Bizarre Title Day: The Book of Three

The Book of Three by Lloyd Alexander. 1964.

The heavy info-drop at the start of this book made me put it aside several times. The only reason I plugged ahead was because I had to complete this list!

I’m mixed. On one had the action is compelling and well-done and the plot moves fairly smoothly (i.e., not the “video game” plotline present in so many fantasy novels—like “we must rescue the enchantress but first we need the magic key but to get the magic key we must defeat the octagonal ogre but to defeat the octagonal ogre we need a dragon’s egg that can only be had as reward for aiding the chicken in his quest to cross the road!”). The similarities to Tolkien (The Hobbit published in 1937) were striking. A Gollum-like creature (Gurgi), and Taran is Sam to Gwydion’s Frodo for a good bit of the beginning. Yet this one is very much more, ahem, feminist than Tolkien. The female has a speaking role! And doesn’t end up embracing domesticity at the end (though maybe she will in future books. It’s still incredible, especially for the early ‘60s). And the plot takes many fascinating, unexpected, and un-Tolkien-like turns.

So, in short, I didn’t appreciate the info-dump at the head, as mentioned, nor the summing-up at the end. But both were far and away less tedious than Tolkien’s councils of Elrond and the like. Some notes on content:

• Taran’s move from Assistant Pig Keeper to hero is believable and subtle—nicely done. An especially poignant passage on p119, “To him, the bright morning felt deceptively gentle; the golden trees seemed to cover dark shadows. He shuddered even in the warmth.” He’s seeing with new eyes, growing, changing.
• But all this to-do over an ocular pig? Tolkien never had to argue the Ents into existence, nor Hobbits, but grown men seeking divination from a sow ... I needed some convincing that I never received.

That Ain't no Bull! Or, maybe it is...

The Story of Ferdinand by Munro Leaf. 1963.

Detailed line drawings showing wonderful expression and a grand fairy tale opening make for a timeless story.

Dear Ferdinand is different: so common to a child’s experience, so engaging. Through an unexpected twist (he sits on a bee) it is he that ends up in the bullfight, where the humans—gasp—poke and stab bulls! But Ferdinand escapes this horrible fate simply by being himself.

An encouraging story for every child who has felt the weight of not being like everyone else.

Aside: I’m also often struck by how violent these older books can be. Would this fly in today’s market? Hmmm. Also, interesting political readings of this story ... but more on that later.

All Time Fave: Where the Wild Things Are

Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak. HarperCollins, 1963.

Illustrations and text work together to move the story forward. In the first spread Max faces the farthest edge, urging the reader to turn the page quickly as the text hints at all the mischief he’s carrying out. The next spread shows him running down the stairs, the very stairs that will, on the next page, take him right back up and into his bedroom for bed without supper. As Max slips into his magical world of Wild Things, the illustrations overtake the page, first relegating the text to the bottom, then driving it from the page altogether. The process reverses as Max slowly chooses to return to the safety and confines of his own room, to order, to language, and to his supper, which is waiting for him and is still hot.

I love the empowerment of this story, how Max exercises control over his own world, but ultimately returns. And unlike the rather creepy ballet version and the gawd-awful film version, this one is tender.

Chilling History Lessons

Hitler Youth: Growing Up in Hitler’s Shadow by Susan Campbell Bartoletti. Scholastic, 2005.

Fascinating and similar in tone and writing style to Darkness Over Denmark. Both take the individual stories from this horrid time in history and weave them into a steady and powerful narrative. I found myself caught up in the history—like that Hitler coming to power after the great depression meant a world-wide work shortage and tight immigration quotas so that the Jews who might have otherwise escaped to friendly countries couldn’t.

• Little different from fiction in that a visual image is painted with detail (none of it superfluous). 
• Shows so clearly that the Germans being satisfied with simple answers seems childlike because those driving Hitler’s movement were indeed children. The children weren’t trained to think, rather to obey. Reason was set aside entirely. 
• Several stories within stuck with me: Aktion T4, the top secret program to kill physically and mentally disabled people, and White Rose, the group of students who published the truth. Ultimately the group was caught and beheaded. Also the description on page 146 of the young soldiers, captured now, being led into a liberated concentration camp. Inmates flanked the boys, ghastly, like wraths. 
• The key quote on page 149: “... the children and teenagers of the Third Reich had been betrayed, deserted, and sacrificed by a party and a regime that had used them to attain power.” 
• Fabulous details in a straightforward narrative.

Brrrrrrrrrrr

The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats. Puffin Books, 1962.

Keats captures the wonder of a snowy day in the story of Peter’s enjoyment of the season’s first snow. He shows pleasures that might seem mundane to an adult, dragging of a stick to make tracks, whapping a tree for the onomatopoeic “Plop!” of snow falling on Peter’s head. Illustrations that appear like paper cut-outs, simplified almost to the point of silhouette, mirror the simplicity of the text. A perfect snowy day read.