For our Cultivating Beauty and Truth study feast, we’re reading Heidi by Johanna Spyri. It’s not the first time I’ve ever read Heidi, but it has been a long time since the last time I read it, probably out loud to my now-adult children. I am savoring the story and the characters and the scenery.
From The Storybook Cookbook by Carol MacGregor: A delightful variation of this Alpine treat, Heidi’s Toasted Cheese Sandwiches:
INGREDIENTS:
2 eggs
3/4 cup milk
1/2 tsp. salt
8 slices of Swiss cheese or 8 slices of American cheese
8 slices of bread
4 Tbsp. butterCurrant jelly (optional)
1. Crack the eggs on the edge of a bowl or piepan and drop them into the bowl. Beat the eggs slightly with a fork. Stir in the milk and the salt.
2. Make the cheese sandwiches by putting two slices of Swiss cheese or two slices of American cheese between two slices of bread. (American cheese has a stronger flavor.)
3. Put a frying pan on the stove and turn the heat to medium. Melt 2 tablespoons of the butter in the pan, but do not let it burn.
4. Dip the sandwiches on both sides in the egg-and-milk mixture. Let them soak a minute. When the butter is hot, brown 2 of the sandwiches on both sides, turning them with a spatula. Add the rest of the butter to the frying pan and brown the last 2 sandwiches. A teaspoon of currant jelly on top each sandwich makes them even tastier.Makes 4 sandwiches.
I’ve never made grilled cheese sandwiches with soaked in an egg mixture nor have I ever put any kind of jelly on top. But it sounds as if it could be good. So, other than an appetite for grilled cheese and fresh goat’s milk, what do you remember about reading Heidi?
I really want a copy of “the other book about Connie Ives’s alley, The Tunnel of Hugsy Goode.” That desire is a good sign that The Alley was a good book. I actually had no idea that Eleanor Estes had written anything other than The Moffats and its companion books about the same family and of course, The Hundred Dresses, a story that is and will always be a classic story about compassion and repentance. However, as I look I see that Estes wrote several other books, including The Alley.
Connie lives in Brooklyn in a house that along with twenty-seven other similar houses backs upon an alley, not an ugly alley, but one that provides a place for the children of the Alley to play and imagine and swing and read and learn to follow rules and grow.
“In the Alley there was more space than you might think to ride bikes in, and at the bottom end of the ——–I was the Circle, excellent for turning around in and excellent for games.
Every yard had flowers. Now it was May, and the flowers were tulips, irises, lilacs.
The Alley–the little houses on the Alley–was an oasis in a great city of good people and of dangerous people. In this city, there were some burglars. ‘But then, that is life,’ thought Connie. ‘In the old days they had Indians, wild animals, pirates, and dragons. They had witches. Now–burglars. You have to take the bad along with the good.’ But Connie never thought much of the burglars there might be outside the Alley. She thought mainly of life inside the Alley, in the beautiful, fragrant Alley. Her life was made up mainly of school and Alley.”
p. 13
The Alley was a book every bit as good as The Moffats or The Penderwicks or Elizabeth Enright’s The Saturdays. Ten year old Connie is an only child, but she has plenty of substitute brothers and sisters in the Alley: her best friend Billy Maloon, Hugsy Goode, Connie’s next-best friend, Katy Star, the rule-maker of the Alley, June Arp, the girl next door, and the thirty or so other children who live along the Alley. And Connie and Billy and the rest have plenty to do: in addition to swinging on Connie’s swing set, they teach piano lessons, go to school, play Meece and other games, and investigate a burglary during the months of May and early June, with is all that the story covers. It seems, through the eyes of a ten year old like a much longer time, and yet the days are full of fun and quirky antics and adventures.
“Connie did not mind the long days that began empty and ended up full. Oh, the wonderful and long days of summer! Just to hold a whole day in your hand and have it and think that it was empty to begin with but that each moment could, would, contain so much.”
p. 280
Illustrated by Edward Ardizzone, The Alley is, according to the Chicago Tribune quote on the front cover, “a story not to be missed.” I agree.
“I can claim to be tolerably detached on the subject of ghost stories. I do not depend upon them in any way; not even in the sordid professional way, in which I have at some periods depended on murder stories. I do not much mind whether they are true or not. I am not, like a Spiritualist, a man whose religion may said to consist entirely of ghosts. But I am not like a Materialist, a man whose whole philosophy is exploded and blasted and blown to pieces by the most feeble and timid intrusion of the most thin and third-rate ghost. I am quite ready to believe that a number of ghosts were merely turnip ghosts, elaborately prepared to deceive the village idiot. But I am not at all certain that they succeeded even in that; and I suspect that their greatest successes were elsewhere. For it is my experience that the village idiot is very much less credulous than the town lunatic. On the other hand, when the merely skeptical school asks us to believe that every sort of ghost has been a turnip ghost, I think such skeptics rather exaggerate the variety and vivacity and theatrical talent of turnips.”
~G.K. Chesterton: ‘Illustrated London News,’ May 30, 1936
So, Knee-Knock Rise by Natalie Babbitt, also author of Tuck Everlasting, is a fairy tale about the necessity of mystery and belief in the supernatural. It’s also about the distinction between foolish credulity and wisdom. But I’m not at all sure that the questions raised in the story are ever settled.
Perhaps this bit of poetry that forms a part of the story is key, but what is the answer to poem’s riddle?
I visited a certain king
Who had a certain fool.
The king was gray with wisdom got
From forty years of school.
The fool was pink with nonsense
And could barely write his name
But he knew a lot of little songs
And sang them just the same.
The fool was gay. The king was not.
Now tell me if you can:
Which was perhaps the greater fool
And which the wiser man?
The writing in this book is lovely:
“a countryside that neither rolled nor dipped but lay as flat as if it had been knocked unconscious.”
“Around her neck a thick roll of extra flesh fanned out soft fur into a deep, inviting ruffle and her ears drooped like rich brown velvet triangles. She was old and fat and beautiful and Egan was instantly enchanted.”
“Uncle Anson smoked his pipe and dreamed into the flames, devising new and daring clocks, while Sweetheart, curled into a furry wad in Ada’s lap, looked the very picture of innocence, a picture which from time to time he spoiled by stretching out a long foreleg and arching the claws wickedly from a taut, spread claw.”
“The Instep Fair! . . . They came in carts, in caravans, on foot, all dressed in their holiday clothes and carrying baskets, boxes, and bundles packed with picnics so special and exotic that even the most finicky of the children were frantic for suppertime.”
And the tale itself is full of ideas and and imaginations just as a good tale ought to be. Egan, the protagonist of the story, longs to know for sure whether the beastly Megrimum lives at the top of Knee-Knock Rise. Some say he certainly does, and the villagers who live below the rise cherish their shivery, scary stories of the Megrimum and his ghostly power. Egan’s Uncle Ott explains away the evidence for the Megrimum with scientific facts and figures. Uncle Anson says, “The only thing that matters is whether you want to believe he’s there or not. And if your mind is made up, all the facts in the world won’t make the slightest difference.”
Certainly, Uncle Anson is right about his second statement. People believe what they want to believe. But doesn’t the truth matter? Are we better off believing in comforting lies and superstitions? Do science and factual knowledge really take the mystery and wonder out of the world, or is there always more to see, more truth to pursue? Who is better off, the worldly wise king or the ignorant fool? Can’t a wise man be happy, and can’t a fool be mired in superstitious fear and misery? Are all ghost stories imaginary, and could a scary Megrimum be real?
Paul Berna was the pseudonym for French journalist Jean Sabran who wrote children’s books in French during the latter half of the twentieth century. The Horse Without a Head (French title: Le Cheval Sans Tête, 1955) was also published in English with the title A Hundred Million Francs, and it tells the story of a gang of poor working class French children who own one treasure: a headless horse on tricycle wheels that carries them on dangerous and thrilling rides down the narrow streets of Louvigny, a small town in northwest France. The story takes place just after World War II, and there are a few references to leftover bomb craters and deserted warehouses that were abandoned during or after war.
I was reminded as I read of the movie, The Goonies. The ten children in the self-styled “gang” are all under thirteen, street savvy, but also honest and innocent. Their leader, Gaby, “purposely kept the numbers down and never accepted anyone over thirteen, for as he said, ‘When you turn thirteen you get dopey, and you’re lucky if you don’t stay that way for the rest of your life.'” Each child has a distinct personality, but the central figures in the story are Gaby, Fernand, the original owner of the headless horse, and Marion, a somewhat mysterious dog whisperer and amateur vet.
To an adult reader, the book is obviously a translation and of a different era. Some of the dialog is awkwardly phrased in English, and the transitions in the action and logic are sometimes abrupt and difficult to follow. At one point in the story, one of the children brandishes an old rusty revolver and says that although he knows it won’t shoot, “I don’t feel so frightened when I’m holding it.” This bit of business, not at all vital to the plot, would certainly be excised by any editor nowadays. The crooks in the story actually shoot real guns at the children, but of course no one is injured. This is an adventure story, not a treatise on violence and gun safety. The horse rides themselves are quite dangerous, described as going forty or even sixty miles an hour (probably exaggerated) downhill and involving inevitable crashes and spills along the way. The adventures of the children are not meant to be imitated at home, although they very well may lead to some experimentation with wheeled vehicles.
I found the book to be quite a nice escape on a rainy Monday evening, and I would recommend it, if you can get past the Frenchiness and playing with guns. My Scholastic paperback edition from 1964 carries a price of 45 cents on the cover, and I surely got at least 45 cents worth of entertainment from the story. (The price has gone up to about $10.00 for a used paperback, more than twenty for a used hardcover copy.) I thought as I was reading that The Horse Without a Head would make a good movie with some editing and rearranging, and I see that Walt Disney made a movie based on this book; it’s available to rent from Amazon Prime video. Has anyone seen the movie? Or read this little French gem?
Eric P. Kelly‘s historical novel, The Trumpeter of Krakow, won the Newbery Medal in 1929. At the Sign of the Golden Compass was published ten years later in 1938, and it has a lot in common with Mr. Kelly’s earlier award-winning novel. Although Golden Compass begins in London in 1576 with the nineteen year old printer’s apprentice Godfrey Ingram being accused of crime he didn’t commit, the main setting is the European continent, specifically the city of Antwerp, Belgium. Spain and Holland are at war, and rebellious and undisciplined Spanish troops are quartered in the Flemish city of Antwerp, threatening violence and pillage to the citizens of the city at any time. Or perhaps the Dutch troop will fight the Spanish in the very heart of the city itself.
Godfrey Ingram, after fleeing to Antwerp, finds himself in the middle of not only a war between the Spanish and the Dutch, but also an intellectual battle between medieval astrologers, sorcerers, and assorted fakirs who fear the spread of knowledge and of literacy and the progressive printers, authors and translators who are working to educate and illuminate by the power of the written word and the printing press. Godfrey finds sanctuary and begins work at the printshop of Christopher Plantin, who is memorialized at the Museum Plantin-Moretus in Antwerp to this day. Other actual historical characters who make an appearance in the novel are philosopher Justus Lipsius, Governor of Antwerp Champagney, Phillip II of Spain, and the painter Peter Paul Rubens.
The central antagonist in the novel is a famous astrologer and sorcerer (as in The Trumpeter of Krakow), and the book shows the controversy between the new ideas brought to the public by means of the printing press and the old superstitions that held men in bondage before the advent of mass printing. In fact the two main characters, Godfrey Ingram and Christopher Plantin, discuss the allure and power of printing toward the end of the book:
“I would far rather be a master craftsman in this trade than posses a doctor’s gown. Yea, I would rather print fine books than own a hundred ships that bore treasures from the Americas or the East.”
The Master’s eyes brightened. “You have it, too,” he said. “The fatal fascination of the press. I sometimes think that ink is a curse, that it lures men on when nothing else in this life interests them. I, indeed, am one such, caught in this folly. Yet, I would not have it otherwise. Write, I cannot. The gift of words has not been given me. But I have the desire, the madness–call it what you will–to print the words of others. To keep alive in the world the thought of thinking men, to spread abroad ideas that enliven and elevate.”
p.189-190
Eric P. Kelly’s style of writing is somewhat florid and overly dramatic; however, he is dealing with dramatic events: the rise of the printing press, the evil of deviltry and superstition, and the sack of Antwerp in 1576, also called the Spanish Fury and known as the greatest massacre in Belgian history. If you’ve read The Trumpeter of Krakow, the style of writing in this book is much the same as in that earlier book. It was off-putting at first, but as I persisted, I became quite engaged in the narrative. It’s not a time or series of events in history that I knew anything about, and I’m glad to have read about it in Mr. Kelly’s book.
I just finished reading Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Caroline Fraser, and although I think the biographer has some underlying assumptions and biases about politics and history that I would not agree with, I still recommend the book. I thought it quite insightful, and it provided background and details that I did not know before about Ms. Wilder’s life.
The book spends as much time on the biography of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s only surviving child, Rose Lane Wilder, as it does on Laura’s life. Perhaps because their lives were so intertwined, the daughter and the mother come across as enmeshed in a somewhat dysfunctional relationship that nevertheless produced several wonderful and classic books. In spite of Rose’s mostly negative influence, Laura Ingalls Wilder’s philosophy of life shines through the books. Garth Williams, the second and most famous illustrator of the Little House books, wrote this about Ms. Wilder after meeting her on her farm in Missouri:
She understood the meaning of hardship and struggle, of joy and work, of shyness and bravery. She was never overcome by drabness or squalor. She never glamorized anything; yet she saw the loveliness in everything.
Prairie Fires, p. 263-264
The same could not be said for her daughter.
In fact, even though I read A Wilder Rose: Rose Wilder Lane, Laura Ingalls Wilder, and their Little Houses by Susan Wittig Albert, a fictionalized account of Laura Ingalls Wilder and her daughter Rose and their somewhat stormy collaboration in writing the Little House books, and I knew that Rose was a difficult person, I didn’t really realize how very unstable she was. Fraser blames Rose’s outbursts and tantrums and trail of broken relationships on childhood trauma and possible mental illness. However, the childhood trauma rationale seems like an excuse rather than a reason. Laura Ingalls Wilder, the mother, endured much more and much worse than Rose ever did, and Laura, while not a perfect person, was certainly more mentally stable and plain likable than Rose ever was.
So, partly because of what I read in this biography, I am considering removing the two books (of three that he wrote) that I have in my library by Roger Lea MacBride, fictionalized sequels to the Little House books about Rose Wilder Lane’s childhood in Missouri. MacBride was Rose Wilder Lane’s protege and heir, and he seems to have been something of a sycophant and a leech. I don’t know that there’s anything wrong with his books, but I also don’t know that they are worth keeping. Perhaps I should pass them on to someone else. I haven’t read the books by MacBride, and since people occasionally ask for them and I got them donated, I added them to the library. But now, I’m wondering. Has anyone here read the MacBride books? Are they well written? Worth keeping?
I thought the realistic middle grade fiction published in 2020, both historical and current day setting, was a much better crop of books than the speculative fiction, which I’ll post the best of tomorrow. Here are 12 of my favorites, all published in 2020.
Leaving Lymon by Lesa Cline-Ransom. A companion novel to Finding Langston, recipient of a Coretta Scott King Writing Honor and winner of the Scott O’Dell Award for Historical Fiction. Everyone has a story, even the bully Lymon, who needs a father and a second chance.
A Ceiling Made of Eggshells by Gail Carson Levine. Set in the 1490’s during the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, this historical fiction title tells the story of a young Jewish girl and her famous and influential grandfather. Loma lives with her family in the judería of Alcalá de Henares, Spain, and wants nothing more than to someday have a family of her own, but it seems as if Loma will never be able to make a life of her own. The Jews are in danger, and only Loma is particularly suited to help her grandfather in his quest to save their people from exile and worse.
Echo Mountain by Lauren Wolk. I thought this one was better than the author’s previous award-winning books, Wolf Hollow and Beyond the Bright Sea. Ellie’s father is in a coma, asleep in their mountain home where her family has been forced to live because of the Great Depression. And since everyone thing her father’s accident is Ellie’s fault, Ellie must find a way to bring him back, even if she has to enlist the help of the “hag” who lives at the top of Echo Mountain
We Could Be Heroes by Margaret Finnegan. Hank Hudson and Maisie Huang, misfits both, become unlikely friends and bond over saving her neighbor’s dog, Booler, who has seizures and is, according to Maisie, in imminent danger of being taken away. I didn’t know that this was a debut novel, but it is quite good. It’s light-hearted and funny without being sarcastic or slapstick, something I think is often missing in children’s fiction these days. The two children do grow, and if the father’s reaction to Hank’s first lie (he’s rather proud of his autistic son for learning how to tell a lie) is confusing to young readers, it could be a point of discussion.
Orphan Eleven by Jennifer Choldenko. Based on a true (sad) story of experimentation and psychological manipulation of orphans back in the 1930’s, this novel of four children who escape from an exploitative orphanage and find a home at the circus is well-written and engaging. Lucy, the central character, is an elective mute, and the suspense of the story has to do with why Lucy doesn’t talk, whether she ever will, and whether Lucy will find her older sister, Dilly. The villains of the story are bad, and the helpers are good; nevertheless, even the supportive adults at the circus aren’t infallible, and the children themselves have their own faults and bad choices to overcome. I liked the way the children bore one another’s burdens and forgave, even when one child was not so likeable and endangered the rest.
Everything Sad Is Untrue by Daniel Nayeri. An amazing story based on a combination of Scheherazade and the 1001 Nights and the author’s own story of emigrating from Iran to Oklahoma, this book should garner all kinds of awards. There are too many poop stories embedded in the overall story, but it’s all part of a bigger narrative of persecution, assimilation, and survival that inspires and educates American readers about Persian culture and the difficulties of being caught between two worlds.
Gold Rush Girl by Avi. Victoria Blaisdell wants independence and adventure, and when she stows away on the steamship that’s carrying her father and other hopeful gold hunters from the East Coast to the gold fields of California, she gets both in spades. Victoria’s father, determined to strike it rich, leaves Victoria and her little brother in wild and dangerous San Francisco while he searches for the gold that will change their family fortunes. And Victoria must deal with thieves, kidnappers, and her own divided loyalties as she learns to persevere and never give up hope.
Here In the Real World by Sara Pennypacker. The NY Times gave it a good review, but Kirkus called the book “well meaning but belabored”. The story is about two eleven year olds, Ware and Jolene, who create a secret garden and castle in a deserted vacant lot and torn-down church. There’s some allusion to Christian ideas and some garbled theology as both of the children try to figure out how to be hopeful and yet realistic in a broken world. If it’s belabored, then I like belabored.
Brother’s Keeper by Julie Lee. Twelve year old Sora and her little brother Youngsoo are escaping with their family from North Korea at the height of the Korean War, but when the two children are separated from their parents they will have to get to Busan on their own. Can Sora survive and take care of eight year old Youngsoo over three hundred miles of war torn country in the dead of winter?
Things Seen From Above by Shelley Pearsall. When April signs up to be a Buddy Bench monitor, mostly to escape from sixth grade lunch hour, she meets Joey, a boy who acts and interacts, well, differently. The more April tries to understand what Joey’s actions during recess are all about, his walking in circles and making trails in the playground dirt, the more she begins to understand about herself and the kids around her, her school and even her town.
Ways to Make Sunshine by Renee Watson. The acclaimed author of The Hate U Give shares a new Ramona Quimby-esque story for the 2020’s, starring a Black girl, Ryan Hart, and her family and set in Portland, Oregon, just like Beverly Cleary’s Ramona books.
The Blackbird Girls by Anne Blankman. This story is told from the perspective of three different girls–Valentina and Oksana at Chernobyl in 1986 and Rifka in 1941 surviving World War II in Ukraine. The themes are overcoming tragedy, disaster, and abuse, the value and meaning of friendship, and loyalty in an age of betrayal.
Modern Mrs. Darcy: My favorite books of 2020. I’m afraid that Anne Bogel and I are just not into the same books, and that’s O.K. You may find some gems on her list of favorites. I didn’t see anything except Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell, which I’ve already put on my TBR list.
Barack Obama’s favorite books of 2020. Well, I want to read Jack by Marilynne Robinson and The Splendid and the Vile by Erik Larsson (about Churchill who is someone I love reading about). I read The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel, and I thought it was meh. Not horrible, just not great. The rest of Mr. Obama’s list seems to be made up of books about race, immigration, politics, drugs, and more race, which is fine but just not what I’m looking for right now.
Trevin Wax: My 10 Favorite Reads of 2020. Now this list is right up my alley. Mr. Wax begins his list with The Last Lion, a three volume biography of Winston Churchill by William Manchester, which I have read and loved. So, the rest of the list is bound to be good. Yes, Breaking Bread With the Dead by Alan Jacobs is one I already have on my TBR list. The Body: A Guide for Occupants by Bill Bryson sounds fantastic. And maybe I’ll even try Reading While Black by Esau McCaulley.
Jared C. Wilson: My Top 10 Books of 2020. Also, most of Jared’s picks are too much for me to try to read this year, although he does recommend (again) Gentle and Lowly by Dane Ortlund, a book I’ve already seen recommended over and over, and one I do plan to read ASAP. And I would like to read Jared’s YA novel, published in 2020, Echo Island.
Adventures of a Digitabulist: My Top 5 Books of 2020. This list was different and intriguing. 600 Hours of Edward by Craig Lancaster sounds like something I’d like. The blogger, Francesca, says she “took a chance” with Edward, and I think I might do so as well.
I used to have a feature here on Saturdays called the Saturday Review of Books. And every year around the end of the year, I dedicated that Saturday Review to lists of books for the old year or for the new year or for anything in between: Favorite Books of This Year or What I’m Reading Next Year or The Best Books of All Time According to Blogger #1 or really any book list that came out on a blog somewhere at the end of the year. So, I’ve been collecting these lists, and now I’ll post a few each day. If I don’t already have yours linked here, please leave a comment and a link. I love book lists, and I like sharing them with you all.
Let the listing begin!
My Favorite Books of 2020 by Russell Moore. Most of Mr. Moore’s list is non-fiction of the theological and sociological persuasion, and for the most part I’m not a fan of those kinds of books. But I am looking forward to reading Marilynne Robinson’s Jack, the newest in her Gilead set of stories.
The 2020 For the Church Book Awards by Ronni Kurtz. “[W]e are pleased to present our readers with a few books that stuck out as exceptional from this past year. In this, our fourth annual For the Church book awards, each member of the editorial team chose two books—a winner and a runner-up—to honor and to recommend to you.” Of the book on this award list, I am most interested in Alan Jacobs’ Breaking Bread With the Dead, about reading and learning from old books.
Cody Glen Barnhardt: 10 Favorite Books I Read in 2020. Mr. Barnhardt is not the first to suggest Gentle and Lowly: The Heart of Christ for Sufferers and Sinners by Dane Ortlund. My pastor also suggested it earlier this year, and I’ve seen it on other lists. Maybe someone is trying to tell me something?
Hungry for Good Books?: The Annual List 2020 Edition. Trina Hayes has her entire list of 100 or more books read during this year of the plague. And I spotted a few possibilities there: Simon the Fiddler by Paulette Jiles, The Printed Letter Bookshop by Katherine Reay, The Women of Copper County by Mary Doria Russell, Eliza Hamilton: the Extraordinary Life and Times of the Wife of Alexander Hamilton by Tilar Mazzeo. I could probably find more, but my TBR list is already way too long.
Dewey’s Treehouse: 25 Top Books I Want to Read in 2021. “Enough with long lists. If I get these done, I’ll be happy.” ~Mama Squirrel. OK, it’s a great idea in theory, but MY list is already miles long. And I can’t resist the this (long) title on the Treehouse short list: Why You Should Read Children’s Books, Even Though You Are So Old and Wise by Katherine Rundell.
Gift Books for Grown-ups by Betsy at Redeemed Reader. Several of these are already on my own TBR list, and several others I’ve already read and enjoyed. I daresay any of them would make a lovely gift—for someone else or for yourself. (And I still added more books to the TBR list from this one.)
I’ll link to a few more book lists tomorrow, maybe yours if you leave me a comment?
I found a copy of this 1962 boy and his dog story while I was in Tennessee a few weeks back. It’s a sweet tale about Colin who is sent a magical helper, Parsifal, because Colin’s need is great. Colin is in the hospital, and although his body is nearly healed from injuries sustained in a bad accident, he is still grieving the loss of his beloved dog, Lad, who saved Colin from being killed in the accident at the cost of the dog’s life. So, Parsifal the Poddley’s first assignment is to help Colin deal with his grief.
Then, by means of a magical time wave, Colin is able to travel back in time to twelfth century Scotland where he meets his hero Robert the Bruce. The time travel part of this simple book is easy enough to understand, but still quite magical. The story is suitable for young readers, ages five to nine, what we would now called a beginning chapter book, but the introduction to the historical heroes of Scotland is sure to inspire further and more challenging reading. The time period, reading level, and length of the story (85 pages) reminded me of the books by Clyde Robert Bulla or Gertrude Chandler Warner (The Boxcar Children), but the magical and time travel elements put this book in a class of its own.
I read some reviews on Amazon for this book in which the reviewers said that Parsifal Rides the Time Wave was a book they remembered fondly from childhood. It’s perhaps a forerunner of the Magic Treehouse books, but the lessons Colin learns are timeless and gentle in their application. (There is a battle scene in which Robert the Bruce fights and kills his would-be assassins, so if violence in books for young children is a problem for you, you might want to skip this one.) I’m glad I found this one, and I’m happy to add it to my library.
Oh, it looks as if there’s another book about Parsifal the Poddley and time travel that came before this one, just called Parsifal the Poddley. Unfortunately this first book about Parsifal seems to be a unicorn, priced at over $100 on used book sites that I checked. If you come across a copy at thrift store prices, I would grab it. From the review at Kirkus Reviews:
Eight-year-old Christopher of Butterfield, Vermont, is badly in need of a Poddley, the special creature who comes to serve lonely little boys. And Parsifal the Poddley, on his first mission shows himself to be ideally suited for Christopher. Not only does he educate him to be more thoughtful, but he takes Christopher back in time to 1659 and introduces him to Vermont in its pioneer period. Christopher participates in a conflict between the Indians and settlers and arrives home just in time to find a neighbor and friend in the person of a new little boy whose family has just moved next door.
