Freddy and the Ignormus by Walter Rollin Brooks
My rating: 4 of 5 stars “Hath not a Rat eyes? If you prick us do we not bleed?” OR “People who are scared are hardly ever very clear about what scared them.” In Freddy and the Ignormus (1941), the eighth of Walter R. Brooks’ 26(!) Freddy the Pig books, Freddy is writing an alphabet book in verse about animals to teach them to read, when Theodore, a handsome frog (who, though prone to stuttering, may be a better poet than the pig), shames Freddy into exploring the perilous Big Woods (“I may be only a pig, but I’ve got some pride”). This leads Freddy to investigate the Ignormus (a newly created rural-legend monster, after whose name Freddy likes to hopefully append, “if he exists”), which leads him to investigate a series of robberies on the Bean farm (even the small wild animals’ winter stores are robbed from the First Animal Bank of which Freddy is President). Freddy is stumped, his reputation as an ace detective and an honest pig in tatters. Even Mr. Bean believes that Freddy has stolen a bag of oats. The scoundrel rat Simon and his clan, recently returned from exile from the First Animal Republic (“For I think you will agree with me that there is no place in a republic of free animals, for rats”), must be behind everything, but how? And how to prove it, as the rats have been keeping out of sight? The novel features a swing for animals, a borrowed and then stolen and then sabotaged shotgun, a strange animal from Africa, the Ignormus (if he exists), a thrilling battle in the Big Woods, plenty of scares, and a surprising and heart-warming resolution. And many of Brooks’ straight-faced funny “facts” about animals: “For hens, as you perhaps know, can crow just as well as roosters if they want to. Usually they don’t want to.” “Mrs. Wiggins wasn’t brilliant—few cows are—but she had common sense, which Freddy had found by experience was a good deal more helpful.” “Spiders have very small voices, and they have to be almost in your ear before you can hear them, which is probably why so few people have ever heard a spider say anything.” “That’s a centipede for you. Generous as all get out, but pretty hard-boiled.” Freddy, of course, plays the central role, a reluctant detective who must discover the identity of the farm robbers in order to clear his own sullied name, while finding time to compose egregious poetry and dress up in disguise (as a small but wealthy hunter with a small hunting dog who looks and sounds suspiciously like a frog!). Jinx, the black cat is great (though his visiting sister Minx is a one-note joke who stays too long, always having had an experience better than yours), Charles the pompous rooster has a couple moments of genuine bravery (call him a chicken at your peril), Mrs. Wiggins the president of the FAR and their army’s general to boot exercises her down to earth wisdom and leadership, Theodore is insightful (and good at manipulating Freddy by appealing to his reputation for adventure), and the spiders Mr. and Mrs. Webb and a beetle called Randolph play key roles. Like the other Freddy novels, this one coheres around a set of themes: how our imaginations can scare us, how ignorance can be an enormous monster, how our reputations can make us reckless, how true bravery involves acting when you’re terrified, how kindness and forgiveness can heal much but not everything. The story is entertaining and funny, and although not up to the high standards of the better books like Freddy the Politician, Freddy the Detective, and Freddy and the Popinjoy, it has some neat moments, like when Simon goads Freddy, “I’ve been visiting my relatives out in Iowa. That’s a great place, Freddy. Lots of pigs in Iowa. But they don’t make poetry. No, no. Out in Iowa the pigs make pork. Pork, not poetry, Freddy. You ought to take a little trip out there.” Or like when Freddy muses, “‘It’s funny,” he thought. ‘Whether I believe in the Ignormus or not depends entirely on where I am. Out here I’m perfectly sure there isn’t any such creature. Am I sure?’ He thought a minute. ‘Yes, I am,’ he said. ‘But the minute I step in under those trees I’ll believe in him again.’” By the way, I bet E. B. White read this book, because in Charlotte’s Web Templeton says things to Wilbur reminiscent of Simon’s words to Freddy here and declaims on how unappreciated he is (as a rat) in ways not unlike those of Brooks’ earlier rat elsewhere in this novel. View all my reviews
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Otto of the Silver Hand by Howard Pyle
My rating: 4 of 5 stars Otto is no Tom Sawyer or Huckleberry Finn! What would you do if you were the baby boy of the robber Baron Conrad, but lived your first twelve years lived among gentle monks in a monastery, until your father abruptly fetched you to live with him and his hard men in his castle? What would happen were your father to mend his ways and go swear fealty to the new Holy Roman Emperor, taking his men with him and leaving his castle and “little simple-witted boy” unprotected, “a sad mistake”? What would happen were Conrad’s feud-foe Baron Henry to get his hands on you, who know how to read but not to fight? Howard Pyle’s compact novel Otto of the Silver Hand (1888) is that kind of story. It’s full of authentic details of life in the “dark ages” (food, clothes, work, arms, castles, monasteries, illuminated books, morals, etc.), suspenseful action (raids, rescues, pursuits, combats, etc.), vivid painterly descriptions (like “‘Forward!’ cried Baron Henry, and out from the gateway they swept and across the drawbridge, leaving Drachenhausen behind them a flaming furnace blazing against the gray of the early dawning”), and Pyle’s beautiful, arresting monochrome illustrations (from first letter of chapter decorations to full-page pictures). Tom Sawyer (1876) and Huckleberry Finn (1884) were published about when Otto of the Silver Hand was, but Twain and Pyle couldn’t be more different in their approach to literature for children. Otto is sure no Tom or Huck! They speak slangy demotic English, Otto elevated medievalesque English (e.g., “Oh, father!” he cried, “oh, father! Is it true that thou hast killed a man with thy own hand?”). They are “bad boys,” active, spirited, clever, irreverent, independent, and hostile to book-learning and church-going. Otto is a “good boy,” passive, spiritual, religious, obedient, and gentle, and loves reading books, gazing at their illustrations, especially one of the nativity, and listening to stories. Unlike Tom and Huck, who constantly play, scheme, trick, and adventure, Otto never initiates anything: starting when he’s a baby (when his mother dies giving birth to him), without his input or outcry he’s picked up and carried from point A to B to C. The closest Otto comes to making a plan is when Pauline, the daughter of Baron Henry, lets him know his father Conrad is in the vicinity, and the boy asks the girl if she’ll let his father know he’s in Henry’s castle so his father can work out how to rescue him. Otto has no sense of humor, and his novel has but one funny sequence (when One-eyed Hans infiltrates the enemy castle), whereas Twain’s boys and novels are made of jokes, comedy, and humor. Tom and Huck laugh more than they cry; Otto cries more than he laughs. People who meet Otto find him “cracked.” In Otto’s defense, he’s a holy child in the violent world of an allegorical historical fiction set in the German “dark ages,” not a “real” boy in a realistic historical fiction set in 19th-century America. Actually, Pyle may be more realistic than Twain in depicting the lack of a child’s agency in the face of adult tyranny, because Tom and Huck always outsmart any strict or sadistic adults they meet. Too often in real life, kids can only be passive and victimized, like Otto. While Tom and Huck are eternally boys, Otto grows from a baby to a man, so in a sense Pyle packs more of a person's life into his shorter novel than Twain does into his longer ones. And although Otto wants something very different from Tom and Huck, like them he sticks to his own way of thinking, no matter what life brings him. Some people may not like their children reading a story in which a child is mutilated, but though we are in the room when it happens, Pyle finesses the act so we don’t “see” it happen or know it happened till later. The graphic violence he does show in real time occurs between men. Indeed, an interesting thing about the story, especially considering that Pyle also published The Story of King Arthur and His Knights (1903), is that it features no feats of derring-do, no knightly jousts or Arthurian quests. It depicts the violence of men as more horrible than glorious. Although at one point Conrad does heroically hold a bridge alone, the book should make children want to read, not to swordfight. There are two spots of bad writing in the novel. Otto’s mother is disturbingly self-centered, and at one point Otto is said to “lay for a while with his hands clasped” when that isn’t really possible. But mostly it’s really well written, with everything from tense suspense, like-- Minute after minute passed, and Schwartz Carl, holding his arbelast in his hand, stood silently waiting and watching in the sharp-cut, black shadow of the doorway, motionless as a stone statue. Minute after minute passed. Suddenly there was a movement in the shadow of the arch of the great gateway across the court-yard, and the next moment a leathern-clad figure crept noiselessly out upon the moonlit pavement, and stood there listening, his head bent to one side. Schwartz Carl knew very well that it was no one belonging to the castle, and, from the nature of his action, that he was upon no good errand. To strange lyrical imagination, like-- But most of all they loved to lie up in the airy wooden belfry; the great gaping bell hanging darkly above them, the mouldering cross-beams glimmering far up under the dim shadows of the roof, where dwelt a great brown owl that, unfrightened at their familiar presence, stared down at them with his round, solemn eyes. Below them stretched the white walls of the garden, beyond them the vineyard, and beyond that again the far shining river, that seemed to Otto’s mind to lead into wonder-land. There the two would lie upon the belfry floor by the hour, talking together of the strangest things. “I saw the dear Angel Gabriel again yester morn,” said Brother John. “So!” says Otto, seriously; “and where was that?” Pyle’s illustrations, especially the twenty-six full-page ones, are exquisite: beautiful, austere, detailed, absorbing, unforgettable. My mother read the book to me when I was ten, and I just now after fifty years reread it, and though I’d mostly forgotten the story, I had mostly remembered the pictures, and looked at them again with mesmerized deja vu. Unlike with Twain’s works, the popularity of Otto of the Silver Hand has worn off by now, but it must have been popular in earlier times, for I detect its influence on artists like Maurice Sendak (e.g., cross-hatching) and Barry Windsor-Smith (e.g., trees) and writers like Lloyd Alexander (e.g., Taran and Eilonwy). Pyle’s The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood (1883), The Garden Behind the Moon (1895), and Howard Pyle’s Book of Pirates (1921) are all much more entertaining, but Otto, the classic passive strange outsider children’s literature hero, really sticks with me and makes me think. View all my reviews
Finn Family Moomintroll by Tove Jansson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars A Magical Valley for Kids and Adults OR The Difficulties of Getting Rid of a Hobgoblin’s Hat I love all the Moomintroll books by Tove Jansson because they are so whimsical and wistful, charming and unsettling, strange and deep. Each book has its own mood, setting, and story-type as it combines with the others to present a full picture of Moomin Valley life. So I was looking forward to hearing Hugh Laurie read an early book in the series, Finn Family Moomintroll (1948). In it, Moomintroll (a soft sensitive animal the size of a plump child), his parents (Moominpappa and Moominmamma), and his friends Snufkin (a wandering loner), the Snork Maiden (a vain and strong girl who loves Moomintroll), the Snork (her know it all brother), and Sniff (a self-pitying coward), as well as their guests the Hemulen (a pompous dress-wearing collector) and Muskrat (a dour hammock philosopher who’s always reading a book called On the Uselessness of Everything), and assorted mysterious creatures, like the deaf and dumb Hattifatteners, the kleptomaniacal mouse-sized herring-faced friends Thingummy and Bob, and the dread wintry Groke, participate in spring and summer adventures initiated by the finding of the Hobgoblin’s black hat: magical transformations, island explorations, alien encounters, nonsensical courtroom dramas, wish-fulfillment feasts, and more. There are many funny asides like when the narrator swears by “the-Protector-of-all-Small-Beasts” (instead of God) or says something like, “If you want to find out what the muskrat’s false teeth were turned into, you can ask your Mama. She's sure to know.” Most of the incidents in this story are charming and cheerful, but beneath them flow undercurrents of dissatisfaction, insecurity, loneliness, and sadness flow. The scene where Moomintroll is unwittingly transformed so that his friends and even (briefly) his own mother don’t recognize him starts off funny but turns distressing. The scene where the Hemulen is depressed because he’s completed his perfect stamp collection and hence has stopped being a collector and become an owner is interesting. Moominpapa is ever writing his memoirs and crying when he recalls his youth, and Moomintroll’s longing love for Snufkin is poignant. Amidst her whimsy, Jansson reveals the depths of the human heart through her cute, grotesque, and fantastic creatures. And her distinctive illustrations are prime: clean lined, lovely, strange, simple, detailed, and fantastic. All those features, in addition to her original imagination, make her books appealing to both kids and adults. Finn Family Moomintroll is not the best Moomintroll book and listening to any of them without Jansson’s illustrations is a loss. However, hearing Hugh Laurie (with his natural British accent) read moments like the rising of the August moon shivered me with pleasure: It sailed up, a deep orange colour, unbelievably big and a little frayed round the edges like a tinned apricot, filling Moomin Valley with mysterious lights and shadows. “Look! To-night you can even see the craters on the moon,” said the Snork Maiden. “They must be awfully desolate,” said Moomintroll. “Poor Hobgoblin up there hunting!” Yea, she can really write fantasy, like “A top hat is always somewhat extraordinary,” “Oh, to be a Moomin and to dance in the waves when the sun gets up,” “Far away, Lonely Island lay flaming in the light of the sunset,” AND-- “It [a ball of poisonous pink perennials] twisted slowly up out of the hat, and crept down onto the floor. Tendrils and shoots groped their way up the walls, clambered round the curtains and blind-cords, and scrambled through the cracks, ventilators, and keyholes. In the damp air flowers came out and fruit began to ripen, and huge leafy shoots blotted out the stairs, pushed their way between the legs of the furniture and hung in festoons from the chandelier. The house was filled with soft rustling sound: sometimes the pop of an opening bud could be heard, or the thud of ripe fruit falling on the carpet. But Moominmamma thought it was only the rain and turned over on her other side and went to sleep again.” View all my reviews
Freddy's Cousin Weedly by Walter Rollin Brooks
My rating: 3 of 5 stars “I like honesty, even in an enemy” OR Home Alone on the Bean Farm OR Draw a Fierce Mustache and Angry Eyebrows on a Timid Piglet at Your Own Peril In the main plot of Freddy’s Cousin Weedly (1940), the seventh entry in Walter R. Brooks’ humorous and savory Freddy the Pig series (twenty-six books published from 1927 to 1958), Aunt Effie and Uncle Snedeker show up at the New York farmhouse of Mr. and Mrs. Bean, who are absent vacationing in France. The aunt and uncle aim to locate and abscond with the silver teapot Effie believes that her mother should have left to her instead of to Mrs. Bean. Needless to say, Freddy the pig and his fellow Bean farm animals will do everything they can to foil the interlopers. The sub-plot consists of Jinx the black cat adopting Freddy’s timorous cousin Little Weedly and trying to instill confidence in the piglet. The book is a comedy of manners: uninvited house guests, contested heirloom, practical jokes, apologies and forgiveness, and so on. The aunt and uncle who seem like villainous invaders turn out to be responsible house guests, helping the animals protect the Beans’ garden from an invasion of martial caterpillars, maintaining the farm in good order, and even, finally, inviting all the farm animals and a number of local wild ones to a consummately polite tea party. As Freddy and company learn that Effie has redeeming qualities, so she learns that pigs and other animals can be at least as well-mannered as people. Effie thinks that being “polite to people even when they’re your enemies” should be in her etiquette book. The book posits that “There are two things you can do if you have a disagreement with somebody. You can try to settle it by fighting, or you can try to settle it by being friendly with them.” Through all that runs an allegorical commentary on race relations using animals as stand ins for people of color. (This is not as offensive as it sounds, because Brooks respects and likes animals at least as much as people and writes most of his stories from the animal point of view.) When Effie goes to watch a movie, she discovers Freddy (a pig!) sitting next to her and demands his removal, only to be told, “We make no class distinctions in this theatre, madam… Bankers, working men, Eskimos, Hottentots, elephants, lizards—we treat them all alike. If they have the price of admission.” It may seem condescending to minorities when Freddy comes off as admirable (and wins Effie’s approval) for offering to leave to avoid causing a disturbance. But as the book was published before the Civil Rights era, Brooks’ attempt to open child readers’ minds about “people” who are different is impressive. Like the other Freddy books, this one is pretty funny. Brooks here presents many amusing animal “facts” like, “Cows do a good deal of resting. They are not very ambitious, and few cows have ever made great names for themselves in the world. They would much rather sit around in the shade and talk. But they are often very wise animals, and their opinions are well worth listening to.” Indeed, the cow Mrs. Wiggins says several wise things. Once she explains the difference between manners and politeness: “Aunt Effie’s only polite when her etiquette book says she ought to be, and that’s when she’s having a party, or maybe when somebody else is being polite to her. I guess with her it’s just manners, and not real politeness.” Elsewhere she explains why she doesn’t open letters: “As long as it isn’t opened, I can think of lots of nice things it might be. But as soon as I open it, then it means I’ve got to do something.” Brooks also writes interesting animal behavior that seems like something real animals might do, as when Jinx tries to get Effie to let him into the house: “Jinx had used his saddest and most mournful mew. It made you think of little children crying and cats dying of starvation and all sorts of sorrowful things, and you would be pretty hard-hearted if you could keep from going to the door.” There is plenty of humor for adults here, too, like when the narrator says that “Uncle Snedeker was usually considered to be a pretty good husband. That is, he almost always did what Aunt Effie told him to.” Brooks usually writes unadorned, straightforward, demotic English suitable for kids, but he’s also capable of vivid, original, and poetic figures of speech like, “The first raindrops pattered like mice running over the shingles.” Freddy is a charismatic protagonist, a protean pig whose interests run from detective work to poetry. Yet he is quite lazy, so that he trains his animal staff at his First Animal Bank to say “good morning” when he shows up late in the afternoon. And he likes poetry too much: “Freddy should have seized the teapot and made off with it without a moment’s delay. But he was a poet as well as a pig of action.” The illustrations by Kurt Weise are perfect: realistic (his animals look like real animals, not Disney cartoon creatures), accurate (he has carefully read the story), well-chosen (he illustrates important and or funny scenes), and witty (his minimalistic picture of Emma the duck trying to look like a wicked tiger is comical). Finally, this is a solid, if not stellar book, being sillier, lighter, and less tightly plotted than the best Freddy books (like Freddy the Detective and Freddy and the Poppinjay), but it has many virtues. The high point is an absurd tour de force play in verse written by Freddy, performed by the Bean farm animals, and featuring Queen Elizabeth I (the cow Mrs. Wiggins), her ladies in waiting (the ducks Emma and Jane), Sir Walter Raleigh (Weedly), Captain Kidd (the horse Hank), Sherlock Holmes (Freddy), a G-man (Jinx), and an unsanctioned marriage plan, stolen jewelry, a lot of ordered executions, and a bad rhyme competition. A smaller-scale high point is a Paul Revere-esque mouse-back midnight ride by the husband-and-wife spiders Mr. and Mrs. Webb (the illustration by Kurt Weise is prime). Oh, and the idea of Jinx (a cat!) adopting Little Weedly (a piglet!) and the timid piglet turning into a cocky prankster after Freddy paints a fierce mustache and angry eyebrows on him is funny. Hey, it’s starting to sound pretty good after all! View all my reviews
Hadashi No Gen Vol.1 - 10 Complete Collection [In Japanese] by Keiji Nakazawa
My rating: 5 of 5 stars A Manga Epic about War, the Bomb, and Buckwheat Whew! I finally read Kenji Nakazawa’s atomic bomb manga epic Hadashi no Gen (Barefoot Gen). Twenty years ago, I bought the three-volume set in the Hiroshima Peace Museum (the original was published in ten-volumes from 1973-1987), but I’d never read it ‘cause it’s so long (2600+ pages) and promised to be so horrifying. It turned out to be a harrowing but also funny and moving story and good practice for reading Japanese (e.g., I learned the Hiroshima dialect way to hostilely address a person: “Odore!”). Inspired by Nakazawa’s experiences before, during, and after the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, the story recounts eight years in the life of his fictional alter-ego (Barefoot) Gen Nakaoka, from age five to thirteen, including his relationships with his family, friends, and nemeses as they struggle to survive before and after the bomb. Throughout, Nakazawa relates historical facts (e.g., how American scientists developed the bomb, how American researchers took samples from the victims to see what effect radiation had on them, and how American authorities suppressed such info to avoid criticism) and reveals Japanese culture (e.g., foods, clothes, jobs, baths, beds, houses, songs, jokes, schools, and communities) and human nature (from selfish and cruel to generous and loving). He draws and writes many memorable scenes, like the following: Gen’s father being beaten by the Japanese police. Gen and his family being helped by their good Samaritan Korean neighbor. Gen and his little brother fighting over a grain of rice. The atomic bomb detonating and destroying. Gen trying to free his family members from their collapsed house as an inferno approaches. Gen helping his mother bear his baby sister. Gen losing his hair. Gen caring for a badly burned young artist whose family won’t touch him. Gen mistaking Ryota for his deceased little brother. Ryota recalling reaching for a cicada when the bomb detonated and killed his parents. Gen trying to steal milk for his sister from the US military but ending up with condoms. Gen earning money by scavenging scrap metal, collecting sewage, and selling skulls. Gen learning how to draw perspective from an old artist. Gen going on a date to Miyajima with Mitsuko. Gen giving Mitsuko’s chastened father a portrait of her. Although Nakazawa depicts the terrible nature of the bomb, he also shows how Japanese war fervor, atrocities against civilians in China and Korea, and abuse of Chinese and Koreans in Japan, deprive the country of innocent victim status. Some of the most disturbing parts of the manga occur before the bomb when, because his father is antiwar, Gen’s family is tormented by neighbors, teachers, and police. Nakazawa’s art looks like that of 1970s manga, ranging from realistic to cartoonish and effectively using camera shots, dynamic motion lines, and expressionistic emotion lines. His panels are rectangular or square, and he dramatically employs rare full-page, half-page, or third-page pictures. He depicts the aftermath of the bomb as a hellscape: buildings collapse, streets buckle, telephone poles snap, and everything burns (even horses); semi-nude people shuffle with hands outstretched before them, their melting skin dripping like wax, or stagger like walking cacti, their bodies bristling with glass fragments; corpses bloat and burst in the river; maggots squirm, flies swarm, and mass cremations smoke. An appalling visual assault on the senses. Maximum body horror. Nakazawa also draws beautiful pictures, like in establishing shots of the sky, as in a small panel showing three flying birds silhouetted against the sun and singing “chi-chi-chi.” He also draws subtle and moving images, as when a closeup of the kids’ footsteps through the sand leads to a zoomed-out picture of their silhouettes starting to run home from the beach with a bright sun above them. He evokes strong emotions via his layouts, as when Gen has been missing his hospitalized mother, and the turn of a page reveals a close-up of her smiling face, evocative lines radiating out from it, her eyes with stars in them. She’s home! Nakazawa also effectively uses suspense and time, as when he informs us that the bomb detonated on August 6th at 8:15 AM, so the family wall clock reading 7:00 means 75 more minutes of “normal” wartime life. When Gen assures his mother that they have nothing to worry about, we worry for them. And when the family clock reads 8:00, they should have fifteen more minutes, but when we turn the page the bomb detonates, time having skipped forward to shock us. Throughout the epic, Nakazawa vividly shows that “In any and every way, war ruins people’s lives.” Gen meets many physically and psychologically damaged people, like the burn-scar-faced girl he says is beautiful only to have her curse him and try to commit suicide after she sees her reflection. At the same time, Nakazawa depicts the resilience of the human spirit. Despite everything he experiences, Gen lives spunkily and encourages other people to try. Surviving adversity makes us stronger, as Gen’s father tells him early on: “Be like buckwheat! The more you step on it and press it down, the stronger and straighter it grows.” It becomes an inspiring refrain for Gen. There are other themes in the manga: Hard work and a positive attitude improve your chances of survival; in any society, in wartime or peacetime, there are unethical, amoral, and cruel people (e.g., politicians, officials, police, gangsters, and any majority) exploiting and tormenting weaker people, and we must oppose such bullies with all our strength; families don't have to be biological to be strong; art should be borderless. At times Gen seems too articulate, intelligent, and aware for his age, serving as mouthpiece for the creator Nakazawa. At one point, Gen’s mother says, “Any time you sense a war feeling starting, you have to immediately speak up loudly against it. There’ll always be some people who say, ‘for the country,’” and Gen replies, “Mom, I won’t let another war happen! No matter what noble and beautiful things people say, I won’t be deceived.” Another time he stops “Kimigayo” from being sung at his junior high school graduation ceremony, telling the audience that the song represents the emperor, who is a war criminal, and that Japanese soldiers cut babies out of pregnant Chinese women with bayonets. Such messages are apt and necessary, but I can’t always believe Gen’d be able to deliver them. The manga has other slight flaws. Given its antiwar thrust, it indulges in too much typical Japanese slapstick violence among family members--though that may be a matter of cultural taste. Nakazawa seems to distinguish between different kinds of violence, acceptable one-on-one fighting vs. abominable bombing and war. Gen is righteously violent: as he ages, he moves from biting evildoers’ fingers to the bone and headbutting their groins to knocking them out with his fists. More than once the manga condones the killing of wicked yakuza by Gen’s surrogate little brother Ryota, being nothing compared to what war criminals did during WWII. Finally, there’s a bit too much potty humor, as when Gen pees on malefactors. All that said, the work is majestic. Anyone wanting to know what it was like to live in Hiroshima before, during, and after the bomb while affirming the power of the human spirit to survive horrors should read Hadashi no Gen (and there are English and other translations). View all my reviews
The Marvellous Land of Snergs by E.A. Wyke-Smith
My rating: 4 of 5 stars “Here! Who are you calling a dwarf?” “It is fortunate for children, and for grownups too, if they can manage it, when they do not concern themselves greatly about the future possibilities of a calamity. Sylvia and Joe were of this kind, especially Joe.” On the coast of an inaccessible enchanted island, the warm-hearted, educated, and upright Miss Watkyns and her fellow women of the Society for the Removal of Superfluous Children (S.R.S.C.) oversee a colony of 478 previously neglected and or abused children now living in cozy one-story houses with fences to keep out the too-affectionate cinnamon bears. About a day and a half walk through dense woods lies the town of the Snergs, a short, broad-shouldered, long-lived, pixie-related people (do NOT call them dwarves) who work in batches for Miss Watkyns and co. in return for presents from the outside world. Down the coast a bit from the S.R.S.C. is a community of cursed, apparently immortal 17th-century Dutch sailors led by Captain Vanderdecken (“vulgarly known as the Flying Dutchman”), who’ve stopped sailing around in their dilapidated ship to live in huts by the shore. The heroes of the story are two troublemaking children, impulsive Sylvia and disobedient Joe. Sylvia was ignored by her society mother, Joe abused by his circus rider father, so the S.R.S.C. spirited them away. They are chums, sharing everything, including their pet puppy Tiger. The plot gets going when Joe throws a half-brick into the Dutch sailors’ cauldron, splashing six of the men with hot soup, so that although Miss Watkyns won’t let the Dutch keelhaul the boy, she punishes him by locking him in the turret room with bread and water, so he and Sylvia run away with Tiger, aiming to visit the village of the Snergs, where no S.R.S.C. child has ever ventured before. The kids quickly meet the real hero of the novel, the most foolish and feckless of all the Snergs (and that’s saying something), young Gorbo, only 273 years old. Gorbo tried to be a potter, but because the pots he provided the S.R.S.C. promptly broke, Miss Watkyns told him to “potter off.” Now he’s gormlessly walking around when the runaways run into him. While Sylvia and Joe remain inveterately reckless (“It is indeed terrible to think that all this fuss should be caused by the folly and disobedience of two shrimps like Sylvia and Joe”), Gorbo has potential. There follows an episodic plot featuring whimsical fantastic things like an uncrossable river, a set of magical doors, a forest of giant fungi, a reformed ogre, an unreformed witch, an intimidating clowder of black cats, an ill-equipped knight errant, a court jester with poor judgment, a tyrannical king of ruthless fame, an expeditionary force of Snergs and Dutchmen, and more. Despite the narrator’s promises, the story doesn’t, finally, prove any useful moral: “For however reprehensible the children were in their disobedience and irresponsibility, it cannot be denied that the general results of their conduct were beneficial.” Wyke-Smith’s book has vivid, humorous descriptions, like “The rope was more than good enough for Snergs, who can climb like startled cats,” and “In appearance it [the turret room] resembled the more despicable forms of lighthouses, and it was quite useless for anything practical, being so narrow that a grown-up person ascending the stairs had to writhe up like a snake, and the chamber atop being so small that Miss Watkyns had considered the question of turning the whole business into a pigeon-house.” It has funny dialogue, like: “And it did not occur to thee, thou farthing rascal, to lead them back to their little home by the sea?” “N-no, O King, I-I didn’t think.” “That we believe, thou worse than worm.” And neat lines, like: “We may be forced to introduce battle, murder and sudden death into these parts.” (That’s a play on the Oxford Book of Common Prayer’s “From battle and murder, and from sudden death, Good Lord, deliver us.”) The narrator is hands on, commenting on the action, like this: “Gorbo, that lout, had really done it this time.” Or this: “To those who know from experience, as I confess I do, how painful it is to have one’s sparkling verbal efforts received with cold unappreciative looks or smiles in which pity lurks behind a mere pretense at mirth, will really appreciate how Baldry suffered from this really pointed meanness.” I hesitate to bring this up, but Wyke-Smith’s treatment of Sylvia may be dated. The girl has more agency than poor puppy Tiger (a prop schlepped around), but she is more easily daunted and discouraged than Joe, already knows how to use her feminine wiles to get what she wants, and perks up when looking at a wedding dress. On the other hand, the witch and Miss Watkyns are the most formidable figures in the novel. About the audiobook, once every half hour lively orchestra music jounces in to end a scene. More importantly, although Peter Joyce may overdo the base narration by drawing out—almost singing—key vowels in key words, as in “and JOOOE (Joe) was gone” and “the AIIIIIR (air) was full of wooden chips,” he relishes reading the story, doing prime character voices, especially the whiny ogre, the snide witch, and the sweet numbskull Gorbo (I love it when he moans, “Oh, no!”). Unfortunately, the “unabridged” audiobook CHANGES the original text (at least) whenever the narrator addresses the “reader” and Peter Joyce instead says, the “listener”: Original: “a narrative which should not be without improving effect on the minds of my younger readers.” Audiobook: “a story which should not be without improving effect on the minds of my younger listeners.” In addition to dumbing down the book by replacing “narrative” with “story,” it’s a violation to change the original “reader” to “listener”! It makes me wonder what other changes the audiobook producers made to the original text. Finally, a fusion of Peter Pan, Oz, Arthurian romance, traditional fairy tales, and and Wyke-Smith’s quirky touches, The Marvellous Land of Snergs (1927) is a delightful pleasure. I recommend it to anyone who likes vintage children’s literature. Hey, Tolkien and his kids loved it! The Snergs—no taller than the average table and fond of feasts—influenced Tolkein’s hobbits, and I bet that the genteel, intrusive, tongue-in-cheek narrator influenced Tolkein’s narrator in The Hobbit. Wyke-Smith wrote other books, and I’m sure curious to read them. View all my reviews
The Story of Freginald by Walter Rollin Brooks
My rating: 3 of 5 stars Who’s a Sissy? OR Too Much Circus, Not Enough Plot, Depth, or Freddy Rather than the usual protean porcine protagonist, the fourth book in Walter S. Brooks twenty-six book Freddy the Pig series, The Story of Freginald (1936), centers on a young male bear called (at first) Louise. Louise’s father wanted to call him Fred and his mother Reginald, but his grandfather, thinking he was a girl, named him Louise. The girl’s name ostracizes Louise from his fellow bears (“We don’t want to play with girls!”) and leads him to become a natural poet, composing poems to deal with his loneliness. Early in the story, Leo the lion recruits Louise to join Mr. Boomschmidt's Colossal and Unparalleled Circus, because they need animals with unusual abilities to satisfy their audiences, and a bear called Louise is unique. And when Mr. Boomschmidt discovers (and exploits) the bear’s poetic talents, the circus enters a new era of success. The only problem that a young girl elephant also called Louise and the bear dislike each other, because the other animals like to call “Louise!” and watch both animals come running. Eventually, the bear changes his name to Freginald, joining the two names his parents wanted to give him. The novel is episodic, a series of exciting and comical adventures leading to a big climax and a satisfying resolution. Freginald recruits a cantankerous mouse to perform as an expert diver; Freginald and Leo are captured by a band of wild southern plantation domesticated animals still fighting the Civil War; a boy shoots at Fregninald and Leo (it’s America after all); Freginald has trouble with a tall, dark man with a long, black mustache; a rival circus tries to drive Mr. Boomschmidt out of business; Freginald enlists Freddy as a detective; etc. In addition to the circus competition, there is a fair amount of American capitalism here, grounding the whimsy in details like circus tickets costing twenty-five cents, photographs of Freginald selling for ten cents, mistreated animals going on strike, better work being found for them with a contractor, and so on. Brooks finishes the book by saying that if we tell Freginald we know the author, we’ll get a free pass to see Mr. Boomschmidt’s circus. Like other Freddy books, there is much humor here. There’s a cute scene where Freginald tries to convince Leo that it’s impossible to jump on one’s shadow: “But you never get anywhere arguing with a lion.” And there’s a funny moment where Freginald receives a cryptic message from Freddy, because his typewriter is missing the n, i, and y keys, so he substitutes m, w, and j for them. There’s slapstick humor like with Jerry the rhino, who’s so near-sighted that when you want him to charge something, you’d better point him in the right direction. There are exaggerated character traits, like “it would have been pretty hard to tell whether Mr. Boomschmidt was awake and singing or asleep and snoring.” Much of Brooks’ whimsical humor derives from humanizing his animals (who speak English with other animals and people and have human names) while retaining some of their natural traits (Freginald tries but can’t stay awake in winter and finally hibernates in his circus wagon till April). Brooks’ narrator provides quirky facts about animals like, “It is no use trying to explain to an ostrich, though few people realize it. It isn’t because they are really stupid, but they are so vain they won’t listen.” Throughout the book, Brooks dispenses dollops of wisdom. A man explains that clowns paint their faces “Because there ain’t anybody can tell the same jokes over twice a day, week after week, year after year, and not get pretty sour.” Louise gives Freginald some writing advice (that Brooks himself follows): “Louise noticed that when she used ordinary language she said much more interesting things. He tried it with his poems, and he found that the simpler they were, the better people liked them.” Fregninald also learns “that suspicious people are the easiest to fool.” The monochrome illustrations by Kurt Weise enhance the charm of the book. His animals are far from Disney, being realistic rather than cartoonish. As a result, the anthropomorphisizing of Brooks’ text forms a pleasing mismatch with the art. At the same time, the pictures have as much whimsy as the stories, and are funny and apt. The humor in the book concerning masculinity and femininity becomes a theme: be yourself and don't worry what other people think. Freginald doesn’t mind being Louise, while Leo doesn’t feel his masculinity compromised by getting his mane permanented into beautiful long curls. However, the message gets mixed. Later when Freginald visits his home, another bear continues calling him Louise, so he forces a confrontation by calling him Mabel, while Leo strikes a leopard who laughs at him after getting a permanent. Leo says to Freginald, “Sure, Fredg, have a manicure,” only to have a squirrel mock the bear, “Shiny-toes! Sissy-toes!” Leo is a brave, intelligent lion—the right paw of Mr. Boomschmidt—who permanents his mane and manicures his claws, but the few female characters in the story are mostly made fun of. Like other Freddy books, apart from the animals, this one is white. Only one character of color plays even a minor role, a scary Native American called Pedro who has no lines, when most characters talk a lot. The book has offensive touches dating it to the 1930s. Once, Leo says, “We tried dressing up the monkeys in fancy costumes and advertising them as members of the wild African tribe of the Bwango-Bwango, but the people saw through the disguise.” Elsewhere, Freginald convinces a “dull and dowdy” wren that if he made a nest from Leo’s gold hair, his children would be “much brighter colored,” which would give them social advantages: “It’s no good being bright inside if you aren’t bright outside.” The kindle version has typos: misspellings (e.g., Shakspere, coud) weird punctuation (“the ceremony was very. impressive”), random letters (e.g., “wilder and more ferocious I than any wild animals can possibly be”). It’s a pity, because Brooks’ straightforward American prose is clean, unadorned, and fun. At times it waxes almost beautiful: “The countryside was so wide and mysterious under the stars, and the woods through which they passed were so deep and black and yet friendly, too.” Mr. Boomschmidt’s circus appears in several other Freddy the Pig books. It adds humor to the novels (owner and animals being idiosyncratic and amusing), as well as enhances the themes on the humane treatment of animals initiated by Mr. Bean’s farm where Freddy lives. However, a little circus goes a long way, and The Story of Freginald is less charming, funny, and focused than the best of the Freddy books, so readers new to the series should start with the third, Freddy the Detective. View all my reviews
Le Secret de la Licorne by Hergé
My rating: 4 of 5 stars Collectors Amok, or the Past in the Present, or Ever a Pleasure When I was a kid, I avidly read Hergé’s Adventures of Tintin in English translations. I loved to open a book and immerse myself in the Tintin world of clean lines, vibrant colors, vivid details, and dynamic action. Whether Tintin was solving mysteries or exploring in South America, East Europe, North Africa, the Himalayas, the Arctic Ocean, China, the Moon and so on, Hergé’s art, layouts, characters, and adventures were exotic and unambiguous, exciting and comical, cartoonish and realistic. I often read aloud, giving different voices to the different characters, like the intrepid cowlicked young reporter/explorer Tintin (a straight man for the outre characters around him), the alcoholic Captain Haddock (joyful, maudlin, or berserk when drunk), the incompetent and clumsy twin detectives Thomson and Thompson, absent-minded and hard of hearing genius Professor Calculus, and the cute, frank, doggy, and loyal terrier Snowy. Twenty years later while preparing for a graduate school French proficiency exam, I read Hergé’s Les Aventures de Tintin in the original French, enjoying them as much as when I’d been a kid. And recently I happened to watch—and dislike—Spielberg’s Tintin movie. It jams together parts of at least three books while leaving out some of the best parts, fabricates a new villain, indulges in too much showy non-stop action, inflicts constant egregious John Williams music, removes Snowy’s charm and “spoken” thoughts, adds a totally out of character dialogue in which Captain Haddock (!) gives Tintin (!) a corny morale raising speech about never giving up, and so on. Although Spielberg and company impressively capture the surface look of some scenes and characters from the original comics, their 3D CG approach makes it all feel less real and less appealing than in the original comics. Thus, the movie made me want to re-read the books, and I started with Le Secret de la Licorne (1943) because it’s one of my favorites. Le Secret de la Licorne is great. Into it Hergé interweaves two plots, one featuring a serial pickpocket targeting men’s wallets and one featuring three cryptic scrolls hidden inside three antique model ships and supposedly indicating the location of a pirate treasure. The pickpocket leads to a clever deus ex machina in the end and adds another layer to the book’s themes about our desires for material things, as with overly avid collectors. The stubborn model ship aficionado Ivan Ivanovitch Sakharine and the ruthless antique dealing Loiseau brothers are, then, mirrored by the well-organized pickpocket Aristide Filoselle, who, he says, is not a thief but a passionate collector of wallets. Even Tintin and Captain Haddock become eager to find a treasure. Of course, the Loiseaus are villainous partly because, unlike Sakharine and Filoselle, who genuinely love model ships and wallets, the brothers care nothing for the antiques they deal in, seeing them only as sources of money. And Tintin and the Captain are the moral compasses of the book, so they sure wouldn’t do anything unethical to pursue a treasure! Moreover, the plot originates from Tintin’s desire to give his nautical friend a model ship for a present. The prime part of the sixty-two-page book is a brilliant fourteen-page sequence early on in which Captain Haddock recounts—and reenacts—the adventure of his doppelganger ancestor the Chevalier Francois de Hadoque when, in 1698 in the Antilles his magnificent frigate the Licorne (Unicorn) was attacked by a smaller pirate ship captained by Rackham Le Rouge (Red Rackham). After an exchange of canon-fire, the pirates board the Licorne, resulting in a ferocious melee, with the Chevalier fighting off numerous pirates until he’s captured, after which he must try to find a way to escape. Throughout the sequence, Captain Haddock channels his late 17th-century ancestor, with the pictures of the Captain acting everything out for Tintin in the present, alternating seamlessly and amusingly with the pictures of the ancestor fighting etc. in the past, including props like the battered furniture, skewered pillows, and bottles of rum of the Captain’s apartment. Conflating past and present, it’s a visual and textual tour de force. And if you have a pirate fetish (as I did when a kid), the fourteen pages will scratch your itch. The book features impressive frames showing a busy marketplace or a sailing frigate or a country road and includes plenty of kinetic (often slapstick) action and a variety of camera angles and all of the best tricks that comics can perform when combining text and sequential pictures. There are amusing sequences featuring the detectives Dupont and Dupond (Thompson and Thomson) struggling with stairs, their hats, or a pickpocket, Milou (Snowy) tracking Tintin through the countryside, and Tintin fleeing from the ruthless antique dealers and their huge dog. As usual in Hergé’s work, there’s plenty of drops of sweat (especially conveying astonishment) and stars (especially conveying pain), but, despite stabbings, shootings, trippings, punchings, and the like, no blood. And no romance—except for Tintin and Captain Haddock’s eternal bromance. Sometimes Hergé overdoes action scenes, as when the chases, escapes, and fights etc. add excitement but don’t move the plot. There are a few sequences of panels where nothing interesting happens visually, when characters stand or sit and talk to each other so Hergé can info dump. At one point, Tintin gets a villain to spill the beans for ten frames in which large text-filled speech balloons nearly force the two characters out of the panels. Thankfully, the racist stereotypes of the early books like Tintin in the Congo are absent here (apart from the absence of people of color!), but the only female characters are an earnest landlady or two and a troublesome woman inopportunely occupying a public phone booth in the rain. Anyway, I can’t help it—I’ll always love rereading the adventures of Tintin. Le Secret de la Licorne is the first of a two-part story, the second volume being Le Trésor de Rackham le Rouge (Red Rackham’s Treasure), in which Tintin and the Captain organize a search for sunken pirate treasure. I am looking forward to it! View all my reviews
The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
My rating: 5 of 5 stars A Comical, Sublime, Poignant, Charming Classic Every second and every word of Anne Flosik's reading of Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows were a pure pleasure to listen to. If I wasn't laughing at the incorrigible Toad's absurd, selfish, reckless, and yet somehow heroic antics, I was shutting my eyes to imagine and savor the warm friendship between Rat and Mole and the rich descriptions of the different seasons of the natural world around the River. The novel achieves great poignancy when Mole misses his home and when Rat hears the call of the south, and sublime beauty when the friends see--and forget--the Piper at the Gates of Dawn. I like the ambiguous nature of the animals, who obey the "etiquette" of the changing seasons according to their animal natures, use paws, live in holes, and are aware of their differences from human beings, and yet who also wear clothes, eat human foods, and equip their holes with comfortable human furnishings. And just what is their size? If they are the naturally sized smallish animals (like any rodents or toads) they sometimes seem to be (like the seafaring rat from Constantinople), how could a field mouse go out shopping for Christmas feast supplies and come back laden with a pound of this and a pound of that and how could Toad crash stolen motorcars, disguise himself as a washerwoman, and ride a stolen horse? This blurring of naturalism and fantasy is one of the pleasures of The Wind in the Willows. Is The Wind in the Willows a children's book? Hmmm. I suspect that (as with the Alice books) adults may enjoy it more than children, though the Toad chapters should make every reader laugh. The book may be criticized for its conservative views on class and gender, but I treasure its humor, beauty, wonder, warmth, nature, and art. And Anne Flosik enhances all those virtues perfectly with her husky and measured voice and appealing wit and emotion. View all my reviews
Beezer by Brandon T. Snider
My rating: 3 of 5 stars Amusing, if a Little Damaged by Sitcom English The conceit of Brandon T. Snider’s Beezer (2019) is that Beezlebub, prince of demons and of hell (the Red Realm), so disappoints his father for lying around playing pranks or games instead of studying dark arts, cultivating supernatural powers, or desiring to destroy souls, that Lucifer banishes him to earth, where he wakes up as a newly adopted thirteen-year-old boy (called Beezer) in a quirky loving family comprised of mother Jessica Lewis and fellow adoptees eleven-year old Lucy and nine-year-old Dash, each of the three children being a different skin color. How will he fit into this multiracial “lovey dovey” family into group hugs and supporting and communicating with each other no matter what? Especially when Jessica is out of work, scrambling to get by, and receiving charity food. What will happen when Beezer goes to the mall or public library or meets kids from Lucy and Dash’s school? Will he ever be able to access his innate dark powers or open a portal leading back to the Red Realm? Will he ever get used to his human body, with its unfortunate needs and weaknesses? The best lines express Beezer’s perceptions of new experiences in his human earthbound body. He says things like, “Exiled to this backwater heaven-hole without powers,” “This human skin suit is so heavy,” and “Being human is so weird.” When hearing chirping birds, he says, “Quiet, you earth harpies.” When told about the mall, he says, “A meeting place where sad people buy things and eat slop in a court.” When trying to influence a worker to give him a red suit, he calls her, “Human saleswoman.” Such moments are one of the pleasures of the book. That said, it is geared too obviously for kids, with body humor aplenty--belches, farts, boogers, peeing, etc. As well as too much too speedy and righteous and definitive comeuppance for too obviously awful bullies. And the characters talk too much American sitcom English. Even before he is exiled to Earth, Beezer talks for some reason like a boy raised on American TV shows, saying things like, “What I’m telling you is that this place sucks” and “Get real,” and “Oh no no no no!” and “You’re the prince of fricking demons” etc. (This problem obtains with Disney movies like Moanna, Frozen, and Tangled, where the protagonist in a fantasy story with no narrative connection to America talks like they’ve been weaned on American sit com dialogue.) Furthermore, all the “We're here for you no matter what” and group hugs and deep breaths and express your feelings and be yourself can almost get cloying. Interestingly, some audible reviewers say the book is not for kids, and I have no idea what they mean. There’s no sex or graphic violence or swearing, so… Does the supposed problem for kids derive from the protagonist being the demon prince of hell and from the story featuring witchcraft, imps, goblins, demons, and hags, not to mention Lucifer himself? Why would those necessarily be bad things for kids to read about (or to listen to)? It must be a Christian thing? The story itself is all about finding one's own life-road in the context of a loving (multiracial) family (“Families come in all shapes and sizes”), about treating people with kindness and respect, and about getting outside your comfort zone to try new things. The only non-salubrious thing in it for kids I noticed was the sitcom American English! The concept is fun and there are funny moments and surprising developments (like Beezer’s “coming out” to the Lewises), and the voice acting by Fred Berman as Beezlebub, Janiece Abbott-Pratt as Lucy, and Margaret Ying Drake as Dash, is lively and smooth (once you get used to Berman’s overly dramatic flourishes as Beezer). The radio drama-like audiobook is entertaining and doesn’t overstay its welcome. I even want to listen to the sequel. 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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