Hans Brinker, or The Silver Skates – Mary Mapes Dodge

On December 30, 2019June 17, 2020 By nymithIn 1000 Good Books List, American writers, Children's Classics, Historical Fiction, Sentimental Fiction, Set in Europe, Set in the NetherlandsLeave a comment

A history of Holland, a tour guide of the same and a novel all rolled into one. It has its flaws, but perhaps they reflect more poorly on we the modern audience than on the book itself.

Title: Hans Brinker, or The Silver Skates
Author: Mary Mapes Dodge (1831-1905)
Original Publication Date: 1865
Edition: Dover Publications, Inc (2003), 276 pages
Genre: Sentimental fiction.
Ages: 11-14
First Line: On a bright December morning long ago, two thinly clad children were kneeling upon the bank of a frozen canal in Holland.

The Brinkers are the poorest family in their Dutch village, ever since the terrible day when father Raff Brinker fell from a dike, struck his head and was brought home a lunatic – an event which coincided with the arrival of a mysterious watch and the disappearance of the family’s life savings, rendering the Brinkers destitute. It’s been ten years but young Hans Brinker is determined to earn money and hire the finest doctor in Holland to attempt a cure. All the other boys and girls in the village are more excited about an upcoming race whose prize is a pair of silver skates, but Hans and his sister Gretel possess only wooden skates and could never hope to compete. A group of local boys are about to set off on a skating tour of Holland and Hans sees them off with a message to the doctor to please hurry, for his father has taken a turn for the worse…

Hans Brinker is a Victorian novel, perhaps even quintessential of all those tropes and styles now associated with that age. You’ll find the worthy poor, prolonged suffering rewarded by a sentimental conclusion, the long arm of coincidence, high culture and lengthy digressions. This is a challenging book to read, and impossible for a child to enjoy unless they have been raised on the more accessible 19th Century classics. There are ample rewards to be had, especially for homeschooling families, but fair warning must be given.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/40/Portrait_of_Mary_Mapes_Dodge.jpg — Mary Mapes Dodge.

Mary Mapes Dodge had never been to the Netherlands when she wrote Hans Brinker, but she knew many Dutch immigrants to America and did scrupulous research on Dutch landscape, culture and history, crafting a novel so accurate that it actually became a rare American novel of the time period to become popular overseas, while at home it outsold all but Charles Dickens himself. Hans Brinker became an undisputed children’s classic, and Dodge contributed to children’s literature in another way by becoming the editor of St. Nicholas magazine. She took this job very seriously and attracted great writers to the magazine, serializing Burnett’s Little Lord Fauntleroy, Alcott’s Eight Cousins, Kipling’s Jungle Book and Twain’s Tom Sawyer Abroad.

Dodge’s importance to the field should not be overlooked; however, her one great novel was an odd mix of genres. The dramatic tale of the Brinker family had to share time with the sights and sounds of Holland, and since Hans and his family were far too poor to be traveling anywhere, Dodge had to devise a way to get the story out of the small town of Broek and into the great cities of Amsterdam and Haarlem. Her solution was to cut the story of Hans in half and give the middle portion of the book over to a skating tour, even adding the English boy Benjamin Dobbs to ensure that customs and monuments would receive naturalistic explanations within the text.

The skating portion is somewhat hard going for the modern reader, but the book-ending plot is designed to captivate the audience and still succeeds. The Brinkers live in dire poverty and although they are symbols of the virtuous poor, Dodge is willing to dive surprisingly deep into their inner lives. They feel real and developed, down to the smallest details like the slight religious schism between Dame Brinker and her very Protestant children, who are shocked when she considers praying to Saint Nicholas. The Dutch are not demonstrative in their affections, and thus the difference between “thee” and “thine” is of great importance to them. His mother had said “thee” to him, and that was quite enough to make even a dark day sunny. Gretel is burdened by tremendous guilt because she was only an infant when her father went crazy; having never known the real man, she is incapable of loving him the way her mother and Hans do. Even Dame Brinker is depicted as a real woman who had a life before her children were born, rather than a static mother figure. She remembers her lost husband with fondness but has carried a heavy burden which Hans is only just old enough to help with:

“When you and Gretel had the fever last winter, and our bread was nearly gone, and I could earn nothing, for fear you would die while my face was turned, oh! I tried then! I smoothed [Raff’s] hair and whispered to him soft as a kitten, about the money–where is was, who had it? Alack! He would pick at my sleeve and whisper gibberish till my blood ran cold. At last, while Gretel lay whiter than snow and you were raving on the bed, I screamed to him–it seemed as if he must hear me–‘Raff, where is our money? Do you know aught of the money, Raff? The money in the pouch and the stocking, in the big chest?’ But I might as well have talked to a stone. I might as–“
The mother’s voice sounded so strange, and her eye was so bright, that Hans, with a new anxiety, laid his hand upon her shoulder.
“Come, Mother,” he said, “let us try to forget this money. I am big and strong. Gretel, too, is very quick and willing. Soon all will be prosperous with us again.”

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/10/a4/23/10a4230fb00a1d96b1af6439e8dd5a22.jpg — From the picture book adaptation by Bruce Coville, illustrated by Laurel Long.

The family is very genuine, and this creates immediate interest in their plight. Dodge also weaves together several compelling questions around them. Will they find the money – and where on earth was it? Can Raff Brinker by cured? What’s up with the pocket watch? Who will win the race for the skates? With these looming mysteries waiting in the wings, Dodge goes in for a cliffhanger: It was a scream–a very faint scream! She then drops the plot entirely for 30 pages, at which point the Brinkers are revisited just long enough to resolve the scream incident and then are abandoned for a further 90 pages while Dodge shifts her focus to happy children on holiday.

The biggest problem with the resultant skating tour is that it is comprised of boys who are almost entirely removed from the main plot – only the leader, Peter van Holp, has any meaningful interaction with Hans, and that only happens after the party sets out. The tour also suffers from having one too many boys in tow, leaving me even at the end struggling to differentiate between Lambert and Ludwig. However, these problems being set aside, there’s actually a lot to enjoy about this portion of the novel, especially if you’re a history buff.

The 120 pages of the tour are a schoolbook tucked inside a novel. As such, it’s perfect for homeschoolers, or for anyone who wants to study Dutch history in a broader European context. Hans Brinker is a very cultured book, packed with references to explore. Dodge expects young readers to know who Handel was and to care about his visit to Haarlem, while her reference to Charles the First anticipates that children will either know or seek out further info on their own, as it brings up more questions than answers: A fresco features a number of family portraits, among them a group of royal children who in time were orphaned by a certain ax, which figures very frequently in European history. These children were painted many times by the Dutch artist Van Dyck, who was court painter to their father, Charles the First, of England. Beautiful children they were. What a deal of trouble the English nation would have been spared had they been as perfect in heart and soul as they were in form!

https://www.rct.uk/sites/default/files/styles/rctr-scale-1300-500/public/collection-online/5/0/245397-1537434105.jpg?itok=hByWl2Gp — The Five Children of Charles I, 1637 painting by Anthony van Dyck.

I read Hans Brinker as a kid, and since I never bothered to look up context for the books I read, I found it incredibly tedious. One must be willing to engage with the text or it turns into so much white noise, while the frustrated reader waits for something to happen. There are some scattered dramatic incidents along the tour, including an attempted robbery, and a surprising amount of humour (I was astonished to find a precursor to Monty Python’s Cheese Shop Sketch, in which Peter orders various foodstuffs at an inn only to be continuously told they’ve run out), but the pace is leisurely. The main purpose of this book is to transmit culture, and so it is atmospheric, descriptive and dense with Dutch inventors, physicians, painters and war heroes. It’s worth noting that English Ben squabbles with his Dutch cousin over which of their homelands is superior, yet their shared patriotism actually seems to knit them closer together rather than drive them apart.

Lambert: “I saw much to admire in England, and I hope I shall be sent back with you to study at Oxford, but take everything together, I like Holland best.”
“Of course you do,” said Ben in a tone of hearty approval. ” You wouldn’t be a good Hollander if you didn’t. Nothing like loving one’s country.”

https://regenerationandrepentance.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/dike.jpg — Engraving of Dutch boy, sadly couldn’t find artist credit.

The most famous part of Hans Brinker is actually far removed from both the A and B plots (or even the C plot surrounding the race). It is the famous story of the Dutch boy who stuck his finger in the hole in the dike and saved his town. This incident is a folktale facsimile which is apparently based on nothing, but Dodge makes it feel so credible that she convinced whole generations this was an old story – despite appearing in the text only as an English school lesson. It took on a life of its own, and Dutch Genealogy did an interesting article on the topic.

Of course, it’s just one more in a sea of digressions in this sprawling, thoughtful novel. Hans Brinker became an American children’s classic well before Tom Sawyer had appeared and a year before Little Women was published in book form, yet it has lost out to them both and is today rather difficult to recommend. The lack of streamlining which adds to the charming content of the book is now seen as a hindrance. While some aspects of the writing have dated very badly (most notably the climactic race sequence, which reads like closed-captioning in places) even at its best Hans Brinker feels like a novel whose time has passed. It makes me sad, but I’m not the one to judge, given that everything which Hans Brinker offers of interest, pathos and entertainment completely passed me by as a child. May other families have more luck.

See Also: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, which also contains challenging prose but is far more modern in its commitment to entertainment rather than education.

Around the World in Eighty Days, another Victorian tour guide with endless asides, yet its digressions actually propel the ridiculous plot along rather than hinder it.

Parental Guide

Violence: The most memorable portion of the story concerns the lunatic father and the family’s wretched state of poverty, including an incident in which Raff seizes his wife and holds her so near the fire her dress begins to burn, laughing all the while.

Another incident occurs on the skating trip, wherein the boys count their money in an inn’s sitting room only to have one of the other patrons sneak into their room by night, armed with a knife. The boys overpower him and the episode is played as a schoolboy adventure.

Values: The book is laced with them, from family loyalty to noble suffering – for the Brinkers, begging is never an option. Education, care of the poor, Christian piety, humility and hard work all get their due.

This bit sums up much of the era’s outlook on what a boy should be, when Peter’s group realise they’ve lost their money purse and have to return home without food. A surly boy, Carl, says “Well, I see no better way than to go back hungry.”
“I see a better plan than that,” said the Captain.
“What is it?” cried all the boys.
“Why, to make the best of a bad business and go back pleasantly and like men,” said Peter, looking so gallant and handsome as he turned his frank face and clear blue eyes upon them that they caught his spirit.

Role Models: Hans, Gretel and a variety of other children are all virtuous, with character flaws given only to Carl and a couple of girls too proud to play with Gretel – all of whom are hinted to have a harder time in adulthood because of their lack of noble principles.

Educational Properties: Fairly well demonstrated already. Besides cultural and military history, there’s also plenty of descriptions of the region’s landscape and how human engineering and endeavor wrested the land away from the sea. Of course, all of its potential is useless if it fails to engage a modern audience, so make sure its a good fit for your family.

End of Guide.

Mary Mapes Dodge has a very short bibliography, of which only this novel is remembered. Her life’s work was St. Nicholas magazine, and between that and Hans Brinker, or The Silver Skates she did a great deal to improve what was still a very new market. My work here is done and I’m glad I took the time to revisit this.

Up Next: A lengthy and regrettable hiatus for personal reasons.

The Magic Snow Bird and Other Stories – Enid Blyton

On December 23, 2019June 9, 2020 By nymithIn Adventure, British writers, Fairies, the Fair Folk and Little People, Fantasy Fiction, Set in England, Short Story CollectionLeave a comment

Charlotte Mason would have called this twaddle, and she’d have been right. However, twaddle is a necessary step on the road to literacy and Blyton’s contributions, seen in this sampling of her posthumous Popular Rewards short story anthologies, are so clean you can practically hear the squeak. These days, that’s refreshing.

Title: The Magic Snow Bird and Other Stories
Author: Enid Blyton (1897-1968)
Illustrator: Dorothy Hamilton (1906-)
Original Publication Date: 1989
Edition: Award Publications (1990), 192 pages
Genre: Short stories. Fantasy. Anthropomorphic fantasy. Realistic fiction.
Ages: 4-7
First Line: Once upon a time, Derry the dormouse hid a nice little store of cherry-stones in the hole of a hollow tree.

If you happened upon this particular volume out of a Blyton bibliography consisting of hundreds of books, you would find 19 stories inside of a durable hardback printed in the German Democratic Republic, with large type, plentiful illustrations and what appears to be surprisingly low-acid paper. The stories are taken in part from a 1951 collection with the same name while the rest possibly date from the same era. Of the stories, 13 are fantasy tales, 4 are realistic tales of little British children at play and 2 are anthropomorphic stories of field and farm animals. The shortest selections are 4 pages long, while the longest, ‘Bobbo’s Magic Stocking,’ runs to 50. There is a slight Christmas theme at work, in that the title story and ‘Bobbo’ both involve trips to the North Pole to visit Santa’s Workshop – however, the rest of the material lacks a proper winter theme and appears to be selected mostly for variety.

The book is trite, just as one would suspect given the cover art. The writing is simple and fond of exclamation points: How all the others laughed! Funny old Thomas–wouldn’t go out into the water with his brothers and sisters, but didn’t think twice about going up to his chin for his boat! The illustrations are not exactly subtle. The pixies sport names like Littlefeet and Scatterbrain. And yet, none of that matters because The Magic Snow Bird (and I suspect many other Blyton works) are absolutely perfect for early readers.

The stories each stand alone and are equipped with simple plots, light comedy and wholesome messages. Three basic topics are covered:

snow bird, blyton, hamilton — Snow bird and cargo.

1. Stories meant purely to delight. Fairy treats such as the titular snow bird, which takes two children to visit Santa, or a magic blackberry which grows into a whole pie. Others ignore magic and involve simple visits from wildlife, such as the story of a dormouse who decides to hibernate in a little girl’s dollhouse. These are all low-stakes adventures based on ideas that children would enjoy.

2. “Just so stories.” Blyton’s whimsical answers to questions like how holly got its spines and why the blackbird’s beak is yellow. “A pixie did it” appears to be a favorite answer.

3. Cautionary tales. Stories of foolish or naughty children learning the error of their ways, such as Bobbo, the greedy materialist who sneaks aboard the annual good children’s trip to the North Pole because elves don’t know how to do head counts. Blyton changes up the standard Santa mythology regarding such questions as how the reindeer fly:

Bobbo looked, and he saw a most enormous hill stretching up in front of the sleigh. It was very, very steep, but the reindeer leapt up it as easily as if it was level ground. The sleigh tilted backwards, and the children held on more tightly than ever. Up and up went the sleigh, right to the very, very top, and then, on the summit, drenched in moonlight, it stopped.
‘We’ve come to a little inn!’ cried one of the children, leaning out. ‘Oh, and here come six little gnomes, carrying something! What are they going to do?’
All the children leaned out to watch. They saw the gnomes come hurrying up, carrying pairs of lovely green wings. There were six pairs of these, and the gnomes knew just what to do with them.
Four of the gnomes went to the reindeer, and fastened a pair of wings on to their backs. The other two bent down by the sleigh, and the children saw that they had fastened two pairs of wings on to the sides of the sleigh as well!

cat, blyton, hamilton — Dormouse and interested neighbour.

For all that the writing is simplistic, I actually enjoyed Blyton’s imagery quite a bit. Her stories are of the halcyon 1950s and utterly reject anything approaching relevance even for the time period. Her children play hide and seek, sail toy boats and have dollhouses. Her families are automatically intact and her reference pool consists of pixies, brownies and gnomes alongside classic British plants like holly and primroses. It’s simple escapism, something for the child graduating from I Can Read books to chapter books, completely clean-cut and cuddly. I suspect Blyton was consistent in this regard – series like Malory Towers might be aimed at an older group of kids than these anthologies, but I highly doubt the content takes any darker shifts.

Now here’s where things get interesting, as librarians and educators have been waging a war against Enid Blyton for the past 50 years. It’s almost funny, given how innocuous a target she appears, and I suspect a large part of their continued bitterness against Blyton stems from the fact that she won. Her books are still massively popular, such that British publisher Hachette’s attempt to doctor the Famous Five books hurt sales so badly that they actually returned to their earlier edition in 2016. Educators and librarians fume but Blyton remains standing. Used bookstores in Britain feature whole shelves stuffed with her books (which I’ve seen firsthand) and there she stays, not on the strength of one canonized classic so much as her whole output.

Normally I would be inclined to sympathize with critics taking a stand against poor prose – however, these critics sit mute over much of the modern dross saturating the markets while insisting that bad old Blyton should be quashed. As such I suspect the “literary standards” argument was simply a handy cudgel in this instance, with the real objection being Blyton’s perpetual popularity. These heartlessly conservative and blindingly white books are still widely read today, while successive Carnegie winners and acclaimed intersectional efforts lapse into obscurity. The so-called experts have failed to turn public opinion against her for over 50 years. That’s gotta sting.

https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1320495328l/7095563.jpg — The bait-and-switch winner of 2010, perhaps?

To best illustrate why I so warmly recommend Blyton, have a quick look at the GoodReads reviews for The Very Little Princess, a Stepping Stones chapter book by Newbery Honor author Marion Dane Bauer. With its quaint title, sweet pink cover and Blytonian premise of a doll coming to life, what could possibly go wrong? Surely any parent could gift this to their daughter in full confidence and leave it at that! Yet this book ends with its young heroine being abandoned by her bipolar mother at her grandmother’s house – a grandmother she’d never met before. The packaging thus appears deeply subversive – bypassing parents and cutting them out of the conversation they should be having (and deciding when to have) with their children about such topics. And it’s not the first, the worst or the last of this trend.

For a cautious parent, researching every book you pick up for your child is an overwhelming task, which leads us back to Blyton. With her, you’re off the hook. Children love her and parents can relax around her. Oh, the horror!

Check out the Parental Guide and see what I mean.

Violence: In one story, a duckling is angry at the mean ducks on the farm and so he goes to the farmer demanding that all the ducks be killed. Mr. Farmer laughs and tells him to come back in eight weeks, since he might change his mind by then – a bit of folktaleish cynicism on display here, though it’s obvious the farmer does not intend to follow through with the duckling’s idea. The duckling is ridiculed as a fool for wishing harm on his own while seeing himself as exempt.

No other stories go near the concept of death. There are some references to scary goblins, but they never actually appear.

Values: Blyton likes to tell her audience not to be idiots. Don’t be greedy. Don’t make assumptions. Don’t lose your temper. Don’t bite your nails. Don’t be like that duckling. Meanwhile, her good children are always helpful, generous and provide shelter for local wildlife.

Role Models: Naughty children learn the error of their ways. Good children visit Santa.

Educational Properties: A fine option for reading practice.

https://www.egmont.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/enid-blyton.jpg — Enid Blyton and dog.

As I said, this book is being recommended on faith as a stand-in for much of Blyton’s work, as the odds of finding specific titles here in America seem small. She’s not great literature – and she doesn’t have to be. She gave children stories they loved.

Up Next: A wintry children’s classic and Dutch travelogue all rolled up in one for the Christmas season: Mary Mapes Dodge.

Flower Fairies of the Spring – Cicely Mary Barker

On December 16, 2019January 12, 2020 By nymithIn British writers, Fairies, the Fair Folk and Little People, Fantasy Fiction, Poetry, Read AloudsLeave a comment

Given that the Flower Fairy books are A: standalone, B: poetry and C: have no plot between them, I will be reviewing this series in whatever order and at whatever speed I am able to acquire them. Nothing like a dream of spring in the depths of winter…

Title: Flower Fairies of the Spring
Author: Cicely Mary Barker (1895-1973)
Illustrator: Cicely Mary Barker
Original Publication Date: 1923
Edition: Frederick Warne (2002), 42 pages
Genre: Poetry. Fantasy.
Ages: 3-8
First Line: The World is very old;
But year by year
It groweth new again
When buds appear.

Nursery rhymes are a tremendous learning tool for small children, conveying obvious skills such as memorization and predictive language, along with the specialized knowledge of how to read poetry in the first place – something of a lost art among today’s schoolchildren. Articles about the declining interest in poetry and what to do about it are a dime a dozen, and librarians are forever extolling the virtues of the trendiest middle-grade novels in verse, when the simplest remedy would be to avoid letting a child’s natural proficiency and enthusiasm for Mother Goose atrophy in the first place, via a fairly straightforward progression of English poets.

By providing the natural stepping-stones of Milne, Lear, Kipling and Stevenson, a gradual link would then be made to the classic narrative verse of Browning’s ‘Pied Piper of Hamelin,’ Rossetti’s ‘Goblin Market‘ and Tennyson’s ‘The Lady of Shalott,’ which are themselves not so far removed from romantics like Coleridge and Keats (and once a young person can read those poets, they would be able to progress both forwards and backwards in time from there with no real difficulty). Aside from the Classical Christian website, I couldn’t find a single educator advising this obvious curriculum to get kids reading poetry, probably because it would be way too white for today’s classrooms – thus they deny heritage to some children while offering mediocrity to all. In fact, educators love these new novels in verse specifically because the word count is lower and therefore they can be used to encourage “reluctant readers.” Now picture someone saying that Paradise Lost is simpler than Moll Flanders or that The Waste Land is an easier read for students than The Great Gatsby and you can imagine how topsy-turvy this whole educational trend really is.

https://thewesterncornerofthecastle.home.blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/52f10-05windflower.jpg — The Windflower Fairy.

This leads me to the Flower Fairy books of Cicely Mary Barker, which could easily fit on a young child’s poetry curriculum. Barker was an artistic invalid who took correspondence courses to become a painter while her older sister supported the family by opening a kindergarten in their house. Taking inspiration from Kate Greenaway and the Pre-Raphaelites, Barker began a series of children’s poetry books, most famously on the subject of fairies. Fairies were all the rage in the 1920s, enjoying heightened publicity thanks in part to the Cottingley Fairy photographs – and of course the Pre-Raphaelites hadn’t been immune to the lure of fairies either, which made it a natural subject for a book of botanical children’s poems. Queen Mary herself admired the results. At some point I will find a complete set of the little books, but for now this first one will have to suffice.

Every open page of this pocket-sized book contains a portrait of a fairy child with the flower he or she represents and on the facing page an ode to the flower in question. Her fairies were modeled by interested children from the household kindergarten, giving each character an individual appearance which combine over the book into a harmonious image of the English schoolchild of the 1920s. They are bright and happy, yet shy. They are impudent and proud and pleasant. They are beautiful, they are the generation who would grow up to endure the Second World War, and they are captured here fancifully and forever.

https://www.bing.com/th?id=OIP.A29LuxycpoD6TG5w_0VL8AHaLa&pid=Api&rs=1 — The Dandelion Fairy.

Each costume for the fairies was based around the flower to be illustrated, which Barker would faithfully paint from real specimens. The costumes were where true flights of fancy would occur, and Barker created physical costumes and wing miniatures to paint, drawn from the different parts of the plant with rewarding detail. As an American, the flower I was most familiar with in this book was the dauntless dandelion and so it was his costume I most closely examined, discovering botanical inspiration from cuffs to shoes to the very shades of green and gold. Every portrait has this level of care, and the result really does have the feel of Pre-Raphaelites for toddlers.

Barker’s artwork is only half the volume, and the accompanying poems are every bit as enjoyable, particularly for parents who are big fans of Victorian poets. I could read this book aloud dozens of times and the poems would only become more engaging due to their mellifluous and leisurely rhythm. This is a book that rewards repetition.

https://www.bing.com/th/id/OIP.V2EcwpaQ-aaJhRwq0VgdDQHaLS?pid=Api&rs=1 — The Daffodil Fairy.

I’m everyone’s darling; the blackbird and
    starling
Are shouting about me from blossoming
    boughs;
For I, the Lent Lily, the Daffy-down-dilly,
Have heard through the country the call to
    arouse.
The orchards are ringing with voices
    a-singing
The praise of my petticoat, praise of my
    gown;
The children are playing, and hark! they are
    saying
That Daffy-down-dilly is come up to town!

This collection is best suited for nature-oriented families, those with English gardens or wildflowers of their own to hunt and observe, for the poems are not narrative, meaning Barker will always be more niche than someone like Beatrix Potter. Nevertheless, these pages cover a variety of imaginative ground, some simply descriptive of the flowers themselves while others take to their viewpoint, like that of the cheerful daffodil. ‘The Song of the Lords-and-Ladies Fairy’ ends with a fierce warning likely to stick in its young audience’s mind and keep them from getting poisoned:
And my berries are a glory in September.
(BUT BEWARE!)

Meanwhile the Willow-Catkin admonishes:

To keep a Holy Feast, they say,
They take my pretty boughs away.
I should be glad– I should not mind–
If only people weren’t unkind.

Oh, you may pick a piece, you may
(So dear and silky, soft and grey);
But if you’re rough and greedy, why
You’ll make the little fairies cry.

There’s star imagery in the Windflower Song, there’s a little Mother Goose to Sing a song of Larch trees and the shortest poem in the lot is the humble ode to the Lesser Celandine. Over it all hang the twin centerpiece of the King and Queen of Spring, who are unfortunately not placed side by side in the middle of the book as they should be by rights. The Primrose has a simple charm and grace while the Bluebell (Wild Hyacinth in this case, not Scottish Harebell) is proud and superb.

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/ae/f8/55/aef8556c9c149bfe6be2ed6bb6947708.jpg — The Bluebell Fairy.

My hundred thousand bells of blue,
    The splendour of the Spring,
They carpet all the woods anew
With royalty of sapphire hue;
The Primrose is the Queen, ’tis true.
    But surely I am King!
            Ah yes,
    The peerless Woodland King!

Loud, loud the thrushes sing their song;
    The bluebell woods are wide;
My stems are tall and straight and strong;
From ugly streets the children throng,
They gather armfuls, great and long,
    Then home they troop in pride–
             Ah yes,
    With laughter and with pride!

Out of curiosity I made a list of the poems to see how often the rhyme schemes and templates repeated, to find that there were no exact replicas. When Barker reused a rhyme scheme she would change the number of stanzas, ensuring that every rhyme had its own face. I expect some repetitiveness would start to appear in the seven companion volumes but for now everything is very fresh, and in truth I would be very surprised if the artistic quality of subsequent installments ever dropped. Highly recommended to all English and Anglophile families.

Parental Guide, with no spoilers for once.

Violence: Completely inapplicable.

Values: English country flowers, landscape, children and folkways. Pre-Raphaelite influences.

Role Models: The children depicted are idealized, which is one of the chief purposes of art that has now been forgotten – to inspire.

Educational Properties: Memorization, recitation and elocution. Use for inspiration to plant and tend an English garden or to take a nature walk (in the right parts of the world) to hunt for the flowers – I’ve seen a number of them here in New England. Families who make their own doll costumes or other textile or artistic crafts might want a copy even if they hate poetry.

End of Guide.

I hope to acquire a complete set of the Flower Fairy books sometime soon, at which point I will make a full review series. I’m very happy to have stumbled upon this English gem I missed in my Anglophile childhood.

Up Next: Staying British with Enid Blyton.

Misty of Chincoteague – Marguerite Henry

On December 9, 2019May 21, 2020 By nymithIn 1000 Good Books List, Adventure, American writers, Animal Stories, Children's Classics, Horse Stories, Read Alouds, Set in Virginia1 Comment

Remember when you could buy a pony for 100 dollars? Me neither.

Related image Title: Misty of Chincoteague (Misty #1)
Author: Marguerite Henry (1902-1997)
Illustrator: Wesley Dennis (1903-1966)
Original Publication Date: 1947
Edition: Aladdin Paperbacks (1991), 174 pages
Genre: Animal Stories. Adventure.
Ages: 5-11
First Line: A wild, ringing neigh shrilled up from the hold of the Spanish galleon.

Paul and Maureen Beebe are growing up on their grandparent’s horse farm in the isolated commuity of Chincoteague Island. Tired of bonding with colts that always get sold, the siblings set out to earn 100 dollars to spend at the annual Pony Penning Day, when the wild herds on Assateague Island are rounded up and the colts auctioned. Paul and Maureen have their hearts set on an elusive mare called the Phantom, who has avoided capture two years in a row. Faced with the challenges of earning enough money, capturing and gentling her, an added complication is thrown into the mix when Pony Penning Day arrives and reveals that this year the Phantom has a colt of her own…

The Newbery list is certainly hit-and-miss but (with a few notable exceptions like The Phantom Tollbooth and Little House on the Prairie) they have historically been quite good at recognising children’s classics when they appear on the American stage and that’s exactly what the 1948 Honor Book Misty of Chincoteague is. A horse story that can appeal to a broad age range, full of action and purpose as the protagonists dedicate themselves to a series of goals, yet devoid of the emotional punches that are found in other famous horse books like Black Beauty. The ending is memorable and wistful, but without tragedy, and the story as a whole is sunny, lacking any villains beyond circumstances that must be overcome. With Paul and Maureen sharing viewpoints, it even has equal appeal to boys as well as girls, something that has become unusual in the genre.

Wesley Dennis — Paul heading off to work.

Marguerite Henry instills her book with a strong sense of place right from the start, not only with the wild herds on Assateague but also the fishing community of Chincoteague, whose independence forms a parallel to the ponies, for these men and women are also making do with less, cut off from the larger nation yet thriving. There’s a real American ethos within the book and it captures a place in time with its own culture and cuisine (there’s a small pile of food descriptions with oysters, cornbread, clam fritters, dumplings and wild blackberry jam). Henry spent a great deal of time on Chincoteague, and even though she changed the larger “true story” drastically, I have no reason to distrust her eye for detail, which even renders the old-timers’ accent through Grandpa and Grandma Beebe:

Maureen: “…if you came here to Pony Ranch to buy a colt, would you choose one that was gentled or would you choose a wild one?”
Grandpa chuckled. “Can’t you jes’ see yer Grandma crow-hoppin’ along on a wild colt!”
“Thar’s yer answer,” laughed Grandma, as she cut golden squares of cornbread. “I’d take the mannerly colt.”

The real draw are the horses, of course, and Henry supplies two perfect equine characters in the Phantom and Misty. The Phantom has a map of the United States on her withers – a clear cut case of symbolism in a patriotic novel. “Lad,” [Grandpa] said, “the Phantom don’t wear that white map on her withers for nothing. It stands for Liberty, and ain’t no human being going to take her liberty away from her. … The Phantom ain’t a hoss. She ain’t even a lady. She’s just a piece of wind and sky.”

https://78.media.tumblr.com/a995b367ed67762425a704e360e5c91e/tumblr_oigdbozsVX1tedwcmo7_500.jpg — Paul’s first glimpse of the Phantom and Misty.

The only thing that really tames the Phantom is her “colt” (islanders in this book refer to every young horse as a colt, which I thought only referred to males), whom Paul names Misty. Misty drives none of the plot – she is the counterweight to the Phantom’s wildness, playful and domestic by nature, belonging to Chincoteague from the moment her hooves land on the shore. Slowly and dejectedly the wild ponies paraded through the main streets of Chincoteague. Only the Phantom’s colt seemed happy with her lot.

I would be remiss not to single out Wesley Dennis as a large part of Misty of Chncoteague‘s charm, as he always supplies the perfect image for every scene. The personalities of every character, horse and human, shine through and equal the best of Garth Williams’ work. Dennis draws comic characters without caricaturing and his equines emote without crossing the line and losing their realism. His dramatic talents also enhance the impact of what is a fairly short and low-stakes adventure tale, making the risks feel bigger and the triumphs sweeter. Nicely done.

https://thehaynesblog.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/il_fullxfull-291177439.jpg — Maureen surrounded by wild ponies – a brief line of text given epic treatment.

I have no complaints to make. Misty of Chincoteague was quite nearly as enjoyable today as it was when I was a child. It makes a lovely addition to the family bookshelf and would make a good read-aloud for high summer, maybe even for 4th of July week given how civic minded the story is. For more on the 1940s value system this is steeped in, check out the Parental Guide below.

Violence: The book opens with a Spanish shipwreck in which the original Assateague ponies, destined for the mines of Peru, successfully swim to shore. All hands perish in the storm, with Henry softening that blow by depicting the Captain as gold-hungry and indifferent to the ponies’ welfare. In the present day, there’s a high ratio of distressed ponies, due to their captivity on Pony Penning Day and the auction. None are injured or die.

Values: Hard work and responsibility as Paul and Maureen seize any type of summer employment they can find to earn money for the Phantom – and then do it all over again to pay for Misty. They have a whole series of chores round the Ranch and almost every time the grandparents are depicted they are in the middle of work, whether that be feeding chickens, preparing food, maintaining the horses or doing laundry.

Misty is very patriotic in tone – Pony Penning revenue goes toward maintaining the island’s fire department, school is “what me and Grandma pays taxes for,” every roundup man is well-known by his day job and the island is a well oiled machine with every man, woman and child doing their part to keep it running. The kids have a great deal of independence and are allowed their own goals and their own time to tell about them, but once Paul is picked for the roundup crew he is expected to obey his leader’s orders (and is promptly rewarded when following instructions leads him to the Phantom). There’s even material about fair play, as Paul and Maureen pull a wishbone to decide who gets to race the Phantom, and liberty, when Paul makes a hard decision about the Phantom’s future.

Role Models: Paul has a keen head for business but also a romantic streak, and he’s the one most attuned to the Phantom. Maureen is given less to do, which disappointed me growing up, and a friend of mine found several disparaging remarks (such as “Quit acting like a girl, Maureen!”) concerning as a parent. As such, I paid close attention to the topic and found the only source of the quotes to be Paul, which could easily be attributed to big brother posturing. Such occasional put-downs never stop him from treating her as an equal partner in their plan to buy and gentle the Phantom and the actual text never devalues Maureen’s (or Grandma Beebe’s) contributions. It’s certainly true that she doesn’t get any action scenes, but it’s also true that not everything has to be about girls. There are thousands of horse and pony books catering to the pre-teen girl demographic, books which I devoured indiscriminately and which rarely ever give equal time or weight to male characters – such that when I first read Misty I assumed that Maureen should naturally have a greater bond with the Phantom just because she was a girl. No one ever labels that a cause for concern, so a mix of recent and vintage horse books would balance out nicely.

Aside from that, not a lot to say. Every character is trustworthy and fair and probably most kids would wish they had grandparents like the Beebes. Oddly, Paul and Maureen’s parents are absent due to being in China (I guess Henry thought orphaning them would be too predictable).

Educational Properties: I would normally advise researching the true story behind the fiction, but in this case there is no historical sweep that would prove schoolworthy and Misty is meant for such young readers that there’s no point digging for disillusion here.

On the other hand, the wild ponies have been observed for decades, which offers quite a lot of information and data for a bit of natural science. Theories on how the ponies arrived on Assateague are also well worth researching. Those in nearby states might want to take a trip to the islands as well.

End of Guide.

I have copies of all three sequels to Misty, which I will be posting in the next few months. I can then embark on her larger bibliography, which consists mostly of other horse stories (one of which won the Newbery Medal), many of which were also illustrated by Wesley Dennis.

Up Next: A springtime poetry collection by Cicely Mary Barker.

The Cat Who Wished to Be a Man – Lloyd Alexander

On December 2, 2019December 7, 2019 By nymithIn American writers, Cat Stories, Fantasy Fiction, Read AloudsLeave a comment

A comic parable for kids who will likely grow up to read Terry Pratchett.

Title: The Cat Who Wished to Be a Man
Author: Lloyd Alexander
Original Publication Date: 1973
Edition: Dell Yearling (1992), 107 pages
Genre: Fantasy. Humour.
Ages: 9-12
First Line: “Please, master,” said the cat, “will you change me into a man?”

Lionel is an improbably nice cat whose master, the cynical wizard Magister Stephanus, gives him the gift of human speech. However, with this new trait Lionel begins to wonder what life is like as a man, and so Magister Stephanus reluctantly changes him into one – sending him to the nearby town of Brightford in hopes of curing the cat’s folly. Lionel’s journey is full of dangers and he encounters thieves, knaves and corruption in Brightford, but also generosity, courage and love. In the end Lionel must make a choice: does he wish to become an innocent feline once more, or remain human?

https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1353430382p5/8924.jpg — Lloyd Alexander, top of his field and pleased about it.

In the ten years after publishing Time Cat, Lloyd Alexander became one of the premier children’s novelists of his era, winning a Newbery Honor, Newbery Medal and the National Book Award for three separate works. The Cat Who Wished to Be a Man finds him post magnum opus and probably looking to decompress – hence another cat-centric fantasy, this time set in a generic medieval time that probably required only five minutes of world-building. The characters sport Dickensian names like Pursewig, Tudbelly and Swaggart and to all appearances it’s a fairly simple little book, a comic trifle. However, it is an obviously more sophisticated affair than Time Cat, and shows a new mastery and conviction of the form.

I mentioned in my review of Time Cat that its prose was not quite polished enough to made a great readaloud, a criticism which is no longer the case. Alexander’s writing is sharper, wry and intelligent enough to place real demands on a young reader’s vocabulary and cultural understanding – helped in large part by the character of the endearing snake-oil salesman Dr. Tudbelly, whose commercial patter features a sizable amount of Latin, cod-Latin and medical misuse. Read widely or miss the jokes:

“Everything is more confusing on an empty stomach. Natura abhoret vacuo. I dislike having my breakfast interrupted. It produces palpitations of the jejunum.”
Opening a compartment of the Armamentarium, Dr. Tudbelly took out the leftovers he had salvaged from the inn: the remains of chicken and some bread crusts.
“Here,” he said cheerfully, offering half to Lionel. “You’d better have something. You look a little green around the gills.”
“Gills?” cried Lionel, clapping his hands to his neck. “Am I turning into a fish?”
“Only a manner of speaking,” Dr. Tudbelly said. “Eat, my boy. It’s the best way to ward off splenetic chilblains.”

Combining memorable characters with wide-ranging comedy and clever writing makes The Cat Who Wished to Be a Man an easy book to recommend. Lionel’s absolute innocence as he careens from one problem to the next like Candide for 10 year olds creates ample plot, both humourous and suspenseful, all in a novel that barely breaks 100 pages. Throughout the silly escapade Lionel finds that as he grows more human he begins to lose his catlike qualities such as the ability to land on his feet, threading a theme of lost innocence into the mix. Indeed, it is implied that Magister Stephanus is himself to blame for Lionel’s “fall,” for:

“Since when does a cat not feel like a cat?”
“Since you gave me human speech.”

https://dreamingandsleeping.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Prometheus-Greek-God-Mythology-Symbolism-and-Facts.jpg — Alexander probably expected his audience to know about Prometheus before reading his stuff.

In some ways, Stephanus actually has more in common with science fiction doctors – tampering with the natural order of things like Moreau and Frankenstein – rather than the good wizard archetype who appears to restore order. There is also an odd variation on the Prometheus story, where the wizard regrets his interference in mankind’s evolution:

“When I first came here, the people of Brightford were tilling their soil with pointed sticks. I pitied them in those days. So I gave them a gift: all the secrets of metalworking. I taught them to forge iron for plows, rakes, and hoes.”
“They must have been glad for such tools.”
“Tools? They made swords and spears! There’s not one gift I gave them they didn’t turn inside out, upside down, and wrong side to. They were a feeble, sickly lot, so I taught them to use roots and herbs for medicines. They found a way to brew deadly poisons. I taught them to make mild wine; they distilled strong brandy! I taught them to raise cows and horses as helpful friends; they turned them into drudges. Selfish creatures! They care for nothing, not even each other. Love? They love only gold.”

https://i.imgflip.com/tcoht.jpg — The supreme self-satisfaction of the true cat.

Once Lionel arrives in Brightford, he finds himself taking sides in a conflict between young innkeeper Mistress Gillian and corrupt Mayor Pursewig, who seeks to put her out of business and take control of the inn’s revenue himself. Lionel makes a much better man than he ever did a cat, being appalled at Pursewig’s greed rather than bored and indifferent. Really Lionel should have gone home immediately upon realising how hard it was to get a bowl of milk in human form, and slept on a shelf the rest of the day. Instead, Lionel learns the finer points of humanity as the situation in Brightford goes from bad to worse. After a good samaritan intervenes on his behalf, Lionel said glumly to him:

“You’d have been better off if you hadn’t tried to do us a good turn.”
“I suppose I would,” replied Tolliver, with a grin. “Even so, I’d do the same again.”
Lionel looked at him in surprise. “Why, not even a cat would make the same mistake twice.”
“Well, now,”said Tolliver, “what may be true for a cat isn’t always true for a man. I might regret doing a wrong thing, but I’ll surely never be sorry for doing a right thing.”

Alexander grew in subtlety after Time Cat, and the morals are seeded through the narrative naturally rather than given grand summations. The ending is extremely pat but it still avoids insulting the intelligence, and the comedy runs quite a gamut (without dipping into vulgarity), from slapstick to rhetorical confusion, and with the added bonus of a Kafka shoutout:

“Silence!” cried Pursewig, rapping on the table. “I’ll judge the facts for myself.”
“They’re already noted down,” said Swaggart. “And the verdict. Guilty as charged.”
“Guilty?” exclaimed Lionel. “Of what?”
“That will be determined in due course,” replied Pursewig. “One thing sure: You’re guilty of something. Otherwise, you’d not be on trial in the first place.”

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51xJ1eIABXL._SX329_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg — Does anyone remember this fabulous little trilogy?

This is a clever little book and it might give its young readership a taste for other clever books going forward – after all, it’s not so far from Alexander’s cats-eye view of humanity to Terry Pratchett’s musings from the nome perspective in Truckers. There’s more thoughtful material to be found here than in many modern fantasies of five times the length. Vintage wins again.

See Also: Time Cat, which is suitable to a slightly younger readership.

Parental Guide.

There’s a little romance between Lionel and Gillian. He learns what kissing is and, although they get off to a rocky start given that she thinks he’s a half-wit, they do end up in love. This subplot is integral to the book’s themes, so I can’t really fault it for being an improbable love story.

Violence: Lionel spends much time being threatened by crossbow, thumbscrew, drowning and a burning building – nothing is very detailed, though (what thumbscrews actually do isn’t described). Swaggart gets into some G rated harassment of Gillian, reminiscent of the old swashbuckler films. “Vixen! You’ll wish you’d sung me a sweeter tune!” Nobody dies or is seriously injured and the villains are quickly dispatched at the end, with Swaggart transformed into a skunk and Pursewig humiliated before the town and somehow demoted to dishwasher.

Values: Magister Stephanus condemns humanity as greedy, violent and self-serving at the start of the book, and Lionel is never able to prove him wrong. Instead, Lionel embraces the better nature of humanity and refuses the offer of returning to cat form. Indeed, the only way he could go back would be by forgetting everything that had happened, losing his memories to reclaim the unknowing Edenic state of the animals. Fairly theological for so small a tale.

Lionel accepts the world as it is, the good and the bad. Stephanus refuses to do the same (in the one plot thread that doesn’t end in a neat little bow) and remains a bitter and begrudging hermit, unconvinced to the end.

Role Models: Lionel is a brave, good-natured innocent, making for a nice hero who is comical yet both sympathetic and just. Gillian has inherited her father’s inn and has a good head for business, also holding her own against the “village gallants” by giving them a whack of her broom. The illustrious Dr. Tudbelly is quite generous with his time, ready to commit to Lionel’s cause or enact a little stone soup scamming for the benefit of Brightford. Even Stephanus, a powerful wizard, spends much of his day gardening and cooking rather than enchanting his house to run itself (as is stated to be well within his power).

Educational Properties: If you and your family are studying Latin, this might have some added use. Otherwise, just read, reference and discuss.

End of Guide.

At this point I am thoroughly charmed by Lloyd Alexander and look forward to my next acquisition of his, whatever it may be.

Up Next: A Newbery Honor Book by Marguerite Henry.

The Western Corner of the Castle

Month: December 2019

Hans Brinker, or The Silver Skates – Mary Mapes Dodge

The Magic Snow Bird and Other Stories – Enid Blyton

Flower Fairies of the Spring – Cicely Mary Barker

Misty of Chincoteague – Marguerite Henry

The Cat Who Wished to Be a Man – Lloyd Alexander