Paddock’s Picks

Editor’s note:  Anita Paddock’s review of books we should read are scheduled to appear on the second Friday of each month. Enjoy.

review by Anita Paddock
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It’s Christmas time again, and the Miller Branch Library is beautifully decorated for the holidays. In our children’s section, we have a plethora of Christmas books, many that are as familiar as Grandma’s apron, but there are many excellent ones that you might not know about. The art work in the following books are as lovely as the stories.

“Christmas in the Trenches” by John McCutcheon with illustrations by Henri Sorensen is the story of a cold December night in 1914.

A grandfather in Liverpool, England, sits with his grandchildren in front of a cozy fire on Christmas Eve. His grandchildren ask about his favorite Christmas memory. He tells them that it was when he was a soldier in World War I.

Allied soldiers and German soldiers were fighting over a muddy stretch of French land.  While the battle subsided, and each side was waiting for the other to make a move,  English soldiers heard singing.  They realized it was a German Christmas carol.

The English sang back to the Germans, “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen.” And then both sides sang in unison, “Silent Night.”

Before long, the Germans approached with a white flag and a Christmas tree adorned with lighted candles. The soldiers showed each other pictures of their families and exchanged small tins of food. One Englishman had a soccer ball, and a game of soccer ensued.

When dawn broke, the soldiers returned to their side of the trench. For a few hours, there were no thoughts of war.

Although this story told by a grandfather to his grandchildren is fiction, it is based on real events that took place between the Allied forces and the German army in 1914 when they were locked in a stalemate over a piece of ground the size of two football fields.  More information can be found at this website.

Eve Bunting’s book, “Train to Somewhere,” with illustrations by Ronald Himler, is about Marianne who was placed in a New York orphanage by her mother who left her with the words: “I’m going West to make a new life for us. Then I’ll come for you.”

When Marianne asks when her mother is coming back to get her, she promises that it will be “before Christmas.”

Marianne  waits for her mother for many Christmases, but she never comes. And now, Marianne is going West on The Orphan Train.

From the mid-1850’s until the mid 1920’s, 100,000 homeless children were sent by train from New York City to small towns and farms in the Midwest in hopes of being adopted. This was called “placing out.”

In “Train to Somewhere,” Marianne looks for her mother at every train station where their train stops. Men and women from nearby towns board the train and inspect the children. They choose the one they want and take him or her home, whether to be treated kindly as a new member of the family or treated unkindly and made to work in the fields.

Marianne is the last one placed. An older couple, the man tall and skinny and the woman short and fat, tells Marianne that they really wanted a boy, but that they “like girls just fine.” Marianne realizes that her mother is not ever coming for her. She gives the old woman a gift of a white feather that she took from her mother’s hair. The old woman places it in the brim of her old hat, where it nestles, as if it always belonged there.

For more information on the Orphan Train, come to the program at the Main Library on Sunday afternoon (Dec. 19). This program is one that has been previously performed on PBS, and it is excellent. It comes from a humanities grant the Fort Smith Public Library received.

“The Christmas We Moved to the Barn” is written by Alexandra Day, who is best known for her Carl books. It’s beautifully illustrated by Cooper Edens. The pictures tell the story of a family who received a letter in the mail telling them that they had to be out of their rented home by Christmas Eve. The mother has a plan. She, her two daughters, and their 12 animals will move to the barn. It’s great fun to look at the pictures and see how the family moves in the middle of a snow storm and celebrates Christmas in the barn.

This book enables readers to be creative and make up words that will tell the story in the way he or she sees it. It also allows the parents or grandparents a chance to rest their vocal cords by saying, “Now you tell me how you think the daughters will move the piano in the snow.”

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Louise Turner recently retired as children’s librarian for the Fort Smith Public Library. She knows children’s books better than anyone I know, and I frequently turn to her for advice on books for adults, as well as children.

Louise has loved books for as long as she can remember.  Her early favorites were the Nancy Drew mysteries and horse stories like “Thunderhead” and “My Friend Flicka.”  She remembers crying over “Smoky, the Cow Horse.”

“A Child’s Garden of Verses” introduced her to poetry, and she has loved poetry ever since.

Louise says she likes to visit old friends at Christmas: Eudora Welty’s story, “A Worn Path” and Truman Capote’s “A Christmas Memory” are just two of her friends.

Louise is currently reading “Dog of the South” by Charles Portis.

“I intended to re-read “True Grit,” another book by the same author, in anticipation of the movie by the Coen brothers,” she says. “Both books are so good that it was hard to decide which to read first.”