Posted on by TracyC

The Mystery on the Train

Boxcar Children

#51 The Mystery on the Train by Gertrude Chandler Warner, 1996.

The Alden Children’s Aunt Jane is planning to travel to San Francisco to join her husband, who is there on a business trip. Because the Boxcar Children have never actually traveled on a train trip before, she invites them to come with her. The trip will take three days by train. Then, they’ll spend a few days in San Francisco before flying hone. The Aldens love traveling, and they’re excited by the idea of a train trip!

When they arrive to catch the train, they witness an odd scene at the station. An older woman is fighting with a younger woman over what looks an art portfolio. The younger woman eventually gets hold of the portfolio, knocking the older woman to the ground, and runs for the train. The Aldens ask the older woman if she’s all right, and she says she is. They also ask her if the younger woman is the owner of the portfolio, and the older woman says yes. She doesn’t explain why they were fighting over it, but they later see her talking to the train porter and giving him some money. The Aldens wonder what that scene was all about.

On the train, they meet the young woman, whose name is Annie. She explains that she’s also heading to San Francisco because she wants to attend art school there. She tells them that she’s planning to stay with an uncle there and that her portfolio contains her art work. Annie and Violet enjoy talking about art together, but the Aldens have the feeling that there are things that Annie isn’t telling them. She seems very paranoid about her portfolio, always afraid to leave it unattended and panicking every time the porter tries to help her with it.

When the portfolio suddenly disappears, Annie admits to them that it doesn’t really contain her artwork. It actually has a set of vintage autographed movie posters that are valuable for collectors. They were part of an inheritance that she and her aunt shared, and she’s hoping that they will help fund her art school education. Who could have taken the portfolio on the train? Was it the man who actually told them that he collects old movie posters and that he’s hoping to purchase some in California, or maybe the mysterious man who wears sunglasses everywhere on the train? Could Annie’s aunt have paid the porter to retrieve the posters from Annie?

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

My Reaction

Mysteries set on a train are always fun because, like with mysteries set in isolated houses, there is a limited set of possible suspects, and they’re in a situation where people cannot easily enter or leave. We know that the portfolio is still on the train, somewhere, and the thief hasn’t left. It’s just a question of who the thief is and where the thief hid the portfolio.

There are some obvious suspects in this story, but there are a couple of points that make the mystery more complicated. One is that there are unknown relationships between different suspects, some which are easier to guess or figure out than others. Another point is that Annie is keeping secrets from the Aldens. Through the story, she isn’t entirely honest with them about what’s actually going on. There are also some things that Annie doesn’t fully understand. This is one of those stories where the stolen object is stolen more than once, changing hands before they fully grasp what happened to it the first time it disappears.

There are twists to this mystery that keep it interesting, and I love the train setting! The trains they ride on through their trip are real trains, and the experience of the trip is what the actual experience is like. They take two trains, changing in Chicago to the California Zephyr, which is a real Amtrak train that goes from Chicago to San Francisco. I’ve been on train trips before, and if you’re curious, there are YouTube videos people have made, showing their own train trips across the US, like this one showing a trip on the California Zephyr.

Posted on by TracyC

The Mystery Cruise

The Boxcar Children

Boxcar Children Mystery Cruise cover

The Mystery Cruise by Gertrude Chandler Warner, 1992.

Boxcar Children Mystery Cruise meeting

Mr. Alden takes his grandchildren on their first cruise to the Caribbean! The Alden kids are excited to go because there are a lot of interesting things to do on the cruise ship. However, they begin to notice some strange things happening happening on the ship and some odd people among the passengers and crew.

The first person they meet is Max, a history professor who shares their table at dinner. The Aldens can tell that something is bothering him. He gets a telegram that upsets him, and he seems desperate to communicate with someone, but for some reason, the phone and radio systems on the ship keep breaking down. It looks like sabotage! Could someone be trying to stop Max from communicating with someone?

Boxcar Children Mystery Cruise girls bedroom

Eventually, Max explains that he was notified about the death of a great-aunt, but to claim the inheritance, he must be present at the reading of the will, and various problems on the ship seem to be delaying the ship from reaching its destination in time. Besides the sabotage of the phone and radio, someone also gives a false cry of “man overboard” to make the ship stop. The crew is able to verify that nobody is missing from the ship by doing a head count. Is someone deliberately trying to prevent Max from reaching their destination on time, so he won’t receive his inheritance? If Max isn’t there, he says another relative, his cousin, will inherit, but this cousin isn’t on the cruise with him. Could she have hired someone to keep Max away from the will reading?

Boxcar Children Mystery Cruise ship railing

There’s a new employee on the ship, Heather, who seems very nervous and secretive about some messages that she’s been receiving. Heather also seems to know the Rands, a family who says that they used to work for another cruise company and who keep saying that the other cruise company was better. Could Heather and the Rands be working together to sabotage the cruise? Tom, another passenger, seems friendly and likes working out and showing off how well he lifts weights, but he also seems too interested in Max’s business and too happy about the ship’s delays. Could he be the mysterious saboteur? How can the Aldens be sure that they can get Max to his destination on time?

My Reaction

One of the things I enjoy about the Boxcar Children mysteries is that they’re good at presenting multiple suspects. The story delays telling readers about Max’s inheritance, so the first part of the mystery centers on what’s going on with Max. When we find out about the inheritance, the mystery becomes a question of whether or not his cousin is trying to keep him from the inheritance. There is only one other possible motive under consideration – that the Rands are still working for a rival cruise company and may be sabotaging this cruise to draw more attention to their company. Sometimes, Boxcar Children books take twists, where the more obvious motive isn’t the culprit’s real motive, but in this case, the inheritance is directly related to the mystery. It’s more a question of who is helping Max’s cousin and what the Aldens can do to help Max reach the reading of the will. In this case, the Aldens get the crew of the ship to help them with their plan to outwit and catch the saboteur.

Boxcar Children Mystery Cruise chef

This is also one of those books where the Boxcar Children are given the opportunity to do things that most children in real life would never been allowed to do. Isaac, one of the chefs on the ship, is charmed by Benny and his love of food, and he invites him to visit the kitchen with his siblings to get free samples of different pastries and desserts. The children ask if they can help out in the kitchen in return for this special favor, and Isaac agrees. In real life, I don’t think most professional kitchens would just allow random kids to visit or to actually help with cooking. Professional kitchens have to maintain health standards, and people who work there have food handlers’ licenses. These things went over my head when I was a kid, but in some ways, they annoy me a little now.

One of the themes of the Boxcar Children books is that the Aldens are hard workers and are incredibly capable, even though they’re young. They often make it a point to earn any special treats or privileges they get or help out without being paid. I think it was the authors’ way of emphasizing the value of hard work. However, it bothers me now because situations like this in these books are very contrived, not things that real life kids would be given the opportunity to do, and probably not things they would even be allowed to do if they asked. Sometimes, the jobs the Alden kids get are due to their wealthy grandfather’s friends and connections, but other times, like this, it’s for no apparent reason. Benny just really liked the food, so they got an invitation from the chef.

Posted on by TracyC

Hattie and the Wild Waves

Hattie and the Wild Waves story and pictures by Barbara Cooney, 1990.

Young Hattie grows up as part of a wealthy family in a red brick house with beautiful woodwork because her father is in the woodwork business. She comes from a family of German immigrants living in New York around the turn of the last century. When she and her siblings start talking about what they want to do when they’re grown up, Hattie says that she wants to be a painter. At first, the others think she means painting houses, but what she actually means is that she wants to be an artist.

While Hattie’s siblings make life hard for the series of nursemaids who come to look after them (and are ultimately fired for reacting to their teasing) and play cards with the cook and maid, Hattie likes to spend her time drawing. The cook’s daughter admires her drawings. Hattie never minds it when she’s confined to bed with a cold because it just gives her more time to draw.

When Hattie’s relative come to visit, they always have a big dinner, and they admire a painting that Hattie’s grandfather painted years ago called Cleopatra’s Barge. However, Hattie’s father prefers a drawing that Hattie made of a barge because he thinks it looks more seaworthy. Hattie knows that the people on her mother’s side of the family tend to be musicians and artists. Hattie’s mother is one of the musical members of the family. She teaches Hattie and her sister how to play the piano and how to sew, but Hattie never does either of these very well.

The family spends their summers at a summer house at Far Rockaway with their relatives. The adults like to gather on the veranda and talk, the women sewing and knitting. Sometimes, they go sailing in their boat. Hattie absorbs the details of everything she sees at the seaside and paints pictures.

Hattie loves their summer house, but then, her father sells it and buys a bigger summer house on Long Island. Hattie’s brother and sister think it sounds exciting because it will be like a castle, but Hattie thinks she will miss the wild waves of Far Rockaway.

Their new summer house is incredible. The children ride horses there and have tennis parties. Hattie’s sister is now old enough to have suitors. While everyone is busy with her sister’s suitors and later, her sister’s wedding plans, Hattie takes walks by herself and finds new things to paint.

Hattie’s life continues to change, but she stays true to her dreams, joining the Art Institute to become the painter she’s always wanted to be. Her mother thinks that she will be like her grandfather, but Hattie knows that she will be her own artist.

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

My Reaction

Some aspects of the story are similar to Miss Rumphius, another book by Barbara Cooney about a young girl growing up around the turn of the century who has very definite ambitions early in life. Miss Rumphius’s life ambitions aren’t quite the same as Hattie’s, but they each know what they want to do with their lives from an early age and find their own way of adding beauty to the world.

This is a very calm and relaxing story about a girl with a strong ambition early in life to be an artist. She comes from a wealthy family, so she grows up in charming homes and summer houses, surrounded by beauty and with a family that includes other artists, so her family isn’t opposed to her ambition. There are changes that come in the girl’s life as she and her siblings grow up, but nothing tragic or traumatic happens to her. This is a book where readers can enjoy the beautiful atmosphere and artwork.

The author based the story on her own mother, Mae Evelyn Bossert, although the girl in the story is called by a different name. The hotel where the family lives at the end of the story is the Hotel Bossert, which Barbara Cooney’s grandfather built and which was the place where she was born. There are German words and phrases sprinkled throughout the story because this is an immigrant family, and they speak at least some German to each other. Readers can generally tell by context what the characters are saying.

Posted on by TracyC

Jessie’s Island

Jessie’s Island by Sheryl McFarlane, illustrated by Sheena Lott, 1992.

Jessie cousin, Thomas, thinks that life must be dull on the island where she lives because there are so many things to do in the city that her island doesn’t have, like arcades, museums, and concerts. However, Jessie’s mother decides to invite Thomas for a visit so he can see what life on the island is really like.

Much of the story takes the form of letters between the two cousins, first where Thomas brags about all the things there are to do in the city and then a letter from Jessie to Thomas, telling him all the things she will show him when he comes to visit.

Jessie describes animals, like bald eagles, seals, and killer whales. There also an old, abandoned cabin to explore that has trees growing through the roof. They can also climb trees, pick berries, go out in a canoe, dig for clams, and go fishing.

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

My Reaction

This book is fun because it points out that, no matter where you live, there are things to do and see that you can’t do and see everywhere else. It’s true that the island doesn’t have the shopping malls and museums that the city where Thomas lives has, but it has other things that Thomas can’t experience in the city. The natural environment provides interesting sights, entertainment, and scope for the imagination! Just because their environments are different doesn’t mean that there’s less to do or appreciate.

The pictures in this book are beautiful watercolor paintings that take up whole pages. I love the way the illustrator captured the colors and scenery of the island!

Posted on by TracyC

Basket Moon

Basket Moon by Mary Lyn Ray, illustrated by Barbara Cooney, 1999.

An eight-year-old boy lives in the countryside with his parents, and his father makes baskets to sell in the town of Hudson in New York. The boy has never been to town before, and he wants to go, but his father always says he’s too young.

His father has taught him which trees are best for wood to make baskets, and he watches his father and the other men who live in the area gathering it. He’s also watched his father weaving baskets, and he starts to weave baskets of his own. When he turns nine years old, his father decides that he’s old enough to go to town with him to sell the baskets.

They sell their baskets to a hardware store, and they buy some supplies their family needs. The boy marvels at all the new sights around him. However, as he and his father are heading home, a man teases them about being hillbillies who only know how to make baskets. The boy’s father ignores them, but the boy is bothered by what the man said.

For a time, the boy no longer wants to make baskets, thinking that it’s something that only hillbillies do, like the man in town said. However, when the boy kicks over stacks of his father’s baskets in anger, they don’t break when they fall, and he sees that his father makes strong, high quality baskets. His mother and one of the other men who works with the boy’s father talk to him about how they learned the art of basket making from the trees and the wind. The trees and the wind never seemed to talk to the boy before, but when he really listens, he begins to understand what the men mean.

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

My Reaction

I like books about traditional crafts and lesser-known pieces of history. In the back of this book, there’s an author’s note about the history of making baskets among the country people around Hudson, New York. Sometimes, these country people came into town to sell their baskets, but the townspeople were also somewhat leery of them. The wooded countryside around the town was spooky to the townspeople, and there were a lot of stories about frightening things that lurked there. The author points out that this is the area where the stories of Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow were set. The time period of the story is indefinite although it looks like it might be set around the late 1800s or early 1900s. The author’s note says that the art of making baskets in the area started dying out in the mid-20th century because people were using different types of containers, such as paper bags, plastic containers, and cardboard boxes. However, the traditional baskets were made very study, and surviving examples of this functional folk art still exist in collections and museums.

One of the themes of book is being in touch with nature, which is what the adults in the story really mean when they talk about hearing the wind and the trees speak to them. In the end, the boy thinks he literally hears the wind calling to him, but I think it’s supposed to be a metaphor for him getting in touch with nature and with his craft. His family and the others around them are country-dwelling people, and some of the townspeople look down on them for living out in the countryside, away from the society, amenities, and business of the town, but the country-dwelling adults are comfortable with themselves and with their lives. They realize that they know things about nature and about their craft that the townspeople don’t know.

It did occur to me that the townspeople probably wouldn’t know how to make their own baskets if they had to do it themselves. We don’t think that much about baskets today, although we still use them sometimes, frequently as a form of decoration. In those days, though, the baskets were functional home necessities for carrying and storing food and other items. The townspeople in the story buy their baskets from these makers in the countryside because they are the ones who have necessary skills and knowledge to make strong, high-quality baskets that the people in the town need, whether or not the townspeople truly appreciate the work and skill that went into them. Part of what the author’s note points out is that the baskets were of such high quality that some of them have long out-lived their original makers and users. Things of quality last.

Posted on by TracyC

The Whispering Cloth

The Whispering Cloth: A Refugee’s Story written by Pegi Deitz Shea, illustrated by Anita Riggio, and stitched by You Yang, 1995.

Mai and her family are Hmong refugees from Laos, living in the refugee camp of Ban Vinai in Thailand. Some of her relatives have gone to the United States, but Mai and her grandmother are still waiting in the refugee camp. Mai’s parents are dead, and Mai doesn’t really remember her family’s life in Laos. Almost as far back as she can remember, she’s always lived in the refugee camp. She only has vague memories of her parents’ deaths and how she and her grandmother fled to the refugee camp.

Mai’s grandmother teaches her how to do embroidery, and she begins helping her grandmother make pa’ndau, a kind of tapestry that tells a story. Together, she and her grandmother pa’ndau to sell to traders for money. They hope to use the money to get out of the refugee camp and join their relatives in the United States.

Their pa’ndau tapestries have beautiful floral borders and images that tell a story. Mai asks her grandmother if she can do one all by herself and if he grandmother will tell her a story she could use. Her grandmother says that she’ll be ready to do a pa’ndau of her own when she has a story of her own to tell.

As Mai thinks about how much she misses her parents, she realizes that she does have a story to tell in her own pa’ndau. She begins embroidering a pa’ndau that tells the story of her parents’ deaths and how her grandmother carried her away in a basket, fleeing as soldiers shot at them. She embroiders their arrival at the refugee camp, and the people and things she sees there.

When she asks her grandmother how much money they can get for her pa’ndau, she says that they cannot sell it because it isn’t finished yet. At first, Mai thinks that there isn’t anything more to tell because they’re still living in the camp, and she hasn’t experienced life beyond it. Then, she realizes that she can embroider the life she hopes to have when they finally join her cousins, based on the things they’ve told her in their letters.

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

My Reaction

The foreword to the story explains that the Hmong people of Laos were driven out by the Lao Communist government, and many of them were killed before they had a chance to leave. The government drove them out because they sided with the Americans fighting in Laos and Vietnam. Many people, like Mai’s family, found refuge in refugee camps like Ban Vinai, waiting until they could find another country willing to take them on a permanent basis. However, at the time this story was published in 1995, the Ban Vinai camp was set to close. The refugees there were set to be either transferred to different refugee camps or sent back to Laos, to face whatever the government there had in store for them. Understandably, many of them didn’t want to be sent back to the country they had escaped from. This article explains more about the generation of children who, like Mai, grew up in the refugee camp, disconnected from the lives their parents knew in Laos, and with ambitions to go to other places, like the United States, to start new lives.

Although this is a picture book, there are violent themes of war in the story, so I wouldn’t recommend it for very young children. The pictures in the book are beautiful, an unusual combination of paintings and actual embroidery. The artist who did the embroidery, bringing Mai’s tapestry to life, was also a refugee in camps in Thailand before coming to the United States in 1992.

I thought this was an interesting way to introduce readers to part of the history of the Hmong people and the fallout of the Vietnam War through a traditional Hmong artform/craft that tells stories in a unique way.

Posted on by TracyC

Eleanor

Eleanor story and pictures by Barbara Coooney, 1996.

This picture book tells the story of Eleanor Roosevelt’s early life. Eleanor Roosevelt (full name Anna Eleanor Roosevelt) was the niece of Theodore Roosevelt (called Uncle Ted in the book), and later, in life, the wife of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (a distant cousin) and First Lady of the United States. This book is about her childhood, so it doesn’t explain about her husband or marriage until the Afterword at the end.

Eleanor’s home life wasn’t particularly happy. She was a disappointment to her mother in a number of ways. Her mother had hoped for a boy, and she didn’t think Eleanor was a pretty baby. Her mother often called her “Granny” as a nickname because she was such a serious child and seemed rather old-fashioned looking, and she reminded her mother of an old woman. When Eleanor’s younger brothers were born, Eleanor often felt left out when her mother spent time with them.

Eleanor’s father loved her and enjoyed playing with her and spending time with her, but she didn’t get to see him often as she was growing up. Her father, Theodore Roosevelt’s brother, Elliot Roosevelt, was a traveler and socialite and later became estranged from his family. Still, although he wasn’t a particularly reliable person and wasn’t present much, Eleanor was very attached to him and sometimes felt like he was the only one who really loved her.

Much of Eleanor’s early life was spent with her nanny, who spoke to her in French, so she mastered the language at an early age. Eleanor was very shy, so she didn’t spend much time with other children. She did spend some time with relatives, too. Sometimes, she helped them with charitable projects, giving her a sense of caring for the less fortunate.

When Eleanor was eight years old, her mother died of diphtheria, and she and her little brothers went to live with her grandmother and the aunts and uncles who also lived with her. Her father had been living apart from the family at this time, but he returned after his wife’s death. After that, he would visit Eleanor sometimes and take her for outings. However, he was sometimes neglectful. The book explains that he died in a fall when Eleanor was nine years old.

Life with her grandmother was difficult for Eleanor because her grandmother made her wear old-fashioned clothes, she had a strict governess, and her aunts and uncles seldom paid attention to her because they were busy with their own work and projects. Other children didn’t think much of Eleanor because she was shy and wore old clothes. Sometimes, her cousin Corinny would join her for dinner, but Corinny never liked it because the house was so grim and silent.

Eleanor was happier when they would go to her grandmother’s summer house, Oak Terrace. At the summer house, she could play games, daydream, read, and catch tadpoles with her little brother Brudie. Sometimes, she would go out in the rowboat with one of her aunts. There were also times when she visited her Uncle Ted and his family. Sometimes, she would play with her cousin Alice Roosevelt because they were the same age, but Alice teased her dreadfully, and Eleanor often found her a little intimidating. Her relatives encouraged her to be brave and to do things that she found scary, but she often found it difficult to keep up with them and some of their daring stunts.

Eleanor was often considered the “ugly duckling” of the family, but things changed for her when her grandmother decided to send her to boarding school in England. She attended a school called Allenswood, and the headmistress, Mademoiselle Souvestre, became a mentor to her.

Thanks to the lessons in French from her former nanny, Eleanor excelled at boarding school. Because the school had a rule that the girls should only speak French at dinner, Eleanor was the only girl at first who felt comfortable talking, a rare change for her. Eleanor made friends with the other girls at school and was happy there. Mademoiselle Souvestre encouraged Eleanor’s sense of independence, opened her eyes to the world around her, took her along on trips to Europe, and advised her to get clothes made in Paris, ridding her of the clothes her grandmother made her wear. By the time she returned home from boarding school, Eleanor was happier and more confident than she had been before, and she credited Mademoiselle Souvestre for her influence.

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

My Reaction

I enjoyed this book for its focus on Eleanor Roosevelt’s childhood. Many books about famous people focus on what they did when the became famous, but I enjoyed seeing her as a shy, awkward child, when it didn’t seem obvious that she would one day be famous. By seeing how she grew up, I feel like I’ve come to understand more about her.

Eleanor Roosevelt came from a wealthy family, but her early life wasn’t very happy. She was deeply affected by her mother’s sense of disappointment in her for not being prettier and by her parents’ troubles and their separation from each other. She was orphaned at a young age, and one of her younger brothers also died not long after their mother. She often felt like she didn’t fit in with her family, and they didn’t seem to understand or appreciate her.

The book explains a little about her father’s estrangement from the family, but it doesn’t go into all the details or some of the dark reasons why. The truth was that he was an alcoholic. His alcoholism was the beginning of his strained family relationships, but then, he had an affair with a servant girl who worked for his wife and fathered a child by her. When that happened, Theodore Roosevelt had him forcibly removed from his family’s home and did his best to keep him away from his children as much as possible, even after his wife’s death. When the book says that Eleanor’s father died in a fall, that was a soft way of explaining it. The truth is that he committed suicide because he was drinking even more heavily after his wife and one of his sons died, and he was depressed about the rest of the family keeping him away from his remaining children.

I thought it was interesting that Eleanor really blossomed at boarding school. She had always been a shy girl, but she was very studious and spoke French, skills which suited boarding school life well. Boarding school encouraged her to spend more time around other girls her age and took her away from her family’s influence, giving her the opportunity to find herself and bond with other people. In particular, the headmistress of the school became her mentor and encouraged her to look at the world in new ways and to become the best version of herself.

Posted on by TracyC

Uncle Jed’s Barbershop

Uncle Jed’s Barbershop by Margaree King Mitchell, illustrated by James Ransome, 1993.

Sarah-Jean remembers her grandfather’s brother, Uncle Jed, and how he would travel to people’s houses to cut their hair during the 1920s and 1930s. He’s the only black barber in their area, so he cuts everybody’s hair in the black community. What he really wants is to own his own barbershop, with proper barbers’ chairs and equipment, but times are tough, and helping out his family means delaying his dream shop.

Everybody is poor in their town, so many people think Uncle Jed will never be able to get enough money to open a shop. However, even though things are tough and money is tight, Uncle Jed is willing to help out when he can. When little Sarah Jane develops a serious illness and needs an operation, Uncle Jed gives her father the money they need for her operation, saving her life.

Later, Uncle Jed loses his savings when the bank fails during the Great Depression, so he has to start saving all over again. Even though he has it hard during the Great Depression, Uncle Jed still helps other people, sometimes cutting hair for customers who can’t afford to pay him because they’re even worse off. He takes payment in whatever form they can offer, like garden vegetables or eggs.

Eventually, things improve, and Uncle Jed is able to afford his barbershop, and everybody comes to the opening. He acquired his shop toward the end of his life, so he doesn’t have it for long before his death, but he was still happy because he accomplished his goal and did something people didn’t think he’d be able to accomplish.

The book received the Coretta Scott King Award.

My Reaction

I thought it was a nice story. The ending seemed a little sad, that Uncle Jed didn’t live very long after finally acquiring his shop, but the book has an optimistic tone. Although Uncle Jed accomplished his life goal toward the end of his life, he did get to accomplish it and enjoy it before he died. It’s less important how long he got to enjoy it than the fact that he did enjoy it.

It took a long time for Uncle Jed to accomplish his goal of having his own barbershop, but I think it’s important to note that he had a pretty good life along the way. Even though he lost his savings in a bank failure, he had steady work through the Great Depression, and he was also able to help friends and relatives when they needed it. He had good relationships with his family and neighbors because of his helpfulness and generosity, and everybody shows up to congratulate him when he finally opens his shop.

This story takes place in the South during times of segregation, which enters the story when Sarah Jane is ill and needs to go to the hospital. Although her condition is serious, not only is her family sent to a segregated waiting room, they also have to wait until all the white patients are tended to before the doctor will even see them. The doctor also insists upon payment before performing the operation she desperately needs, the implication being that the doctor will let her die if he doesn’t get paid up front to save her. Before anybody think that this is an exaggeration, that a doctor would refuse to treat a sick child or save her life because of her race, even during the Jim Crow era South, no, it’s not an exaggeration at all. It was routine:

“It’s absolutely incredible how little organized resistance there was,” says Theodore Marmor, emeritus professor of public policy at Yale University and a key health policy adviser during the Johnson administration.

Before the passage of Medicare and Medicaid, Smith says, the healthcare system was tightly segregated. Hospitals in the South complied with Jim Crow laws, excluding blacks from hospitals reserved for whites or providing basement accommodations for them.

“There were a lot of black communities in the South that had basically no access to hospitals,” says Smith. “Most of the black births in Mississippi were at home. The infant and maternal mortality rates were hugely different for blacks and whites because of that.”

The surgeon who developed the practice of blood storage and blood transfusions, Charles Drew, was also an African American who lived in the early to mid-20th century. He died relatively young of serious injuries from a car accident in North Carolina. There was a popular rumor, which was repeated on an episode of the tv show MASH, that he would have survived if he hadn’t been refused treatment at the hospital because he was African American. The reality is that doctors did try to save him, but his injuries were simply too serious for him to be saved. However, the rumor developed and persisted because the reality also is that hospitals of this time were known to turn away black patients. They had done it to others, so it was completely credible that they could have also done that to Dr. Charles Drew, even if they didn’t do it in this particular case. The fact that this rumor was completely believable and consistent with the practices of Jim Crow hospitals is an indication of their general behavior and conditions. With that in mind, it is also believable and credible that the doctor in the story would have refused to see a seriously ill black child until all white patients were seen and also that he would have refused her life-saving treatment until being paid.

However, rather than lamenting about the prejudices and inequities of this time period, the story focuses on Uncle Jed as one of the good people. The doctor and hospital in the story are not only prejudiced, but their behavior also contrasts with Uncle Jed, who is willing to put off payment or accept lesser or alternate forms of payment for people who need his services but are too poor to pay. The emphasis of the story isn’t on how bad other people or circumstances were so much as how Uncle Jed made things better for everyone as best he could. It meant some sacrifices on his part, putting off his own goals and dreams, but Uncle Jed enjoyed a good life and good relationships with other people along the way and accomplished his goals in the end.

I also enjoyed the pictures in this story, showing the old-fashioned country and small town life in the early 20th century. The illustrator also did the illustrations for Aunt Flossie’s Hats (And Crab Cakes Later).

Posted on by TracyC

Ma Dear’s Aprons

Ma Dear’s Aprons by Patricia C. McKissack, illustrations by Floyd Cooper, 1997.

Young David Earl’s mother, called Ma Dear, has a different apron for every day of the week, and David can always tell what day it is and what the task of the day is by which one his mother is wearing.

On Monday, she likes to wear her blue apron because that’s wash day, and she keeps clothespins in the pocket of that apron. After she’s done with the laundry, she has time to talk to David Earl, and she tells him about his father, who died as a soldier.

On Tuesday, she wears her yellow apron, when she does her ironing. On Wednesday, they deliver the finished laundry to their clients, and Ma Dear gives David Earl a treat from the hidden “treasure pocket” in her green apron.

On Thursday, Ma Dear wears her pink apron, and they pick vegetables and visit people who are sick or elderly at their homes. On Friday, Ma Dear cleans the house of another family, so she wears her brown apron. David Earl comes along, and she sings to him while she works. Saturday is for baking pies to sell, so she wears her flowered apron. She also gives David Earl a bath on Saturdays.

The best day of all, though, is Sunday. Ma Dear doesn’t work on Sunday, so she doesn’t wear an apron

My Reaction

The book starts with an author’s note, explaining that the characters in this story are based on her own family. “Ma Dear” was the nickname of her great-grandmother, Leanna, and Leanna was a single mother in Alabama during the early 1900s, who earned money by doing laundry, cooking, and cleaning for other people, like Ma Dear in the story. The story is about the family stories told to Patricia C. McKissack about her great-grandmother and how she made time for her children, even when she was tired from working hard. The aprons in the story are like one that Patricia McKissack inherited that used to belong to Leanna.

The author’s note, which I would have probably ignored when I was kid because I was too eager to get into the story, made this story better for me. I liked the explanation that this was a family story about a real person. The aprons are a device to help readers connect to memories of the real Ma Dear, similar to how the girls in Aunt Flossie’s Hats (And Crab Cakes Later) hear family stories and memories because they’re associated with the hats in their aunt’s collection. It’s a sweet way to share family memories.

I also like the soft, old-fashioned pictures that accompany the story. Their softness and sometimes slightly blurred quality help create the mood of memories.

Posted on by TracyC · 1 Comment

More Than Anything Else

More Than Anything Else by Marie Bradby, pictures by Chris K. Soentpiet, 1995.

Young Booker lives with his family in a little cabin, and every morning, before the sun is up, he goes to work with his father and brother. They work at the saltworks, shoveling salt into barrels, and it’s hard, tiring work.

There is something on young Booker’s mind, though. More than anything else, he wants to learn how to read. One evening, he sees a black man reading aloud from a newspaper to a group of listeners, and he wishes that he could read like that himself. It inspires him that the man is black, like himself, showing that reading isn’t just something for white people.

Booker tells his mother how badly he wants to learn to read. His mother can’t read herself, but somehow, she manages to find a book for him to study. Booker tries to figure out how to read by studying the letters in the book, but he just can’t figure out it by himself.

Then, Booker thinks of someone who could help him: the man who was reading the newspaper. Before Booker can learn to read, he needs some help from someone who already knows.

My Reaction

The boy in the story is a young Booker T. Washington. The book doesn’t refer to him by his full name in the story because it’s told from his perspective and because, when he was young, he was never referred to by a surname and was only known as Booker. We only get his first name, but the book summary makes it clear that it is Booker T. Washington, the famous African American educator, who lived from 1856 to 1915 and was the first principal of the Tuskegee Normal School, which later became Tuskegee University. He was born into slavery, but he was freed as a child during the Civil War.

I’m not sure whether the description of how he learned to read from this story actually happened in real life. From what I’ve read, he learned to read at a school managed by the Freedmen’s Bureau. Another account that I read said that he wanted to learn to read after seeing white children going to school and that his mother got him a book that taught him basic reading and writing. I don’t know whether he was ever inspired by seeing a black man reading a newspaper, but I couldn’t find anything about it. Because I’ve read some differing accounts, I think that either Booker’s exact inspiration for learning to read is unknown or that there were multiple influences in his early education, with different people putting emphasis on different aspects.

I liked the story, although it doesn’t explain more about Booker T. Washington’s life. I think it would have been more educational if it explained to readers what he did when he grew up, showing how he became a teacher and influenced others’ lives and education. It’s a little disappointing that kids can read the story as it is without really understanding who Booker T. Washington was and what he did. A section of historical information in the back of the book would have helped add context to the story. The story in the book simply ends at the point where Booker learns to write his own name, but I think that showing how this simple accomplishment in basic reading and writing started him on a path to greater accomplishments.