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Red In The Flower Bed: An Interracial Adoption Story and Blog Tour

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Red In The Flower Bed is a sweet, imaginative and yet simple twist on a child’s adoption story. I am an adoptive parent of two children, an adoption advocate, speaker and writer and our home library is more than full of books that are for all ages and stages of the adoption journey. But, this one had a new twist I’d not yet seen which is why I recommend it. Andrea Nepa has taken a seed as a metaphor and while that might seem logical and simplistic, I haven’t actually seen it used in this manner. The seed is a lovely metaphor for an adopted child. While this book specifically tackles interracial adoption, I felt it missed the marketing mark here and limited itself. If you look at this as a story of any adoptee, it makes sense and appeals to a wider audience in my opinion. The child is like the seed of a poppy here, blowing in the wind, carried to a different pasture. The pasture is an obvious reference to the family created by adoption. This story is aimed at 3 to 6 year olds and is reliant on rhyme and cute cutout style pictures. “So there among the violet, rose and marigold the little black dot settled into her spot.”  What a surprise she will be when she blooms and is a bright red poppy in a field of predictable colours. Red In the Flower Bed is a nice addition to anyone’s adoption library. It is a gentle, sensitive story. Red in The Flower Bed is a nice alternative to the many animal metaphors and characters that are often used to explore themes of differences and adoption in children’s fiction. This story is clever and a good way to work the topic of adoption onto your bookshelf and into your child’s life.

Red In the Flower Bed is by Andrea Nepa, published by Tribute Books, December 2008 in the United States, retails for $11.65, also available as an ebook for Kindle.

The opinions in this blog are all my own. I received a copy of this book to read for review.

Sima’s Undergarments For Women

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As luck would have it the novels I have lately been given all tend to have some infertility, loss or adoption theme. Happenstance, or some greater design, I am not so sure. Perhaps more people are exploring these themes through fiction. Sima’s Undergarments for Women is a really moving story of a childless woman who runs a bra and panty store in the basement of her home in Brooklyn. Sima is an expert on lingerie. Nobody else can merely look at the customer coming through her door and tell immediately, almost always without fail, exactly what size and style, cup and width is needed for support. Sima’s store is a mirror of the community she lives in, a female hangout and place of bonding. She is an entrepreneur in her 60s seemingly content with her life and business until a young beautiful Isreali named Timna comes to her store looking for a bra and leaves with a job as seamstress. The closer they work together the greater the promise she sees in the young, carefree version of herself and soon Sima is casting herself in the role of surrogate mother to the young displaced woman. This eventually becomes the source of conflict as Timna grows to resent Sima who has trouble accepting boundaries. Ilana Stanger-Ross is an interesting author and a practicing midwife now living in British Columbia. She has received several prizes for her work including the Timothy Findley Fellowship. She writes authentic and heart-wrenching scenes that revolve around infertility. Sima carries most of the burden of this alone, seeking treatment and consulting doctors earlier on in their marriage, her husband a distant observor of her pain and stoicism. Stanger-Ross pushes the envelope here when she is exploring the ways in which a married couple can lapse into moments of over familiarity, and even emotional cruelty. Lev is the cuckholded husband who seems to take everything Sima can dish out and more until he is finally forced to stand up and call her out when she crosses the line in a brutally harsh scene where wife tries to make husband into her dressmaker’s dummy for lingerie. This is a book that is filled with rich metaphors and I love a good metaphor. She has built a career selling something very intimate and yet her life is completely devoid of intimacy. Sima’s store is in the basement of her home, for instance, the foundation upon which her world sits. She sells foundation garments. Just as a good bra gives support physically to a woman’s breasts, Sima’s shop is a central community hub for women seeking support.
Sima’s Undergarments for Women, by Ilana Stanger-Ross, Penguin Canada, 2009, paperback 2010. $15.00 U.S and $18.50 Canada. This novel gets $$$$ out of $$$$$.

I was not compensated for this review, but received a copy of the book from the publisher, as is common practice in media.

Friday Blog Hop and What Would You Read to Your Daughter?

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This is a fun Friday bloghop for book lovers started by parajunkee.com. I thought I’d pop on by there today and find some new books. Also featured blogger Julie at My Five Monkeys asks If you have a daughter what do you want to read to her? I have a list that I have already started reading both of my girls and I have to say this is one of the best parts of parenting. The reading and sharing the love of the written word. On my list is Anne of Green Gables and Alice in Wonderland (future as they aren’t old enough yet) and so far we have worked through: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, Delta, Charlotte’s Web, the Life of Pi, The Velveteen Rabbit, Ramona and Beezus. When I was a kid I also loved Heidi, so I suspect I will get to that one soon too. Meanwhile, we are eagerly awaiting the new Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe movie. No, we are not Harry Potter fans here. We enjoy classics and we discover some new amazing authors together too. This week I found Lunch With Lenin, by Deborah Ellis and am now committed to working through her entire collection of books so that I can steer Payton in that direction soon. Ellis writes novels that are socially aware and that tackle global issues like Aids and poverty and drugs. I even found a reference to FASD (fetal alcohol spectrum disorder) in the recent Lunch With Lenin.

The King’s Christmas List

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The King’s Christmas List should be at the top of many Christmas lists for parents interested in promoting a generation of socially aware young people. This book is a very sweet story about a little girl named Emma and her dog Shu -Shu, who set out to make their way to a birthday party, but encounter obstacles, in the form of people in need all along the way. Emma and her dog are invited to the King’s birthday party. But they cannot go empty-handed, so together they craft and bake presents to take with them. Emma and her dog are to travel in a beautiful horse-drawn carriage with her new Christmas cape, a cake they have baked, and her favourite bear, Cherry Bear. First they meet a grandmother and her grandson who are cold and hungry. Emma gives them both the cake and she wraps the boy in her Christmas cape. A little further down the road she and Shu-Shu meet a little girl crying because her bear has fallen into a river. Emma selflessly leaves her with Cherry Bear. Finally they arrive at the castle and are slightly embarrassed to have no present to give them King. Emma begins to tell him of her presents and the story of their trip, but he tells her he knows what she has done and that her gifts to others on his behalf have been the greatest present he could ever receive.
The King’s Christmas list is a really lovely story with opulent drawings and a great message about materialism that is not harsh or heavy-handed. Bonnie Leick’s illustrations are gorgeous and rich and magical. Author Eldon Johnson has taken a simple message and a grown up message and pared it down to a child’s level, pulling it together with very realistic examples of a child’s natural inclination to give from the heart. This is a gorgeous book that, in the end, also relates real life examples from World Vision of how we can all give to others to carry out the true spirit of the season.
The King’s Christmas List is by Eldon Johsnon, illustrated by Bonnie Leick, published by Tommy Nelson, or Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nasheville, 2010, $14.99 US. 30 pages.
Thriftymommastips rating is $$$$$ out of $$$$$. Loved this cute book with heart.

Switch

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Switch asks readers to envision one of their worst nightmares come true – that your family is being held captive by a demented psychopath. Then the author asks you to travel down that road for awhile imagining what depths of depravity you might contemplate, what horrible lines you might cross to get them back safe. Switch by Grant McKenzie is a fast-paced page-turner. Switch is one of the quickest reads I have undertaken in awhile. I completed much of it in one weekend. Not because it was simplistic, but because it was so fast-paced and urgent I really needed to get to the end and find out if the hero rescued his family. The story is compelling and creepy and a bit in the tradition of James Patterson and Harlan Coben.
Sam is a somewhat down on his luck actor. He earns a pay cheque as a mall cop and bides his time between roles. He is best known for his high school drama roles and had one big break on Magnum P.I. So he is a bit of a celebrity, targeted partly because of that and partly for other reasons. When we meet him he is living in Portland doing commercials to keep his hand in the game having moved with his family from L.A. The prologue of the book begins with a murder, but a somewhat strange one, in that the murderer, a surgeon named Zack, seems conflicted. The conflict is complicated when it is revealed that Zack is being watched. The start of Switch asks the reader to be patient and to switch gears numerous times before coming to the true plot. It is the only confusing piece, a speed bump in the path of a really good but twisted story. I found this part of the book to be a bit awkward and off-putting. The prologue might have been moved or eliminated altogether to lend a better flow to this piece of the book. Jump then from the prologue to a family getting ready for bed, going through the rituals. There is someone watching this ritual remotely. The Watcher. He presses a remote control switch and punches a hole in the gas line inside the house and soon the house is engulfed in flames. Zack is mysteriously a voyeur to the crime. Sam is working the night shift as usual, a job he compares to glorified babysitting and he stumbles onto some kids robbing a candy store. The middle-aged actor believes himself shot, but it turns out the kids held up the store with paint guns. In the wee hours of the morning he leaves his job and heads home, only to be stopped by a police cruiser as he approaches the home he finds, engulfed in flames, body bags being carried out. His house is gone, family assumed dead. He is plunged into a physical state of shock that is very well captured here and then while immobilized with fear and grief, he is labelled the only suspect, grilled by police. Then he gets a strange phone call telling him his family is not dead, the unwitting news that forces him to become a puppet executing acts of violence and torture on command in order to get his family back. Is his family alive or dead? Who is Zack and why is he suddenly working with Sam? Is he on Sam’s side, or working with someone else? Can he trust this new partner? How will he get out of this unending cycle of violence? McKenzie, born in Scotland, lives in British Columbia and was a former crime reporter for the Calgary Sun. The kind of guy I used to work with toiling away with other ink-stained wretches while penning a novel at night. I love the opportunity to review Canadian authors and have been a big fan of all Canadian literature since high school. I am incredibly lucky to have been given a couple of really different, but intriguing new Canadian novels lately. This one Switch, is shocking, fast, and plot-driven, and it reminded me a lot of the James Patterson books. Imaginative in its depravity and psychologically thrilling. Switch is most fun when dropping clever cultural references to the 70s and 80s. Switch is a good read and a worthy edition to a growing body of crime fiction in Canada.

Enjoyable and fast-paced, if you can negotiate the rocky beginning.

Thriftymommastips rating is $$$1/2 out of $$$$$
Switch by Grant McKenzie is in paperback. 432 pages. It is listed for $25.00 and published by Penguin Group Canada, a division of Pearson Canada Inc. First published in Great Britain by Transworld. The Penguin edition is 2010.

Disclosure: I am not paid for my reviews, but as is common in media, a copy of this book was provided to me for free in order to complete this review.