Classics Revisited

Wow! I received my Junior Classics set yesterday—five days from purchase to shipment arrival! I hadn't bought anything on eBay since fall of 2004, partially because of Mom being sick and all the other things that happened in 2005, and partially because, on my penultimate purchase of 2004, I never received my merchandise and the seller never responded to my e-mails. (After I posted feedback stating this, at least four other people contacted me saying this same seller had never sent their merchandise either and had not responded to their e-mails. I discovered just this morning that the seller actually left me a negative feedback, saying I was a "pain in the ass" for inquiring about my order!) Anyway, it had put me off ordering from eBay for a while.

The books are not mint, but in excellent shape. When I used to go upstairs at Linda's house and sneak a look at the copies her brother had (I still think of these volumes as "Armand's books" <g>), I mostly concentrated on Volume 9, "The Animal Book," but am planning to read them all, even the Greek and Roman myths, which I consider rather boring, and have started from the beginning with the fairy and folk tales. I'm discovering stories I recall reading so long ago, not just the standards like "Cinderella" and "Puss in Boots," but the entire story of "The Three Little Pigs," "The Goose Girl," etc. (I need to let James read "The Bremen Town Musicians" so he'll know what the statue of the animals at Lenox Mall is all about.)

Refreshingly, none of these books are in BIG PRINT or contain paragraphs interrupted with BIG COLORED WORDS in simplified vocabulary (dialect from other countries is even used); even the youngest child is considered to have some intelligence (and a friendly person to read it to them if necessary).

I did page through all of them, including "The Animal Book" and discovered that it contains John Muir's "Stickeen," which I originally read in an elementary school reader, and Eric Knight's original short story of "Lassie Come-Home," which contains several differences from the book, including Joe being named after his father and Priscilla being named Philippa and being older in the story (she can drive a car). Lassie's travels actually take up only two or three pages in the short story; it is mostly about the people around her and how they react to her faithfulness rather than actually about Lassie.

It is interesting to realize that much of what we think of as "children's stories" were not originally written just for children. Rather today their subject matter pegs them as "children's stories." "Lassie Come-Home" was not written for children and did not appear originally in a children's magazine, but rather in The Saturday Evening Post. "My Friend Flicka" is another—it was originally published in Story magazine, not a children's publication. People who see the novel version of Flicka as a sweet story about a boy and his horse have never read the book: Rob and Nell's marriage is chronicled in an adult manner, and topics of adult responsibility, the harsh reality of Western range life, and keeping body and soul together financially are all explored...not your usual topics for children. Years ago, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, Black Beauty, Beautiful Joe, The Call of the Wild, White Fang, and others were all written as adult books.

Got A Set!

Won a set of Collier's Junior Classics on eBay last night. Supposedly mint, from 1956. Too cool.

Speaking of Series Books...

...here's a new fan-written Dana Girls mystery, "The Clue in the Rainbow." It's okay; the "Ice Castle" story is head and shoulders superior.

Sadly, No Mystery at All

I've always been an American history junkie, as well as collecting children's books, especially those I read in my childhood. When the Pleasant Company started publishing their American Girls books, I was frankly in "hog heaven" (except for the price—talk about overpriced books!—and then Sam's Club started stocking the collections, which removed the fiscal obstacle). The original stories were about Felicity, a colonial girl; Kirsten, an immigrant pioneer girl; Samantha, a wealthy Victorian girl; and Molly, a girl growing up during World War II. Naturally my first purchase would be Molly's stories, since my parents were teenagers and then adults during the Depression and World War II and I felt close to their history.

Gradually, and through a buyout of Pleasant Company by Mattel, the series grew to include Kaya, a pre-Revolutionary War Nez Perce girl; Josefina, an early 19th-century New Mexican girl; Addy, a girl who escaped slavery near the end of the Civil War; and Kit, a girl growing up during the Depression. Accompanying the books were dolls and accessories for each girl and then other special volumes (short story books, cookbooks, "how to draw" books, etc., the finest of these being the volumes "Welcome to _________'s World," which used photographs and drawings of the time to illustrate the era of each girl in the series—just the sort of thing I doted on).

The best development to emerge from the American Girls franchise, however, was a stand-alone series of books called the "History Mysteries." These did not involve the series characters and moved in a random manner from a mystery taking place in one era of American history to another. One book might take place in War of 1812 Louisiana, while another would involve a mystery while collecting scrap metal in World War II. The "mystery girls" weren't cookie-cutter versions of any of the series book leads and some of the various mysteries involved history eras not much talked about today, such as the participants of the Alaskan gold rush, the world of the War of 1812, the fascinating lives of the lighthouse keeper's children, and even the plight of the Loyalists during the American Revolution. One of the "History Mysteries," The Night Flyers, about homing pigeons and World War I, won a Juvenile Edgar Award (mystery writer's trophy) and another was nominated.

But since girls and mysteries have gone together since the days of August Huiell Seaman and the Stratmeyer Syndicate books, including the immortal Nancy Drew, the Mattel folks have recently released a new line of mysteries starring the American Girls series book protagonists themselves. The books are fairly interesting in working the mystery format into the series milieu (some of the series stories already having involved minor mysteries), but sadly it seems to have spelled the end of the "History Mystery" stand-alone stories (not one has been released since volume 22, which was at least two years ago). It means the mystery stories are now stuck completely in the era of the series stories and we won't see any other eras represented—so many stories and periods were still waiting to be told: how about a mystery set during the cattle drive days? during the Spanish-American war? in a CCC camp? in a post-war (WWII) housing shortage area? in Florida during its "wild west" pioneer days? at a Northwest logging camp? an early California fruit farm or at one of the Spanish missions or during the "Okies" flight west during the Dust Bowl? or a Northwest Native American mystery (or perhaps a Pilgrim era version)? or one set in the early New England textile mills? Hundreds of wonderful ideas here yet to go!

Maybe Mattel is just taking a breather...but I fear it's the last gasp instead. Apparently, like the television networks, they would rather rake in the bucks while sticking to a formula than continue to branch out into other interesting directions to challenge the minds of their readers. And that, especially for history and mystery lovers of all ages, is a great shame.

"Why Do You Want a Book? You Already Have One..."

... and other Bookworm Droppings.

Absurd remarks made by patrons of used bookstores. Very funny (including the typos).

Reading Online

One of my two favorite short stories, online: "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty"

Here's the other: "The Most Dangerous Game"

Tom, Dick and...Sam?

Here are some of the e-books I've whiled my way through during spare moments:

The Rover Boys at School

You've probably heard joking references to the Rover Boys all your life—but do you know who they actually were? Penned by "Arthur Whitfield," they were actually the very first series book creation of Edward Stratemeyer, whose syndicate series books for children and young adults later included The Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, the Dana Girls, and a whole stable of others. The Rover Boys are the sons of a famous archaeologist who is lost as the series opens, and the boys drive their uncle so wild they are sent to a military boarding school, very fashionable in that day, and to which they are wild to go. Dick is the levelheaded oldest, Tom is the prank-playing middle boy, and Sam is the youngest. Today they sound ridiculously old-fashioned—in several instances the boys even call someone "old top" and use British expressions—and Tom's pranks would probably get him sent to a psychiatrist, and of course ethnic humor and racial stereotypes abound. Still they are an amusing curiosity.

Miss Elliot's Girls

Cross Louisa May Alcott (children learning to be more patient and kind) with a naturalist story and a bit of humane teaching alá Black Beauty and Beautiful Joe and you have this curious story about a "lame young woman" who teaches the children in her care (mostly girls in a sewing circle, but also two boys) about the joys of insect life and being kind to animals. Pretty dull but a good example of a 19th century instructive tale.

The High School Boys' Canoe Club

H. Irving Hancock's sextet of clean-living American boys (their later adventures chatted about here) purchase a damaged "war canoe" from a show, have it repaired, and then participate in boat races at a nearby lake. Since it would be totally boring if they did nothing but, a vindictive bully from school keeps trying to sabotage their summer. Today the boys' parents would have the bully jailed or sent for counseling; back then the boys just solved their own problems until the bully's father figures out what his kid's been up to and ships him home in disgrace.

The Puritan Twins

I've read negative reviews of this Lucy Fitch Perkins "Twin book" and I must agree with them; pretty dull. The story is mostly about the male half of the twin contingent, Daniel, who gets to do all the interesting stuff, while his sister Nancy has to stay behind and be ladylike, or is always being berated for daydreaming and thinking for herself. So realistic of Puritan attitudes to women that it's boring.

The Motor Boys on the Pacific

Another in one of those series stories in which the boys are lucky enough to have some wonderful machine for themselves. In this case, the boys' wonderful speedboat is actually wrecked before the story even opens and several dull opening chapters are reserved for the filing of the insurance claim on it. Then the boys visit California and (how coincidental!) a boy leaving lets them use his big powerful motorboat for the summer! The rest of the story involves looking for a ship full of valuables. The lead characters are so forgettable that...darn...I've forgotten them.

Keineth

Nine-year-old Keineth lives a sheltered life on New York's Washington Square with her widower Dad and a Belgian nursemaid. But as World War I encroaches on the United States, "Tante" returns to Belgium to help her people and Dad, who's a diplomat, sends Keineth to live with friends while he goes to Europe to help make peace. Shy Keineth blossoms under the friendship of the family's children and learns many things before her Dad is safely returned. That's it. Think Understood Betsy with a parent and you have the story, if not the enthralling text.

The Boy Inventors' Radio Telephone

Some of the series' books involved ordinary kids; then there were the pseudo-science fictiony Tom Swiftian series that involved fantastic inventions and the boys who worked with them. In this case, one of the boys has a famous inventor dad who comes up with things like a fabulous electric car that goes miles without a charge, a fabulous airship which his sons and his friends get to travel on, and his newest invention, a radio telephone (which is more like a cell phone many years before its invention). Naturally the boys run afoul of bad guys. Despite the cool inventions, yet another set of youngsters so forgettable that I don't even remember their names.

Penrod and Sam

Booth Tarkington's sequel to Penrod is slightly less funny, but still amusing. Way back then the hi-jinks of Penrod and his buddy Sam were just taken as boys' pranks; they'd probably be arrested now.

The Secret of the Tower

A mystery by Anthony Hope that does not involve Ruritanian swordplay, involving a house with a mysterious tower room and the death of an old man. Main item of interest here, in this early 20th century novel, is that one of the protagonists is a woman doctor who neither faints, simpers, or acts like a fragile flower of Edwardian womanhood.

The Red House Mystery

The visit of a wealthy man's Australian brother provides the beginning of the mystery, which deepens after the wealthy man is murdered. Who did it? How did the murderer escape without being seen? Our sleuth is one Antony Gillingham, a friend of one of the people staying at the home of the murdered man, an amateur who slowly discovers all the clues. Most notable thing about this story: it was written by A.A. Milne of Winnie-the-Pooh fame.

A Name from the Past

I remember reading selections from Mary Antin's The Promised Land in school, but had not thought about her in years. Antin was a Russian Jew whose father moved the family to Boston in the late 1800s. Land is an absorbing autobiography about being an immigrant to the United States.

Mass Moments has a little newsclip, Mass Moments: Crowd Gathers to Hear Writer Mary Antin, that you can listen to and also more information.

You can read Promised Land online here, or read it online or download it in various e-book formats at Blackmask.com.

E-Books Redux

Ah, I've been absent here for a bit while I celebrated over in Holiday Harbour. Tend to read Christmas books over Christmas, but have been digging into the e-books lately.

Last read were two of Edith Van Dyne's "Aunt Jane's Nieces" books. In Aunt Jane's Nieces on Vacation, the girls and Uncle John spend their vacation in the quaint country town of Millville and start and run a newspaper. The colorful country characters from Aunt Jane's Nieces in Millville reappear while we also meet the mysterious "Thursday Smith," a clever but dissipated artist named Hetty Hewitt, and the usual (for the early 1900s) foreign rabble-rousing and drunken workmen, this time workers at a nearby mill. Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad takes place chiefly in Italy, where Uncle John runs afoul of a family of brigands who kidnap rich Americans and then demand they purchase some "antique" in order to be freed. Additionally, Louise is pursued by young Count Ferranti, who has a mysterious pass. The Italians in the story are all pretty stereotypical, but are also presented as having an odd sense of honor, which I find amusing rather than offensive. Young Tato, especially, is full of surprises.

The Meadow-Brook Girls Under Canvas is the first in a series about a group of four teenage girls and their older chaperone, a teacher, who travel about having adventures. Miss Elting is their guiding force, and the girls are Jane McCarthy ("Crazy Jane," the one with the car, whose widowed father has allowed her to run wild), Harriet Burrell (the pretty, talented, intelligent one), Grace Thompson (the childish and rich one who, hilariously—well, according to the book she's hilarious, anyway—lisps), Hazel Holland (pretty much of a cipher) and Margery Brown (nicknamed "Buster" because she is fat). In the initial offering, the girls attend camp with the "Camp Girls" who more than vaguely sound like Campfire Girls and must cope with two unfriendly campers who take a dislike to them. Of the girls, Grace "Tommy" Thompson is the most odd; I'm with Mary Crosson's "Plain Jane" Series List, on which Mary comments "When the reader first meets this series, one burning question leaps to mind: what the heck is wrong with Grace 'Tommy' Thompson? She is short schoolbus material if I've ever seen it—she makes Bobby Belden or Betty from Roy's 'Girl Scouts' series look normal. At 14, she lisps, babbles, frequently needs to 'cuddle,' hallucinates pink elephants when she eats too late at night, wants to sleep in her tentmate's cot because she's 'thcaired of bearth,' etc." The lisping thing gets old really fast, but the girls can be vaguely interesting.

The Meadow Brook girls also go hiking, strike out on a houseboat, visit the White Mountains and the ocean, and play tennis.

Annie Fellows Johnston is most famous for her "Little Colonel" series of books, but she wrote other novels about friends of Lloyd Sherman, "the little Colonel" (if you've only seen the Shirley Temple movie, you don't know the entire story of Lloyd Sherman, who grows up, finds love, and gets married in a series of novels). The Gate of the Giant Scissors is one such book, about Joyce Ware, an American girl who has been sent to France with an aunt to continue her education. She is homesick for her active family and country home and befriends the little nephew of the owner of the estate on which "the gate of the giant scissors" opens; the little boy is perpetually abused and starved by the cruel caretaker of the estate. The "giant scissors" really existed. My favorite Annie Johnston is still Georgina of the Rainbows, but I haven't read that many of them yet.

Books from the Past

I'm toying with buying (which means I'm nosing around E-bay) a set of the Collier's Junior Classics again.

According to this site, Collier Targets Children with Junior Classics, Collier's intended this set of ten books as a child's counterpart to the Harvard Classics (a.k.a. "The Five Foot Shelf," which figured in an early episode of The Waltons). The set I would be looking for would be 1960 or earlier, as after that, Collier redid the volumes and arranged the stories under different categories. I have a single volume from that later set, the holiday volume, which I do enjoy, but the older set has a nostalgic interest as well.

In my early elementary school years, my best friend was a girl who was also named Linda. She lived one street down and several houses further on. Her older sister was already married, but her older brother's room was upstairs across the hall from her. One of the fascinating things in his room was a set of these Collier's Junior Classics.

As I got into fifth grade, Linda's and my interests started to diverge, plus she made two friends I really didn't like all that much. When these two girls were around all they wanted to talk about were clothes and boys. I thought boys, at least in the fashion they were talking about them, were boring, and clothes even more so. I confess that more often than I should I would excuse myself to go to the bathroom, sneak upstairs, and filch a copy of one of her brother's Junior Classics volumes to read for a while to get away from the ordeal of frills and fashion.

It was in "The Animal Book" that I first read one of my favorite dog stories, Albert Payson Terhune's "One Minute Longer."

Changing Tastes

If there's one thing interesting about reading old books, it's about how times and customs and even mealtimes have changed. Some of the changes are refreshing—it's nice to know we don't treat minority groups, immigrants, foreigners, or poor people the way we did back then. Other things just sound funny: girls wear kimonos, not bathrobes, folks go to "sleeping porches" in the summer to get away from the heat of the house, kids climb into "the tonneau" of the car, etc.

In Kit of Greenacre Farm (published 1919), our heroine Kit Bobbins, nearly sixteen, goes to live with her elderly reclusive uncle and his sister while the family house is being reconstructed (the oil stove caught fire and burned them out). Her scholarly uncle was expecting a boy (shades of Anne Shirley; Kit even has red hair), but Kit settles down much more quickly than Anne and is sent to a preparatory school for college-bound young ladies. She immediately befriends a French-Canadian "half breed" family, the Beaubiens, and sticks up for their daughter Marcelle when the other girls turn up their noses at this poor young woman coming into their school.

Kit and her friend Anne give a Founder's Day tea to see if they can get Marcelle properly introduced into the school's girlish society, and they will be serving six kinds of sandwiches. The menu is straight out of a 1920s cookbook: cheese with pimento sandwiches, cheese with chopped walnuts, lettuce and egg, chopped raisins with beaten white of egg, raspberry jam and cream cheese, and sardine on lettuce with maynonnaise and deviled ham. Macaroons, those cookies so loved in that era, are the sweet.

Can you imagine teenage girls eating anything like that today? The sardines would be enough to send most people running off posthaste, but they were extremely popular back then. Even worse, "chopped raisins with beaten white of egg"—basically a meringue sandwich! We would never serve anything like that today for fear of food poisoning.

(Does it strike anyone as odd that 85 years ago fresh eggs were okay to eat while today with all our health precautions we are afraid to each such things?)

The Magazine Files, Part 2: Regular Reading

I mentioned in “Yet Another Journal” that I was cleaning out my three-year collection of Period Living and Traditional Homes. They’re from England, beautifully printed, and although fun to read about the old house restorations, were becoming too expensive for my budget and not really useful. I’ll keep the Christmas and New Year’s issues, though; they’re full of bright baubles and old-fashioned trees—heavens, some folks still use candles, which I imagine are gorgeous, but I’m too afraid of fire to ever do so.

This is actually when I do most of my magazine buying: in the fall and winter. I end up bringing home Country and Vermont Life and Yankee and even Midwestern Living and, this year, even Arizona Highways for the vivid and colorful fall photo shots. They are so beautiful I wish I could drink in the vibrant colors: the juicy reds and oranges and golds that look as if they taste of cranberry and orange and cherry. They remind me there is a civilized season behind the depression and energy-sucking heat of summer.

In the fall and winter I also purchase decorating magazines like Country Almanac and Country Decorating Ideas and Country Sampler because they have become warm and cozy instead of stuffed with a plethora of pinks and other pastels of the summer and spring issues. Each summer issue also manages to include an almost totally white room with filmy mosquito-net-like curtains dragging on the floor. If the curtains dragging on the floor isn’t bad enough, the monochrome white makes me want to run screaming from the house (who came up with this absurd notion of curtains getting all dusty on the floor anyway?). This is even worse than the spring explosion of cutesy flower patterns and ruffles everywhere—eeek! The only setup in the summer magazines that ever attracts me is the beach cottage look, with the beadboard and pale blues and nautical decorations.

I also pick up the October, November, and December Country Living each year half price with a Michael's coupon. They have some good articles but aren't worth full price. I actually prefer the British edition which I can't get half price but is often worth it at Christmastime: the British still remember the 12 Days of Christmas and while the American edition covers furnishings, plants, pets, and decorating in a country style, the British edition actually talks about really living in the country as well, with a regular article by a man who gave up a posh job to run a farm and other articles about real country living.

Once a year at Christmas I purchase Victorian Decorating because they’ll usually do an interesting article on scraps decorating and vintage ornaments, and look at one or two old homes decorated for the holidays. (Some of them are over-decorated, even for Victorian homes!) One year they showed the Mark Twain House in Hartford, Connecticut, which we have visited and I can imagine how it would be to live in the beautiful place with sumptious holiday decorations. (This is supposing, of course, I had someone else to clean the sprawling footage! <g>) Any other time of the year the lace frou-frous in VD drive me wild. I have the same problem with magazines like Romantic Country or Cottage Style; just too many bows and ruffles and furbelows for my taste. I don’t like the cute or feminine country styles, but nice plain, sturdy ginghams and wood in Shaker or Mission fashion. (I’m also apparently the only woman in the country who despises teddy bears, whether dressed in cute little dresses or overalls or baby clothing, or even au natural. I had a teddy I loved as a child but the moment I outgrew him I never went back; even then I always preferred my stuffed dogs.)

At Christmastime I also like to pick up Early American Life, which just had its life restored by a new publisher. Apparently the old management was running this fine magazine into the ground. In fact, the last few issues have been so interesting I’ve occasionally bought one when it isn’t winter time. They’ve had some absorbing historical articles, including a couple about textiles that I didn’t think I’d be interested in.

Each month I purchase Quick & Easy, a British cross-stitch magazine, from the one Barnes & Noble in the area that stocks it. I started buying it almost from when it came out because it has small, simple but attractive designs. Well, it still has some small designs, but also too many these days which are neither quick nor easy and I wonder why they’re in the magazine when the slack can be taken up by a number of sister magazines: Cross Stitcher, Cross Stitch Crazy, The World of Cross-Stitching. I miss the little Jo Verso-like sampler-type patterns that used to prevail (Jo unfortunately died in a car accident some time ago). Another monthly treat used to be the British nostalgia magazine, Best of British, but no one here in Atlanta seems to stock it any longer. I got my last issue while in Rhode Island; dozens of articles in small print with lots of color pictures of old market towns, bygone British brands and vehicles, and stories from readers about growing up or joining the armed services or surviving the Blitz and rationing. I finally broke down and got Reiman’s Reminisce by subscription bimonthly (and of course now I find it here and there where I didn’t before) because I enjoy this nostalgia magazine so much: personal stories here, as well, plus old slide photos, old cars, and the monthly column “I Know…I Was There.”

James gets the bimonthly Cooks Illustrated and the new Cooks Country magazines, but although I like reading the recipes and tips my favorite part of the former is always editor Christopher Kimball’s column about his hometown. I wish they’d collect them in a book!

The magazine I bought the longest (and subscribed to) I no longer receive or read, which is Starlog. I had the complete set for the longest time, with the original issue one, which was printed long before it was a regular magazine, devoted to Star Trek (this was even before the films came out). (It was so long ago, in fact, that the lead character in George Lucas’ new space epic, Star Wars, was still named “Luke Starkiller.”) I loved reading each issue. Then I loaned out an issue and didn’t get it back so didn’t have a complete set any longer, then I noticed I wasn’t reading them right away and in fact finding them unread months later. Regretfully but not regretfully, if that makes any sense, that’s when I let the subscription lapse. I was tempted by one the other day with Harry Potter stories in it, but decided against it. No sense letting that get going again.

The Magazine Files, Part 1: Farewell to the Real TV Guide

I was in love with TV Guide from the start, but the first magazine “I remember liking that liked me back,” as Rhoda Morgenstern would say, was Jack and Jill. I saw very few of these as a kid because we didn’t have a lot of money, but I had the odd issue of J&J and also a couple of Humpty Dumpty that I treasured and read until tattered. There were certain J&J issues that had Lassie articles in them, but I never was lucky enough to get one.

TV Guide came into our house once or twice yearly. When we cleaned out the basement for my father to fix it up, we found a 1961 Fall Preview in a pile of newspapers that I had long-ago scribbled on in black crayon. It’s now in my small collection: small because Mom knew I’d keep every one of the darn things and forbade me to do so. Even when I subscribed I had to promise her not to keep all the issues.

Of course TVG was “a better place” back then. There were not only listings and a little gossip and some picture-stories, but solid reviews and thoughtful profiles of actors and hit series and even serious pieces about the effects of television on children, on politics, on newsmaking, etc. I still have their all-news issue that followed television’s coverage of President Kennedy’s assassination. But then Walter Annenberg aimed for a serious product in general. TVG only got really frivolous at Christmas-time, when folk song artist Allen Sherman wrote an annual tongue-in-cheek poem placing all the network series in rhyme (42 years later I can still recall “Let the kindly candle kindle with warm and mellow thoughts of Grindl...").

Well, all hail Annenberg, for TVG has finally gone down with a whimper: the magazine became bad enough when media bimbo-guy Rupert Murdoch took it over and filled it full of upcoming movie trash, big print, and fashion elements, but now it’s magazine-sized and the listings are gone. Hellooooo! What good is a guide to TV without listings?

A moment of silence for what was once a great magazine...

It's Raining Estrogen

A few posts ago, I gave a glowing review to the first in a new set of girls' books called The Callahan Cousins. In The Summer Begins, 12-year-old cousins Hillary (the athletic one), Neeve (the well-traveled one), Kate (the friendly, rather ordinary one), and Phoebe (the bookish one) all gather at Grandmother Gee's sumptious summer home on Gull Island off the coast of New England, a privilege granted to all 12-year-old female cousins. I fell in love with the old-fashioned cover and found a good combo of old-fashioned girls' adventure and modern sentiments in the volume and was awaiting the next installment.

Boy, was I disappointed.

Home Sweet Home turns into an unbearable estrogen-fest which gets more annoying as the book proceeds.

Girls my age used to complain about the old books where the boys got to have all the adventures and the girls had to stay behind or do domestic things. Nancy Drew and Trixie Belden and their ilk were some exceptions, but the majority of adventure stories were testosterone-fests. The men and boys in The Summer Begins were clearly supporting characters, but had various roles that kept them well-rounded. In Home Sweet Home the boys are mostly relegated to being boyfriends and are barely heard from. So much for the author trying to be well-balanced.

The story's main mystery is Neeve discovering a wedding photo of her dad with a woman who is not her mother. This unnerving plot device is like those aggravating romance books (and movies) where the heroine discovers something bad about the hero and, instead of confronting him about it, just stews and ignores him until the situation is cleared up. All Neeve had to do was ask Grandma Gee about the photo. Nope, Miss Independence sits and worries about it throughout the book, snapping at her cousins before finally confiding in them (and none of them advise asking their grandmother, either) and even falling under the influence of snobby Sloan Bicket, the bete noire of this tale, in an effort to get information. In one absolutely astonishing chapter, Neeve finds out that the relationship between her dad and this woman "ended badly" and jumps to the conclusion that her dad killed the woman. Huh? Her dad whom she loves despite the fact that he makes the family move so often? I watched a lot of crime TV as a kid and would have never, ever suspected my dad of murder in such a situation. What goes on in this kid's head?

The rest of the book is a long tedious argument between Neve and Kate about their summer project: redecorating the Dorm where the girls will have the privelege of living for the rest of the time. Even with Neeve's supposed "creative input," the room turns into a confection of mostly pink. Note to author: not all of us girls like pink, particularly when we had another favorite color and got stuck in pink endlessly as small children. The room turns out as predictably as some fluffy little girl's decorating book spec. Neeve also has a long running conflict with Sloan about some photos which she has traded...her makeup bag for. She spends at least a third of the book trying to get her makeup back. Oh, please.

Gee continues to act more like a friendly older sister than a real grandmother (and I don't mean that she ought to sit around and knit and bake cookies—heck, she has a housekeeper for that). At one point in the book she teaches all four girls to drive. Yes, they are twelve years old. She wants them to know in case of emergencies. Wow. Talk about your dream grandmother. She already has a bottomless budget, a big house, a pool, a boathouse, the Dorm, and even a housekeeper so these kids don't have to do a lick of work if they don't want to, and she teaches them to drive, too. I wasn't aware this was going to be a fantasy series.

The next book isn't out until May 2006. In it Kate is on a campaign to become "cool." Groan. Maybe by next year I'll have the bad taste out of my mouth, but right now, I'll pass.

Potty Over Potter

In preparation for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, I have been rereading all the other five books of the series. I do this about once or twice a year anyway. It's hard to believe that back a few years ago I wasn't really interested in the series; I did like, it, but I was much too wrapped up in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy to pay it much attention. I purchased the books when they came out in paperback, which, any Harry Potter fan can tell you, was a long, long wait because the Potter paperbacks did not come out the usual year after the hardback novel as other books did. Scholastic was really milking the hardback Potter mania to the full.

I realized I had become hooked on Potter when Goblet of Fire came out. At that time Michael's craft stores were selling the Potter novels as well as little Potter geegaws like the Bertie Botts' jellybeans and the Lego Harry Potter pen. On holiday weekends Michael's always has 50 percent off coupons, and one holiday weekend (I can't remember which) I just gave up and bought Goblet. Later on, after James had read the first four books, I went back and replaced my paperback copies of the first three books with hardbacks.

We had a grand time when Order of the Phoenix came out, as the Atlanta Radio Theatre Company got together and did readings from the first four novels at the Barnes & Noble store at Perimeter Mall on the evening before the official release. At midnight, when the book was officially "out," they had been given permission to read from the first chapter. It was great fun: the cast dressed up in costume and there were prizes and games.

They are doing the same thing this year, but we won't be able to go. Oh, well, maybe for the seventh book. But if you're in the Atlanta area on the evening of July 15 and you're a Harry Potter fan, do make the trip to Barnes & Noble. You'll enjoy it.

By the way, I'm having my usual hard time getting through Order of the Phoenix. It's not, as some people have complained, because Harry is so angry all the time in the story (heck, if I were Harry, I'd be angry, too). It's a superb story—but so many dark things happen. It's like rewatching the "Who's Scott Sherwood" episode of Remember WENN.

Meet the Callahan Cousins

I picked up this hardback children's novel, The Callahan Cousins #1: the Summer Begins in Borders yesterday. I've never had any reluctance to pick up children's or young adults' books if they looked interesting enough, and initially, I fell in love with the cover of this book! It wasn't just the shore scene with the white-steepled church in the midst of it (which reminded me of Newport), but because it looked just like the books I grew up with, the inexpensive hardback Whitman books that were only 29¢ when my mom started buying them for me in the early 1960s.

To my surprise, I really enjoyed the story, although there were a few times that, to me, that the four girls didn't sound like they were only twelve years old, and Gee, their grandmother, seems just too good to be true! (As in all these books, everyone has plenty of money so there are always swell things in the house. Gee's "beach house" is huge, has terraces, a boathouse, a huge pool, etc.) And the girls' nemesis, a spoilt girl named Sloan Bicket, reminds me a lot of Draco Malfoy in the Harry Potter books. But these are very minor quibbles; it's very easy to like the characters and situations.

Hillary Callahan and her three girl cousins Phoebe, Neve, and Kate, are all spending the summer at Grandma Gee's house on Gull Island, a privilege granted to all female Callahan cousins when they turn twelve. Hillary's parents have just divorced and she is desperate to prove that she is still a Callahan cousin. So when she finds out her uncles had an old tradition of planting a flag on a small nearby island, she is determined that she and her cousins will do the same thing. As the girls learn about sailing, tides, boats, and navigation, they also learn about friendship and old rivalries. The girls are all very "today," but the book is very nostalgic, harking back to those great old series like the Timber Trail Riders, Trixie Belden, and others. The next one is due out in September and I'm looking forward to it.

Gladys Taber Redux

I have written elsewhere in this blog about my love of Gladys Taber's Stillmeadow books.

They are helping me during a bad patch right now; I've had to fly up to my mother's house suddenly after she collapsed. She is terminally ill with cancer and up until now had been able to take care of herself.

I had to take a few St. Nicholas bound volumes with me; they are thick and "meaty" and would last me a while. But I needed some spiritual comfort and could either take a few of Madeleine L'Engle's nonfiction books or something else. I chose my three paperback copies (lightest) of Gladys Taber instead. There is something very comforting about her writing about her country house, her dogs (cocker spaniels and an Irish setter), cats, garden, and friends. Her prose is like poetry. It makes me feel as if I am wrapped in love.

A Literary Treat

     "Mally...took down two sticks of dark gold paper.
     "Crunchie?" said Velvet, her face lighting...
     In the gold paper was a chocolate stick. Beneath the chocolate was a sort of honeycomb, crisp and friable, something between biscuit and burnt sugar. Fry's chocolate crunchie...It was their year's choice."

Enid Bagnold wrote this back in 1935, in National Velvet. I read it in the mid-1960s, in a brown-covered paperback with a drawing of blond Velvet and her piebald horse on the cover (a far cry from both Elizabeth Taylor in the movie and Lori Martin in the television series). The Brown girls' life next to the slaughterhouse was so different from mine that I was instantly fascinated, and I loved the differences in language and vocabulary. No effort was made to "Americanize" the descriptions or dialog, which I always appreciated. What then was "kedgeree" and "spawn" and what were "capers"? I was fascinated by their life by the sea and Mrs. Brown having swum the English Channel, by the racing information and the descriptions of the Grand National, and, especially since I had had budgies since I was a small child, Meredith and her canaries. (Those Grand National jumps have stuck in my head for years. When I go over speed bumps I think to myself, "Well, here's Becher's, and next is the Canal Turn...")

This description of the candy bar stayed with me for years, too. It sounded delicious. So when James and I went into the little Norcross shop "A Taste of Britain" today—this is a lovely store that stocks china teacups and little cottages, some British CDs, little things like statuettes and bumper stickers, and British foods (even some frozen ones like bangers and meat pasties).—and looked over their stock of British candies, my eyes alighted with recognition on a gold papered stick labeled "Crunchie" (although it is now made by Cadbury). I had to try it, even if the import prices are a bit high.

James took a bit and pronounced it too sweet. It was a bit sweet; it would probably cure a sugar craving for about a week. But I enjoyed the heck out of it anyway. It tasted just as wonderful as it did back when I "sampled" it virtually 40 years ago reading National Velvet.

War is Swell?

I finished reading Thomas Fleming’s very absorbing Illusions of Victory: Americans in World War I a week or so ago. This is a no-holds-barred look at the politics behind and during America’s entry into the war in April 1917, including censorship of any anti-war sentiments (if you’re one of the folks at odds with the Patriot Act, this book might provide an eye-opener of how extremely restrictive the American government really can be).

On the other hand, if you’re looking for a completely unbiased look at this entire situation, be forewarned: this ain’t it. Fleming expends a lot of vitriol on personages on either side, but reserves his harshest criticisms for Woodrow Wilson. This is the flip-side to writings where Wilson comes off almost able to be recommended for sainthood.

I thought the portions of the book concerning how Americans against our entry into “the Great War” (including fiery Senator Robert LaFollette and Congresswoman Jeanette Rankin) were treated even more interesting because of my reading the old children’s/young adults’ series books from the early 20th century. I speak in several paragraphs on my St. Nicholas web page about how this one magazine threw itself into promoting the war effort to children. However, St. Nicholas was not a lone anamoly; in almost all the series books written between 1917-1920 (the Bobbsey Twins were a notable exception), the series’ protagonists, from the hiking and motoring Outdoor Girls and the close-knit Camp Fire Girls of Hildegarde Frey to the various series of Boy Scout books and other boys’ series books, all became involved in the war effort. The girls, of course, were relegated to serving tea and cookies at the precursors to USO halls or knitting for victory, but the older boys quit the Scouts, or whatever their organization, to join the Army or Navy or even the neophyte Air Corps to "join General Pershing’s forces in France and fight for Uncle Sam."

Ninety years ago these books were unabashedly patriotic and thus considered good reading for children. Today they are often absurd propaganda with plotlines full of violence and racial and ethnic stereotypes that make even students of history, who know this existed and aren’t shocked, laugh or cringe.

The latest of these epics I recently finished was H. Irving Hancock’s Uncle Sam's Boys with Pershing's Troops, or Dick Prescott at Grips with the Boche. Hancock’s hero Dick Prescott goes back many years to "The High School Boys" series, with "Dick & Co." as they are called in the descriptions, including Dave Darrin, Dan Dalzell, Tom Reade, Harry Hazelton, and Greg Holmes. Hancock then did a series portraying the boys in grammar school while also portraying their post-school lives: Dick and Greg go to West Point, Dave and Dan to Annapolis, and Tom and Harry become young engineers in three different book series. All or most of the boys (not sure what happened to Harry) then serve during World War I: Dick and Greg of course in the Army, Dave and Dan in command of escort ships, and Tom in the Air Corps.

With Pershing’s Troops actually opens in "Camp Berry, Georgia" where Dick and Greg, now young, manly, outstanding—all our heroes being manly and outstanding, of course—officers train with other "doughboys" for embarcation to France. While there they run afoul of not one, but two, German spies and a member of the Army who they suspect also is a spy.

In one absolutely jaw-dropping scene, Dick has to speak to three conscientious objectors. He pretty much views them as and then calls them cowards, and in persuasive arguments, actually convinces two of them that they can kill if their loved ones are threatened by German imperialism. The third he determines really is against killing, even in self-defense and finds a non-combatent role for him. But before this latter man leaves, Dick asks him to take his hat off and notes that it "has a pointed shape" and that he will remember what the head of a conscientious objector looks like!

Finally Dick and Greg are off on troopships and are fired upon by “the Hun.” Of all the ships in the Navy, guess who are captaining two small escort ships of their transport—yep, you guessed it, Dave and Dan!

Once in France they go directly to the front, met by fawning Frenchmen who thank God for Pershing and Uncle Sam’s boys. Although the French have been in these trenches for months, it is Our Hero Dick, during his first tour, who is the first one to notice one of the French privates is signalling the German line with little electric bulbs whenever an officer puts his head up! (Of course we readers should have suspected the French private was a bit "off"—he has a German name, Berger!) Through the private they find out one of the respected French officers is really a German and also a spy; when caught the scornful man makes a rich melodramatic speech about how he is proud of his German heritage and how German superiority will wipe out the French and the British and even the Americans…yadda, yadda, yadda.

Dick isn’t at the front for 24 hours before he’s captured by "the Boche," marched to a cattle car and taken away to a prison—and of course being Our Hero he is the only one with brains to escape when the train stops. He makes his way to a road where he is saved by a French farmer, who takes him to hide in a barn with another American soldier— guess what, it’s Tom Reade!

I don’t think I have to tell you Our Heroes get back to the Allied side eventually; these stories all end the same. The combination of adulation, coincidence, and jingoism is simply breathtaking.

But as counterpoint to Illusions of Victory, like Dick Prescott it can’t be beat as an illustration of how even the youngest citizens of the U.S. were shown the "right" side of the war in Europe.

Ahhh, Linguistics!

I'm having a great time reading The Adventure of English, although I'd previously read a lot of the facts in my Mario Pei and other linguistics books. Melvin Bragg's writing style reminds me occasionally of James Burke: after a paragraph of talking about how pronounciations change, for instance from "coo" (still used in parts of Scotland) to "cow," and about the Great Vowel Shift, Bragg adds, "...but {linguists] can't say why the great shift happened; or whether it really was one large shift or two or more small ones; or why it happened less in the north (and, as we have seen, not at all to some Scottish cows)." A very Burke-ian quip indeed!

Who is Edith Van Dyne?

Quiet Elizabeth "Beth" DeGraf is fifteen. She lives with her indifferent parents, a music teacher and an embroiderer, in a small town.

Glamorous Louise Merrick is seventeen. She and her mother, impoverished by her father's death, are living high in a nice apartment on the remainder of his life insurance payment rather than eking out a bare existence on the interest, in the hopes that Louise will make a good marriage to support them both.

Freckled redhead Patricia "Patsy" Doyle is sixteen. She and her Irish father, "the Major," live a poor but happy life with her as a ladies' hairdresser and him as a bookkeeper in a tenement house in the city.

At first glance the trio are a disparate lot, but what they have in common is Jane Merrick, a sickly, discontent, rude old lady who is their aunt. When Jane Merrick realizes she is dying, she sends invitations to each of the girls to come live with her for a month. She is planning to decide which of the three is the best heir for the sizeable fortune she inherited from her fiancé, who died on the eve of their wedding and left all his money to her. Dismissive Miss Merrick doesn't even consider it a possibility that the other heir to the estate might be Kenneth Forbes, her intended's nephew, whom she promised her fiancé she would care for if something happened to his mother. Ken is shy, rude, and mostly untutored, and he loathes his "almost aunt" as much as she loathes him.

These wildly divergent personalities come together in the 1906 book Aunt Jane's Nieces written by Edith Van Dyne, and appears typical in writing to the girls' series of the times, although Louise at first seems an atypical heroine for one of them as her character is closer to that of the inevitable opponents the "nice" girls have in other series stories. It will not be much of a spoiler to tell you that, despite the girls' wariness of each other at first meeting, they all are friends by the end of the book, since nine sequels were spawned, including the inevitable World War I era volume that had the three joining the Red Cross. (Almost all children's series fiction had a point where they halted between 1918-1920 and became obsessed with helping out the cause in the Great War, and many more series books were spawned by the adventures of boys who joined the Army and girls who became nurses or who deterred saboteurs.) Into the mix is also tossed the girls' Uncle John, who returns from "the West" rolling in dough from good investments he apparently makes accidentally, and who bankrolls the girls in all of their schemes in the later volumes.

Some of these volumes, however, didn't follow the traditional plots of most girls' novels of the times. Aunt Jane's Nieces at Work, for example, follows the girls as they help Kenneth–who has, under the influence of his now favorite "cousins," become a bit more agreeable–run for office. Politics was a strange bedfellow for three lively girls in that era when women still did not have suffrage, and indeed the pages were full of diatribes about evil grafting politicians and Democratic principals against Republican ones and vice versa. Indeed, several of the Nieces books not only seem to contain a small mystery, but rail against corruption in industry and politics, hardly the usual subjects in girls' books where clothing, society, and parties were the norm.

But then Edith Van Dyne's other books weren't on typical girlish subjects, either. The two volumes about "the Flying Girl," for instance, followed the adventure of a courageous young woman who learned to fly aircraft in the canvas-and-wire era. And the Mary Louise books follow the adventures of a girl who, in her first story, is pitted against detectives and the United States Secret Service (whose agents are portrayed as double-crossing and in competition with each other in an age where Government representatives were usually shown as solid, honest characters) looking for Mary Louise's beloved "Gran'pa Jim" to arrest him for treason! Strong stuff in those days for girls, but they sold well, showing that the young ladies of that day were eager for more than frills and furbelows in their literature. Indeed, Edith Van Dyne must have been a most progressive woman.

Not to fear, the mystery of Edith Van Dyne has long been solved: "she" was a he, in the person of Lyman Frank Baum–yes, the author of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and its sequels. If you are interested in old girls' series books and would like something a little different from the norm, Aunt Jane's trio would probably suit you, not to mention the intrepid Mary Louise. Gutenberg.org has several of the titles, as does Blackmask.com.

A nice article/biography of Baum.

Words That Sing

I can't remember not loving books, from the inexpensive little volumes my mom would buy at Woolworth's to the books of my own and books from the library. I love a good solid story in a smart narrative, but when I was small I didn't realize that good prose could have the voice of poetry as well. Then in a school reader we had an excerpt from Laurie Lee's memoir, Cider With Rosie (published here in the States as The Edge of Day). It was an astounding revelation. Lee's prose told a story, but wound in delightful metaphor that was poetry to read. I still cannot pick up the book without remembering that discovery of those joyful words.

Gladys Taber's Stillmeadow books are similar. Between the narratives of country living and recipes and the antics of the cocker spaniels and Irish setters that populate the landscape came turns of phrase that painted the countryside and its inhabitants in vivid language fit to be verse. (A travel book, Journey Through New England, has this turn of phrase in its descriptions as well and reminds me of Taber.)

I am reading yet another book with a similar blessing. Those of you who are fans of Mary O'Hara's Ken McLaughlin trilogy, My Friend Flicka, Thunderhead, and Green Grass of Wyoming already know of her well-crafted stories and of the description of countryside and characters that makes them special. You may not know about what I consider my favorite book of hers, Wyoming Summer. This is an adaptation of the journal O'Hara kept of one summer at the ranch that was the prototype for the Goose Bar Ranch in those books, and of some events that became inspiration for them, but as an additional joy it also contains that type of prose that sings like poetry. Her descriptions of ranch life, of music, of musings about God and life, are a delight to read not just for the story but for the language. It never fails to send me soaring. This is a worthwhile book to find and to keep forever.

Annettevolution

One of the things I picked up last weekend was a bargain-priced "Disney Press" set of "Walt Disney's Annette Mysteries," containing four of the five books formerly published by Whitman in the early 1960s. (I have no idea why Annette: Mystery at Medicine Wheel isn't included in the set, but I could hazard a guess: it has a Western setting and possibly may no longer present an acceptable view of Native Americans or perhaps Hispanics—although the Hispanic characters in Mystery of Smuggler's Cove are presented respectfully.)

Annette McLeod, the orphan niece of brother and sister Archibald and Lila McLeod, was adopted by them when her father (Archie and Lila's brother) and mother died. The McLeods live in southern California and Annette owns every girl's motorized dream, a trim little white sports car she has nicknamed "the Monster." She and her friends attend high school, but we're never really certain what age they are (aside from the fact they can drive). The waters are further muddied by the fact that although on the book endpapers the Annette silhouette is that of the curly-haired girl as she appeared on The Mickey Mouse Club in the mid to late 1950s, the cover drawings are always of an older Annette with longer hair and a much more mature expression, the Annette of the "Beach Party" movies.

The Whitman book character, derived from a Mouse Club serial called...surprise!..."Annette," had a much longer and more curious bloodline than one might expect.

In 1950, Janette Sebring Lowrey wrote the novel Margaret, which opens in 1906 Texas and concerns teenage Maggie McLeod, who has lived all her life in the small town of Nichols Station with the family that raised her—Bonnie, a practical country woman, her footloose husband "Prince Albert" who spends most of his life away from home riding the rails, and Bonnie and "P.A.'s" cute but rather spoilt little girl, Lois—and her best friend, Michel.

Then Maggie receives a letter from her Aunt Lila McLeod in Ashford, Texas (the town is named after an ancestor of hers). Lila and her brother Archibald, a college professor, would like Maggie to live with them and become a part of the society that is her birthright. Bonnie thinks Maggie should get to know her father's family and insists the girl make the trip.

Ashford is a revelation for the small town girl. She is now called Margaret and welcomed by most of the boys and girls her age, including a country girl from outside town, Jet Maypen, and those in her social circle—but manages to make an enemy of the queen bee of the younger set, a snooty girl named Laura Rogan who sees Margaret as a hayseed. When Margaret becomes popular, Laura accuses her of stealing a diamond necklace that the wealthier girl removed at a party.

Disney reworked Margaret as a vehicle for Annette Funicello. Now entitled "Annette," the storyline is very simplified—entire subplots and characters vanish—but kept the same main plot for the television serial, although Ashford is now some middle American suburb and the time has been modernized to the 1950s. Annette meets the same characters (with their old-fashioned 1906 names intact), including Laura (played in delightfully bitchy style by Jymme Shore—Shore, as Roberta Shore, also played the girl in distress in Disney's The Shaggy Dog) and Jet (portrayed by TV's 1950s tomboy actress Judy Nugent), with Mouse Club regulars (and serial regulars) like Sharon Baird, Doreen Tracey, Tommy Cole, Cheryl Holdridge, Tim Considine, and David Stollery as the others. Richard Deacon, in his pre-buffoon Mel Cooley days, is Uncle Archie, and Sylvia Field, also Mrs. Wilson on Dennis the Menace, was Aunt Lila. The stigma of the stolen necklace hangs (pun intended) around Annette's head until the piece is found and everything ends happily ever after.

(Annette mentions Bonnie, but the character is never seen and she is only a shadowy influence in the girl's life as opposed to her major role in Lowrey's novel. Oddly, although the "Annette" timeframe had been advanced to the present day, Annette arrives in Ashford wearing a countrified outfit that Margaret would have felt more comfortable in. Even the updated Jet Maypen, also from "the country," didn't look that out of synch with time.)

The Whitman (now Disney Press) books dispose of everything except Annette, Aunt Lila, and Uncle Archie. Ashford is given lip service in the first paragraph of the first book of the series, Sierra Summer, in which it is revealed the McLeods have moved permanently to a house Uncle Archie owned in southern California to be closer to "his business." (????) Thus the books had the 1960s All-American sun-and-surf California setting and Ashford friends were forgotten. They are also set a few years later than the serial, since Annette suddenly drives and has a car. (Also, in the simple line illustrations of the day, although Annette looks like...well, Annette, her aunt and uncle no longer resemble the actors who portrayed them; Uncle Archie, in particular, is no longer bald and much younger.)

Today the stories are exercises in nostalgia. Annette's school life is cheery and fun except for tests: not a sign of violence, rapes, rebels, drugs, or drunkenness to be seen. A young character in one book has a father in prison, but of course it was all a mistake and one of the things Annette helps to do is clear the man's name. The mysteries themselves are about at the level of your typical Nancy Drew, or perhaps a little under—my main quibble is they build up and build up the suspense and then in the last chapter in about six paragraphs everything is wrapped up (the bad guy captured by the police, the misunderstanding resolved, etc.), and Annette is back in the Monster, tooling her way back to her aunt and uncle. Still, if you are of the era, they're a fun read and a great way to turn back the clock for a few hours to when everything seemed simpler.

Lowrey's Margaret is also recommended, especially if you've ever seen the "Annette" serial and want to see the derivation. The story stands on its own and the period feel is well done. BTW, if Janette Sebring Lowrey's name seems to stir some visceral memory, you're probably remembering her most famous work, the perennial Little Golden Book favorite, The Poky Little Puppy. Yes, Lowrey wrote this enduring kids' classic. Interestingly, both Poky Little Puppy participants had ties to Disney: Lowrey's Margaret turning into a Disney serial, and illustrator Gustaf Tenggren working for several years as a Disney animator.

Everyone's Christmas

Your little girl asks for just one thing for Christmas, a small, insignificant treasure. You procrastinate and then find out the one thing, the only thing, the sole thing she has requested of Santa Claus, is out of production. What do you do?

That's the dilemma of the young father in "Lipstick Like Lindsay's," just one of the stories in Gerald Toner's collection Lipstick Like Lindsay's and Other Stories. I found Lipstick misfiled and shoved among the tattered children's volumes in a used book store. Toner doesn't write Christmas stories in which apprentice angels turn up to solve miracles or holiday tales where little magical characters appear. One or two of his stories have a slight religious slant, but even that is low key, concentrating not on the religion itself, but the warm feeling of well-being that belief brings.

What his stories are are about real people. Some may be rich, some may be poor, but they all have the usual problems: perhaps a job or lack of same, perhaps parential or spousal problems, or enigmatic children. They may not want to face Christmas, or go into the holiday with different perceptions, and Christmas doesn't solve all their problems, but in some way they make peace with the spirit of the season, and in a way that isn't lachrymose or overly cute.

One of my particular favorite stories this year was the final story in Lipstick, "My Dad's Idea of Christmas." Every year, the father of the story's seventeen-year-old protagonist takes his family into the big city to visit a venerable department story and explore a nearby shopping arcade. The descriptions of the department store brought back all those wonderful memories of Christmas shopping at the Outlet Company and Shepard's and Grant's. Even though you've never met the people or visited the places Toner has created, you know them all, if not still there physically, forever in your heart.

If you want to read Christmas stories that will leave you with a smile and a good feeling, please pick up any or all of Toner's books, which also include Holly Day's Cafe and Other Stories and the novel Whittlesworth Comes to Christmas. I've always been thankful that I rummaged through the untidy shelves of that bookstore one year; the effort is well worth your while.

On the Christmas Track

I've a review of Balducci's The Christmas Train in Holiday Harbour.

Christmas Book Reviews

...in Holiday Harbour.

A Member of the Family

This morning's Thursday Threesome asked a question about which children's book series was your favorite. My answer brought me back...

The first series books I ever read were the Bobbsey Twins. The twins (two sets of them), their names now taken in vain as symbols of white-bread goody-goody kids, go back a long way. The first Bobbsey Twins novel was published in 1904 by the Edward Stratemeyer syndicate (who also did Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys, Tom Swift, etc.) by Mershon. (This first Mershon edition is so rare that if you have one, you can count yourself in for a good deal of money right now.) More sequels were published by Grosset & Dunlap right through the 1930s and 1940s, and then in the 1960s the books were completely revised to bring them up to then-modern sensiblilities. (Some of these revisions were rewritten completely, as in the first book, and some remained with only part of the plot intact--in The Bobbsey Twins and Baby May, for instance, a baby is abandoned; in the revision, it's an elephant that's abandoned.)

I had only about eight or nine of the revised books as a kid, since their $1.25 price was prohibitive on our budget, and I liked those, but I really enjoyed the first three original stories, reprinted by Whitman books, The Bobbsey Twins: Merry Days Indoors and Out, The Bobbsey Twins in the Country, and The Bobbsey Twins at the Seashore. The new novels had the Bobbseys solving mysteries, but the early ones were much more fascinating (if sedate): the Bobbseys rode around in a horse and carriage (horse and sleigh in the winter), and there were fantastic things in the books, like the kids watching the "town well" get cleaned out, or having an Independence Day parade or a boat pageant, and, most astonishing of all, the rescue of men from a sailing ship wreck with something called a "breeches buoy." I was wide-eyed in all the differences in this 1904 world from my own 1960s world. Some things I expected--the children were much more disciplined, especially in school, where boys had to wear ties, and they all stood up when the teacher asked them a question--and in other ways the kids seemed so much more adult and independent. Bert, for instance, at the tender age of nine, is allowed to use adult tools including saws, to build his own iceboat--which he and his pal Charley later sail on the lake without supervision! (In the early books, Bert and Nan, the dark haired older twins are eight to begin with and Freddie and Flossie, the blond younger twins are four; later, they become twelve and six respectively. Even in the early books, Nan, although she typically likes pretty clothes and baking, is described as a sturdy, athletic girl who participates in sports, not following the prissy girl predecessors in the serial book world.)

When I got older I sought out the older, original versions for my own. As the publication dates changed, so did the Bobbseys--Mr. Bobbsey, for instance, in the original books was called "Papa" by the children and "Mr. Bobbsey" in talking about him, but in the 1920s books became "Daddy Bobbsey" in the narration, which always struck me as silly. (Many books of that time also have mothers being addressed as "Momsy," which is really freaky.) Oddly, one of the things that changed, and not for the better, was Dinah.

If you've read any Bobbsey Twins books, you know that Dinah Johnson is the Bobbsey's faithful, nurturing "jolly colored housekeeper." Her husband Sam, who in the original books is the Bobbseys' handyman and gardener, is late the foreman at Mr. Bobbsey's lumberyard on Lake Metoka. As is common in all books written around this era, Dinah and Sam are the usual stereotypical African-American characters--they speak in "black dialect" and, God in heaven, in the country story Dinah even makes a joke about stealing watermelons. This is probably enough to get the early Bobbseys kicked off a modern reading list. However bad Dinah looks in the early books, however, her character actually degenerated during the 1930s stories, which is where I quit collecting.

If you look beyond the obvious racial props Dinah is burdened with in the early stories, she is actually a generous, admirable character. Mrs. Bobbsey, in her role of busy society wife, is a loving mother, but she's out a lot of the time doing charity work. Dinah isn't just a servant, she's a surrogate mother to the kids: she bakes them cakes and cookies, resolves their squabbles occasionally, cleans up after them and doesn't tell on them, and helps them with projects. She has even been heroic: in Merry Days Indoors and Out, when Freddie is buried in the snow while the twins are building a snow fort, she is the one who keeps her head, runs outside and digs him out of the pile of snow. The children in turn adore her; they can't imagine a home without Dinah and she even accompanies them on vacation.

You would have thought that over time Dinah's lot in life would have improved, but in the 1930s they started using her as comic relief. She became the mistress of malaprops, misunderstanding some word the children were using and having to be corrected by her younger educated white charges. It was depressing and embarrassing to read. Other obvious racial stereotypes started appearing more in the stories at that time as well.

Dinah and Sam survived the 1960s revisions--I think they were now referred to as "Negro" in the new editions--and thankfully had quit speaking in that "nebba had dis so good" manner of speech that was so degrading. The later "New" books removed Dinah from the action all together and the stories felt incomplete. Dinah, after all, really was part of the family.

Recently those 1960s revisions have made a comeback in new covers. They look, inside, very much like the editions I had, but I understand they have been changed in subtle ways. Freddie and Flossie, for instance, who were always described as being plump, have lost their nicknames of "fat fireman" and "fat fairy" (I'm not sure if it's because of the program to fight childhood obesity or because "fat" is now considered insulting). Also, Dinah's heritage is not referred to in the text at all. I can't decide whether I like this or not. Certainly it's a positive step forward--it no longer matters what color her skin is...and at the same time it's rather sad. Everyone one of us has an ethnic or racial heritage that should be celebrated. Dinah's race was so often denegrated, especially in the "comic relief" 1930s, that it seems sad that we cannot now turn around and show it in a positive manner. It is as if part of Dinah's identity has taken away. I would be a different person without my Italian roots; it seems crass and wrong to rob Dinah of her African-American heritage.

For more about the Bobbseys, visit Dr. Mike's site.

A description of the series from St. James Encyclopedia of Pop Culture.

100 Years Past

Back in the early part of the century, one of the most prolific writers was a woman named Carolyn Wells. While she wrote articles and mysteries, she was most well-known for her children’s stories, chiefly those for girls.

Wells did several series, including the Patty Fairfield stories, which I believe I’ve spoken of briefly before. The series starts with Patty at fourteen visiting relatives, then follows her to school and college, abroad and then to courtship. Patty’s dad is not rich, but well-to-do enough that Patty isn’t forced to work and always has lots of nice party dresses and things. It’s a much more innocent world, where middle-class girls of seventeen weren’t too old to sit in Dad’s lap while the family gathered around the fire and while descriptions of clothing abounded were full of activities rather than lovesick teenagers mooning over the opposite sex. Patty always had something doing, whether it was a picnic or a charity bazaar or sightseeing.

Wells’ other series was for younger girls and concerned Marjorie Maynard, a lively twelve-year old, again in an upper middle-class family. Unlike Patty, she has siblings: older Kingdon, the only boy, and younger Kitty and the obligatory cute small child with a lisp, Rosy.

The differences are almost shockingly startling, and it has nothing to do with the family having horses instead of a car, traveling by steam train instead of airplane, and using crank telephones. Marjorie at twelve—and her friends of the same age—are still little girls. They play with doll houses and dolls, play tag and climb trees, and the thought of boys as future romantic mates never crosses their minds. It’s so pleasant and relaxing watching them get into mischief no worse than marking up the front stairs with their heavy shoes or splashing water at Grandma’s hired man. They get to be real kids and not premature women, with no sturm und drang about premarital sex, makeup, sexy clothing, and violence in school.

Interestingly enough, they are also smaller in stature as well; one can see how today’s children physically mature so much faster. Marjorie’s Uncle Steve and Grandmother build a tree house for her and her friends and furnish it for her with wicker chairs that are "not of a size for grown people, but were just right for twelve-year-old girls." And these are well-fed well-cared-for children, not underfed waifs from the slums--I don’t think I know a twelve-year-old today who is not adult size and who would fit in those quaint little wicker chairs!

Stormy Weather

Back when I was looking at the reviews for Scotti’s Sudden Sea, about the Hurricane of 1938 (see “There Are Bricks Flying By”), I noted another hurricane book, Storm of the Century: The Labor Day Hurricane of 1935, and remarked that the excerpt on Amazon.com was quite good. Well, Tuesday at Kudzu, the remaindered book store, along with Enright’s classic The Saturdays and a book about American regional language differences, I found a copy.

If you watch documentaries about hurricanes, as we usually end up doing, you find several ubiquitous notables along with the 1938 disaster. There is of course the killer 1900 storm that hit Galveston, Texas, vividly reproduced in Erik Larson’s Isaac’s Storm. There’s the 1926 hurricane on the East Coast of Florida that destroyed the finances of several businessmen building tourist accommodations in Miami and Ft. Lauderdale as well as property. (Ironically, one of these men recovered enough capital to sink all his cash into building oceanfront homes again. On the southern coast of New England in 1938.) More modern storms, such as Hurricanes Camille and Andrew, are also included.

And then there’s the 1935 storm, which struck the Florida Keys with howling force and basically destroyed the old way of life among the “Conches,” as the residents were known.

The facet that makes the 1935 event different from the others is the presence in the Keys of the workers building the highway that now connects Key West to mainland Florida. These men were United States military veterans, and they were there basically because there were no jobs for them anywhere else (and, some say, to get rid of them).

Many of these men had been in the Bonus March of 1932. There are many different “takes” on the Bonus March--President Hoover and many other Government officials apparently truly did believe that what were left of the Bonus Marchers were simply troublemakers, thieves and Communists--but all the histories will tell you that General MacArthur’s high-handed and cruel treatment of them was unfair, whether they were mad radicals or not. The day MacArthur burned out the Bonus Marchers and drove them away from town with tanks and mounted troups, Franklin Roosevelt knew he had won the upcoming election.

The Roosevelt folks will tell you he was trying to do the best for these desperate men when he sent large numbers of them down to Florida to work on the road project. They would have food, shelter, and a job. Detractors say Roosevelt shipped them there so they wouldn’t be near Washington. Either way, the men got a raw deal: the camps they were placed in were dirty, they were inadequately housed and not protected from the hordes of mosquitoes that plague that part of the country, and most of the men overseeing the project had no knowledge of hurricanes or how fast they could move and ignored the locals’ warnings of the possible force of the storm.

From all accounts the men at these camps weren’t the best folks in the world. Many of them had come back from the war with what we would call today “post-traumatic stress syndrome” but back then was known more vividly as “shell shock.” They were belligerent, nasty, and tended to get roaring drunk on payday, partially because the camps were so bleak there was nothing else for them to do. But however badly they behaved, they didn’t deserve the offhand treatment they received—and the fate in store from them as the hurricane struck.

Author Willie Drye doesn’t have quite the narrative strengths of Larson, Scotti, or Everett Allen (A Wind to Shake the World), but the story is still quite compelling and is an excellent portrait of the old way of life in Florida and the hardships of the time.

Synopsis of Storm of the Century on Amazon.com.

1926 Hurricane

American Experience: MacArthur and the Bonus March

Bonus March information

The Bonus March as written by an honors student

Herbert Hoover's take on the Bonus Marchers

Skipping Grisham

I stopped at the library last night. (Good God, here I go again.) I was looking for Elizabeth Peters’ Guardian of the Horizon and ended up with four books. The other three were Christmas books. One of them was one I’d wanted to read for a while: John Grisham’s Skipping Christmas.

Brief boring notes of exposition:

I’ve never read John Grisham. Even though I watched Perry Mason religiously as a kid, a book involving law has all the appeal of curdled milk. I have no interest in reading about it.

If you hadn’t gathered from my “Holiday Harbour” blog and my Christmas web page, I love Christmas. I like the decorations, the music, the entire idea. Despite all that, I don’t relish the overspending and maniac fanaticism that cames at the Christmas season. Fun and exciting is one thing, desperation and bankruptcy is another.

Which is why the idea of Grisham’s book sounded so appealling.

[Warning! Major spoilers ahoy!]

Luther and Nora Krank (I should have guessed what the ending would be when I saw that surname) have just seen off their 23-year-old daughter Blair, leaving for two years in Peru with the Peace Corps, her first Christmas away from home. It’s Thanksgiving weekend and a grumpy Luther notices the already burgeoning Christmas madness--and decides he’s sick of it. He retreats to his calculator and realizes he spent $6,100 on Christmas the previous year and neither he nor his wife were satisfied. It was hectic, no fun, they got and gave useless presents, etc.

Time for another personal interjection: I collect Christmas books. Not Christmas books with crafts or recipes, but books about Christmas itself. Several of them, like Unplug the Christmas Machine, are about simplifying Christmas, since I dislike the furor that goes on during the holiday season. So although Luther isn’t the world’s most likeable character, I was completely in sympathy with him and what he decides to do next: he convinces his wife, also weary of Yuletide shenanigans, to go on a cruise for the holidays, leaving Christmas Day.

It’s not like it’s a new idea; many folks do it. But the Kranks go one step further than some might: they’re not going to decorate, or throw their usual party, or buy a tree, etc. They will forgo all the trimmings of the holiday except their charitable contributions, which they plan to make at other times of the year. Great. Not what I would do, but I understood perfectly.

Unhappily, most of the Kranks’ friends don’t. Oh, a few of them are envious of the pair not having social obligations or unwanted relatives coming over, but most of them are downright indignant. Their bafflingly selfish attitude is “how dare you not have Christmas with all the trimmings?”

The worst are the Kranks’ "neighbors." The couple live on a street that always takes place in a neighborhood decorating contest. This includes every house having a big plastic Frosty the Snowman on the roof. When the neighbors find out the Kranks won’t be decorating, they are nearly apoplectic with rage. Even the neighborhood police, firefighters, and Boy Scouts collecting for charity treat the Kranks like they’re...well, some sort of cranks, even though Luther assures them he will give to their spring and summer charities. The printer who usually does Nora Krank’s Christmas cards and party invitations is downright indignant when the Kranks won’t even tell him why they’re not ordering cards and invitations (as if it were any of his business).

The neighbors, however, go over the top. They harass the Kranks with whispers and gossip, and serenade them with loud Christmas carols under their windows every night. Even the newspapers get into the act, publishing a picture of the Kranks’ undecorated house as if it’s some type of hideous unknown crime.

Well, Linda, you say, that’s the point of the book, isn’t it? Non-Christians, athiests, and others who don’t celebrate Christmas are bombarded with this stuff from before Halloween onward. This is just that syndrome taken to absurdity.

And had the book left it at that, it might have been fine.

But remember, our name is “Krank” here, and we must see the error of our ways. So while I was hoping desperately that Luther and Nora would eventually get away from this boorish herd of obnoxious revelers, it doesn’t happen. In fact, since the entire book has a television sitcom air about it, the predictable thing happens on December 23: daughter Blair calls. She’s not only coming home for Christmas, but she’s engaged for God’s sake to a Peruvian doctor named Enrique who’s always wanted to see a real American Christmas with the tree, the feast, the decorations on the roof.

Were these real adults with backbone Luther and Nora would have told Blair the truth. But no, in true TV sitcom fashion Nora, who was a little reserved about the “skipping Christmas” gig at the beginning but then warmed to it, does a “complete 180” to her husband, decides they will not go on the cruise and sends Luther into a frantic search for food, party guests and decorations before Blair and Enrique arrive on Christmas Eve. A requisite amount of slapstick occurs, including Luther’s foray on the roof to mount the plastic Frosty, to which the obnoxious neighbors look on with glee.

And then they find out why Luther and Nora are doing all this, immediately become sweet and kind again, and help the Kranks get Christmas together.

At the end, Luther gives the cruise tickets to a neighbor and his terminally ill wife.

Oh, please. I’ve gone through 45 years of loving Christmas stories with sappy endings, but this one just made me want to throw the book against the wall. As annoying as Luther Krank is, the idea of him having to be grateful to all these insensitive, malcontented morons makes me positively ill. If I were the Kranks, I’d put that house on the market posthaste--they seem to have the cash to do so--and go live somewhere else. But I’m sure that wouldn’t suit Nora Krank, who just up and repudiates her husband after agreeing with him for most of the book. She probably now thinks all these people are wonderful. Me, I think they deserve to have their cars keyed and eggs tossed at their windows.

The only thing I did like about the sappy ending was Luther giving away the tickets. Yeah, it was a cliché, but it was the only really nice thing anyone does for anyone in this book. And as someone who has known people who were terminally ill with cancer, it’s just a Good Thing all around.

As for Skipping Christmas, you can skip it across a pond for all I care.

Contributing to the Delinquency of Bookaholics Everywhere

Another online book search: Fetchbook

Trim Up the Tree

Do old photos intrigue you, especially those of old Christmas trees and decorations? Are those old-fashioned cornucopias and candle holders on the branches an invitation to more investigation? Wouldn't you like to step into those old parlors and meet the little girls with corkscrew curls and little boys in Buster Brown outfits and look at their tabletop trees and floor-to-ceiling beauties, covered with kugel, Dresdens, bead ornaments and wax babies?

Impossible, of course. The next best thing is Robert Brenner's Christmas Past.

Having seen most collectors' books, I can attest that, unless you are looking for prices, they're pretty dull. Oh, if you have a volume that has old colored photos of something you're interested in, the attraction factor increases, but it's still a glorified price book.

Brenner's book isn't. Instead, it's a history of the Christmas tree and its decorations and lights (candles and electric). After a chapter on the origin of the tree tradition and some reminisces from people who remembered seeing their first trees, or decorating their first trees with popcorn and cranberries and tatted doilies, each chapter is a detailed (in small print, no less) examination of each type of ornament from the glass-blown kugels (a history of Thuringia, where the glassblowers plied their trade, is included) to cotton confections to wire and bead creations to wax babies made in the form or angels or Jesus, and even more. The chapters on lighting the Christmas tree are particularly fascinating--and finally, an explanation of why early electric strings were called "Mazda lights" (named after the Babylonian god of light)!

This detailed examination of all things ornamental and lucent is accompanied by pages and pages of color and black and white photos of the different objects, old-time rooms decorated for the holidays, and old advertisements going back to the 1800s for the various ornaments and lights. It is the definitive book about old Christmas trimmings.

"There Are Bricks Flying By"

It was one of those rainy summers through July, then August raised sweltering temps, exhausting for people without air conditioning in three-story homes. In September it began to rain again, until the ground was saturated.

Mary worked through it all in a factory in Providence, RI, on Pine Street. She was 21 and had had to quit school to take care of her mother in 11th grade. When September 21 turned out to be sunny and pleasant, she was almost reluctant to go in that day.

Later that morning the wind picked up, however--it grew cloudy, then dark. Her workplace had big windows on one side of the room so that the lights were augmented by natural sunlight on nice days. Today she had to peer at her work.

Then, in the early afternoon, she looked outside and saw bricks flying, one by one, past the windows. It was raining steadily and then hard, lashing the glass.

She mentioned it to her supervisor, who only told her to get back to work. She was doing piece work at the time and every minute she dawdled meant a penny or two less in her paycheck. When she mentioned the bricks to other people, they only pooh-poohed her. Once she said she was going home early, but was told to sit down and do her work.

A scant half-hour before quitting time they announced, "It's pretty stormy out. Everyone can leave early."

Mary was lucky--she didn't have to take the bus home or walk as always; a girlfriend's brother had called: "I'm coming to pick you up." They had to walk six blocks in driving rain and were drenched by the time they got to the car.

When she got home her mother was frantic. Her father had chosen that day to go up to their vegetable garden allotment and was not back yet. The power was out and Mary's younger brother trudged to the hardware store in drenching rain to buy kerosene for the storm lanterns. At nine o'clock, finally, a voice from the darkness outside asked, "Hey! Where are all the lights?"

It was her father, who had had to take a different bus to get home in the storm and then got trapped downtown as a storm surge flooded Providence. Mary's niece Anna and her godmother had been in Providence, shopping for a dress for the former. They also made it home unharmed.

The place where Mary worked, Coro's, hadn't been touched because it was on high ground; the flying bricks weren't even from that building. Most weren't so lucky, especially if they had a home at the shore.

What Mary--my mom--had struggled home through was the great Hurricane of 1938. The Weather Bureau didn't believe a hurricane would hit New England and did not send out timely warnings. They were sure it would go out to sea. Instead it hit Long Island--to this day the fast-moving storm is referred to as "the Long Island Express"--and New England like a battering ram. It not only tore up the coastline, it roared inland, destroying pine in New Hampshire, a quarter of Vermont's maple trees, and countless little New England tree-shrouded greens. Downtown Providence was submerged under 17 feet of water that had roared up Narragansett Bay, flooded the basements of the department stores and killed shoppers, submerged cars and drowned their drivers, short circuited trolley cars so their horns blew endless ghostly symphonies under the water.

The hurricane of '38 tale was one of the stories I always begged from my mother as a little girl. It was like the tornado in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz or some other fairy tale cataclysm to me, but this one came with photos--we had a "hurricane book" from Hurricane Carol up in the attic that compared the damage done in 1938 and again in 1954--and an "up close and personal" extra. I vaguely remember Hurricane Donna in 1960, lashing the house and tearing shingles from the roof, leaving us under the light of the kerosene "hurricane lamp" for three days.

R.A. Scotti's Sudden Sea, which I recently re-read after purchasing the book in paperback, transports you to 1938--to the salt-air homes on Napatree Point, RI, the hardscrabble farms on Conanicut (Jamestown), the coastal communities of Long Island, and even "Fenwick," the Connecticut home where Katharine Hepburn was spending the summer with her parents and brother. I re-read the book in a sultry setting that was as warm and oppressive as the approaching storm, and blinked and felt lost and disoriented when I finally finished and returned to my own world.

This is a fabulous book, with all the intensity and realism of Larson's Isaac's Storm and Junger's The Perfect Storm, a time machine back to "the last of the old New England summers," and is much recommended, along with Everett Allen's A Wind to Shake the World, which was written in the 1970s. Not only did Scotti used Wind as part of her research, but his narrative equally absorbing and evocative, and Allen knows of what he speaks: he was there. A neophyte newspaper reporter, Allen began his first journalism job in New Bedford, Massachusetts, on September 21, 1938.

(BTW, I have only read the excerpt on Amazon.com, but Willie Drye's Storm of the Century: The Labor Day Hurricane of 1935, sounds super as well.)

(YOW! I'm glad I found my copy of the Everett Allen book last spring...it's now going for a minimum of $20. Someone at Alibris wants $619.00 for it!)

Library Books du Jour

Finished:

Unsinkable, purportedly the "entire story" of the Titanic disaster, starting with the conception of the ship and ending with Bob Ballard's discovery of her resting place and the subsequent graverobbers who visited her. I learned quite a few things, including that there was an American inquest into the accident. I found some of the reviews on Amazon.com, however, very amusing: several people accuse the author of quoting from Walter Lord's A Night to Remember nearly word for word. They might want to look at the recommendations on the book jacket: the first "attaboy" is from Walter Lord himself. I think if someone were copying his book "word for word" he'd have something different to say.

1876. This was a volume drawn from newspaper and magazine articles of the era and published in 1976, the year of the Bicentennial. Despite all the nice accompanying photos and engravings, I didn't enjoy it as much as I'd hoped when I first saw it.

In Progress:

Sunday Nights at Seven, Joan Benny's biography of her dad interspersed with Jack Benny's own unpublished autobiography, found after his death.

Endurance. Story of Ernest Shackleton's ill-fated Antarctic expedition, with photos taken during the journey.

1900 by Rebecca West, someone who lived the year.

Flanders' Follies

In 1996, I took the two classes CDC then offered on that newfangled frontier, the Internet. In "Internet II" class, we learned how to make a basic web page using Notepad, writing the HTML code by hand.

I was like an adult duck getting to swim for the first time. I went back to the office next day and found "The Beginner's Guide to HTML," which is still wandering around at NCSA's site. Having devoured that, I went to Paul McFedries' Complete Idiot's Guide to Creating an HTML Web Page, which is still around as well.

So I got myself addicted to HTML and web books as well and still have a fair collection of them. Two of my favorites are the Vincent Flanders' Web Pages That Suck books, based on his web site. These are "for God's sake, don't do this!" volumes with amusing text and highly illustrative--if not ysterically funny--screen caps of so-called "professional" web sites that are so mind-bogglingly bad that you can't believe someone paid to have them done. I especially enjoy Flanders' diatribes at "mystery meat navigation," which refers to those websites with obscure looking graphics or photos that are not labeled and you have to mouse-over them to see what they stand for. The poor man practically gets apopleptic about them.

My one complaint with computer books is they are so darned expensive. I understand that even with the popularity of computers today, they are still a niche market, so they are priced higher to recoup publishing costs. But they come at college textbook prices most of the time, an unreal cost that has you paying $40-$50, even $60+ for one book.

Luckily for my habit, I've gotten most of my HTML books at Sam's (back when they had the occasional title), on remainder counters, and lately off Amazon Marketplace. Flanders' Son of Web Pages That Suck was a heart-stopping $45, but I got it for a tenth that price on AM. And I'm enjoying it, too, perhaps even more than the original. There are some great links to web usage sites in this edition.