It’s been somewhat of a dry
spell in my reading life lately. (Granted, my “reading life” is rather
redundant, as reading is inextricable from my “regular” life.) I fell seven books
behind in my Goodreads Annual Challenge. SEVEN! Unheard of! Perish the thought!
Not helping was the fact that I
accidentally left Henry VIII as the
last of the Shakespeare plays for me to read--and it was SO boring! This would
have struck me as impossible, considering the rather colorful life of Henry
VIII, except I remembered that Shakespeare was writing during the reign of his
daughter Elizabeth I…and therefore probably cut out the juicy drama in order to
preserve her patronage and his head. I will
say that it was somewhat amusing, Shakespeare trying to please everyone by
making all the characters (Queen Katherine, King Henry, Anne Boleyn AKA “Bullen”)
over-the-top noble and innocent rather than crafty and power-hungry
politicians. And the end of the play is basically “Hey look Elizabeth I has
been born and is now blessed with awesomeness forevermore!”
That said, I was glad to have
finished off that most recent, and ultimately disappointing, stack of books next
to my bed, and so excited to pull some other books off the shelf that showed
more promise.
Along with Manxmouse that my mom read aloud to me, there have been a few books
from my childhood I’ve been thinking about recently. These were books I read
just as I began to read independently, and I remember reading them over and
over…except I couldn’t remember the name of one of them. I knew it had a little
girl in it who was excited about going to school…it was set in “olden times”
(viz., 1900 or older).
With a little more digging in my
memory (“I think the cover was green…), and with an open search browser, I was
able to hunt down the title of the book: Schoolhouse
in the Woods by Rebecca Caudill.
But wait! It turns out that this
was actually part of a series which my eight-year-old self never knew! (Ah, the
wonders of the internet age!) The series is The
Fairchild Family Stories, the first of which is Happy Little Family.
I know what you’re thinking. “Happy
Little Family” sounds saccharine and oversimplified, like Dick and Jane or
something. While these books were indeed written during the era where
everything geared toward children was naïve and sugar-coated, I have to say
even my adult self is impressed.
I’ve only read the first two
books at this point, but they’re easily one of the books I’d recommend—to both
children and adults. These stories follow the “Happy Little Family” of
Fairchilds: Father, Mother, Althy, Chris, Emmy, Debby, and Bonnie. Nowadays
that’s not considered a “little” family, but these stories seem to be set in
the late 1800s, and the fact is that it wasn’t unusual for families to have
children in the double digits (though mortality rates meant that many of these
children did not survive to adulthood).
The stories focus on the perspective
of the youngest daughter Bonnie, who is four in Happy Little Family and five in Schoolhouse
in the Woods. It follows her struggles as the youngest: often overlooked in
the hubbub of her siblings’ busy lives, wishing she were big enough to do the
things she’s excluded from, and living with hand-me-downs.
There isn’t much “peril” or even
hardship in these books, yet Caudill’s gentle wit and beautiful descriptions of
the Fairchild’s world keeps it from becoming maudlin and unbearable. Also helpful are the absolutely charming line drawings by Decie Merwin that illustrate the events perfectly.
This is exactly the sort of
story I loved as a child, and sad to say I don’t think contemporary juvenile
fiction (JFIC) has produced anything similar. (If there are, I’d certainly like
to read them!) Modern storytellers too often rely on flashy settings (like the
paranormal), rude or sarcastic humor, and situations where the child characters
are more capable than their inept or clueless parents. These sorts of stories
can be fun, sure, but it’s not the sort of storytelling that sticks with you.
I doubt, for instance, that
children will look back on those books twenty years from now and search them
out to re-read.
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