Devil’s Cub by Georgette Heyer

Jun13

Set in the late eighteenth century and originally published in 1932, this book has a lot of conflicting cultural mores and values to balance, and I’m just not sure it works in the feminist-imbued twenty-first century. A virtuous young lady, Mary Challoner, disguises herself as her sister who has a date to run away with the rakish and self indulgent Dominic Alistair, Marquis of Vidal (Vidal for short). In the first chapter Vidal very casually murders a would-be highway robber and leaves the body lying in the middle of the road because he’s too lazy to dispose of it. Then he wounds his opponent in a duel, leaves him for dead, and rushes off to arrange his assignation with Mary’s feckless and gullible sister, Sophia. So, Mary, to save her sister, runs away with Vidal, reveals herself after a while, and hopes that Vidal will lose interest in ruining Sophia. Instead, Vidal decides to abduct Mary out of spite, and he comes close to attempted rape until Mary shoots him in the arm with a pistol.

After all of that set-up, we’re supposed to believe that Vidal is just a misunderstood “bad boy”, kind of a Rhett Butler character, and Mary is just the girl to take him in hand and tame him. Oh, and we know that he’s really a good guy deep down inside because when Mary gets seasick while crossing the Channel with her abductor, Vidal fetches a basin for her to throw up into. By the time they get to France, they are in love with each other although neither one is aware of the other’s regard, and all that remains is for them to discover their mutual admiration, soothe and get the approval of the parents on both sides of the match, assuage Sophia’s wounded pride, and save Mary’s reputation and honor.

I’m just not buying. Vidal never does come across as a good character, although Mary thinks he is. If she marries him, Mary Challoner is in for a rude awakening when he murders a servant someday for polishing his boots the wrong way or tells her that he didn’t know that she would mind his having a mistress on the side. Vidal is not shown to be misunderstood or misjudged, but rather he is absolved of all responsibility and guilt for no discernible reason. He’s actually a cad and a murderer. And if there is such a thing as slut-shaming, Sophia is a victim; it’s said to be justifiable to abduct her because she’s a naive but willing runaway. However, Mary is supposed to be honorable and a cut above her sister because she would never really run away to Paris with Vidal; it’s all a horrible misunderstanding, an adventure, and an accident.

What with the male-female double standard for marital and sexual behavior in the 1930’s and the class distinctions for what is honorable and moral behavior in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, this romance is a hot mess. Honorable, decent girls shouldn’t fall in love with their would-be abductors and rapists, and if they do they can expect trouble in the subsequent marriage. As for Vidal, he doesn’t deserve a wife or a mistress, and I don’t believe his protestations of innocence and undying affection for Mary.

The spectacle of the various characters in the novel chasing one another all over France is somewhat entertaining, but othe wise this novel is both infuriating and forgettable. I’ve liked some other Heyer Regency romances, but I’d recommend giving this one a pass.

A Chameleon, a Boy, and a Quest by J.A. Myhre

Jun6

Ten year old Mu has lived with the family of his great-uncle, the mukumu (a African traditional priest who can cast curses and give protection from them), for as long as he can remember. Mu is treated more as a servant than as a member of the family, but at least he gets to go to school for half a day. Then one day on the way to school, Mu makes a friend, and everything in his life changes as his talking chameleon friend chooses Mu and calls him on a mysterious quest.

“The Myhres, Scott and Jennifer, are missionary physicians who joined Serge (then World Harvest Mission) in 1991, and have worked in East Africa since 1993: 17 years in Bundibugyo, Uganda; five years in Kijabe, Kenya; and now partnering with a busy Kenyan government hospital in Naivasha.”

Author J.A. Myhre is the “Jennifer” of the missionary couple, and she wrote this story as a Christmas present for her four children. Ms. Myhre is obviously well-versed in the flora, fauna, and culture of east Africa as a result of her many years spent living in that part of the world. As Mu travels through the savannah and up the mountains, following the chameleon’s instructions, mostly, the reader gets a wonderful introduction to the geography and culture of east Africa, embedded in an adventure story that is sure to thrill and intrigue. Mu rides an elephant; he sleeps in a warthog’s den; and he escapes from the evil rebel soldiers who try to use him as a child soldier. However, Mu is not without his own evil and cowardice, and he finds himself forced to make choices that are all too disastrous in their consequences.

The talking chameleon and other talking and helpful animals in the story give the tale a hint of “magical realism”, and the ending is pure fantasy. However, for the most part Mu’s story is all too realistic and somewhat sad. Hope is found in Mu’s animal guides and in his calling to an important quest. The book isn’t preachy at all, but it does give a lot of food for thought and discussion as Mu travels through the countryside. What will Mu do when he has the opportunity to rescue a friend, but at the risk of his own life? What will he do when his captors demand that he prove himself to be a man by killing yet another friend? The violence and evil aren’t graphic or gratuitous, but the story is also not without disturbing scenes. If your child isn’t ready to read about animal deaths and human cruelty, condemned and later redeemed but definitely a significant part of the story, then you might want to wait on this one.

I’m really looking forward to Ms. Myhre’s second and third books in this African series, the Rwendigo Tales:

A Bird, a Girl, and Rescue, Book #2
A Forest, a Flood, and an Unlikely Star, Book #3 (to be released in September, 2017)

If you want to know more about the Doctors Myhre and their work, now in Uganda, here’s a link to their blog.

Music, Part IV by Henry Van Dyke

Jun3

O lead me by the hand,
And let my heart have rest,
And bring me back to childhood land,
To find again the long-lost band
Of playmates blithe and blest.

Some quaint, old-fashioned air,
That all the children knew,
Shall run before us everywhere,
Like a little maid with flying hair,
To guide the merry crew.

Along the garden ways
We chase the light-foot tune,
And in and out the flowery maze,
With eager haste and fond delays,
In pleasant paths of June.

For us the fields are new,
For us the woods are rife
With fairy secrets, deep and true,
And heaven is but a tent of blue
Above the game of life.

The world is far away:
The fever and the fret,
And all that makes the heart grow gray,
Is out of sight and far away,
Dear Music, while I hear thee play
That olden, golden roundelay,
“Remember and forget!”

The Camping Trip That Changed America by Barb Rosenstock

Jun1

“I do not want anyone with me but you, and I want to drop politics absolutely for four days and just be out in the open with you.” ~Theodore Roosevelt’s letter to John Muir, March 14, 1903.

Back in the days (1903) when a president could actually go off on a camping trip alone with a famous author and naturalist, President Teddy Roosevelt (Teedie) asked naturalist John Muir (Johnnie) to take him on a camping trip, and the rest was history. After Teedie’s and Johnnie’s journey through Yosemite, President Roosevelt became more than an outdoorsman; he “turned . . . into one of nature’s fiercest protectors. Roosevelt pushed Congress to pass laws saving the wilderness. He failed at first, but that didn’t stop him. He created national parks, wildlife sanctuaries, and national forests.”

“Teedie” Roosevelt is my favorite president, and this story of his encounter with Johnnie Muir and the wilderness of Yosemite is a colorful and fascinating introduction to Roosevelt’s ideas and his personality. (“Bully!” said Teedie, stretching. “What a glorious day!”) It also introduces children to the concept of nature conservation and even the political concept of changing the president’s mind and direction by a little well-placed lobbying for a good cause. (Maybe someone needs to take our current president on a camping trip?)

There’s a touch of generalized “spirituality” in the imagined dialog between Teedie and Johnnie: “Everywhere nature sang her melody. Can you hear it?” And, of course, Muir adheres to the tenets of “old earth” geology: “a massive river of slow-moving ice carved the rock beneath them millions of years before.” Teedie is said to depend on “John Muir’s spirit as his guide” as the president goes about his work in preserving American parks and wildlife. However, these are minor and personal quibbles, things I would have worded differently, that don’t spoil the overall beauty and message of the book at all.

If you or your child is a fan of TR or John Muir or just a nature lover or even a wannabe naturalist, this book serves up a great slice of American history. The imagined dialog is taken from Muir’s books and from newspaper accounts of the famous camping trip.

The Seashore Book by Charlotte Zolotow

May31

Take an imaginary trip to the seashore.

This 25th anniversary edition from Charlesbridge publishers of a Charlotte Zolotow classic is illustrated by Wendell Minor, not an illustrator I’m familiar with, but a talented one indeed. From what I can tell, the cover illustration for this new edition is new, but the inside illustrations are the same as the ones from 1993 when the book was first published.

Charlotte Zolotow, one of my favorite picture books authors, was more of a poet than a storyteller. Her books usually create a mood or tell a simple story of parent and child or friends enjoying a quotidian experience together, such as a day in the park (The Park Book) or a thunderstorm (The Storm Book) or the choosing of a birthday present (Mr. Rabbit and the Lovely Present). Other books feature sisters or brothers or even grandparents with family squabbles and misunderstandings that generally get resolved in the end. Her books are gentle and familial, full of beautiful, evocative, but simple language.

A couple of examples from The Seashore Book:

“You stand and look at the ocean. Far, far out, so far it seems like a toy, a little white sailboat skims over the water and disappears.”

“The fishing pier we pass is white as a snowfall with hundreds of crying seagulls waiting for the fishing boats to come in when the sun sets.”

For children who live near the ocean and who might get to take a beach trip, this book is a lovely introduction to the sights and sounds that a day at the seashore might yield. For children like the child in the book who live “in the mountains” and have “never seen the sea”, the text along with the beautiful illustrations by Minor will give a pretend trip to the beach such a real feel that they might want to go back over and over again.

I’m definitely going to read this book for my next library story time.

A Traveller in Time by Allison Uttley

May30

If ever the term “time slip” applied to a book, it’s this one: Penelope Taberner Cameron slips in and out of two time periods, the twentieth century and the late sixteenth century, like butter slipping about on a plate. She never knows exactly when or how she will slip out of her own time at Thackers, the Derbyshire farm that belongs to her great aunt and uncle, and into another time, the time of Elizabeth I, Mary Queen of Scots, and the Spanish Armada. And no one in either period seems to worry too much about Penelope’s odd absences and re-appearances. It’s a sort of ghostly time travel, although it’s clear that Penelope never becomes a “ghost” in either time that she visits.

This British classic was published in 1939, and the pacing and language reflect the publishing date. Penelope’s adventures, and indeed her personality, are rather languid and slow-moving, even though the excitement of a plot to rescue Mary Queen of Scots from her English captivity does something to enliven the novel. A lot of time is spent describing farm life in the 1930’s as Penelope and her sister and brother come to spend their summer holiday, and then an even longer term, with Aunt Tissie and Uncle Barnabas. Then, there’s also a lot of description of what it was like to live in Elizabethan England. I can see how some children and teens would grow impatient with all of the descriptive passages, but I loved it all, as well as the historical aspects of the novel.

There was a BBC series of five episodes made in 1978 based on this book by Ms. Uttley, but it’s not widely available outside of Britain. Alison Uttley was also a prolific author of very popular books for younger children in England, including a series of books about Sam Pig and another about Little Grey Rabbit.

Wikipedia contrasts time slip novels like A Traveller in Time, where the protagonist has no control or agency in going from one time to another, and time travel books, in which characters use a device like a time machine or a magic talisman to make the time travel happen. Even with time travel books, however, the device often gets lost or malfunctions, leaving the characters marooned in another time period. In Traveller in Time, Penelope worries about getting stuck in the 1500’s, and at one climactic point she almost dies while she’s visiting the sixteenth century, an event which she thinks would surely cause her to also die in the twentieth century. Time slipping and time traveling is fun to read about, but I think it would make my head hurt if it actually happened to me.

If you could time slip or time travel, what time period would you like to visit? What is your favorite time slip or time travel book? (Mine are the Connie Willis books: The Doomsday Book, To Say Nothing of the Dog, Blackout and All Clear.)

Minnow on the Say by Philippa Pearce

May29

British author Philippa Pearce’s second novel was the time travel Carnegie award winning Tom’s Midnight Garden. This beloved novel was and is so popular that it was voted in 2007 one of the top ten Carnegie Medal winners of all time. Ms. Pearce’s debut novel in 1955 was the lesser known Minnow on the Say, not a fantasy or time travel book at all, but rather an adventure story about two boys, a canoe, and a hunt for hidden treasure.

David Moss can’t believe his good fortune when a canoe shows up, caught against the bank of the river Say behind his house. Of course, the canoe must belong to someone, and David soon finds the owner, a boy his age named Adam. Adam and David become friends and work together to varnish and repair the canoe so that they can use it to search the river bank for a long lost treasure. It’s a treasure that Adam and his aunt and grandfather need desperately so that Adam can continue to live with his aunt in rural England instead of with cousins in the city. If the treasure, hidden at the time of the Spanish Armada in 1585, can’t be found, all the boys’ adventures on the river, with the Minnow, their very own canoe, will be over.

Ms. Pearce wrote in the afterword to her first book:

“I didn’t bother much about the plot, except to make sure that it worked. It wasn’t at all original: an old family home in danger of being sold up; a long lost treasure, and the hunt for it; an ancient family likeness; and lots of tricky clues. (I rather enjoyed those clues.)
The plot was all right; but the pleasures of the river and the canoe were, of course, the important things—the real things. I put in other, lesser realities. For instance, I used some surnames that were common in the village then; and I managed to use all the names of my own family, in one way or another, as a kind of private joke.
I knew how to type, and so I typed out the whole story as I made it up, chapter by chapter. It took a long time, and sometimes I felt it was very good and sometimes I felt it was hopeless.”

I thought it was very good, not hopeless at all. Boys and girls who like books with puzzles and clues and the freedom of a summer spent canoeing on the river will surely enjoy this one. It reminds me a little of Swallows and Amazons or of the Hardy Boys, but better written than the latter and more mystery than the former. The boys themselves are well drawn characters, not at all wooden or perfect in their detective skills. They follow lots of red herring clues and spend the entire summer searching for the treasure without much success, but they exhibit persistence and ingenuity, while discouragement and even bad temper and greed all play a role in their character and growth.

I have one child who spent more than one spring and summer messing about with canoes, and I wish I had known about this book at the time. I think he would have liked it then, and although he’s grown now, maybe he still would. I found it absorbing, and it made me want to look for more books in which the children (or adults) spend time paddling canoes or rowing boats or sailing or the like.

Boating Adventure Books:
The afore-mentioned Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome, and all of its sequels, which I may make a point of reading this summer. The children in these books sail about in a catboat, which is “a sailboat with a single mast placed well forward and carrying only one sail.”

The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame, of course. “Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing – absolutely nothing – half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.” Rat and Mole go up the river in a rowboat.

Robert Rows the River by Carolyn Haywood is about a nine year old boy who rows his boat across the river Thames to get to school each day and spends his holidays rowing and even drifting along the river.

Paddle-to-the-Sea is a 1941 children’s book by American author and illustrator Holling C. Holling. In the story a small carved wooden canoe with a wooden Indian passenger travels through the Great Lakes to the Atlantic Ocean.

Downriver by Will Hobbs is a YA canoeing adventure that I just read a couple of weeks ago.

Three Days on a River in a Red Canoe by Vera Williams is a lovely picture book adventure featuring a family canoe trip.

Boats on the River by Marjorie Flack and The Little Sailboat by Lois Lenski are two more picture books about boats that I have in my library for the preschool set.

The Island by Gary Paulsen tells the story of Wil, a teen who, with his parents, moves to a rural area of northern Wisconsin near a lake, Sucker Lake, with an unnamed island in the center of the lake. Wil sees the island while riding his bike, and he also finds a small rowboat conveniently abandoned on the shore so that he is able to row out to the island by himself.

N.D. Wilson’s Leepike Ridge has a boy traveling downriver on a styrofoam raft.

I just remembered Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, a summer classic for sure.

Any other suggestions for “messing about in boats” books this summer?

O Ye Jigs and Juleps! by Virginia Cary Hudson

May28

Today is the birthday of Virginia Cary Hudson (b.1894, d.1954)

I was never sure whether Virginia Cary Hudson actually wrote these humorous essays when she was only ten years old, or whether that was the fictional framework for a series of rather insightful (for a ten year old) essays that manage to make me laugh even when I read them over again at my ripe old age of 59.

Wikipedia says of Ms. Hudson’s age and authorship:

“As a 10-year-old in Versailles, Kentucky, she wrote a series of charming essays that were kept in a scrapbook by her mother, Jessie Gregory Hudson. Her daughter Virginia Cleveland Mayne copied the essays in the spring of 1952 before a disastrous attic fire destroyed the originals in October 1952. Virginia succeeded in publishing the essays with the Macmillan Company as O Ye Jigs and Juleps! The book reached the New York Times Bestseller List for 66 weeks and sold over a million copies.”

I really find it hard to believe that these chapters are the unedited work of a ten year old girl.

Here’s a sample, the first chapter called “Sacraments”, read by Terri Lackey:

I found a brand-new looking paperback copy of O Ye Jigs and Juleps at the used bookstore, and since my old copy is bedraggled and torn, I thought I’d bring it home for my library. This edition is illustrated by Karla Kuskin, the prolific children’s author, poet, and illustrator of one of my favorite picture books,

A few quotes to brighten your day:

“Etiquette is what you are doing and saying when people are looking and listening. What you are thinking is your business.”

“I asked Mrs. Harris when we were plaiting rags for her kitchen rug what good Marco Polo would ever do me, and Mrs. Harris said education gave you satisfaction, but I had rather be ignorant and have fun than be educated and have satisfaction.”

“Most of the things you get, somebody dies so you can get it, but you have to die your own self to get Everlasting Life.”

“When you stroll you never hurry back, because if you had anything to do, you wouldn’t be strolling in the first place.”

“O ye Sun and Moon, oh ye beans and roses, oh ye jigs and juleps, Bless ye the Lord, Praise Him and Magnify Him Forever.”

The Jigs and Juleps Girl! Virginia Cary Hudson: Her Life and Writings by (grandaughter) Beverly Kienzie was self-published last year (2016). I suppose I could read it to find out for sure if young Ms. Hudson was as precocious as these essays make her out to be.

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