My Book Reviews: Little House on the Prairie

Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder

I am always looking for the next book to read aloud with my children, and now that they are getting older it is especially fun for me to find that perfect book that will capture their interests and imagination.  For my six year old daughter, Hattie, that book was Little House on the Prairie.

Over the last few months, Hattie has developed a fascination with pioneer times.  I’m sure moving to our little pioneer-grown town here in Utah has a lot to do with it — like the active rail line through our last home town in Massachusetts helped develop our oldest son’s enthusiasm for trains when he was younger. 

Or maybe it’s just the exercise of the imagination that appeals to her — it isn’t hard for Hattie to picture a young girl sharing household jobs and responsibilites with an older sibling, or to feel the safety and warmth of family and home.  But to put herself into a situation where that home has to be built from hewn logs, a daily dinner of cornmeal is prepared over an open fire, and entertainment consists entirely of chasing prarie dogs and listening to Pa on his fiddle — now that requires a leap of imagination.  

I think it was good for Hattie to see that Laura and her family could live on very little and still be happy.  And to see that they were required to make do with the things they had, while working hard each day.  I think it was good for her to see how habits and customs have changed since pioneer times.  Pa was often enjoying a smoke on his pipe after dinner.  “They used to smoke a lot in pioneer times,” she told me in a very matter-of-fact way.  She was able to understand, in a way that I felt was significant, that over time habits and attitudes can change.

The one thing that concerned me about the book was its treatment of the white settlement of Native American lands.  Laura’s Pa purposely moves his family to what he calls “Indian Territory,” to homestead on the land there.  He is much more sympathetic to the Native Americans than other homesteaders we meet in the book, but he has moved onto their lands, nonetheless.  However, in spite of this attitude of entitlement, the book ends with a very poignant scene in which Laura and her family feel a profound sadness watching the Native Americans vacate the land, and then choose to leave it themselves.  Without making any political or social statements, Wilder captures a feeling of empathy that I felt was very valuable for my daughter to experience.

The Josefina Story Quilt by Eleanor Coerr

When we finished reading Little House on the Prarie, I decided to continue exploring Hattie’s interest in pioneers.  She is an emerging reader, and over the next few nights I listened while she read a pioneer-themed book to me:  The Josefina Story Quilt by Eleanor Coerr.  In it a young girl must help her family pack their belongings into a covered wagon for the long trek west to California territory.  She must leave many of her things behind, but there is one thing she is not willing to part with:  her pet hen, Josefina.  The story follows the family’s adventures along the wagon train, and tells how the girl, Faith, commemorates their journey in a quilt she pieces and sews on the way to California.

Hattie enjoyed the story.  Faith’s affection for her beloved hen was endearing to my little animal lover; the perils and adventures of the trek west were entertaining.  Hattie was also intrigued by the idea that Faith’s quilt was sewn with images that represented things she saw and experienced during her journey.

The Quilt-Block History of Pioneer Days

That led us to the book we are currently reading, The Quilt-Block History of Pioneer Days.  Each night I read Hattie an informative chapter that describes different aspects of pioneer life and how quilts figured into that — from the signature quilts that were sewn to say goodbye to friends and family, to the way quilts were used to protect fragile dishes that women hoped to bring safely to their new homes.  At the end of each chapter is an easy, quilt-themed craft project that Hattie works on the next day.  For example, after we learned about signature quilts, Hattie used the template in the book to make bookmarks for everyone in our family.  She signed her name on one end, and our names on the other.  It has been a fun way to extend her interests, and to learn a little more about the lives and history of the pioneers.

Portrait of a Tooth(less) Fairy

I have a drawer in my writing desk where I keep all that is most precious to me — my journals, letters, notes.  Drawings with misspelled words that say things like, ‘I love you like the jucises of fruits’ and ‘I love you becas yoor sil is bootefl.’  And all of the correspondence that has transpired between my daughter Hattie and the tooth fairy.  I knew she’d rifle through that drawer someday.  Why didn’t I move the evidence?  But I left the notes there, and I paid the price.

 

 Last week Hattie pulled one of her front teeth.  She couldn’t wait to write a note to the tooth fairy and went scrambling for writing materials while I was helping Hunter with some homework.  I knew exactly what had happened when she came downstairs to find me, her face crestfallen.

“Mom,” she said, in a sad and sorry voice, “I looked in your drawer.” 

This is what she found: The original note -

Dear Tooth Fairy,

I would like to know more about you.  Could you be my friend?  Don’t be shy.  I’m nice.

 Love, Hattie

The response:

Dear Hattie,

Thank you for your tooth.  It is a very nice tooth and I will put it in a special place in my collection.

I would love to be friends with a little girl like you.  I love the way your freckles dance across your face when you smile, and I know that you are always kind to all creatures, big or small.

Alas, the Fairy Code prohibits friendships between fairies and little girls.  I don’t know why.  Perhaps it is because we fairies can be jealous and we worry that humans will steal our magic.

I’m not very big at all.  I have glittery wings the color of your eyes.  While you were sleeping, I covered your face with tiny fairy kisses. 

I will return when you lose your next tooth.

Love, the Tooth Fairy

Here is the next letter:

Dear Tooth Fairy,

Can I have a picture of you? 

Love, Hattie

Here is the reply:

Dear Hattie,

Good job pulling your own tooth!  I don’t have a picture of myself.  Fairies are like hummingbirds — tiny and quick.  It is almost impossible to photograph us.  But this is a drawing that looks a lot like me.

I love you!  the Tooth Fairy

Can you see why these notes were so precious to me?  And now I was sure that I had ruined it all.

 ”Why did you write the notes?” Hattie wanted to know. 

I knelt down next to her and told her how much I loved pretending with her.  I told her that I had saved the notes because they were a treasure to me.

My husband had joined us.  I’m sure on one level he was enjoying this.  He had warned me all along about taking things too far.  But he loves his little girl and he put a hand on her shoulder and told her, “There still is a tooth fairy.”

Hattie looked at me and said, “It’s Mommy.”  And then, she understood.  She grinned until her freckles really did dance and she asked, “Can I be the tooth fairy, too?”

So now we have two tooth fairies at our house.  And if Sawyer and Pierce don’t start losing their teeth soon, they’d better watch out.  Their sister is going to be more than willing to get the wiggling started.

Oh, and one more thing.  Last night when I crept into Hattie’s room to take her tooth and leave behind my quarters, there was a note lying on her pillow.  The very best one of all:

Dear Mom,

I love you.  I hope you love me too.  Thanks for the money.

Love, Hattie

Portrait of the Mountains

Mt. Timpanogos

This is a guest post by my son, Hunter, who is 8:

Where I live the mountains are so close that I can ride my bike to trails without getting in the car.  I like to hike and bike in the mountains.  When I go there it feels like I’ve entered a new world.  One that changes in each season.

In spring I view glistening dew on the fresh green leaves.  I also smell the bitter scent of the sagebrush.  In summer I can look up as high as ever and see the sun as an eye-watering gold coin that I can’t resist.  In the evening I hear crickets chirping.  In autumn it is as if someone has spread out pure bronze, gold, and red as far as the eye can go.  The leaves rustle as they fall.  In winter I once biked in the mountains and saw the snow gleaming in the sunlight.  I was very cold as I finished the race.  There is not one season I like the best.  The mountains are always beautiful to me.  Even when I can’t go see them, I carry their memory in my mind.

My Book Reviews: The Truth about Forever

I have heard two different children’s book editors from two different publishing houses speaking at two different writing conferences, one in New Hampshire and the other in Utah, tell writers how excited they are by Sarah Dessen’s work.  They practically begged conference participants to write something like Sarah Dessen.

‘Sarah Dessen,’ I scribbled in my conference notes the first time I heard her name.  ‘Read Sarah Dessen.  Write Sarah Dessen.  Be Sarah Dessen.’

I didn’t know anything about her at the time.  I’m not sure how I could have been so obtuse.  Her books are enormously popular.  They are among the tiny selection of contemporary YA that get shelved at the giant superstores like Walmart and Target.  They even show up at my neighborhood grocery store.  So when I finally opened my eyes, here was my brilliant epiphany:  “Editors love her because she sells!  How mercenary of them.”  And though I picked up a copy of The Truth about Forever, I didn’t bother reading it.

Then last summer, one hundred pages into the book I am writing, I realized that the story I had spent months (actually years) working on was just backstory.  I needed to delve deeper into my protagonist’s life: her problems, her fears, her failures.  And unsure how to do this, I picked up The Truth about Forever, just while I let things percolate.

From the outset, protagonist Macy is struggling to deal with her Dad’s death, although it has been months since his passing.  He died unexpectedly of a sudden heart attack during he and Macy’s routine morning run, and she hasn’t run since.  But this all happened before the book begins.  It is an event that influences Macy, has made her tender, self-aware, angry, and even somewhat fragile.  But it is not what the story about.  That is clear from the first page, where we see Macy helping her perfect, gifted, overachieving boyfriend, Jason, packing for his annual summer brain camp.   This is not a story about Macy’s dad dying.  This is a story about Macy, struggling to find her own identity — to know who she is and what she wants to be.

Dessen’s writing is crisp and clean throughout, and her characters incredibly vibrant and authentic.  The romance is not overpowering — just important to Macy’s process of self-discovery.  The relationship between Macy and her mother is difficult without becoming oppressive.

After reading The Truth about Forever, I found and read an interview Dessen did with Roger Sutton, editor in chief of The Horn Book Magazine, in the May/June 2009 edition of The Horn Book, and this is what she says about her protagonists, and their problems:

“The thing that all my narrators have in common is that they are girls on the verge of a big change.  And how they deal with that change is where the story comes from.”

This approach to character and story really helped me re-think what was going on with my own writing.  It made me ask where my protagonist’s story is coming from — not the story of everything that is happening around her, in her family and where she lives, but the story that is her very own, independent of everyone else.

And finally, when Sutton asked Dessen about being a writer for girls, she answered with an honesty that is as direct and refreshing as her writing. 

“Now anything that isn’t Literature and has women in it is chick lit.  It seems like you’re one or the other, you’re “literary” or you’re “chick lit.”  And that’s unfortunate, because there are lots of shades in between.  But I’m not offended by it, because I am writing books for girls.  I like that my covers are kind of pink and cute.”

So I get it now.  I understand why Dessen is so popular among editors and readers alike.  She is a talented writer, expert at her craft.  She knows how to tell a story — the story.  The one that matters most.   And she knows who her readers are.  Knows them as well as she knows the engaging characters that fill the pages of her books.

Portrait of a Quilter

Tonight I attended a quilter’s guild meeting in my little town.  The topic of the meeting was the Jane Stickle quilt of 1863.  Several of the women in the group recently returned from a trip to the Bennington Museum in Vermont where they went to view Jane Stickle’s masterpiece, and were exhilirated and inspired by their pilgrimage.  Some of them had even undertaken, over the past year, to make their own reproductions of the intricate quilt, which contains a total of 5,602 pieces, and displayed them at the meeting.

As I sat and listened to them recount their experiences reproducing and visiting the Jane Stickle quilt, I wondered at their homage, and at my own feelings of reverence for this woman and what she created. 

Census reports tell us that Jane Stickle was born Jane Blakely on April 8, 1817 in Shaftsbury, Vermont. Married to Walter Stickle sometime before 1850, they did not have a family of their own. They did, however, take responsibility for at least three other children. In an 1860’s census, Jane Stickle was listed as a 43 year-old farmer living alone. She eventually reunited with her husband, but during that time alone she lovingly created what is now known as the Jane Stickle Quilt. As a reminder of the turbulent times the country was going through, she carefully embroidered “In War Time 1863” into the quilt.

There is so much left out of that brief history, but also so much revealed.  The bare facts and the story they outline put me in mind of master historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, and the course I took from her while I was in college.  In her book, Good Wives, she is able to glean rich details from the lives of simple women through historical records as sparse as a county probate inventory. 

Even more importantly, Ulrich directs students of women’s history to the ways women of all ages have found expressions for their intellect and art, even if it is in the quiet, historically transparent realms of house and home.  While I was taking her course, she introduced us to the writings of Alice Walker.  Specifically her essay entitled, “In Search of our Mothers’ Gardens.”  Walker writes about the legacy of slave women and their descendents.  Working women with no time or outlet for their creative, artistic voices.  “When, you will ask,” she writes, “did my overworked mother have time to know or care about feeding the creative spirit?  The answer is so simple that many of us have spent years discovering it.  We have constantly looked high, when we should have looked high — and low.”

Walker then points us to another quilt.  One that hangs in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C.  A priceless quilt “made of bits and pieces of worthless rags,” but “obviously the work of a person of powerful imagination and deep spiritual feeling.”

Walker goes on to describe her own mother’s flower garden — a place “so magnificent with life and creativity, that to this day people drive by our house in Georgia — and ask to stand or walk among my mother’s art.”

And here is the part of Walker’s essay that touches on the feeling – the appreciation and awe – that was present at the quilt guild meeting tonight: 

“I notice that it is only when my mother is working in her flowers that she is radiant, almost to the point of being invisible — except as Creator: hand and eye.  She is involved in work her soul must have.  Ordering the universe in the image of her personal conception of Beauty.

Her face, as she prepares the Art that is her gift, is a legacy of respect she leaves to me, for all that illuminates and cherishes life.  She has handed down respect for the possibilities — and the will to grasp them.”

It is this legacy that we cherished tonight at my quilting meeting.  We were profoundly moved that a simple woman, through ingenuity, art, and persistence, could create something so astonishing.  And we found validation in the work of our souls.

Portrait of Santa Claus

One of my favorite things about being a parent is when one of my kids approaches me with a question.  Something they are wondering about, mulling over.  “Mom,” someone will say, “I have a question.”  And in that moment, the pause before the asking, I brace myself.  Because who knows what the question will be, or if I’ll even be able to answer it.  But I love that they come to me for answers.  I love the way the questions they ask give me glimpses into their little minds, revealing wonder, mystery, and logic.  And I love that after the question is asked and it is time for the answer, we’ll have a chance to learn together.

My oldest, Hunter, is a great asker of questions.  He loves to learn.  But lately he is the one formulating the answers.  I love encouraging him to find solutions, and express his thoughts and opinions.  We are developing a mutual respect toward each other in our learning and understanding of things.  Which makes it hard not to be completely honest and upfront with him when he approaches me with a really good question.  Like how babies are made.  But that is a topic for another post.

Most recently the subject of our conversation was Santa Claus.  Yes, I know, it isn’t even November yet.  But Santa has already become a frequent topic at our house.  Hunter came home from school one day and started telling me about the BMX bike he wants for Christmas.

“We’ll see what Santa says about it.”  I said.  And then I watched him make a face.  One that said, ‘whatever, Mom.’  So I asked him, “What are you thinking about Santa these days?”

“Well, I know he isn’t real.  Nobody can live in the North Pole, and Reindeer can’t fly.”

And this is where I had to admire his logic, and couldn’t make myself quell his very reasonable doubts.  Instead, I pushed him a little bit.  “So who do you think has been bringing you presents all this time?”  I asked.

And of course Hunter, being the boy that he is, had an answer.  Just not the one I expected.  “I don’t know,” he shrugged.  But clearly he’d been thinking about it.  “The United States Government?”

Because of course if someone is going to bring you presents while you are sleeping, those toys and games your heart is most set upon, it is not going to be your parents.  It is the government.  I couldn’t help it.  I had to laugh.  And then I told him the truth, which unfortunately, was harder for him to believe than his own hypothesis.

“Why?” he wanted to know, “Would you and dad buy me all those presents?”

It was a little concerning, I have to admit. 

But at this point, things got more complicated.  My six-year old daughter came on the scene.  She discovered that secret knowledge had been shared and wanted to know, “Why would you tell your son a secret, and not your daughter?”

So I bamboozled her — my daughter who believes in fairies with all her heart, and writes them notes to lure them to her room at night.  I wasn’t ready to tell her the truth yet.  So I told her that the secret was about the United States Government.  It was just a little stretch.  I told her that while the government does NOT bring gifts to kids at night, the CIA can sneak into people’s houses and listen to their phone conversations.

“Oh,” she said, her mouth a little cheerio.  “Does Daddy know?”

So Hattie thinks she got the same information as Hunter.  But I don’t feel bad about lying to her about it.  For her the magic of childhood is still so real.  And for Hunter, science and reason is growing into a whole new world of magic and wonder.  One that I get to be a part of everytime I hear the words, “Mom, I have a really good question.”

My Book Reviews: The Knife of Never Letting Go

The Knife of Never Letting Go is a book I fell into after reading an article that it was chosen as the 2008 recipient of The Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize. 

The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness

The Guardian Award is given each year to a work of children’s literature by a British or Commonwealth author, published in the UK during the preceding year. The award has been given annually since 1967, and is decided by a panel of authors.

I say that I fell into Never Letting Go because in the article there was an excerpt from the book.  It introduced Todd, a boy who is one month away from his thirteenth birthday, and is heading to the swamp that lies on the outskirts of town “because the swamp is the only place anywhere near Prentisstown where you can have half a break from all the Noise that men spill outta theirselves, all their clamor and clatter that never lets up, even when they sleep, men and the thoughts they don’t know they think even when everyone can hear.  Men and their Noise.”

I had to order the book so that I could read more.  Todd’s voice was so astonishingly honest.  In a way, it has to be.  Todd’s thoughts are audible to everyone around him, including Viola, the mysterious, Noise-less girl who appears and accompanies him on his epic-like saga to escape Prentisstown – its Noise and even its history.  But Ness manages that honesty with a deftness that is breathtaking to read.

Aside from a handful of truly nasty men, Noise is the book’s main antagonist.  Noise is so powerful that it constructs a whole new ethos — a new set of laws influencing human interaction and behavior.  They are fascinating to discover and challenging to understand.  Author Patrick Ness says of the book:  “In its most basic form it’s about information overload, the sense that the world is so very very loud. Then I took the next logical step of what if you couldn’t get away.”

The thing that I struggled with the most as I read Never Letting Go is how hope factors into Todd’s life in the New World.  His father-figure, Ben, teaches him that hope is what will get him to the end of the road, that hope is what gets you back up again after you fall.  But when Todd and Viola arrive at the end of their epic journey, there is little resolution to their troubles, and their hope seems to have been in vain.  Never Letting Go is the first in the Chaos Walking triology, and the second book is now available.  I’ve heard that if anything it is more grim than the first book.  But I want to read it and see — is there any hope for Todd and Viola?

Portrait of Grace

This morning my grandmother left behind a body that had grown too weak, too old, too tired.  And although her body pained her greatly, deprived her of independence, hid away the comforts of sight and sound, she bore it’s faltering with the loveliness of grace.  Grace that was always sweet, and full of kindness and love. 

I knew it first as a child, my grandmother’s grace.  It was the encompassing embraces on her front step.  Her soft voice that floated through a room.  It was sitting on her pink velvet couch, knowing instinctively not to wiggle, but to cross my legs at the ankle and take just one piece of spun sugar candy from the crystal bowl on the coffee table, not a handful.  It was warm, home-made meals of pot roast, potatoes, green beans, and jello salad.  And delicate figurines with long, elegant lines behind glass curios.

To me she was my grandmother, generously caring and kind.  The Margaret whose name I had inherited as my own, tucked behind my first given name.  Back then I could not have fathomed what it meant for her to be so lovely, a farm wife who spent her life in the rural farming communities of Eastern Idaho.  As an adult I have learned to see the iron strength of courage and faith that was the muscle and sinew of her grace.

Grandma grew up in Pocatello, Idaho.  It was there, on her father’s small dairy farm, that she learned to combine industry and elegance.  She would accompany her mother, a gifted seamstress, to buy the family’s groceries.  Flour was sold in large, cotton feedsacks decorated with brightly colored prints, and they would linger over each pattern before deciding which sack to purchase, knowing it would become a new a dress for my grandmother.

After high school, grandma took classes at University of Montana in Missoula.  She saved up $60 working so she could become a school teacher, but when she was called to serve a religious mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, she used the money for that instead.  She was sent to the Northwestern United States Mission.  Her responsibilites included traveling from Southern Oregon to Montana, visiting sick missionaries and speaking at conferences.  On one of her hospital visits she met a farm boy from Grant, Idaho, who was recovering from appendicitis.  Howard Taylor.

After their missions, Howard asked her on a date.  They spent a Saturday afternoon together in Lewiston.  The next night he proposed.  After five more dates they were married.  Howard started out milking cows, like Margaret’s father.  But it wasn’t long before he got into the potato business, and soon they had their own potato farm.  They had seven children together.  The oldest was out on a tractor by the time he was six, and the rest followed. 

When their fifth child was still a baby, Grandma suffered her first tragedy.  She had a severe attack of encephalitis that almost killed her.  Instead, it paralyzed her and took her memory and her ability to speak.  Her two youngest children were sent to the homes of friends and family in the community while Margaret fought to regain her health and her former capacities.  Howard, the man whom she had met on a hospital bed of his own, nursed her through the best he could while running his growing farm.

It was a slow, frustrating recovery, but Margaret learned to walk and talk and read and write all over again.  It was different.  Harder.  Her memory was still missing.  Her life was void of a personal narrative to anchor and direct it.  She couldn’t remember who she had been.  But she recognized that somehow, in the comparison between then and now, something was lacking.  She assumed her missionary service had been a failure because she couldn’t remember it, and regarded books stacked along a shelf with sadness, unable to recall the stories that had once inspired her.  But she pushed on.  The grace with its sinews of steel.

I didn’t know this woman when I sat in her front room as a child, watching the reflection of our decorous heads in her large gilt-framed mirror.  I had no understanding of the value of her grace.  Even now I wonder how she managed to preserve it.  Especially after her second tragedy struck.  Howard’s abandonment.  He left her after more than twenty-five years of marriage.  The shock and grief came closer to killing her than the encephalitis.  I was just a baby when it happened.  Too small to register the aftershocks.  By the time I could look and see, she had rebuilt herself.  Again.  With the same loveliness of grace.  So beautiful to look and and be near that you might fail to see the courage and conviction that it rested on.

And now she is gone, has left her body and has moved on.  She’ll take her sweet-strong loveliness of grace with her, but for those of us left behind, the sons and daughters and grandchildren with children of our own, there is a limitless inheritance to share.  A legacy of love and kindness, crossed ankles and bended knees, that will be a strength of its own.  One I hope my daughter, herself a Margaret, will learn to treasure.

My Book Reviews: The Mostly True Adventures of Homer P. Figg

The Mostly True Adventures of Homer P. Figg

One of my favorite parts of each day is when I tuck my kids in bed and read to them.  I make the rounds from one bed to the next, with the help of my husband, making sure each child gets a chance to read from his or her own special book.  If I take too long getting to my eight year old, Hunter’s, room, I’ll hear his voice, quiet but insistent, asking, “Mom, are you going to read to me?”  It is a special time, and I want to make sure it is enjoyable for my kids, so I am careful about which books I choose to read to them.

For the last two years, Hunter and I have been reading fantasy novels together.  Some have been really fun: the Chronicles of Prydain Series by Lloyd Alexander, The Ranger’s Apprentice by John Flanagan, and of course, Harry Potter.  Others . . . not so much.  At least in my opinion.  But Hunter seemed to enjoy them all.

Still, I was dying to share something with him that didn’t involve strange, savage beasts, epic quests, magic spells, and swordplay.  In other words, something that wasn’t fantasy.

I asked our school librarian for some book suggestions and she showed me The Mostly True Adventures of Homer P. Figg.  It was absolutely perfect.  Or in Hunter’s words, “the most amazing book ever.”

I think there are some important elements in True Adventures that endeared it so much to my fantasy lover.  First of all, the evil nemesis.  Every fantasy book I’ve ever read has a dark, malignant antagonist whose existence is a threat to life and happiness.  In True Adventures that antagonist is Squinton Leach.  And while he is no sorceror or evil king, the crimes he commits make him just as dangerous.  He is the protagonist, Homer Figg’s, uncle, and his negligence and abuse of his two nephews make him every bit as vile as the big Voldemort.  Leach initiates the book’s action by selling his underage nephew, Homer’s brother Harold, into the service of the Union Army under the Conscription Law of 1863.

And this is where the next important element begins:  the Quest.  Homer escapes from Leach and embarks on an epic-like quest to find his brother, rescue him from the war, and bring him home, wherever that might be — anywhere where Leach is not.  That quest takes Homer on a journey from Maine southward toward the fighting, where he ultimately witnesses the Battle of Gettysburg.  On the way he  aides in the underground railroad, joins a traveling medicine show, is taken as a prisoner of war, sees hand to hand combat, rides a steamship, a train, and a hot air balloon, and encounters allies and enemies alike.

Throughout it all, Homer maintains that his allegiance lies with himself and his brother.  However, and this is where True Adventures departs from the plot of a more traditional fantasy quest, when he finally tracks Harold down, his brother is somewhat of a fallen hero.  Not only that, he doesn’t want to be rescued.  The black and white, good versus evil construct breaks down and we find ourselves grappling with issues more common to realistic fiction: discovering and learning how to cope with the good and the evil that lie within all of us.

There is a wonderful element of humor in the book.  Homer has an engaging and entertaining voice, and the lies he tells to manuever his way through his adventures had Hunter and I chuckling.  But there are also very sober and somewhat graphic scenes, summed up in this poignant dream of Homer’s: 

 ”In my dream Harold will be happy and strong and find him a wife to darn his socks of an evening and give him children that are never hungry and never get beat or locked in the barn like animals, and never have to run away to war to save their big brothers and see arms and legs being stacked like cordwood, or men dying of their wounds, or hear the keening of boys who miss their mothers and beg to see her in Heaven.”

The treatment of the Civil War battles did not come until the end of the book.  They were brief, but they were somewhat gruesome.  However, I felt that sharing those scenes with Hunter was very valuable.  First of all, because of the historical accuracy Philbrick treats the subject with.  Second of all, and even more importantly in my opinion, Philbrick shows the human aspect of war and fighting in a profound way that recognizes fear, loss, and pain. 

Of course, from the first page there is no question that our resilient protagonist will come out on top, and it was immensely satisfying to reach the book’s conclusion and see just how buoyant, brave, and yes, true, our falsifying friend could really be.

Portrait of an Apple-Picker

Mule Deer

Driving home down Alpine Highway, a busy road for a quiet town, I stopped when I saw a young mule deer standing at the side of the road.  She stood shaded from the mild heat of the late September sun, under the branches of an apple tree that grew along the sidewalk.  When we stopped, me and my little passengers, she looked at us with her big black eyes.  She didn’t dart away, or even flinch.  Instead, she bent her head down to the apples scattered at her feet and took another mouth full.

We watched until we started to worry her.  When her ears began to twitch — her large, quivering ears — I lifted my foot from the brake and we rolled slowly away.   On our way home my eight year old told us, “If my art teacher had seen that deer he would want to draw it or paint it.”

I had just been treasuring the scene up in my mind, thinking how I would describe it in words.  “I want to write about it,” I said.  I started to describe the doe to them — the way I pictured her in my mind with the velvety softness of her ears.

My eight year old interrupted me.  “How do you know its ears are soft?”  He wanted to know.  Not to be smart — well, maybe a little, but mostly it was just a part of his habitual fact checking.  I had to laugh.  He was right.  I didn’t know what the doe’s ears felt like.  I could suppose, but I couldn’t presume to know.  It’s an important distinction.  As soon as my writing pretends to know something, tries to make it say more than it can or should, it sounds false. What a great little editor he makes.

I never did sit down and write about my apple-picking mule deer.  But I did find this poem by Robert Frost about another grazer taking advantage of September’s surplus:

Something inspires the only cow of late

To make no more of a wall than an open gate,

And think no more of wall-builders than fools,

Her face is flecked with pomace and she drools

A cider syrup.  Having tasted fruit,

She scorns a pasture withering to the root.