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Out and About by Shirley Hughes

Sep27

Hughes, Shirley. Out and About: A First Book of Poems. Candlewick, 2015. (U.S. edition)

Shirley Hughes is a well known author and illustrator on the other side of the pond in Britain. She has won the Kate Greenaway Medal for British children’s book illustrations twice –for her books Dogger and Ella’s Big Chance—and many more awards and honors for her work in writing and illustrating children’s books. The author blurb in my library copy of Out and About tells me that she illustrated more than two hundred children’s books in her lifetime. Ms. Hughes died in 2022.

Out and About is a collection of poems for each of the seasons, spring, summer, fall, and winter. Katie and her baby brother, Ollie, explore nature in the poems and pictures that fill this little 42 page picture book brimful to overflowing. The book begins with a poem called “Out and About” and a picture of Katie walking down the garden path while her baby brother stands in the doorway and watches her. The laundry is flapping in the breeze on the clothesline, birds are flying about, and it looks like an altogether lovely day to be outdoors. In some of the other poems Katie tells us why and how she likes mud and water and sand and wind. The entire book is an ode to nature and the changing seasons, and it would be a great addition to a nature study time or a poetry tea or any read aloud time with younger children.

The poems in this book reminded me of Robert Louis Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verses. Ms. Hughes’ poems are more impressionistic, like lists of images and brief reactions to them. However, they are, like Stevenson’s poems, about simple childhood experiences: going to the beach, playing in the snow and in the water, Christmas Day, climbing a hill and rolling down, walking in the rain, a fall harvest. I added this book to Picture Book Preschool under the heading of Wind and Weather because so many of the poems are about the seasonal changes in weather and about experiencing the outdoors.

One of my favorite hobbyhorses is the idea that children need to hear and enjoy lots of poetry: nursery rhymes, silly songs, RLS, A.A. Milne, Christina Rossetti, and more. Shirley Hughes’ Out and About: A First Book of Poems would be perfect for the poetry section of your library and of your morning time or read aloud time.

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

The Fishermen and the Dragon by Kirk Wallace Johnson

Apr2

The Fishermen and the Dragon: Fear, Greed, and a Fight for Justice on the Gulf Coast by Kirk Wallace Johnson, author of The Feather Thief.

The fact that most of this true story took place practically in my backyard had something to do with its fascination for me, I’m sure. Nevertheless, I would recommend the book to anyone since it speaks to many of the issues that are still open and debated in our time: racism, anti-immigrant sentiment, mob action, government corruption, corporate greed, environmental activism, and more. The book certainly doesn’t do much to enhance the reputation of my particular community. All I can say is that, although I feared doing so, I did not find any familiar names or events in the narrative. Most, if not all, of the events in this book were news to me, even though I live just up the road from Kemah and Seabrook where most the story takes place.

I did know of some unrest and antagonism between the fishermen in the Gulf of Mexico and along the Texas coast and the Vietnamese immigrants who were coming into the area in the aftermath of the Vietnam War. Many of these Vietnamese refugees were fishermen by heritage and trade, and it was natural for them to begin plying that trade along the Gulf Coast. It was also inevitable that there would be friction between these newcomers with a different language and culture and the Gulf Coast fishermen who were already struggling with decreased harvests of fish and other seafood and the poisoning of the bays where they made their living by petrochemical plants, oil spills, and and other hazards of modern life. But I thought the problem was over-fishing: not enough fish and too many fishermen.

But Mr. Johnson’s book shows that the problem was much more racial and cultural than economic. Yes, there was a problem with over-fishing, but only because pollutants were destroying many of the prime fishing areas. And generally the Vietnamese were willing to work longer and harder, often with the entire family pitching in to help, than the predominantly white fishermen were accustomed to working. So the Vietnamese got more fish. It wasn’t fair! They must be communists!

As tensions grew, a Vietnamese man killed a white “crabber” (crab fisherman) in self-defense. Then the KKK became involved, and the Southern Poverty Law Center, and everything became much more theatrical and at the same time more enflamed and dangerous. And one lone woman was trying with her own theatricals to direct attention toward the encroaching danger of environmental pollution and corporate malfeasance while everyone else was either (the white guys) busy burning crosses and torching shrimp boats or (the Vietnamese) trying to protect their homes, families and livelihoods from the racist Klansmen.

It’s a fascinating story, and I only wonder what’s happened since this book was published in 2022. Near the end of the story, the author says that most of the shrimp consumed in the U.S. nowadays comes breaded and frozen from shrimp farms in Asia. It’s cheaper that way, and the shrimping industry along the Gulf Coast is minimal. “There were hardly any shrimp left in the bays,” writes Mr. Johnson. “Ninety percent of all shrimp consumed in America was now imported.” It’s a sad story.

When We Were Very Young by A.A. Milne

Jan8

Just as I was making my way through this collection of poems by Winnie-the-Pooh creator, A.A. Milne, I saw someone fretting about reading these very poems as a part of her homeschool curriculum (Ambleside Online). She says they have been reading the poems aloud, and “Honestly I don’t get it. The kids ask me what it was about and I honestly have no clue.”

I sympathize. A lot of poetry used to make no sense to me. Then I learned to just enjoy the rhyme and the rhythm and the language and the word pictures for what they are: just fun, although sometimes serious or thoughtful, turning things round and upside down, and looking at the world from a different perspective. It doesn’t need to all make sense. The poems in When We Were Very Young look at life from a child’s point of view, a British child of the early twentieth century, and that can be disorienting. But it can also be fun.

Have you ever thought about the clouds looking up at the green sky? What about a mother who gets lost because she won’t obey her son with a ridiculously long name? What’s the one thing you think you would remember from a trip to the zoo? (“But I gave buns to elephant when I went down to the zoo!“) And what is the matter with Mary Jane? And what would you do if you were king (or queen)?

These poems aren’t meant to be got (understood). They are just intended to be enjoyed. I recommend When Were Very Young and the other Milne collection of poems, Now We Are Six, for family read aloud to all ages. A poem a day keeps the doctor away. Just read the poem out loud in your very best rhythmic and ridiculous voice. No commentary or explanation. If they ask, ask them what they think. Just read and move along. Think of them as nursery rhymes, for that is what they are, and jolly good ones, too.

When We Were Very Young was first published in 1924, and I read it as part of our 1924 project. 100 years after its first appearance, this book of silly little poems is still a living book.

Captain Cook Explores the South Seas by Armstrong Sperry

Sep9

Captain Cook Explores the South Seas by Armstrong Sperry. World Landmark #19.

The book’s title is a bit of a misnomer: James Cook didn’t explore just the South Seas. He went almost everywhere: starting in England, then Canada, the Arctic, the Antarctic, the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii), Tahiti, Cape Horn, the Cape of Good Hope, Alaska, Melanesia, Micronesia, New Zealand, Australia, and all points in between. He went on three voyages of exploration, and boy, did he explore. And he started out as a farmer’s son and ended up as captain of his own ship and leader of the three afore-mentioned expeditions, gaining fame and glory and all sorts of scientific information, maps, charts, botanic specimens, paintings, and other discoveries on behalf of the Royal Society and the British Admiralty.

All of the Landmark books that I have read are well written, but I think this one is one of the best in terms of excellent writing and storytelling. Cook’s adventurous life and rags to riches story lends itself to the creation of an adventure story, and Sperry’s telling of the story does not disappoint. He begins the tale as thirteen year old James Cook leaves his home to take up an apprenticeship that will bring him near the sea:

“That August morning in the year 1741, the early sun was as bright as a promise of good fortune. It cast a light of gold over the rolling moors of Yorkshire, on fat sheep grazing in the fields. It lay warm as a blessing on the shoulders of the boy who followed so eagerly an empty road that stretched forever away from Great Ayton.

Mark that boy well, Reader! For young James Cook–tall for his thirteen summers, and with all his belongings swinging in a bundle at the end of a stick–had set forth on a great adventure. Although in years to come he was to travel farther over the earth’s surface than any man before him, perhaps this first youthful journey was the most momentous of all. It set the pattern of his future.”

Armstrong Sperry, author of the Newbery award story, Call It Courage, traveled in the South Seas himself, and learned both French and Tahitian. Sperry was also a Navy veteran and interested in all things nautical, and he was a talented artist whose illustrations for this book about Captain Cook are exquisite and fully supportive of the lively narrative text. Sperry wrote two other books for the Landmark series, The Voyages of Christopher Columbus and John Paul Jones, Fighting Sailor as well as several other nautical-themed fiction books for children. I am eager to read some of his other books since the writing in this one is so very good.

A couple of content considerations: Sperry describes the “savages”, both of North America (Canada) and of the Pacific islands, in mostly unflattering terms. Cook described the islanders in particular as primitive, thieving, and unhygienic, reserving the term “handsome” for the Tahitians and the Hawaiians only. So that’s how Sperry describes them. And the life and travels of Captain James Cook do not end well. He gets into a dispute, perhaps a misunderstanding, with the king and people of the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii), and he is killed on the beach by a Hawaiian war club wielded by one of the king’s warriors.

Despite the content considerations, I highly recommend Captain Cook Explores the South Seas, maybe along with a book told more from the perspective of the native islanders. The Last Princess, The Story of Princess Ka’iulani of Hawaii by Fay Stanley is one possibility. Another Landmark about Hawaii (which I haven’t read) is Hawaii, Gem of the Pacific by Oscar Lewis.

The Voyages of Henry Hudson by Eugene Rachlis

Aug16

The Voyages of Henry Hudson, World Landmark #54, is all about the quest “to discover a passage by the North Pole to Japan and China.” The first attempts to find a way to Asia via the North Pole were not directed at finding the Northwest Passage but rather a number of dangerous and ultimately fruitless journeys north up the coast of Greenland and then east to find a way north of Norway and Russia to get to China and Japan. Hudson’s first two voyages were unsuccessful as he was following this route.

But Henry Hudson, encouraged by the stories of his friend Captain John Smith, thought that the passage to the East lay to the west in the New World. So in his third and fourth voyages, Hudson wanted to go west, but most people still thought that he should try going east again—or that the whole idea of a passage to the to Asia in the northern seas was hopeless. And so it was. The fourth and last voyage was a total failure: the ship was trapped in the ice, food ran low, the crew mutinied, and Hudson was abandoned in the ship’s boat in icy waters never to be heard from again.

So why is Hudson remembered, and why are a major river and and a bay named for him? Well, he didn’t discover the Northwest Passage because there is no Northwest Passage, but he did pave the way for Europeans, Dutch, French, Swedish, and English, to map the New World and to begin to settle it and eventually build two nations, Canada and the United States.

Henry Hudson was one of the earliest ship’s captains to keep a meticulous ship’s log. There’s a note on sources in the back of this Landmark book, and author Eugene Rachlis tells readers:

“All the known documents pertaining to Hudson are available. Some are scarce and can be found only in the reference rooms of major libraries. Others, or at least parts of them, are more readily obtainable. Those in Dutch and Latin have been translated into English. The Hudson documents are the major sources for the facts in this book, along with a dozen or so other books which provided material on the items in which Hudson lived, the places he visited and the people he saw.”

For those who are studying Canada and Canadian history, this book, along with World Landmark #8, Royal Canadian Mounted Police by Richard Neuberger and #24 The Hudson’s Bay Company by Richard Morenus would provide a good introduction to the Canadian story. Other Landmarks that impinge upon Canadian history are Evangeline and the Acadians by Robert Tallant, Rogers’ Rangers and the French and Indian War by Bradford Smith, General Brock and Niagara Falls by Samuel Hopkins Adams, and The Alaska Gold Rush by May McNeer.

The Hudson’s Bay Company by Richard Morenus

Aug14

This Landmark history book is really about the French voyageurs and the men of the Hudson’s Bay Company: Pierre Radisson, Medart Chouart des Groseilliers, Le Moyne d’Iberville, Henry Kelsey, Alexander MacKenzie, James Knight, Louis Riel.. And it’s about the fur trade and the ongoing centuries-long dispute between the French, the British, and the Native Americans over who would control that fur trade and reap the riches to be gained from it.

The focus of the book is Canadian history, although events do dip down south of the Canadian American border from time to time. This spotlight on Canada only makes sense since The Hudson’s Boy Company is World Landmark #24, not American. The story features a lot of fightin’ and cheatin’ and thievin’ between 1649 when the book opens and the first half of the twentieth century when it ends. Mr. Morenus chronicles all the ups and downs of the the fur trade and the men who were engaged in it, and he uses language that was appropriate for 1956 when the book was published but may sound jarring to twenty-first century ears (words such as Indian, half-breed, Eskimo, savages).

No one, except for the Royal Canadian Mounties who “brought law to the West and kept it”, is a complete hero in this story. The voyageurs are hardworking, brave, skilled, thieves, poachers, and cutthroats. The Native Americans (in Canada nowadays the correct term is First Nations peoples) are cunning, sometimes friendly, sometimes violent, victimized and drugged with alcohol by the white men. The British and French military and governing authorities are mostly greedy, power hungry, and willing to do almost anything to maintain control of the fur trade. Maybe the fifth Earl of Selkirk who brought a large number of Scots to colonize various parts of Canada, could be considered a “good guy”, but he didn’t have a happy ending. And Alexander MacKenzie seems to have been an intrepid explorer. But the rest of these guys are not anyone you would want to meet in a dark alley.

Anyway, the Hudson’s Bay Company ruled a great portion of Canada for many years. In fact, Hudson’s Bay Company was thought by some to be more powerful and certainly richer than the British government of Canada itself. Now they are a department store conglomerate, also in the real estate and investments business. Their history is integral to the history of Canada and of the northern United States.

Read more about Canada and Canadian history:

  • The Royal Canadian Mounted Police, a World Landmark book by Richard Neuberger, tells more about the Mounties who brought law and order to Rupert’s Land, the territory of the Hudson’s Bay Company.
  • The Canadian Story by May McNeer gives a brief introduction to the sweep of Canadian history, with short chapters for elementary age children.
  • Alexander MacKenzie: Canadian Explorer by Ronald Syme tells of the explorer who made the first journey across Canada to the Pacific coast.
  • The Real Book about Canada by Lyn Harrington is another accessible history/geography narrative about the Canadian story.

The Explorations of Pere Marquette by Jim Kjelgaard

Apr4

Jim Kjelgaard was just the guy for the Landmark book series editors to ask to write about an intrepid explorer of the wilderness. Father Marquette, a Jesuit priest of the seventeenth century, along with his explorer buddy Louis Joliet, were the first Europeans to explore the Mississippi from the north in Wisconsin down to the place where the Arkansas River joins the Mississippi. Father Marquette wrote about all of the peoples, plants , and animals, that he and his fellow explorers found as they travelled down the Mississippi, and he returned to Green Bay in Wisconsin to tell of his adventures to the French governor and others.

Because Father Marquette worked among the Indian tribes in Michigan and Wisconsin and was also one of the first Europeans and Christians to minister to the Illinois Indians and the first to camp near the site of the present-day of Chicago, this book would make an excellent addition to the study of the state histories of Illinois, Wisconsin, and Michigan. In the foreword to the book historian and Jesuit R.N. Hamilton writes:

“What makes this book most interesting is that Jim Kjelgaard has based all but two incidents on the life of Father Marquette, S.J. The stories of the wounded Indian and the finding of game on the South Lakes, while not recorded of Father Marquette, are, as we know from the writings of Jesuits who were his fellow laborers, typical of what he would have done in the circumstances.”

There are content considerations for the book, however. While some individual Native Americans who appear in the story are described as handsome, strong, and courageous, the Indians as a whole group and as individual tribal groups are usually characterized as improvident, unsanitary, poor, and of course, savage. Since this was truly how the early Europeans saw the Native Americans they met in the New World, and since Father Marquette and other Jesuit missionaries were compassionate and eager to improve the physical and spiritual condition of the Native Americans they came to serve, I don’t have a problem with this characterization. I don’t believe that all cultures are equally conducive to human thriving or to honoring the God who made us, so I have no issue with the idea that the Europeans had much that was good and needed to share with with their Native American brothers. And the Native American people had things to teach the Europeans, but that aspect is not emphasized in this book.

Jim Kjelgaard wrote one other book in the Landmark series, The Coming of the Mormons, one Signature biography, The Story of Geronimo, and the historical fiction book, We Were There at the Oklahoma LandRun. Kjelgaard is also responsible for many beloved animal stories, including Big Red, Irish Red, and Outlaw Red, all dog stories. An outdoorsman and a lover of American history and adventure in particular, Mr. Kjelgaard tells the story of Father Marquette and his explorations in an engaging way that will appeal to young, beginning outdoorsmen and adventurers.

The Pirate Lafitte and the Battle of New Orleans by Robert Tallant

Mar20

Another book in the Landmark series, this narrative nonfiction book introduces history buffs and pirate readers to Jean Lafitte and his brother Pierre who were quite a pair. Pirates or patriots or both? You can read the book and decide for yourself, but at the very least, the brothers Lafitte were a bundle of human contradictions and secrets and even heroics.

Contradictions: They were rich, educated, and urbane, but they lived for the most part in the swamps of Barataria, near New Orleans, where Jean Lafitte ruled over a rascally crew of over a thousand pirates with an iron fist. He was beloved by these men who would do almost anything for him. Jean and Pierre made a great deal of their money selling Africans into slavery, and yet their crew included men of every skin color and nationality.

Secrets: Hardly anything is known about Jean’s and Pierre’s youth and childhood. They appeared on the scene in New Orleans in about 1803 when Jean was twenty-four years old and Pierre a year or two older. They were at first privateers with a letter of marque but may later have become pirates. Jean hated Spain and the Spanish and said that he only plundered Spanish ships. Their other enemy who tried to have them imprisoned, tried and executed was American Governor William Claiborne, but they somehow became Claiborne’s friends and allies when New Orleans was threatened with a British takeover during the War of 1812. Then there’s also the secret of what happened to the Lafitte brothers after they were evicted from their second pirate lair on Galveston Island. No one knows.

Heroics: It is not too much to say that had it not been for Jean Lafitte’s loyalty to his adopted country of the United States, Louisiana, at least New Orleans, might be a British possession today. The British invaders had 12,000 men and vastly superior ships and weapons. General Jackson who led the American defense had about 700 regulars and access to a militia of about 1000 men. Then Jean Lafitte and Pierre Lafitte volunteered along with their crew of about 1000 Baratarians, and the British were defeated.

The Pirate Lafitte and the Battle of New Orleans gives children and adults an introduction to a fascinating time and event in American history. Read it as you are learning about Lewis and Clark or the War of 1812 or the Louisiana Purchase or Louisiana history—or just for fun and one more books about pirates, maybe. “People still argue about whether or not he (Jean Lafitte) was a pirate. They even search the marshes for buried treasure that they never find.”

May you find the buried treasure you’re looking for in all the Landmark books you read.

The Rise and Fall of Adolf Hitler by William L. Shirer

Feb14

What would lead a person to read an entire book, even a children’s middle grade nonfiction book, that takes the reader inside the life and mind of Adolf Hitler, the arch-villain of the twentieth century? Well, there’s something rather fascinating about trying to understand how Hitler became Hitler, synonymous with the most evil, murderous, racist, anti-Semitic dictator and warmonger ever. William L. Shirer, author of the 1000+ page tome, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (for adults), was in a position to study this question and come to some kind of conclusions, if anyone from the Allied side of the war was. As an American correspondent in Berlin, Shirer actually met Hitler, listened to many of his spell-binding speeches, and observed him over the course of several years before and during World War II. The result of Shirer’s observations and his journalist’s eye for character and for a story is this book, written for children in the Landmark history series, but suited to readers of all ages.

Shirer begins his book with eleven year old Adolf, showing an independent streak even at that young age in aspiring to become an artist instead of the civil servant his father wanted him to be. I learned a lot about Hitler that I never knew before from this book, and I was reminded of a few “home truths” along the way. After his art career bombed because the art school wouldn’t let him in, said he had no talent, Herr Hitler became a tramp without a real job for several years, but a very well read tramp. He read and studied all the time while working very little. First lesson: readers may become leaders, but they may also become very bad leaders.

Chapter 7 of the book is called “Hitler Falls in Love,” and it tells a story I never knew or else had forgotten. In this chapter of the book and of Hitler’s life, he falls hard for his half-niece, the daughter of his half-sister. Her name was Gell Raubal, and Hitler declared after her death that she was the only woman he ever truly loved. You can read the story in Shirer’s book and decide for yourself whether or not “loved” is the right word to describe Hitler’s controlling obsession with a girl half his age. (The story of their brief “romance” is tastefully told, appropriate for middle grade and older children who will read the book, but icky nonetheless.)

After this personal interlude, the book moves on to Hitler’s political actions and aspirations and quickly into the war years. As he becomes more and more successful, in politics and in war, and gains more and more power, Hitler becomes more and more deranged. Shirer calls him “beyond any question a dangerous, irresponsible megalomaniac.” And yet (next paragraph) Hitler is able to maintain power, and be “so cool and cunning in his calculations and so bold in carrying them out that few could doubt that he well might be the military genius that he claimed to be.” This lead me to another unpleasant truth: a mentally ill egomaniacal murderer can act in a very lucid and intelligent manner for a long time. It is possible to be cunning, bold, and crazy.

Of course, this book chronicles the rise and fall of Hitler, so the craziness does come to an end. Shirer is to be commended for his ability to tell the story in a way that is appropriate for older children, but also truthful and candid in its presentation of Hitler’s horribly destructive life and actions. The book doesn’t completely explain the quandary of why the German people were so enamored of Herr Hitler or how he was able to fool so many people for so long into believing in his “genius”, but it does document in a very readable and engaging style, the rise and fall of a man who was “a power-drunk tyrant whom absolute power had corrupted absolutely.”

I recommend Shirer’s book for its insight and as a cautionary tale for those who would place their faith in any political leader. Hitler is dead, but it is still quite possible to be fooled by a seemingly lucid and benign leader who is actually a wolf in disguise.

Download a list of the entire Landmark history series in chronological order.

Evangeline and the Acadians by Robert Tallant

Feb8

This Landmark book, #74 in the series, published in 1957 (the year I was born), tells the story of the Acadians, or Cajuns as they came to be called in Louisiana and Texas, who were exiled from their homes in Nova Scotia. These Acadians were French farmers who settled in Nova Scotia when it was named Acadia by the French, and they were forced to leave Nova Scotia by the British who distrusted them and questioned their loyalty during the many years of war between France and Britain.

It’s a sad story. Tallant compares the plight of the Acadians to the Jewish Holocaust of World War II. While the Acadians were not taken to extermination camps, they were torn from their homes and dispersed up and down the Eastern seaboard, with many of them ending up in prisons or forced labor or just poverty. Families were separated, and many Acadians died on crowded, unsanitary ships or in homelessness after they reached shore.

So my question was: how did so many of the Acadians end up in southwestern Louisiana where they made a new home for themselves? To find out, you’ll have to read the book, or do your own research. It’s a fascinating saga, and Longfellow’s famous poem, Evangeline, only tells a small, fictionalized part of the story. As indicated in the title, Tallant refers to Longfellow’s poem over and over again throughout the book, and readers of Tallant’s book can learn a good bit about what parts of the poem are fiction and what parts are true. The fictional character, Evangeline, looking for her lost love, Gabriel, made the Acadians famous the nineteenth century, and today Cajun culture and history is celebrated in food, song, dance, literature, and entertainment.

Evangeline and the Acadians not only gives the history of the Acadians, but since those Acadian people were a large part of the history of Louisiana itself, the book is a sort of capsule history of the state of Louisiana. Mr. Tallant wrote two other books in the Landmark series, The Louisiana Purchase and The Pirate Lafitte and the Battle of New Orleans, and the three books taken together would be an excellent introduction for elementary and middle school students to the culture and history of Louisiana (and even southeast Texas). If I were helping my students of Louisiana heritage to study the history of their own state and region, I would certainly read these three Landmark books with them.

Of course, as I said these books were published in the 1950’s. The last two chapters of Evangeline and the Acadians talks about Cajun life and culture “today.” Children who read the book might need to be reminded that the “today’ of 1957 was much different from the twenty-first century “today.” I doubt very many Cajuns speak French as a first language nowadays or even use Cajun English dialect as the Cajun people have become even more assimilated into the greater American culture.

In addition to this book and the other two Landmark books by Robert Tallant, for those interested in the history and culture of Louisiana and of the Acadians, I would recommend:

Picture Books

  • Freedom in Congo Square by Carole Boston Weatherford.
  • Through My Eyes by Ruby Bridges.
  • If I Only Had a Horn: Young Louis Armstrong by Roxanne Orgill.
  • Mr. Williams by Karen Barbour.
  • Little Pierre: A Cajun Story from Louisiana by Robert San Souci.

Children’s books