From The Silver Tarn by Katharine Adams, c.1924. An old fashioned young adult romance, part of a series about Mehitable Webster, an American girl who is living at and attending a French boarding school. The French school has been relocated to Yorkshire in England because of the disruptions of World War I, and Mehitable falls in love with the Yorkshire moors and the silver tarn (small mountain lake) that she finds on the wild moorland.

They opened their presents early in the afternoon, before dinner, and they had a merry time, in spite of the news that Robin must leave the next day. Mehitable was delighted with the blue Russian blouse which Barbara had made for her and Robin had brought with him. She cried a few tears over Aunt Comfort’s blue scarf and Desire’s petticoat, and the three girls hailed a large jar of Desire’s peach jam with shouts of joy. Robin told them how he had received it.
“Desire came to me just before we left, when I ran in to say good-by to them. She looked awfully guilty about the jam, for she heard us say we couldn’t carry much, but I hadn’t the heart to refuse her when she said, ‘Mehitable sets such store by peach jam and I don’t believe she gets enough to eat in that outlandish school, anyway.’ ”
“Desire is perfectly right. We don’t have anywhere near enough of anything that’s good. This jam will be gone almost before the jar is open. We’ll save it for a lonely night at Outliers, when fun seems a thing of the dim past.” Una was examining critically a hockey stick which her brother, Miles, had sent her, “Good of old Miles to send it. He asked Winchy to buy it for him,” she went on.
Mr. Twilltrees and his sister, Abby, came to Christmas dinner, which was rather a solemn meal. Aunt Isobel was worried about her brother’s rehumatism and seemed inclined to take a pessimistic view of everything. She shook her head at the news of Robin’s sudden departure, I’m glad we have a fine lad like you to help in this war, but it’s a dangerous part of the service, being a motor messenger,” she said to Robin. There was a moment’s silence after she spoke and then Robin remarked that Peters had promised to send him oat cakes and brandy balls, and that he hoped they would all write him every day.

The Silver Tarn is the middle book in a trilogy of books about a Vermont teen, Mehitable, who goes to Europe to attend a French boarding school and has adventures all over the continent before, during, and after World War I. All of the characters from the first book, Mehitable, return in this second book, and more are added, making for a rather crowded cast. It’s sometimes difficult to remember who is who and keep every one straight with their individual stories and personalities, especially since I haven’t read the first book in the series. Nevertheless, if you’re looking for a clean, rather nostalgic, novel set during World War I for your teen girl to read, you could do worse than Mehitable and The Silver Tarn. The third book in the series is called Toto and the Gift and centers on Mehitable’s return to France and befriending of a French orphan with dramatic ability. You can read The Silver Tarn on Internet Archive.

Content considerations: On one page of the novel a family servant, a cook, called “Black Mandy” is introduced. The cook speaks in dialect, and she goes to “Darky Town” to visit her family. This character does not reappear in the rest of The Silver Tarn.

This sweet little Christmas story was written and illustrated by the daughter of Velveteen Rabbit author Margery Bianco. It’s about a seven year old girl named Victoria who has been saving her money to buy Christmas presents for her five little sisters. On Christmas Eve Victoria empties her savings bank and goes out to choose the presents, but of course, there are obstacles and misadventures to be overcome.

The Doll in the Window is a text-heavy picture book, a short story really, only thirty pages long. There are only a few illustrations, but those that accompany the story are lovely and colorful. The book was published in 1953, and the economics of the story make that clear. Victoria is excited to have saved a whole dollar with which to buy her five Christmas presents. In addition to the six sisters, the book has a Cub Scout in search of good deed to do and a wonderful, beautiful, surprising doll.

Pamela Bianco was something of a child or teen prodigy. She was the first one to illustrate her mother’s famous story, The Velveteen Rabbit, in England when it first came out. (Later, the familiar illustrations by William Nicholson became those most associated with the story.) Pamela was educated at home, and her paintings and drawings were first exhibited as part of a children’s show in Turin, then in London in 1919, when Pamela was only thirteen years old, and in New York City in 1921. She grew up to be a moderately well known artist, and her works were and still are exhibited in many museums and galleries.

I suppose The Doll in the Window might be considered a bit preachy by some adults, but children will enjoy the story as it is on the surface and not be too worried about the moral. The unstated moral? Greed doesn’t feel good, and generosity is its own reward.

The Christmas Rocket by Anne Molloy. Illustrated by Artur Marokvia. First published as “The Four Legs of Gian-Carlo” in The Horn Book, 1957. Republished by Purple House Press, 2023.

Dino lives with his father and his grandfather and works with them in their pottery shop in the mountains of Italy. At the time of this story, it’s the day before Christmas Eve, and Dino and his father are going down the mountainside to sell the pottery that they have been making to the villagers below. They hope to sell all of their wares in order to make enough money to have some meat for their Christmas dinner, get some shoes for barefoot Dino, buy all four legs of the donkey Gian-Carlo who can carry their pottery down the mountain, and maybe even purchase a Christmas rocket for Dino to shoot off in celebration. However, as Grandfather says, “Rockets! They go up fast with a fizz and then what do you have left? A stick if you can find it. That is all.”

Of course, things do not go quite as well as Dino had hoped they would, but a Christmas miracle is awaiting the poor hardworking family. There’s a rule about writing Christmas stories (and Hallmark Christmas movies): there always has to be a Christmas miracle. The one in this book is satisfying and generous, a good ending to a hopeful Christmas story.

Author Anne Molloy wrote many books for children in her career. A biographical sketch of her life at SeacoastNH.com tells of her writing habits:

“Anne Molloy wrote her books in longhand, her feet propped up on a sofa, her paper supported by a checkerboard. She transcribed each manuscript on her husband’s Underwood typewriter. Wherever she traveled, notebook in hand, she recorded daily details and ideas, providing the rich content that distinguished all of her books and brought her plucky heroes and heroines to life.”

That’s the kind of book The Christmas Rocket is, the kind that you can imagine being written out with a pen and then typed on an Underwood. I think my grandchildren will enjoy adding this one to their Christmas repertoire.

The Christmas Stove by Alta Halverson Seymour. Christmas Around the World Series. Republished by Purple House Press, 2021.

Two orphan children, Peter and Trudi, come to stay with their aunt Tante Maria Fingerhut in her poor little cottage in the Swiss mountains. But will the poverty-stricken Tante Maria be able to care for the children when she can barely feed herself? And how will they ever be able to celebrate Christmas?

“But though Tante was looking kindly at Trudy, she was just ready to shake her head when Peter caught her eye. Instead, she said, ‘Well, there are several weeks yet before Christmas. Who knows what may happen in that time? Come now, it is almost bedtime. We must find a comfortable place for you to sleep. I had moved my ed into the kitchen here for the winter so that one fire would do, but in the other room is the porcelain stove. Peter shall make a fire in that while Trudi helps me make up your beds.’

Trudi was so delighted with the stove that she could hardly leave it; and no wonder, for it was made of tiles, each one with its own picture. Some represented fairy tales, and there were castles and people and landscapes. The clear light from Tante Maria’s candle fell directly on the one Trudi knew she would like best of all.

‘Oh, look!’ she cried with delight. It’s the Christkindli in the manger, Peter. And the animals and His Mother. Oh, Tante, this is a real Christmas stove!'”

Peter and Trudi are young but hard working children, and they soon prove their worth to Tante Maria and to the various members of the small community in Tante Maria’s little village. It’s a lovely little book, only 94 pages long, with lots of traditional Swiss Christmas customs embedded in the story and a theme of learning to deal with difficult people and to love one’s enemies, especially at Christmas time.

I only have a few of Alta Halverson Seymour’s Christmas stories in my library, but reading this one makes me want to buy all of them. The ones I have are:

• Arne and the Christmas Star (Norway)
• A Grandma for Christmas (Norway)
• The Christmas Stove (Switzerland)

The ones I would like to have:

• The Christmas Camera (Sweden)
• The Christmas Compass (Netherlands)
• The Christmas Donkey (France)

The Lion in the Box by Marguerite de Angeli. Republished by Purple House Press.

“Sunday, the children went to Sunday school. Mama kept Sooch with her at home. Ben went into the kindergarten class under Mrs. McAlister’s care. Already, he could sing with the other little ones. The girls were in Miss Von Tipple’s class. This Sunday, she told them more about Christmas, about the shepherds on the hills of Judea, the angel choir and the coming of the three kinds with their gifts for the Baby. There was a tree decorated with bright tinsel, a shiny star at the very top and candles. Lili wished their own tree would be as bright and beautiful.”

This slightly fictionalized but true story of a family of five children who live with their widowed, working mother is dedicated to Marguerite de Angeli’s friend, Lili Galen, who is one of the children in the story. Lili’s family is poor, but as the saying goes, rich in love. Mama works two jobs to support herself and her children. Christmas is coming, but Lili knows that the doll from the department store window and the real toy train that she wishes she could buy for little brother Ben are way beyond the family’s means. Nevertheless, the children work hard, take care of one another, and appreciate what they do have–food to eat, a small Christmas tree, and homemade decorations.

When the family receive a huge surprise Christmas box, speculation is that the box contains a lion! But what it really contains and who sent it are revelations of the abundance of Christmas grace that can and often does inhabit the world. I love knowing that this is a true story and that people did and still do, I believe, give of themselves and their resources to others less fortunate than themselves.

The Brontes–Charlotte, Emily, Branwell, and Anne–are endlessly fascinating subjects for books, fiction and nonfiction. The fact that the Bronte children made little books for each other is a good focus for a book about the hunger for stories that we all have.

I don’t believe I’ve ever seen any illustrations by Briony May Smith, although as I look she has illustrated other books. I’m a fan. The children look like real children , and yet the pictures have a fairy tale, once upon a time quality to them, too. It reminds me a little bit of one of my favorite modern illustrators, Brett Helquist, but Ms. Smith has her own distinctive, original, and recognizable style.

“This is the story of the little Brontes, who lived in a house on the edge of the wild moors–and also in a world of their own imagining.” Sara O’Leary is also a new-to-me author, and she lovingly tells the story of the Bronte children with their pets and toy soldiers, miniature books and real books, and their hunger for stories. It’s a well-told tale, with added information in the back about how to make your own little book, an author’s note about books and the Brontes, and a timeline of the Brontes’ life and times.

The book could certainly be a prequel and encouragement to lots of imaginative play for the children who read it, and it also might lead to the reading of other books about the Brontes and their amazing lives and accomplishments. Some of those follow-up books:

Charlotte Bronte and Jane Eyre by Stewart Ross. A picture book biography that focuses on the writing of Charlotte’s most famous novel, Jane Eyre.

The Return of the Twelve by Pauline Clarke (British title The Twelve and the Genii). Fantasy fiction about the Bronte children and how their toy soldiers come to life and need help to get back home.

The Young Brontes: Charlotte and Emily, Branwell and Anne by Mary Louise Jarden. Historical fiction (not fantasy) about the lives of the young Bronte children.

Girl With a Pen: Charlotte Bronte by Elisabeth Kyle. A biography of just Charlotte.

The Bronte Sisters: The Brief Lives of Charlotte, Emily and Anne by Catherine Reef. Biography for young adults about all of the Brontes and their “brief lives.”

Some picture books are almost poems, and this book is one of those. Mr. Tresselt uses alliteration and rhythm and parallelism to make the text flow, perfect for reading aloud. The story begins with a cat looking out of the window at the rain drops coming down, and it ends with all of the drips and drops gathered into waves on the ocean, and then the rain stops. The book has a simple but satisfying narrative arc to accompany the poetry of it. And if you’re counting, it can be an introduction to the science of the water cycle and weather and rain. So you get poetry, narrative, and science all wrapped up with a nice bow.

Rain Drop Splash was Alvin Tresselt’s first book for children, and it was a Caldecott Honor book in 1947. He was blessed to have experienced illustrator Leonard Weisgard who was asked by the publisher to do the pictures for Tresselt’s debut picture book, and I’m sure that gave Mr. Tresselt’s career a big boost, especially with the Caldecott recognition. The illustrations are indeed beautiful, black and white with splashes of yellow and red in each spread. Weisgard must have insisted on the color since his website biography explains, “As a schoolboy in New York, he was dissatisfied with the books supplied by the public schools he attended. He found the illustrations monotonous and thought that the world could not be all that dreary and limited to only one color.”

As for Alvin Tresselt, he says in the Afterword to my paperback copy of the book,

“RAIN DROP SPLASH started out as a mountain stream named Hyacinth, and I was going to follow her down the mountain until she eventually reached the sea. But somewhere along the journey my personified brook got hopelessly lost, and I realized that this approach would never work. I then decided to “tell it like it is,” and I traced the rain falling on a mountainside and making its way to the sea in a completely realistic manner. I accomplished this in less than five hundred words.”

Five hundred words, but such good words: dripped, splashed, trickled, splunked, tumbling, pickerel weed, barges, scows, tankers, buoy. I liked the words, and the phrases, and the full sentences, each one chosen carefully to create a whole picture of what happens when it rains. Rain Drop Splash is a good book to read aloud to preschoolers when it rains, when there are floods, or when you go on a boat ride or a visit to the ocean. (It would have been good during Hurricane Harvey days here in Houston. There is a farmer’s field and a road that floods in the book, but nothing scary.) Rain Drop Splash is also one of the many picture books listed in my preschool curriculum list, Picture Book Preschool, available for download at Biblioguides.

The Loner by Ester Wier was a debut novel for the author and received a Newbery Honor in 1964.

“During the 1960s and 1970s, Ester Wier published other works of fiction and non-fiction for children and young adults that were praised by critics for their well-researched settings and details. Many of her books are ‘stories of children, primarily boys, who are seeking acceptance by themselves or others,’ and Ester Wier has been lauded for her understanding of ‘youth’s efforts to stand on its own’ and children’s ‘need to achieve and be accepted.'”

The loner of the title is a boy who at the beginning of the story has no name. He travels with the migrant crop-pickers from place to place, catching a ride with anyone who will give him transportation, food, and a place to sleep in exchange for his work harvesting the crops. He doesn’t remember his parents or what happened to them, and he has never had a family or a friend until he meets Raidy, a fellow crop-picker who does have a family and who chooses to care about the boy and call him friend.

Unfortunately, tragedy strikes, and the boy is again on his own and near despair in the wild and lonely Big Country of Montana. At his lowest point, he is rescued by Boss, a big woman, something of a loner herself, who is a sheepherder. The Boy takes the name David, and along with the name he begins to learn how to care for other people and allow them to care for him—but not without a few rather dangerous and serious mistakes along the way.

I read this story of a boy coming of age in sheep country several years ago when my children were using a literature based curriculum that recommended the book. I remember liking it then, but as I read it a second time, I loved it even more. The analogy between the boy David and an orphan sheep, the way David learns from his mistakes, the way Boss learns to communicate her motherly and compassionate feelings to David, the way other adultscome alongside and help David to grow up and become responsible and connected—all of these were themes and issues that were addressed in the book, and addressed and worked through well.

There are content considerations (SPOILERS) that you may want to know about. The girl, Raidy, dies in a rather gruesome farm accident. Animals die in the book, including a pet sheep that the reader has probably grown to love. David kills a rogue grizzly bear with a gun that he has been taught to use by a caring adult.

Despite the rough and rural setting in which David and others must learn hard lessons about the dangers of winter weather and isolated spaces, the story is ultimately hopeful and encouraging. David, a boy who has been dealt a bad hand in life, grows to be a young man who knows how to make good choices and be independent while also leaning on the strengths and wisdom and love of others.

“Once upon a time there was a very old man and a very old woman. They lived in a nice clean house which had flowers all around it, except where the door was. But they couldn’t be happy because they were so very lonely.”

Millions of Cats is said to be the inaugural modern American picture book. The text is hand lettered with pen and ink illustrations, and on the first page we get a folktale-like view of the very old man and the very old woman and their little house. As the story progresses the old man sets out on a journey to find a cat to relieve their loneliness, but he is a somewhat indecisive fellow. He ends up finding and bringing home, not one cat but rather:

What do I love about this book? I love the little old woman who thinks that a nice fluffy cat will assuage their loneliness. I love the little old man who agrees to travel far and wide to fulfill his wife’s desire. I love all of the cats, covering the hills in the distance and in the foreground sitting, pouncing, cavorting, and even one dancing on its hind legs. And I even love the rather violent solution to the problem of too many cats where the old couple are left with just one very special, pretty cat. I spent some time as a child trying to figure out how all of those cats could eat each other up with only one little noncombatant cat remaining. I never did understand it, which just made the book more beautifully mysterious.

Deborah Ray Kogan has written a picture book biography about Wanda Gag and about the road to the writing and publication of Millions of Cats. I haven’t read it, but it looks like a great book for background and extra information on the author and her life. Until I get around to the biography, however, I’ll just get out my copy of Millions of Cats every once in a while and read it to a child or read it for myself–with a cup of hot chocolate or tea in a rocking chair just like the very old man and the very old woman on the final page of the book. And maybe our one cat will be playing happily at my feet.