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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.

Ghost Soldiers by Hampton Sides

Sep2

Ghost Soldiers: The Forgotten Epic Story of World War II’s Most Dramatic Mission by Hampton Sides.

Ghost Soldiers is a well-written and engrossing narrative history of the rescue of 513 American and British POWs from the Japanese prison camp of Cabanatuan in the Philippines. The soldiers imprisoned at Cabanatuan at the time of the rescue (January, 1945) were mostly survivors of the infamous Bataan Death March, survivors who were barely surviving since most of the somewhat healthier prisoners had already been transferred to Japan in anticipation of the Americans retaking of the Philippine Islands. This who were left at Cabanatuan were diseased, injured, and in a very precarious situation—not quite liberated, still under Japanese control, and dispensable because of their lack of usefulness as workers for the Japanese. There were indeed rumors of and precedent for a Japanese massacre of all the prisoners left at the camp as the Japanese retreated before the advancing U.S. armed forces.

The U.S. Army 6th Ranger Battalion was tasked with the mission of rescuing these prisoners of Cabanatuan from behind Japanese lines in January, 1945. The mission had to be done secretly and quickly. No one knew how long the prisoners would remain alive to be rescued. And the Rangers were a new and untried group of elite “commandos”, sort of an experiment. Would they be able to find the prisoners and bring them out before the Japanese army stopped them?

So, Mr. Sides, a journalist and author, has grabbed onto a great story. And it’s one I had never read about before, although I had read some things about Bataan (The Jersey Brothers by Sally Mott Freeman, We Band of Angels by Elizabeth Norman). He tells the story from alternating points of view, that of the Army Rangers who were sent to rescue the prisoners and that of the prisoners themselves who struggled with feelings of hopelessness and abandonment in addition to the physical deprivations and tortures of their ordeal. This way of telling the story works to increase the suspense as the two stories merge into the climactic scene of the Rescue.

One of the interesting things about this story was meeting unexpected heroes that I would like to read more about. Chaplain Robert Taylor, one of the prisoners who was selected to go to Japan just before the rescue took place, ended up on the ill-fated ship, Oryoku Maru, a hellish prison ship that was sunk off the coast of Bataan by the U.S. Navy. Taylor survived, went on another ship which was also disabled by U.S. bombers, finally was sent to Manchuria, survived his imprisonment there, and eventually after his return home became the highest ranking chaplain in the U.S. Armed Forces. Days of Anguish, Days of Hope by Billy Keith is a biography of Chaplain Taylor that I would like to read.

Then, among the 6th Ranger battalion, I encountered Dr. James Canfield Fisher, son of the famous author Dorothy Canfield Fisher. Captain James Fisher was a surgeon assigned to the Ranger battalion that freed Cabanatuan, and he insisted on going with his men up to very gates of the prison camp in order to be available to treat those who might be wounded in the attempted rescue. His story is all the more intriguing and poignant for me since I know of his mother and her books, including the classic Understood Betsy. Who knew that reading about World War II in the Philippines could circle around to connect back to children’s literature?

I recommend Ghost Soldiers to readers who are interested in reading about World War II adventures, the War in the Pacific, stories of courage and endurance, and just good narrative nonfiction. (If you liked Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand or Lost in Shangri-La by Mitchell Zuckoff . . .) I found it to be fascinating and inspiring.

August 5th Thoughts

Aug5

Today is my son-in-law’s birthday. Happy Birthday, Brandon!

Other birthdays today:
Ruth Sawyer (Durand), b. 1880, d. 1970. Ruth Sawyer was first and foremost a storyteller. She wrote several children’s books, including the Newbery award-winning Roller Skates, but her forte was collecting and telling stories derived from folklore from around the world. I have her book The Way of the Storyteller, a sort of manual/inspiration for storytellers, and I need to review it to refresh my own storytelling skills.

Maud Petersham, b. 1890. Maud was the female half of the storytelling, book writing duo of Maud and Miska Petersham. She was born Maud Fuller, the daughter of a Baptist minister, graduated from Vassar College, and met Miska Petersham, a Hungarian immigrant, when they were both working at a advertising agency in New York. The couple went on to collaborate on more than fifty books, and they contributed illustrations for numerous anthologies and collections of stories and poems for children. Their collection of American poems and songs, The Rooster Crows, won the Caldecott Medal for illustration in 1946.

Robert Bright, b. 1902. Bright wrote Georgie, a picture book about “a friendly and shy little ghost who lives in Mr. and Mrs. Whittaker’s attic.” But my favorite book by Bright is My Red Umbrella, in which a little girl shares her red umbrella even as it grows bigger and bigger to shelter all of the animals that come to get out of the rain, including a great big bear.

I’m also thinking and praying today about weddings (about to celebrate one this weekend), gun violence and the people who were injured and traumatized by violent men in Dayton and in El Paso, Abraham Lincoln and the violence he caused, endured, and ended (still reading Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin), Hiroshima and the violence there (tomorrow is the 73rd anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima). Since Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, we humans are a violent race. It’s not a cure-all by any means, but I can’t see why legislation to ban the use by civilians of certain military-style weapons or to limit the size of magazines would be an infringement on the Constitution or on anyone’s freedom or rights under that Constitution.

A Place To Belong by Cynthia Kadohata

Aug5

To be honest, I am tired of reading children’s books about the Japanese internment camps in the United States during World War II. I know that it’s important to remember the injustice that was done to Japanese Americans during that time. I know that the story and the information are new to new generations of children. I know that everyone’s story deserves to be told, either fictionalized for the sake of privacy or as biography or memoir, and I know that survivors of injustice deserve to be heard. Nevertheless, I’ve read this book by Sandra Dallas and this one by Kirby Larson and Weedflower by Cynthia Kadohata and Farewell to Manzanar by Jeanne Houston and Journey to Topaz by Yoshiko Uchida and Paper Wishes by Lois Sepahban and Baseball Saved Us by Ken Mochizuki and The Journal of Ben Uchida: Citizen 13559, Mirror Lake Internment Camp by Barry Denenberg and . . . many more. I thought that this new middle grade fiction book by Cynthia Kadohata would have nothing new to say about this disgraceful episode in American history, but I expected it to be well written by Newbery award-winning author Kadohata.

And it was, well written and surprisingly engaging and informative. I knew that many Japanese internees decided to prove their loyalty to the United States, despite the way they had been treated, by enlisting and serving in the U.S. military. I didn’t know that up to six thousand others decided that there was no place for them in the United States immediately after the war, and so they renounced their U.S. citizenship and were returned to Japan. A Place To Belong is the story of one family who “went back” to a country that most of them had never visited in the first place.

The story is told from the perspective of twelve year old Hanako. She and her father and mother and her little brother Akira are on a boat bound for Japan. There they plan to stay with Hanako’s father’s parents, her grandparents, on a farm near Hiroshima. First, however, the train that they board in Japan goes through the ruins of Hiroshima itself, and that’s a tragic and sobering scene that sets the tone for the rest of the novel. Post-war Japan really has no place for Hanako’s family either, even though Hanako’s grandparents turn out to be the most gracious and loving grandparents a girl could want.

The grandparents, Hanako’s parents, Hanako herself, Akira who is “a strange little creature” (maybe autistic?), and the other characters who enter into the story are all drawn with loving care by a talented author. I learned a lot about Japanese history and culture, and I never felt as if I were being taught a lesson or preached a sermon on the evils of imperialistic racist America. Kadohata lets the story unfold its own lessons, lessons about justice, and forgiveness, and second chances, and forming new dreams. I was charmed by the wisdom and perseverance of Hanako’s grandparents and filled with compassion for Hanako’s family and for all the families and individuals who were faced with impossible choices during and after World War II.

I think there might also be certain parallels between the story of A Place To Belong and the current refugee/immigrant crisis at the Mexican/American border, but I haven’t completely teased those out in my mind. Suffice it to say that today’s refugees are often looking for a place to belong, too. And Americans would do well to look at their situation from their perspective if possible and show compassion for people making hard choices.

Noteworthy and Encouraging: May 29th

May29

Born on May 29th:

Gerald Massey, b. 1828. Poet and amateur Egyptologist.

There’s no dearth of kindness
In this world of ours;
Only in our blindness
We gather thorns for flowers.

Mary Louisa Molesworth, b. 1839. Author of children’s books during the nineteenth century. Known as “Mrs. Molesworth”, her most famous book was The Cuckoo Clock, which I read recently. If you have a child who is a good reader looking for a story about fairies, you might try this one. It doesn’t have much of a plot, not much dramatic tension. Griselda comes to live with her two elderly great-aunts for reasons that are never stated throughout the story. She is sometimes bored and lonely, and the cuckoo from her late grandmother’s cuckoo clock comes to visit and amuse Griselda. Griselda wants the cuckoo to take her to fairyland, but he says that “the way to true fairyland is hard to find, and we must each find it for ourselves.” The cuckoo does take Griselda to some other magical places, and she eventually finds a friend and playmate. Some of the scenes in the book are beautifully described, but as I said, not much happens. I do have a solid library rebound copy of this old book in my library, but my book has illustrations by E.H. Shepard (the illustrator famous for his pictures for Winnie-the-Pooh.)

Eugene Fitch Ware, b. 1841. Kansas poet and politician. “Man builds no structure which outlives a book.”

Charles Francis Richardson, b. 1851. Maine poet and literary historian.
2 John 1:6: And this is love, that we walk according to His commandments. This is the very commandment you have heard from the beginning, that you must walk in love.

If suddenly upon the street
My gracious Saviour I should meet,
And he should say, “As I love thee,
What love hast thou to offer me?”
Then what could this poor heart of mine
Dare offer to that heart divine?

His eye would pierce my outward show,
His thought my inmost thought would know;
And if I said, “I love thee, Lord,”
He would not heed my spoken word,
Because my daily life would tell
If verily I loved him well.

If on the day or in the place
Wherein he met me face to face,
My life could show some kindness done,
Some purpose formed, some work begun
For his dear sake, then it were meet
Love’s gift to lay at Jesus’ feet.

G.K. Chesterton, b. 1874. Author of Orthodoxy, his spiritual autobiography, and many, many other works fiction, essays, and general musings. Chesterton himself was a merry old soul. He weighed over 300 pounds, played the part of the absent-minded professor in his daily life, and enjoyed a beer, a debate, and a nap, but not all at the same time. Nicknamed “The Prince of Paradox,” his verbal gymnastics are sometimes exhausting, usually entertaining, and at the same time full of wisdom and insight into the fallacies of pagan and modern philosophy and into the satisfying rightness of Christian orthodoxy.
The Convert by G.K. Chesterton
A selection of Chesterton’s wisdom.
My reaction to The Man Who Was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton.
More gems (quotes) from Gilbert K.Chesterton.

Terrence Hanbury (T.H.) White, b. 1906. Author of The Once and Future King, White’s version of the Arthurian legends. The musical, Camelot, and the Disney film, The Sword in the Stone, were both based on White’s retelling and embellishment of Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur. I have a copy of The Sword in the Stone in my library, but the rest of the story that makes up the four books of The Once and Future King is a bit too dark for children, IMHO.

Out of School and Into Nature by Suzanne Slade

Mar4

Out of School and Into Nature: The Anna Comstock Story by Suzanne Slade, illustrated by Jessica Lanon.

“From the time she was no higher than a daisy, Anna was wild about nature. She loved to hold it close in her fingers, she wanted to feel it squish between her toes, which was why she ran barefoot all summer long, raised slimy tadpoles into pet toads, and climbed tall trees instead of sitting in their shade.”

Anna Botsford Comstock was an artist, conservationist, teacher and naturalist during the first half of the twentieth century. She enrolled at Cornell University in 1874, in an era when women were not encouraged to go to college or to study science and nature. Her Handbook of Nature Study, published in 1911, became a standard text for teachers, and she was the first female professor at Cornell University.

This picture book introduces children and adults to the nature-loving Mrs. Comstock and her passion for the importance of nature study as a part of a child’s education. The book includes beautiful nature paintings of everything from butterflies to spiderwebs to sunflowers to stinkbugs, and it would be an inspiration to anyone just starting out to do “nature study” with children.

Out of School and Into Nature also features several quotes from Mrs. Comstock herself concerning the vital importance of children interacting with nature:

“Nature study cultivates in the child a love of the beautiful.”

“The nature story is never finished. There is not a weed or an insect or a tree so common that the child, by observing carefully, may not see things never yet recorded.”

In the parlance of Charlotte Mason educators, this picture book about “The Mother of Nature Education” is indeed a living book, as is Comstock’s own Handbook of Nature Study. Let this simple but beautiful book be an introduction to Anna Botsford Comstock and her ideas about nature study, and then move on to her book and share the book and the joys of nature with a child you know. You will both be the richer for having done so.

If you are interested in purchasing ($5.00) a curated list of favorite picture book biographies with over 300 picture books about all sorts of different people, email me at sherryDOTpray4youATgmailDOTcom. I’m highlighting picture book biographies in March. What is your favorite picture book about a real person?

Beneath a Scarlet Sky by Mark Sullivan

Feb25

The problem with a historical novel that is “based on the true story of a forgotten hero” is that the reader is left wondering how much of the story is fiction and how much is fact. Especially when the protagonist of the novel is a World War II hero, which is relatively recent history. If a historical novel is about Cleopatra or Marco Polo, one can assume that most of the dialog and much of the action is made up while the timeline is essentially accurate, if the author did his research. But with a more recent figure and time period, a book about someone who actually gave extensive interviews to Mr. Sullivan, it’s harder to separate fact from fiction. And if I’m reading about a “forgotten hero” like Pino Lella, I can’t even scramble for a biography to fact check as I could with Winston Churchill or General Patton, fo examples.

However, despite the fact that my thoughts persisted in returning to the question of whether this or that episode in the novel “really happened” or really happened the way it was portrayed in the novel, I did enjoy this World War II tale set in northern Italy, mostly Milan, during the last gasps of the war, 1943-1945. The book raises the questions of what makes a hero and what defines a traitor. If you do something to fight against evil, but you don’t do everything you could do because that would cost you your life, is it enough? What if you do some good in the midst of great evil only as a means of hedging your bets? When is action in the face of overwhelming force, honorable and courageous, and when does it become merely quixotic and foolish?

I have read and watched other books and movies about the war in Italy. The following are the most memorable:

My Italian Secret: The Forgotten Heroes is a documentary about heroes of the struggle against Facism and Nazi Germany in Italy during World War II, particularly about some of those who rescued Jews from the Germans. I thought it was quite illuminating. The documentary features world class cyclist Gino Bartali, who secretly worked for the Italian underground during the war. (In Beneath a Scarlet Sky, Pino Lella learns to drive from Alberto Ascari, a race car driver who went on to become a Formula One World Champion after the war.)

A Bell for Adano by John Hersey won the Pulitzer Prize in 1945. It’s about Major Victor Joppolo, an Italian American officer in the U.S. army who was “more or less the American mayor after our invasion” of Adano a small village in Sicily.

A Thread of Grace by Mary Doria Russell. This novel is set in Northern Italy during the last year of World War II.

These I haven’t read, but they look interesting:

Twentieth Century Caesar: Benito Mussolini by Jules Archer. A Messner biography.

Road to Valor: A True Story of WWII Italy, the Nazis, and the Cyclist Who Inspired a Nation by Aili McConnon. About Gino Bartali, the cyclist/hero.

The Brave Cyclist: The True Story of a Holocaust Hero by Amalia Hoffman and Chiara Fedele. A picture book biography of Bartali.