meghan rose allen

So, what do we have?

We have a chic French roman about a precocious little girl named Tita/Lakme/Euphémie and a few months spent with her in a small village near the Pyrenées. It could be called a fable, if there was a moral at the end. It could be called a coming-of-age story, if there was any character development on the part of Tita. It could be called a story, if it was more than just a series of vignettes about growing up in the south of France in the 1950s.

The good: I may not be Charlie, but I’m pretty sure I am Tita. Or I was. Not that I was reading Proust at seven (I barely got through one book of Proust at thirty-three), but I was about as proto-nihilism as she was when I was about seven too:

I’m not sure I have a heart. There is no “deep down” in me. I wonder if I even exist.

Tita just wants to read and learn and be left alone by meddling teachers. I was that kid. I love Tita. I loved every little thing about her. I love how she looks up phrases in the grammar dictionary to correct her teacher (which is a good review of French grammar for me). I love how she sneaks grown-up books away and reads them secretly (as I did with Stephen King and John Irving novels). I love how she writes plays and stories on the typewriter in her father’s office (like I did, although it was my mother’s typewriter and I wrote in her closet). I love her little bons mots sprinkled throughout the text. In short, j’adore Tita. Her little adventures and misadventures and thoughts and schemes. Everything Tita. Je t’adore.

The bad: But nothing happens. Nothing happens and then the book ends. The last forty pages are a glossary of French terms and an interview with Houzelle. I was left with a “Well, that’s sudden” feeling that still hasn’t gone away by the next morning. Okay, so we build up this character, her back story, some proto-conflict (yes, I’m using proto again. It’s the prefix I’m stuck on today) regarding her parents’ financial situation and the fallout from the school choice, and then final stop end, here’s some French (which after many years of French immersion, I didn’t need anyway). I could compile a list as long as the book with unresolved issues:

1. Why have the father be divorced once and with children from the first marriage when they play so little a role in the story, especially the brothers Etienne and Maxime?
2. Tita has three names, her birth name Lakme, her baptismal name Euphémie, and what everyone calls her, Tita. Was that really necessary?
3. The timeline with Tita’s birth and her father’s divorce and her parents’ marriage is never one hundred percent resolved. Or that issue with what Tita’s last name was when she was born.
4. Her father’s business is failing. Maybe that should be addressed?
5. There seems to be a class difference between Tita’s mother and Tita’s father. Not a huge one, but it’s never really developed.

I’ll stop, but I could keep going. Why put such a clever character into a muddle of a story? Tita, I love you, jump free of my kobo and put yourself in a story where you will thrive.

Also, every time I read books about French parenting, I’m always struck by how utilitarian and cold it is. It seems like there are rules for everything and the parents seem so haughty. Sometimes I think all Tita needed was a hug. I’d give her a hug if I were her mother.

I was going to comment on the translation, and even wrote little notes about the translation in my kobo, only to get to the end and realize that the book was written in English originally. So oops on my part. It’s a bit random whether French used in the text is immediately translated or not. Sometimes it is, other times non-French speakers have to look it up in the Appendix. I like consistency. I would have rather an all-or-nothing in terms of translated words in the text.

If it weren’t for Tita, I think I would have despised this book. But my love for Tita knows no bounds. Oh Tita. I could feel the Mediterranean sun on my cheeks as I read about you. It warmed me to the very core.

Tita by Marie Houzelle went on sale September 15, 2014.

I received a copy free in a librarything giveway in exchange for an honest review.

Since the only game I’ve played reliably in the past, let’s say eight months has been a logic time killers game on the iPad and before that I dragged around a logic puzzle book with me, filling in the boxes while watching movies with Tesfa on the basement couch, let’s just say I am a fan of logic. I learned how to do matrix logic puzzles in third or fourth grade, a teacher giving them to me to keep me busy when I’d finished my work. When I saw a giveaway for a matrix logic book for kids, I thought this was a perfect opportunity to force share logic puzzles with her.

The book suggests ages seven through nine, and Tesfa is six, but both her parents have PhD’s in math, so I figure she’s probably math-literate enough to go through the book, provided I read it to her.

Here are her thoughts on the story: The book was funny. The artist [one of the characters in the story] reminded me of daddy because he kept eating and I liked that the doll could talk. The best part was getting to help solve the mystery. The problems weren’t too hard so I could do it. I liked that the pictures were in black and white so I could colour them later.

Her thoughts on the puzzle on the last two pages: It wasn’t too hard for me. I wish there were more like them in the book that I could solve all of it by myself.

Her rating: Five out of five!

So we’ll take five out of five for the rating.

As for me, who is clearly not the audience the book is going for (unless secretly when they say kids seven to nine they mean thirty-four year olds with advanced mathematics degrees), obviously the enjoyment I got out of it was reading it to Tesfa. Tesfa didn’t have any problem following the logic until Chapter Five, where the idea of transitivity (obviously not labeled as such) was introduced, i.e. cats eat fish and fish are blue, therefore cats eat blue things. She did get better at that after we went through a few examples. The level of reading was definitely beyond what she could do at six, but I don’t think it would pose any problem for an eight or nine year old to read themselves. There was one point (which I thought I marked but can’t find) where I thought Gavin was being very gender-roles enforcing, and another where someone said when Petunia here was being a good girl and not fussing so and I have a hatred for both equating being good with not making a fuss and with the phrase good girl or good boy or basically any phrase directed towards children that one would never use in regards to an adult and is more appropriate to use for a dog. Also, this book might not work in Australia, since a lynch-point of the story is the phrase No Shirt, No Shoes, No Service, which, for some bizarro reason, I couldn’t get over how this book would not work down under because of that. Seriously, it must have been because I watched The Slap a few weeks ago and I’m in an antipodal frame of mind. But getting past that, the story will appeal to kids (even if it is a little far fetched and drawn out) and Tesfa had a really good time figuring out who stole the spoon.

But really, the best part for me? After we finished, Tesfa drew a picture on the front, me and her working together under a big, squiggly sun. I like that most.

Logic Lotty: The Fortune Teller’s Spoon by Paige Peterson went on sale January 15, 2015.

I received a copy free in a librarything giveway in exchange for an honest review.