One for Sorrow – Mary Downing Hahn

On October 17, 2020September 27, 2020 By nymithIn American writers, Fantasy Fiction, Ghost Stories, Historical Fiction, Horror, Poison Pills, Set in Maryland, World War OneLeave a comment

This book begins with a run-on sentence. Prepare yourself for a rant, because there will be no prisoners taken, nor will I be using any spoiler warnings in this review…

Title: One for Sorrow: A Ghost Story
Author: Mary Downing Hahn (1937-)
Original Publication Date: 2017
Edition: Scholastic Inc. (2018), 293 pages
Genre: Horror. Fantasy. Historical fiction.
Ages: 10?
First Sentence: Although I didn’t realize it, my troubles began when we moved to Portman Street, and I became a student in the Pearce Academy for Girls, the finest school in the town of Mount Pleasant, according to father.

It’s 1918 and the Spanish Flu is making the rounds of America. Shy Annie Browne is new in school and on her first day is immediately “befriended” by Elsie Schneider, a lying, controlling, destructive little psycho whom all the other girls despise. Annie is prevented from making any other friends until Elsie is absent from school, at which point Annie is finally brought into the popular circle – and takes part in their ceaseless bullying of Elsie. There’s no doubt that Elsie brings it on herself, but she’s grossly outnumbered and Annie feels bad about her part in it (not that it stops her). Eventually, Elsie gets the flu and dies, only to return as an angry ghost with a particular grudge against Rosie, the leader of the clique, and guilt-stricken Annie.

Okay, so the writing in this book is absolutely horrible, beginning with the most brutally short paragraphs this side of a Guardian article. Sentences are clipped, descriptive prose is fleeting and the vocabulary is limited and therefore numbingly repetitive. Is this the style of today? If so, it’s been streamlined of everything that could possibly make reading a “chore.”

Just as I finished my oatmeal, Jane knocked on the door.
When I ran to meet her, she gave me a big hug. “Oh, I’m so glad you’re well enough to come back to school, Annie. I’ve missed you so much.”
“I’ve missed you, too.”

https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1348400532l/200891.jpg — I’m just going to recommend better books in these spaces today.

The prose is continually stuck at the level of early chapter books – and not even challenging ones at that. You’ll find more detailed verbiage in American Girl, Chet Gecko and Beverly Cleary stories for younger readers and that’s a death blow for this entire book. The concept – a ghost story kicked off by the Spanish Influenza at the end of the First World War – has so much potential, but it can’t be harnessed because the setting is never given any focus or weight. Hahn is a veteran writer; she’s been doing this since the 1980s and once won the Scott O’Dell award for historical fiction, but there’s no evidence here for why that would have ever been the case. Aside from the games girls played, the books they read and some basic info on wakes and horse-drawn hearses, there’s just nothing here. Maryland in 1918 is a vague backdrop for the ghostly plot, nothing more.

As far as the plot goes, Elsie’s ghost doesn’t appear until over 100 pages in – before that, One for Sorrow is a story about bullying, which means it should be character driven. It isn’t. Aside from Elsie and Rosie, almost none of the characters merit any physical description or personality. The clique of mean girls are only distinguishable by their degrees of guilt, with the “nice” ones (Annie and Jane) feeling more guilt and the “mean” ones (Eunice and Lucy) feeling less, with Rosie somewhere in the middle. Never mind that this sets up the phony idea that guilt is somehow a virtue; it can lead to virtue but just as easily to self-destruction. As such, none of these girls have any positive traits whatsoever. They are nasty, ill-mannered liars without a complete spine between them. Rosie comes up with a plan (inspired by the true story of Hahn’s mother) to get free sweets by going to wakes and pretending to know the dead people there. “We won’t be doing anything wrong,” Rosie said. “We’ll tell people how sorry we are, we’ll talk about how nice the dead person was, we’ll make the mourners feel better. That’s not taking advantage, that’s not lying.” And Annie more than once compares this horrid specimen to Anne Shirley, who never told a lie. But since most kids won’t (or can’t?) read Anne of Green Gables, I guess they’ll never know that.

As for Annie, she’s a complete drip with no spirit at all. One could be forgiven for assuming that she must improve at some point, being the protagonist and all, but you would be wrong. To the end she thinks (paraphrasing): “oh, why did I let Elsie make me do those terrible things?” She makes no effort to defeat Elsie’s ghost. She goes along with every stupid and cruel idea Rosie ever has, even one which nearly gets her killed, and then feels bad afterwards. She does not grow or alter through the book and never comes clean. When she stumbles upon a retired ghost hunter called Mrs. Jameson, it is by accident, and she simply follows all of Mrs. Jameson’s instructions thereafter with no agency of her own.

https://i0.wp.com/d.gr-assets.com/books/1293762966l/596878.jpg — The second book about Tiffany Aching. Excellent, complex and creepy.

So much for the characters. The plot begins with children being mean (usually by shoving and screaming insults at one another) and once Elsie’s ghost appears it’s just round two of the same spiel for more tedious pages of screaming and shoving. Ghost Elsie is exactly the same as living Elsie, only with more power. This should be unnerving but it isn’t. For instance, Elsie possesses Annie and makes her do terrible things, but Annie doesn’t black out (which would heighten the suspense by adding mystery) or have enough personality to make the behavioral change feel horrifying (a la Tiffany Aching in A Hat Full of Sky). The writing continues to be frenetic and flat, and Elsie explains from the start what she intends to do to Annie, so there’s no chance for the situation to ever feel dreadful or uncanny: Alone except for Elsie, I found myself removing the flu mask from my bookbag and tucking it into Rosie’s. I didn’t want to do it, but I couldn’t stop. It was as if I were outside my own body, watching myself.

One for Sorrow is a ghost story that has no sense of the unearthly and no allowance for anything bigger than the individual. A Scooby-Doo hoax would feel more authentic to this novel’s worldview because while this is set in 1918, all of the characters are from 2017.

https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1361116236l/500660.jpg — By These Ten Bones, featuring werewolves in medieval Scotland. Good and evil, religious belief, horror and the highlands. Worth checking out.

In 1918 a girl’s first thought about ghosts would involve the state of the soul, salvation and damnation. Annie would pray to God for aid and she would go to church – if for no other reason than the hope that Elsie couldn’t follow her there. But Annie doesn’t even think of any of those things, because Annie is from 2017. That’s why she mishears the phrase “at peace with the Lord” as “at the beach with the Lord” – because she’s never heard it before. She’s shocked at the notion of corporeal punishment because her parents and teachers also belong in 2017 (Miss Harrison, faced with a sea of screaming pupils disgracing her school’s orderly reputation, disciplines them by ending recess early). Muddying the waters are a couple of references to hell and the devil, which means Hahn wants us to think of these characters as Christian, even though they obviously aren’t.

So let’s try to assume that Annie and her entire social circle are the very height of the 1918 progressive movement. But just as there’s no spiritual element to her problem, there’s no historical one either – because guess what? Annie loves to read, so it really should occur to her that Elsie can’t be the world’s first ghost. It has to have happened before and there should be records, yet she does no research on spiritualists and ghost-hunters, and no one reading this book would gain from it any sense of the antiquity of hauntings. When Annie’s bad behavior gets out of hand, she’s sent to a convalescent home and it just so happens there’s a retired ghost-hunter on the premises. Mrs. Jameson drops hints that she’s an expert on the matter, but even at this stage there’s nothing bigger than the ghosts – in fact, Mrs. Jameson can’t “help” Elsie until she dies and becomes one herself. In other words, when Elsie causes Mrs. Jameson to fall and break a hip, it’s actually a good thing.

Lastly, although Elsie is clearly psychotic – revelling in every drop of pain she causes and before her death probably headed to a future abducting and murdering children – it turns out that she can only be defeated by empathy.

https://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/bartimaeus/images/1/1d/Trilogy.jpg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/200?cb=20140528201030 — Annie is basically a villain protagonist, but if that’s what you’re looking for, this is still the gold standard.

It’s not even genuine empathy. You know, the sort that would make this story less about the ghost and more about the life lessons the heroine learns about caring for others and standing up to bullies and whatnot. That would be corny but fairly typical. Instead, Mrs. Jameson flat-out instructs Annie to lie: “Be kind to her, earn her trust.” Annie loathes Elsie but pretends otherwise – and it’s the right thing to do. Elsie kills Mrs. Jameson – and it’s the right thing to do. Early on in the book, Elsie screams at Annie: “I’d give anything to have a mother like yours. It’s not fair that you have so much and I have nothing!” Herein lies the key to her defeat. She’s just an underprivileged child who wants her mommy and the whole book was a 200 page temper tantrum (culminating in the murder of a little old lady). It turns out that sympathizing with the motives of evil is what defeats it.

To be extra clear, Elsie does not show any mercy at the end of this book. She becomes “reachable” because she turns maudlin and self-pitying for a couple of minutes. She is not redeemed, but she gets everything she wanted, including a free ticket to the afterlife to reunite with her dead mother. She’s like Hannah in Thirteen Reasons Why, only she’s a literal ghost instead of tapes. She dies and is avenged. All of the adults feel sorry for her, all of the girls who wouldn’t be her friends are haunted by their actions and she never has to repent or live with any of her own choices.

The point of the Castle Project has always been to read as widely as possible in the field of children’s literature. I cannot proclaim the superiority of vintage options if I don’t read the modern alternatives. Well, here you go. On technical merits, One for Sorrow is abysmal. It is relentlessly unpleasant, philosophically poisonous and the bigger picture behind this book implies that speculative fiction in particular is on a steep decline. If there’s nothing bigger than our finite experience, if good and evil are relative based on the individual and if our entire history means nothing, we will be seeing more and more fantasies robbed of power and built on sand.

There was only one thing I appreciated about One for Sorrow and that was Hahn’s inclusion of many book titles which girls of the time would have read. After a while I began keeping a list, hoping that Hahn was sending some kind of message to her readers (she was born in the 1930s, so she has to be aware of what’s happened):

L.M. Montgomery – Anne of Green Gables; Anne’s House of Dreams
Johann D. Wyss – The Swiss Family Robinson
Wilkie Collins – The Moonstone; The Woman in White
Charles Dickens – The Pickwick Papers
Ouida – A Dog of Flanders
Zane Grey – Riders of the Purple Sage
Louisa May Alcott – Little Women
Booth Tarkington – Penrod; Seventeen; The Magnificent Ambersons
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow – ‘The Wreck of the Hesperus’
Victor Appleton – Tom Swift
Sir Walter Scott
Edgar Allan Poe
Nathaniel Hawthorne

Feast your eyes and think of what they call progress.

https://i0.wp.com/photo.goodreads.com/books/1177273274l/690609.jpg — Bonus points for including a cryptid – because people of the time believed in them, even if Rinaldi doesn’t.

See Also: The Coffin Quilt by Ann Rinaldi. Set during the Hatfield-McCoy feud, this books contains plenty of southern gothic atmosphere, morbid and murderous occurrences, actual historical detail and period-accurate belief systems.

Parental Guide, just for fun.

Violence: You’ve got your dead people, your rotting ghost, and your screaming, shoving, fat-shaming and throwing things (these bullies don’t have very original material). Without atmosphere or subtlety, the disturbing horror content ranges from merely annoying to unpleasant. Spookiness can be fun. This was neither.

Values: Be nice! Lying makes people feel better, so it’s good! Empathize at all costs, even with psychos – because if you’re only nice enough, they’ll totally leave you alone!

There’s also a dropped plotline in which the girls hate Elsie for being German, which sets up a commentary on xenophobia that is never utilized because that’s not really why they hate her. It’s just an extra way to insult her.

Role Models: Everyone is horrible. Oh and Annie gets a concussion from sledding. Headfirst. At night. In a cemetery. Just thought I’d mention it.

Educational Properties: If you or yours have already suffered through it, by all means hold a discussion on morality and the Spanish flu to try and make it worth your time. Otherwise, no.

End of Guide.

Mary Downing Hahn has written many ghost stories, and I can easily believe the ones from the 80s were better just because the trends in children’s publishing were healthier at the time. Judging an author from a single book is never entirely fair, but I have to admit that I’m sorely tempted to do so in this case.

Up Next: The vintage equivalent. An obscure Canadian choice from 1968 featuring another angry ghost girl. Let’s see how it stacks up, just as a nice note to go out on.

A Stranger Came Ashore – Mollie Hunter

On October 3, 2020September 27, 2020 By nymithIn British writers, Fantasy Fiction, Mermaids, Selkies and Others, Read Alouds, Set in Europe, Set in ShetlandLeave a comment

The cover makes this look fairly campy, but the actual story hearkens to North Sea folktales. Sign me up.

mollie hunter a stranger came ashore Title: A Stranger Came Ashore
Author: Mollie Hunter (1922-2012)
Original Publication Date: 1975
Edition: HarperTrophy (1995), 163 pages
Genre: Fantasy. Suspense.
Ages: 9-14
First Line: It was a while ago, in the days when they used to tell stories about creatures called the Selkie Folk.

It is a dark and stormy night on the Shetlands Islands when the Norwegian ship Bergen wrecks and a solitary man washes ashore in the isolated community of Black Ness. Calling himself Finn Learson, the good-looking young man secures shelter in the Henderson household, charming the family and their neighbours and quietly making himself indispensable while paying court to his hosts’ lovely daughter Elspeth. Only twelve year old Robbie Henderson finds it hard to trust the stranger. As omens appear in the funeral fire and Elspeth grows listless, Robbie begins to see something menacing behind Finn’s ready smile. Concerned for his sister, Robbie sets out to discover the truth about the stranger – and when he does, he will need to find help, or Elspeth will suffer a terrible fate…

https://thekelpiespearls.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/mollie_hunter2.jpg — Scottish author Maureen Mollie Hunter McIlwraith.

The first thing to understand about A Stranger Came Ashore is that it is deliberately written in the style of an oral folktale. Mollie Hunter was Scottish and she tried to recreate the feel of Shetland customs and concerns; as such, there is a distinct cadence to the writing, a pattern of speech rather than straight narrative. It makes the novel feel distinctly personal, as a tale told directly to you, yet it’s also distancing – this is a tale of a while ago and Hunter does not play up the drama. Even knowing what to expect, the effect is momentarily very strange and perhaps even a deal-breaker for those expecting the techniques of modern storytelling. However, once you grow accustomed to the style, it becomes both lilting and propulsive, such that I have more trouble deciding where to end my quotes than where to start.

So Robbie swithered and swayed in the opinion that was never asked, and meanwhile, Finn Learson was getting acquainted with all the rest of the people in Black Ness. Very easy he found this, too, for all that he was a man of few words, since there is nothing Shetlanders enjoy better than visiting back and forward in one another’s houses.
Sooner or later also, on such occasions, out will come the fiddle. All the young folk–and very often some of those that are not so young–will get up to have a dance; and the first evening that this was the way of things in the Hendersons’ house, Finn Learson showed the lightest, neatest foot in the whole company.
He was merry as a grig, too, clapping his hands in time to the fiddling, white teeth flashing all the time in a laugh, eyes glittering like two great dark fires in his handsome head. No amount of leaping and whirling seemed to tire him, either; and curiously looking on at this with Robbie and Janet, Old Da remarked,
“Well, there’s one stranger that knows how to make himself at home on the islands!”

Hunter laces this book with details of Shetland culture, including their holiday traditions, superstitions, social conventions, the tug of war between pagan and Christian customs, the threat of the press gang, and all the way down to floor plans and furniture: Old-fashioned beds for the islanders were made like a large box complete with a lid on top and a sliding door on one side. There were air-holes in the sliding doors, neatly pierced in the shapes of hearts and diamonds; the box beds themselves stood on legs that raised them above drafts… This gives A Stranger Came Ashore plenty of crossover appeal between kids who like the particular atmosphere of British fantasy and kids who enjoy historical fiction. In other words, I would have loved it growing up if I’d only known it existed.

https://i2.wp.com/dymusings.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/p1000277.jpg?resize=640%2C360 — A Shetland box bed.

The fantasy elements of A Stranger came Ashore are built on ancient motifs. The Great Selkie is drawn ashore by the gold of a young girl’s hair – he has the power to charm the girl and her family, but is bound to speak only truth. This makes Finn Learson a trickster who nevertheless offers recompense to the families he hurts as he willingly takes on the work of the village, and further insists that the Hendersons accept an ancient gold coin, “for it may still cost you more than you think to have me here.” His sea-magic is powerful, but opposed by other elements and Robbie’s role in the story is to be the messenger and summon those other elements. It’s fairly mythic for such a quick read.

Unfortunately, Robbie does have a tendency to be outclassed and upstaged from his own story, as does Elspeth, the damsel in distress who never even realises she’s in danger. Finn Learson, with his charming facade and careful words, owns the book – at least until the final third when Yarl Corbie shows up.

Yarl is both the best and worst thing about A Stranger Came Ashore. He’s a bitter wizard who lost his love to the Great Selkie years ago, and now grinds along as the village schoolteacher, terrifying his pupils and inspiring wild rumours of ancient magic. It’s easy to understand why Robbie is so reluctant to approach such an intimidating and possibly crazy man – and this also forms a smart contrast with the smiling, seductive Finn, for Yarl Corbie acts like a villain but in truth plays the hero. From his first appearance this book is his:

https://th.bing.com/th/id/OIP.-UBQ0Oxy_L7qY1kr7NpO-wHaDF?pid=Api&rs=1 — No idea why I thought of this guy…

To begin with, he had the nickname of Yarl Corbie, for that is the nickname the raven has in Shetland, and he looked like nothing so much as a huge raven.
His nose was big and beaky. His skin was swarthy. His eyes glittered in a sharp and knowing way. He was tall, but very thin and stooped, and he dressed always in black. Besides which, he always wore a tattered, black, schoolmaster’s gown that flapped from his shoulders like a raven’s wings. And like the raven, he was solitary in his habits.
There was yet another reason, however, for his nickname of Yarl Corbie. Long ago, it was said, in the days when this schoolmaster was still only an unchristened child, he had been fed on broth made from the bodies of two ravens. This, it was also said, had gifted him with all the powers of a wizard; and it was this, of course, which had given Robbie his idea.
Yet here was the snag of it all. Robbie was deadly afraid of Yarl Corbie; for Robbie, it has to be remembered, was twelve years old at that time, which was certainly not old enough for him to have lost his fear of wizards. It has to be remembered too, that Robbie was Shetland born and bred; which meant that deep, deep down in his blood and in his bones there lived the Shetlander’s ancient fear of the raven and its croaking cry of death.

The fact that this quote was pulled from page 98, over halfway into the novel, gives rise to the only significant problem I have with A Stranger Came Ashore. There is no earlier appearance by the schoolmaster, no brief cameo or reference to offer any hint that this man could hold a solution to Robbie’s problem. The lack of foreshadowing guarantees that his fortuitous knowledge of the Great Selkie feels like a deus ex machina rather than an organic part of the worldbuilding. He’s so cool that I didn’t really mind, but it’s a significant dramatic flaw that could have been cleared up with just one line, and I wish an editor had intervened on this point.

This is the only notable failing of the book and it’s not one likely to bother its intended young audience. Children who’ve enjoyed hearing folktales read to them will find here a longer fiction with the same feel, and Mollie Hunter’s style lends itself very well to reading aloud besides. There is menace and suspense, but it has none of the love for grotesquerie found in something like Coraline and is leisurely paced and intelligently written, like much of 70s middle grade. A fine addition to your family’s fantasy collection, especially if you prize a northern setting.

https://magdalenaperks.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/800px-crofthouse-shetland.jpg — Traditional homestead, looks like a postcard possibly.

See Also: Seven Tears Into the Sea for a defanged teen romance take on selkies. The Stones are Hatching for a nihilistic deconstruction of British folklore and boy heroes.

Parental Guide and spoilers for the ending.

Violence: Very mild. There are some eerie omens and a vision of Elspeth dressed for some deathly bridal. It is revealed that girls who go to the Great Selkie’s underwater palace eventually grow homesick and drown when they attempt to return to the land, which makes for some unsettling imagery.

One seaside brawl. Yarl Corbie has a knife he likes to wave around and he easily scares Robbie into keeping silent about his wizardry. In the end Yarl becomes a raven and blinds Finn in one eye, sending the Selkie back to the sea.

Values: Lots of Shetland folk traditions are included here, and given that it’s rather hard to find children’s books set on the Shetland Islands, that’s enough for a recommendation already. Although it’s not a retelling, it is a folktale by nature and so is pro family and tradition.

Role Models: Robbie is a good, imaginative boy but also timid and superstitious, and so the only way he can save his sister is to conquer his fears one by one – of the dark, the schoolmaster and the stranger. He rises to the challenge yet also feels compassion for his family’s defeated enemy at the last when he believes Yarl Corbie fully blinded the Great Selkie.

“But a selkie hunts with its eyes,” he exclaimed. “And so you might as well say you’ve doomed him to starve to death!”
“Would that be so bad?” Yarl Corbie asked.
“I don’t know,” Robbie admitted. “But it’s cruel, all the same.”
Yarl Corbie shrugged. “The thought does you credit, I suppose,” he said drily.

Educational Properties: It would springboard nicely into a research session on the Islands, whose history and culture is not well known, as well as selkie folklore.

End of Guide.

It will probably be a while before I come across any more of Hunter’s books – although a prolific writer, relatively few of hers have migrated to America and many appear out of print. However, she’s definitely on my list to watch out for.

The Midnight Fox – Betsy Byars

On July 25, 2020July 19, 2020 By nymithIn Adventure, American writers, Animal Stories, Coming-of-Age Stories, Fox Stories, Read Alouds, Realistic FictionLeave a comment

It turns out that my first choice for Betsy Byars was her own favorite among her many books. For those who are also wondering where to begin with Byars, this is quite a good choice.

Putting the finishing touches on this review, I discovered that both she and her illustrator have passed away this year – a clear loss to children’s literature.

midnight fox cover, byars Title: The Midnight Fox
Author: Betsy Byars (1928-2020)
Illustrator: Ann Grifalconi (1929-2020)
Original Publication Date: 1968
Edition: Puffin Books (1981), 159 pages
Genre: Realistic Fiction. Animal stories.
Ages: 8-12
First Line: Sometimes at night when the rain is beating against the windows of my room, I think about that summer on the farm.

The summer before Tom turns ten, his parents send him to stay with his Aunt Millie, Uncle Fred and cousin Hazeline for a couple of months while they embark on a cycling tour of Europe. Tom is dismayed – as a comfortable city boy he’s sure to be miserable on Fred and Millie’s farm. He’s scared of animals and he misses his best friend Petie Burkis every day. Things change for the better when he catches a glimpse of an elusive black fox, but foxes are not welcome animals on a farm…

The Midnight Fox lacks a shiny award sticker on the cover and so I figured the fox’s chance of living to the end of the book was actually fairly high, although Byars got me second-guessing myself several times before it was finished – if your main concern in animal stories is whether the headlining critter lives or dies, please skip to the Violence section of the Parental Guide below.

While the fox plotline creates drama and suspense, the bulk of The Midnight Fox is a quiet and introspective portrait of a lonely nine year old boy on a depressing vacation – comparisons to my previous Castle read, Junonia (a quiet and introspective portrait of a lonely nine year old girl on a depressing vacation), are inevitable. So how does the vintage choice stand up?

Two of the most notable differences between Betsy Byars and Kevin Henkes are that Byars makes use of humour throughout her book and she allows her child protagonist to have actual interests. Henkes focused completely on the emotions of his heroine Alice, while her life back home, friends or any hobbies outside of shell collecting were barely acknowledged. She got “books” for her birthday; Tom actually reads:

I would go over to Petie’s and he would be sitting on the porch reading. He would be so interested in the book that he wouldn’t even look up to see who I was.
“What are you reading, Petie?”
He would lift the book so I could see the title and it would be something like Mystery of the Deep.
“Can I read it when you’re through?”
He would nod.
“How much more you got?”
Still without missing a word, he would flip the remaining pages.
“Well, hurry up, will you?”
He would nod again, but Petie Burkis had never hurried through a book in his life. So I would wait. And wait. And finally, when I was ready to go out and get the book out of the library myself, then he would come over and give it to me.

Tom has an endearing range of hobbies besides, whether inventing games with Petie, building models, daydreaming or watching the kind of movies that show on “Chiller Theater.” He has a quirky and boyish view of the world which buoys up what would otherwise be a fairly dour and strait-laced narrative. He certainly has a melancholic disposition, but he isn’t depressed. Of course, faulting Henkes for depicting pre-teen depression would be unfair – it was all but unknown in the 60s, and seems to be everywhere today. So in spite of their many similarities, The Midnight Fox and Junonia are closer to apples and oranges than they appear. After all, realistic fiction is framed by the limits of reality – if reality is that pre-teen depression is skyrocketing and many kids are hemmed in by loneliness, anxiety and obsessively structured playtime, novels like The Midnight Fox aren’t going to be written anymore. However, this ensures that Byars is by far the more entertaining choice in this instance.

fox sighting — Ann Grifalconi gives a distinctive look to the story.

One of her best tricks within this novel is to keep Tom’s best friend Petie a presence throughout the book, mentioned with great frequency – true friendships matter even if they have no bearing on the plot. Much of the novel’s accompanying humour comes from Tom’s anecdotes of Petie, alongside his self-deprecating image of what a ridiculous figure he makes on the farm:

I continued to walk until I came out of the forest, right by the pasture where the cows were grazing. They were all together in the shade of the trees, and they turned in a body and looked at me.
I had thought, when I first saw these cows from a distance, that if I ever had to do a circus act, I would get about six cows like these and train them. They would be called The Cow Family Dancers, and I would come out in an Alpine suit with an accordion, and as I would start to play, the cows would come dancing out into the circus arena, not trotting like horses, but doing peasant steps, turning and clicking their heels and tossing their heads.
Now that I saw the cows at close range I abandoned this idea for all time and began to walk slowly past them. “Cows do not attack people. Cows do not attack people. Cows do not attack people,” I said to myself as I passed, and then, completely against my will, I found myself making up a Petie Burkis news story:
COW ATTACKS BOY–SCIENTISTS BAFFLED
Scientists in Clinton County were baffled today by the report that a cow attacked a young boy. The young boy, who was passing the cow in a respectful manner, was able to give no reason for the attack. “She just came at me,” he managed to whisper before he was driven to the hospital. No one has been able to reach the parents of the young boy, as they are having a vacation in Europe.

fox and kit — Grifalconi’s stylized foxes.

A positive change comes over Tom after he catches a glimpse of the black fox, hunting for her sole surviving kit. At first he’s certain that he only dreamed it, not knowing that foxes could even come in black, and afterwards he takes an interest in fox habitat and hunting patterns, forging a link through this new rural hobby with nature, gaining the ability to hold still and really look at the world around him. His terror of domestic animals is replaced by a fascination with wildlife, and he becomes calmer and braver because of it. This is a fairly standard character progression in children’s literature, probably because of how true it is, and it works very well here:

I had found a hornets’ nest like a huge gray shield in a tree. I had found a bird’s nest, low in a bush, with five pale-blue eggs and no mother to hatch them. I had found seven places where chipmunks lived. I had found a brown owl who never moved from one certain limb of one certain tree. I had heard a tree, split by lightning years ago, suddenly topple and crash to the ground, and I ran and got there in time to see a disgruntled possum run down the broken tree and into the woods. But I did not find the place where the black fox lived.

Byars has an enjoyable writing style, a bit rambling but oddly graceful. Her writing advice was to always read your own prose out loud and that pays dividends here. The Midnight Fox does not suffer from any dry prose and it is personal and character-driven while still being amusing. The story is sure to please nature-loving kids, especially if they’ve already enjoyed other vintage options.

See Also: Junonia by Kevin Henkes. Same issues, different generation.

Parental Guide has only one important spoiler. Does the fox live?

Violence: Tom’s cousin Hazeline reluctantly talks about a recent incident with a farmer, a poultry farm and a family of foxes:

“…underneath the moss was an open trap, and that very night the fox came by and he saw the raw chicken and he put his foot right on that moss and sprung the trap. Bingo!”
“Oh.”
“End of fox,” she said. “That was about two weeks ago, and then he found the den and went and got a stick of dynamite and blew it up and that was the end of the baby foxes.”
“Oh.” It was one of those stories that you’re sorry afterward that you made somebody tell you.

There is some real pathos to the separation of the foxes, with the mother fox trying to bring food to the cage her kit is kept in. Animal lovers will be relieved that they survive.

Values: Hunting is not shown in a positive light, although Byars never turns this into a polemic. Tom does not attack or condemn his uncle, nor does he judge his aunt for wanting her poultry protected – he just doesn’t want the foxes to die and so he makes a stand.

Role Models: Tom is a worrier from the start, but he’s well-behaved and tries to keep his petulance under wraps. He’s creative and observant, self-contained and self-aware. In the end, he gets the classic coming-of-age moment of conquering his fears to save something that matters to him.

Tom’s finds his relatives very hard to relate to, but they aren’t villains. Uncle Fred’s understated response to Tom’s defiance is quite heartwarming, the more so since this is not a sentimental story.

Educational Properties: Certainly there’s a fair amount of discussion on the life cycle of the fox, which would tie this to a nature study. With its extremely small cast and limited setting, The Midnight Fox would also be a good choice for mapping out a novel.

End of Guide.

This was an unexpectedly enjoyable book and I shall certainly be keeping an eye out for more Betsy Byars. She went on from this to win a Newbery, an Edgar and the National Book Award and her books regularly appear in used bookstores (or they did before 2020 happened, anyway).

Up Next: Returning to the ongoing saga of Misty of Chincoteague.

Junonia – Kevin Henkes

On July 18, 2020June 22, 2020 By nymithIn American writers, Coming-of-Age Stories, Realistic Fiction, Set in FloridaLeave a comment

Diagnostic.

Title: Junonia
Author: Kevin Henkes
Illustrator: Kevin Henkes
Original Publication Date: 2011
Edition: Greenwillow Books/HarperCollins (2011), 176 pages
Genre: Realistic Fiction.
Ages: 8-10
First Line: When Alice Rice and her parents were halfway across the bridge, Alice felt strange.

Alice is an only child. She has no grandparents, aunts, uncles or cousins. Every year she and her parents go on a seaside vacation to Sanibel Island in Florida, where Alice celebrates her birthday and hunts for seashells, including the rare junonia – which she hopes to finally find this year, for her tenth birthday. Alice has created an extended family out of the other yearly vacationers who share neighboring cottages, but this year several of them aren’t coming and her “aunt” Kate is bringing a new boyfriend and his six year old daughter Mallory, who is in anguish over her mother leaving her to go live in France. Alice watches her make-believe family turn into strangers while her birthday is overshadowed by Mallory’s misery and subsequent bad behaviour. Will everything still turn out alright?

Junonia bird, Kevin Henkes — One of Junonia’s seaside vignettes.

Junonia has an eye catching cover and pretty blue ink illustrations heading every chapter, giving it an endearing appearance of vintage charm. It’s written by Caldecott winner (and 2020 recipient of the Award Formerly Known as the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award) Kevin Henkes, a beloved author/illustrator of picture books. He has also won Newbery Honors for two of his middle grade novels. Junonia has an idyllic setting, thoughtful pace and great perception, giving voice to the emotional life of a lonely and imaginative little girl. It suffers from none of the grittiness and gimmickry that bog down many modern books for pre-teens, and its retro vibe will appeal to cautious parents – but in spite of the sweetly vintage packaging, Junonia carries a hefty dose of spiritual malaise which seeps into every corner of this melancholic little book.

Let’s start with Alice, who is about to turn ten and is depressed. I’m really not sure what else to call this: Being low in the kayak made the water seem so vast and deep, the sky so far and wide. Alice felt like a dust mite compared to all of it. She whispered, “It’s so big.”
Her mother turned her head partway and nodded.
Alice wanted to ask her: Do you ever feel too small to matter? But she didn’t.

Her previous summer vacations were always magical, but this year isn’t and she senses that right from the moment they arrive. Although plenty of nice things do happen this year, the happiness she’d felt was as thin as an eggshell, and as easily broken. She feels resentment toward even the smallest changes, she struggles with body image and awkwardness, and she’s waiting for something wonderful to happen (symbolized by the junonia) which fails to materialize. She is incredibly lonely: Kate was the closest thing Alice had to a relative. It would be different this year. Every other year, Kate had stayed with Alice’s family in their pink cottage, sleeping on the sofa in the living room. Every other year, Alice had had Kate to herself; she hadn’t had to share her with anyone except her parents. Her parents are older, non-religious, they don’t appear to have any pets waiting back home, Alice had given up wanting a brother or sister, and it’s nearly the end of the book before a best friend Libby is even mentioned. She’s never been allowed to walk down to the beach alone. Her parents are financially well off, however, and so she has everything that she really needs – like a Florida vacation and stacks of birthday presents.

Alice is a well-drawn and believable character whose constantly fluctuating inner life is related very clearly. Henkes is renowned for his ability to convey the inner life of children and several GoodReads reviewers referred to this book as Mrs. Dalloway for ten year olds. Aside from the question of whether ten year olds really need their own Mrs. Dalloway, I had no trouble believing in Alice as a real person and I felt great sympathy for her immediately. Henkes uses small details which accumulate into a portrait – not only for Alice, but also the smaller role of Mallory.

Mallory introduces herself by introducing her doll and we (and Alice) can immediately tell that something has gone wrong in the little girl’s life. “Munchkey’s mother went to sea in a pot, and she’s been missing for weeks,” Mallory said, her voice high and thin. “She might never come back.” The little girl proceeds to annoy and trouble Alice, and they never quite become friends. Alice doesn’t seem to have much experience with younger kids (wonder why) and she struggles not to be resentful, while Mallory grasps at any little thing that makes her happy, whether it belongs to her or not. Alice is capable of being patient and compassionate but finds it difficult, especially as Mallory has several breakdowns that spoil everyone’s vacation fun. Many reviewers have expressed annoyance towards both girls for being sullen, but in all honesty they were the only two characters in Junonia that I could stand. Why should they be expected to cavort through their summer vacation like the Bobbsey Twins when the adults in their lives have utterly failed to provide them any of the things those children could rely on?

Henkes depicts the pain, confusion and despondency these girls are dealing with expertly, informing every small moment (and Junonia is nothing but a book of small moments). However, in contrast to books from even the 80s and 90s, neither he nor any of his characters treat the divorce of Mallory’s parents as something unusual – because these days it isn’t. It’s simply a part of life, and of course it hurts kids but they just don’t realize how complicated the situation is. Alice felt as if she had only a dim understanding of adult life. That’s all we are given of her inner thoughts when “aunt” Kate decides to bail. Kate, who chose to start a relationship with a single father, acts sensitive about it but in the end she blames Mallory for ruining everyone’s day. “Next year,” said Kate. “Next year will be better.” She came forward for hugs. “Maybe I’ll be alone.” No accountability.

All of this is incredibly realistic. It’s not uplifting or pretty, but it can’t be said that Henkes puts a foot wrong in depicting this world. His prose is simple and efficient, filled with small details that ring true; however, I did not find it to be as graceful or poetic as I’d heard it described. In fact, I was driven slightly insane by Henkes’s love of similes, which seem to be his go-to literary flourish:

Within minutes Alice was asleep … her hands curled at her chin like unusual, smooth pink seashells.

Banks of clouds sat on the western horizon like great cottony hedgerows with deep lilac shadows.

At the horizon, clouds crammed the sky like rolls of cotton smashed against glass. But up above, the sky was a bright blue bowl.

Seconds earlier, Alice had been thinking that the surface of the water was like glossy, peaked blue-green icing sprinkled with truckloads of sugar.

She watched the endless procession of long waves rolling toward the shore. The crests were white and foamy. The hollows between the crests were deep, like trenches scooped out by a huge shovel. After a while, she saw the crests as strips of lace laid out on folds of steel blue cloth.

Junonia seascape, Henkes — These similes are less effective than his art.

Junonia is a sad little book. This effect owes much to the realism of the story, as Henkes never cheats, never offers a scenario that is even remotely unlikely – everything here can happen, does happen. There’s a subtle and omnipresent depression going on. Lonely and introspective preteen girls might have an easier time relating to Alice than to the Railway Children or the Melendys, but maybe those older books would introduce or inspire a different value system, something more sustaining than Junonia, which simply reflects back to its young readers, honestly and accurately, the rising tide of pre-teen depression, for which “adopting” a sea turtle just isn’t much of a consolation prize.

See Also: The Hundred Dresses, another melancholy realistic story, only with better writing and a greater degree of hope.

Parental Guide.

Violence: None. Not even any bad language outside of one use of “bloody hell.”

Values: Life is disappointing and its best to accept that with grace. Loneliness and disillusionment are a part of life. Change is inevitable. It’s good to be understanding of others. It’s important to see yourself in a positive light, because everyone is pretty in their own way.

Junonia is almost aggressively secular at points, with Alice inventing a sea goddess called Junonia after deciding out of the blue that God wasn’t an old man in flowing robes with a white beard and a temper to beware of. An old man who didn’t come to the rescue during wars or when kids got picked on at school. Her new and improved perfect, personal god is then discarded like a disappointing toy when things go wrong. …it was a silly waste of time to think about a god named Junonia. Obviously she, Junonia, didn’t exist. She hadn’t saved Alice’s party from being spoiled, and she hadn’t stopped Mallory from becoming a thief. When it turns out that Mallory didn’t steal anything, Alice doesn’t reflect back on this dismissal.

Also of note is the final passage of the book, which put me so much in mind of the ending of Little House in the Big Woods that I immediately got out my copy and compared, only to notice a significant difference.

Little House: She thought to herself, “This is now.”
She was glad that the cosy house, and Pa and Ma and the firelight and the music, were now. They could not be forgotten, she thought, because now is now. It can never be a long time ago.

Henkes: Suddenly she felt as if she were the center of everything, like the sun. She was thinking: Here I am. I have my parents. We’re alone together. I will never be old. I will never die. It’s right now. I’m ten.

Laura falls into the stillness of the present because she cannot believe it will ever be forgotten. Alice falls into the stillness of the present because she’s gone from looking forward to turning ten, to no longer wanting to grow up. What’s the opposite of coming-of-age?

Role Models: Alice is a good kid trying to navigate life with few resources at her disposal. The same goes for Mallory times ten. The ghost of an ideal family is still felt, but it’s treated as something unreasonable to expect. The entire cast of vacationers and absentees are well-off, and small families are an unquestioned norm. Alice’s parents are well-meaning and still together, but their idea of a fun birthday surprise is to “give” their daughter a sea turtle, so they can show how much they love the environment together or something.

Junonia shells

Educational Properties: There’s a lot of talk throughout the book of sea shells and Henkes provides a hand drawn chart of them that was very helpful and appreciated. The text includes almost no scientific info on the local flora and fauna though, because Alice just isn’t much of a nerd. This is also reflected in the sea goddess subplot; Alice could have chosen to invest in any of a dozen mythological sea gods and goddesses, which would at least have offered her some cultural backbone, yet she conjured up a New Age alternative. In fact, the phrase Alice got books pretty much sums up what you won’t find here, as Henkes puts all his investment in Alice’s emotions rather than her interests.

Junonia is a successful example of a book that actually could be used to teach some empathy, due to its absolute commitment to realism. Lonely middle-class white kids whose parents take them on vacation and shower them with creature comforts are not high on the prescribed list of “people to feel sorry for,” yet a girl with siblings might take them less for granted after reading about Alice’s imaginary family. It might make a reasonable mother/daughter book choice, although there are many better options out there.

End of Guide.

Fans of modern realistic fiction would undoubtedly be the best fit for Junonia. Those who prefer a real vintage style and outlook will be disappointed. I don’t see much harm in the book when taken by itself, but if Junonia is indicative of the themes in modern middle-grade stories – loneliness, depression, dysfunction, disillusion – then well-adjusted children are really being left out in the cold.

I wasn’t a fan of Henkes’s writing in this book, but I admired his honesty and maintain a policy of never judging authors by just one work – especially when, like Junonia, it’s one of their minor endeavors. Henkes won two Newbery Honors and I won’t make any further pronouncements on his writing style until I’ve tried them both out.

Up Next: The vintage equivalent with a novel by Betsy Byars.

The Cat Who Wished to Be a Man – Lloyd Alexander

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Parental Guide.

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

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

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

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

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

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

End of Guide.

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

Up Next: A Newbery Honor Book by Marguerite Henry.

Historical Fiction: Black Duck

On August 24, 2019August 24, 2019 By nymithIn American writers, Great Depression, Historical Fiction, Nautical Novels, Set in Rhode Island, U.S. StatesLeave a comment

All authors of historical fiction should make proper scholarly use of the Author’s Note – no matter what age group they’re writing for. Aside from that, this is an entertaining novel that only took me a day and a half to read.

Title: Black Duck
Author: Janet Taylor Lisle (1947-)
Original Publication Date: 2006
Edition: Philomel Books/Sleuth (2006), 252 pages
Genre: Historical Fiction. Mystery.
Ages: 10-12
First Sentence: Newport Daily Journal, December 30, 1929: COAST GUARDS KILL THREE SUSPECTED RUM RUNNERS.

It’s 1929, Rhode Island, and rum running is in full swing, with every local family forced to pick a side – easy money on the wrong side of the law, or ratting out the neighbours to what could be the crooked side of the law. Teenagers Ruben and Jeddy are best friends but Jeddy’s father is the local police chief while Ruben’s father is slowly getting ensnared in the bootlegging industry, despite his efforts to remain neutral. One day, Ruben and Jeddy find a dead man in an evening suit washed up on the beach, but by the time they’ve returned with a cop the body’s vanished. Ruben made the mistake of searching the body and soon finds himself plunged into the dangerous underworld of the rum runners, who think he’s taken something valuable from the corpse. Isolated from Jeddy as well as his own father, Ruben gains a new ally in the dashing captain of the Black Duck, the most elusive of the smugglers, but one whose tiny local outfit is threatened by the encroaching big-city operations. Ruben, in way over his head in a world of warring criminal factions and shifting loyalties, becomes the only witness to a terrible night on the water…

https://www.janettaylorlisle.com/images/photos/jtl_sunroom_300dpi_bw.jpg — Janet Taylor Lisle.

This middle-grade novel by Janet Taylor Lisle (who won a Newbery Honor in 1990 for Afternoon of the Elves) is based on the true story of the Black Duck, the fastest rum running vessel on the Rhode Island coast, which was caught by the Coast Guard on the 29th of December in a dense fog. The Coast Guard opened fire on the cabin and three of the four man crew died, while the captain lost a thumb and later insisted that no warning had been given before the authorities opened fire. Given they were ambushed in a fog right after a pick-up of liquor, it seems fairly likely that someone tipped off the authorities to the Black Duck’s whereabouts, but in the end nothing was ever proven and, despite local outrage, the Coast Guard was cleared of all wrongdoing in the incident. Lisle changed this story in a few significant ways, and there will be more information on that in the Parental Guide.

Obviously there is plenty here to hang a novel on, and Lisle makes use of an interview framing device to help propel the plot and its mystery, as a teenager interviews elderly Ruben about the events in his youth, interspersed with (fictional) newspaper clippings about the Black Duck, raising new questions as Ruben answers the old. Lisle knows how to use a hook of the old-fashioned kind when she ends her chapters: There were probably ten perfectly legal reasons why Police Chief Ralph McKenzie would be up late counting out stacks of money at his supper table. I just couldn’t right then think of what they might be. The plot thickens constantly and involves multiple factions beyond a simple cops vs. criminals outlook, with small local outfits, big time operators muscling in, crooked cops on the take, and civilians trying and often failing to stay clear of the whole mess. It’s a rich soup of conflicts, secrets and betrayals. The rum running world is shown in perfectly comprehensible detail – anything that won’t fit organically into Ruben’s story gets brought up in the interview sections – with the governing laws and nighttime operations easy to understand.

https://i0.wp.com/www.traveltourismblog.com/images/Rhode-Island-Mohegan-bluffs-coast.jpg — A rocky stretch of Rhode Island coast.

I’d never been on the beach at Brown’s, though I’d passed it going upriver on the Fall River boat a couple of times. It was a natural cove sheltered by a dip in the coast, a good place for a hidden landing. When I rode up, about twenty men were already there and a bunch of skiffs were pulled up on the beach, oars set and ready. The place was lit up bright as day with oil lanterns planted on the beach and car headlights shining across the sand. When I looked across the water, I was astonished to see a freighter looming like a gigantic cliff just outside the blaze of lights. It was in the process of dropping anchor. I soon found out that she was the Lucy M., a Canadian vessel that usually moored outside the twelve-mile U.S. territorial limit of the coast to avoid arrest.
The way the Prohibition law was written, the Coast Guard couldn’t touch an outside rig, since it was in international waters. So ships from Canada and the West Indies, Europe and Great Britain would lie off there, sell their liquor cargos and unload them onto rum-running speedboats like the Black Duck to carry into shore. Sometimes as many as ten or fifteen ocean-going vessels would be moored at sea, waiting to make contact with the right runner. “Rum row,” these groups of ships were called. You couldn’t see them from land, but you knew they were out there lying in wait over the horizon. It gave you an eerie feeling, as if some pirate ship from the last century was ghosting around our coast.
I couldn’t believe the Lucy M.‘s captain would be so bold as to bring her into Brown’s, where any Coast Guard cutter in the area could breeze up and put the pinch on her. Nobody at Brown’s seemed worried about it, though, and unloading operations soon commenced.

Lisle’s writing is very straightforward and plain, lacking the richer textures and colours of great historical fiction, but she’s good at telling an exciting story and she doesn’t pack Black Duck out with a load of extra gritty details – no foul language, graphic violence or nasty medical conditions – to artificially propel her middle grade story into the reach of the larger young adult market.

One drawback to the novel is a lack of emotional weight. By rights, the story should be perfect for it, with death and betrayal centered around the broken friendship of two boys. However, Jeddy retreats into the background halfway through the book and is barely glimpsed after that, mitigating the impact of subsequent events. It’s a pity, as their relationship is well-drawn, with a tense mixture of small lies and family loyalties pulling them apart. Once that happens, though, Ruben is left fairly isolated save for his visits to the local hermit, Tom, and his interactions with Jeddy’s older sister Marina, whom Ruben is besotted with.

Marina is referred to on the dust jacket as “strong willed,” but I found it refreshing that Lisle did not make use of her as a cynical back door invite to girl readers – you know, “look, there’s a girl helping the boy protagonist and she’s just as important to the story, so please buy this book because boys don’t read enough anymore…” Marina’s role in Black Duck is closer to that of the good girls in old noir films than to a modern “strong female character.” In other words, Marina is not dressing as a boy and moonlighting with the Black Duck crew.

Ruben’s own character development proceeds along the classic path – he starts the story naive, seeking excitement and resenting the steady job he has waiting in his future, feeling unappreciated by his father and jumping at the offer of twenty bucks no matter the source. However, following the fate of the Black Duck’s daredevil crew, well…
A sadder and a wiser man
He rose the morrow morn.

https://englishromanticism.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/the-rime-of-the-ancient-mariner-by-gustave-dorc3a9-jonnard-engraver-plate-2-the-wedding-guest.jpg?w=750 — The Ancient Mariner and the Wedding Guest, from the wood-engravings by French artist Gustave Dore.

My final thoughts on Black Duck could best be summed up by calling it decent. This sounds like a terribly low bar, but it’s an important one in these days of constant envelope-pushing. Lisle’s book is entirely suitable light reading, mixing an intriguing time period with a mystery format. It’s perfect for kids who enjoy the historical genre. However, it lacks staying power, and I would strongly recommend making it a buddy read with Farley Mowat’s The Black Joke, which looks at the rum running business from the Canadian side of things. Together the two books would offer a neat crash course in the coastal landscape of Prohibition for homeschooling families, and with that I offer a new category in my reviews:

See Also: The Black Joke by Farley Mowat, set in the early 30s off the coast of Newfoundland, considerably better written yet also far more boat-centric.

Onwards to the Parental Guide, packed with spoilers and historical links today.

Violence: The original corpse in the water is thusly described: Above it, swathed in a shawl of brown seaweed, a rubbery-looking shoulder peeked out, white as a girl’s. Above that, a bloated face the color of slate; two sightless eyes, open. And there in his neck, what was that? I saw a small dark-rimmed hole. … I went forward and felt around, trying not to brush up against the corpse’s skin. It had a cold, blubbery feel that turned my stomach. The murderers come back later, toting machine guns and killing Tom’s old dog because they tripped over her. The boys, hiding further down the beach and thinking that Tom’s been killed, come upon the scene after the gangsters leave.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1b/LuckyLucianoSmaller.jpeg/220px-LuckyLucianoSmaller.jpeg — Italian gangster Lucky Luciano has a brief cameo.

Ruben gets kidnapped by the villains later, and then re-abducted by a bigger New York crew, who toss him into the back of the getaway car so roughly that he strikes his head on something and spends a considerable amount of time bleeding all over the place. After being rescued, he becomes the fictional fifth member of the Black Duck, who shelters in the tarp-covered lifeboat while listening to the gunfire above.

Lastly, Marina is a pretty girl. Ruben’s crush is obvious but never vulgarly described. A crooked cop takes an interest in Marina, and gives her a ride in his car under false pretenses. When he pulls over, she exits the vehicle immediately and flags down another driver to get home. Marina keeps this a secret, with the takeaway being she doesn’t think anyone would believe her side of the story. This whole sequence feels somewhat shoehorned into the plot, but it’s nowhere near as disturbing as Julie of the Wolves.

Values: Lip service is paid to good cops, but every single one in this story is crooked in some way or other, including Jeddy and his dad.

There’s some family dysfunction on display, though it’s fairly mild for modern youth literature and Ruben actually gets over his resentment of his straight-laced father. In fact, there’s a parallel between Ruben and his young present-day interviewer David, as they both chafe against working in the family business. Ruben came to accept it, and it’s shown how the friendship that develops over the interviews appears to have a good influence on young David.

The Black Duck crew is heavily romanticized and fictionalized, becoming an outlaw crew with Robin Hood allure: They were local men from local families with a need to make ends meet during hard times, different altogether from the big-city syndicates that were beginning to bully their way into the business at that time. Many folks quietly cheered them on around their supper tables, proud that one of their own could outsmart both the government and the gangsters. Their status as good guys makes their fate more impactful, but it’s also a questionable interpretation of events. More on that under Ed. Properties.

Role Models: This whole novel is about murky ethical dilemmas that the young teens at the heart of the story aren’t sure how to navigate. This is apparently a recurring theme in Lisle’s fiction. In consequence, Ruben, Jeddy and Marina flail around and never really come up with any answers to their questions. Jeddy clings with absolute loyalty to his father, ignoring all evidence against him. Marina falls in love with the Black Duck’s captain and says “if you have to make a choice, you do what’s best for the people you love,” but finds out that isn’t really an applicable rule when those “people you love” are in conflict. Ruben decides to move on with a civilian life while trying to forgive everyone involved in the Black Duck incident. Ruben’s got some old-school pluck, but his naievety and trusting nature get pretty frustrating after a while, coming across as willful blindness (like Jeddy’s) that he really can’t afford. It’s actually quite realistic.

Educational Properties: Okay, Lisle changed all the names of the crew of the Black Duck. Her captain is a fellow named Billy Brady, a daring and enterprising young man with a grassroots operation. It’s no wonder Marina’s in love with him. The real Black Duck was owned by a guy called Charlie Travers. Interesting switch takes place here – Charlie was the sole survivor of the shooting, whereas Lisle’s Billy is killed and a minor character survives instead, doubtless to increase the emotional factor.

https://i0.wp.com/www.newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/solomon-solomon.jpg — Russian-Jewish gangster Charles Solomon.

Charlie Travers does appear to have started out as a hotshot kid, reworking the Black Duck’s engine to get up to 32 knots and proving nearly impossible to catch. However, he was a shady figure, becoming the partner of Max Fox, one of Charles ‘King’ Solomon’s lieutenants. Solomon was Boston’s answer to Lucky Luciano, being heavily involved in narcotics and bootlegging, gambling, prostitution and witness intimidation. When he died, Max Fox was one of the men who acquired his divvied-up territory. So if this Charlie Travers person was independent and local, he didn’t stay that way for long. Since Lisle changed all the names (except of the boat itself), this might not seem like important information, but I do feel that Lisle should have clarified her changes in the Author’s Note at the end, Ann Rinaldi style, given that this novel is inspired by real accounts. When Lisle has Marina say of the Black Duck’s crew “they kept clear of the syndicates and they didn’t carry guns,” she’s referring to the fictional Billy Brady, but what reader would know that without looking up the original newspaper clippings?

Therefore, in addition to Black Duck‘s excellent use in a study on Prohibition, I think it could also work as a demonstration of how stories can be retold and repackaged with opposing facts – historical references to machine guns and “King Solomon” become fictional references to unarmed men avoiding the syndicates. It’s kind of like Island of the Blue Dolphins (and oh, suddenly I can’t wait to unpack that “true story”).

End of Guide.

Lisle has a fair number of books out and I would be quite content to try a few more as I see them. I was surprised to find that Black Duck is her most popular work on GoodReads, but like I said, it’s both entertaining and decent, and post-millennium, decency is the first hurdle that any youth literature has to clear, at least on the Western Corner of the Castle…

Up Next: Teenage paranormal romance. Set on the west coast. Published in 2005. No, it’s not Twilight.

Fantasy: Time Cat

On July 27, 2019July 27, 2019 By nymithIn Adventure, American writers, Anthropomorphic Fantasy, Cat Stories, Fantasy Fiction, Time Travel Stories1 Comment

Apologies for formatting errors that I can’t seem to fix in this post.

Lloyd Alexander’s first novel for children is a tour guide of slightly cat-centric history and a promise of things to come. This bibliography is going to be fun.

See the source image Title: Time Cat
Author: Lloyd Alexander (1924-2007)
Original Publication Date: 1963
Edition: Puffin Books (1996), 206 pages
Genre: Fantasy. Historical Fiction.
Ages: 7-10
First Line: Gareth was a black cat with orange eyes.

A somewhat immature boy named Jason is sulking in his room after a bad day when his cat Gareth decides to speak to him. Jason (whose last name is never given, but I expect it’s probably Little) accepts this easily enough – Jason had always been sure he could if he wanted to and it’s left at that. However, he is surprised when Gareth shares a feline secret with him: cats don’t have nine lives, but they can visit nine lives, and Gareth has only been waiting for an “important reason” to do so. Jason gets to come along on a trip from Ancient Egypt to the American Revolution, learning about cats, people and life along the way.

Time Cat is a fairly perfect independent read for kids who are ready to tackle books without any illustrations. It’s a good standalone tale with adventure, humour and a cool premise: when cats disappear from a room they have actually gone time traveling. Short segments sustain the action, an occasional slimy villain pops up to threaten Jason and the situations he lands in are different enough from one to the next that any child should be fully entertained. Incidentally being introduced to the writing of Lloyd Alexander is just a bonus for down the road. Of course, Time Cat‘s very excellence for young kids dooms it to a fairly short shelf life, as it is so broadly sketched as to be soon outgrown in favor of deeper fantasy and historical narratives. That’s as it should be and it is certainly worth all 100+ Magic Treehouse books, and will do far more good for a child’s vocabulary, imagination and shelf space. To give an example: in Italy, 1468, Jason meets a boy called Leonardo (hint, hint) who shows him his room – the sort most scientifically-minded boys have probably wanted at one time or another.

Inside, Jason looked with amazement–tables crowded with piles of paper; collections of butterflies, rocks, pressed flowers. A squirrel raced back and forth in a small cage. In another cage, a sleepy green snake lay coiled. Great bottles and jars held clumps of moss and long-tailed, speckled lizards. From another bottle, a few fish stared at the inquisitive Gareth.
On a table, Leonardo had set a water bottle over a candle flame. “Did you ever notice how the bubbles come up?” Leonardo asked. “I’ve been watching them. There must be something inside, something invisible–I don’t know what it is. Perhaps the philosophers in Florence know and some day I’ll ask them. First, I want to try to find out for myself.”

https://www.johnnytimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/a-cat-by-leonardo-da-vinci.jpg — Detail from Cats in Motion, 1513-16 pen-and-ink by Italian artist Leonardo Da Vinci.

A quick rundown of places visited: The obvious cliche and weakest segment in ancient Egypt where cats are worshipped as gods; time spent tramping with the Roman legionaries before getting captured by some agreeable Britons; meeting a medieval Irish princess (with red-gold hair and a penchant for chatter, by the way) and a dignified slave by name of Sucat; teaching Japanese boy-Emperor Ichigo to stand up to his Regent, Uncle Fujiwara; meeting young Leonardo Da Vinci in Italy as he tries to convince his father that he’s an artist, not a notary; hanging out in post-Pizarro Peru; greeting the original Manx cat as she washes ashore on the Isle of Man; trying to avoid a nasty death in witch-burning Germany; and finally taking the rural tour of America in 1775.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7d/Manx_by_Gambier_Bolton.JPG — A historical photo of a Manx cat by photographer Gambier Bolton.

Almost every segment is two chapters long and everywhere they go Gareth imparts some fortune cookie wisdom like “even a kitten knows if you wait long enough someone’s bound to open the door.” Jason isn’t very proactive on their journey – whatever age he is, it’s apparently too young for active military service. Instead, he observes people and learns about life from them, to return home a steadier and wiser boy. Fantasy novels have a natural aspect of initiation and this one is no different, as Gareth points out at the end that he took Jason with to help him grow. There’s even a (very mild) sacrifice come journey’s end before Jason returns home in a cross between the movie version of The Wizard of Oz and Where the Wild Things Are.

Time Cat was Lloyd Alexander’s first novel for children after a string of flops, including a translation of Sartre’s La Nausée, which got roasted (along with Nausea itself) by Vladimir Nabokov. The moral: aim high and at least the giants themselves shall smite you. Alexander finally changed gears as he neared forty, and later described writing Time Cat as “the most creative and liberating experience of my life.” There’s a real joy that comes through the book, as it’s so clear that Alexander was simply enjoying the freedom of his new path in life. He loved cats, so they feature prominently. His villains are an entertaining series of oily and absurd caricatures, with the German witch-judge a standout:

The eldest judge, a bony, black-robed man with a lantern jaw and eyes as sharp as thorns, shuffled through some parchment sheets on the table. “We have studied your cases thoroughly,” he began, licking his lips, as if tasting every word.
“You’ve had no time to study anything,” shouted the miller.
The judge paid no attention. His little eyes turned sharper than ever as he read from his parchments.
“The accused witch, Johannes the miller: guilty.”
“The accused witch, Ursulina: guilty.”
“The accused witch, Master Speckfresser: guilty.”
“One demon disguised as a boy disguised as a demon: guilty.”
“One demon disguised as a cat: guilty.”
The judge set down his papers. “You will be burned at the stake in the morning. Believe me,” he added with a smile, “this is all for your own good.”

https://thewesterncornerofthecastle.home.blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/dda3e-lloyd2balexander.jpg — Lloyd Alexander.

Alexander’s writing is comfortable and witty, although it’s not quite polished enough to qualify as a great read-aloud on this early outing. He tosses around historic images like favorite toys, expecting kids to grasp the concept of centurions and Imperial Obeisance through context, rather than interrupting the plot to explain different factoids. Because of this it’s very light on educational material compared with more modern historical fiction for the same age group, and it has recently received some pointless criticism for cultural stereotyping. Honestly though, it’s for eight year olds. Try capturing a child’s imagination by explaining how the Incas were “exactly like you and me,” and see how much they remember about the subject in a month. We always begin with the broadest stereotypes, gaining detail and nuance as we grow up – so the Incas are memorable because they have llamas, while the Egyptians worship cats and ancient Britons wave spears around. Such details are memorable and interesting to a young child, and then swiftly outgrown as their reading naturally progresses.

Time Cat is simply a delightful experience at the right age. I read it avidly at around nine or so, and then within a couple of years I had moved on to Alexander’s far more mysterious Rope Trick. It’s easy to recommend and, while I don’t know exactly how consistent a writer Lloyd Alexander was over his long career, I’m looking forward to finding out.

https://i0.wp.com/img2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20110830042922/lloydalexander/images/3/3e/Time-Cat.jpg — My original copy of the book.

The Parental Guide up next, with some spoilers as always.

Violence: Death hangs over Jason’s head multiple times, including three threats of getting burned alive, but he never sustains any injury and after the danger is brought up it’s always swiftly negated. There are no other casualties until the final segment, when the likable Professor Parker is hit by British fire, though it’s never clear if he dies, since this is all we get: He smiled and tried to pull a shilling out of Jason’s ear, but his hand went slack and the coin dropped to the earth.

It is mentioned that cats are regularly killed in 1600 Germany, but none of the animal characters in the book suffer any harm. If you’re wondering, the “sacrifice” I mentioned Jason makes upon returning home is that Gareth will no longer be able to speak to him, but they will still understand one another without words.

Values: Sucat in the Ireland segment has a secular role, but it is revealed in a rather solemn moment at the end that Jason has actually just met Saint Patrick.

Cats are life’s great treasure, and this is not the last time Alexander would write a supremely cat-centric fantasy. In fact, it ends up such a trademark of his that I’m fairly surprised he kicked off his Prydain Chronicles with the hunt for an oracular animal of the porcine persuasion.

Monarchy is a fairly suspect arrangement in Time Cat, with rulers in general portrayed as ridiculously isolated from their subjects.

During the quiet story on the Isle of Man, Gareth states that everyone is pretty if they have pride in themselves, demonstrated by Dulcinea the Manx cat who doesn’t envy Gareth his tail. He also states the theme of Alexander’s career heretofore: “Trying to make someone do what they aren’t really good at is foolish.”

The most eye-rolling bit is easily when Sayri Tupac the Great Inca lets Jason and Gareth (being held for ransom) go because Don Diego the Spaniard gives a mushy speech about peace and understanding between cultures. “Understanding is better than gold,” says Sayri Tupac. Well, it was the sixties…

Role Models: Jason is a completely bland character; while he improves on his journey, it’s mostly by observing other, more interesting people. Gareth is a better creation, wise and unflappable, and when it’s time to save the princess, it’s Gareth who battles and slays the threatening serpent.

Educational Properties: The historical sketches are very light on detail, so even though you could tie the characters of Ichigo and Uncle Fujiwara to their real counterparts, it really belongs in the entertainment and fluency pile.

End of Guide.

Alexander’s books appear with some frequency at my local used bookstore, and I will be acquiring them whenever I can. As always, I invite those who’ve read more of his work than I have to share their opinions.

Up Next: Going for a classic western, and an example of what young adults were probably reading in the 1940s.

Fantasy: The Court of the Stone Children

On June 22, 2019June 21, 2019 By nymithIn Canadian Writers, Fantasy Fiction, Ghost Stories, National Book Award Winners, Set in CaliforniaLeave a comment

Forewarned is forearmed, as they say, and if you have the Puffin edition it’s definitely helpful to know going in that this book contains ghosts and prophetic dreams but absolutely no time travel. You will be happier.

See the source image Title: The Court of the Stone Children
Author: Eleanor Cameron (1912-1996)
Original Publication Date: 1973
Edition: Puffin Books (1990), 191 pages
Genre: Fantasy.
Ages: 10-14
First Sentence: They were standing in a group under the trees tossing up wishes for the future, wishes and predictions, grand and wild and inflated, boys and girls alike, but Nina, lost in her own musings, wasn’t taking it like that.

The Court of the Stone Children is an intellectually demanding and elusive novel which won the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature in 1974 but has since drifted into obscurity. Recapping the plot is a little tricky since no plot threads take precedence over any others (I would say to the novel’s detriment). The story follows Nina, a girl whose parents have just moved to San Francisco. Nina is dismayed by the ugliness of her surroundings and passionately wants to find a nicer apartment for them to live in. She takes solace in a private French museum and hopes to get a job there, but she soon realizes there is a ghost in the museum, a girl named Dominique, whose father was wrongfully executed by Napoleon and who enlists Nina to help clear his name. There’s also a ghost cat with a living double, a boy named Gil who studies time and a mean girl with the inexplicably ugly nickname Marnychuck.

The writing is very stylized and quite lovely. Eleanor Cameron had complete confidence in her young audience and her imagery is intriguing, her turns of phrase almost poetic and her references boldly intellectual – few children will be familiar with Chagall, whose Time is a River Without Banks features throughout the book, nor with the epigraphs lifted from Faulkner, Camus and Gerard de Nerval. It gets a bit pretentious and metaphysical but the writing keeps it afloat, being beautiful to read even when Nina is literally soaking in the ugliness of a city in the rain:

Drenched skirts whipped back; old people in broken shoes and shapeless coats talked to themselves, clutched their bundles in dripping hands, their heads down and faces twisted against the knives of rain. A man swore at her when she butted blindly into his side. Once when the rain stopped for a little, she let the umbrella fall and stood at a street corner gazing up at seagulls planing in circles in a patch of silver sky.
“Come on, come on, girl–you’ll never get home that way!” An ancient dame, merry and toothless, her old head bare to the elements, grabbed Nina by the arm and swung her into the street, then on the other side skipped off lively as a sand flea and disappeared down an alley where garbage cans spilled their orange rinds and coffee grounds and stained papers onto the sidewalk.

It reminded me somewhat of the Patricia McKillip books I read as a teen, with images of beauty and its absence, a dreamlike slow pace, a maturity of tone and sophisticated (even antiquated) language – behold the merry and toothless dame above. It almost feels as if Cameron just happened to write a child protagonist in this case and could as easily have written the same story for an adult audience. This isn’t to say it’s inappropriate for kids – it shares themes with Madeleine L’engle of time, space, intelligence and alienation, though notably lacking her spiritual center. It simply feels heavy with the influence of grown-up things.

I enjoyed Cameron’s writing from the start but language on its own is only half the battle and unfortunately, it’s the half that is most successful here. This is still a children’s book and it still features a ghost girl, ghost cat (Lisabetta looks like the cat on the right, judging by description) and historical mystery to solve. Rather than enhancing any of these elements, the structure of the story keeps them in the background for roughly three quarters of the way. Brief flickers of menace gutter out while Cameron continues with her painstaking scene setting and we wait and wait for Dominique to finally tell her sorrowful tale.

Meanwhile, less compelling B and C plots share equal time with these more intriguing elements and it’s extra frustrating because they could have made interesting mini-arcs were Nina the slightest bit proactive in pursuit of her goals; instead of which we are treated to Nina’s early declaration that she will look for a new apartment since her parents won’t (declaring a problem) and one follow-up scene several chapters later where Nina just happens to overhear a lady talking about an available apartment (solving the problem). Nina gets the address, the landlady is a kindred spirit, her parents are swiftly convinced even though it costs a little more and it’s all over. No conflict. Nina gets her dream summer job in much the same way, with the museum’s owner being another kindred spirit, ready and willing to hire her. Worse, these solutions occur quite late, forcing them to compete with Dominique’s story rather than beefing up the quiet middle section. The pacing felt really off to me, as I kept eyeing the page number and then flipping to the ill-advised cover copy with increasing disbelief. Puffin is partly to blame for my negative reaction, but by the time I adjusted my expectations it was too late.

As a very introspective book, a lot of time is spent on Nina’s perceptions and inner life, her sense of the reality of those who lived before her. Time has no effect on her and her ability to look at a painting or a manuscript and declare it a lie is not wholly due to the ghosts in her dreams. She feels fully realized as a character and these moments of clarity on her part are earned by Eleanor Cameron’s careful setup. I suspect that in the hands of the right child this could be a very enjoyable story, fully based on the kindred spirit principal that Cameron overuses here.

The intellectual ingredient list is fairly long; here’s an excerpt to give the flavour, where Nina and Gil discuss the meaning of a quote by Henri Bergson:

“But ‘Time is the ghost of space.’ I don’t get that,” Nina said. “How can it be? Why should it be?”
Gil was hunched up, cross-legged on the bed, and he frowned at her for a second. “It can be,” he said, “because space is something real–it exists–but time is only in our heads. Just as there have to be bodies for there ever to be ghosts–or, you could say, shadows–of them, so there has to be space for us to have an idea there is such a thing as time, space for objects to take time to move in, change in, because everything does change. No space, no time.”

I was reminded of Madeleine L’engle several times as I read, but it lacks the resonance I remember finding in A Wrinkle in Time, which I suspect is simply due to a difference in worldview between them. Cameron’s references are mostly secular modernists (Duchamp, Picasso) or post-18th century Jewish intellectuals (Bergson, Chagall). For a

book so concerned with the past, it has little to say about how French families of the 18th Century would have seen the world beyond Dominique noting how fast and ugly everything is now. The philosophical underpinnings that Eleanor Cameron flaunts do not enhance her chosen time period and are even alien to it, just as Time is a River Without Banks would be to both artist and model on the right. The Court of the Stone Children is an interesting experience, at times even an elegant one, but it never distills into something more than the sum of its parts.

Up next, the Parental Guide. It’s a 70s book, so I was not surprised to see Nina use “damned” and “stupid ass” during her moments of irritation. Reading so widely in children’s literature is undoubtedly going to reveal some interesting developments and fluctuations in what is and isn’t included at a given time period.

Violence: Dominique’s father was executed by firing squad for criticizing Napoleon (Napoleon comes off rather badly in general), and family servant Maurice was murdered to frame him for it. Dominique describes finding Maurice’s body, but it’s not very descriptive. She also casually mentions that she died giving birth to her third child.

Values: Objects of the past, museums, beauty, authentic and artisan creations, fine French cooking, classic architecture and rooms with a view. Nina desperately loves pretty things but the reasons for former beauty and the 20th Century’s lack of it are not addressed, so her fascination with Dominique’s life feels driven mostly by the ghost girl’s material goods. When she first enters the furnished rooms in the museum, she pretends they are hers: You could lose yourself drifting from one to another, as Nina now did, as though time were indeed a river without banks, “As though this is my home,” she said, then looked to make sure no guard or visitor was nearby, “this French–what is it? Yes, my father’s chateau, and these rooms are ours. That’s his library, and over here, our small private dining room where we have just a few friends–not like that big one back there where we give dinners for ambassadors and things like that.” There’s a recreated French peasant cottage on the grounds, and she’s nowhere near as entranced by that.

Role Models: Nina wants to be a curator, an interesting choice of profession in a children’s book. Her peers think it’s weird but Nina continually runs into older people, mostly women, who understand her quiet passions. Her mother is not included in this elect, and her father is a fairly passive person, so it’s not a family-driven story, but Nina and Gil are both very intelligent and diligent, and although pre-teen love stories are now often featured in middle grade fiction, there’s none of that found here.

Educational Properties: There’s not enough meat here to help with a historical study, though it could tie-in fairly well with one on metaphysics. Visiting some art/historical museums wouldn’t go amiss either. French cooking features frequently, which could lead to some lessons on fine cuisine (I got the photo to the left here if you want to check it out, though I haven’t had time to try it myself). Also, if you do want to discuss aesthetics with your child, this could work – even though the book itself never diagnoses the current problem, it at least acknowledges that there is one.

End of Guide.

If your child loves visiting museums, is learning French or enjoys art, this has a good chance of being a favourite, at least if the average reviews are anything to go by. The writing alone elevates it above much of the current competition. However, since I wasn’t that impressed as an adult, I would like some opinions. What did you think of this one? It won a shiny award, but is it really Eleanor Cameron’s best book?

Up Next: My first foray into the 19th Century will be Mark Twain. I’ll try not to be intimidated. Wish me luck.

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.

The Western Corner of the Castle

Tag: Middle Grade

One for Sorrow – Mary Downing Hahn

A Stranger Came Ashore – Mollie Hunter

The Midnight Fox – Betsy Byars

Junonia – Kevin Henkes

The Cat Who Wished to Be a Man – Lloyd Alexander

Historical Fiction: Black Duck

Fantasy: Time Cat

Fantasy: The Court of the Stone Children

Adventure Novels: The Black Joke