"The Help"

As soon as we come near the end of the school year my mind starts to imagine the places I will go during the next couple of months.

I imagine places in the past, present, and future....all places that I will go with the help of a book.

I am delighted by the thought of reading something, ANYTHING besides NON-FICTION parenting or homeschooling books.
I am ready to get lost in something DIFFERENT.

I find myself roaming the fiction isles of the library for anything that looks interesting. Searching for something to take my mind off of school and all the heavy responsibilities that are attached to being ENTIRELY responsibile for my kids education.

Trust me...after 9 months of being SATURATED by lesson plans, cirriculum, late night blog reading, field trips, and flashcards...I need a mental vacation!!!

I need to think of SOMETHING besides school.

Just for a minute.

Last week I was given a book by my friend to get me started on my "mental vacation".



I started reading it THAT day and was immediately ENGROSSED...
I mean like I almost FORGOT I had kids.
Seriously...I think one day when they asked me for lunch, my answer was, "It's fend-for-yourself day."
Don't judge.
4th grade math was hard on me this year...I deserved a day(or 3).LOL.

It is an amazing tale of a group of 2 sets of women divided by nothing more than a color and an invisible line dictated by geography and history alone.

On "The Help" website it says:
"Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. She may have a degree, but it is 1962, Mississippi, and her mother will not be happy till Skeeter has a ring on her finger. Skeeter would normally find solace with her beloved maid Constantine, the woman who raised her, but Constantine has disappeared and no one will tell Skeeter where she has gone.

Aibileen is a black maid, a wise, regal woman raising her seventeenth white child. Something has shifted inside her after the loss of her own son, who died while his bosses looked the other way. She is devoted to the little girl she looks after, though she knows both their hearts may be broken.

Minny, Aibileen's best friend, is short, fat, and perhaps the sassiest woman in Mississippi. She can cook like nobody's business, but she can't mind her tongue, so she's lost yet another job. Minny finally finds a position working for someone too new to town to know her reputation. But her new boss has secrets of her own.

Seemingly as different from one another as can be, these women will nonetheless come together for a clandestine project that will put them all at risk. And why? Because they are suffocating within the lines that define their town and their times. And sometimes lines are made to be crossed.

In pitch-perfect voices, Kathryn Stockett creates three extraordinary women whose determination to start a movement of their own forever changes a town, and the way women--mothers, daughters, caregivers, friends--view one another. A deeply moving novel filled with poignancy, humor, and hope, The Help is a timeless and universal story about the lines we abide by, and the ones we don't."

This book has a way of putting you DEEP in the lives of these women.
It made me feel grateful that times have SOMEWHAT changes and tolerance is the "new black".
In these times...it is NOW more acceptable to LOVE one another...no matter the shade of their skin.
It made me really think about the fact that there are and will ALWAYS be rebels. The "true-at-heart" who cannot just sit back and LET THINGS HAPPEN.
THAT makes me feel blessed...to know that there have always been those who ROSE to "higher heights"...no matter the struggle.

It was an amazing book that you should RUN and buy...
or- ask a friend ...I bet you know someone who has a copy!!!
Happy Summer Reading!