Category: Something Wonderful

There are plenty of beloved books that people pull out at Christmas, books like A Christmas Carol or The Polar Express. Here are three that you may not have read. The newest is 60 years old and still in print. The other two are out-of-print but can be found for less than $20 each.

The Story of Holly & Ivy

The Story of Holly & Ivy (1957) almost promises that all will be well with its very first sentence: “This is a story about wishing.” Of course, not all wishes come true, but you know right away that in this story, wishes have power. It’s about a doll, Holly, who wishes for a little girl, and an orphan girl, Ivy, who wishes to spend Christmas with a family of her own. The doll and the girl meet each other through a shop window, and both know they belong together. There are obstacles along the way — especially in the form of a very nasty toy owl, a villain that terrifies the other toys in the shop. But Godden promised you that this was a story about wishing, and so you know that Holly and Ivy will overcome everything that comes between them.

I’ve written about Godden’s doll books before. Similar themes pop up among them, including wishing. More than once in Miss Happiness and Miss Flower, Miss Flower frets “What can we do?” Miss Happiness responds, “Wish.” You might say that Godden was the Walt Disney of doll stories.

There are multiple editions of this book. I recommend the one with Barbara Cooney’s illustrations. It’s currently in print.

The Doll in the Window

The Doll in the Window (1953) by Pamela Bianco presumably was illustrated by the author. If not, it’s a pity that the illustrator wasn’t credited, because the pictures are part of what makes the book special.

This is another story about a girl and a doll in a shop window, but it’s very different from Godden’s book. Victoria, the oldest of six girls, is saving her coins to buy her sisters Christmas presents. When she falls in love with a doll in the toy shop, she has a dilemma: buy herself the doll, or buy presents for her sisters. The story is simple and offers a clear message about buying gifts for yourself, but one character, a Cub Scout, saves the story from becoming too moralistic. Although his selflessness is offered as a contrast to Victoria’s selfish wishes, he also brings some much-needed humor to the book.

“Why are you crying?” he asked.

“I’m not crying,” said Victoria. To change the subject, she pointed to the beautiful doll. “She’s pretty. Isn’t she?”

“Yes,” said the little boy. “She’s as pretty as anything, and she really flies!”

“Really flies?” said Victoria. “What do you mean?”

“Oh!” said the little boy, laughing. “I meant the blue airplane.”

“I meant the doll,” said Victoria. “I hadn’t even noticed the airplane.”

The little boy looked at the beautiful doll. “She’s pretty, too,” he said. “A streamlined doll.”

Of the three books in this post, I understand why this one is out of print. It’s a bit simplistic and right on the edge of being too preachy. Still, it’s worth hunting down for the story and the illustrations.

The Christmas Anna Angel

The Christmas Anna Angel (1944) was written by Newbery Award-winner Ruth Sawyer and illustrated by another Newberry winner, Kate Seredy. It’s a shame this gorgeous book is no longer in print. Sawyer takes us to war-torn Hungary, where Anna dreams of Christmas cakes, although she is told that the shortage of flour means there will be no cakes this year.

The children always felt very brave while they were looking through the windows; but when St. Nicholas sprang out of his sleigh, when his hand lifted the latch and he stepped inside the door — then they scampered like frightened mice into corners.

The Christmas saint was big and towering. His bishop’s hat with the golden cross reached almost to the rafters. His bunda was the most beautiful the children had ever seen, with colored pictures of angels and stars, of shepherds and mangers. He pointed to Anna: “You, Anna, have you been a good girl?”

Anna’s voice squeaked like a little mouse: “I haven’t been too good. I have washed the dishes and said my prayers; but I did take the frog to school and put it in Minka Czurczor’s desk — to scare her.”

“Not too good — but then — not too bad.” St. Nicholas looked at Anna’s mother, then back at Anna: “One present is deserved. What shall it be?”

Anna answered quickly: “One Christmas cake — shaped like a little clock. Please, St. Nicholas.”

“I have already told you,” Matyas Rado began. They were all looking at Anna. They were expected her to change her Christmas wish. That seemed too much to ask of anyone.

The Christmas Anna Angel is not to everyone’s taste. One reviewer on Goodreads called the book “weird.” Another said “it was too long and wordy.” Nevertheless, I heartily recommend it. I’ve read it over and over since I was a child. If you only seek out one of the three books in this post, make it this one.

I’ve already mentioned that I like the notion of letting books inspire your life. When I was young, there were two books in particular that filled me with dreams of dolls with interesting wardrobes and furniture. I’m not very good with my hands, so the dreams came to nothing. But maybe the books will inspire you or your children. If not, they’re good stories in and of themselves.

The Fairy Doll is one of Rumer Godden’s lesser-known books. A prolific British author, Godden is best known for Black Narcissus and The Greengage Summer, as well as for many of her children’s books about dolls. Hitty, which won the Newbery Medal in 1930, is by Rachel Field. She was also author of Prayer for a Child, which won the Caldecott Medal in 1945.

The Fairy Doll is a short book about Elizabeth, the youngest of four children. Next to her brothers and sisters, Elizabeth feels klutzy and stupid. They order her about and tease her mercilessly. One Christmas her great-grandmother proclaims that Elizabeth needs a good fairy, just as the family’s tree topper — a fairy doll — falls off the tree.

Elizabeth uses a bicycle basket, moss, and sawdust to make a home for her fairy doll. Then she fills it with a seashell bed and other things.

She asked Father to cut her two bits from a round, smooth branch; they were three inches high and made a table and a writing desk. There were toadstools for stools; stuck in the sawdust, they stood upright. On the table were acorn cups and bowls, and small leaf plates. Over the writing desk was a piece of dried-out honeycomb; it was exactly like the rack of pigeonholes over Father’s desk. Fairy Doll could keep her letters there, and she could write letters; Elizabeth found a tiny feather and asked Godfrey to cut its point to make a quill pen like the one Mother had, and for writing paper there were petals of a Christmas rose.

As an adult, I realize that Fairy Doll’s home would be relatively easy to make. When I was a child, I was both enchanted and intimidated by the idea. Since I didn’t have a fairy doll to make such a home for, I never even attempted it. But I read the book over and over again, entranced by the story of a child who begins to grow up after acquiring a seemingly magical doll.

In sewing they began tray-cloths in embroidery stitches; perhaps it was from making the small-sized fairy things that Elizabeth’s fingers had learned to be neat; the needle went in and out, plock, plock, plock, and there was not a trace of blood. “You’re getting quite nimble,” said Miss Thrupp, and she told the class, “Nimble means clever and quick.”

“Does she means I’m clever?” Elizabeth asked the little boy next to her. She could not believe it.

I haven’t read all of Godden’s doll books, but there is at least one more among them that inspires the same sort of doll-house dreams. Like The Fairy Doll, Miss Happiness and Miss Flower involves an awkward child in a family of six. In this case, the child is Nona, a girl who has been sent from India to England to live with her aunt, uncle, and three cousins. She is sad and fearful, but then a package of Japanese dolls arrives. Nona blossoms as she works to make the dolls their own house. My original copy, which I no longer have, had a floor plan for a Japanese doll house. Even without that, a handy person could make a good start on such a house based on the information in the book.

Hitty concerns a little wooden doll that travels from owner to owner over the course of 100 years. Hitty is lost and found, hidden away and found again, over and over. In India, she acquires a coral necklace; in Philadelphia, her young Quaker owner sews her appropriately plain clothing. At one point, a woman uses her to show off her skills as a seamstress. Through it all, Hitty retains her original chemise with her name cross-stitched on it. Although Hitty sometimes has a few belongings in addition to her clothes, such as a cradle and a sea chest, it was her wardrobe that captured my imagination when I was young. Again, nothing came of it, but I wanted to dress one of my dolls in all of the outfits that Hitty had during her first hundred years.

[H]ow she could sew! I am sure no doll ever underwent so great a change in two short weeks. No butterfly emerged more resplendent from its cocoon than I from the hands of Miss Milly Pinch. Except for my corals, only my chemise remained of my former wardrobe. I doubt if this would have been kept had she not thought it a remarkably fine piece of linen cloth. How is it possible for my poor pen to do justice to my new attire — to the watered-silk dress with draped skirt, fitted waist, and innumerable bows? How can I describe the blue velvet pelisse embroidered with garlands no bigger than pinheads? How tell of the little feathered hat and muff of white eiderdown?

I’ll warn potential readers that it had been a long time since I’d read Hitty when I sat down to write this. As I skimmed through it, I found that it was full of stereotypes that I’d managed to forget. There has been one time when I chose not to write about a book because its contents were not what I remembered. In this case, I’m willing to write Field’s stereotypes off as ignorant, not hateful.

If you love dolls or have a child who loves dolls, or if you enjoy making things, consider picking up The Fairy Doll or Hitty… or Miss Happiness and Miss Flower, for that matter. All of these books are easily obtainable online, if not in bookstores. Enjoy the stories and, if you wish, allow the books to inspire you to create something for a doll.

I recently visited a few national parks in Utah: Arches, Canyonlands, and Capitol Reef. While I there, I read Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey, a sort of love letter to the area through which I traveled.

In some ways, it’s not a surprise that I loved the book. I spent part of my childhood in the southwestern United States. Books about that area speak to me. I also love books that touch on solitude, such as Thoreau’s Walden, and books with a sense of place, such as Blue Highways by William Least Heat-Moon. Abbey’s book is full of both of these things.

On the other hand, Abbey is not the sort of writer I feel I could bond with if I met him in person — an impossibility, since he is dead. There are many books that give me a sense of kinship with the writer. (I suppose this sort of thing plagues popular writers.) If I find myself often saying, “Yes, me too!” while I read, then I begin to see the author as someone with whom I could be friends.

Desert Solitaire is different. Although I love the same landscapes that Abbey loved and have other things in common with him, the Abbey I encountered in the pages of this book was a crank. To some degree, I understand why he was a crank. He loved the wilderness of the southwest. He was horrified by over-development and the failure of others to appreciate things as they were. But while I understand and even sympathize with that point of view, I still don’t find him very likable.

His dark sense of humor doesn’t help. I’m not against dark humor, but I almost believe that Abbey didn’t really like people. In his chapter about tourism and national parks, he wrote:

A venturesome minority [of tourists] will always be eager to set off on their own, and no obstacles should be placed in their path; let them take risks, for godsake, let them get lost, sunburnt, stranded, drowned, eaten by bears, buried alive under avalanches — that is the right and privilege of any free American. But the rest, the majority, most of them new to the out-of-doors, will need and welcome assistance, instruction and guidance. Many will not know how to saddle a horse, read a topographical map, follow a trail over slickrock, memorize landmarks, build a fire in rain, treat snakebite, rappel down a cliff, glissade down a glacier, read a compass, find water under sand, load a burro, splint a broken bone, bury a body, patch a rubber boat, portage a waterfall, survive a blizzard, avoid lightning, cook a porcupine, comfort a girl during a thunderstorm, predict the weather, dodge falling rock, climb out of a box canyon, or pour piss out of a boot. Park rangers know these things, or should know them, or used to know them and can relearn. They will be needed.

While some of the things on his list of what tourists don’t know made me smile, there’s a small part of me that wonders if he isn’t a bit serious about the more ridiculous things on the list. “Well, he’s dead. Let’s bury him here and move on.” I fear I am too earnest and value others too much to be entirely at home with Abbey’s humor.

I’m even more bothered by his hypocrisy. I’m sure we’ve all failed to live up to who we claim to be. I know I have. Still, Abbey shocked me a bit — although maybe he was lying, indulging in more of his odd sense of humor. At any rate, in one chapter he wrote:

Arches National Monument is meant to be among other things a sanctuary for wildlife — for all forms of wildlife. It is my duty as a park ranger to protect, preserve and defend all living things within the park boundaries, making no exceptions. Even if this were not the case I have personal convictions to uphold. Ideals, you might say. I’m a humanist; I’d rather kill a man than a snake.

I took him at his word about wildlife (and assumed he was joking about people). But in the next chapter, he wrote about killing a cottontail with a rock — an experiment to see what he was capable of if he were starving.

Abbey did warn readers in his introduction that we might be disturbed. “I quite agree that much of the book will seem coarse, rude, bad-tempered, violently prejudiced, unconstructive — even frankly antisocial in its point of view.” He thought these things would make readers dislike Desert Solitaire. In fact, I enjoyed the book immensely, which is why I’m recommending it to you.

Besides the fact that I like Abbey’s subject matter, I love the way he writes. He is an inspiring, masterful wordsmith. You can sense this in his introduction:

For my own part I am pleased enough with surfaces — in fact they alone seem to me to be of much importance. Such things for example as the grasp of a child’s hand in your own, the flavor of an apple, the embrace of friend or lover, the silk of a girl’s thigh, the sunlight on rock and leaves, the feel of music, the bark of a tree, the abrasion of granite and sand, the plunge of clear water into a pool, the face of the wind — what else is there? What else do we need?

He and I disagree philosophically, because I do believe in something beyond the surface. But we both appreciate the beauty of those surfaces, and I love the way he described that beauty.

I also think that he had some great suggestions for reforming national parks. In the chapter I mentioned earlier on tourism and national parks, he recommended doing away with automobile traffic. You get to the park, park your car, and proceed on horseback or bicycle or foot or even, if you must, by shuttle bus.

I’d love to see his ideas implemented. I can’t claim that my family hasn’t driven into many a national park. We have. But we don’t really see the park until we get out of the car and actually interact with it, hiking along a trail, attending a ranger-led viewing of the night sky, taking things at a pace that allows us to truly observe our surroundings and not only see but smell, hear, and (when appropriate) even touch and taste things.

And what’s good for the visitors is even better for the place we visit. Significantly reducing motorized traffic into the park would reduce emissions within the park and prevent some of the damage caused by people who insist on driving where they shouldn’t.

If you read Desert Solitaire, and I hope you do, you may find that you like not only the book but Abbey himself. And perhaps, were he to be at one of those hypothetical dinners populated with people living or dead, I would find that I was wrong about him, that I actually liked him very much. But, whoever Abbey was as a person, he was an excellent writer with a deep love of wilderness and the desert and that alone means you should not neglect this book. That goes double if you are traveling to “Abbey country” anytime soon.