Dreaming in Code by Emily Arnold McCully

Dreaming in Code: Ada Byron Lovelace, Computer Pioneer by Emily Arnold McCully. Candlewick, 2019.

This new biography for children of mathematician Ada Byron Lovelace is NOT a picture book, and indeed, although it’s recommended for ages 10-14 in the marketing information, the book chronicles the actions and accomplishments of a woman who lived a rather shocking and tragic life. I’m not sure all fourteen year olds, much less ten year olds, are ready for the revelations that McCully sees fit to include in her biography, revelations of adultery, child abuse, incest, cruelty, and drug abuse.

In addition, the biographer is rather prejudiced. Lord Byron, Ada’s rake of a father, is very nearly absolved of all his faults, mostly because he wrote a poem in which he mentioned his longing to see his daughter after her mother, Lady Byron, ran away with the child and refused to allow Byron near her. Lady Byron, who does seem to have been something of a tartar, is painted in the darkest of terms as “obsessive” and “neglectful”, also self-centered and hypochondriacal, a dark and bullying force in Ada’s life for its entirety. Lord Byron gets off easily, I suppose because he died young and wrote good poetry.

Ada herself, because she was a genius and because she’s the subject of the book(?), is shown as a martyr to her mother’s domineering and dictatorial selfishness and whimsy. Nevertheless, there are numerous indications that Ada wasn’t much better than her parents when it came to being a decent parent and a faithful wife. McCully tells us that Ada was unfaithful to her long-suffering husband on more than one occasion, that she worried that she was a neglectful mother, and that she called her three children “irksome duties”. She was also drug-addicted, unhealthy, and an inveterate gambler. Perhaps one could blame all of Ada’s adult sins and problems on her horrible childhood and her horrible parents, but nevertheless it’s a wonder she was able to accomplish as much as she did in the fields of mathematics and invention.

So, the story of Ada Byron Lovelace is not terribly edifying, but it is a cautionary tale, I suppose. The sins of the fathers are often visited upon the children, and it takes the power of God to break a family heritage of sin and rebellion.

Takeaway:

“This was Ada’s great leap of imagination and the reason we remember her with such admiration. Her idea that the engine (Babbage’s Analytical Engine) could do more than compute, that numbers were symbols and could represent other concepts, is what makes Babbage’s engine a prototype-computer.”

Theodoric’s Rainbow by Stephen Kramer

Mar22

Theodoric’s Rainbow by Stephen Kramer, illustrated by Daniel Mark Duffy. W.H. Freeman and Company, 1995. 32 pages.

I don’t know if it’s The-ODD-oric or Theo-DORE-ic, but either way this fictionalized biography of a real thirteenth/fourteenth century German Dominican friar who experimented with light, optics, and rainbows is a delight for the eyes and the mind. The story is simple enough to read to a five or six year old, yet the scientific concepts that are introduced are challenging enough to intrigue and interest much older children and adults. In fact, after re-reading the book myself, I want to find a prism or a drop of water and go play with rainbows.

The note at the back of the back about Theodoric of Freiburg tell us that little is known about Theodoric’s personal life or about the details of how he made his discoveries or how they were received in the monastery where he lived. “This is the story of how it might have happened.” So, much of the story contained in the pages of this book is just that—a story.

The paintings by Daniel Mark Duffy that illustrate Theodoric’s story are breath-taking and beautiful. As befits a book about rainbows, the illustrations are colorful enough even for me, a lover of color. Mr. Duffy “studied medieval paintings and manuscript illuminations, rainbows of all kinds, and Theodoric’s own drawings” to prepare for illustrating this biography.

It’s not so easy to find biographies or fiction about real medieval people written for children, picture book or otherwise. Theodoric lived during the high middle ages, and he did interesting work as a proto-scientist and observer of God’s creation. I would definitely want to share this book with elementary age children who were studying or interested in this time period or the science of rainbows.

If you are interested in purchasing ($5.00) a curated list of favorite picture book biographies with over 300 picture books about all sorts of different people, email me at sherryDOTpray4youATgmailDOTcom. I’m highlighting picture book biographies in March. What is your favorite picture book about a real person?

The Extraordinary Mark Twain by Barbara Kerley

Mar21

The Extraordinary Mark Twain (according to Susy) by Barbara Kerley. Illustrated by Edwin Fotheringham. Scholastic Press, 2010.

In 1885-6 when he was at the height of his fame, Samuel Clemens’ thirteen year old daughter, Susy, really did write her own biography of her famous father. She wrote secretly at first and then as the work progressed, Mr. Clemens became aware of his young biographer and did his best to help her along by submitting to interviews and giving “pronouncements about himself at the breakfast table just to help his biographer along.” Apparently Clemens/Twain liked very much to talk–mostly about himself. But Susy gives in her journal, which was a diary of sorts as well as a work of biography, an adulatory yet frank picture of her father as only a thirteen year old daughter could.

The design of this picture book biography is quite creative: excerpts from Susy’s diary are inserted into the book as small mini-booklets. The author, Barbara Kerley, adds her explanatory and interpretive notes on the beautifully illustrated pages of the forty page picture book. The result is an intriguing and delightful portrait in words and pictures of an extraordinary man—and of his intrepid and writerly daughter.

The penultimate page of the book gives some extra information about Samuel Clemens and about Susy Clemens, who, sadly, died young from spinal meningitis at the age of twenty-four. Her tragic death made her father value the 130+ pages of Susy’s journal/biography all the more. “I have had no compliment, no praise, no tribute from any source,” said Twain, “that was so precious to me as this one was and still is. As I read it now, after all these many years, it is still a king’s message to me.”

The final page is titled “Writing an Extraordinary Biography (According to Barbara Kerley with a lot of help from Susy).” Here Ms. Kerley encourages her readers to choose their own subjects and write their own biographies, and she gives them some rules or guidelines or tips for doing so. This part of the book, in combination with the text of the book itself, would be a fantastic addition to a unit study on biography and an encouragement to any aspiring biographer.

A good picture book biographer finds a hook, something in the life of the subject to focus on and to build the book around, rather than trying to tell everything about the life and times of the person being written about. Vincent Van Gogh’s insomnia, Lewis Carroll’s way with words, Antoine de St. Exupery’s disappearance—all of these make good “hooks” upon which to hang a story that introduces young readers to the life of a famous person. Susy the biographer gives the reader someone to identify with and a way into the life story of a complex man, Mark Twain.

I’m highlighting picture book biographies in March. What is your favorite picture book about a real person?

Vincent Can’t Sleep by Barb Rosenstock

Mar20

Vincent Can’t Sleep: Van Gogh Paints the Night Sky by Barb Rosenstock, illustrated by Mary Grandpre. Knopf, 2017.

“At present, I absolutely want to paint a starry sky.”

“It often seems to me that the night is much more alive and richly colored than the day.”

“If only you pay attention to it you will see that certain stars are lemon-yellow, others pink or a green, blue and forget-me-not brilliance. And . . . it is obvious that putting little white dots on the blue-black is not enough to paint a starry sky.”
~Vincent van Gogh

The themes of this book, Vincent van Gogh’s sleeplessness and his famous painting of a starry night, are inspired by the artist’s actual, frequent bouts with insomnia and of course, by his art. The insomnia, which was probably a symptom of his mental illness, plagued him throughout his life, from boyhood. In this story, biographer Barb Rosenstock sees the inability as a source of inspiration and productivity for the talented and prolific artist. “Vincent’s personality shines through his art—–with each energetic brushstroke and wild color choice, he brings the night to life.”

I have enjoyed learning more about van Gogh and his art ever since last year when a speaker at a retreat I attended made Vincent van Gogh and his art come to life, so to speak. It often takes a true fan, a person who loves a certain artist or poet or writer, to introduce me to whole new world of that person’s art or poetry or fiction. An educated enthusiast can show me a way into another artist’s work that I just can’t find on my own. A friend in college introduced me to the poetry of T.S. Eliot, poems that I originally found confusing and esoteric, and I have enjoyed Eliot ever since. This speaker at the retreat last year introduced me to van Gogh, and I have been running into him, van Gogh, that is, ever since, in many unexpected ways and places.

Vincent Can’t Sleep is yet another gateway that will open up the world of Vincent van Gogh’s art for children, and even adults. Mary Grandpre uses van Gogh’s backgrounds and styles to create her own art for this luminous picture book. It is a tribute to van Gogh, and yet the artwork in it is new and fresh and beautiful in its own right.

Just as the makers of the film about van Gogh, Loving Vincent, used Vincent van Gogh’s art to create something new, the author and illustrator of this book about van Gogh have given me new insights into the man and his work. I didn’t know that he had insomnia, and I didn’t know the quotes about his use of color and paint to create pictures of the night sky. By the way, I highly recommend the film, Loving Vincent, for adults who, after reading this picture book, are interested in learning more about van Gogh and his art.

A Boy, a Mouse, and a Spider by Barbara Herkert

Mar19

A Boy, a Mouse and a Spider: The Story of E.B. White by Barbara Herkert. Illustrated by Lauren Castillo. Henry Holt and Company, 2017.

“Andy filled his barn with stoic sheep, anxious hens, and gossiping geese. But he still had a mouse on his mind.”

“Andy repaired a roof while another story brewed inside him. He raised a pig and wondered, what if the creature was rescued from a farmer’s deadly plan?”

“One cold October evening, Andy watched a spider spin. He climbed a ladder for a closer look. He’d found the hero of his story.”

In addition to giving readers the basic outlines of the life of beloved author E.B. White, this lovely and colorful picture book biography also tells about the genesis of White’s ideas for his most popular stories, Stuart Little and Charlotte’s Web. (No swans are mentioned.) Andy is the nickname his fellow journalists gave to newspaper writer, essayist, children’s author Elwyn Brooks White, and his ideas came from his love of animals, his farm in Maine, and “his love of boats, cars, skating, and travel; his love of morning and summertime.”

Any child who adores Charlotte’s Web or Stuart Little would be enthralled by this simple biography which uses brief sentences to paint a picture of a boy who faced his fears and a man who found his life’s work in the “power of words” and “the glory of nature.” Ms. Herkert uses words as Ms. Castillo uses pictures to give us a portrait of Mr. E.B. White that will linger in the mind just as Charlotte and Wilbur and Stuart linger and enlighten and give joy.

Definitely recommended.

The Namesake by Cyril Walter Hodges

Mar18

Alfred the Great (in this book) at Stonehenge: “I like to come here, because among these stones I know that I am standing where other men like me have stood and thought the same thoughts as I, a thousand years before I was born, and where others like me will stand likewise after I am dead. This place is like Memory itself, turned to stone, and Memory was given to us by God to make us different from the animals. . . . Every man is a part of the bridge between the past and the future. Whatever helps him feel this more strongly is good. By feeling this, God gives us to know for sure that we are not beasts and do not die as the beasts die.”

I watched the BBC/Netflix television series, The Last Kingdom, based on Bernard Cornwell’s The Saxon Stories series of novels. I haven’t read Cornwell’s novels, and I don’t really recommend The Last Kingdom, although it was enthralling. It was much too violent and had too much sexual content for my tastes. Nevertheless, aside from the sex, the story was probably true to the times. It was a violent and bloody time in ye olde Wessex.

Anyway, the TV series inspired me to read more about Alfred, and a bit of fiction to fill in the gaps in the heroic saga between battles and kingly decrees, is in order. In The Namesake, Alfred is just beginning his reign in Wessex and just beginning his long fight to unite England and drive out the invading Danes.

The title refers to the narrator of most of the story, a young boy who has lost one of his legs in a Danish incursion and whose name happens to be Alfred, just like the king. This happy coincidence, along with a rather mystical vision that that the boy has, both serve to form a connection between peasant and king that lasts through battles and sickness and captivity among the Danes and eventually ends in the boy’s becoming a scribe to King Alfred.

The story is not as fast-paced as modern readers might be accustomed to, but it does have a lot of battles and exciting adventures. Fans of the books of G.A. Henty, when they have exhausted that author’s copious number of novels, would probably enjoy this story about a boy in the time of Alfred the Great of Wessex. (Did Henty write about Alfred the Great in any of his novels?) There is a sequel to The Namesake, called The Marsh King, which I would like to read. I assume the title refers to Alfred’s time in exile, a time spent hiding from the Danes in the marshes of Somerset.

Author and illustrator C. Walter Hodges was born on this date, March 18th, in 1909. In addition to this book about King Alfred the Great, Mr. Hodges illustrated three of the Landmark history series books: The Flight and Adventures of Charles II, Queen Elizabeth and the Spanish Armada, and Will Shakespeare and the Globe Theater. According to the author bio in my copy of The Namesake, Mr. Hodges once said that he wished to “continue to the end of his life in the peaceful occupation of an illustrator.” Instead, he became an author as well as an illustrator, and readers are well-served by his decision to do so.

The Pilot and the Little Prince by Peter Sis

Mar13

The Pilot and the Little Prince: The Life of Antione De Saint Exupery by Peter Sis. Farrar Straus Giroux Books for Young Readers, 2014.

Like Alice in Wonderland, The Little Prince, written and published in the midst of the author’s exile from his native France, during World War II, is an odd book, hard to classify. Is it a book for children or for adults? Is it a philosophical parable or a simple fantasy, or both? Is it full of deep insights, or simply a silly story about a space-traveling prince? It’s certainly, like Alice again, a matter of taste. Some, like me and my youngest daughter, love it, while others find it abstruse and just plain weird. Early critics, when it was first published in New York, said that it was not at all a children’s book, but rather an adult parable in disguise. Therefore, it is fitting that Peter Sis’s picture book biography of author Antione de Saint Exupery is a bit hard to classify—and to read sequentially— as well.

Sis writes a straightforward biographical text that appears at the bottom of each page, but the illustrations are far from straightforward or clearly linear. Mr. Sis gives us much more information about Saint-Exupery, his life, and his times in the context of the pictures that are filled with facts, and maps, and timelines, and anecdotes, than he does in the actual biographical story that parades across the bottom of the pages of his book. This style may not be appealing to every reader. I confess I find it somewhat tedious to read text wrapped in a circle around a small picture or words that wiggle over a mountain or fly up the page instead of across from left to right.

But other readers may become lost (in a good way) in the variations in style and color and format that Sis uses to tell his story about the pilot who became a writer and then a photographer in the French war effort against Nazi Germany.

“The boy would grow up to be a pilot. He would write about courageous flights, but also about places you might find if you were to fly long enough and far enough. What did he find on the earth? What did he find in the sky?”

“On July 31, 1944, at 8:45 a.m., he took off from Brogo, Corsica, to photograph enemy positions east of Lyon. It was a beautiful day. He was due back at 12:30. But he never returned. Some say he forgot his oxygen mask and vanished at sea. Maybe Antoine found his own glittering planet next to the stars.”

The Pilot and the Little Prince could keep an aspiring pilot or writer or Little Prince aficionado amused and enthralled for quite some time. There’s plenty to explore and learn in this busy, beautiful book about a busy man who was an artist with beautiful and meaningful words.

Christopher Robin (movie)

Mar13

I just watched the 2018 movie Christopher Robin. They ripped off the plot and the themes from the movie version of Mary Poppins and from Hook, imported the Disney Pooh characters and some Pooohisms, and pared it all down to the essence of boring. Christopher Robin is all grown up, and he’s the such a baddie because he won’t leave his work to go for a holiday in the country with his daughter and wife. He’s forgotten his childhood and his childhood friends, Pooh and Piglet and the rest of the denizens of the Hundred Acre Woods.

I’m not a fan of movies that that say that growing up is a bad thing, and we should all just forget our responsibilities and our work and play like children. That’s not what Jesus meant when he said we were to become as children. to enter the kingdom of heaven. He wasn’t talking about some Disney version of “let’s go fly a kite” or the catchphrase in this movie, which was something like “doing nothing often leads to the very best kind of something.” (Try that one on your boss the next time you want a day off.) Not that Christopher Robin mentions Jesus or childlike faith or anything else very deep or interesting. I guess we can be thankful that the movie doesn’t give us any post-modern wisdom, just Pooh uttering his simple proverbs, nor does it have any scenes or language that would earn it anything more than a G rating, just a couple of very mild war scenes at the beginning when Christopher Robin is off fighting in World War II.

Silly old Disney. How about you quit giving us recycled blather for a movie and try to do something new and real?

Joan Proctor, Dragon Doctor by Patricia Valdez

Mar12

Joan Proctor, Dragon Doctor: The Woman Who Loved Reptiles by Patricia Valdez, illustrated by Felicita Sala. Knopf, 2018.

In case you’re not current on your famous herpetologists, Joan Proctor was a British expert on amphibians and reptiles who became a curator of reptiles at the Natural History Museum, then a part of the British Museum, just after World War I. In 1923, Joan Proctor was appointed to the post of curator of reptiles at the London Zoo. She designed the Reptile House at the zoo, studied and cared for the reptiles housed there, wrote articles and scientific papers about her findings, and presented her observations and research before the Scientific Meeting of the Zoological Society of London in 1928. All of these accomplishments were done without a college degree and in spite of the chronic illness that kept Ms. Proctor from ever attending college.

Ms. Proctor was particularly interested in and fond of Komodo dragons, especially a Komodo dragon named Sumbawa with whom she took daily walks through the zoo. For any child who is an animal lover, or a fan of reptiles, lizards and snakes, this book would be a treasure.

The book mentions but does not emphasize the fact that Joan Proctor was something of a phenomenon in her day. In a time when middle and upper class women did not work outside the home at all, much less with snakes and lizards in the zoo, Joan Proctor’s work was novel and ground-breaking. The newspaper articles referenced in the bibliography carry titles that indicate that journalists were both curious and a bit shocked by her work:

“English Woman Charms Snakes: Joan Proctor, 25 Years Old, Has Charge of Reptiles in the London Zoo.” The Winnipeg Tribune, August 15, 1923.

“Girl Manages Reptile House in London Zoo.” Mount Carmel Item, December 28, 1929.

“Snakes Alive, and a Lady Who Loves Them. London’s Curator of Reptiles.” The Advertiser, Adelaide, Australia. January 4, 1930.

Unfortunately, Ms. Proctor died young, at the age of thirty-four, from complications due to her chronic illness. But her work and inspiration live on in this timeless picture book biography of a talented and fearless lady who defied expectations to pursue the study and career that she loved. And the book has quite a bit of information about Komodo dragons for readers who are particularly interested in them. (They are rather amazing creations, but I wouldn’t want to take one walking, no matter how tame he was.)

One Fun Day with Lewis Carroll by Kathleen Krull

Mar8

One Fun Day with Lewis Carroll: A Celebration of Wordplay and a Girl Named Alice by Kathleen Krull, illustrated by Julia Sarda. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018. 32 pages.

One Fun Day is not exactly a traditional biography or a picture book biography of the famous author and mathematician Charles Lutwidge Dodgson as it is a celebration of his life, his storytelling, and his way and play with words. Nevertheless, there is two page spread of text and pictures at the back of the book that tells “more about Lewis Carroll’s journey to the Alice books” as well as a glossary of “words and ideas invented or adapted by Lewis Carroll.”

The main part of the book is a romp through the life, words, and ideas of Mr. Carroll. The book talks about Carroll’s enduring childhood and gives an idea of what a day with Lewis Carroll might have been like. The illustrations are a delight, including a two-page spread of Alice chasing the White Rabbit through Wonderland. There are also numerous pictures of Lewis playing and story-telling with his young friends, and the text incorporates many of the words and phrases that Lewis Carroll originated: chortles, uffish, slithy, uglification, and un-birthday, to name a few.

The day and the book both end with Lewis rich, famous, and busy writing stories: “Lewis Carroll, the man who never forgot how to play, had turned a day of fun into stories that were fabulous and joyous—as he would say, frabjous.”

I wrote in another post about my take on modern-day accusations against Lewis Carroll that I find to be unsupported, revisionist, and unfair. You can check out that post and the links there if you’re interested. But I would suggest that you just enjoy Mr. Carroll on his own terms as he and his work are presented in One Fun Day with Lewis Carroll. This picture book would be a wonderful introduction to a read-aloud of Alice in Wonderland, a book that I love but I find to be somewhat polarizing. Some love it as much as I do; others just can’t understand it or hate it. At least you should try reading it if you haven’t. Alice is quite the adventure. And wordplay is the essence of poetry.

More Lewis Carroll:
Many Happy Returns:January 27th

Of Snarks and Quarks

Radio Jabberwocky

Lewis Carroll’s Christmas Greeting

Semicolon

Books we must have though we lack bread.