Thank you, Readertotz, for highlighting this gorgeous video of one of my favorite singers, Andrea Bocelli, singing Sesame Street’s Elmo to sleep with a variation on one of his most well-known songs – very sweet and funny at the same time!

It also made me think of all those picture books where the baby just won’t go to sleep – like Hush! A Thai Lullaby by Minfong Ho, illustrated by Holly Meade (Orchard Books, 2000).

We have deeply enjoyed hosting the Tiger’s Choice, the PaperTigers’ online bookgroup, over the past year–it introduced us to a number of interesting books, a group of authors whom we hadn’t read before, and a collection of new friends from around the globe who joined in our discussions.

Nancy Farmer, Uma Krishnaswami, Ken Mochizuki, Minfong Ho, Jane Vejjajiva, Julia Alvarez, John Boyne,  Katia Novet Saint-Lot are all authors whom we plan to return to again and again for reading that expands our cultural horizons. As their body of work increases, the Tiger’s Bookshelf will be there–to read, to praise, to cheer them on.

We will however be doing this in another form rather than through the Tiger’s Choice. As exciting and rewarding as it has been to explore books through this avenue, we have new plans for the Tiger’s Bookshelf that do not include our bookgroup. We thank all of you who have read this portion of our blog, and who have joined in the discussions, and hope that you will continue to be part of the ongoing conversation that will take place on the PaperTigers Blog, and through the Tiger’s Bookshelf!

For me, The Clay Marble has always seemed a book for all ages, and an important introduction to modern Cambodian history, to Cambodian culture, and to the nightmare years of the Khmer Rouge ascendancy. As Minfong Ho explains in her introduction, she worked with the people she depicts in this novel, she had grown up in Southeast Asia, and she writes about Dara, Jantu, and their families with first-hand knowledge and with love.

The more I read this book, the more struck I am with the way that traditional Cambodian values are described, as well as the destruction to those values that was attempted by the Khmer Rouge. The importance of family, of community, of sharing, of rice planting and harvests are all made stunningly clear in this deceptively simple and powerful story.

Although I’ve read this book often, I’ve never approached it with Marjorie’s fearlessness. She read it aloud over the past month to her two sons, as she explains here.

” Well, we finished reading The Clay Marble about 10 days ago. At the time we were all shocked and upset by the ending and I thought I would leave it a few days before asking the boys what they wanted to say about it. It does mean that their immediate reactions are lost but both of them highlighted Friendship as something that stood out for them. The setting in terms of the war has had more of an impact on Older Brother. Little Brother was much more caught up in the narrative in terms of what was happening to Dara and the other characters. Anyway, here, verbatim, is what they said about it:

Older Brother (nearly 10): “I thought the Clay Marble was very interesting because it was based on things that really happened; and quite horrible at the same time because some people had lost their legs and got infections – things like that. When Jantu died I felt very sad, especially because I thought it was disgusting that she was shot by one of the soldiers that was supposed to be protecting her. She’d been a very good friend in the story.

When Sarun was coming to the Border and for quite a while at the Border, he was always talking about planting crops and building a home for the family but then after a few weeks he was going to join the army at their camp. Then he didn’t want to go home; he didn’t want to plant crops – he wanted to stay there and be a soldier. He wanted to shoot. He thought it made him be a man. He felt like a man, not just a young lad. Why does a rifle, some bullets, some clothing, some fighting – what’s it got to do with being a man? You might die.

Everyone was scared and had to keep moving around. I felt scared for the children who lost their parents.

I thought it was quite funny that Dara believed that the clay marble was really magic, but the extraordinary thing is that when she closed her hand around it, it gave her courage.”

Little Brother (7 and a 1/2): “The Clay Marble makes me think about friendship. Some of the grown-ups were very mean because they were bombing the Border and the refugees and not just the enemy’s soldiers. The fighting made Sarun stop thinking about growing his crops and they had to have more bombings.

It made me very sad when Jantu died. She was gifted and she helped Dara believe in herself. Dara was very brave.”

I think that although Little Brother especially was quite young to be taking in all of the inferences of the story, I don’t think they were too young and they were both completely caught up in it. They were horrified to hear about how close to reality it was. The small map at the beginning was brilliant and we referred back to it many times. We read the introduction afterwards and again, they were struck that there really had been a clay marble.

Yes, I found it emotionally draining. Fortunately I had read ahead so was not having to deal with my own reactions at the same time as the boys’! We read the last few chapters in one sitting the morning after we’d read about Dara finding Jantu and the Baby in the hospital. The boys were both stunned when Jantu was shot. They were indignant and upset, and furious with the way Sarun behaved afterwards – as was I! I think the ending was managed beautifully because, after all, this is a story written with a young audience in mind. Sarun did not lose face but was able to take up his role as head of the family and the story ends with a message of hope – emphasised by the epilogue of Dara “now”, a few years later and a mother herself. A novel for an adult audience wouldn’t get away with being so tidy at the end – but Minfong Ho delivers a riveting story and instills in her young audience the idea of the futility and randomness of war at a level they can absorb, without ever having to state it explicitely: and that is why I think it’s a fine book.”

If you haven’t explored The Clay Marble, please do pick it up–and then share it with others. It, like the best of novels, illuminates the present while explaining the past–and could possibly change the future.

With our present focus on literacy and my avowal that it’s never to soon to start sharing a bedtime story, I feel it is time I put the spotlight on a book for that early age-group. In her last post on the Tiger’s Bookshelf, Janet asked about first bedtime stories and there are a couple of stories there to make you smile. When my two were small, I used to like finding stories that ended with everyone, especially the baby, going to sleep – hint, hint…

It took me a few moments to make the connection between Hush! – A Thai Lullaby (Scholastic, 2000) and The Clay Marble, the Tiger’s Choice for August, but as soon as I realised that they shared Minfong Ho as their author, it seemed too serendipitous to ignore and I knew it would have to be this week’s choice! It also offers a slightly subversive take on the let’s-get-baby-to-sleep ending since by the end of this one, everyone else is asleep except baby…

All the animals mother asks to hush make their noises in Thai, which children will find intriguing as well as fun to imitate. It’s a beautifully written book and the multi-layered illustrations by Holly Meade are also stunning (read reviews here). It could have the desired effect of settling little ones down to a good night’s sleep – but it could equally well raise a triumphant chortle and give the grown-ups a chance to snatch a few moments of shut-eye, even if it is just to be pounced upon and rudely awakened!

What special books do you recommend as bedtime stories for babies and toddlers?

Eleven years ago I made my first visit to Cambodia and fell in love. I was in Phnom Penh, which in 1997 was a city of hope, and the mood of joyous optimism that pervaded its streets was irresistible. The man who was my motorcycle taxi driver during my visit was a man whose smile touched his eyes but did not erase the omnipresent sadness that lived in them. His parents had been killed during the years of Pol Pot when he was just entering his teens, and he refused to accompany me when I entered the grounds of Tuol Sleng, the school that had been turned into a torture chamber, because that is the place that had made him an orphan. He took care of his younger brother as best as he could and they both survived.

He took me to his house in the rural outskirts of the city so I could meet his wife, his two small sons, and his baby daughter. His children all gleamed with the love that he gave them, healthy and happy. At one point during my time with them, my host tapped the side of a large and bulging burlap bag. “Rice,” he said proudly, “We eat it every day.”

When I read and reread The Clay Marble, it brings this memory so strongly to mind that I often find that I am in tears. Minfong Ho evokes the hunger of that dreadful time–for food, for family, for community, for the ability to know that a harvest of rice will soon be reaped, for the safety to sleep in one’s own house with secure and happy children close by.

Obviously I have emotional baggage that I bring with me to this book – would it have the same impact if I had not fallen in love with Cambodia? What about you? Does this book move you or does it feel contrived? Is it an issue in search of a story or does it bring the refugee experience to life? Please let us all know what you think…

Fleeing the horror that has turned her home in Cambodia into a battleground filled with death and starvation, twelve-year-old Dara and what is left of her family cross the border into neighboring Thailand and the safety of Nong Chan, a camp for Cambodian refugees. Quickly they become absorbed into the life of “a vast barren field teeming with refugees” which “had the feel of our village during the years of peace before the fighting started.”

This is a place with enough food for all, where Dara’s family joins forces with the family of Jantu, a girl who becomes Dara’s friend. Jantu has the gift of magic hands; she is able to turn clay and leftover scraps into toys and she makes Dara a clay marble that contains the magic and power that are badly needed in these troubled times.

Even more magical and powerful are the bags of rice seeds that are given to the refugees and carry the promise of future crops in their abandoned fields in Cambodia. Dara and Jantu’s families dream of feeding themselves once again in Cambodia, but even in the safety of the refugee camp, war interferes brutally with their plans.

Written by Minfong Ho, who worked as a volunteer in refugee camps along the Thai-Cambodian border in 1980, this book has become a classic since it first appeared in 1991. Dara and Jantu, with their determination and courage, are characters who reach beyond borders and age barriers to show readers what it means to become refugees and how hope can bring people back to their homes. Please join us in reading and discussing The Clay Marble in July.