Happy Cinco de Mayo!

Just don't overdo the celebrations, okay? I love this hat!






Cinco De Mayo: Celebrating the Traditions of Mexico by Diane Hoyt-Goldsmith (Jan., 2010), a photo essay for children.




Mexican Independence Day and Cinco De Mayo (Best Holiday Books) by Dianne M. MacMillan (May 2008)

How these two holidays are celebrated, a book for ages 9-12.

How did you celebrate Cinco de Mayo?

Book Review: Pearl of China by Anchee Min

Pearl of China: A Novel by Anchee Min (Hardcover - March 30, 2010)

Very moving; excellent writing. I learned a lot about the China that author Pearl Buck grew up in and left, its history from the 1880s to after Nixon's visit and China's admission to the U.N. in the early 1980s. About 100 years of history, plus a fictional account of Buck's friendships in her former home in China, where she lived with her missionary parents, Absalom and Carie Sydenstricker.

The author weaves Pearl Buck's life into the historical novel, which is about the friendship between a young girl, Willow, whom Pearl meets in the small town of Chin-Kiang. This friendship continues into adulthood, through Pearl's marriage to Lossing Buck,  and even after the writer left China for good. The friendship lasts through the Boxer Revolution and anti-foreign sentiment, through the war with Japan, the Communist Revolution, and even to the time of Pearl's death in the U.S. in the 1980s. Anchee Kim has changed the dates of some of the historical events for the sake of her fiction, but she has kept the flavor of China, and certainly brought me to tears with her accounts of the kinds of atrocities that happened during  the Cultural Revolution.

Most moving of all was that Pearl was not granted a visa to accompany President Nixon on his historic visit to China in 1972. She was not allowed to return there after almost 40 years' absence, in spite of her sympathetic and moving depictions of the ordinary Chinese peasants in books such as The Good Earth.  Madame Mao, the instigator and leader of the Cultural Revolution, blocked her visit saying the country had declared Pearl, who openly opposed Mao, an "American imperialist." Pearl Buck died in Pennsylania in 1973 at age 81, not long after Nixon's visit to China.

Beautifully written and heart rending in parts, Pearl in China is a deserving homage to the Nobel Prize-winning author, Pearl S. Buck.

Challenges: 100+ Reading Challenge, China Challenge, Support your Local Library Challenge

 

The Edgar Awards for Mystery Writing: 2010

The Edgar Awards have been noticed by The Wall Street Journal, whose article yesterday, Mystery Rules at Edgar Awards  listed the nominees for this year's award for best mystery writing. The paper noted that women dominated the nominees for the Best First Novel by an American Author category. The Edgar Awards announced the winners:

Best Novel:

The Last Child by John Hart (Minotaur Books) was the winner. It tells the story of the abduction of a twelve year old girl and the attempts by her twin brother and a police detective to find the culprit, after a second child has been kidnapped. A lot of deadly secrets are uncovered in the town.

Other nominees:
The Missing (Vintage Contemporaries) by Tim Gautreaux
 The Odds by Kathleen George
The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death: A Novel by Charlie Huston Nemesis by Jo Nesbø, translated by Don Bartlett
A Beautiful Place to Die by Malla Nunn

Best First Novel By An American Author:

In the Shadow of Gotham by Stefanie Pintoff (Minotaur Books) won in this category. A former New York City policeman investigates the murder of a brilliant Columbia mathematics graduate student. A student of criminology tries to take over the investigation, saying he knows who the culprit is. The novel is set in the early 1900s.

Other nominees:
The Girl She Used to Be by David Cristofano
Starvation Lake by Bryan Gruley
The Weight of Silence by Heather Gudenkauf
A Bad Day for Sorry by Sophie Littlefield
Black Water Rising by Attica Locke

Best Paperback Original:


Body Blows: A Joe Grundy Mystery (Castle Street Mysteries) by Marc Strange (Dundurn Press - Castle Street Mysteries) is the winner.

Other nominees:
Bury Me Deep by Megan Abbott
Havana Lunar by Robert Arellano
The Lord God Bird by Russell Hill
The Herring-Seller's Apprentice by L.C. Tyler

Best Critical/Biographical:

The Lineup: The World's Greatest Crime Writers Tell the Inside Story of Their Greatest Detectives, edited by Otto Penzler (Little, Brown and Company) won in this category. 

Other nominees:

Talking About Detective Fiction by P.D. James
Haunted Heart: The Life and Times of Stephen King by Lisa Rogak

The Talented Miss Highsmith: The Secret Life and Serious Art of Patricia Highsmith by Joan Schenkar
The Stephen King Illustrated Companion by Bev Vincent

The Lineup: The World's Greatest Crime Writers Tell the Inside Story of Their Greatest Detectives is a book I'd love to read.

 

Pearl S. Buck's biography: Burying the Bones: Pearl Buck in China

Burying The Bones: Pearl Buck in China (Import) by Hilary Spurling printed by Profile Boooks, Ltd. in England, 2010.

Publisher's description:

"This is a thrilling portrait of the extraordinary childhood of Pearl Buck, the now-forgotten bestselling Nobel Prize winning novelist. Pearl Buck was raised in China by her American parents, Presbyterian missionaries from Virginia. Blonde and blue-eyed she looked startlingly foreign, but felt as at home as her Chinese companions. She ran free on the grave-littered grasslands behind her house, often stumbling across the tiny bones of baby girls who had been suffocated at birth. Buck's father was a terrifying figure, with a maniacal zeal for religious conversion - a passion rarely shared by the local communities he targeted. He drained the family's budget for his Chinese translation of the New Testament, while his aggrieved, long-suffering wife did her utmost to create a homely environment for her children, several of whom died tragically young. Pearl Buck would eventually rise to eminence in America as a bestselling author, but in this startlingly original biography, Spurling recounts with elegance and great insight her unspeakable upbringing in a China that was virtually unknown to the West."

A review of this new book describes it as a "creative biography" of author Pearl S. Buck. The review is by Elaine Showalter in the Literary Times: Review of Burying the Bones, a biography.

Anchee Min's book, Pearl of China: A Novel is a fictional account of Pearl Buck's growing up in China and her friendship with a Chinese girl her age, Spurling's book is a biography, but both books describe the turbulent times in China in which Pearl Buck grew up. Here is my review of Pearl of China.

Challenge: China Reading Challenge,

 

Wordless Wednesday: Spring Yellow

Not a forsythia, but blooms early spring. Double yellow flowers on long narrow green stems. Anyone recognize this?

More Wordless Wednesdays