VVMBookBlog

There’s something fascinating about the real-life story of how teacher Anne Sullivan was able to Helen to some basic discipline while beginning the process of connecting hand-spelled wordsteach Helen Keller, who was deaf and blind, how to learn and communicate words and ideas. Miss Spitfire is a fictional account of that story but based on real letters from Anne Sullivan.

Anne Sullivan had her own difficult life as a child and problems with her eyes which eventually brought her to the Perkins School for the Blind. From there she was recommended to the Keller family as someone who could help them with their daughter, Helen. This book gives a day-to-day look at what that first month with Helen must have been like as Anne introduces  to communication and language.  Helen’s wild out-of-control behavior at the start would be too much for most people to deal with, but Anne’s patience with Helen, and her courage standing up to Helen’s very permissive parents, helped lead to the miracle of teaching Helen to communicate.

How do you teach about words without using words or sounds?  It’s all pretty amazing!

There’s an old movie on TV every once in a while and it’s called “The Bridge Over the River Kwai.” It takes place in Thailand during World War II after the Japanese have invaded. The Japanese are forcing the British prisoner-of-war soldiers to build the Thailand-Burma Railway, all while keeping them in horrible living conditions, usually in cages placed out in the stifling sun.

So now here’s Elephant Run about World War II with the Japanese threatening to invade Burma. Nick, 14-years-old, was living with his mother in London, but the Germans were bombing London and it was decided that Nick would be safer living with his dad on the family teak plantation in Burma. [Teak is a type of tropical hardwood and Burma is now called Myanmar.]

As soon as Nick arrived at the plantation, called Hawk’s Nest, Nick’s dad wasn’t around much and Nick could sense that something was wrong. And while out exploring a little on his first day there, trying to find out what was going on, Nick had a run-in with Hannibal, one of the elephants that are used on the plantation to harvest lumber. Because of the imminent danger, Nick’s dad was determined to get Nick and Mya, the daughter of one of the plantation workers, out of Burma to safety. And then the adventure begins!

Because Burma had been under British rule, some of the native Burmese people sided with the invading Japanese and turning against Nick’s father. He was taken prisoner by the Japanese and Hawk’s Nest became a headquarters building for the Japanese. Now what has going to happen to Nick, the loyal people in the village, and the elephants, including Hannibal, that had worked so hard for the plantation.  Burmese people were forced to work on airstrips and railways for the Japanese, as were the British prisoners-of-war (just like the movie!) but they were forced to live in horrible, and very unhealthy, living conditions.
Lots of twists and turns and surprises that kept me reading to the end. Again, I learned more about a time and place in history than I knew before, and it made the events in the “River Kwai” make even more sense. World War II truly was a “world” war when we realize just how many countries were affected by events during and after the war.

Have you read From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler? Well, this is by the same author but you might have to do a little more work to read this book!

The main characters are 6th grader Amedeo who has just moved to St. Malo, Florida, with his mother, and moved to a house next door to Mrs. Zender, an eccentric, elderly, formerly well-to-do opera singer, who was in the process of selling her things so she could move into a retirement home. Mrs. Wilcox, with the help of her son, 6th grader William, has been hired to inventory, sell, and dispose of Mrs. Zender’s things. Amedeo has a secret wish to gain fame by discovering something big, and as he’s helping William and Mrs. Wilcox, that might just happen!

So many times when I read a historical fiction book, I learn about something I never knew before or knew very little about. In this case the issue concerned something the Nazis did during their rise to power in Germany. In order to maintain the purity of the Aryan race, Hitler determined that all Modern Art, which they called Degenerate Art, was a bad influence on Germans, especially if the artists were Jewish, and that the art should be destroyed or at least removed from museums. These artists included name like Marc Chagall, Max Ernst, and Paul Klee. Many times the paintings were stolen and after the war were recovered and returned to the rightful owners. And that’s the issue that comes up in this book.

Through a few too many coincidences, members of Amedeo’s family and members of Mrs. Zender’s family are connected by the issue of Degenerate Art from Germany, but that way that the author develops the story makes it very compelling to read to the end.

The vocabulary is very complex, as are the references to cultural items or historical events, so that’s what I mean when I say that you have to do a little work to read this. As with most of Konigsburg’s books, the reader needs to be ready for a challenge and open to learning things along the way.

If you’ve heard me do booktalks, you know that I’m really interested in books about the people who attempt to climb Mt. Everest and everything they have to do to get there.  Well, I’ve found a new interest in books–Shackleton’s attempt to get to and cross Antarctica, and the series of unfortunate events that happened in the course of the journey.

In this fictional account, 18-year-old Perce Blackborow happened to be in Buenos Aires when Shackleton was hiring his crew for the trip south.  Needing a job and wanting some adventure, Perce decided to hide out on the ship until they were on their way and too far out to bring him back.  So now he had to prove himself to be a contributing member of the crew and worth the space and supplies he would require.

While this is a fiction story, it is based on the actual Shackleton expedition and many of the people who made up the crew, including the real Perce Blackborow.  A few months into the journey, the ship encountered the first sighting of pack ice that would slow their journey, and that would be just the beginning of 2 years of desperate attempts to survive the cold and almost certain death.

I started reading this on the first Friday of spring break and I just had to keep reading until I finished it.  It’s so amazing what people are able to go through under the worst of conditions.  It’s a good thing no one is depending on me to do any world explorations, but I really enjoy reading about them.  And, BTW, we also have several non-fiction books on the same topic.

Theo has always been interested in space, especially now in 1977 when NASA will be launching the Voyager 2 space probe that will travel to Jupiter and beyond. His science teacher adds to his interest by asking each class member to come up with one thing or idea that would explain us to another space being.

His quest to come up with just the right statement leads him to try to explain some other mysteries in his life, like why his father never came home from fighting in Vietnam. Since it’s 1977, most soldiers from Vietnam should have come home unless they were POWs (prisoners of war) or MIA (missing in action). So maybe that’s the explanation! He doesn’t get any answers from his family because it’s a subject too painful for his mother to talk about. But how about his grandmother, JeeBee (Grandmother Bernadette)? Maybe she can help him out.

Readers interested in space and also readers interested in life after the Vietnam War will like this book. It’s a fast read but deep enough to help the reader feel Theo’s frustration and his mother’s sadness.