In Praise of Stay-at-Home Moms

In Praise of Stay-at-Home Moms by Dr. Laura Schlessinger

Dr. Laura's newest book is here just in time to give a boost to all full time mommies. This book is not full of statistics and science, just enough emotion to bring realization that there is nothing and no one that can top mommy love.

Obviously I enjoyed the book because it is upon the foundation of the mother relationship that I have built much of my recent life. Dr. Laura's anecdotal ways illustrates the important role mommy plays in the life of her WHOLE family. I felt like I was getting a big old pat on the back. I know the choice I have made is the right one for my family. Do I need validation from anyone else......even if I like you? NO. I don't care what anyone else thinks. I did however like to commiserate with other people by way of reading this book, that feel the same way. My reasons for staying at home are pure unadulterated selfishness. I will not allow the sweet moments of my family to be grasped by the hands of anyone else. I will receive all of the kisses, the hugs, the laughs and tears. I will receive all of the cuddles and diapers and EVERY piece of laundry. I was born to be a mommy and wife first. I have forever to do something else that doesn't matter to me as much. So thanks Dr. Laura.

Rating 4

Rating G

The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane

The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane by Kate DiCamillo and illustrated by Bagram Ibatoulline

First off, fabulous illustrations!
Edward is a china rabbit that stands nearly three feet tall. He belongs to a child named Abilene Tulane. He has a wonderful wardrobe of expensive clothing. Abilene loves Edward. Edward however loves himself. His favorite time of year is winter, when the dark comes early. Edward likes to look at the window and instead of seeing outside, when it becomes dark he can see his own reflection. He thinks he is quite a sensational rabbit.
Abilene's grandmother Pellagrina sees through Edward. She knows he doesn't pay attention to anything except himself and his clothing. She knows he does not love Abilene back. One night just before Abilene is to set off on a ship with her parents, Pelligrina tells Edward and Abilene a warning fairytale.
Aboard ship Edward is accidentally thrown overboard. He sinks to the bottom of the sea. Nearly a year later he is washed to the surface and caught in a fishing net. Thus begins Edward's journey through the hands of many that will love him. As Edward is stripped of his fine clothing and comfort he comes to find that love is all he has left, and it is all that matters.
He lives with the fisherman and his old wife. He becomes a hobo and travels the country for years. Edward does brief time as a scarecrow. He is owned and loved by a sweet and dying four year old. Edward travels to a city with a small boy and becomes his puppet, helping him earn money for food. Edward is beaten and broken. He is given new life by a doll restorer and sits in a doll shop for many years. Finally the circle of life curves to meet itself and Edward is reunited with Abilene.
Edward witnesses love, loss, child abuse, death, evil hearts, heartless people, lost souls and comes to find he can feel love.
Rating 5 Heart wrenching! I cried just like I did the first time I read the Velveteen Rabbit when I was 8.
Rating G I say this is a clean read although there is an instance of child abuse (hitting). I still read this to my own children because I wanted them to understand the important message of the book.

Shadow of the Giant

Shadow of the Giant by Orson Scott Card

Card's final book in the Shadow series continues Peter Wiggins attempt to unite the world under a single government headed by himself, the Hegemon. Bean and Petra are trying to recover their stolen embryos, which have been implanted and are now babies.

Peter as Hegemon wants the earth united. He does not want to do this with force or violence. As the wars rage between the largest powers on earth, Russia, Asia, India and Islam, Peter waits to pick up the pieces, or to offer troops and safety to the countries that join the Free People.

Graff and Mazer are sending ships into space to create new colonies. Their love for the former Battle Schoolers or Jeeshmates, compel them to ask the still children if they will consider leaving the earth to be the leaders of new world colonies in space. This will also save earth from destruction because the members of Ender's Jeesh are now the leaders of warring nations. Many begin to see the sense and flee Earth to start over.

Bean and Petra are slowly finding their babies. Petra gives birth early and they realize that their new baby Ender has Bean's genetic key that will make him very small and very smart until he begins to grow into a giant, as Bean is now. The unchecked growth with kill Bean and the children carrying their father's legacy. Bean decides once all of the babies are found, he will take the ones with the genetic key and leave Earth with them. Petra does not know that she will be left with the normal babies alone on Earth.

Islam and Asia join forces through the marriage of Virlomi....goddess of India and Caliph Alai. This destructive marriage forces the hands of the warring countries and war across the Earth erupts at a greater pace.

The babies are all recovered. After Bean leads the FPE armies to victory, he is 'killed' in battle. He takes the afflicted babies, gives Petra a divorce decree, and leaves Earth. He awaits the genetic cure for his giantism. Petra continues leading an army until the wars cease and the world begins to unite under the Hegemon. Broken hearted over the loss of Bean and three of the babies she finally returns home to raise the remaining five. She finds Peter has a growing relationship with the babies because of her absence. Eventually she will marry Peter and have more children.

The Earth unites, except for America. Peter is Hegemon of the Earth. The Battle School children opt to leave Earth and head their own colonies, freeing the Earth from fighting over their battle genius.

Peter and Ender connect over ansible. They are able to talk about Peter's life and his driving desires and how they affect the way he treated Ender as a small child. When Peter dies, Ender writes the book Hegemon, and speaks for Peter.

Rating 4.5 This is one of my favorites of the Shadow and Ender series. I think it totally trumps the follow ups to Ender's Game. Heart wrenching and quick enough paced. I was able to give more attention to the war scheming.
Rating PG 13 Lust, war

Taken by Storm

Taken by Storm by Angela Morrison

This is a book I have been aching to get my hands on ever since I saw it blogged on Bloggin Bout Books. The author is LDS as well as one of the characters. I am hearing through the grapevine that this books lacks your normal cheese factor. Though it sounds as if it still has a great moral base. I can't wait to pick it up and I would be insanely happy if I could win it over on Bloggin Bout Books.

So B. It

So B. It by Sarah Weeks

Heidi is found as a newborn by her neighbor Bernadette. Heidi and her mother are in the hall outside of Bernie's apartment. Heidi's mom is mentally handicapped. She has only 23 words in her vocabulary. She says her own name is So B. It. Heidi and Bernie have no idea where the mother and daughter came from. Bernie becomes the mother figure for both Heidi and her mother.
When Heidi is thirteen she decides she has to know more about where she came from. Her mother has a word that she uses all of the time, 'soof'. Neither Heidi nor Bernie know what it means. Heidi finds an old camera in a draw in her apartment. She develops the film and finds pictures of her younger mother, possibly pregnant in what looks like a home for the disabled. She finds out that the pictures were taken clear across the country (Heidi is in Reno.) in Liberty New York. Bernie calls the home and after months of phoning, can get no answers.
Bernie has agoraphobia and is unable to leave her apartment. Luckily there is a door between Heidi's and Bernie's apartments so that Bernie never has to enter the hallway in order to help care for Precious (what Bernie calls So B. It.). Because of her disability, Bernie is not able to travel with Heidi. Heidi has been doing the shopping and running errands for Bernie since she was small. Before that Bernie had anything she could, be delivered. Bernie home schools Heidi.
Heidi is a lucky girl. She is able to guess numbers and win slots. She makes enough money to purchase a bus ticket to New York. She sets off, breaking Bernie's heart and leaving her ailing mother to find out the answer to questions that haunt her. Heidi makes friends with people on the bus so that she appears to be traveling with someone. She reaches New York.
When she is delivered to Hilltop Home, she finds that Thurman Hill, the proprietor, unwilling to give her any information. He thinks that she has come to blackmail money out of him. Heidi meets Elliot. As soon as he sees her he utters, 'soof'. Heidi knows now that her mother has been here. Ruby works at Hilltop Home and her husband Roy is the sheriff. They take her home until they can figure out how to get the information that Heidi has come for.
Heidi calls home to tell Bernie that she knows that her mother has been at Hilltop Home and that she met Elliot. Bernie seems uninterested and tells Heidi to come home.
Finally Thurman Hill meets with Heidi and tells her the story she has come looking for. Her mother's name is Sophia DeMuth. She calls herself So B. It because that is all she was able to say. She was born to a single woman. The woman asked Thurman to take Sophia in. He agreed and Sophia lived there for a year. During the year, she and Elliot fell in love. Despite both parents believing that their love wasn't deep enough, and their bodies not willing, Sophia becomes pregnant with Elliot's baby. Thurman feels this could ruin his establishment and everything he has worked towards for Elliot (Thurman is Elliot's father.). He sends Sophia and her mother away and pays for them NOT to give him any information about the baby or their lives. Just as Heidi is born, her grandmother is killed by a bus. This is when Bernie finds Sophia and Heidi standing outside of her apartment.
Heidi calls home to tell Bernie everything she has found out. Bernie greets her call with devastating news, Sophia has died in her sleep from headaches that have been ravaging her for some time. Heidi is crushed. She has been spending so much time trying to find out secrets that she missed out on her mother.
Heidi buries her mother in New York. She returns to Reno and begins school for the first time in her life. She still visits Liberty and sees Roy and Ruby. She hopes to get to know her father and grandfather.
Rating 4 Loved the mystery and Heidi's courage in finding out the truth!
Rating G Clean read

Since You Went Away

Since You Went Away by Dean Hughes Children of the Promise Vol. 2

In this second volume of Hughes WWII series, the Thomas family is pulled apart by the raging war. Alex joins the army paratroopers. Bobbi joins the navy as a nurse. Wally is still a POW in the Philippine Islands. When Gene graduates from high school, he joins the marines. Alex's love, Anna fights the Gestapo and her family is forced into hiding.

President and Sister Thomas are having to face the realities of war. Their children are being called to the corner's of the earth and the Thomases are hoping that they will all live to be reunited.
Alex joins the army after hard thought about staying to run his father's parts plant. He becomes a paratrooper, with the army's promise of later moving to intelligence because of his German background. Alex has a hard time thinking of German's as the enemy. The other soldier's in the paratroopers doing like his soft heart and love of the enemy. Even Alex's leaders think he is not cut out for the elite group. Alex proves them wrong and finds himself quickly working his way up the ranks. He is dropped behind the lines just before D day to make way for the incoming beach landing. Alex with only a very small platoon is able to disarm four large weapons. Just days later, while trying to lead his men toward enemy fire, Alex is shot in the leg. He ends up in a hospital in London. There he meets Anna again. They are reunited for the short time Alex recuperates. They get to know each other and find they are in love as much as they dreamed they would be. They marry and have a short honeymoon before Alex is shipped back to the front lines.
Anna and her family find themselves stalked by the Gestapo. Kellerman, the agent that hated the missionaries is on a mission to ruin the lives of the Stoltz family. He comes to their apartment one day while Anna is alone. He attempts to brutalize her. She slashes his face deeply with a knife and seals the fate of the family. Kellerman will never stop until he has had Anna and killed her family. The Stoltz's go into hiding by running away to Berlin and seeking refuge with another LDS family. On the verge of being discovered they run away and live in a bombed out building. Finally, Brother Stoltz is lead by the spirit to find the identification of dead man. He uses these to get other legal papers and find a job. The family is blessed to get an apartment and through Brother Stoltz's government job, their own legal papers. They work and lead a quiet life, waiting for the day they are discovered by Kellerman. Brother Stoltz hates the Nazi's. He decides to join an underground network in order to help save the lives of Jews. The family takes in a small Jewish family to hide. The Stolzt's are found out. They escape, but the Jewish family is taken away. The Stoltz family is able to escape Germany, but in the process are separated from Peter (Anna's brother). He is left somewhere inside of Germany. Anna and her parents make it to England where Anna and Alex are reunited.
Bobbi is stationed in Hawaii. She meets Afton, an LDS girl. They become friends, room together and attend church together. While at church they meet an AJA (American of Japanese Ancestry). We learn of the Japanese Americans being interred in camps because they could be spies. They are then asked to fight for the country that has treated them so regretfully. Bobbi and Afton also meet Richard Hammond, a sailor and also LDS. Bobbi and Richard fall in love but Richard is not able to reveal his feelings because he is afraid there will be no future for he and Bobbi.
Wally is still being held as a POW on the Philippine Islands. He is subject to atrocity after atrocity; no food, disease, death, violence, brutality, and hard manual labor. He is loaded on a train at one point, with so many men there is no room to move. His friends die or he is separated from them, but still he has the grit and desire to continue on. Wally is always the one trying to help those around him. He is proving to himself that he is not the family quitter. He dreams of the day he can return home and show his father what he is made of. Finally Wally is taken to Japan.
Gene joins up as soon as he graduates high school. He is a sweet and kind boy that has been better at sports than even his older brothers. Gene doesn't want to go to war but he feels like it is his duty. He joins the marines and stays true to who he is, not becoming foul and corrupt like many of the soldiers. Gene is able to be with Bobbi in Hawaii for a short time before he sees battle. On his first day on the beaches of Saigon, Gene is shot down and killed. The family mourns greatly over knowing that they will never be a whole family in this life again.

This is my favorite book so far, in this series and in the series to follow. It is heart wrenching and also a historical feast. Fabulous!
Rating 5
Rating PG 13 War and its atrocities.

All American Girl

All American Girl by Meg Cabot

Samantha Madison is a fifteen year old girl, attending a prep school in D.C. She is an all black wearing, art loving, one friended, Gwen Stefani obsessing, popularity hater. Despite all of that she is quite likable. When her German grades drop and her parents find out it is because she spends her time drawing pictures of famous guys and selling them to popular girls, they enroll her in art classes. They feel like she needs a creative outlet, but Sam feels like it is a punishment.
Sam's sister Lucy is a cheerleader at the same prep school. Her boyfriend Jack is a trench coat wearing artsy guy. Sam is secretly in love with Jack. Jack cautions Sam not to let the art classes strip her of her creativity.

Sam attends her first art class. She meets David. David seems oddly familiar, but Sam can't place him. She draws her first picture, which she is sure is better than everyon else in the class. When the instructor critiques at the end of class, Sam is upset to learn that she did not follow the directions given, which were to draw what she saw. Sam drew what she knew instead and she can't figure out the difference. Taking Jack's advice and feeling angry and embarrassed, Sam decides to further buck the system and skip the next class. She ends up in a music store for the entire time. As she leaves to catch her ride home, Sam notices a weird man from the music store. Just then, a presidential motorcade arrives. The president steps out and heads for a nearby bakery. The weird guy from the music store whips out a gun and fires. Sam jumps on his back and takes him down. He breaks her arm in the fall. Sam has saved the president's life.

As Samantha recovers from her injury, she meets the president and his family. David from art class is the president's son. Lucy takes the opportunity she has been waiting for and gives Sam a makeover for her press conference. Sam instantly becomes popular. She and her sole friend Catherine are invited to a party given by Sam's former friend and recent enemy. Catherine is desperate to go and invite a 'boy'. She has been seriously sheltered by her parents and teased for the clothes they make her wear. Catherine begs Sam to give her the chance to fit in. Sam agrees purely for Catherine's sake. Sam decides to invite David to the party. She wants to be friends, but she is also using David to wake Jack up to what he is missing.

David and Jack get in a fight about art. It becomes clear to David that Sam likes Jack. Despite Sam being a teen ambassador to the U.N. and attending a dinner with the president's family, Sam and David can't overcome their opposite feelings.

Sam is put in charge of an art competition for the U.N. The pictures are to depict what the artist sees out of their window. Jack feels like he is a shoe in with Sam as the judge. Sam finds another picture that she loves, but the president and press secretary feel is controversial. Sam begins to understand what her art instructor meant when she said draw what you see and not what you know.

Sam attends more art lessons in hopes of befriending David again. While there her art improves greatly and she learns to really 'see'. She finds that Jack might not know what he is talking about.

Finally Sam realizes that she loves David, not Jack. She gives a news interview about the art contest and her feelings about whom the real winner should be. At the end she professes her feelings for David. Soon they are together. Sam begins to realize there are more important ways to make a statement about life than by dying all of your clothes black.

Fun, clean story! I liked watching Sam evolve. She also really changes her relationship with her sister. Lucy sticks up for her by breaking up with Jack when Sam and Jack fight over the winner of the art contest. I loved seeing the importance of family relationships brought out. I also really liked that even though there were differing backgrounds and social groups, they were played down and we were able to see that they don't matter as much as we give them credit for.

Rating. 3.75. Fun book, entertaining.
Rating PG attempted murder, injury, clean romance.

Rumors of War

Rumors of War Children of the Promise Vol. 1 by Dean Hughes

The first book in Hughes WWII series is Rumors of War. The Thomas family has made it through the Great Depression and WWI. Hitler is rising in power across Europe and Russia. He promises to strengthen the dying economy. In truth he is out to strengthen communism and wipe out the Jews.

Alex Thomas, oldest son of Al and Bea, is on a mission for the LDS church, in Germany. He is there for the conversion of the Stoltz family and their beautiful daughter Anna. He is also there for the rise of Hitler. Jews and foreigners are being persecuted, including missionaries. After witnessing many atrocities towards Jews, the mission is being closed. Alex and other missionaries must flee the country before the borders close and trap them. The Gestapo is after them.

Once home, Alex wants to return to college, but his father, President Thomas has other ideas. Strict and opinionated Al is investing in a parts plant that he wants Alex to run. Al knows he can make his son rich and keep him out of the war this way. Alex sees things differently. He can't let other members of his family and community serve without joining his own effort. He knows someday he may have to fight the Germans that he came to love. He and Anna promise to ride out the war and find each other.

Bobbi oldest Thomas daughter is engaged to Phil, the man of every girl's dreams. Every girl except for Bobbi. She finds one of her professors more intellectually stimulating. Finally realizing that she doesn't want to be Phil's 'little woman', she breaks off the engagement. President Thomas is furious, especially when he finds out that Bobbi is thinking of marrying her English Lit. professor, David. David is brilliant and right up her alley, but he does not share her faith. He encourages her to master in literature and become a professor herself. When things aren't going the way David wants, he takes another position in Chicago. Bobbi's heart aches for him and she decides to travel to Chicago to visit. She has a wonderful time and things that maybe she can live without David's dedication to the church. David finally sees how that would change Bobbi and tells her they should end the relationship. Bobbi returns to Utah with a broken heart. She strikes a deal with her father that she will become a nurse. Something that President Thomas finds worthy of her time. The war is really raging now, and after Bobbi's brother is caught up in the middle, Bobbi realizes she must join her effort. After graduation Bobbi plans to sign up with the navy.

Wally, second son in the Thomas family is not living up to the Thomas name, at least in the eyes of his father. Wally deems himself the family quitter. When he can't beat Alex in anything, he gives up. His grades drop and he feels depressed. The only thing he loves is Lorraine. And she doesn't want to love him back. Finally when Wally sees that he can't be the man Lorraine wants, he joins the air corps.

Wally is stationed in the Philippines. He is quickly rising in rank and living a life of leisure. Then Japan storms Pearl Harbor and the Philippine Islands quickly follow in a desperate take over. Wally becomes a true soldier over night as he and his men are sent on a death march across the island. The Thomas family back home is frantic. They see the world changing over night. Alex and Bobbi join the fray with the blessing of their father.

The history in this book is amazing and terrifying. Everyone I have spoken with loves this series even more than the follow up series The Hearts of the Children. I can't wait to immerse myself into history with personal perspective.

Rating 4.5

Rating PG 13 War time violence