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The Contender by Robert Lipsyte

Jan10

Some bad ideas just keep coming back to haunt and hinder human flourishing all over again. In this book, published in 1967, Alfred Brooks, a black seventeen year old high school drop out who lives and works in Harlem, hears all the same taunts and race baiting remarks that are common on the internet nowadays.

“You just a slave,” sneered Major. “You was born a slave. You gonna die a slave.”

“You come on, Alfred,” said James softly. “Whitey been stealing from us for three hundred years. We just going to take some back.”

It’s the appeal to enslave oneself to bitterness and resentment that keeps coming back to capture impressionable young minds. Alfred, who lives with his aunt and her daughters in an apartment and works at a local Jewish-owned store, isn’t interested in the siren call of crime and drugs that his tormentors are offering and that his best friend James is yielding to. But Alfred doesn’t really know what he does want to pursue, what his true adventure might be, until he steps over the threshold of Donatelli’s Gym and commits himself to training to become a boxer.

The Contender is a book for older teens and adults, especially for those young men who are considering what it means to become a man. It’s about boxing and drug abuse and the temptations that come with racial hatred and poverty and aimlessness. But it’s mostly about coming of age through struggle and discipline and perseverance to find the person you want to become.

The novel is gritty for 1967. There’s the violence of the boxing ring and of the streets, and the desperation of heroin addiction (Alfred’s friend, James). The bullies, also black teens, who taunt and try to take revenge on Alfred for something he didn’t do, make use of the n-word twice to tell Alfred what a loser he is. But the words and the violence are there for a reason, and by today’s standards, they’re mild. No sexual content other than a few references to young men looking for Friday night girls to date.

Robert Lipsyte is a sports journalist as well as a writer of nonfiction sports biography and memoir and young adult fiction. He was awarded the American Library Association’s Margaret A. Edwards Award for his contribution to young adult literature in 2001. The citation for the award noted that, “The Contender and its sequels, The Brave and The Chief transformed the sports novel to authentic literature with their gritty depiction of the boxing world. An ongoing theme is the struggle of their protagonists to seek personal victory by their continuing efforts towards a better life despite defeats.”

I haven’t read The Brave or The Chief, but I did find The Contender to be thought-provoking. I know a young man who might get a lot out of the story if I could get him to read it.

The Swedish Nightingale: Jenny Lind by Elisabeth Kyle

Dec12

Published in 1964. Biographical novelist Elisabeth Kyle published two books in 1964: Girl With a Pen: Charlotte Brontë, which I read and reviewed earlier this year, and this novel about the life of nineteenth century singer and celebrity Jenny Lind. Kyle also wrote several other “biographical novels,” including works about Joan of Arc, Mary Stuart, Mary of Orange, Queen Victoria, Clara and Robert Schumann, Edvard and Nina Grieg, and Charles Dickens, as well as numerous regular novels for both adults and children. If anyone has read any of her other books, I’d love to hear your thoughts. These two that I read were quite engaging and would be well-suited for voracious teen readers looking for clean, absorbing stories about real people.

As for Jenny Lind, the movie The Greatest Showman did her a great disservice. If she were still alive, I would advise her to sue for defamation of character. The real Jenny Lind was a deeply devout Christian who would never have tried to seduce P.T. Barnum, as the film implied. She was known for her “golden voice” by all who heard her sing, and she was a celebrity in the modern sense—hounded by fans and people eager to exploit her talent, including Barnum himself. Over the course of her career, Jenny Lind made a significant amount of money, most of which she generously gave away to family and charity.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading Kyle’s biography of Jenny Lind. In this portrayal, Jenny is depicted as strong-willed (her friends even use reverse psychology to guide her decisions), yet also kind and generous. Her childhood was tumultuous, with parents who were both neglectful and overbearing , yet after her career takes off, Jenny supports them by buying them a house. Though she initially resists leaving Sweden, she eventually travels to France for singing lessons, and later performs in England and America, including on the famous P.T. Barnum tour.

Jenny Lind herself was a fascinating mix of contradictions: talented yet shy, a child prodigy who almost lost her ability to sing in her early twenties, confident on stage but plagued by stage fright before every performance. She was plain in appearance but transformed by her voice into a beautiful star who attracted numerous admirers, including Hans Christian Andersen and Felix Mendelssohn. Over time, she reconciled all of these contradictions, eventually giving up her singing career to marry and settle in England with her husband and children.

Though Kyle only briefly mentions it, Jenny’s strong Christian faith seemed to be a key factor in preventing her from becoming a spoiled diva. It’s a shame the filmmakers behind The Greatest Showman either didn’t see—or chose to ignore—this aspect of Jenny Lind’s life and character. Jenny Bicks, one of the screenwriters for The Greatest Showman (and a writer for Sex and the City), was likely part of the reason the film’s portrayal of Jenny Lind strayed so far from reality.

In any case, Elisabeth Kyle does a much more faithful job of novelizing Jenny Lind’s story. I wonder how she would have portrayed P.T. Barnum if she had written a book about him?

Bletchley Park Books for Teens

Nov8

The Enigma Girls: How Ten Teenagers Broke Ciphers, Kept Secrets, and Helped Win World War II by Candace Fleming.

The Bletchley Riddle by Ruta Sepetys and Steve Sheinkin.

Bletchley Park and the code breakers who lived and worked there during World War II are hot topics these days. Maybe it’s because the whole episode is less “mined” because of all the secrecy that surrounded the work there. Maybe it’s just a fleeting trend. At any rate, there do seem to be a lot of books about Bletchley floating around, but not so many for the younger set. Until now.

These two books, one fiction and one nonfiction, were recently published (2024) and are appropriate for young people about 13 years of age and up. The Enigma Girls tells the story of several teenaged girls who were recruited to work at Bletchley either because of their math skills or their language proficiency. But these girls were not, for the most part, doing the high level code breaking that was the most intriguing and intellectually challenging work going on at Bletchley Park. Rather, they were keeping records on notecards of all of the code words and German double speak that had been decoded. Or they were servicing and keeping the huge “bombes” running. These were the machines that were created to infiltrate and determine the settings for the German Enigma coding machines. Machines (or primitive computers) were fighting machines, and teenagers were keeping the machines moving and computing.

By limiting her story to the females who worked at Bletchley, gifted nonfiction author Candace Fleming risks over-emphasizing and even distorting the role that these women and girls played in the overall mission of breaking and intercepting the Nazi communications. But she doesn’t fall into that trap, and instead as I read I was moved to admire the persistence and hard work of these unsung heroines who toiled in harsh conditions doing work that they were unable to discuss or even understand completely. It wasn’t a romantic, spy-novel kind of job. The “bombes” were huge, oily, and loud, and the girls who tended them knew very little about how they worked or what significance their work might have. And after the war was over, the Enigma Girls were still left in the dark about how their work helped England win the war because they and everyone else who worked with them were bound to secrecy by the Official Secrets Acts that they all had to sign. They only knew that they were needed to “do their part” in defeating Hitler—and they did.

The Bletchley Riddle, although it is “based on the real history of Bletchley Park, Britain’s top-secret World War II codebreaking center,” makes the whole setting and story much more exciting and romantic. (Fiction can do that.) Ruta Sepetys and Steve Sheinkin, both well known in YA literature circles, wrote this spy novel together, and the joint authorship shows. It’s a bit disjointed at times, but the two authors do tie up most all of the loose ends by the end of the story. Fourteen year old Lizzie Novis has lost her mother, Willa, a single parent who works for the U.S. Embassy in London. Willa went to Poland to help evacuate tens of U.S. Embassy there in anticipation of the Nazi invasion of Warsaw. And she didn’t come back. Everyone says that Willa is dead, that she most likely died in the invasion. But Lizzie is sure that Willa is still alive, and she’s determined to find her mother no matter what it takes.

I’ll let you read to find out how Lizzie ends up in Bletchley, with several hurried trips back to London. I’ll let you read about Lizzie’s older brother Jakob, and how he becomes the other major character in the story. And finally in the pages of the book, you can meet Lizzie’s new friends, Marion and Colin, and read about a little harmless romance that springs up as they all try to keep up with the irrepressible Lizzie and her quest to find Willa. It’s a book about lying and spying and secret-keeping and persistence in a time and place where all of those qualities, even the dishonesty, are necessary for survival.

But the story never becomes too thoughtful or deep. It’s barely believable that Lizzie can get away with all of the shenanigans that she pulls. And Jakob seems too befuddled to be as intelligent as he’s supposed to be. Maybe he’s a bit of an absent-minded professor at the ripe age of nineteen. Anyway, it’s a lark, but not to be taken seriously. And the minor characters—Alan Turing, Dilly Knox, Gordon Welchman—as well as the setting provide a good introduction to Bletchley Park and its importance to the British war effort and eventual victory.

I recommend both books for those teens who are interested in World War II and Bletchley Park and codes and codebreaking. Oh, both books spend a fair amount time talking about codes and ciphers and Enigma and how it worked and how the Enigma code was broken? Or deciphered? I can never keep the difference straight in my head between codes and ciphers, much decode or decipher anything. But you may have better skills than I do.

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 Hidden Treasure of Glaston by Eleanore M. Jewett

Aug21

In twelfth century England the feud between Archbishop Thomas Becket and King Henry has ended in the murder of Becket, forcing the boy Hugh’s noble father, an ally of the king, into exile in France. Young Hugh, crippled by a childhood disease, is left behind in the care of the Abbot of Glastonbury. Glaston soon becomes Hugh’s sanctuary and his beloved home as he finds both mentors and friends as well as a quest to find remnants and reminders of King Arthur’s and perhaps even Joseph of Arimathea’s presence, centuries prior, in that part of the country.

Hugh’s first friendship formed at Glaston is with Dickon, a young oblate at the monastery of Glaston. (oblate: a person dedicated to a religious life, but typically having not taken full monastic vows.) Dickon’s peasant family has signed him over to the monks of Glaston, but Dickon aspires to become a knight, or at least to serve knight. Hugh wishes he could be a knight and make his father proud, but his crippled legs make this dream an impossibility. The two boys become friends, with very different personalities, but also with a common goal of finding or at least seeing a vision of the legendary Holy Grai

Hugh’s mentors and adult friends are Brother John, the monastery’s librarian (armarian), and Bleheris, a seemingly mad hermit who shares Hugh’s and Dickon’s interest in the vision of the Holy Grail. The story moves rather slowly, but the picture of Hugh’s growth and healing and of the friendships he makes is compelling. I kept reading, not to see whether Hugh and his friends would find the Grail, but rather to see whether and how Hugh would find healing for his physical and spiritual wounds.

Honestly, although I enjoyed this Newbery honor-winning novel, I’m not sure what group of children or young people would be the audience for it. Perhaps those who are deeply interested in the whole Arthurian legend would enjoy this Arthur-adjacent story, or maybe fans of Rosemary Sutcliff’s historical fiction. The plot and characters remind me of the Newbery Award book, The Door in the Wall by Marguerite de Angeli; however, The Hidden Treasure of Glaston is a much more intricate and involved look at life in a medieval monastery and the difficulties facing a young boy with a disability in that society–at a much higher reading level. If The Door in the Wall was a favorite for an eight to eleven year old reader, this book might be a good follow-up for ages twelve and up.

I read this book as a part of the 1964 Project. A reprint edition of The Hidden Treasure of Glaston is available from Bethlehem Books.

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

He Went With Hannibal by Louise Andrews Kent

Aug16

He Went With Hannibal is everything you ever wanted to know about Hannibal and his wars with Rome, encased in the story of a fictional Spanish companion and spy named Brecon. Brecon comes to Hannibal in Spain as a hostage at the age of thirteen and remains Hannibal’s loyal friend and servant throughout his life. Hannibal’s famous crossing of the Alps—with elephants–and his march to the gates of Rome as well as all of the battles, both victories and defeats, are all described vividly and in detail, but not so much detail as to get bogged down in minutiae. Brecon gathers information for Hannibal and goes everywhere and meets everyone of note, including Archimedes, Hannibal’s brothers, Hasdrubal and Mago, Fabius Maximus, Marcellus, Flaminius, Scipio Africanus, and of course, Hannibal himself. These are all historical figures whose adventures are chronicled in Roman history, and Brecon becomes the thread that ties all their stories together and makes them come alive for the reader.

I read this story for my 1964 Project, and I’m very glad I did. I really didn’t know much about Hannibal the Carthaginian general, and now I know a little. (I could definitely have learned more with the aid of a map or two, of Italy, North Africa, Spain. But alas, there are no maps in this book.) In her Author’s Note, Louise Kent Andrews writes, “One of the striking things about Hannibal is that we know him only through the eyes of his enemies. There are no Carthaginian accounts of his life.” Andrews read the the Roman histories of the Punic Wars (wars between Carthage in North Africa and Rome in Italy and Spain), particularly Livy’s Annals and Polybius’s history as well as many other modern and ancient books about the time period and about Hannibal and his exploits. She lists several of the books she read in the Author’s Note. Although I’m not a Roman or Latin scholar by any means, it seems to me that she was quite thorough in her research. And the story becomes a fictionalized attempt to tell the history from Hannibal’s point of view. He Went With Hannibal is also the only historical fiction book that I know of that showcases this particular time of the Roman Republic and the Punic Wars. (Biblioguides does list one other historical fiction book about Hannibal, I Marched With Hannibal by Hans Baumann.)

Louise Kent Andrews wrote several other books in her series of books about famous explorers and soldiers, and I am anticipating adding all of them to my reading list. Her style of writing is detailed and descriptive, but she uses mostly short, simple or complex, declarative sentences, no rambling purple prose to be found. The story of Hannibal, which includes quite a lot of his battle tactics and musings on warfare and politics, should appeal especially to those middle school and high school boys who are keen on such subjects. The ending is rather bittersweet/sad, but of course, Ms. Andrews was constrained by the historical facts from giving the story a completely happy ending.

“I hope that some of my readers will feel, as I did, that reading about Hannibal makes them wish to learn more about the great change that took place when the Roman Republic became the Roman Empire. The war with Carthage was one of the causes for that change.” ~ Author’s Note

Other books in the series by Louise Kent Andrews:

  • He Went With Champlain
  • He Went With Christopher Columbus
  • He Went With Drake
  • He Went With John Paul Jones
  • He Went With Magellan
  • He Went With Marco Polo
  • He Went With Vasco da Gama

All of the books in this series are available in reprint editions from Living Book Press.

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

Knights Besieged by Nancy Faulkner

Aug13

This historical fiction novel, published in 1964, is set on the island of Rhodes during the siege of Rhodes in 1522. The Knights of St. John, or Knights Hospitallers, whose headquarters is on the Greek island of Rhodes, are besieged by the Ottoman Turks under the leadership of Suleiman the Magnificent. The battle will decide who will control trade and commerce in the eastern Mediterranean Sea for the immediate future as well as its being a religious war between the Muslim Turks and the Christian (Catholic) Knights.

Our protagonist, Jeffrey Rohan, is an English merchant’s son, fourteen years old, and an escaped former slave of the Sultan Suleiman. After his escape from Constantinople, Jeffrey ends up by accident on the island Rhodes and finds that he cannot leave since the city of Rhodes is under siege. Jeffrey takes solace in his prayers and his belief in the courage and piety of the Knights Hospitallers, but he is also aware, in a way that his friends are not, of the strength and overwhelming numbers of the Turkish force.

I found this story to be intriguing, partly because I didn’t know how it would end. I didn’t know much about the Knights Hospitallers, and I certainly didn’t know whether the Turks or the Knights would have the victory in this particular battle and siege. I would love to discuss the ending, but I won’t spoil it for you. Suffice it to say that Jeffrey is brought to question many of his beliefs and presuppositions over the course of a very long and wearing siege, and yet in the end his faith in God and in chivalry are validated in an unusual way.

This 1964 novel is still fresh and relevant today. The attitudes in the novel are those of sixteenth century people: the Knights are sworn to kill all Muslim infidels, and they do so without mercy. (No gore, just plainly stated facts.) The Turkish besiegers are more inclined to kill those that they must, but rather to enslave and tax the population if they can —and to require allegiance to Suleiman and to the Islamic religion. These are all very medieval attitudes. Now we are trying as a Western post-Christian civilization to come to some sort of compromise and peaceful co-existence with the Muslim world, and they are what? I’m not sure, and this children’s/YA novel certainly didn’t have the answers to our modern problems. However, it did make me think about the complicated and fraught relationship between Westerners and Christians and Muslims and Easterners over the course of history.

Anyway, Knights Besieged would be an excellent introduction to the history of Middle East and the Mediterranean in the late Middle Ages and a great springboard for discussion of past and current events in that part of the world. You will probably want to learn more about the Ottoman Empire, the Knights of St John, and the history of Europe and the Middle East in general after reading the story. I certainly did. And some boys will just be in it for the war and the knights and the intrigue. That’s fine, too. Not every work of historical fiction has to be a history lesson in disguise, even if it is.

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

The Pink Refrigerator by Tim Egan

Jul22
Version 1.0.0

This picture book came to my attention via Tanya Arnold of Biblioguides, but I already knew and loved Dodsworth the rat. (I thought he was a mole, but he’s actually a rat.) Dodsworth and the duck are the main characters in one of my favorite easy reader series, Dodsworth in New York, Dodsworth in London, Dodsworth in Paris, etc. I had no idea that Dodsworth made his first appearance in print in The Pink Refrigerator.

Dodsworth “loved to do nothing.” “[H]is motto was basically ‘Try to do as little as possible.'” The Pink Refrigerator is the story of how Dodsworth got up, got moving, and became an adventurer, and it’s a perfect prequel of sorts to the Dodsworth and the duck books. The awakening of Dodsworth is all because of the inspiration he received from messages he found at the dump on a mysterious and rusty pink refrigerator.

I don’t want to spoil the story by telling too much more, but this one should be a classic. “Dodsworth suddenly felt a great sense of wonder about everything.” Isn’t that sense of wonder and adventure what we all want for ourselves and our children, for all of those we love? If they can learn it from a rat (mole?) named Dodsworth and a pink refrigerator, then more power to him!

“Tim Egan lives in California, where he makes a living as an illustrator and author of children’s books. Sometimes he visits the refrigerator for ideas, too. Except his refrigerator is blue.”

Read more about Dodsworth and his adventures in:

  • Dodsworth in New York
  • Dodsworth in London
  • Dodsworth in Paris
  • Dodsworth in Rome
  • Dodsworth in Tokyo

Read more about the duck in Friday Night at Hodges Cafe.

Sinclair Lewis also wrote a book called Dodsworth. Not the same Dodsworth.

I still prefer to think that Dodsworth is a mole.

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

Flame Over Tara by Madeleine Polland

Jul7

“The year was A.D. 432, and Patrick, for Bishop from Rome to Ireland, arrived in a pagan land whose spiritual life was completely in the power of the Druid Priests and their ‘magic.’ A mild, warm-hearted, humorous man, Patrick, with his handful of followers, began what seemed an impossible task.

For all her training by the Druids, Macha found herself strangely drawn by Patrick’s words. Torn between the new ideas and the bright, safe life planned for her, Macha struggled to find a way to resolve her future.”

Macha is the daughter of the Chief Judge of the High King Leary, fourteen years old, and soon to be wed. So in our culture, Macha would be a child, and in the book she acts like a child, but in her era and culture she is expected to be ready to take on the responsibilities of an adult wife and homemaker. It’s a coming of age novel as Macha grows from an impetuous fourteen year old with divided loyalties into a woman who has learned to follow the God that Patrick preaches and to depend on Him to work out her other debts and responsibilities.

Flame Over Tara is also a novel about a time of change and about how to work through the taking off of the old and putting on of the new. There are several exciting and dramatic scenes in the novel: Patrick does not try to challenge the Druids immediately, but the clash between the Christian God and the magic of the Druids is inevitable. Patrick lives under threat of assassination from the High King and from his Druid priests. Many of the IrIsh people expect Patrick to use his God’s “magic” to counter that of the Druid priests, but Patrick relies on simple prayers and the wisdom of the Holy Spirit to preserve his life and to ensure the spread of the gospel of Christ. (One of Patrick’s disciples does die as a martyr, and his death is mourned in a Christian fashion–with the hope of the resurrection to come.)

This 1964 novel was assigned in the Sonlight homeschool curriculum that we used a long time ago. I don’t know if it still is a part of that curriculum, but it would indeed be a good introduction to a discussion of the spread of Christianity during the early Middle Ages. It might be best enjoyed as a read aloud book so that some of the issues and scenes could be discussed and digested together. Middle school and high school students could certainly read and appreciate the book for themselves, however. Either way, it’s a good fictional treatment for older children of the life and times of St. Patrick.

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.