This month's book reviews

A book about Missouri's best-known writer

Some of us watched the story of Mark Twin's life on public television just a few weeks ago. There is a biography of Twain's life for kids, published by Scholastic Books, which tells his story in print. The book, by Clinton Cox, is called "Mark Twain, America's Humorist, Dreamer, Prophet." Not only is the book interesting reading, but also it has many of the pictures in it that you might have seen on the TV special.

Most kids in Missouri know that Mark Twain's real name was Samuel Langhorne Clemens, and that he grew up in Hannibal, Missouri. He was born in 1835 in another small Missouri town. Probably, his most famous books are "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" and "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn." Both of them draw on Twain's experiences in growing up along side of the Mississippi River. As a young man, he was a riverboat pilot on the Mississippi. The name "Mark Twain" came from a call that boatmen used to signal the pilot that the water was deep enough for the steamboat to move ahead safely.

"Tom Sawyer" was written while Sam Clemens was a grown man and looking back with fond memories of his childhood years in Hannibal. "Huckleberry Finn" was written still later in his life and reflected his hatred of slavery and the racism that existed after the Civil War.

Sam Clemens, or Mark Twain, wrote many other books also. Two others, popular with kids, were "The Prince and the Pauper" and "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court." Since Clemens' home as an adult was in that New England state, he had become a "Connecticut Yankee." Of course, he never forgot his roots in Hannibal, Missouri.

This biography is not just about Mark Twain's childhood. In his younger life, he had many adventures besides just being a steamboat pilot. He developed his writing skills while working as a newspaperman. He used these skills to write books about his adventures in various places around the world. He became a world famous lecturer and entertained audiences in the major cities in Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia. He married, had a family of daughters, and lived in a mansion in New England. Before he died in 1910, the boy from Missouri was one of the most famous men in the world. The author, Clinton Cox, does a good job of telling the story of Twain's life.

 

The story of Missouri's writer of
popular children's books that were
made into a TV series

Most kids in Missouri have heard about or read "Little House on the Prairie" and other books about that pioneer family. Since the woman who wrote the books lived in Missouri when she wrote them, most kids learned a little bit about Laura Engalls Wilder. The book "Laura Engalls Wilder, Young Pioneer" written by Beatrice Gormley is another recent addition to the Childhood of Famous Americans series. It is a good book to read for any girls or boys who want to know how a writer of good stories came to write them in the first place.

Laura Engalls was born in 1867. Her childhood and her adult life were spent living on a farm in various places in the Middle West. For a good part of her life there were no automobiles or airplanes. People lived in homes without running water or electricity. People did not have furnaces or air conditioners. So summers were really hot and winters were bitter cold.

Laura Engalls' father moved his family around, looking for better land to farm so he could support all of them. Laura worked hard from the time she was a little girl. She remembered all the hardships the family went through. She also remembered how much she loved her life and family and how much fun they had even when times were tough. She loved to read books when she could find the time. She had wanted to be a writer from her earliest days. She did well in school and, for a few years, taught school herself, before she married a farmer. She occasionally published articles in local newspapers.

She and her husband, Almanzo Wilder, moved to Missouri to operate a farm and apple orchard. Laura raised a family and continued to work hard as a farm wife. She really didn't write her first book until her family was all grown. One of her reasons for starting to write books was that she wanted modern kids to know how pioneers had lived - the way she had lived in her childhood.

Laura's writings about her childhood were so interesting and fun to read, that she became famous across the country as an author of excellent children's books. She stayed on the farm and continued to write about her early life until she was nearly 90 years old. She finally died in 1968 just after her ninetieth birthday. Missouri children, as well as school children from around the nation, visit her home in Southern Missouri to show their respect for Laura Engalls Wilder and the stories she wrote.

 

A biography for girls who want
to learn to fly airplanes

Probably, the best-known female airplane pilot so far in history is Amelia Earhart. "Amilia Earhart, Young Aviator," by Beatrice Gormley, is the story of the life of this young woman, who tried to open doors for girls to become whatever they want to be.

Amelia, called "Millie" by her family and close friends, was born in the late 1890's when girls were expected to wear lace petticoats and stay quiet and clean and neat. Always being ladylike was not for Millie. She wanted to be outside and be active in sports and never liked to wear dresses.

As Millie was growing up, airplanes had just been invented. The early ones were crude and unsafe. Automobiles, also, were just being refined to the place where they were becoming a dependable way to travel. Amelia first venture into new vehicles was in buying and driving a car. Even that was an unusual step for a young woman, since women just were expected to be interested in machines.

After World War I young army pilots came home from the war. They had loved flying and flew planes around cities and towns, offering plane rides to anyone willing to pay for a short ride. Amelia became excited about flying a plane and, almost in secret, began taking flying lessons. She loved flying so much that when she was still a young woman, she bought her own airplane. She became fairly well known as one of the very few women who flew in air shows and flying contests.

Amelia wanted to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean, just as Charles Lindbergh had in 1927. No one thought a woman could do it. In 1932, Amelia Earhart, became the first woman to fly alone across the Atlantic. She became famous in Europe as well as in America. Other women wanted to dress and be like her. She used her fame to open up opportunities for women in aviation. She also helped people to become aware that going by airplane was becoming a safe way to travel long distances in a much shorter time that by ship, train, or car.

Unfortunately, in 1937, when attempting to fly around the world, Amelia Earhart was lost somewhere over the Pacific Ocean. Radio contact with her plane was lost. No one knows for sure what caused her to disappear. Numerous searches have been made to solve the mystery, but no one has been able to come up with exactly why or where she went down with her plane. Still, she left behind a record that keeps people talking about her yet today.

 

A book that's almost a ghost story

Kit Watson has just moved from another section of England to an old coal mining town called Stoneygate. After the death of his grandmother, his family had moved back to Stoneygate to take care of Kit's aging grandfather. Kit is thirteen years old, very serious, a good student in school, and a talented story teller and writer. Right after school starts, Kit meets John Askew, a classmate, who comes from a poor family where he is often brutally beaten by a drunken father. Askew points out to Kit that they are both descendents of coal-miners from an earlier time, many of whom lost their lives in mine disasters. He shows Kit a monument in the cemetery with both the names Kit Watson and John Askew on it - names on a list of dozens of names of young boys who were killed in a mine explosion and cave-in about a hundred years earlier.

Kit's grandfather had also been a coal miner. He, too, along with John Askew believes that the spirits of some of the young killed miners were still roaming around in the abandoned coal mines. Between the stories of his grandfather and the influence of John Askew, Kit begins to have dreams about the young miners and struggles to know the difference between his imagination, his dreams, and the real world around him.

Actually, Kit and John, in their imaginations reach back even further in time, to visualize families of cave men who lived in that section of the world thousands of years earlier. These experiences of a connection with the past take over John Askew's life, to the point where he finally runs away from the unhappy life he leads in Stoneygate. He is living like a cave man in an abandoned coal mine. Kit feels responsible to bring him back home to reality but feels that if he isn't careful, John might instead lead him into his world of unreality.

This is a book that really makes you think. The author leaves it to you to determine what is real and what exists only in the imaginations of his characters. The book's title is "Kit's Wilderness" and was written by David Almond. Don't read it unless you are the kind of reader that can comfortably go beyond what the author actually says to draw your own conclusions about the meaning the author is trying to convey. If you can do that, this is a good book.