I got all caught up in politics and movies and missed some important authors’ birthdays. February 25th was Cynthia Voight’s birthday–one of my favorite Young Adult authors, I really like Homecoming and Dicey’s Song and the other books about the Tillerman family. Voight has especially good characters, Here’s a website for teaching materials for her novels, but I always think it’s more fun just to read books, never did like filling out worksheets. ( I must admit that I sometimes make my kids do the study questions and the worksheets, but not nearly as often as they would have to in a classroom.)

February 26th was Victor Hugo‘s birthday. From some books I remember characters; from others I remember quotations–or at least try to remember quotations. From Les Miserables, I mostly remember scenes. Of course, there’s Jean Valjean being chased by Inspector Javert through the sewers of Paris and Jean Valjean the convict caught red-handed with the Bishop’s candlesticks and Monsieur the Mayor lifting the cart off the injured peasant and Thenardier looting the bodies of the dead soldiers after some battle (Waterloo?). The scene I usually remember first, though, is that of Thenardier’s children huddled inside Napoleon’s elephant statue.

The bourgeois in their Sunday clothes, who passed by the elephant of the Bastille, often said, eyeing it scornfully with their bulging eyes, “What’s the use of that?” It’s use was to save from the cold, the frost, the hail, the rain, to protect from the wintry wind, to spare from sleeping in the mud, which breeds fever and from sleeping in the snow, which breeds death, a little being with no father or mother, with no bread, no clothing, no sanctuary. Its use was to receive the innocent whom society repelled….This idea of Napoleon’s, disdained by men, had been taken up by God. What had been merely illustrious had become august…The emperor had a dream of genius; in this titanic elephant, armed, prodigious, brandishing his trunk, bearing his tower and making the joyous and vivifying waters gush out on all sides around him, he wanted to incarnate the people. God had done a grander thing with it, he sheltered a child. (p. 957)

I also remember staying up until 2:00 AM when I was in college reading Les Miserables for the first time. I had an 8:00 AM class that morning, but it didn’t matter. It was worth the “hangover” to find out what would become of Cosette and Gavroche and Marius and Jean Valjean. Even though the Accuser pursues us to the ends of the earth, may we. too, be saved by His amazing grace.