Tag: history through literature

Navigating Early

I remember going to the bookstore years ago without a booklist. I didn’t have any title or book in mind, but I knew that I wanted something different… something that would be out-of-this-world good. And boy, did I find a gem in Navigating Early! Clare Vanderpool doesn’t just write… she crafts magically mesmerizing stories that just leave your heart so very full. She won the Newbery Medal for her debut, Moon Over Manifest, but Navigating Early is my favourite.

It is post-World War 2 and we meet Jack, who has been sent to a military boarding school in Maine. He and his father are still stunned from the death of his mother and clearly, neither has grieved properly. Adrift, Jack struggles to fit in and meets Early, a savant, who is an outsider, just like him. The two form a connection for Early also understands loss – his father has recently passed away and his brother, Fisher, is presumed dead from the war.

Early is a strange one – he listens to certain records only on certain days (if it’s raining, it’s always Billie Holiday), is obsessed with the Great Appalachian Bear and the number pi and is convinced that his brother is still alive. Early sees the numbers in pi as a story and it is reminiscent of the legend of Polaris and the Ursa Major constellation. According to Early, Polaris, whose mother calls him by the name “Pi”, wanders and gets lost among the stars. Early believes a similar fate has befallen his brother and resolves to locate him. Since pi is infinite, then Polaris/Fisher cannot possibly be dead.

As Jack and Early go on an odyssey in search of the great black bear, they encounter myriad characters – pirates, a damsel in distress, a bereft old woman waiting for her son, a lonely woodsman who harbours a deep longing and hurt, among others. Early continues to recount Pi’s saga as they journey and reality and fiction parallel each other. Boundaries begin to blur – like Jack, we start out thinking that Early is making up the story as he goes along. However, in a strange and surreal way, it is evident that he is really just retelling what he sees in the numbers.

I won’t say more except this: you have to experience this exquisite puzzle of a book for yourself. This is a story of adventure, friendship, discovery, redemption and transformation. Some have said that Navigating Early is a book that adults love and buy for their children, but that the kids themselves would not want to read. I completely disagree with this. You can see that my copy is now quite battered thanks to my daughter and her friends reading and rereading it.

Yes, you do need to really focus to weave through the different strands, but this book just pulls you in so you have little choice in the matter anyway! You MUST check it out!

The Roses In My Carpets

This book touched me deeply. A young Afghani’s recurring nightmare pulls us into this story – “It’s always the same. The jets scream overhead.” He dreams of running to escape the bombs together with his mother and sister, Maha. In his dreams, they weigh him down and always, he wakes up to his bare home in a refugee camp.

In quiet and almost grim tones, he tells us about his days. He lives with his mother and sister and they manage to eke out a living with the help of a sponsor. He prays and goes to school, but his most cherished activity is when he learns how to weave carpets. It is his lifeline – he hopes this skill will help provide for his family. It also allows him to visualise and carve out his dreams – a world of hope and beauty. The nameless protagonist uses red threads to honour the martyrs, blue for the sky, free of bombing jets, black for the night that hides them from the enemy and white for the shroud of his father. He uses no browns for he longs to escape the dirty brown huts in the camp.

Then one day, he is confronted with the possibility losing yet another member of his family… Will this make him or break him? Has his well of hope run dry?

I personally love this book – Ronald Himmler’s illustrations are always beautiful and in this case, he has sensitively captured the grief and quiet dignity of the family. [You might recognize his work in Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes, Rudy’s Pond, Fly Away Home and The Well.] The contrast between the muddy walls and vibrant carpets bring home the themes of strife and hope.

I think it was brave of Rukhsana Khan to write a story about the very painful ramifications of war. Death, displacement, poverty and trauma don’t make for happy reading, but The Roses in My Carpet is masterfully told. Some may say that this book is too distressing for children, but I feel it is important that my children, who have been blessed with safety and stability, understand the agony that other children from war-torn countries have endured. Their feelings and well-being matter just as much.

The story ends on a hopeful note – the boy dreams again, but this time, his family finds a space away from the bombs, where the earth is strewn with red roses and where the sky is blue and free from the menacing jets.

Fields of Home

Fields of Home by Marita Conlon-McKenna is the third and final volume of the Children of the Famine trilogy. (I have reviewed the first two books, Under the Hawthorn Tree and Wildflower Girl.)

It has been twelve years since the Famine struck Ireland and the O’Driscoll siblings are now young adults and are still trying to build better lives. Eily and her husband have two children and are living on a farm with her great aunt, Nano. Michael is happily working in the stables in the Great House and is even riding in races. Peggy (I have such a spot for this lovely girl!) is still struggling to find her place and dreams in a land that hasn’t quite embraced her.

Ireland is in turmoil – rents are escalating for tenant farmers like Eily and her neighbours and the threat of eviction is ever looming. We see much of this through the eyes of Mary Brigid, Eily’s daughter – landlords are heartlessly throwing tenants out of the only homes they have ever known and like Mary Brigid, we worry and wonder where they will go and how they will manage. Michael, in training to be a horseman, loves his work, but his happiness is short-lived. He finds himself on his own again when the property where he works is sold following a fire. He has no place to go except back to Eily’s farm. The O’Driscolls must now rely on their ingenuity if they are to survive in post-famine Ireland.

Peggy, meanwhile in Boston, is acutely lonely – she is trapped in drudgery and her two friends are moving on. Kitty, her fellow maid, has moved on to serve in another house and Sarah, her beloved friend is moving West to better her health and prospects. James, Sarah’s brother, proposes to Peggy and asks her to come along. Despite her dire circumstances, Peggy is unwilling to settle and wants a true soul mate.

You will find yourself rooting for these brave siblings. They are a tough lot – the kind who just grit their teeth and roll up their sleeves no matter what life throws at them. They are confronted with heartbreak and struggle at every turn and yet, even when they have barely anything to give, they reach out and help one another. This is what I found most heartwarming about this story – their undeniably strong love and their abundant hope.

This book may be for slightly older readers simply because the characters deal with more adult issues like politics, employment and marriage. My girls and I enjoyed the journey with the O’Driscolls and we formed such an attachment to the characters. This story ends on a beautiful note – there is finally the promise of better times!

Wildflower Girl

Wildflower Girl by Marita Conlon-McKenna is the sequel to Under the Hawthorne Tree. (You can read my review here.) This book sees Eily, Michael and Peggy alive and well six years later in Castletaggart. Aunt Lena is now dead and the girls and Aunt Nano try to eke out a living at the bake shop. However, times are hard – many inhabitants of Castletaggart have either died in the Great Famine or have left.

Aunt Lena’s landlord decides to sell his property and move to Dublin. This essentially means that the family will be all but homeless, and it was indeed a bleak time in their village and Ireland. The landlord offers to pay for the family to go to America and this seems to offer some hope for a new start. However, Nano is too old to travel; Eily accepts a marriage proposal and Michael gets a job in a stable. Young Peggy, all of thirteen, decides to take her chances and migrate for a better life. What else is left for her otherwise?

As the family prepares for the impending separation, the grief is poignantly described. You can’t help but think of the larger picture as well – the mass exodus saw the population of Ireland drop by some twenty-five percent. One million people died of starvation or disease and another million emigrated. I read elsewhere that the famine contributed to the decline in the use of Gaelic as well – West Ireland, where Gaelic was at its strongest, was also the hardest hit in terms of deaths and emigration.

Peggy braves horrifying conditions on the month-long journey across the Atlantic. The poor passengers endure sea-sickness, cabin fever and wretchedly awful meals. Peggy survives this ordeal with the help of a friend, Sarah.

Life isn’t much easier in the promised land – the new immigrants are looked down upon and frequently taken advantage of. Peggy gets a job in a lodging house but is abused by the drunken proprietor. As a maid later in a large house, she toils endlessly and is not even given facilities for a bath. Joy for the homesick Peggy is visiting Sarah on her days off and sitting amongst the wildflowers that remind her of home.

I really enjoyed this second instalment of the Children of the Famine series. My daughters were truly moved by the courage of Peggy who left home for a strange land at such a young age. It was such a different time then… a time when children had to grow up fast and hard. We were hooked and looked forward to final book in the series.

Do check out my review of Fields of Home.

Under the Hawthorn Tree

I first discovered this gem of a book by Marita Conlon-McKenna quite by accident and almost gave it a miss – it was such a ragged copy! I got it for a mere 50 rupees in a used bookshop in Islamabad. This award-winning novel deals with the the Great Irish Famine that ravaged Ireland in the 1840s. The story centres around the O’Driscolls, an average Irish family who are tenant farmers, dependent on potatoes as their main source of food. Tragedy strikes in the form of “the Blight” – a disease that destroys the potato crops – and what ensues is extensive starvation.

Eily (who is 12), Michael (10) and Peggy (7) O’Driscoll have coped with heartbreak upon heartbreak. Their parents left to find work, but have gone missing and their baby sister Bridget is dead and buried under the hawthorn tree. (It is said that in Irish mythology, the hawthorn is linked with the otherworld.) All around them, farmers are one by one being evicted by landowners. Surrounded by devastation and the threat of being sent to the workhouse, the children are determined to survive and stay together.

Armed with nothing but courage and love, they embark on a perilous journey across Ireland to find their great-aunts, Nano and Lena, whom they have only heard about in their mother’s stories. The children sleep in the open and forage for food in the wild and in the farms of dead tenants. They are confronted with death at every turn. They see bodies of those who died with no one to mourn or pray over them and they see the living dead – those so traumatised that they are but shells of their former selves.

When the O’Driscoll children arrive in Ballycarbery, they see the ships loaded with food bound for England. It is a painful and bitter pill to swallow – the landlords were making money while their countrymen were falling dead from starvation. Indeed, that is the irony of those horrific years – it was only the potato crop that failed; wheat, oats and meat were in excellent supply but they were shipped out to England. It is said that a million and a half people died during these dark years and another million emigrated.

Read about how Eily, Michael and Peggy push every fibre of their being to stay alive and find a better home. This book is part of the Children of the Famine trilogy. The other books in the series are Wildflower Girl and Fields of Home. This series is very special to me because I have such lovely memories of reading them with my girls many winters ago.

If you are keen on doing a unit study, guides are available at O’Brien Press. I’ve also done a class entitled Ending Hunger at the close of my history of food co-op. If you are interested in my resources, please leave a comment below.