[openbook booknumber=”0670889075″]

[rating:4/5]

The genre of fairy tales has been tamed over the years to the point where they are just considered innocent stories for children and nothing more. Jane Yolen and her daughter Heidi Stemple bring back those fairy tales and look at the originals and variants from all over the world that show that these stories are many things, but they are not for small children. In Mirror, Mirror mother and daughter take a look at the fairy tales that shaped the past of motherhood and the relationships between mothers and daughters and discuss them in light of modern day motherhood and mother/daughter relationships. They discuss everything from abuse to abandonment, coming of age to marriage, rage and love, sex and death. A great book for mothers and daughters to read together to look at their relationships through the “mirror” of the past and to get women talking about each other, their relationship and themselves.

[openbook booknumber=”0449905888″]

[rating:4/5]

In popular mythology there are stories and legends aplenty about great heroes who go on quests and, after facing overwhelming odds, return home victorious. These heroes continue their stories throughout the ages, of men who face dragons, fight for what they believe in, and change the times they live in whether for the better or the worse. In The Sound of a Silver Horn a question is posed, why are there no such heroes for women? Why isn’t there a “female hero” to journey alone, to face great odds, to change things? Why, when asked to name such a woman, can we only name a few, and only a very small number of them real?

Women can be heroes as well, but their type of heroism is different from a man’s. Men’s quests are of the lone wolf variety, working in a vacuum, taking all the risk, and getting all the credit, accepting occasional outside help, but never working in tandem with anyone else, or willing to share the limelight for long. Women work in a collective, risk is taken but account for that risk is tempered with thoughts of the impact on others than herself, credit is shared, help accepted, and working in tandem with others is considered a strength, not a weakness. This book goes into those details of just what makes a female hero. She is not less then a male hero, merely differently empowered and goes about her quest in a different, but no less powerful or profound way.

[openbook booknumber=”0803281951″]

[rating:4/5]

The second book in Ralph Moody’s series about his childhood, starting with Little Britches, picks up where the first left off with Ralph now being eleven years old and becoming the “man of the family” in the wake of his father’s death.

While having a lot of the same strong messages and themes that Little Britches had, namely morality, hard work, honesty, and the meaning behind being a respectable man, this book took a much lighter tone even if it had a dark beginning. With the family’s main form of income gone his mother starts up a cookery route, and with the help of all the children they do odd jobs around town to help earn money to get by. Meanwhile Ralph’s mother refuses to let Ralph drop out of school no matter how tight that made things at home, he wanted to be the man of the family and earn money full time at a man’s wage, but instead he had to learn patience and to think of long term consequences to his actions. Good lessons for life.

[openbook booknumber=”0803281781″]

[rating:4/5]

Ralph Moody, similar to the style of Laura Ingalls Wilder, wrote a series of books about his life dating back to 1906. His first book, Little Britches, starts when he is eight years old and his family moves from New Hampshire to Colorado to start life on a ranch out west. His father’s health isn’t so great, so fresh air and wide open spaces was what the doctor ordered. They arrive to find things not quite as they were lead to believe. But, through hard work and ingenuity they find a way to make things work, for a little while. Ralph never really knew his father before then, but with Ralph the closest thing to another man to rely on his father started working with him and teaching things he would need to know to grow up and “build a house of character”. Between these lessons, and some others he learns the hard way, Ralph grows and talks about his experiences out west at the turn of the century.

[openbook booknumber=”0828104913″]

[rating:2/5]

Since I had started to develop a new found interest in the regency period I decided I wanted to know a bit more about the political events of the period. These almost always surrounded the Napoleonic wars, of which I knew embarrassingly little. So I picked up a book called The Age of Napoleon.

This book is part biography, part history book as it tells the story of Napoleon in the context of the times he was in: political, cultural, military, economic and social.