The Midwife’s Apprentice by Karen Cushman

Brat is on her own; she cannot remember her parents, and no one cares for her. She sleeps in the village dung heap as it’s by far the warmest option, and not so very much worse smelling than the rest of the village. The village midwife takes her in as a skivvy, to sweep and damp and tamp the cottage floor, scatter fleabane about to keep, yes, fleas at bay, and run the occasional errand. Though the cottage floor is not near so warm and soft as the dung heap, being provided food, however inadequate, gives Brat the time and energy to notice the world around her, and wonder if she might dream of becoming more than a beggar brat.

As Brat begins to settle in, she takes note of the midwife’s practices, the herbs to bring on milk, stop or intensify contractions, the charms to ease a woman’s labor and the general techniques Jane Sharp uses. Daring even to give herself a name, Alyce, she begins to think she’s earned a place in the village; a comb and a bath, an intact dress and nearly enough to eat, and she’s on her way. Not only does she befriend a cat, but arranges a position for a little boy of six, at first only called Dung but later Edward for the king, at the local manor house. Gaining confidence from aiding the local cowherd’s boy to deliver his favorite cow of her twin calves, Alyce, as we now must call her, dares help a local woman give birth after the midwife leave to deliver a likelier baby. She succeeds here—the baby is named Alyce Little—but flees aghast when she subsequently takes it upon herself to deliver another woman, but fails to deliver a difficult pregnancy.

She takes refuge in a nearby tavern-inn, using the work habits she’s learned with the midwife to earn her keep and then some. Even the local absent-minded scholar, staying at the inn for a quiet place to study, notes her keen wit and begins “teaching the cat to read”; needless to say, Alyce eavesdrops and learns her own letters easily enough. After Alyce helps a guest at the inn, thought to have a stomach worm, deliver a baby, Jane Sharp tracks her down. While she does not force the girl to come back, she makes it quite clear through an indirect conversation with the absent-minded scholar that she does not consider Alyce to be the incompetent dung-beetle the girl herself thought she was, but rather a girl who foolishly gave up after her first setback—determination is the key. Alyce comes back; at first Jane seems to send her away, but Alyce returns, saying “It is I, your apprentice. I have come back. And if you do not let me in, I will try again and again. I can do what you tell me and take what you give me, and I know how to try and risk and fail and try again and not give up. I will not go away.”

Karen Cushman’s written several books about girls in Medieval England: Catherine, called Birdy, Matilda Bone, and others. The language and setting is such that squeamish parents might want to reserve Cushman’s books for older kids, and indeed they might be good for teenaged reluctant readers, or those who think that history is dull lists of names and dates as dry as the desert. If you’re a curious tween with parents who understand the value of challenging reading, however, don’t let that previous statement stop you; all Cushman’s books are rattling good fun, about strong-willed girls, or those who learn to value themselves and the merits of determination and education. If you’ve read all these books, and are looking for something to read next, try Jane Yolen’s historical novels, or E.L. Konigsberg’s A Proud Taste for Scarlet and Miniver…or indeed any of Konigsberg’s other books. They’re not all historical, but again interesting stories about girls who learn to be bold and sure of themselves.

The Solitaire Mystery by Jostein Gaarder

Combining philosophy with travelogue with phantasmagorical playing cards? Doesn’t always work, but Gaarder does a pretty good job! I’ll try to describe the book fairly without giving too much away about the plot twists.

The framing story is narrated by a boy named Hans Thomas; his mother, Anita, took off eight years prior to ‘find herself’ and hasn’t been back since. One day, an aunt sent them a fashion magazine in which Anita appeared as a fashion model, and as the novel begins, Hans Thomas and his father have set off from their home on Hisoy Island off the coast of Norway on a road trip down through Europe to Greece, where Anita’s most recent photoshoot was located. In Switzerland, we begin to pick up the story-within-a-story when the two are sent on a detour by a mysterious midget with ice-cold hands to a minuscule town in the Alps called Dorf; there, Hans Thomas befriends an old baker who gives the lonely boy four sticky buns, admonishing him to eat the biggest one only when he is alone.

Inside the sticky bun is a minuscule book¹, readable only with the magnifying glass given Hans Thomas by the mysterious midget. At first deciphering the minute writing is only an amusing way to pass the time while his father drives, and pontificates, and drives some more², but as he reads, Hans Thomas realizes that this story, and therefore the baker, may be connected to him. It’s told by the baker, Ludwig, now an old man, about how he came to be the baker in such an isolated town far from his own home: as a young man, he came to rest there after World War II, and was invited to take over the shop of the baker at the time, Albert. The villagers are wary of this seemingly cracked old man, but Albert shows Ludwig enough to convince him of the truth of his story.

I’ll stop there, not least because I don’t want to give away any spoilers, but also because to do a proper job of describing the plot of that convoluted ‘sticky bun’ book would take several blog entries of the length I’ve been making. Just a note, though, as it took me a couple of readings to straighten this plot point out: the ‘sticky bun’ book is actually four stories nested one within the other like a matrioshka doll. Ludwig is the baker who spoke to Our Narrator; he was the German soldier in World War II. Albert is the baker from whom Ludwig took over the shop; he was the youngest child of an alcoholic. Hans is the baker from whom Albert took over; he’s the second sailor to be shipwrecked on the mysterious island in the Atlantic from which the midget came. Frode is the original shipwrecked sailor, and the one who dreamed up the playing-card beings. Confused yet? Don’t worry; just enjoy the book. Really.

Through the vagaries of international publishing, especially where the literature requires translating, this was written (and published in Norway) a year before Gaarder wrote Sophie’s World, but Sophie’s World, being an international bestseller, was published before The Solitaire Mystery in the United States. At this point, I’d suggest readers in any country read them in publication order. One is not the sequel to the other, nor is there any structural connection between the two; it’s more that The Solitaire Mystery is the simpler story. In a manner of speaking.

¹presumably itself also crumby and more than slightly sticky; I’ve always wondered how the baker got the book in there without harming the book in any way.
²Don’t worry: Hans Thomas does get his nose out of the book long enough to not only engage with his father frequently but also notice some of the glories they’re passing in their trek

The Lions of Little Rock by Kristin Levine

What happened in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1957? Right, the Little Rock Nine. Now, how many people know what happened during the 1958-59 school year? (Unless you’re from Little Rock, a student of twentieth century American history, or just pay a lot of attention to the news at the time) Don’t worry, I didn’t either.

Just to be absolutely clear, The Lions of Little Rock is a novel through and through; while Levine did weave in a great many facts about what happened the academic year after the Little Rock high school was forced to integrate, the primary characters themselves are entirely fictional. The community’s reaction, however, is reasonably accurate, as were the actions of the Little Rock school board and city government, along with the Arkansas state government.

The Lions of Little Rock begins in the summer of 1958, just before school is set to begin. Marlee (named for Marlene Dietrich) is about to enter seventh grade; she loves math, despite the general consensus at the time that girls can’t do math or science…and she doesn’t talk. Well, not much anyway, and then only to people with whom she’s comfortable. Hardly anyone at school! Seventh grade means starting at a new school, which means breaking in a new set of teachers (and a few classmates) to the idea that she doesn’t want to talk. Until she meets Lisa.

Lisa is bold, outspoken and intelligent, capable of putting down even the school’s Resident Mean Girl, who regards herself as Marlee’s only friend, with a trenchant phrase. Lisa and Marlee become fast friends, although Marlee’s perplexed that Lisa never invites her over to visit. The two work together on a history project during which process Lisa works on Marlee’s reluctance to speak in public, on the theory that if she doesn’t speak, everyone else will assume that Lisa did all the work; they practice in the Little Rock zoo, rehearsing various parts of their project in front of various animals, though the lions are Marlee’s favorite. Partway through the fall term, Lisa disappears; the official story is that she’s ill, but the rumor that she’s actually black, enrolled in a white school¹ under false pretences, quickly proves true.

The two girls remain friends, and continue to sneak off to various places—the quarry, the zoo—where they can meet unnoticed by their parents, who’ve forbidden the relationship to continue. These meetings are few and far between; even Lisa warms up only slowly to Marlee’s overtures, as she cannot believe that Marlee would be any different from all the other whitegirls, so snide about the Negroes² that they cannot even comprehend using a brush that a Negro had used for fear of contracting lice. Perplexed as to how to proceed but unwilling to give up on the first friendship of her own choosing, Marlee turns to the family’s black maid, Betty Jean, though even there, Betty Jean makes the same suggestion as Lisa’s and Marlee’s parents: drop the friendship, it cannot work. Alas.

Things improve somewhat after Marlee tries to thwart the bombing of Lisa’s family. Their house is still badly damaged by the two sticks of dynamite she had to leave behind in the bomber’s trunk, but this at least reveals the bomber’s identity when she speaks up, and produces the evidence of her snapped-off letter opener blade in his trunk, where she was trapped. The book ends on a rueful note: things are going to get better eventually, but the children of this generation shouldn’t hold their breath for anything in the immediate future.

Overall, this reminded me of Anna Jean Mayhew’s The Dry Grass of August in its acknowledgement that the process of truly integrating our society is a long and rocky one, and the author permits no sugar coating of dewy-eyed innocence on the part of the whites about the true nature of the situation. There is a certain degree of “out of the mouths of babes”, although even Marlee acknowledges that this is the way the world wags, at least in 1958 in Little Rock. There’s a touching scene in the black movie theater, when Marlee arrives unbeknownst to Lisa; it is only when her family’s (black) maid speaks up for Marlee that she is allowed to remain.

¹at this point, it was only the high school which was integrated, though only nominally and even that was something of a moot point, as the School Board had chosen to close it rather than comply with the Federal order to integrate.
²the term used at the time! not mine.

The Princess and Curdie by George MacDonald

Since this is actually a sequel to MacDonald’s The Princess and the Goblin, I’ll start with a bit of backstory:
     Princess Irene, the widowed king’s only child, has been raised in a manor house in the mountains which run along the periphery of the kingdom of Gwyntystorm. While humans mine the portions accessible from the mountains’ surface, a malicious race of goblins, and their cobs (domesticated animals), live not too terribly far below these humans’ scratchings. The goblins, led by their King and Queen, are planning to break out of their imprisonment under the humans; Curdie the brave, honest miner boy and the Princess Irene must thwart this without the aid of the adults, other than the princess’s “great-great-great-grandmother”, also named Irene, who lives in what the adults believe to be an abandoned tower along with her doves and pigeons, emissaries of her soul.
     This adventure brings Curdie to the attention of the king himself, who offers the boy a place in his court. Curdie refuses, preferring to remain with his beloved parents.

The Princess and Curdie picks up about a year later, when the elder Princess Irene summons Curdie to her tower, in order to task him with travelling to the capital of the kingdom, where things have begun to go awry. Curdie sets off for the capital, armed with a pure heart, his mattock and a magical gift given him by the elder Princess, the ability to tell a person’s inner nature by grasping his (or her) hand, and accompanied by Lina, one of the gargoyle-like goblin’s creatures¹. Along the way, they collect a band of phantasmagorical creatures, from a meters-long snake with four near useless legs clustered at one end and rudimentary wings at the other, a tapir-like creature with a flexible nose more hard than Curdie’s mattock, to a ball-like creature which can only roll about.

They arrive in Gwyntystorm, only to find the city in a grave state of moral decay–greedy, lazy, corrupt and distrustful of strangers to the point of setting vicious dogs on anyone from outside the city. Curdie takes refuge with one of the honest city residents, only to be captured and tossed into a subterranean cellar to await trial…but little do they know that the underground holds no barrier that Our Brave Miner Boy cannot overcome. He and Lina work together to escape into what turns out to be the castle’s wine cellar. There they find a castle whose lower levels are awash with more filth and corruption², save only the quarters in which the ailing king is tended by his faithful daughter, wise beyond her years.

The two, aided by the few remaining honest servants and town residents, begin to nurse the king back to health with wholesome bread and wine, and refreshing sleep unbothered by medicines³. However, the corrupt councilmembers and courtiers, having fled to the neighboring kingdom of Borsagrass, return backed by the (armed) forces of that kingdom…but are thwarted by the noble king, his stalwart colonel, and Curdie and Lina’s army of cobs….oh, and a housemaid with a penchant for pigeons.

Like many of the Victorian-era “children’s” books, these two do have a moralizing streak in them, although they’re not nearly so sanctimonious as, say, The Water-Babies; they’re closer to The Wind in The Willows in this regard. In MacDonald’s case, it’s more that he stops periodically to insert maxims of proper behavior for kids: true princesses are uneasy if they’ve done wrong but not had the chance to admit their fault and make it right, or children must respect and love their parents. Lina and her beastie followers are collectively another example; MacDonald strongly implies that they were all human prior to taking on these monstrous forms as a punishment for the evils they have done; in aiding Curdie, they are redeeming themselves.

What to read next? Well, C.S. Lewis’s Narnia series and Lloyd Alexander’s Prydain series are a good choice for kids who love fantasies set in a slightly archaic world of legend, but don’t care for the multisyllabic Victorian vocabulary of this one. And for those who do, try The Wind in the Willows, for a slightly simpler take or William Morris and Lord Dunsany for a more complex one.

¹Lina resembles nothing more than the ugliest of all wolfhounds, with a tail the size of a carpet runner and a lower jaw full of icicle-like fangs.
²moral and physical
³modern hospitals might want to make note of the ‘uninterrupted sleep’ and ‘good food’ aspects of this care, though somehow I doubt that wine will make it to the menu any time soon

By the Great Horn Spoon! by Sid Fleischman

Our story begins in Boston in 1849, where our protagonist, Jack Flagg, and his two younger sisters, Constance and Sarah, have been raised by their maiden aunt, Arabella, since their parents’ death. Unfortunately, Arabella has used up the last of her own family fortune and is on the verge of needing to sell their family mansion. Jack, a bold boy of twelve, determines to save the family finances by running off to the gold fields of California, of which news has recently reached our fair city¹.

The family butler, Praiseworthy², accompanies Jack to the gold fields, though they are forced to stow away on the Lady Wilma after their passage fare is stolen. Upon revealing themselves to the captain, they’re promptly set to shoveling coal into the ship’s boilers…but since they’re sailing through the frigid North Atlantic, this is hardly the punishment it appears to be. Praiseworthy proves himself equally resourceful during that voyage and in the gold fields. Becalmed in the tropical doldrums, and the ship’s running low on water? How to water the grapevine cuttings one passenger’s staked his hopes on…buy the potatoes on which another passenger has staked his fortune! Stuck with a barrel full of neck ties in a community where grubby denim and worn flannel is the norm? Sell it to lovelorn miners when the first lady in deity knows how long shows up…and so on.

Upon arrival in San Francisco, they make their way to the gold mining region and start working on amassing the fortune necessary to Save The Family Domicile. They do, earning both nicknames and a reputation for clever athletic prowess along with their rather heavy fortune in gold nuggets and dust…which is lost when they go overboard after their ship explodes. All proves well in the end, as Arabella, Constance and Sarah have themselves come to San Francisco, after realizing that they too would just as soon be having adventures in the woolly gold fields, and Praiseworthy and Arabella realize that true love has bridged the divide between mistress and butler.

While it is fun to read on its own—that’s what I did, although in fairness, I was a child attending elementary school in San Francisco at the time I read it—I can see this being included as part of the curriculum for grade school kids studying the Gold Rush specifically, and nineteenth century history generally. It’s not detailed enough, much less accurate enough, to serve as primary material any more than Lawson’s Ben and Me and Mr. Revere and I could for the American Revolution. All three would do a great deal to humanize the time period, however; I think they’re rattling good adventure stories that might well prompt kids to voluntarily read more on the subject. Robbers, vandals, brigands and highwaymen, adventurers, roisterers, gruff men but kind, this is definitely a Guy Book for kids who aren’t quite ready to move on to Gary Paulsen. Certainly, Fleischman has a couple of other kids’ books set at about the same time that might also be fun to read—Mr. Midnight and Company, Jingo Django and Humbug Mountain—though they don’t have quite the same historical flavor as this one. Not that that’s necessarily a problem.

¹with a nod to Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers
²isn’t that a grand foreshadowing name, now?

A Corner of the Universe by Ann M. Martin

Well, my opinion of those authors who churn out endless installments in serial books for kids just went up a notch; A Corner of the Universe is one of the better books I’ve read in the past few years…and I don’t like much.

It’s the summer of 1960, between one school year and the next, between the turmoil of the Korean War and the social upheaval of the Sixties. Hattie Owen is twelve, a bit too grown to properly be a child, but not quite old enough to be truly mature; certainly, she’s not yet allowed to eat in the family’s parlor after an unfortunate incident a couple of years ago involving a deviled egg. Her parents run a respectable boarding house in one of the huge rambly old Victorian mansions from an era in which people had huge families; some of the residents have been there since before Hattie was forn. Hattie’s looking forward to another summer just like all the previous ones, in a small town that never changes except with the seasons—snow in winter, heat in summer and the immutable streets and inhabitants…

…well, you knew that wasn’t going to last, or there wouldn’t be much of a book.

Except…of course there’s an except. Hattie’s got an uncle whose existence was kept secret from her, more or less; he was institutionalized shortly after she was born and while they’ve met when she was a toddler, she does not remember him. The ‘school’ is closing, and so “Uncle Adam” must come home and live with his parents until they find another facility. Martin does not specify what precisely Adam has—either schizophrenia or autism—and to a large extent that doesn’t matter. He is different from everyone else, acts differently, cannot control his emotions and reactions as everyone else, including Hattie, can.

Needless to say, the summer is complicated just by Adam’s physical issues; he can’t be left alone, but is an adult with all that entails—he develops a crush on one of the boarding house residents and is devastated when he discovers her in bed with her lover. He wants to befriend Hattie, but not only do the other kids in town act like Mean Girls, his awkward attempt at a birthday party just for her goes badly awry. In the end, he commits suicide, unable to face going back into another institution or living in the, to him, bewildering outside run by behaviors he cannot possibly understand.

The language herein is not complex; it’s clearly written at a tween level, but the ideas are heartbreaking. It’s rare that I cry for a book written for this age group…but I did. I’m sure there are other books for kids which introduce mental illness in age-appropriate ways; this one struck me for its presentation of the uncle as a human being…who’s ill. Not a monster. Not demonized. Not pitying, or romanticized. There isn’t a lot of historical detail about how mental illness was treated at the time, but perhaps not necessary in a book of this level; I don’t think that’s the point in any case.

The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque by Jeffrey Ford

A young and talented though not yet entirely established painter, Piambo, is approached on the street by a blind man, who relays the message from his employer: Paint me, but without ever seeing me. You may be in my presence only if on the other side of a screen, and you may not see images of me, ask me to describe myself or ask anyone who has seen me to do the same. All you will have upon which to base your sketches is what I tell you about myself.

Intriguing concept, most definitely. Piambo takes on the commission, though it proves as difficult as anyone with a grain of knowledge of how painting and painters work could imagine. The sittings last for several weeks, an hour at a time, while Piambo sits on one side of an opaque screen and Mrs. Charbuque on the other. The stories grow more enthralling, yet Piambo is no closer to envisioning his subject despite the snowstorm of words she throws to him. In the end, desperate for more concrete visuals, he searches the community for information on this mysterious woman and at last her own house. It is here that he finds a stack of paintings, done by other artists, of Mrs. Charbuque: all different, and all poles apart from what he himself is attempting to do.

To heighten the drama, there is a strange epidemic spreading among the women of New York; periodically, one will be found swooning with her eyes dissolved into rivulets of blood. To compound Piambo’s own struggles, he is pursued by the jealous husband of his subject, as mysteriously unseen as his wife; Charbuque speaks from shadows in the depths of alleys, from behind while clasping Piambo in a chokehold to the neck. The message is always the same: leave my wife alone.

…and yes, there’s a plot twist, so I’ll stop here.

The book’s an interesting take on the art and technique of painting, or rather of making a living at one’s painting while alive. The process of creating a portrait such as the one in the title, the tightrope balancing of following ones’ muse and remaining true to one’s own artistic vision with that of, bluntly, making a living. Holbein wouldn’t have gotten off the ground if he’d painted Henry and Anne of Cleves exactly as they were, and Piambo’s in the same fix.

I’d call this Gothic Lite; while modern authors such as Dan Simmons ‘improve’ on the original in the sense of including a greater number of more lavishly supernatural details, Ford has stripped down the genre to its barer, and therefore more straightforward, underlying structure. Less circumlocutions. Fewer clauses, both subordinate and independent. And decidedly less purple; I’d call this no more than palest lavender. Recommended for people who like historical fiction, New York and the complexities of the Victorian Era but without the entangled fevered prose so popular at the time.

Now, back to Melmoth the Wanderer and Pride and Prejudice for me…and not least The Strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. (sorry, did I say that last out loud? no plot spoilers here, please move along.)