Caddie Woodlawn

Should I admit that I wasn't looking forward to reading this book? Probably not. My lack of desire to read Caddie was mainly based on ignorance I guess. I had only heard of this book within the past few years. I only vaguely knew that it was a story of growing up in the harsh frontier life of America. And that was about it. Of course, Caddie won me over. I came to enjoy the book, and the things it taught me.

Caddie Woodlawn is the story of an 11 year old tomboy living in the wilds of Wisconsin in 1864. Abraham Lincoln is president of America. The American Civil War was in full swing. And the Woodlawn family were doing their best to get along on their frontier farm. The family had recently moved from Boston and now lived in a farm house near a small village. The town shared a teacher with a nearby settlement, so that the children went to school for 3 months at a time twice a year, leaving them time to do their chores on the farm. They made do, and wasted nothing. Clothes were handed down, clocks and watches were repaired and not merely thrown out or replaced, and nothing was wasted, especially unsold turkeys.

That much I had expected I guess. What I hadn't expected was such a controversial book. Caddie Woodlawn deals extensively with race relations between the white settlers and the Native American populations. Caddie Woodlawn was published in 1935, and won the Newberry Medal in 1936.

Carol Ryrie Brink based her character Caddie, on her grandmother, Caddie Woodhouse. Carol had a particularly tragic early childhood, her grandfather was murdered and she was  orphaned by the age of 8- after her father had died of consumption, and her mother committed suicide. She went to live with her grandmother Caddie and a maiden aunt. Little wonder that she loved hearing her grandmother's stories of her own happy childhood on the frontier with her many brothers and sisters.

The language is dated at times it's true- Caddie talks of half-breeds and redskins, and compares rough skin to that of an Indians. But Caddie and her father are friendly with the local Indian population, they openly trust them, especially Indian John. The book starts with Caddie and her two brothers, Tom and Warren crossing the river to visit the local Indians while they are making a birch-bark canoe. There have been many massacres in the area in the preceeding few years, and from the second page the question of whether the locals would ever participate in such an activity is raised. Every time, Caddie and her father speak strongly in defence of their local Native friends. Throughout the book, the troublemakers are white settlers.

There is a moving passage early on in Chapter 3. Caddie and the other children are expecting a visit from Uncle Edmond, who always "comes with the pigeons." There is a great description of flocks of migrating passenger pigeons (whom Uncle Edmond liked to hunt).

One night when they went to bed the sky was clear and the woods were still. But when they awoke in the crisp autumn morning the air was full of the noise of wings, and flocks of birds flew like clouds across the sun. The passenger pigeons were on their way south. They filled the trees in the woods. They came down in the fields and gardens, feeding on whatever seeds and grains they could find. The last birds kept flying over those which were feeding in front,  in order to come at new ground, so that the flock seemed to roll along like a great moving cloud. 

The boys go out hunting, but Caddie stays inside

She liked hunting as well as the boys. But this was too easy. This was not hunting-it was a kind of wholesale slaughter. She knew that the Indians and the white men, too, caught the birds in nets and sent them by thousands to the markets. She knew that wherever the beautiful gray birds went, they were harrassed and driven away or killed. Something of sadness filled her young heart, as if she knew that they were a doomed race. The pigeons, like the Indians, were fighting a losing battle with the white man.  

That's very moving, and rather far sighted. Although by the time Carol Ryrie Brink writes Caddie Woodlawn in 1935, passenger pigeons have been extinct for over 20 years. The last passenger pigeon, the sadly named Martha, died in captivity in 1914. Another environmental tragedy.

Martha

Just A Dog

I didn't know a lot about this book before I picked it up at the library. I knew that it had been an Honour Book in the Children's Book Council of Australia awards this year. I had seen the cover, and liked it. Who wouldn't? That's some cute dog. Looking a bit sad. Or maybe guilty. 

The thing about reading a dog story, any dog story, is that you know the dog will die. They all do. In life and at the end of the book. And Mr Mosely is no exception. And we'll cry. We always do. 

The book is more than just a dog story however, it is the story of a family told through the oldest child, Corey, who picks Mr Mosely, the quiet one in the mixed Dalmation/bitzer litter. Mr Mosely quickly becomes part of the family, and we learn of their struggles, ups and downs through Corey and Mr Mosely. Corey's dad loses his job, the family is under considerable financial strain, and the inevitable ensuing tensions between the parents. 

I haven't read anything by Michael Gerard Bauer before. Indeed I didn't know all that much about him. It's not surprising to find that he is from Queensland, given that Corey's family have a big mango tree in the back yard. His first book (and possibly most famous) The Running Man is in my 1001 quest, and I look forward to reading more from him. 

Halloween- Gone to the Dogs

We don't really celebrate Halloween in Australia. Traditionally we haven't anyway. There are moves by supermarkets and other stores to sell Halloween items. Chocolates, and even pumpkins to carve! 

These are the only two shabby pumpkins my local Woolies has on display

But they have to tell Aussies when it is. 

I was very surprised to walk into Big W and see two stands of Halloween products!

including special Twisties

My recent trip to Texas, even in September showed me a completely unexpected side to Halloween. For the dogs!

My dogs remain grateful that I didn't buy any of these products and will continue to restrain from dressing them up.


Saturday Snapshot, is a wonderful weekly meme from at home with books.

The Arrival

Reading every Shaun Tan book is such a wonderful experience. Earlier this year I read and loved The Lost Thing, and most recently I've read The Arrival. For some reason, I was a bit reluctant to read this one. I think perhaps it was the drab sepia colouring of the cover. I'd never even thumbed through The Arrival in the library or a bookshop. Reader, I shouldn't have doubted him.

In The Arrival Shaun Tan takes on the immigrant experience. In a story at once familiar, and yet foreign, a man prepares to leave his wife and daughter. He is clearly leaving his homeland, overrun by a menace that feels second world war Europe, but is represented with shadowy dragon tails.

He leaves his family and travels alone to a new land, to make his fortune, to better his family. He journeys by ship to a new country, a surreal kind of New York harbour.

Once again Tan pays homage to well known images. This one was immediately familiar

but I couldn't recall the name until the Artist's Note at the back named Tom Roberts, Going South, 1886, held at the National Gallery of Victoria.

Once again Shaun Tan has blurred the line between picture book (yet this isn't for toddlers), and graphic novel. Wordless and told in a series of nuanced and highly detailed vignettes, the effect is especially moving. The cover, and styling actually are setting up The Arrival as an old, much loved family photo album.

As with any Shaun Tan book there is just so much detail in each and every drawing that rewards your attention, and will reward multiple re-readings.

If you find yourself with a free 20 minutes one day you could do much worse than browse this wonderful book. In the meanwhile, here is a lovely excerpt to give more of a taste.

Read what I thought of The Lost Thing.

The Three Musketeers- the 2011 Movie

For some reason film makers are besotted with The Three Musketeers. There have been at least 23 movie versions, another 7 animated versions, and multiple TV series in the past 100 or so years.

I really want to see one of these old versions

It was with great excitement that I prepared to see the new movie version of The Three Musketeers. Then I read the weekend papers. The review in the Herald, not too bad. 3 1/2 stars. Then I read the review in the Sunday Telegraph.  One star! One for all, all for one, and everyone for the exit. Ouch.

Clearly it's a movie, that you either like or hate.

So how was it?

Picture credit

Well, it bares the slightest resemblance to Alexander Dumas' classic The Three Musketeers. Which I read and loved last year. The character names are the same, and some scant elements of the story. But Dumas did not write about frogmen in Venice, or flying galleons designed by Leonardo DaVinci. This is more The Three Musketeers for the computer gaming generation. There are many Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon moments which always breaks the spell for me, as I remember the soul destroying experience of being trapped inside a cinema for hours and hours enduring that movie.

Still there's lots of swashbuckling action, wonderful costumes, with lots of heaving bosoms to keep the teenage boys entertained.

Picture credit

Sadly this incarnation of The Three Musketeers was shot in Germany. Not Paris. So clearly Not Paris. If you're going to make a movie that is set in Paris, even in 17th century Paris, please make it look like it could be Paris, don't just use scenes of Germany and add Notre Dame to the skyline. It doesn't work, and is just plain annoying.

Wondrous Words Wednesday- 26/10/11

Wondrous Words Wednesday is a fabulous weekly meme hosted by Bermuda Onion, where we share new (to us) words that we’ve encountered in our weekly reading.  

My first word is from the excellent Rain May and Captain Daniel that I recently reviewed. 

1. Ferengi (Noun)

The Ferengi at the supermarket told her. 

The character who writes this sentence is quite obsessed with Star Trek, so I figured it was a Star Trek reference. But it wasn't one that I knew. Off to Google:

        The Ferengi are indeed a fictitious extra-terrestrial race.

The rest of my words today come from Michael Scott's The Alchemyst. 

2. Travertine

Vast and sprawling, built entirely of white travertine marble, and accessible only by a private road, it occupied a sixty-acre estate surrounded by a twelve-foot wall topped by an electric fence. 

A white, tan, or cream-colored form of limestone, often having a fibrous or concentric appearance. Travertine is formed through the rapid precipitation of calcium carbonate, especially at the mouth of a hot spring or in limestone caves, where it forms stalactites and stalagmites.

3. Necromancer

4. Scrying

He had mastered necromancy and sorcery, astrology and mathematics, divination and scrying. 

     Necromancy is a claimed form of magic in which the practitioner seeks to summon the spirit of a    

      deceased person, either as an apparition or ghost, or to raise them bodily, 

      for the purpose of divination. (wiki)

      Scrying. To see or predict the future by means of a crystal ball. (the free dictionary)

5. Nathair

Huge flocks of nathair swooped across the skies and the bushes, and tall grasses were alive with unseen crawling, slithering, scuttling creatures.

     A snake, serpent or adder. Scottish gaelic. (Wiktionary). It is also apparently a boys name in Scotland. 

6. Sigils (Noun)

Unlike in her previous prison, she couldn't see any magical wards or protective sigils painted on the lintel or the floor. 

      i) A seal; a signet

      ii) A sign or an image considered magical. (the free dictionary)

Photo credit

7. Virescent (adjective)

He snapped his fingers and sent a sheet of virescent fire blazing into the fog. 

      1. Becoming green.

      2. Somewhat green; greenish. 

Virescent green metallic bee

The Art of Travel

Having just returned from Houston, it was a perfect time to stumble across this audio book on the shelf at the library. Travel does broaden the mind. Certainly Houston had surprised mine, and I was ready to contemplate travel more widely with de Botton. I've bought, but never read, Status Anxiety, although I might have watched the tv show. So I popped the CD into the player into the car. And steadied myself to be swept up in the joy of travel. How surprising to find that Alain starts with how disappointing travel is!

Few things are as exciting as the idea of travelling somewhere far from home. Somewhere with better weather, more interesting customs and more inspiring landscapes. So why are we so often dissatisfied with the reality of travel? Perhaps we should listen less to the guidebooks that tell us what to do when we get there, and learn to enjoy the journey. 

What? I'm sure glad I don't have to go on holidays with Alain. I already enjoy the journey Alain.

I'd expected The Art of Travel to be a journey of sorts, but I really wasn't expecting to be a journey to Gustauve Flaubert, William Wordsworth and Vincent Van Gogh, as much as it is a journey to Barbados and Amsterdam.

Much of Disc 2 was taken up with Flaubert, and I found it particularly fascinating. So much so that I listened to disc 2 twice. Flaubert wrote Madame Bovary of course, which was my introduction to French classic literature a couple of years ago. Astonishingly different to what was going on in England at the same time. How incredible to learn that if Flaubert had lived in my lifetime he would most likely have ended up committing a high school massacre as a teenager! His teenage self apparently wanted to blow the heads off the good citizens of Rouen as they passed by, and he had a particular enmity for the local Mayor.

Flaubert was very taken with the exoticism of Egypt, and I knew that he had famously travelled there. He was particularly taken with camels and spent quite some time trying to mimic their sounds! What a different experience travel must have been, to return home with just writings, drawings and the noises you could reproduce. I didn't realise that he was quite taken with examples of local colour such as donkeys shitting in cafes- which he apparently found quite appealing.

I learned more about Wordsworth than I ever had before. Not hard certainly as I don't think I knew anything except that he was a poet. He was born and worked in the Lake District of England, and he encouraged us to "see the many animals living alongside us whom we typically ignore, registering them only out of the corner of our eyes, having no appreciation for what they are up to and want".

We also journey to Provence with Van Gogh (in the news this week after speculation that he was murdered, excellent publicity for your new book) and to the lonely American highways, motels and petrol stations of Edward Hopper (who I had only learnt of from Shaun Tan back in May).

To me, Alain was telling us that all these famous thinkers and artists were telling us to notice the Detail of Travel, more than the Art. To see the colour as Van Gogh did, the birds as Wordsworth did, and the donkeys shitting in the corner of the cafe as Flaubert had.

How does Alain wrap up our rather esoteric travels? Alain makes his final journey in the last section accompanied by Xavier de Maistre in his fetching pink and blue cotton pyjamas. I'd not heard of Xavier before, but in 1794 he published a book called Voyage autour de ma Chambre (Voyage around My Bedroom), with the sequel Expedition Nocturne autour de ma Chambre (Night Voyage around My Bedroom). In his journey Xavier is apparently asking us to consider the detail of our daily lives, to shake off our habituation and the blinkers that blind us to the magnificence that is our own bed or chair. There is of course merit in noticing the joy of our everyday surroundings, and not being blind to the life that is already around us.

And yet de Maistre's work springs from a profound and suggestive insight: that the pleasure we derive from journeys is perhaps dependent more on the mindset with which we travel than non the destination we travel to. If only we could apply a travelling mindset to our own locales, we might find these places becoming no less interesting than the high mountain passes and butterfly-filled jungles of Humboldt's South America. 

Which is perhaps disingenuous to some extent. Some places are inherently more beautiful or captivating than others. There are reasons why Paris is the biggest tourist destination in Europe. The feeling of warm Parisian sun on your shoulder standing in Tuileries can not be recaptured whilst looking at your own loungechair, or filling your car with petrol at your local petrol station. I remember being shocked at the bored locals riding the metro. How can they be bored? Look depressed? In Paris?

And what of the audiobook itself? Again, as with Lance Armstrong's It's Not About the Bike, the reader struggles with the frequent references in other languages. Predominantly French, but he bumbles over a smattering of Spanish and German too. So much of The Art of Travel references paintings and visual splendour that I ended up borrowing the book version from the library too, needing to see the many illustrations that I knew this book would have.

It was certainly pleasant to listen to as I journeyed to and from work in the car each day. Although I must admit that his notion of man as "dust postponed" shook me up quite a bit. Just arriving in the car park to start another 10+ hours of work. And all you are is dust postponed. It's a discouraging start to the day. But when you think of the biblical dust to dust pronouncement, I guess that's what we are- dust postponed. Oh dear, I think I need to book another holiday.... and stop listening to philosophy in the car.

BTW Audiobooks are apparently a big craze now, with Hollywood jumping on board, but it's digital downloads that are cool, not people like me borrowing daggy old CDs to listen to in the car.