Dream When You're Feeling Blue

When stuck at Logan Airport for four hours last week I wandered into the Borders there and bought Elizabeth Berg's Dream When You're Feeling Blue. This is the second time I've purchased a Berg novel in the airport. Last year it was A Year of Pleasures. I'd had my eye on this latest book ever since it came out last May. Set in Chicago during World War II, it's the story of the Heaney sisters, their family and the men they love who've gone to war. At times it made me think of Little Women and the sacrifices the sisters make during the Civil War. At other times it reminded me of Woody Allen's Hannah and Her Sisters since there is a lot of relationship juggling going on.

The book was a quick and heartfelt read. Berg obviously did a lot of research, not just historically, but through letters, memiors and personal accounts, in order to deliver the very human story of this novel.

Shen of the Sea

Well I finally finished Shen of the Sea by Arthur Bowie Chrisman. It won the Newbery Medal in 1926. It is a collection of Chinese folktales with block print illustrations. Like many of the early Newbery medalists this book was slow for me. The stories themselves were amusing, but I have a hard time getting through collections of stories since they lack a common narrative thread.

Cock a Doodle Doo

Cock a Doodle Doo by Berta and Elmer Hader won the Caldecott Honor Medal in 1940. It is the story of a chick who for some unknown reason hatches in a nest of ducklings. The mother duck accepts the chick as her own, but the chick has a hard time trying to live the life of a duck. Eventually the chick runs away towards the sound of a rooster crowing. It is a dangerous journey, but he finally makes it to the farm yard and grows up with other chickens. While slightly reminiscent of Hans Christian Andersen's The Ugly Duckling, this story is never about appearances, it's more about ability and a sense of belonging.

Berta and Elmer Hader were a husband and wife team who wrote and illustrated many books. Their book The Big Snow won the Caldecott Medal in 1949. Elmer Hader illustrated the cover of Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath in 1939.

Anne of the Island

Finished Anne of the Island by Lucy Maude Montgomery, the third and so far the best of the Anne of Green Gables books. Anne is at Redmond College pursuing a B.A. She and her chums rent a cottage in town and share many triumphs and setbacks. For those interested in Anne and Gilbert this is a suspenseful book. That's all I'm going to say...

A Little Maid of Nantucket

I really enjoyed A Little Maid of Nantucket by Alice Turner Curtis. This is one of a series of twenty five books she wrote about girl characters living in colonial settings. The main character Prissie is brave and daring and helps to signal Nantucket boats that are heading towards British war ships. Curtis' research of the setting is thorough. I found the book to be an exciting read and would recommend the series as great books for girls to read.

I purchased my copy, published in 1926, last month at the Ann Arbor Antiquarian Book Fair. I was very excited to find it there since I had been unable to get the book through interlibrary loan. Soon after I purchased it the library notified me that it had become available. Out of curiosity I went down and picked it up. It was a library binding edition reprinted in the 1950s with dreadful illustrations. So glad I found the original.

The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate

The Pursuit of Love and it's sequel Love in a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford (published together in this one volume) were the most fun I've had in terms of reading since Christmas. These coming of age between the wars novels are laced with eccentric characters behaving with delightful absurdity. The narrator Fanny, the only grounded character we ever meet, is someone I would have liked to known. Uncle Matthew, with his gross intolerance of everything, this obsession with playing opera on his gramophone and his cracking of bull whips on the lawn at dawn, is probably the most lovable lunatic since P. G. Wodehouse's Roderick Spode. I don't want to say too much more because I don't wish to give anything away. I can recommend these novels very highly to anyone who enjoyed reading Dodie Smith's I Capture the Castle, is an anglophile and/or likes to laugh out loud.

The Marvelous Land of Oz

Finished The Marvelous Land of Oz, the second of L. Frank Baum's 14 Oz books. It was delightful. I read The Wonderful Wizard of Oz aloud to my daughter about eight years ago and at the time was surprised by the violence of the book. I suspect she was just too young for it. There did not appear to be any unnecessary violence in this book. It's very fanciful and humorous, with unique characters who are brought to life by a magic powder. Jack Pumpkinhead and the sawhorse are especially amusing. The illustrations for this and all of the following Oz books were drawn by John R. Neill, who years later actually wrote a few Oz books himself. These black and white drawings are so charming and plentiful, they really added to my enjoyment of the book.

There are many feminist undertones to the story. Tip, the main character of the book, is really a princess transformed into a boy (unbeknownst to him/her), Jinjur's army of girls which dethrones the Scarecrow seems a bit of a joke with their vain priorities and their knitting needles for weapons. However, Glinda's army of women with sabers is very professional and efficient.

Glinda, Tip, the Scarecrow, the Tin Man (aka Jack Chopper), Jack Pumpkinhead, the Highly Magnified and Thoroughly Educated Wogglebug and the Sawhorse are all trying to locate Ozma, the lost Princess of Oz. They suspect that Mombi the witch knows where the princess is and try to question her about this. Mombi works various transformations of herself and others to fool Glinda. Glinda is too clever to be fooled for long and at one point remarks that no self respecting sorceress would work a transformation because it is dishonest. This line really stood out to me.

When I was little I used to be dropped off for story hour on Saturday morning at the Children's Room of the Nantucket Atheneum. They had all the Oz books in hardcover on a shelf. I used to look at them lined up, with a character's face on each spine, and long to read them all someday. I guess I will.

The Ageless Story

Finished The Ageless Story by Lauren Ford. It won the Caldecott Honor Medal in 1940. This is a strange book. It begins with a letter from Ford to her goddaughter, telling her about Gregorian chants and how they were almost lost during the Renaissance. Next follows the legend of Saint Anne followed by the story of the life of the Christ Child in the words of the Holy Gospel according to Saint Luke. The text is quite small and tight. After all this text there are facing pages with illuminated Gregorian chants (score included) and very detailed illustrations for The Ageless Story with captions underneath. The illustrations are the oddest part. They depict the story of the birth of Christ and his boyhood, but seem to be set in 19th Century New England.

When the angel appears to Saint Anne in the garden there is a large green watering can with a red "A" on it (um, hmmmm.....bizarre Hester Prin reference???) When the Virgin Mary is born there are patchwork quilts all over the bedroom. Houses in the background of the illustrations are white clapboard with green shutters. When the angel appears to the Virgin Mary, Mary is dressed in an Amish style outfit with a halo above her little white cap. Joseph appears in several pictures in what looks like a mohair coat and carrying a red and green carpet bag. As Jesus grows to be a young boy the family is shown sitting in a New England parlor with a grandfather clock, a kerosene lamp and ornate wallpaper on the wall. I'm sure that these illustrations are engaging for children in their gentleness and intense detail, but the whole thing seems a bit surreal to me.

The Forest Pool

Finished The Forest Pool, written and illustrated by Laura Adams Armer. It won the Caldecott Honor Medal in 1939. Set in Mexico, it is the story of Diego and his friend Popo who try to catch an iguana to have in the little zoo they have planned in the garden. The illustrations are soft and vague and vividly colorful. After a failed attempt to lure the iguana home with an orange from the garden, Diego's father brings the iguana home for Diego to hold. In the end the iguana runs away into the woods. Diego's mother tells him, "The iguana must live in the dark woods my child. It is not good to keep him in a zoo....You must learn, too, that everything must be free to live in its own home in its own way." Well said.

Another interlibrary loan, this book came from the Education Library at Wayne State University in Detroit. The edition I read was printed in 1938 and has the same cover you see here. Laura Adams Armer also won the Newbery Medal in 1932 for her book Waterless Mountain.

Laughing Boy

Finished Laughing Boy by Oliver La Farge. It won the Pulitzer in 1930. It's the story of a young Navajo man who marries a woman who was born a Navajo, but who was taken from her family and sent to an an American school as a young girl. There she was made to turn her back on her heritage and assimilate. When she meets Laughing Boy she feels that she has finally found someone to bring her back to the Navajo way of life. The novel is the story of their relationship. It is an interesting juxtaposition of American and Native American culture in the early 20th century.

I liked this book. It was an easy read. There were moments of personal honor that reminded me of Shane. La Farge was concerned with the rights of Native Americans and served as president of the Association on American Indian Affairs.

Tales from Silver Lands

How do I hate this cover....let me count the ways. I read the 1924 edition from the University Library. It had wonderful block prints inside. The publisher should have used one of those for the cover.

Tales from Silver Lands by Charles J. Finger won the Newbery Medal in 1925. It is a collection of folktales from Central and South America. Reminiscent of Kipling's Just So Stories these are wonderful, original stories that seemed more like fairy tales than folk tales. In general I prefer to read novels because there is a long story to get engrossed in. So it took me quite a long time to finish this book. Reading individual tales is much less satisfying to me, so my interest wanes easily. Sigh...the next medalist, Shen of the Sea is a collection of Chinese folk tales....

Barkis

Barkis by Clare Turlay Newberry is a lovely book for families to read together. The 1966 edition I read is a large square book. It would be nice for a child and a grown up to each hold an end of it as the story is read. The text is fairly dense, so smaller children will need someone to read it to them. There is sibling rivalry over a new puppy in the family. This is resolved very reasonably. The drawings are soft, velvety, dreamy. It's a charming book that won the Caldecott Honor Medal in 1939.

This was another interlibrary loan book. It came from the Community District Library in New Lothrop, MI, Northeast of Flint. Markings in the book indicate that it was once called the Twin Township Library. The back of the book says, "Hand-set in Weiss Antiqua type by Arthur Rushmore and Elaine Rushmore at the Golden Hind Press, Madison, New Jersey, 1938."

Clare Turlay Newberry won the Caldecott Honor several other times for April's Kittens (1941), Marshmallow (1943) and T-Bone, the Baby Sitter (1951).

The House on Mango Street

My daughter is reading Sandra Cisneros' The House on Mango Street for her Women's Lit class. This was one of the books on the syllabus that I hadn't read. I really enjoyed it. It's quite short. Made up of little vignettes. It's the story of 12 year old Esperanza coming of age in a Latino neighborhood in Chicago. This book won The American Book Award in 1985.

The vignettes contain numerous finely detailed characters. The prose is quite beautiful, even poetic. At one point Esperanza describes her mother's voice, singing along with a record of Madame Butterfly that she has checked out of the library, her lungs velvety and strong like morning glories.

Esperanza checks many books out of the library and reads quite a lot of children's lit classics, including The Water Babies, Rip Van Winkle and "The Carpenter and the Walrus" from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. This is the second time in the last few months that Rip Van Winkle has come up. I really should get around to reading that...

Wee Gillis

Finished Wee Gillis, written by Munro Leaf and illustrated by Robert Lawson. It won the Caldecott Honor Medal in 1939. This is Lawson's second Honor Medal. The story is set in Scotland. Wee Gillis, whose full name is Alistair Roderic Craigellachie Dalhousie Gowan Donney-bristle MacMac (!!!!), alternates living with his mother's relations in the Lowlands tending cows, and his father's relations in the Highlands stalking stags. In both scenarios he exerts himself in ways that make his lungs strong. Eventually he is forced to choose his path in life, become a Lowlander or a Highlander. Just at the point when all his relations expect him to choose, who comes along but a bagpiper. It was easy to see where this was going, which is fine. It's an original story that shows children that it's okay to choose a different path.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs by Wanda Gág won the Caldecott Honor Medal in 1939. The story stays very close to the tale collected by the Brothers Grimm. There are moments when Snow White is first in the house of the dwarfs and tries their food and beds until she finds what is just right for her. This seemed very "Goldilocks" to me, but upon checking the Grimms' text (which I haven't read for many years) I found that it was indeed part of the original story. At the end the wicked queen puts on red hot shoes and dances until she is dead. This was reminiscent of Anderson's The Red Shoes and my daughter and I were very surprised by it.

The illustrations are charmingly drawn and detailed. The timing of the publication of this book seems interesting. With Disney's first full-length animated feature Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs having been released in 1937. This book includes the three attempts (as opposed to the Disney film's one) of the wicked queen to kill Snow White: tightly drawn laces, poisoned comb and finally, poisoned apple.

Gág won another Caldecott Honor in 1942 for Nothing at All. She also won two Newbery Honors, Millions of Cats in 1929 and ABC Bunny in 1934. This always seemed odd to me since these two are picture books, but it is important to remember that the Caldecott Medal was not established until 1938 and so there was no other award for which to nominate picture books until then.