Marshmallow

Finished Marshmallow by Clare Turlay Newberry. It won the Newbery Honor Medal in 1943. This book is adorable.

Marshmallow is a very young rabbit brought home by Miss Tilly to live in her apartment with her and Oliver the cat. Now most people (including myself) would think that this was a recipe for immediate disaster. Oliver is an indoor cat and has never seen another animal before. He's a bit frightened by Marshmallow at first. Later his instinct kicks in and Miss Tilly sees that she must separate them. One day she is late coming home. Oliver fools with the doorknob to the room he's kept in enough to make it click. He watches Marshmallow move around the apartment and isn't sure what he should do. Once Marshmallow notices him he comes right up to Oliver thinking perhaps this is his mother in a new coat. The two become friends and Oliver treats Marshmallow like a kitten, bathing him and napping with him. Clare Turlay Newberry insists that this is a true story. Whether it is or not, it's very charming, and as with her other books the texture of the illustrations is so soft you can almost feel the animals' fur with your fingers.

Dash & Dart

Finished Dash & Dart by husband and wife Mary and Conrad Buff. Both contributed to the text and the illustrations for this book. It is the story of twin fawns, Dash and Dart, of how they grow up and learn about the world around them. The story focuses more on Dash, the male fawn and this thoughts of growing up, growing antlers and being King of the Forest like Old Horney. The illustration are very soft and well detailed. It is a quiet, easy book. Children who like animal stories will enjoy it.

The Buffs also won several Newbery Honor Medals for Big Tree (1947), The Apple and the Arrow (1952), and Magic Maize (1954).

The Store

Finished The Store by T. S. Stribling. It won the Pulitzer in 1933. This is the second book in a trilogy which began with The Forge and ended with The Unfinished Cathedral. Set in the Post-Reconstruction South, The Store is the story of Miltiades Vaiden and the life he leads among the whites and the now freed slaves that he grew up amidst in small town Alabama. While Miltiades does a number of dishonest things in this book, he does have a reputation for being fair and honest with the black patrons at the store where he clerks. This book has a slow and easy pace. The characters are interesting, as is the historical setting. The end however is predictably tragic and unsettling. I enjoyed this book. The motivations of most of the characters are very easy to grasp. I wish now that I had read The Forge first.

The Little House

I've just re-read The Little House by Virginia Le Burton. It won the Caldecott Medal in 1943. This book has been a favorite of mine for years. It tells the story of a little house built way out in the country and the happy years it spends with generations of it's owner's family.

As time passes many changes take place. Horseless carriages appear, roads are built, development springs up around the little house. Eventually it is completely engulfed by a noisy, sooty, thoughtless city. As this happens the facade of the house changes, begins to sag and in the end looks completely heartbroken. One day the great great granddaughter of one of the children who first lived there discovers the house cowering in between two immense skyscrapers. She recognizes it as the house her grandmother once lived in and decides to rescue it. She and her husband make arrangements for the house to be moved ("Traffic was held up for two hours!"). They find the perfect spot to relocate the house back out in the country and then live there with their children.

Burton's illustrations are lovely, warm, intricate and intimate. The facade of the house is truly it's face. When you see it dwarfed by development and progress you want to weep. I love this book very much.

The Stolen Lake

Finished The Stolen Lake by Joan Aiken, the fourth book in her Wolves Chronicles which began with The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, a book I read in 2005 in a thatched cottage on Cruit Island, off the Western coast of Ireland, with the wind howling all around. Perfect.

The story of The Stolen Lake is kind of whacked. Aiken's series features an alternate English history. Dido Twite should be headed back to England after her adventures in Nightbirds on Nantucket but the ship she is a passenger on must detour south to New Cumbria in Roman America to aid an ally of the king. The adventures that take place there are so fantastical that I often found myself reading with very wide eyes. There are a few gruesome moments in this book that made it a little disturbing to read at bedtime, but otherwise it was a very exciting book. I don't understand why Aiken is not more widely read, given the popularity of the Harry Potter books.

In My Mother's House

Finished In My Mother's House written by Ann Nolan Clark and illustrated by Velino Herrera. It won the Caldecott Honor Medal in 1942. This is a lovely book, told from a child's perspective, about life as a Native American. The book is written in little poetic phrases that emphasize bonds with nature,



"But I like best to think
Of Indian tea
As a tall girl waiting;
An Indian girl waiting,
Standing in the tall grass
And swaying to listen
For the footsteps of someone."

Ann Nolan Clark was a teacher in a school for children of Tesuque pueblo people for 25 years. She also won the Newbery Medal for The Secret of the Andes in 1953.

An American ABC

Finished An American ABC by husband and wife illustrators Maud and Miska Petersham. This book won the Caldecott Honor Medal in 1942. In 1946 they won the Caldecott Medal for The Rooster Crows.

Set up in the same manner as "A is for Amy..." this book finds something about American heritage and history for each letter of the alphabet. For each entry there is a page of explanatory text and then a facing illustration page. While the illustrations are colorful and well drawn, they tend to emphasize racial stereotypes. I was curious to see what they would come up with for the letter X. Sadly, X is for Xmas. Need I say more.

Nothing at All

Finished Nothing at All by Wanda Gág. It won the Caldecott Honor Medal in 1942. This is a strange and original story about a dog, named Nothing-at-All, who is invisible, but with the assistance of a Jackdaw and some magic, eventually becomes a "really, truly see-able dog." Gág's illustrations are her usual pleasant, stylized drawings, somewhat soft and odd.

This was an interlibrary loan from the Kalamazoo Public Library. The edition I read was printed in 1941 and was in pretty good shape except that someone had drawn smiley faces inside the white ball drawn to represent Nothing-at-All when he is invisible.

Travels with Charley in Search of America

Finished Travels with Charley in Search of America by John Steinbeck. One of Steinbeck's last books, this is the story of the road trip he took around the United States in 1960 with his standard poodle Charley. Reading the first hundred pages of this book I couldn't shake the feeling that I was reading something by E. B. White. The tone and subjects of this book are very similar to those found in The Essays of E. B. White. I do not mention this as a criticism, just as a point of interest. I love White's essays, some of which feature the many dachshunds he owned over the years. I guess I just found the similarities surprising. The only other Steinbeck that I have read is Of Mice and Men, a book I expected to be thoroughly depressed by. My daughter read it for her Introduction to Literature course, freshman year in high school. I read it when she did and really enjoyed it.

In Travels with Charley Steinbeck sets out to see what America is like at the time. He tries his best to stick to small towns and secondary roads. Many topics are interesting forshadowings of problems we have today. Perhaps the most interesting was his observation of young black children being escorted to school by federal marshals while being jeered at by a group of white women in New Orleans. Steinbeck was so revolted by this experience that he bypassed all the other sights he had planned to see in the area and went off to be by himself. As I was reading this the telephone rang. It was Gus from the Ann Arbor Obama campaign headquarters. I had signed up to volunteer, but had not done so yet. Gus was calling to ask me if I'd be willing to contact a list of local volunteers to match them up with canvassing, phone bank and "Get Out the Vote" opportunities. I'd said no before to telephone work, feeling awkward and shy about it. Somehow at that moment it seemed the best possible thing that I could do. I agreed to call the 20 people on the list that he provided. The next night I called eight before going to College Night with my daughter. The following night I called twelve while recovering from a root canal. It wasn't much, but I'm not sure I would have gotten involved if it hadn't been for Steinbeck at that moment.

Under the Tuscan Sun at Home in Italy

Finished Under the Tuscan Sun at Home in Italy by Frances Mayes. This is a lovely, lyric account of Mayes, and her significant other Ed, purchasing and refurbishing a villa in Tuscany. The prose gives away the fact that Mayes is a poet. Their adventures with contractors, plumbers, plasterers and iron mongers are fascinating and humorous. There is a lot of talk of food in the book including recipes for Tuscan dishes. I've already tried the Cherries Steeped in Red Wine with Marscarpone and am looking forward to making Guinea Hens Roasted with Fennel, substituting a small fryer.

I have seen and enjoyed the film that was based on this book. Hollywood turned a memoir into a fun chick flick, but the book, its language, descriptions and meditations on everything from bees to the saints, is far more rich and satisfying. This is a terrific end of summer book to be read in the hammock with a glass of Prosecco on a small table nearby.

Paddle-to-the-Sea

Finished Paddle-to-the-Sea written and illustrated by Holling Clancy Holling. It won the Caldecott Honor Medal in 1942. It is the story of an Indian in a canoe, carved by a boy in Canada, and sent on its long voyage to the sea. The story is broken up into numbered sections for each stage of the journey. Many people find the toy canoe and help it along its way. The story is fun, exciting and interesting in its tracing of the path the canoe takes from The Great Lakes to the Atlantic Ocean. The illustrations are colorful and very detailed. The text pages often have diagrams and or maps of the journey. This is a book with quite a lot of text, so it may be more suitable for the upper elementary grades. Holling also won the Newbery Honor Medal in 1949 for Seabird.

As a side note I think it's funny, that up until a few weeks ago I had never heard the name Holling before. Now I've just finished a book about a character named Holling Hoodhood and another one by Holling Clancy Holling.

The Wednesday Wars

Just finished The Wednesday Wars by Gary D. Schmidt. It won the Newbery Honor Medal this year. This is the best book I've read in a long time. It's funny, clever, warm, charming, sad and wonderful. Set in 1967/68 it's the story of Holling Hoodhood and his stressful year in seventh grade. Holling, being a Presbyterian, is the only kid at his junior high school who does not attend either Hebrew school or Catholic instruction on Wednesday afternoons, so he must remain at school with his teacher Mrs. Baker. Holling thinks that she hates him. She does not. She assigns a different Shakespeare play each month for him to read and for the two of them to discuss. Holling's exposure to Shakespeare gives him insight into the challenges of everyday life on Long Island during a year that brought bad news from Vietnam, and the assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr and Bobby Kennedy. Holling grapples with family discord, first love, bullies, danger and Shakespeare. Observing that Holling blatantly lacks the support most kids get at home, Mrs. Baker backs him up time and again, helping him to achieve numerous personal triumphs.

The plays Holling reads are The Tempest, Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, Julius Ceasar, Much Ado About Nothing and Hamlet. Schmidt won the Newbery Honor Medal in 2004 as well for Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy.

I laughed out loud many times and cried a few as well with this book. I highly recommend it.

Make Way for Ducklings

I have a wonderful hardcover edition of Make Way for Ducklings by Robert McCloskey. The dust jacket is torn in many places. I am so very fond of this book. This copy was given to me by my great uncle Sidney who purchased it for me at Lauriat's Books in Boston in 1966. Growing up in the Boston area the book was very real to me. I remember chasing ducks at the reservoir in Brookline and riding in the swan boats in the Public Garden.

Make Way for Ducklings won the Caldecott Medal in 1942. It is the story of two mallards who wish to raise a family in the Boston area but have trouble finding a safe and sensible spot to raise ducklings. McCloskey's charcoal drawings are so charming and warm that I've never wanted to eat duck as a result. The book has been deemed The Children's Book of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. In 1987 a bronze statue of the mother mallard and her eight ducklings was installed in the Public Garden as a tribute to McCloskey. A similar statue was also installed in a park in Moscow.

McCloskey won the Caldecott Medal again in 1958 for Time of Wonder. He won the Caldecott Honor Medal several times, Blueberries for Sal (1949), One Morning in Maine (1953) and Journey Cake Ho! (1954).

Pollyanna Grows Up

Finished Pollyanna Grows Up. Published in 1915, this is Eleanor Porter's sequel to her bestseller Pollyanna. Perhaps not as delightful as the first novel, the sequel has interesting new characters and a mystery. This book is a bit of an emotional roller coaster, but in the end of course everyone is exceedingly glad.

Chester Cricket's New Home

Finished Chester Cricket's New Home. This is the fifth book in George Selden's series about Chester and his friends. The first book A Cricket in Times Square won the Newbery Honor Medal in 1961. As with the rest of the books in the series this one was illustrated by Garth Williams.

Chester's home in the country, an old tree stump, is accidentally destroyed. Many of Chester's friends step up to offer him a place to stay. While they all mean well, they are pretty challenging housemates. Chester grows so discouraged that he considers ending it all, but his friends Walter Water Snake and Simon Turtle have a surprise for him.

This book is charming. The prose is quite beautiful in spots. Eventually everything gets sorted out and Chester has a new home for himself and his little bell. His happiness is great. The final words of the book are "It was late in an August afternoon, but the world felt deep and tall and wide. It felt--as it always should--like new."