Armchair BEA: Dear Marilyn Sachs

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I'm writing to thank you for The Truth About Mary Rose (Doubleday, 1973). That's my childhood copy, the 1977 Dell Yearling edition, illustrated by Louis Glanzman. It was one of the few books (maybe even the only one) I read as a child that had a Hispanic or Latina main character--like me, or close enough (I'm Cuban-American). I loved that Mary Rose's dad, an artist, made her rice pudding when he was worried about her being sick, and that she was surrounded by her extended family in New York City, even if they were mostly on her American mother's side. Speaking of Mary Rose's mother (Veronica Ganz, but I hadn't read that book), I also loved that she was a dentist and kept her maiden name at work. But Mary Rose's grandmother, on the other hand, just made me mad (to be fair, she made Mary Rose's mother mad, too). How could she say such mean things about Mary Rose's dad? And why would everyone let her get away with it? Even, especially, Mary Rose herself.

Rereading The Truth About Mary Rose as an adult, which I did last night, I'm more interested in the representation of the Ramirez (Ganz) and Petronski families than I am in the mystery of the first Mary Rose--after all, I already know how it ends. And I want to congratulate Luis Ramirez on his one-man show at MoMA. Very impressive! It almost makes up for having such an awful mother-in-law.

Almost Betsy-Tacy and Tib Dolls

If only someone at Land of Nod had read the Betsy-Tacy books! The Knit Crowd dolls are almost perfect replicas of Betsy, Tacy, and Tib as they look in Lois Lenski's illustrations for the first four books. Just switch the hair color on the brown and yellow-haired dolls and shorten the braids, and you have Betsy and Tib (the ballet dress is better on Tib anyway). And Tacy's red (orange) ringlets are exactly right. Sadly, all three dolls are sold out til early February, but that just means you have time to reread the books, conveniently reprinted in the The Betsy-Tacy Treasury by Maud Hart Lovelace (William Morrow, 2011). I still have my 1970s Harper Trophy editions; judging from their condition, Betsy-Tacy and Tib was my favorite. This image is from Chapter II, Learning to Fly. 

[I am not affiliated with Land of Nod! Although maybe if I had been the dolls, otherwise adorable, would have had the right color hair. I might have to buy the Tacy one anyway. For Milly (ahem).]

Fairies and changelings

I'm currently reading (among other things) Some Kind of Fairy Tale, a grownup fantasy by British author Graham Joyce (Doubleday, 2012). It's not a changeling story, at least not so far, but a kidnapped-by-the-fairies one, in which teenaged Tara Martin disappears into a dense forest known as the Outwoods, only to return twenty years--or is it six months?--later.

Forests are my favorite magical places (castles or old houses are a close second), and Tara's description of the forest on the day she disappeared is especially evocative:


After a while I found a rock covered in brilliant green moss and orange lichen. I sat among the bluebells and put my head back on the mossy pillow of the rock.

The bluebells made such a pool that the earth had become like water, and all the trees and bushes seemed to have grown out of the water. And the sky above seemed to have fallen down on to the earth floor, and I didn't know if the sky was earth or the earth was water. [42]

Then a man on a pretty white horse appears, and you know that boundaries are going to be crossed. As it turns out (I'm on page 132), they are crossed in ways I'm not so interested in reading about. Instead I'm rereading my favorite Zilpha Keatley Snyder book, The Changeling (Atheneum, 1970): "I am a princess from the Land of the Green Sky," Ivy said. "I have discovered the Doorway to Space."

The Changeling isn't a fantasy book, although Snyder did eventually write the Green-Sky Trilogy (beginning with Below the Root; Atheneum, 1978) based on the Tree People game that Martha and Ivy play in Bent Oaks Grove. But Ivy herself is such a magical character, I almost believed that she was a changeling. And that I was, too.

[Why, why is The Changeling out-of-print? I'm adding it to my list of books to reprint when I start my own small press.]

Thank you, Greenwillow!

I was the lucky winner of this big box of Greenwillow books last December.  Can you see what's in there?  Everything from Kitten's First Full Moon by Kevin Henkes, winner of the 2005 Caldecott Medal, to The Thief by Meghan Whalen Turner, which won a Newbery Honor in 1997.  I read Turner's Attolia books, of which The Thief is the first, for the first time last year (no, I have no idea why I waited so long), and it was definitely a Peak Reading Experience--sort of a combination of Dorothy Dunnett's House of Niccolo books and C.S. Lewis's Til We Have Faces.  The latest, A Conspiracy of Kings (2010), is my favorite in the series.

But my very favorite Greenwillow book is this one: The Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley. It was the first book I bought in hardcover, probably before it won the Newbery in 1985 (my copy, a first edition, doesn't have the gold sticker); and it still sets the standard against which I judge high fantasy for young readers. By now I've read it so many times that I can remember certain passages and fragments of dialogue almost word-for-word: Aerin's centuries-long climb up the spiral staircase to Agsded's chamber; Aerin and Luthe (their final scene together is Martha Mihalick's favorite, too); the lovely last lines. Thank you, Greenwillow!

Black Radishes and Pink Rabbits

There is a moment early in Black Radishes by Susan Lynn Meyer (Delacorte, 2010) when 11-year-old Gustave Becker has to pack his things prior to leaving Paris for the small town of Saint-Georges in advance of the Nazi occupation.  Aside from his clothes, he is allowed to bring only a few books and toys.  He chooses the books easily--his Boy Scout Manual and two favorites, The Three Musketeers and Around the World in Eighty Days--but the toys prove more difficult:

[H]ow could he choose only one?  Gustave picked up his new sailboat and ran a finger over its shiny blue and white paint.  Uncle David had given him and Jean-Paul each a sailboat last summer to sail in the fountains in the parks.  Saint-Georges was near a river, so a boat would be good to have.  But then he saw Monkey, partly hidden under his train set on the bed, and his heart tightened.  He had almost forgotten him.  Monkey's head tilted slightly to one side.  A gold post in his ear and the bright black, beady eyes looking out from his face gave him a mischievous air.

At this point I almost shouted, "Gustave, take Monkey!"  I didn't want him to make the same mistake that Anna does in Judith Kerr's When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit (1971); packing, instead of the titular rabbit who had been "her companion ever since she could remember," a newly acquired woolly dog.  Fortunately (spoiler alert), he doesn't, and Monkey goes on to play an important role in the book's climactic scene at the border between occupied and free France.

Black Radishes is a beautifully crafted, impeccably researched novel (and a 2011 Sydney Taylor Honor Award Winner for Older Readers).  Debut author Meyer, an English professor at Wellesley, was inspired by her father's experience in WWII France, although she makes clear (in an informative author's note as well as an interview at BookPage, January 2011) that she's writing historical fiction; and I think Black Radishes is all the stronger for that.  Meyer is also working on a companion novel, tentatively titled Green and Unripe Fruit, which follows Gustave after he and his family emigrate to America in 1942.

And just in case you don't know what black radishes (which also figure in that climactic scene) look like, here they are.

  

Searching for Shona and children's books about the Evacuation

The painting of the ruined Victorian house in last week's Middle Grade Gallery is from Searching for Shona, by Margaret J. Anderson (Knopf, 1978), a recently rediscovered childhood favorite.  After Marjorie and Shona trade places on the train platform in Edinbugh, Marjorie is evacuated to Canonbie.  She and another orphan, Anna Ray, are billeted with the Miss Campbells, middle-aged identical twins who own a dress shop.  Marjorie and Anna find the house in the painting, empty (although not yet in ruins) save for a cozy playroom in the turret.  Clairmont House becomes a refuge for them until the army requisitions it to house soldiers, and by the end of the war, the house is as the artist depicted it in the painting.

How is the painting connected to Shona?  I don't want to give it away--if a middle grade novel about two girls, one from a privileged background (Marjorie) and another with only one clue about her family (Shona), trading places during the evacuation appeals to you (don't forget the abandoned house and the identical twin sisters, either), you really should try to find a copy of Searching For Shona.  I will say that Shona's father, like John Piper (whose work I featured in the original post), turns out to have been a war artist.  But there's more to the story than that, and it's all very satisfying.

Unfortunately, I didn't get many (any) other recommendations of children's books about the evacuation.  Anna Hebner noted that in C.S. Lewis's The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe (1950), the four Pevensie children are evacuated from London to the Professor's country house (Lewis himself took in evacuees at his house in Oxford).  A Tale of Time City by Diana Wynne Jones (1987) also begins with the main character's evacuation from London, although she only makes it as far the train station (this one's out of print, and Charlotte doesn't like it anyway).

As for realistic fiction, The Children's War (a blog dedicated to books written for children and young adults about WWII) has a review of In Spite of All Terror by Hester Burton (1968), and I'm looking for a copy of that one now.

But the books about the evacuation I most want to read are (perhaps not surprisingly) by Noel Streatfeild.  The first is Saplings (1945), a novel for adults about the devastating effects of the war on a middle-class family with four children.  It's available in a gorgeous Persephone Books edition (have you heard of Persephone Books?) and sounds very depressing. The second is When the Siren Wailed (1974), a children's book written at considerably more remove from the war itself, and in which three working-class children are evacuated from London.  The original edition was illustrated by Margery Gill and thankfully, it ends happily.

[See the comments for more suggestions.]

Middle Grade Gallery 8

This week in the Middle Grade Gallery, a painting that functions as a birth token, a small object kept as an identifying record of an abandoned or orphaned infant.  During the evacuation of children from Edinbugh in the early days of WWII, shy, wealthy Marjorie, on her way to relatives in Canada, trades places with the orphaned Shona and is evacuated to the Scottish countryside (from the LoC summary).  Marjorie discovers the painting in Shona's suitcase:

Taking up the whole bottom of the case was a painting in a wooden frame.  Marjorie was puzzled that Shona, who had so few possessions, would bring a painting along with her.  She lifted it out of the suitcase and carried it over directly under the light so she could see it better.  It showed a Victorian house, rather ornate and turreted, standing in the middle of an overgrown garden.  The windows were blank and empty and, in the forground, iron gates hung open, bent and rusted.  The big stone gateposts leaned at drunken angles and a decorative stone ball had fallen from the top of one.  It lay among the weeds, chipped and shadowed so that it looked like a skull.

[Me again.]  The description is from a childhood favorite (note the British orphans, practically a prerequisite).  After years of searching, I recently located a secondhand copy and upon rereading, was as surprised by the painting as Marjorie was; I had forgotten all about it until she opened the suitcase.  The image accompanying this post, a painting of a ruined Victorian house, Lansdown, Bath 1942, is by British war artist John Piper, who had been commissioned to record bomb damage in and around London at that time.

Does any of this sound familiar--plot, painting, Piper?  Even if you don't recognize this middle grade novel, please leave a comment if you can recommend any others having to do with the evacuation.  I'll reveal, review, and round up the recommendations next week.  Thanks!

[Revealed here.]

Emily's Quest

The portrait of Elisabeth Bas featured in August's Middle Grade Gallery hangs by the fireplace in the Disappointed House, as furnished by Emily Starr and Dean Priest during their ill-fated engagement in Emily's Quest by L.M. Montgomery.  This is the third and final book in the Emily series, which isn't nearly as beloved as Montgomery's Anne series (or so I am forced to conclude, since no one guessed.  Members of the Emily Starr Fan Club, please leave a comment).

I didn't love Emily either, but I still like to reread the chapter of Emily's Quest dedicated to making over the Disappointed House (it's Chapter 9), inside and out.  Montgomery describes everything, from the wallpaper in the living-room ("shadowy grey with snowy pine branches over it") to Emily's great-grandmother's wedding china (willow-ware) to the brass chessy-cat door knocker on the front porch door.  And of course, the pictures:  Lady Giovanna, Mona Lisa...and Elisabeth Bas.

Spoiler alert:  Emily breaks off her engagement to Dean when she realizes that she still loves Teddy, and the Disappointed House is boarded up again.  But years later, Dean gives the deed to the house and all it contains to Emily as a wedding gift.  I can't imagine Emily and Teddy actually living there among Dean's things, but it's always been my House of Dreams.

Does anyone else remember the Disappointed House? Or, for that matter, Anne's House of Dreams (perhaps my favorite of the Anne books)?  Which would you prefer?

The Saturdays

The French painting of the girl on the garden wall featured in last week's Middle Grade Gallery comes from The Saturdays by Elizabeth Enright (first published in 1941; Square Fish, 2008).  The Saturdays is the first, and my favorite, of the books in The Melendy Quartet.  There are four Melendy children, too (guess who is my favorite of them?), and in this book they decide to pool their allowances so each can have an Independent Saturday Afternoon Adventure.

On her Saturday, Randy visits an art gallery where French paintings are being shown for the benefit of war relief.  That's where she finds the painting of The Princess, and its model, who turns out to be old family friend Mrs. Oliphant.  The story behind the painting is long and best told as Mrs. Oliphant told it to Randy, over vanilla ice cream and petit fours.  Suffice it to say that at one point Mrs. Oliphant is kidnapped by gypsies (I agree with Charlotte that this is a bit much).

Elizabeth Enright's own pen-and-ink drawings illustrate all four of the Melendy books.  Here's one from The Saturdays of Randy in front of the painting in question (I scanned this image from my childhood copy).  I'm still wondering whether Enright saw a similar exhibition in New York City and based her description on a real painting, or whether she made up exhibition, painting, or both.  At any rate, we know what it looks like.  Congratulations to Charlotte for recognizing it right away!

The Hidden Adult in Henry Huggins

The CCBC-Net discussion topic for the second two weeks of July is Perry Nodelman's newest book, The Hidden Adult: Defining Children's Literature (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008). Coincidentally, I just read Henry Huggins (one of the six children's books under consideration in The Hidden Adult) aloud to the kids, both of whom enjoyed it immensely; in fact, they're clamoring for me to read the next book in the series (Henry and Beezus) as I type.  I was reminded of how much I loved Beverly Cleary books, which were easily identifiable in their Yearling editions by the author's name in red bubble letters above the title, and of how well they've held up:  Henry Huggins was first published in 1950; I read it in the late 70s, and my kids are reading it another 30 years later.  I'm looking for a copy of The Hidden Adult so I can participate in the discussion.

Aside:  I actively dislike one of the other five books (The Purple Jar, Alice in Wonderland, Dr. Doolittle, The Snowy Day, and Plain City) Nodelman analyzes in The Hidden Adult.  Guess which one? 

Lily-of-the-Valley Day

I remember three French customs from A Brother for the Orphelines by Natalie Savage Carlson (pictures by Garth Williams, 1959):  masks on Mardi Gras, the April fish, and lilies of the valley on the first of May:

"The first of May is Lily-of-the-Valley Day in France.  People gather the flowers in the woods and give sprigs to their friends for good luck.  Even the president of France gets one, because ever since the days of King Louis IX, the head of the French government has been presented with a lily of the valley on the first of May."

The orphelines look for their lilies of the valley in the Ste. Germaine Woods outside of Paris, where they live in a falling-down house with Madame Flattot and Genevieve to care for them.  A Brother for the Orphelines is the third in Carlson's series of books about them:  The Happy Orpheline, A Pet for the Orphelines (cats, 12 of them), A Brother for the Orphelines (Josine, the youngest, finds a baby boy in the breadbasket), The Orphelines in the Enchanted Castle, and A Grandmother for the Orphelines.  I seem to have liked French orphans, too.  Happy May Day!

Another Little Princess

If I were going to write a sequel to Frances Hodgson Burnett's beloved A Little Princess, I wouldn't necessarily write it about Ermengarde.  Ermengarde, the "fat child who did not look as if she were in the least clever," never interested me much.

But Hilary McKay's Wishing for Tomorrow (Hodder, Fall 2009 in the UK) begins with Ermengarde's thirteenth birthday.  After I heard this (at the Guardian books blog, of course), I reread A Little Princess, for the first time in many years.  McKay's choice of Ermengarde makes more sense to me now, and I think McKay--author of the Casson Family books, all five of which I read in February--will make her rather less dull than she once seemed.

Now, if one were going to write a sequel to The Secret Garden, unnecessary as it may (also) seem, who would it be about?

Moomins in the house

Question:  Anamaria's dream vacation involves a trip to which Scandinavian themepark?

Hint:  It's based on a series of children's books.

Answer:  Moominworld!

I love the Moomins.  They're part of my childhood canon, along with a surprising number of other Scandinavian children's books (you would be forgiven for thinking the answer was Astrid Lindgren's World).  PW reports that the Moomin books by Tove Jansson are being re-released for their 65th anniversary next year (by Square Fish, the Macmillan imprint responsible for repackaging the books in Madeleine L'Engle's Austin and Time series with new cover art by Taeeun Yoo).  There will be new preschool Moomin books, too.  I'm excited (I haven't read all eight of the original books and can't wait to get my hands on them) and a little bit anxious, too.

Do you remember the Moomins?

A Ring of Endless Light

The Austin family books by Madeleine L'Engle--Meet the Austins, The Moon by Night, and A Ring of Endless Light, plus two others we didn't own and I've not read--belonged to my sister, but I read them, too, and remember them fondly. I haven't reread them as an adult and wonder how they would hold up; they seemed very much of their time even then. My favorite was A Ring of Endless Light (it was also named a Newbery Honor Book in 1981).  I would have been on Team Adam, if Vicky didn't mind the sports metaphor.

This illustration by Taeeun Yoo is of Vicky riding a dolphin; it's on the cover of the Square Fish edition of A Ring of Endless Light published in 2008. I bought a print of it for Milly's birthday next month: she's far too young for L'Engle, of course, but she loves dolphins, and it reminded me of her. Yoo did the cover art for the other books in the Austin Family Chronicles (the illustration for The Young Unicorns might end up Leo's birthday present; I love Yoo's work), as well as for the Time Quintet (Square Fish, 2007).

Which I have never read (I must have read A Wrinkle in Time--it won the Newbery Award in 1963, and I read all the Newbery winners--but I don't remember liking it). I know! Convince me.

For Poetry Friday, "The World" by Henry Vaughan:

I saw Eternity the other night
Like a great Ring of pure and endless light,
All calm as it was bright ;
And round beneath it Time, in hours, days, years,
Driven by the spheres
Like a vast shadow moved, in which the world
And all her train were hurled.
[Read the rest here.]

[It's my mother's birthday today. She's not a book person, so I baked her a Bundt cake instead.  ¡Feliz cumpleaños, Mami!]

Six books that make me happy

Thanks to Charlotte, who tagged me for this irresistible meme (thereby snapping me out of my blogging funk).  Now for my list.  About a year ago, I was poking around in my parents' attic and found several missing boxes full of my childhood books, mostly middle-grade paperbacks.  Most of the books on this list were in those boxes; they were the ones I read first. 

1. Mandy by Julie [Andrews] Edwards.  I loved Mandy's secret cottage and garden, and identified with her desire to care for a place of her very own.

2. Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfeild.  I've written about the Shoes books here.  Good news for Shoes fans:  Skating Shoes is available for pre-order on Amazon!

3. The Christmas Dolls by Carol Beach York.  I'm inordinately fond of this book and would read every Butterfield Square Story in the series if only I could find them (they're OOP).

4. Miss Happiness and Miss Flower by Rumer Godden.  I'm still waiting for someone to make me a Japanese dollhouse.

5. A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett.  My childhood copy of this book, I'm sad to say, was not in the boxes.  Perhaps it fell apart.

6.  What Katy Did et al. by Susan Coolidge.  I own these in an Octopus Books omnibus edition which was one of my prized possessions.  I even had my school librarian wrap the jacket in mylar for me.  It wasn't in the boxes, either: it was on my shelf.  Surprise!  There are no British orphans in it.

Blair Lent

Blair Lent died last week.  Lent was probably best known for his illustrations for Tikki Tikki Tembo by Arlene Mosel (1968), which was a childhood favorite of mine (and perhaps you).  I bought the Owlet paperback for my own kids before I even had any.  They love it, too.  Despite its problematic text.

Then last year I discovered Baba Yaga by Ernest Small; illustrated by Blair Lent (1966).  I was in the process of reading every picture book retelling of a Baba Yaga story I could find at my library (there are many); this one--text and illustrations--was my favorite.  It was only when I read Lent's obituary that I realized that author Ernest Small and illustrator Blair Lent were one and the same person.  I don't think I've ever seen someone credited separately, by pen name and real name, for the same book, but I agree that Lent deserves a lot of credit.

Poetry Friday: Nevermore!

In honor of the 200th anniversary of Edgar Allan Poe's birth (this Monday, January 19); the opening lines of "The Raven:"

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore--
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door--
"'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door--
Only this and nothing more."

[Read the rest--you know you want to--at poets.org)

I can't read Poe's "Raven" without being reminded of Mortimer.  He's Arabel's Raven (Joan Aiken; illustrated by Quentin Blake).  Another childhood favorite with several sequels I never knew existed before writing this post.  Nevermore!

Santa Lucia, Hugo and Josephine

Happy Santa Lucia Day!  This image of Lucia and her attendants comes from my childhood copy of Hugo and Josephine by Maria Gripe, with drawings by Harald Gripe (1962); translated from the Swedish by Paul Britten Austin (Dell, 1969).  Sorry about the poor image quality:  what kind of paper were Dell Yearlings printed on in the 1970s?  Anyway, there is Josephine as a maid of honor (May-Lise, the prettiest girl in the class, is Lucia) and Hugo at far left as a star-boy.

I read and loved the Hugo and Josephine trilogy as a child (Hugo has since gone missing); my other favorite Gripe book was the more mysterious Glassblower's Children.  Gripe's books must have been widely available in translation then:  Maria Gripe, "one of Sweden's most distinguished writers for children," had won the Hans Christian Anderson Award in 1974.  Now my library system doesn't hold a single copy of any of her books.  Not one.  Which is a shame:  Hugo and Josephine, the one I've most recently reread, is a delight: perceptive, often very funny, told in a distinctive present-tense and set in a place (Sweden) and time similar to but interestingly different than our own.  When I start my own press dedicated to printing neglected or OOP children's fiction, the Hugo and Josephine trilogy will be on my list.  Does anyone else remember it?