review: Forest Born by Shannon Hale

genre: young adult

How lovely to spend a little more time in the Bayern world that Shannon Hale has created. I feel like her characters are old friends, and while they are living and growing, they're still familiar. Our main character in Forest Born is Rin, the sister of Razo. She's lived her life in the forest, among the trees, and is able to find a palpable peace within their cover. Well, it's peaceful until one serious mistake, and that one mistake leads to Rin meeting all of our old favorite characters in the city, far from home. When political unrest grows once again in Bayern, Rin feels unable to play a part in helping until she is able to find out who is that real girl inside her and what she's truly capable of.

This book feels much the same as Hale's other books - and yet, different. Rin has a much more sensitive spirit and she's almost a stranger to herself. So much of her story is a process of self-discovery, a searching to be helpful and real. The language of her quest for self is rich and earthy. She has so much to offer, so many intangible "gifts," and her relationship with Isi and Dasha and Enna really helps to widen her view of herself and her abilities. It's also an adventure story, with our favorite boys in the fray, of course. My only complaint is the smaller role that romance played in this one - but I can understand why Hale needed it this way. Rin has so much to learn, this almost feels more like a coming of age story than anything else. And for that, it's just right.

in which i am surrounded by book-lovers

cross posted on my personal blog...

Truly, a wonderful thing it is to spend some time at the National Book Festival in our nation's capital. My darling daughter joined me on this little adventure and what a great companion she was.

Our arrival on the mall at lunchtime meant that we hit probably the biggest crowds, but not to worry - they do a pretty fine job of organizing. Without too much hassle, we made our way over to wrestle up a couple giant purple bags from the C-SPAN wonder bus. Sheely was insistent that THIS was the first order of business for the day. However, I was distracted by two things along the way. FIRST, these awesome signs right near that glorious Washington Monument:
Isn't she cute?

And second, I had already brought with me three registered bookcrossing books that I was planning on handing out (perfect place, huh?) and as we walked along I saw a group of bookcrossers with wagons distributing books! Fortuitous, no? We had a nice chat, they told me about a group they have and I passed along one of my books. The other two I just handed out to strangers later on :)

SO. The giant purple bag to fill with loot. And fill it with loot we did, starting in the Pavilion of the States. Here, each state (and territory, actually - American Samoa? Puerto Rico? awesome) has a booth and you can gather info about local authors, literary sites, books set in that state and gather all kinds of bookmarks, pins, magnets, posters etc. etc. And BOOKLISTS, which thrilled me :) They also have a neat map of the country that you can take around to each booth and have them stamp your map! Sheely filled hers up in our two different visits there. She loved the soybean crayons from Nebraska and Utah gave away mint truffles from The Lion House!! Really, count on Utah to be the ONLY booth that gave away a refreshment :) I love it! At the North Carolina booth we got to put a sticker on our connection to the state - here's Sheely marking out where my in-laws live:After that, we wandered over to the PBS kids tent, but Sheely felt too old to get her pictures taken with the characters. We listened to the band for a while, though, and snagged some awesome green messenger bags. Then to the Target Pavilion where they handed out some SMOKIN red reusable grocery bags. LOVE those, heavy canvas and so Target-ish. I am such a fan of that store. They were the #1 sponsor of this event and you know what my friend Kellie realized later as we discussed? Target was also the #1 sponsor of the Shakespeare Free For All performance we went to. I love the programs that store supports. We should ALL patronize Target as much as possible. I know I do :)

Here is the 1st of 2 best parts of today's story. The only author I was willing to make my 9 year old daughter wait in line with me for a book signing was Shannon Hale. It's so rare and wonderful when you find an author whose every book makes you have a sigh of joy. I brought along the first book of hers I ever read just in the hopes that I could get my daughter to handle the wait. And who should I see as I was walking past the Children and Teens tent? Shannon Hale, standing and chatting just outside the tent with maybe a dozen people standing around. My heart had the thought that this was a SIGN that I was NOT meant to have to make my child wait in gigantic lines today!! So I waltzed myself over and waited my turn and met this fabulous lady.

And she is fabulous. Down to earth and lovely. She actually complimented me on my hair. I think my response was, "Um, you don't have to say that." And she didn't have to, but she did, and it's nice to know I'm not the only person who feels like my brown/gray hair deserves to live and let live. Anyway, we chatted for a moment because I also brought a long a copy of Forest Born that sweet Book Nut let me borrow (yes, from her home very far away). So we talked book blogging for a moment and we all agreed that Book Nut is a book review goddess :) She signed each of the books and then she graciously let me get a picture with her:That is fun, folks. Super fun. I honestly didn't know if the day could get any better but THEN!! I got to have a blogging buddy meet up. Stellar Tricia of Library Queue and I became fast friends oh so long ago on the blessed inter-web and we've tried on several occasions to be in each other's paths along this east coast. When she told me she'd be at the festival, it made my desires to get there increase one hundred fold. PLUS, she brought her 9 year old daughter along too!

Perfection, truly. Walking along near the cinnamon roasted almonds cart she found me and OH the joy! You know life is good when you hug a person you have never seen before in life and you feel just really pleased that the moment has finally come. We had long talks waiting in line for food and we had an al-fresco lunch right there on the grass of the mall. How wonderful that it wasn't awkward. I had a nice stranger take a picture of us:I call it "giant and three friends". Guess who's the giant :) HA! I actually really like it because we all look happy. Also, I like it because we aren't standing in front of the giant hamburger roasting tent like we were in the first picture we took. The Smithsonian Castle is MUCH more scenic :)

After we did the States tent some more with the girls, Sheely was ready to head home. She'd been such a great sport, it was just fine with me. We said goodbye to our new/old friends and walked in the rain back to the metro, filled with the kinds of memories that stay.

Review: Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins

genre: young adult

If you haven't read The Hunger Games already, I probably wouldn't read this review. Instead, I'd just get myself to the library and check myself out a copy of The Hunger Games so I could hurry and read that and then read this. As soon as possible.

Because WOW can Suzanne Collins write a zinger of an book. I love the political intrigue and the way that over and over again - she threw me for a loop. I loved the romantic interplay between Katniss and her boys (GO PEETA!!). I love that Katniss is still figuring out what she's got inside and that it's enough to make a huge difference. I love that she's sometimes so unlovable, but that she's still surrounded by people that DO love her. I also love, in a strange way, that Collins doesn't gloss over the death and the horror of the situation - the realistic light she shines on it makes us as horrified with the Capital and the President as she is. I love the realistic yet fantastical, futuristic yet present-day feel of the world she's created. Can you feel all the love?

If I wanted more after The Hunger Games - I want even more now. Fantastically fun reading.

Review: Hold On to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers by Gordon Neufeld and Gabor Mate

genre: non-fiction, parenting

The premise of this astounding book is that in today's culture, more and more children are living their lives being more attached to their peers than their parents. Sound mind-blowing? Maybe not, but at the soul of this book is the idea that our attachment to our children is the one crucial thing that our children cannot truly grow-up without. The book goes in-depth into attachment theory, but not so deep that you can't find your way out again and understand how necessary it is. We learn about how this "peer attachment" can undermine parenting and what happens to children when they are learning their values from people their own age instead of from their parents and grandparents. "Bullies" and their tactics are pieced apart. But not only do we read the gloom and doom of what can happen to peer-oriented children - the entire last section is how, if they're already "lost," we can win them back. And if we still have our children attached to us, we learn ways to help them be truly independent and mature young adults.

The structure of the book is very linear - the lead author makes a generalized point and then several smaller sections expound on different portions of that general point. This worked for me, but some folks might find it pretty repetitive. I usually need that in non-fiction, otherwise I forget important things. The writing is very readable and I loved all the anecdotal stories, they made the things I was learning much more concrete - even though some of the examples made me feel terrified for my children to grow up any more than they already have.

I must have underlined half of this book, I found so many statements that rang true in a new way - it took me to places in my parenting mind that I have just never thought about, at least not consciously. Some sections gave me chills, they hit so close to home. I read so slowly that I had chances to try out some of the ideas as I read and I actually saw it - I actually saw that helping my son move from anger over something into sadness over it actually dissipated their frustration.

I have already passed on the name of this book to four people. I want to pass it on to everyone. I am looking at my kids and the way I deal with them in an entirely new way. And what does that mean? It means more parenting for me. More time invested in the three people that will give me the most satisfaction in the end: my kids.

Review: The Maze Runner by James Dashner - AND A GIVEAWAY!!

genre: young adult

Nobody knows why the maze is there.

Nobody remembers how they got to the maze.

All they know is that they somehow have to survive and find their way out.

For Thomas, arriving at the maze is an exercise in trying to find the answers to a million questions - and it takes a long time to find people willing to give him any. I loved how this book kept me asking so many questions - it's perfectly set-up to make you as curious as Thomas and the more we learn about the maze and those who live there, the more terrifying and hostile a place it seems to be.

Soon after Thomas's arrival, things begin changing. Rules are broken, strange memories begin to emerge and "gladers" (those who live in the maze) have to step up and start trying to figure out how they are going to solve the maze before their chances are gone for good.

The maze runner was a serious page-turner for me. It wasn't completely predictable (yay!) and it gripped me the same way the Hunger Games did - all teenage characters having to live adult lives. The stakes are high and Dashner had me practically biting my fingernails with the tension. The characters are strong and yet human - I believed their conflicts and their emotion. It's not a pretty story and it has its fair share of gore and violence, but I tell you what, by the end, I wanted to get out of that maze as much as Thomas did. I get the sense that there is a lot more Dashner can do with this series and I can't wait to see where it goes next. Loved it.

This book was so great, I want to pass it on. If you leave a comment on this post, let me know that you want a chance at my ARC copy. I'll be putting a bookcrossing ID number in it, so pass it along when you're finished. International is fine. I'll pick a name out of a hat for it on Friday, Sept 25, sometime at the end of the day. Feel free to spread the word :)

**PLEASE LEAVE AN EMAIL ADDRESS SO I CAN CONTACT YOU IF YOU WIN**

review: The Singing Creek Where the Willows Grow - The Mystical Nature Diary of Opal Whiteley

book 4 of 5 for the Non-fiction five Challenge
genre: non-fiction/biography

I feel like I should preface this review with a line of a poem that I adored in my childhood:

“If you are a dreamer,come in. If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, a hoper, a prayer, a magic-bean-buyer. If you're a pretender, come sit by my fire, for we have some flax-golden tales to spin. Come in! Come in!”
-Shel Silverstein

Opal Whiteley was a remarkable child. Her turn-of-the-century diary was printed onto scraps of paper, wrappings and discards, scratched out with colored pencils and crayons at the age of seven. Her biography (written by Benjamin Hoff, the author of the Toa of Pooh) details Opal's life, beginning with her early childhood in the woods of Oregon, near a logging community. She was an avid naturalist from an early age and went on to spend much of her early adulthood teaching about nature and science to young children.

At some point, however, certain people spread rumors discrediting her diary - claiming it was written when she was an adult, saying that someone so young couldn't possibly have written with such intensity and intelligence. Hoff, obviously, feels very strongly that the diary is authentic and goes to great lengths in the biography to provide evidence to back up his stance. And for me, reading the diary, I couldn't help but believe it was the work of a highly literary and insightful child. There's too much raw belief to think otherwise.

As for the diary itself, it's a place where people who are willing to heed Shel Silverstien's advice should tarry. Opal Whiteley isn't just a dreamer, she's a fairy, a woodland creature - Mother Nature embodied in a wild child who is so at one with the earth and its creatures that she can actually feel their pain. She writes of her conversations with the trees, the joy that the wind and the rain sing to her and each of her dozens of animal friends have long and illustrious names. She has crazy notions about helping her mother and is so innocent and yet grave about the way she wants to do right by the people she loves that it is sometimes painful. She describes this early Oregon landscape and some of its inhabitants (both human and otherwise) with a stark and loving richness.

Because of her father's French-Canadian heritage (they think), she writes with a strange sort of translated syntax which drove my husband crazy when I read it out loud, but which I found enchanting. It made her ideas and "thinks" so much more ethereal:

"By-and-by I came to a log. It was a nice little log. It was as long as three pigs as long as Peter Paul Rubens. I climbed upon it. I so did to look more looks about. The wind did blow in a real quick way-he made music all around. I danced on the log. It is so much a big amount of joy to dance on a log when the wind does play the harps in the forest. Then I do dance on tiptoe."

and

"I think it is very nice to help people have what they do have longings for."

Opal is always grateful, full of joy, trying to understand. She learns deep lessons about life and death (or bornings and goings-away, as she calls them). Her interactions with her mother were harsh and unfortunately littered with bouts of corporeal punishment, and reading them from Opal's point of view was sometimes heartbreaking. It made me want to just hug that girl and take her for a walk, but luckily she had many kindly neighbors, cows, dogs, frogs, crows, wood rats, chickens and horses to keep her company. Her fresh and unadulterated love of the earth, her recognition of the healing that comes from being outside among the animals and trees, her faith in fairies and God and angels - this unique perspective painted the entire diary with an unmistakable swash of joie de vivre.

If you are not one of those dreamers, if you don't every once and a while strain to hear the voice of the wind in the trees, this book may be a bit too sentimental for you. Her fondness for naming every single creature she befriends might tire you. Her precociousness might just make you thank the heavens that you weren't her mother. But for me, Opal's diary opened my eyes to a life of at-one-ness that made me want to laugh for joy and reminded me that, as Opal says, "this is a wonderful world to live in."

BBAW book recommendations:

I haven't been so much playing along with BBAW due to a thousand reasons, but I like this idea. The topic of Day 4:

But let’s talk about that book you know, the one you discovered only because you read about it on a book blog and then you realized you couldn’t live without it! And then you read it and you loved it so hard! Tell us about it and about the blogger (or bloggers!) that introduced the book to you!

1. A Curse Dark as Gold - Melissa at Book Nut. Oh man, I do LOVE a good fairytale retelling - this had the perfect amount of love and fairytale and history to make it delicious. Melissa rocks at helping me know all the good YA stuff that I must put on my list. Bless her.

2. Graceling - Erin at Off the Shelf. I just happen to be lucky enough to be this girl's sister and WOW does she read like a fiend! She is my go-to person for just about everything, but especially book recommendations. She told me I would love this girl-power story and she was right. I know that if she loves it, I will too.

3. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society - Anna at Diary of an Eccentric. I read about this all over the web, but this one sticks out to me. Anna reads all kinds of stuff, but we've got a connection because we've got daughters the same age - plus, she does a great job with her reviews.

4. Crown Duel - Bookwyrm Chrysalis - this blog gives exceptional reviews of ya stuff, she's increased my tbr list in a wonderful way.

5. 84, Charing Cross Road - Tricia at Library Queue. OH book-lovers will love this one. Tricia and I have similar tastes also - she reads ya and contemporary stuff too.

6. Hanna's Daughters - Dawn at My Thoughts Exactly. Dawn's blog is a wonderful mix of real-life parenting, music, books, and laugh out loud humor. I found this gem of a multi-generational story at the thrift store and her previous recommendation made me grab it up.

This was fun :)

Review: Treasure at the Heart of the Tanglewood

genre: young adult fantasy

Instead of the usual review, this time I will be doing an interview with the main character of the book, named Brown Hannah.

me: Brown Hannah, tell me about yourself.

Brown Hannah: Well, I live on the borders of the Tanglewood - alone, except for my animal companions.

me: The Tanglewood, huh? I've heard around the village that the Tanglewood is sorta "creepy."

Brown Hannah: Not to me! I've lived my life amongst the trees and while I get the sense that people from the village are wary of me and my ability to heal - and that the flowers and plants that grow in my hair are distracting to them, they still are willing to come to me when they need help.

me: Flowers and plants grow in your hair?

Brown Hannah: They do! And somehow they know just what would be best for whatever healing I need to do. The foliage in my hair comes up a lot and makes my story more interesting and gives it a fantastical element.

me: I have to agree. Is there a bad guy in your story?

Brown Hannah: Of course. But I don't want to give that away, now do I?

me: True. Is there love? A journey? Can your story give me a wonderful sense of the earth and the depth of its ability to heal us? Do you speak with a lilting accent and use awesome and rarely-used vocabulary explain the world around you?

Brown Hannah: A bit. Yes. Yes, and yes.

me: IS there really a treasure at the heart of the Tanglewood?

Brown Hannah: If only someone could tell ME!! A big part of my story is me working out this very question. Although the answer may seem a bit obvious to some readers, when I realize for myself the answer to the treasure question, it still makes for good reading.

me: WELL.

Brown Hannah: Yes. Well. I'd best be going now.

me: Thanks so much for sharing your thoughts today Brown Hannah. I'll be passing this book along for sure.

in which I visit The Book Thing

(cross posted on my personal blog)

I'd heard of it for a while - a store where all the books are free. The Book Thing of Baltimore. Really? For real? Free books? Read this article if you want, it's interesting. I knew I'd have to make my way there someday and FINALLY we made it. We were already planning to go to the Science Center for the afternoon and I figured since we'd be in Baltimore anyway...why not drag the whole fam over there? I packed up a bag of books to release into the wild and we were on our way.

It's not in a good part of Baltimore, but that's not saying much. Most everything outside one square mile of the inner harbor isn't considered "good," but I had my man with me and had no fear. Thanks to my GPS friend, we made it without a hitch and found street parking right away. Xavier told me he was pretty sure the building was abandoned, which made a guy reading outside the door have a nice laugh. Cause it DOES look like an abandoned building, but it is FULL OF FREE BOOKS. FULL, I tell you. All the walls are covered with bookshelves that are organized by genre. We found the tubs of kids books and I found a few treasures amongst the trash:











That Hailstones and halibut bones book is important to me because it's a book that you read in Joy School for an entire unit. It has peoms about every color and you read a poem a day during The Joy of the Earth. We always had to get it from the library and pass it around because it's not in print anymore (my "new" copy is from 1969!!). I love that I have it now. The words give me memories of the rapt attention of 3 year olds and that is a pleasure. Plus, it's just seriously amazing poetry. Also, amazingly enough, and also poetry related, I found a copy of Robert Louis Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verses" - the EXACT copy I had as a child! The cover looked super familiar, so I took it and then as I looked at the illustrations later, I had strange flashback feelings as I saw pictures that made me remember being 5 years old myself. I don't remember the words so much, just those specific pictures. I love that I have that now too.

My children went to town. Sheely found a classroom set of this random self-published children's book about an oyster (NINETEEN BOOKS!) and she took them all to play school. She was so giddy and I loved that I could just let her do it :) For a time, both my boys were sprawled out on the dirty floor, books in hand, and I was so glad they were being still I just let them lay there as I scoured the "classics" shelf. JACKPOT! I found a small hardbound copy of "The Poems of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow" that someone gave as a gift for Christmas in 1929. It's beautiful. I read "The Midnight Ride to Paul Revere" aloud to Clint as we drove to the science center and I LOVE the idea that my hands are holding and owning and loving something that has been around for such a long while.

Okay, so it was REALLY SUPER FUN in there. And I want to go back when I'm not with people who are finished with digging through books after 20 minutes :) I'm not complaining though, it was really super fun.

review: The Big Rock Candy Mountain by Wallace Stegner

genre: fiction
563 pages

I feel spent, having finished this book. I took more time reading it than any book in recent memory - and it wasn't only its 563 pages that made it a long read. I had to read with a pen at the ready, so many ideas and images and thoughts I wanted to highlight.

The Big Rock Candy Mountain is a western book. A character study. A journey. But not a there-and-back-again book like Bilbo Baggins wrote. It's a go and go again kind of journey, searching ever further afield for that one thing that will make you happy, always finding that it just slipped out of your fingers.

Bo Mason is that dreamer - a schemer who will gamble on a sure thing, following whatever lead will drop him on top of that Big Rock Candy Mountain the soonest. He'll farm, work the railroad, bootleg or run a "blind pig" - whatever it takes to get money in his pocket the fastest. And to Elsa, the daughter of Norwegian immigrants, Bo's zest for life and skills with a shotgun lure her into a love that will test all the strength she's got as they live their lives during the hard years of the early 20th century.

The road their life takes, the unbelievable anguish and sacrifice, the horrible choices and bum deals and the eking out of an existence, the packing up and starting over - you would think that it would be so depressing that you'd want to just chuck the book out the window. But Wallace Stegner is a literary genius because he ties up this cheerless and heartbreaking story with a writing style and way with words that is so amazing you can't help but be floored by the beauty of it. How is that possible? The turn of phrase and poignantly expressed truths stopped me time and again. And as we read the story from different points of view, we see the strengths in the characters, usually deeply hidden under their glaring weaknesses. All except Elsa, whose strengths and weaknesses are both transparent - she is one of the most intriguing and sympathetic characters I've read.

I also loved that this book took me to the Utah of long ago, an emerging place, a western wasteland of outcasts and misfits that was slowly turning into something grand and worthwhile - the side of Utah that the Mormons of my ancestry probably wished didn't exist and certainly wouldn't have appreciated. The language of some characters was really rough and there were scenes of serious ugliness. But this book made a time and place and cross-section of people so real to me. I can't even use the words "grand" or "epic" or "sweeping" because it felt too intimate for those adjectives, too painful - like reading someone's diary and finally understanding how hard their life had been. And despite the language, despite the ugliness, the scope of this book and the way it made me feel and the sense it gave me of a time now forgotten - a time when the great wandering of early Americans was coming to a close - those things make me want to give Big Rock Candy Mountain my book award:

Review: My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George

genre: middle-grade reader, survival

Recently my mother told me about the chapter book that she read to my brother oh so long ago that turned him into a reader: My Side of the Mountain. When I found it at a used book sale, I snatched it up and started it as soon as possible. I read this one aloud to my six year old and my 9 year old often would sit around and listen also.

My cover says it's "The classic story of wilderness survival." I have to agree, and the only part of this book that I had a hard time swallowing was the fact that teen-aged Sam just up and left his apartment in New York City without a backwards glance and hiked out to the Catskills. All the rest, I ate up hook-line-and sinker. He doesn't just survive, that Sam - he flourishes. He taught my boy and I all about how to make five-course meals out of mountain plants, how to trap animals, how to make whistles out of reeds and how to turn a giant tree into a home. Animals became dear friends and a vital source of food. And whether he was training his falcon to hunt or using every part of the animals he caught, Sam treated every living thing in the woods with respect and care.

Sam's voice was friendly, honest and descriptive - the illustrations gave us a sense of the wildness of his place and nicely broke up the text. He let us peek into his life as the seasons changed and we got a view of winter in the mountains unlike any I've ever read. He made mistakes and worked things out, made friends and had to find ways to stay out of sight when nosy folks made their way around.

I sometimes worried that the story would get too "non-fiction" for my boy, but he never got bored - this one held his attention from start to finish. The things we read about let to numerous interesting discussions, especially about animals. As a read aloud for this mommy and her 1st grade son, this book deserves:

R.I.P IV

Well, I have to at least join in the fun. It'll be Peril the Third for me this year, again, over at Carl's R.I.P. Challenge.

My choice this year?

The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane

Supposed to be a mysterious type thriller in Salem during witchy times? Hopefully it'll fit the bill :)

review: The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

book 5 of 5 for the Classics Challenge

Oh Hester, bless your sinful heart. Who is unfamiliar with the sin of Hester and the glaring red "A" emblazoned on her bosom? Who hasn't ached for her humiliation and irked at that Puritan rigidness that led to her infamous life of regret and needlepoint, alone with her wild daughter Pearl?

What a novel of emotions! I kept thinking to myself - each of these four main characters (Hester, the priest Arthur Dimmsdale, the doctor Roger Chillingworth and that flighty Pearl), they are all just a gigantic mass of emotions. Foremost: SHAME! What can shame, guilt and regret do to us, whether the world around us knows of our shame or not? How can we work through that inner turmoil? If we don't work through it, what do we turn into? What kind of person can we be if we DO work through it? Also: FORGIVENESS. How can a lack of forgiveness change us? Who can give forgiveness to us and how do we get it? What does it feel like once we've gotten it? PRIDE: wow, how much trouble can THAT cause?

It takes a while to get into this one, I'm not going to lie. But honestly, feel free to just SKIP the entire introduction because it is completely unnecessary. While it does give us some background into our narrator, we can still enjoy the story without it. Speaking of our narrator, I really liked the third person narration - we got into the minds and hearts of both Hester and Mr. Dimmsdale, along with a beautiful retelling of their tale. Sentences like, "At that distance they accordingly stood, fixed there by the centrifugal force of the repugnance which the mystic symbol inspired." Woah. Beautiful, but not really light reading.

My last thought is this: as much as this is a tale about Hester, it is absolutely as much a tale about our priest. Hester and Arthur are like two sides of the same coin and you can't really understand the one without having pity for the other. And that Pearl - a more obvious literary symbol has possibly never been written. But I like her for that - between her, the nefarious scaffold and Dr. CHILLINGWORTH'S very appropriate name, Hawthorne did a fine job of creating a book that could be discussed in literature classrooms until the end of time. If you can make it through Nathaniel Hawthorne's lovely wordiness, you can find so much about what makes us human in this book.