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!]