The Teacher Who Preferred Judy Blume to Narnia

(If this two-legged train wreck had been one of my teachers, I probably would never have gone to college. She was a college classmate. The idea of her seeking employment as a teacher grossed me out...enough to goad me to write one of the few "poems" I wrote in college that I'm still willing to claim.)

This woman does not trust the mind

that could conceive a thing beyond

its sensory memories recombined:

she’d shelter children from the thought

of flying carpets, talking beasts;

she’d have their fantasies confined

to games, to holidays, to feasts;

mere repetition’s all they ought

to know of big mysterious words

like honor, courage, faith, and joy,

which they’ll repeat like trained, caged birds;

if they must read, let them be taught

stories of real, common things,

of driving to the shopping mall

and stealing brass and plastic rings

and hoping that a boy will call

and dreading friends who might betray

their staring long into a glass

and picking at their face all day,

but never high adventures where

the stakes are more than children’s play,

no gratitude for sacrifice,

no sacrifice for friendship’s sake,

nothing but muck beneath each pond:

how else should it be for such a one

who’s spent all her days in the silver chair

in the land that never saw the sun.

Book Review: Karen's Grandmothers

A Fair Trade Book

Title: Karen’s Grandmothers (Baby-Sitters Little Sister #10)

Author: Ann M. Martin

Author's web site: http://www.scholastic.com/annmartin/

Date: 1990

Publisher: Apple / Scholastic

ISBN: 0-590-43651-1

Length: 102 pages

Illustrations: black-and-white drawings by Susan Tang

Quote: “Some of them don’t have any visitors at all. They are very lonely. Who would like to adopt a grandparent?”

Poor little Karen Brewer, the stepsister of Baby-Sitters Club founder and president Kristy Thomas, has grandparents. Since both of her divorced parents have remarried, she has four “grandmothers” already. (She doesn’t even count grandfathers.) She also has one brother, three stepbrothers, her stepsister Kristy, an adoptive sister, and more pets than any reader with an active life of her or his own is likely to count. “But…having four grandmas…is gigundo special. And if I could have a fifth, that would be even better. I do not know anybody else with five grandmas.”

Did I mention that Karen’s father is a millionnaire? That doesn’t even register as special with Karen. She knows other people whose parents are millionnaires, and although she doesn’t know how to express the thought, having a blended family of four parents and six siblings is not necessarily a good kind of “special.” Also, Kristy is smart, cute, athletic, a leader, and a go-getter, and Karen is the one with the thick glasses. In this spin-off series about Karen, the poor little rich girl is always getting into trouble by trying to be even more “special” than her author has already made her.

Somehow I’ve always suspected that Ann Martin actually knew somebody like Karen. Maybe that’s because Karen reminds me of the poor little rich child of divorce, who didn’t have thick glasses but did have tooth braces, at my school. She might be your very worst friend, if you were her age, and a nightmare if you were her teacher, but you do have to feel sorry for her.

Anyway, in this episode, once again Karen’s craving for special attention gets her into trouble…but in a very nice way that’s easy for her to get out of. How much time does it take for a seven-year-old to relate to five adoring grandmothers? Exactly. But why hasn’t Karen’s school friend, who doesn’t have any grandmother, failed to “adopt” one? Is it possible that Karen’s new adoptive grandmother would be more congenial with someone who really needs an adoptive grandmother? No points for guessing.

Karen Brewer is easier to take in the books than she would be in real life, and in this early episode she hasn’t even unlearned how to write contractions, so Karen's Grandmothers is a nice, wholesome, short fun read.

Martin is still alive, active in cyberspace, and writing a new series for the new generation of kids, so all BSC books are Fair Trade Books. That means that when you send $5 per book + $5 per package to either address at the very bottom of the screen, we send $1 per book to Ann Martin or a charity of her choice. If you buy ten Baby-Sitter's Little Sister stories, you'd send $55 and Martin or her charity would get $10. 

Book Review: Karen's Sleigh Ride

A Fair Trade Book

Title: Karen’s Sleigh Ride (Baby-Sitters’ Little Sister #92)

Author: Ann M. Martin

Author's web page: http://www.scholastic.com/annmartin/

Date: 1997

Publisher: Apple / Scholastic

ISBN: 0-590-06590-4

Length: 108 pages

Illustrations: black and white drawings by Susan Tang

Quote: “My idea is that we have a wintery sort of Christmas party, for the Stones, to raise money…we could have sleigh rides—in a one-horse open sleigh!”

The Stones’ barn has burned down, and Karen, the seven-year-old stepsister of Baby-Sitters Club President Kristy Thomas, has not yet learned how to write contraction words but has thought of the coolest idea to raise money to restore the barn. Karen’s father happens to be a millionnaire. It wouldn’t be appropriate for him to hand his neighbor money. Letting the kids throw a party to raise the money is apparently considered better etiquette in Stoneybrook, Connecticut.

Why does Karen have this brainstorm before Kristy does? Oh well, maybe Karen cares more… What about the Stones themselves? What about Karen’s various parents and step-parents? Regular readers know how I feel about children’s stories where it somehow seems to take a child to think of something that would, in real life, be stunningly obvious to the adults. Ann Martin didn’t do this in the Baby-Sitters Club series, but here she is doing it to younger readers. Tsk. 

I’ll let it go, however, because Karen is not an especially bright little child-of-divorce and it’s just possible that all those older people would have carefully backed away from claiming what started out as the Stones’ idea, dropping a trail of hints just so poor little Karen can have the experience of thinking of a good idea before Kristy does, because BSC readers already know that Kristy has all the brains and looks in that family. The way Karen tells the story, it sounds as if nobody else thought of the idea first, but regular readers already know that Karen is just a tiny bit insecure and inclined to tell stories in ways that enhance her fragile self-esteem…

Anyway, here, dumbed down to a reading level at which children presumably know about possessive forms but not about contractions, is a very nice story about some very nice kids who throw a very nice fundraising party. It contains helpful hints for primary school children who would like to throw fundraising parties themselves. (Parents, beware.) It’s a short but cheerful read.

I dressed a doll to match Karen's outfit on the cover of this book, put it on display, and wrote this review, but was not able to post it, on June 16. The original doll-and-book package was sold on June 20. To commission a different doll outfit inspired by the cover of this book, send $20. 

To buy just the book, as an ordinary Fair Trade Book, send $5 per copy + $5 per package to either address at the very bottom of the screen, and we'll send $1 per copy to Ann Martin or a charity of her choice. Ten or twelve Baby-Sitter's Little Sister books would fit into a package, for a total of $55 or $65, from which we'd send $10 or $12 to Martin or her charity.

Book Review: Logan Bruno Boy Baby-Sitter

A Fair Trade Book

Title: Logan Bruno Boy Baby-Sitter (Baby-Sitters Club Special Edition)

Author: Ann M. Martin

Author's web page: http://www.scholastic.com/thebabysittersclub/ (Found from the home page that highlights Martin's new series, but yes, there's still a page for the Baby-Sitters.)

Date: 1993

Publisher: Apple / Scholastic

ISBN: 0-590-47118-X

Length: 133 pages

Quote: “Coach Leavitt had canceled our track team practice, so I had decided to attend the meeting. That afternoon, all nine members were present…eight Nicky Cash fans versus me.”

To the girls in the Baby-Sitters Club, Mary Anne’s official boyfriend Logan seems just about perfect. Readers might have wondered what is going on in the life of a boy who not only hangs out with wholesome baby-sitter types, but occasionally baby-sits. Does he play sports? Does he have male friends? Is he, y’know, masculine enough to be a good role model for little boys he might baby-sit?

I read this book with some insights, and some nostalgia, because my brother was a boy baby-sitter. I know what was going on in his case. The parents asked me; our parents wanted me to get some work experience but didn’t completely trust the children’s father, who had made a pass at an older girl baby-sitter a few years earlier, so they laid down the law to both of us: we had to baby-sit as a team—and we had to baby-sit our own little sister along with the three other tots of her approximate age. I was sure I was doomed to a lifetime of unemployment. Actually, having “three of us and three of them” worked out pretty well; my sister could play quietly with the quieter little girl, I could keep an eye on the mischievous one, and my brother was fast and tough enough to keep the boy on a tight leash. All six of us bonded. Later, that bond helped my sister cope with the sudden transition to being the Only Child Left at Home.

I know what living with a boy baby-sitter is like, too. It was fun. My brother never listed baby-sitting, day care, or elementary education among the jobs he wanted to be prepared to do as an adult. His short list included farming, construction, carpentry, biological research, and beekeeping; after a successful “Career Exploration” experience he added adult education; with some prodding from male relatives he allowed a few years for minimal military service, after we’d fought a fire he listed fire fighting as a side interest, and with some encouragement from Mother he added evangelical preaching to the list. 

Despite a natural talent and one track trophy, my brother never took sports seriously. He did like running; he complained more than I did as it became obvious that I wasn’t built to be a star athlete, and even spoke wistfully of wanting to run with the high school track and cross-country teams. My brother might have liked to have known more boys his own age who shared his own interests, but accepted the fact that very few of the boys even in my class, four grades ahead, had reached his mental age yet. So possibly, when he was eleven and twelve, hanging out with a four-year-old boy was no less satisfactory, maybe even less embarrassing than hanging out with guys who were supposed to be thinking on his level and just…weren’t. 

End of memoir; on to the book. The boy baby-sitter Ann Martin knew best obviously shared some part of my brother’s experience. Logan is a top student, called a genius by envious schoolmates; he’s on the track team, and thinks of the other boys on the team as friends, but they’re just not intelligent enough to be close friends. Girls like Mary Anne are a little closer to Logan’s mental level, but not quite there yet, either. So when T-Jam, the leader of an eighth grade “gang” who spend a lot of time smoking cigarettes and working on high school gangsters’ cars, asks Logan to be his friend and tutor, why should Logan expect Jam to be a less satisfactory friend than the slower-witted boys, the girls, and the little kids he already knows? Maybe ol’ Jam, who wants so much to be more sophisticated, will be closer to Logan’s mental age…

Jam, of course, is less satisfactory than the other sources of social frustration Logan knows. Logan is just too nice to imagine what lay ahead with a friend like T-Jam. For starters, he’s never really thought about the fact that the way criminals bond and establish “honor among thieves” is by “getting something on” one another, so being part of the gang means being part of the kind of stupid pranks that get eighth grade boys bumped from prep school into reform school.

But this is a Baby-Sitters Club story, in which lots of respectable adults know how deeply decent Logan is, so you know the ending will be very, very nice. I don’t need to spoil it by saying any more…except to note that there are times when boys who aren’t at the head of their classes, aren’t rich, aren’t handsome, don’t have girlfriends, don’t live in posh suburbs, and would never be hired as baby-sitters, get into messes just like Logan’s, for similar reasons. Too often those boys don’t have character witnesses, and a stupid kid prank in which they may not even have participated can launch them into lives of crime. The Baby-Sitters Club are far too young to be allowed to get to know problem students in inner-city schools, of course, and can’t be blamed for never having done that…but this novel made me want to growl at them, “After you’re thirty or forty years old you’d dang well better teach in inner-city schools. See for yourselves what might’ve happened to Logan if he’d been Black and/or Latino and/or fatherless and/or merely poor.” Oh, maybe not—it didn’t happen to Ben Carson—but there’s nothing remotely typical about Dr. Carson. Ordinary kids in situations like his need help from adults. 

Like the other Baby-Sitters Club books, this one is available as a Fair Trade Book, which means that when you send $5 per book + $5 per package to either address at the very bottom of the screen, I send $1 per book to Ann Martin or a charity of her choice. (If you want one, I'll even dress a doll like Logan on the cover of this book; packages including dolls cannot contain other books, and they cost $20.) At least eight BSC books will fit into one package for a total of $45 (to us), thus $8 (to Martin or her charity).

"Men's issues" as a Blogspot Label? I've not used it before, but why not? Guys do face issues; this book happens to be about one of them.

Book Review: Patti's Luck

Title: Patti’s Luck (Sleepover Friends #1)

Author: Susan Saunders

Date: 1987

Publisher: Apple / Scholastic

ISBN: 0-590-40641-8

Length: 101 pages

Quote: “‘Fifth-graders,’ Kate said slowly, rolling the words around on her tongue. ‘Doesn’t that sound a lot more mature than fourth-graders?’”

That’s the level of “maturity” sustained throughout this whole series. Although a goodly number of middle school readers bought and read the Sleepover Friends books, they never were loved in the way other juvenile series, like the Baby-Sitters Club or Clifford the Big Red Dog, have been loved. They’re entertaining enough to keep kids quiet during long rides; they’re not great.

In this episode, during one of their sleepovers, Kate imitates a character in a movie rerun the girls are watching and puts a “bad-luck spell” on Patti. The Sleepover Friends laugh about the hex until Patti really does have a run of bad luck.Some of it spreads over other people as well. A water main breaks, so the girls can’t wash the purple gel out of their hair before bedtime. Lauren hastily sets down her schoolbooks to help Patti untangle her bicycle chain, not noticing that she’s set them down on the back of a stranger’s car; when the girls look up, the car is rolling away, the driver not having noticed the books either. During the class trip to the museum, the fifth-graders get trapped in a stuck elevator. “The bad luck is all in Patti’s mind,” Kate insists, but it persists until the girls convince Patti that she’s due for a run of good luck.

Possibly because this book didn’t qualify for any literary awards, it didn’t arouse the kind of censorious indignation that other novels about middle school characters dabbling in The Occult provoked. It gives more attention to witch lore, relative to ordinary middle school social and family concerns, than either Jennifer Hecate Macbeth William McKinley and Me Elizabeth (why did Amazon mess up the look of that link? I don't know) or The Headless Cupid. Pagans and Unitarian Universalists are likely to enjoy Patti’s Luck. Fundamentalist Christians definitely won’t.

Meh. I didn’t buy this one for myself, or for my niece. I bought it at a bag sale, with a lot of other children’s books I intended to dress dolls to match, and after reading the story I’ve decided not to bother about the doll. Who wants to be accused of encouraging middle school witchcraft? Still, in the end Patti’s Luck actually tends to discourage witchcraft and “evil speaking,” so I suppose it has enough redeeming moral value to be offered to kids who want it.

Should it be a Fair Trade Book? I don't know. The Susan Saunders who wrote this book may still be alive, but I'm finding no positive information to that effect on the Internet. Anyway, to buy it here, send $5 per copy + $5 per package to either address at the bottom of the screen, below the blog feed widget.

Book Review: Dawn and the Big Sleepover

A Fair Trade Book

Title: Dawn and the Big Sleepover (Baby-Sitters Club #44)

Author: Ann M. Martin

Author's web page: http://www.scholastic.com/annmartin/letters/2015-12.htm (This blog post or "letter" mentions one of the young people who inspired the Baby-Sitters' charges, in real life, having a child!)

Date: 1991

Publisher: Apple / Scholastic

ISBN: 0-590-43573-6

Length: 138 pages

Quote: “‘Was anybody hurt?’ Claudia asked. Mal shook her head. ‘Not seriously. But the school was destroyed.’”

Stoneybrook Middle School, home of the Baby-Sitters Club, has a “sister school” and pen pals program. (Volume 44 in a series of over 100 books is the first time it’s been mentioned and, I think, the last.) When their “sister school” is destroyed by a fire, the kids decide to throw a “gigantic sleepover party” at good old S.M.S. for a fundraising event.

Dawn is, as regular BSC readers know, the complete stereotypical California girl—somewhat out of place in Connecticut. Though content not to be president of the Baby-Sitters Club, and superficially a less dominant personality than Kristy, Dawn is every bit as much of an alpha female as Kristy. (In real life, does this kind of relationship work?) When she starts organizing a project, there’s no question that it is going to be organized. The question is whether Dawn can sustain her mellow manner and avoid running herself completely into the ground with her organizational skills. Dawn also has long blonde hair, divorced parents, and a genuine taste preference for “health food.”

Well, now you know how the plot goes; it’s the Baby-Sitters Club, so everything will work out in a very nice, positive-role-model sort of way. Some of the younger children will whimper as they “sleep over” at school. The Baby-Sitters will demonstrate and learn a few wholesome, cheerful ways to handle the anxieties of younger children. They’ll raise money and send it to their pen pals, from whom no more will be heard.

Dawn is not the most fashion-conscious Baby-Sitter but, with her long blonde hair, she’s probably the one who looks most like a Barbie doll. Too bad she’s shown wearing generic jeans and shirt on the cover of this book. It’s always fun to convert Barbie into Baby-Sitter Dawn. At the time of writing, it is still possible to order the Baby-Sitter Dawn doll, packaged together with the book I physically own, for $20 online. The Storybook Dolls packages tend to move fast in real life, where they're cheaper.

To buy the book as an ordinary Fair Trade Book, send $5 per copy + $5 per package to either address at the very bottom of the screen (below the blog feed widget). At least eight BSC books, more if you order the skinny "Little Sister" spin-offs, should fit into a package containing books only and shipped under book rates, and Martin or a charity of her choice will get $1 for each of her books you buy here.

Book Review: Claudia and the Great Search

A Fair Trade Book

Title: Claudia and the Great Search (Baby-Sitters Club #33)

Author: Ann M. Martin

Author's web site: http://www.scholastic.com/annmartin/letters/index.htm (I linked to her "letter" blog post because it's about an interesting charity; you can click back to the home page)

Date: 1990

Publisher: Apple / Scholastic

ISBN: 0-590-49295-5

Length: 144 pages

Quote: “My sister and I sure are different. It’s hard to believe we’re related.”

As Baby-Sitters Club fans know, Claudia’s sixteen-year-old sister Janine is the complete stereotype of the high-achieving Japanese-American student; Claudia is the stereotype-buster, the arts-and-fashion-oriented Japanese-American student who struggles with boring academic stuff like math and spelling. (You can always identify Claudia’s contributions to the B.S.C. logbook, when they’re quoted in the text of any volume, by the misspellings.)

So Claudia goes on a secret search for evidence that she might have been adopted—being a good role model for baby-sitters, and learning more about baby-sitting, along the way. It’s the Baby-Sitters Club, so the story is lighthearted and short and everyone is nice.

All B.S.C. stories can be accused of being fluff or froth, not digging deeply into topics or issues or even emotions. Thousands of girls who enjoyed this series had no problem with that. I do accuse the critics who complained that Claudia doesn’t think enough about her cultural identity, though, of carping. Claudia obviously does think about her cultural identity; what she thinks about it is that she wants to fit into New England Anglo-American culture in every way she can…even though her “individual self-expression” (a trendy thing for Anglo-American teenagers to have) does seem to have been influenced by Issey Miyake and Rei Kawakubo, who were sooo trendy in the 1980s and 1990s that most middle school kids never even found their clothes in stores, but kids like Claudia studied their work for inspiration.

I’ve dressed two dolls to match this book cover; Claudia wears our basic shirt and trousers, and  Emily’s playsuit consists of basic shirt and trousers patterns knitted in one piece with the feet closed together. At the time of writing they're available as a set from the real-world Internet Portal but, unfortunately, I can't afford the phone minutes to post a picture of them online. To buy the dolls and book online, send $30 to either address at the bottom of the screen (down below the blog feed).

To buy just the books...you can, of course, buy them directly from that other Amazon Associate who posted that photo at Amazon; in theory I get a commission that way, too, and their price on that set of four "new" books is high enough that the commission would be worth my time. Or you can buy gently used clean copies of any or all BSC books directly from this web site for $5 per book + $5 per package. At least eight BSC paperbacks should fit into one package, which would cost you a total of $45. When you buy them here, because Ann M. Martin is still living, we send $1 per book to Martin or a charity of her choice.

Book Review: Kristy and the Snobs

A Fair Trade Book

Title: Kristy and the Snobs (Baby-Sitters Club #11)

Author: Ann M. Martin

Author's web site: http://www.scholastic.com/annmartin/ (interesting charity on her blog for February 2016!)

Date: 1988

Publisher: Apple / Scholastic

ISBN: 0-590-43660-0

Length: 145 pages

Quote: “They stopped a couple of yards away from me, and the big snob girl flipped her hair over her shoulder, and put her hand on her hip. “What,” she said, pointing to Louie, “is that?” “That,” I replied, “is a dog.””

Early in the Baby-Sitters Club saga, founder and president Kristy’s mother remarries, and Kristy, her mother, and her siblings move into her stepfather’s posh neighborhood. All kids tend to bristle when they meet, even the very, very nice members of the Baby-Sitters Club; this story is about Kristy’s and her new neighbors’ bristling.

Kristy distributes Baby-Sitters club flyers and is invited to baby-sit for some of the “snob” kids, whose parents could have taught them better manners but don’t mind when Kristy and Stacey teach them better manners—their way. In fact, there’s a distinct possibility that Kristy and Stacey are better baby-sitters than “the big snob girl,” who reacts with derogatory remarks about the Baby-Sitters Club and the dog Louie.

Louie, who is about as old as Kristy and thus doesn’t have long to live, probably has other things on his mind than what a stranger thinks of him. Kristy, however, takes all insults to Louie as insults to herself…at first.

Nevertheless, both Kristy and “big snob girl” Shannon are “thoroughly nice,” and in a few weeks they’ll bond. Readers may recall that Shannon becomes an “associate member” of the Baby-Sitters Club in later volumes. Their progress toward niceness is a little faster and smoother than some readers might believe, but then again some readers think books about children should provide good examples. This one does.

Ann M. Martin has gone on to new things--a new series--in recognition of the fact that the original Baby-Sitters Club members would, if real, be over forty by now. Nevertheless, she's still a living writer, active in cyberspace, boosting a charity that should appeal to both the BSC Fans and the BSC Snark communities on Live Journal. (Seriously.) Therefore, all BSC books qualify as Fair Trade Books. Buy them from this web site for $5 per book + $5 per package, and Martin or her charity gets $1 per book. The per-package shipping fee applies to as many books as I can jam into the package the Post Office will let me use, and going by the last package they offered for book mailing rates, the total price for 8 BSC books (or even 10 or 12 if you buy the skinny little "Baby-Sitter's Little Sister" books) would be $45. To buy the books here, send payment to either address at the very bottom of the screen, down past the blog feed widget. (Then scroll back up, please, and check out the blog feed. Don't I find interesting blogs to follow?)

Book Review: Back Home

(Still not a Fair Trade Book, although while writing this review I was sure it was old enough to be one!)

Title: Back Home

Author: Michelle Magorian

Author's web page, which should be used to buy the book if possible: http://www.michellemagorian.com/back-home/

Date: 1984

Publisher: Harper Collins

ISBN: 0-06-440411-0

Length: 375 pages

Quote: “‘I guess I had it lucky in the States,’ said Rusty guiltily.”

Rusty is a red-haired English girl who has spent the war years of the 1940s with a nice, arty family in Vermont. Her extroverted personality has been encouraged; she’s learned to push herself forward, boast, emote, and chatter to boys as eagerly as to girls.

Rusty thought she wanted to live in her own home with her own parents again, but her old London neighborhood is still unlivable . The people she remembers have scattered. She hardly even recognizes her parents, who are now living with her grumpy grandmother. Emotionally a child, Rusty wasn’t noticed as precocious in her American seventh grade class, but she’s beginning to have curves and is considered dangerously precocious in her English all-girls school. Rusty doesn’t even know why her chattering with boys is considered disgraceful—until a dorm mate asks whether she’s pregnant.

Among other period pieces in this book, there’s a touching scene in which Rusty thinks her mother’s having trained as a mechanic is unladylike, and her mother thinks Rusty’s interest in woodworking is unladylike, but they talk it out and agree that a little honest work won’t affect the femininity of either one.

Their social status is another matter. Rusty and her mother welcome the breakdown of rigid “class” distinctions between landowners, storekeepers, and laborers. Rusty’s father and grandmother don’t. And for Rusty’s little brother, part of his father’s idea of masculinity is being beaten, bullied, and “fagged” (it meant primarily being used as a servant by older boys, and wasn’t supposed to imply homosexual abuse, but  sometimes it did that too) by older boys at an all-boys school. Rusty’s father doesn’t even approve of Rusty’s feeling empathetic and protective toward her brother.

All this socioemotional drama takes place in a bombed-out land where food, fuel, fabric, even hot water bottles are rationed. Everyone is in fact malnourished. The ones who’ve spent the war years in England think they’re “used to it,” but Rusty’s child acquaintances have had their physical development delayed by malnutrition, and one of her adult acquaintances dies.

Although it’s not the most enjoyable read for either children or adults, this is a book families need to read, at least once, because it clarifies the big difference between the meanings of “baby-boomer” in the U.S. and the U.K. U.S. baby-boomers grew up in the Waste Age, when having every piece of faddy junk that came along was considered patriotic. British baby-boomers probably weren’t actually hungry for very long, but didn’t grow up wealthy and extravagant; it took years for the economies of the countries where the war was actually fought to recover.

If, as was recently proclaimed, American women think British accents are sexy, my guess is that it has something to do with the reality-based stereotype of British baby-boomers as tough, resourceful, and frugal. (Personally I’d have to ask which British accent we’re talking about.) Saying “Righto” in the right way stereotypes a man as a First Class Scout who could probably tie a neat tourniquet, using his left hand and teeth, if his right hand were blown off, and compose a clever limerick about explosions while driving himself to the hospital.

Brits can’t be blamed for exploiting this stereotype...when certain U.S. citizens seem determined to deny themselves and their children a moment’s opportunity to cultivate hardiness, even by waiting until mealtime to eat, and then project the fortitude they lack onto this fantasy about British people. However, those of us who admire Britishness in general, as distinct from a particular individual friend who happens to be British, might do better to work on stiffening our own upper lips. Back Home provides several practical suggestions for this exercise. Rusty, despite her scatterbrained “outgoing” temperament, is growing up with fortitude. She seems to deserve an even happier ending than she gets.

It should probably be mentioned that a Disney movie version of Back Home exists. As a small child I liked Disney movies. Around age seven or eight I began to notice that--maybe it was a deliberate effort to encourage movie watchers to buy the books?--all of the books on which Disney movies were based were always much better than the movies. 

As long as this book's been out and as successful as it's been, it's still available directly from the author as a new book (new edition, new jacket picture.) To buy Back Home online, use the link above to michellemagorian.com. 

Book Review: Animal Land

Title: Animal Land

Author: Margaret Blount

Illustrations: black-and-white reprints

Publisher: William Morrow

Date: 1975

ISBN: 0-688-00272-2

Length: 336 pages

Quote: “Animal Farm has been called a satire on dictatorship, but it is a chronicle of the sad sameness of human nature and the ultimate absorption of every revolutionary movement.”

Despite the subtitle, “The Creatures of Children's Fiction,” Blount has read a lot of nonfiction and books written for adults, too. Probably more for enjoyment than merely for the purposes of comparing and discussing the children's stories this book is supposed to be about. In addition to Animal Farm (which I read and liked at fourteen) there are discussions of Perelandra and That Hideous Strength (which determined high school students can read, and I did, but I appreciated them better in college) and The Once and Future King and The Canterbury Tales and Archy and Mehitabel and Of Other Worlds and Children's Books of Yesterday and T.H. White's Bestiary and so on.

Animal Land, itself, is aimed at educated adult readers and most likely to be enjoyed by writers, teachers, or librarians...but I can imagine a bright twelve-year-old, who wants to make sure s/he hasn't missed any really good reads, spending a few hours with this book before looking for all the other books discussed in it.

The publisher seems to have encouraged this since, instead of a blurb, the back jacket merely lists some of the Books and some of the Animals discussed in Animal Land: The Wind in the Willows, Dr. Dolittle, Aesop's Fables, Puss in Boots, Just So Stories, Pinocchio, Gulliver's Travels, Alice in Wonderland, The Box of Delights, Winnie the Pooh, Charlotte's Web, Stuart Little (has anyone besides Blount noticed what a weird, disturbing story that is, by the standards of children's fiction?), The Hobbit, Poo Poo and the Dragons, the apparently exclusively British adventures of Rupert Bear, Black Beauty, The Velveteen Rabbit, the Chronicles of Narnia, Johnny Crow's Garden, The Jungle Book, Babar the Elephant, Uncle Remus, Bambi, and Dumbo the Flying Elephant. And more.

The child who hasn't met all of these fictional creatures will want to meet the others, but may benefit from a warning that (a) some of them have never been distributed in the U.S., and (b) the author's reading list includes anything likely to be read by a "child" between the ages of three and thirty.

The adult reader may find Animal Land useful as a reminder that children don't actually live, read, learn, think, or grow up in “age groups.” Blount helps adults remember this by withholding judgment about the age at which any child is likely to enjoy any book. Perhaps, if the adult reader was lucky enough to read most of these books, the adult reader's memories may help. I remember finding Babar babyish at age six, although I knew older people (mercifully not my parents) to whom Babar had great nostalgic appeal, such that they still enjoyed reading his adventures. Perhaps because children who aren't segregated by gender seem to want to define and separate themselves by gender, I didn't properly appreciate Ernest Thompson Seton's animal stories before age thirty. (My brother liked them, even better than Kipling's, in middle school.) I found Chanticleer in a cousin's twelfth grade literature book and wanted to go back to those relatives' house to read all of his adventure when I was six, but I didn't really get into the rest of The Canterbury Tales even in college.

Animal Land is most warmly recommended to adults who can spend a few pleasant afternoons reminiscing along with Blount, then decide which old favorite they want to revisit, first, in the company of which children. Teenagers? No need to wait until you have nieces or nephews to read to; if you're planning to become a teacher, most of the books discussed in Animal Land, if available in your country, will be on your college reading list.

I recommend not passing up any opportunity to visit Johnny Crow's Garden, a babyish place I'll admit, but one every adult should have visited once. If you don't like Babar, Blount tells enough about his adventures that you can probably answer the questions on the test after reading Animal Land. If you didn't have the complete set of Beatrix Potter's little books as a child, I recommend splurging on the complete one-volume edition now.

What's not to love? Readers might want to add a chapter or two to Animal Land, discussing recent and U.S.-specific animal stories: The Incredible Journey, The Plague Dogs and Watership Down, Lad a Dog (and others by Albert Payson Terhune), the Outcasts of Redwall, the Hogwarts owls, The Cricket in Times Square, The Cat Who Went to Heaven, Rascal, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, the many adventures of Freddy the Pig, and Freddy's creator's less literary but more TV-friendly “Mr. Ed,” seem worthy of as much attention as several animals and stories mentioned in Animal Land. It's possible that Lassie and Thomasina were deliberately omitted for reasons that seemed good and sufficient to Blount, but readers might disagree. 

Margaret Blount wrote a few other books besides Animal Land, apparently all novels. No contact information, no date of death, and no verification that she's alive, shows up on Google. In the absence of contact information I can't claim to offer Animal Land as a Fair Trade Book, although it deserves to be one. And it's moving quickly into the collector price range: $10 per book + the usual $5 per package is the best price I can offer for a clean non-library copy...and I can't even guarantee that more than one book can be tucked into the same package. To buy it here, send payment to either address at the bottom of the screen.

Book Review: Reviens Snoopy (Update)

Title: Reviens Snoopy (Snoopy Come Home)

Author: Charles M. Schulz

Illustrations: black and white cartoons by Charles M. Schulz

Publisher: Holt Rinehart & Winston

Date: 1969

ISBN: 0-03-081048-5

Quote: “L'homme est le meilleur ennemi du chien!”

If the dog is man's best friend, and man is the greatest enemy of the dog...that leaves room for about a hundred pages of cartoons exploring the relationship between child and dog. Which is what this selection from several years of “Peanuts” cartoons does. It's all about Snoopy, the beagle who reflects on his “dog's life” with a man's mind.

Sometimes the complexity of being Snoopy even drives Snoopy to pay five cents for Lucy's somewhat overpriced psychiatric advice, but although Snoopy's thoughts are usually obvious to Charlie Brown and Linus he doesn't actually speak English—or French—and so Lucy gives up on him: “Que faire dans un cas de mutisme obstine?” (What can one do in a case of stubborn mutism?)

Sometimes Snoopy is offered dinners dogs don't normally eat, and, not being a real dog, he eats them...but he doesn't like them. Dumping his bowl, he reflects: “C'est la fin des haricots!” (That's the end of the green beans!)

Other times, he rejects human food, leaving Charlie Brown to observe: “C'est le seul chien que je connaisse qui ait des ennuis de cholesterol!” (He's the only dog I ever knew who worried about cholesterol.)

Often we see Snoopy sitting still, like a dog. Sometimes we see him lying down—flat on his back, like a human. Occasionally he flies, using his ears as rotor blades (in French the kids describe him as “un helichien”). Snoopy is, however, capable of either walking on all fours like a dog, or walking on two feet like a human; he even discovers that he can run and kick a football: “Savais pas qu'un coup de botte pouvait faire tant de bien!” (I never knew a kick could feel so good!)

Before Snoopy became an advertising mascot, when the cartoons were new and fresh, Snoopy was actually funny. Many baby-boomers will remember laughing at these cartoons in English. If you do, you may be in for a nice surprise: I find them even funnier in French.

This book is a collector's item, though not a Fair Trade Book. However, it was popular enough that we can still offer a clean used copy online for the usual price of $5 per book + $5 per package shipped. For current prices, e-mail salolianigodagewi @ yahoo.com.

Book Review: The Changeling (by Selma Lagerlof)

Title: The Changeling [translation of Bortbytingen]

        
Author: Selma Lagerlöf, translated by Susanna Stevens

        
Date: 1989

        
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf

        
ISBN: 0-679-81035-8

        
Length: pages not numbered

        
Quote: “The troll crone pulled the birch-bark basket off her back, removed her own infant, and placed it beside the human baby. And  when she saw the difference between them, she began to howl.”

        
Then the troll switched babies. The human parents tried to switch them back, but the troll hid from them. Most of the humans wanted to beat or abuse the troll and be rid of it, but the mother insisted on treating it kindly. So of course, like all fairy tales about kind people, the story ended happily.

        
This is a nice little picture book with beautiful full-color paintings. Recommended to all present-time and former children. Selma Lagerlof, a Nobel Prize-winning novelist who lived about a hundred years ago, has no use for a dollar any more, but if you send salolianigodagewi @ yahoo.com $5 for this book, you can add it to a package containing almost any of our Fair Trade Books and pay only one $5 shipping charge. 

Karen Bracken on Balance in Public School Textbooks

Karen Bracken shared this document from the Florida Family Association; my response (the paragraph I typed into the petition-to-the-company linked at the end of the F.F.A. report) appears below.

"Several news sites (Fox News and CreepingSharia) reported in late December 2014 that the Pitt County School District in North Carolina was using a vocabulary textbook with a chapter titled The Islamic World.  The work book contained several pages of vocabulary fill in the blank questions such as:

• “There are such vast numbers of people who are anxious to spread the Muslim faith that it would be impossible to give a(n)___ amount.”

• “The responses to Muhammad’s teachings were at first _____. Some people responded favorably, while other resisted his claim that ‘there is no God but Allah and Muhammad his Prophet.”

• “The zenith of any Muslim’s life is a trip to Mecca.”

The entire Islamic World section is posted here.  

Florida Family Association submitted a Public Records Request on January 5, 2015 to the Pitt County School District  which asked for copies of the vocabulary textbook chapter titled The Islamic World.  The request also asked for the separate Christian and Jewish side lessons that the district spokesperson, Brock Letchworth, alleged were also distributed.  Mr. Letchworth complied with the request.  He provided Florida Family Association with a copy of the entire Holt, Rinehart and Winston Vocabulary Workshop Fourth Lesson and two separately created side lessons.

The Holt, Rinehart and Winston Vocabulary Workshop Fourth Lesson was first published 15 years ago.

Florida Family Association began a long drawn out email exchange with Roderick M. Spelman, Vice President of Holt, Rinehart and Winston’s parent company Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.  Florida Family Association asked Roderick M. Spelman “What other workbooks are currently offered for this grade level which give the same presentation of Judaism and Christianity that were presented in this workbook for Islamism, Hinduism and Buddhism?”

After several follow up email communications, Mr. Spelman finally answered on February 6, 2015 with:   "After reviewing past product  I cannot provide you with any vocabulary workbook titles that have been published by HMH (presently or via our legacy companies) that present Judaism or Christianity as the basis for a set of vocabulary activities.  That said, our range of Social Studies texts do present content on all major religions. I would be happy to direct you to those title if that would be helpful to you. Please let me know."

However, Mr. Spelman has not provided the alleged “Social Studies texts on all major religions” that he offered on February 6, 2015 despite Florida Family Association’s follow up requests.  

The Holt, Rinehart and Winston Vocabulary Workshop Fourth Lesson workbook is still offered for sale and used in schools. 

By Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s own admission they have not offered during the past fifteen years vocabulary workbooks that have included Chapters on Judaism and Christianity for this grade level but they have for Islam.  Omitting Judaism and Christianity from publications in this manner makes it difficult for school districts to present a curriculum with fairly and legally balanced religious content.

Florida Family Association has prepared an email for you to send that urges officials at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt to stop omitting Judaism and Christianity from their publications and start providing fairly and legally balanced religious content in the future.

To send your email, please click the following link, enter your name and email address then click the "Send Your Message" button. You may also edit the subject or message text if you wish.

Click here to send email urging Houghton Mifflin Harcourt to stop omitting Judaism and Christianity from their publications and start providing fairly and legally balanced religious content in the future."

To which e-mail I added:

"I know it will be very difficult to discuss the U.S. "majority" religions, with all their diversity and disputes, in the same bland general way it's possible to discuss tiny minorities that are likely to thank publishers for mentioning them at all; publishers have my sympathy about that. I'm even willing to vet proposed texts from a conservative-Protestant perspective. However, it's unfair to students to assume that all children already know everything they need to know about Judaism and Christianity. Most elementary school students are taught about only one (and typically only one denomination), and many aren't taught about either."

Book Review: Little Town at the Crossroads

A Fair Trade Book

Title: Little Town at the Crossroads

        
Author: Maria D. Wilkes

        
Date: 1997

        
Publisher: Harper Collins

        
ISBN: 0-06-440651-2

        
Length: 343 pages

        
Quote: “Before Laura Ingalls Wilder ever penned the Little House books, she wrote to her aunt Martha Quiner Carpenter, asking her to ‘tell the story of those days’ when she and Laura’s mother, Caroline, were growing up in Brookfield, Wisconsin.”

        
And this is the book Maria D. Wilkes made out of the story Aunt Martha told. Laura Ingalls’ mother and sister make friends with a German immigrant girl who spells English words correctly but pronounces the letters “Ah-bay-tsay-day-ay,” and so on, so she can’t be given credit in spelling bees. Laura’s Uncle Henry brings in passenger pigeons to cook into pigeon pies. Woodchucks attack the garden just in time to win the children the right to keep a dog, even though their widowed mother hasn’t felt able to afford to feed a dog.

For me the Little House series ends with On the Way Home; although they were novelized, the Little House books have the credibility of memoirs, and the subsequent tie-ins are mere fiction. For readers who don't make this distinction, they may all seem like nice historical stories for children, with a focus on the kind of thing children really did in the nineteenth century. Considering how much Rose and Laura actually fictionalized, that's probably the more realistic view to take.

        

Apart from being illustrated by Dan Andreasen rather than Garth Williams, this book is much like the original Little House books, with memories of how people used to do everyday work told as vividly as memories of special events. Elementary school readers should be able to enjoy it; if they’re interested in old crafts and old songs, they may enjoy rereading it every year.

As usual: if you buy it here, $5 for the book + $5 for shipping, and Maria DiVencenzo "Wilkes" (this site explains why the publisher wanted her to use the name "Wilkes") gets $1. Or a charity of her choice gets $1. Other online retailers may offer a cheaper price but, so far as I know, this is the only site that pays living writers when we sell secondhand books. Besides, if you buy more than one small book here, you might be able to get enough books in the same $5 package to make the total price lower than you'd pay those other sellers. 

Book Review: Silver Dawn

Title: Silver Dawn

       
Author: Margaret Sweet Johnson

Antiquarian web site with a page about this author: http://dogco.com/margaret-and-helen-johnson-collaboration/

       
Date: 1958

       
Publisher: Morrow

       
ISBN: none (Amazon page here)

       
Length: 80 pages

       
Illustrations: drawings by the author

       
Quote: “Silver Dawn came from a long line of Irish hunters and jumpers.”

       
Silver Dawn, a dapple-gray mare, bonds with Julia, the rancher’s daughter who trains her to jump. The rancher sells the mare, anyway, to a circus. After a leopard attacks Silver Dawn, she is sold again, to a farmer who rents her out as a saddle horse. After an accident with an ignorant rider, Silver Dawn becomes too nervous to be ridden by anyone but Julia. Wandering about in the woods, they come to a forest fire, and Silver Dawn saves Julia’s life.

       
There’s not much suspense in this simply told story—you know it’s going to end with the girl and her horse together forever. Neither is there enough detail to offer any novelty to those who’ve already read Black Beauty. Nor is there a great deal of information about horses; there hardly needs to be, since this book is aimed at an audience who are unlikely to be allowed to do more than pat a horse. 

Nevertheless, for a child whose interest in horses extends to drawing horse portraits, this book has some nice, lifelike images. My brother, whose school drawings were always of horses or dogs, loved this book and used it as a model from which to learn. Other horse-loving children may like the pictures, too, long after they’ve pronounced the story “babyish.” Most adults could take drawing lessons from Margaret Sweet Johnson.

Online, we'll sell this book for our standard bottom price of $5 for the book + $5 for shipping.

Book Review: Mark the Match Boy

Book Review: Ragged Dick & Mark the Match Boy

        

Author: Horatio Alger

        

Date (for combined edition): 1962, 1979

        

Publisher: Collier Macmillan

        

ISBN: none, but click here to see the Amazon page

        

Length: 382 pages

        

Quote: “`And you have a large rent too,’ said the gentleman quizzically, with a glance at a large hole in Dick’s coat.”

        

Richard Hunter, known to his fellow shoeshine boys as Ragged Dick, is a paragon. Homeless at fourteen, his worst vice is “joking” by giving misleading directions to visitors to New York City . (The story was written in 1866, but Alger tells us that it’s to be imagined as having taken place “before the war.”) He is also fond of puns; when a rich man trying to haggle down the price of a shoeshine teases him about the “large rent” in his coat, he continues this joke by imagining a luxurious home on Fifth Avenue —his home “isn’t anywhere else.” Finding him amusing and also honest, the man hires him to work in a store.

        

Dick can now afford to rent a room and share it with another homeless boy, who went to school for a while before he became an orphan, and pays his share of the rent by “tootering” Dick. His aspiration to education puts Dick on the path to Fame and Fortune (the second volume of his adventures, unfortunately not included in this one-volume set). Dick is not destined to be one of the Alger heroes whose big break comes from sheer luck; his upward mobility depends on steady, diligent work in his job and at school. He will, however, quickly surpass the young snob, Roswell Crawford, who becomes his and later Mark’s enemy. (Though more insecure than evil, Roswell won’t find anyone interested in boosting his self-esteem; he’ll slip downhill and eventually go to jail.) 

        

Before we meet Mark the Match Boy in what was originally the third volume, we catch up with Dick and find him almost grown up, looking for the long-lost grandson of a rich friend. When we meet ten-year-old Mark, he is an orphan who has just escaped from the care of a mean drunk who beats him if he doesn’t sell enough matches to buy whisky; he’s sleeping on the ferry. On a whim, Dick and a friend tuck a dollar into Mark’s pocket as he sleeps. Mark can now afford a bunk at the Newsboys’ Lodge, where he’s staying when Dick, always loyal to his old friends, meets Mark again and decides to adopt him. Not as tough physically as Dick was, Mark is clearly one of the characters to whom Alger granted unusual good luck; no points for guessing whose grandson he turns out to be.

        

Because both stories are written as fiction, Dick’s can be classified as realistic or true to life—he achieves modest prosperity through hard work—and Mark’s as fantastic or unlikely—he suddenly discovers himself to be rich through good luck (but he’s in a position to discover this because of his good character). This is a convention; in real life both kinds of stories have happened. Nevertheless, in 1962 the publishers felt it necessary to have this book introduced by one Professor Rychard Fink, who explains how “Wish and faith fed upon themselves in Alger’s novels” and found it necessary to help educated, presumably Marxist-influenced, readers “understand classical laissez-faire individualism” as an “intellectual device that could change the nature of social responsibility” and an intellectual “edifice of gloomy error.” This error was, in Professor Fink’s mind, primarily a belief that “the State is unable to protect the laborer.” Fink has conveniently forgotten that the King, not the State itself, had previously been charged with “protecting the laborer,” that “the laborer” had judged the King’s protection a failure and organized a democratic republic in which the laborer was granted responsibility for “protecting” himself, and that the notion of a nominally democratic State trying to replace the King had only recently been proposed in Europe—by a fellow who seemed, at the time, certainly maladjusted if not quite certifiably insane.

        

Was it the cheerful clergyman Alger, or the outcast misfit Marx, who spun a fiction in which “wish and faith fed upon themselves” to build “an edifice of gloomy error”? By now history has furnished a short answer. It must, however, be recalled that Alger was not content to write just two stories about Dick’s success and Mark’s luck. There were dozens of these stories. Taken by itself, each one was reasonably likely to have happened. Taken as a mass, they made a heavy load of propaganda suggesting that all penniless orphans always ended up rich, which we know was not the case. Alger didn’t write about how many years Ragged Dick might have spent shining shoes and cracking jokes before anyone decided to offer him a better job, or how many residents of the Newsboys’ Lodge, in real life, would have died from starvation, exposure, and filth before one of them got even that much in the way of a break. In saying that there were stories like Dick’s in the real world Alger was writing the indisputable truth; in suggesting that Dick’s story was what any orphan could reasonably expect, Alger probably was, and his fans certainly were, as self-deluded as those who imagined that a Socialist, Communist, Fascist, or other “statist” story could end happily. Alger certainly intended to put his well-off adult readers on the lookout for opportunities to give a deserving young worker a break, but the cumulative effect of the whole body of his work seemed to suggest a belief that, as Fink charges, even homeless orphans “were independent beings needing no assistance,” since they were destined for great good fortune in any case.

        

Still, one Alger story will do no harm. Although Alger’s felt need to teach the reader went beyond little moralizing digs about how boys who wasted their money on tobacco wouldn’t rise in the world, like Dick did, because their characters were weaker, on into footnotes explaining that the characters passed a building “Since [the 1850s] destroyed by fire, and rebuilt,” his stories are certainly easy to read, with jokes to encourage the reader along. Ten-to-fourteen-year-old boys can still read these books, although they may be more interesting to adults who’ve heard the phrase “a Horatio Alger story."

Horatio Alger certainly has no use for another dollar, so go ahead and buy it elsewhere if you find a better price. From this site, Ragged Dick and Mark the Match Boy will cost $5, plus $5 for shipping this book and whatever else fits into the same package.

Book Review: If I Were in Charge of the World

A Fair Trade Book


Title: If I Were in Charge of the World

       
Author: Judith Viorst


Author's agent's Web page: http://www.eaglestalent.com/Judith-Viorst?gclid=CKfTgPqO-8ICFRQQ7AodFwkAlQ

       
Date: 1981

       
Publisher: Atheneum

       
ISBN: 0-689-30863-9

       
Length: 56 pages

       
Illustrations: drawings by Lynne Cherry

       
Quote: “If I were in charge of the world / A chocolate sundae with whipped cream and nuts / would be a vegetable.”

       
These 41 poems about childhood were written with Viorst’s three sons and their school friends as consultants. This by itself would not guarantee their authenticity, since by 1981 Judith Viorst’s sons were college-aged. And, yes, the influence of psychologists is as evident as the influence of children, although the poems keep it light:

                My mom says I’mher sugarplum.

                My mom says I’m her lamb.

                My mom says I’m completely perfect

                Just the way I am.

                My mom says I’m a super-special wonderful terrific

                little guy.

                My mom just had another baby.

                Why?

       
Children who wonder about this might be happier with an answer than with a restatement of the question. Parents of multiple children might as well be truthful. At some point a younger sibling will probably be told “Mom and Dad tried every way they knew to keep from having you,” even if it’s not true, so parents might as well admit that Life (or God) decides when children are to be born.

       
Meanwhile, a more literary criticism might be made along the lines of, “Why do so few free-verse poems stick in the mind, even if they are witty and insightful? Why is the poem about the cat who ‘thinks human beings are / Almost as good / As he is’ really a short essay, not a poem?”

       
Fortunately for kids who'd rather just enjoy poems than debate about what is and isn't a poem, most of the poems in this collection aren’t free verse. Some of them have a quality that’s a sort of trademark for Viorst, a way of setting up an elaborately detailed scene and giving it an unexpected plot twist in just a few words. After sixteen lines about a mother who doesn’t want a dog:

                Mother doesn’t want a dog.

                She’s making a mistake.

                Because, more than a dog, I think

                She will not want this snake.

       
The drawings are realistic and delightful. If you read the author and illustrator mini-biographies, and realize that the poems are about children in Washington but the illustrator was a New Englander drawing mostly from life in Texas, a certain geographical dislocation will explain itself to you...and this is the kind of criticism that really amounts to high praise. How many illustrations in children’s books are well enough done to give any sense of geographical location?

       
This is a book whole families will enjoy reading before they pass it on to other lucky families. It's easy to find, so as a Fair Trade Book it costs $5 + $5 for shipping. Although you pay only one shipping charge per package, and several other items could fit into a package with this slender book, we will send Judith Viorst or a charity of her choice 10% of that total price, $1, for each copy we mail out.