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The Black Fawn by Jim Kjelgaard

Jan30

Jim Kjelgaard was a prolific author of over forty novels for children and young adults, mostly animal stories. His most famous and best-selling book was Big Red, the story of an orphan boy and his beloved Irish setter.

The main character in The Black Fawn is also an orphaned boy, Allan “Bud” Sloan. Bud comes to live with Gramps and Gram Bennett in an attitude of guarded fear and determination.

“With his little bundle of belongings wrapped in a spare shirt and tucked under his right arm–the orphanage did not furnish suitcases when they farmed you out–Bud started up the drive with his head held high and with what he hoped was a fearless, manly tread. But his insides felt like jelly that has stood too long in a warm place and his feet seemed to weigh five hundred pounds each. If he had been sure no one was looking, he would have burst into tears. He could not be sure, and not for an instant must he forget that weakness made him easy prey for whoever saw it.”

Slowly, over the course of the novel, Bud responds to the open-hearted love and care of Gram Bennett and the measured and careful teaching and example of Gramps, and the three become a family even as Bud learns to be a man. The black fawn is something of a touchstone that Bud first saves when the fawn is almost orphaned in infancy, and then watches in brief glimpses as he grows to be a mighty buck that Bud reluctantly hunts along with Gramps. 

So the book showcases the love of animals, but also the thrill of hunting and the satisfaction to be found in farming and animal husbandry. Bud learns “the ways of nature and the meaning of true sportsmanship.” It’s a balanced view of all three of these ways that man interacts with nature and the animal world.

I’m just starting a re-read of James Herriot’s All Creatures Great and Small, and I couldn’t help comparing the two books. Herriot’s Yorkshire farmers care for their animals, but they also know that farm animals are meant to be of use, sometimes for food. The attitude in Kjelgaard’s story is the same. The deer are meant to be respected and admired for their beauty and animal sense, but also to be hunted for food and for sport as well. Gramps sees the black buck as a magnificent and wily adversary, and himself as an elder with lessons worth teaching to young Bud. Some of those lessons come through the medium and process of deer hunting.

The ending to the story is perfect for hunters and animal lovers both, although animal welfare activists and vegetarians might not love it so much. Kjelgaard balances a respect for wildlife and nature with a deep appreciation for the sport of hunting and the lessons that it teaches. This blog post by Daniel Schmidt, a deer hunter, explicates the basic idea contained in this story: Humble Appreciation: A Deer Hunter’s Prayer.

Incident at Hawk’s Hill by Allan W. Eckert

Jan14

Benjamin MacDonald is the six year old younger son of William and Esther MacDonald. The year is 1870, and the place is somewhere to the north of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. In this prairie land the MacDonald family own a farm, and Ben, a child who in today’s parlance would certainly be called “neurodivergent”, has lived his life so far on that farm, exploring those prairie lands. In 1870, folks just say that Ben is “dreadful queer,” “some sort of monster or throwback, an animal-boy.” Ben seldom speaks to people even in his own family, and he has a strange attraction to and affinity for all sorts of animals–farm animals, wildlife, even birds and insects. He spends most of his days following, observing, and mimicking the creatures he finds on the farm and out on the prairie. And the animals seem to respond to Ben and accept his overtures of friendship, even kinship.

So, this Newbery Honor book from 1972 is a nature story with lots of close description of wild creatures and how they live. Although the Newbery Award and Newbery Honor are intended to be awards for children’s literature, Incident at Hawk’s Hill was originally published as an adult novel. Many older children would still appreciate the book. However, sensitive readers should be warned that the Nature pictured is indeed “red in tooth and claw.” Eckert doesn’t shy away from describing–in detail– predators hunting and eating their prey, animals fighting and and defending their young, and eventually the deaths of some of those predators at the hands of men.

The author prefaces his story with this note, “The story which follows is a slightly fictionalized version of an incident which actually occurred at the time and place noted.” An historical magazine, Manitoba Pageant, in 1960 published an article entitled “The Boy Who Lived in a Badger Hole”. The article tells about an 1873 reported incident of a lost boy, found after ten days living in a badger hole. Eckert may have based his Ben’s story on this magazine report. In the book, one day in June, Ben becomes lost on the prairie, and the story becomes a tale of his survival. It’s a somewhat grisly and nearly unbelievable survival story as a wild badger befriends Ben and shares its den and its food with him, and ultimately Ben almost forgets his humanity as he becomes absorbed in badger life.

The ending is a bit disturbing, too, with a fight between two men, almost to the death. If violent death and threats of death, for both animals and people, are too much for you or your child reader, this book is not for you.

Nonetheless, I found this 1972 Newbery Honor book to be fascinating thought-provoking, and quite well written. The language is descriptive and evocative of a prairie world, almost a fantasy world. In fact, at one point in the story, the storyteller writes about Ben’s getting lost, “It was certainly well past midafternoon now but still nothing looked at all familiar to him and he had the momentary panicky feeling that somehow, like the little girl in the story his mother had read to him, he had stepped into another world.” (Alice in Wonderland, published in 1865?)

The cover blurb calls Incident at Hawk’s Hill “a poignant story of human courage and change, a simple fable rich with wonder.” I’m not so sure about the “fable” part, but the story is rich with wonder. Several characters call Ben’s survival a miracle and attribute it to God’s intervention. I like the way the story points, without preaching, toward tolerance and understanding for people whose engagement with the world does not fit inside the “normal” template. Those readers with an interest in nature, wildlife, and natural history will also find the descriptions of the habits and ways of various animals in the story to be quite engaging and informative.

Rilla of Ingleside by L.M. Montgomery

Sep2

Rilla of Ingleside is L.M. Montgomery’s eighth and final book about Anne Shirley Blythe (Anne of Green Gables) and her family. Rilla is Anne’s youngest daughter, named for Marilla of Green Gables, but affectionately called Rilla, or sometimes Rilla-my-Rilla. The time setting is 1914, just at the beginning of World War I, which makes this book a perfect read for teens who are interested in that time period or in finishing out the story of Anne and her family.

As the book begins Rilla is fourteen years old, and according to her mother, “her sole aspiration seems to be to have a good time.” Over the course of the book and of the war, Rilla grows to become a woman of courage and perseverance as she accepts responsibilities far beyond her years. News about the war is interspersed throughout the story, but that news is digested by the family at Ingleside and by their friends and neighbors as it applies to their own lives and to the men they have sent off to war.

I would call Rilla of Ingleside a gentle romance story and also a coming of age story. Rilla herself is a fine character, and her growth into womanhood provides a model for young adults, teen girls in particular, to think about and perhaps even emulate in some aspects. Susan, the Blythes’ cook and housekeeper is something of a counterweight to the seriousness of the wartime novel with her wry humor and optimistic attitude that persists throughout the book.

Rilla’s romantic interest, Kenneth, is a rather vague character, not too well fleshed out, just as the war itself is rather vague and far away over in Europe, even though the war news is almost a central character in the story. Nevertheless, the man that Kenneth becomes will have a lasting influence in Rilla’s life just as the events and tragedies of a war far across the ocean will change the lives of all those who live at Ingleside.

Rilla of Ingleside is much more of a serious novel than Anne of Green Gables or any its other sequels. Rilla gets into “scrapes” and there are various humorous incidents and characters, but the war and its battles and casualties hang over the lives of the family at Ingleside like a dark cloud. It’s an old-fashioned young adult novel, nothing gory or ugly, and even the description of the death of one of the characters in battle is more tragic and sad than it is bloody and violent.

Rilla of Ingleside is recommended for Anne Shirley fans and for anyone looking for a tender but unshrinking introduction to the difficulties and sacrifices required of a young girl who is living through a major war while growing up and becoming a mature adult. Warning: this story may evoke both tears and admiration.

City Spies and The Sherlock Society by James Ponti

Aug23

Ponti, James. City Spies. Aladdin, 2020. Book 1 of 6 in a series by this author. Other books in the series: Golden Gate, Forbidden City, City of the Dead, Mission Manhattan, London Calling.

Ponti, James. The Sherlock Society. Aladdin, 2024. This series is new and possibly as yet uncompleted. Book #2 is called Hurricane Heist.

Because I have seen James Ponti’s middle grade novels suggested and praised in multiple places, I wanted to check them out for myself –and for possible inclusion in my library. I have only read the first book in each of the two series, but I would like to read more. So that’s my initial reaction.

City Spies, Ponti’s bestselling series starter, is indeed a good read. When Sara Martinez is sent to juvie for hacking computers, it’s really a revenge arrest initiated by her abusive foster parents. However, Sara is a computer whiz, and her hacking abilities have not gone unnoticed. A British spy, sent by M16, rescues Sara from the clutches of the New York juvenile justice system and recruits her to join a secret team of juvenile spies instead of going to jail. The City Spies are five kids from around the world who live now in Scotland, attend an elite school, and in their spare time, go on spy missions for the British Secret Intelligence Service.

It’s an intriguing set-up, and the book delivers on its premise. The City Spies, along with their handler, code name Mother, are sent to Paris to infiltrate an international youth competition on the science of rainmaking (seeding clouds and such), while they are really there to protect the reclusive millionaire who’s sponsoring the competition. And there are a few side missions and quirks and turns in the main mission such that Sara is initiated into the team in an exciting and adventurous operation. The assignment is resolved satisfactorily, but there are plenty of remaining questions about the team and its future to lead to another book (and another and another, it seems).

The writing is adequate. The plotting is the same. And the characters are interesting enough, as I said, to make me want to read at least the next book in the series. I can see why this series has gained such popularity. I have no content considerations, really, although there is a murder involved, off-stage, not explicitly described. And the kids do spy stuff: lies, deception, computer hacking, breaking into buildings, false identities–all in pursuit of catching and stopping the bad guys.

Ponti’s second series (that I read), The Sherlock Society, begins with a book not quite as exciting as City Spies, but promising. Instead of international intrigue, this one is about a group of American kids in Miami who are looking for a way to earn some money during the summer break. Babysitting is boring and mowing lawns is hot and sweaty, so Alex Sherlock and his friends Yadi and Lina, inspired by Alex’s surname and the famous predecessor of that same name, decide to start a detective agency. Then, Alex’s older sister, Zoe, and his retired journalist grandfather become involved, and the search for Al Capone’s hidden money becomes a crazy and dangerous chase after environmental polluters and current day criminals.

I liked this one almost as much as I did City Spies, but the pacing was a little off. There’s a lot of Miami history interspersed between the adventure, and any kids’ library in Florida would do well to have a copy of this book just for the history aspect. The characters in this one were fun. Grandfather is just crazy enough to be believable, and Alex’s parents are actually involved in his and Zoe’s lives and in the story, not absent, and that’s a breath of fresh air. Alex and his friends are nerdy, and lovable, and Zoe is a bit harder to get to know and love but worth it in the end. I look forward to reading Hurricane Heist soon, just in time for height of hurricane season here in Houston and in Florida.

The Foreigner by Gladys Malvern

Aug6

When I was a young teen, I became captivated by a genre I called “Biblical fiction”—novels that took the characters and events of the Bible and enriched them with fictional backgrounds, motivations, and settings. Books like The Bronze Bow by Elizabeth George Speare and Moses by Katherine B. Shippen opened up a whole new world for me. I began to realize that the Bible stories I’d heard all my life weren’t just stories—they were history. The characters were real people who lived real, full lives.

By that age, I was old enough to understand the difference between fiction and fact, and I knew the Bible well enough to recognize when a story was embellishing or imagining details. I loved discovering Biblical truths embedded in these fictionalized accounts of what might have been.

My favorite author in this genre was Gladys Malvern, and The Foreigner was one of my favorite books of hers. It’s a retelling of the story of Ruth, enriched with descriptive details, imagined relationships, and added events that don’t contradict the Biblical narrative—but do expand it in thoughtful ways. In Malvern’s version, Ruth and Orpah are sisters, daughters of a wealthy Moabite family. Their parents are indifferent to their well-being and only interested in the bride-price offered by Elimelech, the Hebrew patriarch. As the story unfolds, Ruth comes to love and appreciate the customs and kindness of her new Hebrew family. Out of loyalty and love for Naomi, she undertakes a difficult journey from Moab to Bethlehem.

One of the most powerful aspects of Malvern’s version is her description of that arduous journey. She devotes two chapters to Naomi and Ruth’s trek across Moab and into Judea, traveling on foot with no protection and little provision. Along the way, they encounter wind and dust storms, wild animals, dehydration, and scorching desert sun. It helped me understand just how much Ruth must have sacrificed to follow Naomi to an unfamiliar land—where she would be seen as both a foreigner and, possibly, an enemy.

Malvern also fills in the gaps in the story of Ruth and Boaz—their courtship and eventual marriage—with plausible details that make their relationship more understandable. The original story, while beautiful, can feel puzzling. Why did one relative refuse to marry Ruth, while Boaz embraced the opportunity? Why did Naomi instruct Ruth to go to the threshing floor at night and lie at Boaz’s feet? While not every question is answered, Malvern offers possibilities that invite readers to think more deeply about the cultural and personal dynamics at play.

The final chapters read as a gentle, respectful romance—the story of two people falling in love and becoming the great-grandparents of King David. It’s completely clean and faithful to the Biblical account, at least in terms of the details Scripture actually gives us.

One element I found slightly odd was Ruth’s lingering memory of a childhood idol of Chemosh, the Moabite god. She remarks that Boaz somehow resembles this idol she once prayed to before converting to the Hebrew faith. It’s a minor detail, but it stood out in an otherwise lovely and respectful retelling.

I recommend The Foreigner for teens ages 12 and up—particularly those who enjoy a gentle romance and have enough Biblical background to distinguish fact from fiction. For me, it made Ruth and Naomi come alive with renewed admiration and compassion.

Eyes of the Hawk by Elmer Kelton

Jun3

McElroy, Lee (Elmer Kelton). Eyes of the Hawk. Doubleday, 1981.

My favorite Western author, who happens to be from my own hometown of San Angelo, Texas, is Elmer Kelton. Before his death in 2009, Mr. Kelton wrote and published more forty Western novels, some under pseudonyms which included Tom Early, Alex Hawk, and Lee McElroy. Eyes of the Hawk was originally published by Kelton, using the name Lee McElroy.

Comparisons are odious and everyone has his own tastes, but I think Mr. Kelton is a much better writer than any of the other famous authors of westerns: Louis L’Amour, Zane Grey, and certainly better than Larry McMurtry. I grew up in West Texas, among the heirs of the Western tradition, and as far as I can tell Mr. Kelton gets Texas and the West and cowboys and ranch life right.

My favorite Kelton novel is The Time It Never Rained, but this one, Eyes of the Hawk, is in the running for second place among all the books by Kelton that I have read. Reed Sawyer, as an old man, narrates this story of his life and his friendship with a rancher named Thomas Canfield. Thomas Canfield is “a proud man with the fierce-eyed stare that led the Mexicans to call him gavilán–the hawk.” Canfield is hard but kind to newcomer Reed Sawyer, and Reed becomes Canfield’s employee, hired hand, and eventually is treated as part of the family as he works and supports Canfield’s ever-expanding land holdings and cattle business. But Thomas Canfield is just as strong and implacable toward his enemies as he is loyal to his friends. So when Branch Isom, a powerful businessman, and the entire town of Stonehill, TX become Canfield’s enemies, Reed Sawyer is caught between the two opposing men and forced to go from observer to actor in the ensuing drama.

This book is just so insightful about human nature and how we can become that which we hate and refuse to forgive. I would recommend it to young men (and old men) who enjoy the Western genre, and I would be curious to hear their thoughts on the story after they read it. Thomas Canfield is an admirable character in many ways, but (Spoiler alert!) he is consumed by his thirst for revenge and his bitterness toward those who have injured him. Branch Isom, on the other hand, begins as a ruthless and brash climber who will do anything to beat out the competition, but he learns eventually to humble himself and to try to make peace. Both men change over the course of the novel: one for the better and one for the worse.

Content considerations: Western violence (not explicit or gory), some cursing, prejudice against Mexicans and Polish immigrants.

Elmer Kelton’s website. You can check out a copy of Eyes of the Hawk and other books by Elmer Kelton from Meriadoc Homeschool Library.

Drovers Road by Joyce West

Jun2

West, Joyce. Drovers Road: Adventures in New Zealand, Book 1. Bethlehem Books, 2019.

I ordered this trilogy of books set on a New Zealand sheep ranch on the strength of a recommendation from Sara at Plumfield Moms. And she did not steer me wrong. The narrator, Gay Allan, tells about her life growing up in rural New Zealand, and the story is a delight. It’s a bit like All Creatures Great and Small with all the animals–sheep and goats and dogs and horses, even bees–but from a child’s perspective.

“I have made up my mind that while I lie here waiting for my sprained ankle to mend, I shall write a book. It will be about ourselves, the Allan family, about Drovers Road and all our adventures here, and then when we are grown up we can read it, and remember how happy we were.”

I think Gay is about twelve years old in this book. She lives with her Uncle Dunsany, the owner of the sheep station, and her orphaned cousins, Hugh, Eve, and Merry, and their Great Aunt Belle, who mothers them all. Drovers Road is a very horsy book, as the children and the grownups ride horses just about wherever they go, and the sheep ranch is also a horse raising concern, And of course, there are dogs, sheep dogs and stray dogs and a special dog named Bugle who saves Gay’s life at one point in the story.

Or perhaps I should say, stories. The chapters in the book are episodic, with stories about a ghost, and a hunt, and an elopement, an old romance, and a new one. There’s even a Christmas story and a running-away-from-home story that nearly ends in disaster. The narrator, Gay, weaves all these stories together as she tells about her own coming to maturity in the context of a loving family in the remote hill country. I think I noted one curse word in the book with several mentions of men cursing without the specifics of words used. Merry, who is Gay’s best friend and partner-in-crime, does get a whipping from the schoolteacher when he brings an army of frogs to the one room schoolhouse where both cousins attend classes.

“The funny part is that when he went home he quite bragged about how hard Susan could hit, and admired her very much for it. He insisted upon showing us all the imaginary marks on his legs. My Uncle Dunsany shouted with laughter when he heard about it, and said that he had not been so pleased for years, and he was going round to call upon this little teacher who had spunk enough to put Merry in his place.”

There’s a lot of laughter and reasons for it, in the book, and I am looking forward to reading the next two books in the trilogy in which Gay grows up to become a young lady and an adult.

Valley of Dragons by Christina Baehr

Apr24

The series, The Secrets of Ormdale by Christina Baehr:

  • Wormwood Abbey, Book #1
  • Drake Hall, Book #2
  • Castle of the Winds, Book #3
  • City of Serpents, Book #4
  • Valley of Dragons, Book #5

I already reviewed the first book in this series, and now that I’ve finished all five books in The Secrets of Ormdale saga, I’m going to give you my thoughts on the entire series, rather than review each book individually. My immediate reaction is: excellent fantasy and romance fiction! Set in Victorian London and Yorkshire, these books are appropriately Victorian, with a nod to “new ideas” (at the time) such as women’s suffrage and equality of the sexes and classes. Each book tells a separate contained story, and yet each one leads on to the next. The themes and characters are obviously influenced by Christian and Charlotte Mason ideas and principles, but with a light touch, not at all didactic. There is some exploration of the status and plight of Jewish people in England during the time period when many Ashkenazi Jews were fleeing Eastern Europe to come to British shores. And the central character and narrator, Edith Worms, is a part of a delightful and deeply Christian family who live their commitment to Christ and his teachings rather than grounding their Christianity in Victorian cultural morality.

So, that’s the overview. As for Book #5 in the series, Valley of Dragons, it is much longer than the other four books in the series, clocking in at 499 pages. But the author needed all of those pages to finish her story. As the story commences in Book #5, there are yet many secrets to be revealed, prisoners to be released, enemies to be defeated, and dragons to be tamed.

About those dragons, these stories do feature reptiles, many kinds of serpents, salamanders, cockatrices, basilisks, sea monsters, wyverns, and lizards–even a Quetzalcoatl–all collectively termed as dragons in this alternate world. Indeed, Britain harbors at least four families of dragon keepers who have kept their many species of dragons safe and secret for centuries.

Some literary experts insist that dragons and serpents must always only be shown in literature as “bad guys”, archetypal monsters and symbols of satanic influence, like the serpent in the Garden of Eden. Anyone who writes about a “good dragon” or a dragon ally or pet is inverting the symbols and distorting the fundamental meaning of the literary tradition, and maybe even Scripture itself. However, Edith Worms and her father, a clergyman, and I beg to differ:

“‘You said once that the church had been a comfort to you when you were young, Father, because it mentioned dragons. But aren’t they always a symbol of evil in the scriptures?’

‘A symbol, yes. To say evil is like a dragon is to say evil is deadly and long-lived. . . . But not all of the dragons in the scriptures are evil. What of Job’s leviathan? You will not find a passage more full of wonder than that. Everything was good when it was created. . . .’

‘When I look at the dragons, I see something beautiful–something worth protecting,” I said. . . . “But the people of Dale, they see something fearful. Something only an archangel can save them from.’

‘God made both people and dragons, my dear. What we must find is a way for us to live together peacefully–as He intended. . . ,’ Father said encouragingly.”

Dragons can certainly signify evil and danger and monstrosity with in the literary tradition, but they can also simply stand for power and peril and wonder within that same tradition. Stories are not bound by such petty rules of literary nitpicking. Nor is Scripture. The serpent on a pole that Mose was instructed to elevate before the Israelites in the wilderness was a symbol and vehicle of healing (Numbers 21:4-9). The dragons in The Secrets of Ormdale are certainly dangerous, like lions and tigers are dangerous, but they are subject to men (and women) to whom God gave the job of tending His creation, including all kinds of reptiles, even dragons.

Dragons aside for the moment, these books are all about secrets, especially family secrets, and how they can destroy relationships and even block love itself. The books do involve romance as Edith learns to “open her heart” and accept the pain and loss that loving someone can entail. The romantic scenes themselves are completely chaste, with only a few kisses described, but there are allusions to the perversion of sexual attraction as one character recalls being sexually assaulted and another is kidnapped and almost forced into an unwilling marriage.

I thought these books with their emphasis on freedom and openness and the free choices of responsible men and women to care for each other in mutual, self-sacrificial and loving relationship were a perfect antidote to the typical Gothic romance with its brooding atmosphere of secrets and seduction. In The Secrets of Ormdale, all secrets are eventually brought out into the open, and the happily-ever-after is built on a firm foundation of mutual respect and truth.

The entire series, The Secrets of Ormdale, is available for check out from Meriadoc Homeschool Library for adults and young adult who are prepared for romantic themes, practical young heroines, and of course, beautiful and perilous dragons.

The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion by Beth Brower

Apr18

Brower, Beth. The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion, Volumes 1-4. Rysdon Press, 2019-2021.

I saw these books recommended here and there on the internet, and the synopses and reviews sounded interesting, so I decided to try the first volume of The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion. (I assume that “unselected” means “unedited”.) Miss Lion’s journal in its first volume was a brief read, only 107 pages, but it was indeed enticing enough to make me immediately order a copy of Volume 2. Which led to Volumes 3 and 4, and I am hooked.

In Volume 1 we meet Miss Emma M. Lion as she arrives at Lapis Lazuli House in the neighborhood of St. Crispian’s, London on March 5, 1883. Miss Lion’s journal entries are filled with intriguing and mysterious references to various incidents and persons such as “The Great Burning of 1882” and “The Incident which led to The Scar” and “the monkey’s head Maxwell sent me” and “the Roman centurion (ghost) at Jacob’s Well” and more. Some of these are explained as one reads on; others are left to the imagination and most probably to later volumes. This first volume of the journals really just introduces Emma Lion and a cast of characters who include a nefarious uncle, a formidable aunt, a few friends and cousins, and various inhabitants of the slightly magical, eccentric neighborhood of St. Crispian’s.

In Volume 2, Emma, determined to remain in her home, Lapis Lazuli House, despite financial and social difficulties, begins to enter into multiple adventures and schemes and to add a bit a romance to her life. Even though Emma is not particularly interested in romantic entanglements or marriage, and even though she is not particularly eligible, having little or no money, she does have an awful lot of young men in her orbit: the photographer to whom she rents a room, her childhood nemesis turned into a handsome bachelor, the duke who lives in the neighborhood, a poetic and somewhat eccentric Church of England curate, and a charming scoundrel named Jack, to name a few. Emma navigates all of these with grace and wit, while also doing the bidding of her autocratic Aunt Eugenia, somewhat reluctantly, and managing at least a stand off with her arch-enemy Cousin Archibald.

At this point and into volumes 3 and 4, the story begins to remind one of a TV series (like Downton Abbey or All Creatures Great and Small) with lots of characters, some lovely dialog, little stories embedded into a larger story, and hints and revelations that pique the curiosity and keep one coming back for more. So far the romance is chaste and Victorian, and the language is tame, although there are a very few instances in which characters use God’s name in vain, which I wish were not present. Since I’ve only read Volumes 1-4 so far, I can’t guarantee that Emma remains a paragon of virtue, by twenty-first century standards. By Victorian standards, she’s already lost paragon status by the end of Volume 2. However, her adventures are not really shocking for anyone who is not Aunt Eugenia or of her ilk, and Emma is a church-going, Scripture reading, young lady in all I have read so far.

I love these books, and I foresee spending a great deal of time reading Emma’s journals. Author Beth Brower has promised:  “the plan is to write four years of Emma’s life, give or take. And as every volume covers two months of Emma’s life, that is, indeed, six volumes each year.” So, twenty-four or more volumes. (Volume 2 and succeeding volumes are much longer than Volume 1; 191 pages for Volume 4.) At about $12.00 apiece in paperback, I also foresee spending a great deal of money collecting all of Miss Lion’s journals. If you read books in ebook form, you will have a much less expensive journey, should you decide to read your way through the Unselected Journals. If you can get them from the library, even better; however Rysdon Press seems to be Ms. Brower’s personal imprint, and many libraries do not purchase self-published books as a matter of policy. (Oh, I think Kindle Unlimited may have them for free.)

Still, here I go to order Volumes 5 and 6. At least, you will be able to check out Volumes 1-6 from Meriadoc Homeschool Library in the future. As I said, I am hooked.

The Contender by Robert Lipsyte

Jan10

Lipsyte, Robert. The Contender. Harper & Row, 1968.

Some bad ideas just keep coming back to haunt and hinder human flourishing all over again. In this book, published in 1967, Alfred Brooks, a black seventeen year old high school drop out who lives and works in Harlem, hears all the same taunts and race baiting remarks that are common on the internet nowadays.

“You just a slave,” sneered Major. “You was born a slave. You gonna die a slave.”

“You come on, Alfred,” said James softly. “Whitey been stealing from us for three hundred years. We just going to take some back.”

It’s the appeal to enslave oneself to bitterness and resentment that keeps coming back to capture impressionable young minds. Alfred, who lives with his aunt and her daughters in an apartment and works at a local Jewish-owned store, isn’t interested in the siren call of crime and drugs that his tormentors are offering and that his best friend James is yielding to. But Alfred doesn’t really know what he does want to pursue, what his true adventure might be, until he steps over the threshold of Donatelli’s Gym and commits himself to training to become a boxer.

The Contender is a book for older teens and adults, especially for those young men who are considering what it means to become a man. It’s about boxing and drug abuse and the temptations that come with racial hatred and poverty and aimlessness. But it’s mostly about coming of age through struggle and discipline and perseverance to find the person you want to become.

The novel is gritty for 1967. There’s the violence of the boxing ring and of the streets, and the desperation of heroin addiction (Alfred’s friend, James). The bullies, also black teens, who taunt and try to take revenge on Alfred for something he didn’t do, make use of the n-word twice to tell Alfred what a loser he is. But the words and the violence are there for a reason, and by today’s standards, they’re mild. No sexual content other than a few references to young men looking for Friday night girls to date.

Robert Lipsyte is a sports journalist as well as a writer of nonfiction sports biography and memoir and young adult fiction. He was awarded the American Library Association’s Margaret A. Edwards Award for his contribution to young adult literature in 2001. The citation for the award noted that, “The Contender and its sequels, The Brave and The Chief transformed the sports novel to authentic literature with their gritty depiction of the boxing world. An ongoing theme is the struggle of their protagonists to seek personal victory by their continuing efforts towards a better life despite defeats.”

I haven’t read The Brave or The Chief, but I did find The Contender to be thought-provoking. I know a young man who might get a lot out of the story if I could get him to read it. This book is available for check out from Meriadoc Homeschool Library.