Latest Reads

32. Ginger Pye by Eleanor Estes

This is the kind of simple story about ordinary happy families that I read in bulk as a child. (I remember reading this particular story, in fact.) Rachel and Jerry are brother and sister, living with their mom and dad in a quiet little town. Jerry wants a dog, but he knows it is nearly impossible for him to earn the dollar he needs in time to buy the dog. Lo and behold, an opportunity to earn money avails itself to Jerry and, before he knows it, he is the proud owner of Ginger, a brilliantly clever dog. But, alas, others learn of Ginger’s brilliance. Ginger disappears. The rest of the book is devoted to searching for Ginger. And that’s the whole book. No family turmoil. No dysfunctional people. Everyone in the story seems, well, focused and kind and happy and…gosh, nice. Was Estes deluding herself? Were families really like this? Are most families like this now? One can always hope.

33. Shortcomings by Adrian Tomine

I moved from Ginger Pye to Shortcomings, a typical book for this generation of young readers. The main character is a miserably unhappy fellow, in his early 20’s, who has an awful job and terrible relationships. He alienates his girlfriend and irritates most of the other people in his life. He bungles through his daily life, never feeling joy or even small moments of contentment. The book ends (and this will surprise no one who reads books of this type) with our fellow returning to his pathetic life, sans girlfriend, minus his one friend, hoping that somehow things have changed for the better. Yeah, right.

How did we go from Ginger Pye to Shortcomings? Have people really gone from having lovely lives to living every day on the edge of suicide? Where are all the Ginger Pye books of 2008? Are people really Shortcomings-miserable?

34. The Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt

And thus we move, logically, to The Happiness Hypothesis. Ben Tanaka, main character of Shortcomings, could use The Happiness Hypothesis. Ginger Pye and the rest of the Pye family apparently intuitively knew The Happiness Hypothesis.

Haidt looks at ancient wisdom and compares it to the result of the new science of positive psychology. Some of the things I learned from this book:

*Reciprocity is the best guide to life. This is the classic “Do unto others” thought.

*There are three effective ways to happiness: meditation, cognitive therapy, and Prozac.

*People have good insight about other people, but are terrible in judging themselves. They cannot see their own flaws.

*Instead of trying to improve weaknesses, we should work on our strengths. Often we can use a strength to get around a weakness.

*The personality is now thought to have three components: (1) our basic and classic traits of neuroticism and extroversion, (2) the ways we characteristically adapt including openness to new experiences, agreeableness, and conscientiousness, and (3) our life story, the way we have made sense of our lives.

*It takes adversity to reach our highest levels. Posttraumatic growth is rising to the challenges of problems, which reveals hidden abilities and changes our self-concept.

35. A Gathering of Days by Joan W. Blos

Written in the form of a journal, this book is the story of a year in the life of a fourteen year old girl living in New England in the early 1830’s. During the year, Catherine helps a runaway slave, loses her best friend, sees her widowed father remarry, and leaves her farm forever.

There is something about a book written as a journal that draws the reader close to the characters. I had just started this book when a fifth grader came into the library and asked if I could find her a book like A Gathering of Days. She loved it and wanted to read more books like it.

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