Read-Aloud Thursday: My Father's Dragon and sequels

Granted, I haven't been reading chapter books to my kids (ages 5 1/2 and 2 1/2) for that long (this was only our third, fourth, and fifth selections), but My Father's Dragon, along with the subsequent stories Elmer and the Dragon and The Dragons of Blueland, were instant hits at our house. How do my children (and I) love them? Let me count the ways...

1. These are page turners for the preschool and early elementary set. Each chapter ends with enough suspense that it was immediately met with "Can we read another chapter? Just one more, please." What a way to foster an excitement for reading!

2. The chapters are short, but full of fantastic adventures. Thus, the story moves very quickly. Even I wanted to find out what would happen next, if the truth be told. Taking these first two points into account, it only took us a little over a week to read the three books (242 pages in the one volume edition).

3. There are lots of pictures in each short chapter; in fact, it is pretty rare to have a two-page spread of all text. Although they are fairly simple black and white drawings, the illustrations give enough visual representation to the story to make it come alive, while leaving plenty of room for the imagination, too. I also liked the maps on the end pieces, which were nicely illustrated and clearly labeled, so that we could follow along to see where the story was taking place (learning basic map skills, too).

4. Elmer is an ordinary boy, and many of his adventures involve animals that children would recognize. I think younger children appreciate an element of familiarity along with fantasy and mystical creatures. Although encountering tigers, lions, and alligators could be frightening, Elmer's ingenuity and resourcefulness quickly resolve potential dangers. Even the dragon is only a baby dragon, and one with blue and yellow stripes, red feet, and gold wings.

5. My 2 1/2 year-old boy was ENGAGED in these stories. He listened attentively and asked pertinent questions about the story line. This is a marked difference from our last read-aloud The Trumpet of the Swan, which was probably a little above his comprehension level.

6. These stories were memorable, so much so that any mention of a dragon, and my son cries, "I want to read about Elmer and the dragon!" I hope all other dragon stories are not a disappointment to him in the future.

7. Not only is this a great read-aloud, but I think it will also be one of the first chapter books my daughter will want to read on her own. She's currently reading Little Bear aloud to me among other things, but I look forward to the day when I find her sprawled on her bed or curled up on the couch with a good book. The Three Tales of My Father's Dragon would be an ideal "big" book to start with for the reasons listed above, especially the short chapters, as it would help her to find independent reading fun instead of tedious.

So, if you have young readers, get thee to thy library or bookstore and find My Father's Dragon. Your kids will thank you!

(I couldn't get the "Read-Aloud Thursday" button to work, but if you'd like to read more reviews of great read-aloud books, please check out Hope is the Word.)

How the Heather Looks by Joan Bodger

"A Joyous Journey to the British Sources of Children's Books" is a very accurate subtitle for this delightful book.

In the mid-1950's, Joan Bodger and her family - husband John, 8-year-old son Ian, and 2 1/2-year-old daughter Lucy - took an extended trip to England to find as many connections to the stories they loved while exploring the countryside. It was a trip that any Anglophile or bibliophile, especially one with children, would love to repeat. Realistically, that's not possible for most of the Anglophile and bibliophiles I know, especially those with children, so we can live vicariously through Joan Bodger's account of their travels and adventures.

From spending two weeks in a gypsy wagon and cooking in a converted chicken coop, to sculling the Thames along the same stretch of river that inspired The Wind in the Willows, How the Heather Looks: A Joyous Journey to the British Sources of Children's Books provides rich descriptions, unforgettable experiences, and unique comments on both well-known classics and forgotten treasures of children's literature.

The chapter headings are somewhat indicative of the regions they visited or books and authors that they tried to find, but they are by no means comprehensive. "A Peak in Narnia," for instance, dwells mostly on their sojourn in the gypsy caravan, mentioning books like The Wind in the Willows and The Boxcar Children, with only an fanciful reference to Narnia (which misses the point, in my opinion). But other chapters are more focused, as "In Quest of Arthur," which traces their disappointments and delights as they look for places of Arthurian legend.

One of my favorite incidents is in this chapter on Arthur. At the ruins of Tintagel's castle, they found a sign posted near the cliff edge by the Ministry of Works that stated, "Parents are requested to discipline their children." You can see why this would be necessary:
But I wonder if the British government still makes such a pointed request for child-discipline more than 50 years later!

If ruined castles don't interest you, how about finding the little crooked house where the little crooked man lived with his crooked cat and crooked mouse that inspired the illustrations of Leslie Brooke (112)? Or maybe you would prefer the street in Gloucester where the tailor lived with Simpkin in Beatrix Potters' The Tailor of Gloucester (21)? They visited with Mrs. Milne, the widow of A. A. Milne, who directed them to the very bridge from which they could play Pooh Sticks just like that stuffed hero (152). And they even included some sites pertinent to adult classics, visiting the Bronte home, where a few of the minuscule stories the three sisters wrote with their brother Branwell are preserved (188). I could share many more fascinating tidbits, but, in short, you simply must read the book!

I have also added to the list of must-read books for myself and for my children. Some that weren't at all familiar to me include Puck of Pook's Hill by Kipling, Popular Romances of the West of England by Robert Hunt, and English Fairy Tales by Jacobs (which, according to the author, assists in the understanding of Shakespeare). When we study English history in a few years, I will definitely try to find Looking at History by R. J. Unstead, The Story of England by Brown and Arbuthnot, and 1066 and All That by Sellar and Yeatman (130).

The only thing that would improve the book would be a detailed map marking the path of their travels and the literary points they discovered. Aside from this omission, the book is well documented, with a good index and a section on Further Reading which includes more recent sources for background on authors, regions, history, etc. I'm very glad my library has this book, and I expect I will be referring to it many times in the course of our educational and reading journey. . . even if we do stay on this side of the pond.

The Trumpet of the Swan by E.B. White

This is the second chapter book that I have read aloud to my children, ages 2 & 5, but I must say that they were much more engaged with Charlotte's Web than with The Trumpet of the Swan. By about half way through, my 5-year-old was listening attentively and eager to know what happened next, but the 2-year-old didn't seem to follow the story very well. It seemed more difficult for them to grasp the settings of Canadian wilderness and cities like Boston and Philadelphia than a barnyard. So maybe we will try this one again in a few years.

Louis the swan was born without the ability to trumpet, a disadvantage not only in communicating with his family but also and more importantly in finding a mate. With the help of his friend Sam Beaver, the boy who earned the swan family's trust at their Canadian nesting pond, Louis goes to school and learns to read and write. He can now communicate with people, but not his fellow swans who cannot read. When Louis falls in love (swans mate for life) and can't trumpet his affections to his chosen female, his father, the "old cob," steals a trumpet from a music store. By the time Louis learns to play the trumpet, Serena, the desire of his heart, has flown away. Nevertheless, he has many adventures as he seeks employment to pay back the debt of the stolen trumpet and restore his father's honor.

Aside from my misjudgment on age-appropriateness (for their attention spans, not the content), this is truly a delightful story. It does have a slower pace than Charlotte's Web, and since many of the characters are of the quiet, observant type there is more description and reflection than dialogue. The old cob, Louis's father, is one humorous exception, for he waxes eloquent at any opportunity until his wife wryly reminds him, "We've heard that before..." (186). In many other aspects, however, it shares several common themes with Charlotte's Web. Like Charlotte, the main human character (Sam Beaver) is more at home with nature than people, but also like Charlotte, he is only a supporting character for the main cast of creatures. As with Charlotte, the setting is realistic, the animals are generally in their natural habitat doing animal things, but there is a small element of fantasy that is so seamlessly woven into the story as to make it almost believable (to adults; I'm sure it's completely believable to children).

Eventually, we'll return to E. B. White and read Stuart Little, but for now we are reading something a bit simpler with more fantasy and action: My Father's Dragon and subsequent tales as recommended by Amy at Hope is the Word. In short, we all love it, and it's such a page-turner that I'll be reviewing it soon!

Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy

Tess of the D'Urbervilles has been on my to-be-read list for a long time, even on my mental list before I had a written one. So I was glad to finally have the motivation to read it for book club.

I came to this novel knowing only bits and pieces of the storyline or Thomas Hardy's style - I knew that it was a "fallen woman" story and that Hardy was a fatalist, and that's about it. I was immediately captured by the vividness of Hardy's prose, which made it easy to read and rendered both landscapes and people in enough detail that one could easily picture the setting and characters.

It is a story of a fallen woman, but Hardy makes every effort to show Tess as the victim, one who always had to bow to the will and whims of the men in her life. To this end, the male characters are shallow, proud, and selfish, while Tess is sweet, kind, hard-working - so good that even her female rivals can't disdain her. Hardy's subtitle "A Pure Woman" caused enough controversy in his day that he regretted adding it, but it does succinctly convey the social commentary that is implicit in the novel: that Tess is a victim of circumstances and remains pure in heart and spirit if not in body.

It is a tragic story, and though I didn't really find it depressing, I wish there had been just a bit of redemption. But Angel Clare, the one man who might have forgiven Tess and loved her unselfishly, had dismissed his faith, particularly the resurrection, as untenable. Having no understanding of redemption himself, he can only think of social principles, i.e. his personal disgrace, when he learns of Tess' unfortunate past. Hardy is at least consistent in presenting his agnostic, vaguely deistic views of a universe ruled by an unkind or maybe even an evil fate, but it leaves one wishing for more.

Tess was a key motif in A Prayer for Owen Meany, another book which dealt with determinism but in a more positive light and with a view towards redemption. Perhaps Tess functioned as a foil and foreshadowing in this modern novel. Usually, I wouldn't expect a modern novel to express more faith than a Victorian novel, but in the comparison of those two novels the loss of faith was more obvious in the book from 1891.

On another note, has anyone seen the newer Masterpiece Theater version of Tess of the d'Urbervilles? I think I will wait a few months to watch it until the book is not so fresh in my mind. I usually enjoy movie adaptations better that way.

Busman's Honeymoon by Dorothy L. Sayers

Concluding the Lord Peter Wimsey novels with the marriage and honeymoon of Lord Peter and Harriet Vane, Busman's Honeymoon is a delightful combination of romance and detective work. Sayers combines these two usually disparate genres seamlessly and quite successfully. She comments that "It has been said, by myself and others, that a love-interest is only an intrusion upon a detective story. But to the characters involved, the detective-interest might well seem an irritating intrusion upon their love-story." I enjoyed both aspects of the novel, for the love story lends a much more personal view of Lord Peter and Harriet, while the mystery is full of interesting characters, or suspects as the case may be.

Thus, it is inconvenient to the characters, but perhaps not surprising to the readers, that Lord Peter and Harriet find a corpse in the cellar of the house they have purchased in the country where they had hoped to spend a quiet honeymoon away from the press. Such quiet is not to be theirs, however, with a troop of villagers, hired help, detectives, and reporters who all seem to have an opinion to offer, their own sad story to tell, or simply a desire to be a part of the action. Under these circumstances, Peter and Harriet's strengths and weaknesses are both displayed in stark reality, and they learn more about themselves and each other in a few days than they had discovered over the five or six years of their previous acquaintance.

The characters in this novel are exceptional: there is the Superintendent of police who parries literary quotes with Peter and Harriet for several pages (an interchange which will probably leave most 21st century readers thinking they are shamefully uneducated, at least that was my feeling); there is Lord Peter's mother, the Dowager Duchess, who is just delightful and the perfect mother-in-law to Harriet who lost her mother years before; and then there is Bunter, Lord Peter's faithful butler who always seems to know the right thing to do or say no matter the situation, even one as uncertain as having a wife added to the household.

And then the love-interest truly is the heart of the story - what poetry, what beauty, what raw emotion and brutal honesty, what insights into male/female psyches and relations, as these few quotations will show:

On the thought that their wedding night was tarnished by the fact that the corpse had been in the cellar unbeknownst to them, Peter says, "Nothing that you or I have done is any insult to death - unless you think so, Harriet. I should say, if anything could sweeten the atmosphere that wretched old man left behind him, it would be the feeling we - the feeling I have for you, at any rate, and yours for me if you feel like that. I do assure you, so far as I am concerned, there's nothing trivial about it." (122)

"He appeared satisfied, but Harriet cursed herself for a fool. This business of adjusting oneself was not so easy after all. Being preposterously fond of a person didn't prevent one from hurting him unintentionally. She had an uncomfortable feeling that his confidence had been shaken and that this was not the end of the misunderstanding...He wanted you to agree with him intelligently or not at all. And her intelligence did agree with him. It was her own feelings that didn't seem to be quite pulling in double harness with her intelligence." (131-132)

"Peter accepted the tea and drank it in silence. He was still dissatisfied with himself. It was as though he had invited the woman of his choice to sit down with him at the feast of life, only to discover that his table had not been reserved for him. Men, in these mortifying circumstances, commonly find fault with the waiter, grumble at the food and irritably reject every effort to restore pleasantness to the occasion. From the worst exhibitions of injured self-conceit, his good manners were sufficient to restrain him, but the mere fact that he knew himself to be in fault made it all the more difficult for him to recover spontaneity. Harriet watched his inner conflict sympathetically. If both of them had been ten years younger, the situation would have resolved itself in a row, tears and reconciling embraces; bur for them, that path was plainly marked, NO EXIT. There was no help for it; he must get out of his sulks as best he could. Having inflicted her own savage moods upon him for a good five years, she was in no position to feel aggrieved; compared with herself, indeed, he was making a pretty good showing." (190-191)

Other passages are too lengthy to quote here, but it is worth reading this novel if only to contemplate the views of marriage and men and women's roles that are implicit in the story and dialogue. I found the tension between the individual and the unity of marriage as played out by these two highly intelligent characters to be very interesting, see especially pp. 307-308 and 324-325.

Another unique aspect of this novel is that we see the aftermath and how Lord Peter is affected after figuring out whodunit. While most mystery novels close with the pieces falling into place and perhaps the arrest of the criminal, the reader is simply left to assume that justice will be done, and the detective walks away brushing off his hands and thinking of a job well done. Lord Peter, however, is struck with intense remorse over the fact that his skills of deduction will cost a man, even a guilty man, his life. In the short time (four weeks at most) between the arrest, trial, conviction, and execution of a murderer [The British system is far more efficient than the American one], Lord Peter repeatedly visits the prisoner and spends a sleepless night before his execution. Harriet loyally but quietly supports him through his inner agony, waiting for him to share this part of the detective's life with her - a wait that ends with the most beautiful and poignant phrase of the book:

[Peter says], "I hate behaving like this. I tried to stick it out by myself."
"But why should you?" [Harriet replied]...
"It's damnable for you too. I'm sorry, I'd forgotten. That sounds idiotic. But I've always been alone."
"Yes, of course. I'm like that, too. I like to crawl away and hide in a corner."
"Well," he said, with a transitory gleam of himself, "you're my corner and I've come to hide." (400)

Well, I started in the middle and have now finished half of the Lord Peter Wimsey novels. I suppose it's time to go back and start properly at the beginning with Whose Body?.

The Gift of Asher Lev by Chaim Potok

In The Gift of Asher Lev, Potok brings the reader back to the intricacies and contradictions of Asher Lev's life 18 years after he left Brooklyn for a self-imposed exile in France at the close of My Name is Asher Lev. Asher is now a very successful and well-known artist with a wife and two children, who continues to live with the dichotomy of painting and drawing what is in him for the sake of art while at the same time living as an observant Jew, mindful of Torah and the Rebbe, the leader of the Ladover Hasidic movement.

This is perhaps the most psychological stream-of-consciousness novel that I have read, as the author uses Asher's thoughts, fears, dreams, and visions to convey his current struggles as well as the history of the intervening years and even his wife's memories of World War II. Alongside the nebulous images of Asher's psyche, the traditions and expectations of the Ladover Hasidic community continue to shape the course of his life, even if they feel he has betrayed them with his art. Asher knows he has the Rebbe's blessing to pursue his art, even though his artistic vision brings pain and confusion to the Ladover Jews, but he was not prepared for what the Rebbe asked of him in return. Indeed, the Rebbe's request is posed in riddles and never fully articulated - no one else seems to be aware of how the Rebbe is shaping the future of individual lives and the Ladover movement - but perhaps it is Asher's artistic vision that makes him able to understand the Rebbe's intent and forces him to wrestle with decisions that will forever change the life of his family and children.

This novel was more mystical and introspective than My Name is Asher Lev, but that is to be expected when the protagonist is no longer a child and has years of life experience to reflect upon. It continued the conflict introduced in the first novel and provides a very interesting study of tension between one's gifts or talents and one's beliefs. On the one hand, Asher's artistic talent is a gift from the Master of the Universe, but the Ladover think that he misuses this gift by painting images that do not further the work of God. Asher maintains that this ambiguity is in accord with the way the Master of Universe has ordered the world - it is the only way he can make sense of the senseless things that have shaped the lives of those he loves and the world at large. While Asher wrestled with these issues as an individual in My Name is Asher Lev, in The Gift of Asher Lev he is faced with the implications of his artistic gifts for his family and forced to make a difficult and undesirable choice to try to balance his family's interests with the desires of the Rebbe and with his needs as an artist. Ironically, the decision that seems to be made for the greater good of everyone - himself, his wife and children, his parents, and the Ladover community - leads to a separation that was not unlike what he experienced and resented as a child.

I do not know if the author wanted to convey the message that the sins of the fathers are visited on the children or to emphasize the paradoxes of life: that joy is mixed with pain, that fulfillment entails self-denial, that what is received must be given away. Perhaps both messages are inherent along with many more. Potok's writing is rich with layers of meaning and symbolism, which reflects the mystical life and vision of the Rebbe as well as the Jewish way of discussing many interpretations of a single text. At any rate, it is thought provoking, and I will be adding Chaim Potok's other novels to my to be read list.

Murder Must Advertise by Dorothy L Sayers

Since my local library did not have Busman's Honeymoon, the fourth and final Lord Peter/Harriet Vane mystery, I had to settle for another Lord Peter mystery that is set sometime during the years he is pursuing Miss Vane. There is only one rather veiled reference to Harriet Vane, however, and it seemed to me that Lord Peter was not quite as much the gentleman in this novel as in the ones where her presence is more pervasive. Nevertheless, the plot in Murder Must Advertise is captivating and witty as I've come to expect from Sayers.

Murder Must Advertise finds Lord Peter using his middle names Death Bredon to pose as a copy-editor in an advertising firm while investigating the strange death of a former employee. In unravelling the mystery he finds a complex web of drug dealing (in 1930's London, lest you think it is only an American problem of later years), blackmail, and murder. Lord Peter is a bit more rakish, a bit less genteel, a bit more unpredictable than I expected from the other three mysteries I have read recently, but it added to the fun of the novel to see these unexpected sides of his character, from dressing as a harlequin with a penny whistle to doing cartwheels down the office corridor. I must admit that I was rather lost during the detailed account of a cricket game, but apart from that the British humor is just delightful!

Sayers accurately and hilariously captures the undercurrents of a typical office with a host of colorful characters who love to chat and gossip in between doing their various jobs. Mixed in with the witty and sometime heated interchanges however, are remarkably astute observations about humanity and subtle (or not so subtle) comments on culture that are still quite accurate 75+ years later. On the morality of advertising, for instance...

"I think this is an awfully immoral job of ours. I do, really. Think how we spoil the digestions of the public."
"Ah, yes, but think how earnestly we strive to put them right again. We undermine 'em with one hand and build 'em up with the other. The vitamins we destroy in the canning, we restore in Revito, the roughage we remove from Peabody's Piper Parritch we make u into a package and market as Bunbury's Breakfast Bran; the stomachs we ruin with Pompayne, we re-line with Peplets to aid digestion. And by forcing the d--n-fool public to pay twice over - once to have its food emasculated and once to have the vitality put back again, we keep the wheels of commerce turning and give employment to thousands - including you and me." (54)

Or on the effectiveness of public education... "Wild 'orses,' declared Ginger [an office boy], finally and completely losing his grasp of the aitches with which a careful nation had endowed him at the expense of the tax-payer..." (106)

As in Gaudy Night, there is a not unfavorable reference to what, with a view of history, we would consider questionable politics when a character states: "What we want in this country is a Mussolini to organize trade conditions." (18) I find it fascinating to read novels from the '30's when history had not made it's judgment upon foreign dictators. It would be interesting to do a study of British or Continental fiction in the '30's and '40's to see how views changed over a decade or so.

As for the mystery itself, I found this puzzle to be easier to solve than the other Lord Peter/Harriet Vane novels I've reviewed recently. Perhaps that is because I'm more accustomed to Sayers' style, or perhaps it simply was more obvious in this book. At any rate, I'm looking forward to reading Busman's Honeymoon soon, since a friend has been so kind as to loan me her copy.