Davy Crockett, by Constance Rourke

I don't have too much to say about this book.  It covers what is known of Davy Crockett's life, from his birth through his death at the Alamo, and all of his journeys in between.  It is peppered throughout with a number of legends about his feats, and often gives probable explanations for their sources.

I found it a pretty dry read and a struggle to get through, but the detailed illustrations were very well done.

The Moorchild, by Eloise McGraw

Moql loves her life among the Folk- the festivals, the daily routines, and the fun.  But at a crucial moment, she finds that she cannot hide herself from humans as her peers can.  It comes to light that her father was human, and because she is neither one race nor the other, she is a threat to the entire Band because she risks exposing them.

The Prince of the Folk has little sympathy for her.  She is led away from her home and switched with a human baby, and left on her own.  Helpless in her newborn body, she rages and screams and cannot be consoled, except with honey.  In time she grows in size and skill, but eventually forgets all about the Folk and her true origins.

The people of the town, however, have their suspicions.  Saaski, as she is now known, is unusual.  Her skin is dark, her eyes are slanted, her feet are long, and she has a number of unusual behaviors.  She runs up walls and perches in rafters.  And she spends hours roaming the moors alone, a place most of the townspeople avoid.  Eventually sicknesses and accidents begin to plague the town, and the villagers suspect Saaski as the source.  Where will she go if she cannot remain with her family, and the Folk also do not want her?

A really interesting take on the changeling myth from the perspective of the changeling itself.

The Cow-Tail Switch and Other West African Stories, by Harold Courlander and George Herzog

Hooray for fun folk-tales!  Narrated very matter-of-factly, these brief stories describe how landmarks were formed, or how animals received unique characteristics, or just tell stories of very wise or silly or lazy or greedy people.  And because the humor in the stories is somewhat dry (although not so dry that you'll miss it) I hear them in my head in Lisette Lecat's voice.  Generally an easy read but still fun for all ages.

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.

Pecos Bill: The Greatest Cowboy of All Time, by Dr. James Cloyd Bowman

This very fun book relates a number of chronological tales about Pecos Bill, the fabled cowboy.  It starts with how he is lost by his family and raised by coyotes, and then how he comes to learn that he is actually a human.  After that he meets the members of the IXL ranch and becomes their leader, and because life among the coyotes taught him the languages of the animals and gave him great strength, he performs a number of fantastic feats (such as taming Pegasus, the most ornery and wild horse ever seen).  A number of common-sense practices are attributed to him as well (such as cattle branding).

The chapters are of moderate length but are quick and easy reads.  And they all have a lot of dry humor; I can see this book having made a really fun classic Disney film (live-action, of course).

The Good Master, by Kate Seredy

Having read The White Stag, I was bracing myself for another slog when another Kate Seredy book came my way. But, I was very pleasantly surprised!

In addition to the gorgeous illustrations by the author, The Good Master is a sweet, easy to read, engaging story. It's in the same kind of category as Heidi and The Secret Garden - a thin, vaguely unhealthy city girl comes to the country and experiences honest work, good simple food, and becomes a new person. Instead of the Yorkshire moors or the Swiss mountains, this story takes place on the fruited plains of pre-WWI Hungary.

There is a boy, Jancsi, who lives with his mother and father on a large ranch. At the beginning of the book, he is excited that his cousin Kate, who he has never met, will be coming from the city to stay with his family. He does not have siblings, and is looking forward to company, "even a girl". When Kate arrives, though, she is not only delicate, but a little hellion, and almost as much fun as a brother! She gets into all kinds of trouble, and keeps Jancsi and his parents on their toes, but she comes around when she, along with the reader, is introduced to the rhythms of life in the country, from Easter to Christmas. As examples, we see eggs dyed (an Easter tradition I was not surprised to see) and all the boys in the village sprinkling all the girls in the village with water (an Easter tradition I had never heard of!).

There are lovely descriptions of various folk traditions surrounding major holidays, there are traditional folk tales told by sheepherders and millers (including the one told in The White Stag, but shorter and much more enjoyable!), there are gypsies, a circus, near-death experiences... and there is plenty of good-will throughout. Comparing it to Heidi and The Secret Garden is, I think, high praise well deserved. Unlike those two classics, however, there is also a main character who is a boy, and I think this could be enjoyed by both boys and girls. More people should read it. I'm also looking forward to its sequel, The Singing Tree (one of the1940 Newbery Honors)!

Note: Kate  Seredy was the illustrator of two 1936 Newbery books - she also illustrated the first edition of Caddie Woodlawn!

When Shlemiel went to Warsaw, by Isaac Bashevis Singer

This book is (as the title suggests) a collection of short stories. They all take place in Eastern Europe in a Jewish cultural setting. I found myself wishing I had someone to read these out loud to - they're very much in a storytelling style, and beg for it. Enough that I did a little reading aloud to myself, when nobody was around! The stories are clever and entertaining, and it was a fun read. I think kids aged roughly 9-11 would enjoy it a lot, as they will feel smarter than a lot of the main characters in the stories (I mean, a man gets turned around on a journey and ends up back at his house, but he thinks he's ended up at a house exactly like his own somewhere else!) and have fun guessing what might happen.

I will say that the stories could be a bit confusing for a kid without much exposure to Jewish culture - I know, for example, roughly what a Golem is, and why candlesticks would be important for the Sabbath, but I really wouldn't have when I was a kid, and a lot of the details of these stories would have been entirely lost on me. Which is not to say the exposure wouldn't have been good for me - it certainly would have! But a certain degree of familiarity with the setting is taken for granted, and this might be worth addressing if your reader is completely new to the idea.

Overall, definitely worth picking up - an entertaining read for an adult, would make an excellent read-aloud book, and a great exposure to one of the 20th century's great storytellers. I enjoyed it so much that I plan on looking for some of the author's adult books after this.

Big Tree of Bunlahy: Stories of My Own Countryside, by Padraic Colum

Another fabulously fun book of tales by Padraic Colum! This time, the tales in the book are from the author's own small village in Ireland, and are a mixture of Irish folklore, and the stories of the men who lived in the village. The book gets its name from the large tree in the center of town that served as a sort of town square- visitors would go there to learn about the area, and the townspeople would go there to talk and to work outdoors.

Some of the stories are simple tales of the community and the people who live (or lived) in it, and others are more elaborate tales with magic, witches, and mythological creatures similar in some ways to Grimm tales. There are also hints of religious tension in the book (no doubt unavoidable then, as now) but Colum doesn't presume to tell you which side he favors (although you can probably guess). Wikipedia confirms my suspicion!

The author must have had an exciting life; he came to the US to participate in the gold rush, returned back to Ireland and lived an activist's life, eventually returned stateside, and died in Enfield, Connecticut, so he's almost local! In any case, a very enjoyable book.

The Truce of the Wolf and other Tales of Old Italy, by Mary Gould Davis

The copy of the book I borrowed had no jacket or cover image at all, and this is the only picture I was able to find online, so there we have it. The title story is The Truce of the Wolf, but the picture we see is of Nanna the donkey eating clover, from an entirely different story. Ah, well.

The seven short stories in this book were taken either from well-known Italian sources or were told directly to the author. However, they're not especially exciting or exceptional anyway- even the ones with an element of the supernatural aren't developed enough for my tastes. I've read a lot of fairy tales in my time and none of these will be memorable for me when competing with, say, talking cheeses or fortune-seeking brothers or murderous fiancés. I'm not sure what about it so enchanted the committee.

The White Stag, by Kate Seredy

I read The White Stag when I was in 4th grade. I remember the edition I had, and where I was sitting in the classroom when I read it. But my ultimate takeaway from the book was, I now realize, seriously lacking. I remembered it vaguely as a hunting story.

In reality, it is an epic tale of the journey of the Huns and the Magyars from Asia to the Hungarian countryside. With some distance (there have been a few weeks between the reading and the writing of this post) I think the story is a good one, if you like epic-style stories. There are prophesies, a little magic (not too much), multi-generational journeys, struggles... it's all there. It's a little like Exodus, with the Magyars and Huns instead of the Hebrews (and different enemies, of course). But it's told in such a style that the reading required a lot of effort for me. Instead of feeling grand and prophetic, it mostly just felt laborious.

That said, the illustrations, by the author herself, are gorgeous. I actually got a couple of comments on them as I read on the train! And while I found the writing of the story itself really hard to get into, I did really appreciate Kate Seredy's introduction. She talks about the difference between a story and the facts that fill books of the 20th century, and how valuable the stories are even without hard facts. If I didn't appreciate the storytelling, I did love the idea behind the story!
I did a little online poking and found that some people suggest this as a companion to The Trumpeter of Krakow - I can see the appeal, since this book is from the perspective of the conquerors, and Trumpeter is the story of a member of the conquered in a similar geography. But unlike Trumpeter, I would seriously hesitate before recommending this one to an elementary-aged kid - they should be REALLY into the sort of story before they'll get much out of it. 
I'm pretty impressed with my 9-year-old self for getting all the way through it. Even if I did miss the point entirely at the time.

Call it Courage, by Armstrong Sperry

Mafatu's name means "Stout Heart", but unfortunately, the name is more of a source of embarrassment than of pride. He lives on the island of Hikueru (now part of French Polynesia) with his people, but has always been terrified of the sea. Because Hikueru is largely barren, his people rely heavily on the ocean for survival, but Mafatu is too afraid to go out in the boats with the others, and instead tends to women's work like mending the nets and helping in other ways.

As an infant, during a severe storm, Mafatu and his mother were swept out to sea in a canoe. They eventually washed ashore on an uninhabited island, where his mother died almost immediately. Mafatu was found some time later. Although he sincerely wishes to take part in the activities of his peers, he is simply too afraid to. He reaches his breaking point when he hears a boy whom he has been reasonably friendly with calling him a coward to the other boys. He knows that he must conquer his fears, or he will never find a place among his people. So early the next morning, before anyone is awake, he takes his dog Uri, a spear, and some drinking nuts, and steals a canoe from the shoreline. He sets out to sea, watched by Kivi, an albatross who has also become his friend.

The remainder of the book follows Mafatu as he learns how to be comfortable in the world around him. He and Uri weather a storm which washes them ashore on a lush, but deserted, island. There he teaches himself, from necessity, how to survive from the land and the sea, fighting animals and creating shelter for himself. Because of an alter he finds, he suspects that the island may be a sacred place for a feared tribe of cannibals, and eventually they return, and are angry to see Mafatu there. He manages to outpace them in his boat, and works his way home, finally the boy that his father can be proud of.

One thing that I really respect about this author is that he *paid his dues*. He learned to write and draw (this book was also illustrated by the author), but he had always dreamed of visiting the small mysterious islands in the Pacific. So after college, away he went, to Bora Bora!

Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, by Grace Lin

Although this book is pretty thick (nearly 300 pages), it's a very easy and swift read. The font is reasonably large and the book contains many full-page illustrations, and since the story is reasonably simple and easy to read, I'd recommend this for younger readers of chapter books.

Minli is a young girl growing up in a poor rice farming village at the foot of Fruitless Mountain. Everything they possess is hard-earned, but although they will never be rich, they have just barely achieved sufficiency. Minli's father enriches her life with folktales, which inspire her to wonder. But folktales can't always answer her questions, so she often hears "You'll have to ask the Old Man of the Moon".

One day, a man selling goldfish comes through the village. Minli, hoping to improve her family's fortune and bring something beautiful into their home, is the only one in the village to purchase one. Her father is understanding, but her mother despairs at having another mouth to feed from their meager portion of rice. But the goldfish is, indeed special. It speaks to Minli and tells her that it has explored all of the rivers in China, with the exception of the one in her village. In exchange for setting him free, he tells her how to begin a journey to Endless Mountain to find the Old Man of the Moon.

Thus begins Minli's long journey. This tale is in many ways like a Grimm's seeking-one's-fortune tale where kindness and virtue and rewarded, and greed and vice are punished. She meets many interesting companions (including the dragon depicted on the front cover), and throughout Minli's story are dispersed short tales that explain the history of a landscape or village or creature. These tales are (very) loosely based in the Chinese folk tales that Grace Lin read as a girl.

It's an enchanting story for lovers of folk tales of all kinds, not too long, and very accessible.

The Fearsome Inn, by Isaac Bashevis Singer

This short illustrated story has the size and shape of a picture book, but enough words that it would appeal to slightly older readers, too. It reads very much like an old folk tale. The Fearsome Inn is a bewitched inn in Poland which appears only in winter to lure lost travelers. Its proprietors are a husband and wife, descendants of Satan and Lilith, respectively. They live there with three girls (one with black hair, one with blonde hair, and one with red hair) whom they have enslaved. The girls are unable to escape because their masters have enchanted the roads around the inn.

One winter night, three Jewish travelers, Herschel, Velvel, and Leibel, find themselves at the inn en route to their various destinations. However, Leibel is a student of cabala, and proves to be a formidable match for the evil innkeepers.

A perfect spooky book for the Halloween season, and for anyone who enjoys the rhythm of traditional folk tales.

Vaino, a Boy of New Finland, by Julia Davis Adams

The book begins in the winter of 1916. Vaino, a young Finnish boy, lives with his mother, brother and sister (I don't recall the location of the father being either explained or significant, but I could be wrong about this) in Russian-occupied rural Finland. Russian soldiers are often on the lookout for members of the resistance, and many elements of Finnish culture, including the spoken language, are forbidden.

Vaino's mother often helps pass the time with folk tales of Vaino's namesake, a Finnish god named Väinämöinen, who helps landscape the earth after its creation, and then goes on quests in it (often with his friend Imarinen, a blacksmith of legendary talent).

Over time, Vaino becomes more invested in the resistance movement as his mother ingrains love of his country in him, his brother joins the resistance, and his sister leaves home to marry a member of the resistance on the fly, far from home. His family also wins the support of a Russian soldier by assisting him generously in his time of need. This soldier later defects in favor of the Finnish side and is of great use to the resistance. Vaino also comes of age as he finds his place in fighting for Finnish freedom.

It seems that recently there have been a number of stories of people in love with their homeland, living under the oppression of outsiders, and fighting to free the country they care for. I wish I had a better understanding of what, exactly, was going on in the world at that time to make this kind of storyline so appealing to American audiences, as World War I was well over and done with by then. All Quiet On the Western Front won the Academy Award that year; perhaps it captured imagination enough that parents wanted something similar for their children, only a bit happier.

The Tangle-Coated Horse and Other Tales from the Fionn Saga, by Ella Young

Wow, I haven't Newbery blogged in a while and I feel like a bit of a slacker. Time to plunge back in!

I'll admit that I had a bit of difficulty with this one. I'm not remotely familiar with Irish folk tales. I'm sure these stories are marvelous for those who are. However, for me, I felt like I was dropped into an unfamiliar world and left to fill in the gaps on my own. The book has multiple short stories all centered on Fionn, how he was raised, and his many adventures. These stories, despite being chronological, do not follow or build on one another, so don't need to be read in any particular order. This was not the book for me; I wanted continuity (you don't just introduce the son of your protagonist and then never mention him again!).

However, I did want to be fair to the book so I loaned it to a coworker who's a biiiiig iriphile (Eirephile?) to read over the weekend. As a former teacher she was pleased with its readability, and she enjoyed it because she was already somewhat familiar with the cast. So today's American kids probably need a bit of curriculum support to get into it fully, but it has its time and place.

The Boy Who Was, by Grace Hallock

This book is a volume of short stories throughout the history of Ravello, Italy, which are bound together by a common character. Nino, a young goatherd, was once a friend of a Siren named Parthenope. She would sing stories to him and paint pictures in his imagination of far-off places, and Nino was her playmate. One day, Odysseus and his men sail by, with Odysseus lashed to the mast. They escape unscathed, the first time the Sirens have ever failed to lure their target. Parthenope and her sister retreat, defeated, never to return. But before she leaves, Parthenope sings one last song for Nino. She blesses him with eternal youth, able to watch over the city and its comings and goings into all eternity.

Other chapters in the book focus on significant events that occur there, and how Nino (and his goats) pay a role in their successful resolution (volcanic eruption, invasions, etc.). Cute stories, but one has to wonder what happened to him eventually!

The Wonder-Smith and his Son, retold by Ella Young

This book is a compilation of Irish folk tales collected by the author, about the Gubbaun Saor. The book was a bit tricky for me because it generally lacked description but had a lot of action, so it felt as if I was lacking some necessary background information to really connect with the story. Additionally, the Wonder-Smith's son is not technically his son. He had only a daughter (and the book fails to tell us how he acquired her, so we can only assume that Mrs. Gubbaun Saor was short-lived and of little significance). One day while lamenting that he had only a daughter to whom he could pass on his wisdom and skills, a woman upon the road was weeping likewise for her fool of a son. Each thinks the other to be in a better position than himself, so they decide to trade. The Wonder-Smith does regret his rash choice- his daughter was both beautiful and wise, and his new son is rather lazy, refusing to learn and only playing music to charm the animals. However, he does eventually marry the Wonder-Smith's daughter, reuniting the family. This was the tale that I enjoyed the most from the book.

Interestingly, this volume is illustrated by the same fellow who did the fabulous black-and-white illustrations for Gay Neck, Boris Artzybasheff. It does seem a little unfair that this guy got to do two of the three 1928 Newbery books, but hey. He's clearly very versatile- Gay Neck's illustrations put me in mind of Russian folktales, while the Wonder-Smith illustrations were much more Celtic and suited to this book. But unfortunately, as is common with many older books, after a point the illustrations fail to align with their proper place in the plot, often falling quite a few pages before the depicted event occurs in the text. Quite a shame!

190 pages but still quick- the story doesn't begin until page 23, and each of the 10 illustrations takes up at least 3 pages between the image itself, its caption, and additional white pages. Also printed in very large font.

The Voyagers: Being Legends and Romances of Atlantic Discovery, by Padraic Colum

I was looking forward to this one after reading Padraic Colum's previous honor book, The Golden Fleece and the Heroes who Lived before Achilles. This one, although similar in format, works just as well because the formula still applies.

In the case of this book, Prince Henry of Portugal often looks over the ocean with a sense of adventure and a strong desire to explore the Atlantic Ocean. Men from all over Europe come to him to tell their tales of ocean voyages, which vary from the mythological (Atlantis) to the actual (Columbus). Without getting into long detail, the stories presented in a very enjoyable and readable fashion are:

• The Legend of Atlantis
• The Voyage of Maelduin (an Irish tale)
• The Voyages of Saint Brendan
• The Children of Eric the Red
• The Voyages and Explorations of Christopher Columbus and his Men

I would strongly recommend this one for any child (although this child is usually a boy in my mind's eye) who loves adventure stories. Also, with the immense popularity of the Percy Jackson series, mythological compilations such as this and Colum's other works could easily make a comeback. It's a shame many of them are out of print.

Tales from Silver Lands, by Charles J. Finger

Unlike Shen of the Sea, this book is a collection of actual tales that the author learned from various people (and peoples) during his travels through South America. What makes them seem much more plausible is the fact that birds and flowers and animals come in such unusual shapes and bright colors- fantastic tales of such things seem a bit more believable in that context. Additionally, the unbelievable dangers of the Amazon make it a bit easier to believe in horrendous giants and beasts concealed among the trees.

Finger presents a very rich landscape: rivers and streams, grassy flowered meadows, high cold mountains, dense forests, places of pleasant temperatures and places of bitter cold. Witches and enchantments are a common theme, much like in the Grimm's tales.

This book was a very fun read overall. I found it a bit long, but that's probably only partly true in reality- I've just been very busy lately, which explains why it took me so long!

The Trumpeter of Krakow, by Eric P. Kelly

The story takes place in 1461-1462, in Krakow, Poland. The main character is Joseph, a boy of about 15, whose family leaves their home in the Ukraine after a Tartar raid on their house. The raid turns out to have been because of a treasure that Joseph's family has guarded for generations; in the event that its hiding place was discovered, the family had sworn an oath to surrender it only to the king of Poland. So to Krakow they go; on the way they are confronted by a Tartar-Cossack named Peter of the Button Face who has guessed about their treasure. They make it safely, though, and there they meet a well-respected priest, a kindly alchemist, and his neice, Elzbeitka, who is just about Joseph's age, thus rounding out the cast of main characters. Joseph's father finds work as a tower watchman, and the story takes place around his hourly playing of a certain hymn, called the Heynal (or in Polish, Hejnał) from the guard tower.

I really enjoyed this book. It felt a little like King Arthur - a story involving magic, kings, treasure, good and evil. You don't get very close to any of the characters, but it felt like you weren't supposed to, the way it was told, and I didn't mind. There's a lot of alchemy talk, and hypnotism was clearly an interesting topic to the author (more than to this reader!), but it doesn't matter if you skim those parts, and if you've read Harry Potter the alchemy bits won't bother much.

The Heynal is real, and is a story of its own, which you can read about here (click here to hear it). Also worth noting is that the author clearly loved the city; Krakow has largely been off my radar, but I finished the book wanting to know what of the ancient city is still there, and considering it for the first time as a destination someday.

Today's kids might find the writing style somewhat dated, but the story is still solid - I give it an 8 for readability and overall enjoyment!