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"Seen a Buick with Ohio Plates..."
I read a really, really wonderful children's book to-day. It's written in English by a Hindi woman, and it's set in India, and it's so good, eee. It's called Younguncle Comes to Town, and is about a Hindi family living in a tiny little village in Northern India when their uncle, the father's brother, comes to stay, and he is strange and wonderful and the cover illustration has a picture of him walking along with a monkey and a tiger: he's got a long green tunic on, and round glasses, and sandals, and he's smiling and he has curly brown hair, and you know this is going to be a good book just looking at it.
And he has adventures! With monkeys, briefly, monkeys who steal his shirt and his books of philosophy and read them. And an old tiger in an animal sanctuary, and the fastest bullock in the world. And the writing style is wonderful and fun and comfortable, and all the details are so eeful--they're just there, so that you realise halfway through that you are in India, and you like being there. It is just generally wonderful. Is by Vandana Singh. If Nanni hasn't already read it, she'd better.
Also very good is Phyllis Reynold Naylor's Cuckoo Feathers, which is not as complex or fascinating as Younguncle, but gets all the feelings exactly right. It's also real in a good way. Real things happen. I don't know how to explain better, but it's a good thing, it is. And the feelings are right. I feel the same way, and it was neat to go ohhh, she's feeling the way I do, that's exactly how I feel. Especially when she talks about being jealous. Exactly the same. Made me feel better.
In other news, they are cutting down the sycamore hall in Halifax to make way for a housing development. It's a long stretch of road where there are sycamores on both sides and they reach over the road and meet a little, so you're going through a hall with a tree-branch ceiling. Mary at work says the sycamores were planted for world war one veterans, one for each veteran. That makes it feel a little worse that they're cutting them down--it feels bad already, because they're beautiful trees, and we don't need another housing development, and now I know that they're somebody's trees, too. They belong to war-hurt people. I don't drive that way any more, but I still think about them.
Six more days. ♥
And he has adventures! With monkeys, briefly, monkeys who steal his shirt and his books of philosophy and read them. And an old tiger in an animal sanctuary, and the fastest bullock in the world. And the writing style is wonderful and fun and comfortable, and all the details are so eeful--they're just there, so that you realise halfway through that you are in India, and you like being there. It is just generally wonderful. Is by Vandana Singh. If Nanni hasn't already read it, she'd better.
Also very good is Phyllis Reynold Naylor's Cuckoo Feathers, which is not as complex or fascinating as Younguncle, but gets all the feelings exactly right. It's also real in a good way. Real things happen. I don't know how to explain better, but it's a good thing, it is. And the feelings are right. I feel the same way, and it was neat to go ohhh, she's feeling the way I do, that's exactly how I feel. Especially when she talks about being jealous. Exactly the same. Made me feel better.
In other news, they are cutting down the sycamore hall in Halifax to make way for a housing development. It's a long stretch of road where there are sycamores on both sides and they reach over the road and meet a little, so you're going through a hall with a tree-branch ceiling. Mary at work says the sycamores were planted for world war one veterans, one for each veteran. That makes it feel a little worse that they're cutting them down--it feels bad already, because they're beautiful trees, and we don't need another housing development, and now I know that they're somebody's trees, too. They belong to war-hurt people. I don't drive that way any more, but I still think about them.
Six more days. ♥