The Moon Jumpers by Janice May Udry, pictures by Maurice Sendak, 1959.
In this pleasant, relaxing children’s picture book, some children enjoy a beautiful summer evening! Some of the pictures are in black-and-white and some are in color, but the best pictures are the full-color, full-page illustrations. The illustrations are by Maurice Sendak, who wrote and illustrated Where the Wild Things Are. The story is told from the point-of-view of the children.
While their parents are in the house, the children go outside to enjoy the relative coolness of the evening. They run barefoot through the grass and play tag.
They climb a tree “just to be in a tree at night.” They set up their own camp, make up songs and poems, and tell each other ghost stories.
The moon is rising, and the children jump in the air, trying to touch it, although they know they can’t.
Eventually, their parents call them inside to go to bed. As the children go to bed, they say goodnight to the moon through their bedroom window.
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies). It’s a Caldecott Honor Book!
My Reaction
This is a nice, calm book that would make a good bedtime story on a summer night! It reminds me a little of Goodnight Moon, Time of Wonder, and The White Marble, which are other calm bedtime stories. It isn’t told in rhyme like Goodnight Moon, but it does show the beauties of summer and evenings spent outside, like Time of Wonder and The White Marble.
This is a beautiful, very relaxing picture book about a family’s summer vacation on an island off the coast of Maine. Although you can see from the pictures that the main characters are a pair of sisters, the entire story is told in the second person, from the point of view of “you.” Readers are meant to feel like they’re part of this magical summer trip!
“You” feel like you’re spending the morning walking in the fog along the bay, enjoying the plants and birds in the forest nearby, and sailing in the bay with seals and leaping porpoises.
During the day, there are other children playing on the beach, diving from the rocks, and swimming. In the evening, “you” row a boat out into the quiet water and use a flashlight to look at the crabs.
When it rains, “you” feel it! Most of the time the weather is peaceful, but there is a storm approaching, and people know they have to get ready for it. When it comes, it brings a strong wind that blows through the house!
The family reads together and sings songs until the storm is over and it’s time to go to bed.
The next day, trees are uprooted, and “you” get to explore what’s beneath their roots.
When it’s time to go home because school will be starting again, you’re a little sad to leave this place, although you’re also glad to go home again.
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies). It’s a Caldecott Medal winner!
My Reaction
This is a great book when you want something calm and relaxing or you feel like you need to take a mental vacation, whether you’re a kid or adult! Nothing stressful happens in the story. It’s just a lovely memory of a peaceful vacation. Even the storm that comes doesn’t do anything worse than blow things around the room and knock over some trees and plants. The girls in the story help clean up after the storm, find ancient seashells under the roots of a fallen tree, and are happy that the sunflowers are looking toward the sun again.
When the girls are looking at the shells under the fallen tree, they think about the Native Americans who lived in the area before white people came and before the tree grew there. They call them “Indians” instead of Native Americans, but that’s the only thing I can find to nitpick about the story.
I think this would make a great, calming bedtime story for kids, especially during the summer! It reminds me a little of the song Verdi Cries, about someone’s memories of a special vacation.
The setting for the story, on an island off the coast of Maine, is based on the author’s family’s summer home, and the two girls in the story are based on his own daughters. They are not named here because the story is about “you”, but the older girl is Sarah (called Sal) and the younger girl is Jane. They appear in and are named in Blueberries for Sal and One Morning in Maine, where they are much younger.
This cute picture book features Sal, a little girl who also appeared in Blueberries for Sal. She and her family live or are staying on an island off the coast of Maine. One morning, Sal wakes up and is excited because she remembers that she and her father will be going to Buck’s Harbor (a real place).
She helps her little sister, Jane, to get ready, and while they’re brushing their teeth, she feels that one of her teeth is loose. She’s never had a loose tooth before, and she runs to tell her mother. Her mother tells her not to worry about it because everyone loses their baby teeth when they’re growing up. She say that a new, bigger tooth will grow in when the old tooth falls out. Her mother says that if she puts her baby tooth under her pillow, she will get a wish, but she shouldn’t tell anyone what the wish is.
On her way to the beach, where her father is digging clams, Sal proudly tells all the animals she sees about her loose tooth. When she reaches her father, she tells him about the tooth, too. Then, she joins him in digging for clams.
Then, Sal realizes that she’s already lost the tooth somewhere. She’s really disappointed because she wanted to make a wish. As she and her father walk back to the house, Sal sees a feather that a gull lost. Since the feather is kind of like a tooth because a new feather grows in when one falls out, she decides that she can make her wish on that.
When it’s time to go to Buck’s Harbor, the motor on the boat won’t run, so the girls’ father has to row the boat. When they go to get the motor fixed, Sal tells the mechanic about her tooth. When the spark plug in the motor is replaced, Sal compares the old plug to her lost tooth and gives the old plug to Jane so she can have something to wish on, too.
She also tells the men at the grocery store about her tooth, and she ends up getting an ice cream cone, exactly what she wished for! The book ends with Sal, her father, and her little sister all going home for clam chowder for lunch.
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies). It’s a Newbery Honor Book!
My Reaction
This is just a cute little story about a little girl who is proud of losing her first loose tooth. It’s a sort of rite of passage that all small children go through. Her parents don’t tell her about the tooth fairy or promise her money for her tooth, but she does get a wish. Because her wish is a simple one, it’s easily fulfilled.
The different animals that can be found on the coast of Maine would also be interesting to child readers. Sal and her father also talk about which of the animals have teeth and which don’t. The birds and the clams don’t have teeth, but seals do. Sal keeps making comparisons between her tooth and other things that have to be replaced eventually, like the bird’s feather and the old spark plug, finding a kind of magic in things that are discarded and replaced with something new.
This book is part of the nonfiction history series Landmark Books, which focus on events and famous people in American history. This biography of the Wright Brothers, inventors of the airplane, is told in story format with dialog between characters. I’m not sure how accurate the dialog is, but it’s compelling way of presenting historical figures to children. I remember that I actually used this book for a report that I did about the Wright Brothers back in elementary school.
According to the story, the Wright Brothers’ mother, Susan, was responsible for inspiring their love of science and inventing things because she encouraged their curiosity and enjoyed answering their questions about how the world works, introducing them to concepts like wind resistance when explaining how birds fly and how to walk when you have to walk into the wind. Susan Wright was very good at math and had a talent for planning things out on paper that she taught to her children. She was accustomed to making her own patterns for clothes, and she showed the children how to apply similar principles to planning how to build a sled by drawing out their plan and figuring out, mathematically, the sizes of each piece of the sled. The boys learned a lot from her and applied what she taught them to their later projects, like building a wagon they could use in their first job, working for the local junk man. The boys would gather scrap materials in their wagon that the junk man would buy from them and sell to others. The junk man also gave them some supplies to work with and some tips for building their projects.
The Wright brothers enjoy flying kites with their friends, and now that they’re learning more about making things, they decide to try making their own kites. Their first attempt doesn’t work well, but by studying what went wrong, they learn how to modify different parts of the kite to get better results. Their second kite turns out better than the store-bought kites that the other boys have, and the brothers begin making and selling kites to the other boys.
When they were young, the boys were quite athletic, particularly Wilbur, who played both football and hockey. However, when he was a teenager, he was injured badly during a hockey game. A puck hit him in the face and knocked out several of his teeth. To make matters worse, the injury became infected, and the infection damaged his heart. His doctor advised him not to return to sports or athletics and not to pursue any line of work that involved hard physical work or heavy lifting to avoid further strain on his heart. It was a heavy blow, but it wad also a turn point in the brothers’ lives.
While Wilbur was resting and recovering from his injury and infection, their father gave him a drawing set and a small wood-working kit that included a book about the properties and uses of different types of wood. Wilbur had never been very interested in books before, but he discovered how useful they could be, and the boys used the new knowledge Wilbur gained in their projects. Orville made a good partner for Wilbur because he was happiest doing the actual assembly work of everything they built and had little interest in books and studying. He could handle the heavy work that Wilbur could no longer do while Wilbur studied design techniques and mapped out plans for their projects. In this way, the boys made a chair for their mother as a present. Wilbur came up with the basic concept and then discussed and worked out the plan with Orville. Orville gathered the materials and assembled the chair according to the plan, discussing the results with Wilbur. As Wilbur recovered further, he was able to get out of bed and help Orville more in their workshop in the family’s barn, but they continued to keep this partnership system that worked well for them, with Wilbur focusing on studying and planning and Orville handling the heaviest parts of the assembly.
The boys’ father was a minister, and for a time, he was the editor of a church newsletter. He gave Wilbur the job of folding the papers, with Orville helping. When they realized just how long it took to fold individual papers, they came up with the concept of building a paper-folding machine. Their machine worked incredibly well, finishing all the folding that ordinary took them a couple of days in the space of a couple of hours. Their father was amazed and realized that the boys could have a future as inventors.
In high school, Orville helped a friend of theirs, Ed Sines, with managing the school newspaper, which was printed on a very small printing press. He and Wilbur discussed making a larger press and starting their own newspaper with their friend. This was a harder job that required the boys to work with metal instead of just wood, but they accomplished it. There was one other obstacle, though. They had their own press, but before they could begin printing anything or selling advertising space in their paper, they needed to buy other supplies, like ink and paper. They realized that they and their friend would have to get other jobs to raise the money. Wilbur was the older of the two brothers by four years, and he thought he could get a job delivering groceries. However, Orville was worried that the job might be too difficult physically for his brother because it involved heavy lifting. He suggested that Wilbur get the job and then let him help with the heavier parts of the work. It turned out to be a good idea because they were able to gather pieces of news as they traveled to farms in the area and talked to people as they delivered groceries.
Their newspaper was successful, particularly after they started taking side jobs, using their printing press to print signs, flyers, and bulletins for local businesses and churches. Because it was just a small business, they underbid some of the bigger, established printers. However, the brothers soon became bored with the newspaper and printing press because what they really loved most was building things and fixing things. They sold their share in the printing business and newspaper to their friend, Ed Sines, and they decided to open a bicycle shop, where they could build and repair bicycles.
Orville had the idea of promoting their bicycle business with a bike race. His thought was that he could enter it himself and show off how their methods of cleaning and repairing bicycles improved their speed and performance. Unfortunately, the bike race didn’t turn out well. Although Orville’s bike was in excellent condition, they neglected to put new tires on it. He was just about to win when he blew a tire, and his loss of the race cost them business. People weren’t confident that they would do a good job repairing their bikes if they couldn’t properly take care of their own. However, a local businessman loved the bicycle race so much that he decided to sponsor another one, and Orville easily beat all of the other bicycles in that race. Customers’ confidence in their business was restored, and they learned that, when building or repairing any machine, they couldn’t afford to neglect any part of it or take it for granted that everything was right without checking for certain.
The Wright brothers began building their own bicycles, which they called Wright Fliers, and their mother bought an interest in the business to give them some money to get started. One of the features of their service that drew customers was their promise to repair any bike they sold for free for a full year after the purchase. When their mother died, they threw themselves even more into their business to work through their grief.
Then, Orville became ill with typhoid. It was a frightening and often deadly disease, and Wilbur and their sister Kate feared for him. The book (which was written in 1950, remember) discusses how typhoid was little understood at the time. Doctors at the time didn’t fully understand how it was transmitted. (Answer: It’s a bacterial infection spread through food or water contaminated with Salmonella Typhi. Besides vaccines, water purification methods, pasteurization of milk, and other food safety measures help prevent the spread.) They had no cure for it (which would be antibiotics later), only medicines that they could use to treat the symptoms, to try to help the sick through the worst of it. The book further notes that, by the time the book was written, most parents had their children vaccinated against typhoid and other dangerous diseases, like smallpox, but that wasn’t an option for the Wright brothers because those vaccines had not yet been developed in their time. (The book adds that, “Every single soldier in World War II was inoculated against typhoid fever, and very few of them caught the disease.” The author of this book was aware that this particular vaccine was not 100% effective and didn’t prevent 100% of cases, which is common among vaccines in general, but it was still massively effective and made a major difference in curbing the spread of the disease, even in wartime conditions, which are often unsanitary. The earliest typhoid vaccine dates back to 1896, and that was the year given for Orville’s illness, but the implication is that he caught the disease before he had access to the new vaccine. Missed it by that much.)
Orville’s illness was severe. He spent about two weeks just sleeping, and when he was awake, he was delirious because of his high fever. Wilbur and Kate looked after him with the help of a hired nurse. The doctor told them that there was little that he could do and that the fever had to “run its course.” (The book says at this point that, “You never hear a doctor say, “This disease has to run its course” today. Today doctors know how to fight many kinds of diseases, and they have medicines and drugs to kill the germs that cause the disease.” By 1950, when this book was written, the invention of antibiotics had made an enormous difference in treating infections, and the author of the book would have been aware of the difference it made in quality of life and the treatment and survival rate of diseases. However, I have to admit that it’s not true that all diseases have a cure, even in the 21st century. We have ways of treating viruses, but we still can’t really cure viruses, and most of those also have to run their course. For most of my life, people considered most viruses relatively mild compared to bacterial infections, but the coronavirus of the early 2020s challenged that assumption. It’s just interesting to me to compare these different expectations regarding illness and medicine in three different time periods: the late 1800s, the 1950s, and the 21st century.)
After about three weeks, Orville’s fever finally broke, and they knew that he was going to survive. He had lost weight, and he was very weak, and his doctor told him that he would have to rest in bed for two months. For a young man as active as Orville, that was going to be difficult, but Wilbur told him that he would read to him to keep him entertained. In particular, Wilbur had a book that he knew Orville would love: Experiments in Soaring by Otto Lilienthal. Ever since they had been making kites as boys, they had dreamed of one day building a kite big enough to allow them to fly in it, and that was basically what Lilienthal had done. Lilienthal had invented a glider. (Sadly, he was killed in a glider accident while trying to perfect his design in 1896, the same year of Orville’s illness.) Lilienthal was only one of many people who were experimenting with the concept of flight and flying machines in the late 19th century, but he had been one of the most successful with his designs up to that point. The brothers acquired other books and magazines about flight and the attempts people were making at building flying machines. Neither of the Wright brothers had actually graduated from high school, but their extensive reading and practical experimentation made up for the lack of formal education. Based on their reading, they developed a new goal: to build a glider that would fly farther than any that had so far been created.
At first, they didn’t want to tell anyone else other than their sister what they were working on because they didn’t know for sure that they would succeed, and they thought that everyone would think that they were crazy for trying to fly. A trip to the circus, where they saw an exhibit of a “horseless carriage” (an early automobile), gave them the idea that they might be able to attach an engine to some kind of glider to propel it. Their logic was that if it could work for carriages and boats, it might work for a flying machine. They imagined that an engine could propel the glider through the air as an engine could move a boat through water, and then, the flying machine would be less dependent on the wind, which could be variable.
When they had a glider design that satisfied them, they knew the only way to know for sure how well it would work would be to try it. They didn’t want to try it in Ohio, where they lived, because there were too many hills and trees that would get in the way. They wanted a flat place with few trees and where they could find a reliably steady wind. Since they had acquired their reading materials by writing to the Smithsonian Institute, they wrote to the Smithsonian Institute to ask if they had information about places with the conditions they required. The Smithsonian Institute forwarded the letter to the United States Weather Bureau, which recommended a few places, including Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. (Fun Fact: Kitty Hawk is just a little north of Roanoke Island, the site of the infamous vanished Roanoke Colony. It’s not important to the story, but I just wanted to tell you.)
As with their first kite, their first experiment with the glider was only partly successful. It glided for 100 feet before crashing. They fixed the glider and tried again, but it again ended with a crash because they couldn’t steer the glider. Just as they did with their first kite, they decided to build a new one, using what they had learned from the experiment and refining the design. They knew there were risks in their experiments because of Lilienthal’s death, but they were careful not to test their gliders at a very high altitude. They also added both vertical and horizontal rudders so they could not only steer from side to side but also move up and down, giving them greater control over the movement of the glider. What made their experiments different from others’ is that they ultimately wanted to create a “heavier than air” flying machine, propelled by an engine.
After their successful test at Kitty Hawk in 1903, in which Wilbur flew for 59 seconds, a record time, few people believe it at first. They were angry at first that their own neighbors thought that they made up the story about flying. They continued to work on their flying machine, and when they produced one that flew over a cow pasture near their town for 39 minutes, local people started believing them. Word was also spreading through the international scientific community. President Theodore Roosevelt first learned about the Wright brothers from an article in Scientific American, and he arranged for them to demonstrate their flying machine to the Secretary of War at Fort Myer, Virginia. During that demonstration, Orville flew their airplane for a whole hour, ending with a successful landing. Then, when a young soldier said that he wished he could fly, too, Orville took him for a ride with him on a second flight. The book ends with the Secretary of War hiring the Wright brothers to make bigger, more powerful airplane for the US Army, and the Wright brothers accepting an invitation to dinner from President Roosevelt.
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).
My Reaction
I used this book for a school report about the Wright Brothers when I was a kid, and I think it holds up with time. Part of what I like about the Wright Brothers is their partnership as brothers. They had friends outside of the family, but their greatest friendship was always with each other because they had so many interests in common, even though there was an age gap of four years between them. They often felt like nobody understood them or their projects as well as they understood each other, and they could talk about things with each other that their other friends just wouldn’t understand because they weren’t into building things or studying technical methods and inventions. Not all siblings get along so well, but they really understood each other and complemented each other well. When Wilbur could no longer do some of the heavier work that he did when he was younger, Orville was happy to do the heavier physical work, which he preferred to the reading and studying that Wilbur discovered he really loved. They learned from a young age how to use their strengths to help each other and carry out their projects, and that’s real teamwork!
When I was a kid, I didn’t pay any attention to the About the Author section, but it’s interesting by itself. Quentin Reynolds was a famous war correspondent during World War II, which is part of the reason why he makes multiple references to World War II and World War II airplanes during the book. He also wrote other nonfiction books for adults and children, including four other books in the Landmark series.
Mary Jane is a twelve-year-old African American girl in the American South in the 1950s. Her father is a lawyer, and her older brother, James, is also studying law. Her older sister, Lou Ellen, is a nurse. Her grandfather used to teach at the state agricultural college, and now, he has a farm where he likes to experiment with different types of plants. Mary Jane spends her summers on her grandfather’s farm. Although this seems like a perfectly normal middle-class background, as a black girl in the 1950s, Mary Jane is aware that her race makes all the difference to some people, and she’s about to become even more aware.
Things are changing in society and education. When Mary Jane graduates from her old school, there is an announcement that the high school in her town that was formerly for white students only, Woodrow Wilson High, will become integrated and that black students, like Mary Jane, will be allowed to attend there the following school year, if they want to apply. It has a junior high school division, which is how she can move from the elementary school to the high school. Her older siblings attended the all-black high school for their education, and they have done well for themselves since, but Mary Jane knows that Woodrow Wilson High can offer her the best level of education that she can get for her town, and she wants to go there. It offers a wider curriculum than the all-black school, especially in the sciences, and Mary Jane’s ambition is to be a biologist. Her grandfather says that he became a biologist without attending the fancy high school. He was mostly self-taught, working his way up from being a farm laborer and cleaner to afford more education, but Mary Jane says that things are changing. People’s expectations about education are changing. Mary Jane knows that going to Woodrow Wilson High will give her knowledge she needs and wants and will open up important opportunities in her life. She also insists that it is her right to attend the school of her choice, so there is no reason for her not to go to that school. Her grandfather and parents ask her if any of her friends will be going to that school with her, and she says that only one boy she knows will be going, but she also insists that she doesn’t want to attend high school for socializing. She wants an education.
Education is the reason why Mary Jane’s family has done as well as they have. Mary Jane’s great-grandmother was a slave, and Mary Jane likes to hear her grandfather tell the story about how she learned to read and write in secret. When she had learned enough, she forged a pass for herself to leave the plantation where she lived so she could go north to New York City and start a new life. People with an education have an advantage in life.
Mary Jane thinks her great-grandmother was incredibly brave, and her grandfather says that she will also have to brave, especially if she attends Woodrow Wilson High. Even though she will be allowed to go there now, her grandfather knows that many people won’t want her there. Teachers and students and students’ parents have all made up their minds about what black people are like, and they’ll have many assumptions about Mary Jane before they’ve even met her. Her grandfather warns her that her education will be difficult, frequently lonely, and may involve some real hurt. Mary Jane isn’t too concerned at first because she says that things are changing and that she used to play with some white children in her neighborhood when she was little. Her grandfather says that it’s true that some white people care and can be friendly and helpful. People need friends and help from other people, and even Mary Jane’s great-grandmother found help from white people when she arrived in New York. Her grandfather says that there will be days when Mary Jane will feel like the whole world is against her, but it will help if she remembers that not everyone is against her and some will want to help.
When Mary Jane returns home from her trip to the farm to get ready for the new school year, things are exciting. Her father has given her new furniture for her room, so her room looks more grown-up and is a better place for studying. She also gets a new vanity table so she can do her hair in her room. Her mother buys her new clothes and has her hair done at a beauty parlor for the first time. Mary Jane doesn’t really care that much about clothes or having the latest hair style, but her mother says that appearances are important in high school. Her mother comments on the thing that “they” are wearing this year, not really defining who “they” are, and even the hair dresser says that if “they” say mean things about her, she shouldn’t pay attention. It bothers Mary Jane that people keep saying things like this to her because she realizes that “they” are the people who are going to be her new classmates at her new school, and it seems like everyone is bracing themselves and preparing Mary Jane to expect bad things from them. Mary Jane tries to tell herself and others that this experience of going to a new high school won’t be as bad as everyone seems to expect, but it really feels like everyone is trying to prepare her for a terrible ordeal. She knows that there are bound to be some mean kids, but there were mean kids at her old school, too. Is it really going to be that much different?
An article about Mary Jane and the other five black students who will now be attending Wilson High as it integrates appears in the local paper. (The book and the article refer to them as “Negro children” because “Negro” was a more common word at the time and considered one of the more polite words until around the time of the Civil Rights Movement, which is why it’s still a part of some organizational names, like the United Negro College Fund. Sometimes, the book also uses the term “colored” for similar reasons. The black people in the story refer to themselves by both of these terms. The Civil Rights Movement is responsible for the shift to “black” as a generic term because people wanted to distance themselves from older words that carried more emotional baggage, which is why “Negro” sounds out-of-date to us. It feels like it belongs to this time and these people, some of whom definitely have emotional baggage.) Everyone in town knows that there will be black students going to the formerly all-white high school. Mary Jane’s aunts and uncles give her presents and school supplies, and one of her aunts even thanks her for being the first in the family to do this because things will be much easier for the younger cousins who will come after her. It all makes Mary Jane realize that she is doing something very novel and that she will be accomplishing something beyond giving herself a better education. On the one hand, she feels proud, like a brave explorer entering uncharted territory, but on the other, she begins to get very nervous.
The night before Mary Jane’s first day at Wilson High, her father tells her that he will be taking her to school, accompanied by one of the other black students and his father. Mary Jane is surprised because the school is within easy walking distance. Then, her father tells her the reason why everyone is so nervous. While Mary Jane was visiting her grandfather on the farm over the summer, there were public protests and complaints about the black students attending the white high school. Some white adults have threatened that they will stop the black students from attending the school, and the students’ parents and the police are preparing to protect the children, if necessary. Mary Jane’s simple first day at a new school just a few blocks away is going to be much more complicated and possibly dangerous than she had imagined. Her father tells her that if she’s had second thoughts about it, nobody would blame her if she decided to back out at the last minute. However, Mary Jane can’t bring herself to do that. Even though she is starting to get scared, backing out would seem like a betrayal of the trust people are putting in her and her family’s dedication to improving themselves through education. Her aunt and cousins are hoping that she will pave the way for others. She wants to be like her brave ancestor, who escaped from slavery. She tells her father that she still wants to go to Wilson High.
As they approach the school on the first day, there are police cars in front of the building and angry, screaming protestors yelling things like, “Go back to Africa!” and “Two-four-six-eight, We ain’t gonna integrate.” (This is a direct, literal quote from one of these types of protests from real life. People shouted that at Ruby Bridges, too.) Grown women are threatening to rip young Mary Jane’s curls right out of her head, and all she can do is keep her eyes forward and keep walking past them into the school as the police officers physically retrain the protestors from actively carrying out their threats. (This is also completely true-to-life. Grown adults did threaten children, and there is historical film footage that shows them doing it. They really were like this, and I’ve had feelings about that since I saw some of that footage when I was still a child. In this one, the white man at the very beginning delivers an implied threat about how long the black students will live because he thinks it’s impossible for the police to stay at the school forever – remember, you heard it directly from him, not from me. I was a white child, but that didn’t make me feel any better when I saw things like this. I don’t think anybody in their right mind should ever trust that someone wouldn’t hurt you when you’ve already seen what they’re willing to do to some other defenseless kid, even if the ostensible reason doesn’t seem to apply to you. People’s toleration of you only lasts until they decide it doesn’t, and some people are more unstable, volatile, and generally untrustworthy in their personal temperament than others, especially when they’re deliberately being that way in public, in front of cameras and police. These people knew dang well what they were doing, it was deliberate and planned, and they were proud of themselves for doing it and weren’t at all sorry. Even young me could see that.) Fred, the black boy Mary Jane knows from her old school, shows Mary Jane how his hands are shaking after they get inside the building.
This ordeal is only the first of many ordeals. At the junior high assembly for the students in the lowest grades at the school, which includes Mary Jane and Fred, some of the students start chanting about how they don’t want her. The school principal puts a stop to that, calling the behavior “disgraceful”, but that doesn’t put a permanent stop to it. A girl named Darlene in her home room refuses to sit next to her because her mother told her not to, but the teacher tells the girl that students in her class sit where they are assigned and won’t take any nonsense. When Mary Jane talks to Fred, he says that he’s been receiving worse. Other students have kicked him and knocks his books out of his hands. The one white student who showed them any kindness at all was a blond girl who showed them how to find their classrooms. (This film footage of a newscaster interviewing white students at Central High in Little Rock in 1957 shows the mixed feelings of the white students at the time of integration. Some were against it, some seemed to be okay with it, and most seemed to think that the violent demonstrations against the black students were just taking everything way too far. I found it interesting when some students commented that the parents were more of a problem than the students because that was my sense as well.) The screaming mob is still outside the school when it’s time to go home, and flashes go off in their faces because there are photographers taking pictures of the new black students. At the end of the day, Mary Jane returns home to her mother, who has been listening to news reports about the protests at the school all day, picturing that her daughter might be beaten and bloody and could be lying in the halls of the school, dying.
Mary Jane is proud of herself for getting through this ordeal as well as she has, but this is only the first day of a very long school year. The ordeal isn’t confined to the classroom, either. Grown-up strangers, both men and women, call the house and threaten to murder her if she continues attending the school, some saying that they’ll blow up the family’s house. Mary Jane’s father just leaves the receiver off the hook and tells Mary Jane to ignore it. When Mary Jane sees her picture in the newspaper, awful Darlene is behind her in the picture with her face ugly and twisted in hate. (I think that image might have been inspired by the lady with the vicious expression in this famous photograph taken in front of Little Rock Central High School in 1957. When Darlene and her mother were first introduced, this was the face that I pictured for them.) Mary Jane thinks about what her grandfather told her and wonders if Darlene’s only problem is that she just doesn’t know Mary Jane and has too many assumptions about her. (I think Darlene’s issues go much deeper than that, but I’ll rant about that in my reaction below.) What keeps Mary Jane willing to keep going to Wilson High is the story about her slave ancestor. This school integration ordeal is a major defining moment of her life, and she imagines what stories she might have to tell her children someday.
The days continue, and the reactions to the students integrating at the school are almost schizophrenic. There are more protests, insults, and threats, but there are also more newspaper stories and even an offer for Mary Jane to be interviewed on a television show in New York. Mary Jane is excited at the idea of being on television, but her parents turn down the offer because she is a student who should be in school, not a television star in New York. Part of society declares that it wants to see the black students dead and might even make it happen if the police weren’t physically restraining them while part of society is praising the students for their bravery in the face of the protestors who are threatening to kill them. (The book doesn’t quite phrase it like that, but I think that’s actually a crucial point. This schizophrenic social reaction is like the mixed feelings that were exhibited in the footage I linked above.) Mary Jane even gets a fan letter from a girl in Tokyo, praising her for her bravery. Mary Jane tells everyone who asks that it’s “all right”, but on the inside, it really isn’t.
Mary Jane comes to understand what her grandfather tried to tell her about how her education at Wilson High would be lonely and even hurtful. She and Fred eat lunch together every day because no one else will eat with them. Other students either pointedly ignore them or stare at them like they’re exotic wild animals or harass them. Even though Mary Jane said that she wanted to go to school for an education, not to socialize, it’s hard when nobody wants to talk to her except to give her a hard time. Trying to ignore the yelling protesters outside the school also distracts her from listening to her teacher. Fred is the only one who really understands because he is going through the same experiences she is, but he gets busier when he joins the school’s basketball team. The boys on the team start accepting him because he plays basketball, but Mary Jane has trouble finding a club that will accept her. Even her old friends from her old school are busy now at the school where most of the black kids go, so they aren’t available to hang out on weekends, like they used to. It seems like they even resent her a little for going to Wilson, like she thinks that she’s better than they are and too good for their school. Gradually, the adult protesters stop coming to the school and calling the house, but the student bullies are still there at school, and Mary Jane is still painfully lonely.
There are times when people try to reach out to Mary Jane at school, but it doesn’t come off well because their efforts are clumsy and Mary Jane has been trying so hard to bury her feelings and resentment that she can’t bring herself to accept their efforts. A girl named Sharon acts nice and talks to Mary Jane, and Mary Jane briefly softens, but then, it turns out that Sharon is only pumping Mary Jane for information about her background because she believes a conspiracy theory that her family is actually from New York and that they were paid (by unspecified sources) to come to this town for the sole purpose of infiltrating this high school. Mary Jane is shocked, and when she tells Sharon that this is her home town and she was born there, Sharon loses interest and walks away from her before she’s even done speaking. This just makes Mary Jane even more reluctant to open up to anyone who approaches her. The choir teacher assumes that all black people are good at singing because of Negro spirituals, but Mary Jane insists that she can’t sing, which is true. She’s never been able to carry a tune, so it’s embarrassing to be pressured to sing when she knows she can’t. Although being good at music is a positive stereotype compared to some of the other stereotypes people have about black people, it’s still just as wrong for Mary Jane as all of the others, and it’s embarrassing to be confronted with it. Mary Jane feels like nobody will look at her outside of the usual stereotypes. Mary Jane does well in her classes, but she could use a little help in French. Her French teacher offers her tutoring after school, but Mary Jane turns it down because she feels like the teacher is offering it out of pity. At lunch, she buries herself in her French book, teaching herself phrases about all of the things she hates or how to tell herself that she doesn’t care, to avoid the other students who are being mean to her or staring at her, but in the process, she misses seeing students who are trying to get up the courage to actually talk to her for non-conspiracy and non-bullying purposes.
Things change when Mary Jane rescues a squirrel from a cat. She loves animals and knows how to care for them because of her grandfather. Sally, the girl who helped her find her class on the first day, also loves animals and is happy that Mary Jane saved the squirrel, and the two of them bond over their temporary pet. Sally helps Mary Jane to get the squirrel home, where Mary Jane’s mother says that she can only keep it until it has recovered. The girls’ mutual caring for the squirrel and their attempts to find a permanent home for him help them develop their own friendship and help Mary Jane to create bonds with the other students.
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.
My Reaction
About the Author
The author of this book, Dorothy Sterling, was not a black woman herself, and even if she had been, she would have been too old to be one of the students experiencing desegregation directly at the time it happened because she was born in 1913. Everything she talks about in this book was based on what she observed as an adult at the time of the Civil Rights Movement. She was a Jewish-American journalist, writer, and historian from New York. As an adult writer, she was researching strong women from history to use as inspiration for girls when she learned about Harriet Tubman. She found Harriet Tubman’s story particularly inspiring, and she was amazed that nobody had ever taught her about Harriet Tubman or other strong black women when she was young. She supported the Civil Rights Movement, and when the characters in this book talk about sympathetic white people who try to help, she’s partly talking about herself. Although Dorothy Sterling also wrote mystery stories for children (I’ve covered a couple on this site already), one of her best-known books was a biography of Harriet Tubman for children. She also wrote other nonfiction books about African American history. This video on YouTube explains a few details about her life. She also wrote an autobiography.
My personal reaction and Past Reading History
I wanted to read this book because I was intrigued about a story involving school desegregation that was written while it was all happening. I noticed, as I was reading the book, that it particularly drew on the desegregation of Central High in Little Rock in 1957 for inspiration, and based on the historical footage that I linked above, it was pretty accurate in its interpretation. I think the author was paying close attention to the events and news footage available at the time.
However, I knew before I even started reading it that it was going to be stressful because I find all stories about bullying and one-upmanship in any form to be stressful. I’ve mentioned that many times on this site, and I’ve probably also mentioned that I believe that racism is an extension of a bullying personality and one-upmanship behavior. I firmly think that this is part of Darlene’s problems. If racists weren’t bullying someone based on race, I’m positive that they’d be bullying someone else for some other reason or no reason at all because I think they are the type of people who don’t feel like they’re on top until they’re putting someone else down. It’s the combined defensiveness and aggression of petty social climbers who are deeply insecure about what, precisely, their real social position is, like they automatically move down some kind of imaginary numbered rank anytime something good happens to someone, somewhere. Who they’re putting down or why are probably just a matter of opportunity for them. I think they’re obsessed with being on top and look for any excuse to justify it that they can, unless they’re in a situation where they don’t feel the need to justify themselves at all.
I’ve come to these conclusions based not just on my reading but observations from life, and for me, that’s the worst part of reading books like this. I have names and faces from real life that I associate with the racists in these stories and with aspects of their personal behavior. Some of them might be classified more as bullies than racists, but since their behavior is practically identical, how much difference does it really make? Not much to me. If that sounds like contempt, derision, and judgement … yes, it absolutely is. I am very judgemental about this. While I understand issues like anxiety and insecurity and sympathize with other sufferers, I have very little sympathy for someone who uses their anxieties and insecurities to actively harm other people, and I insist that they must be stopped. Tolerance, like everything else, has limits, and here is where I draw the line. I think everyone has some issue that deeply bothers them and which they find intolerable, and in choosing this particular one, I think I’ve made a decent choice.
When I was a kid, I have to admit that I didn’t enjoy reading books about racism like this in school, but not for the reasons that certain people have been alleging, and I have feelings about some of these allegations, too. I’ve been reading in the news recently that certain people don’t want kids to read books about racism and similar issues in school because they’re afraid that white kids will be ashamed to be white, a much-disputed assertion. Since I grew up a white girl in public schools where we read stories about the Civil Rights Movement and incidents of racism similar to the ones described in this story, I think I’m qualified to have an opinion about my feelings at the time and the long-term effect that type of reading had on me.
I can’t speak for every kid out there, but that definitely was not what bothered me as a kid. When I say that I didn’t enjoy reading about racism, what I mean is I just didn’t like the frustration of hearing about mean people while being unable to do anything about them. It is depressing and frustrating to hear about awful things happening when there’s nothing you can do to stop them or change them because they happened before you were even born. I wasn’t sorry for the racists in those stories, and I didn’t identify with them or what they were doing on a personal level. I didn’t feel like one of them or want to be one of them or even want to be friends with them. I didn’t want any of them in my vicinity or even in my mind. I wanted to be rid of them or to avoid them. They are very mean and extremely frustrating people who don’t care and won’t stop, and that is stressful even just to hear about! I don’t like having them around even in book form, and it just can’t be avoided when the main story is specifically about people dealing with them and their antagonism. That’s the main hardship for books about racism for me. I know that’s the feeling that these stories are supposed to impart, to make you feel like you were there and show you what that felt like. It’s not supposed to be fun reading because nobody thinks that going through situations like that with racists and bullies picking on you is fun. These kinds of books are meant for education and encouraging empathy and understanding. There can be a kind of fulfillment in that, although it can be an emotional ordeal to get there. Life is full of mixed emotions.
As an adult, I think that it was good for me to read some books about some of the more turbulent and racist periods of our history for general understanding of life, history, and society, even though they were emotionally difficult to get through. I don’t regret reading any of them, and I would recommend that kids and young adults read at least some books of this type. I don’t think it’s something to read all the time. It helps to vary it a bit with lighter subjects to avoid getting too frustrated and depressed. It’s not what I would call light reading, but it’s worth it when you go into it with the understanding of what you’re reading and why. I think talking to kids about what these kinds of stories are about and what they’re referencing before they read them can help to prepare them for the rollercoaster of emotions they’re bound to experience while reading them. In fact, I think discussing difficult emotions in the context of both history and fiction can be an important tool for learning to identify and deal with difficult emotions in life in general.
As for the responsibility of white people with racism, I’ve come to realize as an adult that there are two definitions for the word “responsible”: the one where someone is at fault for something and the one where someone feels called to take action and control of the situation. I knew, even as a child, that as far as these past incidents of racism were concerned, I was not in the first category, but I very much felt the second one while being in a position where I could not take the action I wanted to take. I always felt like an old soul who took life more seriously than the other kids, and I very much understand the feelings of the children in this particular story. They have no control over the adults in their lives and the adults’ behavior because they’re just kids, but because the adults have not been behaving responsibly and dealing with issues in their society, it all falls on the shoulders of the kids to work it out among themselves somehow. It’s doubly hard because some of those same adults are sabotaging their efforts and recruiting their classmates to be against them every step of the way.
I was very interested in the interviews of the white students that I linked above because some of them did have the feeling, even at the time, that the parents were more of a problem than the students in the desegregation process. Even in cases where the students were acting out, it seemed to be because their parents already were and were urging them to do it. Even today, it’s a common complaint from teachers that the students with discipline problems are the ones whose parents also behave badly and who urge them to ignore their teachers’ efforts to get them to control themselves and to treat others with respect. The things that happened in both the story and in real life desegregation look like just a more extreme version of the same types of disrespect and bad behavior.
Sally becomes Mary Jane’s friend, but she can’t always do everything she wants to do with her friend because the adults in her life try to stop her. Her parents wouldn’t be so hesitant about what they allow her to do or the friendships she makes if they were able to make all the decisions by themselves, but during the course of the story, we learn that they are under pressure and threats from the pushy and racist people in their neighborhood. Because those people put themselves and what they want to do first and seem willing to back that up with harm, Sally’s parents feel forced to put their own priorities and standards second. That means Sally and her feelings and priorities come third, pushed aside by the angry and pushy neighbors and Sally’s parents’ efforts to protect her … from their own neighbors. Neighbors are supposed to be the people who have your back, but in both the story and in real life situations like this one, neighbors could be the people threatening a knife in your back if you don’t do what they want, and that is truly scary.
The adults in this community may, possibly, care about Sally somewhat, in a sort of shallow and general way because she is a child, but their hatred and their suspicious conspiracy theories (like the one Sharon has) are far more important to them than Sally and her parents are, and it shows. They back up those feelings with definite and deliberate actions. If they have to hurt, intimidate, or frighten their neighbors to get their way, even a child, so be it. If they have to exclude Sally from a store to exclude the person Sally’s with at the time, they do that. Sally’s white, but these other white people are not her friends. They do not treat her like a friend at any point in the story. She’s just a pawn in this nasty game they’re playing, and they get upset when she doesn’t play like they want her to.
I can see that Sally’s still a little higher than black people like Mary Jane in this social hierarchy, but in the grand scheme of things, it’s not by that much because certain other people insist on being first, and they back that up with threats and violence. That’s something that Mary Jane comes to see during the course of the story. Just because Sally is white doesn’t give her immunity from bad treatment from other white people. The people who are higher up the social chain have created their own team in this goal (like Darlene’s mother’s little coffee klatch of nastiness – the antagonistic mothers’ group that is not the PTA but thinks it should rule the school), and everyone else is the enemy or at least an acceptable casualty.
That was something I realized as a child, too. It’s something that still rankles. The racists and bullies both in real life and these stories might not have picked a white kid like me as their first target, if they had a more obvious target of opportunity, but that wouldn’t guarantee that I wouldn’t be a target. There’s no such thing as being safe around someone like that. The list of people and things they tend to nitpick and attack certainly isn’t limited to just one thing, is it? From people who dress in ways they don’t like to people who read things they don’t like to people who believe things they don’t like, they have about as many things to criticize about people who live in their own neighborhoods as Mrs. Mortimer did about the whole entire world. (See Countries of the World Described … or don’t. It’s an example of Victorian era children’s nonfiction that can teach you about as much about prejudice and mental illness as it can about geography. Few geography books would go as far as being critical not only about the personal habits and beliefs of people in every single country they cover but also about the relative quality of their rivers and trees, but Mrs. Mortimer is an intrepid armchair explorer, mainly followed by people with morbid curiosity.) In fact, I’m pretty sure that there are at least two things about me that would have made me a target for this particular group eventually, including the fact that I clearly do not like those kinds of people because of the way they act.
They might think they’ve got the right to dislike anybody they wish, say whatever they want, and treat other people as badly as they like, while thumping on the First Amendment to justify it, but God help the person who openly says anything against them. It’s maddening. That’s why I have that urge to get rid of them or get away from people like that. There just can’t be anything good from a relationship with someone like that. I don’t like these kinds of people because they are mean and selfish, and I feel constantly frustrated and angry around them. Those are not likeable qualities to bond over. I think these people care about themselves and their own status way too much to be truly concerned for anyone else’s well-being, either in the short term or the long term. Everyone is disposable if they think their own ego or social status are in the balance. This is why I feel the way I do about bullying and one-upmanship. They get in the way of everything that’s more decent and interfere with everyone who’s more responsible. People who are determined to be #1 at all costs are bound to give someone else #2, if you see what I mean.
Darlene
I came back to add something to this review. I forgot to say what it was that I would have wanted to do if I had been present for the incidents described in this story or something similar. When I was a kid, I remember daydreaming about several possibilities, most of which would have likely ended with the racists and bullies wiping the floor with me because I was a small and nerdy little girl with glasses who wasn’t physically strong and didn’t expect any mercy from them for the sins of not liking them, telling them off, or fighting back. Of course, I’m 40 years old now, and that makes a difference.
If I were in charge of Darlene and had the ability to make unfettered decisions regarding her education and discipline, I know exactly what I would do, this is the way I would describe it to Darlene herself:
“Darlene, you know exactly why you’re here today and why I want to talk to you. By now, everyone at this school knows how you’ve been picking on Mary Jane and starting fights with her, and we all know why. I don’t want to argue this point with you. I’ve discussed this situation with your teachers, and you’ve been behaving this way in all of your classes. They’ve spoken with you and with your mother multiple times, and you have made no effort to improve. You’ve made it clear that you think that Mary Jane is undeserving of being at this school and that black people are inferior. You seem to think that you know a lot about black people. We’re going to find out just how much you really do know. Normally, when a student is physically aggressive with her classmates and disrespectful to her teachers, she might be suspended or expelled from school, but since you like to think of yourself as different and not bound by the rules of behavior that the other students follow, we are going to treat you as a special case. For the rest of this semester, you will be our exchange student to the local black school.
While you are there, you will follow their rules and listen to their teachers. Nobody will suspend you or expel you from that school because I know you would probably see that as a reward for your bad behavior. No, you will attend that school every day, and you will not be allowed to run away from any problems you decide to create there. Every day, you will return to that school and see the same people, who will all remember whatever you did or said to them the day before, and you will face the consequences of your actions. If you don’t, you might have to stay another semester to get their full school experience. You thought it was acceptable to be rude and abusive to the only black girl at a white school. Now, we’ll see how the only white girl at a black school manages.
Maybe you think you know how that will go, but I say that you don’t. Nobody really knows what other people will be like until they’ve actually met them and spent time with them. Nobody gets to control other people. The best any of us can do is behave as well as we can and hope that other people will do the same and at least treat us with respect. Of course, because humans have free will, they still have the ability to choose to treat you badly anyway, just like you did with Mary Jane, and that’s the risk you’ll be taking, both at the black kids’ school and everywhere else you go in life when school is over. The black children might surprise you. If the black students treat you better than you’ve treated Mary Jane, you might want to consider which of the two of you is really the better person. On the other hand, if they treat you just as badly as you’ve treated Mary Jane … well, at least you’ll find out what it’s like to be at the mercy of people who act just like you.
One thing I know for sure is that, if you’re as smart as you like to think you are, you’ll learn to work on making friends instead of enemies. Consider it important training for later life. Adults don’t always get to choose who they live near or who they have to work with, but they still have to live and get their jobs done. And you know what? Adults who know that they are capable of doing that, managing their emotions and getting on with life, no matter where they are who’s around have better self-esteem than those who don’t think they can do those things. That realization is an important tool in building self-confidence. Not all of the kids at school realize that your bad behavior is partly because you are not self-confident, but I can tell. That’s why you try so hard to control other people, isn’t it? I think you don’t feel like you have control of yourself or that you don’t measure up, and that’s why you put other people down, but that’s not a healthy way to deal with these feelings. Facing up to difficult situations and seeing that you can handle them and that you can control yourself, even when you don’t feel like it, will do much more for you. You won’t worry so much about who other people are or what they’re doing if you’re satisfied with yourself and your ability to manage yourself and deal with life, instead of trying to hide from things and people that make you uncomfortable or fight against them.
I know what I’m talking about, partly because that’s how I try to look at the situation when I’m dealing with you. I don’t find it easy or pleasant to deal with you because you do tend to take out negative emotions on other people. When you lash out at other people, it creates disturbances for me and your teachers to deal with, it encourages other students to behave badly, and it distracts everyone from the things they need to do. It makes my life and job as hard as you’ve been trying to make Mary Jane’s life and time at school, and that’s why this behavior can’t continue. However, as difficult as it is I’m still here, still doing my job, and trying to look after your education, even though it not easy or pleasant. I’ll still be checking up on you and working with you even while you’re attending the other school because I still want you to learn from this experience, both academically and emotionally. I also have a responsibility to your hosts at your new school to see that you don’t become a punishment or burden for them. You will learn how to behave yourself because I will be supervising your time there, I will tell you how to behave appropriately, and I will ask your hosts if you have been following my instructions. You will practice what I teach you, or there will be further consequences for you from me.
It’s better to work on developing emotional regulation skills and behavioral control while you’re young rather than older. This is serious, and it will affect your life in the future, even if you can’t imagine it now. The truth is that most adults quickly lose patience with other adults who can’t manage themselves and their emotions. Adults tolerate some of that in children, up to a point, because we know you’re learning and need time to practice, but by the time you are an adult, there will be the expectation that you have already mastered these skills. If you can’t control yourself as an adult, people will be angry with you and see you as immature and a troublemaker. It’s the sort of behavior that can end marriages and get people fired from their jobs. Employers will be less willing to tolerate bad behavior than your teachers are because they won’t want you to distract everyone from their jobs or drive away customers and co-workers. Even if you think that your only job will be that of a housewife, you should know that housewives sometimes have to help their husbands entertain bosses and co-workers. If you have a reputation for provoking people and creating disturbances and you make trouble between your husband and his co-workers, whoever they may be, it won’t reflect well on your husband’s career. Think, Darlene. This is your future we’re talking about. When you’re an adult, it will be no good saying that everyone should just accept you doing these things because people acted like that when you were a kid or your mom did this or said that when you were young. When you’re an adult, everyone will be looking at you and only you, and they won’t want to hear about what you did when you were a kid or what people used to let your mother do.
If you don’t learn to get along with people instead of antagonizing them or taking out your feelings on them, you’ll be arranging a lifelong punishment for yourself that will be far worse than anything I would arrange for a semester, and you’ll have no one to blame but yourself. A person who can’t get along with people could end up very lonely. You may find it difficult to make new friends, except among people with equally negative habits, and you may even lose some friends that you have when people get tired of all the fights, drama, and negativity. After this exchange student experience, I believe that you will not only come to see the reality of the people you’ve been harassing but will also acquire greater discipline and emotional control. If you don’t work on these things or if you continue to do things that provoke other people, you will at least learn how to face the consequences of your actions. You are dismissed.”
This is the last book in The Chronicles of Narnia series, and this is the book that shows the final days of the land of Narnia.
In Narnia, a wily old ape called Shift lives with a donkey called Puzzle. Shift is more clever than Puzzle and often tricks Puzzle into doing all his work for him. One day, they find an old lion skin in a pool. They think that it probably belonged to a non-talking lion that a hunter killed, but talking animals still show respect to lions because of Aslan. Puzzle thinks they should give the old lion skin a decent burial, but Shift says that he will use the lion skin to make a winter coat for Puzzle. Puzzle doesn’t think that sounds like a good idea because he wouldn’t like to have people thinking that he was trying to look like Aslan. Shift says that sounds like nonsense and makes the lion skin into a coat for Puzzle. Of course, sly Shift has a more diabolical plan in mind.
When Puzzle tries the coat on, he does look like a lion. Shift says that Puzzle looks like Aslan, and if people saw him, he could tell them what to do, and everyone would do it. Puzzle is alarmed at the idea, but Shift insists that Puzzle pretend to be Alsan with him advising him about what to say. Puzzle worries that Aslan would be angry, but Shift isn’t concerned because Aslan hasn’t appeared for a long time. At that moment, there is a thunder clap and a small earthquake. Puzzle is convinced that’s a warning sign from Aslan, but Shift tries to convince Puzzle that it’s actually a sign of approval.
The last king of Narnia is King Tirian. He is a young man, and he has a unicorn friend named Jewel. Word has reached him that Aslan has reappeared in the land, and he is very excited. A centaur wants him that this story much be false because the centaurs study the stars and have not seen the signs that should precede Aslan’s arrival. He is sure that the story about Aslan appearing is an evil lie. Jewel says that it’s difficult to say because Aslan is known to not be a tame lion, and that would make him unpredictable.
Before they reach any conclusions, a dryad stumbles toward them, wailing because the talking trees are being cut down, and her kind are dying. She falls dead at their feet because her own tree is cut down in the forest. The king is appalled and horrified! He insists that he and Jewel immediately go to the forest and find out what is happening and put a stop to it. The centaur urges caution, but the king doesn’t want to wait, telling the centaur to return to Cair Paravel to assemble his troops and follow him to the forest.
When King Tirian and Jewel come to a river, they are horrified to see a river rat with a newly-built raft, floating logs down the river. The king demands to know what he’s doing and by whose authority. The river rat says that he’s taking the logs to sell in another kingdom and that he’s doing it because Aslan the lion commanded it. King Tirian and Jewel find that alarming and difficult to believe, so they continue on to the forest. There, they see men from another country, known to be cruel, chopping down trees. They have also enslaved talking horses to help them. When the king and Jewel witness a couple of men abusing a horse, they kill them on the spot. They ask the horse how he was taken captive, and the horse says that it was at the command of Aslan.
The other men and talking animals realize that the king and Jewel have killed two of their people and turn on them. The king jumps on Jewel, and they run away, but they feel guilty about the men they killed. King Tirian realizes that this impulsive killing was murder because they had not needed to defend themselves. They also worry about whether they have violated Aslan’s command. They are not sure whether the Aslan who commanded these terrible deeds is the real Aslan. None of what has happened sounds like anything Aslan would want to happen, but Aslan is known to be wild and unpredictable, so they can’t be sure. What if they have become sinners for interfering with some grand plan of Aslan’s? Although they are afraid and feel guilty, they decide that the only thing they can do is surrender themselves to the horrible band and ask to be taken before Aslan, both to see if this Aslan is the real Aslan, and if necessary, submit themselves for punishment for killing the men, even if it means their lives.
When they are captured by the men, they are taken before Shift the ape. Shift has dressed himself as a king with a paper crown, and he tells everyone that he’s a human, just that he looks like an ape because he’s very old. He refuses to let anyone see Aslan up close, saying that he will deliver any messages Aslan has for them. He threatens the other animals with dire consequences if they don’t obey all of “Alsan’s” commands. He says that Aslan will turn the country into something amazing with lots of oranges and bananas (the things Shift wants more than anything) and roads and whips and kennels. The other animals try to say that they don’t want all those things, but Shift says that they should want what Aslan wants. A small lamb wants to know why they have to work with the men of the other nation when they know that they worship a different god, one who requires human sacrifices, instead of Aslan. Shift tells the lamb he’s stupid and these other people worship Aslan as well, just under a different name. Some of the animals are fooled by this logic, but others protest. Shift has a cat who protests taken away.
The mice are nice to the captive King Tirian, bringing him food and water. They want to help him, but they are afraid to help him too much because they are afraid of opposing Aslan. King Tirian asks them if it is the real Aslan, and the mice think it is. They say that “Aslan” is in the stable. As King Tirian watches “Alsan” appear by a bonfire on the hill, he notices that the “lion” doesn’t move like a lion should, and when he thinks about what the ape said about Alsan being the same as the cruel god who wants sacrifices, he sees through the fraud. He thinks about the past king and queens of Narnia and calls out to the Pevensies to return to Narnia and help him. To his surprise, he has a vision of the Pevensies at a dinner table, and he realizes that they can see him. The High King Peter calls out to him to speak, but then, the vision fades. Still, he has managed to let the Pevensies know that Narnia is in danger and needs them one more time.
The next morning, a strange boy and girl appear before him, and he recognizes them from his vision because they were at dinner with the Pevensies. The boy is the Pevensies’ cousin, Eustace, and his friend, Jill. Eustace and Jill untie King Tirian and help him escape. When they are safe, Eustace and Jill explain some things about their past adventures. King Tirian recognizes them as the children who rescued an ancestor of his. They also explain to him about the magic rings (which were introduced in The Magician’s Nephew and which they retrieved in his book). They were going to use the rings to reach King Tirian in Narnia, but they were on a train on their way to reach them when they felt a terrible jerk and suddenly found themselves in Narnia anyway.
With the past saviors of Narnia on his side, King Tirian recruits them to help him save Jewel. Jill finds Puzzle in the stable with the lion skin tied to him. She thinks that’s hilarious, but she convinces Puzzle to come with her. At first, King Tirian wants to kill Puzzle for his deception, but Jill persuades him not to because this situation isn’t Puzzle’s fault. Puzzle explains how Shift convinced him that Aslan wanted him to do this, and he says that he doesn’t know much about what’s been happening lately because Shift doesn’t let him out of the stable much. King Tirian agrees to spare Puzzle, and he is sure that many people will change their minds about Shift and what he’s been doing once they see Puzzle in his lion disguise.
King Tirian and the others begin showing Puzzle to everyone and explaining how Shift lied to them and tricked them. Some of the dwarfs find Puzzle as laughable as Jill did, but the humans from the cruel country are angry and fight them. They end up having to kill one of them. Some of the dwarfs disbelieve King Tirian and the children. The dwarfs explain that, yes, they see that the ape’s story about Aslan was a lie, but since they’ve been fooled once already, they’re not prepared to believe anybody else about anything. They don’t want to believe that King Tirian serves the real Aslan or that the real Aslan sent the children to Narnia to help. They don’t want to hear anything more about Aslan being real from anyone, and after the ape king, they don’t want anymore kings of any kind. They know that they were used by the ape, but what’s to say that King Tirian didn’t rescue them from the ape just to use them for some selfish purpose of his own. Having been fools once, they don’t want to risk being fools again by believing in anyone or anything else again. King Tirian and his allies realize that one fake Aslan, even one that was such an obvious fake, has damaged everyone’s faith in the real one because the fraud damaged everyone’s trust. The dwarfs say that they will now be entirely for themselves first and won’t listen to anyone else.
King Tirian thought that once people saw the truth, they would go back to being the way they were before, but he had underestimated the ways people can react when they find out they’ve been tricked. Not everyone will agree that they’ve been tricked, even when presented evidence, and even those who agree that they’ve been tricked may not have faith in the people telling them the truth. Also, now that the ape’s ruse has been exposed, others have seen how trickery can help them gain power and influence over others. Before King Tirian and his friends can tell others about the fake Aslan, Shift’s cronies start spreading their own fake stories about King Tirian and Aslan. Shift accuses Puzzle of being the deceiver because he’s the one who is wearing the lion skin, and it’s difficult to prove that Shift was the one who started all this in the first place. (What’s the best way to survive a witch hunt? Be the one who starts it. Bonus points if you can accuse other people of starting it later and blame them for victimizing you.) When King Tirian and the children try to tell people the truth, they’ve already heard so many lies and conflicting stories, many either aren’t convinced of the truth or are just so confused that they don’t know what to think. Some people realize that Shift has been playing them with the entire time and turn against him, while others still listen to Shift’s explanations and try to follow the convoluted logic and the scary things he promises them if they refuse to listen to them. Some people ally with King Tirian, while others stay loyal to Shift and his cronies, and others don’t want to trust either side and prefer to just try to look out for themselves.
When news reaches them that their enemies have already taken Cair Paravel and killed everyone there, they realize that the end of Narnia is close at hand. There is only one thing left to do: face down the enemy in a final battle for truth and the very souls of Narnia.
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).
My Reaction
I was not looking forward to this book because I don’t like apocalyptic stories, and it was difficult for me to get through. I knew that this story would be about the end of Narnia, and in the Biblical tradition, the end of Narnia’s days are full of horrible things. It’s depressing to go into a story knowing that horrible things are going to happen, followed by the end of the world, at least a world that we’ve come to like through the other books in the series. I also knew that most of the characters we’ve come to know and love get killed in this story. Still, I decided to suffer through the story just to finish off the series and discuss my feelings about it.
It is also important to realize that the last battle of Narnia isn’t really about armies facing each other so much as the battle for truth against falseness, a subject of much debate in real life. Readers of this story are in on the objective truth of the situation along with our main characters, and they see how their enemies play tricks with lies and half-truths to manipulate other people. Their aim is to confuse people so they don’t know what to think, and then, everyone will follow them because they act like they are certain they are on the side of right. People who are insecure and uncertain in themselves will follow people who act confident, regardless of whether that confidence is real or deserved or not. That is the major theme that runs through the entire book. I think it’s an important lesson, but one that also makes me angry because I have seen people doing these things in real life, especially in recent years. I don’t really think that the end of our world is immediately at hand, although I’ve seen some people speculating about that because of things that have been happening.
Life is Unpredictable, and So Is History When You Live It
I was truck by the scene with Tirian remembering past glories of Narnia and its rulers, when there were bad times, but things went right in the end. He thinks how things like that don’t happen anymore, and it seems like there is no happy ending to this story. It reminds me of people who feel nostalgic and patriotic about things like World War II, when the Allied nations united and defeated a great evil and how it seemed like all of society agreed on the vision of victory and achieved it. Some people now, in the 21st century, almost seem like they wish they could return to those days. The only reason why those times provide any comfort now is because we are looking at them in hindsight.
We know what eventually happened and that the world wasn’t destroyed, but the people who actually lived during those times didn’t know that. They had no guarantees that they were going to survive, many of them didn’t. Many people died during WWII, in combat, in bombings, in concentration camps, etc. I’m sure that none of it seemed glorious at the time. At times, it must have seemed like the end of world to the survivors. Knowing the resolution of that conflict gives the false impression that people back then knew what outcome they wanted and were united behind that vision. They weren’t. There were some people who felt like the Nazis were in the right or at least couldn’t be opposed. Even in the United States, there was a pro-Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden. (Video footage on YouTube, courtesy of PBS.) If someone had told the people at that rally on the day the rally was held what was going to eventually happen, they probably would have felt that the defeat of the Nazis would be the end of the world because they were convinced that they were the ones in the right and everyone else was in the wrong. Whether they still felt that way by the time the war actually ended is debatable, but from where they stood at that moment, what was best for the rest of the world would have seemed terrible to them.
Even in Britain, there was sympathy and support for the Nazis among the aristocracy, like the Mitfords and even members of the royal family. C. S. Lewis would have been aware of people like that during his time, and the Mitfords are a good example because they were well-known for their scandalous political views. (P. G. Wodehouse’s character, Roderick Spode, was a parody on the husband of one of the Mitford sisters, who was the leader of the British Union of Fascists during the 1930s.) Their support for Nazis changed some of their lives for the worst, and some of them probably wouldn’t have wanted everyone to remember their earlier stances after the war was over, but while the entire situation was unfolding, they were certainly very sure of themselves. They may have thought that they knew what they wanted and what was going to happen, but outcomes were never guaranteed for anyone.
Life is unpredictable, like an untamed lion. While many of us have a sense of when things are going wrong or seem unreasonable, we’re not always right, and even when we are, it can be difficult convince others of that if they think they have reason to believe otherwise. The truth is that we have never had any guarantees at any point in our history. While we like to think that God will carry us through any situation, bad things do happen along the way, often to good or normal people. Outcomes are not completely assured for anybody. Every disaster, while not bringing about the total end of the world just yet, have been the end of days for some individual people, who didn’t live through them.
The only moral I can think of from that is not to envy people from the past too much. Their problems don’t seem as bad now because we know that the survivors survived, and the world went on. But, the world didn’t go on for everyone caught up in those situations, and survival wasn’t guaranteed for everyone in the middle of the crisis. Even those who did survive in the end couldn’t know for sure whether they would or not while they were struggling along. They didn’t even always have the comfort of knowing absolutely, for certain that they were on the side of right or not not or if they were carrying out their missions in the right way. While I’m sure that they tried to do what they thought was right in spite of everything, there were voices in their ears trying to tell them that they were in the wrong and it was time to give up at every step and stage. Of course, I would argue that Nazi supporters were the ones who really needed to be told that and that they should have taken it to heart, but while the situation was in motion, everyone just had to keep playing out their chosen parts to the end. You can’t rewrite people or situations while they’re in the middle of writing their own histories themselves.
The same is also true of the rest of us. I’ve said before that history is not written by “winners” but by writers, and actions are a form of writing history. We all do it, all the time. Nothing is guaranteed for us. Whatever you stand for and whatever sides you pick to follow are the parts you’ve written for yourself by your choices. Our outcomes will all be determined by the parts we’ve chosen to play and the way we’ve written them for ourselves to act out, and unfortunately, what others choose to act out upon us. We can’t control everyone’s decisions, only our own, and that’s part of what makes life and history unpredictable.
“Fake News!”
When C. S. Lewis wrote the Narnia books, he had already lived through WWII and knew the power of propaganda. From the beginning of the story, propaganda, or more simply, lies, play a major role. It starts with Shift’s plan to put his donkey stooge into a lion costume and use him to get bananas and oranges (or, more generally, wealth that can be used to buy these things). However, along the way, Shift himself becomes a stooge for other people who see the power of his lies and want to use lies for their own purposes. As the situation spirals out of control, the concept of truth itself loses meaning for people, and many people struggle with what to believe. Oh, gee, where have I heard that before about a million times over the last several years? They think they’ve gamed the system, but their own system of lies have gamed them, and none of them are bright enough to notice until it’s far too late. From there, it’s just a slow, excruciating train wreck to watch. (By the end of that book, the metaphor is disturbingly real.)
Yeah, I know that’s a political statement these days, but if you recognize what I’m criticizing without being told directly, you must know what I’m complaining about and why. (I’m sure I’ve complained about this before somewhere on this site because I never suffer anything in silence, and I’m my only editor.) In the story, when King Tirion tries to reveal the truth about the Aslan donkey hoax to everyone, it proves harder than he expected because everyone has been so inundated with lies that they either don’t know what to think or just don’t want to think anything about anything anymore. The villains in the story start spreading their lies faster than our heroes can explain the truth to everyone, and all the villains have to do is to accuse our heroes of being the liars or let others think that they’re just as bad as everyone else telling tales. (“Fake news!”, “Election fraud!”, “All politicians lie” and “Who cares if our favorite ones lie when it benefits us and makes us feel good?” – I could go on and on, but what would be the point? People who have seen the problems with all of this already understand, and those who say they don’t have already made a decision.) Everyone is left to make up their own mind, which wouldn’t be so bad except what some of them decide to do is to let the villains make up their minds for them. When they don’t know who or what to trust, they trust in what they’re accustomed to, and some of them have become accustomed to listening to Shift and his pals because they were the ones who started the whole situation and have been yelling the loudest since.
Puzzle the donkey keeps saying that the reason why he keeps letting Shift talk him into doing things is that he knows he’s not as clever as Shift, so he thinks that he’d better let Shift make the decisions. It’s not unlike those people who assume that someone with a lot of money or a high position must have gotten there through brains. It’s not always true. Sometimes, they don’t have to be bright or talented if they just convince other people that they’re not. Puzzle is sure that Shift is smarter than he is, but actually, Shift is just more manipulative. Yes, he knows how to sew, but it’s the only talent he uses other than lying and manipulation. He wouldn’t have even half of what he’s got if he didn’t routinely talk Puzzle and others into doing things for him or giving him things. Ultimately, he’s a conman. Of course, most of the reason why Puzzle thinks he can’t be clever or competent by himself is that Shift has been telling him that and insisting on making the decisions. Puzzle doesn’t have the confidence to stand up to him, even when he knows that Shift is asking him to so something wrong. Eustace gets frustrated with Puzzle’s attitude and tells him that he wouldn’t have to worry so much about how clever he is if he just focused on being as clever as he knows how to be. If you know better, do better! It’s a Christian concept, and the Narnia stories have Christian themes. Eustace is trying to get Puzzle to listen to those doubts that he has about Shift and what Shift wants, to take them seriously, and recognize that he can say “no” to Shift when he’s asking for something unreasonable.
So, what can you actually do in a situation where you’re not sure who’s telling the truth or what the best thing to do is? There are no hard and fast answers to that, but my answer is … don’t depend on hard and fast answers at all. Never be so married to any particular stance that it would be like ripping out a part of your soul to simply change your mind and change course. Again, “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.” Be open to incoming information and feedback that lets you know how you’re doing and if you’re really understanding the situation correctly. The way I look at it, all humans are capable of being fooled, but those who aren’t afraid to back up or change their minds and are open to updating the information and understanding in their own minds are likely to spend less time continuing down a wrong course, even if they were wrong before.
Also, make sure that you have personal limits. Know when someone is pushing you to your limits or over them, and know when it’s time to back off. Puzzle the donkey has no boundaries whatsoever. Shift can talk him into anything, even things that are personally risky or harmful to him or downright immoral because, while there are things that Puzzle thinks are morally wrong, there is nothing in Puzzle’s moral view that is so far wrong that it would cause Puzzle to stop listening to the person telling him what to do. The only thing Puzzle is sure of is that Shift is smarter than he is, and he clings to that in spite of all evidence to the contrary. In the end, Puzzle is a major part of what brings down all of Narnia because he was the one person who could have stopped its destruction before it started, if he had only said no when he had misgivings. He didn’t invent the scheme, but he’s the one who chose to carry it out, even when he really knew he shouldn’t.
Trains Crash, Everyone Dies
This whole book was like a slow train wreck. It’s well-written, but it’s a well-written slow train wreck. There is the figurative train wreck, where everything spirals out of control in Narnia, and the world ends. Then, there is the literal train wreck that kills most of the characters we’ve come to know and love.
Eustace and Jill die in England at the moment they enter Narnia to help Tirian. Since time in Narnia works differently from time in our world, they don’t find out that they are dead or in the middle of being killed in a train accident until they reunite with the rest of their friends in the “true” Narnia, which is part of Aslan’s Country, which represents heaven. Although the Narnia they all knew before is gone, all the best parts of it and the friends that they knew from past eras of Narnia in their previous adventures are all alive again in True Narnia. The True Narnia is also one of all the “true” versions of all of the other worlds, including ours. The Pevensie children’s parents were also on the train when it crashed, so they appear in the True England that is also part of Aslan’s Country.
The only young Pevensie who isn’t killed in the railway accident on Earth is Susan, who was more worldly than the others and wasn’t on the train. We don’t see her reaction to the deaths of her parents and siblings or learn what the rest of her life on Earth is like. Her siblings say that she has stopped believing in Narnia, remembering it only as a game that the siblings used to play. Her main interests now are parties and fashion, much like other young women. The other characters think that she has become “silly” and has lost sight of what’s important. She may have, but this part of the book gets a lot of criticism because, from the description we have of her, she is just going through a normal phase of life where she wants to have fun, make friends, and date. She might be kind of silly in the way she’s going about it, but by itself, it’s not something abnormal or deserving of scorn. As I said, we also don’t know what the rest of Susan’s life will be like. I think there is an implication that she will someday come to True Narnia, too, because she was also once a Queen of Narnia, and once someone is a King or Queen in Narnia, they will always be a King or Queen there.
The rest of the characters who died in the train accident and are now in True Narnia spend the rest of eternity exploring Aslan’s Country and having endless adventures. It’s framed as a positive because it means that they get to be young forever in the True Narnia, having amazing adventures with the people they love, but it’s still upsetting to me. It bothers me because it occurs to me that they were destined for True Narnia eventually in any case, and I would have liked for them to have lived their full lives on Earth to old age first. Yes, True Narnia is wonderful, and they will get to enjoy eternity there, but it just seems to me kind of sad that they couldn’t have put it off for a few more decades anyway. Polly and Digory are elderly when they are killed, and Mr. and Mrs. Pevensie had the chance to enjoy their marriage and children before the accident, and it just seems like a shame that the young Pevensies didn’t have those opportunities. It’s also sad to think of Susan, mourning the loss of her entire family.
Another Problem
One other thing that bothered me about this book is that the Calormenes are described as being darker physically than the human Narnians. During the final battle of the book, Narnians jeer at them and call them “Darkies.” I don’t like the idea that that the light-colored people are described as being the good ones and the dark ones as the bad ones, especially not when paired with a known racial slur. These people are set in another world, but it just echoes the racism of this world too much for me.
This book starts with the four Pevensie children from the previous book in the series heading to their boarding schools by train. The girls are going to one school, and the boys are going to another. As they’re waiting for their trains at the station, they suddenly feel themselves being pulled and dragged by some unseen force. They feel like it’s magic of some kind, and they all join hands to stay together. The next thing they know, they’re in a forest. They wonder if they might have returned to Narnia.
They explore the area and realize that they are on an island. When they search for food, they find an abandoned apple orchard and the ruins of a castle. Something about the ruins seems strangely familiar to the children. When Susan finds a golden chess piece, they realize that the castle is the ruins of Cair Paravel, the castle where they used to live as kings and queens during their previous time in Narnia. The children are sad that the castle is now ruins. They’re also puzzled at how it can be ruins when they last saw it intact, and when they lived there, the castle was on a peninsula, not an island. Even though their previous adventures only took place a year before for them, it looks like many years, maybe centuries, have passed in Narnia.
They find their way into their old treasure room and discover that it is undisturbed. They leave the jewels and riches there, but they find the special presents that they were given during their last adventure and take them because they may be helpful during this adventure. The one thing they can’t find is Susan’s magic horn, which can be used to summon help in desperate times. Susan realizes that she had it with her during the stag hunt right before they returned to their own world from Narnia, and it was probably lost in the woods.
When they rescue a dwarf from some men holding him captive, the dwarf thanks them. He says that they were planning to drown him as a criminal, but he doesn’t fully explain. Instead, he offers to catch some fish for them all to have breakfast because all the children have are apples. When the children mention that there is firewood at the castle, he is amazed. He’s heard stories about an old castle there, but he wasn’t sure that it was real. The rumors are that the forest around the castle ruins is haunted.
After they eat, the dwarf explains that he is a messenger for Caspian, the king of Narnia. He then qualifies that by explaining that Caspian should be the king. The old Narnians recognize him as the rightful king, although he is considered one of the new Narnians himself. Prince Caspian was an orphan raised in the castle of his Uncle Miraz. He was mostly raised by his nurse and wasn’t very close to his aunt and uncle, but his uncle acknowledged him as his heir because he had no children.
According to the dwarf’s story, Prince Caspian has a fascination for the old days of Narnia from his nurse’s tales, when there were fauns and talking animals in Narnia, but his uncle says those are just fairy tale stories for little kids. The Pevensie children realize that the legends that Prince Caspian was told as a young child were about them and their adventures. People still tell stories about them, but not everyone believes them.
Miraz forbids Caspian from believing in those stories or talking about them again and sends away Caspian’s nurse. Instead, he hires a tutor for Caspian called Doctor Cornelius. Caspian misses his nurse, but he enjoys his lessons with Doctor Cornelius. From Doctor Cornelius, he learns that his ancestors and other humans came to Narnia from another land and conquered it. However, Doctor Cornelius is reluctant to explain exactly whom his ancestors conquered. Doctor Cornelius quietly admits that Miraz forbids anyone from talking about Old Narnia because it’s supposed to be a secret. Over time, Doctor Cornelius lets Caspian know the secrets of Old Narnia, which confirm to him that his nurse’s stories were true.
Caspian’s ancestors were the ones who silenced the taking animals and drove away or killed other races who inhabited Narnia. The reason why Miraz won’t let anybody talk about the history of Old Narnia and denies that other species once lived there is to cover up that his ancestors stole Narnia from its rightful inhabitants and that most of the humans are merely transplants to this land, not its rightful heirs. Doctor Cornelius reveals himself to be a dwarf, one of those few who still live in Narnia in secret. He is also part human, which is how he is able to pass for a human. He says that there are others there in disguise. Caspian feels like he should apologize to Doctor Cornelius, although he knows that what his ancestors did to the dwarves was not his fault. Doctor Cornelius says that apologies are not necessary, but he knows that Caspian will one day be king and can help the remaining Old Narnians who still live there, hiding from Miraz.
The stories about the woods around Cair Paravel being haunted were invented by Caspian’s ancestors to hide Narnia’s past and also because they want the forest to separate them from the sea. Caspian’s people fear the sea because, although they deny that Aslan exists, the legends all say that Aslan will return from across the sea. They fear the wrath that Aslan may visit on them for what they did to Narnia and its peoples. However, not all humans have this fear of Aslan and Old Narnia. Others, like Caspian, are fascinated and would like to see Narnia become more like its past self, with magic and talking animals and dwarves and fauns. As Caspian gets older, he realizes that many people in Narnia are unhappy with Miraz and the way he rules Narnia. He is a cruel king.
One night, while Caspian’s aunt is very ill, Doctor Cornelius wakes him and prepares him for a journey. He tells Caspian that he is not just the prince but the true king of Narnia. His father was the true king, and after Caspian’s parents were dead, Miraz took the throne for himself. Miraz murdered or exiled Caspian’s father’s old friends and supporters. Caspian was too small at the time to understand or have any memory of this, but now, Miraz is planning to murder Caspian. His aunt’s “illness” was actually childbirth, and now that she has given birth to a son, Miraz is planning to eliminate Caspian so his own son can be his heir with no opposition from the true heir. Doctor Cornelius says that Caspian has no other choice but to flee to another, friendly kingdom. To help him on his way, Doctor Cornelius gives him some food, a purse of gold, and Susan’s magic horn, an Old Narnian artifact found after she and her siblings disappeared from Narnia.
While Caspian is fleeing, he has an accident and is knocked unconscious. He is found by a dwarf and talking animals. They almost kill him as one of their enemies, but Caspian explains who he is and why Miraz wants to kill him. The dwarf still wants to kill him, but the badger realizes that Caspian is a hopeful sign. The golden age of Narnia was when human children ruled, and young Caspian’s belief in the Old Narnian stories and assertion that he has longed to meet Old Narnians like them are signs that he could be a true high king like King Peter. The badger says that he would be willing to follow King Caspian if he remains true to Old Narnia and its people.
Caspian is allowed to stay among the Old Narnians in hiding. He gradually makes friends with different species, and they begin to form a rebellion against Miraz. Doctor Cornelius finds Caspian and warns him that his uncle is searching for him. Caspian’s supporters convinced him that it was time to blow Susan’s horn to summon help, and that was how the Pevensie children were summoned back to Narnia.
The dwarf explaining all this to the Pevensie children is the same doubting dwarf who almost killed Caspian and ended up joining his supporters. The men trying to kill him were Miraz’s people. Trumpkin, the doubting dwarf, now doubts that the Pevensie children are the help they were hoping for. They are children again, not the great kings and queens they were when they left Narnia. The children aren’t too troubled by his doubts because they know who they are and the victories they have already achieved in Narnia. They have not lost all the skills they gained in Narnia before, and the more time they spend in Narnia, the more they become like the kings and queens they once were and still are. They outfit themselves from their old treasury and prepare to once again battle again evil in Narnia in support of Aslan.
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies, including some in different languages).
My Reaction
The books in The Chronicles of Narnia are famously Christian allegories, and Christian themes continue through this book. There are people who are doubters, but those who remain faithful believers in Aslan (who represents Jesus in this series) are the ones who prevail in the end. Like Jesus, Aslan wants his followers to do what they can on their own but is often near to offer them strength, support, and hints about the right thing to do. However, some people are more perceptive to his guidance than others, especially Lucy, and there is a theme that runs through the story about belief in things from people who have not seen them directly and are relying on other people’s experiences. As Lucy has a greater capacity for perceiving Aslan, some other people have a greater capacity for general belief. Edmund has learned his lessons from the previous book. Feeling badly about his earlier doubting of Lucy and how he had once belittled her, he becomes her biggest supporter during times when she can see Aslan and others can’t, urging his older siblings to listen to her. Some people, including Peter and Susan, doubt whether Lucy has actually seen Aslan when they haven’t seen him himself. Trumpkin, the doubting dwarf, is the classic Doubting Thomas of the story. He doubts everything, every step of the way, from Caspian’s intentions to the existence of the Pevensies and Aslan, but he keep son going until he sees the Pevensies himself and has the opportunity to see their abilities in action. Among Caspian’s followers, there are some, like the badgers, who have always believed in Aslan and always will, and there are others who are won over when they see for themselves.
There are also themes in the story that can apply equally to religious issues and political ones. Miraz struggles from the beginning to control the narrative of how his family came to rule Narnia and how he himself became the king when his brother’s son was actually the true heir. There are people who know the truth about both of these issues, but he’s not above censoring people, exiling them, and even killing them to prevent people from talking about the truth openly. Miraz is not a good king and has his self-interest in mind more than his subjects’, but he’s sharp enough to know that nobody really likes him or wants him to be king except he has convinced them that he has the authority to be king and that their self-interest lies with him. If people came to see him and his family for who and what they truly are and what they’ve actually done, he would lose all of that, and he knows it. Authoritarian rule is like that. It relies on maintaining the sort of image that, realistically, they can’t maintain if people know what the individuals involved are really like. Authoritarians try to make themselves look stronger and better than normal humans to cover up for their flaws, but the image collapses when they can’t or won’t deliver what they promise, and people see them for the flawed humans they really are, often more flawed than the people they tried to convince were weaker.
Aslan eventually reveals that Caspian and his people are not just from a foreign country in the world of Narnia, but their distant ancestor were actually pirates from our world. They had conquered and looted an island in the South Seas, murdered many of the inhabitants, and taken the women for their own. Then, they had argued and fought among themselves. Some of the pirates took their women and tried to hide in a cave from the others, but it was a gateway to the world of Narnia, and that was how they got there to later conquer Narnia. When Caspian hears this, he says that he wishes that he had come from a more noble lineage than murdering pirates, and Aslan tells him that, further back than the pirates, he is also a son of Adam and Eve, just like the Pevensies, and that lineage is noble enough. I liked this explanation because, in modern times, people have struggled with the concept of having slave-owning ancestors, fearing criticism, punishment, or some form of reparations for it. I’ve heard some people saying that they don’t want to be ashamed of themselves or their ancestors. They are hung up on one part of their family’s history, a history that, when you think about it, goes back as far as humans go, and they fear blame and shame for that. I don’t think I’ve heard many consider that their family didn’t always own slaves. They were something other than slave-owners before that, even if some of them can’t quite remember what that was. I’m not big on ancestor veneration and imitation, but everyone’s ancestry goes back too far to remember every generation. Even if some generations weren’t good examples, they’re not the only past generations, if you see what I mean. Maybe, instead of looking at what their family used to be and lost and might be blamed for even having, they should consider that what they’ve become since then might just be a return to what they were before that period in their family’s history, which might just be better and noble enough.
Earlier in the story, when the Old Narnians talk about whether to support Caspian or continue to support him, there are some who waiver in their support or withhold it, also out of self-interest. While nobody really likes Miraz, Narnian history and legends influence the way that the Old Narnians feel about Aslan and his supporters. Most of the Old Narnians remember the White Witch from the previous book as a wicked ruler, but the dwarves and wolves fared better under her than other species. Their descendants forget that their relatively better treatment came from their collaboration with the witch and their participation in her wickedness, and even then, the relatively better treatment still wasn’t that great. (Plus, some of the wolves are actually werewolves, not just talking animals, like the others.) They just vaguely remember that there was a time when a ruler put them in a better position relative to other species, which they are not now. In fact, they feel like they are now treated worse and given fewer supplies than the other groups. The other groups say that’s not true, but it feels like it is to them because they are no longer better off than the others. They miss that and want it back. When they become impatient with Caspian and feel like he won’t give them the treatment they want, they rebel, and some of them are killed. Prince Caspian and the others feel badly about that because the might not have rebelled and been killed in the struggle if circumstances were different and they had felt more satisfied, but they had no choice but to defend themselves from their attack.
The book also looks at the type of people who support authoritarian rulers. Much of their support also has to do with self-interest or apparent self-interest. Miraz does have supporters among the human nobility who helped him accomplish his rise to power and who helped do his dirty work in getting rid of his brothers old allies. Since then, some of them have become disillusioned with Miraz. Miraz has not followed through on what he promised them before in exchange for their loyalty and support, furthering his own self-interest instead of theirs, and that’s the one thing they can’t accept. The thing about supporting someone who is selfish and is willing to throw former supporters to the wolves or even kill relatives in pursuit of power … is that you end up being one of those former supporters who may be thrown to the wolves or killed when your leader pursues self-interest and power. Some people never think anything through. They may have assumed that they would be a special exception to the leader because of their support, but nobody is special to Miraz but himself. Everyone else is just a tool to be used until he can’t find a use for them or they seem to be a hindrance.
When Aslan reveals the true history of Caspian’s people to them, many of them are afraid that Aslan is going to kill them all for what they’ve been and what they’ve done, which is another factor in their support of Miraz and his narrative. Even some of those who knew the truth before were too scared to say anything or do anything about it because they feared the blame, guilt, and consequences that might follow acknowledging the truth. A major reason for their fear is that they and their ancestors have not been merciful to anybody, so it never occurs to them that someone else might have better intentions for them.
At the end of their adventure, when it’s time for the Pevensies to go home, Aslan tells them that Peter and Susan will not be returning to Narnia next time because they are getting too old, but Edmund and Lucy will return someday. It’s a common theme in children’s fantasy books that only children can experience certain types of magic, and when they get older, they can no longer experience it or believe in it. It’s a trope that is meant to explain why grownups don’t experience this type of magic in the real world and why the adults in stories think that the children are just imagining things when they experience magic, but to me, it doesn’t logically follow in this story. We already know that at least one adult the Pevensie children have met believes in Narnia and magic because he has also experienced them, and we know that the ancestors of Caspian’s people arrived in the world of Narnia as adults. The Chronicles of Narnia don’t seem to have a consistent principle about who can visit the world of Narnia or believe in it, not in age or even in moral character because Caspian’s ancestors were murdering pirates. I think, in the case of Caspian’s ancestors, it might have something to do with explaining how even flawed and immoral people can rise to power or even seemingly have God’s favor, when it seems like they’re the last ones who should. It seems to be a combination of random chance (happening to wander into the right cave, in this case), their own choices (conquering other people), and possibly, part of a much longer game on Aslan/God’s part (eventually producing Caspian, who is the kind of ruler Narnia needs, even though it involved a lot of evil along the way – the evil being the humans’ choice, not a requirement). That’s some speculation and interpretation on my part, but I think the story kind of sets that up. Aslan seems completely aware of what’s going on and what has been happening but hasn’t tried to interfere until the critical moment in this story when Prince Caspian needs his help to fulfill his destiny.
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis, 1950.
During WWII, the four Pevensie children are sent away from London to the countryside as child evacuees. They end up staying in a strange old house with an unmarried professor. The children are fascinated by the professor’s big, old house, and on their first rainy day there, they decide to go exploring. In a spare room, the children see a big, old wardrobe. While her older siblings move on to look in other rooms, Lucy can’t resist looking inside the wardrobe. The wardrobe is full of old coats, but Lucy enters the wardrobe and pushes past the coats to see how far back the wardrobe goes.
As Lucy continues trying to find her way to the back of the wardrobe, she feels like the old coats are starting to feel like tree branches. When she emerges from the wardrobe, she is in a snowy forest. She sees a faun hurrying by with some parcels, and she talks to him. The faun, Mr. Tumnus, is surprised to see her and asks her if she’s a “daughter of Eve”, meaning a human girl. Lucy finds that question confusing at first, but she confirms that she is a human girl. Mr. Tumnus convinces Lucy to join him at his house for tea. While she’s there, Mr. Tumnus plays music for her. Lucy is enchanted, and she almost falls asleep, but then, she suddenly realizes that she should return to her siblings. To her surprise, Mr. Tumnus is upset and guilty. He explains that he has been forced into the service of the White Witch, who has commanded him to charm any human children he finds until she can come and collect them from him. Lucy is shocked and disbelieving because Mr. Tumnus has been so nice to her. Mr. Tumnus hates having to work for the evil White Witch, but she does horrible things to anyone who defies her, often turning her enemies into stone statues. The White Witch controls the land of Narnia, where they currently are, and she’s the one who has made it eternally winter but never Christmas. However, Mr. Tumnus just can’t bring himself to turn Lucy over to her, so he agrees to help her get back to the wardrobe without telling the witch about her.
Lucy returns to her own world through the wardrobe and eagerly rushes to her siblings to tell them where she’s been. When she sees her siblings, she learns that almost no time has passed since she first went into the wardrobe, and nobody has missed her. Her siblings can’t believe that she’s been to a magical land and that no time has passed while she was having this adventure. They go to the wardrobe themselves and look at it, but when they look, it’s just an ordinary wardrobe with a back. They think that Lucy was just playing a prank, but Lucy is very upset because she knows that it wasn’t a joke or a dream. Her oldest siblings, Peter and Susan, would be ready to forget the entire matter, but Edmund can’t resist teasing Lucy about it.
During a game of hide-and-seek later, Lucy goes through the wardrobe again, and this time, Edmund follows her. Edmund is shocked to find himself in the same snowy woods and to realize that Lucy was telling the truth. At first, he looks for Lucy, having lost track of her, but then, he encounters a strange white lady in a sleigh. This is the White Witch. Not knowing who she is, Edmund accepts the witch’s offer of a hot drink and his favorite treat, Turkish Delights. The treats that the witch gives him are enchanted to give him a terrible craving for more. The witch is careful about how many she gives him, but that craving and her promise of more keeps Edmund wanting to please her and to tell her everything she wants to know. He tells the witch about Lucy and her earlier trip to Narnia. The witch asks him if he has any other siblings, and she is strangely interested when he says that he is one of four. The witch tells Edmund that she is the queen of Narnia, but she has no children. She says that if Edmund will bring all of his siblings to meet her, she will make him the prince of Narnia, and he can live in her palace and eat Turkish Delights all day. Edmund is reluctant to bring her his siblings because he craves her treats so much he would rather just go to her palace at once, but the witch insists that he must bring her his siblings.
Lucy and Edmund meet back at the wardrobe entrance to Narnia, and Lucy is pleased at first that Edmund has now seen that Narnia is real. However, when they return to their own world and see Peter and Susan, Edmund spitefully tells them that Narnia isn’t real and that they were just playing pretend. After all of his earlier teasing, he can’t bring himself to admit that he was in the wrong for saying that Lucy was just making it all up before. Lucy is deeply hurt that Edmund is denying something they both know is true and becomes very upset.
Peter and Susan know that Edmund is being mean to Lucy, but they are also concerned about why Lucy seems to suddenly be making up these strange fantasies, when she’s never done anything like that before. Thinking that maybe the stress of being sent away from home is making Lucy crazy, they talk to the professor about what’s been happening. The professor listens to their story and their concerns very seriously, and they are surprised when the professor asks them how they can be sure that Lucy isn’t telling the truth. He admits that this old house is very strange, and he hasn’t even lived there very long himself, so he can’t say for certain what might be happening there. There have been some strange stories about this house before, and sometimes, they even get tourists stopping to see the house. Peter and Susan say that they doubt Lucy’s story because Edmund says it wasn’t true and because they saw nothing in the wardrobe when they looked themselves. They think if the wardrobe was really a portal to a magical world, surely it would be there all the time, for anyone who looked. The professor says that might not be true, that there might be thinks that are real that aren’t necessarily there or visible all the time. Part of his reasoning is that, if Lucy was playing a prank of some kind, she would have hidden for longer before coming to tell them of her adventures so that her story would seem more plausible. Lucy’s story is so implausible that the professor is inclined to believe it. The professor says that time might work differently in Narnia and that’s why it seemed like no time has passed. As for Edmund’s word, the professor asks Peter and Susan whether they would have thought Lucy or Edmund more reliable before. They say that Lucy is usually more reliable than Edmund, so the professor dismisses Edmund’s story in favor of Lucy’s. Peter and Susan still aren’t sure what to do about the situation, even if Lucy really has visited a magical land. The professor’s suggestion is that they mind their own business for now. Not knowing what else to do, Peter and Susan decide to wait and see what happens.
The truth is revealed when the children find themselves in the room with the wardrobe again while trying to avoid a group of tourists the housekeeper is leading on a tour of the house. Hearing the housekeeper approaching they all decide to hide in the wardrobe, and this time, they all find their way to Narnia. Peter and Susan are amazed and apologize to Lucy for not believing her before. It’s cold in the snow, so Susan sensibly suggests that they borrow some of the coats in the wardrobe to wear. Edmund gives away his earlier lie about not having been to Narnia by mentioning the position of a street lamp that is oddly in the forest. Peter is angry with Edmund for lying to them and trying to make Lucy look like either a liar of crazy person. Like a lot of people caught doing something bad, Edmund becomes sullen and resentful that the others are rightfully angry with him for what he’s done.
Lucy wants to introduce her siblings to Mr. Tumnus, but when they reach his house, they learn that he has been arrested. Lucy knows that he was arrested for defying the White Witch, and she explains about the witch to her siblings. Edmund doesn’t tell the others that he has met the White Witch himself, although he tries to introduce the idea that none of them really know what’s going on in this land, asking how they know if the witch is really evil or not. The others don’t listen to him and agree with Lucy that they should try to help Mr. Tumnus, if they can.
At first, they don’t know where to go or what to do, but a friendly robin guides them to meet a beaver. Animals talk in Narnia, and the beaver takes the children to his house, where he explains to them what happened to Mr. Tumnus and the truth about the White Witch. Although the White Witch calls herself the queen of Narnia, the actual ruler of Narnia is Aslan, the emperor. The beaver is vague about exactly what Aslan is, but he says that Aslan is not human, and neither is the White Witch, although she looks sort of human and would like people to think she is human. The truth is that, while humans are “sons of Adam” or “daughters of Eve” (referring to the Biblical Adam and Eve), the White Witch is actually a descendant of Lilith, Adam’s first wife. (According to folklore/mythology, as this video explains, Lilith was created by God at the same time as Adam, but she was not faithful to him. She left him and mothered a race of demons with other creatures. Therefore, in Lewis is following folklore, the White Witch is actually a demonic enchantress. The book doesn’t go into all this backstory. The beaver describes the White Witch as being the product of a djinn and a giant, but based on folklore, that’s the implication that she’s demonic. The White Witch is not just a human who practices evil magic; she’s a non-human demon. Being half-djinn and half-giant sounds less scary for kids, but it’s really more sinister, if you know the folklore and think more deeply about it. That’s what the beaver means when he refers to being careful about things that look human but actually aren’t. In folklore, demons and other evil creatures can sometimes make themselves look human to get people to trust them.) The reason why the White Witch is so concerned about human children is that there is a prophecy that four human children will take the thrones in the castle of Cair Paravel, and that will bring her evil reign to an end. Any time human children come to Narnia, the White Witch tries to get her hands on them to prevent the prophecy from coming true. (She has no intention of adopting Edmund as a prince. If she gets her hands on all four Pevensie children at once, she’ll turn them all into stone statues, as she does with all of her enemies, to prevent them from taking the thrones.) However, the word is that Aslan is returning, and the presence of the four children is a sign that the prophecy will soon be fulfilled.
During the course of this explanation, Edmund slips away from the others, wanting to seek out the White Witch because of her promises to him and his irresistible craving for what she has offered him. When the others realize that he is gone, Peter thinks that they should search for him, but the beaver has accurately realized that Edmund is under the influence of the witch. There is no point in going after him because he is not in a state where he will listen to them and is in the process of betraying them all. Their only hope is to leave before the White Witch comes and to seek out Aslan!
This book is the first book in the Chronicles of Narnia, although the books in the series jump around in time. The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies). It has been made into movies multiple times.
My Reaction
When I was in high school, my history teacher brought up this book, saying that it was more than just a fantasy book, asking the class if we knew what it was supposed to be an allegory for. I said that it was religious allegory, and she told me that I was wrong and that it was an allegory for World War II. The story takes place during World War II, but it is definitely religious allegory. All the talk about “sons of Adam” and “daughters of Eve” and the references to Lilith are not coincidence. C. S. Lewis was a lay theologian and also wrote nonfiction books on the subject of religion. This book was written for his goddaughter, Lucy Barfield. Aslan is a lion in the story, but he also represents God, and toward the end of the story, he performs a Christ-like sacrifice of himself for the sake of Edmund’s sins (Edmund’s betrayal of his siblings has made him the property of the White Witch and a sacrifice for her until Aslan voluntarily takes his place to free him from the witch) before rising to life again and restoring life to all the people who had been turned to stone.
The Chronicles of Narnia is a popular Christian series, and some Sunday schools even use the series to teach Christian lessons. However, because of the fantasy themes and the style of the stories, not all Christians approve of them. Reception among atheists and people of other religions has been mixed, although the series is generally famous and has become a classic among children’s literature. One of the chief problems people have with the stories occurs toward the end of the series, where children who grow up and become interested in dating are at least temporarily lost to godliness or Heaven or the magic of Narnia, and the children who die young are the ones who live in Narnia eternally. It does creep me out a little that dying young instead of growing up is depicted as a virtue. It probably would have creeped me out even more if I had read the last book in the series as a child instead of an adult. As an adult, I see it more as a result of the author’s possible disillusionment with the habits adults develop when they lose their youthful sense of innocence and, even more likely, that problem that fantasy authors often seem to struggle with, explaining how these magical lands and adventures can exist without grown adults knowing about them. Many fantasy authors include an element in their stories that only children can experience certain magical things and that those children will forget about them as they age, allowing young readers to indulge in a belief in magic they can experience that adults living in the real world don’t experience. But, as I’ll discuss more later, the end of this series does bother me because the author kills off most of the characters that we have come to know and love, which I don’t think should be necessary. The girls in the story are also not allowed to take an active part in the battle at the end of the story, fulfilling more support roles, and the story itself admits that it’s because they’re girls. The roles that the girls in the story play are important, and they have their share of excitement, but few modern stories would make this type of distinction between boys’ and girls’ roles like this.
Time functions differently in Narnia, and there are odd jumps in time, both within this book and the rest of the series. Whenever characters are in Narnia, no time passes in our world. The four Pevensie children become kings and queens in Narnia and live full lives there for decades (which helps me feel a little less sad that they don’t live as long in the real world, but still not great). They are adults in Narnia when they find the way back to our world, and suddenly, they find themselves children again in the professor’s house during WWII. Returning to their old lives is a shock, but the professor tells them that they will return to Narnia again someday. The professor knows about Narnia because he was there as a child himself. His backstory is covered in a later book, which also includes an explanation about why there is a street lamp in the forest in Narnia. During later books, when the children and their friends return to Narnia, centuries have passed there, and their adventures from this book have become legends for the people of Narnia.
As a side note, I also liked how the book repeatedly warns readers that smart people realize that, if you ever explore a wardrobe, you should always leave the door open behind you because you don’t want to get shut in. It’s a practical point and one worth making to kids who might want to try exploring a wardrobe or two to see if they can find magic doors.
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!
Miracles On Maple Hill by Virginia Sorensen, 1956.
Ten-year-old Marly and her family are moving from Pittsburgh to the countryside, to Marly’s mother’s grandmother’s old house on Maple Hill. They’re making the move for Marly’s father’s sake. Marly’s father was a soldier and prisoner of war, and everyone says he was lucky to return home from the war. (The book doesn’t specify which war, and no date is given for the story, but the book was written during the 1950s. If it was set slightly earlier than the time of writing, it could be WWII, and if it’s in the 1950s, it would be the Korean War. Not giving the story a date gives it a timeless feel.) Since then, he has suffered from the stress of his experiences. He is frequently tired and irritable. He is easily startled by loud noises, even a door slamming, and he finds arguments between Marly and her older brother Joe too much to handle. On Christmas, he can’t even bring himself to get out of bed to celebrate with his family. (He is suffering from shell shock or PTSD, although the characters in the book don’t use those terms. Mostly, they just describe the symptoms they see in him without giving it a name. Much of our modern understanding of what PTSD is and how to treat itcame out of the World Wars and following conflicts, like the Korean War and the Vietnam War. During the 1950s, they had a general sense of what it was, and they called it different names, like “battle fatigue” or “combat stress reaction” or “gross stress reaction,” but not everyone fully understood it or how to treat it. They didn’t have as many resources for dealing with it, so this family is trying to find their own solution by giving the father a quiet place to rest and process his feelings.) Marly’s mother thinks that the peace of the countryside will do him good.
It’s March when the family makes their first trip to Maple Hill, and there is still snow on the ground. Their car gets stuck in the snow before they reach the house. Joe and Marly both get out of the car to find help. Twelve-year-old Joe initially didn’t want Marly to come with him because he’s in a phase where he likes to show off and make a big deal about how much better he is at doing things than his younger sister, but Marly sets off by herself and meets their friendly neighbor, Mr. Chris. Joe is a little offended that Marly saved the day instead of him, but Mr. Chris and his wife are very friendly and helpful. They remember the children’s mother from when she used to visit her grandmother as a child, and they welcome the family like they’re relatives themselves. Marly likes Mr. and Mrs. Chris, but her father finds their friendliness a little overwhelming. He feels like what he really needs is time alone, and he doesn’t feel much like chatting with people.
The old house at Maple Hill is a little run down because no one has lived there for years. The family has a lot of fixing-up to do, but Marly’s mother thinks that the work will be good for the children’s father. Marly and Joe aren’t used to living in the countryside, and they find some parts of it fascinating. They use a pump for water for the first time and take baths in an old tub. The house contains a Franklin stove (and Marly references the story Ben and Me by Robert Lawson).
Marly is upset when her family kills a nest of baby mice, although they tell her that mice are pests, and they have to get rid of them or be overrun by them. Marly loves animals, and she would have loved to keep the cute little mice as pets. Marly talks about her feelings with Mr. Chris when he shows them how he processes maple syrup. Mr. Chris says that he understands how Marly feels. He also has a soft spot for small animals. Although he doesn’t tell his wife about it, he has a little mouse friend who visits him every day. Marly’s family is there for the conversation, and they say that Marly makes too big a deal out of getting rid of pests, but Mr. Chris says that there’s nothing wrong with Marly for caring and gives her an extra taste of the maple sap. To Marly’s surprise, her father takes her on his lap and says that the only thing wrong with Marly caring too much is that she’ll have to spent her life crying more than she would otherwise have to. Feeling an emotional attachment to people or animals can mean having your feelings hurt when you lose them, and what Marly’s father has been through is about the most extreme version of having hurt feelings that human beings experience.
Marly’s father stays at Maple Hill alone for a couple of months while his wife and children return to the city so the children can finish the school year. In spite of her father’s reluctance to be around people, he does become friends with Mr. and Mrs. Chris in their absence. He sometimes calls his family from the phone at their house. Mr. and Mrs. Chris help him adjust to living in the countryside. He discovers how much life in the countryside is influence by changes in the weather, much more so than life in the city, where people spend more of their time indoors, and Mr. Chris gives him an almanac to use. Mr. Chris tells Marly that, when she and her brother return to the countryside in the summer, he’ll take her around and show her everything, and he’ll show her all the “miracles” at Maple Hill, meaning the wonders of the natural world.
However, even people in the peaceful countryside have their troubles. Marly overhears her mother talking to Mrs. Chris, and Mrs. Chris says that she’s worried about Mr. Chris’s health. Jolly Mr. Chris has suffered a heart attack before, and he hasn’t been taking it easy. He’s always been a hard worker, and Mrs. Chris worries that he pushes himself too hard.
Over the summer, when Marly and her brother and mother return to Maple Hill, Marly has to get used to life in the countryside, as her father has. One morning, when she tries to make pancakes for her family by herself, she accidentally fills the kitchen with smoke because she doesn’t really know how to use the old-fashioned stove. Her father comes in and helps her, and at first, Marly is worried that he’s going to get really angry, the way he often has when things go wrong because of his stress from the war. However, this time, he reacts much more calmly because he knows how to handle the situation, and he admits that he did the same thing himself when he first used that stove. It’s one of the first signs that Marly’s father has been improving in the peaceful countryside.
As Mr. Chris promised, he shows Marly the wonders of the countryside and introduces her to different types of plants and animals. Joe likes to show off what he knows about plants and animals and their scientific names from his books, but Marly enjoys learning the colloquial names for plants from Mr. Chris and observing them directly. However, she realizes that she and her brother Joe have to be careful not to overtax Mr. Chris. When Mr. Chris gets really enthusiastic about something, he pushes himself harder than he should.
As the summer comes to an end, Marly’s parents discuss whether the mother should return to the city with the children for school or if they should stay at Maple Hill year-round now. Marly’s father loves life in the country. He has been growing crops on the farm, and he feels better in the peaceful countryside. He wants to stay there for at least for one year before trying city life again. Marly is eager to stay, although Joe is reluctant because he really likes his old school and the museums and theaters of the city. However, even Joe finds some parts of country life fun and fulfilling, so he is persuaded to give it a try. It helps that boys Joe’s age take the bus to the bigger school in the next town, and that school has a marching band, because Joe had wanted to join the band at his old school.
Staying in the country year-round gives the children the opportunity to experience the changes in nature and farm life through the seasons. However, as it reaches a year since they first came to Maple Hill, Mr. Chris suffers another heart attack. While he is in the hospital, Marly’s family steps in to help harvest and process the maple sap crop, turning it into maple syrup. It’s hard work because the family also has their own crop to tend to, but helping Mr. Chris helps Marly’s family as well. Through hard work for the sake of helping someone else and the relationships they build with their new community, Marly’s father’s old tiredness and harshness turns to gentleness, further healing his spirit.
This book is a gentle story that would appeal to people who enjoy Cottagecore Style Books. It’s full of the wonders of nature and life in the countryside, and the family’s little farmhouse is cozy and charmingly old-fashioned. The “miracles” in the book refer to changes in the natural world that take place over time and with the changing of the seasons. Even Marly’s father’s recovery is natural and gradually takes place over time during the course of the story.
The book doesn’t go into detail about what Marly’s father experienced as a soldier, but it does a good job of showing how the war has affected him. He is tense, nervous, and angry because of his experiences, but not in a way that would be too frightening for children. Getting away from the chaos of the city and working outside in nature does help him. The physical activity of working outdoors gives him an outlet for his stress, and the slower pace of life and limited number of people he sees in the country give the chance he needs to rest.
Cottagecore as a genre and aesthetic became very popular during the Coronavirus Pandemic of the early 2020s. I explained when I wrote my list of books that fit the genre how the pandemic forced many people to change the way they were living. During the height of the pandemic, when there were lockdowns and quarantines, people didn’t get out as much. Many people worked from home, if they could, and limited the number of people they would see. This caused some people to feel stressed and cooped up, but one of the ways they were able to alleviate that feeling was to spend time outside, whether it was in their own gardens or in public parks or in the open countryside. When people were outside, there was less risk of contagion because they either wouldn’t encounter other people or could encounter them from a safe distance. Being out in nature, as much as they could manage, helped people feel a little more free. It gave them a welcome break from being inside their own homes all the time, and seeing beauty in the natural world can be soothing for all kinds of stress.
I mention this because that’s similar to the way Marly’s father and the rest of their family felt when they decided to go to the country. Marly’s father’s condition was hard on his family as well as himself because they were worried about him and because he would become moody and irritable at small things they would do which ordinarily wouldn’t have bothered him much. For a long time since he came back from the war, everyone had to be extremely careful about what they did around him because they didn’t want to upset him. In the countryside, without other distractions and causes of stress, everyone in the family was able to relax more. That’s why books of this kind became so popular during the pandemic; people saw in them feelings that they were experiencing themselves because of the stressful situation everyone was going through. I noticed that the people who handled the social distancing of the pandemic the best were the ones who used it as an opportunity to enjoy a slower pace of life and simple pleasures and to strengthen their connections with a small number of important people, like the people in this story do. Of course, individual circumstances varied, and some people had a greater ability to do this than others, but I think it’s interesting and helpful to note these common ways that people have of dealing with trauma and stress, even when the trauma and stress come from different sources.
Life and Death of Animals and War
There is a subplot that continues all the way through the book about how Marly feels about animals and how her feelings clash with both the way her family feels and the realities of life in the country. She gets very upset when her family destroys the nest with baby mice, and she bonds with Mr. Chris about their caring for small animals. However, Mr. Chris shocks her when he talks about hunting a family of foxes. Marly cares about the foxes because they have five babies, and she can’t imagine how a caring man like Mr. Chris would hunt baby animals. What is the difference between cute little baby mice and baby foxes? Mr. Chris explains that the foxes have been hunting his chickens, and they also eat mice. By eliminating the foxes, he can save the lives of other animals. The area has too many foxes already, and there is a bounty on their pelts. What Mr. Chris and the rest of Marly’s family understand, and which Marly struggles to come to terms with, is that sometimes animals pose a risk to other animals and even to humans. The mice would carry disease if they were allowed to live in the house with humans, and the foxes are killing the chickens. In a perfect world, everything would be able to live peacefully side-by-side without hurting each other, but the world isn’t perfect, and circumstances mean that something that poses a risk to something else sometimes has to be killed. It’s a good metaphor for war.
Marly’s father didn’t go to war because he wanted to. He was sent to war because the government decided it was necessary to prevent something even worse from happening. People don’t normally want to hurt and kill each other, but when faced with someone who poses a real threat, they will. Part of the reason why Marly’s father has suffered is that he had to endure things that went against his natural instincts. Ordinarily, he wouldn’t want to hurt or kill other people, but he had to as a soldier, and he had to survive other people’s attempts to hurt or kill him. To survive those circumstances, he had to change his way of thinking, and now that it’s over, he’s struggling to get back into the mindset of peace, where not every loud sound is a threat, conflicts are minor, and it’s okay to care about people and be sentimental about things. During their time at Maple Hill, the family also meets a hermit who came to the countryside while he was recovering from shell shock from a previous war. The book doesn’t say what war that was, but he’s been in the area for years. If Marly’s father was in either WWII or the Korean War, this man could have been a soldier during WWI, given the time period. The hermit’s experiences show the family and readers that the trauma of war affects people in similar ways across generations and between conflicts, and that what Marly’s father experienced is an inherently human reaction. It also points to the similar ways people have of responding to that type of trauma. Both Marly’s father and the hermit found solace in nature and the peaceful countryside.
Fortunately, Marly and her brother figure out a way to save the foxes from being hunted by scaring them away from their den. If you can get past the early point in the book where they destroy the nest of mice, no further animals were harmed during the course of the story. There is a point where Marly gets some chickens of her own to care for, and I was worried that the foxes would come and eat them, to prove her family’s point that some animals have to be hunted, but I was glad that didn’t happen. Marly does reflect more on how animals eat each other later in the book without needing to have anything else killed. She thinks about how she and her brother saw small animal bones and fur around the foxes’ den and how her own family eats meat and eggs. Mr. Chris says that everything needs to eat something to survive, and that helps Marly to understand the cycles of life and death in the animal kingdom and in farming. The lessons in the book are pretty gentle even though they touch on serious topics.
Boys vs Girls
One of the criticisms that I’ve sometimes seen about this book is the stereotypical gender roles in the story, but I think that’s a little unfair because Marly in particular questions the ways boys act and how other people view boys and girls. It starts very early in the story when the family’s car gets stuck and Joe doesn’t want Marly to go with him to get help. When Marly goes on her own and finds help first because she’s put a little more thought into where to go for help, Joe feels a little bad that his younger sister did better than he did. There’s a kind of competition between them that mostly seems to come from Joe, and Marly gets a little offended sometimes when he tries to leave her out of things so he can be first to do something.
I thought that it was perceptive of her to realize that boys try to prove that they’re better at things than girls because they “seemed afraid they’d stop being boys altogether if they couldn’t be first at everything.” Marly knows that boys aren’t treated the same as girls, and I think her comment comes pretty close to the reason why. The boys have a stronger idea of what they’re supposed to be, relative to girls, and in a way, they’re more threatened when either they’re not as good at something as a girl is or a girl does something that they think is supposed to be a boys’ activity. I’ve noticed men and boys with this sort of attitude even in the 21st century, and it’s ironic that they don’t seem to realize that very attitude puts them at a disadvantage by making their sense of self more fragile and dependent on someone else’s relative skills and interests.
Marly realizes this sense of fragility later in the story when she thinks about how she really likes being a girl better than she would like being a boy. Although some people might tell girls that they can’t do certain things or think of girls as being silly compared to boys, Marly realizes that there is a greater amount of freedom for girls in her time and society to simply be human beings than the boys experience. In some ways, the boys of her time seem like they’re being raised to be like little soldiers, possibly to prepare them for the day when they might be drafted, like their fathers. Boys are urged to be tough, competitive, and unsentimental. Marly knows that her brother cries sometimes, but he doesn’t want to be seen crying. Joe is not expected to care about animals or feel anything about killing them. By contrast, Marly can feel emotions and show them freely about anything she wants because she’s a girl. She realizes that people sometimes laugh when a girl does something silly or makes a mistake or asks what seems like a dumb question or is overly emotional about something, but girls are still allowed to do these things without people thinking much of it. They can do all of these things without anyone questioning their identities as girls or human beings in general. Really, everyone does these things once in a while, but Marly realizes that a boy doing one of these very human things is likely to get more criticism and might even be called “girly.” People of this time would question a boy’s identity as a boy in ways that they wouldn’t question a girl’s identity as a girl, and that’s why Joe acts the way he does sometimes, like he has something to prove to everybody. Boys of her time may have more opportunities in some ways, but in some ways, girls are more free to simply be human. Joe acts like he’s competing with his sister sometimes and trying to show her up, but in reality, he’s competing with society’s expectations for him and his own expectations for himself because of what he’s been told that boys are or have to be.
Toward the end of the story, Marly and Joe are so busy trying to help their family and the Chrises with their maple syrup processing that they miss some time in school. The local truant officer comes to check up on them and find out if they’ve been ill, and she is fascinated when she finds out that they’ve been helping to make maple syrup. She admits that, even though she’s lived in the area her whole life, she’s never actually helped to make maple syrup herself or eve watched it being done. She spends some time with the family, watching them work and asking them questions about the process. Based on what she’s seen, she decides that the children are engaging in a practical and educational experience because they are learning something that is culturally and historically relevant to the area that is not taught in classrooms. In fact, she thinks that this is such a great educational opportunity that she not only makes sure that the children are excused from classes until the work is done but also arranges for field trips of other children from the area to come to the farms and help, giving the two families the extra help they really need and the children’s classmates a unique experience. I thought that was a great example of how a disruption to the usual routine can be an exciting and valuable learning experience, something that I think is also relevant to the changes people had to make to their routines and education during the pandemic, but it also brings up the topic of boys’ work vs girls’ work again.
Throughout the book, there are certain types of work that are considered for men or women, and Marly is happy when her mother counts her among the “women” doing work in the kitchen because it makes her feel grown-up. However, there are times when she boldly speaks up about how girls should be allowed to do other things that boys also do. The truant officer is a woman, but when she arranges the field trips of students visiting the farm to help out, she specifically invites only boys at first. Marly asks her why she didn’t invite the girls because she’d like some other girls on the farm. The truant officer admits that she didn’t think of it as something the girls would want to do, but finding the process interesting herself, she decides that she’ll ask the girls to see if they’re interested. Joe dismisses the idea that girls would help out with the maple syrup because farm work is men’s work. Marly points out that she’s been doing this work the entire time herself, and Joe says that she’s different because she’s kind of a “tomboy” (meaning a girl with boyish qualities or who enjoys activities that boys typically enjoy). Marly insists that she’s not a tomboy because she’s very comfortable with her identity as a girl, and she just thinks that other people are wrong about the range of things that girls can do or be expected to enjoy. It turns out that she’s right that other girls are interested in the farm work and making maple syrup and do want to come on the field trips. They just didn’t before because nobody asked them.
I haven’t actually heard anybody say the word “tomboy” in a long time. When I was a kid in the 1980s and 1990s, it referred to a girl who acted like a boy and liked things boys liked, and it was a term far older than my childhood. In the 21st century, I more often hear about girls who are described, or more often, describe themselves as being “not like other girls.” There is still a concept that “typical” boys and “typical” girls like or do certain kinds of things and that people who don’t like or do the typical things are different somehow, although I think that concept isn’t as strict as it once was. I think that 21st century society has a more expansive notion of the types of things people of different genders like and do and a greater recognition of the varying interests people can have. Some people still leap to the conclusion that, just because someone doesn’t do or like what’s “typical”, they might be homosexual or trans (which I think might be part of that fear that Marly described about boys worrying that they’d “stop being boys altogether” if they couldn’t be first and best at everything compared to girls), but that’s not always the case. Humans come in many variations, and in the grand scheme of life, figuring out what’s “typical” for boys or girls doesn’t really tell you much about any particular individual person’s interests or feelings. (If you’ve ever tried to buy Christmas or birthday presents for a kid based on general recommendations for boys or girls their age and guessed wrong for that person, you know what I’m talking about.) There are some things that can really only be decided on an individual level. Marly is not a “tomboy.” She knows who and what she is, and she’s a girl who also likes to do outdoor activities and farm work. That’s really all there is to it, and there are more girls like her who find that appealing, when people bother to ask them how they feel.
History and Language
There aren’t many issues with language in the story, but there is one incident that I thought I would mention. There are a couple of points in the story where the characters discuss the history of making maple syrup. Mr. Chris says that one of his ancestors learned how to do it from some “Indians” in the area, meaning Native Americans, and his family has continued using the same process ever since. The truant officer is intrigued when Marly’s family tells her that, and she wonders how the Native Americans first realized that they could process tree sap into a food product. She does a little research and later tells the family a story about how a Native American woman used tree sap in making a kind of mush for her husband, and he liked the flavor, so they continued cooking with it.
Using the term “Indians” instead of “Native Americans” is very common in older children’s books, especially those from the 1950s or 1960s and earlier. This book isn’t unusual for doing that because it was written in the 1950s, although “Native American” is the preferred term of the late 20th and early 21st centuries when referring to “American Indians.” I think it’s generally better to use the most specific term possible in descriptors because it’s both more accurate and less confusing, and most people find it more polite and respectful. When I was a kid, I remember finding the term “Indian” a little confusing sometimes because I was aware that “Indians” are also people from India, although I could usually tell by context which kind of “Indians” authors meant.
(By the way, if anybody out there know which kind of “Indian” is meant when someone is sitting “Indian style”, meaning cross-legged or what some teachers now call “criss-cross applesauce”, do let me know. I asked one of my teachers when they first taught us to do it when I was a little kid, and I never got an answer. She rudely ignored the question, probably because she didn’t know the answer, either. I thought at the time it was probably based on Native Americans because of where we were living, but I was curious which tribe it was. The more I thought about it, I also realized that I couldn’t rule out India as the source because people sit crossed-legged for yoga, and yoga comes from India. Personally, I prefer to just call that kind of sitting as “sitting cross-legged” because that describes exactly what you’re supposed to do, and both of those other terms require more explanation of what they mean than I think should be necessary for just telling someone how to sit.)
The use of “Indian” instead of “Native American” sounds outdated and can be a little irritating to some people, but there is one instance where the truant officer uses the word “squaw” to refer to the Native American woman who discovered how to cook with sap from the maple tree. “Squaw” is a controversial word because, apparently, it can mean “woman” in a generic sense in some Native American languages, but in other Native American languages, it can mean something more vulgar and offensive. The word is only used briefly in that one part of the story and not in any insulting manner, but if you’re going to read this to children or have them read this story, I think it’s important for them to understand that this is not a word they should use themselves in conversation. If they want to refer to a Native American woman, they should just call her a woman and not use an ambiguous term that may seem insulting to some people. If they can understand that, sometimes, a word can mean different things to different people and that it’s important to consider your audience’s feelings when choosing what to say and how to describe other people, I don’t think this will be a serious issue with this story.
One final note that I thought of adding is about Marly’s name. Nobody in the story ever calls her anything but “Marly”, but I think that’s a nickname. In the early 21st century, there’s been a trend of giving children, especially girls, surnames as first names as a form of “gender neutral” name, but that wasn’t common back in the 1950s, and the surname of “Marley” is usually spelled with an ‘e’, unlike Marly’s name. Marly’s name could just be “Marly” as a variant of “Marley”, but I suspect, although I can’t prove it, that “Marly” is a nickname for Marlene or a similar name. I think her name is probably Marlene because there was a famous actress during the 1930s named Marlene Dietrich, and there was a spike in popularity for the name Marlene during the mid-20th century, probably because of her. Marlene Dietrich was known for defying traditional gender roles, both in her acting career and in her private life. Although she was considered a fashion icon in her time, when she described her sense of fashion in 1960, she said, “I dress for the image. Not for myself, not for the public, not for fashion, not for men. If I dressed for myself I wouldn’t bother at all. Clothes bore me. I’d wear jeans. I adore jeans. I get them in a public store—men’s, of course; I can’t wear women’s trousers. But I dress for the profession.” That sounds like the kind of girl Marly is. She knows that she’s a girl, but she’s her own kind of girl, who knows what she likes and doesn’t like.
Jestress's Forgotten Books and Stories 