Moon Over Manifest

 Moon Over Manifest, written by Clare Vanderpool, is a fun book full of mystery and adventure.

Armed with an old broken compass, a dress, some overalls, and an old newspaper clipping, 12-year-old Abilene Tucker gets sent away to live with an old man in the town her father grew up in. 

Abilene Tucker is determined to learn more about her father's childhood and the skeletons in his closet.  She discovers a cigar box full of mementos and a letter belonging to a couple of boys named Jinx and Ned. Included in the box is a letter mentioning a spy called the Rattler.

Abilene and her friends, Ruthanne and Lettie, spend their summer looking for the Rattler and getting to know Jinx and Ned through Miss Sadie, a fortune-teller.

Abilene soon gets discouraged. She can't find any influence her father, Gideon, had on the old Kansas town!  She also isn't quite sure that Gideon really will come get her at the end of the summer.

However, Abilene learns many lessons:  when people come together, they can accomplish much, and, "the lines between truth and myth are not what they seem."  She also learns that nobody is a true universal: "Maybe there were just people.  People who were tired and hurt and lonely and kind in their own way and in their own time."

I really enjoyed this book.  It was sweet, and it taught good lessons.  I would recommend Moon Over Manifest to anyone and for any age group.

Written by Emma, who finished the book today and compared it to To Kill a Mockingbird and Tom Sawyer.

The Great Turkey Walk

We are enjoying Kathleen Karr's book, The Great Turkey Walk.  Written in colloquial style, this novel is a great read-aloud.  Thomas and I began reading Friday, to pass the time while Emma and Peter were working in the temple; the others were drawn into the story when they joined us.  Dad came in a couple of days later, as we neared the conclusion, and decided he wanted to read it himself.  He has been sharing the book with the two older girls.  While there are a handful of places where a reader might choose to edit a word, the book has plenty of adventure and gentle character lessons for boys and girls of multiple age groups.  It shows the practical value of school skills and also has some clever twists that help teach irony in its many forms.  The laugh-out-loud appeal for this book is high.

Like the unlikely hero of Holes, 15-year-old "Simple" Simon Green begins as an underdog with little but his cheerfulness going for him.  The story opens on the last day of school in 1860, when Simon's ladylike teacher "graduates" him, following his fourth attempt at third grade.  He borrows the teacher's life savings, invests in a flock of bronze turkeys and (with the hired help of the town drunk and his dog) embarks on an 800-mile journey, amidst the jeers and ill-wishes of his greedy extended family and the neighbors.  As the story progresses, Simon's unlikely party grows, overcomes obstacles and meets unexpected good- and bad-guys.  These include educated Indians, turkey rustlers, the US Cavalry, religious townsfolk, circus swindlers, swarming locusts, an escaped slave and even Simon's long-lost father.

"I think Simon must have had some good determination to walk a thousand turkeys all the way from Missouri to Denver," says Peter.  "I imagine it was hard, and it must have been disappointing when people tried to steal from him."

"It was a fun book," says Thomas.  "My favorite part was when the Indians said that everyone knows Indians are too stupid to know about boundaries.  And I also liked it when Simon caught up with the turkey rustlers the first time and told one of them he had been cheated by his partner with a double-headed coin."

"Simon's best talent was his ability to read people's motives," says Peter.  "He also had the ability to find out what people were good at and help them put their talents to good use.  Maybe this was because he worked at understanding people."

The author tells us that turkey drives really happened during the mid-1800's.  Without refrigerated train cars or trucking, taking meat on its own legs was the only way to get fresh food from one place to another.

Superstar Vocabulary

Four of the older children participated with their father in a 5K this weekend, which left everyone a bit sore.  Most of the participants have complained of stiff legs.  This morning, Thomas asked his older brother about it.

"So, how is your galactic acid doing today?"

Photo from sxc.hu.

Saint Patrick's Day On the Death Star

Thomas made this clever reminder that we all took. 




Even Darth Vader gets into the spirit of things, this year.  And nobody wants to get pinched by Darth Vader!

Exotic Pets

After a bring-home discussion from Dad's work, we watched a couple of instructive videos. 

The question was asked:  If you had to choose between having a tiger that you had hand-raised or a hand-raised chimpanzee, which would be more scary?

After some discussion, we watched the National Geographic special, Tigers of the Snow, followed by Michael Webber's award-winning documentary, The Elephant In the Living Room.  The first showed hazards faced by researchers as they try to save the endangered tigers in Asia; the second follows Ohio police officer, Tim Harrison, as he works to keep people safe from the extremely dangerous exotic pets of people in the American subculture, and Terry Brumfield, a man who struggles to keep a pair of African lions.  Both movies eliminated any desire any of us may have had to keep exotic pets -- especially big cats -- even if it may be legal to do so.

"Having dangerous pets just makes people unhappy," Peter commented. "Dangerous animals can be dangerous, either to you or to other people, and it can lead to having them be taken away."

There were some alarming episodes where deadly snakes were loose.  Some had been released and others had escaped.  Some children found a highly venomous snake in their garage and they played with it -- even rode on its back -- for several hours, before calling animal control.  Miraculously, nobody was hurt.

"The most freaky part was when he (Officer Harrison) was holding the Gaboon Viper," Thomas says.  "Another part that scares me is that an old lady in a wheelchair had a snake stuck in her walls."  The boa constrictor was loose for several weeks and nobody could get it out.

Officer Harrison bought a Puff Adder, one of the world's most venomous, at a fair for exotic animals.  It was in a flimsy, clear plastic bin, with a bit of red electrical tape holding it shut.  After a tense moment where he picked up the snake and locked it inside a more substantial container, he took it to a research lab.  "He was probably helping to make antivenin," Peter says.

We were shocked to hear how many hazardous snakes, big cats, bears and primates are kept in the homes of people in the United States.  "There are more tigers in Texas than there are in India," Peter recalls.


Photos from sxc.hu.