A Basket of Plums by Maud McKnight Lindsay

Jun4

This picture book is one of several that I purchased from The Good and the Beautiful recently when that publisher announced that they were going to close out all of their inventory of reprinted children’s books and in future only print original works written by living authors. I’ll say upfront that while the decision may make business sense, it’s a loss to the community. Older books (this one was originally published in 1915) are often treasures to be preserved and enjoyed by a generation that is starving for true, good, and beautiful literature. We are drowning in the new, the current, the flashy, and sometimes deceitful, but we need the the old, the tried, and the true.

Of course, not all old books are excellent, just as not all new books are sub-standard. However, A Basket of Plums would be a lovely addition to any library. Ms. Lindsay was a kindergarten teacher, founder of the first free kindergarten in Alabama. She wrote more than 18 books for children, and she was also a poet.

A Basket of Plums is a gentle story about an elderly woman who sets out from her home with a basket of plums, hoping to find apples for the apple dumpling that she wants for her supper. As the old woman walks along, looking for apples, she finds others in need of what she does have–plums and the things she trades for–but it takes a bit of time, and a few bargains, to find the apples for her apple dumpling.

The illustrations in this modern edition of Ms. LIndsay’s story, by a modern illustrator, Dan Burr, are colorful, photo-realistic paintings that complement the quaint old-fashioned tone of the story. The title old woman in Mr. Burr’s pictures feels like a real grandmotherly figure and at the same she has a storybook quality that goes with the story. That’s a a hard combination to pull off, but Mr. Burr does it beautifully.

If you can find a copy–I have one in my library now— enjoy reading this story to both preschoolers and older children. Other stories about bargaining and trading and barter include Oxcart Man by Donald Hall, A Bargain for Frances by Russell Hoban, Monkey for Sale by Sanna Stanley, and for older children (middle elementary) The Toothpaste Millionaire by Jean Merrill and Alvin’s Swap Shop by Clifford B. Hicks. Oh, I checked and as of June 4, 2023, The Good and the Beautiful has a few copies of A Basket of Plums left. I recommend you purchase a copy now if you’re interested.

The Forgotten Daughter by Caroline Dale Snedeker

May14

If The Forgotten Daughter were published now, instead of in 1927, it would probably be classified as Young Adult, at least in terms of interest level. The story takes a young Greek slave girl from age twelve to seventeen as she grows up in Samnium, southern Italy, on a Roman farm villa in the second century B.C. Chloe, the slave girl, lives in a hut on the mountainside with her guardian, an older woman named Melissa. Chloe’s mother is dead, and her father, the Roman patrician and owner of the villa whom she hates, deserted her mother before Chloe was born. The first part of the book deals with the back story behind the marriage of Chloe’s parents and Chloe’s birth and enslavement.

Although The Forgotten Daughter was a Newbery Honor book, I can’t imagine anyone younger than 12 or 13 being able to read the book with enjoyment and appreciation. It took several chapters for me as an adult to be able to follow the plot and understand the deeply religious, cultural, and philosophical meanderings that the author indulges. I did eventually enjoy the insight into Roman culture and law and religion, but it took some mental adjustment to understand the purpose of the descriptions and explanations of Roman superstition, Greek religious practice, Stoicism, and Roman politics, among other subjects. (It was a bit reminiscent of Victor Hugo, Les Miserables, and the sewers of Paris, but not nearly as long as Hugo’s digressions.)

The story is a romance, but a chaste one, although there is some kissing mentioned. It’s also a story of redemption and of freedom from the bondage of hatred and of forgiveness. The author paints a vivid and memorable picture of ancient Roman family life and politics, mentioning or invoking Sappho, Plato, Euripides, the Grachi, Plutarch, and many other Roman and Greek politicians and philosophers and playwrights. Chloe grows up isolated on her father’s Roman farm property, but the politics of Rome impact her life in unexpected ways. Her journey from slavery to freedom mirrors her internal journey from hatred to forgiveness, and it’s all accomplished within a pre-Christian religious and philosophical environment that feels very true and well-researched.

Charlotte Mason educators who are following her advice and reading Plutarch with their students would find this story full of connections and insights. I recommend it for philosophical girls and stoical boys and interested adults. Available from Bethlehem Books.

Snipp, Snapp, Snurr and the Buttered Bread by Maj Lindman

May3

I just took a Picture Book Break from library work to re-read a childhood favorite picture book, Snipp, Snapp, Snurr and the Buttered Bread by Maj LIndman. I loved this series of picture books featuring the Swedish triplets, Snipp, Snapp, and Snurr when I was a kid of a girl. I loved the idea of triplets (and twins). It was intriguing to me that you could have three brothers (or sisters, Flicka, Rick and Dicka) who looked alike and were born at the same time. I think also the foreignness of these little boys growing up in a village in Sweden appealed to me.

In this particular Snipp Snapp Snurr adventure not too much happens. The boys long for some butter to spread on their mother’s fresh bread. So Mother sends them out to get some milk from Aunt Annie’s cow. But the cow, Blossom, has had no fresh grass to eat, so she can’t give milk. And there is no fresh grass to give Blossom because . . . So the story goes from one obstacle to another until the boys finally manage to overcome and get some butter for their bread. It’s just a lovely little sequential story showing how one thing depends upon another all in a great chain that finally yields food, feasting and enjoyment.

Lindman’s illustrations are delightful, too. Of course the triplets wear matching clothes, red overalls and a blue shirt, and they look just alike. The reader never knows in this book which one is Snipp or Snapp or Snurr. Lindman writes, “The sun looked down at the boys and shone and gleamed and beamed with happiness.” And the sun in the picture has a giant smile on his sunny face. Mother and Aunt Annie wear suitable but colorful farm woman dresses and aprons. Everything in the story and the pictures is just so charming and picturesque that it enhances my present enjoyment and my feeling of nostalgia.

Alice Dalgliesh writes in her foreword to Snipp, Snapp, Snurr and the Buttered Bread: “This is the fourth book in the series telling of the adventures of Snipp, Snapp, and Snurr. By this time these three little Swedish boys have become firmly entrenched in the affections of American children. . . . The story has the same quaint charm as the preceding ones. It has an air of reality but it takes just a step over the border of fancy. The books are entirely independent of each other. They may be read in any order, and children who first meet Snipp, Snapp, and Snurr at the farm can then go back and read any of the other adventures.”

Indeed. I am tempted to do as Dalgliesh suggests and go back and read all of the Snipp, Snapp, Snurr books as well as their companion series, Flicka, Rick, and Dicka. But my Picture Book Break time is over, so I’ll save the rest for another day.

The Merry Month of May

May2

“It was a beautiful summer afternoon, at that delicious period of the year when summer has just burst forth from the growth of spring; when summer is yet but three days old, and all the various shades of green which nature can put forth are still in their unsoiled purity of freshness. The apple blossoms were on the trees, and the hedges were sweet with may. The cuckoo at fine o’clock was still sounding his soft summer call with unabated energy, and even the common grasses of the hedgerows were sweet with the fragrance of their new growth. The foliage of the oaks was complete, so that every bough and twig was clothed; but the leave did not yet hang heavy in masses, and the bend of every bough and the tapering curve of every twig were visible through their light green covering. There is no time of the year equal in beauty to the first week in summer; and no color which nature gives, not even the gorgeous hues of autumn, which can equal the verdure produced by the first warm suns of May.” 

~Framley Parsonage by Anthony Trollope, p.335

The royal roses redden
And smiling deck the sod,
The world is like a picture
Where the green fields smile to God;
The birds in all the branches
Are singing to the blue,
And the winds that wave the tree-tops
Toss the blossoms over you.
Oh, the splendor of the gardens
And the glory of the green,
Of banks of singing rivers
Where the lovely lilies lean!
The tinkle, faintly wafted,
Of far-off cattle bells,
And the thrushes’ silver music
In the dim and dreamy dells!
For it’s Maytime, it’s Maytime,
And all the world is bright,
And love is in the sunshine,
And the golden stars of night.

“In Maytime” by Frank L. Stanton

The Explorations of Pere Marquette by Jim Kjelgaard

Apr4

Jim Kjelgaard was just the guy for the Landmark book series editors to ask to write about an intrepid explorer of the wilderness. Father Marquette, a Jesuit priest of the seventeenth century, along with his explorer buddy Louis Joliet, were the first Europeans to explore the Mississippi from the north in Wisconsin down to the place where the Arkansas River joins the Mississippi. Father Marquette wrote about all of the peoples, plants , and animals, that he and his fellow explorers found as they travelled down the Mississippi, and he returned to Green Bay in Wisconsin to tell of his adventures to the French governor and others.

Because Father Marquette worked among the Indian tribes in Michigan and Wisconsin and was also one of the first Europeans and Christians to minister to the Illinois Indians and the first to camp near the site of the present-day of Chicago, this book would make an excellent addition to the study of the state histories of Illinois, Wisconsin, and Michigan. In the foreword to the book historian and Jesuit R.N. Hamilton writes:

“What makes this book most interesting is that Jim Kjelgaard has based all but two incidents on the life of Father Marquette, S.J. The stories of the wounded Indian and the finding of game on the South Lakes, while not recorded of Father Marquette, are, as we know from the writings of Jesuits who were his fellow laborers, typical of what he would have done in the circumstances.”

There are content considerations for the book, however. While some individual Native Americans who appear in the story are described as handsome, strong, and courageous, the Indians as a whole group and as individual tribal groups are usually characterized as improvident, unsanitary, poor, and of course, savage. Since this was truly how the early Europeans saw the Native Americans they met in the New World, and since Father Marquette and other Jesuit missionaries were compassionate and eager to improve the physical and spiritual condition of the Native Americans they came to serve, I don’t have a problem with this characterization. I don’t believe that all cultures are equally conducive to human thriving or to honoring the God who made us, so I have no issue with the idea that the Europeans had much that was good and needed to share with with their Native American brothers. And the Native American people had things to teach the Europeans, but that aspect is not emphasized in this book.

Jim Kjelgaard wrote one other book in the Landmark series, The Coming of the Mormons, one Signature biography, The Story of Geronimo, and the historical fiction book, We Were There at the Oklahoma LandRun. Kjelgaard is also responsible for many beloved animal stories, including Big Red, Irish Red, and Outlaw Red, all dog stories. An outdoorsman and a lover of American history and adventure in particular, Mr. Kjelgaard tells the story of Father Marquette and his explorations in an engaging way that will appeal to young, beginning outdoorsmen and adventurers.

The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles

Apr3

I liked this book even better than I did A Gentleman in Moscow, the only other book by Towles I’ve read. I think I need to read Rules of Civility next. Mr. Towles is good at spinning a yarn and tying all the loose ends together at the end. BUT as much as I liked the story and the characters and the way everything came together, I’m still not sure about the ending. I feel as if Towles took a couple of my favorite people and corrupted them, just a little, or maybe a lot. I’m worried about what will happen to these characters after the story ends. I can’t say much more about that without spoiling the ending. So, if you’ve read The Lincoln Highway and you have some reassurance to give me, put it in the comments. I could use the encouragement that everything is going to be okay with these people in their new life after they travel the Lincoln Highway.

The story is set in June, 1954. Eighteen year old Emmett Watson has just returned home from a prison work farm where he was serving a sentence of fifteen months for involuntary manslaughter. Emmett’s father has recently died, his mother deserted them long ago, and Emmett is now responsible for his eight year old brother Billy. Emmett has a plan to start life anew. Billy also has a plan. And the two inmates who hid in the trunk of the warden’s car that brought Emmett home have a completely different plan.

The book could have turned into a comedy, and it borders on the absurd. However, there are some rather dark events to come, along with the ridiculous. Emmett is determined to go straight and control the temper that got him into trouble in the first place. Billy is an inordinate rule-follower with a child’s penchant for literal and concrete thinking. But the two brothers are caught up in a situation where keeping to the letter of the law and self-control in the face of violence and deceit won’t be enough to save them. So the question is how far can you bend the rules of decency and honesty and nonviolence before you become the criminals you’re trying to escape from?

It’s a good story told from several different points of view. It does take the reader inside the mind of an amoral but likable(?) sociopath and of a confused and mentally incapacitated young man, but you’re never tempted to actually condone wrongdoing or accept the excuses of those who break the law. Until maybe at the end. I’m still not sure about that ending, not even after reading this interview with author Amor Towles. If you read it, let me know what you think.

The Windeby Puzzle by Lois Lowry

Mar31

In The Windeby Puzzle, Newbery Award-winning author Lois Lowry gives readers two short stories with archaeology and history lessons interspersed before, between, and after the fiction. The stories are Lowry’s attempt to imagine the life of the Windeby Child, a young teenager whose body was found in the Windeby peat bog in northern Germany in 1952. The body was determined to be that of a girl or a boy about thirteen years of age who lived during the Iron Age, first century A.D.

Since we don’t have all that much information about the lives of the Germanic people of that time, Lowry was able to let her imagination run wild. And the two stories in the book spin a yarn of two possible backstories for the Windeby Child and how he or she managed to die at such a young age in a peat bog. It’s a bit hard to maintain interest and suspense when both you and your readers know how the story ends. In both tales, the main character dies–young. And in both stories the lives of all of the characters are portrayed as “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short” (Thomas Hobbs).

In the first story, a girl named Estrild is a sort of proto-feminist who resents her female life and longs to avenge her uncle, killed in battle, by becoming a warrior herself. The boy protagonist, Varik, in the second story had to be a victim, too, since he dies at the end, so Lowry made him disabled and suicidal. Maybe first century northern European lives were just this grim and ugly, but I could have done with a bit of romanticism and hope in the story.

Half fiction, half history lesson, this book is at least different from your average middle grade fiction book. It was not my cup of tea, but maybe a youngster interested in archaeology or ancient history or finding things preserved in peat bogs might like it. Be careful, though, if you’re exploring any peat bogs. According to Varick, “If you go too deep in, the bog sucks at your feet.” Yuck!

The Lost Year by Katherine Marsh

Mar29

The Lost Year: A Survival Story of the Ukrainian Famine by Katherine Marsh. Roaring Brook Press, 2023.

Not having read the subtitle before beginning the book, I thought this was going to be another of the many, many books yet to come about the Covid year(s). And it was, to some extent. Matthew is a thirteen year old boy who’s been spending most of his time playing Zelda and other video games since the Covid virus made him homebound with his mother and great-grandmother. Matthew’s father, a journalist, is stuck in France, also because of the virus. The first few chapters are a little slow with Matthew acting spoiled and entitled, but the action picks up as the story switches focus to tell about the childhood experiences of Matthew’s great-grandmother, Nadiya.

But when Matthew finds a tattered black-and-white photo in his great-grandmother’s belongings, he discovers a clue to a hidden chapter of her past, one that will lead to a life-shattering family secret. Set in alternating timelines that connect the present-day to the 1930s and the US to the USSR, Katherine Marsh’s latest novel sheds fresh light on the Holodomor – the horrific famine that killed millions of Ukrainians, and which the Soviet government covered up for decades.

I figured out the “family secret” a couple of chapters before the revelation, but the story was told in such a way that the revelation was foreshadowed but not obvious and very satisfying to read about. Matthew got better as a character, and in his character, as he came to be interested in someone besides himself, namely his 100 year old great-grandmother. And the historical event, the Holodomor, that the book illumines is one that is too little known. Knowing about the Holodomor can help to explain some of the historical animosity that is being played out in war now in 2023.

Recommended for ages 12 and up. Starvation and disease are obviously a key aspect of this novel, although readers are mercifully spared the most graphic and horrific details.

The Pirate Lafitte and the Battle of New Orleans by Robert Tallant

Mar20

Another book in the Landmark series, this narrative nonfiction book introduces history buffs and pirate readers to Jean Lafitte and his brother Pierre who were quite a pair. Pirates or patriots or both? You can read the book and decide for yourself, but at the very least, the brothers Lafitte were a bundle of human contradictions and secrets and even heroics.

Contradictions: They were rich, educated, and urbane, but they lived for the most part in the swamps of Barataria, near New Orleans, where Jean Lafitte ruled over a rascally crew of over a thousand pirates with an iron fist. He was beloved by these men who would do almost anything for him. Jean and Pierre made a great deal of their money selling Africans into slavery, and yet their crew included men of every skin color and nationality.

Secrets: Hardly anything is known about Jean’s and Pierre’s youth and childhood. They appeared on the scene in New Orleans in about 1803 when Jean was twenty-four years old and Pierre a year or two older. They were at first privateers with a letter of marque but may later have become pirates. Jean hated Spain and the Spanish and said that he only plundered Spanish ships. Their other enemy who tried to have them imprisoned, tried and executed was American Governor William Claiborne, but they somehow became Claiborne’s friends and allies when New Orleans was threatened with a British takeover during the War of 1812. Then there’s also the secret of what happened to the Lafitte brothers after they were evicted from their second pirate lair on Galveston Island. No one knows.

Heroics: It is not too much to say that had it not been for Jean Lafitte’s loyalty to his adopted country of the United States, Louisiana, at least New Orleans, might be a British possession today. The British invaders had 12,000 men and vastly superior ships and weapons. General Jackson who led the American defense had about 700 regulars and access to a militia of about 1000 men. Then Jean Lafitte and Pierre Lafitte volunteered along with their crew of about 1000 Baratarians, and the British were defeated.

The Pirate Lafitte and the Battle of New Orleans gives children and adults an introduction to a fascinating time and event in American history. Read it as you are learning about Lewis and Clark or the War of 1812 or the Louisiana Purchase or Louisiana history—or just for fun and one more books about pirates, maybe. “People still argue about whether or not he (Jean Lafitte) was a pirate. They even search the marshes for buried treasure that they never find.”

May you find the buried treasure you’re looking for in all the Landmark books you read.

Simon Sort of Says by Erin Bow

Mar10

Simon Sort of Says is funny, and well written, and at the same time thoughtful and trauma-sensitive. It also features mild profanity, inappropriate jokes and sexual innuendo, and post-traumatic stress disorder. And it’s written for middle grade readers, with a twelve year old seventh grader as the protagonist. So not for everyone.

Nevertheless, I enjoyed reading my first volume of middle grade fiction published in 2023. Simon and his parents move to Grin and Bear It, Nebraska, a place with “no internet and no cell phones and no TV and no radio.” Why they move to this place, a National Quiet Zone where scientists study radio waves from outer space, is a complicated story, and if you want the story to unfold gradually (as I think the author intended it to do), don’t read the blurb on the inside front dust jacket. I would certainly have preferred to figure out what happened to Simon and his parents that brought them to Grin and Bear It over the course of the story instead of being hit with the big reveal in the blurb.

And I would have preferred that the book itself left out the sex jokes, which seem a little too informed for twelve year olds, and the few instances of profanity. Honestly, the humor in the book overall is really funny, but again seems a little too witty and mature for a bunch of even very intelligent twelve year olds. Simon’s new friends in Grin and Bear It are Agate, an autistic girl who lives with her large and quirky family on a goat farm (also ducks and bees), and Kevin, a Filipino-American boy whose mom and dad are astrophysicists. (But Kevin’s dad runs a coffee shop.) If that’s not enough for comedy to ensue there are, in the story, alpacas, emus, a stabby peacock, dead bodies (Simon’s mom is an undertaker), and a squirrel who eats . . . Well, I’ll let you find out what the squirrel eats in the Catholic church, should you decide to read this book.

I am placing this one in the category of “I liked it but can’t recommend it.” There’s some bad or incomplete theology stuck in there, too, but I can’t give specifics without spoilers. So, read it if you’re curious, and give it to the kids if you think it’s harmless. It would have confused my kids–and made them laugh out loud. I’m always looking for clean and humorous stories for middle grade readers, by the way, so if you have suggestions, please comment.