The 4th Gift of Christmas at Wounded Knee Creek, 1891

Dec4

Despite heart-warming stories such as the Christmas Truce of 1914 and the redemption of Scrooge in A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, Christmas and its message of “peace on earth, goodwill to men”, does not always bring about compassion nor does it everywhere restrain evil.

“In late 1891, Tibbles and Susette [La Flesche] traveled to Pine Ridge, on of the Sioux reservations in southwestern South Dakota. Many had fled the reservation, fearful of the soldiers who’d come to quell any disturbances aroused by the Ghost Dance. Starving Indians danced to bring the savior, to se departed loved ones living again, and to see the whites driven away and a new earth returned, once again home to free Indians, the buffalo, the elk, and the antelope.

On Christmas Eve, soldiers slaughtered a band of Indians camped near Wounded Knee Creek; they were under Chief Big Foot and included men, women, and children. In one of the darkest moments of her life, Susette helped care for the survivors that escaped to Pine Ridge.”
~Women of the Frontier by Brandon Marie Miller

And this episode and other like it illustrate why we need more than a message from angels, more than the moral law that we know to be true: we need a Savior.

Today’s Gifts from Semicolon
A song: “I understand Christmas as I understand Bach’s Sleepers Awake or Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring. . . When I am able to pray with the mind in the heart, I am joyfully able to affirm the irrationality of Christmas.” ~Madeleine L’Engle

A booklist: A Madeleine L’Engle Annotated Bibliography

A birthday: Nick Vujicic, Serbian Australian evangelist and motivational speaker, b. 1982.

A verse: God Knows by Minnie Louise Haskins.

“The President Has Been Shot!” by James L. Swanson

Nov27

On the evening of November 22, 2013, I was reading, not an unusual activity for me. But instead of reading C.S. Lewis or any of the many novels that I want to finish, I was reading one of the Cybils YA nonfiction books that was nominated this year. “The President Has Been Shot!” The Assassination of John F. Kennedy by James L. Swanson was the sad story of what happened in Dallas fifty years ago, and I was reminded of the fragility of human life and the sinfulness of mankind.

Yes, I remember where I was when I heard the news of Kennedy’s death. Unfortunately for my reputation for perfect recall, I remember incorrectly. I was in first grade in 1963, but for some reason I have a vivid memory of being in my second grade classroom with my second grade teacher, Mrs. Bouska, announcing to us that the president had been shot. I’m not sure why my first grade memory has transposed itself in time into second grade, but there it is. Memory is unreliable.

So we have books—to record the memories and the events and keep us honest. A lot of the information in this book I either never knew or I didn’t remember. I had no idea that Kennedy was shot through the back of the head and his head either fell or was pulled into Jackie Kennedy’s lap where she held pieces of his brain in her hands all the way to Parkland Hospital. Gruesome. Then, it was also rather grisly and horrific to read that Jackie refused to change her blood-stained clothes all that day, saying repeatedly, “I want them to see what they’ve done.” People certainly do grieve and react in different ways to shocking, appalling events.

“History is more than a narrative of what happened at a particular moment in time—it is also the story of how events were reported to, and experienced by, the people who lived through them.” (For Further Reading, p.240) Mr. Swanson does a particularly good job of giving readers a feel for the time period and the way newspapers, magazines, radio, and television reported on the death of the president. Black and white photographs interspersed throughout the book add to the verisimilitude of the story, transporting readers into the early 1960’s when color television was still not in widespread use and newspapers and many magazines were filled with black and white photographs.

Swanson’s 2009 nonfiction tale of an assassination, Chasing Lincoln’s Killer, was adapted from his adult book, Manhunt. “The President Has Been Shot!” was written specifically for the YA market, and it shines as an example of a nonfiction history narrative that doesn’t talk down to teen readers and yet keeps the detail to a level that suits young people who may be new to the subject of the Kennedy assassination. I highly recommend the book for students of history and politics who want a simple but thorough summary of the background of Kennedy’s presidency and the events surrounding and leading up to his assassination.

Women of the Frontier by Brandon Marie Miller

Nov19

Women of the Frontier: 16 Tales of Trailblazing Homesteaders, Entrepreneurs, and Rabble-Rousers by Brandon Marie Miller.

This collective biography/history was a fascinating book, although I found myself skimming the explanatory material at the beginning of each chapter to go directly to the stories of the women themselves. Some of the women I knew something about: Margret Reed, a survivor of the ill-fated Donner Party; Narcissa Whitman, missionary to Oregon; Carry Nation, prohibition campaigner; and Cynthia Ann Parker, captive of the Comanches and mother to Quanah Parker, famous Comanche chief.

Even about these women I learned new things:
According to the author, Narcissa Whitman grew to nearly despise the Native Americans she traveled to Oregon to minister to and convert.

After years of “smashing” saloons to protest the evils of alcohol, Carry Nation settled in Eureka Springs, Arkansas and opened a home for the (abused) wives of alcoholics. The home was called Hatchet Hall.

Indian captive Cynthia Ann Parker was taken back from the Comanches when her son Quanah was only twelve years old, and she thought he was dead. She did not know that he became a great warrior chief of the Comanche.

Then, there were the many seemingly ordinary, actually extraordinary, women who managed to survive a life of hardship and vicissitudes that would have put me into an early grave. Amelia Stewart Knight traversed the Oregon Trail, “out of one mud hole into another all day.” And she was four months pregnant when she and her husband and their seven children left Iowa to head for Oregon. Luzena Wilson learned that she could make more money by cooking and cleaning for the 49ers in the California gold fields than she or her husband could by mining. Then, she learned by experience with both that a fire or flood could destroy everything she had built and earned, and she learned to start all over again.

Mary Lease fought for government regulation of the railroads, the graduated income tax, the direct election of senators, and suffrage for women. She lived to see all of these things enshrined in law. Sarah Winnemucca and Susette La Flesche, on the other hand, both championed the rights of Native Americans, but lived to see most of the promises of the U.S. government to the Native peoples broken and the Native people themselves mistreated and disrespected.

I was inspired and a bit humbled by the stories of these ladies. Again, I’m not sure how I would have done, given their circumstances and faced with their choices. I’d like to say that I would have persevered and made a life despite the difficulties and adversities they faced, but I don’t really know.

Said one Kansas woman:

“It might seem a cheerless life, but there were many compensations: the thrill of conquering a new country; the wonderful atmosphere; the attraction of the prairie, which simply gets into your bloom and makes you dissatisfied away from it; the low-lying hills and the unobstructed view of the horizon; and the fleecy clouds driven by the never failing winds.”

Maybe those things, and more, were enough.

Becoming Ben Franklin by Russell Freedman

Nov11

Becoming Ben Franklin: How a Candle-Maker’s Son Helped Light the Flame of Liberty by Russell Freedman.

I have several books about Benjamin Franklin in my library, including Franklin’s own autobiography. However, the other four Franklin books that I own are all written for younger readers. Becoming Ben Franklin, despite its relatively short seventy-seven pages, is written on a middle school or high school level as a basic introduction to the life of our most celebrated founding father.

Russell Freedman, of course, is quite well-known himself in the field of children’s nonfiction, having won the Newbery Award for his photobiography of Lincoln and Newbery Honors for books about Eleanor Roosevelt and about the Wright brothers. He begins his book on Benjamin Franklin with Franklin’s arrival in Philadelphia at the age of seventeen, a runaway apprentice “with a mind of his own.” In Freedman’s treatment, as in most other biographies of Franklin, Benjamin Franklin comes across as the quintessential self-made man. He asked for financial help from his father when he decided to set up a print shop in Philadelphia, but dad was not prepared to give such help without some proof that Benjamin was serious and likely to succeed. Pennsylvania Governor William Keith promised young Ben introductions and letters of credit and sent him off to England to pick out equipment for his new business, but when Ben arrived the introductions and the loans were nonexistent. So Ben was again on his own.

It seems from the narrative that although Benjamin Franklin was something of an eccentric with his “air baths” and his experiments in electricity, he won his place in the world by dint of hard work, experimentation with good ideas, and perseverance. Ben Franklin is a good subject for a children’s biography because the author can choose whether to emphasize Ben’s quirkiness, hard work, innovative ideas, or influence in politics or science or international affairs.

As I said, this biography would be a good, solid middle school introduction to the life of Ben Franklin. Only one caveat: On page 28, there is a picture of this cartoon from the pen of Mr. Franklin. The caption reads in part: “The parts of the segmented snake are labeled for South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, and New England (which was actually four colonies). Delaware and Maryland are missing.” Obvious mistake. I’m not sure what is missing (Connecticut? Or was it one of the four NE colonies? Maybe Georgia?), but Maryland is NOT missing. Picky, I know, but children’s informational books should be accurate to the nth degree. I wouldn’t buy it with that error in it. However, you may be willing to overlook it since the book is well-written and informative otherwise.

Some other Ben Franklin titles for younger children:

Aliki in The Many Lives of Benjamin Franklin writes: “Benjamin Franklin was born with just one life. But as he grew, his curiosity, his sense of humor and his brilliant mind turned him into a man with many lives.” Aliki’s prism for Ben Franklin is the “man of ideas.” It’s good book that would fit right in to today’s popularity of “graphic” nonfiction with its cartoon panel pages, but it’s out of print.

What’s the Big Idea, Ben Franklin? by Jean Fritz takes much the same perspective as Aliki’s book, but with an emphasis on Franklin’s comical and entertaining side and his nonconformist, can-do attitude. “Benjamin would have liked to do nothing but experiment with his ideas, but people had discovered that he was more than an inventor. Whatever needed doing, he seemed able and willing to do it.”

Poor Richard in France by F.N. Monjo is narrated by Franklin’s grandson, Benny, and focuses on Ben Franklin’s time in France during the American Revolution when he was working to get the French to support the Americans in their fight against the British. In this story Franklin is a wise and indulgent old grandfather who always answers Benny’s questions and outfoxes both the British and the French. The emphasis is on Franklin’s wisdom. (This one is my favorite of the lot. The voice of young Benny and his interactions with his grandfather are a delight.) Unfortunately, Monjo’s book is also out of print.

Benjamin Franklin: Young Printer by Augusta Stevenson is one of the Childhood of Famous Americans series of fictionalized biographies of great Americans. Stevenson’s Ben Franklin is more serious and mature for his age. He gives good advice to his age mates, and he’s “the best apprentice in the world.” Stevenson tells stories about young Ben in the same vein as George Washington and the Cherry Tree, stories that emphasize how Ben was, even in his youth, a diligent, honest, and tenacious young man, a character to be admired and emulated.

Becoming Ben Franklin is a good addition to the stable of children’s biographies about the great man. It’s pitched for an older audience, but still quite accessible with an easy to read layout and design and lots of period illustrations, and at least one factual error that should have been noticed by a proofreader before it got into print.

Home Front Girl by Joan Wehlen Morrison

Nov7

Home Front Girl: A Diary of Love, Literature, and Growing Up in Wartime America by Joan Wehlen Morrison

Joan Wehlen Morrison’s journal from 1937 (age 14) to 1943 (age 20) “allows us to eavesdrop on what everyday Americans thought and felt about” the years before and during World War II.

I’m not so sure how “everyday” Miss Wehlen was. She was, first of all, a prolific writer of poetry and essays and journal entries, of which only a selection are represented in this compilation. Joan was an intelligent young lady and quite aware of political and current events, much more so, I believe, than I was at her age. “As early as 1937, Joan believe[d] that the year 1940 will be a decisive year in history.” She was a pacifist, daughter of a “working class Swedish immigrant with socialist political convictions.” And, finally, she was a Catholic, who wove “personal reflections on love, nature, and God with commentary on contemporary political events.”

Some of her more insightful entries:

Thursday, September 29, 1938
Well—our mythical “peace” is again floating over the land of Europe while four statesmen pretend to come to an agreement. The headline says, “War Averted”—but I know—it should say “War Postponed”—I know.

Sunday, February 5, 1939
I have found beauty in color and line and life and the shadows our little red lamp makes . . . I shall not forget life even if I lose it. It is a lovely world: the sky is blue and the snow is melting and I can hear the Earth expanding. Spring only comes once when you’re 16. I must keep my eyes open for it or I shall miss it in the rush.

Wednesday, December 18, 1940
Oh, world—the years so quickly gone—all the nice boys with the nice shadows in their faces . . . the war could kill them all—

Sunday, December 7, 1941
Well, Baby, it’s come, what we always knew would come, what we never quite believed in. And deathly calm all about it. No people in noisy excited little clusters on the streets. Only silent faces on the streetcars and laughing ones in windows. No excitement. Only it’s come. I hardly knew it, never believed in it. . . . Today, Japan declared war on the United States. She bombed Pearl Harbor and the Philippines while her diplomats were talking peace to Roosevelt. This afternoon at 2:30. My God, we never knew! We were drying dishes out at Evelyn’s place, and I churned butter and went for the well water with Ruth like Jack and Jill. . . . And the earth was turning and it had happened.

Tuesday, January 20, 1942
Mr. Benet was talking about diaries in history and I believe I have written mine with the intention of having it read someday. As a help, not only to the understanding of my time—but to the understanding of the individual–not as me—but as character development. Things we forget when we grow older are written here to remind us. . . . I rather like the idea of a social archeologist pawing over my relics.

So we readers are transformed into “social archeologists,” who read Miss Wehlen’s “relics” and ponder what it was like to grow up in such a time. I was in high school during the Vietnam War, but I doubt my diary, if I had one, would be nearly so interesting or insightful as Joan Wehlen’s is.

She calls Winston Churchill “Pigface”; she was apparently not a fan.

Breakfast on Mars, edited by Rebecca Stern and Brad Wolfe

Nov4

Breakfast on Mars and 37 Other Delectable Essays: Your Favorite Authors Take a Stab at the Dreaded Essay Assignment, edited by Rebecca Stern and Brad Wolfe.

These 38 essays by children’s and YA authors such as Elizabeth Winthrop, Rita Williams-Garcia, Kirsten Miller, Laurel Snyder, and Wendy Moss, are not your average English assignment, get it written and turn it in, essays. These essays sparkle. From the introduction to this collection:

“For too long, we have held essays captive in the world’s most boring zoo. We’ve taken all the wild words, elaborate arguments, and big hairy ideas found in essays, and we’ve poached them from their natural habitat. We’ve locked essays in an artificial home.

********
Essay, we must tame you We must squish you into five paragraphs, and we must give you so much structure that you cower in the corner, scared for your life.

The essay’s fate has long looked bleak. But do not despair, for change is brewing. In the following pages, you’ll catch a glimpse of something most people have never seen in the wild. We’ve let essays out of their cages, and we’ve set them loose. We’ve allowed them to go back to their roots.”

So, in this collection we have a variety of essays, all written with creativity and flair.

How about a personal essay: Ransom Riggs on “Camp Dread, or How to Survive a Shockingly Awful Summer”? It’s a new twist on “What I Did Last Summer.”

Or perhaps a persuasive essay on why we should (Chris Higgins) or shouldn’t (Chris Higgins again) colonize Mars or why the author (Kirsten Miller) believes “Sasquatch Is Out There (And He Wants Us to Leave Him Alone)” or “Why We Need Tails” by Ned Vizzini.

A character analysis essay on Princess Leia (Cecil Castellucci, who is a female, by the way) or Super Mario (Alan Gratz).

The authors take on subjects such as memories (Rita Williams-Garcia), time machines (Steve Almond), life before television (Elizabeth Winthrop), invisibility (Maile Meloy), humpback anglerfish (Michael Hearst) and names (Jennifer Lu).

Did you know you can write graphic essays with pictures (“Penguin Etiquette” by Chris Epting) or cartoons (“On Facing My Fears” by Khalid Birdsong)?

My favorite essay of the bunch, because it spoke to me as a parent, was Lena Roy’s “Sex, Drugs, and Rock ‘n’ Roll”. I won’t tell you the details of Ms. Roy’s adolescent adventures with being “cool”, but I will refer you to the essay in which her dad makes some very wise parenting decisions and gives the young Lena some very wise words to live by:

“Words matter, Lena. What we say about ourselves matter. The words we use to represent ourselves matter. You know that. We only have so many ways we can express ourselves, and words are the most powerful.”

These essays are examples for teens (and adults) of how words can matter in a good way, how, to use the title of yet another essay in this collection, “A Single Story Can Change Many Lives” (Craig Kielburger). It’s time for us all to start writing those stories— in un-squished, wild, and powerful essays.

What a great tool for teachers and what a great illustration of what the essay can be for students of all ages!

Bad Girls: Sirens, Jezebels, Murderesses, Thieves, & Other Female Villains by Heidi E.Y. Stemple and Jane Yolen

Nov1

Harlot or Hero? Liar or Lady? There are two sides to every story.

That tag line states the basic premise of this collection of tales about female villains and misunderstood molls of history. The book begins with Biblical bad girls Delilah, Jezebel and Salome, then moves on to Cleopatra, Anne Boleyn, Bloody Mary (Tudor), and my personal favorite: Countess Elisabeth Bathory, a Hungarian widow who did more than dabble in witchcraft. She killed hundreds of young women and girls so that she could bathe in their blood.

Actually, the story of Countess Bathory is a perfect example of the problem I had with this book. It’s lively and full of very human interest, but it’s also over-simplified and sensationalist, playing fast and loose with the known facts in the interest of engaging readers. In the chapters where I knew something bout the subjects, the story seemed just a tad embroidered. Here’s the Wikipedia take on “The Blood Countess”:

She has been labelled the most prolific female serial killer in history and is remembered as the “Blood Countess,” though the precise number of victims is debated. Her story results mainly from those who accused her and was apparently recorded more than 100 years after her death. It quickly became part of national folklore.
After her husband Ferenc NÃ¡dasdy’s death, she and four collaborators were accused of torturing and killing hundreds of girls, with one witness attributing to them over 650 victims, though the number for which they were convicted was 80. The purported witnesses testified to only 30-35 deaths. Supposedly due to her rank, Elizabeth herself was neither tried nor convicted, but promptly imprisoned upon her arrest in December 1610 within Csejte Castle, Upper Hungary, now in Slovakia, where she remained immured in a set of rooms until her death four years later.

And Wikipedia (not itself the most accurate source of information) later says that none of the witnesses actually said anything about the “bathing in blood” story. That tale grew up later. Although the authors discuss “context” over and over again in the cartoon summaries that follow each chapter in the book, there is very little context given in the text itself. But there is a lot of extra ahistorical information presented as fact.

Delilah is described as “young, beautiful, smart and sly” with “sexy eyelashes.” Then the authors tell us that after betraying Samson to the Philistines, “Delilah took her silver coins and left quickly.” The problem is that Judges chapter 16, the only historical source for the story of Delilah and Samson, says nothing about Delilah’s appearance or sexiness and nothing about her escape, although they could be deduced.

In the story of Jezebel, Jehu, the rebel commander gets a new line. Instead of saying “throw her down” when he orders the death of Jezebel, in Bad Girls he says, “Throw the witch queen down!” It’s much more dramatic, but not accurate according to, again, the only source for the story.

In Bad Girls, Salome is said to have danced the “dance of the seven veils.” The Bible simply says she danced. Oscar Wilde and Richard Strauss are the ones who added the “seven veils.”

Mary Tudor “hated the red-headed baby Elizabeth,” according to Stemple and Yolen. Really? Is there any evidence for this supposed hatred? One source I read indicates that Mary at least tolerated Elizabeth and taught her little sister to play the lute, that the two exchanged gifts and played cards together. Others say that Mary seemed fond of Elizabeth as they were growing up, but when Maary became queen and various Protestant plots to put Elizabeth on the throne in her place came to light, Mary understandably began to distrust her ambitious half-sister.

So, as the book continued with such infamous bad girls as Bonnie Parker, Calamity Jane, and Typhoid Mary, I was never sure exactly how factual and how fanciful the details of the stories were. In their introduction to Bad Girls, IF the authors had told us that these were their own versions of the stories of these women, what they imagined might have happened, I would have been much more comfortable with the book. It did get me interested in some of the women I had never heard of or didn’t know much about. I just think this book blurs the lines between fact and fiction too much, and the untrustworthiness of the narrative makes it of dubious value for readers who want to know what really happened.

Oh, and by the way, Bad Girls is not a graphic novel or “graphic nonfiction” despite the cover (great cover!) and the cartoon panel at the end of each bad girl story.

Lost in a Walker Percy Cosmos, Part 1

Oct26

A couple of months ago Eldest Daughter asked if I would like to accompany her to an academic conference in New Orleans in October. New Orleans in October with Eldest Daughter who is one of my favorite persons? Of course, I would love to go. Then, she told me the subject of the conference, “Still Lost in the Cosmos: Walker Percy & the 21st Century.”

Now I am not a fan, really, of Mr. Percy’s fiction. I say that, having read one, maybe two, books by Percy, The Moviegoer and another book long ago that I think was The Thanatos Syndrome. I remember people in trees(?) or sitting on flagpoles and something about poisoning the water supply and a priest and a doctor. It sounds like the beginning of a bad joke, and unfortunately that’s all I remember of the novel. The Moviegoer I read more recently, and according to Eldest Daughter herself, who is a fan, I just didn’t get it. I concur: I didn’t get it. The main character, Binx Bolling, was the kind of person who, if I were to meet him, I would feel strongly impelled to shake until he spits, as my mother would say. Existentialists (Percy had a thing for Kierkegaard) affect me that way, oddly enough.

Still I am a fan of Eldest Daughter and of a trip to New Orleans, and I like to feel as if I know what people are talking about when I listen to them speak. So in preparation for the conference I began reading Mr. Percy’s book, Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book. Lost in the Cosmos is not a novel, but rather a parody of the myriad of self-help books that tell us that we can categorize our angst and work it out in six easy steps or by repeating one mantra or by listening to the author who will tell us who we really are. The first part of the book is really quite clever as Percy gets the reader first to admit that “it [is] possible to learn more in ten minutes about the Crab Nebula in Taurus, which is 6,000 light-years away, than you presently know about yourself, even though you’ve been stuck with yourself all your life.” Then, through a series of “thought experiments”, Percy leads his readers to recognize the existential lostness that afflicts each of us: we are indeed lost in the cosmos.

So far, so clever. In the middle of the book, however, Percy stops for an extended tour of the science of semiotics, a word I had to look up in my handy, dandy dictionary. Semiotics is “the study of signs and symbols, and their use or interpretation.” (Clear as mud? No? You obviously need to undertake a serious study of semiotics.) This part of the book is called “A Semiotic Primer on the Self.” The print becomes much smaller, and the text much, much more dense. Diagrams are inserted, and footnotes abound. Percy himself writes, “The following section, an intermezzo of some forty pages, can be skipped without fatal consequences.” I skipped. Not only did I skip, I also skipped out and never managed to finish Lost in the Cosmos before the conference in New Orleans. The consequences were not fatal, but perhaps were an inhibition to my understanding of the presenters at the conference.

So, there you have a synopsis of my preparation for the Walker Percy conference at Loyola University in New Orleans. My preliminary studies were inadequate at best. However, I went with the expectation that I would be enriched and challenged by the conference speakers and satiated and enlivened by the food and sights of New Orleans. And Eldest Daughter is still one of my favorite people, even if she does understand Walker Percy when I do not.

Tomorrow, read part 2, Amnesia, Moby Dick, Gulliver’s Travels, and the Shadow of Catastrophe, or How to Title an Academic Paper on Walker Percy.

Lincoln’s Grave Robbers by Steve Sheinkin

Oct22

Well, this episode in history was news to me. At the same time, actually on election night, that Republican Rutherford B. Hayes was in a neck-in-neck election race with Democrat Samuel Tilden, a group of counterfeiters became would-be grave robbers. Their plan was to steal the body of America’s favorite and perhaps most revered president, Abraham Lincoln, and hold it for ransom.

Although the grave robbers come across in the book as incompetent at best, criminally idiotic at worst, the plot was real, as were the guns the criminals carried to Lincoln’s tomb on that election night in 1876. They were serious, and the Secret Service agents who were determined to catch them red-handed were just as deadly serious. Not only does the reader get to read about a little known historical crime, but also we get a vocabulary lesson in criminal and counterfeiting jargon of the late nineteenth century. How many of the following words can you define? (There’s a glossary in the back of the book to help those of us who are unfamiliar with criminal underworld vocabulary.)

Boodle game or boodle carrier
Coney or coney man
Shover
Cracksman
Hanging bee
Resurrectionist
Roper
Ghouls
To pipe (someone)
Bone orchard

And what would you think of reading the following sentence in your local newspaper about a group of escaped criminals?

“If human ingenuity can track them it will be done. It is earnestly hoped that the double-distilled perpetrators of this attempted robbery of the remains of America’s most loved President will soon be brought to justice.” ~reporter John English in The Chicago Tribune

Double-distilled perpetrators? My, how writing styles have changed!

I enjoyed Lincoln’s Grave Robbers mostly as look into history and the almost comical antics of both criminals and police in the post-Civil War time period. The politicians and journalists were somewhat hapless and disorganized as well. On the other hand, I hope that counterfeiters nowadays are not as successful as they back in the late 1800’s. Sheinkin notes that “by 1864 an astounding 50 percent of the paper money in circulation was fake.” And “the one and only task of the Secret Service was to stop the counterfeiters.”

What does all this fake money have to do with stealing poor Mr. Lincoln’s bones? Well, there’s a connection, and it’s rather surprising–and ridiculous. I don’t know how the grave robbers thought they were going to get away with such a plot. But try they did, and you can read all about it in Lincoln’s Grave Robbers.

Lincoln’s Grave Robbers by Steve Sheinkin has been nominated for the Cybils Award in the category of Young Adult Nonfiction. The thoughts in this review are my own and do not reflect the thoughts or evaluations of the Cybils panel or of any other Cybils judge.

Emancipation Proclamation: Lincoln and the Dawn of Liberty by Tonya Boldenn

Oct22

Award-winning children’s and young adult author Tonya Bolden “offers readers a unique look at an often misunderstood American document.” It is unique. Part 1 of this nonfiction book about the proclamation that “freed the slaves” begins with a quotation from Frederick Douglass, recounting the the atmosphere on Thursday, January 1, 1863 as about three thousand people waited at Tremont Temple in Boston for word from Washington, D.C. that the Emancipation Proclamation had been signed:

“We were waiting and listening as for a bolt from the sky . . . we were watching,as it were, by the dim light of the stars, for the dawn of a new day; we were longing for the answer to the agonizing prayers of centuries.”

Part 1 continues on in third person plural as if both author and reader were there, waiting, too. “We waited for all America to repent.” “We abhorred the compromise of 1850’s Fugitive Slave Law.” “Many of us put great faith in the fledgling Republican party.” Since I wasn’t there and since I’m not a “person of color”, I found the continued use of “we” and “us” to be off-putting, at best, confusing, at worst.

Then comes Part II which is written as straight third person history. The author tries to get behind the history and unravel the enigma of Lincoln’s thoughts and motivations, but like most other authors who’ve tired, she meets with limited success. Lincoln was “moody, prone to brooding,”; he “truly loathed slavery.” Yet, Lincoln told abolitionist Charles Edward Lester in regard to freeing the slaves, “We must wait until every other means has been exhausted. This thunderbolt will keep.” And so, throughout Part II of this narrative history, Lincoln is is pushed and pulled back and forth by the events of the Civil War and the politics of maintaining what there was left of the Union, and he proposes or considers first one solution and then another for the slaves: partial emancipation of some slaves, compensation to slaveholders, banning slavery in the territories, gradual emancipation, allowing escaped slavs (contraband) to enter the Union Army, confiscation of Confederate property including slaves, deportation of freed slaves and free black persons to Africa or South America.

Part III returns to the disconcerting “we” for a couple of pages (p. 75-76) and then, inexplicably, back to third person narrative voice. I compared the entire book to the old classic children’s history of the same vent that I have on my shelves, The Great Proclamation by Henry Steele Commager, published in 1960. Other than the fact, dissonant to modern ears, that Mr. Commager calls African Americans “Negroes”, the book differs from Ms. Bolden’s account of the same events in other ways. Commager paints Lincoln as an unadorned hero, bravely attempting in every way possible to free the slaves as quickly as practicable. Commager does not quote Lincoln’s famous statement in a letter to Horace Greeley in 1862:

“If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union.”

That statement of intent should be a part of any discussion of Lincoln and his attitude about emancipation, and Ms. Bolden includes it prominently in her book. Ms.Bolden’s book also has the great advantage of 21st century illustration techniques, layout and design. Mr. Commager’s text in a layout similar to that of Ms. Bolden’s book would be a great improvement. However, what Mr. Commager does well is tell the story of the “great proclamation” straight, without the confusing changes in point of view. So, in the end I think I would either go with Commager’s book or find something else that would be less poetic and and more attuned to current historical perspectives than either of these books. There seem to be several to choose from.

Other books for children on the Emancipation Proclamation (found on Amazon):
Lincoln, Slavery, and the Emancipation Proclamation by Carin T. Ford.
The Emancipation Proclamation by Karen Price Hossell.
The Emancipation Proclamation (Cornerstones of Freedom) by Brendan January and R. Conrad Stein.
The Emancipation Proclamation: Ending Slavery in America by Adam Woog.

Emancipation Proclamation: Lincoln and the Dawn of Liberty by Tonya Bolden has been nominated for the Cybils Award in the category of Young Adult Nonfiction. The thoughts in this review are my own and do not reflect the thoughts or evaluations of the Cybils panel or of any other Cybils judge.

Semicolon

Books we must have though we lack bread.

Archives