Secret Places

Aug27

Peter Sieruta at Collecting Children’s Books writes about The Velvet Room by Zilpha Keatley Snyder in which “Robin, the middle child in a large migrant family finds her special place in the tower room library of an otherwise abandoned estate. On the bookshelves, Robin discovers an old diary that helps her unravel the mystery of the estate’s long-missing heir.”

I started thinking about other books for children in which the protagonist finds a secret place where he or she can read and think and imagine and play pretend and grow.

Mandy by Julie Edwards. Mandy finds an abandoned cottage where she can make a pretend home of her own, but will keeping her secret make her lose the friendship and love of those who care about her?

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. Mary, a spoiled orphan child raised in India, finds both solace and friendship in a secret garden on her aunt’s estate. The little girls have been listening to the Focus on the Family radio drama production of this classic, and I’ve enjoyed rediscovering it along with them.

Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson. Jesse and Leslie create a secret kingdom in the woods where they fight off enemies and crown themselvs king and queen of Terabithia.

In Patricia St. John’s Rainbow Garden, Elaine is sent to live with a family in the English countryside while her mother goes to work in France. Elaine is selfish and bitter, but she experiences healing and forgiveness in her garden.

The View From the Cherry Tree by Willo Davis Roberts. Rob Mallory has his own secret hiding place in the cherry tree, but spying on the neighbors from the branches of the cherry tree turns out to be a dangerous occupation.

Jean Craighead George wrote My Side of the Mountain in which Sam Gribley runs away to the Catskill Mountains and builds himself a secret home inside an old tree.

In their very first adventure The Boxcar Children (Gertrude Chandler Warner) find an old deserted boxcar where they make their home. This part of the story was most intriguing to me as a little girl: how do you make a home out of found objects out in the woods, no money or very little, lots of ingenuity?

Of course, the Magic Treehouse kids have . . . well, a Magic Treehouse.

Now that I think about it these are only the books in which the “secret place” itself is a central issue in the story; lots of other characters in children’s books have their own special places to get away from the fray:
Huckleberry Finn has an island and later his raft.

Tom Sawyer had a cave.

The Little Princess (Frances Hodgson Burnett), Sara Crewe, had her own attic room.

Betsy-Bee reminds me that the girls in Ursula Nordstrom’s The Secret Language not only had a secret language; they also had a fort with a little swimming pool inside (?).

I’ve always been quite fond of nooks and clubhouses and secret hiding places in books and in real life. What others can you think of?

Ramadan Prayer

Aug26

Sunday, August 22, was the beginning of the Muslim observance of Ramadan, a time of prayer and fasting for Muslims around the world. It was also the beginning of a now-annual effort on the part of Christians around the world to pray especially for Muslims. If you want to join in this concert of prayer during the 30 days of Ramadan, you can find a prayer guide here.

The first day’s devotional thoughts were particularly convicting and useful:

Faith is important, but do I also love Muslims? What is my
most profound reaction when I meet them, when I see them
on television? How would I react if a man in Islamic clothing
came to my church? How would I react if a new believer from
a Muslim background wanted to marry into my family? Would
I be willing to give a thousand dollars so someone could proclaim
the Gospel among Muslims? Would I be willing to sit and
eat with a Muslim in a crowded restaurant? Have I been involved
in criticizing them without knowing them? Am I fearful
of Muslims? Is my main attitude toward them one of mistrust?
Am I able to do as Jesus says, “You shall love your neighbor as
yourself”? Is this my desire, is this my goal?

I know that some Muslims might find this prayer focus offensive or patronizing. Please know that this time of prayer is about “Christians learning about, and praying for our world’s Muslim neighbors during their holy month of Ramadan; doing so in humility, and without fear or ill-intent.”

May God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, reveal Truth to us all and help us to know how to love each other.

Dough: A Memoir by Mort Zachter

Aug25

Dough: A Memoir by Mort Zachter. Recommended by Lisa at 5 Minutes for Books.

This book is a sort of sad memoir about two brothers who ran a bread store in New York City’s Lower East Side for most of their lives. The book is written by the brothers’ nephew, their sister’s son. Unfortunately, the brothers, Harry and Joe, while good at making money were not so good at sharing with their hard-working family members or even being honest with them about the extent of their wealth. It’s only after Uncle Joe dies and Uncle Harry becomes completely incapacitated that Mort Zachter finds out about his uncles’ hoard: both valuables and junk all mixed together in a cheap apartment where Joe and Harry lived an extremely frugal, even miserly, life for more than sixty years. And all the while they were storing up riches, not in heaven, but on earth where the money did no one any good.

Mr. Zachter tries to understand his uncles and their obsession with making money and keeping it secret. He fails, finally, to make sense of his uncles’ lives, but he does come to appreciate their quirks even while he wishes that they could have lived somewhat differently, enjoying their hard-earned wealth and even sharing it with the family. (Mr. Zachter’s mom served as an unpaid worker in her brothers’ store for many, many years and never knew how rich they were.)

It’s a bittersweet story, not terribly exciting, but thought-provoking in its examination of attitudes toward money and material things.

Ice Skating and Reading

Aug23

My 15 year old friend, David, told me something the other day that made me sad. He said that he never reads books, unless it’s assigned for school, NEVER! He says he hates to read.

Since Brown Bear Daughter communicated my concern (squealed on me) to David, he came back and told me today that he is reading a book now that’s not for school: a biography about Russian ice skater Ekaterina Gordeeva and her late husband, also an ice skater. He says it’s a really good book, and he shared some information he had learned from the book about Russian skaters in general. You see, my friend David is an aspiring ice skater.

This semi-conversion on David’s part to the world of reading confirms a theory, not original with me. Almost everyone can be enticed to enjoy reading; you just have to find the right hook. Now I know David’s hook, or one of them at least, so can anyone direct me to some good books related to ice skating, appropriate for a 15 year old boy? He’s a good kid, so I figure if I don’t innundate him but just give him about one book a month, he’ll try them out for my sake.

What books would you give David the Ice Skater?

Sunday Salon: Adding Still More Books

Aug22

The Sunday Salon.comI’m finding more books at yesterday’s Saturday Review that I must add to my TBR list. When I see you in heaven, I will be the one who’s still reading in a vain attempt to finish the list.

The Great Fire by Shirley Hazzard. Mindy says this one has joined her top twelve favorite novels list, so I have to read it.

A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry. Recommended at Kacie’s Mixed Media. I thought this novel, set in India, sounded like a good. long, satisfying read.

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley. Recommended by The Indextrious Reader Word Lily, and a host of others.

Sacred Hearts by Sarah Dunant. Carrie says this one moves a little slowly at first, but I’m interested in the subject: convent life in Italy, not sure when.

I ran out of time to peruse any more reviews before I got through the entire Saturday Review last night, but I’m sure these plus the ones already on my TBR list will keep me busy until Kingdom Come.

The Best Bad Luck I Ever Had by Kristin Levine

Aug22

Moundville, Alabama. 1917. Harry Otis Sims, nickname Dit:

“I’ve been wrong before. Oh, heck, if I’m being real honest, I’ve been wrong a lot. But I ain’t never been so wrong as I was about Emma Walker. When she first came to town, I thought she was the worst piece of bad luck I’d had since falling in the outhouse on my birthday.”

Dit is an engaging narrator, the middle child in a family of ten children, shaped by his culture and upbringing in rural Alabama, but willing to learn and to accept change. And change he does as he becomes friends with the new postmaster’s daughter, a girl, and what’s even more shocking, a “nigra” girl.

I liked the way this book was written with nuance and recognition of the complications of race relations in the Deep South. I wasn’t there (I’m not that old!), but this book describes the people of a small town in Alabama the way Harper Lee describes them in her classic, To Kill a Mockingbird. The people in Moundville are not all bad, not all racist to the bone, but they are crippled and held back by their heritage and their innate conservatism. Only Dit and his new friend Emma are able to see past the cultural racism that has ruled Moundville society since the Civil War, and they are able to right a wrong that could cost an innocent man his life.

This wonderful slice of life from the World War I era mentions several historical events and works them seamlessly into the story: the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918, the lynching of black men in the South during the 1910’s, the double standard for employing blacks even in the postal service, the young men going off to war to fight the Hun, a banana train from New Orleans, learning to drive a Model T, seeing one’s first airplane flight. I loved the way the history “lessons” blended into the story, and I can see this book being useful and beloved inside and outside the classroom.

Target ages: 10-14.
Could be enjoyed by readers age 10 through adult. Hey, I liked it.

Poetry Friday: Animal Crackers

Aug21

Z-baby is memorizing this old chestnut by Christopher Morley for her first poem of the new school year:

Animal crackers and cocoa to drink,
That is the finest of suppers I think;
When I’m grown up and can have what I please
I think I shall always insist upon these.
What do YOU choose when you’re offered a treat?
When Mother says, “What would you like best to eat?”
Is it waffles and syrup, or cinnamon toast?
It’s cocoa and animals that I love most!

The kitchen’s the cosiest place that I know;
The kettle is singing, the stove is aglow,
And there in the twilight, how jolly to see
The cocoa and animals waiting for me.

Daddy and Mother dine later in state,
With Mary to cook for them, Susan to wait;
But they don’t have nearly as much fun as I
Who eat in the kitchen with Nurse standing by;
And Daddy once said, he would like to be me
Having cocoa and animals once more for tea!

Christopher Morley (1890-1957)

I had in my mind that this one was a Robert Louis Stevenson poem; it rather sounds like something of his. However, Mr. Morley was an American poet and writer, “one of the founders and long-time contributing editor of the Saturday Review of Literature” and also founder of the Baker Street Irregulars, the American Sherlock Holmes fan club. FDR and Harry Truman were both members of the BSI. Christopher Morley wrote two bookshop novels, Parnassus on Wheels(reviewed at Kate’s Book Blog) and The Haunted Bookshop. I’ve read the latter, but not the former, and I found it a bit Chestertonian, somewhat obscure at times but fun to read nevertheless.

From John Wesley’s Diary, 1768

Aug20

Greatly disgusted at the manner of singing. 1. Twelve or fourteen persons kept it to themselves, and quite shut out the congregation: 2. These repeated the same words, contrary to all sense and reason six or eight or ten times over: 3. According to the shocking custom of modern music, different persons sang different words at one and the same moment: an intolerable insult on common sense, and utterly incompatible with any devotion.” Excerpted from Abide With Me: The World of Victorian Hymns by Ian Bradley.

Mr. Wesley wrote this criticism after a preaching visit to a parish church in Neath. He sounds just like the twentieth and twenty-first century critics of contemporary praise and worship music. There’s nothing new under the sun, is there?

***********

I’m in a fine pickle as far as this hymn project is concerned—the reason you haven’t seen any new hymns in the Top 100 Hymn Project in the past few days. My computer, with the list of the survey results, died and won’t turn back on. The Apple store is holding my Mac hostage, and they say it may or may not be reparable. In the meantime, not only have I lost the survey results, I’ve also lost the syllabus and plans for the Texas history class that I’m supposed to teach for our homeschool co-op. I can’t get to our household budget, which was in dreadful need of revision anyway. All of my best recipes are inside that computer. All of the hymns I bought and loaded into iTunes as a result of the hymn project are trapped inside my Mac. I am bewildered and bumfuzzled, and I find myself exasperated with my own computer dependence.

Maybe there is something new under the sun, computer dependency, and it’s not good.

The people at the Apple store say they’ll give me a diagnosis and a verdict within a week to ten days.

Graceling by Kristin Cashore

Aug19

I don’t need to do a regular review of this YA fantasy title; everyone and his dog have been there before me, and I agree: it’s a great debut novel, good story, intriguing characters, and themes that provoke both thought and emotion. Here are some reviews for those of you who haven’t read the book yet:

Carrie K: “In her debut novel, Ms. Cashore has created a fully formed world with authentic characters that breathe on the page. I loved Katsa, Po, Raffin, Helda, Bitterblue – these characters became real to me as I read, and I cared deeply about what happened to them.”

The Reading Zone: “This is a gorgeous romance set amid a fantastic fantasy. Cashore has given birth to a new world within these seven kingdoms, and the romance between Po and Katsa will leave your heart racing.”

Librarian Amy: “Katsa is an orphaned young woman, the niece of the king, who is graced with the ability to kill. As she matures, she becomes less comfortable with being the king’s bully and muscle, and part of the story is her quest to know herself, her grace, and her place in the world.”


So, relieved of the need to do a full court press review (whatever that is), I thought I’d write a little mini-essay about something I noticed while reading the book, even though it’s not the main point of the novel. The main point of the novel is that relationships are complicated, and that giftedness in whatever area can be both a liability and a “grace.” The remainder of this post assumes that you’ve already read Graceling.

Transition. (I can’t think of one.) Back in the seventies when I was a kid of a girl, I read a series of fantasy novels that became classics: the Dragonriders of Pern series by Anne McCaffrey. Since I was a teenager and more easily shocked back then, I was somewhat taken aback by the attitude of the Weyr-folk of Pern in regard to sex. Basically, without going into detail, they’re rather promiscuous. Their excuse is that the dragons make them do it. I won’t debate the morality or sustainability of such a society, but I did notice that the Dragonriders of Pern with their casual attitudes toward sexual liaisons appeared in literature at about the time that our society was tending toward casual sexual pairings and serial monogamy (and acceptance of homosexuality which is accepted and practiced on Pern). I don’t suppose it’s any great new insight, but McCaffery’s fantasy/sci-fi seemed to be trying out the same morality (or lack thereof) that the American society was trying out in the 1970’s. It works better in the books than in real life.

So what do all these dragon-riding ethical systems have to do with Kristin Cashore’s Graceling? I believe I see the same sort of playing out of the possibilities of a sexual ethic in Graceling. This time rather than promiscuity with excellent reasons, it’s the current rampant marriage-phobia that is being explored. Katsa and Po, the two main characters in Graceling, are in love, but for reasons that are unclear to me, something to do with fear of being controlled or of losing control, the two decide not to marry but to be lovers. How very twenty-first century!

I noticed this same fear of marriage (fear of commitment?) played out in the ever-so-popular Twilight series: Bella is willing and ready to go to bed with her vampire boyfriend, Edward, but she fears and resists the idea of marriage. Both Bella and Katsa are afraid that marriage will spoil the love relationship they have with their respective paramours; somehow marriage, instead of strengthening a relationship, is seen as a spoiler, a denier of freedom, and a trap. Perhaps some of this resistance to marriage is a way for the author to maintain the dramatic and sexual tension between her characters. After all, if your romantic leads get married on page 100, what kind of tension remains to be explored in the remaining 200 pages, not to mention sequels? And even if there is relationship-building and even sex after marriage, is it the kind of thing that Graceling’s and Twilight’s teen audiences want to read about?

However, this view of marriage as the problem rather than the solution, is also a popular one in our culture these days. Bella and Edward make their way to the altar over the course of the four books in the series; perhaps Katsa and Po will also come to understand the possibility for some kind of committed relationship that gives freedom because of its boundaries instead of living in fear of their own desires to belong to one another wholly in a physical and emotional and even spiritual sense. Old-fashioned twentieth century reader that I am, I call that relationship “marriage”, but if author Cashore and her characters want to call it “the grace of committed love,” I won’t complain about the nomenclature.

Noel DeVries says kinda sorta what I’m saying here. Only she’s much more straightforward and comprehensible.

Main Street by Sinclair Lewis

Aug17

This is America–a town of a few thousand, in a region of wheat and corn and dairies and little groves.
The town is, in our tale, called “Gopher Prairie, Minnesota.” But its Main Street is the continuation of Main Streets everywhere. The story would be the same in Ohio or Montana, in Kansas or Kentucky or Illinois, and not very differently would it be told Up New York State or in the Carolina Hills.
Main Street is the climax of civilization.

So begins Sinclair Lewis’s novelistic critique of the manners, mores, traditions of Main Street, USA. Published in 1920, Main Street is proto-feminist, liberal in its politics (to contrast with the no doubt conservative politics of 1920’s small town businessmen), and agnostic in its religious views. Our protagonista, Carol Kennicott becomes the wife of a small town doctor, and finds, to her dismay, that she cannot find a place for herself at all in Gopher Prairie. At one point she calls herself a “hexagonal peg.” (“Solution: find the hexagonal hole,” she says.) She tries to reform the town, to bring culture and refinement to her neighbors and to her husband, then to reform herself to appreciate village life, but all to no avail. For 479 pages Carol struggles, fights, regroups, hides, ventures out again, runs away, and finally resigns herself to being the perpetual aginner, in an overwhelming sea of mediocrity and traditional (hypocritical) family values.

“I do not admit that Main Street is as beautiful as it should be! I do not admit that Gopher Prairie is greater or more generous than Europe! I do not admit that dish-washing is enough to satisfy all women! I may not have fought the good fight, but I have kept the faith.”

Through the entire book, Carol mostly stays just this side of being an obnoxious, supercilious snob, and when she crosses the line, she knows it, admits it, and laughs at herself. It’s worth reading the book for those moments of self-deprecation and realism. Carol never will admit that anything about Main Street or anyone who lives on Main Street is worthy or objectively beautiful, but she finds that city people and office life are much the same as Main Street and its denizens. The best parts of the book are Lewis’s observations, voiced through Carol, of the contradictory ways we think about ourselves and others. His psychological insight into the mind of a young married woman is keen and humorous. Carol tries to read poetry with her prosaic doctor husband, makes various people she meets into heroes, and then finds that they, too, are rather prosaic and ordinary. She’s something of an idealist and unwilling to become a cynic.

The writing and the tone are well done. It’s no wonder that Lewis won the Nobel Prize, ten years after the publication of Main Street, in 1930. However, Lewis’s inability to see any good at all on Main Street makes the book and the world it inhabits a rather unhappy and tedious place to spend reading time. Which Carol Kennicott would say is a good description of Main Street and of Gopher Prairie.

But I still maintain that there are a few kindred spirits in the wasteland, that some church-goers are both thoughtful and sincere, that there is more depth, and even poetry, to the average Main Streeter than Lewis and his mouthpiece would credit. Sinclair Lewis became an expert at showing up the limitations and hypocrisies of American life (see Babbit, Elmer Gantry, Arrowsmith), but he never got past that antipathy to traditional American values to see anything worth appreciating and preserving in the American experience.

Interesting side note from Wikipedia: “Main Street was initially awarded the 1921 Pulitzer Prize for literature, but was rejected by the Board of Trustees, who overturned the jury’s decision. The prize went, instead, to Edith Wharton for The Age of Innocence. In 1926 Lewis refused the Pulitzer when he was awarded it for Arrowsmith.”