The Diamond in the Window

Half-Baked Ideas: The Truth About Vampires and Teenagers

You might need to sit down. I'm serious, I think I may have cracked this thing wide open.

You've probably wondered where the idea of vampires came from. "Perhaps," you thought to yourself, "the idea came because vampires exist." Or maybe you thought: someone saw a bat and thought, "Wait, what if that were a person?"

But I'm here to tell you that the whole vampire myth (or reality!) came from one place: teenagers.

Hear me out (why are you running away?). Consider your 11- or 12-year-old child. Happy. Cheerful. A pain in the ass, maybe (like the rest of us), but recognizable to you. Then one day...everything changes. The child retreats to his room, far from the sun and any contact with you. Where once he woke you up regularly at 6 a.m. (which was, admittedly, a bummer) now he sleeps till 11! Noon! Even later! When he emerges, surly and pale, hungry for meat. Or cornflakes—whatever, let's not quibble. A pervasive aura of gloom covers him, until nightfall. Then, he perks up, energized, wanting to go out into the darkness, to wreak havoc! Or go to the movies (note: also in the dark!).

It all makes sense! All those studies, "Teenagers have different physiological needs, and are at their most productive from the hours of 9pm to 2am." Why did we never fully understand the signs before? They retreat into their dark lairs, and emerge, pale, taller, and sexualized. All that's missing are the capes! And sometimes the capes are even present!

OK: admittedly, I haven't fully figured out where the whole drinking blood, killing, stake in heart aspects come into play. But mark this, oh doubters. When did Bram Stoker write Dracula? 1897. When was his son born? Oh, 1879—so he wrote it when his son was 18 (yes, I can google and add and subtract with the best of them). He had spent the past years researching vampires. Why? Because he was living with one.

Further evidence: consider that other literary masterpiece, Zagazoo.

Image courtesy of StackingBooks.com. Also Quentin Blake, of course.

I have now solved the primary riddle of existence. Now I must eat lunch and work out that whole middle-east thing.

The Obligatory, Annual, Bitching About the Test Post

OK. We made it through the statewide ELA test last week. It wasn't fun. Chestnut, in particular, was stressed out about it. But we lived through it. And now we're in the math. We're slogging. It's no fun.

There are multiple things that bother me about the tests.

First, they're used to judge teachers.

Second, because they are used to judge teachers and schools and principals, class time that could be used for more substantive nuanced work is used...for test prep. HOURS are used for test prep.

Third, they take over home life, in the form of test prep homework (ugh!) and tension. The anxiety!

Fourth, the idea that how a child performs on a standardized test in any way gives a sense of what they know. I mean, I am lucky in that my kids are OK test-takers. But for kids who aren't? Yikes. A constant, permanent record of you as a student, that barely represents you, and in now way reflects all your teachers might know about you.

Fifth (I know I could go on and on): the money. New York City paid Pearson $5.5 MILLION dollars this year for the testing contract. Do you know how much they cut one of my kid's school budget by this year? $80,000. Good-bye language program for the lower grades. Good-bye art. We said good-bye long ago to art supplies. How much did they cut the large local high school's budget? Oh, by $1 million for each of the past three years. There are 5,000 kids there, but someone decided that the money should instead be spent on...testing. And I don't even want to LOOK at how much we are paying in excess of that, because I bet there's more: materials, prep, scoring. I can't bear to think about it.

Sixth: And for all this money, they are INCOMPETENT. Pearson mis-scored the tests of more than 2,000 preschoolers (ugh, yes, they have to give the kids a gifted and talented test, because how else could you tell if they were gifted?). MORE THAN TWO THOUSAND. How many questions were deemed ineffective last year? Oh, three or four. Oh, and who tests the questions for them? Why, the kids of course! Because they don't need the extra classroom time taken by these "test" tests; golly, what would they do with them? Is there anything other than tests that can happen in a classroom? They will have to check their scoring method and get back to you on that.

Why are they giving money to this? Why? Why? Why? It does not seem to me cost-effective to give $5.5 million to these bozos when our kids need theater trips. And textbooks. And computers. And more instructors. And smaller class sizes.

ARRGHHHHHHHHH.

OK. Sorry. No more of this until next year.

Also? Chestnut's idea is that we should all go to the Department of Education, every kid in the school system, and have a big old tantrum-in. It's tempting.

Pairings: Maine and Somalis, or: Explaining

Remember way back when, I had this idea that there would be pairings, a book for parents and one for kids on a subject that gave them all this stuff to talk about, but from different perspectives? Along the lines of better late than never, I am reading/recently read two books that make me think about it again, and bring up a host of other questions besides. This:

And this:

(Yes, a better blogger would figure out how to make those the exact same size. Alas.)

Both these books focus on the arrival of Somali immigrants in Maine, and how both communities stagger a bit in the impact. Both books stagger themselves under the weight of conveying the pertinent background information. And this is what concerns me.

I believe, or at least think (there's a difference) that it's right and worthy to try to push outside the comfort zone to address larger issues. If you live in Maine and all of a sudden there are thousands of Somali immigrants, that's an entirely reasonable subject for fiction. Or more than that: it's the world, even—or especially if—it doesn't appear in the world of literature that surrounds us. And to ignore it is cowardly.

But how does one write a novel like this without having to deliver the information? I mean, beyond the whole "Show, don't tell" stuff. If one knows, as these authors do, that the immigrants they're writing about are secondary immigrants coming from another U.S. city, and before that from unimaginable horrors in Africa, how does one convey that without shoving it uncouthly into the mouths of one of the characters? Must one convey it, to talk about these people? How to avoid sounding like one is giving a history lesson, when that is in fact exactly what one is doing?

I mean, can you read Vanity Fair without knowing about the Napoleonic Wars? No doubt it enhances one's understanding, but is it crucial? Can you read Mansfield Park without thinking about the slaves and sugar and plantations, which the master of the house is busy addressing? Well, of course you can read them, but do you get a whole picture? Do you need a whole picture? Is a whole picture of anything in the world even possible?

What book does a good job of this? I think of genre writers, particularly in fantasy and science fiction, who must convey a whole other world with rules and history in every single book. Who does this well? Ursula K. LeGuin does this well. Who does this well in realistic fiction? In literary fiction? How much does a person really need to understand when reading a book? I can read Dante and know nothing about the papal history, but is it a weaker, thinner reading? And whose responsibility is it to know—does the writer have to put the information there? Or can it be there but invisible, some sort of powerful internal structure buttressing the very heart of the novel?

Answers to the above: I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know.

Do you guys know?

Also, just in case you're wondering, the books noted above, while both flawed, are interesting, particularly when grouped together, and if I had a high schooler with any interest in soccer lying around, and I were an Elizabeth Strout fan generally (as indeed I am, though this is not her best work) I would get the kid Out of Nowhere, I would read The Burgess Boys, and then we would have excellent discussions.

Half-Baked Ideas: Self-Consciousness

This one has been gnawing at me for basically my whole life, so let me know just how far I have strayed from normal thought or logical conclusions in the comments.

Anyway.

You know how when you're in middle school you are beset with a self-consciousness so profound that it can literally freeze you solid mid-behavior? You have the horrible feeling that everyone is staring at you and judging you, and you can't even do whatever it is you meant to do next: answer the person you're talking to, or hand in your homework, or take another step? And when you suffer these paroxysms, people say, "Oh, you shouldn't be so self-conscious!" You might even say it to yourself, taking yourself to task for being too self-conscious: why can't you be more carefree and easy-going like the popular kids, who don't seem to torture themselves in quite this way? (Am I giving too much of myself away here? In all likelihood, yes.)

Here is my theory: while I believed this about awkward, shy, "self-conscious" people for years, I think, in fact, that the reality is the reverse of what I believed. I think that the awkward among us (or maybe only me, uh oh) are actually LESS self-conscious than most, and that this lack of self-consciousness is at the source of these awful moments.

Here is what I mean: these aren't just attacks of heightened self-consciousness; they are attacks of self-awareness at all. My half-baked theory is that while these more assured "popular kids" seem to feel easy and free from self-consciousness, in fact they just feel it all the time. They are always aware of the outside world, so it never jumps up and bites them in the ass. While the awkward and introverted can (or at any rate, I can, let's be honest) completely forget that the outside world is there. One can get so completely absorbed in something—or nothing—that the jarring realization that one is among other people, and that they are aware of one's presence (don't you like how distanced that "one" makes it sound?) is enough to create utter panic.

Or at least, so says my theory.

I am convinced of its visceral truth. But I might be a little bit crazy on this front. What do you think?

A Different Boston

They happen all the time, don't they? Terrible things. And it breaks your heart over and over. So maybe we'll take a moment to think about another Boston we know.

His books are ridiculous, aren't they? So pure and happy and impossible with their cheerful, honest police officers and  wholesome families.

Here is an idea: find your way to Boston, and go to the public garden (I think that's where they are, I always get confused in Boston), and visit the duckling statues.

Image, courtesy Boston Discovery Guide.

They are really pretty great, and if you go with someone small they will feel strongly that the statues are, in fact, awesome. And they will be right. And then this part will be true, too; do you know what I mean? That for every awful thing we can somehow remember that there are also things that are really wonderful, and we can maybe celebrate those. I don't know what I mean exactly, just that maybe we can help tip the balance somehow.

Fond wishes and hopes for recovery going out to all you Boston people out there.

Grown-ups

I thought I was being super-smart buying Chestnut Code Name Verity, even though I hadn't read it myself. I'd heard about it, which I thought was all I needed. Historical? Check. Codes? Check. Everyone talking about how awesome it is? Double check.

Here was her beef: the hero is a grown-up. Cue look of horror.

While it's true that her aversion might be more accurately attributed to the fact that I was the one giving the book her (sucks to be a mom sometimes), it did make me wonder.

I mean, we hear all the time about boys not wanting to read books in which a girl is the main character, the age thing is...different. I remember being 14 or so, and reading Seventeen magazine and feeling really quite sophisticated. And Chestnut herself, let us remember, was perfectly happy to read about Ruth Reichl, who is most assuredly a grown-up. So what gives?

I don't know. I think, partly, that when you're 11 part of you wants to be 15, and the other part wants to be 10. And as for Code Name Verity, I can't say yet because I am on page five. But I can tell so far that she is, indeed, a grown-up. And it is strange to me. Why is this a book for kids? Is it even a book for kids? And who cares if it is? (Other than Chestnut, I mean, who wanted to show my why what I did when I tried to buy her a present was WRONG.) I like to fancy myself a person who is working against cutting literature into discrete and unrelated chunks, rather than letting it blend and ooze.

Yes, that seems great, doesn't it? Letting literature ooze?

Anyway: what do your kids think about books with grown-ups in them? I mean, Robinson Crusoe? Treasure Island? What do you think?

Here's Something Excellent

In my vast, broad, and deep experience, I have found that children, in a general sort of way, like things that are silly. It reminds me, somehow, of when I first had children and was desperately reading, I think, Touchpoints (before Aragorn, son of Arathorn, made me throw away all the child-care books in the house), and the author, talking about three-year-old girls, said something like, "Three-year-old girls can be almost unbelievably silly." He sounded...flummoxed is the best approximation. Or maybe awed.

Anyway, what I mean to say is that they are, of course, silly, and they don't really stop being silly (as far as I can tell) for a long, long time. And yet, while some books (yes, manga!) play to this, most don't, leaving the silly-seeking readers adrift, until they come ashore at Monty Python. I am here to tell you there is an excellent silly book for these readers, and you may not have considered it because it is so, so old, but here it comes, back into your conscious mind:

Image courtesy Fantastic Fiction UK.

Both girls here have loved it, but it was Chestnut who was enjoying it most recently, and it was pure happy joy. She particularly liked how often little girls pulled out guns. But most of all, it wasn't asking her to care about things she just doesn't care about yet.

You can actually read quite a lot of it on the HarperCollins website, but if you're anything like me, reading part of it will make you want to get all of it. It's just...it's just so good!

We Recommend: It's for Babies, You Guys!

It's We Recommend, in which we use our superpowers to find readers the perfect book. Got a kid who needs a recommendation? Write us at thediamondinthewindow (at) gmail (dot) com with the age, reading tastes, favorite books, and any other relevant (or irrelevant) information, and we'll give it a shot. And really? All the good suggestions are in the comments.

This email came at a particularly opportune time for me, because Diana just turned...14. As in, 14 years old. As in, far closer to 20 than to being a baby. As in, I am not fully adjusted to this yet, because I am not so super-spectacular with handling change, and by the time I adjust she will be out of the house and Oh God!

I wish I were wiser.

At any rate, here is something delightful! Bear witness:

I have a 5 month old who loves to be read to. We spend a lot of our day reading board books (Eric Carle, Sandra Boynton, counting books galore) and I could desperately use some new material. He loves pop up books, lift the flap books and books with simple, colorful pictures. I thought Dr. Seuss would be good but those are a bit too long. Most of my go-tos for early readers don't have the right illustrations to really capture his attention (bright, bold).  Any suggestions for this very early reader?

Remember? Picture books? Silliness? When your kid greeted your arrival with a look of utter surprise and bliss, even if it was just that you'd gone in the other room for a minute? (OK, and yes, had diapers and woke up in the night, and vomited copiously. And couldn't talk. True, true.)

Anyway, yes, Dr. Seuss is a lot of words for a five-month-old. And, full disclosure, in letting this writer know we would be addressing this email, I already gave the awesome Byron Barton a shout-out (though at that link they don't have his most awesome book, which is Machines at Work. I love that book so!

The only problem is, there are so many! Pat the Bunny (Daddy's scratchy face! Still sort of freaks me out!), Goodnight, Moon, The Big Red Barn, Goodnight, Gorilla—it goes on and on and on, and those are just the classics! Oh, and Duck Is Dirty! Diana was a big fan of Jamberry, too, and really anything with awesome, silly words. But for the one pick (before we rightfully dive into what I hope are the wide and deep array of suggestions in the comments), I have to go with the one that Diana "read" to Chestnut when Chestnut was tiny, the perfect and strange book we all loved. And it's about babies!

Image Courtesy Amazon (duh).

This book is so excellent! And the last page (spoiler alert!) is a silvered circle for a mirror, so the baby can adorably try to eat its own face.

But OK, enough gushing. If I promise not to complain about how I have a teenager anymore will you offer even better options in the comments?

Why Is This Night Diferent From All Other Nights? Because...Breasts!

First of all, you need to know that there were a lot of seders in my life this passover. And by a lot, I mean three, which is...well, it's a lot. We carried strong through the first. Persisted through the second. And then, on the third seder, we opened the "kids" coloring book version of the haggadah to see...this:

Oh my. As Chestnut used to say, "What the...?"

Those are supposed to be the golden halos of the candles. That's what you thought they were, didn't you?

But here's the weird thing: we also had the 1999 printing, where you can see the same family before the mom got those...halos.

Which, through our excellent deductive reasoning skills, showed us that—someone made this improvment. It's hard to imagine the conversation. "This picture's sweet, but kids only want to color when there are big, round things that can be confused with breasts!" Or something?

I especially like the dad's benignly approving expression. The cat seems to be the only one who realizes something weird is going on. We can maybe tell him, "Kid, easter was never like this!"