He was born on this date in 1547, the son of a surgeon; his mother may have been of Jewish descent.

He was a soldier, wounded in battle by a shot to his left hand. Because of his wound, he gained the nickname, “El manco de Lepanto.”

He was captured by pirates and spent five years as a slave in Algiers. He was finally ransomed and returned home.

He wrote poems, plays, and novels and worked as a tax collector.

However, because of some dispute over money with the government, he was thrown into jail in Seville–twice. He was also jailed briefly as a murder suspect.

He died on April 23, 1616, the same date that is recorded for Shakespeare’s death. However, he actually died ten days before Shakespeare; they have the same date of death because England and Spain used different calendars in the seventeenth century.

“It seems to me,” said Sancho, “that the knights who did all these things were driven to them… but… why should you go crazy? What lady has rejected you…?
“That is exactly it,” replied Don Quixote, “that’s just how beautifully I’ve worked it all out – because for a knight errant to go crazy for good reason, how much is that worth? My idea is to become a lunatic for no reason at all…”

He is mad past recovery, but yet he has lucid intervals.

Carol Kendall, b. 1937. I loved The Gammage Cup by Carol Kendall (b. September 13, 1917) when I was a child, and I still remember images and ideas from it. For instance, I’ve always had a desire to paint my front door red or orange or yellow. And I sort of like being different–sometimes just for the sake of difference. The Gammage Cup was published in 1959. The story of five non-conformist Minnipins who become unlikely heroes probably hit a nerve in the non-conformist sixties, but it’s still a great story. The Periods, stodgy old conservatives with names such as Etc. and Geo., are wonderful parodies of those who are still caught up in the forms and have forgotten the meanings. And Muggles, Mingy, Gummy, Walter the Earl, and Curley Green, the Minnipins who don’t quite fit in and who paint their doors colors other than green, are wonderful examples of those pesky artistic/scientific types who live just outside the rules of polite society. One of them, Muggles I think, isn’t consciously a nonconformist nor an artist; she just gets caught up in the adventures of the others and finds out that she, too, has her own desires and dreams and talents.

Today is also the birthday of Else Holmelund Minarik, b. 1920, author of the Little Bear stories for beginning readers. What is your favorite Little Bear story? I really like A Kiss for Little Bear in which Little Bear’s grandmother gets some friends to deliver a kiss to Little Bear. The kiss unfortunately gets “all mixed-up” when a pair of lovestruck skunks keeps exchanging the kiss instead of delivering it, but everything turns out all right in the end. I also like the quote from Little Bear’s grandfather when Little Bear suggests that Grandfather might be tired and need a rest. “Me–tired? How can you make me tired? I’m never tired,” says Grandfather, just before he falls asleep in his lawn chair. Then, there’s the story of how Little Bear visits the moon and comes back in time for supper. Oh, yes, and I love Little Bear’s Friend about Little Bear’s friendship with Emily. Little Bear is about as fun and as profound as Frog and Toad. Who ever said that children’s books were boring or unchallenging? They have to be better than adult books so that we can enjoy reading them over and over again until they’re memorized.

Also born on this date in 1916 was Roald Dahl, author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and James and the Giant Peach. To tell the truth, Dahl is too gross-out icky for my tastes, but lots of kids and adults love his books.

Finally, Mildred Taylor, b. 1943, is the author of Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry which won the Newbery Award in 1977. It’s the story of Cassie Logan, a black girl growing up in Mississippi in the 1930′ during the Great Depression.

Jane Addams, b. 1860. Founder of Hull House, a settlement house in Chicago, and author of the autobiographical Twenty Years at Hull House. I don’t have a copy of Miss Addams’ Twenty Years, but I do have a book that I picked up at a used book sale called The Mother’s Book, published in 1919, that contains writing by Jane Addams and other authors of her same ilk and persuasion. The book is a mixture of excellent advice on child training and hopelesssly idealistic or condescending nonsense. For example, from an article by William Byron Forbush, Why Home Is Better Than Kindergarten:

There are some distinct advantages in the home-school for small children.
The mother excells the teacher in both knowledge and interest. She may not be familliar with child-study and she does not talk scientifically about the child, but she knows and loves “her” child.
Home life is real, while kindergarten can necessarily only imitate real life.

The author goes on to advocate homeschooling as the best way to educate children up to at least age seven.

On the other hand, another author in the same book tells mothers:

Baby’s training must be begun from the first day. He should not be rocked to sleep, trotted, or walked the floor with, nor allowed to suck his thumb or pacifer. All of these habits will soon have to be broken, so why begin them?
In modern maternity hospitals a crying baby is placed in the center of a large, soft, and comfortable bed and left alone to cry itself to sleep. Very distressing to the mother and the neighbors; but the little one soon finds its true level, will give up the habit of crying, and not wait for the bottle or the bribe of a lump of sugar.

Who knew that the Ezzos studied early twentieth century social work manuals for their parenting advice?

Felix Salten (Siegmund Salzmann), b. 1869. He was born in Budapest, Hungary, but his family moved to Vienna, Austria when he was only a baby. He started writing because he worked in an insurance office, and he was bored. His most famous book was, of course, Bambi: A Life in the Woods, published in Austria in 1923. It was published in the U.S. in 1928, translated into English by none other than Whittaker Chambers, twenty years before the Alger Hiss affair made him (in)famous. The Nazis banned Bambi in 1936, and when the Germans implemented their Anchluss with Austria, Salten fled to Switzerland. (Felix Salten was Jewish.) The German novelist Thomas Mann showed Salten’s book Bambi to Walt Disney, and the movie of the same name came five years later in 1942, during World War II.

Francoise Rene de Chateaubriand, b. 1768. Chateaubriand was the youngest of ten children, and he grew up to be a famous writer and gourmand. His most acclaimed work was called Mémoires d’Outre-Tombe, in English Memoirs from Beyond the Grave. I want to write a memoir from beyond the grave. It sounds so romantic!

Phoebe Cary, b. 1824, is an American poetess who seems to have made a career of re-writing other people’s poems in her own words. You can read some samples here.

Mary Renault (Mary Challans), b. 1905. The King Must Die and its sequel,The Bull from the Sea, tell the story of Theseus in fiction for adults. I like these books a lot, especially the first one. Theseus, as a pagan Greek king, in this book pre-figures Christ in some ways. He sacrifices himself to the will of the god Poseidon, for the sake of his people. These are good stories, but be warned that homosexual behavior is positively portrayed, although not described in detail.

Syd Hoff, b. 1912. Author of Danny and the Dinosaur and Sammy the Seal, classic easy readers.

Joan Aiken, b. 1924. The Wolves of Willoughby Chase by Ms. Aiken is suitably creepy and perilous, just right for Carl V.’s R.I.P. challenge. (Go here for my R.I.P. Autumn Challenge list.) However, we’re plannning to read this classic weird adventure story later this year when we study England, so I’ll content myself with recommending it to you–if you’re still looking for something “gothic, scary, moody, atmospheric.”

Eugene Field, b. 1850. My favorite Eugene Field poem is Jest ‘Fore Christmas, probably because my mother used to quote it to me at Christmas-time. However, ’tis not the season, so I’ll give you another poem by Mr. Field:

Seein’ Things

I ain’t afeard uv snakes, or toads, or bugs, or worms, or mice,
An’ things ‘at girls are skeered uv I think are awful nice!
I’m pretty brave, I guess; an’ yet I hate to go to bed,
For, when I’m tucked up warm an’ snug an’ when my prayers are said,
Mother tells me “Happy dreams!” and takes away the light,
An’ leaves me lyin’ all alone an’ seein’ things at night!

Sometimes they’re in the corner, sometimes they’re by the door,
Sometimes they’re all a-standin’ in the middle uv the floor;
Sometimes they are a-sittin’ down, sometimes they’re walkin’ round
So softly an’ so creepylike they never make a sound!
Sometimes they are as black as ink, an’ other times they’re white –
But the color ain’t no difference when you see things at night!

Once, when I licked a feller ‘at had just moved on our street,
An’ father sent me up to bed without a bite to eat,
I woke up in the dark an’ saw things standin’ in a row,
A-lookin’ at me cross-eyed an’ p’intin’ at me – so!
Oh, my! I wuz so skeered that time I never slep’ a mite –
It’s almost alluz when I’m bad I see things at night!

Lucky thing I ain’t a girl, or I’d be skeered to death!
Bein’ I’m a boy, I duck my head an’ hold my breath;
An’ I am, oh! so sorry I’m a naughty boy, an’ then
I promise to be better an’ I say my prayers again!
Gran’ma tells me that’s the only way to make it right
When a feller has been wicked an’ sees things at night!

An’ so, when other naughty boys would coax me into sin,
I try to skwush the Tempter’s voice ‘at urges me within;
An’ when they’s pie for supper, or cakes ‘at ‘s big an’ nice,
I want to – but I do not pass my plate f’r them things twice!
No, ruther let Starvation wipe me slowly out o’ sight
Than I should keep a-livin’ on an’ seein’ things at night!

Eugene Field also wrote a memoir, The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac. I began reading it here at Project Gutenberg, but I must get my hands on the book itself. I don’t like reading books via computer. Anyway, I’ll leave you with a quote from the first few pages:

I thank God continually that it hath been my lot in life to found an empire in my heart–no cramped and wizened borough wherein one jealous mistress hath exercised her petty tyranny, but an expansive and ever-widening continent divided and subdivided into dominions, jurisdictions, caliphates, chiefdoms, seneschalships, and prefectures, wherein tetrarchs, burgraves, maharajahs, palatines, seigniors, caziques, nabobs, emirs, nizams, and nawabs hold sway, each over his special and particular realm, and all bound together in harmonious cooperation by the conciliating spirit of polybibliophily!

And another poem by Eugene Field:

Keep me, I pray, in wisdom’s way
That I may truths eternal seek;
I need protecting care to-day,–
My purse is light, my flesh is weak.
So banish from my erring heart
All baleful appetites and hints
Of Satan’s fascinating art,
Of first editions, and of prints.
Direct me in some godly walk
Which leads away from bookish strife,
That I with pious deed and talk
May extra-illustrate my life.

But if, O Lord, it pleaseth Thee
To keep me in temptation’s way,
I humbly ask that I may be
Most notably beset to-day;
Let my temptation be a book,
Which I shall purchase, hold, and keep,
Whereon when other men shall look,
They ‘ll wail to know I got it cheap.
Oh, let it such a volume be
As in rare copperplates abounds,
Large paper, clean, and fair to see,
Uncut, unique, unknown to Lowndes.