Afraid to Ride – C.W. Anderson

On June 15, 2019March 16, 2020 By nymithIn American writers, Animal Stories, Horse Stories, Realistic Fiction, Set in New YorkLeave a comment

For those traumatized in early life, heads up that no animals die during this book.

Title: Afraid to Ride
Author: C.W. Anderson (1891-1971)
Illustrator: C.W. Anderson
Original Publication Date: 1957
Edition: Scholastic Book Services (1963), 95 pages
Genre: Animal Stories. Realistic Fiction.
Ages: 7-10
First Sentence: Judy pulled the tan jodhpurs over her slim legs.

I came across Afraid to Ride when I was eleven, in a crumbling antique store with a large selection of books, including three shelves devoted to vintage animal stories. The illustrations caught my eye and turned me into a collector of these forgotten gems, though sadly of no other books by C.W. Anderson – although he was a superb illustrator of horses, he has lapsed into obscurity with only the Billy and Blaze books remaining on the radar. Afraid to Ride is a very genuine little tale – I’ve read that Anderson always based his stories on real people and this adds an air of credibility in the midst of what would otherwise be standard horse crazy wish-fulfillment.

Take the beginning: Judy Ellis, who turns sixteen over the course of the novel, gets to go to a special riding camp, but Anderson brusquely pitches his audience into a very different side of the genre. The riding camp is not a dream come true of fast friends, happy trails and extraordinary steeds; instead, it’s a bunch of girls riding circles in a ring, a poisonous brew of incompetent instructors, clueless riders and wrecked mounts. Trapped in this environment, Judy’s nerves are eaten away and when the accident she’s been dreading finally happens, Judy gives up riding and brands herself a coward. Back home, neighboring equestrian Mr. Jeffers takes an interest in her woes and enlists her help to care for a traumatized Cross Country jumper called Fair Lady. Girl and horse bond on their quiet walks in the woods as they are given all the time they need to move forward.

C.W. Anderson - jump — One of Anderson’s illustrations.

Maybe it sounds like a Very Special Lesson but it never really feels that way. There’s no angst, no whining, no romance and no sense of Judy’s response to her accident being “wrong.” The novel is astoundingly gentle and sensitive to Judy’s fear and while she does conquer it given time, it is never dismissed. Riding and jumping horses is a dangerous sport, and through Mr. Jeffers, Anderson addresses the difference between courage and foolhardiness. Mr. Jeffers is a perfect gentleman, encouraging her not to feel ashamed or cut herself off from the horse community through a mistaken belief that she’s lost her credentials:

Judy felt a warmth rising in her that suffused her with happiness. Suddenly the realization had come to her that a phase of her life that had meant so much had not really ended.
As if reading her thoughts Mr. Jeffers continued. “Some of our greatest trainers have never been riders and many good riders have not been real horsemen. Understanding horses, training them, knowing them as you know yourself is as interesting as riding; I think more so. You have a chance to take something that is utterly spoiled and worthless and bring it back to something all but perfect. Isn’t that worth trying?”

There’s a great deal of emphasis on patience and when Mr. Jeffers talks about giving Lady time to recover it’s also clear how this refers to Judy as well. Trust has to be built between girl and horse for either of them to regain confidence and this is what the middle of the tale is devoted to, centering around quiet ambles in the countryside. There was a tang in the air in spite of the bright sunshine. An occasional splash of red and yellow on the trees in marshy ground told of the coming of autumn. Judy and Lady strolled along the path contentedly and it was apparent that an understanding and feeling of kinship existed between them.

C.W. Anderson - forest ride — Judy, post-recovery.

Of course, it’s no real surprise that Judy conquers her fears in the end. Anderson carries the story beyond that moment of triumph to prove that Fair Lady too has returned to former glory, which gives young riding enthusiasts a bit of action to end on and also a look at the workings of a Cross Country Club course: She remembered how she had dreamed of being a member and joining in their marvelous rides, for they tried to get the feeling of real hunting even though it was without the benefit of fox or hound. They had laid out their various rides to include all natural obstacles that a horse could take safely and the reputation of the club was such that it was considered an honor to be invited to join.

Okay, for the nuts and bolts of this production, I think it’s set in New York, because apparently that’s where Anderson set most of his stories, but I didn’t find any proof. There’s a place called Warrenville in the text – nothing came up from that search – and Mr. Jeffers got his start in the horse business in New York City but it’s all fairly amorphous. Judy is a considerate, modest girl but Afraid to Ride isn’t character-driven and very little sense is ever gained of where she lives or what her life is like away from the stables and trails, aside from the fact that she has two supportive and well-off parents. Mr. Jeffers has a wild Irish past which adds some layers to his character at least.

https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1293249907p8/63597.jpg — Clarence William Anderson.

Anderson’s writing style is not the best the field has to offer (with Judy and Lady both female the pronouns got really confusing in the early chapters). However, the manner underlying his direct sentences is very gentlemanly. It’s hard to explain but it’s something I find very valuable in the old books and is a big reason why I believe it is helpful for children to read them. The use of language changes by generation and Anderson was born in 1891. As simple as his sentences are, they resound with occasional turns of phrase such as “shanks’ mare,” which a later generation of writers would simply drop. Even if the child reader doesn’t understand the phrase, anything mannered or “dated” about the end result wouldn’t matter to her anyway. Anderson was an expert draftsman and his illustrations would make it worth bringing Afraid to Ride back into print by themselves. This man did covers for the Saturday Evening Post and he had superb skill. Like his character Mr. Jeffers, he took a keen interest in conformation and his horses just standing still, in plain black and white, are the prettiest things you’ll ever see.

All else aside, this is just a sweet and gentle little story. She stroked Lady’s neck and told her many things that were not strictly true. Perhaps she was not the finest horse in the world. Still, she was in Judy’s world. Aww.

The shorter-than-average Parental Guide!

Violence: No dead animals. There are some anecdotes of runaway horses. Judy’s accident (she breaks a leg but blacks out right away). The “mean girl” prerequisite to this genre has an accident and Judy finds her unconscious, bleeding badly from a cut on her head. In a panic Judy tried to stop the flow of blood with her handkerchief but it did no good. Actually, the image of this accident is the most disturbing bit, as the girl pitching headfirst over her horse looks very similar to Judy and it isn’t until you turn the page that any context for this image is even given.

C.W. Anderson - accident — Turn the page.

Values: Patience and compassion. Slowing down and observing nature. Kindness to horses. The concept of real courage as far greater than foolhardy bravado. Also, this bit caught my eye, as Judy observes big stone walls on her walks which showed that once these were cleared fields. Thinking how back-breaking that work must have been, with always the threat of an Indian arrow finding its mark, Judy marveled at the endurance and courage of those pioneers. This is definitely the 1950s, since she’s not ashamed of her ancestors.

Role Models: Judy is considerate, affectionate and conquers her fear. Her parents are positive figures. Mr. Jeffers and the Master of the Country Club have the courtesy of true gentlemen. The Club is male-dominated yet no one belittles Judy and she wins their respect and admiration through skill and courage. No manufactured drama here.

Educational Properties: Unless it becomes your child’s introduction to older novels or equines, probably none.

End of Guide.

I read this several times when I was 11 and was pleased that it held up so well on this revisit, which I don’t think is just nostalgia talking. Have you read any of Anderson’s books?

Up Next: Haven’t done a fantasy novel yet, so I’m trying one that won the National Book Award in the 1970s.

Adventure Novels: The Black Joke

On June 8, 2019June 5, 2019 By nymithIn Adventure, Canadian Writers, Great Depression, Historical Fiction, Nautical Novels, Read Alouds, Set in Newfoundland1 Comment

When your tagline reads ” Who said pirates, booty, and high adventure were a thing of the past?” and the reader flips the book over and reads “The time: the 1930s” – you did, pal. This has been an episode of How to Lose Your Argument. I suspect this will not be the last time I take issue with the cover copy on these things.

Title: The Black Joke
Author: Farley Mowat (1921-2014)
Illustrator: Victor Mays (1927-)
Original Publication Date: 1962
Edition: McClelland & Stewart Ltd. (2004), 218 pages
Genre: Adventure. Historical.
Ages: 9-12
First Sentence: One wind-whipped summer day in the year 1735, a black-hulled ship came storming in from seaward toward the mountain walls which guard the southern coast of Newfoundland.

The Black Joke has a slightly perplexing title until you realise it’s the name of a ship, a ship which stood out from her sisters as a ballerina would stand out in a crowd of folk dancers. Her slim, black-painted hull had a grace and delicacy which was unique amongst the rough-built, hard-working fishing ships. The Black Joke is owned by Jonathan Spence, a Newfoundland fisherman with a scrupulous work ethic, independent streak and strong will to avoid debt. His adversary, local merchant Simon Barnes, resents Spence and fears he’ll set a precedent for the local community. Unluckily for Spence, it’s the early 1930s and American Prohibition has created a thriving business for east coast rum-runners, all of whom are looking for fast yet innocuous vessels to smuggle liquor into the United States and in them Simon Barnes sees a way to turn a profit and rid himself of Spence. Framed and separated from his ship, Spence devises a plan to get her back but an accident intervenes and it falls to his young son Peter and his nephew Kye to rescue Black Joke before she sails for America.

Farley Mowat, Victor Mays - boat — An example of the illustrations by Victor Mays.

Most reviews of this little book make it sound like a fairly standard boys’ adventure novel, but I want to emphasize that for over half the duration, Jonathan Spence is the de facto protagonist, with Farley Mowat’s omniscient third person narrator hopping between ancillaries as needed. Children’s books with adults as main characters are pretty much a thing of the past but used to be quite common and The Black Joke is generally a serious story of a man falsely accused and the friends who come to his aid; Peter and Kye don’t get the chance to go rogue until the final quarter. While it is definitely an adventure tale, it’s not quite The Hardy Boys. Everything is kept very real, very plausible.

Take note that this is indeed a boating book. If Jack London’s Cruise of the Dazzler was essentially a human interest story that happened to go to sea, The Black Joke is all about the ship and the setting, with little leftover for the humans involved. I’m lucky to have a nautically knowledgeable friend and a few sea stories behind me but if you present this book to an unversed kid who has no one to discuss it with, he may not make it to the exciting parts, as the first chapters do have a strongly documentary feel.

As an American child, I had little exposure to any books set in Newfoundland. The only one I ever came across was Star in the Storm by Joan Hiatt Harlow, so I was especially interested in The Black Joke‘s setting and Mowat did not disappoint:

By this time it was full daylight, with the sun just showing to the east. The cliffs no longer looked quite so formidable and, seen from the bottom, they were not absolutely sheer. The many ledges were thick-covered with deep moss which was riddled by the burrows of rats and puffins.
Having started the two boys up the cliff, Jonathan remained behind to scuff a small avalanche of moss down over the dory, effectively concealing it from any but the closest inspection. Then he too shouldered a pack and began climbing upward.
Peter led the way, scrambling from ledge to ledge, pausing now and again to search for the best route, but gradually gaining height. A hundred feet up he found a narrow ravine that slanted sideways up the cliff, so that the going became easier. All the same, it took half an hour of hard climbing before the three of them were at the top.

farley mowat, victor mays - boys — On top of Colombier.

The Black Joke leaves Newfoundland and the Spence’s are forced to island-hop from St. Pierre to Colombier to Miquelon and each location is distinctive. Mowat does equally well with weather patterns, which can be as big of an obstacle as the human villains, and also accents. Not only do his characters’ accents vary by ethnicity (Irish, French, Basque) and location (Newfoundland, New Jersey), he even modulates between generations. Pierre the Basque fisherman has a French accent you could cut with a knife but he married a Newfoundlander and their son Jacques speaks English in a stiff and formal, learned-lesson way. Meanwhile, when Pierre is talking to another Basque in private his accent vanishes, our clue that the two are conversing in French. I thought it worked quite well.

The story is very entertaining and the pace picks up as soon as they approach St. Pierre. Mowat strings out the plot, packing a lot of incident into a short space – smuggling and stowaways, fire and a sea battle and even a chapter spent marooned. He also ensures that something goes badly wrong at the last possible moment of every plan the heroes concoct, until finally something actually goes so wrong it goes right. Good stuff.

One thing Mowat does not do so well is character. Throughout the book, Peter and Kye are almost interchangeable. Peter is more emotional and risk-taking, while Kye is the voice of caution but it never feels like more than an outline. When Jacques joins the group he’s pretty much the same. The boys have different levels of knowledge and gumption but when push comes to shove and work needs doing they’re all three good sports and courageous lads. The one character who did stand out amongst the noble Spences and their friends was Smith, the Yankee rum-runner. A villain with significant personal flaws, he also has some genuinely admirable traits that come to the forefront in the eleventh hour.

https://travelcravingsdotcom1.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/1024px-miquelon_shore.jpg — The coast of Miquelon.

I ran some of the boating information here past my nautical friend and he found it all legit – even the actions taken during the sea battle were plausible and smart. I found the story engaging and the setting and cultural assemblage utterly refreshing. The writing has that straightforward masculine quality that I associate with the American midcentury and writers such as Jack Schaefer, Jim Kjelgaard and Jean Craighead George, where feelings take a backseat to rugged endeavour and sweeping natural beauty. It is exactly the kind of low-profile gem I was hoping to uncover for this project.

Parental Guide up next. Some spoilers, as always.

Violence: Nobody dies. Jonathan is taken out of the picture by tipping over and hitting his head, leaving him in the hospital with a severe concussion until the action is over. There’s gunfire that doesn’t hit anyone and a fire that leaves brave Smith choking, hair singed and with hands that bore a ghastly resemblance to two freshly boiled lobsters.

Language use actually surprised me. Mowat sticks to standard Yosemite Sam usage, with “the blazes you will!” and so on, until Smith loses his temper and we get him yelling “you name of a New Jersey name!” and various uses of “blank.” I was so puzzled I had to re-read the passage to understand that this was being substituted for actual cursing. It knocked me completely out of the story; I’d say Yosemite Sam works a lot better.

Values: Men’s work is strongly emphasised throughout and the simple hardness of a fishing life is shown as routine. The boys are enlisted in a world of working that is not 9 to 5 but literally dawn to dusk, until the task is completed. This demand is an important source of fulfillment for them. Kye and Peter caught each other’s glances. Neither would have admitted it, but they were as pleased as only two boys can be who have been told they can do a man’s job and do it well.

Farley Mowat, Victory Mays - ship Loyalty to one’s boat almost as to a living thing is the driving force of the novel – the Black Joke might as well be the Black Stallion for the Spence’s determination to be reunited with it – but loyalty between people is also emphasised. Communities are very tight-knit and old friends do not forget one another.

No value judgement is made on the rum-runners. To the poor coastal towns, smuggling is just another job opportunity and the rum-runners get off scot-free. French authorities don’t come off too well and the true villain is the merchant Simon Barnes, who uses debt as a tool to control and profit from his neighbours. What happens to him is left completely up in the air.

Fishing and hunting are a standard pastime and this Mowat does put a value judgement on: “It is not good to kill more than one needs,” says Jacques.

Role Models: Aside from an impish prank or two, the boys have no real flaws, which is probably why I find them a bit dull. When they lose adult leadership they are forced to improvise and carry on without aid or orders, showing great fortitude and also making things a lot worse before they get better.

When Jonathan is framed he chooses to turn fugitive rather than stand his ground, disregarding the good advice he had given the boys earlier: “When ye’re in the right of a thing, hang on. Don’t change yer mind. There’ll be many a time some feller what’s bigger’n you, or maybe richer, or maybe just louder in the mouth’ll try and shove you off your course. Don’t take no heed.”

Educational Properties: An interesting look at Prohibition from the outside and it could be a nice supplement to learning about the North Atlantic settlers. The setting is very strong and those who love the north countries will probably want to learn more about the dynamic landscape of Newfoundland.

https://images.thestar.com/content/dam/thestar/photos/2014/05/07/in_pictures_canadian_author_farley_mowat/undated.jpg.size-custom-crop.1086x0.jpg — Farley Mowat.

End of Guide.

Farley Mowat only wrote a few books for young readers, all of which I will be on the lookout for. Now that I’ve read both him and Montgomery, I am very curious about Canadian children’s books. What are some other authors I shouldn’t miss?

Up Next: I haven’t done an animal story yet, so up next is a girl and her horse, courtesy of C.W. Anderson and the 1950s.

Coming-of-Age Stories: Anne of Green Gables

On June 1, 2019March 17, 2020 By nymithIn 1000 Good Books List, Canadian Writers, Children's Classics, Coming-of-Age Stories, Read Alouds, Set in Prince Edward Island2 Comments

This is a retooled rendition of the review I originally wrote for my other book blog, Pseudo-Intellectual Reviews, which I have currently discontinued to focus on this more pleasant project. I purchased a complete set of the Anne books on Ebay and intend to work through them in a timely manner. Seven books in twelve months should be feasible. I’m looking forward to it.

Title: Anne of Green Gables (Anne Novels #1)
Author: L.M. Montgomery (1874-1942)
Original Publication Date: 1908
Edition: Modern Library Classics (2008), 287 pages
Genre: Coming-of-Age.
Ages: 9-16
First Sentence: Mrs. Rachel Lynde lived just where the Avonlea main road dipped down into a little hollow, fringed with alders and ladies’ eardrops and traversed by a brook that had its source away back in the woods of the old Cuthbert place; it was reputed to be an intricate, headlong brook in its earlier course through those woods, with dark secrets of pool and cascade; but by the time it reached Lynde’s Hollow it was a quiet, well-conducted little stream, for not even a brook could run past Mrs. Rachel Lynde’s door without due regard for decency and decorum; it probably was conscious that Mrs. Rachel was sitting at her window, keeping a sharp eye on everything that passed, from brooks and children up, and that if she noticed anything odd or out of place she would never rest until she had ferreted out the whys and wherefores thereof.

The Cuthberts of Green Gables, an unmarried brother and sister, send away for an orphan boy to help them on the farm and receive an eleven year old girl by mistake. Unable to bring themselves to send Anne Shirley back to the orphanage they set themselves the task of bringing her up properly. In return the lovable orphan warms their hearts and charms the whole town. However, the plot soon ceases and is replaced by life in all its vagaries as the chapters follow the incidents of Anne’s youth: from being afraid of a haunted wood to getting her best friend drunk (quite by accident) to discovering a passion for schooling and finally to death and grieving. And Anne grows up.

I never read Anne of Green Gables when I was little (my orphan of choice was Sara Crewe) but reading it as an adult its appeal is obvious. Imaginative children would find it easy to identify with Anne, as she has enough flaws to balance out as a relatable character: a girl whose imagination preserves her soul in dreadful circumstances and also gets her into ridiculous scrapes; who only gets out of said scrapes by her good character (apologising when she’s wrong and standing up for herself when maligned). She’s charming, funny, hard-working, honest and clever – a role model, in other words, but never a goody-two-shoes.

She nearly drowns reinacting the Lady of Shalott, she appalls surrounding adults with her temper and she has a disastrous tendency to drift off at critical household moments leaving ruined dinners in her wake (oh, how ruefully I sympathized). Marilla waits patiently for each new disaster to unfold and after a while can even sense when Anne’s getting overdue for one. Anne is not an easy child to raise and that keeps the novel grounded.

A strong secondary appeal is L.M. Montgomery’s romantic depiction of Avonlea, a rural paradise in a corner of Prince Edward Island where everyone knows everybody else, the four seasons march in beautiful parade and the hard shells of the stuffiest individuals can be melted away by an open-hearted little girl. The novel is almost extravagantly European in its culture and it was an absolute dream for me to find the children of Avonlea welcoming spring by gathering mayflowers and singing as they march down the country lanes. Everyone is Christian (the arrival of a new minister is a great local event) and yet the children, especially Anne, have something pagan about their outdoor roving and wreathing:

All the boys and some of the girls went to Mr. Bell’s spruce grove as usual, fully intending to stay only long enough to “pick a chew.” But spruce groves are seductive and yellow nuts of gum beguiling; they picked and loitered and strayed; and as usual the first thing that recalled them to a sense of the flight of time was Jimmy Glover shouting from the top of a patriarchal old spruce, “Master’s coming.”
The girls, who were on the ground, started first and managed to reach the schoolhouse in time but without a second to spare. The boys, who had to wriggle hastily down from the trees, were later; and Anne, who had not been picking gum at all but was wandering happily in the far end of the grove, waist deep among the bracken, singing softly to herself, with a wreath of rice lilies on her hair as if she were some wild divinity of the shadowy places, was latest of all. Anne could run like a deer, however; run she did with the impish result that she overtook the boys at the door and was swept into the schoolhouse among them just as Mr. Phillips was in the act of hanging up his hat.

children maying

It is a beautifully written scene. The pastoral joys of Avonlea are pure and unspoiled but Montgomery tempers the considerable sweetness with strong doses of narrative sarcasm and realism – there are natural results to letting the children run wild, as they play ‘dare’ so vociferously that someone finally lands on a broken ankle (no surprise who). While the inevitability of death is depicted in the final chapters of the novel, most other misfortunes are comical or else relegated to Anne’s mostly unspoken past – this is above all a cheerful book, something which the current Anne with an E Netflix series has stridently corrected for. Early viewers were dismayed by the darkness of the end product but I don’t think the creators of the show had much choice – after all, a faithful adaptation would have meant an idyllic portrayal of a white Christian community being shown to kids, so a violent purge of the original content was really their only option.

Then there are the morals. Most of Anne’s choices and Marilla’s teachings are at odds with the advice given to droves of modern girls. Case in point: Anne’s own identity. Anne, like many girls her age, is terribly self-conscious. She hates her red hair and wishes she had raven tresses and a dramatic, elegant name like Cordelia to go along with them. However, Anne’s reinvention of herself is to learn to love being Anne of Green Gables, leaving Cordelia to the realm of make-believe. She does purchase hair dye from a passing peddler – hoping for black hair, it instead turns a hideous bronzy green that won’t wash out. Marilla has to hack it all off while chiding Anne over her vanity and the lesson is learned: “I never thought I was vain about my hair, of all things, but now I know I was, in spite of its being red, because it was so long and thick and curly.” Anne learns to appreciate her features in the future – it’s a genuinely good example of much-heralded “body positivity” for a culture that can now peddle its green hair dye openly.

Consider also the layers of meaning to Marilla and Matthew deciding to keep Anne. Anne does not ever attempt to be the farm boy they sent for and needed, because she isn’t a boy. Marilla doesn’t require any help around the house either, so the girl is given no outlet to “earn” her keep. On the other hand, the Cuthberts never officially adopt Anne – though they grow to love her, neither of them wants to become a parent at the outset. Marilla expects a certain standard of behaviour from Anne but that’s as far as her wants go. Anne is therefore established as superfluous to the Cuthbert’s well-ordered needs and yet they might be good for her and so she stays. They sacrifice for her sake.

And then comes the end of the novel. Spoilers ahead.

Anne has won a coveted scholarship and is going away to college, “living the dream,” when Matthew tragically passes away. Marilla, whose eyesight is failing, cannot afford to maintain Green Gables and so Anne resolves to postpone higher education and become a local schoolteacher instead. “I’m just as ambitious as ever. Only, I’ve changed the object of my ambitions.” She chooses home and family over career, directly foreshadowing her future (depicted in the later sequels) as a married mother of six and dismaying some modern readers in the process. “Anne should never have grown up to become a conformist” says Jack Zipes in his introduction to the Modern Library edition, strongly implying she shouldn’t have grown up at all. What was she expected to do in this situation? Peck Marilla on the cheek as she dropped her off at a nursing home? “Bye, you’ll literally never see me again!” Would that have made her a greater heroine?

Zipes also quotes another children’s scholar, Perry Nodelman, who says that in the wholesome orphan stories of yore “childhood never really ends, the most childlike children never really grow up, and even terminally mature people can become childlike again. It is the secret desire of grownups to be children again that makes these novels so appealing to grown-ups, and it may be the secret desire of children to never grow up that makes these novels appealing to them.” That’s a lot of secret desires right there (are you sure you’re not projecting, Perry?). If children don’t want to grow up why do they consistently prefer their heroes to be older than themselves? You would think that there would be far more stories like Peter Pan if Nodelman’s theory was correct but in fact immortal children are vastly outnumbered by the other kind. And doesn’t becoming an orphan in fact destroy childhood in these stories, a la Sara Crewe in the attic or Harry Potter under the stairs? Why do the Pevensies get shut out of Narnia? Why does Travis shoot Old Yeller? For the same reason that Anne gives up her hard-won scholarship. Good children’s literature is about growing up, about surviving, because childhood is supposed to end. It has to. Anne of Green Gables is a particularly affectionate roadmap to that process, in all its sweetness and melancholy.

And so the Parental Guide.

Violence: Matthew dies of a heart attack at the close of the novel, and although it is lightly foreshadowed it may come as a bit of a shock considering how rosy the rest of the book is. Anne’s dismal past is handled very circumspectly and the dare game culminating in a broken ankle is as “violent” as the story gets.

Values: Aside from those I singled out earlier, Anne of Green Gables is a solidly Christian novel. Anne arrives at Green Gables and is first of all taught to pray and attend Sunday school. Marilla declares “she’s next door to a perfect heathen,” and that is a very good assessment. Although she is irreverent at times her questioning never leads her anywhere near atheism, and as she gains a sense of belonging in her community, she also sheds her early ignorance of Christianity, the symbol of her previous neglect. It’s very nicely done.

There’s a strong sense throughout the book of Canadian identity and local pride in Avonlea. Naturally there is no diversity to be seen in such a time and place (another thing Anne with an E has “fixed,” of course). Prince Edward Island is so thoroughly sequestered from the world that Marilla shudders even at the thought of acquiring a British orphan: “Give me a native born at least. There’ll be a risk, no matter who we get. But I’ll feel easier in my mind and sleep sounder at nights if we get a born Canadian.”

Role Models: Montgomery gives Anne a number of excellent role models as she matures, each with their own gifts. Marilla is my favorite, with her sense of justice and well-bestowed sarcasm. There is also the schoolteacher Miss Stacy, who holds nature studies and inspires her students. Meanwhile, Mrs. Allen the minister’s wife shows Anne that religion can be a “cheerful thing” and even Mrs. Lynde the town gossip has plentiful good advice and a kindly, if somewhat officious heart. Anne is, of course, a wonderful example for all the reasons earlier mentioned.

The men are somewhat more flawed characters. Matthew shuns difficult decision-making and has no financial acumen but he has a good heart and won’t back down from his principles. Many of the most heartwarming moments in the novel stem from his quiet understanding of Anne. Gilbert Blythe starts out as an obnoxious classmate but he grows up to be quite the gentleman and scholar, and is the soul of chivalry when Anne needs it most. I look forward to reading of their future interactions.

Educational Properties: In all honesty, I drew a complete blank on this one. It could expand everything from the child’s vocabulary and reading material to his or her soul but to me, Anne of Green Gables is really a perfect “delight read.” It’s a book to read aloud or independently and to savour. Obviously, there is a great deal of social and historical detail one could mine from this book (and it has been annotated before), but it almost seems contrary to the spirit of the work to make too much of it.

End of Parental Guide.

Anne of Green Gables would make a lovely read-aloud to share with your children. It’s sweet, funny, wise and beautifully written. I enjoyed it thoroughly and am very keen on the sequels, though also a little nervous. How do they hold up? Also, while I’m maxed out on L.M. Montgomery for the upcoming year, which of her non-Anne books should I keep an eye out for in future?

Up Next: A boy’s boating adventure from the 1960s, courtesy of another respected Canadian writer, Farley Mowat.

https://i0.wp.com/ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51OhjS4JpTL._SY282_BO1%2C204%2C203%2C200_.jpg — I have plenty of reading ahead of me…

Adventure Novels: The Cruise of the Dazzler

On May 25, 2019June 3, 2019 By nymithIn Adventure, American writers, Nautical Novels, Read Alouds, Set in California, U.S. StatesLeave a comment

Word of Warning: I own two Jack London omnibuses and both contained a magazine version of The Cruise of the Dazzler which had been significantly abridged. Both volumes also failed to make note of the abridgement, and it wasn’t until I had read it, taken notes and started researching that I realized my mistake. I found the full text on Project Gutenberg, which isn’t a very fun way to experience an old book, but it let me save my review, and I admire their site tremendously. So here is Jack London’s forgotten boy’s adventure story!

Title: The Cruise of the Dazzler
Author: Jack London (1876-1916)
Original Publication Date: 1902
Edition: Project Gutenberg EBook HTML, unknown page count
Genre: Adventure.
Ages: 10-12
First Sentence: They ran across the shining sand, the Pacific thundering its long surge at their backs, and when they gained the roadway leaped upon bicycles and dived at faster pace into the green avenues of the park.

When reading old books I often will stumble upon oddly resonant, even poignant, passages, that seem to illuminate some tremendously modern concern that we often believe was not an issue in the old days. In the very first chapter of The Cruise of the Dazzler I came upon one of these passages, as protagonist Joe Bronson lashes out at his sister in frustration. “Oh, you can’t understand!” he burst out. “You can’t understand. You’re a girl. You like to be prim and neat, and to be good in deportment and ahead in your studies. You don’t care for danger and adventure and such things, and you don’t care for boys who are rough, and have life and go in them, and all that. You like good little boys in white collars, with clothes always clean and hair always combed, who like to stay in at recess and be petted by the teacher and told how they’re always up in their studies; nice little boys who never get into scrapes—who are too busy walking around and picking flowers and eating lunches with girls, to get into scrapes. Oh, I know the kind—afraid of their own shadows, and no more spunk in them than in so many sheep. That ‘s what they are—sheep. Well, I ‘m not a sheep, and there ‘s no more to be said.” This was in 1902 and Jack London could already see where this was going.

Fed up with the controlled environment of his parents’ guidance, bored with schoolwork, young Joe Bronson gets into fights and flunks all his tests before shipping off with the first crew that will have him, on board the Dazzler, only to discover too late that his new companions are San Francisco Bay pirates. At first he wishes only to escape or alert the authorities somehow but as he bonds with a fellow crewmate known as the ‘Frisco Kid he feels a reformer’s urge to save said Kid from jail, complicating his escape.

I’ve got to mention the fact that this book would make a splendid read-aloud. London provides a slightly wry narration that really brings out the humour of Joe’s predicament: But suddenly a man sprang out of the gloom, flashing a dark lantern full upon him. Blinded by the light, he staggered back. Then a revolver in the man’s hand went off like the roar of a cannon. All Joe realized was that he was being shot at, while his legs manifested an overwhelming desire to get away. Even if he had so wished, he could not very well have stayed to explain to the excited man with the smoking revolver. So he took to his heels for the beach, colliding with another man with a dark lantern who came running around the end of one of the piles of iron. This second man quickly regained his feet, and peppered away at Joe as he flew down the bank.

While the sea story doesn’t begin until the second half of the novel, there’s a fair amount of action throughout, as Joe ends up in the ‘Frisco slums brawling with Irish kids and running from the cops before the main plot even gets going. The violence is treated in a very sportsmanlike fashion, with both sides knowing the rules. Upon calling his captain French Pete a liar, for example: Joe had not been a boy among boys for nothing. He knew the penalty which attached itself to the words he had just spoken, and he expected to receive it. So he was not overmuch surprised when he picked himself up from the floor of the cockpit an instant later, his head still ringing from a stiff blow between the eyes. It’s very different from the brutal scenes in his famous dog books, which were not intended for young readers in the first place, and so could make for a much gentler introduction to Jack London.

Jack London - cruise of the dazzler — From the illustrations in the St. Nicholas magazine abridgement.

As far as subtext goes, there is little to speak of here. Morals are found embedded within the narrative which are then recapitulated in a “job well done” finish. In this day and age it all seems very quaint – charming if you miss those days, somewhat hokey otherwise. Responsibilities were showering upon him thick and fast. But a few days back he had had but himself to consider; then, in some subtle way, he had felt a certain accountability for ‘Frisco Kid’s future welfare; and after that, and still more subtly, he had become aware of duties which he owed to his position, to his sister, to his chums and friends; and now, by a most unexpected chain of circumstances, came the pressing need of service for his father’s sake. It was a call upon his deepest strength, and he responded bravely. While the future might be doubtful, he had no doubt of himself; and this very state of mind, this self-confidence, by a generous alchemy, gave him added resolution. Nor did he fail to be vaguely aware of it, and to grasp dimly at the truth that confidence breeds confidence—strength, strength.

This passage is key to the entire tale. Strength is repeated three times and Joe’s epiphany was meant to serve as an example to boys as he learns responsibility and self-reliance. As a matter of fact, Project Gutenberg reveals that The Cruise of the Dazzler was selected as part of a series called Every Boy’s Library, put out by the Boy Scouts of America with this Jack London - storm specific ideal in mind: We know so well, are reminded so often of the worth of the good book and great, that too often we fail to observe or understand the influence for good of a boy’s recreational reading. Such books may influence him for good or ill as profoundly as his play activities, of which they are a vital part. The needful thing is to find stories in which the heroes have the characteristics boys so much admire—unquenchable courage, immense resourcefulness, absolute fidelity, conspicuous greatness. I would love to find a list of the other books that made the cut.

Joe is a likable protagonist and his struggle with schoolwork is very realistic. He can’t see how it could impact his life, he can’t concentrate on it and even when he wants to study he associates it with shame and gives up quickly, angry at his own failure. His final epiphany only occurs at sight of fellow pirate Nelson (a deliberate choice of name on London’s part, I suspect, as every schoolboy would have known about Trafalgar): Beside him, his injured arm in a sling, was Red Nelson, his sou’wester gone and his fair hair plastered in wet, wind-blown ringlets about his face. His whole attitude breathed indomitability, courage, strength. It seemed almost as though the divine were blazing forth from him. Joe looked upon him in sudden awe, and, realizing the enormous possibilities of the man, felt sorrow for the way in which they had been wasted. A thief and a robber! In that flashing moment Joe caught a glimpse of human truth, grasped at the mystery of success and failure. Life threw back its curtains that he might read it and understand. Of such stuff as Red Nelson were heroes made; but they possessed wherein he lacked—the power of choice, the careful poise of mind, the sober control of soul.

It’s an important passage and a beautiful one. I enjoy Jack London’s writing a great deal and this book does not disappoint. There are some passages that bog down in the world of sailing terminology, with reefing down of jib and mainsail and all that but this price asserts itself in all of the great boating books to come, from The Riddle of the Sands to Moby-Dick, so you might as well start adjusting early.

Aside from Joe, characterization isn’t terribly strong but the major cast are all believable human beings and have moments of deeper feeling to round them out a bit. I have no idea why this book isn’t in print. It seems there is very little space for masculine, nature-oriented adventures on a modern child’s bookshelf but you would think Jack London would still rate an exception.

Got the Parental Guide up next, with spoilers and everything.

Violence: Yes, there’s gunfire, injury, fistfights, death at sea and criminal activity. A dearth of swearing though. “You rat!”

Values: Joe ships off to taste independence and discovers instead that he is responsible to his family no matter where he goes. In ‘Frisco Kid’s loneliness and wish for a sister – the Dazzler’s sole streak of Victorian sentiment – Joe realises that not all children have the support of good families and learns not to take his for granted. Other morals include knowing one’s limitations, protecting the family property, staying honest among thieves and never backing down from a bully. There’s some fairy tale philanthropy offered to ‘Frisco Kid, but Mr. Bronson is cautious of the outcome: “if he comes through his period of probation with flying colors, I’ll give him the same opportunities for an education that you possess. It all depends on himself.”

London’s worldview of solitary excellence is invoked, as Joe Bronson is not able to summon the proper authorities and has to deal with things on his own. London softens it up for his youthful audience though, because ‘Frisco Kid always has Joe’s back and the sea takes care of the wicked without Joe having to navigate any treacherous moral quandaries about life, death, freedom and imprisonment. It all wraps up tidily with lessons learned, patrician forgiveness and the first step to manhood attained.

Role Models: Joe is front and center here as a proper example to good Boy Scouts everywhere. Mr. Bronson is a strong father figure. Joe’s mother and sister Bessie are referred to in sympathetic tones throughout; Bessie is shown as studious and sensitive.

Educational Properties: You could probably use this to introduce the idea that there were pirates of the non-Caribbean in the world, or to accompany a social history of old San Francisco as it takes in rich and poor, schooling, philanthropy and the criminal classes. It also deals in part with the oyster pirates, a unique phenomenon and a cool topic from history.

Joe Bronson’s school test shows what was expected of students before the era of multiple choice tests. Nothing besides the question itself would be there to jog the student’s memory and each child would be expected to know the answer and be able to write it down cogently. The questions on the history test center on the laws of Draco and the reforms of Solon, which were things young teens were expected to know all about.

End of Guide.

I have read both The Call of the Wild and White Fang before, but I don’t trust my omnibuses to contain the official book texts, so I’ll wait on revisiting them. I’m unaware of any other London stories suitable to a young audience, so my biggest question this time is – what are some other good boating adventures I should be on the lookout for? If I read enough of them, maybe the sailing descriptions will actually start making sense. That would be a plus.

Up Next: A perfect June read by L.M. Montgomery.

Mythology: In the Beginning

On May 18, 2019March 16, 2020 By nymithIn American writers, Mythology, Newbery Honor Books, World MythologyLeave a comment

It is relatively easy to avoid bad children’s picture books because they’re such eyesores but what do you do with one that’s simply a disappointment? I do battle with boring prose for the sake of mythology, that’s what.

Title: In the Beginning: Creation Stories from Around the World
Author: Virginia Hamilton (1936-2002)
Illustrator: Barry Moser (1940-)
Original Publication Date: 1988
Edition: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich (1988), 161 pages
Genre: Mythology
Ages: 9-10
First Sentence: Time was, there were no people on earth.

On the face of it, this striking volume is exactly what I would want in a children’s library, which should always come replete with a generous selection of myths and legends, fables, folklore and fairy tales. Virginia Hamilton is a celebrated and award-winning writer while Barry Moser, in addition to illustrating numerous picture books, has composed engravings for such pillars of the written word as Moby Dick and even the King James Bible. So far so good.

https://thewesterncornerofthecastle.home.blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/in-the-beginning-hamilton.jpg?w=300&h=300 — Virginia Hamilton.

Hamilton wrote several books of mythology but she is best known for middle grade novels such as The House of Dies Drear (1968) and M.C. Higgins the Great (1974), and she won pretty much every major children’s book award over the course of her long career – In the Beginning is only one of her Newbery Honor books. However, this is the first of hers that I’ve read and so far I find her prose depressingly dull, with flat, simplistic sentences and no underlying melody. Take for instance this segment from the Russian Altaic story of Ulgen the Creator:

In the beginning, Erlik and God Ulgen were friends. But then Erlik tried to create life of his own. He boasted about it.
“I can do as well as Ulgen. I can make a man.”
That made Ulgen angry. He commanded Erlik down to the depths. Now Erlik is the leader of dead spirits. He is the devil.

I read the whole book and assumed from the above writing style that it was aimed at kids in third or fourth grade. Only after I had finished and was in research mode did I learn that Scholastic actually recommends this book for grades 6-8, meaning 11-12 years old and up. This is the age group that gets recommended books by Philip Pullman and Wilson Rawls – they should be fluent readers. Of course, if the writing was deliberately stripped down to mimic oral traditions, the result should have the rhythm and repetition of speech but when I experimented with reading several of the myths out loud no such pattern manifested itself. The prose remained lifeless, so I went to Project Gutenberg. Compare the above quotation with this one from Old Greek Stories (1895) by James Baldwin (1841-1925):

There was Juno, the queen of earth and sky, who sat at the right hand of Jupiter and gave him all kinds of advice. There was Mars, the great warrior, whose delight was in the din of battle. There was Mercury, the swift messenger, who had wings on his cap and shoes, and who flew from place to place like the summer clouds when they are driven before the wind.

Hamilton’s 9 sentences contain 58 words. Baldwin’s 3 sentences contain 70 words. Read them both aloud and hear the difference. One could certainly accuse Baldwin of being an “old-fashioned” writer but that would not be possible if he hadn’t had some style to start with. At least he expected his young readers to be able to keep up with his winding whimsies, whereas Hamilton seems to expect nothing of her audience beyond the most basic levels of literacy. The only things she brings to the table here are the collective theme (which is definitely interesting and which I will get to in a moment) and her multicultural selection process, which were enough with her and Moser’s reputations to win this volume considerable adulation. Either 1988 was a thin year or the quality and cadence of the writing really didn’t matter to critics in this case. So enough on that subject and on to what I actually did find interesting about In the Beginning.

barry moser - babylonian myth — The endless sea recurs, as in the Enuma Elish.

I do believe this book could open up some rather interesting discussions between a questioning child and his or her parent as the thematic selection from so many cultures is a natural start to a comparative mythology class. One could discuss the intent behind the myths and how imagery recurs and alters from one region to another, as geographical location plays its own part in these stories. Obviously, one could also contrast how recurring elements are handled – for instance, in the aboriginal Karora myth the violence is depicted uncritically as Karora and his human sons hunt down and devour all of his first children, the bandicoots, whereas to the Greeks the tale of Kronos was a morality play, as he who transgressed and killed his father must in turn be slain by his own son.

In the Beginning has good educational merit at its core and all its myths are sourced. I really wanted to like this book, yet am forced to acknowledge another problem: In the Beginning‘s layout. The myths are not arranged geographically, thematically or even alphabetically and the short commentary on each myth and its culture of origin is found at the end of each story rather than the beginning, summarizing events you literally just read. Adding to the confusion, there is a final section: ‘More on These Myths.’ This segment arranges the myths in a helpful thematic order that really enhances reader comprehension – already after you and your children have read them in the random fashion given.

barry moser - nyambi — From the Lozi creation myth of Zambia.

The book’s strongest point is in fact Barry Moser. His watercolor illustrations are moody and often striking, singlehandedly supplying In the Beginning‘s atmosphere. The cover art is superb and caught my eye immediately. He uses light beautifully throughout, from the pearly haze on the first ocean of the world to the harsh illumination as Adam contemplates the apple. His style is fairly grave – his humans are intense and careworn, his animals peaceful yet somber, his monsters genuinely frightening and his abstracts eerie. He does a very fine job with much of the material and I always do enjoy his work.

Clearly, in spite of the sentence structure, this book is indeed meant for older kids who have developed strong comprehension skills. It shouldn’t be your child’s first access to mythology but I would have come to that conclusion regardless of the writing style, as beginning mythology “in the beginning” is a rather terrible idea (Kirkus doesn’t agree with me). The Greek hero myths are so popular for a number of reasons: there are warriors and monsters, epic adventures, treachery and triumph. They also contain a measure of morality that children find easy to understand, advocating and rewarding bravery and cleverness, while punishing hubris. Creation myths on the other hand are quite esoteric. The landscapes are amorphous: In the beginning, all was dark. There was water everywhere. There was no sun and no moon and no stars. The gods’ behaviours are perplexing and changeable; in many myths they quickly decide to destroy what they have made, though this does not always work out well for them. The purpose of these tales often lack in relatable substance for a child – for instance the Babylonian myth concludes with: He let there be Man and thus freed the gods from eternal labor.

With such a wide range of mythology for children now available, In the Beginning is simply not one that I would recommend to parents. Yes, the comparative aspect is interesting but I believe it would be more beneficial for a child to have a larger collection of world mythology written with passion and depth. I doubt any single author could do equal justice to myths from so many different cultures, nice as the concept might sound. Consider In the Beginning supplementary, not essential.

To conclude with the Parental Guide.

Violence: Creation myths are full of death for the most part. Actually, so are most myths. The only caution I would therefore apply to this book regards Barry Moser’s illustrations, which in several places are not appropriate for young or sensitive children. I for one would not have been a happy child to flip through the book and see this:

Values: At the end of the book you will find three Greek myths and two from Genesis. They seem to serve as a summation of sorts, since they are the most recognizable material, and I genuinely think Hamilton did a nice job of retaining some of the King James feel for the Biblical stories. However, I noted one GoodReads reviewer who seemed pleased to think that Hamilton wrapped with the seven-day creation as some kind of “take that!” to Christianity. I didn’t read it that way, but it’s something Christians might want to be aware of.

Hamilton was clearly interested in how different peoples see the world and promoted the value of cultural anthropology and awareness. For those curious to know the cultural breakdown for this book, I’ve arranged them by geographical location. Twenty five myths are included from twenty two cultures, with the Judaic and Greek selections getting split up as mentioned.

Five African myths, from Nigeria, Togo, Benin, Guinea and Zambia.
Five North American myths, of the Blackfoot, Huron, Maidu, Mayan and Eskimo people.
Four myths from Oceania: Australian aboriginal, Micronesian, Melanesian and Polynesian.
Three from the Middle East: Babylonian, Egyptian and Judaic.
Three from Asia: Chinese, northeastern Indian and Altaic Siberian.
Two from Europe: Norse and Greek.

Educational Properties: Besides the obvious comparative mythology angle I think this book could also be used to teach writing. Have your student select his or her favorite myth and retell it in fewer sentences. It would also be a good springboard to a fairly wide-ranging geography lesson.

End of Guide.

barry moser - eskimo woman — I don’t want to leave you with a picture of a cyclops, so here is the first woman, from the myth of Raven the Creator.

Having checked the Classical Christian List as I always do for authors, Virginia Hamilton appears twice – with a picture book entitled The Bells of Christmas and with The House of Dies Drear. Her reputation remains unassailable to this day. Would reading something else by her change my mind on her prose? What could you recommend me as her best work?

Up Next: Getting back to Jack London with a boys’ boating adventure no one remembers.

Historical Fiction: Time Enough for Drums

On May 11, 2019May 3, 2019 By nymithIn 1000 Good Books List, American Revolution, American writers, Historical Fiction, Romance, Set in New Jersey, U.S. States, Young Adult6 Comments

Headstrong teenage girl falls for dashing tutor against the sweeping backdrop of the American Revolution. Horses and pretty dresses also feature. Never say Ann Rinaldi didn’t know her audience.

Title: Time Enough for Drums
Author: Ann Rinaldi (1934-)
Original Publication Date: 1986
Edition: Laurel-Leaf Books (2000), 249 pages
Genre: Historical. Romance.
Ages: 13-15
First Sentence: The cold wind stung my face and brought tears to my eyes when I turned into it to look at my brother Dan, who stood next to me on the hill.

Trenton, New Jersey, 1775. Fifteen year old Jemima Emerson is engaged in a battle of wills with her hated tutor John Reid, an avowed Tory. Jem doesn’t understand why her parents insist on employing him despite their own devotion to the Revolutionary cause. Over the next two years war comes to the Emerson doorstep as Jem grows from an air-headed patriot to a strong young woman – and falls in love with the man she despised, who is not all he first seemed. Time Enough for Drums has a bit of a mini Gone With the Wind vibe as the spoiled girl is forged into a woman by the deprivations of war, while John Reid is more of a Mr. Knightley figure, battling Jemima for her own good – and certainly nothing like John Reed from Jane Eyre (okay, I’m done).

Ann Rinaldi had already published three contemporary young adult novels when, apparently with the encouragement of Avi, she made the jump to historical fiction and became the reigning queen of the genre for the next 20 years or so. Time Enough for Drums was selected as an ALA notable book and made the indispensable CC Education Booklist. While the romance between Jem and John Reid is a major plot thread, this is certainly a more serious historical novel than the cover would lead one to surmise.

The book contains a lengthy author’s note explaining the historical background and which portions she fictionalized. Also included are Rinaldi’s lengthy acknowledgements to various historical societies and a good-sized bibliography (of which only one title, Spies of the Revolution by Katherine and John Bakeless, Scholastic Book Services, would fit within the purview of this blog, though I doubt I’ll ever see a copy). Rinaldi clearly took her new genre very seriously and it shows.

She also seems to have had an unromantic understanding of teenage girls. Jemima begins this story as an absolute brat – she skips school, lies and snipes and says whatever petulant thing springs to mind. She is highly politicized (using ‘Tory’ like a curse word) but very immature, hating to study, ignorant of complications to her simple worldview and embracing the concept of “liberty” as a child does, as an excuse to never get married or work. She does start to grow up later in the book but this puts a lot of weight on the secondary characters to provide some rational discourse early on. Luckily, Jem’s parents and grandfathers fulfill this role and keep the story from sagging into undivided teen angst. Mr. Emerson with his love for breakfast table debates is an especially enjoyable character. From his conversation with oldest son Dan:

Father was about to say more when Dan stood up.
“I’d like to be excused, Father.”
“Excused? From what? Breakfast? You not hungry? Impossible.”
“Breakfast and services. I can’t go to church and pray for the king.”
“Ah.” Father took off his spectacles, intrigued by the possibility of the discussion. “Nobody expects you to pray for the king.”
“Reverend Panton always includes prayers for him in the services.”
“So he does. And do you know why?”
“Because Reverend Panton is a Tory.”
“Not so simple, Dan. As a condition of his ordination in the Church of England he has taken an oath of the king’s supremacy. To depart from that oath would be to break his solemn vows.”
“Well, I took no such vows. My loyalties are to our Cause.”
“As they should be. But we still belong to the Church of England. So we go to services. But we don’t have to join in the prayers for the king. Many remain silent.”
“I know that. But I also know that the whole parish is torn. And that church is a hotbed of controversy. Why go and practice hypocrisy? You always said hypocrisy is the worst sin of mankind.”
“Second only to rudeness, Dan. Civility is all we have left in times of war. As an officer, you should know that.”
“As an officer in the Continental army I know one thing, Father. That I have no place in a church where prayers are said for George the Third–or any king.”

Of course, to the target audience the major attraction of this novel is neither Jemima nor her family. It is of course arrogant John Reid, with his dark good looks and long legs. At fourteen, I would have found John Reid very appealing and I expect many of the girls who read this book felt the same. He’s manly, bitingly sarcastic and he gives Jem Shakespeare sonnets as a token of affection. Their romantic battle of wills is quite entertaining, though I did notice several killjoys on GoodReads talking about grooming and abuse. Listen, in the eighteenth century John Reid is a catch. He’s intelligent, hardworking, stalwart and mature, and he expects no less from Jemima – perish the thought. The only pity in this romance is that Jem’s attitude doesn’t begin to improve until she learns he isn’t really a Tory, which limits her character growth.

Ann Rinaldi uses short chapters and numerous subplots to maintain an illusion of swift pace in the early portion of the novel. These subplots range from Jem’s relationship with a Quaker boy to the various contributions the Emersons make to the war effort to Jem’s frosty interactions with her older sister. In the second half of the story, most of these extra characters are dispensed with and the tone darkens considerably. Jem deals with the British occupation, Hessian mercenaries and war deprivations without the aid of her family. I went into Time Enough for Drums expecting something highly romanticized but Rinaldi does convey the cost of war fairly well to her young audience.

hessian-soldiers — Hessian mercenaries. Maybe lose the hats.

The writing is decent overall, if a little uneven. The dialogue is intelligent and entertaining, as demonstrated above, but Jem’s narration does have its weaknesses: When he stopped [kissing me], I felt an anguish I had not known a body was capable of. And in that moment I possessed and lost the whole world and everything in it and was left with the feeling and the knowledge, which is love, that no matter how we give ourselves we always end up losing. That to love is to lose, the moment we agree to the bargain. And that, being human, we keep standing there wanting to lose more. Say what?

Historically, Time Enough for Drums is quite sound. Rinaldi takes care to note where she embellished, and the only thing that did not ring true for me was her fictional Quaker family, the Moores. When their son Raymond decides to enlist (kind of a big deal, I thought) and their daughter Betsy wants to marry Jem’s brother the Moore parents respond with a shrug. “For the most part we Quakers do not look kindly on our children marrying out,” says Mrs. Moore, and then proceeds to do just that.

On a larger scale, Rinaldi does very well, relating the fall of Fort Washington, the British occupation of Trenton and their subsequent rout by General Washington in an entertaining and relatable fashion. It would help girls learn an important piece of American military history in the guise of a romance and it does so with integrity. Recommended.

For the spoiler-packed Parental Guide this is what I believe is called a “clean romance.” Jem moons over Reid’s arms, legs and face. There’s some kissing, first with Raymond the lapsed Quaker and then, after Jem has “let him down easily,” with John Reid. They get engaged afterward. That’s it. If your daughter/niece/etc is just getting interested in romantic plotlines this is a good option.

Violence: This is a fairly soft-focus war novel with only off-screen deaths. For instance, Jem hears that Raymond the lapsed Quaker has died of dysentery in a letter. She witnesses the battle of Trenton, which amounts to confusion, cannon fire and men falling down. There’s an unspoken understanding of what could befall Jem in an occupied town, with one young officer later saying “Don’t you think, if I were going to ravish you, I would have tried it already?” The only surprising moment was the death of Jem’s father, a twist that did take me by surprise. Between chapters it is revealed that he was beaten to death and Jem viewed the body, related in about the same language (not how modern YA would play it).

Values: Jemima is taught to use a musket in the opening chapter. She’s not very good at it and never has to use it but it comforts her to know its an option.

Jem makes disparaging comments regarding feminine behaviour but it’s always thrown back in her face as an insult to her mother and her brother’s fiancee. She also insults the house slave Lucy, later realizing how poor that behaviour was. Jem’s parents are planning to free Lucy and later do so.

The Emerson family seems tight-knit at the beginning but gets blown apart by the war. Between death, madness and political estrangement, the family is a quarter of the size by the end and the Patriot/Tory divide (as represented by Jem and her sister) is not healed.

The teaser of my Laurel-Leaf edition gives away John Reid’s secret – he’s a spy for the Patriots – and while this is a rather dirty profession for a romantic lead he at least responds harshly when Jemima tries to admire his bravery.

Role Models: Jem’s parents and grandfathers model reason, hard work and stoicism – traits she eventually shares, though it takes time. Worth noting here is that Mrs. Emerson turns out to be a really horrible person, full stop. Feeling to blame for her husband’s death, she feigns madness and hides from the world, pretending not to recognize anyone and leaving her 16 year old daughter to struggle on alone. It’s an incredibly cold betrayal. Interestingly, her mother’s hollow justification that “your heart breaks in life no matter what decision you make” is rejected by Jem at the close of the novel. “I’ve learned that sometimes you just have to keep on going when you want to do nothing but drop. And that just doing the everyday things, like keeping a shop running or getting up every morning, will keep the world going until things can straighten out again.” Well done, Jem.

Educational Properties: Twofold. Time Enough for Drums is a good historical supplement to the Revolutionary War and if you live in or near New Jersey it might inspire a visit to some historic sites. There are references in the text to the complications of running a shop. It’s not a big part of the story but Jem does worry over blockades, inflation and military requisition of goods – all good things to learn about.

219250ef31e00de9ac28a520fcb44026 — MDCCLVIII = 1758.

Jem’s own education is vastly different to a modern teenager’s: French, Latin, penmanship, etiquette, geography and sums. Her required reading includes Shakespeare, Milton and Dryden while she reads Tom Jones on the sly. When she melts down over how boring her assignments are and disses Milton, John Reid responds in passive-aggressive style, gifting her a copy of Paradise Lost for her birthday. I laughed, anyway.

End of Guide.

I enjoyed Time Enough for Drums and do plan to review more of Ann Rinaldi’s novels in the future. Is she consistent? Can you recommend some of her best novels? Is Time Enough for Drums among them? Also, do homeschoolers and libraries still utilize her books or has she been forgotten? Comments greatly appreciated.

Up Next: We remain in the decade with a Newbery Honor Book from 1989. Must have been a thin year because there’s only two choices for what that could be.

Historical Fiction: The Scarlet Pimpernel

On May 4, 2019May 2, 2019 By nymithIn 1000 Good Books List, Adventure, British writers, Classics, French Revolution, Historical Fiction, Romance, Set in England, Set in Europe, Set in France1 Comment

A Hungarian Baroness writes a love letter to all things British starring a French heroine and incidentally creates one of the greatest swashbucklers of all time all without recourse to a single swordfight. This is why we read classics.

Title: The Scarlet Pimpernel (The Scarlet Pimpernel #1)
Author: Baroness Emmuska Orczy (1865-1947)
Original Publication Date: 1905
Edition: Puffin Classics (1997), 323 pages.
Genre: Historical. Romance. Swashbuckler.
Ages: 12-14
First Sentence: A surging, seething, murmuring crowd of beings that are human only in name, for to the eye and ear they seem naught but savage creatures, animated by vile passions and by the lust of vengeance and of hate.

One has to admire the effort taken by a publisher like Puffin. Their line of classics, complete and unabridged, gives a gentle yet firm admonishment to today’s parents: children, when competently taught and engaged, are highly capable readers and, once given a foundational vocabulary and cultural knowledge, many of the classics would appeal to them just as they did to previous generations. Teens looking for unsightly horror once sought out Frankenstein or The Phantom of the Opera while romantics read Jane Eyre. It is worth remembering that adventure and romance narratives WERE the young adult literature of past decades, among them the Baroness Orczy’s tale of love, espionage and a mysterious hero rescuing aristocrats from the bloody French Revolution…The Scarlet Pimpernel.

Half-empty glasses littered the table, unfolded napkins lay about, the chairs–turned towards one another in groups, of twos and threes–seemed like the seats of ghosts, in close conversation with one another. There were sets of two chairs–very close to one another–in the far corners of the room, which spoke of recent whispered flirtations, over cold game-pie and champagne; there were sets of three and four chairs, that recalled pleasant, animated discussions over the latest scandal; there were chairs straight in a row that still looked starchy, critical, acid, like antiquated dowagers; there were a few isolated, single chairs, close to the table, that spoke of gourmands intent on the most recherche dishes, and others overturned on the floor, that spoke volumes on the subject of my Lord Grenville’s cellars.
It was a ghostlike replica, in fact, of that fashionable gathering upstairs; a ghost that haunts every house where balls and good suppers are given; a picture drawn with white chalk on grey cardboard, dull and colourless, now that the bright silk dresses and gorgeously embroidered coats were no longer there to fill it in the foreground, and now that the candles flickered sleepily in their sockets.
…
It all looked so peaceful, so luxurious, and so still, that the keenest observer–a veritable prophet–could never have guessed that, at this present moment, that deserted supper-room was nothing but a trap laid for the capture of the most cunning and audacious plotter those stirring times had ever seen.

Just this one passage is proof enough that the Baroness, a native Hungarian who chose to write in English and spent the majority of her life in England, adored the English language. She was also a creative force in her time, penning her historical romance when “modernity” was the fashion and publishers scorned the result. Rather than giving up on her mysterious hero, the Baroness adapted her work into a play, adopting the “if you can’t go through, go around” idea. The play was such a success on stage that it proved there was a demand for old-fashioned heroism and the novel The Scarlet Pimpernel was published in 1905 and affectionately dedicated to the lead actors of the play. Johnston McCulley’s first Zorro story, The Curse of Capistrano, did not appear until 1919, leaving Baroness Orczy the clear originator of the “masked avenger” so widespread in 20th Century entertainment. Given how prevalent the trope has become, I have to wonder if anyone could possibly be surprised by the identity of the Scarlet Pimpernel anymore. Given how few characters are in the book, I also wonder when her original audience was expected to have it sussed out.

The Scarlet Pimpernel is told mostly from the perspective of Marguerite Blakeney, a Frenchwoman married to the wealthy English fop Sir Percy. The couple is not a happy one since the day of their marriage and now they avoid one another in private and wound each other in public. Marguerite’s only happiness is an occasional visit from her brother Armand. Approached by the French agent Chauvelin with evidence incriminating Armand as a traitor to the Revolution, Marguerite is blackmailed. To save her brother she must discover the location of the brave and cunning Scarlet Pimpernel and hand him over to Chauvelin. Marguerite must summon all her resourcefulness to save the hero all of England admires from her own betrayal.

This is fairly gripping stuff despite having very few action scenes. Baroness Orczy focuses on Marguerite’s internal struggle in the high stakes choice she must make: to save her brother she must send a noble man to the guillotine. Her emotions are believable and her motives sympathetic while the choices she must make are so dire that they keep the pages turning as she devises a spying method, tries to avoid getting caught, wonders whether to engage her husband on the matter and finally struggles to locate the Pimpernel before Chauvelin and his men – one woman alone in France. It’s very well done and livened up by Chauvelin’s always appearing at the worst possible moments and by occasional bouts of delightful realism little seen in books of this type. After all, when an epic chase is underway and the Channel must be crossed before it’s too late one hardly expects the mission to be called off on account of weather, yet heroes and villains alike are forced to wait out a sudden storm in a quiet seaside town. A sure drowning is of no use to the cause, yet so many adventure tales would prefer a dramatic battle with the elements where the practical Baroness chose to delay, thus exacerbating Marguerite’s fears and putting her in a spirit of desperation as things build to a finish.

The Scarlet Pimpernel is not without its flaws, however. Baroness Orczy falls prey to some repetitive language, more noticeable in some chapters than others. I lost track of how many times she referred to Percy’s inane laugh. In spite of the brilliantly ghoulish opening scene, she seems averse to violence and this lack of traditional derring-do, while not impairing the story as a whole, does leave the grand finale feeling somewhat deflated. The cinematic adaptations I have watched have each changed the ending to have greater suspense, and they also inject more scenes from the rescue missions performed by the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel, crafting a more conventional swashbuckler around the Baroness’ framework.

Though the ending disappointed me, there is plenty of satisfaction to be had in getting there and I was surprised by how reminiscent the set-up was to the young adult books I read as a teen. A nominally clever heroine interacting with two moody guys who are not all they might seem on the surface. It’s a common enough recipe and Chauvelin, whose impeccable manners never conflict with his gleeful villainy, is a splendid antagonist. Cosmetically, this whole plot could probably be instantly recycled with the addition of fangs or feminism, and the result would probably look a lot like the miniseries from 1999, which traded in guile for violence, gave Marguerite a more active role in events, equipped Chauvelin with a multilayered personality and hinted at some past attraction between the two. Baroness Orczy on the other hand maintains a strict demarcation between the just and the unjust in her story and I’m not holding my breath for a more accurate adaptation in the future.

Richard E. Grant 1999 — It did have its good points.

I enjoyed this novel a great deal and would highly recommend it for literary, conservative and homeschooling families. Perhaps best suited for those 12 to 14 year olds who are old enough to be interested in romance plotlines but who are not ready to try and field the more explicit material to be found in modern young adult. While there are something like a dozen sequels, none of them are held in the same regard. All are available on Project Gutenberg but I don’t have any plan to pursue them. The original has a fond place on my shelves and that will do for me.

Here follows the spoiler-packed Parental Guide:

Violence: For a novel of the French Revolution this is fairly genteel stuff, owing to the majority of the novel taking place in England and on a lonely stretch of French coast. Chapter One, told from the combined viewpoint of the salivating mobs of Paris, is a much different kettle of fish, full of ghoulish rejoicing and vivid little details, with the tricotteuses especially memorable: knitting and gossipping…whilst head after head fell beneath the knife, and they themselves got quite bespattered with the blood of those cursed aristos. Orczy paints a grim picture of the mob rule she had so feared from her youth and it colours the whole book the appropriate scarlet. Elsewhere there’s not much to speak of – a scuffle where two of the League are captured (later released anticlimactically offscreen) and a severe flogging toward the very end of the book, all described in mild language. Speaking of language, this book is replete with wonderfully quaint expressions of vexation: La! Lud! Zooks! Zounds! Demmed! Jackanapes! Odd’s life! One usage of “damn” late in the book is therefore a little surprising.

Values: The Scarlet Pimpernel takes a staunchly conservative view on the French Revolution with hints of disapproval at the Revolution’s atheism and full sympathy for the aristocrats. All things English are revered.

This being a romance, a great deal of attention is paid to the Blakeney’s strained marriage. They only have one big scene together, a fairly electric conversation as they hesitate – cautious, proud, suspicious and yet hurt by the distance between them as the omniscient narration shows their frustrated love and inability to voice it. It’s truly a marvel that so much can be achieved within one dialogue while the grievances and poor decisions made by Marguerite and Percy are a rich example of the immature ideals of “romance” that plague relationships. After Marguerite finally confesses the full history of her time as a Revolutionary this stinging dialogue follows:

Percy: “…at the time of the Marquis’ death, I entreated you for an explanation… I fancy that you refused me all explanation then, and demanded of my love a humiliating allegiance it was not prepared to give.”
“I wished to test your love for me, and it did not bear the test. You used to tell me that you drew the very breath of life but for me, and for love of me.”
“And to prove that love, you demanded that I should forfeit mine honour,” he said, whilst gradually his impassiveness seemed to leave him, his rigidity to relax; “that I should accept without murmur or question, as a dumb and submissive slave, every action of my mistress.”

If they’d just talked it out from the first instead of arranging tests of character and dishing out the silent treatment… However, heroism wins the day and brings about reconciliation and reaffirmed devotion between these two. The language is a treat, by the way. “Forfeit mine honour” is the sort of phrase I love but will probably never have opportunity to use.

Bravery is valued but the Baroness yet more highly prized cleverness, for the Scarlet Pimpernel never once confronts his enemies but instead uses disguise and subterfuge. The finale has him disguised as a Jew, relying on French anti-semitism to see him escape unnoticed. This doesn’t really work as a plot point since it shares identical tactics and motivation with the role of the pestilential old woman he played in the first scene, and it ends up feeling both drab and parodic – perhaps it had some comedic visual element that worked in theaters of the time, but subsequent filmmakers always change the ending to something more workable.

Role Models: The Scarlet Pimpernel achieves his ends without the use of violence, preferring trickery. His valor and daring are unmatched in the text and the men who follow him are loyal unto death, yet Baroness Orczy contrasts them starkly with Chauvelin’s men, who follow the boss’s directives with unbending zeal and what proves a disastrous lack of imagination. The League of the Pimpernel have that spark of independent thought which allows Sir Andrew Ffoulkes to accompany Marguerite on her mission to France without any input from his leader.

As for Marguerite, while she does make a fairly believable (if somewhat abrupt) transformation from a distant and disdainful wife to loving and self-sacrificing, several GoodReads reviewers took issue with her being described as the cleverest woman in Europe when she is so often slow on the uptake. However, I do believe this reference is made to social wit and repartee rather than intelligence as we would think of it today. From being surprised that accusing an aristocrat of treason would get him executed to completely missing all clues to her husband’s hidden depths, Marguerite is sadly just not that bright.

Educational Properties: This is one of the big reasons I recommend this book to homeschoolers. This would make a great kickstart to a unit on the French Revolution, perhaps compared and contrasted with the American Revolution or even (since so much of the book is about Britain) a nice civics lesson on the differences between the neighboring monarchies and the attendant results. This book would also make a good springboard to classic Hollywood filmmaking through the 1934 film, starring Leslie Howard, Merle Oberon and Raymond Massey. The film still holds up very well today and could itself make a good compare and contrast with The Mark of Zorro, as the two masked avengers share many qualities. Superheroes would also apply if your child likes them.

Creative exercises might include something like a map charting escape routes from Paris or some kind of Diary of an Aristo. The storm system halting all action could tie-in to the science of storms and famous shipwrecks in history. And if your child really enjoys the novel, A Tale of Two Cities could be a good future read.

End of Guide.

Overall this is an enjoyable yarn that’s held up well through the years. Let me know your thoughts on The Scarlet Pimpernel. Also, if you’ve read any of the sequels, am I wrong to dismiss them?

Up Next: We jump ahead to the 1980s and a historical novel by Ann Rinaldi.

‘To Repel Boarders’ and Why I Love Vintage Children’s Books

On May 1, 2019 By nymithIn Adventure, American writers, Read Alouds, Set in California, U.S. StatesLeave a comment

Welcome to The Western Corner of the Castle! For this inaugural post I thought I’d start with a short story that sums up many of the qualities I find appealing in older children’s books: ‘To Repel Boarders’ by Jack London, written for St. Nicholas magazine in June 1902. You can read it online here. It’s a simple boys’ boating adventure, starting with two lads, Bob (the narrator) and his “chum” Paul, onboard a boat and deep in a surprisingly relevant conversation for modern malcontents:

“No, honest, now, Bob, I’m sure I was born too late. The twentieth century’s no place for me. If I’d had my way–“
“You’d have been born in the sixteenth,” I broke in, laughing, “with Drake and Hawkins and Raleigh and the rest of the sea-kings.”
“You’re right!” Paul affirmed

The boys bemoan the times they live in – too soft, too “civilized” – and Bob makes casual reference to historical figures who are unlikely to be referenced by modern boys. Drake, Hawkins and Raleigh were Elizabethan privateers. Hawkins revamped the British navy (directly contributing to the defeat of the Spanish Armada), lobbied for and won a pay increase for sailors and, together with Drake, founded both a charity and a hospital for sick and aging mariners. These men sailed the globe as empire-builders and Drake became the first Englishman to circumnavigate the globe. They had skill and daring, were hated by the Spanish, loved by the British and did exactly the sort of bad things that are part of the privateer job description – they beat down the Irish and traded slaves and killed people. I doubt a modern author would choose these names for a boy to speak of admiringly, or indeed at all.

Sir Walter Raleigh also knew how to dress.

Continuing on, it is revealed that the boys, whose ages are unspecified, are out at midnight on their very own boat; a truly dazzling amount of freedom from a modern perspective. The boys have earned this privilege through the ability to delay and forego gratification. By saving money, by earning more, and by each of us foregoing a bicycle on his birthday, we had collected the purchase-price of the ‘Mist,’ a beamy twenty-eight footer, sloop-rigged, with baby topsail and centerboard. No idea what that last part means, but good for them. The boys learned boating from Paul’s father, a yachtsman who inspected the Mist for them, and now that the Mist was ours, we were hard at work adding to our knowledge. So they’re our for a week’s excursion and Paul’s complaining about how dull his middle-class life is. “And today we go from school to high school, and from high school to college, and then we go into the office or become doctors and things, and the only adventures we know about are the ones we read in books.”

As Paul persists in his lachrymose train of thought, however, we get at the heart of what he’s trying to say. When he talks of adventure he’s not using the phrase in its common manner. He’s not talking about a jolly lark and home by supper, he’s questioning his mettle. Since brave men as well as cowards can have moments of panic and since their lives are so sheltered and they only go amongst civilized men, it looks likely to Paul that he will never know what he would do faced with an emergency and he thirsts for that self-knowledge. It’s a sensation I suspect is very common to boys, which is why they are on average much higher risk-takers than girls, and Jack London clearly understood that impulse and did not condescend to the young audience he wrote for here.

The boys’ hypothetical adventure arrives when they accidentally run into what they assume must be mud-flats and discover too late that the Mist is caught on a fishing-net. The boys are chilled by the approach of a boat containing two foreign-looking fellows with sun-bronzed faces… For all the world they were like pirates stepped out of the pages of romance. And, to make the picture complete, their faces were distorted with anger, and each flourished a long knife. This exciting turn of the plot is soon revealed to be, not pirates per say, but instead a pair of volatile Italian fishermen attempting to board their vessel. Paul and Bob try to hold them off with the oars while explaining that they will pay for the damages, but the men are bigger and stronger. With the peace attempt failing, the boys have to use quick thinking, teamwork and a little sailor’s luck to repel the boarders and escape. Paul later admits to Bob how scared he was during the incident and the story ends.

This isn’t the greatest story in the world but as I read it I realized it really encapsulates a lot of the virtues you will find in vintage children’s literature in a few short pages:

The boys have been raised to a high standard of both independence and personal responsibility, with parents who are neither hovering nor neglectful and who are themselves portrayed as neither a hindrance nor as the enemy.

There are no female characters because the story does not require any.

The contemporary notion of what “traditional masculinity” used to mean is shown as the false parody it really is, because here is Jack London, the ultimate in masculinity, a real man’s man of a writer, spinning a tale where Paul freely admits to his best friend how shaken and scared he feels. Well, knock me over with a feather.

The Italian fishermen can be the villains of the piece without worry that some kid will take them as a representation of all Italians everywhere and base all future life decisions on the idea.

The child characters reference historical figures most modern people don’t have a clue about.

The scenario is unusual and escapist yet perfectly plausible – a backyard adventure of sorts, not speculative fiction (and don’t get me wrong; I like the speculative genres, but they have rather over-saturated the market).

The language is descriptive and nicely fashioned, and a parent could read it out loud without stumbling over fragmented sentences or anything that feels like practice prose.

I couldn’t find an image for the June issue, but I did find this picture of the July issue, containing *The Cruise of the Dazzler,* his full-length novel on the subjects of boating and boys.

My affection for these old books is the chief inspiration for this blog and I hope like-minded people, parents or otherwise, will find The Western Corner of the Castle helpful and informative as I delve into the many decades of children’s literature, with new book reviews every Saturday.