Wayland by Tony Mitton and John Lawrence

Out of the lands in the chill, far North come legends from long ago. This is the story of Wayland Smith, the strangest of all I know.

Those are the opening lines of Wayland: The Tale of the Smith from the Far North, retold by Tony Mitton and illustrated with vinyl engravings by master engraver John Lawrence (David Fickling Books, 2013). Wayland (according to the author's note, which I read using Amazon UK's Look inside! feature) was a legendary smith who took a swan-maiden for a wife. When she leaves him, he dedicates himself to his work, hoping to win her back. Instead, he is captured by a greedy king and imprisoned on a sunless island, where he must hide the treasures he makes in an intricate maze. Ultimately, Wayland makes himself a pair of wings and flies off in search of his wife--and in Mitton's retelling, at least, they are reunited.

The cover of Wayland, with its checkerboard pattern of red flames and white feathers, only hints at the boldness and beauty of Lawrence's expressive engravings. Some of them are available to view online at Illustration Cupboard, which held an exhibition of Lawrence's work on this and other books (including Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials and T.H. White's The Once and Future King). And some of those are available for purchase, although I would be happy enough to have only the book.

Sculptor's Daughter: A Childhood Memoir by Tove Jansson

Books I Want is apparently becoming a regular feature here. This week, I'm wanting Tove Jansson's first book for adults, which is actually a collection of stories called Sculptor's Daughter: A Childhood Memoir. It's been re-released by Sort Of Books in a deluxe edition that includes rare images from the Jansson family archives ("a perfect Christmas gift," says the publisher), such as the one of eight-year-old Tove on the cover. I've not read any of Jansson's adult fiction, but Sculptor's Daughter seems like a good place to start, despite the title. Why do so many books about women identify them as someone else's--usually a man's--daughter or wife? In this case, the sculptor is Jansson's father, Viktor. For the record, her mother, Signe Hammarsten-Jannson, was an illustrator and graphic designer. Also probably just as influential on Tove.

One of the stories in this collection, "The Iceberg," is available to read online (The Independent, November 3, 2013), and it is lovely, keenly observed (lived, really) and true to a child's experiences and emotions. The whole collection, in paperback and with a more anonymous cover photograph of a snowy landscape, will be published in the US by William Morrow in January 2014. If you can wait that long.

Hild

I don't think if I can wait til Christmas to read Hild by Nicola Griffith (FSG, 2013), a novel set in seventh-century Britain about the girl who becomes Saint Hilda of Whitby. Griffith wrote about Hild and genre (Fantasy or history?, 11/12/2013) for Tor.com, and Amal El-Mohtar reviewed the book for NPR in the context of conversations about women in historical fiction--and historical fantasy (Hild Destroys Myths of Medieval Womanhood, 11/14/2013). The early medieval world, historical fantasy, women (and children--Hild is just three at the beginning of the  novel), warriors and saints: I have a deep and abiding interest in them all. And lo, today is the feast day of Saint Hilda!

[That gorgeous cover is by Italian twins Anna and Elena Balbusso.]

Fairies and changelings

I'm currently reading (among other things) Some Kind of Fairy Tale, a grownup fantasy by British author Graham Joyce (Doubleday, 2012). It's not a changeling story, at least not so far, but a kidnapped-by-the-fairies one, in which teenaged Tara Martin disappears into a dense forest known as the Outwoods, only to return twenty years--or is it six months?--later.

Forests are my favorite magical places (castles or old houses are a close second), and Tara's description of the forest on the day she disappeared is especially evocative:

After a while I found a rock covered in brilliant green moss and orange lichen. I sat among the bluebells and put my head back on the mossy pillow of the rock.

The bluebells made such a pool that the earth had become like water, and all the trees and bushes seemed to have grown out of the water. And the sky above seemed to have fallen down on to the earth floor, and I didn't know if the sky was earth or the earth was water. [42]

Then a man on a pretty white horse appears, and you know that boundaries are going to be crossed. As it turns out (I'm on page 132), they are crossed in ways I'm not so interested in reading about. Instead I'm rereading my favorite Zilpha Keatley Snyder book, The Changeling (Atheneum, 1970): "I am a princess from the Land of the Green Sky," Ivy said. "I have discovered the Doorway to Space."

The Changeling isn't a fantasy book, although Snyder did eventually write the Green-Sky Trilogy (beginning with Below the Root; Atheneum, 1978) based on the Tree People game that Martha and Ivy play in Bent Oaks Grove. But Ivy herself is such a magical character, I almost believed that she was a changeling. And that I was, too.

[Why, why is The Changeling out-of-print? I'm adding it to my list of books to reprint when I start my own small press.]

Searching for Shona and children's books about the Evacuation

The painting of the ruined Victorian house in last week's Middle Grade Gallery is from Searching for Shona, by Margaret J. Anderson (Knopf, 1978), a recently rediscovered childhood favorite.  After Marjorie and Shona trade places on the train platform in Edinbugh, Marjorie is evacuated to Canonbie.  She and another orphan, Anna Ray, are billeted with the Miss Campbells, middle-aged identical twins who own a dress shop.  Marjorie and Anna find the house in the painting, empty (although not yet in ruins) save for a cozy playroom in the turret.  Clairmont House becomes a refuge for them until the army requisitions it to house soldiers, and by the end of the war, the house is as the artist depicted it in the painting.

How is the painting connected to Shona?  I don't want to give it away--if a middle grade novel about two girls, one from a privileged background (Marjorie) and another with only one clue about her family (Shona), trading places during the evacuation appeals to you (don't forget the abandoned house and the identical twin sisters, either), you really should try to find a copy of Searching For Shona.  I will say that Shona's father, like John Piper (whose work I featured in the original post), turns out to have been a war artist.  But there's more to the story than that, and it's all very satisfying.

Unfortunately, I didn't get many (any) other recommendations of children's books about the evacuation.  Anna Hebner noted that in C.S. Lewis's The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe (1950), the four Pevensie children are evacuated from London to the Professor's country house (Lewis himself took in evacuees at his house in Oxford).  A Tale of Time City by Diana Wynne Jones (1987) also begins with the main character's evacuation from London, although she only makes it as far the train station (this one's out of print, and Charlotte doesn't like it anyway).

As for realistic fiction, The Children's War (a blog dedicated to books written for children and young adults about WWII) has a review of In Spite of All Terror by Hester Burton (1968), and I'm looking for a copy of that one now.

But the books about the evacuation I most want to read are (perhaps not surprisingly) by Noel Streatfeild.  The first is Saplings (1945), a novel for adults about the devastating effects of the war on a middle-class family with four children.  It's available in a gorgeous Persephone Books edition (have you heard of Persephone Books?) and sounds very depressing. The second is When the Siren Wailed (1974), a children's book written at considerably more remove from the war itself, and in which three working-class children are evacuated from London.  The original edition was illustrated by Margery Gill and thankfully, it ends happily.

[See the comments for more suggestions.]

The Vanishing of Katharina Linden

For the grownups, The Vanishing of Katharina Linden by Helen Grant (Delacorte, 2010), reviewed in the Washington Post (8/23/10).  There's a lot to recommend this novel to adult readers of children's books, especially ones that have something to do with the Grimms (and there are an awful lot of them, readers and Grimm books alike):  the heroine, 10-year-old-Pia (and her only friend, StinkStefan), the setting, a small town in Germany; and the local folklore and traditions that inform the whole story.  PW describes it as a "charming horror novel" (4/12/2010).  I try to stay away from horror novels of any sort, but just look at that gorgeous yellow cover.

Alphabeasties is just my type

The animals in Alphabeasties and Other Amazing Types by Sharon Werner and Sarah Forss (Blue Apple Books, 2009) are created--or composed, as in printing--of type.  There's a different typeface for each animal, from Volta EF Aaaa's for alligator to American Typewriter Zzzz's for zebra (as seen on the cover), with lots of clever combinations, like Bauhaus Dddd's for dog (it's a Dachsund, of course) in between. The result is a playful and sophisticated alphabet book that works for little kids, big kids, and their design-minded parents, too.

In a brief introduction to typefaces and to the concept of the book, Werner and Fosse ask readers to think of a word to describe each animal and consider whether that word also describes the typeface used to create it--a nice exercise in visual thinking.  My favorite match of typeface to animal might be the shaggy sheep (see below).  The typeface is Giddyup, except for a sans-serif band around the middle where the sheep has been sheared (with scissors): 

There's more witty letter-and-wordplay in the sidebars, where you'll find embroidered E's, zippered Z's, and a mouthful of T's, among multiple examples for each letter; as well as gatefolds that open horizontally or vertically to reveal the alligator's open jaws or (another favorite) the unicorn's flowing mane.  [See more interior photos at Werner Design Werks flickr; it was hard to pick!]

Ultimately, Alphabeasties reminds its readers that a b sounds like a b no matter what it looks like (little kids will appreciate that), but a Fette Fraktur B...that's a different animal.  Can you guess which one?

[N.b. Review copy provided by the publisher; thank you!  Alphabeasties is also available at the NGA Shop (that's where I saw it first).  For the littlest kids, there are Alphabeasties Flash Cards (the typeface animals are on the front of the cards; flip them over to make two floor puzzles).   And for everyone else, there's the Alphabeasties Amazing Activity Book as well.]

The Blue Bird of Happiness Project

I read The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin (Harper, 2009) during my blog break and immediately set about starting my own Happiness Project.  (Me and everyone else who reads the book, I imagine.)  I'll spare you the details, although it does involve more blogging--which brings me to this post.

At one point during Gretchen's project, she decides to collect bluebirds, because bluebirds are a symbol of happiness.  The connection arises from Maurice Maeterlinck's play The Blue Bird (1908; link is to Project Gutenberg), in which two children--Tytyl and Mytyl--search everywhere for the Blue Bird of Happiness only to find that it was at home all along.

And of course, The Blue Bird is the matinee performed by the students of Madame Fidolia's Academy of Dancing and Stage Training in Noel Streatfeild's Ballet Shoes (1937).  Two scenes from the play are quoted at length in the book; I loved reading these as a child and imagining myself in the roles of Pauline-as-Tytyl and Petrova-as-Mytyl.  I collect books, not bluebirds, but they bring me happiness all the same.

[N.b.  I love the costume notes for The Blue Bird:

TYLTYL wears the dress of Hop o' my Thumb in Perrault's Tales. Scarlet
knickerbockers, pale-blue jacket, white stockings, tan shoes.
MYTYL is dressed like Gretel or Little Red Riding-hood.
LIGHT.--The "moon-coloured" dress in Perrault's _Peau d'âne;_ that is
to say, pale gold shot with silver, shimmering gauzes, forming a sort of
rays, etc. Neo-Grecian or Anglo-Grecian (à la Walter Crane) or even
more or less Empire style: a high waist, bare arms, etc. Head-dress: a sort
of diadem or even a light crown.
THE FAIRY BÉRYLUNE and NEIGHBOUR BERLINGOT.--The traditional dress of the
poor women in fairy-tales. If desired, the transformation of the Fairy into
a princess in Act I may be omitted.
DADDY TYL, MUMMY TYL, GAFFER TYL and GRANNY TYL.--The traditional costume
of the German wood-cutters and peasants in Grimm's Tales.

And many more, all of which I want to make.  Puppet show, anyone?]

Lindgren and Larsson and Anderson

Warning:  Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is for the grownups.  It is emphatically not a book for kids (it's not even a book for me).  I mention it here because today is Swedish children's writer Astrid Lindgren's birthday, and Lindgren really informs Larsson's book.  His two main characters, financial journalist Mikael Blomkvist and punk hacker Lisbeth Salander, have fictional counterparts in Lindgren's boy detective Kalle Blomkvist (Bill Bergson in the English translation, sadly OOP), and none other than her redheaded heroine Pippi Longstocking, all grown up.

While I hate to imagine Pippi growing up to be Lisbeth, I wonder what other characters from children's books might be like as adults.  Ramona Quimby, for example, or Harriet the Spy.  Have you ever thought about them this way?  I would love to know whom you would like to know (or not know!) as an adult.

[N.b.  Astrid Lindgren would have been 102 today, which means that it's bookstogether's blog birthday, too (two).  Thank you for reading!]

People of the Book

From Geraldine Brooks's People of the Book (Viking, 2008).  Book conservator Hanna Heath is leaving the hospital room where Ozren Karaman, head of the museum library in Sarajevo, visits his young son.

"I pushed past him on the way to the door, and saw that he had a kids' book, in Bosnian, in his hands.  From the familiar illustrations, I could tell it was a translation of Winnie-the-Pooh.  He put the book down and rubbed his palms over his face.  He looked up at me, his expression drained.  "I read to him.  Every day.  It is not possible for a childhood to pass by without these stories."  He turned to a page he'd bookmarked.  I had my hand on the door, but the sound of his voice held me.  Every now and then, he'd look up and talk to Alia [his son].  Maybe he was explaining the meaning of a hard word, or sharing some fine point of Milne's English humor.  I'd never seen anything so tender between a father and his child."  (38)

I get the impression that, for Ozren, neither is it possible for fatherhood to pass by without those stories.

Byatt's Children's Book

No, A.S. Byatt has not written a children's book, she has written The Children's Book. I first heard about it at the Guardian books blog, where I get all my British book news ("The stories children's books tell about the world they're written in," 4/27/09), then tracked down the flap copy:

"Olive Wellwood is a famous writer, interviewed with her children gathered at her knee. For each of them she writes a separate private book, bound in different colours and placed on a shelf. In their rambling house near Romney Marsh they play in a story-book world - but their lives, and those of their rich cousins, children of a city stockbroker, and their friends, the son and daughter of a curator at the new Victoria and Albert Museum, are already inscribed with mystery. Each family carries its own secrets."

There's more, notably a German puppeteer, but that was enough for me.  The Children's Book is available from amazon.co.uk on May 7, and I'm tempted to order it from them now rather than wait for the US edition in October.  Maybe I could pick up Kazuo Ishiguro's Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall at the same time, just to make it worth it?

Nonfiction Monday: Script and Scribble

Script and Scribble: The Rise and Fall of Handwriting by Kitty Burns Florey (Melville House, 2009) is part memoir, part history, part examination of handwriting's place in an increasingly digital world.  Like Florey, I identify with my own script (13); and I found the whole thing fascinating (okay, I might have skipped the chapter on graphology).

The section on handwriting programs in Chapter 5, "Is Handwriting Important?" is particularly relevant to parents whose children are learning cursive in school.  I'm now convinced that it doesn't make sense to teach kids to print and then a few years later switch them to cursive.  Just teach them a sixteenth-century Italic hand right from the start, I say!  [Note that this is not as crazy as it sounds; the Portland (OR) Public Schools have been using the Getty-Dubay Italic Handwriting System for 24 years.]

Any anecdotal evidence re:handwriting programs?  Our county uses Handwriting Without Tears: I don't like it.

[Nonfiction Monday is at Charlotte's Library.  Thank you, Charlotte!]

Nonfiction Monday: Note by Note

If you took piano lessons as a child, or if you have a child who is taking them now, then you'll want to read Note by Note: A Celebration of the Piano Lesson by Tricia Tunstall (Simon and Schuster, 2008).  I like Tunstall's description of music lessons:  "weekly session[s] alone together, physically proximate, concentrating on the transfer of a skill that is complicated and difficult, often frustrating and frequently tedious, but that every now and then open suddenly and without warning into joy" (3).  And the chapter on recitals is particularly, sometimes painfully, well-observed.

Recommended at Read Roger (see the comments for what readers remember from past piano lessons; Spinning Song, anyone?).  I only wish there were something comparable for violin lessons--that's what Leo takes.  Although Little Rat Makes Music by Monika Bang-Campbell (illustrated by Molly Bang; Harcourt, 2007) comes close, from a child's perspective.  So that's what elementary violin playing looks like!

Miss Malaprop

I'm rereading Little Women for my neighborhood book club (we're reading it together with March by Geraldine Brooks).  I must have been younger than Amy when I first read Little Women; I've reread it (or parts of it) countless times since then.  It's like an old friend to me.

That said, I had forgotten how irritating Amy's malapropisms can be.  They start on p.3 with "label" for "libel"  and don't stop until Amy goes abroad (at least I hope they stop by then.  I haven't gotten that far yet).  She's the literary forerunner of Junie B. Jones, for goodness' snake!  And all the other fictional children who too-frequently mistake one word for another (Clementine, I'm talking to you).  As far as I'm concerned, it's only funny when my kids do it.  Not to worry, though: I won't quote them here.

Poetry Friday: The Farmer's Bride

I love narrative poetry for children, like "Wynken, Blynken, and Nod" (Eugene Field) and "The Owl and the Pussycat" (Edward Lear).  Also for grownups:  "The Highwayman" (Alfred Noyes; thank you, Charlotte) and "The Farmer's Bride" (Charlotte Mew).  The latter was the Poem of the Week on the Guardian Books blog this week (thank you, Carol Rumens); like "The Highwayman," it is a dark and lovely love poem.

The Farmer's Bride

Three summers since I chose a maid,
Too young maybe - but more's to do
At harvest-time than bide and woo.
When us was wed she turned afraid
Of love and me and all things human;
Like the shut of a winter's day.
Her smile went out, and t'wasn't a woman -
More like a little frightened fay.
One night, in the Fall, she runned away.

"Out 'mong the sheep, her be," they said,
'Should properly have been abed;
But sure enough she wasn't there
Lying awake with her wide brown stare.
So over seven-acre field and up-along across the down
We chased her, flying like a hare
Before our lanterns. To Church-Town
All in a shiver and a scare
We caught her, fetched her home at last
And turned the key upon her, fast.

[Read the rest here.]

[The Poetry Friday round-up is at Wild Rose Reader this week.  Thank you, Elaine!]

Ms. Hempel Chronicles

Carolyn See reviewed Ms. Hempel Chronicles by Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum (Harcourt, 2008) in the Washington Post today (9/5/2008).  It's a book for adults, a series of interconnected stories (one of my favorite forms) about a middle school English teacher who actually likes her students.  There's more, of course--Ms. Hempel is new to teaching; new even to her own, grownup life:  according to See, she's "doing her best to fake her way into the adult community" (sometimes I feel as if I'm still doing this myself, and I'm 36).

I'm particularly interested in how this newness plays out in the classroom.  See gives one example:  "She assigns Tobias Wolff's This Boy's Life to her seventh-graders, and when a proverbial pill of a mother objects to the strong language on Parents' Night, Ms. Hempel stands up for truth and authenticity in literaure and, unexpectedly, wins the day."  Maybe she should have assigned Old School?  At any rate, (the?) Ms. Hempel Chronicles is on my to-read list.

I should note that the cover is gorgeous, too.

Seed Vault

There was a fascinating article by Adrian Higgins about the Svalbard Global Seed Vault (and saving your own seeds) in last week's Washington Post ("Preserving Precious Seeds, in Norway and Your Way," 3/6/08).  The so-called "Doomsday Vault" keeps a worldwide selection of seeds safe from natural and manmade disaster deep in a Norwegian mountain.  Higgins suggests that "Svalbard may be the gardener's Valhalla: a gathering place for fallen heroes, not quite dead, as in Norse myth, but not quite alive, either."  I love this idea and think it would make a great post-apocalyptic YA novel.  Maybe someone's already written it (I haven't read a lot of post-apocalyptic YA novels); but if not, it might work!

[Somewhat related recommendation for the grownups:  The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell.  I've lost track of who has my copy of this book (this has happened before; I think I'm on my third copy.  No one wants to give it back); otherwise I would look up the gardening reference for you.]

The Post-Birthday World

I just started reading The Post-Birthday World by Lionel Shriver (HarperCollins, 2007).  This is notable because I haven't been reading many books that are just for grownups lately.  First there were the finalists for the Cybils, then the Newbery Honor books, and I still have a stack of middle-grade novels I can't wait to start.  I don't know if I'm going to finish The Post-Birthday World either (I think I've been spoiled by all those middle-grade novels).  It does have an interesting parallel-universe structure; and the protagonist, Irina McGovern, is a children's book illustrator.  I hope she gets some better assignments later in the novel, because this one doesn't sound promising:  "Irina collaborated on a second children's book with Jude--the overt manipulativeness of the first, along the lines of I Love to Clean Up My Room!, appealed to parents as much as it repelled children, and had ensured that it sold well" (6).