Finding Mandelbaum's Kansas Scenes

Also, my trick to NEVER mispronounce a name on the first day of school

Aug 25, 2024

A book to read: The Bright Side Sanctuary for Animals by Becky Mandelbaum

Knowing that I’d soon be spending time in Kansas, I’ve been searching for books set in The Sunflower State.

And I’m so glad I found THE BRIGHT SIDE SANCTUARY FOR ANIMALS by Becky Mandelbaum. It’s such a beautiful book, so deeply rooted in Kansas. It’s exactly the kind of book I was looking for.

The only possible glitch is that here at Jenna Repeats History, I usually review historical books. THE BRIGHT SIDE is set in the fall of 2016. Is that historical enough for us? A certain presidential candidate was running in 2016 and is again running now in 2024, so history is indeed repeating itself.

The Bright Side Sanctuary for Animals, all the way out in western Kansas, is run by Ariel’s mother. She’s exhausted, out of money, and is routinely covered in dog pee. She’s also deeply in love with every snake, gerbil, horse, and kitty that comes her way. She sews up Chihuahua wounds with dental floss, chews up a T-bone steaks for dogs with bad teeth, and tries to drums up grant funding in attempt to keep the place running.

When Ariel hears that her mother’s animal sanctuary is in trouble, Ariel leaves her own sanctuary of Lawrence, Kansas (a liberal college town on the other side of the state) and her boyfriend (fiancée?) to be with her estranged Mother. The book is chock-full of flashbacks, which makes it quite a page turner as bits of Ariel’s backstory are revealed.

Complications, of course, ensue. Ariel’s first love is at the animal sanctuary, along with his new girlfriend. Ariel’s current boyfriend (fiancée?) shows up uninvited, and her mom stubbornly refuses to accept help from literally anyone.

So many complicated characters, so much beautiful writing. A gorgeous read.

A place to explore: Kansas, of course!

I captured my favorite lines from the book and then took pictures in Kansas to match. Here they are:

“driving down a wide gravel road…the sky an empty thought bubble suspended overhead…”

Ariel’s boyfriend (fiancée?) convinced his friend Buddy to drive him out to Western Kansas with the promise of Buddy’s favorite snack: Peanut Butter Snack (“PBS,” if you will). It “involved a jar of peanut butter whose center Buddy would carve out so that he could fill the empty space with chocolate chips and crushed-up pretzels.” I think this is supposed to make the reader feel disgusted, but it makes me love Buddy. I don’t have exactly the same peanut butter snacking habit, but I’m close. My favorite road trip snack is to take a package of peanut butter M&Ms, stick them in the car window until they melt, crush them all together (inside the bag), re-solidify in a hotel refrigerator, and then eat like a candy bar.

“It was her favorite thing about the prairie - that grandness and melodrama of the sky, how it constantly churned above like a mood ring, stagnating them simmering then eventually boiling over into a deep purple temper tantrum, throwing out fistfuls of lightning and hail, the occasional twister, only to clear out the next morning, contrite and bashful, smiling a uniform blue as if nothing had happened. Who, me? I would never.”

No lightning or hail on this trip, but I love this sky

“fields dotted with cows and irrigation systems and old barns so rotted they leaned towards the ground”

I was sent to Kansas by Matador Network and the Kansas Department of Commerce. Lucky me, because SE Kansas was such a delight.

A Lesson to Teach: How to take attendance without mispronouncing names

In THE BRIGHT SIDE, the main character’s name is Ariel. At home, it’s pronounced are, ee, ell but when she moved to Lawrence, professors pronounced her name wrong, sounding more like the Little Mermaid’s name. Ariel, being too shy to correct them, just went with it and soon everyone, in Lawrence was pronouncing her name wrong. This creates a beautifully awkward scene in the book where Ariel’s boyfriend (fiancée?) tries to correct Ariel’s mother on the pronunciation of her name.

“Mona gave him a funny look. ‘Why are you saying her name like that?”
“Like what?” Dex asked. “That’s how you say it - you’re the ones-” He realized, then, that he was talking to the woman who had given Ariel her name in the first place.”

Mispronounced names are good for novels, but bad for classrooms. Here’s my teacher tip for making sure it doesn’t happen on the first day of class:

On Day #1, I begin with a quick 5 or 10 minute typical teacher opener about who I am and how excited I am about teaching and history. Then I give my students this task to work on independently.

While they are busy, I go around to each table group (I have my students in groups of 6), sit down with my roster, and have each kid at the table say his or her or their own name to me.

That way a kid with a tricky name doesn’t have the mortifying task of correcting me in front of the class and/or publicly coaching me on how to say their name. Also, I get a little individual moment with each kid, which is lovely.

The only glitch is that many schools want you to take attendance during the first ten minutes of class, a requirement I get around my simply marking everyone present at the beginning of the period and then going back to fix it later. Hopefully my school admin isn’t reading this :)

After that first day, I give myself one week to learn all the names of my 100+ students. After the week is up, if I say a name wrong, I owe that kid a candy bar. This provides positive incentive for students to correct me (most kids, even high schoolers, don’t like correcting their teachers) AND incentive for me to stay focused on learning names. I don’t want to have to spend time and money buying snacks.