Children’s Fiction of 2007: Home of the Brave by Katherine Applegate

Nov1

I like poetry as much as the next guy, which is to say I have my favorites (mostly rhyming poetry with a distinctive metric pattern) but a lot of it leaves me, well, sort of . . . confused. Home of the Brave is a novel for middle grade children written in free verse form (is that a contradiction in terms?). It’s not confusing, but it’s really a prose story in spite of the author’s admittedly masterful use of poetic images and devices. At least, I think it’s prose, and the arrangement of the words on the page annoyed me all the way through to about page 150 when I finally came to terms with the gimmick and forgot about it. Here, I’ll give you the first lines of the novel as an example:

When the flying boat
returns to earth at last,
I open my eyes
and gaze out the round window.
What is all the white? I whisper.
Where is all the world?

I’m a little fuzzy about the line between poetry, especially free verse, and prose, but I could read those sentences more fluently if they stretched across the page and wrapped around like prose instead of breaking off each phrase and falling down to the next line. I guess I’m just a creature of prosy habit.

Home of the Brave is the story of Kek, a refugee from Sudan who is being resettled in Minnesota with his aunt and his cousin, Ganwar. Kek’s family all died in the wars in Sudan, except for his mother who is missing and may also be dead. Kek indeed needs a great deal of bravery to make himself a home in this new place of America. Slowly Kek makes friends with a girl named Hannah who lives in his apartment complex, with some of the other immigrants who are in his ESL class at school, and, best of all, with a cow to whom he gives the name, Gol, family.

Maybe the arrangement of the words in verse form was meant to mirror the way Kek thinks and talks in his new language in fits and starts and phrases, but why couldn’t it look like this instead:

When I bury my face in Gol’s old hide I smell hay and dung and life. She shelters me like a warm wall, and that is enough for this day.

I rather liked this story of an immigrant’s experience in acclimating to the U.S. and of family and what it means from the persepctive of a diiferent cultural background. Do you think the publisher might put out a new edition in prose form for the prosaic among us? It would make the book a lot shorter, I think, not so much white space. But the story and the language would still be there, and those are the parts I enjoyed the most.

I have a friend, Aruna. from Sierra Leone; he’s the adopted son of one of my best friends. I would love to give Aruna a copy of this book. I think he could identify with the character of Kek.

Home of the Brave by Katherine Applegate, who by the way is the author of the Animorphs series, is nominated for the Cybil Award for Middle Grade Fiction.

To This Great Stage of Fools: Born October 31st

Oct31

John Keats, b.1795.

Can death be sleep, when life is but a dream,
And scenes of bliss pass as a phantom by?
The transient pleasures as a vision seem,
And yet we think the greatest pain’s to die.

How strange it is that man on earth should roam,
And lead a life of woe, but not forsake
His rugged path; nor dare he view alone
His future doom which is but to awake.

Chiang Kai-Shek, b.1887.

Sydney Taylor, b.1904. Ms. Taylor was an actress and a professional dancer with the Martha Graham Dance Company in New York. But here in Semicolon family, she’s famous as the author of the All-of-a-Kind family books, from which we draw the frequently quoted phrase, “My mama smiles on me!”

Katherine Paterson, b.1932 in Qing-Jiang, China. Ms. Paterson wrote several classic children’s books including two Newbery Award books, Jacob Have I Loved and Bridge to Terebithia. My urchins enjoyed both the Terebithia book and the movie. She’s also the author of The Great Gilly Hopkins and The Master Puppeteer, both of which I’ve read and enjoyed. From an interview with the author at Katherine Paterson’s official website, terebithia.com:

In what ways has your religious conviction informed your writing? And would you comment on the presence (or lack ) of religious content, specifically Christian, in recent children’s literature (say the last fifteen years or so)?

I think it was Lewis who said something like: “The book cannot be what the writer is not.” What you are will shape your book whether you want it to or not. I am Christian, so that conviction will pervade the book even when I make no conscious effort to teach or preach. Grace and hope will inform everything I write.

You’re asking me to comment on fifteen years of 5000 or so books a year. Whew! We live in a Post-Christian society. Therefore, not many of those writers will be Christians or adherents of any of the traditional faiths. Self-consciously Christian (or Jewish or Muslim) writing will be sectarian and tend to propaganda and therefore have very little to say to persons outside that particular faith community. The challenge for those of us who care about our faith and about a hurting world is to tell stories which will carry the words of grace and hope in their bones and sinews and not wear them like fancy dress.

Mountain State, Country Roads: West Virginia in Fiction for Kids

Oct31

Almost heaven, West Virginia
Blue ridge mountains, Shenandoah river –
Life is old there, older than the trees
Younger than the mountains, growin’ like a breeze.

Country roads, take me home
To the place I belong
West Virginia, mountain momma
Take me home, country roads.

All my memories gathered round her
Miner’s lady, stranger to blue water
Dark and dusty, painted on the sky
Misty taste of moonshine, teardrops in my eye.

Country roads, take me home
To the place I belong
West Virginia, mountain momma
Take me home, country roads.

I hear her voice in the mornin hour she calls me
The radio reminds me of my home far away
And drivin’ down the road I get a feelin’
That I should have been home yesterday, yesterday

Country roads, take me home
To the place I belong
West Virginia, mountain momma
Take me home, country roads . . .

In addition to Ruth White’s 2007 book, Way Down Deep, here are some other books for children set in the heavenly mountains of West Virginia:

Shiloh by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor. Newbery Medal book in 1992. Joanne, The Simple Wife, reviews Shiloh.

Wrestle the Mountain by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor.

A Blue-Eyed Daisy by Cynthia Rylant.

Missing May by Cynthia Rylant. Newbery Medal book for 1993. Sandy D. reviews Missing May.

The Summer of the Swans by Betsy Byars. Newbery Medal book for 1971. Betsy reviews The Summer of the Swans.

Mine Eyes Have Seen by Ann Rinaldi. John Brown’s daughter, Annie, tells the story of the events leading up to the raid on Harper’s Ferry.

There are three Newbery award-winning books set in West Virginia? What’s up with that? It seems as if that’s more than West Virginia’s fair share? Good books, anyway.

Other suggestions?

Children’s Fiction of 2007: Way Down Deep by Ruth White

Oct31

Way Down Deep is a town in West Virginia: an odd sort of town with several real live characters, including an old lady who throws rocks at kids, a goat named Jethro, and a granny lady with a talking owl. Ruby June, the protagonist of the novel, is a red-headed foundling who appeared in 1944 on the steps of the courthouse. She’s an atypical foundling in that she was approximately three years old when found, but the rest of her childhood pretty much follows the “orphan adopted by a spinster lady with lots of love to give” pattern. The people of Way Down Deep are generally kind, loving and forgiving, a fact which turns out to be key to ending of the story.

In other words the whole book has a sort of fairy tale feel to it (think magical realism for kids), so I wasn’t too surprised when the mystery of Ruby June’s birth, family background, and appearance in Way Down Deep turns out to have a solution that’s part realistic and somewhat surreal, too. And the mixture is never really explained even after the basic facts are ascertained.

I almost felt as if the author had this collection of characters in her mind that she wanted to put into a book, and they all escaped into this one:
Bonnie Clare, Connie Lynn, and Sunny Gaye are identical triplets who spend their spare evenings doing street evangelism, preaching the gospel and a temperance message to passers-by.
Robber Bob is a stranger who comes to Way Down Deep and tries to hold up the bank, with hilarious results.
Robber Bob Reeder has five children: Peter Reeder, Cedar Reeder, twins Skeeter and Jeeter Reeder, and the baby of the family, little Rita Reeder.
A.H. Crawford is an author of independent means with ”two front names” that he prefers not to use. Read the book and you’ll understand why. Mr. Crawford is writing a book about the history of Way Down Deep, but since he spends most of his days asleep in bed, the book isn’t coming along too well.
Miss Worly is the town librarian who delights “in peppering her sentences with fancy words.” The kids in town call her Miss Wordy.
Sheriff Reynolds was an officer whose “heart was way too soft and his mind too fuzzy for sheriffing.”
And Miss Arbutus Ward, Ruby’s foster mother, is the last descendant of the founding father of Way Down Deep, Archibald Ward. She’s also the owner and sole proprietor of The Roost, a boardinghouse for even more odd and quirky characters.

In fact, there’s a list at the beginning of the book of all the characters just so you can keep track of them. It’s a sort of a comic strip in prose, Little Orphan Annie meets Heidi. The book definitely began to remind me more of Heidi and less of Anne of Green Gables in the second half when Ruby June meets her cranky old grandmother who lives at the top of a mountain in a house all by herself and runs off anyone who tries to get close. Ruby June tames Grandma just as Heidi tamed the Alm Uncle, and they all live happily ever after in typical fairy tale fashion.

Don’t worry. I’ve given you some of the plot and introduced you to some of the characters, but there are plenty more eccentric Appalachian oddballs and several more story threads to keep you enjoying this rather pleasant tale. I doubt it will keep anyone awake at night pondering the deeper mysteries of life, but it’s good clean fun.

Way Down Deep is nominated for the Cybil Award for Middle Grade Fiction.

A 1995 interview with author Ruth White.

Publisher’s Weekly 2007 interview with Ms. White.

Other blog reviews of Way Down Deep:

Jules at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast: “White pulls it all together with the cohesive thread that is, at its core, a tender narrative about the relationship between a caretaker and her child â€” and what it truly means to be a family.”

To This Great Stage of Fools: Born October 30th

Oct30

Eliza Brightwen, b. 1830. Naturalist and author, Mrs. Brightwen was plagued by some undefined and never-diagnosed illness for most of her life so that she was hardly ever able to leave her home called The Grove, out in the English countryside. She wrote several books about her observations of nature, and these books sold well and became quite popular in Victorian England. From her diary:

Jan 20th 1893.- I feel intensely the desire to do more for the poor, but how can I reach them? I am physically unable to go into the slums. I do give money far and wide. I try not to lose a minute in working to make things for others. But oh! The mass of misery in our large towns, especially London, fills me with heart sorrow. A goodly sum earned by my book and given to our clergyman here is doing blessed work, getting boots for children, paying back rent, bringing fires into cold rooms, cheering my poor brethren. How glad I am! What blessed interest for my money! But what can I do for London? I have prayed to be guided. A bale of flannel bought cheaply, then cut into garments and given to poor women to make up ready to give away seems to give one of the best ways of investing money, as it helps the one who makes up the clothes and those who receive them. It is easy to say the poor should make their own clothes, but even if they can get the material their time is taken up at the wash-tub, and mending, and cooking. How can a poor mother make all the clothes for five or six children, her husband and herself? I know I could not, and yet we often think a poor, uneducated woman is able to do what we cannot. I think the quiet, patient, plodding life of the poor is incredible. There is no change from day to day, no fresh books to give a change of thought. The husband comes in, tired and depressed, eats his supper and goes to bed. What is there for the poor wife but a daily round of cheerless duties? Oh, I do feel sorry for them and do not wonder they enjoy spending an evening here in my pretty rooms, hearing sweet music, seeing the conservatory lighted up. It must seem, as they graphically say, “Just like ‘eaven.”

Adelaide Procter, b.1825.

A Lost Chord

SEATED one day at the Organ,
I was weary and ill at ease,
And my fingers wandered idly
Over the noisy keys.

I do not know what I was playing,
Or what I was dreaming then ;
But I struck one chord of music,
Like the sound of a great Amen.

It flooded the crimson twilight,
Like the close of an Angel’s Psalm,
And it lay on my fevered spirit
With a touch of infinite calm.

It quieted pain and sorrow,
Like love overcoming strife ;
It seemed the harmonious echo
From our discordant life.

It linked all perplexÃ©d meanings
Into one perfect peace,
And trembled away into silence
As if it were loth to cease.

I have sought, but I seek it vainly,
That one lost chord divine,
Which came from the soul of the Organ,
And entered into mine.

It may be that Death’s bright angel
Will speak in that chord again,
It may be that only in Heaven
I shall hear that grand Amen.

That reminds me of C.S. Lewis trying to recapture Joy. I like the word “amen”, let it be so, as You will, I agree, faith and solid belief, all rolled up into one word.

AMEN: Middle English, from Old English, from Late Latin ÄmÄ“n, from Greek, from Hebrew ‘ÄmÄ“n, certainly, verily, from ‘Äman, to be firm; Semitic roots. O.E., from L.L. amen, from Gk. amen, from Heb., “truth,” used adverbially as an expression of agreement (e.g. Deut. xxvii.26, I Kings i.36; cf. Mod.Eng. verily, surely, absolutely in the same sense), from Sem. root a-m-n “to be trustworthy, confirm, support.” Used in O.E. only at the end of Gospels, otherwise translated as SoÃ°lic! or Swa hit ys, or Sy!. As an expression of concurrence after prayers, it is recorded from c.1230.

Amen.

Gleaned from the Saturday Review

Oct30

The Witness Tree–Howley and Loftus. Recommended by Melanie at The indextrious Reader. A fictionalized biography/family saga of the Dulles family. I know next to nothing about about John Foster Dulles or his family; he’s vaguely associated in my mind with diplomacy and the State Department. The book sounds fascinating.

Kensuke’s Kingdom–Morpurgo. Recommended by Nicola at Back to Books. A boy is stranded on a Pacific island with a Japanese soldier who was shipwrecked on the same island during WW II.

The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett. This one just sounds like fun. Short, sweet, and off-beat —and about the joys of reading. I’m hooked. Recommended by Sam Houston at Book Chase.

I could have “gleaned” a few more, but I’m trying to cut down. Not that I’m trying to cut down on my reading, just trying to cut down the length of my LIST.

Givin’ Stuff Away

Oct29

I debated about participating in Shannon’s Fall Bloggy Giveaway, just because I’m low on time these days. However, I’d love to give someone a copy of my book Picturebook Preschool. And, of course, I do think it might help get the word out about this great resource for parents of preschoolers.

So leave a comment telling me the title of your favorite picture book between now and midnight Friday, November 2nd. On Saturday, I’ll draw a number from the hat, and if your comment number matches the number I draw, you win.

To read more about Picture Book Preschool, you can go here, or here, or here, or here.

Thanks for coming by. Come back sometime when you’re not busy trolling for freebies.

To This Great Stage of Fools: Born October 29th

Oct29

James Boswell, b.1740.

The life of Johnson is assuredly a great, a very great work. Homer is not more decidedly the first of heroic poets, Shakespeare is not more decidedly the first of dramatists, Demosthenes is not more decidedly the first of orators, than Boswell is the first of biographers.” —Thomas Macaulay

So has anyone out there actually read Boswell’s Life of Johnson? I’ve read excerpts and quotations, but never touched the real thing.

Abraham Kuyper, b. 1837. Dutch pastor and theologian, he also became prime minister of the Netherlands in 1901: “Oh, no single piece of our mental world is to be hermetically sealed off from the rest, and there is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry: ‘Mine!'”

Children’s Fiction of 2007: Someone Named Eva by Joan M. Wolf

Oct29

There’s probably more than one reason that I enjoy reading fiction written for children, but one of those reasons is that even the best of children’s fiction is somewhat simple and straightforward. Children, and adults like me, want a story, a beginning-to-end, satisfying, well-written story that gives us something to think about in the process. Someone Named Eva was such a story.

The novel is appropriate for any child who’s mature enough to deal emotionally with the essential plotline: a Czech child is stolen from her home and sent to a school for training young Aryan Nazis to serve the Fatherland. Milada qualifies for this “honor” because she is blonde, blue-eyed, and her nose is the right length. Before she leaves, her grandmother tells her: “Remember who you are, Milada. Remember where you are from. Always.”

Easier said than done. Milada, whose named is changed to the German Eva, hears so many lies, repeated so often and so convincingly that she begins to lose her grip on truth and her sense of her own identity. Her German teachers tell her that her parents died in an air raid, and even though she knows that they were arrested by the Germans themselves and that she was taken away from them, Eva begins to doubt her own memories. Could such “brainwashing” really happen? Of course, it could; Someone Named Eva is based on a true story of a Czech village burned to the ground for supposed collaboration with the the Allies and Aryan-looking children given in adoption to German families during World War II. Many of those children did forget their own native language and their family and cultural heritage.

I was reminded of Hitler’s famous dictum (not actually formulated by Hitler, but attributed to him anyway): “people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.” I thought, too, of Satan, and how his colossal lies are repeated over and over again throughout our society and of how we eventually begin to doubt the truth in favor of the oft-repeated lie:

Money will make you happy. Lots of money and stuff will make you supremely happy.

People and relationships can wait. Pursue the urgent rather than the eternal.

God can be mocked. You will not really reap what you sow.

You are not loved. God cannot be trusted. Live for the moment because that’s all you’ve got.

We believe the lies, act upon them, and lose our own souls in the process.

I’ve gone a bit far afield from the book Someone Named Eva, but a book that can make me think about such important issues is only simple in the sense that it is honest and direct. Oh, the power of a simple story.

Someone Named Eva was nominated for the Cybil Award for Middle Grade Fiction. Read more about author Joan M. Wolf here.

Other reviewers write about Someone Named Eva:

Elizabeth Bird at A Fuse #8 Production.

We Like Mike

Oct29

I told you I’d be posting about Mike Huckabee on Mondays for awhile. I think that the bandwagon is rolling along quite nicely, but it could always use a few more passengers.

Chuck Norris endorses Mike Huckabee for president.

Newsweek interview with Mr. Huckabee.: “Some of the people in leadership positions among the social conservatives have become more process-focused than they are principle-focused, and that’s unfortunate because they will marginalize themselves out of any relevance if they continue in that vein.”

Terri Blackstock, Christian author: “Some would say that Iâ€™m a one-issue voter. Iâ€™m not. There are several issues that are extremely important to me. The abortion issue is not one of those issues. Itâ€™s the foundation on which any candidate I consider must stand. You must understand, if a man or woman believes that itâ€™s okay to kill babies, that tells me that their judgment is severely impaired. They are not fit to run our country.”

Homeschooled twins Alex and Brett Harris blog about Mike Huckabee: “Three brothers’ attempt to spread the word about a man who will take this country up, not down; someone who has a proven track record as an innovative, optimistic, and authentic conservative â€” Mike Huckabee.”

Joe Carter (Evangelical Outpost): “Only after prayerfully considering the issues, the candidates, and the electoral calculus have we decided to settle on this joint endorsement. We hope that you will join us in careful deliberation of Gov. Huckabee’s candidacy and that you will join us in pledging to cast a sacred vote for the office of President of the United States. Our army may go down in defeat, but it won’t be because we refused to enlist in this worthy cause.”
Joe Carter is joined by Justin Taylor (Between Two Worlds) and Matthew Anderson (Mere Orthodoxy) in this endorsement.

Concord Monitor: Voters Should Get to Know Huckabee.

Tim Ellsworth interviews Mike Huckabee.