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The Diamond in the Window by Jane Langton

Jul14

Edward and Eleanor, brother and sister, live in a big old house in Concord, Massachusetts, with their Aunt Lily, a piano teacher, and their uncle Freddy, an addled literary scholar who deeply admires the Transcendentalists, especially “Waldo” Emerson and Henry Thoreau. The problem is a financial one: the bank is about to repossess and raze their home. This impending disaster sets Edward and Eleanor on a quest to find the hidden jewels and treasures that their long lost Uncle Ned And Aunt Nora may have received from an Indian prince, Krishna, and may have left behind when they disappeared as children. Clues in the form of a poem etched into an attic window guide Eddy and Eleanor to enter into dangerous adventures in the form of dreams that really happen, all to find enough treasure to save their home.

This book reminded me of Edward Eager’s books, Half Magic and others, and of Elizabeth Enright’s The Saturdays and Spiderweb for Two. The adventures of Eddy and Eleanor are both real and dreamlike, and the dreams are dreams with a meaning where the two children participate in a joint-dream but learn life lessons along the way. The dreams and the adventures are all intertwined with the writings and lives of Thoreau and Emerson and Louisa May Alcott as well as Oliver Wendell Holmes and James Russell Lowell in a way that is child-friendly and yet speaks on a different level to adults, too.

For example, in one chapter’s dream Eleanor and Eddy travel through a mirror, like Alice in Through the Looking Glass, and find themselves confronted with a long series of reflections of themselves stretching out to the left and to the right. The children must choose again and again which reflection to follow, and as they follow the sometimes more desirable but wrong path their choices narrow and narrow until the only reflection they can choose is a horrible, degraded and degenerate version of themselves. However, when they go back and choose the right path the land of reflections behind the mirror opens up into a multitude of wonderful choices of who each child could become.

Instead of two choices, there were many. They were unable to choose which was the best, so they picked one at random. And beyond that choice lay a hundred, and beyond the next a thousand. Just as the other maze had led them down a narrowing path until there was no choice left, this one opened out into wide and shining worlds of possibility.

And that scene in its turn reminds me of C.S. Lewis and The Great Divorce and Narnia and “further up and further in.” There’s another dream or vision that the children have at Christmas time of all of the light-bearers of history, from ancient times up through the present day, and one of them is Jesus, perhaps the brightest but only one of a multitude of greater and lesser “lights” who add to the accumulated light of the centuries. It’s not exactly right, but it’s close.

Anyway, I loved this book, and I’m pleased to see that there is are sequels, in fact eight books in all about the Hall family of Concord, Massachusetts, one of which is the Newbery Honor book The Fledgling. I’ve actually read The Fledgling a very long time ago, but all I remember is something about flying and perhaps geese? Anyway, The Diamond in the Window is the first book in the series (Hall Family Chronicles), and the second book, which I hope to read soon, is called The Swing in the Summerhouse. The other books are:

  • The Astonishing Stereoscope
  • The Fledgling
  • The Fragile Flag
  • The Time Bike
  • The Mysterious CIrcus
  • The Dragon Tree

I actually have The Fledgling and The Time Bike in my library. I purchased The Diamond in the Window from Purple House Press, so I have that, too. But it looks as if the others in the series are out of print, so I’ll have to find them used or from the public library if I want to continue reading about the Hall Family and their escapades.

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.

Christmas in Philadelphia, PA, c.1962

Dec4

Carolyn Haywood’s Betsy books and her other books about Little Eddie and other children growing up in mid-twentieth century America are a breath of fresh air and a lovely look at the kind of childhood that I actually experienced back in the 1960’s.

In this excerpt from Snowbound with Betsy, Betsy and her friends decide to make a Christmas tree for feeding the birds:

“This is a good place for it,’ said Susan, “because we’ll be able to see it from the window.”

“Yes,” said Betsy. “We’ll be able to see the birds eating the peanut butter.”

“Lucky birds!” said Neddie. “They all get the peanut butter.”

“I love peanut butter,” said Star, longingly.

Susan and Betsy hung the orange cups on the branches of the tree. Neddie helped to hang the apple parings. Finally Betsy and Susan draped several garlands of popcorn from branch to branch, all the way from the top to the bottom of the tree.When they were finished, the children were pleased with the birds’ Christmas tree. They stood and admired it. The bright orange cups against the dark green branches made the tree very gay.

“It looks like a real Christmas tree,” said Susan.

1962: Events and Inventions

Feb12

January 9, 1962. Cuba and the Soviet Union sign a trade pact.

January 13, 1962. Albania allies itself with the People’s Republic of China.

February, 1962. President imposes an embargo on the importation of Cuban goods into the United States.

February 20, 1962. Astronaut John Glenn becomes the first American to orbit the earth. Either the movie, The Right Stuff, or Tom Wolfe’s 1979 novel from which the movie was adapted would be a good introduction to the early years of the U.S. space program.

March 1, 1962. The S. S. Kresge Company opens its first K-mart discount store in Garden City, Michigan.

'Venus naked' photo (c) 2006, Forsetius - license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/July 1, 1962. Rwanda and Burundi in south central Africa separate into two countries and gain independence from Belgium. In Rwanda, Rwandan Hutu attack the Tutsi and massacre them by the thousands. Many Rwandan Tutsi escape to Burundi and Uganda.

July 3, 1962. The French president Charles de Gaulle “solemnly recognizes” the independence of Algeria. After 132 years of French rule, Algeria is an independent nation.

October, 1962. Amnesty International, an organization set up to investigate human rights abuses around the world, is formed.

October 15-28, 1962. Cuban Missile Crisis. President John F. Kennedy receives information that the Soviet is constructing missile sites in Cuba to house missiles aimed at the United States. Kennedy imposes a naval quaratine around Cuba to prevent the delivery and deployment of Soviet missiles. Khrushchev demands the removal of U.S. missiles in Turkey in exchange for Soviet missiles in Cuba. THe U.S. agrees to guarantee no invasion of Cuba if the Soviets will remove the missiles. Crisis averted.

December, 1962. The U.S. space probe Mariner II sends back the first close-up pictures of the planet Venus.

Peace Child by Don Richardson

Mar30

40 Inspirational Classics for Lent

Don Richardson (born 1935) is a Canadian Christian missionary, teacher, author and international speaker who worked among the tribal people of Western New Guinea, Indonesia. He argues in his writings that, hidden among tribal cultures, there are usually some practices or understandings, which he calls “redemptive analogies”, which can be used to illustrate the meaning of the Christian Gospel, contextualizing the biblical representation of the incarnation of Jesus. ~Wikipedia

That rather academic introduction to the story of missionary Don Richardson and his work with the Sawi people of Western New Guinea in Indonesia makes it sound almost boring. Peace Child, a missionary memoir, is anything but boring. Richardson went to Western New Guinea with his wife, Carol, and their seven month old baby in 1962. There they worked with a people who as a culture glorified violence, cannibalism, and revenge. In fact, as they listened to the story of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection in their own language, the Sawi laughed at the poor fool Jesus and admired Judas for his ability to deceive and betray such a close friend. Richardson despaired of ever being able to teach the Sawi the truth of the gospel until he discovered in their own culture that the Sawi had a tradition that mirrored the substitutionary death of Jesus as a “peace offering” for our sins.

The entire idea of redemptive analogies placed within cultures by God for the purpose of giving people a deeper and more complete understanding of the gospel should be handled carefully. I can see how it could be misused and and lead to more misunderstanding than understanding. However, used prayerfully and carefully, I can also see how God could use the stories and educational tools of a people and a culture to bring about miraculous communication. Peace Child is a wonderful story of just such a miracle.

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. 4 In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. John 1:1-4

This Means War! by Ellen Wittlinger

Oct26

It’s 1962 again, just as in Deborah Wiles’ Countdown (Semicolon review here), and while JFK and Khrushchev play chicken in the Cuban Missle Crisis, Juliet Klostermeyer and her friends are competing with the boys in a series of “challenges” to see who’s best, the boys or the girls. Starting with a simple foot race, the challenges escalate until it’s obvious that somebody’s bound to get hurt. Juliet just wants the wars to be over, both of them, but her friend Patsy is determined that the girls will win, no matter what it takes.

As in Countdown, This Means War! was a book filled with duck and cover drills, bomb shelters, and people living in fear. And again, I thought the fear factor was overdone. Maybe we were just too dumb to be afraid in West Texas where I grew up. I remember worrying about tornados, about fires, about drug-crazed hippies like Charles Manson, but not about atomic bombs.

What I liked about This Means War! was the mirror effect of having the children involved in their own escalating war while the Communists and the U.S. were busy daring one another be the first to back down in a nuclear confrontation. The children’s war does get out of hand, and it’s obvious that the lesson that they learn about how easily a game can turn dangerous is the same lesson that countries need to learn about their own disputes. However, the lesson is never stated outright, and the author trusts her readers to get it by themselves. A wise decision.

I liked this book just as much as I did Countdown, and if I were to teach this era in history in a middle grade classroom, I’d be tempted to use both books. Let half the class read one and half the class read the other, and then have a discussion of the two books and what the students learned from each one. The Red Umbrella would be another good book to include in a unit on this time period. Even though it takes place a bit before 1962, and even though it’s more appropriate for a little bit older audience, The Red Umbrella does look at Castro’s Cuba from a Cuban (American) point of view.

So, what other books, fiction or nonfiction, would you include in a unit on the 1960’s for middle grade children?

Countdown by Deborah Wiles

Jun5

Book #1 for Mother Reader’s 48 Hour Book Challenge
Reading TIme: 2.5 hours
Pages: 378

So Countdown is a “documentary novel” taking place in the fall of 1962 near Andrews Air Force Base. Franny Chapman is in fifth grade, and she has a lot going on in her life. Her best friend Margie is suddenly not a friend anymore. Franny’s sister Jo Ellen is hiding something and spending way too much time at college when she should be at home helping Franny. Chris Cavas has just moved back into the house next door, and he’s somehow grown up to resemble Del Shannon instead of Beaver Cleaver. Uncle Otts is trying to build a bomb shelter in the backyard, and everyone is worried about the Russians. What if the air raid siren goes off for real, and the Communists drop the Bomb and end the world as Franny knows it? Will “duck and cover” really be enough to save Franny and her friends and family?

I was born in 1957. In the fall of 1962, I was five years old. Our schools didn’t have kindergarten, so I wasn’t in school yet. I wondered as I was reading if that was why I didn’t remember anything about civil defense shelters or air raid drills or Bert the Turtle or “duck and cover.” So I asked Engineer Husband who’s a few years older than me and would have been about Franny’s age in 1962. He remembers civl defense shelters with the yellow triangle, but he didn’t really know their purpose. And, like me, the only drills he remembers were fire drills and tornado drills (in which you did find an inside wall away from glass and duck and cover your head). I suppose the the powers-that-be in West Texas where we grew up were a lot more worried about fires and tornadoes than atomic bombs. (Engineer Husband does remember being scared silly because his older brother told him that if Kennedy were elected in 1960, he and all his friends would be forced to go to Catholic school.)

Still, even though I don’t remember any bomb scares, I did find a lot of the cultural references in the book familiar. Ms. WIles writes about 45rpm records; I remember those. And I recognized all the songs: Runaway, Moon RIver, Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini, and Monster Mash. (I wondered where the Beatles were, but apparently they didn’t “invade” until 1964.) It was fun for me to read about all of the brands and fads and events of my childhood, even if the book does take place a little before my time.

Interspersed between chapters of the fictional story about Franny and her search for peace in a chaotic world are photographs, news reports, excerpts from speeches, documentary-style reports on famous people like Truman and Kennedy and Pete Seeger. Coming from the conservative side of the aisle, I thought the reports were a little biased toward the left, especially making Kennedy into a King Arthur of Camelot. For instance, the Kennedy bio says that Kennedy “had to deal with a problem he inherited from Eisenhower: the Bay of Pigs invasion.” Yes, training for the Bay of Pigs began under Eisenhower, but Kennedy knew all about it and allowed, if not ordered, the invasion to happen under his watch. The biographical piece on Kennedy generally presents an idyllic picture of him and his presidency, saying that he “made hard decisions” and “dreamed of peace” and served for “three glittering years.” It’s not blatantly biased, though, and as an introduction to President Kennedy and the early 1960’s, it will do.

I liked the characters and the story as much I did the newsy informative sections that were sprinkled throughout the book. The fiction and nonfiction portions of the book complemented each other well. I’m planning a twentieth century study for my homeschool students and for me sometime in the next few years in which we study through the twentieth century year by year. I think Countdown would be a great introduction to the year 1962 and to the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Cold War. After reading the book, we could take a look, and a listen, at the primary sources that Ms. Wiles used to inform her fiction. And then it should still be possible to interview some people who lived during 1962 and remember those times. I’m getting excited, and nostalgic, thinking about it.

Countdown website.
Deborah Wiles’ website.
Scroll down to the previous post for a link to the a book trailer and an excerpt form chapter 1 of Countdown.

The Help by Kathryn Stockett

Apr22

Everybody and his dog has already read this one and reviewed it, but WOW! The Help is a really, really good book. In fact, dare I say it comes close to To Kill a Mockingbird territory. Not quite, but close.

The story is told from the point of view of three characters:

Skeeter is a recent college graduate with no prospect for marriage in sight. This lack of a husband is not acceptable in 1962, white society, Jackson, Mississippi. Skeeter also thinks she wants to become a writer. Unfortunately, she hasn’t the least idea of how to go about becoming a writer or what she wants to write about.
Aibileen is a colored maid in the home of Skeeter’s old friend Elizabeth Leefolt. Aibileen has been “the help” in white homes for a lot of years, and she has stories to tell. But telling those stories to anyone just might the most dangerous thing Aibileen has ever considered doing.
Minny is Aibileen’s friend, also a maid –with a mouth. If Minny can’t learn to keep her mouth shut and quit backtalking her employer, she’s going to be in even more trouble than Aibileen. But, then again, maybe Minny’s story is the one that will insure that the book that Skeeeter is writing about “the help” won’t get them all killed.

Here are links to a few of the reviews that have been added to the Saturday Review:

S. Krishna’s Books: The Help is simply an amazing book. The summary above cannot do this wonderful work of fiction justice; it’s so complicated, so nuanced, and so incredibly beautiful that it would take more than words to describe The Help.

TeddyRose at So Many Precious Books, So Little Time: “Imagine my surprise when I learned that this is Stockett’s first novel! I rarely read a book more than once because there are so many that I want to read however, this book is worth a return visit! I see quite a promising writing career ahead for Kathryn Stockett and cannot recommend this book highly enough!”

Jennifer at 5 MInutes for Books: “The characters are so well-written. I grew to love the three main characters and to feel a kinship with them even though my own life and experience couldn’t be further away from theirs.”

The Book Lady’s Blog: “The Help is addictively, compulsively readable. I couldn’t put it down. Stockett’s debut is well-written, and it is clear that she really understands Southern life and has made great efforts to understand what life was like for black women who served white families. She presents sad stories that leave a great glimmer of hope, and though she examines our differences and our mistakes, she highlights our humanity to wonderful effect.”

What they said –plus. Read it.

Picture Book Preschool Book of the Week: #21

May21


Dr. Seuss’s The Cat in the Hat was published in 1957, as was Little Bear by Else Homlelund Minarik. These two are the classic easy readers, published by Random House and Harper and Row, respectively. In the late 50’s and in the 1960’s and 70’s, books for beginning readers became trendy. Lots of libraries separated the easy readers from the picture books so that beginning readers could easily find the books they could read all by themselves.

Robert the Rose Horse is another one of those old classic beginning readers, published in 1962, back when easy readers were just becoming popular with publishers and in libraries. The book tells the story of Robert, a horse who leaves his country home because he is allergic to roses. Although Robert’s allergy is the central driving plot element of the story, the words “allergy” and “allergic” are never used, of course. Robert sneezes, and the story progresses. Robert is a sort of funny, anthropomorphized, horse, too. He carries a suitcase and walks on his hind legs, except when he’s working as a cart horse. Then he needs all four feet on the ground. And he never talks to the people in the story, but he seems to be able to communicate with them quite well.

None of these oddities detracts from the delightful story of Robert, an ordinary horse with a mild disability (his allergy) who overcomes his problems with perseverance and courage. Robert the Rose Horse is one of my favorite characters. His story is not only fun for young beginning readers; it’s also fun to read aloud with preschoolers. I like making Robert’s sneezes, and my urchins enjoy reading about the bank robbery that turns Robert into a hero.

Picture Book Preschool is a preschool/kindergarten curriculum which consists of a list of picture books to read aloud for each week of the year and a character trait, a memory verse, and activities, all tied to the theme for the week. You can purchase a downloadable version (pdf file) of Picture Book Preschool by Sherry Early at Biblioguides.