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Scotland’s Story by H.E. Marshall

Mar27

I would love to visit Scotland! I’ve been to England (London and Oxford) and to Ireland for a brief visit, and I’d love to go back to either or both of those countries for more. However, my more immediate travel goal is Scotland. Reading Scotland’s Story by H.E. Marshall only intensified my desire to go to the land of Burns and Bruce and heather on the hills.

I’ve been an Anglophile for most of my life, and I’ve read a lot of British history and historical fiction. I read and enjoyed Thomas Costain’s four volumes about the history of the Plantagenets and England. So good! I thought that in all that reading about kings and queens and commoners in England that I knew a fair amount about Scottish history, too. After all, weren’t the two, Scotland and England, unified as one nation after that regrettable incident concerning the death of Mary, Queen of Scots?

However, for hundreds of years Scotland and England were emphatically not unified, and the two countries were at war or near-war more frequently than not. Scotland’s Story is a collection of legends and true stories from history, written by the author of Our Island Story, as a supplement to that book, focusing on the stories and history of Scotland and the Scots people. The book begins in the ancient mists of once upon a time with “The Story of Prince Gathelus” and continues through ninety chapters of Saint Columba and Macbeth, William Wallace and Robert the Bruce, and various other kings and battles and lords and ladies all the way down to George III and Sir Walter Scott in the early nineteenth century.

I read this book over the course of about three months (January-March), one or more chapters or stories per day. Each chapter is about two or three pages long, the perfect length for morning time read aloud and for narration, and I found the stories so absorbing that I couldn’t always limit myself to one a day. Sometimes I just had to know what happened next. During my reading, I found out about many episodes and people that I knew very little or nothing about before: the Picts, the alliance between France and Scotland, the full stories of William Wallace and Robert the Bruce, James I the Poet King and all the Jameses, the covenanters, Flodden Field, Killiecrankie, and Glencoe. I already knew about Mary Queen of Scots and Bonnie Prince Charlie and their unfortunate histories, but even about those two and others, I was reminded of stories I had forgotten and I learned new details and stories that I hadn’t read about before.

The book was written by Ms. Marshall for children to introduce them to the tales of Scotland’s history. And it turns out that Ms. Marshall had a special affinity for her subject in this particular book: she was actually a Scot herself and an ardent admirer of that most famous Scottish novelist, Sir Walter Scott! The history of Scotland, especially in pre-modern times, is rather violent and bloody, but Marshall glosses over the actual gore. Any child who is ready to read about actual battles and political intrigues and deaths of traitors and patriots is ready for this book. And anyone who is a Scotophile (just found that word) or interested in visiting Scotland someday should read Scotland’s Story first. You can check out a copy of Scotland’s Story from Meriadoc Homeschool Library, or you can purchase a copy of the book from Living Book Press.

(So, now I want to read A History of France or A History of Germany, both by Marshall also. Or maybe I’ll just read the entire Our Island Story, a book I’ve only dipped into but never read from cover to cover.)

Facing the Mountain by Daniel James Brown

Mar25

Brown, Daniel James. Facing the Mountain: A True Story of Japanese American Heroes in World War II. Viking, 2021.

Daniel James Brown, author of The Boys in the Boat, has another (2021) book out, Facing the Mountain. Despite my wholehearted support for the idea of “never forget”, I have to admit that I am somewhat jaded and tired of reading about the World War 2 Holocaust, and the Japanese internment camps in the U.S., and really, World War 2 in general. The stories are important and even relevant to our own time, but they are starting to sound like old news.

Nevertheless, this one deserves a place in your reading line-up or stack or To-Be-Read list, wherever you keep those titles that you are planning to read soon. The book covers the internment of Japanese American citizens and legal residents, but the emphasis is on the service of the young men, Nisei–second generation Americans of Japanese descent–“who volunteered for the 442nd Regimental Combat Team and were deployed to France, Germany, and Italy, where they were asked to do the near impossible in often suicidal missions.”

Definitely not old news for me. I learned a lot. The story of these men is a lesson in courage and fortitude and persistence that went way beyond my small store of those virtues. There are even a couple of stories that feature peace-making in the midst of war.

One example, many of the soldiers of the 442nd were Hawaiian-born Japanese Americans; others were from the mainland, mostly the west coast. The two groups may have looked similar with the same ancestry, but their cultural heritage and general attitudes were not the same. The Hawaiians, who were called “Buddhaheads” by the mainlanders, were much too easy-going and rule-breaking for the “Kotonks” (nickname given the mainland Japanese Americans). And the Kotonks were too serious and legalistic, having come mostly from the internment camps, as far as the Buddhaheads were concerned. This difference in outlook led to arguments, even fights, while the guys of the 442nd were in training, and it took some time and some hard knocks for the 442nd to become a cohesive fighting unit.

Then, also, the author Brown tells the story of Gordon Hirabayashi who fought his own battle in prisons across the Southwestern United States as a conscientious objector and resistor not only to the war but also to the restrictions that were being placed on Japanese Americans as a result of their ethnicity. And the Japanese American chaplains who served the 442nd are also featured with quotations from letters that these men sent home.

Daniel James interviewed several of the men of the 442nd, “by most reckonings, . . . the most decorated military unit of its size and length of service in American history.” He also talked to their families and descendants and read and shared their letters and notes and memories. The result is a well-written narrative history of the wartime service of several Nisei soldiers as examples of the entire combat team. And readers get a picture of the chronology of all of the battles and assaults and rescues performed by the 442nd, including the rescue of the “Lost Battalion”, a group of mostly Texan soldiers who in late 1944 in Germany were sent into a trap and only saved at the expense of many lives by the 442nd Nisei.

If you’re a World War II buff, you must read this book. If you’re not particularly interested in WWII, but you do like inspiring stories of courage, like Unbroken and The Boys in the Boat, you should also pick up a copy of Facing the Mountain. Finally, if you have a relationship with anyone of Japanese heritage or if you are a Japanese American yourself, this book is a must read. I’m not Japanese at all, but it made me proud to be an American, even though our record as a country in regard to how we have treated people of color is mixed to say the least. Still, the stories of people overcoming obstacles of racial prejudice and mistreatment, and even becoming heroes, belong to us all.

The Adventure of Living by Paul Tournier

Mar17

Once upon a time when I was in high school, back in the dark ages, I had a friend and mentor who was a big fan of the work of Swiss physician and counselor Paul Tournier. Tournier, who lived and wrote during the 1960’s and 70’s, was a Christian author who advocated for what he called “medicine of the person”, treatment of the whole person, mind, body, and spirit or soul. His most famous and influential book was The Meaning of Persons, published in 1954.

I had not visited with Dr. Tournier since those high school days, but I remembered him as wise Christian counselor, even if his work was a bit over my head at the time I was introduced to it. So, when I saw The Adventure of Living on the used books sale shelf at my local library, I decided to give it a try. It was an especially appropriate read for me now since my word for the year is “venture” or “adventure.” I’ve been trying to live my days as adventures and to venture out beyond my self-imposed limits this year.

I found The Adventure of Living to be helpful and inspiring in my adventurous year. Modern author and psychologist Jordan Peterson has a lot to say about adventure and our need for adventure in our lives, and Tournier reminds me of Peterson at times, except that Tournier is more Christian and a little less esoteric than Jordan can be. In the first chapter of the book, called “An Instinct Peculiar to Man,” Tournier writes, “I should like to depict as I see it the great impulse toward adventure which is peculiar to man . . . ” and later, “Woe betide those, who no longer feel thrilled at anything, who have stopped looking for adventure.”

He goes on to write about what adventures actually are, how they begin, and how they die, creating the need for a new adventure. And using examples from his own counseling and pastoral care practice, Tournier illustrates the risks of taking the adventures that life places before us, the choices we make about how to react to both success and failure, when to follow a new adventure, and how to know which adventure to choose. He writes with wisdom and balance about prayer and meditation and how to experience and know God’s guidance in our small adventures and in the Big Adventure of Life itself.

I suppose The Adventure of Living could be classified as a “self help” or “Christian living” book, but I think it delves deeper than most such books tend to go. It was written before the advent of the 21st century tendency that we have to label and medicate every problem, spiritual or mental. And the advice and exposition of the subject come from a European Christian perspective, but the book speaks to anyone with a Western cultural background, even secular nonbelievers and those of a different religion. I don’t tend to enjoy the self-help or Christian living genres, but I did find this sixty year old book to be absorbing and useful. Mr. Tournier still has a lot to say to our somewhat jaded and over-psychologized age.

I’ll leave you with a couple of quotes that I copied into my commonplace journal just for a sample and a bit of adventurous inspiration:

“What matters is to listen to Him, to let ourselves be guided, to face up to the adventure to which He calls us, with all its risks. Life is an adventure, directed by God.”

“[T]he excitement of adventure rescues us from the sea of introspection that drowns many of those who hesitate. The more they examine themselves the less they act. The less they act, the less clearly do they see what to do. In vain do they interrogate even God on what they ought to do; rarely do they receive any reply. God guides us when we are on the way, not when we are standing still, just as one cannot steer a car unless it is moving.”

The Wager by David Grann

Feb10

The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder by David Grann. Doubleday, 2023.

Not a tale for the faint-hearted. The Wager is the name of the ship that wrecked in this harrowing story of hunger, violence, and rebellion, not an actual gambling wager. However, these sailors of the mid-18th century were wagering their very lives when they went to sea as part of the British Navy, and many of them lost the wager, so to speak.

As part of the War of Jenkins’ Ear, a conflict between the British and Spanish empires that was really about naval superiority and about which country would rule the seas, The Wager set sail in 1740 as one of the ships in a fleet with a mission from His Majesty’s government: to engage and capture Spanish galleons “weakening Spanish holdings from the Pacific coast of South America to the Philippines.” To fulfill this mission, the Navy convoy of five warships would need to cross the Atlantic and round Cape Horn at the tip of South America.

Ay, there’s the rub. Cape Horn is notoriously dangerous, stormy, and difficult to navigate. The Wager and its crew became victims of that stormy and tumultuous passage, shipwrecked on a small, inhospitable island off the Pacific coast of Chile (Patagonia). And then, all h–l broke loose.

The main thing I learned from this true story is that I never want to sail around Cape Horn in any kind of sailing ship, even a modern one, and I hope to never be in a situation in which I and my companions are stranded on a desert island and starving. Apparently, hunger can make men into monsters–as can the lack of “spirits” for 18th century British sailors. Again, I repeat, while well-written and filled with intriguing details, this is not a story for the faint of heart. It is rather a tale of murder and mayhem, violence and degradation. And there are conflicting stories about what really happened on the island and on the way home for the thirty-three survivors (out of approximately 250 original crewmen and officers) who made it back to England. And to top it all off, the Navy convenes a court-martial when the emaciated survivors return to their native land, and all thirty-three men are in danger of being hung for their ordeal.

This incident in the history of the British navy predates Mutiny on the Bounty by about 50 years, and I had never heard of The Wager and its tragic fate. There’s a reason for that, in author David Grann’s estimation, as the reader will discover. If you are interested in sea stories, the novels of Patrick O’Brian and Herman Melville, and other tale spinners of the ocean, this narrative history will add to your ocean-going knowledge and lead you to more of the same. The book has extensive footnotes and a “Selected Bibliography” in the back as well much information about sailing, and navies, and war, and history of the 1700’s.

Did you know?

“To ‘toe the line’ derives from when boys on a ship were forced to stand still for inspection with their toes on a deck seam. To ‘pipe down’ was the boatswain’s whistle for everyone to be quiet at night, and ‘piping hot’ was his call for meals. A ‘scuttlebutt’ was a water cask around which the seamen gossiped while waiting for their rations. A ship was ‘three sheets to the wind’ when the lines to the sails broke and the vessel pitched drunkenly out of control. To ‘turn a blind eye’ became a popular expression after Vice-Admiral Nelson deliberately placed his telescope against his blind eye to ignore his superior’s signal flag to retreat.”

Ode to Grapefruit by Kari Lavelle

Jan25

Lavelle, Kari. Ode to Grapefruit: How James Earl Jones Found His Voice. Illustrated by Bryan Collier. Alfred A. Knopf, 2024.

The things you can learn from picture books! I had no idea that James Earl Jones/Darth Vader was a stutterer. Ode to a Grapefruit by speech pathologist Kari Lavelle tells the story of Mr. Jones’ childhood and young adulthood and his struggles in learning to work with and through his stuttering.

James Earl Jones grew up in Michigan, and according to this picture book biography, he felt such shame and fear about his stuttering that he decided to remain silent in public for the first eight years of his school career. In high school, James Earl, who never received speech therapy as a child, found something that helped him to speak: poetry. The rhythm and cadence of poetry and memorized lines in plays made it easier for James Earl to speak clearly and fluently. With encouragement from a teacher mentor, James Earl began to speak in class and on stage, and he learned to use his resonant voice and overcome his stutter. Even so, he still considered himself a stutterer as an adult, with occasional lapses in fluency.

I had a good friend in college, Gail, who was a stutterer. Gail taught me a lot about stuttering and how it works and how speech therapists teach people to deal with stuttering. This book felt true to what Gail experienced and what she told me long ago about her journey with stuttering. As I was reading the book, I noticed that not much has changed in regard to the advice that is given to people who stutter and to their family and friends.

To those who stutter: “There are no miracle cures for stuttering. But there are many ways to help people who stutter.” To friends: “Be kind. Be patient. Listen to their message. Don’t try to offer word suggestions if they get stuck.”

And what do stuttering and James Earl Jones have to do with grapefruit? Well, that’s something you’ll have to read about in the book. This biography was published in 2024, and James Earl Jones died in September, 2024. It couldn’t have been planned, but the coincidental publication of the book in the same year of Mr. Jones’ death seems like a fitting tribute to the great actor with a great voice.

Gifts From Georgia’s Garden by Lisa Robinson

Jan24

Robinson, Lisa. Gifts From Georgia’s Garden How Georgia O’Keeffe Nourished Her Art. Illustrated by Hadley Hooper. Holiday House, 2024.

Georgia O’Keeffe, renowned for her iconic paintings of skulls and bones, landscapes and skyscapes, and colorful flowers, was also a dedicated gardener and a warm, welcoming host in her New Mexico home. Her garden in the New Mexico desert not only inspired many of her works but also provided fruits, vegetables, and flowers that graced her table and were shared with friends and visitors.

This picture book offers a glimpse into O’Keeffe’s artistic world, but it serves more as an introduction. It can spark curiosity, leaving readers eager to explore her full body of work, whether online or through other books. The focus here is on her New Mexico garden, where she practiced sustainable gardening techniques to enrich the soil, protect her plants, and cultivate food that nourished both her body and her art.

The author also shares some of the dishes—soups, salads, and desserts—that O’Keeffe prepared for her guests, including a recipe for Pecan Butterballs. As someone who loves anything with pecans, this was a delightful bonus!

This book paints a picture of O’Keeffe as not just an artist, but also a gardener and homemaker who left the “male-dominated” art scene of New York City to create a fulfilling life and career in the New Mexico desert. I admire O’Keeffe’s art, and it’s refreshing to learn how her gardening and love of simple, wholesome food shaped her creative process.

One sentence near the end of the book did leave me pondering: “Georgia grew old in her garden sanctuary, and even when she became blind, she continued to tend her garden and paint.” This statement may prompt children to ask how an artist can paint without sight, a valid question that reminds me of how Beethoven composed music despite being deaf. ‘Tis a puzzlement.

Evidence! by Deborah Hopkinson

Jan13

Evidence! How Dr. John Snow Solved the Mystery of Cholera by Deborah Hopkinson. Illustrated by Nik Henderson. Alfred A. Knopf, 2024.

I read an adult nonfiction book called Ghost Map by Steven Johnson, about Dr. John Snow and the 19th century London cholera outbreak associated with the Broad Street water pump. So, I knew the basic outlines of this picture book story by noted author Deborah Hopkinson. Still, it was good to be reminded that the solution of medical mysteries has always required dogged work and investigation to find evidence that will pinpoint the source of diseases and lead to treatments and a cure.

When cholera came to Broad Street and surrounding areas in London in 1854, the prevailing theory was that the disease was caused and spread by “bad air.” Dr. Snow, who had already been researching the disease of cholera for some time, believed that cholera was spread by sewage-contaminated water. This book tells the story of exactly how Dr. Snow proves his hypothesis and stops the Broad Street cholera epidemic from continuing to kill London’s tenement dwellers..

The text of this story is simple but detailed enough to make the story clear to young readers. Step-by-step, Ms. Hopkinson leads us through the thought processes of Dr. Snow as he asks questions and interviews people to test his hypothesis and to eventually show the people of the Broad Street neighborhood what they must do to stop the cholera outbreak.

The illustrations in the book by Nik Henderson are adequate, depicting a foggy, Dickensian London with Dr. Snow moving quickly and confidently through each picture on a quest to find the answers to the cholera problem. The appendices include a brief restating of “the case against the Broad Street pump”, a short biographical sketch of Dr. Snow, a list of major infectious diseases and their causes, and a list of books and internet resources for adults and children about cholera and other infectious disease epidemics.

This post here at Semicolon, called Epidemic, Pandemic, Plague and Disease in Children’s Books, could be helpful for those who want to pursue the subject further.

Van Gogh Has a Broken Heart by Russ Ramsey

Nov21

Van Gogh Has a Broken Heart; What Art Teaches Us About the Wonder and Struggle of Being Alive by Russ Ramsey. Zondervan, 2024.

Russ Ramsey’s first book about art and the life it portrays and reflects and illuminates, Rembrandt Is in the Wind, was and is one of my favorite nonfiction books of all time. This second book is just as good and thought-provoking as the first one, and I highly recommend both books even if you are not an art aficionado, and even if you are not a Christian.

Both books are about art and artists and the Christian life. Both books are accessible and enjoyable to art lovers and philistines (like me), to Christians and to unbelievers. I would call these chapters “sermons in art”–Mr. Ramsey is, after all, a pastor– but that might give those who are not fond of sermons reason to skip the book. That would be a mistake.

What Russ Ramsey offers up in these two books, but especially in this second volume, is a compassionate and broad vision for what art can show us about how to live our our lives through times of joy and wonder as well as through periods of suffering and injustice. The chapters in Van Gogh Has a Broken Heart tell stories about the artists Gustave Dore, Leonardo DaVinci, Rembrandt, Artemisia Gentileschi, Joseph Turner, the artists of the Hudson River School, Norman Rockwell, Paul Gauguin, Norman Rockwell, Edgar Degas, Jimmy Abegg, and others. Each artist’s story illustrates some aspect of life’s journey and some way of seeing that life that is found in the art of those who sacrificed something for the art’s sake.

Charlotte Mason educators talk a lot about “narration”, a practice of telling back what the student sees in a painting or reads in a book or hears in a well told story. These books seem to me to be Russ Ramsey’s narrations of the paintings and the artists’ lives that have taught him to see certain ideas and stories in a new light, that have clarified concepts, both theological and philosophical, for him as he studies the art and artists that have spoken truth into his life.

The books are also just a gentle introduction to and invitation into the world of fine art. Art doesn’t have to intimidating and elitist. It’s for everyone. The appendices to the book are invaluable in this regard. In Appendix 1, I Don’t Like Donatello, and You Can Too, Mr. Ramsey explains what we can do when we “don’t like a work of art or an artist or even an entire style of art.” In short, it’s fine to have a personal taste in art, but it might surprise you to try to figure out why and how to appreciate even that which you don’t much like. Appendix 2 is a Beginner’s Guide to Symbols in Art, also quite helpful. Appendix 3 is a list of Lost, Stolen, and Recovered Art, some selected, famous works of art that have been stolen over the years. (Maybe you’ll find one of these in your attic?) There are also color pictures of some of the artworks featured in the book in a center section.

Recommended for older teens and adults. The two books, Rembrandt Is in the Wind and Van Gogh Has a Broken Heart, by Russ Ramsey are available for checkout from Meriadoc Homeschool Library.

Creekfinding: A True Story by Jacqueline Briggs Martin and Claudia McGehee

Oct18

Once there was a creek in northeast Iowa that got covered up by a cornfield. Then, a guy named Mike bought the land and anted to bring the creek back. But it took a lots of planning and work and rocks and dirt and plants and insects and birds and fish—and even some big earth-moving machines–to revive the creek and make a place for Brook Creek to flourish and nourish both people and wildlife.

“If you went to the creek with Mike, you’d see the water. But a creek isn’t just water. You’d see brook trout and sculpin. You’d hear the outdoor orchestra—herons, snipe, bluebirds, yellowthroat warblers; frogs returned home; and insects–thousands, and thousands, and thousands of insects.”

I’m not much of an outdoors girl. But I did find this true story of how Mike Osterholm, who is “passionate about the prairie, cold water streams, brook trout, and partnering with the earth,” decided to revive the creek that once flowed through his land and how he did it, a fascinating one. The implication in the book, never stated, is that a cornfield is of lesser value or “earth-friendliness” than a brook full of trout. I’m not so sure about that. But a brook was what Mike wanted, just as the farmer who owned the land before him wanted a cornfield, and I liked reading about how it all came about.

The illustrations by artist Claudia McGehee, are all “prairie greens, creek blues,” yellows and browns, nature colors. Etched out in scratchboard and then painted, the pictures are evocative of a wild natural world restored, and they do add to the text a certain earthy feeling that couldn’t be achieved by words alone. It’s a beautiful book, and for this indoor girl, it makes me actually want to find a creek or a brook or some sort of running water to sit beside and observe. That’s a sign of a well done nature picture book.

This book was recommended to me by Sandy Spencer Hall of Hall’s Living Library. It would be a good addition to a Charlotte Mason-style nature study read aloud time, best served next to flowing water—or perhaps in a cornfield?

Wild Woolly West by Earl Schenck Miers

May10

This nonfiction book about the westward movement tries to be fair and impartial toward the cowboys, settlers, Native Americans, gunslingers, explorers, prospectors, and downright ruffians and criminals who were all a part of the opening of the West to settlers of mostly European descent. But it probably doesn’t succeed in twenty-first century terms.

Earl Schenck Miers writes about the Lewis and Clark Expedition, the mountain men who harvested the west of its furs and other treasures, the missionaries and homesteaders who came after mountain men, the forty-niners and the Gold Rush, the cowboys and sheriffs and sodbusters, and finally the Native Americans who struggled to survive the onslaught of people coming west. He tells of the extreme prejudice that the white men expressed and acted out in regard to the Indians they encountered as well as the massacres and atrocities committed by both Native American defenders and “the hordes of white invaders.”

This book was published in 1964, and Miers does use the language of his time: “red men” and “Indians and half-breeds”, as well as quoting racist rants from the nineteenth century with much worse language regarding Native Americans. And he does tell about how the settlers treated the Native Americans (abominably) as well as how the Indians retaliated. Overall, the book presents an overview of the westward movement, with some details about famous people and events. It would make a good, living spine text for the study of this period in history, but there would be many things to discuss with children along the way. I’d recommend that the book be presented as a read aloud to children 11 and up.

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