The Green Year: 365 Little Things You Can Do To Make a Big Difference

For those of you out there interesting in living a greener life and reducing your carbon footprint, this book is for you! It was amazing! It is meant to be read one page a day for every day out of a year. But in actuality, you can reader it in a much shorter period of time and the ideas you find in this book are so fabulous, that you will probably want to.

Of course there are the suggestions that you may already be familiar with - use reusable bags, check your tire pressure, and recycle your live Christmas trees; however, for every suggestion you may have heard, there are just as many creative green solutions that you may not be as familiar with.

I loved this book because it made me feel proactive, like there really is something that I can do today to make a difference. I loved it because many of the ideas are simple and family friendly. They also have a version specifically for kids if you are looking to raise awareness.

This is just a great, practical and well written book. Perfect for every person, perfect for every family.

Code Talkers

I read this book with my fifth grade reading group and it just made for the most amazing discussion. My group was comprised of 10 - 11 year old boys, a difficult age group to encourage reading, and without exception, they all loved this book.

It is amazing how much even I, as an adult, learned from reading this novel. For example, I had no idea how many men we lost in the Pacific to malaria and that the search for a cure to the "mosquito problem" was what brought about DDT. I was amazed at how much information the Code Talkers had to store completely in their memory - the code books never left the base where the Navajo learned the Code to prevent it from falling into enemy hands. Even the Code Talkers themselves were assigned protectors among the other Marines to keep them from being captured by the Japanese.

I loved the way that this book was written in the first person. The reader gets to experience everything with Ned Bengay from his departure from his family,to his treatment at the government school, to his time as a Marine. This is an amazing first person narrative of a few of the most colorful members of the Greatest generation. It's a great read and I recommend it highly.

If you have boys in this age group that enjoy Call of Duty or other online WW2 games, this is a great tie in and way to get them reading. I printed the navajo dictionary out from a site online for the boys in my group and they really enjoyed that. It was an awesome experience, being able to share this work with young men and see the real impact that it made on them.

Fluke or I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings

I picked this book because, well, deep down I really am a whale lover. I don't know too many people, women especially, who aren't. The book is about a man who is a researcher working out of Hawaii trying to discover what makes the male humpback sing. The initial part of the book was very good. Nate, the main character of the book, was trying to uncover what exactly whales are communicating, if anything, in their song.
Things get dicey when Nate gets a little too close to unveiling the truth about the whales.

That is when things took a turn for the weird. When Amelia Earheardt showed up, I threw in the towel. Some readers say that this work is amazing funny and I guess if you enjoy the BIZARRE then this work is for you. As for me, I think that while the author is advocating for conservation, when you take a serious subject matter that you supposedly support and turn it into a big joke, I believe that you do your cause a disservice.

I honestly can not think of a single person that I would recommend this book to, and considering my love of the written word, that my friends says it all.

Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Global Climate Crisis

I read this book as my choice for our April Earth Day book club. It was an extremely detailed and well thought out book. I didn't really know what to expect when I started reading this but was surprised to find the amount of detail on each topic/cause of global warming.

Al starts his work with a quote and it is one that I know I will remember forever, "If you want to go quickly, go alone; if you want to go far, go together. We must go far - quickly." I think that Al is right in many regard, I believe that global climate change is real and I also believe that man is a contributing factor. I agree that there is a huge campaign instigated to convince us that we needed worry about global climate change, it isn't our fault and even if it is, it will never be too late to do something about it.

Where we differ is on *what* should be done about it. I think common sense should prevail. After all, environmentally friendly lightbulbs ( which I use) sound like a great idea until the uneducated masses start using them and not disposing of them properly causing mercury and more to leech into the ground water, and that is ust a simple example.

I say common sense should prevail - reduce, reuse, recycle. Use less. Consider what we consume and stop using the bottom dollar as the only measure of what we should and should not do. So while Al's book was informative on the problems that we face and the causes of those problems, I think he could have gone further with possible solutions.

Each Little Bird That Sings

I just finished reading this as part of a reading discussion group with my 5th grade girls. With both groups, the boys and the girls, it is amazing how much that I felt that I learned from each of these books.

Each Little Bird that Sings is the story of Comfort Snowberger, a 10 year old girl whose family runs the local funeral home. In the course of her short life, Comfort has been to 247 funerals.
Even so, the ten-year-old is unprepared for the series of heart-wrenching events that begins on the first day of Easter vacation with the sudden death of her beloved great-uncle Edisto. This is the story of those events.

Every one of my girls in the discussion group has lost a loved one, as I myself lost my dad this past year. It was amazing how insightful this book was in dealing with death. I don't want this comment to put the reader off though because this book isn't about death, it's about life. This book is moving, insightful and inspiring. Even as an adult it will be a long time before I forget Comfort and her family and the lessons that I learned will stay with me always.

For my girls, I think that this book was very helpful in assisting them deal with losses in their life, their outlook on death and even how to handle peer pressure or difficulties with a friend. After all, death isn't the only loss we endure in this life and each loss results in it's own sort of grief. Life is full of little ( and big!) surprises and it's how we handle them that matters...

Here are some of my favorite quotes from the book:

"It's not how you die that makes the important impression, Comfort; it's how you live. Now go live a while, honey, and let me get back to work."

Everything, even death, served us, according to him. Everything had a grand purpose, and there was nothing amiss in the universe; it was our job to adjust to whatever came our way.

I think those two quotes are full of wise insight that all of us can apply to everyday life. I would highly recommend Each Little Bird That Sings to anyone... but especially to those in the age group of 9- 15 dealing with the loss of a loved one or pet.

The Devil Who Tamed Her

I don't usually waste my time with romance novels, but once in a while, everyone deserves a little brain candy. Back in the day, I used to really enjoy romance novels until I realized that life is too short and there are way too many good books to read. However, I used to love a good Lindsay and after all the downers I have read lately, it was a welcome respite.

As I was reading the story, I felt that it was somehow vaguely familiar. Then, I realized that it should be familiar, it was the retelling of one of my favorite Shakespeare stories, "The Taming of the Shrew".

Every loves a Lindsay, at least that is what they say, and if you love the romance genre this one is worth checking out. However, if you really love the story Taming of the Shrew - no one does it better than Shakespeare, unless of course it's Burton and Taylor.

Columbine

In 1999, the worst school massacre ( up until that time) in US History happened in a little town in Colorado. The school was Columbine. If you were old enough to remember, it was a horrific and terrifying event. It made many Americans feel like there was no where that their children were safe.

I was just home from the hospital. My baby was 2 days old when the tragedy happened. I remember watching many news reports about the bullying and the Trench coat mafia, only to find out when reading this book that all of those suppositions were wrong.

I have always been curious about the cases of Columbine, I wanted to understand why this tragedy happened. I think it's human nature to want to understand the why. After reading the book, I have a crystal clear understanding of the who, what, where and when of the events leading up to the shootings. I am still fairly clueless on the why.

Dylan was depressed. Eric was a psychopath (really, I would never have guessed that) . These seem like simplistic explanations to me. They are almost too convenient. They are rationals, but no definitive reasons are clear. Then I realized that that's part of what's wrong with being a pyschopath - there really aren't any clear reasons. Maybe there can't be.

I do think I have a better understanding of the families. Do I believe that two parents, as in the case of the Kleibolds, can try their best, love their child, work hard to be good parents and yet still raise a child that does something like this? Yes, I do. Do I think Dylans parents probably made mistakes? Well don't we all. I think Dylan is ( aside from the victims) part of the real tragedy here. He could have been more.

Eric Harris - I think he was a murderer from the get go. I think his parents contributed to his mental health problems and covered up the warning signs thereby deluding themselves and others.

My favorite story in the book was Patrick - one of the victims in the library that fateful day. He had to learn to walk and talk again, and yet, he still fulfilled his dream of being valedictorian. Proof that anything truly is possible. He was a light in a great darkness.

I'm off to happier projects now. I hope that as the 11th anniversary approaches the survivors can find peace....