Archives

Marie, Dancing by Carolyn Meyer

Jun10

Edgar Degas’s Petite danseuse de quatorze ans (Little Dancer Aged Fourteen) was the only sculpture he ever exhibited during his lifetime. I had never heard of it, although I have enjoyed his paintings of dancers, until I read Carolyn Meyer’s historical fiction novel about the life of the model for the sculpture, a dancer named Marie van Goethem.

In Meyer’s story Marie’s family is made up of herself, her older sister Antoinette, her younger sister Charlotte, and her mother, a laundress with dreams of stardom for her three daughters. The world of ballet is harsh, especially when the family lives in poverty with hardly enough money to pay the rent and buy food. The little money Marie is paid for modelling for Monsieur Degas helps to buy food and clothing for the girls —and unfortunately, sometimes it goes to feed Maman’s addiction to absinthe. As Marie sees, in Degas’s studio and later in the Paris apartment of American artist Mary Cassatt, a new world of luxuries she hardly knew existed, the little ballet dancer is tempted to follow the example of her older sister and accept the favors and gifts of the men who come backstage to woo the ballet dancers and to gain their “favors” in return. Marie’s final fate is not what I expected, but it does seem realistic, rather than a forced happily-ever-after ending.

I think the artists and the dancers and the dreamers will enjoy this look into the the story behind a great work of art. It’s most appropriate for high school age young people since one of the main dilemmas in the novel is whether or not Marie will become a lorette (kept woman) as her sister and many of the other dancers do. I thought the subject was handled frankly, but also tastefully. Marie must also choose between the attentions of a young coachman, Jean-Pierre, and a young nobleman, Lucian Daudet. Lucien gives Marie jewels and fine meals, but Jean-Pierre has her heart until the day he asks her to give more than she can give.

Carolyn Meyer is one of Brown Bear Daughter’s favorite authors. She especially enjoys Meyer’s novels of Tudor England, including Mary, Bloody Mary and Doomed Queen Anne. I read one of Ms. Meyer’s early novels, Where the Broken Heart Still Beats: The Story of Cynthia Ann Parker, a long time ago, and I remember thinking it quite a good read.

By the way Ms. Meyer’s birthday was yesterday. According to her website, she’s still writing, and her latest project is called Dear Charley Darwin. She also has a book coming out this month called Duchessina: A Novel of Catherine de’ Medici.

Happy 72nd Birthday, Ms. Meyer.

Carolyn Meyer’s website.

The story of a ballet based on the life of Marie van Goethem, Le petite danseuse.

See a picture of the sculpture by Edgar Degas, Petite danseuse.

Red Moon at Sharpsburg by Rosemary Wells

Jun9

I know Rosemary Wells, and maybe you do too, as the author of the Max and Ruby picture books for young children. She can write for young adults, too. Red Moon at Sharpsburg is proof that Ms. Wells has the ability to write and research and create a wstory and a world for young adults as vivid as the one created with very few words and pictures in her Max books.

Red Moon at Sharpburg is, as can be deduced, a Civil War novel. It’s told from the point of view of a southern girl, India Moody, who lives in Northern Virginia with her family —her daddy, a harness maker, her mother, her little brother and her aged grandfather. The Moodys aren’t rich before the war begins, but they are comfortable with a home and a profitable business. The war, of course, changes everything. In spite of a couple of holes in the plot, I thought Red Moon at Sharpsburg was one of the best Civil War novels written for young adults that I have read. The “holes” involve minor characters, namely India’s baby brother and her elderly grandfather, who have a tendency to disappear when they might interfere with the action. I also found it difficult to believe that a young girl in the South during the war was able through a series of fortunate connections to obtain medicines (aspirin?) from Europe that would cure fever since aspirin wasn’t really invented until the late 1800’s. And the one of the characters has a suspiciously modern knowledge of medicine and chemistry and bacteriology that would have made him somewhat prescient in the mid 1800’s.

Still, the narrator and main character, India, is a delightful young lady and role model. And the descriptions of the war, of battlefields and prisons, and of atrocities are accurate and chilling. Ms. Wells says in the back of the book that part of her purpose in writing it was to reveal “the profound immorality of war.” She goes on to say, “Sometimes we must fight wars, but it is unforgivable to pump war full of glamour and glory.” I’m no pacifist, but I agree with Ms. Wells. She also has a mildly feminist agenda, but it doesn’t become overbearing or preachy.

The best thing about this novel was the gems of language and writing that popped up when I was least expecting them. Here are a few examples:

“I follow him down to Buckmarsh Street to catch a last glimpse of him. Then I cry, standing in the the street like a child with a skinned knee.”

Mauve is a pinkish purple of such delicacy I can only hold the silk square to the light and gaze at it. I have seen it only in petunias and stained-glass windows.”

“The moon is in its last quarter. It appears low on the horizon above the smoke. The crescent sits like a bloody smile in the sky.”

“I am aware of a sudden force, as if I have been flung through space at the speed of a comet. I know what this speeding ahead is without being told. It is me being hurled forward in time to the empty spot at the head of my family. It is a place where I was not meant to be for years to come and now I’m there.
48hbc
Other good Civil War novels for young adults:

Beatty, Patricia. Turn Homeward, Hannalee.
Beatty, Patricia. Be Ever Hopeful, Hannalee.
Beatty, Patricia. Charley Skedaddle. (Bowery Boys and deserters)
Hunt, Irene. Across Five Aprils.
Fleischman, Paul. Bull Run.
Keith, Harold. Rifles for Watie. (Cherokee Indian leader Stand Watie and the repeating rifle)
Paulsen, Gary. Soldier’s Heart: a Novel of the Civil War.
Perez, N.A. The Slopes of War: A Novel of Gettysburg.
Rinaldi, Ann. An Acquaintance with Darkness. (Lincoln’s assassination)
Rinaldi, Ann. The Last Silk Dress.
Rinaldi, Ann. Numbering All the Bones. (Andersonville Prison)
Wisler, G. Clifton. THe Drummer Boy of Vicksburg.

Keturah and Lord Death by Martine Leavitt

Jun9

This peculiar tale reminded me of Scheherezade in 1001 Nights and of last year’s other Death Personified story, The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak. I told the Eldest the bare outline of the plot, and she immediately said, “Chaucer’s already used that plot device.” Indeed, Chaucer’s Pardoner’s Tale does have three drunken men go into the forest to meet and conquer Death. And then there’s the flavor in the story, if not the humor, of The Princess Bride.

However, Keturah and Lord Death is neither fish nor fowl, neither romance nor comedy, neither fairy tale nor high tragedy. I thought about saying that it was a sort of prosaic hymn to Death itself, but it’s not that exactly. It may be speculative fiction about the inevitability of Death. Or about the power of love to transcend Death. It may be an old folk tale reworked into a modern novel. Or something else altogether.

I’m not completely sure. And in this book, the uncertainty fits. Keturah and Lord Death isn’t an allegory; it’s a regular old story of the kind that C.S. Lewis would have approved as much as he disapproved of allegory. It’s not exactly a “Christian” story, but it doesn’t contradict the Christian view of life and death.

“Tell me what it is like to die,” I answered.

He dismounted from his horse, looking at me strangely the whole while. “You experience something similar every day,” he said softly. “It is as familiar to you as bread and butter.”

“Yes, I said. “It is like every night when I fall asleep.”

“No. It is like every morning when you wake up.”

Ms Leavitt begins her tale with a snippet of Emily Dickinson (Because I could not stop for Death,/He kindly stopped for me;/The carriage held but just ourselves/And Immortality) and ends with this revelation in the Acknowledgments:

“Finally, I express my love to my younger sister, Lorraine, who died many years ago of cystic fibrosis at the age of eleven. Now, as a mother and grandmother, I realize what a long journey dying must be for a child to make alone. I wish I could have walked with her a little way. This book is my way of doing so.”

If you like faity tale and romantic fantasy and uncoventional quest stories, the journey is well worth your time.

Marika by Andrea Cheng

Jun8

A few months ago I read another book by Andrea Cheng, Eclipse, the story of precocious eight year old Peti, the talkative son of Hungarian immigrant parents. Marika, the book I just finished, is narrated by a girl character, a little older than Peti, eleven rather than eight, but it has the same feel of a very serious story about adult problems being told from a child’s point of view.

I’m not sure, judging from the two books I’ve read, that Ms. Cheng is really a juvenile author. I think she writes adult or young adult books with child narrators, told in a child’s voice. The subject matter in the two books includes child abuse, adultery, genocide, and rape (mentioned), and I’m just not convinced that elementary school children would appreciate the rhythm or the content of either book.

That said, however, Marika is a great novel. The blurb in the back of the book says that Andrea Cheng is the daughter of Hungarian immigrants and that Marika, the character and the book, are loosely based on her mother’s story. Marika, the character, is a young Hungarian girl who happens to have three Jewish grandparents. Her family is culturally Catholic, but they can’t escape their Jewish ethnic identity in World War II Budapest. Marika’s struggles to understand this identity and what it means to be Jewish even though you don’t believe in the Jewish religion, even though you don’t want to be Jewish, from the core of the story.

Here’s a sample of Marika’s voice, on the day she is rescued by her father from confinement in a Jewish prison:

“I sat by the window and looked down at the Danube below, flowing so peacefully along its banks. Lots of people wrote poems about the Danube. We had to memorize one in fifth grade about the wind blowing off the water. I recited it to myself, and when I was done, I sobbed.”
48hbc
That’s the tone of this book: serious, sad, flowing, yet childlike. Marika does mature over the course of the novel, and that growth is reflected in the way she writes about her experiences. However, as the novel ends, and the reader finds out how the war ended for each of the characters in the story, the feelings continue to be mixed. Some survive the war and the Holocaust, and others, of course, do not, a very adult and true lesson to learn about life.

The Loud Silence of Francine Green by Karen Cushman

Jun8

“It was probably just a silly rumor, but I’d heard that nuns had their heads shaved, and I was afraid they relaxed by taking off their veils and running around bald, something I certainly did not want to see.”

A lot of this book reads like a “silly rumor”. However, some of it is true-to-history, and how is a young adult reader to tell the difference? Were Catholic schools and Catholic nuns back in the 1950’s really repressive and threatening? Probably some were. Were some people blacklisted for Communist sympathies in Hollywood during the so-called “red scare”? Yes, some were. Did those who were blacklisted become so intimidated and frightened by the questions and the pressure from the FBI that they committed suicide? Not unless they were already disturbed and depressed. (The author’s note in the back of the book says that “at least two” of those Hollywood types who were blacklisted committed suicide, but I can’t find any names or independent verification of this fact.) Did children really learn to fear The Bomb and the Reds so much that they worried that airplanes flying overhead might drop a bomb on them? I’m sure some imaginative children did.

Author Karen Cushman lived in California during the late forties/early fifties. I didn’t. She attended a Catholic school. I didn’t.
She says she was taught to “duck and cover” in case of a nuclear attack. I wa taught to go out into an interior hallway and cover my head in tornado drills, but by the time I went to elementary school in the 1960’s, no one was talking about nuclear attacks or fallout shelters to schoolchildren in West Texas. At least, not to me.

So, I’m giving the events in this book the benefit of the doubt. Nevertheless, I found it difficult to read as a straight story. It felt more like a series of caricatures: the angry nun teacher, the poor Jewish liberal actor blacklisted as a consequence of his compassion for the poor and downtrodden, the friend who speaks out and gets herself into trouble, the pious goody-two-shoes who wants to become a nun, the empty-headed teenage sister who’s only interested in fingernail polish and boys, and the bumbling dad who can’t figure out what to do to protect his family from godless Communists and atomic bombs.

Only the narrator, Francine, felt like a real person. Francine is conflicted; she wants to be friends with Sophie, the afore-mentioned outspoken defender of lost causes, but she doesn’t want to get in trouble. Francine is a self-described coward. She’s become accustomed to being overlooked and ignored, and some part of her likes to be unnoticed. The nuns at school and her family at home never ask for her opinion on anything, so Francine isn’t even sure she has any opinions of her own. Francine’s supposed to be a representation of the American public, silent in the face of McCarthyism and persecution of Hollywood Communists. But Francine is more than a symbol. As a character, she insists upon being more complicated and interesting, just as I’m sure the politics and culture of the 1950’s were more complex and multi-layered than this simple presentation would indicate. And the ending is confusing and would be epecially so for those “imaginative young people” to whom I would think this book is targeted. What happened to Sophie and her father? Did the Big Bad FBI put them in a dungeon somewhere? Did they emigrate to Russia? Did they just decide to move and start over elsewhere? The uncertainty is realistic, but annoying, perhaps giving young people the idea that America in the 1950’s was a place like Chile in the 1970’s where people just disappeared never to seen again except as bodies in a mass grave somewhere.
48hbc
It’s a middle school/young adult novel of one author’s experience of the 1950’s, the red scare, and growing up to become a person with thoughts and ideas of one’s own. There’s some humor in the vein of the opening quotation, a decent plot, and one very engaging narrator. In Texas idiom, I’d call it “fair to middlin”.

Reviewed, much more favorably, by Fuse #8.

Summer Reading List: Middle School Daughter

Jun4

Brown Bear Daughter is twelve years old. Her favorite books are Harry Potter, Kiki Strike by Kirsten Miller, Rules by Cynthia Lord, and Julia’s Kitchen by Brenda Ferber. Here’s the reading list I made for her for this summer. To be accurate, she made the list in consultation with me.

The Higher Power of Lucky by Susan Patron. Brown Bear likes quirky, and I think this year’s Newbery winner is quirky.

Hattie Big Sky by Kirby Larson. This one was a Newbery Honor book this year. I just read it a couple of weeks ago and found it quite good.

Criss-Cross by Lynne Rae Perkins. Brown Bear chose this one from the Newbery award list.

Number the Stars by Lois Lowry. Brown Bear also likes sad, and I’m thinking this story set in Germany during WW II will be sad enough.

Homecoming by Cynthia Voigt. I put this book and Dicey’s Song on Dancer Daughter’s list, too because they’re two of my favorites.

Dicey’s Song by Cynthia Voigt.

Bridge to Terebithia by Katherine Paterson.

The Bronze Bow by Elizabeth George Speare. Several of Brown Bear’s friends read this book for a class at homeschool co-op last year, so BB thought it would be good to read it. too.

The Shakespeare Stealer by Gary Blackwood. Shakespeare is on our agenda this summer in preparation for our annual trek to Shakespeare at Winedale. As I’ve bragged several times, Eldest Daughter is one of the students at Shakespeare at Winedale this year and will be studying and performing in three plays: A Comedy of Errors, Richard II, and Measure for Measure.

Eight Cousins by Louisa May Alcott. Brown Bear has already started this book, another of my favorites.

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. “Am I old enough to read To Kill a Mockingbird” asked Brown Bear Daughter. I think she’s old enough.

The Cross and the Switchblade by David Wilkerson.

Saffy’s Angel by Hilary McKay.

The Moon by Night by Madeleine L’Engle. She’s already read the first of L’Engle’s Austin familly series, Meet the Austins.

The Comedy of Errors by William Shakespeare. Shakespeare at Winedale reading.


Loving Will Shakespeare by Carolyn Meyer. More background for Shakespeare at Winedale and also a favorite author with Brown Bear.

Doomed Queen Anne by Carolyn Meyer. About Anne Boleyn.

Marie Dancing by Carolyn Meyer. About one of Degas’ models. Brown Bear is a dancer, too, so this book ought to interest her.

Revelation from the Bible. I told her to choose a book from the Bible for reading this summer, and she chose Revelation. I’m not sure exactly what she’ll get out of it, but “all Scripture . . . is profitable.”

How To Be Your Own Selfish Pig by Susan Schaeffer Macaulay. Excellent worldview reading for middle school age young people.

June: Death in Summer

Jun2

“The report of my death was an exaggeration.” Mark Twain, after reading his own obituary, June 2, 1897.

Miracle Max: He probably owes you money huh? I’ll ask him.
Inigo Montoya: He’s dead. He can’t talk.
Miracle Max: Whoo-hoo-hoo, look who knows so much. It just so happens that your friend here is only MOSTLY dead. There’s a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. Mostly dead is slightly alive. With all dead, well, with all dead there’s usually only one thing you can do.
Inigo Montoya: What’s that?
Miracle Max: Go through his clothes and look for loose change.
—From the movie Princess Bride.

Nevertheless, death, and near-death, in summer do happen —especially in books. I thought, in honor of Mr. Twain’s exaggerated death and Westley’s almost death, I’d gather together some loose change, er —summer reading suggestions and other odds and ends, having to do with murder, mayhem, and possible death.


Windcatcher by Avi. “The moment Tony saw the boat, he knew, sure as he knew anything, what he wanted, what he needed, was a Snark.”

“Early one June morning in 1872 I murdered my father – an act which made a deep impression on me at the time.” Ambrose Bierce. Bierce was born in 1842, so he would have been about thirty years old when the alleged patricide occurred.

I Know What You Did Last Summer by Lois Duncan. “The note was there, lying beside her plate, when she came down to breakfast. Later, when she thought back, Julie would remember it. Small. Plain. Her name and address lettered in stark black print across the front of the envelope.”

The House on the Gulf by Margaret Peterson Haddix. “Bran was up to something. I knew it the first day he showed me the house.”


June Night
by Sarah Teasdale

Oh Earth, you are too dear to-night,
How can I sleep while all around
Floats rainy fragrance and the far
Deep voice of the ocean that talks to the ground?

Oh Earth, you gave me all I have,
I love you, I love you, — oh what have I
That I can give you in return —
Except my body after I die?

Evil Under the Sun by Agatha Christie. “And from June till September (with a short season at Easter) the Jolly Roger Hotel was usually packed to the attics. . . . There was one very important person (in his own estimation at least) staying at the Jolly Roger. Hercule Poirot, resplendent in a white duck suit, with a panama hat tilted over his eyes, his mustaches magnificently befurled, lay back in an improved type of deck chair and surveyed the bathing beach.”

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. “There was no hurry, for there was nowhere to go, nothing to buy and no money to buy it with, nothing to see outside the boundaries of Maycomb County. But it was a time of vague optimism for some of the people: Maycomb County had recently been told that it had nothing to fear but fear itself. That summer, I was six years old.”

June by Amy Levy

Last June I saw your face three times;
Three times I touched your hand;
Now, as before, May month is o’er,
And June is in the land.

O many Junes shall come and go,
Flow’r-footed o’er the mead;
O many Junes for me, to whom
Is length of days decreed.

There shall be sunlight, scent of rose;
Warm mist of summer rain;
Only this change–I shall not look
Upon your face again.

The Summer of the Danes by Ellis Peters. “The extraordinary events of that summer of 1144 may properly be said to have begun the previous year, in a tangle of threads both ecclesiastical and secular, a net in which any number of diverse people became enmeshed . . . And among the commonality thus entrammeled, more to the point, an elderly Benedictine monk of the Abbey of Saint Peter and Saint Paul at Shrewsbury.”

Message from Malaga by Helen McInnes. ” . . . he had come a long way from the tensions and overwork of Houston, a longer way than the thousands of miles that lay between Texas and Andalusia. He hadn’t felt so happily unthinking, so blissfully irresponsible in months. He lifted his glass of Spanish brandy in Jeff Reid’s direction to give his host a silent thanks.”

An End by Christina Rossetti

Love, strong as Death, is dead.
Come, let us make his bed
Among the dying flowers:
A green turf at his head;
And a stone at his feet,
Whereon we may sit
In the quiet evening hours.
He was born in the Spring,
And died before the harvesting:
On the last warm summer day
He left us; he would not stay
For Autumn twilight cold and grey.
Sit we by his grave, and sing
He is gone away.

To few chords and sad and low
Sing we so:
Be our eyes fixed on the grass
Shadow-veiled as the years pass,
While we think of all that was
In the long ago.

Summertime + Death: any more suggestions?

Book Review: First Daughter, by Mitali Perkins

May30

I started this book as a school reader and I must say, at first, I could not get interested in it. It was school, I didn’t want to read it, it was a waste of my time, etc. But finally, after much urging from my mother, I sat down and made myself read it. And I liked it.

It is about a Pakistani American girl named Sameera Righton, the adopted daughter of the Elizabeth Righton and James Righton, 2008 US presidential candidate. While in public, the Rightons may seem on top of things and sure of themselves, but alone, James is unsure of and struggling with his stance on religion, Elizabeth is still having trouble finishing her “freaking” report, and Sameera just wants to blog on her “myplace” and ignore her fake website that was set up in order to boost her father’s presidential campaign. She is disturbed by the fake personality set up for her by her father’s campaign manager. Covered with makeup and costumed in the latest styles, giggly and girly, she feels very much unlike herself.

Then, Sameera meets a group of middle eastern teenagers who are rooting for father to win. They convince Sameera to publicize a blog that shows her own thoughts, and who she really is.

One of the things I especially liked was the use of a blog, which gave me the feel of it being “real,” to refer to places such as myspace.com. I also liked the insight to being “famous.” So, despite the occasional crude words thrown in here and there, it was a good book.

First Daughter: Extreme American Makeover by Mitali Perkins

May29

Thanks, Mitali.

Ms. Perkins sent me an ARC of her new book, First Daughter: Extreme American Makeover, and I read it while I was in West Texas. To get a feel for the book, take a bit of first daughter Sameera Righton’s favorite movie, Roman Holiday and mix with a touch of the 1972 Robert Redford flick, The Candidate. It was fun and light and just what I needed while visiting my dad in the hospital. Reading Mitali’s book kept things from getting too grim. And for that I thank her.

However, the book is not just for those looking for escapism; with elections coming up in 2008, First Daughter is YA chicklit with a mission —to educate us about what really goes on behind the scenes in a presidential election and to make us think outside our boxes about what a president’s family ought to look like. In the book, Sparrow (Sameera Righton) is the daughter of the Republican nominee for president of the United States, and she’s also adopted from Pakistan. According to some campaign gurus and journalists, Sparrow doesn’t look like the all-American girl; she’s too international, a little too intelligent, not giggly and empty-headed enough. Dad’s campaign managers are out to fix those perceived problems and give Sparrow, newly christened Sammy, a complete makeover.

The rest of the story follows the summer and fall before the election and Sameera’s journey to understand herself and her role as a celebrity and as a real American girl. A lot of Sameera’s thinking involves blogging; she starts out with a myspace site that’s limited to her circle of 29 buddies. Then the campaign gives her a ghost-written blog, SammySez.com, that makes her sound as if she’s a totally different person from the Sameera Righton she’s always been. Sameera must navigate the treacherous waters of a presidential campaign to find her own voice and her own persona.

I liked the blogocentric plot and writing, and I liked the insights into Pakistani American culture. Sameera comes from a culturally Christan family, but she and her father in particular are still trying to figure out exactly what they believe about God and religion. Over the course of the book Sameera makes new friends, some of whom are Muslim. The blending and the tensions between cultures are entertaining and sometimes thought-provoking.

First Daughter looks to be the beginning of a series of stories about Sameera and her adventures in politics and growing up. Brown Bear Daughter read the book and promises to write her review soon.

Here’s Sameera’s blog with entertaining news and information about the children and and families of the real 2008 US presidential candidates and fictional information about Sameera herself.

Blackthorn Winter by Kathryn Reiss

May15

Blackthorn Winter is a YA murder mystery set in a small village in England. The setting is emphasized since the main characters are “Yanks” from California. The other emphasis in the novel, besides murder, is adoption and familiess since the protagonist, Juliana, is adopted. The book reads like an episode in a TV detective series or a made-for-TV movie; it’s decent entertainment for an afternoon, but nothing profound, just what I needed at the time I read it.

The book did have a couple of minor annoyances. First of all, the author over-emphasized the differences between American and British terms. Every Britishism was pointed out, made into a joke or a misunderstanding, or the very least “translated” in parentheses. It got old, but maybe kids who were completely unfamiliar with British torches and boots and chips would appreciate the too helpful explanations. Also, there were way too many coincidences infesting the plot. I won’t go into detail, but the solution to more than one mystery in the book depends on coincidence, and motive for the murderer is a little weak.

As a side note, not a criticism, I remember when books for children and even teenagers never included actual murders. I think the first children’s book I read that was a true murder mystery was The View From the Cherry Tree by Willo Davis Roberts in which a child actually witnesses a murder, but no one believes him. That plotline was unusual for children’s books back in the seventies when View was first published. but it’s not so unusual now. Child-in-danger movies and books are common fare these days. We’ve become much more lenient about what stories our children are exposed to and more confident of what violence and emotional content they can handle.