#Henry Huggins and Ribsy

[readingbooksinisrael]

Mid-Year Book Freakout 2023

1. Best book you've read so far this year

Well, I reread Spinning Silver/Naomi Novik again… But besides rereads I really loved two non-fiction books: Treaties, Trenches, Mud, and Blood/Nathan Hale. It’s a graphic novel with the characters being represented as animals, so I was really nervous at first that it would make light of something tragic but it didn’t at all, and I think the illustrations emphasized the horrificness while still being appropriate for its intended audience (4th graders). (It also finally convinced me to pick up Maus.) 

The other was The Light of Days: The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitler’s Ghettos/Judy Batalion, which was an extensive following of a number of women resistance fighters in the ghettos, which is a subject that I hardly know about.

2. Best sequel you've read so far this year

It absolutely has to be Ribsy/Beverly Cleary, the last in the Henry Huggins series. I was nervous because it follows Ribsy the dog rather than Henry the human, but it was great. I liked the look at all the different families (except one) and Ribsy’s perspective. It nearly made me cry even/exactly when the good things were happening.

Also, special mention to The Chalet School in Exile/Elinor M. Brent-Dyer for acknowledging the murder of Jews by regular citizens back in the first year of WW2 when that’s something plenty of people refuse to admit to this day. (Though maybe it was easier then when it was an enemy country.)

3. New release you haven't read yet

All of them lol. I’ll choose six notables (one for each month):

The Dos and Donuts of Love/Adiba Jaigirdar--I loved Hani and Ishu’s Guide to Fake Dating so much! I’m so excited about this I’m nervous

The Luis Ortega Survival Club/Sonora Reyes--I love a story about messed up experiences in high school

The Home for Wayward Girls/Marcia Bradley--See above

The Mimicking of Known Successes/Malka Ann Older--I heard it described as a Sherlock Holmes type mystery in space, and I’ve really wanted to read something by this author for a long time but this was the first book that really caught my eye

The Last Tale of the Flower Bride/Roshani Chokshi--It is my favorite sub-genre (fairy tale retelling) of a fairy tale that I find really interesting (Bluebeard) by an author I already know I enjoy

Sorry, Bro/Taleen Voskuni--Jews often feel that they have a lot of common with Armenians (for good reasons) so I’m really interested to read this story of someone claiming both her culture and her sexuality (even my mom was interested and she tries to not be homophobic but she winces at bi characters)

4. Most anticipated release for the second half of the year

Delicate Condition/Danielle Valentine. This absolutely sounds like a book that is going to make me cry.

5. Biggest disappointment

Catherine, Called Birdy/Karen Cushman. This seemed like a book that would be right up my alley--historical, mg, epistolary, rebellious and funny main girl character--but it just fell flat for me in so many ways.

6. Biggest surprise

Leave It to Beaver/Beverly Cleary surprised me by actually being pretty good, which you don’t usually expect for a novelization of a tv show. It wasn’t her best work, but I do want to read the rest of the series.

And, then, one I saved for here, Top Secret/John Reynolds Gardiner. This was recommended me as a funny, gross book and it was that (admittedly, a bit light on the grossness but what was there was good), but it also very much talked about repressing creativity for bad reasons and I loved that.

7. Favorite new author (debut or new to you)

A.J. Sass. I read Ellen Outside the Lines in one night and immediately put two more of their books on my tbr.

8. Newest fictional crush/newest favorite character

Just the one? Well, Ead Duryan from Priory of the Orange Tree/Samantha Shannon is exactly the type of character I love; but have you read about the angel/Uriel Shtetler from When the Angels Left the Old Country?! It thinks in such an interesting way about things and so it changes in a very odd way. (Also, it becoming more ‘human’ doesn’t make it stop using it/its pronouns!)

9. Book that made you cry

Ribsy, I’ve mentioned, but I don’t think any other book made me cry.

10. Book that made you happy

I reread The Girl With the Silver Eyes/Willo Davis Roberts to see if it still held up after over a decade since I first read it and it absolutely did. It acknowledges that grown-ups can make mistakes while trying to help children and that children have the right to defend themselves from that as well as actually evil adults. Also, read this fanfiction of Katie as an adult.

Riding Lessons/Jane Smiley also made me happy because it didn’t attempt to pathologise a kid whom I think would be pathologised today.

Tagging @ninja-muse @bookcub @opalescentswan @books-are-portals and @gigilberry (Only if you want to, obviously.)

[gone2soon-rip]

BEVERLY CLEARY (1916-Died March 25th 2021,at 104).American children’s story writer,best known for creating the characters of Beezus and Ramona Quimby,Henry Huggins and his dog Ribsey,and Ralph S Mouse,and for writing the 1984 juvenile epistolary novel,Dear Mr Henshaw,which won her that years literary award,the Newbery Medal. Her children’s stories were especially noted for their attention to daily life of children growing up in middle class families.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beverly_Cleary

[retropopcult]

Beloved children’s author Beverly Cleary has passed away, just a few weeks short of her 105th birthday.

Beverly Atlee Cleary (née Bunn; April 12, 1916 – March 25, 2021) was an American writer of children's and young adult fiction. One of America's most successful authors, 91 million copies of her books have been sold worldwide since her first book was published in 1950. Some of Cleary's best known characters are Ramona Quimby and Beezus Quimby, Henry Huggins and his dog Ribsy, and Ralph S. Mouse.

The majority of Cleary's books are set where she grew up, in the Grant Park neighborhood of Portland, Oregon.  She has been credited as one of the first authors of children's books to figure emotional realism in the narratives of her characters, often children in middle-class families.

She won the 1981 National Book Award for Ramona and Her Mother and the 1984 Newbery Medal for Dear Mr. Henshaw. For her lifetime contributions to American literature, Cleary received the National Medal of Arts, recognition as a Library of Congress Living Legend, and the Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal from the Association for Library Service to Children. The Beverly Cleary School, a public school in Portland, was named after her, and several statues of her most famous characters were erected in Grant Park in 1995.

Cleary was an only child and lived on a farm until she was six years old, when her family moved to Portland.  The adjustment from living in the country to the city was hard for her, and she found school challenging; in first grade, her teacher placed her in a group for struggling readers. Cleary said, "The first grade was separated into three reading groups—Bluebirds, Redbirds, and Blackbirds. I was a Blackbird. To be a Blackbird was to be disgraced. I wanted to read, but somehow could not." With the help of a school librarian who introduced her to books she enjoyed, Cleary caught up by third grade and started to spend a lot of time reading and at the library. By sixth grade, a teacher suggested that Cleary should become a children's writer based on essays she had written for class assignments.

After high school, Cleary went on to the University of California, Berkeley, where she earned a Bachelor of Arts in English in 1938. She also met her future husband, Clarence Cleary, during her time at Cal. The couple eloped and were married in 1940.  During World War II, she got a job as a librarian at the U.S. Army Hospital in nearby Oakland.  Working with children, Cleary empathized with her young patrons, who had difficulty finding books with characters they could identify with. After a few years of making recommendations and performing live storytelling in her role as librarian, Cleary decided to start writing children's books herself, and in 1942, she became a full-time writer. 

[personinthepalace]

I just hunted down my Beverly Cleary books. My dad bought me the first three books, and they were my introduction to Beverly Cleary’s wonderful world. My sister (or me?) got the last one from a school book exchange

Rest in peace Beverly Cleary 💜

[frances-baby-houseman]

We are reading Ramona the Pest right now. What a gift she gave to so many children.

[bisexualclarkkent]

Still reading Henry Huggins. He’s entered his dog Ribsy into a dog show, and he gave him a nice long bath with his mother’s shampoo. When they were standing in the ring waiting for things to start, Ribsy went and started rolling over in the dirt. He really is my Pluto 😭

[mcguirechildrensmaterials]

Fiction: Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin

Lin, Grace. Where the Mountain Meets the Moon. New York, Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 2009.

Where the Mountain Meets the Moon is about a ten year old girl named Minli who leaves her village on adventure to bring fortune to it. In her journey she befriends a dragon who joins her on her journey while trying to find answers about his own history. The audience for the book is 8 to 10. The perspective of the book is omniscient and the tone is mythical, so emotionally the book is very accessible for kids. The illustrations are also colorful and not realistic which increases the mythical feeling of the book. The book is about both Minli and her parents who are trying to find where she went. The sections with her parents are more emotional and complex, so there are 11 and 12 year olds who might be find those sections emotionally fulfilling. For the most part though these older readers might not engage with Minli’s story as much as younger readers would. The strength of the book is the connected narrative. It really builds on the connected relationships and journeys of the characters. There are so many subplots in the book that end up being connected in the end like how Dragon’s red string and the text Minli gets from the king are both needed to reach the Old Man of the Moon. This works well for the concept of the book which is about how interconnected the world is. Because it is very mythological in nature it may not be the most interesting book for readers who enjoy more thrills in their fantasy stories. The book was a 2010 Newbery Honor winner, and it won the 2010 Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Children’s Literature. The mythical journey nature of the book would make it an excellent book to create a multi-week telling of the book or possibly use a chapter to create an acting program for tweens. There is a way that these two programs could possibly be combined to where the tweens are performing for school age children. 

Read-a-likes:

Funke, Cornelia. Dragon Rider. Translated by Anetha Bell, New York, Scholastic Inc., 2004.

Firedrake is a young dragon who is in search of a dragon safe haven. When he saves a human orphan named Ben. They team up together to find this safe haven while also trying to stay safe from a fearsome enemy called the Golden One. Like Where the Mountain Meets the Moon this book has a great friendship between a human and a dragon, a main character who is trying to help their home, and a world filled with mythology and legend.

Clearly, Beverly. Ribsy. New York, Harper Trophy, 2007.

Ribsy the Hugginses dog gets separated from the family at the mall. After that Ribsy bounces around town running into many different adventures and mishaps. Through it all Ribsy wants to be reunited with his owner Henry Huggins. This book like Where the Mountain Meets the Moon deals with many smaller adventures with in the greater story and also deals with families that have been separated. 

Mass, Wendy and Stead, Rebecca. Bob. Illustrated by Nicholas Gannon, Harrisonburg, Feiwel and Friends, 2018.

Livy is visiting her grandmothers house for the first time in five years and is reunited with a strange creature she met there named Bob. Livy promised Bob to answer the questions of who he is, and now it is time to fulfill that promise. Like Dragon in Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, Bob does not know what his history is. This story is also a story of a girl who helps a creature figure out the answers that they so desperately are seeking out. 

[readingbooksinisrael]

June 2023 Reading Wrap-Up

Rereads

Jacob Have I Loved/Katherine Paterson (young/new adult historical fiction)

Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit/P.G. Wodehouse (Jeeves and Wooster #11) (adult humor)

A Little Princess/Frances Hodgson Burnett (mg school story)

World War Z/Max Brooks (adult epistolary zombie fiction)

5 stars

Ribsy/Beverly Cleary (Henry Huggins #6) (mg animal realistic fiction )

4 stars

Carnival at Candlelight/Mary Pope Osborne, illustrated by Sal Murdocca (Merlin Missions #5) (first chapter books mythological fantasy)

Heat/Mike Lupica (mg realistic sports fiction)

3.7 stars

The Underground Abductor/Nathan Hale (Nathan Hale’s Hazardous Tales #5) (mg non-fiction graphic novel)

3.5 stars

The Demigod Diaries/Rick Riordan and Haley Riordan (Heroes of Olympus #2.5) (mg mythological fantasy anthology)

Shopaholic Takes Manhattan/Sophie Kinsella (Shopaholic #2) (adult realistic fiction)

3 stars

The Djinn Falls in Love and Other Stories/ed. Mahvesh Murad and Jared Shurin (adult fantasy and sci fi anthology)

——————————————————————————————-

# books read: 11

Most read age groups: MG

Most read genre: Realistic fiction

Average rating: 3.6 stars

[gamerssphere]

Books That Every 90s Kid Read

#Books That Every #90s Kid Read #reading #nostalgia #mustread

Books that every 90s kid read meant some of them were forced. They were on the reading list, or there was a book report due. But, more times than some of ya’ll might be willing to admit, we ended up loving those books. Others, though, we have obliterated from our memories. Hopefully none of those appear on this list, but I do apologize in advance if they do. (more…)

[newyorker]

The children’s-book author Beverly Cleary turns 102 today, giving us a chance to reflect and celebrate while she is still around to know about it. Of course, she already knows how we feel. She has sold millions of books, published two memoirs, and won awards; the elementary school she attended in Portland was named after her in 2008; there are statues of Ramona Quimby, Henry Huggins, and Ribsy in Grant Park, in Portland, a few blocks from Klickitat Street. Her birthday has been designated Drop Everything and Read Day. Cleary now lives in a Northern California retirement home. She is still her good old self, telling us, for example, that she didn’t turn a hundred on purpose and that she will be celebrating with carrot cake—just the kind of thing you’d expect her to say.

Read more. 

[absolutelyelle]

Check out this listing I just added to my Poshmark closet: Beverly Cleary Books Various Titles 16 Books - 1 Repeat.

[donnawrightrn]

Nancy Drew, Happy Hollisters & More, Part 1

I read a lot of book series as a kid. In addition to the Little House Books, I read Pippi Longstocking, Nancy Drew, Happy Hollisters, Bobbsey Twins, Trixie Belden, Alfred Hitchcock Three Investigators, Harriet the Spy (ok not really a series but there were two books). I like to think that the book series available to me were better quality in writing and stories than the series that came later, like the books of R.L. Stine. Of course, my kids were fortunate enough to have the Harry Potter books. Harry Potter ignited a love for reading in my daughter, who had tested early as an advanced reader and then turned out to be as stubborn as her mother, by refusing to participate!

Before I graduated to the books above, of course I read all of the Ramona books and other books by Beverly Cleary- The Mouse and the Motorcycle, Henry Huggins (the donut machine!), Ribsy the dog... Ellen Tebbits! I so identified with her! And Otis Spofford! I read those over and over and I’m sure that something in those books shaped my life in some way. Ellen Tebbits had a best friend, and nearly lost her because she was stupid- I’ve done the same! Confession time- these childhood books that I loved so dearly? If they’re available on Kindle, I have them. I hope to read them to the grandbabies some day.

I loved Nancy Drew. I read the books in the late 1960s and early 70s and admired her independence as a woman. Looking back, of course I can see that she really wasn’t independent- her “trim convertible” was provided, along with her lovely home and classy wardrobe, by her wealthy lawyer dad. Still, she was someone I wanted to be. She was smart and pretty, courageous and daring. She had a boyfriend and two close girlfriends. They went to interesting places and met lots of people. She discovered a perfume-pirating ring, solved haunted house mysteries. She found hidden staircases. She visited a bungalow! I didn’t even know what a bungalow was! She and George and Bess went to New Orleans and exposed a jewel thief who created an organ-playing ghost to scare people away. I never met people like that,

I never knew exactly how old Nancy was. She could have been a college grad, but I thought she was 18-19. Did she go to college? Did she ever have a job? I can picture her as the waitress in a cute coffee shop or as a receptionist for a reputable law firm. Her only job seemed to be mystery solving, and it brought many brushes with danger. She got into a lot of scrapes in a short amount of time- if she were my daughter, I wouldn’t let her leave the house!

Twenty years ago I injured my back and was on bedrest and pain pills while waiting for surgery. I was too foggy to read regular books, but just lucid enough to read Nancy Drew, I reread every book! It was like looking through an old photo album, but richer. I enjoyed the different age perspective, saw through some of the glamour, and enjoyed the stories for what they were.

Nancy and George and Bess helped me to be a little courageous, to look at things in a different way. I was always a “scaredy cat” little kid and the Nancy Drew books (along with Harriet the Spy) gave me a little more courage to consider things I might not have thought of before. There was much that I envied about her, but a little envy is good. A little envy can give you a goal to attain, a purpose, a destination. And hey, doesn’t every girl want to be described as slim with titian-colored hair?

[bisexualclarkkent]

I’m reading Henry Huggins, which I actually didn’t realize until recently was Beverly Cleary’s first book. I’m pretty sure I read this as a kid, but it would have been like 25 years ago lol. So this one chapter is about Henry being in a school play, and his dog Ribsy comes to school and ends up climbing a ladder, dumping paint on Henry from above, and then jumping on him (for safety lol). Ever since the first chapter, I’ve just felt this intense kinship for Ribsy and I just realized why. He reminds me of my Pluto lol. Pluto is less chaotic but he’s equally well meaning but goofy.

[therevereddead]

I posted 127 times in 2021

126 posts created (99%)

1 posts reblogged (1%)

For every post I created, I reblogged 0.0 posts.

I added 225 tags in 2021

#notable deaths - 55 posts

#deaths (obituaries) - 46 posts

#obituaries - 42 posts

#in memoriam - 21 posts

#obituary - 18 posts

#1970's - 10 posts

#hollywood - 10 posts

#obitiuary - 9 posts

#rock and roll - 7 posts

#movies - 7 posts

Longest Tag: 96 characters

#the ghost army of world war ii: how one top-secret unit deceived the enemy with inflatable tanks

My Top Posts in 2021

#5

1 notes • Posted 2021-03-26 21:58:17 GMT

#4

1 notes • Posted 2021-10-23 05:51:21 GMT

#3

2 notes • Posted 2021-03-28 05:26:49 GMT

#2

3 notes • Posted 2021-11-28 05:39:47 GMT

#1

19 notes • Posted 2021-09-12 04:00:58 GMT

Get your Tumblr 2021 Year in Review →