ST. DALE

A novel about the world of auto racing was fun for me because my dad raced in a Formula Vee (a smaller version of an Indy car) for several years when I was a teenager. After my father died, my mother started following the NASCAR races on TV. She has "her team", although she also follows the Indy car races and went to see a "Dancing with the Stars" episode that was taped in Indianapolis with a race driver as one of the dance partners. The strong interest in the sport and level of technical knowledge on the part of the fans seemed very familiar to me. However, their intense emotional connection to Dale Earnhart eludes me. My father certainly would have scoffed at it.

But, as I got nearer to the end of the book, I felt frustrated because there was so much research on display that the characters and what happened to them took a back seat. Maybe that is the framework in The Canterbury Tales also - I've never read it. I guess if I had been more interested in Dale Earnhart to begin with, this wouldn't have bothered me. And I was also annoyed by the scorn heaped on Ryan Newman, for being uppity enough to get a degree from Purdue (my family's alma mater) and on Jeff Gordon, for the terrible sin of being a Californian.

Maybe her next book will develop another aspect of the NASCAR world.

THE TALES OF UNCLE REMUS; THE STORIES OF BRER RABBIT

My dad read "Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby" to me when I was little. I remember the tiny black and white pictures showing Brer Rabbit getting progressively stuck and the trickyness of his plea, "Please don't throw me in the briar patch!" We also saw the Walt Disney movie based on these stories, "Song of the South."

I enjoyed reading Julius Lester’s foreward, where he explained the changes he made in the dialect, the plantation setting, and the “faithful darky” portrayal of Uncle Remus. He also saluted the original author for his dedication to publishing only authentic African American stories and reproducing the language of the former slaves in his area of the South.

After reading his foreword, I began to hear Denzel Washington’s voice as I read the stories. That enhanced the reading experience! It made me want to be with a group of children as they get involved in the stories and delight in Brer Rabbit’s tricks.