Three siblings William, Edmund, and Anna. Orphans evacuated from London to the country during the Blitz. A kind librarian. Difficulties with the natives. These and other elements of the story are timeless and not-so-oddly reminiscent of other beloved stories about children evacuated during World War II from bombed out London. Edmund is the naughty brother in this story just like Edmund in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis. As in Noel Streatfeild’s When the Sirens Wailed, the children’s billets and foster families are not the best, and they are threatened with separation and even abuse. The children encounter cruelty and prejudice but also kindness (and they eventually gain a new home) just as the the child in Goodnight Mr. Tom by Michelle Majorian did. All of these echoes of other stories and the new characters and ideas in this one make this debut middle grade novel by an American author a delight and an adventure.

I did find one Americanism in the book (that an editor should have caught): British children carry torches or electric torches, not flashlights. I know this because for a long time in my childhood I wondered why modern day British children were carrying around torches, sticks with a flame on the end. I only found out that a torch was a flashlight much later in my reading life. (I won’t say how much later.)

The books that are not only alluded to but actually featured in this book make for pleasant reading and pleasant memories. William, Anna, and even Edmund are all readers, and they depend on books to comfort and defend them when life becomes difficult and even unbearable. Some of the classics that the children read over the course of the story: The Enchanted Wood by Enid Blyton, A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett, Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie, The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle, The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas, The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame, The Yellow Fairy Book by Andrew Lang, The Call of the Wild by Jack London, Winnie-the Pooh by A.A. Milne, Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery, Five Children and It by E. Nesbit, Mary Poppins by P.L. Travers, and best of all The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien. Only one of he books that these British children read was one I had never heard of: The Incredible Adventures of Professor Branestawm by Norman Hunter. It sounds incredible, and I’m determined to find a copy and read it soon.

William, age twelve, is working on a multi-year project of reading the Encyclopedia Britannica straight through, beginning to end. He’s on the fourth volume HER(cules) to ITA(lic) as the children leave for the country, and he of course takes this volume with him on the journey. Unfortunately, volume 4 of the encyclopedia isn’t much help as William, Anna, and Edmund encounter bullies, nits, rat-killing, poverty, and neglect, but eventually they do find a home and a someone who thinks, like their Mum used to say, that these particular children “hung the moon.”

April is National Poetry Month.

He is a path, if any be misled;
He is a robe, if any naked be;
If any chance to hunger, he is bread;
If any be a bondman, he is free;
If any be but weak, how strong is he!
To dead men, life is he; to sick men, health;
To blind men, sight; and to the needy, wealth;
A pleasure without loss, a treasure without stealth.

Giles Fletcher the Younger was an Anglican cleric who lived during Elizabethan times and wrote poetry. His most famous work was a very long poem in four cantos called Christ's Victorie and Triumph, in Heaven, in Earth, over and after Death. 

April is National Poetry Month.

Sonnet 19: When I consider how my light is spentBY JOHN MILTON

When I consider how my light is spent, 
Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide, 
And that one Talent which is death to hide 
Lodged with me useless, though my Soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present 
My true account, lest he returning chide; 
“Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?” 
I fondly ask. But patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, “God doth not need 
Either man’s work or his own gifts; who best 
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state
Is Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed 
And post o’er Land and Ocean without rest: 
They also serve who only stand and wait.”

April is National Poetry Month.

If Only I Were King

I often wish I were a King,
And then I could do anything.

If only I were King of Spain,
I’d take my hat off in the rain.

If only I were King of France,
I wouldn’t brush my hair for aunts.

I think, if I were King of Greece,
I’d push things off the mantelpiece.

If I were King of Norroway,
I’d ask an elephant to stay.

If I were King of Babylon,
I’d leave my button gloves undone.

If I were King of Timbuctoo,
I’d think of lovely things to do.

If I were King of anything,
I’d tell the soldiers, “I’m the King!”

April is National Poetry Month. I saw this portion of a poem on several of my friends’ Facebook pages over the Easter weekend, and I was reminded that Jesus was truly man, truly God, physically died and was resurrected in a physical human body. And for this we praise God, and for through this we realize hope.

Make no mistake: if he rose at all
It was as His body;
If the cell’s dissolution did not reverse, the molecule reknit,
The amino acids rekindle,
The Church will fall.

It was not as the flowers,
Each soft spring recurrent;
It was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled eyes of the
Eleven apostles;
It was as His flesh; ours.

The same hinged thumbs and toes
The same valved heart
That—pierced—died, withered, paused, and then regathered
Out of enduring Might
New strength to enclose.

Let us not mock God with metaphor,
Analogy, sidestepping, transcendence,
Making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the faded
Credulity of earlier ages:
Let us walk through the door.

The stone is rolled back, not papier-mache,
Not a stone in a story,
But the vast rock of materiality that in the slow grinding of
Time will eclipse for each of us
The wide light of day.

And if we have an angel at the tomb,
Make it a real angel,
Weighty with Max Planck’s quanta, vivid with hair, opaque in
The dawn light, robed in real linen
Spun on a definite loom.

Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
For our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
Lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are embarrassed
By the miracle,
And crushed by remonstrance.
— from John Updike’s Seven Stanzas at Easter

A poet looks at the world the way a man looks at a woman.

~Wallace Stevens

Praise the spells and bless the charms,
I found April in my arms.
April golden, April cloudy,
Gracious, cruel, tender, rowdy;
April soft in flowered languor,
April cold with sudden anger,
Ever changing, ever true —
I love April, I love you.

I’m not an April girl, but for those of you who are, this poem seems appropriate. In George MacDonald’s Phantastes, he indicates that he believes that the time of year we’re born does have some effect on our disposition and personality. I’m not sure I agree, but who knows? Maybe April Girls are changeable and spring-like.

Come, read to me some poem,
Some simple and heartfelt lay,
That shall soothe this restless feeling,
And banish the thoughts of day.

~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Samuel Longfellow was Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s younger brother, the youngest of eight children, and he was an ordained Unitarian minister. He wrote a number of hymn lyrics, this poem being one of them.

Lo, the earth is risen again
From the winter’s bond and pain!
Bring we leaf and flower and spray
To adorn our holiday!

Once again the word comes true,
Lo, He maketh all things new!
Now the dark, cold days are o’er,
Light and gladness are before.

How our hearts leap with the spring!
How our spirits soar and sing!
Light is victor over gloom,
Life triumphant o’er the tomb.

Change, then, mourning into praise,
And, for dirges, anthems raise!
All our fears and griefs shall be
Lost in immortality.

April is National Poetry Month.

I’ve posted poems by George Herbert, the seventeenth century Christian poet, on this blog numerous times. He’s one of my favorite poets. If one were to spend the entire month of April just reading through the poems of Mr. Herbert, one a day, it would be devotional enough to last you through the season and to bring you to an awareness of poetry of faith.

• Here are some of the posts from Semicolon about George Herbert’s poetry:
• Love Bade Me Welcome
• The Pulley
• Christmas
• The Dawning
• The Sonne
• A Wreath
• Easter Wings
• Love (II)
• Vanity (I)

Other Links:
More poetry by George Herbert.
The God of Love My Shepherd Is by George Herbert at Rebecca Writes.

Colossians 3:3 OUR LIFE IS HID WITH CHRIST IN GOD

My words & thoughts do both express this notion,
That Life hath with the sun a double motion
The first Is straight, and our diurnal friend
The other Hid, and doth obliquely bend.
Our life is wrapt In flesh and tends to earth,
The other winds towards Him, whose happie birth
Taught me to live here so, That still one eye
Should aim and shoot at that which Is on high:
Quitting with daily labour all My pleasure,
To gain at harvest and eternal Treasure.

The greatest thoughts of the greatest thinkers have all passed through fire. The greatest poets have ‘learned in suffering what they taught in song.’ In bonds Bunyan lived the allegory that he afterwards wrote, and we may thank Bedford Jail for the Pilgrim’s Progress.

~George MacDonald

Chained is the Spring. The night-wind bold
Blows over the hard earth;
Time is not more confused and cold,
Nor keeps more wintry mirth.

Yet blow, and roll the world about;
Blow, Time---blow, winter's Wind!
Through chinks of Time, heaven peepeth out,
And Spring the frost behind.

This little poem, or piece of a poem, came from chapter twelve of Phantastes by George MacDonald, and I especially liked the idea of heaven peeping out through the chinks of Time. I don’t really understand Phantastes, but I do get inklings of ideas and images that are delightful.

Happy Second Day of April: Poetry Month.