Text and Java

We had boatloads (pun intended) of fun at the Nautical Nonsense Craft today. We made lighthouses, oceans in bottles, and ate "dessert islands". The big hit was the balloon fishing poles complete with fish. The islands were in this month's issue of American Girl mag and the lighthouses were from a girl scout leader's website. The balloon twisting I learned at a workshop this spring. All of the photos are pre-event, as we cannot take pix of our kids without permission, but this was before the chaos.

The best fiction is the kind that allows you to walk in the shoes of a person whom you could never be otherwise. This is one of those books. Sam is growing up during the Civil Rights movement in Chicago. His father is an important figure in Dr. King's work, and his older brother has become a member of the Black Panther Party. Sam sees two versions of everything. Should he follow his father's nonviolent methods of protest or his brother's more hands-on, gun-toting way. Sam's family lives in an affluent suburb of Chicago, but his girlfriend (the spunky Maxie) lives in the projects. Should he be the rock or the river? The writing in this novel was wonderful, never lecture like, and serves as an eye opener for readers. I would have liked a little more of a historical background in the beginning of the book, but there is a nice history in the back pages. My concern there is that a reader unfamiliar with the history of the Civil Rights Movement may not understand the setting ...