Newbery Project: 1920s

Some time back, I began a project to read all of the books that have been awarded the Newbery Medal. After scanning the list of winners, I realized that I'd only read a dozen or so of the books, the earliest of which was written in 1949 (Marguerite Henry's King of the Wind). So delving into the list at the beginning seemed a good way to tackle it. Unfortunately, a couple of ridiculously busy school years threw a giant roadblock into my progress, but I think I have my momentum back. For now, I'll space out the posts I've already created so you won't have a Newbery barrage! As I progress through the list, I'll review my thoughts on each decade's choice (the Medal was first awarded in 1923) and select my favorite work from each decade.

Let's just say that children's reading habits really have changed. Most of the books I checked out from the library were long--several hundred pages each. In reverse order, here are the titles:

The History of Mankind by Henrik Willem van Loon - He's not kidding. He started with aaaaaaaaaaancient history (think primordial soup) and covered most major world events through the end of the first World War. Surprisingly, the writing was quite engaging. It was the hardest slog, though, probably because it was nonfiction (not my favorite genre).

The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle by Hugh Lofting - I kept picturing Rex Harrison, especially when they finally met the Great Glass Sea Snail. Apparently, this book has had to be revised to take out some of the more offensive language common for the 20s that would not fly these days.

Tales from Silver Lands by Charles Finger - This is a collection of stories from South America illustrated with woodcuts. I'm still wondering what a "gentle huanaco" is. I'm thinking llama, but I could be wrong.

The Dark Frigate by Charles Hawes - A pirate-y kind of tale. Slow going at first, like a ship pulling out of the harbor, but plenty of skullduggery to keep things moving as you go along.

Shen of the Sea by Arthur Bowie Chrisman - Another story collection with silhouette illustrations this time. All of these are Chinese, but none were familiar.

Smoky, The Cow Horse by Will James - Since I've never fully outgrown my Misty of Chincoteague phase, I figured I'd like this one, and I did. Will James was a self-taught writer and artist, and I have to say that this book is an excellent example of strong authorial voice. A book on tape of this title would demand Sam Elliott as its reader.

Gay-Neck, the Story of a Pigeon by Dhan Gopal Mukerji - By the time I got to this book, I started to feel that the early Newbery committee members were making a conscious effort to introduce American children to other cultures. This one is set in India and the central characters are Indian natives, but it definitely nods its head to the country's ruler at the time, Great Britain. Gay-Neck, the pigeon, ends up as a carrier pigeon for an Indian regiment fighting with the British in France during WWI. I liked it more than I thought I would.

The Trumpeter of Krakow by Eric P. Kelly - Historical fiction that blends Polish history, the Heynal played four times at the hour from the Church of Our Lady Mary in Krakow, alchemy, and intrigue. What exactly is Joseph's father hiding in that pumpkin shell? Who are those creepy Tartars following the family from the Ukraine to Krakow? And will the Alchemist Kreutz discover how to transmute brass into gold?

And my favorite is...

The Trumpeter of Krakow!

Props to Eric Kelly for writing a gripping story that manages to teach you a heck of a lot about medieval Poland at the same time. I love historical fiction anyway, and this book, even though written for children, was complex and interesting. If you're able to find the pictured copy (like I was; I think my public library bought it as a first edition), spend some time with the great illustrations. Janina Domanska has done a marvelous job evoking medieval art with her chapter illustrations.

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Digging for the Pony

Most of us have heard the story about the man who wanted to teach an optimist a lesson. He'd finally had enough of the optimist's good nature, sunny outlook, and buoyant spirit. Frankly, the optimist bugged the living daylights out of him. So, he filled the optimist's room with manure. Instead of freaking out (as most people would), the optimist grabbed a shovel and got to work. After all, the optimist reasoned, with all this manure, "There just has to be a pony in here somewhere!"

Normally, I totally identify with the pony-loving optimist. I lean toward the bright side like plants turn their leaves to the sun. I look for the good side in people whose good side might measure .3 micrometers in width. Despite multiple encounters to the contrary, I generally assume that folks will live up to my expectations that they be honest, thoughtful, and compassionate. I'm a full-bore, obnoxious Pollyanna, if truth be told.

So it's more than a little disconcerting that life these days is backfilling that room with even more manure than usual despite my cheerful digging. I think I've gained traction at school, then one meeting with assorted powers that be has me doubting both my ability and my stamina. Increasing demands on teachers are pretty much sucking the fun out of my day-to-day work, so that leaves little energy for things I'd like to be doing when school's out, like...oh, I don't know...WRITING?

If you think about it, though, writing is a perfect vocation for a Pollyanna. So many things add to the manure pile: rejection, market woes, manuscripts that won't behave, characters acting out of character, false starts, dreck masquerading as prose--it's enough to make any sane person throw up her hands and switch to knitting, which is far more controllable and produces tangible rewards.

Luckily, writers aren't sane. So despite the overflow of stupid in my life right now, Pollyanna will end up bracing herself with an iced tea and a couple of cookies, picking up the MacBook-shaped shovel, and getting back to work on the current WIP. And someday, since I'm really really positive, I'll have my pony, which will look amazingly like a book contract. Who knows? Depending on the contract, I may end up with a real live pony to boot.

Back to the stables!

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Fifteen Cool Authors

I don't know how I missed this game on Facebook, but thanks to a Jaunty Quills post from my dear friend Nancy Robards Thompson, I'm stealing it. The Rules: list fifteen authors (poets included) who have influenced you and made an impression. Don't take too long to think about it. List the first fifteen you can recall in no more than fifteen minutes.

1. Dr. Seuss - This man taught me to love reading, as he did for most American children. Irresistible wordplay, humor, and wisdom, packaged with loopy, over-the-top illustrations. I hit the sweet spot with Dr. Seuss. I was exactly the right age to absorb the messages of The Sneetches and The Lorax and make them part of my life. My father read me to sleep each night with Dr. Seuss's Sleep Book, a tradition I continued with my own children. I'll also expand Dr. Seuss to include his colleague P.D. Eastman, the author of my personal favorite of the Beginner Books, Go, Dog. Go! These books will be read forever.
2. Laura Ingalls Wilder - History told in Half-Pint's voice. I adored these books and wished, oh, wished I could be as adventurous as Laura. And bad. She seemed to get away with so much more than I ever could! Wilder taught me that history was interesting and fun.
3. Norton Juster - The Phantom Tollbooth is perhaps my favorite children's book ever. Ms. Hoogeveen, my sixth-grade teacher for the short portion I spent in Ohio, read it to our class, and I fell slap in love. It has everything: adventure, mystery, impossibility, wit, puns, and minimalist illustrations by the equally wonderful Jules Feiffer. Juster is, by profession, an architect (a career I considered pursuing once), also responsible for the masterpiece The Dot and the Line. The fact that American treasure Chuck Jones chose to animate both of these says a lot about the material and its endless appeal. I read The Phantom Tollbooth to my AP students every year as a post-exam treat for them. Okay, for me.
4. Carolyn Keene - God bless the anonymous women writing under this pseudonym, who provided me with puzzles to solve and a heroine with curiosity and a brain.
5. Mark Helprin - I first picked up a copy of Winter's Tale because I liked the cover. (What can I say? I fed my horse obsession for years with Walter Farley.) Between the covers is perhaps one of the most interesting, unclassifiable, poetic books I have ever read. Helprin's sprawling cast of characters and audacious plot make for a reading treat. This book made me laugh out loud (Woola-Woola boys), smirk ("Claret, like fillet and wallet. You don't say 'wal-lay,' do you?" is one classic bit), fall in love (anyone who doesn't gasp when Peter sees Beverly playing the piano just doesn't get it), and weep. I treat myself to this book over and over.
6. Barbara Kingsolver - I'm amazed by her. The fact that she's a biologist kinda gobsmacks me. Talk about someone who understands voice! Every character in The Poisonwood Bible is so distinct, you can practically hear them in your head. Same for the women in Prodigal Summer. She even makes nonfiction great--if you haven't read her memoir Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, go pick up a copy. It will make even the most devout city-dweller wish for an ancestral plot of land and the will and ability to farm it. Amazing.
7. Ray Bradbury - This man loves language and is willing to fight for it. Fahrenheit 451 is on my all-time Top Ten Books list, but it's the way he builds a world that really makes me love him. His works are classics for good reason. There's no way you can come away from reading Bradbury without carrying the imagery of Montag's smoke-blackened face, the lion-scented playroom of "The Veldt," the twisted evil of Mr. Dark's carnival, the burning breakfasts disgorged by the frenzied stove of "There Will Come Soft Rains," or "The Sound of Thunder" in your imagination forever. As a writer, I'll always be partial to his advice, which is why Zen in the Art of Writing has a permanent place on my inspiration shelf.
8. Margaret Mitchell - My grandfather the doctor, who read constantly, once told me that I should write a book like Gone With the Wind because Mitchell was an amazing storyteller. He was right. Rose-colored history aside, that book is indelible because of the characters Mitchell created. I've yet to meet a reader who doesn't have strong opinions about Scarlett, Rhett, Melanie, and Ashley. I got sucked into this book in junior high and have reread it many times since because it's a cracking good story and because deep down, every girl has a little Scarlett in there somewhere. If she's really lucky, she's got some Melanie in there, too.
9. William Faulkner - Just like I think people can be divided into groups like cat/dog, blue ink/black ink, and peppermint/cinnamon, I think writers can be divided into Hemingways and Faulkners. Hemingways like conciseness of phrase, visceral prose, bold action, and absolutes. Faulkners, on the other hand, revel in mystery, nuance, and words. Faulkner makes the grand attempt and stuns and amazes in the process. I'll take "Memory believes before knowing remembers" as a first line a million times over "Robert Cohn was once middleweight boxing champion of Princeton." A million times. Faulknerian excess, I know, but there you have it.
10. Harper Lee - To Kill a Mockingbird is a deceptive work. It's so simple on the surface that any decent reader can zip through it untroubled, but there is so much going on throughout that if you reach the end and you're not crying, you haven't been paying attention. Jean Louise "Scout" Finch is the unwitting prybar that broke open the white South to show it its flaws and taught us all something about dignity, respect, family, and truth. Harper Lee may be the most-celebrated one-hit wonder in the history of publishing. But if we only get one shot, please let it be as wonderful as this one.
11. Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings - Jody, Fodder-wing, and a yearling deer named Flag lured me into the mysterious underbrush of the Florida hammock when I was a child. This was one of the first works I'd read that I could truly see in my mind's eye, since Rawlings' Cross Creek is only a few miles up the road from our farm. Rawlings' memoir Cross Creek is a poem of a book, a celebration of a land that few people understand even exists in my beautiful Sunshine State. Shell Pond (our farm) and Cross Creek were far more real to me than any of Florida's famous beaches. Miami might as well be on the moon. Rawlings and her contemporary Zora Neale Hurston (another writer I could choose for this fifteen) told the truth of my home in voices I have heard my whole life.
12. Jane Austen - My college advisor adored Austen. He encouraged me to become a "Janeite" and read all of her works, but since I was basically avoiding anything that looked like a British novel at the time, I missed out. Until later. Reread after reread since, I marvel at the complexity of Austen's work, the sharpness of her wit, and the joie de vivre in her style. It is a truth universally acknowledged that a writer in possession of some talent must be in want of a muse. In Jane, many of us have found her.
13. Anne Lamott - Wise and hilarous, Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird belongs on every writer's shelf. Her books on faith, Traveling Mercies, Plan B, and Grace (Eventually) are warm and welcoming and reveal an openness that many people of faith seem to lack these days. She's laugh-out-loud funny and sting-your-eyes truthful, someone who's been through the wars and wants to help guide you through, too.
14. Stephen King - I spent a long vacation week in the ninth grade listening to a tape of The Alan Parson's Project's I, Robot my best friend Kathryn made for me and reading The Shining. King's ability to peel back normal to show its rotting bones has always been fantastic. Plus, he gets pop culture like no one else. I loved his essays in Entertainment Weekly and pouted when he finally stopped writing them. His response to the literary establishment who were collectively horrified at his National Book Award medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters is the best defense of popular fiction ever. And then there's On Writing. Most of my writer friends own it and adore it. Part memoir, part craft manual, and all engrossing. Plus, he is the man responsible for the amazing films The Green Mile and The Shawshank Redemption. For those ideas alone, he has my thanks, but he's given us all so much more.
15. Dick Francis - I picked up the first one because it had a horse on the cover (see Winter's Tale above). Francis started in a stableyard and a racetrack because he know that world better than anything--he was a champion jump jockey in England before injuries forced him off the track and into racing journalism--but what's amazing about his books is how neatly he incorporates research into every book. Although the racing world features prominently in every work, it never gets dull because his everyman heroes know about other things, too. How cool is it to pick up a mystery with horses and also learn about wine, survival techniques, living with a prosthesis, running a restaurant, and glassblowing? And yet, the pacing never flags. A gallop through a Dick Francis is a pleasure every single time.

I'm cheating a bit by not including a close group of writer friends who are fun and encouraging and wise and every one the kind of woman you're glad you invited into your life. I owe more than I can say to Kathy, Nancy, Caroline, and Melynda, plus many more I don't spend enough time with but admire the heck out of all the same. Here's to friends who get it, and the writers who inspired us all.

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Odd Couplings, Book Version

This post at Bookriot is one of the best things I've read in a while. It's a listing of the Top Ten Made-Up Literary Couples, with explanations of why the two belong together. With pairings like Jane Eyre/Rhett Butler, Katniss Everdeen/Aragorn, and Bella Swan/Lestat, how can you miss?

Reading a post like this makes you think of the possibilities. How about these?

Guy Montag and Belle (Beauty and the Beast) - Okay, cheating a little since she's a movie character, but she's drawn to tortured, guilty souls and could totally feed his awakened hunger for books!

Laura Ingalls and Hawkeye (Last of the Mohicans) - These two share a "westering" spirit of travel and a love of adventure.

Other ideas?

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You Ain't No 'Lectric Elephant

I grew up in awe of my maternal grandmother. A farmer’s daughter, she rarely had idle time. Nearly every hour of the day, she was busy—cooking, managing the books for the farm, making phone calls, volunteering at the church—and that was when she was retired! This is a woman who woke every morning at the ungodly hour of 5:30 am (so I thought then; I’ve since discovered I share her love of early mornings) and often had a pound cake cooling on the counter by the time the rest of us stumbled groggily into the kitchen.

I can’t imagine how her workload looked when she had my mother and aunt at home and helped my grandfather, the traveling salesman, keep track of his travel and orders and expenses. They lived in Atlanta then, and to help manage all that work and the obligatory social engagements she had to maintain as a good corporate wife, she had a housekeeper named Alice.

I don’t remember Alice well, but I do remember her ability for succinct and accurate interpretation. Alice gifted the family with one of our favorite phrases. My grandmother was busier than usual and worried about it (a family trait), when Alice finally pinned her with a look and said, “Now slow down, Mrs. Bero—you know you ain’t no ’lectric elephant.”

None of us has ever understood why she picked that particular phrase, but it fit so well we now use it all the time. A case in point: this past week. Despite a very relaxing break, I managed to contract acute bronchitis again, and so I spent the first three days of the new school year at home in the bed. I dragged myself to school Friday out of an overdeveloped sense of responsibility, but I’m paying for it this morning with a headache and a relapse. That’ll teach me.

Alice was right. Nobody is this family’s “a 'lectric elephant,” and I’d do well to remember it.

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First Footings

New Year’s Day is a big deal in the Scottish culture. Trust me, you haven’t partied until you’ve done it with people in kilts and bagpipes. “Auld Lang Syne” was written by Robert Burns, remember? Hogmanay, as the celebration is called, has a number of traditions, but one of the most fun is the First Footing. According to Scottish tradition, the first person to cross the threshold of your home in the new year will determine the kind of year you’ll have.

Well, I'm not combing my friends list to find a tall, dark-headed male in the superstitious hope that this year will somehow be better than last. What I am going to do, however, is be sure that my steps are aimed toward making this year a successful one. That means steps toward fitness, steps away from mindless eating, steps back into creativity, and steps leaving overwhelming stress and worry behind. Sounds easy when you put it that way, right?

May 2012 be a happy, healthy, and prosperous year!

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Merry Christmas!

One of my favorite moments of Christmas is proceeding into a candlelit sanctuary on Christmas Eve, singing "Of the Father's Love Begotten" accompanied only by handbells. That moment encompasses the mystery and hopefulness of Christmas. May you all have a day filled with many blessings!

Of the Father's love begotten,

Ere the worlds began to be,

He is Alpha and Omega,

He the source, the ending He,

Of the things that are, that have been,

And that future years shall see,

Evermore and evermore!

O ye heights of heaven adore Him;

Angel hosts, His praises sing;

Powers, dominions, bow before Him,

And extol our God and King;

Let no tongue on earth be silent,

Every voice in concert ring,

Evermore and evermore!

Christ, to Thee with God the Father,

And, O Holy Ghost, to Thee,

Hymn and chant and high thanksgiving

And unwearied praises be:

Honor, glory, and dominion,

And eternal victory,

Evermore and evermore! Amen.

Words from “Corde natus” by the Roman poet Aurelius Prudentius, translated by John Francis Neale in 1851, sung to the medieval plainchant melody “Divinum mysterium.” Nativity of Christ window from the Chartres Cathedral.

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