Ribsy by Beverly Cleary

Apr6

To be completely honest and upfront, I must say that I am and always have been a big fan of Beverly Cleary’s many middle grade fiction books. I don’t think that the characters–Henry Huggins, Beezus and Ramona Quimby, and all the rest of the crew on Klickitat Street—are egregiously disrespectful or naughty or that they provide bad role models for children. It doesn’t bother me that they use the words “dumb” and “stupid” frequently, as children did in the 1950’s and 60’s, before those became bad words, not to be uttered by good children. Stories aren’t meant to be treatises on good behavior in disguise; they are meant to be stories that help us understand the world around us and ourselves and others and sometimes make us laugh (or cry).

So, in spite of the fact that I am not a dog person, I loved reading this deceptively simple story about Ribsy, “a plain ordinary city dog, the kind of dog that strangers usually called Mutt or Pooch. They always called him this in a friendly way, because Ribsy was a friendly dog.” The book, appropriate for ages seven to eleven, tells the story of how that friendly dog, Ribsy, who belonged to the boy Henry Huggins, got lost and found his way home. It could be allegorical: Ribsy is like all of us humans who get lost sometimes, partly because of our own stupid mistakes and partly through no fault of our own. Ribsy searches diligently for Henry at first, but a dog’s memory is inconsistent. Sometimes Ribsy forgets all about Henry Huggins and his true home. Then, something happens to make Ribsy remember that Henry is his true owner and that he needs to get home.

So, yes, an adult reader (like me) could find allegory or lessons in the story, but I think most people will just enjoy Ribsy for what it is, a funny dog story, and one in which the dog protagonist does not die or suffer serious injury. Ribsy wanders about, looking for Henry, in a world that’s mostly friendly to him because he’s a friendly dog. There’s always someone around to share a sandwich or a hot dog with Ribsy until he finally manages to get back to Henry.

Our twentieth century world is a scary place, and maybe children do need to encounter dragons and monsters and even the suffering of animals in books where they can learn how to face those dangers and griefs inside a story. But the world can also be a friendly place, and full of humor, and helping hands, and joyful reunions. And maybe we need to see that side of things even more than we need a vision of the darkness. Ribsy, published in 1964, during my own childhood, recreates that friendly world in which a stray dog could wander into a classroom at the local elementary school, take up residence in the second grade, and be fed and loved for a while before going off on his way home.

The Wheel on the School by Meindert DeJong

Apr4

This winner of the 1955 Newbery Award Medal is a winner indeed. The children of Shora, a small village on the Netherlands coast, all six of them, realize one day that the storks never come to Shora to nest. Storks nest on the roofs of houses in other neighboring villages, but not in Shora.

So, the children, along with their schoolteacher, team up to find out why the storks don’t nest in Shora and to fix it so that they do. The project is a difficult one, and the children intend to work hard to bring the storks, or at least one stork, to Shora as the birds begin to migrate to the Netherlands from their homes in Africa. Their teacher tells them to begin by wondering:

“We can’t think much when we don’t know much. But we can wonder! From now until tomorrow morning when you come to school again, will you do that? Will you wonder why and wonder why? Will you wonder why storks don’t come to Shora to build their nests on the roof the way they do in all the villages around? For sometimes when we wonder, we can make things begin to happen.”

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Meindert DeJong has such a way with words, and the black and white drawings in this book by Maurice Sendak are just right, not too intrusive so that readers have room to wonder and create their own pictures of the story but with enough detail so that we can know what a stork looks like or what kind of wheel the children are looking for.

Such a good read aloud selection! But if you don’t have time to read it aloud, introduce the first chapter or two at least, and I believe most children would be drawn into the story. The culture is a bit different from American twenty-first century culture. The children are more “free range”, and the adults are both more irascible and more helpful and approachable than adults are in my city/suburban community. Shora is a small village, after all. But children are children everywhere, and these six Dutch children are imaginative, cooperative, and most of all persistent. And sometimes children with those qualities can make things begin to happen.

Shadow of a Bull by Maia Wojciechowska

Apr3

This Newbery Award winning novel, set in Catalonia, in Spain, introduces readers to a culture and way of life that is foreign to most American children and may even be faded or fading fast in Spain itself. It’s an honor culture, and Manolo’s honor and that of his family depend on his becoming a great bullfighter like his deceased father before him.

“When Manolo was nine he became aware of three important facts in his life. First: the older he became, the more he looked like his father. Second: he, Manolo Oliver, was a coward. Third: everyone in the town of Arcangel expected him to grow up to be a famous bullfighter, like his father.”

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I wonder what it would be like to grow up in the shadow of a famous parent. I have the advantage of not knowing from experience what that would feel like. But I’m sure it must be suffocating. Shadow of a Bull shows the difficulty of such expectations as they impact the growth of a nine to eleven year old boy in a small town in Spain. But the lesson is universal. The expectations of others cannot be the determining factors in the maturing decisions of an individual. Community and culture are important, but so is individuality and one’s own moral judgment. Finding a way to reconcile a person’s own inner desires and ambitions with the expectations of community and family is one possible path to maturity.

The book is also about bull-fighting, but the bullfight is a device. Although bull-fighting is controversial—in Spanish bullfighting, the bull is almost always killed at the end of the bullfight—Shadow of a Bull never tries to make a case against bullfighting itself. All the details are there, and they are somewhat gory (animal lovers beware!), but the conflict is not Manolo against the sport of bullfighting. Manolo’s conflict is within himself: how can he prove to himself that he is not a coward and yet not be forced to become, in essence, a reincarnation of his famous father? Manolo must fight his first bull in order to show himself that he is courageous, not a slave to his fear, but if he does fight the bull, he has started down a path that will lead only to more and more bullfights, not Manolo’s goal at all.

Finally, Shadow of a Bull is a story about a boy who finds his courage to become the person he is meant to be.

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.

Tituba of Salem Village by Ann Petry

Apr1

This fictional account of the Salem witch hunts and trials focuses on Tituba, enslaved servant to minister of Salem, Samuel Parris. Parris, his daughter, Betsey and his niece Abigail Williams were at the heart of the witch scare in Salem, Massachusetts in the late 1600’s. The story is told from Tituba’s point of view, but in third person. Tituba, the Parris’ household servant who may have come to Massachusetts from Barbados, was accused and convicted of witchcraft during the trials, with Abigail and Betsey being among her chief accusers. Tituba was imprisoned, but she did escape with her life, although not her freedom. “In May of 1693 all persons charged with witchcraft were pardoned.” However, Tituba was sold for payment of her jail fees to Samuel Conklin, weaver, and worked for him in Boston for the remainder of her life.

Perhaps it’s good to know that background information going into the story since it is a rather harrowing tale of lies and deceit and flirtation with the occult. According to the story in this book, Tituba does tell fortunes and outlandish tales about talking monkeys and the jungles of Barbados. But from the perspective of this author, Tituba is much more sinned against than sinning. The girls who cry witchcraft are bored and overworked, with imaginations starved by Puritan legalism and the harsh conditions of colonial life. They follow Abigail and become caught up in the social contagion of the time: a belief in and fear of witchcraft. Abigail herself sounds like a piece of work, while Tituba, the character in the book anyway, is both insightful about the girls and their delusions as well as vulnerable to their insistent accusations.

It’s a somewhat scary book, perhaps disturbing to younger readers. I would wait until age thirteen or fourteen to hand this book over. Nevertheless, the outlines of the story are true, and it does illustrate the dangers of “following the crowd” or following a strong and charismatic leader. People can convince themselves of some very strange things when caught up in groupthink or hysteria. Tituba of Salem Village gives one perspective on the outbreak of such hysteria in Salem Village in the late seventeenth century.

If you want to read more about the events in Salem surrounding the witch accusations and trials, there are a number of good books, both well-researched historical fiction and nonfiction:

  • A Break With Charity by Ann Rinaldi (reviewed at Plumfield and Paideia) is historical fiction in the same vein as Tituba of Salem Village. A real girl whose parents were accused during the witch trials tells the story from her perspective as an outsider and a victim of the hysteria.
  • I Walk in Dread: The Diary of Deliverance Trembley, Witness to the Salem Witch Trials, Massachusetts Bay Colony, 1691 by Lisa Rowe Fraustino is part of the Dear America series of historical fiction written in journal or diary form.
  • The Crucible by Arthur Miller. Miller’s play uses the Salem Witch trials as a metaphor for and illumination of the McCarthy and the Committee on Un-American Activites (U.S. House of Representatives) blacklisting of suspected communists in government, entertainment and business. Its initial production on Broadway in 1953 won a Tony Award.
  • The Devil’s Door: A Salem Witchcraft Story by Paul B. Thompson.
  • The Witchcraft of Salem Village by Shirley Jackson is a nonfiction Landmark book about the witch trials in Salem.
  • Devil’s Shadow: The Story of Witchcraft in Massachusetts by Clifford Lindsay Alderman is another nonfiction account of the events.

Girl With a Pen: Charlotte Bronte by Elisabeth Kyle

Mar29

“This being Charlotte Bronte’s story and not her biography, I have taken a few liberties. Some minor happenings have been transposed in time, other omitted or invented. . . . But this is Charlotte’s story. I have written it in the hope of awakening interest in a remarkable girl who wrote remarkable books.”

~Afterword by Elisabeth Kyle

I can’t decide whether it would be best to have read Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre before reading this fictionalized biography or whether Jane Eyre might flow even better if the reader were to know something about the life and times of its author. Either way, Girl With a Pen is a book not to be missed by Bronte fans. Making the story of Charlotte’s life into a fictional narrative while keeping the broad outlines and many of the details was a good choice on the part of a good author herself, Elisabeth Kyle. Ms. Kyle writes vividly and fluidly of Charlotte’s young adulthood and her rise to fame, telling the story of Charlotte Bronte’s growth as a person and as an author with understanding and an affinity for Charlotte and her sisters.

I’ve read several books about the Brontes, fiction and nonfiction. They all have their strengths and weaknesses. This one emphasizes Charlotte’s life in the parsonage at Haworth as a young adult, covers her time as a student in Brussels, and shows us her rocky, yet triumphant road to becoming a celebrated novelist, all without speculating about modern obsessions with Charlotte’s love life or her relationship with her father. Mr. Bronte is this book, is a typical Victorian father, rather over-protective of his daughters by modern standards, but loving and beloved by those same daughters. And Charlotte goes to Brussels to learn French and to teach English and does not indulge in any love affairs whilst there.

This biographical fiction novel is especially appropriate for junior high and younger high school readers who are interested in learning more about Charlotte Bronte’s life since the author omits the more sordid details of Branwell Bronte’s life and death with Branwell appearing only as a minor character in the story. The book also ends before the deaths of Emily and Anne, thereby avoiding those twin tragedies as well.

And Charlotte herself is indeed the focus of the narrative. Ms. Kyle tells Charlotte’s story vividly and memorably. In this book, Charlotte Bronte, who thought of herself as a rather nondescript and even ugly young lady, is is bright and personable and full of life. I would recommend this fictionalized biography to any teens who are readers, introverts, or aspiring writers. And adults like me, librarian-types, should find it fascinating as well.

Other Bronte books I can recommend:

  • The Little Books of the Little Brontes by Sara O’Leary. A picture book about the Bronte children and their homemade miniature booklets.
  • The Bronte Sisters: The Brief Lives of Charlotte, Emily and Anne by Catherine Reef. An excellent young adult biography of the three Bronte sisters.
  • Always Emily by Michaela McColl. Fiction portraying Emily Bronte and her sister Charlotte as a mismatched but effective detective duo.
  • The Return of the Twelves by Pauline Clarke. A fantasy children’s novel about the Bronte children and their toy soldiers.
  • The Brontes: Wild Genius on the Moors by Juliet Barker. I haven’t read this “definitive biography”, but it sounds good.
  • Charlotte Bronte and Jane Eyre by Stewart Ross. A picture book biography of Charlotte Bronte, emphasizing the genesis of her most famous novel.
  • The Young Brontes: Charlotte and Emily, Branwell and Anne by Mary Louise Jarden. A children’s novel, quite long, ab out the four Bronte children and their imaginative existence as the four Genii.
  • The Life of Charlotte Bronte by Mrs. Gaskell. The first biography written about Charlotte Bronte, published shortly after her death.

The Easter Cat by Meindert DeJong

Mar26

Mr. DeJong is fast becoming one of my favorite children’s authors of all time. His books are usually animal stories, often child-centered, with quite a lot of insight into the way a child thinks and acts. The books were written, set, and published in the 1950’s and 60’s, and the children in the stories are therefore much more free to roam, to play, to wonder, and yes, to get into trouble. These children that DeJong portrays are imperfect; they sometimes tell lies or disobey parents and other authorities. They wonder about things that they dare not ask adults. They make unwise decisions.

But these children are real, believable, and I daresay lovable. They don’t have special powers with which they can save the world. They don’t engage in community action in order to save the trees or the community center or whatever is threatened by the Big, Bad Developers. Millicent in The Easter Cat is just a little girl who wants a pet cat. However, her mother’s allergy to cats makes that wish impossible to fulfill. So Millicent plays with the stray cats in the alley, even feeds them, even though her mother has forbidden it.

Then, early on Easter Sunday morning, Millicent finds a cat, inside her house, next to her Easter basket. Could it be that mother has gotten over her allergy? Could this beautiful blue Siamese cat be the gift that Millicent has always longed for? And if he’s not an Easter surprise, can she somehow keep him anyway?

If you want the children in your books to be superheroes or obedient little automatons, The Easter Cat isn’t the book for you. Millicent certainly isn’t a bad child, but she is cat-obsessed. Her deep desire to love and care for a cat of her own can be identified with by many children, and any fellow cat lover will enjoy this story. The tale also includes a secret hide-out, a favorite story element of mine. So I recommend it to readers of Easter stories and animal stories and secret hiding place stories and family stories of all kinds.

Oh, it’s also short, a little over 100 pages. For those who like it short and sweet.

Focus on Alfred the Great

Mar7

I’ve now read three books, two fiction and one nonfiction, about the the life and times of Alfred the Great, King of Wessex (southern England) in the ninth century. I may not know all there is to know about Alfred, aka Aelfred, but I certainly know enough to admire and appreciate the man and his accomplishments.

I read The Namesake by C. Walter Hodges last year and skimmed it last week to compare it with the other two books. As you can tell from my review, Alfred in this book is portrayed as a Philosopher King, and I think that a fair portrayal, although he certainly knew battle tactics and politics, too.

In Eva March Tappan’s In the Days of Alfred the Great, the reader gains a lot more background about Alfred and his life and the political situation in Britain and the stories that were told about Alfred. I think I enjoyed this narrative nonfiction book even more than the two fictional treatments of Alfred’s life. I understand why the author who wished to write about Alfred the Great might choose a novel form: a lot of what is known about the man and his times is legend and story, not really verified. However, Ms. Tappan inserts dialog and story into her nonfiction narrative, making it readable, but also believable. I thought the story made Alfred come alive , and I learned a lot about “the days of Alfred the Great.” I purchased In the Days of Alfred the Great in a reprint edition from Living Book Press, and I recommend the LBP edition of this classic history book.

The third book I read, from another small publisher, Smidgen Press, is called The Lost Dragon of Wessex. It tells the story of an orphan boy who becomes involved in the struggle between the Saxons under Alfred the Great and the invading Danes. Wulf, in the beginning of the story, is a simple forest-dwelling peasant boy who has never been away from home. When Wulf meets a stranger and follows him to the court of Alfred, the boy encounters adventure and testing that will bring him into manhood and into his calling as either a soldier or a bard, or maybe both. The journeys in this story are from forest to city, from ignorance to education, from England to Sweden and back, and from boy to man, and the focus of the story is on Wulf and what Wulf learns in the court of King Alfred, not so much on the king himself or his character and battles.

So, the three books complement one another. The Namesake shows us a fictional, but noble King Alfred as he is remembered by the old man that King Alfred mentored and taught when the man, named Alfred also, was a boy. In the Days of Alfred the Great shows where Alfred came from, the stories that were told of him as a boy and as a man, and the challenges he had to face in defeating the Danes and bringing learning and books to his own people, the Saxons of Wessex. The Lost Dragon of Wessex presents us with Alfred at the height of powers and influence and shows what that influence might have been on one boy as well as on the country as a whole.

Have you read any books about Alfred the Great? What would you recommend?

Proud Prisoner by Walter Havighurst

Feb25

This narrative history/biography book is for older middle school to high school students and adults who are interested in a different perspective on the American Revolution, particularly the war in the Kentucky, Ohio and Michigan territories west of the Appalachian Mountains. The “proud prisoner” of the title is Lieutenant Governor Henry Hamilton, British Governor of Detroit, aka “Hair Buyer”. As the war between the independence-declaring Americans and the mighty ruling British was raging in the east, the illegal settlers in Kentucky and Ohio were experiencing their own war. The British paid Native American allies, led by British officers, to raid the settlements and isolated homesteads of these settlers, who were mostly from Virginia and considered themselves Americans and Virginians, not subject to the British law that said they couldn’t settle in the land beyond the Cumberland Gap.

Henry Hamilton gained the epithet “Hair Buyer” among the Virginians because he was accused of paying the Native Americans for scalps but not for for live prisoners and of encouraging them to massacre men, women, and children. This book makes the case that Hamilton was falsely accused by a couple of unreliable witnesses with an ax to grind. However, the author also states very plainly that Hamilton gave the natives many “presents” (mostly rum), including knives specifically called scalping knives. And when the raiders brought in scalps, including those obviously taken from children, Hamilton gave them praise and more gifts. If that’s not paying for scalps, I’m not sure what it is.

So I wasn’t convinced that Governor Hamilton was an “honest and honorable man whom history has cast in a villain’s role.” Maybe the best you can say is that he was no worse than many of his compatriots as well as many of the Virginians who were also enlisting the natives to fight for them. Anyway, it was fascinating to read about this side of the War for Independence. I don’t remember learning in American history class much about George Rogers Clark, the Virginian sent by Governor Patrick Henry to capture the British outposts in the west and stop the marauding British and natives from their raids on American settlements. Nor do I remember anything at all about the governor of Detroit and the battle between his forces and the Virginia militiamen at Vincennes that ended in the capture and imprisonment of Governor Hamilton.

I thought this story, by a scholar and university professor, was well written, engaging, and well researched. Governor Hamilton left behind many papers, letters, and a diary which means the author had many sources from which to draw in telling the history of this possibly unfairly stigmatized, possibly justly hated, man. Either way, Hamilton’s life was one I knew nothing about, and I’m glad I read about him in Proud Prisoner.

The Book of Three by Lloyd Alexander

Feb23

Whenever I am asked for a book suggestion in the vein of or as a follow up to Narnia or Tolkien, my first question is always, “Have you read Lloyd Alexander’s Prydain Chronicles?” And yet, I haven’t read these five books in the Prydain series, beginning with The Book of Three, in many, many years. Since I am working on reading children’s books published in 1964, sixty years ago, it was definitely time for a reread: The Book of Three was first published in 1964.

I love Lloyd Alexander’s quirky, idiosyncratic characters:

  • Taran, Assistant Pig-Keeper, is the immature, rash, and bumbling sort-of-hero of the story. Well, if not the hero, at least he’s the main character, and he’s about to go on an epic hero’s journey, even if he is only an Assistant Pig-Keeper.
  • Hen Wen, the oracular pig is lost. Can the rag-tag group that gathers around Taran help him find Hen Wen and warn the good guys of impending danger?
  • Prince Gwydion, the older and true hero, still relies on Taran and his friends to help save the kingdom of Prydain from the evil Arawn and his henchman, the Horned King.
  • Eilonwy, girl child or young woman or enchantress, speaks in metaphors and similes and always keeps Taran humble with her sharp observations.
  • Fflewddur Fflam, the bard who used to be a king. His harp is magical in the music it produces and in its response to the exaggerated stories that Fflewddur tells.
  • Gurgi, beast-man or man-beast, is a brave though smelly companion whose constant talk of “crunchings and munchings” and “walkings and stalkings” and “seekings and peekings” adds a memorable bit of spice and humor to the story.
  • Doli is the irascible dwarf guide who can’t manage to turn himself invisible no matter how long and hard he holds his breath.
  • Dallben, who only enters the story at the beginning and at the end, is Taran’s wizard mentor, three hundred and seventy-nine years old and devoted to the work of meditation, “an occupation so exhausting he could accomplish it only by lying down and closing his eyes” for an hour and a half every morning and evening.

The characters and the setting are drawn from Welsh legend and mythology, just as Tolkien’s Middle Earth was taken somewhat from Norse and Finnish mythology. “Arawn, the dread Lord of Annuvin, comes from the Mabinogion, the classic collection of Welsh legends, though in Prydain he is considerably more villainous.” I think Alexander was also influenced by Tolkien, although he never says so, never even admits to having read LOTR. And the stories of Prydain are deeply influenced by the existentialism of Jean Paul Sartre; Lloyd Alexander was the first person to translate Sartre’s novel Nausea into English.

Actually, the plot is somewhat predictable: Young Taran goes on a journey with a mission to save the land of Prydain from the forces of evil. On the way he meets many obstacles and dangers but also finds unexpected helpers and friends.The evil is defeated, temporarily, but of course not conclusively, since there are four more books to come in the series. In some series this ending-not-ending would be irritating, but this story is more about the characters and their growth and the humor and the serious philosophical and even religious journey that each of them is taking. (But there is really no religion in these books. They are more existentialist, about finding out the depths of your own character and identity, but not in an annoying way?)

Anyway, I’m just now beginning my 1964 journey. I may find other books from that year that equal or even better Mr. Alexander’s first entry into the world of Prydain. But I would guess that The Book of Three will be among the top ten books of 1964, at the very least. Highly recommended.

“Most of us are called on to perform tasks far beyond what we can do. Our capabilities seldom match our aspirations, and we are often woefully unprepared. To this extent, we are all Assistant Pig-Keepers at heart.”

~Lloyd Alexander, Author’s Note at the beginning of The Book of Three