old age sticks
up Keep
Off
signs)&
youth yanks them
down(old
age
cries No
Tres)&(pas)
youth laughs
(sing
old age
Scolds Forbid
den Stop
Must
n’t Don’t
&)youth goes
right on
gr
owing old
- by e. e. cummings
Happy New Year from all of us old librarians to all you growing-old teens!
“Joie de vivre” – a French expression translated as “joy of life”, defined on Wikipedia as “a joy of everything, a comprehensive joy, a philosophy of life, a Weltanschauung. Robert’s Dictionnaire says joie…involves one’s whole being.” (Mrs. D. kindly requests that you not tell the other librarians that she uses Wikipedia…some of them are a little, well, 20th century, you know…)
Mrs. D. is going to break with tradition and tell you NOT to read this book. DON’T read this book if you’re happy with your life, everything is coming up roses, and you are secure and confident in the direction your life is taking and your place in the world. SAVE this book for when life turns gray, and you need a good cheer-up. It will make you feel good about being human again.
Lily is in high school, the only sensible person in her muddled up family. She manages the meals and the household chores but resents it. Her father left and went to America when she was a baby, her mother keeps bringing old people home from work to stay over, her older brother Lonnie and grandfather are feuding over Lonnie’s inability to stick with any life plans he makes, her grandmother has an imaginary friend named Sef, etc. etc. etc. Everyone in this book is mad at a parent or child or grandparent or misunderstood by them or mad about being misunderstood by them. Misunderstandings abound in this book, but isn’t that part of being human? (Mrs. D. suspects that it is.)
How will this muddled up bunch of characters (and Mrs. D. has only mentioned half of them) untangle their knotted relationships? Dear Ms. Clarke (you’ve forgotten she is the author, haven’t you, but Mrs. D. is happy to remind you as many times as you need…), Ms. Clarke, who as Mrs. D. was just saying, is a gifted author who can make you feel that something good is coming, that there will be a happy ending after all, that chapter after chapter is building to an inevitable resolution of everyone’s difficulties, and yet even though this turns out to be true the ending is still simply glorious! You won’t want to miss it! Wait until you find out who Mrs. Nightingale really is – Mrs. D. almost forgot she works in a library and gave a joyous shout when she found out…(thankfully she remembered just in time – one doesn’t shout in the libary, does one?)
Is life really like this? Is there a happy ending for all of us? While reading this book, its hard not to believe that life should be, could be, will be this way if we just keep muddling along as best we can…hope keeps us going, doesn’t it?
So Mrs. D. recommends “One Whole and Perfect Day”, by Judith Clarke, because we all need to feel good about life and the possibilities it holds every once in a while.
By the way, Ms. Clarke (must Mrs. D. remind you again who she is?) is Australian (no, not that country in Europe, that’s Austria – she’s Australian, you know, kangaroos and koalas), and the book is chock full of Australianisms, if that’s a proper word. Mrs. D. is up-to-date enough to know that a “bestie” in Australia is what you youngsters these days call a “bff”. Such a lovely country, Australia is, remind Mrs. D. to tell you sometime about when she was stationed there during the war…
Mrs. D. has always been interested in languages, and fascinated by the different ways people have developed to communicate. Language, or the lack of understanding of another’s language, is a barrier to communication. But music is different. If you think of the singing human voice as an instrument designed to express emotion, you can enjoy music from other countries, even if you don’t understand the words.
Thanks to the Internet (how did we ever live without it?) it’s much easier to enjoy music from around the world. For example, Mrs. D. has been enjoying Imagine, her new Vox Angeli CD released earlier this month. Vox Angeli is a group of teens who sing in French – nice relaxing music suitable for librarians that no teen would ever like (But check out the Vox Angeli website or Myspace page if you must.) But one of the songs, Durch Den Monsun, is obviously German not French, and so Mrs. D. googled the title to find the lyrics and who wrote the song. (Helpful tip – to find song lyrics on google search for “lyrics” followed by the name of the song – lyrics is a fancy word for “the words of a song” but you knew that already didn’t you.)
And what did Mrs. D. find but that “Durch den Monsun” was written by someone called “Tokio Hotel”. You have probably heard of them but Mrs. D. hadn’t! Click here to see the lyrics. But what do they mean? Well, who cares, it’s a great song! But if you insist, you can copy the website URL and paste it into Google Language Tools, then have it translate the webpage from German to English. Click here to see the results. (Incidentally, this should show you why you must never use computer translations to do homework for your foreign language classes – they give you the general idea but they won’t fool a teacher.)
So, wondering who Tokio Hotel is, Mrs. D. googled and found their Wikipedia page here. (My, that Bill Kaulitz would scare your parents if you brought him home, wouldn’t he?) From Wikipedia we learn “Durch Den Monsun” was on the album “Schrei”, and that Tokio Hotel translated the song 2 years later as “Through the Monsoon” for the English release of the album “Scream”.
Mrs. D. loves music videos, so the next stop is Youtube, where she searched for “Tokio Hotel Durch Den Monsun” – the original German version recorded 2 or 3 years ago when Bill was 15. That’s it below.
So if you’d like to see the English version of the video click here, but Mrs. D. prefers the original. And click here to see the English lyrics. If you compare these to the lyrics translated by Google above you’ll see that human translators are way better than computers. (Mrs. D. blushes as she realizes she just said “way better” – please don’t tell your English teacher.)
Now some have described Tokio Hotel as “goth” or “emo” and Mrs. D. confesses she can’t tell the difference (although back in the day she could distinguish a hippie from a yippie at a glance.) So Mrs. D. relies on www.urbandictionary.com to keep up with the latest lingo. It’s definition of “emo” is:
Genre of softcore punk music that integrates unenthusiastic melodramatic 17 year olds who dont smile, high pitched overwrought lyrics and inaudible guitar rifts with tight wool sweaters, tighter jeans, itchy scarfs (even in the summer), ripped chucks with favorite bands signature, black square rimmed glasses, and ebony greasy unwashed hair that is required to cover at least 3/5 ths of the face at an angle.
Ha! Urban Dictionary is a hoot…but Mrs. D. has rambled on long enough for this posting. Did you learn anything from all of this?
Kirsten is feeling insecure at the start of the new school year at her private school. She has gained a lot of weight over the summer, her parents are arguing with each other all the time (divorcing?), and she seems to be losing her best friend who would rather hang out with the more popular crowd.
Of course, she’s not the only one feeling like an outsider. Walker is a new student and one of only three black students at the school. Matteo is embarassed because his mother works as a maid for one of the rich families at the school.
There is a huge and completely unexpected surprise 3/4 of the way through the book. But Dbrlteen does not tell secrets…
Maybe we can’t avoid judging each other by outside appearance – looks, clothes, weight, race, family income… but outsiders can start by connecting with each other. Kirsten and Walker start on page 3. How? Complete strangers, one says something, and the other answers. Not so hard if you’ll give it a try.
So Dbrlteen recommends If a Tree Falls at Lunch Period because the more connections we make with people different from us, the more we learn they’re not so different from us after all, and the richer we all are.
Visit Gennifer Choldenko’s website (She also wrote Al Capone Does My Shirts.)
Dbrlteen is reading “If a Tree Falls at Lunch Period”, by Gennifer Choldenko, which includes this great quote from James Thurber:
What are you running from? What are you running to? And what’s the big hurry anyway?
