Entry tags:
two hundred public words 22/30
Bah, I'm a post behind again. What got me so busy yesterday? Well, for a teacher's summer and a teacher-who-is-unemployed's summer, I was kind of busy, what with aqua with ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
amarama, diabetic retinopathy screening photos, celebratory organic ice cream with annathebean and kaleidescope for the latter's new job, and picking up john_b_cannon at BART after his flight home from Kansas -- yay, john_b_cannon is back in town, hurrah. He and I went out for late night food at a café in Emeryville called Rudy Can't Fail, which always makes me think of the Clash song, but john_b_cannon said he never had a Clash period, so he didn't know the song. Which just seems weird to me, but may only mark our age difference. I told him about how this boy in my 7th grade French class, Jon Jacobson, sidled up to me -- a very brave taking-of-risk on his part because I was absolutely student-non-grata in middle school... beneath the very idea of pecking order, though also learning not to ever, ever give a shit about that kind of thing, which was an excellent life lesson... hm, to balance that description, I was also well known as the school Commie, which was fine with me. The school Commie-dyke-pinko-Iranian-lover, to be specific. In 1978. ANYWAY, Jon Jacobson sidled up to me, that year, and literally kind of whispered out the side of his mouth... "[my name], do you know this group, the Clash? You should really get some of their albums..." and then sidled away again, quickly. I love that my politics forced him to make this dangerous social excursion. And, of course, I loved the Clash as soon as I went out and got London Calling and later, Sandinista!.
Right, none of that has anything to do with YAF. Though at that moment I was probably carrying, and had possibly even been reading, a young adult fiction book. I was the kind of kid who could walk into a light pole or a parking meter while reading.
Okay, then, where were we? Ah! Karen Cushman. She's great. She singlehandedly reintroduced the vast subgenre of English medieval historical novels to a new generation, and a generation of girls, at that. She has also branched out into other territory, and is equally good there.
So, background: I loved this subgenre when I was in elementary school. My fourth and fifth grade teacher, Ms. Weingartner (she who smoked in the classroom and drank endless Tabs) used to read aloud to us (which is probably why I think it is an incredibly important thing to do, too, even though I teach middle school). One of the books she read was Marguerite de Angeli's The Door in the Wall, which was about a boy in medieval London who is crippled by disease (polio?) and loses the use of his legs. It's about how he is taken care of by a friar, and learns to look for a different future than his expected one of being a knight. It's funny; I loved that book and the archaic language and the details of medieval England, but I have just read Amazon reviews, and even all the reviews that are strongly positive are like "kids will hate this, don't, for god's sake, assign it or you will strangle their love of reading stillborn!!!!1! zomg!" Weird. Well, as noted, I was a weirdo. I don't remember anyone else in my fourth grade class hating it, but then maybe I was completely insensible to their reactions. I am like that when reading or hearing a story or drawing. Just like my older niece, ha! Anyway, though, in general, most medieval fic was aimed at boys, was about knights and castles and adventures and serving the king or whatever. And I loved it. I just imagined my way in as a boy, I guess.
But then, thirty years later, Karen Cushman broke upon the scene with her first published book (not at all my favorite) Catherine, Called Birdy. It was such a ray of better gendered light that it pretty much was immediately added to the school canon, as was her second (much better, in my opinion) book, The Midwife's Apprentice. Catherine, Called Birdy was about a knight, and a manor if not a castle, and his family, and serfs, including dog boys (nod to T. H. White's The Once and Future King). But there the resemblances stopped.
The protagonist is the daughter of a minor lord, discontented with her lot, unusually literate, and in danger of being married off as an economic transaction. She keeps a diary, and this is the problem with the book -- it gets very tedious to follow that format, and most entries are too wrapped up in BEING entries, in comments about the day, the date, the process of writing a diary, and the wacky long story of which crazy-ass Saint's day this is, and what gruesome death that wacky Saint died. That's interesting and funny for a while, but then becomes kind of repetitive and tedious. My other problem with the book was that I kept wondering how incredibly anachronistic it was, to put these self-liberatory thoughts -- the metaphor is the birds that Catherine loves, but to love, keeps in cages... she's a caged bird, too, flapping her wings against the bars -- in a girl's head in the 1100s or whenever it is. During one of the earlier Crusades. But it is a very good book, anyway, especially as the first thing Cushman wrote.
Her second book was also an instant school classic -- I read it to students myself, at least twice, in West Oakland. And The Midwife's Apprentice is a very good book for that, both because the writing is clear and simple, for read alouds with students who are not at grade level in reading, and because the book's point is about the importance of coming to love and believe in yourself. Also, literacy is a fantastic idea. Kids really responded to both her circumstances -- homeless and living literally in shit -- and to her slow realization of self-worth. Their emotions were engaged and they were rooting for her.
Dungbeetle -- as the main character is known, because of how she tries to keep heat in her body at night -- is a homeless orphan trying to scratch a living begging and doing odd jobs, in medieval England. She goes from village to village, staying until she's driven away. At the opening of the book the girl, who seems to be about twelve or so, is rousted from her bed, which is burrowed into the dung-filled manure heap in a byre, by a grouchy woman who is the village midwife. This woman, Jane, known as Jane Sharp for her sharp nose and sharp tongue and generally sharp outlook -- thus the Middle Ages origins of English-language surnames is introduced in the book, with many other examples -- takes Dungbeetle in as a general dogsbody, allowing her to sleep in the rushes on the floor and eat scraps. The book is very good in its detail about what people would have been likely to eat, according to their stations -- the joy in eating a turnip or onion, for example, or an apple, is extreme, for Beetle. As the short book proceeds, there are small adventures which throw light on ordinary social practices, but the main thrust is whether the girl can gain skills and belief in herself, and how. I highly recommend this book -- it's really, really good.
Cushman has written other books set in medieval England, and they're very good too -- Matilda Bone is about a girl whose clerk father dies, and while she is cared for (and taught) by the church men she lives with, is eventually handed over for apprenticing to a bonesetter. This bonesetter, Red Peg, is an earthy and independent woman who utterly oversets the general old-fashioned chivalric notion (from YAF, I mean) of what women in medieval England were like. Since such notions were never located anywhere below the nobility, that's not surprising. But it's an interesting exploration of medieval notions of medicine and science, as well as ideas of class and social status -- beneath the level of nobility. In a way, it's almost an answer to A Door in the Wall, because Matilda wants desperately to become a learned Abbess or clerk like her father (which is impossible, the latter, as becoming a knight became impossible for the boy in de Angeli's story) but slowly has to let go of her snobbishness and accept where she is, eventually finding pleasure in it. I haven't read Alchemy and Meggy Swann yet, but I look forward to it. Maybe today!
Cushman's other three books are historical, but not medieval. The Ballad of Lucy Whipple is about a girl uprooted to a California gold mining 'town', in ways similar to both Patricia Beatty's works, and Kathryn Lasky's. It's good, though not among my favorites. Rodzina is her exploration of the Orphan Trains, which took the orphaned offscourings (or not orphaned; parents who didn't have the money to support kids could also drop them off to this organization) of Eastern city slums West to be either adopted or... well, the adoptions could seem more like bound labor, though I guess they were all legally adoptions. Rodzina is the awkward, plain, somewhat bellicose daughter of Eastern European immigrants -- Poles, I think, though I don't remember. And she is suspicious of this process throughout the journey. Again, a good book, but not my favorite.
My favorite? The Loud Silence of Francine Green -- which is a school story, of sorts, but also part of my absolute favorite tiny subgenre: stories of the countercultural 1950s. This book makes a great companion piece to two of my recent favorites, by local author Ellen Klages. I'll talk about hers later. Meanwhile, Francine Green is the daughter of two fairly liberal Catholic middle class folks in Southern California, who meets the daughter of a screenwriter because Sophie Bowman is transferred into her class in a parochial school. Sophie and her father are Bohemians, more or less, and her father is at least a fellow traveler (none of the heroes of these books are ever actually in the CP, sigh... they're always heroic fellow travelers persecuted for being CLOSE to people who were actually in the Party). Francine learns to be more open in her challenging of the stifling mold of 50s culture, and to question hegemony. Yeah, basically that's the plot. It's a great book.
amarama, diabetic retinopathy screening photos, celebratory organic ice cream with annathebean and kaleidescope for the latter's new job, and picking up john_b_cannon at BART after his flight home from Kansas -- yay, john_b_cannon is back in town, hurrah. He and I went out for late night food at a café in Emeryville called Rudy Can't Fail, which always makes me think of the Clash song, but john_b_cannon said he never had a Clash period, so he didn't know the song. Which just seems weird to me, but may only mark our age difference. I told him about how this boy in my 7th grade French class, Jon Jacobson, sidled up to me -- a very brave taking-of-risk on his part because I was absolutely student-non-grata in middle school... beneath the very idea of pecking order, though also learning not to ever, ever give a shit about that kind of thing, which was an excellent life lesson... hm, to balance that description, I was also well known as the school Commie, which was fine with me. The school Commie-dyke-pinko-Iranian-lover, to be specific. In 1978. ANYWAY, Jon Jacobson sidled up to me, that year, and literally kind of whispered out the side of his mouth... "[my name], do you know this group, the Clash? You should really get some of their albums..." and then sidled away again, quickly. I love that my politics forced him to make this dangerous social excursion. And, of course, I loved the Clash as soon as I went out and got London Calling and later, Sandinista!.Right, none of that has anything to do with YAF. Though at that moment I was probably carrying, and had possibly even been reading, a young adult fiction book. I was the kind of kid who could walk into a light pole or a parking meter while reading.
Okay, then, where were we? Ah! Karen Cushman. She's great. She singlehandedly reintroduced the vast subgenre of English medieval historical novels to a new generation, and a generation of girls, at that. She has also branched out into other territory, and is equally good there.
So, background: I loved this subgenre when I was in elementary school. My fourth and fifth grade teacher, Ms. Weingartner (she who smoked in the classroom and drank endless Tabs) used to read aloud to us (which is probably why I think it is an incredibly important thing to do, too, even though I teach middle school). One of the books she read was Marguerite de Angeli's The Door in the Wall, which was about a boy in medieval London who is crippled by disease (polio?) and loses the use of his legs. It's about how he is taken care of by a friar, and learns to look for a different future than his expected one of being a knight. It's funny; I loved that book and the archaic language and the details of medieval England, but I have just read Amazon reviews, and even all the reviews that are strongly positive are like "kids will hate this, don't, for god's sake, assign it or you will strangle their love of reading stillborn!!!!1! zomg!" Weird. Well, as noted, I was a weirdo. I don't remember anyone else in my fourth grade class hating it, but then maybe I was completely insensible to their reactions. I am like that when reading or hearing a story or drawing. Just like my older niece, ha! Anyway, though, in general, most medieval fic was aimed at boys, was about knights and castles and adventures and serving the king or whatever. And I loved it. I just imagined my way in as a boy, I guess.
But then, thirty years later, Karen Cushman broke upon the scene with her first published book (not at all my favorite) Catherine, Called Birdy. It was such a ray of better gendered light that it pretty much was immediately added to the school canon, as was her second (much better, in my opinion) book, The Midwife's Apprentice. Catherine, Called Birdy was about a knight, and a manor if not a castle, and his family, and serfs, including dog boys (nod to T. H. White's The Once and Future King). But there the resemblances stopped.
The protagonist is the daughter of a minor lord, discontented with her lot, unusually literate, and in danger of being married off as an economic transaction. She keeps a diary, and this is the problem with the book -- it gets very tedious to follow that format, and most entries are too wrapped up in BEING entries, in comments about the day, the date, the process of writing a diary, and the wacky long story of which crazy-ass Saint's day this is, and what gruesome death that wacky Saint died. That's interesting and funny for a while, but then becomes kind of repetitive and tedious. My other problem with the book was that I kept wondering how incredibly anachronistic it was, to put these self-liberatory thoughts -- the metaphor is the birds that Catherine loves, but to love, keeps in cages... she's a caged bird, too, flapping her wings against the bars -- in a girl's head in the 1100s or whenever it is. During one of the earlier Crusades. But it is a very good book, anyway, especially as the first thing Cushman wrote.
Her second book was also an instant school classic -- I read it to students myself, at least twice, in West Oakland. And The Midwife's Apprentice is a very good book for that, both because the writing is clear and simple, for read alouds with students who are not at grade level in reading, and because the book's point is about the importance of coming to love and believe in yourself. Also, literacy is a fantastic idea. Kids really responded to both her circumstances -- homeless and living literally in shit -- and to her slow realization of self-worth. Their emotions were engaged and they were rooting for her.
Dungbeetle -- as the main character is known, because of how she tries to keep heat in her body at night -- is a homeless orphan trying to scratch a living begging and doing odd jobs, in medieval England. She goes from village to village, staying until she's driven away. At the opening of the book the girl, who seems to be about twelve or so, is rousted from her bed, which is burrowed into the dung-filled manure heap in a byre, by a grouchy woman who is the village midwife. This woman, Jane, known as Jane Sharp for her sharp nose and sharp tongue and generally sharp outlook -- thus the Middle Ages origins of English-language surnames is introduced in the book, with many other examples -- takes Dungbeetle in as a general dogsbody, allowing her to sleep in the rushes on the floor and eat scraps. The book is very good in its detail about what people would have been likely to eat, according to their stations -- the joy in eating a turnip or onion, for example, or an apple, is extreme, for Beetle. As the short book proceeds, there are small adventures which throw light on ordinary social practices, but the main thrust is whether the girl can gain skills and belief in herself, and how. I highly recommend this book -- it's really, really good.
Cushman has written other books set in medieval England, and they're very good too -- Matilda Bone is about a girl whose clerk father dies, and while she is cared for (and taught) by the church men she lives with, is eventually handed over for apprenticing to a bonesetter. This bonesetter, Red Peg, is an earthy and independent woman who utterly oversets the general old-fashioned chivalric notion (from YAF, I mean) of what women in medieval England were like. Since such notions were never located anywhere below the nobility, that's not surprising. But it's an interesting exploration of medieval notions of medicine and science, as well as ideas of class and social status -- beneath the level of nobility. In a way, it's almost an answer to A Door in the Wall, because Matilda wants desperately to become a learned Abbess or clerk like her father (which is impossible, the latter, as becoming a knight became impossible for the boy in de Angeli's story) but slowly has to let go of her snobbishness and accept where she is, eventually finding pleasure in it. I haven't read Alchemy and Meggy Swann yet, but I look forward to it. Maybe today!
Cushman's other three books are historical, but not medieval. The Ballad of Lucy Whipple is about a girl uprooted to a California gold mining 'town', in ways similar to both Patricia Beatty's works, and Kathryn Lasky's. It's good, though not among my favorites. Rodzina is her exploration of the Orphan Trains, which took the orphaned offscourings (or not orphaned; parents who didn't have the money to support kids could also drop them off to this organization) of Eastern city slums West to be either adopted or... well, the adoptions could seem more like bound labor, though I guess they were all legally adoptions. Rodzina is the awkward, plain, somewhat bellicose daughter of Eastern European immigrants -- Poles, I think, though I don't remember. And she is suspicious of this process throughout the journey. Again, a good book, but not my favorite.
My favorite? The Loud Silence of Francine Green -- which is a school story, of sorts, but also part of my absolute favorite tiny subgenre: stories of the countercultural 1950s. This book makes a great companion piece to two of my recent favorites, by local author Ellen Klages. I'll talk about hers later. Meanwhile, Francine Green is the daughter of two fairly liberal Catholic middle class folks in Southern California, who meets the daughter of a screenwriter because Sophie Bowman is transferred into her class in a parochial school. Sophie and her father are Bohemians, more or less, and her father is at least a fellow traveler (none of the heroes of these books are ever actually in the CP, sigh... they're always heroic fellow travelers persecuted for being CLOSE to people who were actually in the Party). Francine learns to be more open in her challenging of the stifling mold of 50s culture, and to question hegemony. Yeah, basically that's the plot. It's a great book.