Tag: Reading

Building your children’s library #1 – books for pre-schoolers

 

I have a deep love of children’s books and am passionate about keeping kids reading, as regular readers of this blog will know. I am frequently asked for recommendations for books for children and young people. In truth, there are so many great books for kids out there and I can only read a fraction of what I’d like to, so it’s difficult. Wander into any bookshop or library, however, and you will see before you dozens of wonderful titles. I am a firm believer in allowing kids to choose their own books; that way you build their love of reading from the inside out rather than it being an interest that the parent tries to impose from the outside in. This is particularly important for teenagers who a) are likely to resist all things their parents like and embrace the opposite, and b) are particularly sensitive to being told what’s ‘good’ and ‘not good’. My advice would be, don’t worry too much about the ‘quality’ of their reading and take pleasure in the fact that they are reading. Once you engage with them on their terms, they may be more open to suggestions further down the line.

 

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Image by Aline Dassel from Pixabay

I have a deep love of children’s books and am passionate about keeping kids reading, as regular readers of this blog will know. I am frequently asked for recommendations for books for children and young people. In truth, there are so many great books for kids out there and I can only read a fraction of what I’d like to, so it’s difficult. Wander into any bookshop or library, however, and you will see before you dozens of wonderful titles. I am a firm believer in allowing kids to choose their own books; that way you build their love of reading from the inside out rather than it being an interest that the parent tries to impose from the outside in. This is particularly important for teenagers who a) are likely to resist all things their parents like and embrace the opposite, and b) are particularly sensitive to being told what’s ‘good’ and ‘not good’. My advice would be, don’t worry too much about the ‘quality’ of their reading and take pleasure in the fact that they are reading. Once you engage with them on their terms, they may be more open to suggestions further down the line.

I know, however, that many parents want to build a decent library of choices for their children, and also, grandparents, aunts and uncles, and godparents also want to know what they should give as gifts. So, I am starting a series of posts on building your children’s library. I will focus mainly on classics as these are books that have stood the test of time. As ever, age boundaries are flexible – a mature 10 year old might enjoy something in 11 -13 range and vice versa. Again, don’t worry; this is not a reflection of their ability, only of their interests. It is counter-productive to push them to read topics they are not ready for.

That probably won’t be a concern for today’s list however, as I’m picking books for pre-schoolers! Having said that, my teens still get great pleasure from having many of these books around (many of our books have gone to charity shops over the years, but some will be treasured forever).

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So, if you have or know young children in 2-5 age group, here are ten of the very best books ever:

  1. The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle
  2. Each Peach Pear Plum by Janet and Allan Ahlberg
  3. We’re Going on a Bear Hunt by Michael Rosen & Helen Oxenbury
  4. Guess How Much I Love You by Sam McBratney and Anita Jeram
  5. Miffy by Dick Bruna
  6. Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown and Clement Hurd
  7. The Tiger Who Came to Tea by Judith Kerr
  8. Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak
  9. The Gruffalo by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler
  10. Elmer by David McKee

There are probably at least a hundred other books I could have included here, so my next post on this topic might just be an extension list to this one! I’d love to hear your recommendations too. I should add that these are books not only that my children loved but that I also loved reading aloud to them. And THAT has truly been one of the joys of my life.

What are your favourite books for pre-schoolers?

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Facebook reading challenge – join us in June

Despite the awful British weather, it is actually June at the moment, halfway through it in fact, so it must be time for a new book on my Facebook Reading Challenge. Earlier in the week, I published a review of the May title – Lord of the Flies by William Golding, one of the great literary classics of the 20th century. So many people have studied this book at school, at a time, perhaps, when English literature was not the thing they were most into, that it can often elicit groans of anguish! In fact, coming to it again after so many years (and as a mother!), I saw new things in this book. That’s the great thing about a reading challenge; you pick up books that you might otherwise have turned away from.

This month’s theme is something from the Women’s Prize shortlist. At the time of setting the challenge I obviously did not know what was going to be on the shortlist. The title I selected is a book I have had my eye on for some time. In fact, I recommended it over a year ago in a post Hot new books for spring. An Amercian Marriage by Tayari Jones has since been announced as the winner of the prize, as of 5 June, so I’m delighted to be reading it this month.

2019-06-14 10.49.53The book is about a young newly-married couple, Celestial and Roy, and is set in the American Deep South. Their lives appear full of potential until Roy is accused of a crime he did not commit. He is convicted and sentenced to twelve years in prison. The book concerns the effect of the separation on their marriage, how Celestial copes alone and what this means for their shared dreams.

The chair of judges of the women’s prize described the book as one that “shines a light on today’s America” and it has won praise from the likes of Barack Obama and Oprah Winfrey, as well as achieving wide acclaim in the review columns. The whole shortlist was extremely impressive and I could have chosen any of the books on; the fact that it beat Anna Burns’s Man Booker winner Milkman, which I loved, tells you something about the high calibre.

So, if you fancy a good read and getting involved in the discussion, do join us, it’s not too late. 

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Book review – “To A Mountain in Tibet” by Colin Thubron

It is some time since I posted a book review – pretty shabby for a book review blog, though I like to think my non-review posts are suitably bookish too! I posted last week about my challenges in getting much reading done at the moment; even Why Mummy Drinks, Gill Sims’s very light, asking-to-speed-read, novel that my book club chose, seemed to be taking me ages. It has been a very busy few weeks – my paid work has been quite demanding (as has my non-paid work!), we have been undertaking a big decorating project in the house, plus we are properly working on the garden for the first time since we bought this house four years ago, and I am on revision-watch as one of my kids is on study-leave for exams this summer.

To A Mountian in Tibet imgSo my reading time has been severely curtailed. I managed to finish Why Mummy Drinks just after the book club meeting, just as well it was a quick read and did not require too much mental investment. My other big read for last month, however, did. Colin Thubron’s To A Mountain in Tibet was the April title for my Facebook Reading Challenge. The theme was travel writing, not a genre I know very much about, so I did a fair bit of research before choosing Thubron. It came with some fantastic recommendations. At just over 200 pages, it is not particularly long, but it felt like a very slow read.

The author has written more than a dozen travel books (as well as eight novels), mostly about the East. In this book he crosses the border between Nepal and Tibet on foot, to follow a route taken by thousands of pilgrims each year to Mount Kailas. I confess I had not heard of it, but it is one of the holiest shrines on earth, important to both Hindus and Buddhists. Whilst I have not read much travel writing, I guess my expectation is that it should educate and inform the reader about the location (tick), consider some of the social and political conditions of the people living there (tick), and include the personal reflections of the writer (tick). After all, isn’t travel writing as much about an emotional and psychological journey as well as physical one?

Thubron’s book does all these things and does them well, and the writing is beautiful. I learnt a great deal about Buddhism, about pilgrims’ reasons for undertaking the perilous trek around Kailas, about the political tension between China and Tibet, and about the poverty and social problems in the region, particularly in Nepal. All of that said, I’m afraid I have mixed feelings about the book. I gave it four stars on Goodreads, but there was something languid about the book that at times failed to engage me. Some of the history was rather dry, while the account of the poverty, the terrible conditions in which some of the people in the towns and villages on Thubron’s route live, was brought vividly alive.

The ‘journey’ that Thubron himself is on, in a state of bereavement, all his family members now dead, reflects the motive of many of the pilgrims in whose footsteps he is following. He writes about his late parents, and his long-dead sister, but I feel this wasn’t covered in as much depth as I would have liked. The blurb on the book’s cover indicates this is a major element, but I would disagree and feel the content could have had a little more meaning if these passages had been included in a slightly less random way.

Overall, I enjoyed the book and I would like to read more of Thubron’s work. I imagine if you know a little more of the subject matter it might have greater impact.

Which other travel writers would you recommend?

 

 

Reading time deficit

I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed by my reading situation at the moment. A quick glance at my Goodreads profile will tell you that I have three books on the go right now. This is not by choice; I was reading The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas, but this was taking me longer than expected. Then I realised it was getting close to the end of the month and I hadn’t even started April’s choice on my Facebook Reading Challenge, Colin Thubron’s To A Mountain in Tibet, so I started that. It’s fascinating and enthralling, but written so beautifully, that you have to read every word, so it’s a slow read and has also therefore taken me longer than expected. At the beginning of last week, I glanced at my diary and saw that it was my book club on Thursday and I hadn’t even started our book. Fortunately, out choice for this month was Why Mummy Drinks by Gill Sims, which is, unlike the Thubron, a very swift read, so easy to whizz through sufficient pages to have a conversation…but still I have not completed it.

So, this all feels strangely messy to me. I know some people like to read a number of books at the same time, but I don’t. I prefer to immerse myself in just one and see it through to the end, before starting on another. I’m loyal like that! They are all very different books, so it’s not like I’m getting storylines mixed up or anything, but, when I do have some reading time, I find myself quite torn about which one to pick up.

The other problem is lack of reading time. It’s been a busy month so far, between work and my kids’ commitments, not to mention one of them deep in major revision mode, and we are decorating the last room in our (so far) four-year long house refurbishment project, which has involved much time poring over light fittings, carpet samples, colour charts and radiators, as well as handling tradesmen, people who measure stuff and retail professionals.

It’s all good, but I think it must be a problem unique to book-lovers, and perhaps also introverts (I am both), that the absence of reading time has a detrimental psychological impact, rather like a lack of vitamins leads to a deterioration in some aspect of physical health. That’s how it feels to me anyway. Many book lovers I know are also a little bit obsessive about certain things and having three books on the go, none of which I seem to be progressing in a satisfying way, is making me a little bit twitchy. I have just completed the audiobook of Professor Steve Peters’ The Chimp Paradox, though, so I know this is just my chimp talking.

I’m very nearly there with Colin Thubron and with Gill Sims, so my Goodreads profile should be back down to just the one book by the end of the week and I may start to feel a little more settled. And be able to post some book reviews again!

How does it make you feel when your days lack reading time?

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Facebook Reading Challenge – May’s book

The months are passing at a rapid rate and I can’t believe it is already time to consider a new book for my Facebook Reading Challenge. Last month the theme was travel writing and I chose Colin Thubron’s To A Mountain in Tibet. I have to confess that, almost a week into the new month, I still have not finished it. Although I am enjoying it, it is a very slow read. Something about the way it is written makes my reading pace reduce to the author’s speed of ascent up the mountain! I wish I could say look out for the review next week but I have had to set it to one side to speed-read my book club book, which I had forgotten all about…

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It will get finished, of course, and I posted a video on the Facebook group’s page last week announcing this month’s book which is William Golding’s Lord of the Flies. A few people replied to say they had done it for ‘O’ level – I am sure they are of a similar age to me, but it was obviously not my year, as I had forgotten that it’s a favourite set text for 16 year-olds. Most people seemed happy to be reading it again though. You can see things in a completely different way when you come back to a book, particularly after a number of years and a number of life changes. My recent re-read of Perfume (the March choice for the Reading Challenge) gave me an insight into that.

 

So, if you care to join us for the challenge this month, hop on over to the group’s Facebook page and request to join, or else just read along and let me know your thoughts when I post a review in early June.

Happy reading!

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Book review – “The Storm Keeper’s Island” by Catherine Doyle

Regular followers of this blog will know that I am passionate about children’s literature and that I frequently post reviews of great kids’ books I have read. I have decided to make this a more regular feature and will devote one week a month to reviewing children’s books and discussing issues about kids reading habits, an issue which I know is of concern to many of you, parents or otherwise. After all, most keen adult readers would, I think, say that their love of reading was fostered in childhood. Just the other day, I recommended Lucy Mangan’s new book Bookworm: A memoir of childhood reading, one of the books on my TBR list this spring which I feel sure will take me back to my own childhood and the many nights I spent reading under the covers, not with a torch, worse, by the light from the landing. It’s a wonder my eyesight wasn’t ruined!

The Storm Keeper's Island imgThis month, I would like to recommend Catherine Doyle’s The Storm Keeper’s Island, published last year by Bloomsbury, as a fantastic choice for any young people you know who like modern adventure stories where the good guy wins. Catherine Doyle is a young writer (just 29 years old) and has published several YA novels already; The Storm Keeper’s Island is her first novel for what is called the “middle grade”, ie about 9-12 years, and it was a barn-storming debut, winning several prizes and accolades from established authors in this genre. A second novel, following the further adventures of the main character Fionn Boyle, is planned for this summer and I would expect it to feature heavily in recommended holiday reading lists in advance of the Summer Reading Challenge.

Fionn Boyle and his twin sister Tara are to spend the summer with their grandfather, Malachy Boyle, on the real-life island of Arranmore, just off the coast of Donegal in north-west Ireland. It is a sparsely-populated island where most of the inhabitants are native Irish speakers, but many tourists visit. It is an island the author knows well, her own grandparents having lived there, and her love of the place comes across strongly. The two children don’t seem to know their grandfather well; he is their paternal grandfather, and their own father died at sea before they were born. The children have been sent to their grandfather because their mother has had some sort of mental breakdown. We learn that she has never really recovered from her husband’s death.

Malachy Boyle soon proves to be a quirky character, about whom there is an air of mystery. His cottage is full of home-made candles with mysterious names, like “The Whispering Tree”, “Low Tide” and “Unexpected Tornado”. Malachy Boyle is in fact Arranmore’s ‘Storm Keeper’, a chosen one whose role is to preserve the memories and legends of the island and protect it from its ancient mythical enemy, Morrigan, and her foe, the good spirit, Dagda. Inevitably, Fionn, gets drawn into an adventure involving these mythical spirits; Tara’s island boyfriend (whom she met on a previous visit), the ghastly Bartley Beasley, a vain, self-centred, full-of-himself bully, is the grandson of Elizabeth Beasley, who wants her family to be the next in line for the storm-keeper role and hopes Bartley will be anointed when it becomes time for Malachy to pass the baton. The undercurrent of conflict between the Boyles and the Beasleys is a metaphor for the Morrigan/Dagda feud.

Led by Bartley, the children (ie him, Tara, and Bartley’s sister Shelby, but excluding Fionn) plan to search out the long-lost and mysterious Sea Cave, where it is said a wish can be made. Obviously, Bartley wants to use the wish to make himself the storm-keeper. They are warned away from it as it is said to be highly dangerous. Fionn wants to find it first, to prevent Bartley having his wish, but he is afraid. As time passes, his grandfather passes on to him the knowledge of the candles and how lighting one enables a kind of time travel, where those present can see, even be a part of, events of the past that have been captured in the candle. Using the candles, Fionn will eventually triumph and (spoiler alert!) become the new storm-keeper.

I am not normally a lover of fantasy fiction, and I fear the above makes it sound as if there is a lot of myth and legend here. There is, but there are also actually a lot of real-life issues, modern concerns that children will identify with – loneliness, bullying, sibling rivalry, grief and loss, emotional vulnerability, what is meant by fear and courage, and perseverance. Ultimately, the good triumphs over the bad, the bullies don’t win and they are be exposed and punished. All the kinds of messages we want kids to get from their reading. The island legends do underpin the novel but it is by no means the heart of the novel. Most of all the child characters are credible and human, and many kids will be able to identify with them.

There is excitement, adventure and mild peril here, but also a kind of escapism – the children are on their summer holidays in a remote island community, with freedom to roam and where candles are more useful than mobile phones. The book would suit a variety of young readers in the 9-12 year-old age group. Recommended.

What recently-published books would you recommend for the 9-12 age group?

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Books to look out for this Spring

The freaky February weather is behind us, those treacherous early Spring storms seem to have passed, and there are signs of Spring – things are sprouting in my garden (apart from all those snowdrops I planted last Autumn – hmm!) and it is warm enough to take the thick down lining out of my winter coat. The London Book Fair has been taking place this week, with all those publishers deciding what we are going to be reading in the coming months, and there are some fantastic new books to look out for. With the Easter holidays coming up in the next month or so, you may be looking for something to read yourself. Here are some of the newly published or soon to be published books that have caught my eye

The FiveThe Five by Hallie Rubenhold

This book has been getting a lot of coverage and tells the stories of the women raped and murdered in Victorian London by Jack the Ripper. Reclaiming a space for these women, the author seeks to make them more than just victims.

 

 

 

 

BookwormBookworm: a memoir of childhood reading by Lucy Mangan

I have been reading Lucy Mangan’s columns in The Guardian for years and have always loved her writing style. I have also always identified with the passion for reading she found she had as an introverted child. This looks like a nice read and one that will take you back to characters and places you may also have loved as a child.

 

 

SpringSpring by Ali Smith

The third in Ali Smith’s seasonal quartet. Autumn was published in 2016 and was shortlisted for the Man Booker in that year. Winter was published in 2017 (still on my TBR list) and here we now have Spring, due for publication on 28 March. It concerns the lives of three people living in a time of war in a country facing a crisis of identity. Remind you of anywhere?

 

 

 

girl balancingGirl, Balancing by Helen Dunmore

Having just completed Birdcage Walk, I’m really keen to get into some more Helen Dunmore and this collection of short stories looks like a perfect one to take on holiday. I don’t read very many short stories so this will be a bit of a departure for me.

 

 

 

LannyLanny by Max Porter

Just read a review of this and it sounds so intriguing that I can’t wait to get hold of it. Set in a small village not far from London, this book is about the many residents past and present who have lived there, and about the culture, history and folklore of the place, embodied by the slumbering woodland spirit Dead Papa Toothwort.

 

 

 

That should keep me going for a while!

What books are you looking forward to reading this Spring?

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The Reading Challenge for March: “Perfume” by Patrick Suskind

This month’s theme for my Facebook Reading Challenge is a European novel. I confess that I did have the “B-word” in mind when I set the theme, feeling the need to assert that there is more that unites us than divides us, to paraphrase the late Jo Cox. The B-word has at this stage, however, become synonymous with something altogether more sinister – something very worrying is happening to our concepts of democracy, statehood, nationality, political representation and society. No-one really knows where we are or where we’re going.

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My thirty year-old copy of Perfume

However, that does not change my belief that we would all do well to push our personal horizons from time to time, literary and otherwise, and engaging with books originally written in other languages is one way of doing that, even if you have to read them in translation. So, the book I have chosen for this month, Perfume by Patrick Suskind, is an absolute classic, and one that I consider to be one of my all-time favourites.

Perfume was first published in 1985 in German, and then in English in 1987. This was also my first year at University, studying English, and I spent those three years reading continuously. Sounds great (it was!) but by the end of it I could hardly even lift a book! Perfume was one of the first books I read after my hiatus, and I was completely blown-away. The novel is set in 18th century Paris and concerns a perfumier Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, his talent for and obsession with all things olfactory, and his descent into a murderous lifestyle – the sub-title of the book is “the story of a murderer”.

I am excited to be reading the book again, although slightly apprehensive – what if I don’t love it as much as I did before? Context matters, so it will be an interesting experience either way.

If you would like to read the book and join the conversation, do pop over to the Facebook page. 

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World Book Day…don’t you just love it!

world book day

I love World Book Day, truly I do, but I have to confess that by the time my third and youngest child was at the end of primary school I breathed a sigh of relief that no longer would I have to be knocking up a costume the night before. (Perhaps this says more about my approach to organisation than anything else!) One of my kids hated dressing up, another is highly imaginative and I’m afraid my sewing skills could never match up to expectations and another worried about their costume and how it would compare to others. It was SO stressful, and I began to feel, towards the end, that we were sort of missing the point.

Going along to the bookshop the following weekend clutching our tokens for a free mini-book was much more in my comfort zone, though, again, we would inevitably walk out with an additional book or two and I often wondered how parents for whom money was tight, or non-existent, managed this particular challenge and having to say no once again. Possibly avoid the bookshop altogether and quietly forget the token?

I saw a post on Facebook this morning suggesting that if the costume your child wants costs more than a book, don’t buy it and get a book instead. This is good advice! Children can be strong-willed little things, however, and it can be hard to hold the line. Schools could do more, I think, to reward and recognise ‘creative’ costumes, or perhaps set the challenge that a costume has to be assembled from a certain limited range of materials and take no more than an hour to put together. Most kids LOVE a set of parameters and this would reduce the peer pressure to turn to online sellers of fabulous ensembles.

My own take on this, as a parent of teenagers, is that books are for life and not a day, and we would all do well to try and incorporate books and reading into our children’s lives. I feel certain this would counter much of the anxiety around screen-time that so many parents experience. So, here are my alternative suggestions for celebrating World Book Day:

  1. Read a book yourself – model the behaviours you want in your children.
  2. Put down the phones, sit down and have a conversation with your child about a book they have read. Value their opinions and don’t judge.
  3. If they don’t like a book (that’s okay), as them why. This will encourage them to think about what they DO like.
  4. Make using their World Book Day token an occasion. Buy them an additional book if you can afford it.
  5. If you can’t, take them along to the charity shop where there will be hundreds of kids’ books.
  6. Get them a library ticket and visit regularly.
  7. Do all of the above. Again.

Nothing is better than reading to your child at bedtime. Yes, I know it can sometimes feel like a hassle, especially if you still have work to do, are tired or want to watch your favourite TV show, but, believe me, it stops and often sooner than you think. Even five minutes reading with your child is better than none.

There was some depressing research published this week showing that only around a third of children under thirteen are read to daily for pleasure by an adult, and the trend is downwards. This is not good. When we also hear about teenagers’ mental health issues, I’m afraid I can’t help thinking there is a link.

What are your thoughts on children’s reading habits?

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Book review: “Becoming” by Michelle Obama

This book has certainly captured headlines since it was published in November. It was abridged and serialised on Radio 4 the week it came out. I caught a couple of the episodes, but this was merely a taster since, having now finished reading it, at over 400 pages, they gave only the very edited highlights. I do not normally go in for celebrity memoirs, and one could be quite cynical about the enormous deal that has been struck by the Obamas and their publishers (though I gather they are donating royalties to charity). However, very early on in the book any cynicism I might have had melted away.  I have no idea what help Michelle had in writing this book, but it does not ‘feel’ ghost-written. Her narrative voice is very authentic – warm and compassionate, the same way that she comes across when she speaks.

becoming imgMy book club chose this for our pre-Christmas read (I’ve only just finished it!) and we all thoroughly enjoyed it. It’s long, and perhaps could have been edited somewhat, but I imagine the main buyers of this book will be Michelle-fans who want as much detail as possible. The first part of the book was, for me, the least engaging. My fellow readers and I were a little surprised to learn that Michelle Robinson did not in fact come from an affluent background. She was a ‘Southsider’ – from a part of Chicago that was fairly blue-collar and largely African-American, and became more so as she grew older and some of the white residents moved out. A picture is painted of a family with strong values around hard work, doing the right thing, caring for others and loyalty to family. Michelle excelled in school through hard work, determination and the support of her parents and attended both Princeton and Harvard Law School. She has never forgotten her humble beginnings, however, and this underpins her commitment to equality and social justice. However, I did feel this part of the book was most descriptive; in the context of the book as a whole I can see why it would have been important to her to put her politics in perspective, but it was a tiny bit…pedestrian?

Michelle met her husband, Barack Obama, while she was working at a law firm in Chicago, and the development of their relationship forms the basis of the second part of the book. It’s a lovely romantic story, and they are clearly deeply committed to one another. However, it did not come without some pain. Much has been made of their difficulties conceiving a child (both daughters were born after IVF treatment) and of their seeking relationship counselling. What I found most interesting, however, was how Michelle has wrestled with and had to reconcile herself to, the role that being the spouse of a high-profile politician, then a Senator, then a President, has meant for her own career ambitions and her life as a parent.

The challenges of this dilemma are thrown into sharpest relief in the later chapters of Part Two where Barack Obama makes his bid for the US Presidency in 2007/8. The way that Michelle was treated is both fascinating and appalling. How she coped is beyond me, and it is to her enormous credit that she was able to rise above the racist and misogynist vitriol that came her way. I suspect those things ultimately made her stronger. Since Barack Obama left office in 2016, there have been calls from many quarters for Michelle to consider running at some point in the future, to which she has repeatedly said she never would (she states this explicitly in the final pages of the book). When you read her personal reflections in the 2008 campaign you can see fully why she is not made for that particular political bear-pit. She is a much better person than that and working towards a bigger picture than the short-termism associated with political elections.

As my visibility as Barack Obama’s wife rose, the other parts of me were dissolving from view. When I spoke to reporters, they rarely asked about my work. They inserted “Harvard-educated” in their description of me, but generally left it at that. A couple of news outlets had published stories speculating that I’d been promoted at the hospital not due to my own hard work and merit but because of my husband’s  growing political stature, which was painful to read. 

The final part of the book looks at her life in the White House. As she writes in the opening lines:

There is no handbook for incoming First Ladies of the United States.

As with most things in her life, Michelle Obama had to find her own way. In some ways that must be a liberating position to be in – having the freedom to write your own job description (the present First Lady has taken a somewhat different approach) – but for Michelle Obama there was the deep hostility she had to contend with, not just the political opposition, but the more personal, racist, misogynist and body-shaming tone she also endured.

I understood…that I’d be measured by a different yardstick. As the only African American First Lady to set foot in the White House, I was “other” almost by default. If there was a presumed grace assigned to my white predecessors, I knew it wasn’t likely to be the same for me. 

When the book was published, commentators pounced upon her comments about the present incumbent of the White House, looking for something juicy. Yes, there are some criticisms, as you might expect, and sadly the echo chamber rather defines the politics of the age – most of us prefer to read or listen to people who reflect the views we already hold. But what struck me in fact was the restraint, and the most chilling comment was that Michelle Obama will never forgive Trump and his team for placing the life of her husband and her daughters in danger. This sums up the book, and the woman, for me; it’s family, loved ones, values first, politics second.

If you’re a Michelle fan you’ll love this and have probably read it already anyway! If you’re objective there is still much to enjoy here and there’s no doubting the courage, integrity and sheer grit of the woman. She is undoubtedly a role model to us all.

What did you think of Michelle Obama’s memoir? 

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