Cinnamon Moon by Tess Hilmo

Jan31

On October 8, 1871 the deadliest fire in U.S. history killed an estimated 1500 people, possibly as many as 2500. No one knows exactly how the fire started, but it was fanned by strong winds into massive proportions and consumed an area approximately twice the size of Rhode Island, including the town at the center of the fire.

No, this deadly tragedy was not the Great Chicago Fire of October 8, 1871 that everyone knows about, but rather the Peshtigo Forest Fire, on the same date in and around Peshtigo, Wisconsin, the one that killed many more people and destroyed far more acres of forest than the more famous fire in Chicago. The two children who are the protagonists in Cinnamon Moon are survivors of the Peshtigo Fire. (“The fire jumped across the Peshtigo River and burned on both sides of the inlet town. Survivors reported that the firestorm generated a fire whirl (described as a tornado) that threw rail cars and houses into the air.Many escaped the flames by immersing themselves in the Peshtigo River, wells, or other nearby bodies of water.” ~Wikipedia)

Oddly enough, twelve-year-old Ailis and her younger brother, Quinn, having lost their entire family in the fire, end up in Chicago, a city which is still recovering from its own fire. In the midst of all the destruction and confusion, the family friend who rescued Ailis and Quinn leaves them in a boarding house with the less-than-nurturing Miss Franny, who makes them work for her rather than go to school. In the boarding house Ailis and Quinn become friends with an orphan girl, Nettie, who has been placed temporarily in the care of Miss Franny, and when Nettie goes missing in a city full of human trafficking and exploitation of child labor, Ailis and Quinn must find her and rescue her.

This novel is historical fiction at its best, good for middle graders who are ready for an introduction to the seamier side of life for children and especially orphans in the nineteenth century. Nettie is enslaved and put to work killing rats in the sewers. She lives in a sort of Dickensian Chicago warehouse for captured orphans. Ailis and Quinn find that it’s hard to rescue someone who doesn’t understand the terms and limitations of her enslavement, but as it should be in a children’s book, all ends well for all three of the children. The story is just dark enough to show older middle grade children that this world is not always a safe place without depriving them of hope and faith in at least some of the adult around them.

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The Scourge by Jennifer Nielsen

Jan30

I am a fan of Jennifer Nielsen’s Ascendance Trilogy, beginning with The False Prince, and I read her historical fiction book set in East Berlin, A Night Divided, and enjoyed it too. But The Scourge just didn’t connect with me. I felt the prose and dialog were poorly written, and the plot was contrived and didn’t make sense a lot of the time.

Ani Mills is one of the River People who live up-country in a primitive and poverty-stricken culture, and she and her fellow “grubs” don’t have much to do with the townsfolk who they call “pinchworms”. Maybe that minimal contact is the reason that the Scourge, a deadly infectious disease that is rampant in the pinchworms, hasn’t yet infected the River People. When Ani is arrested and taken to the lowlands town to be tested for The Scourge, she knows it must be a mistake. But Ani’s River People are powerless in the governmental system of this world, and Ani may be infected after all. Anyway, she has little or no choice about what will happen to her, but she continues to fight against her fate and her oppressive society and government.

I liked the premise of this book, but it just didn’t go smoothly. I don’t mean that things needed to go well for the protagonist, Ani, or for her friends. Her situation goes from bad to worse, but that’s the way you make a story: take your main character and get her into trouble and then see what happens. However, with Ani, her lows are unbelievably low, and her hairbreadth-escapes are unbelievably fortuitous. The penal colony or quarantine island Ani is sent to is very poorly run, with prisoners running around all over the island with no supervision, yet it’s supposed to be inescapable and quite authoritarian.

Younger readers who want a “Hunger Games” experience, very political, in their reading might like this one and might be willing to overlook the far-fetched solutions and rescues, but I was not.

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What Should I Read Next?

Jan28

I don’t have a lack of reading plans or books to be read. If anything, I have an over-abundance of reading plans and books I want to read. But sometimes I have trouble narrowing down the list to the particular book I want to read next. I thought for the month of February, I’d try to read your recommendations—from my To-Be-Read list on Goodreads, which has grown to an unmanageable, out of control, over 800 books. These are all books that I saw recommended somewhere. Maybe I read a review. Maybe I read your review. Or I picked up the book at the library or bookstore, but haven’t managed to read it yet. My question is, of all these 800+ books, which are the priorities? Which ones should I read NOW, in February?

I you want to take a look at my TBR list and give me some advice, I will promise to take your recommendations very seriously and try to read one or more of the books that each of you recommends. Remember, your recommendations need to come from the list I already have of books I want to read. I don’t need to add any books to the list, although I probably will.

So, let’s have a book sharing party. Which of the books on my list should I read next? Let the comments begin.

All Rise for the Honorable Perry T. Cook by Leslie Connor

Jan27

Eleven year old Perry T. Cook has lived all of his life at the Blue River Co-ed Correctional Facility in Surprise, Nebraska—in other words, in prison. His mom is the one who committed a crime, however. She lives on Cell Block C. And Warden Daugherty, Perry’s foster mom, is the one who makes it possible for Perry to live in prison with his birth mom, sort of. The warden and the guards and the prisoners and Perry and his mom are all just fine with Perry living at Blue River, but when the new District Attorney gets a bee in his bonnet about the inappropriateness of Perry’s living situation, Perry’s life is turned upside down.

OK, the premise is a little improbable, but it does shine a light on the issue of children whose parent(s) are incarcerated. And All Rise is not just an issue-driven novel; it’s a good story about an extremely patient and compliant boy (Perry) who finally, through persistence and a little luck, manages to get the adults to look at the spirit rather than the letter of the law. Gary Schmidt calls the book “a deeply moving, even inspiring novel”, and the plot and characters remind me of Mr. Schmidt’s books. An innocent boy is caught up in the problems of the adults around him and finds a way to navigate those problems with kindness and perseverance.

There are a couple of problems with the book. First, Perry is a little too innocent and patient, never complaining even when his new foster father is manifestly blind and unfair. But the point of the story is that Perry has been trained to be compliant in his life growing up in a prison, just as incarcerated criminals are trained to be compliant and not necessarily to think for themselves or stand up for their own convictions. There are also a few instances of cursing (God’s name taken in vain) that may add to verisimilitude of a prison setting, but don’t add much to a middle grade novel. However, those instances were only a handful.

I found Perry’s story inspiring and moving myself, and it has a lot to say about the work of forgiveness and about rehabilitation and even our justice system and our foster care system. Children need and long for their own parents; when they are unable to be with their parents because a parent is in jail or prison, the child is serving a sentence along with the parent. And that’s sad. All Rise for the Honorable Perry T. Cook is a hopeful story, however, and one that might help children to understand some things about prisoners and the justice system and children in foster care jut a little bit better.

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Demelza by Winston Graham

Jan26

I’m spending my Thursdays here on the blog in the eighteenth century, 1700’s.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this second book in Mr. Graham’s Poldark series, even though I knew what was going to happen since I have already watched seasons one and two of the TV series, Poldark. These are such good stories. I think I will enjoy them even more when I get to the books for which I haven’t seen the television adaptation. I’m not sure exactly when that will be because season one was based on the first two books. Does season two cover books three and four?

At any rate, I find the books excellent reading. Mr. Graham seems to have done his research, and he knew how to tell a story. I’ll just use the rest of this post as my “commonplace book” and write down some memorable notes and observations on the text.

Ross Poldark, back in 1789, seems to be in a political pickle similar to the one that many of us are in nowadays:

“I’m neither Whig nor Tory,” Ross said.
“Well, drot it, you must be something. Who d’you vote for?”
Ross was silent again for some time and bent and patted the hound. He seldom thought these things out.
“I’m not a Whig,” he said, “nor ever could belong to a party that was was for ever running down its own country and praising up the virtues of some other. The very thought of it sticks in my crop.”
“Hear, hear!” said Sir John, picking his teeth.
“But neither could I belong to a party which looks with complacency on the state of England as it is. So you’ll see the difficulty I’m in.”

“You must be something.” Well, I see the difficulty, but I still choose to be neither fish nor fowl, neither Trumpista nor “progressive” in the absolute wrong direction. If that makes me a misfit, like Mr. Poldark, so be it.

This second book in the series ends with death, destruction, and loss. I won’t be specific, for those of you reading who haven’t seen the TV series or read the books; however, from its hope filled beginning with the birth of a child for Ross and Demelza Poldark to the end when all is dark with only a hint of light in the last line of the novel (“I am quite warm, Ross. Let me stay a little longer in the sun.”), it’s quite a ride.

In the Afterword, written by American author Liz Fenwick, she says that Graham “presents something of a feminist view” in this novel which was written and published in 1946, just after World War II. I think the story has more to say about the beginning of the end of classism in Britain, which only accelerated over a century after the setting of the book as World War I began and World War II continued the move toward a more egalitarian society. Demelza is from the lowest of the lower class, and the idea that a girl of her background could become something of a sensation in society within a few short years of being married to Ross Poldark is a bit fanciful and unlikely in the eighteenth century, but romantic and appealing to those of us who don’t believe in “classes” in the first place.

I love the history embedded in the pages of Demelza. The characters discuss the “troubles” in France, but it all feels very far away and foreign and extraneous to local concerns. Even the affairs of Parliament and mad King George and his ambitious son, the Prince of Wales, all seem far away in London, of no immediate concern to the people, both great and small, of Sawle and Truro and Wheal Leisure and Nampara. An eighteenth century antiquarian, Richard Gough, wrote that “Cornwall seems to be another Kingdom.” Indeed, and it’s a fascinating Kingdom to visit in Mr. Graham’s many iterations.

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Aim by Joyce Moyer Hostetter

Jan25

Aim is a prequel to Ms. Hostetter’s two books about Ann Fay Honeycutt, Blue and Comfort. Aim is about Junior Bledsoe, a secondary, but beloved, character in those other two books. (Ann Fay is the minor character in this one.)

The story takes place in 1941-1942. Fourteen year old Junior Bledsoe of Hickory, North Carolina has a troubled life. His father is a drunk. Junior doesn’t like school and can’t really see the point of it. His cantankerous and sometimes cruel granddaddy has moved in and taken over Junior’s bedroom. And World War II is about to involve the United States of America, except according to Granddaddy, “That yellow-bellied president is too chicken to take us to war. He ain’t half the man the Colonel was.” (The Colonel, in Grandaddy’s jargon, refers to Teddy Roosevelt.)

While Junior worries about school and the draft and impending war and that fact that his father seems distant and stern most of the time, Junior’s dad manages to go on a drinking binge and get killed in a accident. Or was it an accident? How can Junior go back to school when he’s not sure what really happened to his Pop? And what are they going to do about Grandaddy who’s becoming more verbally abusive and demanding every day? Should Junior drop out of school and get a job? Or join the army? Or investigate the moonshiners who may have been involved in Pop’s death?

This story is really all about a boy who’s trying to find his way to adulthood without the guidance of a father. However, the wonderful thing is that the community steps in to work together and separately to help Junior find his “aim” in life. Even when Junior Bledsoe makes some really poor choices and gets himself into what could become serious trouble, members of his extended community help his now-single mother guide Junior back to the path of good sense and responsible moral judgement. Junior is a good kid, but he’s looking for a way to deal with his father’s death and a way to earn the respect of his family and his friends. It’s not easy for a fourteen year old boy to lose his father, especially not the way Junior Pop dies. It was inspiring to read about how ordinary, ind neighbors, teachers, and friends help Junior to process his father’s death and to decide which parts of his father’s legacy he wants to continue and which parts he wants to leave in the grave.

Aim is an excellent coming-of-age novel, and I would also recommend Blue, about Ann Fay and her encounter with the dreaded disease of polio about a year after the events in Aim have taken place. I have yet to read Comfort, the sequel to Blue, but it is definitely on my TBR list.

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Texas Yankee by Nina Brown Baker

Jan24

Texas Tuesday: Texas Yankee; The Story of Gail Borden by Nina Brown Baker.

Benito Juarez, Peter the Great, Simon Bolivar, F.W. Woolworth, America Vespucci, Sir Walter Raleigh, and Nellie Bly are a few of the other celebrities and historical figures that Nina Brown Baker wrote about in her prolific career as a children’s biographer. Texas Yankee, about the inventor of condensed milk and sweetened condensed milk, is a biography in Ms. Brown’s short, slightly fictionalized, and highly readable style. The story begins with twelve year old Gail Borden and his family moving from New York to Kentucky and ends 129 pages later with Gail Borden’s death at his ranch near Columbus, Texas in 1874 at the age of 72. Borden’s life in-between these two events took him from New York to Kentucky to Ohio to Mississippi to Texas and back again up north to Connecticut and New York to try to sell his inventions and ideas to an Eastern seaboard audience.

Then, came the disruption of the Civil War, and Gail Borden found himself on the opposite side of the slavery and Union issues from most of his fellow Texans and therefore in exile so to speak from his beloved Texas. But after the war and the bitterness from the war had died down, Gail Borden was able to return to Texas a successful man who gave travelers and immigrants and settlers of the West a way to transport good, healthy milk over long distances without having it go bad and without having to purchase milk for their children from questionable sources along the way.

I once met a restaurant owner who read a book about Gail Borden when she was in fifth grade and was so inspired by her reading that she looked to him as an example for her business dealings and also made a lifelong study of the history of Texas. Nina Brown Baker’s book about Gail Borden may have been the book she read as a fifth grader, for all I know. At any rate, I can see how this book and Gail Borden’s life would be inspirational. Mr. Borden’s commitment to Christ is a thread throughout the biography, not over-emphasized but definitely acknowledged. The only problem in recommending this biography to your fifth grader is that it was published in 1955 and is now out of print. I do find one other biography of Borden, Milk, Meat Biscuits, and the Terraqueous Machine by Mary Dodson, but it’s from 1987 and also out of print. And there’s a Childhood of Famous Americans series volume, Gail Borden: Resourceful Boy by Adrian Paradis, also out of print.

It seems as if the subject of Gail Borden, supporter of the Texas revolution and persistent inventor, might be ripe for a new biography by some up-and-coming adult or children’s biographer.

FNFC: Alfred Hitchcock’s The Wrong Man

Jan23

This Hitchcock film from 1956 comes with introductory remarks by Hitchcock himself; he tells us that this film is different from his other movies because it is a true story. The false arrest and imprisonment of Mr. Christopher Emmanuel Ballestrero (aka Manny) actually took place in New York City in 1953. He was accused by several eyewitnesses of having committed armed robbery. The police took Mr. Ballestrero into custody on the word of these witnesses and subjected him to a rather primitive and inconclusive form of a police line-up and then charged him with the armed robbery.

In addition to asking why the movie was in black and white instead of color, my daughters were amazed at the lack of due process and proper police procedure that led to the wrongful arrest and indictment of Manny Ballestero. No Miranda warning (Miranda vs. Arizona, 1966), no lawyer provided (Gideon vs. Wainright, 1963), and police questioning and investigation that was unfair and rather perfunctory—it certainly didn’t look anything like a current day police drama or criminal investigation. We don’t realize what protections we have now that weren’t there a little over fifty years ago. Perhaps the choice of a black and white film emphasizes the antiquated and unjust investigation and trial. And yet, my daughters and I were quick to note that the same kind of false imprisonment can and does happen today, especially for minority suspects who are more likely to be victims of false identification and false arrest.

I kept thinking that Mr. Ballestrero needed to call Perry Mason. Mr. Mason would have had that case resolved and thrown out of court within an hour of television. As it was it took a little longer that that in the movie version, and the defendant and his wife had to do all of their own investigative work to come up with an alibi for Mr. Ballestrero. Perry Mason would have had Paul Drake to help with the detective work.

The next thing we noticed about the movie was the rather dated and hokey psychiatric diagnosis and treatment. Manny’s wife has what would have been called at the time “a nervous breakdown” because of the stress of the arrest and impending trial. However, her break with reality is almost complete; she barely speaks coherently to Manny or to anyone else after she becomes mentally ill. Stress might trigger a mental illness like that of Mrs. Ballestrero, but she’s practically catatonic and obviously suffering from something (clinical depression? schizophrenia?) more serious than stress. Vera Miles plays the wife, and she’s good in an eerie sort of way. Henry Fonda as Manny is mostly stoical and poker-faced, a little bewildered, a man who perseveres through all of the injustice of being prosecuted for a crime he didn’t commit with a certain dignity and humility.

The most interesting scene in the movie has Manny finally breaking down into near-despair over his situation, with his mother exhorting him to pray to God. “My son, I beg you to pray! Pray for strength!” she says. He does pray in his bedroom, while looking at a picture of Jesus, and the movie’s viewers see the real robber walking out of the darkness, then his face superimposed on Fonda/Ballestrero’s face. The police catch the real robber in the act of holding up a store, notice the similarity between Manny and the robber, and the case is solved. Manny is delivered. It’s a very obvious answer to prayer, and yet the ending to the movie shows that Manny still needs God’s strength to get through the continuing aftermath of the storm that has upended his life and marriage.

Manny Ballestrero: “Be careful of accusing anyone. Before you accuse anyone, you should think, because you can destroy a family, physically and mentally, like mine could have been destroyed.”

More analysis and review of The Wrong Man:

At the Alfred-Hitch Blog.

Alfred Hitchcock’s Two Most Catholic Films at decent films.

Roger Ebert on Hitchcock’s Least Fun Movie Is Also One of His Greatest.

This Friday the Friday Film Club feature will be Judgment at Nuremberg, a 1961 American courtroom drama, directed by Stanley Kramer, written by Abby Mann and starring Spencer Tracy, Burt Lancaster, Richard Widmark, Maximilian Schell, Werner Klemperer, Marlene Dietrich, Judy Garland, William Shatner, and Montgomery Clift.

Sunday’s Hymn: Thy Mercy, My God

Jan22

We sang this hymn this morning in church. The words were written by John Stocker and appeared in The Gospel Magazine in 1776 and then were later published by Daniel Sedgwick, a great British collector of hymns and a bookseller in the mid-nineteenth century. Sandra McCracken tells the story of how she discovered these old lyrics and wrote new music for them here.

Without Thy sweet mercy I could not live here;
Sin would reduce me to utter despair . . .

Dissolved by Thy goodness, I fall to the ground,
And weep to the praise of the mercy IÂ’’ve found.