I Love The Christmas Pig

 A Book Review

The Christmas Pig

By JK Rowling

Illustrated by Jim Field

When I was a child, I had a steadfast friend in the stuffed chimpanzee which once graced my mom’s college bedroom. I renamed it Judy after the chimpanzee in a tv show called Daktari, and soon I could not be separated from my friend. I played with her and cried with her and when nothing else could help, her hugs always did. 

My parents quickly became expert at the game of hide and seek required to discover the many places our adventures deposited my Judy.  I never remembered by bedtime where she had been snuggled last, but I knew I’d be eaten by the monster in the closet if she wasn’t holding my hand as I slept. Our milk was delivered to an insulated silver box on the front porch and Judy thought it was the perfect place to catch a nap.

“Der Pig, DP,” is so much like my old friend. And my friend, Judy now wears her Harry Potter Gryffindor robes quite proudly in spite of controversy surrounding JK Rowling. I have to say, I love Hogwarts and the world of magic as much as I loved Judy. I don’t agree with Rowling’s stand on the issues of gender identity, but I still love the world she created and where I spent so many hours with my two sons as we read all the books and saw all the movies together. Now my granddaughter is starting to find her way to identifying with the book loving Hermione and I will be happy to watch that journey wether or not she later decides that she isn’t as feminine as the winter ball version, but perhaps finds herself in one of the other shades of the gender rainbow. I have so many friends who felt hurt and betrayed byJK Rowling’s words that I have to acknowledge that here. The more they loved Harry Potter and found themselves in Hogwarts, the more her failure to defend them hurt. I see them, and have tried separating that betrayal from the stories and movies she created. 

From the moment I finished reading a Harry Potter story, I longed for the next, and once there were no nexts arriving, I tried the other books written by this author, but while they were well written, they were not magic. I never wanted to reread one. I liked the characters but forgot them once I closed the book. 

But in the Christmas Pig I found it again; The magical stuffie that could be so filled with love and tears and secrets that it was alive, The characters who stayed with me and had to be shared with my sons and the grandkids, and the book that begs to be reread again - out loud, with friends and family. 

Jack and Der Pig share so much love that it is heartbreaking tragedy when they are separated and only a night of miracles, and sacrifice and hope can turn that tragedy into something that makes everything better.  

Lumos

A Review of A Casual Vacancy

     Of course all the reactions that are in all the other reviews of this book happened for me.  I was delighted that JK Rowling Was going to be publishing another book.  I was sad and unbelieving and hopeful and worried when I heard that it would not be part of the Harry Potter universe.  I am after all a functioning, adult woman, who just happens to also be a major Potterhead.
     I actually didn't start out loving Harry Potter.  That seems unreal to me now, but I remember thinking that the characters were stereotyped and the story itself was unoriginal and merely a rewriting of old stories.  Then I fell in love and never looked back.  So I trusted Rowling, and when I started the new book, I was willing to keep going even though I did not really like the Casual Vacancy.  I still didn't like it by 100 pages in and I was having a hard time keeping the characters straight.  The book has no clear central character and the view point changes from one section to another and back again so you never get to know enough about one group of people in the first introduction to have them firmly in your mind the next time they appear.  It was a confusing feeling like the first week in a new town when you always wonder, "have I met this person before, should I recognize some details or is this all new?"
     I spoke to other people who were reading the book and found that we shared some of the same feelings and had some interest in the same characters, but agreed that they were not exactly people you would "like" or want to know in real life.  But "Real Life" is what this book is all about.  I found myself recognizing situations and people in a way that was a bit uncomfortable and gritty.  I flinched at some of the brutal detail and the language, but after 23 years teaching children and meeting their families, especially those in Severely Handicapped classes, none of the brutality sounded unreal or exaggerated.  JK Rowling's new book is not a magical escape but rather a confrontation with the part of town a lot of people prefer to avoid.
     By the time I finished the final chapter, and turned the back cover, and glanced once more at the author blurb, the final line of the back flap stood up and slapped me awake.  "She supports a wide range of causes and is the founder of Lumos, which works to transform the lives of disadvantaged children."

    Then I saw it, and I realized this book is very similar to Harry Potter after all.
     There is even a faint reference to Harry Potter in one line on page 81, " . . . once, (she dreamed of it, still), a child who had been locked in a cupboard for five days by his psychotic stepfather."

     So this book is, like Harry Potter, about fear and prejudice against those who are different, and about children who are unwanted, or even if wanted, neglected through ignorance and desperation.  There is much about Harry and Krystal Weedon that is similar, but then with Harry there was an owl, and a magic school and a quiddich team and friends with powers and hope.  There were teachers who saw potential and nurtured it.  For Krystal there is no magic owl, and the rowing team breaks up when the book begins with the one adult who saw her potential, dropping dead. Her peer friends were also 16 year old powerless foster kids. Life without the magic,

 but still trying to show that disadvantaged children are

really there, and we all need to stop looking away.
Let there be light.  Lumos.

Completed the Goodreads Giveaway and logged into Pottermore

This summer has been a busy one, as an author, a Mom, a Harry Potter Fan.  I'm sure that I have been driving people batty with my constant chatter about my having completed my second Duffy Barkley novel, and having been involved in a book giveaway contest on Goodreads in the hopes that a few more people would hear about my book and maybe the winners would give me a good review or a like somewhere, as that seems to be better than gold in the writerly mind.

 I posted about the competition, and kept checking on it, hoping at first that I'd get even 100 people who cared enough to fill in their address and enter.  100 more people knowing about my Fantasies and even expressing interest, that could not be a bad thing.  So I was waiting and surprised when the number crept up to 300/

 Then the other waiting, and refreshing pages, and driving my friends to distraction, had to do with Pottermore, and my insistence that if it was from JK Rowling, It had to be good.

I started on Harry's July 31, birthday, spending sleepless nights, chatting on twitter with other like-minded, sleep deprived hopefuls and managed to find the magic quill that unlocked the invitation to be one in a million Beta testes on the opening of the site before it goes public in October.

But then nothing.  Just waiting for my "owl" the invite to begin, and that email kept not coming, even as I chaffed at the bit and joined the #NoOwlParty on Twitter/

 and in the wonderful, real world, where, more important than anything, I am a Mom, to a recent High School grad. and a soon to start Senior Year, son - life was moving too fast.  The kids who had been in and out of our home for years were fading out of town to colleges and jobs and life needed to hit a pause where I could say, "Hey, It's been great, and sure it's changing, but we are still together, supporting and loving you."

So I managed to throw together a long weekend up at Howard Prairie Lake with family and friends.  We swam, and told bad jokes and hiked and boated and got filthy and stank of sweat and campfire smoke, and came home filled with fresh air and light.

Angel Fire

I took this picture of the kids by campfire and lantern light and found angels hovering near-by.

Morning View from my tent

It was 40 degrees hotter, and 4,700 feet higher in elevation than where I live, and it made me puff and pant for every breath when I tried to be active, unless I was in the water.  But every aching calf muscle is so worth it.

 The way the light sifted down through the dark forest and illuminated this little infant tree was glorious!

I didn't get an owl, bringing me my invite to Hogwart's but this little Chip or Dale sure tried to get the message through to my ice chest that he was hungry.

Mt. McLoughlin over Howard Prairie Lake

Then when I finally came home, refreshed and happy and back in touch with what mattered, I found that 503 people had entered the giveaway and The ones who won were from across the United States and one in Great Britain.  So today I was glad to get 10 books sent out, to the five winners, each getting both Duffy Barkley books and my best wishes.

Been waiting on an owl to Bring me my Pottermore Welcome.

 And with the teacher's back to work, and the young adults beginning new careers and starting college I decided I would have time to pick blackberries and raid the farmer's market and bake pies

BUT my OWL Came!!!  

And Here IT IS!!

 So suddenly I had no time, staying up all night and blearily exploring pottermore.  It is a strange blend of new and interesting reads about the characters and places I love in Harry potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, and very simple old school, preschool video games which remind me of 15 years ago when my kids were playing fisher price castle and pirate computer games, looking for map pieces instead of the chocolate frog cards and galleon coins I am searching for now.  I am an adult - but pottermore brings me a very childish delight as I get my Owl and my wand and

My Wand, proof I'm not a Muggle, just a Potterhead.

Got Sorted into Hufflepuff where you can find me, if you look for StarDawn199

Author of Duffy Barkley: Seek Well but currently seeking the formerly untold Ghost Plots of JK Rowling

Pottermore, More Writing,

Ok, I love that I got in to Pottermore as a Beta Tester, but I have to admit that the truth is that as exciting as it is to find new people on twitter who are all going as sleepless as I am, and all as excited as I am, and all trying to find the clues even after they get in, and hating waiting for the "Game ON'  --  I would rather be anxiously waiting for a new Potter Book.  I am curious about Pottermore, but I want more Potter, much more!

Come on JK Rowling, you can do it.  Write a series about the past at Hogwarts, tell us about the years when Tom was a student, and Hagrid, and Dumbledore taught transfiguration. Or the years when Harry's parents and Snape and Serius and Lupine and on and on.  Or go into the future and give us the world you hinted at in the end of book 7.

Pick up your magic quill and set the tip onto parchment and begin.

Please.

But!!!

How can I tell you to write when my keyboard has bee used exclusively for refreshing the pottermore page and tweeting?  I have a commitment to finish another book in August.  Not a Duffy Barkley book this time, but a book about two girls traveling on the Oregon trail, 150 years apart but sometimes able to see each other's journals in the lapdesk that they both own.  It is a magical box made by the Pharaoh's carpenter.

Why do I need to write it this month?  Because I am signed up to write it during the month of August for CampNaNoWriMo.  A month to write 50,000 words.  Yep, that NaNoWriMo site is where all my novels are conceived.

Let me share the prologue about the box.  From a book tentatively titled, Double Time on the Oregon Trail.  Here you go.

Prologue:  In the ancient days, of the proud kings of Egypt, dwelt one of the truly great minds of all times.  This fine mind was in the body of a common artisan, a craftsman, who slaved to produce the beautiful wooden work which was demanded by the nobles of the Egyptian court.  As he carved, and fitted, wooden chairs, and boxes, and tables, and intricate relief figures of all types, he had many quiet hours in which to reflect upon his thoughts.  This man lived in a world where everything was kept in its separate place.  Each person had their separate role, slave or noble, soldier or teacher.  Each part of life had its own God or Goddess, the sun, the earth, the seasons, even the land of the dead.  His niche in life was to create wooden art, on order.  It was not to think.  But still he thought.

     One day he received a beautiful piece of scented cedar wood.  He thought about how the cedar tree is part of many worlds.  He thought of its solid trunk standing strong in his world.  He thought of its roots reaching thirstily for nourishment into the underworld. He thought of its delicate twigs, anything but steady as they danced on the breezes in their reach through the heavens.  As he thought, he carved and polished and found himself crafting an amazingly plain, cedar lined, box with its slanted black ebony top sliding on and off the base along two perfectly grooved tracks.  He rubbed the box to a smoothness which pleased his fingers and a sheen which soothed his eyes.  He loved the box with is delicate perfume more than any other piece he had ever worked on.  Yet he knew that its simplicity would not attract any admiring glances from the nobles who fed and housed him.  So he set this one piece of all that he had ever crafted aside for himself.

     Over time his thoughts often turned toward his idea of unity between many parts of life.  While carving the stylized forms of many gods, he longed for One God.  While dreaming of the past or wondering about the future, there were moments when his mind jumped with the idea that all times were connected, somehow.  While carving falcons, or hounds, papyrus or Pharaohs, he struggled with the idea that all life is one.

     Sometimes, some little item would seem to speak to him out of its own special power and he would hold it close for awhile, then tuck it away in his box.  A special, Nile smoothed stone, a feather gleaming with a purple sheen, a piece of papyrus paper with hieroglyphs he had never learned to read but could almost understand.

     Sometimes his woodwork went to temples or to the tombs of kings, but the box never left his possession.  The kings he served struggled to find ways to preserve their bodies so that they might live forever and this humble woodworker with the scent of cedar in his skin, for all his grand thoughts never guessed that his simple box would travel farther and hold more of life, than all of his other works put together.