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Abe Lincoln’s Other Mother: The Story of Sarah Bush Lincoln by Bernadine Bailey

Feb12

Well, today is the anniversary of the birth of perhaps America’s most beloved president, Abraham Lincoln. (Only George Washington, whose birthday is also this month, rivals Lincoln in fame and veneration.) So, although I didn’t plan it, I picked a good day to have finished reading this biography of Lincoln’s stepmother and to post some thoughts on it.

This Messner biography is written for upper elementary and middle school readers, perhaps high school, although today’s young adult readers might find it a bit too unsophisticated for their tastes. The book certainly idealizes Sarah Lincoln and her stepson, Abe, while characterizing Abe’s father, Thomas Lincoln, as somewhat lazy and lacking in ambition. In this lightly fictionalized biography, Sarah Bush Lincoln is the backbone and foundation of the Lincoln family, careful to respect her husband, but always encouraging him to do more, provide more, and work harder. Abe Lincoln is the child prodigy, hard worker, and studious young man that Sarah Lincoln is proud to encourage and support.

It all makes for a very readable and interesting introduction to the life of Abraham Lincoln, and the book shows the importance of the influence of a good parent on the lives of the children. Although Abe Lincoln is the focus of Sarah’s attention and love in the book, the other Lincoln children also grow to be capable adults under the tutelage of their hard-working mother and despite the example of their rolling stone of a father. Well, mostly they grow up to be responsible adults. The book indicates that the youngest of Sarah’s three children from a previous marriage, John Johnston, is not very dependable as an adult. I looked up John on the internet and found this letter that Abraham Lincoln wrote to his step-brother in 1851, about nine years before Lincoln became president. So, I’m guessing that the author of this biography of John’s mother got John’s character pegged just about right.

I also read the Wikipedia article about Abe’s father, Thomas Lincoln, and from I can glean there, Ms. Bailey’s portrait of Thomas rings fair and true. At any rate, this biography, at a little more than 200 pages, gives a brief but tantalizing view of Lincoln’s childhood and early adulthood, of his relationship with his family, especially Sarah Bush Lincoln, and of his rise to prominence. The book would be inspiring to mothers and to children as they read of the obstacles that Sarah Lincoln overcame to provide a loving home and decent provision for a husband and five children. And the book also shows the persistence and loving-kindness of Lincoln himself as he cared for his step-mother at home and even after he left home until the end of his life.

These Messner biographies are quite well written and fascinating. So far I have read and reviewed five of these biographies, including this one about Sarah Lincoln, and I read two more that I didn’t manage to review. So, I’ve read seven in all. And I recommend all seven of those I’ve read in this series.

The Little Giant: Stephen A. Douglas by Jeanette Covert Nolan
The Doctor Who Saved Babies: Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis by Josephine Rich.
Antonin Dvorak: Composer From Bohemia by Claire Lee Purdy
Eloquent Crusader: Ernestine Rose by Yuri Suhl
First Lady of the Theatre: Sarah Siddons by Molly Costain
Mr. Lincoln’s Master Spy: Lafayette Baker by Arthur Orrmont.

The Little Giant: Stephen A. Douglas by Jeanette Covert Nolan

Jan25

Stephen Douglas is known now mostly for the debates he had with another famous fellow, Abraham Lincoln. I took a break from my reading of Doris Kearn Goodwin’s massive tome, Team of Rivals, to read a few other books, including this much more brief biography of Stephen Douglas, who was Abraham Lincoln’s rival indeed, but not a member of what Goodwin calls Lincoln’s “team of rivals”.

Douglas was unlike Lincoln in many ways: middle class background, a compromiser, supporter of popular sovereignty, indifferent to the evils of slavery, a judge and a lawyer, and a promoter of the growth and expansion of the United States at all costs. Douglas was short and stocky and sensitive about his height. Lincoln came from poverty and from a frontier background. He was tall and lanky and athletic. He believed that the Union could not grow or even endure half-slave and half-free. He wanted slavery to be contained until it eventually died of its own accord. Lincoln was a country lawyer, never became a judge, but he did become president—over a broken and un-United States.

In other ways the men were much alike. Both made their reputation on the law circuit in Illinois, traveling from place to place, representing their frontier clients in land disputes and other frontier matters, sometimes sleeping two to a bed in crowded inns before moving on to the next court session in the next town. Both believed in the Union, and both claimed to oppose slavery. And both men were known for their public speaking skills which they used to become politicians, U.S. representatives, and eventually presidential candidates.

The book is more about Douglas than Lincoln, but the comparisons are inevitable and run throughout the book. In fact, this same book was originally published in 1942 as The Little Giant: The Story of Stephen A. Douglas and Abraham Lincoln, but retitled and republished in 1964 with this title, Lincoln’s name left off. The two books are the same as far as I can tell.

There is an appendix in the back of the book with excerpts from the Lincoln-Douglas debates, a fascinating primary source document. Just as the abortion debate in our time is actually more nuanced than just pro-abortion versus anti-abortion and yet it comes down to that in the end, the debate in the 1850’s was more complicated than just anti-slavery versus pro-slavery. This look at the man, Stephen Douglas, and the debates which defined his times is a good discussion starter, and a way to look at our times and the debates and issues that will be remembered from our politics and culture. Stephen Douglas was personally opposed to slavery, but he did not want to impose his views on others. And now he is remembered as the pro-slavery candidate.

The Kings of Big Spring by Bryan Mealer

Jan23

The Kings of Big Spring: God, Oil, and One Family’s Search for the American Dream by Bryan Mealer, author of The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind.

I’m a West Texas girl, not a native of Big Spring but rather of San Angelo, which is about 87 miles southeast of Big Spring on US Highway 87. Bryan Mealer’s extended family and family heritage remind me of mine, lower middle class or poor, mostly, with dreams and sometimes actual accomplishments of striking it rich. However, while my family runs mostly to teachers and retail workers and farmers and insurance salesmen, Bryan’s family seems to have had its fair share of businessmen and high rollers, truck drivers and dirt and cattle haulers. And then there was the oil business, boom and bust and everything in between. I never heard of anyone in my family working as a roustabout or an oil field worker or even anyone involved in the oil business in any way. Bryan’s family members, however, were impacted in many ways by the ups and downs of the oil business.

I’m sure I enjoyed this book as much as I did because it took place, more or less, on my home turf. It was difficult to keep up with all the family members whose stories Mealer tells in his book. But when Mealer writes about his grandfather hauling caliche, I know exactly what that is because I grew up until the age of 11 in a house on a street “paved” with caliche. When he tells about the dust storms and the drought and the people praying for rain, I know exactly what he’s talking about because I experienced all of those things in San Angelo. I never met any oil tycoons, but I knew they were around, and I saw the oil wells, pumping oil out of the ground whenever we drove down the highways of West Texas. Most of all, I knew people just like Mealer’s grandmother Opal, who served the Lord in her Pentecostal church all her life and when she was dying asked the family to sing her into heaven with the old hymns she loved. I also knew a lot of “good ol’ boys” who were married to God-fearing women and eventually got right with the Lord themselves after much prayer and persuasion—and a few who never did.

Mealer’s book takes a kind but truthful look at West Texas culture and West Texas people. There’s a lot more drug use and beer and divorce and domestic violence than I ever experienced in my Southern Baptist upbringing, but maybe I just didn’t know what was goin on under the surface or behind closed doors. I wonder how Mr. Mealer was able to get his family members to be so honest and vulnerable and revealing about their past mistakes and family skeletons, but maybe he has a knack for interviewing people and getting them to open up. The book reminds me of J.D. Vance’s bestseller, Hillbilly Elegy, but it’s even more immediate and recognizable to me because these really are my people. Thanks for the memories, Mr. Mealer.

If you want to read a sample of what is in the book, and some more about the latest oil boom in Texas that isn’t covered in the book, check out this article by Mr. Mealer in the magazine Texas Monthly.

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.

Christmas in Mexico, 1960

Nov28

The Year of the Christmas Dragon by Ruth Sawyer.

At first glance, this Christmas story seems to be set in the mountains of China, home of many dragons, including the King Dragons. In fact, the story does begin with a boy named Chin Li in China:

“He could see dragons everywhere: immense, ancient dragons; lazy, fat dragons; small scrawny dragons. Except for size they all looked alike. They had shining green scales covering their bodies and tails. They had black spots here and there, and their noses and claws were black. The splendid part of them was their wings; these were a bright red, and when they spread their wings Chin Li could see they were lined with gold.”

However, Chin Li and a certain dragon with whom he becomes friendly are infected with wanderlust, and they travel together across the ocean to a new land, Mexico. And there the dragon falls asleep and sleeps for a very long time, only to awaken to another friendship with a Mexican boy named Pepe. And as Christmas approaches, Pepe tells the dragon about the wonderful true story of Christmas:

“For a number of days Pepe came to the barranca shouting with the joy of the Christmas. Many things had to be explained to the dragon. Angels, for instance. Pepe told about the shining light about their heads, about their wings, white as a dove’s, about the heavenly music they could make. Pepe’s eyes shone with some of the light as he told, and his voice caught some of the heavenly music. He had to tell about the star that shone the first Christmas Eve. No one had ever told him how large and bright it had been. ‘It must have been brighter than the moon,’ Pepe explained. ‘And truly it must have been larger than the largest rocket ever sent into the sky.'”

How Pepe’s dragon becomes the Christmas Dragon and how the year of the dragon’s wakening becomes The Year of the Christmas Dragon complete this tale that dragon lovers will find enchanting. The reading level and interest level of the story is about on par with other dragon tales such as My Father’s Dragon by Ruth Stiles Gannett or The Reluctant Dragon by Kenneth Grahame.

For Christmas giving, pair this book with a stuffed dragon toy or a dragon costume, and you will delight any dragon fan below the age of 10.

Christmas in Fontainbleau, France, c.1955(?)

Nov26

Natalie Savage Carlson, author of The Family Under the Bridge, another story set at Christmas time, wrote five books in the Orpheline series about a family of French orphans who live in a castle south of Paris. A Grandmother for the Orphelines is the fifth and final book in the series, and as noted, it takes place during the Christmas season. The twenty little girls called collectively the Orphelines have already gained a home, three mothers, thirty-one brothers, and multiple pets in the other books, and now they are longing for a grandmother, “one with a big soft lap and an apron that smells like gingerbread.”

These French orphans are both mischievous and delightful as they wheedle and eavesdrop and discuss and connive to get themselves a real grandmere who can tell them stories about the past and hold them in her capacious lap. And intertwined with the story are details about a traditional French Christmas and the French customs and stories to entertain and captivate readers everywhere. This book would make a great Christmas read aloud for primary age children and a good introduction to the series, even though it’s the last one. The series doesn’t have to be read in order, and I can see reading this one to introduce children to the orphelines and then giving a set of this one plus the other four books as a Christmas present if this one appeals.

“Kelig was not to be outdone. After supper, she gathered the orphelines around her.

‘Madame told you the donkey’s name,’ she said, ‘but not about the wonderful thing that happens on Christmas Eve. At midnight the beasts in the stable talk together in human tongues. They were given this power because they shared the stable with the Little Jesus. And the oxen warmed Him with their breath.’

Josine was entranced.

‘I wish they would talk every day,’ she said. ‘I wish they’d talk to me.’

She could hardly wait for morning to find out if they could be drawn into conversation before Christmas Eve. While the girls were in school, she climbed the stile over the stone wall. She went to the barnyard where the oxen and the donkey were awaiting their day’s work.”

Can Josine entice the animals to talk to her? Where can the orphelines find a real grandmother who will agree to be grandmother to twenty little girls, not to mention thirty-one little boys? And what will Father Noel bring the orphelines for Christmas?

The Orpheline books are all available for checkout at Meriadoc Homeschool Library:

The Happy Orpheline
A Brother for the Orphelines
A Pet for the Orphelines
The Orphelines in the Enchanted Castle
A Grandmother for the Orphelines

Born on This Date: Carol Kendall, b.1917, d.2012

Sep13

The Gammage Cup by Carol Kendall. The story of five non-conformist Minnipins who become unlikely heroes. The Periods, stodgy old conservatives with names such as Etc. and Geo., are wonderful parodies of those who are all caught up in the forms and have forgotten the meanings. And Muggles, Mingy, Gummy, Walter the Earl, and Curley Green, the Minnipins who don’t quite fit in and who paint their doors colors other than green, are wonderful examples of those pesky artistic/scientific types who live just outside the rules of polite society. The Gammage Cup was a Newbery Honor book in 1960.

The Whisper of Glocken by Carol Kendall. A sequel to The Gammage Cup, Whisper continues the story of the Minnipins and their isolated valley home. In this story which takes place among a new generation of Minnipins, the Minnipin valley is being flooded. Five new unlikely heroes—Crustabread, Scumble, Glocken, Gam Lutie, and Silky— set out on a quest to release the dammed river.

The Firelings by Carol Kendall is a third fantasy novel for middle grade readers and older, but it does not take place in the the world of the Minnipins. Instead, the Firelings are a group of people who live underneath a volcano and worship the fire god, Belcher. As the heretofore dormant volcano begins to erupt, a group of again “unlikely heroes” must find a way to save the Firelings.

Ms. Kendall also wrote a couple of children’s mysteries, a couple of adult mysteries, and two collections of folk tales, Chinese and Japanese. She liked to travel, but made her home in Lawrence, Kansas.

In a 1999 lawsuit, an author, Nancy Stouffer, accused J.K. Rowling of plagiarizing the name “Muggles” from her books. But Rowling’s lawyer pointed out that Carol Kendall used the name “Muggles” for one of her, very ordinary, characters many years previous to Rowling’s or Stouffer’s use of the term/name. Carol Kendall is said to have laughed at the brouhaha and said, “I’ve got no quarrel with them … There’s only so many ideas and if you have one then someone else out there probably has the same one, too.”

Quotes from Kendall’s books:

“No matter where There is, when you arrive it becomes Here.”

“When you say what you think, be sure to think what you say.”

“You never can tell
From a Minnipin’s hide
What color he is
Down deep inside.”

“If you don’t look for Trouble, how can you know it’s there?”

“Where there’s fire, there’s smoke.”

“It was easy to be generous when you had a lot of anything. The pinch came when you had to divide not-enough.”

“No hurry about opening his eyes to see where he was. If he was dead, he wouldn’t be able to open them anyway; and if he was alive, he didn’t feel up to facing whatever had to be faced just now. After a while it occurred to him that he had no business being dead. You couldn’t just selfishly go off dead, leaving your friends to their fate, and still feel easy in your mind.”

“[I]t came to him—–the truth about heroes. You can’t see a hero because heroes are born in the heart and mind. A hero stands fast when the urge is to run, and runs when he would rather take root. A hero doesn’t give up, even when all is lost.”

All three of Kendall’s fantasy novels for children, but especially The Gammage Cup, are not as well known as they ought to be and also highly recommended—by me.

Old Friends by Tracy Kidder

Sep11

I like Tracy Kidder’s books. His Soul of a New Machine is a classic nonfiction introduction to the culture of the high-tech computer industry. Among Schoolchildren gives an in-depth look at the community of a fifth grade classroom. House shows the joys and challenges of building one’s own home. And in Kidder’s Strength in What Remains the protagonist of the book, also nonfiction, is a young man from war-torn Burundi who finds friends and sustenance in the United States. Mountains Beyond Mountains is about American philanthropist and doctor, Paul Farmer, who works through the medical and international aid communities to help tuberculosis patients in poverty-stricken places.

I guess one thing that draws me to Kidder’s books is their emphasis on community, on looking deeply into a community of people who are pursuing a goal or forming a group to mutually support one another in life. Old Friends is about the forced community of a nursing home. Lou Freed, a 90-something Jewish man, and Joe Torchio, a 70-something stroke victim, are assigned to each other as roommates. Lou, nearly blind but otherwise healthy, has recently lost his beloved wife. Joe has re-taught himself to walk and talk, but he still warns others that he is only working with half a brain. The two men live in a New Jersey nursing home, Linda Manor, where they interact with other residents, staff, and visitors in a “home” that will most likely be their final place, their last experience of community.

It’s a gentle story, somewhat tragic, but ultimately hopeful. The residents of Linda Manor are a mixed bag. Some are cognizant of their surroundings, intelligent and aware, and others are overcome by dementia or Alzheimer’s or some combination. Joe calls the former, the mentally alert residents, those who got-all-their-buttons. Some Linda Manor residents spend their days in bed or watching television; other roam the halls. One picks imaginary flowers from the carpet as she walks through the home. Joe and Lous participate in exercise classes, bingo games, and other planned, and sometimes unplanned, activities. They deal with visitors and phone calls and health alarms and staff cuts. They talk about how to maintain or improve their health and how to relate to or help the other residents and the staff at Linda Manor. They make jokes, act in a play directed by one of the residents, Eleanor, and monitor each other’s mental state and physical ailments.

The ending for this book was always going to be a problem because we all know how it ends. These men are not going to recover their health, go home, and start over. As it is written, the book covers a year of life at Linda Manor, and the two old friends are still old and still friends at the end of the year. Of course, I wanted to know what exactly happened to Lou and Joe and when, but a part of me is content to leave it there. I guess I know generally what happened since it’s been over twenty-five years since the events in the book took place. And that’s enough. From the introduction to the book:

There is an ancient proverb:
Don’t judge a life good or bad before it ends.
~Sophocles, Women of Trachis

Other books about growing old or about nursing home residents:
The Song of Sadie Sparrow by Kitty Foth-Regner. Sadie Sparrow is an eighty-six year old widow who has come to live at The Hickories because her daughter is too busy to care for her at home. Meg Vogel is freelance writer who has been hired to write the residents’ biographies, to take down their stories. Their friendship seems unlikely, but as they get to know each other and the other residents and visitors, their questions and the answers they find lead them to consider eternal truth and ultimate answers.
A Song I Knew By Heart by Bret Lott. This novel is based on the book of Ruth, and the characters even share (or come close to) the Biblical names: Naomi, Ruth, Mahlon, Eli, and Beau. However, this book is the story of an elderly Southern woman who has been living in the Northeast. After the deaths of both her husband and her only son, Naomi decides to return to her childhood home in South Carolina.
Winter Birds by Jamie Langston Turner.
A Severed Wasp by Madeleine L’Engle. Katherine Forrester Vigneras is an elderly, and quite famous, pianist, musician, and grande dame. She moves to lives in New York City and finds community in the people who live near and in relation to the Cathedral of St. John the Divine.
Summer of the Great-Grandmother by Madeleine L’Engle. Nonfiction. Reflections on family life, death, and dying in a Connecticut farmhouse.
Being Mortal: Illness, Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande. A doctor writes about his own experiences with aging parents and the issues surrounding terminal illness, hospice, nursing home care, and death and dying.

Walking to Listen by Andrew Forsthoefel

Aug10

Walking to Listen: 4000 Miles Across America, One Story at a Time by Andrew Forsthoefel.

I’m a sucker for books like this one: reading projects, walking projects, Humans of New York, year-long projects. In fact, I once wrote a post about projects and “project books” that I have read and would like to read. It seems to me as if a BIG PROJECT like Mr. Forsthoefel’s must bring with it wisdom and clarity in some way.

And I guess Andrew Forsthoefel felt the same way. After graduating from Middlebury College, he didn’t know what to do with the rest of his life. So he sought counsel by walking across the country, carrying a sign that said “Walking to Listen.”

“Life is fast, and I’ve found it’s easy to confuse the miraculous for the mundane, so I’m slowing down, way down, in order to give my full presence to the extraordinary that infuses each moment and resides in every one of us.”

Mr. Forsthoefel’s literary gurus were Walt Whitman and Rainer Maria Rilke, not the ones I would have chosen, but not all bad either. His counselors along the way across the country include a cattle farmer, a family of Navaho women, artists, and lots of just regular people. He thinks a lot about death and life, mostly death, and he never does come to any kind of unifying theory of life that ties his journey together. I guess I wanted some kind of epiphany or conversion or eureka! moment, and that never happened.

My favorite walk-across-america books are Peter Jenkins’ A Walk Across America and The Walk West. I’ve never read William Least Heat-Moon’s best-selling Blue Highways, partly because I thought the New Age-y-ness of it would annoy me. The meandering existentialism of Walking to Listen was sometimes a little too much for me, too, but I would recommend this book for anyone who enjoys the project story genre. It’s as much about pushing through, endurance, and completing the project as it is about the people he meets along the way, which is to say it’s a lot more about the author than it is about the people he supposedly listens to. A Walk Across America is a much better story.

Little Britches, or Father and I Were Ranchers by Ralph Moody

May2

This autobiographical memoir/novel is actually the first in a series of such books written by the adult Mr. Moody about his childhood in Colorado, Boston, and later as a young adult, the West and Midwest. Ralph is eight years old as the story begins, but one has to remind oneself just how young he really was as the books progress through Ralph’s long life and he takes on more and more adult responsibility.

SPOILER: Ralph’s father dies at the end of the first book, Little Britches, but not before Ralph manages to learn some very important lessons from his almost saintly father.

A man’s character is like his house. If he tears boards off his house and burns them to keep himself warm and comfortable, his house soon becomes a ruin. If he tells lies to be able to do the things he shouldn’t do but wants to, his character will soon become a ruin. A man with a ruined character is a shame on the face of the earth.

Little Ralph takes this lesson to heart, not so much because the words are so impactful, but because he sees this character-building project as it takes place in his own father. Father is straight-talking, creative and innovative, hard-working, and above all, honest. And Ralph, aka “Little Britches” as the other boys and cowboys in Colorado call him, learns to be the same kind of man his father is, with a few mishaps and mistakes along the way.

The other books in the series are:

The Man of the Family. Nine year old Ralph and his older sister, Grace, work with their mother, an industrious and faith-filled example in her own right, to take care of the family after Father’s death. They start a baking business, and Ralph finds other ways to work and contribute to the family coffers. Life is hard, but good, and the family pulls together to recover from the tragedy of Father’s death.

The Home Ranch. Ralph finds new friends and mentors as he takes a job on a ranch for the summer.

Mary Emma & Company. Mary Emma is Ralph’s mother, and the family has moved back east to Boston in this fourth book in the series. The older members of the family must find new ways to support the family, and they start a laundry business while Ralph works as errand boy in a small grocery store. Over and over again, the lessons of diligence, faithfulness, and honesty are taught and learned through experience as Ralph, Grace and Mother work through illness, accidents, and mistakes to win through at the end.

The Fields of Home. In this book, a young teenage Ralph goes to live with his grandfather in Maine for a time. I didn’t read this one because I don’t have a copy of it yet.

Shaking the Nickel Bush. In 1918, Ralph is nineteen years old, thin and losing weight. The doctor diagnoses Ralph with diabetes and sends him west to work in the sunshine, follow a very restricted diet, and hope for the best. But everyone, including the doctor and Ralph’s family, knows that a diagnosis of diabetes (pre-insulin therapy) is practically a death sentence. Ralph manages to “shake the nickel bush”, support himself, and send money home—and survive and even thrive in spite of a ne’er-do-well companion and an ornery, broken-down “flivver” (automobile). Ralph does lie to his mother in his letters, to protect her from worry, and his friend, Lonnie, is a thief and a slacker. These aspects of the story are disappointing; nevertheless, the period details and the pure adventure of two young men traveling about and supporting themselves by their own hard work and ingenuity (mostly) are worth the read.

The Dry Divide. Ralph takes a laborer’s job on a wheat farm with a very cruel and dictatorial farmer, but by the end of the harvesting season, Ralph is a young entrepreneur with a thriving business and money in the bank. He works hard and smart, and everyone around Ralph shares in the prosperity that results from Ralph’s ingenuity and tenacity.

Horse of a Different Color: Reminiscences of a Kansas Drover. In this last book of the series, Ralph is a farmer/rancher himself. I still have this one to read in the future after I get hold of a copy.

I really loved these books, as evidenced by the fact that I read six of them in a week’s time, one after the other. I would have read all eight books that Mr. Moody wrote in his extended Bildungsroman if I had owned them all. Ralph “Little Britches” Moody and his friends and companions are not always perfect—there is some swearing and gambling in some of the books, condemned by Ralph’s mom, but still tolerated—nevertheless, I wish I had known about these books when my boys, and girls, were younger. I may still send one of my young adult sons a Ralph Moody book, if I can decide which one would most capture his interest and inspire him.