Mossy by Jan Brett

Sep5

“One summer morning, my husband, Joe, and I were dangling our feet from our dock on Goose Lake. I was watching some waterweeds on the bottom, thinking they looked just like a giant turtle. Suddenly, they swam up toward us. It was a turtle, a huge snapping one, with an underwater ‘garden’ on its shell.”

Author illustrator Jan Brett was inspired by the turtle with a garden on its back to write Mossy, the story of an eastern box turtle who also grows a garden on her carapace (shell). In the story Mossy the turtle becomes the showpiece of Dr. Carolina’s natural history museum, but Dr. Carolina’s niece, Tory, isn’t so sure that Mossy is happy in her museum habitat. Romance enters the picture when Mossy meets Scoot, a handsome male turtle with ruby-red eyes. But will Mossy be able to get back to Lilypad Pond where Scoot is pining for her?

The book is laid out in Jan Brett’s signature style with lush, colorful illustrations in a central large page or two-page spread painting, framed by smaller pictures of minor characters and objects from the story. Mossy herself is a delightfully expressive turtle with a garden full of leaves and mushrooms and flowers and wild berries on her back. Her male counterpart, Scoot, doesn’t have a garden, but he is indeed a handsome turtle. The human characters–Dr. Carolina, Tory, and a couple of sisters named Flora and Fauna–are dressed in late nineteenth century/early twentieth century clothing to give the book a quaint old-fashioned feeling that goes along with the story very nicely.

Box turtles “generally live for 25-35 years but have been known to survive to over 100 years old,” according to my internet research. The author implies at the end of the book that Mossy. with her turtleback garden, might still be living near Lilypad Pond where she first appears in the story. I certainly hope so.

I’ve added this book to Picture Book Preschool under the heading of Reptiles and Fish. (Turtles are reptiles, right?) I have two other Jan Brett title listed in Picture Book Preschool: The Hat and Brett’s illustrated version of The Night Before Christmas by Clement Clark Moore. However, Ms. Brett is a prolific author and illustrator, and I have many of her books in my library. Do you have a favorite Jan Brett book? Tell us all about it in the comments.

Ratty by Suzanne Selfors

Sep2

Ratty Barclay isn’t supposed to be a four foot tall rodent. He was born a boy, but something, maybe the Barclay Curse, turned him into a rat soon after his birth. And now Ratty wants to come out of hiding and somehow break the curse. He’s in hiding because people generally hate rats, especially human-sized talking rats. And his uncle Max has protected Ratty from the world of rat-hating humans for almost thirteen years, but Ratty thinks he can break the curse if he can return to Fairweather Island and the Barclay family estate where it all began.

What Ratty doesn’t know is that on Fairweather Island, indeed on the Barclay Estate itself, lives Edweena Gup, granddaughter of the manor’s groundskeeper and Ratcatcher Extraordinaire. Edweena is obsessed with rats, even though the island has no rats and she herself has never had the opportunity to catch or kill one. She has certainly studied them, gathered the tools for exterminating them, and considers herself the heir of her great-great-great grandmother’s legacy and skill at rat-catching.

Will Ratty be able to break the Barclay Curse? Will Edweena find Ratty and trap him before he can? Will something catastrophic happen to Uncle Max on Fairweather Island? What is the Barclay Curse? Why have so many Barclays died in mysterious circumstances? Why is Edweena so afraid of rats? Why is Ratty a rat when he was born a boy to human parents?

Here’s where the spoilers come into this review. If you don’t want to know the answers to the above questions, or at least some of the answers, don’t read any further. It’s a good little story, entertaining and clever and clean of everything except rats, lots of rats, and I recommend it for those who enjoy quirky. If you don’t mind introducing the idea of a family curse (it’s fiction, guys!), Ratty is good, wholesome reading for nine to twelve year olds who enjoy odd little stories about unusual characters and events, with a little humor thrown into the mix.

However as an adult, living in the 2024 world of gender dysphoria and identity confusion, I couldn’t help looking for signs that this simple story had a hidden meaning. Is Ratty’s discomfort with his rat body an allegory for body dysmorphia? Does Ratty’s desire to break the curse and change back into a human boy with a human body mirror the desires of many young people nowadays to change their bodies and to become something they are not? I don’t think kids will read any of this into the story, but I’m not a child. And I’ve seen too many children’s books lately that have a barely hidden agenda.

Well, long story short, here’s the spoiler: at the end of the book, Ratty decides that the Barclay Curse is not what made him a rat, and he accepts the body he has and his rat habits. He stays a rat, albeit a really large and somewhat human-like rat (R.O.U.S?). We never find out how or why Ratty became a rat. So, if the book was intended to support in some way the gender confusion of this decade, it doesn’t work that way. I think it’s just a quirky story, reminiscent of The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins in its inexplicable mysteriousness, about a rat and a family curse and an island and a girl who learns that friendship and firsthand knowledge can overcome fear.

Jane and the Year Without a Summer by Stephanie Barron

Aug31

I was looking for new mystery detective fiction, having read all of the Agatha Christie, Rex Stout, Dorothy Sayers, and Erle Stanley Gardner that I could find, as well as many more in the genre. A friend suggested the Jane Austen Mysteries by Stephanie Barron. I looked for the first book in the series, Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor, but my library didn’t have it on the shelf. So I just picked one that sounded interesting and thus read Jane and the Year Without a Summer, set in the summer of 1816 when “the eruption of Mount Tambora in the South Pacific caused a volcanic winter that shrouded the entire planet for sixteen months.” (Climate change, indeed!)

The real Jane Austen died in 1817 at the age of 41, so this book portrays a fictional Jane well toward the end of her short life. Jane is feeling unwell with chronic fatigue and stomach upset, and she and her sister Cassandra decide to sample the waters at Cheltenham Spa in Gloucestershire. These books are said to be “based on the author’s examination of Austen’s letters and writings along with extensive biographical information.” But of course, a mystery is inserted into the biographical story to spice things up a bit.

In this particular book, the mystery involves a several of the Misses Austen’s fellow boarders at the lodging house in Cheltenham where they are staying. The actual murder (or unexplained death) doesn’t happen until about three quarters of the way through the book, but the atmosphere and setting that the author creates makes up for the lack of action in the first half of the book. The characters, aside from Jane herself, are somewhat one-dimensional, and the mystery and resolution there of require some suspension of disbelief. Why and how the murderer does the deed is a bit unlikely. Nevertheless, the Regency setting with period details and information about the real Jane Austen’s life and times is, as Jane might say, quite enjoyable.

I liked it well enough to seek out another book in the series, preferably the first, and maybe I’ll read them them all. Stephanie Barron has written fifteen of these books with Jane as the sleuth and protagonist, and the fifteenth one is called Jane and the Final Mystery. So I assume the series is complete. It might be a nice adventure to travel through all fifteen.

Maybelle The Cable Car by Virginia Lee Burton

Aug29

Burton, Virginia Lee. Maybelle the Cable Car. Houghton Mifflin, 1952.

Maybelle the Cable Car! A San Francisco treat!

Virginia Lee Burton wrote and illustrated the classics Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel and The Little House and Katy and the Big Snow. Maybelle the Cable Car ranks right up there with Ms. Burton’s other lovely books. Set in San Francisco, this picture book tells the story of how Maybelle and the other cable cars work hard going up and down the many hills of the city. In their big green barn at night, Maybelle and the other cable car reminisce about the good old days in San Francisco when the city was smaller and slower and every one knew everyone else and everyone appreciated the cable cars. Now the cable cars, who work for the city government, are neglected, and Big Bill the Bus says they are “too old and out of date, much too slow and can’t be safe.”

Like Mary Anne, Mike Mulligan’s steam shovel, Maybelle is in danger of becoming obsolete and being scrapped. But, of course, the book is named for Maybelle, so that can’t happen. “Virginia Lee Burton’s . . . classic story recounts actual events in the city of San Francisco’s efforts to preserve and protect its cable cars and illustrates how the voice of the people can be heard in the spirit of democracy.”

The story of Maybelle the Cable Car might require some explanation of how votes and petitions and ballots work and how people can band together to ask their government leaders to change their plans. But you could just read the book and answer questions afterwards, if asked. Children often don’t need to understand everything in a picture book in order to enjoy it. There are also some technical details about how cable cars work at the beginning of the book that will be of great interest to some children and not so much to others.

I’m adding this book to my guide, Picture Book Preschool, in the new, expanded edition under the subject heading of United States History. It really does show the history of San Francisco from the perspective of the cable cars who remember how the city grew and changed. And with so many picture books and children’s books set in New York City and on the east coast, it’s good to have one that takes place on the west coast. Now, if only I could find a fantastic picture book set on the Gulf Coast!

Farmer Duck by Martin Waddell

Aug22

Waddell, Martin. Farmer Duck. Illustrated by Martin Waddell. Candlewick, 1991.

Some people take their picture books way too seriously. I thought this story of a lazy farmer and his rebellious animals was a great read. A bare-chested farmer sits in bed and eats chocolates while the duck does all the farm work. The only dialog in the book is the farmer asking the duck, “How goes the work?” The duck replies, “Quack.” Finally, the duck is so exhausted and discouraged that the other farm animals take pity on him and come up with a plan to relieve his misery by taking over the farm.

Yes, it’s Orwell’s Animal Farm, without the nasty, autocratic pigs. Yes, the ending has the animals working happily together to run the farm. Yes, the farmer is forced to run away, barefoot and still bare-chested, never to return. Yes, it’s a socialist animal-run utopian dream. But I just don’t believe any child (or adult) will become a good little communist after reading this book. However, some of the reviewers on Amazon certainly found the book to be subversive. “Communistic.” “Scary and violent.” “Propaganda book.”

On the other hand, the jacket blurb calls the story “a fable.” If it is a fable, perhaps it IS teaching a lesson. But I don’t believe it’s a communist lesson. Maybe it’s just a lesson about laziness and how eventually the worker duck will get fed up and worn out if he has to do all of the work. Maybe it’s a lesson about helping and working together and “the one who is unwilling to work shall not eat” (I Thessalonians 3:10). Or maybe it’s just a funny story with a happy ending and great illustrations.

Author Martin Waddell received the Hans Christian Andersen Medal in 2004. Helen Oxenbury has won the annual Kate Greenaway Medal, the British librarians’ award for illustration, twice and been runner-up four times. So the team has a reputation. As far as illustrations go, the duck’s expressive face, “sleepy, weepy, and tired” all at the same time, was particularly well done, and I loved the story.

The Hidden Treasure of Glaston by Eleanore M. Jewett

Aug21

In twelfth century England the feud between Archbishop Thomas Becket and King Henry has ended in the murder of Becket, forcing the boy Hugh’s noble father, an ally of the king, into exile in France. Young Hugh, crippled by a childhood disease, is left behind in the care of the Abbot of Glastonbury. Glaston soon becomes Hugh’s sanctuary and his beloved home as he finds both mentors and friends as well as a quest to find remnants and reminders of King Arthur’s and perhaps even Joseph of Arimathea’s presence, centuries prior, in that part of the country.

Hugh’s first friendship formed at Glaston is with Dickon, a young oblate at the monastery of Glaston. (oblate: a person dedicated to a religious life, but typically having not taken full monastic vows.) Dickon’s peasant family has signed him over to the monks of Glaston, but Dickon aspires to become a knight, or at least to serve knight. Hugh wishes he could be a knight and make his father proud, but his crippled legs make this dream an impossibility. The two boys become friends, with very different personalities, but also with a common goal of finding or at least seeing a vision of the legendary Holy Grai

Hugh’s mentors and adult friends are Brother John, the monastery’s librarian (armarian), and Bleheris, a seemingly mad hermit who shares Hugh’s and Dickon’s interest in the vision of the Holy Grail. The story moves rather slowly, but the picture of Hugh’s growth and healing and of the friendships he makes is compelling. I kept reading, not to see whether Hugh and his friends would find the Grail, but rather to see whether and how Hugh would find healing for his physical and spiritual wounds.

Honestly, although I enjoyed this Newbery honor-winning novel, I’m not sure what group of children or young people would be the audience for it. Perhaps those who are deeply interested in the whole Arthurian legend would enjoy this Arthur-adjacent story, or maybe fans of Rosemary Sutcliff’s historical fiction. The plot and characters remind me of the Newbery Award book, The Door in the Wall by Marguerite de Angeli; however, The Hidden Treasure of Glaston is a much more intricate and involved look at life in a medieval monastery and the difficulties facing a young boy with a disability in that society–at a much higher reading level. If The Door in the Wall was a favorite for an eight to eleven year old reader, this book might be a good follow-up for ages twelve and up.

I read this book as a part of the 1964 Project. A reprint edition of The Hidden Treasure of Glaston is available from Bethlehem Books.

He Went With Hannibal by Louise Andrews Kent

Aug16

He Went With Hannibal is everything you ever wanted to know about Hannibal and his wars with Rome, encased in the story of a fictional Spanish companion and spy named Brecon. Brecon comes to Hannibal in Spain as a hostage at the age of thirteen and remains Hannibal’s loyal friend and servant throughout his life. Hannibal’s famous crossing of the Alps—with elephants–and his march to the gates of Rome as well as all of the battles, both victories and defeats, are all described vividly and in detail, but not so much detail as to get bogged down in minutiae. Brecon gathers information for Hannibal and goes everywhere and meets everyone of note, including Archimedes, Hannibal’s brothers, Hasdrubal and Mago, Fabius Maximus, Marcellus, Flaminius, Scipio Africanus, and of course, Hannibal himself. These are all historical figures whose adventures are chronicled in Roman history, and Brecon becomes the thread that ties all their stories together and makes them come alive for the reader.

I read this story for my 1964 Project, and I’m very glad I did. I really didn’t know much about Hannibal the Carthaginian general, and now I know a little. (I could definitely have learned more with the aid of a map or two, of Italy, North Africa, Spain. But alas, there are no maps in this book.) In her Author’s Note, Louise Kent Andrews writes, “One of the striking things about Hannibal is that we know him only through the eyes of his enemies. There are no Carthaginian accounts of his life.” Andrews read the the Roman histories of the Punic Wars (wars between Carthage in North Africa and Rome in Italy and Spain), particularly Livy’s Annals and Polybius’s history as well as many other modern and ancient books about the time period and about Hannibal and his exploits. She lists several of the books she read in the Author’s Note. Although I’m not a Roman or Latin scholar by any means, it seems to me that she was quite thorough in her research. And the story becomes a fictionalized attempt to tell the history from Hannibal’s point of view. He Went With Hannibal is also the only historical fiction book that I know of that showcases this particular time of the Roman Republic and the Punic Wars. (Biblioguides does list one other historical fiction book about Hannibal, I Marched With Hannibal by Hans Baumann.)

Louise Kent Andrews wrote several other books in her series of books about famous explorers and soldiers, and I am anticipating adding all of them to my reading list. Her style of writing is detailed and descriptive, but she uses mostly short, simple or complex, declarative sentences, no rambling purple prose to be found. The story of Hannibal, which includes quite a lot of his battle tactics and musings on warfare and politics, should appeal especially to those middle school and high school boys who are keen on such subjects. The ending is rather bittersweet/sad, but of course, Ms. Andrews was constrained by the historical facts from giving the story a completely happy ending.

“I hope that some of my readers will feel, as I did, that reading about Hannibal makes them wish to learn more about the great change that took place when the Roman Republic became the Roman Empire. The war with Carthage was one of the causes for that change.” ~ Author’s Note

Other books in the series by Louise Kent Andrews:

  • He Went With Champlain
  • He Went With Christopher Columbus
  • He Went With Drake
  • He Went With John Paul Jones
  • He Went With Magellan
  • He Went With Marco Polo
  • He Went With Vasco da Gama

All of the books in this series are available in reprint editions from Living Book Press.

Richard Scarry’s Busiest Fire Fighters Ever!

Aug15

Scarry, Richard. Busiest Fire Fighters Ever!. Golden Books, 1993.

Richard Scarry wrote and illustrated more than 300 books during the course of his prolific career. And they have been and continue to be some of the best-selling and most popular picture books in the world. I must admit that I rather avoided Busytown when I was reading aloud to my own children because, well, Busytown can be awfully busy. The big Busytown books, such as Cars and Truck and Things That Go, What Do People Do All Day? and Busy, Busy Town, have multiple storylines going on at the same time on multiple levels on the page, and lots of characters, and it’s hard to find the correct sequence to read the story in, and . . . well, kids love them, but I didn’t, at least not for read aloud time.

However, the Little Golden Books by Scarry cut all of that busyness in Busytown down to size. In Busiest Fire Fighters Ever, Sparky, Smokey, Snozzle, and Squirty (pigs) are the fire fighters. They help the people of Busytown by solving all sorts of problems from lost keys to pigs stuck in trees. They also stand ready to respond to a fire call. But when the fire fighters put out the wrong fire and spoil the Greenbug family’s barbecue, they are quick to respond by hosting the Greenbug family at the firehouse for a fire fighter barbecue.

There’s only one sequential story in this book, just a fun little story about how fires can be good or bad and how fire fighters can be helpers in the community in many different ways. It talks about fire in a way that recognizes the dangers of uncontrolled fires, but isn’t scary for young children. Somebody on Amazon wished the fourth fire fighter pig wasn’t called “Squirty”, but I thought the name was cute and appropriate. Squirty squirts the firehose. Mr. Frumble makes an appearance in the story, too, and he’s always good for a preschool laugh or two.

I added this Little Golden Book to the lists in the new edition of Picture Book Preschool. The other Picture Book Preschool book by Richard Scarry is Richard Scarry’s Please and Thank You Book.

Knights Besieged by Nancy Faulkner

Aug13

This historical fiction novel, published in 1964, is set on the island of Rhodes during the siege of Rhodes in 1522. The Knights of St. John, or Knights Hospitallers, whose headquarters is on the Greek island of Rhodes, are besieged by the Ottoman Turks under the leadership of Suleiman the Magnificent. The battle will decide who will control trade and commerce in the eastern Mediterranean Sea for the immediate future as well as its being a religious war between the Muslim Turks and the Christian (Catholic) Knights.

Our protagonist, Jeffrey Rohan, is an English merchant’s son, fourteen years old, and an escaped former slave of the Sultan Suleiman. After his escape from Constantinople, Jeffrey ends up by accident on the island Rhodes and finds that he cannot leave since the city of Rhodes is under siege. Jeffrey takes solace in his prayers and his belief in the courage and piety of the Knights Hospitallers, but he is also aware, in a way that his friends are not, of the strength and overwhelming numbers of the Turkish force.

I found this story to be intriguing, partly because I didn’t know how it would end. I didn’t know much about the Knights Hospitallers, and I certainly didn’t know whether the Turks or the Knights would have the victory in this particular battle and siege. I would love to discuss the ending, but I won’t spoil it for you. Suffice it to say that Jeffrey is brought to question many of his beliefs and presuppositions over the course of a very long and wearing siege, and yet in the end his faith in God and in chivalry are validated in an unusual way.

This 1964 novel is still fresh and relevant today. The attitudes in the novel are those of sixteenth century people: the Knights are sworn to kill all Muslim infidels, and they do so without mercy. (No gore, just plainly stated facts.) The Turkish besiegers are more inclined to kill those that they must, but rather to enslave and tax the population if they can —and to require allegiance to Suleiman and to the Islamic religion. These are all very medieval attitudes. Now we are trying as a Western post-Christian civilization to come to some sort of compromise and peaceful co-existence with the Muslim world, and they are what? I’m not sure, and this children’s/YA novel certainly didn’t have the answers to our modern problems. However, it did make me think about the complicated and fraught relationship between Westerners and Christians and Muslims and Easterners over the course of history.

Anyway, Knights Besieged would be an excellent introduction to the history of Middle East and the Mediterranean in the late Middle Ages and a great springboard for discussion of past and current events in that part of the world. You will probably want to learn more about the Ottoman Empire, the Knights of St John, and the history of Europe and the Middle East in general after reading the story. I certainly did. And some boys will just be in it for the war and the knights and the intrigue. That’s fine, too. Not every work of historical fiction has to be a history lesson in disguise, even if it is.

Dodsworth in New York by Tim Egan

Aug8

Egan, TIm. Dodsworth in New York. Houghton Mifflin, 2007.

This easy reader with four short chapters is the first in a series of easy readers about Dodsworth and his friend, the duck. The duck is never given a name, and I thought when I read some of the other Dodsworth books that Dodsworth was a mole. He still looks like a mole to me, but I am informed by reliable sources that Dodsworth is, indeed, a mouse. (I can still think of him as a mole. I prefer moles to mice.)

Character identity confusion aside, Dodsworth first encounters the duck in this book in the first chapter at Hodges’ Cafe. The duck is at first Hodges’ duck, and he’s a crazy, pancake-throwing, runaway duck who stows away in Dodsworth’s trunk. Dodsworth is on his way to New York City, from thence to embark on a journey to see the world. But Dodsworth can’t get rid of the crazy duck who becomes the key to adventure in a series of books: Dodsworth in Rome, Dodsworth in Paris, Dodsworth in London, and Dodsworth in Tokyo.

Dodsworth is the straight man in this world-traveling comedy duo. The duck is a rather bizarre comedian who gets lost a lot. I happen to think that easy readers are often perfect for reading aloud to precocious preschoolers, and that idea was confirmed when I loaned these Dodsworth books to my then-three year old grandson. He was smitten by the stories and by the humor. He got the jokes. And we had to read Dodsworth over and over and over again. He got a kendama (from Dodsworth in Tokyo) for his fourth birthday, along with his own set of Dodsworth books.

I read these books out of order, all the while mistaking Dodsworth the mouse for a mole. But I thoroughly enjoyed them anyway. I would recommend beginning with Dodsworth in New York because New York is the beginning of this zany journey. Yankee Stadium. The Brooklyn Bridge. The Statue of Liberty. Radio City Music Hall. And one crazy duck. What’s not to like?

Dodsworth in New York has been added to the updated edition of Picture Book Preschool for the week on United States–Travel.