Halloween Read: Who Was Dracula? by Jim Steinmeyer

A strange Frankenstein's-monster mash-up of three genres in one; literary criticism of Dracula, biography of Bram Stoker, and microhistory of the settings and characters of Stoker's life.  Despite some strange seam-lines and jumps in topic, I thought it was a clever and fairly adept combination, providing apt analysis of the author, the writing, and the nature of the character of Dracula through different perspectives and possibilities.

Who Was Dracula? Bram Stoker's Trail of Blood
Jim Steinmeyer
ISBN: 9780142421888
Finished Oct. 30, 2014

First off, you'll only like this book if you like all of the components therein: biographies (of Stoker, and of other characters from the time-period: Walt Whitman, Henry Irving, Oscar Wilde...) micro-histories (mainly of the theatre, but we get a bit about Jack the Ripper, and about American tours of theatrical companies, and a view of the theatrical/artistic set's socializing and infighting) and literary criticisms (No, Dracula as a character wasn't an attempt to exact revenge on Irving, and can we get over how Dracula is about sex?  We all KNOW it's about sex, we have eyes, we read the book already).

If none of those make you roll your eyes out of your head, then you're in for a treat.  We stick with each non-book subject long enough to get into it (and sometimes long enough to think, "wait a moment, this is really interesting stuff about Stoker's other books/Irving and the Lyceum/Jack the Ripper/Oscar Wilde, but I don't think I've seen anything about Stoker or Dracula in the past four chapters") and then in the next chapter, you're back to Dracula again.

It wasn't at all what I expected, and aside from a cringe-worthy quotation from the author responsible for glittery vampires excusing her not having read Dracula, it was better than I expected; more history, less supposition.

I will say that the underlying question remains mostly unanswered, although hints drop that Steinmeyer tends towards the "it was a composite of lots of influences" school of thought, rather than "it was meant to strike back at Irving" or "It was Jack the Ripper!" suppositions.

I liked the 'coda' towards the end explaining how Stoker's widow used her tenacity and a timely membership in an Author's Society to fight back against Nosferatu (although I'm so glad she failed in destroying it) and to stage critically awful and popularly brilliant versions of Dracula across England and the USA in order to keep herself in mint.  Stoker would have been proud.

Picture Book/Modern Fairy Tale: Pumpkin Light, by David Ray

I really wanted to like this, as I love Halloween, and I really enjoy modern created fairy tales (Jane Yolen's Girl in the Golden Bower is a perfect example), but I was not entranced or even interested in this stolid story with little magic or interest, and painfully workmanlike illustrations.

Pumpkin Light
David Ray
ISBN: 0399220283

I wanted to like it - a book about an early Americana farm boy who loves pumpkins and gets cursed?  Sounds great!  Sadly, the author/illustrator bit off more than he could chew, with both the story and the illustrations getting away from him right from the beginning.  This is a quote from the set-up of the story; "Now there was one other thing Angus loved as much as his mother and father and almost as much as pumpkins and that was to draw and paint."

Just, no.  I'm sorry to be blunt, but those are not the lines of a good story, or a good tale to read aloud to someone.  Sadly, it was like that all the way through.


Bare bones story:
Pumpkin-loving artistic kid stays up too late on Halloween, gets sent to bed without supper, has a very complex bad dream, and wakes to find everything better again.

Longer version:
Angus was born in the fall, under a pumpkin sun, and loves pumpkins and art.  He always goes to town on Halloween to draw the jack o'lantern display at the General Store, then goes home and hangs his pictures on his bedroom walls.  One Halloween he stays too late drawing and runs home (past jeering children who are out there being hateful for no reason at all) and returns home after dark to angry parents who send him to sleep with no dinner, and no pumpkin pie, and no time to hang his drawings on the walls.

Suddenly he's in a hayloft in a barn overlooking his house, watching his mother set a pumpkin pie out on the windowsill to cool.  He's hungry, so he sneaks over, steals the pie, and hides under a scarecrow (why god why) to eat it.  The spirit of the scarecrow (because there has to be a scarecrow spirit) is angry at him for stealing the pie when he was sent to bed with  no supper.  So the scarecrow turns him into a dog, and names him Autumn (Why?  Who knows.) and passes on the terms of the curse - "Autumn" has to spend every night in the barn loft, guarding a "magic pumpkin" (wtf?) until "a forgiving soul carves it and releases the power to change you back into a boy."  Ok.

So now Angus' parents are super sad because their little boy is gone, but the little dog keeps them company, except it insists on sleeping in the loft (and no one asks why this dog is so attached to the loft, or ever goes to check).  A whole bloody year later, somehow the parents magically know the dog's name is Autumn (not even going there) and the boy-dog finally gets a clue that perhaps he can trick Mom into carving the magic pumpkin for her (apparently only once-a-year) pumpkin pie.

He nips and drags at her until she gets up there, sees this lovely pumpkin, and (still not asking WHY a pumpkin is in her hayloft) she drags it home and begins to cut it open, but overcome with memories, decides to try to carve it into a jack o'lantern like her missing son would have done.  The pumpkin lights up magically, and yay, Angus is back!   About here is where I notice that dad has gone suspiciously missing through this whole ordeal.

The light from the pumpkin grows brighter and blinds the magically recovered boy, and when he blinks to clear his eyes, he's home in bed, with his parents hanging up his pictures on his walls, and a pumpkin pie smell wafting in from the kitchen (she baked a fresh one for breakfast, apparently).  A lengthy (everything about this book is lengthy) coda explains how Angus always afterwards treasured a special painting of a dog and a pumpkin.


Ok, so this is obviously trying for Film!Oz territory, where it's all a dream, or is it!?  However, it just seemed like it was trying too hard.  A scarecrow spirit cursing a boy for disobedience ought to be right up fairy-tale alley, easy to accept, but it fell flat, and begged for an explanation.  Why a dog?  Why the deal with guarding the pumpkin?  What would happen if he didn't?  It just didn't make any sense, but so much time was spent explaining things that didn't need explaining, it made the magical (and not-explained) personages and events stick out terribly.

I hate when this sort of thing happens, because I want to fix the story, and it isn't mine, and I can't do anything about it.  Perhaps I'll write my own Halloween fairy-tale with a jack o'lantern obsessed child and see if I can do any better.

Tuesday Storytime: Halloween!

 I love Halloween storytimes!

We started off with the delightful Zombelina, moved through the equally new and strikingly illustrated Ten Orange Pumpkins, and ended on a lighthearted note with Happy Halloween, Biscuit.

Zombelina
Kristyn Crow, illustrated by Molly Idle (Flora and the Flamingo)
ISBN: 9780802728036
Sweet green zombie gets stage fright at her dance recital, until her spooky family arrives to cheer.

This book is ADORABLE.  I will probably read it on non-Halloween nights just as a dancing or performance book.  (Maybe with Rock n Roll Mole?)  Zombelina loves dancing at home, and her loving parents finally take her out to buy supplies and start in dance classes.  Her classmates are a little weirded out by this limb-losing ballerina, but her teacher is accepting and encouraging, and she blooms.  Until the night of her recital, where she gets stage fright, and starts acting like an actual zombie and scares her classmates and audience away.  Her family arrives and cheers her on in a more familiar way, and she performs beautifully, then is whisked home for a celebratory dinner.  Boatloads of wordplay and clever jokes with the illustrations had the parents laughing, while the kids seemed to enjoy our perky adorable heroine.


Ten Orange Pumpkins: A Counting Book
Stephen Savage
ISBN: 9780803739383
Already reviewed.

This one worked very well in the middle spot.  I got through the spider with aplomb (I thought) and the kids especially liked the alligators in the river and the skeleton pirate crew.


Happy Halloween, Biscuit
Alyssa Satin Capucilli, illustrated by Pat Schories
ISBN: 9780694012206
Lift-the-flap book showing Biscuit the puppy hiding or getting into minor trouble on Halloween.

Super cute and as inoffensive as it is possible to be and still cover dressing up in costume and trick-or-treating.  Biscuit and his little girl go out to the pumpkin patch to make a jack-o-lantern, pick out costumes to wear, meet costumed friends, and get treats from a family-member's house before going back home to bed.  Very cute, and one of the parents checked it out after storytime!

Random Romance Reads: The Switch, Lynsay Sands

I'm including this one with the RRR, even though the underlying difficulties all stem from "period" miscues rather than anything else.

The Switch
Lynsay Sands
ISBN: 9780062019820 (reprint)
Read October 24, 2014

The short, mostly spoiler-free version:  A set twin girls, countrified members of the ton, have their bucolic peaceful lives disrupted by the deaths of their parents.  Their uncle, the new guardian falls peril to gambling and bad investments, and his idea is to sell the winsome girls in marriage to rich elites, thus preventing his financial ruin.  One sister is to a gentleman who is simply repugnant, but the other is meant for one who has been through three wives in the last few years, and rumor runs rampant about their "accidental" deaths.  En route to the marriage mart, they stop at an inn, and the girls escape, with one sister dressed as a boy to evade suspicion and to assuage propriety.  They are immediately noticed and taken under the wing of a kindly noble, who passes them off as cousins while they have their season in London, taking turns pretending to be the sister or the brother as they set their caps for different men.  Blackmail and the dissolute uncle provide the villainy, and Gretna Green is abused beyond all reason in tying up the leads in holy matrimony.

The good:
Crossdressing!
Interesting premise with twins and gender-bending where each twin takes a turn being male.
The put-upon hero is vastly overwhelmed, and I felt sorry for him and his confusion the whole book.

The bad:
Crossdressing mechanics and historical fashion and clothing in general not matching up with the time-period intended (although God only knows what that period was, as I couldn't work it out beyond somewhere possibly very "early regency").
Paper-thin characters for nearly everyone, especially the men.
Overstepping the bounds of propriety and allowed behavior in some places, while calling attention to them and carefully attending to them at others.  If the whole story had simply pretended the mores did not exist, I would have taken it as a silly story set in an imaginary or simplified "regency-land" and gone on with the story.  Calling attention to the proper modes of behavior simply made me wince at all the gross violations (sartorial and social) that went unremarked.

The Verdict:
Silly but with world-building flaws that are grievous given that it claims to be set in the real world, in a time and place which was scrupulously recorded at all levels of society.  If the "flaws" were, as I suspect. used to forward the plot or build moments for the characters, then I'm even more grumpy, because that's just sloppy plotting, and totally unnecessary and slapdash.

Nonfiction: The Woman Who Would be King, Kara Cooney

Hey look!  I read grownup books too!

The Woman Who Would be King: Hatshepsut's Rise to Power in Ancient Egypt
Kara Cooney
ISBN: 978030795767
Finished October 23, 2014

This one has taken a while to read - usually I'm faster than this, but then usually I'm reading light "pop" nonfiction, or reading on topics I'm already pretty familiar with (education, neurological science) and this was way outside my area of familiarity.  I started it about two weeks ago, and have been slowly working my way through, and now it's over and I wish there was more!

I loved it.  I know enough about archaeology to know that most of the "suppose" thises and "perhaps" those other things and "maybe" this or thats are way unusual for the field (and I think actually frowned on) but for a historical figure like Hatshepsut, where there's really no chance of us really learning about how her life really was, I don't see the harm, and I agree with the author that there's really no other way to write about her without it being a dry-as-dust textbook listing of the artifacts found and their significance and implications.

Now, I do wish that there had been room to write a few "alternate history" accounts, especially in sections that had to be total conjecture like working relationships and palace life, or in places where there are competing and roughly equal interpretations of how events took place (for example: after her death, when we deal with the destruction of her monuments and the obliteration of the mentions of her daughter and head official).

I learned so much, and now I want to know so much more.  I've not read the footnotes or the references yet, but I'm planning on it (they're impressively long) and I hope that some of my questions will be answered there.  Regardless, I'm sensing a resurgence of my elementary school passion for Egyptology.

Here's hoping that Cooney writes another one!  

Storytelling: Diamonds and Toads/Mother Hulda (fairy tale)

This one is another old favorite.  If you want to get into the nitty-gritty of fairy tales (you know you want to) this one is an Aarne-Thompson 480; "Kind and Unkind Girls" which should be subtitled "Who Get What They Richly Deserve."

The two classic versions are known as Diamonds and Toads and Mother Hulda, respectively.

In Diamonds and Toads, the youngest daughter of a widow is the only nice one in the family, and thus gets the short end of the stick, doing all the work.  She's out at the well one day, and kindly draws extra water for an old beggar lady, who (of course) is a great fairy in disguise, and who blesses her for her kindness by decreeing that diamonds, pearls, and roses will fall from her lips every time she speaks.  Despite the awkward nature of this gift, it's a lovely thought, and the girl's nasty mother thinks so as well.  She sends the older, nastier sister out as well, but the girl is an idiot as well as mean, so the fairy curses her to drop toads and vipers from her mouth instead.

Mother Hulda is a bit more complicated.  Instead of helping the beggar by the well, our virtuous heroine (this time a stepdaughter) jumps down the well after a fallen spindle, and ends up in a magical country where she finds everything in disarray, and industriously helps a lady sort things out.  The lady is (of course) the fairy ruler of that realm, who covers her in gold and pops her back up the well back home, but the family can't remove the gold to steal it.  So, stepmother shoves stepsister down the well, but the lazy girl doesn't bother to help (in some versions even actively opposes the lady just to be a brat), so the lady rolls her in pitch (tar) and returns her back home as well.

There's a delightful cajun-flavored version by the delightful duo of Robert D. San Souci and Jerry Pinkney, called The Talking Eggs, where it's set down in creole country, with a family of poor black women.  The fairy lady now owns a strange farmstead out in the woods, and the wondrous items (that fall at the good girl's feet, not from her lips) are gained from magical eggs who kindly indicate their use, despite their appearances.

This one makes the list mainly because there is evidence of this tale being adapted by southerners, but what makes me most happy is that, again, this is a story of clever people (especially clever women) who are clever AND kind and generous, and who get rewarded for those qualities, while the less-smart, less-kind, and less-generous representatives ALSO get what's coming to them, but it's no-one's fault but their own.

I also like the idea, as in Little Gold Star, that bad behavior gets made physically obvious on the person, either permanently, or until they repent and behave better.

Finally, this one is another where there is no supernatural evil or "villain" to conquer, just an exploration of human nature and the consequences of selfish or hurtful behavior.  

References:

Online:
Toads and Diamonds, via Project Gutenberg (from the Blue Fairy Book, collected/edited by Andrew Lang)
Annotated Diamonds and Toads via SurLaLune

Mother Hulda (Frau Holle) via SurLaLune

Mother Holle, via Project Gutenberg (from Fairy Tales, by the Brothers Grimm)


Picture Books:
Toads and Diamonds
Charlotte Huck, illustrated by Anita Lobel
ISBN: 9780688136802

The Talking Eggs
Robert D. San Souci, illustrated by Jerry Pinkney
ISBN: 9780803706194


Others:
Toads and Diamonds
Heather Tomlinson
ISBN: 9780805089684
(Juvenile/Middle-Grade fiction, set in India)

Storytelling: The Buried Moon / The Dead Moon, English folktale

This story is usually called The Buried Moon.  A version of this story appears online, on a page cataloging Joseph  Jacobs' 1894 collection of English folk and fairy tales (More English Fairy Tales).  It also appears as a picture book called The Buried Moon, with the language slightly simplified by Amanda Walsh, who also created haunting Steven-Kellog-ish twisty illustrations for it.  Charles de Lint also has an homage-tale called The Moon is Drowning as I Sleep.

Like most stories I want to tell, this is a triumphant story, where good prevails due to bravery and cleverness.  The fens (marshes) are dangerous places at night, except on the nights of the full moon.  On those nights, the brightness drives the evil lurkers away, and lets travelers pass in safety, until one night when a traveler is led astray by a will-o-the-wisp.   The moon pities him, and even though it isn't the night of the full moon, she comes down from the sky to lead him to safety.  He is saved, but in her weakened state is caught in a snag, and captured and buried under a heavy stone by the vengeful evil lurkers, who are angry that she makes the night safe for humans once a month.

Now the humans have no moon at all, ever, and the fens crawl with evil, and anyone out after dark is lost.  In despair, the villagers search through the whole town to find the last successful traveler, and with his memory and the advice of a wise-woman (cryptic as always;  "search for a coffin, cross, and candle") the entire village arms themselves with light and heads into the deadly marshes at dusk of the next full-moon night to search.  The moon is found under the stone (the coffin) marked by the snag that caught her (the cross) and lit by the triumphant will-o-the-wisp who sits there gloating every night (the candle).  Once rescued, she rises up out of the night, and her brightness scalds the evil lurkers into nothing.  Now the fens there, and the adjacent villages, are the safest places in England to be at night.

This one has a lot of potential.  First, as a straightforward folk-tale, it packs a punch.  Evil marsh-lurkers and people and beautiful lady moons getting dragged down into the muck and buried, tortured or eaten?  Heck yes!  The people also get mad props because they manage their rescue with cleverness and bravery, not with fairy tricks or magic assistance.  Finally, the tragedy is a true tragedy.  The moon is caught, not because she's vain or careless or stupid, but because she was trying to help someone despite being weak, and her true powers are revealed after she's rescued.

There's also a lot of potential to pad it out a bit.  Does the moon save the traveler because she thinks he's handsome?  Perhaps they are lovers?  Perhaps the traveler himself is something supernatural, and that's why he tried to cross the fens after dark?

Why is this one village/town in the middle of fae-infested marshes?  What sort of people live in a town like that?  What if the old wise woman (or even most/all of the townspeople) were priestess or devotee of the moon?

What if the marshes were haunted by human spirits instead of / in addition to the original bogles, truckles, and kelpies?

What if the moon took the traveler back into the sky with her as she was rescued and left?

What if the fens were permanently brightened by moon-light, and that's the origins of fox-fire lights?



So much to play with, depending on audience and length needed.

Books and sources:

Wikipedia Article on The Buried Moon  

The Buried Moon
Amanda Walsh
ISBN: 0395593492

More English Fairy Tales
The Buried Moon
Joseph Jacobs
"original" version from 1894 collection
Available online and on Project Gutenberg

The Moon is Drowing as I Sleep
Charles de Lint
Collected in:
Dreams Underfoot
ISBN: 9780765306791
and in
The Very Best of Charles de Lint
ISBN: 9781892391964





 

Storytelling: Two of Everything (Chinese Folktale)

I first discovered this folktale through Cynthia DeFelice and Andrea U'Ren's delightful Irish-flavored homage One Potato, Two Potato.

The basic story is simple; a lonely impoverished peasant farmer discovers a magic pot in his fields, digs it up and carries it home.  Usually he throws something inside the pot to help him carry everything.  Once he gets home, he's simply happy about the free pot, but his clever wife realizes that the item he threw into the pot has doubled, and they set about doubling the little bits of things they own, working hard to grow more prosperous, and eventually (through mishap or purpose) doubling themselves to provide company and extra hands to share work.

It's a sweet story, with no real villains or unfortunate events, other than the poverty and loneliness which are overcome during the story itself.  I rather like that about the story, because it puts the focus on the delight of having more after having had so little for so long.  It also illustrates how quickly everything multiplies, using simple mundane items like candlesticks or kindling wood or potatoes.

The implications are that these farmers are clever enough and humble enough to enjoy the magic of the pot without screwing themselves over like The Fisherman's Wife does.  Also, unlike Why The Sea is Salt, or another Chinese folktale called the Magic Pot (The Runaway Wok) there's no trick to use, or an evil/trickster spirit that requires cleverness to outwit or that inflicts damage on neighbors/enemies.  It also has echoes of Stone Soup, in that it illustrates quite vividly that starting with next-to-nothing isn't quite the same as starting with absolutely nothing, and that companionship and generosity are intrinsic to human nature.

Related picture books to use for thematic, comparative, or contrasting concepts:

One Potato, Two Potato
Cynthia DeFelice, illustrated by Andrea U'Ren
ISBN: 0374356408

Two of Everything
Lily Toy Hong
ISBN: 0807581577

The Runaway Wok: A Chinese New Year Tale
Ying Chang Compestine, illustrated by Sebastia Serra
ISBN: 9780525420682

Stone Soup
John J. Muth
ISBN: 9780439339094

The Magic Fish
Freya Littledale, illustrated Winslow Pinney Pels
ISBN: 9780590411004

A Catfish Tale: A Bayou Story of the Fisherman and his Wife
Whitney Stewart, illustrated by Gerald Guerlais
ISBN: 9780807510988

New Picture Book: Just In Case, by Yuyi Morales

Just in time for Dia!

A sequel of sorts to Just a Minute, which I actually prefer.

Just in Case
Yuyi Morales
ISBN:9781596433298
Read Oct. 20, 2014

Senor Calavera is once again heading to Grandma Beetle's birthday party, and the ghost Zelmiro is helping him choose a last-minute gift (he forgot that gifts were customary).  Calavera works his way through the alphabet picking sometimes very good gifts (instrucciones "to find all things lost"), sometimes less good ("un kilo" is actually just that - a just-over-two-pounds weight), and sometimes just peculiar (Niebla; fog, and W; because two Vs are just not going to cut it) until he gets to Y, and he's done.  Surely Grandma will like something, and besides, he's running late for the party now!  He hurries on his bicycle but crashes and falls, and now he needs just one more present, perhaps something starting with Z...

It's cute, but the alphabet bits make it difficult for storytime.  I do Halloween/Dia only once a year (sadly) so I should be fine sticking with the original.

Tuesday Storytime: Comparing Yourself to Animals

Because there are enough good quality fun picture books out there to do a storytime SOLELY about comparing yourself to animals, here we are!  A trio of excellent storybook authors/illustrators also represented, with very different art styles, so a win all around for this week.

Little Mouse
Alison Murray (Apple Pie A B C)
ISBN: 9781423143307
Retro-bold outlines and bright color-blocked cast of animals follow a little girl through her day.

Our narrator is mommy's "little mouse" when she's all cuddly and snuggly, but she wants us to know that she's lots of other animals too.  This one is very fun because she never states out-loud what the animals are, but they appear behind her, so when she is shown grumpily heading for her bath with an irate bear behind her and the commentary "And I'm pretty certain that little mice don't stomp..." (emphasis in the original) the kids are happy to add "like a bear!" to finish the thought.


Quick as a Cricket
Audrey Wood, illustrated by Don Wood
ISBN: 0859531511
Classic stream-of-opposites with an engaging boy emoting along with the animal representative.

I don't read this one very often, but I really enjoy what it does: presents a set of emotional or physical feelings and relates them to the animals that are most associated with that emotion or feeling or attribute in western (American) culture, specifically the ones that have actual phrases associated.  So we have "weak as a kitten" and "gentle as a lamb," but also "mean as a shark" and "strong as an ox" all of which are fairly common statements.  In addition, there's others that simply make sense "tough as a rhino," "wild as a chimp," "slow as a snail" may not be actual folk-statements, but they hold true and would make sense to most adults.


Monkey and Me
Emily Gravett (The Odd Egg)
ISBN: 9781416954576  
A cute little girl and her stuffed monkey (in scribbly pencil art reminiscent of Emma Kate, by Patricia Polacco, ISBN: 9780399244520) act out movements of various animals from the classic jump-rope rhyme.

Love the repetition, and the scrambles of the kids (and the patient hints of the parents) trying to figure out what the girl and monkey duo are acting out.  The elephant pantomime is especially clever, and I like the sing-song effects of the repeated chant leading up to whatever they were going to see.  The ending is perhaps a bit abrupt - because the story is entirely on sets of spreads, it's over very quickly compared to a lot of stories.

Juv Historical Novelization: The Arrow Over the Door, by Joseph Bruchac

The Arrow Over the Door
Joseph Bruchac, illustrated by James Watling
ISBN: 0803720785
Read Oct 20, 2014
A pacifist Quaker boy outside of Saratoga in 1777 is stung by accusations of cowardice in the face of the American Revolution, while an Abenaki boy (from what is now Canada) travels south to decide if his people will fight on the side of the distant King to punish his unruly colonists.



This is an interesting novelization of an actual historical event between Quakers and Native Americans.  The author has done extensive research to puzzle out the actual records of the event, to reach past stereotypes and assumptions of the past to present a (hopefully) historically-accurate narrative of what may have happened.

What we KNOW: there was a Quaker (Friends) meeting where a notable friend of the Native Americans was visiting.  A party of Native Americans with a prisoner arrived at the meeting house, discovered it full of friendly pacifists, and declared friendship with the people within, recognizing them as people of peace who would not be involved with the impending conflict.  A Friend invited the guests to dine, and after dinner, they left, leaving the Friends and their belongings in peace.

On this historical framework, we get a nice (very slender) dual-narrative from two author-invented characters; the teen Friend and the teen Native, as they navigate their own consciousnesses and the responsibilities and expectations of their cultures and religions.

Very short, and raises lots of questions about intentions and cultural responsibility and personal growth, and doesn't really answer them in any depth; the ending is perfunctory and abrupt for the amount of buildup.  That ending is actually a bit of a let-down, considering the time and care taken in establishing moods and personality and cultural perspectives for each boy.

Still, in addition to being a good look at both Friends and Abenaki culture, this is an interesting short vignette about the founding of America, from not one, but two marginalized and often-overlooked perspectives.

Tuesday Storytime: The Natural World

These three aren't hugely close to each other in content, but taken as a whole, they provide a nice gentle nonfiction progression through nature.  A good informational fit for a rainy, blustery, southern-fall day.


Squish! A Wetland Walk
Nancy Luenn, illustrated by Ronald Himler
ISBN: 0689318421
Scribbly muted watercolor washed landscapes in dull earthy fall colors.

This is a very low-key book.  The narrative uses a child in a bright yellow rain-slicker and an older jeans-and-flannel dressed companion as our entry into a gentle and general description of a wetlands, of what it is like, what lives there, why wetlands are important for people to protect, and what they provide for the creatures who live in them.  It's not energetic, it's not overly beautiful, but the simple descriptions and flowing watery smudgy artwork makes this a lovely calm informative nonfiction picture book encounter.



Underground
Denise Fleming
ISBN: 9781442458826
Gritty colorful underground cutaway-views of burrows and stratification and various critters.

Fleming is a delight.  I don't think I've encountered a single story of hers that I didn't love to page through and exclaim over the amazing number of details hidden in her deceptively crude blocky colorful pages.  In this one, we start with a bird, but immediately fall "low down way down under ground" to explore tunnels and burrows and nests and caches and cocoons and ground strata and any number of (totally unmentioned) human artifacts nestled into the embrace of the earth, or being dug into them (we see buried toys and tools, a small potted plant being set into a hole, and a larger tree-root-ball being watered).  All of this with the most minimal text possible, and with a variety of animal and insect life represented on the progression of spreads.  Excellent guide to the identities of the creatures forms the last spread, and don't forget to check out the endpapers for even more buried treasures.


Step Gently Out
Helen Frost, photographs by Rick Lieder
ISBN: 9780763656010
Forced-close perspective photographs of insects against artistic and muted blurred backgrounds.

Even though there are not one, but TWO whole pages with a spider (the one in Fleming's Underground is small enough and sidelined enough for me to ignore), I think I like this book best of today's trio.  A gentle cadence of relaxing commentary introduces various insects (and spiders) but remains unobtrusive against the truly beautiful photography on display here.  Again, don't forget to spare a look at the front and back endpages - they're different from each other, and also stunning photographs.  Lieder should be proud of his beautiful and entrancing work introducing young people to the smaller creatures we share our planet with.

Clockwork Heart, and Clockwork Lies: Iron Wind, both by Dru Pagliassotti

The last in the trilogy came out in September, and made me realize that I had missed the arrival of the second.  Originally, when I read the first, I only remembered the intricate caste system, the concept of flying couriers, and the noble "Exalted" class who were hidden behind intricate and restrictive robes and masks in all but the most private or extreme circumstances.

Clockwork Heart
Dru Pagliassotti
ISBN: 9781770530263
Re-read Oct 10

Clockwork Lies: Iron Wind
Dru Pagliassotti
ISBN: 9781770530508
Read Oct 12


In Heart, we're introduced to the mountainous city-state of Ondinium, made proud and rich by industry, and by the precious metal ondinum, which not only floats, but rises.  This metal powers giant difference engines in the heart of the city, keeps timepieces and cable-cars aloft, and provides the ability for small and light-weight people to become icarii - couriers and emergency response crews who fly on enormous lighter-than-air metal wings.

These couriers are the only members of Ondinium's strictly regulated society able to transcend caste boundaries - marked clearly by tattoos on the face, or in the case of the Exalted, also marked by enveloping and restrictive heavily ornamental and stylized robes and masks.

Taya Icarus' immigrant family is from one of the lower rungs of society, but Taya herself, cleared for any job due to her position as an icarus, wants to be a diplomat.  She's still worrying about her aptitude test when she responds to a cable-car accident, rescues a duo of Exalted, and is immediately thrust into a web of espionage and state-secret-selling, aided and wooed by two very different high-caste brothers.



In Lies, Taya has gotten her coveted diplomat job, but not quite the way she had imagined, and she is also a bit unprepared for the brutal nature of politicking and schmoozing in their neighbor-kingdom Mareaux.  When her Exalted diplomat companion is the subject of multiple assassination attempts, the duo must protect themselves (diplomatically) work with their security escort to figure out what is happening (diplomatically), return home early (diplomatically) and once back home, survive a last-ditch effort to destroy them all.  All of that only gets us to the halfway mark, and the rest of the book deals with the conclusion of their investigations and Taya's attempt to avert a true and enormous threat to the entire country, while still saving the man she loves, and trying to not shatter the ancient taboos she is bound by.  The feel of this book was a lot different from the first - this was more like a heist novel or a James Bond story.


In both stories, I really enjoy the relationship between Taya and the Exalted - it's not one you see often in science fiction or fantasy novels (a notable exception being Mary Robinette Kowal's Regency-With-Magic Glamourist Histories).  I also very much like the Lictor (police) Lieutenant Amcathra - again, nice to see a positive representation of police in this sort of story.

Looking forward to seeing the last book processed into the library collection: Clockwork Secrets: Heavy Fire was out in mid-September, so I should be seeing it soon.

Beautiful Old Fairy Tales: A Book of Fairy Tales, by Dean's Publishing

I mentioned this recently in my post about The White Cat, and as I remembered the story from my childhood, I had to go hunt down the actual book so I could look at the illustrations again.  It just came in, and it's so pretty.  I remember so many of the stories inside, and how they were just gently strange and odd - not all of them the usual ones that appear in collections.

A Book of Fairy Tales
illustrated by Janet and Anne Grahame Johnstone
published by Playmore Inc in New York, and Dean & Son in London (hardcover, 1977)
Originally published as the following individual books:
     Hans Christian Andersen Fairy Tales
     Janet and Anne Grahame-Johnstone Gift Book of Fairy Tales
     Gift Book of Fairy Tales
     The White Cat


Stories included:
Little Red Riding Hood
Old Mother Goose Rhyme
Hop O' My Thumb
Goldilocks and the Three Bears
The Three Little Pigs
Rumpelstiltskin
Jack and the Beanstalk
The Frog Prince
The Princess and the Pea
The White Cat
Little Ida's Flowers
Ole Luckoie, or The Dustman
Thumbelina
The Top and the Ball
The Darning Needle
Blockhead Hans
Sleeping Beauty
Puss in Boots
Tom Thumb
Hansel and Gretel
Beauty and the Beast
Babes in the Wood


They're so pretty.

What I remembered:


Ole Luckoie (Sandman) who tells the boy seven stories for seven nights, and on the last night, shows off his beautiful brother Death on his beautiful horse, where the good hear lovely stories in front of him, and the bad hear terrible tales behind his back, shrouded in his cloak.

The Princess and the Pea, standing in the rain, all soaked and black-haired and beautifully drapey.

The White Cat sequence where the Cavalier-dressed rain-soaked Prince draggles his pathetic way through the woods, to the doorway with the bellpull "hanging by a chain of diamonds," and then enters (dripping) into a blazing gold corridor illuminated by ghostly hands in sconces holding torches.  (Really makes me wonder if whoever did the Phantom of the Opera movie had seen this illustration)

The White Cat and her retinue riding on monkeys.

The little fairy page boy giving serious side-eye to the goblin page boy with the Wicked Fairy, while the Fairy curses the baby Sleeping Beauty.

Blockhead Hans riding a goat, throwing mud at a reporter, while the Princess claps in delight.

Serious waif-fu Gretel kicking ass and taking names.

A sinister and dramatic Rumplestiltskin dancing around his campfire.

New Picture Book: The Baby Tree, Sophie Blackall

This one's a real cutie.

The Baby Tree
Sophia Blackall
ISBN: 9780399257186
ink-and-watercolor in bright pastels and pink-cheeked faces.

One morning, our narrator finds out his parents are going to have a baby, and this leads to the question - where does a baby come from?  Commute-buddy Olive says it's a seed that grows, his teacher says they come from the hospital, the mailman says eggs are involved, and grandpa thinks the stork drops them off.  Now he's really confused.  Parents set him straight with a very simplistic but honest explanation, and he realizes that his buddy Olive, his teacher, and the mailman all had parts of the idea right (dad's seed, mom's egg, and most babies are born in hospitals) but he really needs to go see grandpa and set him straight.  So adorable, and has a nice section in the back with scripted talking points to help parents with curious kids, and reassures that telling the truth about the process is most helpful and most developmentally appropriate for all kids.

Glad to see it, and glad we have it available for our parents and potential siblings.

Storytelling: Flossie and the Fox, Patricia McKissack (Red Riding Hood)

You might have noticed by now that I enjoy slightly non-standard fairy-tales, or at least versions of them that are enriched by new environments and cultures.  Another classic Southern version of a fairy tale that I would dearly love to tell is a version of Red Riding Hood called Flossie and the Fox, put into beautiful picture book form by Patricia McKissack and illustrated by Rachel Isadora.  If you've never read it, I encourage you do check it out; it's a perfect blend of cheeky humor and serious storytelling chops.

According to the book itself, this version was told to Ms McKissack when she was a child, by her own storytelling grandfather.  More in-depth research is going to be needed to discover whether that story was his alone, or (as I suspect) a "local" version that reflected the lives and circumstances of the people living in that time and place.  I'm really hoping that it turns out to be the latter, so that I can help spread the story along myself in the future.

Much like Red Riding Hood in the classic story, Flossie is a young girl who is tasked with traveling though the woods alone with a basket.  The circumstances and the heroine of this story are quite different, and that's why I like it so much.  In Red Riding Hood, Red is an innocent, and she's totally taken in by the wolf, and too stupid (or innocent) to notice the dramatic and pointed differences in dear old granny.  This of course culminates in the ending where both Red and granny have to be saved by a third party introduced for that sole purpose.  None of that passive innocence here - Flossie is a force to be reckoned with.  

Like Red, she is carrying a basket, but in Flossie's case, taking eggs to a neighbor whose hens have been scared off of laying by a roaming fox.  Now, Flossie holds that she's never seen a fox before, but she's perfectly willing to do the neighborly thing and make sure those eggs get to the neighbor.

Once in the woods, our fox approaches, but unlike dear sweet innocent Red Riding Hood, Flossie has this encounter (and the several which follow) totally under control.  Her sweet innocent game completely sideswipes the poncy fox, who is distraught that this slip of a girl won't believe he is even a fox, let alone that she should be afraid of him!  He brings in various other animals to help plead his case, but the girl stubbornly refuses to see reason - that is, until the neighbor's house (and the resident hunting dogs) comes into sight, and the dogs recognize the fox perfectly well.  Isadora's final illustration of Flossie's bright grin is a perfect ending to the picture book, making sure readers are in on the joke.

I hope that I can find some alternate versions of this story, because between the plucky clever heroine and the gorgeous Southern idioms, I really want to tell this story over and over and over again.

Flossie and the Fox
Patricia C. McKissack, illustrated by Rachel Isadora
ISBN: 0803702507


  

Tuesday Storytime: Friends and Neighbors

Sometimes I find a book that just screams for me to find a weird, off-the-wall storytime theme to build around it.  Today was one of those storytimes.  I have to wonder sometimes what the adults think of my selection processes.  :)


The Owl and the Woodpecker
Brian Wildsmith
ISBN: 9781595780436
Psychedelic colors and vivid page compositions.

Woodpecker lives in his tree, and is happy working all day (peck peck peck) and sleeping all night.  Which works great until Owl moves in next door and likes to hunt all night and sleep all day - but he can't because of the noise.  This is a great child-level illustration of neighborly feuds, and how they eventually embroil the entire community, and sometimes take a great danger or a terrible event to overcome.  In this instance, a family of beavers decides Owl's tree is super tasty, and a storm rolls in to finish it off - Woodpecker saves the sleeping Owl, and helps him move to a new location, whereupon they become much better friends than they ever were neighbors.


The Knight and the Dragon
Tomie DePaola (Strega Nona)
ISBN: 0399207074
Naive line art with bright primary colors, becomes a "wordless" book about halfway through,

A knight and a dragon live near each other, but they've never fought.  After finding books about epic knight vs dragon showdowns, they're both game to try it out.  A series of comic-book-style panels show them practicing alone, their polite invitations to join in combat, then illustrates the resulting battle, which goes less than well.  A passing princess notices their difficulties, and provides them with a new set of books; "Outdoor Cooking" and "How to Build a B.B.Q." which brings about a much more successful collaboration.  Super cute, and almost funny enough to ease the sting of not being able to use The Reluctant Dragon like I wanted to.


Too Tall Houses
Gianna Marino
ISBN: 9780670013142
Gouache and pencil in a "southwestern" palette, with expressive main characters and peculiar houses,

Rabbit and Owl are good neighbors, until Rabbit's corn gets too high for Owl to see his beloved forest.  So Owl builds his house a bit higher, but now Rabbit's garden is in the shade.  So Rabbit builds his house a bit taller, and plants his garden on top (spilling water and dropping tomatoes onto Owl) and of course Owl has to retaliate - until the both of them are at the top of rickety miles-tall structures waving ominously in the wind.  What goes up must come down, and a suitably chastened Owl and Rabbit pool their remaining meager resources to build one small house with a lovely garden, overlooking the forest.  Funny, pretty, smooth-flowing narrative, and short, which is a rare set of attributes to find together.  

Nonfiction: The Little Girl Who Fought the Great Depression, John F. Kasson

The Little Girl Who Fought the Great Depression: Shirley Temple and 1930s America
John F. Kasson
ISBN: 9780393240795
Read October 3, 2014

I don't know that I can recommend this book as a book.  The individual chapters have a lot going for them, and the overarching concept is solid, but the execution is badly flawed.  From the cover, we seem to have a fairly secure idea: we're going to be looking at how Shirley Temple helped America overcome the Great Depression.  Or, we're going to be taking a look at America in the Great Depression, through a lens of Shirley Temple movies.

Sadly, that isn't really what we're getting, and I think in this case, it's all the editor's fault.  The author admits at the end (and it's terribly clear during the reading) that this final book is formed from a collection of already-created essays or talks or presentations or short publications about various topics of the Great Depression: about Shirley Temple's movies, and about Shirley Temple's childhood, and about the movie industry, and about the entertainment journalism industry, and about how dour and unlikeable Hoover was, and about the presidential campaign at the beginning of the Depression, and about the cult of personality that FDR indulged in, and about how Shirley ended her movie career and got married and became a diplomat, and about the presidential campaigns at the end of the Depression, and about the growing market for branded toys and events... are you beginning to see?

We have a LOT of material here, and under a skillful editor (and someone willing to kill their darlings) we might have gotten a coherent thematic journey out of it.  Either one of the two approaches that the cover teases would have been lovely.  (I'd personally have preferred the first option.)  Sadly, neither one really gets any traction because the author bounds back and forth between already published materials, only marginally related, plopping great hunks of discourse in about one tangent, then leaping onward to another great blob of information about something completely different (but still in America (mostly) and still in the Depression (mostly) instead of simply staying on track.

Now, along the strange multifaceted herky-jerky trip we do end up on, we learn a great deal about all of the topics I mentioned above.  It's just a shame that none of them are really ever related to each other, or to the Great Depression as a whole, or to the strange phenomenon that was Shirley Temple's career.

A let-down to be sure, especially since the information that was presented about the movie and entertainment industry could very easily have been worked into a more agile treatment of presidential image consciousness and the development of journalism and entertainment presses in creating trends and concepts for mainstreet Americans to latch on to.

Short Story Collection/Ghost Story: Sparrow Hill Road, Seanan McGuire

Late to the party, (this collection has previously published stories from all over the place, and was itself published back in May) but this is a really really good combined ghost story.

Sparrow Hill Road
Seanan McGuire
ISBN: 9780756409616
Read October 2, 2014

Doesn't everyone look for a good ghost story to set them up for Halloween?  If you do, I'd strongly suggest you add this one to your rotation.

This is such a good cumulative ghost story.  Fair warning, the book is (from what I can tell researching) an edited compilation of previously existing stories and short fiction about a single character and world, and as such, some of the stories either slightly disagree with each other, or (more often) are a bit repetitive, as the basic introductions and world mechanics must be introduced as part of what was originally intended to be a single story standing alone.  It didn't bother me, because I greatly enjoyed McGuire's worldbuilding and thought that the characters inhabiting this world were interesting and quirky, but that repetition seems to have really bugged the snot out of some readers,

Summary:  It seems like everyone knows the ghost story of the Girl in the Diner, or the Phantom Prom Date.  Those two stories especially - the first of a trucker's angel who appears as a hitchhiker and saves her driver from impending accidents, and the second of a murderous jilted ghost who kills boys in retribution from being stood up at her prom - have haunted Rose Marshall since 1952.  Or, more appropriately, Rose has haunted the roads, and the stories have slowly evolved.

The reality is closer to the first than the second (although I have to say there was a solid tease that there IS a darker version of Rose out there, homecoming away, and would I ever love to see the story of that realization and confrontation unfold) and Rose has been around longer as a ghost than she ever was as a living girl.  She's just starting to get the hang of the rules of the undead world, of twilight ghosts interacting with the living, and the midnight world of long-dead ghosts interacting with strange and terrible creatures of myth.  She is lucky to have survived this long, because she's being hunted by someone who seems to be both living and dead, and needs her soul for fuel.

Despite the chronological (roughly) progression of the story, we don't get a solid "here is the ending of the book" resolution.  Again, I'm pretty sure that this is because we're just seeing a collected version of all the existing stories about Rose.  I really really hope that we'll get MORE stories, or perhaps a novella or novel about her and her world, but for this one, having a character wrapped up in a pretty "the end" bow would cut off so many possibilities that I'm really not surprised at all to come away without a final resolution to her through-line conflict.  The 'miniboss fight' that we did get was good, but not amazingly climactic, which makes the open-ended sense a little stronger.

On that note, I did feel like our antagonist could have been a smidge more active or at least a bit more present in the stories.  He came off a little weak in the aggregate, even though his individual appearances were suitably tense.  I'm not entirely sure why the overall impression weakens like that, but it might be that we never actually see any consequences of his predation (other than Bethany, who was 1) partly spared, and 2) blase about her experiences).

I'm immediately passing this on to one of my friends, and I very rarely do this.  It's just up his alley tho, and I think he'll enjoy it.

Similar ghostly or american-creepy reads:
The Night Circus (Erin Morgenstern)
The Boneshaker (Kate Milford)
Anna Dressed in Blood (Kendare Blake)
anything written by Charles de Lint
American Gods and Anansi Boys (Neil Gaiman)
The Graveyard Book (Neil Gaiman)
The Little Girl Who Lived Down the Lane (Laird Koenig)
Mad Maudlin (Bedlam's Bard series, Mercedes Lackey & Rosemary Edghill)

 

Storytelling: The White Cat (fairy tale)

If you're unfamiliar with this story, you ought to check it out.  It's a lovely story, and I am continually shocked that it doesn't get turned into a movie or a longer story more often than it has.  A couple of good classic versions of it are found on SurLaLune's fairy tale site (a delightful website in general) the first from Andrew Lang's "Color" Fairy Books, in the 1889 Blue book, specifically. Another practically identical version comes from Madame d'Aulnoy in 1892.

One picture book version that I don't totally hate is:
The White Cat
Robert D. San Souci, illustrated by Gennady Spirin
ISBN: 9780531071700
I'm actually sad that I don't like this version more - between San Souci and Spirin, you'd think it would be right up my alley, but it's just a little too stiff and formal and sepia-toned for me to truly adore.

My all-time favorite version of the story is found in a collection.
A Book of Fairy Tales (Published by Dean's in 1977)
The story itself is the Madame d'Aulnoy version, dated from 1682 (the original French edition) and the illustrations are by Janet and Anne Grahame Johnstone.
This is a lovely book in general, and the illustrations are PHENOMENAL.  This was the picture book of fairy tales that I first had as a child, and I love the elegant willowy characters and draping finery.



Short Version:
King has three sons, all decent and good, and only one kingdom.  It's small, so breaking it up isn't really an option, and he really doesn't want to abdicate or get killed quite yet, so he figures he'll keep them busy with crazy quests to complete, vowing to give the kingdom to whoever best fills his requests, basically hoping for some time to rule in peace while they're all gallivanting around the kingdom.

First test: he wants a beautiful little dog.  They have a year.  Youngest prince hares about buying pretty dogs until he gets lost in a great wood and finds an enchanted castle, where he gets drugged and spends his year being entertained by a retinue of lovely cats.  At the end of the year, he is reminded that he has to go back to the king with a dog, but the lady of the castle gives him an acorn with a tiny dog inside.  Obviously the King thinks the tiny dog is a marvel, but he's still happy ruling, so...

Second test: a sheet of muslin thin and fine enough to draw through the eye of a needle.  The prince is no slouch, and figures that if a tiny magic dog inside an acorn is no biggie, obviously this will be a piece of cake too, and besides this way he can spend his year being entertained by the Court of Cats and the lovely Lady of Cats.  He does, they do, and a the end of the year, she gives him a walnut (but the cloth is actually inside a nested series of smaller nuts and seeds).  Again, the other two princes have done amazingly well, and have actually found materials that can meet the condition, just barely, but the magic cloth is overwhelmingly amazing.  The king is getting a bit worried, so he proposes a final test.

Last test: a beautiful princess to become queen.  Prince heads back to the magic castle, and at the end of the year, the White Cat demands that if he loves her, and he wants to help her, he has to cut off her head.  He does so, and voila!  Beautiful enchanted princess!  She tells her life story (Mom essentially went Rapunzel on the fairies, and they did the Rapunzel in the tower plot, but instead of the wandering in the woods blind ending, THAT Prince got eaten by a dragon, and the fairies turned the Princess into a White Cat when she refused their suggested suitor; the King of the Dwarves.)  They both return to the old King, and glory be, she's got NINE kingdoms that she inherited from her parents, as well as scads of fairy wealth from her adopted parents, so the old King can continue with his own kingdom in peace, and she'll even give the other brothers their own kingdoms into the bargain.

Finis.



What I love most about this story is that instead of the Beauty and the Beast idea where a prince is changed into a beast through his own evil nature and must be "tamed" by love and kindness (his own or other's, depending on the story) this one has more of a Rapunzel flair to it, where the desires of the parents (and the subsequent stubborn refusal of the princess to marry the King of the Dwarves) are the cause of the transformation, and the Princess, although trapped as a cat, and restricted to the castle, is able to perform useful magics for the Prince, even if she can't break her own enchantment.

Now, as a story, I think it has some minor issues.  It's pretty obviously sexist, and there are places where the story-book logic hangs a little bit thin, but overall it's delightful, rarely seen in picture books or in novelizations or adaptations, and has a beautiful castle filled with magical cats that fulfill wishes.  What more could you want?

If I work on this story, I have a feeling I'm going to make the king's tests coincide with a set of tests from the White Cat to see if the prince is worthy (instead of just being told that he is worthy) to make a nice Weave of Words/Clever Anaeet parallel between the obviously bogus requests of the king to take up time and energy, and the actual clever and telling tests of the White Cat to show the prince's character and abilities.

I'm unsure about the brothers.  On the one hand, it's nice to see siblings that get along well, but on the other hand it could be a nice callback to Cinderella to have step-siblings that dislike or try to sabotage the younger Prince.

Likewise, the backstory of the princess and how she got turned into a cat will be an interesting puzzle.  The Rapunzel portion with her mother's cravings and her growing up with the fairies and then being locked into a tower is a full fairy-tale on it's own, and that's not even getting into the potential for storytelling that marrying the King of the Dwarves has.  That part links back into Thumbelina thematically, with the girl not wanting to marry the mole and live forever in the dank darkness.  Perhaps some of the "entertainments" that the cats present to the Prince can be these fairy tales acted out for him, and he slowly realizes that they're a history of someone.

I'm excited about this one, although part of me wants to save my creative energy here and try to create it as a longer novel or story.  I just want to see it become more common and appreciated.

      

Nonfiction: The Way Into Narnia, Peter J. Schakel

Ran across this while shelving, and enjoyed a different take on the Chronicles of Narnia.

The Way Into Narnia: A Reader's Guide
Peter J. Schakel
ISBN: 0802829848
Finished October 1, 2014.

The author is a Lewis scholar, and has written several other books about Lewis, and about the Chronicles in particular.  I especially think that his second book: Imagination and the Arts in C. S. Lewis: Journeying to Narnia and Other Worlds (2002, ISBN: 9780826219374) would be an interesting read.

However, back to this one.  Here, we look at the Chronicles in the light of Lewis and Tolkien's desire to create new myths or "fairy" stories of other worlds and places that would resonate spiritually with readers and inspire them in various ways.  The premise is sound, and we're treated to a nice introduction that deals with Lewis' background in imagination, education and spirituality (and lacks thereof, and recovery thereof) that led him specifically to want to write stories of a "Secondary world" that would allow him to make allusions and references and suppositions (not allegories) of truisms that he held to be inspiring and important in this "First" world of everyday life.

Once we get into the breakdowns of the individual books, the premise lags a bit, as the majority of the mythos involved here is Christian, and while the author tries gamely to keep it to a minimum, the obvious fact remains that many of the important plot points of the books, or important character moments, are extremely deeply rooted in a very Western, very Christian, very theological sense of the world and how to live in it.  That is as it is, but it makes the treatise on the books being created fairy stories a bit thin in places, and no amount of caviling about how Lewis was inspired by Northern mythos or sentiment, or drew on Spenser and MacDonald's realms of "faerie," or inserted the gods and heroes of Classical mythology will change that those all appear in addition to and as supports to the overarching Christian figures and themes.

The real interest here for me is how the author gets into the spirited debate over reading order.  Much like with Star Wars, there is a very deep and sometimes acrimonious split between different camps of equally devoted fans, and like everyone else, I have my own deep-seated opinions.  I was happy to see that the author largely agrees with me, although I have to be difficult and admit that I prefer my own slightly weird ordering scheme (Lion, then Magician, then Horse, then Caspian and Dawn Treader as quickly as possible together, then Silver Chair to close us out, leaving The Last Battle out entirely.)

The author points out several extremely pertinent textual areas which clinch that Lion should be the first Narnia book read.  There we are introduced to the world of Narnia along with the Pevensies, and we get to discover and learn with them who Aslan is, and what this new strange world is.  Once we've made the initial discovery, then we can backtrack to Magician, and see how it all began, after we are already familiar and attached to the world.

Schakel also spends a good portion of his writing time on elaborating the differences in editions between the first British edition, the edited first US edition, and the subsequent "unified" edition in 1994 that reverts back to the (in the author's and in my own opinion) less powerful and more problematic first British edition.  In addition to lamenting the textual difficulties, he also warns against the unfortunate disappearance, reduction, or miniaturization of many the illustrations from subsequent editions, limiting the power and impact of the story on children reading for the first time (or as is more likely) being read to, and perusing the illustrations on their own to remember the stories and characters.

Sadly, all the illustrations are only in the British edition, the better edited text is in the first US edition, and there are multiple line editing mistakes and omissions in the US edition as well.  Looks like I'll be creating my own patchwork edition to correct all the faults and present the best possible reality of the Chronicles to my hypothetical future children.

Nonfiction: Seven Myths About Education, Daisy Christodoulou

I was referenced to this title by an earlier read: Curious, and after having read the other title that it recommended on education theory and practice (Why Don't Students Like School?) I decided I needed to follow up on the ideas presented with this one as well.

Seven Myths About Education
Daisy Christodoulou
ISBN: 9780415746823
Read September 28, 2014

I don't know why I expected this book to be longer than it was, but it's practically a pamphlet.  It's also written by a teacher in Great Britain, so the specific institutional frameworks referenced are quite different from ours (mentions of analogues to school boards and review or policy-makers, or even to the grades or ages of students in examples - all were unfamiliar) but does not in my opinion make the book difficult to understand or to follow her chains of logic.

And her chains of logic are scrupulously maintained.  For each myth, she examines in detail the theoretical underpinnings of an idea, proof that this idea is promulgated and approved by current school doctrines, then shows neurological and historical counters to this idea which establish it as a myth, and offers counterexamples and options for preferred teaching methods (although these last are a bit scarce).

I was amused to see her champion the Common Core methodology, given the political aching and moaning which is torpedoing progress in adopting a knowledge-based curriculum, but in a sort of perverse satisfaction, at least now with this book I know the British aren't head and shoulders ahead of us.  

On the down-side, I have practically given up any hope that if I do have offspring, I'm going to be able to trust their education to any school system, either public, private, or Montessori.  It's depressing to realize, but the saying seems to be true: if you want it done right, do it yourself.  Needless to say, I've purchased this book for my own parenting collection.

Storytelling: Moss Gown, William H. Hook & Donald Carrick

This is a story that I haven't told yet, but I have WANTED TO for my whole life.  It's one of a pair (the other one is The White Cat - which I also harbor dreams of turning into a juvenile or YA fantasy story someday) and if I had to choose only one picture book or fairy tale to read for the rest of my life (terrible thought) then Moss Gown would be that book.

Moss Gown

William H. Hook, illustrated by Donald Carrick

ISBN: 9780395547939

 This is an interesting fairy tale, and is one that is almost certainly Southern American in origin.  Alternate forms are the Cap o' Rushes, Catskin, Tattercoats, or Meat-Loves-Salt.  The core of the story is very like those older English tales, or to a classic Cinderella story, but what makes this version so interesting is that it has been married to a King Lear foundation.  

Candace is the youngest of three daughters of an old plantation master, and he summons all of them to declaim their love for him, before he makes his decisions about his will.  Candace isn't interested in flattery, but does love him.  He doesn't understand, and banishes her from his lands (here we see King Lear) where she falls into the Cinderella elements of the story; meeting a "gris-gris" woman in the swamp, being gifted with magical helpful items (her gown of moss).  The story then mixes the Catskin and Cinderella stories thoroughly, with Candace working in the kitchen in her moss gown, but sneaking off to a single ball, where the young master falls in love with her and pines away.  In a sweet King Lear finish, the wedding ball is crashed by an old beggar who Candace recognizes as her father, turned out by her conniving older sisters.  She arranges to serve him a dinner of unsalted food, then reminds him of the simple power of love.

Carrick's illustrations are phenomenal.  They are powerful and rich and evocative and haunting, and I will remember and love them all my life.  That said, I do believe that this story is rich enough to stand on it's own, and the very specific Southern flavor of the story makes it perfect for my region.

  

New Picture Book! Hermelin: the Detective Mouse, Mini Grey

I love Mini Grey so much.  Traction Man is so amazing, and Toys in Space is just adorable.  Now we get a story about a mouse detective solving adorable cozy neighborhood (super-simple) mysteries.

Hermelin: the Detective Mouse
"as told to Mini Grey"
ISBN: 9780385754330

After a slew of mysterious cases are solved by a clever individual named Hermelin, the residents of Offley Street desperately want to meet their new neighborhood benefactor; until they realize he's a mouse.  Emily the journalist (and aspiring detective in her own right) realizes that cleverness and kindness (and a quick mind in an emergency) are necessary traits for a detective, regardless of species.  The story ends with the inauguration of their joint detective agency, solving the remaining mystery of Offley Street; where have all the cats gone?

Oh I hope this will be a continuing series!  The notes are adorable, and simply perfection.