Prayer for a Child

Finished Prayer for a Child written by Rachael Field and illustrated by Elizabeth Orton Jones. It won the Caldecott Medal in 1945. Field wrote a poem for her daughter which was later developed into this picture book. The tone of the poem and the illustrations is very gentle. The pictures are soft and representational. Several show a little girl in her own room with a drawing she has done tacked up over the bed. The drawing is wonderfully juvenile, absolutely age specific for this little girl. Also, there is a line in the poem which reads,

"Bless other children far and near
And keep them safe and free from fear."

The accompanying illustration is of a crowd of children from many different races and nationalities, all standing together. An interesting drawing for 1944. I mentioned Orton Jones' display of diversity in her drawings in my post about Small Rain: Verses from The Bible in January 2009.

Rachel Field Won the Newbery Medal in 1930 for Hitty, Her First Hundred Years and the Newbery Honor Medal in 1932 for Calico Bush. Field also wrote novels for adults including All This and Heaven Too which was made into a film starring Bette Davis and Charles Boyer in 1938.

This was an interlibrary loan from the Wickson Memorial Library in Frankenmuth, Michigan.

Gay Neck, The Story of a Pigeon

Finished Gay Neck, The Story of a Pigeon by Dhan Gopal Mukerji. It won the Newbery Medal in 1928. Set mostly in the Himalayas and partially in France during World War I, this is the story of a carrier pigeon. He is named Gay Neck for the colorful feathers about his neck. He is raised by an Indian boy. Gay Neck's parents teach him to fly, but the boy teaches him to be a carrier pigeon. His skills are so fine that he is recruited to work with the allies during the war. This book clearly illustrates that it is a bird-eat-bird world out there. Gay Neck's parents and many other birds are attacked and eaten by eagles, hawks, owls, vultures and crows. At times it was pretty damn disturbing, especially before bedtime.

Nonetheless, the book is an exciting one and the story holds your interest. I think perhaps the older end of the Newbery audience would enjoy it, but it might be too unsettling for younger readers.

The Mighty Hunter

Finished The Mighty Hunter by Berta and Elmer Hader. It won the Caldecott Honor Medal in 1944. It is the story of a small Native American boy who wishes to be known as a great hunter. One day instead of going to school he takes his bow and his arrows and goes hunting. The first creature he sees is a rat. He takes aim, but the rat tells him he is too small for a mighty hunter to shoot and takes him to where the boy will find a prairie dog. Again the boy aims, but the prairie dog tells him he knows where the mighty hunter can find a rabbit. This continues with each animal recommending a larger target, until finally the little mighty hunter takes aim at a grizzly bear with two cubs. She chides him, then roars so fiercely that the mighty hunter drops his bow and arrows and runs all the way to the school house.

This book is simple with very warmly painted illustrations. The Haders won the Caldecott Medal in 1949 for their book The Big Snow.

Mary Poppins Comes Back

Finished Mary Poppins Comes Back by P. L. Travers. This is the second book in the series. Mary returns, via kite, to again be nanny for the Banks children, which now consist of not only Jane and Michael, but twins Barbara and John and the soon to be born Annabel. Mary is as prim and stern as ever, but orchestrates all sorts of unusual adventures. Travers' Mary is much harder, much more severe than Disney's version of the character, but that's what makes her so much more fascinating, especially to the children.

The Brontë Project

Finished The Brontë Project by Jennifer Vandever. Sara Frost is searching for letters written by Charlotte Brontë for research in connection with her thesis. Her topic and academic outlook are out of step with the English Department's new tone and newest visiting Scholar Claire, who has created a Diana Studies genre dedicated to the life of the late Princess Diana. Sara's fiancee leaves her and her research fellowship is not renewed. While these circumstances all sound pretty bleak, the tone of The Brontë Project is edgy, humorous and at times zany. This is a fun read, especially for Brontë fans, English majors and classic film buffs.

Village Diary

Finished Village Diary by Miss Read. It is the second book in the Fairacre series (see Village School, December 2007). Miss Read continues on as Headmistress of Fairacre School. The infants teacher Mrs. Annett leaves to start a family. Miss Clare comes out of retirment to fill in for a bit, but then a new teacher, just out of teacher's college arrives to assume the post. Miss Jackson is very progressive and somewhat puzzled by the ways of this country school and it's students. She must board at the school house with Miss Read, which is less than advisable given their complete opposite natures and teaching philosophies. It's not until Dr. Martin brings Miss Clare's quiet poverty to light that a solution is found and Miss Jackson cheerfully goes to board at Miss Clare's. Once again, a cozy, funny, lovely read.

Pierre Pidgeon

Finished Pierre Pidgeon by Lee Kingman. This book won the Caldecott Honor Medal in 1944. Set in Canada, by the sea, it is the story of a boy who is fascinated with a ship in a bottle that he sees in the local store. He and the shopkeeper discuss the concept of how the ship got inside the bottle. The shopkeeper tells him that if Pierre ever figures that out he will be a very smart boy indeed. Pierre earns an unexpected dollar when he assists an artist who wants to paint in a neaby field, but is frightened by Pierre's family's ox Henri. Pierre uses the dollar to purchase the ship in a bottle, but the bottle is later broken. Pierre is very sad, but notices how the little ship has collapsed on itself. He wonders, now that it is so small, if he can insert it into another bottle. He tries this out and is successful. He then runs back to the shopkeeper the explain how it was done.

This was an interesting book with a very original story to tell. The illustrations are charming, especially those of Henri the ox. Kingman was a children's literature editor at Houghton Mifflin in the 1940s.

Small Rain: Verses from the Bible

Finished Small Rain: Verses of the Bible by Jessie Orton Jones. This book won the Caldecott Honor Medal in 1944. Normally I find picture books based on bits of The Bible somewhat annoying. Not this one. Most of the selected text is familiar, even to a heathen like me. Jones' illustrations are wonderful. Her style seems a blend of Norman Rockwell and Robert McCloskey. The drawings feature children of more than one race, and are so warm and engaging that I found myself really enjoying this book.

Another interlibrary loan. This time from the Spring Lake District Library, Spring Lake, MI.

The Good-Luck Horse

Finished The Good-Luck Horse by Chi-Yi Chan, illustrated by her twelve year old son Plato Chan. This book won the Caldecott Honor Medal in 1944. It is based on a Chinese folk tale and tells the story of a lonely boy, Wah-Toong, who longs for a friend. He cuts a horse out of paper and the magician who lives next door turns the paper horse into a real one. The illustrations are very consistent and the expression on Wah-Toong's father's face, after the magic horse has wrecked his garden, is excellent.

This was an interlibrary loan from the Grace A. Dow Memorial Library in Midland, Michigan.

Crampton Hodnet

Finished Crampton Hodnet by Barbara Pym. This is Pym's first completed novel, written in 1939, but not published until 1985, after her death. Set amid the academics and clergy of Oxford, it is a cozy, gossipy, humorous novel that reminded me much of the Father Tim series by Jan Karon. This is a comfortable read with moments of poignant prose,

"Miss Morrow nodded. A great unrequited passion was hardly in Mr. Latimer's line, she realized, the sort of love that lingers on through many years, dying sometimes and then coming back like a twinge of rheumatism in the winter, so that you feel it in your knee when you are nearing the top of a long flight of stairs."

Lucky Jim

Finished Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis. It was his first novel, published in 1954. The protagonist, Jim Dixon, is a hapless first year lecturer in Medieval History at a provincial British university. He is constantly in the soup in terms of college and boarding house politics. This was a group read choice of the Anglophiles Anonymous group I belong to on Shelfari. The point was to read something humorous. This book is very funny in parts. In particular, Jim has an entire repertoire of faces that he makes in reaction to various situations. Of these my favorites were his "Evelyn Waugh face" and his "Sex in the Roman Empire face." While the book was funny, I'm afraid I found the story rather painful. I cringed at the situations he found himself in and sometimes dreaded returning to the book. I also had a 1957 library bound copy from the U-M library which had almost no margins or white space on the page. This added to my dread. The one poignant moment towards the end of the book was when Jim finally has something positive happen and realizes that he has no face to express his joy over it. All his faces express either dread or rage. His realization of this seemed to be the turning point for a better future.

A Child's Good Night Book

Finished A Child's Good Night Book by Margaret Wise Brown, illustrated by Jean Charlot. It won the Caldecott Honor Medal in 1944. This is a sweet little bedtime book that I wish I'd known about when my daughter was small. It describes different animals getting ready to sleep at night, and then calls them sleepy, "sleepy birds, sleepy bunnies" etc. It made me sleepy, but perhaps that was the turkey soup I had for dinner. Brown is best known for her books Goodnight Moon and The Runaway Bunny. She won the Caldecott Honor Medal for Little Lost Lamb (1946) under the pseuedonym of Golden Brown, and Wheel on the Chimney (1955). She won the Caldecott Medal in 1946 for The Little Island, also under the pseudonym.

Christmas Pudding

Finished Christmas Pudding, Nancy Mitford's second novel, published in 1932. It's a comedy of errors set in the English countryside at Christmas. It's a bit like a Jeeves novel minus the most important character to solve all the scrapes that everyone gets into. There are shades of The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate with people hanging about in linen closets and playing canfield saying "if this comes out, I shall marry him." Being an early novel it lacks the sophistication and biting wit and irony of her later books. It's good fun and very humorous in parts. An easy, cozy holiday read.

Miracle on 34th Street

Finished Miracle on 34th Street by Valentine Davies. Published in 1947, this novella was released at the same time as the original motion picture starring Edmund Gwynn, Maureen O'Hara, John Payne and Natalie Wood. The book is slightly different from the film, but most of the dialogue is identical. It was a quick holiday read with an excellent take away line,

"Faith means believing in things when commons sense tells you not to."

Many Moons

Finished Many Moons written by James Thurber and illustrated by Louis Slobodkin. It won the Caldecott Medal in 1944. This is a story about personal interpretation. Princess Lenore is ill. Her father asks her what can he do to make her feel better. She asks him for the moon. He then demands the moon from his various advisors, the Lord Chamberlain, the Royal Mathematician, the Royal Wizard. Each of these advisors tells him that the moon is larger and farther away than the last advisor indicated and so the task seems impossible. It is the Court Jester, the Fool, who sees that the Princess's concept of the moon is that of a small, golden orb she can see from her bedroom window. He has the Royal Goldsmith create a small moon for the Princess to wear on a chain around her neck. This was all that she wanted after all.