Follow these Breadcrumbs to a Magical Fairy-tale Novel [Book Review]

Sometimes people change. Friends change. Marriages end. People move. Sometimes loved ones with problems, or friends in trouble, don’t want to be saved. These are the heartbreaking truths of adulthood that Anne Ursu beautifully and brilliantly explores in her mid-grade novel Breadcrumbs.

It’s hard for boys and girls to stay best friends as they grow older. Jack is the only person Hazel knows who has a real imagination. Once they played tea parties in the Arctic or Wonderland or outer space and invented superhero baseball (because superheroes need organized sports too), but lately Jack’s started playing capture the flag and football with the boys at fifth grade recess.

“Sometimes your friends change,” Hazel’s mother tries explaining. “Sometimes when you get older you grow apart” (86). The astute reader knows that the mother could as easily be speaking of her own divorce.  As a divorced woman myself, this double theme of loss struck me deeply; I identified with both Hazel and her mother. (I cried.)

Because of the divorce, the change in family finances lands Hazel in public school for the first time. Public school, unlike her previous school, stresses rules over creativity; she has trouble adjusting. She learns that “school [is] very easy … if you just disconnected your heart.” (117).  At the same time, Jack’s mother’s chronic depression turns his heart cold, and in true fairy-tale fashion he goes off with the white witch into an enchanted frozen woods, “and by the time [he] came to her palace, he felt nothing at all” (112). Hazel knows she is the only one who can save him.

Drawing by Erin McGuire

By fairy-tale, I don’t mean sanitized and happily-ever-after. Ursu’s book is breathtakingly beautiful, a moving retelling of “The Snow Queen” and a superb homage to her forbearers with her delightful allusions to “The Red Shoes,” “The Little Match Girl,” “The Swan Maiden” and of course “Hansel and Gretel” and others.

Every quest is a journey into self-knowledge, and Hazel comes to realize that just “because someone needed saving” it doesn’t mean that “they were savable” (247). The term codependence never appears in the text: Hazel is a strong heroine, a “brave knight” and not a victim — Jack must and does participate in his own saving. I still applaud Ursu for introducing to readers the truth that I hope every young woman learns before adulthood: one cannot save another.

The themes of friendship and belonging are seamlessly intermingled with questions of identity, adoption, skin color, and parental problems (depression; grief) in a rich, multilayered and fully realized whole.  Brava. Stunning and breathtakingly beautiful.

An exquisite gem. Recommended for all fairy tale girls and women.

 

Ursu, Anne. Breadcrumbs. Walden Pond Press / HarperCollins. 2011. Print.

A Discussion Guide is available on the author’s website.

Hornets and Mines: When Folktales Meet History

There’s an old Russian legend about St. Nicholas’ Day collected by Aleksandr Afanas’ev:

13th Century, from the collection of the Russian State Hermitage Museum; United States Public Domain. from Wikimedia Commons

Some peasants worked for a foreign steward, and the foreigner did not follow the Orthodox faith or observe the Russian holidays. He made the peasants work all the time.

One day the village elder came to the Estate house and spoke to the steward. “Tomorrow is St. Nicholas’ Day and we are forbidden to work.”

“Who is St. Nicholas?” the steward scoffed. “Show him to me.”

The village elder brought him an icon of the saint.

“This is just a wooden board” the steward persisted. “It can’t do anything to me. I shall work, and so shall you all.”

So the peasants worked the Estate, keeping St. Nicholas in their hearts and minds that day. But they soon decided to play a trick on the foreign steward.

A few months later, the elder walked up to the Estate house again.  “Tomorrow we have a holiday,” he informed the steward.

“Who is it this time?”

“St. Hornet’s Day.”

“Who is he? Show him to me.”

The elder brought the steward to a hollow tree in which hornets had built a nest. “There he is,” he told the steward.

The steward peeped through the cracks in the bark. He heard humming and buzzing but could see nothing. “How he sings!”  he exclaimed. “He must have drunk too much vodka. Nonetheless, I am not afraid of him, and you all must work.”

As he spoke, the hornets flew out of the hollows and stung him in a great swarm.  The steward screamed at the top of his lungs. “I swear I won’t order you to work. I too shall rest. Take the whole week off.”

And that is how the peasants outwitted the harsh steward.

(Adapted by Cynthia June Long)

          I couldn’t find hornets, so here are some bees.                       “Apes (apis = bee) coming from a bee-hive, attack a man.” 1450. From the National Library of the Netherlands via Europeana Creative Commons. Public Domain

 

~         ~         ~

            An amusing tale, good for a few chuckles, and like much oral tradition, no doubt with its origins in a reality Russian peasants would have faced working for a foreigner. I’m partial to stories about the underdog or trickster. My favorite heroes are those who overcome an adversary through wit.

However, history bears an unexpected somber resemblance to this folktale: in 1907 real-life tragedy struck down 239 lives while those who kept a holy feast day were spared. In December 1907, the celebration of St. Nicholas Day saved more than 200 Carpatho-Russian miners in Jacob’s Creek, Pennsylvania.

They worked long, hard, unsafe days in the Darr Mine on the west side of the Youghioheny River, about forty miles southeast of Pittsburgh.  They lost a day’s wages to attend church and keep the feast.  On December 19, 1907, in the middle of the liturgy, around 11:30 a.m., a loud rumble preceded an explosion which spewed thick smoke and shook the ground for miles. Immediately everyone knew what had happened.  The mine had exploded. The next day the Philadelphia Inquirer reported “Scores Dodged Death by Going to Church Instead of to Work.” The survivors considered it a Miracle of St. Nicholas. A few years after the disaster, ~1911, St. Nicholas Carpatho-Russian Orthodox Church at Jacobs Creek was founded to honor the saint’s intervention that fateful day. A commemorative icon was created later.

At least 239 men lost their lives in the Darr mine; the period newspaper accounts are gruesome, describing unidentifiable remains and worse. Very Rev. Dr. Edward Pehanich, pastor of the Jacob’s Creek St. Nicholas Church, was quoted by the Pittsburgh area Tribune-Review on the occasion of the 100^th year anniversary of the event: “We certainly don’t believe that those who were saved were better than those who died, but for whatever reason, St. Nicholas prayed to save those miners. . . If it wasn’t for the service that day, another 200 men would have lost their lives.”

December 1907 was one of the bloodiest months in U.S. mining history, and over 700 miners died that month throughout the United States. The national total for 1907 was 3200 lives lost in mining accidents.  Workplace safety rules followed on the heels of these mining disasters. Even so, forty-fivc years later in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania, my own grandfather would die from the coal miner’s ‘black lung’; my father was only 13 years old at the time. It was—and is—a brutal profession.

The Philadelphia Inquirer also reports great drunkenness in the Jacobs Creek area that December 1907 night: “Some of the men . . .got a good start on account of the holiday, continuing their carousal after the explosion in celebration of their escape.”  Constables were called in, and the only tavern within two miles was asked to close down throughout the several days duration of the recovery operation.

The folktale steward reconsidered his viewpoint after a painful encounter with hornets. It took 700+ deaths to begin to reform the mining industry. In my younger years, I would postpone filling up the car gas tank and then find myself a week later praying like mad that I’d be able to make it back to a gas station in time. A few times—I hate admitting it—I cut it too closely and unexpectedly rolled to a stop on the side of the road.  Then I’d repeat the cycle a few weeks or months later. (It’s a Jersey Girl thing; after over twenty years living in Philadelphia, I still can barely accept the fact that I have to pump my own gas here.)

How many car accidents have I ‘miraculously’ escaped?  One day I might be stung by a hornet and another day, spared from death or injury. Feast day or work day, December 6 or December 19 or any day at all, I pledge to celebrate each day as a gift.

 

Sources and Resources

Afanas’ev, Aleksandr. “The Foolish German.” Russian Fairy Tales. N.Y.:  Pantheon Books, 1945, 1973. Print.

“Blames Coroner Juries.” The Philadelphia Inquirer. Vol. 159 n. 75. September 13, 1908. p. 5A.

“Buried in Wrecked Mine 250 Men Are Probably Dead.” The Philadelphia Inquirer. Vol. 157 n. 173. December 20, 1907. p. 1-2.

“Centennial of the Miracle of St. Nicholas, Jacobs Creek.” Holland, MI: St. Nicholas Center. Web. http://www.stnicholascenter.org/pages/centennial

“Darr Mine Disaster Historical Marker.” n.d. Harrisburg, PA: Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. Web.

“Experts To Probe Mine Disasters.” The Philadelphia Inquirer. Vol. 159 n. 27. July 27, 1908. p. 8.

Reeger, Jennifer. “New Exhibit Remembers 1907 Darr Mine Disaster.”  Pittsburgh, PA: Tribune-Review. 2007. Web.

Storey, Jerry. “Orthodox Faithful Endure In the Face of Mine Disaster, Church Fire.” Pittsburgh, PA: Tribune-Review. n.d. Web.

You Can Do It, Sam [Book Review]

Sam bear helps Mrs. Bear make and deliver small cakes as gifts to the neighbors. A delightful bedtime or anytime picture book. The illustrations by Anita Jeram really make this a winner. From the bear-shaped snowman on its title page to the bear-shaped hood ornament on the pick-up truck, this is a warm book to snuggle with on a cold winter’s evening. The design on the tw0-page spread of Sam tramping through the snow with his bootprints embedded in the snow, curving from lower left beneath the text to mid-right on the facing page is near-perfect.

The nose-to-nose affirmation of Sam’s success is equally as charming and well-done.

Of special note to Children’s Librarians: this is a good choice for a holiday story-time in a diverse community because it doesn’t explicitly mention Christmas; the reader is free to draw his/her own conclusions about why the Bear family is delivering cake gifts. Very well done.

Hest, Amy, author and Anita Jeram, illustrator. You Can Do It, Sam. Cambridge, MA: Candlewick Press, 2003.

Initially reviewed on GoodReads.

Piper [book review]

Piper the dog runs away from a mean master and finds a loving mistress. A grim and disappointing offering from the author of the lighthearted “No More Kissing” and Blue Kangaroo books. Sad beginning, happy ending. Good word choice conveys tone: “fierce” and “grimly.” Dark illustrations (oil? not sure) do a skilled job of conveying the scenery of the text, especially the “lonely crooked house” with a gray sky background and the (from the dog’s point of view) intimidating cityscape painted (?) in browns and grays. I credit the author with expanding her repertoire and acknowledge that my expectations for a lighter book may have influenced my reading. Probably too dark to use in preschool story-time, but perhaps it might fit into a lower elementary unit on not-fitting-in, animal cruelty, or perseverance. The best part is when Piper “took care of” the rabbits by playing with them instead of hunting them because the master poorly explained the command. Then the rabbits brought him food. I would have liked to see more of the rabbits.

Chichester Clark, Emma. Piper. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Books For Young Readers, 1995. Print.

Reviewed on GoodReads

 

 

 

A Tale of Dracula’s Justice

Or was it a test?

Carriage with masked figure from BL Harley 5256, f. 22 | Loys Papon. Public Domain from The British Library; Creative Commons Europeana collection

A merchant was travelling in Wallachia and he stopped overnight in the capital, Tirgoviste. He was reluctant to leave his carriage and wares unattended in a foreign city overnight, but the Prince of Wallachia, also known as Vlad III whom some call the Impaler and others call Dracula, Son of the Dragon, insisted that he share and trust his own princely hospitality.  So the merchant, dreading greatly, left his carriage unattended in the street in front of the palace overnight. The next morning the merchant hurried to his carriage and found his inventory unmolested, but he had been robbed of 160 gold coins. He reported the theft to the Prince.

The princely Son of the Dragon assured the merchant to have no concerns, and vowed that the thief would be found and the gold returned. He ordered his soldiers to search the city, and he threatened to destroy the entire city if this affront to his honor was not remedied.

Overnight the thief was found and the pouch of gold was returned to the merchant’s carriage. The next morning the merchant counted it: once, twice, thrice.  Each time he counted 161 coins in his bag.  He returned to the palace. “Sire,” he told Dracula, “My money has been found, but there is one coin extra.”

Dracula chuckled, and ordered his guards to bring in the thief.  “Go in peace,” he told the merchant, “And you may keep the extra coin for your honesty. For if you had not admitted to the extra coin, I was ready to impale you alongside this thief.”

I couldn’t find a picture of the palace, so here is a church in Tirgoviste. Dormition of the Theotokos Church in the Old Royal Court at Tirgoviste, constructed 1585. Photo by Razvan Orendovici. Thru Flickr Creative Commons. https://www.flickr.com/photos/razvanorendovici/12474682075/

A tale from Russian and Romanian sources. Russian source from MS 11/1088 in the Kirillov-Belozersky Monastery Collection at the Saltykov-Schredin Public Library in St. Petersburg; translated by Raymond T. McNally and published in McNally & Florescu In Search of Dracula: The History of Dracula and Vampires (1972, revised 1994). Adapted by Cynthia June Long.

Execution, Forensics, Faith, and Saints: Getting to Know the Grand Duchess Maria

         

          My fascination with the Romanovs began in 1995, although it lay dormant for twenty years. In 1995 The New Yorker magazine published a piece on the forensic and DNA identification of the nine bodies found in a forest in the Urals near the Russian city of Ekaterinburg close to the boundary between Europe and Asia. In his article “The Last Romanov Mystery” author Robert K. Massie compellingly told the story of Tsar Nicholas and his family’s last night, their brutal execution, hasty burial, removal and reburial, and eventual exhumation and identification 73+ years later. The horrific and gripping details—bullets bouncing off the Grand Duchesses because they had sewn jewels into their corsets—made a lasting impression, as did the account of one of the daughters waking up from unconsciousness and crying out in pain amid the corpses of her family being loaded onto a truck. Compelling and grisly.  What impressed me the most was the author’s explanation of the scientific evidence in a detailed yet accessible manner which was comprehensible to laypersons like myself. I renewed my New Yorker subscription for several years based on the strength of this piece alone.

It was the history and science which interested me; I’ve never gone gaga over royalty. I’d had zero desire to see the 1997 animated film Anastasia which I knew would be romanticized drivel. Fast forward ~16 years.  At the time of my conversion to the Orthodox Church—a non-Russian jurisdiction I might add—my priest informed me that Tsar Nicholas and his family were saints, and I respectfully concealed my skepticism. It was only this past July, upon reading about the Feast Days for the Romanovs, that I began to understand why they were considered saints, and then I became completely captivated with the Grand Duchess Maria.

Grand Duchess Maria 1914.                           Photo from Wikimedia.

In Russia, the royal family is considered Passion-Bearers, those who face death in a Christ-like manner, although some recognize them also as martyrs. Whatever his flaws personal and political, Tsar Nicholas II abdicated for the good of his country; he choose to stay in Russia to share the suffering of his people. Later, when he tried to emigrate, it was too late. Fate slowly tightened around him and his family. (An example of an English passion-bearer is King Edward the Martyr.)

          One religious website describes the Grand Duchess Maria as having “the rare quality of being perfectly happy in any surroundings, even when the family was imprisoned in Tobolsk.” Because of this good nature, “she was chosen by her parents to accompany them when they were forced to separate from the family and embark upon their last fateful journey to Ekaterinburg” (Sheniloff). I took a special interest in Maria—I have a history of depression amidst life trials less challenging than the horrors of political imprisonment—and I set out to learn to the truth about the Grand Duchess. Was her good temperament actual, or a religious gloss? I had to know.  Thus began my quest into the Romanovs.

          Helen Rappaport’s The Last Days of the Romanovs: Tragedy at Ekaterinburg was as compelling as the original The New Yorker article. She devotes a chapter to each of the key players—the four daughters are combined in one chapter—and the reader learns about Tsaritsa (Empress) Alexandra’s genealogy as Queen Victoria’s granddaughter and her marriage to the Tsar; some reasons for Tsar Nicholas’ ineffective reign; the tremendous courage of the Doctor and other household servants who  accompanied the royal family; and why the family was executed at that point in time: the Czech army and the pro-monarchy White Russian army was advancing on Ekaterinburg and closing in three miles away. Rappaport confirms that third-daughter Maria “seemed easily contented with very little, having no complaints about the family’s quiet life [under arrest] in Tobolsk.”  The author also verifies that Maria was “patient” and “stoic,” a natural caregiver for her oft-indisposed mother and her hemophiliac brother Alexey, the heir.  She alone initially accompanied the Tsar and Tsaritsa as they were moved from Tobolsk to what would become their final prison and execution site, the Ipatiev House in Ekaterinburg (81).  [Tsarevich Alexey was ill and couldn’t travel, and the rest of the family joined them later.]  Rappaport also addresses in brief their 2000 canonization and the founding of the Church on the Blood at the execution site; her book is copywritten 2008, before the identification of the bodies of Alexey and Maria, who were buried separately from the main mass grave.

Of particular interest to religious readers will be Rappaport’s description of the family’s final liturgy, a service called the obednitsa, a shorter liturgy-without-communion typically offered to soldiers in the field. When the serving deacon came to the part of the service commemorating the dead—“ ‘With the saints give rest, O Christ, to the soul of your servant where there is neither pain, nor sorrow, nor suffering but life everlasting’ ”— he was compelled to chant rather than speak it, and the entire family “had all silently fallen to their knees” (162). They recognized their likely approaching death, and turned to God in their last days as they had throughout their entire lives.

The Church on the Blood (Ekaterinburg, Russia), the church built on the Romanovs’ execution site. Note the photos of the imperial family posted on the church.                              Photo from Wikimedia

I remember being a little girl of 4 or 5 when my father compared me to Sesame Street’s Oscar-the-Grouch. It seems I’ve always been grumpy. Lately I’ve been thinking about Grand Duchess Maria. If she can be cheerful throughout house arrest, surely I can learn to stop complaining. An Atlantic article suggests that kindness is a muscle we can strengthen. Grand Duchess Maria is someone I aspire to emulate: I have recently taken Maria Nikolaevna Romanova as my patron saint.

To think it all started with a The New Yorker article.

 

Interesting Tidbits

• New Yorker author Robert Massie  won the 1981 Pulitzer Prize for Biography for his book Peter the Great: His Life and World.

• Helen Rappaport  has also written a 2014 book about the Romanovs, The Romanov Sisters: The Lost Lives of the Daughters of Nicholas and Alexandra.

For Additional Reading

Maria Romanov: Grand Duchess Maria Niklaevna of Russia

References

Massie, Robert K. “The Last Romanov Mystery.” The New Yorker. Vol. No. August 21 & 28, 1995, p. 72 – 95.

Rappaport, Helen. The Last Days of the Romanovs: Tragedy at Ekaterinburg. N.Y.: St. Martin’s Press,  2008.

Sheniloff, Matushka Natalia. “Russia’s Crown Jewels: The Child-Martyrs.” Orthodox America [Newspaper]. Vol. XVI, No.6 (146), February1997, pp. 8 & 10. Posted online at http://www.serfes.org/royal/child-martyrs.htm

 

Snow White Meets True Grit

Catherynne M. Valente’s Six Gun Snow White is, as the title implies, a fractured fairy tale, a Snow White recast in the Western genre. The feminist elements are strong, but the best way to describe this fast-paced novel is Snow White meets True Grit. Consider their opening sentences:

               “I accept with equanimity that you will not credit me when I tell you Mr. H. married a Crow woman and had a baby with her round about the time he struck his fortune in the good blue, which is how folk used to designate Nevada silver. It don’t trouble me none if any soul calls me a liar.”

and

               “People do not give it credence that a fourteen-year-old girl could leave home and go off in wintertime to avenge her father’s blood but it did not seem so strange then, although I will say it did not happen every day.”

Can you tell which is which?

If you’ve seen the 2010 film adaptation starring Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon, and the talented Hailee Steinfeld, you may recognize the opening voice-over of the movie as the opening paragraph from the 1968 Charles Portis novel, reproduced here in the latter paragraph above. Six Gun Snow White creates a stronger, harder Mattie Ross, a young woman who over the course of several years (instead of the few months’ journey of Portis’ book) travels from innocence to experience.

                 Snow White is a half-native woman whose mother was forcibly taken from her tribe and who died giving birth to Snow. The stepmother Mrs. H hates her for many reasons, not only for her beauty, but also her mixed heritage. Racism is real in this fairy tale, and Mrs. H tries to bleach her skin white by making Snow White bathe in milk.

Her gun Snow White calls Rose Red. The huntsman sent to track her is a Pinkerton detective. Her horse she has named Charming. The ‘dwarves’ are seven outlaw women living in a makeshift town in Montana Territory, outcasts from society who form their own ‘feminist collective’—not that they would ever call it that.

The first enchantment: a poisoned cigarette, and mouth-to-mouth resuscitation revives her.

The second enchantment: poisoned whiskey, and the gag-reflex saves her.

The third enchantment you will have to read for yourself, but it is entirely fitting if unexpected ending. No savior prince, as you might expect from this modern retelling, but a more-or-less happily-ever-after all the same.

The tone is flawless. The language is precise, perfect, heartbreaking. Snow White informs the reader that “a stepmother is like a bullet you can’t dig out” (38) and the outlaw ladies tell Snow, “Your past’s a private matter, sweetheart. You just keep it locked up in a box where it can’t hurt anyone” (105). The author maintains a breathtaking control of language.

When Snow White runs away, she thinks, “Fuck that mirror and fuck that house.” (67). I was surprised and delightfully shocked by the unexpected profanity; if the reader didn’t realize it before, this ain’t no fairy tale.

I am myself an emotional orphan, and Valente exquisitely expresses the longing for a mother who loves you. One of the outlaws tells Snow White: “You’re grown—crooked and backbent, but grown—and it’s time to stop hanging your heart on your mother” (111). [I cried here.]

The novel also captures the flavor of Native American folklore in the chapter titles such as “Snow White Secures Fire” and “Snow White’s Stepmother Gives Birth To The Sky.” At 153 pages, this is a quick read. Periodic illustrations by Charlie Bowater add to its appeal, and like a good children’s picture book, the illustrations collaborate with the text in telling the story.

Snow White cheats at cards. Illustration by Charlie Bowater

This a beautiful book, and every fairy-tale aficionado will want to read it.