The Silver Donkey by Sonya Hartnett

Oct15

It’s easy, almost inescapable, to find children’s books set before, during and after World War II–fiction, adventure stories, Holocaust stories, biography, memoir, nonfiction about battles and about the home front. I have about three shelves full of World War II books. But when I am asked to recommend books about or set during World War I, the task is harder. There are some good books about World War I, fiction and nonfiction, even picture books, but that war just doesn’t live in our collective imaginations in the same way that World War II does.

Someone recommended The Silver Donkey to me, and I thought, what with the comparative dearth of books set during that war in comparison to the Second World War, I’d add it to my library. Sonya Hartnett, the author, is an Australian writer. Her books, mostly written for children and young adults, have won numerous awards and prizes, including for the author the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award from the Swedish Arts Council in 2008, a sort of lifetime achievement award in children’s literature. Knowing all of this, I was primed to enjoy The Silver Donkey.

And enjoy it I did. However, I must say that it’s an odd sort of book. Two sisters who live on coast of the English Channel (do the French call it the French Channel?) in France, find a man lying in the forest who appears to be dead. The sisters, Marcelle, age 10, and Coco, age 8, are deliciously thrilled with their discovery, brimming with “anticipation and glee.” Their response feels very French, and somewhat true to the nature of children. As they approach the man, they find that he is not dead, but merely sleeping. He also tells them that he cannot see.

Marcelle and Coco have found a British deserter who wants nothing more than to go home across the Channel, to see his family, especially his younger brother who the soldier believes is calling to him to come home. Marcelle and Coco, and later their brother Pascal, find a way in their childish simplicity to help the soldier by bringing him food and eventually by discovering means for him to cross the Channel to England. In return for their help, and to pass the time, the soldier tells the children stories–stories about donkeys.

These are not perfect children, nor are they role models. They take food from the family larder and lie to their parents about what has happened to the food. They keep secrets. They aid and abet an army deserter, and they squabble with one another. They are somewhat ghoulish; Pascal in particular wants stories about war and battles and violence and heroism. The donkeys in the stories are more admirable. The first story the soldier tells is about a faithful old donkey who takes the expectant Mary to Bethlehem for the census and brings her and her baby home safely. The second story is about a humble donkey whose humility saves the world from a terrible drought. And the war story that Pascal begs for ends up being about a donkey who carries the wounded to safety in the midst of battle–at the cost of his own life.

The whole book is bittersweet. The heroes are all fictional donkeys. The children are funny and very human; somehow they feel as if they could only be French children with a sort of French attitude toward life. The soldier is a hero who calls himself a coward, and he is both brave and tired, tired of war. He is so tired that he decides one day, after having fought courageously in the war for a year or more, to leave the battlefront and walk home. His blindness seems to be a psychosomatic response to the horrors of war.

I wouldn’t recommend this book for younger readers, but for children thirteen and older it might be a good introduction to the controversies surrounding the entirety of World War I. Was it a wasteful stalemate of a war, initiated and perpetuated by old men who sent young men to die for no reason? Is honor worth fighting for? Should a soldier be like the donkey, brave and humble and faithful, or are humans called to be more discerning and wise than donkeys can be? What is the proper response to a war or to a soldier who has abdicated his responsibility in a war? These are certainly questions for older children and adults to think about, and The Silver Donkey gives rise to thought and discussion about questions of this sort.

The donkey stories are the best parts of the book, though.

Come Again, Pelican by Don Freeman

Oct10

Freeman, Don. Come Again, Pelican. Viking, 1961. Republished by Plough Publishing, 2024.

Come Again, Pelican tells the story of a boy, Ty, and his day at the beach, and his pelican friend. Ty and his family come to the same wind-swept beach for their family vacation every year. This year Ty says he is “old enough to learn how to fish,” and his parents turn him loose for the day to do just that with only a couple of general cautions: “Be sure to stay away from the big waves.” “And be sure not to lose those new boots of yours.”

I don’t know how old Ty is; the book doesn’t tell. But I’m fairly sure that in our overprotective times, Ty would not be allowed to spend the day fishing in the ocean and talking to a pelican—all by himself. Of course, Ty does have a bit of an adventure when the tide comes in behind him while he is sitting on and fishing from a post that was once part of an old pier. In the meantime, the pelican is fishing for his supper, and Ty and the pelican eventually exchange gifts and fishing tips as the tide rolls back out.

This one is such a gentle story, not a cautionary tale, not a high-stakes adventure, just a beautiful little story about a boy and a pelican and a day of growing and self-education and independence-within-boundaries at the beach. The illustrations by the author, Don Freeman, are similar to those in Freeman’s other more well known books such as Corduroy, Mop Top, and Beady Bear. These pictures are appropriate for a beach story–lots of blue and yellow and orange. And Ty is an all-American boy in his T-shirt and beach trousers and captain’s hat.

I’m nostalgic and find myself wishing we could return to simpler times as portrayed in this picture book. But if we can’t return, we can at least read about it. Come Again, Pelican is the perfect book for reminiscing if you grew up near the the ocean, and even if you didn’t, you’ll enjoy the story about Ty and Mr. Pelican and fish and Ty’s red boots. I added this one to the Beach/Seashore week in Picture Book Preschool, and I was especially happy to do so because Plough Publishing has brought it back so that a new generation can easily purchase it and enjoy the story.

The Tenth Mistake of Hank Hooperman by Gennifer Choldenko

Oct7

When I first started reading The Tenth Mistake of Hank Hooperman, I thought, “Oh, no! Not another condescending middle grade fiction book full of bathroom humor!” On the very first page, we find out that eleven year old Hank, who is trying to potty train his little sister, Boo, would prefer his sister called him “Superman”. Instead, her affectionate nickname for her beloved older brother is “Pooperman.” However, Boo’s nickname for Hank turns out to be about the only “potty humor” in the book, and precocious little Boo is a delightful breath of freshness and innocence in a book that otherwise deals with some heavy subjects.

A week ago, Hank’s single mom left him in charge of Boo in an apartment with very little food or money. Hank has taken care of himself and Boo so far with no major errors, but now they are completely out of food and money. And the apartment manager is threatening to evict them. With no family to turn to and no idea where his mom could be, Hank takes Boo across town to the home of a stranger that his mom once mentioned. It may be a level 10 mistake, but what else can he do?

The stranger, Lou Ann Adler, turns out to be an old friend of Hank’s dead grandmother, and she takes them in–for now. But Hank has to find his mom, figure out why she abandoned them, and decide whether or not he can trust her to take of him and Boo in the future. Hank is a good kid, hyper-responsible, and deeply afraid of making a mistake that will ruin their lives. I won’t spoil the story, but there is a positive, hopeful ending, after a lot of trauma, anxiety, and dangerous situations have been resolved.

The Tenth Mistake of Hank Hooperman reminded me a bit of Gary B. Schmidt’s novels Okay for Now and Just Like That. All three of these books show good kids thrown into situations that are way too hard for their maturity levels. And in all three books the kids, the boys, are desperately trying to figure out what to do about their situation and which adults to trust. I’m not sure Choldenko is quite as good as Schmidt at showing the nuances and complexities of the situation, but she’s not bad. Hank Hooperman is a good, believable character, and I really, really sympathized with his plight and his desire to avoid both small and catastrophic mistakes.

Cautions: There’s an ongoing thread about Boo’s potty training, including the words “crap” and “poop”. Hank engages in a major deception, for what seem like good reasons at the time, and he pays the consequences. A female friend at Hank’s new school wants to be his girlfriend, and his male friends tease him about the possibility of kissing her.

I would recommend this one for sixth grade and up. The story portrays positive models of compassionate adult behavior as well as the fact that not all adults are trustworthy. Hank himself is a character to root for, even though he does make mistakes and wrong choices.

“Why doesn’t someone invent a way to know if you’re about to make a mistake? A Mistake-a-nator that would light up red if you’re about to mess up. I could use one of those.”

Sparrow Being Sparrow by Gail Donovan

Oct6

Sparrow Robinson is a nine year old Dennis the Menace or Ramona Quimby. She likes to dance and move and leap and play. She loves all of the cats that belong to Mrs. LaRose next door. Sparrow and her parents have just moved to a new house in a new town, and she has lots to say and lots of questions to ask. And she sometimes “gets carried away”, as her parents put it.

When Sparrow and Mrs. LaRose get carried way, dancing like butterflies, and Mrs. LaRose falls and breaks her hip, Sparrow is sure that it’s all her fault. The only thing she can do to try to make up for the fall is to take care of Mrs. LaRose’s cats, as she promised. But taking care of the cats, seven of them in all, leads to more complications, a few accidents, and even a big lie. How can Sparrow learn to control her actions and her tongue and make friends in this new place?

If you’re looking for stories for yourself or for your children about perfectly behaved little boys and and girls who would never tell a lie or an exaggeration, who always think before they act, and who never, ever argue with their parents, this book is not the right book for you. Sparrow is a normal nine year old, maybe a little over-active (no diagnoses, please!) And the other characters in the book are refreshingly ordinary, too. Sparrow’s parents are practitioners of “positive parenting”, but as with any parenting technique, the positive doesn’t always stay so positive. When Sparrow sincerely apologizes for one of the mishaps she gets into, her new friend Paloma doesn’t immediately forgive and forget, although she does come around eventually. Some neighbors invite Sparrow and her parents to go to church with them, and they go–to a normal, somewhat boring (for Sparrow) church service and a decent little Sunday School class. It’s good to read about regular kids and parents and neighbors doing regular stuff in an ordinary community.

There’s nothing profound here–just Sparrow being Sparrow, lots of cats, a bit of trouble over broken cups and an inadvertent lie, making new friends, and learning to deal with the ups and downs of life. Kids who are fans of Ramona and Clementine and Clarice Bean will enjoy Sparrow Robinson. And it’s short, clocking in at 178 pages, and new, published in 2024. I loved it.

Going Places by Aileen Fisher

Oct3

Fisher, Aileen. Going Places. Designed and illustrated by Midge Quenell. Bowman, 1973.

Poet and author Aileen Fisher wrote over a hundred children’s books, and all of those that I have seen are delightful. Her poems are easy to read and accessible, mostly about animals and the natural world. Going Places is a poem in picture book format, illustrated by Midge Quenell.

“How do you travel, bird in the sky?

Sometimes I glide, but mostly I fly.

How do you travel. fish in the sea?

Swimming is always in fashion with me.”

The poem becomes more detailed and vivid with each animal’s locomotion that is described, but the rhythm and rhyme and vocabulary remain simple and preschool-appropriate. Ms. Fisher tells us in poetry how snails, rabbits, snakes, bees, beetles, hornets, crickets, mice, frogs, koalas, opossums, and penguins move about and travel through their various habitats. Finally, the poem moves to a description of how school children travel by various ways and means, and “sometime, though probably not very soon, we’ll purchase a ticket and go to the moon.”

Midge Quennel’s watercolor illustrations accompany and support the text of the poem well. And the lettering by Paul Taylor gives the travel saga a whimsical look that also goes with the poem itself quite handily.

The last week, Week #52, in Picture Book Preschool is titled Going Places, so this book fits comfortably into that niche. It’s out of print but used copies are still available as of this blog posting at a reasonable price. And this book would be perfect for preschool story time or for a morning time picture book, quick and engaging food for the imagination. What other animal movements could you talk about? What are some other ways that people travel that are not in the poem?

The Cuckoo’s Calling by Robert Galbraith

Sep30

Definitely not for everybody. Robert Galbraith’s (J.K. Rowling’s) first book in her crime series about private detective Cormoran Strike is gritty and contains quite a bit of bad language, mostly F-bombs. (By the way, I really like that name, Cormoran Strike. It feels quirky and detective-like and memorable.) I wish Rowling could have toned down the language, but I must admit that in the world of celebrities and super-models where this particular mystery takes place, the dialog probably accurately reflects the characters and their common everyday use of language.

Cormoran Strike is a tortured soul, as most detectives usually are these days. Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple were rather ordinary and well-adjusted, except for their exceptional detecting abilities. Lord Peter Wimsey had a somewhat complicated background and some psychological issues, but nothing like what modern detectives of stage, screen, and literature have to deal with. Cormoran Strike has a dysfunctional childhood and a vengeful ex-girlfriend, and he’s lost one leg to a land mine in Afghanistan. And he’s practically homeless with his detective business about to go bankrupt due to a lack of clients.

So, when the wealthy brother of legendary super-model Lula Landry asks Cormoran to investigate the death, apparent suicide, of his sister, the detective is willing even though he doubts the police could have missed anything in the case, considering all the publicity surrounding Lula’s death. The case itself is a look into the lives of the rich and famous, a world that is not completely foreign to Cormoran Strike, whose mother was a “super-groupie” following his rock star father around for a while back in the 70’s.

The novel is well plotted, and I didn’t figure out whodunnit or how until the very end. There is also a lot of good character development as the story slowly introduces Cormoran Strike, his background, and his personality as well as his detecting methods and habits, learned through his time in the army as an army investigator. We also meet another character who will show up in subsequent novels, I’m sure: Robin Ellacott, the temp secretary and office manager that Cormoran can’t afford to keep on but finds invaluable in ferreting out clues and information for him to use in his investigation. The story is told in third person, but mostly from the viewpoint of either Cormoran Strike or Robin Ellacott, so we get to be privy to some of Strike’s thoughts as well as Robin’s, understanding how they react to one another and to the suspects and witnesses to Lula Landry’s suicide–or murder. The duo work together well, but frequently misunderstand one another in small ways that make the story intriguing and keep the reader guessing as to what will happen next.

I liked it well enough to request the next book in the series from the library, and if the language and grit don’t get any worse, I’ll probably continue to read the entire series. The other books in the series so far are:

  • The Silkworm
  • Career of Evil
  • Lethal White
  • Troubled Blood
  • The Ink Black Heart
  • The Running Grave
  • The Hallmarked Man? (not yet published)

Again, the content is dark, including foul language, drug use, sexual immorality (not described explicitly in this book), and violence (somewhat gritty, but not too much detail). This is a book for adults, not children or teens. But the characters are engaging, and the mystery was satisfying in its conclusion. J.K. Rowling is a good writer with a talent for more than fantasy writing.

Alfred Hitchcock and The Three Investigators in The Secret of Terror Castle by Robert Arthur

Sep27

Read for the 1964 Project, and because I wanted to revisit The Three Investigators series that I remember from my childhood.

The Secret of Terror Castle is the first installment in The Three Investigators series of mystery detective stories, also known as Alfred Hitchcock and The Three Investigators. The original series was published from 1964 to 1987 and comprised 43 finished books, written by at least five different authors and illustrated by a multiplicity of illustrators over time. Robert Arthur, who invented the series and had the idea of using Alfred Hitchcock as a character and a marketing ploy, wrote the first nine books in the series as well as Book #11. After Mr. Arthur died in 1969, subsequent adventures were written by various other authors hired by Random House, the publisher. All of Mr. Arthur’s books and some of the others were given a fictional introduction and epilogue said to be written by the famous movie director Alfred Hitchcock (but actually written by the author himself). Hitch also appears as a minor character in at least the first book.

It is Mr. Hitchcock who reluctantly gives the three boys of The Three Investigators Detective Agency their first case: they are tasked with finding a truly haunted house for Hitchcock to use as a setting to film his upcoming movie. The boys discover a deserted mansion called Terror Castle, “located in a narrow little canyon up above Hollywood, called Black Canyon.” And they proceed to investigate to see if the castle is really haunted by the ghost of Stephen Terrill, a star of horror pictures from the silent film era.

The Three Investigators are Jupiter “Jupe” Jones, Peter “Pete” Crenshaw, and Bob Andrews. They are young teenagers, about 13 or 14 years old, who maintain their headquarters and crime/photographic lab hidden away in the back of Jupiter’s uncle’s junkyard. Jupiter is the chief detective with a knack for figuring out riddles and puzzles, Pete is the athletic brawn of the trio, and Bob is the researcher and information guy. (Bob works in a library!) The three boys are too young to drive, but they have the use of a car (gold-plated Rolls-Royce) and a chauffeur (Worthington) that Jupiter won in a contest. And their trusty bicycles come in handy for transportation, too.

The whole book gave me “Scooby Doo” vibes. (For the uninitiated, Scooby Doo is a cartoon series from the 1970’s.) Terror Castle seems to be haunted with some very spooky events and activities, but of course, the ghosts and scary incidents and eerie sounds turn out to have perfectly natural explanations. For those who are worried, there’s nothing occult-ish in any of the first 20 or so books in this series, although there is plenty of “woo-hoo” that seems as if it might be the result of spirits and ghosts and fortune tellers—until Jupe and his buddies figure out the real source of the seemingly supernatural phenomena.

Although these books were written for and marketed to middle school boys, I enjoyed them as a ten to twelve year old myself. The books are from an earlier time, when boys (and girls) were free to roam the community they lived in, talk to adults, and become involved in all sorts of exciting but fairly harmless adventures. The boy characters are unsophisticated by today’s standards, not having been exposed to the wonders of the internet, but they also display a vocabulary, a deductive skill, and an intrepid spirit that would put most 21st century boys to shame.

Unfortunately, my hard cover copy of The Secret of Terror Castle disappeared a couple of years ago, and the one I have how is a 1985 revised paperback edition. Because Mr. Hitchcock died in 1980, Random House decided to replace him with a fictional British movie director named Reginald Clarke (in this first book). And then to confuse us all, I suppose, Reginald Clarke turns into some other guy named Hector Sebastian in Books 2-30. I hope those are the only changes made in the revised editions, but I’m not sure, and I don’t like the jettisoning of Alfred Hitchcock as a character. I just switched the introduction and the cameo appearances of “Reginald Clarke” to “Alfred Hitchcock” in my mind, but I wish I hadn’t needed to do so,

If you want to know all you could ever want to know about The Three Investigators series, also called T3I, this website is a goldmine of information for serious readers and collectors. If you just want to enjoy or help your kids enjoy the stories, try your local public library or private lending library. I would suggest the hardcover, unedited editions, if you can find them.

Out and About by Shirley Hughes

Sep27

Hughes, Shirley. Out and About: A First Book of Poems. Candlewick, 2015. (U.S. edition)

Shirley Hughes is a well known author and illustrator on the other side of the pond in Britain. She has won the Kate Greenaway Medal for British children’s book illustrations twice –for her books Dogger and Ella’s Big Chance—and many more awards and honors for her work in writing and illustrating children’s books. The author blurb in my library copy of Out and About tells me that she illustrated more than two hundred children’s books in her lifetime. Ms. Hughes died in 2022.

Out and About is a collection of poems for each of the seasons, spring, summer, fall, and winter. Katie and her baby brother, Ollie, explore nature in the poems and pictures that fill this little 42 page picture book brimful to overflowing. The book begins with a poem called “Out and About” and a picture of Katie walking down the garden path while her baby brother stands in the doorway and watches her. The laundry is flapping in the breeze on the clothesline, birds are flying about, and it looks like an altogether lovely day to be outdoors. In some of the other poems Katie tells us why and how she likes mud and water and sand and wind. The entire book is an ode to nature and the changing seasons, and it would be a great addition to a nature study time or a poetry tea or any read aloud time with younger children.

The poems in this book reminded me of Robert Louis Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verses. Ms. Hughes’ poems are more impressionistic, like lists of images and brief reactions to them. However, they are, like Stevenson’s poems, about simple childhood experiences: going to the beach, playing in the snow and in the water, Christmas Day, climbing a hill and rolling down, walking in the rain, a fall harvest. I added this book to Picture Book Preschool under the heading of Wind and Weather because so many of the poems are about the seasonal changes in weather and about experiencing the outdoors.

One of my favorite hobbyhorses is the idea that children need to hear and enjoy lots of poetry: nursery rhymes, silly songs, RLS, A.A. Milne, Christina Rossetti, and more. Shirley Hughes’ Out and About: A First Book of Poems would be perfect for the poetry section of your library and of your morning time or read aloud time.

Have You Heard the Nesting Bird? by Rita Gray

Sep19

Gray, Rita. Have You Heard the Nesting Bird? Illustrated by Kenard Pak. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014.

I read this picture book through once, quickly, and thought it was rather slight, not much to it. Then, for some reason, I decided to pick it up again, and this second time I read through it slowly–and aloud. It’s a book meant to be read aloud because it includes all of the bird songs. For example, the wood thrush says “ee-oh-lay”, and the cardinal says “cheer-cheer-cheer-purdy-purdy-purdy”.

To rewind back to the beginning, two children, a boy and a girl, are outdoors, watching and listening to the birds that are singing their various songs. So the children, and the reader, are introduced to about a dozen species of birds in the pictures and in the text that gives an approximation of their songs. However, the children keep coming back to the tree where there is a robin in a nest and asking each other, “But have you heard the nesting bird?” The nesting bird doesn’t make a sound.

The story ends by revealing what the nesting robin has been doing and why she is so quiet. And a sort of appendix called “A Word with the Bird” has the mother robin answering questions, such as “why are you so quiet in your nest?” and “do you have a song?”.

So, to my delight, there was more here than at first meets the eye. In fact, it’s a book about birds and bird songs, and I added it to Picture Book Preschool under the heading of Hearing and Touching because of all of the bird sounds that are introduced. There’s a note in the back that tells readers that they can hear more robin songs and sounds at a certain web address, but it doesn’t work. Broken web addresses are an occupational hazard, I suppose. Try this website, All About Birds, instead.

Mossy by Jan Brett

Sep5

“One summer morning, my husband, Joe, and I were dangling our feet from our dock on Goose Lake. I was watching some waterweeds on the bottom, thinking they looked just like a giant turtle. Suddenly, they swam up toward us. It was a turtle, a huge snapping one, with an underwater ‘garden’ on its shell.”

Author illustrator Jan Brett was inspired by the turtle with a garden on its back to write Mossy, the story of an eastern box turtle who also grows a garden on her carapace (shell). In the story Mossy the turtle becomes the showpiece of Dr. Carolina’s natural history museum, but Dr. Carolina’s niece, Tory, isn’t so sure that Mossy is happy in her museum habitat. Romance enters the picture when Mossy meets Scoot, a handsome male turtle with ruby-red eyes. But will Mossy be able to get back to Lilypad Pond where Scoot is pining for her?

The book is laid out in Jan Brett’s signature style with lush, colorful illustrations in a central large page or two-page spread painting, framed by smaller pictures of minor characters and objects from the story. Mossy herself is a delightfully expressive turtle with a garden full of leaves and mushrooms and flowers and wild berries on her back. Her male counterpart, Scoot, doesn’t have a garden, but he is indeed a handsome turtle. The human characters–Dr. Carolina, Tory, and a couple of sisters named Flora and Fauna–are dressed in late nineteenth century/early twentieth century clothing to give the book a quaint old-fashioned feeling that goes along with the story very nicely.

Box turtles “generally live for 25-35 years but have been known to survive to over 100 years old,” according to my internet research. The author implies at the end of the book that Mossy. with her turtleback garden, might still be living near Lilypad Pond where she first appears in the story. I certainly hope so.

I’ve added this book to Picture Book Preschool under the heading of Reptiles and Fish. (Turtles are reptiles, right?) I have two other Jan Brett title listed in Picture Book Preschool: The Hat and Brett’s illustrated version of The Night Before Christmas by Clement Clark Moore. However, Ms. Brett is a prolific author and illustrator, and I have many of her books in my library. Do you have a favorite Jan Brett book? Tell us all about it in the comments.