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The Night War by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

Jun11

I’ve read and reviewed a few other books by contemporary middle grade and young adult author Kimberly Brubaker Bradley:

I’ve also read, but not reviewed, The War That Saved My Life and The War I Finally Won. Ms. Bradley tends to write about several topics and settings: World War II Europe, France in particular, Catholicism and religion, abused children, children with disabilities. The Night War is a Jewish Holocaust story set in France, 1942. When Miri (Miriam), a twelve year old Jewish girl, and her parents are routed from their apartment in Paris by the French police and herded onto buses to be taken to the Velodrome d’Hiver, Miri becomes separated from her family but she given the responsibility of escaping with and caring for her two year old neighbor, Nora Rosenbaum. Mrs. Rosenbaum tells Miri to run, to take Nora, and to somehow try to get to Switzerland. And Miri is faced with a choice, the first of many impossible choices: will she try to find her parents in the Velodrome or escape with Nora?

Miri chooses to run, and with the help of a French nun, she manages to get away from the Nazi roundup of Jews in Paris. Eventually, Miri, who takes the name of Marie, and Nora end up in Chenonceaux, near the castle of Chenonceau, which was long ago the dwelling of Diane de Poitiers and subsequently, Catherine de Medici. These women and their history become a significant part of Miri/Marie’s story. (SPOILER WARNING: Here be ghosts and ghost-like characters.)

And so do the nuns of Chenonceaux. Marie is hidden in a convent school, and she again is faced with choices. Does she stay in relative safety in the school, or does she attempt to take Nora and flee to Vichy France and then on to Switzerland? Is Nora safer with her foster family, or is she in danger of forgetting her family and her Jewish heritage? Can Miri pretend to be Catholic and still pray to God in her own Jewish way? And there are other choices to be made as Marie stumbles upon a secret resistance network and is asked to help smuggle others out of Nazi-controlled France.

This story with its emphasis on personal responsibility and making good choices, and the consequences of bad choices, is an excellent one for middle grade readers who are just waking up to their own responsibilities and moral choices in life. Recommended for readers age 10 and up, or as soon as you think your reader is ready for hard things about the Holocaust and the evil that people do. Not graphic.

Linnets and Valerians by Elizabeth Goudge

Jun10

Linnets and Valerians is a beautiful, truth-filled, engaging fantasy story by one of my favorite authors that I’m afraid will be problematic for many Christian readers. It shouldn’t be problematic to acknowledge that there is a spiritual realm of both good and evil and that spiritual battles must sometimes be fought by unconventional means. But witchcraft and spells, even good ones that counter evil, are a snare and anathema to some people, even reading about such things, so follow your own conscience.

Four endearing but rather naughty siblings–Robert, Nan, Timothy, and Betsy– are left to stay with their grandmother while their father is in Egypt with his regiment. “Grandmother said they were insubordinate; Father only thought them high-spirited.” Since the children’s first acts in the book are to run away from grandmother’s house and to “borrow” a pony and cart full of someone’s else’s groceries, I tend to agree with Grandmother. But the children turn out to be charming, nevertheless.

And they don’t stay with Grandmother very long. It’s not much of a spoiler, since the change happens in the second chapter of the book, to tell that the four incorrigible children end up living with their Uncle Ambrose, a Church of England clergyman, former educator, and inveterate bachelor. Uncle Ambrose also claims to dislike children, but he takes his nephews and nieces into his home anyway. And so the adventure begins.

Since this is a fantasy story there is magic, both black magic and white. Since it’s an Elizabeth Goudge story there are families to be reunited. And since it’s essentially a story with Christian underpinnings and a fairy tale of sorts, there is a happy ending where all’s well that ends well. But before we get to the happy ending, there is also a witch and evil spells and good counter-spells. That’s the part that’s going to be a deal-breaker for some readers. In short, if Harry Potter is a an offense to your conscience, then Linnets and Valerians is not for you either. I wish Goudge had used prayer instead of “white magic” to fight off the evil in the book, but in a way the prayers and common sense of Uncle Ambrose are weapons in the battle, too.

Still, I thought it was a fantastic story. Robert is the quintessential plucky British boy with a big, but very practical, imagination. He tends to get himself and his siblings into trouble with his schemes and ideas, but Nan, the sensible older sister, is there to keep Robert somewhat in check. Timothy is imaginative, too, but he tends toward being delicate and sensitive and thoughtful rather than “a force to be reckoned with.” And little Betsy has both the sweetness and the toughness of a youngest child. Uncle Ambrose is curmudgeonly, with a heart of gold, and each of the other characters has his or her own eccentric personality and peculiarities, including Emma Cobley the witch, Ezra the beekeeper servant, Moses Glory Glory Alleluja, Lady Alicia, Abednego the monkey, Hector the owl, and even Daft Davie who lives in a cave up on the hill.

With wonderful characters such as these, Elizabeth Goudge weaves a plot that takes the children all over the surrounding countryside and into the ancient manor house of Lady Alicia, who lives a secluded life after having lost her husband and her only child. Lady Alicia’s only companions are Abednego the mischievous monkey and one servant, Moses Glory Glory Alleluja –until the children intrude on her life and indeed begin to bring her back to life. Full story to follow.

If you can get past the witchiness and “white magic”, this one of only two children’s books by Elizabeth Goudge (the other is The Little White Horse) is, dare I say, pure magic. It reminds me of a hymn of praise and a prayer for protection from evil, and there is in fact a hymn of praise and invocation inserted into the story. I wish I knew a tune for it.

Glory, children, glory alleluja,
Praise to the Lord.
Great glory for sun and moon and star shine,
And for His Word.

Glory that wells, streams, and flowing fountains
Sing to His praise,
That the snows laud him, frost fire, and rainbows
The nights and days.

Glory, children, glory alleluja
For birds and bees,
For shepherd and sheep upon the mountains,
Valleys and trees.

Is it glory for the gift o’ children
To guard an’ keep?
Varmints and scoundrels, I love ’em only
When they’re asleep.

Linnets and Valerians, p.97-98

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

Once a Queen by Sarah Arthur

Jun8

At first, I thought this 2024 middle grade/YA fantasy novel from Waterbrook Press was Narnia fan fiction, or perhaps a Narnia sequel, Susan’s Story: Once a Queen in Narnia or something like that. (“Once a king or queen of Narnia, always a king or queen of Narnia.”) That expectation was a disservice to the novel as it is. Sarah Arthur’s story certainly has strong echoes of Narnia, as well as being indebted to E. Nesbit, George MacDonald, Elizabeth Goudge, and Madeleine L’Engle, influences the author acknowledges in an author’s Q & A in the back of the book. So in my defense, I didn’t know, and the Narnia-love was there from the beginning.

I would advise readers to take Once a Queen on its own terms and NOT try to compare or find connections to any other stories or worlds until you get to the end. In this particular story, fourteen year old American Eva Joyce comes with her British mother to visit her estranged grandmother in the family manor of Carrick Hall in the West Midlands region of England. The year is 1995. Eva has been nurtured by the classic fantasy tales and children’s books, especially the Ternival tales of Mesterra by A.H.W. Clifton. She’s never actually experienced a magical portal to another world, however, even though this trip to England feels a bit like a fairy tale.

And the story does turn into a fairy tale, complete with magical worlds, an evil queen, secret gardens, fantastical creatures, and a quest to be completed. And secrets. Lots of secrets. Eva’s mum has secrets. Eva’s grandmother has secrets. Eva herself discovers so many wondrous secret things that she finds herself unable to keep all of the secrets straight. Who can be told about what, and when, and how? And what secrets are being withheld from Eva and why? This whole secret motif is the weakest part of the book: too many people keeping too many secrets for too little reason. Nevertheless, I resigned myself to getting bits of information doled out to me in each chapter –reluctantly and incompletely.

The novel itself alternates between strange occurrences in our world as Eva gets to know her grandmother and her grandmother’s tragic history and equally strange events in the world of Mesterra, woven by Magister, and ruled by a long line of kings and queens who built a a great kingdom called Ternival. Of course, there are doors between the worlds, hard to find and harder to open, but real. And Eva and her friend Frankie, the gardener’s grandson, are determined to find the way into the fantasy world that they have read about in books and somehow to solve the problems of their own world by doing so.

Once a Queen is a a lovely story with Christian worldview underpinnings, despite all of the secrets and slow revelations, and I highly recommend it to lovers of high fantasy and adventure stories. The novel is set up for a sequel, perhaps many sequels, and indeed there is a “sneak preview” of the next book in the series that is printed in the back of of this first book. The next book is to be called Once a Castle, and I look forward to its publication. (Once a Queen is complete in itself, and does not end in a cliffhanger.) Recommended for ages 12 and up.

Basil and the Lost Colony by Eve Titus

May31

What a great little book, full of jokes and literary and historical allusions! Basil of Baker Street, the Sherlock Holmes of the mouse world, sets out to Switzerland to find the lost colony of the Tellmice of 1291, who fled to the mountains to escape their own tyrannical version of Gessler, William Tell’s famous oppressor. How refreshing to read a humorous mystery adventure for primary and middle grade readers that does not condescend to slapstick and potty humor but respects its readers while remaining accessible to them. In this story, readers will encounter Flora and Fauna, the Faversham sisters; the Tellmice of Switzerland; Inspector Antoine Cherbou of the Paris policemice; Dr. David Q. Dawson, Basil’s narrator and assistant; Elmo the St. Bernard; the Adorable Snowmouse; and of course, the evil Ratigan, Basil’s arch-enemy (“I smell a rat again–Ratigan!”) —as well as many more characters whose names and personalities and talents are allusions to various literary and cultural icons, people, and events. Some I recognized, and others were lost on me. (Tillary Quinn, who writes crime stories = Ellery Queen, but for some reason she’s a New Zealander?)

The jokes embedded in the story are old; at the ripe old age of 66, I’ve heard most of them before. But they will be funny and fresh to a new generation of readers. The illustrations by Paul Galdone are endearing. Such an intrepid mouse detective! And the book and the series are perfect for hooking beginning chapter book readers into the joy of reading. Basil and the Lost Colony is only 88 pages long, short but sweet.

The book is part of a series by the well known author of the Anatole picture books as well as other books for children. These Sherlockian stories include:

  • Basil of Baker Street
  • Basil and the Cave of Cats (aka Basil and the Pygmy Cats)
  • Basil in Mexico
  • Basil in the Wild West
  • Basil and the Lost Colony

Basil of Baker Street, the first book in the series, was also made into a Disney movie in 1986, The Great Mouse Detective.

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

The Piper by Eden Vale Stevens

May30

This Dickensian Christmas tale could have come straight out of Victorian England, but instead it’s a story from an American writer. Set in Oliver Cromwell’s England of the 1600’s, this 128-page quest story tells of a young orphan boy, Ned, and his search for food and a mother and a home. As he navigates his way through the threatening city of London, avoiding the officers who want to take him to the poorhouse, and the others who want to imprison him for thieving bread, Ned searches for the Mother and Babe that the bells of the cathedral are said to herald.

The illustrations for this story by Fermin Rocker are beautiful, and they help to bring the tale down to earth and make it more accessible. I have to admit, though, that the story itself struck me as a bit odd. Ned lives with a group of street children, but he leaves them to go and find his family. We never know what happens to his street urchin “family”. Eventually, the poet Robert Herrick (1591-1674) finds him and feeds him, but Ned leaves Herrick’s warm hospitality in a tavern to continue on his quest to find either his own mother or the Holy Mother proclaimed by the bells of the cathedral. Then, he finds a family, father, mother and three children, who decide to take him in, maybe because he reminds them of the Christ Child?

The best idea I have is to try this story out as a read aloud at Christmas time and see if your children are taken by the small piper, Ned, and his search for a mother and a family. The poem in the very back of the book is this one by Herrick, which I suppose is the inspiration for the story:

Go prettie child, and beare this Flower
Unto thy little Saviour;
And tell Him, by that Bud now blown,
He is the Rose of Sharon known:
When thou has said so, stick it there
Upon his Bibb or Stomacher:
And tell Him (for good handsell too)
That thou has brought a Whistle new,
Made of a clean strait oaten reed,
To charm his cries (at times of need):
Tell Him, for Corall, thou hast none;
But if thou hadst, He sho’d have one;
But poore thou art, and knowne to be
Even as monilesse as He.
Lastly, if thou canst win a kisse
From those mellifluous lips of his;
Then never take a second on,
To spoile the first impression.

The Orphelines in the Enchanted Castle by Natalie Savage Carlson

May27

The Orphelines in the Enchanted Castle is the fourth book in a five book series about a group of French orphans, “orphelines”, who live together with their guardian, Madame Flattot and her caretaker assistant, Genevieve. This volume begins:

“Once upon a time there were twenty beautiful French princesses who were going to live in an enchanted castle with their fairy godmother and their thirty knights. . . The noble knights were the boy orphans who would share the castle with them. And the castle was to be their new orphanage. It was in the forest of Fontainebleau, south of Paris, waiting for them to bring it to life again–as the prince had done in THE SLEEPING BEAUTY OF THE WOODS.”

Of course, the real orphan girls don’t always act like princesses, and the orphan boys who come to live in the castle with them are not the most noble of knights. The story tells how the girls learn to temper their imaginations with good sense and to behave themselves even when the boys can’t or won’t. And the boys, some of whom come from the streets of Paris and are quite uncivilized, are introduced to a French version of Lord Baden-Powell’s Boy Scouts and to Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book, and thereby with some help from the girls and from Genevieve, become quite chivalrous wolf cubs and doers of good deeds.

These books about the orphelines are short, about a hundred pages each with large print and lovely illustrations in this particular volume by Adriana Saviozzi. Both the story and the reading level are appropriate for beginning chapter book readers, ages six to ten or so. The children in the book are quite mischievous and sometimes naughty, but they learn and grow. If children were about to join a scouting-type group such as Trail Life or American Heritage Girls, this book would be a good introduction to the concept of scouting.

Other books in the series about the Orphelines include:

  • The Happy Orpheline
  • A Brother for the Orphelines
  • A Pet for the Orphelines
  • A Grandmother for the Orphelines

The Orphelines in the Enchanted Castle is Book 4 in the Orphelines series of five books total. The other volumes in the series are similar to this in terms of reading level and interest level, but they have various other illustrators, such as Garth Williams, Fermin Rocker, and David White. I like the simple and vivid drawings in Enchanted Castle best, I think, although Garth Williams is always good. This book is another entry in the Books of 1964 Project.

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

Yugoslav Mystery by Arthur Catherall

Apr11

This novel is the second or third of Mr. Catherall’s young adult novels I’ve read, and I’m beginning to get a feel for his style and genre. He reminds me of the adult spy novelists Nevill Shute or Alistair MacLean, or even Helen MacInnes, but a bit more tame with teen protagonists. I would guess that boys ages 13 to 16 would find Catherall’s novels quite intriguing.

This mystery takes place on an impoverished island off the southern coast of the former Yugoslavia. It’s several years post-World War 2, but the people who live on this island are still trying to recover from the war and all of its many depredations and consequences. One of those consequences of war is that our protagonist, Josef Piri, fourteen years old, lives with his grandfather and his mother, all of them believing that Josef’s father died in the war before Josef was born.

One day while Josef and his grandfather are out fishing, a police boat comes alongside to ask if they have seen an escaped fugitive on or near the island. Josef, in fact has and does see the escapee clinging to a rope alongside the police launch, out of sight and desperate to remain so. What is the right thing to do? Remain silent and help the man escape or give him up to the authorities?

The choice Josef makes leads him and his entire island village into quite an adventure. There are guns and hidden treasure and narrow escapes and various people who are not what they seem to be. Josef must draw again and again on his courage and his innovative ideas to protect his family and the other villagers and to understand his heritage as his father’s son.

The story takes place in Communist Yugoslavia in about 1960, and it was published in 1964. The Communist government is far away in this story, and is neither praised nor criticized. The villagers, including Josef and his family, live far from the day to day reach of the government, and their lives continue with very little government interference or help. There are a couple of mentions of government aid to the villagers, but it’s not significant. And the adventure that Josef’s encounter with the police boat and the escaped fugitive brings has little or nothing to do with Communism or Marshal Tito.

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

The House of Sixty Fathers by Meindert DeJong

Apr8

Even though all ends well, this novel, based on the author’s own experiences in China during World War II, is darker and more scary than any of the other books by DeJong that I have read.

“The House of Sixty Fathers is based on Meindert DeJong’s actual experience. During World War II Mr. DeJong was official historian for the Chinese-American Composite Wing which was part of Chennault’s famous Fourteenth Air Force. A young Chinese war orphan, the Tien Pao of this story, was adopted by DeJong’s outfit. The boy chose DeJong as his special “father,” and the two were devoted to one another. Mr. DeJong wanted to bring the boy back to the United States with him, but because of legal complications, he was unable to do so. However, the men in the outfit left the youngster well provided for when they returned to America. The Communists then took over that section of China, and DeJong has never heard what happened to the boy.”

I read that note after I finished reading the novel about Tien Pao, a young Chinese boy who becomes separated from his family during the Japaneses invasion of China with only his pet pig to keep him company. Tien Pao’s story is harrowing. He becomes lost behind the Japanese lines, almost starves to death, is shot at, nearly captured, and pursued for rescuing an American flyer. Tien Pao is a very small boy lost in a sea of soldiers and refugees and casualties of war. Nevertheless, there are friends and helpers along the way: the Chinese guerrilla leader who carries Tien Pao across enemy lines, the man who pulls Tien Pao onto a train at the last minute and hides him in a tall basket, and the American airmen (Flying Tigers) who become his “sixty fathers” when Tien Pao cannot find his own parents.

It’s a war story and people are killed, but the descriptions of the war itself are not too graphic. It’s the effects of the war on the civilian population that are the focus of the story, and that part is difficult to imagine and to read about. The children, who are starving, eat grass and mud to fill their stomachs. People target Tien Pao for the sake of his pig companion, Glory-of-the-Republic, and Tien Pao struggles to keep Glory-of-the-Republic from being eaten. Refugees flee the city of Hengyang when it is taken by the Japanese, and Tien Pao is caught up in the flight of the people from the dreaded Japanese army.

If a child is looking for a war story about heroes and daring deeds, The House of Sixty Fathers might be an appropriate recommendation, even though the heroes in this story are quiet, understated heroes, and the daring deeds are ones of persistence, patience, and continued, careful resistance. Tien Pao’s story is one small slice of life in the midst of a complicated war, but it does satisfy the desire for a story of what might happen to a child caught in a war that is beyond his comprehension or control.

What can a lost boy do, other than keep trying to find his home and his parents? I do really wonder, though, what happened to the Chinese boy that Meindert DeJong and his fellow soldiers befriended in China during the war.

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

The Wheel on the School by Meindert DeJong

Apr4

This winner of the 1955 Newbery Award Medal is a winner indeed. The children of Shora, a small village on the Netherlands coast, all six of them, realize one day that the storks never come to Shora to nest. Storks nest on the roofs of houses in other neighboring villages, but not in Shora.

So, the children, along with their schoolteacher, team up to find out why the storks don’t nest in Shora and to fix it so that they do. The project is a difficult one, and the children intend to work hard to bring the storks, or at least one stork, to Shora as the birds begin to migrate to the Netherlands from their homes in Africa. Their teacher tells them to begin by wondering:

“We can’t think much when we don’t know much. But we can wonder! From now until tomorrow morning when you come to school again, will you do that? Will you wonder why and wonder why? Will you wonder why storks don’t come to Shora to build their nests on the roof the way they do in all the villages around? For sometimes when we wonder, we can make things begin to happen.”

p.6

Meindert DeJong has such a way with words, and the black and white drawings in this book by Maurice Sendak are just right, not too intrusive so that readers have room to wonder and create their own pictures of the story but with enough detail so that we can know what a stork looks like or what kind of wheel the children are looking for.

Such a good read aloud selection! But if you don’t have time to read it aloud, introduce the first chapter or two at least, and I believe most children would be drawn into the story. The culture is a bit different from American twenty-first century culture. The children are more “free range”, and the adults are both more irascible and more helpful and approachable than adults are in my city/suburban community. Shora is a small village, after all. But children are children everywhere, and these six Dutch children are imaginative, cooperative, and most of all persistent. And sometimes children with those qualities can make things begin to happen.

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

Shadow of a Bull by Maia Wojciechowska

Apr3

This Newbery Award winning novel, set in Catalonia, in Spain, introduces readers to a culture and way of life that is foreign to most American children and may even be faded or fading fast in Spain itself. It’s an honor culture, and Manolo’s honor and that of his family depend on his becoming a great bullfighter like his deceased father before him.

“When Manolo was nine he became aware of three important facts in his life. First: the older he became, the more he looked like his father. Second: he, Manolo Oliver, was a coward. Third: everyone in the town of Arcangel expected him to grow up to be a famous bullfighter, like his father.”

p.1

I wonder what it would be like to grow up in the shadow of a famous parent. I have the advantage of not knowing from experience what that would feel like. But I’m sure it must be suffocating. Shadow of a Bull shows the difficulty of such expectations as they impact the growth of a nine to eleven year old boy in a small town in Spain. But the lesson is universal. The expectations of others cannot be the determining factors in the maturing decisions of an individual. Community and culture are important, but so is individuality and one’s own moral judgment. Finding a way to reconcile a person’s own inner desires and ambitions with the expectations of community and family is one possible path to maturity.

The book is also about bull-fighting, but the bullfight is a device. Although bull-fighting is controversial—in Spanish bullfighting, the bull is almost always killed at the end of the bullfight—Shadow of a Bull never tries to make a case against bullfighting itself. All the details are there, and they are somewhat gory (animal lovers beware!), but the conflict is not Manolo against the sport of bullfighting. Manolo’s conflict is within himself: how can he prove to himself that he is not a coward and yet not be forced to become, in essence, a reincarnation of his famous father? Manolo must fight his first bull in order to show himself that he is courageous, not a slave to his fear, but if he does fight the bull, he has started down a path that will lead only to more and more bullfights, not Manolo’s goal at all.

Finally, Shadow of a Bull is a story about a boy who finds his courage to become the person he is meant to be.

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