Hi, I’m Rebecca. I write books and I write here at This Joyful Mess to inspire everyone to find JOY in the everyday messes of life. Here you’ll find inspiration, educational resources, and so much more. Please explore and connect—I’d love to hear from you!
With the BFG Movie Coming and All
In honor of a very special day, I thought I'd revive this old post about a book I found, um, intriguing, with some interesting asides...
Witness this!
This book was made up of poems from different points of view and usually in differing and discernible voices all telling one story.
The plot, though ... the story seemed to end at the wrong spot. It ended with...
A Compass of Gold, off to a Good Start: Pullman's Golden Compass
The power of a great opening: Pullman’s The Golden Compass begins, “Lyra and her daemon moved through the darkening hall, taking care to keep to one side, out of sight of the kitchen.” We see a bit of each method of creating conflict. We know...
The Gift of Suffering: The Giver by Lois Lowry
Lowry opens The Giver with a description of fear and immediately cements the unusualness of the world she’s created as well as giving us insight into the young protagonist, Jonas. She also is so deliciously good at creating a Utopia that seems wonderful, at the start, and only slowly...
How to Build a Mosque
The intro is sort of dry, but the melding of fiction and nonfiction with fascinating detail on construction held my interest to the end. Yet why was there such a need for bathing? (I know it’s ritual bathing, but the text doesn’t tell me this.) There’s a ton of info on engineering, but not much...
That's Just Plain Nonsense, Eddie: Complete Nonsense of Edward Lear
Lear was the youngest of 21 children and was brought up by his sister, who cared for him until he was nearly 50. He was an eternal child with “invincible boyishness,” according to the editor. This collection...
Babe, Such a Gallant Pig
The style is hysterically understated and plays off stereotypes of the grumpy farmer and meddlesome wife. I found...
Exquisite Poetry for Two Voices
This is a Charlotte Zolotow book, which is no surprise. Such lovely language, metaphor, all the poetic devices one learns in school. I don’t read music, but this reads like I imagine music to be read...
Secrets, Platforms, Bizarre Britishisms
Rich and fun fantasy. Ibbotson starts off with quaint Brittishisms, ghosts, and secret doors to other worlds. What’s not to love? Loads of fantastical invention and a heavy dose of political correctness. Atmospheric with a distant 3rd person narrator, similar in voice to others like...
Collection of Poems, linked: Carver: A Life in Poems
Would it be admitting ignorance to say I don’t like poems I don’t understand? I mean, I sort of understand “The Perceiving Self,” but I mostly don’t. It makes me wonder...