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The Year of the Perfect Christmas Tree

The Year of the Perfect Christmas Tree by Gloria Houston, pictures by Barbara Cooney, 1988.

Ruthie is a little girl living on a farm in Pine Grove in the Appalachian Mountains during World War I. (The story calls it The Great War because that was its name before WWII.) During the spring, Ruthie’s father selected a tree for the village church’s Christmas celebration. The local families take turns providing the tree, and it’s their family’s turn. Ruthie goes with him to pick out the right tree and mark it with a red ribbon.

However, during the summer, Ruthie’s father has to go away to be a soldier overseas. Ruthie and her mother tend the farm while her father is away, but money is tight. Ruthie thinks ahead to Christmas and prays for her father to come home and for a special Christmas present for herself – a pretty doll with a cream-colored dress with ribbons and lace.

In the fall of that year (1918), Ruthie’s father writes a letter, saying that the Armistice has been signed, meaning that the war is over, so he’s sure he’ll be home for Christmas. Ruthie and her mother keep waiting for him to arrive any day, but he doesn’t seem to come, and they don’t know exactly when to expect him.

At school, Ruthie is told that she will have the role of the heavenly angel in the Christmas play and that they are still expecting Ruthie’s father to supply the Christmas tree. Ruthie is looking forward to it, but Ruthie and her mother don’t have enough money for a new dress for the angel costume, and there is still the worry about when her father will return home, and if he will make it in time to cut the Christmas tree and take it to the church.

The local preacher tells them that the person who is due to provide a Christmas tree next year is willing to do it this year instead, if Ruthie’s father can’t get home in time, but Ruthie’s mother is still sure that their family can manage the tree. Ruthie’s mother decides that she and Ruthie will go get the tree themselves. It isn’t easy, but they manage it, and Ruthie’s mother also finds a way to make a dress for Ruthie’s angel costume.

However, there are two more things that would make this Christmas perfect for Ruthie – if her father returns home in time for Christmas and if she somehow receives the doll of her dreams.

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

My Reaction

This is a sweet, old-fashioned Christmas story about wishes coming true. Wishes coming true at Christmas is a popular theme in Christmas stories, and in this book, they come true because Ruthie’s mother and Ruthie do what they need to do to make everything work out the way they want it to. They could have let someone else provide the Christmas tree, and no one would have thought less of them for doing it because the father of the family was still away, but they were determined to see their family’s promise to provide the Christmas tree through. The mother also uses her old wedding dress for the material for Ruthie’s angel costume, and it’s implied that she also made the angel doll for the top of the Christmas tree that becomes Ruthie’s special Christmas present.

The pictures are charming, and they fit well with the Cottagecore aesthetic that’s been popular in recent years.

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Jingle Dancer

Jingle Dancer by Cynthia Leitich Smith, illustrated by Cornelius Van Wright and Ying-Hwa Hu, 2000.

Jenna is inspired to become one of the jingle dancers at the powwow because her grandmother has been a jingle dancer. She loves the way the little cone-shaped bells on the dancers’ costumes sing!

Her grandmother tells her that there won’t be enough time to get the tin for making the jingles for her costume this time, but next time, she can dance with the Girls group.

Jenna knows how to do the dance because she has watched old videos of her grandmother dancing and has practiced. However, she can’t really do a proper jingle dance without the jingles for her dancing costume.

However, her grandmother isn’t the only person Jenna knows who has been a jingle dancer. Other women in Jenna’s family and among her family’s friends have also been jingle dancers, and not all of them dance anymore. Perhaps, with their help, Jenna can get the jingles she needs in time for this powwow!

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

My Reaction

I liked the way the book showed how Jenna’s family and friend supported her and helped her to take part in a tradition that they have all shared. They can’t all be there to see Jenna when she dances, but Jenna dances for all them, her dress covered in borrowed jingles!

A section in the back of the book explains more about Jenna’s tribe and the traditional dance shown in the story. The story is set in Oklahoma, and Jenna is part of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation and has Ojibway (Chippewa/Anishinabe) ancestry. Elements of both tribal cultures appear in the story. The tradition of jingle dancing originated with the Ojibway people, and the book describes details of the costume (called “regalia” in the book) that women and girls wear to perform the dance. The book also contains a glossary of words that appear in the story with some additional details about their significance.

I think this story is a fun way to introduce readers to Native American traditions that may not be familiar to them. I also enjoyed the pictures, which have a lovely, dream-like quality to them.

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Fannie in the Kitchen

Fannie in the Kitchen by Deborah Hopkinson, 2001.

This is the story of Fannie Farmer and her famous and popular cookbook! When I first heard of the Fannie Farmer Cookbook (originally The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book (1896)), I wasn’t sure whether Fannie Farmer was a real person or if that was just a pseudonym or a marketing name for the cookbook, but Fannie Farmer was a real person in the late 19th century, and that was her real name. The story in this picture book is based on her real life, although details may be fictionalized, and the pictures give the story humorous twists.

In the beginning of the story, a little girl named Marcia Shaw prides herself on how many things she can do around the house and how much help she can give to her mother. However, she’s still a little girl, and there are some things she doesn’t know how to do well. In particular, Marcia doesn’t know how to cook. Now that her mother is expecting another baby, Marcia’s mother decides that she needs to hire some extra household help, especially with the cooking.

Marcia is a little offended that her mother considers her inadequate to help by herself, but when the new help arrives, a young woman named Fannie Farmer, Marcia has to admit that she’s a good cook. Even better for Marcia, Fannie doesn’t consider her cooking techniques trade secrets. She enjoys letting Marcia help in the kitchen and teaching her cooking tips.

Under Fannie’s tutelage, Marcia’s cooking skills improve. Fannie teaches her many important pieces of information about cooking, like how to measure ingredients and how to tell when ingredients are fresh or if they’ve gone bad.

Marcia enjoys learning to cook with Fannie, but she thinks that she’ll never be as good as Fannie because there’s just too much to remember. She doubts that she’ll ever be able to memorize it all. Marcia is amazed that Fannie can keep all of that cooking information in her head. To help Marcia, Fannie decides to write out a notebook with recipes and cooking instructions, including all of the specific measurements for ingredients and detailed information about cooking techniques to make the recipes come out just right.

This is what makes Fannie Farmer and her cookbook so unique for their time period. If you’ve ever seen a very old recipe book or even just old family recipes written down, they often don’t have all of the amounts of ingredients written down, or the amounts are written in very vague terms. Old recipes also offer little to no cooking techniques, like how to tell when it’s time to turn a griddle cake over or how to tell if a cake is done baking. The assumption was that girls (usually girls for this time period) would learn to cook by watching their mothers and by learning from their examples. However, that assumes that their mothers knew all of these cooking tips themselves, that the mothers remembered to tell their daughters what they knew and explained it well enough for them to understand (some people don’t have much of a talent for teaching, even when it’s a subject they know themselves), and that the daughters understood or remembered everything their mothers said. Otherwise, the vague directions in cookbooks and family recipes were of little help, and new cooks had to learn through experimentation or trial and error. Fannie’s approach to cooking, as explained in the story, is an art and a science that anybody can learn if someone explains it well enough, so she puts her focus on recording all of the necessary details of her recipes.

Fannie’s recipe book, started for Marcia, turns out to be very popular with both the Shaw family and their friends and neighbors. As word spreads about it, people start coming by to borrow recipes or get cooking advice. Fannie realizes that there is a lot of demand for better teaching of cooking techniques, and she really enjoys teaching cooking, so she decides to accept a job at the Boston Cooking School.

Before Fannie leaves the Shaws, Marcia borrows the cooking notebook and makes a special cake for Fannie to show her what she’s learned. The cake comes out just right because Marcia has followed Fannie’s directions.

There are hints from the Fannie Farmer cookbook throughout the book, and there is a section in the back of the book with historical information about Fannie Farmer. It also includes a sample recipe for Griddle Cakes.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies). New and used copies are also available on Amazon. You can also buy the original Fannie Farmer Cookbook through Amazon or read it online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).

My Reaction

One of the things I liked about this book is the illustrations. There are eccentric details in the pictures that add humor to the story, like how Marcia stacks a bunch of chairs on top of each other while making candles, so she can make them extra long, and one of her extra long candles appears later, when Fannie shows her how to tell if an egg is fresh by holding it up to a light. For some reason, Marcia’s mother also has a weird habit of licking her dishes when she’s eating one of the yummy recipes, and there is one picture where it looks like she’s lost control of the baby carriage, and it’s rolling away with the baby. I’m sure these aren’t historical details and were just thrown in to be funny.

I think it’s also important to point out that the real-life Fannie Farmer lived an unconventional life for someone of her time period. She was plagued with health problems from a fairly young age. At some points in her life, she was unable to walk, possibly because of a stroke, and when she walked, she had a limp. She never married, but she built a fulfilling career around her talent for cooking. and achieved lasting fame because she wanted to share her knowledge with others. She is credited with establishing exact and level measurements in cooking in the United States, and she was also a strong believer in quality food and proper nutrition, especially for people with health problems.

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The Moon Jumpers

The Moon Jumpers by Janice May Udry, pictures by Maurice Sendak, 1959.

In this pleasant, relaxing children’s picture book, some children enjoy a beautiful summer evening! Some of the pictures are in black-and-white and some are in color, but the best pictures are the full-color, full-page illustrations. The illustrations are by Maurice Sendak, who wrote and illustrated Where the Wild Things Are. The story is told from the point-of-view of the children.

While their parents are in the house, the children go outside to enjoy the relative coolness of the evening. They run barefoot through the grass and play tag.

They climb a tree “just to be in a tree at night.” They set up their own camp, make up songs and poems, and tell each other ghost stories.

The moon is rising, and the children jump in the air, trying to touch it, although they know they can’t.

Eventually, their parents call them inside to go to bed. As the children go to bed, they say goodnight to the moon through their bedroom window.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies). It’s a Caldecott Honor Book!

My Reaction

This is a nice, calm book that would make a good bedtime story on a summer night! It reminds me a little of Goodnight Moon, Time of Wonder, and The White Marble, which are other calm bedtime stories. It isn’t told in rhyme like Goodnight Moon, but it does show the beauties of summer and evenings spent outside, like Time of Wonder and The White Marble.

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Time of Wonder

Time of Wonder by Robert McCloskey, 1957, 1985.

This is a beautiful, very relaxing picture book about a family’s summer vacation on an island off the coast of Maine. Although you can see from the pictures that the main characters are a pair of sisters, the entire story is told in the second person, from the point of view of “you.” Readers are meant to feel like they’re part of this magical summer trip!

“You” feel like you’re spending the morning walking in the fog along the bay, enjoying the plants and birds in the forest nearby, and sailing in the bay with seals and leaping porpoises.

During the day, there are other children playing on the beach, diving from the rocks, and swimming. In the evening, “you” row a boat out into the quiet water and use a flashlight to look at the crabs.

When it rains, “you” feel it! Most of the time the weather is peaceful, but there is a storm approaching, and people know they have to get ready for it. When it comes, it brings a strong wind that blows through the house!

The family reads together and sings songs until the storm is over and it’s time to go to bed.

The next day, trees are uprooted, and “you” get to explore what’s beneath their roots.

When it’s time to go home because school will be starting again, you’re a little sad to leave this place, although you’re also glad to go home again.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies). It’s a Caldecott Medal winner!

My Reaction

This is a great book when you want something calm and relaxing or you feel like you need to take a mental vacation, whether you’re a kid or adult! Nothing stressful happens in the story. It’s just a lovely memory of a peaceful vacation. Even the storm that comes doesn’t do anything worse than blow things around the room and knock over some trees and plants. The girls in the story help clean up after the storm, find ancient seashells under the roots of a fallen tree, and are happy that the sunflowers are looking toward the sun again.

When the girls are looking at the shells under the fallen tree, they think about the Native Americans who lived in the area before white people came and before the tree grew there. They call them “Indians” instead of Native Americans, but that’s the only thing I can find to nitpick about the story.

I think this would make a great, calming bedtime story for kids, especially during the summer! It reminds me a little of the song Verdi Cries, about someone’s memories of a special vacation.

The setting for the story, on an island off the coast of Maine, is based on the author’s family’s summer home, and the two girls in the story are based on his own daughters. They are not named here because the story is about “you”, but the older girl is Sarah (called Sal) and the younger girl is Jane. They appear in and are named in Blueberries for Sal and One Morning in Maine, where they are much younger.

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Hilda’s Restful Chair

Hilda’s Restful Chair by Iris Schweitzer, 1981.

One hot morning, Hilda finishes watering her garden and decides that she needs to rest for a while.

When Hilda needs to rest, she has a special place she likes to go – an old armchair that she keeps in a shed. She calls the chair her “restful chair.”

Hilda is joined in her restful chair by Osbert the wombat and Cadbury the cat. However, Osbert and Cadbury aren’t the only animals who enjoy the restful chair. Soon, a pair of rabbits ask to join the others in the chair.

As Hilda and her animal friends sit in the restful chair, other animals come to join them. As the chair becomes more loaded with animals, it starts to creak and groan.

Eventually, the chair just can’t take it anymore, and it falls over, dumping everyone onto the floor.

Still, all the animals decide that they had a good rest. As the animals leave, Hilda sets the chair up again, and she and her animal friends go inside to have some watermelon.

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

My Reaction

This is a cute, fun story about animals who enjoy a comfortable chair as much as a little girl. Kids like stories with repetition, and they would probably enjoy seeing the parade of animals who come to join Hilda in her chair. They would probably also see the ending coming, that the chair won’t be able to hold everyone. It’s just a question of which animal is going to be the last straw for the chair. Fortunately, no animals were harmed by this experience, and even the chair seems okay, even though it fell over.

Because there is a wombat in the story, I assumed that the story takes place in Australia. It probably does, but from the publication information, it looks like it was first printed in Great Britain. The author was originally from Israel, but she was living in London at the time the book was published.

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Clifford Takes a Trip

Clifford

Clifford Takes a Trip by Norman Bridwell, 1966.

Emily Elizabeth and her parents don’t usually take long trips during the summer because it’s too difficult to bring Clifford along. He’s just too big to go on trains or buses. One summer, Emily Elizabeth’s parents decide to go camping in the mountains. They can’t take Clifford, so they leave him behind with a neighbor.

However, Clifford misses Emily Elizabeth too much, so he decides to go find her! A gigantic red dog can create a lot of chaos on a cross-country trip.

Along the way, he does help a man with a broken-down grocery truck, and the man is grateful enough to feed him.

He also arrives at the family’s campsite just in time to save Emily Elizabeth after she thought it would be fun to play with some baby bears she found.

The family considers that next year, they may find a way to take Clifford with them somewhere else.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies, including one in Spanish).

My Reaction

Like all Clifford books, the humor is based around Clifford’s enormous size. Even though the family thought that it would be too far for Clifford to walk to come to the mountains with them, he tracks them down there anyway. Then, after he rejoins his family, he sleeps with Emily Elizabeth, his ear propped up to be her tent. The idea they’re considering next for transporting Clifford is a flat-bed truck. I could well imagine my own dog trying to track me down if I went on vacation without her, but fortunately, when your dog is about the same size as Toto in the Wizard of Oz, traveling with a dog isn’t as difficult.

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Six Crows

Six Crows by Leo Lionni, 1988.

A farmer in the Balabadur Hills (the book doesn’t explicitly say that this story takes place in India, but it’s implied) has a good farm, but he also has a problem with the crows who live nearby. Whenever his wheat is ripe and about ready to harvest, the crows come and eat it.

Chasing the crows away doesn’t work because they always come back. The farmer decides to try building a scarecrow instead. It does frighten the crows, but with an unexpected result.

The crows decide that they must make their own scare-person, a kite that looks like a big, fierce bird, to scare away the scarecrow. When they fly over the field with their scare-person kite, the farmer gets scared and decides that he needs a bigger, scarier scarecrow.

The situation escalates, with the birds building an even bigger and scarier bird kite to scare the farmer.

Meanwhile, an owl who has been watching all of this unfold decides that it’s gone far enough and goes to talk to the farmer and the crows about the situation. The owl persuades both sides to speak to each other and work things out.

When they talk, the farmer and the crows realize that they don’t want to fight with each other. The crows depend on the farmer’s wheat for food, and the farmer realizes that he actually enjoys having the birds around. The owl fixes the mean-looking scarecrow to have a happy and friendly look.

I’m not sure that this is really a traditional fable because the book doesn’t provide any background information on the story and the author isn’t credited as doing a “retelling”, but the story is told in a folktale or fable format about conflict resolution. When the farmer and the crows are feuding, they continually escalate the situation with bigger and scarier “weapons” until the owl convinces them that the only way out of the situation is to talk it out and come to an agreement.

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

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The Story of Ferdinand

The Story of Ferdinand by Munro Leaf, drawings by Robert Lawson, 1936.

Ferdinand is a young bull living in Spain. He has been different from the other young bulls since he was a little calf. While the other young bulls liked to run around and butt their heads together, Ferdinand preferred to simply enjoy the peaceful countryside and smell the flowers. His mother sometimes worried about him, sitting all by himself under his favorite tree. She was afraid that he would be lonely, but Ferdinand told her that he just liked sitting under the tree and smelling flowers and that he didn’t want to play rough with the other young bulls. As long as Ferdinand was happy, his mother was content to let him do what he wanted to do.

As time went on, Ferdinand and all of the other young bulls grew up big and strong. The young bulls who had always played rough together were fascinated by the bull fights held in Madrid. They thought that it would be exciting to be picked to participate in the fights. But, Ferdinand had no interesting in fighting of any kind. Although he was big and strong, he still preferred to just enjoy his flowers and his favorite tree.

When some men come to the field to pick out bulls for the bull fight, the other bulls try to show off for the men. Ferdinand doesn’t, but by accident, he sits on a bee and is stung. When the men see him jumping around in pain, they assume that he must be the fiercest bull in the field!

Poor Ferdinand is carted off to Madrid, but no matter what the bull fighters do in the arena, they just can’t get Ferdinand interested in fighting them. There is only one thing that interests Ferdinand, and that’s flowers. When the men put him in the bull fighting arena, he just sits and looks at the pretty flowers that the women in the stands are wearing in their hair, enjoying the smell. They are so disappointed at the lack of fighting that they put Ferdinand back in the cart and put him back in the field … which is exactly where he wants to be.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies, including some in different languages). It has been reprinted many times. It has not been out of print since its first publication, and it has been made into a movie.

My Reaction and A Little History

I remember that I didn’t care for this book when I first read it years ago. I was really worried for poor Ferdinand when he was picked to join the bullfight. Because the book is for young children, it doesn’t make it fully clear that the bullfight is supposed to end with the death of the bull. The bullfighters all have spears and swords “to stick in the bull”, and the book says it’s to make the bull mad, but adults and older kids realize that they’re really going to hurt and kill the bull during the fight. There are vultures in some of the pictures as a clue that death is a real risk.

Fortunately, nothing bad happens to Ferdinand in the story. Because Ferdinand is a peaceful bull, who has no interest in fighting and only wants to enjoy flowers, he is not exciting enough for the bullfight, so he gets sent home to the field and the peaceful life he loves. The other bulls may not know that their lives could be much shorter because of their willingness to fight.

It’s also interesting to note that this book was written in the 1930s, when the world was headed for World War II. It was also published shortly before the Spanish Civil War. Because of its pacifistic themes, it was banned by both Franco and Hitler. The author, Munro Leaf, said that he didn’t really mean the story to be a serious one, but its themes resonated with even the adults of his time, in different ways, as this article from Sotheby’s notes:

“In 1937 Leaf wrote that he had published a book he “thought was for children… but now I don’t know” and in 1938 The New Yorker wrote “Ferdinand has provoked all sorts of adult after-dinner conversations.””

It wasn’t just Hitler and Franco who were suspicious of the book’s intentions. Some people also suspected it of being “Red Propaganda” or “Fascist Propaganda”, presumably because some people feared the pacifism in the story would encourage people not to fight communists or fascists. Some people also questioned the book’s message on the topic of masculinity. I could see that the story could be regarded as a commentary on men who think they have to tough, macho fighters, like the bulls. Even though Ferdinand might be regarded as a failure as a bull for not engaging in the fighting and rough play of the other bulls and not going through with the bullfight, he lives a happier, more peaceful, and ultimately, longer life because of it. Maybe he’s not a failure after all but just smarter than the average bull. Ferdinand is certainly a non-conformist who finds a way to make it work for him. How any reader might feel about that could depend on what they think conformity means and how they feel about that.

However, the book also received a lot of positive support. There is an anecdote that Gandhi loved it, and President Franklin Roosevelt requested a copy. The Sotheby’s article also recounts a story that I first heard from my children’s literature teacher when I was in college, that 30,000 copies of the book were sent to Germany after World War II as a peace gesture. When my teacher told the story, she explained that few children’s books were published during the war (and if you’ve already read my review of Emil and the Detectives, you already know that even children’s books were not exempt from book burnings if they had anti-war themes), so the distribution of the copies of The Story of Ferdinand were welcome, and the children who received them loved the story.

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Marvin K. Mooney, Will You Please Go Now!

Marvin K. Mooney, Will You Please Go Now! by Dr. Seuss, 1972.

It’s time for Marvin K. Mooney to go, but he absolutely refuses. Where is going? We don’t know because the book doesn’t say. I imagine that he’s supposed to go to bed because it’s bedtime. He looks like he’s wearing footie pajamas, and the large hand that points for him to go looks like it might be a parent’s hand, but that’s just a guess. This book is just a nonsense rhyme.

The owner of the hand repeatedly tells Marvin to go, telling him that he can go in any way he chooses, as long as he goes.

In the tradition of Dr. Seuss books, all the suggested methods of going are nonsensical, and there are a few made-up nonsense words and devices thrown in.

Eventually, when the owner of the large hand insists, Marvin decides that it really is time for him to go.

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

My Reaction

I’m not a big fan of Dr. Seuss. I wasn’t even as a kid, mainly because my early introduction to Dr. Seuss was The Cat in the Hat and Green Eggs and Ham, two of the major ones people think of when they think of Dr. Seuss. I thought that the Cat in the Hat was way too pushy, and I was very concerned about the welfare of the pet fish in the story. When my teachers made the requisite eggs and ham and dyed them with green food coloring, I absolutely refused to eat them. I didn’t mind it when they turned milk bright green with food coloring for our earlier green-themed day because milk turned the color of mint ice cream looked good, but nothing that turns the shade of green of those green eggs and ham looks appetizing. Knowing that it was just food coloring didn’t help. Speaking of becoming more accepting of new experiences, Sam I Am really needs to learn how to take “no” for an answer.

Anyway, my early Dr. Seuss experiences didn’t appeal to me much, so I didn’t seek out Dr. Seuss books as a kid. I never encountered this particular Dr. Seuss book until I was an adult, and the one thing about Dr. Seuss that really appeals to me now is the knowledge that The Cat in the Hat was specifically meant to be a more interesting alternative for beginning reader than the Dick and Jane readers that were popular in the mid-20th century century. All Dr. Seuss books contain a limited range of simple vocabulary with a few made-up words thrown in to make it interesting, and they’re all meant to be funny and somewhat bizarre to keep young readers interested.

As I said, I don’t know for sure who is telling Marvin to go in this story or where he’s supposed to go. I think it’s probably bedtime, and he’s supposed to go to bed. It would be just like a parent to use a child’s full name to tell them that they’re supposed to do something when they’re not listening. But, it doesn’t really matter. There are some Dr. Seuss books that have a moral to them, but this isn’t one of them. It’s just supposed to be a simple story that’s fun for young children to read. You can imagine where Marvin goes yourself!