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Theras and His Town by Caroline Dale Snedeker

Jan10

This fiction book recommended for children grades 5+ begins with the author very obviously teaching her child readers about Ancient Greece and Ancient Greek culture, Athens in particular. We get short sections about how seven year old Theras of Athens goes to school, goes to the marketplace, worships Athena on the Acropolis, etc. Finally, something actually happens, and Theras is in danger. But that episode ends quickly and happily, and we are back to Theras’ daily life: Theras and his mother, Theras and his father, Theras wants to become a soldier, etc.

The book is written in three parts, and the second part is about how Theras goes to live in Sparta, obviously written to contrast life in Athens with life in Sparta. Athens is much better. Theras, and we along with him, get to experience what it’s like to be a Spartan boy. Then in part three we get a travelogue, an exciting journey but a travelogue nonetheless, through Ancient Greece with stops in Orestium, Mantinea, Corinth, the Bay of Salamis, and Eleusis before Theras and his friend Abas finally return to Athens. This third part of the book is actually the best with rather stirring adventures and mishaps and near escapes, but it still feels like a teaching book rather than a storybook.

I can see why this book is recommended in many homeschool curricula. There is a dearth of good historical fiction set in Ancient Greece. And I did enjoy learning about and being reminded of the way of life in the Greek cities of Athens and Sparta around the time of Pericles and Herodotus, who both make an appearance in the book. But to say that this book is a “living book” with excellent writing and living ideas would be a stretch. Educational, yes. Enjoyable, maybe. Life-giving, not really.

There are some ideas that parents may want to discuss with their children who are reading about Theras and Athens and Sparta and the rest. For instance, when Theras and his father visit the temple of Athena, the author tells us that the Athenians believed that Athena frequently visited and blessed her favored city of Athens and its citizens:

“All this Theras believed. But you must not think him foolish for so believing. Athena was his goddess. The wise, grown-up men in Athens believed in her, respected her, and loved her. And often they prayed to Athena so truly and thought her so good and kind that their prayers reached to the true God after all.”

I didn’t care for the pedantic style of the writing in this book, a style that I didn’t find so prominent in the other (later published) books that I have read by the same author. Theras is written for a younger audience than either The White Isle or The Forgotten Daughter, both books by Snedeker that I read and reviewed. I think Ms. Snedeker either improved in her writing skills or was just better at writing for an older audience. Theras and His Town is OK, but just not excellent or very memorable.

Alexander the Great by John Gunther

Mar23

This biography is the current book that the Facebook reading group Read All the Landmarks is reading. I finished this book just as I was listening to an interview with a well-known celebrity pastor who lost his job, platform, family and reputation because of gross sin on his part. The two stories, that of Alexander and that of the pastor, reminded me of one another. In the interview, someone quoted someone (vague enough?) to the effect that “sometimes our talents and charisma put us in places that our character is not developed enough to handle.” Alexander certainly had the talent and the attractiveness and even the courage to conquer the known world, but he couldn’t handle the temptations and the sheer magnitude of the power he attained.

Actually most of us find ourselves in places of responsibility or leadership that we are just not equipped to handle. Had Alexander been wise enough and humble enough to rely on the God who makes Himself known through all creation, or had he even listened more to his old teacher, Aristotle, he might have avoided his final years of debauchery and disappointment and even his untimely death at the age of thirty-two. (He also would have done well to have laid off the liquor. If John Gunther were a temperance promoter, he could not have written a better cautionary tale about the evils of alcohol than this biography of Alexander the Great who turned into Alexander the Mad Drunkard.)

Because I was interested in gaining an alternative view of Alexander’s life and career, I pulled down another book from shelves, History of Alexander the Great by Jacob Abbot. Part of Abbott’s Makers of History series, this biography was published in 1849, about 100 years before Gunther’s Landmark history (1953). In the preface to Abbott’s book, he says the series was meant for young people between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five who wish to be educated about the great events and people of history. The Landmark history books are written for a younger audience, middle grades or ages ten to fifteen, although they can be enjoyed by those of us who are much older than that. I wondered, “How would a nineteenth century biographer see Alexander’s life in contrast to a children’s writer of the twentieth century?”

Abbott begins by saying: “The secret of Alexander’s success was his character. He possessed a certain combination of mental and personal attractions, which in every age gives to those who exhibit it a mysterious and almost unbounded ascendancy over all with their influence.” Gunther would agree that Alexander started out well and possessed a great many gifts and a certain charisma, but Gunther emphasizes that even as a young man, Alexander’s strengths were balanced by his weaknesses: “Like most creative people, he was full of contrasts. He was affectionate, generous and loyal. . . He never spared himself, he liked to do services for others, and he loved his friends. But—this is the other side—he had no control of his temper and, in later life, often went into crazy fits of debauchery. Worst of all he showed great cruelty on many occasions.”

Things I learned about Alexander, from both Abbott and Gunther:

Alexander loved Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. He had a copy of Homer’s epics, given to him by his teacher Aristotle, that he carried with him on all his campaigns. For most of those twelve years of battle and conquest, he kept his copy of Homer in a jeweled casket that he took form the Persians as part of the spoils of war.

When Alexander was only eighteen, he and his father, Phillip of Macedon, had a fight at a feast, and Alexander made fun of Phillip and called him a “drunk who cannot get across the floor without tumbling down”. Phillip was indeed drunk at the time, and Alexander was an insolent son. Father and son reconciled just before Phillip was assassinated by a man called Pausanias.

Alexander became more and more power-mad and dissolute and cruel and alcoholic as he conquered more and more territory. After he died at the age of thirty-two, his “empire” fell apart. It took a great deal of time for the various parts of his territory to recover from the disaster that was Alexander sweeping through the land.

Abbott ends his book with these words: “Alexander earned well the name and reputation of THE GREAT. He was truly great in all those powers and capacities that can elevate one man above his fellows. We cannot help applauding the extraordinary energy of his genius, though we condemn the selfish and cruel ends to which his life was devoted. He was simply a robber, but yet a robber on so vast a scale, that mankind, in contemplating his career, have generally lost sight of the wickedness of his crimes in their admiration of the enormous magnitude of the scale on which they were perpetrated.”

“Simply a robber” is not the legacy I would want to leave, no matter how “great” a robber i might be.

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?

The Exploits of Xenophon by Geoffrey Household

Mar1

So I finished this Landmark history book last night, and I really found it absorbing. Apparently, it’s a famous story that comes from the Anabasis by Xenophon, but my ancient Greek history is a little rusty. I’ve heard of Xenophon, but I didn’t know anything about this little incident. It’s really all about this orphaned Greek army marching all over Asia Minor and trying to survive and get back home. They encounter multiple enemies, raging rivers, treachery, harsh winter weather, and more treachery and finally the army does make it back to Greece, or at least near-Greece, maybe Thrace/Bulgaria, just across the Dardanelles from Constantinople?

I needed a better map in my head to follow all of the wanderings of the Greek army called the “Ten Thousand” because supposedly there were that many Greek soldiers in this super-duper Greek fighting force of mercenaries who were tricked into fighting for the younger brother, Cyrus, of the Persian emperor, Ataxerxes, in Cyrus’s attempt to take over his brother’s throne. The Greeks won the battle for Cyrus, but while they were enjoying a little plundering, Artaxerxes managed to kill Cyrus. So they became an army without a mission, trapped deep in enemy territory, with no way to get home safely. Artaxerxes just wanted to get rid of them, and so he allowed them to march north through Kurdistan and Armenia and then west to the Black Sea. Not that the Persians didn’t harass the Ten Thousand as much as possible, and then the Kurds were another problem, and the rivers and snows and mountains, and then more Persians and other “wild tribes.”

Xenophon apparently wrote the Anabasis, the story of the March of the Ten Thousand, in the third person, writing about how “Xenophon did this” and “Xenophon decided that”. He probably wrote his masterpiece that way to “distance himself as a subject, from himself as a writer,” according to Wikipedia. Mr. Household chose to put the whole story into first person and write it from Xenophon’s point of view, a perspective that is already in the original, just disguised a bit. I’m not sure why Household switches the narrative to first person, but it does make the story more immediate and modern-sounding. We’re rather fond of first person memoir in our day and time.

Household also says in the preface to the book that he modernizes some of Xenophon’s style and cut the story for this juvenile edition to quarter of its original length. However, all of the content is pure Xenophon. I think it would be fascinating to follow the Ten Thousand on their journey on a map of ancient Mesopotamia, Turkey, and Greece, and read this slimmed down version of the Anabasis aloud as a family—especially if you have a family of adventurers.

A few random facts, courtesy of Wikipedia:

“Traditionally Anabasis is one of the first unabridged texts studied by students of classical Greek, because of its clear and unadorned style.”

“The cry of Xenophon’s soldiers when they meet the sea is mentioned by the narrator of Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864), when their expedition discovers an underground ocean. The famous cry also provides the title of Iris Murdoch’s Booker Prize-winning novel, The Sea, the Sea (1978).”

Author Geoffrey Household served in British Intelligence during World War II in Romania, Greece and the Middle East. He was best known for his suspense novels, especially one called Rogue Male. Between the World Wars, he worked in the banking business in Romania, moved to Spain to sell bananas for United Fruit Company, and came to New York and wrote radio plays for children for CBS.

I really wish I knew more about how Bennett Cerf found and assigned different authors to write the books in the Landmark history series. Cerf on hiring authors: “I decided not to get authors of children’s books, but the most important authors in the country.” How did Mr. Household come to Cerf’s and Random House’s attention, I wonder?

Oh, by the way, Exploits of Xenophon is one of the more rare titles in the Landmark history series. It’s listed at anywhere from $30.00 to $80.00, used, at Amazon.

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?

Web of Traitors by Geoffrey Trease

Mar21

A mysterious plot to overthrow the democracy of Athens is foiled by young Alexis and his friend Corinna. The story includes appearances by Socrates, Plato and Xenophon, competition at the annual Athenian drama festival, and an exciting torch race through the countryside near Athens. Alexis, the Athenian second son of an Athenian nobleman, and Corinna, alien daughter of a cook and innkeeper, form an unlikely friendship when they meet out in the country near Alexis’s father’s farm. And the two of them discover that that the Spartans are in league with an exiled Athenian traitor to overthrow the Council and install themselves as dictators.

Subtitled “An Adventure Story of Ancient Athens” and originally published in England as The Crown of Violet in 1952, Web of Traitors is a good accompaniment to the study of ancient Greece in history. The student who reads this “adventure story” will be introduced to Athenian theater and sport, to the rivalry between Athens and Sparta, and to the culture and customs of Athens. However, this novel is not just a history book in disguise. The characters are fun and fresh and believable, and the story itself is intriguing enough to hold the interest of middle school readers, even of those who go into the novel with very little knowledge of interest in ancient Athens.

According to Jan Bloom’s author guide, Who Then Should We Read?, Geoffrey Trease, a British children’s author with a background in the classics and in theater, “once commented that he could write about any period if he could figure out what made those people laugh.” He wrote more than fifty historical novels for middle grade and young adult readers, set in all different time periods from the Athens of Socrates and Plato to the time of Shakespeare (Cue for Treason) to the French revolution (Victory at Valmy). His novels are said to combine historical accuracy, adventure, and a love of drama to make great reads.

Here are a few of Trease’s novels, along with the setting of each, that I would like to read and to own for my library:

Message to Hadrian: Roman Britain.
Escape to King Alfred: Ninth century during the reign of Alfred the Great, King of Wessex.
Cue for Treason: Shakespeare’s England. I already own this one and plan to read it next.
The Silken Secret: Eighteenth century London and the beginnings of silk manufacture in England.
Victory at Valmy: French Revolution.
The Iron Tsar: St. Petersburg during the reign of Czar Nicholas I.
The White Nights of St. Petersburg: 1916, the Russian Revolution.
No Boats on Bannermere: contemporary with publication in the 1940’s.

In fact, I’m excited about reading as many of the books of Geoffrey Trease as I can get my hands on. I like this first book of his that I’ve read far better than I enjoyed the few books by G.A. Henty that I’ve read. Henty is popular among homeschoolers, but I think for exciting and informative historical fiction, I may decide that Trease is better.

Mikis and the Donkey by Bibi Dumon Tak

Apr15

This 89-page little gem of a story takes place in Corfu, a Greek island in the Mediterranean, and it’s about a boy and his donkey. Well, it’s really his grandfather’s donkey. The boy Mikis, however, is the one who names the donkey Tsaki and the one who cares for Tsaki when he is hurt and the one who insists on building Tsaki a new stable and the one who finds Tsaki a lady-friend.

This one reminded me of Red Sails to Capri by Ann Weil, a 1953 Newbery honor book: Mediterranean island, simple family life and family dynamics, children exploring the island and learning about their heritage and their place in their culture. Mikis and the Donkey also won an award from the ALSC, the Batchelder Award for children’s books originally published in another language and translated into English.

Anyway, it’s a lovely book, and I wish I had a copy for my library. It’s definitely going on my wishlist.