Oh I dunno...stuff.

[mamajoan]

I don't want to talk about yesterday's election here in MA. Let's just skip it, okay? Thx.

I wrote the other day that I've already read 5 books in 2010. I thought I'd try to write just a little brief thing about each one. I wanted to start with the most recent, which was Free-Range Kids by Lenore Skenazy. You may have heard of her; she caused a huge controversy a couple of years ago when she wrote a column about letting her 9-year-old son ride the NYC subway by himself. People called her "the worst mother in America" and similar delightful things, which prompted her to start this sort of "movement" which she calls Free-Range: the idea that it's okay, even beneficial, to give your kids some freedoms.

So the book talks about how America got to this place now where parents are afraid to let their kids do anything at all unsupervised, take any risks. Parents who drive their kids to school even though it's a short walk -- or worse, drive them to the bus stop! Parents who put helmets and kneepads on their babies while they're learning to crawl and walk. Parents who won't even let their kids play on the lawn because they could be abducted or who knows what. Skenazy debunks all this stuff by talking about how truly astronomically unlikely these things are, and delves a bit into the psychology of how we came to be so fearful (hint: blame the media), and offers some suggestions for how each of us can work on being a more Free-Range type parent. She writes in a friendly, witty sort of way, which is also how she writes her blog and Twitters (which in turn is what got me interested in reading the book).

So I enjoyed reading her book, but I fear that it's kind of preaching to the choir. I don't think there are really going to be all that many parents who pick it up and go "OMG she's so right! I must completely change my way of parenting starting today!" Maybe some people who are sort of on the edge will benefit from it, I guess. I personally did appreciate all the research and statistics she quoted, to show that kids are pretty safe nowadays, as well as the information about how they do things in other countries. (One thing that stuck out for me was that in modern-day Germany, a kid at the age of three is considered old enough to go down to the corner bakery to pick up the day's bread. Alone! I think about my 3-year-old Ruthie, and...well, yeah. I can just barely see it, if we lived in a more suburban type area, and if I didn't have to worry about having Child Protective Services called on me.) I also found it interesting to learn that in all of recorded history there is not a single actual substantiated case of a child being poisoned by Halloween candy by a stranger. And those are just a couple of examples.

Anyway, good book. And the others I've read so far this year are:
* Julie and Julia by Julie Powell, which I felt a little embarrassed reading on the subway because I don't want people to think I'm just jumping on the bandwagon now that there's a movie out. I kept wanting to yell "I've had it on my Amazon wishlist for years! I swear!" ;) It was pretty good and now I'm interested in checking out the movie at some point.
* One Amazing Thing by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, via the Early Reviewers program at LibraryThing.com. An interesting story of people trapped in a visa office after an earthquake, telling each other stories of why they are trying to go to India.
* In the Company of Cheerful Ladies by Alexander McCall Smith. What can I say, the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series continues to delight. I never want it to end! And yes, I want to see the TV show too, which my mom has seen some of and says it's great. Some day I'll get around to that.
* Sorcery and Cecilia by Patricia Wrede and Caroline Stevermer, one of those books I've had on my wishlist for ages, and now that I finally read it I'm wondering why I waited so long!

And now I am reading Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro.

Hmm, I was going to talk about other stuff in this post too, but it got long so I'll save it for another time.

Comments

I *love love love* sorcery and cecilia!

[lightningrose.livejournal.com]

the whole series is worth picking up. if you need one to take up that space on the wishlist, I recently finished both Odd & the Frost Giants and A Curse As Dark As Gold... great books!

Re: I *love love love* sorcery and cecilia!

[pekmez.livejournal.com]

oh yes. and have you read Freedom and Necessity? I think of the Sorcery&Cecelia series as Freedom and Necessity lite. :)

(There are a few other decent Wrede or Stevermer books in a similar universe, as well as 2 actual Sorcery & Cecelia sequels.)

[brina-is-sassy.livejournal.com]

I'm now very interested in reading Free-Range Kids! Just the other night I was looking on Wikipedia at cases of people who mysteriously disappeared and I came across an article on The Beaumont children. I don't recall ever hearing about it before, but in 1966 three siblings (9, 7, and 4) took a 5 minute bus ride, by themselves (and with permission from their parents, I guess they did it often and it was completely normal back then) to a beach and were never seen again. When I first started reading, I was mortified but then I started to remember stories my older family members have told me about the 40s, 50s and 60s, in particular. Plus, after about 7 I had quite a bit of freedom, within reason.

I have so many books to read this year and I feel like I've barely made a dent! I'm at 4 or 5, I'm too tired to think about it. :p

[mamajoan.livejournal.com]

I mean, obviously it does happen. Kids do get kidnapped, murdered, etc. and she's not claiming they don't. Her point is just that it's SOOOO rare and thus SOOOO unlikely to actually happen to YOUR kid. We hear about one case in the news and it's natural human psychology to immediately assume that it's going to happen to 'me next!' Of course, you don't hear on the news "Kid walks home from school by himself and nothing bad happened to him at all!" But when something bad does happen, you hear about it on the news nonstop for weeks. So you get an inflated sense of how common it is. (this is the way condensed version of her points... :) )

[brina-is-sassy.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, I understood that, I just brought up the story because I was reminded of it, and reading about it so recently makes me even more interested in reading her book :D!

Yeah, it's funny how often I hear people say how much worse the world is compared to the old days, when really, it has more to do with exposure. In the past, people sometimes had to wait days, weeks or even months to pass information. Now we are surrounded by a constant flood of minute by minute coverage of everything.

[angledge.livejournal.com]

Maybe her book's value is for parents who do let their kids have some freedom, & therefore take tons of flak from relatives/friends/etc. They can read her book & be comforted by the statistics & knowing that there are other parents out there who do as they do. That may give them the fortitude to stand up to criticism & fearmongering.

[mamajoan.livejournal.com]

Yes, that's a good point. I tend to get that kind of validation from other sources (my parent-friends, and my mom) so I probably underestimate the value of that aspect.

At the back of the book, there's a little "card" that you can cut out and put in your kid's backpack, which basically says, "Yes, my mom lets me go out on my own. If you don't believe me, here's her phone number." I love that.

[lapenn.livejournal.com]

I want to read the book too! I was a really independent-minded kid and always pushing boundaries. I don't remember ranging out when I was super young, but I do remember playing in the woods and stuff when I was in 6th grade. A few years later, a murdered girl was found in the woods (but it wasn't a random crime). The stats overwhelmingly show that the vast majority of weird crimes are not random. That said, what a weird case with those kids. I'm totally reading wikipedia right this second.

[rainbow-goddess.livejournal.com]

I don't have kids, nor do I plan to, but I find the free-range kid book interesting. Every so often somebody forwards me this email about how things were just soooo much better 50 years ago because back then you could let your kid play outside without worrying about said kid being abducted, and I'm like, "You can let your kid play outside TODAY without the kid being abducted!" Aren't the majority of child abductions done by a non-custodial parent or someone else the kid knows? But of course everyone will point to Elizabeth Smart.

I told Monster about how there has never been a proven case of poisoned Halloween candy. He's so certain there has been. There was a case a few years ago where it turned out the parent had done the poisoning, IIRC.

[downwardlashes.livejournal.com]

It was quite awhile ago that a dad poisoned his kids' candy (and accidentally got a cousin or a neighbor kid as well), I want to say late seventies but I can't remember exactly. I guess it's just one of those things that when people hear about it, they think, "Oh that's so devious and yet so simple, I bet it happens all the time!"

[mamajoan.livejournal.com]

Yeah, according to the Free-Range book, there was that one instance of a father poisoning his kid (which doesn't count because it's not a *random* act of malice) and also an instance where a kid accidentally overdosed on heroin that he found in the house, and the parents sprinkled heroin on the Halloween candy in an attempt to cover it up. And there was one instance where a woman put boxes of rat poison into kids' trick-or-treat bags -- clearly marked "rat poison" so no kid actually ingested it.

So, there have been poisoning cases, but never a case where poison was put in Halloween candy specifically to kill random (i.e., unknown to the poisoner) kids.

In general, the VAST majority of kids who are murdered, are murdered by family members or other acquaintances. Murder of a child by a total stranger is exceedingly rare. And yet, that's what we parents are supposed to worry about the most.

[angledge.livejournal.com]

hotpantsgalore & I listened to the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series on books on CD during our helluva long road trip at Christmas. It. Was. AWESOME.

I also like AMS' books that are set in Edinburgh.

[mamajoan.livejournal.com]

I read the first of the Edinburgh one (I think? something about philosophy in the title?) and it didn't do much for me, but maybe I should give that series another shot at some point. Isn't it interesting how the same author can create such different stories!

[angledge.livejournal.com]

Well, I probably liked the stories because I was reading them while living in Edinburgh. So, reader's bias there.