The King at the Door by Brock Cole

Jun10

Brock Cole was a professor of philosophy before becoming an illustrator and author of children’s fiction and picture books. Several of his picture books are derived from classic folk tales, such as The King at the Door (out of print, unfortunately), in which a ragged old beggar at the village inn says that he is really the king, but no one believes him except for a servant.

My pastor used this story as a sermon illustration one time, and it worked quite well. Picture books should be featured in sermons more often, in my opinion. This review says the book is about gullibility versus cynicism. I’m not so sure about that.

Little Baggit, the servant boy at the inn, believes the ragged old man who claims to be king and serves him with respect and with all the material wealth that he can spare. The innkeeper makes fun of Little Baggit and of the poor-looking old king and offers sarcastic comments and a lack of generosity. I think it’s a story that mirrors Matthew 25:32-48.

Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink?

 When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee?

 Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?

 And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.

Little Baggit sees the old man in need and he helps him. Perhaps Little Baggit recognizes the inherent kingliness in the man, or maybe not. But Little Baggit is generous and kind anyway. The innkeeper wouldn’t recognize a king (or a child of God) in any guise because the innkeeper is a stingy sourpuss who enjoys ridiculing Little Baggit’s instinct for kindness and faith.

The King at the Door was Dr. Brock Cole’s first published picture book, and I love it. It’s quirky with a happy and just ending, and it’s one of the recommended books in my Picture Book Preschool book list. I see that Dr. Cole later went on to write and publish at least three Young Adult novels. The YA novels sound awful to me, but that doesn’t tarnish this gem of a picture book.

Giant by Judith McQuoid

Jun10

Published by independent Irish publisher, Little Island, and written by debut author Judith McQuoid, Giant is the the imagined story of a working class boy named Davy and his upper middle class friend, Jacks, in Belfast, c.1908. Jacks Lewis is an imaginative ten year old who lives in a big house with his mother and father and sometimes his brother Warnie, who is away at school for most of the story in our book. Davy lives on the other side of Belfast, near the shipyards, where his father drives a delivery cart. Davy’s little sister Minnie is his only sibling, and his mother works as a maidservant for the Lewises.

You may have already guessed that “Jacks” is the Belfast boy who grew up to become the famous professor and author, C.S. Lewis. Judith McQuoid, who is Irish herself, born in Belfast, wanted to write a story about Lewis’s boyhood and how his growing up years in Belfast might have shaped his later life and writings. In Giant, Jacks Lewis is seen through the eyes of Davy, and he becomes Davy’s mentor and inspiration and most of all friend, even though Jacks is a bit younger, much more wealthy, and less worldly-wise than Davy. Davy shows Jacks something of the real world outside his middle class home, and Jacks inspires Davy to see the magic and wonder that exists in that world despite Davy’s poverty and limited opportunities.

The boys share and communicate through the media of books and storytelling and drawings. There are so many references to Jacks’s favorite books and stories, books that he shares with Davy. But the stories and the everyday magic of nature and art are a contrast to Davy’s dangerous and difficult working life as a heater boy and later a rivet boy, working on the huge ships that were built in the Belfast shipyard, ships like the Olympic and the Titanic.

For Lewis fans who are ready to get a picture of some of the background for Lewis’s Narnia tales, Giant is great read. And for anyone interested in a visit to Northern Ireland, its history and landscape, Giant is a must read. I enjoyed all of it: the history, artfully woven into the story with a light touch, the Lewisian and literary references, and just the story of a boy growing up with grace and courage in difficult circumstances. I’d say it’s appropriate for readers ages nine or ten and up.

I actually met author Judith McQuoid a few years ago in England, and I even read an early draft of her manuscript for Giant. I think she solicited my advice on the story, but I had very little to give. I am a reader, not an author or and editor, but Ms. McQuoid, with this book, shows that she is indeed a first class writer. Her love for all things Irish and Belfastian shines throughout the book. I hope she writes more books. We need more books in the world about C.S. Lewis and about Ireland from people who love them both.

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.

A Papa Like Everyone Else by Sydney Taylor

May29

Sydney Taylor, author of the beloved series of All-of-a-Kind Family books, also wrote this story of a Jewish Hungarian family living in a newly constituted Czechoslovakia just after the end of World War I. The family consists of Mama and her two daughters, Szerena, about 12 years old, and Gisella, age 8. (As far as I can find, the book never gives their exact ages.) The family has a papa, too, but he has been absent in America for seven years, most of Gisella’s life. In fact, Gisella doesn’t even remember her papa, and whenever she thinks about him, she mostly feels some mixture of confusion and resentment. Gisella longs to have a “papa like everyone else”, but she does not want to leave her village, the only home she has ever known, and go to America to join a papa she doesn’t really know at all.

The story paints a vivid picture of life in a small Eastern European village. The girls celebrate holidays, Jewish holidays like Passover and Sabbath, and also secular Hungarian holidays like May Day. They herd and pick the feathers from their geese, help Mama spin the flax into linen, raise silkworms, go to school, and help with all of the multitude of tasks to be done on a small family homestead. And all the while they are anticipating their eventual journey to New York City where Papa is living. Mama has had to take care of her girls mostly by herself all through the war and its aftermath, and she and Szerena are looking forward to the time when Papa will have enough money saved for them to join him in America.

This year-in-the-life-of book reminds me a little bit of All-of-a-KInd Family, except for the fact that in this story Papa is absent and the community is a rural village in Hungarian Czechoslovakia. A Papa Like Everyone Else also reminds me of Kate Seredy’s The Good Master and The Singing Tree, set in rural Hungary at about the same time period, during World War I. These books are so wonderfully descriptive of Hungarian and Jewish life during that time. I felt transported to another place and time.

Even though it might be a difficult book for any child who is missing a beloved father, deployed perhaps or just having to travel for work, A Papa Like Everyone Else might also be cathartic for children in that situation. And everyone can enjoy the depiction of farm life and Jewish life with just enough detail about how the family make plum preserves, lechwar, or how they fatten the geese by force feeding them, or how they do all the other tasks that support their meager, but also rich, family and community life.

A few content considerations: A robber comes when the family is away from home and steals almost all of their possessions. This robber is said to be a “gypsy”, and the constable slaps one of the Roma suspects, showing the usual contempt and prejudice that was current at the time for Roma people. One of GIsella’s cousins is whipped by the schoolteacher for the cousin’s lack of preparation for his lessons. And a neighbor shoots the fox that has come to steal the chickens and geese in the barn.

All’s well that ends well as Gisella and Szerena and Mama do leave the village and go to join Papa in America. The ending, in case you’re a reader of endings, is:

“As Papa caught them both in his strong arms, the girls buried their faces against his dark jacket, too overwhelmed to speak. Gisella thought, Szerena and I aren’t orphans with only a Mama to love, anymore. We’re a real family now–a family with a mama and a papa.

Papa knelt down and tipped Gisella’s chin up.

“Papa!” she whispered in shy happiness. “Oh, Papa!”

A Papa Like Everyone Else would be a perfect read aloud book for Father’s Day (or really anytime). Maybe it would give us all a renewed appreciation for our own fathers.

Bark, George by Jules Feiffer

May15

Feiffer, Jules. Bark, George. Michael di Capua Books, 1999.

So many dog and cat books in the world! But some of them stand out as especially funny or endearing or living. Bark, George is one of the attention grabbers.

Cartoonist Jules Feiffer wrote and illustrated Bark, George, and the story really is a sort of cartoon or joke. George the dog moos and meows and oinks and quacks when his mother tells him to bark. So Mother Dog takes George to the vet to see why George can’t or won’t bark. The answer to George’s barking problem will make preschoolers and even older children laugh out loud, and the ending to the story leaves the reader with both a resolution and a question. At least, it left me wondering, in a good way.

You may recognize Feiffer’s artistic style from his illustrations for The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Jester. The people and The people and the animals are rather elongated and cartoonish, as befits a cartoonish and jokey picture book. The pictures of George and his mother and the vet are imposed on solid but brightly colored backgrounds which makes George and company pop out and look as if they might hop off the page at any moment.

I added this book to Picture Book Preschool because children like funny and because it makes a great read aloud book, either at bedtime or for morning time. The suspense of finding out what will come out of George next, as the reader turns each page to the next, is irresistible.

Betsy Bird at Fuse #8 writes about Bark, George, calling it her “favorite read aloud book of all time.”

The Gammage Cup and The Whisper of Glocken by Carol Kendall

May14

Some classic fantasy tales are just not as well known as they should be. Two of these lesser know stories are Carol Kendall’s two books about the Minnipins who live in a village called Slipper-on-the-Water in The Land Between the Mountains. I love these books because the characters are just as endearing and memorable as Bilbo Baggins or Taran the Assistant Pig-Keeper and the setting is just as immersive as Narnia or Oz. If you are a fan of high fantasy, these two books are must-reads.

The Gammage Cup by Carol Kendall. The story of five non-conformist Minnipins who become unlikely heroes. The Periods, stodgy old conservatives with names such as Etc. and Geo., are wonderful parodies of those who are all caught up in the forms and have forgotten the meanings. And Muggles, Mingy, Gummy, Walter the Earl, and Curley Green, the Minnipins who don’t quite fit in and who paint their doors colors other than green, are wonderful examples of those pesky artistic/scientific types who live just outside the rules of polite society. The Gammage Cup was a Newbery Honor book in 1960.

The Whisper of Glocken by Carol Kendall. A sequel to The Gammage Cup, Whisper continues the story of the Minnipins and their isolated valley home. In this story, which takes place among a new generation of Minnipins, the Minnipin valley is being flooded. Five new unlikely heroes—Crustabread, Scumble, Glocken, Gam Lutie, and Silky— set out on a quest to release the dammed river.

There’s not much magic or fairy tale in these books. The “magic” consists of a faraway, imaginary time and place where the battle between good and evil, foolishness and wisdom, plays out among some extraordinary characters who are called to defend their land and their way of life despite their outcast status.

A few of my favorite quotes from The Gammage Cup and The Whisper of Glocken:

“No matter where There is, when you arrive it becomes Here.”

“When you say what you think, be sure to think what you say.”

“You never can tell
From a Minnipin’s hide
What color he is
Down deep inside.”

“If you don’t look for Trouble, how can you know it’s there?”

“Where there’s fire, there’s smoke.”

“It was easy to be generous when you had a lot of anything. The pinch came when you had to divide not-enough.”

“No hurry about opening his eyes to see where he was. If he was dead, he wouldn’t be able to open them anyway; and if he was alive, he didn’t feel up to facing whatever had to be faced just now. After a while it occurred to him that he had no business being dead. You couldn’t just selfishly go off dead, leaving your friends to their fate, and still feel easy in your mind.”

“[I]t came to him—–the truth about heroes. You can’t see a hero because heroes are born in the heart and mind. A hero stands fast when the urge is to run, and runs when he would rather take root. A hero doesn’t give up, even when all is lost.”

I may have to re-read The Gammage Cup and The Whisper of Glocken this summer–if someone doesn’t check them out of my library before I can get around to it. One of the Minnipins, Muggles I think, isn’t consciously a nonconformist or an artist; she just gets caught up in the adventures of the others and finds out that she, too, has her own desires and dreams and talents. I loved The Gammage Cup by Carol Kendall (b. September 13, 1917) when I was a child, and I still remember images and ideas from it. For instance, I’ve always had a desire to paint my front door red or orange or yellow. And I sort of like being different–sometimes just for the sake of difference.

Harry, the Dirty Dog by Gene Zion

May8

Zion, Gene. Harry the Dirty Dog. Illustrated by Margaret Bloy Graham. Harper, 1956.

Here’s another book that was first published in 1956, the year before I was born. And it’s remained in print all the years since then because it tells a classic story of a dog who doesn’t want a bath. (I remember some children who were much like Harry–bath-resistant.) Because Harry, a white dog with black spots, runs away when it’s bath time, he gets very dirty and turns into an unrecognizable black dog with white spots. And when his own family doesn’t recognize him, well, Harry begs for that bath that he so successfully avoided at the beginning of the story. I could read this story over and over and not get tired of it, which is why it’s one of the 520 books listed in Picture Book Preschool.

I have A Harry the Dirty Dog Treasury in my library with Harry the Dirty Dog and two more stories about Harry, No Roses for Harry and Harry by the Sea. In No Roses for Harry, Harry’s hated sweater from grandmother unravels, to his delight. And in Harry by the Sea, another Picture Book Preschool selection, Harry, covered in seaweed, is mistaken for a sea monster. Harry and the Lady Next Door is the fourth and last of the Harry books. All four Harry books, whether you read them in the treasury or individually, are warm and funny and just a delight that no preschooler should miss out on.

Illustrator Margaret Bloy Graham and author Gene Zion were a husband and wife team collaborating on the Harry books. And a fine team they were. Unfortunately, the couple divorced in 1968, and there were no more books about Harry, the dirty dog after that. Margaret Bloy Graham did, however write and illustrate at least one book of her own, Be Nice to Spiders, which is also a Picture Book Preschool selection in the week themed “Creepy Crawly Creatures.” Mr. Zion, on the other hand, quit writing after their 14-year long collaboration ended with the divorce.

I’m thankful they were together long enough to give us Harry, one of the great dogs of picture book literature. You can check out all of the Harry books by Gene Zion and Margaret Bloy Graham from Meriadoc Homeschool Library.

The Little Fish That Got Away by Bernadine Cook

May7

Cook, Bernadine. The Little Fish That Got Away. Illustrated by Crockett Johnson. William R. Scott, 1956.

This little book was published the year before I was born, in hardcover and then in a paperback edition from Scholastic. Then it went out of print at some point, and for a long time, the old Scholastic paperbacks were all that could be found. Then, HarperCollins published a new edition in 2005 and again in 2019, and now it’s readily available, new and used at reasonable prices for the used books.

If the cover reminds you of The Carrot Seed and Harold and the Purple Crayon, that’s because Crockett Johnson illustrated all three. Crockett Johnson was the pen name for author, cartoonist, and painter David Johnson Leisk. He was married to children’s author Ruth Krauss, who wrote The Carrot Seed and many other picture books. Johnson’s little round faced boys with the big eyes are iconic, easily recognizable in this book about a boy who goes fishing–and about the fish that he caught and the one that got away.

“Once upon a time there was a boy who liked to go fishing. . . He went fishing every day. But he never, no never, got any fish. All he ever did catch was a bad cold. But ONE day . . .”

The story goes on to tell about the boy’s adventures with a GREAT GREAT big fish, a GREAT big fish, a BIG fish, and finally a little fish. Can you guess which one got away?

The story is repetitive, which children love. Of course, it lends itself to being read aloud. I can get a little tired of repeating the same phrases over and over again for each of the boy’s attempts at catching a fish, but I haven’t met a child yet who gets tired of the repeating choruses. And the ending, which escapes the repetitive cycle, is funny every time.

The Little Fish That Got Away is a Picture Book Preschool selection. It can be seen as teaching tool for learning about relative sizes of things, but I wouldn’t suggest pointing that aspect out to little children. Let them enjoy the story and pick up on the “math” and measurements as they listen. Children absorb learning better if they are not force fed.

You can also check out The Little Fish That Got Away from Meriadoc Homeschool Library.

The ABC Bunny by Wanda Gag

May6

Wanda Gag, author of Millions of Cats and Gone Is Gone, or The Story of a Man Who Wanted To Do Housework, also wrote The ABC Bunny, in which the aforesaid bunnies crash and dash and meet up with all kinds of other alphabetically named forest creatures and events and objects– all the way from “A for Apple, big and red” to “Z for ZERO, Close the Book.” In this book, X, always a letter I check in alphabet books because it’s so hard find words that begin with X, is “for eXit–off, away,” with a picture of a rabbit rushing to hide in his burrow.

Really, though, I like the text in this book, but the pictures are so delightful that they could carry an entire wordless book by themselves. These illustrations of bunny rabbits doing everything that can be done by rabbits in a forest or a garden, are black and white lithographs, similar to those in Millions of Cats if you are familiar with that classic. However while the cats and the little old man and lady in Millions of Cats are exquisitely tiny and quaint, these rabbits and their fellow forest creatures are big and bold and full of dash and flash and dart. I just love them!

In the front of my book and again in the back there is music for you to sing the text as an ABC Song. I don’t sight read music, so I don’t know if the tune is catchy or not, but if you do, let me know what you think. The music was written by Wanda Gag’s younger sister, Flavia Gag. The words in the book were hand lettered by Wanda’s younger brother, Howard. And Wanda created The ABC Bunny for Gary, her small nephew. So it’s a family collaborative endeavor, shared with the world.

Alphabet books are kind of hit and miss with me. “A is for Apple, B is for Boy,” just doesn’t engage adults or young children unless there’s something added to the illustrations or the text itself to make the book more appealing and nourishing. The written story in this one is fine, well written enough to win Ms. Gag a Newbery Honor for her work in The ABC Bunny in 1934. However, I think it would have garnered a Caldecott Honor or Award, had the Caldecott been around in 1934. As far as I’m concerned, in The ABC Bunny the “eXtra” is in the pictures (and maybe the song.) Wanda Gag’s artistry was enough to make this one a Picture Book Preschool selection, one of the ten ABC books included in Picture Book Preschool.

You can check out a copy of ABC Bunny from Meriadoc Homeschool Library. Or you can purchase your own copy, brand new, since this 1933 book is actually in print from University of Minnesota Press.

Learn more about this and other living books at Biblioguides.