Books

A few weeks back Elliot brought Call It Courage (1941) by Armstrong Sperry home from school to read.  From Wikipedia:

Call It Courage is a coming of age story set in the Pacific Islands. It chronicles the journey of Mafatu, the son of the chief of Hikueru Island. Mafatu is afraid of the sea due to witnessing his mother drown as a young child, which makes him a shame to his father, and a coward among his tribe. One night Mafatu takes a dugout canoe and sets sail into the ocean without knowing where he will end up.

Elliot loved it which sparked interest in Finn.  I checked out the book on cd from the library for Finn and me.  Finn loved it too (calling it one of the best he’s ever read).  It’s got plenty to engage a little boy’s imagination: battling sharks and wild boars, fleeing “eaters of men,” etc.

I recently finished reading the 3rd book in the Twilight series, Eclipse.  I think I liked this one a little more than the previous one although I thought the latter portion was kind of a let-down…stuck with the people waiting for the action to be over rather than with the action that we’d been headed towards.

I enjoyed reading Twilight enough that I continued on with reading and then recently going to see New Moon (2009,PG-13) with Lisa.  From ScreenIt!:

A teen must not only contend with her vampire boyfriend suddenly dumping her and moving away, but also the discovery that her best friend is a werewolf.

I pretty much felt the same about this one as the first one.  The book was enjoyable enough, and the film was tolerable as a companion to the book.

I give it 3 out of 5.

On our 15th anniversary cruise back in July, Twilight (2008,PG-13) was showing in the ship’s theater.  I’d been planning to read it anyway (if the ladies occasionally watch football with us, we can occasionally read about romantic vampires), so I knocked the book out over a few days before watching it with the Crumps.  From ScreenIt!:

After relocating to a small town to live with her dad, a teenager meets and ends up falling for a teenage vampire who's torn between his love for her and his appetite for her blood.

I didn’t love the book or anything, but it was enjoyable enough.  Having read the book also made the film more interesting than it would have been otherwise.

I give the film 3 out of 5.

Back during the summer I read Warren St. John's "Outcasts United: An American Town, a Refugee Team, and One Woman's Quest to Make a Difference."  From the book's web site:

Outcasts United is the story of a refugee soccer team, a remarkable woman coach and a small southern town turned upside down by the process of refugee resettlement.

In the 1990s, that town, Clarkston, Georgia, became a resettlement center for refugees and a modern-day Ellis Island for scores of families from war zones in Liberia, Congo, Sudan, Iraq and Afghanistan. The town also became home to Luma Mufleh, an American-educated Jordanian woman who founded a youth soccer team to help keep Clarkston’s boys off the streets. These boys named themselves the Fugees -- short for refugees.

Outcasts United follows a pivotal season in the life of the Fugees, their families and their charismatic coach as they struggle to build new lives in a fading town overwhelmed by change. Theirs is a story about resilience in the face of extraordinary hardship, the power of one person to make a difference and the daunting challenge of creating community in a place where people seem to have so little in common.

I never played organized soccer, but I've had more interest in the sport as adult between following the World Cup and the boys each playing one or two seasons every year.  The combination of the descriptions of youth soccer and the inspiring story of Luma doing whatever she can to make a difference in those kids lives makes for enjoyable reading.