World War One for Children and Young Adults

Apr30

I read three novels in the past couple of weeks for children and young adults that were set before, during, and after World War I. I’ll have to say that each of the books was odd in its own way: odd prose style in the first, an unexpected twist that I almost didn’t see coming in the second, and anomalous angels in the third.

Eyes Like Willy’s by Juanita Havill. A French brother and sister, Guy and Sarah Masson, and their Austrian friend Willy are separated by the war. The writing style in this one is the strange part. At least, it read oddly to me. The sentences are short and choppy, Hemingway-esque, with a lack of transitions and analogies that I found disconcerting. At the same time, the sparse prose made me pay attention to each detail, so I can’t say it was ineffective—just odd. Here’s an example, chosen at random:

“Their first guests of the summer were Willy and his father. Willy had grown much taller. He was almost as tall as Guy, and thinner. He had a thin black mustache and looked older than seventeen. Seeing Wily’s mustache, Guy decided that he would grow one this summer.”

If I were writing the story, I would probably have combined some of those sentences into one more complicated sentence. But I’m not at all sure that my inclination to complication would be the better choice for this story. The book is short, 135 pages, but it tells a nuanced story of friendship over the course of several years and the effects of war on the relationships of three young people as they grow into adulthood during World War I.

Private Peaceful by Michael Morpurgo. Mr. Morpurgo also wrote War Horse, the book that formed the source material for the movie of the same name from last year. Both Private Peaceful and War Horse are set during World War I, and I plan to pick up the latter book from the library this afternoon. I haven’t seen the movie or read the book yet.

Private Peaceful focuses on the plight of British soldiers who were summarily tried, condemned and executed on the battlefield for cowardice or desertion during World War 1. Mr. Morpurgo gives some information in his afterword that I did not know about this practice:

“That a shameful injustice had been done to these unfortunate men seemed to me beyond doubt. Their judges called them ‘worthless.’ Their trials, or court martials, were brief, under twenty minutes in some cases. Twenty minutes for a man’s life. Often they had no one to speak for them and no witnesses were called in their defense. . . . The youngest soldier to be executed was just seventeen.

Successive British governments have since refused to acknowledge the injustice suffered by these men, and have refused to grant posthumous pardons—which would of course be a great consolation to surviving relatives. The New Zealand government have pardoned their executed soldiers; it can be done. The Australians and the Americans, to their credit, never allowed their soldiers to be executed in the first place.”

I thought the novel itself, the story of Charlie and Tommo Peaceful, brothers who went to war together, was well-written and absorbing. Mr. Morpurgo kept me guessing until the end, and one of the minor characters, Big Joe, was so well-drawn that I wanted him to have his own book. (Big Joe is the Peaceful brothers’ older sibling who is mentally challenged.)

I recommend Private Peaceful if you liked War Horse or if you just want to read a well-told tale of the difficulties of being a soldier on the front lines during World War I.

A Time of Angels by Karen Hesse. In 1918 Boston, Hannah Gold must face her own wartime suffering as the influenza epidemic sweeps through her family and town. While the war forms a backdrop for this novel, it’s really the story of a Jewish family and the influenza epidemic of 1918. Fourteen year old Hannah is rather improbably sent out into the streets of Boston by her erstwhile guardian to keep her from catching the flu from her family members, and she ends up, again improbably, in Vermont. Hannah also sees angels.

It’s a good introduction to the time period and the prejudices of that era and the hardships of the Spanish flu epidemic. And the reviews at Amazon are for the most part highly positive. I just didn’t ever believe in Hannah or her cold impersonal guardian Vashti or her plight. And I thought the author cheated on the ending by making us believe one (tragic) thing and then pulling off a “no, not really” surprise. And the angels seemed out of place and sort of extraneous.

So, my favorite World War I children’s and YA novels so far are: Winnie’s War by Jennie Moss, The Lord of the Nutcracker Men by Iain Laurence, and Private Peaceful by Michael Morpurgo. What about you?

Saturday Review of Books: April 28, 2012

Apr27

â€œThe business of fiction is to probe the tender spots of an imperfect world, which is where I live, write, and read.â€ ~Barbara Kingsolver

Welcome to the Saturday Review of Books at Semicolon. Hereâ€™s how it usually works. Find a book review on your blog posted sometime during the previous week. The review doesnâ€™t have to be a formal sort of thing. You can link to your thoughts on a particular book, a few ideas inspired by reading the book, your evaluation, quotations, whatever.

Then on Friday night/Saturday, you post a link here at Semicolon in Mr. Linky to the specific post where youâ€™ve written your book review. Donâ€™t link to your main blog page because this kind of link makes it hard to find the book review, especially when people drop in later after youâ€™ve added new content to your blog. In parentheses after your name, add the title of the book youâ€™re reviewing. This addition will help people to find the reviews theyâ€™re most interested in reading.

After linking to your own reviews, you can spend as long as you want reading the reviews of other bloggers for the week and adding to your wishlist of books to read. That’s how my own TBR list has become completely unmanageable and the reason I can’t join any reading challenges. I have my own personal challenge that never ends.

The Penderwicks at Point Mouette by Jeanne Birdsall

Apr26

I finally got a chance to read this third book in the Penderwick series, and I can tell anyone who hasn’t already read it that it’s just as good as the first two books about the Penderwick family of four girls—Rosalind, Skye, Jane and Batty—having adventures and growing up.

In this particular installment of the Penderwick saga, Jane falls in love herself when she tries to write a romance for her bold protagonist, Sabrina Starr. Skye becomes the OAP (oldest available Penderwick sister) while Rosalind takes a vacation. And Batty collects golf balls, makes a new friend, wears a large orange life jacket through most of the story, and discovers her own special giftedness. Jeffrey, the girls’ friend from the first book, is back, and many of the adventures involve Jeffrey and his musical talents and his family trials and tribulations.

I truly think the Penderwick series is going to go down in history as classic children’s lit, comparable to Beverly Cleary’s Ramona books and Elizabeth Enright’s Melendy family series. I’ve picked a couple of samples of Ms. Birdsall’s spot-on depiction of sisters who really love each other, through thick and thin.

This paragraph is Skye, trying to decide what to do about Jane who has developed an unfortunate crush on a skateboarding BOY!

“Skye managed to get off the porch and outside without punching Jane in the nose and making it swollen all over again, and she was quite proud of that, at least. But now she was really concerned. How could she protect Jane from this idiocy? Wondering what Caesar or Napoleon would do in this situation was worthless. Skye needed a tree to kick now, immediately. Poor patient birch trees—this wasn’t the treatment they deserved. But kicking them calmed Skye down a little, enough to help her realize that she did after all have someone she could talk to about boys, crushes, and dancing with Popsicle sticks. Aunt Claire, of course. Skye apologized to the birch trees and began to plot how to broach these painful subjects without giving away Jane’s secrets.”

And here’s a totally different passage, different in tone and content, about the Penderwicks’ friend Jeffrey and his mentor playing music for them

“From Jeffrey’s clarinet poured a haunting, stirring melody, a soaring string of notes that floated out over the ocean. All alone Jeffrey played, his eyes closed in concentration, until it seemed that the song was ending. But then Alec’s saxophone joined the clarinet, and together the man and the boy again played the heart-stopping tune, note for note. The girls clung to each other, each one feeling as though she’d never really heard music before, and although the splendor of the music was almost too much, the players began yet once more, this time in rich harmony, finally ending with a flourish, so thrilling that when the music stopped, it seemed for a moment as though the world had to stop along with it.”

Now, that’s some fine writing. And the plot and characters are just as good as the writing. Just quit reading my pedestrian attempts to describe the Penderwicks books, and go read one, preferably starting with the first book in the series and then proceeding in order through the three books Ms. Birdsall has so far gifted us with. By the time you finish those, maybe there will be a fourth. I certainly hope we don’t have long to wait for another installment. (On her website, Jeanne Birdsall says it takes her three years to write a Penderwicks book and that there will be five books in all.)

Book 1: The Penderwicks: A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits, and Very Interesting Boy Z-baby listens to The Penderwicks. Semicolon review of The Penderwicks.

Book 2: The Penderwicks on Gardam Street Reviewed by Sarah at Library Hospital. Reviewed by Carrie K. at Books and Movies.

Book 3: The Penderwicks at Point Mouette Reviewed by Amy at Hope Is the Word.

Amnesia Is In

Apr26

What Alice Forgot by Lianne Moriarty

Alice Love is twenty-nine years old and pregnant with her first child. She and her husband Nick are deeply in love and very excited about their soon-to-be-born child. Alice’s older sister Elizabeth is her best friend, and life is good. The year is 1998.

But when Alice falls at gym and hits her head, something strange happens. She wakes up, not pregnant and not in 1998. It’s 2008, and Alice has lost the memory of the past ten years of her life. I liked the way this book, essentially chick-lit, ended. The ending was unexpected, and I was pleased with the choices the author made about her characters and their choices.

Of course, this novel made me think about memories, good and bad. Who are we without our memories?

Before I Go to Sleep by S.J. Watson

In this amnesiac novel, Christine has lost more than twenty years of her life. She, too, was involved in an accident that caused her to lose her memory, but for Christine her ability to form and retain memories is impaired. She can remember what’s happened to her today, but when she goes to sleep and wakes up the next morning, her memories are all gone. Each day is a clean slate in which Christine starts out believing that she is still a twenty-something or even a child rather than a forty-five year old wife and mother. Christine’s husband, Ben, must remind her every morning who she is, where she is, and who he is.

“I cannot imagine how I will cope when I discover that my life is behind me, has already happened, and I have nothing to show for it. No treasure house of recollection, no wealth of experience, no accumulated wisdom to pass on. What are we, if not a accumulation of our memories?”

This second book is more of a thriller: Christine’s memory loss puts her in a situation that is not what it seems to be, and by the end of the book Christine is in serious danger of losing her life if she cannot find a way to access the memories that will enable her to distinguish between truth and lies.

I thought both of these were worthwhile, if you’re at all interested in the premise. I also found a couple of books at Amazon that would make good nonfiction companion reads to these two novels. I haven’t read these, but I would like to do so soon.

Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything by Joshua Foer. “Foer . . . draws on cutting-edge research, a surprising cultural history of remembering, and venerable tricks of the mentalist’s trade to transform our understanding of human memory. From the United States Memory Championship to deep within the author’s own mind, this is an electrifying work of journalism that reminds us that, in every way that matters, we are the sum of our memories.”

In Search of Memory: The Emergence of a New Science of Mind by Eric R. Kandel. “Driven by vibrant curiosity, Kandelâ€™s personal quest to understand memory is threaded throughout this absorbing history. Beginning with his childhood in Nazi-occupied Vienna, In Search of Memory chronicles Kandelâ€™s outstanding career from his initial fascination with history and psychoanalysis to his groundbreaking work on the biological process of memory, which earned him the Nobel Prize.”

And here are some fictional “amnesia books” that I have read and can recommend:
The Last Thing I Remember by Andrew Klavan. YA fiction. Semicolon review here. Sequels are The Long Way Home, The Truth of the Matter, and The Final Hour.

Random Harvest by James Hilton. Semicolon review here.

A Portrait of Jennie by Robert Nathan. Semicolon review here.

Brat Farrar by Josephine Tey. Not exactly an amnesia story, but it reminds me of Hilton’s style somehow. Semicolon review here.

The Professor and the Housekeeper by Yoko Ogawa. Semicolon review here. Engineer Husband is reading this one right now, and it’s one of my favorites. Math and memory loss.

Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac by Gabrielle Zevin. More modern and young adult-ish. Semicolon review here.

The Adoration of Jenna Fox by Mary Pearson. Also YA and more of a twenty-first century feel. Semicolon review here.

Anne Perry’s William Monk detective series features Mr. Monk as a late nineteenth century private detective suffering from amnesia. His assistant/love interest/foil is a nurse named Hester.

Any more amnesiac selections that you can remember?

Scoop by Evelyn Waugh

Apr24

I don’t know if it was just me or my mood or what, but Evelyn Waugh’s comic novel that the NYT Book Review called “thoroughly enjoyable, uproariously funny” just felt like a P.G. Wodehouse wannabe, except more pretentious and not nearly as accessible or humorous. Scoop is a parody of the world of sensational journalism, and as such it’s neither dated nor inaccurate. If anything, Big Journalism has become more unreliable and farcical in the twenty-first century than it seems to have been in 1937-38 when this book was first published. But I did keep thinking, as I read the story of the accidental foreign correspondent for the Daily Beast, William Boot, that I’d rather be reading about Bertie Wooster and Jeeves.

In a case of mistaken identity, Boot is sent to the country of Ishmalia to cover an incipient rebellion. Although set in a fictional country in North or East Africa (near Soudan?, Waugh’s spelling), the novel doesn’t really have much to say about Africa either. The Africans in the novel are simply foils for the oh-so-comical exploits of the European press corps and the politicians who seek to exploit the Africans. The N-word makes frequent appearances, and although the mere appearance of such a term doesn’t offend me as much as it does some people, the attitude of condescension and superiority that all the Europeans in the novel have toward “the natives” does make for reader discomfort and weariness after a while.

“The novel is partly based on Waugh’s own experience working for the Daily Mail, when he was sent to cover Benito Mussolini’s expected invasion of Abyssinia – what was later known as the Second Italo-Abyssinian War. When he got his own scoop on the invasion he telegraphed the story back in Latin for secrecy, but they discarded it.” Wikipedia

Now that’s funny.

One main idea in the novel is that the news reporters create the news. Even if nothing of importance is happening, where there are reporters, news must happen. So the reporters make it happen or make it up. Nowadays with CNN and the internet and the 24 hour news cycle, news must be created even faster and in greater quantity. Maybe that insight is worth wading through some of the obscure slang and bewildering politics of Scoop, but I’m not sure.

I did like the way Waugh ends some of his chapters, with purposefully purple-ish prose that satirizes the journalists and yet communicates a sort of melancholy feel to the story:

“And the granite sky wept.”

“So the rain fell and the afternoon and the evening were succeeded by another night and another morning.”

“William once more turned to the Pension Dressler; the dark clouds opened above him; the gutters and wet leaves sparkled in sunlight and a vast, iridescent fan of colour, arc beyond arc of splendor, spread across the heavens. The journalists had gone, and a great peace reigned in the city.”

Scoop is the first book I’ve read from my Classics Club list. I’m hoping it only gets better from here.

World Book Night (Day)

Apr23

So, this is it: World Book Night (Day).

World Book Night is a celebration of reading and books which will see tens of thousands of people share books with others in their communities across America to spread the joy and love of reading on April 23. Successfully launched in the U.K. in 2011, World Book Night will also be celebrated in the U.S. in 2012, with news of more countries to come in future years. Additionally, April 23 is UNESCOâ€™s World Book Day, chosen due to the anniversary of Cervantesâ€™ death, as well as Shakespeareâ€™s birth and death.

I will be giving away twenty copies of the book Peace Like a River by Leif Enger. If you’ve not read it, I highly recommend it. Here’s my review of Peace Like a River.

I have some questions for you, my readers, on this lovely day of celebration of reading and writing and creativity and story:

If you could give away one book to all the people in your life who “don’t read much”, what book would you give away?

If you were going to give away your one title to strangers, where would you go to give it away?

How will you celebrate World Book Day/Shakespeare’s (Possible) Birthday?

What is your favorite Shakespeare comedy? Tragedy? Other play?

If you were going to teach a class to high school students on Shakespeare, an entire year-long celebration of Shakespeare’s plays, what is one activity you would use to engage the students and communicate a love for the works of The Bard? What plays would you include in your curriculum for the year?

Happy World Book Day to you all!

My Psalm Project

Apr22

I’m in the process of making a collection of songs based on the psalms as a playlist on my iTunes. Here’s what I have so far:

Psalm 5 Chuck Girard, Voice of the Wind
A Mighty Fortress (Psalm 46) Covenant Life Church
The Law of the Lord Is Perfect Ed Gungor, Shouts of Joy
Praise to the Lord the Almighty (Psalm 103 & 150) Fernando Ortega
The King of Love My Shepherd Is Fernando Ortega
Create In Me a Clean Heart Keith Green
The Lord Is My Shepherd (23rd Psalm) Keith Green
How Majestic Is Your Name (Psalm 8 ) Kristin Chenoweth
While the Nations Rage (Psalm 2) Rich Mullins
Psalm 3 Salvador, Into Motion
Psalm 6 Sons of Korah, Light of Life
Praise the Lord Sovereign Grace Music
Psalm 4 Waterworks, An Order for Compline
The Lord’s My Shepherd Wintley Phipps
My Soul Finds Rest (Psalm 62) Aaron Keyes, Not Guilty Anymore
God Be Merciful (Psalm 51) Indelible Grace Music

Suggestions? I would really like to find a good, singable version of Psalm 1, since I have Psalms 2-8, but not the first one. I know a song from childhood that’s based on Psalm 1, but I haven’t found a recorded version that I like.

Please add your suggestions for recorded versions of the Psalms in almost any musical style. I do like for the words to be understandable, and for the tune to be musical and easy to sing along with.

Saturday Review of Books: April 21, 2012

Apr20

â€œTolkien believed that the true escapist, or the ‘fugitive spirit,’ will be drawn by the ‘oldest and deepest desire, the Great Escape: the Escape from Death.’ This ‘Escape from Death’ is at the heart of the best books— the ones that stir our hearts, give us deeper understanding of our pain, and glimpses of joy to come.â€ ~Travis Prinzi at The Rabbit Room

On the Blue Comet by Rosemary Wells

Apr19

Another boy’s book in which time travel makes my head hurt. “Time is a river in which we can travel both forward into the future and back into the past.” The urchins watched Back to the Future 2 last night, and it made my head hurt, too. With The Blue Comet I just gave up on trying to understand the river of time and enjoyed the story.

Eleven year old Oscar Ogilvie lives with his dad in a little house in Cairo, Illinois. Mom is dead, but Dad and Oscar are happy with Oscar doing the cooking, Dad working as a salesman for the John Deere Tractor COmpany, and the two of them enjoying the Lionel train layout that they have in the basement. Then, the stock market crashes, and the depression hits, and Oscar’s dad loses is job and has to go to California to look for work, leaving Oscar behind to live with his crabby Aunt Carmen. All of this and a little more happens in chapters 1-4, before the time travel/magic part of the book begins. It’s a little slow, and some kids may give up before they get to the good part.

But they shouldn’t. The Blue Comet is deceptively dull at first, but the pace picks up in chapter 5 with a bank robbery, a jump into that River of Time, and some cameo appearances by famous stars and celebrities of the 1940’s such as “Dutch” Reagan, A. Hitchcock, and even a very young Jack Kennedy. It was fun to try to pick out the celebs, and it was enjoyable just to follow the story of our boy-hero, Oscar, as he worked his way from one side of the country to the other and from one era to the next and then back to the past where he came from.

The illustrations in this book by Bagram Ibatoulline deserve, indeed require, a mention. I wish I could show you an example. The pictures are full-color painting in a sort of Norman Rockwell-style. They’re just beautiful and quite evocative of the time period. I guess the cover illustration will have to do to give you an idea, but the pictures inside the book are even better.

So time travel. Electric trains. Depression-era. A boy and his dad. Oh, and Rudyard Kipling’s “If” and a disappearing math teacher. Bank robbers foiled. Surely, one or more of those will capture your interest in this well-told tale of historical adventure.

Wednesday’s Word of the Week: Defenestrate

Apr18

My daughter and I think it’s funny that there’s a word for throwing someone or something out of a window: defenestrate. The word comes from Latin: de for down and fenestra for window, and it’s a transitive verb. So, you can defenestrate your garbage or your mother-in-law.

“There have been many defenestrations over the course of history, but the most famous, and the one that inspired the word defenestration, was the Defenestration of Prague on May 23, 1618. Two imperial regents and their secretary were thrown out of a window of the Prague Castle in a fight over religion. The men landed on a dung heap and survived. The Defenestration of Prague was a prelude to the Thirty Years’ War.”

The quotation is from Anu Garg’s site, Wordsmith.org or A.Word.a.Day. Can you think of any other famous defenestrations, either historical or fictional, because I’m blank? Brown Bear Daughter encountered the word in Eva Ibbotson’s YA novel, A Song for Summer. She says, by the way, that she liked the story but not the ending. (No, it doesn’t end in defenestration; that comes near the beginning of the novel.)

'Defenestration' photo (c) 2008, torroid - license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

The above is a picture of a work of art in San Francisco called “Defenstration.” I also think the word would make another good blog title.

Prior Wednesday Words of the Week: galimaufry,flanerie, vatic, pavid, galactagogue, snollygoster, apophenia.