I’m so sorry — somehow I completely forgot that I was going to draw from among the participants in the Laura Ingalls Wilder Reading Challenge LAST WEEK to give away a copy of The Little House Cookbook!
So I attended to that just now, and the winner is……
Congratulations! I’ll get that off to you hopefully in a timelier manner than that in which I drew for it!
Thanks to all of you for participating! You’ve enriched the challenge and made it more fun!
A lot of what I had been reading lately required a good bit of concentration, so I was in the mood for something light and fun. Scrolling through my Kindle app downloads, I came across The Last Superhero by Stephen Altrogge. I don’t remember where or who recommended him, but when I saw this book offered for free (at this writing it’s 99 cents), I decided to give him a try.
The story is about a family of superheroes. The grandfather, John Utticus Wagner, is something is a legend in the superhero community. But his son is something of a klutz: he has superhuman strength, but has trouble controlling it. So after nearly killing three professors and causing assorted other problems, he’s kicked out of Superhero College. His wife has super speed…but has trouble stopping. You can imagine the kind of trouble that causes. They decide being superheroes isn’t working out so well for them, so the dad decides to become an accountant. They have Junior, or John Utticus Wagner II, who also has super strength, but without any training, he doesn’t know how to use his, either.
Though the dad has some regrets about not carrying on the family business and some longing to be an able superhero, life goes along pretty well until a new villain, Boom, starts blowing things up around town. Then the three generations of men — an aging superhero, a klutz, and an 8th-grader — decide to go into training to find and defeat him.
Those of you who know me well know this isn’t my usual fare. But it did fit the bill of a clean, light, fun read, at least until a tragedy at the end. The ending sets things up for a sequel, but I don’t know if any is in the works.
Altrogge’s tone had me smiling throughout the books. Here are a few excerpts. The book is written from Junior’s point of view.
Girls like guys who are tall, dark, and handsome, not pale, short, and able to punch a hole in a steel door.
Now you, the reader, probably already know this, but it doesn’t hurt to point out that the last sentence my Grandpa said is something dark and sinister called ‘foreshadowing.’ If this were a movie, the camera would probably zoom in close on Grandpa’s face as he said the words. See, my Grandpa said that he was glad he didn’t have to deal with ‘The Plague’ any more. But maybe they’re not as gone as he thinks. Maybe they’ll play into this story somehow. You probably think you have the whole thing figured out, but trust me, you don’t.
Mom was getting really worked up, and tears began to trickle down her cheeks. As I’m sure you know, it’s a really, really bad sign when your mom starts crying. It can’t get much worse than that. Mom tears are one of the most powerful forces in the universe.
The carpet was so thick I could have made carpet angels.
There are also a number of funny asides about other well-known superheroes, and apparently thee Wagners were behind a number of famous incidents in history. 🙂
I didn’t know, until I looked him up after reading the book, that Altrogge is a pastor and a co-writer at The Blazing Center, a blog I’ve looked at and linked to occasionally. The book isn’t Christian fiction, though there is a Bible verse quoted: it’s just good clean fun. And though I don’t normally like the dad in a story portrayed as a klutz (there’s too much of that on TV), it’s not done here in a disrespectful way: he’s not a clueless idiot, he just doesn’t have quite the superhero capabilities as others do.
Overall I really enjoyed it as a fun weekend read, and I’ve already bought another of Altrogge’s books, Escaping My Story.
(This will also be linked to Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books.)
I don’t know when 148 pages of someone’s life story has impacted me more. There are sections where I have sticky tabs and markings on several pages in a row.
The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert: An English Professor’s Journey Into Christian Faith is Rosaria Champagne Butterfield’s story of how she, as an atheist, leftist, feminist, lesbian professor specializing Critical Theory, or postmodernism, and whose specialty was Queer Theory, who hated Christians, encountered and embraced the truths of Christianity in what she calls a “train wreck” of a conversion.
After a few pages detailing how she came to her professorship and worldview, she describes a kind and inquiring letter from a pastor in response to an article she had written.
The Bible makes it clear that reason is not the front door of faith. It takes spiritual eyes to discern spiritual matters. But how do we develop spiritual eyes unless Christians engage the culture with those questions and paradigms of mindfulness out of which spiritual logic flows? That’s exactly what Ken’s letter did for me – invited me to think in ways I hadn’t before (pp. 8-9).
The letter had invited her to call him, and after a week, she did. He invited her to have dinner with him and his wife at their home, and she accepted. She was also at this time doing research for a book on the Religious Right and figured he could answer some of her questions. “Even though obviously these Christians and I were very different, they seemed to know that I wasn’t just a blank slate, that I had values and opinions too, and they talked with me in a way that didn’t make me feel erased” (p. 10). Thus began two years of regular meetings and studying Scripture before she ever set foot in a church, which Ken and his wife knew would probably be “too threatening, too weird, too much” (p. 11) for her. “Good teachers make it possible for people to change their positions without shame. Even as Ken prayed for my soul, he did it in a way that welcomed me into the church rather than made me a scapegoat of Christian fear or an example of what not to become,” (p. 14.)
Gradually she came to believe, but she knew it would cost her. “I clung to Matthew 16:24, remembering that every believer had to at some point in life take the step I was taking: giving up the right to myself, taking up his Cross (i.e., the historicity of the resurrection, not masochism endured to please others), and following Jesus.” “I learned that we must obey in faith before we feel better or different. At this time, though, obeying in faith, to me, felt like throwing myself off a cliff” (p. 22). “One doesn’t repent for a sin of identity in one session. Sins of identity have multiple dimensions, and throughout this journey, I have come to my pastor and his wife, friends in the Lord, and always the Lord himself with different facets of my sin” (p. 23).
She tells of a woman she knew and counseled who was in a Bible-believing church but was in a secret lesbian relationship. Her secret denied her the help and prayers of other believers and only resulted in shame and pretense. When Rosaria asked why she didn’t share her struggle with anyone in her church, she replied, “If people in my church really believed that gay people could be transformed by Christ, they wouldn’t talk about us or pray about us in the hateful way they do” (p. 25). Rosaria then asks readers, “Do your prayers rise no higher than your prejudice? I think that churches would be places of greater intimacy and growth in Christ if people stopped lying about what we need, what we fear, where we fail, and how we sin” (p. 25).
Rosaria was a tenured professor in subjects that would now radically change because of her conversion. When she let it be known that she was now a Christian, both she and her gay friends felt she had betrayed them and turned traitor. “I…was alert to the reality that God had ministry waiting for me. I prayed that I would be strong for the task at hand. Yes, I was still a laughing stock in the gay community. Yes, I was still a traitor and an example of what not to be. But so too was Paul the Apostle shamed among Pharisees, and I trusted that God would take my life and make a place for me” (p. 50).
The rest of the book tells how God did just that, both in her career and ministry to others, leading her to marry a pastor, to eventually adopt four biracial children, and to become a homeschooling mom.
Along the way, she shares an eye-opening perspective of what Christianity looks like to others. For instance, when she moved to a community where there were Bible verses on bumper stickers and placards, instead of it looking like people were sharing a bit of light, it looked to her like the community was for “insiders” only. Christians seemed like “bad thinkers” or even anti-intellectual to her before this journey, using Scripture to shut down conversations rather than to shed light. Unfortunately, that is too often true: instead of truly discussing what the Bible has to say and being “ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear” (I Peter 3:15b), some Christians take offense at being asked and use Scripture to bludgeon. One of my own family members has been turned off, not so much to all Christian truth, but to Christian community because of this experience.
One theme that comes out throughout the book is the willingness to engage people who are different from us in any way. Thank God the pastor and wife who first shared Christ with her looked past her butch haircut and gay and pro-choice bumper stickers to the need of her heart. But even after she became a Christian, she ran into this phenomenon in various churches. When her husband was the guest speaker at a church and she was getting out of the car holding one of her children while the other was asleep in the car seat, a man said to he, “So, is it chic for white women to adopt black kids these days?” After asking him if he was a Christian, she said, “So, did God save you because it was chic?” When her husband started pastoring a small church plant made up mostly of college students, families would come for a month or so and then leave because of a “lack of fellowship” with people just like themselves. I could step on a small soapbox here: I get so discouraged when people within the same church only want to fellowship with people just like themselves — same age bracket, some marital or parental status, same way of educating or disciplining children, etc., etc.
If I shared everything else I marked, I’d be nearly rewriting the book here, so I can’t do that. But here are just a few more things that grabbed me:
“Since all major U. S. universities had Christian roots, too many Christians thought that they could rest in Christian tradition, not Christian relevance” (p. 7).
“When we read in the book of Romans, “And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose” (8:28), we are not to be Pollyanna about this. Many of the ‘things’ we will face come with the razor edges of a fallen and broken world. You can’t play poker with God’s mercy – if you want the sweet mercy then you must also swallow the bitter mercy. And what is the difference between sweet and bitter? Only this: your critical perspective, your worldview. One of God’s greatest gifts is the ability to see and appreciate the world from points of view foreign to your own, points of view that exceed your personal experience” (p. 125).
“Many people in our community protect themselves from inconvenience as though inconvenience is deadly. We have decided that we are not inconvenienced by inconvenience. The needs of children come up unexpectedly. We are sure that the Good Samaritan had other plans that fateful day. Our plans are not sacred” (p. 126).
When a teenage girl in foster care with mental illness heard a pastor speaking about God’s call, afterward she “approached Pastor Steve and said, ‘Steve, I hear voices all the time. How do I know the difference between hearing the voice of God and hearing the voices of my own sick mind?’ Pastor Steve said, ‘Dear one, we all have the check the voices of our own sick mind with the Bible. Daily. You are no different'” (p. 128).
One thought that came to mind while reading the book was, “Why don’t we see this happening more often?” If the gospel is the power of God unto salvation, and it is, then why don’t we see such transformative conversions more often, and why are those raised in Christian culture often so anemic? Sometimes I long with the Psalmist “To see thy power and thy glory, so as I have seen thee in the sanctuary” (Psalm 63:2). Is it because we don’t share the gospel in a kind and loving way enough? Or is it because not many people are truly willing to examine the claims of the Bible and bring themselves under its authority? Maybe both. I’ve seen online encounters where non-Christians have as much of a “smackdown” way of encountering Christians as Christians do encountering them. I know I would have been scared to death to engage someone like Rosaria before she was saved: I’d have been afraid that I wouldn’t be able to answer her questions and she’d be able to run rings around me with her reasoning ability. But I have to remind myself that those whom God brought across her path with just the right thing to say at the right time were operating under the leadership of the Holy Spirit, not their own wisdom and insight. Sometimes we look for a formula: we see articles or pamphlets about “How to witness to atheists” or whomever else, and those can have some helpful points, but we can’t memorize a script and then present it to people. We need to share a Person and show His love to others and trust Him for the right words to say and pray for His working in hearts.
Rosaria writes now from a Reformed Presbyterian perspective, and since I am not from that perspective, I’d disagree with a few minor points here and there, but I am not going to nitpick about them. I do believe Christians can agree on the big issues and agree to disagree about smaller ones.
There is a condensed version of her testimony here, but I do encourage you to read the book as well. I believe it’s going to go down as one of my top ten of the year.
(This will also be linked to Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books.)
I first encountered Dreams in the Medina by Kati Woronka when Lisa reviewed it. We discussed how fiction can sometimes make things more real to us or cause us to care more than we otherwise would. Later Lisa said the author had given her a voucher to share the book with one other person, and since she knew I liked fiction, she graciously offered it to me. Thank you, both Lisa and Kati!
The Medina is a student housing complex of the University of Damascus, and Dreams tells the story of four women students. Most of the story focuses on Leila, a practicing Muslim whose world is expanding by what she is learning in her English literature courses and exposure to other cultures. Huda is excessively studious, but the others don’t realize the extent her family is depending on her to do well, and the pressure almost has tragic ends. Huda is a Muslim by culture but is largely untaught about it and doesn’t mind questioning its teachings. Maha is a Christian but doesn’t seem to know a whole lot about her faith (for example, she can’t answer why offerings are taken at her church when another girl thinks she has to “pay” to come), but she seems the most stable of the group. Roxy is a free spirit, and unbeknownst to her family is a second wife to a Muslim man.
There are recognizable college activities common to most any culture: trying to cram studies in, visiting each other’s rooms, socializing, girl-talk, thrills and sorrows with the opposite sex, and questions and struggles on the road to becoming an adult.
But of course there are differences as well. They make tabouli in their rooms rather than ordering pizza. Conflicts come from things like washing one’s feet for ablutions before prayer in the same sink where food is prepared. Family expectations carry more weight than one’s personal desires. And the various degrees of their faith and practice affect them in a myriad of ways.
I was surprised at first by the different practices of Muslims from different villages, but then realized that they might be surprised by the variation in professing Christians here as well.
Since the book is written primarily from Leila’s point of view as a Muslim, there are statements I wouldn’t agree with as a Christian, like the assumption that the Bible and the Quran agree (in a few minor things, maybe, but not overall), but I can understand such statements coming from her, and her perspective as she gets to know Maha better and even attends her church once are interesting. One statement stood out that the prominent display of a cross in the church “was completely unapologetic in its declaration that Christians are all about the cross.”
Overall this was a nicely-written window into a world I knew very little about. I ashamed to say that before this book I wasn’t even aware that there was a civil war in Syria. Though the setting of the book is before the war (I think — I don’t remember a mention of it), the pictures of these women and the country have made the people more real to me now and raised my awareness, and I think those would have been some of Kati’s goals.
Dreams in the Medina is available for Kindle or for various e-readers. Though not an expensive book, it is on sale half-price for a few days at Smashwords. You can follow Kati’s blog and read more about the background of the book here.
(This will also be linked to Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books.)
The folks at 5 Minutes For Books host What’s On Your Nightstand? the fourth Tuesday of each month in which we can share about the books we have been reading and/or plan to read.
February has seemed like a much longer month than 28 days this year. But I’ve managed to get some reading and audiobook-listening in.
Since last time I have finished:
Emily of New Moon for Carrie’s Lucy Maud Montgomery Reading Challenge, reviewed here.
The Tenth Plague by Adam Blumer, reviewed here. Suspenseful Christian fiction about a warped man who uses the Biblical ten plagues of Egypt as a playbook to exact revenge, and the couple who is trying to find and stop him.
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, reviewed here, for Carrie’s Reading to Know Book Club.
Let the Hurricane Roar by Rose Wilder Lane, reviewed here. Laura’s daughter wrote a fictionalized account of some of her grandparent’s experiences. This one and the next two were for the Laura Ingalls Wilder Reading Challenge which wraps up Thursday.
West From Home by Laura Ingalls Wilder, reviewed here, a compilation of letters Laura wrote to Almanzo while visiting their daughter, Rose, and Rose’s husband, and the World’s Fair.
On the Banks of Plum Creek by Laura Ingalls Wilder, reviewed here. It covers the same events as Let the Hurricane Roar plus a few more: a grasshopper plague, blizzards, attending school for the first time, meeting Nellie Oleson.
These High Green Hills (audiobook) by Jan Karon, Book 3 of the Mitford series, not reviewed. There is a lot in this book: dealing with a case of child abuse, an unidentified burn victim, and the death of a long-time Mitford resident, as well as the continuing adventures of Father Tim and the rest of Mitford.
I also wrote about books I remember reading as a child and my reading history here.
I’m currently reading:
Dreams in the Medina by Kati Woronka, courtesy of a free voucher Lisa graciously shared with me, a coming-of-age story about several girls in Syria.
Out to Canaan by Jan Karon (audiobook), Book 4 of the Mitford series.
Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert by Rosaria Champagne Butterfield: a lesbian leftist professor who hates Christians….becomes one. Just started this one and can’t wait to dig in more.
Coming up next:
Introverts in the Church: Finding Our Place in an Extroverted Culture by Adam S. McHugh. I know it’s okay to be an introvert, but I struggle with whether I sometimes play the introvert card when I should be seeking God’s grace to extend myself. We all need to leave our comfort zones sometimes.
A New Song by Jan Karon.
A Maud Hart Lovelace book for Carrie’s Reading to Know Book Club for March. I’ve never read her: any suggestions?
I need to pick something from my multitude of Kindle app downloads! But I’ll decide that after I finish some of the above.
So what are you reading?
Update: I am linking this post up with
Booking Through Thursday, a weekly meme related to books. Today’s (2/28) question is “what are we reading,” which ties in nicely with this post. 🙂
I wanted to read next On the Banks of Plum Creek by Laura Ingalls Wilder right on the heels of Let the Hurricane Roar (linked to my thoughts) by her daughter, Rose Wilder Lane while it was fresh in my mind, because they covered some of the same events.
Little House on the Prairie had ended with the Ingalls family having to leave their homestead in “Indian territory” when it was determined that the Indians had rights to the land. On the Banks of Plum Creek opens with the family coming into Minnesota near Walnut Grove (“only three miles away, a nice walk”, Pa says) and trading their horses for the land and crops of a family who is leaving. The family had a little dugout house, and the Ingalls live there until Pa’s wheat crops start to sprout, and he borrows against it to buy lumber and supplies for a new house.
Since they are close to town, Mary and Laura begin to attend school, where they meet the infamous Nellie Oleson, who becomes an instant enemy with her derisive assessment of them as “country girls.” The also meet Reverend Alden and are able to attend church for the first time in a long time.
This book contains some of my favorite “Little House” scenes, like the party where their classmates are invited to the house on the creek and Laura lures Nellie into the area where the crab and leeches are, the church Christmas party where Laura gets her fur cape and muff, the girls bringing in all the firewood during a storm when Ma and Pa are away after they heard about a house of children who froze. It also tells of the awful grasshopper invasion, Pa’s having to go East for work, prairie fires, and the terrible blizzards.
Some of us reading Laura’s letters in books like West From Home have remarked how unemotional her correspondence seems. I’m not sure how much of that comes from her personality and how much from her upbringing. The Ingalls weren’t stoics, but their attitude during any crisis seemed to be to buck up and do what you had to do. Emotion is shown more subtly, as when Pa stops playing his fiddle during stressful times or Ma sits late at the window with the light in it, staring at her hands, worried for her husband, who might be caught out in a blizzard. Once when a visiting child takes a liking to Laura’s rag doll and wants to keep it, Ma admonishes Laura that the child is little and company and should have the doll, and scolds Laura that a great girl like her (about age 8 at this time) should sulk over it. But then later Ma does come around and says she didn’t realize Laura cared so much for the doll and helps her restore it when Laura rescues it from a puddle, and while she doesn’t let them rant, she does understand when they’re strained and stops work to play games with them. Laura is ashamed of herself for crying during Pa’s long absence, saying it would be a shame even for younger Carrie to cry. Laura seems to paint herself as the only family member having bad emotions, like envy and pride.
Once again I marvel at the strength of the early settlers, who regard three miles as a “nice walk” and bear so much without a whimper. I don’t know if we could do today what they did, maybe because we haven’t had to. But then, each generation has its particular trials and hardships.
I liked seeing through Laura’s eyes as she described new things and how she thought when she fell into temptation. I enjoyed visiting with the Ingalls family again, with Pa’s cheerfulness, Ma’s gentleness and resourcefulness, their industriousness and endurance of the whole family as well as their enjoy of simple pleasures, and the interaction of the family as well as getting to know new neighbors from town.
(This will also be linked to Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books.)
The February selection for Carrie‘s Reading to Know Book Club is The Scarlet Letter, chosen by Shonya from Learning How Much I Don’t Know. I don’t think I have read it since high school, so I figured it would be good to revisit it, especially when I found it as an audiobook.
As most people know, The Scarlet Letter is about Hester Prynne, whose sin of adultery has produced a child in a 1640 Puritan community and whose punishment is to wear the letter A for “adulteress” on her bosom. I’ve been looking around at other reviews, study guides, and such, and many seem to see the story as a strong woman overcoming the confines of a repressive society. But I saw it described in a couple of places as a psychological romance or drama, and I think that is where the strength of the story is.
The audiobook for some reason leaves out the first chapter in which the narrator finds the scarlet letter in a custom house before telling the story behind it. We first see Hester emerging from the prison, the scarlet A already on her chest, with her child in her arms, sentenced to stand on a public scaffolding for three hours. She had been married, and her husband had sent her on ahead to this country, but her pregnancy became evident too long after arriving for the child to have been her husband’s. In all the intervening time he has not been heard from and is assumed dead. Hester steadfastly refuses to name the other guilty party in her sin.
The first time I read the book, it took me a while to realize who it was. If I were reading it for the first time as an adult, I think I would have figured it out much faster. It was interesting reading it knowing who he was from the outset, as there are clues everywhere. I’ve wrestled with whether to name him or not: I don’t want to destroy the suspense for anyone who hasn’t read it yet, but I don’t know how much I can say about the book without naming him. I’ll give it a try. 🙂
The psychological drama comes in the contrast between Hester’s publicized guilt and its consequences, ostracism from society and the resulting extreme loneliness, versus the consequences her partner in sin’s suppressed guilt: the torment of hearing praises heaped on him for his goodness when he knows he is a hypocrite. At first I thought he kept quiet because he was spineless, but later the author shows he is concerned as well about the negative repercussions his guiltiness could have if it were known, thus he feels “caught,” and his guilt begins to affect him physically.
Hester’s long-lost husband shows up at the first scaffolding scene, but signals to Hester to remain quiet. When he speaks to her later, he swears her to secrecy about his real name and their relationship. He understands, in one sense, her sin, because theirs had not been a marriage of love, and he was much older than she. But he determines to find and exact revenge upon Hester’s partner. He has become a doctor of sorts and goes by the name of Roger Chillingworth, fitting for his cold heart. There is more psychological drama when he thinks he has found the guilty party and determines to “dig” until he knows for sure, and the guilty party thinks he is a friend and doesn’t realize the danger.
The book could be easily divided into sections based on three scenes at the scaffold, where each of the major characters appear each time. The first I’ve mentioned; in the second, the other guilty party has been driven in the middle of the night to the scaffold in his guilt and pain. Self-flagellation, fasting, and vigils have not alleviated his guilt, so he goes himself to the scene of Hester’s shame — yet under cover of darkness, where he is tortured at the thought of being found out. Hester and her daughter, Pearl, happen to be walking by at that same time, and he calls to them to join him. They do, and Pearl asks if he will stand with them the next day at noon. He says no, but he will at the Judgment Day. Then the light of a meteor reveals the face of Chillingworth watching them. The final scaffolding scene takes place near the end of the book, with the same characters, yet in a public setting, where everyone’s fate is resolved.
The book is replete with symbolism: the A, of course, and the different meanings associated with it through the years, Chillingworth’s name and misshapen form representing his heart, Hester’s dressing little Pearl in scarlet, the scenes in the forest, the wild rosebush by the prison door, various manifestations of light and darkness. Pearl herself seems symbolic until the end of the book and acts something like a conscience for her parents. At one point she tells Hester, “the sunshine does not love you. It runs away and hides itself, because it is afraid of something on your bosom.
There are two things I don’t know that keep me from understanding this book more fully. One is Puritan society. I don’t know if how it is viewed here and in general (legalistic, harsh, repressive) is what it really was. This community is totally graceless, but the quotes I have read from Puritans have not been, though I admittedly have not read a great deal of Puritan literature. One source said that Puritans believed that whether you were “elect” or not would show in your life, thus Hester’s partner’s dilemma and struggle between his public persona and private sin. But all of the sources I looked at spoke of either being “elect” or earning one’s way to heaven (which did not seem possible for anyone in the book), yet neglected the real truth of grace that reaches out to the fallen sinner to provide redemption.
The other thing is Hawthorne’s transcendentalism and how it affected his views. I looked into this a bit when rereading Little Women (linked to my thoughts) but didn’t feel I really got a handle on their beliefs. Maybe someone else who read this book for this challenge will have more insight into that.
But I could definitely see the themes and contrasts between judgment and grace, penitence and repentance, and true versus perceived identity (both Hester’s partner and Chillingworth present different personas from what they really are and tend to self-destruct because of it). I don’t know if I would say I enjoyed the book, but it was an interesting study.
(This will also be linked to Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books.)
Carrie had someone ask this question in her comments, and she answered yesterday. My response grew into several paragraphs, so I figured it would be better to form them into my own blog post rather than posting a full-fledged post in her comments.
Since I am in my mid-fifties, my childhood was a long time ago. I don’t remember whether my mom read to me, though I assume she did. I LOVED reading in school. The first book I remember reading from is A Child’s Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson. I must have read several Little Golden Books, because they were familiar to me when I started reading them to my kids. I remember checking out a biography of Martin Luther from the school library in maybe the second grade. My dad did not read much at that time (though he did after he retired), and he thought I was being lazy if I was sitting around reading much. I remember being admonished about that a number of times, so I must have been reading a lot, but it doesn’t seem to have dimmed my enthusiasm. Since I was the oldest of six kids, whatever children’s books we had did not survive the long run through everyone’s use.
I never heard of Anne of Green Gables until I was a young adult (when the Megan Follows films came out) or Narnia until less than 15 years ago. When someone in our church talked about acting in a local production of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, I was suspect. 🙂 I think it was probably then that I checked the series out and loved it. I think it’s been in that time frame that I discovered The Hobbit and LOTR, too.
Somehow I even missed Nancy Drew and The Babysitters Club! I do remember reading Little Women and its sequels many times, and I must have read some of the Little House books, because they were familiar to me later. Then in high school I discovered and loved Dickens with David Copperfield. Somewhere along the way I read Great Expectations and Oliver Twist and didn’t like those quite so well, and attempted A Tale of Two Cities several times over the years before finally getting through it and then instantly rereading it and deeming it my favorite novel. I remember some book from the Scholastic book paper about a girl getting pregnant (and my dad was very angry I was reading that) and one called The Endless Steppe about a girl in Russia
I remember studying a different Shakespeare play each year in high school but not getting much out of it. My sophomore English class was memorable because we made a film, but I don’t remember what we read. That was the early 70s, just coming off the hippie era, and my teacher that year “fit” into that era well.
It was in college that I first discovered missionary biographies, and that was nurtured by the church I attended for the first 14 yeas we were married which had in the monthly ladies’ meetings a librarian who talked briefly each meeting about a book and had them there to check out.
Early married years were when I first discovered Christian fiction with Janette Oke. In high school I had read Not My Will by Francena Arnold, which was kind of a precursor of modern Christian fiction, and it spoke to my heart.
I know we explored good literature in three of my college literature classics, but all I can remember is discovering and loving Anne Bradstreet and then Jane Austen’s Emma. A lady professor who attended my church taught a class on Shakespeare that I really wanted to take, but just couldn’t work it in.
Since I’ve started a blog I’ve purposed to read through some of the classics. I’ve read all of Austen’s books, Les Miserables, The Count of Monte Cristo, and many others. I’m enjoying discovering them as an adult, though I am sorry I missed being exposed to them at a younger age. I also enjoy rereading some of the ones I had read earlier, like Little Women and the Little House books and Dickens. I’ve had fun exploring children’s classics that I missed along the way, like all of the Anne books, Narnia, Caddie Woodlawn, Five Little Peppers and How They Grew (a favorite, though I need to reread it again). And I continue on with biographies, “real-life” stories, Christian fiction and non-fiction, and an occasional secular fiction or non-fiction.
Some favorites I read to my own kids when they were small were the Francis books, Curious George, Clifford, the Little Bear series by Else Holmelund Minark, the Jesse Bear series by Nancy White Carlstrom, Mike Mulligan, The Little Engine That Could, Robert McCloskey books (Make Way for Ducklings and Blueberries for Sal), Dr. Seuss, P. D. Eastman, Keep the Lights Burning, Abbie by Peter Roop one of my all-time favorites, about a girl who has to keep the lighthouse lamps burning when her father is delayed from getting back home due to a storm), The Puppy Who Wanted a Boy by Jane Thayer, the Snipp, Snapp, and Snurr books by Maj Lindman, and of course the Little Golden Books. One of their favorites was Gus the Bus, who goes frolicking off his usual route when his tires get overfilled. We kept that even though it is taped together.
So…what did you read when you were a kid?
(Graphic Courtesy of Grandma’s Graphics.)
Let the Hurricane Roar by Rose Wilder Lane, daughter of Laura Ingalls Wilder, is also published as Young Pioneers. In some versions the characters are named Molly and David: in others they are Charles and Caroline. The events are based on the same events covered in Laura’s book On the Banks of Plum Creek, though some details have been changed.
I had wondered about the title, since hurricanes don’t generally come to the prairie, but the title comes from a hymn.
Molly and David are very young newlyweds (16 and 18) who head west to claim a homestead. Though they live in a little sod house and don’t have many possessions, they are gloriously happy, especially when a good wheat crop grows and they have a baby son. But disaster strikes in the form of a grasshopper plague that destroys the crop. David had borrowed against the lost crop, so he must travel to look for work. Even though neighbors give up and leave in the face of similar difficulties, Molly stays on through a terrible winter so claim jumpers won’t steal their land.
A former pastor used to bestow high compliments on people when he called them “pioneer stock” — sturdy, dependable, strong, not easily swayed. David and Molly would both qualify for this compliment. I am sure I would not! At least not when it comes to living in a dirt house all alone through several blizzards. The book realistically portrays Molly struggle with being alone, wrestling with all of the “what ifs,” and David’s anger over his failure, poor choices (going into debt), and difficult circumstances, rather than portraying them as always smiling and unflappable.
Some of that “pioneer stock” is shown as well in Molly’s attitude when a neighbor complains about hardships, and Molly thinks to herself, “Well, the land isn’t going to feed you with a spoon!” Quite different from the attitude of many today.
I also liked the description at the beginning that Molly “never quite lost the wonder that she, quiet and shy and not very pretty, had won such a man as David. He was laughing and bold [and] daring.”
It’s obvious Rose loved and admired her grandparents, and I am glad she shared this part of their story with us. Part of her goal in writing it was to “inspire Depression-era readers with its themes of resilience in the face of hardship and the strength of the American character” (The Wilder Life by Wendy McClure, p. 168).
Carrie and Amy both reviewed this book last year — in fact, Carrie’s review is where I think I first heard of it. They both focus more on the relationship between Molly and David than I did, but after rereading their reviews as I came to the end of mine, I do remember that that’s part of what drew me to this book, besides its relationship to Laura. Though the book is not written as a romance per se, and as Amy said, Rose writes with restraint, the realities as true love as opposed to “romance novel fiction” shine through it.
The only blight on this novel is that Rose used this information from her mother’s material without her mother’s knowledge or permission. Laura was understandably upset, and they eventually came to terms with it and moved on.
I was originally going to read Farmer Boy next for the Laura Ingalls Wilder Reading Challenge, but since it is Almanzo’s childhood story and doesn’t need to be read in order, I think I am going to read On the Banks of Plum Creek for Laura’s version of the events in this story while this book is still fresh in my mind.
(This will also be linked to Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books.)
Stray Thoughts 