Birthdays Books

Better Than Life is a great read for anyone who has a family that's less than perfect. The Connar family is both hilarious and realistic as it prepares for Min's 90th birthday party. Aubrey, the son living at home with Min, has to contend with her excentricities and tendency to 'die' every once in a while.

The small town they live in is filled with characters and secrets and stories that will engage the reader as the story progresses to the big birthday party. Jurgen Gothe sums it up very well on the back cover:

"What could be better than this? The finer points of Belgian doughnuts, fried chicken wars, papier-maché squirrels; small town intrigue, outrage and inter-municipal plottery; great convoluted characters and relationships, not a little looniness and quite a lot of real pain. Part colour cartoon, part small town soap opera, part neurosis case book. Sum total: big time winner."

Excuse my asking, did anyone notice the illustrator's choice of scribbling? We checked many books ilustrated by Rosanne Litzinger and we cannot figure out why she chose to mark the pages the way she did. We were thinking that maybe it was an accident until we saw the cover and it was the same as the paper cover. Then we read about the iluustrator and noticed that she loves children's books, so we were thinking that she probably asked a child to help her. We then read the deication page and read that it was dedicated to children, but we are still wondering why the artist chose to scribble scrabble. We think the colors have something to do with the story and how people feel in the book. Maybe blue means sad, and red means happy It could be the smell. Maybe she drew it as the smell. We really like the way the author used big, tremendous words for the three vice presidents. It is a good book for questioning work. Our class had at least 100 questions. The one we thought about the most was the question about the illustrations. I think this is a good book for kindergartners to read. We are in third grade and everyone liked this story.

This is such a wonderful idea and a tradition that I am looking forward to starting...the Birthday Book is a gift for my best friend from college and years later and thousands of miles apart, we will have this opportunity to share our most treasured thoughts and dreams year after year after year! I am really looking forward to presenting this beautiful, suede book of "future" memories...

My daughters, ages 3 & 2 just adore this book - I'm not sure why! Maybe it's because they love to sing "ring around the rosy" along with me as I read, maybe because it's such a sweet, charming story, or because the illustrations are so colorful (in a pastel sort of way) and so child-like. I love the illustrations, by Hiroe Nakata who also illustrated one of my all-tiem favorites "Tell Me My Story, Mama". Anyway, it's a charming story and is sure to be a hit with any little girl.

I found this book in my parents library; it had been there while I was growing up. 30 years later I wanted to find out what it was about.
The premise of the story starts with a lot of dialog between the characters that will play into the story line. Mostly political discussions into what they feel is happening to their country. I found this a little hard to follow; the names were complex,ie everyone had several different names and professions. Most importantly we see the evolution of Hitlers germany through the views of the residents, a family running an industrial business. Later the characters come together and try to influence each other in their way of thinking and what is best for the future of their business regardless of the outcome of the war. They were deciding what is the more important values they wished to retain.
The story spans the years 1939 to 1945. Most interesting is how the characters evolved based on things that were happening to their country; changing their minds often to fit the mood of what was happening.
It all comes together in the end as the allied forces are approaching the city of Berlin; they must decide what will become of them and how they will be judged for their activities the past few years.
A very complex story, yet quite simple.
Most of all, this is the first story I have read that actually shows the feeling of the German people who were drawn into a war that they didn't fully understand and feared what would happen to them in the end and therefore were planning what to do after the enevitable loss of Germany.

In The Birthday Party, a musician who escapes to a dilpidated boarding house becomes the victim of a ritual murder in which everyone -- assassins, victim, and observers -- implacably plays out the role assigned him by fate. In The Room, a derelict boarding house again becomes the scene of a visitation of fate when a blind Black man suddenly arrives to delivery a myseterious message.

This edition was revised in 1968 and has 8 pages of photographs from the original London production.

In the book's description, it was described to be a hardcover. However, when I received it, it was a large paperback book. The content of the book is excellent. I was just disappointed in the look of the book.

Birthday Stories, edited by Haruki Murakami, is a slight dose of morphine for those who are waiting for the English translation of his latest novel, Kafka on Shore. This "timeless anthology" of short stories brings the readers to see birthdays at different angles. There are sober birthdays, and also sweet ones. Stories are selected to provide a wide range of writing styles, from contemporary writer Andrea Lee and Ethan Canin to the famous Raymond Craver, Paul Theroux and Murakami himself. Personally, my favourite picks in the book include: "The Moor" by Russell Banks (a man meeting a woman accidentally on her birthday thirty years later and a love affair involving an age difference of decades is revisited); "Timothy's Birthday" (about how Timothy draws away from his parents after his homoosexual partner died in the previous year); "The Birthday Cake" by Daniel Lyons (a mother who insists on not giving away a cake for their children who are not coming home for celebration); "The Bath" by Raymond Craver (the parental worries on concern on the car accdient of their beloved birthday son; the ending is particularly thought-provoking) and "Close to the Water's Edge" by Claire Keegan (an eminent Harvard student failing to change his lifestyle on his birthday).

The first book I picked up by Ethan Canin was his collection of short stories called The Palace Thief. His writing style already haunted me at that time. What amazes me more in his "Angel of Mercy, Angel of Wrath" is his fast-paced plot and the delicate treatment of the psychology of a paranoid and ignored birthday mother. The dialogues are simple but powerful, short by revealing.

Let's talk about the dose of Murakami morphine. His story "Birthday Girl" is simple and consise to bring out the message that no matter what we wish on our birthdays, we are still what we are. Wishes for a change in fact do not, or cannot, change anything at all". This is similar to the everything-happens-for-a-reason theory in Wild Sheel Chase. The birthday girl in the story does not tell the narrator what she wished on her 20th birthday. Does it matter? Her life still goes on like normal.(Remind me of the ending shot in Lost in Translation!)

This anthology is a fast-read. All the stories in the anthology are very solid, nothing pretentious. It is definitely one of the books you may pick out if you have no dates on the forthcoming birthday - a great birthday companion. What should be mentioned here is the poem (or lyrics?) written by Paul Simon at the beginning of the anthology - "Have a good time". How many of us really had a good time on our past birthdays? Or how many of us expected so? Will we have a (un)happy birthday next year? We don't know. But the characters in the stories tell us that they have something to grasp on theirs - the readers.

A fine book for 3-7 year-olds about a small boy Timothy, who wanted to give his mother a special birthday present. So, in the kitchen he begins creating a "birthday thing". That is to say, with the help of his older sister, brother, and dad, a bizzare oven-baked creation that would make lesser people laugh. His mother takes the high road, and is delighted with his creation, and makes wonderful use of it. Sort of a "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder" story.

Very nice illustrations, and story length.

The words "Illustrated by Barry Root" on a dust jacket immediately tell me that young eyes will find some very special pictures accompanying a story. That is certainly true of The Birthday Tree, a mythic tale filled with birds, landscapes, and billowy clouds all rendered in Root's warm watercolors.

As the story opens a sailor and his wife had "lost three sons to the waves," so they are leaving the sea far behind. When at last they reach a green valley where the sailor can no longer hear the sea, smell it or even see it with his spyglass, they build a little house.

In time they have another son whom they call Jack, and they plant an apple seedling to commemorate his birth. Jack and the tree grow tall and strong together. In fact, they almost seem as one because "the branches of the tree hung heavy when was Jack sad. When he was happy, the limbs stood out straight and proud...."

Although the sailor and his wife never spoke of the sea to Jack they sensed he was curious about it, and one morning Jack was gone. There was a meadowlark sitting atop the apple tree which they took as a sign that Jack was traveling over land. Then one day a white gull took the meadowlark's place and they knew Jack had gone to sea. Of course, they were worried and lonely without him.

Their fears were realized one night when a storm came up and lightning struck the tree cracking a limb that fell to the ground - they knew Jack had been in a shipwreck. They could only watch and wait as the branches of the tree drooped and its leaves curled.

Finally they couldn't bear to look at the tree any longer and decided to move to a place where people had never even heard of the sea. At this point author Fleischman has a surprise in store for them and for readers as well.

The Birthday Tree is a unique, imaginative tale that both youngsters and parents will enjoy.

- Gail Cooke