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Ferris by Kate diCamillo

Jun19

“It was the summer before Emma Phineas Wilkey (who everyone called Ferris) went into the fifth grade.

It was the summer that the ghost appeared to Charisse, the summer that Ferris’s sister, Pinky Wilkey, devoted herself to becoming an outlaw, and the summer that Uncle Ted left Aunt Shirley and moved into the Wilkey basement to paint a history of the world.

It was the summer that Ferris’s best friend, Billy Jackson, played a song called ‘Mysterious Barricades’ over and over again on the piano.”

Ferris is a summer book. It’s filled with quirky, caricature characters. The theme line repeated throughout the book is: “Every story is a love story. Every good story is a love story.” And this story embodies that theme. 

However, the story also gives readers some outlandish, exaggerated characters who showcase the difficulties and barriers to that love in the real world. Ferris, the main character, is a ten year old rule follower and observer. Her little sister, Pinky, is a six year old thief and would-be outlaw bank robber. Seriously, among other unbelievable and laugh-out-loud escapades, Pinky tries to rob a bank to get her name and picture on a wanted poster. Ferris’s and Pinky’s parents are inept at best, but loving and involved even when they can’t do anything about Pinky’s mayhem or the raccoons in the attic. Charisse, Ferris’s grandmother, has a heart condition and sees a ghost who wants someone to light the chandelier in the dining room with forty candles, a chandelier that has never been lit before. Uncle Ted is called to paint a history of the entire world on the basement walls, but all he can do is paint a blob that is supposed to be a foot. 

It all sounds prosaic and weird when I tell it, but when Kate DiCamillo takes over and tells the story it becomes poetic, a love story. I think the basic idea is that we love people even in their weirdness and unfathomability. Love them even when we don’t understand and when their behavior is out of control (like Pinky), and when they see demanding ghosts that we can’t see. Or when they feel a calling that we don’t understand. Love them despite the “mysterious barricades” that attempt to come between us and those that we love.

Vocabulary, language, and words are a big part of this book, too. Ferris’s and Billy’s former teacher, Mrs. Mielk, taught them a lot of words, and that vocabulary is woven into the story of the children and their summer adventures. I loved all of the vocabulary that filled the story with the joy of language.

I’ll close with a few quotes to give you a flavor of the book. It’s definitely odd and unusually humorous and endearing, while dealing with serious subjects such as aging, broken relationships, reconciliation, and death. Ferris is a great narrator, childlike and unknowingly insightful at the same time, and Pinky is amazing in her incorrigible delinquency.

“Pinky was six years old, and even though Ferris was her older sister, she did not understand Pinky on a cellular level. Pinky was a fearsome mystery.”

“Monomaniacal. That was another Mielk vocabulary word. It described Pinky perfectly. She was only interested in one thing: being an outlaw.”

“You are too much of a rule follower, Ferris,” Charisse had said to her once. “You have to insist on being yourself. Do not let the world tell you who you are. Rather, tell the world who you are. Pinky understands this. She takes it to an extreme, of course.”

“These people,” he said, “are afraid to love. Loving someone takes a whole lot of courage. Some people just aren’t up to the task.”

“The dogs bark but the caravan passes by.” (Ferris’s dad’s favorite maxim)

This book can be borrowed by member families from Meriadoc Homeschool Library.

The Secret Language of Birds by Lynne Kelly

Jun12

For some reason that is never really spelled out in the story, Nina has trouble making friends. She’s twelve years old, perhaps a little bit over-enthusiastic about her special interest, birds, and otherwise seemingly normal and likable. But she hasn’t yet found her “tribe”.

Nevertheless, as an amateur birdwatcher and collector of bird facts, Nina is feeling almost at home at her aunt’s summer camp in Bee Holler, TX. Her new camp friends, who call themselves The Oddballs, make Nina part of the group, and when the four girls discover two huge white birds nesting near the old infirmary at camp, they also discover a group mission: protect the birds!

There are mysteries to be solved in this nature fiction story. Are these birds rare, endangered whooping cranes? If so, why are they in Texas, not their natural habitat? Who is the female bird of the pair, and where did she come from? Is there an egg in the nest? Will it hatch? When? How can the girls watch over the birds without alerting the public to their whereabouts?

The story also involves some rule-breaking on the part of The Oddballs, but there are consequences for their disobedience.Everything is resolved satisfactorily by the end of the book. And there are a few mentions of evolutionary theory (“Did y’all know that birds evolved from dinosaurs?”), but most of the science-y information in the book is accurate as far as I could tell. Give this one to nature lovers, bird lovers in particular, and to twelve year olds who are thinking about where they belong in the world and how to fit in without losing themselves. It’s not too preachy, but the story does deal with those issues in an understated and helpful way.

The Night War by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

Jun11

I’ve read and reviewed a few other books by contemporary middle grade and young adult author Kimberly Brubaker Bradley:

I’ve also read, but not reviewed, The War That Saved My Life and The War I Finally Won. Ms. Bradley tends to write about several topics and settings: World War II Europe, France in particular, Catholicism and religion, abused children, children with disabilities. The Night War is a Jewish Holocaust story set in France, 1942. When Miri (Miriam), a twelve year old Jewish girl, and her parents are routed from their apartment in Paris by the French police and herded onto buses to be taken to the Velodrome d’Hiver, Miri becomes separated from her family but she given the responsibility of escaping with and caring for her two year old neighbor, Nora Rosenbaum. Mrs. Rosenbaum tells Miri to run, to take Nora, and to somehow try to get to Switzerland. And Miri is faced with a choice, the first of many impossible choices: will she try to find her parents in the Velodrome or escape with Nora?

Miri chooses to run, and with the help of a French nun, she manages to get away from the Nazi roundup of Jews in Paris. Eventually, Miri, who takes the name of Marie, and Nora end up in Chenonceaux, near the castle of Chenonceau, which was long ago the dwelling of Diane de Poitiers and subsequently, Catherine de Medici. These women and their history become a significant part of Miri/Marie’s story. (SPOILER WARNING: Here be ghosts and ghost-like characters.)

And so do the nuns of Chenonceaux. Marie is hidden in a convent school, and she again is faced with choices. Does she stay in relative safety in the school, or does she attempt to take Nora and flee to Vichy France and then on to Switzerland? Is Nora safer with her foster family, or is she in danger of forgetting her family and her Jewish heritage? Can Miri pretend to be Catholic and still pray to God in her own Jewish way? And there are other choices to be made as Marie stumbles upon a secret resistance network and is asked to help smuggle others out of Nazi-controlled France.

This story with its emphasis on personal responsibility and making good choices, and the consequences of bad choices, is an excellent one for middle grade readers who are just waking up to their own responsibilities and moral choices in life. Recommended for readers age 10 and up, or as soon as you think your reader is ready for hard things about the Holocaust and the evil that people do. Not graphic.

Once a Queen by Sarah Arthur

Jun8

At first, I thought this 2024 middle grade/YA fantasy novel from Waterbrook Press was Narnia fan fiction, or perhaps a Narnia sequel, Susan’s Story: Once a Queen in Narnia or something like that. (“Once a king or queen of Narnia, always a king or queen of Narnia.”) That expectation was a disservice to the novel as it is. Sarah Arthur’s story certainly has strong echoes of Narnia, as well as being indebted to E. Nesbit, George MacDonald, Elizabeth Goudge, and Madeleine L’Engle, influences the author acknowledges in an author’s Q & A in the back of the book. So in my defense, I didn’t know, and the Narnia-love was there from the beginning.

I would advise readers to take Once a Queen on its own terms and NOT try to compare or find connections to any other stories or worlds until you get to the end. In this particular story, fourteen year old American Eva Joyce comes with her British mother to visit her estranged grandmother in the family manor of Carrick Hall in the West Midlands region of England. The year is 1995. Eva has been nurtured by the classic fantasy tales and children’s books, especially the Ternival tales of Mesterra by A.H.W. Clifton. She’s never actually experienced a magical portal to another world, however, even though this trip to England feels a bit like a fairy tale.

And the story does turn into a fairy tale, complete with magical worlds, an evil queen, secret gardens, fantastical creatures, and a quest to be completed. And secrets. Lots of secrets. Eva’s mum has secrets. Eva’s grandmother has secrets. Eva herself discovers so many wondrous secret things that she finds herself unable to keep all of the secrets straight. Who can be told about what, and when, and how? And what secrets are being withheld from Eva and why? This whole secret motif is the weakest part of the book: too many people keeping too many secrets for too little reason. Nevertheless, I resigned myself to getting bits of information doled out to me in each chapter –reluctantly and incompletely.

The novel itself alternates between strange occurrences in our world as Eva gets to know her grandmother and her grandmother’s tragic history and equally strange events in the world of Mesterra, woven by Magister, and ruled by a long line of kings and queens who built a a great kingdom called Ternival. Of course, there are doors between the worlds, hard to find and harder to open, but real. And Eva and her friend Frankie, the gardener’s grandson, are determined to find the way into the fantasy world that they have read about in books and somehow to solve the problems of their own world by doing so.

Once a Queen is a a lovely story with Christian worldview underpinnings, despite all of the secrets and slow revelations, and I highly recommend it to lovers of high fantasy and adventure stories. The novel is set up for a sequel, perhaps many sequels, and indeed there is a “sneak preview” of the next book in the series that is printed in the back of of this first book. The next book is to be called Once a Castle, and I look forward to its publication. (Once a Queen is complete in itself, and does not end in a cliffhanger.) Recommended for ages 12 and up.

The Mystery of the Pilgrim Trading Post by Anne Molloy

Jun1

This mystery tale of smugglers and Native American artifacts and a fight against bridges and roads being built on top of someone’s home is fairly standard and quite readable. It reminds me of my beloved Trixie Belden mysteries and of the many mysteries by Helen Fuller Orton and the Boxcar Children series by Gertrude Chandler Warner. This one is not part of a series, but if you like any of Ms. Molloy’s many mystery adventure stories, you will probably enjoy this one.

Thirteen year old twins, Will and Lettie Dennis, and their cousin Jonas Wingate are invited to spend the summer at the old TIbbets homestead with Cousin Mary Peter, whose home is set to be demolished soon so that a bridge can be built from the Maine coast out to Eden Island and Smuggler’s Cove. None of the three really wants to sped their summer in Maine with a cousin they never met, but their parents have asked them to give it a week’s trial. Cousin Mary Peter, a pharmacist, storekeeper, and somewhat eccentric caregiver, assumes that the children are staying for the summer. And as it turns out, Will, Lettie, and Jo find more to pique their interest than they thought they would, including a plan to save the old homestead by having it declared a historical site. The family have always “firmly believed that it [the house] was the very place where the Pilgrims set up a post to trade with the Indians when they came from Plymouth to this bay.” If the children can prove it, the house will be protected.

Published in 1964, the mystery adventure story features free-range children exploring and sometimes doing rather foolish things like stowing away on a smuggler’s boat or taking a leaky boat out into the bay, but all’s well that ends well. (Just don’t try these exploits at home.) Even one of the “villains” of the story is redeemed in the end. It all makes for a satisfying middle grade summer novel. And as I said, it’s a stand alone book, for those who prefer their books free of series entanglements.

This book can be borrowed by member families from Meriadoc Homeschool Library.

Basil and the Lost Colony by Eve Titus

May31

What a great little book, full of jokes and literary and historical allusions! Basil of Baker Street, the Sherlock Holmes of the mouse world, sets out to Switzerland to find the lost colony of the Tellmice of 1291, who fled to the mountains to escape their own tyrannical version of Gessler, William Tell’s famous oppressor. How refreshing to read a humorous mystery adventure for primary and middle grade readers that does not condescend to slapstick and potty humor but respects its readers while remaining accessible to them. In this story, readers will encounter Flora and Fauna, the Faversham sisters; the Tellmice of Switzerland; Inspector Antoine Cherbou of the Paris policemice; Dr. David Q. Dawson, Basil’s narrator and assistant; Elmo the St. Bernard; the Adorable Snowmouse; and of course, the evil Ratigan, Basil’s arch-enemy (“I smell a rat again–Ratigan!”) —as well as many more characters whose names and personalities and talents are allusions to various literary and cultural icons, people, and events. Some I recognized, and others were lost on me. (Tillary Quinn, who writes crime stories = Ellery Queen, but for some reason she’s a New Zealander?)

The jokes embedded in the story are old; at the ripe old age of 66, I’ve heard most of them before. But they will be funny and fresh to a new generation of readers. The illustrations by Paul Galdone are endearing. Such an intrepid mouse detective! And the book and the series are perfect for hooking beginning chapter book readers into the joy of reading. Basil and the Lost Colony is only 88 pages long, short but sweet.

The book is part of a series by the well known author of the Anatole picture books as well as other books for children. These Sherlockian stories include:

  • Basil of Baker Street
  • Basil and the Cave of Cats (aka Basil and the Pygmy Cats)
  • Basil in Mexico
  • Basil in the Wild West
  • Basil and the Lost Colony

Basil of Baker Street, the first book in the series, was also made into a Disney movie in 1986, The Great Mouse Detective.

This book can be borrowed by member families from Meriadoc Homeschool Library.

The Piper by Eden Vale Stevens

May30

This Dickensian Christmas tale could have come straight out of Victorian England, but instead it’s a story from an American writer. Set in Oliver Cromwell’s England of the 1600’s, this 128-page quest story tells of a young orphan boy, Ned, and his search for food and a mother and a home. As he navigates his way through the threatening city of London, avoiding the officers who want to take him to the poorhouse, and the others who want to imprison him for thieving bread, Ned searches for the Mother and Babe that the bells of the cathedral are said to herald.

The illustrations for this story by Fermin Rocker are beautiful, and they help to bring the tale down to earth and make it more accessible. I have to admit, though, that the story itself struck me as a bit odd. Ned lives with a group of street children, but he leaves them to go and find his family. We never know what happens to his street urchin “family”. Eventually, the poet Robert Herrick (1591-1674) finds him and feeds him, but Ned leaves Herrick’s warm hospitality in a tavern to continue on his quest to find either his own mother or the Holy Mother proclaimed by the bells of the cathedral. Then, he finds a family, father, mother and three children, who decide to take him in, maybe because he reminds them of the Christ Child?

The best idea I have is to try this story out as a read aloud at Christmas time and see if your children are taken by the small piper, Ned, and his search for a mother and a family. The poem in the very back of the book is this one by Herrick, which I suppose is the inspiration for the story:

Go prettie child, and beare this Flower
Unto thy little Saviour;
And tell Him, by that Bud now blown,
He is the Rose of Sharon known:
When thou has said so, stick it there
Upon his Bibb or Stomacher:
And tell Him (for good handsell too)
That thou has brought a Whistle new,
Made of a clean strait oaten reed,
To charm his cries (at times of need):
Tell Him, for Corall, thou hast none;
But if thou hadst, He sho’d have one;
But poore thou art, and knowne to be
Even as monilesse as He.
Lastly, if thou canst win a kisse
From those mellifluous lips of his;
Then never take a second on,
To spoile the first impression.

The Black Cauldron by Lloyd Alexander

May27

In his Author’s Note at the beginning of The Black Cauldron, Lloyd Alexander notes that “a darker thread runs through the high spirits” of this second novel in the Prydain series as compared to the first book, The Book of Three. The first book sent Taran, Assistant Pig-Keeper, on a quest to find the lost Hen-Wen and brought him to face the evil Horned King, servant of the Lord of Annuvin. This book involves another quest, darker indeed, to capture and destroy the Black Cauldron, birthplace of the deathless Cauldron-born warriors who also fight for Arawn, Lord of Annuvin. This journey is harder and longer and more perilous than the search for Hen-Wen, and Taran must face sacrifice, hardship and even death itself in his quest to end the power of the Black Cauldron.

But still there is Gurgi with his “smitings and bitings” and Fflewddur Fflam with his harp and Eilonwy, the girl with the sharp tongue and the golden bauble. And “good old Doli” joins the quest, reluctantly, to lend a bit of invisible help. New friends, or perhaps enemies, are Ellidyr, Prince of Pen-Larcau, and Adaon, Son of Taliesin. This second book in the Prydain series really picks up the pace of the story, and readers gain more insight into the characters of Taran and his companions and friends. The Black Cauldron is better than The Book of Three, which is a good book in its own right. That’s as it should be: in a series the books should get better, or else what’s a series for? Alexander writes in the Author’s Note, “[W]hile extending the story, I have also tried to deepen it.”

You can read The Black Cauldron as a stand alone book, but the books in this five book series are better read in chronological and publication sequence. The Prydain books, in order, are:

  • The Book of Three
  • The Black Cauldron
  • The Castle of Llyr
  • Taran Wanderer
  • The High King

The stories are inspired by Celtic and Welsh mythology, but they don’t follow any one folk tale or myth closely. Prydain is an imaginary realm, not Wales, and the characters in the book may remind one of Celtic heroes, but they are filtered through and created by Mr. Alexander’s imagination, illuminated by Celtic heroes. It’s a lovely set of stories.

These books can be borrowed by member families from Meriadoc Homeschool Library.

The Orphelines in the Enchanted Castle by Natalie Savage Carlson

May27

The Orphelines in the Enchanted Castle is the fourth book in a five book series about a group of French orphans, “orphelines”, who live together with their guardian, Madame Flattot and her caretaker assistant, Genevieve. This volume begins:

“Once upon a time there were twenty beautiful French princesses who were going to live in an enchanted castle with their fairy godmother and their thirty knights. . . The noble knights were the boy orphans who would share the castle with them. And the castle was to be their new orphanage. It was in the forest of Fontainebleau, south of Paris, waiting for them to bring it to life again–as the prince had done in THE SLEEPING BEAUTY OF THE WOODS.”

Of course, the real orphan girls don’t always act like princesses, and the orphan boys who come to live in the castle with them are not the most noble of knights. The story tells how the girls learn to temper their imaginations with good sense and to behave themselves even when the boys can’t or won’t. And the boys, some of whom come from the streets of Paris and are quite uncivilized, are introduced to a French version of Lord Baden-Powell’s Boy Scouts and to Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book, and thereby with some help from the girls and from Genevieve, become quite chivalrous wolf cubs and doers of good deeds.

These books about the orphelines are short, about a hundred pages each with large print and lovely illustrations in this particular volume by Adriana Saviozzi. Both the story and the reading level are appropriate for beginning chapter book readers, ages six to ten or so. The children in the book are quite mischievous and sometimes naughty, but they learn and grow. If children were about to join a scouting-type group such as Trail Life or American Heritage Girls, this book would be a good introduction to the concept of scouting.

Other books in the series about the Orphelines include:

  • The Happy Orpheline
  • A Brother for the Orphelines
  • A Pet for the Orphelines
  • A Grandmother for the Orphelines

The Orphelines in the Enchanted Castle is Book 4 in the Orphelines series of five books total. The other volumes in the series are similar to this in terms of reading level and interest level, but they have various other illustrators, such as Garth Williams, Fermin Rocker, and David White. I like the simple and vivid drawings in Enchanted Castle best, I think, although Garth Williams is always good. This book is another entry in the Books of 1964 Project.

This book can be borrowed by member families from Meriadoc Homeschool Library.

The Pushcart War by Jean F. Merrill

May11

My absolute favorite children’s book of 1964, and one of my favorite of all time. In my copy of the book, the Pushcart War takes place in 1976, and the story is supposedly being told to children in 1986, ten years later. Since the book was published in 1964, this event and the retelling all happen in the future. I have been told that there is a newer edition of The Pushcart War in which the war happens (happened) in 2026, and I assume is being recounted ten years later in 2036. Which means, if I’ve got all the time stuff worked out, we’re due for a new edition soon that takes place in 2056?

Anyway, aside from all the timey-wimey stuff, the story begins with The Daffodil Massacre, March 15, 1976, when a truck ran down a flower seller’s pushcart in New York City. The owner of the pushcart, Marris the Florist, was “pitched headfirst into a pickle barrel.” The war, which has been simmering for a while, breaks out from that incident and escalates with sabotage by peashooters, blockades, barricades, manifestos, a Peace March, and finally, a Master Plan by the truckers to take over the city, thwarted by the cunning and courage of the intrepid pushcart owners.

From the author’s introduction:

“I have always believed that we cannot have peace in the world until all of us understand how wars start. And so I have tried to set down the main events of the Pushcart War in such a way that readers of all ages may profit from whatever lessons it offers.”

Contrary to the title and even the opening scene, this is not a violent story. The Pushcart War is fought mostly with push pins, nonviolent resistance, and cunning. The truckers, the bad guys in the story, are a bit intimidating, threatening to run over the pushcart owners, but no one is seriously injured. The humor in the story is tongue in cheek and hilarious, and the plot is engaging and well paced.

Even though many reviewers and summarizers try to make this a story about labor relations or an uprising against powerful interests or bullying, it seems to me that it’s just a funny story about how the pushcart sellers and their allies defeated the Mammoth Trucks and truck owners that were taking over New York City. I’m not sure how Jean Merrill felt about it all, but she did say that she was inspired to write the story out of her frustration with the loud and oppressive truck traffic that she experienced when she lived in Greenwich Village.

At any rate, the world is starved for funny and witty books for children that don’t stoop to scatological or otherwise crude humor. The Pushcart War is a gem that has stood the test of time, even if the time setting has been updated several times. (See the Wikipedia article for a complete list of times that the story has been updated to.)