Tag: books

NEW ENGLAND YEAR
By Muriel Follett
Stephen Daye Press, 1940
Yankee Publishing, 1988

Category: Adult Nonfiction (memoir)

I’m still working through this book, and I like it so much that I simply have to add to my initial entry about it. Muriel Follet’s view of life on a 1930s New England farm has been invaluable to my understanding of the time and place I have set my new novel. But I have found a deeper wisdom in the pages of NEW ENGLAND YEAR, and its application transcends my writing.

Here is an excerpt from Ms. Follett’s May 12 entry:

“Even though I enjoy doing many things, I would like most of all to have more time to write. But somehow I have a hunch that in order to do any job well, my close human relationships must first be right, and that if I neglect my children and my family at this stage of the game, we would all be poorer in the long run. Maybe I am wrong. Maybe they would be just as well off without me. But I cannot make myself believe that. I have tried it for short intervals and it has never worked out well. The youngsters need someone to whom they may go at any time, anywhere, to discuss their problems. Sometimes, I am not much help and I make mistakes, but I try, and I listen.”

As a woman raised on the principle that I could have it all: a healthy marriage, a growing family, and a fulfilling career (so long as I worked hard enough), I am well aware of the joys and sorrows of the working soccer mom. I was surprised, however, that a woman like Muriel Follett struggled with essentially the same issues. This is a woman who grew or raised almost every morsel her family ate. This is a woman who sewed most of the clothes she and her family wore. This is a woman who, by necessity, put her writing last in line behind her husband and her children and her farm. Still, she fretted and she worried. Is there a mother in the world who doesn’t struggle to find time for herself and her passions amidst the endless pull of parental and wifely duties? Is there a mother anywhere who doesn’t worry that she is not doing enough, that every moment devoted to herself—her passions, her job, her calling—is a moment of selfishness for which her children will pay? I doubt it. Do women of every historical age worry about these same issues? Will my great-great-granddaughters worry, too? Probably.

I like to think that if Muriel and I had lived in the same decade, we would have been great friends. We would have found time—perhaps a stolen hour after the noon meal had been prepared, served, and cleaned up, with our washing piles on the porch railing and the electric iron (a new-fangled and welcome gadget in Muriel’s day) plugged into the porch light—to talk about parenting and writing. We would talk and iron and spend long moments laughing over the kids romping in her massive garden. Maybe we would have found a way to encourage one another’s writing. Maybe we would have convinced each other that raising healthy children was plenty. Maybe we would have told one another that we were each doing the best we could … and that it was enough.

WHY I WAKE EARLY
By Mary Oliver
Beacon Press, 2004

Category: Poetry for adults

I am finally catching up to the rest of the kidlithosphere (the community of online admirers and reviewers of children’s books). Friday, in this otherworld, is poetry day. Who knew?

It just so happens, however, that I got a book of poetry for Christmas. And although I haven’t finished it yet (Poetry forces my reading to slow down, I linger and dwell in a way that I am never able to with prose), I can happily recommend it to budding poets and poetry enthusiasts everywhere. In fact, I recommend it to folks who don’t enjoy poetry, or who are a little afraid of it (this description fits me sometimes), or to anyone who admires wildlife and the natural world.

The title poem, WHY I WAKE EARLY, has become a morning ritual for me. It is an homage to the sun, a resolution to begin each day, with the sun’s help, “in happiness, in kindness”. These mornings—these cold and dark January mornings when I am up, alone, and working by lamplight—require a drop more imagination than most. But I aspire to begin in happiness and in kindness nonetheless.

NEW ENGLAND YEAR
By Muriel Follett
Stephen Daye Press, 1940
Yankee Publishing, 1988

Category: Adult Nonfiction (Memoir)

The writing project that most challenges me at the moment is a middle-grade historical novel. This is my first attempt at such a beast, and, truth be told, it is more than challenging. It is terrifying! My rational self recognizes this terror as a good sign; if I didn’t think the work was good, I’d feel nothing but frustration. But the truth is I like this book a great deal. I believe it has a lot of potential.

I also believe it is far from finished. Sigh.

To keep myself focused and to help me stay immersed in the time period I am writing about, I have cleared my bedside table of all the books I planned to read this month. In their stead I have stacked books published between 1920 and 1940, and the pile includes NEW ENGLAND YEAR, by Muriel Follett.

Muriel and Rob Follett raised their two children on a working farm in southeastern Vermont in the 1920s and 1930s. In 1938, Muriel kept a diary of daily life on the farm and someone, bless his or her soul, saw fit to publish it in book form. NEW ENGLAND YEAR is filled with the sorts of details that will help me to set my book in a time and place that was gone before I was born. But NEW ENGLAND YEAR is more than just a research tool; it is a fascinating look at the ways our living (and loving and working and playing and parenting) have changed in the past seventy years. Follett’s delicate narrative is addictive and her experiences a convincing testimonial for country life.

STONE FOX
By John Reynolds Gardiner
HarperTrophy, 1980

Category: Middle-grade Fiction

This little book shocked me. It was recommended by our children’s librarian, who knows emotional books get to me, and who knows that a book with racing sled dogs on the cover would get to my boys. We read the book in two sittings and I’m still thinking about it three days later.

Little Willy is ten and lives alone with his grandfather on their potato farm. One morning he wakes late to find Grandfather still in bed. Grandfather’s eyes are open, but he is unresponsive. Little Willy runs for Doc Smith, who examines Grandfather and offers this cryptic diagnosis:

“There is nothing wrong with him.”
“You mean he’s not sick?”
“Medically, he’s as healthy as an ox. Could live to be a hundred if he wanted to.”
“I don’t understand,” little Willy said.
Doc Smith took a deep breath. And then she began, “It happens when a person gives up. Gives up on life. For whatever reason. Starts up here in the mind first; then it spreads to the body. It’s a real sickness, all right. And there’s no cure excpet in the person’s own mind. I’m sorry, child, but it appears that your grandfather just doesn’t want to live anymore.”

So Little Willy takes it upon himself to bring back Grandfather’s will to live. I thought I knew how this one was going to end. In fact, I was rather smug about how see-through the plot was. But the author slipped in a doozy of an ending that left me wondering whether I loved the book or hated it. I mean, if a book is technically flawed (and I think this one has several logistic holes) but the story pulls you in and keeps you turning the pages, if certain aspects of the plot bother you, but the story as a whole leaves you, at the last, in tears … well, then, can you criticize it? I think not.

If you’ve read STONE FOX, I’d love to hear what you thought.

ELEANOR
Written and Illustrated by Barbara Cooney
Viking, 1996

Category: Picture book biography

My daughter picked this book off the shelf today. With Christmas behind us and her brothers back to school and no sign of winter anywhere (to a five-year-old the one and only sign of winter is white and fluffy and falls from the sky), I think my little one was in a gloomy mood. I’ve always thought the cover art for ELEANOR gloomy and somber. Could my daughter have picked up on this, too?

The title Eleanor is none other than Eleanor Roosevelt, and this picture book explores her childhood. It was a hard childhood, a very sad childhood. How hard? How very sad? Here is the opening line of the book:

“From the beginning, the baby was a disappointment to her mother. She was born red and wrinkled, an ugly little thing. And she was not a boy.”

Ouch. My daughter wrinkled her brow and dropped her little jaw. “Mothers are supposed to love their babies,” she whispered. Indeed. Thankfully, there were bright spots in Eleanor Roosevelt’s childhood. Throughout the course of the book Father, Uncle Ted and Mlle. Souvestre (one of Eleanor’s teachers and perhaps the brightest of the bright spots) help young Eleanor to blossom. Barbara Cooney’s illustrations are lovely, the likenesses true, and the story, ultimately, triumphant.

My daughter was not interested in the Afterword, and so did not hear that Eleanor went on to become one of the most beloved women of her time. It was enough for her that Eleanor overcame her Mother’s disdain, her many fears and her shy nature … that Eleanor found people who loved her and who she loved in return. Once that happy ending was secure, my little love left me on the couch and headed back to the bookshelf. What was she after? “A book that is really, really, really about snow!”

THE CARETAKER OF TREE PALACE
By C. Dawn McCallum
Illustrations by Morgan Doxey
Longhorn Creek Press, 2006

A writer friend once suggested to me that the best way to thank a fellow writer for wisdom shared or advice given is to buy a copy of their book. Duh! Why didn’t I think of that myself? Talk about a win-win … your colleague sells a book and you get a new read.

And so I bought myself a copy of THE CARETAKER OF TREE PALACE over the holidays. Its author, Cindy Dawn McCallum, has acquired a wealth of experience as she toured with her first novel in the fall … and she has generously answered my many questions about the process. I appreciate her kindness and look forward to cracking open her literary eco-novel.

Good luck, Cindy Dawn!