Nonfiction Book Reviews

Okay, all of you germophobes, you can’t leave yet!! Why Dirt is Good: 5 Ways to Make Germs Your Friends by Mary Ruebush is especially important reading for the Clorox Sanitizing Wipes/Purell gel sanitizer type people, which germophobes usually are.  Yeah, you know who you are.

Why Dirt is Good was written by a doctor who is a microbiology and immunology instructor at Kaplan Medical and has taught about immunology, infectious disease, and pathology in medical schools for 30+ years.  So she isn’t some quack who is spouting of her own ideas of what she thinks we ought to do - she has years and years of experience backing her (and her admittedly insane ideas).

So here’s the book in a nutshell:

Our immune system is like anything else - it gets better and stronger the more it is used.  An immune system has to learn how to fight off bugs, and it has to do it regularly to stay in good shape (just like an Olympic gold medalist couldn’t take off an entire year from training and then still compete in an event.)  When a child is not exposed to dirt and germs at a young age, then the immune system doesn’t learn how to fight the viruses and bacteria, and the child will actually be more prone to illnesses when they get older than a child who was exposed to a lot of dirt n’ germs.

In other words, those parents who are clean freaks who sterilize everything that goes into their child’s mouth in order to “keep them from getting sick” is setting that child up for a lifetime of sickness.  Ironic, is it not?

But having said that, this doesn’t mean that the author was advocating that you have your child never wash their hands or send your child outside with specific instructions to eat a cup of dirt every day, but she was saying that you as the parent should not freak out when your child does the things that children do (eat mud pies, eat food dropped on the floor, share their food with others, etc).  Don’t sterilize the binky/pacifier every time it drops on the ground.  Wipe it off on your pants and plug it back in!  Your child will thank you later.

Ruebush also spent a lot of time talking about the anti-bacterial and anti-microbial hand sanitizers that you see all over the place.  She said something that probably won’t be trumpeted in the next Purell ad you see on TV: These sanitizers work really well in the laboratory but have shown virtually zero effect in real life.

From page 111:

The primary ingredient in the hundreds of liquid antibacterial soaps on the market today is triclosan.  In much higher concentrations, triclosan is used in hospital settings - by surgeons scrubbing before an operation, for example.  At those concentrations and in that setting, triclosan kills bacteria across the board.  At the much lower concentrations in soap made for the consumer use (usually 0.15 percent), the amount of triclosan is just right for creating resistance to it.

What the story there is: Bacteria and viruses are some of the best organisms at evolving out of anything residing on this planet.  They can literally evolve within a couple of hours.  You cannot possibly keep ahead of them by producing a new anti-bacterial in the lab every time something evolves.

And the bacteria do it by adapting to the agents trying to kill them.  There is the phrase, “Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” right?  Well, that phrase is absolutely applicable to bacteria.  When you use a low level anti-bacteria on bacteria, it kills off the weak strains of bacteria and leaves the more advanced and potentially deadlier bacteria alive, and now resistant to whatever it was that you used to try to kill it.  The more you use anti-bacterial soap, the more deadly the bacteria gets, and the less effective that soap is.

Seriously, it’s just frustrating isn’t it?

To find out lots more than you ever really wanted to know about bacteria and viruses, you need to read Why Dirt is Good.  It opened my eyes to a lot of things that I had thought I had known but now know is false.

Well, now for the negatives.  The margins are huge, and the book is short (roughly 170 pages without counting the glossary at the back) so there really isn’t much to it.  At times, it felt like an overblown magazine article, where the author just tried to take a topic and stretch it out as far as possible.  There were some things that were repeated too much in my ever so humble opinion.

If they had shrunk the margins down to normal size, resized the dimensions of the book itself into the “normal” (and bigger) size for a book, and had taken out all of the repeated stuff, this would have been a very short book indeed.

Does that mean that I don’t think it’s worth it to buy?  At retail ($19.95) probably not.  But if you can find it on discount, then I’d go for it.  There really is a lot packed into these pages, much more than what I’ve covered above.  Or just do like I did and check it out of the library.

I give Why Dirt is Good: 5 Ways to Make Germs Your Friends 4.25 out of 5 stars.  If you’re a germophobe who uses every sanitizing product under the sun, then run, don’t walk, to the bookstore and buy it.  Or order it online.  It will change your way of thinking, guaranteed.

Hava

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I first heard about Schuyler’s Monster: A Father’s Journey With His Wordless Daughter by Robert Rummel-Hudson from a patron who was returning the book. He said that his wife read it, and thought it was excellent. Intrigued, I checked it out and brought it home, only to promptly forget about it.

It sat on my shelf for a while, until a couple of days ago, when I finally decided that I needed to either read it or return it. I figured I’d give it the first chapter to prove its worth, or it was going back to the return bin.

Well, I read it and fell in love with it.

Schuyler (pronounced “Sky-ler”) is a beautiful little girl (yes, that is her on the front cover of the book) who was born with an extremely rare disease that robs her of the ability to speak coherently. It also causes her to have only partial small muscle control, which means that it’s difficult for her to use sign language.  She does it, but it’s hard and some of the more difficult signs are out of her reach. And in the other cases of people afflicted with this disease, there is usually mental retardation, although they aren’t positive that’s something Schuyler has been afflicted with.

But up until Schuyler’s 18-month birthday, nobody realized anything was wrong with her. She was a smiley, happy baby who won the hearts of everyone around her; she was able to walk and eat like other babies, and she did make noises. During a routine check-up with the doctor, however, the doctor started to probe deeper and they started to realize that not all was right in the land of Oz. It took several years and many, many tests to finally receive a correct diagnosis.

The eventual result of the testing and diagnosis was that they realized that Schuyler was never going to be able to speak like “a normal person.”  Up to that point, they had been hoping that with enough therapy and work, Schuyler would eventually be able to speak clearly.  So they started looking at options that would provide Schuyler a way to communicate with the rest of the world.

Like I said before, sign language is something she can do, but not well, so they went after a high-tech option that if Schuyler would have been born 20 years earlier, never would have been available to her.  It was an “alternative augmentative communication device” or an AAC device.

An AAC in its most basic form allows the person to push buttons and then the device says the sentence outloud.  The picture I have posted is of the latest and most high tech version yet, the Vantage Lite, but at $7,295 it isn’t cheap.  The funding would normally come from a school district, but the majority of Schuyler’s Monster is spent chronicling their fight to get an AAC for Schuyler, and to get the teacher support needed for this type of device to work.

So that’s the story in a nutshell. Although it’s a sad story, on the surface there isn’t much there to grab you and hold your attention. But it’s the writing that really does it for me. Rummel is a blogger (check out Schuyler’s Monster blog) and in fact this book grew out of that blog, not the other way around. His writing style causes this to be one of the most enjoyable books I’ve read this year. I cried, I laughed, and everything in between.

I cannot tell you how thoroughly I enjoyed Schuyler’s Monster.  It is rare to find an author who is willing to be so open about his life and his feelings.  Life wasn’t hunky-dory.  The family went through a lot, and they almost didn’t make it.  I appreciated Rummel being willing to tell it exactly how it was, and to tell it so well, I cared about them through out it all.

For a darling video of Schuyler using her very first AAC (or “box of words” as Rummel calls it) check out the following.  Keep in mind, she’s 5 years old in this video.

I give Schuyler’s Monster 4.5 out of 5 stars.  Good luck, Schuyler - I know you’re going places, girl.

Havs

I had heard about The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls from SmallWorld Reads (another book blog), who highly recommended it.  It turns out that Glass Castle was on the New York Times bestseller list for two years, and yet I had never heard of it until SmallWorld mentioned it.  Don’t ask me where I’ve been.

Now that I’ve finally read it, I can see why SmallWorld (and the rest of the world, incidentally) loved it so much.  This autobiography reminded me in some ways of Three Weeks with my Brother by Nicholas Sparks.  Both sets of parents had an “interesting” outlook on parenting (basically, let the kids do whatever they wanted, as long as it didn’t actually kill anyone else) and they were both raised in extreme poverty.  But while Nicholas’ parents at least tried to feed and clothe their children, Jeannette’s parents didn’t always even do that.

This is an honest and open memoir - the some of the things that Jeannette went through as a child makes your heart hurt.  Her parents, at many points during her childhood, did not provide even the most basic of necessities - food, clothing, and at some points, shelter.  Yet unlike A Child Called It, where this is because the parent is trying to torture the child, in Glass Castle it is more simply because the parents are free-spirits, with a distinct lack of planning skills.  Oh, and the father is an alcoholic who drinks most of their money away.

At one point, a family member dies, leaving the parents with a house and quite a bit of money.  I was cheering for the family at this point - surely they would use this money to actually get ahead in life, right?  But even as I was cheering for them, I knew it wouldn’t happen.  The parents are beyond irresponsible, and sure enough, the money soon disappeared. The house fell into major disrepair, and they eventually left and moved back East, leaving the house empty behind them.

The most mind-boggling part of the book is that Jeannette clearly loves her parents.  Even though they leave her and her siblings nothing to eat at various times (forcing Jeannette to eat butter for dinner at one point) and even though their parenting style is far beyond neglectful, into the realm of outright child abuse, Jeannette seems to have been able to look back on her life and appreciate the good parts about her parents, and the things they tried to do for their children.

I think this is what makes this memoir so wonderful - it is not bitter or hateful in any way.  She loves her parents, warts and all.  It is a testament to the human spirit that she could endure something like this, and still look back on it all with love for her parents.

Despite this upbringing (or perhaps in some ways, because of it) Jeannette became quite successful in the news world, eventually becoming a columnist for MSNBC.com, until she decided to take a break and just write books for a while.  If you’re interested in more information about Glass Castle, then you’ll definitely want to check out this interview done with Jeannette Walls (warning: It’s long!) where she talks about her parents, the book, and the impact it’s had on her life.

Glass Castle was a terrific memoir - one of the best I’ve read.  I give it 4.75 out of 5 stars.  If you’re one of the few people left who haven’t read this book, go check it out.  You won’t regret it.

Hava

I have to confess: I’ve never read a single Nicholas Sparks book. I own the movie The Notebook, and only found out by pure chance a couple of weeks ago that it was based on a Nicholas Sparks book. I had no clue. I check out a lot of Nicholas Sparks books to patrons, and quite frankly, all of the titles just run together in my mind. I had never paid attention to the fact that one of them was named The Notebook. A keen eye for details, I have not.

So why did I read Three Weeks With My Brother by Nicholas and Micah Sparks? Well, I was wandering about Barnes and Noble with my husband, and for once, I was waiting for him to finish reading a book before we could go. (Needless to say, it’s usually the other way around). I wandered over to the biography section, and there was Three Weeks With My Brother. I was surprised. I hadn’t realized that Nicholas Sparks had written anything but fiction. I picked the book up and started reading.

And just loved it. I was laughing (quietly, of course - heaven forbid I get kicked out of B&N!) just a few pages in. He has an excellent writing style, which after I thought about it, realized it only made sense. The guy makes his living by writing. If his writing style left something to be desired, I rather think he wouldn’t be on the New York Times Bestseller list regularly.

I can’t testify myself that his fiction writing style is fantastic, but I can his memoir writing style. His parents were unique in their child-raising techniques, to say the least. The following is a little long, but I think captures the childhood of Nicholas and his older brother, Micah, quite well:

On the first day of kindergarten, Mom walked with Micah to the bus stop; from there forward, he walked by himself. Within a week, he told my mom that some older girls, 7th grade or thereabouts but huge to a kindergartener, had cornered him in the junkyard and taken his milk money. Then they threatened him; they said that if he didn’t bring them a nickel every day, they were going to hurt him.

“They said they’re going to beat me up bad,” Micah cried.

There are a number of ways a parent could handle such a situation. My mom could have started walking him to school regularly, for instance, or walked with him one day, confronted the girls, and threatened to call the police if another incident occurred…Not my mom. Instead, after Micah told his story, she rose from the table and…when she returned, she was carrying an old Roy Rogers lunchbox; rusty and dented, it had been her younger brother’s years before.

“We’ll put your lunch in this tomorrow, instead of a brown bag,” she said, and if they try to take your money, just wind up and hit ‘em with it. Like this…”

Cocking her arm like a lion tamer, she began swinging the lunchbox in wide arcs, demonstrating while my brother sat at the table watching.

The next day, my six-year-old brother marched off to school with his hand-me-down lunchbox. And just as they’d threatened, the girls surrounded him when he wouldn’t give them his nickel. When the first one charged, he did exactly as my mom had told him.

In our bedroom that night, Micah related to me what happened.

“I swung with everything I had,” he said.

“Weren’t you scared?”

With his lips pressed together, he nodded. “But I kept swinging and hitting them until they ran away crying.”

The girls, I might add, never bothered him again.
~Page 25 - 26 of Three Weeks With My Brother

Yup, the mother actually showed her son (a kindergartener) how to beat up a group of 7th graders, and more amazingly still, he succeeded.  The parents were big fans of the Tough Love School of Parenting.

They were…relaxed, I guess is the kindest way to put it, in their parenting style. They gave their kids BB guns, which Nicholas (they called him Nicky as a child) and Micah used with wild abandon until the sheriff came and took them away. To console the children, the parents then gave them a bow and arrow set, with real arrows. None of the wussy plastic shafts and bunted tips for them. The kids played with that until (you guessed it) the sheriff came and took that away too. They came a little too close to killing other people one too many times.

So where does the three weeks part come in? Well, in 2002, Nicholas and Micah embark on a trip around in the world, which lasts for three weeks. It’s quite an adventure, and Nicholas always starts the chapter out in present time, and then jumps back in history to their childhood. It is their autobiography, not just a story about those three weeks in 2002. And I do mean “their” - really, it’s an autobiography of the whole Sparks family, with the emphasis on Nicholas and Micah.

I cried hard and laughed a lot too - it is one of the best autobiographies that I have ever read. Even if you’ve never read a lick of Sparks’ writing and have no interest in learning more about him (hmmm…sounds familiar) if you like autobiographies, you’ll love this book. Heck, if you just love a good story, you’ll love this book.

I’m giving it a rare 5 out of 5 stars. Thanks for the amazing book, Nicky. I just might have to read one of your fiction books someday…

Havs

Fun Friday - The Weekly Review of Children’s Books

I originally picked up A Smart Girl’s Guide to Money: How to Make It, Save It, and Spend It by Nancy Holyoke and Ali Douglass because my niece (hi Hailey!) had checked it out, and I saw it when she returned it. I figured I had read plenty of guides on how to manage money as an adult - it was time to check out what the kids were being taught.

Again, I was surprised at how knowledge-packed the book turned out to be.  Perhaps I’m just not expecting enough out of children’s books, I don’t know, but so far I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the depth of the information given.

In A Smart Girl’s Guide to Money, American Girl teaches the whole cycle of money - it gives a list of 101 ways to make money (selling items or providing a variety of services) and also how to figure out if the business venture is profitable or not by doing a cost analysis.  It even talks about keeping a ledger and staying on a budget.  If there was a girl out there who read this book and took it to heart, she’d be a miniature Donald Trump (but hopefully with better hair!) by age 25.

The book also tackles sticky subjects from how to ask for an allowance raise, to recognizing and reigning in the impulse buying while at the mall.  It even touches ever so briefly on putting money into the stock market and paying taxes on what you earn.  (I told you I was shocked at how much was in here).

Yet it still managed to stay very readable and interesting to the average tweener (10 - 14 year old range).  It had lots of great drawings and quite a few multiple choice quizzes.

So comes the question: Would a boy read it?  No, I would say probably not - too many references to buying nail polish and new clothes at the mall, not to mention the fact that all of the drawings are of girls.  I haven’t looked to see, but I would hope something similar but aimed for the boy population has been produced, because it really did break down money management into children-sized pieces.

If your daughter wants to make money this summer, or if you’ve noticed that she tends to spend her money too freely and you’re hoping to give her a little direction, this would be an awesome book to get for her.  I honestly can’t think of anything critical or negative to say about it.

Warning: Childless adult is about to give out parenting advice - ignore at will!!

If I had a daughter, I would give her this book when starting her allowance, so she could be pointed in the right direction on how to handle her money, instead of just being handed money each week.  I was a pretty open spender as a child - I once spent $50 on candy and had a stomachache for a week.  I really could’ve used this book as a kid.

Overall, I give A Smart Girl’s Guide to Money 4.75 out of 5.

Hava

China Ghosts: My Daughter’s Journey to America, My Passage to Fatherhood by Jeff Gammage was an excellent autobiography. I’ve read a string of less-than-stellar autobiographies lately (ie Hope’s Boy, Shattered Dreams, Enter the Past Tense) and I was ready for a great one. I found that in China Ghosts.

Jeff Gammage is a reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer, and I think that had a LOT to do with how much I enjoyed the book - a newspaper reporter has to learn early on to weave a deft and interesting tale without using too much over-the-top descriptions, and that writing experience shows in his writing of this book. I’m starting to realize that I can put up with almost anything but a poor writing style: Typos, missing information that I think is important, and even swearing doesn’t bother me like bad writing does. Luckily, China Ghosts is very well written.

He spares no quarter for himself; he talks about how he never had any desire to have children, because he was self-centered and if there was another person in the equation, then that would mean his family and wife would pay attention to someone else other than himself - the horrors! He didn’t want that, and thus, he would’ve been happy if he and his wife stayed childless. Or so he thought.

But his wife was born with a nurturing instinct, and she wanted children, so Jeff said yes to make his wife happy. They tried for several years to have children, but eventually it was declared that they were infertile. My heart broke for them at this point - that’s actually something that my husband and I are struggling with. We have been trying for 4 years to get pregnant, and thus far, nothing has happened. It’s a very tough row to hoe. (If that’s something you also struggle with, make sure to check out the Infertility blog here at Today - it’s a great blog for infertility information).

Anyway, back to Jeff Gammage: He and his wife finally decide to go the adoption route, and for reasons he explains in detail in the book, they decide to adopt from China. He jumps back and forth in time, keeping your interest high, wondering what will happen next. This is not just a book about adopting a toddler, but of becoming a father, an especially difficult task for him since he had no previous experience with children. His transformation is astounding, and you realize that a parent’s love is truly boundless. When they finally pick their new daughter up, he falls head over heels in love with her, which was so sweet to see. It was beautifully written and by the end, I too had fallen in love with his daughter. She’s a cute little girl, and I loved watching her “grow up” (the book ends when she’s 6 years old).

He spends time explaining the background on different cities in China, and since that wasn’t as interesting to me, I simply skimmed those parts. I think that could have easily been left out of the book, but it wasn’t a huge deal. Even with that in there, it was a quick read (I finished it one day - I had a hard time putting it down!) and I’m hoping to someday read a “sequel” by his two daughters (he eventually adopts a second daughter from China). That would just be so fun for me.

I give it 4.5 out of 5 stars. And don’t forget - with the Chinese Olympics coming up quickly, it might be a good read for anyone interested in learning more about China. Oh, and if you’re thinking about adopting a girl from China, I would rate this book as an absolute must read - it had so much interesting and helpful information in there about the whole process. Two thumbs up!

Havs