Monsieur Marceau by Leda Schubert

Feb13

Monsieur Marceau: Actor Without Words by Leda Schubert, illustrated by Gerard Dubois. Roaring Brook Press, 2012.

Look at this man.
He climbs imaginary stairs.
He bows to an invisible person.
He tames a lion no one can see.
He plays a violin that isn’t there.

He does not speak.
His name is Marcel Marceau, and he is a mime.

An introduction to the French artist Marcel Marceau and to the ancient art of mime, this picture book would be an excellent one to read aloud to a group of young aspiring actors. I am fascinated myself by the idea of silence: what does it mean to be quiet, to refrain from speaking, to let one’s actions and gestures speak instead of the voice, to refuse to add to the clamor of voices and words that pervades our culture and our world. Marceau is quoted in this book, “Never get a mime talking. He won’t stop.” And my own experiments in silence have not lasted very long. I’m not even sure what the attraction is, why I have wanted to see how long I could last without speaking any words. I don’t know why I have marked in my Bible the many injunctions to “keep silent” (Proverbs 11:12) and “be still” (Psalm 46:10 and “control your tongue” (James 3:1-12) and just be quiet or use fewer words (Psalm 141:3; Proverbs 10:14; Proverbs 15: 1,2,4,7,28). But silence and the art of mime are a pet fascination of mine.

So, Marcel Marceau. I found a lot about him that I didn’t know from reading this 32 page picture book. He was Jewish. He was active in the French underground during World War II. His father died in a Nazi concentration camp during the war. He changed his name from Mangel to Marceau to conceal his Jewish heritage, but he said that He created the character Bip, named after the Dickens hero Pip in Great Expectations (Bip sounded better than “Peep” in French.) His screen idol was Charlie Chaplin.

The author also implies that Marceau was the originator of the famous dictum (a riff on Tolkien): “Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup.” But the internet collectively seems to think that he origin of the proverb is indeterminate. And it’s morphed into dragons instead of wizards since the time Marceau said it.

Anyway, it’s a great picture book, and it made me want to read more, which is the entire purpose of picture book nonfiction, is it not? Well, also good pictures that make you want to see more are a purpose and an advantage, too. And this book has lovely colored paintings of Marceau is various poses, mostly on a solid white or dark background, to symbolize the silence around him, I suppose. As far as reading more, there’s a list of four books for further reading in the back of the book. And you can see the silent art of Marcel Marceau in this video (and many others on youtube):

Note: I’m beginning today a series of posts on some of my favorite picture book biographies. For more picture book biography suggestions, check out the following:
Read Aloud Revival: Picture Book Biographies We Love
Redeemed Reader: Picture Book Biographies Booklist
I have my own list of more than 300 picture book biographies that I am willing to share with you for a contribution of just $5.00 payable via PayPal. This list is currently in a Excel document, unfinished and still under construction. If you are interested in having a copy of the list, just email me at sherryDOTpray4youATgmailDOTcom.

Abe Lincoln’s Other Mother: The Story of Sarah Bush Lincoln by Bernadine Bailey

Feb12

Well, today is the anniversary of the birth of perhaps America’s most beloved president, Abraham Lincoln. (Only George Washington, whose birthday is also this month, rivals Lincoln in fame and veneration.) So, although I didn’t plan it, I picked a good day to have finished reading this biography of Lincoln’s stepmother and to post some thoughts on it.

This Messner biography is written for upper elementary and middle school readers, perhaps high school, although today’s young adult readers might find it a bit too unsophisticated for their tastes. The book certainly idealizes Sarah Lincoln and her stepson, Abe, while characterizing Abe’s father, Thomas Lincoln, as somewhat lazy and lacking in ambition. In this lightly fictionalized biography, Sarah Bush Lincoln is the backbone and foundation of the Lincoln family, careful to respect her husband, but always encouraging him to do more, provide more, and work harder. Abe Lincoln is the child prodigy, hard worker, and studious young man that Sarah Lincoln is proud to encourage and support.

It all makes for a very readable and interesting introduction to the life of Abraham Lincoln, and the book shows the importance of the influence of a good parent on the lives of the children. Although Abe Lincoln is the focus of Sarah’s attention and love in the book, the other Lincoln children also grow to be capable adults under the tutelage of their hard-working mother and despite the example of their rolling stone of a father. Well, mostly they grow up to be responsible adults. The book indicates that the youngest of Sarah’s three children from a previous marriage, John Johnston, is not very dependable as an adult. I looked up John on the internet and found this letter that Abraham Lincoln wrote to his step-brother in 1851, about nine years before Lincoln became president. So, I’m guessing that the author of this biography of John’s mother got John’s character pegged just about right.

I also read the Wikipedia article about Abe’s father, Thomas Lincoln, and from I can glean there, Ms. Bailey’s portrait of Thomas rings fair and true. At any rate, this biography, at a little more than 200 pages, gives a brief but tantalizing view of Lincoln’s childhood and early adulthood, of his relationship with his family, especially Sarah Bush Lincoln, and of his rise to prominence. The book would be inspiring to mothers and to children as they read of the obstacles that Sarah Lincoln overcame to provide a loving home and decent provision for a husband and five children. And the book also shows the persistence and loving-kindness of Lincoln himself as he cared for his step-mother at home and even after he left home until the end of his life.

These Messner biographies are quite well written and fascinating. So far I have read and reviewed five of these biographies, including this one about Sarah Lincoln, and I read two more that I didn’t manage to review. So, I’ve read seven in all. And I recommend all seven of those I’ve read in this series.

The Little Giant: Stephen A. Douglas by Jeanette Covert Nolan
The Doctor Who Saved Babies: Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis by Josephine Rich.
Antonin Dvorak: Composer From Bohemia by Claire Lee Purdy
Eloquent Crusader: Ernestine Rose by Yuri Suhl
First Lady of the Theatre: Sarah Siddons by Molly Costain
Mr. Lincoln’s Master Spy: Lafayette Baker by Arthur Orrmont.

Margaret Wise Brown: Awakened by the Moon by Leonard S. Marcus

Feb8

Margaret Wise Brown, author of The Runaway Bunny and Goodnight Moon as well as more than a hundred other picture books for children, led a troubled and flamboyant life, although she sometimes described herself as a quiet person. I read Marcus’s biography of Ms. Brown, not for the details of her personal life which are rather sad, but rather for the insights into the history of children’s literature in general and the picture book in particular and for the revelations about and appreciation of the educational philosophies that shaped our teaching of small children and our literature for them.

To sweep the personal stuff out of the way: Ms. Brown was almost married on two separate occasions to two different men, had a long affair with an older married man, and entered into a long term romantic (sexual?) relationship with a twenty years older woman, the divorced wife of actor John Barrymore, who called herself Michael Strange (birth name: Blanche Oelrichs). Margaret Wise Brown was prone to depression, excessive guilt, and angst, but she was also quite generous and mentored many writers and illustrators who later became published and famous in their own right.

The really fascinating material in this book, however, concerns the history and direction of children’s literature in the mid-twentieth century. If I understand the issues correctly, Margaret Wise Brown began her writing for children out of the Bank Street Experimental School, where she was mentored by the school’s founder, Lucy Sprague Mitchell. The school taught two things about writing for children: that books should be centered in the “here and now” (no nostalgic fairy-tale type stories of the idyllic past) and that books before being published should be tested and retested on their intended audience, children.

The rivals to this school of children’s literature were the Librarians.The librarians were epitomized by New York Public Library’s head of children’s services, Anne Carroll Moore. Ms. Moore was the recognized authority on children’s books in the years before World War II. “Her stamp of approval or disapproval was often widely accepted as final judgment on a book.” Anne Carroll Moore did not appreciate the “here and now” school of thought and at one point in the book she dismisses a group of pre-publication books brought to her for prior approval by one of Brown’s publishers as “truck”.

The controversy between the here and now school of writers and illustrators—Ruth Krauss, Esphyr Slobodkina, Clement and Edith Thacher Hurd, Leonard Weisgard, and Margaret herself as well as others who followed in their footsteps—and the Librarians and their followers was one of esthetics versus practicality. The Librarians preferred books with the best literary content, the most refined forms of traditional art, and inspiring characters and plot. The Here-and-Now-ers believed in accessible, straightforward prose that was also somewhat poetic in its images that a child could understand and appreciate and contemporary, realistic settings. Even the animal characters in the here-and-now books were not magical or fantastical but rather stand-ins for human characters with here-and-now speech and actions and concerns. Anne Carroll Moore and her librarian coterie championed books such as Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter, Marcia Brown’s folk tales such as Cinderella and Stone Soup, and Claire Huchet Bishop’s The Five Chinese Brothers. They liked books set in exotic places and times and books that challenged the literary muscles of children who read them.

Of course, now we look back and say, “Why can’t we have both?” Fantasy and reality, here and now but also there and then, poetry and prose and all things in between. Pictures that are abstract and fantastical and illustrations that are realistic and simple and accessible, all kinds of artistic expression can be found in the picture books of the last century, all beginning with the controversy that eventually resolved into a smorgasbord of picture books for all tastes.

I recommend this biography of Margaret Wise Brown to all those who have an interest in children’s literature and the publishing industry and the educational movements and philosophies of the the twentieth century. There’s much more to read about in the book. I haven’t even talked about the influence of Gertrude Stein on Ms. Brown’s books, an influence I would never have known about if I hadn’t read this book. And just the details of how different books were conceived and brought to fruition was enlightening and thought-provoking. Maybe I should write a picture book, although I’m told, in this biography and in many other things I’ve read, that it’s harder than it looks to write a good children’s picture book.

People Are Not Dirty Silverware

Feb7

Well, folks, I thought we had learned. I thought people in the church no longer compared sinful people to broken, damaged roses—or dirty silverware. Yet, my seventeen year old daughter attended a youth retreat this past weekend with a friend from an evangelical church in our area. And the speaker talked about sex and sexual ethics. He (of course, it was a man, speaking to a mixed group of boys and girls, middle school and high school ages) told these precious, beloved young people that if they failed to meet God’s standard in the area of sexual behavior, they would be like dirty silverware. And no one wants to eat with used, dirty silverware! In fact, said the pastor, God can’t and won’t use dirty silverware.

Brothers and sisters, this ought not to be. This preacher was affirming the self-righteousness of those who had not failed in the area of sexual sin (maybe because of lack of opportunity?). Some of the young people cheered him on. What a dangerous thing it is to imply that if you have never expressed your sexuality outside of marriage you are clean before God, and He can thereafter use you to His glory. And he was condemning those who had sinned, in using others for their own sexual pleasure or allowing their bodies to be used for the sexual pleasure of another, to possibly a lifetime of feeling dirty and unwanted. What a dangerous message to preach to a room full of sexual people who are just beginning to learn how to express that sexuality in healthy, God-honoring ways!

Did this preacher mention that every single one of us, whether we have engaged in sexual acts outside of marriage or not, is dirty and sinful before God? In fact, the Bible makes a worse comparison than the dirty silverware analogy; Scripture says that our best works, the things we are most proud of, our good deeds and our righteousness, are all just like filthy, nasty rags in the light of God’s holiness (Isaiah 54:6). Isaiah wasn’t talking about sexual immorality, but rather about the idolatry that God’s people were practicing, that we all practice. In Ephesians 2:1-5, the Bible says that we are not just dirty; we are all dead and buried in sin. We all have sinned, and we all fall short of the glory of God. We try to convince ourselves that we are good people. We keep some rules, maybe the “sex rules” or the “no stealing” rule or the “don’t murder” rule, maybe even all three, and we tell ourselves that we are good people, really, well mostly. But we know deep down inside that we are guilty of being less than the image-bearer of God that we were created to be, that we are not the completely and truly obedient children of a loving and patient God. This doctrine of “total depravity” is not a popular message. But it’s true, and we all stand guilty before a holy God.

However, did this pastor even get to the good news? (I don’t think so, according to my daughter. I wasn’t there, so I can only say that if he did, she didn’t hear it.) We are made to be God’s people in Christ! Jesus cleanses and uses us. While we were still dead and lost and sin-filled and unclean, Jesus died for us! God doesn’t look at us and see dirty silverware or a damaged, irreparable rose, no matter what we have done or failed to do. No, He looks at us, and He sees Jesus. We are clothed in Christ. If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. God sees those who come to him in repentance and humility as new creations, the people we were meant to be all along. We are people, made in the image of God, given God’s grace through the cross of Jesus, and called to be the temple of the Holy Spirit living in us. That’s why we respect and care for our own bodies as well as the bodies of others. Jesus’s love for us, body and soul, is why we flee sexual immorality. “Run from sexual sin! No other sin so clearly affects the body as this one does. For sexual immorality is a sin against your own body.” (I Corinthians 6:18, NLT) God loves us just as we are, and He enables us to be clean and forgiven and useful, no matter what we have done to ourselves or to others.

We can use our bodies to serve the One who loves us so much that He died for us! We are alive in Christ, not dead anymore! If we are pure, it is because He purifies us, not because we keep some set of rules. So, love God with your heart and soul and mind and strength. Serve Christ joyfully with your body. And when you mess up, in any way, come to Him for forgiveness and renewal of life. You are not a dirty fork or a broken unwanted rose—you are a child of God.

Ferdinand Magellan, Master Mariner by Seymour Gates Pond

Feb6

Ferdinand Magellan, the man who led the first expedition to circumnavigate the globe, was born on February 3, 1480. So, happy belated birthday to Captain Magellan!

I read this *Landmark history book in honor of Magellan’s birthday. It was a somewhat hagiographic volume on the life and work of this Portuguese explorer who took a fleet of Spanish ships and pushed, prodded, and bullied the sailors and officers under his command until they reached the Pacific Ocean, through what are now called the Straits of Magellan. In fact, what most people know about Magellan, that he was the first to sail around the world, is wrong. Magellan only made it to the south Pacific island of Mactan where he was killed in a battle to invade the island, subjugate it to the King of Spain, and convert the natives, by force, to Christianity.

Magellan, at least the way Mr. Pond presents him, was a very forceful and stubborn man. Pond uses adjectives such as “resolute”, “heroic”, “bold”, “brave”, and “perhaps overzealous” to describe Magellan and his actions. In his impatient and overbearing desire to see the islanders convert to Christianity and bow to the sovereign power of Spain, Magellan rushed in to land on the island of Mactan, where the people were hostile to his overtures, and he invaded with only forty-nine armed sailors to support him. The islanders numbered in the thousands, again according to Pond, and Magellan was killed almost immediately. But one of his five ships made it back to Spain with nineteen survivors, out of two hundred sixty seven seamen who set set sail with Magellan three years before.

So, Magellan gets the credit as the first to circumnavigate the globe in 1519-1522. And more than four hundred years later Mr. Seymour Gates Pond writes a book about Magellan and his “heroic courage, the ideal to serve unselfishly a great cause for mankind.” I read recently that courage is the median virtue between cowardice and recklessness, and I would tend to think that Magellan, courageous to a fault, erred on the side of recklessness. Nevertheless, his story was a fascinating look at the perils of exploration in the sixteenth century and the values of a biographer in the mmid-twentieth century. In this time of deconstruction of all heroes, I’m not sure anyone could write such an adulatory biography of Ferdinand Magellan, but I’m glad it exists. The biography is certainly informative and well-written, and as a history read-aloud it could certainly provoke an interesting discussion on leadership and courage and the value of wisdom to temper reckless bravery.

*The Landmark series of history books, published by Random House in the 1950’s and 1960’s, were a series of history books written by such famous and talented authors as John Gunther (best-selling author and journalist), Mackinlay Kantor (Pulitzer Prize winner), Sterling North (Newbery honor), Armstrong Sperry (Newbery Award winner), Robert Penn Warren (Pulitzer Prize winner), Pearl S. Buck (Nobel Prize for Literature), Jim Kjelgaard, Quentin Reynolds (World War II reporter), Van Wyck Mason (historian and best-selling novelist) and C.S. Forrester. There were 122 titles in all. For any upper elementary or middle school age student trying to get a handle on World or American history, these books are the gold standard.

To learn more about the Landmark series of biographies and history books for young people, check out this podcast episode, Parts 1 and 2, of Plumfield Moms, What Are Landmark Books? Why Do They Matter?

Book Girl by Sarah Clarkson: Beloved Dozen

Feb5

Book Girl: A Journey Through the Treasures & Transforming Power of a Reading Life by Sarah Clarkson.

Book Girl Discussion Question #7: The author gives her ‘Beloved Dozen’ list in chapter 3. What titles would you include on your must-read list?

I have a list of 79 of the best fiction books I’ve ever read. To narrow that list down to 12 will be difficult, but I’m game. Note that these are only fiction, not nonfiction.

Les Miserables by Victor Hugo. I read this tome long before there was a musical version, and I devoured it. I stayed up until I fell asleep after 2:00 AM, reading Les Miserables in my dorm room bed, exploring the convents, battlefields, and sewers of Paris and of France, even though I had an 8:00 class to attend that same morning. I recommend plunging headfirst into an unabridged version and enjoying every single minute detail of Victor Hugo’s masterpiece.

David Copperfield by Charles Dickens. Such a good story. I wish I could find time to re-read it.

The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis. The Chronicles of Narnia may be my favorite C.S. Lewis books, but The Great Divorce is the one that I would recommend that everyone read. Just remember that it is fiction, not theology, a supposing, not a prophecy.

Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton.

The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien. I also read these books as a teen, long before Peter Jackson made them even more famous than the books already were.

No Graven Image by Elizabeth Elliott. A young missionary finds that God is trustworthy, but not necessarily fathomable. I find the same to be true in my Christian life. This novel and the book of Job are my mainstays in the time of suffering and difficulty.

Eight Cousins and Rose in Bloom by Louisa May Alcott.

Kristin Lavransdattar by Sigrid Undset. So surprising and so right. Actions and decisions have consequences, and living out the aftermath of good decisions and bad ones is how we learn and grow.

Well, actually the final two books that everyone should read are nonfiction:

The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom. Such a good autobiographical story of a family that followed Christ into hard places, step by step, in World War II Holland.

Joni by Joni Eareckson (Tada). Joni was also led into some very hard places, but she found the Lord already there.

I also made this list of “10 books that shaped or defined me.” It includes both fiction and nonfiction.

Born On This Day: Sidney Lanier, 1842-1881

Feb3

Sidney Lanier, born February 3rd, poet of the American South, was also a storyteller, a flautist, and a professor of literature. He fought for the South during the Civil War, was taken prisoner, contracted tuberculosis during his imprisonment, and suffered from the disease for the rest of his life. After the war, Lanier taught school, moved around, taught himself to play the flute and to read the music, and became, in a minor way, famous as a flautist.

In order to support himself and his family Lanier began to write poetry. It doesn’t sound any more lucrative than the musician gig, but he managed to make a living. Poetry was more popular back in the day. One of Lanier’s most well-known poems, The Marshes of Glynn, describes the salt marshes of Glynn County on the coast of Georgia. An excerpt that I like very much goes like this:

As the marsh-hen secretly builds on the watery sod,
Behold I will build me a nest on the greatness of God:
I will fly in the greatness of God as the marsh-hen flies
In the freedom that fills all the space ’twixt the marsh and the skies:
By so many roots as the marsh-grass sends in the sod
I will heartily lay me a-hold on the greatness of God:
Oh, like to the greatness of God is the greatness within
The range of the marshes, the liberal marshes of Glynn.

Behold, I will build me a nest on the greatness of God. I really like that.

Sidney Lanier also wrote four books of stories for boys:

The Boy’s Froissart (1878), a retelling of Jean Froissart’s Froissart’s Chronicles, which tell of adventure, battle and customs in medieval England, France and Spain;
The Boy’s King Arthur (1880), based on Sir Thomas Malory’s compilation of the legends of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table;
The Boy’s Mabinogion (1881), based on the early Welsh legends of King Arthur, as retold in the Red Book of Hergest; and
The Boy’s Percy (published posthumously in 1882), consisting of old ballads of war, adventure and love based on Bishop Thomas Percy’s Reliques of Ancient English Poetry.

The Boy’s King Arthur is fairly easy to find, new or used and at a reasonable price, with illustrations by N.C. Wyeth. I found a an old copy of The Boy’s Percy on Amazon for $18.00; it looks good in the picture, but I would be afraid to purchase it without really knowing anything about the content or condition of the book. The Boy’s Mabinogion is rather expensive for a hardcover used book. The Boy’s Froissart is available for around $15.00. Of course all of these are available in reprint editions and online, since they were published in the late nineteenth century and are now in the public domain.

I do think it would be lovely to have a set of these four books, but the only one I do have is The Boy’s Arthur. A book of Lanier’s poetry, edited and arranged for children as in the Poetry for Young People series, would be a lovely thing to have, too. But I don’t think such a thing is available.

Another poem by Mr. Lanier:

Into the woods my Master went,
Clean forspent, forspent.
Into the woods my Master came,
Forspent with love and shame.
But the olives they were not blind to Him,
The little gray leaves were kind to Him:
The thorn-tree had a mind to Him
When into the woods He came.

Out of the woods my Master went,
And He was well content.
Out of the woods my Master came,
Content with death and shame.
When Death and Shame would woo Him last,
From under the trees they drew Him last:
’Twas on a tree they slew Him—last
When out of the woods He came.

Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng

Feb1

This adult novel is about mothers and their children and their bond to their children. It’s quite compelling and the issues that are raised are thought-provoking and worthy of examination. However, I have a couple of issues myself with the novel and its believability and the lack of believable motivation and awareness on the part of some of the characters. To talk about these problems, I will have to give some spoilers for the plot of the novel, so here is your warning. Here there be spoilers.

Mia Warren is an artist (photographer) and a single mom. She and her teen daughter, Pearl, rent an apartment in Shaker Heights, Ohio, a Midwestern suburb that is, we are told repeatedly, the epitome of upper middle class respectability, predictability, and dullness. (Under the surface, however, there’s a lot of not respectable, unpredictable, and crazy stuff going on in good old Shaker Heights.) Mia’s and Pearl’s landlords are the Richardsons, particularly Elena Richardson, who lives in a luxurious two-story home in Shaker Heights with her four teenage children and her colorless and barely described husband. (You can forget the husband. He doesn’t really do much of anything in the story.) An old friend of Elena Richardson, Linda McCullough, attempts to adopt an abandoned baby. The baby, abandoned at a firehouse, is ethnically Chinese. In the meantime, Pearl develops a close friendship with the younger of the two Richardson sons, Moody, while Moody proceeds to fall hard for Pearl. Pearl, however, has a crush on the older Richardson, Trip, and eventually they get together. The oldest Richardson child, Lexie, eighteen, has a boyfriend who is black, and the two of them manage to get Linda pregnant. Mia, the avant-garde photographer, not only has a secret in her past that involves Pearl’s conception and birth, but she also befriends the Chinese baby’s real mother and tells her where her baby is, in the home of Elena Richardson’s friend, about to be adopted.

Despite all of these intertwining relationships and problematic characters, the title and the narrative indicate that the book is really not about any of these people as much as it is about the Richardsons’ fourth child, Izzy. Izzy is fifteen years old, and she has a fraught relationship with her mother because of her traumatic birth and the way her mother has treated her ever since—and Izzy’s reaction to that ill treatment. Izzy is a social justice warrior, and she just doesn’t fit into the staid, racially indifferent world of Shaker Heights. She especially doesn’t live up to her mother’s rule-following expectations. She gets along with Mia Warren much better than she does with her own family and her parents. So far, so good. We have a lot of interesting characters and situations to explore.

The first false note sounds when Lexie finds out that she is pregnant. She begins to dream of keeping the baby, of her and her boyfriend, Brian, going off to Princeton or Yale together and living in family bliss while raising their own child. However, she soon realizes that this dream is not likely to become a reality. Brian recoils at the mere suggestion of a possible unexpected pregnancy. Lexie can’t think of anyone she can tell about the baby, and so she schedules an abortion. Meanwhile, Lexie is feeling her own maternal instincts which display as an inordinate interest in the little Chinese baby, Mirabelle/May Ling, and a sympathy for the adoptive parents who are fighting to keep Mirabelle as the birth mother tries to regain custody of the baby she abandoned. Never once does Lexie even begin to think of her own baby and its own right to grow up in a loving home even as she is almost obsessed with the child that is at the center of the custody battle and that girl’s right to grow up in a loving home. Not once does Lexie say to herself, “Wait, maybe someone would like to adopt my child. Maybe my child has a right to life and a home and parents who love her and can care for her.” It’s a huge blind spot, and no one in the novel even brings up the obvious and painful parallel.

Then, there’s the ending of the novel. Basically, Izzy burns the Richardsons’ house down—on purpose. We’ve been told over and over throughout the novel that Izzy isn’t crazy, just misunderstood. Then, she takes Mia’s words about “how sometimes you need to scorch everything to the ground and start over” literally, and she sets a bunch of little fires in all the beds in the house and burns it to the ground. Izzy then runs away from home to try to join Mia and Pearl who have left town for their own reasons, and Izzy’s mother vows to “spend months, years, the rest of her life looking for her daughter.” So, if Mother Richardson ever does find her wayward daughter, Izzy obviously needs some serious psychiatric help. People who are simply artistic and misunderstood don’t burn the house down for no reason other than a need to start over. Maybe the last paragraph of the novel is meant to tell us that Linda, too, is in need of some psychiatric help and lives in a fantasy world. She tells herself that Izzy, when they find her, will “be able to make amends.” I wanted to shake Linda Richardson and tell her that Izzy is delusional. Izzy won’t make amends because Izzy doesn’t even see that she’s done anything to make amends for. I can’t make a definitive diagnosis, but Izzy is ill and needs help. And maybe Linda does, too.

So, it’s an interesting novel with compelling characters, but none of the characters were people I could sympathize with or understand very well. Sex-driven teens whose parents preferred not to know what they were doing. Rule-keeping parents who can’t think outside their own little boxes. A rule-breaking parent who suggests vandalism to impressionable teens and then disclaims responsibility. A parent who discards her baby and then wants her back. Another parent who is too dumb to see her own blind spots in regard to societal expectations. And crazy arsonist Izzy. I just couldn’t find anyone very likable, but if these were real people, I would feel sorry for them. And this is me, being smug and patronizing, probably.

The Season of Styx Malone by Kekla Magoon

Jan31

Ten year old Caleb Franklin and his older brother, Bobby Gene, are different from each other. Caleb longs to become someone distinguished and special and he can’t wait to leave the small town of Sutton, Indiana and go somewhere exciting. Bobby Gene is more like the boys’ dad—content to be ordinary, even extra-ordinary, which Caleb understands to mean extra-boring and extra-plain and extra-normal.

So, when Caleb and Bobby Gene meet Styx Malone, a new boy in town, sixteen years old and extra-cool, it’s Caleb who becomes Styx’s acolyte and hero-worshipper. Bobby Gene goes along with the plan to pull off a Great Escalator Trade and trade up to a motorbike that will take Caleb and the other two boys everywhere they want to go. But Caleb does more than just go along; Styx Malone makes promises that Caleb just can’t resist until the dreams and the price of those dreams get a little too high and a lot too dangerous.

What a great story! As Caleb follows the ultra-cool Styx Malone, we as readers get to see just how easy it is to be sucked into doing things and saying things we know are wrong. And there really are no villains in the story. Caleb’s parents are old-fashioned and ordinary, and they don’t really understand Caleb’s longing for the special and exciting. But the parents are good, involved parents, not villains. Bobby Gene tries to put the brakes on the boys’ adventures with Styx Malone, but Caleb is too blinded by his hero-worship to see the wisdom in Bobby Gene’s caution. Even Styx himself, who turns out to be a foster child who has been moved from home to home too many times, isn’t mean or bad kid. He doesn’t tell the boys all of the truth, and he gets them into situations that are at the very least borderline unethical. However, Styx just wants to provide the adventure that Caleb so desires. Styx Malone is the catalyst, but all three of the boys bear some responsibility for what happens.

It has been noted before that good stories provide an opportunity for us to try out different personas and courses of action and see how those decisions might play out in real life—without the danger of actually trying out risky behavior. The Season of Styx Malone provides just such an opportunity for readers to see how heroes can fail us and how our own desires can blind us to the truth. Caleb is a somewhat unreliable narrator because of this blindness, but he’s unfailingly honest. And eventually he and Bobby Gene see what the reader sees much sooner: A Cool Guy is just a regular guys with some extra confidence or bluster, and we all have to rely on our own conscience to make moral and ethical judgments. Or in other words, be careful whom you follow.

And we get all of this wisdom without its ever being stated, without a moral being given. Story really is the best way to internalize wisdom. I’m going to remember Caleb and Bobby Gene and Styx for a long time, and I’ll bet the children who read this book will remember them, too.

Born on This Day: Vera B. Williams, 1927-2015

Jan28

Vera B. Williams was an American illustrator and author who wrote several popular picture books for children. The two that I’m most familiar with are A Chair for My Mother, which won a Newbery Honor, and Three Days on a River in a Red Canoe, the story journal of a mother-daughter-aunt canoe trip. A Chair fro My Mother is a beautiful homely story about a girl whose family experiences a fire in their apartment. No one is hurt, but all of their possessions are destroyed in the fire. Their community and family come together to give them things to help them start again, but the one things they don’t have is a soft, comfortable chair for the girl’s mother to relax in after a hard day of work at the diner. SO the family begins to save up their money in a big jar to buy a chair for mother (and grandmother who lives with them). It’s such a good book about a working class family and about how families work together to manage their money and save for something important. I feel as if the book teaches gratitude and delayed gratification and teamwork and so much more, but in a story, not a sermon.

Ms. Williams’ bio sounds as if she led a colorful life: she helped start a “community” (sounds like a commune) in the hills of North Carolina and a school based on the Summerhill model. Then she moved to Canada and lived on a houseboat for a while, where she illustrated her first book. Oh, and she spent a month in the federal penitentiary in West Virginia after a “peaceful blockade of the Pentagon.”

“I don’t make a point of ending up in jail. But if you try to put your hopes and beliefs for a better life into effect, arrest is sometimes a hazard. As a person who works for children, who raised three children … I have to be able to say I did something to try to save our planet from destruction.”

It sounds as if our politics may differ, but I do appreciate Ms. Williams’ books.