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Admiral Byrd of Antarctica by Michael Gladych

May23

Another Messner biography, published in 1960, Admiral Byrd of Antarctica is a solid, decent read, but not as enthralling or inspiring as other Messner biographies I’ve read. Gladych characterizes Byrd, who explored both the Arctic and the Antarctic, as resourceful, persistent, brave and somewhat driven by a desire to do something important and noteworthy.

The most celebrated event of Byrd’s life came in 1934 on his second Antarctic expedition when he spent five months alone gathering meteorological data in a base station during the antarctic winter. He almost died of carbon monoxide poisoning from a poorly ventilated stove. He later wrote an account of his experiences when isolated and on his own in his book, Alone. Gladych quotes Byrd saying about his motivation for manning the station by himself:

“There comes a time in every man’s life when he should take stock of himself—sort of check on his navigation, so to speak. . . . You see, it has taken me a long time to get where I am today. And we are all like aircraft on nonstop flights, with time like precious fuel which we cannot replenish. God alone knows how much time-fuel I have left, and I’d like to check my course—make sure that where I am headed is where I should be going. I can do it best alone—out there.”

p.156

I don’t know if that’s an actual quote from Admiral Byrd, or a paraphrase of something he said, or entirely made up by author Gladych. However, while the idea of checking your course by way of an extended retreat is a good one, I think it could have been accomplished with less drama and danger, to Byrd and to his compatriots who eventually had to come to his rescue. But, then, what do I know about polar exploration or the compulsion to adventure and challenge the unknown?

Admiral Byrd was one of the most highly decorated Navy officers in U.S. military history. He also got all kinds of awards and commendations from various non-governmental organizations. But the fact that his wife, Marie, stayed married to him and raised their four children by herself for a good bit of their marriage seems like the best commendation of all. She must have seen something in him. He did name a region in Antartica after his long-suffering wife, Marie Byrd Land.

Some other books about Admiral Byrd and his adventures:

  • Black Whiteness: Admiral Byrd Alone in the Antarctic by Robert Burleigh. Picture book about Byrd’s famous near-death experiment in solitude.
  • Something to Tell the Grandcows by Ellen Spinelli. Picture book. Hoping to have an adventure to impress her grandcows, Emmadine Cow joins Admiral Richard E. Byrd on his 1933 expedition to the South Pole. I have this book in my library.
  • Alone: The Classic Polar Adventure by Richard Evelyn Byrd.
  • Explorer: The Life of Richard E. Byrd by Lisle E. Rose. An adult biography of the explorer published in 2008.
  • Richard E. Byrd: Adventurer to the Poles by Adele de Leeuw. A children’s biography from the series by Garrard Publishers, Discovery biographies.
  • Byrd & Igloo: A Polar Adventure by Samantha Seiple. A narrative account for children of the daring adventures of the legendary polar explorer and aviator and his loveable dog companion draws on letters, diaries, interviews, newspaper clippings, and expedition records.
  • Admiral Richard Byrd: Alone in the Antarctic by Paul Rink. Original title: Conquering Antartica: Admiral Richard E. Byrd.
  • We Were There With Byrd at the South Pole by Charles S. Strong. Juvenile fiction set during Byrd’s first Antarctic expedition.

The Horse Without a Head by Paul Berna

May4

Paul Berna was the pseudonym for French journalist Jean Sabran who wrote children’s books in French during the latter half of the twentieth century. The Horse Without a Head (French title: Le Cheval Sans Tête, 1955) was also published in English with the title A Hundred Million Francs, and it tells the story of a gang of poor working class French children who own one treasure: a headless horse on tricycle wheels that carries them on dangerous and thrilling rides down the narrow streets of Louvigny, a small town in northwest France. The story takes place just after World War II, and there are a few references to leftover bomb craters and deserted warehouses that were abandoned during or after war.

I was reminded as I read of the movie, The Goonies. The ten children in the self-styled “gang” are all under thirteen, street savvy, but also honest and innocent. Their leader, Gaby, “purposely kept the numbers down and never accepted anyone over thirteen, for as he said, ‘When you turn thirteen you get dopey, and you’re lucky if you don’t stay that way for the rest of your life.'” Each child has a distinct personality, but the central figures in the story are Gaby, Fernand, the original owner of the headless horse, and Marion, a somewhat mysterious dog whisperer and amateur vet.

To an adult reader, the book is obviously a translation and of a different era. Some of the dialog is awkwardly phrased in English, and the transitions in the action and logic are sometimes abrupt and difficult to follow. At one point in the story, one of the children brandishes an old rusty revolver and says that although he knows it won’t shoot, “I don’t feel so frightened when I’m holding it.” This bit of business, not at all vital to the plot, would certainly be excised by any editor nowadays. The crooks in the story actually shoot real guns at the children, but of course no one is injured. This is an adventure story, not a treatise on violence and gun safety. The horse rides themselves are quite dangerous, described as going forty or even sixty miles an hour (probably exaggerated) downhill and involving inevitable crashes and spills along the way. The adventures of the children are not meant to be imitated at home, although they very well may lead to some experimentation with wheeled vehicles.

I found the book to be quite a nice escape on a rainy Monday evening, and I would recommend it, if you can get past the Frenchiness and playing with guns. My Scholastic paperback edition from 1964 carries a price of 45 cents on the cover, and I surely got at least 45 cents worth of entertainment from the story. (The price has gone up to about $10.00 for a used paperback, more than twenty for a used hardcover copy.) I thought as I was reading that The Horse Without a Head would make a good movie with some editing and rearranging, and I see that Walt Disney made a movie based on this book; it’s available to rent from Amazon Prime video. Has anyone seen the movie? Or read this little French gem?

Parsifal Rides the Time Wave by Nell Chenault

Dec1

I found a copy of this 1962 boy and his dog story while I was in Tennessee a few weeks back. It’s a sweet tale about Colin who is sent a magical helper, Parsifal, because Colin’s need is great. Colin is in the hospital, and although his body is nearly healed from injuries sustained in a bad accident, he is still grieving the loss of his beloved dog, Lad, who saved Colin from being killed in the accident at the cost of the dog’s life. So, Parsifal the Poddley’s first assignment is to help Colin deal with his grief.

Then, by means of a magical time wave, Colin is able to travel back in time to twelfth century Scotland where he meets his hero Robert the Bruce. The time travel part of this simple book is easy enough to understand, but still quite magical. The story is suitable for young readers, ages five to nine, what we would now called a beginning chapter book, but the introduction to the historical heroes of Scotland is sure to inspire further and more challenging reading. The time period, reading level, and length of the story (85 pages) reminded me of the books by Clyde Robert Bulla or Gertrude Chandler Warner (The Boxcar Children), but the magical and time travel elements put this book in a class of its own.

I read some reviews on Amazon for this book in which the reviewers said that Parsifal Rides the Time Wave was a book they remembered fondly from childhood. It’s perhaps a forerunner of the Magic Treehouse books, but the lessons Colin learns are timeless and gentle in their application. (There is a battle scene in which Robert the Bruce fights and kills his would-be assassins, so if violence in books for young children is a problem for you, you might want to skip this one.) I’m glad I found this one, and I’m happy to add it to my library.

Oh, it looks as if there’s another book about Parsifal the Poddley and time travel that came before this one, just called Parsifal the Poddley. Unfortunately this first book about Parsifal seems to be a unicorn, priced at over $100 on used book sites that I checked. If you come across a copy at thrift store prices, I would grab it. From the review at Kirkus Reviews:

Eight-year-old Christopher of Butterfield, Vermont, is badly in need of a Poddley, the special creature who comes to serve lonely little boys. And Parsifal the Poddley, on his first mission shows himself to be ideally suited for Christopher. Not only does he educate him to be more thoughtful, but he takes Christopher back in time to 1659 and introduces him to Vermont in its pioneer period. Christopher participates in a conflict between the Indians and settlers and arrives home just in time to find a neighbor and friend in the person of a new little boy whose family has just moved next door.

The Peppermint Pig by Nina Bawden

Sep7

Old granny Greengrass had her finger chopped off in the butcher’s when she was buying half a leg of lamb.

The opening sentence of this British children’s novel, published in 1975, should be a warning to the squeamish or the tender-hearted: This is not the book for you. I looked at the reviews on Goodreads, and there are at least two polar opposite verdicts. Either the reviewer finds the story to be “sweet and touching, poignant and heart-breaking” or “traumatic, brutal, and cruel.” Well, actually some readers found all of those adjectives applicable and enjoyed the contrast.

The story is told in third person from the point of view of Poll, the youngest of four children in a middle class family in England. When Poll’s father leaves his family behind to go off to America to make his fortune (because of an unfortunate misunderstanding with his employer), Poll, her mother, and her siblings are left without funds and go to live with Mother’s sisters, Aunt Harriet and Aunt Sarah. Mother comes home one day with a tiny runt of a pig, called a “peppermint pig”, that the family adopt as a pet.

Lily said, “You can’t keep a pig indoors, Mother!

“Oh, we had all sorts of animals in the house when I was young,” Mother said. “Jackdaws, hedgehogs, newly hatched chicks. I remember times you couldn’t get near our fire.”

“But not pigs,” Lily said.

“I can’t see why not. You’d keep a dog, and a pig has more brains than a dog, let me tell you. If you mean pigs are dirty, that’s just a matter of giving a pig a bad name, to my mind. Why, our Johnnie was housebroken in a matter of days, and with a good deal less trouble than you gave me, my girl!”

As it turns out, Lily was right, and Mother was wrong. It’s not a good idea to keep a pig for a pet, especially if the family who owns the pig is poor and will eventually . . . well, no spoilers. However, I saw where this story was going long before the “cruel” and “traumatic” ending. And I was fascinated by the tone of the story which reveals the secret lives of children, lives of thought and action that can be very dark indeed. I think it would be comforting to some children to read that other children have violent thoughts and tell lies and become quite angry and still survive. Other children might find it quite horrifying.

But, I’m ambivalent about keeping this book in my library. I think some parents would be shocked by the language and the actions of both children and adults, while I just thought the story was realistic about the sin that overtakes us all and about the brokenness that is a part of our world. Nine year old Poll is a passionate child with ideas and questions and feelings that are overwhelming at times for such a small person. And some of the ideas and events and emotions in this book might be a bit too much for a nine or ten year old who is reading it. Some examples (and you can decide for yourself):

‘Poll said, ‘What do you mean about biting off puppies’ tails?’
‘That’s what the groom at the Manor House used to do. My mother was cook there, you know. I’ve seen that groom pick up a new litter one after the other, bite off the tail at the joint and spit it out, quick as a flash. The kindest way, he always said, no fuss and tarradiddle, and barely a squeak from the pup.’

‘She hit him in the stomach, he grunted and fell and she fell on top of him. He tried to get up but she grabbed his hair with both hands and thumped his head up and down.
She couldn’t move but Noah’s laughing face was above her so she spat into it as hard as she could and said, ‘Damn you, you rotten bug, damn and blast you to hell…’

‘She made a best friend called Annie Dowsett who was older than she was and who told her how babies were born. ‘The butcher comes and cuts you up the stomach with his carving knife,’ Annie said.’ 

Theo was clever but he wasn’t sensible the way ordinary people were. He saw things differently and this set him apart. Poll thought, Theo will always be lonely, and it made her proud and sad to know this, and very responsible.

It’s a stark and realistic picture of the inner life and growth of a child during one hard year of near-poverty and perceived abandonment. Tender-hearted animal lovers and idealizers of children should beware.

Village of Scoundrels by Margi Preus

Sep1

Le Chambon-sur-Lignon is a commune in the Haute-Loiredepartment in south-central France. Residents have been primarily Huguenot or Protestant since the 17th century. During World War II these Huguenot residents made the commune a haven for Jews fleeing from the Nazis. They hid them both within the town and countryside, and helped them flee to neutral Switzerland. In 1990 the town was one of two collectively honored as the Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem in Israel for saving Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe.

~Wikipedia

Village of Scoundrels is a fictional depiction of the activities of the villagers of Le Chambon during World War 2, especially the teens and children who were either refugees or resistors or both. The book doesn’t really have a clearly defined protagonist, but some of the heroes and villains in the books are listed in the opening pages, and these characters are mostly based on the lives and actions of real, living people:

  • Celeste is a high school student who becomes a courier for the Resistance.
  • Jean-Paul is a Jewish teen who wants to become a doctor, but who find that his talent for forgery is in demand.
  • Jules the Scoundrel is a ten year old goatherd who plays dangerous games with the French policeman who is collaborating with the Nazis to uncover the secrets of Le Chambon.
  • Henni and Max are German Jews, boyfriend and girlfriend, who take refuge in Le Chambon.
  • Philippe, a high school student from Normandy, hides refugees and smuggles them to Switzerland.

This book is gaining lots of accolades this year, and indeed the subject matter cries out for a good novelization or narrative nonfiction telling (maybe there is a good nonfiction book about this WWII event?). However, the mix of fiction and nonfiction in this one was not that well done. It should have either been more fictionalized to make the story flow with a clear protagonist and plot or just straight nonfiction with chapters telling the stories of each of the various children and young adults who were active in the French Resistance in Le Chambon. I found it interesting, but hard to follow.

The last part of the novel, where the story coalesces around the French policeman, Perdant, and Jules the Soundrel, is pure fiction and better reading than the rest of the book. Then, the afterword attempts to help the reader sort fact from fiction, but I found it just as confusing as the preceding chapters. Again, can anyone recommend a well written nonfiction book on this subject? Preus provides a bibliography of twenty or more titles at the end of the book, but which one is the best?

Winterbound by Margery Williams Bianco

Aug13

Illustrated by Kate Seredy and published in 1936, Winterbound is a Newbery Honor book that would be classified as Young Adult fiction nowadays, if it were even considered for publication. I doubt it would be considered or published in the current century, however, since it’s a clean, wholesome story of two teen sisters, ages nineteen and sixteen, and how they work together to manage an impoverished household in the country through a Connecticut winter. The older sister, Kay, is an aspiring artist whose art education has been cut short by the family’s move from the city to the country. Kay is refined and tasteful, but also hard-working and determined to make the best of their financially strained circumstances. The younger sister, Garry (short for Margaret), is an outdoors type, interested in gardening, travel, science, and animals. Garry is the practical sister, the one who keeps them afloat financially while both parents are unavoidably absent from the home: Dad is off on a two year long scientific expedition, and Mom is in New Mexico, caring for a sick relative.

This story of two strong, independent young women learning to care for a home and a family is just the sort of “feminist” novel that should be required reading for today’s up and coming generation. There are two younger siblings in the family, Martin and Caroline, and Kay and Garry are responsible for the care and upbringing of their younger family members as well as for feeding the wood stove, doing the shopping, making the meals, pumping the water from an outside pump, and scrounging for extra income when their money almost runs out. It’s really a delightful, self-reliant sort of story that shows how some young people used to learn to be adults in difficult circumstances. I was quite impressed with Kay and Garry and their good humor and their tenacity and determination while living in a home—-no running water, no electricity, cracks in the walls, below zero temperatures—that would be daunting to me and absolutely impossible for most anyone younger than I am. (I sound OLD.)

I think fans of the later Betsy-Tacy books by Maud Hart Lovelace (Heavens to Betsy, Betsy and Joe, etc.) or of the later Anne of Green Gables books ( Anne of the Island, Anne of Windy Poplars, etc.) or of the Emily books also by L.M. Montgomery would enjoy this story by author Margery Williams Bianco, most famous for her children’s book The Velveteen Rabbit. Winterbound is as I said for older readers, with just a touch of hinted romance at the very end of the book, and it’s not nearly as sentimental as The Velveteen Rabbit. But Bianco’s writing skill and ability to tell a good yarn are evident in both books. My copy of this book is a Dover reprint edition, published in 2014 in Dover’s series Dover Newbery Library. Thanks to Dover Press for making these older books available again.

Christmas along the Bayou Barataria, Louisiana, 1941

Dec1

“The day before Christmas, Papa Jules came into the kitchen laden down with mysterious packages and on top of them, two fat ducks. Maman eyed him suspiciously, so he explained.

‘Me, I killed a big buck and Eugene, he shipped it to market and give me a good price for it.’

‘How much?’ demanded Maman.

‘oh, two-three cent!’ laughed Papa. Everybody else laughed, too. ‘Now, en’t you glad I I go hunting’ every day? EN’t you glad that big buck make Christmas for us? Oh, yes, here two fat ducks I brought down—cook ’em for dinner tomorrow.’

The mysterious packages disappeared from sight. Maman forgot all her worries and set to work She loved to cook and Christmas dinner was worthy of her best efforts. There was chicken and oyster gumbo, fluffy white rice, roast duck, white cream tarts, and a layer cake. Tante Toinette and Nonc Moumout came to help eat it, drink wine and enjoy the fun.”

~From Bayou Suzette by Lois Lenski.

Bayou Suzette is one of the books in Ms. Lenski’s series of books about children of various regions of the United States. Published in the 1940’s these books tell stories steeped in the culture and vernacular of the many heritage groups that make up our melting pot/tossed salad of a country. One of the books in this series, Strawberry Girl, won the Newbery Award for distinguished children fiction in 1946.

The other books in the series include:

Blue Ridge Billy (North Carolina Blue Ridge Mountains)
Boomtown Boy (Oklahoma oil fields)
Coal Camp Girl (West Virginia coal mining town)
Corn-Farm Boy (Iowa corn farm)
Cotton in my Sack (Cotton farming in Arkansas)
Deer Valley Girl (Vermont farm life)
Flood Friday (Connecticut)
Houseboat Girl (Houseboat life on the Mississippi River)
Judy’s Journey (Migrant farm workers from Alabama)
Mama Hattie’s Girl (Great Northward Migration of a black family)
Prairie Girl (South Dakota blizzard)
San Francisco Boy (Chinatown, Chinese American family)
Shoo-fly Girl (Amish family in Lancaster, Pennsylvania)
Strawberry Girl (Florida strawberry farm)
Texas Tomboy (West Texas ranching family)
To Be a Logger (Oregon loggers)

Twentieth Century Caesar: Benito Mussolini by Jules Archer

Oct22

Jules Archer wrote several of the biographies in the Messner Shelf of Biographies series, including this one about the infamous dictator who led Italy into the second World War and dragged the Italian people into his own personal downfall as he became Hitler’s puppet.

“Benito Mussolini was a man of many contradictions but with one driving ambition—to rule Italy and restore it to the power and splendor of the ancient Roman Empire, with himself as the new Caesar. In time he became the founder of the Fascist movement and dictator of all of Italy—but at what a price!”

So, it was Mussolini’s dream to Make Italy Great Again, but MIGA doesn’t sound quite as strong as MAGA. And Benito Mussolini was no Julius Caesar. He was instead the son of a poor blacksmith who abused his children both physically and verbally. Mussolini’s father taught him to be a socialist and a populist. He became a journalist who advocated violence and who led the Italians into World War I on the Allied side as a result of a bribe from the French. While he was exiled to Switzerland, Mussolini fell under the influence of Communist Angelika Balabanoff, a comrade of Lenin and of Trotsky. She taught him to bathe and to study languages and communism.

I really wanted to understand WHY the Italians followed Il Duce, the name Mussolini took for himself after his rise to power. How did an entire nation of people become enamored of a boor who blustered and incited, even commanded, violence from his own army of Blackshirts and who went from being a power broker before World War 2 to a powerless sycophant who dependent on the sometimes good will of Adolf Hitler and his Nazi war machine?

I hope that the difference between early twentieth century Italy and present day United States is that America has a proud heritage of resistance to dictatorship and government overreach. Italy looked back to the glory days of the Caesars and longed for someone to come and put things right, even at the cost of individual liberty. I pray that we Americans as a people continue to want government to leave us alone and let us make our own lives right, with government providing only a safe and stable environment for us to do so. As I hear more and more about socialist envy and making America great, I wonder if we could be doomed to repeat, in a uniquely American way, the fantastic blunders of fascist Italy. I certainly pray not.

Archer’s other Messner biographies:

African Firebrand: Kenyatta of Kenya
Angry Abolitionist: William Lloyd Garrison
Battlefield President: Dwight D. Eisenhower
Famous Young Rebels
Colossus of Europe: Metternich
Fighting Journalist: Horace Greeley
Front-Line General: Douglas MacArthur
Man of Steel: Joseph Stalin
Red Rebel: Tito of Yugoslavia
Science Explorer: Roy Chapman Andrews
Strikes, Bombs & Bullets: Big Bill Haywood and the IWW
Trotsky: World Revolutionary
World Citizen: Woodrow Wilson

Archer seems to have been particularly interested in rebels, revolutionaries, strongmen and dictators. I wonder whom he might write about if he were still writing?

The Discoverer of Insulin: Dr. Frederick G. Banting by I.E. Levine

Oct2

I read this Messner published biography back in the summer, but I’m just now getting around to reviewing it. The dust jacket blurb says in a nutshell somethings of what I learned from the book:

“When Frederick Banting discovered insulin, he gave millions of doomed diabetics the gift of life. . . . Banting grew up on a farm in Canada. When his tomboy playmate Jane died at fourteen of diabetes, he was determined to one day find the cause of this mysterious disease. . . . Banting became a university instructor and researcher. He was still puzzled by the mysterious disease of diabetes. . . With Charles Best, his assistant, Banting sweated in a grimy attic laboratory, racing the time allotted him by Toronto University. Alternately sure of success and plunged into despair, they hung on grimly through a series of experiments. They succeeded in discovering Hormone X, but it took many, many months before they perfected the wonder drug—insulin.”

That’s the short version of the story. But I learned so much more about medical research and diabetes and early twentieth century medicine. Did you know:

* Until insulin, six out of every ten diabetics died of coma. And almost every juvenile diabetes sufferer died within a few years of diagnosis. Diabetes was a death sentence.

* Banting started out as an orthopedic surgeon, not an internal medicine doctor.

* Banting and Best killed a number of dogs in their experiments to isolate and produce what they called “isletin” (insulin), but they considered the dogs as “soldiers in the war against disease” and treated them as humanely as possible.

* Much of the research time they spent was unpaid. Banting and Best lived in poverty while they conducted their experiments to find the hormone that would control diabetes in those who were diagnosed with the “sugar sickness.”

* Banting received the Nobel Prize for his work on insulin, but instead of recognizing Charles Best as co-discoverer, the Nobel Prize committee named Dr. Macleod, the head researcher at Toronto University, who had been less than encouraging in the research of Banting and Best and not present for most of it.

As I have often said, I am interested in many things. This biography of a revolutionary doctor and medical researcher was an inspiration to persevere in the calling that I have been given, no matter how small. I’m not going to change the lives of millions of people with an incurable disease, but I am called to be faithful just as Banting was.

The Winged Girl of Knossos by Erick Berry

Sep11

Erick Berry was the pen name of author, illustrator, and editor Evangel Allena Champlin Best. She wrote this book, based on the Greek myths about Icarus, Theseus, Ariadne, and Daidalos, and interestingly enough, for this female author with a male pseudonym, she turns Icarus, Daidalos’ son, into a daughter named Inas.

Inas, the protagonist of this myth retold as historical fiction, is a brave and daring character. She dives in the Aegean Sea for sponges. She assists the Princess Ariadne of Crete in her court intrigues and plots to save the life of the Greek captive Theseus. She uses the wings that her inventor father has built to glide from the cliffs down to the seashore. She is a bull-vaulter, taking part in the ancient games of skill that her countrymen celebrate. She helps her father to escape the wrath of King Minos when the king is misled into thinking that Daidalos is a traitor.

There is a bit of romance in the novel, and the characters do a bit more dithering about trying to decide what to do and how to do it than I would like. But overall the book is a lovely introduction to the culture and history of ancient Crete encased in an exciting adventure saga.

“Long, long before blind Homer sang his songs of ancient Troy, long even before Troy itself rose from the ashes of her past and fair Helen smiled from the towers of Ilium, Minos reigned in Crete. The broad halls of the palace at Knossos welcomed traders from Egypt and from Sicily, from far Africa and rain-swept Cornwall and the savage shores of the Black Sea, and Daidalos built the Labyrinth, and dark Ariadne loved the brown-haired Theseus.”

I was, of course, reminded as I read of my favorite adult historical fiction that retells the story of Theseus and Ariadne and Crete and the Labyrinth: The King Must Die and its sequel The Bull From the Sea, both by Mary Renault. In Ms. Berry’s 1934 Newbery Honor winning version of the myth, Theseus is a boorish hunk who captures Ariadne’s eye for gorgeousness more than her heart. I found this image of Theseus hard to reconcile with the suave, bold, and daring Theseus of Mary Renault’s books. Middle grade readers won’t have this problem—unless they encounter the Berry Theseus now and later try to make him into a more heroic character when they read Renault’s books.

At any rate, The Winged Girl of Knossos, long out of print and unavailable for most of today’s readers, was re-published in 2017 by Paul Dry Books in a beautiful paperback edition. This edition includes an after-afterword, called “an appreciation,” written by librarian and blogger Betsy Bird, who advocated for its reissue.