The Merry Month of May

May2

“It was a beautiful summer afternoon, at that delicious period of the year when summer has just burst forth from the growth of spring; when summer is yet but three days old, and all the various shades of green which nature can put forth are still in their unsoiled purity of freshness. The apple blossoms were on the trees, and the hedges were sweet with may. The cuckoo at fine o’clock was still sounding his soft summer call with unabated energy, and even the common grasses of the hedgerows were sweet with the fragrance of their new growth. The foliage of the oaks was complete, so that every bough and twig was clothed; but the leave did not yet hang heavy in masses, and the bend of every bough and the tapering curve of every twig were visible through their light green covering. There is no time of the year equal in beauty to the first week in summer; and no color which nature gives, not even the gorgeous hues of autumn, which can equal the verdure produced by the first warm suns of May.”

~Framley Parsonage by Anthony Trollope, p.335

The royal roses redden
And smiling deck the sod,
The world is like a picture
Where the green fields smile to God;
The birds in all the branches
Are singing to the blue,
And the winds that wave the tree-tops
Toss the blossoms over you.
Oh, the splendor of the gardens
And the glory of the green,
Of banks of singing rivers
Where the lovely lilies lean!
The tinkle, faintly wafted,
Of far-off cattle bells,
And the thrushes’ silver music
In the dim and dreamy dells!
For it’s Maytime, it’s Maytime,
And all the world is bright,
And love is in the sunshine,
And the golden stars of night.
“In Maytime” by Frank L. Stanton

The Explorations of Pere Marquette by Jim Kjelgaard

Apr4

Jim Kjelgaard was just the guy for the Landmark book series editors to ask to write about an intrepid explorer of the wilderness. Father Marquette, a Jesuit priest of the seventeenth century, along with his explorer buddy Louis Joliet, were the first Europeans to explore the Mississippi from the north in Wisconsin down to the place where the Arkansas River joins the Mississippi. Father Marquette wrote about all of the peoples, plants , and animals, that he and his fellow explorers found as they travelled down the Mississippi, and he returned to Green Bay in Wisconsin to tell of his adventures to the French governor and others.

Because Father Marquette worked among the Indian tribes in Michigan and Wisconsin and was also one of the first Europeans and Christians to minister to the Illinois Indians and the first to camp near the site of the present-day of Chicago, this book would make an excellent addition to the study of the state histories of Illinois, Wisconsin, and Michigan. In the foreword to the book historian and Jesuit R.N. Hamilton writes:

“What makes this book most interesting is that Jim Kjelgaard has based all but two incidents on the life of Father Marquette, S.J. The stories of the wounded Indian and the finding of game on the South Lakes, while not recorded of Father Marquette, are, as we know from the writings of Jesuits who were his fellow laborers, typical of what he would have done in the circumstances.”

There are content considerations for the book, however. While some individual Native Americans who appear in the story are described as handsome, strong, and courageous, the Indians as a whole group and as individual tribal groups are usually characterized as improvident, unsanitary, poor, and of course, savage. Since this was truly how the early Europeans saw the Native Americans they met in the New World, and since Father Marquette and other Jesuit missionaries were compassionate and eager to improve the physical and spiritual condition of the Native Americans they came to serve, I don’t have a problem with this characterization. I don’t believe that all cultures are equally conducive to human thriving or to honoring the God who made us, so I have no issue with the idea that the Europeans had much that was good and needed to share with with their Native American brothers. And the Native American people had things to teach the Europeans, but that aspect is not emphasized in this book.

Jim Kjelgaard wrote one other book in the Landmark series, The Coming of the Mormons, one Signature biography, The Story of Geronimo, and the historical fiction book, We Were There at the Oklahoma LandRun. Kjelgaard is also responsible for many beloved animal stories, including Big Red, Irish Red, and Outlaw Red, all dog stories. An outdoorsman and a lover of American history and adventure in particular, Mr. Kjelgaard tells the story of Father Marquette and his explorations in an engaging way that will appeal to young, beginning outdoorsmen and adventurers.

The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles

Apr3

I liked this book even better than I did A Gentleman in Moscow, the only other book by Towles I’ve read. I think I need to read Rules of Civility next. Mr. Towles is good at spinning a yarn and tying all the loose ends together at the end. BUT as much as I liked the story and the characters and the way everything came together, I’m still not sure about the ending. I feel as if Towles took a couple of my favorite people and corrupted them, just a little, or maybe a lot. I’m worried about what will happen to these characters after the story ends. I can’t say much more about that without spoiling the ending. So, if you’ve read The Lincoln Highway and you have some reassurance to give me, put it in the comments. I could use the encouragement that everything is going to be okay with these people in their new life after they travel the Lincoln Highway.

The story is set in June, 1954. Eighteen year old Emmett Watson has just returned home from a prison work farm where he was serving a sentence of fifteen months for involuntary manslaughter. Emmett’s father has recently died, his mother deserted them long ago, and Emmett is now responsible for his eight year old brother Billy. Emmett has a plan to start life anew. Billy also has a plan. And the two inmates who hid in the trunk of the warden’s car that brought Emmett home have a completely different plan.

The book could have turned into a comedy, and it borders on the absurd. However, there are some rather dark events to come, along with the ridiculous. Emmett is determined to go straight and control the temper that got him into trouble in the first place. Billy is an inordinate rule-follower with a child’s penchant for literal and concrete thinking. But the two brothers are caught up in a situation where keeping to the letter of the law and self-control in the face of violence and deceit won’t be enough to save them. So the question is how far can you bend the rules of decency and honesty and nonviolence before you become the criminals you’re trying to escape from?

It’s a good story told from several different points of view. It does take the reader inside the mind of an amoral but likable(?) sociopath and of a confused and mentally incapacitated young man, but you’re never tempted to actually condone wrongdoing or accept the excuses of those who break the law. Until maybe at the end. I’m still not sure about that ending, not even after reading this interview with author Amor Towles. If you read it, let me know what you think.

The Windeby Puzzle by Lois Lowry

Mar31

In The Windeby Puzzle, Newbery Award-winning author Lois Lowry gives readers two short stories with archaeology and history lessons interspersed before, between, and after the fiction. The stories are Lowry’s attempt to imagine the life of the Windeby Child, a young teenager whose body was found in the Windeby peat bog in northern Germany in 1952. The body was determined to be that of a girl or a boy about thirteen years of age who lived during the Iron Age, first century A.D.

Since we don’t have all that much information about the lives of the Germanic people of that time, Lowry was able to let her imagination run wild. And the two stories in the book spin a yarn of two possible backstories for the Windeby Child and how he or she managed to die at such a young age in a peat bog. It’s a bit hard to maintain interest and suspense when both you and your readers know how the story ends. In both tales, the main character dies–young. And in both stories the lives of all of the characters are portrayed as “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short” (Thomas Hobbs).

In the first story, a girl named Estrild is a sort of proto-feminist who resents her female life and longs to avenge her uncle, killed in battle, by becoming a warrior herself. The boy protagonist, Varik, in the second story had to be a victim, too, since he dies at the end, so Lowry made him disabled and suicidal. Maybe first century northern European lives were just this grim and ugly, but I could have done with a bit of romanticism and hope in the story.

Half fiction, half history lesson, this book is at least different from your average middle grade fiction book. It was not my cup of tea, but maybe a youngster interested in archaeology or ancient history or finding things preserved in peat bogs might like it. Be careful, though, if you’re exploring any peat bogs. According to Varick, “If you go too deep in, the bog sucks at your feet.” Yuck!

The Lost Year by Katherine Marsh

Mar29

The Lost Year: A Survival Story of the Ukrainian Famine by Katherine Marsh. Roaring Brook Press, 2023.

Not having read the subtitle before beginning the book, I thought this was going to be another of the many, many books yet to come about the Covid year(s). And it was, to some extent. Matthew is a thirteen year old boy who’s been spending most of his time playing Zelda and other video games since the Covid virus made him homebound with his mother and great-grandmother. Matthew’s father, a journalist, is stuck in France, also because of the virus. The first few chapters are a little slow with Matthew acting spoiled and entitled, but the action picks up as the story switches focus to tell about the childhood experiences of Matthew’s great-grandmother, Nadiya.

But when Matthew finds a tattered black-and-white photo in his great-grandmother’s belongings, he discovers a clue to a hidden chapter of her past, one that will lead to a life-shattering family secret. Set in alternating timelines that connect the present-day to the 1930s and the US to the USSR, Katherine Marsh’s latest novel sheds fresh light on the Holodomor – the horrific famine that killed millions of Ukrainians, and which the Soviet government covered up for decades.

I figured out the “family secret” a couple of chapters before the revelation, but the story was told in such a way that the revelation was foreshadowed but not obvious and very satisfying to read about. Matthew got better as a character, and in his character, as he came to be interested in someone besides himself, namely his 100 year old great-grandmother. And the historical event, the Holodomor, that the book illumines is one that is too little known. Knowing about the Holodomor can help to explain some of the historical animosity that is being played out in war now in 2023.

Recommended for ages 12 and up. Starvation and disease are obviously a key aspect of this novel, although readers are mercifully spared the most graphic and horrific details.

The Pirate Lafitte and the Battle of New Orleans by Robert Tallant

Mar20

Another book in the Landmark series, this narrative nonfiction book introduces history buffs and pirate readers to Jean Lafitte and his brother Pierre who were quite a pair. Pirates or patriots or both? You can read the book and decide for yourself, but at the very least, the brothers Lafitte were a bundle of human contradictions and secrets and even heroics.

Contradictions: They were rich, educated, and urbane, but they lived for the most part in the swamps of Barataria, near New Orleans, where Jean Lafitte ruled over a rascally crew of over a thousand pirates with an iron fist. He was beloved by these men who would do almost anything for him. Jean and Pierre made a great deal of their money selling Africans into slavery, and yet their crew included men of every skin color and nationality.

Secrets: Hardly anything is known about Jean’s and Pierre’s youth and childhood. They appeared on the scene in New Orleans in about 1803 when Jean was twenty-four years old and Pierre a year or two older. They were at first privateers with a letter of marque but may later have become pirates. Jean hated Spain and the Spanish and said that he only plundered Spanish ships. Their other enemy who tried to have them imprisoned, tried and executed was American Governor William Claiborne, but they somehow became Claiborne’s friends and allies when New Orleans was threatened with a British takeover during the War of 1812. Then there’s also the secret of what happened to the Lafitte brothers after they were evicted from their second pirate lair on Galveston Island. No one knows.

Heroics: It is not too much to say that had it not been for Jean Lafitte’s loyalty to his adopted country of the United States, Louisiana, at least New Orleans, might be a British possession today. The British invaders had 12,000 men and vastly superior ships and weapons. General Jackson who led the American defense had about 700 regulars and access to a militia of about 1000 men. Then Jean Lafitte and Pierre Lafitte volunteered along with their crew of about 1000 Baratarians, and the British were defeated.

The Pirate Lafitte and the Battle of New Orleans gives children and adults an introduction to a fascinating time and event in American history. Read it as you are learning about Lewis and Clark or the War of 1812 or the Louisiana Purchase or Louisiana history—or just for fun and one more books about pirates, maybe. “People still argue about whether or not he (Jean Lafitte) was a pirate. They even search the marshes for buried treasure that they never find.”

May you find the buried treasure you’re looking for in all the Landmark books you read.

Simon Sort of Says by Erin Bow

Mar10

Simon Sort of Says is funny, and well written, and at the same time thoughtful and trauma-sensitive. It also features mild profanity, inappropriate jokes and sexual innuendo, and post-traumatic stress disorder. And it’s written for middle grade readers, with a twelve year old seventh grader as the protagonist. So not for everyone.

Nevertheless, I enjoyed reading my first volume of middle grade fiction published in 2023. Simon and his parents move to Grin and Bear It, Nebraska, a place with “no internet and no cell phones and no TV and no radio.” Why they move to this place, a National Quiet Zone where scientists study radio waves from outer space, is a complicated story, and if you want the story to unfold gradually (as I think the author intended it to do), don’t read the blurb on the inside front dust jacket. I would certainly have preferred to figure out what happened to Simon and his parents that brought them to Grin and Bear It over the course of the story instead of being hit with the big reveal in the blurb.

And I would have preferred that the book itself left out the sex jokes, which seem a little too informed for twelve year olds, and the few instances of profanity. Honestly, the humor in the book overall is really funny, but again seems a little too witty and mature for a bunch of even very intelligent twelve year olds. Simon’s new friends in Grin and Bear It are Agate, an autistic girl who lives with her large and quirky family on a goat farm (also ducks and bees), and Kevin, a Filipino-American boy whose mom and dad are astrophysicists. (But Kevin’s dad runs a coffee shop.) If that’s not enough for comedy to ensue there are, in the story, alpacas, emus, a stabby peacock, dead bodies (Simon’s mom is an undertaker), and a squirrel who eats . . . Well, I’ll let you find out what the squirrel eats in the Catholic church, should you decide to read this book.

I am placing this one in the category of “I liked it but can’t recommend it.” There’s some bad or incomplete theology stuck in there, too, but I can’t give specifics without spoilers. So, read it if you’re curious, and give it to the kids if you think it’s harmless. It would have confused my kids–and made them laugh out loud. I’m always looking for clean and humorous stories for middle grade readers, by the way, so if you have suggestions, please comment.

Lawrence of Arabia by Alistair MacLean

Mar4

Winston Churchill on T.E. Lawrence, aka Lawrence of Arabia: “I deem him one of the greatest beings alive in our time. I do not see his like elsewhere. I fear whatever our need we shall never see his like again.”

Indeed, Lawrence seems to have been a extraordinary man and military leader. This book by the best-selling author of espionage novels and thrillers, Alistair MacLean, portrays Lawrence as almost superhuman. In the course of his adventures through the Arabian desert over the course of the four years of World War I, Lawrence is shot, beaten, tortured, injured by shrapnel, starved, dehydrated, burned, frozen, sun struck, and ill—all several times and in many places. He survives sleepless nights, days without food and with very little water, capture by the enemy, and journeys of hundreds of miles through the desert on a camel, all for the sake of helping his friends, the Bedouin Arabs, to realize the dream of throwing off the rule of the Turkish Empire and forming a free and unified Arab nation.

The book was filled with details of military strategy and maneuvers, and the numerous battles and explosions and other acts of sabotage and war blurred together in my mind into a conglomeration of violent desert warfare. I would have liked to have learned more about the man, T.E. Lawrence, and less about the battles he fought. The politics of the Middle East before and during World War I were also complicated and sometimes a bit cloudy in my mind, but I was more interested in the political battles than I was the actual battles.

So, as I reached the end of the book, I realized that it was a good introduction to the era of the Turkish Empire, the British assault on that empire, the Great Arab Revolt, World War I in the Middle East, and Lawrence of Arabia. But it was just an introduction to all of these topics, and I was left with many questions. What were the British doing in Arabia in the first place? Did they come there just to fight the Turks? What made Lawrence care so much about the Arabs and Arab independence? Were there really enough Jews in Palestine during and immediately after World War I to make it a battleground between Jews and Arabs? How did Lawrence survive all that he did? We know what Churchill thought about Lawrence. What did Lawrence think of Churchill? Lawrence was a secretive man. He never married. What happened to him after 1920 (when the book ends)? Why was he so secretive? What did he care about other than war and Arab independence?

As I said, a good introduction, after all it’s a Landmark book written for children and young adults, but I would like to know more. I may try a biography written for adults, Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East by Scott Anderson.

The Slave Who Freed Haiti by Katherine Scherman

Mar3

The Slave Who Freed Haiti: The Story of Toussaint Louverture by Katharine Scherman.

There’s always a danger in writing nonfiction: new events and information may prove you wrong at some time in the future. In The Slave Who Freed Haiti, author Katharine Scherman calls Haiti “a beautiful and fertile land,” spoiled only by the “lazy and shiftless” Spaniards and the “brutal, indolent, lawless, and cruel” French slavemasters and their Creole assistants. Toussaint Louverture, a black enslaved man, born into slavery, like Mary Poppins is practically perfect in every way, in Ms. Scherman’s portrait of his life. She calls him a good man, a moral example, and a devout Christian. All of those assessments may very well be true, and indeed in reading the book and an article on Wikipedia, I could find very little fault in the man or the country.

However, Ms. Scherman ends her books with these words:

“To this day the little country stands as a monument to great-hearted Toussaint. There, in one of the few free black republics in the world, Negroes can walk with their heads high, without fear or shame, and the are the equals of anyone on earth.”

Another true statement, as far as it goes. But I think Toussaint Louverture, that good man, would weep to see the state of his free republic in 2023, and even in 1957, just three years after The Slave Who Freed Haiti was published, “Papa Doc” Duvalier took over the Haitian republic and made it into a “reign of terror” state.

Still The Slave Who Freed Haiti was a good introduction to the life and work of Toussaint Louverture and to the history of the nation of Haiti. I would like to share this book with the Haitian family who are members of my library and see what they think about it. Yes, it’s somewhat dated and maybe a bit hagiographic, but it has its place in the multitude of opinions about and portrayals of the Haitian revolution. And I am content to have it in my library as an introduction to Haiti and its history.

Content considerations: Slavery was cruel and evil everywhere it was practiced, but slavery in the Caribbean in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries rose to a level of brutality and torture that was unequalled, perhaps, in the history of slavery. Ms. Scherman describes the cruelty of the slave ships and the sugar plantations on the island of Haiti in plain language. One example:

“For the smallest offenses slaves were flogged to death with heavy whips made of plaited cowhide. Clever and hideous tortures were devised to kill rebellious slaves painfully. They were burned to death, blown up with gunpowder, partly buried in the ground with their bodies covered with molasses to attract ants, maimed by having an ear or even a hand cut off.”

Also the war for independence and freedom from slavery was violent and full of atrocities on both sides. So there’s a lot of very ugly content in this story. Do not read or assign this book to sensitive readers.

I knew very little about Toussaint Louverture before I read this book, and now I know more and more about Haiti and more about man’s cruelty to man and more about the courage and resilience of the Haitian people. And that makes the book a worthwhile read.

Combat Nurses of World War II by Wyatt Blassingame

Mar3

“In World War II, Wyatt Blassingame was an intelligence officer with the Naval Air Corps on the islands of Tinian and Okinawa. He witnessed the work of army and navy nurses when he visited sick and wounded comrades in hospitals on Hawaii, Saipan, and Okinawa.”

“Here is the story of the courageous young women who served at Pearl Harbor, Corregidor, Anzio, Battle of the Bulge, Iwo Jima, and other fighting fronts of the Second World War.”

Courageous young women indeed. Amazing young women. And they were all volunteers. These young women (Blassingame often calls them “girls” in his narrative) may very well not have realized what they were volunteering for, or what dangers and harrowing experiences they were going to be called on to endure, but they knew it was war, or imminent war, and they knew that nurses were likely to come into contact with blood, gore, injury and death. I certainly would be hesitant to take on a nursing career in a peacetime hospital, much less in a war zone.

In the Author’s Note at the end of the book, Mr. Blassingame writes, “Not very much has been written about the American nurses who served with such courage and endurance and devotion to duty in World War II. Consequently in researching this book I often had to rely on personal contact with nurses who could tell me about their experiences.” This reliance on interviews with World War II nurses makes the book even more valuable and compelling.

I searched online for the names of many of the nurses that Mr. Blassingame writes about in his book, but I found very little information on most of them. Combat Nurses of World War II may be the only record left of the contributions made by many of these heroic, yet ordinary, nurses. I did find a few books, written for adults, about some of of the nurses in this book:

And If I Perish: Frontline U.S. Army Nurses in World War II by Evelyn Monahan and Rosemary Neidel-Greenlee.
The Secret Rescue: The Untold Story of American Nurses and Medics Behind Nazi Lines by Cate LIneberry.
Albanian Escape: The True Story of U.S. Army Nurses Behind Enemy Lines by Agnes Jensen Mangerich
Savage Will: The Daring Escape of Americans Trapped Behind Nazi Lines by Timothy M. Gay.

And a couple of articles about some of the World War II nurses:

Aboard the USS Comfort, 1943 by Doris Gardner
Four Women Earned Silver Stars in the Same WWII Battle

I did find the story about the nurses and medics who accidentally crash-landed behind enemy lines in Albania (told in three of the above books) to be the most exciting story in the book It would make a good movie, I think. Some of the other nurses’ stories are probably retold in other books about World War II in general, or about specific ships or battles. But a lot of the nurses’ words and stories are most likely preserved only in Combat Nurses.

Even though it’s a story about war, the book is not gratuitously gory or shocking. People, nurses and others, do get injured and even die, but their stories are told in a way that honors the nurses’ sacrifice and preserves their memory. I would give this book, and probably its companion book Medical Corps Heroes of World War II, to any middle grade or older young person who was studying or interested in World War II. “The Greatest Generation” was blessed in its heroes and its heroines.

This Landmark book, once a rare find, out of print, has been reprinted by Purple House Press, and it’s now available at a very reasonable price with updated maps and photographs which were not in the original book. I have a copy of the old, original edition in my library, Meriadoc Homeschool Library, but I may need to purchase a copy of the updated reprint from Purple House Press. And if you want even more information, check out the podcast episode from Plumfield Moms, Combat Nurses.

Semicolon

Books we must have though we lack bread.