Archives

Reading about the Spanish Influenza Pandemic of 1918-1919

Sep30

Hero Over Here by Kathleen Kudlinski. Theodore’s father and brothers are heroes —fighting the enemy during World War I. Theo learns his own lesson about heroism when he must take care of his entire family, mother and sisters, during the deadly flu epidemic of 1918.

A Time of Angels by Karen Hesse. Hannah flees Boston to escape the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic, but she must battle both influenza and prejudice in Battleboro, Vermont where she makes a new life for herself.

Listening for Lions by Gloria Whelan. When Rachel’s missionary parents die in an influenza epidemic in 1919 in Kenya, she is sent by scheming neighbors to England to pose as their daughter for a rich grandfather who may leave his estate to his fake granddaughter if she can endear herself to him.

Winnie’s War by Jennie Moss. Winnie has her courage tested when the influenza attacks her small Texas town of Coward’s Creek. The fun thing about this novel is that Coward’s Creek is a pseudonym for the town of Friendswood, Texas just down the road from our home in southeast Houston.

Reading about the Romanovs

Sep30

On the night of July 16, 1918, the Romanov royal family was awakened around 2:00 am, told to dress, and led down into a half-basement room at the back of the house where they were imprisoned. There they were executed by Bolshevik soldiers who feared that the family would soon be rescued by monarchists with the White Russian army.

Many have wondered for a long time what happened to Princess Anastasia and her brother Prince Alexei, children of Czar Nicholas II of Russia who was murdered along with his wife and at least three of their five children on July 17, 1918. Nicholas and Alexandra: An Intimate Account of the Last of the Romanovs and the Fall of Imperial Russia is an excellent 1967 biography of the last royal family of Russia by historian Robert K. Massie, but it doesn’t deal with the mystery of the disappearance of two of the Czar’s children, possibly Anastasia and Alexei. From time to time impostors have shown up claiming to be Princess Anastasia or Prince Alexei. The bodies of the royal family were exhumed in 1998, and it was then that it was discovered that two of the children’s bodies were indeed missing.

However two more bodies were discovered in 2007. DNA tests proved that these were the bodies of Prince Alexei and Princess Maria. If you’d like to read more about the Romanovs (wrapped in a fictional speculation), check out these books.

Children’s Books:
Anastasia’s Album by Hugh Brewster. Reviewed at The Book Nosher.

Young Adult Fiction:
The Lost Crown by Sarah Miller. Reviewed at The Fourth Musketeer.
Anastasia’s Secret by Susanne Dunlop. Bloomsbury, 2010. Reviewed at The Fourth Musketeer.
Anastasia: The Last Grand Duchess by Carolyn Meyer. (Royal Diaries series) Scholastic, 2000.
The Curse of the Romanovs by Staton Rabin Margaret K. McElderry, 2007. This one’s mostly about Alexei, the Romanov brother,and about Rasputin, and it combines science fiction, horror, and teen historical fiction into a rather odd adventure story. Reviewed at Book Dweeb.
Dreaming Anastasia by Joy Preble. Reviewed at Whimpulsive.

Adult Fiction:
The Tsarina’s Daughter by Carolly Erickson. Reviewed at S. Krishna’s Books.
The Kitchen Boy by Robert Alexander. The kitchen servant boy tells the story of the downfall of the Romanov family from his point of view.
The Romanov Bride by Robert Alexander. A novel about the Russian Revolution and Grand Duchess Elisavayeta Feodorovna Romanov, wife of Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich of Russia. Reviewed at Life and Times of a New Yorker.
Oksana by Susan May Warren and Susan K. Downs. Reviewed at The Friendly Book Nook.

1917: Events and Inventions

Sep29

February 1, 1917. Germany resumes unrestricted submarine warfare, announcing that any ships trading in Allied waters will be liable to be sunk without warning.

February 26, 1917. U.S. Congress, still reluctant to go to war with Germany, agrees that U.S. ships can be armed to counter German submarine attacks.

March, 1917. Food riots break out in St. Petersburg, Russia, and Czar Nicholas II is forced to resign and abdicate his throne. A provisional government takes control of Russia. Below is a picture of the czar’s Winter Palace.

'St. Petersburg - Winter Palace' photo (c) 1999, Roger Wollstadt - license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/

April 6, 1917. The U.S. declares war on Germany. President Woodrow Wilson says that this war is a battle “to save democracy.”

April, 1917. Bolshevik (Communist) leader Vladimir Lenin returns to Russia from his exile in Switzerland, traveling with German assistance.

June 27, 1917. The first U.S. troops, called “doughboys”, arrive off the French coast under the command of Major General John “Black Jack” Pershing. U.S. troops will be sent to fight in northern France and in Belgium along the Western Front.

July, 1917. Lenin flees Russia after a Bolshevik uprising is crushed by the new Russian government led by Alexander Kerensky.

November 6, 1917. After months of fighting, the Allies capture what is left of the bomb-blasted village of Passchendale, Belgium.

November 9, 1917. British Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour sends a letter to Jewish Zionist organizations promising the British government’s full support for Jewish homeland in Palestine. The British hope that the declaration will gain the full support of the Jews in Europe for the Allied war effort.

November 17, 1917. The Bolsheviks, led by Lenin who has returned to Russia, stage an armed coup in Petrograd. They capture all the bridges and public buildings and seize control of the Winter Palace. The Communists, now in power, organize the Red Army to defend the revolution and set about fulfilling their promise of “Peace, Bread, and Land!” through communism.

The Foreshadowing by Marcus Sedgewick

Sep28

The Foreshadowing tells the story of a girl, Alexandra, who is a sort of Cassandra: she can foresee the imminent death of people with whom she comes into contact. But of course, no one wants to hear her predictions, and no one believes her.

I just read the following article at the BBC website, before reading Marcus Sedgewick’s story of World War One horror and supernatural intervention. And the essay definitely colored my reading of the book.

First the article: World War One: Misrepresentation of a Conflict by Dr Dan Todman. Dr. Todman asks the question: “Is the traditional tale of ‘stupid generals, pointless attacks and universal death’ a fair representation of a war celebrated in 1918 as a great national deliverance?”
His answer: “Sassoon and Wilfred Owen could be used to evoke an emotional reaction against war which engaged students and satisfied teachers, but which utterly misrepresented the feelings of most Britons who lived through the war years.”

If Dr. Todman is right, then Marcus Sedgewick’s book, The Foreshadowing, totally buys into that misrepresentation, as does most of the fiction I’ve read about World War One and its aftermath. The protagonist, Alexandra, who has disguised herself as a nurse in order to rescue her brother from her vatic vision of his impending death in battle, speculates about a Tommy she meets along the way: “Presumably he had killed at least one man. Maybe several. He was a friendly man, he seemed very ordinary, kind even, but he didn’t seem to be bothered by what he’s done. And when he got to the German trenches he must have met German soldiers, who would have killed him too, if they could. I wondered if either Englishman or German had the slightest idea what they were killing each other for.”

All of the characters in the book seem to have little or no motivation for going to war other than honor and the desire to “do my bit”. Alexandra’s father tells her brothers Edgar and Tom that they must”do their bit”. And Tom later tells Alexandra that he came to war to die, no purpose at all except slow suicide.

Alexandra is the only one with a purpose: to change the future that she has already seen in a vision and to save Tom’s life. She pursues that purpose with single-minded determination and with the help of a friend, Jack, who hares her gift/curse of prophetic vision. The picture of what World War One was really about and how the soldiers who fought there really experienced it may be flawed—apparently one can re-write the past–but the story about whether one can or should try to change the future is suspenseful and intriguing with a surprise ending that made me gasp and appreciate.

Recommended, but the pace is slow at first. And the chapters are very short, a page and a half or two, a device I found annoying. Others probably won’t notice. I did become impatient with Alexandra way before she became impatient with herself.

Banned Books Week–Again

Sep28

I haven’t had much to say about Banned Books Week this year, mostly because I’ve said it before and I fear I would only repeat myself.

However, I do have a few links to share on the subject and related topics:

Banned books? How about banned posters? Shouldn’t professors have the right to put whatever poster they want in their own office?

Or banned statues? Actually, these yard sculptures haven’t been banned at all, but under the current popular terminology for Banned Books Week, they have been “challenged”—the neighbors are complaining. I think it’s a delightful collection, and I certainly wouldn’t mind having it in my neighborhood.

On a more serious and thoughtful note, Emily and Janie are doing a series of posts related to Banned Books Week at Redeemed Reader. These are well worth your reading time:

Light Your Library! Win Stuff, Love People, and Think Deeply by Emily Whitten, former children’s book editor and current homeschool mom.
Interview with Meghan Cox Gurdon, author of a controversial article in the Wall Street Journal that called the YA literature world to task for the increasing darkness and pessimism of young adult literature.
The Use and Abuse of Youth Literature by Janie B. Cheaney, young adult and middle grade fiction author and WORLD magazine columnist.
What Gets a Book “Banned”? by Janie B. Cheaney.

While you’re at Redeemed Reader, explore a bit. Janie’s and Emily’s blog has become a new favorite of mine.

Wednesday’s Word of the Week: Vatic

Sep28

Vatic: describing or predicting what will happen in the future; prophetic.

'The Prophet Moses with Torah' photo (c) 2010, Ian Scott - license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/No, it doesn’t come from the same root word as “Vatican.” Vatican is from the latin, vaticanus, referring to Vatican Hill in Rome. Vatic comes from the Latin, vāt Ä“s or seer + -ic. At least, I think those are separate source words. Correct me if I’m wrong, ye Latin scholars.

Anyway, vatic. As in, the candidate’s vatic speeches were received by the crowd with great awe and credulity. Or, her vatic trance ended abruptly when the dog bit her behind. Or, How vatic L’Enfant was when he laid out Washington as a city that goes around in circles! (I replaced the word “prophetic” with “vatic” in that last sentence, a quotation from author John Mason Brown.)

Oh, and don’t even believe my non-vatic utterances. I just looked at A Word a Day, and found this etymology for vatic:

From Latin vates (prophet). Ultimately from the Indo-European root wet- (to blow or inspire) which is also the source of fan, atmosphere, Vatican

1917: Books and Literature

Sep27

The first Pulitzer Prizes were awarded in 1917. One of the first prizes awarded was for editorial writing, and the first winner was an editorial about the war and the anniversary of the sinking of the Lusitania.

This editorial by Frank J. Simonds appeared in the New York Tribune on the first anniversary of the torpedoing of the Lusitania cruise liner. Read the entire editorial and see if it reminds you of anything nowadays. Could you not have substituted the words “Islamic extremist” for “German” and “Germany” in this editorial and published it, almost unchanged except for a few references to contemporary events and specifics, on the tenth anniversary of 9/11?

“This war in Europe on terrorism is going on until the German the Islamic terrorist idea is crushed or conquers. The world cannot now exist half civilized and half German Islamic extremist. Only one of two conceptions of life, of humanity, can subsist. One of the conceptions was written in the Lusitania 9/11 Massacre, written clear beyond all mistaking. It is this writing that we should study on this anniversary; it is this fact that we should grasp today, not in anger, not in any spirit that clamors for vengeance, but as the citizens of a nation which has inherited noble ideals and gallant traditions, which has inherited liberty and light from those who died to serve them, and now stands face to face with that which seeks to extinguish both throughout the world.”

1916: Art and Entertainment

Sep26

On May 20, 1916, artist Norman Rockwell publishes his first cover for the magazine Saturday Evening Post. The picture was called Boy With Baby Carriage., and it shows a boy who is having to push a baby in her carriage while his friends go off to play baseball.

Also, during 1916 and until his death in 1926, Claude Monet continues to paint his murals of water lilies even though he develops cataracts on his eyes and is unable to see as clearly or paint in such detail as he was in his earlier work.

Christina Bjork (b. 1938) is author of the beautiful book, Linnea in Monet’s Garden. In the book, Linnea, a young girl, and her neighbor, Mr. Blom, get to visit Paris and Giverny and see the places where Monet created his paintings. The book is a wonderful introduction to impressionist art and to the work and life of Claude Monet.

1916: Books and Literature

Sep26

Seventeen A Tale of Youth and Summer Time and the Baxter Family, Especially William by Booth Tarkington; illustrated by Arthur William Brown, published by Harper and Brothers, 1916, is a humorous novel about a seventeen year old boy’s first love. Mr. Tarkington’s novels were very popular in the first part of the twentieth century.

Listen to W.B. Yeats’ poem, Easter, 1916 about the Irish Uprising that occurred in Dublin, Ireland on Easter Monday of that year. The rebels proclaimed Irish independence and an Irish republic, but they were forced to surrender to superior British forces on April 29, 1916. Over 300 Irish died, and over 2000 were imprisoned by the British.

Here’s the last verse of the poem which celebrates those Irish heroes who died in the Easter Uprising:

'Thomas MacDonagh - Easter Rising 1916' photo (c) 2008, William Murphy - license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?
That is Heaven’s part, our part
To murmur name upon name,
As a mother names her child
When sleep at last has come
On limbs that had run wild.
What is it but nightfall?
No, no, not night but death;
Was it needless death after all?
For England may keep faith
For all that is done and said.
We know their dream; enough
To know they dreamed and are dead;
And what if excess of love
Bewildered them till they died?
I write it out in a verse –
MacDonagh and MacBride
And Connolly and Pearse
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.