Period Piece: A Cambridge Girlhood by Gwen Raverat, for the #1952Club

This is a gently affectionate and often amusing memoir of a Victorian childhood from an unusual perspective – Gwen Raverat was a granddaughter of Charles Darwin and had an outspoken American mother. In 1883, Maud Du Puy came from Philadelphia to visit an aunt in Cambridge, England. She was pretty and sociable but not well educated or academically inclined so it seems a little surprising that she enjoyed the university life of Cambridge and attracted several suitors.

My April 2024 Reading

Lots of good books in April, including some for the #1937Club, a spine-tingling Orphan X book, a book by Nicholas Stuart Gray I’d always wanted to read, and Mrs. Quinn’s Rise to Fame, which was the most delicious read of the month - I'm surprised I didn't gain weight just reading it!

Baby Island by Carol Ryrie Brink, for the #1937Club

Title: Baby Island
Author: Carol Ryrie Brink
Illustrator: Helen Sewell
Publication: Macmillan, hardcover, 1937
Genre: Juvenile fiction

Description: Twelve-year-old Mary Wallace and her younger sister Jean are on their way to Australia from San Francisco to join their father, who has been managing a ranch there for the past two years. Mary and Jean have long been devoted to other people’s babies and entertain themselves by playing with those on the ship.

Six Degrees of Separation – from Coach to Marry in Haste

It’s time for #6degrees, inspired by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best. We all start at the same place, add six books, and see where we end up. This month’s starting point is the last book I read in January, which is Coach by Michael Lewis (2005). It’s a novella about an influential baseball coach at the school Lewis attended in New Orleans but it’s really about the generational divide – how modern parents coddle their children and “protect” them from character building experiences and Coach Fitz’s more acerbic approach had upset current parents who wanted him fired. 

Six Degrees of Separation – from Beach Read to Winter Cottage

It’s time for #6degrees, inspired by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best. We all start at the same place, add six books, and see where we end up. This month’s starting point is Beach Read by Emily Henry. I haven’t read that but I did recently finish Book Lovers by the same author.  

Bookshelf Traveling - August 29

Time for another round of Bookshelf Traveling in Insane Times which was created by Judith at Reader in the Wilderness and is currently hosted by Katrina at Pining for the West.   The idea is to share one of your neglected bookshelves or perhaps a new pile of books.  

My guest room has seven bookcases of children’s books, including this shelf which holds the Ellen Confords, three by L.M. Boston, Understood Betsy (which I couldn’t find when I needed it last month for the family read!), the Carol Ryrie Brinks, and my E. Nesbits.

Front Desk (Book Review)

Title: Front Desk 
Author: Kelly Yang

Publication: Scholastic, hardcover, 2018

Genre: Children’s Book

Plot: Mia Tang has a secret.   She does not live in a house or an apartment like her fifth grade classmates.   She lives at the rundown Calivista Motel where she staffs the front desk while her parents endlessly clean the rooms and tend to the guests.   They are underpaid and abused by the owner, Mr. Yao, who knows they are immigrants with limited English skills and afraid to stand up for themselves.  Even Mr. Yao’s privileged son Jason torments Mia at Dale Elementary.   But as Mia becomes acclimated to the United States, makes friends at school and with the permanent residents of the motel, she figures out how to use fairness, determination, and the writing skills she has fought hard to acquire to achieve her goals – and maybe Jason isn’t all bad, after all.

Audience: This book is aimed at middle schoolers but will delight readers of all ages

Favorite Quotes: 

As I walked, I gave the butterflies in my stomach their usual pep talk – It’s going to be okay. I’ll make friends, and if I don’t, I’ll borrow books from the library.   

There’s a saying in Chinese that goes “Never forget how much rice you eat.” It’s a reminder to stay humble, to stay real.  Just because you have an important job doesn’t mean you’re better than everybody else.  You still eat rice, like the rest of us.

It was the most incredible feeling ever, knowing that something I wrote actually changed someone's life.  As my mom and dad and I cheered and congratulated Uncle Zhang, my eyes slid to the closet, where the printout of the essay contest lay.  Maybe, just maybe, I could change our lives too.

My Impressions: Mia is a memorable and inspiring heroine.   She is not perfect: she rages against what she perceives as her mother’s criticism and she is humiliated by the cheap clothes from Goodwill she has to wear, but she is endlessly resourceful.  When her teacher gives her a bad grade in English, she doesn’t give up but borrows a “nifty dictionary-thesaurus” and uses it to fine tune the letters that become a special skill.

The painful, endless work of Mia’s parents and the way they are exploited is based on the real life circumstances of author Kelly Yang and her parents, but Yang is able to offset these heartbreaking experience with incredible humor.  Some of this comes from Mia’s irrepressible take on life in American and some comes from hotel guests and the Tangs’ illicit visitors, Chinese immigrants whose stories are occasionally comical although often disturbing.   One of the best moments of the book is when Mia uses her burgeoning writing skill to help one of the immigrants retrieve his passport from a manipulative employer.

The way the Tangs interact with their motel “weeklies” and how they become a family that can celebrate or commiserate together reminded me of Carol Ryrie Brink’s The Pink Motel.  That is a much more lighthearted story in which the Mellen family inherits a motel from an uncle and go to Florida to put it in running order:

“ . . . And, whether because of the color or because Uncle Hiram was a rather unusual person, it attracted the most unusual guests." 

“What do you mean unusual?” asked Mr. Mellen, also rather nervously, for he was always suspicious of anything unusual. . .

But Kirby was pleased.  For some reason he had always liked peculiar and unusual things.  A pink motel and most unusual guests!  He thought it might be fun.

And it is fun, just as Mia’s story is, although more children will see themselves in Mia’s experience and, I hope, others will develop empathy for immigrants.

Awards: I am disappointed that Front Desk did not win a Newbery Award, which were announced today.  However, I am pleased it was awarded the Children‘s Literature Winner for the Asian/Pacific American Librarians Association Award for Literature, which is based on literary and artistic merit.

Source: This book came from the Chelsea Public Library. 

Off the Blog: I read this after the Patriots’ exciting overtime win over Kansas City when I was still too excited to sleep.

What to Read in a Blizzard or During the Long Winter

My part of Boston got about ten inches of snow yesterday so it's the perfect time to recommend some winter favorites!  These are books that would make you feel the cold even if it were a warm July day.

Children's:

Little Bear by Else Holmelund Minarik (illustrated by Maurice Sendak) - This is one of the first books I remember, and I can hear my mother's voice reading to me:  It is cold.  See the snow. See the snow come down.  Little Bear said, "Mother Bear, I am cold. See the snow.  I want something to put on."

Snowbound with Betsy by Carolyn Haywood - Several years before I encountered Betsy Ray, I had met this other Betsy, an outgoing girl with pigtails and (later in the series) a little sister named Star.  I read every book by Haywood several times and even named my Teddy Bear after a minor character.  In this book, a storm cancels school the week before Christmas and some travelers are stranded at Betsy's home.   

Winter Cottage by Carol Ryrie Brink - A father and two daughters, down on their luck, appropriate a Wisconsin summer cottage when their car breaks down.  The father tries to repair their fortunes by entering contests while teenage Minty yearns for a permanent home.  Along with Two are Better Than One, this is my favorite Brink.

Football in Kidlit

Superbowl Sunday seems like an appropriate time to reflect on the children's books I enjoyed with football as a theme. Although I did not become a football fan until college, when I became a football manager of the Harvard team, I always enjoyed reading about it (in the same way I enjoyed nature so long as I could do it from a comfortable armchair inside the house).

All discussion of football in juvenile fiction must begin with Family Grandstand by Carol Ryrie Brink, which I found in my elementary school library. Set in a midwestern college town, the story delightfully depicts the Ridgeway family's absorption with the fortunes of the team and its star quarterback, Tommy Tokarynski. One of my favorite parts was how George, the only son, tries to make money parking cars in the family driveway during football games as they live just a few blocks from campus. I often thought that my family's involvement with college hockey was a lot like the Ridgeways' fun with football in this book. Also in my school library were many books by Carolyn Haywood,which I read repeatedly until I discovered the other Betsy. I remember in Betsy and the Boys Betsy is told she can't play football with her friends. Betsy fights back, saying girls can do anything but it takes help from the kindly policeman Mr. Kilpatrick - who points out that the person who comes up with a football will be welcomed to the game, and finds a football for Betsy in his attic - which she brings triumphantly to the game. On the new cover, the tagline reads "The best boy on the team . . . is a girl!"

Two authors prominently displayed at the school library were Walter Brooks's books about Freddy the Pig, including Freddy Plays Football (in which Freddy joins a high school football team), and the prolific Matt Christopher who has written a book about every sport imaginable with at least 80 under his belt. The one I remember is Touchdown for Tommy which was about an orphan, another favorite theme. This may have been Christopher's first book.

While I suffered deeply with Tippy Parrish when her boyfriend dies in the Korean War, it was hard to understand why she thought her patient friend Peter Jordon was so dull (portrayed that way by Janet Lambert, I guess). After all, he was a big football star at West Point and could doubtless have dated dozens of girls less tearful than Tippy! For those who never read Janet Lambert, her Parrish and Jordon books, which follow two military families from World War II to (improbably) the 70s, are back in print from Image Cascade. She made West Point sound like such a magical place as her heroines dashed up the Hudson from New York City for football games and dances that I yearned to see it for myself. It was a big thrill in college when our football team traveled to West Point: the team practiced in famous Michie Stadium and we ate in the cadets' mess hall (I saw no hazing, unlike all my favorite stories).

As well as reading all the Janet Lamberts I could find (although it was not until I was an adult that I was able to hunt down and own all 53 of her books), I read the old boys' series books about young men attending West Point and Annapolis. It is not clear to me who the Dick Prescott and Dave Darrin books by H. Irving Hancock ( 1866?-1922) that I found in the attic belonged to. I think they came from my father's childhood home but they were published long before he was born and I doubt he read them. Perhaps they belonged to my great-aunt Lillian's brother Lawrence. In any case, both Dick and his high school friend Dave were gridiron heroes. I also read the slightly more recently published series about Clint Lane, also a West Point cadet and football player, but Clint has such trouble with math that he is forced to quit the team to concentrate on his studies, much to his chagrin. This series was written by Colonel Red Reeder who played football at West Point himself (class of '26) and after WWII became the athletic director at his alma mater.

Ralph Maddox is the football star in Betsy and Joe whose arrival may bring glory to the Deep Valley High school team if he can get over his disinclination to be tackled. Betsy knows little about football but enjoys going to games with the girls as a crowd because all the boys they know except Joe are on the team. I didn't know until many years later that Maud Hart Lovelace knew little about football herself and let her husband write all the sports bits.

In contrast to the romanticized descriptions of football from my childhood is Carl Deuker's Gym Candy, a YA title published in 2007 about a high school freshman who wants to get playing time on the football team so turns to steroids for a competitive edge.

Most recently, I became a huge fan of DJ Schwenk, the heroine of Catherine Gilbert Murdock's trilogy that begins with Dairy Queen. DJ is a quiet teen from a family that barely talks at all. However, the whole family loves football: the cows on their farm are named after famous pros, DJ's older brothers earned football scholarships to Big Ten colleges, and Mr. Schwenk is credited with training his sons so is asked to help the quarterback from the rival high school get ready for preseason. DJ is a talented athlete who had to quit basketball her sophomore year to help on the farm. She realizes that once she has prepared Brian Nelson to be a starting quarterback she has also got herself into prime quarterback condition, and decides she can play football too, even if she is a girl. What she doesn't realize is that this rivalry will destroy a relationship that was just developing between her and Brian.

I'm sure I am forgetting some I've liked - please let me know if you think of others!