Village of Scoundrels by Margi Preus

Sep1

Le Chambon-sur-Lignon is a commune in the Haute-Loiredepartment in south-central France. Residents have been primarily Huguenot or Protestant since the 17th century. During World War II these Huguenot residents made the commune a haven for Jews fleeing from the Nazis. They hid them both within the town and countryside, and helped them flee to neutral Switzerland. In 1990 the town was one of two collectively honored as the Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem in Israel for saving Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe.

~Wikipedia

Village of Scoundrels is a fictional depiction of the activities of the villagers of Le Chambon during World War 2, especially the teens and children who were either refugees or resistors or both. The book doesn’t really have a clearly defined protagonist, but some of the heroes and villains in the books are listed in the opening pages, and these characters are mostly based on the lives and actions of real, living people:

  • Celeste is a high school student who becomes a courier for the Resistance.
  • Jean-Paul is a Jewish teen who wants to become a doctor, but who find that his talent for forgery is in demand.
  • Jules the Scoundrel is a ten year old goatherd who plays dangerous games with the French policeman who is collaborating with the Nazis to uncover the secrets of Le Chambon.
  • Henni and Max are German Jews, boyfriend and girlfriend, who take refuge in Le Chambon.
  • Philippe, a high school student from Normandy, hides refugees and smuggles them to Switzerland.

This book is gaining lots of accolades this year, and indeed the subject matter cries out for a good novelization or narrative nonfiction telling (maybe there is a good nonfiction book about this WWII event?). However, the mix of fiction and nonfiction in this one was not that well done. It should have either been more fictionalized to make the story flow with a clear protagonist and plot or just straight nonfiction with chapters telling the stories of each of the various children and young adults who were active in the French Resistance in Le Chambon. I found it interesting, but hard to follow.

The last part of the novel, where the story coalesces around the French policeman, Perdant, and Jules the Soundrel, is pure fiction and better reading than the rest of the book. Then, the afterword attempts to help the reader sort fact from fiction, but I found it just as confusing as the preceding chapters. Again, can anyone recommend a well written nonfiction book on this subject? Preus provides a bibliography of twenty or more titles at the end of the book, but which one is the best?

The Thing Around Your Neck by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Aug30

Our family–me, some of my adult children and their spouses–are participating in a book club together this year. We’re taking turns choosing a book a month. The July book was The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel. It was a novel about a Ponzi scheme and the people who become enmeshed in it, both before and after the scheme goes bust. In August we read a book of short stories, The Thing Around Your Neck by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie who also wrote the novels Purple Hibiscus, Half of a Yellow Sun, and Americanah. She is a good writer, and although I always enjoy full length novels more than I do short stories, these stories were well worth the read.

I started a couple of weeks ago and read one story each night before bedtime. It was a good way to digest a book of seemingly unrelated short stories that are at least somewhat tied together by theme if not characters or plot. Reading only one story at a time gave me an opportunity to reflect and learn from each one.

The stories are about cultural encounter and clash between men and women, parents and children, Christian and Muslim, younger and older generations, modern and ancient, Nigeria and the United States. For the most part the tone and the outlook of each story are rather bleak. With one exception, the cultural and generational encounters in each of the stories are fraught with misunderstanding and even tragedy. In the first story “Cell One” a young man learns a lesson when he is imprisoned for a few days. In the second, “Imitation”, a properly submissive young wife confronts her husband’s blatant adultery. Another story is about a black woman from Nigeria who becomes the girlfriend and lover of a white man in Hartford, Connecticut. As in the other stories, the romance/story ends sadly, not with bang but rather a whimper.

The one story that shows two people coming to some sort of bridge of cultures is called “A Private Experience.” Two women are trapped together in a small store by violence and riots in the streets of a small market village in Nigeria. One is a Hausa Muslim woman, a mother; the other is a young Christian college student from the city. They are different is so many ways: economic status, religion, age, experience. And yet as they are thrown together, the two learn to trust and help each other, and they survive. This tale, too, does not have a happy ending, and yet there is a spark of hope in the patient endurance of the Muslim woman and the awakening understanding and empathy of the young Christian student.

And on it goes. A Nigerian nanny misunderstands the actions of her artist employer. A young wife whose son has died is applying for asylum in the United States, but she is unable to explain the complexities of her situation to the customs official who is taking her application. There’s a Cain and Abel story featuring a girl and her older, favored brother. Two Africans in college housing become friends and bond over their grievances about past lovers in spite of their differing religious perspectives. An arranged marriage sours very quickly.

Then, the last and culminating story , “The Headstrong Historian”, tells of a grandmother and the granddaughter who carries on her strength and cultural awareness even though the interceding generation has been Christianized and diminished by white colonization. In all of these stories, when it appears, Christianity is dour and powerless, never a fulfillment of African destiny and understanding, but rather a threat to the deep roots of African greatness or an empty husk to be discarded in the wake of modern twentieth century wisdom. This story begins when the grandmother is young in the late nineteenth century, immersed in African thought patterns and African religion and African community life. The next generation, the son and his wife, accept Christianity, Catholicism, and are made weak and pitiful and rigid by the tenets of the new religion. Then, finally comes the granddaughter, a new, educated, strong woman who learns her true history and goes back to her roots “reimagining the lives and smells of her grandmother’s world.” She writes a book, subtitled A Reclaimed History of Southern Nigeria. But nothing in the story indicates that the granddaughter understands the darker elements of attempted murder and revenge and slavery and mistreatment of women that form part of her history just as much as the depredations of colonialism. The granddaughter changes her name from Grace to Afamefuna, “My Name Will Not Be Lost”, but I wonder if she really knows the meaning and background of her new-old name.

Picture Book States: Vermont

Aug24

I’m going to try to make this post a weekly ritual. Vermont is the state for this week, with lots of snow in the book forecast. And farms, lots of farms. With fifty states to travel to, by way of the best picture books I can find, this journey should take about a year.

Vermont

  • Motto: Freedom and Unity
  • Nickname: Green Mountain State
  • State Flower: Red Clover
  • State Bird: Hermit Thrush
  1. Snowflake Bentley by Jacqueline Briggs Martin. Illustrated by Mary Azarian. HMH Books, 2009. This Caldecott Award-winning books tells the story of Wilson Bentley, a man who fell in love with snowflakes and their delicate and varied shapes and patterns as a boy in Vermont and grew up to spend his life photographing them.
  2. Sugaring by Jessie Haas. Illustrated by Jos. A Smith.  Greenwillow, 1996. This picture book is the third in a series of books about Nora and her grandparents’ lives and work on a Vermont farm.
  3. Nora’s Ark by Natalie Kinsey-Warnock. Illustrated by Emily Arnold McCullly. HarperCollins, 2005. Nora’s Ark is based on a real event: the Vermont flood of 1927. In the story, Nora and her family take refuge in Grandma’s house, up on a hilltop.
  4. Snow Comes to the Farm by Nathaniel Tripp. Illustrated by Kate Kiesler.  Candlewick, 2001.
  5. Aaron and His Green Mountain Boys by Patricia Lee Gauch.  Illustrated by Margot Tomes.  Calkins Creek, 2005. 64 pages. This easy reader is set during the Revolutionary War in Bennington, Vermont.
  6. The Canada Geese Quilt by Natalie Kinsey-Warnock.  Illustrated by Leslie Bowman.  Dutton, 1989. 60 pages. Another easy reader/early chapter book in which Ariel and her grandmother work together to piece a quilt.
  7. Fanny in the Kitchen by Deborah Hopkinson. Illustrated by Nancy Carpenter.  Atheneum,  2001. Subtitled The Whole Story from Soup to Nuts of How Fannie Farmer Invented Recipes with Precise Measurements. Who knew that Fanny Farmer, of cookbook fame, was from Vermont?
  8. Kitty and Mr. Kipling: Neighbors in Vermont by Lenore Blegvad. Illustrated by Erik Blegvad. Margaret K. McElderry, 2005. And who knew that Rudyard Kipling ever lived in Vermont? This historical fiction tale shares the story Kipling and a neighbor girl named Kitty.
  9. Champ and Me by the Maple Tree: A Vermont Tale by Ed Shankman. Illustrated by Dave O’Neill. Commonwealth, 2010. Champ the Monster of Champlain Lake is best friends with the narrator of this rhyming tour through the Vermont countryside.
  10. Sleep Tight Farm: A Farm Prepares for Winter by Eugenie Doyle. Illustrated by Becca Stadtlander. Chronicle Books, 2016. A farm family gets ready for a Vermont winter.

So, what did I leave out? Any Vermonters out there know of a great Vermont picture book not to be missed?

The Laura Ingalls Wilder Companion by Annette Whipple

Aug22

Subtitled A Chapter-by-Chapter Guide, this book is a curriculum or family reading guide to the eight books in the Little House series by Laura Ingalls Wilder, plus the extra book, The First Four Years. I have a curriculum book called The Prairie Primer by Margie Gray that does much the same thing this book sets out to do, but I like Ms. Whipple’s book even better. This newer guide, published this year (2020), addresses the concerns that many have recently expressed about racism and stereotypes in the Little House books. And Whipple addresses these problems in a gentle way by asking questions about how the settlers and the Native Americans and others would have seen their lives and interactions and how we see these things today. Questions and discussion are so much better than either reading and ignoring the issues completely or alternatively, trashing the books because of the outdated and sometimes unjust opinions expressed.

Examples of discussion questions:

  • Laura confronted Ma about her dislike of the American Indians. It took a lot of courage. What would you have said to Ma or a grown-up you know?
  • How would you feel if you had to move unexpectedly but didn’t know where you were going to live?
  • Ma didn’t like Laura helping Pa with field work. What do you think of Ma’s thoughts on women working in the field? Why did she think like that?
  • Why did Mary and Laura enjoy their days at the creek so much?
  • Why was the family so happy without presents or candy at Christmas?

The book also includes more than 75 activities, everything from recipes for old-fashioned doughnuts and dried apples to craft instructions to science and nature study experiments and observations. And there is chapter-by-chapter commentary that tells readers some of the inside story and background details that make the novels understandable and give more food for thought. The book guides children to think about living in a sod house or surviving a long winter and what that might be like without telling them what to think or feel.

The Prairie Primer is no longer in print, and used copies are quite expensive. As I said, I like this book better anyway, although it’s not quite as long as Prairie Primer. It’s also not as expensive, and it would be more than adequate for a family study of the Little House books. Read more about the book at Ms. Whipple’s website, www.WilderCompanion.com.

New Found World by Katherine Binney Shippen

Aug21

It’s somewhat difficult to find good books about Latin America: Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean, and South America. Or maybe I just don’t know where to look. I have only a handful of historical fiction books to recommend that are set in Latin America and also not many books about the history of Latin America, although there are lots of books about explorers and exploration. There are a few more that cover culture and geography, usually part of a series, but in general I think Latin American history in books for children has been neglected.

Enter New Found World by Katherine Binney Shippen. Published in 1945 and updated in 1964, the book is still somewhat dated. And I found a few mistakes, including the inaccurate statement that Moses Austin came to Texas with a group of settlers in 1823 (p.216). Moses Austin died in 1821, and his son Stephen was the one who carried out Moses’ dream of bringing American settlers to Texas. Please. I know my Texas history, as should anyone who is writing about it.

Nevertheless, I found New Found World to be a fascinating and engrossing look at he history of Latin America from Texas in the north to the tip of Argentina in the south. Shippen writes about the Inca, Aztec, Maya, Carib, Arawak, and other groups of Native Americans, with respect and as much detailed information as would fit into an overview of the region. She does use the currently disused term “Indians” to refer to the entire haplogroup (got that word from my current binge-watch of Finding Your Roots) of Native Americans, but since the book was published mid-twentieth century, I don’t think we should hold that against her. When she is talking about distinct tribes or kingdoms, she uses the correct-for-that-time term to refer to them.

I learned lots of things that were new to me:

  • The Native Americans had no domesticated animals, except for few pet dogs and llamas used as beasts of burden in South America. They also had not invented the wheel as a machine to enable transportation.
  • Cortes was only thirty-five years old when he set out for the New World in command of a fleet of ships to conquer new territory for Spain.
  • Pizarro never even learned to read or write.
  • The Inca (king) Atahualpa paid the Spaniards a large ransom of gold and silver to get them to go away and leave the Inca people alone. The Spanish took the treasure and murdered Atahualpa.
  • Simon Bolivar wanted to unite all of South America into a country he called El Gran Colombia. But according to Shippen, “in 1826 the people of South America were not yet ready for democracy.”
  • The island of Hispaniola, especially the part that is now Haiti, was for many years a haven for pirates.

Much, much more is told about the vicissitudes of Latin American history in this volume. It would make a great spine for a year-long study of Latin American history. What books would you use to supplement this one? Historical fiction set in Latin America? History or geography of particular countries? Picture books? Folk tales or Native American lore? Language studies? Do you know of a more recently published survey of Latin American history that would bring that history up to the present day (not a textbook)?

The book ends with John F. Kennedy and the Alliance for Progress which was supposed to “build a hemisphere where all men can hope for the same high standard of living—and all men can live out their lives in dignity and freedom.” It’s sad that those words sound rather quaint and idealistic to me now. All of the Latin American nations, except for Cuba, joined the Alliance for Progress and “agreed to work together to help the depressed people of the southern continent.” What ever happened to the Alliance for Progress? Do you think of South and Central America as “depressed” and in need of our help now? Do they think of themselves that way?

Leaving Lymon by Lesa Cline-Ransome

Aug18

In 1960, children’s author Mary Stolz published a book called The Dog of Barkham Street, about a boy, a dog, an undependable uncle, and a bully named Martin. Three years later the sequel to The Dog of Barkham Street, The Bully of Barkham Street, told the same story from the point of view of Martin, the villain/bully of the first story. I remember reading these two books and being made to think about how the same story can look completely different from a different point view. Author Susan Perabo writes about this recognition that everyone has his own story in a blog post at Read It Forward called What I Learned on Barkham Street.

It’s an important lesson, and not one we learn from being preached at. As Ms. Perabo says, “In the hands of a lesser writer, these books might have seemed like teaching tools instead of great stories—a ten year old can smell a life lesson a mile away.” I still have Mary Stolz’s books in my library, and they still speak powerfully to children (and adults) about understanding and character and looking at people from a different perspective. Nevertheless, there’s room in the world for more than one story like this. Finding Langston and Leaving Lymon by Lesa Cline-Ransome are two books written much in the same vein as Mary Stolz’s titles. And the two books together have the power to bring a sense of empathy and understanding to a new generation of readers.

Finding Langston tells the story of a young African American boy who moves from Alabama to Chicago with his father during what is called The Great Migration, the movement of many Black Americans from the Jim Crow South into the cities of the northern United States. Langston is a country boy, and he finds the streets and schools of the big city unfriendly and difficult to navigate. The bullying and teasing he receives from classmates, especially the mean, hostile for no reason, Lymon, is almost more than Langston can stand. Nevertheless, Langston finds solace in the library and in the poetry of Langston Hughes.

Lymon is a minor character in Finding Langston, an unrepentant bully and just another hard thing for Langston to learn to overcome or endure. But in Leaving Lymon, Lymon gets his own story. We find out why Lymon is so angry, why he doesn’t have the strength or maturity to be kind or friendly, and why Lymon and Langston can’t understand each other despite their similar backgrounds. Both boys have moved to Chicago from the South; both come from country roots,; both find some comfort in the arts, Langston in poetry and Lymon in music. But instead of sharing their stories and finding connection, both boys are trapped by their own troubled circumstances.

In spite of the difficult topics that are covered in these two novels—death, grief, abuse, bullying, abandonment—both books do have the requisite somewhat happy and hopeful ending. Langston learns to stand up for himself and to feel a connection to his dead mother. Lymon is still angry at his parents for abandoning him, but he learns to express that anger and to look to the future rather than dwelling on the unfixable past. I think Mary Stolz would like these new books on an old theme of walking a mile in the other person’s shoes.

7 Joyful Tidings, or Stuff that Made Me Glad This Week

Aug14

“[I]f God took the trouble to tell us eight hundred times to be glad and rejoice, He must want us to do it—–SOME.” ~Pollyanna by Eleanor Porter.

Rejoice in the Lord always; again, I say, rejoice! ~Phillipians 4:4

1) I never read this poem by C.S. Lewis before, even though I’m a Lewis fan:

As the Ruin Falls
by C. S. Lewis
All this is flashy rhetoric about loving you.
I never had a selfless thought since I was born.
I am mercenary and self-seeking through and through:
I want God, you, all friends, merely to serve my turn.
Peace, re-assurance, pleasure, are the goals I seek,
I cannot crawl one inch outside my proper skin:
I talk of love –a scholar’s parrot may talk Greek–
But, self-imprisoned, always end where I begin.
Only that now you have taught me (but how late) my lack.
I see the chasm. And everything you are was making
My heart into a bridge by which I might get back
From exile, and grow man. And now the bridge is breaking.
For this I bless you as the ruin falls. The pains
You give me are more precious than all other gains.

It might seem an odd thing to be joyful about, falling ruins, but I think I get what he means. And I am happy to be made new.

2) Winterbound by Margery Williams Bianco. It is perfectly possible to live a happy, grateful life in less than ideal circumstances.

3) This prayer by Inca Pachacutec, to Pachacamac, “a god who was the creator and preserver of all mankind” and above even the Sun God whom the Incas had always worshipped:

O Pachacamac!

Thou who hast existed from the beginning,

Thou who shalt exist to the end,

Powerful, but merciful,

Who didst create man by saying,

“Let man be!”

Who defendest us from evil,

And preservest our life and our health,

Art Thou in the sky or upon the earth?

In the clouds or in the deeps?

Hear the voice of him who implores thee

And grant his petitions,

Give us life everlasting,

Preserve us and accept this our sacrifice. . . .

Prayer preserved by Spanish priests, copied from New Found World by Katherine B. Shippen

See Romans 1:19-20. God has always been revealing Himself to men through His creation, and He continues to do so through His Son, Jesus Christ.

4) I got to go to church last Sunday, and I will go again this Sunday, God willing, to worship the Lord with the saints in my congregation. What a blessing!

5) I’m adding lots and lots of new-to-me books to my library, Meriadoc Homeschool Library, books that I acquired from a school that was closing (sad), but that will now have a new opportunity to serve the patrons of my library.

6) I thought I’d posted this song, Joy by Scott Mulvahill, before, but I couldn’t find it. It still makes me smile:

7) I got to spend time with both of my baby grandchildren, Teddy and Hazel, this week. That’s joy, for sure!

Winterbound by Margery Williams Bianco

Aug13

Illustrated by Kate Seredy and published in 1936, Winterbound is a Newbery Honor book that would be classified as Young Adult fiction nowadays, if it were even considered for publication. I doubt it would be considered or published in the current century, however, since it’s a clean, wholesome story of two teen sisters, ages nineteen and sixteen, and how they work together to manage an impoverished household in the country through a Connecticut winter. The older sister, Kay, is an aspiring artist whose art education has been cut short by the family’s move from the city to the country. Kay is refined and tasteful, but also hard-working and determined to make the best of their financially strained circumstances. The younger sister, Garry (short for Margaret), is an outdoors type, interested in gardening, travel, science, and animals. Garry is the practical sister, the one who keeps them afloat financially while both parents are unavoidably absent from the home: Dad is off on a two year long scientific expedition, and Mom is in New Mexico, caring for a sick relative.

This story of two strong, independent young women learning to care for a home and a family is just the sort of “feminist” novel that should be required reading for today’s up and coming generation. There are two younger siblings in the family, Martin and Caroline, and Kay and Garry are responsible for the care and upbringing of their younger family members as well as for feeding the wood stove, doing the shopping, making the meals, pumping the water from an outside pump, and scrounging for extra income when their money almost runs out. It’s really a delightful, self-reliant sort of story that shows how some young people used to learn to be adults in difficult circumstances. I was quite impressed with Kay and Garry and their good humor and their tenacity and determination while living in a home—-no running water, no electricity, cracks in the walls, below zero temperatures—that would be daunting to me and absolutely impossible for most anyone younger than I am. (I sound OLD.)

I think fans of the later Betsy-Tacy books by Maud Hart Lovelace (Heavens to Betsy, Betsy and Joe, etc.) or of the later Anne of Green Gables books ( Anne of the Island, Anne of Windy Poplars, etc.) or of the Emily books also by L.M. Montgomery would enjoy this story by author Margery Williams Bianco, most famous for her children’s book The Velveteen Rabbit. Winterbound is as I said for older readers, with just a touch of hinted romance at the very end of the book, and it’s not nearly as sentimental as The Velveteen Rabbit. But Bianco’s writing skill and ability to tell a good yarn are evident in both books. My copy of this book is a Dover reprint edition, published in 2014 in Dover’s series Dover Newbery Library. Thanks to Dover Press for making these older books available again.

Italian and Dutch and Who Knows What Else

Jul30

I am NOT an expert genealogical researcher. I may have this all wrong. However, if I understand the information I have gathered in my reading and my rambling at sites like ancestry.com, my tenth great grandfather was possibly the first Italian to settle in New York, or New Amsterdam as it was then, in 1635.

Pietro Caesare Alberti, aka Peter Albertus, Pietro Cicero Alberti, Peter the Italian, and many other names and nicknames, was a sailor on a Dutch ship, De Coninck David (the King David), who perhaps because of a dispute with the ship’s captain, De Vries, decided to jump ship, more or less, and settle in New Amsterdam. He arrived in the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam on June 2, 1635, having sailed with DeVries from the Dutch island of Texel to Guiana in South America to Virginia and then finally to New Amsterdam where De Vries hoped to have repairs made to his leaky ship. For one reason or another Pietro Alberti decided to stay in America. He later sued De Vries in court for back pay that he said was owed to him for the part of the voyage he did complete. Alberti won a payment of ten guilders.

This Venetian thrown among the Dutch became a middle class farmer in a hard land. He acquired land for a tobacco plantation on Long Island in 1639, and in 1642 he married a Dutch Walloon girl, Judith Manje, in the Dutch Reformed Church in New Amsterdam. At first the couple lived on the Here Graft (Broad Canal, Manhattan), but they soon moved to their farm/plantation on the Long Island shore of the East River. This island was wild country at the time, disputed, settled, bought and sold between the English from Connecticut and Massachusetts colonies, the Dutch from New Netherlands, and the Native tribes who still lived on Long Island. And one Italian. Pietro Alberti and his wife Judith had six children over the course of twelve years of marriage: Jan, Marles, Aert, Marritje, Francyntie, and Willem, all baptized and recorded in the Dutch Reformed Church records.

Then, in about November 1655 both Pietro, age 47, and Judith, age 35, died, possibly in an Indian raid. They left five orphaned children (one child died as an infant), the oldest only eleven years old. That oldest child was my ninth great grandfather, Jan/John Albertus, and John’s daughter Elizabeth married a Stewart. My mother was a Stewart descended from these early inhabitants, Dutch and Italian and English, of New Amsterdam/New York.

Born on This Day: Hilaire Belloc

Jul27

Belloc is remembered in an annual celebration in Sussex, known as Belloc Night, that takes place on the writer’s birthday, 27 July, in the manner of Burns Night in Scotland. The celebration includes reading from Belloc’s work and partaking of a bread and cheese supper with pickles. ~Wikipedia, Hilaire Belloc

I think Mr. Belloc was incredibly prescient at times. For example apply the following insight to the present-day political situation in the United States:

In a word, the Barbarian is discoverable everywhere in this that he cannot make; that he can befog or destroy, but that he cannot sustain; and of every Barbarian in the decline or peril of every civilisation exactly that has been true.
We sit by and watch the Barbarian, we tolerate him; in the long stretches of peace we are not afraid.
We are tickled by his irreverence, his comic inversion of our old certitudes and our fixed creeds refreshes us: we laugh. But as we laugh we are watched by large and awful faces from beyond: and on these faces there is no smile.
Ch. XXXII : The Barbarians , p. 282

However, he could also be quite simply wrong:

I am opposed to women’s voting as men vote. I call it immoral, because I think the bringing of one’s women, one’s mothers and sisters, into the political arena, disturbs the relations between the sexes.

Often, he was funny:

When I am dead, I hope it may be said: “His sins were scarlet, but his books were read.

The Llama is a woolly sort of fleecy hairy goat, with an indolent expression and an undulating throat; like an unsuccessful literary man.

Then, sometimes he is just homely and lovely:

If I ever become a rich man,
Or if ever I grow to be old,
I will build a house with deep thatch
To shelter me from the cold,
And there shall the Sussex songs be sung
And the story of Sussex told.

I will hold my house in the high wood
Within a walk of the sea,
And the men that were boys when I was a boy
Shall sit and drink with me.