Book Reflection: Ojibway Heritage

Now, when I said my "books with bears" thing was going to be "semi-regular", I did, of course, mean "actually quite random".

Nevertheless, I have one for you today:

Sharon read Ojibway Heritage, by Basil Johnston.

Should you ask me to recite the first chapter of The Song of Hiawatha, I probably could. Not as well as I used to be able to, back when I was rehearsing it regularly for a Speech exam (yes, I’m one of those kids), but I’d probably get most of it out. I occasionally burst into sections of it for no apparent reason anyway (although most people just think I’m insane, not reciting a particular poem). And I have to admit that the trochaic tetrameter comes to me a little too naturally.

In a way I guess you could say

That this rhythm almost haunts me

But it is a happy haunting -

Happy for it keeps me busy.

Any time I need to churn out

Verses for a rhyme or reason

This will rise up, deep within me

And produce a likely poem.

I love the way the lines don’t have to rhyme to produce a properly poem-y poem – although sometimes I feel like being a smart-arse and trying to get a rhyme scheme in there, too.

So, why am I waffling on about The Song of Hiawatha? Because I recently read Basil Johnston’s Ojibway Heritage – I managed to shoe-horn it into my library’s Reading Challenge as being set in a country I’ve never been to. It fits into that category three times over. I’ve never been to the Ojibway Countries, and I’ve never been to Canada or the USA, which are currently sharing the Ojibway Countries. It also has bears in it, although I didn’t mention that for the review I wrote for my work blog.

As Johnston points out, the Ojibway believe that bears symbolise strength and courage (which is actually one of the reasons why I have a bear tattoo), they offer wisdom and guidance during quests and ceremonies, and they make good eating if you can kill one before it kills you. The Ojibway have an interesting relationship with animals, as they both revere them and revere the hunting of them. The idea is to do it respectfully, and thank the animal for its (somewhat involuntary) sacrifice. Actually, their attitude towards omnivorism is pretty good – live a good and noble life, and do as much good as you can in your life, to justify the lives lost to feed you.

Johnston’s book (a mixture of explanatory text, poetry and stories) elucidates the Ojibway spiritual take on the world – their faith and some of the structure of their religion. It’s a lovely way to see the world, I must say. I loved the idea that each plant has it’s own spirit, but the plants (and rocks) in a particular area also combine together to create a spirit of place that you can feel while you are there. I felt exactly that recently when I visited a nature reserve in Sydney – there was one area in particular that had a really strong vibe to it, and I found I had to slow down and just be in it for a while.

The hierarchy of the orders of things was also pretty marvellous. Like the Judeo-Christian faiths, the Ojibway believe that a Great Spirit created the physical world first (rocks, earth, sun, moon), then the plant life, then the animals, and then humans after everything else was in place. Unlike the Judeo-Christian faiths, they don’t believe everything was created for mankind, but rather that mankind was at the tail end of the process because we can’t survive without all the other parts – we are the weakest and feeblest of all creation. Animals will survive without us. Plants will survive without animals (well, some will at any rate – the birds and insects do help out a lot of plants), and the soil and rocks will survive without any of it. We are not more important than what comes before us and sustains us, and we should treat our “parents” and our “elder brothers and sisters” with respect.

I really, really like a lot of the Ojibway world view Johnston outlines in this book. I kept thinking, “well, I guess I’m going to have to convert” as I read… but there’s something that’s got me thinking. I’m not sure, as someone who doesn’t have a drop of Native American blood in me (as far as I know – I haven’t done one of those DNA tests), if I’m allowed to convert to their religion. Or, as is more likely to happen, as I’m not part of the culture, take on aspects of their religion as my own. That’s probably cultural appropriation, which is a bit of a no-no at present. You can convert to Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, Baha’i or any number of other faiths, but can you convert to a “native” faith when you’re not a “native”?

Speaking of “native” – that’s a word that’s fraught with baggage. It tends to be something that was used by White Men of Longfellow’s vintage to imply a kind of cultural inferiority. An example of how a useful word can be given an unfortunate connotation that makes it something you can’t use any more. And speaking of White Men of Longfellow’s vintage, it really pains me to note that my beloved Song of Hiawatha has its own share of casual racism. That sucks. One of my favourite lines in the poem is one of the worst: “the feeble hands and helpless, groping blindly in the darkness, touch God’s right had in that darkness and are lifted up and strengthened” – which, in my teens, I always took to apply to all of us (and I still think it does apply to all of us), but in hindsight it was almost definitely written as a “poor heathens don’t know the True Faith of Christianity” reference. Humph.

I have never been to Obijway territory, and I have never met an Ojibway person, but there’s just something about that culture and that landscape (seen only in film and photographs) that makes me feel a strange wistfulness, like the song Gonzo sang in the first Muppet Movie – I’ve never been there, but I’m going to go back there some day.

Book Reflection: Mostly Mary

Continuing my occasional series of reflections on books with bears in them, this week I’ll be looking at a chapter book for children:

Mostly Mary, by Gwynnedd Ray (illustrated by Clara Vulliamy).

I was introduced to Mary by a bear called Paddington.

I mean that, literally. I bought a hard cover edition of A Bear Called Paddington in Paddington station when I visited London (why wouldn’t you?) and the blurb on the book jacket included a very interesting sentence:

“Like Winnie the Pooh and Mary Plain, Paddington is a bear to remember.”

Now, I am quite familiar with Winnie the Pooh. Even if Disney hadn’t made sure I had that “tubby little cubby all stuffed with fluff” on my radar from an early age, I probably would have encountered Christopher Robin and the good folk of the 100 Aker Wood through the story books my mother bought for me as a child.

But Mary Plain? I’d never heard of her. Here she was, being mentioned in the same breath as Winnie the Pooh and Paddington (two much beloved bears), but she was a complete mystery to me.

Well, I did what any librarian would do. I googled Mary Plain and discovered she was the heroine of a series of books published from the 30s through to the 60s. She was, apparently, quite a popular character at one point. So why had I never heard of her?

Unfortunately, none of my libraries had a copy of any of the Mary Plain books, but it just so happened that four of the books had been recently reissued with new illustrations by Clara Vulliamy. I ordered the first two books, and sat down to meet a new friend.

There’s something you have to remember about Mostly Mary. It was written in 1930 as light entertainment for children. So it is a cheerful, light-hearted, entertaining book… about a terrible zoo that would never be built in a civilised society in this day and age.

I visited the bear pits in Bern a few years ago, and the old pits weren’t in use at the time – they now have the bears in a park along the river bank where they have some space to roam and grass and trees and things (although I understand these are connected to the pits with a tunnel, so the bears can use both spaces). When I saw the bear pits, it made me sad to think that bears would spend their whole lives in those concrete bunkers. Now, thanks to Mary Plain, I know that people also threw random crap at them while they were in there.

Gwynned Rae used to visit the zoo while she was living in Bern in the 1920s, and the bears were the highlight of the zoo for her. She imagined them as being like a family with small children, going about their business being bears in a pit, and that’s the angle from which she has written this book. Mary is very much like a child, but not completely anthropomorphised. The book consists of a series of stories (mostly about Mary, but some of the other bears take the lead in a few stories – hence the title). During these stories, the bears are playful, happy and interested in the world around them.

But they’re in a terrible zoo, during a time when people treated animals with little respect, and I kept coming across parts of the book that were supposed to be “oh, how dear!” moments, but were actually “well, that’s a bit sad, really” moments instead.

Mary overhears one of the humans commenting about her, saying “isn’t Mary plain?” and she thinks this must be her full name – she gets so excited and happy about this that she runs to her favourite part of the concrete bunker and hugs herself because there was no one else around to hug. People throw stuff at the bears all the time, and that’s pretty much the most interesting thing that happens to them, so they like to play with the random crap that has been tossed at them. People also throw food at them – often carrots bought from a stall, but also “treats” like honey and condensed milk, and the bears practically live for these moments. There is one lone tree in each of the pits, and they’ve been used so much that the lower branches are all broken off…

There’s a point in the book where Mary is put on a leash and taken to some rich person’s party. This is supposed to be an awfully big adventure for the young bear, but all I could think of is, “Really? This was something they did in the 20s? Rented bear cubs from the zoo as party tricks?”

And this charming, happy-go-lucky bear cub is just so excited to encounter every crappy part of her crappy little life.

I wanted to love this book, but we’re in a different place now (thank God), and it’s hard to love something that cheerfully celebrates a mistake we made in our ignorance that we regret deeply (at least, we should regret it deeply – I’m sure there are some people who don’t, but those people are the ones who never stopped to ask “but what must it be like?”).

A child who has never seen the pits and hasn’t got a full appreciation for how terrible the zoos from that time were would probably enjoy the book and fall in love with Mary. I wish them luck. Personally, I have to wait a little longer before I can bring myself to read the second one.

Book Reflection: I Want My Hat Back

I've decided to start an occasional (knowing me, very occasional) series of book reviews for books that have bears in them. Because I like bears. This isn't so much a review of the book as a review combined with a pointless ramble about where my brain went as a result of thinking about the book.

So, more of a "book reflection" than a "book review".

I'm kicking things off with my most recent purchase:

I Want My Hat Back, by Jon Klassen.

This book kind of sneaks up on you. The first time you read it, it seems a bit plodding and, dare I say it, not very interesting... right up until you get to the last few pages, when it's entirely possible you will find yourself uttering an involuntary "Hah!"

You see, the whole book is basically a wind up to a punchline. It's just a very subtle and understated wind up to a very neatly done punchline. It will no doubt tickle the funny bones of many children, and I expect many a household has been reduced to fits of giggles by this one. I wasn't rolling around on the floor laughing, but I'm also not three-to-five years old (and, sadly, do not have any three-to-five year old co-readers), so I'm not exactly the target audience. It still made me utter an involuntary "Hah!", and I had a smile on  my face at the end of it.

In subsequent readings, you know what is coming and you know how sly the humour is, so I can imagine scores of four-year-olds start giggling the minute they see the rabbit.

The bear you see on the cover of the book has lost its hat. It asks everyone it meets if they have seen its hat, but no one has... or is one of them lying?

The book is part of a trilogy of hat books, including We Found a Hat and This is Not My Hat. I haven't read the other books, but from what I can tell they are unrelated stories, linked purely by the central role a hat plays in the plot.

I mentioned above that I'm not three-to-five years old, and am therefore not in the target audience for this book. I haven't been three-to-five years old for quite some time now, and yet I've always maintained that such a technicality is no reason why I should stop reading picture books. I am also in a situation where I have no children in my life. I don't have any kids of my own, and I have no nephews or nieces. I am a librarian, but I'm an academic librarian, so I rarely read books to children (I've done it a few times in my job, but not for years).

I still think "childhood" is not a prerequisite for reading picture books written for children. I love poetry, art and good stories, and you get all of these things in abundance in the picture book section of the bookshop or library. So I happily borrow and buy these books for myself, even though I am not a child and I don't have any regular contact with children.

But I realised, on thinking about this book, that sometimes it helps to be four years old. I was a tired and grumpy adult when I read it for the first time. I had read a recommendation of the book by Jenny  Colgan, who that said it was very funny and made her laugh every time she read it. I was expecting it to be highly amusing. And yet I read it, and found it only mildly amusing. It was, I suppose, "laugh out loud" funny, in that I did, indeed, utter an involuntary "Hah!" But overall it was... well... "okay I guess?"

It was only on reflection that I realised a four-year-old would probably crack up at the point where I uttered my involuntary "Hah!" And would probably crack up every time they thought about it for hours afterwards. And would probably crack up in anticipation of that moment on subsequent re-readings. They would probably also crack up every time a member of their family answered a "have you seen my...?" question with "I haven't seen it. I wouldn't steal a ... Don't ask me any more questions."

You do see the world differently when you're only three-feet tall and you still enjoy knock-knock jokes about interrupting cows.

Sometimes I really miss being four.

Leftover Book Challenge Review: The Chronicles of Narnia

So, I have another left-over review that wasn't needed on my work blog for the Reading Challenge, and I may as well post it here. The challenge for this week was to read a trilogy or series.

Sharon B read the Chronicles of Narnia, by C.S. Lewis.

I have a theory about series that go beyond four books: They shouldn’t. A trilogy is great, and a series of four books is thoroughly enjoyable, but past the fourth book, things go a little south. Most series fall into the same pattern, I’ve found:

• The first book is a new and exciting experience; you get caught up in the plot and the characters and you want to read more.
• The second book can’t quite get out of the shadow of the first book; nine times out of ten it doesn’t really have legs as it’s own story, but you enjoy reading it because you get to spend more time with the characters you loved from the first book.
• The third book manages to have a genuinely interesting plot, fills you with excitement and reminds you why you engaged with this series. Or it kind of sucks and you wonder what happened.
• The fourth book is still good, and it can be the most mature and developed story of the whole series – but it’s often a completely different beast to the first book, and there’s something about it that feels like a natural ending.
• Every book after that is moving further and further away from what you loved in the first book, and sometimes they just end up being kind of sad, really.

Now, I love The Chronicles of Narnia. I’ve loved them since I was a kid and I re-read them every now and then – and still love them. But they absolutely conform to my theory. Let’s look at them in publication order:

• The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe is one of the finest novels for children in the English language. It was a game-changer that has inspired countless copy-cats over the decades, and has a group of passionate fans who love it to pieces.
• Prince Caspian is a wonderful opportunity to be reacquainted with the Pevensie kids and get back to Narnia for another adventure… but it’s not the most memorable book in the series, and the story isn’t a patch on the first book.*
• The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is a rip-snorter of a story, and the bits that people love most about the series are probably in this book, if they weren’t in the first one. But we lost half the kids from the first book before we even started and, even though we picked up another kid, we lose the other characters we love at the end…
• The Silver Chair (the Fourth Book in the series) is actually a really good book with a great story, but it doesn’t have any of the characters from TLtWatW, so it kind of feels as if the story that started in that book is well and truly over. If this had been the last book, it would have been a good book to end on.
• The Horse and His Boy is an odd book that stands on its own well enough, but doesn’t feel like it belongs in the series. It’s in the “world”, but completely outside of the narrative of the first four books. If all of the references to “Narnia” were changed to “Elsia”, and “Aslan” was a hawk called “Elsor”, you’d never pick it as belonging to the series – and the series wouldn’t miss it if it wasn’t there.
• The Magician’s Nephew is a prequel that takes away some of the wonder and mystery from the back-story of the first book by filling in gaps that didn’t need filling (how did a street lamp end up in the middle of the Narnian woods?). It’s okay, but it’s not great.**
• The Last Battle is trying too hard to be an analogy, and forgets to be a fun book to read. It’s kind of sad and vaguely depressing and an unfitting end to the series – and I can’t forgive Lewis for what he did to Susan. The series should have stopped before this book.

*I have to admit I usually forget what happens in Prince Caspian. I've re-read it a couple of times, and every time it's like "oh, *that's* what was in this book".

**Having said that, I was given a box set of the series as a child which was in story-event order, not publication order. The Magician's Nephew was actually the first book in the series that I read, and I have fond memories of reading it as a child - especially some parts, like the "wood between the worlds". It's only on re-reading it now that I notice it's definitely post-fourth-book.

Duncan Isn't Horrible

I have a confession to make: I find Hägar the Horrible kind of boring.

This is something that always confuses me, because the strip is currently written and drawn by Chris Browne (the son of Dik Browne, the strip's creator), and Chris Browne wrote Raising Duncan - which just happens to be one of my favourite comic strips of all time.

Raising Duncan featured a tubby bearded guy who's a bit of a big kid at heart and his not-quite-as-tubby wife - sound familiar? The same guy wrote two comic strips simultaneously featuring ostensibly very similar characters. One charmed the socks off me, and the other leaves me indifferent. I don't know how that works.

I don't want to undersell Raising Duncan buy suggesting it's destined to be compared to Hägar. It's quite it's own beast. It's a contemporary (early 2000s) story about a professional couple who have pets instead of children - and it's an entirely joyful take on the idea.

The main characters are a pair of authors, B.D. Kelly (aka, Big Daddy or Bruce, the romance novelist) and his wife Adelle (the more successful crime novelist), and their pets Brambly (the cat) and Duncan (the Scottish terrier). B.D. is more mature and less obnoxious than Hägar, and Adelle is more playful and less nagging than Helga. The pets are, oddly, convinced they are in a relationship (at times they sound like an old married couple), but the true joy of the strip lies in the relationship between B.D. and Adelle.

They are clearly playmates as well as husband and wife, and I have to admit that I envy their camaraderie. Helga and Hägar are often at loggerheads with each other, and there is an extent to which their relationship still feels more comfortable in the 1970s (when their strip was originally created), while B.D. and Adelle get along like a house on fire and take turns being the responsible(ish) adult.

If I could move into a comic strip, and move in next door to an existing comic strip family I'd be had pressed to choose between the Kellys and the Pattersons (from For Better or For Worse, which I'll probably rabbit on about another time).

The thing that amazes me most about Raising Duncan at present, however, is the fact that you can't buy the comics - but you can read them for free on Go Comics (currently one of the most annoying web page designs I have the misfortune to encounter in my day).

It's bizarre. Browne stopped creating the strip years ago, and you should, by rights, be able to buy the whole collection. I certainly would, and I'm sure I'm not alone. So how is it possible in this day and age that people who would be willing to buy something can't - but you can access it as much as you like if you have the patience to putt up with a crappy web page?

Very odd.

A spare review: "A Walk in the Woods"

Over on my work blog, we've been reviewing books every week as part of a 52 Book Reading Challenge.

I've been thinking about writing "bonus" reviews on this page, where I mention a few things I prudently snipped out of a review that's promoting works in my library's collections, but I haven't gotten around to such things.

Recently, though, I stuffed up.

For a number of the reviews, I've chosen books that I had lying around my house that also happen to be books in the collection, and I did that for my most recent review as well....

Only, it turns out that it wasn't a book we have in the collection - it was a book we had in the collection. I couldn't very well review a book we weeded, now, could I? So I've got a left-over book review floating around. Just for the heck of it, I'm putting it here:

*****

Sharon B read A Walk in the Woods, by Bill Bryson.

Have you ever had one of those conversations that go along the lines of: “If you could have any job in the world, what would it be?”

Whenever something like that comes up, my answer is almost always “I’d like to have Bill Bryson’s job.” And this is completely true. I’d love to write Creative Nonfiction for a living. I’m sure there are parts of Bryson’s job that are hard going, but the man takes trips he’s been on, or places he’s visited, or topics that fascinate him, and he manages to spin best-selling books out of them. Who wouldn’t want to do that?

A Walk in the Woods is one of Bryson’s most famous books. It’s a slightly fictionalised account of a hiking trip Bryson undertook in the late 90s, when he decided to walk the Appalachian Trail (“slightly fictionalised” because he changed people’s names and was a bit flexible with his descriptions of his interactions with them).

Chapters that chronicle his time on the trail (with his travel buddy, “Katz”) are interspersed with sections talking about the trail, the history of national parks in America, the fate of certain species of trees or mollusks, and some insights into American culture and the relationship between Americans and their natural heritage.

It’s an interesting mix. The book is basically two books in one. On the one hand we have the story of a hiking trip (the walk in the woods), and on the other hand, we have a collection of essays inspired by the woods in which our heroes walked.

It may be a bit of an acquired taste – and I’ll admit this is my second attempt to read this book. The first time I picked it up I didn’t get past the first couple of chapters. But, I’m glad I took the opportunity to revisit this book and take a walk with Bill – it has been an interesting trip.

*****

Oh, and just between you and me, I didn't actually read this book at all - I've been listening to the audio book in my car. The library I work for has never had the audio version of this book, so I was cheating big time.

Jõudu tarvis

I'm currently on a "road trip" for work, preparing to teach a series of classes for a workshop in one of our microcampuses, and I'm planning on starting the workshops off with an Estonian lesson.

Do I think first-year nursing students in a rural Australian city are particularly interesting in learning Estonian? Well, I can't say I'm expecting many of them to say "Oh, good, that's what I came here for" - seeing as the workshop is on academic writing and research skills.

But I'm going to teach them two Estonian words anyway:

Jõudu tarvis

One of the things I love about Estonians is their world-weary and practical nature.

In Australia, if we see someone undertaking an endeavour, like hard physical labour or a difficult task, or running a race or competing in something that takes effort, we wish them luck.

"Good luck!"
"Thanks!"

That's the standard exchange used in these parts, and we use it often.

In Estonia, however, they tend to should out something different:

"Jõudu!" or "Jõudu tööle!"

This is often interpreted in phrasebooks as "good luck", but it actually means "strength!" or "strength for the work!"

Estonians don't wish each other luck when they're undertaking an undertaking, they wish each other enough strength to tackle the work at hand. It's a beautiful thing.

And the response?

"Jõudu tarvis" - "strength is needed."

It's a simple, shared acknowledgement that this is a job that requires strength.

So why do I want to teach this phrase to a bunch of nursing students at an academic writing workshop?

Because writing assignments is a job that requires strength. It might not look much like plowing a field, but it requires time, effort and the use of "muscles" that you don't use in quite that way for anything else. You don't need luck to do well, you need to throw your shoulder into it.

Sometimes it will feel like pushing a boulder up a hill. And if you're studying more than one subject, you'll have to juggle several boulders at the same time.

Jõudu tarvis - strength is needed.

It helps to acknowledge the hard work that assignment writing can be. It helps to understand that you can't expect it to be easy. But, like all work, you get stronger with time.

Jõudu!