In my twenties, I disliked the book "Miss Rumphius"; it was a staple at the Catholic school where I taught, and it had a flavor of preachiness that I found mildly irritating. To me, Catholicism seems to be about hairshirts and self-flagellation, and "the Lupine Lady"'s crazed quest to "make the world more beautiful" just reminded me of various annoying homilies, and I wasn't converted. But now my daughter makes me reconsider certain things. For example, she makes me interested in birds, so I find myself at "the Raptor Trust" on weekends. That's something I wouldn't do if I didn't have Susie. Rereading "Miss Rumphius" with my child, I notice how the protagonist quietly resists family life, resists marriage, and finds a way to explore the planet, although she is a single woman in the 1950s (or 1940s?) ....She hangs out with the Bapa Raja in an Indonesian fishing village, and she performs athletic feats in the Land of ...