Archives

The Silver Donkey by Sonya Hartnett

Oct15

It’s easy, almost inescapable, to find children’s books set before, during and after World War II–fiction, adventure stories, Holocaust stories, biography, memoir, nonfiction about battles and about the home front. I have about three shelves full of World War II books. But when I am asked to recommend books about or set during World War I, the task is harder. There are some good books about World War I, fiction and nonfiction, even picture books, but that war just doesn’t live in our collective imaginations in the same way that World War II does.

Someone recommended The Silver Donkey to me, and I thought, what with the comparative dearth of books set during that war in comparison to the Second World War, I’d add it to my library. Sonya Hartnett, the author, is an Australian writer. Her books, mostly written for children and young adults, have won numerous awards and prizes, including for the author the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award from the Swedish Arts Council in 2008, a sort of lifetime achievement award in children’s literature. Knowing all of this, I was primed to enjoy The Silver Donkey.

And enjoy it I did. However, I must say that it’s an odd sort of book. Two sisters who live on coast of the English Channel (do the French call it the French Channel?) in France, find a man lying in the forest who appears to be dead. The sisters, Marcelle, age 10, and Coco, age 8, are deliciously thrilled with their discovery, brimming with “anticipation and glee.” Their response feels very French, and somewhat true to the nature of children. As they approach the man, they find that he is not dead, but merely sleeping. He also tells them that he cannot see.

Marcelle and Coco have found a British deserter who wants nothing more than to go home across the Channel, to see his family, especially his younger brother who the soldier believes is calling to him to come home. Marcelle and Coco, and later their brother Pascal, find a way in their childish simplicity to help the soldier by bringing him food and eventually by discovering means for him to cross the Channel to England. In return for their help, and to pass the time, the soldier tells the children stories–stories about donkeys.

These are not perfect children, nor are they role models. They take food from the family larder and lie to their parents about what has happened to the food. They keep secrets. They aid and abet an army deserter, and they squabble with one another. They are somewhat ghoulish; Pascal in particular wants stories about war and battles and violence and heroism. The donkeys in the stories are more admirable. The first story the soldier tells is about a faithful old donkey who takes the expectant Mary to Bethlehem for the census and brings her and her baby home safely. The second story is about a humble donkey whose humility saves the world from a terrible drought. And the war story that Pascal begs for ends up being about a donkey who carries the wounded to safety in the midst of battle–at the cost of his own life.

The whole book is bittersweet. The heroes are all fictional donkeys. The children are funny and very human; somehow they feel as if they could only be French children with a sort of French attitude toward life. The soldier is a hero who calls himself a coward, and he is both brave and tired, tired of war. He is so tired that he decides one day, after having fought courageously in the war for a year or more, to leave the battlefront and walk home. His blindness seems to be a psychosomatic response to the horrors of war.

I wouldn’t recommend this book for younger readers, but for children thirteen and older it might be a good introduction to the controversies surrounding the entirety of World War I. Was it a wasteful stalemate of a war, initiated and perpetuated by old men who sent young men to die for no reason? Is honor worth fighting for? Should a soldier be like the donkey, brave and humble and faithful, or are humans called to be more discerning and wise than donkeys can be? What is the proper response to a war or to a soldier who has abdicated his responsibility in a war? These are certainly questions for older children and adults to think about, and The Silver Donkey gives rise to thought and discussion about questions of this sort.

The donkey stories are the best parts of the book, though.

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

The Christmas Anna Angel by Ruth Sawyer

Dec6

The Christmas Anna Angel by Ruth Sawyer, illustrated by Kate Seredy. Viking Press, 1944. (Christmas in Hungary, c.1918)

“Here is one of those heart-warming tales that never grow old but take their place on the Christmas shelf to become year after year a part of the family Christmas. Ruth Sawyer heard the story from a friend named Anna, whose little girlhood was spent on a Hungarian farm where her own Christmas Anna Angel came to her. Miss Sawyer’s text and Kate Seredy’s lovely drawings retell the tale with a feather-light touch that would not brush away the loveliness of a dream or of a little child’s belief in Christmas.

~New York TImes

This book is absolutely beautiful. The story is great, but the text combined with the illustrations make the book a children’s masterpiece. Miklos and his older sister Anna are growing up on a farm during the later years of World War I. The book begins on St. Nicholas Eve, “the day that begins the Christmas time,” and ends on Christmas Day. In between, Anna tells Miklos about Christmases past, before the war, when there was plenty of flour and honey and eggs and fuel for the baking of Christmas cakes to hang on the Christmas tree. And as the children welcome St. Nicholas on his day, celebrate St. Lucy’s Day, and wonder at the marvels of the Christmas Eve celebration, Anna maintains her faith that the angels in heaven, especially her own Christmas Anna Angel, will see to the baking of Christmas cakes in spite of the war conditions and privations.

This story is Hungarian Catholic in its culture and setting; Protestant readers may have to explain about talking and praying to saints and going to Mass on Christmas Eve. However, it’s also a very Christian book, with an emphasis on the true wonder and meaning of Christmas and the coming of the Christ Child while holding onto a child’s ability to imagine and embroider even in wartime. I wish I could send a copy of this story to every child in Ukraine this Christmas, along with a copy of the gospel of Luke, to give them hope and imagination and joy in their time of war.

Whatever war or harshness is in your life this Christmas, I wish for you, too, some hope and joy and Christmas cakes. If you get a chance to read The Christmas Anna Angel this Christmas and you like it, I recommend Kate Seredy’s books, The Good Master and The Singing Tree, both also set before and during World War I in Hungary and quite reminiscent of Ruth Sawyer’s Christmas story.

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?

Born on This Day: Eric P. Kelly, Lover of the Polish People

Mar16

Eric P. Kelly was an American newspaperman and later professor of English at Dartmouth, but his heart was with the Polish people during and after both World War I and World War II. He worked with Polish refugees after World War I, and he came to love Warsaw, writing to his mother, “Warsaw is a beautiful city, reminds me in some ways of Denver.” Then, in 1925-26, Mr. Kelly was a lecturer at a polish university in Warsaw where he heard the legend of the trumpeter of Krakow who, in 1241, was pierced by a Tartar arrow before he could finish a song called the Heyna? Mariacki (aka St. Mary’s Song or the Krakow Anthem). Ever since then, the song has always been played every hour four times from the tower of the Church of Our Lady St. Mary, but abruptly cut short before it is finished.

I’ve never managed to finish Mr. Kelly’s 1928 novel, The Trumpeter of Krakow, either, even though it won the Newbery Medal in 1929 and even though I’ve started it several times. However, I’m working on it now (again), and I’ll let you know what I think when I finish.

Eric P. Kelly also wrote the following books, a few of which I would really like to check out:

The Blacksmith of Vilno (1930) Also set in Poland, one of Kelly’s three “Polish novels.”
The Golden Star of Halicz (1931) The third of the Polish novels.
Christmas Nightingale (1932) Christmas stories of Poland, illustrated by Marguerite De Angeli.
The Girl Who Would be Queen (1934) Biography of the Countess Franciszka Corvin-Krasi?ska who lived during the 18th century in Poland and who sounds as if she might have been a fascinating person. A Polish writer of children’s literature, Klementyna Ta?ska, wrote a novel in 1825 about Countess Krasinska, The Diary of Countess Francoise Krasinska (children’s or adult?).
Three Sides of Angiochook (1935)
Treasure Mountain (1937)
At the Sign of the Golden Compass (1938) A tale of the printing house of Christopher Plantin in Antwerp, 1576.
On the Staked Plain (1940) Maybe a cowboy story?
From Star to Star (1940) A story of Krakow in 1493.
In Clean Hay (1940) Christmas story, illustrated by Maud and Miska Petersham.
Land of the Polish People (1943) The Portraits of the Nations Series.
The Hand in the Picture (1947) Another fiction book set in Poland.
The Amazing Journey of David Ingram (1949) This one sounds amazing. Did you know that there was a young man, David Ingram, who claimed to have walked from Tampico, Mexico to Nova Scotia in 1568, the first European to have traveled across the continent. He also claimed to have seen silver, gold, elephants, and penguins on his journey, which makes some people doubt his story. Nevertheless, a book about the journey of David Ingram would be fun to read, I think.
Polish Legends and Tales (1971)

So, Eric P. Kelly, born March 16, 1884, died in 1960 after 33 years of teaching English at Dartmouth. The Trumpeter of Krakow was his first published book, and it remains his most well-known. If you happen to run across any of his other books, grab them for me.

Five Children on the Western Front by Kate Saunders

Oct3

Edith Nesbit’s classic story of siblings and magic, The Five Children and It, was first published in 1905. In Five Children on the Western Front, British children’s author Kate Suanders gives us the Bastable children about nine years older and wiser and the Psammead (pronounced Sammy-ad) as irascible as ever, but not quite so magical. Maybe that’s because the world itself was more magical in 1905 than it became in 1914.

World War I has intruded upon the lives of the grown-up or nearly grown-up children, Cyril, Anthea, Jane and Robert, and even The Lamb (Hilary) and the new little Bastable sister, Edie, are living in a wartime Britain rather than the idyllic turn-of-the century British countryside in which the older children first encountered magic. The story covers the wartime years, 1914-1918. The Psammead has returned to see the children through the war—or maybe he’s come back because he can’t really control his magic or grant wishes anymore, and he just needs a place to live. He thinks he’s been “de-magicked and dumped” in the Bastables’ garden by an angry universe. At any rate, Edie, nine years old at the story’s inception, takes a liking to the grumpy and rather sleepy sand fairy, and occasionally even manages to be involved in some magical adventures on his behalf.

I thought this was a fascinating look at “what ever happened to the five children and It”, but I would have to try it out on a real child to know whether this is just a book for nostalgic adults and teens who were Nesbit fans or whether actual children would enjoy it, too. There’s a lot of kissing and war romance and war scenes, shown from a child’s (sometimes eavesdropping) perspective and totally appropriate for children, but the story is really about adults as much as it is children.

It’s also about repentance. The Psammead has a cruel and tyrannical past life, and part of his task during the years of the book’s tale is to repent. Repentance in this particular case means understanding that he’s done something bad and feeling a bit sorry. No reform or payment is required, but the Psammead has trouble with even a minimal amount of humility or apology. So, the children take turns laughing at his unrepentant cruelty and carelessness and trying to convince him that he is not the center of the universe. Again, I was interested in whether or not the old Psammead would ever be able to “go home”, reconciled to the universe, but I don’t know how many children would stay interested.

For fans of Edith Nesbit or Downton Abbey (for the history) or maybe World War I settings.

Remembrance by Theresa Breslin

Jun8

I read Remembrance for my journey to Scotland last month because it was the only book by Theresa Breslin, Carnegie medal winning Scottish author, that my library system had. And it was set during World War I, a favorite time period. There were definitely echoes of Downton Abbey in the book.

Seventeen year old John Malcolm Dundas, son of a Scottish shopkeeper, can’t wait to enlist and fight the Huns. His sister Maggie is eager to do her part, too, or at least to do something more exciting than working her father’s store, and she goes to work in a munitions factory. Little brother Alex Dundas is only fourteen, but he longs to get into the fighting before the war ends. Then, there’s the other family in the book, the Armstrong-Barneses, consisting of mother, son Francis, and daughter Charlotte. Charlotte trains to become a nurse so that she can contribute to the war effort, even though her mother does not approve of girls in her “station of life” (the upper class) working in hospitals, particularly not her teenaged daughter. Francis, old enough to be a soldier, tries to avoid the war, reads lots of newspapers, and draws. He’s the sensitive, artistic type, and he’s opposed to the war and the way it’s being fought.

The book follows the histories of these five teens as World War I impacts them, fills their lives, and changes them and their families and their village. It would be a good fictional introduction to World War I for high school age readers and for adults. The details of life in the trenches and in the hospitals are harrowing and gritty, but I would much prefer this book as an accompaniment to the study of World War I over the one that’s often assigned, All Quiet on the Western Front. I found the plot of All Quiet on the Western Front very nearly as confusing as the battles of the war itself must have been. Remembrance with its more straightforward plot leaves out none of the horror of the war, but it tells the story of World War I in a much more approachable and understandable manner.

The Family Romanov by Candace Fleming

Apr12

The Family Romanov: Murder Rebellion, and the Fall of Imperial Russia by Candace Fleming.

Were the Romanov family a Christian family, persecuted by the evil Communist revolutionaries and ultimately martyrs to their (Orthodox) faith?

“Alix (Alexandra) . . . spent hours a day on her knees in prayer.” (p.28)

“God’s will must always be accepted without complaint. After all, everything that happened in life was the result of God’s will, so it was pointless to question the meaning of events. ‘God knows what is good for us,’ Nicholas often reminded himself. ‘We must bow down our heads and repeat the sacred words, ‘Thy will be done.”” (p.43)

“Typically Nicholas believed Alexei’s illness was God’s will, and so he accepted it passively. ‘My own fate and that of my family are in the hands of Almighty God.'” (p.55)

“Alexandra believed Rasputin’s healing powers were a gift from God, the answer to all her long hours of prayer.” (p.87)

“Alexandra wanted to do more. So she enrolled in nursing courses, and she took nineteen-year-old Olga and seventeen-year-old Tatiana with her. . . Working in the wards, the students washed, cleaned, and bandaged maimed bodies, mangled faces, blinded eyes.” (p.138)

“‘It is necessary to look more calmly on everything,’ she (Alexandra) said three months after her husband’s abdication. ‘What is to be done? God has sent us trials, evidently he thinks we are prepared for it. It is a sort of examination—to prove we are ready for His grace.'” (p.185)

“Their mornings began and evenings ended with prayers.” “Marie offered to read aloud from the family’s favorite collection of sermons.” (p.228)

Or was Nicholas an evil, violent man and was Alexandra blinded by her near-idolatry for Rasputin and for her icons to which she turned in faith that they would make her son well?

“They (the police) shared Nicholas’s view that ‘the Yids,’ as he derisively called his Jewish subjects, ‘must be kept in their place.'” (p.69)

“Nicholas decided to crack down on all of his subjects. Now, he declared, they would ‘feel the whip.’ Perhaps then they would think twice before rebelling.” (p.79)

“Their work (the pogroms) delighted Nicholas. Once, after reading a particularly gruesome report of hangings and beatings, he turned to an aide. ‘This really tickles me,’ he said. ‘It really does.'” (p.80)

“Alexandra firmly believed Rasputin was God’s messenger, sent to guide them through the war. ‘I fully trust in Our Friend’s wisdom endowed by God to counsel what is right for you and our country,’ she wrote Nicholas.” (p.148-9)

Both, I think, however contradictory that may be. The book is certainly a warning to those of us who are Christians: we may be blinded by our own prejudices and those of our culture into believing things that are contrary to the gospel of Christ and into acting upon those erroneous beliefs. We must always compare our actions and beliefs with the yardstick of Scripture and ask for specific guidance from the Holy Spirit. I believe that if Nicholas and Alexandra had done so in regard to the Jews and to Rasputin, that guidance would have been granted to them.

Ms. Fleming does a good job of presenting a balanced and intriguing picture of the Romanovs, and I recommend the book.

March 18th: St. Alexander of Jerusalem and Second Lieutenant Owen

Mar18

St. Alexander was a bishop in Jerusalem in the third century, and he is known for having founded a theological library and a school in Jerusalem during his tenure there. When he was an old man, he was arrested and taken to prison in Caesarea where he died, after being physically tortured and almost fed to the wild beasts.

“The glory of his white hairs and great sanctity formed a double crown for him in captivity.” Feast Day Of St. Alexander of Jerusalem, March 18th.

Wilfred Owen, World War One poet, b.March 18,1893, d.November 4, 1918.

2nd Lt, Wilfred Edward Salter Owen, 5th Bn. Manch. R., T.F., attd. 2nd Bn.
For conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty in the attack on the Fonsomme Line on October 1st/2nd, 1918. On the company commander becoming a casualty, he assumed command and showed fine leadership and resisted a heavy counter-attack. He personally manipulated a captured enemy machine gun from an isolated position and inflicted considerable losses on the enemy. Throughout he behaved most gallantly.

The Parable of the Old Man and the Young
by Wilfred Owen

So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went,
And took the fire with him, and a knife.
And as they sojourned both of them together,
Isaac the first-born spake and said, My Father,
Behold the preparations, fire and iron,
But where the lamb for this burnt-offering?
Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps,
and builded parapets and trenches there,
And stretchèd forth the knife to slay his son.
When lo! an angel called him out of heaven,
Saying, Lay not thy hand upon the lad,
Neither do anything to him. Behold,
A ram, caught in a thicket by its horns;
Offer the Ram of Pride instead of him.

But the old man would not so, but slew his son,
And half the seed of Europe, one by one.

Poetry Friday: The 20th Gift of Christmas in France, 1917

Dec20

Christmas Eve in France by Jessie Fauset
“Jessie Redmon Fauset (April 27, 1882 — April 30, 1961) was an American editor, poet, essayist and novelist.
Fauset was the editor of the NAACP magazine The Crisis. She also was the editor and co-author for the African American children’s magazine Brownies’ Book. She studied the teachings and beliefs of W.E.B Dubois and considered him to be her mentor. Fauset was known as one of the most intelligent women novelists of the Harlem Renaissance, earning her the name ‘the midwife’. In her lifetime she wrote four novels as well as poetry and short fiction.” ~Wikipedia, Jessie Redmon Faucet
OH little Christ, why do you sigh
As you look down to-night
On breathless France, on bleeding France,
And all her dreadful plight?
What bows your childish head so low?
What turns your cheek so white?

Oh little Christ, why do you moan,
What is it that you see
In mourning France, in martyred France,
And her great agony?
Does she recall your own dark day,
Your own Gethsemane?

Oh little Christ, why do you weep,
Why flow your tears so sore
For pleading France, for praying France,
A suppliant at God’s door?
“God sweetened not my cup,” you say,
“Shall He for France do more?”

Oh little Christ, what can this mean,
Why must this horror be
For fainting France, for faithful France,
And her sweet chivalry?
“I bled to free all men,” you say
“France bleeds to keep men free.”

Oh little, lovely Christ, you smile!
What guerdon is in store
For gallant France, for glorious France,
And all her valiant corps?
“Behold I live, and France, like me;
Shall live for evermore.”

The Bess Crawford series by Charles Todd

Jan17

A Duty to the Dead by Charles Todd. In which we are introduced to nurse Bess Crawford as she becomes a survivor of the sinking of HMHS Britannic in the Kea Channel off the Greek island of Kea on the morning of November 21, 1916. Upon her return to England to convalesce, Bess carries a cryptic message to the family of a soldier who died while under her care. The message begins a chain of events which lead to Bess’s involvement with a man who is possibly an escaped lunatic, but also possibly a wronged man.

An Impartial Witness by Charles Todd. This second book in the series featuring World War I nurse detective Bess Crawford uses good, solid storytelling and slow, careful character development to hold readers’ interest. Upon Bess’s return to England from the trenches of France, she witnesses a tearful parting between a woman, Mrs. Evanson, and a soldier who is not her husband but possibly her lover. When Bess recognizes Mrs. Evanson from her picture that was carried by her pilot husband and when the woman is later murdered, Bess becomes enmeshed in the family’s affairs and in the resolution of the mystery of her death.

In both of these books, the mystery and the characters were intriguing and entertaining. Bess Crawford is an independent young woman, and yet she doesn’t come across as a twenty-first century feminist artificially transplanted into the soil of the World War I-era. Instead, she has a family to whom she listens and she allows herself to be protected to some extent by the men in her life, especially family friend Simon Brandon. (I think Bess and Simon are headed for romance, but at least by the end of the second book in the series, the romance is completely unrealized.) And still Bess does what Bess feels obligated or drawn to do, and she meddles in things that are not really her concern.

In fact, that would be my only complaint about these books. For the purpose of furthering the plot, the authors (a mother-son team using the Charles Todd pseudonym) have Bess ask all sorts of questions and become over-involved in the lives of strangers with very little justification for her visits and intrusions. However, I can overlook the lack of warrant for Bess’s interference in the lives of her patients and their families for the sake of a good story.

Lots of comparisons are made at Amazon and Goodreads between these books and the Maisie Dobbs series by Jacqueline Winspear. I liked these two, at least, better than I liked the books about Maisie. Maybe I just liked these books set during the Great War better than those set just after.