Freddy the Magician by Walter Rollin Brooks
My rating: 4 of 5 stars Freddy Does (or Undoes) Magic Freddy is quite the protean pig (poet, detective, newspaper editor, banker, etc.), but when he starts taking magic lessons from Presto, the fired white rabbit of an unpleasant and shady magician called Signor Zingo, who himself has been fired from Boomschmidt's Colossal and Unparalleled Circus after pilfering the petty cash, Freddy realizes there will be some limits to what he can accomplish: “Of course I could never do card tricks; you have to have hands for that and I’ve got trotters. But I bet I could learn some of the others. Maybe I could give performances.” (He is often an optimistic pig, which is one of his charms.) In Freddy the Magician (1947), the fourteenth Freddy the Pig book, then, author Walter R. Brooks demystifies “magic” by humorously anatomizing its trickery, from misdirection and secret pockets and hidden clips and elastic bands to sibling look alike cats and unobtrusive mice. The novel features not one but two climactic magical performances that devolve into duels between rival magicians featuring numerous feats of sleight of hand (or of trotter) and revealing to the audiences the tricks which have been deceiving them. Will Signor Zingo or Professor Frederico get the upper hand/trotter in their feud? Which magician will prove to the people and animals of the fictional New York town of Centerboro and environs that he’s the better mind reader? Will Freddy ever be able to get the unpaying and unwanted Zingo to move out of the town hotel? Why does Zingo want his missing magic hat so badly? In addition to Freddy’s magician’s war with Zingo, the book (like most Freddy novels) features at least one sub-plot: Leo the circus lion has to shave his luxuriant locks and come to terms with his new identity as the Great Bald African Lion, while Jinx the black cat has to deal with his irritatingly boastful sister Minx. In addition to the pleasures of talking animal fantasy as performed by Brooks (it’s a given that animals can talk with each other and or with humans) and of the comical situations he imagines (a fired magician’s rabbit teaching magic to a pig, a lion disguising himself as a pig disguising himself as a boy disguising himself as an Indian, a jail so appealing that released inmates commit crimes to get put back in, a henhouse blown into a tree on the local millionaire’s estate, a department store where the clerks and customers regularly end up deservedly slapping each other, and so on), like most Freddy novels, this one also has plenty of the following virtues: Brooks’ straight-faced, tongue-in-cheek animal facts, like: “Cows are plain and there is nothing they can do about it, but they are very kindhearted animals, and it is a pretty mean man who will deliberately insult a cow,” and “People who don’t know much about pigs are not likely to class them as dangerous animals; but an angry pig is something that no farmer in his senses will tackle barehanded.” Brooks’ humor for adults (as a boy, I read the Freddy books as serious adventures and never laughed at anything in them, but reading them now I regularly smile and chuckle), as when an aggrieved Leo greets Freddy: “Ah, it’s the pig,” said Leo as if speaking to himself. “Come to look his last upon an old comrade. Come to gibe and to sneer, no doubt—to point the finger of scorn and make the dirty crack. Ah, me, the great King of Beasts, to be made a laughingstock for those who, in the days of his greatness, stood in awe before his strength; who, in the words of Shakespeare, ‘smiled at his purr and trembled at his growl!’” “That’s not in Shakespeare,” said Freddy. “I have his Complete-Works-in-One-Volume at home, and there’s nothing like that in it.” Brooks’ quirky wisdom for adults, as when Freddy and Leo the circus lion talk about self-identity and mirrors: “When I see myself, I think I look one way, and then I find out that I look quite different. And it makes me wonder if when I think I look sort of noble I’m not really looking just sort of half-witted. Like when I’m talking to you, now, for instance—I think I look probably worried, but reasonably intelligent. But—do I? I just can’t be sure. Maybe I’m really making idiotic faces at you. You got a mirror handy?” “You, being a lion, I suppose want to look dignified and interesting, with just a little touch of ferocity. I, being a pig, want to look clever and good-humored, with just a dash of romance. Probably neither of us will ever look the way we want to. But if we forget mirrors we may get somewhere close to it. Watching mirrors all the time just makes us look anxious and a little foolish.” Brooks’ flexible and capable style, which ranges from the G-man slang favored by Jinx the black cat to the elevated “poetry” of Freddy when he has some spare time to compose. Brooks’ life lessons for kids, as when Freddy feels sorry for his enemy or accepts the aid of caterpillars and beetles or the narrator opines that “in a fight, or in a contest of any kind, the one who keeps his temper has an advantage that is equal to two shotguns and a small cannon.” Kurt Wiese’s monocrhome illustrations, which are mostly fine, for, in addition to drawing animals more realistically than, say, Disney, he has a knack for choosing the most interesting to see scenes in each chapter. While being an entertaining entry in the series, Freddy the Magician is not perfect. Signor Zingo is too early too clearly a villain (his mustache’s ends turn up like horns!), and with his name is a bit too much of an unsavory non-WASP character. The hotel manager Mr. Groper’s “sesquipedalianism” becomes too much of a good thing: a little “I ain’t mad… Just, as you might say, kind of reduced to the nadir of pessimistic hypochondriasis… the ultimate and nethermost profundity of the abyss” goes a long way. And the story ends too abruptly and incompletely. I recommend readers new to Freddy to start with Freddy the Politician, Freddy the Detective, Freddy and the Poppinjay, or Freddy and the Ignormus, but really any of the books can be read in any order and most of them, like this one, should amuse you. View all my reviews
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Freddy and Mr. Camphor by Walter Rollin Brooks
My rating: 3 of 5 stars Freddy the Caretaker, Rat Art Critics, Patriotic Insects, the Man with the Black Mustache and his Dirty Faced Boy, a Rich Man and His Butler, and Proverbs “It’s because you’re too fat,” said Jinx, the cat. “Golly, it makes me hot just to look at you, pig, sitting there grunting and mopping your face.” Freddy the Pig wants to escape a hot spring and his duties as Editor of the Bean Home News and President of the First Animal Bank, so he leaves the Bean farm for a cushy summer job as caretaker of the wealthy Mr. Camphor’s estate: for keeping an eye on the place, Freddy will get fifty dollars, meals, and lodging in a well-appointed houseboat on the lake. Furthermore, as Mr. Camphor and his butler Bannister hope to write a book disproving proverbs like “a rolling stone gathers no moss,” the rich man will pay Freddy $10.00 for every saying he can test by experiment. This leads to humorous moments like when Mr. Camphor complains, “Money is the root of all evil,” only to have Bannister point out, “If you really believed money were the root of all evil, sir, you’d get rid of all your money!” It all goes well for caretaker Freddy, lounging on Mr. Camphor’s houseboat (“I’m a lucky pig!”), until some old antagonists from previous books show up. Simon the rat and his clan have moved into Mr. Camphor’s mansion and don’t take kindly to his attic-stored “family” portraits (“Why, it’s our artistic duty to chew ’em up”), while the Man with the Black Mustache and the Dirty Faced Boy drive noisily in and try to muscle (and frame) Freddy out of his job (“It needs a man around the place”). A WWII subplot runs through this eleventh of Walter R. Brooks’ Freddy the Pig books, Freddy and Mr. Camphor (1944). As the patrons of the First Animal Bank are withdrawing all their money to invest in government war savings stamps, the spider Mr. Webb is holding patriotic mass meetings to persuade insects to refrain from eating farm vegetables for the duration of the war: “we are still all good Americans… Are we not?” Threatening the spider’s campaign is an obnoxious horsefly called Zero who points out that spiders don’t eat vegetables and scoffs at the patriotic agenda. A few other Freddy books also reveal their WWII era provenance, but less earnestly and intrusively than this one. The fate of Zero after losing a political debate (in which “calling names is entirely permissible”) is disturbing because the novel approves of it. Most villains in Freddy books, from needlessly destructive rats to animal-hating robbers, are defeated, humiliated, exiled, arrested, and/or reformed. But because Zero (a reference to the Japanese fighter aircraft?) is “unpatriotic,” his epitaph is “So perish all traitors!” And maybe because I dislike patriotism, the busybody Mr. Webb, who spreads his patriotic no-vegetable eating movement from farm to farm, and calls his wife “Mother” (even though they apparently have no children), is irritating, and I found myself unusually not wholly enjoying the novel. The story also has some loose ends. Brooks never explains how Zero became able to spin webs and leaves the proverbs sub-plot unfinished. Luckily, there are plenty of the usual virtues of the Freddy books here: humorous scenes and conversations, concise and vivid descriptions, quirky wisdom, nonsensical animal “facts,” formidable foes, savory friends, and, of course, the protean pig Freddy, who, while serving as Mr. Camphor’s estate caretaker, finds time to don a smock and beret and do a little painting restoration on the side. I love Brooks’ quirky nuggets of wisdom, like “For pigs understand boys pretty well, perhaps because they are so much alike. If fathers and mothers who have trouble with bad boys would consult pigs oftener, they would profit by it.” And his straight-faced animal facts, like “Even a cat cannot see anything in complete darkness, although all cats pretend that they can,” and “Fleas are so nearly invisible that they find it easy to get away with things that wouldn’t be tolerated for a moment in larger creatures.” And his wide range of registers, including Jinx the cat’s demotic English (“Hi, old pig! … We thought the old sausage grinder had got you at last”), Simon the rat’s unctuous English (“Well, well . . . fancy meeting you here, pig! What a small place the world is, to be sure. Well, don’t you recognize me? Haven’t you a warm handshake for your old friend, Simon?”), and Breckenridge the eagle’s “high-flown” English: “Your young friends, with a fortitude out of all proportion to their size, descended by way of the chimney. They found much to criticize in the housekeeping, I am given to understand. But after a prolonged search they discovered large quantities of plunder—much of it merely heaped up in the bathtub. Which indicates quite sufficiently, I feel, the character of this Mr. Winch and his offspring.” By the way, as I’m reading my way through all twenty-six of Brooks’ great, too much forgotten Freddy the Pig books, I realize how much adult targeted verbal humor they have and recall that when I read several of them as a boy, I thought they were serious talking animal adventures and never dreamed they were funny. But now! Brooks was writing children’s novels for adults. Another interesting point in this novel is a minor touch that, I believe, E. B. White took and flew with in Charlotte’s Web: a spider writing English messages in its web! Here it’s Mr. and Mrs. Webb writing signs in their webs announcing the patriotic rallies. Both E. B. White and Brooks worked at The New Yorker, and I’ve been noticing other things from the Freddy books that may have inspired White with his classic children’s novel. The illustrations by Kurt Weise are top notch: monochrome; more realistic than Disney; showing choice moments from the text (like when a troop of fleas attack some pesky rats or like when Freddy dresses in some of Mr. Camphor’s clothes to pass for a burglar). I did notice a few typos in the Kindle version. Anyway, if you can stand the patriotic subplot, this novel should be amusing for you, but Freddy the Detective, Freddy the Politician, and Freddy and the Poppinjay are much better. View all my reviews
The Enchanted Castle by E. Nesbit
My rating: 4 of 5 stars A Comical, Scary, Sublime, and Imperfect Fantasy The heroes of E. Nesbitt’s fantasy novel The Enchanted Castle (1907), Gerald (Jerry), Kathleen (Kathy/Cat), and James (Jimmy) are three British West Country siblings who go to unisex boarding schools and can only meet on the weekends at some house where they can't play (“You know the kind of house” says the narrator). Luckily one thing leads to another, and the boys get to spend the holiday at Kathleen's girls’ school in Littlesby while all the other girls are gone. The kids are wanting an adventure—Kathleen even suggests writing a book, but the boys refuse that fatiguing work—when out hunting caves in the woods they stumble upon (and into) one that leads to what appears to be an enchanted castle with an enchanted garden with an enchanted princess lying there waiting to be kissed awake. Princess, garden, and castle all turn out to be not exactly enchanted in the way the kids (and reader) were expecting. The ensuing plot has the kids making a good new friend in Mabel Prowse, the daughter of the housekeeper of Yalding Towers, the estate the kids found, and getting to know through increasingly fraught trial and error the properties of what turns out to be a tricky magic ring. Is it a ring of invisibility? Or a wishing ring? Or whatever one wants it to be? Like certain other later more famous magic rings, this one has a tendency to drop off your finger at unexpected moments and to seduce you into using it the wrong way. **You can see the influence Nesbit must have had on C. S. Lewis here: two boys and two girls having fantastic adventures driven by magical artifacts, marked by the interface between the “real” world and fantasy, and flavored by pagan deities (though Nesbitt blessedly is not writing Christian allegory). There’s lots of fantasy in the novel! Comedy scenes, like Gerald disguising himself in brown-face to become an India Indian conjurer at the town fair (this is offensive today). Disturbing horror developments, as when an audience fashioned from coats, pillows, broomsticks, and hats comes to life as “Ugly-Wuglies,” or as when to prove a point Mabel (foolishly!) wishes the ring made people four yards tall, or as when Kathleen (foolishly!) wishes she could be a statue, or as when James (foolishly!) wishes he were rich. Interspersed through the disturbing moments shine sublime ones, like a celestial picnic featuring animated statues of pagan gods and a moment of total revelation and understanding outside time and space and without need of words, when it seems “that the whole world lay like a magic apple in the hand of each listener and that the whole world was good and beautiful.” Throughout all of the fantasy, Nesbit runs her “realism,” which involves giving plenty of money and food details, demystifying or mundaning certain fantasy elements (like sleeping beauties and enchanted castles) while freshly and imaginatively utilizing others (like magic rings), and frequently addressing her readers to for instance challenge them to do things like make their own Ugly-Wuglies to see how scary they can really be and generally to pose as a real person who’d met the siblings and gotten their story from them (she archly tells us that she believes everything she’s been told, including the story we’re reading). She also uses relatable similes, like “... looking as unreal as the wrong answer to a sum in long division.” And she has her kids use then current British slang, like “I've had a rum dream,” and “What a ripping book!” and refer to then popular literature like Sherlock Holmes. She also inserts at one point an American millionaire who, suitably, likes saying “great” and shooting his gun (which he lovingly carries on his person). Gerald is a neat character, good at currying favor with adults by being attentive and polite to them, a natural born general who takes charge of the other kids and bucks them up when their morale flags, an articulate lad who likes narrating their activities as though he’s the narrator of an adventure novel as well as its hero, with the other kids being his minions. The other kids are not as interesting but still individual enough. There are points where they do unbelievably stupid and out of character (the kids are anything but stupid) things with the ring to create suspenseful complications. Johanna Ward gives a fine reading of the Audiobook. Unfortunately, Nesbit shoves into the story an unconvincing and excrescent fairy tale-like romance involving the French governess “Mademoiselle” who’s supposedly keeping an eye on the kids during their holidays. And, like Gerald posing as an Indian conjurer, some things don’t wear well today, as in lines like, “Even though you’re French you must know that British gentlemen always keep their word.” But the novel is worth reading for psychologically interesting and true moments like when the kids reveal their awareness that grownups play with them to please them without knowing that kids play with them to please them, and for some potent fantasy writing, like this: "There is a curtain, thin as gossamer, clear as glass, strong as iron, that hangs forever between the world of magic and the world that seems to us to be real. And when once people have found one of the little weak spots in that curtain which are marked by magic rings, and amulets and the like, almost anything may happen." And like this: “The two little girls kissed in the kind darkness, where the visible and the invisible could meet on equal terms.” View all my reviews
Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak
My rating: 5 of 5 stars A Perfect Picture Book I’ve been teaching Where the Wild Things Are (1963) here at Fukuoka University for over twenty-five years now, and almost every time I learn something new about how it works and enjoy it again. Maurice Sendak had some false starts making his classic book, one in 1958 called Where the Wild Horses Are, a book about an inch in height with wide pages, and then one in 1963 with the final title but fashioned too small (about the size of his Nutshell Library). And then when he’d found just the right size and title of the eventual book, he had to de-clutter the words (the text being overwritten) and pictures (the initial pictures having too many objects and details). Anyway, he did finally make a perfect picture book. In the compact and potent story Max is wearing his “wolf suit” pajamas and going violently crazy at home (torturing his stuffed animal bear, hammering a nail in the wall to hang a string to make a blanket lair, chasing his dog down the stairs with a large fork, threatening to eat his mother up, etc.), so his mother calls him, “WILD THING!” and sends him to bed without supper, whereupon his bedroom changes into a forest and an ocean, and he sails off in a boat to Where the Wild Things Are, where he tames the monsters and becomes their king and plays with them, until he finally is sated and realizes he misses someone who loved him most of all and returns to his bedroom to find his supper waiting for him. To tell that story, the pictures and words do interesting things, separately and together. Sometimes the words add details absent from the pictures, like Max’ mother, whom Sendak never draws. One sentence goes on for about eight pages! But he uses “and” skillfully and ends each page at a pause-able point so as to make it easy and fun to read the book aloud. There’s even a neat touch whereby he puts the time words when Max travels to Where the Wild Things Are in an order increasing from small to large (night, day, weeks, year) only to reverse them (year, weeks, day, night) when his hero returns home, giving the impression of time travel (though then how is one to explain the full moon in his bedroom window at the end of the story when it began with a crescent moon?). Sometimes the pictures add details absent from the words, like the nature of Max’ mischief, the picture on the wall of a wild thing that Max has drawn, the presence of the moon throughout, the way the moon changes size to match Max’ changing moods, the items in his supper, the diverse and chimerical composition of the wild things, and so on. Sometimes the illustrations provide a pleasing balance or symmetry, as when Max and the wild thing with human feet are sitting like mirror images in the same pose. Sendak’s extensive cross-hatching makes the pictures solid and substantial but also dreamlike and nocturnal. Sometimes the words and pictures work together, as when Max is “lonely,” and the picture shows his melancholy face. Sometimes the words and pictures work against each other, as when “mischief” seems an understatement for the mayhem Max is unleashing, and when “terrible” repeatedly describes the wild things, but they look more silly or cute or ugly. Sendak also cleverly uses layout, as in the way the pictures at first appear on the right hand pages with big white margins around them, while the words at first appear on the left hand pages, but as Max’ wildness grows, the pictures grow across the pages as the words and margins retreat, until in the wild rumpus climax there are three consecutive wonderful wordless two-page spreads where the pictures go from edge to edge (it is now that the moon is finally full, too). Then after Max expresses his wildness and fulfills and exhausts himself, the pictures start retreating as the words start advancing, till the last page has no image at all but only the words, “and it was still hot.” A wonderful touch to represent the degree of Max’s wildness by the presence or absence of words (more civilized) and pictures (more primitive). It must be so fun for kids to read a story in which the little boy hero goes wild at home, escapes punishment by journeying to his ideal wild play place, takes command of giants like grotesque adults, gives them the punishment his mother has given him by sending them to bed without their supper, then returns home to his own still hot supper comprised of soup, milk, and cake. (The themes on using fantasy to express one’s anger and resentment and frustration are great.) And although in the last picture he has pulled down his wolf suit head to reveal his good boy’s head, he is still wearing the wolf suit, and he can go wild again any time, and the moon is full, and the wild thing on the cover is waiting for him. Finally, I’m impressed by Sendak’s emotional restraint in the book, which is unsentimental. Imagine if at the end, instead of the brilliant last blank white page bearing only the words, “and it was still hot,” Sendak had, for instance, forced on us a picture of Max and his mother hugging or of Max’s mother watching her son eating! (Contrast that with the ending of the 2009 movie.) This year the book is sixty, but it never feels old. View all my reviews
The Book of Three by Lloyd Alexander
My rating: 5 of 5 stars A Compact, Philosophical, and Funny Fantasy Adventure I’ve read The Book of Three (1964) many times, first by myself in junior high school and later with my Japanese university students in seminars over the years, and every time I’ve liked going on the journey with Taran and company. Taran, the Assistant Pig-Keeper of indeterminate age, parentage, and appearance (one reason why his hair ranges from gold to red to brown to black in the various cover illustrations done over the years), is an impatient and reckless boy who chafes at chores and runs away from the safety of his home and its 379-year-old wizard Dallben to pursue the panicked oracular pig Hen Wen into the forest and then finds adventures more challenging and uncomfortable than he'd read or dreamed about. If Taran remains rather humorless and featureless, the colorful supporting characters he meets are vivid and funny, like Gurgi the homeless and hungry dog-monkey who refers to himself in third person and likes rhyming and eating (“crunchings and munchings!”), Eilonwy the lonely princess who’s learning to be an enchantress from a wicked “aunt” and who likes making similes, Fflewddur Fflam the abdicated king who likes wandering as a bard with a magical harp that plays itself and breaks its strings when he exaggerates, and Doli the crabby odd-man-out dwarf who can’t make himself invisible and can’t stand a botched job. I like the way Lloyd Alexander works into his concise and fast-paced story plenty of messages for kids (and adults) to think about, like the world of human beings being a hard place for animals to live in; the three foundations of learning being “see much, study much, suffer much”; overcoming despair is a more vital part of being a hero than big muscles or swords; noble character being more important than noble birth; our homes being smaller when we return to them after a journey; and so on. Although he does some typical things with gender, making the enchantress Achren a by-the-numbers beautiful wicked witch, he also (for 1964) makes Eilonwy strong-headed and clever (Taran’s boss) and gives her a great riff on not wanting to be called a girl. And his refusal to give us what we expect or want in the climax of the novel is remarkable. (view spoiler)[Everything has been leading up to a big battle between the army of the Horned King and the army of the Sons of Don and to a Boss Fight between the Horned King and Taran or Prince Gwydion (the legendary Son of Don whom Taran meets and loses early in the adventure). Eilonwy has been lugging around this huge enchanted (cursed?) sword, and Taran finally gets his hands on it and circumstances are forcing him to finally draw it to use it to kill the Horned King, right? Instead, the boy tugs it a few centimeters out of its sheath and is zapped unconscious by the action, which interrupts the climax because he’s the point of view protagonist. And then in the resolution chapter Taran’s companions and Gwydion tell him what happened while he was unconscious! Thus, Alexander doesn’t depict the climax in real time. And there wasn’t a big battle because Gwydion just said the Horned King’s true name to destroy him, which made the enemy army melt apart without their leader. Alexander is trying to get us to appreciate the non-physical side of being a hero, especially the psychological and moral or ethical side, as in helping or being helped by anyone or anything (after all, aren't we all lame ants?) or as in transcending disaster by overcoming despair. Taran has begun to learn both lessons by the end of the novel. He has often been a pessimistic downer: he thinks Gwydion is trying to poison him when they first meet, that Gwydion is killed in Spiral Castle's collapse, that Eilonwy is trying to trap or trick him, and even in the end that he has waken up in Annuvin. So he's still learning to overcome despair like Gwydion in Achren's torture castle. Anyway, in the context of genre expectations Alexander’s avoidance of the big boss fight and big battle is a bold move perfectly in tune with the themes of his novel. (hide spoiler)] Finally, Alexander’s writing is fine, his concise evocation of mood, place, and character through word choice, sounds, and images first rate. As with these descriptions: --“Approaching the Eagle Mountains, Taran felt his burden lighten, as he inhaled the dry, spicy scent of pine.” --“Medwyn strode ahead, as slowly and powerfully as if a tree were walking.” --“They descended to a broad, sun-swept meadow. The morning had turned bright and warm; dew still clung to the bending blades of grass.” Despite its flaws, then, (view spoiler)[like the Horned King remaining a cardboard dark lord’s minion or Eilonwy getting a pretty RING when Gwydion hands out rewards in the end instead of, say, a book of useful spells for adventures (hide spoiler)], it is a fine, compact novel that moves speedily, has a lot of good messages for kids (and adults) and colorful characters, and is refreshingly different in some key ways from usual fantasy adventures. Although my favorite novel in the five-book series is the fourth, Taran Wanderer, The Book of Three is a great start. And James Langton gives a fine reading of the audiobook—doing distinctive and suitable voices for the various characters and enhancing the various moods of the story without overly dramatically “performing” the book and drawing attention to himself.</["br"]></["br"]></["br"]></["br"]></["br"]></["br"]></["br"]></["br"]></["br"]></["br"]></["br"]></["br"]></["br"]></["br"]></["br"]></["br"]></["br"]></["br"]></["br"]></["br"]></["br"]></["br"]></["br"]></["br"]></["br"]></["br"]> View all my reviews
Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O'Dell
My rating: 4 of 5 stars An Inspiring and Sad Female Native American Robinsoniad In the Newbery Medal winning novel Island of the Blue Dolphins (1960), a Native American named Karana recounts how at the age of twelve she ended up alone on her home island and then, apart from some wild dogs and other creatures, lived there for eighteen years. Author Scott O’Dell’s Afterword reveals that he based his novel on a real historical native woman called “The Lone Woman of San Nicolas Island,” that she lived off the Californian coast on one of the Channel Islands southwest of LA and Catalina, and that she was eventually found and taken to the mainland and put in the Santa Barbara Mission. Because no one spoke her language so she could only tell her story partially by using gestures, O’Dell is imagining almost everything in the story, including Karana’s native name. In that context, O’Dell writes an authentic feeling, absorbing, and moving novel relating how Karana survives for years there, like a female indigenous Robinson Crusoe. How she gets food and water and shelter, dries abalone, makes a dress from cormorant feathers, deals with hostile wild dogs, survives a hurricane and an earthquake, hunts a devil fish, hides when otter hunters show up, and generally deals with being the only human being on the island. O’Dell writes convincingly in Karana’s first-person voice, as when she describes things like the arrival of a big western ship (“At first it seemed like a small shell afloat on the sea. Then it grew larger and was a gull with folded wings.”) and its use of a canon (“A puff of white smoke came from the deck of the ship. A loud noise echoed against the cliff. Five of our warriors fell and lay quiet.”). I wonder when Karana is telling her story. It’s not a present-tense first-person story (that trend not having been in vogue when O’Dell wrote the novel), so, unlike something like, say, The Hunger Games, it’s obvious that the story is being told long after the events occurred, as the first line reveals: “I remember the day the Aleut ship came to our island.” However, the novel ends without any indication of how Karana would have learned enough English (or Spanish) to tell her story so well. [In fact, the historical woman Karana is based on died of dysentery just seven weeks after arriving at the Santa Barbara Mission.] Anyway, it feels like a mature survivor’s story of her youth. It is a sad book, both in Karana’s isolation and more largely in the plight of her tribe and all Native Americans, partly because of the restraint with which O’Dell has Karana tell her story. She rarely expresses the strong emotions she must be feeling and never says anything like, “Another case of white people taking our resources and killing our people.” The novel packs a strong emotional punch as a result. However, I’d maybe have liked a bit more of a righteous polemic on that score! But after all Karana is ignorant of the larger world, being born and raised on her island, and is only aware that people live on the mainland. (view spoiler)[One of the saddest moments comes at the very end when, after eighteen years alone on the Island the Blue Dolphins, a ship with a Spanish missionary shows up there, and she chooses to live with people rather than to go on living alone, and she proudly dons the special, beautiful cormorant feather skirt she’s painstakingly made, and the missionary and his people make her an ankle length dress to wear instead, and she resolves to wear her own dress once they get to the mainland, but we suspect it won’t be so easy for her henceforth, and it’s clear that the white people care nothing for her culture and will impose their own on her. (hide spoiler)] O’Dell writes some potent early second-wave feminist stuff on gender roles and their limitations: “I wondered what would happen to me if I went against the law of our tribe which forbade the making of weapons by women—if I did not think of it at all and made those things which I must have to protect myself.” Despite being all alone, it takes an effort of will for Karana to do what she needs to do to survive. Another important theme running through the novel concerns the human exploitation of animals, and Karana’s change regarding that is remarkable. (view spoiler)[The tragedy of Karana’s people derives from the insatiable human greed for otter skins. The other saddest part of the novel for me—sadder even than the deaths of her stupid and fated father and of her quick and foolish little brother—is the death of the dog Rontu. In the early part of the story, Rontu probably helps kill Karana’s brother, and she resolves to kill every last wild dog on the island, but after she has shot the big dog with an arrow, she suddenly decides to save his life and then tames and befriends him. “Why I did not send the arrow I cannot say. I stood on the rock with the bow pulled back and my hand would not let it go. The big dog lay there and did not move, and this may be the reason. If he had gotten up I would've killed him. I stood there for a long time, looking down at him, and then I climbed off the rocks.” Partly as a result of her relationship with Rontu, she decides at one point to never kill any more animals (apart from abalone and fish!) for food or clothes, regardless of whether or not they are her friends. (hide spoiler)] I have no idea how accurate O’Dell’s depiction of Karana and her people is, but he did research the lives of Native Americans in the Southwest Museum of the American Indian and manages to tell an absorbing, page-turning, authentic-feeling story with mostly only one human character on stage, the last member of her lost tribe, and makes us care about her. View all my reviews
Freddy the Detective by Walter Rollin Brooks
My rating: 4 of 5 stars Freddy Steps to the Fore, or Rats, Robbers, a Train, and a Trial A porcine Sherlock Holmes, a purloined train, a resourceful gang of resentful rats, an overly enjoyable animal jail, a pair of slovenly bank robbers, a murdered crow, and an entertaining trial (“a long and hard-fought legal battle”) featuring rooster judge, crow prosecutor, pig attorney, cat suspect, rat and mouse witnesses, animal jury (including a cow, a bear, a porcupine, and a spider), animal packed barn “courthouse,” inflammatory or revelatory testimony, overruled objections, manipulative speeches, and appeals to good old American democratic concepts like “No free-born American animal . . . can be convicted of a crime until he is proved guilty” and “You don’t have to answer any question if you feel that the answer would incriminate or degrade you.” The third Freddy the Pig book by Walter R. Brooks, Freddy the Detective (1932), has all that and more. The plot starts when Jinx the black cat tells Freddy about the disappearance of the toy train cherished by one of a pair of orphans (who never appear in the novel) adopted by the farming couple Mr. and Mrs. Bean. The pig, who has recently read The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, decides that this mystery will be the first solved case in his brilliant new career as genius detective. And Jinx will help him. Soon Freddy finds himself inundated by cases and having to get a partner (the cow Mrs. Wiggins) and numerous small animal trainee assistants, who disconcert the farmer Mr. Bean by “shadowing” him as he works the farm. The novel features the virtues of the roughly two-dozen subsequent Freddy books, including-- *straight-faced whimsical animal facts, like “Like all ducks, she was very stubborn, and when she had made up her mind to anything, nothing could stop her.” *multiple sub-plots, here involving rats, robbers, and a jail. *amusing developments, like when a young rabbit gets Freddy’s attention and starts eating Mr. Bean’s verboten lettuce so as to get arrested and thrown in jail, which is rumored to be a fun place where the prisoners get to eat and play without having to work. *critical observations about human behavior, like, “I’m glad I’m not a man! How they ever manage to do anything or get anywhere in all these clumsy hot clothes I can’t imagine! Lords of creation, they call themselves! Humph, I’d rather be a pig any time.” *a strong moral compass, whereby people (like the city detective or bank robbers) who dislike and mistreat animals are bad, and people (like the local Sheriff and Mr. Bean) who like and respect animals are good. While the first two books in the series were travelogues (to Florida and the North Pole), this one occurs on or near the Bean farm. In this circumscribed setting, for the first time Freddy’s protean nature comes to the fore: scholar, detective, lawyer, jailer, and de facto leader of the farm animals (though not yet a poet or banker or newspaper pig!). Although in later Freddy books the Bean farm animals can talk with each other as well as with people, here they can only talk with each other and understand what people say to them without being able to say anything back. It’s a little clumsy, and you can see Brooks getting ready to abandon the limitation as Freddy nearly talks to the sheriff and to some robbers but then uses gestures to communicate instead, almost as if he could have talked to them but wanted to avoid surprising them. In later books, illustrator Kurt Wiese provides charming, vivid, and accurate pictures to accompany the text, without Disneyfying any of the animals. While those traits are also present here, he’s not as accurate as he is later in the series. For instance, the story says that Freddie disguises himself by donning a suit and applying a fake mustache sans beard, but the illustrations (including the cover picture) show him wearing a black beard sans mustache. Anyway, moments like when Freddy scolds Jinx make this book a lot of fun: Jinx started to walk across the floor, but Freddy stopped him. “Please don’t disturb anything,” he said, “until I have finished my investigation.” “Oh, I’m not disturbing anything. What’s the matter with you?” demanded the cat. “You’re disturbing the clues,” replied the pig testily. “All crimes have clues, and if you follow the clues, you find the criminal.” And moments like when the leader of the rats, Simon, expresses their point of view give the novel some depth: “But we have to live! Even the humble rats have to live… And what has Mr. Bean ever done for us? Set traps and mixed poison—that’s what he’s done for us! Driven us out of our comfortable homes! And you think we should be nice and kind and do things for him and say ‘pretty please’ just because he’s a man and owns this farm. Well, we’re sick of men. Men are all alike, selfish know-it-alls, and if you don’t do as they say—out you go!” View all my reviews
The Trumpet of the Swan by E.B. White
My rating: 3 of 5 stars An odd last children’s novel, less appealing than his first two I found E. B. White’s third and final children’s book, The Trumpet of the Swan (1970) less charming, funny, moving, and fantastic, than Stuart Little (1945) and Charlotte’s Web (1952). It tells the story of Louis, a trumpeter swan who’s born mute and who therefore must find a way to “speak” in order to attract the swan he loves (because male trumpeter swans use their bugling calls to woo and win mates). A nature- and animal-loving boy called Sam Beaver inspires Louis to learn to read and write with a slate and a chalk pencil, while Louis’ father heroically steals a trumpet from a Boulder, Colorado music store and gives it to his son to give him a voice. The rest of the novel depicts Louis’ attempts to earn money playing the trumpet to pay back the music store owner, to woo his beloved Serena, and to find a way to live free with his family. As in Charlotte’s Web, White begins this novel with what seems to be a human child protagonist and then shifts to a young animal hero for the bulk of the story. As in Charlotte’s Web, White loves nature, especially eggs. As he researched spiders to write Charlotte’s Web, White researched trumpet swans to write this novel, working in plenty of information about them: size, color, nests, eggs, flight, migration, names for males and young, etc. It is an odd children’s novel in its emphasis on money--needing it, getting it, spending it, finally living without it, etc.--including the prices of various things like hotel watercress sandwiches or a postage stamp or an airplane ticket or an agent’s fee or a bugler’s salary for a boys’ wilderness summer camp, etc. It is also much concerned about adult love (even more than Stuart Little), romantic and practical, with plenty of reproduction occurring. White writes verbose, poetic, dramatic, hyperbolic speeches for Louis’ father, and I’m unsure he’s funny enough to warrant the time/space given him, or that kids would appreciate his verbiage (though they might enjoy it when his down to earth spouse reigns him in). The novel favors the child who’s different from others, especially the child who has a “defect” of some sort and tries to encourage such a child to develop alternate ways of thriving, but it never really favors the idea of a child being a complete loner. Also, although the book touts the attractions of freedom, (view spoiler)[a bargain Louis makes with a zookeeper sacrifices the freedom of some of his cygnets. It seems a weird bargain made by White for Louis with Sam as intermediary, promising in return for the zookeeper not clipping Serena’s wings to bring the zoo any future physically challenged cygnets she bears to Louis, unconcernedly sacrificing their future freedom in return for Serena’s and his own. One wonders why White felt compelled to write this plot strand into his novel, given his vivid depiction of Louis’ speech defect, overcoming of it, and pursuit of freedom (and love). (hide spoiler)] The greater amount of popular culture references and slang (e.g., hippies, rock, jazz, country, Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, etc.) date the novel more than his earlier books for kids. It has (for White) some surprisingly lame writing. At one point a boy says, “That swan is as good as Louis Armstrong, the famous trumpet player,” when no boy would say that appositive phrase. White is ham handedly and unnecessarily explaining to the reader who Louis Armstrong was. For that matter, calling the swan Louis is too obvious a Louis Armstrong reference. Furthermore, while Fern names Wilbur, and Stuart’s parents presumably name him, for the cob to name his son Louis is an odd rupture of White’s fantasy. The talking animal business is handled by White as follows. His animals (well, the swans) speak English with each other as eloquently as any human beings and can understand human English, and Louis learns to communicate with humans by writing on his slate. But no animals (surely not the mute Louis) can speak English to people. It’s a little like Charlotte writing English words in her webs for people to read, though they take them as miracles and not attempts at communication by a spider. As for Stuart, he can talk with other animals and people alike and they with him, but he “only” looks like a mouse, and whether he’s animal or human is ambiguous. Anyway, in this third novel, White works the language thing inconsistently, having Louis’ father wield an impressively large and advanced vocabulary in his speechifying, understand what people are saying, but then assume that “superficial” means “serious” at one point. The fantasy in this book, then, doesn’t always hold up as convincingly as does the fantasy in White’s other books. That said, there is a great touch when Louis has Sam cut the webbing on one foot so he can play the trumpet! That’s a neat, painful, realistic touch to the fantasy that works well. Sam Beaver, who looks like an Indian and walks like one and has the family name Beaver but is not an Indian, is cool. Intelligent, thoughtful, curious, sensitive, observant, quiet, and kind, he’s like what we could (hope to) imagine Fern becoming if she didn’t instead become fascinated by Henry Fussy, for Sam loves animals and loves watching them and thinking about them and being with them at least as much as Fern does and more consistently as well (view spoiler)[though his final career choice to become a zookeeper seems at odds with the novel’s themes about freedom and wilderness (hide spoiler)]. All this is to say that being a book by E. B. White, it’s well written and has great moments and humor and beauty and is full of the love of life in this world on this earth and the longing to be free from adult constraints, but that it’s less fulfilling and memorable than his earlier two novels. Although I frequently teach his older books in classes, I’ve never thought to use The Trumpet of the Swan. Another reason for that may be that the illustrations are not done by the splendid Garth Williams. The audiobook I listened to was perfectly read by White himself (available in parts on YouTube) and includes real trumpet playing whenever Louis plays the trumpet. View all my reviews
The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
My rating: 5 of 5 stars Charming and Not for Children When he was a little boy, the narrator of Le Petit Prince (1943) gave up becoming an artist because adults thought his drawing of a boa constrictor who’s swallowed an elephant was a hat. Now an adult, he’s all alone in the Sahara Desert thousands and thousands of miles from any human habitation, trying to repair his airplane (a matter of life and death), when a little guy suddenly appears and asks him to draw him a sheep. As the narrator can’t seem to draw a satisfactory sheep, he finally draws a box and says the sheep is inside it, which does the trick. Thus begins the narrator’s time with the Little Prince, which happened, we learn, six years ago and which the narrator has never forgotten. As the Little Prince never answers questions, only asks them, persistently, the narrator only gradually learns his story: he left his tiny home “planet” (asteroid B612, which turns so fast that you can see multiple sunsets each day and has three miniature volcanoes, a flower, and some baobab seeds) to learn how to deal with his temperamental and manipulative rose, whom (he realizes after leaving his planet) he loves. On his way to earth, drawn by a flock of passing birds, he stops off at a series of small worlds inhabited by solitary grownups, a king (who commands you to do what you’re going to do anyway), a vain person (who expects you to applaud and compliment him), a drunkard (who drinks because he’s ashamed and is ashamed because he drinks), a businessman (who has no time for loafing cause he’s gotta keep counting his possessions, the stars), a lamplighter (whose world is so small that he’s constantly having to light or extinguish the one streetlight as day and night rapidly pass), and a geographer (who has been too busy doing geography to explore his world). And so to Earth, where there are orders of magnitude more of each of those “bizarre” adults: “111 kings ... 7,000 geographers, 900,000 businessmen, 7,500,000 drunkards, 311,000,000 conceited men; that is to say, about 2,000,000,000 grown-ups.” During his year on Earth, the Little Prince has met a wise fox, who suggests he be tamed, a snake, who promises to help the Prince return to his home world (and his rose) with a little bite, and then finally the narrator, who befriends the Prince and hears his story and learns to be less uptight about his adult concerns (e.g., running out of water in the desert with a damaged airplane to repair). My high school French teacher took us to see the Bob Fosse movie adaptation (which we enjoyed for the cool songs and dances), I first read the book in a university French class, and I often listen to the wonderful (though unfortunately abridged) 1954 French adaptation on record with Gerard Philipe as the narrator, excellent voice actors for the other characters, and neat background music. And I don’t think it’s a book for children. It’s more a book for adults trying to remember being kids or for adults nostalgically remembering when they thought about remembering being kids. It is full of poetic, potent life wisdom, that would probably go right over kids’ heads, like: “Je suis responsable de ma rose.” (I am responsible for my rose.) And “on ne voit bien qu’avec le coeur. L'essentiel est invisble pour les yeux." (one only sees well with the heart. The essential is invisible to the eyes.) Perhaps the messages re childhood and adulthood and life and love and perception and what’s important etc. get a little . . . strongly delivered. . . But the conversations in the book are meaningful, humorous, and strange, the ending is moving and ambiguous, and the illustrations by the author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry are distinctive charming, minimalist, and beautiful. It is a uniquely appealing work. View all my reviews
Freddy and the Bean Home News by Walter Rollin Brooks
My rating: 3 of 5 stars Freddy, World War II, and a Media War The tenth Freddy the Pig book, Freddy and the Bean Home News (1943), begins mildly on the Bean farm, with Charles the Rooster feigning a cold to make his wife do the early morning wake-up crowing and Freddy giving a speech to the animals of the farm and environs to make them do “their patriotic duty” by joining a scrap metal drive to support the war effort. (This is a WWII novel: in addition to the drive, it features a well-timed blackout.) When Freddy visits Centerboro to give a story about the drive to the town newspaper, the Guardian, he finds a new regime there: the wealthy Mrs. Humphrey Underdunk has bought the paper because she was offended when the editor ran a story about her luncheon party next to a story about Freddy’s birthday party, and some people confused the photos of woman and pig, so she has replaced the editor Mr. Dimsey, a friend of Freddy’s, with her animal-hating brother Mr. Garble. Freddy thus decides to start his own paper, The Bean Home News. Soon, the pig’s energy, writing ability, personality, and extensive pool of “reporters,” (including keen-eared town mice and a curious hen who lives with a curious woman who provide Freddy with more news than he can—or should—use) are helping his paper outsell the Guardian. Mr. Garble starts printing anti-Freddy, anti-animal fake news, and such is the power of print and Mrs. Underwood’s money, that she gets a law passed by which any animal appearing in town without its owner may be repossessed or shot, and Freddy becomes a menace to society, a wanted pig sought by state troopers and private detectives. Freddy’s friend the Sheriff counsels him to tell his side of the story in print, so he starts fighting back in his paper with the truth. Mr. Bean has warned Freddy that “Politics … ain’t news,” but when the Guardian targets the Sheriff (who’s so humane that he provides the jail inmates with ice cream, picnics, and games, to the point that they try to stay in jail after their sentences end), Freddy defends his friend to help his chances to win the next election. Will Freddy’s disguise as a little boy called Longfellow Higgins clad in a sailor suit really work? Will he be able to continue publishing his paper while in hiding? Will he win the battle for public opinion? Will Old Whibley the owl successfully defend him in court? Will the Bean animals win the scrap metal drive? Will Freddy resist the tempting offer of a job on the staff of Senator Blunder? Will he ever write a poem that does not feature a pig? Will he ever purr like Jinx the black cat? The story answers such questions with aplomb. The illustrations by Kurt Weise are a big part of the charm of Freddy books like this one. The pictures are clean and realistic compared to “cute,” anthropomorphized Disney animals. Although Weise depicts the animals doing things animals would not really do (like writing poems), he usually draws them anatomically correct. And he usually chooses good scenes to illustrate. In Brooks’ fictional world animals (including birds and insects) can speak with each other and with humans (though they try to remain silent around most people to avoid startling them). According to his moral system, anyone who feels superior to animals or mistreats or insults them is punished, while anyone who likes animals and tries to help them is rewarded. Pompous bullies like Mrs. Underwood and Mr. Garble had best beware… *Brooks’ treatment of the situations that arise when Freddy and his animal friends are or aren’t invited to certain events or permitted to do certain social things signal that the books may be read as a pre-civil rights era racial allegory with animals representing people of color (though I bet kids wouldn’t notice it).* This is a fun book written in clean, demotic English (the black cat Jinx is downright slangy) aimed at least as much for adults as for kids. It features plenty of humor (ranging from slapstick and bickering to quirky “facts” about animals and ironic wisdom about people), some porcine poetry, a media war, a courtroom drama, and a neat new character in Jerry Peters, a keen, argumentative, lazy loner ant with a miniscule pet beetle. When Jerry, “no fool,” explains why he wants Freddy to teach him to read, he says, “Because I like things that aren’t any use to me,” which makes the pig defensive: “Reading is the—h’m, the gateway to knowledge. It opens up the—ha, the portals of wisdom. It permits you to share the thoughts of all great thinkers of the past—” “Such as what?” said the ant. “Eh?” said Freddy. “What thoughts?” said Jerry. “What are some of these great thoughts? You read a lot. Give me just one great thought you’ve got out of your reading.” “Well, naturally,” said Freddy, “you can’t just offhand pick out one. There’s Shakespeare, for instance, whose Complete-Works-in-One-Volume I possess. Shakespeare is full of great thoughts—” “Such as?” said the ant. “If you want to know these things, learn to read and then read them for yourself.” Brooks uses Freddy and Jerry to poke fun at pretentious people who collect and push “literature” without understanding it, while ultimately telling kids they should read. Freddy’s conflict with Underwood and Garble over the newspaper and animal rights is amusing and pointed, and the novel has plenty of the usual virtues of Freddy books, being a fusion of whimsical talking animal fantasy, realistic animal behavior, exciting action, sophisticated irony, and social, literary, and human satire, but this one seems slighter than the better ones. Anyway, it’s a pity that although the Freddy books were best sellers in the middle of the twentieth century, they are not so popular today. Perhaps they are too literate while looking too childish? On the bright side, they are mostly back in print as physical or kindle books. I’m really enjoying rereading the several Freddy books I first read fifty years ago and reading the others for the first time now. View all my reviews |
Jefferson Peters
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by Sabaa Tahir
A Young Adult Epic Fantasy with Lots of Violence & Romance
Elias is an elite Martial soldier, Laia a naïve Scholar slave. As they alternate telling their stories (in trendy Young Adult first person, present tense narration), we soon rea...
"It must be due to some fault in ourselves"--
George Orwell's Animal Farm (1945) is an anti-totalitarian-communist allegory in which the exploited animals of the Manor Farm kick Farmer Jones out and set about running the farm. At first...
by Lu Xun
Perfect Stories of Life in Early 20th Century China
Chinese Classic Stories (1998) by Xun Lu is an excellent collection of seven short stories by perhaps the most important 20th century Chinese writer of fiction. Lu Xun (1881-1936) stu...
Fine Writing, Great Characters, Immersive World
The Surgeon's Mate (1980) is the 7th novel in Patrick O'Brian's addicting series of age of sail novels about the lives, loves, and careers of the British navy captain Jack Aubrey and the ...
An Overwritten, Oddly Compelling Gothic Father
Matthew Lewis' notorious and influential Gothic novel The Monk (1796) takes place during the heyday of the Spanish Inquisition. Ambrosio, the monk/friar/abbot/idol of Madrid, is nicknamed ...
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