The Right Book! (That Wasn't)

This time, I was sure I had it. Thanks to the excellent book-sleuthing skills of Louise and Sue, librarians at the children's collection at the NYPL's main branch, British author Helen Cresswell's Moondial was delivered into my waiting hands for on-site viewing. In the brief minutes I could spend that day in the reading room, I sped through the first 44 pages.

All sorts of familiar details sprang out at me: the "icy gusts" that Minty, the protagonist, experiences as she nears the sun/moondial; the garden "waiting for her;" the boy from another time clad in his rough jacket and woolen trousers. Never mind that I didn't remember Minty's mother having a car accident, or anyone owning a microwave oven. I went right home and ordered an old copy of the book for 1 cent, certain that the rest of the details I'd been reading fast to find would emerge beginning on page 45.

Well, they didn't. The back-and-forth between eras that Minty experiences at the moondial is too swift and easy (in the book I remember, the protagonist has to unlock the mystery of the sundial in order to figure out how to use it for time travel). There is none of the riddle-solving or potion-making that stuck so fast in my memory. And that microwave...well, that was a big clue, if only because it prompted me to look at the publication date. Which was 1987. The year I was a sophomore in college and so, needless to say, an unlikely year for me to have been reading a middle grade mystery novel.

And so the search continues! Thanks to all who've been helping in the quest and please keep writing in with your suggestions!

This Is Not the Book I'm Looking For

Every several years, I embark on a fruitless search to find a particular book I once read and enjoyed when I was about my daughter's age (9). The search renews whenever I have a new crop of librarians and/or children's book specialists of one stripe or another available in my life—in the most recent instance, a week ago, the amazing former Bank Street librarian, Lisa von Drasek. Sadly, the search always ends in failure. 

This is not the book I'm looking for (although, LVD, please know it was a noble guess, the closest yet):

Neither is this—not even close, not by a long shot:

And neither is this:

Although honestly, this one didn't come as any shock at all, since the book I'm looking for must have been written in the '60s or '70s and Annie Barrows is a thoroughly contemporary author. It was just a dream, the wisp of a hope of a dream, persistently unrequited. 

I'm not sure why it's so important to me to rediscover this book. It couldn't have been one of my favorites, seeing as how I can't even remember its title, I never owned it–just took it out of the library, once–and this means I never re-read it. The only thing I remember about it is one critical scene, in which the protagonist brings a concoction of herbs to a sundial in an overgrown garden, in order to travel back in time. I'm guessing it wasn't otherwise much of a book (how else to account for the ignorance of whole teams of kid lit experts?). But still I persist; I hate a lingering literary mystery and plus, my daughter is a dedicated potion concocter–something tells me she'd love, if not this whole book, at least that one potion-related scene in the weed-filled garden. 

Anyone? Anyone?

Meanwhile, unrelated to magical gardens and time travel, I offer this book as my pick of the week:

It's probably not the greatest book ever written, and it's certainly dated. But in its favor are a tiny, magical talking dog; a covetous collection of miniature bejeweled wind-up animals with various abilities; and yes, as the title pretty much screams, flying in the house. After 45 years of living, I still wish I could do that.

Two—Count 'Em—Picks of the Week

To tell you the truth, I wasn't much of a Roald Dahl fan as a kid. I wasn't a disparager, either, just sort of a disinterested party; I think the deep sadnesses experienced by his young characters stressed me out. But sometime in my young adulthood, I got my hands on this:

And then immediately after devouring it, I went right out and got my hands on this:

I started reading them out loud to Ada a couple of weeks ago, mostly because I wanted an excuse to read them again myself. And happily enough, Ada seems to be enjoying them as much as I did and do. She called BOY "gruesome," but she meant it in the best possible way and her face kind of lit up as she said it. And the book—containing autobiographical sketches of the author's school years, some of which were spent at an English boarding school—certainly does touch on the gruesome. But it is also a kind of amazing and tricky symbiosis of complete self-confidence and self-effacement on the part of Dahl—his way of shrugging off his own bravery or brilliance, and for making his most frightening travails seem, not at all commonplace, but absolutely surmountable. And it's funny. And in addition to all that, there are several terrific "ah-ha" moments throughout, in which the reader gets a glimpse of the author-to-come, and what must have been some rich—and yes, gruesome—material for his later books. 

In some ways, GOING SOLO is even better, although it deals with Dahl's post-school adult years, during which he joined the Shell Company and went off to a life of adventure in Africa, only to be waylaid by World War II. I wasn't sure Ada would be interested in his account of flying fighter planes over Egypt for the RAF. But she is; perhaps it is the recitation of exotic place names, or Dahl's always spot-on tone and ear for pacing—a rival to Tolkien—or the descriptions of places and events that are so distant in place and time as to seem almost magical. Admittedly, though, it was the tales of snakes and other wild animals that had her sitting on the edge of the couch, biting the inside of her lip at the tension. Would the gardener be bitten by the deadly green mamba? Would the lion, trotting off with the cook's wife in his jaws, finally consume her? There is only way for you to find out, of course, and I suggest that you do it, posthaste!

A Read-Aloud Pick of the Week

Any day now, Peter Jackson's movie treatment of THE HOBBIT will be upon us. I'm sure I'll like it just fine. But what I love, and loved beyond measure as a child, was Tolkien's riveting novel, which I'm shocked to realize I read to myself only once. I read it out loud to Ada this summer, just before she turned nine. It was one of those rare instances of hitting precisely the right book at the right time, and I'm crossing my fingers that she lets me read it to her again one day extremely soon.

My favorite HOBBIT cover

It's not that Ada, or any book-loving kid of her age, couldn't read this book for herself. But reading it aloud was a total pleasure for both of us, for the simple, crucial reason that Tolkien was a master of language and pacing and suspense—you feel the full force of these gifts when you utter his words out loud (or hear them read to you). There are few writers to match him in this regard, no matter what detractors like Phillip Pullman eventually made of his "simplistic" moralism (which, in fairness, I believe applies more to the LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy).

The cover of THE HOBBIT I read as a kid

Once I got started reading, I almost never wanted to stop, even when I began to go hoarse. So it was that I managed to read the entire book to Ada in about four days. I sped through the thing, then was sorry I hadn't made it last forever. And once the book was finished, I couldn't think of another book I wanted to read out loud half so much. In fact, I'm still trying to come up with reasonable read-aloud sequel. I've hit on something pretty close, though—more about that next week.

A New York-Centric Pick of the Week

It's not a coincidence that I selected this week's pick directly on the heels of last week's pick. When Ada and I first read ALL-OF-A-KIND FAMILY by Sydney Taylor

(shown here – small. Sorry – with its most recent reprint jacket), my first reaction was that it was like a LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE of New York. The book and its four sequels follow the lives and adventures of five – count 'em – Jewish sisters (and eventually, one brother) growing up in the early years of the 20th century, and are heavily based on Taylor's own girlhood. 

Throughout this series, as in the LITTLE HOUSE series, there are illnesses (the dreaded scarlet fever); big moves (from the largest Jewish neighborhood in the world at that time, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, uptown to a more integrated and swank locale); celebrations of holidays (Purim, for one notable example); the saving of pennies for highly coveted candy; detailed and fascinating descriptions of everyday life and various childhood mishaps and triumphs. Here is micro-history, not of the American plains but of urban streets, and every bit as engrossing and unfamiliar when contemplated now, over a hundred years later. There's a dwindling number of New Yorkers who remember, say, street-side pickle merchants, or buying crackers by the pound out of a barrel (broken crackers were cheaper). 

AOAKF was another book that captivated Ada so thoroughly that she could not tease out her favorite parts. As for me, I loved the sisters' Friday visits to the library (a perfect happenstance, since the book was originally recommended to me by a librarian). The highly anticipated recurring event is a thread that stitches some otherwise anecdotal chapters together. It's also a great reminder of the beauty and importance of books, which were once so rare and valuable that, for all but the privileged, owning one was almost unthinkable.