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Tituba of Salem Village by Ann Petry

Apr1

This fictional account of the Salem witch hunts and trials focuses on Tituba, enslaved servant to minister of Salem, Samuel Parris. Parris, his daughter, Betsey and his niece Abigail Williams were at the heart of the witch scare in Salem, Massachusetts in the late 1600’s. The story is told from Tituba’s point of view, but in third person. Tituba, the Parris’ household servant who may have come to Massachusetts from Barbados, was accused and convicted of witchcraft during the trials, with Abigail and Betsey being among her chief accusers. Tituba was imprisoned, but she did escape with her life, although not her freedom. “In May of 1693 all persons charged with witchcraft were pardoned.” However, Tituba was sold for payment of her jail fees to Samuel Conklin, weaver, and worked for him in Boston for the remainder of her life.

Perhaps it’s good to know that background information going into the story since it is a rather harrowing tale of lies and deceit and flirtation with the occult. According to the story in this book, Tituba does tell fortunes and outlandish tales about talking monkeys and the jungles of Barbados. But from the perspective of this author, Tituba is much more sinned against than sinning. The girls who cry witchcraft are bored and overworked, with imaginations starved by Puritan legalism and the harsh conditions of colonial life. They follow Abigail and become caught up in the social contagion of the time: a belief in and fear of witchcraft. Abigail herself sounds like a piece of work, while Tituba, the character in the book anyway, is both insightful about the girls and their delusions as well as vulnerable to their insistent accusations.

It’s a somewhat scary book, perhaps disturbing to younger readers. I would wait until age thirteen or fourteen to hand this book over. Nevertheless, the outlines of the story are true, and it does illustrate the dangers of “following the crowd” or following a strong and charismatic leader. People can convince themselves of some very strange things when caught up in groupthink or hysteria. Tituba of Salem Village gives one perspective on the outbreak of such hysteria in Salem Village in the late seventeenth century.

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

If you want to read more about the events in Salem surrounding the witch accusations and trials, there are a number of good books, both well-researched historical fiction and nonfiction:

  • A Break With Charity by Ann Rinaldi (reviewed at Plumfield and Paideia) is historical fiction in the same vein as Tituba of Salem Village. A real girl whose parents were accused during the witch trials tells the story from her perspective as an outsider and a victim of the hysteria.
  • I Walk in Dread: The Diary of Deliverance Trembley, Witness to the Salem Witch Trials, Massachusetts Bay Colony, 1691 by Lisa Rowe Fraustino is part of the Dear America series of historical fiction written in journal or diary form.
  • The Crucible by Arthur Miller. Miller’s play uses the Salem Witch trials as a metaphor for and illumination of the McCarthy and the Committee on Un-American Activites (U.S. House of Representatives) blacklisting of suspected communists in government, entertainment and business. Its initial production on Broadway in 1953 won a Tony Award.
  • The Devil’s Door: A Salem Witchcraft Story by Paul B. Thompson.
  • The Witchcraft of Salem Village by Shirley Jackson is a nonfiction Landmark book about the witch trials in Salem.
  • Devil’s Shadow: The Story of Witchcraft in Massachusetts by Clifford Lindsay Alderman is another nonfiction account of the events.

Girl With a Pen: Charlotte Bronte by Elisabeth Kyle

Mar29

“This being Charlotte Bronte’s story and not her biography, I have taken a few liberties. Some minor happenings have been transposed in time, other omitted or invented. . . . But this is Charlotte’s story. I have written it in the hope of awakening interest in a remarkable girl who wrote remarkable books.”

~Afterword by Elisabeth Kyle

I can’t decide whether it would be best to have read Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre before reading this fictionalized biography or whether Jane Eyre might flow even better if the reader were to know something about the life and times of its author. Either way, Girl With a Pen is a book not to be missed by Bronte fans. Making the story of Charlotte’s life into a fictional narrative while keeping the broad outlines and many of the details was a good choice on the part of a good author herself, Elisabeth Kyle. Ms. Kyle writes vividly and fluidly of Charlotte’s young adulthood and her rise to fame, telling the story of Charlotte Bronte’s growth as a person and as an author with understanding and an affinity for Charlotte and her sisters.

I’ve read several books about the Brontes, fiction and nonfiction. They all have their strengths and weaknesses. This one emphasizes Charlotte’s life in the parsonage at Haworth as a young adult, covers her time as a student in Brussels, and shows us her rocky, yet triumphant road to becoming a celebrated novelist, all without speculating about modern obsessions with Charlotte’s love life or her relationship with her father. Mr. Bronte is this book, is a typical Victorian father, rather over-protective of his daughters by modern standards, but loving and beloved by those same daughters. And Charlotte goes to Brussels to learn French and to teach English and does not indulge in any love affairs whilst there.

This biographical fiction novel is especially appropriate for junior high and younger high school readers who are interested in learning more about Charlotte Bronte’s life since the author omits the more sordid details of Branwell Bronte’s life and death with Branwell appearing only as a minor character in the story. The book also ends before the deaths of Emily and Anne, thereby avoiding those twin tragedies as well.

And Charlotte herself is indeed the focus of the narrative. Ms. Kyle tells Charlotte’s story vividly and memorably. In this book, Charlotte Bronte, who thought of herself as a rather nondescript and even ugly young lady, is is bright and personable and full of life. I would recommend this fictionalized biography to any teens who are readers, introverts, or aspiring writers. And adults like me, librarian-types, should find it fascinating as well.

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

Other Bronte books I can recommend:

Proud Prisoner by Walter Havighurst

Feb25

This narrative history/biography book is for older middle school to high school students and adults who are interested in a different perspective on the American Revolution, particularly the war in the Kentucky, Ohio and Michigan territories west of the Appalachian Mountains. The “proud prisoner” of the title is Lieutenant Governor Henry Hamilton, British Governor of Detroit, aka “Hair Buyer”. As the war between the independence-declaring Americans and the mighty ruling British was raging in the east, the illegal settlers in Kentucky and Ohio were experiencing their own war. The British paid Native American allies, led by British officers, to raid the settlements and isolated homesteads of these settlers, who were mostly from Virginia and considered themselves Americans and Virginians, not subject to the British law that said they couldn’t settle in the land beyond the Cumberland Gap.

Henry Hamilton gained the epithet “Hair Buyer” among the Virginians because he was accused of paying the Native Americans for scalps but not for for live prisoners and of encouraging them to massacre men, women, and children. This book makes the case that Hamilton was falsely accused by a couple of unreliable witnesses with an ax to grind. However, the author also states very plainly that Hamilton gave the natives many “presents” (mostly rum), including knives specifically called scalping knives. And when the raiders brought in scalps, including those obviously taken from children, Hamilton gave them praise and more gifts. If that’s not paying for scalps, I’m not sure what it is.

So I wasn’t convinced that Governor Hamilton was an “honest and honorable man whom history has cast in a villain’s role.” Maybe the best you can say is that he was no worse than many of his compatriots as well as many of the Virginians who were also enlisting the natives to fight for them. Anyway, it was fascinating to read about this side of the War for Independence. I don’t remember learning in American history class much about George Rogers Clark, the Virginian sent by Governor Patrick Henry to capture the British outposts in the west and stop the marauding British and natives from their raids on American settlements. Nor do I remember anything at all about the governor of Detroit and the battle between his forces and the Virginia militiamen at Vincennes that ended in the capture and imprisonment of Governor Hamilton.

I thought this story, by a scholar and university professor, was well written, engaging, and well researched. Governor Hamilton left behind many papers, letters, and a diary which means the author had many sources from which to draw in telling the history of this possibly unfairly stigmatized, possibly justly hated, man. Either way, Hamilton’s life was one I knew nothing about, and I’m glad I read about him in Proud Prisoner.

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

The Book of Three by Lloyd Alexander

Feb23

Whenever I am asked for a book suggestion in the vein of or as a follow up to Narnia or Tolkien, my first question is always, “Have you read Lloyd Alexander’s Prydain Chronicles?” And yet, I haven’t read these five books in the Prydain series, beginning with The Book of Three, in many, many years. Since I am working on reading children’s books published in 1964, sixty years ago, it was definitely time for a reread: The Book of Three was first published in 1964.

I love Lloyd Alexander’s quirky, idiosyncratic characters:

  • Taran, Assistant Pig-Keeper, is the immature, rash, and bumbling sort-of-hero of the story. Well, if not the hero, at least he’s the main character, and he’s about to go on an epic hero’s journey, even if he is only an Assistant Pig-Keeper.
  • Hen Wen, the oracular pig is lost. Can the rag-tag group that gathers around Taran help him find Hen Wen and warn the good guys of impending danger?
  • Prince Gwydion, the older and true hero, still relies on Taran and his friends to help save the kingdom of Prydain from the evil Arawn and his henchman, the Horned King.
  • Eilonwy, girl child or young woman or enchantress, speaks in metaphors and similes and always keeps Taran humble with her sharp observations.
  • Fflewddur Fflam, the bard who used to be a king. His harp is magical in the music it produces and in its response to the exaggerated stories that Fflewddur tells.
  • Gurgi, beast-man or man-beast, is a brave though smelly companion whose constant talk of “crunchings and munchings” and “walkings and stalkings” and “seekings and peekings” adds a memorable bit of spice and humor to the story.
  • Doli is the irascible dwarf guide who can’t manage to turn himself invisible no matter how long and hard he holds his breath.
  • Dallben, who only enters the story at the beginning and at the end, is Taran’s wizard mentor, three hundred and seventy-nine years old and devoted to the work of meditation, “an occupation so exhausting he could accomplish it only by lying down and closing his eyes” for an hour and a half every morning and evening.

The characters and the setting are drawn from Welsh legend and mythology, just as Tolkien’s Middle Earth was taken somewhat from Norse and Finnish mythology. “Arawn, the dread Lord of Annuvin, comes from the Mabinogion, the classic collection of Welsh legends, though in Prydain he is considerably more villainous.” I think Alexander was also influenced by Tolkien, although he never says so, never even admits to having read LOTR. And the stories of Prydain are deeply influenced by the existentialism of Jean Paul Sartre; Lloyd Alexander was the first person to translate Sartre’s novel Nausea into English.

Actually, the plot is somewhat predictable: Young Taran goes on a journey with a mission to save the land of Prydain from the forces of evil. On the way he meets many obstacles and dangers but also finds unexpected helpers and friends.The evil is defeated, temporarily, but of course not conclusively, since there are four more books to come in the series. In some series this ending-not-ending would be irritating, but this story is more about the characters and their growth and the humor and the serious philosophical and even religious journey that each of them is taking. (But there is really no religion in these books. They are more existentialist, about finding out the depths of your own character and identity, but not in an annoying way?)

Anyway, I’m just now beginning my 1964 journey. I may find other books from that year that equal or even better Mr. Alexander’s first entry into the world of Prydain. But I would guess that The Book of Three will be among the top ten books of 1964, at the very least. Highly recommended.

“Most of us are called on to perform tasks far beyond what we can do. Our capabilities seldom match our aspirations, and we are often woefully unprepared. To this extent, we are all Assistant Pig-Keepers at heart.”

~Lloyd Alexander, Author’s Note at the beginning of The Book of Three

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

The 3rd Gift of Christmas in New Guinea, Indonesia, 1964

Dec3

Peace Child by Don Richardson tells the story of Christian missionaries Don and Carol Richardson and their attempts in the early 1960’s to bring the gospel of Jesus to the Sawi people, headhunting cannibals of New Guinea. For the Sawi, treachery was an ideal, and the only way to make peace between enemy tribes was to give the sacrifice of a “peace child” to ensure the treaty between warring groups.

“You want Hurip to die?” I asked.
“Yes!” Amio hissed.
Anxiously I rose and faced Amio, “Why?”
Amio’s voice choked with emotion as he replied: “Remember I told you my father Hato once gave a tarop child to the Kayagar, only to learn later that they had killed the baby and devoured it?”
I nodded, and Amio continued, “The man lying in this canoe is the man to whom my father gave that child! He is the same man who killed and devoured my little brother! Tuan, I’ve been waiting for years for a chance to . . .”
Now I was trembling, too. The Christmas spirit was not coming easily to the banks of the Kronkel that day. . . . was I really being realistic in hoping they would forgive their enemies for Christ’s sake?
For a moment I stood speechless before Amio, praying for wisdom. Then an old memory stirred in the back of my mind. Reaching out with both hands, I gripped Amio by his earlobes. He was startled, but he did not draw away. He listened carefully while I said: “Tarop Tim titindadeden! I plead the Peace Child!”
Amio shot back, “The peace child my father gave to Hurip is dead! Hurip himself killed him!”
“But the Peace Child God gave still lives!” I countered. “And because He lives, you may not take vengeance against Hurip. Forgive him, Amio, for Jesus’ sake!”
My fingers still gripped his earlobes.

Today’s Gifts from Semicolon:

A booklist: Barbara H and 31 Days of Missionary Stories.

A birthday: Andy Williams, b.1930. We always used to watch Andy Williams’ Christmas special on TV, back in the day.
Joseph Conrad, b.1857.

A verse:
Moon River by Johnny Mercer.

Moon River, wider than a mile,
I’m crossing you in style some day.
Oh, dream maker, you heart breaker,
wherever you’re going I’m going your way.

Two drifters off to see the world.
There’s such a lot of world to see.
We’re after the same rainbow’s end–
waiting ’round the bend,
my huckleberry friend,
Moon River and me.

A Christmas idea: Redeeming Christmas, Kindness-Bombing by Juanita at Once Upon a Prairie.

1964: Events and Inventions

Feb14

February 5, 1964. The government of India declares the province of Kashmir in northern India to be a part of india without holding a vote for the people of Kashmir to declare their wishes in the matter. Pakistan protests Indian control of Kashmir.

March 31, 1964. The military overthrows Brazilian President João Goulart in a coup, starting 21 years of military dictatorship in Brazil.

April 26, 1964. The nations of Tanganyika and Zanzibar merge to form Tanzania.

'Nelson Mandela - The Struggle is My Life' photo (c) 2010, Seth Anderson - license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/June, 1964. South African lawyer Nelson Mandela is sentenced to life imprisonment for sabotage and plotting to overthrow the government. Mandela is the leader of the banned political group, the African National Congress (ANC), a group fighting against the apartheid laws in South Africa.

July 6, 1964. Malawi declares its independence from the United Kingdom.

July 31, 1964. U.S. satellite Ranger 7 sends back to earth the first close-up photographs of the moon.

August 5, 1964. Aircraft from carriers USS Ticonderoga and USS Constellation bomb North Vietnam in retaliation for strikes against U.S. destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin.

October 1, 1964. The new Shinkansen high-speed passenger rail service opens in Japan, between the cities of Tokyo and Osaka.

October 14-15, 1964. Nikita Khrushchev is deposed as leader of the Soviet Union; Leonid Brezhnev and Alexei Kosygin assume power.

November 3, 1964. The Bolivian government of President Víctor Paz Estenssoro is overthrown by a military rebellion led by General Alfredo Ovando Candía, commander-in-chief of the armed forces.