Here, There Be Dragons

Many years ago I got lost in James A. Owen’s Here, There Be Dragons and its sequels. At the time I was reading solely for my own enjoyment and found the series to be exciting, wholesome, and a fantastic literary puzzle for me to solve. When my well-read teen book club readers begged for more…

Her Father’s Daughter

I wonder if Gene Stratton-Porter’s success went to her head. She was always opinionated, but in Her Father’s Daughter, she reaches her height of preachiness. If it were only that, it wouldn’t be an insurmountable aspect of the story. We put up with a bit of that from other beloved authors. In this book, Stratton-Porter…

Beauty

Beauty Robin McKinley This will be a summer of reading, rereading, makings lists, and mercilessly shortening them as I plan literature courses for the coming fall.  Over the years, I have seen Beauty, by Robin McKinley, on so many lists of good books that I thought it was high time I read it.  I believe…

The Great Train Robbery

On May 15, 1855, the crime of the century was perpetrated by turning lead into gold. Enacting a highly sophisticated bait and switch, Edward Agar, William Pierce, Jeremy Forsyth, and James Burgess were able to steal £12,000 in gold which was being transported from London to Paris. This highly publicized crime, the Great Gold Robbery,…

Ronia The Robber’s Daughter

Many years ago I read Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren and disliked it. There was something about Pippi’s tone that most people found to be hilarious, but which I found to be troubling. After buying and reading aloud several Pippi books, I finally gave myself permission to acknowledge my concerns about Pippi’s disrespectful attitude towards…