Beth Kephart

First sentence: Ursula Nordstrom
was a grown-up
who never forgot
what it was to be a child.

Premise/plot: Chances are children are clueless when it comes to knowing who Ursula Nordstrom is. (Perhaps most parents as well.) But there's a HUGE possibility that you've read aloud to your little one a book edited by Ursula Nordstrom. Nordstrom was a children's book editor.

My thoughts: I greatly enjoyed this book celebrating books. I loved learning more about her contribution to the world of children's books. I had heard of her before--having studied children's literature at a graduate level.

I loved the way this one was written.

My favorite quote:

And she would remind anyone who called stories
too naughty, funny, or scary
that there were all kinds of children who need all
kinds of books:
books for children who feel sad
books for children who get mad
books for children who feel different
books for children who are lonely
books for children who have secrets.
Once, when Ursula was asked
to explain why she, a grown-up
who had not gone to college,
who had never been a teacher or librarian,
had any business making books for children,
she declared:
"I am a former child, and I haven't forgotten a thing."… (més)

When the author (an American raised in northern suburbia) marries her husband (an artist from El Salvador), she experiences difficulties finding her place within his intimidatingly foreign family, language, and country. The best parts of Still Love in Strange Places involves Kephart's examination of how twentieth-century Salvadorean politics are intertwined with her husband's family history. But the memoir is more interested in wielding a vast metaphor (marriage as an act of emigration) than in examining El Salvador itself, and the metaphor is far less interesting than the author's precise impressions of the country. More damningly, the tone is treacly. Still Love in Strange Places is self-effacing and self-validating enough to be fit for Oprah. Worse, the narrative is pre-emptively guilty about the author's natural resentment of her exclusion from her husband's clannish country. I wanted the memoir to either own that anger or to excise it, but its current role (hesitant, agonized acknowledgment) is utterly unsatisfying. Still Love in Strange Places seems to present a portrait of marriage/travel as nervously performed on egg shells.… (més)