When the Sky Falls by Phil Earle

2022 Middle Grade Fiction: When the Sky Falls by Phil Earle.

I received a review copy of this book, originally published in Great Britain in 2021, and scheduled for publication in April of 2022 in the U.S. The tagline on the front of my ARC says, “Friendship can come from unexpected places,” and that line does summarize at least one of the themes of this story. In 1940, with his parents unavailable and his grandmother unable to control him, twelve year old Joseph Palmer isn’t to London (instead of being evacuated out of the city) to live with his grandmother’s old friend, Mrs. F.

Joseph is filled with anger, rebellious and quick to take offense from the hurts he has sustained in his short life. When he finds out that Mrs. F. is the sole proprietor of a run-down, war torn zoo in the heart of the city, with most of the animals either sent away or barely surviving, Joseph is even more confused and angry with his grandmother for sending him away, with his father for leaving to go to war, with Mrs. F. for her unyielding personality, with the whole world and the war and “Herr Hitler” and just about everything else, including the silver back gorilla called Adonis.

Joseph continues throughout most of the book to be a prickly and rage-filled character, although we do learn some of the underlying reasons for Joseph’s anger and inability to trust. And just as Adonis is not a tame gorilla (there is no such thing), Joseph is not so much tamed as educated, learning that his impulsive anger and rage do not really serve him well as he navigates the city and the zoo during a war that takes and takes and takes away all that is good and hopeful. Mrs. F. says, at one point in the story, “I hate this war. All of it. All it does is take.”

The story is good. Joseph does grow and learn over the course of the book, in a believable story arc that ultimately ends in both tragedy and hope. But . . . the writing and the details felt a little off in some way. Rough. There’s some language, using God’s name in vain and a few curses sprinkled through, but that wasn’t the real problem. Joseph nurses his rage and anger over and over, and I just couldn’t see where it went, what it really was that redeemed him or relieved him of his fear and hatred. Mrs. F. says more than once that there’s something good deep down inside Joseph. Joseph and Adonis do form a connection, or perhaps even a friendship. And the friendship and loyalty of Mrs. F. and others with whom Joseph lives and works become important to him.

Nevertheless, even with a “four years later” epilogue chapter at the end, the story felt unresolved. I think it would be absolutely traumatizing for animal lovers in the younger end of the middle grades. Joseph’s age, twelve, is a good minimum age for reading this harrowing, but somewhat hopeful, tale. It is a war story, and maybe it would be helpful for middle grade and young adult readers who are having to deal with the horrors of war, at least in the news, again, in Ukraine and elsewhere.

I’m ambivalent. It’s certainly not James Herriot and All Creatures Great and Small, but it might resonate with readers who need something a bit more grim and gritty, but still with a glimmer of hope.

Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro

Mar30

I didn’t know that Kazuo Ishiguro won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2017. I must have been busy the day that was announced. At any rate, I’m fairly sure he deserves the honor. There are layers of meaning in his latest novel, Klara and the Sun, and I’m not at all sure I got all or even most of them.

I don’t want to write too much about the plot of the novel because half of the fun is figuring out as you read what exactly is going on, who Klara is, what her abilities are, what this society and culture she lives in is like. We do know from the beginning of the story that Klara is an AF, and Artificial Friend, and what that means for Klara and for the teenager for whom she becomes an AF, is played out over the course of the novel.

The book asks some important questions about life and death: is death something to be avoided at all costs? What would you sacrifice to avoid dying? What would you sacrifice to keep someone you love alive?

Also there are questions about life and love: what is the essence of a human being? What is it you love when you say that you love someone? Is human love eternal, lifelong, and if it’s not, is it really love at all? Is the essence of love self sacrifice or imitation or something else? Is love letting go or holding close or both?

And finally, the questions are about technology and our relationship to it: is technology good or bad? Is it killing us or replacing us or enhancing our humanity? Can we become, through technological means, gene therapy or some other futuristic tinkering with our bodies and brains and genetics, something superhuman, better than human? Or are we losing something precious, our very humanity, when we try to create (super)man in the image of a god instead of living as a created being, under the authority of God, imago Dei?

My reviews of other books by Sir Ishiguro:

I look forward to reading more books by Kashuo Ishiguro, and I will be thinking about the implications of the story of Klara and the Sun for a good while. (Fell free to discuss details and spoilers in the comments. I’d love to hear your thoughts if you’ve read the book.)

Over in the Meadow by John Langstaff

Mar28

Over in the Meadow by John Langstaff, illustrated by Feodor Rojankovsky.

Over in the meadow 
In the sand in the sun  
Lived an old mother turtle and her little turtle one. 
"Dig," said the mother, 
"I dig," said the one; 
So he dug and was glad in the sand in the sun.

John Meredith Langstaff was a musician and music educator who wrote children’s picture books, produced music education videos for the BBC, and published songbooks, music, and texts, all emphasizing traditional and folk songs and music. He started something called The Christmas Revels in New York City in 1957, and later in Cambridge, Massachusetts. These amateur performances involved singing, dancing, recitals, theatrics, and usually some audience participation, all appropriate to the holiday season. Langstaff died in 2005, but his Revels still go on in select cities across the United States at Christmas time.

Langstaff, of course, didn’t originate the lyrics for the song, Over in the Meadow, but neither did Olive A. Wadsworth, aka Katherine Floyd Dana, who is credited with writing the poem, Over in the Meadow, in several places online. Katherine Floyd Dana (under the pen name Olive A. Wadsworth) wrote down the words to the song that she heard possibly in Appalachia or the Ozarks, and Mabel Wood Hill notated the music. The words and music together were published in the book Kit, Fan, Tot, and the Rest of Them by the American Tract Society in 1870. Langstaff’s version of the lyrics is much different from Wadsworth’s, using different animals, and different actions, and different descriptions. It’s an old counting rhyme that may trace back to the 16th century, and there are many different versions.

There are also several picture book versions of the song available, including one illustrated by Ezra Jack Keats, another by Anna Vojtech, and yet another illustrated by one of my favorite picture book artists, Paul Galdone. Still, my favorite for this song is this Langstaff/Rojandovsky partnership version. I like Langstaff’s lyrics, and Rojankovsky’s illustrations are delightful, just busy enough without overwhelming, with lots of endearing animal detail. The beavers build; the spiders spin; the owls wink; and the chipmunks play—all the way up to ten rabbits who hop.

If you’re looking for more folk songs in picture book form, I would suggest:

Old MacDonald Had a Farm, illustrated by Lorinda Bryan Cauley. Putnam, 1989.
Hush, Little Baby, illustrated by Margot Zemach. Dutton, 1976.
Frog Went A’Courtin’ by John Langstaff, illustrated by Feodor Rojankovsky. Harcourt, 1967.
Mary Wore Her Red Dress, and Henry Wore His Green Sneakers, adapted and illustrated by Merle Peek. Clarion, 1985.
Fox Went out on a Chilly Night, illustrated by Peter Spier. Doubleday, 1961.

All of these folk song picture books are listed in my Picture Book Preschool curriculum guide. Picture Book Preschool is a preschool/kindergarten curriculum which consists of a list of picture books to read aloud for each week of the year and a character trait, a memory verse, and activities, all tied to the theme for the week. You can purchase a downloadable version (pdf file) of Picture Book Preschool by Sherry Early at Biblioguides.

O. Henry by Jeanette Covert Nolan

Mar18

O. Henry: The Story of William Sydney Porter by Jeanette Covert Nolan.

O. Henry, aka William Sydney Porter, led a colorful life, but he was a retiring and secretive man. As his biographer says, “his autobiography, if set down, would probably have been scorned as a travesty on truth by the instructors of proper college writing classes.” Born and raised in North Carolina, he moved to Texas as a young man, married an Austin girl from a wealthy family, fathered a daughter, became a journalist, owned a newspaper for a short while, worked in a bank, was accused of embezzlement, fled the country, returned to be with his dying wife, and was convicted of a felony and imprisoned in Ohio. All this happened while he was still a young man, in his thirties, and before he began to make his reputation as a writer of exquisitely crafted short stories that became both popular with common readers and respected in literary circles.

Ms. Nolan’s biography of O. Henry/Porter, written for young adults, is obviously sympathetic to Porter, portraying him as wrongly convicted of embezzlement and mostly confused and mistaken in his decision to flee justice, deserting his wife and child for a brief time. His wife, Athol, seems unnaturally supportive, saying in her letters only that she believed in his innocence but that they would have to remain apart as long as he was a fugitive since she was too ill to join him in Honduras where he fled. And Nolan glosses over Porter’s alcoholism–he died of cirrhosis of the liver and other ailments—and says only that he drank heavily but was always a perfect gentleman. Porter comes across as a lonely and tragic figure, shrouded in mystery, but likable, jovial, and humorous with all who knew him in his after-prison days.

This approach to telling the story of Porter’s life makes the biography a gentle story, somewhat melancholy, but ultimately hopeful. Nolan describes Porter as a “rather stout and mild-mannered man, timidly smiling, respectably dressed–dark suit, blue tie, yellow gloves in his right hand, and maybe a malacca cane, too; and the buttonhole of his coat the little Cecil Brunner rosebud which he had bought that very morning at the flower-stand one the corner of Madison Square.” The entire book inclines one to think of Porter fondly, much as his short stories portray most of their characters, mistaken at times but “more sinned against.”

However, Ms. Nolan makes a strategic error when she includes in her story references to the Ku Klux Klan, apparently active in Porter’s boyhood hometown of Greensboro, North Carolina. I’m not sure why Ms. Nolan even felt it necessary to mention the Klan, but she does. And when she does, while she has Porter’s father argue that the “Klan is as hateful in theory as in practice,” she also has him say that “the average Negro is still an inarticulate creature, not far removed from the primitive; he doesn’t know what he’s doing or why.” In these first few chapters of the book about William Porter’s boyhood there’s a whole thread of apology for the Klan and for the hatred of Southerners for Reconstruction and the Northern interlopers it bought to the South. And the fear, pity, and contempt of Southerners for their formerly enslaved Black neighbors is quite evident and articulated plainly. It made me wonder: if Nolan could sympathize with the underlying fears and prejudices that gave rise to the Klan, what other dark episodes and secrets would she spin in a positive way? (And Nolan was Indiana born and bred, so it’s not as if she was a Southerner herself.)

At any rate, I still enjoyed reading this biography of William Sydney Porter, and it made me want to pull out some of his short stories and re-read them. Book does lead on to book in a never-ending chain.

Interesting side-note: William Porter made friends in New York City during the latter half of his life, mostly in the publishing world. One of those friends was Gelett Burgess, author of Goops and How To Be Them and its sequels, and also the famous ditty, “I Never Saw a Purple Cow.”

I never saw a Purple Cow,
I never hope to see one;
But I can tell you, anyhow,
I’d rather see than be one.

Ruth by Elizabeth Gaskell

Mar14

She braved the opprobrium of her husband’s Unitarian congregation, in part for her depiction of prostitution and illegitimacy, particularly in her novel Ruth, and also for her challenge to the traditional view of women’s role in society.
Elizabeth Gaskell biography: The Gaskell Society

Various critics and biographers describe Mrs. Gaskell’s writings as “old-fashioned”, “warm hearted”, “melodramatic”, and even “over-wrought”. Some of the feminists have taken her up as a “proto-feminist”, although her portrayal of female characters seems to me to be most conservative and traditional. Ruth, Mrs. Gaskell’s story about a “fallen woman”, portrays the title character as woman bound to lifelong penance and disgrace, with maybe a possible inkling of a chance to become a saint at last.

I tend to think of sin “but lightly”. Sin is something to be repented, forsaken, and forgotten. Modern psychology and evangelical Christianity would say that this is a healthy way to think about the wrongs that we do to one another. In fact, moderns would go a step further, reclassifying many of the sins that horrified the Victorians and those who came before them as human foibles and minor eccentricities. Adultery, fornication, all the sexual sins as well as greed, jealousy, envy, and conceit are not really SIN, but just a difference of opinion or the way a certain person deals with life.

In Ruth, characters are crushed by their own sin and horrified and judgmental about the sin of others. Not just Ruth herself, but other people in the book judge themselves or others harshly when they perceive that their actions have broken God’s law or the social code of Victorian society. Mrs. Gaskell shows in Ruth how this judgmental and unforgiving attitude is unfair and limiting, often pushing sinners back into the sin they would choose to leave, if permitted. Ruth in the book is allowed to repent and to live a reformed life, but the weight of her sin is ever present, and the consequences of her youthful actions are visited on her illegitimate son as he is called upon to suffer for Ruth’s sin.

Maybe there’s a balance somewhere in there. I don’t believe we need to live with guilt and shame weighing us down so much that we become like Ruth, some kind of shadow people, who never feel worthy or whole enough to live in the light of God’s forgiveness and grace. Ruth is self-abnegating to the point of being nearly suicidal. But . . .

If you think of sin but lightly
nor suppose the evil great,
here may view its nature rightly,
here its guilt may estimate.
Mark the sacrifice appointed,
see who bears the awful load;
’tis the Word, the Lord’s anointed,
Son of Man and Son of God.

Our sin is great, but God’s mercy is greater. I suppose that’s the balance we need to strike. And if Mrs. Gaskell’s sometimes melodramatic and devastating portrayal of sin and its consequences can swing the pendulum back toward a truer vision of our need for repentance, then it’s not a bad antidote for a society bent on denying that sin is sin or need have any negative consequences at all.

I thought Ruth gave a good picture of Victorian England and its view of sexual sin and its consequences. It’s a compassionate book, and even if the male characters, whose sin is just as great or greater than Ruth’s, get off lightly in terms of earthly consequences, Ruth is clearly the heroine of the story whose life and reputation “shine like the brightness of the heavens, and . . . lead many to righteousness, like the stars.” (Daniel 12:3)

Picture Book Preschool–Come and Get It

Mar13

I’m excited because, beginning today, you can purchase a pdf copy of my preschool curriculum book, Picture Book Preschool, from the book website, Biblioguides. Picture Book Preschool is a preschool curriculum based on picture books I have been reading to my children, and now grandchildren, for the past twenty years. Each week of the year is built around a theme, and includes a suggested character trait to work on, a Bible verse, a supporting activity, and seven suggested picture books to read to your children. Now you can find all of the Picture Book Preschool recommendations on Biblioguides and purchase a PDF of the curriculum which includes all of the supporting resources and schedule.And while you’re at it, check out Biblioguides, a great resource for finding books and book information to enrich your own education and that of your children.

If you would prefer a print copy of Picture Book Preschool, you can email me at sherryDOTpray4youATgmailDOTcom.

Preparing for the Preparation Days of Lent

Feb22

Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent, is Wednesday, March 2nd, this year. Easter Sunday falls on April 17th. One good thing to do for the Lenten days of fasting and preparation leading up to Resurrection Sunday is to choose a book (or two) to read, one that prepares your heart and leads you into repentance and celebration.

Julie at Happy Catholic has a list of fiction books that would help to form your heart and mind during this time of year.

Observing Lent, a Semicolon list. Not a book list, this post just gives some ideas for observing Lent as a family. It makes me nostalgic for the days when I had children at home with whom to observe these activities and reminders.

Inspirational Classics. This link goes to a set of posts that I set out to write in 2011. It was supposed to be 40 Inspirational Classics for Lent, but I only managed to write about 15 or so books. Still, the ones I did write about are some of the greats.

What are you reading for Lent? I’m continuing with my Cultivating Beauty and Truth study, re-reading The Hobbit and reading Hearts of Fire, a book of stories of modern day persecuted Christian women who are amazing in the courage they demonstrate. Only God.

The Blithedale Romance by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Jan30

I am working through a reading project, a Century of Reading —reading one book published in each year from 1851-1950. My choice for a book published in 1852 was Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Blithedale Romance. It’s not a long novel, a little over 200 pages, but it took me the entire month of January, reading a couple of chapters at a time, to finish it. And then, I was confused.

Questions (with spoilers): What was the relationship between Zenobia and Westervelt? Why was Priscilla so docile and weak-willed? Was Coverdale actually in love with one of the two women in the story? What was the meaning of the masquerade scene at the end? How did Zenobia lose her money? Why does Zenobia commit suicide? What kind of person is Coverdale really? Is he a reliable narrator or an unreliable one? What do the personal love lives of these four main characters have to do with the experimental farm called Blithedale? Is the failure of such a utopian community inevitable? Why?

I already knew about the connection between Hawthorne’s experiences at Brook Farm, the failed Transcendentalist experiment in communal living, and this novel written many years later. I read the Introduction by John Updike in my Modern Library edition and found not much to illuminate or answer my questions. I read the Wikipedia article, and a few other pieces, mostly feminist musings on the character of Zenobia, and still no answers. Then, I found this article, Love Conquers All, at an online journal called The New Atlantis. Although it didn’t answer all of my questions, it certainly was helpful, giving me some perspective on the novel.

I think, whether he knew it or not, Hawthorne was writing in part about the dangers of idol worship. Each of the main characters in the novel is looking for someone or something to worship, someone or something to give his or her life meaning and purpose. And God, for the most part, is ignored or given short shrift. Hollingsworth is completely wrapped up in his scheme of reforming criminals. Zenobia worships Hollingsworth and accommodates even her most cherished views to his overpowering sermons. Priscilla silently worships Zenobia and Hollingsworth, but her high god is shown to be Hollingsworth. Coverdale flits from one god to another: the community and its high purpose, his own poetry, his own individuality, the beauty he finds in Zenobia and in nature itself, maybe Priscilla. Coverdale can never commit to anything or anyone, and that is his tragedy.

The great tragedy for all of the characters in this novel is that they try to create heaven without God, and they all end up without any meaning or purpose at all. They give lip service to a Creator, but like all of us, their foolish hearts try to find Him in the worship of the things and people He has created. I recently heard a story about a Bible study group that was studying the book of Romans, and one of the members asked incredulously, “You mean good people who try to do everything right are not righteous in God’s sight? A good person will not necessarily go to heaven?” This novel (and the book of Romans) show how being good, having good intentions, trying to worship good things, is never enough. We are more deceived, even as we look into our own hearts, than we can know.

For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became foolsand exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles. . . . But you see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Romans 1:21-23; 5:6-8

And yet there is hope. Here’s what Hawthorne wrote about Zenobia’s body, recovered from the stream after her suicide.

“One hope I had; and that, too, was mingled half with fear. She knelt, as if in prayer. With the last, choking consciousness, her soul, bubbling out through her lips as it may be, had given itself up to the Father, reconciled and penitent. . . . The flitting moment, after Zenobia sank into the dark pool–when her breath was gone, and her soul at her lips–was as long, in its capacity of God’s infinite forgiveness, as the lifetime of the world.”
p.213, The Blithedale Romance

Finding You (movie review)

Jan25

I just watched the movie that’s based on this Christian romance novel by Jenny Jones. And I can say that my book review goes double for the movie. If it hadn’t been for the setting, Ireland, I don’t think I would have made it through the entire movie. It’s sort of a Hallmark movie with cute actors and very poor plotting and dialog. So many unbelievable and disconnected twists and turns, and yet at the same time so predictable. Of course the two sisters who are the enactors of a lifelong feud, manage to reconcile just before one of the sisters dies. Of course, boy manages to end up with girls despite the many obstacles along the way. However, the course of true does NOT run smooth. Oh, and there’s a town drunk who magically becomes both wise and sober whenever

Watch it via Amazon when you’re in the mood for something mindless and sort of Irish. Well, at least the scenery is Irish.The accents are sometimes Irish. The story is, well, not to be blamed on the Irish. (Oh, the movie leaves out any God-talk, except for a brief shot of a Bible verse on a tombstone.)

Wild Swans by Jung Chang

Jan18

Wild Swans is the story of three generations of a Chinese family during the rise of Communism, and Mao Tse Tung, and the Cultural Revolution. Jung Chang’s grandmother was a concubine to a Chinese general. She had her feet bound as a child in the traditional Chinese way. But her daughter, Chang’s mother came of age during the conflict between the Nationalist Chinese under Chiang Kai-shek the Communist idealists who followed guerrilla leader Mao Tse-tung. The Changs, mother and father, became dedicated Communists who believed in Chairman Mao and the ideals of the Communist Party without question. True believers, Jung Chang’s parents endured great suffering and hardship for the sake of changing Chinese culture and society into a Marxist Communist paradise. Because she was taught the virtues of communism under Mao and the evils of a capitalist society, Jung Chang came to share their philosophy and to idolize Chairman Mao and his Little Red Book. But eventually, it all came crashing down when Chang’s own family became the persecuted instead of the persecutors during the Cultural Revolution.

“The whole nation slid into doublespeak. Words became divorced from reality, responsibility, and people’s real thoughts. Lies were told with ease because words had lost their meanings—and had ceased to be taken seriously by others.”
The state of China in 1958, from Wild Swans by Jung Chang

It was horrible, yet instructive, to read about an entire society gone mad in twentieth century China and about how slowly and subtly a utopian ideal can become a nightmare, especially with a power-hungry madman in charge. It happened in Russia with Stalin, in Cuba with Castro, in Venezuela with Hugo Chavez and Maduro, and in China with Mao. From 1958 to 1962, Mao’s Great Leap Forward policy led to the deaths of up to 45 million people in a famine that starved people throughout China. The Cultural Revolution that followed in the late 1960’s killed somewhere between 500,000 and two million people. The number of people who didn’t die but suffered great injury and trauma under Mao’s Communist rule is literally incalculable. Jung Chang’s Wild Swans brings the story of this historic horror down to an understandable but terrible story of one family. The book shows how the first generation suffered in the political corruption and prejudice against women that characterized Chinese culture before Communism, how the second generation came to idolize Mao as the embodiment of their dreams of a socialist paradise, and how Jung Chang herself and her siblings, the third generation, paid the price for their own and their parents’ mistaken ideals.

I think everyone should read this book or another book that shows the true story of what can happen in an authoritarian society run by a charismatic but evil ruler. “Mao hoped his movement would make China the pinnacle of the socialist universe and turn him into ‘the man who leads planet Earth into communism.'” Instead, he became the bloodiest dictator the world has yet known. Some other accounts of twentieth century China, the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, and the aftermath of the late twentieth century.

Red Scarf Girl by Ji-li Jiang. Middle school/high school account of the experiences of one girl, twelve years old when the Cultural Revolution began.
China’s Long March by Jean Fritz. Describes the events of the 6,000 mile march undertaken by Mao Zedong and his Communist followers as they retreated before the forces of Chiang Kai-shek.
Blood Letters: The Untold Story of Lin Zhao, a Martyr in Mao’s China by Lian Xi. Not the best written book, and definitely for adults. The title pretty much sums up this harrowing and true story of a Catholic girl martyr.
Sparrow Girl by Sara Pennypacker. This picture book manages to tell about the backward disaster that Mao’s Great Leap Forward precipitated without being unnecessarily traumatic for young readers. Based on real events in China, when Chairman Mao ordered the people to kill all of the sparrows because they were annoying and stealing too many seeds.
Revolution Is Not a Dinner Party by Ling Chang Compestine. Nine year old Ling, the daughter of two doctors, struggles to make sense of the Cultural Revolution. Young adult to adults.
Little Leap Forward: A Boy in Beijing by Guo Yue. In Communist China in 1966, eight-year-old Leap Forward learns about freedom while flying kites with his best friend, by trying to get a caged wild bird to sing, and through the music he is learning to play on a bamboo flute. A gentle introduction to this difficult period of history for younger children.

I’ve not read any of the mostly adult books on these lists, but I’m interested in pursuing at least some of them.

The best books on the Cultural Revolution.

Five Must-Read books about the Chinese Cultural Revolution.

Best books about the Chinese Cultural Revolution