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osprey_archer) wrote2023-06-07 07:33 am
osprey_archer) wrote2023-06-07 07:33 am
Wednesday Reading Meme
What I’ve Just Finished Reading
As generally happens when I’ve got just a few books left before I finish a decade of the Newbery honor books, it’s all Newbery all the time up in here. This week I finished three, starting with a special trip to the Indiana State Library to read Katherine Shippen’s Men, Microscopes, and Living Things. (Sadly the book-reading part of the library is not in the beautiful old building with the dark wood panel walls and the murals and the stained glass, but after I finished reading I took a stroll through the library to admire.) The book is a history of the science of biology, starting with Aristotle and Pliny, with beautiful pen-and-ink illustrations by Anthony Ravielli.
I also read Clara Ingram Judson’s Abraham Lincoln: Friend of the People, a biography of Abraham Lincoln. (The early decades of the Newbery are heavy on Abraham Lincoln and George Washington.) Very much struck by this letter, which Lincoln wrote in the 1830s or 40s announcing his bid for re-election to the state legislature: “I go for all sharing the privileges of government, who assist in bearing its burthens. Consequently I go for admitting all whites to the right of suffrage, who pay taxes or bear arms (by no means excluding females).”
Just a little surprised to see the inclusion of women! (Albeit only tax-paying white women.)
And finally, Mary & Conrad Buff’s Magic Maize, which like Dorothy Rhoads’ The Corn Grows Ripe is about a modern-day Mayan boy who is planting corn with his family. Was there a big upsurge of interest in the Maya in 1950s America? Maybe some new archaeological discoveries? (One of the side characters in this book is an American archaeologist, who makes the happy ending possible when he pays big bucks for a jade earplug that our hero found while planting some experimental corn kernels.) I realize two books is not a trend, but it’s still weird that it happened twice.
Two 1950s Newbery Honors left to go!
What I’m Reading Now
Still trucking in Isabel Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other Suns. We’ve reached the North now, and are discovering that while the North is better than the South, it still falls far short of a Promised Land.
What I Plan to Read Next
Letters from Watson has inspired Letters from Bunny, a readthrough of all the Raffles stories! It doesn’t start till March 2024, which is good because it won’t overlap with Letters from Watson, but also bad because it’s so long to wait…
As generally happens when I’ve got just a few books left before I finish a decade of the Newbery honor books, it’s all Newbery all the time up in here. This week I finished three, starting with a special trip to the Indiana State Library to read Katherine Shippen’s Men, Microscopes, and Living Things. (Sadly the book-reading part of the library is not in the beautiful old building with the dark wood panel walls and the murals and the stained glass, but after I finished reading I took a stroll through the library to admire.) The book is a history of the science of biology, starting with Aristotle and Pliny, with beautiful pen-and-ink illustrations by Anthony Ravielli.
I also read Clara Ingram Judson’s Abraham Lincoln: Friend of the People, a biography of Abraham Lincoln. (The early decades of the Newbery are heavy on Abraham Lincoln and George Washington.) Very much struck by this letter, which Lincoln wrote in the 1830s or 40s announcing his bid for re-election to the state legislature: “I go for all sharing the privileges of government, who assist in bearing its burthens. Consequently I go for admitting all whites to the right of suffrage, who pay taxes or bear arms (by no means excluding females).”
Just a little surprised to see the inclusion of women! (Albeit only tax-paying white women.)
And finally, Mary & Conrad Buff’s Magic Maize, which like Dorothy Rhoads’ The Corn Grows Ripe is about a modern-day Mayan boy who is planting corn with his family. Was there a big upsurge of interest in the Maya in 1950s America? Maybe some new archaeological discoveries? (One of the side characters in this book is an American archaeologist, who makes the happy ending possible when he pays big bucks for a jade earplug that our hero found while planting some experimental corn kernels.) I realize two books is not a trend, but it’s still weird that it happened twice.
Two 1950s Newbery Honors left to go!
What I’m Reading Now
Still trucking in Isabel Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other Suns. We’ve reached the North now, and are discovering that while the North is better than the South, it still falls far short of a Promised Land.
What I Plan to Read Next
Letters from Watson has inspired Letters from Bunny, a readthrough of all the Raffles stories! It doesn’t start till March 2024, which is good because it won’t overlap with Letters from Watson, but also bad because it’s so long to wait…
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The author of the bird kingdom book is Anne LaBastille Bowes, and her bio is very cute and old fashioned: "Anne LaBastille Bowes is a young naturalist wo ha always been interested in the wildlife of tropical and semi-tropical regions ... in the past two years, Mrs. Bowes has served as Director of a research and conservation campaign to save a rare Guatemalan bird [amusing that they don't name the bird; I feel like nowadays we would] ... In addition, [her] data is being prepared for her doctoral thesis at Cornell University."
And looking online, I find a book published in 1993 by Anne LaBastille (no longer a Mrs. Bowes, apparently) titled Birds of the Mayas: Maya folk tales : field guide to birds of the Maya world : complete check list of birds, which sounds like a fortified version of the 1967 book. The bio on the Amazon page identifies the rare bird--the giant grebe! ... Oh no... and Wikipedia tells me it went extinct ;_;
. It was described in 1929 by Ludlow Griscom based on a specimen collected in 1926 and had been overlooked in the past. American ecologist Anne LaBastille observed the decline of this species over a period of 25 years. It was declared extinct by 1990.
--Okay, that's a depressing end to the story. But anyway... your Newbery Honor Books on corn-planting habits of the Mayas--definitely interesting!
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Oh, how awful to spend 25 years observing the decline of a species, and ultimately its extinction.
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