Misty’s Twilight – Marguerite Henry

On August 29, 2020August 9, 2020 By nymithIn Animal Stories, Horse Stories, Realistic Fiction, Set in Florida, Superfluous SequelsLeave a comment

Whatever the case may be, I’m going to insist this was actually ghostwritten and so should you.

Misty's Twilight - Marguerite Henry Title: Misty’s Twilight (Misty #4)
Author: Marguerite Henry (1902-1997)
Illustrator: Karen Haus Grandpré (????-)
Original Publication Date: 1992
Edition: Aladdin Paperbacks (1996), 142 pages
Genre: Animal Stories.
Ages: 8-12
First Line: On an early Saturday in spring, when dreams explode into reality, Dr. Sandy Price tiptoed about her home on Stolen Hours Farm.

This is the story of Twilight, Misty of Chincoteague’s great-great-grandfoal, whose mixed lineage of Chincoteague pony and thoroughbred makes her a potentially brilliant show horse, if only her owner Sandy Price could make up her mind what to do with her.

After 30 years, Marguerite Henry returned to Misty’s legacy in an irritating and completely skippable volume that, besides being graced with surprisingly pretty cover art, offers nothing to its intended child audience or to any grown fans of the earlier trilogy. Lacking Henry’s classic signatures of local colour and lovable characters, it falls far short of the normal standards which have made her a go-to for generations. Consider the rest of this review a set of variations on this statement.

Problem 1. Heavy doses of nostalgia for the original book and its legacy. This isn’t simply the story of a particularly gifted descendant of Misty. You will find herein full recaps and reenactments of scenes from Misty of Chincoteague, along with a protagonist whose whole life changed because she read the book as a twelve year old. It’s astonishing how self-congratulatory the whole thing feels. There are bland recreations of classic scenes, complete with stilted dialogue, most notably when Sandy’s two kids get upset over the foals and mares being split up on Pony Penning Day:

“Pam! Chris!” Sandy’s voice was firm. “Stop worrying! Don’t you remember in the book when Paul and Maureen were upset by this very sight, they went to see the fire chief, and he said, ‘Colts have got to grow up sometime. Their mothers can’t tell a colt in so many words to go rustle his own living. They just kick him away, gentle-like at first. But sometimes they have to get a bit rough, especially when they’ll be birthing a new foal in a few months.'”
Pam stopped crying. “I remember now,” she said, “how the fire chief puffed up in pride at his parting words to Paul and Maureen. ‘Separating the little ones from their mothers for only one night,’ he said, ‘why, that’s the kindest way we know how to wean ’em.'”
A gathering of parents and kids were listening in. Chris and Pam reddened in embarrassment at the attention.

Karen Haus Grandpre, Misty's Twilight — Sandy out shopping with the kids.

Problem 2. Sandy Price is an adult, sure, but it’s far more detrimental that she is not an underdog of any kind. Most kids who like horses don’t actually have any of their own, and reading about somebody lucky enough to live out that dream should be thrilling – provided the fictional proxy actually appreciates his or her good fortune in this matter. Sandy is introduced on her very own thoroughbred farm, but she ignores all of her unnamed horses to go chasing after her childhood dream of owning a Chincoteague pony. Regular thoroughbreds just aren’t enough. Her two kids act like horses are completely humdrum, so already in chapter one there’s nobody for the reader to root for. Sandy goes on to win three Chincoteague ponies at auction, but she still covets having a direct descendant of Misty (regular Chincoteague ponies just aren’t enough) and so she purchases Misty’s great-grandfoal Sunshine. Now she has four Chincoteague ponies, all of whom the book ignores as soon as Sunshine has a foal of her own.

Some readers might forgive Sandy if she at least formed an appropriate bond with newborn Twilight – like Paul and Maureen did with Misty. But it is soon apparent that Sandy has no meaningful interaction with any of her horses. She has a guy named Robert who works in the stable, while she goes to her day job as a skin doctor. She misses Twilight’s birth and she’s never shown training or tending her. Her kids are never shown playing with her. In other words, basically this entire book aimed at ages 8-12 is about a rich woman’s woes because she owns more equines than she has any time for.

Problem 3. Sandy is awful. She’s introduced announcing her decision to make her kids’ shared birthday the launch of a family road trip to Chincoteague – using their birthday to live her dream. She goes downhill from there. An idea was beginning to form in Sandy’s mind of taking one of Misty’s family home to set it free on Stolen Hours Farm. This impulse leads her to purchase Sunshine, a completely docile mare who loves attention, promising that she’ll “never know a bit or bridle.” Sandy appears to be quite bothered by the domestication of Misty’s descendants: What a contrast, these penned-up creatures, from the wild ponies of Assateague. Fame certainly had its price. A sadness came over Sandy that wouldn’t be pushed away. Yet given the chance, she gladly makes Twilight pay that price. What a fight she gave when first she felt the restriction of the rope! With a potential champion of cutting/jumping/dressage on her hands, Sandy gets over her scruples in a hurry. No pasture days for Sunshine’s spitfire daughter.

Grandpre, Misty's Twilight — Poor Twilight.

Sandy’s lack of horse sense then leads to the most horrible chapter of the book when she packs Twilight off to a horse trainer. She’s told Twilight will be ready to come home in three weeks, and during that time Sandy does not visit or supervise the trainer’s methods. When she comes to pick her up she finds out too late that poor Twilight has lost fifty pounds, trembles at the slightest touch and has a deep cut across her tongue to make her more sensitive to the bit. It would take weeks for Twi to learn all over again to trust those who had sent her away. Rather than engaging in a little self-criticism for her own part in her pony’s abuse, Sandy just directs all of her anger and blame at the trainer while she focuses on getting Twi registered. A little due diligence would have spared Twi’s ordeal but that never occurs to Sandy. Instead, she just quietly starts supervising the next trainer and remains impossible to like.

Problem 4. There are absolutely no developed or memorable human characters. Sandy’s story arc is a mess. First she wants a wild pony in pasture, then she wants a show champion, then she wants a wild pony in pasture again. Sandy’s kids are obnoxious at the beginning of the book, but then fifteen years go by and they’re suddenly understanding adults. Robert the horseman is a big guy. Andrew is from England. O’Quinn is Irish. Judy keeps house for Sandy but never features in a single scene. This is the same writer who gave us the Beebe family and their neighbours. Where are the character quirks? The warm humour? The brightness? The local colour? It’s so conspicuously absent that it’s hard to believe this is the same author.

Only one character is truly vibrant, enjoyable and Not a Problem – Twilight herself. Twilight was as unpredictable as a dangling electric wire. She liked to race along the fence rail, taunting the thoroughbreds on the other side, daring them to race. She had speed without question. She scared Sunshine and Sandy half to death as she skidded to the fence corners by sliding on her haunches and waiting until the last second to wheel out. Her poor mother tried to follow with frustrated whinnies, but she just couldn’t keep pace. None of the other Chincoteague ponies could. There was nothing tagalong about Twilight. She went far afield and returned only to nurse.
Unlike her mother, Twilight barely tolerated the bristles of the grooming brush and would pull away from a hand that longed to pet her. But in her frequent gallops she obviously enjoyed the cool fingers of the wind combing her coat.

Karen Grandpre, Misty's Twilight — Little Twilight at play.

Problem 5. Twilight is not the protagonist. She certainly should be, as it’s only when she’s being described that this begins to feel like a proper Marguerite Henry book. Twilight trains, travels and competes and we’re stuck witnessing it through Sandy’s eyes as she… waits at home and watches as ribbons get delivered to her door. She also answers the telephone and watches videos of Twi’s warm ups. Trust me, no child will be impressed with this.

Misty's Twilight, Karen Haus Grandpre — Twilight in her cutting career.

This lack of action does not extend to the illustrations, provided by Karen Haus Grandpre and also Not a Problem. Grandpre makes the most of Twilight’s athleticism, and her sketchy style suits the movement of show horses quite well. She captures Twi’s energy and her delicate build. It’s true that Grandpre lacks the humour and personality that Wesley Dennis always provided, but there’s so little of either to be found in the actual text that let’s be fair: I doubt if Dennis had lived to illustrate Misty’s Twilight that he’d have been able to inject any special life into it either. Let’s move on.

Problem 6. Marguerite Henry’s inability to maintain the natural connective tissue between her various sequels is still a problem. A cameo from fictional Paul or Maureen, grown and guarding Chincoteague’s legacy, would have been too much to expect. However, no acknowledgement of the Beebes or update on their existence is made at all; instead, Misty’s progeny are all owned by some guy called Merritt. Why does Henry insist upon reverting to the facts always after she’s come up with a lovely work of fiction? Here she refers to Stormy as “Misty’s third foal” even though in the novel Stormy, Misty’s Foal she was the fictional Misty’s firstborn, heightening the tension. Documentary facts or human interest drama: pick one and stop flip-flopping like this.

Problem 7. The faceplant ending. When Twi is twelve, Sandy suddenly starts having second thoughts. “Is it fair to work Twi daily and strenuously, to ship her across the ocean to enter the Olympics? Are we satisfying our belief in her … or is it our own vanity?” You’ve had your favorite pony on the ropes for ten years, woman, and you only think of this now? She then has the brilliant idea to make bred-in-captivity, over qualified, overly trained, registered champion Twilight some kind of wilderness ambassador. Okay then. Mercifully, the book finally concludes at this point.

I would not recommend Misty’s Twilight to any family at all. No matter how much you and yours love Marguerite Henry, just skip it and stick to her other books.

See Also: The Misty trilogy (Misty of Chincoteague, Sea Star, Stormy) are all worth it.

I’d direct your attention to Afraid to Ride by C.W. Anderson as well – long out of print but a much better book. Twilight’s rehabilitation after being abused is completely glossed over, while Afraid to Ride is an entire story dedicated to bringing a traumatized show jumper back to her former glory, with a genuinely nice main character.

Quick Parental Guide.

Violence: The scene with freshly “broken” Twilight, ribs showing.

Values: Misty of Chincoteague is the best book in the world. Horses should be free (or they should be made to jump through every competitive hoop available to make a name for ~~their owners~~ themselves).

Role Models: Terrible. Sandy lacks any introspection – she never examines her own desires or even appears grateful for goals achieved, she just runs from want to want to want. Faceless Judy raises her kids, faceless Robert tends to her horses, and she just obsesses over how to send Twilight straight to the top in whatever category seems best at the moment.

Educational Properties: None, unless you’re really interested in equine sports, and then there are better books on the subject.

End of Guide.

Your family/library/homeschool/students all deserve better. Give it a miss.

Up Next: A spinoff Anne novel about her new neighbours that’s better than it sounds.

Wanted! – Caroline B. Cooney

On August 22, 2020August 9, 2020 By nymithIn American writers, Mystery, Thriller, Young AdultLeave a comment

Behold the phenomenon of the 90s teen thriller. Forget about forensics and just go with it.

Title: Wanted!
Author: Caroline B. Cooney (1947-)
Original Publication Date: 1997
Edition: Scholastic Inc (1997), 230 pages
Genre: Thriller.
Ages: 11-14
First Sentence: “It’s Daddy, Alice.”

Alice gets a call from her father telling her to take one of his computer discs and its backup and drive his red Corvette to an ice cream place outside of town, hanging up before she can ask him whatever for. Alice doesn’t have her license yet, and before she can work up the nerve to leave the house a stranger with a voice she almost recognises comes looking for the disc. Alice hides beneath the Corvette until he’s gone. After the combined terror of this incident and of having to drive an overpowered muscle car to the rendezvous point, Alice waits for her father to arrive. He doesn’t. Instead, she hears on the radio that he has been found murdered in his house and that Alice sent an email to her mother confessing to the crime. Now in full panic mode, and thinking her own mother is against her, Alice goes on the run.

Wanted! is a beach read, a lightweight thriller dedicated to answering only one question: what would it be like to be a teenage girl on the run from the cops? Follow Alice from A to B to C as she attempts to do just that.

The book opens on dialogue, proceeds through a “hide from the creepy guy” scene and settles into a surprisingly accurate portrayal of a girl in shock. Alice takes off in an overpowered car without even adjusting the seat first, without calling the cops, because her father told her to meet her at the ice cream place and that’s all she can think to do. She responds like a scared child and the only thing unbelievable about this scenario is that it takes forever for a cop to notice her driving that badly in that car:

There was the turnoff, by a low-lying meadow with a narrow glimpse of the beautiful Salmon River. The turn came quicker than Alice expected, and she took her foot off the gas late, braked late, and knew immediately that the best decision was to quit making the turn. Skip the whole thing, keep going straight, turn around later and come back. Too late for that. Alice found herself in the turn with way too much velocity. The tires screamed as if she had run over squirrels and Alice screamed, too, imagining their flat, bloody bodies, but she hung onto the wheel and missed the picket fence of somebody’s yard and even got back onto her side of the road.

Maybe the lack of cell phones prolonged the plot.

https://th.bing.com/th/id/OIP.EQ6je0P1YpowSYBK6rCZnQHaFj?pid=Api&rs=1 — I don’t get the appeal but I’d definitely notice it.

Provided you can get behind a protagonist who is running scared, lying and hiding with two days of practice while in constant panic mode, Alice is fairly easy to sympathize with – which is good, considering she occupies about 98% of the book by herself. Cooney manages this through extensive focus on Alice’s state of mind, her repetitive fears and random thoughts offering some sense of what her normal life was like as she figures out how to disappear. She ditches the flashy Corvette, she evades mall security, pretends to be a college student and wonders what to do as technology keeps getting in her way. Alice is running around with a disc that may have gotten her father killed and she can’t read what’s on it because every school and library computer lab requires passwords and ID cards.

Sadly for any readers attracted to the paranoia of the premise – girl on the run! trust no one! – this really isn’t Robert Ludlum for teens, more of a standard “spot the killer” narrative with a cast that’s slightly too small for good red herrings. Because of the focus on two day’s worth of action, there’s less tapestry for the mystery to be pinned against. Alice uncovers old secrets but it takes her way too long to figure out who the only incriminating figure truly is. On the other hand, it’s more excusable for her than it is for the police, who apparently don’t know how to talk down a scared fugitive girl. Also, forensic evidence would have put Alice in the clear so quickly that there would have been no story at all if she’d only understood that a “typed confession” meant diddly squat by comparison.

https://i0.wp.com/s.fixquotes.com/files/author/caroline-b-cooney_77UFH.jpg — Caroline B Cooney.

But Wanted! is geared for a younger audience and it’s clear that Cooney didn’t win their support with cold hard logic. Underneath the thrills, Alice’s actions are actually driven by a very simple emotional hook – her love for her parents and her sense of betrayal at their divorce. Alice flees because the divorce left a gap in Mom’s character which allows her to fear the worst – that her own mother will not believe her innocence. Does that make any sense logically? Nope, but any girl whose parents ever let her down this way will get it. There’s no 21st Century Henkesian resignation here – Cooney taps this vein of teen angst for all its worth:

Alice was pretty close friends with Cindy, who had been through divorce twice with each parent, a horror so enormous that Alice could not even think of it as real life, but as a soap opera taking over.
…
How could Mom stand the presence of any man but Dad? Couldn’t Mom see that these men did not measure up? How could Mom giggle and put on perfume and buy a new wardrobe and experiment with expensive makeup as if she, too, were fifteen and learning how to flirt?

Similar to Betsy Byars (with some obvious literary differences), Cooney understands that a character doesn’t need to be in on the action to have an affect on the protagonist. It’s a little unexpected to find such primal resentment threaded within this one-day escapist beach read, but it works to give Wanted! a little emotional backbone (and prolong the plot).

https://cdn1.theyoungfolks.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/02200142/Sadie_FINAL-cover-image.jpg — A Booklist Top Ten YA Books for Adult Readers. I’d call that missing the point.

One thing which is very obvious about Wanted! is that it will only appeal to younger and less jaded teens. This is not a criticism, although today it will be seen as one because YA has been aging up for a while. A quick scan of the recent YA Edgar Award list makes it clear that the industry has been busy taking advantage of “crossover appeal” with the adult market (which already made up at least 55% of YA readers back in 2012). The 2019 Edgar winner was a novel called Sadie, which comes replete with trigger warnings for pedophilia/sexual abuse and is about a teenage girl hunting down the man who killed her little sister. All of the (adult) reviewers love it, and applaud its maturity (because YA needs to “grow”). The marketplace has changed vastly since Cooney’s heyday and I expect the “dark sophistication” of YA books to only increase while (by coincidence, I’m sure) teen readership continues its decline.

Is there any audience for Wanted! left? Like most potboilers, it has an obvious expiration date and that has long since passed. Of course, some kids do enjoy reading vintage books, whether for the novelty factor or from content sensitivity, and if my prediction pans out I expect we will be seeing a revival of vintage YA at some point. Cooney’s Face on the Milk Carton series has remained in print, so it’s clearly possible. I suspect that Wanted! is not the best that she has to offer, but it’s not a bad way to spend an afternoon.

Parental Guide.

Violence: Nothing visceral. The plot hinges on a pair of murders (Alice’s Dad and another person long ago), but neither incident is witnessed by Alice and little description is ever offered. The killer puts Alice in vaguely specified danger.

Values: Spoilers if you actually plan to read this.

Everything is tied up with a bow at the end. Alice was never without a safety net after all. If she had only trusted her mother, her school friends or the cops, she would have been safe from the very start.

Also, don’t run from the police.

End of Spoilers.

Role Models: Alice has many scruples about her newfound career as a fugitive. She burns with shame when she has to steal a little kid’s backpack. She ditches the Corvette but can’t bring herself to steal another car and flee – because then she’d have truly broken the law. In the end, she goes to a friend of her Dad’s, and since he’s away, she steals his old beater – little is made of this act afterward, perhaps because she knows who to return it to and figures he might forgive her given the circumstances.

Educational Properties: … … What exactly do you expect me to say here?

End of Guide.

Cooney wrote a wide array of novels, including a retelling of Macbeth, a retelling of the Trojan War, a reimagining of The Snow Queen as a paranormal horror story, a romantic time travel quartet, a non-romantic vampire trilogy, and a thriller that got “banned” in school libraries for its anti-Islamic content. I might continue to sample her work when I’ve got an afternoon to kill. It sounds quite eclectic.

Up Next: Late period Marguerite Henry.

Anne of Ingleside – L.M. Montgomery

On August 15, 2020July 19, 2020 By nymithIn Canadian Writers, Sentimental Fiction, Set in Prince Edward Island, Young AdultLeave a comment

If you haven’t read them yet, I would highly recommend reading the Anne books in publication order, given that there are big spoilers for Rilla of Ingleside hidden within this supposed sixth book in the series.

Title: Anne of Ingleside (Anne Novels #6)
Author: L.M. Montgomery (1874-1942)
Original Publication Date: 1939
Edition: Bantam Books (1998), 274 pages
Genre: Sentimental Fiction.
Ages: 12-15
First Line: “How white the moonlight is tonight!” said Anne Blythe to herself, as she went up the walk of the Wright garden to Diana Wright’s front door, where little cherry-blossom petals were coming down on the salty, breeze-stirred air.

Anne is now mother to six darling children, though only five of them are featured in this book. The Blythe children are imaginative, precocious and sweet – although they share a sad tendency to befriend the most unsuitable schoolmates. Luckily, Anne is always there to solve their particular trials and tribulations, even though she is no longer remotely proactive in fixing her own…

Sixth in chronology and final in publication order, Anne of Ingleside is typically seen as one of the weakest books in the series, right alongside Anne of Windy Poplars, with which it shares one primary flaw: somewhere along the way, L.M. Montgomery lost any desire to write about Anne as a proactive character. As in Windy Poplars, Anne is here presented with difficulties that solve themselves. The story begins with a particularly aggravating in-law coming to visit. Aunt Mary Maria (and it’s written out in full like that for 80 pages) quickly outlasts her welcome while ignoring all hints that she should be on her way home soon. As the months go by, Anne silently endures all of Aunt Mary Maria’s officious and overbearing behaviour – she does not talk to Gilbert about it, she devises no plans and doesn’t even get to vent her frustrations through Austenian repartee. No, she just tries so, so hard to be nice that she accidentally sends Aunt Mary Maria packing. It’s the Pringles all over again.

https://image3.mouthshut.com/images/ImagesR/2008/8/Anne-of-Ingleside-Lucy-Maud-Montgomery-925054685-3422750-1.gif?a=1/6/2016%203:36:48%20PM — Once again, other editions offer much nicer cover art.

Anne only features at the beginning and end of this book, which is actually good given how uninspired her storylines are and how tepidly they resolve. The bulk of the text is instead given over to her children, all of whom have lessons to learn and goals to work toward, whether that’s walking home in the dark for the first time, winning the love of a homesick dog or “earning” the friendship of various manipulative little brats. The Blythe children are quite likable, although so naive as to be easy targets on the schoolyard – this is apparently because Anne and Gilbert refuse to lie to them, even in jest, and so the children have no method by which to measure truth, taking everything at face value. Yet they are an engaging set of protagonists, and their escapades and misunderstandings often come with a touch of gently acerbic humour, as when Walter brings two toads into the cellar and Susan the housekeeper is not keen:

She put one of them out when evening came but could not find the other and Walter lay awake and worried.
“Maybe they were husband and wife,” he thought. “Maybe they’re awful lonely and unhappy now they’re separated. It was the little one Susan put out, so I guess she was the lady toad and maybe she’s frightened to death all alone in that big yard without anyone to protect her … just like a widow.”
Walter couldn’t endure thinking about the widow’s woes, so he slipped down to the cellar to hunt for the gentleman toad, but only succeeded in knocking down a pile of Susan’s discarded tinware with a resulting racket that might have wakened the dead. It woke only Susan, however, who came marching down with a candle, the fluttering flame of which cast the weirdest shadows on her gaunt face.
“Walter Blythe, whatever are you doing?”
“Susan, I’ve got to find that toad,” said Walter desperately. “Susan, just think how you would feel without your husband, if you had one.”
“What on earth are you talking about?” demanded the justifiably mystified Susan.
At this point the gentleman toad, who had evidently given himself up for lost when Susan appeared on the scene, hopped out into the open from behind Susan’s cask of dill pickles. Walter pounced on him and slipped him out through the window, where it is to be hoped he rejoined his supposed love and lived happily ever afterwards.

https://i.pinimg.com/736x/87/d4/8b/87d48b78616ed2f10801a251503f1085.jpg — The old Bantam cover artist from the seventies.

You can tell that Montgomery didn’t take this material very seriously, and it makes for a less predictable set of stories than the perpetual matchmaking plots found in Windy Poplars. Unlike that installment, Anne of Ingleside takes no risks in format. New characters are also given short shrift, as Montgomery prefers to focus on Anne’s family and coast on nostalgia for the pre-war years, crafting a perfect rainbow soap bubble for the children to live in, filled with high ideals and simple pleasures soon to vanish: But in the library or the big kitchen the children planned out their summer playhouse in the Hollow while storms howled outside, or fluffy white clouds were blown over frosty stars. For blow it high or blow it low there was always at Ingleside glowing fires, comfort, shelter from storm, odours of good cheer, beds for tired little creatures.

This would make for an enjoyable read, but there’s a definite bitter streak to Anne of Ingleside, which sits uneasily with the children’s adventures, and crops up at the oddest moments (for instance, during a rather interminable quilting party in which old scandals are raked up and aired). Sadly, nothing is ever seen of Diana’s or Leslie’s children, whom readers must surely be interested in learning about. Instead, Montgomery treats us to a cavalcade of nasty little kids – none quite as bad as the serial killers in training from Windy Poplars, but all chronic liars and bullies. There are the Parkers, who think it’s great fun to tell Walter Blythe that his mother is dying, and there are the various girls (Delilah, Dovie and Jenny) who rejoice in malicious gossip, putting on airs and manipulating Anne’s wide-eyed daughters. The friendships which they pursue inevitably sour, leaving the impression that the only place good enough for the Blythes is their own household, where they live suspended above the roil and choke of the great unwashed. What were gently ribbed foibles in the town of Avonlea have become considerably less pleasant in Ingleside, as Montgomery’s own depression intensified.

https://www.pc.gc.ca/en/lhn-nhs/pe/greengables/culture/~/media/7F194D2FF61A48609AFC3F688B83D98F.ashx?w=200&h=285&as=1 — L.M. Montgomery.

There is one other problem with this late installment in the series. Written long after Rilla of Ingleside, Montgomery clearly did not consider the possibility that people would one day read her Anne books in chronological order, and thus includes blatant foreshadowing of who lives and dies in the war to come. Anne has three sons (even though young Shirley might as well not exist in this book) and if you want to know what’s going to happen to two of them, this is your ticket. It is much better to read the series in publication order.

Anne of Ingleside is a very uneven entry, which is doubly sad as both the longest Anne book and as Montgomery’s final published novel. Of course I still recommend it as part of the complete series.

See Also: The other ones.

Parental Guide.

Violence: Lots of bullying amongst the small fry and lots of dead pets, occasionally treated in a rather flippant manner that modern sensibilities would not condone. Then Tiger Tom, who lived in the barn and was never allowed in the house because of his thievish propensities but got a good deal of petting for all that, was found stark and stiff on the barn floor and had to be buried with pomp and circumstance in the Hollow. Finally Jem’s rabbit, Bun, which he had bought from Joe Russell for a quarter, sickened and died. Perhaps its death was hastened by a dose of patent medicine Jem gave him, perhaps not. Joe had advised it and Joe ought to know. But Jem felt as if he had murdered Bun.

Values: The Blythes learn the worth of common sense and healthy skepticism the hard way. Their problems are often solved by confiding their woes. There is the usual Montgomery mix of idealism, love of beauty, fair play and pursuit of the right and the good, but there is also such foreshadowing of the war that it comes across as a lost world. Montgomery’s heavy heart is tangible.

Role Models: Anne remains a great example of a caring and available mother, using her abilities to bring up well-adjusted and well-behaved children. Again, many readers are critical of this development, and Montgomery oddly echoes this with a late cameo from Christine Stuart, Anne’s supposed rival for Gilbert in Anne of the Island. She appears at a dinner party and makes several pointed comments. “I’m afraid I’m not the maternal type. I really never thought that it was woman’s sole mission to bring children into an already overcrowded world.” She also prods Anne about giving up her writing, to which Anne retorts “I’m writing living epistles now.” This sequence completely destroys Christine’s former characterization, all so she can swoop in to sneer and make Anne feel threatened. I wonder if even back in the day Montgomery received feedback from hurt feminists, because this sequence feels like a retort to critics. Poor childless Christine, shooting her little arrows of mockery.

Educational Properties: About the same as usual.

End of Guide.

Only two to go!

Up Next: Something completely different. A 90s teen thriller by Caroline B. Cooney.

Wolf Story – William McCleery

On August 8, 2020July 19, 2020 By nymithIn American writers, Bizarre Children's Books, Humour, Poison Pills, Set in New YorkLeave a comment

A mildly meta curio spoiled by an ill-thought moral at the end. Not recommended.

Title: Wolf Story
Author: William McCleery (1911-2000)
Illustrator: Warren Chappell (1904-1991)
Original Publication Date: 1947
Edition: NYRB Children’s Collection (2012), 82 pages
Genre: Humor.
Ages: 4-6
First Sentence: Once upon a time a man was putting his five-year-old son Michael to bed and the boy asked for a story.

A father tucks his son into bed and the son naturally wants a story. After rejecting Goldilocks, Michael requests a new story and is soon “helping” his father make it more exciting by adding a fierce wolf called Waldo to the mix. On subsequent outings with Michael and his best friend Stefan the wolf story continues, despite the father’s boredom, until they reach a mutually satisfying conclusion.

Okay, so this book is nowhere near as meta as it probably sounds. The first two chapters do work quite well in that regard, as the story is constructed while the father and son’s relationship is being sketched out – mostly through the use of dialogue. It’s cozy and endearing, while also forming a humorous commentary on storytelling conventions:

And the man continued: “Once upon a time there was a hen. She was called Rainbow because her feathers were of many different colors: red and pink and purple and lavender and magenta–” The boy yawned. “–and violet and yellow and orange…”
“That will be enough colors,” said the boy.
“And green and dark green and light green…”
“Daddy! Stop!” cried the boy. “Stop saying so many colors. You’re putting me to sleep!”
“Why not?” said the man. “This is bed-time.”
“But I want some story first!” said the boy. “Not just colors.”
“All right, all right,” said the man. “Well, Rainbow lived with many other hens in a house on a farm at the edge of a deep dark forest and in the deep dark forest lived a guess what.”
“A wolf,” said the boy, sitting up in bed.
“No, sir!” cried the man.
“Make it that a wolf lived in the deep dark forest,” said the boy.
“Please,” said the man. “Anything but a wolf. A weasel, a ferret, a lion, an elephant…”
“A wolf,” said the boy.

wolfs hen and boy — Jimmy Tractorwheel the farmer’s son, and Rainbow the hen.

The rapport between father and son creates a pleasantly homey vibe, so nostalgic that it seems pulled directly from McCleery’s own experiences telling bedtime stories to his son. However, the novel proceeds to take on a slightly different tone, as subsequent chapters take place on various Sunday outings, accompanied by Michael’s best friend Stefan – from then on it’s two against one as the boys hijack and control the story, reducing the early delightful tug of war. The wolf story is then continuously interrupted by forays into the wider world of 1940s New York:

“Do you mind if we have lunch in the park?” said the boy’s father to the boy’s mother. “Would you mind not having to fix lunch for us?”
“Oh, that would be terrible,” said the boy’s mother. “If I don’t have to fix lunch for you I will be forced to go back to bed and read the Sunday paper!”
Soon the man and the two boys were driving along the West Side Highway toward Fort Tryon Park. The boys could see freighters, tankers, ferry boats and other craft in the Hudson River. “Enemy battleships!” the boys cried, and raked them with fire from their wooden rifles. Sometimes the man had to speak sternly to the boys, saying, “Boys! Sit down! Stop waving those rifles around. Do you want to knock my front teeth out?”
The boys were very well behaved, and every time the man spoke sternly to them they would stop waving the rifles around, for a few seconds anyway.

As you can tell, McCleery has a fairly repetitive style and prefers to avoid using names or descriptions for his characters. The story is completely trivial and its lack of suspense probably works in favor of a young audience – the wolf story is constantly being treated as a game by the boys, cutting any build-up of suspense with interruptions. It’s packed with dialogue, onomatopoeia and exclamation points, and supposedly makes an enjoyable read-aloud (although I have some caveats in the Parental Guide). McCleery wrote plays for television and Broadway, which explains a lot about his style.

I would say that Wolf Story‘s greatest asset is its illustrator, Warren Chappell. Leaving the family wholly anonymous, he only illustrates the tale within the tale. Chappell takes McCleery’s dim-witted wolf and makes him hulking and villainous, yet absurd, while Rainbow the hen looks like she wandered in from Greenwich Village, sporting a debonair hat. Most charming of all are his medieval letters at the start of every chapter, with the wolf lurking behind them (it’s a pity the 10 chapters only opened with 5 individual letters).

Wolf Story is a very short book. It’s nicely packaged by NYRB and it seems to be well-received by modern parents – however, it doesn’t strike me as a lost children’s classic and I’m a little surprised it was chosen out of the sea of out-of-print stories waiting for a new lease on life. The plot is slight and gains little development, characters are thinly sketched, the glimpses of 1940s New York are all too brief and the writing is on the flat side. Also, the ending is a huge problem – the wolf story is based around a folktale motif, but if you enjoy the hard-headed sensibilities of classic folktales (where evil, selfishness and stupidity are punished in the end), you will probably find Wolf Story as much a letdown as I did. It looks good at the start but it wouldn’t make my list of vintage gems.

See Also: Stuart Little, another evocation of New York in the 40s, directed to the same basic age group (though the writing has way more style) and with eccentricities all its own…

And now a long Parental Guide for a short novel. Big spoilers for how the book ends.

Language: Quick heads up that there is one appearance of the word “damn,” which the father tries to dissuade his son from using, offering “darn” as a substitute – this book gets called a perfect read-aloud a lot, but I know there are parents who would prefer curse-free books for their six year olds.

wolf attacked — Big five year old or small wolf?

Violence: It’s about as serious as a Road Runner cartoon. Five year old Jimmy Tractorwheel, the farmer’s son, wallops Waldo the Wolf with a baseball bat and all that’s missing from the scene are the circling birdies. Lots of threats of eating the hen or shooting the wolf but no one actually dies, leading to…

Values: …the father inserting an asinine moral when the farmer’s family finally capture Waldo. Jimmy Tractorwheel decides to try and reform Waldo after the wolf whines about how: “I never had no opportunities. I ain’t even been to school.” He’s still a wolf, but that’s forgotten about and social experimentation follows, which the father insists is absolutely successful: “So Waldo was locked up and every day Jimmy would come and ask him questions about how a wolf is treated by his parents and what makes him so fierce. The more Waldo talked about his fierceness the gentler he grew, until finally he was allowed out of the cage on a leash. Jimmy and Waldo wrote a book about wolves which was read by the farmers and the wolves in that part of the country and helped them to understand each other. They all became quite friendly and some wolves even worked on the farms, as sheepdogs.”

Michael actually tries to have Waldo revert to type and repay the farmer by stealing Rainbow again, but the father won’t have it and ends the story, which put me in mind of the quote by G.K. Chesterton: “For children are innocent and love justice, while most of us are wicked and naturally prefer mercy.”

Role Models: The father clearly intends Jimmy to be such. Since both the father and Jimmy literally advocate letting a ~~fox~~ wolf guard the hen house, they obviously aren’t very smart. The wolf himself has no redeeming qualities – he is murderous, doltish and cowardly – yet he gets off scot-free.

Educational Properties: Since this is a static novel about the joys of telling a dynamic story out of thin air, it could be used as an example of meta fiction for the young. You might also discuss the ending and explain that A: wolves are not tameable and B: pop psychology is not a panacea (and that’s just for starters). There are already too many people out there who think they live in a Disney movie. This is not helpful.

End of Guide.

This was William McCleery’s only work for young people, which means I have now completed his bibliography and I’m honestly relieved. Imagine what he’d have done with The Little Red Hen…

Up Next: Back to the story of Anne Shirley.

Stormy, Misty’s Foal – Marguerite Henry

On August 1, 2020July 12, 2020 By nymithIn Adventure, American writers, Animal Stories, Horse Stories, Read Alouds, Set in Virginia, Survival StoriesLeave a comment

This second sequel is a great improvement on Sea Star and makes so little reference to the events of that book that it could even be read as the first sequel to Misty – which nine year old me believed it to be, thanks to the Aladdin boxset.

stormy Title: Stormy, Misty’s Foal (Misty #3)
Author: Marguerite Henry
Illustrator: Wesley Dennis
Original Publication Date: 1963
Edition: Aladdin Paperbacks (1991), 223 pages
Genre: Animal Stories. Survival stories.
Ages: 8-12
First Line: In the gigantic Atlantic Ocean, just off the coast of Virginia, a sliver of land lies exposed to the smile of the sun and the fury of wind and tide.

Misty has been home with the Beebes for an indeterminate amount of time and is now ready to have her first foal. Paul and Maureen are excited and impatient, but a violent storm strikes the islands, causing massive tidal flooding and forcing the locals to evacuate. Animals can’t come on the helicopters, so the Beebes have to move Misty into their kitchen and hope for the best. Will Misty and her colt survive? Will the Beebes have a home to return to? And how can the islands ever recover from such terrible devastation?

Stormy, Misty’s Foal is a much darker novel than Misty or Sea Star, death-riddled from the sixth chapter (when a neighbor reports on two thousand drowned baby chicks), onward through the storm and into its aftermath, in which Paul and Grandpa Beebe are enlisted to scour the islands and place markers wherever dead ponies are found. It’s a sequel meant for older kids, with a greater suspense and dread, and it stands on its own identity rather than the laurels of what came before.

cat and dog, wesley dennis — Happy dog, less happy cat.

Being considerably longer than the first two Beebe books, Marguerite Henry is able to place more focus on the location, with Pony Ranch clearly defined as a going concern. There are more details surrounding such things as church visits and the contents of the Beebe’s smokehouse, along with a family cat and dog. Misty is referred to as a “movie star,” and she’s obviously made the family prosperous, but there’s no indication in the text that she was ever gone, which makes it feel like Sea Star never happened.

Again, Henry contradicts a passage in her earlier work, preventing the three books from coming together as an integral whole. From Sea Star: “Look at me, Sea Star,” [Paul] said. “When Misty comes back home, you and she can be a team. Misty and Star. Sound pretty to you? And you can run like birds together and you can raise up foals of your own, and Maureen and I can race you both and we won’t care which wins.” It’s a pretty passage and was a high point of that book, yet Sea Star doesn’t appear or get mentioned here. The reason is probably that the true story had an unhappy ending – orphan foals are hard to keep alive, and the Beebe’s efforts were in vain – but after writing such a positive tale, Henry disappoints any children hoping to see Misty and Star together by silently sticking to the facts.

Grandpa Beebe, wesley dennis — Grandpa Beebe worries over his life’s work.

There are a host of positives that come with this third story, though. Chiefly among them is a real sense of the Beebe family as an ensemble cast. Therefore, Paul is no longer the only really proactive character; everyone has a job to do when the disaster strikes, and they each have their own fears to quell. Grandpa Beebe is particularly changed by this process into a man in his own right rather than the wise authority figure of previous books.

Misty spends much of her time separated from the Beebes, as their symbol of home, history and everything they wish to return to (with Stormy embodying hope for the future). Given this is based off of the Ash Wednesday storm of 1962, it’s clear that Henry is again playing loose with the facts – the real Clarence and Paul Beebe had both sadly died in the intervening decade and a different branch of the family was living at Pony Ranch and caring for Misty during this time. However, the extensive credits at the end of the book make it clear that Henry was determined to do right by the islanders and what they endured. She consulted everyone from the family to the mayor to the coast guard, giving Stormy‘s evacuation and cleanup scenes clarity and definition.

A street sign veered by, narrowly missing the horses’ knees. 98th Street, it said. Grandpa turned around to make sure he had read it aright. “My soul and body!” he boomed. “It scun clear down from Ocean City! That’s thirty mile away!”
…
In front of Barrett’s Grocery two red gas pumps were being used as mooring posts for skiffs and smacks and trawlers. A Coast Guard DUKW, called a “duck,” and looking like a cross between a jeep and a boat, came churning up alongside Grandpa and Paul.
…
As they turned onto Main Street, which runs along the very shore of the bay, Paul was stunned. Yesterday the wide street with its white houses and stores and oyster-shucking sheds had been neat and prime, like a Grandma Moses picture. Today boats were on the loose, bashing into houses. A forty-footer had rammed right through one house, its bow sticking out the back door, its stern out the front.
Nothing was sacred to the sea. It swept into the cemetery, lifted up coffins, cast them into peoples’ front yards.

flood destruction, wesley dennis — Flood destruction.

Stormy works just as well as the earlier volumes for reading aloud, and in this case parents might actually find the plot more gripping than their children, who would most likely focus on the ponies and the missing dog while parents would immediately grasp the larger nature of the disaster.

Of course, it isn’t all grim – there’s a great deal of focus on the community supporting one another and on the brave men in the Coast Guard and local volunteers setting forth into the floodlands, by boat and helicopter, providing aid and rescue. Also, the various book covers don’t exactly keep you in suspense about whether Misty safely delivers her foal or not.

Spoilers for the final chapters below.

Misty and Stormy end up on tour, raising money to restore the depleted herds of Assateague. Because we’ve seen the devastation close up, this tour to help the ecology and economy of Chincoteague comes across as truly heartwarming (unlike the previous college-for-Clarence plot), and it does help a lot that the Beebes don’t sell her off this time.

End of Spoilers.

One bit of advice I’d give is that no matter how many of the Misty books you decide to add to your library, avoid the Aladdin editions pictured at the top of these reviews. The Aladdin books are clearly cheap reprints and Wesley Dennis’s marvelous illustrations lose a great deal of definition in the process.

See Also: Misty of Chincoteague and Sea Star.

Parental Guide!

surviving ponies, wesley dennis — Surviving ponies.

Violence: A great deal. Many animals die in the flood, either drowned or exposed to the elements. Much of the time this is only mentioned in passing, but when Paul and Grandpa finally make it out to their ponies’ winter pasture they find an entire herd dead, and proceed to make a grim search for survivors. The heart-breaking work went on. They came upon snakes floating, and rabbits and rats. And they found more stallions dead, with their mares and colts nearby. And they found lone stragglers caught and tethered fast by twining vines. Grandpa is hit especially hard by this loss.

However, none of the main animal characters die and there are no human casualties at all, so depending on what your own child has already read, this might be very easy to handle. I remember finding it extremely disturbing when I first read it, but a year or so later this became my favorite Misty book.

Values: Faith, hope and charity all get their due, along with love of home and family, some grassroots philanthropy and community pulling together in hard times. The civic emphasis of the previous volumes (obey your elders and sacrifice for college) is replaced by civil disobedience. The Mayor has trouble with the mainland government after the storm:

“The government has approved sending ‘copters to take fresh water to the ponies still alive on Assateague, but they have no orders yet to take out the dead ones.”
Grandpa exploded. “Mayor! The live ones has got water. There’s allus water in the high-up pools in the White Hills. Them ponies know it.”
“You and I know it too, Clarence. But sometimes outside people get sentimental in the wrong places.”

This theme continues when the government refuses to allow women and children to return to Chincoteague, with Grandpa deciding to just smuggle his family home.

Perception of government isn’t the only thing that changed between the 40s and 60s. The role of women had too, and Grandma, a positive and respected figure before, is now singled out for pity at various points for having to always be at home or supporting the Ladies’ Auxiliary. As for Maureen…

Role Models: Maureen is now actively complaining about being a girl. As Maureen and Grandma heaped the trays and carried them back, Maureen’s lip quivered. “Oh, Grandma, Paul didn’t even ask what I did today. He doesn’t even know I was at Doctor Finney’s, riding a famous trotter. Oh, Grandma, why was I born a girl?” This is right after Paul and Grandpa come back from scouting for dead ponies, both so stricken by the sight that they can’t even talk about it, and she’s whining because she was spared all that and got to play with living ponies instead. She spends much of this book bursting into tears. “Oh, Grandma, being a girl is horrible. Paul always gets to have the most excitement.”

She’s acting as if trawling the death-choked waters is fun and games, and that’s not to mention that Paul only gets to accompany his grandfather on these forays back to the islands because he’s getting near full-grown, and the Coast Guard needs able-bodied men to do these jobs. Maureen is a pre-teen girl. She comes off far worse here than she ever did back in the 40s, precisely because Henry is trying to make her more outspoken – chafing at restrictions while ignoring that those restrictions are perfectly logical in this situation. The author never has any of her characters sit down and talk to Maureen about her attitude, and the girl is now a terrible role model, even though the others all remain admirable.

Educational Properties: Storms and flooding are serious concerns in coastal communities, and Stormy covers many aspects of such crises, from the creation of tidal storms to which citizens are most vulnerable when the power goes out (there’s a subplot involving a man who lives in an “electric cradle”). The details of evacuation, clean up and recovery mean that a lot of research and discussion could take place around this book, whether or not such a scenario could happen where you live. Obviously, massive amounts of natural science could also be tied in with Stormy, and there are also some random bonuses – like the reference to Grandma Moses and a world news report on the radio which is a time capsule in and of itself.

End of Guide.

I highly recommend Stormy, Misty’s Foal. It could foster some great conversations, and it’s full of drama without feeling lopsided the way Sea Star did. At this point, it seemed that Marguerite Henry had said all she needed to about Misty’s life, but Misty had three foals in all and Henry kept tabs on the descendants of her former pet and muse, eventually resulting in one final book about an especially gifted descendant: Misty’s Twilight. Expect my review next month.

Up Next: An odd little book by William McCleery, brought back in print by the NYRB Children’s Collection.

The Western Corner of the Castle

Month: August 2020

Misty’s Twilight – Marguerite Henry

Wanted! – Caroline B. Cooney

Anne of Ingleside – L.M. Montgomery

Wolf Story – William McCleery

Stormy, Misty’s Foal – Marguerite Henry