For the record, I'm thrilled about The Graveyard Book which I loved, disappointed by We Are the Ship not hitting a triple with the Caldecott and wondering why there isn't a Newbery/Printz level nonfiction category. (The Sibert just doesn't seem like enough in terms of notoriety and also, I find it odd to include NF titles for such a wide age range in one category.) Moving right along....

From the January double-sized issue of Booklist, here are some titles that caught my eye:

The Book of Dead Philosophers by Simon Critchley: "Dismayed by the devolution of philosophy into a dry academic specialty, Critchley reconnects his discipline with the most universal of human concerns. For it is in pondering death that serious thinkers have discovered the wellsprings of wisdom. Seneca is thus voicing a persistent philosophical motif when he insists, “He will live badly who does not know how to die well.” However, because death refuses to shrink into a tidy intellectual construct, Critchley scrutinizes not only what prominent philosophers have thought about the subject but also how they have actually died. Readers thus contemplate the dying Augustine reading the Hebrew psalms in tears; the doomed Nietzsche rushing into the street to embrace a horse, so signaling a final descent into syphilitic madness; the heroic Bergson contracting his fatal illness by voluntarily joining fellow Jews forced into the bitter cold of midwinter to register with Nazi authorities."

I know nothing - nothing - about philosophy. Does anyone learn about this in school? I never heard Aristotle's name even mentioned in the classroom, all the way through grad school. It seems like instead of the extremely lame "Art, Music, Drama" mess I was required to take (or the pointless repetitive "English Composition") that an "Intro to Philosophy" class would have been more welcome. This book, which got a starred review, sounds like an interesting place to start.

How Lincoln Learned to Read: Twelve Great Americans and the Education That Made Them by Daniel Wolff. "Eclectic author and journalist Wolff looks at the training, formal or otherwise, of 12 unique Americans in an effort to identify aspects of a “good education.” From Abe Lincoln’s obsession with books and newspapers to Elvis’ fascination with movies and their soundtracks, Wolff ties these varied biographies together with common historical threads, discerning how each was able to surmount difficulties and make his or her mark. We learn that Ben Franklin “finds his refuge in books” as a child and that Abigail Adams “entered the adult world through the library.” W. E. B. DuBois was fortunate to be born in Massachusetts, where education was mandatory for 6- to 12-year-olds, black or white. Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins, a Paiute Indian, opened her own Indian school, striving to keep the traditional ways alive in the face of white-run schools trying to exterminate Indian traditions."

We are knee deep in Lincoln books these days (and there were already a zillion of them out there) but this one uses him just as a jumping off point to focus on several other interesting Americans that few of us know much about. (Plus I'm not ashamed to admit that the idea of reading about how Elvis learned is totally fascinating to me.)

Nature's Second Chance: Restoring the Ecology of Stone Prairie Farm by Steven Apfelbaum. "Ecologist Apfelbaum wanted to put into practice what he learned about restoring damaged ecosystems on land of his own. He purchased a 150-year-old farmhouse and eventually, thanks to the success of his visionary consulting business, Applied Ecological Services, acquired 80 acres of southern Wisconsin farmland. By dint of ardent research and relentless hard work, Apfelbaum and his partner, Susan Marie Lehnhardt, transformed land long depleted by corn crops, pesticides, and invasive species into a thriving prairie resplendent with wildflowers and resurgent birds, butterflies, and wildlife. Part treatise on ecological restoration—with fascinating forays into the history of the Midwest, Aldo Leopold’s land ethic, the role of fire in prairie ecosystems, and the damage done by industrialized, monoculture farming—this utterly compelling tale is also an eco-memoir."

"Eco-memoir" - the new 21st century must read genre.

The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yuko Ogawa. "The narrator in Ogawa’s mysterious, suspenseful, and radiant fable, the youngest housekeeper at the agency, knows that her new client will be a challenge: nine housekeepers have already been fired. But when she meets the Professor in his small cottage, she is intrigued instead of wary. A brilliant mathematician, he lives a surreal life. The elderly Professor can’t remember anything after 1975. He can absorb new information and new experiences for 80 minutes at a stretch, then it is erased, and he has to start over. Quiet and kind, his jacket festooned with scraps of paper on which he writes notes to remind himself of what he always forgets, he spends his puzzling days solving highly advanced math problems and winning national contests. At long last, he has the perfect companions. The smart and resourceful housekeeper, the single mother of a baseball-crazy 10-year-old boy the Professor adores, falls under the spell of the beautiful mathematical phenomena the Professor elucidates, as will the reader, and the three create an indivisible formula for love."

This one just sounds beautiful and sometimes it is nice not to read something that will tear me apart - sometimes it is nice just to read about the better part of the human condition. (The perfect tonic after all these war books....)

Sparrow Girl by Sara Pennypacker, Illustrated by Yoko Tanaka. "In 1958, Chairman Mao declared war on sparrows. He blamed them for devouring the nation’s wheat crop, and he required all citizens, armed with pots and pans and firecrackers, to take to the streets and literally scare the birds to death. The successful campaign brought on a plague of locusts and a three-year famine that resulted in the deaths of almost 40 million Chinese. The author takes these actual events as inspiration for a resonant, contemporary fable about Ming-Li, a girl who feels for the sparrows under attack, defies the leader, and rescues seven birds as they fall from the sky. Pennypacker strikes a suitably moralistic tone and tells her story with rich, descriptive detail. Tanaka matches the somber elegance of the text with opaque, folk-inspired paintings in a subdued palette. An author’s note explains the difficult facts behind the story. Opposite the grave historical account, though, is an uplifitng image: on a field of white, a small nest with seven eggs promises the hope that springs from the simple actions of one empathetic heart."

This is a picture book which surprises me as the subject matter is certainly heavy (I'd love to see it as a YA novel). The history blew my mind however and I've got to take a look at it. Can you believe this? Almost 40 million people dead because of sparrows?

Here we go - a ton of sparrow miscellany from Denis Summers-Smith's On Sparrows and Man. (You can also read a bit more about the "Great sparrow campaign" on wikipedia.) (Drat, the Summers-Smith book seems to out-of-print everywhere these days.)