Ann Rinaldi, b. 1934. Ms. Rinaldi may be my two teenage daughters’ favorite historical novelist. You can find many titles by Ann Rinaldi, mostly based on American historical figures, in these two lists:
Historical Fiction for Young Ladies, Part 1.
Historical Fiction for Young Ladies, Part 2.
Also born on this date:
Lyndon Baines Johnson, b. 1908.
Mother Teresa (Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhui), b. 1910.
I can hardly think of two more unlike people to share a birthday, can you?
Lee DeForest, b. 1873. American pioneer in the invention of broadcast radio, talking pictures, and television. We watched this excellent PBS documentary a long time ago and need to watch it again:
In Empire of the Air: The Men Who Made Radio, Ken Burns examines the lives of three extraordinary men who shared the primary responsibility for this invention and its early success, and whose genius, friendship, rivalry and enmity interacted in tragic ways. This is the story of Lee de Forest, a clergyman’s flamboyant son, who invented the audion tube; Edwin Howard Armstrong, a brilliant, withdrawn inventor who pioneered FM technology; and David Sarnoff, a hard-driving Russian immigrant who created the most powerful communications company on earth.
John Buchan, b. 1875. Read George Grant’s brief but informative biographical entry on Buchan posted last year at King’s Meadow.
Albert Bruce Sabin, b. 1906. He invented the oral polio vaccine which replaced Salk’s injected vaccine.
Patricia Beatty, b. 1922. Author of mostly historical fiction for children and young adults. My favorites of her books are Behave Yourself, Bethany Brant about a turn-of-the-century preacher’s daughter who’s always in trouble and Wait for Me, Watch for Me, Eula Bee about a young man whose little sister is captured by the Indians when he is supposed to be looking after her.
Max Beerbohm, b. 1872, was an English satirist, critic and caricaturist. Quotation of the day: “Anything that is worth doing has been done frequently. Things hitherto undone should be given, I suspect, a wide berth.”
Mike Huckabee, b. 1955 in Hope, Arkansas. Are all presidential candidates from Arkansas born in Hope? Wikipedia: “Hope is also the birthplace of the former governor of Arkansas and current presidential candidate, Mike Huckabee; former White House Chief of Staff Mack McLarty; attorney Vince Foster; former Louisville, KY mayor David L. Armstrong; former Arkansas Secretary of State Kelly Bryant (1908-1975), and actress Melinda Dillon.”
Edgar A. Guest, b. 1881. I’ve posted poems by American poet Edgar Guest here and here. My father-in-law, a Southern Baptist preacher, often quoted Guest’s poems, several of which I think he had memorized and used as sermon illustrations. (I didn’t know that Judith Guest, author of the novel Ordinary People, was Edgar’s great-niece.)
Here’s another sample of Guest’s poetry, which some folks deride as sentimental and overly optimistic. I rather like it.
Good books are friendly things to own.
If you are busy they will wait.
They will not call you on the phone
Or wake you if the hour is late.
They stand together row by row,
Upon the low shelf or the high.
But if you’re lonesome this you know:
You have a friend or two nearby.
The fellowship of books is real.
They’re never noisy when you’re still.
They won’t disturb you at your meal.
They’ll comfort you when you are ill.
The lonesome hours they’ll always share.
When slighted they will not complain.
And though for them you’ve ceased to care
Your constant friends they’ll still remain.
Good books your faults will never see
Or tell about them round the town.
If you would have their company
You merely have to take them down.
They’ll help you pass the time away,
They’ll counsel give if that you need.
He has true friends for night and day
Who has a few good books to read.
What this country needs is a great poem. John Brown’s Body was a step in the right direction. I’ve read it once, and I’m reading it again. But it’s too long to do what I mean. You can’t thrill people in 300 pages. The limit is about 300 words. Kipling’s “Recessional” really did something to England when it was published. It helped them through a bad time. Let me know if you find any great poems lying around.
Herbert Hoover, b. August 10, 1874
So, what is The Great American Poem, or who is the Great American Poet? Sandburg and Frost, I think, are too much tied to one area of the country, Sandburg to Chicago and the Midwest and Frost to New England. Emily Dickinson is too detailed and sometimes obscure. The British nowadays might not want to put Kipling in such a grand position, might prefer Yeats or Eliot or even Tennyson, but Kipling is inspirational.
God of our fathers, known of old–
Lord of our far-flung battle line
Beneath whose awful hand we hold
Dominion over palm and pine–
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget – lest we forget!
The tumult and the shouting dies;
The captains and the kings depart:
Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice,
An humble and a contrite heart.
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget – lest we forget!
Far-called, our navies melt away;
On dune and headland sinks the fire:
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!
Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,
Lest we forget – lest we forget!
If, drunk with sight of power, we loose
Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe–
Such boasting as the Gentiles use
Or lesser breeds without the law–
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget – lest we forget!
For heathen heart that puts her trust
In reeking tube and iron shard–
All valiant dust that builds on dust,
And guarding, calls not Thee to guard–
For frantic boast and foolish word,
Thy mercy on Thy people, Lord!
So Herbert Hoover and I are taking nominations for the quintessential American poem, a poem that captures the American spirit and inspires us to live up to what is best about the United States of America. Maybe if we’re trying to mirror Kipling’s British poem, we should call it the Great American Hymn. Any suggestions?
As for art, I’m not sure who the Great American Artist is either. But I nominate Norman Rockwell. His best work is both inspirational and challenging. This one’s called “Saying Grace.”
Last but not least, author and illustrator Tasha Tudor celebrates her birthday today. She is 89 years old. Go here for an article on Tasha Tudor that originally appeared in Practical Homeschooling, Mary Pride’s magazine. According to her family website, Tasha Tudor is still in excellent health: “She continues to lead an independent and active life which encompasses copious artwork, gardening and greenhouse care, pets, family and friends.” If you’re not familiar with Tasha Tudor’s illustrations, all her children wear what my children choose to call “homeschool clothes,” old-fashioned clothing from the 1800’s. (We don’t really know any homeschoolers who wear these kinds of dresses, but we do know some who would like to if they could find them readily available.) Anyway, Tasha Tudor is a wonderful writer and illustrator, and she’s created a life that sounds as if it came out of storybook. She lives on a farm in rural Vermont. To read more about Tasha Tudor’s life and work, read The Private World of Tasha Tudor by Richard Brown. My favorite book by Tasha herself is A Time to Keep: The Tasha Tudor Book of Holidays.
Say is a Japanese-American author who was also born on this date. He was born in Yokohama, Japan and came to the U.S. just after WWII with his father. His father enrolled him in a military school in California, and Say hated the school and the United States. He was expelled from military school after a year enabling him to explore California on his own. He began to write and illustrate children’s books while doing advertising photography for a living. His book The Bicycle Man is set in Japan immediately after World War II. In the story, two American soldiers visit a Japanese schoolyard and show the children tricks on a bicycle. Maybe this book would be a good one to distribute among American servicemen in Iraq. Then again, maybe the situations are not that analogous. The Iraquis seem to be more dangerous. Could two American servicemen visit an Iraqui school without guns (the book specifically says, “They had no guns.”) and hope to be welcomed? Would they even be allowed to do so by the U.S. and Iraqi authorities? I don’t know.
Say also won a Caldecott Award for his book Grandfather’s Journey about his own grandfather’s coming to the United States.
Krasilovsky is the author of several children’s picture books, but I am only familiar with our all-time favorite, The Man Who Didn’t Wash His Dishes. Read this one for a humorous answer to the kid question: “But why do we have to wash the dishes?” These titles by the same author sound interesting also.
The Man Who Cooked for Himself: “A man who lives at the edge of the woods discovers that he need not rely on the store for a supply of good things to eat.”
The Man Who Tried to Save Time: “A man drastically reorganizes his daily routines to save time, only to come to a startling realization.”
The Woman Who Saved Things: “A woman who prides herself on her extensive junk collection finds that there is no room in her home for her grandchildren to sleep.”
The Man Who Was Too Lazy to Fix Things: ‘A lazy man takes shortcuts when repairing his aging house. He pastes a broken plate back together with flour and water, wraps band-aids around a chair rung, pounds a nail with his shoe, and spreads chewing gum over a crack in the sidewalk.”
It sounds as if Krasilovsky likes to write about the pitfalls of housekeeping in a humorous vein. SInce I live the pitfalls of housekeeping in a humorous vein, I might have to get some of her other books.
He was so very, very tired after carrying everything back and putting it away that he decided that from then on he would always wash his dishes just as soon as he had finished his supper. —The Man Who Didn’t Wash His Dishes
I have a plethora of authors with birthdays today to present for your reading pleasure. First, we have Roger Antoine Duvoisin, born in 1904 in Geneva, Switzerland. He attended art and music schools in Switzerland and France and eventually emigrated to the United States. Duvoisin wrote and illustrated over forty books for children, and he illustrated more than 140. He won the Caldecott Medal for his illustrations in White Snow, Bright Snow by Alvin Tresselt. Roger Duvoisin created at least two delightful characters that I know of: Petunia the silly goose and Veronica the conspicuous hippopotamus. When she travels to the city, Veronica is “gloriously conspicuous.” However, after getting way too much attention from everyone including the police, “Veronica . . .was tired of being conspicuous. One can be too conspicuous.” Conspicuous is such a fun word to introduce to little children.
Alfred Hitchcock: “”Seeing a murder on television can help work off one’s antagonisms. And if you haven’t any antagonisms, the commercials will give you some.”
Today is also the anniversary of the birth of Alfred Joseph Hitchcock (b.1899, d.1980). I have seven Hitchcock films on my 102 Best Movies list: The Man Who Knew Too Much, North By Northwest, Notorious, Rear WIndow, Rebecca, To Catch a Thief, and Vertigo.
So Hitchcock is my favorite director. He made scary movies that were not (usually) gory nor full of gratuitous violence. I don’t include Psycho or The Birds on my list because I watched them both ages ago and they scared the bejabbers out of me. I don’t know if that’s good or bad, but I do know that I plan never to see either one of them again. As for the others that did make the list, they are full of suspense, plot twists and engaging characters. I would have preferred that Hitchcock had cast someone besides Kim Novak in Vertigo, but as compensation, Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart are about my favorite leading men.
Hitchcock, again, with the last word: “‘Once a man commits himself to murder, he will soon find himself stealing. The next step will be alcoholism, disrespect for the Sabbath and from there on it will lead to rude behaviour. As soon as you set the first steps on the path to destruction you will never know where you will end. Lots of people owe their downfall to a murder they once committed and weren’t too pleased with at the time ‘”