osprey_archer: (books)
[personal profile] osprey_archer
One of my many (many, many) favorite books as a child was Doris Gates' Blue Willow. The title refers to the only beautiful object that our heroine Janey's family owns: a blue willow plate, which Janey loves with an almost religious fervor. The plate, to her, is a feast for the imagination and an escape from her family's sometimes desperate poverty.

The plate is their last memento of more prosperous times. Ever since losing their farm in the Dust Bowl, the family has followed farm work around the country. They hover on the brink of disaster.

That's the basic set-up. What do I love about this book? Well - JANEY. She's such a treat of a character, real enough to pop off the page: proud and prickly, curious and imaginative, and wistful. She wants more than anything to stay in one place long enough to make real friends and go to a real school with bright new books.

She can't have most of that quite yet, but she's got a new best friend: Lupe, the little Mexican girl from across the road. Gates is so very excited about the fact that she writing a Mexican girl that she describes Lupe as "the Mexican girl" every time she shows up, which gets irritating. But otherwise Lupe is darling: kind and, more importantly and more unusually, tactful.

There's a great scene: Lupe's family, more prosperous than Janey's, has taken Janey to the carnival. Lupe thinks Janey doesn't have money to ride the carousel, and concocts a little story to convince Janey to accept a free ride (which Janey would never, never do if it were offered outright). The dialogue is just right. And the description of the carnival is just wonderful - Janey feels like she's in a sort of fairyland, and the wonder of the experience flows off the page.

Gates' descriptions are beautifully evocative. The book starts with a description so rich that you can see Janey's shadow on the sun-baked boards, the heat shimmer hovering in the air... The rich description and occasional flashes of beauty (the carnival; the wonderful scene where Janey's family goes fishing beneath the willows on a nearby stream) soften the grimier aspects of Janey's life without occluding them.

And this balance is the thing that makes the book great: it's so beautifully crafted. Flashes of wonderful soften the painful, grimy backdrop of everyday life. Janey is a delicate blend of virtues and flaws, realistic and sympathetic and wonderful. The plot flows like a stream, always moving but never jolting.

(And - minor spoilers! though nothing you probably hadn't guessed - the happy ending is so well-earned and beautiful and beautifully constructed: radiant, yet realistic, with a starring role for Janey. It's hard to make a little girl the heroine of a realistic and rather grim story without breaking the realism; the only other book I can think of that manages it so well is Number the Stars.)

Blue Willow is such a wonderful book. I loved it when I first read it, at nine or ten, and loved it again when I reread it this fall, and I hope this review convinces someone else to read it and fall in love with it too.

Date: 2011-01-22 02:54 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] asakiyume.livejournal.com
soften the grimier aspects of Janey's life without occluding them.

I love this phrase. It shows such insight; you use such lovely, perfect words. I really would like to read this now, thanks to what you've written here.

Date: 2011-01-22 03:43 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] osprey-archer.livejournal.com
I hope you do read it! It's such a lovely book!

Date: 2011-01-22 06:39 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] asakiyume.livejournal.com
Adding it to my wishful "to-read" list on Goodreads.

Date: 2011-01-22 07:06 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] visualthinker11.livejournal.com
Okay, this is going on my to-read list. Absolutely.

It's kind of horrid timing, since I leave for England really soon and that will be an academically rigorous semester, probably with American classics on somewhat limited availability, but how would you feel about some sort of summertime reread of childhood classics? Your review makes me think of some of my other classic favorites with determined female heroines: books by Frances Eliza Hodgson Burnett, Eight Cousins by Louisa May Alcott, all the Little House on the Prairie books...the list goes on and on.

At the very least I want to create a list of these books, but could some sort of re-read (where people can submit books to the list and have to pick and review a certain number of them) be something you're interested in? I don't know, I'm getting all nostalgic, and I'd love to discover some new favorites in with the thing I read as a kid.

Date: 2011-01-22 08:03 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] osprey-archer.livejournal.com
I love all those books! (Although I didn't read Eight Cousins till last year. I actually liked Rose in Bloom a bit better, though.) My mom read me the Little House on the Prairie books, and I begged her to read them over and over...I loved Little House in the Big Woods when I was four, because Laura was my age, and the illustrations so cozy...

YES, I would be interested! I keep planning to review some of my old childhood favorites to convince other people to read them, but somehow I never get around to it.

Where are you going to be in England?

Date: 2011-01-22 09:36 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] visualthinker11.livejournal.com
the illustrations so cozy...
Absolutely. : )

YES, I would be interested!

Yay! I think it would be the best excuse ever to read childhood favorites, plus, they're short reads so people should be able to get through quite a few.

So what should we do--maybe plan to make a lj community for it, and get as many members as possible as we make the list of books to pool from over the summer? Or we could just do this at our own journals...

Also, should we do all kid lit books or only classic ones? And if the latter, how do we define classic?

Date: 2011-01-23 04:59 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] osprey-archer.livejournal.com
Maybe we should start on our own journals and start a community if there's enough interest? (And perhaps link each others reviews as we go?) I'm not sure how many people would read it if there's just this random new community for it.

I think we should just go for quality kids' lit books and not worry too much about whether they're technically classics, because otherwise we'll spend tons of time fretting about the definition of classic.

Besides, if there are books we love that aren't classics, we ought to spread the word about them!

Aw, now I'm all excited about this. Summer is sooooo far away! But we could start making the list. I could post a preliminary tomorrow...?

Date: 2011-01-23 06:03 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] visualthinker11.livejournal.com
Maybe we should start on our own journals and start a community if there's enough interest? (And perhaps link each others reviews as we go?) I'm not sure how many people would read it if there's just this random new community for it.

That makes lots of sense. I like your plan.

And you can totally post a preliminary tomorrow! I'll try to come up with a list of my own, separately...it'll be neat to compare them!

Date: 2011-01-22 10:23 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] visualthinker11.livejournal.com
Oh, and I'll be mostly in Bath, England!

Date: 2011-01-23 04:53 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] osprey-archer.livejournal.com
Oh, hurray! Bath is such a beautiful city!
(deleted comment)

Date: 2011-01-23 04:42 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] osprey-archer.livejournal.com
Yay! I'm glad to have helped bring about a reunion!

Profile

osprey_archer: (Default)
osprey_archer

July 2025

S M T W T F S
   1 2 345
67 8 9101112
13 1415 16 17 1819
20 21 22 23242526
2728293031  

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Jul. 26th, 2025 07:55 am
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios