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2021 MGF: In a Flash by Donna Jo Napoli

Nov11

I’ve enjoyed Donna Jo Napoli’s books in the past; the author blurb says she’s published more than eighty books for children in her long career. Most of the ones I’ve read have been fairy tale and folk tale retellings (The Wager and Zel) or historical adventure tales (Alligator Bayou and North and Song of the Magdalene). Ms. Napoli, a professor of linguistics and social justice at Swarthmore College, is a good writer. Her books tend to fall toward the upper end of the middle grade fiction age group, maybe even pushing into young adult. In a Flash has a child narrator/protagonist, eight years old at the beginning of the story, but the subject matter and setting, the horrible plight of two Italian sisters surviving on their own in WWII Japan (1940-1946), is harrowing enough to call for some maturity in the reader. I was appalled by the suffering that SImona and her little sister Carolina undergo, and I’m a grown up who knew what to expect when the children, toward the end of the story, end up in the city of Hiroshima.

Because the chapter headings have dates affixed at the beginning and the book is written in first person from Simona’s point of view, I thought at first that the author was trying to pretend that this was SImona’s diary or journal. However, the writing isn’t a child’s writing, and the story is told mostly in present tense. Neither of those choices works for a diary entry. So, I soon realized that the dates were just there to assist the reader in knowing how much time had passed between chapters and where the children were in terms of age and in regard to the war. I found the story fascinating, a little slow-moving at first, but the details about life in Tokyo and in Japan as a whole were vivid and enlightening. The cultural differences between Japanese manners, language, and expectations and Italian cultural mores manifest themselves through the eyes of two little girls who struggle to live as the Japanese do while remembering that they are also Italians.

As I indicated, the book doesn’t shy away from the gruesome details of the starvation, fear, political repression, and sheer misery and trauma of living in wartorn Japan, especially as hated Westerners, Italians who were at first welcomed as friends of the Japanese, then despised as traitors after Italy’s surrender to the Allies. The suffering of the common people of Japan, as well as the choice of some of them to resist the suicidal “patriotism” required of them, are also portrayed in the story.

Because of all the suffering and bombing and starvation and imprisonment, the novel read like a Holocaust story, but with a very different setting. I would recommend In a Flash for mature young people who have been reading about the horrors of World War II as a different perspective and view of the atrocities and difficulties of that time.

Twentieth Century Caesar: Benito Mussolini by Jules Archer

Oct22

Jules Archer wrote several of the biographies in the Messner Shelf of Biographies series, including this one about the infamous dictator who led Italy into the second World War and dragged the Italian people into his own personal downfall as he became Hitler’s puppet.

“Benito Mussolini was a man of many contradictions but with one driving ambition—to rule Italy and restore it to the power and splendor of the ancient Roman Empire, with himself as the new Caesar. In time he became the founder of the Fascist movement and dictator of all of Italy—but at what a price!”

So, it was Mussolini’s dream to Make Italy Great Again, but MIGA doesn’t sound quite as strong as MAGA. And Benito Mussolini was no Julius Caesar. He was instead the son of a poor blacksmith who abused his children both physically and verbally. Mussolini’s father taught him to be a socialist and a populist. He became a journalist who advocated violence and who led the Italians into World War I on the Allied side as a result of a bribe from the French. While he was exiled to Switzerland, Mussolini fell under the influence of Communist Angelika Balabanoff, a comrade of Lenin and of Trotsky. She taught him to bathe and to study languages and communism.

I really wanted to understand WHY the Italians followed Il Duce, the name Mussolini took for himself after his rise to power. How did an entire nation of people become enamored of a boor who blustered and incited, even commanded, violence from his own army of Blackshirts and who went from being a power broker before World War 2 to a powerless sycophant who dependent on the sometimes good will of Adolf Hitler and his Nazi war machine?

I hope that the difference between early twentieth century Italy and present day United States is that America has a proud heritage of resistance to dictatorship and government overreach. Italy looked back to the glory days of the Caesars and longed for someone to come and put things right, even at the cost of individual liberty. I pray that we Americans as a people continue to want government to leave us alone and let us make our own lives right, with government providing only a safe and stable environment for us to do so. As I hear more and more about socialist envy and making America great, I wonder if we could be doomed to repeat, in a uniquely American way, the fantastic blunders of fascist Italy. I certainly pray not.

Archer’s other Messner biographies:

African Firebrand: Kenyatta of Kenya
Angry Abolitionist: William Lloyd Garrison
Battlefield President: Dwight D. Eisenhower
Famous Young Rebels
Colossus of Europe: Metternich
Fighting Journalist: Horace Greeley
Front-Line General: Douglas MacArthur
Man of Steel: Joseph Stalin
Red Rebel: Tito of Yugoslavia
Science Explorer: Roy Chapman Andrews
Strikes, Bombs & Bullets: Big Bill Haywood and the IWW
Trotsky: World Revolutionary
World Citizen: Woodrow Wilson

Archer seems to have been particularly interested in rebels, revolutionaries, strongmen and dictators. I wonder whom he might write about if he were still writing?

Christmas in Sorrento, Italy, c. 1300

Dec2

“Whatever you do, work at it with your whole being, for the Lord and not for men, because you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as your reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.”

The French legend of the little juggler is transplanted to Italy and set in the early Renaissance time period, told and illustrated by the talented Tomie dePaola in The Clown of God. This book is one of those suggested as a part of the Five in a Row picture book curriculum, volume 1. It is also included in the list of Biblioguides’ 25 Picture Books to Read this Christmas.

“Giovanni became very famous, and it wasn’t long before he said good-bye to the traveling troupe and set off on his own.

Up and down Italy he traveled, and although his costumes became more beautiful, he always kept the face of a clown.

Once he juggled for a duke.

Once for a prince!

And it was always the same. First the sticks, then plates, then the clubs, rings and burning torches.

Finally the rainbow of colored balls.

‘And now for the Sun in the Heavens,’ he would shout, and the golden ball would fly higher and higher and crowds would laugh and clap and cheer.”

Tomie DePaola writes beautiful books and illustrates them. Several of his books are about Catholic saints and stories: The Legend of the Poinsettia, The Clown of God, Patrick: Patron Saint of Ireland, Francis: The Poor Man of Assisi, The Lady of Guadalupe, and Mary: The Mother of Jesus. He also has written and published Bible story books including The Miracles of Jesus, and The Parables of Jesus.

Stay tuned tomorrow for another favorite and lovely version of this story.

Julius Caesar by John Gunther

Apr10

Since most of what I know about Julius Caesar comes from Shakespeare (and a little GB Shaw, which I assume is mostly fiction), I learned a lot about the life and times of Mr. Caesar from reading this Landmark history book for middle grade children. Yes, his surname really was Caesar; it became a term for a ruler or king after Julius and Augustus made it famous.

Julius Caesar was a successful and intrepid general and an excellent and shrewd politician; that’s how he rose to the place where he was a threat to the Roman republic and ripe for assassination. I didn’t really realize that he won so many important battles or subjugated so much territory. I also didn’t know about, and still don’t understand, the intricate and corrupt state of Roman politics in the time of Julius Caesar. Caesar had to weave his way through some labyrinthine politics that would challenge a modern American political consultant or campaign manager. And I thought our political system was bad. If Washington, D.C. is a swamp, Rome was a swamp in which people actually died over their failure to back the right candidate for tribune or consul. And that’s before Julius Caesar died for being so ambitious. (Apparently, Sulla was a bad dude.)

I learned or had confirmed a few more things about Julius Caesar:

~ He liked the Jews and gave them special privileges to practice their religion in Rome.
~ According to Gunther, it was on Caesar’s watch that the library of Alexandria burned down. (Although Wikipedia says no one knows exactly when it burned and that there may have been several separate fires over the space of hundreds of years.)
~ Caesar did have a fling with Cleopatra, and she did get delivered to his headquarters in a pile of rugs. (GBS was right about that.) Egyptian politics were just as complicated, devious, and deadly as Roman politics.
~ The Rubicon is (was?) a shallow, insignificant river, but crossing the Rubicon, the boundary of his authority to lead an army, was a momentous decision for Caesar, the beginning of the end for Julius Caesar and for the Roman Republic.
~ Julius Caesar used the phrase “Veni, vidi, vici” in a letter to the Roman Senate after he had achieved a quick victory in his short war against Pharnaces II of Pontus at the Battle of Zela.

Gunther leans heavily on Shakespeare in the concluding chapters of the book, but I think both Gunther and Shakepeare were leaning heavily on Plutarch and Suetonius for the facts on Julius Caesar’s life, his death and the aftermath of his assassination. According to Gunther, “Friends, Romans, countrymen” was an actual speech that Mark Antony gave at Caesar’s funeral, and it was indeed a real barnburner. Portia really did commit suicide by swallowing burning coals (ouch!), and Brutus truly was a noble but indecisive character. According to Gunther, everything went pretty much the way Shakepeare wrote it many years later. (Except for Caesar’s ghost, which probably didn’t appear; I’m not much of a believer in ghosts, and Gunther doesn’t mention any spooks.)

This book would be an excellent prequel to watching Shakepeare’s Julius Caesar. The movie version with Marlon Brando as Mark Antony is an excellent film, even if it is in black and white.

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

Four Seasons in Rome by Anthony Doerr

Jun27

Four Seasons in Rome: On Twins, Insomnia, and the Biggest Funeral in the History of the World by Anthony Doerr.

I read Anthony Doer’s Pulitzer prize winning novel, All the Light We Cannot See, last year, but I never did review it here at Semicolon because I just didn’t love it the way everyone else did. It was OK, but I probably went into it with my expectations raised too high. So it turned out to be just OK.

However, I did like Mr. Doerr’s writing enough that when Modern Mrs. Darcy recommended Four Seasons in Rome to one of the guests on her podcast, I thought I’d give it a try. And I thought it was quite a lovely book. It’s short, about 200 pages, and sweet, all about the year that Doerr and his wife spent in Rome with their twin baby boys. The day after the twins were born, Mr. Doerr got a letter inviting him to be a fellow in literature at the American Academy in Rome. He will have a year work on writing anything he wants. He doesn’t have to produce anything or prove anything to anybody, just write, expenses paid. It’s too good an offer to turn down, even though the birth, care and feeding of their twins has thrown both Doerr and his f=wife, Shauna, for a loop.

Everyone thinks Doerr and his wife are crazy to take six month old twins and move to Italy, to Rome. But what an adventure! The author spends approximately equal time on the difficulties and joys of caring for twin boys, the beauties and treasures of Rome, and the characteristics and dilemmas of the writer’s life. It’s a good combination. Just as I became a little tired of reading about teething and toddlerhood, the narrative would switch to the death and funeral of Pope John Paul II, and then to Mr. Doerr’s studio as he attempted to work on his novel, All the Light We Cannot See, but was only able to write a short story plus the journal entries that formed the spine of this book.

On twins: “There is a circle of understanding, an unspoken fellowship, between parents of multiple babies. Two days ago a Roman mother grappled her twins onto the tram at Largo Argentina, one baby clipped to her chest and other in her arms. She flipped her hair out of her face and her gaze took in Henry and Owen, the stroller, me, and for a half second our eyes met. Something in my heart flared. I thought, Hang in there. You’re not alone.”

On writing: “I x-ray sentences; I claw away at a paragraph and reshape it as carefully as I can, and test it again, and peer into the pages to see if things are any clearer, any more resolved. Often they are not. But to write a story is to inch backward and forward along a series of planks you are cantilevering out into the darkness, plank by plank, inch by inch, and the best you can hope is that each day you find yourself a little bit farther out over the abyss.”

On Rome: “Something about this city exacerbates contrasts, the incongruities and contradictions, a Levi’s billboard rippling on the facade of a four-hundred-year-old church, a drunk sleeping on the tram in $300 shoes. Four mornings ago I watched a man chat with the baker for five minutes while half a dozen of us waited behind him, then climb into a Mercedes and tear off at fifty miles hour. As if he had not a single second to spare.”

Recommended, especially if you’re planning a trip to Rome anytime soon—or if you want to make a journey there vicariously.

Dodsworth in Rome by Tim Egan

Oct13

Cybils nominee: Easy Readers Nominated by Sondra Eklund at SonderBooks.

Dodsworth and the duck have apparently been to New York, Paris, and London in previous books in this series about a mole?/badger?/some kind of animal with a pointy nose named Dodsworth and his sidekick, simply known as “the duck.” In this book Dodsworth and the duck are on vacation in Rome.

The pair tour Rome, at first from the seat of a scooter, and then on foot. They visit the Coliseum, the Pantheon, the Trevi Fountain, and the Sistine Chapel. They eat gelato, and then when they come into some unexpected funds,lots of other very Italian dishes at nice Italian restaurants. The duck tries his hand at throwing pizzas, and Dodsworth tries to keep the duck and himself out of trouble.

I think kids would like this series with its simple jokes and wordplay. Dodsworth and the duck are like a comedy team, and as they explore Rome, kids get a fun introduction to that city and a chuckle or two. The funny parts reminded me of the classic Amelia Bedelia because the duck tends to take comments rather literally with comedic results.

Z-baby: Wow! I never knew that Italy was in Rome!
Me: No, Rome is in Italy. Rome is the city, and it’s in the country of Italy.
Z-baby: Oh, now I get it.

*This book is nominated for a Cybils Award, and I am a judge for the first round thereof. However, no one paid me any money, and nobody knows which books will get to be finalists or which ones will get the awards. In other words, this review reflects my opinion and Z-baby’s and nothing else.