1930: Hitty, Her First Hundred Years by Rachel Field

I had never heard of this book before I read it for this blog, but I found the story line familiar, as would most people: it's the story told from the perspective of a toy. Like the Tin Soldier or the cast of the Toy Story movies, Hitty is a doll who goes through many owners and adventures, always without her owners realizing that she is observing them. But I read this as more than just a story about a doll. It seemed to play around a lot with the subject/object duality. Hitty is an object, but giving her a voice and personality subjectifies her. Her position as an observer gives her the ability to view her owners, who range all over the social spectrum, with objectivity. And though the story makes her subjective, her immobility as an object makes her the passive victim of the whims of her owners.

In essence, Hitty is a slave. Though she has a life and thoughts of her own, she is considered property to be treasured or abused on a whim. When I wrote about Smoky the Cowhorse, I made this assertion based on contextual evidence, but in Hitty the author actually makes this comparison explicit. From her time with a Quaker family who reads Uncle Tom's Cabin but cannot participate in the war, Hitty makes her way to the South where she meets two old ladies who lost loved ones at the hands of the "Yankees." Later still, she comes to belong to a little black girl whose family, while technically freed, still live in poverty in a shack belonging to a plantation. Even more explicit, toward the end of the book Hitty is auctioned off in an estate sale where she discovers that she is a valuable antique. She remarks, "I am sure no slave on the block was ever more surprised at her own value than I."

This explicit comparison colors much of the rest of the story with extra shades of meaning. For instance, when she's put on display at various places, such as the cotton expo and a junk sale, I was reminded of the Hottentot Venus. I could hardly help flinching when Hitty says that being sold was a "great relief to me, as I grew tired of being explored by so many strange fingers."

Additionally, the book seems more like a slave narrative when we consider that Hitty is only able to write her memoirs after a hundred years or more. For the rest of her time, her ability to write "her story" leaves her essentially without a "history." When she hears her owner wondering about her origins, she thinks, "it made me wish more than ever that I had some way of telling her about myself." The only thing each owner can discover is her name, cross stitched (branded?) on her undergarments by her first owner.

Of course, this all might make it sound like an unpleasant book, but it really isn't. In fact, there are quite a few people who make their own Hitty dolls and form clubs about her. As a side note, Hitty actually does exist; Rachel Field bought her from the antique store where she ends the book, and she now lives in the Library Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. There's plenty of info on the internet about making your own Hitty, as well as kits you can buy for flat traveling Hittys that you can mail to friends or family members. Maybe I'll have to learn how to whittle so that I can make my own Hitty ...

1929: The Trumpeter of Krakow by Eric P. Kelly

These days the inside of dust jackets mostly feature a quote from the book or from the New York Times Book Review. But I always appreciate when the dust jacket actually has a summary of the plot, as older books often do, because then I can judge the book before I even reach the first page.

In the edition of The Trumpeter of Krakow I read, printed by MacMillan and illustrated by Janina Domanska in 1966, the flap says, "out of his great love of Poland and its history, Mr. Kelly painted a vivid picture of the political and social life of Krakow in the early Renaissance." To a large extent, this summary is accurate. The story opens with a historical moment. An earlier trumpeter of Krakow, sworn to trumpet on the hour from the balcony of the Church of Our Lady Mary, is shot down by invading forces before he can finish the last few notes of the Heynal. When the current story takes place years later, with Pan Andrew and his family hiding from their enemies in Krakow, he and his son become the new trumpeters of Krakow. They learn that it is now tradition to cut the Heynal short in honor of that trumpeter's bravery. To this extent, the story has a strong current of patriotism and pride in the quality and character of Poland.

But the reason for Pan Andrew's family's migration is what really interested me in this story. Their house is burnt to the ground and looted, forcing them to flee through the night. Joseph (the main character) gradually discovers that his father is responsible for hiding a great treasure, the Tarnov Crystal. This crystal is said to have occult powers. The narrator explains that "men were then but beginning to see the folly of many superstitions and cruelties that had been prevalent since the Dark Ages; they believed that certain persons had malign powers such as could transform others into strange animals; they thought that by magic, men could work out their spite upon others in horribly malicious ways." Indeed, with all of the astrologers and alchemists living in the university section of the city, the characters often have a hard time judging the thin line between scientific explorations and the dark arts.

At first, the Tarnov Crystal seems like it might be a tool for these dark arts, possibly even the key to the Philosopher's Stone. But by the end of the book we discover that when people are entranced by the beauty of the Crystal, it's not the devil's secrets that they see in its depths, but the secrets of their own minds. For instance, when the alchemist goes into a trance and thinks he has found a way into the Devil's workshop, we are told that in fact "the information he had during the trance came from his own fund of learning." This is a theme throughout the book, that mystical things turn out to be products of the human imagination. The Alchemist knows this better than anyone because he uses a costume, phosphorescent chemicals, and explosive powders to frighten robbers who come to steal the Crystal. Even though there's a scientific explanation for this apparition, the robbers' imaginations supply the terror.

Throughout the whole book, these powers of the human mind take on a darkness, especially in contrast to the innocence of the Pan Andrew family, who are blessedly unaware of the inner workings of their own subconscious. The Alchemist, on the other hand, knows that the Crystal's powers are terrible, which knowledge compels him to fling the Crystal into the river at the end in order to prevent any more disasters from occurring. Possibly I exaggerate the prevalence of this theme ... I've had "the mind" on the mind for a while, anticipating A.S. Byatt's new book, which she said is going to be about some of Freud's disciples/patients, a group who rather famously suffered at the hands of psychological over-investigation. Read it and decide for yourself, I guess.

1928: Gay-Neck The Story of a Pigeon by Dhan Gopal Mukerji

Well, I must say that I sat down to read this book with more than usual enthusiasm. Why? Because I am one of the very few people who absolutely love the bird that some people have erroneously called the "rat with wing." Where other people see disease-ridden pests, I see noble individuals with personality and charisma.

I'm reminded of Mike Tyson's story that his first fight started when a neighborhood kid ripped the head off his favorite pigeon and threw it in his face. Tyson recently created a miniseries about his love for the birds, called Taking on Tyson. When PETA objected (I almost said "inevitably objected," but that would be snarky, wouldn't it?) they had an interesting point. PETA Vice President Lisa Lange: "If Mike Tyson truly loved birds, he would fight for their protection - not force them into a 'race' that tears them away from their families and subjects them to injuries, exhaustion and death."

Gay-Neck covers some of this same territory, only instead of depending only on the voice of the pigeon-fancier, it also contains first-person accounts from the pigeon hero himself. The primary narrator of this novel is a young man living in Calcutta. He is a dedicated pigeon fancier who takes pride in treating his racing and carrier pigeons with the utmost care. A good portion of the novel details this boy's growing knowledge of pigeons and of wildlife in general. But through all the story the narrative is driven by the gem of his pigeon flock, Gay-Neck. And through Gay-Neck's story, we are given an objective look at humanity.

For the first portion of the book, Gay-Neck must learn to avoid natural predators such as hawks and eagles. There is a great deal of animals devouring other animals, all culminating in Gay-Neck remarking, "Why is there so much killing and inflicting of pain by birds and beasts on one another? I don't think all of you men hurt each other. Do you?" He is given his answer not too much later when he is enlisted in the war as a messenger. Gay-Neck serves his country and his master bravely, but he seems to be aware that the cause is somewhat dubious. When the soldiers tell him he has saved the day by delivering his message, he thinks, "but there was no day in sight. It was a darkening gray sky under which death coiled and screamed like a dragon, and crushed all in its grip." All Gay-Neck knows of the war is the constant noise of the machine guns and the need to flee from the great Machine-Eagles, or airplanes, that eventually manage to shoot his leg and wing. When he surveys the wreckage, he sees that "even rats and field mice did not manage to escape: dozens of them had been slaughtered and cut to pieces."

I see a similar motif here to Smoky the Cowhorse, even down to the difficult ramifications of the animal-human relationship. In Smoky, Clint considered himself Smoky's friend, but this "friendship" resulted in years of suffering for the horse. Here, Gay-Neck's loyalty to his master repeatedly puts his life in danger and results in grievous injuries. This narrator seems possibly more aware that it may be unfair to drag animals into human conflict. I am reminded of the third post I made on this blog, where I quoted Hugh Lofting on how it seemed unfair that we expected horses to carry us into war but did not give them even remotely the same medical treatment that we gave to human soldiers.

These last few posts may have sounded a little radical to some. But I'll assure you, I'm not advocating abolishing the domestication of pets, or making universal health care available to animals. I have two cats who live with me who, I flatter myself, enjoy their life with me much more than they would a life on the streets. I simply think it's important to consider such a common portrayal of the human-animal relationship to see whether it is constructive or destructive. Maybe I'll have more time to consider it in the future - there certainly have been a lot of animal books so far.

1927: Smoky the Cowhorse by Will James

I told you we'd be seeing more of the "animal friend" motif, and here we are, reading the biography of a horse.

Smoky is basically Black beauty's country cousin. He is born on the range, a wild horse. When he's four years old, he's corralled and "broken" by a cowboy who develops a deep affection and respect for him. He is then stolen and taken across the border to Mexico where he is mistreated and eventually becomes a bronco in a rodeo show. When the fight goes out of him, he's sold to a horse rental stable that works him to the bone, renting him out to over-enthusiastic boys from dawn until well after dusk. When his health fails him, he is sold as chicken meat, then to a vegetable deliverer who starves him and whips him. When he is all but dead, the cowboy who first fell in love with him discovers him, takes him back to his ranch, and restores him to health. Presumably Smoky is able to squeeze in a couple of years of retirement before his death.

I recognized two distinct issues relating to the motif of the "animal friend" in this novel. First, I noted throughout the book the idea that animals exist only to serve human beings. The second is more of a question, and that is whether we can rightly call a relationship a friendship if it involves an institutional imbalance of power.

When Smoky is young, he roams the range freely, facing dangers and occasional hardships. But then he catches the eye of Clint, the cowboy, and the narrator tells us that "his time for usefulness had come." When he was young, he "didn't know he was on this earth for the purpose of the human and that if he did throw one man another would climb him till finally he'd have to give in." Far from condemning this fact, the narrator seems sentimental about the process of breaking wild horses, calling the relationship a "friendship" and imagining the fond feelings the horse might have for his master.

If we knew only of Smoky's early years, we might be tempted to agree. Clint doesn't abuse him, after all, and it is the policy of the ranch to release the horses after several years of service, allowing them to enjoy a pleasant retirement on the range. But Smoky, as I mentioned, is stolen from Clint, and his new master is not nearly as beneficent toward his animals. This new master beats Smoky almost to the point of killing him, and when he's unable to break his spirit, he sells him to a rodeo where Smoky is driven mad several times a day for an audience of spectators. Likewise the owner of the rental stable, while not an evil man, places profit before the health of his animals, and the vegetable man is even worse - he buys horses who are on death's doorstep because it is cheaper to let them starve than to actually maintain healthy animals.

Smoky's story could easily serve as a parable for slavery; despite his noble qualities and his intelligence (which the author takes labors to emphasize) he is considered property, and is ultimately considered valuable based on his extrinsic value rather than his intrinsic value. That is, he is not worth anything for his own sake, but only for the sake of his usefulness to humanity. As in slavery, the problem is not how one particular master treats Smoky, but that the institution provides for an imbalance of power, leaving the treatment of horses up to personal taste. Clint treats Smoky kindly and with respect, but by the standards of the law, the next master is within his rights to drive Smoky until he is just a bag of bones. The cowboys who do believe in treating animals well are dependent on a member of the humane society to come by and chastise animal abusers. As in slavery, it seems to me that there is no such thing as a "good" master when there is the possibility of a cruel master.

I suppose I will continue this topic next week. For now, I will leave the question open: can the relationship between Smoky and his captor really be called "friendship" when Smoky is, by his master's standards, property?

1926: Shen of the Sea by Arthur Bowie Chrisman

It's interesting that two very similar books were awarded the Newbery two years in a row. Like Tales from the Silver Lands, Shen of the Sea is also a collection of folk tales, only its tales come from China instead of South America. Also like last week's book, these tales were recounted by a man who was not in fact Chinese, just as Charles Finger was not actually from South America. They even both ended their lives in Arkansas. Strange ...

Despite their similarities, though, I think I liked Tales from Silver Lands a little better. There was nothing particularly wrong with Shen of the Sea, although the rampant sexism was a little hard to ignore (excessive amounts of wives per husband, comments about women being beheaded for defending their country, that sort of thing).

There was one thing that I found entertaining, though. It seems that parents doting over misbehaving offspring is a universal cultural experience. There are two separate stories in this book in which a father seems oblivious to his son's faults - laziness in one case, extreme naughtiness in the other. The funny thing is, in each case, the child in question is inadvertently responsible for a great invention - either of printing or of gunpowder. It reminds me of all the stories my grandma tells me about my dad, how naughty he was and how much grief he caused them. At the end of the story, no matter how much burning or pillaging is involved, she inevitably sighs and says what a precious little boy he was. He turned out ok, of course - although he hasn't invented something like gunpowder or the printing press. I suppose there's always still time for that.

1925: Tales from Silver Lands by Charles Finger

This is what Wikipedia has to say about this week's book:

"Tales from Silver Lands is a book by Charles Finger that won the Newbery Medal in 1925. The book is a collection of nineteen folktales of the native populations of Central and South America, including a 'just-so story' describing how rabbits and rats got their tails."

That's it. It has a little more to say about Charles Finger, but not much. He was born in England, traveled extensively, and finally settled in the Ozarks, Kansas. It's not much to go by. In fact, as one of my side projects for this week, I think I'll take it upon myself to add a little to the Wikipedia entry. It pains me to see such a delightful book given such little space on the vast planes of the internet - after all, internet realty is free.

But despite the general lack of information about this book, we can learn a lot of things from the book itself. The book was rife with evil witches, imprisoned maidens, and beasts transformed into humans and vice versa. The story mentioned in the Wikipedia stub, the 'just-so story' called "A Tale of Three Tales," is probably one of the least remarkable. If you want to read just one or two selections from the book, I might recommend "The Tale of the Lazy People." It's toward the end of the book, but I enjoyed it very much - possibly because I just spent a weekend with a friend who is taking a class on socialism and was alert to the evils of capitalism. I also enjoyed the story of the noble and gentle huanacos, who stand sentinel on the ridges of the mountains ("The Tale of the Gentle Folk").

I think I will mention only one topic in depth, and that was one I discovered with the interests of an eco-critic in mind. The stories in this book are very positive about nature; good characters are in touch with nature and can often speak the language of the beasts and plants. But there was one rather troubling aspect, and that was the recurring appearance of the "animal companion" - that is, an animal who is supposedly "friends" with a human and accompanies him or her on adventures. The animals in many of these stories help humans by building, carrying messages, and fighting on their behalf. In the first story, they even help the protagonists cut down the forest - the one in which the animals themselves (used to ) live! And we're told that after this little feet of irony "all things in the forest were glad."

This got me thinking about animal "friends" and how they always seem to get the short end of the stick. Think about it. How often do stories feature a human with an animal companion where the animal ends up sacrificing itself for its human friend? And when was the last time you read a story where a human sacrificed his or her life so that the animal companion could go on and have a happy ending? This is one of the reasons Old Yeller upset me when I was younger - poor Old Yeller defended his master to the death, and what did he get in return? He got rabies and a bullet to the head. Alas.

I was just rereading So You Want to be a Wizard in preparation for the next chapter in my book, and the same thought occurred to me then. Kit and Nita travel to an alternate Manhattan in which the dominant form of life is sentient automobiles. Kit helps one of these feral cars (the mouse removing the thorn from the lion's paw) and in return the car defends him - and loses its life in the process. The thing that seemed strange was how predictable I found this sequence of events. Why else would Kit befriend a wild creature but so that it would come to his aid later?

I have a feeling I'll be exploring this idea some more in the future, especially as the next couple of Newbery books feature a wild horse and a pigeon war hero as their protagonists. And at the same time, as I do research for my chapter on religion and eco-ethics (for which I reread Duane's Wizard novels, among others), I have been encountering questions of the power dynamic between humans and animals over and over again. For now I suppose I'll leave the issue open, and welcome anyone who has a response.

1924: The Dark Frigate by Charles Boardman Hawes

Perhaps some of you have thought to yourself that the last couple of posts on this blog were a bit on the long side. Perhaps you did a bit of skimming, brushed up on your speed reading skills. If so, you will probably enjoy this post, because it is fairly short.

Why is it so short? As my poor husband (whom I constantly pursue around our apartment enthusing about remote and uninteresting topics) will tell you, I didn't particularly enjoy this book. This may be because I'm not as versed in maritime adventure stories as I should be. But I think it might mostly be because of certain unavoidable comparisons I drew between The Dark Frigate and Treasure Island. They are both maritime coming-of-age adventure stories, but Treasure Island is much more famous than The Dark Frigate ... and for very good reason. Let me describe my impressions, and those of you who have read the book can defend it if you like.

I spent the entire book trying to picture the main character, and I never quite managed to form a mental image. As far as I could tell, he is young but of indeterminate age; slim but strong enough to fight off opponents twice his size; handsome enough to be instantly propositioned by whatever woman he encounters; and very honest-looking, even when he's caught doing something dishonest.

Each time another character meets this boy, they instantly like and trust him. He gets promoted faster than his peers, befriended by his rivals, spared by the hangman ... and all, as far as I could tell, because they "instantly liked the look of him." The first person he meets, a Scottish smithy, becomes so enamored of him that he seems to want to adopt him on the spot; but alas, he has to settle for staying up all night and forging him a dagger and with an ivory handle and a loving inscription. By the end of the book, his good looks and mysterious je ne sais pas get him an inheritance from a wealthy landowner - not to mention the man's alluring daughter.

Perhaps you feel I am being unfair. You might argue that it is a tradition of this genre to weight the dice in favor of the protagonist. But for a coming-of-age story, this book was missing something vital: a coming-of-age. Sure, the character ages throughout the book. Sure he has many experiences, both exciting and traumatizing. But I cannot see that he changed much at all through the whole book. His struggles are purely external, meaning that though he observes many lawless activities taking place and feels vague disapproval, he never acts. Perhaps this is a mistake on the part of the author, who was generous with the fist-fights and nautical terms but a little skimpy on the internal development. All we get to see of the main character are his actions and reactions. When his ship is shanghaied by ruthless pirates, he tut-tuts at the carnage and then joins up with the new captain hoping to make a few bucks. While he does eventually slip away because "an honest man can go so far in the company of rogues and no farther," this is only after he's taken part in a few unsuccessful ventures and sees there's nothing to be gained by sticking around. The only time he draws a clear moral line is when he refuses to testify in court against the murdering pirates out of some sense of honor among thieves. This doesn't make him a very good citizen, but it turns out that he made the right choice, because of all the pirates he alone escapes the noose, having impressed the jury with his honesty (and his awe-inspiring face).

In conclusion, I felt no sympathy or interest in the main character. He begins the book with superhuman strength and a magical face, and ends the book in exactly the same state. Where's the fun in that? Its similarity to Treasure Island only drew attention to the comparative flatness of its characters. Oh, and one more thing. Before I end this post, I will make one parting shot: the main character's name is Phil. Phil?

But I will say no more.

1923: The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle by Hugh Lofting

I had a feeling when I sat down to read this book that I wouldn't have to scrape around looking for environmental themes, and it turns out I was right. To start off this post, I think I'll include a quote from the Afterword of the edition I read, which contains an explanation from Hugh Lofting about his time serving in the first great war:

One thing, however, that kept forcing itself more and more on my attention was the very considerable part the animals were playing in the World War and that as time went on they, too, seemed to become Fatalists. They took their chances with the rest of us. But their fate was far different from the men's. However seriously a soldier was wounded, his life was not despaired of; all the resources of a surgery highly developed by the war were brought to his aid. A seriously wounded horse was put out by a timely bullet.

This did not seem quite fair. If we made the animals take the same chances as we did ourselves, why did we not give them similar attention when wounded? But obviously to develop a horse-surgery as that of our Casualty Clearing Stations would necessitate a knowledge of horse language.

That was the beginning of the idea: an eccentric country physician with a bent for natural history and a great love of pets, who finally decides to give up his human practice for the more difficult, more sincere and, for him, more attractive therapy of the animal kingdom. He is challenged by the difficulty of the work - for obviously it requires a much cleverer brain to become a good animal doctor (who must first acquire all animal languages and physiologies) than it does to take care of the mere human hypochondriac.

Lofting makes this animal-centric ideology the central vision of his novel. As a little extra-curricular activity for this week, I watched the film versions of the book, and I noticed that even Hollywood decided not to abandon some of the more serious environmental elements of the novels. The 2001 Eddie Murphy film Doctor Dolittle 2 (certainly not what one would call a serious film) portrays the Doctor fighting against the Evil Empire of logging. And I very much enjoyed one of the songs from the 1967 version, called "Like Animals":

This song is very much in keeping with the goals of the original novel, which, while mostly fantastical and absurd, contains several serious moments. One of these occurs when Dolittle first shows Stubbins, his new assistant, his "zoo." Stubbins expects to find cages, but instead he finds little stone houses, and Dolittle explains, "in my zoo the doors open from the inside, not from the out." It turns out that Dolittle's "zoo" is actually a kind of retirement village, entirely optional for the animals, most of whom have chosen to live there because of the convenience of the medical attention.

When Stubbins asks to see the large wild cats, however, Dolittle becomes upset. He says that if it were up to him,

there wouldn't be a single lion or tiger in captivity anywhere in the world [...] They are always thinking of the big countries they have left behind. You can see it in their eyes, dreaming - dreaming always of the great open spaces where they were born; dreaming of the deep, dark jungles where their mothers first taught them how to scent and track the deer.

I couldn't help but think as I read this passage of Rilke's "Panther":

His vision, from the constantly passing bars,
has grown so weary that it cannot hold
anything else. It seems to him there are
a thousand bars; and behind the bars, no world.

As he paces in cramped circles, over and over,
the movement of his powerful soft strides
is like a ritual dance around a center
in which a mighty will stands paralyzed.

Only at times, the curtain of the pupils
lifts, quietly--. An image enters in,
rushes down through the tensed, arrested muscles,
plunges into the heart and is gone.

Lofting has this same awareness of the paralyzed will, the image that enters the animal's heart and, having nowhere to go, disappears. Doctor Dolittle goes on:

What are they given in exchange for the glory of an African sunrise, for the twilight breeze whipping through the palms, for the green shade of the matted, tangled vines, for the cook, big-starred nights of the desert, for the patter of the waterfall after a hard day's hunt? What, I ask you, are they given in exchange for these? Why, a bare cage with iron bars, an ugly piece of dead meat thrust in to them once a day; and a crowd of fools to come and stare at them with open mouths!

This is tough medicine for someone who has oggled plenty of caged animals in her time. And yet I can't argue with Lofting that there is a certain dull horror in seeing large animals behind bars. I remember the last time I went to the zoo, as I was standing in front of a polar bear display, a family came to stand beside me. The mother shuffled her two children to the front so that they could see better. Then, when they had a nice view, she began to talk loudly about how miserable the polar bears were, about how they missed their native home, and how EVIL zoos are. Needless to say my little party shuffled off feeling as though some of the fun had been taken out of the zoo, but I haven't forgotten that little scene (and I'm sure the woman's children haven't either!).

Environmentalists have found such pleas for large animals worrying, because large animals like whales or polar bears - or animals with human-like faces such as gorillas or panda bears - are more likely to receive funding and media attention when their species is endangered. But Doctor Dolittle actually doesn't focus all his energies on defense of the larger animals. In this novel, Dolittle spends much of his time trying to learn the language of shellfish. While it is not such a stretch for us to believe that our domesticated pets are trying to communicate with us, very few people have thought of crustaceans or insects having any kind of language. But Dolittle explains to Stubbins that "some of the shellfish are the oldest kind of animals in the world that we know of [...] So I feel quite sure that if I could only get to talk their language, I should be able to learn a whole lot about what the world was like ages and ages ago." This is particularly interesting in contrast with last week's book, The History of Mankind, in which Van Loon writes, "Without written documents we would be like cats and dogs, who can only teach their kittens and their puppies a few simple things and who, because they cannot write, possess no way in which they can make use of the experience of those generations of cats and dogs that have gone before." Lofting emphasizes the idea that there is no such thing as a purely "human" history, because always in the background there are animals and the natural landscape that shaped us.

In addition to defending wild cats, Lofting also makes a compelling argument against bullfighting. When they arrive on a Spanish island and witness a procession honoring the noble bullfighters, Doctor Dolittle explains to his companions that the during a bullfight the "bull was allowed to tire himself out by tossing and killing a lot of poor, old, broken-down horses who couldn't defend themselves. Then, when the bull was thoroughly out of breath and wearied by this, a man came out with a sword and killed the bull." One might argue against such judgments for the sake of cultural sensitivity, but Doctor Dolittle is not attacking the Spanish people themselves. On the contrary, he says, "these Spanish people are most lovable and hospitable folk. How they can enjoy these wretched bullfights is a thing I could never understand."

That is not to say that cultural sensitivity is not an issue for this book. In the introduction to the edition I read, the editors explain that the original text of the book was "marred by racially insensitive language and artwork." They go on to say that, though they are "opposed to book banning and censorship" they are "equally committed to the idea that no book should undermine a child's self-esteem." Therefore, to make the novel "more suitable for twenty-first century readers" they made various changes. I am reminded of the recent controversy over a new edition of Huck Finn which edited out racial slurs. Of course, the debate immediately became polarized, with literary purists on one side and educators and the culturally sensitive on the other. Loorie Moore wrote an interesting article suggesting that because it is so hard to interest high school children in reading at all, we should just wait until college to try to teach this text.

Anyway, even with editing, there are still a few passages in Dolittle that make one wince, such as when Stubbins looks forward to meeting a black person because he has only ever seen them in circuses, or the Kipling-esque song written by Natives of South America in honor of Dolittle's exploits:

One was a Black - he was dark as the night;
One was a Redskin, a mountain of height;
But the chief was a White man, round like a bee;
And all in a row stood the Terrible Three.

Oh, strong was the Redskin; fierce was the Black.
Bag-jagderags trembled and tried to turn back.
But 'twas of the White Man they shouted, "Beware!"
He throws men in handfuls, straight up in the air!

Yes, there's definitely some White-Man's-burden action going on here. The remark that the "Indians were ignorant of many of the things that quite small children know" (how to make fire, how to cook food, how to build homes, how to make medicinal compounds - the list goes on and on) may or may not be tempered by the qualifying remark, "though it is also true that they knew a lot that white grown-ups never dream of."

But if you can get past the historical racism, this book has some valuable things to offer for an eco-critic. Apart from the direct appeals to reform zoos and end bull fights, he also gives animals voice and agency. Dolittle of course speaks animal language, suggesting that in his reality animals have a language apart from the bare necessity of grunts and growls. We're told that he's written"history books in monkey talk, poetry in canary language and comic songs for magpies to sing." Toward the beginning of the book, with the help of Doctor Dolittle's translations, a bulldog is able to take the stand as a witness in a murder trial.

And perhaps most important is Polynesia the parrot. Polynesia, we are told, is nearly 200 years old, and it is she who is responsible for teaching Dolittle the foundation of animal languages. Almost at the very beginning of the novel, Stubbins says, "sometimes I almost think I ought to say that this book was written by Polynesia instead of me." Perhaps Polynesia is a play on words - "poly" for many, as she is the key to the animal kingdom's many languages, their Tower of Babel. She comes up with the plans, earns money for their trips, and, in one case, even has to manipulate Dolittle, talking to him "as though she were talking to a wayward child."

Yes, despite a few awkward moments, I found this to be a very interesting book, and full of evidence that Lofting thought carefully about the plight of the natural world, particularly animals. As I research the topic of environmentalism and children's literature, I will keep this book in mind. Maybe I'll even read the other Dolittle books ... if I have time with all of these other Newbery books! Next week I read The Dark Frigate.

1922: The Story of Mankind by Hendrik Willem van Loon

This seems like an appropriate book with which to begin my little reading journey. Maybe that's what those first judges also thought when they awarded The Story of Mankind with the inaugural Newbery Medal.

The Medal has been predominantly awarded to works of fiction, and yet you'll notice that this is a work of nonfiction. It seems as though Van Loon anticipated such a complaint. After describing a particularly absurd episode in human politics (of which, if you read the book, you will begin to notice an almost endless supply), he quips, "Why should we ever read fairy stories, when the truth of history is so much more interesting and entertaining?" I happen to be very fond of fairy stories, but van Loon tells humanity's story with such perception that you really do begin to see how all of human history is like a great long tale, fully of unlikely characters and surprising plot twists. Or, perhaps not so surprising. By the end of the book, I found myself agreeing with Van Loon's statement that "history is like life. The more things change, the more they remain the same."

The events in the book unfurl one episode after another in a steady chronological flow, with brief summations at the beginning and end of particularly influential eras. But here and there amidst the historical narrative and the dry commentary Van Loon squeezes entertaining little observations. In one, found toward the middle of the book, he gives us what might be considered his modus operandi:

Few things in human life are either entirely good or entirely bad. Few things are either black or white. It is the duty of the honest chronicler to give a true account of all the good and bad sides of every historical event. It is very difficult to do this because we all have our personal likes and dislikes. But we ought to try and be as fair as we can be, and must not allow our prejudices to influence us too much.

Has van Loon taken his own advice? As I read I sensed a leaning toward the West - toward Western religion, politics, and thought. He explains any possible omissions of Eastern civilization by saying that he highlights "only those events of the past which can throw a light upon the conditions of the present world."

But while our neighbors further to the East might protest that their civilizations deserve a little more consideration, they should at least be grateful that they are largely spared his dry humor and keen observation. Van Loon delivers his "true account" with a really delightful straightforwardness. For example, he explains the centuries-long conflict between Catholics and Protestants by saying that "it was a question of hang or be hanged, and both sides preferred to do the hanging." Or take his statement that, after serving as Rome's dictator, Sulla "died quietly in his bed, having spent the last year of his life tenderly raising his cabbages, as was the custom of so many Romans who had spent a lifetime killing their fellow-men." A real gem, that one.

At first I thought this would have to be a purely descriptive post, and that I would have to wait for later books to hop on my environmental hobby horse. But though this book's themes are not overtly environmental, it is nonetheless contains a strain of environmental consciousness that cannot be entirely unconscious. Perhaps unsurprising for a book published in 1921 (only four years before the Scopes trial), he begins his history of mankind with evolution. The earth begins as a flaming ball of fire, then it transforms into a livable environment, and next our amoeba ancestors acquire lungs and subsequently migrate to land. Interesting - to an eco-critic's mind, at least - is his explanation that of all living organisms,

man was the last to come but the first to use his brain for the purpose of conquering the forces of nature. That is the reason why we are going to study him, rather than cats or dogs or horses or any of the other animals, who, all in their own way, have a very interesting historical development behind them.

A somewhat humanistic approach, you might think, to laud humanity as the pinnacle of nature's creatures. And yet he is not exactly praising humanity, only explaining that our minds are what allowed us to shape nature for our own purposes and survive its vagaries, over and above other creatures perhaps more fit for survival than us slow, hairless beings. Yes, he makes note of "the parting of the ways when man suddenly leaves the endless procession of dumbly living and dying creatures and begins to use his reason to shape the destiny of his race." But he retains a sort of sympathy for the rest of creation, which has borne up so long under the destructive use to which we have generally put those wonderful and unique minds. For instance, during one of the ice ages which carved out valleys and left mountains in their wakes, he writes that "many animals were in the habit of sleeping in dark caves. Man now followed their example, drove the animals out of their warm homes and claimed them for his own."

Van Loon seems to imply that our attitudes toward nature often translate into our attitudes toward other people. For instance, while covering the medieval period, he describes surfs as "those unfortunate human beings who are neither slaves nor freemen, but who have become part of the soil upon which they work, like so many cows, and the trees." Such people, I might add, are liable to be cut down and butchered like the cows and trees; he remarks elsewhere that a certain group of people "cut down forests and they cut each other's throats with equal energy."

I could say a lot more, about how he gives the landscape credit for so much of civilized development (of the Greeks: "don't you see how these surroundings must have influenced a man in everything he did and said and thought?"), or how he traces the development of small communities into large cities as one of the most influential changes in all of history, or about his acute awareness of the potential ills of property ownership. But I think I have said enough already to suggest that this is a very worthwhile read. If nothing else comes of this blog, I am glad to have read this book, which I don't know that I would have encountered otherwise. Next week, of course, I will be reading Dr. Doolittle, which I'm certainly looking forward to.

Starting at the beginning

I've been watching my cursor blink impatiently for several minutes while I wondered how to start this blog. The simple answer is to start at the beginning - that is, the beginning of my decision to embark on this little project. But that's not as simple as you'd think.

During my short year or so as an independent scholar, I have come to the conclusion that I could spend a lifetime analyzing children's literature. Why? Among many other reasons, because literature for children will shape the thoughts and opinions of future generations, and because it radically shaped my own life and thinking. But when I ask myself why I want to share what I find, I realize that my great interest lies in the way children's books talk to one another, to adult books, and to culture at large.

When I write critical analysis, I feel a little like I'm writing the gossip column of some cheap magazine. You'll never guess what I overheard Philip Pullman saying to John Milton ... Think you know Roald Dahl? Read on for shocking new revelations! That sort of thing. Of course, the funny thing is that anyone and everyone can eavesdrop on books. It just so happens that when I listen carefully, I hear things that no one else has heard before. Last spring the journal Children's Literature published an article I had written about David Almond's Skellig and its conversation with William Blake. While several people have written scholarly pieces on Skellig, I read its lines and heard whispers of Blake's contraries, and I knew I had to share what I had overheard. Since publishing that article, I've followed several lines of inquiry: applying Freudian psychoanalysis to Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, delving into the anti-Lewis sentiments of Philip Pullman, teasing out the idea of the child and the adult in AS Byatt's The Children's Book. Like Whitman's spider, I have launched forth filament after filament, musing and venturing, seeking for connections.

Now I believe I have connected my spheres at last - or, at the very least, I've decided which spheres to focus on. I have begun writing a book-length study on ecocriticism and contemporary children's literature. As I sat down to write the introduction, thinking about the future of environmental texts for children, I realized that it would be essential for me to also know about their past. And that's where this blog comes in.

The first Newbery medal was awarded in 1922. In the 89 years since then, the medal has come to represent a sort of guarantee. While the winning novels are often different in scope and approach, the medal on their cover suggests that not only should the reader expect to find a well-written story, he or she should also expect to encounter ideas and themes which were important to many readers when the medal was awarded. Of course, such a tradition of evaluation is complicated by issues of cultural "gatekeepers" and the way "universal" values tend to marginalize minorities. After all, this is an award given to adults by adults, but for books which are meant to be read by children. Nonetheless, considering the longevity of the award, I decided this was a good place to start tracing the changing attitudes toward the environment in children's literature, for no other reason than it reflects literary preferences and values of nearly a century of readers.

For the next 90 weeks, then, I will read one Newbery winner a week, beginning with the winner for 1922 and ending with the 2012 winner of the medal, which is of course yet to be decided. On Sunday I will post any thoughts I've had about each book - environmentally related themes if I can find them or, if not, any other observations I come up with. Hopefully, someone will enjoy my comments or have comments of their own to make. But if not, then it will have been worth it to keep a record of 90 years of novels, and a year of my life spent reading them.