A Certain Slant of Light

Galloping through the Newbery books again! Today we start out with a couple of biographies. Quite unexpectedly, these biographies have become one of my favorite Newbery genres, possibly because I feel an illicit thrill every time the mid-twentieth century biographers shamelessly invent dialogue.

Clara Ingram Judson’s Theodore Roosevelt, Fighting Patriot is a particularly good example: when Judson wishes to illuminate the mood of the country, she writes a conversation such as you might hear from a bunch of old man loafing in front of the store, discussing the prospect of war or Teddy’s chances in the next election. (Side note: Teddy apparently hated the nickname Teddy.)

Theodore Roosevelt is one of those gob-smackingly energetic people who achieves more before breakfast than most of us do in a week: he buys a ranch, becomes the police commissioner of New York, leads a charge up San Juan Hill, raises six children (and while obviously he had a lot of help with that, he was also a very involved father!), becomes president of the United States, and also just occasionally tosses off a book as a little side project. SIR. HOW. I realize that he didn’t have the internet or the television to distract him but NONETHELESS.

In soothing contrast, Tom Paine emerges from Leo Gurko’s Tom Paine, Freedom’s Apostle as a far less energetic figure, a man who had failed at everything he tried before, in his late thirties, he washed up on the shores of the United States just at the right time to inflame pro-independence opinion in the colonies with his pamphlet Common Sense. He followed this up with thirteen more pamphlets, published at intervals throughout the Revolution (also in the interstices of Paine’s own service as a soldier: he loved to be near the front), then spent the rest of his life acting as a gadfly, suggesting such hare-brained schemes as old-age pensions, and nearly dying in the French Revolution once the Jacobins got wind of his notable lack of enthusiasm for executing the former King and Queen.

Also, delighted to learn that Tom Paine’s bones went missing after his death, which may explain the origin of the song “Tom Paine’s Bones.” Evidently a Paine disciple dug up Paine’s remains, shipped them back to England, and then lost track of them.

Holling C. Holling’s Minn of the Mississippi follows a three-legged snapping turtle, Minn, as she drifts down the full length of the Mississippi. (Evidently snapping turtles with the full complement of legs can drag themselves back upstream, which would of course spoil the conceit of the book.) We learn about the geology, zoology, botany, and anthropology of the river (anthropology including both the history of the river and what people are doing with it in the now of 1951). I love this as a conceit but struggled with the execution, which is often pretty dry.

Finally, back to fiction: Natalie Savage Carlson’s The Family Under the Bridge features three Parisian children who live under a bridge after their father dies. I had envisioned a Boxcar Children type story, but in fact that protagonist and main focus of the story is the cranky old tramp with a heart of gold who becomes their protector, allegedly against his will, although in fact within about two pages of meeting the children he is already ride-or-die for them.

It’s fine for what it is, but to be honest I was really looking forward to the Boxcar Children-type story I had imagined, so I was a little disappointed.