Thank You and Good Night by Patrick McDonnell (review)

Reviewed by: Good Night! , and: Spoonful! by Benoit Marchon Elizabeth Bush Marchon, Benoit. Good Night!; tr. from the French by HMH; illus. by Soledad Bravi. HMH/Houghton, 2013. 40p. ISBN 978-0-547-89314-3 $7.99 R 6–24 mos. Spoonful!; tr. from the French by HMH; illus. by Soledad Bravi. HMH/ Houghton, 2013. 40p. ISBN 978-0-547-89313-6 $7.99 R 6–24 mos. Each title in this pair of board books features a single die-cut shape that extends through all the pages to reveal a face from the last page. In Good Night!, the face of a baby peeks through each egg-shaped opening, and the surrounding picture coordinates with a sweet or whimsical endearment: “Good night, my little fox”; “Good night, my shrimp”; “ . . . my sunshine”; “ . . . my dumpling”; “ . . . my little bug.” The pictures are the soul of simplicity, a dreamy wisp of a figure afloat on a contrasting colored backgrounds of sky blues, ruby reds, and sunny yellows. By the final page, the baby (now revealed in a heart-printed sleeper) is still in no mood to sleep, calling out “Again!” in a word bubble. But don’t give up there: the [End Page 343] back cover says “Good night, my love,” and baby’s finally off to the Land of Nod. Spoonful! attempts similar encouragement for mealtime, with the shape of a head in profile, mouth wide open for the next bite of food. There’s a spoonful for Mommy, for the fish, for the astronaut, for the worm in the dirt, for the superhero, and finally for an enthusiastic toddler, who accepts the kudos, “Hooray! You ate it all!” The backgrounds here are a bit more detailed, featuring objects toddlers are sure to recognize (fire engines, flowers, etc), adding to the visual appeal. The inclusion of a spoon in each of the spreads would have made this effort more successful, but the sheer number of diners suggested here should nonetheless urge finicky eaters on through even a robust meal. Copyright © 2013 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Myopic Beauty:The Map, the Photograph, the Palimpsest, and Joyce Joseph Nugent (bio) Gabriel pointed to the statue, on which lay patches of snow. Then he nodded familiarly to it and waved his hand. —Good night, Dan, he said gaily. (Joyce, Dubliners 216) James Joyce, too, was familiar with it, and familiar with the family of Daniel O'Connell, the man it honored. He had particular reason to be. Two generations before, his grandfather had married into the prosperous O'Connells of South Kerry. Dan, the Joyces claimed, was one of their own. Of course, the family connection was difficult to prove, but the Liberator himself, Richard Ellmann tells us, was happy to indulge the notion (11). That would have been enough for James Joyce, who knew that history was more than a paper trail. History, Joyce understood, was a lived condition, its traces all around. In Dublin it underlay the fabric of the city, was written in its very stones, confronted the citizen at every turn, was omnipresent, ghostly, nightmarish. And in 1882, the year that James Augustine Joyce was born, even as the metropolis turned its eyes to the future, with the much-heralded Irish Exhibition of Arts and Manufactures, it marked the centenary of the Irish Volunteers and, Janus-like, looked backwards too. Dublin was a place of retrospective [End Page 266] aspiration, its eyes set firmly on a past it did not want the citizen to forget. Since 1808 the hero of Trafalgar had presided over Sackville, not yet O'Connell, Street from the great Doric column that was the Nelson Pillar. Victorians knew the value of the great man as aspirational device and of emulation as ideological tool. As the cult of the fallen hero spread across the nation-states of Europe, boulevard and thoroughfare were colonnaded with warriors and leaders, reifications in bronze and stone of the glory of the race. Surmounted by the great and good, idealized types, these monuments were rubrics of the national narrative, assertions of a seamless continuity between glorious past and certain future. A newly confident Irish people, too, set out to ossify the exemplary qualities of its dead for the edification of its youth. On August 15th, 1882, the Freeman's Journal reported, "Hundreds of thousands, young and old, hopeful in heart for a great and glorious day," braved a dismal downpour to converge on O'Connell Bridge. They had come to celebrate the opening of the Exhibition and to witness the unveiling of what was to be the most imposing piece of public sculpture to grace the city yet. It had been conceived barely a decade after the Great Famine. On this, the feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin, John Henry Foley's magnificent memorial was finally ready to be unveiled. The proceedings of the much-anticipated day would proclaim the breadth of Dublin's industry displayed by its menfolk marshalled in grand procession. From all corners of the city came its tradesmen: the city's horseshoers, then its nail makers, its printers, cork cutters, butchers, basket makers, its skinners, plumbers, bottle-makers, brush makers, saddle makers. "At one o'clock … the veil fell to the Lord Mayor's signal, and the O'Connell Bronze stood revealed," wrote the Freeman's; then "a mighty roar went up from ten thousand throats." At that very moment "the sun suddenly opened its beams through the drenching rain, and gloriously lighted up the monument and the crowded platform" (O'Hanlon lxxiii). The gods were smiling. Four Winged Victories surround the monument's base. Here are Patriotism and Fidelity, resplendent, massive, in resounding bronze. Courage and Eloquence, two more embodiments of the qualities the [End Page 267] Irish people revered O'Connell for, sit out of sight. Between them are mounted the four great shields of Ireland's provinces. For years James Joyce carted his own coat of arms from dingy flat to other flat, a step ahead of the landlord, proud, like his father, of his ancestry. Strange, then, that in the pantheon of Irish heroes it was not to his reputed kinsman but to Parnell he always looked. Joyce was patriotic, but his patriotism was not of...

Pre-Face, Sur-Face, Inter-Face, Post-Face:The Horror Story of Goodnight Mommy Olivia Landry (bio) The opening scene of Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala's 2014 Austrian horror film Goodnight Mommy (Ich seh ich seh) is an obscene preface (Figure 1). A dirndl-clad mother encircled by seven beaming and utterly Aryan-looking children all sing Johannes Brahms's putatively halcyon lullaby "Guten Abend, gute Nacht" ("Good Evening, Good Night"). For a horror film about a brutal matricide, this excessively harmonious first image appears to do nothing more than adumbrate its own violent demise. Foreboding is already contained in this singular image and its soundtrack. In particular, the lullaby's ominously coded message introduces the present film as a dream that could easily turn into a nightmare, sleep unto death: Morgen früh, wenn Gott will,wirst du wieder geweckt [Tomorrow morning, if God wills,You will be awoken once again] The obscenity of this image lies not only in what Marina Warner would refer to as the terror of death so often embedded in the lullaby but also in its cinematic citation.1 This grainy and harshly [End Page 90] saturated image would be uncannily familiar to an Austrian viewer (or a German one, for that matter). Framed like a picture by the black screen, it is an Ur-image from the national cinematic album. Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. The familial choir singing a lullaby in a citation of The Trapp Family (1956) that opens Goodnight Mommy (2014). This image was extracted from the final scene of Wolfgang Liebeneiner's 1956 West German classic film The Trapp Family (Die Trapp-Familie), which later went on to inspire a sequel, The Trapp Family in America (Die Trapp-Familie in Amerika, 1958), as well as the famed musical and film The Sound of Music (1965). The image's appearance here seems to recast a revisionist past in cinematic anticipation of its own rebuke. Historically based on among other things this Austrian family's flight from the Nazis, The Trapp Family (and the aesthetics of this final scene in particular) is inescapably part of the apolitical ethos of an archive of films from the 1950s often subsumed under the genre Heimatfilm. These features routinely served to present nostalgic and even escapist narratives to German-language audiences in which tradition, nationalism (pre-Nazism, of course), family, and a return to the simplicity and the idyllic nature of the hinterland was intended to offer temporary respite from the onerous memory of the horror of the recent past. While Johannes von Moltke has persuasively argued for the critical recovery of the Heimatfilm as not only an important Germanlanguage film genre, one that Thomas Elsaesser calls "Germany's only indigenous and historically most enduring genre,"2 but also one rich in nuance, the films of this genre still remain linked to a historical legacy of parochialism and repression of historical violence. Addressing this repressed history of violence has been a task [End Page 91] of much Austrian cinema since the early 1990s, as exemplified by many of Michael Haneke's German-language films. To paraphrase German film critic Katja Nicodemus, contemporary Austrian cinema is born of muted screams and carefully swabbed blood.3 But while critics have largely praised Goodnight Mommy for its ability to conjure up horror in the simplicity of the domestic and the quotidian with notable comparison to Haneke's 1997 Funny Games, Franz and Fiala's film has not been examined in much depth, and the filmmakers, both new to the director's chair, remain relatively unknown.4 Yet at a time when Austria, indeed much of Europe, has been swept up in a wave of frightening new nativism with the late 2017 election of the populist Austrian People's Party, which formed a coalition with the extreme right-wing Freedom Party of Austria, founded after World War II by former members of the Nazi Party, I propose that this film invokes some startling observations about cinema and politics.5 At the site of the face, cinema shows itself as a violent medium of the history and politics of whiteness in Europe and in Austria...

Reviewed by: Hello, Day! Jeannette Hulick Lobel, Anita; Hello, Day!; written and illus. by Anita Lobel. Greenwillow, 2008; [40p] Library ed. ISBN 978-0-06-078766-0 $17.89 Trade ed. ISBN 978-0-06-078765-3 $16.99 Reviewed from galleys R 1-3 yrs As the sun rises, various animals greet the day with their customary sounds ("The Cow said, 'Moo'"); as day ends and the moon appears, a lone owl calls "'Whooooo.' What she meant was . . . 'Good night!'" Although the inclusion of a mouse ("Eeeek") and a rabbit ("Pr-pr-pr") add a bit of novelty, this catalog of animal sounds treads pretty familiar ground. However, Lobel's attractive mixed-media artwork adds a breath of fresh air to an elemental text. Layering of various media provides rich texture and depth to the full-page illustrations of animals and landscape, and the vibrant colors are warm and cheery; the simple words appear in large bold print on the plain white facing pages. Good both for groups and for one-on-one lap reading, this is a sunny selection that will encourage little ones to join right in with the sounds they love to imitate. [End Page 481] Copyright © 2008 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Reviewed by: Robert and Frances Flaherty: A Documentary Life, 1883–1922 Kay Armatage (bio) Robert J. Christopher. Robert and Frances Flaherty: A Documentary Life, 1883–1922 McGill-Queen’s University Press. xxiv, 454. $44.95 Quite a curious volume, this. The majority of Flaherty cinema scholarship attends to his life and work after the making of Nanook of the North (1922). Thus it comes as something of a surprise to find a book that only in the final chapters arrives at the dawn of his career as one of the originators of actuality drama. The book asserts itself as an antidote to the standard Flaherty biographies, which not only tend to gloss over the nearly forty years before Nanook, but also to underrate Frances Hubbard Flaherty's contributions to his career. The bulk of the book is Flaherty's journals of his various expeditions in the North, augmented by Christopher's contextualizing narratives, and it is engrossing to an unexpected degree. The first chapter, recounting Flaherty's childhood (part of an unfinished autobiographical narrative), speaks to Flaherty's skill in literary prose as he recalls his early outings with his father, a geologist and miner, with whom he went on his first trip when he was twelve. His recollections flow in continuous narrative (with novelistic renderings of conversations) and lyrical description, and his writing talent flows throughout the book, making it altogether a wonderful read. The sighting of the massive herd of stone deer decoys is thrilling. The second journal is especially delightful. Two versions from this period exist, notes Christopher, one of Flaherty's workaday world, and the other written for Frances Hubbard in the year before they married. Here is a soupçon: 'The night is perfect. We are camped on a long narrow lake girded with magnificent hills ... The foliage of the birches and poplars already turned yellow russet or orange, contrasting perfectly and blending with the dark, velvety green of the firs and pine firs ... I think of the night we had in the sand at Obakamiga – this day has been just as hot as some we had together – do you remember them? It is getting too dark to write – good night.' This is a world of lyrical expression and erotic desires, as well as a portrait of a practised woodsman with transcendent aspirations. The match with Hubbard seemed improbable, despite the happy meeting of the pianist with the violinist (Flaherty carried his fiddle with him and Hubbard asked if he was practising while he was away). A graduate of Bryn Mawr, Hubbard studied music in Paris, attended a poetry reading by W.B. Yeats and a lecture by Henry James, and, in her role as secretary of the local Suffragette Society, introduced Emmeline Pankhurst. Yet she saw her work as Flaherty's amanuensis as fulfilling her education. [End Page 509] Hubbard's diary (1914–16), covering the period when Flaherty made his first attempt at filmmaking (the non-extant Belcher Islands film), attests to her work as archivist, secretary, and copy editor, and her indefatigable efforts to market the films, photographs, and diaries. Her shrewd assessments of his weak speeches, excess weight, extravagance, and lack of business sense are buffered by her commitment to his (their) success. And passionate commitment was necessary, as she had to contend with Flaherty's other life in the North, where he had children with Inuit women. Well after his death, she was shepherding his legend in Odyssey of a Filmmaker (1960), her memoir of his career. Although Christopher strives to ameliorate it, the portrait of Flaherty here adds ammunition to the critiques that predominate cinema scholarship now: the quotidian racism of his day (the happy and yet so skilled 'Eskimo'; '[t]hey are such children') and filmic strategies in the service of a Romantic salvage ethnography. His explorations followed well-charted Inuit maps and trails, meeting Native families and hunters along the way; at least he gave credit to his guide in his geographical publication. This is a work of meticulous editing (of the handwritten and typescript journals) and great scholarship (the narratives that introduce each diary correct and augment previous biographies, and the endnotes are rich in explanatory...

Reviewed by: The Girl with the Red Balloon by Katherine Locke Kate Quealy-Gainer, Assistant Editor Locke, Katherine The Girl with the Red Balloon. Whitman, 2017 [288p] (Balloonmakers) Trade ed. ISBN 978-0-8075-2933-1 $16.99 Paper ed. ISBN 978-0-8075-2937-9 $9.99 Reviewed from galleys R Gr. 7-10 Despite the objections of her German-born Jewish grandfather, sixteen-year-old Ellie Baum joins her class on their trip to Germany. While they’re visiting the Berlin Wall Memorial, a red balloon randomly floats by, and when Ellie impulsively grabs it, she suddenly finds herself transported to the dark streets of 1988 East Germany. Fortunately for her, Kai, a Roma boy who’s member of an underground resistance group, finds her before the Volkspolizei do. Kai’s a Runner, sending desperate people over the Wall on the strings of balloons enchanted by the Schöpfers to make their passengers invisible—the balloons, though, have only ever transported people from place to place, not through time. Until Kai’s colleagues figure out what happened with Ellie’s balloon, Ellie is stuck in 1988, but as she becomes closer to Kai and [End Page 122] his cause, she’s not entirely sure she wants to go home. Narration alternates among Ellie, Kai, and a boy named Benno in a World War II concentration camp, who is eventually revealed to be Ellie’s grandfather. The shared storytelling gives both historical context and emotional resonance, clearly conveying the idea that our present is built on the ghosts of past events and people. This is most palpably explored when the Schöpfers do indeed find a way to make a balloon that goes through time and are then faced with the decision to change history, leading to potential chaos, and or leave it as it is, choosing a set of events that while tragic are at least known. These are serious, heavy themes, and the heartbreaking ending is no less thought provoking; hand this to readers looking for the personal dramas behind the facts in their history book. Copyright © 2017 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Hunger Robynne Graffam (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution Photo by Jules Morgan [End Page 108] She did not want to eat him. Not really. It was expected; she knew that, had always known it. But it surprised her to discover she’d rather not. A dilemma. Caught in that ineffable struggle, she avoided the issue as best she could, but the effort was draining, [End Page 109] and occasionally she found herself pulling a blade of grass from the lawn and biting down on it, just to taste the bitter spike of chlorophyll on her tongue. She liked him. This was the trouble. She hadn’t intended to, but there it was. She’d chosen him for his blandness, which she’d assumed would make things easier. He was stolid, unremarkable, dull even. Hair of indeterminate brown, eyes smallish and watery with allergies. An accountant, obviously. They went on tepid dates—the movies or dinners of pasta and dusty chianti. At the end of the evening, he held her hand in damp fingers and she let him kiss her good night, kissing back just enough to hint at what might be possible behind closed doors, a warm pink moment of affection that went no further yet planted the seed of desire firmly enough in the arid soil of his imagination. But he surprised her. Once they were engaged, he brought her small presents, delightful and unexpected. A bunch of poppies, persimmon- orange, black rings winking in the sunlight like naughty children. A scarf of tissue-thin silk, painted with delicate vines of morning glory. A swallowtail butterfly, golden-winged, that he’d caught himself in a net and released in her kitchen to flutter dazedly in search of a window. (She watched it with pleasure, snatching it up and eating it discreetly while he went to the bathroom.) And he discovered how to touch her, lightly at the waist, occasionally eliciting an almost girlish laugh she hardly recognized as her own. She hadn’t expected to enjoy him touching her and knew it would only complicate matters later. Still, she could not help smiling at his breathy kisses on her neck, his fingers resting gently on the small of her back. She did her best not to think about what they would taste like. Their wedding was a small affair. He had parents, white-haired and frail, just shy of elderly. Two unremarkable siblings, a friend from high school who stood with him as best man. She had only her mother. Slender and stern, dressed in a pearlescent gray sheath with a pillbox hat, she watched from the edge of the room, her dark, unblinking eyes betraying no emotion whatsoever. The bride did not have anyone to “give her away” (loathsome expression) and so walked down the aisle alone, which suited her. She’d never known her father, of course, and therefore did not miss him. She had wondered about him occasionally, if he was kind or strong or intelligent. Once, on an evening when she and her mother sat on the back porch watching the dusk swallow the trees like a rolling blanket of fog, she’d asked about him, about what he was like. Her mother paused a moment and said simply, “Tough.” [End Page 110] On their wedding night, she stacked extra towels by the bed, slipped the small knife into her pillowcase as her mother had instructed. She assumed this was not the marriage-bed conversation most girls had with their mothers, but that was no concern of hers. Every relationship, she reminded herself, was unique. But again, he surprised her. Emerging from the bathroom in a wine-colored satin robe, he gave a rakish grin that stirred a quick and visceral curiosity which left her involuntarily flexing her fingers. He slipped his hand behind her, pulling her to him, a vitality in his eye she was sure she’d never seen before. He kissed her with an eagerness that was equally pleasant and troubling, but she allowed herself to be led to the bed and sank down into the pillows, almost blushing as his hand found its way to the cleft...

Prairie Daughter (1982), and: Prairie Daughter (1962), and: Prairie Daughter (1936), and: Prairie Daughter (1877), and: My Body’s a Billboard, and: Bathtub Athena Kildegaard (bio) Prairie Daughter (1982) We buried Papa in that high place and thenhe came to the door and waited to be let in like a mangy dog the neighbors denied.The smalls said they could hear him climb and then descend the porch stairs, but they hadfeverish ears. If he stood and looked across the tar to the fields, did he see history creepinginto the dust? Mama couldn’t get up out of bed. She said something was hunting her down,grief with yellowed canines and a bag of heavy rocks. We buried her beside him, beloved wife and mother,though we couldn’t say he ever held her to be beloved, something that tender and everlasting. Did we hear himsay any more to her, anything more sweet than Good night? Prairie Daughter (1962) Papa drags the plow west to the edge and backeast to the edge, dredges up rocks. Then he drives a rack [End Page 164] and we bend down to lift rocks from dirt. Don’t call itdirt, Papa says. Worms, beetles, ants scurry from their revelation. At first we sing, the smalls and I,My Name Is Jon Johnson and There’s a Hole in My Bucket but we grow as silent as the rocks we lift, and our necksstiffen and the backs of our knees sweat and crease with soil, and our hands throb but there is no endto the rocks that have come up with winter’s freeze so I begin to curse winter silently for its stubbornrevival and I time my curses with the rocks landing one on another, harsh consonants of permanence, and soit goes all afternoon. Even at dinner we are silent, as if our mouths had been filled with pebbles. Mama saidthe evening seemed cooler. Indeed, Papa spoke into the room. Prairie Daughter (1936) We ate tumbleweed in brine after the government menshot the cow. Dust pushed the fences under. Whole days went by with no light. We learned to sitwith our eyes closed, to breathe through sponges, when we had them, otherwise pillowcases folded and wet.I could trace dreams in the dust: daisies or apples or sidecars. Not for girls Mama said. Anyway, a sidecarwouldn’t be fast enough. Snakes twisted belly up [End Page 165] on the barbed wire. I used to stand by the front doorand count how many steps to any grove of trees, any hill, any river you could escape to. Now I’d settlefor calm. I want to tear those dust-black sheets down. Prairie Daughter (1877) Mama and the smalls mixed up bowls of branand molasses to attract the grasshoppers, and arsenic to kill them, all of the molasseswe’d said would make February tolerable. Whole tribes of grasshoppers settledon Papa’s one saddle, ate the tooled surface right down to the pressed wool. Imagineall those tiny mandibles sawing and sawing at what was once cow. And the cows twitchyin the field, laden with the tribes and their bellies full of what we’ll long for come winter.There’s no escaping the plague and no knowing the sin that brought it. Papa saidthe priest led a parade down Atlantic Avenue in his white cassock, someone carrying the cross,praying that the grasshoppers be delivered. [End Page 166] My Body’s a Billboard When I was ten it was my heightand when I was eleven it was my pussy,in the pool, boys circling me, hands getting a rubof what was, to me then, nothing much,and when I was twelve it was my breasts,nipples like lunar blossoms, and when I wassixteen it was my pussy—again—full-out grownand ripe and when I was twenty it was my tongue,and when I was thirty it was my breasts heavywith milk, and when I was forty it was my wholemouth and the way it attached to my brain...

Two Poems Janet Heller (bio) Family Reunions Lisa lights the candlesand says a prayer for all of us,cousins and in-laws,grownups and newborns,Christians and Jews. As we dig into the buffet,John and Jean suggest a moment of silenceto think about those who are far from Wisconsinand can't share this Thanksgiving meal,especially my mom and Uncle Bob, the twins. The room fills with the ghosts and smells of holidays past:Aunt Ann's brunches with omelets and savory eggs,homemade cranberry bread and muffins;the turkey dinners, the rib roast dinners,the frosted cakes and cookies and soufflés;Mom lighting the candles,Uncle Bob leading the Passover service,a little kid asking the Four Questionsor stumbling over hard words in the Haggadah,Nannie feeling too cold or asking for the missing butter,a cousin announcing an engagement. In the fall, the boys had football scrimmages,Will and Ross and Paul and Joe and John and Jeff.Nancy and Jean wanted to playand fought the gender biaswithout much success. [End Page 62] Uncle Bob always told jokes,and Mom laughed for the next hour.He said he was a gentleman from the startbecause Mom was the first-born twin.How many morons does it take to make popcorn?Answer: Four—one to hold the pot and three to shake the stove.Uncle Bob claimed that he had considered investing fundsin a brand-new business: The Ted Kennedy Driving School. Sometimes Pegi combined ketchupwith peanut butter and vegetables,and the rest of us sampled her inventions.We tried a different way to eat cake,leaving the frosting for last. Joe would open the door for the prophet Elijahduring our Seder, but my cousin pretended to welcomehis favorite Green Bay Packer, Elijah Pitts. At every reunion, Dad auctioned off banana slices,Will tried to tell the joke about a man named Bowels,and Mom saved her fancy place-cards for next year. Jeff and I compare notes,realizing that we alone,the youngest and the oldest kids,lack a first cousin our age and gender. I imagine all of us together in Julyfor the twins' sixty-fifth birthday,a vast horde of three generationsno longer fitting around one table.I hope it won't rain—Somehow it always used to pourwhen the whole family came to Elkhart Lake. Now I watch five-year-old Brandon playWith his first cousin Jason,sharing a toy airplane.Then Jason refuses to leaveuntil Brandon's baby brother Zachstops crying. [End Page 63] My heart fills with lovefor this new generation of cousins.I hope they will always be as closeas we adults feel,growing up in twinned families. Synagogue Rummage Sale People bring dozens of bags and boxesstuffed with clothes, pots, glasses, jewelry,linens, suitcases, birdfeeders, books,toys, games, furniture, washing machines,bicycles, exercise equipment, and candlesticks. We women sort everything,gently fold towels and sheets and slacks,and carry items to the proper place.The social hall of the synagoguebegins to resemble a department store. When I finish unloading five boxes,Rod hauls down five more.I worry that this task will never end,that I will spend the rest of my lifeat this labor, like Sisyphus. The piles of clothes get higher and higher.We put baskets, magazines, rugs, a punch bowl setunderneath the full tables. I dispatch the wisest volunteerswith colored stickersto price unique merchandise. As I stoop to rearrange some books,the local lecherpinches my torso.I feel like hitting him in the groinwith The Joy of Cooking. The day before the sale,I dream that someone robs the synagogue, [End Page 64] stealing our money and vandalizing our treasures.I awake and race to the building,relieved to find everything safe. During the sale, we greet customers,answer their questions,pick up dropped clothes,prevent children from grabbing jewelryor breaking dishes,carry heavy items for senior citizens. Exhausted after a week of set-up and sale,I finally get a good night's sleep.Vivian phones the next...

Metaphors for My Two Step Yalie Kamara (bio) •name tag•resume••cover letter•elevator pitch• •mission statement•not-for-profit••dot-org•best practices •hip autograph• ankle editing••toe kisses•shin signatures• •foot cursive•nickname••white flag•surrender• •province•territory• •border•flag• •mother tongue•root••family tree•coat of arms• •broken branch•small dance•shy-girl glide•introvert bounce• •perfume footed shimmy•Jesus walk••Rapper's Delight•tonic water• •with lime! [End Page 50] •radio edit•kid-friendly• •birth control•curfew••closed eyes•heaven somewhere• •becoming Dorothy•ruby shoes••heel click•heel click• •I wish I were home• •I wish I were home••I wish•I wish••I wish•Good night• [End Page 51] Yalie Kamara YALIE KAMARA is a Sierra Leonean-American writer and native of Oakland, California. She currently serves as Assistant Editor of Black Camera: An International Film Journal. She is the author of A Brief Biography of My Name (African Poetry Book Fund/Akashic Books, 2018) and When the Living Sing (Ledge Mule Press, 2017). Some of her poetry, fiction, and translations have been featured in The Poetry Society of America, Vinyl Poetry and Prose, Puerto del Sol, and Indiana University Press. She was a finalist for the 2017 Brunel International African Poetry Prize, a 2017 National Book Critics Circle Emerging Critics Fellow, and a fellow of the 2016 Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop. She received an MFA in creative writing (poetry) from Indiana University, Bloomington, and an MA in French culture and civilization from Middlebury College. She will begin her doctoral studies in English literature and creative writing at the University of Cincinnati in fall 2018. Copyright © 2018 Johns Hopkins University Press

Sayres, Brianna K. Where Do Diggers Sleep at Night? Illus. Christian Slade. New York: Random House, 2012. Print.If the title Where Do Diggers Sleep at Night? seems a tad familiar, well, it probably is. In the same vein as the ultra-popular Good Night, Good Night, Construction Site, Diggers presents the sweet nighttime rituals of diggers, trucks and other heavy machinery. At first I thought this was a simple effort to take advantage of a similar, bestselling title however Sayres’ work does indeed hold its own.In this picture book aimed at ages 3-6, first time picture book author Sayres gives young heavy equipment aficionados a delightful take on the bedtime story. In rhyming couplets and often in a humorous manner, all sorts of trucks, cranes and tractors get ready for rest under the watchful headlamps of their caregivers: “Where do garbage trucks sleep / when they’re done collecting trash? / Do their dads sniff their load and say, / ‘Pee-yew—time to take a bath’?” Sure to get the young ones giggling.The sleepy-eyed dozers and tow trucks eventually give way to an equally sleepy young boy in his cozy bed, with a reminder that the trucks will be waiting for him when he wakes. Save for one naughty truck, winking, under the bed (my five-year-old happily pointed this out).Though the illustrations by former Disney animator Christian Slade are rather cartoon-like and not realistic, they match the text well, are in soothing nighttime colours and allow for the trucks to have droopy eyes and smiling faces. Read in a lyrical fashion, or even as a song, this would be a nice end to any wee truck lover’s day. This would make a nice addition to any public library or as a gift.Reviewer: Debbie Feisst Recommended: 3 stars out of 4Debbie is a Public Services Librarian at the H.T. Coutts Education Library at the University of Alberta. When not renovating, she enjoys travel, fitness and young adult fiction.

Good nights: optimising children’s health through bedtime stories

Michael E. DeBakey, 1908 to 2008

Fear, Abuse, and Invisibility:Form and Metaphor in the Works of Tormod Haugen Eva-Maria Metcalf (bio) In 1990, Tormod Haugen received the Hans Christian Andersen Medal as his fifteenth and most prestigious award. Born in 1945, he made his literary debut in 1973 with Ikke som i fjor (Not like last year) after studying art and literature at Oslo University and working for two years at the Edvard Munch Museum in Oslo. A free-lance artist and author of more than a dozen children's books, he is well-known and well-respected in his native Norway and throughout Europe. Although his books have been translated into fourteen languages, he is little known in the United States because only two of his books, The Night Birds (1975, translated 1982) and Zeppelin (1976, translated 1991) have appeared in English.1 Haugen has developed artistically since the seventies, and in the late eighties and nineties his novels have become increasingly experimental in nature. The underlying theme of his work has remained constant, however. His books display a deep concern for the powerless: for all who are oppressed, silenced, and buried by the process of acculturation. The dominant metaphor he uses to express this concern is the metaphor of invisibility; through its manipulation he makes visible that which has become invisible. His books appeal to children and adults alike to free themselves from social and cultural constraints, to surmount obstacles, and to embrace the ultimate courage of daring to be vulnerable. Invisibility as it is used in Haugen's books has little to do with the invisibility conferred upon heroes by magic cloaks, nor does it concern the countless invisible playmates who have been a staple of children's literature for a long time. Haugen's invisible children are more closely related to the invisible child in Tove Jansson's short story by the same name. In this story the young girl Ninni becomes invisible because of a loveless situation at home, where she is treated with icy irony. She is brought to the Moomin family and finds a warm and loving atmosphere in which she dares to be herself and gradually becomes visible again. Haugen's fictional characters suffer from the same emotional distress that Ninni does, but they rarely find the safe haven of a Moomin family. The coldness, indifference, insensibility, disregard, and mockery of the older generation are what cause Haugen's fictional characters to become invisible; for psychological injuries, although invisible, are as real and as painful as physical ones. He draws on a wide spectrum of mental and emotional abuse of children—and of adults—who are either struggling to gain a degree of independence, the precondition for the development of their own personalities, or to regain their individuality. Adverse circumstances or the negligence and blindness of parents and their partners are often the cause of this invisibility, and rarely is such abuse carried out consciously or with malicious intent. In The Night Birds, Jake's father, for instance, is too involved in his own fears and failures to notice the impact of his behavior on his son. And oftentimes the phrase, "We parents want only what's best for you," provides justification for many forms of well-intentioned abuse, as it does for Father King in Slottet (The White Castle) (174). Such a conception of abuse is often relative, for identical treatment by a parent may cause anguish and agony for one sibling but not another. Central to Haugen's work is a thorough and sobering inquiry into childhood. In one way or another, all of his books raise his readers' awareness of the repression of children in our society. As he explores what is hidden behind it, Haugen deconstructs the cultural myth of a happy, carefree, and innocent childhood and uncovers its dark side. As a result, he has come to the challenging, [End Page 14] if disputable, conclusion that childhood, while being the foundation of life and the source of hope and renewal, is also life's saddest, most troublesome, and most painful period. What makes children invisible in his books is their acute feeling of being misjudged, excluded, and not taken seriously, particularly...

Thank You, and Good Night.