Caleb's Story

Finished Caleb's Story by Patricia MacLachlan. It is the third book in a series of five which began with Sarah, Plain and Tall, which won the Newbery Medal in 1986.

When Caleb is home alone with Sarah and his little sister Cassie during a blizzard he finds a stranger in their barn. He is an old man who is gruff and seems ill. Sarah, always compassionate, invites him into the house. When Papa returns from town he is stunned when he begins to recognize the stranger. The stranger is his father who left when Papa was a boy. Papa is angry that his father has returned after all these years without a word or a letter. Sarah does her best to repair the rift between the two men. All along Caleb is writing about these events in the journal that his older sister has given him.

Caleb is very observant and after a while he begins to realize that his grandfather cannot read. In secret Caleb teaches his grandfather to read and write. His grandfather then writes the letter to his son that he was never able to write before.

I enjoyed this book. It was very brief and even though it has been years since I read Sarah, Plain and Tall and Skylark, it was very easy to drop back into the lives of these characters.

The Cat Who Went to Heaven

Finished The Cat Who Went to Heaven by Elizabeth Coatsworth. It won the Newbery Medal in 1931. It is the story of a Japanese painter whose housekeeper brings home a cat from the market instead of food. At first the painter is skeptical, cats are demonic, but after observing the behavior of the cat he changes his mind. The painter is commissioned to paint a mural for the temple of the death of Buddha. The painter imagines himself as Buddha and as each of the animals that Buddha welcomes to Nirvana. The descriptions of each animal are interesting and compassionately written. The cat is the one animal that was not welcomed, but this seems to change by the end of the book. I don't usually enjoy books that are religiously based, but this book is special. "One of the thirty 20th-century children's books every adult should know."--The Horn Book. Unfortunately I cannot seem to locate that list itself.

A Little Maid of Provincetown

Finished A Little Maid of Provincetown by Alice Turner Curtis, originally published in 1913. This is the second book in her series of twenty five that I have read. Set during the American Revolution, it is the story of Anne, whose father's fishing boat is captured by the British. The people of the Provincetown Settlement think that Anne's father has turned spy or informant for the British. Anne is taken in by a childless couple who she calls Aunt Martha and Uncle Enos. Anne is taunted by other children who call her spy and traitor. Anne has a plucky spirit and a fierce temper. She throws water and sand in the faces of these children, who then go wailing home. Uncle Enos catches her at it and rather than scolding her for such behavior, he praises Anne for standing up for herself and her father. Anne learns that her father has escaped the British and has joined the American soldiers in Boston. She stows away on Uncle Enos' boat when he sails for Boston in order to try to find her father. Uncle Enos helps her to find him and then Anne carries a message for her father to the leader of the rebels in Newburyport.

This was a fun book. Curtis includes a few British soldiers who are kindly and who rescue Anne when she is in danger. She is not so complimentary of the Native Americans in the region however. This is surprising since the Native Americans in A Little Maid of Nantucket were portrayed in a much more favorable light.

The edition I read was a vintage reissue printed by Applewood Books, the same company that has reissued Nancy Drew books in their original form. Applewood issued twelve titles from the series some time in the 1990s.

The Rooster Crows: A Book of American Rhymes and Jingles

Finished The Rooster Crows: A Book of American Rhymes and Jingles by Maud and Miska Petersham. It won the Caldecott Medal in 1946. This book has many cheerful illustrations, nursery rhymes, finger games, count off games and jump rope songs, some familiar, some rather peculiar. The Petershams were a husband and wife illustration team who also won the Caldecott Honor Medal in 1942 for An American ABC.

Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There

Finished Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There by Lewis Carroll. This was a re-read for me. I probably last read this fifteen years ago, aloud to my daughter. It's hard to believe that she could have followed it. Much like Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator I really preferred the first book. Both first books are complete originals, zany and fun. Both second books are completely off the wall. I realize that Carroll's second book is a masterpiece of logic with complicated chess moves, but that doesn't really interest me. Stories interest me and there really is no actual story in Through the Looking Glass. There are, however, a number of pretty creepy characters, Humpty-Dumpty and Tweedledum and Tweedledee in particular. In a way I suppose it was just too complicated for my taste. A cranky entry, I know.

Some Tame Gazelle

Finished Some Tame Gazelle by Barbara Pym. This was her first published novel. It is the story of two spinster sisters living in a small village in England. Their world is very small and precise. Any changes to it cause tremendous upheaval. There were moments when I was reminded of characters in the first of the Mapp & Lucia books, but I enjoyed this book so much more because I actually liked these characters.

The main character, Belinda, nurses her long unrequited love for their neighbor the Archdeacon. While a small, quiet, sometimes amusing story, I was very drawn to the characters and found myself wondering about them when I was at work and away from the book. Pym novels always have an excellent quote worth saving. One from this book is "If only one could clear out one's mind and heart as ruthlessly as one did one's wardrobe." Next year I will read her next novel Excellent Women.

Down the Garden Path

Finished Down the Garden Path by Beverley Nichols. This book is wickedly funny and best suited to those who know their way around a garden. Read it outside, in the sunshine or twilight, with a glass of something bubbly.

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Finished re-reading Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. This is perhaps the fourth or fifth time I have read the book. The Anglophiles Anonymous group I belong to on Shelfari finally decided to read some children's lit and chose both of the Alice books.

This time around I read all the annotations in the edition I have. The type is so tiny and made me so sleepy that it took perhaps longer than it should have for me to finish the first book.

I have always enjoyed Tenniel's illustrations.

With this reading I was struck by Alice's concern for good manners. While constantly finding herself in absurd situations she still does not wish to offered anyone. Also, characters who I found intimidating or even frightening when I was younger now appear harmless and I feel they are looked upon with an indulgent eye, not only by me, but by Alice herself.

How Green Was My Valley

There is a lovely book it is. A lovely, lovely book.

Main Street

Finished Main Street by Sinclair Lewis back in mid July but forgot to blog about it here. It is the story of Carol Kennicott, married to a country doctor, after living life as an independent young woman in Minneapolis. Gopher Prairie, MN is a small, close, terribly judgmental place and Carol tries her hardest to reform it visually and socially. Her struggle in this effort is at first valiant, but in the end a bitterly lost cause. I felt despair and disappointment for Carol as she was forever buried under the petty norms of small town America in the 1920s.

Despite this bleak prospect I enjoyed the novel. Lewis' characters are so real it's easy to get caught up in their lives.

The Hidden Staircase

Finished The Hidden Staircase by Carolyne Keene, the second Nancy Drew mystery, published in 1930. Nancy sleuths alone, carries a revolver and is pretty damn bold. This book was a reissue of the original text, printed by Applewood Books.




I pulled out my childhood edition of The Hidden Staircase to make comparisons and found that the 1959 revision of the text bears little resemblance to the original. Like The Secret of the Old Clock this book is riddled with racial stereotypes that make one cringe. This second book, however, was much more exciting than the first in the series.

Carolyn Keene was a pseudonym for a number of writers who worked on the series, but most of the first twenty-five Nancy Drew books were written by Mildred Wirt Benson.

Julie & Julia

Finished Julie & Julia in anticipation of the film's release in August. The film is based on this book and Julia Child's memoir My Life in France which I finished in August 2007, just prior to beginning this reading blog.

Julie & Julia chronicles Julie Powell's attempt to cook every recipe in Childs' Mastering the Art of French Cooking while blogging about her efforts. Compared to most of the books I've read in the last few years this is quite contemporary. It has all the angst, drinking, smoking and swearing of Bridget Jones' Diary, but it has something else as well. It has a sense of tangible accomplishment. Powell, a recovering theater geek, turned temp, turned permanent secretary, learns that she is capable of great and fearsome things. Not only do her cooking skills excel during the project, but her writing skills do as well. This book is very personal and very funny.

I'd have to say that of the two books I really prefer My Life in France. It's charming and equally as funny, but perhaps in a different way.

Fairy Tales: A Selection

Finally finished Fairy Tales: A Selection by Hans Christian Andersen. It takes me a long time to get through disjointed texts, books of tales or short stories. I much prefer a long, drawn out narrative with lots of characters to follow. This collection has sat on my bookshelf, unread, for many years. It contains many of Andersen's most familiar works, The Princess and the Pea, Thumblina, The Little Mermaid, The Emperor's New Clothes, The Ugly Duckling, The Snow Queen, and The Little Match Girl. It was pleasant to read these in the original (if translated) text. However, I found the tales I was not familiar with truly bizarre and interesting. The Galoshes of Fortune was my favorite. It reminded me very much of the 1942 film Tales of Manhattan, where a tail coat passes from person to person, changing the destiny of each one.

Hitty: Her First Hundred Years

Finished Hitty: Her First Hundred Years by Rachel Field. It won the Newbery Medal in 1930. About a decade ago, when I used to read chapter books out loud to my daughter we started Hitty. We got about twenty pages in and were so bored we started calling it "Hitty: Her First Million Years." Needless to say we gave up and read something else. Because of that experience I was concerned when Hitty came up next in my chronological reading of the Newbery medalists. At times like this I hear the voice of Miss Baker, one of my middle school English teachers, saying "Always give a book at least 32 pages before you give up on it." Reading Hitty this time I was engrossed long before page 32.

Hitty is a doll, carved from strong Mountain Ash. She was made by a peddler for Phoebe Prebles, a little girl living in Maine in the 19th Century. Hitty's adventures begin almost immediately. She is picked up by a crow and brought back to a nest where she is pecked and crowded by young crows. She falls from the nest and is rescued by the Prebles. Phoebe's father is the Captain of a Whaler. He takes his family along on a voyage to the South Seas. They are shipwrecked on a small island. The people of the island are fascinated by Hitty and place her in a shrine where she is anointed and worshiped. Someone steals Hitty back and the family is rescued and taken to India. Phoebe is so tired. She is carried to lodgings and loses her grip on Hitty. Hitty falls into the gutter. She is later discovered there by a snake charmer. Hitty travels in a basket with a cobra from one end of India to the other. Adventures such as this go on and on.

There are times when Hitty is lost to the world in attics, barns, down beneath sofa cushions. She is always rediscovered, rehabilitated, and brought back in a different role, sometimes simply as a plaything, other times as a museum piece. She remarks on the changes that she sees over the years, new inventions, innovations, changes in styles and manners. She at one point is given a little desk, quill pen and ink and so begins to write, these, her memoirs.

This book was exciting and fantastical. An interesting historical ride. There are moments where one cringes over ethnic and racial stereotypes, but taken within the context of when they were happening, they are sadly the tone of the times. Hitty herself is a bit of a snob.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

When I read about The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society in the Times Book Review last summer I knew this was the book for me. Last week in Logan Airport I was sans book and popped into the Border's there to grab something, anything, to get me through the flight back to Detroit. There it was, now in paperback, so I snapped it up.

This is a book populated by deeply human characters, ones you glom onto almost from the first meeting. They are odd and each wounded in one way or another, and so endearing that you don't want to finish the book at all because, then they will be gone.

The book is written in letters, to and from the main character as well as letters among others in the story. This makes it very easy to pick up and put down here and there and thus breeze right through.

Set in 1946, the main character Juliet receives a letter from a person who lives on Guernsey, one of the Channel Islands that was occupied by the Nazis during World War II and which was cut off from the rest of the world for several years as a result. The story of life during the occupation unfolds in these letters, at times charming and humorous, at others shocking and heart wrenching. Juliet eventually travels to Guernsey to meet all the folks who have been writing to her to possibly write a book about their experiences. Living among the people of Guernsey changes her life drastically. This was an excellent read.