Jamie's Journal Goes Viral in Disney Channel's Read It and Weep

I have never had much luck keeping a private journal. I can’t seem to motivate myself much when I’m writing only for myself, and it’s a little nerve-wracking to be writing down things you specifically don’t want anyone else to read, because what would happen if they did? In Disney Channel original movie Read It and Weep, teen scribe Jamie Bartlett is about to find out.

Jamie (Kay Panabaker) is a quiet, geeky girl who totes her tablet computer with her everywhere and spends all her free time scribbling down her frustrations about the unfair world of high school. Except in her journal, which features fictionalized versions of everyone in the school, the geeks triumph and the jerks are humiliated. It’s a great release for her, but she is appalled when she accidentally e-mails it to her friend instead of the essay she intended to enter in the school’s contest. After it wins, she is praised as a biting satirist and given a book deal that catapults her to writing fame. But will her sudden stardom turn her into the kind of monster she derided? And how will her classmates react when they realize the characters were modeled after them?

This is pretty much your typical teen flick about an awkward kid who becomes popular, loses sight of what’s important and eventually remembers. Jamie is likable, albeit overdramatic, but then most of the characters here come across as a bit cheesy and over-the-top. Panabaker’s older sister Danielle plays Is, Jamie’s fictional alter-ego who begins to take over her life. Their confrontations are fun to watch, especially when they occur in front of other people, who, of course, can only see and hear Jamie. Is basically becomes the devil on Jamie’s shoulder, continually urging her to ignore her good impulses and stick with self-involvement and false friends like catty queen bee Sawyer (Allison Scagliotti) and guileless but lunkheaded dreamboat Marco (Chad Broskey).

Other key characters include Jamie’s best buddies, a trio of outsiders who have stuck together for years. Offbeat artist Harmony (Alexandra Krosney), animal rights activist Lindsay (Marquise Brown) and shy Connor (Jason Dolley), who is secretly in love with Jamie, eat lunch together and work at the struggling pizza parlor owned by Jamie’s parents. Both of them are kind and supportive, with her mom (Connie Young) a bundle of bubbly energy and her dad (Tom Virtue) a goofy dreamer with a bad habit of tainting his pizzas with disgusting experimental toppings like prunes and liver and onions. By contrast, Jamie’s brother Lenny (Nick Whitaker) is surly and argumentative, but that’s largely because he has a dream of his own that is not being nurtured.

I don’t know the current Disney channel line-up well enough to be familiar with the actors here, several of whom I gather are veterans of other tween Disney projects. I recognized only Krosney, and it wasn’t until I consulted with IMDb that I realized it was because she played aggressive young Other Ellie in the season five LOST episode Jughead. The acting all around is acceptable but corny, with most characters constantly displaying exaggerated expressions. The most understated performance probably comes from the instantly sympathetic Dolley.

The movie has a faux-hip vibe to it that makes it rather grating at times. Nowhere is that more apparent than in the constant shots of the journal itself, in which no two words are the same size and different colors and fonts, along with snarky doodles, scream out that this alleged work of genius is more style than substance. The speed with which it all happens is absurd, too; she seems to go from having excerpts of her journal in the school paper to full-blown published book in a matter of days. Additionally, most of the dialogue has the unmistakable whiff of writers who think they are being trendy and clever but aren’t.

Still, while the characters never felt fully real to me, the main quartet is likable enough to root for, and Jamie’s parents are quite endearing for all their quirkiness. Like most contemporary Disney channel original movies, Read It and Weep does not transcend the narrow confines of its genre, but it’s reasonably entertaining for an hour and a half.

Kids Share Their Theological Thoughts in Bill Adler's Dear Pastor

Kids say the darnedest things. That was the theme of the show that Art Linkletter and later Bill Cosby hosted for many years, and it’s also something to which Bill Adler could readily attest, only he might instead say, “Kids write the darnedest things.” Adler has published many books showcasing letters that children have written to particular people. In the gift book Dear Pastor, illustrated by Bettye Beach, the addressee is a child’s pastor.

Unfortunately, there are no notes in here about how these were collected, so I’m not sure if he asked pastors for letters from children or asked kids to send in letters that they might send their pastor. My suspicion is the latter, since each letter follows the same format: “Dear Pastor, [body of letter], [optional sign-off], [name], [age], [city].” Then again, he may have just contacted those kids and asked them to re-write their letters in that format. Since almost every letter is hand-written – some print, some cursive – I assume that we’re seeing the kids’ own hands. If not, he’s using a lot of kidprint fonts to be rather misleading.

These are cute letters that delve into a number of theological questions. Because of the book’s format, they are extremely short. Most letters only contain one or two sentences, and there are recurring themes. Some kids offer backhanded compliments on the service like “I like the choir in church very much except for the songs they sing” and “I like to go to church on Sunday because I don’t have any choice.” Others have suggestions on how to make things more fun; particularly memorable is that of 9-year-old Loreen, who muses, “I think more people would come to church if you moved it to Disneyland.”

While some of these kids clearly are not too enthralled with church as it stands, many of them seem to yearn for a deeper sense of spiritual connection. One child requests God’s phone number, another His zip code. Ten-year-old Franklin, tired of feeling invisible in a classroom where his teacher still can’t get his name right, hopes that God knows his name. Others seem more concerned about God’s well-being; one asks what He does for fun, another who He turns to in times of crisis. Some of the questions seem pretty goofy, but these are pretty typical of young children trying to explore religious ideas. I’ve certainly heard a few questions like this from kids at church and asked a few myself. In fact, my inquisitiveness about such matters got me in a heap of trouble at the public kindergarten I attended.

Adler doesn’t offer any answers here; he just chronicles the questions and comments, and Beach provides humorous drawings to accompany them. These cartoonish kids mostly appear on the right pages, though one will occasionally show up on the left. Not every kid has a cartoon counterpart; we have 75 letters but only 40 illustrations. Still, the kids we do see in visual form are very cute, both the virtuous and the mischievous.

Christian parents and anybody who works with kids in a church capacity will probably find humor in these letters. The book may also prepare them to respond to these types of queries if they come up. This book’s purpose is really just to entertain, but if it can help strengthen a dialogue between kids and adults, so much the better.

Of Mice and Me, Both Skewered at the David Sedaris Reading at Mercyhurst College, 10-22-11

During my last semester of college, I was introduced to the work of David Sedaris in a Creative Non-Fiction class. While it was a writing course, we read several books in order to give us an idea of the different memoir styles out there and integrate techniques employed by the writers into our own work. Of all the writers I encountered in college for the first time, Sedaris is one of my favorites. While some of his essays get pretty off-color, there’s just something so irresistible about his pointed observations about the absurdities of how people interact with each other. Much of what he says rings very true to my ordinary experience, while some of his more outlandish stories make me wonder how he ever survived his 20s. He’s a riveting storyteller.

However, my experience of Sedaris is almost entirely limited to the page. I’m not much for audiobooks and I’ve rarely caught him on National Public Radio, where he often reads essays, but those who have listened to him more than read him have insisted that his work is far more entertaining when he reads it himself. Thus, when my brother Nathan told me that Sedaris would be giving a reading at Mercyhurst College, it didn’t take a lot of persuading to convince me to go too. Also attending were his girlfriend Morgan and my mom, whose exposure to Sedaris was very limited. I wasn’t sure what she would make of him, but while some of his discussion topics made her squirm a bit, she mostly found him very funny and astute.

We bought our tickets in late August, and by the time of the reading on October 22, the theatre, which accommodates several hundred, was sold out. It got started a bit late, allowing time for stragglers to make their way in from the lobby, and lasted just over an hour and a half, with Sedaris reading four full-length stories, followed by excerpts from his diary. He also took a little time out for questions from the audience at the end.

His first selection was The Squirrel and the Chipmunk, the story from which the cover illustration of his latest book is taken. This collection of animal fables is a departure for him, as he mostly writes of his own experiences. However, the tales here certainly have applicability to people, and that’s especially true of this story, which deals with prejudice, peer pressure and fear of the unknown getting in the way of a relationship. It’s a bittersweet story, yet it is not simply a case of a perfect relationship being ruined by disapproving relatives. It also demonstrates how much better things tend to look in hindsight, especially when they have been, to some extent, forcibly taken away.

The longest and most riotous of the stories was the second, Easy, Tiger, a New Yorker piece in which Sedaris discusses the oddities of the Pimsleur language instruction tapes that he has used to help him navigate other countries. In it, he shares several actual conversations used on these tapes, commenting on the uselessness of some of the banter and what the differences in dialogue between languages reveals about the countries in which they are spoken. For this, he played us samples of actual Pimsleur tapes and also demonstrated his skills in Japanese, Italian and German. The impact of his expressive voice, whose timbre is remarkably like that of John Fiedler, who played Piglet for about four decades in various Disney projects, is amplified by his impeccable comic timing. While this essay was mostly funny, it also posed some interesting questions about how and why we learn foreign languages and whether, as more and more people around the world learn English, Americans will cease to bother trying to bridge the communication gap themselves.

Atta Boy, which comments on today’s tendency toward over-indulgent parenting as compared with the brutal but effective tactics employed by his father and, to a lesser extent, mother, resonated strongly with many in the audience. Looking around, I could see a lot of people nodding in agreement with his disgust over the parents who threaten to sic the police on a man who lays a hand on their son to apprehend him after catching him at spray-painting a mailbox. His description of his own parents is howlingly funny, particularly his aggressive dad who hoards after-work snacks, threatens to pummel neighborhood smart-alecks and removes his pants during dinner – and, when the doorbell interrupts the meal, insists on answering the door himself. I think a lot of people felt pretty grateful for their families after hearing this essay.

The final essay focused on Sedaris’s experiences with various doctors, including one whose response to medical issues is too lackadaisical for his liking and another who subjects him to bizarre travel shows on mute while he is poking around in his mouth. This was the essay that inspired my brother, who recently graduated from college with a Fine Arts degree, to draw a mouse on a skewer for him as a gift in exchange for his autograph. It was as funny as the others, and we got to hear him speak French, but I was glad when it was over because all that medical talk was getting rather icky.

The diary entries were taken from the last two years and mostly commented on individuals who struck him as unusual or related jokes that people had told him at readings. These were invariably crude, as was a quip about a quiz show that most of the audience didn’t get, and it kind of worries me that I did. The funniest bit was probably his baffled description of the Occupy Wall Street protesters he encountered in the organic hipster wonderland of Burlington, Vermont. Most of these were very short, sometimes only a couple of sentences, and it was fun to get these quick laughs after the much longer stories.

The question and answer period wasn’t all that illuminating, especially since one of the questions was incomprehensible, but his recollection of the crummy Bangor, Maine motel where he stayed during this tour was hilarious. On the more serious side, he encouraged everyone to go out into the lobby and buy a copy of Peter Kessler’s River Town, a piece of immersion journalism about life among Chinese schoolchildren that particularly impressed Sedaris.

After the reading, the audience had three options: leave, head for the book table or line up for the signing. I’d brought a book, so I got in the signing line, though it took me a while to get there, especially since we bumped into a friend on the way out of the theater, and as a result, Mom and I wound up near the back of the line, which barely seemed to move at all in the first half hour. Nathan and Morgan opted to lounge around the lobby, where they had a good view of the signing table where Sedaris was engaging each person who came up to him in conversation. After more than an hour of waiting, Mom got Nathan to take her place in line while she found a bench, and I gave him the pen and notepad for him to draw his skewered mouse while we waited. As we drew closer, we caught snatches of his conversation with other attendees. I especially liked his request to the 13-year-old pianist ahead of us to, after his concert the next day, “Go out and do something autumnal. Rake some leaves, do something with an apple… I don’t know. Just go outside and be autumnal!”

When we finally made it to the table, I presented my book, the copy of Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk that Nathan had bought me for Christmas, and I mentioned that I had bought it for Nathan as well and that we’d snapped a picture of us holding up our identical books. He made a comment about the dangers of that happening in a family at Christmas and how he and his sister had bought each other the same CD or DVD on occasion. He signed the book “To Erin with friendly friendship” and handed it back… and then he noticed my “purse.” “I’m sorry, is that your purse?” he asked. I replied that it had started out as a camera bag and I ended up just carrying it around everywhere. It’s a clunky red and black thing, not ladylike in any sense of the word but certainly utilitarian. “I just have to say,” he persisted, “that is the most ungainly handbag I have ever seen. I mean, if there was a contest for ugly purses, that would take first prize!”

Well, what can I say? I’ve never claimed to fashion-conscious. I just sort of smiled and shrugged, and he shook his head and laughed, and then he noticed the button on the side. He asked what it said, and I explained that I’d picked it up in Salem, Massachussetts – the trip, incidentally, which made me decide to switch from raggedy ten-year-old purse to hardy compact camera bag – and that it read, “Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and good with ketchup.” Of course, he informed me that the dragon button just made the ensemble all that much worse, and then he fixed his eye on my green VeggieTales bracelet and asked if that was to go with the button, and I told him that it was a bracelet tied in with the kids’ video series VeggieTales. At this point, he was looking at me a bit like I was some sort of intergalactic visitor, and he laughed again and said, “You are absolutely adorable.”

Nathan should have gone first because I’d already introduced him as my brother, so the signature he got in his copy of Holidays on Ice was “Think Celine,” who Sedaris informed him is a designer of upscale handbags whose work he insisted Nathan track down so he could get me a less mortifying purse for Christmas. However, he seemed delighted with Nathan’s detailed doodle – “Oh! It’s a mouse on a skewer! Well, look at that!” – and then the two of them spent a few minutes discussing their favorite artists, so I think that Nathan probably managed to demonstrate that his visual tastes are a little more refined than his sister’s. We each selected a twisted postcard to tote home with us; I was hoping to snag the one cheerily chirping, “Let’s explore diabetes with owls!” but that was gone by the time I got there, so I had to satisfy myself with the Pekingese skull.

It was closing in on midnight by the time we left, so it was a full evening, and not only did I have the pleasure of listening to him share his keen insights with that wonderful delivery, I think I also got a taste for what it must feel like to be an inadequate American Idol contestant in front of Simon Cowell. Or Ugly Betty. But hey, at least I’m adorable!

Young New Yorkers Seek Greater Self-Awareness in Josh Radnor's Happythankyoumoreplease

My friend Dan is in town this week, and that always means a movie night or two. This time around, we headed for the video store with no clear idea of what we wanted to rent, and after half an hour or so of uninspired browsing, we finally decided to take a chance on 2010’s Happythankyoumoreplease, whose screenplay had received praise on a blog he reads. I’m glad we did. Written and directed by How I Met Your Mother’s Josh Radnor, who also stars, this movie with the rather cumbersome title is a gem of an indie about late 20-somethings in New York City trying to figure out who they are and how they fit into the world.

Radnor is Sam Wexler, a scruffy struggling novelist burdened with an idyllic childhood that’s left him insufficiently angsty. In addition to his lack of personal tragedy, he suffers from reluctance to commit that carries over into his writing. His short stories are brilliant, but sustaining one character for hundreds of pages proves a problem. Then something – or rather someone – comes along to challenge his M.O. On the subway ride to another meeting with an editor, he sees Rasheen (Michael Algieri), a young dark-skinned boy with a sullen, silent face, fail to get off with his family.

Moved in spite of himself, he takes the boy under his wing, only to eventually discover that the separation was intentional and that he is trying to escape from an abusive foster care situation. He knows he should turn Rasheen over to police, but the boy seems to need him, and he likes feeling so valued for a change. His discovery of Rasheen’s raw artistic talent furthers his reluctance to release him to a system that seems to have failed him.

During their first day together, Sam and Rasheen come into contact with three important people. One is Mississippi (Kate Mara), a bartender and cabaret singer who catches Sam’s eye. Neither has the best history of romantic relationships, but each is clearly interested in the other, and Sam proposes an unusual way to get to know each other.

Another is Mary Catherine (Zoe Kazan), a short, fiery friend of Sam’s from way back who is anxious to express her disapproval for his life choices. She is about to face a major decision of her own as her boyfriend, Charlie (Pablo Schreiber), returns home from a business trip and announces his intention to move to L.A. Can she follow the man she loves if it means giving up the places and people that have meant home to her for so long?

The third major character we meet here is Sam’s best friend Annie (Malin Akerman), a woman whose lifelong lack of hair has left her fragile and convinced that she is unworthy of genuine romantic love. Despite her history of being hurt by insensitive cads, there is a radiance to her countenance reflecting a strength of spirit no one can take from her. The depth of friendship she and Sam share is touching, though I found myself wondering why two people who care so deeply for each other never became romantically involved, an issue one of the deleted scenes addresses but never answers. Into Annie’s world steps another Sam, a coworker played by Tony Hale, who I know as Chuck’s deliciously irritating Emmett Milbarge. Sam #2, as he comes to call himself, admires Annie with an unsettling intensity, and the question of whether he is a creep or merely an unconventional suitor becomes one of the most intriguing of the movie.

All of the performances are excellent, from the somber quietude of young Algieri, making his film debut, to the dazed confusion of Radnor as a man who seems to be almost sleepwalking through life. Akerman’s gentle joy is mesmerizing, and Hale left the longest lingering impression on me. In addition to the actors, singer-songwriter Jaymay has a strong presence in the film through her folksy, acoustic songs, most of which manage to sound cheerful and melancholy all at once. This is particularly true when she harmonizes with herself, producing a sound that puts me in mind of my favorite duo, Simon and Garfunkel. Her sprightly melodies and pensive lyrics enhance many of the film’s scenes, and I’m glad the DVD includes a short featurette focusing on her role in the film. In fact, no sooner was the DVD out of the machine than I started searching YouTube for her music.

This movie is rated R for its adult language and situations. Mostly, that means a lot of bedroom scenes, though nothing really explicit, and a liberal sprinkling of a certain word beginning with the letter “f.” If it weren’t for that particular word’s use, I really see no reason why this couldn’t have been PG-13. While it mostly made me roll my eyes, I must admit I got a chuckle out of Sam’s outbursts in the company of Rasheen, to which he immediately adds the admonition, “Don’t swear.” It’s an oddly sweet demonstration of his struggle to make a change in how he relates to the world.

I’d never heard of this movie before last night, and if hadn’t been for our trip to the video store, I don’t know if it ever would have caught my eye. While I didn’t have any negative expectations going into it, I didn’t expect to find the film so moving. I’m happy I watched it, so thank you to Dan for suggesting it, and to Josh Radnor, I will simply say, “More, please!”

Ilene Beckerman Shares Snark and Insight in Makeovers at the Beauty Counter of Happiness

I’ve never been much into makeovers. From the ten-minute makeovers that are a weekly feature on the local news to the makeover that allegedly won Clay Aiken his spot in the semifinals during the second season of American Idol, they’ve always seemed to superficial to me. It seems that Ilene Beckerman, author of Makeovers at the Beauty Counter of Happiness, came to a similar conclusion in the preparations for her elementary school reunion though she is far more fashion-conscious than I ever was.

My friend Libbie lent me this pithy book, which is just over a hundred pages long and feels considerably shorter because it is filled with white space, squiggly illustrations and text boxes containing letters to her granddaughter or various famous folks. In it, Beckerman talks about her lifelong struggles to feel beautiful in her own skin. The looming class reunion brought all of this to the surface, prompting her to examine her thoughts more thoroughly and create a book of advice she could pass on to her granddaughter Olivia.

Most of the pages that don’t feature a letter have only three or four short paragraphs, if that. The letters, meanwhile, are generally only about a paragraph long. Libbie and I have both enjoyed writing letters to famous people as well as each other, so this was an aspect of the book to which we could both relate. Throughout the book, she shares lots of letters, few of which she actually sent. The messages to Olivia are usually wise or sweet, while the notes to celebrities tend to be snarky or self-deprecating. Many of them reflect a preoccupation with physical appearance.

For instance, right from the get-go she mentions that she has spent huge portions of her life obsessed with her clothing, hair, makeup and other aspects of her looks, often trying to emulate supermodels or glamorous actresses. She then reveals a letter that she claims she wrote to Mother Teresa years ago in which she confesses that she wishes she had spent that fashion-focused time on more noble pursuits and wonders what she might have made of herself if she had. Then she adds that she wishes Mother Teresa – or Sandra Day O’Connor, another woman she says she admires – had Audrey Hepburn’s wardrobe.

She writes to a lot of people throughout the book. Other non-recipients include Sofia Coppola, Ann Landers, Bess Truman, Shirley MacLaine, Ava Gardner, Jackie Kennedy Onassis, Sarah Jessica Parker, Kate Hudson, Gwyneth Paltrow, Gene Tierney, Madonna, Helen Gurley Brown of Cosmopolitan, Sophia Loren, Goldie Hawn, Elizabeth Taylor, Audrey Hepburn, Marilyn Monroe and Meryl Streep. These letters usually begin with some variation of “I’ve always been a fan of yours but” or “even though” nearly every letter includes some bit of advice, though obviously some of it is not meant to be taken seriously (particularly since some of it is directed at people who have been dead for years).

Beckerman talks about how hung-up on appearances she used to be and honestly, to some extent, still is. While she doesn’t always take her own advice, she tries to tell Olivia that looks aren’t everything, and neither is star power. Early in the book, she tells her, “I hope you don’t have to wait as long as I did to know nobody’s perfect.” Mostly, she seems to think that society has progressed and that Olivia will be more able to feel content with herself than she did as a girl. Sometimes, though, she is horrified by modern trends. After stumbling upon MTV while channel surfing, she writes, “Kids seemed to be doing things to music that I didn’t know about until after I was married… and I certainly never did to music.”

Mostly, however, she expresses optimism that Olivia will be able to navigate the excesses, pressures and temptations of her generation to become a poised young woman. “I wish I’d known that people liked me just the way I was, even if I didn’t like me the way I was,” she writes in her final letter, having been surprised at how kindly her classmates treated her and each other and how insecure many of them reported feeling during their school days. “It takes a lifetime to get smart,” she advises her but hopes that she can get a head start.

The quirky illustrations add to the fun of this book. Some are quite silly, like the “bad hair days” illustration that features, among others, the headgear of Amelia Earhart and Whistler’s Mother. All of them have a very sketchy quality about them. These aren’t particularly artistic illustrations, but they are often amusing.

If you’ve ever struggled with self-esteem related to body issues, you may find solace or at least a smile in this book. Makeovers at the Beauty Counter of Happiness is probably not going to change anyone’s life, but it may make you a little more aware of the ways in which the fashion industry drives our culture, sometimes to the detriment of impressionable young minds.

Charlie Tries to Participate in His Own Life in The Perks of Being a Wallflower

When I realized that it was Banned Books time again, I wondered what I could review to take part in the write-off. I haven’t read anything very controversial lately and I wanted it to be something fresh in my mind, so I figured this merited a trip to the library. A glance at the list of recently banned books turned up Stephen Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower, which has long intrigued me as I am a wallflower myself.

In this epistolary novel, a high school freshman named Charlie chronicles his year from August to August through a series of letters to an anonymous recipient who never writes back. He neither expects nor wants a response; he simply likes the idea of knowing that somewhere out there, another person knows his innermost thoughts. The idea that an actual individual is reading his words gives them focus. While he goes off on tangents from time to time, it’s generally pretty easy to follow his line of thinking.

Charlie is a sweet kid who feels more like an observer than a participant in his own life. The book opens with his recollection of his only friend’s suicide earlier in the year. It doesn’t take long to see that Charlie is a deeply sensitive soul who cries at the drop of a hat and who intently watches everyone around him and develops keen insights into how they operate while they barely notice his presence. He comes across as deeply naïve, empathetic and anxious, always thinking primarily of the good of others, always obsessing over what he might have done differently in a particular situation, never knowing how to refuse a request that makes him uncomfortable or initiate something that he wants to have happen. While I have never been in most of the gritty situations he describes, I often found his general way of reacting to things comparable to my own, especially in high school.

It helps that he spends so much of the book drawing in various references to pop culture. When one of his favorite memories involves watching the series finale of M*A*S*H and he includes a Simon and Garfunkel song on a mix tape, how can I not like this kid? The novel is also propelled by the reading of books, since Charlie’s English teacher, a hip young man who insists upon being called Bill outside of class, has given him a list of classics to ingest and write about as a sort of independent study. Charlie rarely goes into depth discussing these books, but they help provide a framework for the year.

Charlie’s home life is generally supportive. His mother dotes on him, while his father is more distant but never abusive, as Charlie is quick to point out lest his reader think he has it worse than he does. His macho older brother has just started his freshman year playing football for Penn State, a detail that made this Penn State Behrend alum smile, and his sister is a high school senior developing some very bad habits when it comes to boys. Their relationship is one of the most tumultuous and interesting of the book, and an early passage wonderfully illuminates the dynamic between them.

”I hate you.”
My sister said it different than she said it to my dad. She meant it with me. She really did.
“I love you,” was all I could say in return.

This exchange is typical of Charlie’s interactions with others. He always wants to think the best of people even when they have done terrible things. On the other hand, when he does something regrettable, he can’t stop beating himself up over it. When he does find some friends, he becomes the go-to shoulder to cry on, but while he enjoys his time with these vivacious people, he still often feels as though he is on the fringes, particularly when it comes to Sam, the senior who he considers the sweetest, most beautiful girl he has ever known.

If this book were a movie, it would most definitely be rated R. I can think of a dozen reasons why it might have been challenged, starting with the suicide. The book deals heavily with myriad aspects of teen sexuality, from Charlie’s first erotic dream – which he spends most of the year trying to forget – to the covert relationship between Sam’s brother Patrick and the quarterback of the high school football team. Throughout the year, Charlie is exposed to and sometimes ingests alcohol, marijuana and LSD, and he becomes thoroughly addicted to cigarettes. Other controversial topics that arise include molestation, domestic abuse, racism and abortion. Finally, while Charlie has a very clean mouth, he occasionally quotes the profanity of others, and most of it is pretty harsh.

If my first introduction to this book was that laundry list of topics, I doubt I’d be too interested in picking it up. As it was, I won’t pretend that some of the things I read didn’t make me squirm. However, Charlie’s compassion and idealism as he observes and weathers some very difficult issues keep this from being depressing or degrading. It also was a quick read, with the 210 pages only taking me a few hours to get through. While I wouldn’t recommend this to anyone younger than high school, I wouldn’t ban it either, and considering how many teens report feeling disenfranchised, I’m sure that many would relate to Charlie’s struggles to understand his place in the world. “I think everyone is special in their own way,” Charlie tells his unknown reader late in the book. “I really do.” Maybe that’s a message that a few wallflowers who feel that they have outgrown the affirmations of Mr. Rogers could stand to hear again.

Betty White Delights in the Light, Breezy If You Ask Me

Back when it was on the air, I used to watch The Golden Girls, mostly because I loved sweet, naïve, animal-loving Rose, portrayed by Betty White. I’ve seen her pop up in all sorts of other places since then and shared in the amusement of many mall visitors when the calendar kiosk where I worked last year stocked dozens of calendars bearing her image. It seems she is quite the star. So when my friend lent me her latest book, If You Ask Me (And of Course You Won’t), I was interested to see what she had to say for herself.

Practically her first assertion is “Writing is my favorite thing.” This particular admission is actually written in longhand, which she integrates into later portions of her book as well. It’s funny to think of a beloved actress claiming such a quiet pursuit as an even deeper passion, but it’s nice to know that she enjoyed herself while penning this memoir. The book is a pretty quick read at about 250 pages, which are grouped into eight sections of loosely related reflections. With 46 chapters, none of them is more than a few pages long. The most extensive chapter is the one dealing with her 2010 appearance on Saturday Night Live, and even that is not quite ten pages long and includes several photos.

Of course, every chapter has at least one accompanying photo, and there’s a blank page following each chapter, plus a separate page for section headings, so what you’re really getting are fewer than 150 pages of actual text. The tone is very conversational; you feel like you are just sitting down for an afternoon with Betty and she is relating some of the stories of her life as they come to her. I haven’t read any of her other books, so I can’t say whether this is the way they all are, but it works pretty well. It just feels a bit like we’re only scratching the surface because she’s barely begun to discuss a topic before she’s moved on to the next one.

The timeliest section is the one that prompted the writing of this book. Hollywood Stories discusses Hot in Cleveland, The Proposal, The Lost Valentine and the immensely popular Snickers Super Bowl commercial that prompted the Facebook campaign that led to her co-hosting of Saturday Night Live. Through all her successes, she maintains a humble attitude, repeatedly saying what a joy it is to be able to do something she loves for a living and to make enough money at it to feed her other passions. She never seems to forget that hers is a life that many would love to have.

She reveals nothing shocking in her recollections. This memoir is as courteous as Donny Osmond’s, and she spends no time spewing venom on anyone. She seems to go out of her way to see the good in people. For instance, in one chapter, she discusses film projects she declined because they contained scenes she found distasteful. However, she also indicates that the writers who penned the offending screenplays are very talented. She comes across as a woman of both integrity and tact.

Perhaps the most interesting revelation for me was that she never wanted to go into show business as a child. Instead, it was always her dream to become a park ranger or a zookeeper. This love of animals permeates the book at all turns, whether she is recalling memorable encounters with creatures like Koko the gorilla and Beethoven the beluga, discussing the idiosyncrasies of her beloved pets or confiding the comfort she has derived on set from fans who bring their dogs to meet her. While she has glowing remarks to make about many colleagues and friends, not to mention her adored late husband, she admits that she has always felt more comfortable in the presence of furry companions.

This is a very lightweight book, but it really is a delight to read. From her self-effacing comments about her struggles with stage fright and connecting faces with names to her fond memories of her parents and her easy-going attitude about approaching 90, If You Ask Me is relentlessly cheerful, almost inevitably provoking a sense of uplift. Betty White is an American icon and a very considerate woman, and if you ask me, her words are well worth reading.

Booky Makes Her Mark Melodramatically

Booky Makes Her Mark is the first in a series of Canadian made-for-TV movies based on a book series about a Depression-era family living in Toronto. However, it takes place several years after the two movies that follow it, and it was the third movie that I saw. Hence, I had a hard time thinking of it as the first. While all the movies were directed by Peter Moss, there are significant differences between this movie and the next two, and I’m not sure which is truer to the book. In any case, although I mostly enjoyed this installment, it’s easily my least favorite of the three.

The only actors who appear in both this movie and the ones that follow are Megan Follows and Stuart Hughes, who are Francie and Thomas Thomson, Booky’s parents. Francie is tough and resourceful, while Thomas is hardworking but very angsty. As the movie begins, Thomas is once again out of work, and the family is evicted. It’s just the first in a string of unfortunate events that occur in this rather bleak film. Despite the difficult times, the other two movies have an upbeat tone to them, and nothing ever seems to get Francie down for long, but here, she is almost as cantankerous as Thomas, who is at his most ornery yet.

Tatiana Maslany looks as though she could legitimately be the older version of Rachel Marcus, the actress who plays Booky in the other two movies. In this one, she is 15 years old, and that means major teen melodrama. The 11-year-old is almost always cheerful and plucky, but at 15, she is prone to flinging herself down on her bed and wailing, “This is the worst day of my life!” It seems every time something good happens to her, something comes along to ruin it. Granted, her misery is usually at least somewhat understandable, but she almost always blows it out of proportion, especially considering the life-or-death concerns that plague her parents. It would seem I should relate to her more in this movie than the others, since it is here that she decides she wants to be a writer, but more often than not, I found her behavior annoying. Her most redeeming quality is her consistent kindness to Roy-Roy (Philip Riccio), a mentally disabled man who lives in the neighborhood.

Booky’s little brother Jakey, who provides many light moments in the other two movies, is nowhere in sight. Not having read the books, I don’t know if something happened to the character or if he was just cut from the adaptation and then added back in later, but I missed his presence, particularly since Booky’s older brother Arthur (Erik Knudsen) is such an obnoxious ne’er-do-well in this one. The character whose personality is most consistent throughout the series is Willa (Sarah Allen), Booky’s sweet, studious older sister, but oddly, she seems to be the same age in this movie as she is in the other two.

Additionally, it’s a little jarring that neither of Booky’s close female friends is in this movie, though rich blonde Gloria (Kate Todd) is similar to Laura and plain brunette Ada-May (Lauren Collins) is a lot like Rosie. Georgie (Ephraim Ellis), the object of Booky’s affections in Booky’s Crush, is present, but she doesn’t think much of him, instead reserving her ardor for the wealthy and handsome Lorne (Mike Lobel).

As Booky’s parents try to scrape out the family’s survival, Booky deals with a series of humiliations, some the fault of her parents, others the fault of her friends but most at least partly her own fault, as she is so prone to overreactions. The mildest criticism sends her into the depths of despair, while an accomplishment turns her into an insufferable egotist. My favorite segment of the movie finds her out in the country with her hardscrabble Aunt Aggie (Roberta Maxwell), a spinster farmer, working her fingers to the bone in the hopes that all that clean country air will cure her of her chronic cough. Aggie’s determination and no-nonsense way of putting things is refreshing in the midst of all the soaring teen emotions.

As with the other movies in the series, this one is rich in period detail, and the sets look very realistic. I would say this one is a bit less of a family film, since none of the characters are younger than their teens and since the overall tone is darker. There’s also a bit of profanity, and we see several teens smoking cigarettes. On the other hand, one point of interest unique to this movie is the presence of L. M. Montgomery, author of the Anne of Green Gables series, as a character who meets with Booky and offers her advice on her writing craft. Fans of Anne or other Montgomery characters may want to check out the movie just for that. While I prefer the movies that focus on Booky’s younger years, Booky Makes Her Mark is still a well-crafted film that shines a light on a fascinating historical period.

Elizabeth and Tara-Starr Preserve Their Friendship Through E-Mail in Snail Mail No More

How can friends stay connected despite vast distances that separate them? It’s easier now than it used to be. In P.S. Longer Letter Later, Paula Danziger and Ann M. Martin craft a correspondence between two 12-year-old girls. They write letters to each other, which is a slow process. It’s usually close to a week and sometimes even longer between sending off the letter and receiving the response. Having all that time in between sometimes puts a strain on the friendship, especially if the girls get testy with each other. In the sequel, Snail Mail No More, traditional pen and paper is all but out the window. They do send postcards and packages occasionally, but basically, when they want to write to each other, they use e-mail. The communication is so much quicker, allowing the friends to feel even closer this year than the last.

Elizabeth is a shy, quiet girl who enjoys poetry and lives with her mother and little sister in a small apartment. Though it’s a far cry from the elegant house where they used to live, Elizabeth is content with her change in circumstances. She’s happy to live so close to her friends Susie and Howie, with whom she has become especially close in the past few months, and she’s relieved that her erratic alcoholic dad is out of her life, maybe for good. Tara-Starr, whose move to Ohio prompted the correspondence in the first book, is adjusting to her new life too. She’s loud and flashy and isn’t afraid to express herself. This year, she has a lot on her mind, most notably her burgeoning interest in theater, an egg baby project that wreaks havoc on her romantic life and her mother’s pregnancy, with which she is very slowly coming to terms.

The letters in this book sound much the same as the ones in the first. The only real difference is the lack of a handwritten signature at the end of each one. The girls also have some fun with subject lines. But the length and frequency of the e-mails actually isn’t impacted all that much. It isn’t as though they write to each other five times a day now, nor are their e-mails generally vastly shorter than the letters. There might be a quick two-sentence e-mail sprinkled in here and there, but mostly, we’ve still got long missives that come in maybe once or twice a week. Elizabeth’s are more hesitant, Tara-Starr’s more open, but both of them are the products of kind, intelligent 13-year-olds.

Once again, I enjoyed the book and found its style easy to slip into. Neither of the narrative voices wowed me the first time, and they didn’t the second time either – though to be fair, I read both shortly after reading Gary Schmidt’s Okay For Now, which features one of the best young adolescent voices I’ve ever encountered in a novel. By contrast, Elizabeth and Tara-Starr feel pretty prosaic, but they also feel authentic and contemporary. (Well, almost-contemporary. This was ten years ago; perhaps a third installment would find the girls, now young adults, commenting on each other’s Facebook pages.) They haven’t outgrown their use of multiple exclamation points, question marks or “o”s in the word “so”. They definitely sound their age, and the way they struggle with the crises that come their way feels very realistic.

I enjoyed this book about as well as the first. Some interesting twists develop, and some of the side characters come into better focus. We get to know Susie and Howie pretty well, along with a couple of Tara-Starr’s friends. A couple of them even get e-mails addressed to them, during the portion of the book in which Elizabeth is visiting Tara-Starr. This segment is a little silly, since the girls are finally together but they keep writing e-mails to each other, but I chalk that up to excitement over the novelty of e-mail, with both have just begun using, and wanting to remember what they did during their time together. E-mails can serve as wonderful journals; just make sure to save your outgoing messages.

Snail Mail No More is an enjoyable epistolary novel that explores the continuation of a long-distance friendship, acknowledging the changes that must happen between best friends over time as each develops friends and interests apart from the other. In the midst of these changes, that friendship endures, and sometimes having a friend to pour out one's heart to in writing can be just as powerful as having a physical shoulder to cry on. In this book, Elizabeth and Tara-Starr provide each other both, leaving young readers with optimism about the capacity of friendship to endure in spite of – and maybe sometimes because of – challenging circumstances.

A Friendship Endures Despite Distance in P. S. Longer Letter Later

I’ve been very into epistolary stories lately, so I was excited to stumble upon P.S. Longer Letter Later, a mid-grade novel written by Paula Danzinger and Babysitters’ Club creator Ann M. Martin. This 230-page book consists entirely of letters shared between two seventh-grade friends, Elizabeth and Tara-Starr (who prefers to spell her name Tara*Starr). Martin writes as Elizabeth, the quiet poetry enthusiast who lives with her parents and little sister in a fancy house and is dealing with her best friend’s departure. Danzinger writes as Tara-Starr, an only child who is flashy and exuberant and adjusting to her new life in faraway Ohio with her youthful parents. Both girls seem to be reflections of the authors’ personalities, and the novel proceeded organically, one letter at a time, with neither one knowing just what would come next.

It’s an interesting collaboration that works pretty well. We get a very strong sense of who these girls are. Elizabeth is cautious and considerate; a crisis begins to brew in her family shortly after Tara-Starr leaves, but she doesn’t want to pry too much into what’s happening or make many judgments about the behavior of her parents. Tara-Starr is freer with her emotions. She starts off the school year furious with her parents, and she doesn’t hang back from saying so. Throughout the year, her feelings toward them go up and down, and she vents all of her frustration to Elizabeth – and wishes Elizabeth would be a little more vocal about her own frustrations.

This book reminds me a bit of the Friends 4-Ever series, which involved a group of friends who pledge to write to one another after one of their number moves away. There are only two correspondents in this case, though, except for the very occasional letter to or from Tara-Starr’s mother Barb. It takes place during the course of one school year, and there are no chapter separations, just one letter after another. Most letters are at least two pages in length; it’s a week or two between letters, so these girls have a lot to say to each other, especially since this is a pretty eventful year for both of them. They definitely sound like seventh-graders, especially Tara-Starr, who is prone to using multiple exclamation points and question marks and huge strings of “o”s in the word “so”. The letters are not especially eloquent or literary, but they do feel authentic. It’s easy to imagine this as a real series of letters between real pre-teens.

The book deals with several topics that many middle-schoolers must face. First and foremost, it’s about adjusting to a new life after a move. Tara-Starr has the biggest adjustment to make, since she’s starting off fresh, but it feels like a difficult new beginning for shy Elizabeth too, and without the excitement of being in a new place. Eventually, Elizabeth must also deal with several changes on the home front, including job loss and a mid-life crisis on the part of one of her parents. Meanwhile, Tara-Starr must adjust to her parents’ new, more mature outlook on life, as well as their desire to have a baby. Through it all is the difficulty of maintaining a deep friendship despite distance. Because of the expense, phone calls are a rarity, and miscommunication is all too easy when it’s impossible to smooth things over immediately. It seems inevitable that two girls in the midst of disquieting changes would eventually say the wrong thing to each other and introduce a rift into their relationship. But this book is optimistic about the ability of true friends to weather such misunderstandings, even from afar.

P. S. Longer Letter Later is a quick, down-to-earth read about two friends who refuse to let geographical proximity dictate the extent of their relationship. I’d readily recommend it to any friends facing a separation as encouragement that their friendship can continue and even deepen even though they no longer live in the same town.

Books Connect Continents in 84, Charing Cross Road

Books have the capacity to bring people together. I’ve read several charming books exploring the ways that shared texts deepen friendships and particularly recommend the Mother-Daughter Book Club series for intermediate readers. In 84, Charing Cross Road, Helene Hanff shares a 20-year-long correspondence centered upon books. Frank, her primary correspondent, finds them for her, and she reads them. They don’t discuss the books’ contents at length, or at least he doesn’t, and yet these volumes bind them together in a powerful way, bridging the gap between two continents.

I stumbled upon the movie 84 Charing Cross Road on Netflix last year, and in light of National Poetry Month, I thought it seemed a good time for me to read the book that inspired the movie. After all, Hanff is extremely passionate about poetry. The book is simply a collection of just under 100 letters between Helene Hanff, a New York writer, and Frank Doel, a London bookseller. Occasionally, letters to and from other employees at Marks and Co., Booksellers, as well as Frank’s wife Nora and a sprinkling of other acquaintances, work their way into the book, but the real heart of the story is the reserved, humble Frank, who, from Helene’s first letter requesting a few hard-to-find books, works tirelessly to secure her desired volumes and never charges her any more than he needs to.

Most of the letters are well under a page in length; generally speaking, Helene’s are much longer. She fills her letters with impressions of the books she has received – sometimes glowing praise, sometimes stern rejoinders. Beyond just the words, she is often awed by the craftsmanship of the books themselves: “I just never saw a book so beautiful. I feel vaguely guilty about owning it. All that gleaming leather and gold stamping and beautiful type belongs in the pine-panelled library of an English country home…”

On the other hand, it’s not at all uncommon to find her missives peppered with words in all caps, and it’s easy to imagine her pounding away at her typewriter in fury. She’s a fiery woman, and it infuriates her to see poor editorial decisions hampering her enjoyment of beloved authors. For instance, she lavishes disdain upon an abridged version of Pepys’ Diaries that excludes some of her favorite entries and scratches her head at a volume of poetry that includes the complete works of both John Donne and William Blake. “Will you please tell me what those two boys have in common? – except they were both English and they both Wrote?” She also delights in scolding Frank if he goes too long without sending her something. She “needles” him endlessly, while he takes her jabs with good grace.

Frank’s notes are polite and tend to be rather detached, though the warmth of his gratitude shines through when he writes to thank her for the packages she sends to the bookshop containing food that is scarce in England of the 1950s thanks to rationing. He always comes across as extremely appreciative. Additionally, though he always passes her letters around to the other employees, once they begin writing to Helene they make it clear that he treasures their correspondence and thinks of her as his own personal pen pal. It’s charming to see his subtle wit peek through as he gradually becomes less formal with Helene. One of his funniest moments comes about halfway through their exchange, when he announces, “Prepare yourself for a shock. ALL THREE of the books you requested in your last letter are on the way to you and should arrive in a week or so.”

“From where I sit,” Helene writes in one of her letters, “London’s a lot closer than 17th Street.” She says this to indicate that it’s easier to write to Frank for what she wants than to walk all the way to a New York bookshop that probably won’t have it anyway, and almost certainly not as nice an edition as Frank is all but sure to find for her. But it also emphasizes the sense of intimacy that develops between her and Frank, as well as his close circle of associates and his wife. Yet physical proximity eludes her. There’s never any talk from England of a visit to America; it doesn’t seem to be within the realm of possibility. But Helene wants nothing more than to come to London, and it’s apparent that Frank and the others want this to happen as much as she does. At a certain point in the correspondence, nearly every letter from London includes some sort of entreaty to come soon, with the tone growing ever more wistful. Frank’s letter ten years into their exchange seems particularly poignant: “We are all sorry to hear that your television shows have moved to Hollywood and that one more summer will bring us every American tourist but the one we want to see.”

It’s often the case that reading the book makes a person rather disdainful of the movie that followed, but in this case, I gained a deeper appreciation for just how well-done the movie is. It incorporates the majority of the letters in the book, trimming some of them, while providing just enough in the way of dialogue and unspoken scenes to give us what feels like a complete story. Of course, Anne Bancroft’s zesty performance and Anthony Hopkins’ quiet gestures give us a strong sense of Helene and Frank’s personalities as well. The book is a wonderful record of a lasting correspondence, but it lacks any sort of context or transitions between the letters, which, toward the end, become ever more infrequent. Given the choice between the two, I would actually first recommend the movie; it’s an incredibly faithful adaptation with just a bit of embroidery to make the tale feel more complete.

That’s not to say, however, that I don’t recommend the book wholeheartedly. If you’re someone who loves “antiquarian” books or the art of letter-writing, you’re sure to find it a rare delight.

Massimo Troisi Pours Himself Into the Poetic Il Postino

April is National Poetry Month, so I was tickled when I realized that the first movie to rise to the top of my Netflix queue this month was Il Postino, the 1994 Italian film about a humble villager who secures a job delivering mail to a famous poet. Directed by Michael Radford, the film is a tender and often very funny look at the way that a love of words can shape a person’s life.

Massimo Troisi, who also shares directing and writing credits, stars as Mario Ruoppolo, a gentle, unassuming fellow who lives with his cantankerous father and is fascinated by the effect that Pablo Neruda (Philippe Noiret), a Chilean poet in exile, has upon women. He first catches a glimpse of his popularity with the ladies in a newsreel announcing his arrival on their small island, and then he sees it first-hand when he takes a job as the poet’s personal postman and notices that virtually all of Neruda’s fan mail has been written by women. Mario, who is shy and awkward, begins to associate one with the other, and he wonders whether delving into poetry himself might help him out a bit in the romance department.

This romantic angle intensifies partway through the movie when he falls head over heels for Beatrice (Maria Grazia Cucinotta), a young woman who works at a local eatery. But Mario’s curiosity about Neruda’s craft is hardly limited to its aphrodisiacal qualities. He is fascinated by the way words work and surprised that when he sits down to read Neruda’s poetry, it awakens feelings in him he didn’t know were there. It causes him to observe the world around him more intently and long to capture an ephemeral moment himself. As the days and weeks wear on, Mario begins peppering the poet with questions about his work, and gradually, the seasoned poet warms to him, becoming a mentor and even a friend.

As someone who has both read and written quite a bit of poetry, I loved the discussions between the wise but rather world-weary teacher and the naïve, eager student. Mario feels intimidated by the process of poetry and doesn’t believe that he is worthy to write it himself, but his visceral appreciation for it reveals that he indeed has the soul of a poet. Neruda seems to find Mario somewhat annoying but increasingly endearing, and he becomes more and more willing to spend time trying to answer his questions.

His lesson on metaphors is wonderful, as is his encouragement when Mario comes up with a metaphor of his own. He also speaks of the difficulty of trying to explain poetry, saying he can only use the words that he has chosen to describe a particular experience. He seems like he probably wouldn’t relish having his poems picked apart by overzealous English majors, a process Billy Collins amusingly describes in his poem Introduction to Poetry: “I want them to waterski / across the surface of a poem / waving at the author’s name on the shore. // But all they want to do / is tie the poem to a chair with rope / and torture a confession out of it.” So Mario doesn’t spend much time analyzing. He simply ingests Nerudo’s poetry and lets it work its magic upon him, and eventually he builds up the confidence to begin weaving some enchantment of his own.

This movie is originally in Italian, so I had to watch it with subtitles, but I didn’t mind too much; there’s something fitting about needing to do so much reading while watching a movie about poetry. I was surprised by how much the movie made me laugh. Mario has an understated but refreshing joviality about him, and some of the laughter is from sheer joie de vivre. There’s also some great banter between him and the snarkier Neruda, as well as his gruff boss at the postal service. Probably the single funniest character in the movie is Beatrice’s overbearing aunt, Donna Rosa (Linda Moretti), who is deeply suspicious of Mario’s motives once he begins wooing her. There’s a bit of slightly suggestive humor here, but it’s rated a mild PG, and that seems appropriate to me. I really wouldn’t say there’s anything objectionable, though it’s clearly a movie aimed at adults and I doubt it would interest most kids very much.

For the most part, this is a light-hearted, feel-good movie, so I was surprised to see it take a darker turn toward the end. The last act of the film is more subdued, and the focus shifts from the effect Neruda has had upon Mario to how the idealistic Mario has enriched the poet’s life. This is a movie that celebrates the qualities of great teachers and pupils, as well as where they may fall short. It’s romantic, funny and touching, and it demonstrates the power of poetry. The movie also presents the beauty of the town and countryside on this windswept island, and Franco Di Giacomo’s cinematography is like visual poetry.

I was saddened to read that Troisi was very ill when he made this and died of a heart attack the day after filming concluded. His performance is immersive and entirely winning; you can really feel that he is pouring himself completely into this role. For Mario and for Troisi, then, poetry brought both rewards and heartbreak. Knowing the background makes the film all the more bittersweet, but that’s certainly not a reason not to watch it. Il Postino is a lovely movie for those who love poetry and for those who love life.

Bullock and Reeves Write Their Way Into Each Other's Hearts in The Lake House

I’d heard some pretty tepid reviews of The Lake House, the 2006 Sandra Bullock-Keanu Reeves romance about two people engaged in a most unconventional epistolary relationship, so it wasn’t a movie I’d been dying to see. However, I love movies in which letter-writing plays a prominent part, so I finally decided to give it a shot.

Directed by Alejandro Agresti and based on the Korean movie Siworae, the film focuses on Kate Forster (Bullock), a kind doctor, and Alex Wyler (Reeves), a business-minded architect. When she departs from the lake house where she has been living, she leaves a letter in the mailbox for the home’s next occupant. He reads the letter but is confused by its contents. He puts his response into the mailbox and lifts the flag. Before long another letter appears. It only takes a little experimentation for them to discover the bizarre truth: that he is living in 2004 and she in 2006, and this mailbox is the key to their communication. (Conveniently, he never receives mail from anyone else. Maybe he didn’t tell anyone his address?)

While nobody in the movie actually time travels, the letters do, as do occasional objects, like the scarf Kate sends Alex on the day that she remembers a freak April blizzard will hit. LOST’s Daniel Faraday and Back to the Future’s Doc Brown would never approve the liberties taken with the space-time continuum here, but as long as you accept that there will be a couple of paradoxical points, this is a pretty enjoyable movie. I thought it was a little slow getting started, but once the letter-writing began in earnest, I was sucked in.

Both Kate and Alex have a distinct advantage over the other in this correspondence. Because she lives precisely two years in the future, Kate can give Alex details about things that happened on that day in 2004. (Oddly enough, given his rather materialistic outlook in the beginning, he never suggests that she send him an almanac and give him the opportunity to make a killing betting on sporting events; maybe he saw Back to the Future II and thought better of it!) Alex’s advantage is that he can manipulate past events for her instant gratification. For example, he writes graffiti on a wall downtown to let her know that they were in the same place two years apart.

As their correspondence continues and their regard for each other deepens, a chance encounter brings Alex face to face with Kate. He knows her identity, but she has no idea who he is yet, so this aspect of the movie reminded me a bit of You’ve Got Mail. However, the future Alex isn’t so easy for Kate to track down, and as she despairs of ever meeting Alex in her present, Kate’s giddiness begins to wear off. Is this long-distance relationship little more than a dream?

Earlier this year, I started reading Jane Austen’s Persuasion, so I got a kick out of seeing that book about love deferred taking a prominent role in the story midway through. (Another point of similarity with You’ve Got Mail, which prominently featured Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.) Kate’s description of the novel doesn’t seem like the most accurate summary, but there certainly are thematic connections between the movie and the book, mainly having to do with the idea of waiting a long time to unite with a loved one. More than Persuasion, it reminded me of The Constant, the fan-favorite LOST episode that heavily involves both time travel (of sorts) and patient love. There’s something very sweet in this meeting of the minds, especially on Kate’s end, since she lacks the immediacy of experience that Alex gets when he meets her in his present. She loves Alex without having a clear idea of what he looks or sounds like. But getting their timelines in sync seems impossible.

I generally like Bullock in her movies, and I found her very enjoyable here. Reeves doesn’t usually seem all that engaging to me, and he lacks the warm presence of someone like Tom Hanks, but I mostly liked him too, especially the voiceovers of his letters. Probably about half the movie contains these voiceovers, and Agresti is creative in how he shows the two, so that at times we forget how much actually separates them. They seem as though they could reach out and touch each other. What this really means is that Kate must need to spend an awful lot of time out at the Lake House, which isn’t technically hers any longer, just standing by the mailbox with a pad of paper so the two of them can carry on what amounts to a cumbersome IM session. Most of the letters are quite short; some are only a few words long.

Both Kate and Alex have outside romantic interests, but only just. Kate’s is nice enough, but he’s dull as dishwater and incredibly clingy. It’s obvious in their few scenes together that Kate can’t muster any passion for him. Alex, too, has someone who’s more of a tagalong than a girlfriend, and her possessive and ditsy traits don’t make her very endearing either. Alex and Kate describe themselves to each other as single, which sparked an interesting discussion with my parents. Does that mean that they consider themselves unattached or just unmarried? The movie doesn’t make it entirely clear. My parents were shocked to realize that for me, “single” means “does not have a significant other,” while I was shocked to realize that their definition of “single” even includes people who are engaged. Is it a generational thing, I wonder?

More interesting than the not-really romantic rivals are the parents. Willeke van Ammelrooy is affectionate and slightly exotic as Kate’s mother, who clearly enjoys a very close relationship with her. I loved her emotional openness and her easy acceptance of Kate’s strange situation, and some of my favorite scenes involved their heart-to-heart talks. Alex’s relationship with his father, a famous architect reminiscent of Frank Lloyd Wright, is more complicated. They haven’t spoken to each other in years, and Christopher Plummer’s largely vitriolic performance makes it easy to see why. Through him, we gain a much keener understanding of what makes Alex tick.

Movies revolving around letters are hard to come by, so I certainly recommend this to those who still value the art of correspondence, though probably the best movie I’ve seen that focuses on good old-fashioned snail mail is the quiet Anthony Hopkins-Anne Bancroft vehicle 84 Charing Cross Road. Still, if letters hold as much magic for you as they do for me, this is one love story on which I will gladly put my stamp of approval.

Number 2700: The Story Behind the Song Is Chicken Soup for the Music Lover's Soul

Three years ago, my friend Libbie and I went to see Music and Lyrics, a romantic comedy that also has a lot to do with the songwriting process. I found it both entertaining and inspiring, as it helped motivate me to do some more lyric-writing. This past Christmas, Libbie gave me Chicken Soup for the Soul: The Story Behind the Song. I was anxious to read it, and I also hoped that it would provide a similar boost. Given my love of music as both a fan and an aspiring lyricist, I thought this would be a fitting review with which to mark my 2700th post on Epinions.

Chicken Soup for the Soul is a series of books, each featuring 101 contributions pertaining to a particular theme. Usually, a majority of the authors in any given book are ordinary people who happen to have a great story to tell. Libbie and I both have read several of these feel-good collections, and I even had a poem included in 2008’s Chicken Soup for the Soul: Love Stories. This volume is a little different in that every contributor is a songwriter, or at least is intimately acquainted with one. It’s a bit on the long side as each entry includes the lyrics to the song in question after the reflection on what brought that song about. Some of these entries are quite detailed; most are between one and two pages.

Another difference between this book and most others in the series is the fact that there are no sub-sections. Typically, a book will be divided into several smaller categories, ranging from the silly to the tragic. In this volume, the arrangement is alphabetical by the last name of the song’s composer. In most cases, this is also the person who wrote the essay. One exception to this is Ingrid Croce, who writes about the people and circumstances inspiring Operator and Bad, Bad Leroy Brown, two hits by her late husband Jim Croce. I’ve always been a big fan of his, so I was especially interested in those stories, and I had to chuckle over the fact that as many as 40 guys have approached Ingrid over the years to identify themselves as “the real Leroy Brown”.

As I perused this book, I was surprised at how many of the songs I didn’t recognize. Only about a quarter of the songs were ones I knew. No doubt everyone who picks up this book will gravitate toward different songs and songwriters. My interests tend toward classic and folk-rock. While most of my favorite songwriters - Paul Simon, Gordon Lightfoot, Billy Joel, Elton John and Paul McCartney, to name a few - did not chime in, I enjoyed reading about several songs from artists I’m not quite as familiar with, and the book introduced me to plenty of songs that were new to me.

Among the entries that interested me most were the reflections on Bohemian Rhapsody (Roy Thomas Baker), That’s What Friends Are For (Carole Bayer Sager), Right Here Waiting (Richard Marx), The Rose (Amanda McBroom) and Eye of the Tiger (Jim Peterik). One of the most detailed entries is Tony Asher’s recollection of writing Wouldn’t It Be Nice with Brian Wilson after a chance meeting brought them together in the mid-sixties. Asher talks about the back-and-forth nature of their collaborative process and the way they pushed the envelope with this song, which now seems so innocent.

Chicken Soup for the Soul books are always designed so that you can skip around as much as you like, reading an essay here and an essay there and not worrying about the order in which the stories are presented. I’ve certainly read The Story Behind the Song in this way, often opening it up at random and seeing what song I end up with. The first entry that I read was Tom Higgenson’s description of how he came to write Hey There, Delilah as a tribute to a girl he liked but didn’t know very well. There was a very appealing sweetness and scrappiness to the story, as he hadn’t really hit the big time yet when he wrote the song in fulfillment to a promise that he had made to this young woman. I must have had his reflections rolling around in my head for the next month or so because my streak of new LOST filksongs began in February with a parody of Hey There, Delilah.

If you’re interested in songwriting or the music business in general, The Story Behind the Song is a fun and fascinating collection that celebrates songs spanning half a century. My only complaint is that it makes me curious about what a lot of other songwriters would have to say about their own work. I’m hoping that they will consider a follow-up volume and that even more musicians will participate. Until then, this volume has plenty to keep me reading.

Anthony Hopkins and Anne Bancroft Nurture a Long-Distance Friendship in 84 Charing Cross Road

The other day, I watched The Shop Around the Corner, the 1940 movie starring Jimmy Stewart and Margaret Sullavan as two quarrelsome shop employees who don’t realize that they’re falling in love with each other through correspondence. I presume this movie was the reason my eyes settled upon 84 Charing Cross Road when I was browsing Netflix’s Instant Viewing selections last night. It’s also the main reason I expected a romance - though Netflix’s categorization explains some of that too. This engrossing film starring Anne Bancroft and Anthony Hopkins really isn’t a romance at all, but it is the story of a profound friendship blooming between two people on different continents.

Bancroft plays Helene Hanff, a fiery script reader (and eventual writer) scraping a living in New York City. Her great passion is English literature, and we watch her pound the pavement, checking out every bookstore in town and finding that each comes up short on offering what she’s really looking for. In desperation, she writes to an "antiquarian" bookshop in London with a list of books and a request to send her any that can be sold for less than five dollars a piece. Frank P. Doel, senior bookseller at this establishment, sends two of the requested books immediately, and at a very reasonable price. And so an international friendship is born.

This movie, based on a true story, spans about 20 years and is told almost entirely through letters. Usually it’s Bancroft or Hopkins speaking, but eventually others in the bookshop, along with Frank’s wife Nora (Judi Dench), write to Helene as well. All of them are fascinated by her letters, written with such spunk and wit, and grateful for the packages she sends for holidays, particularly because of the food rationing going on in England at the time. I was a little disappointed when I realized that Frank was married; I envisioned a fairly lengthy correspondence, followed by Helene finally coming to London (which we see her do in the film’s opening scene) and throwing herself into Frank’s waiting arms. Not quite. But the fact that half a dozen others are caught up in the excitement of this letter exchange makes it even more interesting. Frank is still her primary correspondent, but eventually she has a sizable group waiting to welcome her to London for a visit.

I found myself reminded of the opening scenes of Up as I watched, since Helene’s dream of going to London is so often set aside for mundane expenses like rent and root canals. Initially, she intends to visit a couple of years into their correspondence, but life gets in the way. As the years wear on, various members of the bookstore staff die or move on to other jobs, and the big question becomes whether she will make it to London in time to meet Frank, a typically reserved Hopkins character whose emotional attachment to Helene is nonetheless plainly apparent as he reads her letters and composes his.

Bancroft is very funny in her role as this independent woman who knows exactly what she wants. Her letters are often bitingly sarcastic; she never bothers to hide her disdain for poorly edited or abridged copies of books, and her caustic observations bear the mark of a high intellect. Yet Frank, who nearly always sends the books first and encloses an invoice, never gets any of the books back. Even if she loathes the copy he found for her, she keeps it and pays him accordingly, though usually sternly instructing him to find her something better. His letters are much more restrained than hers; he never loses his professionalism, though he sometimes allows himself a sly remark or two. Even more than his words, his tireless efforts to find the books she desires, and his refusal to charge her a penny more than necessary, demonstrate his dedication to his vocation and his special fondness for her.

Because this movie stretches across two decades, there is a bittersweet edge to it, but it’s a lovely film that never becomes boring, at least for someone who loves literature and who understands the power of friendships born through correspondence. It’s also an interesting peek into history, as significant events, from the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II to protests at Columbia University, punctuate the more intimate details of Frank and Helene’s lives. The supporting cast all do a fine job, especially Ian McNiece as Frank’s right-hand man, Bill Humphries, but this movie really lies in the hands, or rather tongues, of Hopkins and Bancroft, two celebrated actors who I’ve rarely enjoyed more. Next time you’re looking for a cozy, intellectually stimulating movie, consider a visit to 84 Charing Cross Road.

Literary Ace Snoopy Types Out a Masterpiece With Woodstock in Tow

I love Snoopy in all of his many guises. But best of all is the Literary Ace, sitting atop his doghouse with his typewriter, diligently tapping away on those keys even though he knows full well in the back of his mind that he’ll soon be getting another rejection slip. I own the book Snoopy’s Guide to the Writing Life, so I have a good idea of just how frequently and thoroughly Snoopy’s work has been rejected. But that doesn’t deter him. He’s industrious as well as creative; one could say that all of his other personas are outgrowths of his writerly ambitions. This beagle’s daydreams are epic, and once in a while he takes the time to actually write them down, though a bit always seems to get lost in the translation.

At my college graduation party, I gave away goodie bags stamped with the image of Snoopy on his typewriter. On my piano, I have a snowglobe with Snoopy hard at work on his next novel. But the beginning of my Snoopy the Writer collection was Hallmark’s Spotlight on Snoopy: Literary Ace ornament, which came out in 2002. Spotlight on Snoopy is a series of ornaments that started in 1998; we only have three, but I’d be tempted to get the rest online sometime. It’s hard to go wrong with Snoopy. But I’m glad to at least have my favorite.

Literary Ace Snoopy comes in a box that is absurdly large in proportion to the ornament itself. While Snoopy doesn’t measure more than two inches in any direction, the box is five inches tall, three and a half inches wide and two and a half inches deep. This leaves room for the large piece of molded plastic in which to place Snoopy when Christmas is over. Still, the size seems slightly misleading, though most Hallmark stores would have had the ornament on display for examination. I usually think of Hallmark boxes as being a deep red color, but Snoopy’s is bright blue, with beige on the front and back. While the front features a picture of the ornament, the back includes a descriptive verse: “Snoopy’s never at a loss / for clever words to write. / His latest novel starts: ‘It was a dark and stormy night.’”

In addition to the ornament, the box contains a “memory card”. This has a picture of the ornament on the front; on the back are “To” and “From” spots, along with several lines under “Holiday Memory 2002”. If the giver were so inclined, he or she could take the card out ahead of time and write a message in this space before returning it to the box. Or the recipient could fill in this portion after Christmas with a memory involving that person from the celebration that just passed or perhaps an explanation of why this ornament was probably chosen for them. There’s not a lot of space, just five lines of an inch and three quarters. But it’s enough room to jot something down, especially for those with small printing or handwriting. If you have a lot of ornaments with memory cards, you might want to put them in a special book or box instead of leaving them with the ornaments; that way, you can peruse them all at the same time.

Snoopy is usually a fairly solitary writer, barring objections from the likes of persnickety Lucy, but in this ornament, he has a friend to supervise his activities. While Snoopy sits with his “hands” poised over the keys, Woodstock perches on his left “foot”. Woodstock is bright yellow and wears a red scarf and green earmuffs. His eyes are tiny flat lines, and he has no mouth. Snoopy is all white, with the exception of his eyes, which, like Woodstock’s, look more like eyebrows; his round nose; and the outer portion of his floppy ears. There’s also a little black spot at the base of his tail, and though it isn’t easily visible when you look at him head-on, he is smiling. He wears a purple sweater, a green scarf and, just to make the ornament extra-Christmassy, a red Santa hat trimmed with white.

The typewriter is black with black keys that don’t look as though they actually have numbers and letters on them, though it’s difficult to see. On either side is a silver knob, and the paper is halfway through the mechanism. It’s also blank, which seems a bit odd; I would think that “It was a dark and stormy night” would be there for all the world to see, but perhaps they were afraid of water damage. The typewriter is entirely non-functional, but that’s probably for the best; I could see the piece of paper easily getting lost if it could be maneuvered back and forth.

While my Captain Kirk and Captain Picard ornaments are so large as to be unwieldy, Snoopy is in danger of getting swallowed up by the tree because he’s so small. He hangs just fine, but I have to be careful to put him in a prominent spot, lest I accidentally leave him dangling from the branch when the tree goes out. He’s too big for a miniature tree, of which we have a few, but he rests easily on a flat surface, so it also works well to set him in front of the tree on the piano or the table. Wherever he is, Literary Ace Snoopy is a welcome part of our Christmas celebration.

From Walden Pond to Sleepy Hollow, Live Deliberately in Concord, Massachusetts

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life. And see if I could not learn what it had to teach and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived." This iconic thought by Henry David Thoreau is one that has been quoted in many an English literature class, and certainly by one Mr. Healey, a passionate high school teacher who made a profound impact upon me and my friend Erica, whose Massachusetts home I recently visited. Erica and her husband Art live just outside of Boston - or, if you like, just outside of Concord, the site of Walden Pond, which so inspired Thoreau and, in turn, us.

We saved Concord for the second full day of my trip, a Friday; we wanted to get Boston out of the way on Thursday, before the weekend rush, and Saturday looked to be full of showers (though that prediction came to naught, at least in Salem). The day dawned rainy, but the weather forecast promised a drier afternoon, so we headed out around noon with umbrellas in hand, just as a precaution. We'd made a Target run in the morning for a second memory card for my camera in case my first ran out; when I arrived at the state park, I discovered that when I placed the card in my camera to ensure it fit, I failed to return the camera to its case. So Erica and I shared her camera at picturesque Walden Pond as we slowly wandered the pathways, keeping a careful eye out for animals and unique plant formations. Because of the rain, we had to negotiate our way around several mud puddles that filled the whole walkway, but this just added to the sense of adventure. Meanwhile, the overcast weather cut down on the number of visitors, so we had the trail to ourselves most of the time, though we spotted several people splashing their way through the pond, preferring an immersive experience of Walden.

We didn't go in the water, but we certainly went near it, snapping several photos of its reflective surface and peeking down at the fish swimming near its shores. The trail (which is punctuated by signs, including an ever-so-helpful one pointing to the perpetually visible pond) teems with life, from wildflowers to fungus, though our most exciting discoveries weren't quite so stationary. Eagle-eyed Erica alerted Art and me to the presence of a large black snake with yellow stripes curled quietly in the leaves. It kindly posed for a few pictures before slithering languidly into the trees. Several blue jays chattered to each other from lofty branches, and one decided to tease us by leading us onward, always taking flight just as Erica was about to snap its picture. In one marshy area, we heard several bullfrogs before we spotted them. There were a couple sitting down below in the shade of the trees, and as we crossed a makeshift bridge, one fearless frog stood inches away from us, calmly observing our intrusion.

Of course, if you're literarily inclined, as all three of us are in the extreme, the highlights of Walden are Thoreau's cabins: the replica that greets visitors as they arrive and the original site about halfway along the trail that makes the circuit of the pond. The replica was closed when we got there, so we contented ourselves with peering in the windows and walking the circuit of the tiny house before posing for the obligatory pictures with the statue of Thoreau. When we returned to the car, however, we noticed that the cabin door was ajar, so we went to investigate and found ourselves able to go inside and check out the interior, with its bed, desk, stove, fireplace and broom. As an avid LOST fan, I found myself reminded of the mysterious cabin where Jacob is said to dwell. Likewise, whenever I watch season three's The Man Behind the Curtain, when Ben warns John, upon their approach to the cabin, to turn off his flashlight because "Jacob feels the same way about technology that you do," I catch myself thinking about Thoreau. There's also a sign with a list of the materials Thoreau used to build the cabin and how much they cost. Less than thirty dollars for the whole works? Sounds all right to me! The actual cabin site is just as neat, nestled in a small clearing in the woods with short stone pillars marking the spot where it once stood. The woodshed is also sectioned off. This is where you will find the sign with the opening quote and the large pile of stones, many of them decorated, left in Thoreau's honor. I spent several minutes wandering around this pile, which is bigger than the cabin itself, and reading the messages people had left on the rocks.

Before we left, we had to stop into the gift shop. I'd been specifically warned about the eight-dollar finger puppets, but of course, I succumbed to the temptation of a squirrel. I also bought a deck of cards featuring famous authors, a few postcards - sixty cents each, which is a bit on the high end, but I wasn't able to find Walden postcards anywhere else - and, for my peripatetic brother, Thoreau's Walking, which was on prominent display because we'd happened to come on World Sauntering Day. If you forget your camera like I did and don't have somebody else in your party who remembered, the store also sells disposable cameras. Unlike Boston and Salem, Concord isn't much of a tourist trap. Admission to the park is only five dollars per car, and Sleepy Hollow, the other big destination, offers free one-hour parking. It's likely this will be the only gift shop you enter in this area, and it sells several items you probably won't find in other places, so don't feel too badly about spending some money there.

Sleepy Hollow Cemetery is not far from Walden Pond, where we stayed for two or three hours. It might seem a bit morbid that we went to a cemetery during each of the three day trips we took during my visit, but each one features graves of historical significance. Sleepy Hollow has Authors Ridge, where one can find the surprisingly humble markers for Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Louisa May Alcott. There's something especially poetic about Thoreau's tiny stone, nestled amongst the graves of his relatives, which simply reads "HENRY". Scattered around and on top of each of these graves are trinkets from visitors, including pennies, pebbles and, most appropriately, pencils and pens. One hour is plenty of time to see these famous stones, which are all clustered together, and still have an opportunity to appreciate the unusual markers belonging to less famous folks and drink in the natural beauty of the grounds. Among the more striking monuments we found were a tall, stately Celtic cross and the tiny, accidentally amusing stone bearing the initials "M. L. B." Alas for the death of the great American pastime... We also stumbled upon a rock memorializing "Kirkegaard", just a letter away from Soren the philosopher. I also just discovered that this is not the Sleepy Hollow of which Washington Irving wrote; that cemetery is in New York, a destination for an entirely different trip.

But who needs Irving when you've got four fantastic authors to visit? If you're a literature lover or a nature enthusiast, Concord is a wonderful place in which to spend the afternoon, and the price to visit Walden and Sleepy Hollow is certainly right. If this is the way to live deliberately, count me in!

Grace's Gumption Is Rewarded in Mr. Lincoln's Whiskers

I'm rather fond of writing letters to famous people. I've written to authors, actors, musicians and even a U.S. President. But the President I really would have loved to write predated me by more than a century. I didn't get that chance, but 11-year-old Grace Bedell did, and the brief correspondence between this Westfield, NY, girl and soon-to-be-elected Abraham Lincoln encourages children to express their ideas and not to let anyone convince them their thoughts are of little importance.

In Mr. Lincoln's Whiskers, Karen B. Winnick depicts Grace as a young woman passionate about politics. After her father returns from a trip and brings her a poster of Lincoln, she studies his picture and decides that he would look much better with a beard. Having heard one of her brothers putting Lincoln down, she wants to do what she can to assist with his campaign, so she writes to him suggesting he adopt facial hair. Not only does she receive a response, she has the opportunity to see Lincoln when his train heading from Springfield, IL, to Washington, D.C. stops in Westfield, and he has a surprise in store for her...

Winnick's oil paintings are realistic and full of details of life in 1860. I especially like the painting of Mr. Bedell's horse-drawn carriage standing in the shadow of autumn trees and of Grace snuggling under a patchwork quilt, a little doll on her bed and a big dog underneath it. The best picture, however, is saved for last, when Grace actually meets almost-President Lincoln and savors the feel of his newly grown "whiskers" as he kisses her on the cheek.

This book includes the entire text of Lincoln's response to Grace, most notably the playful and misleading, "As to the whiskers, having never worn any, do you not think people would call it a piece of silly affection if I were to begin it now?" Grace's letter is slightly abridged, with details that have no relevance to the book omitted. Copies of both letters are included in the back of the book, so readers can puzzle over both Bedell and Lincoln's handwriting.

In subsequent years, Lincoln's beard would become a physical characteristic as striking as his height. Like William Riker, the second-in-command on Star Trek: The Next Generation, Abraham Lincoln gained a much more authoritative look when he had a few whiskers to flesh out his face. They didn't make him a better president, but they did make him seem more distinguished.

Winnick tells her story in short paragraphs set in white text boxes against the full-page illustrations. Most of the tale is told in dialogue as Grace discusses the upcoming election and its aftermath with her parents and brothers. Mr. Lincoln's Whiskers would be a great book to read to a grade school class as part of a study on Lincoln or a letter-writing project. Who knows what impact those children's words might have?

Number 2200: Christmas Comes Early for Potter Fans With The Tales of Beedle the Bard

Last year, J. K. Rowling published Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and like millions of other fans, I immediately began to go into withdrawal. Though I submerged it by frantically writing fan poetry as though I'd been given a month with a muse who would never be heard from again, a dull ache remained. When I learned that Rowling had written The Tales of Beedle the Bard, the collection of children's stories bequeathed to Hermione Granger in the final novel, but only intended to distribute it to a select few friends, it was like rubbing salt on a wound. How cruel to know that such a text existed but was unavailable! I fervently hoped that one day she would release the volume to the general populace. When I got wind of its publication, I was overjoyed. What a delicious dessert after one of the most nourishing epics I've ever read! I snatched up my copy as soon as I could, eager to let this long-awaited book mark my 2200th post here. Indulge me while I digest...

Given the charitable intentions of this collection, the net proceeds of which benefit the Children's High Level Group, The Wizard and the Hopping Pot is a particularly appropriate tale with which to begin. Just as Rowling and Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne, MEP, urge readers in the introduction and afterward to support children whose families lack the means to provide them with proper care, so the wizard in this story dedicates his life to assisting his desperate Muggle neighbors. He uses the titular pot as a front to mask the breadth of his magical abilities. Upon his death, his son inherits the pot, which becomes more and more of a nuisance as the young man coldly turns away peasant after peasant requesting the aid his father provided. The first association I made as I read this story was with Strega Nona, the grandmotherly witch who is the subject of several picture books by Tomie de Paola. She, too, is a prolific pot stirrer, and she also has a protege who runs into trouble when he fails to follow her lead regarding its use. I also found myself thinking of Beauty and the Beast, in which an arrogant prince is hideously transformed as a punishment for his lack of compassion. Inner changes come later, and none too easily...

The Fountain of Fair Fortune does not call to mind any particular story for me, though it utilizes a device implemented by many a writer, including Rowling herself late in the Harry Potter series, though it's a plot twist I associate most readily with M*A*S*H. Otherwise, this is a quest story, in which three witches and one Muggle must work together in hopes that one of them will be rewarded for the arduous journey with a cure for present woes. As in many labyrinthine adventures, the travelers face riddles whose solutions often reveal themselves as a result of hard labor rather than intellect. Like the first story, it encourages cooperation among magical and non-magical peoples, painting at least one Muggle as a sympathetic, albeit awkward, figure.

The Warlock's Hairy Heart is gothic and grotesque. It seems like a story that could have been written by Edgar Allen Poe, or at least one of the Grimm Brothers in an especially grim moment. It concerns a young warlock who, in order to protect himself from the ravages of romance, performs a dangerous spell to immunize himself against the charms of womankind. While the first story reminds me of The Picture of Dorian Gray, in which the title character's transgressions are reflected in his portrait, that association is even stronger in this tale of an outwardly attractive man who, in pursuit of security, sacrifices true human happiness and unwittingly creates a monster.

Babbitty Rabbitty and Her Cackling Stump gets my vote for the best title of the bunch, and it's also the funniest of the stories, though the bulk of the humor in this book derives from the commentaries by Albus Dumbledore. This story is so similar to The Emperor's New Clothes that I can't imagine Rowling wasn't thinking of it when she wrote it. A king decides that he should be the only one in the land to do magic. Not possessing any magical skill himself, and having sent out brute squads to round up all witches and wizards in his kingdom, he finds himself relying upon a seedy con man for his magical instruction. Instead of a luxurious invisible suit, this Muggle has a worthless "wand" that is little more than a twig. But who has the nerve to point that out? The voice of candor in this story is the title washerwoman, whose role in this story reminds me a bit of Cyrano de Bergerac as well as the Biblical Esther.

The Tale of the Three Brothers closes the book, afterward from the baroness aside. I'm not surprised to see the book essentially leading up to this story, as it is such a critical clue to our understanding of the series, and certainly Harry's understanding of his purpose. The only trouble, of course, is that the vast majority of people who read this book will have read this particular story before. When I read it, both a year and a half ago and just today, it reminded me of any number of tales involving trios of friends or brothers, one of which is much wiser than the others. It also made me think of the old fable about the man who crosses paths with Death and runs to a distant town to escape him, only to find him waiting for him there, confessing surprise at having seen him earlier when he was expecting him in this very village, at this very hour. Perhaps most of all, it recalled Hazel's encounter with the Black Rabbit in the final paragraphs of Watership Down, which qualify as among my favorite endings in all of literature. This is the shortest and simplest of the tales, but it packs a powerful punch.

I draw all of these comparisons to other works not to accuse Rowling of a lack of originality but rather to demonstrate how well her tales fit in with so many others in the morality tale tradition. I love these stories, and I believe that, with the possible exception of the gruesome third tale, they could well become classics in their own right. But I must confess that as an avid Potter fan, what I enjoyed most of all were Albus's musings, occasionally augmented by notes from Rowling. Not only are they often funny, they are quite illuminating, delving into Wizarding history both ancient and recent, sometimes revealing tidbits about familiar figures and occasionally introducing others.

Albus's thoughts on the final tale, while profound, are probably the least interesting of the bunch, since they mostly cover familiar territory, even down to the fact that he is less than forthcoming with his knowledge of the lore surrounding this legend. What caught my attention most here is the reference to his brother Aberforth's favorite bedtime story, Grumble the Grubby Goat. Ms Rowling, please tell me that's sequel bait... Elsewhere, we get more background on the circumstances of Nearly Headless Nick's death and the dubious record of Care of Magical Creatures professor Silvanus Kettleburn.

Among the new characters who Albus introduces, my favorite is probably Beatrix Bloxam, an insufferably sugary authoress responsible for sanitized versions of Beedle's tales. The excerpts from her writings read almost exactly like the phony cover of Lemony Snicket's Unauthorized Autobiography, which rambles giddily about how absolutely everybody loves pony parties. Meanwhile, the most hilarious segment of the book falls at the beginning of the commentary for the second tale, as Albus recounts an utterly disastrous attempt to launch a theatrical presentation of it.

I've often puzzled over the apparent lack of an arts department at Hogwarts, so I was tickled to see that matter addressed here. I also found abbreviated but valuable new insights into the nature of Animagi, the magical properties of wands and the basic rules that govern the Wizarding world. Moreover, I caught what I took to be sly allusions to such works as MacBeth and Harvey, not to mention some amusing digs at academia and, conversely, those who skim stories with little attempt at a deeper understanding. Rowling, through Albus, has a lot to say about literature and the revision of stories for the manipulation of impressionable minds. Most of all, though, she makes a compelling case for compassion, tolerance and acceptance of one's own mortality. Fans of the series will find in this small collection a perfect complement to the lessons so gradually taught over the course of seven books.

The Tales of Beedle the Bard is scarcely more than a hundred pages long, so it doesn't take long to read it from cover to cover - both of which, incidentally, are quite snazzy, especially the front, which contains visual references to each of the tales. While Mary Grand-Pre provides that artwork, Rowling does her own work inside, increasing the sense of intimacy about the volume. She's not an accomplished artist like Grand-Pre, but she holds her own. She also rather shamelessly plugs Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, another supplementary volume published for the benefit of charity. While that encyclopedia-like tome is enjoyable, as is its companion Quidditch Through the Ages, Beedle is far and away the best of the three. Well worth the wait, this book resonates especially well during this time of year when generosity and goodwill are at a peak, so give yourself and others a gift this December with The Tales of Beedle the Bard.