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You may have heard about the recent Pew Research Center study that shows millennials (born roughly between 1980 and 1995) fleeing Christian churches to occupy the ranks of the “nones,” those professing no religious affiliation. But how much do you know about the decade that gave birth to the millennial generation?
Thirty-seven years ago, Marcia Brown published her first picture book for children: The Little Carousel.* On June 28, 1983, she received her third Caldecott Medal for Shadow. Those years from 1946 to 1983 have encompassed one of the most distinguished careers in American children’s books. That her latest book has received such a signal honor and that she is the first illustrator to be awarded the medal three times are evidences of the undiminished vitality and richness of her contribution to the field. It is an uncommon achievement.
The nourishment of such a gift and such an achievement comes from many sources. Marcia grew up in several small towns in upstate New York, one of three daughters in a minister’s family. Everyone in the household loved music and reading, and her father also passed along to her, especially, his joy in using his hands. From childhood Marcia was allowed to use his tools and learned to respect and care for them. And from her own workbench and tools, in later years, have come the wood blocks and linoleum cuts that illustrate such handsome books as Once a Mouse… (1961), How, Hippo! (1969), All Butterflies (1974), and Backbone of the King (1966). Marcia feels that the most important legacy her parents gave her was a deep pleasure in using her eyes — for seeing, rather than merely for looking. Her keen delight in the details of nature and her acute observation of them are evident in all her books — most dramatically, perhaps, in the beautiful photographic nature books Walk with Your Eyes, Listen to a Shape, and Touch Will Tell (all Watts, 1979).
As a college student, Marcia was interested in botany, biology, art, and literature. During summer vacations she worked in Woodstock, New York, at a resort hotel and studied painting with Judson Smith, whose criticism and inspiration have remained an important influence in her life and art. After graduation she taught high school English, directed dramatic productions for a few years, and worked in summer stock. Some years later, she became a puppeteer in New York City and also taught puppetry for the extra-mural department of the University of the West Indies.
When Marcia moved to New York City, her interest in children’s book illustration drew her to work in the Central Children’s Room of The New York Public Library, where she gained invaluable experience in storytelling and an exposure to the library’s large international and historical collections. Here, too, she received encouragement from such outstanding children’s librarians as Anne Carroll Moore, Helen A. Masten, and Maria Cimino.
Marcia’s particular interest in folklore and fairy tales is apparent to anyone familiar with her books. Marcia believes strongly that the classic tales give children images and insights that will stay with them all their lives. To each of these stories she has brought her own special vision, her integrity, and a vitality that speaks powerfully and directly to children.
A very important influence in her life and in her books has been the stimulus of travel — that mind- and eye-stretching jolt out of the usual. Marcia has traveled widely in Europe, Great Britain, Russia, East Africa, the Middle East, and the Far East, including China. If she has a “home away from home,” it is Italy, the country with which she has felt most profoundly in tune. She lived in Italy, off and on, for four years, spending much of her time painting. Felice (1958) and Tamarindo! (1960) are books that grew out of her love for that country and her friendships with Italians. Marcia still writes to friends there, in Italian, and is able to converse with them in the language when she calls them on special occasions. France, too, has a special place in her life, and she spent over a year there; while living in Paris, she studied the flute with a member of the Paris Conservatory Orchestra. On a speaking trip to Hawaii she was so overwhelmed by the incredible beauty of the islands that she returned to spend many months and to do the research that was the basis for one of her most powerful books, Backbone of the King, a retelling of a great Hawaiian hero legend.
In the late 1960s Marcia gave up her long-time residence in New York City and moved to a small town in southeastern Connecticut. For the first time she was able to design and build a studio to fit her needs. It is a large room with a balcony at one end, a high ceiling with two skylights, and areas for doing painting, woodcuts, drawing, photography, sewing, and flute playing. The house is surrounded by hemlocks, and the woods nearby are filled with possums, raccoons, deer, squirrels, and birds. Not far from her property is the small river that provided the inspiration and the evocative winter photographs for her only filmstrip, The Crystal Cavern, published by Lyceum Productions in 1974. The plants, trees, wildflowers, and animals — and the changing seasons — are a constant source of stimulus and delight. Her greatest problem is finding time for all the interests she wants to pursue at home and also for going to New York to attend operas, ballets, concerts, and museums — and for traveling.
Most days, Marcia gets up early and spends some time reading while she has her breakfast. Just now, she is interested in the recently published book about a journey through the byways of America, Blue Highways, by William Least Heat Moon (Atlantic-Little). She finds many of the conversations the author had with residents of small, out-of-the-way villages the stuff of living folklore. Later, she might go to her studio and practice Chinese brush painting, a technique which first interested her in 1977 and which she began to study seriously, with a teacher, two years ago. Her paintings of lotuses, bamboo, plum blossoms, birds, and dramatic landscapes fill the walls of her living room and studio. She has begun to exhibit, along with other artists practicing the technique, and has sold several paintings.
If she has a sewing project, as she often does, Marcia will spend time on the studio balcony, where she has set up a sewing area. And each day, she faithfully practices her flute. She feels very fortunate to be studying with John Solum, a much-esteemed concert flutist, who lives in a nearby town. When she sews or paints, or works on illustrations, there is always music — as necessary to her as food. Her love of music and the dance and her deep understanding of them perhaps account, in part, for the grace, rhythm, and strength of her writing and illustration. Most certainly they are profound influences. Because her work requires solitude and long stretches of concentration, she often does not see as much of her friends as she would like to, but she accepts this fact as a price that must be paid.
Marcia Brown’s books have unquestionably stood the test of time. Nearly all of them are still in print — a certain proof of their enduring hold on generations of children. Never has Marcia been interested in passing fashions in children’s book illustration. She has worked in many media but not for the sake of variety; rather, she has always let the story and her feeling for it determine the medium and the style. Her particular vision and her uncompromising integrity have been rewarded in the past: two Caldecott Medals (for Cinderella in 1955 and for Once a Mouse… in 1962), six Caldecott Honor books, two nominations for the Hans Christian Andersen Award, the University of Southern Mississippi Medallion for Distinguished Service to Children’s Literature, and the Regina Medal. Now, after so many years of creating memorable children’s books, Marcia stands in a unique position — one abundantly deserved. It is gratifying that the children’s librarians of America, the dedicated people who bring children and books together, have honored her in so special a way.
*Except where another publisher is indicated, all books mentioned are published by Scribner.
From the August 1983 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.
This is an absolutely wonderful coming-of-age novel by a writer who cannot put a foot wrong. David Mitchell doesn’t just get inside the head of a thirteen year old boy but brings teenage adolescence to life like I have never read before. David Mitchell captures the innocence, the naivety, the pain and the joy so […]
paying homage to my favorite doll from childhood...the cheerfully colorful and cute Rainbow Brite...and her BFF, Starlite.
this doll was everything to me as a little girl and i am so NOT a doll person (ironic, considering how girly i am...). stuffed animals were always my *thing*. elephants, to be exact. still love them...lots!
anyhoo...i wanted to do a little tribute to sweet Rainbow Brite and Starlite (loved that stuffed horse too). so here she is.....and i'm so loving working with all the colors of the spectrum here. oh, and it's the year of the horse too. perfect.
another irony, did not like the '80s. at all. especially the music. but i loved this doll...:)
The question is not whether Red Dawn is a good movie. It is a bad movie. As the crazed ghost of Louis Althusser might say, it has always already been a bad movie. The question is: What kind of bad movie is it?
(Aside: The question I have received most frequently when I've told people I went to see Red Dawn was actually: "Does Chris Hemsworth take off his shirt?" The answer, I'm sorry to say, is no. All of the characters remain pretty scrupulously clothed through the film. The movie's rated PG-13, a designation significant to its predecessor, so all it can do is show a lot of carnage, not carnality. May I suggest Google Images?)
My companion and I found Red Dawn to be an entertaining bad movie. I feel no shame in admitting that the film entertained me; I'm against, in principal, the concept of "guilty pleasures" and am not much interested in shaming anybody for what are superficial, even autonomic, joys. (That doesn't mean we can't examine our joys and pleasures.) No generally-well-intentioned, "diversity"-loving, pinko commie bourgeois armchair lefty like me can go into a movie like Red Dawn and expect to see a nuanced study of geopolitics. I knew what I was in for. I got what I expected: a right-wing action-adventure movie based on a yellow peril premise. Red Dawn is an unironic remake of a 1984 movie predicated on paranoid right-wing fantasies; it's not aspiring to even the most basic Starship Troopers-levels of intertextuality and metacommentary. There's none of the winking at the audiences that fills so many other 1980s remakes and homages (e.g. Expendables 2, which relies on the audience's knowledge of its stars' greatest hits — the only convincing performance in the movie is that of Jean-Claude van Damme, who, apparently overjoyed to be released from the purgatory of straight-to-DVD movies, plays it all for real, and becomes the only element of any interest in the whole thing). The closest Red Dawn comes to acknowledging its position in the cinemasphere happens when it turns the first film's very serious male-bonding moment of drinking deer blood into a practical joke, giving the characters a few rare laughs.
What are we supposed to feel good about in this movie? The 1984 Red Dawn was not even remotely a feel-good movie, but it gave us a space in which to feel proud of an idea of America that could survive even the most devastating attack by the Soviet Union (and its Latin American minions). It made a point of showing concrete objective correlatives for the abstract idea that is "American freedom" — the one that was most impressed on me by my father when we first watched Red Dawn together was the scene where Soviet soldiers talk about going to a gun shop to collect the federal Form 4473s, and using them to track down gun owners. This, to my father and many other people, demonstrated exactly why even the most minimal type of registration of guns is not merely annoying, but a threat to freedom. I vividly remember my father saying, "If the Russians come, we burn those damn forms." Red Dawn was not merely an action movie; it was a documentary.
But Red Dawn was a movie made during a time when the U.S. was not officially at war. It appeared in U.S. theatres less than a year after the invasion of Grenada, and just at the time when the actions that would eventually become the Iran-Contra Scandal were making their way into the public consciousness. The hawks of the Reagan administration needed the public to be both patriotic and fearful of the Red Menace, because otherwise it was difficult to justify the massive transfer of wealth into the Pentagon. Red Dawn did that better than any other movie of the time. (For much more on this background, see the article by J. Hoberman in the Nov/Dec 2012 issue of Film Comment.)
Now, though? The new Red Dawn comes as the Iraq war is winding down and the war in Afghanistan (our longest) may be nearing some sort of end. (And then, of course, there's Libya.) But these have been wars where we have been invaders fighting insurgents. They have been long, unfocused wars with no clear victory conditions. They began with some popularity and unanimity of public opinion, but the longer they went on, and the more that people learned about them, the less popular they became. They continued because the U.S. military is, while a huge part of the national budget, not a particularly concrete and visible part of everyday life and concern for many Americans. Without the threat of a draft, and with the rise of long-distance and drone strikes, most Americans can ignore the immediate reality of American wars, the hundreds of thousands of deaths and injuries on every side.
It's in what the new Red Dawn makes us attach our feelings of pride, joy, and power to that it really differs from its predecessor, because the idea of America that it presents is neither particularly clear nor the product of much conviction. There are flags and some general genuflecting in the direction of "freedom", but the original Red Dawn offered a vision of how its idea of "freedom" actually works in the world, and what threatens it. There was an attempt at creating a certain amount of plausibility and verisimilitude — one of the advisors to the original film was Alexander Haig, Reagan's former Secretary of State, who worked with writer/director John Milius to craft what seemed to them a relatively realistic invasion scenario, the weapons and vehicles were as realistic as could be accomplished without being able to buy actually Soviet weaponry (the CIA inquired about the tanks after seeing them being moved to the set; later, the Pentagon used images of them to train the guidance systems in spy planes), and the tone is dark, with war presented as hell for both sides. Milius made numerous references to his masculine hero Theodore Roosevelt, and the vision he presented was stark, painful, and apocalyptic, more Hobbesian than Amurrican. It was Panic in Year Zero! by way of The Battle of Algiers.
Ours is the Age of the Tea Party, not the Age of Reagan, and so the new Red Dawn is closer to the ideological vision of The Patriot than that of its original source. The Patriot is the story of a man in Colonial America who doesn't see much point in fighting against the British until his own family is affected, at which time he becomes a psychopathic vengeance machine, and then at the end returns home to a small community not to help build up a new government or create the idea of a common United States, but to become the leader of a little utopian plantation. (He had already been leader of a utopian plantation before the war, because the black people doing work on his property were not actually slaves, but free employees. Really. As William Ross St. George, Jr. wrote in his review (PDF) of the film for the Journal of American History, this must have been "the only such labor arrangement in colonial South Carolina".) What matters in The Patriot is not country or government — all government is portrayed with contempt in the film — but rather self-reliance and, especially, family. Despite the movie's title, it's not about being a patriot, but about being a loyal, strong, independent, and avenging father.
The new Red Dawn, much more than the original, is also a movie about families and fathers. Jed, played originally by Patrick Swayze and in the new film by Thor, is now an Iraq vet who struggled to be a good son to his father and, especially, a good brother to Matt (originally Charlie Sheen, now Josh Peck). Lots of family melodrama is alluded to. The boys don't visit their father in a re-education camp; instead, the Evil Korean Guy (whose name I thought was Captain Joe, but IMDB tells me it's Captain Cho. I prefer my version), who for some unfathomable reason recognizes from the very first moment that Teenagers Are The Enemy (he was probably a high school teacher back home), rounds up their fathers, brings them to the Evil Dead Cabin where the kids had been hiding out, and makes the fathers plead with the kids to come in. Of course, the weak and collaborating mayor pleads with them to give themselves up, but the strong and noble father of Jedmatt (in a much blander performance than the clearly unhinged and perhaps psychopathic man portrayed by Harry Dean Stanton in the original) instead tells them to fight to the death, causing Captain Joe to channel his inner Nguyen Ngoc Loan and shoot him in the head. Oh dad, poor dad. Jed and Matt then go on to learn how to be good brothers to each other, just in time for— Well, you don't want to know the ending, do you? (For a moment, I thought it would turn out to be a movie climaxing with brotherly kisses and fellatio, but, alas, it did not. Well, not exactly. Although the more I think about it...)
We have to talk about the ending, though, because we have to talk about who lives and who dies. The original Red Dawn was not Rambo — while it certainly stirred up feelings of patriotism against the Soviet enemy, and admiration for the U.S. military, its tone isn't all that far away from The Day After. The end is a downer, but it's not nihilistic. We zoom in on a memorial plaque, its words read to us on the soundtrack: "In the early days of World War III, guerrillas, mostly children, placed the names of their lost upon this rock. They fought here alone and gave up their lives, 'so that this nation shall not perish from the earth.'" The memorial asserts that these lives were lost for a great cause, and by quoting the Gettysburg Address, it connects their sacrifice to that of soldiers who fought to preserve not just some idea of Americanism, but the union itself.
The remake turns patriotic tragedy into personal tragedy — Jed is killed just at the moment when he has reconciled with his brother. Toni (Adrianne Palicki in the remake, Jennifer Grey in the original) and Matt both survive in this version, along with many of the other Wolverines. Well, the white Wolverines.
The new Red Dawn isn't just a yellow peril movie, it's a vision of white supremacy. Only one nonwhite Wolverine has much of an identity (Daryl, played by Connor Cruise), and the others die pretty quickly. Finally, Daryl is, without his knowledge, injected with some sort of tracking device that can't be removed from his body, so he's given some supplies and left to wander away, probably to be killed by the North Koreans. Almost all of the white Wolverines survive, presumably with a new understanding of the miraculous powers of their skin color.
Remember what happened to (white) Daryl in 1984? His sleazy father (the mayor) forced him to swallow a tracking device. He knew it was in him. After barely surviving the assault that followed, the Wolverines take him to the top of a freezing mesa with a captured Russian soldier and get ready to execute him. Jed and Matt fight about it, with Matt saying it will make them worse than the Russians. Jed kills the Soviet soldier, but doesn't seem to be able to kill Daryl. Robert, whose experiences have fully brutalized him, shoots Daryl. It's a wrenching, disturbing scene. Again and again, the original Red Dawn says: War is a horrific, destructive experience for everyone involved, and it reduces us to our most animalistic natures — naming the guerrillas Wolverines was not merely the naming of a mascot or a rallying cry, it was a statement of what they had become.
The new Red Dawn doesn't hurt. It's superficially entertaining in a way that the original is not. Sure, it's shocking that Jed dies, but the way that scene is set up and edited highlights the shock, not the pain. In the original Red Dawn, Jed and Matt know they're heading out on a suicide mission. Jed survives a little while longer only because the Cuban Colonel Bella (Ron O'Neal) feels some respect or sympathy for him and is tired of the whole war. Jed1984 kills the Super Nasty Russian Bad Guy, just as Jed2012 kills Capt. Joe (with his father's gun, because they just happen to be in Dad's Police Station!), but the original film then takes the brothers to a frozen park, where, mortally wounded, they sit together on a bench and drift off to eternity.
The new Red Dawn instead puts its concluding weight on the idea that you probably shouldn't trust the black guy, even if he's friendly and well-intentioned. He's probably got a tracking device in his blood. Even though he doesn't want to be, he's a traitor. Best to leave him in the wilderness. This in a movie that begins with a montage showing us that President Obama and his minions are ineffective at defending us from the North Koreans (and their secret Russian puppetmasters).
The original Red Dawn had an unabashed political purpose — it warned us not to let our guard down, it encouraged us to support massive increases in defense spending, it encouraged us to stockpile guns and canned goods. It especially wanted us to call our congresspeople and tell them to support funding for the Contras and similar anti-communist forces. The September 1984 issue of Soldier of Fortune magazine includes an article about Red Dawn's production, particularly its weaponry, that begins: "Military strategists have often discussed the repercussions of a communist takeover of Central America. One worst-case scenario has the Soviet Union training Cubans and Nicaraguans in the offensive use of advanced weapons such as the MiG 25 and T-72 tank." The article ends:
Red Dawn seriously attempts realism. Milius spent $17 million trying to give the American public a taste of what Soviet weaponry, tactics and occupation practices are all about.
Liberal critics will howl about Reagan's deleterious effect on the creative arts and scream that Red Dawn is unabashed saber-rattling propaganda. It sounds like our kind of movie.
Red Dawn opens across the country on 17 August.
So yes, Red Dawn was propaganda in 1984. But it was not merely propaganda; there is cleverness and even humanity to it. It's an action/survival movie, so character development isn't a particular goal, but where it spends it moments of character development are telling. Instead of just building of family melodrama, the original Red Dawn gave humanity to some of the antagonists (particularly Colonel Bella). While the Soviet commanders are cartoons, the Russian soldiers are clearly just as trapped in the horrific logic of war as the Wolverines.
The new Red Dawn also wants to be propaganda, as the opening montage shows us. But there are more subtle connections to not just right-wing militarism, but extremist nuttiness. The key is three letters: EMP.
How do the bad guys invade North America? They wipe out the American defense infrastructure, and apparently the entire American military, by setting off at least one electromagnetic pulse (EMP). Now, EMPs are real. Boeing is even developing an EMP missile. But who gets really excited at the idea of an EMP knocking out electronic infrastructures? The apocalypse addicts at WorldNet Daily. Famed doomsayer Newt Gingrich brought it up during the Republican primary. Right-wingers get positively giddy at the idea. Why? Because it justifies lots of spending on missile defense. But according to the right wingers, President Obama is not spending nearly enough money to defend us from missiles. We could be wiped out at any moment by an EMP. But the weak, appeasing black guy in the White House is, whether he knows it or not, a traitor.
The politics of the new Red Dawn are about as coherent as those at a Tea Party rally, where really the only unifying theme is hatred of anything that can be called "government" (and doesn't contribute to the life and happiness of the complainer), hatred of the Socialist Kenyan Muslim Manchurian President Nazi Obama, and love of weaponry.
Whatever can be said about John Milius, at least he was committed enough to his concept to have thought it through. The new Red Dawn seemingly unintentionally opens itself to all sorts of odd moments, such as when Jed says, "When I was overseas [in Iraq], we were the good guys, we enforced order. Well, now we're the bad guys. We create chaos." In 1984, when the Wolverines went into the desert on horses, they evoked images of the Mujahideen in Afghanistan. (The cover of that September 1984 issue of shows a guerrilla and the headline "Exclusive: Afghan Raiders on Russia's Border".) In 2012, when a character talks about the order enforced in Iraq, it's hard not to think about all the insurgents created by the chaos of the American invasion. When the Wolverines are called "terrorists" by their enemies, who doesn't think of the War on Terror? No wonder the U.S military has been disappeared by the new Red Dawn (instead of being assisted by active duty soldiers, the Wolverines are assisted by retired Marines). Nobody can forget that the U.S. military of the 21st century is an invading force. In 1984, the U.S. wanted to arm and train the "freedom fighters" of the world. In 2012, insurgents and terrorists "hate our freedoms".
In the nearly thirty years between the two films, gender roles seem to have become more confining. There weren't many women in the original Red Dawn, but Toni and Erica (Lea Thompson) in the original were interesting, active characters. They were stereotypically, tragically traumatized by something that happened with the Russians (likely, rape), so much so that their grandfather hides them in the cellar, but though they remain traumatized and quiet, they also assert themselves against the assumptions of the men, and (like the women in Battle of Algiers) prove to be excellent, committed guerrillas, and more resilient than many of the men. When she dies, Toni makes sure she takes at least one Russian with her. The women of the original Red Dawn do not end up as objects of our pity or our lust, but rather of our respect.
Toni and Erica both survive in the new Red Dawn, but that's about all they have going for them. Erica is a sharp-cheeked blonde (Isabel Lucas) whose entire job in the movie is to be gawked at and pined for — Matt is so in love with her that he repeatedly risks the safety of the Wolverines to save her. (Girls are dangerous! They make boys stupid!) Once her role as the Imperiled Love Interest is over, she mostly disappears from the movie. Toni exists primarily to help Jed get in touch with his emotions. Her costumes tend to highlight her figure (the opposite of the costumes in the original film), and though she gets to shoot stuff and blow things up like everybody else, there's little sense of her as an integral member of the unit.
One of the problems for the new film is that it doesn't really know what to do with its characters. The mayor is set up to be just as sleazy and appeasing as the original, but nothing much is made of his story. He's just another weak, naive black guy. But that's what happens when you allow black people into government, as we should have learned from Birth of a Nation. While the original Red Dawn ended by invoking Abraham Lincoln, the new Red Dawn conjures the glory days of the John Birch Society.
But I'll end where I began: It is entertaining while it lasts. There's lots of action, lots of explosions. Some of the action is badly filmed — a car chase in the beginning is particularly incoherent, much to its detriment, because though part of the point of this action is to get us excited for our protagonists in peril, it also has some information to convey, and it can't do it because it's so badly shot and edited. There is moment-to-moment excitement. But though I went into the film determined to give it the benefit of the doubt, soon the entertainment was at least partially because of the film's idiocies. It's breathtakingly racist, but I also found it difficult to be disturbed by its racism, because it was so obviously stupid that it was comic, and my companion and I kept nudging each about the blatant, self-parodying silliness.
However, as Twitter showed, plenty of people found the movie inspiring, convincing, and powerful. Its political message got through. Its racism buttressed the inherent racism of many people who went to see it during its opening week. Its ideology did some work in the world.
Thinking about that fact is very far from entertaining.
0 Comments on Notes After a Viewing of Red Dawn (2012) as of 12/9/2012 12:57:00 AM
I am SUPER thrilled to be a part of this fantastic show in Paris! If any of you are in the area (lucky!) be sure to check it out! If not, then at least check out the works online : D
Thursday, September 15 · 7:00pm - 10:00pm
LA FLAQ GALLERY 36 rue Quincampoix ( 75004 ) Paris, France
Here’s part two. You may notice that the formatting is unbelieveably horrible. I tried to fix it, but I’ve given up now.
7. The Trumpet of the Swan, by E.B. White
The dust jacket on my copy is long since lost.
So, here’s an unpopular opinion for you: this is the best E.B. White book. Charlotte’s Web is pretty good. I like it a lot. Stuart Little coasts on the fact that tiny things are cute. The Trumpet of the Swan is better than either of them. When I was little, I also thought it was completely hilarious — I would reread bits and sit there giggling to myself — but it’s probably only moderately funny. That’s okay, though, because it’s clever and thoughtful and enormously weird, and when it comes to children’s books, that’s what I want most.
The Trumpet of the Swan, for those of you unlucky enough not to have read it, is about a mute trumpeter swan named Louis. He can’t attract a mate without being able to make trumpet-y noises at her, so his father goes off and steals him a trumpet, and the rest of the book is all about people being wowed by his excellent trumpet-playing skills, which makes me happy because one of my favorite things in books is characters who are really good at what they do (cf. Carry On, Mr. Bowditch, two of the three books in the final section of this list, and that post I will someday write on Trustee from the Toolrom). Anyway, it’s a wonderful book all around, and a deeply satisfying one. Most books that I like leave me wanting to know more, but I think it’s actually better when a book gives you exactly as much as you need, and this is one of those.
***
6. Carry On, Mr. Bowditch, by Jean Lee Latham
I think this cover is gorgeous.
Okay, here’s one I read several times when I was, oh, maybe twelve? I ran across it at a used bookstore last summer, and thought, “I adored that book. Why haven’t I thought about it for the last dozen years?” And then I reread it, and, as it turns out, I still adore it.
This is a fictional take on the life of Nathaniel Bowditch, who revolutionized navigation in the late 18th century. Latham introduces us to Nat as a kid about to be apprenticed to a ship chandlery in Salem in the 1770s, and from there we follow his struggles to educate himself and others. It’s a sad book, because massive numbers of people die, but it helps to know that they’re real people who died, rather than characters the author is gratuitously killing off. And also, it’s an incredibly moving book, and I think it owes some of that to the historical environment. Nat’s family is very poor, and a career at sea includes the possibility of death, and Latham doesn’t minimize those things.
And then there’s the people-being-really-good-at-what-they-do thing. It’s fun to see Nat surprising people with his surreptitiously acquired book-learning, and it’s even better to see him winning over his shipmates with his expertise on practical matters. Especially
0 Comments on Top 10 Underappreciated Children’s Books 2/3 as of 1/1/1900
TAKING OFF, by Jenny Moss (Walker 2011). It's late 1985 and Clear Lake, Texas, high school senior Annie doesn't know what she wants to do with her life. Stay in town and marry Mark, who loves her? Go to college? Or write poetry, which she loves, but has never told anyone, including her best friend Lea?
When Annie meets teacher-astronaut Christa McAuliffe, she's fascinated. So much so that she just has to go see the launch in Cocoa Beach...
Annie's story is compelling and should resonate with anyone who has faced the dilemma of "where do I go from here?" In sum, TAKING OFF is a bittersweet coming-of-age story that brings home the 1980s and the events of January 28, 1986, when seven astronauts "prepared for the journey and waved goodbye and 'slipped the surly bonds of earth' to 'touch the face of God.'"
The Plot: Carrie Bradshaw, high school senior, living in the suburbs far from New York City.
What she wants: to be a writer. To be a writer in New York City.
What her father wants for her: to go to nearby Brown, his alma mater. And to be a scientist.
And there's also Sebastian Kydd. The new boy in school.
Carrie wants Sebastian. And wants to be a good friend to her friends, whatever that means. She wants to make herself happy without disappointing her family and friends.
Most of all, Carrie wants to find out who she is. And to become the Carrie Bradshaw she is meant to be.
The Good:
I loved, loved, loved this book. Yes, in part because I am a fan of both the book Sex and the City and the HBO series Sex and the City, which feature a thirtysomething Carrie Bradshaw. I loved this book because it works as a classic coming of age story, with Carrie figuring out her world and her place in it; with that world including expanding her horizons beyond her small town. Carrie works on being a writer and what that means. As the book starts, Carrie has been rejected for a summer writing program in New York City. She is at first reluctant to join the school newspaper (it's not her type of writing); she does not become an investigative journalist, rather, (spoiler!!!) she starts looking at herself and her friends and foes as source material, providing biting (and anonymous) commentary on high school.
Sorry about that spoiler. But this is a prequel of sorts, to both the book and film Carrie, so the reader "knows" where Carrie will end up, at least in fifteen odd years. The question isn't whether Carrie become a writer living in New York City; the question is how that happens. And while there is romance, sex, and love in The Carrie Diaries, this is equally about becoming an artist, finding a voice, and discovering what is, and isn't, important.
There is romance in the book: Carrie falls for new kid Sebastian Kydd, handsome with a reputation. A typical enough story for a young adult book. What happens (and doesn't h
8 Comments on The Carrie Diaries, last added: 4/7/2010
Thanks for this review. I had vaguely heard about it, but it was good to get some details. I'm not sure whether I'll read it, but now I'm sure I wouldn't regret it if I did.
I'm a huge SATC fan; I've been experiencing a high level of withdrawl since the show has been off. I can't wait to get my hands on a copy of this book!
It was a lot of fun -- I'm going to pass it along to my cousin (who is a fan of Candace Bushnell but she doesn't usually read YA) and get her feedback, also.
I watched the show off and on, and saw the movie. I thought the article about how the book didn't follow the show was so annoying. The book came first! But I think it does look fun and I'm sure I'll pick it up.
This book is obviously not for me -I read three sentences of this review and thought "This is wrong -Carrie's father left when she was a child..." Reading about Carrie Bradshaw now without automatically connecting it with the show is impossible.
La Boca is a London based design firm specializing in transporting its viewers to places of the future by means of the past. This record sleeve, created for Arcadion, has a nice composition with the symmetry of the two magnetic looking objects on the edge of what seems like a portal into space. The warm gradient behind the bold text nicely juxtaposes the cool waves of the galactic landscape. This is where I’d like to be today.
In addition to creating record sleeves, La Boca has also created some out of this world shirts for Sixpack France. To see more of their work, check out their website. Be sure to read their blog for some neat video picks, like Len Lye’s Kaleidoscope.
English artist and designer, Tom Eckersley (1914-1997), created numerous posters from the 1940s to the 1980s. Eckersley’s work communicates strong messages by employing bold overlaid colors, simplified forms, and informative text.
This poster, created for Pakistan International Airlines, depicts a dapper looking gentleman in Swiss garb. His playful image is simple, clean, bright and colorful; a stark contrast from the dark turquoise background. The composition is pleasing to the eye; as the figure gazes at the distant aircraft, we too are gazing at his cheerful image. Let’s all go to Geneva!
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire book cover (1963)
Keep Britain Tidy Campaign poster (1963)
Eckersley’s work proves that good design is timeless and even iconic. His work is archived at the University of Arts London Archives and Special Collections Center, and may be viewed at their online resource for visual arts site.
Sometime in the early 1980s, probably 1983/1984, during the middle of an English Composition exam I fell in love with the word entrepreneur. I'd always loved reading - if twitter had existed back then I would have stalked Enid Blyton until she was forced to take out a restraining order - but I'd never considered that I could write a book. I didn't decide that day either, but I like to think of it as the start of the slow-burn.
Even earlier in the 1980s, about 1981, we had to write a story about a postman and his route. I can't say for sure what the other stories were like but I'm nominating mine as possibly the worst in the class. I think I was a very dim child. I wrote about a postman and I had him deliver a letter to each house and well, that was it. Snooooze. I hope you're still here. I remember the teacher having to explain to me that I should have added some action, like a vicious dog (if she'd mentioned zombies, I'd have choked on my gulp). There was no spark back then, not even a slow burn.
In primary school, about 1976, the teacher asked us to write our own version of Alice in Wonderland. I plagiarised. Adding here that I was about 8. I thought if I changed a few words, I kid you not, that the teacher wouldn't realise I'd copied it from a book. Oh she noticed, thank god they didn't use rulers on backsides back then.
So why this post..? Just me wondering wondering which point in the road led to today.
17 Comments on Once Upon a Time..., last added: 10/2/2009
Ha! Ying had the same problems with the idea of fiction. Still does : ) Which means, wherever your road forked, the other route led to being an engineer. Which, from what I've seen, is even weirder than fiction writing by far!
(Oh, and you made me think of the Dr. Seuss's Big Book About Me that I had when I was seven. I loved that book and filled it all in. And on the page where it says "can you draw a bird?" or whatever, I copied the Dr. Seuss bird on the previous page. Even worse, my "story" was a list of things around me, preceded by "I love," as in "I love TV. I love couches. I love dogs. I love macrame." Yes, macrame. It was the 70s and my grandmother had a big macrame wall hanging in her den.)
This is great! I laughed out loud scrolling through them and then laughed even harder when I noticed that the clothing was catalogued at the bottom of each image.
Gallery 1988 has shared a glimpse into their upcoming exhibition, Under The Influence: Masters of the Universe. This Battlecat painting by Robert Burden is, in their own words, absolutely epic. Clearly Robert haaaas the powerrrrrr.
Episode 1 does a brilliant job of setting up this series. Hope and Michael, the thirtysomething couple with a baby and their circle of family and friends. Ellyn, Hope's best friend from childhood. Gary, Michael's best friend from college. Melissa, Michael's cousin. Elliot, Michael's business partner, and Elliot's wife, Nancy. A created family, revolving around the orbit of Hope and Michael.
thirtysomething was a show about, well, nothing. And everything. It was about life -- friendships, career, children. Small choices, big events. Running a business; losing and finding love; figuring out how to have balance in life. And doing so not with family. Melissa and Michael are cousins; but aside from that, family is not a priority. What is the priority is the family these group of friends have created amongst themselves. Even then, the first season shows that it was not always a group; Nancy is simply "Elliot's wife," at first Ellyn isn't really friendly with "Michael's friends," Melissa and Gary.
Standalone episodes are combined with longer season and series arcs. From the start, Nancy talks of writing a children's book; Michael and Elliot's business struggles; Michael talks of writing yet doesn't act on it; Elliot is interested in film; Hope and Michael try to find a way to have an Interfaith marriage. The friends fight as drastically and bitterly as family, and reconcile just as family does.
Is this dated? I think the idea of finding ones way, of seeking balance is still current; and the challenges, dreams and hopes of this group (who would now be fiftysomething!) are the same today. So what if no one has a cell phone and computers are a big scary machine? So what if a tattoo is a big deal? Today, an airplane and terrorist joke would not be made; someone dating their boss, a professor dating students, wouldn't be so accepted.
What isn't dated? The method of storytelling, unwinding, including various people. Using fantasies and flashbacks and multiple points of view still work and the people are still real. The little touches -- people wearing a favorite sweater, houses in constant stages of repair, recurring characters and jokes -- work.
I'm looking forward to the other seasons; to Miles Drentell (hey, did he ever refer to these people in Once and Again?); to Susannah coming and not being friends; to Nancy's blossoming; Melissa's successes. Even the death.
Now, the Hope Question. I guess you either love her or hate her. OK, hate is strong. And I don't want to get into other seasons. But Hope, well, she's tough. When her mother visits, we find it's the first time her parents have visited since the baby was born, yet Hope is pissy about the visit. She and her mother are in constant conflict; yet later, we find out the parents helped Hope and Michael with a downpayment for the house. Actually, most of the people on this show don't get along with their parents, are still rebelling against their parents, struggle to not define themselves through their parents' eyes. (Watching this thinking that Mad Men are the parents of this generation is interesting!)
And Michael; Ken Olin's performance is memorable. Who else could have made Michael sexy and attractive, yet insecure and jealous? Olin is fearless as he exposes every weakness of Michael. Yet, Michael never turns into a whiner, a complainer. As I think about the nuances in Olin's performance, I realize part of the problem with Hope is that she is beautiful -- and that Mel Harris isn't as strong an actress, so with that depth lacking Hope came across as shrill rather than searching. Judgmental rather than strong.
The other two standout performances are Melanie Mayron, showing a believable mix of insecurity and confidence, as Melissa, the talented photographer who struggles to grow so that she stops picking the wrong men and Patricia Wittig as Nancy. Yes, its the future seasons that really give Wittig a chance to shine (I still remember, word for word, the scene where she fears dying when her daughter is too young). Wittig portrays Nancy as trapped in a role she didn't want, distanced from her husband, unsure of what to do, having lost who she once was and never realizing, until now, that her life isn't what she thought it was or what she hoped it would be. Slowly realizing she cannot blame others for her own choices. In lesser hands, Nancy could have been shrill, pathetic, clingy -- in other words, seen only as Elliot sees her -- but we see her depth, her possibility, her own struggles.
I enjoyed the many DVD extras, including glimpses into how the stories came about. They wanted to give someone cancer -- who would it be? At some point, almost every actor on the show ended up directing; some went on to careers that are now more directing than acting, and they credit this show with encouraging that type of creativity. There is also some interesting "history of TV" stuff, including the show's use of music (which held up the release of the DVD) which most viewers would think isn't a lot. But at the time, it was. Also -- for those of you who watched this in syndication? You've been missing seven minutes. In the twenty years since thirtysomething aired, we've lost seven minutes of TV shows to ads.
Great review, Liz. I look forward to getting the DVD. I can remember SO many conversations about thirtysomething at my old job. A few of us would endlessly (and happily) analyze the episodes.
I can hardly wait to purchase this series on DVD. Being thirtysomething myself now I feel like I will really appreciate and be able to relate to this series.
I loved watching the show as a teenager, and reading your review brought me right back to what I loved! I so agree about Nancy--she really developed as a character. The episodes where she struggled to figure out how to stay strong with cancer and be the same mom she had been really stuck with me. If only "My So-Called Life" could have run as long as this show!
I was twentysomething when I watched it and I loved it. I remember going in to work one day after the Christmas episode and saying to a friend (she was nominally Catholic and her husband was Jewish),"Did you see thirtysomething last week?" and she said miserably, "I LIVED thirtysomething last week."
Using Joni Mitchell's "River" in the Christmas episode? Inspired.
Elvin Lim is Assistant Professor of Government at Wesleyan University and author of The Anti-intellectual Presidency, which draws on interviews with more than 40 presidential speechwriters to investigate this relentless qualitative decline, over the course of 200 years, in our presidents’ ability to communicate with the public. He also blogs at www.elvinlim.com. In the article below he reflects on nostalgia for the 80’s. See his previous OUPblogs here.
Journalists are not usually in the habit of looking back. They are charged to deliver “breaking news” to us. Novelty is the coinage of the newsroom, not history. Yet this week, the media’s preponderant coverage of the life and death of Michael Jackson has been stridently nostalgic. It reveals a culture needing and ready to sing an ode to the 1980s.
We cannot turn back time, but we can mark its passing. Up till last week, popular culture hadn’t had the chance to address the passing of an 80s superstar and with that, the 1980s. We were given occasion to mourn and contemplate the passing of the 1950s with Elvis Presley’s untimely death, and the passing of the 1960s with John Lennon’s death. So we have sung an ode to the post-war consensus, as we have sung an ode to the cultural revolution.
But enough of the 80s has remained with us - MTV, Nintendo, Reaganomics - not defunct but writhing for relevance, that we have not dared sing its eulogy. Michael Jackson’s and Farrah Fawcett’s death has served us a dramatic notice that it may be time.
After all, it is unlikely that we will see another Michael Jackson. In our era where songs are downloaded one at a time, no one is likely to sell a 100 million records (of “Thriller” or any other album) again. The 80s are over, but it has taken us three decades to find a moment to collectively mark and mourn its passage.
Tragic deaths are compelling not only for human interest reasons, but for the decisive statement about our mortality they make. For if even iconic characters who once defined their age can be so suddenly ejected from the remorseless flow of history, then there is surely no stopping the march of time.
It is no surprise that Michael Jackson is more beloved posthumously than he was all of this decade. Elvis Presley too, had become more and more of a has-been as the 60s progressed. Time is never forgiving - our only feeble antidote is nostalgia. So wrote Joseph Conrad, “Only a moment; a moment of strength, of romance, of glamor–of youth! … A flick of sunshine upon a strange shore, the time to remember, the time for a sigh, and–good-bye!–Night–Good-bye…!”
If the 1980s and whatever the decade repesented are indeed over, then businessmen, journalists, and especially politicians - take note! Nostalgia can only occur when the past has been rendered past.
0 Comments on Michael Jackson, Nostalgia, and the 1980s as of 6/30/2009 6:14:00 PM
Fascinating photos from Frederic Chaubin. Many of his images feature strange buildings from the former Soviet Union. Most of the structures were built during the 1970s and 80s and look like something straight out of Sci-fi movie.
So, I’m hanging out my with friend and fellow book nerd Sean Flores a while ago and he’s breaks out these incredible posters designed for Bally in the 1980s. My jaw drops! He tells me they were created by French designer Jacques Auriac. Who the heck is Jacques Auriac? I’m thinking. Then Sean mentions that a Paris based publisher produced a catalog of his work. Ahh crap!! just what I need, another expensive import book to track down. A year later and a trip to Tokyo I finally got my hands on this thing.
It’s a beautiful book filled with full color reproductions of Auriac’s poster work from the 1950s up till when he died in 2003. He was a profilic designer/ illustrator and produced posters for a broad range of clients includng Middle East Airlines, Air Afrique, Gitanes and Bally. His earlier work reminds slightly of Raymond Savignac, Herve Morvan and Jacques Nathan Garamond.
Grand Prize goes to Tim Kim - 1st pick of the 4 prize options goes to Vertigo Andy - 2nd pick of prizes goes to Jory Dayne- 3rd pick of prizes goes to Tim Kim - 4th prize goes to Celiajoy our winner from twitter - We will contact all of you directly.
Hildegarde’s Holiday is a meandering sort of book, and it also sort of forms a break in the narrative of the series. Since the end of Queen Hildegarde, Bubble and Pink Chirk’s mother has dies, and they have been given a home by the Hartleys. Bubble has been sent to school in the city, as [...]
0 Comments on Hildegarde’s Holiday as of 11/2/2008 6:38:00 PM
From the book - Jacqueline S Casey Thirty years of design at MIT
Beautiful work from graphic designer Jacqueline Casey. It mentions in the book she was inspired by Karl Gerstner, Kurt Wirth and Anton Stankowski.
“In the early 1950s, John Matill, a writer and editor, founded the MIT office of publications. He was joined in 1952 by Muriel Cooper. Cooper was among the first designers ever hired by a university to represent it graphically. She and Matill hired Jacqueline Casey to design summer session materials in 1955.” Casey continued to work for MIT until her retirement in 1989. (Taken from the introduction of the book.)
During the last two years, pretty much every aspect of my life has changed, with things only now just starting to settle down. For the first time during that window, I took a month off (August) and am not doing any travel or presentations for work. Instead, I’ve spent a small portion of this newly-recovered time trying to re-establish routines that long ago fell by the wayside.
One of those routines is how I keep up, something I haven’t been doing very well during this time. I’ve been experimenting with different aggregators, trying to find one that makes me more efficient that I can access while on the go. I’d given up on the mobile access, mainly because I was looking at it through the lens of my Treo since it’s the one internet access point I always have with me. It took me a while, but I finally got around to trying Google Reader, and so far I’m pretty impressed, mainly because of Google Gears. Besides the fact that it’s pretty cool, it’s incredibly useful if you’re a laptop user and I think it has the potential to play an important role in the next few years.
Basically, Google Gears is code that anyone can embed in their online tools to make them available offline. It’s integrated into Google Reader via a one-time install that doesn’t even require you to restart your browser. Once activated, a little icon appears in the upper right-hand corner, green for online, purple for offline.
It sounds simple enough, but here’s what happens when you click the green button. Gears downloads all of the posts in your Reader (minus the images) so that you can keep reading when you’re offline. You can still use the standard keyboard commands to navigate and quickly scan your news, just as if you were online. When you do get back to a live connection, you click on the purple icon, Reader goes back online, and it synchronizes your un/read items back to the Google servers, including any items you starred for future reference.
–or–
Now that I have a laptop I am willing to carry back and forth to work, Gears has been a godsend. I load up feeds at home in the morning, go offline, read them on the train, go online before leaving work, load up my aggregator again, go offline, read new items on the train, and then synchronize again when I get back home. I’ve had so little time lately (moving to a new house could be a full time job in itself!) that this has been the only way I’ve been able to track the online world for the past couple of months.
Like other disruptive technologies such as digital video recorders (like Tivo), MP3 players, and feed readers, it’s changing how I interact with information/media, especially since other sites can use Gears, thereby offering their services even when the user is offline. The other place I have used it is on the to-do site Remember the Milk. One day I logged in there and could magically add Gears to it. Now I can manage my lists on the train, at the airport, or anywhere else (as long as I’ve remembered to click on that icon and tell Gears to take that site offline so I could keep using it). These days I really wish I could add Gears to WordPress so that I could also blog while reading my aggregator. I wonder how long it will be before Google adds this functionality to Blogger, Google Docs, etc.? And what if the rumored gPhone includes Gears in an ebook reader, mobile Google Apps suite, Gmail, etc.? The combination of mobile and offline could be powerful.
It’s a great idea, one that has already helped me. It’s not as useful for you if you’re not a laptop user, but it’s still an interesting idea to think about. Eventually, wireless broadband will be ubiquitous and mainstream, and we’ll just never be offline. But we’re a few years away from that, and I’m now wondering if there are any library services that could benefit from incorporating Gears so that users can keep accessing them when offline. It’s probably not possible to make the catalog available this way, and really, what patron would think to take the catalog offline to keep searching it (plus, you’d lose accurate shelf status). Maybe there are other pieces, though.
This type of tool is a bridge to an approaching future when we’re all a live IP address all the time, wherever we are, so it’s something I’m keeping in the back of my mind. Especially when I’m offline.
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by 
and the HBO series 
, which feature a thirtysomething Carrie Bradshaw. I loved this book because it works as a classic coming of age story, with Carrie figuring out her world and her place in it; with that world including expanding her horizons beyond her small town. Carrie works on being a writer and what that means. As the book starts, Carrie has been rejected for a summer writing program in New York City. She is at first reluctant to join the school newspaper (it's not her type of writing); she does not become an investigative journalist, rather, (spoiler!!!) she starts looking at herself and her friends and foes as source material, providing biting (and anonymous) commentary on high school.
1987, Personal copy
?); to Susannah coming and not being friends; to Nancy's blossoming; Melissa's successes. Even the death.
are the parents of this generation is interesting!)
I *really* enjoyed this as well!
Thanks for this review. I had vaguely heard about it, but it was good to get some details. I'm not sure whether I'll read it, but now I'm sure I wouldn't regret it if I did.
I was never a huge SATC fan..... but I think you just might've convinced me to check out this book.
I'm a huge SATC fan; I've been experiencing a high level of withdrawl since the show has been off. I can't wait to get my hands on a copy of this book!
It was a lot of fun -- I'm going to pass it along to my cousin (who is a fan of Candace Bushnell but she doesn't usually read YA) and get her feedback, also.
I watched the show off and on, and saw the movie. I thought the article about how the book didn't follow the show was so annoying. The book came first! But I think it does look fun and I'm sure I'll pick it up.
Oh goody! I'm so glad to hear it is not a disappointment. I'll check it out for sure, now!
This book is obviously not for me -I read three sentences of this review and thought "This is wrong -Carrie's father left when she was a child..." Reading about Carrie Bradshaw now without automatically connecting it with the show is impossible.