Toro! Toro! by Michael Morpurgo tells the tale of a young boy who bonds with a bullfighting bull in Spain after he helps raise the calf when its mother dies in birth. The truth about bullfights is hidden from him until he goes one day to watch a bullfight. Afterwards, the boy named Antonito is determined to free his bull named Paco.
One day Antonito decides the best way to free the bulls is to let all 50 of them go free. He knows then that since bulls are herd animals, Paco will follow his mates into the mountains. He gets up one morning early and does just that. However, on this day, his village, Sauceda, is bombed, caught in the crosshairs of the Spanish Civil War in the 1930’s. His whole family is killed while he was away. All he has left is a horse and his bull. However, Paco escapes in his rage to not be left behind by Antonito and disappears.
Antonito is left to wander the countryside, not trusting any adults. His uncle, a freedom fighter against Franco, finds him and cares for him. Eventually, he is reunited with his sister who survived the bombing as well. She survived because she was out looking for Antonito on that fateful day.
While on the run, they hear stories of a bull called The Black Phantom that chases away the Guardia Civil. Antonio is sure this is his bull, Paco. Antonito and his sister are sent away to live with their uncle’s mother. Their uncle is never heard from again.
Later in life, Antonito has a job cutting cork in the forests of Maracha. Always longing to see his bull once more, he searches for him every day. One night he awakens after dreaming of his bull to find the grass flattened beside him, the ground still warm, and hoof prints. He knew Paco had been with him.
Antonito says, “men and women have a capacity for kindness as great if not greater than their capacity for evil.”
Good, quick read. Sad at times as a bullfight is described and I for one hate bullfights. When I lived in Mexico and Spain, I refused to go and see one, not wanting to support it. Sad when his family dies.
Paco harbors guilt at what he had done: letting go of all his father’s prized bulls. Yet, he is seven and this is all he knows.
The love, care, and compassion shown by the boy to his pet Paco is the heart of this story. I love this story because of the way it plays out. I love it when God uses seemingly bad things for good. Because Antonito was releasing the bulls, he was saved. Otherwise, he would have been killed along with his family. Because Antonito was releasing the bulls, his sister was saved, sent by her parents to go and find Antonito that fateful morning.
The love for an animal trumps right and wrong and in the end is what saves the boy and his sister. Animals hold such precious places in our hearts that a lot of us are willing to do anything it takes to save them. God is the one who placed that love for animals in us when He told us to care for all of his animals. God is the one who prompted the boy to save the bull on that day–which ultimately saved his life and that of his sister. Albeit the boy felt guilt, it was God’s will, which is often not understood.
Antonito is telling the story to his grandson. I bet he is glad that he did release Paco as he is alive today and able to hug his grandson.
Anne Frank, the young Jewish teenage girl who went into hiding from the Nazi’s in World War II, didn’t survive. She and her family were betrayed and ended up being the last deportees from the Netherlands to be sent to the concentration or death camps. Her story combines the innocence of youth with the horrors of war so vividly one is moved to tears and hopefully one will vow “never again.”
We follow Anne from her 13th birthday when she received the diary until she was forcefully removed from her hiding place, which she calls “The Secret Annex” because it was a part of her father’s office building that most people didn’t know existed. The diary ends when she’s 15 years old. Anne never makes it to her 16th birthday.
A diary is very personal and Anne doesn’t hold back anything. She discusses her problems with her mother and how she doesn’t feel close to her and only loves her because she is her mother. She talks about her dad, whom she affectionately calls “Pim”, whom she adores. Her sister, Margot. She discusses the other people they went into hiding with: The Van Daan’s and their son, Peter, and Mr. Dussel who joins them later.
We see Anne blooming into a teenager under extraordinary circumstances. She candidly talks about her fear of being discovered and what would happen. She talks about her hopes and dreams for the future. She talks about her first kiss with Peter and her first impulses of love. She talks about her helpers, the outsiders who keep them alive–the Dutch Christians who risk their lives by providing food and everything else they need.
Throughout it all, Anne never loses faith or hope and God stands prominently in her faith and hope. She says in the definitely edition on April 1, 1944: “God has not forsaken me, and He never will.”
Her greatest hope, like most of us is “I don’t want to have lived in vain like most people. I want to be useful or bring enjoyment to all people, even those I’ve never met. I want to go on living even after my death! And that’s why I’m so grateful to God for having given me this gift (she speaking about writing here), which I can use to develop myself and to express all that’s inside of me!”
I thought if she only knew then what she’d become. If she only knew then God’s plan for her that we all know. For in her short life, she has lived on. She has become a symbol of all that’s good in this world and a symbol for hope and a symbol for the end of wars. God used her short time on earth to impact the world that most of us never will. Her words humanize even the most cold-hearted.
In that same entry dated April 5th, 1944, Anne says, “When I write I can shake off all my cares. My sorrow disappears, my spirits are revived!…Will I ever be able to write something great?”
This expresses how most of us writers feel and most of our desires–to write something great. Anne did.
April 11th, 1944: “We’re Jews in chains…without any rights, but with a thousand obligations. We must put our feelings aside; we must be brave and strong, bear discomfort without complaint, do whatever is in our power and trust in God…The time will come when we’ll be people again and not just Jews!”
“Who has inflicted this on us? Who has set us apart from all the rest? Who has put us through such suffering? It’s God who has made us the way we are, but it’s also God who will lift us up again….maybe our religion will teach the world and all the people about goodness and that’s why…we have to suffer…God has never deserted our people. Through the ages Jews have had to suffer and the centuries of suffering has only made them stronger.”
When I was 15, I would have never had such wisdom. And put so eloquently. Her faith shines and I wonder if mine does.
July 15th, 1944, in one of Anne’s last entries, she says: “I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart.”
She was an extraordinary young woman, living out her life with courage and hope in the face of constant fear. Yet she knew God. She knew God would not abandon her. She had faith. She hoped she’d make it through. She didn’t. God had a purpose for her life that she could not see. But she trusted.
I wonder if she had lived would we be reading her diary or would it have had the impact it still does today. Probably not. The fact she was so close to making it is heart-wrenching. The fact the world stood by, knowing what the Nazi’s were doing is heart-breaking. It is a sad, sad period in human history brought to light by one little girl and her diary. The evil man himself is capable of is hard to digest because we all are capable of such evils.
I read this book as a teenager, and it had no impact like it does to me today. As a mother, I ache for her. As a former teenager, I see myself in her. Knowing her fate, gives one a whole new perspective. When she speaks of what she will do once she is set free, tears form because we know she never makes it.
My kids were engaged and felt similarly to me. They knew throughout her fate and yet while reading it hope and courage shine out and inspire to do better, be better, and know better.
This book should be required reading for everyone. Historical value alone it’s priceless. Human nature and perspective it’s fundamental. Hope and faith it’s a testament. For one scared little girl it’s her voice that was cut off all too soon. Riveting and powerful, the reader will see World War II in a different light–and never be the same afterwards. Highly recommended. Life-changing. Amazing testament to faith in trying times and how one lives when God is in control.
Voices at Whisper Bend by Katherine Ayers is a young adult mystery novel set in World War II. We meet Charlotte and her brother, Robbie, who are 12 and 9 respectively. The war has only been going on for a few months when they listen to Franklin Delano Roosevelt give a fireside chat, urging ordinary Americans to do their part for the war effort. Charlotte decides to collect scrap metal and enlists her school to help.
One day all the scrap metal goes missing, propelling the mystery as to who stole it. Charlotte and Robbie run through a bunch of different suspects, discovering in the end they had misjudged all of them. One was a boy named Paul Russi who Charlotte thought for sure was the culprit. But when Paul offers to help Robbie when his hand is injured and has to go the doctor, Charlotte realizes he is a good guy. Another is a teacher who the kids thought was dodging the draft when really he was ineligible for the draft for medical purposes. Kids at school blame Mr. Willis who’s the school’s janitor and had access to the keys that unlocked the room where the metal was stored.
One day on the boat with her father, Charlotte sees a pile of scrap metal. She returns with Paul and Robbie to explore it and it turns out its the pile of stolen metal! The kids decide to watch the pile from a rowboat and one night when it’s raining, they pull ashore and catch the thieves. It turns out it was a kid from Robbie’s class and his older brother. They needed the money because their mom just died and he was supporting them.
After inviting them to their house, Charlotte and Robbie and their mother find a solution. They will plead with the draft board for an exemption for Joseph, the older brother, so he can get a real job to support the family. They will ask to stay with an elderly neighbor who is lonely and has extra rooms. And Charlotte’s dad needs help on the tugboat so Joseph will have a job that is vital to the war effort–helping him earn an exemption from the draft.
Very quick read. I usually don’t like mysteries but with all the twists and turns Ms. Ayers throws in and the very happy and uplifting ending, it was a book my whole family enjoyed. I loved how they all sat down at the end to learn why the metal was stolen and just didn’t call the cops, which would have resulted in the break-up of a family. Instead, one family is helped in a life-changing way all because the effort was made to understand the culprits. Good twist on your typical crime book.
Great historical background as we see air-raid drills in the schools, rationing of food, Victory gardens, men in war, women working in steel mills, and an entire country pitching in to defeat a horrible threat to mankind–Hitler. Highly recommended for both entertainment and historical value.
Hiroshima by Laurence Yep is a fictionalized tale of two sisters on the morning of August 6th, 1945 when the atomic bomb was dropped. The two sister, Sachi and Riko, head to school where today is a workday. They are put to work for the war effort since most of the men are away fighting.
The Enola Gay drops the bomb which contains millions of atoms that collide together in a chain reaction, unleashing the incredible energy they generate. Fires erupt and 75% of the buildings are annihilated. Sachi survives as does her mother. Her sister dies and her father does not return home from the fighting. She bears burn marks and is helped by the Americans as one of the Hiroshima Maidens.
Short, powerful tale that tells the devastation of such a weapon in terms children can understand. Recommended for children who can understand war and life and death. My seven year old read it with us. He got it. We’ve been studying World War II and to me it’s important for my kids to know all of history–the good and the bad–which is a hallmark of the good and the bad in people. We must know so we never repeat the past. There is not a lot of kids books on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the atomic bomb and this one is beautiful in its simplicity and straight-forward facts.
Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes
Sadako and the Thousand Cranes by Eleanor Coerr is another tale of Hiroshima but this one focuses on the long-term effects. We follow a 12 year old girl named Sadako Sasaki who is on the verge of entering Junior High School. Her goal is to make the track team as she loves to run. She starts getting dizzy spells until one day she collapses at school. She is taken to the hospital where she is diagnosed with the atom bomb disease or leukemia–a disease many Japanese developed from exposure to harmful radiation.
While in the hospital, her best friend tells her of a Japanese legend that says if a sick person folds 1000 paper cranes, the gods will grant her wish and make her healthy again. So, Sadako begins, having her brother hang them on the ceiling every time she makes a paper crane.
So Sadako spends the months in the hospital, praying for a miracle and folding cranes. She becomes weaker and weaker but she never gives up hope she will live. She only made it to 644 before she died.
A true story, Sadako Sasaki was a toddler living in Hiroshima when the bomb dropped. Still, exposure to the harmful radiation slowly took its toll–and her life. She died on October 25th, 1955. Her classmates folded the remaining 356 cranes so she could be buried with her 1000. Her story spread throughout Japan and soon money was collected and a memorial statue made, set in Hiroshima Peace Park, of her standing on a mountain and a golden crane in her hands.
To this day thousands of paper cranes are set on her statue on August 6th to commemorate the day the bomb fell over the city.
A sad story, one that may bring tears to your eyes, but an important one that kids today need to know. And an encouraging one–of hope and the will to live despite being sick. Sadako never gave up the hope she would get better. We all will face death, and she did it with dignity.
Too many people shy away from rough topics–such as the Holocaust and the innocent killing of civilians through atomic weapons. But we are doomed to repeat the past if we don’t know about it. Thus, kids need to know about these things so when they grow up, they ensure they never happen again.
War is real and war needs a face and both of these books do an excellent job of putting a face to the war and showing the impacts of war on innocent civilians.
Christmas Tapestry by Patricia Polacco is an endearing tale about being in the right place at the right time.
Jonathan Jefferson Weeks’ father is a pastor. He leaves his church in Memphis to bring back a lagging church in Detroit, Michigan. Jonathan does not want to move. Upon arrival, the whole family pitches in to reviving the church–painting, landscaping, washing, repairing the walls, etc. The church began to grow. By Christmas, it was almost finished. One more painting on the wall would finish it off.
Then a big snowstorm hit and a huge hole was left in the wall! Luckily, a plasterer was available on Christmas Eve. Jonathan is distraught over the hole but his father assures him God has a plan.
The next day Jonathan and his father take the bus into town to pick up Christmas decorations. They see a wonderful tapestry for sale in a store window and buy it. It should be the perfect size to cover the hole in the plaster!
It is very cold and snowing. At the bus stop, a little old lady offers them to share hot tea and cookies with them. She lives far away and Jonathan’s father offers to give her a ride from their house. She accepts. When they arrive back home, Jonathan hangs up the tapestry before taking the old lady home. The old lady recognizes the tapestry as one she made 60 years ago in Germany. It was the canopy over her and her husband on her wedding day. They were rounded up by the Nazi’s shortly after their wedding and she never saw him again. She insists they keep it to cover the hole.
The next day is Christmas Eve and the plasterer shows up to look at the damage to the wall. The old man recognizes the tapestry as the one his bride made back in Germany before the Nazi’s took her. They race Mr. Zukor, the plasterer, to the old woman’s house where a reunion of joy takes place.
Jonathan learns why exactly they had moved to Detroit, why the plaster fell, why they took the bus and shared tea with an old woman.
This tale is adapted from tales. The circumstances of the coincidences are highly unlikely, but it illustrates how God can do the impossible. I think it’s good to read stories that stretch the realms of possibility so kids can believe in the impossible, dream of better things in this world, and push themselves to achieve what they themselves do not believe they can.
Great story of how hindsight and the passing of time reveals to us the reasons why things happen in our lives. Great lesson learned by Jonathan of trusting God and His plans when we cannot see them. An uplifting and heartwarming tale for Christmas or any time that brings God’s ways into our lives and reminds us of His complete control.
Leah’s Pony by Elizabeth Friedrich starts out as an average story about a girl and her horse, but the ending packs a wallop!
Set in the 1930’s Dust Bowl, Leah spends every waking moment with her pony. She watches her neighbors pack up and leave for Oregon when the crops fail. Leah’s family is one day forced to auction off the farm and its contents to pay the bank. Leah, anxious to help her family, sells her precious horse without telling her parents in order to get money. As the auction begins, items begin selling; but when her dad’s tractor is put up for sale, Leah bids a dollar (the amount she sold her pony for). No one bids against her, much to the auctioneer’s dismay.
She buys the tractor for one dollar, setting off a wave of “penny bids” for the rest of the items. All of the neighbors give back the items they bought to Leah’s family. They end up keeping everything. Leah goes to sleep missing her pony.
The next morning Leah goes to the barn and finds her pony. A note from the grocer whom she sold her to tells her the pony fits her much better than his grandson.
I had never heard of these “penny” auctions before this book but apparently they were commonplace in the Great Depression. Neighbors and friends would gather around a family who couldn’t pay their mortgage. They would agree beforehand to not bid too much on items and encouraged others who showed up not to bid either. Then they would buy all the items at low prices and give it all back to the family, thereby settling their debt with the bank. I wonder wistfully where these neighbors are today when people lose everything.
Saving Strawberry Farm by Deborah Hopkinson
Another book along the same lines is called Saving Strawberry Farm by Deborah Hopkinson. This one features a woman who owned a strawberry farm and would invite all the children over each summer to pick her strawberries. One boy found out she was to love the farm through an auction. Encouraged by a shopkeeper, the boy rallies the neighbors and show up to the auction to save Strawberry Farm.
When the bidding started, the boy bid one penny. Everyone else bid up the price but just by a little bit, no one allowing anyone to bid up the price too high. When the price reached $9.75 cents the woman bid on her own property and the bidding stopped. The neighbors collected the money and gave it to her to pay for her farm.
Both tales are heart-warming and inspiring to help others in times of need. Both show the power of the collective good when all are united for one cause. I loved the ingenuity of people which continues to amaze me. Both recommended highly especially to lighten the mood when speaking of such trying times as the Great Depression. Take away: the human spirit never dies despite the circumstances we face.
After reading The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, we had to read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. Meant as a sequel to Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn instead went on to become a stand-alone book and in fact a classic of literature. Where Tom Sawyer is just a very well-written story of a boy and his antics, Huck Finn is a story of a boy who grows up and learns the power of friendship when he decides to help his friend, Jim, escape when he’s a slave. Huck Finn tackles head-on the evils of slavery through the eyes of a 12 year-old boy which puts all the adults to shame.
Set in the 1850’s, Huck Finn picks up right where Tom Sawyer left off: Huck and Tom have found a treasure trove and Huck has been adopted by Miss Watson. Tom is still up to his same ol’ antics of boyhood fun. However, Huck’s father shows up in town (the fictional St. Petersburg, Missouri) wanting Huck’s money. He’s a drunk and a child abuser and he ends up kidnapping Huck Finn while he fights the courts for Huck’s money. Huck can’t take it anymore so he fakes his own death by killing a pig, spreading its blood everywhere, and running off to an island in the Mississippi (the same island where Tom Sawyer ran off to for his adventures as well). Here, he meets Jim, a slave who has run away from Miss Watson when he heard he was going to be sold.
Huck and Jim team up–mainly because Huck is lonely and doesn’t want to run away alone and because Jim needs help. They make a raft and set off down the Mississippi River, where their adventures begin. The plan had been to make for Cairo, Illinois, which sits right where the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers meet and head up the Ohio River so Jim can be free. Instead, they end up missing the Ohio River when a fog and a storm arise so they are now floating down into slavery territory.
Here, Huck battles whether or not to turn Jim in. He feels guilty for helping a slave escape, especially since it’s Miss Watson’s slave and she needs the money she was going to make from his sale. Yet, he’s torn with loyalty to Jim because Jim helps Huck time and time again and all Jim wants to do is get free and then buy his wife and kids’ freedom.
Huck says, “I feel bad and low, because I knowed very well I had done wrong….but a body that don’t get started right when he’s little, ain’t got no show”. Huck says he’d feel bad either way–bad if he had given Jim up and bad if he hadn’t so he sticks with what’s easier.
Jim and Huck run across two liars and frauds known as the king and the duke that make for some of the funniest scenes in the novel as they try to rip people off of money. In the end though, Huck foils them and steals all the money and places it in a dead man’s coffin.
Some people here think, “Why does Huck stay with these people?” Well, Huck answers this himself, “I learnt that the best way to get along with his kind of people is to let them have their own way.” Let’s not forget Huck is just a boy here which it is hard to forget when you are reading this and the king and duke are adults.
The climax of the novel is where Huck grows up and changes. The duke and the king conspire to sell Jim as a runaway slave, which they do. Here, Huck reasons it’s best then to tell the truth so Jim can at least go home to a nice family to be a slave with. He writes a letter to Miss Watson to free his conscience; however, he gets to thinking what a good person Jim is and tears up the letter, saying “I’d got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. All right, then, I’ll go to hell”. He decides to rescue Jim and steal him out of slavery forever.
The rest of the book is rip-roaring good time as Mr. Mark Twain brings Tom Sawyer back into the picture and they end up spending the rest of the book “stealing Jim out of slavery” from Tom’s aunt who had ended up buying Jim from the king and the duke. Tom concocts all these things Jim must do as to break out of prison “proper” and ends up causing havoc with his aunt and in the end Tom ends up being shot as the escape unfolds and he’s bragging about it!
Spoiler for conclusion: we discover at the end that Huck’s father has died and Jim has been free for two months because Miss Watson died and set him free. Tom pays Jim for all the fun they had with him at his expense and Tom’s Aunt Sally wants to adopt Huck.
Huck concludes about Jim: “I thought he had a good heart in him and was a good man, the first time I see him.” This is the first time Huck does not call him a “nigger”. Mark Twain took heavy criticism for using this word, which he does over and over again in this book. But it made it’s point: it’s the exact use of the derogatory word that proves the power of man’s ignorance towards one another and in the end, the power of Huck’s words ring out as readers discover the same thing: Jim is a man and worthy of his freedom and in fact deserves his freedom like everyone else.
A classic of literature everyone should read, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a powerful example of discovering humanity, great fun in its antics and adventures, and a book that’ll leave you in tears and laughing all at the same time.
What I love about this book is it transports you: you get to see through the eyes of a 12 year old boy what it was like to be a boy in the 1850’s. How it was possible for a boy to float on a raft down the Mississippi. How a boy could survive on his own by fishing and hunting. How a boy walking around a strange town by himself didn’t cause any alarm. How a boy could go missing and his family didn’t freak out about it until 2 or 3 days had passed. How a boy played all day long, entertaining himself by thinking up adventure stories and walking miles and miles in the woods. How a boy could use a canoe by himself and take off and explore caves.
None of this could happen in the twenty-first century in America at least. I love history and I’m always fascinated by the change in the times. There was something magical about the freedom people had 160 years ago and it’s why Americans love the Wild West stories. There’s also dangers like when Huck falls in with the king and the duke and is at their mercy; yet there is an innocence that we all yearn for and for the most part it existed in everyone in the 1800’s. And books such as Huck Finn lets us experience that time for just a brief moment–and that’s the magic of books.
The history behind the writing of the book is fascinating. Mr. Twain never meant this book to be about slavery. It started out as just another adventure story to compliment Tom Sawyer. Half-way through writing this tale, Mr. Twain put it down and when he picked it back up again in a year, it became the powerful novel that it is today.
As a writer, I love this because my novels never end up as I’ve planned–things always arise that moves the novel and the characters in different directions than planned–and always in better directions than planned. I think most writers never set out to write “the great American classic” that will impact readers for all of time. It just happens; and that in itself is powerful.
Winner of the Newbery Award for Outstanding Contribution to Children’s Literature for 1953, Ann Nolan Clark pens a wonderful tale about the Incas and discovering your true path in this world.
We meet Chuto, an old Indian, and Cusi, a young Indian boy, who live high up in the Andes Mountains in a Secret Valley. They tend llamas and Cusi has a pet llama all his own that he names Misti.
A minstrel visits who notices Cusi’s golden earplugs in his ears. Cusi does not know what this means. He does not know who his real parents are. He does not know many things Chuto speaks of such as why he is called the Chosen One.
Chuto and Cusi take their annual journey to the Salt Pits to gather salt. It is the first time Cusi can remember leaving the valley. He sees many new sights and many new people. However, he does not get to meet the family he has been watching that lives below them in the valley. Cusi longs for a family all his own. The trip is brief and Cusi is glad to return home.
One day Amauta arrives to teach Cusi all he needs to know. Chuto tells Cusi, “Your acts obey only the course of your own mind’s whisper.” Amauta teaches Cusi all he knows and then he leaves and Cusi is left wondering what all this means.
One day he follows Misti to a hidden valley and finds a pair of golden slippers. Chuto tells Cusi this is the sign for him to leave to Cuzco and find his heart’s desire. He gives Cusi Misti and seven other llamas packed with wool to take on his journey.
Cusi is helped along the way by a hidden village of Inca. He meets a strange woman whom he gives 5 of his llamas to. Cusp’s journey continues as he searches for a family. He finds a family that takes him in but it doesn’t seem right. His heart is in the hidden valley with Chuto whom he loves. He is learning to follow his heart and seize the days that are awaiting him. He is learning that a family is Chuto and the llamas and sharing everything with one another.
Cusi learned to read his own heart and thereby find his heart’s desire. “Grieve not your searching circles,” an old man known as the Keeper of the Fields told Cusi. His desire was to return to his real home with Chuto and the llamas.
When Cusi returned, Chuto questioned him, asking him if this was his true desire to stay in the mountains. Cusi said yes and with those words made a blood vow to always breed the Inca llamas and care for them. Chuto showed Cusi a hidden passage full of gold dust, dust the Incas had brought the Spaniards to release their kind. Instead the king was killed and the Inca hid the gold and the llamas. Only two alive know where the gold is: Chuto and now Cusi. Cusi is the Chosen One, the one to guard the flock and the gold and to train the new chosen one when the time is come.
Cusi learns that he is the son of another Chosen One, one that Chuto had trained but who had run away because Chuto would never allow him to leave. His real father, Titu, sent Cusi in his place. Now, Cusi is free to travel the world as a proper Herdsman of the Inca’s llamas must be wise and well travelled. Chuto will stay for the animals. However, Cusi says not now for he is happy there. They salute the sun for a new beginning.
Most memorable quote: “Open your eyes. Open your heart. Open your mind. The day is waiting for you.”
This book is fatefully known as the book that beat Charlotte’s Web for the Newbery Award. Some on the committee have explained their votes by saying there are no good books on South America. History tells its take on that.
Great tale and a short read. Slow at first but picks up quickly. Keeps the readers guessing to the very end as to what the Secret of the Andes is and who Cusi is. My kids and I had fun in guessing who Cusi really was and what his purpose was.
Great depiction of the Incas. One of our favorite parts is how Inca Indians keep showing up to help Cusi on his journeys and how everyone knows who he is but Cusi doesn’t. Great story weaving. Great, vivid descriptions. Great book for the family and on finding your own heart’s desire and path in the world.
The Inheritance Cycle which consists of the books Eragon, Eldest, Brisingr, and Inheritance is a fantasy series by Christopher Paolini. I read these books when they first came out but only recently finished Inheritance when my daughter and I competed to finish the series (she won by the way).
We meet Eragon, a boy of 13 who lives a quiet farm life in the Spine until he discovers a dragon’s egg in the forest and it hatches. The world is ruled by Galbatorix who has killed most of the dragons except his and controls all of the eggs. Eragon finds himself a target by the Empire because he now has a dragon. All four books of the series follows Eragon on his adventures as he first tries to just hide from the Empire and then he becomes the leader of the rebels trying to bring Galbatorix down. He gives up all he knows and learns to step into his role as the only Rider left.
This world is peppered with elves, dwarfs, a race called Urgals, dragons, and humans. Eragon works with all of them in their fragile alliance to bring down the Empire.
In the last book, Inheritance, Galbatorix is overcome and the world must now rebuild after so many years of being suppressed. I didn’t like how the series ended with Eragon leaving all his family and friends behind as he leaves the known world to raise the new crop of dragons. However, Mr. Paolini has promised a fifth book, but that could be years out.
Great overall series written by a homeschool kid who wrote Eragon when he was just 15. Classic story of good overcoming evil. Lots of twists and turns as Eragon grows up under intense pressure to grow up before his time. Good adventure story. The books get progressively longer and longer akin to Harry Potter series and Twilight series so especially in Inheritance there’s a lot of detail that in my opinion slows down the plot but plug through and you’ll be glad you did!
We decided to head back to a classic tale set in the mid-1800’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain after The Trumpet of the Swan. I don’t ever recall having read this book and I thought my kids would enjoy it and we sure did.
We meet Tom Sawyer playing hookey from school and his Aunt Polly upbraiding him for it. He is an affable boy of 12 whose life purpose is to have a good time.
Early in the book we see perhaps the most famous scene of Tom Sawyer when Tom is put upon by Aunt Polly to whitewash the fence and he in turn manages to get all of the neighborhood boys to do his work for him by tricking them and telling them it takes a lot of skill to do this. He discovers the principle of reverse psychology and as the narrator says “he had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it–namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain.” Classic!
We follow Tom in his adventures, including when one night he and Huck Finn sneak out of the house and go to a cemetery and witness a murder. Tom ends up testifying at the trial and ends up freeing a man wrongly accused. We see him take a beating at school for the girl he likes, Becky Thatcher. He decides to “play pirate” and him and three other boys go and live on an island for a few days during which time the townsfolk take them for dead and Tom and his friends show up at their own funerals! And we see him and Huck on a quest for buried treasure and they find it in a cave that Tom and Becky get lost in!
In the end, both Tom and Huck split the stolen money and with proper prudence from Becky’s dad who is a judge the boys become the richest people in town.
This book is fast-paced with no dull moments. Full of great moral values for the times. Huck frees a man wrongly accused by testifying of what he saw that night in the graveyard. Twain propounds “knowledge is worth more than anything there is in the world” when Tom fusses about memorizing Bible verses. Tom feels bad about tricks he plays on his aunt. He discovers “that to promise not to do a thing is the surest way in the world to make a body want to go and do that very thing.” When the boys are missing and when Tom and Becky are lost in the cave, the families and the whole town pray and search for them.
Short and fun and full of teaching moments and of what life once used to be like in the 1860’s and how life has changed. For example, Tom and Huck return to the cave to find the treasure. They take a boat and travel 5 miles down river. I told the kids that could never happen today. One, their parents wouldn’t let them. Two, the cops would be called if they were discovered. Three, most kids can’t sail a boat at age 12. But back then it was commonplace. When the boys are “playing pirate” on the island, they light their own fires, fish for their own food, build a shelter, and basically go camping today but with no modern conveniences. Great fun and highly recommended!
