Big Tree, by Mary & Conrad Buff

This book summarizes the life of the oldest Redwood tree in the American northwest, from sprouting thousands of years ago until conservation of the area began to protect this tree and others like it from being cut down for human use.

I was not the proper audience for this book.  Because the story spans thousands of years, it is told as short vignettes from different times- the lives of animals living nearby, fire passing through, Indians hunting nearby. . . because Wawona (the tree) is immobile, his perspective is limited and his voice is slow and generally passive.  Honestly, I was bored.  But this one may have more appeal for wildlife lovers or conservationists.  It does have some accurate and well-done black-and-white illustrations.

The Avion My Uncle Flew, by Cyrus Fisher

Johnny Littlehorn lives on his family's ranch in Wyoming during World War II.  Because his father is away, Johnny decides to help bring in the cattle one night.  Unfortunately, he sustains a serious leg injury on his horse.  He has it treated, but will need to see a specialist.  While trying to decide where they should travel to (New York City or San Francisco), his father unexpectedly returns.

Mr. Littlehorn was injured in the war, and as he was not fit to rejoin his unit, he was given a position as a liaison in Paris between the French and British governments.  The war has ended but he is still needed there; as his wife is French, Mr. Littlehorn proposes that the entire family relocate to France so they can be closer together, and so Johnny can get to know his uncle Paul, who still lives near the family's ancestral home.  As an added bonus, one of the specialists who would be qualified to treat Johnny's leg is in Paris, sealing the deal.

Once in Paris, the family befriends a porter, Albert, from the hotel.  He agrees to regularly wheel Johnny around the city for fresh air.  But during these excursions, when he's alone while Albert runs an errand a strange man keeps making conversation with Johnny in the park, asking pointed questions about his family and their home in St. Chamant.  The man seems suspicious and makes Johnny uncomfortable, but he can't communicate with Albert and his parents don't take him seriously.  Eventually, the man tries his utmost to convince Johnny not to go to St. Chamant to see his uncle Paul, but Johnny has little choice in where he goes.  Mr. Littlehorn is recalled to London, and Johnny's parents decide that to aid his recovery, Johnny should go to St. Chamant to stay with Paul.  To make it appealing, they promise him that during his three-month visit, if he is able to teach himself to walk again and learns enough French to write his mother a letter, he'll receive a bicycle with gears and a dynamo-powered light on the front (an item almost nonexistent in Wyoming, sure to be the envy of all of his peers).

Uncle Paul comes to Paris to retrieve him, and is a kind and friendly fellow.  Although poor, he is generous with Johnny, and confides his plans: he is attempting to invent and build a new type of glider plane so he can sell it to a bigger company.  With the proceeds, he will rebuild the family home, which was destroyed by Germans as they left the country following the occupation.  As they are traveling via train to the village, however, they see the suspicious man from the park.  Johnny is convinced that they are being followed.  Uncle Paul agrees to write to his friends in the police in Paris, but suspects that the man is an agent of the mayor of St. Chamant, who has made it clear that he'd like the property for himself.

Over the Summer, Johnny (now called Jean) becomes a part of the community and makes a few friends his own age, gradually learning the language.  But he still looks over his shoulder for Albert and the man from the park.  And his anxiety really kicks into high gear when he finds a German soldier's recently-abandoned back pack in the ruins of the family home, with a pistol inside!

Suffice it to say, this is a fun adventure-y sort of book for middle grade readers.  Additionally, the reader learns French vocabulary along with Jean (so some background in the language would help if for no other reason than to know how to pronounce it), and by the end of the book, if you've paid attention, you've got enough vocabulary to read the letter he writes to his mother.

Some interesting notes on the author (who wrote this book under a pseudonym) are here: http://www.enotes.com/topics/darwin-l-teilhet  A midwest resident like his protagonist, he also spent time in France as a teen.  He also worked for US Intelligence in Britain during the War, and wrote mystery novels and spy thrillers.  This book is a worthy extension of his talents!

The Hidden Treasure of Glaston, by Eleanore M. Jewett

The story begins on a dark and stormy night.  In the midst of a storm, the residents of the monastery in Glaston are awakened in the middle of the night.  A nobleman, clearly fleeing something, asks to leave his son in their care.  In exchange, he offers several rare and valuable books which will be treasured by the residents.  Rather than staying to rest, he then ventures back into the storm to continue his journey.

The young man, Hugh, is lame in one leg and knows that a future as a knight or nobleman is probably not feasible.  So he resigns himself to an apprenticeship, although he soon grows fond of the men who he works with.  During a walk outdoors on his own, he also encounters another young man his age: Dickon, an oblate, whose tasks keep him elsewhere in the monastery.  The two become fast friends.  Dickon would like for them to become sworn brothers, but Hugh refuses to disclose his origins.

When Hugh suddenly encounters a man from his past fleeing an angry crowd, he steals a horse and cart to speed the man to the sanctuary of the church.  The man, Jacques, was a member of the staff in Hugh's household, and it is revealed at that time that Hugh is the son of Hugh de Morville, who was fleeing the country due to his role in the murder of the Archbishop Thomas Beckett.  Hugh can then be reconciled to Dickon- he had only maintained secrecy because he had sworn an oath to his father to do so for his own protection.  With no secrets between them, Dickon takes Hugh to his secret hideaway- a cavern underground which may have once allowed the monastery's residents to flee from Vikings.  There appears to be no entrance besides an opening in the rocks too small for a grown man to enter.  And some treasures still remain there- a sword, a jeweled altar, and a number of loose pages written in ancient Latin.

When Hugh, working with the monks to clean old, useless parchments for reuse, discovers similar writing hidden underneath the surface, he realizes that they (and the secret pages from the cavern) relate stories of the Holy Grail.  He knows that Joseph of Aramithea had carried the Grail to this region and established the church here.  With Dickon's help he resolves to translate the pages secretly so that they can solve the mystery of the location of the missing Grail themselves and present it to the church.

It's evening and I'm tired and I'm somehow feeling as if I've never written a more dry description of a novel.  But I really, really, loved this one.  It had mystery, folklore, and a bit of adventure to it.  And it's written in such a way that it's timeless- it's a book that a child today could enjoy just as easily as one sixty years ago when it was first published.

Miss Hickory, by Carolyn Sherwin Bailey

Miss Hickory is a doll. And readers will not be shocked to know that I read her book when I was in 3rd grade. I didn't love it, but I read it, because it was a book about a doll! After a second read, two decades later, I understand my prior lack of enthusiasm.

This is more of a parable than a story. Here's the premise:


Miss Hickory is made of an apple twig suggesting a body, arms, and legs, with a hickory nut for her head. Her head is "hard" and this makes her very resistant to new ideas. But, she is forced out of her comfort zone when her humans move to Boston for the winter, and a chipmunk moves into her little corncob cabin. Her friend Mr. Crow shows her a nest to borrow for the winter, and she makes do there and has lots of adventures in the forest, all of them ultimately broadening her experience and making her a little softer and less "hard headed". In the end, her nest's owner reclaims his house, and she finds herself homeless. She has an epiphany about her hard-headedness, and in the end, grafts herself to an apple branch, which causes the tree to flower beautifully - her human, Ann, back in town for the summer, notices the tree and even recognizes Miss Hickory in it. And Miss Hickory is happy.

This sounds charming, and some of it really is - the descriptions of her clothes (she has to sew her own clothes from forest materials) are lovely, and I liked the personalities assigned to various forest and farm animals. But I had a hard time staying engaged with the story, and some of it didn't seem clearly tied to anything. At one point, we leave Miss Hickory and see the world from a faun's point of view, and end the chapter thinking his mother has been killed by a hunter. Only to see the two of them, both perfectly fine, randomly mentioned a few chapters later.

The point of the story is a good one - don't be stubborn, and you can touch and be touched by a lot of people. But I think the target audience will have a tough time getting it.