Posted on by TracyC

When Jessie Came Across the Sea

When Jessie Came Across the Sea by Amy Hest, illustrated by P. J. Lynch, 1997.

Jessie and her grandmother live in a small, thatched cottage in a small village. The little village is poor, and so are Jessie and her grandmother. Jessie’s parents died when she was a baby. Jessie’s grandmother raised her, and she insists that Jessie have lessons with the village rabbi, like the boys in the village. Jessie can read and write, and she also tries to teach her grandmother. Her grandmother makes a little money by sewing lace, and she teaches Jessie how to sew. Although they don’t have much, they are basically content with their lives.

Then, one evening, the rabbi makes an important announcement. His brother, who was living in America, has died. Before his death, he sent a ticket for a ship traveling to America to the rabbi, asking him to join him in America. Now that his brother is dead, there is no need for the rabbi to go to America, and he would rather stay in the village with his congregation. However, he thinks that someone else should use the ticket his brother sent.

Various villagers ask rabbi if they can use the ticket, offering reasons why each of them would be the best person to go. They brag up their best qualities, boasting about how strong, smart, and brave they are. The rabbi knows that they’re boasting, so he just tells them that he will pray about it and let them know his decision tomorrow.

The next day, he goes to see Jessie and her grandmother and tells them that Jessie should be the one to go to America. His reasoning is that his brother’s widow owns a dress shop in New York City. Jessie can work there, and she would be a comfort to a lonely widow. Jessie doesn’t really want to leave her grandmother, and her grandmother fears to send her, but her grandmother can see the rabbi’s logic. She knows that this is an important opportunity for Jessie.

So, Jessie leaves her village and sets sail on a crowded ship for America. On the ship, Jessie is scared, lonely, and seasick. As Jessie spends time with the other passengers, she makes a few friends, and she sews a few small items for them. A boy named Lou, who is a shoemaker’s son, makes a pair of small shoes for a baby, and he and Jessie also become friends.

Finally, their ship arrives at New York. Everyone crowds around the rails of the ship to see the Statue of Liberty and their first glimpse of America. The ship docks at Ellis Island, and the passengers disembark to be inspected and questioned by immigration officials.

The rabbi’s brother’s widow comes to meet Jessie. She is a friendly woman, and she asks Jessie to call her Cousin Kay. Cousin Kay shows Jessie around the city. It’s a crowded, confusing place with fascinating sights, although the streets aren’t paved with gold, as Jessie has heard. Cousin Kay runs the dress shop out of her home, and she pays Jessie to sew for her. Jessie likes watching the busy street outside while she sews, and she saves the money she earns in a jar.

When Jessie puts some lace on a plain white dress, turning it into a lovely bridal gown, the shop becomes popular with young women who are getting married and looking for similar gowns.

Cousin Kay also insists that Jessie go to school and learn English. It isn’t easy, but Jessie learns. She likes walking around the city and going to the local library. Gradually, Jessie begins feeling more at home in New York, and she builds a new life for herself there. One day, she runs into Lou again in the park, and they begin meeting there regularly. Lou proposes to Jessie, and Jessie uses the money she has saved to buy a ticket so her grandmother can come to America for their wedding.

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

My Reaction

I remember reading this book when I was young! I was really older than the target audience when it was first published, but I enjoyed the story. It’s one of those books that I think takes on more significance when you’re older and understand more of the history behind the story. We don’t know exactly where Jessie is from because the book never says, but her journey resembles the kind of journey that many people made during this same period of history. We don’t know the year, either, but it appears to be set in the late 19th century or early 20th century.

Although coming to a strange country, alone and unable to speak the language, is a scary experience, Jessie is fortunate because there is a friendly and caring person waiting there for her, and she has a job lined up that suits her skills. In real life, not everyone was so fortunate, and it was more of a struggle for them to get established in their new home. Jessie still has to struggle with homesickness and missing her grandmother, but her life changes for the better because she took the chance to go to a new country and start a new life. Readers can emphasize with Jessie’s fears and uncertainty as she starts out on her journey and celebrate with her when things work out for the best.

The pictures in the book are beautiful! Readers really get the sense that they’re seeing another time, with Jessie’s tiny village, the crowded ship in the rain, and busy New York City, more than 100 years ago. Even when the environment and circumstances are harsh, the pictures are charming.

There is a note in the beginning of the book for parents and teachers about how they can use this book to spark discussion with children. They can use the opportunity to invite children to learn how their own families arrived in America, because this book was originally intended for an audience of young American readers, and most people who live in the United States (with the exception of Native Americans) are descended from people who came from somewhere else. It’s an opportunity for children to learn their family’s history and to see how it compares with that of other people, whose families also made a decision to come here and start over, going through their own struggles along the way. There is also some general advice about sharing books with children, and making a point of surrounding children with books and reading aloud to them.

Posted on by TracyC · 1 Comment

William’s House

William’s House by Ginger Howard, illustrated by Larry Day, 2001.

It’s 1637 in Colonial New England, and a man named William is building a house for himself and his family. He wants a house that’s like his father’s house in England. The story describes all the steps he and his family go through to build the new house.

The descriptions include interesting historical details about homes from the Colonial era. When the family wants to put a window in their house, they don’t have any glass, so William uses a very thin piece of animal horn instead. It lets in light, but the window opening is still covered. William also uses stones and clay from a nearby creek when he builds a fireplace for the house.

William and his family also need furniture for the house. William uses boards from a wooden packing crate to make a table, and he stuffs bags with corn husks to make beds. When the house is finished, and the family is living in it, the book describes aspects of their daily lives. It describes how the family eats together.

The family has to change some of their habits and make additions to their house and the area around it because conditions are different in New England. The weather is hotter than they’re accustomed to from their lives in England, and their food spoils faster, so William digs a cellar for storing food. Before ice boxes and refrigeration, people would store their food underground in root cellars because it was cooler underground. When the thatch on their roof dries out and becomes a fire risk, William replaces the thatch with singles.

Then, when winter comes and it snows, they realize that the snow is too heavy for the roof, so William replaces the whole roof with one that has a steeper slope, so the snow will slide off. Then, he has to make the fireplace bigger because the house is so cold.

When spring comes, William’s cousin Samuel arrives from England with his wife, and he asks William about the design of his house. Originally, William wanted a house like the one he grew up in, but because he’s living in a different place and under different conditions, he’s had to make many changes to the house. Still, it’s his family’s new house, and it’s exactly what they need it to be.

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

My Reaction

I love stories about life in the past, and I liked all of the little details of daily life in this story. The main focus of the story is about the building of a new home, and at first, William wants a house like the one where he grew up in England. However, when the family experiences what life is like in New England, they realize that they have to make some changes to their home and the way they live. I like the way the book points out that the style of a person’s home depends on where they live and the circumstances of their life. The family doesn’t fully understand at first what their new lives will be like and what they really need, but they learn to adjust, and they make changes to their new house along the way.

When William’s cousin arrives, he doesn’t understand the design of their house at first. He hasn’t been living in New England yet, but readers know that he’s about to find out some of the reasons why people’s houses in New England are different from those in England at the same time period. At the end of the book, the characters are building a new house near William’s house, so it seems that his cousin and his wife will be living there, and they will benefit from what William has learned about building a house suitable for that environment.

Posted on by TracyC

When Clay Sings

When Clay Sings by Byrd Baylor, illustrated by Tom Bahti, 1972.

This children’s picture book is a salute to the ancient makers of Native American pottery, dedicated to these makers and the museums that preserve their work. It’s written as free form poetry with images of the American Southwest and designs from Native American pottery.

The story sets the scene on a desert hillside, where pieces of ancient pottery are buried. Sometimes, Indian (Native American) children dig up pieces of old pottery, and their parents remind them to be respectful of what they find because they are pieces of the past and of lives that went before. Sometimes, they’re lucky enough to find pieces that fit together or even a bowl that isn’t broken.

They reflect on the time and skill that went into making the pottery and how strong the pottery would have to be to last well beyond the lives of the people who made it. They think about the people who painted the beautiful designs on the pots and what their lives were like. Could their own children have requested favorite pictures painted on their bowls?

Some designs show animals or bugs or hunters, but others show bizarre creatures that might be monsters or spirits. Others show a medicine man trying to cure a child, ceremonies, dancers in masks and costumes, or the traditional flute player. People can reflect on the lives of those long-ago people and how they compare to the lives of people today.

There is a map in the back of the book which shows the areas of the American Southwest (Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and Colorado) where the pottery designs the book uses originated from and the tribes that used them.

This is a Caldecott Honor Book. It is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).

My Reaction

I grew up in Arizona, and I remember our school librarian reading books by Byrd Baylor to us in elementary school during the late 1980s or early 1990s. She wanted to introduce us to this author because she wrote about the area of the United States where we lived. In fact, this book about pottery was fitting because, when they were building our school in the 1970s, they found some ancient pottery. They used to have it on display in the school library. Even to this day, it’s common for people creating buildings in this area to have the site surveyed by archaeologists. Finds are fairly common, and the usual procedure is to thoroughly document everything that gets uncovered before burying it again in the same location and constructing the building over it. One of the reason why they usually rebury finds is that, in this dry, desert climate, putting them back into the ground will actually preserve them very well. It’s possible that later generations will find them again (especially with the location documented) when the building is gone or no longer necessary, but they may have better instruments or techniques for analyzing them.

I’m a little divided on how much I like this book, though. On the one hand, I like books about folklore and traditional crafts, and this book focuses on a geographical area that’s very familiar to me. On the other hand, the free verse poetry that reflects on the feelings of people about the pottery doesn’t appeal to me quite as much as books which show the process of making it, like The Little Indian Pottery Maker. I like to see the process and learn more of the known background legends of some of the designs than just try to imagine what things might have been going through the minds of the designers. Toward the end of the book, they show the legendary humpbacked flute player, but they don’t tell you that this figure is called Kokopelli and that there are legends about him. It’s a nice book, but I just felt like there was potential to include more background information.

This book uses the word “Indian” for “Native American” or “America Indian”, which is common in older children’s books.

Posted on by TracyC

Mystery of the Strange Traveler

Mystery of the Strange Traveler by Phyllis A. Whitney, 1951.

This book was originally published under the title The Island of Dark Woods.

Laurie Kane and her older sister, Celia, are traveling by train without their parents to visit their Aunt Serena in New York. Aunt Serena has invited the girls to come stay with her while their parents are traveling in Asia for one of their father’s newspaper assignments. In her letter to the family, Aunt Serena hints at exciting things that are happening. She used to be a schoolteacher, but she says that she’s starting a new business, and the girls can help her with it, although she won’t say what it is until they arrive. Also, Aunt Serena has recently moved to a new house. When their father sees where she’s living now, he’s intrigued because it’s the location of their “ancestral mystery.” He would tell the girls the story himself, but Aunt Serena says in her letter that she would like to be the one to tell them about it. There father says that Aunt Serena loves being tantalizing and mysterious. Laurie, who loves mystery stories, wonders about it all the way to New York.

Aunt Serena lives in a wooded area on Staten Island, near Clove Lakes Park. She has a small red brick house with another outbuilding on her property that she says used to be an old cobbler’s shop. Her new business idea is to turn it into a small bookshop. Laurie loves it immediately because she loves books. She wants to be an author herself, and Aunt Serena says that she might even get a chance to meet her favorite author, Katherine Parsons, because she lives in the area. Celia is the practical one, and she asks Aunt Serena all the practical questions about how she plans to get people to come to her little shop when there are no other stores around them to draw customers in. Aunt Serena says that she’s not expecting her shop to turn into a big business. It’s more of a small hobby business to bring in a little extra money and also be a fun activity.

Laurie and Celia begin unpacking some of the books that Aunt Serena will sell in her small shop, and Laurie is pleased to see a collection of books by Katherine Parsons. On the back of one of the books, there’s a picture of the author and a short biography. Laurie is pleased to note that Katherine Parsons is left-handed, like herself. There are times when Laurie has difficult with things because she’s left-handed, and she feels a kinship toward the author because she shares that trait.

Meanwhile, Celia has noticed that there is a boy next door, moving the lawn. Laurie is more interested in books than boys, so she doesn’t find this exciting news. Celia tries to get the boy’s attention, but he seems to be ignoring her. When he does seem to notice the girls, he turns away quickly, like he wants to avoid them. Celia points out to Laurie how the house where the boy is looks very different from the rest of the houses around it – big, old-fashioned, dark, and creepy. Laurie comments that it looks haunted, and their Aunt Serena surprises them by saying it is.

The boy, Norman, lives with his grandfather, Mr. Bennett, in the old house. Mr. Bennett is a difficult man, and Aunt Serena admits that she got on his bad side when she first moved to the area by asking him if she could buy his house. Aunt Serena admits that she didn’t actually want to buy Mr. Bennett’s house; she was only using her inquiry as an excuse to talk to him and maybe get a look inside the house. However, Mr. Bennett took offense at the inquiry.

There is another boy in the neighborhood called Russ Sperry, and he’s friendlier. His mother sends him to bring a cake to Aunt Serena, and Aunt Serena says that she hopes he will be friends with the girls and show them around. Russ stays awhile to have some cake and chat, and he mentions that Norman Bennett’s father is in South America because he has a job there, which is why he’s staying with his grandfather. Aunt Serena says that Norman’s mother is dead and that his father rarely comes home. She doesn’t approve of the lonely way Norman’s grandfather seems to be raising him because it seems like Norman doesn’t have any friends. Laurie thinks that Norman’s loneliness is at least partly his own fault because he seems to avoid contact with people when she and Celia try to approach him. Celia decides that Russ is cute, but Laurie finds herself intrigued by Norman, not because she wants to flirt with him but because there’s an element of mystery about him.

The girls try to ask Aunt Serena more about what she means when she says that the Bennett house is haunted, but she says that she would rather talk about that later. She gets the girls busy unpacking their belongings, arranging things in her shop, and talking to Russ about the area. Russ helps to explain the geography of Staten Island, and Aunt Serena tells the girls more about the history of the area. Aunt Serena mentions that there are dances in the park on Wednesday nights, which sounds exciting to Celia. When Laurie spots Norman passing by, wearing riding clothes, Russ explains that there are a couple of stables in the area, where people can rent horses. There are plenty of things for the girls to do in the area, and Aunt Serena begins planning an opening party for her bookshop, with Katherine Parsons there as a special guest to sign her books.

Laurie is excited about the party and the opportunity to meet Katherine Parsons, but she continues to think about the mystery of why Norman seems so unfriendly. Soon, other strange things start happening. One night, she sees a light in Aunt Serena’s bookshop, as if someone were sneaking around in there. However, when Laurie goes to wake Aunt Serena to show her, the light is gone, and the next day, there aren’t any obvious signs that anything in the shop was disturbed.

When Laurie has a chance encounter with Mr. Bennett, where she asks him if he’s ever seen the ghost that haunts his house, he says, no he hasn’t seen it. The ghost is supposedly a phantom stagecoach, but Mr. Bennett doesn’t believe it exists. Once Laurie knows that there’s supposed to be a phantom stagecoach, she tries to press Aunt Serena for more details, but Aunt Serena refuses to tell them the rest of the story until she can tell them on a gray, stormy day, when the atmosphere is right.

When a stormy day comes and Aunt Serena agrees to tell the story, she allows Celia and Laurie to invite Russ and Norman over to hear it, too. Norman comes to hear the story without his grandfather’s permission because he’s always known there was some story about the house, but his grandfather hasn’t wanted to talk to him about it. When Aunt Serena tells the ghost story, the connections between the Kane family and the Bennett family become clear.

About 100 years before, there was a stagecoach route that ran through this area. One stormy day, a stagecoach was passing through the area, and one of the passengers, a woman with an infant daughter, was seriously ill and had become delirious. The stagecoach driver sought help at the Bennett house. The Bennetts brought the sick woman inside the house, along with the infant daughter. The stagecoach driver sent a doctor to tend to the woman, but she died in the Bennett house. They had no idea who the woman was and were unable to trace her origins or family. If the woman had a husband or the infant girl had a living father, the man never showed up to inquire after his wife or to claim the baby. All the Bennetts had do go on were the meager possessions the woman was carrying with her, and the little girl herself, whose last name was unknown but the mother had called “Serena.”

At this point, Serena explains that this Serena was the ancestor of the Kane family, the great-grandmother of Celia and Laurie. Since nobody was able to discover where she and her mother came from or locate any relative, the Bennetts adopted the first Serena and raised her until she grew up, got married, and moved away from the island. However, local people still tell stories about the terrible day when the first Serena and her ill mother were brought to the area, claiming to have seen a ghostly stagecoach pull up to the Bennett house and a ghostly woman get out.

Laurie is intrigued by the mystery surrounding her family’s origins. Aunt Serena shows them some of the belongings that the first Serena’s mother had when she died, which have been passed down as heirlooms. There was a doll with doll clothes, a woman’s dress with bonnet and gloves, a sewing kit, a fan, an old novel the woman must have been reading at the time, and a purse containing a very old coin. The old coin is another oddity about this strange situation because it dates from before the Revolutionary War and would have been long obsolete by the time the woman died during the 19th century. Is it still possible to solve a mystery that’s about 100 years old? Will Laurie and her family ever learn who their ancestors really were? Why does Mr. Bennett not want them to visit his house or talk about the old mystery or the ghost story? Does he know more about them than he wants to admit?

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

My Reaction and Themes

The mystery in the story unfolds slowly, which might make people who are used to faster-paced modern stories a little impatient. Aunt Serena takes quite a while from the time when she first mentions that the house next door is haunted until she actually explains what the ghost is supposed to be and what the mystery surrounding their family is. However, Aunt Serena values atmosphere, so the story could appeal to people who don’t mind a slower-paced mystery as long as it has a good atmosphere.

When the mystery does begin, some parts are resolved quickly and others are more of a puzzle. The idea of an orphan with an unknown identity and a hidden past is always intriguing. The light in the bookshop at night, on the other hand, turns out to be less of a mystery, and Mr. Bennett’s reluctance to discuss the ghost story and the old mystery turns out to be nothing sinister. Mr. Bennett doesn’t really have any hidden knowledge about the orphaned child or her dead mother. It’s just that he’s a very reclusive person who craves peace and quiet so he can work on his private projects. He also has some resentment toward the Kane family because, while they used to be very close, Laurie’s grandfather was the one who inspired Mr. Bennett’s son to take a job in another country, which is why Mr. Bennett and Norman rarely see him. By the end of the story, though, things get patched up between them.

Every time the matter of the mysterious orphan and the question of whether or not the house is haunted by her mother is raised, Mr. Bennett has had to deal with a bunch of people and reporters stopping by his house, harassing him with questions and asking for tours of the place, and he’s sick of it. He doesn’t want Aunt Serena or the kids raising the issue again because he doesn’t want to deal with everybody’s questions anymore, and he has no more information to give anyone. As far as he’s concerned, the mystery is unsolvable because he thinks whatever trail there might have been has long since grown cold, and if it were ever possible to learn the dead woman’s identity or the real origins of the child, someone else would have figured it out a long time ago. However, Laurie tells Mr. Bennett that she thinks that there’s still a chance to figure it out, and that plays into one of the major themes of the story.

The Atmosphere and Location

The atmosphere of the story is pleasant, with Aunt Serena’s cheery little house decorated with bowls of wildflowers and her little bookshop. Aunt Serena greatly believes in establishing atmosphere, creating scene, and setting a mood. On the stormy day when Aunt Serena finally tells the girls the local ghost story, she makes it a point to set the atmosphere for the story by making popcorn and lighting candles.

Like other books by Phyllis Whitney, this story is set in a real location and uses some of the history of that location. The original title of this book came from the original Native American name for Staten Island, Monocknong, which the fictional author in the story, Katherine Parsons says means “The Island of Dark Woods.” Mr. Bennett disagrees, though, saying that it actually might mean, “The Place of the Bad Woods,” and they debate about different possible translations and meanings of the phrase. The history of the Staten Island plays directly into the story because it turns out that Laurie’s ancestors were involved with the historical events of the area, particularly Santa Ana’s stay on Staten Island after the Battle of the Alamo in Texas that was part of the Texas Revolution against Mexico.

A couple of other points I’d like to make regarding history are about race in the story. Toward the end of the book, Mr. Bennett hires “a young colored woman” as a housekeeper. “Colored” is a dated term in the 21st century, but this book was written in the 1950s, when that was considered one of the more polite ways to refer to black people. The popular terms we use now (“black” as the informal generic term and “African American” as the formal term specific to black people of African descent who live in the United States) came into use after the Civil Rights Movement as people tried to distance themselves from older terms as a way to shed the emotional baggage associated with them. The housekeeper, Anna, becomes friendly with Laurie, and she offers her a new perspective and some helpful advice about a different approach to tracing her family’s roots. Anna enters the story late, so she doesn’t appear much, but she is helpful, and I didn’t notice anything particularly stereotypical about her, although I suppose the idea of a black person in domestic service might be kind of cliche.

The other thing I wanted to mention is that American Indians are referred to multiple times in the story when the characters discuss the island’s history. The characters always refer to them as just “Indians” instead of “American Indians” or “Native Americans”, which is typical of the 1950s. At one point, Celia and Laurie are discussing their role in the island’s history. Celia talks about how she was glad that she wasn’t around then because there were massacres and “the Dutch kept buying the island from the Indians and the Indians kept taking it back.” However, Laurie says that was “because the white men cheated them.” I appreciated that Laurie acknowledged that, and I think that this exchange not only highlights some of the stereotypical views people had in the 1950s about Native Americans and history, but also differences between the ways Celia and Laurie look at other people. I have more to say about that below, but Celia tends to cling toward accepted views and the general social rules of society while Laurie has a talent for empathy and looking at situations from another person’s perspective. I’ve noticed that the author, Phyllis Whitney, has used this technique in other books of hers to subtly challenge stereotypes, pointing out that different groups of people have their own perspective and their own side of the story.

This book is fun for book lovers. Laurie’s favorite author, Katherine Parsons, is fictional, but the story captures the spirit of book lovers. It turns out that Norman is a book lover, too, and Laurie is able to draw him out and bond with him over their shared love of books. Aunt Serena also praises Laurie for her ability feel empathy for other people, a quality that she believes comes partly from Laurie being a book lover. After all, readers are accustomed to the idea of seeing circumstances through the eyes of someone else and experiencing their thought processes when they read a story. Aunt Serena believes that one of the benefits of reading it that it helps to cultivate a person’s skills in using empathy to understand other people and that readers carry that technique over into the real world.

I will say, though, that Laurie’s story took an unexpected turn. Laurie is a book lover, but through her association with Katherine Parsons, she unexpectedly realizes that, while she’s always dreamed of writing stories and being published, she doesn’t actually like the writing process. She enjoys the stories other people have written, and she has a knack for understanding characters, whether real or on the page, but she’s surprised to realize that the routine of writing doesn’t appeal to her. She feels a little sad at the realization because it means giving up an old dream but also a little relief because her life is now open to more possibilities that she might like better.

The Sisters and 1950s Social Rules

I also enjoyed the relationship between the two sisters in the story. They get on each other’s nerves and fight with each other sometimes, but they also care about each other and make up with each other after fighting. Celia, as the older sister, is more interested in boys than Laurie is, and she has all kinds of social rules about how to talk to boys and how to get their attention. Laurie knows that Celia and her friends talk about these things a lot, but Laurie doesn’t really understand all of their little rules and thinks a lot of them sound silly, like the idea that girls can’t invite boys to things but have to wait for the boys to ask them or that they should pretend like they’re not too interested in a boy so the boy will approach them first. This book was written in the 1950s, so a lot of Celia’s social expectations about how girls and boys should act around each other sound dated, but I enjoyed Laurie questioning Celia’s rules.

Laurie thinks it more important to know about what specific people like and how to appeal to them as individuals than to adhere to more general social rules. This is especially apparent when the girls try to get Mr. Bennett to let them in his house and talk to him. When the sisters compete to ingratiate themselves to Mr. Bennett so they can get access to the house and talk to him about the mystery, their different approaches play on their concepts of social rules and human empathy. Celia tries a very conventional approach, trying to appeal to Mr. Bennett in a general way, but Laurie decides that “Mr. Bennett was too much of an individual to be governed by rules that worked for most people” and tailors her approach to him as an eccentric individual.

Celia’s idea is to make some homemade cupcakes and take them to Mr. Bennett as a gift because she believes in the old axiom that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. As Laurie suspects, though, this approach falls flat because Mr. Bennett isn’t interested in baked goods. Laurie has a better idea of what Mr. Bennett really likes because she has talked to Norman about him, and she decides that the way to get his attention is to demonstrate a shared interest in something he likes. Knowing that he likes nature more than anything else, she starts putting together a collection of interesting leaves and asks Mr. Bennett if he can help identify them. Mr. Bennett isn’t really impressed by her collection because she didn’t mount the collection properly, most of her collection is very common leaves that he thinks she should be able to identify if she knew anything about trees, and she also included a sample of poison ivy, which she should have known better than to touch. However, he is sufficiently amused by her efforts and her mistake to talk to her for a few minutes.

No Man is an Island

One of the major themes of the story is that “No man is an island”, meaning that people do need other people. Aunt Serena is concerned that Mr. Bennett’s obsession with solitude is hurting his grandson because he’s making it difficult for Norman to make friends. Mr. Bennett has forbidden Norman to bring any other kids to the house because he doesn’t want to deal with the noise and disturbance. Because she’s been a teacher, Aunt Serena knows that Norman needs more opportunities to socialize with his peers. Mr. Bennett doesn’t even seem to pay much attention to Norman himself because he’s too absorbed in his own work.

What Laurie points out to Mr. Bennett when Mr. Bennett tries to tell the kids that the old mystery is unsolvable is that a group of people working together can accomplish more than any one person, working alone. They don’t have many clues to the past, but just because they don’t all make sense to any one of them doesn’t mean that parts of them wouldn’t make sense to different people. By pooling their knowledge and consulting other people, they could still put together the pieces of the past.

Along the way, Laurie also makes Mr. Bennett realize that there are many things he doesn’t know about Norman. Even though he and Norman have been living alone together for a long time, Mr. Bennett hasn’t paid much attention to Norman or things Norman has been doing. Norman has felt lonely and neglected, although he hasn’t wanted to admit how much. When Mr. Bennett realizes that Norman is an artist and has been developing his skills to an impressive degree without him even seeing any of Norman’s projects, he realizes that he has been too absorbed in his own concerns and starts to make an effort to learn more about what’s happening in the lives of the people around him. This is a similar situation to a grandmother in another of the author’s books, Mystery of the Angry Idol.

Posted on by TracyC

Look Up!

Look Up! by Robert Burleigh, illustrated by Raul Colon, 2013.

This picture book is about the life of Henrietta Leavitt, a “Pioneering Woman Astronomer” during the late 19th century and early 20th century.

The story says that Henrietta had a fascination with the night sky from a young age, often wondering just how high the sky was. When she got older, she formally studied astronomy, although most of the other students were men, and it was an uncommon profession for women.

After she graduated, she found a job with an observatory, although she rarely worked on the telescope. She was part of a team of other women who acted as human “computers”, doing basic calculations by hand and compiling information for others to use. Women like Henrietta were not expected to use this information themselves or draw conclusions from their own calculations, but Henrietta had her natural sense of curiosity and confidence in her ability to use her own mind.

She continued studying in her spare time, and while examining photographs of stars and doing her calculations, she began to notice some patterns that made her wonder about the explanations behind them. She studied an effect where stars seemed to become brighter and then dimmer, a kind of “blinking” effect.

She not only discovered that the existence of some of these stars had not been recorded yet, but she also found herself wondering about the pattern of this twinkling effect. Some stars appeared brighter and seemed to “blink” more slowly between bright and dim than other stars that weren’t as bright. By examining the relative brightness of the stars and the patterns of blink rate, she realized that it was possible to calculate the true brightness of the stars and use that to figure out how far away each star is from Earth. When she presented her findings to the head astronomer at the observatory, he was impressed. By using the chart Henrietta compiled, it was possible to calculate the distances of stars even beyond our galaxy. People of Henrietta’s time initially thought our galaxy might be the entire universe, but Henrietta’s finding shows that it was not and also that our galaxy is much larger than people thought.

The book ends with sections of historical information about Henrietta Leavitt and her discoveries and other female astronomers. There is also a glossary, some quotes about stars, and a list of websites for readers to visit.

My Reaction

I enjoy books about historical figures, especially lesser-known ones, and overall, I liked this picture book. The pictures are soft and lovely.

The only criticisms I have are that the book is a little slow and repetitious in places, and the subject matter is a little complex for a young audience. Some repetition is expected in picture books for young children, but how appealing that can be depends on what is being repeated. Henrietta’s work involves a lot of looking at pictures and figures and studying, so the text gives the feeling of long hours studying and “looking,” and many of the pictures are of her looking at books and examining photographs of stars through a magnifying lens. I found the story and pictures charming and in keeping with the Academic aesthetics, but I’m just not sure how much it would appeal to young children.

The story explains some of the concepts that Henrietta Leavitt developed and discovered, and it does so in fairly simple language. However, I still have the feeling that it would mean a little more to a little older child, who already knows something about astronomy, or to an adult like myself, who just enjoys the charming format of the story.

Part of me thinks that this story could have been made into a little longer book, perhaps a beginning chapter book, which would have allowed for a little more complexity. One of the issues with making the story of Henrietta Leavitt into a longer book is that, as the section of historical information says, “not a great deal is known about her life.” There just might not be enough known details about Henrietta’s life to put together a longer book.

Still, I really did enjoy the book, and I liked the presentation of 19th century astronomers and astronomical concepts. I especially enjoyed the way the story portrayed the concept of “human computers.” This type of profession no longer exists because we have electronic computers and computer programs that perform mathematical calculations faster than human beings can, but before that technology existed, humans had to do it themselves. “Human computers” had to work in groups to get through massive amounts of data and calculations, and it was long and tedious work, but their work was largely hidden from the public eye. As the story says, they were expected to do mathematical calculations and compile data, but they were compiling it for someone else’s use. Someone else would use their data to draw conclusions, and that person usually got the credit for whatever they discovered, ignoring all the people who did the grunt work that made it possible. Since women like Henrietta were more likely to be among the “human computers”, working in the background, they often didn’t get much credit for their work. The male astronomers were more likely to be the ones analyzing data and taking credit for the conclusions they drew, although they didn’t do the background calculations themselves. What made Henrietta different was that she stepped beyond the role of simply compiling information but also took on the role of studying patterns and drawing conclusions from the data she was compiling. She did all of it, from compiling data and making calculations to interpreting the data and laying out conclusions and discoveries from it.

Women once worked in similar positions as “human computers” at NASA. The 2016 movie Hidden Figures was about women working as “human computers” at NASA in the 1960s.

Posted on by TracyC

Five Secrets in a Box

Five Secrets in a Box by Catherine Brighton, 1987.

This story is about Virginia Galilei (1600-1634), the eldest child of Galileo Galilei, and her perception of his work and equipment as a young child. The book has sections of historical information about Galileo and Virginia in the front and the back inside cover, although the story itself is just about Virginia exploring Galileo’s study.

Virginia, as a young child, knows that her father stays up late at night, studying the night sky, while she is asleep. During the day, she must be quiet to let him sleep. She is not really supposed to touch his scientific instruments, but she can’t resist the temptation to take a look. In her father’s study, she finds a box with five mysterious objects in it, and she investigates what they do.

One of them is a lens that makes small things look bigger. Another is a lens that makes things that are far away look closer. There is another lens that makes everything look blue and another that makes everything look red. Then, there is also a plain, white feather.

Virginia wonders what the purpose of the feather is, and she asks her father about it. He tells her that it is important to his work.

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

My Reaction

According to the historical information provided, little Virginia’s mother left Galileo and married someone else while Virginia was still young. Virginia remained living with Galileo and was close to her father. When she was 12 years old, her father sent her to a convent, which was a fairly common way for upper-class girls at that time to get an education. However, Galileo probably intended for his daughters to join the Church as nuns rather than marrying when their education was complete. The book doesn’t explain this, but Virginia and her younger brother and sister were born out of wedlock. Because they were illegitimate (born outside of a legally-recognized marriage – the word “illegitimate” literally refers to someone born outside of the law and legal standing with implications about both the legal status of their parents’ union and the child’s possible future inheritance, depending on the laws of that particular society), their social status was compromised from birth. Galileo believed that it would be difficult for his daughters to find husbands, so joining a convent and becoming nuns would provide the girls with stable lives and careers as well as an education, which is what both of them did. Virginia remained at the convent as a nun, taking the name of Sister Maria Celeste, and unfortunately, died relatively young at the age of 34. The book doesn’t say why, but it was because she contracted dysentery, which is caused by consuming tainted water or food.

The story itself doesn’t really explain the purpose of the five special objects that Virginia examines in her father’s study. Some of them are obvious because readers will recognize what they are and the way they work. The purpose of the feather is left a little mysterious at the end, but readers get the full explanation by reading the section of historical information. Galileo was studying gravity, and apparently, he dropped objects off of the leading tower of Pisa to study how long it took them to fall. A feather will take longer to reach the ground than a stone, but that’s because of air resistance. One of Galileo’s premises was that, if there were no air to produce that air resistance, the stone and the feather would fall at the same rate of time due to gravity. I think I would have preferred to have Galileo explain some of this to his daughter when she asks him about the feather, but the story ends kind of abruptly at that point, with Virginia just playing with the feather. I felt like the ending isn’t exactly an ending without that explanation.

The pictures are the main reason why I really liked this book. They are colorful and realistic, and I thought they did a great job of showing the scientific instruments of the past. I also liked some of the little details of the house included in the backgrounds of the pictures. There is a crucifix hanging on the wall behind the telescope in Galileo’s study because this is a religious household, even though some of Galileo’s assertions about the way the world works clashed with Church teachings and got him placed under house arrest. (The book says that he was “sent to prison”, but he was actually placed under house arrest rather than being sent to a prison because he was elderly and in bad health by that point in his life.)

The book doesn’t go into detail about Galileo’s arrest because that happened later in his life, but he was basically considered a heretic for his belief in Copernicus‘s theory that the sun is the center of the solar system instead of the Earth. That sounds like a rather petty charge, and you might wonder why it matters or what different it could make to religion. It wasn’t a new idea because others had reached that conclusion long before him. Copernicus was never arrested for his ideas, partly because he didn’t live very long after he published them, but his book was placed on the restricted list by the Inquisition.

The reason why the relative positions of the sun and the Earth mattered depend on whether particular Biblical passages are meant to be interpreted literally or figuratively. Under a strict literal interpretation, which was the interpretation approved by the Church at that time, the conclusion was that the Earth was the center of the solar system, so saying otherwise would be to go against the Bible and Church teaching, making it a heresy. It wasn’t so much that the relative positions of the sun and the Earth were that important by themselves so much as the act of apparently contradicting the Bible. The Renaissance era was also the era of the Reformation, where Protestants were breaking away from the Catholic Church, partly because of the questions of literal interpretation of the Bible and Church doctrine. The Catholic Church’s response to that during this period was to become more strict in enforcing moral and doctrinal standards in the Counter-Reformation, so anything that seemed to challenge these aspects of the faith was taken far more seriously during this period. This stance would shift again later in history.

The background and aftermath to this story is far more complex than the story itself, although I think part of the charm of the story is it’s simplicity. This is one particular day and a small incident, seen through the eyes of a child, even though adult readers know that there are bigger events surrounding it.

Posted on by TracyC

Hanukkah at Valley Forge

Hanukkah at Valley Forge by Stephen Krensky, illustrated by Greg Harlin, 2006.

It’s a cruel winter at Valley Forge, during the American Revolution, and George Washington is worried about the welfare and morale of his soldiers.

As Washington walks through the camp, he sees a young soldier lighting a candle and reciting something softly to himself.

Curious about what he’s doing, Washington stops to talk to him, casually remarking on how cold the night is. The young soldier says that he saw colder nights when he was young in Poland, and he is lighting candles for Hanukkah. Washington asks him what that means, and the soldier explains the meaning of the holiday.

The soldier recounts the story of how Israel was conquered by the Ancient Greeks, who forced Jewish people to worship Greek gods and tried to replace Jewish customs with Greek ones. Washington also says that he understands what it’s like to feel like you’re under the thumb of a king who lives far away and the desire for liberty. The Jewish soldier says his family left Poland for similar reasons, because they were not being allowed to practice their beliefs there.

Returning to the story of the ancient Israelites, the soldier explains that a priest named Mattathias refused the Greeks’ orders to bow to idols, and he fought back against the Greeks. Mattathias and his five sons, who were called the Maccabees, led a rebellion against the Greeks. They were a small group, and the odds were against them, but they were determined to continue the fight against their oppressors. Washington says that he understands the feeling because his army is in a similar position.

Continuing the story, the soldier recounts how Mattathias’s son, Judah, inspired their troops by reminding them that God was on their side, leading them to victory. When they finally managed to overthrow their Greek rulers, they took back their Temple and lit the Temple menorah. The menorah was supposed to be kept lit constantly, and they were worried because there was very little oil left. They only had enough to keep it burning for one day, and they weren’t sure when they could get more oil. However, they lit the menorah anyway, trusting that God would somehow provide them with more soon. It took them eight days to find more oil for the menorah, but to their surprise, the menorah continued to stay lit all the time they were searching, lasting eight times longer than they thought it would with the amount of oil they had. Hanukkah became the commemoration of this miracle.

George Washington contemplates the story that the soldier told him, and he finds it inspiring. It reminds him that, even though their current situation in Valley Forge may seem bleak, there have been others before them who have also faced steep odds in their struggles and who still managed to succeed. He begins to think that, if they persevere, they may also be gifted with a miracle of their own.

There is an author’s note at the end of the book that explains the inspiration behind the story. As the characters in the story do, the author draws parallels between the American Revolutionary War and the historical battle that began the tradition of Hanukkah. The author learned that George Washington may have learn about Hanukkah during the Revolutionary War, although there are no entries in his diary to confirm it, so he used excerpts from George Washington’s other writings to explain his sentiments. The author also offers commentary on bullies and the importance of standing up to oppressors, both in the context of war and in daily life.

This book won the Sydney Taylor award from the Association of Jewish Libraries.

My Reaction

I love books that include little-known or lesser-known events. Whether this one happened or happened in the way the author tells it is difficult to verify, and it seems likely that it’s more of a folk tale than an historical account. George Washington was a real, historical person, but so many legends have grown up around his life that it’s sometimes difficult to tell whether certain stories about him actually happened. As the author says, Washington’s own diary doesn’t offer any verification about this particular incident. Other reviewers of this book, including J. L. Bell, who specializes in Revolutionary War history in the Boston area, have attempted to trace the origins of this particular story about Washington learning about Hanukkah during the Revolutionary War. In his blog, J. L. Bell explains the known sources for this story, which vary in their description of exactly when the encounter between Washington and the Jewish soldier took place and what the soldier’s name was. The soldiers who have been credited with having this encounter with George Washington were real people, but there’s nothing that definitively proves that the discussion about Hanukkah actually happened with any of them. The story is probably more folklore than history, and Bell believes that it started to circulate during the 20th century, when there were more immigrants arriving from Poland with stories and experiences like the one the Polish soldier in the story tells about not being allowed to practice their religion openly. Even so, the parallels the story draws between the ancient rebellion of the Maccabees and the American Revolution are fascinating.

There are certain feelings that are universal among humans, and the author’s point that nobody likes being oppressed by a bully, whether that bully is another person or a government or an army, is true. No matter what you’re up against in life, perseverance in the face of hardship is important, and miracles can come to those who continue to stand up for themselves and what they believe in. It is also true that people who come from different sets of circumstances can help to inspire each other by sharing common feelings about their struggles.

Posted on by TracyC · 1 Comment

The Gift of the Christmas Cookie

The Gift of the Christmas Cookie by Dandi Daley Mackall, illustrated by Deborah Chabrian, 2008.

This is a sweet Christmas story that discusses the meaning of Christmas along with the history of Christmas cookies.

The story doesn’t provide a year, but it seems to be implied that it takes place during the Great Depression because Jack’s father is described as hopping a freight train to find work and send money home. Since then, Jack and his mother have lived alone, saving every penny that Jack’s father sends to them.

Then, before Christmas, Jack arrives home to find his mother making cookies. Jack is thrilled at the idea of having a rare treat, but his mother says that the cookies are for the needy at church. It’s disappointing because Jack has been feeling rather needy himself.

Then, his mother shows him the wooden cookie board molds that they will use. They are big with elaborate carvings of Christmas symbols. Making the cookies is labor-intensive, and Jack wonders why they’re working so hard to make such elaborate cookies that people will just eat anyway.

Jack’s mother tells him a story that takes place in the “Old Country” of their ancestors during the Middle Ages. (It’s in Germany, although Germany didn’t exist as the single country it is today back then.) Times were very hard, and people couldn’t afford much, but one family wanted to do something special for their neighbors for Christmas. The father of the family was a woodcarver, so he considered carving Nativity figures, but his wife said that many people were hungry, so it would be better to bake something they could eat. The woodcarver made wooden molds in the shapes of figures associated with Jesus’s birth, and his wife made the sweet dough to put in them, and they made cookies to share with their neighbors.

Jack’s mother saves one cookie from their batch in the shape of an angel for Jack so he can have a treat, but when a hungry man comes beginning for something to eat, Jack considers his own father, who might be traveling and hungry.

Jack is inspired to share his special Christmas cookie with someone who might need it more than he does and to pass on the story that goes with it.

My Reaction

I like stories that include some history, and I enjoyed this story about the origins of Christmas cookies and a lesson in generosity, giving to someone else as he hopes other people will be generous with his father. The invention of Christmas cookies can’t be traced back to any particular family, like the story in the book tells it, and Christmas cookies might have actually originated in Medieval monasteries because the monks would have had greater access to the sugar and spices needed than most people. However, the general concept of Christmas cookies made with molds is accurate. There is a brief note in the back of the book about the cookie boards or springerle molds that come from the Schwabian region of Germany, Switzerland, and Austria and how these molded cookies have had religious shapes since the Middle Ages. The book also notes that some cookie molds take the form of specially-carved rolling pins rather than the flat boards shown in the book, and this was the type of cookie mold that my grandmother used to use. When she made molded cookies, they were anise-flavored, which is traditional and tastes like licorice, although I prefer to make ginger cookies with my cookie mold rolling pin. The book includes a simple recipe for cookies that you can use with cookie molds or cookie cutters, and it uses the traditional anise flavoring.

Posted on by TracyC

A Pioneer Thanksgiving

A Pioneer Thanksgiving by Barbara Greenwood, illustrated by Heather Collins, 1999.

This book is part story, part history, and part craft and activity book. It tells the story of a particular pioneer family’s Thanksgiving celebration in 1841 to explain the sort of Thanksgiving celebrations that pioneer families would have at the time, and there are related activities and recipes to accompany the story.

Everyone in the Robertson family helps with preparing the food for the Thanksgiving feast, including the family’s neighbors, who will be joining them. The story is episodic, focusing on different family members and their adventures and activities through the Thanksgiving preparations.

As they begin their preparations, they are worried about Granny, who is unwell. Mrs. Robertson is afraid that she might die because she doesn’t seem to be improving. As Sarah reads to her, Granny expresses a wish to taste her mother’s cranberry sauce one more time.

Sarah decides to go out and gather some cranberries for the sauce herself, but her little sister, Lizzie, tags along with her. The cranberry bog isn’t safe. Lizzie falls in and nearly drowns. Sarah manages to save her, but she’s very upset at almost losing Lizzie. However, her brother George finds Sarah’s basket of cranberries and brings it back to the house. The first activity in the book is a recipe for cranberry sauce.

Willie, one of the boys in the family, almost gets lost while looking for chestnuts for his mother’s chestnut stuffing, and he plays a game of Conkers with a Native American (First Peoples) friend, whose family trades foods with the Robertson family. Part of the story explains about Ojibwa and Iroquois thanksgiving ceremonies, and there are instructions in the book for playing Conkers with chestnuts and a Native American game with peach stones.

The younger children go into the woods to gather nuts, and there are instructions for weaving a nutting basket. Meg, the oldest girl in the family, makes bread with interesting designs, and there’s a recipe for bread. Sarah makes a Corn Dolly, and Granny explains the superstition of making a Corn Dolly and then plowing the Corn Dolly back into the soil at the beginning of the next planting season to ensure a good harvest.

Mr. Burkholder, their neighbor, tells them a story about when his family had newly arrived in North America and they had little food. Then, there is a section about weather and now to make a weather vane. Finally, everyone gathers at the table to say grace and enjoy the feast!

In the back of the book, there is a section about the history of Thanksgiving as a holiday in North America, both in the US and Canada. This book is actually set in Canada, and it explains that the date of Canandian Thanksgiving celebrations wasn’t initially fixed. Sometimes, they could be in October and sometimes in November. Canadian Thanksgiving was finally established as the second Monday in October in 1957.

I couldn’t find a copy of this book online, but I did find a copy on Internet Archive of a related book by the same author about the same pioneer family in Canada.

My Reaction

Although the book doesn’t say exactly where this family is other than North America, the other book about the family establishes that they are in Canada, and the references to Native Americans as “First Peoples” confirms it. When I first started reading the book, I thought that the pioneer family was somewhere in the United States or its territories. The lifestyle that the Canadian pioneers lived seems very similar to the way pioneers in the United States lived around that time, so I think the recounting of this family’s holiday would still be of interest to fans of the Little House on the Prairie series and similar books.

Hearing about Canadian Thanksgiving was interesting, and I liked the inclusion of information about the Thanksgiving traditions of the First Peoples and immigrants to Canada. The family in the story was originally from Scotland, and the grandmother in the story talks about how Thanksgiving celebrations remind her of the Harvest Home celebrations back in Scotland.

The book has a good selection of different types of activities for readers to try, from recipes to games to crafts. It seems like there is something here that could appeal to many people with different interests. Each of the activities appears next to a part of the story that references it, so readers can feel like they’re taking part in the activities along with the people in the story. I also really love the realistic art style in the illustrations!

Posted on by TracyC

A Native American Feast

A Native American Feast by Lucille Recht Penner, 1994.

This nonfiction children’s book explains the traditional foods of different Native American tribes and how they were prepared. (Throughout the book, they are referred to both as “Native Americans” and “Indians”, but mostly, the book uses the term “Native Americans.” The focus is on Native American tribes in the area that is now the United States, but the book includes information about various tribes across the United States.)

It starts with an Introduction that explains how European settlers came to North America and how the first settlers almost starved to death because they weren’t prepared for the conditions they found and didn’t understand the plants and foods of the Americas. In those early years of the colonies, the colonists relied heavily on help from nearby Native American tribes in learning techniques for hunting and growing food in North America. These colonists had to adopt some of the Native American foods and techniques of getting food in order to survive. Not only did European colonists adopt some foods used by Native Americans, but Native Americans also adopted foods that were introduced to them from Europeans, including some plants and grains, like apples and wheat, and some domesticated animals, like sheep. The focus of this book is on Native Americans and their cooking and eating habits, both pre-colonization and post-colonization. For more information about what the colonists were cooking and eating, see The Colonial Cookbook.

The book explains how we know what we know about Native American foods and cooking. Some information was recorded by early European colonists in America and European scientists who were interested in plants of the Americas, and archaeology provides information in the form of animal bones, clamshells, and pollen from plants that Native Americans cultivated, going back hundreds and even thousands of years. Native American eating habits shifted throughout their history, although they shifted very abruptly with the European colonization of North America.

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

Contents

Every chapter, including the Introduction, contains recipes that readers can make at home. Some of them are easier than others. Some recipes include pieces of Native American folklore about them or the foods in the recipes. Many of the illustrations are 19th century drawings.

Rather than organizing the book based on tribe or geographic region, the chapters of the book are based around particular types of food or cooking and eating concepts:

Introduction

This section introduces how historians know about the history of food among Native American tribes and how their diets changed after the arrival of Europeans.

Recipes in this section are:

  • Hickory Nut Soup
  • Green Succotash
  • Pueblo Peach Crisp

Discovering America

This section includes information about the earliest known hunting and cooking habits of Native Americans. It includes a description of the “land bridge” theory of how the ancestors of Native Americans arrived in the Americas from Asia. As of the early 21st century, we still don’t have a definitive answer for precisely how ancient people first arrived in the Americas, more recent theories include the possibility of these ancient people being seafaring rather than finding a land crossing, although the land crossing theory is also still possible.

Then, it explains about the arrival of the European colonists. It doesn’t sugar coat that the arrival of the colonists and their westward expansion led to the extinction and endangerment of native animal species because these newcomers hunted them without restraint. The introduction of unfamiliar diseases, like measles and smallpox, to the Native Americans took many lives, sometimes even killing whole tribes. These drastic changes greatly impacted the lives and lifestyles of Native Americans, although some traditional habits survived, including the preparation of traditional types of foods.

There are no recipes in this chapter.

A Great Mystery

This chapter explains about hunting and gathering and the development of agriculture among ancient Native American tribes. The “mystery” is about the development of corn as we know it. It was never really a wild plant. The evidence suggests that ancient Native Americans deliberately created it by cross-pollinating different wild grass plants, but it isn’t really known which ones. Most of this chapter explains how widespread corn was as a food and the uses and folklore that different tribes had for it.

Recipes in this section are:

  • Roasted Corn on the Cob
  • Blue Pinole – a blue cornmeal-based drink with sugar and cinnamon, from the Southwest
  • Thumbprint Bread (Kolatquvil)
  • Hopi Blue Marbles – boiled balls of blue cornmeal dough, a traditional breakfast food
  • Wagmiza Wasna – a mixture of cornmeal and dried berries

Treasure

This section is about foods that Native Americans introduced to the rest of the world, like pumpkins, peanuts, chili peppers, sunflower seeds, maple sugar, and different varieties of beans, including kidney beans and lima beans.

Recipes in this section are:

  • Cherokee Bean Balls
  • Apache Pumpkin with Sunflower Seeds
  • Popped Wild Rice
  • Zuni Green Chili Stew

The Hunt

This chapter is about Native American hunting techniques and the animals they hunted.

Recipes in this section are:

  • Broiled Buffalo Steaks
  • Venison and Hominy Stew

Feast and Famine

This chapter is about Native Americans who lived in areas where food was scarce and ways of foraging for food during times of famine. It also explains special feast days.

Recipes in this section are:

  • Mouse Cache Soup – made with beef broth and seeds: sunflower seeds, sesame seeds, buckwheat groats, and millet
  • Iroquois Strawberry Drink
  • Mushrooms Cooked in Oil

Berries, Flowers, and Bear Fat

This chapter explains the seasonings that Native Americans added to food and cooking techniques that added nutrients.

Recipes in this section are:

  • Fried Squash Blossoms
  • Pemmican Cakes – the origins of beef jerky
  • Maple Sugar Drink
  • Wild Grape Dumplings
  • Inuit Ice Cream – a berry dessert originally made with seal oil but made with egg whites here
  • Wojapi – a Sioux fruit pudding

Lighting the Fire

This chapter is about how plants and animals were processed to make them ready for cooking, such as how corn and acorns were ground into flour and how animals were butchered. When they had to boil water, they often used vessels that would have been damaged if they were put directly over fire, so they would heat stones and put them into the water instead.

Recipes in this section are:

  • Broiled Salmon Steaks with Juniper Berries
  • Broiled Rabbit with Corn Dumplings
  • Baked Beans with Maple Sugar

A Basketful of Water

Native Americans didn’t have cooking pots and pans made out of metal or glass until after the European colonists arrived. Before that, their cooking vessels were made of wood, stone, pottery, or tightly-woven baskets. This chapter explains the different types of cooking vessels they had, including the shells of pumpkins and gourds.

Recipes in this section are:

  • Pumpkin Shell Soup

Good Manners

This short chapter is about eating manners, superstitions, and taboos among different tribes. There are no recipes.

Thanksgiving

This section explains how Native Americans would give thanks to their Creator or Great Spirit or Nature or to animals and plants themselves for the foods that helped keep them alive. There are no recipes in this chapter.