Author: keepinthesunlightblog@gmail.com

Austenland

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Austenland
by Shannon Hale

Thirty-something, Jane Hayes, has never had much luck in love.  While she claims to be disinterested, deep in her heart she knows she is secretly measuring each man against a very high standard–the one and only, Mr. Darcy.  Apart from her fascination with the Jane Austen books, she has also watched the BBC Pride and Prejudice mini-series more times than she’d care to admit.  When Jane is given an opportunity to spend three weeks immersing herself in Jane Austen’s world at an exclusive experience/stay called Austenland, Jane hopes this will be her chance to finally say good bye to her fantasy.  With all the outfits and dinners and twists and turns of an Austen novel, Jane finds herself wavering between finally living out her daydreams and realizing maybe, just maybe, reality, even with its disappointments, might be better.

As with so many books I’ve read and reread, I have the amazing gift of a forgetful memory.  And so, on the most recent reread of Austenland, I found myself staying up late each night to read just one more chapter to find out what happens.  Having also just rewatched the BBC Pride and Prejudice twice in the last few weeks (at the request of our six-year old), I found this book all the more fun.  Thank you again, Shannon Hale.

P.S.  Gotta love Ms. Hale’s letter to Colin Firth.

Kid Lit Women

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Kid Lit Women is:

“A podcast of interviews and essays focusing on women’s and gender issues, including non-binary and gender fluidity, in the children’s literature community and all its intersectionality!”

There were 100 episodes posted from July 2018 to June 2019, and while I’m unsure if there are any plans to add more, I’m so excited to visit all these recorded podcasts.  I am a huge Grace Lin fan, but I only just recently discovered this podcast, so I have many, many more episodes to enjoy.  I’m delighted to hear these issues being discussed, and when I realized episode 3 was a conversation between two of my favorite authors, Shannon Hale and Grace Lin, I almost couldn’t believe my ears!   I think Grace Lin is super rad for taking the initiative on this, and I love that so many authors stepped up to have this discussion.  Thank you all! (…she says, on the very off-chance any of these amazing people visit…)  =)

Run Like a Girl!

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I’ve been listening to the KidLitWomen podcast, and it reminded me of this video commercial I had seen.  I tend to miss the viral videos, but I am SO grateful to have seen this one.  I cry every time.  And I LOVE that this notion of “like a girl” is being revisited, rethought, and embraced as something strong and powerful.

(When my friend and I separately asked our daughters to “run like a girl,” they both responded like the young girls in the video.  Huzzah!)

The Goose Girl

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The Goose Girl (2003)
by Shannon Hale

I love Shannon Hale‘s books.  My first book of hers was The Princess Academy, and I remember the lovely way I felt after reading it and seeing there was this other Shannon Hale book out there called The Goose Girl.  And, for some reason, I resisted looking into it right away.  Unfamiliar with the fairy tale it’s based on, my mind started making up stories about what the book was about before even cracking the cover.  The Goose Girl is an incredible book (of course) and (lucky for the reader) the first of a series of four!

The Goose Girl is based on the Grimm’s fairy tale of the same title.  Doing my best to sum up the novel here– Anidori is a princess in Kildenree, but is arranged to marry a prince from a neighboring kingdom to avoid war.  On her three-month journey to Bayern, she is accompanied by many guards and her lady-in-waiting, Selia.  As they near Bayern, things start to shift.  Selia begins acting strange and a good majority of the soldiers seem to break off into Selia’s “group,” while a small number remain loyal to Princess Ani.  Selia’s plan is to show up in Bayern as the princess, instead of as the lady-in-waiting, since nobody there will know otherwise.  There is a mutiny in the forest, and Ani makes a close escape.  She spends months working as a goose girl in Bayern while she tries to figure out how to convince the king of the truth and stop an impending war based on false information from the false princess.

There is everything in this book–adventure, danger, humor, friendship, romance, courage, and so much more.  It definitely has some “darker” parts, so I’d be cautious of recommending it to too young a reader, but if you or your reader is ready for it, I can’t recommend The Goose Girl highly enough.  This last read of it was a re-read for me, and I could not stop turning pages.  I’m so excited to re-visit the rest of the Bayern books!

Our Tooth Fairy

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Our tooth fairy made her first visit back in January.  For years, I had wondered what our family’s tooth fairy would be like and what she would leave in exchange for teeth.  I didn’t necessarily like the idea of money, as I’d heard the amounts get out of control and was afraid she might be out of the right amount on the night a tooth fell out.  I had heard of some tooth fairies leaving seeds, which I loved in theory, but didn’t see us doing much with at this point.  So, finally I realized our tooth fairy would be bringing beads.  She collected many fun and decorative beads to have on hand, and she also promised a fairy doll which the beads could be sewn onto.  (I’m sure beads could also be made into necklaces or sewn onto small doll pillows as well.)  Our fairy, Flora, left a bead and small fairy skirt her first visit.  Her next visit brought another bead and a tiny fairy wand.  She was going to continue like this, bringing things like wings, tiny slippers, etc, each time, but life became busy for sewing all these, and so she left the doll on her third visit.

Our tooth fairy writes in very tiny writing, and thanks to many questions left in notes by our daughter, she also has a very elaborate backstory.  She realizes that teeth like to pop out on trips and such, and so she always plans by writing some notes ahead of time and traveling with beads.  But were she to ever miss a tooth, I’m sure she would have a very understandable explanation the next night.