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Gem Books from 100 Years Past: 1924

Apr23

It was indeed a different era. What was going on in 1924 when these books were being published and read? The 1924 Paris Olympics, Leopold and Loeb murders, the premiere of Rhapsody in Blue by Gershwin. Vladimir Lenin died, and Mallory and Irvine disappeared while attempting to summit Mt. Everest. Robert Frost won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, and crossword puzzles were all the rage after Simon snd Schuster published their first book of crosswords.

As far children’s literature was concerned, the field of books written especially for children was just coming into its own. The Horn Book Magazine, the oldest bimonthly magazine dedicated to reviewing children’s literature, was founded in Boston in 1924. The Newbery Medal for “the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children” was only a couple of years old. The medal-winning book for 1925 (published in 1924) was Tales from Silver Lands, a book of Central and South American folktales, collected and recorded by Charles Finger. Two other 1924 books were “runners-up” for the Newbery: The Dream Coach by Anne Parish and Nicholas: A Manhattan Christmas Story by New York Public Library’s head children’s librarian, Anne Carroll Moore.

Unfortunately, all three Newbery-honored books from 1924 seem to me to be not horrible, but forgettable. The South American folktales are perhaps of interest to scholars and storytellers, but I doubt the average child would glom onto them. The other two books are more the sort of books that adults think children should like than they are the kind of story that children do enjoy.

Still, 1924 was a good year for children’s books. Here’s a list, with brief annotations, of eight real gems from 1924. Several of these are not in print, but I would love to see them come back.

To see more books from 1924, with links to reviews, check out this post from the beginning of our 1924 Project.

Carolina’s Courage by Elizabeth Yates

Apr12

Carolina and her family, the Putnams, are leaving their New Hampshire farm to go west to Nebraska Territory. It’s a long way, and there are many things they must take with them in their wagon to enable their new start in the wilderness. Therefore, many, many things, everything unnecessary or replaceable, must be left behind. Carolina can only take one very precious item, her beautiful china doll, Lydia-Lou.

This book is a short and easy to read novel about going west. It clocks in at 131 pages, and every page is delightful. I’m not sure how old Carolina is as the story begins, old enough to go to school but young enough to love and talk to her doll, maybe six or seven years old. She has an older brother, Mark, and a father who’s determined to start anew in Nebraska Territory, and a mother who’s willing to follow her husband’s lead despite the sacrifices that they all must make to get there.

I loved the fact that the Putnam family have a deep faith in God that becomes a natural part of the story. “In the village there was a white church with a slender spire, and the Putnam family went every Sunday morning.”

“[In] the safest place of all the space in the wagon, the driest, and the most accessible. There the Bible was laid, wrapped in a soft woolen shawl.”

“We’ll have need to keep an edge to our minds,” he said, ” and we’ll do it best with the Bible.”

“God blessed our coming into this house fifteen years ago,” John Putnam said, and it was hard to tell whether he was praying or making a last entry in some invisible book. “He blessed us with Mark, and later on with Carolina. Now may He bless our going out as we seek another land and work for our hands.”

Those are just a few of the times that the book mentions the prayers and faith of Carolina’s family as they travel across the country. And I thought that the story was well crafted to show that the Putnam family, although they had many wonderful adventures on their way to a new land, also had to make many sacrifices to get there safely. And perhaps Carolina is called on to make the biggest sacrifice of all.

Elizabeth Yates was such a talented and faith-filled author of beautiful books for children. I haven’t read them all yet, but I have the following books by this author in my library. And I do plan to read them all. Highly recommended author.

  • Iceland Adventure. Fifteen-year-old Michael and his fourteen-year-old sister Merry accompany their adventurous Uncle Tony to Iceland, where they explore the remote mountainous countryside in search of a long-lost relative of one of their uncle’s friends.
  • Swiss Holiday. A visit to Switzerland with their adventurous Uncle Tony brings Michael and Meredith new friends and an introduction to the art of mountain climbing.
  • Hue and Cry. Jared Austin, staunch member of the mutual protection society that defends his 1830s New Hampshire community against thieves, tries to temper justice with mercy when his deaf daughter Melody befriends a young Irish immigrant who has stolen a horse.
  • A Place for Peter. Thirteen-year-old Peter gets a chance to earn his doubting father’s trust when he successfully handles the important task of tapping the sugar maples to make syrup for their mountain farm.
  • Sarah Whitcher’s Story. The community searches for a young girl lost in a New Hampshire forest in the pioneer days. Based on a true story.
  • The Journeyman. One day a journeyman painter visits a quiet New Hampshire farm, and his unexpected offer sets Jared aglow with excitement. He starts off on an adventure that takes him miles from home and into experiences that bring him to manhood and deepen his faith.
  • Mountain Born. A boy in a family of sheep farmers raises a black lamb to be the leader of the flock. 1944 Newbery Honor book.
  • Amos Fortune, Free Man. The life of an eighteenth-century African prince who, after being captured by slave traders, was brought to Massachusetts where he was enslaved until he was able to buy his freedom at the age of sixty. 1951 Newbery Medal winner.

Across Five Aprils by Irene Hunt

Apr10

Across Five Aprils is a U.S. Civil War novel and another coming of age story.. When the story begins, Jethro Creighton is a nine year old farm boy, the youngest of a large family, in southern Illinois. It’s 1861, the war is about to begin, and any reader who knows anything about that war knows that Jethro is going to have to grow up fast. As Jethro’s three older brothers and his cousin leave to go to war, the burden of the farm falls on Jethro’s shoulders. His father becomes disabled, and even more pressure is put upon Jethro to act like a man.

I really like this photo realistic cover picture on the paperback reprint edition of this book, by the way. Jethro looks like a nine, ten, eleven year boy who is looking out into the future and becoming a man, with the war in the background pushing him forward.

Through letters to home from Jethro’s older brothers and newspaper accounts that Jethro follows assiduously, readers see the battles and the politics of the Civil War from the public perspective as well as from the point of view of a boy trying to understand the war and all of its ramifications. For Jethro it’s mostly a story of battles won and lost and generals who are one day heroes and the next, failures. And president himself, “Old Abe” or Mr. Lincoln in more polite terms, is first thought to be too slow and too careful and later not careful enough, until the book finally ends with the greatest tragedy of the war, Lincoln’s assassination.

The “five Aprils” of the title are the five Aprils of the war, 1861-1865, and Jethro does become a man over those five years, even though he’s only fourteen years old as the book comes to a close. The language might be somewhat challenging for some young readers. The characters speak in a southern dialect that feels authentic to me and adds to the atmosphere of rural farm people looking on and trying to fathom a war that was and still is in some ways beyond understanding. This book would be high on my list of recommendations for children studying the Civil War to get an overview of the war in a fictional format. Not graphically violent, but somewhat tragic, with hope underlying.

Edge of Manhood by Thomas Fall

Apr9

“Thomas Fall was born in the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas in a community with many Cherokee Indians. and grew up in western Oklahoma among many families of Plains Indians.”  The author may have had some Native American ancestry himself. Edge of Manhood tells the story of See-a-way, a Shawnee boy growing up in Indian Territory (Oklahoma) at the end of the nineteenth century.

“This story of a Shawnee Indian boy’s view of the end of the age of the American Indian does not depict the life of any person living or dead. All the episodes and characters are imaginary.

Such a story might actually have happened in the 1870’s. It was during this period that wester expansion overran the Indian Territory (now the state of Oklahoma) where dozens of Indian tribes from the South, East and North of the United States had already been pushed by the white man. It was here that railroads, and consequently commerce, finally caught up with the American frontier.”

~Author’s Note, Thomas Fall
Version 1.0.0

Cultural assimilation, the violent clash of cultures, colonization, war, peace, revenge, forgiveness—we are still discussing and debating these very issues in our own day and time. Edge of Manhood places these ideas and controversies within a specific place, the Indian Territory, and with an individual, See-a-way, in a specific culture, the Shawnee tribe of Native Americans. But the themes are universal.

See-a-way must decide, first of all, whether to cling to his own culture and traditions, to the exclusion of the new ways of the white man. At first, it seems to be an easy decision. See-a-way is determined to never go to the white man’s (Quaker) school or learn their ways. In fact, See-a-way’s burning desire is to shoot a white man, even though he has never met any white people. Even his frenemy from the Pottawatomie tribe, Blue Eagle, tells him: “See-a-way, you are still more stupid even than the sheep and the cow. You should have been born a naked Indian of the plains, so you could run around in a breechclout and do war dances and raid the white people all your life. The poor Plains Indians will be wiped out completely if they do not realize that they must learn the white man’s way.” But See-a-way is “furious” at this reprimand and becomes even more so when his family experiences even more tragedy and injustice at the hands of the white men.

Now See-a-way has another choice to make: revenge or surrender and forgiveness. Again, See-a-way chooses to act as most of us would act, at the behest of his anger and desire for retribution. I won’t spoil the ending for you, but suffice it to say, See-a-way does creep toward the edge of manhood with some help from his own people and from his people’s enemies, the Pottawatomie and even the white men.

This coming of age story is short, only eighty-eight pages long, but it is full of wisdom and excellent storytelling. Students who are studying the U.S. western expansion and the defeat and the near destruction of the Native American tribes who lived in the Great Plains would do well to be introduced to See-a-way and his growth into manhood. The book would be especially good for boys, and as I said before, it could apply to current day clashes and issues, although no situation in history is exactly analogous to another or reenacted in exactly the same way again. Bethlehem Books’ In Review, Winter 1996, The Move West–Exploration and Frontier Life in North America lists this book and recommends it as “of interest for grades 5-8.”

Ribsy by Beverly Cleary

Apr6

To be completely honest and upfront, I must say that I am and always have been a big fan of Beverly Cleary’s many middle grade fiction books. I don’t think that the characters–Henry Huggins, Beezus and Ramona Quimby, and all the rest of the crew on Klickitat Street—are egregiously disrespectful or naughty or that they provide bad role models for children. It doesn’t bother me that they use the words “dumb” and “stupid” frequently, as children did in the 1950’s and 60’s, before those became bad words, not to be uttered by good children. Stories aren’t meant to be treatises on good behavior in disguise; they are meant to be stories that help us understand the world around us and ourselves and others and sometimes make us laugh (or cry).

So, in spite of the fact that I am not a dog person, I loved reading this deceptively simple story about Ribsy, “a plain ordinary city dog, the kind of dog that strangers usually called Mutt or Pooch. They always called him this in a friendly way, because Ribsy was a friendly dog.” The book, appropriate for ages seven to eleven, tells the story of how that friendly dog, Ribsy, who belonged to the boy Henry Huggins, got lost and found his way home. It could be allegorical: Ribsy is like all of us humans who get lost sometimes, partly because of our own stupid mistakes and partly through no fault of our own. Ribsy searches diligently for Henry at first, but a dog’s memory is inconsistent. Sometimes Ribsy forgets all about Henry Huggins and his true home. Then, something happens to make Ribsy remember that Henry is his true owner and that he needs to get home.

So, yes, an adult reader (like me) could find allegory or lessons in the story, but I think most people will just enjoy Ribsy for what it is, a funny dog story, and one in which the dog protagonist does not die or suffer serious injury. Ribsy wanders about, looking for Henry, in a world that’s mostly friendly to him because he’s a friendly dog. There’s always someone around to share a sandwich or a hot dog with Ribsy until he finally manages to get back to Henry.

Our twentieth century world is a scary place, and maybe children do need to encounter dragons and monsters and even the suffering of animals in books where they can learn how to face those dangers and griefs inside a story. But the world can also be a friendly place, and full of humor, and helping hands, and joyful reunions. And maybe we need to see that side of things even more than we need a vision of the darkness. Ribsy, published in 1964, during my own childhood, recreates that friendly world in which a stray dog could wander into a classroom at the local elementary school, take up residence in the second grade, and be fed and loved for a while before going off on his way home.

The Wheel on the School by Meindert DeJong

Apr4

This winner of the 1955 Newbery Award Medal is a winner indeed. The children of Shora, a small village on the Netherlands coast, all six of them, realize one day that the storks never come to Shora to nest. Storks nest on the roofs of houses in other neighboring villages, but not in Shora.

So, the children, along with their schoolteacher, team up to find out why the storks don’t nest in Shora and to fix it so that they do. The project is a difficult one, and the children intend to work hard to bring the storks, or at least one stork, to Shora as the birds begin to migrate to the Netherlands from their homes in Africa. Their teacher tells them to begin by wondering:

“We can’t think much when we don’t know much. But we can wonder! From now until tomorrow morning when you come to school again, will you do that? Will you wonder why and wonder why? Will you wonder why storks don’t come to Shora to build their nests on the roof the way they do in all the villages around? For sometimes when we wonder, we can make things begin to happen.”

p.6

Meindert DeJong has such a way with words, and the black and white drawings in this book by Maurice Sendak are just right, not too intrusive so that readers have room to wonder and create their own pictures of the story but with enough detail so that we can know what a stork looks like or what kind of wheel the children are looking for.

Such a good read aloud selection! But if you don’t have time to read it aloud, introduce the first chapter or two at least, and I believe most children would be drawn into the story. The culture is a bit different from American twenty-first century culture. The children are more “free range”, and the adults are both more irascible and more helpful and approachable than adults are in my city/suburban community. Shora is a small village, after all. But children are children everywhere, and these six Dutch children are imaginative, cooperative, and most of all persistent. And sometimes children with those qualities can make things begin to happen.

The Easter Cat by Meindert DeJong

Mar26

Mr. DeJong is fast becoming one of my favorite children’s authors of all time. His books are usually animal stories, often child-centered, with quite a lot of insight into the way a child thinks and acts. The books were written, set, and published in the 1950’s and 60’s, and the children in the stories are therefore much more free to roam, to play, to wonder, and yes, to get into trouble. These children that DeJong portrays are imperfect; they sometimes tell lies or disobey parents and other authorities. They wonder about things that they dare not ask adults. They make unwise decisions.

But these children are real, believable, and I daresay lovable. They don’t have special powers with which they can save the world. They don’t engage in community action in order to save the trees or the community center or whatever is threatened by the Big, Bad Developers. Millicent in The Easter Cat is just a little girl who wants a pet cat. However, her mother’s allergy to cats makes that wish impossible to fulfill. So Millicent plays with the stray cats in the alley, even feeds them, even though her mother has forbidden it.

Then, early on Easter Sunday morning, Millicent finds a cat, inside her house, next to her Easter basket. Could it be that mother has gotten over her allergy? Could this beautiful blue Siamese cat be the gift that Millicent has always longed for? And if he’s not an Easter surprise, can she somehow keep him anyway?

If you want the children in your books to be superheroes or obedient little automatons, The Easter Cat isn’t the book for you. Millicent certainly isn’t a bad child, but she is cat-obsessed. Her deep desire to love and care for a cat of her own can be identified with by many children, and any fellow cat lover will enjoy this story. The tale also includes a secret hide-out, a favorite story element of mine. So I recommend it to readers of Easter stories and animal stories and secret hiding place stories and family stories of all kinds.

Oh, it’s also short, a little over 100 pages. For those who like it short and sweet.

The Book of Three by Lloyd Alexander

Feb23

Whenever I am asked for a book suggestion in the vein of or as a follow up to Narnia or Tolkien, my first question is always, “Have you read Lloyd Alexander’s Prydain Chronicles?” And yet, I haven’t read these five books in the Prydain series, beginning with The Book of Three, in many, many years. Since I am working on reading children’s books published in 1964, sixty years ago, it was definitely time for a reread: The Book of Three was first published in 1964.

I love Lloyd Alexander’s quirky, idiosyncratic characters:

  • Taran, Assistant Pig-Keeper, is the immature, rash, and bumbling sort-of-hero of the story. Well, if not the hero, at least he’s the main character, and he’s about to go on an epic hero’s journey, even if he is only an Assistant Pig-Keeper.
  • Hen Wen, the oracular pig is lost. Can the rag-tag group that gathers around Taran help him find Hen Wen and warn the good guys of impending danger?
  • Prince Gwydion, the older and true hero, still relies on Taran and his friends to help save the kingdom of Prydain from the evil Arawn and his henchman, the Horned King.
  • Eilonwy, girl child or young woman or enchantress, speaks in metaphors and similes and always keeps Taran humble with her sharp observations.
  • Fflewddur Fflam, the bard who used to be a king. His harp is magical in the music it produces and in its response to the exaggerated stories that Fflewddur tells.
  • Gurgi, beast-man or man-beast, is a brave though smelly companion whose constant talk of “crunchings and munchings” and “walkings and stalkings” and “seekings and peekings” adds a memorable bit of spice and humor to the story.
  • Doli is the irascible dwarf guide who can’t manage to turn himself invisible no matter how long and hard he holds his breath.
  • Dallben, who only enters the story at the beginning and at the end, is Taran’s wizard mentor, three hundred and seventy-nine years old and devoted to the work of meditation, “an occupation so exhausting he could accomplish it only by lying down and closing his eyes” for an hour and a half every morning and evening.

The characters and the setting are drawn from Welsh legend and mythology, just as Tolkien’s Middle Earth was taken somewhat from Norse and Finnish mythology. “Arawn, the dread Lord of Annuvin, comes from the Mabinogion, the classic collection of Welsh legends, though in Prydain he is considerably more villainous.” I think Alexander was also influenced by Tolkien, although he never says so, never even admits to having read LOTR. And the stories of Prydain are deeply influenced by the existentialism of Jean Paul Sartre; Lloyd Alexander was the first person to translate Sartre’s novel Nausea into English.

Actually, the plot is somewhat predictable: Young Taran goes on a journey with a mission to save the land of Prydain from the forces of evil. On the way he meets many obstacles and dangers but also finds unexpected helpers and friends.The evil is defeated, temporarily, but of course not conclusively, since there are four more books to come in the series. In some series this ending-not-ending would be irritating, but this story is more about the characters and their growth and the humor and the serious philosophical and even religious journey that each of them is taking. (But there is really no religion in these books. They are more existentialist, about finding out the depths of your own character and identity, but not in an annoying way?)

Anyway, I’m just now beginning my 1964 journey. I may find other books from that year that equal or even better Mr. Alexander’s first entry into the world of Prydain. But I would guess that The Book of Three will be among the top ten books of 1964, at the very least. Highly recommended.

“Most of us are called on to perform tasks far beyond what we can do. Our capabilities seldom match our aspirations, and we are often woefully unprepared. To this extent, we are all Assistant Pig-Keepers at heart.”

~Lloyd Alexander, Author’s Note at the beginning of The Book of Three

Along Came a Dog by Meindert DeJong

Feb10

A brown, toeless hen and a servile, stray dog become friends as the dog becomes the guardian and protector of the injured hen. The animals in this book are real, hardly anthropomorphized at all. The dog follows his natural instinct to serve and obey and protect. The hen follows her natural bent to lay eggs and protect them from all danger. And the man in the story is slow to understand what is really happening in his barnyard right under his nose.

This story would appeal to any child who lives on a farm, especially if that farm has chickens. The chicken in the story are quite unintelligent, and yet the brown hen, at least is somewhat endearing and becomes the man’s pet as well as the dog’s “purpose and duty.” I just loved the idea that this story could possibly really happen. The animals think animal thoughts, not human ones, and although the man in the story talks to his animals, he is unlike Dr. Doolittle. The animals don’t talk back, and the man doesn’t really understand much of what drives them to act as they do.

This book is the fourth one I’ve read by Mr. DeJong about animals, pets. Shadrach the Rabbit, Candy and Wayfarer the dogs, and the unnamed dog and hen in this story all have something in common. They all act as animals do, no magical or talking pets in these books, and yet each of them has its own personality and its own affections. I’m more and more impressed by Meindert DeJong’s ability to see inside the mind of both children and animals and to write about them in a way that feels natural and wise and insightful.

Journey From Peppermint Street by Meindert DeJong

Feb9

Mr. DeJong has a talent for getting inside the mind of a child and writing about the imaginations and embarrassments and fears and delights and misapprehensions and insights that run through a child’s thoughts. In Journey From Peppermint Street, eight year old Siebren, a little Dutch boy, goes on a journey with his grandfather, and he experiences all of the above, in addition to much adventure, as we readers walk along with him on a trip from Weirom, near the coast of Holland, to his great-aunt’s monastery home near an inland swamp full of frogs and fireflies and giant pike.

At first the story seems rather mundane. Siebren walks along behind Grandfather, and Siebren’s thoughts run hither and thither. Siebren talks a lot, but he also listens carefully, although not with full understanding. When Grandfather calls the miller with whom he has been feuding “handball of Satan”, Siebren latches onto the phrase and wonders whether he himself might be a “handball of Satan” since he sometimes listens to and acts on his fears and temptations rather than his good sense. (I googled the term “handball of Satan”, but nothing came up. It must be an insult peculiar to Grandfather alone.)

The story becomes more and more exciting, however, and filled with both real and imaginary dangers: a giant pike who can eat a whole frog in one gulp, the swamp muck that can suck up and drown the unwary traveller, an attack from a pack of village dogs, a frightened neighbor with a gun, a bottomless cistern that empties out to the river, a night alone in a dark house, and last but not least, a tornado. (I didn’t know that the Netherlands even experienced tornadoes; I halfway thought tornadoes were only a peril in Kansas and the rest of the midwestern United States.) Siebren must sort out his real fears and dangers from the imaginary ones, and he must learn how adults can be trusted and whether he himself is meant to be a handball of Satan or a believer in miracles.

Journey From Peppermint Street was the winner of the National Book Award for Children’s Literature the very first time that award was given in 1969. I’m on a quest to read all of Meindert DeJong’s books for children, and so far this one is one of his best.

Content considerations: Siebren gets a spanking for disobedience from his dad at the beginning of the story. There’s the whole “handball of Satan” question and discussion. And Siebren more than once lets his imagination and curiosity run away with him, stealing cookies, disobeying his grandfather and his great-aunt several times with mixed results. Sometimes his disobedience turn out okay, and other times it gets him into trouble, which is the way it worked for me when I was an imaginative and exploring child like Siebren.