Forgotten Literary Treasures

There is lots of buzz in the blogger community with Book Blogger Appreciation Week.  Today, bloggers are asked to post about terrific books that fly under the radar.  We often ask booksellers just that question when we visit a bookstore and pass on their recommendations.  Here’s our chance to share our own thoughts.

Claire’s favorite forgottens:  If I ask people whether or not they like Dickens and Austen, I get an immediate answer, usually (but not always) in the affirmative.  If I ask them about my other favorite author, Colette, I tend to get a blank stare.  People have–sometimes–heard of her.  Usually more for her semi-scandalous lifestyle (had lovers of both sexes, woo-hoo) than for her work, although there is the whole Gigi thing–people who like musical theater know her novella Gigi.

But the Claudine books?  Claudine at School, Claudine in Paris, Claudine Married and Claudine and Annie (well, that last one isn’t so great, so skip that).  People don’t know them and I don’t understand why.  They’re amazing reads: witty, funny, sexy, insightful, bawdy, crazy, intelligent.  Claudine is the BEST heroine of all time.  I’d match her against Scarlett O’Hara any day.  She’s smarter than anyone else around her, but she’s not particularly interested in intellectual pursuits.  She’s beautiful, but uniquely, almost weirdly so.  She’s fifteen in the first book and you can see the tension between the sexuality she wants to explore and her fears of where that exploration could lead her–where they do eventually lead her in subsequent books.  She’s old beyond her years and very very young.

When I wrote my first novel, I thought a lot about what I loved about Claudine and tried to use some of that.  I’d prefer not to use the term “stealing”–but if I could write half as well as Colette, I’d steal everything I could from her.  She’s an amazing writer, able to capture anything she can sense–taste, feel, see, touch–in simple but beautiful prose.  (She wrote these books originally in French.  They’re translated wonderfully by Antonia White.)  It’s crazy to me that people don’t read these books. I reread them regularly.  They’re an escape and a pleasure and a delight.

Kim’s spotlight turns to Susan Straight:  When people ask me what I’ve recently read, I stutter and pause as if I’m trying to hide something, but it’s not that, it’s that I read one book after another and they start to blend.  The very good ones and the bad ones stand out, but the others, almost all good, start to fade into the mist of my middle aged brain matter.  Not so with Highwire Moon.  There are scenes from the book that still resonate with me, or maybe even haunt me, years later.  A book about a daughter seemingly abandoned by her mother (that scene alone is worth the price of the book), it is the story about how they both struggle with their separation.  In the process, Straight opens the door to the life of an illegal immigrant, how our food is grown, and our foster care system.  Topics more timely now than when the book was published 8 years ago.

I first encountered Straight in 1995 with Blacker than a Thousand Midnights, about a black man trying to become a fireman in a world full of road blocks.  Halfway through the book, I looked at her picture and was amazed she wasn’t a black man.   She writes characters so real in her books that I physically feel the joy and pain they experience.  Pick up either of these books, you won’t regret the time you’ve spent.

The foundation of the book is Winthrop’s A Model of Christian Charity speech in which he invokes “a city upon a hill” from the Book of Matthew in the New Testament.  More than one President took up the phrase from Winthrop.  Sarah explains, “The most important reason I am concentrating on Winthrop and his shipmates in the 1630s is that the country I live in is haunted by the Puritan’s vision of themselves as God’s chosen people, as a beacon of righteousness that all others are to admire.”  She points out that the seal of the Massachusetts Bay Colony includes an Indian with the words “Come over and help us” coming out of his mouth.  Sarah noted that ever since we have been helping people to death.

A Model of Christian Charity sets out a road map for how the Puritans are to live in community:  the rich are to help the poor, all are to mourn together, rejoice together, take on each others “conditions.”  Sarah calls it a declaration of dependence.  She then sets out to look at how Winthrop and his Puritans lived up to the ideal.  They failed miserably.  Enter stage left, Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson, on scene to prove that Winthrop’s community is a model of charity as long as everyone agrees with him and the leadership he established. 

Sarah chronicles the founding years of the Massachusetts Bay Colony inhabited by bookish people.  A subject matter that could turn deadly dull in an instant, Sarah describes with humor and a knack for showing the continuing relevance of the events.  Sarah finds Winthrop, with all of his flaws and inconsistencies, laudable and lovable, but hard to like.  Williams and Hutchinson, two people who have come down through history as outcasts for standing up for religious freedom retain their reputation, but are also fanatics.  Quite frankly, I would have been happy to see them go myself.

At her reading at Book Soup earlier this month, Sarah explained that she decided to write the book after hearing the “the city on a hill” image used during Ronald Reagen’s funeral.  The irony that the term was used by Winthrop to describe a city where the poor were helped and everyone contributed to the betterment of the community when Reagen aggressively slashed programs for the poor was not lost on her.  Winthrop declared that the the world would be watching the Massachusetts Bay Colony to see if it failed to provide mercy and love.  Sarah found the entire meaning twisted by the 20th century.  At the end of the book, Sarah describes Pres. Kennedy use of the phrase a city on the hill that everyone is watching in a speech a few days prior his Inauguration.  She notes that of course the world is watching us, we have stock pile of gigantic bombs that we could use to end the world as we know it.

I loved the book and I enjoy Sarah’s voice, although the degree to which her opinions are secular can be strong for me at times.  As a fan of history, my  hope is that people who don’t usually read it will find Sarah’s writing so fun that the knowledge will sneak in with the enjoyment.  Asked who her favorite historian is, Sarah responded that she doesn’t think of herself as a historian, she wants to write better than that.  Thankfully, her emphasis is more on the writing than the history, making the entire reading experience better for all of us.

We’ll be taking the rest of the week off to enjoy the holiday with our families.  Happy Thanksgiving!

[t]he fifty states differ in landscape, topography, and weather; in political outlook, cultural preference, and social ideals; in accent, temperment and sense of humor. . . The fifty states themselves have individual places in our collective imagination, and they offer their natives a mind-set, even a world-view.  For all of the talk of identity in American life, the personal fact that defines American lives as much as gender, ethnicity, or class is where you’re from, which more than anything means your state.

As a Californian who can’t imagine living anywhere else, I read William Vollmann’s California essay first.  I didn’t like it, in fact I almost stopped reading the book.  Much of it felt like a re-hash of what is written over and over again–Owen’s Valley per “Chinatown,” sensationalizing San Francisco, four paragraphs into the essay the author mentions The Day of the Locust.  Yawn.

Yet, as a fan of “This American Life,” I moved on to Montana written by Sarah Vowell.  Within five pages, I discovered a sense of place and culture that I didn’t feel after spending two weeks boating, hiking and touring the state.  That is the purpose of State by State, to paint a word portrait, and Sarah Vowell fulfills it.  Guess what?  Clark County in Nevada is named after a Montana businessman who opened a supply store on his railroad line between Salt Lake City and Los Angeles, a supply store that grew up to be Las Vegas.  Without Ms. Vowell’s essay, I never would have known the importance of the Montana State University traveling Shakespeare program.  Every summer acting troops travel across the state performing Shakespeare and other classics outdoors for free.  An alumnus of the program, Bill Pullman remarked that the audiences from

isolated towns . . . really felt compelled to think about the stories and the characters from Shakespeare.  They weren’t going to the performance to just say they went or for the sheer entertainment.  They wanted to think about how a character in the play might be like some parts dealer they had known or how chance can bring calamity in short order.

I wish I had that level of concentration and commitment every time I went to the theatre.

I wonder if my reaction to the California essay would have been different if I weren’t a native.  I read David Eggers essay on Illinois and loved it.  I laughed by the end of the first paragraph describing how “Land of Lincoln” is the best license plate slogan (apparantly points were given for alliteration); therefore, Illinois is the best state. Who else has ever worked in sex appeal when talking about Lincoln?  But if I was an Illinoisan, maybe I would sigh that the essay started with Lincoln (what, him again?) and then yawn when it moved to Chicago and Oprah.  As an outsider, I enjoyed every word.

Matt Weiland describes us as a nation “united by rhetoric and musket nearly 250 years ago, reaffirmed in [our] unity by rhetoric and rifle a century later, and bound together today as tightly as any confederation on earth–somehow stubbornly resist blending into a single undifferentiated whole.”  As I read these essays, learning about history and lore across our nation, I saw some of myself, but a different world also.  As a nation, we’re at a time of making significant decisions and while State by State doesn’t discuss those issues, the opportunity to learn about each other, to see a different perspective, helps enrich the conversation.

Two hundred and thirty-three years ago, many families gave up their lives and livelihood so that we could develop into the nation we are today.  Take some time and read about who we are with State by State:  A Panoramic Portrait of America.

Civil War Origins

Memorial Day started in 1868 as a day dedicated to honoring the dead of the Civil War.  Initially called Decoration Day, it was celebrated in part by placing flowers on the soliders’ graves which could be found throughout the country. 

The greatest tribute to the fallen of the Civil War and one of the greatest speeches in American history is the Gettysburg Address by President Lincoln.  This two minute speech was given on November 19, 1863 to dedicate Soliders’ National Cemetery in Gettysburg, PA. 

We all know the opening line “four score and seven years ago” and many of us memorized the speech in school, but with each re-reading it’s hard not to be drawn to Lincoln’s tribute to soldiers who died not just for the Union, but for the preservation of freedom:

It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us-that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion-that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain-that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom-and that government: of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. 

The story many of us grew up with, that Lincoln wrote the speech on the back of an envelope on the train to Gettysburg, isn’t true.  However, he didn’t have much time because he was only invited to the ceremony 17 days before it occurred.  The invitation specifically stated that the orator was Edward Everett.  Lincoln’s limited role was to only “formally set apart these grounds to their sacred use by a few appropriate remarks.”  In modern terms, the President of the Untied States was the ribbon cutter.  What Lincoln said to memorialize the 7,500 dead on the field demonstrates why he was a wonderful President.

 Expansion of Memorial Day After World War I

Following the end of WWI, Memorial Day was expanded to include the American dead from any war or military action.  Veterans frequently sell poppies to raise money before Memorial Day.  Poppies grew into a Memorial Day symbol after the popularity of Lt. John McCrae’s seminal World War I poem, ”In Flanders Fields.”  Lt. McCrae wrote the poem the day after watching his friend, Alexis Helmer, die in battle.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Fortieth Anniversary of D-Day Speech

One of the great modern day speeches honoring the fallen occurred at Ponte du Hoc on the fortieth anniversary of D-Day.  Given by President Ronald Regan, it marked the sacrifice of so many from all nations to end Nazi tyranny.  Read the full speech online, here is an excerpt specifically remembering the Rangers who stormed this beach in Normandy:

Forty summers have passed since the battle that you fought here. You were young the day you took these cliffs; some of you were hardly more than boys, with the deepest joys of life before you. Yet, you risked everything here. Why? Why did you do it? What impelled you to put aside the instinct for self-preservation and risk your lives to take these cliffs? What inspired all the men of the armies that met here? We look at you, and somehow we know the answer. It was faith and belief; it was loyalty and love.

The men of Normandy had faith that what they were doing was right, faith that they fought for all humanity, faith that a just God would grant them mercy on this beachhead or on the next. It was the deep knowledge — and pray God we have not lost it — that there is a profound, moral difference between the use of force for liberation and the use of force for conquest. You were here to liberate, not to conquer, and so you and those others did not doubt your cause. And you were right not to doubt.

Follow President Obama’s Advice

In his weekly address, President Obama noted what his administration is doing to help veterans and active service soldiers and their families.  He went on to remind all of us of our debt to those who sacrifice for the entire nation:

But we must also do our part, not only as a nation, but as individuals for those Americans who are bearing the burden of wars being fought on our behalf. That can mean sending a letter or a care package to our troops overseas. It can mean volunteering at a clinic where a wounded warrior is being treated or bringing supplies to a homeless veterans center. Or it can mean something as simple as saying “thank you” to a veteran you pass on the street.

We all have a role in supporting and remembering those who fought for our country.

Enough about me, you should buy the book, really.  I can’t tell you how angry people get with their loved ones when they leave their estate a mess.  Having your finances and wishes in order is more than a responsibility, it is a gift that you give to the ones you love.  This book describes in a manageable step-by-step process how to organize your accounts, important documents, estate planning papers, final letters to family members, health issues, burial issues and much more.  A CD is included with the book that provides forms and checklists to simplify the process. At your incapacity or death, it will be much simpler for your family to carry out your wishes. 

In my opinion, everyone should see a lawyer for an estate plan, it should never be done from a book or a computer program.  This book is still essential even with professional advice.  Lawyers and accountants prepare the documents and tax returns, they do not organize papers, that is the responsibility of the client.  Moreover, the book covers various personal issues, such as providing an autobiography or writing final letters to your loved ones; these tasks are completely separate from the role of a lawyer or accountant.

Here’s a Mother’s Day or Father’s Day idea:  buy the book, give it to your parent and volunteer to help them organize for a few hours.  You’ll spend time with your parent and accomplish an important task.

Kyle and Kim

Last year Keith and I were driving Kyle and his friend to an event and I asked the friend what he was doing the next day for Mother’s Day.  He answered that he was reading his mother a poem.  Keith and Kyle almost fell over in astonishment and the friend was confused.  I explained that they were expecting (hoping) that he would say “what, tomorrow is Mother’s Day?” and his answer just showed up whatever plans they made.  Kyle’s friend explained that the kids have a little show for their mother every year. 

Keith and I went on to dinner with two couples and I told them about our car conversation.  One husband spent the rest of the evening conjuring up poems, or maybe sailor limericks would be a better description.  The second husband worked with his daughters the next morning to plan a list of reading material including poems and excerpts from Little Women and Pride and Prejudice and read them to her throughout the day.  So, surprise the Mom in your life and spend a few minutes reading to her. 

Suggestions for what to read to your mother:

- Kyle’s friend read  “The Lanyard” by Billy Collins and it is a perfect Mother’s Day poem, especially for a child still in school.

- The few pages in Little Women in the first chapter starting with the paragraph “The Clock struck six” when Beth lays out Marmee’s slippers, to when Marmee comes home and announces “I’ve got a treat for you after supper.”  Or don’t stop, it’s such a lovely book.

- The poem “To My Mother” by Wendell Berry, perfect for an adult child.

- You may have a wife or friend who needs this story:

“Kids are Dogs, Teens are Cats” by an unknown author

I just realized that while children are dogs … loyal and affectionate …
teenagers are cats.

It’s so easy to be a dog owner. You feed it, train it, boss it around. It
puts its head on your knee and gazes at you as if you were a Rembrandt
painting. It bounds indoors with enthusiasm when you call it.

Then around age 13, your adoring little puppy turns into a big old cat.
When you tell it to come inside, it looks amazed, as if wondering who
died and made you emperor. Instead of dogging your doorstep, it
disappears. You won’t see it again until it gets hungry … then it pauses
on its sprint through the kitchen long enough to turn its nose up at
whatever you’re serving. When you reach out to ruffle its head, in that
old affectionate gesture, it twists away from you then gives you a blank
stare, as if trying to remember where it has seen you before.

You, not realizing that the dog is now a cat, think something must be
desperately wrong with it. It seems so antisocial, so distant, sort of
depressed. It won’t go on family outings. Since you’re the one who
raised it, taught it to fetch and stay and sit on command, you assume
that you did something wrong. Flooded with guilt and fear, you redouble
your efforts to make your pet behave.

Only now you’re dealing with a cat, so everything that worked before
now produces the opposite of the desired result. Call it and it runs
away. Tell it to sit and it jumps on the counter. The more you go toward
it, wringing your hands, the more it moves away.

Instead of continuing to act like a dog owner, you can learn to behave
like a cat owner. Put a dish of food near the door and let it come to
you. But remember that a cat needs your help and your affection too.
Sit still and it will come, seeking that warm, comforting lap it has not
entirely forgotten. Be there to open the door for it.

One day your grown-up child will walk into the kitchen, give you a big
kiss and say, “You’ve been on your feet all day. Let me get those dishes
for you.”  Then you’ll realize your cat is a dog again.

Do something wonderful for a mother in life and enjoy the weekend!

Phoenix walks through deep, still woods, climbs up a hill “through pines” and “down through oaks,” maneuvers through thorn bushes, crosses a creek on a log, crawls under barbed wire and walks through a dead forest, dead corn fields, and a swamp.  She travels through cold and wind.  Just as she starts on “the easy going,” a black dog startles her and she lands in a ditch, too weak to get up by herself.  A young, white hunter helps her out and orders her to return home.  When she insists on going to town, he insults her by saying “I know you old colored people!  Wouldn’t miss going to town to see Santa Claus.”  But, the motivation for Phoenix’s journey is not trivial, it’s a labor of love.

The title and the nurse’s comments inform the reader that Phoenix endures this journey on a regular basis to obtain “the soothing medicine.”  When the nurse asks if the boy is still alive, Phoenix’s response radiates with love:

“My little grandson, he sit up there in the house all wrapped up, waiting by himself,”  Phoenix went on.  “We is the only two left in the world.  He suffer and it don’t seem to put him back at all.  He got a sweet look.  He going to last.  He wear a little patch quilt and peep out holding his mouth open like a little bird. . . I could tell him from all the others in creation.”

Ms. Welty said the source of the story was a glimpse of an old solitary black woman walking through a winter landscape.  She wondered what would cause the women to walk there and decided it could only be an errand for someone else, an errand for a loved one.

Easter imagery of death and re-birth is everywhere:  the main character’s name, the journey occurs in December as one year is dying and another will start, Phoenix’s coma-like rigidity in the doctor’s office and then sudden re-awakening.  Other instances of Easter symbolism occur in Phoenix’s struggle to mount the hill, it  ”seems like there is chains about my feet . . . something always take a hold of me on this hill–pleads I should stay” as if it were Golgotha.  Phoenix getting caught in the thorny bush is a reference to the crown of thorns and the scarecrow points to Christ on the cross.  The stops along the way are reminiscent of the stations of the cross.  Having walked the stations of the cross, I can tell you that the meaning of that journey is far better portrayed in this story than fighting your way through the throngs in Old Jerusalem.

In “A Worn Path,” Ms. Welty gives us a story of a journey, one that is undertaken in hardship as a sacrifice for love, just like Easter.

My oldest son was diagnosed with autism when he was two and a half and at some point along the way, a friend suggested I go see Dr. Koegel who was running a clinic at the University of Santa Barbara with her husband Dr. Robert Koegel.  (That clinic has since been named after them: it’s now the Koegel Autism Center.)  The story of our first meeting is described in Overcoming Autism: basically my husband and I were blown away by Lynn’s personal brilliance and by the effectiveness of their pivotal response teaching behavioral approach. 

Thanks to her guidance (and the hard work of many other wonderful professionals), our son is doing great today.  He’s an amazing kid and a fully mainstreamed high school junior who’s currently trying to figure out which colleges to apply to.

Back when he was still young, Lynn discovered that I was a writer (a rather unfulfilled writer at the time) and asked if I could help them rewrite their clinic brochure.  I did.  A year or so later, she asked me if I’d have any interested in co-authoring an entire book with her.  I did.  Together we wrote Overcoming Autism.  The expertise in the book is all hers, but I was able to add some personal experiences as the mother of a kid on the spectrum and help with the general writing and presentation. 

I can’t speak for Lynn, but, for me, the collaboration was a pure joy.  I’ve heard a lot of stories of people trying to partner on a big project and ending up resentful and estranged.  (Actually, it also happens every time one of my kids has to buddy up on a school project.)  The fact that Lynn and I finished up eager to write another book together is a tribute to her kind, supportive, and generous nature.

This new book arose out of our original intention to put out a new edition of Overcoming Autism which has sold steadily since first being published.  Without any special promotion or publicity, OA‘s reputation has blossomed.   Word of mouth has been strong, and the publishing house expressed interest in our editing it, adding a new chapter or two, so they could re-issue it.

But when we started putting down on paper the things we wanted to add to the book–mostly information about older kids on the spectrum, since we had pretty much stopped at the elementary school years–the editor realized there was a whole new book there.  So we put together a proposal and Growing Up on the Spectrum fell into place.

We wanted to create a guidebook for parents of older kids on the spectrum.  Very little has been written about the high school, college, and adult years for these kids, many of whom still need varying degrees of support, but who want to be independent and self-sufficient–and whose parents want to help them get there.

So that’s what we’ve tried to do in GUOTS: find ways for parents to support their older kids as they move out into the world.   Or, as we put it in the book, the question is no longer “how do I teach my kid this or that?” but “how do I teach my kid not to need me to teach him anymore?” 

We offer advice for all the big milestones of life after high school: going off to college, getting a job, finding a safe home–even pursuing romance. 

But the thing about this book that I’m proudest of is that my son contributed his own wonderful, honest personal essays to the book and also illustrated it.   On this project, I got to collaborate with two people I love and respect.  How lucky am I?

There is only one book that is perfect for this day of donning jeans, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants by Ann Brashares.  In case you haven’t heard the story, just before they leave for summer, four high school juniors find a pair of jeans in a thrift store that fits all of them even though they are different sizes (personally, I’m looking for a pair of pants that would fit me in the size I wore as a high school junior, now that would be magic).  They decide that they each will wear the pants for awhile, then ship them to the next girl for her turn.  The book follows the girls’ summer with four distinct voices, characters and experiences.  As the jeans travel around, they acquire patches and mementos and take on the character of a clothing scrapbook.  What I appreciate about the story is the emphasis on the importance of girlfriends and supporting your friends.  In this age of “mean girls,” it’s nice to have a book that shows how girlfriends mess up and still hang in there for each other.  Friendships take effort whether it be finding the time to have fun or being supportive or holding each other accountable or forgiving one another for blowing it.  This series of books (there are four in total) gives examples of the mistakes girlfriends make, but ultimately shows the triumph of their relationship.

The story has spawned other sharing adventures.  I learned of four girls who were so inspired by the book that they decided to get a pair of “magical jeans” themselves–a pair they could trade around all summer long while they went their separate ways to camp, summer houses, on trips, etc.  One mom took them shopping.  They wanted to buy the jeans used, like in the book, so they went first to a couple of thrift stores, but unfortunately thrift stores don’t have a wide selection of magical jeans–especially in girls sizes 10-12–so they wound up at the Gap where, after a very long time spent picking out pants and trying them on, they decided that a pair of denim shorts would best accommodate their different shapes and sizes, so those become their traveling pants.  And travel the shorts did–all over the country all summer long.  The girls worked out a very complicated schedule of mailing/passing the shorts back and forth (which one of the mothers thankfully simplified), ensuring that each girl would have the shorts during her biggest adventure of the summer. The mom whose daughter had them first ran out and bought lots of fabric paint and permanent markers, so the girls could decorate the shorts in some way that would remind them always of their summer adventures.  They also sewed on patches they found on their journeys, and wrote long entries in a journal that they passed along with the shorts.  When one girl found five dollars lying in the road while wearing the shorts, they all agreed the shorts truly WERE magical.  It was a pretty special things for friends to do.

In our family, Kelsey wanted to read this book in 4th grade.  We were standing in a bookstore and she brought it to me.  Making one of those off the cuff parental decisions, I told her she couldn’t read it until she was in 6th grade.  I pretty much made that up other than I saw some of the girl’s in Kyle’s class reading it when they were in sixth grade.  The minute school was out at the end of 5th grade and Kelsey was “officially” a 6th grader, she wanted to buy the book.  Amazing how she could remember that one conversation over a year earlier and she can’t remember to feed the dog unless reminded.  Personally, I think she may have been too young.  I think this series is far more mature than the Twilight saga.  But I’ve learned my lesson, now when she asks for a book that is too mature for her, I tell her she can read it in college.  When she is old enough in high school, I’ll get the book for her and look like a good guy.

Mr. Lincoln’s Boys by Staton Rabin and illustrated by Bagram Ibatoulline

I was particularly attracted to  Mr. Lincoln’s Boys because it tells of the mischievous adventures of two young boys living in the White House just at a time when two young girls (who look to have an abundance of personality) have moved into the same home.  I like it when history books for children can be relevant for today.  Three sentences struck me as an echo across the centuries:  “And wherever his sons went, strangers pointed at them.  “I wish they wouldn’t stare at us so,” Willie said.  “Wasn’t there ever a president who had children?”

Wille and Tad Lincoln were rowdy rascals.  They irritated the adults around the Lincolns.  Mr. Ibatoulline’s beautiful illustrations portray various expressions of frustration on the part of a general, the White House gardener, and Mr. Lincoln’s secretaries.  The boys trick of wiring the bell system to go off all at once or interrupting their father to climb all over him and pinch his cheeks show the boys exuberance, but also the President’s indulgent love.  The book opens with young Tad waking from a bad dream about people fighting and looking to his father for comfort.  It sets the stage of a serious time without over-emphasizing battle.  The boys lived in a White House at war and their naive fascination with the soldiers caused them to play solider games of capturing their Zouave Jack (think a Civil War GI Joe) as a spy and punishing him or later requesting a pardon from their father for the soldier’s transgressions.   The book gives a sense of the time with a lovely humane portrait of Abraham Lincoln.  A gentle man that is wise, but not intimidating to a young reader.  For the crafty reader who would like to delve into Abraham Lincoln a bit more, check out the stove pipe hat project.

Tad Lincoln’s Father by Julia Taft Bayne

Julia Taft Bayne

Staton Rabin actually recommended Tad Lincoln’s Father to me.  Tad and Willie had two best friends, Bud and Holly Taft, and the four of them set of on one adventure or another.  Bud and Holly’s older sister, Julia Taft, often accompanied them to the White House and became friends with the entire Lincoln family.  Julia wrote this memoir sixty years later and doesn’t claim to write with “historical exactitude, [but to] set these things down as they live in [her] memory, impressions of that tense, waiting period when the war-clouds gathered for the storm that was soon to shake the nation to its foundation.”  And that’s what I love about the book, Ms. Bayne remembered what struck her as important as a sixteen year old, such as how rude people were to President Lincoln during the Inaugural Parade, how tense everyone was that the capital wasn’t protected, how in a military camp she heard the “long roll” calling the soldiers to arms, and how the slaves in Washington DC were whisked south just before the Emancipation Proclamation so they wouldn’t be freed. 

Her portrait of Lincoln is warm with a great love for his family.  Time and again he joined in his children’s antics by attending their circus show after paying 5 cents, wrestling with them on the floor, and stopping by to tell them a story.  The motto of the White House parents was “let the children have fun.”  Ms. Bayne notes several times that the presence of the children lifted President Lincoln’s spirits.  This book is appropriate for children, teens and adults because it gives a view of a rambunctious family with lots of stories of antics and a peek into the atmosphere of a very important time in our nation’s history.  It provides an insiders loving portrait of one of our greatest Presidents.  One section struck me because it highlights the humility of President Lincoln, a trait I also admire in our current President:

There was little of the pride of position in Mr. Lincoln.  My mother would say, “I wish President Lincoln would always remember that he is the President.”  She called it his “provoking humility.”  Colonel Lamar, the marshal, kept his eye on him to shoo him into his proper place, the first, which belong to his rank.  He opened a door for me once and held it, and I was horror-struck.  I could not precede the President!

Celebrate Abraham Lincoln

There are so many ways to learn about Abraham Lincoln.  Adult books were reviewed by William Safire in the New York Times Review of Books and three books were highlighted on NPR.  Scott Simon gave a wonderful tribute to President Lincoln and his step-father, the owner of Abraham Lincoln Bookshop (I’m making a beeline for it the next time I’m in Chicago).  Listen to a recording of Copland’s ‘Lincoln’s Portrait‘ or read the poem Walt Whitman wrote in response to President Lincoln’s assassination.  We are a better country because of him, so take the opportunity to experience a little bit of Abraham Lincoln this holiday weekend.