Feathers, Kids, and a Dose of Humility

Getting lost while driving in strange places is one of my biggest fears. Never mind that the strange place may be just the local hamlet of Kirkland; I could make a wrong turn and be unable to correct it quickly because of an angry driver tailgating me, and before you know it, I would be on The Highway With No Exits Until Bucktail, Nebraska!

So I wasn't sure I wanted to budge out of my house one Thursday evening a few weeks ago.

Plus, it was dark. And raining.

Nevertheless, I decided to shake off my slothfulness and actually drive somewhere after dinner, because it isn't every day that the author of one of your favorite books is speaking practically in your backyard, unless you happen to live next door to him or her and he or she is asking you to please come get your dog out of their chicken coop.

Reader, you will be glad to hear that I made it safely to my destination in Kirkland and even found parking. The event I attended was hosted by the Eastside Audubon Society and featured biologist Thor Hanson, author of the smashing book Feathers and the newly published The Triumph of Seeds.

Feathers is the kind of natural-history book I love best--one that sweeps together a multitude of fascinating facts as well as anecdotes and snippets of cultural as well as natural history and compels you with the same narrative drive that a good novel does. 

I pretty much expected that I'd learn more about feathers and possibly seeds that evening, which of course would've been wonderful, but just like the aforementioned Feathers, the author's discussion ranged across topics and lit on many subjects I hold dear: writing, kids, everyday wonders, and the instinctive affinity for the natural world that every child is born with and that can blossom or wither as the child grows.

I could natter on for ages about any of these topics but I'll stick with one of the anecdotes Hanson shared, a little story in which a child takes you down a peg or two without intending to do so and leaves you realizing that even if you think you're fairly humble, you're still capable of fluffing up your feathers and strutting a bit.

In the author's story, he was at a local shop in their very small town with his young son, where they ran into a little girl from their preschool. In the shop's window was a poster with the author's photo on it, announcing the date of an upcoming presentation. The little girl gawped at the author, looked at the poster, looked back at the author, then back at the poster, clearly linking the two and seemingly speechless. "Is that you?" she finally asked. Yes, came the reply. 

How could one not feel a bit chuffed at this bit of recognition? And then came the flattening reaction: the little girl studied the author, and then the photo, and finally asked, "Do you wear the same sweater every day?" 

(Note to self: borrow a sweater when the day comes that I actually get an author photo taken. And return it to the owner immediately.)

My dad had a similar experience once upon a time. He was an aeronautical engineer with many interests and loved nothing more than a wide-ranging conversation. One summer day, he was at a company picnic, and a little boy fell into chatting with him. Talk turned to jets and airplane design. Dad warmed to his topic as the boy stared at him, entranced. How wonderful to have such an appreciative audience! The boy was practically slack-jawed with fascination.

Then, without warning, the boy sped off and ran to his own father. He pointed back at my dad. "Papa! Papa!" he cried. "Look! Look! That man is all covered with little dots!"

It is quite true that auburn-haired Dad was liberally speckled with reddish freckles, which were on glorious display in short sleeves on that summer day. "Well," said Dad at this point, "that put me in my place."

Carol Burnett knew this feeling well; on her show back in the 1970s, she told a story about sitting on her young daughter's bed, talking to her earnestly--longer than she'd intended, as the child's rapt face and unblinking gaze encouraged her to continue. Satisfied, Burnett smiled lovingly at her daughter, waiting for a reaction. She didn't expect it to be the statement, "Wow. You sure have a lot of teeth."

I don't recall a time when anybody young or old hung on my every word, but there was a day when I gave a little presentation about writing books to a small group of kids in my daughter's elementary school.

Most of them were inattentive, but one boy was riveted. I turned the pages of one of my published books and warbled on about the writing of books for his benefit. When I asked if anyone had any questions, his hand shot up. That's when I learned the real source of his fascination: "How did you write all those words so perfectly in the book?" 

By which of course he didn't mean my deft word selection, but actually I would be very happy to see that as a review on Amazon. Hope is, after all, the thing with feathers.*

*A statement that I can no longer make without thinking of Woody Allen's reaction: “How wrong Emily Dickinson was! Hope is not 'the thing with feathers.' The thing with feathers has turned out to be my nephew. I must take him to a specialist in Zurich.”

The Fifth Father's Day

We're approaching our fifth Father's Day now without Dad. Which seems impossible--impossible both that he's not here, and that it has been five years. So much happened during that span that it wasn't until this past spring that I was able to deliver on a promise we made to him in his last month--that we would take good care of his book collection and not just chuck it in the bin at a thrift store.

My dad was never without a stack of books to read. He consumed a steady supply of books about history, mathematics, and airplanes (he was an aerodynamics engineer) and also would fasten on to subjects that he'd pursue for months on end. Among the last ones were the Peloponnesian war and the building of the Panama Canal.

All those books would be carefully bookmarked with his favorite marker: a computer punch card from his early days at Grumman Aerospace. He had stacks of them, having retrieved them from the company when they were throwing them away after they were outmoded.

Often these cards bear a list of words my dad encountered in his reading and intended to look up, sometimes because he didn't know the meaning but more often because he wanted to learn more about the word's origins.

After his death, and our mom's subsequent move to a smaller home, the vast majority of the household's books were easily sorted: history and boating books mainly went to one brother's household, a lot of science books to mine, cooking ones to my sister and me, a handful of aircraft books to my nephews.

But finding a place for his aeronautical and engineering books, many of which were highly technical, would be hard--that is, if Boeing's own museum and library wasn't interested.

We didn't want to ask them point-blank if they just wanted boxes and boxes of books, so I set out to catalog the entire collection and gather it in one document so the librarians could pick and choose according to the needs of their library.

Sounds tedious, but it actually offered ample time to muse on the office--the "den" as we called it--where Dad kept his books when we were kids and worked late sometimes on special projects. It was a tiny room, rather dark, but we were always welcome even though now I know we were probably delaying his work by popping in to visit.

I recall gazing up in wonder at all those books, many of them somber-looking tomes from the 1940s and early 1950s, and whispering in awe, "Wow, Dad, you must be really smart!"

"Not really," he chuckled. (But he was.)

Sometimes as I flipped the pages of a book after gleaning the title, author, and publication date, a computer card or piece of paper would fall out, or I'd find a note written on a page. Because the mathematics involved are totally beyond my understanding, I could only marvel at the inscrutability of what was amazing to him.

One item in his library was a 4-inch-thick bound stack of papers with 7 or 8 columns of numbers on each page, just a river of data pouring through the volume. On one page, in one column, Dad had corrected a few digits in one number after the decimal point. How he could've spotted that error utterly escapes me.

I loved seeing the enthusiasm he had in acquiring a volume, and how the engineers kept a running history in a beloved book, as if it were a family Bible:

On a more down-to-earth level, I enjoyed seeing how his signature changed over the years: from a student's careful script...

to the firm hand of a graduate...

to the confident use of his nickname and purple ink of his later years. He preferred purple felt-tip pens and was dismayed when local stationers and office supply stores ceased carrying them. One of my last Christmas gifts to him was a big box of purple Papermate felt-tips. I was sure he'd have years more of using them.

It was also pretty cool to Google the house in  New Hyde Park where he lived as an older child; it's still standing. Not sure exactly where he lived as a little kid--I know it was an apartment building in Queens, that his dad and mom (German immigrants) were the caretakers of the building, and that due to their position they had access to the basement, which made Dad a king among his peers as they ran up and down alleys fighting endless world wars.

After cataloging everything from "Akin, J. E., Finite Elements for Analysis and Design" to "Watman, H., 'Assessment of the Unified Approach for Predicting the Hypersonic Characteristics of a High L/D Reentry Glider,'" I contacted the Boeing library, and fortunately they were interested in taking on most of the books; the old books were particularly welcome because historians and engineering students delved into them in their work. Plus there were my dad's own folders of writing and collected materials on the development of aircraft on which he worked.

I hauled them all up to Boeing's restoration center on a gray March morning. We know Dad would be really glad to think of his books in the hands of another generation of engineers.

I also know Dad would be very amused and slightly appalled (if you can be such a thing) at my saving bits and pieces like scribbles on paper. He'd probably make some jokes about relics and Oliver Plunkett's head. I don't really know why I hang on to them other than that it's all I've got left of him other than photos and what he's instilled in us kids. I feel sometimes like a bird on a nest, tucking every precious scrap around me.



    

Soft Spring Evenings with "Apricot Sky" by Ruby Ferguson

In the early 1970s my uncle delivered a stack of books to me. He'd picked them up on a trip to Ireland and assumed, quite rightly, that his horse-crazy niece would love a series of books about a girl her age who acquires first one pony, then a second, and tumbles into a series of misadventures with them.

These books were the "Jill" books by Ruby Ferguson, a series of nine titles starring the sharp, funny, sometimes klutzy, and often impetuous Jill Crew. She begins the series as an 11-year-old and ends as a 17-year-old, pony-mad from start to finish.

Sadly, there were only the nine, and my equally horse-besotted friend M. and I read the paperbacks over and over and went around talking like Jill, saying "frightfully" and "smashing" rather a lot, until the pages became soft as tissue and the spines scored with folds.

So, since there weren't any more Jill book to be had, about a decade ago I thought I'd have a go at reading some of the books Ferguson wrote for an adult audience. (Ferguson, by the way, was born Ruby Constance Ashby in Yorkshire in 1899. Between 1926 and 1934, she published 7 mystery novels under the name R. C. Ashby. Her 13 adult novels were published between 1937 and 1967; the "Jill" books fall in the middle of that span, as does a children's book entitled A Paintbox for Pauline. More biographical information can be found here.)

Ruby Ferguson

Unfortunately, it isn't easy to find these books, at least not in a Pacific Northwest library system, which is pretty far removed from Yorkshire. At one point the Seattle Public Library had two of her titles circulating (or not circulating actually, which would explain why they were ultimately weeded from the collection). The King County system had just one title: Apricot Sky, published in 1952.

Apricot Sky is picked out by Ferguson fans as the best one to track down, the other romances being fairly gloomy and the mystery novels being just OK. Author Hilary Clare describes this book as "a glorious romp through the summer of a West Highland family and contains some children who might be straight out of the Jill saga." And she's totally right.

The story unfolds in post-World War II Scotland. There are references to some brothers lost in the war and to rationing, but there's generally an air of "things are looking up," no doubt because the heroine, Cleo, has just arrived home after spending three years in the United States and because her younger sister is about to be married--to the younger brother of the next-door laird, Neil. Whom Cleo has pined after for years. Neil, however, is very Darcy-like and barely seems to notice her existence.

Cleo's hapless attempts to engage in conversation while writhing inwardly at her blunders alternate with the escapades of her niece and nephews, Primrose, Gavin, and Archie, who are wonderfully messy, rambunctious, and realistic kids who long to spend the summer potting about in boats rather than preparing for a wedding and entertaining their sordid, stuck-up older cousins, Cecil and Elinore.

Apricot Sky is an affectionate comedy of manners, with humorous touches that remind me not only of the beloved "Jill" books but also such works as Shirley Jackson's stories about parenting (Life Among the Savages and Raising Demons) and Betty MacDonald's stories about finding a job in Seattle and spending time in a TB sanitarium (Anybody Can Do Anything and The Plague and I).

Ferguson described moors, fishing villages, and lovely seascapes, but didn't neglect to leave out the little things that intrude into the most heavenly moments, such as ill-fitting shoes and sore feet, leaky  jam jars, and the embarrassment of saying stupid and obvious things when you're desperately trying to seem lighthearted and carefree in conversation with the object of your crush.

A New York Times review sums up the book thus: "What happens during the long, lazy summer of Apricot Sky is not of great consequence....What counts are the gently satiric pictures of life in the highlands and the fresh, light wind of wit and charm that ripples the pages of this book."

Here are a few of my favorite bits and pieces from the story.

Scene: the garden. Characters: Cleo's mother, who's been ambushed by the arrogant, pretentious poppycock of a novelist who lives next door and has asked her to tell him, as a woman, what his Sister Agnes character in his latest work might do next. She hasn't been listening to a word he's said, so is caught off guard and wildly suggests she break her vows, which makes the novelist cross, saying that would be out of character.

"There wouldn't be any novels at all if everybody did everything in keeping with their characters,' said his hostess stoutly. "and what's more, people love stories about nuns who break their vows. Look at The Woman of Babylon, by Joseph Hocking. It's the best novel I ever read."
     Mr. Trossach closed his eyes in pain and made a kind of whiffling sound in his throat.
     "Would you mind getting off that pansy?" said Mrs. MacAlvey. "It's rather a favourite one of mine. You know," she added triumphantly, "I've always thought I could write a novel myself if only I had time."

(Any writers among you will be only too familiar with that last line.)

The "Jill" books are filled with descriptions of food, because Jill and her friends are always starving and gobbling up cream teas and toast, so it was fun to discover that the inhabitants of Apricot Sky likewise enjoy good feasts:

In spite of being so disturbed by love, Cleo was hungry. The roast chickens came in, preceded by a rapturous smell mingling the odours of bread sauce, rich gravey, and game chips....Everybody disposed of large platefuls.

In their sailboat, the younger kids are barely away from shore before they're ready to tuck into their picnic:

"I've never been so famished since that day we went to watch the shooting and forgot the sandwiches. I could eat a whole sheep. Let's start on the meat pie, and then work up to the apple charlotte and the chicken legs and the crackers and jam. Isn't this utter blissikins?"

That's 15-year-old Primrose speaking, who's what they would've called a tomboy back then. She's full of great observations, such as  her disgust at her aunt's decision to buy 25 yards of brocade for curtains in her new home:

"What a waste!" said Primrose. "Fancy spending fifty galumptuous pounds on curtain material when you could use old sheets or anything and buy a cine-camera."

Primrose is not one to mince words ("She really is the most binding clot," is how she describes cousin Elinore). And she's not about to be put down by her supercilious cousin, as evidenced by the mockery she incites among her siblings and their friend Gull at Elinore's expense:

"I think Elinore is a beautiful name, and I have another. Felicity. Elinore Felicity. Don't you think that's musical? Have you got another name, Primrose?"
     "As a matter of fact, I have," said Primrose, dragging one leg out of the sand to scratch the ankle. "But I don't like it much. It's Hephzibah. Primrose  Hephzibah."
     Archie gave a great snort of joy. "I've got another name, too," he volunteered. "It's Brontosaurus."
     "I think Neurasthenia is an awfully musical  name for a girl," said Gavin. "Don't you, Prim?"
     "Oh yes, and so's Lethargy."
     "They only call me Gull for short," said Gull. "My real name is Seagull Nightingale Cuckoo Stork Tordoch."

One scene mid-book reminds us that fussy food fetishes have always been in fashion: here Raine and Cleo are visiting their snobbish, controlling sister-in-law Trina and her two milquetoast children. Trina is ushering them out the door of her home at lunchtime without exactly shedding a tear at their departure.

"I'd have asked you to come back and share ours, but I don't think you'd be satisfied with our simple food."
     "Oh, but we're not fussy--" began Cleo, and Trina interrupted, "When I said Simple Food, I was speaking advisedly. I don't suppose you've read Adelaide Amble MacPherson's book, but we all have the greatest faith in it. She says that to obtain the maximum of nourishment, food ought to be simplified to the nth degree; that is to say, colourless, formless and practically tasteless. We've been practising this for three weeks, and we're all wonderfully better for it. It seems to have made our lives quite different."
     "I'm sure it has," said Cleo.

But I'll have to leave you with much better fare than that. Here's the younger kids, out on another sailing adventure, and Archie has just asked if they can have dinner before they do anything, because explorers always begin by eating.

"I've never heard that," began Gavin, but Hamish was already unpacking the food....There were packs of sandwiches, ham, egg, and tomato, wrapped up in separate dozens in paper napkins with pink roses round the border. This novelty added considerably to the success of the feast, especially from the point of view of Elinore, who was faddy about finding bits of the boat bottom in her food. There were also fresh scones, buttered thickly, and chunks of fruity cake. There were tarts with apple inside and biscuits with chocolate on top. Finally everybody had a bottle of fizzy orangeade, the quart size, all to himself. So superior a lunch seemed fitting for such an occasion.

Odd Things People Say to Writers

Look! Even pre-Internet, cats. (Image courtesy Graphics Fairy).

A few weeks ago a humor piece about what it'd be like if strangers spoke to everybody the way they often speak to writers was making the rounds, eliciting chuckles, sighs, and rueful self-recognition along the way.

It made me think of some of the odd things people have said to me over the years as I've pursued my freelance-writing career.

I present them here with no irritation, astonishment, bitterness, or desire to have my soul soothed, because by now I just think they're kind of funny. Everybody in every walk of life hears people say stuff that takes them aback (how many times a day does a doctor hear "but I read on the Internet that..."?).

Scene: college cafeteria, freshman year.
Me: Oh, hello [unnamed arrogant author who happily lay around on college lawn with nubile college roommate discussing her, um, writing]! Er, I was just wondering if I got into your writing class?
Author: Hmm? Oh. No, I'm sorry. You have a lot of enthusiasm, but little talent.

Scene: college, different professor's office, later in freshman year.
Me: Um, hello [frightening professor who went on a tear one day raging against people who described things as being "a dull black"]...you wrote on my paper that you wanted me to come in and see you?
Professor: Hmm? Let me see. [Takes paper. Reads uplifting comment that says "Please come and see me. You have unusual talent."]
Me: [Silent. Scared. Hopeful.]
Professor: [Hands paper back abruptly. Fixes me with glare over pince-nez. Sneers.] Soooooo. You've come to hear me sing your praises, then?
Me: Oh! No! No, not at all.
Professor: [Rambles on a really long time about something.]

Scene: Living room, right after opening parcel that contains new book I wrote as work-for-hire about the history of everyday objects.
Houseguest (angry young woman fresh out of college): This your new book?
Me: Yes.
Houseguest: It's all just schilling for corporations!! Listen to this! [Reads text aloud in mocking tone.]
Me: Well, sometimes companies did invent and make stuff that we buy, like Band-Aids and crayons...
Houseguest: [goes on to scorch teakettle left on untended stove and to borrow clothing without returning it.]

Scene: Same living room, years later. Family from down the street whom we thought would be New Friends asks to see some of my books.
Me: Here's some animal books I did for young kids.
Guy from Other Family: "All About Baboons"???
Me: Yeah, I know, the title's funny! Can't help it, "baboon" is just a funny word.
Guy from Other Family: [Reads aloud from book while wife and children snicker and sputter.]
Me: [Silent in clear knowledge that these people will not be New Friends.]

Scene: kid's soccer game.
Soccer dad: So what's your next book about?
Me: Birds.
Soccer dad: Oh. So you just go and steal other people's research and write it all down.

Scene: UW classroom, science class for elementary-school teachers.
Fellow student: So you write books?
Me: Yeah.
Fellow student: So what are you doing in this class? You're here to steal all our ideas, aren't you?
Me: [Silent, thinking, What is up with this stealing stuff? And, hey, don't flatter yourself, lady.]

Scene: elementary school cafeteria.
Other mom: So what's your next book about?
Me: Birds.
Other mom: Oh. How boring!

Scene: A friend's baby shower.
Guest: I hear you're a writer!
Me: Um, yeah. I work as a freelance writer.
Guest: I've written a book! It's a memoir! Let me go get it.
Me: [worriedly waiting as fellow guest runs out of house to her home to fetch manuscript.]
Guest: [dumps manuscript in lap.]  Here! Maybe you can just read some of it for now.
Me: [vast alarm as manuscript reveals itself to be long, rambling diary filled with complaints about the woman's husband and personal details.]

Scene: Multiple occasions, throughout life, whenever people winkle it out of you that you're a writer of books for children. (Note, however, that the vast majority of people say pleasant things. Sometimes I think people are stinkers, but at heart I think most people mean well, so I actually don't mind the common comment "Would I have read anything you've written?")

"I've always wanted to write a children's book, but I don't have time."

"Really? Do you think that you'll ever write a real book?"

"Well, it's not like you need a college education to do what you do."

"That must be easy."

"Well, that's nice. I have to work for a living."

"So you just write stuff with short words?"

"Did you ever have a real job?"

The Weird Vintage Pop-up Books in the Basement

The creepy pop-up clown.

When I was a kid, I was always amazed to read stories in which the child protagonists felt fortunate to own a book.

I loved to read, so it wasn't that I thought a book was a strange item to cherish. It was just that books seemed like something everybody had, like air, or spoons.

Books were indeed plentiful and relatively inexpensive by the time the 1960s had rolled around (for a typical middle-class family, that is, such as mine).

My childhood home was awash in Little Golden Books, Big Little Books, and "I Can Read It All By Myself" Beginner Books. School order forms for paperback books routinely trailed me home, and books regularly appeared wrapped up for birthdays and Christmas.

There were also the somewhat mysterious books that had come down through the ages to reside alongside our colorful books on the shelves. At least, they seemed to me as if they came from antiquity--they dated back to my mother's childhood, a time that seemed as distant to me as Jane Austen's heyday. (I believed her when she said, after being badgered for hours by five-year-old me to reveal her age, that she was 100 years old.)

Among those books were four battered cardboard books filled with clever pop-ups and some vaguely unsettling illustrations.

I didn't like the stories very much, but I did enjoy opening the books to the pages that contained the pop-ups.

My mom always spoke reverently of the books, noting that they were very old and very valuable.

She wasn't far off the mark--they would have been valuable, if they weren't in terrible condition. Though they'd come by that condition honestly; they'd been read to pieces by my mom and her brother when they were kids.

My uncle had also colored in most of the pictures with paints. He filled them in very neatly and carefully, but I don't think they've done much to increase the books' value.

Their value wasn't further enhanced when one of my siblings, discomfited by some of the distorted, exaggerated features of various characters, went through the books and cut off the heads of many of the pop-up people and animals.

In researching the books, I learned they were part of a British book series called Bookano Books (which made sense family-history-wise, because they'd been sent from Ireland by my great-grandmother to my uncle in the 1930s).

Their creator, a publishing-industry executive named S. Louis Giraud, teamed up with a paper engineer named Theodore Brown to create pop-up books that featured "mechanical" moving parts. The name "Bookano" was a blend of the words "book" and "Meccano," the name of a popular European building-toy kit. The team produced 16 or 17 books between 1929 and 1949 (sources vary on the number).

Giraud geared the books to sell to a wide audience by using very thick, cheap paper, inexpensive printing techniques, and low-cost bindings (which is obvious to collectors of the falling-apart books) so that the books could be priced low. Oddly, it's the colorful pop-ups in each book that have best stood the test of time.

Bookano Books was also a cottage industry. Cutting out and constructing the pop-ups was a job hired out to women working from home. The materials would be delivered to them and picked up when finished. The pop-ups' claim to fame was that they could be viewed from all angles.

That was a big part of their appeal, and I can personally attest to that appeal because I spent a lot of time getting down on eye level with the books to peer into some of the scenes. I remember being particularly fascinated by this one, with characters gathered around a table, because you could see them from the front and the back, unlike a flat illustration in a book.

I don't know why I thought this was magical--I certainly didn't regard my three-dimensional toys in this way. I suppose there was just something about the 2-D managing to be 3-D that was inherently amazing, like View-Master slides. Or like getting one of those postcards with a plastic corrugated front that turned the picture into a 3-D image. (I spent a few hours of my youth trying to peel the plastic off one of those cards so as to enter the world of Mowgli and Baloo the Bear on a Disney postcard. I never succeeded.)

The regular illustrations in the books were, as mentioned previously, just kind of weird. I mean, jeepers. Check out this one. The first of many scary ringmasters in children's books. And clowns.

The comical stories were illustrated in a style similar to that used in the early Disney cartoons, with exaggerated features and rubbery limbs, lots of big teeth and giant nostrils. The serious fairy tales' illustrations were peopled by stiffer, more remote characters. The writing varied from formal and wordy to overwhelmed-by-cupcakes cheerful.

There were stories the likes of which you'd probably not find in the children's section today:

And I don't think I've ever run across the words "eunuch" and "female slaves" in any other children's books outside of these ones.

But the books' endpapers often delighted with more enchanting images:

The pop-ups really could be astonishing, such as this one of a Red Admiral butterfly and an orchid:

Though I don't think I'll ever forgive Bookano for giving me nightmares about clowns.

Pony Books and the Making of a Reader

Photo courtesy Newspix/Rex Features

A few months ago there was a dust-up online regarding adults who like reading YA literature.

Apparently this twisted the knickers of some critics, who muttered about the quality and (supposed) lack of depth in YA literature.

Reading the Harry Potter books, anything by John Green, and the like was suddenly a shameful thing for adults to be doing, though I guess it was OK to read chick-lit or light beach-escape reading as long as it was written with grown-ups in mind.

Far better writers than I have addressed this issue and extolled the fine writing and substance to be found not only in YA but also chapter books and picture books. I can only say that I've had a very pleasant few months indulging in the habit of reading horse books, which took turns with other novels that would be more likely to pass muster with these critics.

As a horse-crazy kid, of course, I did nothing but read horse books between the ages of 9 and 14. My local library helpfully labeled all its horse books with a little horse-head sticker on the spine, so you didn't even have to use the card catalog.

I figured I'd probably read every horse book available in our library system and most of the ones ever written for the middle-grade/young adult crowd by the time I got to high school, but there were actually herds and herds of literary oaters out there that I'd never come across, and that's not even counting the hundreds of titles that kids in England enjoyed throughout the 1900s.

Among these titles was a five-book series I stumbled upon in a vintage-items shop in late summer: The Timber Trail Riders. This series was published between 1963 and 1964, when I was still a very tiny person learning to talk, let alone read.

The adventures of the Timber Trail Riders were published by Whitman Publishing Company of Racine, Wisconsin. Whitman Publishing Company became a subsidiary of Western Publishing in 1915 (Western later published the beloved Little Golden Books). The Whitman line included many mysteries and westerns; series based on characters such as Trixie Belden, Donna Parker, and Troy Nesbit; and many books based on popular TV shows and movies such as Lassie and various Walt Disney films.

One aspect that intrigued me about these books was their obvious appeal to boys--three of the five stories featured boys as the main characters. This might not have been remarkable back in the day, but among the connoisseurs of pony books (yes, there is such a thing, and we hold our heads high), there is concern about the pinkification of the horse world--is there too much emphasis on all that is pink, glittery, and princess-y?

When the Resident Teen was a very small Resident Horse-Crazy Tot, a friend who was the mom of a little boy told me her son had rebelled at the idea of visiting some horses while they were on vacation. "Horses are girrrrl animals," he sneered, wrinkling his face in disgust. (Interestingly, in his middle teen years, this boy became a Brony.)

There was no shortage of boy-friendly horse stories when I was looking for books in the 1960s and early '70s, though. Marguerite Henry's books appealed to both boys and girls, as did the many volumes in Walter Farley's "Black Stallion" series. Most of these books had boys as the central human characters, but the horses figured so strongly in them, it wasn't off-putting to a horse-crazy girl reader.

I read Henry's books over and over, though the Black Stallion books didn't grab me--I read a few of them and then left off when my mom signed me up for the World Famous Horse Story Library book club, which brought books from authors around the world to my doorstep.

So when I sat down to read the Timber Trail Riders, I wondered if they'd have appealed to me when I was a kid, when just about all it took for me to like a book was the presence of a horse every few paragraphs.

When I finished them, I knew for sure they wouldn't have been my cup of tea.

 Not because the writing is terrible--it's not scintillating prose, but it's up to the task for a simple, unadorned, straightforward action-adventure mystery, perhaps the sort of writing for teens that would be called "hi-lo" today (high interest/low reading level).

One reason I wouldn't have liked them is the fact that they're mysteries. I hated mysteries as a child and I still don't like them. I had only one mystery book as a kid, and the only reason I read it again and again was because I knew how it ended. Something involving--wait for this--a false drawer in a desk! Unheard of!

I also wasn't, and am still not, really interested in fast-paced adventures. I couldn't have said so at the time, but the fact that as an adult one of my favorite books is The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating by Elisabeth Tova Bailey is a pretty good clue that this taste in reading has deep roots. (The book chronicles the long, slow recovery of the author from an obscure virus and her observations of the tiny snail that lives in a potted violet on a table by her bedside.)

My childhood obsession with horses taxed the patience of many adults--an art teacher took credit off my grade because I painted too many horses, a great-uncle ridiculed my drawings because they were of "yet another horse," and I was praised mightily when I brought home a book from the library that wasn't about horses.

(I often wonder if kids who were interested in cars, rockets, stamps, ancient Egypt, or the like were pressed to set aside their interests in this way.)

But I can say only this to teachers and parents who fear that girls' horse obsessions will limit them in life: Stop worrying. Horses carry the young reader into all kinds of amazing worlds of imagination and history and fact. And I can see now that the types of books I like now are rooted in those horsy books I indulged in as a kid, so I was actually forming reading tastes while I was steeping myself in horse lore. Jill Crewe of Ruby Ferguson's "Jill" pony books and her stories set in a small village where everybody knows each other, life turns on small hinges, and there's lots of talking and humor? Well, Jill, meet Jane Austen.

OK, So, What About the Books?

As noted, there are five titles, all published in a two-year span. I have found very little about them on the internet and absolutely nothing about the author. Or authors? Was Michael Murray a pen name for several writers? A copyright-renewal page online notes only that Murray was a hired writer. Either Murray was a very fast writer, or he was actually two or three writers.

I also wondered whether Whitman intended to continue the series. Each book's cover includes the title and a tagline featuring the main character's name: "A Mike Casey Story," "A Peggy Lewis Story," and the like. This billing makes me think they thought the series would take off and that the characters would become household names.

What they have in common is a scheme used by authors from the Brothers Grimm to Roald Dahl and J. K. Rowling: get rid of the parents, and get rid of them quick!

Fortunately for the parents of the assorted Timber Trail Riders, most of them are not stomped to death by an angry rhinoceros, blasted by an evil wizard lord, or otherwise dispatched. Typically, the kids simply get a marvelous opportunity to live away from their family for a month or two or even as long as a year and have thrilling adventures during that time. They also obtain horses or access to horses in ways that real kids can only dream of. Details below.

The Long Trail North: A Mike Casey Story

Mike Casey and Danny Hall are 13-year-old boys who help out on an old-time cattle drive set in modern times. It's all part of a nostalgic whim of an Englishman who’s bought an old cattle ranch that other people wanted to turn into a game farm. Failing to obtain the ranch (spoiler alert), the bad guys try to sabotage the cattle drive.

Little hiccups in the journey include  a near drowning, a few stampedes, a steady loss of cattle, and a hostage situation in a ghost town.

A fun surprise in this book is the appearance of a Native American boy who's also coming along as a drover. Mike speaks to him in stupid, truncated English, saying things like "We come from east, far toward rising sun.”

Little Bear plays along for a while, until he's asked if  he's ever heard of Chicago. He replies, “If you’re referring to Chicago, Illinois, I’ve been there at least half a dozen times, visiting my uncle who teaches ethnology at the university. I presume that is the Chicago you have reference to?”

The Texas Tenderfoot: A Dave Talbot Story

Dave Talbot, age 15, arrives in Chicago’s airport, dressed like a cowboy, and gets stared at a lot. Dad is off for a year working in the oil industry and Mom is deceased, so Dave's going to stay with Dad’s old pal  Colonel Dwyer who owns a big horse farm,. There he meets mysterious Lee Ann Burton, a poor little rich girl whose jet-setting parents are out of the picture.

They contend with Bo, the mean stableboy who's up to no good. You know he's Trouble with a capital T from the start: "“Bo was a husky tanned youth, with heavy features and a sullen manner. His dark brown hair had streaks of yellow, and he wore it too long, with slicked-back sides and exaggerated sideburns.”

Long hair--and dyed, no less! Clearly bad news.

Dave falls off a horse that Bo deliberately saddles improperly. Bo also lets valuable horses escape and tries to blame it on Dave, puts a burr under his saddle, and even attempts to burn down the stable. Dave ends up playing Sherlock Holmes and proving Bo's the culprit. In other news, Dad buys the brilliant horse Star Bright for Dave. There's also a show and party. The author of this book describes all the food lavishly. It will make you hungry.

The Luck of Black Diamond: A Sunny Saunders Story
Sunny Saunders is a young teen who goes off to live with her aunt and grandmother for a few weeks in Colorado. Straightaway she is witness to the rescue of a cow that gets stuck in quicksand. Soon after she is given free use of a splendid black horse named Diamond, who is getting a month off from his job as a regular lesson horse—he will be hers alone.

And then her uncle buys the horse to send home with Sunny, on the condition that she ride him and not neglect him. Which causes her to worry mightily about her magnanimous decision later on to let her friend ride the dependable horse in a show—her uncle has arrived for a surprise visit and when he sees that, he’ll hit the roof, won’t he? No, because at the last minute the other girl gets another lovely horse and all is well.

This, the third book in the series, appears to have been written deliberately to cater to the tastes of many girl readers by focusing on relationships rather than adventures (a stereotype, for sure, but it probably resonates for a lot of women who like romances). After the quicksand bout, there are no other big adventures than a snarly dog that sometimes frightens the riders as they trot by a house.

One aspect of this book that I liked was how Black Diamond is actually endowed with a lot of personality--he's got opinions and quirks. However, I didn't appreciate the stunning lack of sympathy for a girl in the story who's afraid to ride after a fall—she’s repeatedly told she's “silly.” The book is also, of course, a product of its time, which still doesn't stop you from bridling when you read that when Sunny hugs her horse and he objects, Sunny concludes, “He was not like a girl, pleased to be kissed just because some boy wanted to. His favors had to be won.”

The Mystery of the Hollywood Horse: A Peggy Lewis Story

Teenager Peggy Lewis heads off to California to stay with her Aunt Paula for a month. Her aunt finesses a job for her at the stable of the trainer of Cinder, famous TV-star horse. She soon becomes friends with the girl who’s starring in Cinder’s next movie.

There’s also a mysterious, grumpy older teen named Chuck who skulks around fretting about Cinder. They find lots of clues that point to somebody plotting to steal Cinder, and speculate a lot about it and whether or not to tell his owner for fear of being dismissed as worrywarts and fussbudgets. Guess what! Cinder gets stolen! Peggy, however, finds the horse thieves’ secret lair and spirits the horse out. The police show up and the bad guys are caught.

This story stars a girl, and has more in the way of "relationship" angst than the adventure-oriented tales even though it has more hijinks than Sunny Saunders's story, but I did grow weary of all the hand-wringing and keeping things silent. Perhaps just my frustration with mysteries showing through. Or else knowing that the darn horse would be stolen and wanting to head this off at the pass.


The Mysterious Dude: A Dave Talbot Story

Dave Talbot reappears in this book. He arrives at the California dude ranch of one of his dad’s friends. Dave and that man’s son, Ron, were childhood friends. Ron's parents, Mr. and Mrs. Maynard, have to go East because Mrs. Maynard suffers from some mysterious illness, and she will get examinations there.

Because they're gone, the ranch may have to be sold—but no! Ron and Dave will run it in their absence!

Mystery shows up in the form of a slight girl with a “pale” voice who corrects everybody and recites information like a machine. She's annoying as heck and does irritating things like take horses out of the stable in the middle of the night. But I have to say she's a weird and interesting twist on your typical horse-book character.

Unfortunately, unlike the tongue-in-cheek and fairly respectful portrayal of a Native American teenager in the series' first book, this title includes a Mexican cook who's a hot-headed, fiery South-of-the-Border stereotype straight out of central casting; she flings pots and pans and mutilated English right and left, and has a son who speaks like the mouse Speedy Gonzales from the "Bugs Bunny" cartoons. Kind of cringe-inducing.

Later on, it's revealed that the Mysterious Dude-ette has a photographic memory. Not only that, but she turns out to have witnessed a crime and is hiding out at the ranch to escape a trio of men who are aiming to snuff her out, which they attempt to do during the big parade before the rodeo.

I have to admit that by this time I was weary of action-adventure and mystery, and eager to get back to reading Molly Gloss's Falling from Horses, so I was rather racing through the books at the end. It did feel nicely subversive, however, to read books that the "no teen lit for adults" leagues would've chided me for perusing.

Australia on My Mind

I have always wanted to go to Australia. Any country that has animals with names like bandicoot, numbat, wallaroo, tasmanian devil, hairy-nosed wombat, and squelching froglet clearly must be seen to be believed. (Seeing pictures on Facebook of relatives frolicking on sunny shores Down Under is a bit of an inspiration, too.)

Taking a Qantas leap to Australia is not, however, in the budgetary cards anytime soon, so I'll have to content myself with reading about the place, which for some reason has been happening all winter as one book has inspired the reading of another in domino fashion.

It started when I was nosing around online to see if I could get a DVD of the movie Phar Lap for the Resident Teen. Phar Lap was a magnificent Australian racehorse who raced during the early years of the Depression and died under mysterious circumstances after coming to the United States.

This research caused me to disappear down the rabbit hole of Google to find out more about Phar Lap when I was supposed to be doing other things.

I started getting giddy notions of purchasing various and sundry books but sternly reminded myself that I was already guilty of tracking down books online, receiving them with glee, then stockpiling them for future reading, and that perhaps I should read some of those books first before taking up with other titles.

The Christmas season seemed a perfect time to curl up with some fiction. (Why do we curl up with books and nothing else, I wonder?) So I pulled down the stack of books by Australian author Elyne Mitchell that I'd ordered for the Resident Teen back when she was the Resident Horse-Crazy Girl.

Elyne Mitchell's best-known works are her stories about Australia's wild horses, called brumbies. The movie The Silver Stallion, starring a young Russell Crowe, is based on her beloved series about Thowra, the Silver Brumby. The series kicks off with this horse's birth in The Silver Brumby, continues with four more books featuring this horse, his mares, and his offspring's adventures, and canters off into the sunset through a number of follow-up titles about the horses in his range.

Mitchell wrote the stories from the horses' point of view, complete with dialogue--not an easy style to pull off when you're trying to make your animals believable as animals even as they give voice to their thoughts.

But she does it very well. The animals are all far more clever and deep-thinking than their real-life counterparts ever could be, which can make a jaded adult reader raise an eyebrow, but if you are still a horse-crazy girl inside, and if you can suspend disbelief enough to read them as twentieth-century legends (with the whole "horse kingdom" aspect of the Australian mountain ranges being something like an equine Olympus in these books), they're a lot of fun to read. (And I would venture to say they're the only books I'll ever read that contain the phrase "Venerable Wombat.")

The movie (called The Silver Brumby in Australia) blends the first book in the series with bits of the author's life. Mitchell created the stories for her own children's entertainment and education. She stocked them not only with horses and adventure but also lush depictions of the flora, fauna, and geography of Australia. In the film, the horse's story unfolds as an ongoing narrative being created by the author for her daughter.

It's kind of funny to see the original video-box cover for the film, which features the horse front and center and also gives prime seating to the actresses portraying the author and her girl--

and compare it to the one that came after Russell Crowe rocketed to stardom:

Crowe was still a gangly youth when Australian author Miles Franklin's book My Brilliant Career became a film in 1979. Franklin wrote the book as a teenager, and it was published in 1901. The movie popped out of my memory after I'd finished up the brumby books and had the words "Australian" and "icon" etched in my mind.

My Brilliant Career was based on Franklin's life and is often referred to as "semi-autobiographical." It became wildly popular across Australia when it was published and remains a source of pride today. Franklin herself was a determined, strong person and an ardent feminist. The girl in her story rebels and fulminates against the repression of women and their role in Australian society.

Franklin followed up by writing My Career Goes Bung (published in the U.S. as "End of My Career"), in which the semi-autobiographical character endures post-publication trials involving having published My Brilliant Career. (My head spun a bit as it tried to keep this all straight: "OK, so the first book features a girl named Sybylla and tells her story, but the second  book is about Sybylla and none of what happened in the first book really happened to Sybylla, it was just a story that Sybylla made up and published and in this book she's dealing with the fallout.")

In real life, Franklin's second semi-autobiographical book was not well received by publishers, and so was not published until 1946. (She meets with one of the most damning rejection letters I've ever heard of: one editor who was an early champion of her work responds with a note that begins "You've made me jolly glad I didn't meet you...not even 200% would induce me to publish.")

I found Sybylla fascinating, but a bit tiresome at times, in the first book. I liked her quite a lot in the second one, though, in which she lets fly with some great insults, such as "You conceited lord of creation!" and "old frogabollow" and "feeble nauseating creepers" and "flap-eared weakling." (She tosses in a great word, too, that I haven't turned up anything on by googling: "There was no end to the annoyance caused by that feraboraceous book.")

Sybylla also recounts her wild experiences riding horses in this book. (My husband, in the first year of our relationship, accused me of planning vacations in such a way as to always include horses at every stop. But I cannot help it that horses somehow come to the fore in almost everything I pick up to read. The world truly does revolve around horses, you see.) Here is Sybylla/Miles on being an equestrienne:

"There was one great recreation open to me, even at Possum Gully, which was a sop to energy. I could ride. I could ride tremendously. I loved horses and seemed to become part of them. In the district were any number of good horses, most of them owned by bachelors. As one of these bachelors said, 'A lovely high-spirited girl is just the thing to top off a good horse.' All kinds of horses, from racing stallions to hunting mares, were brought to me with the owners included as escorts and the source of chocolates in wonderful boxes."

Franklin really did rampage on horseback as a girl in her actual life, not just her semi-autobiography. She grew up in a valley called Brindabella and started riding as an infant, recalling that "the rhythm of horses came to me earlier than walking." According to the introduction of one edition of My Brilliant Career, she was known throughout the valley as "a precociously fearless and accomplished rider."

She brought an equally fearless attitude to the rest of her life, going on to work as a nurse, travel and live in the United States, publish novels, speak out as a feminist, and endow a literary award that is still granted in Australia today.

I am pretty sure that, after reading the first five of the Silver Brumby books, I don't feel the need to devour the rest of that series, but I'm pretty eager to get my hands on Franklin's actual biography, a memoir of her first ten years called Childhood at Brindabella, as well as some of her other works. I wonder what snippet in them will then point the way to the next book or topic of interest, quite likely one that has absolutely nothing to do with Australia.

A Month Devoted to Writing

November's National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) passed me by this year, as did PiBoIdMo (Picture Book Idea Month) and NaPlWriMo (National Playwriting Month) and probably a lot of other NaMo things I've never even heard of.

But November was still a wonderfully writer-ish month, filled with events that took me away from the computer and into the company of other writers and all the inspiration that such mingling can bring.

For starters, I went to a writers' retreat for the first time ever, namely the "Weekend on the Water" retreat at Port Ludlow in early November. This event was associated with the Society for Children's Book Writers and Illustrators. The speakers were Patricia Lee Gauch, author and former Editorial Director of Philomel Books, and author Linda Urban (A Crooked Kind of Perfect).

And what a spoiled-rotten weekend it was. I sat enthralled as Ms. Gauch analyzed passages from Olive Kitteredge by Elizabeth Strout, drawing our attention to the author's word choice and imagery, tone and voice in a way I hadn't enjoyed since college.

My mind traveled back even further, to my 10th-grade English class, when teacher John Long surprised us all with a pop quiz on To Kill a Mockingbird that tested our knowledge of seemingly ridiculous details in the book.

His purpose, it turned out, was not to prime us for winning trivia contests but to show us how important it was to read carefully and closely instead of gobbling up pages and racing the clock.

The spoiling, of course, also included excellent meals, walks in the woods, beautiful views, lively conversations, and time to just read and write.

To top it all off, my roommate and I discovered we shared all sorts of connections; not only did we live in Hoboken, New Jersey, during the same span of time in the 1980s, but also one of her oldest friends turned out to be one of my former work colleagues.

The retreat was followed a few weeks later by PubCamp, hosted by Writer.ly, an online marketplace for writers in search of editors, book designers, and marketing assistance. This event took place in Seattle in the lovely Center for Urban Horticulture, where the plants were edged with crystalline rime at the start of a very cold day.

The morning got rolling with an introduction by Shawn Welch, author of APE: Author, Publisher, Entrepreneur, followed by advice from a social media expert, Peggy Fitzpatrick, and Writer.ly CEO Kelsye Nelson. After that, I had the luxurious choice of presentations divided into four blocks of three sessions each.

I opted to hear Peter Rowan (Coinstar) discuss "The Business of Self-Publishing."  Next up was Waverly Fitzgerald (author of Slow Time, Dial C for Chihuahua, and more). Ms. Fitzgerald focused on the considerations one should keep in mind when thinking about self-publishing or going the more traditional route with a publishing house; paramount among these considerations were how to best locate and connect with your readers.

After lunch, I attended a "self-editor's toolkit" workshop presented by author Wendy Call, which provided a nice summary of levels of editing, and rounded out the day with a lovely, humorous presentation about memoir writing by author Theo Nestor (How to Sleep Alone in a King-Size Bed and Writing Is My Drink).

Peek-a-Who Owl from "Peek-a-Who" by Nina Laden watches readers
peruse books at the Ballard Writers Collective "Writer Next Door" event.

As if this weren't enough, the month also included an evening at the Sunset Hill Community Center called The Writer Next Door, hosted by the Ballard Writers Collective (authors' panel! refreshments! books! readings! raffle prizes, of which I won one!).

Not long after, I enjoyed an SCBWI informal gathering on a chilly Sunday night at a Bainbridge Island pub called the Harbour Public House, a cozy restaurant tucked inside a house built in 1881.

I feel as if I need another retreat and evening at a pub to process it all. In the meantime, here are a few quotations and observations I jotted down during these events. I'm amazed I can read my scrawled notes, actually. So, see? I did do some writing outside of my freelance work this month after all. It was all part of NaJoDoMo (National Jotting and Doodling Month).

When writing for children:
"Honor the small things in a big world that matter to kids."--Linda Urban

On "show, don't tell":
"There's a terrible thing going around: 'show, don't tell.' Don't you believe it!"--Patricia Lee Gauch

(Ms. Gauch went on to explain what she meant, so she was certainly not advocating dull writing. I wish I could summarize what she so eloquently expressed, but basically she used Olive Kitteridge to show how showing related to introspection. Showing could also help you "navigate the contours of your character's life." I believe this topic was linked to another of my cryptic notes about the author writing as though on a dolly used for filmmaking, to move in and out of a scene. Ms. Gauch also stressed, "Don't report it; let it live.")

Adverbs?
"Of course, use adverbs when you want them! Give me a break! [Banning adverbs]...it's the dumbest thing." --Patricia Lee Gauch

Attitude:
Attitude is like "a fine rain casting a mist over the whole story."--Patricia Lee Gauch

A quip on being realistic:
"If you want to make a lot of money, publishing probably isn't the right business for you!"--Waverly Fitzgerald

Serial commas or not?
"You know, there are comma people!" --Wendy Call

On submitting your memoir:
"Yes, it's been done before. Here's how mine's different." --Theo Nestor

On the universality of your story:
"A book about you that is also about others makes your want real; they [readers] will want it for you." --Theo Nestor

Seeing Someone Buy Your Book: This Never Gets Old

So I was at the local horse-product store this morning, purchasing worming paste in a syringe and hoof-strengthening supplements (the sort of thing you routinely pick up while running errands after a hayburner has plodded into your life; it goes along with finding yourself saying things like "Why is your stud chain in the bathroom?" without thinking it strange).

As the cashier rang up my purchase, I glanced to my right and saw someone else's items on the counter: a bag of brightly colored socks spotted with little horse images--and a copy of For Horse-Crazy Girls Only.

Two little girls were darting around the store, now that they'd finished trying on new jodhpurs.

"Excuse me," I said to the cashier. "Is...is somebody buying that book or is it just, like, on the counter?"

"They're buying it," she replied, indicating the girls and their mom.

Inwardly I waffled a bit, being a Rather Hesitant sort of person, but finally allowed that, if they'd like, well, I kind of sort of wrote that book, and would be happy to sign it.

Yes, please! they said, providing a name to put in it. Hannah it was...double points for the day because not only did this lovely coincidence occur, but also the recipient of the book has a palindrome for a name.

Jane Austen, Orangutans, Sheep Tongues, and Trifle

From JASNA

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that anybody in possession of a blog must be in want of an opening sentence--and that if the blog post is going to be about Jane Austen and Pride and Prejudice, the opening sentence is going to be some version of the first line of that book, pummeled into shape to suit the text that follows.

Yesterday, Monday, January 28, 2013, marked the 200th anniversary of the publication of Pride and Prejudice. This event's being celebrated worldwide by Austen fans with readings, marathon movie viewings, parties, and more. Counting ourselves among her fans, we didn't want to be left out of the fun.

(Jane's modern-day fans are also said to include a 40-year-old orangutan named Albert who lives in a Polish zoo and his partner Raya, putting a whole new spin on the notion of "Me Tarzan, you Jane." If they don't get a nightly reading of 50 pages of her work, they throw fruit snacks around and refuse to sleep. And you parents of toddlers thought you had it rough.)

We (or should I say "I," as I'm the bossy social-relations rep, chief Austen fan, and cook in the household) decided to celebrate by having a Regency-era dinner with old friends, one of whom was once in a Jane Austen book club with me and who also worked with me as a docent at Woodland Park Zoo (a nice commingling of Austen and Orangs).

The Jane Austen Cookbook by Maggie Black and Deirdre Le Faye provided plenty of recipes for perusal. Some were unwieldy or called for ingredients that would be kind of expensive or difficult to obtain, such as Pigeon Pie and Harrico of Mutton. Others sounded stodgy or dull or just a lot of work for little reward. A few sounded worth making just because they had amusing names (Forcemeat Balls, anyone? No? Then how about some Solid Syllabubs?)

I finally decided on Chickens with Tongues.

Yes, chickens have tongues. But no, this recipe didn't call for chicken tongues. The tongues in question were sheep tongues. Which apparently weigh a quarter-pound each and take more than 2 hours to simmer to cooked perfection.

Not that I was going to try this at home. I still remember when I was about six or so, and my German grandmother was living with us, and I used to sneak friends into our kitchen so I could show them the packaged, sliced "bologna with tongue" that she kept in the meat tray of the fridge. I'd hold it up because there, embedded in the slices, were slivers of tongue, like specimens in a glass slide. Ewwww! I should've done this at Halloween and charged admission.

Even the author suggested that "boiling sausages will provide a suitable flavour contrast to the chicken in an acceptable shape."

That wasn't the only substitution I made: The boiled "poussins" (month-old chickens weighing a pound or less) were replaced by roasted chicken breasts (being from modern behemoth chickens, each of these probably outweighed a poussin). The boiled cauliflower, at the author's suggestion, was replaced with rice. I swapped the boiled spinach for broccoli, and left out the rashers.

But we did pile it all one on plate, with the rice in the middle and the chicken, sausages, and broccoli fanned out around it, because the author noted that "This dish illustrates beautifully the Regency delight in symmetry and display, shown in precise shapes and colours--even on the dinner-table. An interesting dish for a small, formal supper."

The result was like a birthday cake you make following the instructions in a book only to have your cake come out looking like a candidate for the website "Cake Wrecks." Oh well. Like the cake, it was still tasty. We served it with more broccoli, as well as bashed neeps (mashed rutabaga) and a green salad. Dessert was a trifle from a recipe in Irish Traditional Cooking by Darina Allen.

We did not read aloud from Pride and Prejudice, but fortunately this did not cause people to throw fruit snacks or trifle or any other foods.

I wondered what Jane herself would have made of the hubbub surrounding her book's anniversary. I bet she would've liked it--she seemed to have a great sense of humor, a taste for the absurd, and a great talent for making wry comments. 

"Such wonderful condescension!"

The book wasn't overlooked in its time, either, and it enjoyed some favorable reviews (presumably written by primates with less fur than Albert). One reviewer called the book a "very agreeable novel" that "rises very superior to any novel we have lately met with in the delineation of domestic scenes."

The writer of the review, which appeared in a journal called Critical Review in October 1813, refers to Jane as the "fair author." (Of the odious boot-licking Mr. Collins, he says, with great restraint, that he is "indeed a notable object.")

Jane herself wryly commented on her book in a letter to her sister Cassandra, mocking the popular notion at that time that novels written by women were sentimental drivel and novels written by men were deep and intellectual:

"Upon the whole...I am well satisfied enough. The work is rather too light, and bright, and sparkling; it wants shade; it wants to be stretched out here and there with a long chapter of sense, if it could be had; if not, of solemn specious nonsense, about something unconnected with the story: an essay on writing, a critique on Walter Scott, or the history of Buonaparté, or anything that would form a contrast and bring the reader with increased delight to the playfulness and general epigrammatism of the general style."

I bet very few of those guys got to have an Archie McPhee action figure made of them, complete with writing desk and quill pen!