The Indian in the Cupboard (and Return)

The Indian in the Cupboard
© 1980 Lynne Reid Banks

I had to keep watch in the children's department today, and there bumped into an old friend: Omri, the boy with a seemingly magical cupboard that can turn plastic figures into real, albeit tiny, people.  I can't remember how young I was when I encountered the Indian in the Cupboard series, though I do remember being puzzled as to why the "dollar" signs looked funny (£).   The story begins when Omri receives a plastic figure of an Iroquois warrior and a cupboard for his birthday.   There's no key for the cupboard, but oddly one of Omri's mother's heirloom keys fits the lock perfectly.   When Omri locks the figure up for safekeeping, however, he's astonished to hear yelling and muted scraping from within. Somehow, the toy has come alive.  When Omri is able to talk to the figure -- now a very animated and angry warrior -- he learns that the man is not simply a moving toy, but a real man suddenly ripped from history. The book follows Omri and Little Bear's evolving friendship, as well as the near disaster that ensues once Omri trusts his friend Patrick with the secret.  Oddly enough, the arrival of this tiny figure from the French and Indian Wars is a pivotal experience for Omri, giving him his first taste of responsibility, an opportunity for wrestling with the morality of his own actions. Ultimately he decides that he doesn't have the right to play with lives from history like this, and he and Patrick will send back Little Bear and a few others back closing and locking the cupboard door once again.

I loved this series as a child, and I enjoyed it no less today when I decided to revisit the first two books. I remembered much about the story -- I should, considering how many times I read the first few books --  but was amused by some of the things I'd forgotten.  The memory of the weird dollar signs, for instance -- I didn't realize the book was set in another country back in the day, and there were some jokes that went over my head because 'whiskey' wasn't a word that I had encountered at age seven, or whenever it was that I found these.  What a delight this book was to me back then, already in love with history -- even in fourth grade, my history book was the first one I looked for on the first day of school --- and immediately interested in any notion of toys coming to life. One of my favorite childhood books was Elvira Woodruff's Back in Action,  about a magic kit that brings toys to life and shrinks their owner down to have adventures with them.   This book was genuinely educational, however, as Little Bear behaves nothing like what Omri expects a 'savage' to act like. Through Omri and Little Bear, I learned that there were all kinds of different native Americans, that some lived in longhouses and some in tipis, that they fought each other and fought on different sides against  European powers.  Omri becomes fascinated by Iroquois culture, and when in the sequel his friend makes a churlish remark about  the 'savages',, it is Omri who chides his friend for not knowing what he's talking about.

Return of the Indian is more of an adventure than a moral drama -- Omri brings Little Bear to life again to tell him some good news, and then learns that the warrior's village about to be burned and his friend killed, so Omri tries to figure out a way to help out -- but is still enjoyable.  There's so much to appreciate about these two books, but I suppose the days of children playing with little figurines instead of their parents' phones are passing into memory.

This book appeared in a 2011 Top Ten Tuesday list, "Childhood Favorites".

The Aeneid for Boys and Girls

The Aeneid for Boys and Girls
© 1908 Alfred J. Church
300 pages

What do I know of The Aeneid? It's the story of a survivor of Troy, who goes on to found the City of Rome after breaking the Queen of Carthage's heart.  That much I've retained from  -- strangely enough  -- a college music appreciation course that covered an opera about Aeneas and (Queen) Dido.  With that ignorance in mind, I decided to read The Aeneid for Boys and Girls by A.J. Church before trying the actual poem -- to make understanding the story easier, rather like I listened to an audio play of The Epic of Gilgamesh before reading it.

So, if you've never heard of The Aeneid except as something vaguely famous,  let's begin with the story of the Trojan War. The Greeks have, after an eleven-year siege, finally taken and sacked the high-walled city of Troy,  via the famed wooden horse doubling as a troop transport.  One young man, the daughter of the goddess of love, is given sight to see that this was Troy's tragic destiny, for even the gods are aiding in the city's destruction. Aeneas's own destiny is to sail towards the west,  to the land his people originally came from, and build a new city there.

Unfortunately  for him, Juno -- wife of Jupiter and the queen of heaven -- still has an axe to grind against the Trojans.  Oh, sure, they've lost their city, and well they deserved it. (Their ruler didn't think she was as pretty as that Spartan trollop, Helen! Obviously everyone had to pay.)  But now the Trojans are coming west, and if they do that they're destined to found a city that will destroy her pet city, Carthage. Carthago delenda est? Not on her watch!  So, like Ody- sorry, Ulysses --   Aeneas is driven hither and yon by  malignant winds on Juno's promptings, losing seven years of his life. He meets a woman - Dido -- and falls in love, until Jupiter sends down a little reminder to get with his Italian destiny, whereupon the now-abandoned Dido delivers an aria and stabs herself. (Okay, the aria came later.)

At long last the Trojans reach Italy, navigating to the city of the Latins, and there they are met in celebration.  Seers have prophesied that the king'd daughter would marry a stranger from overseas, and glory would be in the offing -- but naturally, Juno has to screw things up by poisoning hearts here and there. She is most successful in turning the warrior (former suitor of the king's daughter) Turnus into the organizer of an Italian alliance against the poor Trojans, who are forced to flee making allies among the Latin's other enemies.  Eventually, after much bloodshed -- at least three battles -- Jupiter orders Juno to stop  meddling.  After exacting a promise that the new city of the Trojans won't be called Troy, she relents, and everyone lives happily after after.

(Except for the Carthaginians.)

Church's adaptation of the Aeneid renders the story in much simpler prose, of course, yet -- given its publication date in 1906 -- still retains some formal beauty. In that vein, it frequently borrows Biblical  phrases:  "he who  gives his life will save it", "your people shall be as my people", "put away childish things", "pondered it in his heart".  The initial framing device -- copying that of The Odyssey, in which the beleaguered hero is asked to tell of his arduous journey -- is abandoned for a straightforward recap of the Trojan war, moving straightaway into Aeneas' escape and further adventures. Virgil's original text was itself  made constant allusion to the Odyssey, beginning with the muse invocation and continuing throughout.. At one point, one of  Odysseus'/Ulysses' own men is even rescued from the island of the Cyclopes, No doubt the poems will prove to have structural similarities, too, as I now attempt to read Robert Fitzgerald's verse translation.

Anne of Green Gables

Anne of Green Gables
© 1908 Lucy Maude Montgomery          

299 pages

 "Anne, are you killed?" shrieked Diana, throwing herself on her knees beside her friend. "Oh, Anne, dear Anne, speak just one word to me and tell me if you're killed.""No, Diana, I am not killed, but I think I am rendered unconscious.""Where?" sobbed Carrie Sloane. "Oh, where, Anne?

  Anne of Green Gables is chicken noodle soup bound in paper, the heartwarming story of a imaginative girl growing up on the Canadian frontier. Anne is every reader’s ideal companion; she is one of us.  Anne is not content to read good stories; hers is a boundless imagination  that makes the ordinary spectacular;  she names trees,  sees roads to Camelot in humble dirt lanes, and can convert anything into a sweeping story.  She is the embodiment of childish wonder and delight, who is rendered rapturous at the thought of learning about something new, or embarking on an adventure with a friend.  Though orphaned at an early age – she has no memory of her parents, and is adopted by a childless pair of siblings at the novel’s start – Anne’s imagination gives her access to a boundless well of enthusiasm. Although she crashes from misfortune to disaster, she never loses and hope and always gains a bit of character from the experience. Anne’s imagination is not limited to creating stories for she and her friends to act out (Tom Sawyer would be an interesting neighbor for her; what would happen if the rafts they set out on chanced to meet, and Anne’s Arthurian romance collided with Tim’s pirate ship?). Her head is filled with the language of books, and when she reacts she reveals a vocabulary filled gloriously with pomp.  It’s almost a disappointment when she becomes more level-headed assuming the responsibilities of adulthood, but all stories have their proper ending. For Anne, that usually involves hugs, tears, and speeches.   Green Gables is glorious fun;  I wish I’d paid more attention when watching the play in third grade, but I was fairly smitten by the  actress. 

The Last Battle

The Last Battle
© 1956 C.S. Lewis
184 pages

"This is my password," said the King as he drew his sword. "The light is dawning, the lie broken. Now guard thee, miscreant, for I am Tirian of Narnia."

In The Magician's Nephew, the great lion Aslan sang Narnia into existence and commissioned a human boy to plant a special tree to protect it against evil. But now the Tree has fallen, and a  Lie reigns.  The story begins with a malevolent ape and his witless donkey companion discovering the skin of a lion. Shift, the ape, has an idea:  skin the lion, dress the donkey in it, and use this guise to awe the woodland folk into doing his bidding!  Hundreds of years have passed since anyone saw the great Lion, Aslan himself,  and the lie succeeds -- to the destruction of Narnia.Consumed by avarice, Shift begins ordering the destruction of Narnia's enchanted forests in the name of "Aslan", selling it piecemeal to the dreaded Calormen and even inviting their soldiers into Narnia. The king Tirian, captured early after falling for the deceit himself, is in no place to prevent his people being massacred and his cities destroyed. At this hour of greatest crisis, Jill and Eustace are called into Narnia to take up the Lion's banner one more time. For this is the last battle, the great battle, and one where Narnia's foe is not a mere witch presuming power, or a greedy horde of warlords, but a winged beast that smells of death and devours everything in its path. Although Narnia's enemies have always cloaked themselves in deceit -- the Witch as a Queen, most consistently -- here lie is compounded upon lie. No sooner do our party of heroes  (Eustace, Jill, the rescued Tirian, and a unicorn to begin with) unravel part of the diabolical plot than does the Ape add another. Yet the Ape is being controlled by another party, and they still by another.  Some Narnians are frightened by all this, and run away; some decide the battle isn't worth bothering with, and retreat into their own narrow issues (like the dwarves, who become nasty little chauvinists). Our heroes know only one thing: they are between the paws of Aslan, and they would rather perish fighting the Ape and his death-god than betray the lion.  So it goes, and such is this literary version of  the Book of Revelation, with its antichrist, astronomic fireworks, and all-consuming finale.   Virtually all of the major characters throughout the series make appearances, making it a glorious reunion of sorts, The Last Battle is darker and more intense than the other books, however, and if I read it as a child I probably would have had nightmares about it.  The witch of previous books was evil, but in a Disney villain way;  the baddies here are positively revolting, between the Ape perverting good to evil and the death-thing invoked by the Calormen.  While I can imagine future re-reads of various Chronicles books, The Last Battle  is a little too rapturous.

Look for a Narnia wrapup tomorrow!

Related:
The Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis
Lord of All, Robert Hugh Benson

The Silver Chair

The Silver Chair
© 1953 C.S. Lewis
217 pages

Escaping from bullies in their oppressively modern boarding school, Eustace Scubbs and his friend Jill Pole opened a door and promptly fell into Narnia. Visits to Narnia always come unexpectedly, and never without purpose.  Though only a year has passed since Eustance's sea voyage with Caspian, Lucy, Edmund, and their Narnian comrades, a lifetime has passed for the friends left behind. Young Caspian is now an aged, bearded king driven to despair over his son, ten years missing. According to story, he was last seen in the company of a beautiful woman, dressed in green, while hunting for a serpent which killed his mother. A dozen of Narnian lords have ventured into the northern wastes where the Prince was last seen in the hopes of finding him, to no avail: they never come back. Now it's time to send in the A-Team:   Aslan, and the heroes he has chosen.  Armed with four signs and a very pessimistic frog-thing,  Eustace and Jill journey into the land of the giants and discover the truth of the prince's captivity.  If only they listened more;  they might have known that the lady in green who greeted them in the giant lands, and referred them to a Giantish city ("they'd love to have you for the August feast") was up to no good.  Previous Narnian adventures have seen innocents in distress rescued, mysterious objects returned to their rightful owners, beasts dispatched, spells broken   -- but now the heroes, like Odysseus, must descend into the Underworld, fighting their own fears along the way. Jill, like the other children thrown into Narnia's animal-dramas, proves resilient. Despite missing clue after clue, they continue to rise to the occasion -- as they do when the Witch, having captured them deep within the bowels of the Earth, attempts to enchant them into believing her realm is the summation of reality, and that their memories of Aslan and the skies above are mere dreams. Pleasant dreams, to be sure, but dreams nontheless.   Some dreams, however, have more weight than reality, and so they fight on.

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
© 1952 C.S. Lewis
223 pages

            There are unwanted gifts, and then there are unwanted gifts that pull your only son into a fantasy world of dangerous creatures, powerful enchantments, and the odd supernatural beging.  These last are usually called books, but a certain portrait of a ship at sea can do the same thing. At any rate, that’s what happened to Edmund and Lucy Pevensie, along with their obnoxious cousin Eustace.  One moment they were sitting in a guest bedroom, staring at it, and the next they were on the ship with the boy-prince whose throne they’d help win.  With his country at peace, regal Caspian decided to set out to find some lost countrymen, and perhaps discover the End of the World. So begins The Voyage of the Dawn Treader,  a tale of Narnian adventures at sea.  There’s no enormous stakes here, just the call of the open ocean, a thirst for adventure slaked only by salt spray as a ship of merry friends sails into the unknown.  They have a serious mission in discovering the fate of several nobles who were sent on fools’ errands by the wicked regent who attempted to kill Prince Caspian. The forlorn peers have met various fates; some, eaten by dragons; others turned to gold; still others captivated by spells.  The character of  Eustace makes for a particularly entertaining tale, not because he’s a delight because he’s such a boor. He’s a very modern boy, Eustace, raised by parents who know better than everyone else, and whose head is filled with practical things like the workings of watermills, and no cranial capacity given over to dragons.  It’s a pity, for when he was turned into a dragon it might have helped to know what such a thing was!  The humorless Eustace is completely out of place in this magical world, although he takes the existence of talking, combative mice in stride.  The mishaps and adventures aren’t mere amusement;  each carries with it some moral import. This is most obvious on the isle of Deadwater, where the party encounters a pool of water that turns anything immersed in it into gold; the wealth is tantalizing and deadly. Aslan makes infrequent appearances, offering mercy or a warning to those who err.  Lewis’ interweaving of Christian themes and European myths continues,  with an ending that makes plain Aslan’s significance. 

The Horse and his Boy

The Horse and his Boy
© 1954 C.S. Lewis
199 pages

"For in Calormen, story-telling (whether the stories are true or made up) is a thing you're taught, just as English boys and girls are taught essay writing. The difference is that people want to hear the stories, whereas I never heard of anyone who wanted to read the essays." 

p. 35

Far below the green hills of Narnia lays a vast desert, and just south of it, the mysterious land of Calorman.  Here a shipwrecked baby was rescued by a fisherman, one not unkind but not terribly loving, either -- a man who called the boy his son, but was willing to sell him as a slave to the first rich warlord ambling by his house.  Informed of the warlord's cruelty by the lord's talking horse, the boy and said horse decide to run away together -- to go north, beyond the desert to the legendary land of Narnia. In The Horse and his Boy we find a Narnia tale where it is merely a dreamt-of destination to the extreme north, where Edmund and his sister appear as visitors from afar, paying their respects to another king.  The visit of Susan stirs part of the plot, as her beauty drives the Calorman prince insane with lust and he decides to invade Narnia to take her by force after his first lock-her-up-and-marry-her plan didn't work. Shasta's dream of trekking north, surviving the desert wastes, takes on new importance; having learned of the wicked prince's secret plan, he must somehow warn Narnia of the invasion-in-the-making.  Calorman, with its deserts and turbaned warriors wielding scimitars, brings to mind "The Orient" -- perhaps inspired by the Ottoman Empire, a chronic threat to southern Europe. Through the story we moved from the 'exotic' to the more familiar, complete with Aslan's presence. He is neither named nor known until the conclusion of the story, where exhausted characters on the brink of lost spirit learn that he has been there all long, and will see them through to the end.  Of the Narnia books I've read so far, The Horse and his Boy is the most traditionally plotted;  the characters start one place, they end up another, and along the journey they grow up-- not physically, but they transcend fear and vanity to act decisively and nobly.  (Even the horse, who was already grown but needed some emotional maturity.)

Prince Caspian

Prince Caspian: The Return to Narnia

© 1951 C.S. Lewis

195 pages

        

  Once upon a time four children stumbled through an ordinary-looking wardrobe into another  world altogether, a place called Narnia where they became its kings and queens and fought great battles under the banner of a noble lion, its creator and champion.  Then they returned to their own ordinary lives, but not for long. A year after their return, the four siblings – Peter,  Lucy, Edmund, and Susan – found themselves snatched from a train station and deposited on a mysterious island.  They soon discovered that they had returned to Narnia, more than a millennium after their former reign. Their beloved talking animal friends had been slain or driven into hiding; their former favorite places were in ruins and surrendered to wilderness; their lord Aslan was absent, and cruel men ruled in their stead.   From a lone dwarf in the wild, the Penvensies learn what has happened since their departure, and decide to go to the aid of young Prince Caspian, the last human defender of Old Narnia.   Prince Caspian is a story in two parts; first, Caspian’s revolt against the evil kingdom he was technically heir to, the desperate war against his tyrannical uncle, and his grasping-at-straws move that called the four legends from the past to come to his aide.  The battle that follows has plenty of heroics, but most satisfying is the  character of Edmund; the once nasty boy who betrayed his family to the White Witch  is selfless here, the model of ‘nobility’.  It is a tale simple, fast, and sweet, with both gentle humor and adventure to stir the heart. 

The Magician's Nephew

The Magician's Nephew

© 1955 C.S. Lewis

183 pages

        

 Diggory and Polly were just two kids on vacation exploring a forbidding-looking attic. They didn’t intend to witnesss Creation, let alone accidently unleash evil into it. Like the more familiar Lion, Witch, and the Wardrobe –   for which this serves as a prequel  -- The Magician’s Nephew retells a Christian story, this time of the Creation and Fall, incorporating creatures and symbols from other western traditions as well. The trouble begins when Diggory’s uncle, a man with a taste for the occult, discovers a way to send beings into another world. He’s tolerably sure he knows of a way to fetch them back, but not positive enough to test it on himself – that’s what nephews are for. Diggory and Polly, having discovered the warlock-wannabe’s lair, become his unwilling test subjects and are thrown into a mysterious netherworld that allows travel between different places like our own Earth and Narnia. One world proves a desperate landscape, lit by a dying sun and filled with lifelessness reigned over by a wax-still woman. A nearby bell teases visitors; ring it and heaven knows what will happen, but let it be still and the prospect of what might have been will agonize them forever. Over the warnings of the far more sensible Polly, Diggory rings the bell – and awakes a creature who will one day be known as the White Witch.   The meat of the story of Narnia fans happens halfway through, when the Witch, the children, and a few innocent bystanders fall into a world which is without form and void – until they hear singing. The dream-weaver is Aslan, the great lion, and his songs call life into being. The witch ruins things, but in the end the children are able to accomplish a mission for Aslan which sends her into retreat at least for a little while.  As with its predecessor, The Magician’s Nephew abounds in symbols, creatures, and objects from across the western imagination. A  forbidden tree in the midst of the garden, for instance, hangs low with not just any fruit, but silvery apples reminiscent of Eris’ Apple of Discord.   The garden appears long after the 'fall' of the novel; this is not a Chrstian story reold with different characters, but in a different way altogether; unlike  Lion, wherein Aslan did all the heavy lifting, here  he human characters, principally Diggory, to prove capable of growing beyond their mistakes through accomplishments more impressive than great physical deads.  Narnia continues to be a lovely, enchanting story.

Top Ten Authors I've Read the Most Of

This week the Broke and the Bookish are asking people who their most-read authors are.

1. Isaac Asimov 

It's been a while since I read the dear doctor here, but after discovering his fiction in 2007 I went a little mad. Now I have an entire bookcase of short stories, essays, and novels by him. Shelfari says I've read fifty-seven titles by him, and I own a few dozen I've not even touched yet.  He's appeared on the blog 63 times.

2. John Grisham

Guilty pleasure here, obviously.  I've read all of Grisham's adult fiction.

3. R.L. Stine

How much Stine have I read? Good lord, who could count? I've read all of Goosebumps, all of Goosebumps Millennium, all of Nightmares on Fear Street, and  far too many Fear Street novels.  It's probably close to a hundred. For the inexplicable few who have never heard of Goosebumps, it was a series of fantasy-horror novels for children, always with twist endings at the end of every chapter and book.

4. Gertrude Chandler Warner

Technically, I suppose I haven't read as much of Warner as I think I did. She only penned the first dozen or so of Boxcar Children novels, after which point the children became something like cartoon strip characters: static figures against a changing background, always solving mysteries.  That went on for 70+ books or so.

5. Beverly Cleary

My first favorite author, who penned the Henry Huggins series. Okay, that's probably better known as the Beezus and Ramona series,but the first book of hers I read was about Henry and his lost dog, Ribsy.

6. Bernard Cornwell

My favorite author of historical fiction, a man who has taken me into the Napoelonic Wars a few dozen times. We've also visited the Viking era extensively.  He's appeared on this blog...44 times, second only to Asimov.

7. Harry Turtledove

I have subjected myself to Turtledove almost forty times, going by Shelfari, which is sad.

8. Jeff Shaara

The only thing this man has written that I haven't read is his last Civil War book, which opens with the burning of Atlanta. Things just go downhill from there, really, and so I stopped. The Shaara style is to take the reader into the mind of the men who lived history; their thoughts are part of the narrative. It works wonderfully, but I didn't want to be in Sherman's head.

9. Steven Saylor

Saylor writes detective mysteries set in the Roman Republic,  and has created a couple of epic novels I rather enjoyed.

10. K.A. Applegate

I didn't quite finish the Animorphs series, but I think I made it about 50+ books. They were published around the millennium, and were about six kids fighting an alien conspiracy by morphing into animals.  It sound kiddy, but the series grew dark as the tweens came of age as hardened warriors.

.

Honorable Mentions
Wendell Berry, whose entire bibliography I aim to read.
Lemony Snicket...counting the entire Series of Unfortunate Events.
 Spangenburg and Moser, the authors of a series of scientific history books
Frances and Joseph Gies, medieval historians who specialize in social history
Will  and Ariel Durant, of the Story of Civilization series.

Ender's Game

Ender's Game 
© 1985 Orson Scott Card
384 pages

            Andrew Wiggin is only a young boy, but in the eyes of his world’s leaders, he may be humanity’s only hope.  Decades ago, Earth was ravaged by invasions of swarming insect-like creatures and fought them off only by the skin of its teeth. What made the difference was superior command ability – a man who performed a miracle, a virtual inheritor of Alexander the Great.  Although the skies have been silent since, all Earth knows that somewhere in the depths must be another insectoid fleet, a third invasion, and  against an  empire stands one frail planet…and one not-so-frail boy. Ender's Game is the story of a young boy chosen to be groomed to be Earth's next saviour, The cost of Earth's salvation is his own childhood, as he is forced to leave  his sister on Earth behind for many years: enrolling at six, his first leave is scheduled for his sixteenth birthday. (He doesn't too much mind leaving his brother behind, since Peter is an abusive jerk with dreams of world conquest.)  Ender's Game is the story of Ender's upbringing on stations in space, living and training with other gifted children every day in highly elaborate zero-gravity games  Ender is the best of the best,  and forced to be so by the adults who condition him psychologically to be the ideal general -- not only strategically smart, but forcefully decisions, a man capable of taking the lives of thousands and the future welfare of millions into his own hands. Although the sci-fi setting is inescapably important, the book is  driven by character drama -- the book alternates between Ender's story and that of his sister Valentina's, who with Peter makes the Wiggin children a trio of dangerous intelligence.  Although Ender engages in combat virtually every day,  this comes in the form of in-person zero-g laser tag games or computer simulations.  Ship to ship combat is rendered only distantly, but that makes it exciting is experiencing Ender's thoughts as he takens in the chaos of the battlefield, sees patterns emerging, and then creates a plan on the fly to check the adversary. Ultimately things deeper than just a boy growing up to find greatness during a war; Card gets a little philosophical toward the end, a trend which I understand continues more in books like Speaker for the Dead.  Though I read this primarily for a reading challenge, I could see continuing in the series. 

Related:
Starship Troopers, Robert Heinlein.  Humans vs bugs, but more SF war and political philosophy, less childhood stress.

Little Women

Little Women
© 1868 Louisa May Alcott
528 pages

"But you see, Jo wasn't a heroine, she was only a struggling human girl like hundreds of others, and she just acted out her nature, being sad, cross, listless, or energetic, as the mood suggested. It's highly virtuous to say we'll be good, but we can't do it all at once, and it takes a long pull, a strong pull, and a pull all together before some of us even get our feet set in the right way."

Last year I began a course of American literature, purposely reading classics I'd heard of my entire life but never read. Little Women resumes that effort, and like A Scarlet Letter and Uncle Tom's Cabin, I found it a genuine surprise.  Originally written as a story for girls, it features the four girls of the March family -- Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy -- as they grow up in America's 19th century. Aside from the odd jaunt to New York or Europe, this is domestic fiction, set in or around the March home, and filled with the quiet little episode of childhood. The sisters chatter endlessly as they see to their responsibilities, they run about outside having wild adventures in their minds, they piece together bold plans and see them fly apart -- they fight, they love.  The home life is punctuated with minor drama throughout -- a little scarlet fever here, a near-drowning there -- but there's no great quest, no calamitous struggle to overcome. There is merely the challenge of living life day to day, of growing as a result of its challenges and not giving into them.  Is it exciting? Well, no, but it's cozy, and even entertaining.  I read this to strike it off a list, but Alcott's sense of humor won me over. The book's gushing wholesomeness can be gathered from the fact that the girls interpret their lives according to John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, but there's too much snark here for it to be saccharine. Jo and her neighbor-friend Laurie are especially fun: the word 'mischief' appears twenty times in the text, and every time they are getting up to it.  It's not that they're scheming, but Jo in particularly doesn't respond well to having to stuff her into a box of propriety, as she does when she and her sister go to make social calls at an overly pompous house. She doesn't desire an ordinary life, but yearns to write, and so she does -- but eventually becoming an aunt, she finds all the pleasures of ordinary family life besides. The relationships between the characters have especial appeal because they are developed through the years; the full book covers over a decade, and in it the characters mature from children to adults with children of their own. Though the voices of the characters alter as they increase in maturity, still there are the spots where childlike abandon erupts through. This is a tale full of warmth, good humor and more than a few one-liners.

Brian's Saga, continued: Winter, River, and Return

Brian's Winter /  The River / Brian's Return
© Gary Paulsen 1996, 1991, 1999

            Hatchet told the story of a young teenager named Brian who survived a crash landing in the middle of the Canadian wilderness.  Forced by the pressing urge to avoid death to become student of the landscape and a tinkerer, Brian discovered and invented ways to provide food and shelter for himself for over two months in the wild. The story ended when he triggered an emergency transmitter, and for some readers this felt like a bit of a cheat. What would have happened had Brian not stumbled upon the transmitter in the plane wreckage?  Brian’s Winter is an ‘alternate’ history that picks up after his dive into the lake to rummage through the plane, and sees him continue to mature as a woodsman, as he must to survive the Canadian winter. As with Hatchet, Paulsen takes readers through Brian’s thinking as ideas come to him, and as he struggles to turn them into fact. The River is the first sequel to Hatchet, and begins with a trio of men from the government asking Brian to return to the wilderness, this time with a psychologist in tow. They want to understand the mindset that makes survival possible -- how can it be taught, ahead of time?  Their mission goes the way of most well-thought plans: within days, the psychologist is in a coma, and Brian must construct a raft and get his deadweight companion back to some semblance of civilization before he dies.  Brian's Return is a sequel to both of these,  and depicts Brian's inability to cope within the zoo that is domesticity after having sucking all of the marrow out of life for months in the wilderness.  After realizing the woods are in his bones, he decides to return -- and there the novel ends.

     Although these three books don't complete Brian's saga (there is a fifth novel, Brian's Hunt), I bundled them together here because the last two are so minor. Brian's Winter is  almost as fascinating as the original novel, forcing Brian to adapt to completely new circumstances.  The larger animals that ignored Brian in Hatchet, like bears,  become far more interested in him as summer gives way to fall and they must prepare for hibernation. In addition to having to learn new skills -- weatherproofing his shelter,  creating winter clothing out of rabbit skins, fabricating snowshoes --  Brian takes on larger challenges, like hunting moose and deer. He does this not for sport, but out of necessity:  the Canadian winter storms are so savage that he is safer taking the occasional big kill than risking exposure every day looking for rabbits and grouse.  In River and Return,  river navigation gets some attention but wilderness survival plays second fiddle to the book's respective little plots.  Far more interesting than the plot of Brian's Return, I thought, was the author's note that almost everything that happens to Brian within the novels in the wild happened to him during his twelve years of living in the wilderness, including deer jumping into his canoe and skunks rescuing him from bears.  Brian's Winter  is a strong sequel to the fascinating Hatchet, but the other two seem more like extras than anything else.

           

Hatchet

Hatchet
© 1987 Gary Paulsen
195 pages

Hitching a ride on a small plane to meet his father in Alaska,  young Brian is left alone thousands of miles in air when his pilot succumbs to a heart attack.  The thirteen-year old is no pilot, but as he numbly sits taking in his perilous condition, he realizes he has to do something if he doesn't want to perish once the plane runs out of gas and careens into the thickly wooded Canadian wilderness. Taking his life into his hands, learning through trial and error how to control the plane in the air, when the time comes the young boy will guide the plane's failure with some measure of intelligence, sending it into a lake where he may scramble out into the water and swim for life.  Still alone, he must somehow  survive in the wild until help can reach him -- armed only with native brightness,  vague ideas about nature gleaned from various movies, and a little hatchet. Hatchet is the gripping story of a young man's endurance.

Although eventually rescued, Brian's summer sojourn in the wilderness is wrought with peril. From the moment he lands, he is assailed by woodland creatures great and small -- skunks, porcupines bears, wolves, and clouds of mosquitoes.  Struggling against feelings of hopelessness and despair, as well as against repeated injuries -- he really doesn't know what he's doing --   the young man slowly gains the experience and strength of spirit needed to prevail.  A boy accustomed to being taken care of his parents must build shelter, must find food, must outwit prey and predators alike. Nothing will be done for him, and he cannot stay still for a moment. Thrust into the struggle for existence, realizing it in full,  Brian quickly becomes a woodsman;  his senses and memory sharpened by necessity allow him to piece things together, allow him to invent solutions and find resources.  Some are encountered only by accident, as when he throws his hatchet at an invasive creature and the tool creates a shower of sparks upon crashing into a flint-flecked stone face. Other lessons he takes from experience, from long hours spent in observation, from series of mistakes. But he learns!  A primitive lean-to becomes a more sophisticated shelter, grubbing around for berries leads to fishing and hunting,  and timidity turns to courage.  This fantastic tale of adapting to the wilderness, of thriving against the elements, is not romanticized, however; even when he creates some measure of comfort for himself,  misery and disasters are never far away. It's an adventure, but one harsh and wild.

Related:
The Sea Wolf, Jack London
My Side of the Mountain, Jean Craighead George

Where the Red Fern Grows

Where the Red Fern Grows
© 1961 Wilson Rawls
245 pages

“I suppose there's a time in practically every young boy's life when he's affected by that wonderful disease of puppy love. I don't mean the kind a boy has for the pretty little girl that lives down the road. I mean the real kind, the kind that has four small feet and a wiggly tail, and sharp little teeth that can gnaw on a boy's finger; the kind a boy can romp and play with, even eat and sleep with.”

Few books bring back memories of boyhood as swiftly as Where the Red Fern Grows. I can still remember my third grade teacher beginning to read this out loud, and my having chills as soon as the narration opened on an older man rescuing a tired hound dog and fingering a trophy on the mantle, thinking of two dogs he had loved fiercely as a child.   Where the Red Fern Grows is a classic story of a boy’s yearning for puppies, and the adventures taken on once such friends were found.

 Billy Coleman, the narrator, is a remarkable boy:  raised in the wooded foothills of the Ozarks, a hunter and trapper from the day he could walk, he wants nothing more than a faithful hound at his side.  The price of a hound bred for hunting matches that of a mule, though, and is beyond his family’s means. Undaunted,  Billy earns money  hunting crawdads, picking blackberries, and selling small furs until he has the funds – and then, when there is delay about sending off for the puppies, takes off into the wilderness and advances into the big city of Tahlequah to take delivery of them personally.   Training them personally, teaching them every trick he’s heard of and witnessed in his long hours watching and trapping on his own,  he and they become an inseparable trio, utterly devoted to one another. When the hounds Big Dan and Little Anne tree their first raccoon, Billy keeps his promise to them  to ‘take care of the rest’ by laboring several days and nights at the tree, hatcheting away, and when his strength fails he prays for more.  The dark nights and fast-moving creeks of the Ozarks provide danger aplenty, but they whether it together, even becoming regional champions of coonhunting. Every story has its ending, though, every childhood must end, and so does Billy’s in a violent altercation with a mountain lion. Billy himself survives, but his remembers the losses.

 Where the Red Fern Grows has a brutal ending, especially for young boys who, like me, doted on their own dogs, and felt the desperate pain of separation from them when life’s twists and turns made it so.  Reading now as an adult, I expect the ending, and so it is not quite gut-wrenching. Rather, like the narrator, the ending frames all of the fond memories that unfold in the story that is told before, putting them into focus. I only read this book once or twice in my youth, during the early 90s, but its scenes have buried themselves in my brain. For me this was a visit with an old friend, whose face I have not seen in decades, but not forgotten a line of.   The boy is everything a boy could hope to be -- courageous, intelligent, and beloved, with a pair of friends and a family who cannot be bettered.  This is a book filled with love and adventure, and often the two are intertwined to great effect.  It's also a look back at an America with a frontier, where civilization is contained within scattered sanctuaries and the woods filled with danger and excitement. There are few stories that can be more enticing for a young reader, especially boys!  

Related:

• The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Mark Twain
• Meat Eater: Adventures from the Life of an American Hunter,  Stephen Rinella

Allegiant

Allegiant
© 2013 Veronica Roth
544 pages

 "Sure as I know anything I know this, they will try again. Maybe on another world, maybe on this very ground swept clean. A year from now, ten, they'll swing back to the belief that they can make people…better. And I do not hold to that. So no more running. I aim to misbehave." (Serenity) 

Divergent ended in one caste of future-Chicago’s society attempting to wipe out another in a bid for power; Insurgent ended with the resistance mounting a counterattack on that caste’s headquarters. Tyranny gives way to tyranny, however,  and soon our plucky heroes find themselves outside of Chicago altogether, venturing into the wilderness beyond it, through the shattered remnants of a world that once was. The finale to the Divergent series regains the first book’s strength, as Tris and the others finally find answers to questions that have only become more mysterious throughout the books. There are the usual action scenes, of course, and Roth’s characters grow up faster here than at any other time, having to make decisions with momentous consequences.   As the overall story is finally revealed, Tris discovers that her city is the result of genetic engineering gone wrong,  and Roth plays with the idea that certain kinds of power in human hands – the mind-control, the various serums that have been used, and the engineering – are wholly unwise. What is most striking about Allegiant, however, is not the world it creates or the issue it addresses, but the unexpected ending.  I wouldn't have expected such boldness for a young adult novel, and it's sad yet faintly apropos.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
© 1876 Mark Twain
202 pages

            There is truly no better time to revisit The Adventures of Tom Sawyer than the summer, with its long, languid days bringing back memories of childhood liberty from school, and the mischievous episodes used  to fill them.  Tom Sawyer is the history of a boy, told by an aging boy – Mark Twain – whose own fond recollections of boyhood are obvious.  Tom is the quintessential boy;  wild, clever,  with a head full of adventures. The importance of memorizing  Bible verses may be lost on him, as is the value of whitewashing a fence – but he is not dull or lazy. How could he be when he spends days hard at work digging for treasure, or playing out The Tale of Robin Hood with his friends, delivering dialogue word-for-word from the book by memory?  Tom may struggle at being civilized,  but he has his own values to live up to. For all his youthful mischief, Tom is hard at play, practicing to be a man; he yearns to be the adventurous pirate, the gallant knight winning the favor of his lady love. In Tom’s case, such practice is fruitful, for his pursuit of pretend adventure will lead him headlong into actual danger when he and his friend Huck  witness a murder. In the months that follow, Tom must live up to the nobility he practiced to truly rescue damsels in distress, to truly defeat a dastardly villain, and win the prize for all his derring-do – genuine pirate treasure!  Could there be a better book for boys?

Divergent

Divergent

© 2011 Veronica Roth

487 pages

Every major city has problems with organized gangs, but the Chicago of Divergent’s future has nothing else. The entire society is organized in five factions devoted to an ideal;  Dauntless, Abnegation, Erudition, Amity, and Candor. These five subcultures prescribe virtually every aspect of life; occupation, manners, dress, and living quarters.  Every year, on their sixteenth birthday, young people submit to a test that informs them which faction best suits their personality. A rare few defy this sorting serum, however;  they are Divergent, and their very existence is taboo. Such is the premise of Divergent, a young adult sci-fi thriller that succeeds in  thrilling despite some problems.

 Our lead character and hero is Beatrice, soon to be called Tris. Tris has been raised by the  semi-religious Abnegation, who strive for selflessness and are trusted with the governance of society. Beatrice, soon to be called Tris, loves her family’s ways but can’t help but feel she doesn't  belong there. When her inconclusive test results giver her the option of choosing, she bolts factions and becomes Dauntless. Her new faction, the society’s warriors and guards, place a premium on battle skills and ferocity.  Most of the book is taken up with Tris training for initiation; if she fails, she will be homeless.  Considering that the training involves teenagers violently sparring with one another (with the occasional knife thrown),  and the  plot eventually ends in rebellion against an establishment reigning with the machinery of the state,  little wonder it has been compared to The Hunger Games.

 Unlike The Hunger Games,  the insurrection is not one of the oppressed against an oppressor, but of one sect against another, manipulating  others to do its bidding. The Erudite, who are less wise  here than presumptive elites,  think little about society being run by simpering religious folk. They intend to seize power through sinister technocracy,  and Tris soon finds her allies as against her as everyone else.  Though she prevents catastrophic defeat, her victory is necessarily minor given that there are two more books in the series. Divergent is a touch more risqué than The Hunger Games, and not nearly as violent (yet).  The premise is contrived, especially when the primary danger of being Divergent is that such individuals pose a danger to the exact technology and plot used by the Erudite to start their coup.  Either the Erudite have been scheming this for a very long time,  Divergency is dangerous for other reasons, or that was a boo-boo.  The entire intellectuals vs. virtuous religious angle is obnoxious,  and the villains are more flatly Eeeeeeevil than one would expect for a teen audience. The ever-sympathetic challenges of a young person being removed from the safety of childhood and having to adapt to a new environment and new people provide a familiar story with plenty of excitement, with some exploring of moral horizons thrown in.  In my view Divergent’s best virtue is the value placed on family; while its society urges that Faction comes before family,  Tris  uses the lessons learned from her parents to help guide her transition into her own brave new world, and later relies on their help in the coup. 

Problematic but fun, Divergent is best for older tweens and teens.

Related:

• "Profession", Isaac Asimov.  In a future society where people's professions are assigned to them by a testing computer, one man finds himself at a loss when he is declared un-assignable. 
• The Hunger Games, obviously.

Little House on the Prairie

© 1933 Laura Ingalls Wilder

I would say that Little House on the Prairie brings back fond memories, but in truth the volume I remember so happily was Little House in the  Big Woods, which recounts author Laura Ingalls Wilder's accounts of growing up in the Wisconsin wilderness in the 19th century. In Little House in the Prairie,  little Laura and her family -- Ma, Pa, big sister Mary and baby sister Carrie --  leave the big woods behind. Wisconsin, once the frontier, is now brimming with people -- and Pa has decided to move the family to Indian country, to the plains. Little House on the Prairie is the story of their journey westward, and of their first year among the wolves, wind, and natives.

 Wilder’s account, partially based on her own childhood, is charming, beginning with its opening – "once upon a time, when all the grandparents were babies" --  exciting, and educational. There’s no end to the dangers faced by the Wilders on the frontier; not only is the landscape rife with creatures that find humans edible, like wolves and panthers, but carving a house out of the wilderness is perilous work.  Gas within the ground poisons men digging wells, the timbers of homes fall, and storms appear out of nowhere.  And then there are the Indians, to whom the country belongs and who have a pretty good idea that the increasing appearance of white settlers within their territory isn’t a harbinger of peace.  Published in 1933, this is not a book that would fare  well among publishers today, given Ma Ingall’s outright loathing fear of the Indians, and the cheerful assertions that the white men have got to take the land in hand and make something of it, creating a civilization where these Indians have let the wilderness remain.  The stories are lessons in history, as when Wilder describes Pa building the cabin in exact detail, or comments on how the settlers didn't know that the disease that swept through their farms was malaria. 

Long after publication, Little House on the Prairie remains a lovely story about American history, giving children an idea of what it was like to head into the wilderness and begin to make a home for themselves. Although today's readers are more removed from Laura's world than her initial audience, the Ingalls remain immanently relatable. 

This week at the library: politics, Star Trek, a Cold War fantasy for kids, and trains

Last week's titles: 

The Price of Everything, Russell D. Roberts  | What It Means to be a Libertarian, Charles Murray |  Star Trek Silent Weapons, David Mack |  Day of Reckoning, Pat Buchanan | Getting There, Charles Goddard

Dear readers:

This week has seen some grappling with politics, with Star Trek, fantasy, and trains for relaxation.  Both The Price of Everything and What It Means to be a Libertarian  were on the...well, libertarian side, with Roberts exploring how prices work and vouching for markets as a better way of arranging things than government fiat. Murray was more philosophical, starting off by establishing that libertarianism is fundamentally against coercion of any kind, whether physical force or taxation. After a strong start, he then attempts to explore what a libertarian society would look like: it's one with courts and interstates, and not much else, though allowances can be made for government control of 'natural monopolies' like infrastructure that requires an enormous amount of capital and coordination (hence, highways). As much as I like his philosophy in theory, its widespread application depends entirely too much on the hope that things will sort themselves out for me.  I prefer concrete evidence, not idealism -- even Murray's very attractive kind, which posits that the government putting citizens' responsibility for their lives will suddenly witness a rebirth of civic virtue. a rebirth I'd delight to see. 

I resumed reading the Cold Equations trilogy by David Mack,  which actually took a potshot at libertarianism by putting the action on crime-ridden Orion, where the government stays out of business and out of most everything else.  I didn't plan Mack as a counter to Murray, so it must have been Fate. Obviously. The book was a fantastic mystery-turned-political thriller, which sees the powers within the Typhon Pact vying for dominance, while keeping a close eye on NATO the Khitomer Accord, which consists of the Federation, the Klingon Empire, the Cardassians, and a few other races who were not quite all the way evil.  The Typhon Pact strife seems to hint that the Downfall series of books being planned for autumn will see the Evil League of Evil, not the Justice League of the Federation, disintegrate. 

Speaking of self-defeating evil, Pat Buchanan thinks the United States has become that, invading everyone while simultaneously letting cheap goods destroy American manufacturers and American jobs. He rails against a handful of ideas -- imperialism, the triumph of ideology, the decline of Anglo-Americans, the glorification of free trade --  but only the first two really piqued my interest. Buchanan is called a paleoconservative, and they seem to  differ from 'neoconservatives' on the key issues of invading people and free trade.  Buchanan believes we shouldn't invade people, but should have the ability to do so if need be, and we should raise protective tariffs to keep other people's stuff from invading us. We should have an export surplus, not a trade deficit.  Out of self-interest I'm given to agree, but if the other fellows take the same stance it seems we'll have  a lot of nations with trade walls up, with the ships of commerce unable to pass them. This seems a story with a sad ending. You could invade people and force them to buy your stuff (he's all for mercantilism), but invading people is out, so.....

On the subject of strife between nations, I recently read a fantastically funny Cold War fantasy about a middle-schooler named Jane whose parents flee McCarthyist witch hunts to live in London, where Jane immediately complicates their lives further by getting involved in a battle between intelligence agencies and an ancient order of chemists. But really, how often do you make friends with someone who just happens to be heir to arcane knowledge passed down through uncountable generations, knowledge that can heal the body, turn it into a bird, and even -- maybe -- squelch an atom bomb of the earth-shattering kaboom sort?  Soon enough Jane and her friends (a trio, naturally) are on the run from both the British government and the Soviets. The resulting shenanigans make for hilarious light fantasy, the only fly in the ointment being the fact that the kids are expected to read a book composed in ancient Greek and Latin by means of their grammar school Latin primer.  I can't even read Der Spiegel on my uni-Deutsch, let alone a technical journal.

So! Next week! Today being the 14th, I should be concluding a series of French reads right about now. I am not. Call it poor planning, but my interlibrary loan books haven't arrived, so today I've been reading an oddly personal survey of French history called The Outline of French History.  I'll be continuing that this week, along with (perhaps) The Body Electric, the last in the Cold Equations trilogy. After that, who knows?  Once I've paid honor to France there are a few essay collections I'm itching to read, from Wendell Berry to Bertrand Russell.  I also have a book on airplanes checked out, because airplanes are fun.  Not as much fun as trains, but fun still. Oh, and speaking of trains -- I also read Getting There, about the struggle between railroads and highways for transportation dominance. Remarks will be posted later in the week.