This is the story of Fannie Farmer and her famous and popular cookbook! When I first heard of the Fannie Farmer Cookbook (originally The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book (1896)), I wasn’t sure whether Fannie Farmer was a real person or if that was just a pseudonym or a marketing name for the cookbook, but Fannie Farmer was a real person in the late 19th century, and that was her real name. The story in this picture book is based on her real life, although details may be fictionalized, and the pictures give the story humorous twists.
In the beginning of the story, a little girl named Marcia Shaw prides herself on how many things she can do around the house and how much help she can give to her mother. However, she’s still a little girl, and there are some things she doesn’t know how to do well. In particular, Marcia doesn’t know how to cook. Now that her mother is expecting another baby, Marcia’s mother decides that she needs to hire some extra household help, especially with the cooking.
Marcia is a little offended that her mother considers her inadequate to help by herself, but when the new help arrives, a young woman named Fannie Farmer, Marcia has to admit that she’s a good cook. Even better for Marcia, Fannie doesn’t consider her cooking techniques trade secrets. She enjoys letting Marcia help in the kitchen and teaching her cooking tips.
Under Fannie’s tutelage, Marcia’s cooking skills improve. Fannie teaches her many important pieces of information about cooking, like how to measure ingredients and how to tell when ingredients are fresh or if they’ve gone bad.
Marcia enjoys learning to cook with Fannie, but she thinks that she’ll never be as good as Fannie because there’s just too much to remember. She doubts that she’ll ever be able to memorize it all. Marcia is amazed that Fannie can keep all of that cooking information in her head. To help Marcia, Fannie decides to write out a notebook with recipes and cooking instructions, including all of the specific measurements for ingredients and detailed information about cooking techniques to make the recipes come out just right.
This is what makes Fannie Farmer and her cookbook so unique for their time period. If you’ve ever seen a very old recipe book or even just old family recipes written down, they often don’t have all of the amounts of ingredients written down, or the amounts are written in very vague terms. Old recipes also offer little to no cooking techniques, like how to tell when it’s time to turn a griddle cake over or how to tell if a cake is done baking. The assumption was that girls (usually girls for this time period) would learn to cook by watching their mothers and by learning from their examples. However, that assumes that their mothers knew all of these cooking tips themselves, that the mothers remembered to tell their daughters what they knew and explained it well enough for them to understand (some people don’t have much of a talent for teaching, even when it’s a subject they know themselves), and that the daughters understood or remembered everything their mothers said. Otherwise, the vague directions in cookbooks and family recipes were of little help, and new cooks had to learn through experimentation or trial and error. Fannie’s approach to cooking, as explained in the story, is an art and a science that anybody can learn if someone explains it well enough, so she puts her focus on recording all of the necessary details of her recipes.
Fannie’s recipe book, started for Marcia, turns out to be very popular with both the Shaw family and their friends and neighbors. As word spreads about it, people start coming by to borrow recipes or get cooking advice. Fannie realizes that there is a lot of demand for better teaching of cooking techniques, and she really enjoys teaching cooking, so she decides to accept a job at the Boston Cooking School.
Before Fannie leaves the Shaws, Marcia borrows the cooking notebook and makes a special cake for Fannie to show her what she’s learned. The cake comes out just right because Marcia has followed Fannie’s directions.
There are hints from the Fannie Farmer cookbook throughout the book, and there is a section in the back of the book with historical information about Fannie Farmer. It also includes a sample recipe for Griddle Cakes.
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies). New and used copies are also available on Amazon. You can also buy the original Fannie Farmer Cookbook through Amazon or read it online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).
My Reaction
One of the things I liked about this book is the illustrations. There are eccentric details in the pictures that add humor to the story, like how Marcia stacks a bunch of chairs on top of each other while making candles, so she can make them extra long, and one of her extra long candles appears later, when Fannie shows her how to tell if an egg is fresh by holding it up to a light. For some reason, Marcia’s mother also has a weird habit of licking her dishes when she’s eating one of the yummy recipes, and there is one picture where it looks like she’s lost control of the baby carriage, and it’s rolling away with the baby. I’m sure these aren’t historical details and were just thrown in to be funny.
I think it’s also important to point out that the real-life Fannie Farmer lived an unconventional life for someone of her time period. She was plagued with health problems from a fairly young age. At some points in her life, she was unable to walk, possibly because of a stroke, and when she walked, she had a limp. She never married, but she built a fulfilling career around her talent for cooking. and achieved lasting fame because she wanted to share her knowledge with others. She is credited with establishing exact and level measurements in cooking in the United States, and she was also a strong believer in quality food and proper nutrition, especially for people with health problems.
Revolutionary War on Wednesday by Mary Pope Osborne, 2000.
The story begins with a prologue that explains things that have happened in the series up to this point, saying that Jack and Annie are currently undertaking a series of missions to four special types of writing for the library at Camelot. These missions cover books #21-24 in the series, and in this book, Jack and Annie need to find a piece of writing that represents “something to send.” To find this piece of writing, they’re off to the time of the American Revolutionary War!
When they arrive, it’s winter, and they find a camp of soldiers nearby. At first, they’re not sure which side the soldiers are on, so they sneak up to the camp to get a look at them. The soldiers catch them spying on the camp, but it’s okay because they’re Patriots, not British Redcoats. The soldiers tell the children that they had better go home, thinking that they’re just ordinary children from their time.
After Jack reads a little further in their book about the Revolutionary War, he realizes that this is December 25, 1776, and that they are about to witness the famous crossing of the Delaware River in Pennsylvania. This was a mission carried out in secret by George Washington and his men. The children listen while George Washington delivers an inspirational speech to the soldiers (“These are the times that try men’s souls.”), but a captain tells them that they had better leave because they don’t want children getting in the way of the mission. However, he asks them to do one favor before they leave. He asks them to take a letter to his family back in Frog Creek. He says that it’s a farewell letter, and they should only deliver it if they hear that the mission has failed and many soldiers were lost. Jack accepts the letter, realizing that this letter represents “something to send.”
Since the children know from their book that the mission will be successful, they can safely keep the letter. Jack thinks that their mission is over, but Annie has other thoughts. She climbs into one of the soldiers’ boats because she wants to spend more time with George Washington. George Washington tries to send the children back, but when the snow gets worse and he considers canceling the mission, the children have to persuade him to continue.
At first, the soldiers think that the children might be enemy spies because they seem to know too much about their mission, and one of them saw Jack writing something down earlier. However, Jack convinces them otherwise when he shows that he copied George Washington’s inspirational speech. He reminds George Washington about what he told his men about perseverance. Jack’s words inspire George Washington to take his own advice.
There is a section in the back of the book with more information about the Revolutionary War and places and people mentioned in the story.
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.
My Reaction
I didn’t often read prologues to books when I was a kid, and I remember skipping over sections that explained the story background and past events in series that I followed regularly, but in this case, I was glad that the prologue explained the children’s mission. I’ve read books in this series out of order, although I don’t really recommend doing that. The books in the Magic Tree House series are very linear, and there are story arcs that extend over multiple books. If you skip around too much, it can spoil some surprises or disrupt the thread of the story.
I liked how this book introduced children both to the historical event of Washington crossing the Delaware and to the famous speech that he made. The lesson about perseverance was good.
The Richleighs of Tantamount by Barbara Willard, illustrated by C. Walter Hodges, 1966.
The Richleighs are a wealthy Victorian family in England, their enormous wealth the product of generations of marriages between wealthy families. There are four children in the family (from oldest to youngest): Edwin, Angeline, Sebastian, and Maud. The four Richleigh children are accustomed to their family’s wealthy and luxurious lifestyle, brought up by their fond parents and the governesses and tutors they hire to oversee the children’s education. Overall, the children are happy and appreciate their privileged lifestyle, but there is one thing that bothers all of them. It has bothered them for a long time. They don’t understand why their parents won’t take them to see their family’s ancestral home, Tantamount.
The wealthy Richleigh family owns several grand houses (including one in Scotland and one in Italy), but Tantamount is a mystery to the children. They know it exists because their family has a painting of it, and their grandfather talked about it once. A distant ancestor built this castle-like mansion in Cornwall, on a cliff overlooking the ocean and in a mixture of styles from around the world, and it’s supposed to contain some amazing things. Yet, the children’s father says he has never been there himself. The children’s parents don’t even like to talk about the place, and they’ve never taken the children there. The children know that something mysterious must have happened there at some point, but they have no idea what it is. They just know that they would love to see the place and find out what all the mystery is about! They often speculate about what the place is like, what once happened there, and why they’ve never been allowed to see it.
One day, Sebastian, who is the one who usually asks the most questions, decides to press their mother for answers about Tantamount. She tells him that his great-great-great grandfather, who built the place, was an eccentric and that the mansion is just too big, too inconvenient, and too remote to be of any comfort or use. This inconvenience is one of the reasons why most of the Richleigh family just cannot be bothered to go there. Also, his mother admits that the Richleighs are actually a little ashamed of the house because it is so hideously, overly elaborate and vulgar, even by the luxurious standards of the Richleighs. Sebastian says that he would still like to go there for an adventure, but his mother sees no point to it. She tells him that he can’t always have everything he wants, that he’s already a very indulged boy, and that he should just be happy with what he has. However, the children’s burning desire to see Tantamount and experience what they imagine as its mysteries isn’t really about the physical ownership of the house or the fantastic things that are supposedly kept there but about the spirit of mystery and adventure. As wonderful as everything the Richleigh family has, the children are chasing something else: excitement!
The children’s parents are actually the ones who don’t seem to understand the emotional attachment that people can have to physical belongings. Twice a year, they have their children donated old toys of theirs to the poor, which is a good thing, but poor Maud is traumatized when her parents tell her that she must give up her old rocking horse, Peggy, and that they will replace it with a brand new one. It’s not because Maud has outgrown rocking horses, but Peggy is looking a little shabby from use, and they want the children’s toys to all be in the best condition. They don’t consider the emotional attachment that Maud has to Peggy from her hours of playing with her or that Peggy’s shabbiness is a sign of Maud’s love for her. When they tell Maud that old toys are dangerous for children to play with, Maud asks why they aren’t dangerous for poor children to play with, her mother just tells her not to answer back. (Meaning that she doesn’t have a good answer, and she knows it.) Sebastian says maybe it would be better to just buy the poor children a new rocking horse instead of sending them Peggy, but his father tells him not to be impertinent, showing that this ritual about giving toys to the poor isn’t really about doing something nice for the poor so much as updating the children’s toys for the newest and “best” when that isn’t really what the children themselves want.
Soon after the children’s father gives away Peggy, he falls seriously ill, apparently from something he caught from the family he gave Peggy to. The children worry about what his illness will mean for their family, especially if he dies. Their first thoughts seem fairly petty. They first think that maybe this wouldn’t have happened if he hadn’t decided to give away Peggy. Then, they realize that, with their father ill, they won’t be able to travel to Italy this summer, as the family planned. Then, they think that, if their father dies, they will all have to wear gloomy black, and either Edwin will become head of the family at age 16 or that their uncle will look after the family. Their uncle is a more dour man than their father, so that’s also a gloomy prospect.
Fortunately, the children’s father recovers, and the children are relieved. His doctors advise him to take a sea voyage to recover. The parents will be traveling without the children, and they won’t be going to Italy, but the children say that they understand that this is important to their father’s health. However, this does leave the question of what the children will do while their parents are traveling. The parents ask the children for their opinions about what they would like to do this summer because they want the children to have a pleasant time together while they are gone. There is only one thing that all of the children want, and this time, the children’s parents agree: the children will spend the summer at Tantamount.
The parents make arrangements with Mr. Devine, the agent who manages the property on behalf of the family, for the children to go there for the summer. The children will be chaperoned by their governess, Miss Venus, and Edwin’s tutor, Mr. Gaunt. Before they leave, the children’s father tells Edwin that, since he is 16, he’s no longer just a child, and if any situation should arise which requires him to take charge, he should, as the heir to Tantamount. If anything serious happens, and they need help, they can also send word to Mr. Devine. The children’s mother tells them that there will also be a housekeeper at Tantamount who has a daughter of her own, who will also be helping out.
From the moment their parents leave for their voyage and the children make their final preparations to leave on their trip, they feel like everything is changing. Although they were always aware that they were privileged, they never really noticed much about the details of their lives or home or thought very much about the people who served them. Alone for the first time with Miss Venus and Mr. Gaunt, Angeline is struck with the thought that she never really noticed much about Miss Venus as a person, even what she truly looked like. Before, she was always just the governess, just another part of the steady routine of the children’s lives, but now, dressed for travel and just as excited as the children, she really seems to be a real person. Even Mr. Gaunt is excited and not so much his usual somber self. The children quickly realize that, without their parents there to insist on proper behavior, stiff manners, and a certain appearance, the governess and tutor are relaxing and become more themselves. Mr. Gaunt tells the children stories about his past travels across Europe, and they’re much more fun to hear about than his usual dull lessons. As they step outside of their usual rigid routine, it seems like everything has magically come to life for the children.
When they first arrive at Tantamount, it’s dark, and the place seems sinister. However, they receive an enthusiastic welcome from the housekeeper, Mrs. Pengelly. In the morning, the children see how grand the place truly is. The rooms are big and elaborately decorated, and there are amazing views of the sea.
Even more exciting than that, the children also quickly realize that life at Tantamount offers them the opportunity for more freedom than they’ve ever had in their lives. Without their usual nurses to pick up after them or fuss over what they’re wearing, they are free to make these simple choices for themselves. The idea of looking after themselves for a change and doing things as they want to do them is exciting by itself. Some parts of looking after themselves seem a little daunting at first, but Angeline realizes that it’s also good for them. Young Maud worries about what “they” will say about things the children are doing, but the older children point out that there is no “they” to worry about. Their parents and nurses aren’t there, and everyone who is there technically works for them.
Eagerly, the children begin to explore Tantamount. It is filled with strange and wonderful things, but most of it is in shabby and neglected condition. There are magnificent statues that are crumbling and a beautiful chandelier lies smashed where it fell on the floor of the ballroom. Angeline first thinks that their father will blame Mr. Devine and Mrs. Pengelly for the condition of the house, but Edwin points out that the house has been neglected for generations by the Richleighs themselves. Who knows how many years ago the chandelier fell when nobody in their family even cared whether it was still hanging or not? Edwin himself says that if their ancestral home was neglected to the point where it started falling apart, their own family was to blame. The children discuss which is more of a “folly”, as Mr. Gaunt put it, to build such a grand place in such a remote location or to forget forget about it and let it fall apart. The word “folly” can refer to an unnecessary building like this, and Edwin says that Tantamount is a “folly” in the sense that the family has done well enough without it for years. Edwin says that their ancestor probably had fun building it and that men like that build grand things for travelers to marvel at, but apart from that, they have little use. Since then, most family members have barely even thought about Tantamount. The children begin to feel sorry for the mansion, almost like it’s a neglected animal with a personality of its own. The place starts to feel sad to them.
Edwin also points out that Tantamount is actually dangerous in its crumbling condition. He even saves Maud from stepping onto a section of floor that would have crumbled underneath her. The children realize that they will have to be very careful of everything they do in Tantamount.
Tantamount is a sad and scary place, but still exciting because the children’s adventure is only just beginning. When Miss Venus and Mr. Gaunt see the condition of Tantamount, they decide that they and the children cannot possibly stay there for the summer. However, the children have only just had their first look at the place and have only just begun to delve into its secrets and consider what might be done with the crumbling old mansion. Even more importantly, they have had their first real taste of the freedom and responsibility that Tantamount has offered them, and they won’t give it up so soon. Edwin asserts himself as the de facto head of the Richleigh family and tells the governess and tutor that they may leave if they find it too uncomfortable, but he and his siblings will be staying because they are family and this is their home.
At first, the children are nervous at sending the adults away, but Edwin has thought it out. He has noticed that Miss Venus and Mr. Gaunt are fond of each other, and he suspects that they might take this opportunity to run away and get married. The other children wonder if they will tell their parents that they are at Tantamount alone, but Edwin doubts it. It would take awhile for any message to reach their parents, and the tutor and governess also wouldn’t be too quick to admit that they had abandoned the children, even if the children did request it themselves. The children have also begun to suspect that Tantamount might not be all that it seems. Although their family neglected the place badly themselves, what exactly has Mr. Devine been doing as the steward?
The Richleigh children befriend Nancy and Dick, two sailor’s children who live by themselves nearby. Nancy and Dick are a little afraid of the Richleigh children at first, partly because Edwin attacks them when they first meet, thinking that they’re trespassers, and partly because they know more about the dark history of the Richleighs and Tantamount than the Richleigh children do. However, the children all become friends, and Nancy and Dick teach the Richleighs many things that they need to know to survive on their own at Tantamount. The Richleigh children are happy to get help from Nancy and Dick, and they’re especially happy that, for one in their lives, they’ve made friends on their own instead of just associating with the people their parents have picked out for them to meet. Nancy and Dick are far less fortunate than the Richleighs, and they open the children’s eyes to what poverty really means. Nancy and Dick are also on their own because their mother is dead and their father hasn’t yet returned from the sea.
The Richleighs are impressed with the things that Nancy and Dick know and can teach them, and they also enjoy the carefree summer that they spend with Nancy and Dick. While they’re happy to accept help from them, the last thing the Richleighs want is any adult finding out that they’re living alone at Tantamount. There are still mysteries there for the children to solve, and the last thing they want is to give up the first real freedom that they’ve ever experienced!
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.
My Reaction and Spoilers
The Richleighs are practically the personification of a privileged Victorian family. Readers are told that the Richleigh children are accustomed to luxury, although the book is also quick to say that they aren’t spoiled because readers might find them insufferable if they were. However, in the first few chapters, readers might also realize that the Richleigh children are living a rather repressed and highly controlled life. They have all kinds of toys to play with but no control over whether or not they get to keep their favorite old toys. Their parents get rid of anything that they personally think is getting too shabby without regard for sentimentality. Peggy wasn’t just a toy to Maud; she was like an old friend, and she and her siblings are sure that her new owner won’t appreciate her as much or might do something horrible, like sell her for drinking money or turn her into firewood. The parents are unconcerned about Maud’s feelings. They and the children’s nurses are always telling children not only what they should do but how they should feel. When Angeline expresses an opinion, her nurses tell her that “Ladies don’t have opinions – they’re nasty things to have.” When Sebastian tries to make his mother understand how much it would mean to him and his siblings to see Tantamount, he talks about “adventure”, but the book hints that he may have also been thinking of “escape” – escape from the luxurious monotony of their lives, from the constant supervision and control of the adults, and from constantly being told who they are, what they should do, and how they should think and feel. The two oldest children, Edwin and Angeline, realize that their parents are prepared to give them anything they want, but only provided that the children want the things their parents think they should want, like the new rocking horse.
When the children are left to the own devices at Tantamount, they have to take responsibility for themselves and manage everything by themselves for the very first time in their lives. Rather than finding it frightening, however, the Richleigh children find it exciting. Young Maud is the one who’s the most worried because there has never been a time in their lives when the children haven’t had someone taking care of them and telling them what to do. Angeline thinks that learning to do things for themselves will be good for them, and she delights in making simple choices, even deciding what to wear without someone to tell them. However, Maud doesn’t even know how to dress herself without help, and she worries about what “they” would say. Sebastian points out that there is no “they” to say anything. The children themselves are in charge, and Sebastian is looking forward to them doing what they want to do. Maud doesn’t know how they’ll even begin to know what to do without someone telling them, but Edwin reassures her that they’ll figure it out.
Since Edwin is the oldest boy and he already has their father’s permission to act as the heir to Tantamount, the children immediately decide that he’s in charge. It fits the general pattern of Victorian society that they’re all accustomed to, and it makes Maud feel a little better that someone’s in charge. However, because Edwin now gets to run things the way he wants, he doesn’t just want to give his siblings orders. He establishes the group as a family council so they can discuss things and make decisions together. Although he maintains his position as the head of the family council, he cares about how the others feel, and over the course of the summer, he particularly comes to value the thoughts and advice of Angeline, who proves herself to be a sensible and practical young lady.
It isn’t long before the children discover the dark secret of Tantamount that they always suspected was there: it is being used as a hideout for smugglers and has been for some time. The reason why Mr. Devine hasn’t tried to maintain the house or a staff there is that he doesn’t want anybody snooping around and learning the truth about what he’s been doing there. When the children figure it out, they also realize that no one else is aware of their discovery yet. The locals might have their suspicions, but so far, nobody knows that the Richleigh children have made this discovery and that the children are staying at Tantamount all by themselves. However, this situation can’t last. Eventually, the smugglers will come back or Mr. Devine is bound to check on them, and the children will have to decide what they will do when that happens.
The children also must confront the knowledge that their own ancestors must have been the ones who started the smuggling and wrecking business and were responsible for the deaths of many sailors. There was a hint to the dark history of Tantamount in the painting the children have admired for years, but the children just didn’t understand the meaning of it before. The children’s parents don’t seem to be aware of any of this, or they would never have allowed the children to go to Tantamount at all. The children realize that the reason why Tantamount was abandoned by the family was that, at some point, some of the Richleighs decided that they didn’t want any part of this nefarious business anymore, so they got as far away from Tantamount as they could, created new lives and homes for themselves, and tried to prevent the younger generations of the family from finding out what happened there. This is the dark side of privileged families. Although much of the Richleighs’ wealth has come from wealthy marriages, not all of it has, and some has come from some dark sources.
The children still love Tantamount, even for its darkness, and they wish they could do something to cleanse it of all the bad things that happened there. Tantamount has changed them and allowed them their first tastes of freedom, independence, and self-discovery. The oldest children realize that their time there can’t last because their parents will come for them at the end of the summer, and there is still the matter of the smugglers. They try to think of a way to preserve some of the feelings of this transformative summer even when it’s time for them to go home.
In the end, the real villain eventually brings about his own end while trying to destroy Tantamount and hide its secrets forever, and the children pledge to themselves that they will rebuild it someday, but in their own way and for much better purposes. This is a secret that they keep from their own parents, just between the four of them, because this is something that they want and will pursue independently at some point in the future.
There are sad parts to the story as the children reflect on the abandoned and neglected nature of Tantamount and the evil that has happened there. However, there is also adventure and mystery and the kind of magic that comes from a carefree summer spent in a fantastic place!
This is the story of Louisa May Alcott, the famous 19th century author who wrote Little Women and other books for children.
The book begins with Louisa May Alcott’s birth on November 29, 1832 in Pennsylvania and explains about her parents’ backgrounds. When Louisa’s mother, Abba (short for Abigail), had first become engaged to her father, Amos Bronson Alcott, people advised her not to go through with the marriage because Bronson didn’t seem like a very practical man and nobody really expected that he would amount to much. However, Abba genuinely loved him and understood him. They shared similar ideals, including Abolitionism and the practice of service and charity to others, although they didn’t agree about everything. Bronson was a scholarly man who worked as a teacher, although he struggled to get an education himself when he was young because he was born to a family of poor farmers. As a young man, he had worked as a traveling salesman and had seen much of life across the country. He was good at talking to people and was very good at speaking to children, which led him to eventually settle down to teaching.
The Alcott family was happy where Bronson Alcott was teaching in Germantown, but the death of his school’s patron was a heavy blow. Without his patron’s backing, the school didn’t last, so the Alcott family left Germantown and moved to Boston. Little Louisa enjoyed the busy city of Boston, but the book also describes a harrowing situation in which she almost drowned after falling into Frog Pond. This incident was a traumatic memory for Louisa, but it wasn’t just the trauma that left a mark on her. The person who rescued her from drowning was a black boy. (The book uses the word “Negro.”) Louisa never knew the boy’s name, but her gratitude toward her rescuer influenced her feelings toward black people for the better at a time when the country was heading toward Civil War over the issue of slavery.
The Alcott family had ties to some important people. Her father was friends with Ralph Waldo Emerson and Elizabeth Peabody, who was instrumental in the development of kindergarten education in the United States, worked at his school in Boston. Her mother’s elderly aunt, known as the formidable Aunt Hancock, had been the wife of the famous John Hancock. However, in spite of connections, Bronson met with opposition to his teaching when parents of the students learned that he was an Abolitionist. A friend of his, William Lloyd Garrison, was almost lynched by an angry mob for airing his views about ending slavery. When Bronson admitted a black boy as a student to his school, it was the last straw, and many parents withdrew their children. Louisa later remembered discovering that her parents helped to hide runaway slaves when she was young, but it isn’t clear at which of their homes they were doing this.
After his school in Boston closed, he moved the family to Concord. He didn’t have the heart to open another school, so he supported this family through farming. They were poor and lived very simply, but they enjoyed living in the countryside. However, her father did maintain some scholarly contacts and was involved with the Transcendentalist movement. In 1843, the family moved yet again to join a community of Transcendentalists, experimenting with a more isolated lifestyle. (A footnote in the book, added decades after the original writing, compares it to the communes of the 1960s and 1970s.) However, the community was not a success. When one of the leaders of the community suggested that Bronson give up his wife and daughters to live in the style of Shakers, Bronson discussed the situation with his family, and they all came to the conclusion that this community was asking too much. Giving up on his experimental lifestyle was difficult for Bronson, but Abba’s brother understood the situation and helped the family move to a new home. Eventually, the family resettled in Concord.
Compared to her sisters, Louisa was a boisterous and temperamental child. She loved running wild in the countryside, and her curiosity and impulsiveness sometimes got her into scrapes. She wasn’t as good at housework as her older sister, Anna. However, she was always imaginative. When the family returned to Concord, Louisa was able to have a room to herself for the first time, and she used her new privacy for writing stories. She created plays for her and her sisters to perform.
As she grew up, Louisa became increasingly aware of her family’s poverty and her father’s lack of understanding for the ways of the world. Her mother was frequently worn out from trying to make do and take care of the four girls in the family. She began making plans early that she would find a way to provide for her parents and her sisters when she got older.
At Concord, her family continued their friendships with Thoreau and Emerson, and Ralph Waldo Emerson allowed Louisa to read books from his library, She developed a kind of hero-worship of him as a teenager. The Alcott girls also attended a regular school for the first time. Louisa often felt awkward because she was taller than the other girls at school, but she was also very athletic. She frequently wished that she had been born a boy instead of a girl.
At age 16, Louisa began her professional life, giving lessons to Emerson’s children. She was a good teacher, although as an active person, she found quiet study and teaching for extended periods difficult. Her mind often wandered to ideas for romantic stories, and she wrote a collection of little stories for Ellen Emerson. However, the family was badly in need of money, and they had to leave Concord and return to Boston, where they would live with her mother’s brother.
In Boston, Louisa continued teaching and found work as a governess. She also picked up other odd jobs to help support her family. One of them, a job as a live-in companion for an invalid, turned out especially badly because the job had been misrepresented and turned out to be hard labor. She was paid very little for it, too. It was during this time that her father discovered the little stories that Louisa had written for Ellen Emerson. He took one of them to a publisher he knew, and the story was published. Encouraged, Louisa and her father had the rest of the stories published in a collection called Flower Fables, Louisa’s very first book.
This did not bring her instant success as a writer, though. The family’s lives were filled with ups and downs, and they moved house multiple times. Louisa left her family to pursue an independent living for a time, although she made very little money, taking teaching jobs, sewing, and anything she could find. It was during this time that Louisa’s two younger sisters became ill with scarlet fever while the family was engaging in their usual charity work. Elizabeth had it particularly badly, and her health was never good after that. Louisa rejoined the family when they once again returned to Concord, where Elizabeth passed away. Elizabeth’s death was reflected in Louisa’s semi-autobiographical Little Women with the death of Jo’s sister Beth.
The Alcotts had been such a tight-knit family that separations of the sisters were bitterly painful, but every family experiences change over time. After Elizabeth’s death, Anna became engaged to marry John Pratt. It upset Louisa because it felt like she was losing another sister. Louisa once again set out to try to make her own living, but for a long time, it seemed like nothing would go right for her. It was difficult for her to find work, and opportunities seemed to disappear when she was about to take them. At one point, she was in such despair that she even considered suicide. Fortunately, after hearing an uplifting sermon about girls who were in her position, she renewed her determination to succeed, and she received a job offer from someone she had worked for before. Meanwhile, her father was finally starting to have some success with his educational lectures, and he even became superintendent of schools in Concord.
During all of these trials and tribulations for Louisa and the Alcott family, the country was headed toward Civil War. The Alcotts were still Abolitionists, and Louisa’s father had even been involved in a riot in Boston where a mob of citizens had tried to rescue a runaway slave who was about to be returned to the slave owner. After the war started, Louisa felt the urge to do something to help the side of the Union, so she volunteered as a nurse. Conditions were rough at the hospital where she worked, and she was put to work immediately with no training. She had some talent for nursing and a good bedside manner, having nursed Elizabeth through her final illness, but nothing could have prepared her for dealing with the war wounded. It was difficult and often heart-wrenching work, and it took a toll on her own health. After only about a month of working there, she caught typhoid, and her father was summoned to come and take her home.
Louisa eventually recovered from her illness. She felt like a failure for not being able to complete the full term she had originally promised to the hospital, but her nursing experiences helped further her writing career. The letters that she had written to her family about the people she met and her experiences at the hospital were so interesting that they had them published as “Hospital Sketches”, and they were extremely popular. So many people had friends or family who had gone away to war that they were anxious to know as much as they could about what was happening to them and others like them. The success of the “Hospital Sketches” led publishers to ask Louisa for further writings.
When Louisa recovered further, she felt restless, so she accepted a position as a nurse/companion to a friend’s daughter, who was unwell but wanted to go on a trip to Europe. Traveling as a nurse/companion didn’t give Louisa all of the freedom she would have liked to see and do everything she wanted, but she did get to see many things in Europe. She was able to visit the home of the German philosopher Goethe, and she attended a public reading by Charles Dickens. During their travels, she also met the young man who would be the inspiration for Laurie in Little Women.
She started writing Little Women after she returned home from Europe, at the suggestion of her publisher, who thought that she should write books for girls. When her publisher read it, he wasn’t sure that it would be successful at first because its tone was different from the popular children’s books for girls at the time. He tested it out by giving copies to his niece and some other girls who were about the same age, and they all loved it, so he went ahead and published it. It was so successful that it provided Louisa and her parents with financial stability for the first time, and readers wanted more! Much of the story was based on Louisa’s own life with her sisters and on people they knew, but she changed some parts for the sake of the story. Since the real Louisa never married, she made up a fictional husband for her story counterpart, Jo. In the story, Jo marries a German professor, and in the sequel, she and her husband start a school for boys based on Louisa’s father’s theories about the ideal school. Many of her father’s theories about education were very progressive for the time, and since he never got the chance to try all of them, Jo and her husband did in the story.
Even though she never fully recovered her health after having typhoid, she continued to write books for children, and she visited schools to speak to children. The book explains how these other books were also inspired by aspects of Louisa’s life. She and her youngest sister, May, took another trip to Europe together. May always had a talent for art, and Louisa funded her further travels and studies in Europe. May eventually married, but sadly, she died not long after the birth of her only child, a daughter named after Louisa. In accordance with her wishes, May’s infant daughter was brought to Louisa to raise, and Louisa treated her like her own daughter, calling her Lulu as a nickname. The book ends with Louisa’s death, mentioning that she made one of Anna’s sons her heir to perpetuate her copyrights. In the back of the book, there is a chronology of events from Louisa May Alcott’s life.
The book is a Newbery Medal winner. It is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).
My Reaction
I bought my copy of this book at a Scholastic Book Fair back in the 1990s, but I didn’t notice until I was an adult that the book was originally published in the early 1930s. I think part of the reason why the author was interested in doing a biography of Louisa May Alcott at that particular time was that it was around the 100th anniversary of her birth. I appreciated how later reprintings of this book also tried to keep it up-to-date and relevant for modern readers, including the addition of the footnote in the book about communes of the 1960s and 1970s.
Something that shows how 19th century society was different from modern society is the qualifications required for certain types of jobs. In the past, there were relatively few professional and educations qualifications required for teachers and nurses. In the 21st century, both teachers and nurses are required to have college degrees and relevant certifications to apply for their jobs. Nobody in the 21st century gets those jobs without having the requisite professional credentials (with the exception of homeschooling families, where the teachers are the parents). It would be useless to apply for such careers without having all of the education and certification required. In the 19th century, it was sometimes more important to just find someone willing to do the job, whether they had any particular qualifications to do it or not. Where the need was sufficiently great, like in the hospitals tending to the war wounded, they would take almost anyone who showed up and was willing to take the job with the hardships and blood involved. (There is one episode where Louisa witnesses an applicant being turned down because, while this person wanted to help the war effort, they didn’t have the stomach or stamina for the demands of the job. Next to that, medical knowledge was less important.) I explained dame schools when I reviewed Going to School in 1776, and the concept still applied in the mid-19th century. Dame schools were informal schools set up by people, often women, who were simply willing to take on the job of teaching local children. They got the jobs chiefly because they were the people who were willing to do them in the area. The quality of education these informal teachers could provide varied drastically, depending on the individual teacher. Some of them were actually well-read individuals with a gift for teaching (this is what Louisa and her father were like, in spite of their relative lack of formal education), while others provided little more than day care while the children’s parents worked. In the section of this book that explains Bronson Alcott’s history, there is some discussion of how education levels and quality varied across the country in the mid-1800s.
Parts of this book and the lives of the Alcott family also offer a different perspective on what it means to be successful in life. Through most of their lives, the family has little money, and Louisa and her father often struggle to find jobs and get recognition for their work. Louisa May Alcott is famous now, but early in her life, she felt like a failure. She struggled to find and keep jobs and had health problems that interfered with her ability to find and keep work. In the end, it wasn’t having money that made her famous but her talent and perseverance. There were times when she wanted to give up, and she even felt suicidal at one point, but she kept going in spite of everything. Even her father eventually managed to carve out a career for himself that suited his real talents. Their early problems didn’t mean that they were worthless or incapable. Their talents were just unusual, and they needed time to find their proper niche in life, the right circumstances to demonstrate what they could do, and the right people to recognize and appreciate their abilities.
The Story of Ruby Bridges by Robert Coles, illustrated by George Ford, 1995.
This is a beautifully illustrated picture book about Ruby Bridges, one of the first black children to attend a school that was formerly all-white during the desegregation of schools that took place during the Civil Rights Movement. The story is told in the form of the memories of Ruby and other people, looking back on their experiences, rather than as a first-person account.
When the book begins, it introduces Ruby as the child of a poor family who moved to the city after her father lost his job picking crops when farmers began using mechanical pickers instead. After her family moved to New Orleans in 1957, her father worked as a janitor, and her mother became a cleaner at a bank.
The book explains briefly that schools were segregated at the time, and that black children were not given an education that was equal to what was offered in white schools. Because the book is for children, it doesn’t go deep into detail about the Civil Rights Movement and desegregation or exactly how Ruby Bridges’s family became involved. (Ruby was selected as one of the children because she passed a test for academic aptitude, showing that she could keep up with a class of white children, who had better early education.) It simply says that, in 1960, a judge decided that four young black girls would be sent to schools that had been for just white children and that six-year-old Ruby Bridges was one of them.
It was a harrowing experience for young Ruby. There were protesters outside the school, yelling angrily and threatening the little girl. For her safety, she had to be escorted by armed federal marshals.
Parents in the area refused to send their children to school so they wouldn’t be in the same classroom with a black child, so Ruby Bridges was literally in a class all by herself. Her teacher, Miss Hurley taught Ruby in an otherwise empty classroom. Miss Hurley was surprised at how Ruby was able to keep a good attitude in spite of the angry protestors and the lack of other children.
One day, Miss Hurley was looking out the window as Ruby approached the school, and she thought she saw Ruby saying something to the angry crowd before coming inside. When Miss Hurley asked Ruby what she said to them, Ruby said that she was talking to them; she was praying for them. Miss Hurley hadn’t realized it before, but Ruby had a ritual of praying for the people who were angry and hated her every day before school. This was just the first time that Miss Hurley had seen her doing it.
Ruby also said the same prayer after school. This prayer was part of what helped her get through those difficult days of hostility and loneliness.
The book ends by explaining that the parents soon began to send their children to school again and let them join Ruby’s class because they realized that life had to continue and that keeping their children from their education was hurting them. The angry protestors gradually gave up. Ruby continued going to school and eventually graduated from high school. She later married a building contractor and had four sons of her own. She founded the Ruby Bridges Educational Foundation to help parents become more involved with their children’s education and to promote equality in education.
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).
My Reaction
I’ve heard the story before of Ruby Bridges praying for the people threatening her and protesting against her. This particular rendition is very good, although there is one thing that confuses me. According to this book, her teacher’s name is Miss Hurley, but I understood her name was Barbara Henry. I thought perhaps Hurley was her maiden name and that she later got married, but I haven’t been able to find anything to confirm that. I haven’t found anything to explain where the name Hurley came from at all. I’m not the only reviewer who questions the name confusion.
Ruby Bridges wrote books herself about her experiences, at different reading levels, and they’re also available on Internet Archive.
Not long before Christmas, the lighthouse keeper at Tern Rock, Byron Flagg, approaches Martha Morse, asking her if she would be willing to temporarily take the job of tending the lighthouse while he takes a vacation. The lighthouse can never be untended because ships rely on that light, and it can be difficult for Mr. Flagg to find someone to take over his duties for an extended period of time, especially so close to Christmas. Mr. Flagg wants to hire a substitute with experience tending the lighthouse. Mrs. Morse lived there for 14 years while her late husband was the lighthouse keeper. Although many people would be daunted by the isolation of the lighthouse, Mrs. Morse actually loved it because she enjoyed the beauty of the sea and nature. She knows that she would enjoy staying there again. However, she hesitates to take the job of temporarily tending the light because she is caring for her young nephew, 11-year-old Ronnie. Ronnie might enjoy the adventure of staying in a lighthouse, but he would have to miss some school.
Mr. Flagg appeals to Mrs. Morse’s sense of nostalgia about the lighthouse and points out that Ronnie could bring along some of his schoolwork to study during their stay. Mr. Flagg says that their stay will only be for two weeks, and that he’ll return and relieve them on December 15th. Mrs. Morse points out that the weather around Tern Rock can be unpredictable and that he might not be able to return when he says he will, but Mr. Flagg says he is confident that he can. They talk to Ronnie about it, and Ronnie says that he would like to see the lighthouse, but he wants to be home for Christmas. Mr. Flagg assures them that won’t be a problem and that they will enjoy their stay at the lighthouse, so they agree to go.
When they arrive at the lighthouse, Ronnie is awed by rugged environment of Tern Rock and daunted by the isolation of the lighthouse. His Aunt Martha says that she understands how he feels, that he wonders if they’re up to the task, but she assures them that they are. The job they will do is a necessary one because, without the light, the rocks in this area are a danger to ships.
As they settle in, Ronnie becomes fascinated with the lighthouse. The interior is comfortable and designed to be compact, almost like the interior of a ship. His Aunt Martha establishes their schedule, teaching Ronnie what they need to do. She turns off the light at sunrise and lets it cool down while they have breakfast. Then, they clean the lamp, polish its lens, and do other chores to keep the light in working order. Ronnie does his schoolwork in the afternoon, and they turn on the light when the sun goes down. They spend their evenings doing quiet activities, like reading and playing games. Although Aunt Martha wasn’t sure that the quietness and monotony would appeal to an active boy like Ronnie, Ronnie finds the newness of the environment and the change in his usual routine fascinating.
Ronnie’s feelings change when December 15th arrives, and Mr. Flagg doesn’t. The weather is good, so there’s no reason why a boat shouldn’t approach Tern Rock, but Aunt Martha says that there may have been some other problem that delayed him. She doesn’t think an extra day or two at the lighthouse will hurt them, but the days go by, and still, Mr. Flagg doesn’t come. They are still comfortable in the lighthouse and there haven’t been any problems with the light, but Ronnie is angry because he realizes that Mr. Flagg lied to them. Christmas is approaching, and it becomes clear that Mr. Flagg never had any intention of being back at the lighthouse in time for Christmas.
Ronnie has trouble understanding and excepting Mr. Flagg’s lies and broken promises. Ronnie and Aunt Martha discuss the importance of honesty and the meaning of broken promises. Ronnie thinks that Mr. Flagg has been wicked. He has certainly been unfair, but Aunt Martha says that there are worse kinds of wickedness, and before they jump to conclusions about what has happened, they need to know the reasons for it.
Aunt Martha says that the Christ Child visits every home on Christmas, and no place is too distant for Him to reach, so they should make the lighthouse ready and prepare for Christmas. Ronnie doesn’t see how they can because they didn’t bring any decorations or anything for Christmas. Ronnie considers firing the cannon that would signal an emergency to bring someone out to the lighthouse, but Aunt Martha firmly tells him no. The cannon is only for serious emergencies, when there are lives in danger, not for mere disappointment and self-pity. However, Mr. Flagg has left some special surprises for them.
It is true that he intentionally deceived them about being back in time for Christmas. When Ronnie finds a sea chest with a Christmas message, he knows for certain that Mr. Flagg was lying to them the entire time, which makes him angrier. However, a letter that Mr. Flagg left explains his reasons, which earns their sympathy. To soften the blow of his deception, he has also left them some special presents and treats gathered from exotic places. This still isn’t the Christmas that Ronnie and Aunt Martha had originally planned, and being lied to doesn’t feel good. Still, in the end, this Christmas is pretty special and memorable, and they both realize that they are exactly where they need to be.
The book is a Newbery Honor book. It is recommended for ages 8 to 12 years old. It is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive. The author, Julia L. Sauer, also wrote Fog Magic.
My Reaction
I wasn’t familiar with this story when the Coronavirus Pandemic started, which is a pity because this would have been a great book for the type of Christmas we had in 2020. Still, this is a lovely Christmas story, and the pandemic isn’t quite over yet. Things have improved considerably since 2020 because people have been vaccinated, but for those who still need to be cautious and are disappointed that things aren’t completely back to normal or anyone who has hard feelings toward someone or is having a rough Christmas for any other reason, this story is a useful reminder that disappointments are still temporary, and sometimes, the place where you find yourself is exactly where you need to be. Also, disappointments and inconveniences can come with compensations, if you’re open to experiencing them.
Mr. Flagg shouldn’t have lied to Mrs. Morse and Ronnie. He acknowledges in his letter that this was a hurtful thing to do, and he explains his reasons. Basically, he was lonely and desperate. As a lighthouse keeper, he is what we might call an “essential worker”, someone who can’t easily take time off from his work because he does a necessary job that can only be done in a particular place. People’s lives depend on the light from the lighthouse, so Mr. Flagg can’t leave his job for any length of time unless he finds someone qualified who is willing to take his place. This story is set during a time before lighthouses became automated, so there must be a human in this role.
Mr. Flagg is in his 60s, and he explains in his letter that he has spent most of his Christmases either alone or with other adults because of his life as a sailor and lighthouse keeper. He has a niece who has several children and who would be happy to have him for Christmas, but he has never managed to find anyone who was willing to relieve him from his duties during Christmas before. He was desperate to spend at least one Christmas with his family, so he resorted this deception out of desperation, but he left all the presents and special treats for Aunt Martha and Ronnie because he didn’t want them to be miserable.
Aunt Martha is getting older herself, and she understands how Mr. Flagg feels, having lived a similar sort of life. When she lived at the lighthouse, she and her husband were together, but Mr. Flagg has never married, and he was desperately lonely. Ronnie has more trouble understanding the feeling because he is younger and hasn’t experienced this type of loneliness before. Aunt Martha points out that Ronnie will have many more Christmases before him, more than either she or Mr. Flagg have left. One disappointing or just bizarre Christmas won’t mean that much to him in the long term. With maybe 50 or more future Christmases to come as well as the ones he’s already experienced, this strange Christmas in the lighthouse is just one more memory or story to tell other people in Christmases to come.
Part of this story is about forgiveness, but they don’t use that word at all in the story. People have different views about what forgiveness entails, but I think it’s important that Aunt Martha and Ronnie don’t excuse Mr. Flagg’s actions. They come to understand his motives, and they feel pity or sympathy for him for the kind of rough and lonely life he’s lived, but that doesn’t make lies to them good or right. He did something hurtful by betraying their trust, and there will probably be some kind of reckoning between them when Mr. Flagg eventually shows up. Mr. Flagg acknowledges that in his letter, that the knowledge that he betrayed their trust will keep him from fully enjoying Christmas with his family, even when he’s finally getting the kind of Christmas he has wanted, and he can’t blame them for whatever they’re feeling as they read his letter. So, the story never says that what Mr. Flagg did was okay or that it didn’t hurt that he lied to the people who were helping him. Lying was wrong, and it was hurtful, and the characters are honest about that. They don’t try to pretend that they’re not hurt, which I think would have made their feelings worse in the long run. Instead, it’s about looking past that hurt to something better and finding things to be happy about even in a situation where they didn’t want to be.
Aunt Martha sees that what’s really preventing Ronnie from enjoying Christmas as they happen to have it is his anger, disappointment, and bitter feelings and the way he broods about them. Brooding about the angry things he wants to say to Mr. Flagg when he sees him isn’t making his Christmas any better. Aunt Martha compares cleaning out negative emotions to cleaning house before the holiday. You have to clear out all the dust and negativity to let in something better. They will eventually see Mr. Flagg, and there will probably be words between them, but those words can wait while they enjoy themselves as best they can for this Christmas. By then, each of them will probably have a better sense of just how they really feel about the situation and what they want to say about it anyway.
Once Ronnie works through his feelings and is able to put aside his anger, he realizes that this Christmas is something special. He does miss the class Christmas party the rest of his school is having, but in return for that sacrifice, he is experiencing something truly unique that his school friends will probably never experience. He doesn’t fully consider how unique this experience actually is at first, but he senses that there is a unique feel to Christmas in the lighthouse, with its giant light. Ronnie considers the tradition of putting candles in windows at Christmas, to guide the Christ Child or other travelers. (They emphasize candles as welcoming the Christ Child in the story, but when I first heard of the tradition, it was to welcome travelers or absent family members.) He realizes that, by tending the lighthouse, he and his aunt are doing the same thing, but they’ve got the biggest candle of anyone!
Whatever your Christmas happens to be this year, wherever you’re spending it, and whoever you’re spending it with (even if it’s just yourself), don’t forget to do the little things to make it special and enjoy it for whatever it is! Merry Christmas!
Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder, 1932.
The story begins “60 years ago”, in a little house in the woods in Wisconsin, where a little girl named Laura lives with her parents and her two sisters, Mary and Carrie. Mary is older than Laura, and Carrie is younger. Their father hunts for meat for the family in the woods, and although Laura worries about the wolves in the woods, she and her family are safe in their little house.
Much of the family’s time is occupied with getting and preserving food. Food preservation is important because not every hunting trip is successful, and they need to make sure that they make the best use of every animal they get, as well as dairy products and produce. Laura and Carrie like to play among the food being stored in the attic. One of their favorite chores is helping their mother mold butter into shape with their butter mold, and often, the highlight of their day is getting something special to eat.
The story begins in winter, and Christmas is coming. The girls help their mother to prepare some special foods and treats, like apple pie and vinegar pie. They make candy by pouring a molasses syrup over snow to freeze it. The girls’ aunt, uncle, and cousins come to visit, staying overnight. The children have fun playing in the snow, making what they call “pictures” by throwing themselves down in the snow and seeing what type of shapes they can make with their bodies. The family has a feast, during which the children are not allowed to talk because “children should be seen and not heard”, but they don’t really mind because the food is really good, and they can have as much as they like. The children believe in Santa, and they are happy with the simple presents they receive: a pair of red mittens and a peppermint stick each.
Laura also receives a very special present: her first real rag doll. Her older sister already has a rag doll, but up to this point, Laura didn’t. Her only doll was made from a corn cob. Children of their time don’t get many presents, and the youngest children don’t get any at all or only have improvised toys. The other children aren’t angry or jealous because Laura has received this extra present because she is younger than they are. Only the babies in the family are younger than Laura, and the older chidren know that Laura didn’t already have a doll, like they do. Laura isn’t being favored; it’s just that she is now old enough to get this kind of present.
Although the family is safe when they’re in their log cabin, there is a genuine risk of attack from wild animals when they’re outside. Members of the family talk about close encounters they or other people had with panthers or bears. Laura’s Pa has a humorous encounter with a tree stump that he mistakes for a bear in the snow, while Ma actually slaps a bear because she mistook it for the family cow.
As the seasons change, the family activities change. They help relatives make maple syrup, and they have a dance. The girls have their first trip to town with their parents. Pa gathers honey, and Ma makes straw hats. Pa helps a relative with his harvest, and a cousin who plays mean tricks instead of helping gets his comeuppance.
I couldn’t find a copy of this book to read online, probably because of the racial language in the story, but there are shorter books on Internet Archive based on individual incidents in this story, like the winter and Christmas scenes. I thought those were the best parts of the story anyway. I would recommend those shorter books and picture books over the original for young children.
My Reaction
Things I Liked and Didn’t Like
It’s been a long time since I first read this book, and honestly, I didn’t like it as much as I did the first time. I remembered kind of liking it when I was a teen. I can’t remember exactly how old I was the first time I read it, I might have been a young teen or tween, but I know I didn’t read Little House on the Prairie books as a young child. My mother wasn’t really into the series herself, so she didn’t read them to me or recommend them much. (She preferred Nancy Drew, and really, so did I.) I know I lost interest in the series after reading only one or two more books because it seemed like that poor family was always getting sick everywhere they moved, and I found that depressing. This book series is one of the reasons why I don’t believe that exercise and organic food by themselves keep a person from being sick. This family had both, and it never helped them. During the course of the series, they catch everything from malaria to scarlet fever or meningoencephalitis, whichever it was that eventually made Mary go blind. It’s like all of the diseases my characters died from in the Oregon Trail computer game but in book form. Come to think of it, people on the Oregon Trail were also exercising and eating organic, and I’ve seen the real tombstones of pioneer children. I believe in sanitation and vaccinations.
As an adult, I found much of the first half this particular book boring or frustrating. That’s surprising because I usually like books with details about life in the past, and many of the details in this particular book echo stories passed down in my own family. (I also had ancestors with strict traditions about not working on Sundays, and they also ate cold meals on Sundays because they had to do all the Sunday cooking the day before.) I found some of the early parts of this story grating. The main reason is that this book is not actually a single story. There is no real, over-arching plot. It’s basically a collection of episodic reminiscences and family stories. I found some of them interesting, but not the early parts.
The book isn’t bad because the writing quality is pretty good, but in the first part of the book, there are long descriptions of hunting and food. I hated the descriptions of how they processed animals they hunted and butchered. I’m sure they’re true-to-life, but I’m the squeamish type. The parts where they talk about foods they like are better. They have kind of a cozy feel, with homemade meals and goodies that have kind of a nostalgic feel. However, I’m not that much of a foodie, and I’m not into “food porn” or long detailed descriptions of things other people are eating. There are limits to how much of that I can take before I start wanting more plot to happen. I think food descriptions are good when used to add color and atmosphere to a story, but it’s too much when they start turning into the story itself. Ideally, a good food description in the book will make me think of a story I liked the next time I eat that particular food. When it’s too overwhelming, there isn’t much of a story to be transported to. Part of the reason why Laura dwells on the subject of food is that this family has to struggle and work hard to get it. It’s not always guaranteed, and when there is something extra, there’s reason for celebration. They are poor, and treats are rare. I think that part of the reason why this book was so popular during the 1930s, when it was first published, was that many other children were growing up in a similar situation during the Great Depression.
When there is more action in the first part story, it’s typically that someone has a close encounter with a dangerous wild animal, like a panther or a bear. Most of this isn’t something that little Laura witnesses directly, but people will tell her stories about family members who had this happen to them. It happens repeatedly throughout the book. One really exciting encounter with a wild animal who wants to eat someone makes for a good adventure story, but when it happens repeatedly, the novelty goes out of it. It starts to become more like, “Oh, another animal attack incident story. Everybody’s got one.” Ma slapping the bear was something special, though. After the other descriptions of animal attacks, Pa’s mistaking a stump for a bear and Ma actually slapping a real bear felt like the punchline of a joke.
People in Laura’s family carry guns with them whenever they go out both for hunting purposes and because they are living in a real wilderness full of dangerous animals, and there is always a real possibility that they might have to defend themselves from a bear, panther, or wolf. They also eat bear when they can get one, and Laura likes the way it tastes. One of the chores that the kids find fun is when they help their father make his own bullets using molten lead in a bullet mold. I actually know someone who does this in modern times. Some modern gun hobbyists do, but I’m not into guns myself, so I didn’t find that as interesting as other types of home crafts. As the book continued and the seasons changed, there was more variety in activities for the family, and I started getting more interested.
The books in this series are semi-autobiographical, based on the real life and childhood of the author, Laura Ingalls Wilder. Laura Ingalls Wilder is actually the Laura from the book. That’s partly why the book isn’t structured liked a story so much as a collection of reminiscences, because this is just about what she remembers from her early life and family. I appreciated some of the small details of daily life, like the log cabin where the family lives, the butter mold with the strawberry shape, the trundle bed where the girls sleep, the lanterns they use for lighting, the family’s Sunday traditions, how the ladies prepared for their dance, and how they made maple syrup and straw hats. The parts of the story that I didn’t like so well were the parts where she goes on about the parts of life in the past that interest me the least. I don’t like hunting, I have no interest in guns, I don’t like hearing about butchering animals, and I’m not the kind of person who gets excited about animal attacks. (I never liked watching them on National Geographic, and I refuse to watch Shark Week or anything like it.) The parts I liked better were about using items that people just don’t use anymore and often don’t even have in their homes and the things the family did for fun and entertainment or celebrating holidays.
One of best scenes in the book, which is probably many people’s favorite, is the Christmas episode. It’s charming how Laura and her family make candy by pouring molasses syrup over snow. People can still do this today if they want to try an old-fashioned treat. It’s also heart-warming that they spend Christmas with visiting relatives, playing outside in the snow and enjoying a few simple presents, mostly handmade. They take great pleasure in simple activities and small presents because much of the rest of their lives were about chores and basic survival, and special treats and presents of any kind were rare. I thought about this book during the covid pandemic, when many people couldn’t safely visit with family or friends for Christmas. This is just one household of people, with just a few relatives visiting for a day, enjoying a few simple pleasures and homemade food and fun. It can be possible to enjoy very simple, homemade activities if you take the time to fully appreciate them and really throw yourself into making the most of them. The Christmas scene was the one that really stayed with me from my first reading when I was young, and it was the main reason why I wanted to read it again. I forgot most of the rest of the book.
Racial Language Issues
One thing that many people find distasteful about the Little House on the Prairie books these days is that books in the series have inappropriate racial language. This sort of thing went completely over my head when I was a kid because I didn’t know what some of these words meant, but it really jumps out at me now. At one point in the story, Laura’s father plays his fiddle and sings a folk song called Uncle Ned (that link is to a page from Missouri State University with words and music), which is about a black man who dies and uses the word “darkey” repeatedly. To be completely honest, I listened to the entire recording of this song, and I have no idea why anybody would like it. It’s not the only song Pa sings in the story about someone dying, and I can’t figure out why he thinks any songs like that are fun. They just sound depressing to me. But, Uncle Ned stands out from the other songs because of the racial slur.
I want to stress that it definitely is a slur. “Darkey” was not a polite term even during the time the story was set. People said it, but it was rude and insulting slang, not a word for polite conversation. Black people did have feelings about racial terms, and there were terms that were preferred and polite and terms that were considered demeaning and insulted and were known to be deliberately condescending. This particular term belongs to the second category. Black people weren’t always able to openly express their real feelings about the rude terms because of threatened violence for anything they might say, but their inability to speak openly about the issue doesn’t change the reality of the issue. There were 19th century white people who were well aware of what terms were polite and which were impolite, and they made active efforts to teach children to speak politely, such as the editors of this 19th century children’s magazine and Rev. Jacob Abbott, author of the Stories of Rainbow and Lucky (1859-1860), among other children’s books. Both of those sources are older than Laura Ingalls Wilder, pre-Civil War. Abbott made it a point to include a conversation between a grandfather and grandson in one of his Rainbow and Lucky stories to teach children the polite way to address black people of their time (“black” was one of the less preferred terms until the Civil Rights era, when people wanted to distance themselves from older racial terms and their accompanying emotional baggage, but the advice to care about others’ feelings and what they want to be called still holds true):
“I don’t know who they are, grandfather,” said he, after gazing at Handie and Rainbow a moment intently. “One of them is a black fellow.” “Call him a colored fellow, Jerry,” said the old man. “They all like to be called colored people, and not black people. Every man a right to be called by whatever name he likes best himself.” “But this is a boy,” replied Jerry. “The same rule holds good in respect to boys,” added the old man. “Never call a boy by any name you think he don’t like; it only makes ill blood.”
True politeness requires consideration for others’ feelings, not denial of them, which would be the exact opposite of politeness by literal definition. Politeness is about avoiding what would offend others and emphasizing behaviors others find pleasant, not about doing only what pleases oneself or choosing to take personal offense at the idea of considering another’s feelings.
So, what’s the deal with Pa Ingalls? If other white adults of this era cared and tried to teach their children to care, why doesn’t he? Some people might point out that he’s just singing a song and that he didn’t write the song, which is true. In this particular instance, he’s effectively quoting someone else. That being said, this is just the first instance of questionable racial terms and attitudes in this series, and some of the later ones are worse. After thinking it over, I think what it comes down to is that the Ingalls family has little need to consider how people of other races feel specifically because of the way they live. Most of the time, there are simply no “others” in their lives to consider.
Nobody thinks anything of this type of language in the story or comments on it because, remember, this family lives in a log cabin in the woods with no close neighbors. They rarely go to town, and when they visit with other people, it’s usually other relatives, like the children’s aunt and uncle or grandparents. What I’m saying is that, when you live alone much of the time or surrounded only by people like you, especially close relatives, you don’t have to put much energy or thought into how to live with other people. The Ingalls family doesn’t have to think about any of this, so they just don’t think about any of this. But, when it comes right down to it, that’s certainly not the kind of life I’ve lived or the kind of life modern 21st century children live.
Since my first encounter with this book, I grew up in a city, in multicultural society full of people to interact with every day, and I got a higher education with a heavy focus on cultural issues. Some of the words in this book went over my head the first time, but I grew up. This book did not grow with me, and the racial language is one of the parts that not only doesn’t hold up but feels worse when you’re older and know better. This is not a book that has greater depth and provides more insight when you go back and read it as an adult with more life experience, as some children’s books do. Instead, it brings out some uncomfortable realizations about characters you liked before and the lives they live.
I’ve read that some newer printings of these books have changed the problematic parts, which is actually very common with older classic children’s books that are still in print. The same thing was done to old Stratemeyer Syndicate books like the Bobbsey Twins, Mary Poppins books, and various books by Enid Blyton. I was surprised when I found out what some of the original editions of those books were like. However, I haven’t seen a new copy of any of the Little House on the Prairie books to know how much has changed. There are parts of this series that I remembered from reading them the first time, mostly the Christmas scenes, but I’m just not really into this series. There are others I like better. Overall, I really prefer the Grandma’s Attic series to the Little House on the Prairie series because it also has details of daily life in the past, but I feel like it has more variety and warm humor to the stories in those books, and there are no inappropriate racial terms. My own grandmother grew up on a farm in Indiana, and she specifically recommended the Grandma’s Attic series to me, saying that it reminded her of her youth. She never mentioned or recommended Little House on the Prairie books, so I suppose she wasn’t as into those, either.
Sign of the Beaver by Elizabeth George Speare, 1983.
The story begins in the late 1760s with twelve-year-old Matt’s father leaving him alone in the log cabin that he and his father built for their family in the Maine territory. The rest of their family is still in Massachusetts, and Matt’s father is going to get them and bring them to their new home. Their family will be the very first to settle in what will soon be a new township. However, for now, Matt is alone at their cabin, surrounded by miles of wilderness, while he waits for his father to return and the rest of his family to arrive. Matt will be looking after the cabin and the field of corn that he and his father planted, but he finds the silence and solitude unnerving.
Before he left, Matt’s father left his watch and rifle with Matt. After his father leaves, Matt tries the rifle. He doesn’t hit anything, and he decides that it will take getting used to. He learns to hunt with it, and Matt finds that he is very busy with hunting, fishing, and chores, which helps pass the time. Every day, he makes a notch on a stick to mark the days that pass.
Gradually, Matt becomes aware that someone is watching him. Someone seems to be hiding and following him. Since there are no other white families living for miles around, he can only assume that it must be an “Indian” (Native American). They know that there have been some in the area, although they haven’t really met any yet. Matt finds the prospect a little worrying because he isn’t sure what to expect from them, but his father always told him that, if he met an Indian, he should just be polite and respectful. Matt is nervous that whoever is watching him is also hiding from him, though.
One day, Matt hears someone wearing heavy boots tramping in the woods, and Matt thinks that maybe his father has returned early for some reason. However, it turns out to be a stranger in a blue army uniform. Although Matt has missed having company, he finds himself reluctant to talk much to this stranger, and he doesn’t want the man to know that he is there completely alone. Still, the stranger is hungry, so Matt agrees to let him share a meal with him. The stranger, who calls himself Ben, stays the night with Matt, uninvited. Matt can’t bring himself to turn away someone who needs hospitality in the wilderness, and Ben tells him stories of his past adventures. Matt still has misgivings about Ben, and he’s sure his stories are tall tales. When Ben mentions leaving a town because there was trouble there, Matt thinks maybe Ben ran away because he’s a criminal. Matt plans to stay awake that night to keep an eye on Ben, but he eventually falls asleep. When he wakes up, Ben is gone, and so is his father’s rifle. Ben is a thief! Matt realizes that he was right to be suspicious of Ben and is angry that he let him get away with stealing the rifle.
Without that rifle, Matt can’t hunt. He can still feed himself through fishing, but he loses more of his supplies when he forgets to properly bar the door while he’s out fishing, and a bear eats most of the food in the cabin. Reduced to eating only fish, Matt gives in to temptation and tries to get some honey from some bees he finds in a nearby tree. It’s a bad idea, but this decision changes everything for Matt.
Matt is badly stung by the bees, and when he tries to escape them in the water, he nearly drowns. Fortunately, Matt is saved from drowning by the Indians who have been watching him. It turns out to be a grandfather and his grandson. The grandfather, Saknis, takes Matt back to his cabin, brings him food, and treats his wounds. When he realizes that Matt hurt his ankle and lost his boot in the water, he gives Matt a crutch to use for walking and a new pair of moccasins to wear.
Matt is both grateful for this much-needed help but also very self-conscious about it. He can tell that the grandson, Attean, doesn’t like him and thinks that he’s a fool for getting hurt like this, which is embarrassing. Matt also thinks that he should repay them for what they’ve given him, but he doesn’t have much to offer. The only thing he can think of to give them is the only book he owns, a copy of Robinson Crusoe. Matt is embarrassed when he realizes that the Saknis can’t read, and he thinks maybe he will be offended at this type of gift, but the older man realizes that Matt’s knowledge of reading is a gift that they badly need.
In broken English, the old man explains that his people have made treaties with white people before, but because they can’t read English, they never really know what’s written in the treaties. When white people break the treaties or tell them that they’re no longer allowed in certain areas of land, there isn’t much they can do, since they don’t even know for certain what was in the original agreements. He realizes that his people can’t afford to be ignorant. There are more white people moving into their territory all the time, and his people will have to know how to deal with them. Therefore, Saknis proposes a kind of treaty with Matt: they will continue to bring Matt food if Matt teaches Attean to read.
Attean immediately protests this plan. He really doesn’t like Matt, or any white people in general, and he doesn’t want these reading lessons. However, his grandfather is firm that this is something he needs to do. Matt also isn’t sure about this plan. He does owe them for their help, but he’s never taught anybody to read before. His own early lessons didn’t go particularly well, although he likes reading Robinson Crusoe now. Also, Matt thinks of Attean as being a “savage” and a “heathen” who doesn’t even really want to learn, so he’s not confident that the reading lessons are going to go well. Still, Matt does owe them for saving him and could use their continued help while he recovers from his injuries, so all he can do is try.
When Attean gets frustrated during the first reading lesson and storms out of Matt’s cabin, Matt thinks that the lessons are already over. Yet, Attean does return for more lessons. Gradually, Matt thinks of ways to make the lessons more interesting to Attean, reading the most exciting parts of Robinson Crusoe out loud to Attean to get him interested in reading the story himself and finding out what will happen to the main character. It isn’t easy to get Attean interested in learning because Attean is initially determined not to be interested or impressed by anything Matt has to say.
When Matt becomes curious about some of the things Attean and his tribe do, like how Attean hunts rabbits without a gun, Attean opens up a little and shows Matt some of the things he knows. Matt begins to admire some of the unique skills Attean shows him and learns to use them for himself. Matt is aware that his first efforts must look clumsy and childish to Attean as he tries to learn skills that Attean has known for years, but it puts the boys on a more equal footing with each other. Each of them has something to learn from the other, and it’s all right for each of them to look a little awkward to the other while learning. Matt gets embarrassed sometimes when he does something clumsy in front of Attean, but he learns that he must also persevere. Attean teaches him some good, practical skills for making things without using some of the manufactured goods that he and his father brought with them from Massachusetts. When Matt loses his only fish hook, Attean shows him how to make a new one. Attean teaches Matt to be self-reliant and to use new methods to accomplish his goals.
During the part where Matt reads the part of Robinson Crusoe where Robinson Crusoe rescues the man he calls Friday, and Friday, out of gratitude, becomes his slave, Attean protests that would never happen in real life. Attean says that he would rather die than become a slave. Matt is surprised because he never really thought that much about how someone like Friday would feel in real life. Matt learns to look at the story as Attean would, reading the best pieces to him, the ones that emphasize the friendship between the two characters rather than servitude.
Gradually, Matt and Attean become friends. Matt doesn’t think he’s very good at teaching Attean to read, but Attean does slowly learn. Although Attean resists learning to read because he’s trying to prove that he doesn’t need this skill that he associates only with white people, his spoken English becomes better as he and Matt talk. Attean admits that he tells parts of Robinson Crusoe to his people, and they enjoy hearing them, so Matt moves on to stories from his father’s Bible. Attean finds the Bible stories interesting and compares them to stories that his people already tell. (It is interesting, for example, how many civilizations around the world tell stories about great floods.) The boys are fascinated by the common themes in their stories.
The boys also enjoy doing things together, and Matt feels less lonely when Attean comes to visit. Matt doesn’t always like Attean because he has a disdainful attitude toward him, but they learn to trust each other, and they find interesting things to do together. Matt comes to realize that his irritation at Attean’s attitude is because it’s so difficult to earn Attean’s respect, and he really wants Attean’s respect. Although Matt doesn’t like Attean’s attitude toward white people, he does agree with Attean about some things, and he has to admit that he cares about what Attean thinks. Matt does get some respect from Attean later when the boys have a hair-raising encounter with a bear. Attean is the one who actually kills it, but Matt proves his usefulness during the struggle. Matt also comes to understand Attean’s resentment against white people when Attean eventually tells him that he’s an orphan and that his parents were killed by white people. That’s why he lives with his grandparents.
As time goes by, Matt becomes increasingly worried about whether or not his family will ever arrive. He worries that maybe something happened to his father and that the rest of the family won’t know where the cabin is and won’t be able to find him. When it passes the time when his family should have arrived, Matt fears that maybe they will never come at all. What if he is left alone? He has survived so far, with some help from Attean and his people, but can he live alone forever? Or could there be a place for him among Attean’s people?
Saknis has also been thinking about this, and he has noticed that Matt’s family has not yet come. He knows that it would be dangerous for the boy to remain alone in the cabin when winter comes. As the seasons change, the Native Americans are preparing to move to their winter hunting grounds. Saknis invites Matt to come with them, and Matt has to decide whether to accept the offer or stay and wait for his family.
This book is a Newbery Honor Book. It’s available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).
My Reaction and Spoilers
This story reminds me a little of The Courage of Sarah Noble, where an 18th century white child who is afraid of Native Americans comes to learn more about them by living with them and interacting with them. I actually read The Sign of the Beaver when I was a child, and I only read The Courage of Sarah Noble as an adult. I’m not sure now if I prefer one of these books over the other. For a long time, I forgot the title of The Sign of the Beaver, although I did like this book the first time I read it. I remembered the concept of the boy living alone while he waited for the rest of the family to join him. One part that stuck in my mind the most was the part near the end of the story where Matt makes a cradle because he knows that his mother was expecting a baby when he last saw her and thinks that it would be nice to have a cradle ready for his new younger sibling, but when his family arrives, he is told that the baby died. That tragic image just stayed with me for years.
Some of the prejudiced language in the story, like “savage” and “heathen” and some anti-Catholic talk from Ben early on, is a little uncomfortable, but this is one of those stories about changing attitudes and overcoming prejudice. The main character has to show some fearful and/or prejudiced thoughts toward Native American initially for readers to appreciate how far he comes and how much his thinking changes after he makes friends with them and learns more about them.
Ben, of course, is a villain character, so his prejudiced talk is a reflection of that. He’s selfish and a thief, so his views of other people are based on what puts him in the best light or justifies things that he’s done. When he talks about the people of the last town he was in being against him and making trouble so he had to leave, both the readers and Matt realize that Ben was the one who started the trouble. Ben blames other people for problems he creates himself. The stories he tells Matt about his earlier, supposedly brave adventures are based around the French and Indian War, which is where the Catholics enter the discussion.
Several times during the story, Attean uses the word “squaw” to refer to women. I didn’t think too much about that sort of thing when I was a child because I assumed that both the author and characters in books that used that term knew what it meant and were using it correctly. Since then, I’ve heard that it actually has a rather vulgar meaning, although I’ve also heard conflicting information that it’s not always vulgar. The contradictory accounts make it a little confusing, but according to the best explanations I’ve read, the contradictions about the meaning of this word have to do with similar-sounding words in different Native American languages. Not all Native American tribes have the same traditional language, and some have words that sound like “squaw” and refer to females in a general way, while others have words with a similar sound that refer to female anatomy in a more vulgar way. For that reason, something that might seem innocuous to one native speaker might sound crude to another, and non-native speakers of any of the languages involved may not fully understand all the connotations of the word. In the end, I’m not sure how much of this the author of this book understood, but my conclusion is that it’s best not to use certain words unless you’re sure of their meaning, not only to you but to your audience. I only use the word here to make it clear which word appears in the book. Other than that, I don’t think this word is a necessary one, at least not for me. I understand what Attean is referring to in the context of the story, and I think that’s what really matters in this particular case. Whether that’s the right word for Attean’s tribe to use at this point in history would be more a matter for a linguist. I’m willing to accept it in the book as long as readers understand the context of the situation and are content to leave the word in the book and not use it themselves outside the context of the story.
When Attean talks about women in the story, it’s typically to point out certain types of work that he considers women’s work instead of men’s work. Matt is a little offended sometimes when Attean tells him that some chore he’s doing is for women instead of men. Matt’s family doesn’t have the same standards for dividing up chores as Attean’s tribe does, and the fact is that Matt is living alone at the moment. There are no women in Matt’s cabin, only Matt. Any chore that needs to be done right now is Matt’s to do because there simply is no one else to do any of it for him. I think when Attean tells him that he’s doing women’s work, he’s trying to needle Matt because, otherwise, he comes off as sounding a little dense. Sure, Attean. We’ll just have the women who aren’t here do this stuff that needs doing right now. During the course of the story, Matt comes to appreciate how the Native Americans live differently because it makes sense for the place where they live and their circumstances, but this is one instance where Attean could be a little more understanding about Matt’s circumstances.
One thing that I had completely forgotten about in this story was the part where Matt thinks about how Attean smells bad. Earlier, when I did a post about Mystery of the Pirate’s Ghost by Elizabeth Honness, I was irritated at the author for having one of the characters imagining smelly Native Americans because I had never heard of that as a stereotype before (I thought at the time), and I didn’t know where that idea came from. A site reader suggested that the trope came from the Little House on the Prairie series because there is talk like that in those books, but The Sign of the Beaver actually offers an immediate explanation as soon as Matt thinks about the cause of the smell. Matt realizes that Attean has smeared a kind of smelly grease on his body that is meant to repel mosquitoes. Matt has heard of people doing this before, and he understands that there is a useful purpose behind it, but he just hates the smell so much that he thinks he’d rather just put up with the mosquitoes. That explanation really helps to put everything into context. When there’s no explanation about things like this in stories, it makes it sound like Native Americans are just smelly because they’re “savages” who don’t bathe or something, but when you hear the explanation, it’s just that the smell is an inconvenient side effect from something that has a real, practical purpose. It might be unappealing to Matt, but there is a point to it. So, on the one hand, I feel a little bad about getting down on Elizabeth Honness for throwing that idea into her story without an apparent basis, but still irritated because, if she knew that was the explanation, she could have said something about it instead of just throwing that out there, like everyone reading the story would already know. I have similar feelings about some of the things Laura Ingalls Wilder put in her books, too. Context is important, and some authors are better at providing it than others. I also think that context is something that books from the late 20th century and early 21st century often provide better than books from earlier decades, although there are some exceptions.
At the end of the story, we don’t know for sure whether Matt and Attean will meet again. When Matt’s family arrives, they tell him that other white families will be arriving soon. Matt knows that the tribe he befriended will likely lose their hunting grounds to the town that will be built there. Matt is concerned for their future, but he is glad to be reunited with his family and still considers Attean his friend.
The story begins with a young Navajo girl, Bright Morning, admiring the beginning of spring, but she is caught in a storm and hurries home without the sheep she was supposed to be tending. When the girl’s mother realizes that she abandoned the sheep, she takes the girl back to the sheep, and they watch them all night. The sheep are very important to the family, and the girl’s mother refuses to allow her to take the sheep out by herself again for the rest of that spring.
When Bright Morning finally proves that she can be responsible and not leave the sheep to tend themselves, she is allowed to take them out again. Bright Morning likes to talk to the other girls, Running Bird and White Deer, as they watch all of their sheep together. The girls like to talk about their futures, who they will marry and what kind of children they have. They like to tease each other. Bright Morning’s friends know that she is likely to marry a young man called Tall Boy. The rumor is that Tall Boy’s parents want him to marry her because her mother owns so many fine sheep. Bright Morning knows that her friends tease because they are curious about Tall Boy and want her to talk about him, but she refuses. The girls know that he is supposed to be riding out with the warriors soon, and they tease that maybe he will bring back some other girl from the Ute tribe, but Bright Morning ignores them.
After the warriors have left for their raid on the Utes, the girls see some white men on horses approaching the village. The girls recognize them as oldiers and are worried that their village could be vulnerable to attack without the warriors. Later, the girls encounter more white men, but these men are not dressed as soldiers. They stop to talk to Bright Morning and Running Bird, asking them for directions, but the girls realize that they are slavers. They kidnap both girls and ride away with them!
They take the girls to a town of Spanish people and separate them from each other. They sell Bright Morning to a woman who uses her as a servant. The woman has other Native American girls as slaves, including a younger girl called Rosita. Rosita doesn’t mind her captivity or her life as a servant much. She came from a tribe that was very poor, and since she was brought to this woman’s household to work for her, she has had better food and clothing than she did at home. Rosita tells Bright Morning that the family they work for isn’t bad, and Bright Morning is allowed to keep her dog, who followed her when she was abducted. However, Bright Morning can’t stand her captivity. The woman who owns the house gives her new clothes, but Bright Morning doesn’t care. All she wants to do is find a way to go home.
Bright Morning is reunited with Running Bird when another captive girl comes up with a plan for the three of them to escape. They manage to steal horses and ride away from the town. Along the way, they meet up with Tall Boy and one of his friends, and the boys help fight off the Spaniards who are pursuing the girls. Unfortunately, Tall Boy is badly injured in the fight. He loses the use of one of his arms, and the other Navajos know that he can no longer be a warrior. Bright Morning still cares about Tall Boy, but her mother and sister tell her that she should no longer consider marrying him.
However, the Navajos’ troubles are just beginning. They haven’t heard the last of the soldiers. The American soldiers return and drive the Navajos off their land. They destroy all of their homes and eventually round them up and start them on a long march with little food, where many of them die. The Navajos fear that all of them will die. How will Bright Morning and her family survive, and will they ever see their homeland again?
The book is a Newbery Honor book. It’s available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).
My Reaction
I remember reading this book when I was about 13 years old, in middle school! It takes place in my home state, the northern part, where the Navajo reservation is now, in the Four Corners region. I’ve been to Canyon de Chelly (“Chelly” is pronounced like “shay”, like in French) before, although I hadn’t been there at the time when I first read this book. Since I read this book as a kid, I’ve been to places and seen things that helped me understand the setting of the story better. As an adult, I appreciate the historical aspects of the story even more because I know more about the background. The book doesn’t give a date for the story until the postscript at the very end of the book, but the death march described in the story is Long Walk of 1863 to 1865.
The second half of the book is very depressing because there are horrible conditions and many deaths, including the deaths of children. I wasn’t sure that I really wanted to revisit this book at first because I remembered that it was depressing, but the book is well-written. The narrator describes events in an exciting, compelling way.
I had forgotten many details of the story, but there were some things that jumped out at me as an adult that I hadn’t noticed the first time. The postscript at the end of the story explains how life and Navajo culture changed after this traumatic event. If you see photographs of Navajo in “traditional” costumes now, they often include velveteen clothing, but that’s actually a relatively new tradition. The velveteen was adopted from white people during their captivity because they didn’t have access to wool to make their older style of traditional clothing. When Bright Morning was held captive in the Spanish town, she was given velveteen clothing there.
Another odd topic that is touched on only very briefly but that I know more about from other sources concerns the subject of flour. The book mentions that the Navajo were unused to eating wheat flour until it was their only form of rations during the Long Walk. Until then, their staple grain was corn, and when they started eating wheat flour, it made them feel sick. Their bodies just weren’t used to it. The book doesn’t explicitly explain this, but I know from other sources that the Long Walk and those flour rations were the origins of Navajo fry bread. Fry bread was not part of Navajo diet until that point. I grew up eating it on special occasions as a treat because it is greasy but good with powdered sugar, and it’s often served at carnivals and fairs here. However, as an adult, I came to realize that its origins as a food come from a very dark source. It was starvation food. It can keep you alive if there’s nothing else, but it’s not going to keep you healthy if you eat nothing else. It’s greasy and fatty, and it has little nutritional quality. Even now, I don’t have as much tolerance for it as I did when I was a kid. I can’t stomach it well these days if it’s too greasy or I eat too much.
That’s actually not a bad metaphor for the events described in this book. They’re heavy, and the more of it you understand and absorb, the sicker you feel. I absorb much more now than when I was a kid and only half understood the full significance of the events, and it makes me feel much worse than I did the first time.
So, do I recommend this book for kids? Actually, yes. I’m not a fan of depressing books with a lot of death, and I struggled through some depressing books when I was in school. If you had asked my 13-year-old self whether books with this much death and suffering were worth it, she might have had trouble answering that question, but time and further understanding have changed the way my adult self feels. There are some depressing topics that are worth the struggle to absorb them, but if I were the one teaching the lessons, I think I would do it a little differently than my teachers did for me back then.
I think this book is still a good introduction to topics that can be difficult to discuss. It’s worth reading once to understand the historical background of these events and what they really meant to the people who experienced them directly. It’s painful to read the bad parts, but it’s the kind of pain that leads to something better: real understanding. I recommend the book for kids in their early teens because I think that’s the best level for understanding it and accepting the bad parts. I think it should also be accompanied by nonfiction history lessons about the time period and events and discussion about their feelings about the story and historical events. I remember being told some of the history the first time I read this book, but I think that maybe there should have been more discussion about feelings.
I think it’s important to discuss feelings because they’re the hardest part of this book and they’re also the reason why it’s difficult to study some of the darker parts of history. I had a hard time with this when I was younger, and I still do in some respects, but I think understanding what causes those feelings is key to handling them. Reading books like this while discussing tools to handle difficult feelings could help students to better handle their emotions in other areas of life as well.
One of the first points that I think is important to understand and which my teachers didn’t really explain to me is that it’s natural to feel bad when you hear about bad things happening to other people, even when the bad things happened generations before you were born or even when those individual characters are fictional. (Bright Morning and her friends and family are fictional characters even though the events around them are historical. Real Navajos did experience what they experienced.) Empathy is a natural human emotion, and it’s an important tool for living with other people. Humans are social creatures. We live as part of larger groups, and we need at least some empathy to understand other people’s emotions and circumstances, how our actions affect them, and how to treat other people as we ourselves would truly like to be treated. The ability to experience empathy is a sign that you are mentally and emotionally healthy. It’s really only worrying when someone can’t feel it.
One of the most disturbing feelings about this story comes from realizing that the soldiers who are inflicting all of this death and pain either don’t feel empathy for the people they are harming or have actively chosen to ignore it to further their own purposes. That’s not a sign of being mentally or emotionally healthy or behaving in a moral way. When the readers feel repulsed by the soldiers and what they’re doing, it’s because they recognize that these people are a serious danger to others, and they are not functioning in a normal way. Your brain is warning you of a threat. It’s a past threat rather than an immediate one, but if you find the soldiers and their actions upsetting, it’s a sign that your brain has accurately assessed the risk associated with these people and the harm they do. You have accurately connected the suffering of other people for whom you feel empathy with the people who are the direct cause. I’m not saying that the soldiers were necessarily psychopaths, but lack of empathy and remorse and calculated manipulation are all symptoms of psychopathy and should raise alarms for anyone confronted with those signs. So, feeling bad about this situation and the people causing it is a sign that you yourself are mentally and emotionally healthy and have correctly recognized the seriousness of the situation and the harm being done to other people. What I’m saying is that, even when you’re feeling bad, it’s for good reasons, and that deserves recognition.
When I was young, I felt angry and frustrated by stories where people were doing terrible things to others. I still do because that’s part of empathy, but I also came to realize that part of my frustration when it came to historical situations came from my inability to change the situation. When harm has been done, it’s impossible to undo it. What was done was done. I can’t help the people who died, and I can’t even punish the wrong-doers because they’re dead now, too. It’s frustrating to find yourself confronted by a situation where nothing can change. But, I think it’s important to realize that change has happened and is currently happening. History is being written all the time, not even just through writing but through the ways that people live their lives every day. Even when a particular event is over, events and people keep moving. Bad events can cast long shadows, causing harm long after the initial event. That’s part of what makes them so bad. However, as time moves on, new people enter the scene, and new things happen, including things that people in the past would never have foreseen. It eventually reaches a point where the things that continue to happen rely on what we, the living, continue to do or allow to be done. History takes the long view, and I think people need to be reminded of that.
Do you suppose that the people in this story who act as villains thought of themselves like that? Further point, how much does it matter how they thought of themselves? Maybe they thought of themselves as winners at the time because they were getting their way and the people they were hurting were unable to stop them from hurting and killing them, but is that really “winning”? Lazy historians frequently brush things off by saying that “history is written by the victors“, but if that were really true, would we even be hearing or reading stories like this? Would we ever hear about slaves or care about the victims of war and atrocity? Would we ever consider the perspectives of people who died at all? Or does it change your mind about what “winning” really is and who’s really a “winner”? Maybe, in life and history, there aren’t any “winners” because neither of those was ever really a contest to begin with. (Or, as some put it, life is a collection of contests that people can simultaneously be both winning and losing. Personally, I think life is just for living, not for winning against someone else who is also trying to just live and probably couldn’t care less about you “winning” or not.) Apparent victories aren’t always real accomplishments, and people who see that reality are the ones who write the most accurate histories. Individual human lives only last so long, so any apparent “win” by an individual or group is never more than temporary. Our sense of what history includes and what people in the past were really like changes as we increase our knowledge of it and reconsider the context, not unlike the way my 40-year-old self has a deeper understanding of this book than my 13-year-old self did.
Remember that, at the beginning of this particular story, the Navajo warriors were going to raid the Utes. We never really find out in the book why they were going to do this, but does it matter anymore when the Navajos themselves get raided and subjected to something that might be even worse than what they were originally planning to do to their enemies? The story drops this subplot when the march begins. Life is like that, constantly moving, ever changing. History goes on and on. Sometimes, a young warrior who was praised for his prowess gets shot in the arm and can’t pull a bow anymore. Sometimes, a 40-year-old woman from the 21st century looks back on 19th century soldiers who may have thought of themselves as heroes and wants to tell them, to their faces, that they couldn’t be more wrong about that. If they’re not evil psychopaths, they’re doing a dang good job of pretending, and I never once thought of them as being “heroes” in my entire life. That’s life for you. Each of the people who have read this book or ever will read it are among the new people entering the story and its sequels, and we all have the ability to decide what role we want to play in the on-going story of history.
What happens after the book ends, is important, too. If I were teaching this, I would follow up this particular chapter of Native American and Navajo history by talking about some of the developments that continued to happen in their history, including some of the better moments, like the development of the written form of the Navajo language (for much of it’s history, Navajo was only a written language – that’s why the soldiers in the story couldn’t leave a written message in Navajo) and how code talkers used the Navajo language during WWII. The people who realized that these things were possible and something worth working toward were creative individuals. Rather than seeking to destroy something or repress it, they found creative ways to make use of what was there and put people’s talents to good use, helping others. The worst moments of history have been when people without empathy use others or seek to destroy them for personal gain, but the triumphant moments are when people take what they have and find a way to make it better. Noting these positive moments doesn’t make the bad parts of history any better than they actually were, but what we want is more of these positive moments of creativity and development and the type of people who are willing to work to make them happen.
It helps to balance out the explanations of what went wrong and people who did wrong with examples of what was better. Some teachers stress how we teach the bad moments so people learn from the past and don’t repeat it, and that’s true. However, I think we also need to add on what has worked and what we want people to do instead. A “don’t do this” needs to be followed up by “do this instead” to be an effective instruction. As a society, we don’t want more destroyers and takers. We want innovators and makers. We want creative people who find new uses for resources, including human resources and talents, and who are dedicated to truly helping others and human society as a whole instead of merely helping themselves to what others have that they want. This book demonstrates the dark side of humanity, but as I said, history is still being written every day with new players.
On the lighter side of this story, I enjoyed the descriptions of the coming-of-age ceremony for young women that Bright Morning has and the marriage ceremony later. During her time in captivity in the Spanish town, Bright Morning also attends Easter celebrations. She doesn’t understand Christianity and has never heard of Jesus before, and she doesn’t understand what the holiday is about or what’s going on. Rosita tries to explain to her who Jesus is in terms of Navajo religion. I found the explanation fascinating, but Bright Morning is still confused.
This book is part of the New True Books series, a series of nonfiction picture books on a variety of topics. This particular book gives an overview of the history and culture of Native Americans.
The book starts with some basic definitions and broad explanations of certain aspects of Native American culture, beginning with the explanation of why Native Americans are sometimes called “Indians.” The book notes that each tribe of Native Americans also has a name for itself. Each tribe has had its own culture, which it thought was better than other tribes’ cultures, but throughout history, tribes have interacted and traded with each other. One factor that made Native American cultures different from each other was whether tribes relied mainly on farming or hunting and gathering for food.
The book refers to hunter-gatherers as “caretakers”, a term that I can’t recall seeing before for hunter-gatherers. The reason why they use the term “caretakers” is they say that hunter-gatherers took care of their environments and only took the plants and animals they needed for survival, not wasting anything.
There are sections of the book that discuss some general aspects of Native American culture, like types of homes and tribal leaders. Of course, as the book notes, many cultural aspects varied, depending on the tribe, the environment where they lived, and whether they were mainly farmers or “caretakers.”
The book also has sections about the Native America tribes of various regions of North America, like the Northeast, the Southeast, the Southwest, the Northwest Coast, and the Plains.
The book ends with a brief section called Changes, which explains how Native American cultures were impacted by the arrival of Europeans in North America.
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.
Jestress's Forgotten Books and Stories 