Patience, Princess Catherine

by Carolyn Meyer.  Young Royals series.  Gulliver Books, Harcourt, Inc. 2004.

Vicki enjoys historical fiction, and we have been reading books in the Royal Diaries and Young Royals series.  Both series focus on historical princesses and queens.  In this series, we have already read Doomed Queen Anne, about Anne Boleyn.  Patience, Princess Catherine is the story of Catherine of Aragon, who at the age of fifteen traveled from Spain to England in 1501 to marry Arthur, the elder son of King Henry VII.  Arthur, a sickly young man, dies soon after their wedding, and Catherine sets her hopes on Arthur’s younger brother Henry, who was to become Henry VIII.  She waits for seven long years of humiliating treatment by Henry VII.  The title is apt, as Catherine must show great patience and will to achieve her destiny of becoming Queen of England.

Each chapter begins with a short section about the young Henry, who was six years Catherine’s junior.  This section is followed by a first-person account in Catherine’s voice.  The reader sympathizes with her plight as she stubbornly refuses to give up her goal, despite her lack of power, influence and money to support her Spanish court.  This book ends on a fairly happy note. although the Historical Note at the end tells the sad story of Henry’s eventual rejection of Catherine, whom he divorces and banishes to increasingly remote and uncomfortable residences when he decides to marry Anne Boleyn in the hope that she will provide him with a son.  Catherine, however, never agreed to the annulment of her marriage and never gave up her title of Queen of England.

Doomed Queen Anne, by the same author, tells the parallel story of Anne Boleyn’s single-minded pursuit of Henry, her determination to hold out for marriage and her belief that she could, unlike Catherine, produce a male heir to the English throne.  Instead, she gave birth to the daughter who would become Queen Elizabeth I.  After she too suffered a miscarriage, Henry quickly got rid of her and proceeded to marry four more women before he died.  He only managed to do this by breaking with the Catholic Church and making himself head of the Church of England.

This is an interesting period of English history, and Carolyn Meyer’s novels make it accessible to  readers both young and old.  Vicki and I are looking forward to reading Mary, Bloody Mary to learn about the life of Catherine’s daughter Mary, who eventually became Queen of England and restored Catholicism to England for the period of her reign.

Heidi

by Johanna Spyri

I think Heidi must be my all-time favorite children’s book, at least from those that I actually read as a child. I have three hardcover editions; my most recent acquisition is a Knopf 1987 edition illustrated by Ruth Sanderson (interestingly, the translator is not named).

I don’t know why this story of a young Swiss orphan, her grandfather, the people who dwell on the Alp with her, and those she meets when she is sent to Frankfurt as a companion for a crippled child, appeals to me so much and so consistently; but I love Heidi’s honesty and goodness. Other characters the reader cannot help loving and admiring are Heidi’s grandfather, the Alm-Uncle (or Nuncle, as he is called in one translation); young Clara Sesemann, whom Heidi is sent to Frankfurt to befriend, her father, and her grandmother; and the Frankfurt doctor who helps Heidi return to her beloved home. In addition, the characters of Peter the goatherd; Fraulein Rottenmeier, the Sesemanns’ housekeeper; and Sebastian, the butler are memorably drawn.

My favorite parts include the part where Heidi’s simple trust and intelligence win over her grandfather, who has lived for years isolated from his fellow men; the part where Clara’s Grandmamma persuades Heidi that she can, in fact, learn to read; the part where Heidi’s homesickness gets the better of her and she sleepwalks, frightening the entire household, and especially where the doctor quickly gets to the root of the problem and induces Mr. Sesemann to send her back to her grandfather; and the doctor’s and Clara’s visits to the Alm. I read and reread these and other favorite parts, never tiring of them, always finding tears in my eyes at the same moments.

I also love the descriptions of the natural beauty of the Alps and the mountain meadow where Heidi and Peter go with the goats; the mountains, plants, and animals are lovingly described. It is this natural beauty that Heidi misses in Frankfurt, as much as she misses her grandfather. Shut up in a big city house, unable to see the sky or hear the wind in the trees, served fancy food instead of the wholesome goat’s milk, cheese, and bread she was accustomed to, she actually begins to wither like a plant deprived of light and water.

When Vicki was young, I purchased the Shirley Temple movie for her, and when we began watching it together, I was delighted to see the beginning of the story unfolding exactly as it is told in the book. Imagine my horror when the movie soon diverged so completely from the story as to be unrecognizable. In the movie, Fraulein Rottenmeier, instead of the vain, foolish woman portrayed in the book, is frankly evil, bent on selling Heidi to the gypsies, and Heidi’s grandfather travels to Frankfurt and rescues Heidi in a ridiculous carriage chase through the snowy streets. I wondered, why invent such absurdities when the story is so satisfying as originally told? Despite its moralistic tone and old-fashioned piety, Heidi is a timeless treasure of children’s literature.

Harry Potter

by J. K. Rowling (Scholastic; various pub. dates); narrated by Jim Dale

In anticipation of the July 21, 2007 release of the seventh and last book in the series, I am re-reading (actually, listening to) the first six books in the series. It is my first opportunity to listen to the Jim Dale recordings in their entirety. He’s really great. Most of the characters are immediately recognizable by their voices and accents. As with many audiobooks, I appreciate the impossibility of skimming through the story too quickly. When I first read these books, I read them very fast, because the stories are so riveting; now, I am taking this opportunity to savor the stories and the language.

Rowling’s style is uncomplicated, and she moves the stories along skillfully. Reading them all together like this makes one realize that they are really all one long story; this is particularly true of books 6 and 7. At the end of book 6, the reader is given a kind of map for the last book. We already know that Harry and his friends may not be returning to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry for their final year, and that they will probably spend the year chasing down and destroying the various horcruxes (shards of the evil Voldemort’s soul which he has hidden in various places to ensure his immortality).

I read recently that the Harry Potter books are “just British school stories,” as if that were a bad thing. Indeed, they are a very clever reflection of life in British boarding schools. Never having attended one of these schools, I can still imagine what they are like, based on Rowling’s description of the magical Hogwarts. Her attention to detail is formidable, and the fantastic elements are usually very clever and funny.

For English learners, the Harry Potter books have a lot of advantages and some disadvantages. Those who have already read the books in translation, or seen the movies, will find reading the novels in the original English to be less daunting than starting a novel from scratch without any background information. The frequent reference to what has gone before will give readers a solid grounding in that elusive tense, the past perfect (“At the age of one year old, Harry had somehow survived a curse from the greatest Dark sorcerer of all time…), and Rowling makes constant use of participial phrases (“‘Ignore them,’ he said, accelerating to catch up with Ron….”), which grammar books tend to treat as an after-thought but which are frequently used in English writing.

On the negative side, learners of American English will learn a lot of British expressions such as skiving off class, rounding on someone, bloke, snog…) and all learners will need to develop a vocabulary of Harry Potterisms (muggles, horcrux, quidditch, thestral, apparate and disapparate…) which will do them little good in the real world. They may have difficulty making sense of Hagrid the gamekeeper’s speech (where final consonants disappear, to is ter and you is yeh) without guidance.

Nevertheless, much useful vocabulary is presented and used over and over, so that readers who persevere will expand their vocabulary naturally and effortlessly. There is, of course, much use of dialogue, which can be helpful in improving production and comprehension of natural speech.

The main attraction of the series, however, remains the page-turning appeal of the stories. Readers who dislike fantasy in general will probably not like this series either, and it would be a mistake to expect them to; but for those readers/learners with an appreciation for the whimsical and magical, Harry Potter is hard to beat.

Addendum, after reading the last book (twice):  I thought the finale was awesome.  Like The da Vinci Code, it started fast and hardly slowed down.  V. and I read it to each other, which slowed me down somewhat (5 days instead of 2), but that is good, because left to my own devices I would have read it too fast and missed too much.  As it was, when I re-read (on audio) I noticed much that I had missed the first time through.  The complexity of the interwoven plot always amazes me.  How could J.K. keep it all straight in her mind for 10 years and 4,000 pages?

After the 6th book, we were all on  tenterhooks about whether Dumbledore was really dead or not.  In the 7th, J.K. showed us how he could be dead but still present in the novel and in the lives of Harry and the others.  Somehow, the fact that he had died ceased to matter so much.

Like one reviewer I read, I also noticed strong similarities to The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.  This novel of witches and sorcerers ended up with an obvious Christian allegory–what a surprise!  In fact, there were many surprises.  Rowling kept us all guessing until the last page.  What a talent!

The Alice series

by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

The Agony of Alice has spawned 18 sequels (the latest to be released next year) and 3 prequels. My daughter Vicki and I have been reading the books together. Both of us love them. Alice, her father and brother Lester, her best friends Pamela and Elizabeth, her first boyfriend Patrick, her sixth-grade teacher Mrs. Plotkin, her seventh-grade English teacher Miss Summers (who eventually marries her father), and others in the series seem like real people. They face real-life dilemmas and deal with them honestly. They are a great way to stimulate dialogue between mothers and daughters. They are a kind of “how-to” manual for growing up because of the wide range of issues dealt with in the various books.

The American Library Association reports that this series is one of the “most challenged”, surpassing even Harry Potter in 2003 in complaints, due to the “sexual content” of the books. Actually, the sexual content is one of the things I like most about the books, as it stimulates a lot of conversations with my daughter as we follow Alice through adolescence. By the way, “sexual content” may be somewhat of an overstatement–we are currently reading Patiently Alice, which deals with the summer between 9th and 10th grades, and there has been no explicit mention of anyone having sex! But Alice and her friends (especially Pamela) wonder about sex a lot, and if I remember correctly, so did I when I was their age, and I would have appreciated a series such as this one that answered all my questions!

We enjoy the books because they are laugh-out-loud funny. Lester always adds comic relief, and Alice herself describes her frequent blunders and faux-pas in such a forthright way that a reader cannot help laughing.

Naylor does not shy away from the hard issues of racism, bullying, death, depression, abuse, suicide, and more, yet the tone of the books is unfailingly optimistic and good-humored, as Alice picks her way through the minefield of adolescence with the unfailing support of her family, friends, and teachers.

For me, the biggest mystery is why the series is not more popular, especially in this area, since the books have a lot of local color. Alice shops at Wheaton Plaza, her father manages the Melody Inn, a music store in Silver Spring modeled after Dale Music, and Lester is a student at the University of Maryland. Yet when we visit our local library or bookstores, I find only a few of the series on the shelves. Can it be that they can’t keep them in stock?

Because the books deal unflinchingly with the issues facing a girl in public school in the U.S., they might also be of interest to adult learners of English. The language is not particularly difficult.

The Seeing Stone (Arthur Trilogy, Book 1)

by Kevin Crossley-Holland, read by Michael Maloney

During the closing months of the year 1199, the life of 13-year-old Arthur de Caldicot reflects that of the young King Arthur as the 12th-century Arthur observes scenes from the life of his namesake through a magic stone given to him by Merlin, close friend of his family.  I did not think of this as a young adult novel until I read a review of it after finishing it, but I suppose that given the age of the protagonist, it is.  I really enjoyed it.  The characters are realistic and well-drawn and the depiction of medieval life on a manor near Wales was detailed and convincing.  Maloney’s reading is excellent.

The Skull of Truth

by Bruce Coville.

Another of the Magic Shop Series, this delightful book tells the story of Charlie, who discovers the Magic Shop in the usual way (when he is chased by bullies and suddenly finds himself in an unfamiliar part of town) and comes away from it with a wisecracking human skull that turns out to be that of Yorick (yes, as in “Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio.”). Yorick was cursed by a witch, making him unable to lie, which ultimately leads to his death; the same compulsion to speak the truth affects Charlie and anyone else in close proximity to the skull. Thus, the book examines the concept of truth and untruth, and how telling the truth can cause pain and trouble, but that it can also heal and be a very powerful force in the world. The plot is clever, and the book gives plenty to think about. Like the other Magic Shop books, it is beautifully illustrated in black and white by Gary Lippincott.

The Monster’s Ring

by Bruce Coville.

This appears to have been written with younger readers in mind, compared with Jennifer Murdley’s Toad. The protagonist, Russell, is only in fifth grade. The book begins predictably, with runty Russell being pursued into his beloved swamp by bullies, finding himself in a part of the swamp–and then a part of his hometown–which he does not recognize, and discovering S. H. Elives’ Magic Shop, where he acquires a magical ring which transforms him into a monster. It happens to be Halloween, so Russell uses the ring to “dress up” for the school Halloween parade, with startling results. But he has not bothered to read Mr. Elives’ directions very carefully, so he gets into a lot of trouble and is almost stuck in his monster’s guise forever. He has to find the Magic Shop again and seek Mr. Elives’ help, but even the old magician cannot completely undo the harm Russell has done by not following the directions he was given: a cautionary tale for 5th graders!

This is the shortest, and for both me and my 13-year-old, the least satisfying, of the four Magic Shop series books.

Jennifer Murdley’s Toad

by Bruce Coville. Minstrel (Pocket), 1993.

One of four books in the author's "Magic Shop" series, this novel tells the story of a kind but homely girl, the victim of bullying by her peers, who is given a magical talking toad named Bufo. Things become more complex when Bufo kisses Sharra, Jennifer's principal tormenter, thus turning her into a toad as well. From then on, whomever the "new" toad kisses turns into a toad, while the kissing toad reverts back to human form (except Bufo, who is a real toad, despite the fact that he can talk, and remains a toad). However, if one stays a toad for more than ten hours, the transformation is permanent, lending a certain tension to the situation. Before the book ends, Jennifer has to make some difficult decisions which require her to think about the kind of person (or toad) she truly is, and wants to be.

My daughter Vicki read this book to me. I enjoyed it, albeit not as much as I enjoyed another in the same series, Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher. It has some very funny moments, and Vicki and I had some good laughs while reading it. At the same time, it includes some serious subject matter: the issue of bullying, and the value of physical beauty.

Favorite quote: "Hey!" yelled Brandon (Jennifer's 4-year-old brother). "How come you get to eat bugs? Everyone yells when I do it."

Homeless Bird

by Gloria Whelan, 2000.

In this young adult novel about a young girl in contemporary India, Koly, the protagonist, is married at thirteen and quickly widowed when her sickly young husband dies. Abandoned in Vrindavan, a city of begging widows, Koly triumphs over her sad fate by depending on her skill and talent at embroidery. A very uplifting novel with an inspiring main character.