Sometimes It's Nice to Have Parents Around

Jeanne Birdsall's The Penderwicks on Gardam Street, the follow-up to The Penderwicks, is just as good as the original. There's not an ounce of cynicism in this story, nor is it saccarine. Continuing about a month after the four Penderwick girls and their father return from their summer vacation, this story chronicles the widowed Mr. Penderwick's awkward attempts at dating, and Rosalind, Skye, Jane, and Batty's plot to avoid a potential wicked stepmother. The book had me nearly in tears twice: in the prologue, which is a brief flashback to Mrs. Penderwick's last few days in the hospital, and in the following excerpt, which shows 4-year-old Batty and her dog spying on the neighbors (it certainly makes me feel a little extra mushy that the baby's name is Ben). If Batty's quiet yearning for a mom doesn't get you a little choked up, you might have been born without a soul.

They tiptoed to the forsythia border and lowered themselves quietly to the ground. Through the bottom branches of the bushes they could see the feet of the neighbors: little baby feet in red sneakers, zigzaging tipsily around the yard, and grown-up lady feet in white sneakers, following behind.
"Duck, duck, duck!" Ben was calling happily, his feet zigging and zagging even farther.
"Oh, Mr. Silliness," laughed his mother, and kept on chasing.
Batty thought Iantha had a nice voice and an even nicer laugh. It was hard to tell about Ben's voice, since he only kept saying "duck."
Now the little red sneakers stumbled, and suddenly there was an entire Ben in view. Batty pulled herself and Hound back a bit, but before the baby could notice them his mother had scooped him off the ground.
"Oh, dear, are you hurt, my Ben, my pumpkin, my lumpkin, darling Ben?"
Batty caught her breath. Yes, it was a truly extra-nice voice.
"My pumpkin, my lumpkin, darling Batty," she whispered to herself.
Ben, not hurt at all, was soon wriggling out of his mother's arms, and then all the feet disappeared and the voices stopped, and Batty knew that they'd gone back into their house.
"My pumpkin, my lumpkin, darling Batty." This time she made her voice lower, so that it would sound more like Iantha's voice.

Clockwork Contraptions and Unnatural Beasties

I've appreciated touches of the steampunk trend elsewhere: in the 1960 The Time Machine starring Rod Taylor and the curious contraptions in Hayao Miyasaki's movies. Reading Scott Westerfeld's Leviathan immersed me in this fascinating mash-up of Victorian and futuristic science and technology. Leviathan is set in an alternative version of Europe on the cusp of World War I. The first protagonist is Alek, the teenage son of assassinated Archduke Ferdinand, who is on the run from his enemies. The second protagonist is Deryn, a teenage girl masquerading as a boy in order to join the British Air Service.

In Westerfeld's mind-bogglingly creative world, Germany, Austria-Hungry, and the Ottoman Empire arm themselves with menacing steam-powered contraptions, such as nimble two-legged tanks and enormous walking land frigates. The allied Brits, French, and Russians have embraced Darwinism and genetically engineered beasts that are half animal, half machine. The greatest example is the Leviathan, a gargantuan, part-whale airship, which manages to be both an unholy perversion of the natural law and COMPLETELY AWESOME. I am certainly in a quandary over it. The military terminology and action sequences bring to my mind Hornblower's naval battles as well as Imperial walkers on Hoth.

Leviathan is the first book in a series with rather a cliffhanger ending. You can imagine my distress as I drew near to the exciting conclusion, realizing there weren't possibly enough pages left in my book to incorporate a conclusion. Although a bit slow to warm up to, the characters developed greater depth and likability as the narrative progressed, and I'm eager to follow their burgeoning friendships in the sequel(s). However, for me, the absolutely best, most mesmerizing element of this book is the illustrations, and more specifically, the map appearing on the endsheets. I could gaze at that map for hours transfixed by the eerie mythological faces forming Norway and Sweden, the warrior lion curled into the shape of Great Britain, and the slavering Russian bear with his jaws open and poised over the machinery filling the regions of Germany and Austria-Hungary. If I were to make a list of my favorite maps from books (and this does strike me as an excellent idea), that map would certainly be in the top few.

Gains and Losses

My feelings during and after reading The Book Thief are difficult to express. It is excellent. I was initially concerned that a story told by Death, who describes human deaths according to the prevailing color would feel forcibly artistic or pretentious. In the end, it did not. The final words were lovely and haunting. Death's narrative bounces back and forth timewise, so you have many glimpses of events that will occur, but those events are still vague enough to be surprising. It's the story of a German girl in World War II. She's an orphan, she's poor, she's not a Nazi, and technically she's a book thief, but there's something about her thievery that doesn't feel like theft. Each theft feels like a religious experience; oftentimes it's her best way of connecting with someone she loves, and it usually feels like she's taking something that's rightfully hers.

I'm rambling. Sorry.

Liesel is an orphan, sent to live with foster parents who turn out to be quite loving, especially her father. Her three closest friends are Rudy (a boy with lemon-colored hair who loves to run), Max (the young Jewish man hiding in her basement), and the mayor's wife (a sad woman who shares her personal library). Markus Zusak claims to have based his book on tales from his parents about growing up in Germany during the war. Liesel's joys, disappointments, and profound losses do feel like real life, and like the best wartime stories, we see the worst and best humanity has to offer. There are also two illustrated books-within-the-book that are simple and moving.

Lists

Oh, gosh, I'm actually so embarrassed that is has been so long since my last post. However, it's easy to update you on my reading by subject matter: time travel, World War II, and magic. It seems like just about everything I've read in the past few months have had one or all of these themes. The magic one was really a Christmastime phase I experienced: I reread Masefield's The Box of Delights and adored it even more the second time, and because I was in the mood for that sort of thing, I reread Nesbit's The Enchanted Castle and also loved it more the second time. But all around that were gobs of time traveling and many books or shows/movies about WWII. Since January is year-end list-making frenzy time, I'm making two lists accordingly:

The Time Travel List:
The Time Travelers (or Gideon the Cutpurse) Trilogy
When You Reach Me (which recently was awarded the Newberry)
London Calling
The Lighthouse Trilogy
A Whole Nother Story (I didn't love this one, although if I were 11 years old, I'd probably think it hysterical. However, there's a time traveling device, so on the list it goes.)
The Game of Sunken Places
Doomsday Book
To Say Nothing of the Dog

The WWII List:
London Calling
To Say Nothing of the Dog
The Book Thief (separate blog post on this one to come)
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
Band of Brothers (viewed in full the week prior to Christmas)
Foyle's War (added to my list of all-time favorite miniseries)
Mrs. Henderson Presents (I didn't love this.)

Of course my favorites (on these lists and possibly this year) were the two Connie Willis books, which I raved about in earlier posts. I often wonder how brief a time is a reasonable wait before rereading. What do you think?

Fewer Grownups = More Fun

I really lucked out at our library sale this week finding hardback copies of The Wind in the Willows (with the proper illustrations--hard to find) and The Penderwicks, among other treasures. A mom friend pointed out The Penderwicks to me, mentioning that it won the National Book Award because it was different from all the other children's books nominated that year. "They were all dark fantasies," she said. "This is just a sweet tale about children on summer vacation with minimal adult supervision."

I dove into Penderwicks as soon as I got it home and read it within three days. From the start it reminded me strongly of E. Nesbit's stories and Edward Eager's Tales of Magic, and in fact it makes references to Nesbit's Bastables and Eager's Magic by the Lake. The four sisters also reminded me a bit of Little Women.

The premise is simple: the kindly, Latin-quoting Mr. Penderwick rents a cottage in the New England countryside for his family for several weeks in the summer. The cottage is on the grounds of a large estate with magnificent gardens. Rosalind (filling in for her deceased mom), Skye (the hot-headed tomboy), Jane (the authoress), and Batty (the animal-loving preschooler) befriend a lonely boy and unwittingly get into trouble daily. The girls are all intelligent, spunky, sensitive, and oh-so-likable. It's charming charming charming.

A Medley of Creepy Stuff

Kate Morton's The Forgotten Garden reminded me of many things.

Wuthering Heights: The scope of its story takes place over multiple generations, and the high-spirited women of the family seem cursed as they seek happiness and love.

The Secret Garden: There's a fantastic walled garden, plus cousins--one sickly and one eager to drag the sick one out of the English manor and into the fresh air so they can share the garden. Frances Hodgson Burnett even has a brief cameo.

The Thirteen Tale: Twins, the gothic mood, creepy English manors, the suggestion of incest, etc.

The Lady in White: Secrets are revealed from multiple perspectives, although TFG's narrative bounces back and forth from 1913 to 1975 to 1913 to 2005 (and so on).

Dickens: Abandoned children and orphans are in the Dickensian vein, especially those trying to survive in Victorian slums whose only comfort comes from spinning terrifying tales about ghosts and Jack the Ripper. Also Dickensian are the cruel, low-class Mrs. Swindell and the vile Mr. Mansell.

Rebecca: The portraits are oppressive and haunting, and Lady Mountrachet pulls a Mrs. Danvers.

Jane Eyre: There's something about that old creep Linus and his withered leg, hiding in the darkroom with his stalker photos and living on the edge of insanity that recalls Mrs. Rochester.

The Faun and the Woodcutter's Daughter: A collection of fairy tales plays a central role in the story, and several of the tales are included in full in the book. TFatWD is just one of the better fairy tale collections that have a similar feel.

Everything I've read set in Cornwall: Because it's set primarily in Cornwall. (Although the bit set in Queensland puts me in mind of The Thornbirds.)

If you like all those things, especially in combination, you'll certainly enjoy The Forgotten Garden. I'll refrain from summarizing the plot and leave it as a pleasant secret to you readers. Although it felt a bit pulpy at times, there were many genuine and tender moments.

When you tire of time travel or fish and chips, you are tired of life.

First of all, I completed the Time Travelers (aka Gideon) trilogy by Buckley-Archer and enjoyed it from start to finish. It's great for kids or adults; it's even a wee bit educational. For example, there's an inside joke about Sam Johnson's famous London quote, references to the revolutionary writings of Thomas Paine and the events of the French Revolution, and a touching depiction of King George III's young family. I appreciate it when an author assumes her readers are educated and rewards them with applicable humor as well as suspense, but there's also a subtext throughout the trilogy that in order to appreciate the fantasy (or scientific invention) of time travel, it's essential to know a good bit about actual history. (That theme is similarly important in Connie Willis's books, insofar as the time travel department at Oxford is the history department.)

While you are reading your books set in London, enjoy some tasty fish and chips! Here's a recipe a partly invented for dinner the other night. I'll give credit to Mark Bittman for the original fish sandwich recipe and Giada de Laurentiis for the oven-baked fries recipe, but I've changed them enough to mostly claim them as my own.


Crunchy Fish Sandwiches with Lemon-Curry Mayo

Begin with 2 pounds fresh white fish (I used haddock. You could easily substitute cod or catfish--just make sure it's the freshest you can find. If you're a sad landlocked person, you can usually get local farm-raised catfish.). Cut the fillets into sandwich-sized pieces. Season with salt, pepper, and cayenne pepper. Dredge in a mixture of cornmeal and flour.
Pour just enough olive oil into a frying pan to cover the bottom and heat it on high until a spec a cornmeal sizzles when dropped in (this is the best part, as the fragrance of all that hot olive oil is ever so lovely). Add fish to pan a few pieces at a time and reduce heat. Fry about 3 minutes per side. Drain on paper towels.

For the mayo, mix equal parts light mayo and light sour cream with fresh lemon juice and zest, salt, pepper, lots of curry powder, and a dash of cayenne. Just keep seasoning and tasting until you like it.

Our grocery bakes tasty soft white Italian loaves. I cut thin slices of these and toasted them. Then I slathered them with mayo and added the fish and a handful of fresh arugula (the arugula is essential!).

Oven-baked Sweet Potato Fries

Peel a couple of sweet potatoes and slice them into 1/2- x 4-inch fries. Coat with olive oil and salt and pepper. Roast in the oven at 425-450 for about 45 minutes until beginning to brown, stirring a couple of times. They won't be crisp like potato fries, but they'll taste great, especially dipped in the curry mayo.


Speaking of leftovers, the fish heats up nicely in the toaster oven. You can make yourself another sandwich the following day, or you can put some of the heated fish in a tortilla with fresh cilantro and a squirt of fresh lime for a simple, yummy fish taco.

Or you could just mash up the cold fish and sweet potatoes and eat them with your fingers, which is what Baby Ben did.