Invention of Hugo Cabret (copy)

He stares at the old man through the five in the clock face. From his position above, the old man looks to be taking inventory. He knows it won’t be long before the old man begins to doze, but he wonders if the old man has started to notice things missing. Little things really, he doesn’t like stealing and only takes what he absolutely needs to finish his automaton.

Hugo is alone now. The automaton is all that is left of his previous life. His mother died when he was a wee boy, but he spent many happy days with his father. As museum mechanic, Hugo’s father made sure Hugo had a mind for gears, pulleys, and springs. If not in school, he brought Hugo along with him on all repairs.

Their favorite thing to work on together was the automaton. Someone had stored the lifelike man in the museum attic after it broke, and the father and son team took it on as a mission. Hugo’s father would draw its small pieces and parts in a notebook as he disassembled the work. From this notebook, he hoped to turn around and put it back together with clean pieces and parts and have a working machine.

The automaton was a little man sitting posed behind a desk with his arms raised above the desk. In his left hand resided an ink well and in his right a pen. If things worked correctly, after being wound the automaton would write something on a sheet of paper placed underneath the arms on the desk. Father and son dreamt of those words.

Ah, the old man was asleep. Hugo quickly climbed down from the attic, slipped into the alley, ran across the road, and shimmied into the cracked air grate. From there, he silently made his way to the toy booth, and his goal. He could see the old man still sleeping as he slowly moved the air vent cover.

His prize in reachable site, he outstretches his arm to grab the little blue mouse. The old man suddenly comes alive and grabs Hugo around his wrist and begins to yell for the station inspector. Hugo is doomed! If the station inspector discovers he is alone it will be straight to the orphanage and good-bye automaton. He must talk fast!

The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick is a 500 plus-page picture book that won the American Library Association’s prestigious Caldecott Medal for 2008. I wrote article the summer of 2008, but after seeing the movie last night I want to shout to everyone, “Read this Book!”

Invention of Hugo Cabret (copy)

http://maggiereads.blogspot.com/2011/11/invention-of-hugo.html

Ntl Picture Book Month (copy)

I give thanks every Wednesday morning when I start writing these columns. First, I am thankful that there are great Mississippian or Southern authors to read and discuss. Second, I am thankful that I have great eyesight and leisure time to read. Third, I am thrilled that I have a job I love and that reading is a requirement. Lastly, that I have people willing to read these columns.

At the annual Career-Technical BBQ, I was honored among many fine members of the division for some work the library did in their behalf. It was very nice to be included and I was thankful that the LPN program could use my help. They have an excellent school and I enjoyed my time working with everyone involved.

As a little bonus, they gave me a gift. It was Christmas in theme and I got a cool spreading knife and green napkins, but at the bottom was the best gift ever. It came from people that read my columns and know me. It means the world.

They gave me Bruce Whatley’s The Night before Christmas. This fully illustrated picture book displays the magic of the season on each page. Big presents under the tree can stir young ones to all kinds of wishes. I grew up with the Santa Mouse and How the Grinch Stole Christmas, so my 70s Christmas either had tiny gifts or no gifts at all.

November is National Picture Book Month. I bet you are scratching your chin thinking, hum, I did not know that. Well, they are special. It is a format that will never fit comfortably on a Kindle or Nook. Picture books, with their 32 pages of bliss, are meant to be flipped through, carried with small hands, and sometimes even chewed on.

Picture books are the corner stone of childhood. Every child’s first stuffed animal should be accompanied with a book. I like the tie-ins myself. Books such as Elmer, with the calico elephant or Where the Wild Things Are with hairy but kind monsters are the best. I picture a child in yellow-footed pajamas with a Curious George book tucked under one arm and his hand pulling the monkey along with the other.

Thank you Career-Tech for the gift, thank you Northwest for the job, and thank you to all my readers. It gives me great pride to know that we Mississippians like our books.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Ntl Picture Book Month (copy)

http://maggiereads.blogspot.com/2011/11/ntl-picture-book-month-copy.html

Outlaw Album (copy)

Every Sunday after church we would head to the grandparents’ houses to visit. First mom’s family then dad’s until we were all visited out. Sweetheart and Papa talked politics and money with my parents while Granny Smith and Paw ran-on about the ole days. One family lived in the here-and-now while the other lived in the past.

I liked the ole stories. Granny Smith and Paw could entertain for days with these crazy uncle and aunt antics. Who cared about tobacco prices?

To encourage Sweetheart’s story telling abilities, I would thumb through the family photo albums and ask her about certain pictures. What is Papa doing? Who is this guy standing next to you? How many brothers and sisters do you have, Sweetheart? Why do none of you look alike?

I thought about this weekly ritual after finishing The Outlaw Album by Daniel Woodrell. My grandmother rarely answered my questions with more than a quick name or two. This got me to thinking…she might not want me to know the answers.

The Outlaw Album is set in the Ozarks of Missouri and Arkansas. The short stories involve different families, but it makes one heck of a grim photo album. After each story, I can picture the main character, always the narrator, and place him on a page in my “Outlaw Album.”

One story, set during the Civil War, has a regiment of rebels dressed in union jackets riding the countryside of Missouri unchallenged. At the Sni-A-Bar creek they come across a family stopped to water their team as they travel west. The father hollers a correction to the boy and our narrator notices he is Dutch.

Once the Dutchman proclaims his loyalty to the Union, it is all over for him. The men circle and snare him while one fashions a rope. A discussion flares over the proper noose size, seven or thirteen coils, as the condemned man blathers in the confusion. Once the man swings, his boy runs to his aid and is shot in the back.

The photo I would place in my album would feature our yellow-bellied narrator sitting proudly on his horse with the Dutchman’s lifeless body dangling from a tree.

I love Woodrell. His style of writing is amazing, but this is not a collection for the faint of heart. His outlaws include young girls, rapists, and old men getting away with murder one story after another. Woodrell makes the Ozarks one scary place.

Outlaw Album (copy)

http://maggiereads.blogspot.com/2011/11/outlaw-album-copy.html

Winter's Bone (copy)

Among a small group at Northwest, chatter is occurring around the characteristics of the “dirty south” or “rough south” genre in American literature. Two English professors discussed Harry Crews, father of the genre, enough to request the book Feast of Snakes. Set in Mystic, Georgia, this southern horror story centers around a fallen high-school athlete, Joe Lon Mackey, and the craziness of the annual Rattlesnake Roundup.

Also known as “grit lit,” another instructor loves Mississippian, Larry Brown. Every so often, I have a curious student ask about a Brown title and he explains the “grit lit” expression. Of course, I am in awe. Not necessarily because he knows the term, but the motivation to read an author the instructor casually mentioned during a lecture.

I have spoken separately with a husband and wife teaching team who love Missouri author, Daniel Woodrell. He excites me too, since he is writing actively in the genre. Both Crews and Brown have gone to the great double wide in the sky. Winter’s Bone by Woodrell is one of his best.

Ree Dolly is in charge of a wayward family. Her mother spends her days by the potbelly staying warm and mumbling. Her father is eating three squares under the supervision of the Missouri Correctional Department. Her two younger brothers are suffering under quilts and eating the same ole grits Ree cooks daily.

Today is a little harder on the family’s stomachs. Across the creek hangs venison curing in the open air. They live in a hollow in the Ozarks surrounded by kin. Little Harold makes the mistake when he asks if they will offer any to the family. Ree is quick to turn his ear and say, “Never. Never ask for what ought to be offered.”

After the boys’ meager breakfast, they are sent off to the bus stop and Ree begins her daily chopping of wood. The snow slaps her in the face as she dreads the washing that will have to hang in the house to dry.

Within an hour the boys are returning to the house in the back of a cop car. Ree greets the officer with a quick, “They didn’t do nothin’!” and is reassured they did not. School has been cancelled. The policeman, an old friend of her father’s, has something to tell her before he leaves.

“Jessup’s out on bail and I can’t locate him. Girl, you better find him by November 8, or you will lose the house, barn and timbre acres if he don’t show. He signed them over”

Winter's Bone (copy)

http://maggiereads.blogspot.com/2011/11/winters-bone-copy.html