Balancing Acts

Book #24: The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation by Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colon.

I got this book at NCTE, too. I've put off reading it, but it was gripping - especially at the beginning when they were talking about that day. They really did an amazing job of it and used the graphic novel form to their advantage: the four planes are shown as parallel timelines, so you can compare what happened when (and who knew what when) or follow one flight all the way through and then read the next.

That's my analytic response. My emotional response is that I was crying as I read it. I didn't think I would, but it was almost a flashback experience.

The authors have a statement on Amazon about why they chose to write this version in the form of a graphic novel. It's great - it compares comics to the cave paintings at Altamira. Nice.

From the last paragraph of the forward, written by the chair and vice chair of the 9/11 Commission: "The safety and security of our country require a well-informed public to hold its elected leaders to account. Have our leaders done all that they can and should to protect the American people? It is up to each of us to insist that they do. As we stated in our original preface to the commission report, we hope that this graphic version will encourage our fellow citizens to study, reflect--and act."

Yes. Absolutely. On all counts: that we need a "well-informed public" and that we should "hold [our] leaders to account" and that we should work to protect ourselves from terrorist attacks. Yes. And, that is not enough. It is a delicate and difficult balancing act: to protect us from terrorist attacks... and from attacks on our civil rights.

Book #25: Judith Viorst's Alexander and the Wonderful, Marvelous, Excellent, Terrific Ninety Days.

I needed something silly, family-oriented, stable, real, and non-terrifying to balance out the 9/11 Report. This was it.

The funny thing is that when I ordered it online from the library, I was mad at her for her title. I was a little appalled that she'd so clearly plagiarized from one of my favorite books from when I was little: Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.

I guess that's what happens when you pick a book without looking at the cover! I was embarrassed and relieved when I read on the front cover that SHE wrote that amazing children's book. And then I read the inside front cover, and it asked: "Whatever became of Alexander after that famously bad day? And did you know that Judith Viorst is his mother?"

The subtitle of this book says it all: An Almost Completely Honest Account of What Happened to Our Family When Our Youngest Son, His Wife, Their Baby, Their Toddler, and Their Five-Year-Old Came to Live with Us for Three Months.

I loved her tone: honest, funny, admitting that she was perhaps a little bit obsessed with the cleanliness of her many velvet-covered chairs. I liked it best when she talked about her own family. She added a bunch of anecdotes at the end of the book about other people's experiences with living in a three-generation homes, and I didn't enjoy them quite as much (although some of them were quite funny).

I also loved the quote on the page before the first chapter, attributed to Sayings of the Jewish Buddhist: "Be here now. Be someplace else later. Is that so complicated?"

Well, yes. It is complicated for me... but I'm working on it! It's also complicated for our government... and we all need to work on that.