Wringer

Sometimes, unplugging is just fantastic.  With the holiday weekend being long, I was running around.  I spent Saturday and Sunday at my grandparent's place.  We decorated everything for Christmas and got the house all cleaned up.  I spent some of my down time reading my favorite book from 5th grade.  I was a really weird child.  Not surprising.  My favorite book involves death and animals.  Hmmm.  The cover alone looks scary.  I ended up loving it.  As I'm re-reading this book for book club, I'm wondering why I loved this book so much.  I'll probably remember it while I'm blubbering over the ending.  Yay!  Jerry Spinelli wrote Wringer, my childhood favorite.  It is about a 9 year old boy, Palmer, desperate to be accepted, but dreading the rather strange tradition his town plays host to every year.  Palmer's town hosts a festival around the end of summer and the grand finale of the festival is the shooting of imported pigeons.  Thousands upon thousands of birds are shot or have their necks wrung after being shot.  The book follows Palmer's journey as he tries to find out why people enjoy this so much and how his fitting in with the local boys, even pleasing his father, is tangled up in the tradition of wringing.

Ugh - I just realized I still haven't switched my calendar from October to November and it is December by the end of this week.  Depressing.  Well, I guess I have a good book to accompany me