Books that Tug at My Heartstrings

 

I haven't come across children's books that tug at my heartstrings in a long time!

 

I could so identify with Brian, the invisible boy.

He often felt unattended to by the teacher who was too busy managing the difficult children and tending to the vocal ones.

He felt out of place sitting in the midst of chatty classmates who talked about the party he was not invited to.

 

Until Justin, a Korean boy, joined the class. The friendly boy was laughed at over the name of his packed lunch but Justin quietly wrote a note telling him his food looked tasty.

In return, Justin befriended Brian and invited him to join him in a group project.

As Brian felt noticed and included, he started to have colours on him.

Eventually, Brian became a part of his class like the rest of the children.

I showed the book to Baby as she had told me she went for recess alone. 

I told her I liked the book because I felt like Brian sometimes, and I asked her if she ever felt like him too.

She said yes, especially during recess.

Oh, I feel so sorry for Baby. Apparently, an unkind girl had asked other girls not to be Baby's friends.

I encouraged her to befriend other girls but she said that she had tried to and she did not like to hang out with 'boring friends'.

A tricky problem I see there.

 

Last Stop On Market Street tells of a story about kindness.

Grandma would take CJ to a soup kitchen, a charitable organisation which prepared food for the needy, every week after church.

 

Whenever CJ asked a question, Grandma always had a wise and beautiful answer to it.

 

Coco had done CIP (community involvement project) at a soup kitchen locally. She felt exhausted just washing vegetables for hours. I thought it interesting that soup kitchen is a borderless organisation that helps the poor.

 

The last book, Sumi's First Day Of School Ever, is about Sumi's fears on her first day at school.

She was worried that the teacher and friends would be unkind.

But as she interacted with the teacher and friends, she realised things were not as bad as she had imagined. 

And she started to enjoy school.

The book reveals the inner world of children whose fears should not be dismissed. It would be apt for children who are going to school for the first time, or even Primary One.

All in all, these three books are highly sincere children's literature that aim to identify with children's vulnerable feelings, especially The Invisible Boy and Sumi's First Day Of School Ever. A good read anytime!

The Alchemist

 

I first knew about this book from Amy Cheung's (张小娴) novel 《情人无泪》.

It mentioned a powerful quote in Chinese and I quote it here:

当你真心渴望某样东西时，整个宇宙都会联合起来帮助你完成。

When you want something, all the universe conspires  to help you achieve it.

I have read The Secret so this statement is a strong reminder of the law of attraction.

Instead of using the book's directly translated title 《炼金术士》,  Cheung calls it by the other name《牧羊少年奇幻之旅》. It made the book sound magical. 

However, it took me a long time before I decided to pick this book up to read because it sounded like a thick book, which anyone would suspect since it was read by a prolific writer.  I haven't had time for thick Chinese books so all the more, the idea of reading a thick English book put me off.

But being on no-pay leave gives me a lot of time to do what I have always wanted, such as doing parent-volunteer work and reading. So I was at a public library last Saturday when I re-read one of Cheung's novels and came across this quote again. The male and female protagonists boasted to each other about how young they were when they read The Alchemist, 11 being the younger of the ages. I thought it should not be too challenging a read if an eleven-year-old Hong Konger could read it, even if she is a fictional, gifted character.

The book proved to be quite a rather spiritual read. It has an innocuous beginning about a shepherd boy Santiago who had a recurrent dream in which he was transported to the Egyptian Pyramids and decided to travel there after an old gypsy interpreted his dream and told him that he would find a treasure there that would make him a rich man. 

The book delves into the supernatural at different points, which I am not sure whether they should be classified under 'occult' or simply 'fantasy'. Since I don't believe in man being able to communicate with the desert, wind and sun, or being able to turn himself into a destructive wind for an army, and I do not wish to take everything too seriously, I would classify it under 'fantasy'.

It has some elements of witchcraft or sorcery I thought, with the reference to the Philosopher's Stone in which a small sliver of the stone can transform lead into gold and the shepherd boy having the ability to see into the future, albeit for once. Again, I take it as 'fantasy' but I must admit the frequency of the supernatural talks is somewhat disturbing. Perhaps it disrupts the equilibrium in-built in me since I learnt about the dangers of occult activities as young as 14. 

All these supernatural talks about Soul of the World, following your heart aside, I think there are some arresting segments that capture the very element of human nature:

The crystal merchant who did not want to realise his dream of pilgrimage to Mecca even though he became rich enough to "Because it's the thought of Mecca that keeps me alive. ... I'm afraid that if my dream is realized, I'll have no reason to go on living."

"I just want to dream about Mecca. I'd already imagined a thousand times crossing the desert, arriving at the Plaza of the Sacred Stone ... But I'm afraid that it would all be a disappointment, so I prefer just to dream about it."

He also turned down the shepherd boy's proposal of expanding his crystal business at first because "you are forcing me to look at wealth and at horizons I have never known. Now that I have seen them, and now that I see how immense my possibilities are, I'm going to feel worse than I did before you arrived. Because I know the things I should be able to accomplish, and I don't want to so."

The crystal merchant is a representation of most of the people in the world. We are afraid to take the first step to realise our dream because we are afraid that we would be disappointed. We are also afraid to step out of our comfort zone and attempt challenging circumstances. I see myself in what he says and identify with him in so many ways.

I also like the many worthy quotes in the book:

There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.

Life is the moment we're living right now.

No matter how many detours and adjustments it made, the caravan moved toward the same compass point. Once obstacles were overcome, it returned to its course, sighting on a star that indicated the location of the oasis.

I think what's intriguing about the book is that the writer himself went through the uncanny process of following his Personal Legend and persisted in having this book published by another publisher when the original decided to cut losses by cancelling their contract after seeing pathetic sales of not more than three books within a year. The book was subsequently read and raved by famous celebrities, Madonna and Will Smith, and everybody was suddenly talking about it. It became a huge success unforeseen by Coelho himself.

It is not a difficult read and I finished it within half a day interrupted by different activities. 

Wow, I just realised I typed a thesis about the book when it's meant to be a short review! Perhaps it's the magical power of the book at work:

When you want something, all the universe conspires  to help you achieve it.

Going On the Reading Adventures With Mooty

I saw an ex-colleague talking about these books with her friends on Facebook and they mentioned that they had read these books as children. 

I have never read these books myself so my curiosity was piqued. The next thing I knew, I had borrowed all five of them home from the library for Baby to read them.

When Coco was at Baby's age, she had finished reading all the Harry Potter books available in print.  She had gone on to thick and wordy children's literatures such as The Secret Garden and The Outsider and was scavenging the house and rummaging my cupboard for books to read. At P4, she was reading the study guide for Jane Eyre. The only books that threw her off were Hamlet and Volpone that were in Shakespearean language. 

I had tried to get Baby to read wordier children's books in vain. The only book she was willing to read on her own accord was Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes which was recommended by her P1 English teacher to the P4 pupils. I simply told Baby that her English teacher had recommended the book (without the part on P4 pupils) and she read it without a qualm. She even enjoyed it. Unfortunately, her good experience with the book strangely did not manage to whet her appetite for similar books.

I began to accept that Baby is a different child from Coco and that not every child progresses in reading in the same way. 

I decided that the love for reading is more important than the progress in reading age, so I made up my mind to be happy to borrow picture books for her. If these are the books she wants to read, so be it. After all, I enjoy these books myself!

These Mooty books are very simple books meant for young children aged before or up till 6. Simple words and simple structures generally.

Each book consists of two stories eg. Book Five has Mooty Falls In Love and Mooty Has a Son so they make for very quick and simple read. 

 

Book One actually features the local context ie. Mooty and the Satay-man. It fosters a familiar tie with the local reader. 

 

The other title is Mooty and Grandma which is the introductory story, and it represents the common fear and detest for a mouse by a grandmother in a candid way.

 

Book Two is about how Mooty Moves Out to find a place where he belongs, and there is a display of wit and courage in the next story Mooty Saves a Life.

 

In Book Three, Mooty Goes to School talks about the importance of literacy and mathematical skills in a simple manner ie. Mooty felt inferior that his younger friends could read, write and count but he could not, but his diligence was greatly rewarded when he worked harder than his friends who had a headstart.

 

After studying comes play. The next story Mooty Plays Hide-and-Seek is an educational story about how lizards' tails would grow back themselves after they drop off.

 

Book Four incorporates the space elements in which Mooty goes to space ie. Mooty and the Spacemen and Mooty the Space-Mouse.

 

 

The easy-to-understand storylines coupled with cute illustrations make for an enjoyable read. In fact, Baby liked the books so much she did not want to return them immediately after finished reading them. I am happy with these books because they open my mind to be more accepting to having Baby read simple books.

It appears these books have a Chinese-translated version as well but I will do well with developing Baby's love for reading for now.

A Good Read in a Long Time

I bought this book just today and devoured it like a hungry ghost (pun intended) within a few hours.

I came across this book on kiasuparents forum on a thread titled 'How to motivate my girl'. The author maintains a blog which shares her method and insights on how to teach Chinese to a potato kid. I am greatly inspired by her method. For someone who got distinctions for Chinese from PSLE to A level, I am blind to what a potato kid like Coco doesn't know or see in Chinese. I am not able to suss out weak points to rectify eg. language structures, grammar structure. I couldn't understand why it was so difficult to construct a Chinese sentence since it is a comparatively more fluid and colloquial language than English.

She got her son to memorise model Chinese compositions for a start.

And to a large extent, I agree to the method even though I am a hardcore Chinese reader who believes in reading quickly and widely for the best effect.

I got Coco to emulate the learning process. It was just about the fastest way to get her to see that she had missing links and structural errors in her writing. I really appreciate that.

This book is not really about teaching you to teach.

It is about strategies to get the child to be motivated on his own, and in turn, want to study for his own enjoyment. It sounds unbelievable, right? It's a bit late to try them out on Coco, but I'll try them out on Baby for sure.

However, I realised that there are some strategies that I have used here and there, and sometimes I don't follow them through thinking that they don't work.

The book also emphasises on the need for adults to have self-control when implementing the strategies ie. body language, expression, voice since children are especially sensitive to adults' reactions. It increases my awareness of the need for an adult to be sensitive to the kids.

And she said this: It's the parent's fault when the child is unmotivated.

Oh my goodness! All along, I believe that it is the child's fault since motivation is innate. But she gives examples of how she 'manipulates' her son and daughter to be self-motivated and shows that a motivated child is the work of successful parenting.

The book is a must-read, must-get. It is not out at bookstores yet, so you can only buy it via her blog.

$25 per copy. But it's really worth it! Parents and educators should get it!

Review on Puppy Money 小狗钱钱

I devoured this book within 2 or 3 hours yesterday in between my late lunch.



The Chinese synopsis, straight from the back of the book:
吉娅是一个普通的12岁女孩，一次偶然的机会，她救助了一只受伤的小狗，并给它取名叫“钱钱”。没想到，钱钱居然是一位深藏不露的理财高手，它彻底改变了吉娅一家人的财富命运……“欧洲第一理财大师”博多·舍费尔用生动的理财童话，教会你如何从小学会支配金钱，而不是受金钱的支配；如何像富人那样思考，正确地认识和使用金钱；如何进行理财投资，找到积累资产的方法，早日实现财务自由！
What it's about:
Jiya is a 12-year-old girl who lives with her financially strapped parents. She loves dogs and finds an injured dog lying just outside her house one day.
Subsequently, the dog becomes her pet and she named the dog '钱钱', inspired by the father's exasperated lament of 'Money! Money! ...'
One day, she discovers that the dog could talk and communicate with her. The dog goes on to become her finance educator. He teaches her about the four laws of success, gets her to list her three most important dreams and pen down her each successful step. He also teaches her about wealth distribution and accumulation. One thing leads to another and Jiya becomes a little rich girl by the end of the book.
It's written by 博多·舍费尔, apparently a renowned financial expert who gives wealth management talks and writes books educating people and children about finance management around the world. I thought it strange though, that I am not able to find an English translation for even his name. Not in wikipedia either.
There are some sound advice in the book though:
1) Save 10% to 50%, depending on one's comfort level, of your income.
When it says 'save', it really means 'savings'. That means you don't touch it whatsoever. Not saving up to buy anything. It's purely for savings purpose, so that it can eventually be your goose which lays golden eggs. The idea behind this is to make your money work for you eventually.
An adult financial advisor Jiya meets in the book advised her to save at least 10%, but both Jiya and the financial advisor save up 50% of their income.
2) Set aside money for your dreams.
Whatever dreams you have, set aside a separate account or piggy bank for it and save up separately from your goose savings.
Jiya has two dreams: to go to California for a holiday and to buy a laptop.
She saves up 20% of her income for each of her dreams. In total, she saves 40% of her income for these two dreams.
She spends 10% of her income as pocket money.
3) List the 3 most important dreams you have
It teaches you to focus on what is important and work towards it. The dog 钱钱said that most people focus on what they can't do and earn money by that. They feel that they should not make money by doing what they enjoy.
I was shocked to read that, because that's me! I reflected on what it says and thought about my past jobs, my past experiences. Haven't I been focusing on what I can't do and try to be better at them? And I am trying to do this to Coco! She loves painting, and I don't approve of her painting and drawing. *Gasp!*
Haven't I thought the same way too? That one should not get paid for doing what one loves. Oh dear! I haven't realised how scary this mindset is till yesterday.
4) Start a 'Success Diary' and list the positive steps you have made every day
I find that a challenge, as predicted by钱钱. I will try, but I have to start doing that really soon. In his words, if you don't start on an idea within 72 hours, you will never start on it.
5) Poverty gives people more problems than wealth does.
If you can't handle the little money that you have, you can't handle big money when it comes, and big money will not come your way if you can't handle the little money that you have.
Many think that money is the root of all evils, which many others know is not true. We say that, instead, the love of money is the root of all evils. However, the book says that it depends on the character of the person who handles the money. If it is a good person, he will use wealth to everyone's benefit; if it is a person of a bad character, he will only use it in foolish or evil ways. And stolen money will never last. Robbers and thieves think that money will solve their problems, but in fact, they will find themselves having more problems than ever after the crimes.
For a finance idiot like me, this is a great read. It educates me on the things I knew but never realised the impacts. It is supposed to be a fairytale version of 'Rich dad poor dad'. However, I have never read the adult and realistic version of it, so I'd never know.