The Alley by Eleanor Estes

May24

I really want a copy of “the other book about Connie Ives’s alley, The Tunnel of Hugsy Goode.” That desire is a good sign that The Alley was a good book. I actually had no idea that Eleanor Estes had written anything other than The Moffats and its companion books about the same family and of course, The Hundred Dresses, a story that is and will always be a classic story about compassion and repentance. However, as I look I see that Estes wrote several other books, including The Alley.

Connie lives in Brooklyn in a house that along with twenty-seven other similar houses backs upon an alley, not an ugly alley, but one that provides a place for the children of the Alley to play and imagine and swing and read and learn to follow rules and grow.

“In the Alley there was more space than you might think to ride bikes in, and at the bottom end of the ——–I was the Circle, excellent for turning around in and excellent for games.

Every yard had flowers. Now it was May, and the flowers were tulips, irises, lilacs.

The Alley–the little houses on the Alley–was an oasis in a great city of good people and of dangerous people. In this city, there were some burglars. ‘But then, that is life,’ thought Connie. ‘In the old days they had Indians, wild animals, pirates, and dragons. They had witches. Now–burglars. You have to take the bad along with the good.’ But Connie never thought much of the burglars there might be outside the Alley. She thought mainly of life inside the Alley, in the beautiful, fragrant Alley. Her life was made up mainly of school and Alley.”

p. 13

The Alley was a book every bit as good as The Moffats or The Penderwicks or Elizabeth Enright’s The Saturdays. Ten year old Connie is an only child, but she has plenty of substitute brothers and sisters in the Alley: her best friend Billy Maloon, Hugsy Goode, Connie’s next-best friend, Katy Star, the rule-maker of the Alley, June Arp, the girl next door, and the thirty or so other children who live along the Alley. And Connie and Billy and the rest have plenty to do: in addition to swinging on Connie’s swing set, they teach piano lessons, go to school, play Meece and other games, and investigate a burglary during the months of May and early June, with is all that the story covers. It seems, through the eyes of a ten year old like a much longer time, and yet the days are full of fun and quirky antics and adventures.

“Connie did not mind the long days that began empty and ended up full. Oh, the wonderful and long days of summer! Just to hold a whole day in your hand and have it and think that it was empty to begin with but that each moment could, would, contain so much.”

p. 280

Illustrated by Edward Ardizzone, The Alley is, according to the Chicago Tribune quote on the front cover, “a story not to be missed.” I agree.

Admiral Byrd of Antarctica by Michael Gladych

May23

Another Messner biography, published in 1960, Admiral Byrd of Antarctica is a solid, decent read, but not as enthralling or inspiring as other Messner biographies I’ve read. Gladych characterizes Byrd, who explored both the Arctic and the Antarctic, as resourceful, persistent, brave and somewhat driven by a desire to do something important and noteworthy.

The most celebrated event of Byrd’s life came in 1934 on his second Antarctic expedition when he spent five months alone gathering meteorological data in a base station during the antarctic winter. He almost died of carbon monoxide poisoning from a poorly ventilated stove. He later wrote an account of his experiences when isolated and on his own in his book, Alone. Gladych quotes Byrd saying about his motivation for manning the station by himself:

“There comes a time in every man’s life when he should take stock of himself—sort of check on his navigation, so to speak. . . . You see, it has taken me a long time to get where I am today. And we are all like aircraft on nonstop flights, with time like precious fuel which we cannot replenish. God alone knows how much time-fuel I have left, and I’d like to check my course—make sure that where I am headed is where I should be going. I can do it best alone—out there.”

p.156

I don’t know if that’s an actual quote from Admiral Byrd, or a paraphrase of something he said, or entirely made up by author Gladych. However, while the idea of checking your course by way of an extended retreat is a good one, I think it could have been accomplished with less drama and danger, to Byrd and to his compatriots who eventually had to come to his rescue. But, then, what do I know about polar exploration or the compulsion to adventure and challenge the unknown?

Admiral Byrd was one of the most highly decorated Navy officers in U.S. military history. He also got all kinds of awards and commendations from various non-governmental organizations. But the fact that his wife, Marie, stayed married to him and raised their four children by herself for a good bit of their marriage seems like the best commendation of all. She must have seen something in him. He did name a region in Antartica after his long-suffering wife, Marie Byrd Land.

Some other books about Admiral Byrd and his adventures:

  • Black Whiteness: Admiral Byrd Alone in the Antarctic by Robert Burleigh. Picture book about Byrd’s famous near-death experiment in solitude.
  • Something to Tell the Grandcows by Ellen Spinelli. Picture book. Hoping to have an adventure to impress her grandcows, Emmadine Cow joins Admiral Richard E. Byrd on his 1933 expedition to the South Pole. I have this book in my library.
  • Alone: The Classic Polar Adventure by Richard Evelyn Byrd.
  • Explorer: The Life of Richard E. Byrd by Lisle E. Rose. An adult biography of the explorer published in 2008.
  • Richard E. Byrd: Adventurer to the Poles by Adele de Leeuw. A children’s biography from the series by Garrard Publishers, Discovery biographies.
  • Byrd & Igloo: A Polar Adventure by Samantha Seiple. A narrative account for children of the daring adventures of the legendary polar explorer and aviator and his loveable dog companion draws on letters, diaries, interviews, newspaper clippings, and expedition records.
  • Admiral Richard Byrd: Alone in the Antarctic by Paul Rink. Original title: Conquering Antartica: Admiral Richard E. Byrd.
  • We Were There With Byrd at the South Pole by Charles S. Strong. Juvenile fiction set during Byrd’s first Antarctic expedition.

Seven Beaver Skins by Erick Berry

May11

Seven Beaver Skins: A Story of the Dutch in New Amsterdam by Erick Berry is one of the books in the Land of the Free series, published in the 1940’s and 50’s for older children and what we would call young adults now. All of the stories feature young protagonists of varying ethnicities, mostly immigrants, who find a place in the New World. I have read three others of the books in this series: Chariot in the Sky by Anna Bontemps, Door to the North by Elizabeth Coatsworth, and Sing in the Dark by Maude Morgan Thomas.

These books ought to fit right into the emphasis on diversity that is currently the rage, but they were written in a time when the some attitudes and characterizations that are now shunned were perfectly acceptable. For instance, Seven Beaver Skins has a very minor character named Andries, a black enslaved servant, who is, shall we say, creative at getting out of work. The author says in the introduction that Andries was a real person, and that he was “at least as lazy as here depicted.” No doubt there were many enslaved people who were indeed lazy, if they were allowed to be, but it’s a trope that wouldn’t be appropriate in any book published nowadays. The book Chariot in the Sky uses the word “Negro” to designate the race of its main characters, because that was the accepted and respectful term in the 1951 when the book was published. The Native Americans, Maquas and Mahicans, in Seven Beaver Skins are portrayed as intelligent and as good traders and hunters, but also violent and savage to one another and sometimes to the Dutch settlers. This portrayal, too, although quite possibly accurate, would probably be disallowed in today’s super-sensitive environment.

Nevertheless, to anyone interested in the diverse and multi-ethnic story of the building of the United States of America into a country of immigrants from all over the world, the Land of the Free books are well-written, well-researched, and full of insight as well as factual information. I learned more about patroons and the beaver trade and the economics of the West India Company and its colonization of New Amsterdam from reading this story of a boy named Kaspar de Selle and his adventures in “the Manhatens” than I ever did by reading a textbook. Not to mention I was amused by the crossover learning about falconry and its terms and methods, since I read Helen MacDonald’s H Is for Hawk earlier this year. (Kaspar brings a peregrine falcon to the Manhatens when he comes as a colonist to the patroonship of Renselaerswyck in New Amsterdam.)

If you’re interested in falconry or Dutch colonization or the history of New York or in just a good adventure story, Seven Beaver Skins is the book for a rainy day’s read. If you enjoy this book, you might want to check out some of the others in the series, if you can find copies. Some of them are quite rare and hard to find. I’ll be reading Colt of Destiny next because I have a copy in my library. If you find any of the books in the series, I would suggest you snap them up.

The full list of the Land of the Free series:

Knee-Knock Rise by Natalie Babbitt

May5

“I can claim to be tolerably detached on the subject of ghost stories. I do not depend upon them in any way; not even in the sordid professional way, in which I have at some periods depended on murder stories. I do not much mind whether they are true or not. I am not, like a Spiritualist, a man whose religion may said to consist entirely of ghosts. But I am not like a Materialist, a man whose whole philosophy is exploded and blasted and blown to pieces by the most feeble and timid intrusion of the most thin and third-rate ghost. I am quite ready to believe that a number of ghosts were merely turnip ghosts, elaborately prepared to deceive the village idiot. But I am not at all certain that they succeeded even in that; and I suspect that their greatest successes were elsewhere. For it is my experience that the village idiot is very much less credulous than the town lunatic. On the other hand, when the merely skeptical school asks us to believe that every sort of ghost has been a turnip ghost, I think such skeptics rather exaggerate the variety and vivacity and theatrical talent of turnips.”

~G.K. Chesterton: ‘Illustrated London News,’ May 30, 1936

So, Knee-Knock Rise by Natalie Babbitt, also author of Tuck Everlasting, is a fairy tale about the necessity of mystery and belief in the supernatural. It’s also about the distinction between foolish credulity and wisdom. But I’m not at all sure that the questions raised in the story are ever settled.

Perhaps this bit of poetry that forms a part of the story is key, but what is the answer to poem’s riddle?

I visited a certain king
  Who had a certain fool.
The king was gray with wisdom got
  From forty years of school.
The fool was pink with nonsense
  And could barely write his name
But he knew a lot of little songs
  And sang them just the same.
The fool was gay. The king was not.
  Now tell me if you can:
Which was perhaps the greater fool
  And which the wiser man?

The writing in this book is lovely:

  • “a countryside that neither rolled nor dipped but lay as flat as if it had been knocked unconscious.”
  • “Around her neck a thick roll of extra flesh fanned out soft fur into a deep, inviting ruffle and her ears drooped like rich brown velvet triangles. She was old and fat and beautiful and Egan was instantly enchanted.”
  • “Uncle Anson smoked his pipe and dreamed into the flames, devising new and daring clocks, while Sweetheart, curled into a furry wad in Ada’s lap, looked the very picture of innocence, a picture which from time to time he spoiled by stretching out a long foreleg and arching the claws wickedly from a taut, spread claw.”
  • “The Instep Fair! . . . They came in carts, in caravans, on foot, all dressed in their holiday clothes and carrying baskets, boxes, and bundles packed with picnics so special and exotic that even the most finicky of the children were frantic for suppertime.”

And the tale itself is full of ideas and and imaginations just as a good tale ought to be. Egan, the protagonist of the story, longs to know for sure whether the beastly Megrimum lives at the top of Knee-Knock Rise. Some say he certainly does, and the villagers who live below the rise cherish their shivery, scary stories of the Megrimum and his ghostly power. Egan’s Uncle Ott explains away the evidence for the Megrimum with scientific facts and figures. Uncle Anson says, “The only thing that matters is whether you want to believe he’s there or not. And if your mind is made up, all the facts in the world won’t make the slightest difference.”

Certainly, Uncle Anson is right about his second statement. People believe what they want to believe. But doesn’t the truth matter? Are we better off believing in comforting lies and superstitions? Do science and factual knowledge really take the mystery and wonder out of the world, or is there always more to see, more truth to pursue? Who is better off, the worldly wise king or the ignorant fool? Can’t a wise man be happy, and can’t a fool be mired in superstitious fear and misery? Are all ghost stories imaginary, and could a scary Megrimum be real?

Knee-Knock Rise was a Newbery Honor book in 1971. This writer from Wake Forest University thinks the book is anti-religious, or at least questioning religion, but I think it can be read as anti-scientism. Perhaps we both believe what we want to believe.

The Horse Without a Head by Paul Berna

May4

Paul Berna was the pseudonym for French journalist Jean Sabran who wrote children’s books in French during the latter half of the twentieth century. The Horse Without a Head (French title: Le Cheval Sans Tête, 1955) was also published in English with the title A Hundred Million Francs, and it tells the story of a gang of poor working class French children who own one treasure: a headless horse on tricycle wheels that carries them on dangerous and thrilling rides down the narrow streets of Louvigny, a small town in northwest France. The story takes place just after World War II, and there are a few references to leftover bomb craters and deserted warehouses that were abandoned during or after war.

I was reminded as I read of the movie, The Goonies. The ten children in the self-styled “gang” are all under thirteen, street savvy, but also honest and innocent. Their leader, Gaby, “purposely kept the numbers down and never accepted anyone over thirteen, for as he said, ‘When you turn thirteen you get dopey, and you’re lucky if you don’t stay that way for the rest of your life.'” Each child has a distinct personality, but the central figures in the story are Gaby, Fernand, the original owner of the headless horse, and Marion, a somewhat mysterious dog whisperer and amateur vet.

To an adult reader, the book is obviously a translation and of a different era. Some of the dialog is awkwardly phrased in English, and the transitions in the action and logic are sometimes abrupt and difficult to follow. At one point in the story, one of the children brandishes an old rusty revolver and says that although he knows it won’t shoot, “I don’t feel so frightened when I’m holding it.” This bit of business, not at all vital to the plot, would certainly be excised by any editor nowadays. The crooks in the story actually shoot real guns at the children, but of course no one is injured. This is an adventure story, not a treatise on violence and gun safety. The horse rides themselves are quite dangerous, described as going forty or even sixty miles an hour (probably exaggerated) downhill and involving inevitable crashes and spills along the way. The adventures of the children are not meant to be imitated at home, although they very well may lead to some experimentation with wheeled vehicles.

I found the book to be quite a nice escape on a rainy Monday evening, and I would recommend it, if you can get past the Frenchiness and playing with guns. My Scholastic paperback edition from 1964 carries a price of 45 cents on the cover, and I surely got at least 45 cents worth of entertainment from the story. (The price has gone up to about $10.00 for a used paperback, more than twenty for a used hardcover copy.) I thought as I was reading that The Horse Without a Head would make a good movie with some editing and rearranging, and I see that Walt Disney made a movie based on this book; it’s available to rent from Amazon Prime video. Has anyone seen the movie? Or read this little French gem?

A Place to Hang the Moon by Kate Albus

Apr27

Three siblings William, Edmund, and Anna. Orphans evacuated from London to the country during the Blitz. A kind librarian. Difficulties with the natives. These and other elements of the story are timeless and not-so-oddly reminiscent of other beloved stories about children evacuated during World War II from bombed out London. Edmund is the naughty brother in this story just like Edmund in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis. As in Noel Streatfeild’s When the Sirens Wailed, the children’s billets and foster families are not the best, and they are threatened with separation and even abuse. The children encounter cruelty and prejudice but also kindness (and they eventually gain a new home) just as the the child in Goodnight Mr. Tom by Michelle Majorian did. All of these echoes of other stories and the new characters and ideas in this one make this debut middle grade novel by an American author a delight and an adventure.

I did find one Americanism in the book (that an editor should have caught): British children carry torches or electric torches, not flashlights. I know this because for a long time in my childhood I wondered why modern day British children were carrying around torches, sticks with a flame on the end. I only found out that a torch was a flashlight much later in my reading life. (I won’t say how much later.)

The books that are not only alluded to but actually featured in this book make for pleasant reading and pleasant memories. William, Anna, and even Edmund are all readers, and they depend on books to comfort and defend them when life becomes difficult and even unbearable. Some of the classics that the children read over the course of the story: The Enchanted Wood by Enid Blyton, A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett, Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie, The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle, The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas, The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame, The Yellow Fairy Book by Andrew Lang, The Call of the Wild by Jack London, Winnie-the Pooh by A.A. Milne, Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery, Five Children and It by E. Nesbit, Mary Poppins by P.L. Travers, and best of all The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien. Only one of he books that these British children read was one I had never heard of: The Incredible Adventures of Professor Branestawm by Norman Hunter. It sounds incredible, and I’m determined to find a copy and read it soon.

William, age twelve, is working on a multi-year project of reading the Encyclopedia Britannica straight through, beginning to end. He’s on the fourth volume HER(cules) to ITA(lic) as the children leave for the country, and he of course takes this volume with him on the journey. Unfortunately, volume 4 of the encyclopedia isn’t much help as William, Anna, and Edmund encounter bullies, nits, rat-killing, poverty, and neglect, but eventually they do find a home and a someone who thinks, like their Mum used to say, that these particular children “hung the moon.”

Excellency of Christ by Giles Fletcher

Apr15

April is National Poetry Month.

He is a path, if any be misled;
He is a robe, if any naked be;
If any chance to hunger, he is bread;
If any be a bondman, he is free;
If any be but weak, how strong is he!
To dead men, life is he; to sick men, health;
To blind men, sight; and to the needy, wealth;
A pleasure without loss, a treasure without stealth.

Giles Fletcher the Younger was an Anglican cleric who lived during Elizabethan times and wrote poetry. His most famous work was a very long poem in four cantos called Christ's Victorie and Triumph, in Heaven, in Earth, over and after Death.

Sonnet 19 by John Milton

Apr10

April is National Poetry Month.

Sonnet 19: When I consider how my light is spentBY JOHN MILTON

When I consider how my light is spent, 
Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide, 
And that one Talent which is death to hide 
Lodged with me useless, though my Soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present 
My true account, lest he returning chide; 
“Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?” 
I fondly ask. But patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, “God doth not need 
Either man’s work or his own gifts; who best 
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state
Is Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed 
And post o’er Land and Ocean without rest: 
They also serve who only stand and wait.”

If Only I Were King by A.A. Milne

Apr9

April is National Poetry Month.

If Only I Were King

I often wish I were a King,
And then I could do anything.

If only I were King of Spain,
I’d take my hat off in the rain.

If only I were King of France,
I wouldn’t brush my hair for aunts.

I think, if I were King of Greece,
I’d push things off the mantelpiece.

If I were King of Norroway,
I’d ask an elephant to stay.

If I were King of Babylon,
I’d leave my button gloves undone.

If I were King of Timbuctoo,
I’d think of lovely things to do.

If I were King of anything,
I’d tell the soldiers, “I’m the King!”

Seven Stanzas at Easter by John Updike

Apr8

April is National Poetry Month. I saw this portion of a poem on several of my friends’ Facebook pages over the Easter weekend, and I was reminded that Jesus was truly man, truly God, physically died and was resurrected in a physical human body. And for this we praise God, and for through this we realize hope.

Make no mistake: if he rose at all
It was as His body;
If the cell’s dissolution did not reverse, the molecule reknit,
The amino acids rekindle,
The Church will fall.

It was not as the flowers,
Each soft spring recurrent;
It was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled eyes of the
Eleven apostles;
It was as His flesh; ours.

The same hinged thumbs and toes
The same valved heart
That—pierced—died, withered, paused, and then regathered
Out of enduring Might
New strength to enclose.

Let us not mock God with metaphor,
Analogy, sidestepping, transcendence,
Making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the faded
Credulity of earlier ages:
Let us walk through the door.

The stone is rolled back, not papier-mache,
Not a stone in a story,
But the vast rock of materiality that in the slow grinding of
Time will eclipse for each of us
The wide light of day.

And if we have an angel at the tomb,
Make it a real angel,
Weighty with Max Planck’s quanta, vivid with hair, opaque in
The dawn light, robed in real linen
Spun on a definite loom.

Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
For our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
Lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are embarrassed
By the miracle,
And crushed by remonstrance.
— from John Updike’s Seven Stanzas at Easter