Archives

The Boy Whaleman by George Fox Tucker

Nov8

In searching for children’s books published 100 years ago in 1924, I found a set of three books called The Three Owls, edited by New York Public Library children’s librarian Anne Carroll Moore. In these three volumes Ms. Moore collected various thoughts, essays, and booklists, written by herself and others, related to the children’s literature of her day. In the first volume of The Three Owls, a children’s author named Henry Beston (later to become husband to children’s author Elizabeth Coatsworth) reviews The Boy Whaleman, saying, “Of all the accounts of whaling voyages I have read for some time, quite the best is this boy’s book by George F. Tucker. It is the record of a youngster’s one cruise in an old-time whaler, which was rather a decent ship as whalers go.”

Mr. Beston and I are in agreement, not that I have read that many accounts of whaling voyages to compare. The book is more of a travelog than a story, although travel is not quite the word for the experience of a sailor who took ship on a whaler. More appropriate terms come to mind: hard work, danger, adventure, or “stink, grease, and backache” as the description of a whaleman’s work went at the time. The book takes place in the early 1860’s as the boy Homer Bleechly, age fifteen, takes ship from New Bedford, Massachusetts on the whaler, Seabird. He will be eighteen and a man by the time he returns to his home in New Bedford.

“My father, when a young man, went whaling for a single voyage which lasted for more than three years. He was a sailor, or, to use the regular phrase, a foremast hand, and at the end of two years, he became a boat-steerer or a harpooner. When I was a little boy he used to take me on his knee and tell me stories about the life of the whalemen, –of chasing whales and harpooning them, of angry whales smashing boats and chewing them to bits; of towing whales to the ship and cutting them in and trying them out; of losing the ship and remaining all might in the open boats; of encountering great storms and riding them out in safety; of meeting after many months another New Bedford vessel, and getting the latest news from home; and of visiting in the Pacific Ocean islands inhabited by savages.”

All these stories from Homer’s father are a foreshadowing of almost exactly what happens to Homer Bleechly on the Seabird, and Homer narrates his voyage with gusto and with much intelligent detail about the life of a whaleman. Some parents may cringe at the gory descriptions of slippery blood and guts covering the ship’s deck, of plunging a harpoon into the whale’s eye, or of scooping the spermaceti out of the whale’s head cavity. But a young person who is hungry for adventure can take these things in stride just as Homer apparently did. There are also mentions of the South Sea islanders as savages and uncivilized and of cannibalism both in the islands and in sailor stories that Homer and the others tell each other, but these things are not dwelt upon.

The work and culture of a whaling ship are the main focus of the book, and the story is somewhat slight in comparison to the details about the sea, the lore of whales, seamanship, financial matters in regard to whaling, and Homer’s shipmates in forecastle. It’s something of a coming of age story, but again the emphasis is not on Homer himself but rather on the Seabird and its job and the events of the voyage.

Reading this book made me want to read more about so many things: Tahiti, whales, Commodore Perry, whaling and seagoing, Captain Cook and his voyages, the Essex, the Bounty mutiny, Pitcairn Island, whale ships, missionaries to Polynesia and Micronesia, Magellan, the opening of Japan to Western influence, ambergris, and much more. I have a whole list of books to read next, but, alas, not enough time to read them all in addition to my many other reading projects.

Captain Cook Explores the South Seas by Armstrong Sperry

Sep9

Captain Cook Explores the South Seas by Armstrong Sperry. World Landmark #19.

The book’s title is a bit of a misnomer: James Cook didn’t explore just the South Seas. He went almost everywhere: starting in England, then Canada, the Arctic, the Antarctic, the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii), Tahiti, Cape Horn, the Cape of Good Hope, Alaska, Melanesia, Micronesia, New Zealand, Australia, and all points in between. He went on three voyages of exploration, and boy, did he explore. And he started out as a farmer’s son and ended up as captain of his own ship and leader of the three afore-mentioned expeditions, gaining fame and glory and all sorts of scientific information, maps, charts, botanic specimens, paintings, and other discoveries on behalf of the Royal Society and the British Admiralty.

All of the Landmark books that I have read are well written, but I think this one is one of the best in terms of excellent writing and storytelling. Cook’s adventurous life and rags to riches story lends itself to the creation of an adventure story, and Sperry’s telling of the story does not disappoint. He begins the tale as thirteen year old James Cook leaves his home to take up an apprenticeship that will bring him near the sea:

“That August morning in the year 1741, the early sun was as bright as a promise of good fortune. It cast a light of gold over the rolling moors of Yorkshire, on fat sheep grazing in the fields. It lay warm as a blessing on the shoulders of the boy who followed so eagerly an empty road that stretched forever away from Great Ayton.

Mark that boy well, Reader! For young James Cook–tall for his thirteen summers, and with all his belongings swinging in a bundle at the end of a stick–had set forth on a great adventure. Although in years to come he was to travel farther over the earth’s surface than any man before him, perhaps this first youthful journey was the most momentous of all. It set the pattern of his future.”

Armstrong Sperry, author of the Newbery award story, Call It Courage, traveled in the South Seas himself, and learned both French and Tahitian. Sperry was also a Navy veteran and interested in all things nautical, and he was a talented artist whose illustrations for this book about Captain Cook are exquisite and fully supportive of the lively narrative text. Sperry wrote two other books for the Landmark series, The Voyages of Christopher Columbus and John Paul Jones, Fighting Sailor as well as several other nautical-themed fiction books for children. I am eager to read some of his other books since the writing in this one is so very good.

A couple of content considerations: Sperry describes the “savages”, both of North America (Canada) and of the Pacific islands, in mostly unflattering terms. Cook described the islanders in particular as primitive, thieving, and unhygienic, reserving the term “handsome” for the Tahitians and the Hawaiians only. So that’s how Sperry describes them. And the life and travels of Captain James Cook do not end well. He gets into a dispute, perhaps a misunderstanding, with the king and people of the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii), and he is killed on the beach by a Hawaiian war club wielded by one of the king’s warriors.

Despite the content considerations, I highly recommend Captain Cook Explores the South Seas, maybe along with a book told more from the perspective of the native islanders. The Last Princess, The Story of Princess Ka’iulani of Hawaii by Fay Stanley is one possibility. Another Landmark about Hawaii (which I haven’t read) is Hawaii, Gem of the Pacific by Oscar Lewis.

Ghost Soldiers by Hampton Sides

Sep2

Ghost Soldiers: The Forgotten Epic Story of World War II’s Most Dramatic Mission by Hampton Sides.

Ghost Soldiers is a well-written and engrossing narrative history of the rescue of 513 American and British POWs from the Japanese prison camp of Cabanatuan in the Philippines. The soldiers imprisoned at Cabanatuan at the time of the rescue (January, 1945) were mostly survivors of the infamous Bataan Death March, survivors who were barely surviving since most of the somewhat healthier prisoners had already been transferred to Japan in anticipation of the Americans retaking of the Philippine Islands. This who were left at Cabanatuan were diseased, injured, and in a very precarious situation—not quite liberated, still under Japanese control, and dispensable because of their lack of usefulness as workers for the Japanese. There were indeed rumors of and precedent for a Japanese massacre of all the prisoners left at the camp as the Japanese retreated before the advancing U.S. armed forces.

The U.S. Army 6th Ranger Battalion was tasked with the mission of rescuing these prisoners of Cabanatuan from behind Japanese lines in January, 1945. The mission had to be done secretly and quickly. No one knew how long the prisoners would remain alive to be rescued. And the Rangers were a new and untried group of elite “commandos”, sort of an experiment. Would they be able to find the prisoners and bring them out before the Japanese army stopped them?

So, Mr. Sides, a journalist and author, has grabbed onto a great story. And it’s one I had never read about before, although I had read some things about Bataan (The Jersey Brothers by Sally Mott Freeman, We Band of Angels by Elizabeth Norman). He tells the story from alternating points of view, that of the Army Rangers who were sent to rescue the prisoners and that of the prisoners themselves who struggled with feelings of hopelessness and abandonment in addition to the physical deprivations and tortures of their ordeal. This way of telling the story works to increase the suspense as the two stories merge into the climactic scene of the Rescue.

One of the interesting things about this story was meeting unexpected heroes that I would like to read more about. Chaplain Robert Taylor, one of the prisoners who was selected to go to Japan just before the rescue took place, ended up on the ill-fated ship, Oryoku Maru, a hellish prison ship that was sunk off the coast of Bataan by the U.S. Navy. Taylor survived, went on another ship which was also disabled by U.S. bombers, finally was sent to Manchuria, survived his imprisonment there, and eventually after his return home became the highest ranking chaplain in the U.S. Armed Forces. Days of Anguish, Days of Hope by Billy Keith is a biography of Chaplain Taylor that I would like to read.

Then, among the 6th Ranger battalion, I encountered Dr. James Canfield Fisher, son of the famous author Dorothy Canfield Fisher. Captain James Fisher was a surgeon assigned to the Ranger battalion that freed Cabanatuan, and he insisted on going with his men up to very gates of the prison camp in order to be available to treat those who might be wounded in the attempted rescue. His story is all the more intriguing and poignant for me since I know of his mother and her books, including the classic Understood Betsy. Who knew that reading about World War II in the Philippines could circle around to connect back to children’s literature?

I recommend Ghost Soldiers to readers who are interested in reading about World War II adventures, the War in the Pacific, stories of courage and endurance, and just good narrative nonfiction. (If you liked Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand or Lost in Shangri-La by Mitchell Zuckoff . . .) I found it to be fascinating and inspiring.

Up Periscope by Robb White

Jun21

According to Jan Bloom’s Who Should We Then Read, Volume 2, author Robb White’s books are “high action, well-written adventure yarns peopled with realistically drawn, likable characters in plausible yet exciting situations.” This particular yarn is a World War II submarine adventure that takes place in the South Pacific. Kenneth Braden, lieutenant (junior grade), U.S. Naval Reserve, volunteers for an unnamed job while he’s in Underwater Demolition School, and he soon finds himself in Hawaii, Pearl Harbor, talking to an admiral about doing something “hard, lonely, and dangerous” somewhere in the Pacific. Ken can take the job or back out. Of course, he decides to go for it.

I won’t spoil the story by telling what Ken’s job entails, but it does involve a great deal of time on a submarine. Both Ken and the readers of the novel learn a lot about submarines by the time the story is over. I knew almost nothing about submarines and submarine warfare when I started reading, and now I know . . . a little, not because there’s only a little information in the book, but mostly because I could only take in and assimilate so much. Readers who are really interested in submarine warfare will find the story absorbing and informative, and I assume the details are accurate since Mr. White served in the U.S. Navy himself during World War II. Suffice it to say I enjoyed this action tale, and World War II buffs or submarine aficionados will enjoy it even more than I did.

Apparently, the book was popular in its time, or else Robb White had connections in Hollywood. The novel was published in 1956, and it was made into a movie, starring James Garner, in 1959. White’s memoir, Our Virgin Island, about the Pacific island he and his wife bought for $60.00 and lived on before the war, was filmed as Virgin Island in 1958. The movie starred John Cassavetes, Sidney Poitier, and Ruby Dee. (White did write for Hollywood, so I guess he had connections.)

The author is just about as fascinating as his novel. He was born in the Philippines, a missionary kid. He learned to sail at an early age, graduated from the Naval Academy, and loved the sea. But he also wanted to be a writer, and he wrote magazine articles, screenplays, three memoirs, and more than twenty novels. His novels were mostly marketed to what we would now call the young adult market, but Up Periscope at least is not about teens, but rather adult men, fighting in an adult war. The only reason it might be considered a “children’s” or “young adult” novel as far as I can see is that there is a distinct lack of bad language and sexual content, a welcome relief from modern young adult novels. I counted only one “damn”, and on the flip side, several instances in which the men pray in a very natural, fox-hole way for God to save them from impending death. There is some war nastiness and violence, but that’s to be expected in a war novel. I think anyone over the age of twelve or thirteen could appreciate this thrilling story of espionage and submarine derring-do.

Only a couple of Robb White’s books remain in print; the rest are available at wildly varying prices from Amazon or other used book sellers. On the basis of just having read this one (and Jan Bloom’s recommendation) I would recommend his novels for your World War II-obsessed readers, and I would be quite interested in reading Mr. White’s three memoirs: Privateer’s Bay, Our Virgin Island, and Two on the Isle.

Gaff by Shan Correa

Nov10

The combatants, aptly referred to as gamecocks, are specially bred birds, conditioned for increased stamina and strength. The comb and wattle are cut off in order to meet show standards of the American Gamefowl Society and the Old English Game Club and to prevent freezing in colder climates. Cocks possess congenital aggression toward all males of the same species. Cocks are given the best of care until near the age of two years old. They are conditioned, much like professional athletes prior to events or shows. Wagers are often made on the outcome of the match. While not all fights are to the death, the cocks do endure physical trauma that may result in death. Cockfighting was at one time considered to be an accepted, traditional sporting event in the United States. . . . In some regional variations, the birds are equipped with either metal spurs (called gaffs) or knives, tied to the leg in the area where the bird’s natural spur has been partially removed. ~Wikipedia, Cockfight

Yes, I’ve heard of cockfighting before. No, I’ve never seen a cockfight (thank goodness). I thought it was a mainly rural/Hispanic sort of thing. I had no idea cockfighting was big in Hawaii, where the book Gaff by Shan Correa is set. In the story, thirteen year old Paul Silva and his friend Sal Salvador are fascinated by the roosters their fathers raise for sale. Then, when the two boys actually attend their first cockfight, Paul is horrified by the violence to the beautiful birds, and he vows to find a way for his father to make a living that doesn’t involve training birds for fighting. Unfortunately, that way may involve moving the family away from their Hawaiian country home to a condominium. Is it worth it when someone else will take their place in the cockfighting and breeding business anyway?

The Wikipedia article goes on to say that cockfighting is illegal in all fifty states of the United States. In forty states and in D.C. it is illegal to be a spectator at a cockfight. However, it is not illegal to train birds for fighting or to raise them for the purpose of being fighting birds.

Correa’s book has descriptions just vivid enough to convey the nastiness of the “sport” but it remains appropriate for a middle grade audience. If the ending is a little bit too hopeful, it’s hard to find fault when I was rooting for Paul and his family to find the perfect way out of the cockfighting business and into a better way of making a living. The detailed descriptions of life in Hawaii and the occasional taste of pidgin English gave the book a regional flavor that was lots of fun. And the story does a good job of showing the different perspectives of the characters on cockfighting without either condoning the violence and cruelty or preaching against it.

I wasn’t sure going in that I would like this one, but I did. I liked the way the parents and family were involved in all aspects of the story. And I also liked the way the Catholic faith of the families in the story became a natural part of their lives and of the the plot of the the novel.

I would end this review with my “other takes” feature, but the only place I can find this book even mentioned is, appropriately enough, at the Hawaii Book Blog. And even there it hasn’t been reviewed yet. Hawaiians and others should love this island story of a boy growing up and learning to trust his own convictions.

Henderson’s Spear by Ronald Wright

Apr29

Olivia, a British Canadian filmmaker, is writing to the daughter she gave up for adoption at birth. She’s writing from the jail in Tahiti because the French authorities suspect her of spying on nuclear testing in the Pacific, perhaps even murder.

Olivia, in turn, shares her own story and the story of the ancestor of a friend of the family, Henderson, who as a young man accompanied the Prince of Wales on a trip through Polynesia and the Pacific islands. When he was a bit older Henderson had a nearly deadly encounter with some Arabs in North Africa, and he came to believe that his treatment in North Africa was somehow connected to the secrets he learned while travelling with Prince Eddy through Polynesia.

I didn’t feel as if the plot strands in this book came together well. I didn’t much care for the oh-so-liberated Olivia who was mourning, twenty or so years later, both the loss of her father and of her daughter. Henderson, the other main character in the book, was a bit of a Victorian prig, stereotypical, yet he accepted certain events that I think would have appalled any man of his time and background.

I give it about a C+.

LOST Rehash: The Glass Ballerina

Oct11

*************SPOILERS*****************************
If you have not watched this second episode, third season, of LOST and you don’t want to know what happens, don’t read.

1. I don’t like Sun so much anymore. She managed to get her lover killed, get mad at Jin for obeying her daddy (for her sake), lie to Jin, and shoot somebody. Will the Others really “become” the enemy now? I think, that despite protestations to the contrary, they’ve been doing a pretty good enemy imitation all along.

2. Sayid is a little over-confident in this episode. He’s going to take two of them as hostages and kill the rest —single-handed? I like Sayid; I think Sayid’s the best offensive player the Lost team has, but he needs a reality check. Maybe he got one tonight.

3. What was the name of the girl who got shot? Colleen? Carrie? Is she dead?

4. Did you hear Hurley talking to Desmond at the end? “Uh, the hatch blew your clothes off!” 🙂

5. Why do Sawyer and Kate get a sentence of hard labor while Jack gets to lie around in his cell and have soup and sandwiches brought to him on a platter? Are they trying mind games with Jack because they think he has a mind? And Sawyer and Kate are fit only for breaking rocks and making plans that are monitored over the intercom? Shouldn’t they have some clue that their discussion might not be so private?

6. Did Ben introduce himself as Benjamin Lyons? As in, he’s a LIAR? I believe they have contact with the outside, but I don’t believe they can get off the island or out of its magnetic field or whatever it was that brought the raft back to the island. She-Who-Was-Shot-By-the-Glass-Ballerina wasn’t worried about the Losties escaping in their sailboat; she was only worried that they might find Other City.

7. Sun’s daddy is a bad guy. A really bad guy. Is Sun stupid or willfully blind? I guess she’s willfully ignoring and avoiding the subject.

8. Maybe all the Losties are somehow Enemies of Dharma, and so Dharma sent them to crash on the island/prison where they can’t get out and do any more damage to Dharma. And Sun’s dad, along with Desmond’s girlfriend’s dad, is a Dharma Director. It’s all some kind of criminal syndicate.

9. However, there are other things going on, too. The Dharma people only know that the Island is a convenient place to send unwanted people. But it’s also a healing place and a place where odd things happen to people. And the Others are just as confused about the real purpose of the island as anyone else.

10. Who pushed Sun’s special friend out the window? Or did he jump?

11. Is Sun really pregnant? Or is it a false pregnancy? Or another lie?

Anyone else see anything interesting or illuminating tonight?

Week 6 of World Geography: South Pacific Islands

Sep18


Music:
Ludwig Beethoven—Ninth Symphony
Ludwig Beethoven and the Chiming Tower Bells–Wheeler

Mission Study:
1. Bold Bearers of His Name: Kiayi Palus Tosari
2. BBOHN: Ruatoka & Tungane
3. BBOHN: Joseph Kam
4. BBOHN: Deu L. Mahandi
5. Window on the World: Indonesia

Poems:
Rime of the Ancient Mariner–Coleridge

Science:
Measurement

Nonfiction Read Alouds:
KIDS Discover: Equator

Fiction Read Alouds:
A Question of Yams–Repp
Born in the Year of Courage–Crofford

Picture Books:
Come to My Place: Meet My Island Family–Kamikmica

Elementary Readers:
Call It Courage—Sperry
Twenty-One Balloons—duBois
Kensuke’s Kingdom—Morpurgo
Island of the Blue Dolphins—O’Dell
Kaiulani: The People’s Princess–White

Movies:
South Pacific
Father Goose

Any other suggestions? Do any of you know of any really excellent books for children that are set in Indonesia, the Philippines, Fiji, Samoa, or any of the other 30,000 islands of Polynesia, Melanesia or Micronesia?