The Island on Bird Street

Holocaust Lit for kids is a strange genre. Writing about one of the worst events in human history for children takes incredible skill. The Island on Bird Street is a great example of the genre. It is strangely optimistic and hopeful, although perhaps it is because the Holocaust is not so central to the events of the book as say The Boy in The Striped Pyjamas.

The Island on Bird Street is the story of 11 year old Alex who lives with his father in the Warsaw Ghetto during World War II. His mother has disappeared recently, she never came back after going to visit friends. Alex's father is still working in a rope factory, and Alex must hide as most of the children have already been sent away. There are rumours that Jewish people are being systematically killed in camps.

Alex must hide while his father is at work with only his pet mouse Snow and some books to keep him company.

I don't know how I would have gotten through whole days without him, from early morning until dark, alone by myself in our ceiling hideout or down in the bunker. How long could I just sit there and read?

The boredom must have been incredible, along with the fear.  And then one day Alex's father is taken away too. Alex manages to evade capture and begins to live by himself, hiding in the most extraordinary places. His story is incredible. I know that I couldn't have survived there, and would have been long carted off by the Germans. His resilience and resourcefulness is extraordinary.

I felt as though I were living on a desert island. Instead of an ocean all around me there were people and buildings, but though they seemed close, they were really a world away. 

And yet Alex reminds us that we should be grateful for what we have, and that there are always those worse off than ourselves.

Sometimes I didn't feel like reading or playing with Snow or even looking at the Polish side of the wall. All of a sudden I'd start thinking about father and mother. I never cried, but I'd lie in the larder thinking about all the terrible things that could happen, and about how lucky the Polish kids were for having homes and being able to play where they wanted. Except that then I'd remember the other children who had been in the factory with me and realise that I had no right to complain. Not as long as I was here, waiting for my father. 

No right to complain! I really liked The Island on Bird Street. It was much more optimistic than I thought possible. It is a reminder to those of us living really very comfortable suburban lives just what people can endure and survive.

People should help each other to live. 

A potent reminder in our time of mass migration of refugees.

Uri Orlev is said to be the most widely known Israeli author of children's books. He has written over 30 books for children, and widely translated into many languages. He received the very prestigious Hans Christian Andersen Award in 1996. Alex's experiences in the book are based on those of Uri Orlev who hid in the Warsaw Ghetto himself before being captured by the Nazis and sent to Bergen-Belsen. His survival alone is an amazing story in itself.

276/1001

Pippi Longstocking

I do remember loving Pippi Longstocking as a girl. Strangely, I didn't remember any of the story at all, just that I was very fond of it. Sadly my copy hasn't survived or I would have reread it recently. Happily, Pippi Longstocking is just as fabulous a read now as it was back when I was a girl 100 years ago. Pippi is a classic orphan tale.

Pippi's mother had died when Pippi was just a tiny baby lying in her cradle and howling so dreadfully that no one could come near. Her father..... had been a ship's captain, and sailed on the great ocean. Pippi had sailed with him on his boat, at least until the time he had blown into the sea during a storm and disappeared. 

Pippi is now a nine year old girl, living by herself in Villekulla Cottage. By herself, except for her pet monkey, Mr Nelson, and the horse that she lifts on and off the front porch. Pippi is a remarkable, free spirit, and it really is quite extraordinary to think that she was created in 1940s Sweden. It's immediately obvious why she is popular with children. Pippi is so subversive, and even down right naughty at times. She has no adults to tell her what to do, and when they try she betters them easily. Pippi can bake buns and gingersnaps whenever she is hungry, and drinks tea in trees. Pippi starts school because the notion of Christmas holidays is too good to avoid.

'Have I behaved badly?' asked Pippi, very surprised. 'But I didn't know that myself,' she said, looking sad. No one could look as tragic as Pippi when she was unhappy. She stood silently a minute, and then she said in a shaking voice, 'You understand, ma'am, that when your mother is an angel and your father a Cannibal King, and you've travelled all your life on the seas, you don't really know how you oughter behave in a school with all the apples and the snakes.'

Is it weird that rereading this tale of a 9 year old living on her own with only a monkey and a horse as companions didn't stir any deep seated memories for me? I think so. But I'm very glad to have met Pippi again. I'm glad that fabulous modern illustrators like Lauren Child are creating beautiful new editions of this book to make it accessible and current to modern kids.

More contentious is the modern editorial pruning given to books like Pippi. After all Pippi is 70 years old this year, and yes some of our societal views have certainly changed in those 70 years. Yes, some things within the stories are dated. But modern kids are smart enough to notice, or their parents decent enough to explain it to them. Adults can get a bit caught up in it all. Enid Blyton receives the same treatment in English.

But Pippi Longstocking is a cultural phenomenon in Sweden, both Pippi and her creator Astrid Lindgren are held in the highest regard. The Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award is the worlds richest prize for Children's Literature, created the year after Astrid Lindgren died in 2002. Astrid's childhood home has been turned into a cultural centre. So many new reasons to go to Sweden- besides the ABBA Museum of course.

Astrid Lindgren's daughter Karin actually created this most famous of her mother's characters. In the early 1940s Karin was ill and one day asked her mother to tell her a story about Pippi Longstocking. Astrid continued to make up Pippi stories to tell Karin for several years, until one day in 1944 when Astrid herself was laid up after a sprained ankle and she decided to write down some of the stories as a birthday present for Karin. It's extraordinary to think of it, a childhood illness and a sprained ankle in the 1940s and we have one of the best loved characters ever made in any language.

The Summer Book

The Summer Book is my second read from Scandinavian legend Tove Jansson. I read Comet in Moominland, the first of the Moomin books, a few years ago. I didn't love it, but enjoyed having read it. The Summer Book is not a Moomin book at all, but rather a small family story set on an island off the coast of Finland. Being a child of the 70s  who has never travelled to Finland I imagine all islands off Scandinavia to be like the magical Viggso, where Abba had a writing hut. 

A story of six year old Sophia spending her summer holiday on the island with her father and grandmother. Told in 22 "crystalline vignettes", the writing is lyrical

The sea lay glossy and listless in a shroud of heat, and over the coast towered the usual wall of deceitful clouds. The gulls barely lifted as they drove by.

It’s perhaps a little too gentle and lyrical for me. The story drifts along, with not a lot to hold your attention. There isn’t really a narrative thread. I kept thinking back to the introduction to my New York Review of Books edition:

-on the one hand you could say nothing happens, there is no plot, and on the other hand that everything in the book is driven by a single event, so fleetly mentioned as to be almost occult: “Sophia woke up and remembered that they had come back to the island and that she had a bed to herself because her mother was dead.”

I don’t know that this gentle story would have held my attention as a child, it barely did it now as an adult when I can admire the quality of the writing- which is lovely.  I didn’t like the later chapters much at all. I didn’t feel that I got to know the girl or her grandmother really. I didn’t get a particular sense of either of them. And I certainly didn’t get a feel for the father- perhaps he’s absent and grieving? But if it’s about the death of the mother then why not talk about it? At least sometimes. Not just once. 

247/1001

Emil and the Detectives

Emil and the Detectives is a classic book written by German journalist, poet and thinker Erich Kästner. It was published in Germany in 1929, and then in English in 1931. It is a charming book, with a deserved enduring popularity. Indeed there is a current theatre production by the National Theatre in London. The National Theatre made a lovely short video piece about the historical context of Emil.

Emil Tischbein lives with his mother in a small town in rural Germany. His father died when he was five, and his mother supports them both with her hairdressing business, but it's a fairly marginal existence, and money is tight. Emil sets off alone on the train to visit family in Berlin with money to take to his grandmother. Emil is robbed on the train, and sets off after the villain when they arrive in Berlin. He enlists the help of a group of boys he meets on the street to help him get his money back and catch the thief, all without the help of the police of course.

The illustrations are the original ones
by Walter Trier
with odd social commentary
(I think by Kästner)

I found Emil and the Detectives a little slow to get going at first. But this gentle wonder grew on me with every page. It feels like a period piece. 1929 was a long time ago after all. When the boys are organising themselves to catch the villain one of them asks:

"Who's on the phone at home?"

Detective adventures were certainly all the more difficult in the pre-iphone age! I read a cute 1959 translation by Eileen Hall (to help bring translators out of the shadows) from Vintage Classics.

Emil and the Detectives was one of the first books to feature a child detective, although he was pipped to the post by Franklin W. Dixon's Hardy Boys in 1927 (see my review). And it has been a burgeoning genre ever since. The Famous Five. Nancy Drew. Encyclopaedia Brown. Artemis Fowl.

Erich Kästner is intriguing in himself too. He was one of the most important intellectuals in Berlin, a pacifist and who opposed the Nazis, and so attracted Nazi attention to his writings. His writings and books were burnt by the Nazis in May 1933. Kästner himself was present at the burnings. However, Emil and the Detectives was very popular, and even the Nazis couldn't find it offensive, so it was the only one of his writings to escape the pyre.

But Erich Kastner is fascinating for other reasons too. In 1931 he published the book The 35th of May, where the characters enter a fantasy world via a wardrobe- a full 19 years before CS Lewis published his The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe! It seems that there really is nothing new under the sun.

233/1001

The Boy Who Climbed Into the Moon

I read David Almond's extraordinary The Fire-Eaters last year. I've been keen to read more of his writing ever since- checking out my library, and even buying a book online (not this one). I've been enjoying a few quick reads over the last few weeks- perfect for our ridiculously hot Australian summer this year- it's much too hot to concentrate on anything lengthy, I have no idea how everyone else is reading The Luminaries in this weather.

I'd borrowed The Boy Who Climbed Into the Moon from my library before, but returned it unread. I was determined to read it this time. I'm determined to read more David Almond and the title and cover of this one really appealed.

There is what seems to be a typical Almond start.

Some time ago, there was s rather lonely boy named Paul who lived in a city in the north of England. He lived underground, in a basement flat at the bottom of a great apartment block. Over his head, there was floor after floor after floor, and family after family.

This made the world seem very heavy and the sky seem far away. 

Paul decides to go and touch the sky even though he'd never thought that he might be adventurous. Of course he sets of on his adventure and meets a cast of rather unusual characters that populate his apartment building. It all becomes rather bizarre, diverting off to thoughts about war, and while that is moving, it's also a becomes even more odd.

"Correct! It was the obvious solution. There we were, billions and zillions of us lined up on the battlefield, armed to the teeth, glaring and growling and gnashing our teeth, all of us determined to kill as many of each other as we possibly could. I just took a shortcut. Soon as any battle started, I just dropped down dead."

There are discussions of fate and destiny. Of imagination, spontaneity and planning.

"What's the plan?" he asked.

"The plan?" said Benjamin. "What could be more boring than a plan? How can we plan when the outcome is unknown? How can we plan for the impossible, the outrageous, the unspeakable?"

The back cover blurb quotes:

Almond lays claim to being Roald Dahl's rightful heir- cookiemag.com

I don't think I really agree with that- I do think that David Walliams is much a better fit for Dahl's legacy. Although we do learn that sausages are better than war, that's somewhat Dahlesque. Philip Ardagh proclaimed it a modern classic, a fable for all ages, and "the kind of book I've always wished The Little Prince had been". I do think that The Little Prince is a better comparison than Dahl. But I didn't understand The Little Prince that well either. I'm sure both would reward rereading at some stage and while I didn't love The Boy Who Climbed Into the Moon as much as I expected, I'll certainly keep reading David Almond.

The Fire-Eaters

I just love finding great new authors that you've never really heard of before. I started to know of David Almond a year or two ago, but hadn't had a chance to read him before I picked up The Fire-Eaters recently. I often find when the name and the cover of a book don't really appeal, sometimes it's good to read it anyway, even if somewhat begrudgingly, as often it's a great revelation.

The Fire-Eaters is an oddly engaging story written about a summer and autumn in Northern England. It's not just any ordinary late summer though. It's 1962, and everyone is consumed with thoughts and fears of the Cuban Missile Crisis and the ever present threat of nuclear war. I thought David Almond did an amazing job of conveying the uncertainty, fear and despair that the people were going through. They thought that nuclear war was about to start. That really came through in the story. The kids were spooked, the adults were too. Not the usual cheery subjects, or style, of children's literature.

Then I lay in bed and dreamed again and the blankets became chains and my sleep was a great writhing and struggling to break free.

The Fire-Eaters is set in the small coastal community of Keely Bay, near Newcastle. Bobby Burns lives near the beach in a modest house, that is probably run down. The Spink family live nearby. Their mother has died recently and all the children help their father gather sea coal to fund their rather marginal, but reasonably happy existence.  Bobby meets McNulty on page one- a mysterious figure, he is a strong man and fire-eater busking at the market in Newcastle when Bobby visits with his mother one Sunday morning. There is a clear malevolence and history surrounding McNulty.

He was wrapped in chains. He writhed and jerked and struggled on the cobbles.
'Look at him,' she said. 'The poor soul.'

And what of the new boy who has moved in to Keely Bay with his family? Will he be a friend, or another new threat? The children also face more real and immediate dramas at their new high school. The changing weather is also used to represent the changing political climate.

All that sense that things is doomed and all that gathering scariness.

It was ultimately quite a political, yet even a hopeful book. Bobby asks his father:

'Is it always right to protest,' I said, 'even if you think it's hopeless?'

I actually made two starts at reading The Fire-Eaters. The first time I tried it clearly wasn't the right time for me. I made a tentative start, and was a bit put off early on. I only read two chapters then, and there was something of the malevolence of McNulty that reminded me of The Changeover, which I hadn't really liked. So I set it aside while I finished The Coral Island. Happily when I picked up The Fire-Eaters again I fell under David Almond's thrall quite quickly. I really enjoyed his writing. I love his use of the Northern England dialect, all that owt and nowt and bairns. Bobby's family mix jam into their rice pudding! How good does that sound? Definitely something to try this winter. I love rice pudding but had never thought of combining it with jam.

There's a quote from The Sunday Telegraph on the back cover of my library copy:

One of these days, someone is going to notice that David Almond has been kidnapped by children's publishing and demand him back for adults.

That pretty much sums it up for me. I'm looking forward to reading much more of his work. The Fire-Eaters is certainly one that would repay rereading.

206/1001

The Changeover

I was really looking forward to this book. Margaret Mahy is a legendary New Zealand author, who sadly died last year, and I hadn't really read much of her work- the occasional picture book, but not any of her longer books. I married a kiwi, and am a frequent visitor there, so naturally I'm interested in their book culture, and feel a sort of antipodean allegiance I guess, and have an expectation that I will like their books, and generally I do. So, I was quite disappointed with myself that I didn't enjoy The Changeover more.


The Changeover, which is sometimes subtitled A Supernatural Romance, won The Carnegie Medal in 1984. It is the story of 14 year old Laura, a schoolgirl in suburban Christchurch, who lives with her mother Kate, the manager of a local bookstore, and her 3 year old brother Jacko. Laura goes  to rather extraordinary lengths to save her young brother Jacko from sinister forces that threaten his life.

It was clearly well written, and I could see the cleverness of the author in the prose, but I just didn't like the story. 

Laura like to hear Jacko praised, but the man leaned forward as he spoke and his dreadful smell struck her like a blow- a smell that brought to mind mildew, wet mattresses, unopened rooms, stale sweat, dreary books full of damp pages and pathetic misinformation, the very smell- she thought she had it now- of rotting time.

I was never fully captivated by Laura's battle to save Jacko from the rather creepy Carmody Braque. There are great themes- love, family, cruelty, revenge, justice, teenage years and early yearnings. Even so I wasn't fully engaged.  Clearly, I'm a bit out on a limb here. Googling around there is much love for this book- it seems everyone else gets it, and loves it. Ah well. We can't all be the same, can we?

201/1001

Island of the Blue Dolphins

Wow, what a story! This was my second reading of this amazing action-packed, dramatic tale, and I loved it even more than the first time. The story of a 12 year old girl, Karana, who becomes stranded, alone on her native island off the Californian coast in the 19th century. She survives for nearly 20 years on her own. Inspired by the real life story of Juana Maria, Island of the Blue Dolphins won the Newbery Medal in 1961.

Karana has grown up on the island, is schooled in the pattern of the seasons and the ways and means of living from the land and the sea. It is of course this knowledge that allows her to survive. Although she has to go against the tribal customs that forbid women from making weapons, and overcome many other challenges. It's often quite beautifully written. There are particularly lovely passages about the fish, birds and other creatures who share her world.

The sai-sai is the colour of silver and not much bigger than a finger. On nights when the moon shines full, these little fish come swimming out of the sea in schools so thick that you can almost walk on them. They come with the waves and twist and turn on the sand as if they were dancing. 

Karana makes some unusual alliances in the many years of her solitude, and there are very powerful environmental messages woven into the story. We see the beauty of the changing seasons and the vitality, intelligence and caring instincts of her animal companions. We also see the brutality of the hunters who come from the Aleutian Islands to hunt the plentiful otter for fur. I'm still reading Robinson Crusoe for the first time (and finding it a bit slow going to tell the truth), but it's interesting to understand how influential Robinson Crusoe was, and indeed books such as Island of the Blue Dolphins, and Kensuke's Kingdom draw so heavily that they have their own genre called Robinsonade.

Scott O'Dell said that "Island of the Blue Dolphins began in anger, anger at the hunters who invade the mountains where I  live and who slaughter everything that creeps or walks or flies." That anger is apparent. At the end Karana changes her ways too (perhaps somewhat improbably).

After that summer, after being friends with Won-a-nee and her young, I never killed another otter. I had an otter cape for my shoulders, which I used until it wore out, but never again did I make a new one. Nor did I ever kill another cormorant for its beautiful feathers, though they have long, thin necks and make ugly sounds when they talk to each other. Nor did I kill seals for their sinews, using instead kelp to bind the things that needed it. Nor did I kill another wild dog, nor did I try to spear another sea elephant. 

I read this book as my first ever read on the Kindle function of my ipad. The major difficulty was wresting the ipad from my son who naturally is addicted to several ipad games. I'm planning a future post on the ipad reading experience specifically, but I can say that I found it enjoyable on the whole, and so, whilst I haven't embraced the ereading phenomenon with both hands yet, it is very acceptable when I can't get hold of the actual book any other way.

Comet in Moominland

Comet in Moominland is the first in a series of books very famous and popular still in Finland and Europe, but less well known to those of us in the rest of the world. Intriguingly they were written in Swedish, but published in Finland because Tove Jansson was part of the small Swedish-speaking minority population in Finland. In the 1940s and 50s she created the Moomins- gentle, white hippopotamus-like creatures. Moomins even inspired their own theme park in Finland, Moomin World. 

I was thrilled to get to finally read this book. I've been hearing more and more about these books in the past few years, and the suspense was killing me. In the end I enjoyed meeting these famous characters, more than I enjoyed the book I think. 

Moomintroll learns that a comet may be heading towards the peaceful valley where the Moomins live in their blue house. Moomintroll and Sniff set out to visit the Professors in the Observatory on the Lonely Mountains to find out more about comets and whether or not their peaceful existence is under threat. The "scientists made thousands of remarkable observations, smoked thousands of cigarettes, and lived alone with the stars." It was certainly another time. 

I've never been a big one for quest story, where "the action" is a seemingly endless journey across unknown country, and the things that happen along the way.

I particularly enjoyed the philosopher Muskrat though:

I should just like to point out that your bridge-building activities have completely ruined my house in the river bank, and although ultimately it doesn't matter what happens, I must say even a philosopher does not care for being soaked to the skin. 

Thank you, but I was just thinking how dangerous it is to load yourself up with belongings. 

And I did enjoy the gentle writing, and the occasional nuanced humour. 

There are hardly any unnecessary things, I think. Only eating porridge, and washing....

I loved that she used words like titivating in a book clearly written for reasonably young children. I loved that the Moomins played poker, and ate pancakes rather incessantly. So while I wasn't bowled over by my first Moomin experience I am willing to give them another go, after all Neil Gaiman is quoted on the cover proclaiming it "a masterpiece". That alone is worth a second look.