Reading Through The Olympics

Aug5

Here are a few of the books in my library related to the Olympics:

Biographies of Olympic heroes:
Jim Thorpe, Olympic Champion by Guernsey Van Riper. A biography of the Native American athlete known as one of the best all-round athletes in history, for his accomplishments as an Olympic medal winner as well as an outstanding professional football and baseball player.

Babe Didrikson, Girl Athlete by Lena Young de Grummond and Lynn de Grummond Delaune. Babe Didrikson Zaharias was an all-round Olympic champion female athlete, with ability similar to Jim Thorpe’s in a number of events. After her Olympic career, Didrikson Zaharias excelled as a professional golfer.

Eric Liddell by Catherine Swift. A biography of the famous runner and missionary from the movie, Chariots of Fire.

The Boys in the Boat (Young Readers Adaptation): The True Story of an American Team’s Epic Journey to Win Gold at the 1936 Olympics by Daniel James Brown.

Mary Lou Retton: America’s Olympic Superstar by George Sullivan.

Highlights of the Olympics: Past and Present by John Durant. This history includes the origin of the original Greek Olympics and of the modern-day version and then highlights mostly American Olympics athletes through 1964.

Unbroken: An Olympian’s Journey from Airman to Castaway to Captive (adapted for young adults) by Laura Hillenbrand. The best true Olympic story ever.

About kids participating in Olympic, and not-so-olympic, sports:
Stop! the Watch: A Book of Everyday, Ordinary, Anybody Olympics from Klutz Press. Host your own Olympic games with raisin-tossing, finger snapping, and under the bed crawling.

Everybody’s a Winner: A Kid’s Guide to New Sports and Fitness by Tom Schneider. A Brown Paper School book.

Jump: The New Jump Rope Book by Susan Kalbfleisch.

Olympic sports-related fiction for elementary and middle grades:
Mission to Marathon by Geoffrey Trease. The first marathon in 490 BC. Philip must run across the mountains to warn his family and all of Athens that the Persians are invading. Will he get to Athens in time to save the city?

The Winning Stroke by Matt Christopher. Swimming.

Soccer Halfback by Matt Christopher.

Stepladder Steve Plays Basketball by C. Paul Jackson.

Break for the Basket by Matt Christopher. Basketball.

Soup’s Hoop by Robert Newton Peck. Basketball. Soup has a plan to help his favorite hometown basketball team win, including the use of a musical instrument called a spitzentootle.

The Hockey Trick by Scott Corbett. When three brothers, all extraordinary baseball players, move into the neighborhood, two rival teams play a game of hockey to determine which team will get them.

Face-Off by Matt Christopher. Hockey.

Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome. Sailing. The jolly crew of The Swallow pursue summer adventures in their sailboat.

Young adult fiction:
The Contender by Robert Lipsyte. A Harlem high school dropout escapes from a gang of punks into a boxing gym, where he learns that being a contender is hard work. Young adult.

The Moves Make the Man by Bruce Brooks. For Jerome Foxworthy, basketball is a metaphor for life. But trying to to teach the moves to Bix Rivers is a job that even Jerome may not be able to handle. Young adult.

The Runner by Cynthia Voigt. In the Vietnam War era, a black student joins the track team, forcing Bullet Tillerman to question his own prejudices. But nothing will keep Bullet from running. Nothing. Young adult.

In the process of making this list, I’ve decided to read some Olympics books myself, and also a book or two set in Brazil. I’d like for most of the books I read to be from my library, but I’m open to suggestions. Do you have any great Olympics-related books to recommend?

Amos and the Moon by Jan Balet

Aug2

Jan Balet “was a German/US-American painter, graphic artist and illustrator. Affected by the style naive art he worked particularly as a graphic artist and as an Illustrator of children’s books. Besides this he painted pictures in the style of naive art. Referred to as a “naïve” painter, his works exhibit a dry wit and refreshingly candid, satirical view of life.” ~Wikipedia, Jan Balet.

Amos and the Moon by Jan Balet was first published in 1948. The AMMO Books reprint edition that I received for review is certainly a lovely re-gift to today’s children from the golden age of children’s literature. The story is reminiscent of James Thurber’s Many Moons, which won a Caldecott Medal in 1944. In Thurber’s story, the ailing Princess Lenore wants the moon, and her father, the king, directs various servants and courtiers to get it for her. In Balet’s picture book, Amos sees the moon in his mirror, believes it belongs to him, and goes out to find it himself when it disappears the next day. Various vendors and storekeepers give him gifts–a piece of ice, a horse, a watch, a moon-shaped cookie—- as he searches, but none of his friends can give Amos “his moon”. Finally, Joe Ming, the Chinese laundryman, wisely tells Amos, “No one has the moon always–just once in a while.”

It’s a gentle, old-fashioned kind of story, and the illustrations are delightful. Mr. Balet was first and foremost an artist, and the pictures of the various shops that Amos visits in search of his moon will interest and appeal to anyone, young or old, who is inspired by detailed scenes, exquisitely rendered. The illustrations sort of remind me of Norman Rockwell or Currier and Ives or even the Impressionists like Manet, but Balet has his own style and subject matter. There is a European feel to the story and to the pictures, perhaps because of the many immigrants and ethnic groups that Amos encounters on his quest, even though the story is obviously set in an English-speaking, probably American, city.

AMMO Books has reprinted another of Balet’s picture books, The Five Rollatinis, which is a circus story and a counting book combined. Some of his other books, both those he illustrated that were written by other authors and those he wrote himself, are available on Amazon used. I really appreciate the publishers who find these old, treasured titles and bring them back into print for a new generation.

Some Kind of Happiness by Claire LeGrand

Aug1

“Reality and fantasy collide in this powerful, heartfelt novel about family, depression, and the power of imagination.” Yes. Collide is the operative word. I wasn’t a fan of the way the story transitions from the real world of a precocious eleven year old named Finley to the fantasy world that Finley has created for herself, Everwood. All the characters in Finley’s extended family seemed like just that, characters, not real people. And Finley herself repeats her introspective and twisted thinking to the point of being annoying.

The secrets in the story that add to the tension are sort of arbitrary; why Finley’s aunts and grandparents and parents couldn’t come up with better answers to at least some of her questions was never clear to me. It’s about the three D’s: depression, divorce, and delusional thinking—and about adults with guilty secrets. I get why the adults are keeping their Big Guilty Secret, but I don’t understand why they keep all the little secrets. For instance, Finley and her cousins become friends with some neighbor boys whose father is an alcoholic and who also is a part of the Big Guilty Secret. So, the adults don’t want Finley and the cousins to associate with the Bailey boys. Why can’t they just say that dad is unstable, and they don’t want Finley to go to the Bailey house? Why can’t the kids still be friends at Finley’s grandparents’ home? Why is there so much “Just do it because I say so!” And why does Finley keep asking questions in her head but refuse to ask them out loud?

This story frustrated me because I felt the potential. Finley could still have struggled with her parents’ impending divorce if the parents had been honest and told her that they were having marital issues. And the grandparents and aunts could have been at least partially honest, and much more believable and sympathetic, had they told at least part of the truth. And would any responsible parents leave their eleven year old daughter for the entire summer with grandparents she had never met, grandparents who were just about completely estranged from their only son (Finley’s father) for the past eleven or twelve years, and for good reasons?

I wanted to like this one, but I just didn’t believe it. Your mileage, and opinion, may vary from mine.

New Biographies in the Library: July, 2016

Jul29

I’m going to start posting here about the books that I acquire for my library. For those of you who don’t know, I have a private subscription library in my home, mostly for homeschoolers, although others who are interested in quality books are welcome to visit or to join. I have a lot of older books that are no longer available from the public library as well as some new books that I think will stand the test of time.

Here’s an annotated list of some of the new/old books I’ve acquired (from thrift stores, used bookstores, library sales, donations) in the past month:

Harry Houdini: Young Magician by Kathryn Kilby Borland. Illustrated by Helen Ross Speicher. Childhood of Famous Americans series.

Albert Einstein: Young Thinker by Marie Hammontree. Illustrated by Robert Dorms. Childhood of Famous Americans series.

Kate Douglas Wiggin: The Little Schoolteacher by Miriam E. Mason. Illustrated by Vance Locke. Childhood of Famous Americans series.

George Eastman: Young Photographer by Joanne Landers Henry. Illustrated Rawson. Childhood of Famous Americans series.

I have a young library patron who devours these Childhood of Famous Americans series books. They are a series of somewhat fictionalized biographies of almost all of the famous Americans you can think of. They’re written on a primary grade/easy chapter book reading level, and the stories are engaging and adventure-filled. The bios focus on the childhood years of the subject, hence the series title, but do give information about each person’s adult life as well. I recommend them for second to fourth graders who want to read about real people. I find them to much more readable and “narrative” than more recent biography series for that age group, which sometimes tend to be dry and factual and focused on the adult lives of the biographical subject.

The War in Korea: 1950-1953 by Robert Leckie. World Landmark series is another great series for children and young adults, this one more middle grade level and usually about historical events or time periods, although some are biographies. I didn’t really have any books in my library about the Korean War or set during the Korean War, so I was glad to pick up this Landmark history book.

The Story of Beethoven by Helen Kaufmann. Another series, Signature Books from Grosset and Dunlap publishers. Excellent biographies written by top-notch authors.

Giants of Invention: Stories of the Men Whose Inventions Remade our World by Edgar Tharp. Illustrated by Frank Vaughn.

History’s 100 Greatest Composers: Life Stories of the Immortals of Music Selected by America’s Top Music Critics by Helen L. Kaufmann.

On a Beam of Light: A Story of Albert Einstein by Jennifer Berne. I found this more recent title, a picture book biography emphasizing Einstein’s unrelenting curiosity, at a thrift store. It’s a lovely introduction to the great scientist and his work.

Thistle Games by Mike Nicholson and Jo Litchfield

Jul26

Just in time for the summer Olympics, here’s a rhyming picture book about a different kind of sports event, the Thistle Games. Subtitled “a braw Scots story for bairns,” this Picture Kelpies imprint book from Scotland gives a lovely introduction to traditional Scottish games and competitions and also to all those fun Scottish words. How many of these do you know? (The definitions are in white font, so that if you move your cursor to highlight the spaces immediately after the word, you can read the definition.)

Dour: stern, severe

Dwam: a blank or dreamy state of mind

Gie-ing it laldy: giving it energy and enthusiasm

Havering: talking nonsense (I thought it meant wanting or desiring.)

Hirple: to limp or hobble

Keek: a peek or glance

Lugs: ears

Mingin: stinky

Numpty: a silly person

Skiver: someone who dodges work

Sleekit: sneaky, cunning Isn’t this word used in that Burns poem about the mouse?

Spurtle: a short stick for stirring porridge

Stookie: a plaster cast

The fun thing is that you don’t have to memorize these words in your study of Scotland: they’re all used in the rhyming text of this rollicking good story about a community picnic, games competition, and musical event, with races, food, shopping and dancing. Unless you’re a numpty or in a dwam, you should queue up and take a keek at this braw Scots story.

Thistle, by the way, is a made-up place and the Thistle Games are imaginary, too, but real in the sense of being played by Scots, old and young. The authors have written two other “Thistle” books: Thistle Street and Thistle Sands.

Thumbelina, illustrated by Elsa Beskow

Jul25

In the mail the other day, I received a review copy of Hans Christian Andersen’s Thumbelina, illustrated by famous Swedish artist Elsa Beskow. Ms. Beskow’s illustrations are justly known throughout Sweden and the world as classic artwork, both for her own books and for stories by other authors. Of course, Andersen’s story of a tiny girl “no taller than your thumb” is perfectly suited to Ms. Beskow’s lovely watercolor pictures.

This edition of Thumbelina features beautiful framed, full-page illustrations. The illustrations probably come from one of the eight (!) fairy tale collections that Elsa Beskow illustrated. Like Beatrix Potter, Ms. Beskow was a close observer of nature, and her pictures remind me of Potter’s, except larger. The “largeness” of the world, from Thumbelina’s vantage point, is portrayed quite well in this book, and a child reader will identify with Thumbelina as she travels through the countryside until she finally finds a home with the tiny King of the Fairies.

Elsa Beskow also wrote thirty-three stories of her own in Swedish, many of which have been translated into English and published along with her original illustrations. In my library I have Ollie’s Ski Trip and Pelle’s New Suit. Floris Books, the publisher of this Thumbelina, also has available and in print: Peter in Blueberry Land, The Land of Long Ago, The Sun Egg, Princess Sylvie, The Children of Hat Cottage, Emily and Daisy, Children of the Forest and many more. If you like classically styled picture book art, like the picture on the cover of Thumbelina, and then you will probably enjoy all of Ms. Beskow’s books.

The author and her husband Nathanael Beskow, a minister, had six children—all boys. I’m sure she enjoyed creating the pictures for Thumbelina and feeding the “girl-y” part of her nature, while surrounded by all those boys.

The Chequer Board by Nevil Shute

Jul24

I have had this book on my TBR list for a few years, but I haven’t been able to find a copy anywhere, not in my big city library system, not at the local used bookstores. So when I found a copy at the Blooms’ little bookstore, I was delighted. Britisher Nevil Shute (Norway) is most famous for two of his other books, On the Beach, an apocalyptic novel about nuclear holocaust, and A Town Like Alice, a story of post-World War II development in the outback of Australia. However, I’ve enjoyed others of his books, too, including The Pied Piper, The Far Country, and Trustee from the Toolroom.

So, The Chequer Board begins with Mr. John Turner going to see a doctor, a specialist, for help with some troubling physical symptoms that have been interfering with his life and work as a sort of traveling salesman for the company, Cereal Products, Ltd. Mr. Turner’s life is about to take a “turn” for the worse when he receives the news from the doctor that an old war injury is about to take his life. Mr. Turner only has a few months, maybe a year, to live.

Dr. Hughes, who is a sort of framing narrator for the novel, appearing only in the first and last chapters, is not terribly impressed with his patient, John Turner, at first. The good doctor describes Turner as “not very prepossessing. He was about forty years old with a fresh complexion and sandy hair, going a little bald. He had a jaunty air of cheerfulness and bonhomie which did not fit in well with my consulting room; he was the sort of man who would be the life and soul of the party in the saloon bar of a good-class pub, or at the races. He was wearing rather a bright brown suit with a very bright tie, and he carried a bowler hat.” With the added information that this book was published in 1947 and takes place in about that year, can’t you just picture Mr. Turner, in all his florid, Willie Loman-esque splendor?

Mr. Turner reminded me of Willie Loman (Death of a Salesman) in other ways, too. Turner is a little bit crooked, we find out, not above taking advantage of an opportunity to make a good deal on the side or skim a little money off a sale. Otherwise, he says, the taxes would make it impossible for a man to get ahead at all. And he and his wife have settled into a rather typical middle class life, with not much in common, and a lot of low-level wrangling and mis-communication between the two of them. The news of Mr. Turner’s imminent death changes everything.

Turner begins to reminisce about the time he spent in hospital with three other injured servicemen, and he becomes fixated on finding the other three men and helping them, if they need help. As it turns out, Turner is more helped by the search and by what he finds out about his three fellow hospital mates than he is able to help them.

I must have been in just the right mood for this novel. There’s some World War II adventure involved, and themes of racial harmony and overcoming adversity, but it’s really just a gentle, rather philosophical, story about people muddling their way through life. My own life is in sort of a muddle right now, and I appreciated Mr. Turner’s frequent, though cliched reminder that “we’ll all be the same in a hundred years.” In spite of its tendency to promote Buddhism and denigrate Christianity, the novel was still a comfort to me. It’s about normal, average people dealing with the war and its aftermath in interesting and somewhat unpredictable ways.

The characters do make frequent (and jarring to a 21st century reader) use of the n-word in reference to a black American soldier who was one of Turner’s three hospital mates. The word was fairly typical, I think, in 1947 in England and in America, and perhaps didn’t carry quite the same derogatory meaning in British parlance? Anyway, the book treats its black characters and other POC characters (Burmese) with respect and understanding, while showing how many people in the 1940’s did not do the same.

The title of this book by Mr. Shute is fun to think about, too. It could refer to the past events that Mr. Turner explores in the book, chequered with light and dark. Or the theme of white and colored people reaching for racial reconciliation and even community is another meaning that finds an apt image in the light and dark chequerboard. The idea that life is a sort of game in which one makes moves either good or bad, and that in consequence each person might be reincarnated as a higher or lower being than he was before is also alluded to in the title and in the story.

Peter Nimble and His Fantastic Eyes by Jonathan Auxier

Jul22

Peter Nimble is a blind orphan and a thief. His other senses are, of course, exceptionally sharp and perceptive. When he steals a box with three sets of magical eyes and receives a quest to travel to the Vanished Kingdom and rescue the people there, Peter Nimble is challenged beyond anything he has ever experienced in his thieving life. Maybe the Vanished Kingdom needs a blind thief, and maybe Peter Nimble needs to become a hero and find a real home.

Beautiful, humorous, and meaningful writing characterizes this fantasy adventure. The author also inserts little asides that illuminate and explain the story and the world of Peter Nimble. Here are a few sample quotes to whet your appetite:

“Now, for those of you who know anything about blind children, you are aware that they make the very best thieves. As you can well imagine, blind children have incredible senses of smell, and they can tell what lies behind a locked door – be it fine cloth, gold, or peanut brittle – at fifty paces.
Moreover, their fingers are so small and nimble that they can slip right through keyholes, and their ears so keen that they can hear the faint clicks and clacks of every moving part inside even the most complicated lock. Of course, the age of great thievery has long since passed; today there are few child-thieves left, blind or otherwise.”

“There is something wonderful that happens between true friends when they find themselves no longer wasting time with meaningless chatter. Instead, they become content just to share each other’s company. It is the opinion of some that this sort of friendship is the only kind worth having. While jokes and anecdotes are nice, they do not compare with the beauty of shared solitude.”

“If ever you have had the chance to spend quality time with a villainous mastermind, you will know that these people are extraordinarily fond of discussing their evil schemes out loud.”

“You may be thinking that his blindness is no handicap at all, and that it somehow gives him an advantage over the average seeing person. Some of you may even be thinking to yourselves, ‘Boy! I wish I were blind like the great Peter Nimble!’ If you are thinking that, stop right now. Because whatever benefits you may believe that blindness carries with it, you must understand that there are just as many disadvantages.”

Caveats: The story does include some rather violent and creepy images and episodes. There’s a murder of murderous crows who peck out Peter’s eyes and who peck another (villainous) character to death. There are gangs of evil apes and a few dangerous sea serpents. The children in the Vanished Kingdom are degraded and enslaved, and the adults are brainwashed into acquiescence. However, evil is ultimately defeated, and goodness and light win.

An interview with Jonathan Auxier in which he discusses the difficulties of writing a story from the point of view of a blind character.

Mr. Auxier also wrote The Night Gardener, another creepy tale with fantastic themes and images.

New Picture Books in the Library: July 21, 2016

Jul21

I’m going to start posting here about the books that I acquire for my library. For those of you who don’t know I have a private subscription library in my home, mostly for homeschoolers, although others who are interested in quality books are welcome to visit or to join. I have a lot of older books that are no longer available from the public library as well as some new books that I think will stand the test of time.

Here’s an annotated list of some of the new/old books I’ve acquired (from thrift stores, used bookstores, library sales, donations) in the past month:

Sing in Praise by Opal Wheeler. I am familiar with Ms. Wheeler’s biographical stories of famous composers such as Bach, Beethoven, Chopin and others, but I didn’t know that she had written a book about hymns and hymn writers. In this volume, with beautiful full color and pen-and-ink illustrations, Ms. Wheeler tells the stories of such famous lyricists and musicians as Isaac Watts, Lowell Mason, Charles Wesley, and several others.

The Birds of Bethlehem by Tomie dePaola. “The story of the Nativity from a bird’s-eye view.” It’s Tomie dePaola—and an unusual Christmas story.

On A Beam of Light: A Story of Albert Einstein by Jennifer Berne. Illustrated by Vladimir Radunsky. A picture book biography of the great physicist. “And in his mind, right then and there Albert was no longer on his bicycle, no longer on the country road . . . he was racing through space on a beam light. It was the biggest, most exciting thought Albert had ever had. And it filled his mind with questions.”

D is for Democracy: A Citizen’s Alphabet by Elissa Grodin. Illustrated by Victor Juhasz. Part of a series of beautiful alphabet books from Sleeping Bear Press.

H is for Home Run: A Baseball Alphabet by Brad Herzog. Illustrated by Melanie Rose. Another in the Sleeping Bear Press series.

Daisy Comes Home by Jan Brett. A Chinese girl, Mei-Mei, raises “happy chickens” and sells their eggs in the market. The story reminds me of the classic Story of Ping because one of the chickens, Daisy, runs away from home because she’s tired of being pecked and pushed out of the nest by the other chickens. Lovely Jan Brett illustrations.

Stone Giant: Michelangelo’s David and How He Came to Be by Jane Sutcliffe. Illustrated by John Shelley. “On the front of the stone, he drew the outline of his David. Then all that was needed was to carve away what was not David. . . . Day after day Michelangelo worked furiously. Every night he went home floured with the dust of not-David. He combed bits of not-David from his beard.”

Cathedral Mouse by Kay Chorao. A small spotted mouse finds a real home in a big, beautiful cathedral. This one reminded me of Norman the Doorman by Don Freeman.

Behold Your Queen! by Gladys Malvern

Jul20

Behold Your Queen! is a fictionalized version of the book of Esther from the Bible. The novel is by Gladys Malvern, a popular writer of what we would now call “Young Adult fiction”. Back in the 1940’s and 50’s it was called teen fiction or just children’s fiction for older children. Many of her books are set in either Old Testament or New Testament times and are embellishments on familiar Bible stories. Books such as The Foreigner (about Ruth), Saul’s Daughter (about David’s wife, Michal), Tamar, and Rhoda of Cyprus were favorites of mine when I was a teen, and as I re-read Behold Your Queen!, I was again impressed with how Ms. Malvern was able to make the Bible story come alive and make her characters into real, breathing people.

There are a few deviations from the Biblical story. In Ms. Malvern’s book, Esther gives only one feast for the king, her husband and Haman, the evil Amalekite minister. At that first feast, she begs for the lives of her people to be spared and denounces Haman as the enemy of the Hebrew people as well as the enemy of the king himself. The author adds many details and descriptions of Persian court life and of King Xerxes/Ahasuerus and other characters and settings in the story. However, the basic story is the same, and the author has the Jews give credit to Esther and to “Almighty God” for their deliverance from the hand of the evil Haman.

I’ve posted before about the book of Esther. It’s a fascinating story. Chuck Swindoll wrote a book about Esther called Esther: A Woman of Strength and Dignity. I also have a couple of other post about Esther, Soundtrack for the Book of Esther and Esther, Illustrated. On the latter subject, the “decorations” in Gladys Malvern’s Behold Your Queen! are done by her sister Corrine, who was the illustrator for most (all?) of Gladys’ books.

I had a fascination with historical fiction based on Biblical narratives or set in Biblical times for a while when I was a teen, and Gladys Malvern was one of my go-to authors. Others who wrote these kinds of tales back in the early to mid twentieth century or before were Lloyd C. Douglas (The Robe, The Big Fisherman), Lew Wallace (Ben-hur), Norah Lofts (How Far to Bethlehem?), Elizabeth George Speare (The Bronze Bow), Joanne Williamson (Hittite Warrior), Marjorie Holmes (Two from Galilee), Patricia St. John (Twice Freed), and Frank G. Slaughter (The Road to Bithynia and many others). All of these stories were more or less Biblically accurate and made me think about the Biblical narratives in new ways as the people in them began to feel like real people instead of the flannel-graph one-dimensional characters of my childhood understanding. Whether it’s by means of historical fiction or the kinds of imaginative Bible study, I think it’s important that the people of the Bible be understood in this way as one grows and learns more about them.