A Certain Slant of Light

I technically didn’t need to reread Kate Seredy’s The Good Master for my Newbery project, as I already read it as a child and liked it so much that it survived repeated cullings of my childhood book collection… but I didn’t actually remember anything about it, aside from the vague sense that “This might be a good book for my Problem of Tomboys post.”

And how. The book begins when Jancsi’s Cousin Kate arrives on the train from Budapest. Over the course of the next few chapters, Kate:

- throws a temper tantrum when she realizes she’ll have to ride in a horse cart rather than a proper taxi;
- pushes Jancsi and his father off the cart, takes hold of the reins, and whip the horses home while standing in the cart like a charioteer in Ben Hur;
- climbs into the rafters to eat sausages (which are stored in the rafters);
- cuts her skirt with a pair of shears so Jansci can give her a riding lesson;
- and then, at the end of the first riding lesson, screams like a banshee just for the fun of seeing Jancsi’s horse try to buck him off.

After this, Kate becomes slightly less of a danger to life and limb, but not less of a tomboy. In fact, after the skirt cutting incident, Jancsi’s mother dresses Cousin Kate in Jancsi’s cast-off clothing (which Kate has already anathemized as looking like girl’s clothes, with those wide pleated trousers). If she’s going to run wild, might as well have the proper clothes for it!

In general, if you wish to read about children behaving badly for no particularly good reason, the 1930s are a fruitful decade in which to look.

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

A couple of Unread Book Club books: G. Clifton Wisler’s Red Cap, which is far less emotionally moving than one might expect of a book set largely in Andersonville prison (the largest and deadliest Confederate prison in the American Civil War). Ah well. They can’t all be winners, I guess.

And also Ann Turner’s Elfsong, which sounds like it ought to be a thing I like: a girl who accidentally meets an elf while out searching for her lost cat, which the elf has enticed away to be his new mount, what could go wrong?

But I felt it was trying too hard to awaken a sense of wonder. The elves can hear the songs of all the things on earth, and pass this ability on to Maddy and her grandfather. And these are not just regular birdsong or the pleasant plash of a brook or whatever, but songs with words, so wherever you go you’ll be surrounded by baby mice singing

My place, mine
my turn, mine

or rocks rumbling

We were here before you.
We were a river of fire,
then a river of stone.

Which would be delightful and magical - I rather like the little poems - if you could make it stop. But it sounds like Maddy is going to surrounded by a constant inescapable din for the rest of her life and that sounds dreadful.

What I’m Reading Now

Sheila O’Conner’s Sparrow Road, which I plucked from a Little Free Library a few months back purely because the cover seemed promising - and I was right! So far it is atmospheric and mysterious and there are possible ghost orphans (I think they’re metaphorical rather than real ghosts but still) and I’m feeling it.

I’ve also begun Kate Seredy’s The Chestry Oak, which kicks off with a Hungarian prince in his castle listening to planes pass overhead during early World War II… and I can already tell this is going to be a tale of woe and disaster and I’m sort of dreading it honestly.

Also Isabel R. Marvin’s A Bride for Anna’s Papa, which gets points for being set in a Minnesota iron mining camp, just because I’ve never read a book set in such a place before. Have only just started this one. Will let you know how it goes!

What I Plan to Read Next

I need to decide what to read for this month’s reading challenge, “a book published before you were born.” The Chestry Oak fits the bill, but I was planning to read that anyway, so maybe I ought to branch out.

But on the other hand I may not get through it without the additional incentive of fulfilling my reading challenge. It will probably not be that harrowing, self, there is no reason to believe that this is Grave of the Fireflies: If It Were a Book Set in Hungary.

More Newbery medal books! In case you don’t want to wade through it all, this entry contains: Marguerite De Angeli’s The Door in the Wall, medieval historical fiction novel about a youth who loses the use of his legs, Kate Seredy’s Hun epic The White Stag, and Eleanor Estes’s family adventure with dog, Ginger Pye (with bonus discussion of Estes’s The Hundred Dresses).

Marguerite De Angeli’s medieval historical fiction novel The Door in the Wall features Robin, who awakens one morning mysteriously unable to walk. Robin learns to lope around on crutches, to swim, to play the harp and write and whittle wonderful things; the door in the wall is a metaphor for finding another way forward when one’s original plans, like Robin’s plan to be a knight, are blocked by unexpected barriers. He can’t be a knight if he can’t walk; but he finds other talents he can use.

I am almost positive that long ago I read, or had read to me, the first chapter or two. I suspect we stopped reading because I was terrified by the idea that you could go to bed one night, just as usual, and wake up unable to walk. (We also stopped reading Susan Fletcher’s Dragon’s Milk because I found Lyf’s plague too upsetting - though I did get back to that series while I was still a child. I am not a fan of books about sudden and terrible diseases.)

Second, Kate Seredy’s The White Stag, which is not a novel. Oh, it has many of the accoutrements of a novel, chapters and illustrations (and lovely illustrations they are, too); but it is in fact an epic.

It spans generations, larger-than-life hero succeeding larger-than-life hero, all of them referred to not by name but by epithet: Nimrod, Mighty Hunter before the Lord; Magyar and Hunor, Twin Eagles of Hadur; Bendeguz, White Eagle of the Moon; ending, at last, with Attila the Conqueror. And the narration sustains the elevated, mythic tone set up in these names.

Personally I find mythic diction - indeed, epics in general - airless and dull. So I didn’t enjoy the book very much, but it’s well-done for what it is, and I suspect children who have a taste for the epic find this a soul-stirring introduction to the genre.

And finally, Eleanor Estes’ Ginger Pye, an engaging comfort read about featuring Rachel and Jerry Pye, who adopt a dog (Ginger Pye, naturally), only to have their dog stolen. The stolen dog storyline provides a light framework for the book, which is mostly a digression-laden meander through their small town and Pye family stories. It reminds me of a much lighter and more New England To Kill a Mockingbird.

I think this is a case where the right author won, but for the wrong book. I enjoyed Ginger Pye, but Estes clearly should have gotten the medal for The Hundred Dresses, a gentle and sensitive story about bullying. Maddie disapproves but does not try to stop her friends’ teasing of a classmate named Wanda, only to realize too late just how badly that teasing hurt Wanda.

What I like particularly like about this book is that Maddie’s realization comes only after Wanda has moved away, when it’s too late to make amends. Realizing that you have done wrong and can’t right it except by doing better towards others in the future is an uncommon literary theme: it’s melancholy (because the harm is irrevocable) without being hopeless (because Maddie will try to do better). It’s a difficult mood to capture.