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Theras and His Town by Caroline Dale Snedeker

Jan10

This fiction book recommended for children grades 5+ begins with the author very obviously teaching her child readers about Ancient Greece and Ancient Greek culture, Athens in particular. We get short sections about how seven year old Theras of Athens goes to school, goes to the marketplace, worships Athena on the Acropolis, etc. Finally, something actually happens, and Theras is in danger. But that episode ends quickly and happily, and we are back to Theras’ daily life: Theras and his mother, Theras and his father, Theras wants to become a soldier, etc.

The book is written in three parts, and the second part is about how Theras goes to live in Sparta, obviously written to contrast life in Athens with life in Sparta. Athens is much better. Theras, and we along with him, get to experience what it’s like to be a Spartan boy. Then in part three we get a travelogue, an exciting journey but a travelogue nonetheless, through Ancient Greece with stops in Orestium, Mantinea, Corinth, the Bay of Salamis, and Eleusis before Theras and his friend Abas finally return to Athens. This third part of the book is actually the best with rather stirring adventures and mishaps and near escapes, but it still feels like a teaching book rather than a storybook.

I can see why this book is recommended in many homeschool curricula. There is a dearth of good historical fiction set in Ancient Greece. And I did enjoy learning about and being reminded of the way of life in the Greek cities of Athens and Sparta around the time of Pericles and Herodotus, who both make an appearance in the book. But to say that this book is a “living book” with excellent writing and living ideas would be a stretch. Educational, yes. Enjoyable, maybe. Life-giving, not really.

There are some ideas that parents may want to discuss with their children who are reading about Theras and Athens and Sparta and the rest. For instance, when Theras and his father visit the temple of Athena, the author tells us that the Athenians believed that Athena frequently visited and blessed her favored city of Athens and its citizens:

“All this Theras believed. But you must not think him foolish for so believing. Athena was his goddess. The wise, grown-up men in Athens believed in her, respected her, and loved her. And often they prayed to Athena so truly and thought her so good and kind that their prayers reached to the true God after all.”

I didn’t care for the pedantic style of the writing in this book, a style that I didn’t find so prominent in the other (later published) books that I have read by the same author. Theras is written for a younger audience than either The White Isle or The Forgotten Daughter, both books by Snedeker that I read and reviewed. I think Ms. Snedeker either improved in her writing skills or was just better at writing for an older audience. Theras and His Town is OK, but just not excellent or very memorable.

This book can be borrowed by member families from Meriadoc Homeschool Library.

When We Were Very Young by A.A. Milne

Jan8

Just as I was making my way through this collection of poems by Winnie-the-Pooh creator, A.A. Milne, I saw someone fretting about reading these very poems as a part of her homeschool curriculum (Ambleside Online). She says they have been reading the poems aloud, and “Honestly I don’t get it. The kids ask me what it was about and I honestly have no clue.”

I sympathize. A lot of poetry used to make no sense to me. Then I learned to just enjoy the rhyme and the rhythm and the language and the word pictures for what they are: just fun, although sometimes serious or thoughtful, turning things round and upside down, and looking at the world from a different perspective. It doesn’t need to all make sense. The poems in When We Were Very Young look at life from a child’s point of view, a British child of the early twentieth century, and that can be disorienting. But it can also be fun.

Have you ever thought about the clouds looking up at the green sky? What about a mother who gets lost because she won’t obey her son with a ridiculously long name? What’s the one thing you think you would remember from a trip to the zoo? (“But I gave buns to elephant when I went down to the zoo!“) And what is the matter with Mary Jane? And what would you do if you were king (or queen)?

These poems aren’t meant to be got (understood). They are just intended to be enjoyed. I recommend When Were Very Young and the other Milne collection of poems, Now We Are Six, for family read aloud to all ages. A poem a day keeps the doctor away. Just read the poem out loud in your very best rhythmic and ridiculous voice. No commentary or explanation. If they ask, ask them what they think. Just read and move along. Think of them as nursery rhymes, for that is what they are, and jolly good ones, too.

When We Were Very Young was first published in 1924, and I read it as part of our 1924 project. 100 years after its first appearance, this book of silly little poems is still a living book.

Round the Year in Pudding Lane by Sarah Addington

Jan6

A Guest Review from Jeannette Tulis of Green Door Children’s Heritage Library in Soddy Daisy, TN. Round the Year in Pudding Lane by Sarah Addington

This book was so clever, it made me laugh out loud. It’s an especially good book to read aloud if your children know a lot of nursery rhymes because there are so many references to classic Mother Goose rhymes, and they are worked into the story in such a charming fashion.

This is a story of one year in Pudding Lane where Santa Claus, a young boy, lives with his family: Mr. and Mrs. Claus, and the twins, plus a new baby. On Pudding Lane are also the Woman who lived in a Shoe with all her children, Old Mother Hubbard, The Candlestick Maker and, well, you get the idea.

Round the Year in Pudding Lane is a book full of kindness and generosity. Each chapter deals with a different holiday or season of the year. I especially enjoyed the last chapter of Christmas surprises. This book was published 100 years ago (1924), and I read the e-book free on Internet Archive. I had recently read another book by this author, The Boy Who Lived in Pudding Lane, which was about the boyhood of Santa Claus and how he grew up to be the famous personage of Christmas. It is available as a reprint. 

Red Caps and Lilies by Katharine Adams

Dec29

Another book first published in 1924, Red Caps and Lilies is historical fiction set during the first days of the French Revolution. An aristocrat family attempts to come to terms with the rapid descent into chaos and revolution that begins in Paris, 1789. Soon it is obvious that thirteen year old Marie Josephine, her older brother Lisle, and their beloved maman, along with servants and relatives and friends and other various and sundry folk, must flee Paris and even France to ensure their own safety. But who will help them? Whom can they trust? And will they be betrayed by their own pride and disbelief that their lives could possibly be in danger in the first place?

I could quibble with this historical novel from another generation. The plot is a little creaky at times, with lots of unexpected meetings and paths crossing at just the right time. The events of the family’s escape are told and then retold and retold again as the family gathers and each one recounts his adventures to the others. Some character growth is evident in Lisle, the proud aristocratic teen, who is humbled by his experiences, and in Grigge, the peasant who has good reason to hate the aristocratic family but finds reason to help them anyway, All in all, though it’s a harmless little story with a fairly happy ending.

I guess I’ve become accustomed, for better or for worse, to something a little more ambiguous and and a little more unpredictable. I knew from the beginning, or at least near the beginning, that the family would escape and that all would turn out well. There was just no real suspense in the story, even though I think the author tried to create some. Still, if you want a historical novel that give a young adult reader some introduction to the time of the French Revolution with good and noble characters and a few daring escapes, you could do worse than reading about these French “lilies” cast out to fend for themselves among the “red caps” of the mobs of Paris.

You can read this “oldie but goodie” on Internet Archive if your library doesn’t give you access to a copy.

The Boy Whaleman by George Fox Tucker

Nov8

In searching for children’s books published 100 years ago in 1924, I found a set of three books called The Three Owls, edited by New York Public Library children’s librarian Anne Carroll Moore. In these three volumes Ms. Moore collected various thoughts, essays, and booklists, written by herself and others, related to the children’s literature of her day. In the first volume of The Three Owls, a children’s author named Henry Beston (later to become husband to children’s author Elizabeth Coatsworth) reviews The Boy Whaleman, saying, “Of all the accounts of whaling voyages I have read for some time, quite the best is this boy’s book by George F. Tucker. It is the record of a youngster’s one cruise in an old-time whaler, which was rather a decent ship as whalers go.”

Mr. Beston and I are in agreement, not that I have read that many accounts of whaling voyages to compare. The book is more of a travelog than a story, although travel is not quite the word for the experience of a sailor who took ship on a whaler. More appropriate terms come to mind: hard work, danger, adventure, or “stink, grease, and backache” as the description of a whaleman’s work went at the time. The book takes place in the early 1860’s as the boy Homer Bleechly, age fifteen, takes ship from New Bedford, Massachusetts on the whaler, Seabird. He will be eighteen and a man by the time he returns to his home in New Bedford.

“My father, when a young man, went whaling for a single voyage which lasted for more than three years. He was a sailor, or, to use the regular phrase, a foremast hand, and at the end of two years, he became a boat-steerer or a harpooner. When I was a little boy he used to take me on his knee and tell me stories about the life of the whalemen, –of chasing whales and harpooning them, of angry whales smashing boats and chewing them to bits; of towing whales to the ship and cutting them in and trying them out; of losing the ship and remaining all might in the open boats; of encountering great storms and riding them out in safety; of meeting after many months another New Bedford vessel, and getting the latest news from home; and of visiting in the Pacific Ocean islands inhabited by savages.”

All these stories from Homer’s father are a foreshadowing of almost exactly what happens to Homer Bleechly on the Seabird, and Homer narrates his voyage with gusto and with much intelligent detail about the life of a whaleman. Some parents may cringe at the gory descriptions of slippery blood and guts covering the ship’s deck, of plunging a harpoon into the whale’s eye, or of scooping the spermaceti out of the whale’s head cavity. But a young person who is hungry for adventure can take these things in stride just as Homer apparently did. There are also mentions of the South Sea islanders as savages and uncivilized and of cannibalism both in the islands and in sailor stories that Homer and the others tell each other, but these things are not dwelt upon.

The work and culture of a whaling ship are the main focus of the book, and the story is somewhat slight in comparison to the details about the sea, the lore of whales, seamanship, financial matters in regard to whaling, and Homer’s shipmates in forecastle. It’s something of a coming of age story, but again the emphasis is not on Homer himself but rather on the Seabird and its job and the events of the voyage.

Reading this book made me want to read more about so many things: Tahiti, whales, Commodore Perry, whaling and seagoing, Captain Cook and his voyages, the Essex, the Bounty mutiny, Pitcairn Island, whale ships, missionaries to Polynesia and Micronesia, Magellan, the opening of Japan to Western influence, ambergris, and much more. I have a whole list of books to read next, but, alas, not enough time to read them all in addition to my many other reading projects.

The Pearl Lagoon by Charles Nordhoff

Nov2

What are boys (and girls) reading in the way of adventure stories these days? Most of the the realistic fiction I read these days for middle grade readers is “problem fiction”: mom is sinking into depression and the child must cope with the fallout, or the main character is autistic or has a learning disability, or the bad developers are going to turn the local park into a parking lot. Nothing wrong with that, but where’s the adventure? Many young readers are into fantasy fiction, which does have the adventure element, but it’s not usually an adventure that the reader can imagine participating in himself.

Well, the novels of yesteryear for young people were full of adventure. Sure some of the adventures required a suspension of disbelief, as does this 1924 novel, The Pearl Lagoon. Nevertheless, excitement and danger used to be abundant in fiction written for young people. In The Pearl Lagoon, Charlie Selden, the protagonist and narrator, is an all-American boy of sixteen, living on a California ranch, isolated and starved for adventure, when his Uncle Harry, “a buyer of copra and pearl-shell in the South Seas,” comes along with an offer that can’t be refused. Uncle Harry wants to take Charlie back to the island of Iriatai in the South Pacific, to help him hunt for pearls in Iriatai Lagoon.

Needless to say, Charlie jumps at the chance to go with Uncle Harry, and the adventure begins. The book includes fishing trips with Charlie’s new Tahitian friend, Marama, a boar hunt, a near-deadly shark attack, some rather perilous pearl diving, exploration of a hidden cave, and a climactic encounter with pirates who intend to steal all of the pearls the divers have found. Charlie grows older and wiser over the course of a life changing and thrilling experience.

The South Sea islander characters in the story are portrayed as “noble savages.” If the musical South Pacific and other stories of that nature are offensively “colonizing” to you, then Nordhoff’s 1924 vintage portrayal of the islands and their culture and people will be, too. Charlie says of his friend Marama,

“My friend could read and write, but otherwise he had no education in our sense of the word. He knew nothing of history, algebra, or geometry, but his mind was a storehouse of complex fishing-lore, picked up unconsciously since babyhood and enabling him to provide himself and his family with food. And when you come to think of it, that is one of the purposes of all education.”

The people of Tahiti and Iriatai are described variously as natives, savages, brown, formerly heathen, and superstitious. But they are also admired for their skill, courage, honesty, and loyalty. Charlie’s uncle, like the author Nordhoff, has come to think of Tahiti as his home, “the most beautiful thing in all the world.” You can read the book and decide for yourself whether Nordhoff shows love and respect for the Tahitian and other South Sea island peoples or not. I believe he does, and I recommend the book as a stirring romantic adventure, in the best sense of the word romance. (Romance, according to Sir Walter Scott, the great romantic novelist: “a fictitious narrative in prose or verse; the interest of which turns upon marvellous and uncommon incidents.”)

The Pearl Lagoon is marvelous, and uncommon, indeed.

Billy Mink by Thornton Burgess

Oct26

Do you think children are traumatized by reading about animals who hunt and kill and eat other animals?If the book is straight nonfiction or even narrative story about a particular animal, I think most children will take the encounters between predator and prey rather matter of factly, as long as the descriptions aren’t too gruesome and bloody. Everybody has to eat, and it’s just true that larger animals often eat smaller ones.

However, in this first book of animal stories that I’ve ever read by Thornton Burgess, the animals behave like animals, but they are also anthropomorphized to some extent. Billy Mink hunts and is hunted by other predators, but he also wears clothing in the illustrations. He lives and acts like a mink, but he also thinks like a person. And he is given a human-like personality with feelings of delight and anger and frustration and satisfaction. Billy is an engaging little fellow, and the reader can’t help rooting for him to escape from the traps that are set for him by a hunter or from Hooty Owl who swoops down and surprises hime, almost catching him.

But the problem with this story, and perhaps Burgess’s books in general if they’re all similar to this one, is that both predator and prey are given names and personalities like Jumper Rabbit and Reddy Fox and Billy Mink. So as I read I wanted Billy Mink to escape his predators, and I wanted him to be able to eat and not starve to death, but I didn’t want him to actually eat Jumper Rabbit. (Spoiler: Jumper escapes, but several of the Robber Rats do not.) I suppose it’s okay for Billy Mink to eat a couple of rats. Nobody really loves rats, do they? But the whole hunter and hunted part of the story could be disturbing for some children.

All that said, Billy Mink is a well told little story. I can picture reading it aloud to a class of kindergartners or first graders. Burgess uses fairly simple sentence structure but somewhat challenging vocabulary to tell an engaging story. I wasn’t bored even though it’s a story for younger children, and I can see this series becoming one that a certain kind of child would fall in love with.

Billy Mink was published 100 years ago in 1924. It’s a good book, but not the kind of book I can imagine being published or popularized in the twenty first century. If you want to read something by Burgess with your children, I’d suggest starting with Mother West Wind’s Children or The Burgess Bird Book for Children, unless you’re particularly interested in minks.

The Black Pearl by Scott O’Dell

Oct21

I just finished reading The Black Pearl, a Newbery Honor book published in 1967. I’m trying to decide what I think. It takes place in Mexico, Baja California, and it’s very Catholic as would be appropriate for the setting. In the story, which is something of a fairy tale about a boy and the Monster Manta Diablo, the Madonna of the Sea is a direct representative of or substitute for God Himself, which bothers my Protestant brain. But it’s a good and well written fairy tale or folk tale about the dangers of pride and hubris and the mystery of God’s (or the Madonna’s?) will and working in the world.

The protagonist, Ramon Salazar, is sixteen years old and concerned about becoming a man. The coming of age theme is huge in this story. The Black Pearl, or the Pearl of Heavens as it is also named, is something of a MacGuffin, sought, found, given away, stolen, lost again, and replaced, all over the course of 140 pages of the book. The real story is about what’s going on inside Ramon, and his father, and Ramon’s enemy, Gaspar Ruiz the Sevillano. Ramon wants to go pearl diving, something his father has never allowed him to do, and he dreams of finding the largest and most valuable pearl of all, the Pearl of Heaven. (In fact, I think the book should have been called The Pearl of Heaven instead of The Black Pearl, but they didn’t ask me.) Diving for pearls is dangerous, however, and one of the most dangerous creatures in the sea is the manta, also known as a manta ray or devilfish.

We are told that the manta, especially The Manta Diablo, is a huge monster creature that has the power to swallow up an entire ship and that it is a “creature of beauty and of evil whom only two have seen with their eyes.” Ramon tells the reader in the beginning of the story that he is one of the two who have seen The Manta Diablo.

This book reminded me of Steinbeck’s The Pearl and of The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway. But the similarities in setting and tone are superficial, I think. It’s been a long time since I read The Pearl. I don’t know exactly what I thin of this one. I sort of liked it. It’s about how the intent of the gift matters. A sacrifice or offering given out of spite and and in an attempt to buy God’s favor is wrong. But a gift given in adoration and gratitude is accepted. That part rings true. I wouldn’t suggest it for middle grade children, but older teens might enjoy puzzling out the meaning of this tale and engaging in the adventure.

All Thirteen by Christina Soontornvat

Oct10

All Thirteen: The Incredible Cave Rescue of the Thai Boys’ Soccer Team by Christian Soontornvat. A Robert F. Sibert Honor Book. An Orbis Pictus Honor Book. A Newbery Honor Book 2021.

“On the soccer fields of Mae San, Thailand, it sounds like a typical Saturday morning.”

In this 229 page somewhat over-sized book, Christina Soontornvat, an American writer with family in Thailand, tells the story of the 13 members of the Wild Boars soccer team who were trapped in the cave Tham Luang Nang Non, the Cave of the Sleeping Lady, for eighteen days while thousands of people came together from all over the world to effect their rescue. Soontornvat uses narrative, photographs, diagrams, and informational sidebar inserts to tell the story of the boys and how they survived and of the rescuers who worked to save them.

I already knew the outlines of the story of the cave rescue from watching the movie, Thirteen Lives. But reading about the cave rescue made me appreciate even more the miraculous nature of what was accomplished in rescuing these boys. Vern Unsworth, one of the many key players in the rescue, said, after the boys were safely out of the cave, “I still can’t believe it. It shouldn’t have worked. It just should not have worked.”

There is much information in the book about caves and cave exploration, about Thai culture and soccer and about Buddhism and Buddhist practice. Soontornvat is respectful and unbiased in her presentation, recognizing that there were cultural differences that hindered communication between the Thai rescuers and authorities and the outsiders, mostly, British and American, who came to help. These differences in communication style and in expertise were sometimes difficult to navigate, but also the differing approaches became strengths as the rescuers learned to work together.

All of this story is presented in narrative form and in language that is accessible to children ages eleven or twelve and up. As an adult reader, I was nevertheless fascinated and enlightened by this “children’s book.” The information boxes are thankfully kept to a minimum and contain interesting supplemental information about such subjects as hypothermia, Buddhism in Thailand, and specialized breathing equipment used by the rescuers. There are a few references to climate change (as a reason for heavy rainfall that trapped the boys in the cave) and evolution as an agent in the formation of limestone, but these are not obtrusive.

The story focuses mainly on the thirteen boys and their will to survive and it is compelling and well told. The book would be a fine supplement to studies of Southeast Asia, caves, diving and underwater rescues, Buddhism and world religions, or more specifically Thailand. Give it to kids who are interested in soccer, survival stories, or exploration stories. And I highly recommend both this book and the movie Thirteen Lives.

All Aboard for Freedom! by Marie McSwigan

Aug11

The author of this book, Marie McSwigan, also wrote the popular World War 2 story, Snow Treasure, which is based on a true story of children outwitting the Nazis to rescue the country’s gold reserves. All Aboard for Freedom! is also based on a true story of a group of children outwitting oppressive authorities, this time in Czechoslovakia in 1951. And the oppressors are not Nazis but rather their own countrymen who have bought into the Communist regime aided by the Russians.

Ludmila Novak is foster mother to five children, orphaned by the war. The oldest, age thirteen, is Franta Kristufek. When the Communist authorities threaten to separate the children and their beloved foster mother from each other and send the children to state run institutions, Fran comes up with a plan to keep them all together. However, the plan involves a train, the help of adults, and a very dangerous, time-critical strategy for escape. Who can Fran trust to help him escape Czechoslovakia to freedom in Germany? How can he keep his plan a secret with four other children involved, the youngest only four years old? What if “they” (the Communists) come for the children before they can put their plan into action?

This book, published in 1954, is very 1950’s, very anti-communist and pro-American, and very exciting. The children, especially Fran, are believable but also intrepid and imaginative. The story reminds me of one of Helen MacInnes’ Cold War spy novels, but it’s written for children, not adults. And it pictures characters, a time, and a situation that we in the West are in danger of forgetting—the people of Czechoslovakia who suffered under communist rule and yearned for the freedom we now take for granted. One more plus to this book: Fran stops to pray for God’s guidance and protection several times during the story. And that resort to prayer seems quite believable and wise, too.

All Aboard for Freedom is a book for train lovers, patriots, and adventurers. Pair it with Snow Treasure for a double dose of good reading.