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Napoleon and the Battle of Waterloo by Frances Winwar

Jul21

I read the Landmark book about Adolf Hitler earlier this year, and I couldn’t help comparing as I read this Landmark book about another would-be conqueror, Napoleon. The author of Napoleon and the Battle of Waterloo has the advantage, and the disadvantage, of distance from her subject. Maybe the havoc and death that resulted from Napoleon’s ambition over two hundred years ago just doesn’t feel as bad as Hitler’s evil deeds that are only seventy-five or so years in the past. Or maybe Napoleon, unlike Hitler, did have his good side.

Anyway, Winwar tells the story of Napoleon well, and with the semblance of objectivity. She goes through the events of his life from his birth in 1769 to a Corsican rebel lieutenant and his wife to his defeat at Waterloo and his exile and death on another island, St. Helena. Napoleon’s father was a rebel against the French occupation of the island of Corsica, and Napoleon himself became the personification of French identity and patriotism. I learned some facts about Napoleon and his empire, built and lost. And Winwar’s summary at the end of her book seems fair:

“Napoleon, however, left behind him a legend and a moral lesson. He showed what a man can accomplish through strength of purpose, courage, and imagination. He destroyed the last remnants of feudalism in Europe and abolished the Inquisition in Spain. He helped to build the modern code of laws. He encouraged art and science and education.

But once he gained power he paired it with his colossal ambition. The two, like fiery steeds driven recklessly for his own glory, plunged him and his empire to destruction. So great was his fall at Waterloo that since then all defeat has been known by its name.”

I can’t quite imagine a similar recitation of Hitler’s legendary feats and his fall. And yet Napoleon’s ambition and egomania was responsible for a great deal of suffering and death for the French people and for the other peoples of Europe. His colossal ambition was just as disproportionate and damaging as Hitler’s was, but without the tanks, sophisticated and deadly weaponry, and death camps. I wonder if the people of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries who were closer to the results of Napoleon’s reign would have given him credit for “strength of purpose, courage and imagination.” Distance in time can give us perspective, but is it an accurate and truthful perspective?

Jim Grey of Moonbah by Reginald Ottley

Jul14

I happen to be reading Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson right now, and the connections between Stevenson’s tale of a orphaned young man out seeking his fortune and getting into trouble and Ottley’s story of young Jim Grey are inescapable. Jim Grey and David Balfour are two innocents, one Australian and one Scottish, who are drawn into danger and crime through the evil machinations of a trusted mentor, yes, but also each as a result of his own foolishness and ambition.

Let’s concentrate on Jim Grey in this review. (I’ll write about Mr. Balfour in another review, when I’ve actually finished the book.) Fifteen year old Jim Grey is not an orphan, but his father has recently died, and Jim is feeling somewhat adrift. He has the advantage of a strong and loving mother and a sheep station (ranch), Moonbah, to call home. Yet Jim is restless, missing his father and wondering for the first time in his life what it would be like to travel and see the world. The adolescent Jim is easy prey for Russ Medway, a stranger who shows up at Moonbah on his way to . . . somewhere better. Russ is friendly, personable, and eager to help Jim and his mother with tasks that need to be done on the sheep station–for a little while before he moves on to greener pastures.

It’s easy for the reader to see that Jim is looking for a father figure, or at least an older brother figure, to replace his dad. Jim even tries to convince himself at one point that Russ reminds him of his father. But he has to admit to himself after only a minute’s thought, “I’m mad to think they’re alike. . . But there you are. It’s just in odd ways that Russ reminds me of Dad, I suppose. Or maybe I’m seeing’ things. Things that ain’t really there.” Indeed, in classic Eve-like innocence, Jim is drawn into listening to and following a liar and a crook instead of remembering his dad and choosing good.

The Australian setting for this story is fascinating, and the slang is not too thick for a non-Aussie to penetrate. Reginald Ottley was born in London and ran away to sea when he was fourteen, so it seems likely that some of what Jim experiences and learns comes from Ottley’s own personal experience. Ottley also worked on a cattle station in Australia, so he knew the country and its people.

This book would be such a good cautionary and adventure tale for adolescent boys. Jim, too, wants adventure and feels the pull of home duties and responsibilities against the lure of freedom and wanderlust. The story is never explicitly didactic, but it does indeed teach lessons. “Not all that glitters is gold.” “A wise son listens to his father’s advice.” “The best journey takes you home.”

Dog Journeys: Books About Dogs

Jun19

Roverandom by JRR Tolkien.

One Hundred and One Dalmatians by Dodie Smith.

I have often heard people say that they avoid dog books because the dog always dies. And indeed, many beloved dog books do turn out that way: Old Yeller, Sounder, Where the Red Fern Grows, The Art of Racing in the Rain, Stone Fox, White Fang, and many more. (Sorry for the spoilers. Or maybe, you’re welcome to the warning.)

Anyway, I read a couple of books recently in which the doggy plot heads in a different direction. The dogs in these two books are endangered and face obstacles and go on a difficult and challenging journey, but the dogs do not die. Roverandum by JRR Tolkien, of hobbit fame, began as a bedtime story for Tolkien’s sons to explain and console them for the loss of a toy dog on the beach. In the story Roverandom was once a real live dog, turned into a small toy by an irascible wizard. When Roverandom is lost on the beach, another, more benevolent wizard can’t undo the first wizard’s curse, but he can send Roverandom on a journey, first to the moon where he has many adventures, and then to the depths of the ocean where Roverandom, after many more adventures, finally manages to get permission to be returned to his normal doggy state. The stories in this short 148 page book would be fun as a read aloud for elementary age children and might even engage the interest of those a little older than that.

I have also heard some people opine that the adventures of Bilbo and Frodo Baggins become somewhat repetitious and even tedious after a while. Those same readers would find Roverandom even more dull. On the other hand, those of us who enjoy imaginative flights of fancy and dueling wizards and journeys full of unusual adventures are primed for reading about a toy dog who visits the dark side of the moon as well as hobbits who visit dragons and gigantic spiders.

The other book I read was 101 Dalmatians by Dodie Smith. I saw the Disney movie long ago, and of course, I thought I knew the story. But also of course, the book is much more engaging and humorous than the movie ever could have been. It’s a Christmas story, beginning just before Christmas, in which a pair of Dalmatians, mother and father, Pongo and Missus, go on a perilous and difficult journey to rescue their kidnapped puppies–all fifteen of them. Cruella de Vil is both cruel and devilish, but she eventually gets her just deserts. There are no wizards or magic spells in this book, but it is full of fun as the dogs, who think they own their humans, the Dearlys, exhibit humor and personality and independence and courage in the face of danger.

I highly recommend both Roverandom and 101 Dalmatians as stories in which the dog does NOT die, but instead goes on a brave journey of self-discovery and also exploration of the world and its wonders.

More good dog journey stories in which the dog does not die (I don’t think):

  • The Incredible Journey by Sheila Burnford.
  • Silver Chief, Dog of the North by Jack O’Brien
  • Lassie, Come-Home by Eric Knight
  • Big Red (and sequels) by Jim Kjelgaard
  • Kavik the Wolf Dog by Walt Morey
  • Red Dog by Bill Wallace
  • Hurry Home, Candy by Meindert DeJong
  • Ginger Pye by Eleanor Estes

Any other suggestions?

The Windeby Puzzle by Lois Lowry

Mar31

In The Windeby Puzzle, Newbery Award-winning author Lois Lowry gives readers two short stories with archaeology and history lessons interspersed before, between, and after the fiction. The stories are Lowry’s attempt to imagine the life of the Windeby Child, a young teenager whose body was found in the Windeby peat bog in northern Germany in 1952. The body was determined to be that of a girl or a boy about thirteen years of age who lived during the Iron Age, first century A.D.

Since we don’t have all that much information about the lives of the Germanic people of that time, Lowry was able to let her imagination run wild. And the two stories in the book spin a yarn of two possible backstories for the Windeby Child and how he or she managed to die at such a young age in a peat bog. It’s a bit hard to maintain interest and suspense when both you and your readers know how the story ends. In both tales, the main character dies–young. And in both stories the lives of all of the characters are portrayed as “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short” (Thomas Hobbs).

In the first story, a girl named Estrild is a sort of proto-feminist who resents her female life and longs to avenge her uncle, killed in battle, by becoming a warrior herself. The boy protagonist, Varik, in the second story had to be a victim, too, since he dies at the end, so Lowry made him disabled and suicidal. Maybe first century northern European lives were just this grim and ugly, but I could have done with a bit of romanticism and hope in the story.

Half fiction, half history lesson, this book is at least different from your average middle grade fiction book. It was not my cup of tea, but maybe a youngster interested in archaeology or ancient history or finding things preserved in peat bogs might like it. Be careful, though, if you’re exploring any peat bogs. According to Varick, “If you go too deep in, the bog sucks at your feet.” Yuck!

The Lost Year by Katherine Marsh

Mar29

The Lost Year: A Survival Story of the Ukrainian Famine by Katherine Marsh. Roaring Brook Press, 2023.

Not having read the subtitle before beginning the book, I thought this was going to be another of the many, many books yet to come about the Covid year(s). And it was, to some extent. Matthew is a thirteen year old boy who’s been spending most of his time playing Zelda and other video games since the Covid virus made him homebound with his mother and great-grandmother. Matthew’s father, a journalist, is stuck in France, also because of the virus. The first few chapters are a little slow with Matthew acting spoiled and entitled, but the action picks up as the story switches focus to tell about the childhood experiences of Matthew’s great-grandmother, Nadiya.

But when Matthew finds a tattered black-and-white photo in his great-grandmother’s belongings, he discovers a clue to a hidden chapter of her past, one that will lead to a life-shattering family secret. Set in alternating timelines that connect the present-day to the 1930s and the US to the USSR, Katherine Marsh’s latest novel sheds fresh light on the Holodomor – the horrific famine that killed millions of Ukrainians, and which the Soviet government covered up for decades.

I figured out the “family secret” a couple of chapters before the revelation, but the story was told in such a way that the revelation was foreshadowed but not obvious and very satisfying to read about. Matthew got better as a character, and in his character, as he came to be interested in someone besides himself, namely his 100 year old great-grandmother. And the historical event, the Holodomor, that the book illumines is one that is too little known. Knowing about the Holodomor can help to explain some of the historical animosity that is being played out in war now in 2023.

Recommended for ages 12 and up. Starvation and disease are obviously a key aspect of this novel, although readers are mercifully spared the most graphic and horrific details.

The Rise and Fall of Adolf Hitler by William L. Shirer

Feb14

What would lead a person to read an entire book, even a children’s middle grade nonfiction book, that takes the reader inside the life and mind of Adolf Hitler, the arch-villain of the twentieth century? Well, there’s something rather fascinating about trying to understand how Hitler became Hitler, synonymous with the most evil, murderous, racist, anti-Semitic dictator and warmonger ever. William L. Shirer, author of the 1000+ page tome, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (for adults), was in a position to study this question and come to some kind of conclusions, if anyone from the Allied side of the war was. As an American correspondent in Berlin, Shirer actually met Hitler, listened to many of his spell-binding speeches, and observed him over the course of several years before and during World War II. The result of Shirer’s observations and his journalist’s eye for character and for a story is this book, written for children in the Landmark history series, but suited to readers of all ages.

Shirer begins his book with eleven year old Adolf, showing an independent streak even at that young age in aspiring to become an artist instead of the civil servant his father wanted him to be. I learned a lot about Hitler that I never knew before from this book, and I was reminded of a few “home truths” along the way. After his art career bombed because the art school wouldn’t let him in, said he had no talent, Herr Hitler became a tramp without a real job for several years, but a very well read tramp. He read and studied all the time while working very little. First lesson: readers may become leaders, but they may also become very bad leaders.

Chapter 7 of the book is called “Hitler Falls in Love,” and it tells a story I never knew or else had forgotten. In this chapter of the book and of Hitler’s life, he falls hard for his half-niece, the daughter of his half-sister. Her name was Gell Raubal, and Hitler declared after her death that she was the only woman he ever truly loved. You can read the story in Shirer’s book and decide for yourself whether or not “loved” is the right word to describe Hitler’s controlling obsession with a girl half his age. (The story of their brief “romance” is tastefully told, appropriate for middle grade and older children who will read the book, but icky nonetheless.)

After this personal interlude, the book moves on to Hitler’s political actions and aspirations and quickly into the war years. As he becomes more and more successful, in politics and in war, and gains more and more power, Hitler becomes more and more deranged. Shirer calls him “beyond any question a dangerous, irresponsible megalomaniac.” And yet (next paragraph) Hitler is able to maintain power, and be “so cool and cunning in his calculations and so bold in carrying them out that few could doubt that he well might be the military genius that he claimed to be.” This lead me to another unpleasant truth: a mentally ill egomaniacal murderer can act in a very lucid and intelligent manner for a long time. It is possible to be cunning, bold, and crazy.

Of course, this book chronicles the rise and fall of Hitler, so the craziness does come to an end. Shirer is to be commended for his ability to tell the story in a way that is appropriate for older children, but also truthful and candid in its presentation of Hitler’s horribly destructive life and actions. The book doesn’t completely explain the quandary of why the German people were so enamored of Herr Hitler or how he was able to fool so many people for so long into believing in his “genius”, but it does document in a very readable and engaging style, the rise and fall of a man who was “a power-drunk tyrant whom absolute power had corrupted absolutely.”

I recommend Shirer’s book for its insight and as a cautionary tale for those who would place their faith in any political leader. Hitler is dead, but it is still quite possible to be fooled by a seemingly lucid and benign leader who is actually a wolf in disguise.

Download a list of the entire Landmark history series in chronological order.

Evangeline and the Acadians by Robert Tallant

Feb8

This Landmark book, #74 in the series, published in 1957 (the year I was born), tells the story of the Acadians, or Cajuns as they came to be called in Louisiana and Texas, who were exiled from their homes in Nova Scotia. These Acadians were French farmers who settled in Nova Scotia when it was named Acadia by the French, and they were forced to leave Nova Scotia by the British who distrusted them and questioned their loyalty during the many years of war between France and Britain.

It’s a sad story. Tallant compares the plight of the Acadians to the Jewish Holocaust of World War II. While the Acadians were not taken to extermination camps, they were torn from their homes and dispersed up and down the Eastern seaboard, with many of them ending up in prisons or forced labor or just poverty. Families were separated, and many Acadians died on crowded, unsanitary ships or in homelessness after they reached shore.

So my question was: how did so many of the Acadians end up in southwestern Louisiana where they made a new home for themselves? To find out, you’ll have to read the book, or do your own research. It’s a fascinating saga, and Longfellow’s famous poem, Evangeline, only tells a small, fictionalized part of the story. As indicated in the title, Tallant refers to Longfellow’s poem over and over again throughout the book, and readers of Tallant’s book can learn a good bit about what parts of the poem are fiction and what parts are true. The fictional character, Evangeline, looking for her lost love, Gabriel, made the Acadians famous the nineteenth century, and today Cajun culture and history is celebrated in food, song, dance, literature, and entertainment.

Evangeline and the Acadians not only gives the history of the Acadians, but since those Acadian people were a large part of the history of Louisiana itself, the book is a sort of capsule history of the state of Louisiana. Mr. Tallant wrote two other books in the Landmark series, The Louisiana Purchase and The Pirate Lafitte and the Battle of New Orleans, and the three books taken together would be an excellent introduction for elementary and middle school students to the culture and history of Louisiana (and even southeast Texas). If I were helping my students of Louisiana heritage to study the history of their own state and region, I would certainly read these three Landmark books with them.

Of course, as I said these books were published in the 1950’s. The last two chapters of Evangeline and the Acadians talks about Cajun life and culture “today.” Children who read the book might need to be reminded that the “today’ of 1957 was much different from the twenty-first century “today.” I doubt very many Cajuns speak French as a first language nowadays or even use Cajun English dialect as the Cajun people have become even more assimilated into the greater American culture.

In addition to this book and the other two Landmark books by Robert Tallant, for those interested in the history and culture of Louisiana and of the Acadians, I would recommend:

Picture Books

  • Freedom in Congo Square by Carole Boston Weatherford.
  • Through My Eyes by Ruby Bridges.
  • If I Only Had a Horn: Young Louis Armstrong by Roxanne Orgill.
  • Mr. Williams by Karen Barbour.
  • Little Pierre: A Cajun Story from Louisiana by Robert San Souci.

Children’s books

The Barbary Pirates by C.S. Forester

Feb7

This Landmark book, written by the celebrated author of the Hornblower series of Napoleonic nautical novels, is not so much a book about pirates and piracy as it is a book about the beginnings of the U.S. Navy and naval warfare. One of the heroes of the book is Captain Edward Preble who established many of the procedures and protocols that became the basis for U.S. Navy regulations and discipline later on when the Navy was a more official entity. (The USS Constitution under Preble’s command makes a very brief appearance in C.S. Forester’s novel Hornblower and the Hotspur.)

The naval warfare in The Barbary Pirates involves the war between the new nation, the United States of America, and the nations of the Barbary Coast of Northern Africa, mostly blockade and eventual invasion of the port of Tripoli, which is in the modern nation of Libya. The war is called the Tripolitan War, after Tripoli, and it took place during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries while Jefferson and later Madison served as presidents of the U.S. The goal of the war was to clear the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean of North African pirates (or privateers) at a time when the economy of the Barbary States—Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya or Tripoli–depended on the prizes their corsairs were able to take and bring home. Of course, the U.S. economy depended upon the trade across the Atlantic with Europe and Africa. So, the war, which America eventually won, made the U.S. and Europe, over time, much richer, and the Barbary States much poorer.

I enjoyed reading about an era and event in history that I knew very little about before reading this children’s Landmark book. There is a book written for adults, Thomas Jefferson and the Tripoli Pirates: The Forgotten War That Changed American History by Brian Kilmeade, that goes over the same ground in more detail, I would assume, but I haven’t read it and therefore can’t recommend it. I have heard it recommended, but also I’ve seen mixed reviews. So if you just want a basic understanding of the Barbary pirates and the war to contain them, I would recommend Forester’s little book. It’s well-researched and would likely make a good nonfiction accompaniment to Forester’s Hornblower series or to Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey/Maturin series of nautical adventures—for a bit of historical background.

These Landmark books are such a good introduction, for children and for grownups, to so many historical time periods, people, and events. I’m excited to continue my project of reading and reviewing many of the Landmark series books this year. Next up: The Slave Who Freed Haiti: The Story of Toussaint Louverture by Katharine Scherman.

The Door of No Return by Kwame Alexander

Dec31
  • This book is marketed as middle grade fiction, perhaps because the author’s previous books were mostly middle grade verse novels, but I believe this particular historical fiction verse novel falls firmly into the Young Adult genre and maturity level. It includes horrific violence, war, and sexual assault, and even though these things are true to the time and setting and are not gratuitously described, they are present and central to the story. Caveat emptor.
  • I don’t care for verse novels. I chafe at the constrictions of writing (and reading) narrative/story in a series of free verse poems. The writing of a story in the form of a series of short poems seems choppy and incomplete to me. Write a novel, or write poems, or even a long narrative poem, but don’t try to combine them.
  • Nevertheless, as verse novels go, this one was a well-written one. There were some striking images, and the story managed to come through in spite of the limitations of the form.
  • So, The Door of No Return is a book that I would recommend to older teens and adults as a window into African/Ashanti history and the history of African slavery. I do believe that it is well-researched and valuable as a window into the origins and horror of African slavery in the nineteenth century.

With those initial thoughts given, The Door of No Return is a Young Adult verse novel set in 1860’s Ghana among the Ashanti people of that area. In the fictional region of Upper Kwanta, eleven year old Kofi lives in a village with his family and enjoys hanging out with his best friend Ebo, the stories of his grandfather Nana Mosi, his flirtation with his cousin Ana, and swimming in the river Offin. He does NOT enjoy his cousin who bullies and teases him, his teacher Mr. Goodluck Phillip who thinks learning the Queen’s English is the path to future success, or the rule that says he must never swim in the river at night.

When Kofi’s brother accidentally becomes the victim of old animosities and horrific injustice, Kofi is caught up in the violence and injustice himself. And thereby Kofi has his first direct encounter with “the wonderfuls” (white men) who perpetrate the greatest injustice of all–kidnapping and slavery.

This story is an indictment of war and greed and enslavement and hatred carried across generations. In the afterword, Mr. Alexander says that this was a hard book to write, and it is also a hard book to read.I want to deny the fact that these things happened, but I cannot. I wish that the book had been written in narrative prose with detailed descriptions of Kofi’s village and his life there. But I really wouldn’t wish for any more details than are already present in the book about the suffering and cruelty that Kofi experiences. So, maybe a verse novel was the best way to go.

Highly recommended for older teens and adults, poetry lovers, historical fiction fans, and readers concerned with the issues of injustice, hope, and endurance.

The Christmas Anna Angel by Ruth Sawyer

Dec6

The Christmas Anna Angel by Ruth Sawyer, illustrated by Kate Seredy. Viking Press, 1944. (Christmas in Hungary, c.1918)

“Here is one of those heart-warming tales that never grow old but take their place on the Christmas shelf to become year after year a part of the family Christmas. Ruth Sawyer heard the story from a friend named Anna, whose little girlhood was spent on a Hungarian farm where her own Christmas Anna Angel came to her. Miss Sawyer’s text and Kate Seredy’s lovely drawings retell the tale with a feather-light touch that would not brush away the loveliness of a dream or of a little child’s belief in Christmas.

~New York TImes

This book is absolutely beautiful. The story is great, but the text combined with the illustrations make the book a children’s masterpiece. Miklos and his older sister Anna are growing up on a farm during the later years of World War I. The book begins on St. Nicholas Eve, “the day that begins the Christmas time,” and ends on Christmas Day. In between, Anna tells Miklos about Christmases past, before the war, when there was plenty of flour and honey and eggs and fuel for the baking of Christmas cakes to hang on the Christmas tree. And as the children welcome St. Nicholas on his day, celebrate St. Lucy’s Day, and wonder at the marvels of the Christmas Eve celebration, Anna maintains her faith that the angels in heaven, especially her own Christmas Anna Angel, will see to the baking of Christmas cakes in spite of the war conditions and privations.

This story is Hungarian Catholic in its culture and setting; Protestant readers may have to explain about talking and praying to saints and going to Mass on Christmas Eve. However, it’s also a very Christian book, with an emphasis on the true wonder and meaning of Christmas and the coming of the Christ Child while holding onto a child’s ability to imagine and embroider even in wartime. I wish I could send a copy of this story to every child in Ukraine this Christmas, along with a copy of the gospel of Luke, to give them hope and imagination and joy in their time of war.

Whatever war or harshness is in your life this Christmas, I wish for you, too, some hope and joy and Christmas cakes. If you get a chance to read The Christmas Anna Angel this Christmas and you like it, I recommend Kate Seredy’s books, The Good Master and The Singing Tree, both also set before and during World War I in Hungary and quite reminiscent of Ruth Sawyer’s Christmas story.