Best in Snow, by April Pulley Sayre (2016)

Best is Snow is a charming books of photographs by April Pulley Sayer celebrating the mysteries of snow.  And what better mediation for this, the Eve of Christmas Eve?

Sayre is the author of a companion book, Raindrops Roll.  One imagines that she was inspired to move onto snowier topics by living in South Bend, Indiana, one of the snowiest cities in the United States.

The text of Best in Snow is a study in brevity – this review alone would equal three-to-four times as many words.  But if a picture is worth a thousand words, than this simple book speaks volumes. 

Sayre shows us photos of a variety of birds, squirrels and other animals as snow gently drifts on idyllic sylvan scenes.  These are pictures of remarkable beauty and refinement, and are perfect for a quiet evening before the fire … or even the radiator.

In addition to her animal photos, Sayre provides great shots of leaves, branches and ice crystals, and she illustrates the effects of ice, water, cold and snow on natural, living things.

The final two pages of the book are some fun facts about snow … some even obscure enough to be a surprise to Your Correspondent.

This is a great book for the winter-fans, snow-buffs and nature-lovers – not to be missed!

A Special Christmas Eve Message Tomorrow!

Candy Cane Lane, by Scott Santoro (2016)

One of our favorite memories of Christmas 2016 will be having read Candy Cane Lane, by Scott Santoro, under our Christmas tree.  It is a delight.

Santoro is the author and illustrator of Farm-Fresh Cats and Which Way to Witch School?  He has also worked on several animated feature films, including The Lion King, Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron, and Gnomeo and Juliet.  He is a great talent and deserves wider recognition; it is our hope that Candy Cane Lane is the breakout holiday book of the 2016 season, and that it reaches a wide readership.

The story is about a little girl who lives on the eponymous street.  Every house is a marvel of outlandish holiday decoration, each lawn is more elaborate than the one proceeding it.  Her house, however, is always empty, as her father cannot afford fancy lawn ornaments.

Just before Christmas, a mighty storm blows in, and the ornaments of Candy Cane Lane are scattered everywhere.  A plastic choirboy ends up in the nearby trashbin, and she takes it for her own.  Her pleasure is short-lived, however, when the trashmen take it away.

Alone, in the snowy city dump, the choirboy pines for Candy Cane Lane and the little girl.  He is befriended by a plastic, illuminated reindeer, and, later, by a discarded Halloween ghost.  They decide to join forces and find their way back.

Lost, they come upon the offices and showroom of Giant Displays, where they are befriended by the plastic Giant out front, along with the scores of factory rejects (like Green Santas or giftless Magi) who also need homes.

What follows is a parade of ornaments and over-sized product avatars seeking their own, special Christmas refuge.

It is almost impossible to overestimate the charm of this book.  The illustrations have a loose line and sense of fun, and the coloration of the pages is stunning.  Each page is filled with work that has real forward momentum … many of the figures seem ready to fly off the page.  Santoro also has the gift for capturing ‘glowing’ light, and, better still, the quality of light thrown off by Christmas lights in the darkest of nights, against backdrops of snow.

There is also an antic sweetness to the book that irresistible.  Perhaps it is Santoro’s background in animation that makes so much of this book reminiscent of the animation style of the Little Lulu or Mighty Mouse cartoons of the 1940s, produced by Famous Studios and Terrytoons, respectively.  

Like the best animated cartoons, it makes the inanimate live, and shows us the interior lives of the objects around us.  One could almost imagine a Big Band score to accompany the illustrations – and Your Correspondents hopes that Candy Cane Lane becomes a cartoon itself, some day.  The book is touching without being cloying, and smart without being knowing.  In short, Santoro has created a little Master’s Class in making the difficult seem easy, all with a wonderful vibe that is both retro and timeless.   

Candy Cane Lane is a delicious confection – and our favorite Christmas picture book of 2016.  Bravo Santoro – and more, please!

The Night Gardener, by The Fan Brothers (2016)

There are so many great picture books for children this Christmas season that it’s almost impossible to write about them all.  But there are a few standouts that demand particular attention, and we will try to bring them top-of-mind this week.  (The number of excellent prose novels recently released for Young Adult readers is equally impressive, and we will tell you about some of those before the New Year rings in, we promise!)

One of the most original and delightful books to cross our desk this season is The Night Gardener, by Terry Fan and Eric Fan.  These extremely talented brothers are Ontario-based writers and illustrators, and The Night Gardener is their best book to date.

The story tells of life on Grimloch Lane.  Life continues apace, without much interesting seeming to happen.  Young William notices, though, a mysterious gardener steal by one night, a gardener who transforms an ordinary tree into a magnificent topiary sculpture of an owl.  The neighborhood falls agape with wonder … and the mysterious gardener continues to ply his trade, leaving these amazing wood-and-leaf sculptures in his wake.

William, of course, promises to stay up one night and catch him in the act…

There is so much going on in The Night Gardener that adults will delight in unpacking the story as much as children.  The evocative illustrations for this book were rendered in graphite, and then digitally colored.  Fortunately, the Fan Brothers exercised as much restraint in the coloration process as they did with their drawings.

Grimloch Lane in the early pages of the book is a fairly gray, monochromatic place.  As the Night Gardener creates more and more topiary art, the pages slowly and subtly infuse with color, reaching a full, rich coloration at the end.  But this is never used to cheap effect; indeed, illustrations that take place in moonlight are just as mysterious and creamy as they are subdued. 

The drawings themselves have a great deal of charm; they are mindful, in their way, of the pen-and-ink work of Edward Gorey (1925-2000).  But where Gorey was macabre and mordant, the Fan Brothers are more mysterious and insinuating.  The brothers have a happy knack of composition, and the drawings are filled with witty details that catch the eye. 

Any attentive reader paging through the book will, again and again, return to the word ‘subtle.’  We are told very little about William, but there is a picture of his parents on his windowsill.  We never learn anything about them, and it was not until my second page-through that I noticed that the building he leaves at one point is an orphanage.  And our gardener seems to sculpt his animals based on whatever animals happen to be in the neighborhood.  And who are the mustached, hat-wearing twins in nearly every group drawing?  Could it be the Fan Brothers, themselves?

But just as interesting as the illustrations are, the story is even more compelling.  Are the Fan Brothers offering a parable on the affect that art has upon us, or a story of transferring intergenerational expertise?  Is it about the soul-crushing effects of ugly neighborhoods and urban blight, or about the restorative effects of engaging in the arts?  Is it a meditation on seasonal changes, or a commentary on created families?

This is a book with no easy answers, but many earned pleasures.  The Night Gardener is sure to intrigue both children and adults with its subtle drawings, evocative narrative, and hidden clues.  A gem!

Interview with William Todd, Author of A Christmas Coda (2016)

It’s not often that a Christmas book crosses our desk as smart, as moving and as ornate as A Christmas Coda, by William Todd.  We were lucky enough to read and review his new book last week, and even luckier when Mr. Todd graciously consented to an interview.

A Christmas Coda is a sequel to Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, and is a worthy addition to the Scrooge mythos.  It has excited a great deal of interest among Dickens scholars and Carol enthusiasts alike, and is well on its way to becoming a holiday classic in its own right.

Here Todd responds to our questions….

Can you tell us a little about yourself and your career?

I was born in 1960 in Detroit, Michigan, and spent the first couple decades of my life doing non-writing stuff.  So let's start at age 23, when I moved to Los Angeles to begin my first job (of any type, ever) as an aerospace engineer.

Like a lot of new hires, my first couple weeks on the job were basically "free roam," where not much is really expected of you except learning how to use the copy machine.  That's how I found myself one day sitting in my office with a bunch of other new hires, shooting the breeze, until someone raised one of those "Book of 1000 Questions" type of questions, which was:

"If wages were no object, and you could do ANYTHING you wanted to do with the rest of your work life, what would it be?"

To my surprise, I started hearing such answers as "I'd play the saxophone" or "I'd race boats" (which I didn't even know was a career option!).  But an even bigger surprise was that not one of the new hires in my office, aerospace engineering majors all, said, "I'd build the best spaceship ever" or even "I'd become the head of NASA...”

...including me - which was by far the BIGGEST surprise of all.

You see, I'd grown up loving the world of entertainment - books, plays, and especially movies and TV.  But I'd also grown up in Michigan, about as far away from the centers for these activities as you could get, geographically and psychologically.  Entertainment as a career path was never even remotely on my realistic radar.  I was good at school.  I was good at math and science.  An engineering career was a guaranteed job back then.  Why aerospace?

I loved Star Trek.  That should have been a clue.

Instead, I did what I was expected to do.  I got my degree (or two), got my guaranteed job, moved out to the Promised Land...

...and for the first time, stared down the barrel of 50 years doing this.  And, as embarrassed as I am to admit it, waiting my turn to answer the "Book of 1000 Questions" question, not having ever REALLY considered what I'd REALLY like to do with those 50 coming years.

And as it turned out, somewhat to my surprise (and somewhat not), the answer wasn't "to become the best damn engineer I could."

So what DID I want?

And that's how, within a month of graduating from college with two aerospace engineering degrees, and within a week of moving my life out to Los Angeles...

...I started writing scripts.  After work.  Every night.

And didn't stop until I finally sold one, four years later.

Yep, my self-administered "university education" on How To Become A Writer was four straight years of just doing it.

Which, of course, turned out to be only the beginning...

What was it about A Christmas Carol that told you that it needed a sequel?

A Christmas Carol has always been my favorite Christmas story.  Especially Act Three, where the reborn Scrooge awakens on Christmas morning.  I love this part so much that I often watch just this sequence from several of its many movie adaptations, all in a row, for the simple shared joy of it.

But there have always been lingering questions.  And for years, like the spirits that haunted Scrooge, these would occasionally visit me:

- How did Scrooge help Tiny Tim to walk again?

- Could there be any chance for Scrooge to redeem lost love?

- How could Scrooge ever repay a debt of the magnitude he owed Jacob Marley?

Inevitably, these led to speculative musings (most often in the shower, a writer's greatest think tank!) and the eventual forming of answers, image by image and scene by scene.

It took years.  Literally.  But there finally came a time when the enterprise as a whole elbowed its way to the fore and said, "It's time."

And so I began what would be, for me, the most difficult thing I ever wrote in my entire life.

Are there any real-world events that make a sequel to A Christmas Carol particularly pressing at this time?

Yes.  And no.

And forgive me, because my intention is not to waffle, but to hope that A Christmas Coda, like A Christmas Carol before it, is more universal in nature, rather than tied to any specific place, time, or event.  Certainly, there are things in the real world today that beg a re-acquaintance with "goodwill toward men," just as there were very real issues in Victorian times that coincided with the motions of Dickens pen.  But these are universal, ongoing, human issues, not fixed in time, as the longevity of Dickens tale instructs.

The economic realities of Scrooge’s world are pretty bleak; have we come far enough?  Have we lived up to the ideals of The Carol?

We can never - and will never - "come far enough"...

...but that doesn't mean we should stop trying.  I'll broaden the point philosophically to say, there will always be evil in the world, just as our goal should always be to completely eliminate it - even though we know that to be impossible.

We'll never completely "live up to the ideals of The Carol" because that would involve an end point, a state of flawlessness in an inherently flawed universe.  But this is not a matter of despair, because fighting the good fight is what our lives are all about:  It gives us meaning.

[And before anybody beats me to it, yes, I'm the guy who wrote the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie!]

So much of A Christmas Carol and A Christmas Coda are about redemption, and then making good on that redemption.  Why does redemption resonate with you?

I think it relates to the above:  Trying your best to be as good as you can be, inevitably failing to achieve any ideal standard, but finding that it's never too late to do better.

I’m delighted that Jacob Marley is such a large presence in A Christmas Coda, even though he doesn’t appear onstage.  What is the heart of the Marley Paradox, for you?

I'm not sure what the "Marley Paradox" even is!  But I'll give it a shot:

The thing that always bugged me the most about A Christmas Carol was the idea that Jacob Marley, the guy who moved (presumably) heaven itself to save a friend, was himself never saved, but instead, forever condemned to chains, and in his own wailing words, "doomed to wander through the world—oh, woe is me!—and witness what [I] cannot share, but might have shared on earth, and turned to happiness!"

That's not fair!  That's not right!  Scrooge got a second chance...

...why not Marley???

And thus the seed of a sequel was sown...

What is it about A Christmas Carol that has made it such a classic?  Is it the story?  The character of Scrooge?  Or something else?

If only the S.A.T. had been this easy--

e.)  All of the above!

And, yes, more.

But mostly, I believe, is its message of Redemption:

It's never too late - for anyone - to change for the better.

Take THAT, Relentless Focus On The Negative In Modern Culture!

I can imagine that someone who wrote A Christmas Coda is a fan of the holiday.  What are your thoughts and feelings on Christmas?

I've always loved Christmas.  It's been my favorite holiday ever since childhood, when I actually experienced the magic of a Midwestern winter morning transformed by the kindness of parents into a warmly glowing treasure hunt initiated by siblings in knit pajamas well before the rise of the sun, tearing open package after package of colorfully wrapped gifts, piled 'neath a twinkling tree... made of aluminum.

I thought it the most beautiful thing in the world.  I used to lie under it at night reading Archie Christmas comic books, staring up at the ornaments, slowly changing hue from the rotating color wheel with its ratcheting metal plate and blindingly hot floodlight bulb that could only exist in a fairy-tale era before OSHA.

The gifts are the very least of it for me now.

I love it for the music, and the food, and, yes, the fact that people at least try to experience it as "a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time".

In other words, I love it for a lot of the same reasons Charles Dickens did.

How do you envision Scrooge?  Is there an actor or interpretation you had in mind while writing your novel?

I sometimes envision a specific person (such as an actor, but not always) as a physical model when writing a script, and it was (perhaps too) easy to let Alastair Sim slip into the role of Scrooge, given that the 1951 film version of A Christmas Carol has become all but canon amongst movie adaptations.

Certainly, in the opening sequence of A Christmas Coda, Mr. Sim was much in mind, right down to the whooping of his post-salvation laugh, since his interaction with Mrs. Dilber was purposely reminiscent of the scene in the 1951 movie (which does not exist in Dickens' novella) where she threatens to "scream for the beadle".

Soon thereafter, however, I abandoned all physical reference to Scrooge, even the original John Leech illustrations, in favor of the original character Dickens described, and thus available to be cast to the particular taste of any reader, in their own mind's eye.

Do you have a favorite adaptation of A Christmas Carol?

Actually, no.  Not even what seems to be the consensus pick for "Best Adaptation," which, as mentioned above, is the 1951 Renown Pictures version starring Alastair Sim.

As alluded to farther above, I tend to judge A Christmas Carol adaptations by their third acts, and each has its strengths and weaknesses.

A particular strength of the 1951 version is the scene in which Scrooge goes to his nephew Fred's house on Christmas Day to finally accept his annual dinner invitation.

[An aside:  In an example of just how much people love that 1951 movie version of A Christmas Carol, and for anyone who might particularly appreciate a story of heroic research, there is the tale of "Fred's Maid".  She appears in a scant 42-second scene in which she answers the door to Scrooge, and silently encourages him to enter the party.  This actress didn't have a single word of dialogue, and is nowhere credited in the film, but she became such a beloved character to many over the years that she eventually sparked an internet hunt for her identity.  Only recently has the mystery been solved!  If anyone cares to, you may read about it here:  http://dickensblog.typepad.com/dickensblog/2013/05/meet-the-maid-an-interview-with-theresa-derrington-cozens-hardy.html]

There, he encounters Fred and his wife, a woman he had heretofore refused to acknowledge (previously thinking it a bad match - financially) and, in one of the most emotional scenes in the entire movie, asks forgiveness.  And all to the strains of "Barbara Allen" - quite the concentration of weepy emotion in and of itself!

Similarly, the 1984 movie adaptation starring George C. Scott finds its deepest emotional resonance in that very same scene, Scrooge literally capping it with, "God forgive me the time I've wasted."

I love these scenes.  Perhaps best of all.  And the most fascinating thing about them is this:

These moments DO NOT EXIST in Dickens' original "A Christmas Carol".

Instead, he wraps up the entire Fred visit in barely half a page:

In the afternoon he turned his steps towards his nephew’s house.  He passed the door a dozen times, before he had the courage to go up and knock. But he made a dash, and did it:

“Is your master at home, my dear?” said Scrooge to the girl. Nice girl! Very.

“Yes, sir.”

“Where is he, my love?” said Scrooge.

“He’s in the dining-room, sir, along with mistress. I’ll show you up-stairs, if you please.”

“Thank’ee. He knows me,” said Scrooge, with his hand already on the dining-room lock. “I’ll go in here, my dear.”

He turned it gently, and sidled his face in, round the door. They were looking at the table (which was spread out in great array); for these young housekeepers are always nervous on such points, and like to see that everything is right.

“Fred!” said Scrooge.

Dear heart alive, how his niece by marriage started! Scrooge had forgotten, for the moment, about her sitting in the corner with the footstool, or he wouldn’t have done it, on any account.

“Why bless my soul!” cried Fred, “who’s that?”

“It’s I. Your uncle Scrooge. I have come to dinner. Will you let

me in, Fred?”

Let him in! It is a mercy he didn’t shake his arm off. He was at home in five minutes. Nothing could be heartier. His niece looked just the same. So did Topper when he came. So did the plump sister when she came. So did every one when they came. Wonderful party, wonderful games, wonderful unanimity, won-der-ful happiness!

And now, a Sacrilege:

I actually like the movie versions of the Fred scene better than Dickens' original.  To me, they resonate with far more emotion.

But before you gather pitchfork and torch and set GPS coordinates for my home address, pause a moment, as I once did, to consider that perhaps some good can come out of this realization...

...because for me, it was a sign that I, too, might dare extrapolate the work of The Inimitable.

Or that you, perhaps, could actually enjoy it.

My fond hope, of course, is that you will.

For my dearest hope is that A Christmas Coda, like The Carol before it, will become a small part of YOUR love of the Christmas season - blessed to Dickensian fullness--

With Tidings of Comfort and Joy,

William Todd

The Little Wizard Stories of Oz, by L. Frank Baum (1914)

We have never taken a prolonged look at the corpus of Oz books by L. Frank Baum (1856-1919) and that is something we will do in 2017.  They are perhaps the most important and accomplished work of sustained fantasy in the 20^th Century (take that, J.R.R. Tolkien!), with the first six books in the series being especially delightful.  We will fix his absence in these pages soon.

As an appetizer, and considering the holidays are upon us, I thought I’d take a look at the only collection of short stories in the Oz canon, The Little Wizard Stories of Oz, written in 1913 and collected in 1914, with illustrations by the greatest of the Oz artists, John R. Neill (1877-1943).

The stories were conceived by Baum and his publisher, Reilly & Britton, and were intended for publication in little booklets for each story (each costing 15 cents).  The Oz books were traditionally written for middle readers – ‘tweens,’ in today’s lexicon – while these short stories were created for very young readers.  Baum and company hoped to generate interest in Oz at a very early age, and continue to promote Baum and all of his books into a brand name for kiddie lit.

Because of the younger audience, Baum tones down a bit of the irony and pun-play found in his longer books, and the plots are significantly less intricate.  But taken on a level of simple fun and games in the land of Oz, these stories are unbeatable.

There are six stories in the book, with three of them being particularly charming.  In The Cowardly Lion and the Hungry Tiger, both big cats are bored standing guard at the throne of Ozma, princess of Oz.  The Hungry Tiger would particularly like to eat a little baby, while the Cowardly Lion is eager to maul some innocent.  They leave the castle and promptly come upon a lost baby and, later, the distraught mother – both ripe for consuming and mauling.  The self-deceptions they use to avoid creating mayhem are hilarious, and very human.

Jack Pumpkinhead and the Sawhorse shows two of our favorite characters from the later novels work together to save a boy lost in the forests of Oz.  This is particularly grand because Baum always tried to work out the absurdities of Oz to their most logical conclusions…. For example, since neither Jack nor the Sawhorse sleep, when night comes, they simply stand by the side of the road till daylight.  (A somewhat disquieting image.)  And when Jack’s pumpkin head is spoiled, he must go headless until he gets back home.  There is more than enough to delight any child with a sense of whimsy here.

The Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman features, perhaps, the two most famous characters in the series.  When the two friends go boating, the Tin Man falls overboard.  He lies at the bottom of the riverbed, his tin stuck in the soft earth.  The Scarecrow would save him, but his straw would not allow him to submerge.  The two finally escape with the help of some low comedy crows, but things get significantly better when the Wizard himself shows up.

The other stories, Little Dorothy and Toto, Tiktok and the Nome King and Ozma and the Little Wizard are all fine, and worthy of attention.

The book is available online, but can also be gotten in a low-cost hardcover reprint from Books of Wonder, complete with the original illustrations.  Their Web site is: http://www.booksofwonder.com.  For the Oz completest, or to introduce younger readers to the world Oz, it makes for amusing reading.

Framed! A T.O.A.S.T. Mystery, by James Ponti (2016)

For anyone actively engaged with children’s literature and Young Adult fiction like Your Correspondent, the challenge isn’t in finding the good, but in keeping up with all that is good (and great).  I am constantly amazed at the high quality of the books that come across my desk, and marvel at what a Golden Age this is for the medium.

Case in point – Framed! A T.O.A.S.T. Mystery by James Ponti.  I approached this book with trepidation, expecting just another juvenile mystery in the Hardy Boys vein.  What I found instead was a novel that is smart, beautifully constructed, and often screamingly funny.  Framed! ranks as one of the best books I’ve read this year – either for adults or young readers. 

Framed! is all about Florian Bates, a 12 year old who recently moved to Washington, DC, with his art conservator mother and museum-security specialist father.  Bates is an extraordinary boy in that he has an uncanny knack for noticing things, and making educated suppositions based on tiny facts.  He calls his method TOAST, or the Theory Of All Small Things.

He meets his neighbor, Margaret, and promises to teach her the TOAST technique.  She is a more than adept pupil, and is quickly matching Florian deduction-for-deduction.  While providing her with TOAST training at DC’s National Gallery, their observations lead them to believe that something shifty is afoot.  When key Impressionist paintings are stolen from the museum, his deductions bring him to the attention of the FBI, who, realizing themselves how outlandish it all is, bring Florian onto the case.

Framed! often reads like a Young Adult version of the popular series Sherlock; and it shares with that series an almost beatific regard for the lead’s deductive powers, and the comedic interplay between the lead characters.  Author Ponti really makes the entire notion of TOAST come alive.  It is essentially a riff on Sherlock Holmes’ famed powers of observation and deduction, but Ponti makes a point of walking us through Florian’s mental gymnastics as they occur, rather than explaining afterwards.  It is an effective twist.

The novel begins with Florian kidnapped by the Romanian mafia, and then trying to remember the lessons of his hostage survival course provided by the FBI.  When he comes face to face with the criminal kingpin, Florian makes another key deduction, which then leads to a book-long flashback explaining how he got into this fix.

Perhaps one of the most fascinating things about the book is Ponti’s regard for Florian’s intellectual prowess.  There are many (many!) books where young protagonists rely upon magic or science fictional ideas to succeed; Florian is a creature of the mind and exults in his intelligence.  More, please!

One minor quibble, not that any of the younger readers would make note, is that in Ponti’s world, the FBI is a benevolent entity filled with agents of real integrity who are focused on justice, rather than a highly politicized entity spying on innocent Americans.  Given a tracking chip by the bureau (with a promise never to spy on him), I feared that young Florian would grow up to spend his adulthood in hiding with Edward Snowden…

But real-life disappointments have little to do with this marvelously realized book.  It is fabulously addictive from the very opening.  For example, here is Florian talking to his Romanian kidnapper (with a very uncertain grasp of English) while trying to ply his hostage training:

Survival Step 2 – Disrupt Your Captor’s Train of Thought

“Do you mean ‘not wrong’ as in I’m not wrong in what I’m saying?  Or ‘not wrong’ as in you’re not wrong in whom you kidnapped?”

I waited for a response, but all I heard was a low, frustrated growl.  I assumed this was his deep-thinking noise.

“If you don’t use pronouns, it really makes the conversation hard to follow.  You need to say ‘You’re not wrong’ or ‘I’m not wrong.’  Especially in a situation like this with threats and demands.  The wrong pronoun could have someone else ending up with your ransom money, and that wouldn’t be good for either one of us.”

“Not wrong!” he barked again as if saying it louder suddenly solved the grammar issues.  Just then he swerved to avoid another car, blasted his horn, and yelled what I assumed were choice Romanian curse words.  I figured he was distracted enough for me to start inching toward my backpack.

“Don’t feel bad,” I continued.  “I understand how hard it is to learn a new language.  My family moves all the time.  I’ve had to learn French and Italian.  It’s molto difficile.  That’s Italian for ‘very difficult.’”

“Stop talk!”

“That’s a perfect example of what I mean.  You said ‘stop talk’ but it should be ‘stop talking.’  English is so complicated.  But let’s forget about grammar and get back to you kidnapping the wrong person.  Like I said, it’s an easy mistake and easy to fix.  If you let me go, I promise not to tell anyone.  Just drop me off at the nearest Metro station.”

“Shut mouth or else!”

The “or else” was ominous, and combined with the continued lack of pronouns it reminded me of the third step from my training.

Survival Step 3 – Do Not Antagonize Your Captor

(When I told Margaret about the steps, she couldn’t believe this wasn’t first.)

This is a delightful book and comes highly recommended.

A Christmas Coda, by William Todd (2016)

Regular readers of The Jade Sphinx know of the central place Christmas holds in my life, and the paramount importance of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol in my personal philosophy and worldview.  To Your Correspondent, Ebenezer Scrooge is not just a fictional character, but a friend, an example, and a terrible lesson all-in-one.  The book is my secular liturgy, my heart-laid-bare, the best reflection of my best self.  People who wish to reimagine or write a sequel do so at their peril.

There have been many continuations of A Christmas Carol since 1843, many of them created in Dickens’s own lifetime.  Most of them have been dire.  We have seen Scrooge and Sherlock Holmes, Scrooge and Cratchit taking on corrupt businessmen, a grown Tiny Tim involved in international conspiracies, Scrooge and zombies...  Sigh.  There have also been several serious literary visitations to Scrooge: for example, Robertson Davies (1913-1995), one of the great voices of 20^th Century letters (if not the great voice), wrote a continuation of A Christmas Carol which is utterly indigestible.  It is almost as if the Christmas Cosmos created by Dickens is too big, too intimidating, too … honest for other writers to approach on an equal level.

So, it was with some little trepidation that I approached A Christmas Coda, just e-published by author William Todd.  Trepidation entirely unjustified, as Todd has written a wise, moving and wonderful book, fully in keeping with both Dickens and the Carol, and a worthy literary achievement in its own right.

In Todd’s novel, it is exactly one year since the events of A Christmas Carol.  Scrooge is as good as his word, and has become as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man as he possibly can.  But … the thing that most occupies him is repaying his debt to Jacob Marley.

Readers versed in the Carol will remember that the visitation of the mighty Christmas Ghosts and Scrooge’s redemption were all at Marley’s intervention.  While Scrooge has his reclamation, poor Marley is doomed to walk forever fettered in chains, witnessing what he cannot share, but might have shared on earth, and turned to happiness.  Scrooge is determined to alleviate the otherworldly suffering of his late friend.

To do this, he creates The Jacob Marley Foundation to help those who need it most.  He also practices personal philanthropies, such as sponsoring the surgeon who cures Tiny Tim, creating an annual Fezziwig Ball, and helping dozens of the needy on London streets.

The linchpin of the novel is Scrooge’s association with a young businessman, Midas Stump.  Stump – rapacious, consumed with gain, unthinking of the human toll his ambitions would take – is much like the younger Scrooge.  Scrooge hopes to reform him while helping the Jacob Marley Foundation; this task becomes more urgent when he learns that Stump is engaged to the daughter of the woman he loved in his youth, Belle.  To achieve his ends, Scrooge must assume the tasks of the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Yet-to-Come to save a young soul, and relieve another in torment, but without supernatural aid.

It is nearly impossible to say enough good things about this book.  Todd assumes a sustained Dickensian diction and prose line that is surprisingly successful.  The new characters – Stump and his assistant, Pockle, for instance – come wonderfully to life.  (Todd also has a knack for Dickensian names.)  But best of all, Todd understands Scrooge and the others from the original novel with a humane, novelist’s empathy.  Here is Scrooge talking to Tim, “You see, Tim, sometimes we get used to things that aren’t good for us.  It becomes hard to imagine living any other way.  But we can be shown, by those who care, how to walk a better path. To change.”

One of the most interesting things in Dickens’ original novel is the sense of … ritual.  Scrooge, before his reclamation, does many things by route and habit.  In Todd’s novel, that remains; he has, to some extent, fetishized his experience with the Ghosts into his own secular ritual.  He wants Tim to walk specifically on Christmas Eve, as explained here:  Scrooge made straightaway to Tim, still in his father’s arms.  “You see Tim,” he began, in earnest chord, “that’s why I arranged the doctor’s visit today.  Christmas Eve is very special to me.  I wanted it to be just as special for you.  For us all.  Every one.”

This is great stuff; true characterization without shtick or caricature and, mercifully and blessedly free of irony.  Better still is the climactic scene with Scrooge and Stump at the gravesite of Jacob Marley on Christmas Eve – Scrooge, avenging angel, merciful father and very human man all at the same time. 

Todd gets Scrooge – which is wonderful, as so many do not.  The popular reading of A Christmas Carol is that it’s a parable against greed – but that is a complete misreading of the text.  Scrooge is not damned because he’s a miser, or even because he is a business shark – he’s damned because he has cut himself off from his own humanity and the humanity of others.  His soul was barren – he filled it up with business and gain, but it could’ve been alcohol or sex or anything else, and the effect would have been just the same.  He lost the fact that all of our actions affect those around us, and to be uncaring of other people and their fates has profound consequences. 

That is the Scrooge that Todd gives us, not the bah, humbug cartoon so often served up. 

Readers who love Christmas tales – and you know who you are – will also find little Easter eggs strewn throughout the book.  Scrooge’s nephew Fred, who has no last name in Dickens, is christened Gailey by Todd – the name of the lawyer in Miracle on 34^th Street.  There are also a few lines that reference that other great holiday icon, the Grinch.  But these references never become jokey or dumb; they are merely there for the eagle-eyed to spot.

I cannot recommend this book enough.  It is only available – inexplicably – in e-copies.  (Why was this book not published by a mainstream house?)  You can find it on Amazon here:  https://www.amazon.com/Christmas-Coda-Will-Todd-ebook/dp/B01LDWH7BS.

Buy this book.  Buy this book now.  Buy this book now and read it today – and God bless us, every one.

Hap-Pea All Year, Written and Illustrated by Keith Baker (2016)

Hap-Pea All Year is a charming and delightful book for very young readers.  Following his previous books about peas (which took the peas through letters, numbers and colors), writer and illustrator Keith Baker now provides a snappy walk through the year, blithely illustrated with hap-pea peas.

Each of the 12 months is showcased in a two-paged, double-spread illustration, showing how the peas enjoy each month.  There’s snow in January, Valentines in February, and camping out under summer skies in July.  The simple paintings are fecund – crammed with detail and amusing incident, each with little ‘pocket’ stories of isolated action.

Hap-Pea All Year is for young readers (under eight), but parents will not find it a slog.  In fact, adults will get nearly as much fun pointing to the various elements of each painting, and helping underscore the various delights that can be found in each month.

Hap-Pea All Year is a book of beguiling sweetness and delicious simplicity.  It comes highly recommend to anyone with young children, and should inspire new readers to pick up Keith Baker’s earlier titles. 

The Marvelous Thing That Came From a Spring: The Accidental Invention of the Toy That Swept the Nation, by Gilbert Ford (2016)

Every now and then Your Correspondent comes across a new picture book and the response is simply – gosh, that’s terrific.

I can’t help myself; The Marvelous Thing That Came From a Spring: The Accidental Invention of the Toy That Swept the Nation, by Gilbert Ford, is simply fantastic.  It has been on our coffee table for several days now, and I’ve been unable to resist it.  People come over, and I show it to them – it’s that delightful.

The story – and it’s true – is simple enough.  It tells the story of engineer Richard James, who creates a new toy, the Slinky, in the 1940s.  He and his wife take out a loan to manufacture a bunch of them, and he manages to sell out his entire stock at a demonstration in Gimbels right before Christmas.

The business continues to grow, and the James’ move from manufacturing Slinkys on their own, to buying a factory and mass producing them.  Following the war, the Slinky became a staple for emerging Baby Boomers – I know, I had one myself.  Mrs. James would eventually run the business herself, moving it into its greatest period of popularity and sales.

For Your Correspondent, one of the great joys was the flood of memories the book inspired.  I remember my older brother William and I ‘walking’ our Slinky down the stairs as soon as we got it, or how my brother Thomas and I would sing the jingle whenever it was on television:

What walks down stairs,

Alone or in pairs,

And makes a slinkity sound?

A spring,

A spring,

A marvelous thing.

Everyone knows it’s Slinky

The text by author/illustrator Gilbert Ford is simple and straightforward.  But where the book really shines is the wonderfully inventive mode of illustration.  Ford created a bunch of cut-out figures and props, and then mixed them with actual miniature props (tables, toys, shelves, etc.) to create dioramas.  These dioramas were then beautifully photographed by Greg Endries (who must share equal accolades for the success of the book) to create the final effect. 

It is this mixture of illustration, diorama and photography that makes the book so beguiling.  The resulting photos are unlike anything you’ve seen in children’s picture books, and are great fun.  The book is great for children, their Generation X parents, and their Baby Boomer grandparents.  Enjoy!

Truth or Dare: Five Girls, One Summer, Many Secrets, by Barbara Dee

We are starting a two-week long look at children’s books here at The Jade Sphinx, which seems especially pertinent now that the Christmas holidays are upon us.  What astonishes us is not the sheer fecundity of new books hitting the shelves this season, but the extremely high quality of the offerings.

We start with the newest by Barbara Dee, author of The (Almost) Perfect Guide to Imperfect Boys and Drama Queen.  When not writing Young Adult novels (her next, Star-Crossed, is slated to appear in spring 2017), she directs the Chappaqua Children’s Book Festival.  She lives in Westchester County, and you can dip into her blog at Fromthemixedupfiles.com. 

Her latest, Truth or Dare: Five Girls, One Summer, Many Secrets, Dee tells a story that is touching and remarkably real.  The novel tells of Lia, who manages to overcome the grief of losing her mother in a car crash, thanks to her friendship with four other girls.  The girls – Marley, Abi, Makayla and Jules – and Lia return from vacation on the cusp of seventh grade and find that their relationships have subtly altered.  They have become competitive and mistrustful of one another; and after a prolonged game of Truth or Dare, Lia finds herself lying to keep up with them.

Her lies are the result of many things: creeping peer pressure, dissatisfaction with herself, and the need (so vital to young people) to define who she is.  On top of all that, Lia must deal with the many people who try to help her now that her mother is gone, and reconcile her feelings for her aunt, who has come to the family’s aid, but who many disregard as slightly crazy.

Dee includes touches that work wonderfully well.  The aunt, for example, is pretty ‘out there.’  But Lia learns that her eccentricities do not mean she isn’t a valuable member of the family, or that she doesn’t have a lot to contribute.  An interesting twist on this all is a neighboring Mom (mother of one of the girls who bullies Lia), who coordinates the neighbors in helping care for Lia’s family.  The neighbor is engaged and actively kind, but over-bearing and difficult.  In fact, she bullied Lia’s aunt when they were children, and young Lia sees how this behavior can be inherited, and how it affects generations.

Dee’s novel is not a big book in that it does not deal with huge events or earth-shattering crises.  But the smaller, intimate vibe of the tale is its greatest strength: this is a slice of life that all of us have experienced in one way or another.

Dee writes of the disorientation that comes with puberty, peer pressure, lying to ourselves (and others) to create a persona, and, most importantly, finding friends who like us for how we are, and not what we seem or wish to be.  Dee’s novel is wise in its simplicity, penetrating in its psychology, and engrossing in its raw emotion.  This is a model Young Adult novel.

Here is Lia, after concocting her first lie:  I’d like to tell you that I didn’t sleep that night, and that all of Sunday I squirmed and blushed when I thought about the lie I’d told my friends.  But here’s the truth – by the next morning I felt proud of myself.  The tiny green bud of the lie – I kissed Tanner – had bloomed into a gorgeous pink flower overnight, a great big peony I could keep in a vase in front of me and take whiffs of whenever I felt left out of the conversation.  I kissed Tanner wasn’t the truth as a statement of What Actually Happened to Me That Summer, but it was a different kind of truth – a statement of What Was Going on Inside My Brain, how all of a sudden I could come up with the details (the walk on the beach, the fifteen-second kiss, the closed eyes).  I mean, I’d never even thought of stuff like that before, ever.  Not about myself, anyway.  So I felt excited, and maybe a little bit scared, about my new power.

If you know young people who are putting together the narrative of their lives, Barbara Dee’s Truth or Dare would make a wonderful addition to their book shelves.

Custer’s Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America, by T. J. Stiles (2015)

A fabulous book.

Many of us think we know George Armstrong Custer (1839-1876) because we know how he died: at the battle of Little Bighorn, he and his men slaughtered by Lakota and Northern Cheyenne warriors.  Most people see Custer’s end as a cautionary tale: one of hubris, or racism, or simple tragic miscalculation.  But Pulitzer Prize-winning author T.J. Stiles believes that this end-is-the-beginning approach is overly reductive.  In fact, the only way to make sense of Custer, he thinks, is to embrace the totality of his experience, and to understand how he was both a player and observer in a changing America.

Custer’s Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America argues that Americans saw their world radically remade during Custer’s lifetime.  Custer’s life is the story of the American Civil War, the Westward expansion, and the Indian Wars.  Through it all, Custer was a study in contradictions as he struggled to find foothold in an earth that was ever-changing beneath him.  He was a brave Union solider who sympathized with the South.  He freed countless slaves, but was openly hostile towards people of color.  He was a dutiful and obedient soldier, but he also suffered from a crippling vanity and need for acclaim.  He behaved with reckless abandon and considerable courage on the battlefield, but it is unlikely that he ever fully internalized war’s catastrophic human cost.

Because of these contradictions, historians (and armchair philosophers) have had their way with Custer for decades.  Stiles argues that Custer has been left to be misremembered by each succeeding generation.  Because he is so contradictory a figure, he very much symbolizes to people what they like or dislike about American history.  Is he a hero who died to spread Western civilization, or a murdering racist who targeted Native Americans?  Is he representative of the heroism and valor that is part of the American character, or is he a bully and braggart?

Stiles believes that asking these questions is a losing game:  Custer does not need to bear the full weight of American history, and that his life has significant meaning outside of the narratives told by defenders or debunkers. 

In reading this long and well-argued book, I’ve come away somewhat surprised by how much I liked Custer.   There were many, many things detestable about the man by 21^st Century lights, but to condemn (or praise) figures of the past by the dictums of today is ridiculous.  Historical figures need to be seen in historical context, and to do otherwise would make as much sense as a Venusian judging a rural American through his interstellar worldview.  The differing points of reference are so vast as to render the exercise meaningless.

Custer was profoundly needy, troubled by self-doubt, and always hoping to improve himself.  Last in his class at West Point (a position routinely called ‘the goat’), Custer wanted to live up to his romantic ideals of military life.  His romantic ideals are not to be sneered at: they often translated into bravery in battle, magnanimity to captured enemies, and selfless protection of others.  One of the most telling stories in the book is Custer demanding a litter to take a wounded comrade away during a retreat – while his brother soldiers opted to leave the man behind.

Custer was not a bogeyman or devil nor an angel or a demigod; he was simply a man, with all of the qualities and flaws attendant to that designation.  And in reading this excellent book, Stiles allows us to know that man a little better.

Best of all, Stiles tells his tale with a novelist’s dash.  Here is a representative passage: She emerged into a clearing and encountered mayhem.  Custer’s brigade fought amid a sea of enemy soldiers – bullets cracking overhead, artillery shells exploding, mounted Confederates charging here and there with sabers swinging.  The wagon master approached Custer and asked if he could lead the wagon train to the rear.  Custer looked around and said, “Where in hell is the rear?”

This book is highly recommended to students of Custer, the Civil War, or simply American history.

Education of a Wandering Man, A Memoir by Louis L’Amour (1989)

We recently reviewed a graphic novel based on the work of Louis L’Amour (1908-1988), and we have certainly read many of his novels in the past.  But … we knew precious little about the man himself.  So, it was a delight to come across his memoir, Education of a Wandering Man, revised and published in 1989.  It is a remarkable book.

It puts us in mind of the old Chinese legend about tests: the student sits down and simply writes down everything he knows.  L’Amour doesn’t quite do that, but he does create a fascinating account of his own intellectual development, and his deep and passionate engagement with reading.  If you are at all interested in the effect that reading has, and what a tool it can be to enlightenment, then certainly read this fascinating book.

L’Amour’s engagement with reading in his early life is not surprising when one looks at his major characters.  The typical L'Amour hero was a strapping young man in his late teens or early 20's, a romantic, nomadic figure dedicated to self-improvement. His character Tell Sackett carried law books in his saddlebags; Bendigo Shafter read Montaigne, Plutarch and Thoreau; and Drake Morrel, a one-time riverboat gambler, read Juvenal in the original Latin. 

Much like L’Amour, himself.

L’Amour looked like one of his own literary creations – big, ruggedly handsome and self-contained.  He was born Louis Dearborn L'Amour on March 22, 1908, in Jamestown, ND. He was a son of a veterinarian who doubled as a farm-machinery salesman, grandson of a Civil War veteran and great-grandson of a settler who had been scalped by Sioux warriors.

He quit school at 15, roaming the West working as a miner, rancher and lumberjack before taking off for the Far East as a seaman. By the time he was 20, he had skinned cattle in Texas, lived with bandits in Tibet and worked on an East African schooner.  He managed to survive a walk through Death Valley on his own with little water, and rode the rails as a hobo.  He worked as a longshoreman, a lumberjack, an elephant handler, a fruit picker and an officer on a tank destroyer in World War II. He had also circled the world on a freighter, sailed a dhow on the Red Sea, been shipwrecked in the West Indies and been stranded in the Mojave Desert, and won 51 of 59 fights as a professional boxer.  And all the time he was on the road, he was reading: Shakespeare, Byron, Wilde, Ibsen, Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Sheridan, Bacon, Tolstoy … and many, many others too numerous to mention.  L’Amour provides his reading list during the period at the end of the book and, frankly, it made me deeply ashamed of my own profound failings as a reader.

I read Balzac, Victor Hugo and Dumas before I ever read Zane Grey, he said in an interview.  His first book was not a Western, but a collection of poems, published in 1939.  But despite his immense erudition, L’Amour could not reconcile the disdain the literary elite had (and has) for novels about the Western experience.  If you write a book about a bygone period that lies east of the Mississippi River, then it's a historical novel.  If it's west of the Mississippi, it's a western, a different category. There's no sense to it.

Here is L’Amour writing about talking to people of the Old West during his wanderings in the 1930s:  Yet there was no better time to learn about what the West had actually been.  Many of those who lived it were still alive, and as the years of their future grew fewer, they were more willing to talk of what had been.  Old feuds were largely forgotten, and time had given the past an aura.

The old cowboy might appear to be as dry as dust, he might scoff at some of the stories, but he was a figure of romance in his own mind (although he would never have admitted it) or he would not have become a cowboy in the first place.  As the years slipped away, he began to want to tell his stories, and I was often there, a willing listener, knowing enough to sift the truth from the romance.

In every town there was at least one former outlaw or gunfighter, an old Indian scout or a wagon master, and each with many stories ready to tell.

One story engendered another, and sitting on a bench in front of a store I’d tell of something I knew or had heard and would often get a story in return, sometimes a correction.  The men and woman who lived the pioneer life did not suddenly disappear; they drifted down the years, a rugged, proud people who had met adversity and survived.  Once, many years later, I was asked in a television interview what was the one quality that distinguished them, and I did not come up with the answer I wanted.  Later, when I in the hotel alone, it came to me.

Dignity.

This is great stuff, one step removed from prose poetry.  We here at the Jade Sphinx (having recently moved our own library from the East to West Coast), sympathize with L’Amour’s acute bibliomania:  A wanderer I had been through most of my early years, and now that I had my own home, my wandering continued, but among books.  No longer could I find most of the books I wanted in libraries.  I had to seek them out in foreign or secondhand bookstores, which was a pleasure in itself.  When seeking books, one always comes upon unexpected treasures or books on subjects that one has never heard of, or heard mentioned only in passing.

Now I know what I wished to learn and could direct my education with more intelligence.

Slowly I began to place on my shelves the books I wanted.  When the shelves were first installed, one workman doubted they would ever be filled, yet a few years later they were crammed with books, filling every available niche.

What I find most refreshing here is L’Amour’s own determination to educate himself, his active engagement with his own intellectual development, and for the breadth of his knowledge.  Here is a wonderfully prescient passage: If we had only Greenwich Village as an example, it would tell us nothing of the rest of America, yet often one discovers a writer, or several of them, giving just such a narrow picture.  One should tread warily when using the life-style of any group as an example of the thinking or practice of a people.

This is a warm, wise and essential book.  Highly recommended.