Zamba

With a creative beginning and a heart-tugging concussion, Ralph Helfer brings readers along on an incredible 18 year journey of his life with an African lion named Zamba.

This true story though tells more than the adventures they share together.  It is a story of a childhood dream of living with animals (from a boy in inner-city Chicago) and how that dream was lived out event after event.

Early on Ralph knew that love, not fear, was the way to effectively communicate with animals and he developed what he called "affection training".  He daily practiced affection training as he  raised up his little cub. Through the years over 1500 animals were also influenced by him and his effective training method.

In chapter 7 Ralph lays out the philosophy behind the training with the key elements which are:
LOVE: a total commitment to each other
PATIENCE: an infinite amount.
UNDERSTANDING: so we know each other's strenghts and weaknesses.
RESPECT: so we don't take advantage of each other.

The book is chronologically layed out and Ralph shares many insights to life as he saw it.  Through various events, triumphs and set-backs of life lived together, Zamba and Ralph grow and depend upon each other.  At times, if you tried, you could almost feel the splender of Zamba's great mane as you read.  Many thanks to Melanie and Sophie for recommending this story to me and I would recommend it to others that love animals the way that they do.

Zamba
Ralph Helfer
256 pages, hardback
2006

Beloved

In 1988 Toni Morrison's novel Beloved won the Pulitzer Prise for Fiction and is on Hannah's book list for an American Literature class at Baylor.  So when we saw the paperback for sale in a book barn after picking blueberries in Michigan, I paid the 4 dollars then in need of a story to captivate me during a migraine I began to read it, from the beginning, not looking at the back cover for hints of what I was in store for.  


After the first chapter I did not want to go forward nor did I want to put the story down.  Its poetic writing and convincing language took me in even as the pictures it painted were on a canvas of something I did not wanted to see.  The story was the story of a woman, and those in her family, both one generation older than her and one generation younger and it moved abruptly from past to present (post Civil War) and back again with most of the pages anchored in Cincinnati,  Ohio. There is not a whole lot of romance in this love story but the love is thick.


I have to agree with those that praised the extraordinary talent expressed in this novel. It took you right back to where you could taste, see and feel what was going on, to places i did not want to be, nor did i want anyone to have to experience, but to know that many did have lives like those in this story gives me much to think about.   Near the end of the book, a minor character makes on observation that I feel does a good job at summing up the story.  "The future was sunset; the past something to leave behind.  And if it did not stay behind, well, you might have to stomp it out.  Slave life; free life-everyday was a test and a trial."

this novel was indeed a trial for me to read.


Beloved
Toni Morrison
275 pages paperback
1988

The Story Teller ~ Promises

Promises was recommended to me by my friend Raffia who received it from our friend Kellie and although it has taken me forever to read (first started it on a plane to Burma, then took it on into China and finished it up in Thailand) I'm so glad that I read it on  through, enjoying several chapters as I hula-hooped.

The man with a hundred wrinkles tells the history of Israel in an ongoing camp-fire chat with small gathering of freinds from the People of Promise. He begins with king Jeroboam II all the way through to the birth of the One who "shall be a great king of the royal line of Shepherd. He shall conqueer every kingdom and heal every hurt and bring peace to the Blue Planet."

This book comes complete with a glossary for important names and places and the reading of the story then is fresh and intriguing.  Promises is one book of four in the Story Tellers Series.


Promises
by Steve Stevens
paperback 204 pages
2000

Ginger Pye

One day while at the Grace school library to pick up a book I had on hold, I saw a book that Beth Lewis had on hold (and she was not due back until after summer) and thought, I bet if Beth wants to read this it would be a good book and with Sophie (our dog lover) visiting, it seemed to be a good choice. However, life got really busy with our move and related things to end well in Chiang Mai and I did not get to finish this charming book...but maybe by posting it, I will not forget it and get to enjoy it again at a later time.

Written in 1951, we get a glimspe into the days of the Pye family as they bring a puppy named Ginger into their lives in Cranbury.
I have a feeling it would be a great great read- aloud to kiddos.
Jerry and Rachel are clever siblings and it looks like Ginger is a very clever addition to their family.  Even though I did not get to read it through, it was an interesting book and I like how they have an uncle younger than they are and one day all three kiddos worked to clean the church...how else were they able to get the money needed to buy the cute puppy?


Ginger Pye
by Eleanor Estes (author of Pinky Pye and The Moffats)
306 pages paperback
The book was originally published in 1951 and it won the Newberry Medal for excellence in 1952.

The Princess

If you are looking for a light, make-believe, modern-day fairy tale (but without the fairy, well other then Fairy Cakes, a white cake and frosting confection), then The Princess might be just the read for you. Hannah loaned to me her paperback copy saying I would like it.  Author Lori Wick never kept me from sleeping but the story was a great one to pick up and set down again, reading a page here, a chapter there until the happily ever after ending 294 pages later.  It all begins in the kingdom of Pendaran with a king and queen and a prince in need of a wife.
 
Interspersed throughout the the story is prayer for and from just about all of the major characters, who, by the way, are quite likable.

Without giving away too much, here is a little summary of a speech that Princess Shelby gave to the August Garden Club, for one of her new responsibilities is to be involved with kingdom events.  She begins with sharing how she grew up with memories of her parents enjoying their flower gardens each spring and how the sound of the honey bees would send her mother running for fear of being stung, but her father, who was deaf from birth did not flee the noise of the bees.  Shelby then goes on to say, "I found myself asking, 'What do I listen to that causes me to fear?  It might seem like a small thing to you, but over the years the sight of flowers or trees has often helped me remember to whom I should listen when it comes to the subject of fear..." You can read more of her garden talk on pages 84-85, and the response she receives from Prince Nikolai, who is still acutely mourning the death of his first wife as he is getting to know his second wife from an arranged marriage.

The Princess
Lori Wick
294 pages, paperback
1999 (republished in 2006)