“[R}eally good books. Good or even great because they make the right connections. They pull together for us a world that is falling apart. They are the words that integrate us, stretch us, comfort and heal us. They are the words that mirror the Word of creation, bringing order out of chaos.” ~Katherine Paterson
Three wonderful authors, for whose work I am very thankful, were born on this date. Any of their books would make lovely Christmas presents.
1. C.S. Lewis
Lewis is the best writer and the most profound thinker of the three, the one whose work will stand the test of time. I predict that Mere Christianity, The Screwtape Letters, and Till We Have Faces, in particular, will be read and appreciated a hundred years from now. Because he died fifty years ago on November 22, 1963, he has been remembered with many, many articles and blog posts this month. Here are links to just a few from this year and from other years.
50 Years Ago Today, RIP Jack
Jared at Thinklings: Remembering Jack (2005)
Lars Walker at Brandywine Books: The Feast of St. Jack and The Great Man’s Headgear
Hope at Worthwhile Books reviews Out of the Silent Planet, the first book in Lewis’s space trilogy.
Heidi at Mt. Hope Chronicles writes about her appreciation for the works of C.S. Lewis.
Jollyblogger reviews Lewis’s The Great Divorce.
2. Madeleine L’Engle
Ms. L’Engle is the most likely of the three to have her work become dated. However, the science fiction quartet that begins with A Wrinkle in Time may very well last because it deals with themes that transcend time and localized concerns. And I still like The Love Letters the best of all her books, a wonderful book on the meaning of marriage and of maturity.
Madeleine L’Engle favorites.
In which I invite Madeleine L’Engle to tea in June, 2006, before her death last year.
A Madeleine L’Engle Annotated bibliography.
Semicolon Review of The Small Rain and A Severed Wasp by Madeleine L’Engle.
Semicolon Review of Camilla by Madeleine L’Engle.
My Madeleine L’Engle project, which has languished this year, but I hope to get back to it in 2009.
Mindy Withrow writes about A Circle of Quiet.
Remembering Madeleine: Obituaries and Remembrances from September, 2007.
3. Louisa May Alcott.
I love reading about Ms. Alcott’s girls and boys even though many people are too jaded and feminist to enjoy books that celebrate the joys of domesticity and home education.
Circle of Quiet quotes An Old-Fashioned Girl by Louisa May Alcott on the wearing of blue gloves.
Carrie reviews Little Women, after three attempts to get though it.
Claire, The Captive Reader re-reads my favorite Louisa May Alcott novel, Eight Cousins.
Claire, The Captive Reader revisits Rose in Bloom, the sequel to Eight Cousins.
Sam at Book Chase reviews Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women by Harriet Reisen.
Joyfuly Retired sponsored an “All Things Alcott” Challenge in 2010 where you can find links to many posts about Louisa May and her family and her novels.
“Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us. It behooves us then to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.” ~Abraham Lincoln, Proclamation of a National Day of Humiliation, Fasting and Prayer, March 30, 1863
Some hae meat and canna eat, –
And some wad eat that want it;
But we hae meat, and we can eat,
Sae let the Lord be thankit.
~Robert Burns
“For, after all, put it as we may to ourselves, we are all of us from birth to death guests at a table which we did not spread. The sun, the earth, love, friends, our very breath are parts of the banquet…. Shall we think of the day as a chance to come nearer to our Host, and to find out something of Him who has fed us so long?” ~Rebecca Harding Davis
“I am grateful for what I am and have. My thanksgiving is perpetual. O how I laugh when I think of my vague indefinite riches. No run on my bank can drain it, for my wealth is not possession but enjoyment.†~Henry David Thoreau
Psalm 150
Praise the Lord.
Praise God in his sanctuary;
praise him in his mighty heavens.
Praise him for his acts of power;
praise him for his surpassing greatness.
Praise him with the sounding of the trumpet,
praise him with the harp and lyre,
praise him with timbrel and dancing,
praise him with the strings and pipe,
praise him with the clash of cymbals,
praise him with resounding cymbals.
Let everything that has breath praise the Lord.
Praise the Lord.
On the evening of November 22, 2013, I was reading, not an unusual activity for me. But instead of reading C.S. Lewis or any of the many novels that I want to finish, I was reading one of the Cybils YA nonfiction books that was nominated this year. “The President Has Been Shot!” The Assassination of John F. Kennedy by James L. Swanson was the sad story of what happened in Dallas fifty years ago, and I was reminded of the fragility of human life and the sinfulness of mankind.
Yes, I remember where I was when I heard the news of Kennedy’s death. Unfortunately for my reputation for perfect recall, I remember incorrectly. I was in first grade in 1963, but for some reason I have a vivid memory of being in my second grade classroom with my second grade teacher, Mrs. Bouska, announcing to us that the president had been shot. I’m not sure why my first grade memory has transposed itself in time into second grade, but there it is. Memory is unreliable.
So we have books—to record the memories and the events and keep us honest. A lot of the information in this book I either never knew or I didn’t remember. I had no idea that Kennedy was shot through the back of the head and his head either fell or was pulled into Jackie Kennedy’s lap where she held pieces of his brain in her hands all the way to Parkland Hospital. Gruesome. Then, it was also rather grisly and horrific to read that Jackie refused to change her blood-stained clothes all that day, saying repeatedly, “I want them to see what they’ve done.” People certainly do grieve and react in different ways to shocking, appalling events.
“History is more than a narrative of what happened at a particular moment in time—it is also the story of how events were reported to, and experienced by, the people who lived through them.” (For Further Reading, p.240) Mr. Swanson does a particularly good job of giving readers a feel for the time period and the way newspapers, magazines, radio, and television reported on the death of the president. Black and white photographs interspersed throughout the book add to the verisimilitude of the story, transporting readers into the early 1960’s when color television was still not in widespread use and newspapers and many magazines were filled with black and white photographs.
Swanson’s 2009 nonfiction tale of an assassination, Chasing Lincoln’s Killer, was adapted from his adult book, Manhunt. “The President Has Been Shot!” was written specifically for the YA market, and it shines as an example of a nonfiction history narrative that doesn’t talk down to teen readers and yet keeps the detail to a level that suits young people who may be new to the subject of the Kennedy assassination. I highly recommend the book for students of history and politics who want a simple but thorough summary of the background of Kennedy’s presidency and the events surrounding and leading up to his assassination.
Rather than do a Thanksgiving book post of my own, I thought I’d share some links to some of the Thanksgiving book delicious-ness that I’ve discovered at other blogs in the wake of KidLitCon. I’ve been visiting the blogs that are linked to the Kidlitosphere website, and many of the bloggers have Thanksgiving book posts. So I’m thanking the Lord of all for kidlit bloggers and for books that inspire us to gratitude for the many blessings we have.
Thankgiving links of the bookish sort by Amy at Hope is the Word.
Thanksgiving book reviews at Christian Children’s Book Review.
5 Books about Thanksgiving from Melissa at Inner Child Learning.
Redeemed Reader: Looking Forward to Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Delightful Children’s Books: 10 Children’s Books to Celebrate Thanksgiving.
Delightful Children’s Books: A Bookish Advent Calendar. Somebody else I know online does something like this for her children during advent. Anyway, it’s not strictly “thanksgiving”, but it would be necessary to prepare now.
And a couple of picture book lists for your early Christmas shopping perusal:
Betsy at Redeemed Reader: Favorite Picture Books of 2013
Laurel Snyder: 2013 Best Picture Books by Women
I Love Booklists! Thank you, God, for many things: family, friends, church, Engineer Husband, health, home, BOOKS, and READING.
P.S. MotherReader has published her annual list of 150 Ways to Give a Book. What a great resource for bookish gifts!
“Once upon a winter’s night when the wind blew its guts out and a fishy piece of moon scuttled among the clouds, a coach came thundering down the long hill outside of Dorking. Its progress was wild, and the coachman and his guard rocked from side to side as if the maddened vehicle was struggling to rid itself of them before going on to hell without the benefit of further advice.”
If you like that beginning and you like historical fiction written in such a style, you might very well want to pick up this book or another of Leon Garfield’s many historical novels for children. I remember reading Garfield novels, perhaps Smith or Black Jack, back in the day when I and my peers were the target audience. So I know that young teens, maybe even eleven and twelve year olds, can enjoy the stories. However, as I read The Sound of Coaches, I really felt the prose style and the plot would appeal more to an older audience, maybe adult and young adult fans of Dickens and other Victorian authors.
Garfield’s plot and characters and atmosphere owe a lot to Dickens. I was especially reminded of Great Expectations as I read this story of an orphan boy of mysterious parentage who is raised by a common coachman and his wife. The coachman, called Chichester after his road, and his wife, a rather fierce woman who serves as the above-mentioned guard on his route to and from London to Chichester, are a couple of gruff and stolid exterior with hearts of gold, as the saying goes. They adopt the orphaned infant Sam at the beginning of the novel, and the story goes on to tell how Sam grows up and becomes a flawed, but perceptive and empathetic, adult.
Sam’s search for his “other father” and for his true origins is similar to Pip’s search for his mysterious benefactor. And Sam, like Pip, finds that people are not what they seem to be at first glance. The Sound of Coaches is not as difficult, or rewarding, to read as Dickens’ novels are, but it might be a good introduction to the genre of picaresque orphan adventure and coming of age novels. If it goes down well, follow it up with David Copperfield or Great Expectations. (We read Great Expectations aloud as a family when my oldest children were probably 12, 10, and 8 years old, and it was a great success, although it took some perseverance at first.)
I plan to read (or maybe re-read) Garfield’s Smith: The Story of a Pickpocket, recently republished by New York Review Children’s Collection, as soon as I manage to get through the holidays and the Cybils and the hundred and one other things I have going on in my life. However, since reading is an important and necessary part of that life, and since I enjoyed The Sound of Coaches a lot, I may get to Smith sooner rather than later. I don’t have time for a re-read of Dickens right now, but I think I can make time for some Garfield.
“You can’t get a cup of tea big enough or a book long enough to suit me.” ~C.S. Lewis
“I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now…Come further up, come further in!â€â€• C.S. Lewis, The Last Battle
Fifty years ago a not-so-quiet man whose friends called him Jack slipped quietly from his home near Cambridge, England, into his Real Home and found True Joy. While most of the world, certainly the United States, were mourning the violent death of another Jack, Clive Staples Lewis had died about an hour before Kennedy and gone through “a door out of a little, dark room (that’s all the life we have known before it) into a great, real place where the true sun shines and we shall meet.” (Till We Have Faces)
And today, fifty years after his death, a memorial will be dedicated to Lewis in Poet’s Corner at Westminster Abbey. Others are celebrating all month and on through the end of the year, not his death but his life and work and legacy. On Pinterest, 50 Fans, 50 Years Later quotes authors and other who laud the influence of C.S. Lewis. And this post at the C.S. Lewis blog collects links to news articles celebrating the legacy of Lewis.
“Comparisons are odious,” said the philosopher, but they are inevitable. I venture to guess that Lewis’s influence and legacy will last a lot longer than that of a certain U.S. president. No disrespect intended to the other Jack, but how many people has God used to such great effect for His kingdom as He has used C.S. Lewis, that reluctant convert?
“You must picture me alone in that room at Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England” (Surprised By Joy, ch. 14, p. 266).
Till we all—Jack Kennedy, “Jack” Lewis, and the rest of us, reluctant to face a holy but loving God–till all of us “have faces”, may the grace of God sustain us until we are surprised by the joy of His presence.
The recently deceased children’s author Charlotte Zolotow was also an editor and a poet herself. She edited many of the most gifted authors of poetry for children of the twentieth century during her tenure at Harper and Row.
Lee Bennet Hopkins wrote of his editor Charlotte Zolotow: “Charlotte was editor-supreme. Her respect for an author, her insight, foresight, her vision of what could be — become — has been a highlight of my career. Lucky is one to be caught in the true Charlotte’s web.”
Paul Fleischman, winner of the 1989 Newbery Medal for Joyful Noise: Poems for Two Voices was also edited by Ms. Zolotow. In a tribute to her editorial skills, he says: “In matters of larger scope, her vision was truly exceptional. She was an astounding discoverer of talent. Once she’d found you, she didn’t rewrite you any more than she did your sentences. Ideas for books weren’t thrust upon you. The latest trends in publishing were never bandied about. Charlotte operated on the theory that the best book you had inside you was the one you most wished to write, no matter what happened to be selling at the moment.”
Poet Karla Kuskin, also a friend and protege of Ms. Zolotow, wrote a poem for a 1990 celebration of Charlotte Zolotow’s work:
There is that smile
that warms us like the sun.
There is the ouevre
(fine work done,
fine work yet to come).
There is all this, and more
combined
with that well honed and stainless
steel trap mind…
Mind and imagination combined made Charlotte Zolotow a formidable and talented author and editor and poet. Here are a couple of poems by Ms. Charotte herself:
Ladybug by Charlotte Zolotow
Little ladybug
With your
Glazed red wings
and small black polka dots
you look like a porcelain statue
until suddenly
you
fly
away.
People by Charlotte Zolotow
Some people talk and talk
and never say a thing.
Some people look at you
and birds begin to sing.
Some people laugh and laugh
and yet you want to cry.
Some people touch your hand
and music fills the sky.
Of course, the big news this week is the new Hunger Games movie, Catching Fire. One of my urchins wants to go to the midnight premiere on Thursday. However, there are other movies coming down the pike for November/December release:
The Christmas Candle, based on the novel by Max Lucado.
A movie called Tar, based on a book of poems by poet C.K. Willams and on the life of the poet, is set to release on December 1st.
From IMDB: “Based on the beloved bestselling book, The Book Thief tells the story of a spirited and courageous young girl who transforms the lives of everyone around her when she is sent to live with a foster family in World War II Germany.” I didn’t really care for the book, but I actually think the movie may be better.
The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug opens December 13th. I can hardly wait.
Saving Mr. Banks tells the story of the collaboration of Walt Disney and P.L. Travers to make Mary Poppins a household name. Starring Tom Hanks as Walt Disney and Emma Thompson as Travers, it opens December 20th.
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is a remake of the 1947 movie with Danny Kaye, this time starring Ben Stiller, It’s about a man who lives in his imagination, and it’s based on the short story “The Secret World of Walter Mitty” by cartoonist James Thurber.
Ender’s Game, based on the book by Orson Scott Card, and How I Live Now, from the YA novel by Meg Rosoff, are already in theaters. Anybody seen them? Anybody planning to make the midnight showing of Catching Fire?