Month: July 2011

Good clean reads

beccakinla books, clean, family, kosher, recommended reading, summer Leave a comment

A friend asked me about good clean books (obviously, other than those from reliable Jewish publishers) to share with her preteen and teenage kids during the summer. Here are just a few great books for the (Jewish) kid, all pre-approved by moi. However, you should ALWAYS skim books before letting your kid read them. Even if they are “kosher,” they might not be at the right reading level, for example.

(And you do have to take the following into account:
I allow my kids to read books by non-Jews and about non-Jewish subjects–which some frum moms might disapprove of–and I do allow my kids to read about somewhat controversial topics, as long as they are developmentally appropriate. I’m also a big fan of all those treife animals some people shun–I just don’t eat them.
However, I ditch books with strong language, completely “un-tznua” romantic situations, excessive violence, flagrant racism or xenophobia, or that promote avodah zara, movies or television.
…And, yes, that includes Disney!)

These books are for kids 8 and up:
The Hobbit (Tolkein)
The Courage of Sarah Noble (Dalgliesh)
The Stories Julian Tells (Cameron)
Binky series of graphic books (Ashley Spires)
Hereville: How Mirka Gets her Sword (Deutsch)
The Rabbi’s Girls (Hurwitz)
Baseball Fever (Hurwitz)
The Travels of Benjamin of Tudela (Shulevitz)
Fat Men from Space (Pinkwater)
Fat Men from Space
Bobby vs. Girls (Accidentally) (Lisa Yee)
all Henry Huggins books (Cleary)
Ramona, Ramona the Pest, Beezus and Ramona, Ramona the Brave, Ramona and her Mother, Ramona and her Father (Cleary)
Sarah, Plain and Tall (MacLachlan)
Little House in the Big Woods and Farmer Boy (Wilder)
There’s a Boy in the Girls’ Bathroom (Sachar)
Sadako and the Paper Cranes (Coerr)
The Princess Tales, Volume I (Levine)
A Single Shard (Park)
The Thief Lord (Funke)


And these are for age 12 and up:
Dealing with Dragons (Wrede)
Searching for Dragons (Wrede)
Tripods trilogy (John Christopher)
The Pool of Fire
Homecoming (Voight)
The Eye, the Ear and the Arm (Farmer)
The Giver (Lowry)
The Cay (Taylor)
Treasure Island (Stevenson)
all the Little House books not listed above
Island of the Blue Dolphins (O’Dell)
Tuck Everlasting (Babbitt)
Un-Lun-Dun (Mieville)
Bud, Not Buddy (Curtis)


For age 15 and up:
Sorcery and Cecilia (Wrede and Stevemer)
Rabbi Harvey vs. the Wisdom Kid (Scheinkin)
Rabbi Harvey vs. the Wisdom Kid: A Graphic Novel of Dueling Jewish Folktales in the Wild West
The Blue Sword (McKinley)
The Graveyard Book (Gaiman)
Dealing with Dragons (Wrede)
Catherine, Called Birdy (Cushman)
The Folk Keeper (Billingsley)
The Martian Chronicles (Bradbury)
I Robot (Asimov)
1001 Arabian Nights
When I Was a Slave: Memoirs from the Slave Narrative Collection (Norman R. Yetman, ed.)
A Wizard of Earthsea (Le Guin)
Things Not Seen (Clements)

P.S. There are many other wonderful books out there…please share your “kosher” reading recommendations for the 8+ crowd in a comment below! Also, don’t assume other books by the same authors as the above are okay. In many cases, they are most definitely NOT.

Wanna be a punctuation vigilante? I’ll bring the Sharpies!

beccakinla Eats Shoots and Leaves, editing, Lynne Truss, punctuation, Uncategorized Leave a comment

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You know how there’s always a book that you mean to read, but you never seem to get around to it? Or you always forget the title when you’re actually at the library and in a position to borrow it? Well, several years ago, I heard Lynne Truss on NPR’s Fresh Air discussing her then-new book, Eats, Shoots and Leaves. Ever since then, I’ve intended to read the book, but somehow never did until last week.
If there ever was a perfect candidate to read this book, it’s me. I am what Ms. Truss calls, “a stickler.” When I find a typo in a book, I take a pencil to it. (Oh, how delightful it is when I discover in a library book that a fellow stickler has already repaired the error ahead of me!) If I pass a shop with an error in its sign, it takes all my self-discipline not to run home for a Sharpie and start to copyedit in permanent ink. And don’t even ask about menus. (Though I usually cut the restaurant slack if it’s run by non-native speakers of English. I’m sure they punctuate English better than I can punctuate Farsi or Chinese.)
I’ve gotten slightly better in recent years, probably because I no longer have the energy after chasing toddlers all day and cooking three dinners for six people (don’t ask). As soon as I get all my kids off to school and out of diapers (hopefully, not in that order), I’ll probably get that itchy stickler finger again.
When I explained the topic of the book to my darling husband, he smiled knowingly. “Yes, that’s the perfect book for you.”
What’s amazing about Eats, Shoots and Leaves is that it’s fun to read. Even non-sticklers will appreciate Truss’s explanation of the vagaries of English punctuation and the pleasures in getting it just so. Some of the best moments are when Truss laughs at her own stickler tendencies, which is good, because otherwise, the stickler is in damage of going off the deep end entirely.
I also felt a surge of pleasure in being American, as Americans punctuate a little more consistently than the English.
I highly recommend this book for all writers, teachers, and sticklers. Well, unless you got around to reading the book before me.

Another great contest…this time for readers, not just writers!

beccakinla book, contest, free books, Jewish Leave a comment
The website Savvima is giving away a copy of the new Artscroll book, Let’s Go to the Sun and the Moon. To enter, you need to visit this link and put in a topic you’d like to see a Jewish book address before July 4th, 2011. One entry will be selected to receive the book.