Burns Books

The first installment of a children's detective series, a la "Encyclopedia Brown" or "Nancy Drew", the twist with "Wright and Wong" is that B. Orville Wright has Asperger's Syndrome. The book is fairly standard junior detective fare, but the way that it slips back and forth between the perspective of Orville and his normal best friend, Agatha Wong, makes it special. Each of the kids has a distinct personality, and they both have strengths and weaknesses. Orville's disability is not treated as part of who he is, not as a crippling cause for devastation and unhappiness. For example:
...Orville had this annoying habit of not saying anything if he didn't think he had anything to say.
Nana Wong was always telling Agatha it was an annoying habit she should develop.

Written for the same age as the "Goosebumps" series, "Wright and Wong" lacks grossness but has plenty of middle school drama, from a handsome jock to class warfare with the rival school, and a football field that goes up in flames and takes Agatha's dreams of popularity with it. Definitely a great book to recommend for middle schoolers.

Her writing is delicate- almost brittle, like a glass sculpture, yet burns with a power that can only be achieved by one who is speaking the absolute truth. In her poem "Jury Selection," she describes herself standing in front of a judge and being asked if she's "ever had reason/ to doubt the integrity/ of a police officer." She proceeds into a simple and sparse narrative, describing a tense encounter between her sister and a sheriff on the side of an empty stretch of highway. In the space of a stanza, Clough creates a picture of absolute fear and helplessness before authority- all the stronger for the fact that the reader never finds out exactly what happened. You just learn that Clough is "excused with cause." This would be the metaphor that best fits this talented writer. She speaks her truth plainly, unflinchingly, and emerges victorious.

The settings for Centre/Center are West Sonoma County, California of the late '60s; frozen Northern British Columbia of the mid '70s; Vancouver, B.C. and the Oregon coast of the mid '80s.

Centre/Center's cast of characters include: a daughter whose cultural, political choices put her at odds with her mainstream suburban family; pot-smoking hippies with anti-science beliefs and neo-pagan rituals; anti-war protesters; a LSD casualty who liberates a motorcycle from an owner who doesn't respect it's need to be ridden; a woman who permanently borrows without permission her friend's truck because she thinks he can get along without it; a drug dealer; an abandoned child searching for her mother and coming to terms with an uncomfortable truth about her father; a disillusioned and angry Vietnam veteran who lives in isolated northern wilderness and fathers a child with a woman stronger than he and another Veteran burn-out lost to a drifting hobo life.

The novel is in three sections, in the first section the omnipotent narrator drifts through the thoughts and histories of a group of young people challenged by the stresses of the Viet Nam War era. The second section's narration is tensely focused on a couple in a wilderness cabin. The third and final section is the first-person narrative of a determined, capable 20 year old girl.

At this point, I must disclose that I'm not an unbiased reviewer, Mary Burns is a friend of mine, she and I write a blog, "afterSonoma". I first knew her in Sonoma County, California of the late '60's. Although this book is not strictly autobiographical, several people we both knew are recognizable, in composite and it is dedicated to the mutual friend who introduced us.

The settings, social attitudes and interactions of the first section are all quite familiar to me, she thoroughly manifests the era and illustrates the way we were. Our thoughtfulness, how seriously we took ourselves, the moral dilemmas we tackled, all ring true. The shifting, drifting narration of the section accurately evokes the mood of the hippie life-style we enjoyed.

I'm a stranger to the wilderness setting of the second section, though it is clear from the writing alone that Mary is not. Though I've corresponded with Mary through the decades, I last saw her as she and her young daughter drove north up Highway 101, I know they didn't stop until they reached the Yukon. She, again, brings authority to this wilderness story of a strong woman and a troubled man.

From intimate observation, Mary is able to get inside the voice of the third section's narrator, a character the same generation as Mary's daughter. The character's adventures while on her quest have the clear truth of fiction and bring the novel to an enlightened completetion.

Mary's my friend. She also wrote a great book that gets it right.

Amazon search results bring up titles by at least three Mary Burns. Besides Centre/Center, this Mary Burns wrote:
The Private Eye: Observing Snow Geese
Shinny's Girls and Other Stories
Suburbs of the Arctic Circle

If you have read Sobrino's "Jesus the Liberator" you are in for a surprise is his new book "Christ the Liberator." It is a more accessible book for a fundamental theology than "Jesus the Liberator." I would call it a MUST READ for anyone working in or thinking about theology. It is also so clearly written and clearly translated that it is suitable for the general reader.

This book brought back many wonderful memories of my childhood. In those years, one of the best toys we ever had was a large cardboard box. Using our minds, it was among other things a racecar, a big 18-wheel truck, a motorboat and a space ship. We climbed in and out of it, marked and re-marked the sides and taped up the breaks until it simply could no longer be repaired.
That is the theme of this book. Christina Katerina is a young girl with a friend named Fats Watson. One day a refrigerator arrives in a large box and Christina Katerina claims the box. At first, it is a castle. However, when Fats kicks it over, Christina Katerina's mother tries to throw it away. Christina Katerina protested mightily until her mother relented and the box became a clubhouse. After that, it became a racecar and its' last role was as a floor for a tea party. Unfortunately, Fats scrubbed the floor, which of course destroyed it. The story ends with the joyous event of Fats walking to Christina Katerina's with two cardboard ships in his hands.
This story is a celebration of the imagination of childhood and was a refreshing reminder that sometimes the best toys are the simple ones that stimulate the child's imagination.

This book is an easy to use reference book which pulls together the various renderings of the content of Chronicles in other Biblical books. There are charts which succinctly show the emphasis of particular accounts by charting the number of verses in particular books spent on the history of specific individuals. The book makes it easy to study the historical period covered by Chronicals as a single unit rather than the hop-scotching that reading the Bible straight through provides.

Highly recommended for anyone studying Chronicles - whether you call it Tanak or Old Testament.

I had been looking in every used bookstore that I could. But when I went to Amazon,
there it was! Being a primary teacher I had heard of The Collection of Math Lessons,
but never thought that I would find one.

This book is great to have around the house. Any medical term you can think of is in here so you don't have to go asking a doctor or searching on the internet for answers. The book is very easy to read and understand. You won't need and english dictionary to understand this dictionary. I would strongly recommend it.

I work in a large county hospital on the burn unit. When my manager suggested that I look at this book I was amazed. Usually when you read a book about burn care it gives very limited photos, and great detail about the surgical corrections made. In this book all departments share the spotlight. PT and OT, nutrition, nursing, doctors all share equal time. The book goes into great detail about the full color pictures illustrating the different burn injuries. This book is a must read for anyone in the medical field especially in burn medicine.

I had just gotten back from a vacation to face a slew of, you guessed, it, diffiult people when a friend of mine sent me this book. Fortunately it is so well organized that I was able to zero in on help for each type of tough situation and person that I was faced with. The book offers very practical step-by-step methods for dealing with self-involved types, overly demanding blowhards, nit-picking perfctionists, passive agressive obstructionists, and just plain old "garden variety" rude, thoughtless people. Its strategies are not only effective but also will leave you feeling good about yourself and the way you handled things. The most important piece of advice in this book: You can't control anyone else but you can always control the way you react to them. In the end, that make you the powerful one. (BTW, see also this author's Complete Idiots Guide to Beating Stress.)