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The Restorationists series by Carolyn Leiloglou

Nov20
  • Beneath the Swirling Sky by Carolyn Leiloglou. Illustrated by Vivienne To.
  • Between Flowers and Bones by Carolyn Leiloglou. Illustrated by Vivienne To.

I read Beneath the Swirling Sky last year when it came out—and failed to write a review. Now, I just finished the second book in what is slated to be a trilogy, and I must say that that this series, already pretty good in the first installment, just got better in the sequel. Reading Between Flowers and Bones was an immersion experience, just like stepping into a book (or a painting).

That’s a not-so-subtle nod to what happens in these stories. In Beneath the Swirling Sky, Vincent is visiting his great uncle Leo in Texas. Vincent’s parents believe that if Vincent gets a taste of all of the art that Uncle Leo, an art restorer, has in his home, Vincent will start making art again. But Vincent never wants to look at a paintbrush again.

However, Vincent’s homeschooled cousin, Georgia, and his little sister Lili, are also staying with Leo, and when Vincent actually falls into a painting and Lili gets kidnapped . . . well, Vincent’s gift for art and artistry along with Georgia’s navigational skills are the only way to save Lili. And so Vincent becomes a Restorationist.

Between Flowers and Bones focuses on Georgia and her envy of the gifts of others to the detriment of her own gift as a Restorationist Navigator. Can Georgia and Vincent become a team, or will Georgia’s jealousy and Vincent’s headaches keep them from saving and restoring and even making great art? Just as the first book featured the work of Vincent Van Gogh, but also a lot of other artworks by a multitude of artists, this second one features Georgia O’Keefe along with many other artists in an exciting art adventure.

It looks if the third book in the trilogy will feature yet another child, and probably another artist, as the central characters in the book. The ending in Between Flowers and Bones is somewhat satisfying, but also a bit of a cliffhanger, which is always not my favorite kind of ending. But I can deal with it. At least the story does have a good arc, and it was all engaging enough for me to want to come back for more.

Ms. Leiloglou is a homeschool mom, the granddaughter of art collectors, and the daughter of an art teacher. So all of the art and the inclusion of a homeschooled character in the boos is no accident. Indeed, it’s obvious that writing these books required a lot of research and a lot time spent in art museums and artists’ studios. All of the artists and paintings that are mentioned in the books are an invitation to view their work, and I was intrigued enough to look up some of them online. Surely art-inclined readers will be drawn to do the same.

The Restorationists series embodies middle grade fantasy quest fiction at its best, and I recommend it–if you don’t mind that the story is somewhat incomplete. Or you could wait for the third book–maybe, next year?

Ratty by Suzanne Selfors

Sep2

Ratty Barclay isn’t supposed to be a four foot tall rodent. He was born a boy, but something, maybe the Barclay Curse, turned him into a rat soon after his birth. And now Ratty wants to come out of hiding and somehow break the curse. He’s in hiding because people generally hate rats, especially human-sized talking rats. And his uncle Max has protected Ratty from the world of rat-hating humans for almost thirteen years, but Ratty thinks he can break the curse if he can return to Fairweather Island and the Barclay family estate where it all began.

What Ratty doesn’t know is that on Fairweather Island, indeed on the Barclay Estate itself, lives Edweena Gup, granddaughter of the manor’s groundskeeper and Ratcatcher Extraordinaire. Edweena is obsessed with rats, even though the island has no rats and she herself has never had the opportunity to catch or kill one. She has certainly studied them, gathered the tools for exterminating them, and considers herself the heir of her great-great-great grandmother’s legacy and skill at rat-catching.

Will Ratty be able to break the Barclay Curse? Will Edweena find Ratty and trap him before he can? Will something catastrophic happen to Uncle Max on Fairweather Island? What is the Barclay Curse? Why have so many Barclays died in mysterious circumstances? Why is Edweena so afraid of rats? Why is Ratty a rat when he was born a boy to human parents?

Here’s where the spoilers come into this review. If you don’t want to know the answers to the above questions, or at least some of the answers, don’t read any further. It’s a good little story, entertaining and clever and clean of everything except rats, lots of rats, and I recommend it for those who enjoy quirky. If you don’t mind introducing the idea of a family curse (it’s fiction, guys!), Ratty is good, wholesome reading for nine to twelve year olds who enjoy odd little stories about unusual characters and events, with a little humor thrown into the mix.

However as an adult, living in the 2024 world of gender dysphoria and identity confusion, I couldn’t help looking for signs that this simple story had a hidden meaning. Is Ratty’s discomfort with his rat body an allegory for body dysmorphia? Does Ratty’s desire to break the curse and change back into a human boy with a human body mirror the desires of many young people nowadays to change their bodies and to become something they are not? I don’t think kids will read any of this into the story, but I’m not a child. And I’ve seen too many children’s books lately that have a barely hidden agenda.

Well, long story short, here’s the spoiler: at the end of the book, Ratty decides that the Barclay Curse is not what made him a rat, and he accepts the body he has and his rat habits. He stays a rat, albeit a really large and somewhat human-like rat (R.O.U.S?). We never find out how or why Ratty became a rat. So, if the book was intended to support in some way the gender confusion of this decade, it doesn’t work that way. I think it’s just a quirky story, reminiscent of The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins in its inexplicable mysteriousness, about a rat and a family curse and an island and a girl who learns that friendship and firsthand knowledge can overcome fear.

The Giant Jam Sandwich by John Vernon Lord

Aug1

Lord, John Vernon. The Giant Jam Sandwich. With verses by Janet Burroway. Houghton Mifflin, 1972, 2000.

The setting is the English village of Itching Down. The characters are a full cast of English villagers: Mayor Muddlenut, Baker Bap, Farmer Seed, and more. The problem is wasps, millions of wasps.

They drove the picnickers away,
They chased the farmers from their hay,
They stung Lord Swell on his fat bald pate,
They dived and hummed and buzzed and ate,
And the noisy, nasty nuisance grew
Till the villagers cried, “What can we do?”

Tis’ a puzzlement . . . until Bap the Baker proposes a giant strawberry jam trap. Funny and clever at the same time, this tall tale in rhyme plays out with grace and humor and ties up all the loose ends on the final page.

John Vernon Lord is an award-winning illustrator and a professor of illustration at the University of Brighton in England. Janet Burroway is an American author who collaborated on The Giant Jam Sandwich by taking Lord’s story and putting it into verse. The illustration style is not exactly my favorite: it’s very busy with lots of activity and caricature characters. The pictures feel British somehow, maybe because the architecture of the village and the look of the countryside is very British or European. Nevertheless, perusing those illustrations would give readers, and listeners, a lot of details to explore as they absorb the rollicking story of how the villagers of Itching Down disposed of four million wasps, give or take a few.

This one is in print, but only in paperback. It’s been popular enough that it’s been in print since 1972. And composer Philip Wharton wrote a narrated orchestral work based on the book. Watch out Peter and the Wolf–here comes The Giant Jam Sandwich! Maybe readers and fans could make up their own tunes for Burroway’s verses and sing the story.

The Great Jam Sandwich has been added to the new edition of Picture Book Preschool. This book can be borrowed by member families from Meriadoc Homeschool Library.

The Tiger Who Came to Tea by Judith Kerr

Jul4

Kerr, Judith. The Tiger Who Came to Tea. W. Collins (London), 1968.

This picture book is quite well known and popular in Britain, practically a classic, but not so well known in the U.S. As one can tell from the title, it’s a very British sort of story. Nevertheless, American children as well as those from other countries should be able to appreciate this whimsical tale of an unexpected tiger who comes to visit and eats up all the food and drink in the house. Words such as “tap” and “tins” and “biscuits” and “packets” and even “tea” may need to be redefined for those same American children, but that’s part of the fun.

The illustrations are bold and simple, perfect for preschoolers. And the Tiger is big but not scary. Even though the Tiger does look rather ravenous throughout, there’s no hint that the little girl in the story is afraid or worried that the Tiger will finish off his meal with her. In fact, she snuggles up to him and plays with his tail in the pictures. The girl and her parents do have to come up with a solution for the lack of food and drink in the house after the Tiger leaves. And they also make a plan just in case the Tiger makes a return visit: a big box of Tiger Food to keep on hand.

Sometimes British humor is, well, somewhat foreign to my American understanding, but this book is spot on. It’s short and sweet, also memorable and imaginative, and I can see why it has been a children’s literature staple in Britain since its publication in 1968. It reminds me a little bit of Where The Wild Things Are, published in 1964, or The Cat in the Hat from 1957. But it’s more precious, in a good way, and more British. This book is another one that I will definitely be adding to Picture Book Preschool in the new edition.

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

Rooftoppers by Katherine Rundell

Jun28

Often I read twenty-first century middle grade fiction books in which the writing ranges from average to good, and I could recommend the book as a decent read—except for one minor dealbreaker or content advisory. Maybe the book has an evil character who swears once or twice, or the author has inserted a bit of modern propaganda or a minor character is added only to please the diversity crowd. I can overlook a certain amount of this kind of thing, but others may not be willing to do so. Then, I try to tell people the facts and let them decide.

Rooftoppers, a very popular British import, is in a different class. (Rooftoppers are abandoned and orphan children who live on the rooftops of Paris.) The writing–the metaphors and the sentence structures and the word choice–is excellent. I’ll give you a few examples, chosen almost at random:

“When they began to play, the music was different. It was sweeter, wilder. Sophie sat up properly and shifted forward until only half an inch of her bottom was on her seat. It was so beautiful that it was difficult for her to breathe. If music can shine, Sophie thought, this music shone. It was like all the voices in all the choirs in the city rolled into a single melody.”

“Money can make people inhuman. It is best to stay away from people who care too much about money, my darling. They are people with shoddy, flimsy brains.”

“Sophie looked and gasped. Below her feet, Paris stretched out toward the river. Paris was darker than London: It was a city lit in blinks and flickers. And it was Fabergé-egg beautiful, she thought. It was magic carpet stuff.”

“To most things in life, there is no trick, but to balance, Sophie thought, there was a trick of sorts. The trick was knowing where to find your center; balance lay somewhere between her stomach and her kidneys. It felt like a lump of gold in amongst brown organs. It was difficult to find, but once found, it was like a place marked in a book–easy to recover. “

The story itself is good, too. One year old Sophie survives the sinking of her ship at sea. She is taken in by her fellow survivor and rescuer, the eccentric scholar Charles Maxim. Charles is a wonderful guardian, but the powers-that-be, child care officers and social welfare committees, finally decide, just after Sophie’s twelfth birthday, that she must be removed to an orphanage so that she can be properly cared for–no more trousers and no writing on the walls and and no Charles Maxim to encourage her unorthodox ways. Sophie and Charles are both devastated. Coincidentally, just before Sophie is set to leave, guardian and child find an important clue about Sophie’s mother, who is said to have died when the ship sank. There is just the slightest possibility that she didn’t die, that she is somewhere in Paris. And so Sophie and Charles Maxim run away to Paris to look for Sophie’s cello-playing mother, and there they discover the Rooftoppers.

So far, so good. Excellent writing, a lively plot, endearing characters, building action–I can see why the book was an award-winning, best-selling success in Britain and why it is becoming more and more well known in the U.S. I had a very bright young lady recommend the book to me when I was in Ireland a few years ago, but I’m just now getting around to reading it.

But . . . our young protagonist, Sophie, with “hair the color of lightning”, “tall and generous and bookish and awkward”, also spits and curses. She curses and uses God’s name in vain several times in the course of the story. And it’s totally acceptable to her own conscience and to everyone else in the story. There’s nary an admonition, and no one blinks an eye. And then, there’s the fight scene. Sophie and her friends, the Rooftoppers, are attacked by another gang of young rooftoppers on a roof, of course. The children fight with teeth and nails, sharpened bone daggers, stones, and at least one knife. They bite and scratch and throw rocks and roof slates and draw blood, and Sophie kicks one of her (male) opponents in the crotch, rendering him incapacitated. The advice Sophie gets during the fight is serious and dangerous: “Punch like you mean it.” Kick him if you can’t punch him.” “Kicking is less personal.” “Do not mess with rooftoppers.”

So. Dealbreaker? I couldn’t hand this one to any of my young library patrons without a warning at least. And I won’t shelve it in my library, even though the author, “a fellow in English literature at All Souls College, Oxford’ has talent. I just wish she had left out the cursing and toned down the fighting.

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.

The Black Cauldron by Lloyd Alexander

May27

In his Author’s Note at the beginning of The Black Cauldron, Lloyd Alexander notes that “a darker thread runs through the high spirits” of this second novel in the Prydain series as compared to the first book, The Book of Three. The first book sent Taran, Assistant Pig-Keeper, on a quest to find the lost Hen-Wen and brought him to face the evil Horned King, servant of the Lord of Annuvin. This book involves another quest, darker indeed, to capture and destroy the Black Cauldron, birthplace of the deathless Cauldron-born warriors who also fight for Arawn, Lord of Annuvin. This journey is harder and longer and more perilous than the search for Hen-Wen, and Taran must face sacrifice, hardship and even death itself in his quest to end the power of the Black Cauldron.

But still there is Gurgi with his “smitings and bitings” and Fflewddur Fflam with his harp and Eilonwy, the girl with the sharp tongue and the golden bauble. And “good old Doli” joins the quest, reluctantly, to lend a bit of invisible help. New friends, or perhaps enemies, are Ellidyr, Prince of Pen-Larcau, and Adaon, Son of Taliesin. This second book in the Prydain series really picks up the pace of the story, and readers gain more insight into the characters of Taran and his companions and friends. The Black Cauldron is better than The Book of Three, which is a good book in its own right. That’s as it should be: in a series the books should get better, or else what’s a series for? Alexander writes in the Author’s Note, “[W]hile extending the story, I have also tried to deepen it.”

You can read The Black Cauldron as a stand alone book, but the books in this five book series are better read in chronological and publication sequence. The Prydain books, in order, are:

  • The Book of Three
  • The Black Cauldron
  • The Castle of Llyr
  • Taran Wanderer
  • The High King

The stories are inspired by Celtic and Welsh mythology, but they don’t follow any one folk tale or myth closely. Prydain is an imaginary realm, not Wales, and the characters in the book may remind one of Celtic heroes, but they are filtered through and created by Mr. Alexander’s imagination, illuminated by Celtic heroes. It’s a lovely set of stories.

These books 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 Dream Coach by Anne Parrish

Jan11

A Guest Review from Terri Shown of The Dream Coach by Anne Parrish, a 1925 Newbery Honor book.

Embark on a tranquil journey through the pages of The Dream Coach, a 1924 publication that, while potentially lulling readers into a peaceful slumber, may not resonate with every audience. Despite its promise of a celestial odyssey, the collection unfolds with narratives that are predominantly lengthy, meandering, and easily forgettable.
The initial tale, “The Seven White Dreams of the King’s Daughter,” follows the unfortunate Princess Angelica on her unhappy birthday, marred by the burdensome formalities of royal life. Witnessing her distress, an angel endeavors to uplift her spirits by bestowing seven white dreams, each portraying moments of freedom – a daisy in a field, a little white cloud in the blue sky, a lamb frolicking in lilies, a butterfly in flight, a small egg in a soft nest, and a snowflake dancing.
Next, “Goran’s Dream” unfolds in Norway, where six-year-old Goran faces solitude as he cares for the animals in his grandmother’s absence. The story takes an unusual turn as Goran’s dream, a whimsical and somewhat perplexing Alice in Wonderland-type scenario, adds a layer of complexity to his winter experience.
In “A Bird Cage With Tassels of Purple and Pearls (Three Dreams of a Little Chinese Emperor),” the Dream Coach shifts its mission, aiming to impart a lesson rather than providing comfort. The young emperor, having confined a songbird, experiences a transformative dream where he understands the hardships of captivity. Filled with newfound empathy, he releases the bird, demonstrating personal growth.
Concluding with “King” Philippe’s Dream, the narrative takes us to France, where a young boy envisions his relatives transformed into natural forces during a slumber. He dreams that all his close relations turn into forces of nature like river, rain, wind, and snow. His little cousin becomes spring and the dream goes on till he awakes to find he is back with his parents.
While the tales may not be exceptional, there’s a sweetness and a touch of exoticism that might appeal to certain readers. The charming highlight of the book, however, seems to be the black-and-white illustrations, which are visually appealing and serve as a complement to the narratives.

The Dream Coach may not captivate many modern readers. Yet, for those seeking a calming bedtime experience, there may be some enjoyment within its pages.