Posted on by TracyC

The Dark-Thirty

The Dark-Thirty: Southern Tales of the Supernatural by Patricia C. McKissack, 1992.

There are ten short, scary stories in this book, not thirty. The author explains in the beginning that the name of the book comes from an expression kids used when she was young. The “dark-thirty” was the last half hour of light before it became truly dark outside, when the kids had to hurry home so they wouldn’t be out after dark, when the monsters came out. The author was African American, and the stories in this book have African American themes. They were based on stories that the author heard from her grandmother when she was young.

This is a book that I remember a school librarian introducing to us when I was in elementary school, probably around age 10 or 11. My memories of it are a little vague. I had forgotten most of what the stories were about, although the title stuck with me, and I remembered thinking that I should read it again someday. I have to admit that most of the emotions that I experience while reading this book as an adult were anger and frustration. The sad truth is that those are the emotions that permeate much of African American history, from the harsh conditions of slavery to the injustices of racism, and those are the aspects of the stories that stand out to me most as an adult. As I recall, I did think more about the ghost parts of the stories when I was a kid, but I didn’t have as deep an understanding of the background of the stories then. Maybe part of the lesson here is that human monsters are more terrifying than anything supernatural, partly because it’s the people who are or should be closest to you in a shared humanity are the ones who have the most opportunity to cause harm, if that’s what they’ve decided to do. That’s a rather dark thought, but these are dark stories with dark themes.

On a lighter note, I found the stories that introduced pieces of folklore fascinating. I’ve had an interest in folklore since I was a kid, which is part of why this book stuck in my mind for so many years.

I wouldn’t recommend this book for kids younger than 10 years old because of the dark themes. There is also derogatory racial language in the stories (including the n-word), particularly used by the villains, which helps show why they’re villains. I think, before kids are ready for this book, they need to have some background information on the subjects of racism and slavery to understand what’s going on, and they should also know that there are certain words they shouldn’t use themselves, even if other people do.

The book is a Newbery Honor Book. It’s available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.

Stories in the Book:

The Legend of Pin Oak

The story is set during slave days. Harper McAvoy, a plantation owner, has resented one of his slaves, Henri, since they were both young. Harper was neglected by his father after his mother died giving birth to him, and years later, when his father finally returned to their estate, called Pin Oak, he learned that his other had another son with a free black woman, Henri. Their father had hoped that the two boys might be friends and that Henri would help Harper run the estate one day, but Harper always resented Henri for being more like their father than he was and for receiving the attention that his father never showed him. After their father died, Harper thought that he could sell Henri and be rid of him forever, but Henri has actually been a free person all along because his mother was free.

When the slavers try to take Henri anyway, he and his wife run away with their baby. They apparently die jumping to their deaths at a waterfall, although some say that they actually turned into birds and flew away while Harper is killed pursuing them. Others think that Henri and his family may have survived by jumping into a cave behind the waterfall, although there is evidence that Henri didn’t know there was a cave there. Their fate is left ambiguous.

We Organized

As part of the government’s effort to get people back to work during the Great Depression, the Library of Congress employed writers to record the stories of people who had been slaves. This chapter is a poem based on one of those stories.

Justice

This story is about the Ku Klux Klan. A wealthy and influential man called Riley Holt is murdered. The identity of the murderer is unknown, but local people are so shocked and angry at the crime that they are determined to get “justice” … one way or another. A bitter and suspicious local man called Hoop Granger blames a young black man named Alvin Tinsley. However, Alvin has an alibi, and the chief of police, knowing that Hoop is a bully and a liar and has a history of pushing Alvin to take responsibility for things he’s done himself, asks Hoop if he has an alibi, too. He says that he was working at his service station and his friends will vouch for him, but Chief Brown doesn’t think much of any of them as witnesses.

Hoop is a member of the KKK, and to throw suspicion for the murder from himself, he convinces his fellow KKK members that Alvin is guilty and needs to be punished. They capture Alvin and lynch him, but before Alvin dies, he promises to come back and prove his innocence. Hoop and his friends tell everyone that Alvin hanged himself after confessing to Holt’s murder. Not everyone in town believes the story, but they have no way of proving it’s a lie, and the authorities seem satisfied with the explanation (mainly because the mayor’s son was also part of lynch mob, and the mayor is forcing everyone to cover for him). However, Hoop can’t forget what Alvin said about coming back to prove his innocence. He seems haunted by Alvin’s words. Soon, he starts seeing things and becomes convinced that Alvin is coming back for him. Is it really a restless spirit or Hoop’s own guilty conscience?

The 11:59

This story is about train travel and the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters had stories that they liked to tell each other, like this story about a phantom train called the Death Train or the 11:59.

A retired porter enjoys telling the younger porters stories about how the Brotherhood was formed and the truly great men among the porters. Many of his stories are tall-tales. One of his stories is about the 11:59. When a porter hears the whistle of this phantom train, he only has 24 hours left to live, and nobody can escape it. Not even old Lester.

The Sight

There’s an old superstition that babies who are born with a caul over their heads will have psychic abilities and could be able to see the future or spirits. A boy named Esau gets “the sight” and is able to tell the future from a young age. However, people with “the sight” have to be careful who knows they have that power because some people will try to use them for unethical purposes, which might cause them to lose their gift, and Esau’s father is a con man. Esau knows that his father can’t be trusted, but when he feels compelled to warn his father of danger, his father learns what Esau can do. His father forces him to help him win at gambling with his gift until the gift finally fades. Then, his father deserts him and his mother. Esau’s mother says maybe it’s just as well to lose the sight, and Esau agrees, not liking it when he sees that bad things are about to happen.

Years go by, Esau grows up, and he eventually becomes a soldier in WWII. He manages to make it home safely, but he is surprised by the sudden return of his gift just in time to save his family.

The Woman in the Snow

This story involves the bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama in the 1950s.

Grady Bishop, a white man with a bad history and a chip on his shoulder, has recently started working as a bus driver, although he’s never happy when he has to take the less prestigious route through the city, where a lot of black people catch the bus. Driving makes him feel powerful, but he considers this route beneath him.

One day, during a bad snow storm, a poor woman with a sick baby begs him for a ride although she doesn’t have money to pay. She’s afraid if she can’t get the baby to the hospital, she’ll die. Grady refuses to give her a free ride, convinced that she’s making too much out of nothing and just trying to get a free ride. Later, he hears that the woman and baby froze to death in the storm. A year after that, he sees the same woman again on the same route. Startled, Grady crashes his bus and is killed.

Years later, a black bus driver has that route, and other drivers tell him about the ghost lady with the baby that they see whenever it starts snowing. He becomes the last person to see the ghost lady … because he’s the first to give her a ride.

The Conjure Brother

This story explains that “conjure women” were women who sold herbal cures and practiced folk magic to help people change their luck.

A girl named Josie is tired of being an only child and wants a brother. However, her mother shows no signs of being pregnant, even though Josie keeps asking her for a brother. When she hears a couple of women talking about the local conjure woman, Josie decides to go see her and ask if she can help her get a brother. The conjure woman gives her a set of instructions to follow, but Josie performs the ritual too early at night. Instead of getting a baby brother, Josie gets an older brother, called Adam. Her parents act like Adam has always been their oldest child. Adam is bossy, and some of the things that used to belong to Josie now belong to Adam. Josie starts to think of Adam as a pest and returns to the conjure woman to ask her to do something about Adam, but instead, she learns an important lesson about sharing her life and house with a sibling.

Boo Mama

This chapter talks about the tumultuous times of the late 1960s and the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy. Some people felt so overwhelmed by everything that was going on that they just wanted to “drop out” of society and ignore the chaos around them.

Leddy has been a social activist since she was in her teens, but then, her husband is killed in the war in Vietnam, leaving her with a young child. After the deaths of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy soon after her husband’s death, Leddy feels completely overwhelmed. She’s been putting forth all of the effort she has for a long time, and the deaths of the man she loved and the people who inspired her feel like too much. She has a breakdown and starts questioning whether everything she and her friends have done has really accomplished anything. Deciding that she needs a change of scene for her and her son, she moves to a rural community in Tennessee.

At first, her young son seems to do better in the countryside, and Leddy finds the change of pace relaxing, but then, her young son disappears. He wanders away while his mother is hanging out the laundry. The locals put together a search party. They search for days, but all they can find is the boy’s teddy bear. Everyone is convinced that he’s dead, but Leddy can’t give up hope that her son is still alive. Her son does turn up, but he is strangely different. Where has he been, and what has happened to him?

The Gingi

There is an old superstition that “Evil needs an invitation.” Among the Yoruba people of West Africa, there is a belief that evil spirits need someone to welcome them into a house before they can enter, so they will try to trick unsuspecting people into giving them an invitation. They use special talismans called gingi to guard against evil.

A woman named Laura is fascinated by a strange statue that she sees in a shop window. However, when she tries to buy it, the shopkeeper says that she’s never seen it before and warns Laura that evil spirits sometimes disguise themselves to trick people into taking them into their homes. Laura thinks this is just superstition and insists that she wants the statue. The shopkeeper charges her a price that’s too high to discourage her from buying the statue, and it almost works, but for some reason, Laura feels compelled to buy it and pays for it anyway. Seeing that she can’t prevent Laura from taking the statue, the shopkeeper insists that she take a small complementary talisman and keep it with her. The talisman is a small doll, and she gives it to her young daughter to play with.

The Chicken-Coop Monster

The final story in the book is semi-autobiographical, inspired by the author’s feelings when her parents got divorced when she was a child.

A young girl named Melissa is upset about her parents’ divorce. Her parents send her to stay with her grandparents in Tennessee while they’re sorting things out, but she becomes convinced that there’s a monster living in the chicken coop on her grandparents’ property. She and her friends are part of a group called the Monster Watchers of America. Melissa’s grandmother doesn’t believe in the monster, but her grandfather teaches her an important lesson about facing up to life’s monsters.

Posted on by TracyC

Famous American Negros

Famous American Negroes by Langston Hughes, 1954.

I sought out an electronic copy of this book because I don’t own a physical one, and after I found out that it existed, I knew that I had to cover it at some point! The book is part of a series of biographies for children that I covered earlier, but what caught my attention was the author of the book, Langston Hughes, the famous poet of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and 1930s. I mostly knew Langston Hughes for his poetry, and I wasn’t aware that he had written any children’s books until I found out that he had written several biography books for this series. When I found out that he specifically wrote books about African Americans and other notable black people from history, it occurred to me that he might have even written biographies of people he knew personally because of the circles he traveled in.

This book focuses on prominent African Americans through history. It contains a series of short biographies and profiles, beginning in the Colonial times and continuing into the mid-20th century, when the book was written. Some were contemporaries of Langston Hughes, but since the biographies are brief and focus only on providing an overview of the subjects’ lives, there is no indication whether Hughes ever met any of them himself. I was a little disappointed about that because I would have enjoyed hearing a personal perspective, but the personalities covered are still fascinating. I also enjoyed how some of the earliest biographies in the book relate to some of the later ones because of the influence some of the earlier people had on the lives of others.

If you’re wondering why he uses the term “Negro” instead of “African American”, it’s because that term was one of the more polite and acceptable terms during his youth and around the time when he wrote this book. (That’s why the UNCF, or United Negro College Fund uses it as well. It was one of the polite terms in use at the time of its founding.) It sounds a bit out of date to people of the 21st century because, around the time of the Civil Rights Movement, which began around the time this book was written, people began advocating for a shift in the words used to describe black people. They wanted to distance themselves from old attitudes about race by using newer terms that didn’t have as much emotional baggage attached to them. This is when terms like “colored” and “Negro” feel out of use and were replaced by “African American” as the correct, formal term to specifically describe an American with African ancestry and “black” (considered somewhat impolite a century earlier, as I understand it, see the Rainbow and Lucky series for an example – I discussed it in the historical description of the 1830s) as the generic term to describe a person with dark skin and African ancestry, regardless of their nationality.

Because this book was written in the mid-1950s, some of the information included is long out of date. People who were alive when Langston Hughes wrote the book are obviously not alive now, almost 70 years later. There are more recent books that cover the same topic and include information about late 20th century and early 21st century musicians Langston Hughes wouldn’t have known about. However, this vintage book is still interesting because of its famous author and because it was written at a turning point in American history, when society was changing and racial issues were being challenged.

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

The biographies included in the book are:

Introduction

The book begins with a brief history of black people in America. Langston Hughes points out that histories of African Americans often begin with slavery, but there were people of African ancestry who came to the Americas before that, not as slaves. Some traveled with explorers from Europe as members of their crews and expeditions.

After the slave trade began, slavery affected the lives of black people throughout the American Colonies and, later, the United States. Some slaves managed to find ways to take their fate into their own hands by running away, and of those, some helped others to escape to freedom. Some slaves were able to hire themselves out for wages on the side and saved up enough money to purchase themselves and gain freedom in that way. Some slaves were even freed by the the people who owned them, although others simply lived and died in slavery.

After the end of the Civil War and the end of slavery, former slaves were free to pursue their own destiny, but they were in a precarious position because they had no resources from which to start building their independent lives. Slaves had work experience, but much of their experience was in unskilled labor, which brought low wages. Most slaves had no education. (In many places, it was illegal to teach slaves to read. There were a few exceptions, and some people skirted the law, but this was a major problem for many formerslaves once they were granted their freedom, lacking an essential skill.) They had no money or land of their own. Getting established in their new lives meant building something from nothing or almost nothing, and it was a long, uphill struggle.

Even generations later, racial discrimination added obstacles to the lives of African Americans. The biographies in this book are about people who triumphed over the obstacles in their lives to leave a lasting mark on society.

Phillis Wheatley (c. 1753-1784) – Whose Poetry George Washington Praised

Phillis Wheatley was brought to the American colonies from Senegal as a slave when she was only a small child (approximately age 6 or 7 because she was still losing baby teeth when she arrived). Phillis was not her original name, but it is unknown what her original name was, exactly when she was born, how she became a slave, or what happened to her parents. She was purchased by a tailor named John Wheatley in Boston to be a servant for his family, and the Wheatley family gave her the name Phillis. When she first arrived in Boston, Phillis could not speak England and no one could speak Senegalese, so it was some time before anybody could truly communicate with her, which is part of why we know so little about her earliest years.

Fortunately, the Wheatley family was kind and even nurturing toward Phillis. Even though they purchased her to work for them, they cared about educating her. They taught her read and write, even though it was discouraged to teach slaves those skills and even illegal in some areas. When Phillis learned English and was able to read and write, it soon became apparent that she had a talent for poetry. The Wheatleys supported her poetry, and the granted Phillis her freedom in 1772. By the time she was about 21 years old, her poetry had been printed all over the colonies and in England. Although her poetry was successful, Phillis’s life took an unfortunate turn when she married a ne’er-do-well, and she died in poverty.

Richard Allen (c. 1760-1831)- Founder of the African Methodist Episcopal Church

Sometimes, slave owners used Christianity as an excuse for slavery, claiming that they were saving the souls of heathens. However, even though they converted slaves from Africa to Christianity, they didn’t provide much opportunity for their slaves to have religious worship. Richard Allen was born into a slave family in Philadelphia, and he was a child when he was sold to a farmer in Delaware. When he grew up, he became a Methodist preacher, and his owner let him perform religious services for the other slaves. He also became a wagon driver during the Revolutionary War and earned enough money to buy his freedom.

Once he was free, he returned to Philadelphia as a preacher. There was no Methodist congregation that was only for black people at that time, so he sometimes preached for a mixed congregation. However, some of the white members of the congregation protested to his presence as a black preacher, and some also objected to the presence of the other black parishioners as well. When Allen and a couple of friends were interrupted while praying one Sunday and told to leave the church, Allen realized that the only way any of them would be able to worship in peace would be to form their own group. The society he and his friends formed was the Free African Society, and that group went on to found the Bethel Methodist Episcopal Church. They were among those who helped to tend the sick and bury the dead during the yellow fever epidemic that struck the city in the 1790s.

Ira Aldridge (1807-1867) – A Star Who Never Came Home

Ira Aldridge was the son of a Presbyterian minister in New York. Aldridge started acting at a young age and became part of a black theater troupe, performing in a theater close to the African Free School he attended and the famous Fraunces’ Tavern (mentioned earlier in Phoebe the Spy, this book says that it was owned by a black family but other accounts say that the Fraunces family was mixed race – it has never been firmly established which is more accurate). His father wanted him to further his education, so he sent him to the University of Glasgow in Scotland, which accepted black students. It is unknown whether Ira Aldridge ever completed his degree there, but from there, he went to London to continue his acting career and won acclaim for his portrayal of Othello at the Royalty Theater. Ira Aldridge toured Europe and gathered a prominent following, even winning awards from some of the royal families of Europe. The reason why he never returned home was that he remained in Europe for the rest of his life, still touring as a successful actor up until his death at age 60.

Frederick Douglass (c. 1817-1895) – Fighter for Freedom

Frederick Douglass was born into slavery, originally with the last name of Bailey. In most cases, we know very little about the early lives of individual slaves because few slaves could read and write and their owners didn’t think it was important to even record their birth dates. Frederick Douglass is an exception because he learned to read and write and later wrote his famous autobiography. (The autobiography is now public domain, and you can read it for free online in many places, including Documenting the American South, Project Gutenberg, and Internet Archive (multiple copies). The reading level isn’t difficult, although parts are emotionally wrenching.) His autobiography contains many details of his early life (although even he never knew his own birth date, which is why we can only estimate). The description that follows is a brief summary of both the chapter in this book and the contents of his autobiography:

Frederick’s mother was a slave, but his father was a white man (or in some sources I’ve seen, possibly mixed race). (The book doesn’t identify his father, and his identity has never been definitely established, although there are theories. According to the Library of Congress, Frederick’s “Mother is a slave, Harriet Bailey, and father is a white man, rumored to be his master, Aaron Anthony.”) Because his mother had to work in the fields all the time, he rarely saw her when he was a child. (This book doesn’t mention it, but Frederick’s mother died while he was still young.) He was raised by his grandmother during his earliest years and later by a woman who abused and neglected her young charges. Then, young Frederick was sent to live with and work for another part of the family who owned him in Baltimore. At first, the mother of family was nice to Frederick and gave him his first reading lessons, but her husband put a stop to that, telling his wife in Frederick’s presence that if a slave learns to read and write, they’ll probably run away. Frederick managed to continue his reading lessons in secret with the help of some of the white children in the neighborhood. His new skills did help him to learn more about human rights and what freedom meant, and he also learned about the existence of abolitionists. Newspapers in Baltimore called abolitionists anarchists and accused them of being in the service of the devil, but young Frederick began to see them as possible allies.

As a teenager, Frederick was sent to live with a different branch of the same family in a smaller town. This family became suspicious of him when they found out that he could read and write and that he had joined a Sunday school that was run by a free black man. They decided to send Frederick to a man named Covey who was a “Negro breaker“, which was someone who would “tame” slaves by “breaking” them physically, mentally, and spiritually. In his autobiography, Frederick states that Covey did break him and very nearly killed him, but after a particularly vicious beating at Covey’s hands, Frederick realized both that he couldn’t take anymore and that he wasn’t going to take any more. He fought back. That’s when he began planning to run away. Somehow, plans of his escape leaked out, and he was sent away to work in the shipyards in Baltimore. There, he disguised himself as a sailor, borrowed some papers belonging to a sailor, and sneaked onto a train headed for New York.

When he arrived in New York, he was free, but he wasn’t quite sure where to go or what to at first. He had no place to stay and didn’t know anybody he could trust. Fortunately, a real sailor gave him a place to stay and helped him to connect with a society that helped escaped slaves. He found a job on the wharves and gave himself the name surname Douglass.

What truly makes Frederick Douglass famous is not just that he escaped from slavery, but once he did so, he wanted to help others gain their freedom. He became an abolitionist and gave public talks about slavery alongside many other famous abolitionists. When he met with violence, he moved his family to Canada, but he returned when the Civil War broke out to meet with President Lincoln. His sons became Union soldiers, and after the war, Frederick Douglass held various government offices, including US Marshall, Recorder of Deeds for the District of Columbia, and US Minister to the Republic of Haiti.

Harriet Tubman (c. 1823-1913) – The Moses of Her People

Like Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman was born as a slave in Maryland, but unlike Frederick Douglass, she had no early education. From an early age, she had a willful and rebellious personality, which was part of the reason why she was assigned to work in the fields instead of the house. One day, another young slave had gone to a local store without permission, and the overseer decided to whip him. He told Harriet help him to tie up the young slave first. When she refused to do it, the young slave ran away. I’m not completely clear on whether what happened next was deliberately aimed at Harriet or whether she was just in the way when the overseer tried to vent his wrath, but what is known is that the overseer picked up an iron weight and threw it. The weight struck Harriet in the head, cracking her skull. Harriet almost died of the injury and spent days lying unconscious. She eventually recovered, but she never recovered completely. Throughout the whole rest of her life, she bore a scar from the injury and would suffer from periodic seizures and sudden loss of consciousness. Her owner thought that the head injury had left her with diminished intelligence, which wasn’t true, but Harriet realized that it was useful to let him think that.

A few years later, her owner died, and she found out that she and two of her brothers were going to be sold to someone else. At first, they planned to run away together, but her brothers backed out of the plan, and Harriet left by herself. She managed to make her way to Philadelphia, found a job there, and established a new life. However, she didn’t stay in Philadelphia. She returned many times to help other people escape as one of the “conductors” on the Underground Railroad. Her own parents were among the people she rescued, and she never lost any of her “passengers” (partly because if anybody started to panic or turn back, she’d threaten to shoot them, but it worked without her actually shooting anyone). When the Civil War began, she became a Union nurse. She lived a long life, and although her exact age was unknown, she was probably somewhere in her 90s when she passed away.

Booker T. Washington (c. 1858 -1915) – Founder of Tuskegee

Booker T. Washington was also born as a slave to a black mother and a white father. (His mother was a cook called Jane. The identity of his father is still unknown, although the popular belief was that his father was a plantation owner. His mother later married a man named Washington Ferguson, who became Booker’s stepfather.) During the Civil War, Booker’s stepfather was with the Union army, and after the war ended, he rejoined the family and took them to Malden, West Virginia, where he worked in the salt mines. Although Booker was still a child, he also had to work, tending a salt furnace, because his family was poor and needed the money. Both he and his mother wanted to learn to read, but they had to struggle to learn by themselves at first because there was no school for them. When a black man who was able to read moved to the community, the others in town paid him to open a school to teach them. Booker began to take lessons after work, and the school was where he gave himself his last name. In his early life, he had only been known by one name – Booker, but when all the students at the school introduced themselves, he realized that most had two names. Wanting a second name for himself, he called himself Booker Washington.

Wanting a better life than working in the salt mines, Booker decided to pursue an education. He had heard that there was a school in Virginia he could attend called Hampton and decided to go there. It was a difficult journey, and he had to work along the way for money, but he finally made it. When he arrived at Hampton, he was dirty, looked somewhat disreputable, and didn’t have much money, so the head teacher initially had some doubts about admitting him, but he was willing to work at the school as a janitor to pay for his education, so she accepted him. Booker made the most of the opportunity and eventually graduated with honors in 1875. After he graduated, he returned to Malden, West Virginia, as a teacher. Since the previous teacher had left, Booker T. Washington was the only teacher in town. He encouraged his students, including his own brother, to go on to Hampton for higher education, like he had. The founder of Hampton was so impressed with Booker’s students that he offered Booker a job as a teacher at Hampton and house father for a dormitory of Native American students. Booker accepted the job and did well. Then, he received a new offer to establish a school in Tuskegee, Alabama.

Establishing a school for black children in Tuskegee was no easy task. Between limited funds, poor facilities, and threats of violence from the Ku Klux Klan, it was an uphill struggle all the way. However, Booker persevered, and his school became the Tuskegee Institute. One of the innovations that of the Tuskegee Institute that I particularly found interesting was that they had a “movable school”, meaning that they carried books and teachers to rural areas where people could not come to school, bringing school to them. It’s not quite the same as the bookmobiles I grew up with because these were more mobile schools than mobile libraries, but it seems like a kind of precursor. The Tuskegee Institute eventually became Tuskegee University, which still exists.

Daniel Hale Williams (1858-1931) – Great Physician

Daniel Hale Williams‘ early life was more peaceful than many black people of his time because his family was free, not slaves. His earliest years were spent in Pennsylvania, but after his father died, his mother moved the family to Wisconsin. Williams loved to read and received an education in his youth. At first, he thought that he might like to be a lawyer, but he soon learned that he didn’t like the constant arguing in presenting law cases. Instead, he developed an interest in medicine. He found a job working for the Surgeon General of the State and attended Northwestern University in Illinois. After obtaining his medical degree, he became a surgeon in Chicago. He helped other young black people who wanted to study medicine and were having difficulty finding training schools that would accept them and hospitals that would accept them as interns. Dr. Williams became famous for a successful operation on a man who had been stabbed in the heart, the first successful operation of its kind.

Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859-1937) – Who Painting Hangs in the Luxembourg

Henry Ossawa Tanner was the son of a bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church and was raised in Pennsylvania. When he was still a child, he saw a man painting a picture in a park, and it inspired him to become an artist himself. His father thought that his artistic ambitions were impractical, but Tanner began experimenting with different types of media, including paint and clay, and he attended the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. He began selling his paintings professionally while he was still a student. After he graduated, he found a job teaching art at Clark University. He continued to paint and opened a photography studio on the side. A generous churchman gave Tanner some money so he could study art in Europe, so Tanner lived and painted in Paris for several years. He found the artistic life of the city inspiring, and he did a series of paintings with religious themes. In particular, he is known for his painting of The Resurrection of Lazarus, which he painted in 1896. The French government purchased this painting to hang in the Luxembourg, a famous art gallery. Tanner did return to the United States for a time, but finding life in Europe easier because Europe did not practice racial segregation like the United States did at that time, he decided to return to Paris, where he lived the rest of his life.

George Washington Carver (c. 1864-1943) – Agricultural Chemist

George Washington Carver was born a slave, and his father died in an accident while he was still an infant (or shortly before his birth, according to other sources – since he was a slave and slave birthdays were not recorded, that might explain the differing accounts). In fact, while he was still an infant, he and his mother were abducted from the farm where they lived in Missouri by Night Riders, a gang of criminals who kidnapped slaves to sell to different owners in other states. The fate of his mother is unknown (according to the book, although other sources say that she and George’s sister, who was also abducted, were sold to someone in Kentucky), but little George was found because he was ill with whooping cough, so the Night Riders simply abandoned him by the road. George was returned to the people who owned him and his mother, the Carvers, who had offered a reward for his return. The Carvers had no other slaves beyond George and his family. George also had an older brother who managed to avoid being captured by the Night Riders and remained with the Carvers. The Carvers ended up raising George and his brother like adopted children after the loss of their parents and the end of slavery.

During his childhood, George liked to play in the woods and fields near the Carvers’ farm, and he developed a fascination for plants. He often brought samples of different plants to Mrs. Carver to ask her what they were. The Carvers didn’t have much education, but they told him what they knew and gave him his first lessons in reading. Later, George attended a school for black children in another town, Neosha, living with a black woman named Mariah Watkins. From there, he became an itinerant worker, finding jobs and continuing his education wherever he could. Eventually, he attended Iowa State College, studying agriculture. He graduated at the top of his class and wrote a thesis called “Plants as Modified by Man.” He stayed on at the college to get his Masters degree, working as an assistant botany instructor. After he got his MA, Booker T. Washington invited him to teach at Tuskegee as the head of the agriculture department. Carver’s work at Tuskegee made him famous. He ran experiments to determine new uses for agricultural products, devoting the rest of his life to agricultural research.

Robert S. Abbott (1870-1940) – A Crusading Journalist

Robert Sengstacke Abbott was the son of a minister in Georgia. He loved books since childhood and found a job as an apprentice printer after graduating from Hampton. Because his opportunities for advancement were limited in the South, he moved to Chicago, but he still met with discrimination and found it difficult to get work in the printing industry. Discouraged, he studied and practiced law for a time, but he missed his printing work. Instead, he decided to buy his own printing press and start his own newspaper. He knew that African Americans and their concerns weren’t being represented in existing newspapers, so he wanted to become their voice. The newspaper he started was called the Chicago Defender, which became a national newspaper (and which still exists in an online format), although some Southern communities outright banned the newspaper and even made it a crime for a black person to simply possess a copy under the claim that it would incite black people to riot.

Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906) – The Robert Burns of Negro Poetry

Paul Laurence Dunbar‘s father escape from slavery in his youth, returning to fight on the side of the Union during the Civil War. Paul was born after the war, and his father died when he was only twelve years old. His mother didn’t have much education, but she wanted him to be educated and worked hard to make it possible. Paul enjoyed writing poems since he was a child, and when he was in high school, he became the editor of the school paper. One of his English teachers was so impressed by his poetry that she arranged for him to write a poem and read it before a meeting of the Western Association of Writers. When Paul had enough poems to make a book, he had them published with the help of a publisher who loaned him money to cover the publishing costs. He sold enough copies of the book to cover the loan and make a nice profit.

After a stint working for Frederick Douglass at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Paul wrote a second book of poetry that made him nationally famous. He received many orders for copies of the book, and he was invited to give public readings of his poems. He even went to London to give readings during Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee. When he returned to the US, he got a job at the Library of Congress and got married, but unfortunately, his life was cut short by tuberculosis.

W. C. Handy (1873-(later D. 1958)) – Father of the Blues

W. C. Handy is mentioned in a later book by Langston Hughes in the same biography series, Famous Negro Music Makers, but his biography doesn’t appear in that book although he made his living in music.

William Christopher Handy was born in Alabama. When he started school, his favorite subject was music. His teacher was a graduate of Fisk University (an African American college with a strong musical tradition, which is also described in Famous Negro Music Makers), and he introduced his students to a variety of musical styles. Handy’s father was a Methodist minister, and he didn’t believe in music outside of church and school. Musicians had a bad reputation, so he didn’t support his son’s musical interests and wouldn’t let him have an instrument of his own. Handy often improvised instruments, and he was inspired by traveling musicians who came to town. In spite of his father’s opposition, Handy joined up with musical groups.

Handy’s father wanted him to follow in his footsteps and be a minister, but Handy told his father that he’d rather be a teacher. When he found out how bad teachers’ salaries were, he found a job in a foundry instead. In his free time, he continued to play music in his church and started an orchestra and brass band. When he lost his job at the foundry due to an economic depression, he formed a quartet with some other young men, and they headed off to the World’s Fair in Chicago. They sang for their food and transportation along the way, only to learn that the World’s Fair was postponed. Instead, they decided to go to St. Louis, but still unable to find singing jobs, the group broke up.

Handy was too proud to go home to his father and admit defeat, so he continued to travel around and pick up whatever odd jobs he could find. Eventually, he joined up with a minstrel group, and he began to make a career in music. He traveled all over the country, giving performances, but when he became a father, he decided that it was time to settle somewhere to give his child a stable life. He took a job teaching music and English in Alabama, but he didn’t like the job because he wasn’t allowed to teach popular music, only hymns and classics. He returned to playing minstrel shows and became the bandmaster for a Knights of Pythias band in Mississippi. He composed music, writing The Memphis Blues and The St. Louis Blues. These songs were big hits, and The St. Louis Blues made Handy a great deal of money. Handy became a music publisher on Broadway, and his company was the largest African American owned publishing company in the US.

Charles C. Spaulding (1874-1952) – Executive of World’s Largest Negro Business

In the years immediately following the end of the Civil War and the Emancipation of the slaves, things were very difficult for black people. The newly-freed slaves had no money or assets to help them establish their new lives or even to take care of their sick or bury their dead. To help each other, they banded together and formed benevolent societies and fraternal organizations to share the resources they had and support each other. Some organizations of this type already existed, but Emancipation led to the expansion of such groups and the formation of new ones.

Charles C. Spaulding was the first manager and later president of the North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company. He had grown up poor and only had an eighth grade education. He worked at various jobs until he was approached by the owner of a series of barber shops who was interested in starting an insurance company. Spaulding’s uncle was also interested in the venture, and they hired Spaulding to be the manager of this small company. At first, Spaulding didn’t know much about insurance, and he had to wear a lot of hats in the business, starting out as bookkeeper and janitor of the business as well as its manager. In fact, he was originally the only employee of the company. The very first customer of the insurance company died only a few days into his policy, putting the company into debt immediately, but the owners of the company dutifully paid what they owed to the man’s widow, giving the company a reputation for reliability and earning them more customers. As the business grew, the company also supported public projects of interest to the African Americans in their community, such as the formation of a new library and a new hospital. Spaulding inherited the company after his uncle’s death, and he continued supporting civic projects.

A. Philip Randolph (1889-(Later D. 1979)) – Distinguished Labor Leader

Asa Philip Randolph was born in Florida. His father was a Methodist preacher, and he grew up reading his father’s books of sermons and Shakespeare. After he graduated from high school, he decided to go to New York to look for work. He worked at various jobs, and he became interested in improving working conditions for black people. Randolph gave public talks on the subject in Harlem and helped to start a magazine called The Messenger to advocate for the rights of African Americans. He began to travel to other cities to give talks and fiery speeches, and at one point, he was called “the most dangerous Negro in America” because some people feared what he might stir up in discontented African Americans faced with discrimination and bad working conditions.

Randolph was invited to speak to the Pullman Porters Athletic Association about the importance of trade unions because the porters had unsuccessfully tried to unionize before. Their working conditions were harsh, their pay was low, and the porters hadn’t made any real progress toward improvement. Randolph hadn’t worked as a porter, but he was interested in unions and labor organizations. The porters in New York asked him to help them organize, and they formed the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters in 1925. Some porters were reluctant to join at first because they were afraid of being fired, but Randolph continued to travel and speak about the importance of unions, recruiting new members. The Great Depression was hard on the porters, but the union managed to negotiate for better working conditions and pay.

Ralph Bunche (1903- (later D. 1971)) – Statesman and Political Scientist

This particular biography begins with a brief history of Israel and Palestine and the conflict between the two because of the aftermath of WWII, a conflict that has continued into the 21st century.

Ralph Bunche was the son of a barber in Detroit, Michigan. While he was still young, his parents suffered health problems and were advised to go to a drier climate, so the entire family moved to New Mexico. Ralph enjoyed living in the Southwest, but unfortunately, his parents died, leaving him and his sister with their grandmother. Ralph’s grandmother insisted on him continuing his education, and he also worked part time. After he graduated from high school, his grandmother insisted that he go on to college. He got a scholarship for the University of California, and from there, he got another scholarship to attend Harvard. At Harvard, Ralph studied political science, and after he graduated, he accepted a job from Howard University in Washington DC which wanted to set up a political science department of its own. Washington DC was more segregated than other places Ralph had lived, and he turned his attention to seriously studying racial relations. In 1936, he became one of the co-directors of the Institute of Race Relations at Swarthmore College.

During WWII, Dr. Bunche could not serve in the armed forces because he was deaf in one ear. However, he served the Office of Strategic Services, researching cultural and political attitudes in Africa where the US had strategic interests and wanted to establish military bases. Because he performed this job well, he was chosen to be the Associate Chief of the Division of Dependent Territories in the State Department, making him the first black person to be in charge of a State Department office. After the war, he became one of the consultants in the drafting of the charter of the United Nations, which is how he became involved with the conflict in Israel. Dr. Bunche attended session of the UN, and in 1947, he became part of a UN Special Committee sent to Palestine to negotiate peace. It was a dangerous mission, and other members of the committee were actually assassinated. While the situation in Israel and Palestine has yet to be completely resolved, Dr. Bunche made more progress than the rest of the committee in the 1940s, getting the two sides to agree to an armistice. At the end of the tense negotiations, he had the respect of both sides, and his work earned him a Nobel Peace Prize is 1950.

Marian Anderson (1897-(Later D. 1993)) – Famous Concert Singer

Marian Anderson was a famous singer who became the first black person to sing for the Metropolitan Opera Company the year after this book was written. A later book by Langston Hughes in the same biography series, Famous Negro Music Makers, describes this achievement and other details of her life and work.

Jackie Robinson (1919-(Later D. 1972)) – First Negro in Big League Baseball

Jackie Robinson was the youngest of a family of five children. His father died when he was still an infant, and his mother moved the family from Georgia to California to live with her half brother and find non-segregated schools for the children. Jackie was young during the Great Depression, and times were hard for his family. He sometimes had little to eat. However, he excelled at athletics in school, which helped him to get into Pasadena Junior College and the University of California. He played football for UCLA, but he left college in his final year to find a job and help his family financially. He got a job as an athletic director for a Civilian Conservation Corp camp. When the US joined WWII, Jackie Robinson joined the army, but he was honorably discharged before the end of the war due to an old football injury that began troubling him again. After that, he took a job as an athletic director at a small college, and then, he joined a baseball team called the Kansas City Monarchs.

During the 1940s, black people were barred from joining major league teams, so at first, Jackie Robinson didn’t take it seriously when he was approached by a scout for the Brooklyn Dodgers. However, WWII had brought about changes in racial attitudes and new opportunities for black people. After a stint with the Montreal Royals, Jackie Robinson did join the Dodgers and became famous as a baseball player.

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Famous Negro Music Makers

Famous Biographies for Young People

Famous Negro Music Makers by Langston Hughes, 1955.

I sought out an electronic copy of this book because I don’t own a physical one, and after I found out that it existed, I knew that I had to cover it at some point! The book is part of a series of biographies for children that I covered earlier, but what caught my attention was the author of the book, Langston Hughes, the famous poet of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and 1930s. I mostly knew Langston Hughes for his poetry, and I wasn’t aware that he had written any children’s books until I found out that he had written several biography books for this children’s biography series. When I found out that he specifically wrote books about African Americans and other notable black people from history, it occurred to me that he might have even written biographies of people he knew personally because of the circles he traveled in.

This book focuses on prominent African American musicians. It contains a series of short biographies and profiles, beginning with musicians from the 19th century and continuing into the mid-20th century. Most of the musicians described in the book were contemporaries of Langston Hughes, but since the biographies are brief and focus only on providing an overview of the subjects’ lives, there is no indication whether Hughes ever met any of them himself. I was a little disappointed about that because I would have enjoyed hearing a personal perspective, but the personalities covered are still fascinating.

If you’re wondering why he uses the term “Negro” instead of “African American”, it’s because that term was one of the more polite and acceptable terms during his youth and around the time when he wrote this book. (That’s why the UNCF, or United Negro College Fund uses it as well. It was one of the polite terms in use at the time of its founding.) It sounds a bit out of date to people of the 21st century because, around the time of the Civil Rights Movement, which began around the time this book was written, people began advocating for a shift in the words used to describe black people. They wanted to distance themselves from old attitudes about race by using newer terms that didn’t have as much emotional baggage attached to them. This is when terms like “colored” and “Negro” feel out of use and were replaced by “African American” as the correct, formal term to specifically describe an American with African ancestry and “black” (considered somewhat impolite a century earlier, as I understand it, see the Rainbow and Lucky series for an example – I discussed it in the historical description of the 1830s) as the generic term to describe a person with dark skin and African ancestry, regardless of their nationality.

I enjoyed the range of different styles of music covered in the book. Recognized some of the most famous singers in the book by name alone, before I even started reading, but this book also introduced me to some musicians I hadn’t known about before. I knew about Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Bessie Smith, and Marian Anderson, but I hadn’t heard of Lena Horne or Roland Hayes and some of the others. I’m sure that modern children would also be unfamiliar with some of the musicians included in the book. The biographies begin with musicians from the 19th century and end with musicians who were contemporaries of Langston Hughes in the 1950s.

Because this book was written in the mid-1950s, some of the information included is long out of date. People who were alive when Langston Hughes wrote the book are obviously not alive now, almost 70 years later. There are more recent books that cover the same topic and include information about late 20th century and early 21st century musicians Langston Hughes wouldn’t have known about. However, this vintage book is still interesting because of its famous author and because it was written at a turning point in American history, when society was changing and racial issues were being challenged.

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

The biographies included in the book are:

The Fisk Jubilee Singers, The Story of the Spirituals

This musical group began touring and singing spirituals in 1871. Some of the first members of this group had been born in slavery. After the end of the Civil War, the American Missionary Association of the Congregational Church established the Fisk School in abandoned army barracks in Nashville to teach black children at the high school level. However, it attracted a much larger student body than high school students. Many of the students had grown up in slavery and never learned to read, so that was the first skill they had to master. In addition to children of all ages, the school attracted older adults who wanted to learn enough to read Bible stories before they died. There was local opposition to a school for black people, and a lack of funding endangered the school’s existence. The school’s treasurer came up with the idea of holding musical performances to raise money. At first, the performers weren’t sure they wanted to sing their spirituals in front of white audiences, but they turned out to be very successful. They even did a European tour and sang before Queen Victoria. The Fisk School continued to grow and later became Fisk University, which still exists in Nashville and is considered one of the top historically black colleges in the US.

James A. Bland (1854-1911), Minstrel Composer

This section begins with an explanation of the creation of the banjo as an American instrument by slaves. People have negative associations with the term “minstrel show” in modern times, but the book explains that the first minstrel shows were performed by black slaves who had a talent for music. They were allowed to travel between plantations to perform their musical shows. Later, white actors and musicians adopted the style of these performances and started wearing blackface to perform their own minstrel shows.

However, James Bland fell in love with banjo music and the style of minstrel performances from a young age. Although minstrel music had a poor reputation, and his parents disapproved of his interest in this style of music, Bland earned extra money by giving street performances while he was in college. Although most theaters only wanted to book all-white minstrel groups in blackface as opposed to all-black minstrel groups, Bland managed to join an all-black group and make a name for himself as both a performer and composer.

Bert Williams (1875-1922), Artist of Comedy Song

In his youth, Bert Williams helped earn money for his family by singing in the street. Later, he formed a partnership with George Walker, and the two of them developed a musical comedy act. Bert Williams became famous for his act, but it also troubled him because he weirdly had to use blackface, even as a black person, because that’s what audiences expected, and he also had to act dumb when he was actually very smart. He wanted to move on to more serious roles as an actor, but people didn’t think he could play anything other than comedic roles. Also, in spite of his fame, he was treated as a second-class citizen everywhere outside of the theater because of Jim Crow laws. He was quoted describing the situation, “It is no disgrace to be a Negro, but it is very inconvenient.”

Bill Robinson (1878-1949), Music with His Feet

Bill Robinson was a famous tap dancer, often credited under his nickname, Bojangles. He was orphaned at a young age and partially raised by his grandmother, who was a former slave. He left school at the age of eight and got a job in a riding stable because he loved horses. He also earned extra money by dancing on street corners and ended up joining a traveling show. He became famous for his dancing and had dancing roles in movies. He is particularly remembered for his appearances in Shirley Temple movies in the 1930s.

(Note: He and Shirley Temple are regarded as the first interracial dance team in movies. While people of the time might have been scandalized by an interracial adult dancing team, it was acceptable for little Shirley Temple to dance with Bill Robinson because of her youth and innocence. Basically, because she was a young child, and he was in his 50s, it was obvious that there could be no romantic relationship between the two of them. Segregationists of the early 20th century feared interracial marriages and created laws to prevent them, which is why they feared any suggestion of romance between a black person and a white person. Shirley Temple was a safe person for Robinson to dance with because she was just a cute little girl dancing with her “Uncle Billy”, not a potential romantic partner.)

Leadbelly (1880s-1949), The Essence of Folk Song

His original name was Huddie Leadbetter, and he had a wild youth. He was a rough fighter who was even charged with murder and assault and sent to prison and escaped multiple times. (The book notes that he may not have actually killed anybody. The book explains that he was involved in brawls with other local people at Saturday night dances, where he was in demand as a musician. During one of these fights, in which a large number of people were involved, a man was killed, and Leadbelly, as he came to be called, was the one who was apprehended and charged for his death. However, in this type of free-for-all fight, it’s difficult to tell who did what, so it isn’t definite that he was responsible for the man’s death. I’m not completely sure whether the description of the fight in the book is fully accurate, though, because I saw it described differently elsewhere. It’s enough for readers to know that he had a rough youth, that he got in trouble for a fight in which someone was killed, and that he was in and out of prison for a time.) However, he had a natural talent for music and a love of folk songs that helped him to build a better life. His performances and recordings are credited for preserving songs that might otherwise have been lost to time.

Jelly Roll Morton (1885-1941), From Ragtime to Jazz

His original name was Ferdinand Joseph Le Menthe, and he grew up in a mixed race family in New Orleans. New Orleans was an exciting city with many different types of music, and Morton (as he later called himself) discovered his love of music early in life. He worked a variety of jobs in his youth, but through it all, he continued to play his music. He traveled the country, learning and playing ragtime and jazz music, eventually composing his own songs.

Roland Hayes (1887-(later D. 1977)), Famous Concert Artist

Roland Hayes was a student at Fisk University (whose origins were described in the first chapter of this book) in his youth. However, while the Fisk Jubilee Singers had popularized Negro spirituals and helped make it acceptable for theaters to book black people to sing these songs, Hayes was in love with classical music from Europe, the style of Beethoven and Brahms and classical opera, and theaters would not book a black performer to perform that style of music. Still, Hayes was determined to find a way to perform the music he loved. Strangely, motion pictures helped him to get his start. Because movies were silent then, all music had to be provided by live musicians in the theater. Hayes got his start singing behind the screens of movie theaters, where no one could tell that the performer was a black man. He also toured with the Fisk Jubilee Singers and made a name for himself in London, where he even sang before King George V.

William Grant Still (1895-(later D. 1978)), Distinguished Composer

In his day, William Grant Still was considered “the most prolific of American Negro composers.” He was raised to have a love of learning and music, although his mother and stepfather thought that music would be an unreliable career, unless he was teaching. For a while, he studied science at Wilberforce University, but he later attended Oberlin College to learn musical composition. He also worked for W. C. Handy’s music publishing company. He later moved to California and composed and arranged music for movies in Hollywood. However, his work extended beyond movies, and he is mainly remembered as a symphony composer.

Bessie Smith (1896-1937), “The Empress of the Blues”

Bessie Smith is described as being a large and tall woman with a powerful voice. She was a blues singer who mainly performed before black vaudeville audiences. The blues style of music had its roots in folk music, and it was considered lowbrow in the early 1900s. Gradually, it began to enter the wider culture and helped to form the style of popular jazz, but at the time, Bessie Smith’s style wasn’t taken seriously by Broadway. Bessie Smith was well-loved in her performances and may have gone on to be a bigger star, but unfortunately, she died from injuries in a car accident. According to the book,she might have survived, but the nearest hospital was for white people only and refused to take her. She died on the way to a hospital that would accept black people. This was just one of the harsh realities of life and death in the segregated South. However, the story about the whites-only hospital appears to have been discredited since this book was written. It seems that she did reach a hospital that accepted black people and lived to have her badly-damaged arm amputated, but she was too badly injured to survive.

Duke Ellington (1899-(later D. 1974)), Composer and Band Leader

Duke Ellington‘s birth name was Edward Kennedy Ellington. His father worked for the Navy Department of the Government, and he was born in Washington, DC. His early interests in life were art and baseball, but his mother had him take piano lessons. In high school, he and some friends started a ragtime band. The band was successful, and they moved to New York. After a few years, they began recording for Columbia Records and other recording companies. He composed music throughout his career, jazz and symphony orchestra.

Ethel Waters was born into a poor family in Pennsylvania and had a hard childhood. She started working as a hotel maid in her early teenage years, and she worked her way up through adversity in the theatrical world. She became a vaudeville singer and actress, eventually going on to make Hollywood movies.

Louis Armstrong (1900-(later D. 1971)), King of the Trumpet Players

Louis Armstrong began his musical education in a very odd way. When he was twelve years old, he was apprehend on the streets of New Orleans for firing a gun in the air on New Year’s Eve. Firing a gun in the air is a dangerous thing to do (people are sometimes killed by celebratory fire), and the authorities decided that he was he was a young hoodlum for running around, firing a gun in the streets. The sent him to the Colored Waif’s Home, which was being used as a youth reformatory as well as an orphanage. As a younger child, he had played music on street corners with some of his friends and had admired musicians who played horns, but he had never had a horn of his own. At the reform school, he was given a coronet and music lessons. Louis loved it, and he loved playing in the reform school’s band when it marched in local parades. He was disappointed when he didn’t get to keep the coronet when he left the reform school. However, his talent had become known. The owner of a local restaurant bought him a horn from a pawnshop so he could play in some of the local bands. At first, he had trouble adjusting to playing again because it had been so long since he had played regularly at the school, and his lip got sore. When that happened, he would fill in the trumpet part by singing in his gravelly voice. It was such a unique sound that word of it spread, and soon, he was getting attention from audiences and other musicians. Early on, he found it difficult to read music, so he learned to play by ear, and he had a talent for adding his own embellishments and variations to songs. He became famous for his scat singing.

Marian Anderson (early 1900s-(later D. 1993)), Metropolitan Opera Star

Marian Anderson began singing in the church choir as a child, and she was so talented that her church raised money to pay for her musical education. Later, she was also sponsored by the Philadelphia Choral Society. In 1925, she entered the New York Philharmonic Competitions and won first place. She did a singing tour of Europe, where she made a name for herself, and when she returned to the US, she became an acclaimed concert artist. In January 1955, she became the first black performer to sing for the Metropolitan Opera Company. (That was the year this book was written, and it discusses this event as a landmark for black musicians.)

Bennie Benjamin (1907-(later D. 1989)), Broadway Song Writer

I couldn’t remember having heard of Bennie Benjamin before, but I had heard of one of his songs, I Don’t Want to Set the World On Fire. It was his first big success, and he became a famous Broadway song writer. Something that made his music different from other black song writers of his day was that his music wasn’t inspired by spirituals, blues, or jazz. He was originally from the West Indies, and he moved to New York as a young man, so he was always more interested in Broadway styles of music than Southern music. At the time this book was written, he was still alive and writing songs.

Mahalia Jackson (1911-(later D. 1972)), Singer of Gospel Songs

As a child in New Orleans, Mahalia Jackson listened to Bessie Smith’s records and was inspired by her singing style. Mahalia’s specialty was gospel music. She never wanted to perform secular songs, but her music wasn’t the same as spirituals. Gospel music is different from spirituals because spirituals evolved from folk music with no known composer, and gospel music is more modern with known professional composers.

Dean Dixon (1915-(later D. 1976)), Symphony Conductor

Dean Dixon‘s mother was a music lover, and when he was a young child, she would take him to symphonies at Carnegie Hall. She had him learn to play the violin, and he played in his high school orchestra. He developed an interest in orchestration, and he formed a small chamber orchestra at the local YMCA, where he acted as the conductor. After high school, he attended the Julliard School of Music and did graduate work at Columbia University. While he was studying, he also led a mixed race symphony of children and adults in Harlem. He went on to become the first black person to conduct the New York Philharmonic Symphony.

Lena Horne (1917-(later D. 2010)), Singing Star of Hollywood

Lena Horne was an actress and singer. In 1942, she became the first black female singer to appear in a Hollywood move as a featured star in a film with white actors. At that time, typical movie roles for black people were minor comedic parts and servants. Even though black people in American society were educated and held professions like doctor or lawyer, movies typically showed them in more menial jobs, like chauffeur or maid. Lena Horne’s role in the movie Panama Hattie, in which she played a singer, helped to set a new precedent. During WWII she toured with the USO. After she became famous, she was known to turn down singing engagements in places that practiced segregation.

Famous Jazz Musicians (1800-1955), Congo Square to Carnegie Hall

This chapter explains the history and evolution of jazz music and discusses some prominent musicians from the early to mid-20th century who have not been discussed earlier in the book. Toward the end of the chapter, the author discusses a particularly interesting point that the National Association of Music Therapy was researching therapeutic uses for jazz music in the 1950s. Langston Hughes was also pleased that jazz could be used to encourage people to take an interest in other aspects of African American culture, like poetry, and how this style of music has spread all over the world.

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Abraham Lincoln Joke Book

The Abraham Lincoln Joke Book by Beatrice Schenk de Regniers, 1965.

I love joke books on oddly specific topics! This one is a little bittersweet because it was published 100 years after Abraham Lincoln’s death, but the book isn’t about that. Instead, it’s a fun celebration of some funny stories about Lincoln and some of his favorite jokes.

The jokes are mostly in story form, and many of them are stories about incidents from Lincoln’s own life. Some of them are stories about his youth, like the time he helped a classmate secretly during a spelling bee and the time he played a prank on his stepmother by holding some younger boys upside down so they could walk across the ceiling of the house, leaving muddy footprints.

Not all of the stories in the book are true tales about Lincoln. The book admits that some of them are “tall tales” that other people told about him. Many of them were jokes that people told about Lincoln’s height because that was one of the first things that people noticed about him. It was all the more notable when he was standing next to his wife because he was especially tall and she was especially short.

The end of the book discusses how Lincoln would often use jokes and stories to make a point in a conversation or soften the blow of criticism. As President, he liked to read joke books or humorous stories to cheer himself up during stressful times. He is quoted as saying, “I laugh because I must not cry.” The book ends with a timeline of events in Lincoln’s life.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).

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101 Valentine Jokes

101 Valentine Jokes by Pat Brigandi, illustrated by Don Orehek, 1994.

This is one of those little themed joke books that I used to pick up at school book fairs and used book sales when I was a kid. Most of the jokes are really corny, but I remember finding them fun when I was a kid. Happy Valentine’s Day!

One of the things that surprised me about this book is that some of the jokes are weirdly insulting for a Valentine-themed book. It just struck me as odd that there were jokes with people basically insulting their boyfriends or girlfriends or sending insulting Valentines.

Actually, as I kid, I think I understood the point of the insulting joke Valentine cards because, when you’re a kid in school, there are rules that require you to give a Valentine to every person in class, whether you like them or get along with them or not, so nobody feels left out. Those rules make sense because teachers don’t want to create a situation a situation where somebody in class is being deliberately ignored by other students or the kids are playing one-upmanship about who is more popular than who. But at the same time, when someone else in class has been picking on you all year, that’s the last person you want to give a Valentine. You can’t really give people nasty Valentines like this (at least, not without getting into trouble), but there are times when it can be fun to imagine that you could so you can tell off some jerk who desperately needs it.

But, when it comes to people insulting their boyfriends or girlfriends, I’m just thinking, “If you feel that way about this person, why are you going out with them? Go find someone else!”

Fortunately, not all the jokes in this book are mean. It would have been depressing if all of them were negative in some way. There are the usual knock-knock jokes, jokes based on puns, and a few jokes that are told in story form or silly conversations.

There is one long joke that’s a form letter for “thanking” someone for a present. (Hint: It’s implied that the present wasn’t that great and the person isn’t thankful for it. It reminded me of one of the joke poems in The D- Minus Poems of Jeremy Bloom, and I think the poem was better.)

Overall, I think the best jokes were the kind that I think I kids really could use in class Valentines without getting in trouble. Because of all the insulting ones, though, I felt like there weren’t enough of this kind of joke.

What did the chewing gum say to the show?
I’m stuck on you.

This book does have the classic:

Will you remember me tomorrow?
Of course I will.
Will you remember me next week?
Of course I will.
Will you remember me next month?
Of course I will.
Will you remember me next year?
Of course I will.
Knock, knock.
Who’s there?
See, you forgot me already!

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

Posted on by TracyC

The Neverending Story

The Neverending Story by Michael Ende, 1979, 1983.

Bastian Balthazar Bux has problems. He’s smaller and fatter than the other boys, no good at sports or fighting, and not even a particularly good student.  Because of this, other kids tease him, bullies chase him, and the one time that he tried to talk back to them, the mean kids shoved him into a trash can, so he was afraid to ever try it again.  One day, on the way to school, he seeks sanctuary from his bullies in an old bookshop that belongs to Carl Conrad Coreander.  Bastian loves books more than anything.  In fact, his love of books and his imagination are his only apparent strengths at this point in his life.

Coreander doesn’t like children, and as soon as he sees Bastian, he makes it clear that the boy isn’t welcome in his shop, that he doesn’t carry books for children, and that he won’t sell Bastian any books for adults. Coreander says that children are just noisy and make messes and ruin books.  Bastian protests that not all children are like that, and the two them talk about why Bastian is there and why the other children bully him.  Bastian says that one of the reasons why the other kids think he’s odd is that he likes to make things up, like imagining places and characters and odd names. He rarely shares these things because nobody else seems interested. Coreander asks what his parents have to say about all of this, and Bastian reveals that his mother is dead and his father doesn’t take much interest in him or things that happen to him in his daily life.  Coreander is rather condescending to Bastian but also strangely interested in some of the details about him and his life.

When Coreander gets up to take a phone call, Bastian finds himself looking at the book that Coreander was reading when he came into the shop.  It’s called The Neverending Story, a title which captures Bastian’s imagination at once because he always hates it when a book he likes ends. The book seems to call to Bastian, and he suddenly feels like he has to have it.  Because Coreander has already made it clear that he won’t sell any books to Bastian, Bastian simply snatches up the book and leaves the shop with it.

After he’s out of the shop, Bastian suddenly feels guilty for stealing the book, even though he still feels compelled to have it and read it. He knows that he can’t take the book home with him because, even though his father doesn’t notice much, he would notice if Bastian showed up at home when he’s supposed to be at school.  Bastian knows that he’s already terribly late for school, but he can’t bring himself to go to class, especially not with a stolen book.  Desperately, he tries to think of a place to go.  Then, he remembers that his school has an attic.  Hardly anybody goes up there, and even those who do don’t go there very often.  He can hide there for a while and read.

Without giving much thought to how long he’s going to hide and what he’s going to do for food when he gets hungry, Bastian hurries up to the attic of the school, locks himself in, and starts to read The Neverending Story.

From this point on, most of the book is the story in the book Bastian stole, but at the same time, it’s also a story about Bastian himself.  There are periods when things in the story remind Bastian of things happening in his life or times when he pauses to think about what his class at school would be doing at this time without him, things that he’s glad to be missing himself.  However, gradually, Bastian himself starts to enter the story.

The Neverending Story Begins

The story in Bastian’s book takes place in the magical land of Fantastica.  The first characters we meet are messengers who are on their way to see the Childlike Empress who rules the land.  Within that land are many fantastical people and creatures who inhabit countries of their own, but strange things are happening here that have nothing to do with the usual magic of Fantastica.  A small group of messengers who happen to meet each other talk about what they’ve observed and why they need to talk to the Childlike Empress.  Whole sections of their countries and even some of the people and creatures who normally inhabit them have simply disappeared.  By “disappeared”, they mean that nothing is left in their place.  Whenever people try to look at the areas that used to be there, they see absolutely nothing, as though they have all gone blind when looking in their direction.  Nobody knows why this is happening, and people are panicking.

The Childlike Empress lives in a beautiful tower.  When the messengers arrive there, they discover that so many messengers have arrived from every corner of Fantastica that they have to make appointments and wait their turn to talk to the Childlike Empress.  Everyone seems to have the same problem, and to make matters worse, word has spread that the Childlike Empress is ill, and the doctors can’t seem to understand the nature of her illness and have no idea what to do to help her.  The messengers wonder if the Childlike Empress’s illness could have something to do with all the strange things that have been happening.  All of the creatures in the kingdom know that the very existence of their kingdom depends on the well-being of the Childlike Empress.  If anything ever happened to her, the rest of them would simply cease to exist.

At this point in the story, Bastian is reminded of his mother’s death and stops to think about her.  He remembers being at the hospital with his father while his mother was undergoing an operation to try to save her life, but unfortunately, it was unsuccessful.  After that point, Bastian’s father changed, becoming mentally and emotionally withdrawn, so it seems as though Bastian not only lost his mother completely but also part of his father.  His father continues to look after him physically and even gives him nice things, like a bicycle, but he rarely takes much notice of his son’s day-to-day life, making Bastian feel almost like he isn’t there himself.  His father no longer talks to him about ordinary, everyday things, and he’s always preoccupied with his grief.

The doctors trying to treat the Childlike Empress say that she doesn’t have any obvious symptoms of illness.  For some reason, she simply seems to be fading away, making it seem likely that her malady is tied to the fading away of Fantastica itself.  Chiron the centaur, the greatest of the healers, says that the Childlike Empress has said that someone must go on a quest to find the solution to her problem. She doesn’t say what the solution is, but she has chosen the hero who will go on this quest by name and has given Chiron her medallion to give to this hero.  The Childlike Empress’s amulet, Auryn, takes the form of the twined snakes (it’s a sort of elaborate ouroboros) that appears on the cover of the book that Bastian is reading.

Chiron takes the medallion to the Greenskins, a people who resemble nomadic Native Americans who hunt purple buffalo, to find the hero called Atreyu.  Atreyu turns out to be a 10-year-old boy, and Chiron is upset at first that a child so young has been given this important mission.  Even though he is doubtful that a child could save the Childlike Empress, he has to trust the empress’s decision.  He explains the situation to Atreyu and his people, and Atreyu sets off on his quest, although he has little to go on.

Bastian comes to identify somewhat with Atreyu, who is an orphan, raised communally by his people.  In a way, Atreyu is like what Bastian himself wishes he was.  Atreyu is also an orphan, but where Bastian feels neglected by his remaining parent and has no one else to rely on, Atreyu is regarded as the “son of all” his people, with everyone raising him.  Bastian wishes that he could feel like he could rely on everyone around him to care about him.  Atreyu is also strong and brave, which Bastian is not, or at least, he doesn’t feel like he is.

Atreyu travels far and asks everyone where he stops if they know how to help the Childlike Empress, but no one does.  However, in a dream, a purple buffalo tells him that he must visit an ancient woman called Morla, who lives in the Swamp of Sorrows.  She is the oldest creature in Fantastica, and she will know the answer.  Atreyu loses his beloved horse in the Swamp of Sorrows because the horse is overtaken by a dreadful depression and cannot save himself from being dragged down into the swamp.  (This was the worst part of the movie version of this story for me as a kid although somewhat less traumatic in the book.)  Atreyu is protected from the depression by the Childlike Empress’s amulet and is able to reach Morla.

Morla turns out to be a giant and ancient tortoise.  She does know the answer to the problem, but Atreyu has trouble persuading her to explain it at first because Morla is so old that she has come to feel like life is meaningless and doesn’t really care if she and everyone else disappears or not.  Fortunately, Atreyu’s arguments with her revive enough of her interest for her to talk to him. Morla says that the Childlike Empress has always been young because her life isn’t measured by time like others’ lives.  The Childlike Empress’s life is measured by names.  She has had many, many names over the years, most of them forgotten now, and even Morla doesn’t know what her current name is.  In order for her life and existence to be renewed, the Childlike Empress needs a new name.  Atreyu asks Morla how she can get one, and Morla says that she doesn’t know who can give her a new name, only that it can’t be anyone from Fantastica.  Atreyu must visit the Southern Oracle to find the answer.

At this point, Bastian thinks it’s too bad that he can’t give the Childlike Empress her name because thinking up unusual names is something that he’s really good at, and this might be the one place where his talent has a use and people who would welcome it.  However, the things that are happening in the story are so scary that Bastian is also grateful that he is safe where he is, just reading about them.

Bastian reads that Atreyu wanders out of the swamp on foot. He doesn’t know where he’s going, and he lost all of his supplies with his horse.  Then, Bastian hears the clock chime and knows that school is out for the day. As the other children leave the school, Bastian has to decide what to do. He knows that he really should go home and own up to his father about stealing the book, but when he gets up to go, he has the feeling like he has to keep reading, to finish what he’s started, like Atreyu, who is still fulfilling his mission in spite of hardship.  Bastian feels a little proud of making a difficult decision because he’s not running away from his responsibilities so much as continuing a quest of his own.  He knows that he must finish that book. Indeed, he must because the existence of Fantastica now depends on him.

As he continues reading and following Atreyu’s adventures, Bastian begins to feel more like the story isn’t just a story, that there is something more to it. When Atreyu reaches the Oracle, which communicates only through rhyme, it tells Atreyu that nobody in Fantastica can give the Childlike Empress a new name because the truth is that all of them are only characters in a book who exist as they are because of the needs of the story.  The people of Fantastica didn’t invent their world, they don’t create it as it exists, and they don’t have any real power to change anything, even a name.  All of those powers belong to humans who live in what they call the “Outer World.”  The Oracle says that generations of human children have read the book that contains all of Fantastica, and they are the ones who have used their powerful imaginations to give the Childlike Empress new names, over and over.  The problem is that the book has not been read by anyone for too long and children tend not to believe in stories like theirs anymore, so it has been too long since the Childlike Empress was given her last name. The memories of all the names she’s been given have faded, so she is losing her ability to maintain her existence and the existence of all of Fantastica.  They need a human child with the ability to believe in Fantastica and think of a new name to rename the Childlike Empress.  They need Bastian … if Bastian can manage to believe in himself as the hero of his story.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies, plus a computer game about it and the theme song from the movie). It was originally written in German, and the version I have is the English translation. There is a movie version from the 1980s that is very well-known among people who were young then and fantasy fans. There are also two movie sequels that aren’t as well-known.

My Reaction and Spoilers

I saw the movie version of this book long before I ever got hold of a copy and way before I was old enough to read a book that long.  The movie was big in the 1980s, when I was a young child, and it has a magical and very 1980s theme song that was also used as a cultural reference in the show Stranger Things.  I’m actually attached to that song because it’s one of the sounds of my early childhood. For reference, I’m younger than all the Stranger Things kid characters are supposed to be, even Erica, but old enough to have memories of the time period of that show. The mall scenes in that show are practically right out of my childhood. Those electronicized ‘80s songs, bright-colored clothes and clothes with paint splatter designs, Cold War with two Germanies – East and West – these things were all part of my early life, and that is the time period when this book was popular and the movie was new.  As Stranger Things points out, things like fantasy books and movies and playing Dungeons and Dragons were all considered part of nerd culture back in the day.  To a certain extent, they still are, but Harry Potter brought a renewed interest in and popularization of fantasy books in the late 1990s.

The story is about the power of imagination and the roles that fantasy play in human lives.  The story actually gets deep in places about the philosophy of stories and how people use them.  It explains that humans fear stories, particularly fantasy stories, because, when fantasy characters get out in the real world and take over people’s minds, they can cause madness and delusions or be used as lies by unscrupulous people to fool and manipulate others.  They don’t use the word “propaganda”, but that’s part of what they imply, and it’s a fitting concern for the Cold War era when this story was written.  Madness can also be a real risk for people who can’t separate reality from fantasy, as shown in Bastian’s further adventures in Fantastica, described below.  Humans are creatures that live and function in the real world, and while we sometimes venture into the realm of fantasy and stories, we can lose ourselves if we don’t know how to keep the two separate in our minds.  So, what’s a human supposed to do?

The book suggests the idea that people can’t simply avoid fantasy entirely for fear of the effect that it might have on them, like people who refuse to allow children to read fantasy books.  Even though people like that might think they’re smart for avoiding “lies” and “delusions”, but the problem with that is that there are many types of delusions that people have, even in their everyday lives, and people who are convinced that they’re being thoroughly realistic and avoiding any sort of fantasy actually make themselves vulnerable to lies and delusions of other kinds.  Anybody who’s lived through the era of accusations of “fake news” should be able to grasp that concept.  A real world fact is that people use stories of all kinds to explain and understand the world around them.  We all use stories, and those stories have shades of emotion and varying degrees of elements of fiction.  The principal of Fantastica is that fantasy is fine when people approach it as fantasy, coming to it willingly in the full knowledge that it is fantasy.  Even in fantasy stories there can be elements of realism, such as the reality of human emotions, but people can pick out the real bits from the fictional ones when they know what they’re dealing with and are willing participants, not having it pushed at them by people who are actively seeking to trick them. 

People with broad, real-world knowledge, who are used to stories of various kinds in the real world, get accustomed to distinguishing between different types of stories and recognizing fictional elements from false ones.  There have been a couple of times when I’ve actively pointed out to people on my neighborhood website who shared “shocking” stories about horrific kidnapping attempts of kids or young women that those stories were false.  The local police have even said that they were false, but I knew that they were even before getting that confirmed with the local police.  How?  I’ve seen them before, or ones very much like them.  Honestly, they were basically the type of kidnapping stories that appear on Wattpad, the infamous Internet home of badly-misspelled stories of that ilk, and because I read fanfiction, I’ve seen them before in all their grammatically-incorrect glory.  I recognized elements of the fake stories from ones that I read before in the full knowledge that they were completely fictional and probably written by teenagers, most of whom don’t understand how chloroform actually works.  I could see their ridiculously complicated premises anywhere and go, “Yep, it’s one of those stories.”  The people attempting to share these stories as shocking things that their neighbors need to know about have probably never read Wattpad or any similar amateur fiction and equally don’t know how chloroform works.  They just experienced a feeling of shock when reading these stories on Facebook (yes, that is where they said they got them) and did what they automatically do when they feel shocked about something, passed it on to someone else without asking someone more knowledgeable.  Some of the other people reading their posts on the neighborhood website called the local police to check their stories, but the original posters did not do that before posting them. It seems that never crossed their minds.  I’m telling you this because I’m pointing out that I’m immune to this particular kind of shocking fake kidnapping story because I’ve seen it before, I’m familiar with the general format, and I actually did look up what chloroform does and how it works because I was curious.  I’ve sort of inoculated myself against this sort of story.  I don’t feel shocked when I see it.  I roll my eyes. 

I’m not saying that it’s completely impossible to fool me on anything because human beings are limited, and I can’t say that I’ve heard every story out there, but I’ve heard quite a lot of them.  I’m a voracious, long-term reader in different genres, fictional and non-fiction, badly-written and award-winning.  I don’t fear fiction or fantasy or even “fake news” because I’ve seen it before in various forms.  I know how to verify information and already have reliable sources of information lined up on various subjects.  Above all, I have the knowledge that I’m always responsible for myself and in control of myself and that no amount of fiction or “fake news” can ever make me do anything without my consent.  Even people under hypnosis can’t be made to do anything that is truly against their will or morals, and I’m pretty comfortable with my sense of self and what I’m willing or not willing to do.  (By the way, I got the Pfizer vaccine back in April 2021 and the Moderna booster in December 2021, and I’m perfectly fine. It’s not poison, unlike some of those idiot horse cures some people try when they’re so afraid of being tricked by some people that they leave themselves open to being tricked by other people, who can see their real fears. It’s also not magnetic.  I used to stick coins to my skin way back in elementary school in the early 1990s, although I preferred the trick where you roll a coin down your forehead and nose. Sticking coins to your skin works because of sweat, not magnetism, like that trick of sticking a spoon to your nose because you licked it first. This is a digression, but honestly, how does anyone get out of childhood without knowing how that works? I wasn’t aware that anybody who had ever been to school with other kids in their childhood hadn’t seen this stuff before.) Fear is one element I know that can cloud people’s perceptions about what’s real and what’s not, and while I’m naturally a nervous person in a lot of ways, this isn’t something that scares me at all.  I’m not afraid of being tricked.  I never was.  I was a fan of magic tricks at a young age, and that led me to read about magic and the tricks that people use. None of them scare me because I’ve done them before myself and know how they work.  It’s like that with fiction, too.  Been there, done that, seen it, know it, and I urge other people to do the same.  This kind of mental vaccination works as well as the other kind.  At least, it always has for me.

Book vs. Movie

There are many incidents in the book that are not in the movie, although some appeared in the first movie sequel.  In fact, the original movie really only covers about the first half the book.  Rather than ending with Bastian giving the Childlike Empress her new name, Moon Child, while she and Atreyu are at the Ivory Tower where she lives, Bastian hesitates because he’s not sure what he’s supposed to do, if he’s really chosen the right name, if he’s really going to enter Fantastica and how, and above all, if a small, weak boy like himself can really be a hero.  Seeing that his indecision could ruin Fantastica forever, the Childlike Empress finds a way to put the story into a loop, repeating over and over, making it truly a never-ending story until Bastian finally names her.

After Bastian names her, Moon Child gives him the last grain of sand from Fantastica, like in the end of the movie, so he can rebuild it.  At first, Bastian isn’t sure how, but she explains to him that he can do it with his wishes. He has as many wishes as he wants, and he can wish for anything and everything.  Bastian feels overwhelmed at the thought that he can think of anything, and that makes it difficult to think of anything because he doesn’t know where to start. Yet, Bastian must make wishes to rebuild Fantastica.  From here, I’ll basically describe Bastian’s continuing adventures in Fantastica, although I’m going to leave out a lot of detail and individual incidents and characters because there’s far too much to describe:

Bastian’s Continuing Adventures

To get him started, Moon Child asks Bastian what made him hesitate before to name her.  Bastian explains how he doesn’t look or feel like a hero should. He thinks that heroes should be like princes, handsome and strong, not small, weak, and fat like himself.  With this first wish, Bastian becomes a handsome prince.  Moon Child gives Bastian the Auryn, which gives him the power to control things in Fantastica and yet keep him safe from all dangers at the same time.  Using it, Bastian makes himself strong and brave as well as handsome, and his wishes take him on new adventures through new lands, creating things as he goes.

Then, his wish for companionship leads him to find Atreyu.  He is glad to be reunited with him, but Atreyu remembers Bastian’s real appearance because he saw him in a mirror before.  By now, Bastian’s memories of his former self are fading.  The people of Fantastica appreciate Bastian’s ability to make new stories because they lack that ability themselves, but it starts getting out of hand.  Bastian’s creations start getting out of his control, and Atreyu realizes that Bastian is losing more and more of his memories, forgetting who he really is and what his home is really like.  As Bastian loses touch with his real self, he also gets confused about what he really wants, and his confusion is causing his wishes to produce uncontrollable results. To make matters worse, Bastian is losing his desire to return home along with his memories of home.  His friends are distressed because they know that Bastian must return home in order to inspire other children to come to Fantastica.  If he doesn’t, other children won’t come and give Moon Child new names in the future, and Fantastica will be in danger once again.  Basically, Bastian has lost of the plot of his own story.

Persuaded by his friends, Bastian makes a wish that will help him figure out what to do: he wants to see the Childlike Empress/Moon Child again.  Although Atreyu and Falkor wanted him to make a new choice to guide their quest, they’re not convinced this is the right one because one of the rules of Fantastica is that nobody can see her more than once.  Bastian says that he thinks he’s different because he’s human and not from Fantastica, and he’s already seen her more than once.  As they continue their journey, Bastian continues losing more and more of himself, getting offended with his friends because they treat him like a child, forgetting that’s what he actually is.

At one point, an evil character separates Bastian from his friends by feeding his vanity.  As Bastian loses more and more of his memories, he becomes uncertain about whether or not he really wants to continue his journey to see Moon Child, forgetting his original reason for wanting to see her.  They do finally arrive at the Ivory Tower, but the Childlike Empress is not there, and nobody knows where she is.  At the evil character’s urging, Bastian tries to make himself emperor in her place, thinking that she has left Fantastica forever and that the reason she gave him Auryn is because she wanted him to be her successor.  However, the other residents of Fantastica know that it’s not right.  Atreyu and Falkor end up leading the forces of Fantastica against Bastian to get the amulet, return his memories, and put things right.  I don’t like stories where people turn against their friends like Bastian does because it’s pretty uncomfortable.  In this case, many people are killed in the battle against Bastian, Bastian wounds Atreyu, and the Ivory Tower collapses.

At first, Bastian blames Atreyu for his own failures and tries to go after him to get revenge, but along the way, he stumbles on a town occupied with former emperors and empresses of Fantastica.  A little monkey explains to Bastian what the town is and who the people there are.  All of the people in the town were people who tried to take over Fantastica but lost their minds in the effort.  They’re humans and have lost their memories and now do crazy things.  Because they’ve lost their minds and memories, they’re unable to wish themselves home.  This is what happens to humans who lose their desire to go home to the real world.  Readers can look at it as people who become detached from reality and live in a madness based on fantasy.  Humans need reality to keep themselves grounded and sane, and they need their memories and their pasts to help themselves build a future.

The monkey shows Bastian how he taught the crazy ex-emperors a game where they spell words with alphabet blocks.  Most of what they create is gibberish, but the monkey says that, when they’ve played for a hundred years or so, they’ll occasionally spell out a poem, and since they play endlessly, they’ll eventually spell out all of the works of literature, poking fun at the theory that monkeys pounding endlessly on typewriters could do the same thing.  Bastian is horrified and questions the monkey about how he can avoid this fate.  Auryn is a liability because it’s removing the memories that Bastian needs to return home, yet the monkey says that Bastian will need Auryn in order to return home.

As Bastian journeys further, he finds a land where people always work together and use the word “we” instead of “I.”  It’s inspiring in a way, but Bastian is troubled because, in a land where nobody is distinctive or special, everyone is easily replaceable in the work force, and nobody seems to really love anybody else as an individual.  Here, Bastian realizes that his true wish, one that he has long forgotten, is not to be the strongest or handsomeness or most powerful but simply to be loved.  He wants to be loved for the person he really is, even with all of his imperfections.  The problem is that Bastian is uncertain now about who he really is because he’s changed so much since he came to Fantastica and has lost his memories of who he used to be.

Journeying further yet, Bastian meets a singing woman.  He has a strange feeling like he wants to run to her, hug her, and call her “Mama,” but he knows that this woman is not his mother.  He remembers that his mother is dead, and she was a very different woman from this one.  This is a plant woman who grows fruit herself.  The strange woman gives him some fruit to eat and begins telling Bastian a story.  The story she tells is Bastian’s own story, the story of how he came to Fantastica, how he gave the Childlike Empress her name, and how he had made wishes that were both good and bad and lost himself along the way.  The house where the woman is called the House of Change, which not only changes itself but changes people who are there.  The woman says that Bastian’s problem is that he always wanted to be someone else other than what he was, but at the same time, he didn’t want to change himself.

During his time in the House of Change, Bastian becomes like a child again, and the plant woman, Dame Eyola, is motherly to him, fulfilling the need for love that Bastian has had for so long.  He feels guilty about all the things that he’s done since he arrived in Fantastica, but Eyola comforts him and advises him to seek the Water of Life.  However, when he does, she cautions him that it will be his last wish.  Bastian is afraid because he knows now that every time he wishes, he will lose a part of himself.  Still, Dame Eyola fills up him with her motherly love, and Bastian finds himself needing less love himself and wishing that he also had the ability to love someone.  This is his last wish.  With that wish, Bastian forgets his parents, his last memory aside from his own name.  Dame Eyola says that Bastian will be able to give that kind of love to others when he has drunk the Water of Life, and he will only be able to return to his own world when he brings some of that Water of Life back to his world with him.

To get to the Water of Life, Bastian must pass through a picture gallery of forgotten dreams and find one of his own forgotten dreams.  His wish is to love someone, but to do that, he must choose someone in particular to love and forget the last person he still remembers – himself. 

Bastian has to dig to find his forgotten dream because it’s buried, but when he finds it, it’s a dream of his father, sad and trapped in ice, begging him to help free him.  Bastian’s troubled relationship with his father has been at the heart of most of his feelings, but now, he finds himself wanting to help his father.  He now has the power to reach the Water of Life.  There is another problem that he has to deal with before he can reach the Water of Life, and he encounters Atreyu and Falklor again. 

The Water of Life is inside Auryn itself, and Bastian reaches it when he finally takes it off.  When the three of them get to the Water of Life, he has trouble reaching it because he’s lost all memory of himself.  However, Atreyu speaks on his behalf as a friend because he remembers who Bastian really is.  Bastian sheds all of the changes that he’s gained in Fantastica, becoming fully himself again and actually being happy with himself for the first time, able to truly love himself and love other people.  Bastian wants to bring some of the Water of Life to his father.

There is some consternation when the white snake of the Auryn realizes that Bastian has left uncompleted stories in Fantastica.  It wants Bastian to stay in Fantastica and finish them all, but Bastian says he’ll never get to go home if he does that.  However, Atreyu and Falkor promise to complete all of the unfinished stories on Bastian’s behalf, and the snakes of Auryn allow Bastian to go home.

Bastian finds himself in the school attic once again.  He’s not sure how long he’s been there, but his clothes are still wet, like they were from the rain when he started reading.  Bastian remembers that he should return The Neverending Story to the bookshop, but he can’t find it.  It seems like the book has disappeared.  He decides all he can do is talk to the owner of the bookshop and explain the situation.  As he walks through the school, he can’t find anybody and worries that he’s completely alone in the world.  He’s forgotten that it’s Sunday, and there’s no classes on Sunday.  Since the school building is locked, he has to let himself out through a window and climb down some scaffolding, a fear that would have been terrible for him before his adventures in Fantastica.

Bastian goes home and sees his father, who is glad to see him.  His father hugs him.  He’s been worried about him and wants to know where he’s been.  Bastian learns that he’s only been missing for a day.  Bastian explains the whole entire story to his father, and his father listens in a way he hasn’t before and actually understands.  When his father holds him on his lap and cries, Bastian knows that his father has received the Water of Life.  His father says that things are going to be different between them from now on.  At this point, Bastian’s adventures might seem like the imaginings and dreams of an unhappy and neglected boy and his father’s changes as the realization that both he and Bastian experienced loss and that Bastian badly needs his love.  However, the story isn’t quite over yet.

The next day, Bastian feels compelled to visit Mr. Coreander and explain to him about the book.  When he does, Mr. Coreander questions him about which book he took.  Bastian tells him, but Mr. Coreander says that none of his books are missing.  He denies ever having had a book called The Neverending Story.  Bastian insists that he’s telling the truth, and Mr. Coreander says that he’d better tell him the whole story.  Bastian once again tells the whole story.  When he’s finished, Mr. Coreander says that Bastian isn’t a thief because the book he took wasn’t from his shop.  He says that the book is from Fantastica and it has now moved on to another reader.  Mr. Coreander admits that he knows about Fantastica, and the book that Bastian read is only one door into it.  Mr. Coreander didn’t read that one, but he has read others, and he also gave the Childlike Empress a name.  He says that maybe Bastian will find other books that will return him to Fantastica.  When Bastian says that he was told that he could only meet Moon Child once, Mr. Coreander reveals a secret that only humans know: humans can see the Childlike Empress again if they give her a different name.  People can only see her once under each name she has, but humans can name and rename her again and again.  Mr. Coreander appreciates that he can discuss Fantastica with Bastian because there aren’t many people who have experienced what they’ve experienced, and Mr. Coreander thinks that Bastian will guide others to Fantastica and all of them will also bring back the Water of Life.

Posted on by TracyC

The Phantom Tollbooth

The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster, 1961.

Milo is a boy who never really knows what he wants or what to do with himself.  He is always bored because he doesn’t really know the purpose or point of doing anything.  Nothing he learns in school interests him because he can’t see what he could ever do with the knowledge.  He never bothers to read the books he has, play with his toys, or learn to use his tools because he just doesn’t have the imagination to appreciate them or what he could do with them.

One day, when Milo gets home from school, he finds an unexpected package.  It’s not his birthday or Christmas, but the package is definitely intended for him because it has his name on it: “For Milo, who has plenty of time.”  There is a list of items contained in the package: 1 tollbooth (which must be assembled, according to the directions), 3 precautionary signs (“to be used in a precautionary fashion”), some coins for the tollbooth, a map (with no familiar places on it), and a driver’s rule book (which must be obeyed).  Interestingly, it promises that if Milo is not satisfied with his tollbooth experience, his time will be refunded.  Since Milo doesn’t think he has anything else to do anyway, he decides that he might as well unwrap the tollbooth and set it up. 

Although Milo thinks that the map is purely fictional and that the tollbooth is just a playset, he decides that he might as well select a destination on it for his trip through the tollbooth.  He closes his eyes, puts a finger on the map, and selects a place called “Dictionopolis.” He gets in the toy car, puts a coin in the tollbooth, and goes through it.

To his surprise, Milo suddenly finds himself driving down a real highway, no longer in his own apartment.  He sees a sign pointing the way to a place called Expectations, and he stops to ask a man about it.  At first, he thinks he’s talking to a weather man, but the man corrects him, saying that he’s really the “Whether man.”  Part of his job is to hurry people along, even if they have no expectations.  Nothing the Whether Man says to Milo makes sense to him, so he decides that he’d better just get going.

As Milo drives down the highway, he gets bored and starts daydreaming.  As his mind wanders, the scenery gets duller and grayer, the car slows down, and eventually, the car stops and won’t move further.  Milo looks around and wonders where he is.  It turns out that he’s in the Doldrums, the home of the Lethargarians.  They tell him that thinking isn’t allowed there.  Milo says that’s a dumb rule because everybody thinks.  The Lethargarians say that they never think and Milo must not have thought either because, if he had, he wouldn’t be there.  People usually get to the Doldrums because they’re not thinking, and once they’re there, nobody is allowed to think.  They refer Milo to the rule book that came with the tollbooth.  Milo looks in the rule book and sees that is a rule.  There are also limits on laughing and smiling in the Doldrums.  Milo asks the Lethargarians what they do if they can’t think or laugh.  They say that they can do anything as long as they’re also doing nothing.  Mainly, they do things like daydreaming, napping, loafing, loitering, and wasting time.  They say it gives them a full schedule and allows them to get nothing done, which they consider an important accomplishment.  Milo asks them if that’s what everybody here does, and they say that the one person who doesn’t is the Watch Dog, who tries to make sure that nobody wastes time.

At that point, the Watch Dog shows up.  The Watch Dog looks like a dog, but his body is an alarm clock.  The Watch Dog asks Milo what he’s doing, and is alarmed when Milo says that he’s “killing time.”  It’s bad enough when people waste time, but killing it is horrible!  (The book is full of these kinds of puns. It’s just getting started.)  Milo explains how he got stuck in the Doldrums while he was on his way to Dictionopolis and asks the Watch Dog for help.  The Watch Dog explains that if he got there by not thinking, he can also get out by thinking and asks to come along because he likes car rides.  Milo agrees, and the two of them get in the car.  Milo thinks as hard as he can (which the book notes isn’t easy for Milo because he’s not used to thinking and doesn’t do it too often).  Gradually, as Milo thinks of various things, the car begins to move.  The faster Milo thinks, the faster the car goes.  Milo learns that it’s possible to accomplish a lot with just a little thought.

The Watch Dog’s name is Tock because his older brother is named Tick. However, their names are a mistake because his older brother only makes a tock sound, and Tock only makes a tick sound.  It’s a source of pain and disappointment.  Tock tells Milo about the origin of time and why Watch Dogs find it important to make sure that people use time well.  He says that time is the most valuable possession because it always keeps moving.

When they arrive at Dictionopolis, the gatekeeper won’t let them in immediately because Milo doesn’t have a reason for being there.  Nobody gets let in without a reason.  Fortunately, the gatekeeper always keeps a few spare reasons lying around, and he decides to let Milo have one.  The one he selects is “WHY NOT?”, which the gatekeeper considers a good, all-purpose reason for doing anything.  (I don’t know. I’ve heard that one followed up by an angry “I’ll tell you why not!” before.)

As readers have probably guessed, Dictionopolis is all about words. When Milo enters the city, he finds himself in the marketplace, which is called the “Word Market.”  The ruler of Dictionopolis is Azaz the Unabridged, and when Milo is welcomed to the city by the members of the king’s cabinet, they do so in multiple ways, using synonyms.  Milo asks them why they don’t just pick one word and stick with it, but they’re not interested in that.  They say that it’s not their business to make sense and that one word is as good as another, so why not use them all?  (That isn’t true, but the story tells you why not later.)  They go on to tell Milo that letters grow on trees here, and people come from all over to buy all the words they need in the Word Market in town.  Part of the cabinet’s duty is to make sure that all of the words being sold are real words and have real meanings because people would have no use for nonsense words that don’t mean anything and that nobody will understand.  The cabinet doesn’t seem to care about whether or not the words are being used in a way that makes sense as long as they’re real words. (If you’re familiar with business speak or buzzwords, you’ve probably noticed that much of it works on a similar principle.)  Putting the words into a context that makes sense isn’t their job.  (Later, you meet the person who had that job.)  However, the cabinet does advise Milo to be careful when choosing his words and to say only what he means to say.  They excuse themselves to get ready for the banquet and say that they’ll see Milo there later, although Milo doesn’t know what banquet they’re talking about.

Milo and Tock explore the Word Market.  Milo is fascinated by the variety of words available.  He doesn’t know what they all mean, but he thinks that if he can buy some, he can learn how to use them.  He chooses three words he doesn’t know: quagmire, flabbergast, and upholstery. (I’m surprised he didn’t know the last one because, surely, he has upholstered furniture in his apartment.)  Unfortunately, Milo quickly realizes that he has only one coin with him, and he’ll need that coin to get back through the tollbooth.  Eventually, he finds a stall selling individual letters for people who like to make their own words.  The stall owner gives them some free samples to taste. They taste good to Milo, and the stall owner tells them that sets of letters come with instructions.  Milo doesn’t think he’s very good at making words, but the Spelling Bee, a giant bee, begins showing him how to spell words.  However, the Humbug, a grumpy bug, tries to tell Milo not to bother learning.  The Spelling Bee tells Milo not to listen to the Humbug because he just tells tall stories and doesn’t actually know anything, not even how to spell his own name.

The Spelling Bee and the Humbug start fighting and knock over all the word stalls around them. There is a big mess, all the words get scrambled, and it takes some time before everyone sorts everything out.  By that time, the Spelling Bee is gone, and when the policeman comes, the Humbug blames everything on Milo and Tock.  At first, it seems like Milo will get off lightly because the policeman (who is also the judge) gives him the shortest “sentence” he can think of (“I am”).  Unfortunately, he’s also the jailer and takes Milo and Tock to prison for 6 million years.

In the prison, Milo and Tock meet the Which.  At first, Milo thinks that she’s a “witch”, but she says many people make that mistake.  The Which is King Azaz’s great-aunt, and her job used to be to make sure that people correctly chose which words to use and didn’t use more words than necessary. (A problem that Milo noticed in the market.)  The Which explains that she was thrown into prison because she got too carried away with her job and became too miserly with words. Word economy is good (and something I struggle with), but rather than promoting brevity, the Which started promoting silence instead,. It got so bad that people eventually stopped buying words and the market was failing, so the king had to put a stop to it.  The Which says that she understands now where she went wrong, and Milo asks her if there’s anything that he can do to help her.  The Which says that the only thing that would help her would be the return of Rhyme and Reason.  When Milo asks who they are, she tells him the story of the founding of the Kingdom of Wisdom.

Years ago, the King of Wisdom had two sons, and he was proud of both, but one of them had an obsession with words, and the other had an obsession with numbers.  The king didn’t realize how bad their conflict was growing, and it got worse over time. One day, the king found a pair of abandoned infant twins.  The twins were both girls, and the king had always wanted daughters as well as sons, so he adopted them and named them Rhyme and Reason.  Everyone loved Rhyme and Reason, and they had a talent for resolving problems and disputes. When the king died, he left his kingdom to both of his sons and left instructions for them both to look after Rhyme and Reason. The word-obsessed son, Azaz, established a capital city of his own, Dictionopolis, and the number-obsessed son, the Mathemagician, established the city of Digitopolis.  Rhyme and Reason remained in the city of Wisdom and acted as advisers to the brothers, mediating their disputes.  This system worked until the brothers got into their worst fight over whether words or numbers are most important.  They took this dispute to Rhyme and Reason, who said that both are of equal importance. This satisfied most people, but both brothers were angry because they had wanted the girls to make a definite choice between them. In their last joint act, they banished Rhyme and Reason to the Castle in the Air. Since then, there has been continued fighting between the two brothers and their respective cities, the city of Wisdom has been neglected, and there’s been no Rhyme or Reason to any of it. (Ha, ha.)

Milo says that maybe they could rescue Rhyme and Reason from the Castle in the Air. The Which says that would be difficult because there’s only one stairway to the castle, and it’s guarded by demons. Milo remembers that there is also the matter of them being stuck in prison for 6 million years. The Which says that being in prison isn’t really a problem. Although the policeman/judge/jailer likes putting people in prison, he doesn’t care much about keeping them there, so Milo and Tock can leave when they like, and he probably won’t notice. (Sounds like he’s not very good at the “jailer” part of his job.)  The Which points out a button on the wall, Milo presses it, and a door opens.

When they step outside, the king’s cabinet members come to take him to the banquet that they mentioned earlier. They have Milo and Tock step into their wagon and tell them to be quiet because “it goes without saying.” (Ha, ha.) They take Milo and Tock to a palace shaped like a book, where they meet King Azaz and join the banquet.

The banquet is a pun-filled meal where everyone has to literally eat their words and have half-baked ideas for dessert.  (Half-baked ideas look good, but you shouldn’t have too many because you can get sick of them. Tock says so.)  Nothing makes sense, and even the king realizes it, which gives Milo the opportunity to suggest bringing back Rhyme and Reason.  The king isn’t sure that’s possible, and the Humbug, of course, volunteers Milo and Tock for the job.  The joke turns out to be on him because the king volunteers the Humbug to assist Milo.  Reaching Rhyme and Reason will be a perilous journey, and possibly the most difficult part will be getting the Mathemagician to agree to let them do it.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies). There is also a movie version of this book (mostly animated but part live action) with songs. You can see a trailer for it on YouTube.

My Reaction

The Phantom Tollbooth is a fantasy story, but like many fantasy stories, it’s also a morality story.  It’s a little like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which aims to correct children’s bad habits.  Milo’s boredom problems are due to his lack of thought for the things he could do and imagination to figure out how to make use of what he has.  His adventures after he goes through the Phantom Tollbooth help him to see things differently and to learn to use his mind creatively.

However, I wouldn’t say that the story is too preachy.  A couple of parts started to feel a little like a lecture, but it’s set in a fantasy land that feels a little like Alice in Wonderland.  There’s a healthy dose of nonsense that keeps things interesting and fun.  The book is peppered with puns and peopled by a fascinating variety of characters.  There’s the boy who can see through everyone and everything, who teaches Milo to look at things from an adult perspective and helps him to realize the benefit of keeping his feet on the ground (both of those are also puns). There’s the man who is the world’s shortest giant, the world’s tallest midget, the world’s thinnest fat man, and the world’s fattest thin man all at the same time.  Basically, he’s just an ordinary guy who’s noticed that people think of him in different ways when they compare him with themselves.

I was first introduced to this story when I was in elementary school, as many people were.  Our teacher read it to us and showed us the cartoon version.  Parts of songs from that version still get stuck in my head, almost 30 years later.  (“Don’t Say There’s Nothing To Do the Doldrums …”) The part of the story that stuck with me the longest was the Dodecahedron, a shape with twelve sides. If you’ve seen the twelve-sided dice used for Dungeons and Dragons and similar role-playing games, those are dodecahedrons. In the book, the Dodecahedron is talking character as well as a shape, but I remember it because our teacher gave us paper cut-outs to make our own dodecahedrons. I made two of them, and I might still have one somewhere.

Posted on by TracyC

Marianne Dreams

Marianne Dreams by Catherine Storr, 1958, 2000.

Marianne has been looking forward to her birthday because her parents have promised her that when she is ten years old, she will be old enough to have riding lessons. She and her family live in town, so she doesn’t have easy access to horses, like children in the country do. Her special birthday present is going to have her first lesson at the local riding stable. Her birthday is wonderful, and the riding lesson goes very well, even if some of the more spectacular things that she had imagined before didn’t happen. Marianne would be perfectly happy except, at the end of the lesson, she is more tired than usual and feels achy. By lunchtime, she is feeling definitely ill, and she has a fever.

Marianne’s birthday illness quickly turns into the worst illness she’s ever had. Because of her illness, Marianne has to be confined to her bed for weeks, and she loses track of time. About three weeks after her illness began, she begins to feel a little more like herself and has more awareness of time and what’s happening around her. When she was at her worst, it was hard for her to be interested in anything or focus on anything, but now, she can think clearly enough to be bored and look for something to entertain herself. Marianne’s mother allows her to look through her grandmother’s old workbox, which mostly contains old needlework tools and an array of buttons, ribbons, beads, and other odds and ends that are interesting to look through and sort.

Among the things in the workbox, Marianne finds an old pencil. She immediately likes the look of the stubby old pencil and has the sense that it would be fun to use for drawing, so she picks up her drawing book and begins to draw a picture of a house with a fence around it and some flowers. Marianne’s drawing isn’t particularly great, not as good as what she pictured in her mind’s eye when she started it, but it is the start of something very special.

Although she is starting to feel better, Marianne’s doctor tells her that she is going to miss the whole rest of this term at school. He prescribes strict bed rest for her for the next six weeks. The doctor doesn’t actually say what’s wrong with Marianne, but he tells her that if she doesn’t rest, she could harm herself in a way that would last for the whole rest of her life. Even though she’s bored and says she’d rather be harmed or permanently ill than have to spend more weeks in bed, her doctor is firm with her that this is the way things are. He’ll see that she follows his instructions and recovers whether she likes it or not. Her condition is not contagious, so she can have visitors, but she must remain in bed and rest.

Marianne is sure that these weeks of bed rest are going to be horrible and boring, but soon, something strange begins to happen. She starts having dreams about the house that she drew with that special pencil. When she finds herself in the country with the house, the house is a little misshapen, and it unnerves her. The house is located on an empty, windy prairie, and Marianne can’t even get into the house because she didn’t draw a door handle on the door or put anyone inside the house who could let her inside.

Marianne realizes that she could easily remedy these things by adding more to her drawing, so when she wakes up, she adds a knocker and handle to the door. She also draws a boy looking out one of the windows of the house. The boy seems a little sad when she draws him, but she isn’t sure how to fix his expression, so she just leaves it. Although Marianne isn’t sure whether she’ll ever dream of the house again, she does. In her next dream, the door has the knocker and handle, just like she drew, and there is a sad-looking boy at one of the windows of the house. Marianne waves to the boy and asks him to let her into the house, but he can’t. The boy is upstairs in the house, and there aren’t any stairs down to the ground floor. Marianne asks the boy how he got up there without any stairs, but he says he doesn’t know. Marianne insists that she needs to get into the house, and the boy says that he needs to get out. Marianne gets angry at the boy and the situation, which seems impossible. However, this is not the end of the dreams, and the boy isn’t just a figment of her imagination.

Marianne’s mother hires a temporary governess to tutor Marianne at home so she doesn’t fall too far behind in school. Marianne doesn’t like the idea of the governess at first, but Miss Chesterfield turns out to be friendly, and her visits and lessons add variety to Marianne’s days. When Marianne asks Miss Chesterfield about her career as a governess, she learns that, unlike governesses in books, Miss Chesterfield doesn’t live with her clients. Instead, she tutors different children in their homes, visiting each for a couple hours at a time. All of the children she tutors are children who are behind in their studies or who are studying special subjects that aren’t covered at their school or whose circumstances prevent them for going to school for a time, like Marianne. One of the other children being tutored by Miss Chesterfield is a boy named Mark, who has been left partially paralyzed from a severe illness and can’t walk. Marianne asks Miss Chesterfield if Mark will be able to walk again someday, and she says that it’s likely he will if he takes care of himself in the next couple of months and does what his doctor says.

However, as with Marianne, obeying the doctor’s orders isn’t easy for Mark. While Marianne wishes that she could just be up and about instead of resting like she should, Mark is just the opposite. He loves being at home with his books, and he has trouble pushing himself to start getting up and moving again, which is what his condition really requires. Mark needs to do physical therapy to strengthen his body and retrain his muscles, but it’s difficult and painful. Marianne is sympathetic to Mark because she knows what it’s like to be ordered to do something she doesn’t want to do even though it’s for her own good. She wishes that the two of them could switch places for a time so he could do at least some of her bed resting for her, and she could have the chance to get up and move around. Miss Chesterfield says that she thinks the two of them are better off being themselves and doing what each of them needs to do.

Marianne continues to feel the urge to draw in her spare time. She discovers that she’s unable to erase anything that she’s drawn, but she can continue to add to the picture. She adds more to the background so the house won’t seem to be in such an empty void, and on the opposite page in her drawing book, she draws the interior of the house, adding the stairs that the boy said were missing. This time, when Marianne dreams of the house, she finds herself in the interior, which is mostly empty because she hasn’t drawn furniture yet. She explores the house and finds the boy sitting on a window seat, looking outside, like he did before. The boy has noticed that the world outside the house has changed since Marianne drew hills and a tree. The two of them talk about their situation, trying to understand how they came to be in the house, and Marianne tells the boy that, now that there are stairs, he can go outside. The boy tells her that he still can’t because he can’t walk. He explains to Marianne about how he’s been ill for a long time, and he has special exercises he’s supposed to do to help his muscles, but it still isn’t definite whether he’ll be able to walk again or not. That’s when Marianne realizes that she’s talking to Mark, the same Mark that Miss Chesterfield told her about.

The two children could be dream companions for each other, but Marianne becomes more temperamental the longer she’s cooped up. One day, in a fit of anger because Mark made Miss Chesterfield late to see her and ruined her special surprise present for Miss Chesterfield’s birthday, Marianne turns the house in her drawing into a prison and the rocks outside into monsters that watch the house. Marianne thinks it would be a fitting punishment for Mark to be a prisoner in their dream house, but the problem with that is that Marianne still goes to the house when she’s asleep, too. Whenever she’s there, she’s also in a scary prison, surrounded by rock monsters.

It takes Marianne an embarrassingly long time to realize that everything she adds to her drawing changes the environment of the dreams that both she and Mark share, and even when she realizes that’s the case, Mark has a difficult time accepting it. It seems like, when the kids are in the dream world, they have some trouble remembering the waking world and making connections between the two, although Marianne has more memory of her waking life than Mark does, probably because Mark is more seriously ill. While Marianne has control of the special pencil and more ability to alter the world of their dreams, she can’t change everything, and the two children will have to work together to overcome their obstacles and escape the house. The house is useful for them during their recovery, but they quickly realize that it’s also a dangerous place, and they can’t stay there forever. Although Marianne didn’t draw a way for the rocks with the eyes to move, they are moving, and they’re getting closer all the time.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies). In 1988, the story was made into a movie called Paperhouse. Paperhouse is a much darker version of the original story, though. There was a much earlier television mini-series from 1972 based on the book called Escape Into Night, which was much more faithful to the original story, although in that version, Marianne had a broken leg from a riding accident instead of being ill. All six episodes of Escape Into Night are currently on YouTube. I don’t know of any other way to watch it if you live in the US. There are dvds available on Amazon, but they’re region coded. For sci-fi fans, I swear that the rock monsters in Escape Into Night also sound like Daleks from the original Doctor Who. The book was originally published in Britain, and the movie versions are also British. There is also a sequel to this book called Marianne and Mark, where the two children from this book meet as teenagers in real life instead of in the dream world.

My Reaction and Spoilers

To begin with, I’d like to explain that, while the concept of a drawing coming to life somewhat reminds me of Harold and the Purple Crayon, this is definitely a more serious book with greater depth. The children in the story are dealing with some serious and frightening problems, both in the real world and the dream world.

I love the way that the pictures in the book alternate between Marianne’s drawings and the children’s “real” experiences. First, we get to see what Marianne draws, and then, we get to see how her drawing comes to life in the children’s dreams. Marianne’s drawings are child-like, with crooked houses, misplaced windows, and stick figures. The dream drawings are as misshapen as Marianne’s drawings, but at the same time, they are more three-dimensional, as the children perceive them when they’re inside them in their dreams.

The book never explains exactly why Marianne is sick or what might happen to her if she doesn’t rest, although I have a couple of ideas. There are illnesses which can leave people severely weakened for long periods of time, and they have to rest or suffer lasting organ damage. When my aunt was young, she was extremely ill with valley fever. That’s probably not the illness Marianne has because valley fever comes from a fungus found in the soil in certain parts of the Americas, but I don’t think it’s found where Marianne lives in Britain. I mention it because I think that it’s similar in severity to Marianne’s illness. Most people who get valley fever don’t have it severely. In fact, most long-term residents of the area where I live have had it at some point in their lives, and it’s often mistaken for a mild flu. However, once in a while, someone has a much more serious case, like my aunt did. My aunt had to spend weeks at home, resting, and a tutor came to the house to help her with her schoolwork until she recovered enough to return to school. Even then, she had certain restrictions. Valley fever is hard on the lungs, so she couldn’t over-exert herself. For a period after she returned to school, she still tired quickly from ordinary activities, she could not take physical education classes, and she even had to use the elevator at her school (which was reserved only for those who needed it) instead of taking the stairs to classes like most of the other students. If my aunt had pushed herself too hard before she had fully built back her strength and stamina, she might have damaged her lungs permanently. I think that the doctor in this book is warning Marianne that her condition is similar, that she might cause herself some form of lasting organ damage if she doesn’t rest and let herself fully recover.

In Marianne’s case, I suspect that Marianne’s illness could potentially damage her heart because her doctor is concerned that she not get angry or over-excited, but that’s just a guess. Illnesses like that are relatively uncommon, but they do happen in real life. Depending on the condition she has, it’s possible that Marianne’s extended bed rest might also be shortened by more modern treatments, if this story happened during the 21st century. It’s difficult to say without knowing what her ailment is, but I think it’s worth pointing out that this story was written during the 1950s, which is also coincidentally the time period when my aunt had her illness in her youth.

In the movie version of the story, Paperhouse, they say that Marianne had glandular fever, but since the book never specifies, some readers have speculated that she might have had rheumatic fever, since the symptoms fit the description of her illness. I tend to think rheumatic fever is more likely because it can potentially cause a risk to the heart, and that seems to be the concern in the book, the reason why Marianne has to rest and be careful to avoid long-term damage to herself until she is fully healed. In Paperhouse, Mark is described as having muscular dystrophy, but the book actually says that Mark has polio. The first polio vaccine was developed by Jonas Salk in the early 1950s, although it took a few years for it to come into widespread use, so it’s plausible that Mark could have caught the disease before he had a chance to be vaccinated.

My parents were both in elementary school during the 1950s, and they remember getting their polio vaccinations and the boosters that they gave to kids in an edible form on sugar cubes. Other people who were young around that time period may have similar memories. Although I never saw a child or young person with polio when I was a kid, probably because all the kids I knew were vaccinated, my parents say that it was a real menace when they were young, and the serious consequences of the disease were a real fear. While my mother was still young, her aunt contracted polio as an adult. Her aunt survived having polio, but there were lasting effects. Even people who recover their strength after having polio while young or relatively young can have it come back on them when they’re older as post-polio syndrome. My mother remembers her aunt before she became ill, but by the time I met my great-aunt, she was an elderly lady in a wheelchair because of the condition. That’s part of the reason why my family believes in the benefit of vaccines in general. We’ve noticed definite improvements between generations because of them.

The characters in the story experience some personal growth from their ordeals. I liked it that, in the beginning of the story, Marianne considers some of the old-fashioned stories she’s read where girls suffer from severe illnesses or ailments that keep them in bed for long period of time. It is a common trope of 19th century and early 20th century books that characters’ lives and personalities are changed by illness because dealing with the illness and the restrictions imposed on them because of it teaches them patience and understanding. (See What Katy Did in the Carr Family series from the late 19th century for an example.) Marianne wonders if she’ll experience the same type of transformation or if she’ll still be the same Marianne she always was after her ordeal is over. Both Marianne and Mark have things they need to learn in order to overcome their respective problems. Miss Chesterfield’s belief that it’s best for them both to learn to manage their problems rather than envying each other is the correct one.

Marianne has to learn about emotional control. During her period of forced rest, Marianne’s temper gets worse because she’s frustrated with her situation, and her doctor warns her that she’s going to have to learn to keep calm because fits of temper are as bad for her health as physical over-exertion. Marianne needs to learn to relax, to not try to push herself or situations to move faster than they need to go, and to keep her temper even when she’s frustrated. When she realizes that the things she draws on paper with the special pencil have real consequences for Mark, who is also struggling through his illness, Marianne also becomes more compassionate and considerate, trying to find creative ways to help Mark through her drawings. It takes some trial and error, but Marianne does become a more thoughtful person. When it’s finally time for Marianne to get out of bed and start to strengthen herself again, she experiences some of what Mark has been struggling with, and it increases her understanding of his situation.

Meanwhile, Mark has to learn to push himself a little harder and to persevere even in the face of hardship. Miss Chesterfield has noticed that, while Mark will work and study hard at things he likes or things that are easy for him, he has a tendency to give up too soon or only make half-hearted efforts at things that are difficult or don’t come naturally to him. While his body is getting the the medical attention it needs, his spirit needs some stirring so he can find the inner strength to keep going with his efforts to restore and improve his physical health. He explains to Marianne how he feels, being physically weak and dealing with the uncertainty of whether or not the exercises he’s been given to do are even going to make a real difference or not. Because his condition is serious, even things that his doctor says are likely to help aren’t completely guaranteed to help. These feelings of uncertainty are a heavy burden for Mark to bear and another obstacle that he has to overcome. He finds it hard to continue making an effort when he knows that it might not make a difference in the long run. He needs to remind himself that, while trying his best may not be enough to help him walk again, doing nothing at all guarantees that he will lose that ability. A chance at improvement is better than no chance at all. Marianne provides support and encouragement for Mark, and seeing the results they experience from their efforts in the dream world encourages the children to do what they need to do in the waking world.

Although the book has fantasy themes, I thought that the descriptions of the children’s struggles in the real world and Marianne’s feelings about her illness were very realistic. Mark and Marianne have to use some different tactics when battling their illnesses because they have different problems. I think the book makes a good point that what’s necessary for one person’s situation isn’t always the same for another’s. Some people need to push themselves a little harder and tackle problems head-on while others need to develop a little more creativity and patience to work around their problems. In the end, Marianne and Mark do both. The children are an inspiration to each other, helping each other every step of the way.

Posted on by TracyC

A Pattern of Roses

A Pattern of Roses by K. M. Peyton, 1972, 1973.

Tim Ingram has been feeling depressed since his parents decided to move from London to an old house in the country that they’re fixing up. It’s hard for him being separated from his friends and living in this overly-quiet place, where it seems like nothing ever happens, but the truth is that he was depressed even before his family moved. A large part of Tim’s problem is not knowing what he wants out of life. He works hard in school to get good grades, and his school has a reputation for getting its students into good universities, but it all seems so futile because Tim doesn’t know what he really wants to study or what he’ll do when he gets out of school. His father quit school early and went to work, working his way up the ladder in an advertising firm and becoming monetarily successful. However, Tim doesn’t feel like he has either the wit or self-confidence for starting off from practically nothing and working his way up in a direction he’s not even sure he wants to go. His father’s plans and suggestions for the future don’t excite him or make him happy. They actually make him feel more stressed and depressed when he thinks about them. His father is in a position to just give him a job with his company, so Tim does have a guaranteed job if he can’t think of anything else, but advertising doesn’t appeal to Tim. He’s not sure what does appeal to him. He fears and dreads the future, specifically his own future. He doesn’t know what to do with himself, and in this new place, it seems like there isn’t a lot he can do.

Tim has also been arguing with his parents, discovering that he has different interests and priorities in life than they do. While they’re enthusiastic about expanding onto this country house with a new and stylish modern wing, Tim prefers the older part of the house and its simpler style. He thinks the modern additions his parents made look ugly and out-of-place, ruining the natural beauty of the countryside. His parents feel like he’s unappreciative of their standards and the sort of lifestyle they’ve worked hard to build, and his mother even goes so far as to call him “perverse and awkward.” He kind of feels that way, too. Tim often feels like he’s a nobody, not very outstanding at anything. His ambitious parents are disappointed in him because they’ve invested so much in his education to show him off as another one of their achievements in life, and he doesn’t think he’s much to show off. He’s even a little disappointed with himself because, not only does he not seem to live up to his parents’ expectations, he doesn’t even have it in him to stand out as a rebel or a troublemaker, like some of his friends. He’s not an aggressive person, and it’s just not his nature to fight or get into trouble, and that makes him feel like even more of a nobody. If he neither excels at meeting people’s expectations or at deliberately flouting them, what is he? Who is he? Where does he fit in? With all of this, Tim hasn’t been feeling well, and he fakes being sicker than he is so he doesn’t have to get out of bed and deal with any of it. Since he’s been unwell, he’s also excused from school until after Christmas, leaving him with nothing to do in this countryside house but lie in bed and think about all the things that are worrying him.

Then, one day, the builder who’s been working on their house finds an old tin box hidden in the chimney of the room that Tim has chosen for his bedroom. The box catches Tim’s attention. It looks like a very old biscuit (meaning cookie, this book is British) tin decorated with a faded pattern of flowers. The builder opens the box and is disappointed to see that it just contains papers, not anything that looks really valuable. However, Tim is curious and insists that he wants to see the papers.

The papers are drawings, quite old and done in black crayon. Most of them are landscapes and buildings, but there is also a girl, who is labeled “Netty.” Netty’s name is written in a heart, so the artist must have loved her. The date on one of the drawings is February 17, 1910 (the story seems to be contemporary with the time when it was written in the early 1970s because Tim thinks that was 60 years ago), and to Tim’s surprise, the author signed with his initials: T.R.I. Tim’s full name is Timothy Reed Ingram. Tim is intrigued that the artist who lived so long ago had the same initials and apparently lived in his room.

The builder, called Jim, asks Tim if he likes to draw or knows anything about art. Tim gets good grades in art, but he’s not very self-confident about his abilities. Still, he knows enough to tell that the artist wasn’t particularly great at his art. There are places where he got the proportions of his drawings wrong, but Tim is impressed that they convey a lot of feeling. Even though the drawing of Netty isn’t perfect, Tim feels like he can tell what kind of girl she was. She looks like she’s in her early teens and has a kind of proud, somewhat naughty or daring look. Tim asks the builder if he knows anything about the artist or the people who lived in the house back in the 1910s. The builder says that was before his time, but he thinks that he remembers hearing that the family name was Inskip, and he says that he could ask his father if he knows more. Tim wonders why the drawings were hidden in the chimney and begins to imagine what the first T.R.I was like, picturing a boy close to his own age.

Tim is surprised at how real the boy he imagines seems because he’s often found it difficult to imagine old people as once having been young. He’s seen old men and known that they were part of the generation that fought in WWI but is unable to picture them as once having been soldiers. In fact, he knows that his own father flew a Spitfire during WWII, but even though he knows it happened, he has trouble picturing that of the middle-aged advertising manager his father has become. Yet, somehow, T.R.I. seems incredibly real to him, someone he can connect with, even more so than his own father. Details of this past boy’s life flash through Tim’s head without him knowing quite where they came from. However, Netty seems even more real to Tim because of her picture.

When Tim’s mother makes him get out of bed and go visit the local vicar to get a copy of the parish magazine, Tim has a strange vision of the boy artist he imagines as being named Tom Inskip passing him in the lane. It’s so real that Tim feels like Tom is actually there. As he pauses to look around the churchyard, he spots some beautiful purple roses by a gravestone. Taking a closer look, he sees that the grave has the initials T.R.I., a birth date of March 1894, and a death date of February 18, 1910. Tim is shocked to realize that the artist was not only a little less than 16 years old when he died, just a little younger than Tim is now, but that he also died the day after he drew that last picture. It seems like the boy’s death was sudden and unexpected, more like an accident than a long illness.

Tim doesn’t meet the vicar, but the vicar’s daughter, Rebecca, spots him in the churchyard and asks him if he’s all right. Tim just says that he’s there to get a parish magazine. Rebecca isn’t too cheerful or friendly, and she just gives him one and sends him on his way. Tim later learns that Rebecca is the youngest of the vicar’s children and the only one still in school. Her older siblings are all grown up and have jobs working for good causes and charity organizations.

Tim talks to Jim the builder about the grave he saw, and Jim is interested. He suggests that, since T.R.I. is buried in the churchyard, there will be church records about who he was and how he died. Tim has another vision of the boy, and the boy says, “Find out. But be careful it doesn’t happen to you.”

Tim returns to the vicarage and talks to Rebecca about T.R.I. Rebecca says that she doesn’t believe in ghosts and that she thinks the visions he’s had are just his imagination. However, Tim’s guess that the artist’s first name was Tom turns out to be correct. His full name was Thomas Robert Inskip. The records don’t say how he died, but Rebecca suggests that Tim ask an old local man called “Holy Moses.” The old man says that he remembers Tom Inskip but he doesn’t know what happened to him because he left the village to work somewhere else and didn’t come back until after Tom was dead. When Moses shows them an old photograph of all the children at the local school, Tim recognizes Tom instantly as the boy from his visions and strangely even knows the name of Tom’s friend, Arnold, standing next to him in the photograph, without being told.

From this point forward in the story, scenes with Tom alternate with scenes with Tim. Tom’s scenes start with the day the photograph was taken, when Tom was eleven years old. It was also the day that Tom first met the new vicar of the parish, Reverend Bellinger, a fire-and-brimstone kind of preacher, very different from the gentle man who was the last vicar. Like Tim, Tom was bright, imaginative, and artistic, but he was not much of a worrier. Tom fails to impress the new vicar because he is not very good with religious knowledge and often doesn’t pay attention. Tom loves to draw, but after he gets out of school and starts working, he finds that he doesn’t have time anymore. The vicar’s daughter, however, is kind and encourages him to draw because it’s a talent from God and must be used. People often underestimate her and don’t appreciate her because she has a disability, so she understands what it’s like not to have the opportunity to use and develop her talents to the fullest. It’s only sad that a tragic accident cuts Tom’s life short before they can see what he might have developed into, although when Tim and Rebecca manage to contact the people who knew and remember Tom best, one of them points out that, if Tom hadn’t died when he did, he might have been sent off to fight and die with the other young men during WWI, and with his gentle soul, he might have suffered more from the war than he did from the accident that took his life, when died young in an act of self-sacrifice.

Tim’s scenes involve his parents and school discussing his future, asking for little input from him, not caring about how he feels or what he wants. Tim actually does love art, and his art teacher thinks he should go further with it, but his teacher realistically acknowledges that, with Tim’s good grades in his other classes, his family and the school will want to push him into more lucrative and higher-status fields. But, does Tim really care about money and status as much as his parents? Is that really what he wants?

Gradually, Tim begins to consider the idea of the legacies people leave behind. Few living people remember that there was once a boy named Tom Inskip who died young, and after those people are gone, no one will remember. It occurs to Tim that few people would likely remember either him or his father as advertising workers. If all you care about is just getting money to afford the good things in life, any job could do, and there are many well-paying jobs that make little lasting or meaningful impact on the world. On the other hand, if what you want is to leave a lasting and meaningful legacy, you have to think a little deeper and maybe sacrifice some material gain. Money comes, and money goes, and one coin or bill looks like another, but what lasts as long and has as much individual character as a collection of imperfect but evocative drawings hidden away in an old tin box?

The question of what Tim wants to do with his life becomes the question of what Tim wants to leave as his life’s legacy. The quietness of the country, rather than being the torture it initially seemed, gives Tim a chance to think and really consider what he wants. Through his search for Tom’s past and consideration of Tom’s legacy, Tim finds a new vision of his own future that makes him more hopeful instead of more frightened and that may lead him to find what one of Tom’s friends called Tom’s “perfect spiritual grace.”

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies). Some US versions of the book are titled So Once Was I.

That alternate title is fitting for the theme of the story. Tom was once a living boy with choices to make in his future, much like Tim is now. That phrase also appears in the story as part of an epitaph from another tombstone, which I’ve also seen elsewhere. That same epitaph has been used in different forms in real life. It refers to the inevitability of human mortality – all those living will someday die, like every other generation before. As one of my old teachers used to say, “Nobody gets out of life alive.” But, I would also like to point out that the sentiment also refers to growing up. Every adult used to be young (although Tim has trouble picturing it), and every child will someday be an adult (if they live to grow up – Tom was unfortunate). Every person in a profession of any kind was once a student and a beginner, struggling to learn and find or make their place in the world, and every student will one day find or make some place for themselves and try to make a mark on the world. Change is inevitable. Time passes, people grow and change, and everyone moves on in one way or another. Tim won’t always be a student with his parents controlling his education. He will eventually grow up, graduate, and become an adult. That part is inevitable. What else he becomes is up to him and whatever opportunities he seeks and finds for himself. His future legacy is still in the making.

There is also a made-for-television movie version that is available to rent cheaply online through Vimeo. The movie version is notable for being Helena Bonham Carter’s first movie role. She played young Netty.

My Reaction and Spoilers

I found this story very sad, particularly Tom’s death, trying in vain to rescue beloved hunting dogs but drowning along with them in an icy lake when they all fell in. The death of the dogs was as traumatic as Tom’s, and it is described in awful detail. I also hated a part earlier in the story, where one of the dogs kills a pet cat. I love animals, and that was hard to take. It’s all a tragedy, but Tim’s story has a more hopeful ending. Besides leaving behind a box full of drawings, Tom’s effect on Tim’s life becomes a part of his legacy. Even though they lived in different periods of time, Tom and his life story helps Tim, who has been going through a personal crisis, to realize what’s really important and what he wants out of life.

Through much of the book, both Tim and Rebecca are in a similar situation when it comes to their future lives and their family’s expectations for them. As Tim gets to know Rebecca, he discovers that she has hidden depths and is inwardly quite sensitive. She often uses a blunt and abrasive manner to keep people at a distance and hide how sensitive she really is. Like Tim, she is also unimpressed by the money and business-oriented priorities of the modern world and Tim’s parents, preferring things with an old-fashioned, natural beauty – things that, sadly, are often cleared away by modern people in the name of money, business, and being modern. Yet, Rebecca also doesn’t feel like she fits with the lives that her family lives. She doesn’t have the patience to deal with the people her family tries to help, many of whom are nasty and ungrateful instead of kind and appreciative of the help they get, and she feels like her parents don’t have time for her because they spend all of their time helping everyone else. Rebecca is considering a career in social work, but it’s mostly because it’s what her parents want and expect of her. As they compare their family lives, Tim and Rebecca both realize that neither of them quite fits their families’ lifestyles and expectations. They both feel pressured. Their families are also extremes: extreme business and high-achievement vs. extreme charity. Tim and Rebecca are looking for a happy medium that neither one of them knows how to achieve. They feel overwhelmed by a world full of choices, their parents’ expectations, and their own uncertainty about what path to choose.

It occurs to them that a boy like Tom in the 1910s would have limited choices in life and expectations from his family and community. Tom died young, but if he hadn’t, he probably would have been expected to do what other young men in his community did, which was mostly farming or joining the army. In some ways, Rebecca thinks life was probably much easier for those who had no choices than it is for modern people with many more choices and little to no guidance about how to use them. Tim and Rebecca aren’t really bound to their parents expectations because there is less social stigma with being different in their time, but being young, inexperienced, and uncertain of their options in life, they aren’t sure what to do with their relative freedom. They feel trapped, but not in quite the same way as each other and in a different way from people in the past.

Perhaps all people have limits and obstacles no matter when or where they live, and nobody is ever fully in control of their destiny because they are subject to limits in knowledge, ability, and available options. Maybe not everybody is even really suited to where they end up in life. They learn that the man who was the vicar in Tom’s time was more of a bully than a loving and charitable man. Tim’s art teacher comments that he used to work in a job similar to Tim’s father before he found his calling teaching art. Having followed two different professions in his life and seen the people who thrive in each, he thinks that Tim’s personality fits better in the art world than the business world, but he can also see that Tim is going to have to learn to fight and stand up for himself to get where he really needs to be.

But, happiness in life depends on more than fighting or earning money. May, the vicar’s daughter, who is still alive and has lived a happier life than anyone expected after the death of her father, says that one of Tom’s greatest gifts was “perfect spiritual grace.” She explains that Tom never asked a lot out of life and was satisfied with what he had. His life was tragically short, but he enjoyed it to the fullest as long as he lived. Tim thinks that Tom might have gotten less satisfied with his limited prospects in life if he had lived longer, but it’s difficult to say. However, May’s description makes Tim realize that he wants that same sense of “perfect spiritual grace”, making the most of the opportunities open to him and being satisfied that he pursued those opportunities to the best of his ability.

Life has a way of taking many people in directions that they never expected. People often don’t know what they want to do with their lives when they’re young, some of us still question our career choices when we’re older, and many of us end up doing things we didn’t expect or entering fields we didn’t originally study. Tim’s new home and new acquaintances and the inspiration that he receives from Tom’s life story cause him to consider different directions that his life might take. Tim finds a job in the country as the local blacksmith’s assistant. Blacksmithing appeals to Tim’s creative side, and there is enough demand for specially-crafted decorative metal objects that Tim is confident that he can build his own business around it. He’s confident enough about it that he finds the ability to stand up to his parents and insist on the future he really wants. He probably won’t make as much money at it as his father does in his advertising firm, but he’ll be independent and creating real things that will leave the lasting legacy that he now craves. He hopes that, along the way, he’ll also find the “perfect spiritual grace” that Tom had.

Tim also comes to realize that the company that his father built was his father’s act of creation, and that’s why he takes so much pride in it, wanting Tim to continue it as his legacy. However, Tim also realizes that what his father did with his life was his decision, done for his own reasons and his own sense of fulfillment, and he doesn’t need to stifle his own creative urges to validate his father. Tim is adamant that he wants to create something of his own, to know the satisfaction of that kind of creation for himself. His parents are angry with him, seeing his decision as throwing away all that they’ve given him and all they say that they’ve sacrificed for. Still, Tim points out that the lifestyle that his parents chose was their choice, not his. He didn’t ask them to do any of it, they did it because it was what they wanted to do, and he wants the right to make his own choices. It affects their relationship, but Tim already had the feeling that their relationship was strained because of his parents’ expectations for his future, which were making him unhappy. When they argue about it, it becomes apparent that his parents have been emotionally manipulative, and having a say in his own future isn’t an unreasonable thing for Tim to ask for, even though his parents claim that it is. His parents really have been selfish and even neurotic, planning to use Tim as something to show off, ultimately depending on him to make themselves feel successful and fulfilled and validating their life choices. They make it clear to him that their support for him hinges on him doing exactly what they want him to do. Their love is conditional and transactional. In an odd way, it feels like a relief to Tim to have it all out in the open and to take control of his destiny in spite of their opposition. Whether or not his parents will eventually accept Tim’s decision and independence or whether they will remain estranged is unknown.

I don’t think I’d read this book again because of the sad and stressful parts, but it does offer a lot to think about. I’d also like to point out that this story is not for young kids because of the subject matter, and there are also instances of smoking and underage drinking.

Posted on by TracyC

Mary Poppins in the Park

Mary Poppins in the Park by P. L. Travers, 1952.

This Mary Poppins book is supposed to take place during the first three books in the series. It’s a collection of incidents that take place in the park. Each chapter is a short story, and each of the stories can stand alone.

I thought that the stories were fun, but there are a few instances of racial language that I didn’t like in the original version of the book. At various points throughout the original version of book, Mary Poppins chides the children for things they’re doing by calling them “Blackamoors”, cannibals on an island, or “Hottentots. ” In other words, she’s implying that they’re being “savages.” I know that notions of “savage natives” appear in other old children’s books, but I don’t think it’s a good idea to give modern children these ideas, and I don’t like it that Mary Poppins uses racial words as insults for the children in the story. Fortunately, later printings of this book rewrote these scenes to remove inappropriate racial language.

When I was writing this review, I told my brother the plot of one of the stories in the book,Lucky Thursday, and we had a good laugh over it. It was a pretty funny story to read. My brother asked whether the story was supposed to have a moral or teach children anything. I thought about it, and I suppose that part of the moral could be “Be careful what you wish for”, but in the end, I don’t think any real lessons were learned.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).

Stories in the Book:

Every Goose a Swan – When everyone seems to be daydreaming and pretending that they’re someone they’re not, Mary Poppins tells the children a story about a vain goose girl and the others around her who have grand ideas about who they think they really are. When someone points out the realities of being the people they like to think they are, they all decide that maybe it’s better to just be themselves.

Faithful Friends – Miss Andrews, a neighbor of the Banks families, has been advised to go traveling for the sake of her health by her doctor. Before going away, she asks the Banks family to look after her “treasures” during her absence. Mrs. Banks puts them in the nursery because she knows that Mary Poppins will look after them, although Mary Poppins is a little put out by this extra duty. The “treasures” turn out to be a collection of random knickknacks, battered and incomplete. The children are particularly interested in a pair of hunters with lion friends, but one of them is mostly missing, and they think that the lion missing his hunter looks rather sad. By coincidence (apparently), they meet a couple of policemen who are reminiscent of the hunters. One of them used to live near a jungle but had to return home because he lost a foot, like the knickknack hunter. He’s been sad since he got back because he says he’s missing a friend. However, he gets his friend back when a loose lion suddenly appears in the park. When children get home, the missing hunter is back in the knickknack, and the lion looks happy.

Lucky Thursday – Michael is unhappy because the other children got to go to the park while he had to stay home with a cold. The only interesting thing that happens is that he sees a strange cat out the window. Michael goes to bed in a bad mood, but the next day, all sorts of lucky things begin happening. However, it turns out that it’s not quite as lucky as he thinks. First, he doesn’t take care of some of the nice things he receives and loses them. Then, the mysterious cat leads him on what seems like a magical journey from the park to a castle of cats, and he is told that everything he’s received has been because he wished on the Cat Star the night before. Part of what he wished was just disgruntled grumblings, though, and part of the cats’ idea of fun and games is to make Michael answer riddles. If Michael answers the riddles correctly, he’ll get to marry one of the cat princesses, and if he doesn’t, he’ll have to work in the kitchen of the castle with other children who made foolish wishes. Michael does answer the riddles correctly, but he doesn’t want to marry a cat, and he has a desperate struggle to escape from the castle of the cats. He only manages to escape when he blows Mary Poppins’s whistle.

The Children in the Story – The park keeper isn’t very happy about the fair set up near the park because it always leaves such a mess. Mary Poppins and the children are also in the park, and Jane is reading aloud from The Silver Fairy Book. She and Michael start talking about the princes in one of their favorite stories. Then, the three princes come out of the story to see Jane and Michael. The princes say that Jane and Michael are the children in the stories they read, and they’ve entered their own book to visit them. They say that they’ve visited generations of other children before.

The princes have brought their unicorn with them, and when adults around them start noticing that there’s suddenly a real unicorn in the park, they start panicking and arguing among themselves about whether the unicorn belongs in the zoo, in a museum, or as a sideshow at the fair. The adults seem to feel like the princes and unicorn are vaguely familiar, but they can’t seem to remember why. Most adults forget about the princes when they get older, but not all. Bert the matchman remembers, and it turns out that Mary Poppins has also been nanny to the princes.

The Park in the Park – The children are playing in the park on a hot day. Jane is making little figures out of plasticine and a little park for them all. Michael is hungry, and the baker figure comes to life and gives him pie. The children get to know the other figures, and Jane is amazed that the characters have lives that she didn’t create for them. The figures don’t seem to remember that Jane made their little world, and Jane and Michael are astonished to realize that they have now become child-size in the little park she created.

Hallowe’en – On Halloween, as the children are heading home with Mary Poppins with nuts and toffee apples, they meet the strange Mrs. Corey and her tall daughters. The children are told to be careful of stepping on shadows and that they should take care of their own shadows so they don’t run away. Mary Poppins hurries the children home and to bed, but the children find leaves that seem to be invitations to some kind of party. The children look outside and see shadows without people in the garden. The children follow the shadows, including their own, to the park. There, they see the shadows of everyone they know and even nursery rhyme characters. Mrs. Corey, her daughters, and Mary Poppins are there, and they explain that it’s the night before Mary Poppins’s birthday, and that’s what the celebration is about. They all dance with the shadows until Mrs. Boom arrives, upset, because her husband is distressed that his shadow is missing. Soon, other people also arrive to reclaim their shadows.