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The Unbreakable Code

UnbreakableCode

The Unbreakable Code by Sara Hoagland Hunter, illustrated by Julia Miner, 1996.

A young boy, John, is upset because his mother has recently remarried, to a man from Minnesota.  Now, John is faced with the prospect of moving to Minnesota, and he doesn’t want to go.  He would much rather stay with his grandfather on his farm on the Navajo Reservation.  His grandfather points out that he’ll return in the summer, but that hardly seems good enough.  Then, his grandfather tells him that he’ll be okay because “You have an unbreakable code.”

UnbreakableCodeJohnGrandfather

John asks what his grandfather means by that, and he says that the Navajo language is the unbreakable code.  John worries that he’ll forget how to speak Navajo, but his grandfather says that he never did even though he had to attend a government boarding school at a young age and that the language saved his life during World War II.  John’s grandfather was a code talker.

John’s grandfather tells John the story of how he became a Code Talker, starting with when he was at boarding school.  The purpose of the government “Indian Schools” was to assimilate Native Americans into white American culture.  They were known for forcing their students to abandon traditional clothing, cut their hair, take English names, and speak only English.  John’s grandfather describes having to chew on soap whenever he was caught speaking Navajo.  He was only allowed to return home during the summer to help his family with their sheep and crops.

UnbreakableCodeBoardingSchool

Then, when he was in his teens, during World War II, he heard an announcement on the radio that the Marines were looking for young Navajo men who could speak both English and Navajo.  Seeing it has a chance to escape, he ran away from school and enlisted.  After life at a harsh boarding school, the military marches and drills were no problem, and all of the Navajos already had wilderness survival skills.

After they had completed basic training, they were told that they were needed for a secret mission in the Pacific.  The Japanese had intercepted American radio transmissions and broken the codes they were using.   The Marines wanted Navajo speakers because the language was almost unknown outside of the United States, not many non-Navajos had ever learned it, and at that point in its history, the language had not been recorded in writing, so there was no way that the Japanese could research it and learn it.  The Marines and code talkers developed a system of code words in Navajo and military terms to use, so it wasn’t as simple as just speaking the language plainly.  The system was highly effective.

UnbreakableCodeTalker

John’s grandfather goes on to tell John about how bloody the war was and how his life was constantly at risk.  Once, another American soldier even mistook him for a Japanese spy because he didn’t know what language he was speaking.  Fortunately, one of his friends intervened and saved his life.

UnbreakableCodeWar

The code was never broken during the war, and John’s grandfather eventually made it home safely.  However, the code talkers were not hailed as heroes because, for many years, the government wanted to keep the code a secret.  No one was allowed to talk about it.  John’s grandfather was glad to return to a peaceful life on his farm.

UnbreakableCodeReturnHome

His grandfather’s story gives John the courage that he needs to face moving to a new place.  After all, his grandfather had been to far more frightening places and faced them with courage.  Knowing his family’s history gives John a new sense of his own identity and the knowledge that his identity and language will remain with him wherever he goes.

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

My Reaction and Additional Information

Even though this is a picture book, it isn’t really a book for very young children.  There are descriptions of the blood and violence of the war that would be more appropriate for older children.  There is a brief note from the author at the beginning of the book that explains a little about World War II and code talkers, and at the end of the book, there are charts that demonstrate how the code worked.  This book is an a good way to introduce students to the topic of code talkers if they have never heard of them before.

UnbreakableCodeTable1
UnbreakableCodeTable2

In modern times, there is a written form for the Navajo language, and since I grew up in Arizona, the colleges I attended had classes in Navajo for those who wanted to study the language.  I used to see the books for the classes in the school book stores, although I never studied Navajo myself.  I met one of the code talkers once when he came to speak at our college.  I believe that there are a few who are still alive at the time of this writing.

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The Courage of Sarah Noble

SarahNoble

The Courage of Sarah Noble by Alice Dalgliesh, 1954.

SarahNobleCookingIn 1707, a man living in Massachusetts named John Noble bought some land in Connecticut which had recently been purchased from a tribe of Indians (Native Americans) living nearby.  He planned to move his family there and start a new homestead, but with his children so young and the baby somewhat sickly, it was decided that he would travel to the new land ahead of his family and start building a new house there.  The only family member to accompany him was his eight-year-old daughter, Sarah, who came along to cook for him.  Before they leave home, Sarah’s mother tells her to “Keep up your courage,” something which Sarah repeats to herself from time to time.

SarahNobleFamilyOn the way to their new property, Sarah and her father have to camp out in the wilderness, although they do manage to stay one night with a family called Robinson.  The Robinson boys tease Sarah, saying that where she’s going, the Indians will probably chop off her head and eat her or do other horrible things.  Their sister tells Sarah not to worry because her brothers just like to tease.  Sarah’s father and Mistress Robinson also reassure her that the Indians in the area are friendly and that they sold their land knowing that new people would come there.

The Robinsons make Sarah uncomfortable.  Sarah later says to her father that there doesn’t seem to be love in the Robinson house. Her father agrees with the observation and says that the Robinsons should learn to watch their words and teach their children to do the same, adding “there are people in this world who do not help others along the way, Sarah, while there are those who do. In our home all will be treated with kindness-always, Sarah. The Indians, too, and they will not harm us.”  Although the Robinsons allowed the Nobles to stay the night in their house, they didn’t exactly make them feel welcome, and both of them realize that the things the boys were saying and their rough manner were clues to the Robinsons’ real attitudes and the kinds of things the parents talk about when no one else is around.

SarahNobleReadingWhen Sarah and her father reach the land that is to be their new home, they take refuge in a hollow place in a hillside, and John begins building their new house.  However, Sarah is still very nervous and lonely.  Then, while Sarah sits, reading the Bible, some curious Indian children from the nearby tribe come to see her.  She reads a Bible story aloud to them, and they listen, but she when she finishes the story, she can tell that they didn’t understand what she was saying.  Sarah can’t understand them, either, when they try to talk to her.  She gets impatient and snaps at them for not knowing English, and they run away from her.  Sarah is sorry about that because she realizes that she shouldn’t have been so irritable, and even if they couldn’t talk to each other, it was still nice to have people around.

Fortunately, the Indian children come back to see her again, and they become friends.  She tries to teach them English, but they don’t make much progress at first.  Even without being able to talk to each other, though, they can still do things like picking berries together.

SarahNobleNativeAmericanChildren

Sarah’s father also becomes friends with an Indian he nicknames “Tall John” because he can’t figure out how to pronounce his real name.  John and Tall John trade with each other, and John allows Sarah to visit Tall John’s home to play with his children.

When John finishes building the house and it is time for him to go and fetch the rest of their family, he decides that it would be better for Sarah not to make the long journey again, so he leaves her in the care of Tall John and his family.

SarahNobleStaysBehind

At first, Sarah is a little worried about living with the Indians.  Being friends and visiting during the day is one thing, but what would it be like to actually live with them?  Although Sarah likes her Indian friends, it’s obvious that the stories that she’s heard all her life about “savage” Indians bother her, and she still has some prejudices and misconceptions to overcome.  There are also the worries that often accompany children who are staying with someone other than their parents: what if something bad happens, her father never comes back, and she never sees her family again?  Sarah worries that, even though the tribe that lives nearby is nice, there are other Indians who aren’t, and some of them might attack while her father is away.

Fortunately, things go well during Sarah’s time with the Indians.  She finds some of their habits strange, and she notices that Tall John’s children (nicknamed “Small John” and “Mary”) find some of her habits strange, like the clothes she wears and the way she prays at night.  Tall John’s family gives Sarah some deerskin clothing, like they wear, and some moccasins, which she finds surprisingly comfortable.  There is a scare about a possible attack, but that passes without incident, and Sarah ends up enjoying her time with her Indian friends, playing games and participating in chores with them.  Tall John and his wife treat Sarah like one of their own children.

When it’s time for her to rejoin her family, Sarah changes back to her old clothes, but they no longer seem as comfortable to her, and she decides to keep wearing the moccasins.  A little of her Indian friends has rubbed off on her, and she is a different person because of her experiences.  Sarah’s mother expresses some concern about her daughter having lived with “savages” (her word), but Sarah is quick to defend them, saying that they aren’t savages and that they’re friends.  Her father agrees that Tall John and his family are good people who took good care of Sarah.

This book is a Newbery Honor Book.  It is currently available online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).

My Reaction

Throughout the story, various characters have obvious prejudices about American Indians, and the language used isn’t what we would use today (ex. “Indians” instead of “Native Americans” and nobody says “squaw” anymore (or shouldn’t – white people used to think it simply meant “woman” but it has other connotations as well, better to just say “woman” when that’s what you mean)), but these are fitting with the time period when the story takes place.  The overall attitude of the story, especially Sarah’s evolving attitudes toward her new Native American friends, is good.  Sarah begins by being frightened because of all of the scary things people have told her about Indians, but once she begins spending time with them and living among them, she sees that the things she heard before weren’t true, and she values their friendship.  The parts where characters behave in prejudiced or condescending ways are uncomfortable, but you can’t have a story about improvement without someone behaving or thinking wrongly in the first place.  At least, that was my interpretation.  I understand that there are others who are more concerned.  At the end of the story, Sarah’s mother doesn’t seem convinced about the Indians, but I like to think that experience may change her as it did Sarah.  I think Sarah’s mother represents where Sarah came from but not where she ends up.  I think it’s important to explain to children the historical context of the story and put the emphasis on Sarah’s changing opinions.  Sarah’s experiences help her to see the truth about her new neighbors.

The author’s note in the beginning of the book explains that the story of Sarah Noble is based on the life of the real Sarah Noble, who did accompany her father to the family’s new homestead when the community of New Milford was forming in order to cook for him while he built the family’s new house.  The real Sarah did live with the nearby tribe of Native Americans for a time, although the author of the story had to invent some of the details of her stay.  It also says that the real Sarah maintained a friendship with the Indian the book refers to as “Tall John.”  The real Sarah become a school teacher as an adult, as the Sarah in the story said that she wanted.  She also married and had children.

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Molly’s Pilgrim

MollysPilgrim

Molly’s Pilgrim by Barbara Cohen, 1983.

Molly has been unhappy since her family moved to the smaller town of Winter Hill, New Jersey so that her father could get a better job. In New York City, there were other Jewish girls like her, and she didn’t feel so strange and out-of-place. The Winter Hollow girls don’t understand her at all and don’t like her. Molly’s family fled Russia to escape persecution, and they’ve only been living in America for about a year.  Molly still has a Yiddish accent and doesn’t quite speak proper English yet.  Molly is constantly teased about the way she talks and her unfamiliarity with American habits.

MollysPilgrimSchool

One girl in particular, Elizabeth, makes up rhymes to make fun of Molly, even following her home from school like a creepy stalker, to continue singing them at her. The other girls follow Elizabeth’s lead because they kind of admire her and because she is always giving them candy.

MollysPilgrimBullies

Then, one day, the girls’ teacher begins teaching them about Thanksgiving. Of course, Elizabeth makes a big deal about the fact that Molly has never heard about Thanksgiving before. But, Molly finds the story about the pilgrims interesting. The teacher says that for their Thanksgiving activity, instead of making paper turkeys like they usually do, the children are going to make clothespin dolls to look like American Indians and pilgrims, so they can create a scene like the first Thanksgiving.

MollysPilgrimClass

When Molly gets home and explains the assignment to her mother, she has to tell her mother what a “pilgrim” is. She explains it by saying that they were people who came from across the ocean in search of religious freedom. Her mother understands that and offers to help Molly with the doll.

However, when Molly sees what her mother has done with the doll, she is worried. The doll is beautiful, but her mother has dressed the doll in the clothes of a Russian refugee, like Molly’s family, not in the traditional Puritan garb of the pilgrims. At first, Molly is sure that she’ll be teased more than ever at school when she shows up with a doll wearing the wrong clothes and that people will think that she’s stupid for not understanding how pilgrims dressed.

MollysPilgrimDoll

But, Molly’s mother is correct in pointing out that their family are modern pilgrims, coming to America for the same reasons that the original pilgrims did. Molly does get some teasing from Elizabeth (that’s not a surprise, since it’s Elizabeth, after all), but when the teacher asks Molly about the meaning of her doll, it leads everyone to a better understanding, both of the holiday and where Molly and her family fit in with their new country and its history.

Molly’s teacher points out that the holiday of Thanksgiving wasn’t entirely an original idea that the pilgrims invented all by themselves but that they took their inspiration from a much older Jewish tradition from the Old Testament.  Human beings do not exist in a vacuum, and we all regularly take ideas that we’re exposed to and build on them in our own lives.  Although Puritans were generally known for their belief in religious “purity” (hence, their name) and noted for their intolerance to different religions and beliefs, they also strongly believed in education, which frequently involves taking past ideas and knowledge and applying them toward new situations.  Their Thanksgiving celebration was just an example of that, an older idea that they used for their own purpose, adapted to the lives of the people who adopted the tradition.  It was their celebration, but not their sole intellectual property.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).

There is also a sequel to this book called Make a Wish, Molly, in which Molly learns about birthday parties in the United States.

My Reaction and Additional Information

The book doesn’t mention it, but the word “pilgrim” itself is also much older than the early Puritan colonists in America.  Before the development of the America colonies, it referred to any religious traveler on their way to a holy place, and many people still use it in that sense.  A person on a pilgrimage could be just about anyone from anywhere going to anywhere else as long as the journey has spiritual significance.  The Puritan colonists used that term for themselves to emphasize the reasons why they were seeking new homes in a new land.  For them, it was a kind of pilgrimage to a place where they could start again.  Molly’s family came to America in search of religious freedom, just as the Puritans did.  Their journeys weren’t quite the same, but they shared a common purpose and ended up in the same place (more or less).

By showing the links between Molly and her family and the pilgrims, Molly’s mother and her teacher help the other students to understand that Molly really does fit in, that her being there makes sense, and that she has a place in their class and in their celebration of Thanksgiving.

This story was also made into a short film. I remember seeing it in school when I was a kid in the early 1990s.  I checked on YouTube, and there are trailers posted for this film.  One thing that I hadn’t remembered from when I was a kid was that the time period of the book was earlier than the film.  In the film, the characters are shown to be contemporary with the time the film was made, but the style of dress of the girls in the book’s pictures and the things that Molly’s mother says about why the family left Russia indicate that the book probably takes place during the late 19th century or early 20th century, possibly around the same time as the events in the famous play/movie Fiddler on the Roof.

As a side note, if you’re wondering why the girl is named Molly, which doesn’t sound particularly Russian, Molly is typically a nickname for Mary and other, similar-sounding, related names.  Molly’s mother also calls her Malkeleh, which may be her original name or perhaps another variant, if her original name was Malka, as another reviewer suggests.

In spite of the warning on that last site I linked to about reading a book with your child that may be covered in class, I say to go ahead and read it anyway.  It’s hard to say what books may or may not be used in classes by individual teachers, and if your child’s teacher doesn’t happen to use this one, it’s still a good story.  Perhaps just warn your child not to say something that would spoil the ending for their classmates who haven’t read it yet.

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Blossom Culp and the Sleep of Death

BlossomSleepDeathBlossom Culp and the Sleep of Death by Richard Peck, 1986.

This book starts shortly after the previous book in the series ends.  After Blossom’s old history teacher was run out of town for his scandalous behavior, he was replaced by Miss Fairweather.  Miss Fairweather is a tough, no-nonsense woman who pushes her students to study hard and take history seriously.  Unexpectedly, she comes to appreciate Blossom, an outcast from a poor family, because Blossom demonstrates some knowledge of Ancient Egypt.  Little does Miss Fairweather know that Blossom’s comments in class were inspired by one of the visions that Blossom occasionally gets because of her psychic gifts.

Blossom experiences a visitation from the spirit of an Ancient Egyptian princess who says that she needs Blossom’s help.  Years ago, her mummy and some precious objects were stolen from her tomb.  The princess doesn’t seem to know exactly where her “earthly form” is now, but she’s sure that it’s somewhere nearby.  She’s very concerned because she senses that archaeologists in Egypt are digging to find her tomb and knows that when they finally reach it, they will discover that she isn’t there.  Rather than being concerned about her tomb being violated by the archaeologists, the princess senses that they are searching for her remains in order to venerate them, that if they find her mummy, they will take it to a place of great beauty where it will be treated with the utmost care and respect (a museum).  She wants that and fears that she will miss her chance at the kind of immortality that this form of glorification, care, and study will provide.  So, she asks Blossom to find her earthly remains and inform the searchers of her true whereabouts.  At first, Blossom has no idea how she can accomplish that, but the princess threatens her with a true Egyptian curse if she doesn’t try.

Then, Blossom receives a clue to the mystery in the form of a beautiful Egyptian scarab that her mother found one day while she was out scavenging.  If Blossom can find the place where her mother found the jewel, she can also find the princess’s mummy.  Fortunately, Miss Fairweather has assigned the class special projects about Ancient Egypt, and she is thrilled when Blossom says that she wants to study grave robbers.  Blossom sees this as a good way to collect some extra information about grave robbers that she can use to find the princess’s mummy as well as get a good grade in Miss Fairweather’s class.  It also proves to be an excellent way to draw Alexander Armsworth into her search for the mummy.

Alexander still denies to Blossom that he has real psychic abilities like hers, even after their previous adventures together.  He insists that it was just a phase that they were going through, one that he wants to leave behind.  He’s been busy flirting with Letty, the class snob, and he’s trying hard to get into a prestigious fraternity so that he can give Letty his fraternity pin.  Not only does Blossom think that the boys in the fraternity are a bunch of idiots who do stupid things, but the idea of Alexander giving Letty his pin as a sign of their relationship is just sickening.

Blossom is reluctant to admit her real feelings for Alexander, but the two of them are close in ways that Letty and Alexander never will be because of their shared abilities and adventures, and Blossom has a sense that their futures will be intertwined as well.  Alexander is angry that Blossom is roping her into yet another supernatural escapade, but he has to go along with her project idea because he has already gotten on Miss Fairweather’s bad side and needs to do well on the project to save his grade in class.

Along with the supernatural adventure, there is also a look into the past, the world of 1910s America as well as Ancient Egypt.  First, there are the traditions of stunts associated with Alexander’s initiation into his fraternity and the tradition of giving a girl a fraternity pin as a precursor to engagement (“engaged to be engaged”).  Then, they discover that Miss Fairweather is a suffragette, which is the reason why she left her previous teaching job.  Her feminist ideals cause problems for her in her new, small town when they become known, but with Blossom’s help, she wins over some of the influential women in town as well as a male admirer.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.

Posted on by TracyC

Molly Learns a Lesson

MollyLesson

Molly Learns a Lesson by Valerie Tripp, 1986.

MollyLessonHideoutIn 1944, everyone is concerned with finding ways to help the war effort.  In Molly’s third grade class at school, her teacher announces that their class is invited to participate in the Lend-a-Hand contest.  The class will be divided in half, and each half will compete against the other to find the best way to help the war effort.  The class decides to make the contest boys against girls, and Molly immediately starts trying to figure out a spectacular idea that will impress everyone.  Unfortunately, one of the other girls says that the girls in class should knit socks for soldiers, and the teacher accepts that as the goal for the girls’ team, before Molly can say anything.

MollyLessonCollectingMolly is appalled at the idea of knitting socks.  It’s partly that she had wanted to be the one to come up with the best idea, and it’s also partly because she has tried knitting before, and she knows that socks are difficult, time-consuming projects, especially for beginning knitters.  Molly is sure that the other girls are going to find it too difficult and that, in the end, they’ll have nothing to show for their project.  Her friend Susan doesn’t think that the project sounds so bad, but Linda also dreads the idea of knitting because she’s not very good at it.  Talking it over in their secret hideout in the storage area of Molly’s garage, the three girls decide that they’ll work on a secret project by themselves, something that will save the day when the other girls’ project falls through.

At first, the idea of doing something in secret sounds exciting.  However, coming up with a good secret project and seeing it through turn out to be more difficult than they expected.  All they can think of to do is to collect bottle tops for scrap metal, and as they go door to door in the rain, asking for them, they learn that most people have already given theirs to the Boy Scouts who were collecting scrap metal.  Tired, wet, and discouraged, the Molly and her friends decide to look in on the other girls and see what progress they’re making.

MollyLessonBlanketThe other girls are certainly a lot more comfortable, knitting inside.  However, as Molly predicted, they are finding their project harder than they thought it would be.  None of them has completed an entire sock yet; all they really have are the square shapes at the top of the sock, and they’re getting discouraged.  That’s when Molly gets a better idea: why not take the squares they’ve made and turn them into a blanket?  Simple squares are much easier to make than socks, they can make a lot of them quickly with everyone helping, and the girls who can’t knit well can sew the squares together.  A blanket is still a good war effort project because Molly’s father has told her that the hospital where he works is always in need of blankets for the wounded soldiers.  With this new idea, the other girls become much more excited, and they make more progress.

The theme of this story is that working together and sharing ideas benefits everyone more than working alone or trying to be too competitive.  Molly’s first ideas weren’t very good by themselves, and neither was the sock-knitting idea.  However, when Molly and her friends join the other girls, Molly finds a way to help them build on the idea that they already had (knitting) and take it in a better direction.  Molly and her friends also explain to the other girls about the bottle tops they were trying to collect, and some of them think of other places where Molly and her friends didn’t go for their collecting.  All of the girls working together manage to finish the blanket and collect 100 bottle tops in a single day, surprising and pleasing their teacher.

In the back of the book, there is a section with historical information about what it was like to go to school in America during World War II.  Discipline was more strict than it was in schools during the late 20th century, and there was also more separation between boys and girls.  Sometimes, boys and girls going to the same school and attending the same classes played on completely separate playgrounds, and sometimes, they even had to enter and exit the school through different doors (this is something that was also mentioned in the book Cheaper By the Dozen, which takes place during the late 1910s/early 1920s).  Teachers emphasized patriotism and taught the children about the war, why soldiers were fighting, and what life was like in other countries that were involved in the war.  It was common for schools to have drives to collect scrap metal or other materials to help the war effort.  Special projects like knitting clothing or blankets for soldiers were also popular.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.

MollyLessonHistory

Posted on by TracyC

Meet Molly

Molly, An American Girl

MeetMolly

Meet Molly by Valerie Tripp, 1986.

MeetMollyThreatMolly McIntire misses her father, who is a doctor stationed in England during World War II.  Things haven’t been the same in her family since he left.  Treats are more rare because of the sugar rationing, and she now has to eat yucky vegetables from her family’s victory garden all the time, under the watchful eyes of the family’s housekeeper.  Her mother, while generally understanding, is frequently occupied with her work with the Red Cross.  Molly’s older sister, Jill, tries to act grown-up, and Molly thinks that her brothers are pests, especially Ricky, who is fond of teasing.  However, when Molly and her friends tease Ricky about his crush on a friend of Jill’s, it touches off a war of practical jokes in their house.

MeetMollyHalloweenTrickHalloween is coming, and she wants to come up with great costume ideas for herself and her two best friends, Linda and Susan.  Her first thought is that she’d like to be Cinderella, but her friends are understandably reluctant to be the “ugly” stepsisters, and Molly has to admit that she wouldn’t really like that role, either.  Also, Molly doesn’t have a fancy dress, and her mother is too busy to make one and also doesn’t think that they should waste rationed cloth on costumes.  Instead, she suggests that the girls make grass skirts out of paper and go as hula dancers.  The girls like the idea, but Halloween doesn’t go as planned.

Everyone loves the girls’ costumes, and they collect a good number of treats in spite of the war rationing, but Ricky takes his revenge for their earlier teasing by spraying them with water and ruining their costumes and all of their treats.  When the girls get home, and Mrs. McIntire finds out what happened, she punishes Ricky by making him give the girls the treats that he’s collected, except for one, which she allows him to keep.  However, to the girls, this seems like light punishment, and they’re offended that he got off so lightly.

MeetMollyRevengeBecause he laughed at the girls, saying that he could see their underwear after he sprayed them with water and ruined their skirts, the girls decide to play a trick that will give Ricky his just desserts.  The next time that Jill’s friend comes to visit, the girls arrange to have Jill and her friend standing underneath Ricky’s bedroom window when they start throwing all of his underwear out the window, right in front of Ricky.  Ricky screams at the girls that “this is war!” just as their mother arrives home.

Their mother makes it clear that war is a serious thing, not a joke.  There is a real war on, and their childish pranks are wasting time and resources (like the food that Ricky ruined on Halloween – sugar is rationed, and some of their neighbors had gone to a lot of trouble to save their rations to give the kids a few treats).  She also points out that this is how real wars start, with “meanness, anger, and revenge.”  Faced with the reality of what they were doing, Molly and Ricky apologize to each other and clean up the messes that they each made under their mother’s direction.

In the back of the book, there is a section of historical information about what life was like for civilians in America during World War II.  People with relatives overseas worried about them, but people in service had to be careful about what they said in letters home, in case those letters were intercepted by enemy forces.  Some of the luxury goods that people were accustomed to having became more scarce, although the rationing wasn’t as bad in the United States as it was in Europe (this is covered more in a later book in the series) because certain types of materials had to be saved for the war effort (like the metals used to make cans for food, which is why victory gardens were important) and because factories that ordinarily made civilian goods were converted to make equipment for the armed forces.  For example, they mention that car factories were making things like tanks and airplanes and clothing factories were making tents and uniforms.  People referred to the efforts that civilians were making to save needed materials for the war as “fighting on the home front,” reminding themselves and others that the small sacrifices that they made each day, like driving their cars less to save gas or raising food for their families, helped to make a big difference for a larger cause.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.

Posted on by TracyC · 1 Comment

Immigrant Kids

ImmigrantKids

Immigrant Kids by Russell Freedman, 1980.

ImmigrantKidsEllisIsland

One of the best parts about this book is the pictures.  The preface of the book specifically talks about photography at the turn of the 20th century, how cameras were still fairly new technology but growing in popularity.  Cameras that were small enough to be held in a person’s hands were an 1880s innovation, and the book mentions that small cameras like that were known as “detective cameras” because they were small enough that they could be used to take pictures without the subjects noticing.  Over time, it became easier for amateurs to learn to use cameras, and it became more common for people to take pictures of their ordinary, everyday lives.  Pictures like these open up a window on the past.  The pictures in this book are of children whose families had only recently arrived in America from countries around the world.  The photographer for many of these pictures was Jacob A. Riis, a journalist in New York City who wanted to document the living conditions of poor immigrants.  He published a book called How the Other Half Lives in 1890, in which you can see more of his work.  Other pictures in this book are by Lewis Hine, who is known for his photographs of child laborers.  They are not the only photographers whose work appears in this book, but they are the most famous.

The book is divided into sections, covering different aspects of the lives of immigrant children.  In the chapter called Coming Over, the author describes what the journey to America was like.  One of the primary motivations for people to come to America around the turn of the century was money and employment opportunities.  If a family had little money and little or no chance of getting better jobs in their home country, they would decide to try their luck somewhere else.  Because most of the immigrant families were poor, it was common for families to immigrate gradually.  Often, the father of the family would come first, find a job, start establishing a life and home for his family, and eventually send for his wife and children when he’d saved enough money.  The actual journey was by ship, often in “steerage,” the cheapest form of passage available, in cramped rooms in the ship’s hold.

ImmigrantKidsFamilyQuestions

Although the journey could be harrowing, one of the most nerve-wracking parts was the immigrant processing that took place at immigrant ports like Ellis Island.  There were routine questions that immigrants were expected to answer and exams for them to take, and if the questioners weren’t satisfied, the immigrants could be sent back to the country they came from.  Doctors would examine the immigrants to evaluate their health and look for signs of possible mental defects.  They were particularly concerned about signs of infectious diseases.  Sometimes, it was difficult for immigrants to answer all the questions because of language barriers and the immigrants’ own nerves at being interrogated.  If an immigrant seemed too agitated, the examiners would typically let them rest for a while before trying again.

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The other chapters in the book are At Home, At School, At Work, and At Play, which give more details about the lives of immigrant children as their families settled in America.  They often settled in large cities because those were where the most employment opportunities were to be found.  Because they didn’t speak much English and needed help learning how things worked in America, such as how to find jobs and places to live and how laws worked, they tended to settle in neighborhoods with others from similar backgrounds who could help them.  That is why, even to this day, there are certain areas of large cities, such as New York, Boston, or Chicago, which are known for people of a particular nationality (like the Irish neighborhood, the Jewish neighborhood, Chinatowns, etc.).  New arrivals often joined friends or relatives who had already been living in the US for a while, seeking help in getting themselves established.  These ethnic neighborhoods were located in poor parts of town because the people there didn’t have much money.  People lived in small, crowded apartments called tenements, sharing water and toilet facilities with other families because the apartments were not provided with individual facilities.  However, once these groups of immigrant families became established, they remained established for a long time, and they gave these neighborhoods their own distinctive style.

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School was often difficult for new arrivals because the children had to learn English before they could study other subjects.  There were some special English language learning classes for them at larger schools with enough demand for them.  At smaller schools which didn’t have these classes, they often had help from other children who had arrived in America earlier and could act as translators.  They were also frequently put into classes for children who were younger than they were, studying easy subjects, until they had learned enough English to move up to classes with children their own age.

Typically, immigrant children aimed to stay in school until they were fourteen years old because that was the age when they could officially get full-time work.  However, because their families were poor, the children might have to leave school early to find jobs and help their families make ends meet.  The book describes how rules were frequently bent or broken because the laws were not well-enforced, and children often worked at younger ages, even under harsh conditions.  For immigrant children, the most important education was that which taught practical, vocational skills that would help them find jobs quickly.  Some agencies, like the Children’s Aid Society (known for the Orphan Trains), would help them with vocational training.

ImmigrantKidsBaseball

However, immigrant children still like to play.  Boys and girls usually played separately.  Boys frequently played games like baseball in the street, or stickball, which was a variant that could be played in smaller spaces.  In stickball, the “bat” was a stick or the handle of an old broom, and the ball was rubber and allowed to bounce before it was hit.  Girls would play other games, like “potsy,” which was a version of hopscotch.

Because of the lessons they were taught in schools and because the immigrant children mixed with children outside of their immigrant groups in school, the children absorbed the local culture and became Americanized faster than their parents.  Many of them experienced the feelings of being torn between their parents’ traditions and wanting to fit in with society around them.

In each of the chapters in the book, there are anecdotes from people who had arrived in the US as children around the turn of the century, telling stories about different aspects of their lives.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.

Posted on by TracyC

Under Copp’s Hill

UnderCoppsHill

Under Copp’s Hill by Katherine Ayres, 2000.

This book is part of the American Girl History Mysteries series.

The year is 1908, and eleven-year-old Innocenza Moretti lives with her relatives in Boston.  They are immigrants from Italy.  Innie, as her family calls her, is an orphan.  According to the story that her grandmother told her, she was the only one of her parents’ children to survive infancy, her siblings being born prematurely and dying shortly after birth.  Innie’s mother was so grateful that Innie survived that she promised her to the Holy Mother at her baptism.  Then, Innie’s parents died in a fire in their tenement building when she was about two years old.  Innie and her grandmother, Nonna, survived the fire only because little Innie had started crying in the night, and she took her outside to walk her around so that she wouldn’t wake her parents.  Because of that experience, Nonna is deathly afraid of fire and also has become convinced that the Holy Mother must have spared Innie (as well as herself).  She thinks that Innie is destined to become a nun and has continued to promise her to the Holy Mother in prayer, repeating the promise regularly.  Although Nonna thinks that the miracles surrounding Innie’s life are signs of a future life in the Church for Innie, her grandmother’s promises in prayer terrify Innie.

Innie feels trapped by her grandmother’s expectations for her, expectations that the rest of her family don’t even know about.  She doesn’t want to be a nun, but her grandmother is sure that she will be.  Because of her fears that her grandmother may force her to become a nun when she grows up, Innie is never on her best behavior.  She thinks that if she gets a reputation as a trouble-maker, the Church will decide that she is unsuited for a religious life.  Unfortunately, Innie’s long-practiced habit of ignoring rules and her problem child reputation lead her to be suspected of something worse than just minor misbehaving.

Innie’s family owns a boardinghouse where they provide food and lodging for young immigrant men.  Innie and Nonna live on the ground floor, and Innie’s aunt, uncle, and cousins live above them.  Innie spends a lot of time with her cousins, especially Teresa, who is about her age.  Her older cousin, Carmela, persuades both Teresa and Innie to join a library club at a new settlement house with her.  The settlement house helps girls and young women from immigrant families by teaching them work skills and aspects of American culture that they can use as they become American citizens in exchange for some of the work that the girls do on behalf of the settlement house.  Carmela has taken a new job as a pottery painter there and tells her parents that it will be good for Teresa and Innie to go there as well because they will receive help with their schoolwork and they will also have classes to teach them skills like sewing, knitting, and pottery, that they can use to make money later.  However, the real attraction of the club for the girls is that they get to listen to music, have dancing lessons, read books, and socialize with other girls about their age.  The prospect of sewing classes isn’t appealing for Innie, but she loves books and looks forward to borrowing some from the settlement house library.

At the settlement house, Innie meets a variety of girls from other immigrant families, not just Italian ones.  In particular, Innie makes friends with a girl named Matela, who is a Jewish girl from Russia.  As the girls talk about a recent, large fire in town, Matela talks about the czar’s soldiers burning things back in Russia and how she misses her grandfather, who is still there.  Innie understands Matela’s feelings because she knows what it’s like to miss someone.  She doesn’t really remember her parents, but she feels the lack of them in her life.  Teresa also becomes friends with Matela, but the three girls agree to keep their friendship secret because each of their families prefers them to associate with girls from backgrounds similar to their own.  Innie’s uncle wants the girls to spend time with other Italians, and Matela admits that her father prefers her to spend time with other Jewish girls.  The adults don’t really understand the cultural mix at the settlement house.

However, from the very first day that the girls begin going to events at the house, strange things start happening.  Things disappear or are oddly moved about.  Food disappears.  A silver teapot belonging to the ladies who run the settlement house is stolen.  Then, someone steals some pottery and a shawl.

To Innie’s horror, she ends up becoming the prime suspect for the thefts because she was caught snooping in an area of the house where she didn’t belong and because she accidentally broke one of the pieces of pottery that the others girls made and tried to sweep it up without telling anyone.  When she and her friends snoop around and try to find the missing objects, Innie discovers one of the missing pottery pieces.  However, instead of being happy for the clue, the ladies who run the house just think that Innie must have broken more of the pottery and tried to cover it up, like she did before, by hiding the rest of the set.  After all, if she was doing some things she shouldn’t have been doing, it’s plausible that she could be a thief, too.

If Innie is going to remain a member of the library club (and continue to have access to books that she can read), she’s going to have to prove her innocence.  In fact, proving her innocence may also be important for Carmela, who is supposed to have a citizenship hearing soon.  If Innie’s bad reputation causes problems for her at work, she may lose her job and be denied American citizenship!

Matela thinks that the thief could be a ghost from the nearby Copp’s Hill graveyard, but Innie is sure that it must be a human being.  There are secrets at the settlement house that even the ladies who run it are unaware of and someone who desperately needs help and can’t ask for it.

Teresa and Matela continue to help Innie, and in the process, Innie confesses to Matela her fears about becoming a nun.  It is Matela who helps Innie to find the solution to her problem, urging her to step outside of the small community of Italian immigrants that her family clings to and to seek advice from a priest in the Irish area of the city.  As a priest, he has the knowledge that Innie needs to understand her faith, and because he doesn’t know Innie’s family personally, he has the objectivity to help Innie to see her grandmother’s promise in a new light and to understand that her future destiny is still in her own hands.  No one can speak for another person or make important promises on their behalf.  A religious vocation is a serious decision that only a mature adult can make for herself, or not make, as the case may be.  The priest tells her that, as young as she is, Innie should focus on learning to be a good person, and then she will see what direction life leads her.  With that knowledge, of course, Innie realizes that she will have to put more effort into behaving herself, but it’s a relief to her to realize that she doesn’t need to purposely misbehave in order to control her life.

Eventually, Innie’s aunt also learns about the grandmother’s promise and Innie’s worries and reassures her that, although her grandmother can be an intimidating woman with what she wants, Innie’s family loves her and that she shouldn’t be afraid to come to them with her questions and concerns. Innie has thought of herself as parentless, at the mercy of her grandmother’s wishes and expectations, but her aunt says that she loves Innie like she does her own daughters and that Innie is as much a part of their family as they are.  If Innie has problems, her aunt will be there for her, helping her find whatever answers she needs.

There is also a subplot about how girls in immigrant families (at least, in ones like Innie’s family) aren’t as highly-regarded as boys.  When the family is discussing important matters, Innie often tries to comment on what she thinks, but her grandmother keeps telling her to be quiet because it isn’t a girl’s place to comment on business that men should handle and her male cousins sneer at her because they don’t think she knows anything.  However, when Innie’s uncle is worried about the legal papers he has to sign in order to open his new grocery business because his English still isn’t good enough to understand them, Innie points out that Carmela’s English is the best of the family because of all the books she had to read and the paperwork she had to complete when she was applying for citizenship and that she would be the best person to study the paperwork.  At first, her grandmother makes her try to be quiet and her male cousins laugh, but Carmela speaks up and says that she can help her father, if he wants her to, and her father agrees, on the condition that she act as translator and adviser and let him make the final decisions about the business.  Carmela is happy because the arrangement allows her to use her skills without taking her away from the pottery painting that she loves.  The point of this part of the story is about acknowledging the talents that people possess and not disregarding them because they are outside of the usual roles and expectations.  It fits in with the subplot about the grandmother’s expectations for Innie’s future, which are not really in keeping with either her talents or character.  The young people in the story are growing up under different circumstances than their parents, and they will have to learn to find their own way in life, using the abilities they have and the education they can find.

In the back of the book, there is a section with historical information about Boston in 1908.  The fire that happens around the time that the story takes place was a real event.  The settlement house with its library club was also real, and the ladies who run the settlement house, Miss Brown and Miss Guerrier, were also real people.  The book explains more about what life was like for immigrant families like Innie’s and about what the future held for girls like her.  Many of the girls who attended the library clubs later became librarians and teachers themselves, which may be Innie’s eventual destiny when she grows up.  The book also mentions that the area of Boston where Innie’s family lived still has many Italian restaurants and groceries that were started by immigrant families like Innie’s, so we can imagine that the grocery store that Innie’s uncle wants to open will be successful.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.

Posted on by TracyC

The True Tale of Johnny Appleseed

JohnnyAppleseed

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.

Posted on by TracyC

Pocahontas

Pocahontas

Pocahontas by Jan Gleiter and Kathleen Thompson, 1985.

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

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

PocahontasEngland

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

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

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

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

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

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

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.