Sonderling Sunday – Chapter 9 – Meeting the Sonderlinge

Der Orden der Seltsamen Sonderlinge, Sonderling Sunday 1

It’s time for Sonderling Sunday! I missed last week because it was my youngest son’s 18th birthday! (Where oh where does the time go?) That reminds me of a funny thing about Germans and birthdays. Did you know that German kids sing “Happy Birthday” in English? Perhaps it was just my landlady’s family, since she grew up around Americans, but I suspect it was more widespread, because the small children who attended this birthday party in 1998 knew the words to the English “Happy Birthday” song.

(The cutie in the bottom right corner is my son, who is now 18 years old.) I believe the birthday girl was 5 years old, and we were so surprised at how well the small children sang in English. I suppose, bottom line, it’s hard to fit Alles gute zum Geburtstag into a nice song.

But back to Sonderling Sunday, the time when I play with language and supply you with delightfully useless phrases to know in German by looking at the translation of James Kennedy‘s The Order of Odd-Fish, Der Orden der Seltsamen Sonderlinge, a truly Sonderbook.

We left off two weeks ago in the middle of chapter 9, on page 86 in English, and Seite 110 auf Deutsch.

Last time, we learned several different translations for “dithering,” as the knights of the Order of Odd-fish discussed Sir Oliver’s six-hundred-thousand-page dissertation on the subject. I still find it interesting and not at all surprising that Germans don’t have as many different words for dithering as English speakers do.

Ah! There’s a lovely paragraph right at the start of this next section, so I’ll start off by quoting the whole thing:

The cockroaches swooped in, snatched away the soup bowls, and served plates heaping with a gooey stew. It was spicy and slimy, and after a few cautious bites, Jo decided she liked it.

That translates as:

Die Kakerlaken stürmten wieder in den Raum, entrissen allen die Suppenschüsseln und servierten Teller mit einem pappigen Eintopf. Er war würzig und schleimig und nach ein paar vorsichtigen Bissen kam Jo zu dem Schluss, dass sie ihn mochte.

Some of the goodies here:

“soup bowls” = Suppenschüsseln
“gooey stew” = pappigen Eintopf (“cardboardy one-pot”)
“slimy” = schleimig (Surely this is where we got the English word?)

Going on, there are more wonderfully useless phrases about being wonderfully useless:

“properly dubious” = angemessen zweifelhaft

“unreliable” = unzuverlässig

“useless” = nutzlos

“out of date” = überholt (shorter in German!)

“contradictory” = widersprüchlich (“speech against”)

“we never publish anything misleading” = wir niemals irgendetwas veröffentlichen, das auf eine falsche Fährte führen könnte (“we never publish anything that can send one on a wrong trip”)

“deliberately misleading” = vorsätzlich Irreführendes (See the root for trip still in there?)

I thought it was funny that with this sentence the German translator did not dither as much as in English:
“Which, er, isn’t too far, actually, sometimes.” = Was, genau genommen, manchmal nicht sonderlich weit ist. (“Which, strictly speaking, sometimes is not especially far.”)

This one sounds better in German:
“an unreliable reference book” = ein unzuverlässiges Lexikon

Here’s a fun one I didn’t know before:
“at once” = schlagartig

“Jo’s stomach dropped.” = Jo plumpste der Magen in die Kniekehlen. (“Jo flopped her stomach in the hollow of the knees.”)

“Rumors, leads, myths, things that are maybe true, maybe not.” = Gerüchte, vermutungen Mythen, Dinge, die vielleicht wahr sind, vielleicht aber auch nicht.

“whiskers” = Backenbart

“hiccups” = Schluckaufs

“dubious” = fragwürdig (“question worthy”)

“discredited metaphysics” = verrufene Metaphysiken

“It is spectacularly tiresome!” = Es ist ungeheuer ermüdend! (“It is monstrously tiresome!”)

“Some of my research positively sparkles with dullness.” = Etliche meiner Metaphysiken funkeln förmlich vor Trübsinn. (“Some of my metaphysics sparkles formally with gloom.”)

“arcane drudgery” = uralter Trübsal (“ancient sorrow”)

I like this translation:
“Oh ho ho, oh no, oh no!” = Nein und nochmals nein!” (“No, and again no!”)

“Jo couldn’t help but smile.” = Jo musste unwillkürlich lächeln. (“Jo must involuntarily smile.”)

“supreme distaste” = überlegenem Abscheu

“Jo gritted her teeth.” = Jo knirschte mit den Zähnen.

Here’s a nice concise way of putting it:
“wet with sweat” = schwei?nass.

“as Sir Alasdair dissolved into snuffling laughter” = während Sir Alasdair vor Lachen Schniefte (“as Sir Alasdair with laugher sniffed”)

That’s all I have time for tonight! I hope to meet the rest of the Order next week!

Meanwhile, here are some highlights:
Most fun to say: Suppenschüsseln, unzuverlässiges Lexikon, Schluckaufs
Best exclamation: Nein und nochmals nein!
Best figure of speech: Jo plumpste der Magen in die Kniekehlen.
Most concise: schwei?nass.

Bis nächste Woche!

Review of Wisdom’s Kiss, by Catherine Gilbert Murdock

Fairy Tale Variant, Fantasy, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Wisdom’s Kiss

A Thrilling and Romantic Adventure, Incorporating Magic, Villainy, and a Cat

by Catherine Gilbert Murdock

Houghton Mifflin Books for Children, 2011. 284 pages.
Starred Review

Here’s another fairy-tale-type story set in the world of Princess Ben. In fact, Princess Ben, as a grandmother, makes an appearance, though you don’t at all have to have read her story to understand what’s going on.

Wisdom’s Kiss centers around two princesses, named Temperance and Wisdom. They are granddaughters of Queen Benevolence and share the tradition of character-based names in the kingdom of Montagne. The story is also about Trudy, a young maid with the Sight. She loves the miller’s son Tips, who has gone off to learn to be an acrobat, and an excellent one.

Despite his mother’s machinations toward the throne of Montagne, Duke Roger of Farina is betrothed to Wisdom, the younger sister. She must travel to Farina for the wedding, and along the way she gets a new lady-in-waiting, Trudy, even though when Trudy looks at Wisdom, she feels great pain.

But then Tips’ troupe is performing in the capital of Montagne, and when Wisdom sees him, she finds out what she really aspires to. But royal betrothals are not easily gotten out of.

This is a fun story, with very creative story-telling, including several different perspectives, The Imperial Encyclopedia of Lax, letters, and a play script. The plot moves along with nice twists and turns and is never the least bit boring.

A lot hinges on love at first sight, which I wasn’t crazy about, but mostly everyone’s actions seem true to character, and even that love seems to have a basis in the characters of the people involved.

This is an entertaining tale, creatively told, and does include romance, magic, and villainy to delight all readers.

catherinemurdock.com
hmhbooks.com

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Source: This review is based on an Advance Reader Copy I got at a library conference.

Review of The Friendship Doll, by Kirby Larson

Children's Fiction Review, Historical 0

The Friendship Doll

by Kirby Larson

Delacorte Press, 2011. 201 pages.

The Friendship Doll tells the story of an exquisite Japanese doll, Miss Kanagawa, sent to the United States in 1928 along with fifty-seven other dolls in a gesture of friendship. The book tells about four girls whom Miss Kanagawa encounters over a period of years. All the girls learn a small lesson from the doll, and the doll herself becomes less haughty and learns about love.

I was put off a bit by the very first story. Bunny is pouty because the mean girl Belle Roosevelt gets to give a speech to welcome the doll, even though Bunny could do it better. The doll convinces Bunny not to play a mean trick herself. It just all seemed a little petty, right from the start. Perhaps that was intentional, so we could see some growth in Miss Kanagawa herself.

I did warm up more to the stories of the other girls. Kirby Larson walks a thin line, but stays on the right side of preachiness, even though the girls learn lessons. But it’s delicately done. The girls Miss Kanagawa encounters are all quite different from one another, and I found myself enjoying each adventure a little more than the one before.

However, I do have one peeve with the second adventure, during the Depression. This could be a spoiler for this particular story, so be forewarned.

Here’s the thing. Lois dreams of flying some day like Amelia Earhart and Bessie Coleman. When she gets to go to the World’s Fair with Aunt Eunice, she wants nothing more than to go on a rocket ride zooming two hundred feet above the ground over the lagoon. On the day of the Fair, she has a quarter to spend how she wishes. Then she even gets permission from Aunt Eunice to go on the rockets. But she sees Miss Kanagawa and gets a message from her: A good friend gives our heart wings. She decides instead to buy some exquisite dollhouse furniture for her friend Mabel who couldn’t come.

Okay, call me selfish, but I really really wish Lois had gone on the ride! The reason I’m mentioning it is this: Isn’t that what girls are so often encouraged to do? Enjoying the moment is selfish — you should buy something for someone else.

Now, I lived in Europe for ten years. I learned after awhile that buying a souvenir for someone else tends to not mean a whole lot to them. Because a souvenir from a place they haven’t been doesn’t have any memories tied to it. But even more than that, why can’t Lois take the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity being offered her and enjoy it to the hilt, without having to feel guilty that her friend can’t share it, too? And what if Mabel doesn’t even like what she picks out? But she’s supposed to like it because Lois sacrificed her dream to give it. Isn’t that a recipe for resentment between them?

Anyway, that’s my take on the admittedly artificial situation. But I should add that this would make a fabulous mother-daughter discussion. What do you think?

I wasn’t crazy about this book, but I did enjoy it. And I think younger girls, especially ones who still love dolls, will find it enchanting. There are some fascinating historical details as well as lots of fuel for discussion.

kirbylarson.com
randomhouse.com/kids

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Source: This review is based on a book I got at ALA Annual Conference and had signed by the author.

Review of The Reading Promise, by Alice Ozma

Audiobooks, Nonfiction Review, Starred Review, True Stories 0

The Reading Promise

My Father and the Books We Shared

by Alice Ozma
Narrated by the author

Hachette Audio, 2011. 7 hours on 6 CDs.
Starred Review

It should come as no surprise that I’m crazy about a book about a father reading to his daughter. Alice Ozma and her father Jim Brozina had “The Streak” going — he read to her for 3,218 days in a row, from a day when she was in third grade to the time she went off to college.

My initial reaction? I’m mad at myself for never counting the nights their Dad and I read to our sons. And what a brilliant idea! With a “streak,” the kids don’t decide they’ve outgrown being read to nearly as soon. Indeed, Alice’s father had exactly that in mind, because he didn’t want Alice to decide she was too old for this, as her sister had done. Obviously, the strategy worked beautifully.

Alice Ozma reads the audiobook herself. At first, I thought her voice sounded way too young for it, but as the book got going, since she’s talking a lot about when she was a child, that is perfect, and I got used to her voice by the time she was talking about being older. In a lovely touch, her father narrates the foreword he wrote, and reads all the sentence excerpts from classic children’s books placed at the beginning of each chapter.

This isn’t an outline of every book they read. They don’t talk about every day of reading. Instead, there are lovely vignettes about different times in Alice’s reading life and her relationship with her father.

And my goodness, they have some entertaining vignettes! I laughed and laughed over the way Alice’s father convinced her she could go out on a highwire act — except they didn’t have a costume the right size. Or the way the family accommodated her at the funeral of Franklin the fish. Or how her father convinced her that getting in the dreaded kiss-lock with a boy was life-threatening. But the funniest one of all (and I’m just a little ashamed of saying this) was when she talked about her terrible fear of the corpse of John F. Kennedy.

To be completely fair, it was not the person himself whom I was afraid of, initially. I was afraid of his dead body, and I had somehow become convinced that it would appear one night on my bottom bunk, all laid out and ready for a funeral. I don’t know where I got this idea, and I’m happy to report that today it makes me laugh. Then, though, it was a very grave and serious matter.

Every night, I would go through a huge ordeal to avoid the body. At first I tried going to bed while it was still light out, but because it was winter that only gave me an hour or so from the time I got home from school. And if I went to bed early, it meant waking up early, while it was still dark out. So the darkness was unavoidable. Instead, I tried turning on all the lights in my room and sleeping with them on. My parents didn’t even yell at me, but finally the overhead light in my room burned out and I wasn’t tall enough to replace it. My father was, but I think he made a conscientious decision not to do so. As I got older, contrary to my parents’ expectations, the fear actually got stronger. By middle school, avoiding JFK’s dead body, which was obviously lying in state on my bottom bunk, was the focus of my evening….

The fear soon shifted from JFK’s dead body to JFK in general and included even photos of or quotes about him. So it was with great terror that I learned my father was planning a family trip for my sister and me shortly after my mother moved out, and one of the stops was the JFK Memorial Library. My father tried to convince me that I liked libraries more than I feared JFK. I had to point out to him that he did not know his own daughter.

I like the way she finishes off that sad but hilarious chapter:

I couldn’t appreciate it then, but it takes creativity to lie shivering and shaking in your bed, wondering if your cats will know how to defend you, not against ghosts or the boogeyman, but against the immobile body of one of the most famous and beloved ex-presidents of the United States. Thanks to The Streak and my father, imagination was not something I lacked.

The book does progress beyond these vignettes to a sad story of its own. Alice Ozma’s father was a school librarian, and an outstanding one, who emphasized reading to children. In the name of “progress” he was ordered to stop reading to them, to emphasize computers, and his entire collection was put in storage. Here’s where he tells Alice, now in college, about it:

“Neither of them understand what I’m trying to do. [The principal] ordered hundreds of new books this summer without listening to my suggestions. He said we needed all new, current books because students like new things. He put everything but the picture books, fiction or nonfiction, in storage.”

I put up my hand to fight in defense of the collection my father had spent years building, but he raised his eyebrows and gestured his hands in agreement and continued.

“I know! It’s absurd! Here’s the worst, Lovie — the library already owned some of the books he ordered! We had them in hardcover, and he ordered them in paperback. I never order paperbacks because they fall apart in less than a year. He ordered flimsy, paperback versions of books we already had. After all the budget cuts, that is how he uses our precious library money. When there are things we really needed, books that the children would have cherished. And where is the collection I spent so many years putting together? In boxes, in the school basement.”

Mr. Brozina did fight back, but eventually, he retired. However, Alice got a front row seat on this battle and how much it hurt the kids in the school. By the end of the book, her dad’s reading to seniors and preschoolers and to children in hospitals.

But inevitably, his mind wandered back to the children he had left behind. After working in a school made up mostly of minorities and almost entirely of children who qualified for free lunches from the state, he always worried about the students who slip through the cracks. A library without books seemed like a nightmarish punishment for students who desperately needed literacy to move on in the world and rise out of poverty. I knew that he couldn’t settle with the injustice for too long. His announcement did not come as a surprise.

“I’m running for the school board,” he said one day, as though waking up from a long nap.

Alice Ozma ends her book with something of a manifesto.

We called it The Reading Streak, but it was really more of a promise. A promise to each other, a promise to ourselves. A promise to always be there and to never give up. It was a promise of hope in hopeless times. It was a promise of comfort when things got uncomfortable. And we kept our promise to each other.

But more than that, it was a promise to the world: a promise to remember the power of the printed word, to take time to cherish it, to protect it at all costs. He promised to explain, to anyone and everyone he meets, the life-changing ability literature can have. He promised to fight for it. So that’s what he’s doing.

She ends with a sample Reading Promise in which you can fill in your own name, with this explanation:

My father was not the only person to make this promise. I made it, too, just as millions of people have made it around the world. Since books were first created, copied by hand beside glowing firelight, many have recognized them for the treasures they really are. Men and women everywhere have valued and protected these treasures. They may not start a reading streak, but the commitment is still there. There is always time to make the commitment to read and defend reading, and it is a commitment that is always worthwhile. This is more important now than it has ever been before. Unfortunately, my father’s situation is not unique: day by day, literature is being phased out of our lives and the lives of our children. This is the time to act. This is the time to make a promise.

There you have it. This book includes heartwarming stories about a girl and her father, and it progresses to a call to action about the power of literature. This wonderful story will remind you of the power of reading together and stir you to action.

makeareadingpromise.com
HachetteBookGroup.com

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library audiobook from the Fairfax County Public Library.