Posted on by TracyC

The Demon in the Teahouse

DemonTeahouse

The Demon in the Teahouse by Dorothy and Thomas Hoobler, 2001.

This is the second book in the Samurai Detective series.  Like other books in this series, it is not a book for young children!

Seikei is trying hard to learn all the things he must know as a samurai and Judge Ooka’s adopted son. One evening, while the judge is in Edo (now called Tokyo), he sends a message that Seikei and the other samurai must come immediately. Edo is in a state of emergency because of a series of fires that have been deliberately set in shops around the city. Although Judge Ooka helped to design a system of watch towers and fire brigades to help the city in case of fire, the threat of fire is still very serious because most of the buildings in Edo are made of wood.

The only clue they have to the person setting the fires is a geisha who was in one of the shops before it burned. Judge Ooka and Seikei go to the city’s pleasure district, Yoshiwara, where there are theaters and teahouses where geishas provide entertainment. While they are there, they learn that geishas have been dying under mysterious circumstances, and the people of Yoshiwara are afraid.

Judge Ooka has Seikei take a job as a servant at a teahouse in order to learn more. He soon discovers that the dead girls were all friends of Umae, one of the most popular geishas. Then, one of Umae’s many admirers brings her a present, and she is horrified to discover that it is the kimono that one of the dead girls was wearing. Who brought her the kimono, and what connection does she have to the fires?

The nature of the villain and the villain’s motives is rather dark for a middle school level book (although some middle school level books do get fairly dark).  Although the reading level of the book would be fine for someone aged twelve to fourteen, the subject matter might make the story more appropriate for someone a little older.  I recommend parental discretion on this one.  (Remember, it takes place in the “pleasure district” of Edo.)  It’s an exciting story, and it contains an interesting picture of feudal Japan, but it’s definitely not for young children!

The part about Judge Ooka organizing watch towers and fire brigades is something that the real, historical Judge Ooka actually did.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.

Posted on by TracyC

Pippi Longstocking

PippiLongstocking

Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren, 1950.

Pippi Longstocking is an iconic figure in children’s literature, a little red-haired girl with amazing strength (she can lift a horse all by herself) and a quick wit, who can “always come out on top” in any situation and is frequently doing exciting and hilarious things without adult supervision. The books in her series were originally from Sweden, with the first one written in 1945, but I’m reading a later English translation.

In the first book, she comes to live by herself in a house, which she calls Villa Villekulla, in a small town in Sweden when her father, a ship’s captain, is washed overboard at sea.  Although others fear that he is dead, Pippi thinks it more likely that he was washed up on an island of cannibals, where he will soon be making himself their king.  (Of course, Pippi turns out to be right, but that’s getting ahead of the story.) Her mother died when she was a baby, so Pippi now lives all by herself, except for her pet monkey and horse. She pays for the things she needs with money from the suitcase of gold coins that her father left for her and spends her time doing just as she pleases.

Tommy and Annika, the children who live next door to Ville Villekulla, are perfectly ordinary, basically obedient children, who live normal lives with their parents. When Pippi moves in next door, their lives get a lot more exciting. The first time they meet her, she’s walking backward down the street. When they ask her why she’s doing that, she says that everyone walks that way in Egypt. Tommy and Annika quickly realize that she’s making that up, and Pippi admits it, but she’s such an interesting person that they accept her invitation to join her for breakfast. They’re amazed when they find out that Pippi has no parents, only a monkey and a horse living with her, and are entertained by the tall tales that she tells.

When they go back to see her the next day, Pippi tells them that she’s a “thing-finder” and invites them to come and look for things with her. Basically, Pippi is a kind of scavenger, looking for valuable things, things that might be useful, or (which is more likely) just any old random junk that she might happen across. Pippi does find some random junk, although she makes sure that Tommy and Annika find better things (probably by hiding them herself).

Then, the children see a group of bullies beating up another boy and decide to intervene. The meanest of the bullies, Bengt, starts picking on Pippi, but picking on a girl with super strength isn’t the wisest move. She picks him up easily and drapes him over a tree branch. Then, she takes care of his friends, too.

Word quickly spreads through town about this strange girl. Some of the adults become concerned that such a young girl seems to be living on her own. A couple of policemen come to the Ville Villekulla one day to take Pippi to a children’s home, but she saucily tells them that she already has a children’s home because she’s a child and she’s at home. Then, she tricks them into playing a bizarre game of tag that ends with them being stuck on the roof of the house. The policemen decide that perhaps Pippi can take care of herself after all and give up.

Tommy and Annika try to persuade Pippi to come to school with them, but that doesn’t work out, either. Pippi, completely unfamiliar with the routine of school, thinks that the teacher is weirdly obsessed with numbers because she keeps demanding that her students give her the answers to math problems that Pippi thinks she should be able to solve on her own. The teacher concludes that school may not be for Pippi, at least not at this point in her life.

Tommy and Annika delight in the wild things that Pippi does, like facing off with a bull while they’re on a picnic, accepting a challenge to fight a strongman at the circus, and throwing a party with a couple of burglars.  When they invite Pippi to their mother’s coffee party, and their mother’s friends begin talking about their servants and how hard it is to find good help, Pippi (having already devastated the buffet of desserts and made a mess in general) jumps in with a series of tall tales about a servant that her grandparents had, interrupting everyone else.  Tommy and Annika’s mother finally decides that she’s had enough and sends Pippi away.  Pippi does leave, but still continuing the story about the servant on the way out, yelling out the punchline from down the street.

However, Pippi becomes a local hero when she saves some children from a fire after the fireman decide that they can’t reach them themselves.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.

My Reaction

I have to admit that, as a character, Pippi sometimes annoys me with her obvious lies and some of the stuff she does. She openly admits that she lies after telling some of her tall tales, but it’s the parts where she admonishes her listeners not to be so gullible that get to me. You can tell that her listeners aren’t really fooled at all; they’re just trying to be polite by not calling her a liar directly, and then she insults them for it. Maybe it’s Pippi who’s really the gullible one, thinking that she’s fooling people when she isn’t really. 

Admittedly, Pippi’s wild stories are sometimes amusing.  I liked the one where she claimed that the reason why other people don’t believe in ghosts is that all of the ghosts in the world live in her attic and play nine-pins with their heads.  When Tommy and Annika go up there to see them, there aren’t any, of course, and Pippi says that they must be away at a conference for ghosts and goblins.

I just don’t like it that Pippi seems to be deliberately trying to make people look dumb when she’s the one saying all the stupid stuff and it’s really obvious that people know it. I also don’t like the part where she makes such a mess at the coffee party because she seems to be trying to be a messy pain on purpose.  She insists that it’s just because she doesn’t know how to behave, but I get the sense that it’s just an excuse and that Pippi just likes to pretend to be more ignorant than she is, pushing limits just because she likes to and because she usually gets away with it.  I didn’t think it was very funny.  But, Tommy and Annika seem to just appreciate Pippi’s imagination, enjoying Pippi’s antics, which bring excitement and chaos to a world controlled by sensible adults, which can be boring to kids, and accepting Pippi’s stories for the tall tales they are, playing along with her.

Pippi herself is really a tall tale, with her super strength, her father the cannibal king, and her ability to turn pretty much any situation her to advantage.  Part of her ability to “come out on top” is due to her super strength and part of it is that Pippi approaches situations from the attitude that she’s already won and isn’t answerable to anyone but herself.  This approach doesn’t always work in real life (I can’t recommend trying it on any of your teachers, or worse still, your boss – not everyone is easily impressed, especially the people who pay your salary), and nobody in real life has Pippi’s super strength to back it up. The adults in the story frequently let Pippi win because they decide that fighting with her just isn’t worth it. (Admittedly, that does happen in real life, too. I’ve seen teachers and other people give in to people who are just too much of a pain to argue with because they’re too impatient or find the argument too exhausting.)  Kids delight in Pippi’s ability to get the better of the adults, who usually have all the control, and in Pippi’s freedom to do what she wants in all situations.

One thing that might surprise American children reading this story is that the children in the story drink coffee. Tommy and Annika say that they are usually only allowed to drink it at parties, although Pippi has it more often. It isn’t very common for American children to drink coffee in general because it’s usually considered more of an adult’s drink and because of concerns about the effects of too much caffeine on young children. Children in Scandinavia tend to drink coffee at a younger age than kids in the United States.

Posted on by TracyC · 2 Comments

Bed-Knob and Broomstick

BedKnobBroomstickBed-Knob and Broomstick by Mary Norton, 1943, 1947.

This book is actually two books in one.  The title Bed-Knob and Broomstick is the one used for editions that include both the first book, The Magic Bed-Knob, and the sequel, Bonfires and Broomsticks.  Together, these two books were the basis for the Disney movie Bedknobs and Broomsticks, although the plot of the movie is considerably different from the two books. Because the movie is based on both of the books at once and because I read the combined edition, I’ll explain the plots of both of the books in one post.

There are two major differences between the movie and books that change many other things about the plot. The first one is that there is no mention of World War II in the books, even though the books were written during that time.  Miss Price was not studying magic to help the war effort, and the children were only in the countryside for vacation, not because they were evacuated there. Also, in the books, Emelius Jones (Emelius Brown in the movie) was a man they met when they traveled through time, not a man living in London during their own time.  He was not involved in Miss Price learning magic, although the two of them do end up together in the end.

The Magic Bed-Knob

At the beginning of the first book, the three Wilson children – Carey (who is described as being “about your age”), Charles (“a little younger”), and Paul (six years old) – are spending the summer with their Aunt Beatrice in Bedfordshire. There is never any mention of the children’s father in the books. Probably, their father is dead, although he might have left the family and went to live elsewhere or may be fighting overseas, although there is no mention of that in the book, making me think that it is probably not the case. The children apparently live with only their mother in London, and because she works, she always needs to find somewhere for them to stay during the summer, when they’re out of school. (This is a major plot point in both of the books.  In the Disney movie, the three children are orphans who have no memory of their birth parents, and their guardian was killed in a bombing shortly before they were evacuated to the countryside.  You only get their full backstory if you see the anniversary edition of the movie that includes the deleted scenes.)  While the children stay with Aunt Beatrice, they enjoy playing in the countryside, and one day, they happen to meet Miss Price, who they find with an injured ankle.

Miss Price is a respectable spinster from the village who gives piano lessons and is often seen riding around on her bicycle.  When they find her hurt, Carey says that they should get a doctor for her, but Miss Price insists that she doesn’t want one. Instead, she just asks the children to help her get home. As she starts to lean on Carey and Charles, Paul picks up a broom nearby. The older children thought it was just an old garden broom, but Paul calmly says that it belongs to Miss Price because it’s what she rides around on. The others are shocked, but Paul simply says that that he’s seen her improve in her flying, so Miss Price knows that he’s seen her riding her broom more than once. Miss Price is worried that everyone in the village will know now that she’s a witch, but Paul hadn’t even told his brother and sister what he’d seen.

The children help Miss Price get home, and they allow their aunt to think that Miss Price simply fell off of her bicycle. When the children are able to speak to Miss Price privately, they ask her directly if she’s a witch, and she admits that she’s studying to be one. She says that she’s had some talent for magic since she was young, but she never really had the time to develop it. The children are convinced that, while Miss Price might be a witch, she’s not a wicked one, and she says that’s true, that she started too late in life to be that way and that wickedness doesn’t come naturally to her. However, she’s still worried that the children might tell people about her magic.

Carey is the one who suggests that Miss Price give them a magical object as part of their pledge of secrecy (unlike in the movie, where it was Charlie’s idea), with the idea that, if they ever told anyone that she’s a witch, the magic would stop. Charles suggests that Miss Price could give them a magic ring that would summon a slave to do their bidding, but she says that she couldn’t manage that and that she has a better idea. Miss Price asks the children if they have anything on them they can twist, like a ring or a bracelet. The only thing they have is a bed-knob that Paul twisted off the end of his bed (basically, because he discovered that he could).

Miss Price says that the bed-knob will do nicely, and she casts a spell on it that will allow the children to travel to the destination of their choice when they put it back on the bed and give it a twist. If they turn it in one direction, they can travel in the present time, but turning it the other way can send them to the past. Also, because Paul was the one who had the bed-knob, he’s the only one who can make it work. Miss Price isn’t troubled by Paul’s young age because she thinks that it’s best to learn magic young, although she warns the children to be careful.

Because it’s Paul’s bed-knob, Carey and Charles give him first choice of where to go, but they think the places he wants to go sound mundane. He wants to either see a museum exhibit that the others saw without him once or to go home and see their mother in London. Carey and Charles try to persuade him to go someplace more exciting, but Paul insists that he wants to go home.

The bed whisks the children home to London, but when they get there, their mother isn’t home. Apparently, their mother has gone away for the weekend herself, and the children find themselves alone on their bed, in front of their house, on a foggy night. A policeman bumps into them, and when he demands to know who they are and where the bed came from, he doesn’t think it’s funny when they say, “Bedfordshire.” He takes them to the police station to spend the rest of the night. Fortunately, they find a way to get back to the bed and use the spell to return to their aunt’s house before they’re missed in the morning. It’s not quite the adventure that the children had been hoping for when they started out, but it’s just the beginning of their amazing summer!

However, magic turns out to be more dangerous than they thought. Their next adventure takes them to an island with cannibals (yeah, one of those scenes, sigh – I think that the island of talking animals in the movie was more fun), and they narrowly escape after Miss Price has a duel of magic with a witch doctor. Their magical adventures create problems that the children can’t explain to their aunt without giving away Miss Price’s secret. Eventually, their messes and wild stories cause their aunt to send them home to their mother. Miss Price considers that magic might cause more problems than it solves and tells the children that she’s thinking of giving it up for awhile. However, Paul keeps the bed-knob in the hopes that their adventures aren’t done yet.

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Bonfires and Broomsticks

In Bonfires and Broomsticks, two years have passed since the children’s first adventures, and Aunt Beatrice has died. Carey and Charles, worried that Paul would talk too much about their magical adventures, tried to convince Paul that it was all just a dream, although they weren’t very successful.

Then, the children see an advertisement in the newspaper that Miss Price is offering to board a couple of schoolchildren in her house for the summer for a fee. The children’s mother works, and she always has to find somewhere for the children to spend the summer, when they’re not in school. They still have the bed-knob, so they tell their mother that they want to visit Miss Price, hoping they can have more adventures with her. At first, their mother doesn’t understand why they would want to visit Miss Price so badly, but since she seems like a nice, respectable woman and an old friend of Aunt Beatrice’s, she agrees.

Miss Price is happy to have the children stay for the summer, but they are disappointed when they learn that she was really serious about giving up magic. The children discover that Miss Price bought the old bed that they had used for their previous adventures at the estate sale after their aunt’s death. She’s been sleeping on it in her own room. They want to try the bed-knob on the bed, but Miss Price takes it from them. She tries to make their summer vacation a normal vacation with normal activities, like picnics and croquet.

But, even Miss Price can’t resist the opportunity to try the bed-knob one last time. One morning, Carey and Charles discover that Paul and Miss Price have traveled somewhere on the bed without them. When the two of them confront Paul about it, he says that they only went to a nearby town, just to see if the spell on the knob still worked. Carey and Charles understand, but Carey thinks that if they got to use the bed once more, she and Charles should have one more turn. She especially wants to try going into the past, which was something they hadn’t had a chance to try last time. Miss Price is reluctant, but finally agrees after Carey pressures her about it.

The children travel to London of 1666 (ending up there accidentally, when they were aiming for the Elizabethan era), where a man named Emelius Jones has been living as a necromancer. When he was young, he studied magic under a mentor who, as he was dying, finally told him that everything he learned was fakery. It was all an act that he used to get money from gullible people, although it paid very well. The old man leaves Emelius his business, but Emelius is always nervous, worrying both because someone might discover that it’s all a fake and because others might believe that it’s real and that he should be hung as a witch. The only reason why he stays with it is because he has no other business to follow.

The children meet Emelius after ending up lost and stopping at his house for directions. The children can see how nervous and unhappy Emelius is, and they ask him about himself, discovering that his home town is actually close to where they’re staying with Miss Price. They reveal to him that they are from the future and invite him to come home with them for a visit.

Miss Price isn’t happy to see that they’ve brought someone back from the past with them, but she ends up liking Emelius. Before sending him home, they learn that Emelius’s aunt, who lived near to where Miss Price now lives, died the same day that Emelius left London in the past, which is coincidentally shortly before the great fire that destroyed a good part of the city. They know that Emelius’s London lodgings will likely be destroyed in the fire as well, but at least he can move into the house that he will inherit from his aunt.

However, after they send him back to his own time, the children and Miss Price learn that Emelius never made it to his aunt’s house because he was executed for practicing witchcraft. Unable to leave poor Emelius to such a terrible fate, they come up with a plan to rescue him.

The combined book edition is available online through Internet Archive.

My Reaction and Spoilers

Changing Emelius’s past also changes Miss Price’s future. Neither of them has ever married, and both of them have been lonely, and they come to the conclusion that the two of them were meant to be together. In deciding that they will live their lives together on Emelius’s aunt’s farm in the past, they put an end to the magical traveling bed. Only Paul can make the magic bed-knob work, and once he sends them into the past (not going with them), they can never return. But, Carey has one final vision of the two of them, being happy together, so she knows that they will be alright.

Overall, I preferred the Disney movie to the original books.  I think the war-based plot was better than the children’s random travels to cannibal-filled islands (I never liked those tropes in children’s stories anyway) and other places.  At one point in the books, Carey did speculate about the use of magic in war, but she rejected the idea because the notion of someone with the ability to conjure a dragon that could breathe mustard gas or who could turn whole armies into mice was just too horrible.  The spell that Miss Price used against the Nazis in the movie was part of their plan to rescue Emelius in the second book, but I think the movie’s ending was much more exciting.

Posted on by TracyC

Escape to Witch Mountain

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Escape to Witch Mountain by Alexander Key, 1968.

This is the book that the Disney movie of the same name was based on.  In fact, there have been three movie renditions of this book, although the 1975 Disney version is the one I know the best, and it’s the only film version to call the children by their original book names, Tia and Tony (other versions use the names Danny and Anna or Seth and Sara).  There are some major differences between the book and each of the the movies.  For one thing, most people in the book think that Tia is mute because she speaks at a frequency that ordinary humans can’t hear.  Only her brother, Tony, can hear what she’s saying.  She uses the little case with the double star emblem that she’s had ever since she can remember to carry paper and pencils so that she can write messages in order to make herself understood by other people.  In the 1975 movie, Tia can speak to Tony telepathically, but both children can speak aloud normally and be understood by everyone.

When the book begins, Tia and Tony know that they’ve always been different from other children.  They look different: they have olive skin, pale hair, and very dark blue eyes, which is a somewhat unusual combination. They can do things that others can’t: Tony can make things move with his mind, Tia can open locks without using a key or any other device, and only Tony can understand the strange way that Tia talks that others can’t even hear. They can’t remember any other home than the one they had with Granny Malone, the woman who adopted them, but now that she’s dead, they find themselves wondering who they really are and where they came from.  Tia has shadowy memories of a time before they came to Granny Malone, when they were on a boat and something bad happened to them, but she can’t quite remember what.

With no known relatives to go to, the children are taken to an orphanage, Hackett House, after Granny Malone’s death.  It’s a tough, inner-city environment, where no one has any patience with Tia and Tony’s strangeness.  However, when the children from the orphanage are sent to Heron Lake Camp in the mountains during the summer, a nun recognizes the double star symbol on Tia’s case as one that she had seen before on a letterhead, giving the children their first clue to finding their origins.

Then, a figure from one of Tia’s memories, Mr. Deranian, comes to the orphanage to claim them, saying that he’s their uncle. The children can tell that he’s no relative of theirs. They run away to see a kind priest, Father O’Day, an associate of the nun they met earlier. Father O’Day is the only one who believes the children when they talk about what they remember of their past and isn’t frightened by their strange mental powers. When the children show him a map that they found in a hidden compartment in Tia’s case, he offers to help them find the place marked on it and, hopefully, someone who knows who the children are and where they belong.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.  There is a sequel to this book which was also made into a movie, Return from Witch Mountain.

My Reaction and Spoilers

As the children and Father O’Day try to elude Deranian and the others who are chasing them, more of Tia’s memory returns. The children are from another planet. Years ago, their planet was destroyed when it crashed into one of their twin suns. Their people, who call themselves the Castaways, knowing that their planet would not be habitable for much longer, had already begun looking for a new home. Earth was the nearest habitable planet, so some scouts arrived early and began to create a home for them in the mountains of North America, which was the closest environment to their former home.

Unfortunately, when the rest of the children’s people came to Earth, the group that Tia and Tony were with crashed in Eastern Europe. The book was written during the Cold War, so the place where they crashed was controlled by Communists. When the Communists realized the powers these people possessed, they planned to make use of them themselves. One of Tia and Tony’s people escaped with the children and managed to get them aboard a ship heading for America. Before he died of a gunshot wound, he placed some money and a map in Tia’s case so that the children would know where to find the rest of their people. However, the children were traumatized by the experience, and Tia blocked the memory out of her mind. The ship’s captain, upon reaching the United States, gave the children to Deranian, a friend of his. Deranian, not knowing who the children were or what powers they possessed, gave them to Granny Malone to raise. Later, he found out about the children’s abilities from his contacts in Eastern Europe and tried to get the children back.

In the end, Father O’Day manages to reunite the children with the rest of their people, who take them to the community they have built on Witch Mountain, a place where locals are too superstitious to go, named for the odd things they’d seen there when the Castaways first arrived. Father O’Day plans to go there and join the community along with the children someday.

In spite of the Communists being enemies during the Cold War, Tia and Tony say that one of the reasons why their people had trouble establishing themselves in America at first was that they were unaccustomed to the idea of having to buy land to live on.  On their world, no one owned land; land was just there for people to live on and care for.  Their people’s early scouting expedition included selling pieces of their ships in order to raise enough money to buy some land in order to build their community.  Father O’Day is impressed with the Castaways’ commitment to the common good of all people and unselfish sharing.  So, although the oppressive Communist regimes of the Cold War are enemies in the book, some of the ideals of sharing and supporting the common welfare of everyone are still attractive ideals in the book.  The implication in the book is that Tia and Tony’s people are socially as well as technologically advanced and have created the best of all possible systems, a blending of ideals to create the ideal balance.

I can understand why the movies did not include Tia speaking at a frequency no one else can hear and appearing mute.  That would be difficult to show in a movie that relies on characters being able to communicate with each other, and it makes sense to replace it with an ability to communicate telepathically by choice instead.  None of the movies include the Cold War references that were present in the book, and the character of O’Day or the person who helps the children to reach Witch Mountain changes from movie to movie, but the plot of the 1975 Disney movie is still the closest to the original book.

Posted on by TracyC · 1 Comment

Ira Sleeps Over

IraSleepsOver

Ira Sleeps Over by Bernard Waber, 1972.

Ira, a young boy, is happy when his friend, Reggie, who lives next door, invites him to sleep over at his house. Then, his sister asks him if he’s going to take his teddy bear with him. At first, Ira says no, but his sister points out that he’s never slept without it.

Ira starts to worry about whether he should take the teddy bear with him or not. He worries that Reggie might laugh at him for having a teddy bear. His parents say that he won’t and that Ira should go ahead and take the bear with him. However, his sister says that Reggie probably will laugh.

IraSleepsOverWorry

Ira tries to talk to Reggie and sound him out on the idea of teddy bears to see if Reggie will laugh, but Reggie ignores Ira’s questions. Reggie is excited about all the things that he and Ira can do at the sleepover and eagerly explains his plans. It all sounds like fun, but Ira gets nervous when Reggie mentions ghost stories.

IraSleepsOverReggie

Ira continues to debate about whether or not he should take his bear with him. Before going over to Reggie’s house, he decides to leave his teddy bear at home.

The two boys have a lot of fun playing together at the sleepover. At bedtime, Reggie starts to tell a ghost story, and both of the boys are a little spooked. That’s when Ira discovers that Reggie has a teddy bear of his own.

IraSleepsOverTeddy

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.

My Reaction

This is a nice story about how the things that we worry other people will find ridiculous or embarrassing are often more common and less embarrassing than we think. At first, Ira worries (because of what his sister said) that Reggie will think that his teddy bear, named Tah Tah, is silly and childish, but after discovering that Reggie has a teddy bear named Foo Foo, Ira realizes that Reggie will understand how he feels about his bear and decides to run home and get it.  Reggie probably dodged Ira’s earlier questions about teddy bears because he was similarly worried about what Ira would think of his bear.  Sometimes, when people really open up to each other and talk honestly about the way they feel, they learn that other people have shared their feelings and experiences more than they might have thought.

Posted on by TracyC · 3 Comments

Imogene’s Antlers

ImogenesAntlers

Imogene’s Antlers by David Small, 1985.

One day, a young girl named Imogene wakes up to find that she has sprouted antlers during the night. It comes as a shock to the rest of her family, and she finds that it’s very difficult to do things with large antlers sticking out of her head.

No one seems to know why Imogene has sprouted antlers or what to do about them. Imogene’s mother faints just about every time she looks at her daughter, and her attempt to help Imogene hide them with a specially-designed hat is pure disaster. Imogene’s brother, Norman, thinks that Imogene might be a rare kind of elk now.

However, Imogene still has a lovely day as the family maid uses her as a rack to dry towels and the cook decks out her antlers with donuts to feed the birds.  She even puts candles on her antlers as an elaborate candelabra while she practices her piano lesson.

ImogenesAntlersDonuts

Still, it’s a most bizarre day, and her family is relieved when the antlers are gone the following morning.  But, Imogene’s adventures may only be just beginning.

The book never offers an explanation for why Imogene grew antlers or why she now has a peacock tail, but it doesn’t really matter. This is just one of those books that’s fun to read because it’s silly. While Imogene’s mother panics over her daughter’s condition and tries to hide it under a ridiculously big hat at one point, readers don’t have to worry about the long-term implications of Imogene’s antlers (or any other animal transformations) because she just enjoys them for what they are. The peacock feathers may not have as many practical uses as the antlers did, but one can imagine that Imogene will make the most of them while she has them.  I loved this book when I was a kid!

This book was featured on Reading Rainbow.  It is currently available online through Internet Archive.

Posted on by TracyC

Mirette on the High Wire

Mirette

Mirette on the High Wire by Emily Arnold McCully, 1992.

About 100 years ago (the book says, so it’s around the 1890s), a young girl named Mirette and her widowed mother run a boardinghouse in Paris. Most of the people who live there are actors and performers of various kinds.

MiretteBoardinghouse

One day, a strange, quiet man named Bellini comes to stay at the boardinghouse. Most of the time, Bellini prefers to keep to himself, but then Mirette catches him walking on the rope they are using for clothesline in the courtyard of the house. It turns out that Bellini is a tightrope walker. Mirette begs him to teach her how to do it, but he refuses.

MIretteRequest

Not to be daunted, Mirette begins experimenting with tightrope walking herself. After repeated falls, Mirette eventually learns to balance on the rope. When she shows Bellini that she can walk the length of the rope, he is impressed with her perseverance and teaches her more things to develop her skills. However, he becomes very upset when she boasts that she will never fall again.

MirettePractice

Mirette learns that Bellini was a world-famous tightrope walker until a friend of his was killed in a fall, and he lost his nerve. She talks to Bellini about it, and he says that he doesn’t know how to get over being afraid. Seeing Mirette’s disappointment and worry, however, gives Bellini the courage to try once again.

MiretteBellini

After talking with a performing agent staying at the boardinghouse, Bellini arranges a performance where he will walk a tightrope over a Paris street. When Mirette sees him hesitating at the beginning of the performance, she joins him on the wire, bolstering his courage and realizing her own dreams of becoming a real tightrope walker.

MiretteBelliniTightrope

There are other books in a series about Mirette and Bellini, where they perform tightrope acts and have adventures around the world, but I think that the first book is really the best.  The pictures are beautiful, done in an impressionistic style.

This book is a Caldecott Award winner.  It is currently available online through Internet Archive.

Posted on by TracyC

The True Tale of Johnny Appleseed

JohnnyAppleseed

The True Tale of Johnny Appleseed by Margaret Hodges, 1997.

This American folktale was based on the life of a real person, John Chapman.

Johnny Appleseed was born as Johnny Chapman in 1774. His family lived in Massachusetts. There were plenty of apple trees there, and Johnny loved them. When he was grown, he started traveling west with the idea of spreading apple trees.

He carried very little with him, and some people said that he wore the pot that he used to cook his meals on his head as he walked. Everywhere he went, he planted apple seeds.

His reputation spread, and although people thought that traveling around just to plant apple seeds sounded crazy, they sometimes let him stay with them on his travels. Even Native Americans seemed to like him because he was friendly and helpful and interested in learning their languages. His legacy continued long after his death with trees that were enjoyed by generations of families across the Midwest.

There is a section in the back of the book that explains more about the history behind Johnny Appleseed’s story, including the end of the Revolutionary War and the beginning of westward migration in America. One of the things they mention is the effect that the War of 1812 had on relations between pioneers and Native Americans. Because pioneers were already pushing into the territory of Native Americans in the area that later became Ohio, the tribes there sided with the British in the war, hoping to push out the invading pioneers. After the war was over, though, the pioneers continued to come west, and when they did, they retaliated against the tribes that had been on the side of the British. The pioneers could be brutal, and part of the reason that Native Americans liked Johnny Appleseed was that he was different. He wasn’t trying to hurt anyone or take land for himself; he just wanted to plant trees. After he planted trees, he would build fences around them to keep animals from eating them while they were growing.

John Chapman’s life was unconventional.  He never married, and he acted as a Christian missionary in his travels as well as a planter.  Although he could be regarded as something of an oddball in the itinerant way he lived his life, he became a legend.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.

Posted on by TracyC

Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox

PaulBunyan

Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox by Jan Gleiter and Kathleen Thompson, 1985.

This story is based on an American folktale that was used to promote the logging industry. The book doesn’t explain the background to the story, but in a very literal sense, it is a “tall tale.”  The book is part of a series about legendary figures from history and myth.

Paul Bunyan is a giant of a man, and he was a giant since he was a baby, even though his parents were both of normal human size (no explanation given). Because he was never small enough to fit in his parents’ house, they made a large boat for him to sleep in as a cradle, rocking him to sleep on a river. Needless to say, having a giant baby complicates everything and can pose a real risk to everyone. His parents had to teach him early about what he could and couldn’t do so that he would avoid hurting people.

PaulBunyanBaby

However, Paul discovered early that he was skilled with an ax, and because of his great size and strength, he realizes that he is good at cutting down trees. Because this was the frontier days in America, good loggers were in demand because trees were plentiful and wood was needed to build houses and railroads. (Paul Bunyan would not be such a hero for cutting down whole forests today.)

However, a giant of a man can also be lonely when there’s no one around his own size. Paul finds a companion in a giant blue ox. (Yep, that’s part of the traditional story.) He found the ox partly buried in a blizzard. After he dug it out, he named it Babe, and the two of them became lifelong friends.

PaulBunyanBabe

Part of the story is that the Mississippi River and all the lakes in Minnesota were caused by Babe accidentally spilling water that he was carrying on his back. Paul also supposedly dug the Grand Canyon by accident by dragging his ax behind him when he walked to California.

PaulBunyanBabeSpill

Paul also meets a man named Hals Halvorsen who is almost his size. After trees get cut down, Paul and Hals pound the stumps into the ground with their fists to finish clearing the land. Then, they try planting some corn to see how good the land is for farming, but the corn stalk grows up so high that Hals nearly starves to death while climbing it to try to find the top of it.

PaulBunyanHals

The part of the story I liked the best as a kid was when they made gigantic pancakes for Paul Bunyan and Babe, greasing their giant griddle by basically skating across its surface with grease strapped to their feet.

PaulBunyanPancakes

I can’t say that this was one of my favorite folktales as a kid, and my feelings as an adult about deforestation don’t make me feel good about it now. Still, it is an interesting piece of Americana and a little nostalgic.  As a side note, Paul Bunyan was used as a mascot for a pancake restaurant in an episode of Disney’s Phineas and Ferb (which has also been done in real life).  In that episode, Norm, a giant robot, accidentally gets the head of the Babe statue outside the restaurant stuck on his head, causing Phineas and Ferb to think that they are being chased by a Minotaur.  Now that I think about it, this joke’s use of Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox makes me smile more than the original version of the story.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.

Posted on by TracyC

Pocahontas

Pocahontas

Pocahontas by Jan Gleiter and Kathleen Thompson, 1985.

The story about the life of the young Native American woman known as Pocahontas (“Pocahontas” was really a nickname, which the book mentions, although it doesn’t say that her original name was Matoaka) has been told many times in many forms, but this particular book is somewhat sentimental for me because it was the first one I ever read about her when I was a kid. It’s part of a series about famous and legendary figures in history and myth. Pocahontas was a real, historical person, but aspects of her life have taken on the characteristics of legend (as well as providing material for a Disney movie, although the Disney movie takes liberties with the real life of Matoaka/Pocahontas and the movie was not based on this particular rendition of her story).

When this particular book begins, Pocahontas is a grown, married woman going by the name of Lady Rebecca Rolfe. While living in England, she reflects back on her life and youth, remembering when she first met Europeans.

PocahontasEngland

When she was ten years old, she heard her father, Powhatan (who was the chief of their tribe) and other men talking about the white men. Although Pocahontas hears that the white people had betrayed her people’s trust and even killed some of them, she is curious to get a look at them.

PocahontasSettlerChildren

She ends up meeting with a group of boys from Jamestown and playing with them. She begins making friends with people in Jamestown and visiting them from time to time. A man named John Smith becomes curious about the girl and her people and gets Pocahontas to teach him some of her language.  (The book is more accurate than the Disney version here, showing that there is a significant age difference between Pocahontas and John Smith, with Pocahontas being a child at their first meeting.)

PocahontasJohnSmith

Then, one day, there is a feast in Pocahontas’s village, and some of the men of the tribe bring a white man who was caught trespassing in their territory. Pocahontas recognizes the white man as John Smith and, upon realizing that he is about to be executed, intervenes to save his life. (This is one of the most famous parts of the story of Pocahontas’s life, although the exact circumstances surrounding the real-life incident are a little confusing and may have actually been part of a more complex ritual that John Smith didn’t fully understand at the time, not an actual attempt at execution, if the event actually happened at all. This book offers a simplified version of the incident, supposing that John Smith’s life was in real danger, as he described it in his account of what happened.)

PocahontasExecutionAttempt

In the end, the settlers at Jamestown kidnap Pocahontas in the hope that Powhatan would end hostilities with them, using her as a bargaining chip.  (The book says that her father wasn’t too worried because he knew that the settlers were her friends and would treat her well, but I find this part of the book pretty worrying myself, reading it as an adult.  I’m pretty sure that is not how a parent would react to a missing child in real life.  I guess that the book is trying to keep the tone light for children, but it just sounds weird.) Pocahontas remains among the settlers, living according to their lifestyle and taking the name Rebecca. Eventually, she meets a man named John Rolfe and marries him. The two of them have a son together. With her new family, she travels to England and tries to help the people there to understand her people.  (The book says this in a very optimistic way, calling her visit a “success”, although in real life, this visit was largely a propaganda move on the part of the Virginia Company of London. On the other hand, she was, evidently, very well-received in England, if something of a social curiosity.)

PocahontasWedding

The story in the book ends here, with her still in England, thinking back on her life and her reasons for being there. Part of me wishes that it had explained a little more about Pocahontas’s earlier life and some other facts behind her story. Sadly, part of the reason why they might have been reluctant to tell the rest of the story to children was that the real Pocahontas didn’t live very long after the point where the story ends.  As she was preparing to return to Virginia from England, she became very ill and died.  Her exact age at the time of her death is unknown, but she was probably about 21 years old.  Her son, Thomas Rolfe, was very young at the time she died, but they do still have living descendants today.

Overall, I’d say that this is one of those stories that becomes more interesting when you’re older and realize the full depth of it.  This picture book is a very simplified version of the story, meant for kids, but when I was young, it did inspire me to learn more about Pocahontas.  There any many missing details of Matoaka/Pocahontas/Rebecca Rolfe’s life because of the limited records of it, but what is known is fascinating.  It’s sad because she died so young, but that the story of her life lived on in so many imaginations after her death is profound.  Different people, both when she was alive and after her death, tried to use her for their own purposes, but her legend still continues, out-living them all.  I’ve never seen the Disney Pocahontas movies, and I don’t really want to.  I already know how the story ends.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.