Let's try this one more time...

Felix Salten's Bambi: a Life in the Woods

Translated by Hannah Correll

This is not Disney's happy little buckaroo...

Like many children of my generation, along with several generations prior to and many more since, my first exposure to Bambi's story was Walt Disney's 1942 animated film, which was based - loosely - on Salten's 1923 novel.  The only book I associated with the story was a Disney issued picture book using the characters and storyline from the film.  

It was not until last year that I read the original book, and learned something about its author, Felix Salten, born Siegmund Salzmann in 1869 to a Jewish family in Pest, then a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. 

Bambi: a Life in the Woods can be, and has been, interpreted in any number of ways. For the instance of its value in a school library, the two most relevant in my opinion are: as an excellent example of nature writing for the intermediate grades, think Brown's The Wild Robot, and in addition, for middle grades and up, an examination of the question of life itself. (I highly recommend Chapter Nine as a jumping-off point for this one, where the remaining fall leaves contemplate the hereafter.)

You can, of course, toss in a few others if you like: the nature of friendship, what it takes to be a leader, feeling different from everyone around you, the nature of mentorship, man versus nature, nature versus nature, and many more. Up to you.

Salten loved the woods and was also an avid hunter. During his lifetime, whenever his fortunes allowed (they tended to wax and wane), he spent his time in woods. This knowledge is reflected in his writing. 

Bambi: a Life in the Woods is the story of Bambi's life from birth, childhood, young adulthood and full maturity as a Prince of the Forest and finally, his status as The Old One. 

 Salten mirrors actions and behaviors in the life cycle of deer along with the changing seasons and environments of woodlands throughout the story, as well as the other woodland creatures. 

As a fawn, Bambi's mother keeps him in a thicket, where they shelter in the daytime and she nurses him in safety. Born in the spring, it is not until the summer that they venture out, Bambi's mother instructing him on on proper behaviors, active at dawn and dusk, venturing out into the forest only at night, and sleeping, hidden during the day.

Bambi is full of questions for his mother, but Bambi's mother is careful never to expose him to more information than his age can handle, but stresses almost from the beginning the need for caution. She explains, in response to his inquiry, that the groups of stags that appear occasionally but don't interact with the rest of them are 'the fathers'. 

The figure that most impresses Bambi, and who also inspires fear, is The Old One, an ancient stag who rarely appears and is thought, by some, to be a myth. 

The Old One is not a myth, his mother explains, but the one who walks paths the others have no knowledge of, and knows all the ways of the forest. The Old One walks alone, and for him, "...there is no danger." 

One of Bambi's question is on the nature of danger, and he discusses it with his friends and cousins, Faline and Gobo, the children of his mother's sister, Ena. They all have theories, but none are prepared for its first appearance, when He appears, with his sharp, distinctive scent, and his third arm from which claps of deadly thunder explode. The animals all flee in terror.

Their second encounter is much more deadly, when a large group of He descend on the forest, killing many creatures, Bambi's mother among them, and wounding Gobo, who is left to die.

Bambi periodically encounters The Old One, whom he fears but also reveres. As a youngster, he was separated from his mother, calling out to her, when The Old One appeared and asked him, Can you not be alone?

It is the role of this aloneness, as a vehicle for growth and wisdom, that appears throughout the book. Bambi's early life is that of any young buck. He fights off competitors Karras and Ronno for Faline, and the two lived happily together for some time, until Bambi feels the need for more solitude, and the two begin to spend less and less time together. It is during these periods of solitude that Bambi gains more wisdom of the ways of the forest, and of life itself.

Bambi will cross paths with The Old One occasionally - it is The Old One who determines these encounters - and once with another Crown Prince, possibly his own father. Unfortunately, neither of them can speak to the other as they desire to, and both leave the meeting unsatisfied.

Gobo returns, to the surprise of everyone and the delight of his mother. Gobo had been rescued from the forest and taken as a pet for a human family. Gobo expounds on how wonderful and kind He is, if only you love and serve him. The others - not Bambi - are enthralled by his story until The Old One arrives, listens sadly, and calls Gobo "unfortunate one." Gobo is later killed when He arrives again, after foolishly going into the meadow in broad daylight after Bambi and the others urge him not to. Gobo has forgotten the knowledge of the forest, and pays the price with his life.

Bambi encounters Faline after a long separation, and tells her that he needs to be alone. Faline departs in sadness, and afterwards Bambi is shot. He runs to safety in the forest, and The Old One appears, and, after forcing Bambi to create a false trail with his still dripping blood, leads him to the safety of his own den. Bambi heals, and from then on, stays with The Old One, who  now allows himself to show more warmth to the younger buck.

Bambi then encounters a squirrel, the grandson of a squirrel that was his friend as a fawn, and learns that the great oak, home to so many creatures, was cut down by He, and the creatures are now homeless. Bambi wants to ask of the others, Faline especially, but does not. the squirrel tells Bambi that he will tell the other that Bambi is still alive, and a Crown Prince.

While Bambi and The Old One are together, they witness a dog tracking down and killing a fox. The fox accuses the dog of being a traitor, and the dog retaliates by killing the fox, but not before claiming that He, man, is all powerful, and that everything they, the forest creatures have, comes from him.

Bambi calls the event dreadful, and The Old One counters that the most horrific aspect is that all the forest creatures as well as the dog believe it, and that they will spend their lives in fear, that they hate Him and themselves, and that they will die because of him.

One day, Bambi hears three claps of thunder. The Old One insists that Bambi follow him to the sight, where they see the body of He, dead. Once he realizes that Bambi now understands that He is not all-powerful, that there is another above all of us and above him, The Old One takes his leave. His time is up, and, he tells Bambi, "... I loved you very much."

Bambi is now The Old One. That summer, he sees a young brother and sister deer calling for their mother. He likes the look of the young male, thinks he might see him again when he's bigger, and the female reminds him of Faline. He approaches the two and says, Can you not be alone?

The two stare at him in silent wonder, and then Bambi turns and disappears into the forest.

It is a wonderful book.

It is also a book we English speakers read in translation, which presents the quandary of choosing the best one. I don't have an answer for you on that, I've only read the version referenced above. (I did a previous post on this question with the book Emil and the Detectives, but for that book I'd read more than one translation. In that case, I found a big difference.)

I found an interesting article specifically on the translations of Bambi. If you're curious, you can read it here, at We Love Translations.

My starting point for most author biographies is Something About the Author. I own a number of the older volumes, but I am also lucky enough to have access through my public library to its database.

The entry for Felix Salten, born Siegmund Salzmann, is not particularly expansive. Bare bones, Salzmann (1869 - 1945) was born in Pest, then part of the Austro-Hungarian empire, Tinto a Jewish family, and died in Zurich, Switzerland. The family moved to Vienna when Salzmann was young, but fell on hard times, and Salzmann never forgot how that felt.

Salzmann worked for a time for an insurance agency, then made his living primarily as a journalist and theater critic, publishing hundreds of articles and writing several novels in the course of his career. He was associated with a the Young Vienna group of writers, a notable member being Arthur Schnitzler, many of whom were Jewish.

Anti-semitism was rampant in Austria, and Salzmann felt its effects. With the rise of the Nazi party, his writings were banned, and the annexation of Austria by Germany in 1938 caused Salzmann to flee to Switzerland, where his daughter was living, and where he died in 1945.

An excellent source for information on Salzmann, one that I utilized, is the Introduction written by Jack Zipes  to The Original Bambi: The Story of a Life in the Forest. Zipes is also the translator, and while I did not read beyond the Introduction, I did admire the illustrations by Alenka Sottler. Beautiful.

I do think, if your approach to the book is as an example of nature writing, that it would be beneficial to do some non-fiction reading on deer before tackling the story, and then drawing on that information while you read.

Returning to my previous comment on Chapter Nine, you could easily, for younger readers, skip that chapter. The chapter is complete in and of itself, and is not essential to Bambi's story. 

Coming up next will be Carlo Collodi's The Adventures of Pinocchio.

 

Before I was so rudely interrupted by 2016, I began a post on Harold and His Crayon

 You never forget your first true love...

Harold and the Purple Crayon by Crockett Johnson.

I have owned copies of Harold and the Purple Crayon my entire life. 

Like all first things, the memories have become blurred over time. It is, sadly, impossible for me to actually remember with any clarity my emotions of over (ahem) a half century ago. What I know to be true is that Harold was a constant, a loyal, a no judgement companion whose adventures I could share whenever I wanted or needed.

Harold had a purple crayon, but whether or not it was Harold or the crayon drawing, well, I'm not so sure on the answer to that. But it was Harold who held the crayon, and Harold who drew his world with that crayon. What that crayon can represent is entirely up to the reader.

As an adult, this is what I think appealed to me as a child.

Harold called the shots. 

Not his parents, or his teachers, or his siblings, or the kids at school. In fact, the only adult who made an appearance was a policeman, drawn by Harold himself. And that adult didn't solve anything, he just pointed Harold into the same direction he was already heading.

Harold called the shots.

And, Harold made mistakes. Lots of them. The frightening dragon the caused Harold to plunge into the sea. The too tall mountain that sent him spiraling through the air. The crowded tall buildings that obscured his way home.

But Harold solved them all, with a boat, a hot air balloon, and a sketch of the moon to bring him home.

One of the great literary themes: to find a way home. Homer's Odyssey needed 12,000 plus lines. Crockett Johnson pulled it off in sixty-one pages, six hundred and fifty words, and three colors. 

I think there's a bit of genius in that.

Harold and the Purple Crayon, in my opinion, is one of the true rarities of children's literature: a classic. It worked sixty years ago, it worked thirty years ago, it works today, and it will work in all of the years in the future.

The author and illustrator of Harold and the Purple Crayon was Crockett Johnson, born David Johnson Leisk in 1906. I knew very little about him until I wrote this post. An excellent source of information is the book Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss: How an Unlikely Couple Found Love, Dodged the FBI, and Transformed Children's Literature by Philip Nel. I am posting the author's webpage here. The following short biography is gleaned from that source.

Crockett Johnson was born David Johnson Leisk in 1906 in New York City. He studied art at Cooper Union and New York University, worked a variety of jobs that included advertising, and stood over six feet tall. He was bald, just like Harold, and Barnaby, his famous cartoon strip character.

Crockett was deeply affected by the plight of the common man during the Great Depression. He was a member of the Book and Magazine Writers Union, and became professionally involved in the Communist Party publication New Masses. Later, he also drew comic strips for Collier's, and from that, the Barnaby comic strip.

In 1943 he married Ruth Krauss, the author of A Hole is to Dig, illustrated by Maurice Sendak, and other works. Johnson and Krauss were friends and mentors of Maurice Sendak, who was a frequent visitor at their home in Connecticut.

During the last ten years of his life, Crockett created over one hundred mathematical paintings based on James Newman's The World of Mathematics and other works.

Crockett Johnson died in 1975.

Aside #1

When I started this blog, my goal was to bring into the spotlight older children's books that could still be read and enjoyed by today's children. Not all books, as every librarian knows, age well. But, others do, and I didn't want those books to get lumped in with the former based only on their publication date. My focus was on providing information that would be helpful to school librarians.

Personal circumstances in 2016 - life has a way of happening, does it not? - directed my time and energies elsewhere, and I only recently decided to try and start up the blog again. 

My focus is still to provide information, particularly in view of the increased efforts by certain groups to police what others are allowed and not allowed to read, or even to access. I won't be compiling lists anymore, though. I am done with "charting progress" forever. Those of you who work in education will know exactly what I mean.

As far as a timeline for posts? I'll try for every two weeks, and see how that goes.

Take care.

To Make a Family, It is Really Not so Difficult, n'est pas? 

Natalie Savage Carlson and The Family Under the Bridge

The sun is blazing, the temperature outside is in the nineties and climbing, and even the most die-hard of sun lovers are waving the white flag skyward in desperation.

Time for a Christmas story!

Not that The Family Under the Bridge, Natalie Savage Carlson's 1959 Newbery Honor Book is, per se, a Christmas story, but the month is December, the setting is Paris, and the time is somewhere in the decade of the 1950s.


Book #39:  The Family Under the Bridge (1958) by Natalie Savage Carlson; illustrated by Garth Williams. 97 pages.

With the return of the cold weather, the old hobo Armand, returns to his winter spot under the bridge tunnel of a branch of the Seine in Paris, only to discover that it's already occupied by the  three young Calcet children, Suzy, Paul, Evelyne, and their little dog, Jojo.

The children's father has died, leaving the family homeless. Determined to keep her family together, their mother, Madame Calcet, leaves her children under the bridge during the day while she works at her job, where she hopes to save enough money to eventually afford a rented room of their own.

Armand wants nothing to do with the children - starlings is what he calls them, and nothing but trouble - but the children see through his feigned gruffness and before you know it, he becomes their unofficial Grandpapa. Madame Calcet is less than thrilled with this development, she is prideful and views Armand as an undesirable, but the children love him.

While the mother is at work, Armand takes the children on walking tours of Paris, including a visit to his friend Father Christmas (a fellow hobo friend temporarily employed) at the upscale department store the Louvre.  When Father Christmas asked them for their Christmas wish, their reply is a real house. When he tells them that he cannot fit a real house on his donkey, the children become despondent.

Armand, alarmed at the children's unhappiness, tries to cheer them up, and they end up singing Christmas carols on the street while Armand passes the hat. Later that night, when the mother discovers that he let the children beg, Armand leaves in anger.

The next morning, worried about the children, he returns to the bridge, only to learn that the children have been spotted by two society ladies who want to "save" them. Armand takes the children to another friend, Mireli, a gypsy who, with her clan, are temporarily camped in a courtyard in the middle of Paris behind a a section of buildings being demolished.

The children and Armand are warmly welcomed, and Armand goes back that evening to get Madame Calcet. Upon arriving at the camp, she is horrified that her children are among gypsies, who she calls thieves and wanderers. Armand admonished her, asking her why she thinks that she is better than the gypsies. Madame replies that she is honest. Armand grants her that, but challenges her as to whether or not she is kinder or more generous. She has no answer.

On Christmas Eve, the family attends a party given by the Notre Dame congregation for the street people, and one of the gypsy men, Nikki, drives them there in his car. Armand has not been to a mass in years, but he finds himself asking God to find  roof for his homeless family.

One day soon after, a policeman comes into the gypsy camp looking for Nikki. The gypsies immediately pack up camp and depart, but they leave a tent and some food for the Calcets. Paul wanted to go with them, and when they are unable to find him afterwards, they fear that he has, in fact, joined the gypsies.

Paul returns a little while later. He hadn't joined the gypsies, he had gone to the Halles, the huge food market, trying to get a job to help his family, but the men had all laughed at him because he was so little. Armand then decides that he will get a job and help the family himself.

The policeman returns, and they discover that he didn't want to arrest Nikki, but instead, return his stolen wallet with his weekly wages and a winning lottery ticket inside. Armand tells the policeman that he's gone, and the policeman leaves with the wallet.

A newly spruced up and trimmed Armand then finds a job that, in addition to a salary, provides a four room house for the family to live. He wasn't a hobo anymore. He was a workingman of Paris.


The Family Under the Bridge at Amazon.com


Carlson's writing style is wonderful. With a few lines of dialogue and just the right amount of description, she creates believable characters and realistic settings. Her descriptions of the streets, shops and marketplaces of Paris immediately draw in the reader, and she smoothly integrates several historical points in along the way.

The difficulties with this book for the modern reader are several. The first is the modern child's almost complete lack of knowledge of geography. They don't know where Paris is, they don't know where France is, and they've kinda sorta heard of Europe, like, isn't that a country in South America?
(I am drawing from real life here, and yes, it is depressing).

The second is the lack of historical knowledge. Adults reading this book are cognizant - please, God, please! - of the fact that they are reading about post WWII Europe. Today's child - no.

The third difficulty is the different set of social sensibilities and social awareness between the mid-20th century and today. Reading in the context of the time is a learned skill, and no child possesses this skill. For a child to appreciate this story, an adult needs to lay a considerable amount of foundation. In my opinion, this story is worth the effort, and here is why.

The story is a family story, about a family sticking together, about a family redefining itself after the death of a father, and about a family that isn't defined by blood relations. We have no control over the family into which we were born, but we do have the ability to create the family we need and want. This is something a child needs to know, and this is why they should have this story.

Madame Calcet's actions by today's standards would be considered criminal, herself an unfit mother, and her children taken away. I don't know that it was so different then. Discussion point. Were her actions justified? What were her alternatives?

I don't know if kids today even know the words hobo or tramp. I see hobo, I think Emmet Kelly or the desperate men and boys that rode the rails during the Great Depression. Carlson's Armand is a contented hobo, living the life he choses to live. Today's kids are unlikely to view homelessness as a happy lifestyle choice. Gypsies are another unknown, and Carlson's sympathetic portrayal is still rife with references to dusky faces and beady eyes. Additional conversation will be necessary, but it's worth the effort.



I have never read anything by Natalie Savage Carlson before. My first impression after reading several chapters was that English was not her first language. The sentence structure at times, the cadence, seemed distinctly French. I was wrong, but not completely out of the ballpark.

Natalie Savage was born in 1906 in Kernstown, Virginia. Her mother, a gifted storyteller herself, was French-Canadian. Natalie's first published children's book, The Talking Cat and Other Stories of French Canada (1952), was based on her mother's tales.

Natalie had three older half-sisters and two sisters. The family moved to a farm, Shady Grove, along the Potomac River in Maryland when Natalie was very young.

At the age of four, she was sent to the Visitation Convent boarding school along with her older sisters. After three years, she returned home. Later, the family moved to Long Beach, California.

From 1927 to 1929, Savage worked as a writer for the Long Beach Morning Sun.  In 1929, she married Daniel Carlson, a naval officer, and the couple and their children lived in a number of locations: Hawaii, Mexico, Canada, & France. They also traveled extensively.

According to her biography on the de Grummond Collection website of the University of Southern Mississippi, Carlson, who wrote over thirty books for children starting in 1952, said that she writes about people of different races and nationalities because of her French-Canadian relatives who visited her family when she was young. She found the differences fascinating, and felt that by presenting different cultures to children through her books she was promoting understanding, sympathy, and tolerance.

Some of Carlson's other popular titles include the Happy Orpheline series and the Spooky the Cat series.

In 1966, Carlson was the U.S. nominee for the Hans Christian Andersen International Children's Book Award.  She died in 1997.



Natalie Savage Carlson Papers at USM de Grummond Collection.



Garth Williams may be best known as the illustrator of E.B. White's Charlotte's Web and Stuart Little, and well as Laura Ingalls Wilder Little House books.

Garth was born in New York City in 1912, educated in England, and was a graduate of the Royal College of Art in London. In 1936, he won the British Prix de Rome for sculpture.

He died in Mexico in 1996.


Garth Williams' obituary in the New York Times.

Garth Williams Illustrator page on Facebook.

Question: Does anyone recognize a children's book, maybe circa 1960s, about two young brothers who left their family farm during the Dust Bowl to ride the rails? At some point, the younger brother was killed in an accident, but that's all that I remember.

The Day the Storks Returned to Shora

Meindert DeJong's The Wheel on the School

Meindert DeJong was not into self-promotion.

I already love the man.

Other than the two brief entries that I found in two separate volumes of Something About the Author, one of which was a short obituary (he died in 1991), I came up empty.

According to SATA, outside of his books, the only additional information available were The Horn Book's publication of his Newbery and Hans Christian Andersen awards acceptance speeches, and one article on how to write for children for Author and Journalist.

In DeJong's words, "... before he [the author] can perform that duty of art, he has to listen for and to only one challenge: he has to listen to the cry of creativity. But he has to listen to it alone."

Good luck with that in 2016.

Authors today seem to be under a constant pressure to be out there, to have a strong media presence, a platform, to be accessible and open and approachable and on and on and on, world without end. That leaves me to wonder, how in the world do they ever get any writing done?  I remember reading an article about Alex Haley, how, when he wanted to write he would book a passage on a commercial freighter effectively isolating himself from life's distractions for weeks at a time. Since the end result was Roots, I'd say it was a good call on Mr. Haley's part.

Lucky for us, DeJong also saved his energy for what counted, and today's post is the evidence.

Book #38:  The Wheel on the School (1954) by Meindert DeJong; illustrated by Maurice Sendak. 298 pages.


Shora is a fishing village in Holland. It has some houses, and a church, and a tower, and is situated tight against a dike on the shore of the North Sea.

This is Holland of a century ago, with wooden shoes and white caps and wide-legged breeches.

There are no trees in Shora, save one well-guarded cherry tree in the backyard of a legless man named Janus, who spends his days guarding its fruit against birds and children. And because there are no trees, and because there are no wheels on any of the roofs where they could build their nests, there are no storks in Shora.

Lina, the only girl in a school of six children, wants the storks to come to Shora. Her aunt who lives in Nes has told her all about them. Lina writes a story about storks and with the teacher's permission, shares it with her classmates Jella, Eelka, Auka, and the brothers Pier and Dirk.

The children, with their teacher's encouragement, decide to bring the storks back to Shora. But with no trees, the only other way to attract them is to mount wheels on the rooftops for their nests. The problem is that there is not a spare wheel to be had in the town, so each child is sent out to look for one, especially in places they will be least likely to find one.

In the course of their search, the children all become better acquainted with the people who live in and around their small fishing village, who eventually band together to help them on their quest.

There is Grandmother Sibble III, the oldest woman in the village and the only one who remembers a time when there were storks in Shora; Janus, the fisherman who lost his legs and who strikes terror into every child's heart until he becomes their friend and supporter, the tin man, with his large family and less than stellar sales; and old Douwa, who was nearly a hundred years old and who took long walks along the dike every day.

Once Lina and Douwa recover and old wheel from the wreckage of the man's old fishing boat, only narrowly escaping drowning in the process, it then falls to the fathers to mount the wheel on the roof of the schoolhouse. They do so during the course of a weeklong storm that prevents them from being out in their fishing boats, under Janus's stern direction.

The children, and all of the town by now, are thrilled to see the wheel mounted, but worried that the storm will prevent any storks from arriving and watch the skies for any signs of the magnificent birds. In the meantime, Lina's little sister and her friend manage to get themselves locked in the tower, but the entire village except the fathers, now that the storm is over they are back out at sea for weeks at a time, turns out in search and the tiny tots are found, but not before they spot two storks "standing out in the sea".

It turns out that the storks have been trapped in a sandbar, and it's a race against time to rescue them before the flood tide starts. But rescued they are, and after being warmed by a fire, the pair are carried to the wheel on top of the school, where, after some consideration as to its suitability, they make their nest.

The storks have returned to Shora.


This was a book I fell into easily and read straight through until the end. DeJong has a  straightforward style and the ability to infuse the characters in his story with distinguishable personalities with an economy of words.

The story's not an uncommon one in children's literature; not the storks, but the coming together of people for a common goal and the inevitable consequence of better understanding and appreciation of those around us when we just take the time to actually engage with another human being.

It's a good story, and a timely one.

The setting is the world of DeJong's childhood, a world that was gone even when the book was first published in 1954. But childhood memories are some of the most powerful memories we possess, and you feel, after reading the book, that somehow Shora is still a place that exists, maybe just a little bit out of reach, but with some effort still a realistic, not a romanticized, destination. A place where people would have been content keeping themselves to themselves, but were shown the error of their ways by a little girl's wish, a wish so, "... impossibly impossible that it just had to be. "

Wheel would make a great read-aloud and serve as a golden opportunity to explain why Holland and the Netherlands are not synonymous.

The Wheel on the School was the 1955 Newbery Medal Winner.


The Wheel on the School at Amazon.com

Meindert DeJong was born in 1906 in Wierum, Netherlands and died in 1991 in Allegan, Michigan. In addition to the Newbery Medal for The Wheel on the School, he also was the recipient of the international Hans Christian Andersen Award, normally given to the world's best single book of fiction for children, for his overall works for children in 1962, and in 1969 he won the National Book Award in Children's Literature for Journey From Peppermint Street.

DeJong only began writing at the age of thirty-two, and his first book, The Big Goose and the Little White Duck, was published in 1938. During WWII, he was stationed in China with the U.S. Army Air Corp.

DeJong retired from writing in 1986.



Brief biography of Meindert DeJong from the New Netherland Institute.



Maurice Sendak is for another post another day.  If you haven't already, read My Brother's Book.

Dick King-Smith and the Lives of Everyday People 

Crows, Corn and a Boy Called Spider in Spider Sparrow

Dick King-Smith is the author of The Sheep-Pig, which I have yet to read. The Sheep-Pig was the basis for the film Babe, which I have yet to see.  The Sheep-Pig was first published in1983 in Great Britain, and two years later it was released in the United States with the title Babe, The Gallant Pig. In 1984, King-Smith won the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize, a one time in a lifetime award for The Sheep-Pig.

This is an impressive accomplishment for a man who only began writing in his fifties, following his careers as a farmer and then as a teacher.

It's that farming background that comes through loud and clear in today's review for Spider Sparrow.

Book #37:  Spider Sparrow (1998) by Dick King-Smith, illustrated by Peter Bailey. 163 pages. 

Spider Sparrow's proper name is John Joseph Sparrow. Abandoned at birth, he is discovered, wrapped in an old woolen shawl, in an empty pen meant for sheep by the shepherd Tom Sparrow. Inside the folds of the shawl is a note, "PLEASE SAVE THIS LAMB". 

Tom and his wife, Kathie, have no children of their own, and with the assistance of Tom's employer, the farm-owner Major Yorke, they adopt the baby. 

It quickly becomes obvious that the child is "different".  Long, thin and sickly as an infant, he is still unable at the age of two to walk or talk. Instead, he moves on all fours, using his very long arms and legs, scurrying about like a spider, hence the nickname. And while he cannot talk, or seem to understand most of what is said to him, he possesses an uncanny ability to mimic the sounds of birds and animals, who respond to him as if he were one of their own.

Eventually, Spider masters a few phrases, his favorite being "Good un!".  His parents finally admit to each other that Spider isn't like other children.  In the language of the time, the boy is "simple", and everyone in the village knows it. In the words of the farm's manager, Percy, in discussion with Tom:

...all the village knows by now. Some'll be kind about it and some'll be cruel and some won't care - that's human nature for you. But I'll tell you one thing, Tom. Your Spider is a lucky little boy.

When Tom asks Percy just how Spider is lucky, Percy replied that the boy's got Tom and his wife for parents, and that he's happy.

By the time Spider is school age he can walk, but it's a splayed flat-footed gait, very slow, with his arms dangling before him.  He's the subject of mockery by a certain group of village boys, and one day they chase him and attack him when he falls to the ground. After that, Spider is only comfortable in his home or wandering the farm.  When he is denied entrance to the village school, his parents are secretly relieved that he won't be subject to the strain of dealing with others.

Spider continues to grow into a tall, thin teenager, but he is never strong, and always slow.  Happy to stay in his house and the farm, he is given the occasional job by Percy, who is impressed by the boy's ability with animals.

Most farm work is beyond him, but Spider excels at crowstarving, chasing away crows and other birds that try to feed on newly planted fields. Out on the farm, he's alone with the animals and at his happiest.

Spider's role at the farm expands with the advent of World War II, when many of the young men are called for military service. Percy's son is killed in action, and Major Yorke's is taken captive.

Aside from the lack of men, live goes on as before in the countryside, until one day a German plane crash lands near the farm, and the pilot is taken prisoner. But even after that event, life goes back to its old patterns of animal care and crops.

When Spider is sixteen, he catches a terrible cold and the doctor is called in. The doctor tells Kathie that Spider will be fine, but then afterwards takes Tom aside to warn him that Spider has a weak heart, and to be prepared. Shortly after, when Spider goes for a walk but doesn't return, Tom looks for him, and finds him in a shelter used during planting season. After sixteen years, Spider's heart finally gave out, but even in death, he was smiling.

Spider was happy.


Spider is the type of book I love to read but find less and less available. It's a quiet book, with nothing much really happening, where the focus is on people, and the natural rhythm of their lives.  In that it reminds me of Alcott's Little Women, a book I will read and reread just to spend time with Jo and Beth and Amy and Meg. I don't care what they're doing; I just want to see how they are.

Spider is set in a rural English village, beginning in the years following the Great War, a war that affected a good many of its inhabitants, and ending somewhere in the midst of World War II.  In his depiction of the time, place and people, King-Smith avoids any sentimentality; there is not some much as a whiff of nostalgia for some golden, simpler time which in reality only exists in revisionist memories.

People can be kind, but they can also be cruel. Life and death are a matter of course on a farm. Animals die. People die. We mourn, but life goes on. We do the best that we can.

Spider could walk, slowly, and talk almost not at all, but he was loved, and he was happy, and that is what truly mattered.

Dick King-Smith was a prolific writer, with something in the neighborhood of 125 books to his credit. The majority of the books focused on animal characters. Several of these books were adapted for film and television, most notably Babe.

King-Smith was born Ronald Gordon King-Smith in England in 1922 and died in 2011. He came from a well-to-do family that owned and operated a number of paper mills, and served in Italy in World War II. In 1943 he married Myrle, a childhood friend, while they were both in the service and they remained married until her death in 2000.

The Guardian ran an obituary on King-Smith when he died, and I'm providing the link here.  It pretty much sums up everything I've read on the man, and does a wonderful job.

I read another book by King-Smith titled The Catlady.  At some point I'll write a review, but if you get the chance to read it, do so. It's worth your time.



Dick King-Smith website.




Peter Bailey was born in India and grew up in London.  Read his biography at the Caroline Sheldon Literary Agency.  Included is an online portfolio. Glorious!


Peter Bailey maintains a blog at Peter Bailey Illustrations.

The Groundbreaking Blue Willow by Doris Gates.

It's Janey Larkin's Turn.

The best laid plans...

Back in May of this year, I wrote a post on Julia Sauer's Fog Magic, that included some background information regarding the ongoing controversy of the time that pitted proponents of realistic fiction against advocates of imaginative fiction as far as which of the two was the "best" type of literature for children. 

On the realistic side, Doris Gates' Blue Willow was frequently cited as a groundbreaking work.   Gates, who had worked as a librarian in schools for  California's migrant population, won the 1941 Newbery Honor award for her book.

Several weeks ago I finally read Blue Willow (in one night) and did some research on the author, Doris Gates.  My recommendation is that you stop reading this post right now, go out, buy the book, read it, and order multiple copies for your library. Once those copies come in, booktalk it to every class, third grade and higher, and then give it to each teacher to read.

It's that good.

This book reads as if it were written yesterday, an amazing feat considering it was first published in 1940.  The only giveaway that it wasn't was a single reference to a fellow migrant worker as a Negro as opposed to black or African-American.  That's it.

I had intended to write the review the following day, but circumstances arose that delayed its composition until today. In the meantime, I managed to misplace both the book and my notes, so some of the information that I'd hoped to share will have to wait for another day. 

Book #36: Blue Willow (1940) by Doris Gates. 176 pages. Illustrated by Paul Lantz.


Ten-year-old Janey Larkin has only the faintest memory of life on the family's Texas ranch, and of her mother, who died when Janey was very young.  The one thing, only thing, she does have is a blue willow plate, a plate that has been in her mother's family for generations.  It is her most cherished possession, and a symbol of Janey's deepest wish, to have a permanent home of her own.

But it's the 1930s, and the loss of the family ranch due to a combination of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl has left Janey and her parents - her father remarried - to make their living as migrant farm workers up and down the West coast.  The family is close knit but not demonstrative, and Janey is required to read from their only book, the family Bible, every day to improve her reading.

The story opens with their arrival at an abandoned shack in the the San Joaquin Valley, where Mr. Larkin will work bringing in the cotton crop for the owner, Mr. Anderson. There is a Mexican family across the way, the Romeros, and Janey, after some initial resistance, becomes best friends with one of the daughters, Lupe.  The Romeros have lived in the same place for over a year, and Lupe attends the regular school in town.  Janey, who has never stayed anywhere more than a few months, attends the camp school for the children of the migrant workers.  Unlike many of the children, Janey has never worked in the fields herself; Mr. Larkin will not allow it.

Despite herself, Janey finds herself becoming more and more attached to the place and the people, and has to keep reminding herself that they could be moving on any day.  She visits a country fair, her first, with the Romeros, and her father places second in a cotton picking contest that gives the family a much needed infusion of cash.

The one fly in the ointment is the ranch's overseer,  a shifty character named Bounce Reyburn, who demands a monthly rent for the shack and only reluctantly supplies Mr. Larkin with a receipt.

The contest cash goes for some much needed necessities; tires for their car and a new coat for Janey.  When Mrs. Larkin becomes ill, there is no money for a doctor, and Bounce refuses to allow the family to stay unless he is paid.  Janey, knowing that her mother must rest to get well, offers Bounce her one possession, the blue willow plate.  He takes the plate, but it's only a temporary solution.  There's no more work for Mr. Larkin, and the family needs to move on.  Janey, desperate for a final look at her blue willow plate, makes her way to the ranch owner's house.

The ranch owner, Mr. Anderson, knows nothing about any blue willow plate, but soon coaxes the entire story from Janey.  Furious, he fires Bounce and offers Mr. Larkin Bounce's old job, an offer he quickly accepts.

Janey Larkin has come home.




This book is so good on so many levels, it's difficult to know where to start.  Janey is a thoroughly believable little girl as are her parents. Was it a fairytale ending? Of course it was, but sometimes, if rarely, fairytales do come true.  Gates doesn't sugarcoat the extreme poverty or the precariousness of the migrant worker's life, and she also avoids making Janey and her family symbols as opposed to real flesh and blood individuals. The Romeros are never stereotyped Mexican as was common in children's stories back then, and even Bounce, a true s.o.b., is given his due as being good with cattle but clueless about people.  Excellent writing, excellent story. Read it and see for yourself.


Blue Willow at Amazon.com



Doris Gates was well acquainted with the lives of migrant workers. Born in Mountain View, California in 1901, she was the daughter of a physician who made frequent house calls to the surrounding rural population.  The family later owned a prune ranch where Gates had direct contact with migrant workers and their lifestyles.

A California resident for most of her life, Gates worked as the director of library work with children for the Fresno Free County Library fro 1930 - 1940.  A reduction in her hours gave her the opportunity to pursue her writing, and her first book, Sarah's Idea, was published in 1938, followed by Blue Willow in 1940.  All in all, Gates published over twenty-five books, including several textbooks and a number of books on Greek mythology. She died in 1987 in Carmel, California.


Here is where I wish I had my notes.  Somewhere in them is a paragraph taken from an interview with Gates about her childhood, the instance that she realized that there would be many, many things that she couldn't do because she was a girl, things that only men could do.

This did not sit well with Gates, as a child or an adult, and something of that frustration is evident in a paragraph in Blue Willow.  Mr. Anderson, the ranch owner, had just offered Mr. Larkin Bounce's old job. Seventy-five dollars a month, a house, and all the eggs and milk they could use.  Mr. Larkin said nothing, and Mr. Anderson repeated the offer.  Still silent, Mr. Larkin, still dazed,  held out his hand, and Janey, watching, wanted to scream out, to yell, to make sure Mr. Anderson understood that her father did want to job, but she didn't, and Gates wrote the following:

But Janey had learned during her strange life that there are times when only men are important, when even grown-up women didn't matter at all. And certainly not little girls. This was distinctly one of those times.

Interesting.




Doris Gates papers at the University of Oregon.


Brief biography of Doris Gates.

The Ultimate Get Away From It All 

William Pene du Bois' The Twenty-One Balloons 

No matter how many bookmarks I buy - and I buy them by the pack - I can never get my hands on one when I need it.  So I am very grateful to the individual(s) at my local public library for providing a consistent supply of different booklist bookmarks, conveniently located next to the self-checkout stations.

This past week's bookmarks featured a booklist on Microhistory: A Social History of Just One Thing.  Some of the books I've read: Kurlansky's Salt: A World History, Bryson's A Walk in the Woods, Barry's The Great Influenza, and Krakauer's Into the Wild. All great reads, and I'd recommend every one of them.  Others on the list I've yet to read, including Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded, by Simon Winchester. 

Winchester's book caught my eye because it happens to be the setting for Pene du Bois The Twenty-One Balloons. What are the odds of reading a children's book set in Krakatoa (or even the fact that one exists) and then that very same week picking up a bookmark referencing that very place? It's like buying a new car that's bright blue and all of a sudden noticing that every other car on the road is bright blue also. I'm sure there's a name for this phenomenon, or maybe not. I tend to over think.

Either way, the appearance of the word Krakatoa twice in the same week must be a portent (in the archaic sense), so here is today's review of William Pene du Bois' The Twenty-One Balloons.

Book #35: The Twenty-One Balloons by William Pene du Bois (1947), illustrated by the author.  180 pages.

Professor William Waterman Sherman has spent the past forty years teaching mathematics in a school for boys in San Francisco, California, and at the beginning of the story is feeling every minute of those years. With the freedom of retirement looming on the horizon, Professor Sherman begins to take the necessary steps to fulfill a long simmering ambition of sailing the world in a balloon for one solid year. Alone.

The man wants his privacy.

Ballooning has been all the craze in the thirty years since the end of the Civil War, and Professor Sherman has been an avid follower of the sport. He joined the local Explorer's Club in San Francisco. He studied, planned, tested and retested various designs, finally settling on a variation of the plans of the great French balloonists Giffard and Nadar, and their balloons the Clou. and the Geant.  Sherman gave his design to the Higgin's Balloon Factory, and named the final product the Globe.

On August 15th, with little fanfare other than a small article in the back pages of the newspaper, Sherman set off on what he hoped would be a year-long journey across the globe, traveling where ever the winds might carry him. Alas, it was not to be, for on the seventh day the balloon was damaged by an errant seagull and the professor found himself stranded on a tropical island of a very special kind.

Krakatoa, a volcanic island located in the Sunda Strait of Indonesia.

And he wasn't alone.

When Sherman came to, he was greeted by a gentleman in a white morning suit wearing a white cork bowler.  After offering the badly sunburnt professor a similar suit of clothing, along with a set of cufflinks made from four diamonds the size of lima beans, he introduces himself as Mr. H., and explains that unknown to the outside world, the island is inhabited by a group of specially selected families, all of whom support themselves through the periodic sale of diamonds to other countries.

Discovered by a shipwrecked sailor, the diamond mines - truly wondrous to behold - are immense, and capable of supporting the families in opulent style for the rest of their lives. Mr. H takes the professor back to his own mansion, and informs him that he will now need to think of himself as a permanent guest of the island, since the families cannot risk disclosure by allowing him to leave.

During the next few days, the professor learns more of the history of the inhabitants and their manner of living, focusing on exotic architecture, foods, a novel calendar and the unusual education of their children.  The professor also adapts physically to the periodic disruptions of the surface of the island, the result of underground volcanic activities.

When queried by Sherman as to an exit plan in the event of a volcanic eruption, the residents inform him of their plan.  Should an eruption threaten, they have constructed a huge raft, to be lifted skyward via balloons, that will carry them, along with a stock of diamonds, to other lands where they can resettle.  Not that they are particularly concerned; as they informed the professor, the volcano has been dormant for over 200 years, after all.

When Krakatoa erupts, everyone rushes to the balloon raft, and, after a harrowing near-failure to rise, escapes.  All save the professor have a parachute, so he is left to last on the raft, descending into the Atlantic Ocean, where he is eventually saved after being spotted by a passing freighter en route to New York City.

Back home, the professor is returned, with great fanfare, to San Francisco via the Presidential train, and, after being carried to the Explorer's Club and placed in a bed on stage, and recounts the above tale to a breathless audience. At the conclusion of his speech, the professor is asked about his future plans.  He replies that he intends to have another balloon built, a Globe the Second, a seagull resistant one, and spend a year floating around the world. And just how will he finance such an expedition?

With the sale of a single pair of cufflinks.



Balloons was a bit of a slow go at the beginning, but really picked up the pace once the professor took to the air.  I learned a great deal about ballooning, a topic on which I was totally ignorant, and of course that lead to a healthy dose of non-fiction reading up on the subject. Giffard and Nadar are real people, fascinating people, and they and their balloons were quite the sensation in their day.

The eruption of Krakatoa in 1883 is well-documented, and resulted in the deaths of over 35,000 people. It was an event that was literally felt around the globe. For a brief history, go to this link at History.com.

21 Balloons turned out to be a fun read, and I can see older intermediate and middle-school kids enjoying the book. The author's writing style is more adult than geared for children - an example of an author who writes books that children can read versus an author who writes specifically for children. As far as the illustrations, they fit the tale, but I personally preferred his scenery versus his people, who came off as stiff and with slightly diabolical expressions. To each his own.

Like many older books, there are instances throughout the book that come off as dated/unfortunate. There is a scene involving a generic American Indian where the individual expresses himself in Hollywood Indian speak - easy enough to revise, and a reference to a Negro clown performing at the London Music Hall - again, easy to fix if the will/legalities are all in place. Penne du Bois died in1993. Hopefully whoever controls his estate would be open to the idea.

(I see that Amazon sells a 1986 edition of the book.  My version is older, so if anyone reading this has read this newer printing, I'd love to know if it includes any revisions.)


Link to The Twenty-One Balloons at Amazon.com.



William Pene Sherman du Bois was born in 1916 in Nutley, NJ but spent most of his life in France. He served in the army during World War II, and also served as a correspondent for Yank magazine. After the war, he continued to write and illustrate his own books, as well as illustrate books for other authors such as Isaac Bashevis Singer, Edward Lear, and Rumer Godden.  He was the first art director for The Paris Review starting in 1953.

In 1948, he won the Newbery Medal for The Twenty-One Balloons, and was twice a runner-up as an illustrator for the Caldecott Medal.

Penne du Bois wrote or illustrated over twenty-five books during his lifetime.  As always, whenever I review one book by an author, I end up adding more books by the same author to my list of books that I want to read/review. It's a long list. Several that look particularly interesting to me here are The Lion, Lazy Tommy Pumpkinhead  (part of an uncompleted series on the Seven Deadly Sins), Squirrel Hotel, and Gentleman Bear.

He died in 1993 at the age of 76 of a stroke in Nice, France.



Read his obituary in The New York Times


William Pene du Bois' papers at the New York Public Library.

William Pene du Bois' papers at the University of Minnesota Libraries.