strange and random happenstance

Caddie Woodlawn's Family by Carol Ryrie Brink
Published by: Aladdin
Publication Date: 1939
Format: Paperback, 208 Pages
Rating: ★★★★★
To Buy

Growing up on a farm can be full of fun if you know how to play a good prank or keep a secret. The work day seems that much lighter when you magically find watermelons in the barn or when there's a little lamb all your own whom you have to care for or a very special doll that has to have the perfect handmade dress ready in time for Christmas. But the real excitement comes from visitors! Oh, when people gather for a celebration, a stranger comes to town, a new family moves in, or a long lost friend returns with stories of their travels, that is something to look forward to! The Circuit Rider told tales of Indian braves that he heard at his father's knee to the enraptured Woodlawn children! Such stories of their ferocity and their kindness that they could hardly believe their ears. The new neighbors brought children for the the Woodlawn's to play with, and their dutiful daughter Emma was going to miss the big show everyone was going to, Dr. Hearty's Marvelous Cure-All, until her duty and a twist of fate intervened. Dr. Hearty's wagon had trouble and Emma, due to her kindness, got a show all her own. But life also has it's hardships and heartaches, what if you have to stand up in front of the entire school and do a recitation!?! Or what if your beau is riding out in a sled with some other girl? And worst yet, what if at an auction what you think is the height of fashion turns out to be mourning wear and you end up buying your mother widow's weeds!?! But at the end of the day family is family and full of love and a gathering to celebrate Independence Day is just the tonic everyone needed, no offense to Dr. Hearty, even if Caddie does end up ruining her new dress. That's just Caddie for you!

If you're a girl who grew up in the Midwest you were raised on Laura Ingalls Wilder. It's just part of the Midwestern package. But if you're a girl who grew up in Wisconsin you were raised on Laura Ingalls Wilder and Carol Ryrie Brink. Carol Ryrie Brink wrote Caddie Woodlawn, a seminal classic about her maternal grandmother growing up in Northern Wisconsin around Dunnville. In fact, during Caddie's adventures Laura Ingalls Wilder was being born about only twenty miles away. I remember in sixth grade my teacher really focused on regional literature and was very encouraging of my reading. In fact sixth grade was one of the better grades in school learning all about Wisconsin from the glaciers and grit to the literature of place. While I thankfully didn't decide to go live a rural life with a raccoon as my best friend Caddie Woodlawn quickly became a favorite book. I connected to Caddie's family on a more personal level than I ever did with the Ingalls clan. I'm not sure why but Caddie was it for me. Perhaps it's because Wisconsin is my home and the Ingalls did roam. This past summer I decided to re-read Caddie Woodlawn for a sense of nostalgia, a more pleasant past to retreat into than the current horrible present, and that's when a friend of mine asked if I had read the sequel. What!?! Yes people, I know I have astonished some of you with this fact as it astonished me, but there is a sequel. Caddie Woodlawn's Family, originally published as Magical Melons, consists of fourteen short stories, the first titled "Magical Melons." While there isn't a through line with the plot like the first book, the structure of interconnected short stories allows us to move away from Caddie and see more of her family. In fact my favorite story, "The Christmas Costume," a continuation of the prior story "Mrs. Nightingale's House," concerns Caddie's younger sister, Hetty, and a kindness to a friend that keeps a tradition alive. The story just warmed my heart and made it grow larger than the story of the Grinch ever did.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Caddie Woodlawn, Caddie Woodlawn's Family, Carol Ryrie Brink, Christmas, Farm, Grade School, Grandmother, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Magical Melons, Regional Literature, The Circuit Rider, Wisconsin

On the Banks of Plum Creek by Laura Ingalls Wilder
Published by: HarperCollins
Publication Date: 1937
Format: Hardcover, 352 Pages
To Buy

If you're a girl from Wisconsin there is one given, and that's you're a fan of Laura Ingalls Wilder. It's in our DNA. It was sure in my DNA. I don't know if I remember a time before I knew about Laura and her family up in Pepin but that's all down to my mom. She didn't just love the stories she loved the illustrations. Garth Williams will forever be a favorite illustrator of our family inculcated from some of my very first picture books to my earliest chapter books; Three Bedtime Stories, Bedtime for Frances, Little Fur Family, The Cricket in Times Square, and of course, Charlotte's Web. But back to Laura. I think growing up on a dairy farm in Lone Rock made my mom see a lot of herself in Laura. But interestingly enough my mom's favorite book in the series wasn't when Laura and her family lived a typical pioneer life but when they lived an atypical one in a sod house on the banks of a creek. My mom would talk rapturously about living in this little hideaway made of dirt and grass. She loved the story about when Garth Williams was researching his illustrations for the reissue of the books that he went to Minnesota and found the indentation of where their house was. I think this was my mom's favorite in the series because it appeals to the very heart of what it is to be a child, making a home out of the nature around you and living a carefree life. Of course the life Laura lived in this book was far from carefree, but that house does spark in the imagination something primal, something fantastical, something straight out of childhood daydreams.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Bedtime for Frances, Charlotte's Web, Childhood, Garth Williams, Laura Ingalls Wilder, On the Banks of Plum Creek, The Cricket in Times Square, This Are a Few of My Favorite Things

Bookstore: Dickson Street Bookshop

Location: Fayetteville, Arkansas

Why I Love Them: So, to recap for those who didn't read last Friday's post, I was still on my road trip for my friend Sarah's wedding and now we'd reached Arkansas, the final destination state. The wedding itself was taking place in Eureka Springs, a quaint yet odd town full of dichotomies, bikers surrounded by prosperous frontier town opulence with a religious bent. But my friend Matt and I arrived early and went to Sarah's home in Fayetteville. Knowing we were there a day early in order to help and then haul whatever needed hauling to Eureka Springs I didn't do any prep in advance as to sightseeing in Fayetteville. Yet Sarah knows we well, in fact she's known me since I was fourteen so she took me straight to a bookstore. Ah, the Dickson Street Bookshop, a bookstore that knows what a bookstore should be, stretching farther and farther back, steps up into other buildings, shelves precariously packed, and aisles you could barely squeeze through. The gauntlet that every book lover hopes to run. I could have spent days in there and not discovered everything. There was even a side annex that just had science fiction laid out on tables. Tables and tables of cheap paperbacks, it was almost too much to hope for! If I had had more time who knows how much money I would have spent! But as it turns out, this wouldn't be where I spent most of my money, that honor was reserved for the gift shop at the Laura Ingalls Wilder Historic Home and Museum that we stumbled upon in Missouri. But I still found something... one can never leave a bookshop without finding something!

Best Buy: Sometimes before really digging into a bookstore I do a quick sweep. I basically name-check all my favorite authors and if the store has them then I know it's worthwhile to dig in deep. Mitfords, check, Durrells, check, I knew I'd find something here! So a bit of history. Ever since I was younger I've been collecting the Everyman's Library Children's Classic Series. It started with Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan and has expanded as often as I can stumble on the editions. My copy of Little Women was even bought at Orchard House! In fact on a few recent outings I added three new volumes, two in one day, and I couldn't believe my luck. The problem is that the website list that Penguin Random House has posted is incomplete! It omits editions that have gone out of print, such as Little Men. So while they say there are 58 volumes in the series, and I have 37, there are certainly more than 21 volumes I need to still find... which is why my trip to the Dickson Street Bookshop was so fortuitous. I had scoured the store. All the back rooms, all the weird nooks with history books, and I'd even gone through some of the science fiction. My friend Sarah even offered to help because if my traveling companion Matt doesn't eat on time he becomes obstreperous and it was dinnertime. So my time looking for books was coming to a close even with Sarah's help. As I was about to give up I was right near the counter, heading for the door and I saw this "special edition" section. It was rather small but there were two books from the Everyman's Library Children's Classic Series! Two! One of them was The Pied Piper of Hamelin. Do you think the book was trying to tell me something?

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Alice in Wonderland, Dickson Street Bookshop, Everyman's Library Children's Classic Series, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Little Men, Little Women, Peter Pan, Support Your Brick and Mortar, The Pied Piper of Hamelin

Lost on Mars by Paul Magrs
ARC Provided by the publisher
Published by: Firefly Press
Publication Date: May 14th, 2015
Format: Paperback, 336 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
To Buy

Lora and her family have a harsh life on Mars. But they aren't like the townsfolk, they are heartier. With their homestead out on the prairie, growing their sustenance out of the strange Martian soil, they are true pioneers. For all the destructive forces on the inhospitable planet working against them they have each other. Even Lora's grandmother who is almost more trouble then she is worth has her place; she was part of the initial colonization of the red planet. Though something is coming, the harsh yet manageable routine of their lives is about to be upset when the disappearances start again. They've happened before, the whispers that Martians still exist and sneak into their dwellings at night and whisk people away never to be seen again. Though no one is willing to believe it is happening again. One night when Lora is staying in town she sees them. Strange creatures dancing through the streets. The next night her grandmother is taken. The small township is still unwilling to believe the truth in front of their eyes. The sheriff would like nothing better then to ignore this problem, and then his wife disappears too. Though Lora's breaking point is the disappearance of her father.  

With her father gone and her mother struck down with grief that she self medicates, Lora becomes the head of her family and she decides that they are no longer safe and should head out into the wasteland to save themselves. Calling on the townspeople to join them they pick up five more travellers. Ma, Al, Hannah, Toaster, Aunt Ruby, the Adamses, Madame Lucille and her husband all put their lives in Lora's hands. It's a harsh journey with untold hardships and eventually flagging spirits. Madame Lucille's husband is the first casualty, followed by their pack animals. When they are set upon by unknown creatures and separated, Lora and her brother Al learn that there is a secret City Inside. The complex city with all it's decorum makes Lora long for the simplicity of her family's homestead. Though the City Inside is now their home. A home full of secrets and dangers that might prove more deadly then anything they faced while trekking across the red planet. But their might also be hope there as well.

The wonderful thing about Paul's books is that they will never be what you expect. Some people might not like this, but personally I think that a great story surprises you and takes you to new lands and shows you new experiences that you would never have had if not for the words between the covers. To be surprised and delighted by the narrative voice is something that every true reader longs for. And Paul's voice is so unique, with each book he has written being it's own voice but somehow all part of him. When Megan from Firefly Press contacted me to see if I was interested in reviewing Lost on Mars I jumped on this opportunity. The promotional material gave me an interesting if eventually narrow view of what to expect. Seeing as Paul and I have previously discussed our love of Laura Ingalls Wilder, me being practically raised on the books what with being born in the same state as her, I was picturing Lost on Mars very much as Little House on the Martian Prairie. But, being Paul, he turned all my expectations on its head and gave me an odyssey that is Little House on the Prairie meets Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy meets Priscilla Queen of the Desert, with Roald Dahl and The Wizard of Oz and maybe even some Mad Max thrown in for good measure but all somehow something only Paul could have written.

Lost on Mars has two very distinct halves. There's the first half which is a pioneer tale of trying to survive the Martian wastelands and then there is the second half with the City Inside which is a Jules Verne Victorian epic that raises the book up to a new level that makes you extremely sad to part ways at the end while you keep your fingers crossed that the next installment won't be too far in your future. At first I was wary of this abrupt change in the story. The two worlds couldn't seem more apart yet somehow it was a natural transition. If not for this transition I don't think the book would have worked. By the time Lora and her compatriots are captured I had tired of their journey and the relentlessness of their life and bickering. The Martian abductors were a little too much like the Ninnies for me, and while I do like how the worlds of Paul's books are permeable and have a fluidity between them, the love I have for The Ninnies is so strong that I want them to remain their own thing. Therefore this switch up made the book click. It also added a level of mystery that Martians abducting people for dinner lacked. Plus the possibilities inherent in this new city are literally endless, which again makes me impatient for the next installment.

The reason that the City Inside is so fascinating to me, besides the fact that it's basically a Dickensian Christmas on Mars, is that Paul has this ability to imbue everything with life and personality; from cities to homes to utensils. Objects get sentience and smarts. Humans have a deep seated need to bring the world around them to life. Whether it's naming your car to your house, we anthropomorphize everything. One of my favorite characters on Red Dwarf was Talkie Toaster. He was uppity, full of his own importance, was always looking for a way to bring up bread products, and held his own with characters played by real actors. Enter Paul Magrs and his cast of characters. In his Iris Wildthyme books we have Barbara who is a vending machine, as well as Art Critic Panda, but he has said that he is in no way an object so I mustn't talk of him as such. In Lost on Mars Paul imbues life into a sunbed called Toaster. Toaster is easily one of my favorite characters. Besides being living history as well as a member of the Robinson family, the thought of him running across the Martian plains like a little gangly robotic dog makes me smile. He's just as real, if not more real, then some of his "human" compatriots.

As for those humans. For a YA book Paul doesn't flinch on showing the harshness of human nature. There is no sugar coating. Everyone is in it to save themselves, as seen when the ragged band of travellers stumbles on an abandoned ghost town. The adults descend on the supplies like a pack of jackals; and like those vicious carnivores they are willing to fight off anyone interested in their kills. The darker side of human nature is fully explored from cowardice to self interest. The townspeople are willing to ignore the disappearances because they don't want their lives upset. It's for the greater good to turn a blind eye, as has happened more times then we can count in our own very human history. They follow Lora because they can't be bothered to take the responsibility or initiative themselves. What compromises will man put up with in order to maintain peace?  What will man do to survive? A pack animal that is loved and cared for is nothing but food at the end of the day, even if it has learned language. This is very much mirrored by the Martians own thoughts. While humans may be their intellectual equals, with art and history, they need the food more. To see the humans actions mimicked by an alien race shows in stark detail the wrongness of our thinking.

But there was one thing above everything else that made me connect to this book and that's it's literary pedigree. The Martian landscape and the settlers lives have been shaped by literature, from books being the most prized of possessions to the naming conventions of pets and even their town, "Our Town." Even the ships they arrived on where named from literature! It's all the little asides, the little jokes slid in that reinforce the importance of literature and will hopefully spark the reading bug in anyone who picks up this book. When Lora's last name of Robinson was finally revealed, a smile spread across my face at the thought of the original Robinson family, that of The Swiss Family Robinson. But it's this lovely combining of literature and their lives that makes the world and in particular the City Inside a kind of dream state, as if you were to wake one day within your favorite book. The arrival at the City Inside with them waking within a poppy field to see the magnificent metallic green city was a frisson of Ozian joy. Not only is this a great story, it harks back to other great stories and sets itself up in the grand literary cannon of our times that is now so meta in nature.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Iris Wildthyme, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Little House, Lost on Mars, Mad Max, Paul Magrs, Priscilla Queen of the Desert, Red Dwarf, Roald Dahl, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, The Ninnies, The Wizard of Oz

The Flame Trees of Thika by Elspeth Huxley
Published by:  George Weidenfeld & Nicholson
Publication Date: 1959
Format: Hardcover, 287
Rating: ★★★★
To Buy (different edition then one reviewed)

"This book was one of the great, unexpected benefits of researching The Ashford Affair. I’d recommend it to anyone, whether you’re doing background reading for a book set in Kenya or not. It is an utterly charming, fictionalized account of Elspeth Huxley’s childhood in Kenya as her aristocratic parents essayed several largely unsuccessful experiments in farming. As such, it’s a little bit Little House on the Prairie and a little bit Anne of Green Gables with a hearty dollop of retrospective worldly wisdom." - Lauren Willig

In the late twenties, Kenya became known for it's "Happy Valley." A place of paradise and pleasure, where you could start your life over a make a fortune in coffee or dairy. But to those who settled there before the first world war, it was an entirely different world. In 1913 Elspeth Huxley's family moved to Thika to start a coffee plantation. They had heard there where fortunes to be made... only coffee takes at least five years to bring in any crop, and that's if everything goes right. With insects that would make anyone's skin crawl, to fighting amongst their workers who belonged to waring tribes, to curses and black magic, life is far harder than any of them would have expected. Yet the friendships they make with their workers, who are loyal in their own way, and with their fellow settlers, leads to an interesting and diverse community that Elspeth grows up in.

The beauty of Africa, while harsh, still is inspiring. Elspeth sadly reminiscences that the days when the plains would be covered with a plethora of game and where there were some areas in which you were probably the first human ever to set foot was soon to end. The settlers would change the landscape forever, but luckily, there was an inquisitive little five year old who saw Thika for the magical world it was and forever preserved it in these pages. 

A few years back I was driving back with a friend through southern Missouri from another friends wedding in Arkansas when I spied a billboard for the Laura Ingalls Wilder museum in Mansfield. As you can imagine, he was a bit dismayed by the fact that he now had to go on a tour of Laura's Rocky Ridge Farm. Before the house tour, which hand some interesting carpentry thanks to Laura's husband Almonso, there was a nice museum to wander through. In one of the cases with pride of place was Laura's own guns, which she used often to kill small game. That's when it struck me, the reality of Laura's life versus her books. Thankfully I was not the other two tourists who where having issues coming to gripes with the fact that the tv show was pure fiction, while Laura's books where, not fiction, but her interpretation of her life.

The Little House Books had presented a a sort of glorious golden childhood of living in sod houses and tapping maple syrup. Right about now you might be wondering why I'm going on about Laura Ingalls Wilder in a book review for Elspeth Huxley, but the truth is that Huxley's book, The Flame Trees of Thika, is Little House without the softened edges. They are both fictionalized but at the heart is the truth of their upbringing. Unlike Little House, you are not spared details about ticks and ants and dead animals and goat sacrifices. You will get terrified of what could happen to your pets in Africa. You will not be thinking, oh, how lovely to life in a sod house, no, you will be thinking, dear lord, I am so glad someone didn't have to heat up a needle and use it to extract an egg sack from under my toe nails. Because that is what Kenya was for Elspeth.

Now, I'm not saying that Kenya isn't Elspeth's her version of heaven and paradise combined, it's just that she doesn't stint on the whole picture, the good and the bad. This is what makes it such a great read. You are not just contained only in her little world of house and hearth, but all the characters in her life. Because of the farm needing so many workers, you get a glimpse of tribal life and the strong differences between the Kikuyu and the Masai. How the natives should never be underestimated in their cunning, a story about the Masai stealing cattle but shipping it via railway under the "true" owners name is one example. I say "true" owner, because Elspeth digs deep into the mindset of the Africans, and how their definition of property is far more fluid than Europeans.

Elspeth, growing up around these people, has a way of not condemning them for being different, but being able to see both sides. She understands why her parents and other settlers would be annoyed, but she sees that, through the natives eyes, that they aren't to blame, it's how they live. This is so refreshing. She is more an anthropologist, seeing everyone for what they are, versus the typical British Imperialist's view of do as I say, live as I do, that is the only way. In fact, by the time I got to the end of the book all the characters had become my friends so deeply that I didn't want to leave them, even if World War I was starting. Thankfully I see there is a sequel!

Now I must sidetrack everything to do a little review of this edition. This edition was released with a new introduction in the late 80s after the success of the BBC miniseries. Sadly it is long out of print, which baffles me. The book is far more beautiful then the little paperback one you can currently get. There are luscious illustrations by the Kenyan artist Frances Pelizzoli. Not only do they bring Kenya alive, but they so sync with the story. Their placement in the text is perfect and they are so accurate to the story. Nothing annoys me more then when a book is illustrated and the illustrations don't go with the text. The point of illustrations is to illuminate and expand your connection with the text. The most recent grievous perpetrator of this was in Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book, where Dave McKean, a frequent collaborator with Neil, has Bod dressed in clothes before Silas gives him clothes. Um, yeah, not meshing together and pulling me out of the book. Whereas Pelizzoli just dragged me further in the world of Elspeth.

Though I have a feeling this edition was more for admiring then reading. The paper stock is glossy, so it's hard to read in some lighting situations because the pages reflect the light. Also, the font is so small and the lines so long per page, it's easy to lose you place and makes it far longer to read. I'm a fast reader and I struggled with the book just for this reason. So, your paperback copy you have sitting on your shelf will serve you better for the daily readings, but if you ever see a copy of this at your local used bookstore, pick it up for your coffee table, it's beautiful and, well, it's about coffee too, so thematic with your table. A win win situation.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 4 comments  

Labels: Ashford April, Dave McKean, Elspeth Huxley, Frances Pelizzoli, Happy Valley, Kenya, Kikuyu, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Lauren Willig, Little House, Masai, Neil Gaiman, The Flame Trees of Thika, The Graveyard Book, Ticks