The Twenty-One Balloons (1948)

Professor William Waterman Sherman "had been teaching arithmetic at a school for boys in San Francisco for forty years and was thoroughly tired of the idea." (p.5)  He had thoughts of balloon travel where he could escape from human interaction for a whole year.  He had his balloon built and made his escape on August 15, heading west over the Pacific Ocean.  He was picked up in the Atlantic Ocean 40 days later, which cut the around-the-world time in half. (as in Around the World in 80 Days.)

This created a big mystery as W. W. Sherman would not let anyone know of his grand adventures until he had returned to San Francisco.  He even refused to meet the president of the United States, thinking he would even try to get him to tell his tale.  Upon this refusal, the president then offered Prof. Sherman the use of the presidential train so that he could recuperate and travel back to San Francisco more quickly so the tale could be told even sooner.

He is given a hero's welcome in S.F., and taken to the Western American Explorers' Club where he gives a speech, while sitting in a fancy bed, describing his adventures.  He tells of his crash landing on the island of Krakatoa, meeting a number of families there and the society they have created for themselves.  Of the fabulous wealth in diamond mines they discovered, how they have built their government on cuisine and of the many fabulous inventions to make life pleasant on the isolated island. 

Then comes the fateful day that the island exploded.  Luckily, the people of the island had provided for just such an explosion with a floating platform.  They escaped before the island completely blew itself up.

This book has two facts based on historical events.  There really was a balloon craze in the last decades of the 19th century.  And the volcanic island of Krakatoa really did blow up in 1883.  The book was very entertaining.  Here are two quotes, one from the beginning and one from the end, that illustrate the humor in the book.  (Speaking of illustrations, William Pene du Buois also illustrated the book with fun drawings.)

On why balloon is the best way to travel to school, "You get up early in the morning with your schoolbooks, climb into the basket, look in the direction of the schoolhouse, untie the ropes, and fly off.  On your way many delightful things can happen such as:
     a) the wind will be calm and you'll never get to school;
     b) the wind will blow you in the wrong direction and take you fifty miles out into the country away from school, and
     c) you might decide to play hookey, just once, and nobody can bother you in a balloon." (p. 5)

On how he could give such a good speech about his adventures while still in his "sickened condition...'Ha,ha' shouted the Professor, leaping from the bed.  'I feel fine.  I rested up completely on the Presidential train on my five-day trip across the country.  I could have made the talk standing up, but when I saw this beautiful bed on the speaker's platform I thought I'd be a stupid fool if I passed it up.'" (p. 178)

du Bois, William Pene.  The Twenty-One Balloons.  The Viking Press, 1947.

Miss Hickory (1947)

Miss Hickory was kind of an odd book about a doll made from an apple twig with a hickory nut head.  Miss Hickory, unlike Hittie, (another doll character from a Newbery book) is able to move and interact with animals and her environment, but she is never shown interacting with humans. 

Left behind (and outside in New Hampshire) when the family in the house moves to Boston for the winter, Miss Hickory despairs of ever surviving.  Her corncob house taken over by a chipmunk, she has no place to spend the winter.  Finally Crow takes pity on her and helps her find an abandoned robin's nest to live in for the winter.

Miss Hickory is quite resourceful.  When her clothes start to fall apart, she improvises with things she finds in the forest.  She discovers that she loves to skate on the frozen streams.  She finds berries frozen under the snow to eat.  She helps the pheasant hens start a ladies aid society. 

The one thing that characterizes Miss Hickory most is her hard head.  She says that it is because it is a hickory nut.  She doesn't take easily to change.  She has a hard time believing her animal friends or trusting them. 

Near the end of the book Spring has finally arrived.  Miss Hickory has to find a new home when the robins return to their nest, and decides to look into Squirrel's hole in the tree.  She hadn't seen him for some time and thought he had moved on.  To her great surprise, and dismay, she found him home.  I say to her dismay because Squirrel, having eaten all of his nuts, needed food and saw Miss Hickory's head as his salvation.  It was at this point that the head started realizing how hard it was and all of the things Miss Hickory had missed because of it.  So then the image the author gives is a bit funny.  The body of Miss Hickory wanders around and climbs the old, gnarled apple tree and sticks the neck part of the twig into a crack.

Good things come of this, however.  Miss Hickory becomes a scion, bringing new life to the old tree.  (dictionary.com defines scion as "a shoot or twig, especially one cut for grafting or planting; a cutting.")   

Bailey, Carolyn Sherwin.  Miss Hickory.  The Viking Press, 1946.

Strawberry Girl (1946)

In the Foreword of Strawberry Girl, Lois Lenski tells us her purpose in writing a "series of regional books for American children."  She writes, "We need to know our country better; to know and understand people different from ourselves; so that we can say: 'This then is the way these people lived.  Because I understand it, I admire and love them.'" (p. xi) Set in the early 1900's in the backwoods of Florida, this book is rich in regional dialect and character.

When the Boyers move from Marion County to the old Roddenberry house (I couldn't find a town name, only that they moved from northern Florida to somewhere more southern), they have more than just the land and weather to contend with.  They have the Slaters.  Despite all their efforts at being neighborly, the Slaters, just don't want to get along.  The Boyers, along with many families in the area, start strawberry farms, and the Slaters' hogs and cattle roaming unfenced wreak havoc on the plants.  But when Bihu Boyer decides to fence his land, that's when things get ugly.

Told from the perspective of 10-year-old Birdie, we experience with her the joy and sadness, faith and fear of a brave girl who wants to do good and who truly loves her neighbors despite their shortcomings.  The Boyer family is portrayed as hard-working, kind, forward-looking; in sharp contrast with the Slaters, who are depicted as lazy, selfish and backward. 

During the course of the story, Mrs. Boyer and Mrs. Slater and the children become friends and learn to appreciate and serve each other, but it takes a small miracle to bring Mr. Slater around.

I enjoyed reading this book very much.

Lenski, Lois. Strawberry Girl. HarperCollins Publishers Inc., 1945.

Daniel Boone (1940)

Many thanks to our local children's librarian for help in obtaining a copy of this for me to read!

Daniel Boone.  One of the great legends of the settling of America.  His story is told here.  Filled with adventure, loyalty, love, patriotism, this book gives a taste of life in early America, and the people who sacrificed and worked to make the nation great.

The book begins with the Boone family in Pennsylvania.  They decide the country is filling up and move to North Carolina with their 11 children, Daniel being one of the 11.  When he was about 22 he joined an army going to fight the French and Indians.  George Washington, same age as Boone, was in the same group.  This campaign ended in disaster.

Boone married Rebecca Bryan.  She had to have been a remarkable woman.  The family moved several times, when one area would "fill up" they would move on to a new one.  When they moved to a new place, they had the work of building a fort and fending off Indian attacks as well as breaking ground and planting. 

Daniel often went on extended hunting and trapping trips, extended meaning a year or two, long.  He blazed the trail through the Cumberland Gap and led settlers into the beautiful Ohio Valley. 

Daniel Boone was a great man.  Unfortunately, this particular biography was not very fulfilling.  Dates, which I really like in a biography, were missing throughout.  So a timeline would have been nice. Another thing I didn't like about the book was the writing style.  Here is one example, which I actually like quite a bit, but when the whole book is written in this rather florid style, it gets a bit annoying.  "Boone's story was the story of a whole people.  It had all their griefs and tragedies and restless longings and rich half-fulfilled dreams, all their ranging freedom and mortal bondages.  It rang with the roaring laughter and boisterous fun; it was dark with the unfathomable silent anguishes by new-made graves; it was full of lost hopes and dreams of grandeur." (p. 52)  The author put this in the middle of the book, but it sounds like a great ending to me.  I think this would be a hard sell to get a child to read.

Daugherty, James.  Daniel Boone.  The Viking Press, 1939.

Rabbit Hill (1945)

You know the old adage, "Don't judge a book by its cover."  In this case, trust it.  When I first picked this book up I judged it, wrongly.  So don't let the cover put you off.  Here is the scoop.

All the little animals on the hill are in a hard way.  There have not been "folks" in the big house for several years and the animals sorely miss having a garden to raid, garbage pails to go through, and people to plant the fields.  The excitement starts when the news of new folks coming begins to buzz through the animal neighborhood. 

There is much speculation as to what type of folks these will be.  They all hope for planting folk but the worriers among them wonder if there will be dogs, cats, traps and poison.  When they finally move in, the animals find in them good friends.  The worker repairing the yard wall is told to leave a section near Porkey the woodchuck's burrow, so as not to disturb him.  Another, in charge of planting the field, is told "No poison or traps."  These men really wonder at the wisdom of this method of keeping varmints out of the garden. They figure it is because the new folk read a lot.  One says, "Seems a shame, nice folds too, pleasant-spoken and all-but queer.  Comes of readin' books too much, I guess.  Grandpa had the right of it. 'Readin' rots the mind,' he used to say." (p. 84)

There is a cast of great animal characters.  Phewie the skunk.  Worrying Mother rabbit. Pompous Father rabbit. Energetic Little Georgie and cantankerous Uncle Analdas Rabbit.  Porkey the Woodchuck.  Willie the field mouse and his best friend Mole. And many others.

After the folk leave washed veggies out for the animals,  the animals decide that the folks are so good they won't despoil the garden and fields, but keep guard around it so other critters don't get it.  Back to the workman.  "Louie, I just can't understand it.  Here's these new folks with their garden and not a sign of a fence around it, no traps, no poison, no nothing; and not a thing touched, not a thing...Now me, I've got all them things--and what happens?  All my carrots gone and half my beets...I can't understand it.  Must just be Beginner's Luck." (p. 128)

A fun book for the younger Newbery crowd.

Lawson, Robert.  Rabbit Hill.  The Viking Press, 1944.

The Matchlock Gun (1942)

I finished this book over a week ago and have had multiple opportunities to write about it, but just couldn't seem to bring myself to do it.  It wasn't a bad book, it just didn't strike me as a great book. 

In The Matchlock Gun, the Van Alstyne family lives in upstate New York in the mid 18th century during the time of the French and Indian War.  They have an old Spanish musket that has been in the family for generations.  When Teunis goes off to defend against Indian aggression, he leaves his wife, Gertrude, and two children, Edward and Trudy, at home, also the gun.  (He takes is more modern gun.)  Gertrude decides not to go to the larger house that her mother-in-law lives in.  Apparently, she has never approved of Gertrude, her being German, not Dutch.

They don't know what is going on and so prepare to defend their home against any Indians who might get past the guard.  Gertrude sets up the matchlock gun, an old Spanish musket, on the table and gives 10-year-old Edward a signal word of when he should fire the gun.  Then she goes out to pick beans, a pretense for keeping watch. 

The Indians have indeed slipped past the guard and as they chase Gertrude to the door of the house, she calls out several names, probably to make the Indians think there are many men in the house.  The last name she calls is "Edward" and that is the signal.  He lights the primed gun and it fires, the kickback knocking him onto the floor with the gun on top of him. 

Here is how it all played out.  Gertrude was hit in the shoulder with an axe.  Edward's shot killed 3 Indians.  The house caught on fire, but Edward and his sister were able to get out, move their mother out of harms way, and Edward saved the gun.  Their father found them there in the morning.
I know people's attitudes were different back then, but I really don't like it when Native Americans, or other aboriginal groups, are portrayed as less than human.  I don't think I would want my 10-year-old to have on his conscience the death of 3 people. 

I really liked the illustrations, though.

Edmonds, Walter D.  The Matchlock Gun.  Dodd, Mead & Co., Inc., 1941.

Johnny Tremain (1944)

This was a fun book, and so great for the 4th of July!  Set in Boston just before the Revolutionary War, Johnny Tremain gives a good flavor for life in Boston at the time.  We learn of the Patriots (Whigs) and Loyalists (Tories) and the political struggles leading up to the American Revolution. 

At the beginning of the book, Johnny Tremain works as an apprentice silversmith.  He is very talented as a silversmith, practically running the shop.  Through his pride, and the meanness of others, he suffers an accident that leaves him crippled in one of his hands, unable to do the work he loves.  In looking for work, he meets Rab, a kind young man who helps him find work and by not focusing on his crippled hand, enables him to also look past it and see that he is more than his disability.

Rab also introduces him to the ideas of the Patriots and the cause to which  they aspire.  Johnny begins delivering The Observer, a Patriot paper, to cities around Boston.  He becomes very good with his horse and when the Redcoats come to subdue the people of Boston, Johnny is able to spy on them when he delivers notes and through gossip among the stable boys.

Johnny rubs shoulders with the likes of Paul Revere, Sam Adams, John Adams and others.  He takes part in the Boston Tea Party and anxiously awaits the news from Lexington and Concord. 

Intertwined with the political turmoil, Johnny also experiences love, friendship, jealousy, family intrigue.  A good book to introduce children to the American Revolution and get them interested in history.

Here are some quotes I liked:

At one of the Sons of Liberty meetings, James Otis had a great speech in which he uses questions to draw out the answer to why they will fight.  I will shorten the passage considerably.

"'Sammy,' he said to Sam Adams, 'You were saying...We will fight...For what will we fight?'

'To free Boston from these infernal redcoats and...'

'No,' said Otis. 'That's not enough reason for going into a war....Why are we going to fight?  Why?'

'We will fight for the rights of Americans.  England cannot take our money away by taxes.'

'No, no.  For something more important than the pocketbooks of our American citizens.'

Rab said, 'For the rights of Englishmen--everywhere.'

'Why stop with Englishmen?' Otis was warming up.  'For men and women and children all over the world.  There shall be no more tyranny.  A handful of men cannot seize power over thousands.  A man shall choose who it is shall rule over him...The peasants of France, the serfs of Russia.  Because we fight, they shall see freedom like a new sun rising in the west.  Those natural rights God has given to every man, no matter how humble.  The battle we win over the worst in England shall benefit the best in England...So we hold up our torch and we will set it as a new sun to lighten a world...'" (p. 177-179)

Johnny talking to Mrs. Bessie:

"'How old are you Johnny?'

'Sixteen.'

'And what's that--a boy or a man?'

He laughed.  'A boy in time of peace and a man in time of war.'" (p. 236-237)

Forbes, Esther.  Johnny Tremain. Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, 1943.