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When We Were Very Young by A.A. Milne

Jan8

Just as I was making my way through this collection of poems by Winnie-the-Pooh creator, A.A. Milne, I saw someone fretting about reading these very poems as a part of her homeschool curriculum (Ambleside Online). She says they have been reading the poems aloud, and “Honestly I don’t get it. The kids ask me what it was about and I honestly have no clue.”

I sympathize. A lot of poetry used to make no sense to me. Then I learned to just enjoy the rhyme and the rhythm and the language and the word pictures for what they are: just fun, although sometimes serious or thoughtful, turning things round and upside down, and looking at the world from a different perspective. It doesn’t need to all make sense. The poems in When We Were Very Young look at life from a child’s point of view, a British child of the early twentieth century, and that can be disorienting. But it can also be fun.

Have you ever thought about the clouds looking up at the green sky? What about a mother who gets lost because she won’t obey her son with a ridiculously long name? What’s the one thing you think you would remember from a trip to the zoo? (“But I gave buns to elephant when I went down to the zoo!“) And what is the matter with Mary Jane? And what would you do if you were king (or queen)?

These poems aren’t meant to be got (understood). They are just intended to be enjoyed. I recommend When Were Very Young and the other Milne collection of poems, Now We Are Six, for family read aloud to all ages. A poem a day keeps the doctor away. Just read the poem out loud in your very best rhythmic and ridiculous voice. No commentary or explanation. If they ask, ask them what they think. Just read and move along. Think of them as nursery rhymes, for that is what they are, and jolly good ones, too.

When We Were Very Young was first published in 1924, and I read it as part of our 1924 project. 100 years after its first appearance, this book of silly little poems is still a living book.

Round the Year in Pudding Lane by Sarah Addington

Jan6

A Guest Review from Jeannette Tulis of Green Door Children’s Heritage Library in Soddy Daisy, TN. Round the Year in Pudding Lane by Sarah Addington

This book was so clever, it made me laugh out loud. It’s an especially good book to read aloud if your children know a lot of nursery rhymes because there are so many references to classic Mother Goose rhymes, and they are worked into the story in such a charming fashion.

This is a story of one year in Pudding Lane where Santa Claus, a young boy, lives with his family: Mr. and Mrs. Claus, and the twins, plus a new baby. On Pudding Lane are also the Woman who lived in a Shoe with all her children, Old Mother Hubbard, The Candlestick Maker and, well, you get the idea.

Round the Year in Pudding Lane is a book full of kindness and generosity. Each chapter deals with a different holiday or season of the year. I especially enjoyed the last chapter of Christmas surprises. This book was published 100 years ago (1924), and I read the e-book free on Internet Archive. I had recently read another book by this author, The Boy Who Lived in Pudding Lane, which was about the boyhood of Santa Claus and how he grew up to be the famous personage of Christmas. It is available as a reprint. 

Red Caps and Lilies by Katharine Adams

Dec29

Another book first published in 1924, Red Caps and Lilies is historical fiction set during the first days of the French Revolution. An aristocrat family attempts to come to terms with the rapid descent into chaos and revolution that begins in Paris, 1789. Soon it is obvious that thirteen year old Marie Josephine, her older brother Lisle, and their beloved maman, along with servants and relatives and friends and other various and sundry folk, must flee Paris and even France to ensure their own safety. But who will help them? Whom can they trust? And will they be betrayed by their own pride and disbelief that their lives could possibly be in danger in the first place?

I could quibble with this historical novel from another generation. The plot is a little creaky at times, with lots of unexpected meetings and paths crossing at just the right time. The events of the family’s escape are told and then retold and retold again as the family gathers and each one recounts his adventures to the others. Some character growth is evident in Lisle, the proud aristocratic teen, who is humbled by his experiences, and in Grigge, the peasant who has good reason to hate the aristocratic family but finds reason to help them anyway, All in all, though it’s a harmless little story with a fairly happy ending.

I guess I’ve become accustomed, for better or for worse, to something a little more ambiguous and and a little more unpredictable. I knew from the beginning, or at least near the beginning, that the family would escape and that all would turn out well. There was just no real suspense in the story, even though I think the author tried to create some. Still, if you want a historical novel that give a young adult reader some introduction to the time of the French Revolution with good and noble characters and a few daring escapes, you could do worse than reading about these French “lilies” cast out to fend for themselves among the “red caps” of the mobs of Paris.

You can read this “oldie but goodie” on Internet Archive if your library doesn’t give you access to a copy.

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.

The Pearl Lagoon by Charles Nordhoff

Nov2

What are boys (and girls) reading in the way of adventure stories these days? Most of the the realistic fiction I read these days for middle grade readers is “problem fiction”: mom is sinking into depression and the child must cope with the fallout, or the main character is autistic or has a learning disability, or the bad developers are going to turn the local park into a parking lot. Nothing wrong with that, but where’s the adventure? Many young readers are into fantasy fiction, which does have the adventure element, but it’s not usually an adventure that the reader can imagine participating in himself.

Well, the novels of yesteryear for young people were full of adventure. Sure some of the adventures required a suspension of disbelief, as does this 1924 novel, The Pearl Lagoon. Nevertheless, excitement and danger used to be abundant in fiction written for young people. In The Pearl Lagoon, Charlie Selden, the protagonist and narrator, is an all-American boy of sixteen, living on a California ranch, isolated and starved for adventure, when his Uncle Harry, “a buyer of copra and pearl-shell in the South Seas,” comes along with an offer that can’t be refused. Uncle Harry wants to take Charlie back to the island of Iriatai in the South Pacific, to help him hunt for pearls in Iriatai Lagoon.

Needless to say, Charlie jumps at the chance to go with Uncle Harry, and the adventure begins. The book includes fishing trips with Charlie’s new Tahitian friend, Marama, a boar hunt, a near-deadly shark attack, some rather perilous pearl diving, exploration of a hidden cave, and a climactic encounter with pirates who intend to steal all of the pearls the divers have found. Charlie grows older and wiser over the course of a life changing and thrilling experience.

The South Sea islander characters in the story are portrayed as “noble savages.” If the musical South Pacific and other stories of that nature are offensively “colonizing” to you, then Nordhoff’s 1924 vintage portrayal of the islands and their culture and people will be, too. Charlie says of his friend Marama,

“My friend could read and write, but otherwise he had no education in our sense of the word. He knew nothing of history, algebra, or geometry, but his mind was a storehouse of complex fishing-lore, picked up unconsciously since babyhood and enabling him to provide himself and his family with food. And when you come to think of it, that is one of the purposes of all education.”

The people of Tahiti and Iriatai are described variously as natives, savages, brown, formerly heathen, and superstitious. But they are also admired for their skill, courage, honesty, and loyalty. Charlie’s uncle, like the author Nordhoff, has come to think of Tahiti as his home, “the most beautiful thing in all the world.” You can read the book and decide for yourself whether Nordhoff shows love and respect for the Tahitian and other South Sea island peoples or not. I believe he does, and I recommend the book as a stirring romantic adventure, in the best sense of the word romance. (Romance, according to Sir Walter Scott, the great romantic novelist: “a fictitious narrative in prose or verse; the interest of which turns upon marvellous and uncommon incidents.”)

The Pearl Lagoon is marvelous, and uncommon, indeed.

Billy Mink by Thornton Burgess

Oct26

Do you think children are traumatized by reading about animals who hunt and kill and eat other animals?If the book is straight nonfiction or even narrative story about a particular animal, I think most children will take the encounters between predator and prey rather matter of factly, as long as the descriptions aren’t too gruesome and bloody. Everybody has to eat, and it’s just true that larger animals often eat smaller ones.

However, in this first book of animal stories that I’ve ever read by Thornton Burgess, the animals behave like animals, but they are also anthropomorphized to some extent. Billy Mink hunts and is hunted by other predators, but he also wears clothing in the illustrations. He lives and acts like a mink, but he also thinks like a person. And he is given a human-like personality with feelings of delight and anger and frustration and satisfaction. Billy is an engaging little fellow, and the reader can’t help rooting for him to escape from the traps that are set for him by a hunter or from Hooty Owl who swoops down and surprises hime, almost catching him.

But the problem with this story, and perhaps Burgess’s books in general if they’re all similar to this one, is that both predator and prey are given names and personalities like Jumper Rabbit and Reddy Fox and Billy Mink. So as I read I wanted Billy Mink to escape his predators, and I wanted him to be able to eat and not starve to death, but I didn’t want him to actually eat Jumper Rabbit. (Spoiler: Jumper escapes, but several of the Robber Rats do not.) I suppose it’s okay for Billy Mink to eat a couple of rats. Nobody really loves rats, do they? But the whole hunter and hunted part of the story could be disturbing for some children.

All that said, Billy Mink is a well told little story. I can picture reading it aloud to a class of kindergartners or first graders. Burgess uses fairly simple sentence structure but somewhat challenging vocabulary to tell an engaging story. I wasn’t bored even though it’s a story for younger children, and I can see this series becoming one that a certain kind of child would fall in love with.

Billy Mink was published 100 years ago in 1924. It’s a good book, but not the kind of book I can imagine being published or popularized in the twenty first century. If you want to read something by Burgess with your children, I’d suggest starting with Mother West Wind’s Children or The Burgess Bird Book for Children, unless you’re particularly interested in minks.

All Aboard for Freedom! by Marie McSwigan

Aug11

The author of this book, Marie McSwigan, also wrote the popular World War 2 story, Snow Treasure, which is based on a true story of children outwitting the Nazis to rescue the country’s gold reserves. All Aboard for Freedom! is also based on a true story of a group of children outwitting oppressive authorities, this time in Czechoslovakia in 1951. And the oppressors are not Nazis but rather their own countrymen who have bought into the Communist regime aided by the Russians.

Ludmila Novak is foster mother to five children, orphaned by the war. The oldest, age thirteen, is Franta Kristufek. When the Communist authorities threaten to separate the children and their beloved foster mother from each other and send the children to state run institutions, Fran comes up with a plan to keep them all together. However, the plan involves a train, the help of adults, and a very dangerous, time-critical strategy for escape. Who can Fran trust to help him escape Czechoslovakia to freedom in Germany? How can he keep his plan a secret with four other children involved, the youngest only four years old? What if “they” (the Communists) come for the children before they can put their plan into action?

This book, published in 1954, is very 1950’s, very anti-communist and pro-American, and very exciting. The children, especially Fran, are believable but also intrepid and imaginative. The story reminds me of one of Helen MacInnes’ Cold War spy novels, but it’s written for children, not adults. And it pictures characters, a time, and a situation that we in the West are in danger of forgetting—the people of Czechoslovakia who suffered under communist rule and yearned for the freedom we now take for granted. One more plus to this book: Fran stops to pray for God’s guidance and protection several times during the story. And that resort to prayer seems quite believable and wise, too.

All Aboard for Freedom is a book for train lovers, patriots, and adventurers. Pair it with Snow Treasure for a double dose of good reading.

A Basket of Plums by Maud McKnight Lindsay

Jun4

This picture book is one of several that I purchased from The Good and the Beautiful recently when that publisher announced that they were going to close out all of their inventory of reprinted children’s books and in future only print original works written by living authors. I’ll say upfront that while the decision may make business sense, it’s a loss to the community. Older books (this one was originally published in 1915) are often treasures to be preserved and enjoyed by a generation that is starving for true, good, and beautiful literature. We are drowning in the new, the current, the flashy, and sometimes deceitful, but we need the the old, the tried, and the true.

Of course, not all old books are excellent, just as not all new books are sub-standard. However, A Basket of Plums would be a lovely addition to any library. Ms. Lindsay was a kindergarten teacher, founder of the first free kindergarten in Alabama. She wrote more than 18 books for children, and she was also a poet.

A Basket of Plums is a gentle story about an elderly woman who sets out from her home with a basket of plums, hoping to find apples for the apple dumpling that she wants for her supper. As the old woman walks along, looking for apples, she finds others in need of what she does have–plums and the things she trades for–but it takes a bit of time, and a few bargains, to find the apples for her apple dumpling.

The illustrations in this modern edition of Ms. LIndsay’s story, by a modern illustrator, Dan Burr, are colorful, photo-realistic paintings that complement the quaint old-fashioned tone of the story. The title old woman in Mr. Burr’s pictures feels like a real grandmotherly figure and at the same she has a storybook quality that goes with the story. That’s a a hard combination to pull off, but Mr. Burr does it beautifully.

If you can find a copy–I have one in my library now— enjoy reading this story to both preschoolers and older children. Other stories about bargaining and trading and barter include Oxcart Man by Donald Hall, A Bargain for Frances by Russell Hoban, Monkey for Sale by Sanna Stanley, and for older children (middle elementary) The Toothpaste Millionaire by Jean Merrill and Alvin’s Swap Shop by Clifford B. Hicks. Oh, I checked and as of June 4, 2023, The Good and the Beautiful has a few copies of A Basket of Plums left. I recommend you purchase a copy now if you’re interested.

The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles

Apr3

I liked this book even better than I did A Gentleman in Moscow, the only other book by Towles I’ve read. I think I need to read Rules of Civility next. Mr. Towles is good at spinning a yarn and tying all the loose ends together at the end. BUT as much as I liked the story and the characters and the way everything came together, I’m still not sure about the ending. I feel as if Towles took a couple of my favorite people and corrupted them, just a little, or maybe a lot. I’m worried about what will happen to these characters after the story ends. I can’t say much more about that without spoiling the ending. So, if you’ve read The Lincoln Highway and you have some reassurance to give me, put it in the comments. I could use the encouragement that everything is going to be okay with these people in their new life after they travel the Lincoln Highway.

The story is set in June, 1954. Eighteen year old Emmett Watson has just returned home from a prison work farm where he was serving a sentence of fifteen months for involuntary manslaughter. Emmett’s father has recently died, his mother deserted them long ago, and Emmett is now responsible for his eight year old brother Billy. Emmett has a plan to start life anew. Billy also has a plan. And the two inmates who hid in the trunk of the warden’s car that brought Emmett home have a completely different plan.

The book could have turned into a comedy, and it borders on the absurd. However, there are some rather dark events to come, along with the ridiculous. Emmett is determined to go straight and control the temper that got him into trouble in the first place. Billy is an inordinate rule-follower with a child’s penchant for literal and concrete thinking. But the two brothers are caught up in a situation where keeping to the letter of the law and self-control in the face of violence and deceit won’t be enough to save them. So the question is how far can you bend the rules of decency and honesty and nonviolence before you become the criminals you’re trying to escape from?

It’s a good story told from several different points of view. It does take the reader inside the mind of an amoral but likable(?) sociopath and of a confused and mentally incapacitated young man, but you’re never tempted to actually condone wrongdoing or accept the excuses of those who break the law. Until maybe at the end. I’m still not sure about that ending, not even after reading this interview with author Amor Towles. If you read it, let me know what you think.

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!