An Embarrassment of Riches

Wake up Mama - by Jen Mothers know the weird duality of being able to sleep at the drop of a blankie combined with the super spidey-sense that allows us to hear four-year-old eyelids popping open at, say, 2:37 a.m. for no discernible reason. I have an interest in sleep which I compare to the interest armchair travelers have in far-off and exotic lands to which they never actually travel. My personal feeling is that parental sleep deprivation is nature's way of attempting to dull or cushion the other body blows children dole out on a daily basis.  

A recent example would be Child the Elder's decision to microwave butter in an orange enameled cast-iron pot. If you're wondering, it takes exactly one minute and thirty-seven seconds to blow a hole through the interior wall of the appliance and this will be accompanied by impressive sound effects and fire. If a younger child is present for the explosion, you will also have much terrified screaming to accompany the wails of "I didn't know it was metal!  It doesn't look like metal!" from the responsible party. The pot itself will emerge completely unscathed--and completely unlike your nerves, despite the sleepiness. A well-rested parent might have noticed the child putting the pot in there in time to intervene, but where's the fun in that?

But enough about parents. James Mollison's book Where Children Sleep is an intriguing photo-essay of the circumstances in which children rest all over the world. A two-page spread is devoted to each individual child with one page containing a portrait and paragraph about the child's life and the other a picture of the place in which that child sleeps. It is a vast and sobering continuum, from the mansion bedroom of a child in New Jersey to a discarded sofa on the streets of Rio de Janeiro. The details in each picture speak volumes and add layers to the spare text. In one paragraph we are told that Alyssa's "shabby house" in Kentucky is "falling apart." Indeed, the photo of Alyssa's bedroom shows a missing ceiling with insulation hanging from the rafters above a once regal angel doll, wings battered and drooping and gray with dirt.

If this sort of photography is your cup of tea, I would also highly recommend Material World: A Global Family Portrait and What I Eat: Around the World in 80 Diets by Peter Menzel and 1000 Families by Uwe Ommer. All of these titles offer fascinating looks at the eye-opening contrasts in circumstances for humanity around the globe. They are enough to wake a person up--no destruction of small appliances required.

Getting Lucky - by Jen In my life, lucky means snagging the last box of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Valentine's Day cards from the Dollar Tree shelf for the child who will have no other kind. Not even the kind with scratch 'n' sniff stickers. (My mind wonders about combining the two--what does the end of a franchise/era/childhood smell like?)

The Odds by Stewart O'Nan has 67 holds, but I managed to find a copy on the Lucky Day shelf. It was exactly what I wanted for Valentine's Day--the perfect love story to pluck from the twee sea of pink and red plush animals with giant eyes, the cheap boxes of drugstore chocolates, the cards that always fall short of the mark.

Set on a Valentine's Day weekend, the story follows Marion and Art Fowler on the eve of their thirtieth anniversary. Jobless, facing foreclosure and with their marriage set to finally implode, they book a bridal suite at a ritzy Niagara Falls casino for a second honeymoon--and the gamble of their lives with their liquidated savings.

Find a cozy place to sit and break out that heart-shaped box of chocolates. (You know, the battered ones with all the tiny finger-holes in the bottoms from children attempting to locate the caramels. Or maybe that's just my box.) Bet red or black on this game of reading roulette. Either way, you'll win.

It's Comical by Jen The other night during dinner Child the Younger excused himself from the table, walked over to the cat minding her own business by the front door and proceeded to make large and dramatic conjuring motions in her direction (think Mickey the Wizard in Fantasia.) This was accompanied by those weapon sound effects that all small boys seem to perfect. When he was finished he walked calmly back to his chair, sat down and resumed eating with no explanation. I couldn't resist asking.

"What was that you just did?"

"I needed to give the kitty her laser so she can shoot fire out of her fingernails."

"Oh. Okay."

I managed to keep it together during this exchange, but my husband was trying not to look like he was howling with laughter while snorting iced tea through his nose. It's an admirable parenting skill. Why the cat needed her fire-shooting powers at that very moment remains a mystery to all but one of us.

I've read some great graphic novels lately and one of the best is directly from the mind of a five-year-old boy. Axe Cop is the imagined universe of Malachai Nicolle as drawn by his older brother, Ethan. The title character is a policeman who picks up a fireman's axe and never looks back. He uses his weapon of choice and his somewhat violent tendencies on any number of bad guys, but the best parts involve the crazy sidekick characters including a dinosaur soldier who transforms into an avocado with a unicorn horn, a dog named Ralph Wrinkles, and The Best Fairy Ever. If you would like a direct window into the imagination of a five-year-old, here's your ticket. If you are hoping it will explain why you must NEVER MOVE UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES the plastic fireman's axe that currently resides in the drawer with your brushes and combs, you will be sorely disappointed. Not recommended for reading on public transportation or while drinking iced tea, and especially not both at the same time. And remember: only cowboys and warriors can control the magic riding spider.

Smile is Raina Telgemeier's biographical saga about losing her permanent front teeth to an accident in sixth grade and the drama that ensues for the next five years as she simultaneously experiences the horrors of dental reconstruction and adolescence. The combination of compelling story and detailed drawing make it more than the sum of its parts and you will be transported back to middle school (whether you want to go back there or not. And I'm guessing not. But go anyway.)

Kampung Boy by Lat is the luminous story of a boy from birth to boarding school growing up in rural Malaysia on a rubber plantation. The love and humor surrounding this family make the story rise off the page as the tropical environment and Muslim customs and rituals are explored and explained in a down-to-earth manner.

The sunshine is finally here, so park it in a lawn chair and read some comics before Axe Cop comes after you on his transformed Tyrannosaurus Rex-turned-dragon with rocket wings and machine gun arms. Awesome.

A Monster Under Every Bed - by Jen If you have ever come home to a preschooler chasing the cat around the house with a tube of Chapstick (because "the kitty wants WIP BALM on her WIPS!") you know that your first task is to confiscate that Chapstick. You also probably know that you will be too late, because by the time you liberate that tube from the greasy little fingers wrapped around it the cat will be staring at you accusingly from under a bed, glistening with fury and emollients.

We all have our monsters. Here are some of my favorites:

The Host
Set in Korea, a dysfunctional but devoted family pays a great price when a nefarious substance is dumped down a drain and winds up in the Han River. This movie is eccentric family comedy, political commentary and kick-ass monster in one compelling package. What is scarier--the thing that lives in the sewer or the self-serving governments that originate and perpetuate misguided terror?

The Abyss
A nuclear sub is sunk in some of the deepest waters on earth, and the only people with the equipment to potentially mitigate impending disaster are a ragtag bunch of civilian, off-shore drilling engineers, including the sparring, married-but-divorcing Ed Harris and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio. Love-hate relationship plus undiscovered alien life in the Mariana Trench? I'm there.

The Bad Seed
It doesn't get much scarier for a parent than the realization that your adored little girl is an eight-year-old homicidal sociopath. Patty McCormack is not to be missed as Rhoda Penmark in the title role; piano practice and penmanship will never be the same again. One of the best movie endings ever.

My Neighbor Totoro
Sometimes we need friendly monsters, and Hayao Miyazaki's lush animation is a treat. This is an all-ages movie for the whole family; two sisters discover the title "keepers of the forest" as they cope with moving to a new house and their mother's extended hospital stay. Hop aboard the Catbus and prepare to be delighted.

Escape to Dystopia - by Jen I don't know about you, but when I'm being pelted with hail under a brilliantly sunny sky my mind tends to think, "Hey, look at that. The apocalypse is here." (This is even without factoring distressing global geological and political current events into the equation, which hold their own private audience with my horrified psyche on what seems like a near-hourly basis.) Extreme maybe, but my default setting is "the sky is falling." If I override that, I can remember it's spring.

I should be reading up on how to outwit slugs in the garden or what to do when a child discovers (shudder!) an entire universe of massively multi-player online gaming. Instead, I've been indulging in some fabulous dystopian fiction. What better way to escape the end of the world hosted by our evil slug overlords?

The Hunger Games trilogy is compulsively readable. The first book wins some sort of award for being the only reading material that has ever made me miss my bus stop. The Capitol controls the twelve districts of Panem, a country which covers territory once known as North America. The primary device for this control is the annual Hunger Games, in which one boy and one girl from each district are chosen by lottery to fight to the death in a manipulated arena on live television until only one remains. Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen volunteers herself for the Games when her twelve-year-old sister is chosen. The trilogy is executed in a spare and accessible style with unexpected twists and a powerful ending.   

If you balk at reading teen fiction, now is your chance to get over it. Really. Everyone else has, and you're missing out. The Hunger Games is now part of the Lucky Day collection, so may the odds be ever in your favor.

Never Ask for What Ought to be Offered - by Jen Never. Never ask for what ought to be offered.

These are the words of sixteen-year-old protagonist Ree Dolly in Daniel Woodrell's book Winter's Bone, giving her younger brother a lesson in conduct. Their father has not been home in days and they are hungry. A family across the way, to whom they are related, has freshly killed carcasses hanging in the trees; he is wondering about requesting some of the meat.

Ree's father cooks crank and the story picks up after he is missing and in danger of skipping a court date; if he does, the family will lose the house and land--their only security, pledged to a bail bond. Ree's mother, mentally ill and a vacant shell of her former self, is a burden Ree carries without question, along with her two younger brothers. They are family, and family is all.  

This novel is atmospheric, darkly lyrical and devastating. While the gritty portrayal of hardscrabble Ozark life is striking, even more compelling is the seeming resignation and acceptance of the status quo by adults, children and the law. The questioning Ree is a lone and exposed nail waiting for the hammer of the system to come down. She is clear-eyed about the risk she is taking but she also knows that without that risk she will sacrifice her life and the futures of her small brothers to the ravenous and self-perpetuating cycle of drugs and poverty.

She knows that searching for her father will take her deeper into darkness than she wants to go, but she also knows it is her only chance of finding the light.

Cat Bites and Clatterford by Jen After a day of work, I sometimes wonder what it would be like to sit on the sofa and have obedient and loving children welcome me with my slippers and a cup of tea while a well-trained dog fetches the newspaper (which has not been torn asunder and scattered to the winds in the required-by-law daily comics raid.) This imagined scene gives me a hopeless little chuckle as I enter what I affectionately call "The Battle Zone of Wars Eternally Lost", also known as "My House." For the sake of brevity (the soul of witless parenting) my dear husband and I call this place, simply, "The Zone."

My homecoming assessment of "The Zone" begins on the street as I monitor the noise level from outside the front gate. Silence does not guarantee détente, but screaming, yelling, and whining do almost certainly guarantee impending misery. The sound of a child practicing piano is a good sign, but the sound of, say, deafeningly determined Rachmaninoff means that my co-parent is waving the white flag of surrender and is completely ignoring the children in a last-ditch attempt to save any scraps of sanity he might have left after a day of endless screeching demands. There is no sitting on the sofa (unless my spouse has gone beyond Rachmaninoff and is huddled in the far corner of the couch with a blanket over his head.) There is no tea if I do not prepare it, and instead of a dog we have a cat with a personality disorder who bites only me, routinely and somewhat enigmatically, with no provocation or warning. Whatever The Zone holds, the objective is always the same: survive through Bedtime. If I live to tell the tale, my reward is a little television. I am sorry to say there are only three existing seasons of my latest favorite BBC show, Clatterford.On British soil it goes by the title Jam and Jerusalem, but they changed it for the American audience. Don't ask me why--trading reference to a familiar food and a known geographical place for the name of an obscure English town is the sort of sensible exchange that goes through my cat's brain just before she sinks her fangs into my flesh.

The show is a kinder, gentler comedy from the brilliant mind of Jennifer Saunders, creator and star of the searingly hilarious Absolutely Fabulous. The show centers around the life of Sal Vine (Sue Johnston), a nurse and recent widow in the small town of Clatterford St. Mary. Sal's efforts to reorder her life after her husband's death orbit around her grown children and the town Women's Guild, which is populated with fascinating minor characters. Outrageous comedic bits--Rosie (Dawn French) nursing a lamb in the pub; accidental vacuuming of church displays of the Nativity/Palm Sunday/Resurrection in which the primary players have been carefully crafted using stalky roadside weeds with googly eyes; Caroline's (Jennifer Saunders) constant misuse of pornographic sexual terms--are balanced with sincere drama. Loneliness washes in and out of lives as the characters struggle with relationships lost and found. Clatterford is complicated and messy. It's funny and familiar and at the end of the day you can't wait to go there. Just like home. Without the cat bites.

The Samurai and the Fruitarian - by Jen

I'll start with this: I don't hate to cook. I just hate to cook for my current captive demographic, which includes a child who begs for sushi in his wretched school lunch every day and a child who maintains a firm company policy of automatically rejecting anything that is not a fruit. Which kids in America scorn spaghetti and meatballs for dinner? Mine. Or homemade macaroni and cheese? Mine again. In all honesty, we would do best to just cut out the middleman and throw the children's portions of most any given meal directly into the garbage.

Plain Jen - by Jen

As a high school sophomore I once earned major nerd street cred by getting my coach to excuse me from junior varsity tennis practice so I could go home and watch Jane Eyre on PBS. This earned me snorting laughter from my teammates and a used copy of the book later presented at the tennis awards dinner. (That battered paperback was--and remains--the only "award" for sports participation I have ever received. It was the "most creative excuse for skipping practice" award.) In any normal universe I would have been embarrassed. But on my own nerdy planet, I was proud. I may have been assigned to play bottom-of-the-roster doubles with a partner who hated my weak backhand in particular and my bookish guts in general, but in my mind I had struck a blow: a mighty blow for all the girls picked last.

The 2007 Masterpiece Theatre production of Jane Eyre is my favorite screen version to date. The casting is near-perfect and even minor characters (notably Adèle and Mrs. Fairfax) have warmth and depth they are not usually allowed. The chemistry between Jane and Mr. Rochester is undeniable and plays out against a visually lush landscape in an astonishingly sensual manner. (Fluttering red scarves in windows! Flocks of birds exploding from trees! Jane and Edward getting horizontal--in a completely clothed and Victorian way, of course!) The ending is satisfyingly triumphant in all its "Reader, I married him" glory. If you gravitate to underdog stories and have a need to spend 240 minutes with your television and a pan of brownies, this is for you.

Big Love Under Construction - by Jen

I sat down to dinner recently and noticed something amiss. My otherwise-perfect and untouched plate of food sported an ear of corn with a shaggy crop circle in the middle of the cob about the size of a preschooler's mouth. I looked to Child the Younger, sitting to my right, and asked him if he knew what had happened. He smiled jubilantly, his baby teeth clotted with yellow kernels.  

"Sowee, Mommy."

Sorry indeed.

I have learned from parenting that there is birthed, along with the child, a never-ending list of things-- both done and undone-- for which to be sorry on both sides. This parenting thing is a project without blueprints, continually under construction, using tools that are as frequently inadequate, shoddy, missing or downright dangerous as they are right for the job. If a day on the parenting jobsite is particularly heinous, I may think of the list I have posted at my desk just to remind myself to laugh:

The Six Phases of a Project:

1. Wild Enthusiasm
2. Disillusionment
3. Panic
4. Search for the Guilty
5. Punishment of the Innocent
6. Praise and Honors for the Non-Participants

One project I managed to complete on my recent vacation was reading Brady Udall's magnificent novel The Lonely Polygamist. This is a Big Book, in both a physical and an existential sense; it is the American family writ large. Golden Richards is a big man (known to some as "Sasquatch") with three houses, four wives and twenty-eight children. He has problems. Big problems. While his lifestyle creates and magnifies difficulties, his internal struggles could belong to anyone. He attempts to keep his contracting business and his family finances afloat with a morally questionable project: his wives think the brothel he's building in Nevada is a senior center. His wives don't understand him and his children don't really know him. The story builds upon the alternating points of view of Golden, Trish (his fourth and newest wife), and Rusty (the eleven-year-old son of his third wife.) Trish is at a crossroads in her marriage while Rusty hatches a revenge plot for the bungling of his "special" birthday. At the center for each of these characters is a smoldering sun of grief blinding them in various ways to the complicated landscape. Golden grieves a lost daughter, Trish grieves a lost son, and Rusty is a ticking time bomb of grief waiting to happen. In all of this Udall manages to find the inherent humor in each situation, much of it laugh-out-loud funny. Within the mundane Udall raises Big questions, but the one that percolates through and ultimately lifts the book far above anything else I have read recently is this:

How big is love?

This is a question echoed by the deservedly popular HBO television series Big Love which I also highly recommend. Bill Henrickson is a modern-day polygamist living in suburban Salt Lake City with his three sister-wives, their numerous children and houses, and all of the complications and frustrations of his chosen lifestyle. His ties with a fundamentalist compound bring trouble, as do his business arrangements. Can one man find a way to keep it all together when forces both internal and external threaten constantly to tear it apart? Faith and love are big, but are they big enough?

In her memoir The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance Elna Baker discusses the issues that come with Big Faith. By turns utterly hilarious and painfully embarrassing, this described "Mormon Tina Fey" tells tales of what it's like to be an abstinent and religious single young woman in a city that's pretty much...not. Along the way she loses eighty pounds and takes a series of fascinating jobs ( I was entranced by her description of life as an "adoption specialist" for ridiculously expensive baby dolls at FAO Schwarz.) The heartbreak that ensues is predictable, but Baker finds the humor in each situation and manages introspection along with stories such as showing up to a Halloween dance dressed in a failed costume that makes her look, quite accidentally, like a giant part of the female anatomy.

The holds lists may be lengthy for some of these, but believe me: the love is Big. And worth the wait

Haiku Review - Model Home - by Jen

Dumped in the desert,
American Dream in flames.
What happened, Zillers?

Model Home by Eric Puchner

Calling Mrs. Trumbull - by Jen Sometimes I get a bit impatient and want the children to grow up a little faster so I can share films with them that don't involve sarcastic cats or operatic turtles or crime-fighting dogs.

I confess I did recently make the possible mistake of letting Child the Younger watch many episodes of  I Love Lucy on library DVD with me when we were both lying ill and lethargic on the sofa. He has since stopped requesting viewings of Maisy in favor of "that funny heart show" and, really, it makes sense. If you are almost three and think your choices are between a primitively-drawn mouse and her friends who mutter mysteriously to one another in what sounds suspiciously like Serbo-Croatian OR Lucy hilariously trying to pretend twenty-five pounds of cheese is a baby (after sensibly flying to Europe WITHOUT child in tow) in order to fly said cheese home on an airplane without paying luggage fees, which would you choose?

But that is not really the sharing I meant to talk about sharing. What I would like to share is that great and bottomless treasure trove we have in the Criterion Collection. If you have limited viewing time (which, if you're like me, is already at war with your laundry-dishes-bill-paying-clean-out-this-random-cupboard-while-the-kids-sleep-time) and want to make the most of it, you really need to worship at the altar of Criterion with me. Unless, of course, you have your own reliable Mrs. Trumbull who will babysit your Little Ricky so you can fly off to Europe and see films in arty theaters. I'm guessing you don't, so here are three to get you started:

Eyes Without A Face may be the most lyrically filmed work of horror you will see in black and white.  A surgeon father in Paris is cutting the faces off kidnapped women in an attempt to cure his own beloved daughter's disfigurement.  It's suspenseful--mesmerizingly creepy--and possibly even more horrifying now that full facial grafts are a medical reality.

Ohayo is the very funny tale of two young Japanese brothers who take vows of silence to protest their parents' refusal to purchase a television set.  Set in a late 1950's Tokyo suburb, this is an exploration of changing cultural traditions with a side of fart jokes.  

The Passion of Joan of Arc was originally a silent French film released in 1928. It has been set to an amazing orchestral work, Richard Einhorn's Voices of Light, with a performance of the choral ensemble Anonymous 4. Believed lost to a fire, the film was miraculously found in perfect condition in 1981--in a Norwegian mental institution. This is art, and a higher power wants you to see it.

And if any of you do know where Mrs. Trumbull is hiding, I'd really like her number.

Frozen River - by Jen I saw Frozen River many months ago and the story has continued to simmer to the surface of my mind. So last night I put the kids to bed, made some popcorn, and sat down to watch it again. I'm glad I did.

Ray and Lila are two minimum-wage earning mothers caught in the shadowy world of smuggling illegal immigrants across the St. Lawrence River via the Mohawk territory between Quebec and New York. Ray wants the double-wide with the decent bathtub she saved for before her husband disappeared with the money days before Christmas. Lila wants to raise the baby son her mother-in-law has taken from her. Ray's dead-end part-time job at Yankee Dollar and Lila's employment at the reservation bingo parlor are no match for the lure of cash in exchange for a quick drive across the frozen river. The two women form an uneasy partnership built on a rusting Dodge Spirit with a push-button trunk.

It is a midwinter story of desperate circumstances, but the remainder is that of spring; reckoning and resurrection, and a thaw. Behold the miracle of mud: it may not be what you planted, but something green will grow.

Locked Up - by Jen Oh, my.

It's been too long since I've felt like locking my kids in a closet so I could finish a book. I do the next best legal thing, which is give myself an extended bathroom break. That door is so rarely locked that it brings momentary stunned silence to the yelling and swirling vortex of boy energy I seldom escape.

"Mama?"
"Mama!"
"Mommy! I can't find my spelling words and I hurt my knee!"
"What are you doing in there?"
"What's for dinner? I hate Brussels sprouts, so I hope it's not those Brussels sprouts on the counter!"
"Mama! Hold you and READ THIS BOOK!"
"Mama?"
"Mommy? Why aren't you answering me?"

The noise swirls from tentative to insistent and back to tentative as small fists tap an impatient rhythm on the door and smaller fingers poke beneath it like the legs of exploratory spiders. The spiders push Maisy Cleans Up, a book I have read 437 times in the last week, under the bathroom door. I know it's 437 times because I have been carving decorative marks into my own arm at each reading like a prison tattoo. I ignore the cheerful white mouse and her vacuum cleaner and her cupcakes and her crocodile friend Charley. (Why do they mop and vacuum the floor BEFORE eating cupcakes? And why doesn't Charley just eat Maisy and put me out of my misery?)

The New York Times has already told you to read this book that is inspiring me to neglect my children, so you probably don't need me telling you as well. But I'll tell you anyway because I can't stop myself and really it's no use trying.

Read The Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore. Yes, you may wait a long time for a library copy. But you will wait longer for another book that will knock your fictional character-driven socks off. I want to weep when I read a novel this compelling, this rich. It gives you that elusive combination of both story and story-telling when so often these days you get one or the other and maybe not so much of either most of the time.

It gives you a gift. So open it. And ignore the fat little finger worms wiggling under the door for a few minutes. It won't be hard.

Crock, or Crock Not. There is No 'Try'* - by Jen

My New Year's Resolution is to read more books that do not involve adorable insects driving pickle cars or underpants-clad superheroes telling poop jokes. For a good majority of the people reading this (I'd say 5 out of the 6 of you), I suspect that would hardly constitute a challenge. But trust me, it's a worthy goal within my personal sphere. My other goal is to get a handle on the food shopping and cooking in order to have more time for reading. So my work for the year is here, and has been here for quite some time, huddled in a neglected corner like a freezer-burned chicken.

On my food-as-literature battlefront is the graphic series Oishinbo, a la carte by Tetsu Kariya. Journalist Yamaoka Shiro is entrusted with the task of designing the "Ultimate Menu" for the publishers of the Tozai News to commemorate the newspaper's 100th anniversary. The series builds on the expected cast of characters: handsome but unmotivated anti-hero, beautiful and loyal sidekick, clownish co-worker, forbidding nemesis who also happens to be the hero's father. Think Luke versus Darth Vader, if only the Rebel Alliance was battling the Empire for bragging rights to the finest sashimi in the star system and Obi-Wan Kenobi had lines like, "In the old days, shaving the katsuobushi was the children's job" and "I'd rather DIE than eat a farm-raised sweetfish that has no flavor or scent to it!!" Each installment of the series is specific to a particular food with chapters building to the inevitable "Ultimate" versus "Supreme" menu showdown reminiscent of my favorite Food Network program, Iron Chef. The best thing about Iron Chef was the frequently ridiculous dialog, and Oishinbo does not disappoint with its liberal dashes of awkward Japanese-to-English translation. (Where else will you read the smell of vinegar-soaked kelp described as "touching?")

In one scene, blond women (or the cloned ideal that substitutes for the stereotype of an attractive female lifeform in manga) dressed as cowboys offer sushi at a "California Rice Promotion," triggering a discussion of rice as import commodity versus rice as national identity. The series is rife with nationalistic and egocentric comments about the superiority of Japanese cuisine and details about the featured foods are painstakingly minute. If you like reading about the food and culture of Japan and don't mind doing it in an amusing comic book form, then Oishinbo is indeed "a fascinating, addictive journey." Crave rice balls, you will.

If Yoda was a Crockpot Master, he would be proud of his apprentice Stephanie O'Dea and her book Make it Fast, Cook it Slow: The Big Book of Everyday Slow Cooking. This appealing cookbook is filled with uncomplicated yet tasty-sounding recipes. As a bonus, the recipes are written using gluten-free ingredients with ordinary substitutions suggested and easily made. The book contains no pictures; this does not detract as it might for other sorts of cookery books, and actually makes the book even more appealing with clean lines and most recipes fitting into a single page. (And in the introduction, the author promises that readers can go to her website for pictures and descriptions if desired.) The book began as a personal blogging challenge to use a crockpot every day for a year, and the website contains the entire chronicle of successes and failures. She offers the honest reactions of her three- and six-year-old to the recipes in the book and her own ideas for things she might do differently the next time. She even includes some creative things to do with crockpots and kids that have nothing to do with dinner. Who knew you could make crayons and Shrinky Dinks in a slow cooker?  

This resourceful cookbook author is firmly behind the idea of experimentation and using what you have immediately available. I'm thrilled with a book containing recipes I might have ingredients for without requiring a special shopping trip. It is the difference between turning the house upside down with an exhaustive yet fruitless search for flashlight batteries and just using the light-saber Child the Elder left lying on the stairs. It works. And if it doesn't, call for pizza. The Force is with you.

*My sincere apologies to Jedi Master Yoda.