The Sheila Variations

The Books: "Tanglewreck" (Jeanette Winterson)

Actually, this book is a book for kids - but in the interest of keeping an "author together" - I have shelved it with Winterson's adult books. So: Next book on my adult fiction bookshelf for the Daily Book Excerpt:

Tanglewreck, by Jeanette Winterson.

This is Jeanette Winterson's first book for kids.There is much here to praise - a fast-paced story, with time travel, and little kids on the run, and evil villains ... A lot of it feels quite derivative, however. It's obviously Winterson's voice but unlike her other books - which I barely can compare to anything else - this is full of things that reminded me of other books. Wrinkle in Time, Harry Potter ... It doesn't quite work. A great children's book is also a great book for adults. I count something like Good Night Moon in that. There is such a thing as perfection - and it's the same for kids as it is for adults. Good Night Moon wouldn't hold up as an adult NOVEL, of course - but the standard of excellence is the same, as far as I'm concerned. Madeleine L'Engle said a great thing once: "You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children." LOVE that. That's why her books are so transportive. I never get sick of them. Tanglewreck is a wee bit too didactic ... but in this case it feels sneaky, like Winterson is trying to sneak in a message in such a subtle way that the kids won't be bored - but she's trying to get her point across. I rolled my eyes at some of these. Winterson is a big environmentalist. Nothing wrong with that. But she tried to put that into the book ... and again: nothing wrong with that, but it felt sneaky, like she was trying to get away with it, and I didn't like that. Kids don't like to be condescended to. If you have a message, then find an inventive way to weave it into the book so that it is inevitable, rather than snuck in. Compare that to Madeleine L'Engle's Ring of Endless Light (excerpt here here) - perhaps my favorite of all of her books (I fluctuate) ... and its vision of a summer working at a marine biology lab, and hanging out with dolphins - in captivity and also in the wild ... The things learned about dolphins that summer transcend marine biology concerns, and makes the book about (on some level) the necessity of ongoing scientific research - that science that has a practical GOAL is not the only kind of science ... There's way more ... but in general, it's about the importance of dolphins, and how they should be protected, studied, loved, whatever. But do you ever catch Madeleine L'Engle trying to preach ANY of that to us? Do you ever catch her trying to sneak in her message, hoping we won't notice? Or, no - it's not "hoping we won't notice" ... Winterson tries to sneak in her message hoping it will work on the kids in a subconscious way ... that the kids will be swayed to her point of view through osmosis. Something about that did not sit well with me, reading Tanglewreck. It is obvious L'Engle's love for dolphins, and her belief that preserving dolphins, and studying them, and protecting them, should be a priority. But she only does that through telling the story of Vicky and Adam working in the lab. L'Engle isn't trying to sneak anything past us! Winterson also assumes that her audience will all feel the same way about America, so her main villain is American, a representative of a huge multi-national corporation, and the most ambitious person in the galaxy. Winterson relies on a shorthand here (American = bad, not to be trusted) that feels very "right now" to me. Yeah, I know, the world has always hated us (but whatever, when you all want to escape the tyranny in your own lands, where do you go?? Yeah. I thought so.) Back to my point: I know "anti-Americanism" is nothing new. I mean, if you go back and read some of the things George III said about us, way back when, when the US was first starting out, you can see the contempt. Nothing has changed. It's been there since the beginning for us. (So to imagine we could "go back" to a time when we were universally admired ... Yeah, uhm, so when would that be? Learn your history, people.) But a children's book needs to be, on some level, universal. If you want kids to read it not just in this generation but others. I can feel the world of 2006 and 2007 in Tanglewreck, even though that's not what it's about at all. I can feel the global warming debate, I can feel the Iraq war, I can feel the anger at America's power, I can feel the "green" movement ... all in a book that has nothing to do with any of that. I guess what I'm saying is: Winterson is not at the top of her game here. Frankly, I don't think she would have tried to "get away" with any of this if it were a book for adults - and THAT is why the book sometimes feels condescending. Winterson has NEVER come across as didactic to me ... she's too much of a free spirit. But here she does.

However, on the flip side: The classic Winterson imagination is at work here, and I very much liked the weaving of truth with fantasy. Like, we're in this magical story where "Time Tornadoes" have sprouted up all over England, ripping people into the past, future, whatever ...but there are certain things that still ground us to reality. I liked that.

Silver lives in a big 500 year old house called Tanglewreck. Her parents and little sister disappeared one day. She now lives with an evil aunt, who stays with her at Tanglewreck, and doesn't take good care of Silver at all. Silver has to fend for herself. She loves her house, it feels alive to her. These Time Tornadoes start to swoop through London, and suddenly, things start to shift and change. A man named Abel Darkwater shows up at Tanglewreck, talking about a specific clock that was left in her parents hands - an essential clock called The Timekeeper ... Mr. Darkwater, a clock fanatic, and an ambitious man, knows that whoever has this Timekeeper will control Time. Something has happened to disturb Time. Huge forces begin to converge on Tanglewreck ... there is a Timekeeper hidden there ... it goes back centuries ... and Silver needs to hand it over. Silver has no memory of any Timekeeper. She is 11 years old. Just a kid. Abel Darkwater takes her to his house in London, but she escapes - and eventually joins up with a tribe of people who live in the tunnels beneath the city ... They call themselves "The Throwbacks". For whatever reason, they are immortal. Time has somehow "forgot" them ... most of them were inmates in Bedlam, the famous mental hospital of old in London, and are scarred forever by the experience. Turns out Abel Darkwater, too, is immortal ... and his connection with the Throwbacks is an unhappy one, and goes way back. But they save Silver - and they realize the urgency of keeping the Timekeeper out of Abel Darkwater's hands ... and so begins a chase - not just across England but across the galaxy ... to, first of all, find the Timekeeper, and to then hide it from people who would use it for ill.

It's a quick read. The slight annoyances didn't stop me from enjoying it. It just didn't have that "oomph" that great children's books need to have. I guess I felt a bit of distance from it. It feels like a lot of Winterson's other intellectual exercises ... ruminations on quantum physics and Schrodinger's cat and Einstein ... all fascinating stuff, and I ate it up here ... but I do wonder if a kid would be bored by it all.

Just to prove my point from yesterday about some of her more rabid fans: One of the reviews on Amazon (I think for the British version of the book) states that she feels she knows Winterson so well that "if we were to meet we would be on a first-name basis". Okay. First creepy clue. Then she goes on to list her problems with the book (and many of them were my problems as well) - but finally she is MOST disappointed in the fact that Silver, an 11 year old girl, appears to "fall in love" with Gabriel, a young Throwback BOY ... and that particular reader was SO disappointed that Winterson chose to have it be a heterosexual thing and missed an opportunity "to teach kids it's okay to be gay." Oh, great: let's add one MORE didactic message to the book! Why are you looking to Winterson, an artist, to "teach kids it's okay to be gay"?? In a book that has nothing to do with that? Winterson struggles with that kind of thing - people expect her to be a mouthpiece for them, rather than herself. Tanglewreck has no obligation to be anything other than itself. To look for it to show "kids it's okay to be gay" when ... it has nothing to do with that, you would never put such a pressure onto another writer - you only put the pressure on Winterson because she is gay - but that's the kind of narrow-minded thinking Winterson has always fought against. Do NOT label her as a gay writer. Or, whatever, go ahead and label her - but just know: that by labeling her, you limit her. It reminds me of Ted's story about directing Virginia in Chicago and being told on a radio interview that he wasn't qualified to direct a play about Virginia Woolf because he was a man. It also reminds me of the recent (and ongoing) kerfluffle between Clint Eastwood and Spike Lee about Eastwood's film about Charlie Parker and how Spike Lee thinks only a black man should have directed that film. Clint Eastwood was like, "But nobody else did it! I did! Get over yourself." I like Spike Lee a lot, but that kind of nonsense is ... well, nonsense. This is a level of art that I cannot stand. Where group identity politics trumps artistic considerations and imagination. Oh, so only a deaf actor can play someone who is deaf? Personal experience trumps imagination? Well, sorry, but that goes against everything I believe in. You don't need to be a prince to be able to imagine yourself into Hamlet - and to put that kind of literal consideration onto any artist is fucking stupid. Winterson is gay - therefore she can only write about gay things? How boring! Thank God Winterson appears to be easily bored, and continues to try new things, not listening to those who need her to be some posterchild for gay rights. Winterson obviously, with Tanglewreck, wanted to write a story about the things that interest her (and always have): quantum mechanics, space, transformation, alchemy ... To read her book and be disappointed that it doesn't have a gay person in it, is to be moronic. It makes me sad. It makes me hope that Winterson just keeps on keeping on ... writing what SHE wants to write. Every book may not be successful - and that's, actually, one of the most interesting things about Winterson. Even her failures are interesting. She does not play it safe. Or - no, that's not right. I feel she DID play it safe in books like Gut Symmetries (excerpt here) and The PowerBook (excerpt here) - same ol' same ol'. I suppose the fans who only want one thing out of her were tremendously pleased by those books. Those books validate THEM. I don't look for Winterson to validate me. I want her to follow her star, and I will always be right behind. Wherever she goes. When she plays it safe, she gets boring. So when she tries something new (Art & Lies (excerpt here), Tanglewreck) - sometimes it doesn't completely work - but I find that just as fascinating, and admirable. It takes guts to fail. It takes guts to put yourself out there, to know you might be out of your element ... but to understand that being out of your element is exactly where you need to be. To quote Winterson herself: "What you risk reveals what you value." And then, sometimes, she takes a risk (like with Weight - her story of Atlas and Heracles - excerpt here) - and she triumphs. That's what's exciting. Not to mention the fact that her first three books - Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (excerpt here), Sexing the Cherry (excerpt here) and The Passion (excerpt here) - are all HUGE risks ... and she knocked them out of the park. So keep taking risks, Winterson. Keep trying to please yourself - not those who have something specific they need of you ... and I'll always be a reader.

Well, I'll always be a reader, regardless. I'm no fair-weather fan! And I suppose - like the woman on Amazon - I have certain "needs" of Winterson, too. I am always curious as to what the hell she is getting up to (she has a new book out - The Stone Gods - a sci-fi book, and I haven't read it yet ... I'm not a big sci-fi fan, but I can't wait to read it ... just to see what she's doing) ... and I hope that my expectations of her are not unfair, or limiting. I know when I'm bored, and I trust that response ... but I also know that Winterson is a wild card. She's made her name on being unpredictable. I'm a fan for life, that's just the way it goes.

So although Tanglewreck is not quite a success, I do admire it because of the risk she took in writing it. She had to know people would be displeased. She wrote it anyway. Awesome! It is only by doing what she wants to do ... that she will continue to grow and flourish as an artist. She has the money. Her books are huge successes. She can please herself. That's what I like about following her career. I never know where she will go next.

Here's a section where Silver sits in the tunnels beneath London with the tribe called The Throwbacks. She is on the run from Abel Darkwater.

EXCERPT FROM Tanglewreck, by Jeanette Winterson.

Gabriel began to teach Silver how to find her way through the labyrinths, and where to come Upground. They told each other stories about their lives, and Silver promised Gabriel that whatever happened, one day she would take him to Tanglewreck.

'I should be glad to see the place that you love,' said Gabriel. 'Nothing matters but those things that matter, Micah says.'

And Silver thought she understood.

In the timeless, ageless space of the Throwbacks, Silver felt happy again, happier than she had been for years. She remembered that with her parents and Buddleia at Tanglewreck, every day had stretched into every day, and she had been free, just like this. She started to sleep on her back, instead of curled up in a ball. She had no sense of how much time was passing - perhaps all of it. Perhaps none.

One day, finding Micah on his own in the Chamber, smoking his pipe, she asked him what he had meant by the 'Experiments'. His face grew dark.

'They be alchemists - him and Maria Prophetessa.'

'That's the beautiful woman called Regalia Mason?'

'Yes.'

'Is an alchemist a sort of magician?'

'Yea, in sort.'

And Micah explained how hundreds of years ago, science and magic were nearly the same thing. Nobody studied physics or chemistry, they studied mathematics or astronomy, and they studied alchemy. Astronomers were also astrologers, who predicted what would happen by measuring the movement of the stars. Even Isaac Newton, who studied mathematics, and discovered gravity, was an astrologer.

'And Isaac Newton, he be a member of a secret society called Tempus Fugit.'

'Time Flies!' said Silver. 'Abel Darkwater's shop!'

'Yea,' said Micah. 'Many of the alchemists spent all their lives labouring to turn metal into gold, but some, like Isaac Newton, and Abel Darkwater, and Maria Prophetessa, and a very powerful magician called John Deem they laboured to make Time.'

'You can't make TIme,' said Silver, thinking, even as she said it, how grown-ups were always saying they had to make time, usually for their children.

' 'Tis why he be alive and not dead in the earth,' said Micah.

'But you are all alive too,' said Silver.

'Yea,' said Micah. 'He experimented on us in the lunatic asylum in ways that would curdle your heart, but when we escaped we discovered that we be not dying as Updwellers do. Have you not noticed something about Abel Darkwater?'

Silver thought about his marble eyes, his round body, his shadowy face ...

'He be like us who don't want the light. If our kind do go in the light, as Updwellers do, we die. Abel Darkwater is cleverer than we; he don't die in the light, but he can't be in the light for long. The dark slows death down, like hibernation. Like animals who sleep all winter.'

'What else slows it down?' asked Silver.

'Cold,' said Micah. 'You put a piece of meat in your cold safes - fridges, you call them. Yea, in the cold safe it does not decay. In the sun it decays.'

'Dark and cold,' said Silver.

'Yea,' said Micah. 'Dark and cold. Come.'

Micah hoisted Silver up on to the warm shaggy back of a bog pony and led her through a short maze of tunnels.

Silver hung on to the pony's thick mane, and felt his warmth on her fingers. Now she understood why Abel Darkwater's house was so cold. It wasn't because it was an old house like Tanglewreck; it was to keep him alive. That was why he had no electric lights, and that was why Mrs Rokabye complained a lot, even for her. Silver didn't feel the cold much. They had hardly any heat or electricity at Tanglewreck because their parents couldn't afford it. Only Mrs Rokabye had electric fires and electric blankets, and even an electric headscarf that she wore in the winter.

'Behold!' said Micah.

They had come to a round corral where half a dozen cattle were contentedly munching hay. The temperature was freezing, and a haze of cold hung over the cows.

Silver shivered and wrapped her legs round the pony. She looked up and saw that the opaque natural light and the steaming cold were coming from a perfectly round sheet of what looked like frosted glass. But it was perhaps fifty metres in diameter.

'In thine own world that be an ice-skating pond,' said Micah. 'A great marvel, for it remains frozen the whole of the year, and through your four season.'

'It's an ice-rink,' said Silver.

'We depend on it for our cattle. These cattle be bred by Abel Darkwater in 1805. We keep them in calf for milk, and we eat the calves for meat.'

'When will they die?' asked Silver.

'I know not. None of us knows when we shall die. But that is true of thine own world too.'

Silver and Micah made their way back to the Chamber.

'Why are you still afraid of Abel Darkwater?' said Silver.

'For the chains and the beatings and the blood-lettings and the faintings, and the dissections and anatomies he performed, and the great cold he kept us in, and the darkness where we dwelled before we be made different by him and her, and that he was my Master. He could destroy us still. He does not destroy us for reasons of his own, but I know them not.'

'Why does he want the Timekeeper?'

Micah stopped as he was walking. 'Abel Darkwater never must find the Timekeeper. If truly you know where it be ...'

'I don't know where it be, I mean, where it is,' said Silver.

'He must not become Lord of the Universe, for that is his wish, and his many lifetimes' work,' said Micah, his face grave.

'How can we stop him?' asked Silver.

'He cannot do it without the clock.'

'But he says I will lead him to the clock.'

Micah was silent. 'It may be that you must dwell with us for the remainder of your days.'

Silver gasped at this. 'What, and never see Tanglewreck again?'

'It may be. If you be the Keeper of the Clock, it be your duty to keep it safe.'

'But I DON'T KNOW WHERE IT IS!'

'That may be the means of keeping it safe,' said Micah.

The Books: "The Birds' Christmas Carol" (Kate Douglas Wiggin)

Next book on the shelf ... (we're in my children's and young adult bookshelves, by the way):

Next book on the shelf is The Birds' Christmas Carol by Kate Douglas Wiggin

I can't remember where I got my copy of this book but I have had it for what feels like my whole life. This book was published in 1886 and I think the copy I have was actually issued in the 1880s. It's a hard cover, and it has those shiny pages I've mentioned before - old-fashioned paper, which has a sheen to it - and where you can see the imprint of the typeface. Also - it has wonderful illustrations - dark scratchy drawings - very Victorian-era. That's the only way I can describe it. Beautiful illustrations. My Alice in Wonderland book is an old book as well - a Victorian-era printing of it. I love it. The Birds' Christmas Carol is one of the most sentimental treacly proselytizing children's books I've ever read - YET - it has its charms, and she's a good writer. You can certainly see how Lewis Carroll kind of fucked up other writer's plans in this era. He actually described a REAL little girl. Alice is REAL. She has faults, she gets angry, she has a sense of SELF ... In general, kids' books were Sunday School tracts, teaching morals, and lessons, and showing you how to be "good", and blah blah blah Yawn.

So The Birds' Christmas Carol is definitely in that moralizing vein. And add to it that the whole thing is a Christian metaphor - you have the potential for a pretty boring pompous book. Yeah, yeah, I got it, Christ died for my sins, I'll be a good little girl ... Uhm, can I go play now?

But Wiggin, although the sentimentality here is overwhelming, has some lovely passages. She really does. Nobody ever really comes to life - they are all caricatures, two-dimensional - but I do like some of her writing. Briefly: the plot.

On a Christmas Day - a child is born. A little girl. The proud and happy mama and papa don't know what to name her. Since it is Christmas, they hear the choir singing in the church beside the hospital and decide to name her Carol. Their last name is Bird. So her name will be Carol Bird. You can probably already see where we are going here.

For the first 5 years of her life, Carol Bird has a perfect childhood. Her hair is golden and curly, her eyes sparkle with blueness, her cheeks flush - her little laugh makes the world seem like a better place. She is adored.

Then tragedy strikes. Carol begins to walk with a little limp. Her parents notice it, and cling to one another in terror. The limp gets worse until finally Carol is completely crippled and must lie in her bed all the time. I'm assuming polio, but I have no idea.

Poor little Carol. The Christmas child meant to spread joy and happiness ... confined to her room!

Then on her 11th birthday - which is, of course, Christmas, she decides to throw a party. This is her only wish for presents - that her parents help her with this party. She wants nothing for herself. (Of course she doesn't. And why? Because she is a metaphor for the Christmas spirit, not a real little girl!) Anyway - next door there is a poor family named the Ruggles - with 8 kids or something like that. They are poor in a TOTALLY offensive and sentimentalized way. They are adorable, they fight, they have stockings that sag, and yet they all have good hearts. Their mother is stern, loving ... It's not their FAULT that they are poor!! So anyway, Carol wants to have all the Ruggles kids over for Christmas dinner. A little charity function, basically.

So the party goes off very well - we are supposed to chuckle heartily at the sight of the goggle-eyed poor kids, being confronted with the PLENTY of the Christmas table at the Birds house. We are supposed to find their poverty CUTE. But they all have a great great time - it is a night for the books- a night everyone will remember - a night when the Christmas spirit is alive and well and stalking the earth! The Ruggles fill up their poverty-struck souls with Christmas plenty - enough to get them through many a cold night - and Carol, tired yet happy, waves them goodbye from her bedroom window.

And that night ... as the nighttime Christmas mass in the church next door (there is always a church next door, apparently) goes on and the choir sings a Christmas carol - Carol lies her blonde curly head down on her pillow, closes her eyes, happy because of her good deed, and then - she promptly dies.

The End.

I mean, what??

But still. With all of this treacly Christian nonsense, I loved this book when I was a kid, and was captivated by it. Not so much by Carol - because she is obviously not a real little girl and who can care about a two-dimensional cutout? But Wiggin describes her room, where she spends all her time, and how it is decorated (of course in a Christmas theme - because it is Christmas all year round for Carol!) so vividly. I loved it. I also loved Wiggin's description of the Christmas feast - because ... it's from a different time. Another era. The food is different. It sounds old-fashioned. And I always loved books from other eras. Also - there are actually some very funny moments - all involving the Ruggles family, in their adorable poverty.

Anyway, here's an excerpt - where Carol comes up with her plan to entertain the Ruggles.

I know I'm making fun of this book - but it's one in my collection that I could never throw out. Especially my copy of it - which is actually from the era when the book was printed.

Oh - and written on the first page of the book - in a swoopy cursive, now discolored from age are the words:

Oliver
from Marguerite
Xmas 1912

I love that. A relic from days gone by. The book in my hands right now was a Christmas present to Oliver, probably long dead now, in 1912.

Excerpt from The Birds' Christmas Carol by Kate Douglas Wiggin

Uncle Jack did really come on the twentieth. He was not detained by business, nor did he get left behind nor snowed up, as frequently happens in stories, and in real life too, I am afraid. The snow-storm came also; and the turkey nearly died a natural and premature death from overeating. Donald came, too; Donald, with a line of down on his upper lip, and Greek and Latin on his tongue, and stores of knowledge in his handsome head, and stories - bless me, you couldn't turn over a chip without reminding Donald of something that happened "at College". One or the other was always at Carol's bedside, for they fancied her paler than she used to be, and they could not bear her out of sight. It was Uncle Jack, though, who sat beside her in the winter twilgihts. The room was quiet, and almost dark, save for the snow-light outside, and the flickering flames of the fire, that danced over the "Sleeping Beauty's" face and touched the Fair One's golden locks with ruddier glory. Carol's hand (all too thin and white these latter days) lay close clasped in Uncle Jack's, and they talked together quietly of many, many things.

"I want to tell you all about my plans for Christmas this year, Uncle Jack," said Carol, on the first evening of his visit, "because it will be the loveliest one I ever had. The boys laugh at me for caring so much about it; but it isn't altogether because it is Christmas, nor because it is my birthday; but long, long ago, when I first began to be ill, I used to think, the first thing when I waked on Christmas morning, 'Today is Christ's birthday - and mine!' I did not put the words close together, you know, because that made it seem too bold; but I first said, 'Christ's birthday,' out loud, and then, in a minute, softly to myself - 'and mine!' 'Christ's birthday -- and mine!' And so I do not quite feel about Christmas as other girls do. Mamma says she supposes that ever so many other children have been born on that day. I often wonder where they are, Uncle Jack, and whether it is a dear thought to them, too, or whether I am so much in bed, and so often alone, that it means more to me. Oh, I do hope that none of them are poor, or cold, or hungry; and I wish - I wish they were all as happy as I, because they are really my little brothers and sisters. Now, Uncle Jack dear, I am going to try and make somebody happy every single Christmas that I live, and this year it is to be the 'Ruggleses in the rear'."

"That large and interesting brood of children in the little house at the end of the back garden?"

"Yes; isn't it nice to see so many together? -- and, Uncle Jack, why do the big families always live in the small houses, and the small families in the big houses? We ought to call them the Ruggles childrne, of course; but Donald began talking of them as the 'Ruggleses in the rear,' and Papa and Mamma took it up, and now we cannot seem to help it. The house was built for Mr. Carter's coachman, but Mr. Carter lives in Europe, and the gentleman who rents his place for him doesn't care what happens to it, and so this poor family came to live there. When they first moved in, I used to sit in my window and watch them play in their back yard; they are so strong, and jolly, and good-natured; -- and then, one day, I had a terrible headache, and Donald asked them if they would please not scream quite so loud, and they explained that they were having a game of circus, but that they would change and play 'Deaf and Dumb Asylum' all the afternoon."

"Ha ha ha!" laughed Uncle Jack, "what an obliging family, to be sure!"

"Yes, we all thought it very funny, and I smiled at them from the window when I was well enough to be up again. Now, Sarah Maud comes to her door when the children come home from school, and if Mamma nods her head, 'Yes' that means 'Carol is very well,' and then you ought to hear the little Ruggleses yell, - and I believe they try to see how much noise they can make; but if Mamma shakes her head, 'No,' they always play at quiet games. Then, one day, 'Cary', my pet canary, flew out of her cage, and Peter Ruggles caught her and brought her back, and I had him up here in my room to thank him."

"Is Peter the oldest?"

"No; Sarah Maud is the oldest - she helps do the washing; and Peter is the next. He is a dressmaker's boy."

"And which is the pretty little red-haired girl?"

"That's Kitty."

"And the fat youngster?"

"Baby Larry."

"And that -- most freckled one?"

"Now, don't laugh - that's Peoria."

"Carol, you are joking."

"No, really, Uncle dear. She was born in Peoria; that's all."

"And is the next boy Oshkosh?"

"No," laughed Carol, "the others are Susan, and Clement, and Eily, and Cornelius; they all look exactly alike, except that some of them have more freckles than the others."

"How did you learn all of their names?"

"Why, I have what I call a 'window-school.' It is too cold now; but in warm weather I am wheeled out on my balcony, and the Ruggleses climb up and walk along our garden fence, and sit down on the roof of our carriage-house. That brings them quite near, and I tell them stories. On Thanksgiving Day they came up for a few minutes - it was quite warm at eleven o'clock - and we told each other what we had to be thankful for; but they gave such queer answers that Papa had to run away for fear of laughing; and I couldn't understand them very well. Susan was thankful for 'trunks', of all things in the world; Cornelius, for 'horse-cars', Kitty, for 'pork steak'; while Clem, who is very quiet, brightened up when I came to him, and said he was thankful for 'his lame puppy'. Wasn't that pretty?"

"It might teach some of us a lesson, mightn't it, little girl?"

"That's what Mamma said. Now I'm going to give this whole Christmas to the Ruggleses; and, Uncle Jack, I earned part of the money myself."

"You, my bird; how?"

"Well, you see, it could not be my own, own Christmas if Papa gave me all the money, and I thought to really keep Christ's birthday I ought to do something of my very own; and so I talked with Mamma. Of course she thought of something lovely; she always does: Mamma's head is just brimming over with lovely thoughts - all I have to do is ask, and out pops the very one I want. This thought was to let her write down, just as I told her, a description of how a child lived in her own room for three years, and what she did to amuse herself; and we sent it to a magazine and got twenty-five dollars for it. Just think!"

"Well, well," cried Uncle Jack, "my little girl a real author! And what are you going to do with this wonderful 'own' money of yours?"

"I shall give the nine Ruggleses a grand Christmas dinner here in this very room - that will be Papa's contribution - and afterwards a beautiful Christmas tree, fairly blooming with presents - that will be my part; for I have anotherw ay of adding to my twenty-five dollars, so that I can buy anything I choose. I should like it very much if you would sit at the head of the table, Uncle Jack, for nobody could ever be frightened of you, you dearest, dearest, dearest thing that ever was! Mamma is going to help us, but Papa and the boys are going to eat together downstairs for fear of making the little Ruggleses shy; and after we've had a merry time with the tree we can open my window and listen together to the music at the evening church-service, if it comes before the children go. I have written a letter to the organist, and asked him if I might have the two songs I like best. Will you see if it is all right?"

Birds' Nest, December 21, 188-
Dear Mr. Wilkie - I am the little girl who lives next door to the church, and, as I seldom go out, the music on practice days and Sundays is one of my greatest pleasures.
I want to know if you can have "Carol, brothers, carol," on Christmas night, and if the boy who sings "My ain countree" so beautifully may please sing that too. I think it is the loveliest thing in the world, but it always makes me cry; doesn't it you?
If it isn't too much trouble, I hope they can sing them both quite early, as after ten o'clock, I may be asleep.
Yours respectfully,
Carol Bird
P.S. -- The reason I like "Carol, brothers, carol" is because the choir-boys sang it eleven years ago, the morning I was born, and put it into Mamma's head to call me Carol. She didn't remember then that my other name would be Bird, because she was half asleep, and could only think of one thing at a time. Donald says if I had been born on the Fourth of July they would have named me "Independence" or if on the twenty-second of February, "Georgina", or even "Cherry", like Cherry in "Martin Chuzzlewit"; but I like my own name and birthday best.
Yours truly,
Carol Bird

Uncle Jack thought the letter quite right, and did not even smile at her telling the organizt so many family items.

The Books: "The Sword in the Stone" (T.H. White)

Next book on the shelf ... (we're in my children's and young adult bookshelves, by the way):

Next book on the shelf is The Sword in the Stone by T. H. White

I can't remember a time when I hadn't read this book. I know I eventually HAD to read it for school - maybe in 8th grade? Would that be right? But I read it much much earlier - mainly because my cousin Susan - who not only did I adore, but I WANTED TO BE HER - read and loved it (and The Once and Future King) so I, of course, had to read them. Susan actually had great tastes in books (she was a year older than me) - and through her I discovered all the Enid Blyton books, for which I am FOREVER grateful. By the way - I thought I HAD some of those old Enid Blyton books, but obviously I don't, since I'm already on "W" in the alphabet. Hmmm. I loved those Adventure books of hers. Again, with the themes I adore: children on their own (preferably British), having to survive by their wits. No parental figures around. Anyhoo. Susan was responsible for me reading a lot of cool books - and the TH White books are part of that. I just LOST myself in these books. The Sword in the Stone was my favorite of the two. I just loved it - the training scenes, the transformation scenes, becoming animals ... I loved Merlyn, and I loved the relationships described. There is a kind of Dickensian flavor to the whole thing - children at the whims of financial realities. Sir Ector is looking for a tutor for his "real" son, his proper son, his REAL heir - Kay. Kay's younger brother is an adopted child named Wart (well, he's called "The Wart") - who, well. His name kind of says it all, in terms of how he is perceived. Sir Ector is a kind and loving man - who does love Wart - but it is no secret that Kay is the one he favors, and wants to give the best to. But it is Wart's journey that makes up the story of this book. Sir Ector hires the magical Merlyn to be Kay's tutor, and Wart's as well, by default. The magic starts. The psychedia starts. They travel back and forth in time. They meet Robin Hood. I love the scene with the little mustard pot that comes alive. Merlyn gives Kay and Wart (but mainly Kay - remember!!) challenges. They become fish. They become badgers.

And did I mention the awesome-ness of the writing? It's rich writing, man - detailed, funny, sharp-eyed - the characters are well-drawn, and you care about them. You care about Wart. I love Wart. He's one of my favorite fictional characters.

Meanwhile, through their journeys - there is word that there is a sword stuck in an anvil in London - and the word goes: ""Whoso Pulleth Out the Sword of the Stone and Anvil, is Rightwise King Born of All England."

There is, at this point, no heir to the throne (if memory serves). So it's a big deal. Where is this sword in the stone? Why is it so hard to pull the sword out? Just pull it out, what's the big deal?

Eventually - Wart and Kay are in London, for a jousting tournament, I believe. Is Merlyn with them? I can't remember - there's a very sad scene when Merlyn lets the boys know that their time with him is almost through. Anyhoo - they're in London, and they head to the jousting tournament. Kay realizes he left his sword back at the castle. Wart, who is basically his manservant in life, is sent back to get it. But the door to Kay's room is locked, and Wart decides to go out into the streets of London and find Kay another sword. Now - this all occurs at the end of the book - and will make up the excerpt I post below - but one of the things I LOVE about the ending of this book, why it gives me goosebumps every time I read it is because it starts out so casual. You don't even get what's coming. It's all very casual, "Oh, where's my sword? Could you go get my sword?" Door's locked. Let's go get another sword. Whatever. It's not all filled with portent and telegraphing of the end. That's why the end packs such a huge punch. For me, at least. Wart doesn't know that what he is doing is accepting his destiny. He will be King of England. He will become Arthur. This is his destiny, and it has been there all along. But Wart is unaware of it. He totally buys into the whole "Kay is the favored son" routine. He hovers in Kay's shadow. He has no dreams of greatness. He just wants to learn the same stuff Kay learns. But there's something deeper going on here. Merlyn knew. But nobody else does. And TH White doesn't tip his hat too early. I LOVE the ending of this book.

So anyway - Wart, wandering around London looking for a replacement sword, casually comes upon a big iron anvil - with a sword sticking up out of it. He doesn't think about the legend, or the saying. He just goes and tries to pull the sword out.

Here's the excerpt. It just kills me. Why does it kill me? Because Wart doesn't know that what he just did was a big deal. Not just a big deal - but the biggest deal ever. And watch how it all unfolds ... how he tells people where he got the sword ... how Kay, the golden boy, tries to ignore the implications, because HE'S supposed to be the king, he is the favorite one, after all ... how could silly dirty little WART have pulled out the mythical sword that nobody else could remove?? And just watch how the realization dawns - on Wart - on everyone else - on what this all means.

It's just a GREAT story about ... a person who might not be expected to heed the call of greatness, who might not be ready for his destiny ... but oh well - here his destiny comes anyway. Anybody can relate to it.

And the ending (or, almost the ending) which I post below ...

Gulp. I'm tellin' ya. It gets me in the throat every time.

Excerpt from The Sword in the Stone by T. H. White

"How does one get hold of a sword?" he continued. "Where can I steal one? Could I waylay some knight, even if I am mounted on an ambling pad, and take his weapons by force? There must be some swordsmith or armorer in a great town like this, whose shop would still be open."

He turned his mount and cantered off along the street.

There was a quiet churchyard at the end of it, with a kind of square in front of the church door. In the middle of the square there was a heavy stone with an anvil on it, and a fine new sword was struck through the anvil.

"Well," said the Wart, "I suppose it's some sort of war memorial, but it will have to do. I am quite sure nobody would grudge Kay a war memorial, if they knew his desperate straits."

He tied his reins round a post of the lych-gate, strode up the gravel path, and took hold of the sword.

"Come, sword," he said. "I must cry your mercy and take you for a better cause."

"This is extraordinary," said the Wart. "I feel queer when I have hold of this sword, and I notice everything much more clearly. Look at the beautiful gargoyles of this church, and of the monastery which it belongs to. See how splendidly all the famous banners in the aisle are waving. How nobly that yew holds up the red flakes of its timbers to worship God. How clean the snow is. I can smell smothing like fetherfew and sweet briar - and is that music that I hear?"

It was music, whether or pan-pipes or of recorders, and the light in the churchyard was so clear, without being dazzling, that you could have picked a pin out twenty yards away.

"There is something in this place," said the Wart. "There are people here. Oh, people, what do you want?"

Nobody answered him, but the music was loud and the light beautiful.

"People," cried the Wart. "I must take this sword. It is not for me, but for Kay. I will bring it back."

There was still no answer, and Wart turned back to the sword. He saw the golden letters on it, which he did not read, and the jewels on its pommel, flashing in the lovely light.

"Come, sword," said the Wart.

He took hold of the handles with both hands, and strained against the stone. There was a melodious consort on the recorders, but nothing moved.

The Wart let go of the handles, when they were beginning to bite into the palms of his hands, and stepped back from the anvil, seeing stars.

"It is well fixed," said the Wart.

He took hold of it again and pulled with all his might. The music played more and more excitedly, and the lights all about the churchyard glowed like amethysts; but the sword still stuck.

"Oh, Merlyn," cried the Wart, "help me to get this sword."

There was a kind of rushing noise, and a long chord played along with it. All along the churchyard there were hundreds of old friends. They rose over the church wall all together, like the Punch and Judy ghosts of remembered days, and there were otters and nightingales and vulgar crows and hares and serpents and falcons and fishes and goats and dogs and dainty unicorns and newts and solitary wasps and goatmoth caterpillars and corkindrills and volcanoes and mighty trees and patient stones. They loomed round the church wall, the lovers and helpers of the Wart, and they all spoke solemnly in turn. Some of them had come from the banners in the church, where they were painted in heraldry, some from the waters and the sky and the fields about, but all, down to the smallest shrew mouse, had come to help on account of love. Wart felt his power grow.

"Remember my biceps," said the Oak, "which can stretch out horizontally against Gravity, when all the other trees go up or down."

"Put your back into it," said a Luce (or pike) off one of the heraldic banners, "as you did once when I was going to snap you up. Remember that all power springs from the nape of the neck."

"What about those forearms," said a Badger gravely, "they are held together by a chest? Come along, my dear embryo, and find your tool."

A Merlin sitting at the top of the yew tree cried out, "Now then, Captain Wart, what is the first law of the foot? I thought I once heard something about never letting go?"

"Don't work like a stalling woodpecker," urged a Tawny Owl affectionately. "Keep up a steady effort, my duck, and you will have it yet."

"Cohere," said a Stone in the church wall.

A Snake, slipping easily along the coping which bounded the holy earth, said, "Now then, Wart, if you were once able to walk with three hundred ribs at once, surely you can coordinate a few little muscles here and there? Make everything work together, as you have been learning to do ever sice God let the amphibia crawl out of the sea. Fold your powers together, with the spirit of your mind, and it will come out like butter. Come along, homo sapiens, for all we humble friends of yours are waiting here to cheer."

The Wart walked up the great sword for the third time. He put out his right hand softly and drew it out as gently as from a scabbard.

There was a lot of cheering, a noise like a hurdy-gurdy which went on and on. In the middle of the noise, after a very long time, he saw Kay and gave him the sword. The people at the tournament were making a frightful row.

"But this isn't my sword," said Sir Kay.

"It was the only one I could get," said the Wart. "The inn was locked."

"It is a nice-looking sword. Where did you get it?"

"I found it stuck in a stone, outside a church."

Sir Kay had been watching the tilting nervously, waiting for his turn. He had not paid much attention to his squire.

"That's a funny place to find a sword," he said.

"Yes, it was stuck through an anvil."

"What?" asked Sir Kay, suddenly rounding upon him. "Did you just say this sword was stuck in a stone?"

"It was," said the Wart. "It was a sort of war memorial."

Sir Kay stared at him for several seconds in amazement, opened his mouth, shut it again, licked his lips, then turned his back and plunged through the crowd. He was looking for Sir Ector, and the Wart followed after him.

"Father," cried Sir Kay, "come here a moment."

"Yes, my boy," said Sir Ector. "Splendid falls these professional chaps do manage. Why, what's the matter, Kay? You look as white as a sheet."

"Do you remember that sword which the King of England would pull out?"

"Yes."

"Well, here it is. I have it. It is in my hand. I pulled it out."

Sir Ector did not say anything silly. He looked at Kay and he looked at the Wart. Then he stared at Kay again, long and lovingly, and said, "We will go back to the church."

"Now then, Kay," he said, when they were at the church door. He looked at his first-born again, kindly, but straight between the eyes. "Here is the stone, and you have the sword. It will make you the King of England. You are my son that I am proud of, and always will be, whatever happens. Will you promise me that you took it out by your own might?"

Kay looked at his father. He also looked at the Wart and at the sword.

Then he handed the sword to the Wart quite quietly.

He said, "I am a liar. Wart pulled it out."

As far as the Wart was concerned, there was a time after this in which Sir Ector kept telling him to put the sword back into the stone - which he did - and in which Sir Ector and Kay then vainly tried to take it out. The Wart took it out for them, and stuck it back again once or twice. After this, there was another time which was more painful.

He saw that his dear guardian Sir Ector was looking quite old and powerless, and that he was kneeling down with difficulty on a gouty old knee.

"Sir," said poor old Sir Ector, without looking up, although he was speaking to his own boy.

"Please don't do this, father," said the Wart, kneeling down also. "Let me help you up, Sir Ector, because you are making me unhappy."

"Nay, nay, my lord," said Sir Ector, with some very feeble old tears. "I was never your father nor of your blood, but I wote well ye are of an higher blood than I wend ye were."

"Plenty of people told me you are not my father," said the Wart, "but it doesn't matter a bit."

"Sir," said Sir Ector humbly, "will ye be my good and gracious lord when ye are King?"

"Don't!" said the Wart.

"Sir," said Sir Ector, "I will ask no more of you but that you will make my son, your foster-brother, Sir Kay, seneschal of all your lands."

Kay was kneeling down too, and it was more than the Wart could bear.

"Oh, do stop," he cried. "Of course he can be seneschal, if I have got to be this King, and oh, father, don't kneel down like that, because it breaks my heart. Please get up, Sir Ector, and don't make everything so horrible. Oh, dear, oh, dear, I wish I had never seen that filthy sword at all."

And the Wart also burst into tears.

The Books: "Ballet Shoes" (Noel Streatfield)

Next book on the shelf ... (we're in my children's and young adult bookshelves, by the way):

Next book on the shelf is Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfeild.

There are a couple of important books I read in my childhood and this is one of them. Important, I mean, in terms of me, and my development- and also my private little world of wanting to be an actress. Because even though I was in plays and everything as a little kid, and even though I knew I was happier on stage than just about anywhere else - my ambition was something I kept private. It seemed embarrassing and I didn't know what to do with it. Also, my family didn't really like show-offs, and I didn't want to be a show-off. But what is acting other than showing off? A lot of my desire to be an actress came from (and still comes from) wanting to be seen. This isn't easy to admit, because people hate people like that. And yet, whaddya know, they still shell out their 10 bucks to go see movie stars "show off" ... and maybe they don't respect the impulse, and maybe they wouldn't like the movie star if they met him in person ... but they still love to go be entertained. And all of those people, mega-stars even, just want to be SEEN. As you develop your craft, other things come into the picture. For me it did, anyway. You fall in love with the artform itself. You become aware of a bigger need. Something happens between actor and audience during the course of a play that is truly profound - on both sides - and it is addictive. What is it? It is a shared experience. It is an experience of Community with a capital C unlike anything else I have ever experienced. I was unaware of all of this when I was a little kid. I just knew that being in school plays was the most fun I had ever had ... and more than that ... I knew that I NEEDED to do it. I liked other things, too. I loved to write. I loved playing baseball. But acting - with all its anxiety, all its frightening implications - was what I NEEDED to do. And at the very bottom of that need, was a ferocious desire to be SEEN. I believe that once you accept that desire (which is, at its base, an anti-social desire), and stop shaming yourself for it, and stop thinking that you need to be like other people, and stop putting "fitting in" as the #1 virtue - you are well on your way to actually BEING an actor. So in terms of the importance of this book, Ballet Shoes (which is a wonderfully written story, by the way) - it said a couple of different things to me. It said: You are not alone. Other little girls out there have the same burning desire. It also said: There is a way to take this craft seriously. You can actually WORK at it until you can do it as a JOB. Now my aunt Regina was (and is) an actress - and part of my childhood was going to see her in shows up and down the Eastern seaboard. A marvelous singer, wonderful actress - she was impossibly glamourous to me - one of my most important influences. My first trip to New York was when I was 11 years old - and I went on the train by myself (Mum, Dad - how on earth did you dare??) - and stayed with Regina for a weekend. She took me to see Annie (and omigod, Sarah Jessica Parker was playing Annie!!) - and I stayed with her in her little apartment, and she took me around to museums, and it was one of the coolest trips EVER! Now I know that Regina was only 22 at that time - which is just amazing to me - she seemed SO adult!! I'm imagining myself at 22. Wow. What?? So unlike some other people - who have no examples in their immediate family of people who do this weird job and actually have lives, etc. - I had an example right in front of me, which was very important. This private acting dream of mine was something I could actually do when I was a grown-up.

Ballet Shoes, which I read when I was 9 or 10, was a hugely formative book for me - for all of these reasons. It is the story of Pauline, Petrova and Posy Fossil (yes, those are their names) - three adopted sisters - who live in the bleak rain-sodden world of 1930s London - and who, in order to pay for their room and board in their foster home - start to train for the stage. Streatfeild wrote a whole series of these books - about kids who are good at something, and who go to train for it - Circus Shoes, Tennis Shoes - and more. I read them all - but Ballet Shoes was my favorite. I LIVED with those girls. I went to the Academy of Dancing with them. I angsted over their auditions. I marveled at Posy's gift for ballet. I wanted to BE in those classes. I wanted to have my chance too - to "put my name in the history books" (this is a vow the 3 sisters make to one another). I read it over and over and over ... and I still have my copy of it - and funnily enough, I picked it up this morning, and I knew the first paragraph by heart:

The Fossil sisters lived in the Cromwell Road. At that ed of it which is farthest away from the Brompton Road, and yet sufficiently near it so one could be taken to look at the dolls' housese in the Victoria and Albert every wet day. If the weather were not too wet, one was expected to "save the penny and walk".

Interestingly enough, Petrova (the one who didn't want to be an actress) was my favorite of all of the sisters. I related to her the most. She was not obedient, she grumbled a lot, and she had outside interests. This seems interesting to me - it seems logical that Pauline, the little prodigy actress would have been my favorite, but no. Petrova was my girl. I could analyze this thus: Even with acting growing in my heart as something I wanted to do ... I think I knew that I could never not have other interests. I don't know that I KNEW this, actually ... most of this was unconscious. Petrova was an actress, and actually kind of a good one - instinctive - but she never took it too seriously, and always had her eyes looking up in the sky, looking for "aeroplanes", her main passion. People do not fit into nice little square boxes. Pauline "should" have been my favorite - but she was not. Petrova was.

Another reason why this book was so haunting to me was because the three girls lived in a world I didn't know - London in the 1930s. What is the Cromwell Road? No idea - it seemed like I SHOULD know - but because of this book I had a vivid picture of it in my mind. As well as "the dolls' houses in the Victoria and Albert". What is the Victoria and Albert? No idea - but I had an entire building erected in my mind. I had a love affair with stories of kids in London anyway, starting from when I read Oliver Twist at age 10 - I loved the Narnia books - I loved The Little Princess ... London was just alive for me, because of books like that. It seemed kind of grim. There was always rain. People wore galoshes, and lit fires when they came inside. There were tea trays, and grey sodden lawns. Noel Streatfeild is a wonderful writer - she doesn't just write very convincingly of the training young actors got in London those days (although all of that is very well done) - she describes that entire pre-war world of London vividly. You LIVE there with those sisters. Also, I just so wanted to call my own dresses "frocks" and not have anyone look at me weird. "Frock" is SUCH a better word than 'dress", an opinion I maintain to this day.

Pauline turns out to be a gifted actress, and starts getting leading roles immediately. Petrova is the odd one out - a skinny brown-haired tomboy - she has no interest in this stuff - she wants to be an aviatrix. She wants to fly "aeroplanes". Again - with that spelling of the word .... a whole other world is evoked. A British world. A world SORT of like mine - I knew what she was talking about when she talked about "aeroplanes" - but that's not how WE spell it. I loved that slight difference. It was romantic. The youngest sister, Posy, is 8 years old. And although she has no training yet - it is apparent to the people at the school from day one - that she could be a ballerina the entire world would know. Her talent is kind of mystical - and there are a couple of goosebumpy sections when it is recognized (one of them is in the excerpt below). Posy is casual about her genius - beause most geniuses are. They don't know that there is any other way to be than the way that they are.

If I had to look back on my childhood and pick 5 books which helped me to become who I am today - this one is on the list. Maybe it would be #1. Well, it would have to be a tie with Harriet the Spy. Harriet was the writer in me. The Ballet Shoes girls were the actress. This book helped say to me:

No. You are not crazy. This is actually something you can DO and taking it seriously is not only NOT silly ... but it is one of the most worthwhile things you can do with your time. Being a show-off is not a bad thing if you put it to USE. So whatever you do, Sheila, put it to USE. Yes, I was only 10, 11 years old when I read it ... but it had that affect on me. Flipping through the pages right now, I can feel the young young Sheila reading it, poring over every word, taking life lessons from every page.

Weirdly enough: I have mentioned this book before on my blog, just in passing. I got a random email from Mark Steyn of all people - out of the blue - saying, "Anyone who loves Noel Streatfeild is okay in my book. I read them all when I was a kid." Okay - now picture THAT!! Also ... uhm ... Mark Steyn reads my blog? Huh?

Here's an excerpt that kind of captures the magical feel of this book. The Fossil girls have just been accepted as scholarship students into the Academy of Dancing. Their whole lives change.

Listen to the details. See how a whole world is created?

Excerpt from Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfeild.

The Fossils became some of the busiest children in London. They got up at half-past seven and had breakfast at eight. After breakfast they did exercises with Theo for half an hour. At nine they began lessons. Posy did two hours' reading, writing, and kindergarten work with Sylvia, and Pauline and Petrova did three hours with Doctor Jakes and Doctor Smith. They were very interesting lessons, but terribly hard work; for if Doctor Smith was teaching Pauline, Doctor Jakes taught Petrova, and the other way on, and as both doctors had spent their lives coaching people for terribly stiff examinations - though of course they taught quite easy things to the children - they never got the idea out of their minds that a stiff examination was a thing everybody had to pass some day. There was a little break of ten minutes in the middle of the morning when milk and biscuits were brought in; but after a day or two they were never eaten or drunk. Both doctors ahd lovely ideas about the sort of things to have in the middle of lessons - a meal they called a beaver. They took turns to get it ready. Sometimes it was chocolate with cream on it, and sometimes Doctor Jakes' ginger drink, and once it was ice-cream soda; and the things to eat were never the same: queer biscuits, little one from Japan with delicate flowers painted on them in sugar, cakes from Vienna, and specialties of different kinds from all over England. They had their beavers sitting round the fire in either of the doctors' rooms, and they had discussions which had nothing to do with lessons. At twelve o'clock they went for a walk with Nana or Sylvia. They liked it best when Sylvia took them. She had better ideas about walks; she thought the Park the place to go to, and thought it a good idea to take hoops and things to play with. Nana liked a nice clean walk up as far as the Victoria and Albert and back. On wet days Sylvia thought it a good plan to stay in and make toffee or be read out loud to. Nana thought nicely brought-up children ought to be out of the house between twelve and one, even on a wet day, and she took them to see the dolls' houses in the Victoria and Albert. The children liked the dolls' houses; but there are a lot of wet days in the winter, and they saw them a good deal. Pauline and Petrova had lunch with Sylvia, Posy had hers with Nana. After lunch they all had to take a book on their beds for half an hour. In the afternoons there was another walk, this one always with Nana. It lasted an hour, and as they had usually walked to the Victoria and Albert in the morning, they did not have to go there again, but took turns to choose where they went. Pauline liked walking where there were shops. Petrova liked the Earl's Court Road, because there were three motor showrooms for her to look at. Posy liked to go towards the King's Road, Chelsea, because on the way they passed a shop that sold puppies. They all liked Posy's walk; but they did not choose it themselves because they knew she would. If Nana was not so sure that they must save and penny and walk they would have gone to much more exciting placesl for you can't get far on your legs when there is only an hour, and that includes getting home again. Tea was in the nursery at a quarter to four, and at half past they went by the Piccadilly railway to Russell Square. They all liked going on the underground; but both Gloucester Road, where they got in, and Russell Square, where they got out, were those mean sort of stations that have lifts instead of moving staircases.

"Going to dancing class," Petrova said almost every day, "wouldn't be so bad if only there was even one moving staircase."

As soon as they got to the Academy they went down to the changing-room. There they shared a locker in which their rompers and practice-frocks and shoes were kept. Their rompers were royal blue with C.A. for Children's Academy embroidered on the pockets. They wore their rompers for the first half-hour, and with them white socks and black patent-leather ankle-strapped shoes. In these clothes they did exercises and a little dancing which was known as "character", and twice a week they worked at tap dancing. At the end of half an hour they hung towels round their necks (for they were supposed to get so hot they would need a wipe down) and went back to the changing-room and put on their white tarlatan practice-frocks. These were like overalls with no join down the back; the bodice had hooks and the frills of the skirt wrapped over and clipped. With this they wore white socks and white kid slippers. The work they did in these dresses they found dull, and it made their legs ache. They did not realize that the half-hour spent holding on to a bar and doing what they thoughts stupid exercises was very early training for ballet. Ballet to them meant wearing blocked shoes like the little pair that had come with Posy or such as the more advanced classes wore at school. Sometimes Madame Fidolia came in to watch their class, and directly she arrived they all let go of the practice-bar and curtsied to the floor saying "Madame".

They got home at half-past six, and Posy went straight to bed. Sylvia reada to the other two for twenty minutes, and then Petrova had to go up, and at seven, Pauline. The lights were out by half-past and there was o more talking.

On Saturday mornings they worked from ten to one at the Academy. As well as special exercise classes and the ordinary dancing classes, there was singing, and one hour's acting class. For these they wore the Academy overalls. They were of black sateen made from a Russian design, with high collars, and double-breasted, buttoning with large black buttons down the left side; round the waist they had wide black leather belts. With these they wore their white sandals.

Petrova, who hated clothes, found the everlasting changing an awful bore. Saturdays were the worst.

"Oh, I do hate Saturdays," she said to Nana. "I get up in my jersey and skirt, and as soon as I get to the Academy I change everything, even put a vest on instead of my combinations, and wear those rompres; and then my practice-dress and the overall; and then back into my combinations and my skirt and jersey. I wish I was a savage and wore nothing."

"That's no way to talk," Nana told her sternly. "Many a poor little child would be glad of the nice clothes you wear; and as for changing out of your combies, I'm glad you do; you wear holes in them fast enough without all the dancing in them."

From the very beginning Madame took an interest in Posy. Every class that she came to watch she made her do some step alone. Posy had her shoes taken off one day and her instep looked at; Madame was so delighted at the shape and flexibility of her feet that she called the rest of the class to look at them. The rest of the class admired them while Madame was there, but secretly none of them could see anything about them different from their own. Pauline and Petrova thought it very bad for Posy to be made so conspicuous, and to teach her not to get cocky they called her "Posy-Pretty-Toes" all the way home. Posy hated it and at last burst into tears. Nana was very cross.

"That's right, you two, tease poor little Posy; she can't help Madame saying she has nice feet. It's jealous, that's what you are. Any more of your nonsense and you'll go to bed half an hour early."

"Why should we be jealous?" asked Petrova. "Who cares what feet look like? They are just useful things."

Pauline giggled.

"Have you pretty feet, Nana?" She looked down at Nana's square-teoed black shoes which she always wore.

"I have what God gave me," Nana said reverently. "and they're all I need, never having thoughts to dance in a ballet."

The thought of Nana, who was very fat, dancing in a ballet made them all laugh so much that they forgot to call Posy "Pretty-Toes" again, and they were still laughing when they got home.

It was at the acting classes that Pauline shone. The acting in their first term was entirely in mime. They acted whole fairy stories without saying a word. Whether she was a princess, or a peasant, or an old man, Pauline managed to make them real without any dressing up, but just in the way she moved.

Just before Christmas the school broke up for a month. All the senior girls were working in pantomimes, and for some time all those who were not old enough for licenses had felt very important. The children's classes were moved from one room to another to make room for rehearsals, and the notice-board was covered with rehearsal calls. "All concered in the Rose Ballet, in room three at 4.30". "The children appearing in Red Riding Hood, 5.30, room seven." "The principals for the Jewel Ballet, 4 o'clock, room one." And, as well, calls for the children stars. "Poppy: 10.30 with Madame Fidolia." "Winifred: 12 o'clock with Madame Fidolia."

Pauline, Petrova, and Posy would gaze in great awe at these names.

"Winifred," one of them would say - "that's the girl who wears a fur coat. Poppy is going to be Alice in Wonderland. She's the one with the long hair."

They would peep through the glass on the doors of the rooms where the rehearsals were taking place, and stare at the children who were already twelve and old enough to earn money.

"Not this Christmas, but the one after I shall be one of those children," Pauline said enviously.

"Do you want to be?" Petrova asked in surprise. "I'm very glad I'm not twelve, except because of Garnie wanting money to look after us."

Pauline watched the figures through the glass, the rows of white practice-dresses, and the rows of pink canvas ballet shoes.

"I don't want to be them, exactly," she explained, "but I want to be old enough not to dance, but to act. I'd like that."

Posy could not see through the glass window without standing on her toes. Suddenly watching the ballet rehearsal she got up on to her points. She was only wearing her sandals, but she did not seem worried by the position. Pauline nudged Petrova.

"Look at Posy."

Petrova looked. Then both of them tried to stand up on their toes, but they could not - it hurt. Posy was not looking at them; but she lolled against the door balanced on her points as easily as if they were her flat feet. Petrova said at last:

"Could you walk on your toes like that, Posy?"

Posy looked down at her feet as if surprised at the way they were behaving. Then she walked down teh passage. She was perfectly easy on her points, as though it was ordinary to walk on them. Pauline and Petrova did not show her how impressed they were, as they thought it would be bad for her. But on the way home, Pauline said:

"You know, Petrova, I do think Posy really has got rather nice little feet."

Petrova nodded.

"I shouldn't wonder if she danced terribly well."

The Books: "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" (J.K. Rowling)

Next book on the shelf ... (we're in my children's and young adult bookshelves, by the way):

Next book on the shelf is Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling.

A massive swooping book (which, broken record, I could not put down) - with a tragedy at the end - something I didn't see coming.

But I chose a girlie excerpt, because I'm a girl, and I enjoy the high drama of teen romances. I especially love unrequited love.

Excerpt from Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling.

Harry could not see Hermione at the Gryffindor celebration party, which was in full swing when he arrived. Renewed cheers and clapping greeted his appearance, and he was soon surrounded by a mob of people congratulating him. What with trying to shake off the Creevey brothers, who wanted a blow-by-blow match analysis, and the large group of girls that encircled him, laughing at his least amusing comments and batting their eyelids, it was some time before he could try and find Ron. At last, he extricated himself from Romilda Vane, who was hinting heavily that she would like to go to Slughorn's Christmas party with him. As he was ducking toward the drinks table, he walked straight into Ginny, Arnold the Pygmy Puff riding on her shoulder and Crookshanks mewing hopefully at her heels.

"Looking for Ron?" she asked, smirking. "He's over there, the filthy hypocrite."

Harry looked into the corner she was indicating. There, in full view of the whole room, stood Ron wrapped so closely around Lavender Brown it was hard to tell whose hands were whose.

"It looks like he's eating her face off, doesn't it?" said Ginny dispassionately. "But I suppose he's got to refine his technique somehow. Good game, Harry."

She patted him on the arm; Harry felt a swooping sensation in his stomach, but then she walked off to help herself to more butterbeer. Crookshanks trotted after her, his yellow eyes fixed upon Arnold.

Harry turned away from Ron, who did not look like he would be surfacing soon, just as the portrait hole was closing. With a sinking feeling, he thought he saw a mane of bushy brown hair whipping out of sight.

He darted forward, sidestepped Romilda Vane again, and pushed open the portrait of the Fat Lady. The corridor outside seemed to be deserted.

"Hermione!"

He found her in the first unlocked classroom he tried. She was sitting on the teacher's desk, alone except for a small ring of twittering yellow birds circling her head, which she had clearly just conjured out of midair. Harry could not help admiring her spellwork at a time like this.

"Oh, hell, Harry," she said in a brittle voice. "I was just practicing."

"Yeah ... they're - er - really good ..." said Harry.

He had no idea what to say to her. He was just wondering whether there was any chance that she had not noticed Ron, that she had merely left the room because the party was a little too rowdy, when she said, in an unnaturally high-pitched voice, "Ron seems to be enjoying the celebration."

"Er ... does he?" said Harry.

"Don't pretend you didn't see him," said Hermione. "He wasn't exactly hiding it, was --"

The door behind them burst open. To Harry's horror, Ron came in, laughing, pulling Lavender by the hand.

"Oh," he said, drawing up short at the sight of Harry and Hermione.

"Oops!" said Lavender, and she backed out of the room, giggling. The door swung shut behind her.

There was a horrible, swelling, billowing silence. Hermione was staring at Ron, who refused to look at her, but said with an odd mixture of bravado and awkwardness, "Hi, Harry! Wondered where you'd got to!"

Hermione slid off the desk. The little flock of golden birds continued to twitter in circles around her head so that she looked like a strange, feathery model of the solar system.

"You shouldn't leave Lavender waiting outside," she said quietly. "She'll wonder where you've gone."

She walked very slowly and erectly toward the door. Harry glanced at Ron, who was looking relieved that nothing worse had happened.

"Oppugno!" came a shriek from the doorway.

Harry spun around to see Hermione pointing her wand at Ron, her expression wild: The little flock of birds was speeding like a hail of fat golden bullets toward Ron, who yelped and covered his face with his hands, but the birds attacked, pecking and clawing at every bit of flesh they could reach.

"Gerremoffme!" he yelled, but with one last look of vindictive fury, Hermione wrenched open the door and disappeared through it. Harry thought he heard a sob before it slammed.

The Books: "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" (J.K. Rowling)

Next book on the shelf ... (we're in my children's and young adult bookshelves, by the way):

Next book on the shelf is Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J.K. Rowling.

Here's the post I wrote directly after finishing the book. I was very taken by the cover of this book - of all the covers (and the artwork is generally amazing) - but the midnight-blues and blacks seemed very evocative to me - and it really goes along with what this whole book is about. The darkest of the series. Harry is alone. Harry is different. We always knew Harry was different - from the beginning - he's got the mark of difference on his forehead. But in the first books, he finds a group of friends, he is accepted (even with that difference), and even embraced. All of that changes in Order of the Phoenix. We see the dark side of being different. Which is: being isolated. Having to go it alone. Only Harry is really equipped to do what must be done. And he doesn't feel ready for it. Who of us feels ready when called? He also resents the fact, almost for the first time, that he is different - that he is "the one". Why is all the responsibility on his shoulders? He's pissed about it. Also, he's dealing with a lot of physical anxiety - his dreams, his itching scar, the taunting voices in his head ... These are all private experiences. His friends can sympathize, but they don't understand. He is alone. This is something any kid can relate to - even if they have not been marked by Voldemort, and go to a school of magic. Harry is a miserable dude in this book - and he makes life miserable for his friends who care about him. Finally, Ron and Hermione kind of just back off from him, because they are sick of him lashing out at them. This book is so true to the upheavals of adolescence. Yes, it takes place in a magical otherworld - but all of that stuff is so right ON, and that's one of the appeals of the books, for me.

I'll post a really creepy excerpt.

I remember reading it for the first time, and thinking: "Okay. This canNOT be a good sign." It's early in the book - and it sets up the whole theme in a really chilling way - a sudden and upsetting separation in perspective from his kindred spirits Ron and Hermione. They do not (and cannot) enter into his experience with him. It's upsetting. Upsetting to be alone.

Excerpt from Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J.K. Rowling.

Here stood the hundred or so horseless stagecoaches that always took the students above first year up to the castle. Harry glanced quickly at them, turned away to keep a lookout for Ron and Hermione, then did a double take.

The coaches were no longer horseless. There were creatures standing between the carriage shafts; if he had had to give them a name, he supposed he would have called them horses, although there was something reptilian about them, too. They were completely fleshless, their black coats clinging to their skeletons, of which every bone was visible. Their heads were dragonish, and their pupil-less eyes white and staring. Wings sprouted from each wither -- vast, black leathery wings that looked as though they ought to belong to giant bats. Standing still and quiet in the gloom, the creatures looked eerie and sinister. Harry could not understand why the coaches were being pulled by these horrible horses when they were quite capable of moving along by themselves.

"Where's Pig?" said Ron's voice, right behind Harry.

"That Luna girl was carrying him," said Harry, turning quickly, eager to consult Ron about Hagrid. "Where d'you reckon - "

" - Hagrid is? I dunno," said Ron, sounding worried. "He'd better be okay ..."

A short distance away, Draco Malfoy, followed by a small gang of cronies including Crabbe, Goyle, and Pansy Parkinson, was pushing some timid-looking second years out of the way so that they could get a coach to themselves. Seconds later Hermione emerged panting from the crowd.

"Malfoy was being absolutely foul to a first year back there. I swear I'm going to report him, he's only had his badge three minutes and he's using it to bully people worse than ever ... Where's Crookshanks?"

"Ginny's got him," said Harry. "There she is ..."

Ginny had just emerged from the crowd, clutching a squirming Crookshanks.

"Thanks," said Hermione, relieving Ginny of the cat. "Come on, let's get a carriage together before they all fill up ..."

"I haven't got Pig yet!" Ron said, but Hermione was already heading off toward the nearest unoccupied coach. Harry remained behind with Ron.

"What are those things, d'you reckon?" he asked Ron, nodding at the horrible horses as the other students surged past them.

"What things?"

"Those horse --"

Luna appeared holding Pigwidgeon's cage in her arms; the tiny owl was twittering excitedly as usual.

"Here you are," she said. "He's a sweet little owl, isn't he?"

"Er ... yeah ... He's all right," said Ron gruffly. "Well, come on then, let's get in ... what were you saying, Harry?"

"I was saying, what are those horse things?" Harry said, as he, Ron, and Luna made for the carriage in which Hermione and Ginny were already sitting.

"What horse things?"

"The horse things pulling the carriages!" said Harry impatiently; they were, after all, about three feet from the nearest one; it was watching them with empty white eyes. Ron, however, gave Harry a perplexed look.

"What are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about - look!"

Harry grabbed Ron's arm and wheeled him about so that he was face-to-face with the winged horse. Ron stared straight at it for a second, then looked back at Harry.

"What am I supposed to be looking at?"

"At the -- there, between the shafts! Harnessed to the coach! It's right there in front --"

But as Ron continued to look bemused, a strange thought occurred to Harry.

"Can't ... can't you see them?"

"See what?"

"Can't you see who's pulling the carriages?"

Ron looked seriously alarmed now.

"Are you feeling all right, Harry?"

"I ... yeah ..."

Harry felt utterly bewildered. The horse was there in front of him, gleaming solidly in the dim light issuing from the station windows behind them, vapor rising from its nostrils in the chilly night air. Yet unless Ron was faking - and it was a very feeble joke if he was - Ron could not see it at all.

"Shall we get in, then?" said Ron uncertainly, looking at Harry as though worried about him.

"Yeah," said Harry. "Yeah, go on ..."

"It's all right," said a dreamy voice from beside Harry as Ron vanished into the coach's dark interior. "You're not going mad or anything. I can see them too."

"Can you?" said Harry desperately, turning to Luna. He could see the bat-winged horses reflected in her wide, silvery eyes.

"Oh yes," said Luna. "I've been able to see them ever since my first day here. They've always pulled the carriages. Don't worry. You're just as sane as I am."

Smiling faintly, she climbed into the musty interior of the carriage after Ron. Not altogether reassured, Harry followed her.

The Books: "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" (J.K. Rowling)

Next book on the shelf ... (we're in my children's and young adult bookshelves, by the way):

Next book on the shelf is Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling.

I had SUCH a blast reading this one in the series, in particular. Not sure why. I just know that I could not put it down. The 'world cup' chapters? Just so inventive - so awesome - you just go deeper and deeper into this 3-dimensional world that Rowling created. And now - in this book - the stakes are ratcheted up a bit. I mean, think about the ending ... think about Cedric. The stakes in the other books were serious, too - but now? It seems to be getting personal. There's a death mark in the sky, things appear to be getting more desperate ... I also, you know, love the little glimmerings of teenage romance that start to bubble up here and there. But there's just so much to say about this book because, of course, it is 10,000 pages long. I remember one summer on vacation with my family looking across the room, and little 6 or 7 year old Cashel was sitting in a chair - one leg crossed over the over - just like my dad sits, and just like my brother sits (with the ankle of the crossed leg resting on the knee of the other leg - so that the crossed leg makes a little shelf) - and Cashel had this massive hardcover book which was practically wider than his torso - resting on the little shelf of his crossed leg - and he was seriously reading, turning the pages. That was the book that got him to the next level, in terms of reading by himself. The first couple of books we would have to read to him. But Maria and Brendan told him he couldn't see the next Harry Potter movie that came out until he read the book all by himself - so Cashel sat down, crossed his leg, and read the whole damn thing.

I had a hard time deciding what to excerpt - so much good stuff - but I finally went with the arrival of the 2 other schools at Hogwarts for the Triwizard Tournament. I just love her descriptions here. And I love Madame Maxime's French accent.

Excerpt from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling.

Harry was starting to feel cold. He wished they'd hurry up ... Maybe the foreign students were preparing a dramatic entrance ... He remembered what Mr. Weasley had said back at the campsite before the Quidditch World Cup: "always the same -- we can't resist showing off when we get together."

And then Dumbledore called out from the back row where he stood with the other teachers -

"Aha! Unless I am very much mistaken, the delegation from Beauxbatons approaches!"

"Where?" said many students eagerly, all looking in different directions.

"There!" yelled a sixth year, pointing over the forest.

Something large, much larger than a broomstick - or, indeed, a hundred broomsticks - was hurtling across the deep blue sky toward the castle, growing larger all the time.

"It's a dragon!" shrieked one of the first years, losing her head completely.

"Don't be stupid ... it's a flying house!" said Dennis Creevey.

Dennis's guess was closer ... As the gigantic black shape skimmed over the treetops of the Forbidden Forest and the lights shining from the castle windows hit it, they saw a gigantic, powder-blue, horse-drawn carriage, the size of a large house, soaring toward them, pulled through the air by a dozen winged horses, all palominos, and each the size of an elephant.

The front three rows of students drew backwards as the carriage hurtled ever lower, coming in to land at a tremendous speed - then, with an almighty crash that made Neville jump backward onto a Slytherin fifth year's foot, the horses' hooves, larger than dinner plates, hit the ground. A second later, the carriage landed too, bouncing upon its vast wheels, while the golden horses tossed their enormous heads and rolled large, fiery red eyes.

Harry just had time to see that the door of the carriage bore a coat of arms (two crossed, golden wands, each emitting three stars) before it opened.

A boy in pale blue robes jumped down from the carriage, bent forward, fumbled for a moment with something on the carriage floor, and unfolded a set of golden steps. He sprang back respectfully. Then Harry saw a shining, high-heeled black shoe emerging from inside of the carriage - a shoe the size of a child's sled - followed, almost immediately, by the largest woman he had ever seen in his life. The size of the carriage, and of the horses, was immediately explained. A few people gasped.

Harry had only ever seen one person as large as this woman in his life, and that was Hagrid: he doubted whether there was an inch difference in their heights. Yet somehow - maybe simply because he was used to Hagrid - this woman (now at the foot of the steps, and looking around at the waiting, wide-eyed crowd) seemed even more unnaturally large. As she stepped into the light flooding from the entrance hall, she was revealed to have a handsome, olive-skinned face, large, black liquid-looking eyes and a rather beaky nose. Her hair was drawn back in a shining knob at the base of her neck. She was dressed from head to foot in black satin, and many magnificent opals gleamed at her throat and on her thick fingers.

Dumbledore started to clap; the students, following his lead, broke into applause too, many of them standing on tiptoe, the better to look at this woman.

Her face relaxed into a gracious smile and she walked forward toward Dumbledore, extending a glittering hand. Dumbledore, though tall himself, had barely to bend to kiss it.

"My dear Madame Maxime," he said. "Welcome to Hogwarts."

"Dumbly-dorr," said Madame Maxime in a deep voice. "I 'ope I find you well?"

"In excellent form, I thank you," said Dumbledore.

"My pupils," said Madame Maxime, waving one of her enormous hands carelessly behind her.

Harry, whose attention had been focused completely upon Madame Maxime, now noticed that about a dozen boys and girls, all, by the look of them, in their late teens, had emerged from the carriage and were now standing behind Madame Maxime. They were shivering, which was unsurprising, given that their robes seemed to be made of fine silk, and none of them were wearing cloaks. A few had wrapped scarves and shawls around their heads. From what Harry could see of them (they were standing in Madame Maxime's enormous shadow), they were staring up at Hogwarts with apprehensive looks on their faces.

" 'As Karkaroff arrived yet?" Madame Maxime asked.

"He should be here any moment," said Dumbledore. "Would you like to wait here and greet him or would you prefer to step inside and warm up a trifle?"

"Warm up, I think," said Madame Maxime. "But ze 'orses --"

"Our Care of Magical Creatures teacher will be delighted to take care of them," said Dumbledore, "the moment he has returned from dealing with a slight situation that has arisen with some of his other - er - charges."

"Skrewts," Ron muttered to Harry, grinning.

"My steeds require - er - forceful 'andling," said Madame Maxime, looking as though she doubed whether any Care of Magical Creatures teacher at Hogwarts could be up to the job. "Zey are very strong ..."

"I assure you that Hagrid will be well up to the job," said Dumbledore, smiling.

"Very well," said Madame Maxime, bowing slightly. "Will you please inform zis 'Agrid zat ze 'orses drink only single-malt whiskey?"

"It will be attended to," said Dumbledore, also bowing.

"Come," said Madame Maxime imperiously to her students, and the Hogwarts crowd parted to allow her and her students to pass up thes tone steps.

"How big d'you reckon Durmstrang's horses are going to be?" Seamus Finnegan said, leaning around Lavendar and Parvati to address Harry and Ron.

"Well, if they're any bigger than this lot, even Hagrid won't be able to handle them," said Harry. "That's if he hasn't been attacked by his skrewts. Wonder what's up with them?"

"Maybe they've escaped," said Ron hopefully.

"Oh, don't say that," said Hermione with a shudder. "Imagine that lot loose on the grounds ..."

They stood, shivering slightly now, waiting for the Durmstrang party to arrive. Most people were gazing hopefully up at the sky. For a few minutes, the silence was broken only by Madame Maxime's huge horses snorting and stamping. But then --

"Can you hear something?" said Ron suddenly.

Harry listened, a loud and oddly eerie noise was drifting toward them from out of the darkness: a muffled rumbling and sucking sound, as though an immense vacuum cleaner were moving along a riverbed ...

"The lake!" yelled Lee Jordan, pointing down at it. "Look at the lake!"

From their position at the top of the lawns overlooking the grounds, they had a clear view of the smooth black surface of the water - except that the surface was suddenly not smooth at all. Some disturbance was taking place deep in the center; great bubbles were forming on the surface, waves were now washing over the muddy banks - and then, out in the very middle of the lake, a whirlpool appeared, as if a giant plug had just been pulled out of the lake's floor ...

What seemed to be a long, black pole began to rise slowly out of the heart of the whirlpool ... and then Harry saw the rigging ...

"It's a mast!" he said to Ron and Hermione.

Slowly, magnificently, the ship rose out of the water, gleaming in the moonlight. It had a strangely skeletal look about it, as though it were a resurrected wreck, and the dim, misty lights shimmering at its portholes looked like ghostly eyes. Finally, with a great sloshing noise, the ship emerged entirely, bobbing on the turbulent water, and began to glide toward the bank. A few moments later, they heard the splash of an anchor being thrown down in the shallows, and the thud of a plank being lowered onto the bank.

People were disembarking; they could see their silhouettes passing the lights in the ship's portholes. All of them, Harry noticed, seemed to be built along the lines of Crabbe and Goyle ... but then, as they drew nearer, walking up the lawns into the light streaming from the entrance hall, he saw that their bulk was really due to the fact that they were wearing cloaks of some kind of shaggy, matted fur. But the man who was leading them up to the castle was wearing furs of a different sort: sleek and silver, like his hair.

"Dumbledore!" he called heartily as he walked up the slope. "How are you, my dear fellow, how are you?"

"Blooming, thank you, Professor Karkaroff," Dumbledore replied.

Karkaroff had a fruity, unctuous voice; when he stepped into the light pouring from the front door of the castle they saw that he was tall and thin like Dumbledore, but his white hair was short, and his goatee (finishing in a small curl) did not entirely hide his rather weak chin. When he reached Dumbledore, he shook hands with both of his own.

"Dear old Hogwarts," he said, looking up at the castle and smiling; his teeth were rather yellow, and Harry noticed that his smile did not extend to his eyes, which remained cold and shrewd. "How good it is to be here, how good ... Viktor, coming along, into the warmth ... you don't mind, Dumbledore? Viktor has a slight head cold ..."

Karkaroff beckoned forward one of his students. As the boy passed, Harry caught a glimpse of a prominent curved nose and thick black eyebrows. He didn't need the punch on the arm Ron gave him, or the hiss in his ear, to recognize that profile.

"Harry -- it's Krum!"

The Books: "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban" (J.K. Rowling)

Next book on the shelf ... (we're in my children's and young adult bookshelves, by the way):

Next book on the shelf is Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling.

I didn't know what excerpt to choose! The dementor appearing on the train? The patronus training? Professor Trelawney - one of the goofiest characters ever created (brilliantly portrayed in the movie as well by Emma Thompson) - I just think her whole thing is so FUNNY. But ... well ... I decided to go with this one.

The "fat lady" has disappeared from her painting - which has now been slashed to bits. Dumbledore orders everyone in the school to go into the Great Hall and stay there until the entire castle has been searched. Crisis! Thank goodness we have the priggish git Percy in charge! Every school must have a fascist-dictator-in-training!

This is the book where Harry seems to start dealing, emotionally, with what happened to his parents. The dementors affect on him is devastating - he hears his parents last moments of life - screaming to one another, trying to save their baby son ... Harry seems to be both weakened and strengthened by these glimpses into the horrors of the past.

Excerpt from Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling.

Professor Dumbledore sent all the Gryffindors back to the Great Hall, where they were joined ten minutes later by the students from Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin, who all looked extremely confused.

"The teachers and I need to conduct a thorough search of the castle," Professor Dumbledore told them as Professors McGonagall and Flitwick closed all doors into the hall. "I'm afraid that, for your own safety, you will have to spend the night here. I want the prefects to stand guard over the entrances to the hall and I am leaving the Head Boy and Girl in charge. Any disturbance should be reported to me immediately," he added to Percy, who was looking immensely proud and important.

Professor Dumbledore paused, about to leave the hall, and said, "Oh, yes, you'll be needing ..."

One casual wave of his wand and the long tables flew to the edges of the hall and stood themselves against the walls; another wave, and the floor was covered with hundreds of squashy purple sleeping bags.

"Sleep well," said Professor Dumbledore, closing the door behind him.

The hall immediately began to buzz excitedly; the Gryffindors were telling the rest of the school what had just happened.

"Everyone into their sleeping bags!" shouted Percy. "Come on, now, no more talking! Lights out in ten minutes!"

"C'mon," Ron said to Harry and Hermione; they seized three sleeping bags and dragged them into a corner.

"Do you think Black's still in the castle?" Hermione whispered anxiously.

"Dumbledore obviously thinks he might be," said Ron.

"It's very lucky he picked tonight, you know," said Hermione as they climbed fully dressed into their sleeping bags and propped themselves on their elbows to talk. "The one night we weren't in the tower ..."

"I reckon he's lost track of time, being on the run," said Ron. "Didn't realize it was Halloween. Otherwise he'd have come bursting in here."

Hermione shuddered.

All around them, people were asking one another the same question. "How did he get in?"

"Maybe he knows how to Apparate," said a Ravenclaw a few feet away. "Just appear out of thin air, you know."

"Disguised himself, probably," said a Hufflepuff fifth year.

"He could've flown in," suggested Dean Thomas.

"Hoestly, am I the only person who's ever bothered to read Hogwarts: A History?" said Hermione crossly to Harry and Ron.

"Probably," said Ron. "Why?"

"Because the castle's protected by more than walls, you know," said Hermione. "There are all sorts of enchantments on it, to stop people entering by stealth. You can't just Apparate in here. And I'd like to see the disguise that could fool those dementors. They're guarding every single entrance to the grounds. They'd have seen him fly in too. And Filch knows all the secret passages, they'll have them covered ..."

"The lights are going out now!" Percy shouted. "I want everyone in their sleeping bags and no more talking!"

The candles all went out at once. The only light now came from the silvery ghosts, who were drifting about talking seriously to the prefects, and the enchanted ceiling, which, like the sky outside, was scattered with stars. What with that, and the whispering that still filled the hall, Harry felt as though he were sleeping outdoors in a light wind.

Once every hour, a teacher would reappear in the hall to check that everything was quiet. Around three in the morning, when many students had finally fallen asleep, Professor Dumbledore came in. Harry watched him looking around for Percy, who had been prowling between the sleeping bags, telling people off for talking. Percy was only a short way away from Harry, Ron, and Hermione, who quickly pretended to be asleep as Dumbledore's footsteps drew nearer.

"Any sign of him, Professor?" asked Percy in a whisper.

"No. All well here?"

"Everything under control, sir."

"Good. There's no point moving them all now. I've found a temporary guardian for the Gryffindor portrait hole. You'll be able to move them back in tomorrow."

"And the Fat Lady, sir?"

"Hiding in a map of Argyllshire on the second floor. Apparently she refused to let Black in without the password, so he attacked. She's still very distressed, but once she's calmed down, I'll have Mr. Filch restore her."

Harry heard the door of the hall creak open again, and more footsteps.

"Headmaster!" It was Snape. Harry kept quite still, listening hard. "The whole of the third floor has been searched. He's not there. And Filch has done the dungeons; nothing there either."

"What about the Astronomy tower? Professor Trelawney's room? The Owlery?"

"All searched ..."

"Very well, Severus. I didn't really expect Black to linger."

"Have you any theory as to how he got in, Professor?" asked Snape.

Harry raised his head very slightly off his arms to free his other ear.

"Many, Severus, each of them is as unlikely as the next."

Harry opened his eyes a fraction and squinted up to where they stood; Dumbledore's back was to him, but he could see Percy's face, rapt with attention, and Snape's profile, which looked angry.

"You remember the conversation we had, Headmaster, just before - ah - the start of term?" said Snape, who was barely opening his lips, as though trying to block Percy out of the conversation.

"I do, Severus," said Dumbledore, and there was something like warning in his voice.

"It seems - almost impossible - that Black could have entered the school without inside help. I did express my concerns when you appointed --"

"I do not believe a single person inside this castle would have helped Black enter it," said Dumbledore, and his tone made it so clear that the subject was closed that Snape didn't reply. "I must go down to the dementors," said Dumbledore. "I said I would inform them when the search was complete."

"Didn't they want to help, sir?" said Percy.

"Oh, yes," said Dumbledore coldly. "But I'm afraid no demetor will cross the threshold of this castle while I am headmaster."

Percy looked slightly abashed. Dumbledore left the hall, walking quickly and quietly. Snape stood for a moment, watching the headmaster with an expression of deep resentment on his face; then he too left.

Harry glanced sideways at Ron and Hermione. Both of them had their eyes open too, reflecting the starry ceiling.

"What was all that about?" Ron mouthed.

The Books: "Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets" (J.K. Rowling)

Next book on the shelf ... (we're in my children's and young adult bookshelves, by the way):

Next book on the shelf is Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets by J.K. Rowling.

The books are so episodic that I found it hard to pick out an excerpt. Like - we have the flying car which leads to the Whomping Willow. But - once that's over, it's over - and onto the next thing. (I find parts of the books tedious for that reason - It ends up reading like: "And then THIS happened and then THIS happened and then THIS happened ..." and eventually I'm like: "So?" I get bored with the episodic nature of the books sometimes. The main PLOT-LINE of each book - the ARC, if you will - is there in the titles. The final battle, or stand-off - is always in the title - but I feel like some of the episodes included are extraneous and could have been chopped earlier along in the process.) All of this is to say I flipped through the book, reminiscing about my favorite parts - I love the ridiculousness of Lockhart - He is such a funny character. I love how the Weasleys come and save Harry in the beginning of the book. This is our first introduction to The Burrow, and what a cozy chaotic happy place it is. You just love being there, and you're happy for Harry to have such good friends.

Anyway, I decided - as an excerpt - to go with the Deathday Party (or at least part of it). I just found some of the images really arresting, and cool - and I also love Rowlings cleverness and wit here. The books are funny - that's one of the reasons I am so hooked on them. Like - the group of "gloomy nuns" at the party ... It's just such a funny random image. I love that detail.

Also, I am SURE that Rowling was subtly referencing Miss Havisham's decaying wedding feast in this section. Can't be a coincidence.

Also, please. I love Ron so much I frankly do not know what to do with myself.

Excerpt from Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets by J.K. Rowling.

The passageway leading to Nearly Headless Nick's party had been lined with candles, too, though the effect was far from cheerful. These were long, thin, jet-black tapers, all bursting bright-blue, casting a dim, ghostly light even over their own living faces. The temperature dropped with every step they took. As Harry shivered and drew his robes tightly around him, he heard what sounded like a thousand fingernails scraping an enormous blackboard.

"Is that supposed to be music?" Ron whispered. They turned a corner and saw Nearly Headless Nick standing at a doorway hung with black velvet drapes.

"My dear friends," he said mournfululy, 'Welcome, welcome ... so pleased you could come ..."

He swept off his plumed hat and bowed them inside.

It was an incredible sight. The dungeon was full of hundreds of pearly-white, translucent people, mostly drifting around a crowded dance floor, waltzing to the dreadful, quavering sound of thirty musical saws, played by an orchestra on a raised, black-draped platform. A chandelier overhead blazed midnight-blue with a thousand more black candles. Their breath rose in a mist before them; it was like stepping into a freezer.

"Shall we have a look around?" Harry suggested, wanting to warm up his feet.

"Careful not to walk through anyone," said Ron nervously, and they set off around the edge of the dance floor. They passed a group of gloomy nuns, a ragged man wearing chains, and the Fat Friar, a cheerful Hufflepuff ghost, who was talking to a knight with an arrow sticking out of his forehead. Harry wasn't surprised to see that the Bloody Baron, a gaunt, staring Slytherin ghost covered in silver bloodstains, was being given a wide berth by the other ghosts.

"Oh, no," said Hermione, stopping abruptly. "Turn back, turn back, I don't want to talk to Moaning Myrtle --"

"Who?" said Harry as they backtracked quickly.

"She haunts one of the toilets in the girls' bathroom on the first floor," said Hermione.

"She haunts a toilet?"

"Yes. It's been out of order all year because she keeps having tantrums and flooding the place. I never went in there anyway if I could avoid it; it's awful trying to have a pee with her wailing at you --"

"Look, food!" said Ron.

On the other side of the dungeon was a long table, also covered in black velvet. They approached it eagerly but next moment had stopped in their tracks, horrified. The smell was quite disgusting. Large, rotten fish were laid on handsome silver platters; cakes, burned charcoal-black, were heaped on salvers; there was a great maggoty haggis, a slab of cheese covered in furry green mold and in pride of place, an enormous gray cake in the shape of a tombstone, with tar-like icing forming the words.

SIR NICHOLAS DE MIMSY-PORPINGTON
DIED 31ST OCTOBER 1492

Harry watched, amazed, as a porly ghost approached the table, crouched low, and walked through it, his mouth held wide so that it passed through one of the stinking salmon.

"Can you taste it if you walk through it?" Harry asked him.

"Almost," said the ghost sadly and he drifted away.

"I expect they've let it rot to give it a stronger flavor," said Hermione knowledgably, pinching her nose and leaning closer to look at the putrid haggis.

"Can we move? I feel sick," said Ron.

The Books: "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" (J.K. Rowling)

Next book on the shelf ... (we're in my children's and young adult bookshelves, by the way):

Next book on the shelf is Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling. Here we go!!!

Well, I can't resist. I need to post an excerpt from the first chapter. I'll just explain why. This is a series - this is a phenomenon ... So it is interesting to look at the BEGINNING. I remember reading that first chapter for the first time - and at the last paragraph - I literally got a little goosebumpy.

This was a true BEGINNING. It doesn't feel like a fluke that this series took off, and that Harry Potter became as huge as he did - especially not when you read that first chapter, and even more specially: when you read the last paragraph of the first chapter.

I am probably not explaining myself well. But I think JK Rowling knows exactly what she's doing - and while it may have been one of those lucky strikes of fortune that helped propel this book into mythic status - I still imagine Rowling sitting in the coffee shop, scribbling this first chapter in a cheap looseleaf notebook .... or on stray napkins ... whatever piece of paper was handy. There was no guarantee. There are no guarantees. The success of Harry Potter was not a foregone conclusion, even though the whole thing seems inevitable now. I think that if the first chapter were not so, well, perfect ... the series might not have taken off as it did. How can you not keep on reading?

But also (in my opinion - and not to overthink this) - there's a little bit more to it - than just setting up a cool story. And whatever it is in that last paragraph.

The only word I can think of to use is an appropriate one - Magic.

Suddenly, in that last paragraph ... there is magic. Basically, the microscope becomes a telescope, in one fell swoop. You can see it in the writing. Minute detail ... and then pulling back, way way back ... Even now, re-reading it this morning, I got a little, ehm, lump in my throat, and felt the goosebumps. It WORKS.

Here's the end of that first chapter:

Excerpt from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling.

If the motorcycle was huge, it was nothing to the man sitting astride it. He was almost twice as tall as a normal man and at least five times as wide. He looked simply too big to be allowed, and so wild - long tangles of bushy black hair and beard hhid most of his face, he had hands the size of trash can lids, and his feet in their leather boots were like baby dolphins. In his vast, muscular arms he was holding a bundle of blankets.

"Hagrid," said Dumbledore, sounding relieved. "At last. And where did you get that motorcycle?"

"Borrowed it, Professor Dumbledore, sir," said the giant, climbing carefully off the motorcycle as he spoke. "Young Sirius Black lent it to me. I've got him, sir."

"No problems, were there?"

"No, sir -- house was almost destroyed, but I got him out all right before the Muggles started swarmin' around. He fell asleep as we was flyin' over Bristol."

Dumbledore and Professor McGonagall bent forward over the bundle of blankets. Inside, just visible, was a baby boy, fast asleep. Under a tuft of jet-black hair over his forehead they could see a curiously shaped cut, like a bolt of lightning.

"Is that where --" whispered Professor McGonagall.

"Yes," said Dumbledore. "He'll have the scar forever."

"Couldn't you do something about it, Dumbledore?"

"Even if I could, I wouldn't. Scars can come in handy. I have one above my left knee that is a perfect map of the London Underground. Well - give him here, Hagrid - we'd better get this over with."

Dumbledore took Harry in his arms and turned toward the Dursleys' house.

"Could I -- could I say good-bye to him, sir?" asked Hagrid. He bent his great, shaggy head over Harry and gave him what must have been a very scratchy, whiskery kiss. Then, suddenly, Hagrid let out a howl like a wounded dog.

"Shhh!" hissed Professor McGonagall, "you'll wake the Muggles!"

"S - s - sorry," sobbed Hagrid, taking out a large, spotted handkerchief and burying his face in it. "But I c-c-can't stand it - Lily and James dead - an' poor little Harry off ter live with Muggles --"

"Yes, yes, it's all very sad, but get a grip on yourself, Hagrid, or we'll be found," Professor McGonagall whispered, patting Hagrid gingerly on the arm as Dumbledore stepped over the low garden wall and walked to the front door. He laid Harry gently on the doorstep, took a letter out of his cloak, tucked it inside Harry's blankets, and then came back to the other two. For a full minute the three of them stood and looked at the little bundle; Hagrid's shoulders shook, Professor McGonagall blinked furiously, and the twinkling light that usually shone from Dumbledore's eyes seemed to have gone out.

"Well," said Dumbledore finally, "that's that. We've no business staying here. We may as well go and join the celebrations."

"Yeah," said Hagrid in a very muffled voice, "I'll be takin' Sirius his bike back. G'night, Professor McGonagall - Professor Dumbledore, sir."

Wiping his streaming eyes on his jacket sleeve, Hagrid swung himself onto the motorcycle and kicked the engine into life; with a roar it rose into the air and off into the night.

"I shall see you soon, I expect, Professor McGonagall," said Dumbledore, nodding to her. Professor McGonagall blew her nose in reply.

Dumbledore turned and walked back down the street. On the corner he stopped and took out the silver Put-Outer. He clicked it once, and twelve balls of light sped back to their street lamps so that Privet Drive glowed suddenly orange and he could make out a tabby cat slinking around the corner at the other end of the street. He could just see the bundle of blankets on the step of number four.

"Good luck, Harry," he murmured. He turned on his heel and with a swish of his cloak, he was gone.

A breeze ruffled the neat hedges of Privet Drive, which lay silent and tidy under the inky sky, the very last place you would expect astonishing things to happen. Harry Potter rolled over inside his blankets without waking up. One small hand closed on the letter beside him and he slept on, not knowing he was special, not knowing he was famous, not knowing he would be woken in a few hours' time by Mrs. Dursley's scream as she opened the front door to put out the milk bottles, nor that he would spend the next few weeks being prodded and pinched by his cousin Dudley ... He couldn't know that at this very moment, people meeting in secret all over the country were holding up their glasses and saying in hushed voices: "To Harry Potter - the boy who lived!"

The Books: "The Westing Game" (Ellen Raskin)

Next book on the shelf ... (we're in my children's and young adult bookshelves, by the way):

Next book on the shelf is The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin.

This is such a great book that I'm not going to say anything about it. I'm just going to post an excerpt and DARE you to not want to read further.

This is the first chapter of the book, called 'Sunset Towers'.

Excerpt from The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin.

The sun sets in the west (just about everyone knows that), but Sunset Towers faced east. Strange!

Sunset Towers faced east and had no towers. This glittery, glassy apartment house stood alone on the Lake Michigan shore five stories high. Five empty stories high.

Then one day (it happened to be the Fourth of July), a most uncommon-looking delivery boy rode around town slipping letters under the doors of the chosen tenants-to-be. The letters were signed Barney Northrup.

The delivery boy was sixty-two years old, and there was no such person as Barney Northrup.

_______________________________________

Dear Lucky One:

Here it is - the apartment you've always dreamed of, at a rent you can afford, in the newest, most luxurious building on Lake Michigan:

SUNSET TOWERS

You h ave to see it to believe it. But these unbelievably elegant apartments will be shown by appointment only. So hurry, there are only a few left!!! Call me now at 276-7474 for this once-in-a-lifetime offer.

Your servant,
Barney Northrup

P.S. I am also renting ideal space for:

The Books: "The Mysterious Disappearance of Leon (I Mean Noel)" (Ellen Raskin)

Next book on the shelf ... (we're in my children's and young adult bookshelves, by the way):

Next book on the shelf is The Mysterious Disappearance of Leon (I Mean Noel) by Ellen Raskin.

Holy moly, how all the O'Malley kids loved this book. Actually, we were huge Ellen Raskin buffs - but this was the book that started it all. Ellen Raskin is amazing - her books are intricate whodunits - the reader becomes a participant in solving the mystery (actively - in Leon (I Mean Noel) - where she has encouraging footnotes shouting at us: "REMEMBER THIS PART. WRITE IT DOWN. OR PUT A BOOKMARK HERE. THIS IS A CLUE!" Etc. Her books are soooo fun. She's kind of a genius. Not only does she create these masterful mysteries - almost interactive - but her characters are great as well. My favorite of hers is The Westing Game - I can't recommend that one highly enough - but The Mysterious Disappearance of Leon (I mean Noel) was my introduction to Ellen Raskin.

I haven't read this book in years but here is what I remember:

It opens with 2 families - the Fishs and the Carillons - they're neighbors - they both have farms, and one family grows only tomatoes and the other family grows only potatoes. They are having a rough year, financially - so they get together on Thanksgiving, pool their resources for a dinner. The Carillons have a little boy named Leon and the Fishs have a little girl named Caroline only everyone calls her Little Dumpling. (Everyone in this book has multiple names. Which you can guess from the title) Anyway - one family brings a bunch of tomatoes, the other brings potatoes - and they wonder: Hmm, what can we create out of this for a Thanksigivng dinner? They end up making soup - which turns out to be so spectacularly good - that they end up selling the recipe I believe and making gazillions of dollars. (Sorry - the details are not clear). Oh - but before that happens - the two sets of parents decide to cement their legacy, keep it all in the family, so to speak, by marrying their two children. Who are only, what, 7 years old? The two little kids - Little Dumpling and Leon, stand in the living room, with runny noses, their mittens dangling from their wrists, and they are promised to one another.

So. Long story longer. Leon and Little Dumpling of course have to go ahead and grow up before they can actually live as a married couple - but now - instead of everyone calling Little Dumpling Caroline - or Caroline Little Dumpling - everyone (including her parents) call her Mrs. Carillon. Even when she's only 9 years old. This is such a wacky book.

Leon and Little Dumpling are separated for most of their childhood. Throughout that time, Leon sends Little Dumpling cryptic messages (one a year) - which sound very benign - "I'm growing a red mustache" - but end up being clues later on.

At the age of 19 they are reunited ... and they are sailing in a boat - and a huge wave comes and knocks the boat over - and as Leon disappears under the water he glub-blubs one last message - which is totally mysterious - and ends up sending Little Dumpling on a worldwide search for him - because - he didn't drown ... the hospital confirms that for her, they released him ....? What was he trying to tell her? What did those last glub-glubs mean?

This is a book that is like a word game. You have to cut and paste different pieces of words to see if when put together again they make sense. It's like a game of hangman or Jeopardy - where you have to visualize what the complete word or phrase is when you only have a few letters.

This is all I remember of the book. My siblings will probably remember more. I can't even remember if it's a happy ending. But it's totally engrossing, and loads of fun. I read it when I was about 10.

Here's an excerpt, from early on in the book - Notice her little warning guideposts in the footnotes. So much fun to read when you're 10 - and as an adult!

Excerpt from The Mysterious Disappearance of Leon (I Mean Noel) by Ellen Raskin.

At times she thought those seven long years of pokes and jabs and smells of simmering soups would never end, then suddenly, one day, her dream came true.

Leon's fourteenth card with the fourteenth message had arrived.

____________________________

Nineteen-year-old Mrs. Carillon locked the last suitcase and studied herself once more in the full-length mirror. She was singing one of Leon's messages at the top of her lungs, because she was happy, and because it hurt Miss Anna Oglethorpe's sensitive ears.

"Grown a mustache - it's red, red, red ..." *

Every December 9th Leon had written her a message inside identical wedding anniversary cards decorated with violets. Mrs. Carillon knew every word of the fourteen messages by heart; still, she wondered what her husband looked like as a grown man. Would she recognize him?

"No problem," she thought as she pinned a stray black curl in place. "Leon, I mean Noel, is sure to recognize me." She appeared taller than her five feet in her purple high-heeled shoes; but she had to admit that she still looked something like a dumpling. Besides, she was wearing a purple-flowered dress.

A car horn honked. Mr. Banks had arrived to drive her to the station.

Mrs. Carillon grabbed her bags stuffed with purple-flowered resort clothes and ran down the stairs.

"Good-by soup! Good-by house!" she shouted.

"And good-by, forever, Miss Anna Oglethorpe!"

LEON'S FOURTEEN MESSAGES**

1. Hi! Leon
2. I am fine. How are you? Leon
3. I hate school. I'm the smallest one here. Leon
4. Got to wear glasses because I can't see the blackboard. Leon
5. My best friend is called Pinky. Leon
6. I'm writing the story of my life. You are in it. Leon
7. I'm going to wear a black tie to mourn my folks from now on and always. Leon
8. Who wrote that awful soup song? I can't stand it! I hate the song as much as I hate the soup. In fact, I hate all soup - except won ton. Leon (I hate my name, too!)
9. Pinky taught me how to ride a horse - it's great fun, except the stable only has slow nags. I think I'll get a horse of my own. Noel (That's my new name. It's much more genteel, don't you think?)
10. Help! Mr. Banks won't let me buy a horse. Try and make him change his mind. Noel
11. Found a great job. Tell tight-wad Banks to keep his old riding boots - I don't need handouts. Noel
12. Grown a moustache. It's red! Noel
13. Shaved off my moustache. Noel
14. Meet me at the Seaside Hotel, Palm Beach, this Friday. Noel

Leon? Noel!

No one in the lobby of the Seaside Hotel recognized her, or her purple-flowered dress. She announced herself to the desk clerk and was handed a key to room 1164. No one was in the room.

Mrs. Carillon wondered whether today was Friday; then she saw the note in the familiar handwriting propped up on the desk.

Put on a bathing suit and meet me at the dock. Noel

No one seemed to recogniz her, or her purple-flowered swimsuit. She jostled through the throng of vacationers looking for - no, not a black tie, no one wore neckties with bathing trunks - glasses, perhaps, and a red ... Suddenly, she saw him.

"Leon, I mean Noel!" Mrs. Carillon shrieked and threw her arms around a skinny man with brown hair, red moustache, and sunglasses. The little man struggled desperately to free himself from her tight embrace.

She didn't realize her mistake until a pretty blonde woman hissed, "Seymour, what are you doing?" and yanked him out of her arms. Mrs. Carillon watched the couple hasten away. She was too confused and embarrassed to feel someone tapping her on the shoulder.

"Mrs. Carillon?" And another tap.

Mrs. Carillon spun around. A tall, clean-shaven man with brown hair and sunglasses smiled down at her.

"Leon?" she asked in a hoarse whisper.

"Noel," he replied.

THE LAST MESSAGE***

It was an awkward moment, not at all the way she had dreamed it would be. Fourteen years had passed; they had grown up into strangers.

"We still have time for a sail," Noel said at last. "Let's go!"

Mrs. Carillon studied her handsom husband as he guided the sailboat out of the bay. "I never would have recognized you," she said.

Noel turned to her and smiled.

She smiled.

They sat there and smiled.

They didn't move; the boat didn't move. It hung suspended on the crest of a monstrous wave. It teetered. It crashed into the thrashing sea, smashed.

Mrs. Carillon somersaulted into the wild water, rose to the surface, climbed onto the broken hull, and looked about her.

"Leon, Leon!" she shouted at the bobbing head a few yards away. The head went under; the head came up; the head went under; the head came up.

"Leon!" she cried.

And he answered:

"Noel glub C blub all .... I glub new ..." ****

__________________________

Mrs. Carillon didn't know what hit her, or what happened next. Two days later she woke up in a hospital with an aching head.

"How's Leon -- Noel?" were her first words.

"Leon Noel?" repeated the nurse. "You must mean the man who was rescued with you. Just a cut on the elbow. We patched him up right away and let him go."

Mrs. Carillon returned to the hotel, but Noel was no longer registered there. The only message was a checkroom stub for her luggage. She finally found a bellhop who remembered delivering a plane ticket to a man of her description.

"A ticket to New York, I think."

* Message 12. Strange, for Leon had brown hair, but not impossible.

** Some very important clues here. You don't have to memorize all the messages as Mrs. Carillon did; a bookmark will do.

*** Hereupon referred to as the glub-blubs.

**** That's it! Copy it down, or memorize it; most of all, try to solve it.

The Books: "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" (C.S. Lewis)

Next book on the shelf ... (we're in my children's and young adult bookshelves, by the way):

Next book on the shelf is The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis.

I mean, please.

This book was read out loud to our 4th grade class. Unforgettable. I still remember my first encounter with this book. The magic, the heartache, and ... just the writing - the DETAIL! It was always the DETAILS that got me, sucked me in. The description of Mr. Tumnus' cave ... I mean, honestly. Who would not want to live in that cozy spot?? The terrifying first meeting between the White Witch and Edmund ... who wasn't fascinated by Turkish Delight? Who didn't relate to Edmund in that scene? But the way that Witch appears, and the two line description of her made me go all goosebumpy when I was a kid and I still go all goosbumpy when I read it: "Her face was white - not merely pale, but white like snow or paper or icing sugar, except for her very red mouth. It was a beautiful face in other respects, but proud and cold and stern." See? Goosebumps. Details. The smell and scratch of the fur coats in the wardrobe, and the sudden wintry chill. That damn lamppost. Etc. I could go on and on and on and on ...

I'll post what may be a rather innocuous excerpt except for the brief hint of things ominous to come at the very end - but it's one of my favorite bits of writing in the entire book. It was when I was a kid, too. I remember my mouth almost watering when I heard this part read to me for the first time. The food smells, the coziness after the winter, the roaring fire, the melty butter ...

CS Lewis made that world real.

From The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis.

Above the dam there was what ought to have been a deep pool but was now of course a level floor of dark green ice. And below the dam, much lower down, was more ice, but instead of being smooth this was all frozen into the foamy and wavy shapes in which the water had been rushing along at the very moment when the frost came. And where the water had been trickling over and spurting through the dam there was now a glittering wall of icicles, as if the side of the dam had been covered all over with flowers and wreaths and festoons of the purest sugar. And out in the middle, and partly on the top of the dam, was a funny little house shaped rather like an enormous bee-hive and from a hole in the roof smoke was going up, so that when you saw it (especially if you were hungry) you at once thought of cooking and became hungrier than you were before.

That was what the others chiefly noticed, but Edmund noticed something else. A little lower down the river there was another small river which came down another small valley to join it. And looking up that valley, Edmund could see two small hills, and he was almost sure they were the two hills which the White Witch had pointed out to him when he parted from her at the lamp-post that other day. And then between them, he thought, must be her palace, only a mile off or less. And he thought about Turkish Delight and about being a King ("And I wonder how Peter will like that?" he asked himself) and horrible ideas came into his head.

"Here we are," said Mr. Beaver, "and it looks as if Mrs. Beaver is expecting us. I'll lead the way. But be careful and don't slip."

The top of the dam was wide enough to walk on, though not (for humans) a very nice place to walk because it was covered with ice, and though the frozen pool was level with it on one side, there was a nasty drop to the lower river on the other. Along this route Mr. Beaver led them in single file right out to the middle where they could look a long way up the river and a long way down it. And when they had reached the middle they were at the door of the house.

"Here we are, Mrs. Beaver," said Mr. Bever, "I've found them. Here are the Sons and Daughters of Adam and Eve" -- and they all went in/

The first thing Lucy noticed as she went in was a burring sound, and the first thing she saw was a kind-looking old she-beaver sitting in the corner with a thread in her mouth working busily at her sewing machine and it was from it that the sound came. She stopped her work and got up as soon as the children came in.

"So you've come at last!" she said, holding out both her wrinkled old paws. "At last! To think that ever I should live to see this day! The potatoes are on boiling and the kettle's singing and I daresay, Mr. Beaver, you'll get us some fish."

"That I will," said Mr. Beaver and he went out of the house (Peter went with him) and across the ice of the deep pool to where he had a little hole in the ice which he kept open every day with his hatchet. They took a pail with them, Mr. Beaver sat down quietly at the edge of the hole (he didn't seem to mind it's being so chilly) looked hard into it, then suddenly shot in his paw, and before you could say Jack Robinson had whisked out a beautiful trout. Then he did it all over again until they had a fine catch of fish.

Meanwhile the girls were helping Mrs. Beaver to fill the kettle and lay the table and cut the bread and put the plates in the oven to heat and draw a huge jug of beer for Mr. Beaver from a barrel which stood in one corner of the house, and to put on the frying pan and get the dripping hot. Lucy thought the Beavers had a very snug little home though it was not at all like Mr. Tumnus's cave. There were no books or pictures and instead of beds there were bunks, like on board ship, built into the wall. And there were hams and strings of onions hanging from the roof and against the walls were gum boots and oilskins and hatchets and pairs of shears and spades and trowels and things for carrying mortar in and fishing rods and fishing nets and sacks. And the cloth on the table tho' very clean was very rough.

Just as the frying pan was nicely hissing Peter and Mr. Beaver came in with the fish which Mr. Beaver had already opened with his knife and cleaned out in the open air. You can think how good the new-caught fish smelled while they were frying and how the hungry children longed for them to be done and how very much hungrier still they had become before Mrs. Beaver said, "Now we're nearly ready." Susan drained the potatoes and then put them all back in the empty pot to dry on the side of the range while Lucy was helping Mrs. Beaver to dish up the trout, so that in a very few minutes everyone was drawing up stools (it was all three-legged stools in the Beavers' house except for Mrs. Beaver's own special rocking chair beside the fire) and preparing to enjoy themselves. There was a jug of creamy milk for the children (Mr. Beaver stuck to beer) and a great big lump of deep yellow butter in the middle of the table from which everyone took as much as he wanted to go with his potatoes and all the children thought - and I agree with them - that there's nothing to beat good freshwater fish if you eat it when it has been alive half an hour ago and has come out of the pan half a minute ago. And when they had finished the fish Mrs. Beaver brought unexpectedly out of the oven a great and gloriously sticky marmalade roll, steaming hot, and at the same time moved the kettle on to the fire, so that when they had finished the marmalade roll the tea was made and ready to be poured out. And when each person had got his (or her) cup of tea, each person shoved back his (or her) stool so as to be able to lean against the wall and gave a long sigh of contentment.

"And now," said Mr. Beaver pushing away his empty beer mug and pulling his cup of tea towards him, "if you'll just wait till I've got my pipe lit up and going nicely - why, now we can get to business. It's snowing again," he added, cocking his eye at the window. "That's all the better, because it means we shan't have any visitors; and if anyone should have been trying to follow you, why he won't find any tracks."

The Books: "The Diamond in the Window" (Jane Langton)

Next book on the shelf ... (we're in my children's and young adult bookshelves, by the way):

Next book on the shelf is The Diamond in the Window by Jane Langton.

Maybe not as well known as some of the other children's classics - this was one of my absolute FAVORITES when I was a kid. It was a toss-up between Harriet the Spy and Diamond in the window. I put it on my list of Favorite Childhood Books. I still read it on occasion! My cousin Susan got me into Jane Langton's stuff. She read another book of Langton's called Her Majesty Grace Jones (a terrific book) - which I loved so much that I went home to my local library to see what other books by that author were there. This was how I came across Diamond in the Window. So Susan, I will be forever grateful that you introduced me to Her Majesty Jane Langton!!

Eleanor and Edward Hall are brother and sister. They live in Concord, Massachusetts - in a big old rambling house - with their spinster aunt and bachelor uncle (who are also brother and sister). I can't remember what happened to their parents. Eleanor and Eddy both have bright orange hair. The book opens with a threat from outside: their big rambling house may be sold. It has all kinds of historical significance for Concord, yadda yadda, and they all might have to move. Eleanor and Eddy are horrified at this. Move?? They LOVE this old house, with its crystal gazing ball in the garden, its stuffed peacock in the hall, its busts of Thoreau, Emerson, and Louisa May Alcott - its nooks and crannies. In the first chapter, they stare up at the house - realizing that they may have to say good-bye to it - and suddenly - after living there all their lives - they notice a tiny little dormer window sticking out of the roof - and the glass of the window is shaped like a keyhole. They are baffled. Where is that window? They've never seen it before. Is there a secret room in the house? They go off to explore.

What they discover leads them on a tremendous journey which will change their lives. They find the secret room - and it has 2 little beds in it, perfectly made, a toy chest full of toys, and in the center of the keyhole window is what looks like an enormous shimmering diamond. Scratched on the pane of glass is a long poem. Which Eleanor and Edward, fascinated, try to decipher.

The deciphering process takes the entire book. They end up both having these intense dreams at night - dreams that are hard to say are not real - For example, in one, Eleanor plummets out of a tall oak tree, scratching her leg. When she wakes up in the morning, the scratch is still there.

The dreams lead them through the poem scratched on the window. Thoreau shows up. Louisa May Alcott shows up. The Concord heroes.

It's a literate book. It's sometimes very very scary. There's a sentient jack-in-the-box which, frankly, freaks me out terribly. But it's very moving and also - unlike a lot of kids books - there is really excellent character development here. Edward is his own person. You can't put him in a little box - he reveals himself over the course of the book. He is tremendously smart, which alienates him from kids his own age. He's 9 years old. He has one goal in life: to be the President of the United States. He also talks fluently in backwards language, and has a whole alter ego that he daydreams about named; Trebor Nosnibor. Aunt Lily and Uncle Freddy, bachelor brother and sister, are interesting complex characters as well. Freddy was once considered a genius. He was a scholar, and author - and his topic was the Transcendentalist movement in the 1800s (Uhm - what? This was my introduction to the concepts of that movement. At age 10). And something happened to him, some disappointment, something - which has made him lose it, mentally. He lives in a world of complete fantasy - where his only true companions are the twin busts of Thoreau and Emerson, his heroes. He talks to the busts. He yells at the Louisa May Alcott bust, because what is that little strumpet doing even breathing the same AIR as the intellectual giants who must ALWAYS be male!!! He's a tragic character. Everyone loves Freddy so much, but they wish he would be back to his old self. This is one of the payoffs of the book - the Freddy character. It is unclear, at first, why Lily is a spinster - she's beautiful, she has long red hair, she teaches piano to the kids in Concord ... but something sad happened to her once, too - and she never really recovered. So now Lily and Freddy raise Edward and Eddy ... in a house with a secret room ... where there is a diamond in the window.

GREAT BOOK!!!!!!

Here's an excerpt.

From The Diamond in the Window by Jane Langton.

They all wore their new finery on the way to church. Even Aunt Lily's single mitten adorned one hand (the other hand was in her pocket). Eleanor's legs felt cold and beautiful in her new stockings. Uncle Freddy sported his muffler. Edward would have liked to stalk up the aisle in his new skates, but he had to be content to wear his nose-warmer.

The service in the big white church was crowded, sentimental and grand. Aunt Lily's choir outdid themselves. Timothy Shaw, the tenor, simply soared. (After the service he gave Aunt Lily a new handkerchief, bashfully -- it had a pink L in one corner.) Everybody sang The First Nowell. Eleanor, feeling silky wrinkles around her ankles, carolled happily,

They looked up and saw a star
Shining in the East beyond them far ...

Benjamin Parks was standing in the next pew with his family. Eleanor pretended not to notice. But on the way out he gave her a gruff "hello." She returned it with a lovely freckled smile and squeezed Uncle Freddy's arm tight.

It had been a good day. Just before bedtime, Uncle Freddy took it into his head to go fishing with his new pole in the Mill Brook. "We'll all go," said Aunt Lily. They bundled up and walked across the brown field. Edward put on his new skates and skated up and down.

Uncle Freddy cut a hole in the ice and let his line down into it. Then he looked up at the sky. The stars were out in crowds.

Eleanor jumped up and down to keep warm. She had changed her new stockings for her wool ones, but it was very cold. "Which star do you suppose was the star in the East?" she asked.

Aunt Lily pointed at one with her new mitten. "Maybe it was Sirius," she said, "the Dog Star, following Orion across the sky. See Orion up there?" Sirius was brilliant, rising low over Emerson's house. Eleanor's astigmatism made it look like a great teardrop, welling up in the eastern sky.

"Where's the Big Dipper?" said Edward. "Oh, there it is."

They all stood with their heads thrown back. Then suddenly, Uncle Freddy yanked his line out of the ice and started to whirl it around his head. He tossed it up at the stars. "Fish in the sky!" he cried. "Now, there's a stream to fish in! Look at those bright pebbles at the bottom!" He flung his line up again and again. "If I could catch just one star, just one, to hitch my wagon to, then how I should fly!"

His hook became entangled in his muffler. "Fred, dear," said Aunt Lily, "we'd best go in."

But Uncle Freddy struggled with his tangled line and jabbed his thumb on the fishhook. "Now, there, I've gotten blood all over it!" He flapped his muffler and sucked his thumb.

On the way to bed Edward stumbled on a ripped place in the stair carpet, and almost fell down the whole flight. "If only that silly lady lighted up," he said thickly, almost crying.

"Poor old Mrs. Truth," said Aunt Lily, helping him to his feet. They looked up at the statue on the newel post, pathetically holding up her star with its burned-out bulb.

'Poor old Eddy, you mean," said Edward.

Eleanor climbed into her little bed, put her head down on the pillow, thought happily for a minute about Benjamin Parks, and then fell asleep. But Edward lay awake for a little while, looking out the window. He searched for the star Aunt Lily had called the Dog Star. What was its other name -- Truth? No, no, that was the other star, the one with the burned-out bulb. He had them mixed up. There it was, the Dog Star. From where he lay he could just see it at the corner of one pane of colored glass. If he moved his head a little on the pillow, the light of the star shone right through the diamond. It was like catching the sun in a pocket mirror. The diamond, ignited, blazed forth, now blue, now red, now flashing white. It became the incandescent focus of Edward's dream, and Eleanor's.

The Books: "From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler" (E.L. Konigsberg)

Next book on the shelf ... (we're in my children's and young adult bookshelves, by the way):

Next book on the shelf is From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E.L. Konigbsburg

Uhm - this book is fantastic. For any age level. Who read this book as a kid and didn't want to be Claudia and Jamie - camping out in the Metropolitan Museum? Like - how COOL was that??

As an adult, though, I can see just how good this book is - how sophisticated. It is actually written by "Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler" - and it is addressed to her lawyer "Saxonburg". On occasion, Mrs. Frankweiler will interrupt her own narrative to give a slyly teasing or mocking comment to 'Saxonburg" - as though she is having a running conversation with him throughout. It's kind of a brilliant device. Because for most of the book, or for at least half of the book - you have no idea who Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler is. As far as the story is concerned - it is all about Claudia and Jamie deciding to run away - to teach their parents to miss them, basically - and appreciate them - and how they survive, by camping out in the Met, sleeping in one of the huge beds in one of the exhibits, and stealing pennies from the bottom of the fountain. Who is this Frankweiler woman and why does she know every intimate detail of this story? And why does she constantly give Saxonburg a hard time, about how uncultured he is, how shocked she is that he isn't aware of this or of that? And who the hell is Saxonburg?? It all becomes clear ... There's a mysterious statue in the Metropolitan Museum ... and Jamie and Claudia start to investigate it .... And it's brilliant, that's all. E. L. Konigsburg is a fantastic writer.

Here's an excerpt.

From From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E.L. Konigbsburg

"Come along, Sir James. To our bath. Bring your most elegant pajamas. The ones embroidered in gold with silver tassels will do."

"Where, dear Lady Claudia, dost thou expect to bathe?"

"In the fountain, Sir James. In the fountain."

Jamie extended his arm, which was draped with his striped flannel pajamas, and said, "Lady Claudia, I knew that sooner or later you would get me to that restaurant."

(It makes me furious to think that I must explain that restaurant to you, Saxonburg. I'm going to make you take me to lunch in there one day soon. I just this minute became determined to get you into the museum. You'll see later how I'm going to do it. Now about the restaurant. It is built around a gigantic fountain. Water in the fountain is sprayed from dolphins sculptured in bronze. The dolphins appear to be leaping out of the water. On the backs are figures representing the arts, figures that look like water sprites. It is a joy to sit around that wonderful fountain and to snack petit fours and sip expresso coffee. I'll bet that you'd even forget yhour blasted ulcer while you ate there.)

Lady Claudia and Sir James quietly walked to the entrance of the restaurant. They easily climbed under the velvet rope that meant that the restaurant was closed to the public. Of course they were not the public. They shed their clothes and waded into the fountain. Claudia had taken powdered soap from the restroom. She had ground it out into a paper towel that morning. Even though it was freezing cold, she enjoyed her bath. Jamie, too, enjoyed his bath. For a different reason.

When he got into the pool, he found bumps on the bottom, smooth bumps. When he reached down to feel one, he found that it moved! He could even pick it up. He felt its cool roundness and splashed his way over to Claudia. "Income, Claudia, income!" he whispered.

Claudia understood immediately and began to scoop up bumps she had felt on the bottom of the fountain. The bumps were pennies and nickels people had pitched into the fountain to make a wish. At least four people had thrown in dimes and one had tossed in a quarter.

"Some one very rich must have tossed in that quarter," Jamie whispered.

"Some one very poor," Claudia corrected. "Rich people only have penny wishes."

Together they collected $2.87. They couldn't hold more in their hands. They were shivering when they got out. Drying themselves as best they could with paper towels (also taken from the restroom), they hurried into their pajamas and shoes.

They finished their preparations for the night, took a small snack and decided it was safe to wander back into the Great Hall to look again at their Angel.

"I wish I could hug her," Claudia whispered.

"They probably bugged her already. Maybe that light is part of the alarm. Better not touch. You'll set it off."

"I said 'hug' not 'bug'. Why would I want to bug her?"

"That makes more sense than to hug her."

"Silly. Shows how much you know. When you hug someone, you learn something else about them. An important something else."

Jamie shrugged his shoulders.

Both looked at Angel a long time. "What do you think?" Jamie asked. "Did he or didn't he?"

Claudia answered, "A scientist doesn't make up his mind until he's examined all the evidence."

"You sure don't sound like a scientist. What kind of scientist would want to hug a statue?"

Claudia was embarrassed, so she spoke sternly, "We'll go to bed now, and we'll think about the statue very hard. Don't fall asleep until you've really thought about the statue and Michelangelo and the entire Italian Renaissance."

And so they went to bed. But lying in bed just before going to sleep is the worst time for organized thinking; it is the best time for free thinking. Ideas drift like clouds in an undecided breeze, taking first this direction and then that. It was very difficult for Jamie to control his thoughts when he was tired, sleepy, and lying on his back. He never liked to get involved just before falling asleep. But Claudia had planned on their thinking, and she was good at planning. So think he did. Clouds bearing thoughts of the Italian Renaissance drifted away. Thoughts of home, and more thoughts of home settled down.

"Do you miss home?" he asked Claudia.

"Not too much," she confessed. "I haven't thought about it much."

Jamie was quiet for a minute, then he said, "We probably have no conscience. I think we ought to be homesick. Do you think Mom and Dad raised us wrong? They're not very mean, you know; don't you think that should make us miss them?"

Claudia was silent. Jamie waited. "Did you hear my question, Claude?"

"Yes. I heard your question. I'm thinking." She was quiet for a while longer. Then she asked, "Have you ever been homesick?"

"Sure."

"When was the last time?"

"That day Dad dropped us off at Aunt Zell's when we took Mom to the hospital to get Kevin."

"Me too. That day," Claudia admitted. "But, of course, I was much younger then."

"Why do you suppose we were homesick that day? We've been gone much longer than that now."

Claudia thought. "I guess we were worried. Boy, had I known then that she was going to end ujp with Kevin, I would have known why we were worried. I remember you sucked your thumb and carried around that old blanket the whole day. Aunt Zell kept trying to get the blanket away from you so that she could wash it. It stank."

Jamie giggled. "Yeah, I guess homesickness is like sucking your thumb. It's what happens when you're not very sure of yourself."

"Or not very well trained," Claudia added. "Heaven knows, we're well trained. Just look how nicely we've managed. It's really their fault if we're not homesick."

Jamie was satisfied. Claudia was more. "I'm glad you asked about that homesickness, Jamie. Somehow, I feel older now. But, of course, that's mostly because I've been the oldest child forever. And I'm extremely well adjusted."

They went to sleep then. Michelangelo, Angel, and the entire Italian Renaissance waited for them until morning.

The Books: "Jennifer, Hecate, MacBeth, William McKinley and Me, Elizabeth" (E.L. Konigsberg)

Next book on the shelf ... (we're in my children's and young adult bookshelves, by the way):

Next book on the shelf is Jennifer, Hecate, MacBeth, William McKinley and Me, Elizabeth by the great great E.L. Konigbsburg - who also wrote Mixed-up Files etc etc

I know how much her Mixed-up Files book is loved - I love it too - but this book is wonderful as well - I actually preferred it to the other, when I was a kid. Has anyone else out there read it??

It was the spark. For a good YEAR, I was obsessed with all things witch-y. I wanted to go back in time and live in Salem. I wanted to cast spells. I wanted to BE "Jennifer" in the book - who doesn't just pretend she's a witch during her free time. She walks around AS a witch.

By the end of the book - Elizabeth, the main character, who SO looks up to Jennifer - and wants to be just like her - anyway, Elizabeth realizes that all along Jennifer was just pretending, she's not a witch - she's just a lonely girl whose parents don't love her, or her parents are getting divorced - I can't remember what the plot point is - but all along, Jennifer has been haloed in this kind of mystique. She's bossy. She knows everything about being a witch. She wears black stockings and black shoes with buckles. She is domineering, serious, and bossy. When she and Elizabeth hang out, they don't "play". They do serious witch-stuff. Jennifer is the boss. And in this way, the two become friends. Elizabeth is eager for Jennifer's approval. She does things to try to get Jennifer to say "Good job!" Jennifer has that kind of imperious-ness. But at the end of the book - ack - something is revealed about Jennifer - we get a tiny glimpse into her world - and it is NOT a pretty picture - and obviously the whole witch thing is her defense mechanism, her way of escape into a fantasy world that she prefers. Her way of being important and different. No, she's not just a child whose parents are divorcing. She's a witch!!

But this revelation that Jennifer is actually NOT a witch rocks Elizabeth to her core - and she is furious. She feels betrayed, angry, stupid ...

I LOVED this book when I was a kid. First of all, it's E.L. Konigsburg - so you know it is VERY well-written. It's funny, it's deep, the language is not condescending to kids - I remember there were words I had to look up, and I also remember a whole chapter where Jennifer basically analyzes the spells in Macbeth for Elizabeth. Jennifer is not messing around!!

Now - one last thing about this wonderful book (which, if you have a daughter, who is 10, or 11 - I think this would be a great book for her to read!):

The illustrations are great (just like in Mixed-up Files) - and it always struck me as a kid, and it strikes me now: In the illustrations, we can see that Jennifer is black. But it's never mentioned in the book. I found that to be fascinating when I was a kid - one of those "a-ha" moments in life when I realize: "Oh! It doesn't matter what skin color anyone is! She's just Jennifer!" Like - I was so used to there being some explanatory text in the story - you always hear what people LOOK like. But not in this book. You hear about Jennifer's clothes, you hear about her voice, you get her entire personality - but only in the illustrations do you see her skin color. For some reason, I just love that. It makes the point, loud and clear, that the skin color thing should just be a non-issue.

Here's an excerpt from the book where Jennifer discusses Macbeth to an enthralled Elizabeth. Remember - these girls are, like, 10 years old. Listen to how bossy and dominating Jennifer is! She completely captivated me when I was a kid. Great character.

From Jennifer, Hecate, MacBeth, William McKinley and Me, Elizabeth by E.L. Konigbsburg

When we met on Saturdays in March, Jennifer always brought Hilary Ezra with her. Hilary Ezra was our toad. Around New York most people don't have toads in March or watermelons in January. Jennifer was not most people. She came to the park the first Saturday in March and said, "Today I brought the toad." She held him out in her hand. He wasn't very big. For a minute I thought he was the plastic kind that you buy in kits. The kind that are stuck on a cardboard under one big plastic bubble. Sometimes they are glued on a card under separate little plastic bubbles, and the card says "Farmyard Friends", or "Dinosaurs - Great and Small." The toad moved. I jumped. Jennifer closed her hand.

"Where did you get him?" I asked.

"Witches always have toads," she answered. "Toads are the first ingredient." She paused a second, looked up toward the sky and said, "What's the matter, didn't you ever read Macbeth?"

"Well, no," I said. "I've heard about Macbeth."

"Every modern witch ought to read Macbeth." Jennifer said. "Those witches cooked up a wonderful brew. Not flying ointment brew. Trouble brew. And the first ingredient to go in was a toad." Then Jennifer stared at me and recited:

"Round about the cauldron go:
In the poison'd entrails throw.
Toad, that under cold stone
Days and nights has thirty one
Swelter'd venom sleeping got,
Boil thou first i' the charmed pot."

She stared at me the whole time she was reciting.

"Did Macbeth say that?"

"Of course not," she scolded. "Macbeth wasn't a witch. The witches say that as they stir their brew of trouble. Notice they boiled the toad first in the pot."

"What are the witches' names in Macbeth?" I asked.

"First witch, second witch, third witch," she answered, "and Hecate, the queen of the witches is in it, too."

"What kind of trouble was in the pot?" I asked.

"They gave him a warning," she replied.

I thought a minute and said, "It doesn't sound mean to warn someone. That doesn't sound like trouble. Sounds rather nice, as a matter of fact."

"It wasn't nice," Jennifer insisted. "How can you be a witch and be good, too? The two just don't go together."

"What did they warn him of?"

"The truth."

I couldn't understand what could be so awful about the truth. I had heard grown-ups talk about the awful truth, but I couldn't understand what they meant. So I asked, "What's so bad about the truth?"

"They told him the truth in such a way that he got to feeling too sure of himself. He became careless and brought about his doom."

"What did they tell him?" I asked.

"I won't tell. You have to read Macbeth. Every modern witch should. Those witches were wonderful."

"Give me an example," I begged. "Please?"

"I'll give you an example of the kind of thing they did." She thought a long minute before beginning. "Suppose they said to you first, 'Elizabeth, beware of ... beware of the toad. The toad will cause you pain.' You think to yourself that you like the toad. Besides, you can't imagine how any toad with no sharp claws and no sharp teeth can cause you pain. But since the witches warned you - you will beware."

"Yes," I said. "I would listen. They might mean that I'll get a wart and need to have it burned off."

Jennifer nodded. "Next they tell you that no animal born where rain can fall will harm you. Then you think to yourself ... toads are always born out of doors in a pond or a lake where rain can fall. So you don't have to worry much about the toad or about most animals."

I silently agreed. Then Jennifer continued, "Next they tell you that you'll have no pain until the home of the toad comes to you. You think ... how can a lake or a pond or a park come to me? So after the first warning, which you are perfectly willing to believe, you end up feeling pretty sure of yourself."

"What's wrong with feeling pretty sure of yourself?" I asked.

"Pretty sure is okay. But too sure isn't okay. Imagine being so sure of yourself for a test that you never even open the book."

"Oh, I'm never that sure." I was watching the toad and wanting to pet him.

Jennifer was still concentrating on Macbeth. "In Macbeth Hecate says:

'And you all know, security
Is mortals' chiefest enemy.'"

"Is man a mortal?" I asked.

"Of course," Jennifer answered.

"Then, is this Hecate's way of saying the story of the tortoise and the hare? You know, that fable about the rabbit being so sure of winning the race that he wasn't even careful. He didn't try very hard to win."

"Yes," Jennifer explained. "Except that they didn't make Macbeth sure of winning ... they made him sure he'd never lose."

"Never lose what?" I demanded.

"His life," she croaked. She looked at me hard. I swallowed hard.

"Jennifer," I asked, "what do you ever do besides read?"

She looked up at the sky and sighed and said very seriously. "I think." She continued looking up at the sky and added, "Now do you absolutely understand about the witches' warning?"

"Macbeth's witches?" I asked.

"Any witches."

I nodded. For just a minute the idea crossed my mind that Jennifer actually was warning me. Then I thought, "Oh, well, how can a lovely little toad cause me pain?"

"May I hold him?" I asked.

"Of course." She handed him to me.

"Jennifer, do witches ever name their toads?"

"Never," she answered.

"I think we should," I said.

"We shouldn't," she said.

"I think we should call him Hilary. Hilary means cheerful. And he is bright-eyed and cheerful."

"Witches don't name toads," she said.

"Yep, Hilary is a fine name."

"Witches don't name toads," she repeated.

"Hilary means cheerful, and you are cheery, dearie," I murmured. To the toad ... not to Jennifer.

"He should be called Ezra if he's called anything at all," she replied.

"Why Ezra?" I demanded.

"Because Ezra means help ... and he'll help us make the flying ointment."

"Hilary is better," I insisted.

"Ezra," she said.

"How about Hilary Ezra?" I asked.

"Agreed," she answered.

I think I grew to love Hilary Ezra from that very second. Naming him was the first argument I ever won from Jennifer.

The Books: "The Long Secret" (Louise Fitzhugh)

Next book on the shelf ... (we're in my children's and young adult bookshelves, by the way):

Next book on the shelf is The Long Secret by Louise Fitzhugh. A sort of sequel to Harriet the Spy - only Harriet isn't the lead of this one. She's the second lead. The lead of this book is Beth Ellen (a mousy girl who appears peripherally in Harriet the Spy). The girls are now 12 - and it's summer vacation - and their families both have houses in a place like The Hamptons (of course they do!! You always could tell Harriet's family was wealthy.) And there's a mystery in the town - someone has been writing strange notes, and leaving them all over town. Notes like: JESUS HATES YOU. Or random quotes from the Bible. The butcher gets one, the librarian gets one, etc etc. Nobody knows who is writing these notes, and it gets the town into a kind of tizzy.

The intricacies of the plot are not as clear to me with this one as with Harriet - I can't remember - Beth Ellen is staying with her grandmother, I know that - and her mother is ... off gallivanting with a new man in Europe or something? Beth Ellen is kind of a sad character. Not loved by her parents. Dumped off with the grandmother.

Oh, and the whole menstruation topic is HUGE with Beth Ellen and Harriet (oh, and good old crazy Janie comes into the book as well) - since they are 12, and Beth Ellen starts menstruating that summer. Harriet cracks me UP. She's such a little temperamental tyrant.

Here's an excerpt. Beth Ellen has just gotten her period for the first time - Harriet is cranky because she hasn't gotten it (not that she wants to menstruate - but she hates being left behind) - Beth Ellen's mother is not in the picture so she has no one to go to for advice except her Grandmother - so Beth Ellen and Harriet talk to Janie, the crazy scientist girl from their class, to see if she knows what this whole period thing is about.

From The Long Secret by Louise Fitzhugh.

The next day was Saturday and Beth Ellen went to Harriet's house for the day. When she came into the bedroom, Harriet and Janie were discussing the situation.

"I've been working on a cure for this thing ever since it happened to me," Janie said, frowning and looking very serious, even though she was lying upside down on the bed in a bathing suit with her feet straight up against the wall.

"What kind of cure?" asked Harriet, after she had said Hello to Beth Ellen.

"I just want to end it, that's all," said Janie in a furious way.

"But ... doesn't it have something to do with babies?" asked Harriet.

"How would you know, Harriet Welsch? You haven't even done it," snarled Janie, swinging her legs down to the floor and sitting up. "You wouldn't know a Fallopian tube if you fell over one."

Chagrined, Harriet pointed to Beth Ellen. "She's done it, yesterday. She told me."

Beth Ellen turned bright red, looked at the floor, and wanted to die. They both stared at her.

Janie finally spoke, and said softly, "What's there to think about? It's a nuisance, that's all, and frankly, I think should be done away with."

Beth Ellen kept looking at the floor.

"What's it feel like?" asked Harriet.

"Yuuuuuchk," said Janie. "It has absolutely nothing to recommend it." She looked at Beth Ellen as she continued, "You don't feel like working or playing or anything but just lying around and looking at the ceiling, right? Icky. Right, Mouse?"

Beth Ellen nodded but still couldn't look up for some reason.

Janie looked at her a minute, then said, "It happens to everybody, though, every woman in the world, even Madame Curie. It's very normal. And I guess, since it means you're grown up and can have babies, that it's a good thing. I, for one, just don't happen to want babies. I also have a sneaking suspicion that there're too many babies in the world already. So I'm working on this cure for people that don't want babies, so they won't have to do this."

Beth Ellen looked up at Janie and asked tentatively, "Do those rocks hurt you too?"

"Rocks?" Janie yelled.

"Those rocks inside that come down," said Beth Ellen timidly.

"WHAT?" screamed Harriet. "Oh, well, if they think I'm gonna do anything like that, they're crazy."

"There aren't any rocks. Who told you that?" Janie was so mad she stood up. "Who told you there were rocks? There aren't any rocks. I'll kill 'em. Who told you that about any rocks?"

Beth Ellen looked scared. "My grandmother," she said faintly. "Isn't that right? Aren't there little rocks that come down and make you bleed and hurt you?"

"Right? It couldn't be more wrong." Janie stood over her. "There aren't any rocks. You got that? There aren't any rocks at all!"

"WOW!" said Harriet. "ROCKS!"

"Now, wait a minute," said Janie, holding up her hand like a lecturer, "let's get something straight here before you two get terrified."

They both looked up at her. Beth Ellen was frightened and confused. Harriet was angry and confused.

"Now, you must understand," said Janie, looking very earnest, "that the generation that Beth Ellen's grandmother is was very Victorian. They never talked about things like this, and her grandmother thought that telling her this was better than telling her the truth."

"What's the truth?" said Harriet avidly.

Beth Ellen didn't care about the truth. The rocks were bad enough to think about. What could the truth be?

"That just goes to show you," said Janie, looking like a stuffy teacher, "that people should learn to live with fact! It's never as bad as the fantasies they make up."

"Oh, Janie, get on with it," said Harriet. "What is the truth?"

"Aw, what a question," said Janie.

"JANIE!" said Harriet in disgust. Janie could be very corny and exasperating when she turned philosophical.

"Okay, okay," said Janie as though they were too dumb to appreciate her, "it's very simple. I'll explain it." She sat down as though it would take a long time.

"Now, you know the baby grows inside a woman, in her womb, in the uterus?"

They nodded.

"Well. What do you think it lives on when it's growing?"

They both looked blank.

"The lining, dopes!" she yelled at them.

They blinked.

"So, it's very simple. If you have a baby started in there, the baby lives on the lining: but if you don't have a baby, like we don't, then the body very sensibly disposes of the lining that it's made for the baby. It just comes out."

"Falls right out of you?" screamed Harriet.

Oh, thought Beth Ellen, why me?

"No, no, no. You always exaggerate, Harriet. You would make a terrible scientist. You must be precise. It doesn't fall out like you say; it comes out a tiny bit at a time over a period of from, well, say four to six days, depending on the woman. It's very little at a time, and it doesn't hurt or anything. You just feel tired."

"I hurt," said Beth Ellen.

"Well ..." said Janie, "sometimes there's a little pain, but it really isn't much. I just, frankly, don't care for it," she said as though she'd been asked if she liked a certain book.

"Well," said Harriet.

"Another thing I don't like is people making up these silly stories about it, like those rocks. Why can't people just take life as it is?"

Beth Ellen thought of her grandmother taking life as it is. She couldn't imagine her grandmother talking to her about babies, linings, Fallopian tubes, and so forth. She felt a little sorry for her grandmother. She supposed that she had been trying to make it nicer for her, but it had been wrong because the rock story had scared her.

"The thing is," said Harriet, "does your grandmother really believe there are rocks? Maybe we should tell her."

"Of course she doesn't," said Beth Ellen, "and you won't tell her anything."

"That's silly," said Janie to Harriet. "You don't take into account how different each generation is."

"Well!" said Harriet, considerably miffed. "Instead of just lying there talking, why don't you make a cure?"

"I'm going to cure this one way or the other if it's the last thing I do." Janie looked determinedly out the window as though there were a cure sitting in the backyard.

"I just can't wait to not do this," said Harriet.

"Well," said Janie, "you might as well, since everyone else is. You'd feel pretty silly if you didn't. Besides, you get to skip gym when you have it."

"Yeah?" said Harriet and Beth Ellen in unison. They both hated gym.

"Yeah," said Janie with one of her fiercest smiles.

"Well!" said Harriet.

That, thought Beth Ellen, is a decided advantage.

The Books: "Harriet the Spy" (Louise Fitzhugh)

Next book on the shelf ... (we're in my children's and young adult bookshelves, by the way):

Next book on the shelf is another childhood favorite: Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh.

I don't know what to say. This is one of my favorite books of all time. I wrote a huge thing about it here, if you're interested. It kind of covers why I think this book is so great.

It STILL surprises me, this book. It has not grown old, or quaint. I don't re-read it, thinking, "Oh, man ... member how much I loved this as a kid?" No. I re-read it, and think: "Oh shit, Harriet's gonna get into trouble for that one ..." or "Oh man ... what will Harriet do without Ole Golly?" etc. It's STILL a good read.

Harriet herself amazes me. I wonder if you could get away with writing such a character today. Also, her parents! Would such parents be understood today? Or would someone look at the Harriet character and think she was "neglected"? Harriet has no after-school activities, like kids have today every night of the week. No - she comes home, and she occupies herself. She writes. She goes on her spy route, which involves BREAKING INTO OTHER PEOPLE'S HOMES. Uhm, Harriet? That's illegal? She has TONS of unsupervised time - which seems to not really exist for kids as much anymore as it did when I was a kid. There seems to be such a conformist attitude afoot in the culture at this moment in time ... people hemmed in by what is acceptable, offensive, politically correct. Being "nice" is HIGHLY prized. (Look at how people were bitching about Prince blowing off Ryan Seacrest on American Idol. I thought it was GREAT - because, hey, Prince is Prince ... He's not "nice" and if he were "nice" then he wouldn't be Prince.) I'm not saying "niceness" wasn't a virtue in other times - but being "nice" is really not the only thing in life - there are MUCH greater and more complex qualities to strive for ... and this book completely acknowledges that. It's about the messiness of someone who might be destined for greatness. Such a person must reconcile themselves to being a loner, to being misunderstood. THIS is Harriet's journey. A more conventional book would have this prickly 10 year old loner learn some tough lessons about how to "fit in", how to not be so weird and mean, how to "play well with others". This book does not go that route. Because to smooth out Harriet's rough edges would be to smooth out what is special and unique about her. She has to accept who she is. She has to accept that she will NEVER be a "nice" normal person ... her life is going to be weird, and she has to be okay with that. (Ahem - see why I loved this book as a kid??) I am now thinking of Katharine Hepburn, a great example of this type of thing. She had to be who she was - she couldn't hem herself in just to make the "nice" people of the world feel more comfortable - but she had to just accept her loner status. Now - one of the important things about childhood is learning how to "play well with others". In a way (and this is just me observing from outside) - it seems that "plays well with others" is now the PRIMARY virtue. I find that a bit disturbing. I mean, of course - be nice to each other, blah blah blah ... but when I read Harriet the Spy I realize, yet again, that there are things more important than being "nice" to everyone.

Harriet is not nice. The ending of the book is not neat. There is definitely some resolution between Harriet and Sport and Janie ... but it doesn't come in a conventional way. Harriet is very sorry about her mean diary ... but she's not sorry that she had those thoughts about other people. It's just that by the end of the book she realizes that her meanness might be her best quality - as long as she can channel it into something ARTISTIC. She starts taking her mean little diary - and writing short stories, and she puts out a fabulous school newspaper - filled with biting observations about everyone in the school. Again - not "nice" observations - She definitely calls people OUT. But now - instead of just bitching about how ugly someone is, or how they smell, or wondering how their parents could love them ... she turns them into characters in a story. Or - there's something empowering about what she chooses to share in the newspaper. "Janie has just won the battle. If you don't know what I'm talking about, go ask her." So ... even though she's STILL observing everyone around her with the cold clear eyes of a spy ... there is something a bit different in what she chooses to share.

This just occurred to me, in writing this: Perhaps what has happened to Harriet is this - perhaps THIS is Harriet's real journey: The plot of the book is: She writes in her journal all day long. It is a private expression. It is how she gets stuff out. She is hostile, biting, mean ... even to people she loves. Anyone who has ever kept a really honest journal will know what what this is like. But then - the kids at school steal her journal and read the whole thing. HORROR. They read all the mean things she has said. They confront her. They are not just mad - but mean. For the first time in her life Harriet really feels afraid, looking at all their mean faces. Harriet gets into big trouble. Her parents won't let her write in her notebook anymore - or they limit how much time she can write. They won't let her take it to school, etc. Harriet seriously suffers from withdrawal. She aches to write stuff down. When she starts her journal again, it is different. You'd have to read the whole book to see how ... but it is.

And perhaps what has happened to Harriet is that for the first time in her life she has become aware of having an AUDIENCE. And so now ... when she writes in her journal - she is aware of that audience. She is aware of what they need, of what they are looking for ... And instead of crippling her expression, that awareness of an audience actually sets Harriet free.

Every writer has to have SOME idea of their audience. There's lots of talk in writing books about the "ideal reader" ... You know, if you're a writer: who is your reader? You can't control who reads you, of course - but who is your IDEAL reader? By that I mean: who is the perfect listener? When you sit down to write, all by yourself, with no audience there ... who is the person you are writing for? Yeah, whatever, write for yourself ... but the "ideal reader" exists for most writers, and it's really interesting (at least for me, in my own process) how letting in an awareness of who that person is - for me - has helped me to become a better writer.

I apologize for myself less. I don't give a shit about the rolling-eye crowd. I'm not writing for them. Once I started getting more readers - it affected my writing for a while. I go back into my archives, and look, and can see the difference between the writing then and the writing now. I was self-conscious for a while - having people showing up to read my site - and that's fine - but it's NOT okay when it actually affects the writing itself.

So over the past year or so - I have been working with this ideal reader idea.

My ideal reader is someone who shares my sense of humor, who "gets it", someone who doesn't roll their eyes at excitement or enthusiasm, someone who loves to get fired up about this or that, who isn't put off by a grown woman blithering like a 13 year old. My ideal reader is someone who likes to go deep. Who isn't afraid to go deep. My ideal reader is not the kind of person who needs to make a joke, nervously, when the mood gets serious.

Now: I'm not talking to ANY of my ACTUAL audience right now and I'm not talking about trying to mold my ACTUAL audience (although I've worked on that as well - see the comment policy - heh heh) - I'm talking about the imaginary person who is right beside me when I write ... the perfect listener ... the person who wants to hear my thoughts, my ambivalence, my darkness, my humor ... the imaginary reader who sets my own creativity free. Because imagining that ideal reader - makes it possible for me to write stuff like this. One of my ACTUAL readers completely took that piece the wrong way - made a comment that hurt my feelings so badly that I banned him forever. Good riddance. He had made comments on my blog before which had already revealed him as, to put it mildly, NOT my ideal reader. He was condescending, snarky, completely political at all times, and thought women were kind of, well, silly. He didn't like how emotional I got. Which makes me wonder: that's FINE, he doesn't NEED to like emotion - but why on earth would you read ME if emotion makes you uncomfortable? Or why on earth would you read me if you think women are, in general, kind of silly creatures not to be taken seriously? Bizarre. But here's the deal: here's what I'm REALLY trying to say: Some people (and you can probably think of examples) write with their most critical readers in mind. If I wrote with just that one dousche-bag in mind, my writing style would be very different, wouldn't it?

"I know that you probably think that most women are wack-jobs - and maybe you're right - but I'm telling you that this was a serious moment for me ..."
"Mind you, I know what you are thinking. God, can't she just grow up and start acting like an adult?"

Etc.

You get the picture. That's horrible writing, in my opinion - but I see it all the time. I could fall prey to it myself - so I have to really edit my stuff sometimes, to clip out such argumentative apologetic sentences. Some bloggers are just yelling at phantom critics throughout their entire posts.

I have made a conscious effort to NOT do that. This is because I am trying to write for my "ideal reader" - not someone who holds me in contempt. Not someone I have to argue with, or over-explain myself to ... No. I write for the "ideal reader" who gets me. This is how I get into the state of mind that helps me be personal, open up, share stuff ... I consciously edit out phantom argument comments like: "Now I know that some of you are probably thinking ..." because it weakens the writing. If someone's main response to my writing is a rolling of the eyes - then I will not waste my time writing FOR that person.

Anyway - as you can see - Harriet has MANY lessons for me - to this day.

By the end of the book, even though she is only 10 years old, she has accepted that she is a writer. And people want to read her stuff. When she writes now - she always has that audience in mind. I see that in some of my Diary Friday stuff - me speaking to some imaginary reader. I ALWAYS had that. I always was writing TO someone. My journals don't feel private - they are FOR someone. Now there are certain things in those journals that I will NEVER share - I would NEVER want people to read certain parts - too awful, too revealing ... but in the writing of it, it was almost like how Anne Frank created "Kitty" - as her ideal pen pal. "Kitty" was the perfect listener. Kitty did not judge. Kitty did not roll her eyes, Kitty did not tell Anne to stop being so dramatic, or to grow up, or be "nice". Kitty just listened. Kitty listened patiently, and with love, as Anne worked things out for herself.

I have strayed far far from the path, but this just goes to show you the impact that this one book has had on me.

Here's an excerpt. This is from the beginning half of the book, before Harriet's whole world falls apart. I love how the cook has no name. It's just "Cook". I also love how OBNOXIOUS Harriet is.

From Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh.

It was time for her cake and milk. Every day at three-forty she had cake and milk. Harriet loved doing everything every day in the same way.

"Time for my cake, for my cake and milk, time for my milk and cake." She ran yelling through the front door of her house. She ran through the front hall past the dining room and the living room and down the steps into the kitchen. There she ran smack into the cook.

"Like a missile you are, shot from that school," screamed the cook.

"Hello cook, hello, cooky, hello, hello, hello, hello," sang Harriet. Then she opened her notebook and wrote:

BLAH, BLAH, BLAH. I ALWAYS DO CARRY ON A LOT. ONCE OLE GOLLY SAID TO ME, "I COULD NEVER LOSE YOU IN A CROWD, I'D JUST FOLLOW THE SOUND OF YOUR VOICE."

She slammed the notebook and the cook jumped. Harriet laughed.

The cook put the cake and milk in front of her. "What you always writing in that dad-blamed book for?" she asked with a sour little face.

"Because," Harriet said around a bite of cake, "I'm a spy."

"Spy, huh. Some spy."

"I am a spy. I'm a good spy, too. I've never been caught."

Cook settled herself with a cup of coffee. "How long you been a spy?"

"Since I could write. Ole Golly told me if I was going to be a writer I better write down everything, so I'm a spy that writes down everything."

"Hmmmmmmph." Harriet knew the cook couldn't think of anything to say when she did that.

"I know all about you."

"Like fun, you do." The cook looked startled.

"I do too. I know you live with your sister in Brooklyn and that she might get married and you wish you had a car and you have a so that's no good and drinks."

"What do you do, child? Listen at doors?"

"Yes," said Harriet.

"Well, I never," said the cook. "I think that's bad manners."

"Ole Golly doesn't. Ole Golly says find out everything you can cause life is hard enough even if you know a lot."

"I bet she don't know you spooking round the house listening at doors."

"Well, how am I supposed to find out anything?"

"I don't know" -- the cook shook her head -- "I don't know about that Ole Golly."

"What do you mean?" Harriet felt apprehensive.

"I don't know. I just don't know. I wonder about her."

Ole Golly came into the room. "What is it you don't know?"

Cook looked as though she might hide under the table. She stood up. "Can I get you your tea, Miss Golly?" she said meekly.

"That would be most kind of you," said Ole Golly and sat down.

Harriet opened her notebook:

I WONDER WHAT THAT WAS ALL ABOUT. MAYBE OLE GOLLY KNOWS SOMETHING ABOUT COOK THAT COOK DOESN'T WANT HER TO KNOW. CHECK ON THIS.

"What do you have in school this year, Harriet?" asked Ole Golly.

"English, History, Geography, French, Math, ugh, Science, ugh, and the Performing Arts, ugh, ugh, ugh." Harriet rattled these off in a very bored way.

"What history?"

"Greeks and Romans, ugh, ugh, ugh."

"They're fascinating."

"What?"

"They are. Just wait, you'll see. Talk about spies. Those gods spied on everybody all the time."

"Yeah?"

"'Yes', Harriet, not 'yeah'."

"Well, I wish I'd never heard of them."

"Ah, there's a thought from Aesop for you: 'We would often by sorry if our wishes were gratified.'" Ole Golly gave a little moo of satisfaction after she had delivered herself of this.

"I think I'll go now," Harriet said.

"Yes," said the cook, "go out and play."

Harriet stood up. "I do not go out to PLAY, I go out to WORK!" and in as dignified a way as possible she walked from the room and up the steps from the kitchen.

The Books: "The mystery of Lonesome Manor" (Harriet Evatt)

Next book on the shelf ... (we're in my children's and young adult bookshelves, by the way):

Next book on the shelf is another childhood favorite: The mystery of Lonesome Manor by Harriet Evatt. And again - I think it was discarded from our local library back home because that's the copy I have. A hardcover, with a beautiful old-fashioned sticker (not the right word - dad??) on the front page - with a beautiful little drawing of the front-door of our local library (in existence since colonial times. George Washington actually freakin' hung out in that building during his peripatetic war travels ... They would have freakin' revolutionary meetings in that building. hahaha) Anyway, I LOVED this book.

It's about a little French-Canadian girl named Alouette. She has 11 brothers and sisters. She lived in a world very different from my own - a world of sleighs, and fur muffs, and the casualness of wearing snowshoes all the time, and being multi-lingual. I LOVED her. There was one moment where she woke up on the morning of her birthday and it was so cold that there was ice in the wash basin in her room and she had to crack it in order to wash her face. It was all so vivid, and different, and I just loved it.

So there's an old deserted manor in Alouette's town - no one has lived there as long as anyone can remember. There's some mystery about it. Alouette senses that, but no one will talk about it. It's not a story for children. But then one night, in the middle of a snowstorm - Alouette is basically confronted by an Indian on snowshoes, and he calls himself the Northern Traveler. He gives her a beautiful emerald ring sent by some mysterious person in the far-off mystical land of Manitoba. The ring will bring Alouette good fortune apparently.

Right after Alouette receives the mysterious ring, suddenly lights are seen in the windows of the lonesome manor. Who is there? What is going on?

Alouette becomes determined to solve the mystery - it is a beautiful woman with pure white hair who comes and goes from the manor in a gold sleigh drawn by a silver horse - who is she? Why is her face so sad??

It's a beautiful story. Hauntingly well-written, and one of my beloved childhood books.
Here's an excerpt from the first chapter called "A Gift from a Stranger".

From The mystery of Lonesome Manor by Harriet Evatt.

Meanwhile, Alouette, unaware that she was being watched and discussed by the village gossip, rode happily down the road, whistling in tune withi the brass bell on Herbert's harness.

But as she neared the gate to the lane that led to the Robinette farmhouse, a figure seemed to appear from nowhere out of the snowstorm, and to loom up beside the sledge.

"How!" A man was standing with right hand held high in an Indian's peaceful greeting.

"How ... how!" quavered Alouette. "I ... I didn't see you coming, it's snowing so hard."

Alouette brushed the snow from her eyes and peered at the stranger. She thought, "It is an Indian, and he is on snowshoes."

The man stood and waited as Alouette looked at him. His long black hair was partially covered by a wide-brimmed hat with a round crown. His clothing was made of deerskin.

She knew all the friendly Hurons who came from the Indian village of Lorette by sight, but this man was a stranger.

At last the Indian spoke: "Where you think you go so fast?"

"I don't think, I know. I'm going home to supper."

"Nice warm supper, eh?"

"Of course. Doesn't everyone go home to a warm supper in the wintertime?"

"Not all. Some wander on face of earth. Sometimes warm supper, sometimes no.

You live near?" he asked suddenly, changing the subject.

"Yes, up there." Alouette pointed toward the lane.

Herbert moved restlessly and pawed the snow. It was his suppertime, too, and he was growing impatient. Still the stranger seemed reluctant to let her go.

Alouette began to be frightened. "Look here," she said. "If you are hungry and will follow me up the lane to the house, Maman and Grandmere will give you supper. No one has ever left the Robinette kitchen hungry."

"Ahha ... that is Robinette farm!" the man said, ignoring her invitation.

"Certainly. Everyone knows that."

"No. You be Alouette Robinette? And is Christmas tree grove back your house?"

Alouette nodded. "Yes, I am Alouette, and Grandpere raises Christmas trees to sell in Quebec at the Christmas market."

"You are called Little Featherhead."

"Yes. Who knows that better than I do?"

"This your birthday but one sun. Tomorrow you be eleven years. Is true?"

"Yes."

"What you think this?" The stranger reached into his pocket and dangled something before her startled eyes.

"Oh, what a beautiful ring!" The Indian was holding up a ring on a golden chain ... a ring unlike anything she had ever seen. Set in a wreath of flashing green stones was a milky gray stone. As she looked at it closely she discovered that a light streak ran through the center of the stone, for all the world like the pupil in the eye of a cat.

"Why, it is beautiful ... it ... it looks like a cat's eye!" she gasped.

"That name of stone. It cat's eye, and emeralds around," the Indian said, placing it in the palm of her hand. "This rare and old ring. Is but one other ..." He broke off, then said, "It is for you, the ring, if you do two things."

Alouette nodded, her fascinated eyes held by some mystic spell the beautiful ring seemed to work on her.

"First thing is you tell no one about the ring, not show to any, not even family," the man explained.

"I promise. And what then?"

"You know tune 'Alouette'? If yes, whistle for me."

"Oh yes. My uncle, Jacques Robinette, taught me to whistle that tune." And once again Alouette's clear, birdlike whistle broke the winter silence.

The Indian nodded. "Now whistle 'Frere Jacques'."

Alouette did as he asked her.

"Why are you asking me to whistle these old French songs?"

"Because Alouette and Jacques belong together," was the mysterious response.

"Now here keepsake for you from way-off Manitoba," he said, "because I know you one I seek." And he closed the fingers of her mittened hand over the beautiful ring on its golden chain.

"But who are you then?"

"Call me Northern Traveler."

Alouette looked up then and said, "Thank you. Oh, thank you! The ring is so beautiful. Thank you, Northern Traveler."

But there was no one there to hear her. The stranger had disappeared as silently as he had come, vanishing into the snowstorm. Even the tracks of his snowshoes were disappearing. There was nothing to do but slip the ring and the chain into her pocket. She turned Herbert up the lane toward the warm barn and the twinkling lights of the friendly old farmhouse.

It was growing bitterly cold as the wind blew in from the St. Lawrence River, but Alouette did not notice the cold. She was turning the Northern Traveler's words over and over in her mind. "A keepsake for you, from way-off Manitoba," the stranger had said.

"But who, then?"

The little farm girl, born on the island of Orleans, did not know a living soul in faraway Manitoba.

The Books: "The summer sleigh ride" (Betty K. Erwin)

Next book on the shelf ... (we're in my children's and young adult bookshelves, by the way):

Next book on the shelf is The summer sleigh ride by Betty K Erwin.

I LOVED this book when I was a kid - my love was something akin to mania. I had to constantly take it out of the library so I could read it AGAIN. There were illustrations - sort of black scratchy drawings - and I just found the whole thing magical. It's long out of print now but last fall I did a search on Amazon and found it - at some used bookseller's in Texas. I flipped. I ordered it. When it arrived, it was the exact same edition of the book that I remembered as a kid. Not only that but this was a "discarded" library book, with the word DISCARD written across the main page. I couldn't believe it when I held it in my hands again. Last time I had even seen the book I was 11 years old. Here it is!! I don't even really remember what exactly it WAS that I loved so much but that doesn't matter! Summer Sleigh Ride and Sheila are back together again!

I couldn't even remember the intricacies of the plot - all I remembered was that these 4 young girls all somehow were whisked, via sleigh, into an alternate universe. A sort of Aldous Huxley-esque universe. I flipped through it when I got it and the entire thing came back to me: These 4 friends live in a small town in, oh, Minnesota - something like that. And in their normal girlhood experiences one year (carving pumpkins for Halloween, sitting on the roof of one of their houses star-watching, etc.) - they start to get the feeling that someone is following them. They aren't sure if it's a game or if it's real, but they all get that feeling. Then one of them disappears. Off the face of the earth, it seems. A huge search ensues. Everyone goes nuts. It's a Natalee Holloway type situation. Only without the Dutch government. The 3 friends left behind walk around the town, putting up posters, yadda yadda - it's horrible (this Betty Erwin is a lovely writer) - and then, winter comes - and one snowy night they somehow start speaking to a man driving a huge sleigh - and he says he knows where Emilie is. If they'll just get into the back of the sleigh and come with him, he'll take them to her. Excited, they leap into the back of the sleigh. They're 11 years old. Forgive them for their naivete. Oh, and the book takes place in 1933. I loved books that took place in earlier times.

Anyway - the sleigh ends up acting as some kind of time traveler - because eventually - they slip into an alternate universe - an exact replica of their old town but with all different people, and with one very eerie difference: There are no children in the town. The girls are treated like wild animals at the zoo, to be gawked at, stared at, feared. Are they real? What do we feed them? We've heard rumors of such creatures but now here they are!

It all works out in the end, of course.

Here's an excerpt from the beginning half of the book, before they all are kidnapped.

I just loved the 4 girls back when I was a kid - they each have a different and distinct personality - as little girl first I related to one, then to another ... I just loved them. And I kind of wanted to be friends with them.

From The summer sleigh ride by Betty K Erwin.

The coal hole was behind the church; it was covered by a trapdoor which led into the cellar. Since the door was flat with the surrounding brick, very people knew it was there.

Emilie was last. When she got there the girls were holding the trap up for her. She swung down into the dark and Margaret let down the trapdoor. It was black as pitch.

"Now where did I leave that candle?" Belle was saying. She fumbled around on a shelf in the blackness. She found a candle and a match at last; there was a flare of light and then the welcome flame burned steadily.

"I left some candy, too, the last time I was here," Belle said. "Where did I put them? A couple of bars at least."

"The janitor probably ate them," Margaret said. "He could live on the food you scatter behind you."

"Here they are," Belle said, "two good Hershey bars. Let's divide them."

There was a noise from above. The trapdoor opened and two legs appeared in the candlelight.

"Here you are," a voice said. "I knew I'd catch up to you. I've got something to tell you."

"Dick Stone," Margaret said disgustedly, "why can't you leave us alone? We don't go following you around, for heaven's sake!"

"Keep your hair on, Meg," Dick said. "I'm trying to do you a good turn."

"Good turn," scoffed Belle, "why, you wouldn't help your grandmother across the street!"

"All right," he said. "you''ll see. I've come to warn you."

"Warn us!" Polly said. "Don't be silly. You're trying to frighten us because we let your poor old raccoon go."

"So it was you!" he said wisely. "No, that isn't it. This time you've got to believe me. Listen --" And for once his pale bony face wore such a look of earnestness that, in spite of themselves, the girls were impressed.

"Listen," he said, "you know when you were up in that tree back of Polly's? There was a man watching you!"

"Pooh!" Emily said bravely. "I don't believe you."

"Who was he?" Belle asked.

"I've never seen him before," Dick said. "He wasn't like anyone I know. He was standing by the corner of the shed, watching and watching. It gave me the willies. Gosh! I wouldn't like to be you! He was a funny-looking guy."

"You're just trying to frighten us, Dick Stone," Margaret said.

"Cross my heart and hope to die," he said soberly.

For a minute they believed him, and then Belle said, "You get out of here this minute. We're not going to listen to you any more!"

"All right," he said, "I'll get. But I wouldn't be surprised if he wasn't hanging around out there now."

"Pooh!" Polly said.

Dick went out the trapdoor and when it was safely shut the girls looked at each other, their eyes round and shiny in the candlelight.

"Well," Emilie said, "what do you make of that?"

"Nothing," Belle said. "I don't believe it."

"At this rate," Margaret said, "what with being followed all over the place we won't have to look for a new game."

"What if he is out there?" Polly asked.

"You wanted adventure," Belle said. "This is it."

The curfew began to ring. Even underground, they heard it.

"C'mon," Margaret said, "we'll walk Emilie partway home and then run back. Are you afraid?"

"Of course not," Polly said. "Let's pretend someone is following us. It'll be fun."

Belle blew out the candle, and, like a thrifty housewife, put the candle end away. She put the Hershey bars away too. The girls had forgotten them and they would come in handy another time.

Once outside they drew together and clasped hands. For a moment, all common sense was lost and they felt eyes staring at them from every tree. "Goodness," Emilie said. "I think our old games were nicer."

"You wait," Margaret said. "This is going to be fun. It may lead to anything!"

Long afterward, looking back, they agreed that this night, with the warning they had laughed at, was the first thing. They counted them up -- four things all together, before the adventure.

All unwittingly, they had found a new game. Or a new game had found them.

The Books: "The Children of Green Knowe" (Lucy M. Boston)

Next book on the shelf ... (we're in my children's and young adult bookshelves, by the way):

Next book on the shelf was given to me by Jean - The Children of Green Knowe by by L. M. Boston. Now - it appears that this book has been re-released - but my copy is an old hardcover - and on the front page is a huge note from some librarian: DISCARD. There are old-time black and white illustrations - and it has a cover that is kind of curling off in places. This is from a series of books (the so-and-so at Green Knowe) - and the one that we were totally obsessed with was The River at Green Knowe. We just LOVED that book - and I honestly cannot remember why. But I am sure we had very good taste. We were just OBSESSED with it.

Looking at the list of "Green Knowe" books on Amazon - it seems like The River at Green Knowe is not as popular- it doesn't appear to have been re-released in paperback form.

Jean - why did we love that book so much??

Anyway - Jean came across The Children of Green Knowe at a yard sale, or a library sale ... and of course immediately bought it for me.

The opening of the book kind of explains to me why we loved these books so much - It's just chock FULL of British atmosphere. It's like all those great books about kids being shunted off to relatives, on train carriages ... Secret Garden, or Lion Witch and Wardrobe ... little kids on their own, making their way ...

From what I remember, this book is about a little boy who goes to stay with his great-grandmother at a place called Green Knowe. She lives in an old old house - almost like a castle - and from the moment he arrives very odd things start happening. Magical things. There's a portrait in one of the rooms - an old oil painting of three children who used to live in the house way back in the 17th century. Great-grandmother tells her great-grandson stories about these kids .. and the little boy eventually starts to sense that the kids are still in the house. He finds their toys ... he thinks he sees them, etc. etc. The way LM Boston describes this house ... it's like the house in Lion Witch and Wardrobe - You just SO want to explore this house!!

Here's the first couple of paragraphs. Great writing, in my opinion.

From The Children of Green Knowe by by L. M. Boston.

A little boy was sitting in the corner of a railway carriage looking out at the rain, which was splashing against the windows and blotching downward in an ugly, dirty way. He was not the only person in the carriage, but the others were strangers to him. He was alone as usual. There were two women opposite him, a fat one and a thin one, and they talked without stopping, smacking their lips in between sentences and seeming to enjoy what they said as much as if it were something to eat. They were knitting all the time, and whenever the train stopped the click-clack of their needles was loud and clear like two clocks. It was a stopping train - more stop than go - and it had been crawling along through the flooded country for a long time. Everywhere there was water - not sea or rivers or lakes, but just senseless flood water with the rain splashing into it. Sometimes the railway lines were covered by it, and then the train-noise was quite different, softer than a boat.

"I wish it was the Flood," thought the boy, "and that I was going to the Ark. That would be fun! Like the circus. Perhaps Noah had a whip and made all the animals go round and round for exercise. What a noise there would be, with the lions roaring, elephants trumpeting, pigs squealing, pigs braying, horses whinnying, bulls bellowing, and cocks and hens always thinking theyh were going to be trodden on but unable to fly up on to the roof, where all the other birds were singing, screaming, twittering, squawking and cooing. What must it have sounded like, coming along on the tide? And did Mrs. Noah just knit, knit, and take no notice?"

The two women opposite him were getting ready for the next station. They packed up their knitting and collected their parcels and then sat staring at the little boy. He had a thin face and very large eyes; he looked patient and rather sad. They seemed to notice him for the first time.

"What's your name, son?" asked the fat woman suddenly. "I've never seen you on this train before." This was always a question he dreaded. Was he to say his unexpected real name or his silly pet names?

"Toseland," he said.

"Toseland! That's a real old-fashioned name in these parts. There's Fen Toseland, and Toseland St. Agnes and Toseland Gunning. What's your Christian name?"

"That is it - Toseland."

"Do your mum and dad live round here, son?"

"No, they live in Burma."

"Fancy that now! That's a long way away. Where are you going, then?"

"I don't know. That is, I'm going to my great-granmother Oldknow at Green Noah. The station in Penny Soaky."

"That's the next station after this. We get out here. Don't forget - the next station. And make sure there's some dry land before you get out of the train. The floods are bad there. Bye-bye, cheerio."

They got out, shouting, and joking with the porters and kissing the people who had come to meet them. They started off into the hissing rain as if they loved it. Toseland heard the fat woman's loud voice saying, "Oh, I don't mind this. I like it, it's our home-rain, not like that dirty London water."

The train jogged on again and now Toseland was quite alone. He wished he had a family like other people - brothers and sisters, even if his father were away. His mother was dead. He had a stepmother but he hardly knew her and was miserably shy of her. He had been at a boarding-school, and for the last holidays he had been left behind to stay with the head mistress, Miss Spudd, and her old father. They meant to be kind to him, but they never spoke to him without saying 'dear'. It was "Finish up your porridge, dear, we don't want you to get thin", or "Put on your coat, dear, we don't want you to catch cold", or "Get ready for church, dear, we don't want you to grow up to be a heathen." And every day after breakfast, "Run along to your room, dear, we want to read the papers."

But now his great-grandmother Oldknow had written that he was to come and live with her. He had never seen her, but she was his own great-grandmother, and that was something. Of course she would be very old. He thought of some old people he had seen who were so old that it frightened him. He wondered if she would be frighteningly old. He began to feel afraid already, and to shake it off he thought about Green Noah and Penny Soaky. What queer names! Green Noah was pure mystery, but Penny Soaky was friendly like a joke.

Suddenly the train stopped, and the porters were shouting, "Penny Soaky! Penny Soaky! Penny Soaky!" Toseland had no sooner got the door open than a man wearing a taxi driver's hat came along calling:

"Anybody here for Green Noah? Are you Master Toseland for Green Noah?"

"Oh yes, please. It's me."

"This your luggage? Two more in the van? You stand here out of the rain while I get it."

There were a few houses to be seen on one side of the line, and on the other nothing but flooded fields with hedges standing in the water.

"Come along," said the taxi-man. "I've put all your luggage in the car. It'll be dark before we get there and we've got to go through a lot of water."

"Is it deep?"

"Not so deep, I hope, that we can't get through."

"If it rains forty days and forty nights will it be a real flood?"

"Sure enough it would."

Toseland sat by the driver and they set off. The windscreen wipers made two clear fans on the windscreen through which he could see the road half covered with water, with ditches brimming on the other side. When they came near the bridge that crossed the river, the road disappeared under water altogether and they seemed to drive into the side of the river with a great splash that flew up against the windows; but it was only a few inches deep, and then they reached the humpbacked bridge and went up and over it, and down again into deeper water on the other side. This time they drove very carefully like bathers walking out into cold water. The car crept along making wide ripples.

"We don't want to stick here," said the driver, "this car don't float."

They came safely through that side too, and now the headlights were turned on, for it was growing dark, and Toseland could see nothing but rain and dazzle..

"Is it far?" he asked.

"Not very, but we have to go a long way round to get past the floods. Green Noah stands almost in the middle of it now, because the river runs alongside the garden. Once you get there you won't be able to get out again till the flood goes down."

"How will I get in, then?"

"Can you swim?"

"Yes, I did twenty strokes last summer. Will that be enough?"

"You'll have to do better than that. Perhaps if you felt yourself sinking you could manage a few more?"

"But it's quite dark. How will I know where to swim to?"

The driver laughed. "Don't you worry. Mrs. Oldknow will never let you drown. She'll see you get there all right. Now here we are. At least, I can't go any further." Toseland pushed the car door open and looked out. It had stopped raining. The car was standing in a lane of shallow water that stretched out into the dark in front and behind. The driver was wearing Wellington boots, and he got out and paddled round the car. Toseland was afraid that he would be left now to go on as best he could by himself. He did not like to show that he was afraid, so he tried another way of finding out.

"If I am going to swim," he said, "what will you do with my luggage?"

"You haven't got no gum boots, have you?" said the driver. "Come on, get on my shoulders and we'll have a look round to see if anyone's coming to meet you." Toseland climbed on to his shoulders and they set off, but almost at once they heard the sound of oars, and a lantern came round the corner of the land rocking on the bows of a rowing boat. A man called out, "Is that Master Toseland?" The driver shouted back, "Is that Mr. Boggis?" but Toseland was speechless with relief and delight.

"Good evening, Master Toseland," said Mr. Boggis, holding up the lantern to look at him, while Toseland looked too, and saw a nice old cherry-red face with bright blue eyes. "Pleased to meet you. I knew your mother when she was your size. I bet you were wondering how you were going to get home?" It was nice to hear somebody talking about 'home' in that way. Toseland felt much happier, and now he knew that the driver had been teasing him, so he grinned and said: "I was going to swim."

The boat was moored to somebody's garden gate while the two men put the trunk and tuck-box into it.

"You'll be all right now," said the taxi-man. "Good night to you both."

"Good night, and thank you," said Toseland.

The Books: "Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great" (Judy Blume)

Moving right along with my daily book excerpt thing. I am now actually done with my history/american biography bookshelf, sniff, sniff. It didn't take me as long to get through as the first bookshelf - because the first bookshelf is mostly plays, and those are much smaller, so you can fit more of them on the shelves!!

So the NEXT bookshelf I'm going to tackle (I'm so obsessive) is my shelf of all my beloved children's books! I am so excited! Many of these books I have had since I was literally 6 years old. Others I tracked down, once I was an adult - and there are still more that I need to find - I love children's books, and my young adult books ... They are more treasured to me than any other of the books in my library. Because I have loved them longest.

I hope those of you who read these excerpts find some of your favorites here, too!

So to start off? We've got some Judy Blume. JUDY BLUME. I read them all when I was a kid ... and I was particularly excited, as a child, because one of her heroines was named after me. My 4th grade teacher Miss Rogers (who was, in general, a bitch, who shamed me for not understanding fractions, and I credit HER with my mental block towards mathematics - BITCH - I will never forgive her for that) read Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great outloud to the class - this was my first introduction to Judy Blume's books. I LOVE Sheila the Great. She's such a great character.

So that's the first book on the shelf: Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great by Judy Blume.

Sheila Tubman is in 5th grade. She lives in New York City with her family. She has an older sister Libby who is VERY condescending. The book takes place during summer vacation when the family leaves the city for the summer and lives in Tarrytown ... right down the street from Sleepy Hollow. Sheila is kind of a scaredy-cat - she is terrified of the Headless Horseman, terrified of swimming (she has never learned how), terrified of s's (that's my girl), scared of dogs - she will go out of her way to avoid dogs - and has a whole catalog of secret fears. But on the other hand, she acts like a superhero, she has a huge ego, and she refers to herself as Sheila the Great. She doesn't know who she is. Is she the scaredy cat? Or is she the brave bossy hero? Which side of her personality will win out? Over the course of the summer, she has all of these learning experiences - makes new friends, she takes swimming lessons (some of the best parts of the book) - and, in general, learns to conquer some of her fears.

I love this book. Judy Blume is awesome awesome awesome.

Here's an excerpt from the first chapter. It's funny - I haven't read this book in years, since I was a little kid!! But all the details came back to me when I looked over this chapter this morning: Sheila gulping down orange juice, forgetting the milk, Libby's ballet shoes...

(Also, my copy - which I just ordered - appears to have been updated. There is reference to a CD player. There was, recently, a brou-haha because Judy Blume updated Are You There God - which is about getting your first period. That original book had reference to pads with belts - which, of course, are no longer in use. I don't believe there was any reference to tampons. It was a different time. Judy Blume went through and updated it, for girls of this generation - so that it would be relevant to their first-menstruation experiences. So anyway, back to Sheila the Great; It probably said "turntable" or "record player" in the original)

The goodness of Judy Blume's books, for me, is in the DETAILS. Notice all the details she gets in here. It's good writing - yes, for a 10 year old reader - but good writing. It's also very funny.

From Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great by Judy Blume

Henry was right. Ten flights up is a long walk. By the time I got to my floor I was huffing and puffing so hard I had to sit down on the landing and rest. Little drips of sweat ran from my face down to my neck. Still, I think it's pretty smart of me to pretend that I hate Turtle because he smells. I always hold my nose when I see Peter coming with him. That way Peter will never know the truth!

After a few minutes I wiped my face with the back of my hand and walked down the hall to our apartment. Mrs. Reese is the only person on our floor with a dog. And I don't worry too much about her. Because her dog is so small she carries him around in her arms. She calls him Baby and knits him little sweaters to wear.

I pushed open our apartment door and went straight into the kitchen to get something to drink.

"Is that you, Sheila?" my mother called.

"Yes," I answered.

"Did you have fun at Laurie's?"

"Yes," I said, gulping down a whole can of apple juice.

"Is it still hot out?" Mom asked.

"Yes."

"Did you remember to bring home a quart of milk?"

Oh oh! I knew I forgot something.

"Sheila ... did you bring home the milk?" Mom called again.

"No ... I forgot."

I went into the living room then. My mother was reading a book. The CD player was on and my sister Libby was twirling around in her pink toe slippers. She is thirteen and thinks she's a great ballerina. I could hold my nose for the way Libby dances, but I'd get into big trouble if I did.

My mother said, "You better go back down and get the milk, Sheila."

I flipped into the big chair that tilts back and said, "I can't, Mom. I'm dead. I just walked up the stairs."

"Don't tell me the elevatory is out of order!" Mom said.

"No."

"Then why did you walk up ten flights of stairs?"

"I don't know," I said. "I just felt like it."

"Sheila, that was a very foolish thing to do in this heat," Mom told me. "Now go into your room and lie down for a while before supper."

"Do I have to?"

"Yes, you do. Libby will go to the store and get the milk."

Libby did three flying leaps before she said, "Can't you see I'm in the middle of a routine?"

"Your routine can wait," Mom said. "I need the milk for supper and Daddy will be home soon."

"But, Mother! I'm in my leotard," Libby said.

Libby used to say Mom, like me. But since she started junior high, it's Mother this and Mother that. She is very strange.

Mom told Libby, "You can put a skirt over your leotard and nobody will notice." Then she looked at me. "Sheila, what are you waiting for? I said go and lie down."

"Okay ... okay," I said. "I'm going." I took off my shoes and arranged them on the floor so that the toes pointed toward my bedroom.

I line them up every day before my father comes home. It's part of a private game Daddy and I play. I am always hiding somewhere and Daddy has to find me. His only clue is my shoes. I invented this game when I was seven and we've been playing it ever since.

Libby said when she was ten she acted a lot more grown-up than me. I think she missed out on some good fun. Anyway, Daddy would be disappointed if I stopped playing our game.

Libby and I share a bedroom. I stretched out on my bed while Libby turned the closet upside down looking for a skirt.

"You are a pain!" she said to me. "You know that, Sheila? You are a real live pain!"

I didn't answer her.

"Why'd you walk up the stairs ... huh?"

I still didn't answer.

"Did you see a dog in the elevator? I'll bet that's it. I'll bet Mrs. Reese was in the elevator with Baby."

"Wrong!" I said.

Libby finally found a skirt and pulled it on over her leotard. "Then I'll bet it was Peter Hatcher and Turtle."

"Maybe it was and maybe it wasn't," I said.

"Chicken chicken chicken," Libby called as she left.

I put my hands over my ears to show I wasn't even listening.

The Books: "Alice in Wonderland" (Lewis Carroll)

Next book in my Daily Book Excerpt:

We're still in my oversized picture book area and the next book is Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass , by Lewis Carroll.

An all-time favorite of mine. I never get tired of it.

One of the things I truly love about it is how nasty Alice can be. How she is willful, has a mind of her own, a terrible temper, does not like being victimized - and fights back. She's not at ALL a little 19th century girl. She feels real. Not idealized. Love her.

Here's a terrific page outlining the background and history of this classic book. I especially like seeing the work of all the different illustrators, from all the different versions of this book. Tenniel, to me, seems to have captured the book definitively - however, that may be just because I know his stuff by heart, and they just seem to "go" with the book. But seeing all the different examples is really interesting. They're beautiful. Getting a chance to illustrate this book has been compared to getting a chance to playing Hamlet to an actor: it's the Holy Grail, the thing most wished for, but also a daunting task - How does one compete with Tenniel? How can you put your OWN stamp onto it? Check out that link - it's very very cool.

And finally, for all you Carroll and Alice nuts out there, here is a long excerpt from Morton Cohen's extensive biography of Charles Lutwidge Dodson (Lewis Carroll). A fantastic biography - once of my favorites.

Neither Alice book has ever gone out of print; both are, in fact, firm bulwarks of society, both in the English-speaking world and everywhere else. Next to the Bible and Shakespeare, they are the books most widely and most frequently translated and quoted. Over 75 editions and versions of the Alice books were available in 1993, including play texts, parodies, read-along cassettes, teachers, guides, audio-language studies, coloring books, New Method readers, abridgements, learn-to-read story books, single-syllable texts, coloring books, pop-up books, musical renderings, casebooks, and a deluxe edition selling for 175 pounds. They have been translated into over 70 languages, including Swahili and Yiddish; and they exist in Braille.

Critics have pondered the books' magic and tried to explain it. What are they all about, they ask, and why so universally successful? What is the key to their enchantment, why are they so entertaining and yet so enigmatic? What charm enables them to transcend languages as well as national and temporal differences and win their way into the hearts of young and old everywhere and always?

Commenting on Alice, Charles himself wrote: "The 'Why' of this book cannot, and need not, be put into words. Those for whom a child's mind is a sealed book, and who see no divinity in a child's smile, would read such words in vain No deed, I suppose, is really unselfish. Yet if one can put forth all one's powers in a task where nothing of reward is hoped for but a little child's whispered thanks and the airy touch of a little child's pure lips, one seems to come somewhere near to this."

Charming as that comment is, it does not help us grasp the meaning of the books. We must go beyond Charles' reflections. The critiques, commentaries, exegeses, and analyses that have appeared during the past hundred years and more - some profound and interesting, some absurd - offer many bewildering theories. Recalling a few simple facts, however, helps.

To begin with, Charles wrote both books with Alice Liddell and, to a lesser degree, her sisters and Robinson Duckworth in mind. All the occupants of the boat who first heard the tale of Alice are characters in the first book. The Dodo is Charles, the Duck is Duckworth, the Lory is Lorina, the Eaglet Edith. But they play hardly more than walk-on parts. The book is about Alice, the middle sister; it is she, and she alone, who stands at center stage throughout.

The actors in both Alice books are transplants from real life, as are the episodes, and those who sat in the gliding boat recognized them as Charles related them, just as they would later experience flashes of memory reading Looking Glass. The landmarks, the language, the puns, the puffery - it was all rooted in the circumscribed enclave of their Victorian lives. Oxford provided the landscape, its architecture, its history, its select society, its conventions. In Under Ground and in the additions that Charles later made to the tale and in the sequel, his listeners (and readers) would have instantly picked up on the references, to the Sheep Shop on St. Aldate's, the treacle well at Binsey, the lilies of the Botanic Gardens, the deer in Magdalen Grove, the lion and the unicorn from the royal crests, the leopards from Cardinal Wolsey's coat of arms that graces the fabric of Christ Church and are known as "Ch Ch Cats". Charles parodied familiar verse and songs, some of which they sang together as they rowed up or down the river: "Twinkle, twinkle, little bat"; "Salmon come up" in "The Lobster Quadrille"; "Turtle Soup"; "How doth the little crocodile" and more. They would readily penetrate the thin disguises of John Ruskin as the conger eel, Bartholomew Price as the Bat, Humpty Dumpty as some egghead don pontificating, the Caterpillar as another conducting a viva. The Mad Tea-Party as a parody of Alice's birthday party would have elicited howls of laughter. A good many of the references are lost to us, so localized they were.

Underlying the characters, however distorted and exaggerated, is the cast-iron foundation of Victorian society, its shibboleths, class hierarchy, manners, conventions, proprieties, taboos, and, perhaps most of all, its foibles and follies. The Victorian idea, or, in Charles' terms, the misconception of the child is at the heart of both stories, as are the child's observations of the adult world and the adult world's insensitive, abusive treatment of the child. We also have a running commentary on the human condition and especially a catalog of human weaknesses - sliding away from rectitude, succumbing to frailties, escaping responsibilities, imagining infirmities.

Although the heroine is still young and learning, she is old enough both to reflect her training and to criticize it. She mirrors her society by showing that her sensitivity has already been blunted and that she has learned to mimic the haughty stance, the rude rebuke common in her social milieu. Her indelicate treatment of the Mouse and the birds in the early chapters of Wonderland are a mere prelude to the insolence and arrogance she herself encounters and criticizes. Almost everyone she meets mistreats her: the rabbit mistakes her for his housemaid and shouts orders at her, the caterpillar cross-examines her, the Duchess berates her, the Hatter criticizes the length of her locks, the March Hare lectures her on her use of language, the Gryphon chides her and tells her to hold her tongue, the Queen of Hearts shouts, "Off with her head!"

Bad behavior is one thing, but violence is something else, and it too occurs in these books, some of it initiated by our heroine. Alice's fall dwon the rabbit hole is in itself not violent, but it certainly carries with it the fear of a violent crash. When Alice is jammed into the Rabbit's house, she kicks Bill the Lizard up the chimney like a skyrocket. In Looking-Glass, there's the Jabberwock with jaws that bite and claws that catch, the oysters are all eaten, the Lion and the Unicorn engage in battle, and the red chess pieces are threatening.

The books reflect England's rigid social scale more than they criticize it. Charles has a good ear and captures the speech and manners of several social grades.

The characters behave according to their stations, but a good many Victorian bromides transcend class, and Charles deals them out mercilessly. "I'm older than you, and must know better," says the Lory to Alice. When Alice asks exactly how old the Lory is, she vainly refuses to tell. Group games are the target in the Caucus-race, with its solemn prize-giving ceremony. When the Mouse goes off in a huff after reciting its tale, the old Crab admonishes her daughter: "Ah, my dear! Let this be a lesson to you to never lose your temper!" Then the Caterpillar orders Alice to "keep your temper". Similar rebuffs and platitudes occur throughout.

What, then, does it all add up to besides art? The answer surely is a double-layered metaphor. The more obvious one, not much disguised, is the child's plight in Victorian upper-class society, which the Liddell sisters would easily recognize. But that same metaphor goes far beyond Charles' original purpose: it reaches beyond Victorian Oxford into the wide world. For Charles, intentionally or not, got at the universal essence of childhood and captured the disappointments, fears, and bewilderment that all children encounter in the course of daily living. He wove fear, condescension, rejection, and violence into the tales, and the children who read them feel their hearts beat faster and their skin tingle, not so much with excitement as with an uncanny recognition of themselves, of the hurdles they have confronted and had to overcome. Repelled by Alice's encounters, they are also drawn to them because they recognize them as their own. These painful and damaging experiences are the price children pay in all societies in all times when passing through the dark corridors of their young lives, and Charles miraculously captures their truth.

The second metaphor lives in Charles' own life. He could not have written about Alice's adventures had he not himself experienced the indignities that Alice suffers and the fears she feels. The Alice books become, in this metaphor, a record of Charles' childhood, the shocks dealt him by parents, teachers, all his elders. Bad manners and violence were commonplace in Victorian days, but their emphasis and frequency in these books, while capturing the ethos of the age, also tell us that Charlese must have stored up an amount of hostility as he grew up, at home, at school, and at Oxford. At home and at school, he very likely smarted under innumerable commands from above, unreasoning and unreasonable, and as a sensitive observer, he saw and deplored society's artificial and meaningless minuets. The spare-the-rod philosophy was still dominant; whippings and beatings at school were customary. The bullying he witnessed, the knockabout games on the sporting fields, surely weighed on him. Accumulated resentment seeks outlets, and Charles took this opportunity to get even with the past.

In the end, however, the books are not mainly about fear and bewilderment. Once readers have associated with Alice and wandered with her through Wonderland, they are together on a survival course. They are thrown back upon their own inner resources, determining whether their resources are strong enough to get them through. Does Alice have the wit necessary to master the maze of childhood and emerge a tried and tested teenager? Charles' answer is affirmative. He endows his heroine, and by extension all children, with the means of dealing with a hostile, unpredictable environment. At the close of both books, we have a catharsis, an affirmation of life after Wonderland and life on this side of the looking-glass. Although unconventional, the endings are happy, as fairy-tale endings should be. In both cases, Alice should meet a strong male rescuer, a Prince Charming, and they should fall in love and live happily ever after. But she does not. She succeeds, but not through the formula of grand romance. Instead of honeyed happiness, she gains confidence, a way of dealing with the world; instead of love, she finds advancement, recognition, acceptance. It is a reasonably happy ending for Charles himself, for he is at the heart of the tales.

The Alice books affect all children of all places at all times in a similar way. They tell the child that someone does understand; they offer encouragement, a feeling that the author is sharing their miseries and is holding out a hand, a hope for their survival as they pass from childhood into adulthood.

But this discussion sounds too serious, really, because Charles' most successful device is laughter. Anyone who abhors a pun does not appreciate its usefulness as a tool to exercise the mind, to urge the growing child to wed sense to sound. When, in reading the Alice books, the child sees and gets the pun or some other joke all on his or her own, the child suddenly senses an awakened pride in his or her ability and, at least for a moment, laughter replaces a troubled emotion.

Many of the critiques of the Alice books seem to have been written by people who seldom laugh.

Children's books had existed for centuries before Charles came along. He did not invent the genre. But he did something significant. He broke with tradition. Many of the earlier children's books written for the upper classes had lofty purposes: they had to teach and preach. Primers taught children religious principles alongside multiplication tables. Children recited rhymed couplets as aids to memorizing the alphabet " A: In Adam's fall we sinned all, F: The idle Fool is whipped at school." Children learned their catechism, learned to fear sin - and their books were means to aid and abet the process. They were often frightened by warnings and threats, their waking hours burdened with homilies. Much of the literature of Charles' day, the books he himself read as a boy, were purposeful and dour. They instilled discipline and compliance.

The Alice books fly in the face of that tradition, destroy it, and give the Victorian child something lighter and brighter. Above all, these books have no moral. About a year after Wonderland appeared, when Charles sent a more conventional book to a young friend, he wrote (January 1867): "The book is intended for you to look at the outside, and then put it away in the bookcase: the inside is not meant to be read. The book has got a moral - so I need hardly say it is not by Lewis Carroll."

Perhaps the most important difference between the Alice books and more conventional children's stories of mid-Victorian Britain is a difference in the author's attitude towards his audience. For a middle and upper class child, growing up in Victorian times may have been something less than a happy experience. It was an age of the nanny and the governess; children were shunted off to the nursery, brought out to spend an hour with their mothers in the late afternoon, and then whisked off again. When they reached school age, they were packed off to preparatory and then public schools, where they learned to fear schoolmasters and mistresses, and even more, one another. School was too often the arena of the bully: violence was rampant. To survive at the English boarding school, one had to be strong and resourceful enough to outwit one's classmates.

By a magical combination of memory and intuition, Charles keenly appreciated what it was like to be a child in a grown-up society, what it means to be scolded, rejected, ordered about. The Alice books are antidotes to the child's degradation. Like Dickens, Charles knew that when harsh reality becomes unbearable, the child seeks escape through fantasy. Charles also knew how to make the adult reader sympathize with the child Alice, the victim of the unpredictable, undependable world of adults into which she has accidentally fallen. Charles champions the child in the child's confrontation with the adult world, and in that, too, his book differs from most others. He treats children, both in his book and in real life, as equals. He has a way of seeing into their minds and hearts, and he knows how to train their minds painlessly and move their hearts constructively.

The theme of survival echoes all through Charles' work, just as it is a major concern in his life. If the Alice books are symbols of his own struggle to survive, they are also formulae for every child's survival: they offer encouragement to push on, messages of hope in the wilderness of adult society. Time and again, Charles articulates that message, through his works and in his personal relationships. Ethel Rowell, a child friend, recorded her debt to him for teaching her logic and compelling her "to that arduous business of thinking." And she added: "He gave me a sense of my own personal dignity. He was so punctilious, so courteous, so considerate, so scrupulous not to embarrass or offend, that he made me feel I counted."

The element of respect and the absence of condescension are crucial, and Charles' acceptance of the child as an equal makes all the difference, for it is these components that render the books timeless. Despite the Victorian furniture built into the tales, they do today for young people what they did for Ethel Rowell and other Victorian children. A 17 year old student of mine confirmed this notion, writing in a paper on 19th century fantasy: "Lewis Carroll gives equal time to the child's point of view. He makes fun of the adult world and understands all the hurt feelings that most children suffer while they are caught in the condition of growing up but are still small. I find myself constantly identifying with Alice as I move through this bewildering world of ours. The Alice books help the child develop self-awareness and assure her that she is not the only one feeling what she feels. Maybe they even show adults how to be more aware of the child and the needs of children. They really made it easier for me to grow up."

Charles does not play jokes on children - he shares jokes with them and, in doing so, gives them the self-confidence they need, the extra boost to make them take another step forward in the often precarious process of leaving childhood and entering adulthood. Along the road he makes them laugh without requiring them to pay for their laughter.

Even today the formula works: Charles helps children see themselves anew and to like what they see. That is why the Alice books have been translated into practically every language that children speak and why Charles commands an audience in every new generation.

"Charles does not play jokes on children - he shares jokes with them and, in doing so, gives them the self-confidence they need ..."

It's so true. That's why adults can enjoy these books as much as children. Lewis Carroll didn't write one condescending line.

Here's an excerpt:

EXCERPT FROM Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass , by Lewis Carroll.

So she set the little creature down, and felt quite relieved to see it trot away quietly into the wood. "If it had grown up," she said to herself, "it would have made a dreadfully ugly child: but it makes a rather handsome pig, I think." And she began thinking over other children she knew, who might do very well as pigs, and was just saying to herself "if one only knew the right way to change them ---" when she was a little startled by seeing the Cheshire-Cat sitting on a bough of a tree a few yards off.

The Cat only grinned when it saw Alice. It looked good-natured, she thought: still it had very long claws and a great many teeth, so she felt that it ought to be treated with respect.

"Cheshire-Puss," she began, rather timidly, as she did not at all know whether it would like the name: however, it only grinned a little wider. "Come, it's pleased so far," thought Alice, and she went on. "Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?"

"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat.

"I don't much care where---" said Alice.

"Then it doesn't matter which way you go," said the Cat.

"---so long as I get somewhere," Alice added as an explanation.

"Oh, you're sure to do that," said the Cat, "if you only walk long enough."

Alice felt that this could not be denied, so she tried another question. "What sort of people live around here?"

"In that direction," the Cat said, waving its paw round, "lives a Hatter: and in that direction," waving the other paw, "lives a March Hare. Visit either you like: they're both mad."

"But I don't want to go among mad people," Alice remarked.

"Oh, you can't help that," said the Cat: "we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad."

"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.

"You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn't have come here."

Alice didn't think that proved it at all: however, she went on: "And how do you know that you're mad?"

"To begin with," said the Cat, "a dog's not mad. You grant that?"

"I suppose so," said Alice.

"Well, then," the Cat went on, "you see a dog growls when it's angry, and wags its tail when it's pleased. Now I growl when I'm pleased, and wag my tail when I'm angry. Therefore I'm mad."

"I call it purring, not growling," said Alice.

"Call it what you like," said the Cat. "Do you play croquet with the Queen today?"

"I should like it very much," said Alice, "but I haven't been invited yet."

"You'll see me there," said the Cat, and vanished.

Alice was not much surprised at this, she was getting so well used to queer things happening. While she was still looking at the place where it had been, it suddenly appeared again.

"By-the-by, what became of the baby?" said the Cat. "I'd nearly forgotten to ask."

"It turned into a pig," Alice answered very quietly, just as if the Cat had come back in a natural way.

"I thought it would," said the Cat, and vanished again.

Alice waited a little, half expecting to see it again, but it did not appear, and after a minute or two she walked on in the direction in which the March Hare was said to live. "I've seen hatters before," she said to herself: "the March Hare will be much the most interesting, and perhaps, as this is May, it wo'n't be raving mad -- at least not so mad as it was in March." As she said this, she looked up, and there was the Cat again, sitting on a branch of a tree.

"Did you say 'pig' or 'fig'?" said the Cat.

"I said 'pig'," replied Alice; "and I wish you wouldn't keep appearing and vanishing so suddenly: you make one quite giddy!"

"All right," said the Cat; and this time it vanished quite slowly, beginning with the end of the tail, and ending with the grin, which remained some time after the rest of it had gone.

"Well! I've often seen a cat without a grin," thought Alice; "but a grin without a cat! It's the most curious thing I ever saw in all my life!"

The Books: "Polar Express" (Chris van Allsburg)

Next book in my Daily Excerpt:

We're still in the picture book section3 . The following book is yet another one of the presents my sister Jean has given me. We in the O'Malley family REVERE good children's books. This one is The Polar Express, and it's by the marvelous Chris van Allsburg. I didn't see the movie because, frankly, the animation freaked me out. Also, I didn't want to see any of the "additions" made to the book. The book is perfect. Plain and simple.

Here's a small excerpt, proving yet again that just because a book is for kids doesn't mean that the author has to dumb down the language, or have a result anything less than literary.

The illustrations in this book are classic Chris Van Allsburg ... but the vividness of the language could stand on its own. The ending of this lovely book never fails to give me chills. And I love the image of the city being like a 'strange ocean liner'.

EXCERPT FROM The Polar Express , by Chris van Allsburg.

We traveled through cold, dark forests, where lean wolves roamed and white-tailed rabbits hid from our train as it thundered through the quiet wilderness.

We climbed mountains so high it seemed as if we would scrape the moon. But the Polar Express never slowed down. Faster and faster we ran along, rolling over peaks and through valleys like a car on a roller coaster.

The mountains turned into hills, the hills to snow-covered plains. We crossed a barren desert of ice -- the Great Polar Ice Cap. Lights appeared in the distance. They looked like the lights of a strange ocean liner sailing on a frozen sea. "There," said the conductor, "is the North Pole."

The North Pole. It was a huge city standing alone at the top of the world, filled with factories where every Christmas toy was made.

The Books: "The Magic Finger" (Roald Dahl)

Next book in my Daily Book Excerpt:

We're still in the picture book section. The following book was one of my favorites as a kid. My sister Jean gave it to me as a gift a couple Christmases ago, and it was so fun to re-discover it. The book is called The Magic Finger, and it's by the great Roald Dahl. It's one of his more violent and disturbing children's books - there were certain illustrations in it that haunted me as a kid. It's the story of a little girl who is pretty mild-mannered, easy-going ... but when she gets mad? Look out. Whenever she "sees red", she is no longer responsible for her actions thereafter. She will point at whoever is making her mad - point with her magic finger - and then horrible things begin to happen to that person. A lot of the book highlights man's cruelty to animals - so many of her magic-finger-tricks have to do with turning people who are cruel to animals into animals - a pretty just revenge, I'd say. The thing to remember is that when she "sees red", she can't stop herself. It;s like the Incredible Hulk or something.

People are nasty in this book.

So anyway, I loved this book as a kid.

Here's an excerpt:

EXCERPT FROM The Magic Finger , by Roald Dahl.

For months I had been telling myself that I would never put the Magic Finger upon anyone again -- not after what happened to my teacher, old Mrs. Winter.

Poor old Mrs. Winter.

One day we were in class, and she was teaching us spelling. "Stand up," she said to me, "and spell kat."

"That's an easy one," I said. "K - a - t."

"You are a stupid little girl!" Mrs. Winter said.

"I am not a stupid little girl!" I cried. "I am a very nice little girl!"

"Go and stand in the corner," Mrs. Winter said.

Then I got cross, and I saw red, and I put the Magic Finger on Mrs. Winter good and strong, and almost at once ...

Guess what?

Whiskers began growing out of her face! They were long black whiskers, just like the ones you see on a kat, only much bigger. And how fast they grew! Before we had time to think, they were out to her ears.

Of course the whole class started screaming with laughter, and then Mrs. Winter said, "Will you be so kind as to tell me what find so madly funny, all of you?"

And when she turned around to write something on the blackboard, we saw that she had grown a tail as well! It was a huge bushy tail!

I cannot begin to tell you what happened after that, but if any of you are wondering whether Mrs. Winter is quite all right again now, the answer is No. And she never will be.

The Magic Finger is something I have been able to do all my life.

I can't tell you just how I do it, because I don't even know myself.

But it always happens when I get cross, when I see red ...

Then I get very, very hot all over ...

Then the tip of the forefinger of my right hand begins to tingle most terribly ...

And suddenly a sort of flash comes out of me, a quick white flash, like something electric.

It jumps out and touches the person who has made me cross ...

And after that the Magic Finger is upon him or her, and things begin to happen ....

The Books: "When the Sky is Like Lace" (Elinor Lander Horwitz)

Next book in my Daily Book Excerpt:

I have written about this book before - and my long search to locate the book of my childhood that I thought was called "On a Bimulous Night" - which is why I couldn't find it for years. The book is called When the Sky is Like Lace .

The book has some of the most beautiful illustrations I have ever seen (by the spectacular Barbara Cooney). Truly transportive. And the language! For example: "it feels like the velvet inside a very old violin case." This is a line from a CHILDREN'S book. Isn't it marvelous? Children's books do not need to be educational or edifying or preachy ... they can also be literature. This book is literature.

Here's a little excerpt:

EXCERPT FROM When the Sky is Like Lace .

Because on bimulous nights when the sky is like lace, the trees eucalyptus back and forth, forth and back, swishing and swaying, swaying and swishing -- in the fern-deep grove at the midnight end of the garden.

You will also find that, on bimulous nights when the sky is like lace, the grass is like gooseberry jam. It's not really squooshy like jam, because then the otters' feet would slurp around and snails might drown. It only smells like gooseberry jam. But if you walk barefoot, it feels like the velvet inside a very old violin case.

If you plan to go out on a bimulous night when the sky is like lace, here are some rules you must remember:

Never talk to a rabbit or a kissing gourami.
If your nose itches, don't scratch it.
Wear nothing that is orange, not even underneath.

And -- if you have a lucky penny, put it in your pocket. Because, on bimulous nights when the sky is like lace and the otters are singing and the snails are sulking and the trees are dancing and the grass is like gooseberry jam, it's a good idea to be prepared.

Because -- you never know.

The Books: "A Christmas Memory" (Truman Capote)

Next book in my daily book excerpt:

We've moved out of the "science" area, and now we're in the "oversized children's and picture books" area. So next up is an excerpt from Truman Capote's classic: A Christmas Memory. It's an autobiographical tale, about the only friend he had in his childhood: a 60-something year old cousin - who, maybe, was rather "simple" - or maybe just "eccentric" - He never says. We don't even care. Truman Capote's childhood was a pretty bleak one, at least in terms of being loved ... and this cousin of his loved him unconditionally. We love her for it. It is told from Truman's perspective as a 6 or 7 year old boy. And every Christmas, his "friend" and he make a batch of fruitcakes. It is something they save up for, anticipate, dream about ... They live in their own little world, together. The book packs a huge punch. It's Capote at his bittersweet nostalgic best.

Here's the opening couple of paragraphs:

EXCERPT FROM A Christmas Memory , by Truman Capote.

Imagine a morning in late November. A coming of winter morning more than twenty years ago. Consider the kitchen of a spreading old house in a country town. A great black stove is its main feature; but there is also a big round table and a fireplace with two rocking chairs placed in front of it. Just today the fireplace commenced its seasonal roar.

A woman with shorn white hair is standing at the kitchen window. She is wearing tennis shoes and a shapeless gray sweater over a summery calico dress. She is small and sprightly, like a bantam hen; but, due to a long youthful illness, her shoulders are pitifully hunched. Her face is remarkable -- not unlike Lincoln's, craggy like that, and tinted by sun and wind; but it is delicate too, finely boned, and her eyes are sherry-colored and timid. "Oh my," she exclaims, her breath smoking the windowpane, "it's fruitcake weather!"

The person to whom she is speaking is myself. I am seven; she is sixty-something. We are cousins, very distant ones, and we have lived together --- well, as long as I can remember. Other people inhabit the house, relatives, and though they have power over us, and frequently make us cry, we are not, on the whole, too much aware of them. We are each other's best friend. She calls me Buddy, in memory of a boy who was formerly her best friend. The other Buddy died in the 1880s, when she was still a child. She is still a child.

"I knew it before I got out of bed," she says, turning away from the window with a purposeful excitement in her eyes. "The courthouse bell sounded so cold and clear. And there were no birds singing; they've gone to warmer country, yes indeed. Oh Buddy, stop stuffing biscuit and fetch our buggy. Help me find my hat. We've thirty cakes to bake."