Printed Maine People

Series 2,Vol.2 April 21, 2002

Maine Book Reviews For Us and By Us

FROM THE EDITOR:  Maine, in many ways, is a resource state. And we all know that children are our most precious resource. There is nothing more precious then, than Maine Children’s books. This issue of Printed Maine People begins with a special section gathering together reviews of the most current Maine Children’s books. Enjoy.

Nipper, I Love You, written and illustrated by Meg Plinth. (Sequin Cove Press, 2002) Reviewed by Anne Marie Crustle

“It’s early summer on the Maine Coast and young Stanley Witkins can’t wait to go swimming and snorkeling in the ocean that beckons at the feet of the Witkin family’s summer house. Down and up he dives and surfaces. He can hear his mother calling for him in the distance, It’s time for lunch. ‘One more dive,’ he yells. Stanley plunges down and his feet skim across the weeds on the bottom and then yank, his ankle is caught in the weeds. He can’t pull free! Stanley looks about wildly, barely noticing the lobster which comes ambling up. But then, to Stanley’s amazement, the lobster uses its sharp claws to cut him free from the weeds!” So starts Meg Plinth’s heartwarming new Maine picture book, Nipper, I Love You.

That night Stanley dreams of the crustacean which saved his life. He can see her vividly, a medium sized lobster with a very distinctive diamond shaped marking. The following week the Witkin family goes out for dinner at an area restaurant. Passing by the lobster tank Stanley is stunned to find a medium sized lobster with a distinctive diamond shape marking in the tank. “‘Nipper’,” he shouts. ‘Mom that’s the lobster that saved me.’”

Stanley talks his family into buying Nipper and taking her home. Setting Nipper up in a salt water tank inside an all terrain wheelbarrow Stanley and the lobster spend an idyllic summer together, sharing a unique friendship which only deepens when Stanley learns to communicate with Nipper by using his pointer and index fingers to mimic Nipper’s eye stalk movements.

In the fall, as Stanley returns to school during the day, Nipper begins to fret in his tank. One evening she calls Stanley over and tells him that, though she wouldn’t trade their summer together for anything, she misses the ocean bottom and her lobster friends. A heart wrenching final scene ensues as Stanley learns that the true meaning of friendship sometimes takes a catch and release form.

This warm and delightful Maine story is accentuated by Plinth’s crude but evocative crayon drawings. Sure to join Blueberries For Sal and Miss Rumphius as a classic Maine picture book, Nipper, I Love You is an unforgettable story which will recall youth to the aged and aging to the young.

Anne Marie Crustle writes and edits the monthly publication of Friends in the Sea, a non-profit corporation. She lives in Margaretboro, Maine with her two dogs and three kayaks.

Don't Look out Your Window—Horror Stories for Young Children by Sawyer
Nelson. (Wee Winkie Press, 2002). Reviewed by J Booth.

     We live in a PC world. By PC I do not mean "Personal Computer" world. 
I mean "Politically Correct" world, a world where certain things are simply 
not said. Or done. And I won't go into what they are here, because that 
would just be so, well, "un PC." But, if we are honest with ourselves, and 
can get beyond current social conventions and expectations, being PC is often 
a real drag. And, in our PC world, as much has been gained, so has much also 
been lost.
     Take for instance, scaring children. When I was growing up in the 
1950's, and when my parents were growing up, and their parents were growing 
up, and probably back to caveman times, it was PC (Perfectly Correct) to 
scare the pants off the little heathens. No one reported you to the 
Department of Human Services if you told the kiddies that the Boogie Man 
would get them if they didn't shape up, or no one recommended that they might 
need $17,000 of rehabilitative psychotherapy if you scratched on their 
windows on Halloween, or if you said, "Of course there's a monster under your 
bed, and he'll get you if you get out of it just one more time tonight." 
And, the fact was, the kid's LIKED to be scared. Think about your favorite 
fairy tales----Beauty and the Beast, Snow White, The Snow Queen, Little Red 
Riding Hood, The Three Little Pigs---they all have evil monsters and hideous 
villains. And, admit it, you loved them. As did I. And as did Sawyer 
Nelson, the author of a new and terrific little book entitled Don't Look Out 
Your Window---Horror Stories for Young Children.
     The twelve tales told here are all original; no repeats of anything we 
ever heard as kids. And all are refreshingly Politically Incorrect. 
The first offering is "Shirley, the Vampire Paper Doll," a ghoulish story 
about a little girl who gets a book of paper dolls from her grandmother for 
Christmas. I won't spoil the surprise for you here, but, reader beware, 
Shirley is no golden haired little dumpling, no matter how she may appear.
Another favorite is "The Toy Hearse," in which a boy, age five, inherits 
an antique toy hearse from his great grandfather. Again, I won't spoil the 
fun for you, but this one is sure to scare the kiddies--and you--half, if not 
totally--to death.
     Especially choice is a tight Poe-esque little selection called "Ashes, 
Ashes, We All Fall Down," about two London street urchin orphan twins, age 
seven, who discover that, by simply uttering the words to a certain nursery 
rhyme, they can infect their victims with the plague. It's macabre and 
delicious, and sure to please the 6-8 set.
     Author Sawyer Nelson, himself a retired child psychologist, says, 
"Children need to feel fear early in life so that they may learn to 
overcome it. That was why I wrote this book, actually. I wanted to leave 
something behind me of lasting value to help children."
     So, parents, throw your PC-edness out the window for the time being, and 
run---don't walk--- to your local bookstore, and buy this book today. Do it 
for your kids. You'll be glad you did.

J Booth lives in Bangor, Maine in a house he says is haunted. In his spare 
time, he is an amateur ghostbuster.

(Editor’s note: PMP would like to thank J. Booth for taking on the review of Don’t Look Out Your Window on such short notice. We had originally assigned Don’t Look Out Your Window to one of our regular reviewers, Diane Findergall. A copy of a nearly completed review was found on Diane’s computer screen by the emergency medical technicians who answered her distress call. Unfortunately, they arrived too late. We had planned to publish Diane's review posthumously, as a tribute to both Diane and the efficacy of Don’t Look Out Your Wind, however a macabre incident which occurred during the typesetting of Diane’s fragmentary review convinced us to immediately expunge her review from living memory.)

Let’s Go to the Dump, by Mildred Canonfild (Rumpageous Press, 2002)

Reviewed by Florence Ingersombey

The joys of childhood are delightful in a way all their own. Delightful childhood experiences range from the universal to the particular to the regional. The first taste of ice cream, backyard rambles with the gang, reading your very own first book by yourself, some joys are everyone’s.

Some childhood joys are peculiar to Maine, however. In Let’s Go to the Dump Mildred Canonfild brings to life the fun, excitement and learning that Maine children bounce, run, carry, sort, and dodge, (i.e. overloaded Ford 150's,) around the dump each weekend. Canonfild specializes in writing picture books filled with the sort of bouncing, hopping childhood rhymes, of nonsense and sense interwoven on the palate of a joyful tapestry, that makes young readers spring from the couch and run and scream like crazy around the room.

“Klip klap sump

It’s fun to go to the dump

Tin Cans, Aluminum Cans

Let’s sort all our cans

Snip snap stans

I can toss them in with my hands

Look at the pretty view

And the burn pile burning too

Flip flap flier

Let’s throw on a tire

Misspelled signs

let’s break bottles of wine

Klip klap sump

It’s fun to go to the Dump

Skoopity skappity

Rump slump jump

Goopity gappity

I never want to leave the Dump”

Canonfild’s delightfully frenetic quatrains are accompanied by the delightfully baroque drawings of Art Tatelthorne, a talented, convicted art forger whose probation terms stipulated illustrating original childrens books. The wonder and delight which Tatelthorne evokes demonstrates to his readers, as well as to his parole board, that the artist has embraced his return to society. Let’s Go to the Dump is a marvelous picture book which will delight the young, the old, and everyone in between.

Florence Ingersombey is a retired parole officer with an interest in the literary arts. She lives in Canton and is editing an anthology, Released to Release: A Collection of Poems and Stories by the Paroled.

The Bear in the Basement, by Jeremy McGredney. (Bilganderry Press, 2002).

Reviewed by Stensin Houghtin, M.A.

The manner in which classical themes and narrative structures sometimes compose themselves through authors with no appreciable classical background is really quite remarkable. Take for example the juvenile narrative which has most recently passed my desk for review, The Bear in the Basement. The Bear in the Basement, by juvenile fiction veteran Jeremy McGredney, tells a simple tale whose simplicity is imbued with tragic pathos due to what can only be an intuitive infusion of Aristotelian sensibility.

Intuitive indeed! For classical erudition has been evident nowhere in McGredney’s previous juvenile novels such as Cherry Tomato Summer, The Missing Coyote Pelt, and Slow Boat to China, Maine. The Bear in the Basement is set in the backwoods town of Sample, Maine which is home to the Greeley family. The Greeleys are concerned to find that the idyllic countryside surrounding their home is being shattered by the notorious Spinniger and Son Extraction Company, which has been dynamiting area caves and rock formations looking for amethyst deposits. On a cold January afternoon young Sam Greeley hears the now all too familiar rumble of a dynamite explosion just beyond the edge of his property line. This time however the explosion is followed by a sudden roar and the sound of running men. Sam is shocked to find that the miners have destroyed the winter refuge of a rare Maine brown bear.

The bear, clearly confused by this sudden discommoding, staggers about plainly seeking help. Sam, realizing that no cave is safe from the Spinnigers, takes the bear by the paw and leads him to the family basement, wrapping him in blankets which the drowsy but appreciative bear gladly accepts. All that winter the bear slumbered, slumbered until the concerns of Sam’s mother were gradually laid to rest.

One day, early in spring, Sam comes home from school to find the house in a shambles, furniture upturned, curtains shredded, the kitchen in a tumult. Rushing to the basement Sam finds his worst fears confirmed: the bear was gone. Sam, distraught at the thought of confronting his parents, sagged his way into the kitchen. On the table, to Sam’s astonishment, in a rough untutored hand, was a note from the bear.

“Dear kind boy,

How my heart churns at the shame of haiving returnd your kindnes with my rampage. How sory I am for eating your fish in the tank upstars. I awok in a ferocous state, knowing not what I diid. I can never forgiv myself nor should you forgiv me. I can never repay your kindnes to me. But thank you. Know that I walk the forests galled to the quick with the thought of my shame. Your friend. Gambollo the Bear.”

Sam, touched deeply by the bear’s remorse, ran out the door to find the bear and forgive him. Out in the woods Sam is overtaken by a sudden spring snowstorm. Lost, shivering, and with a broken leg Sam faces certain death until a familiar brown shape lumbers out of the snow...

Bear in the Basement is a tale of fatalism and redemption whose ursine hero steps forth to the reader as though straight from the annals of a Greek Tragedy. The rotundite cylindricism, so commended by Aristotle, and so marked in McGredney’s narrative structure, is not to be found in so pure a form outside the works of Euripides. The rhetorical flourishes found in McGredney’s dialogue bear distinctive characteristics found only in the orations of Demosthenes and Dinarchus.

How can we explain McGredney’s transformation from the Juvenile hack who wrote The Sour Ball Conspiracy, to the sublime tragedian who penned The Bear in the Basement? Dare I venture an explanation? Yet the dead hand teaches best, and for those who can discover it awaits a rare redemptive treat.

Stensin Houghtin, M.A.., abruptly retired from his Classical Studies position at Malthus State University after a two month tenure. He lives in Pawbridge, Maine.

Forgotten Children's Games, by Marti Glibfleish, M.S.

How to Scare Your Neighbor, Good! by Ted H. Smyth; (Boy Zone Press, 2002)
(recommended for ages 9 to 21) Illustrated. Reviewed by Irving P. Horhumph

In the mail today, a killer juvenile book, the first by ex-con Ted H. Smyth. If that boy doesn't do afternoon sports, clubs, lessons, detention, that kind of thing, then he'll be looking for something to do, and he'll be amused with doing all the great after-school activities that Mr. Smyth (tongue in cheek? maybe, but then again, maybe not!) outlines in this back-pocket-sized, spiral bound manual. Smyth gives his hungry young reade

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And in other book news, this delicious last minute review just came in.

The Smelt Elegies: by Caleb Stuart Bean; (3 vol.; privately printed)

Reviewed by Jayne M. Whoollychesterre

Tears of a Smelt
Smelt Loves
Angel Smelt, Daemon Smelt: A Verse Vision

Smelt Loves, in many ways the happiest of the three volumes, reverses center and margin, plunging us into a fanciful social world of underwater flirtation, parties, "schools" and the like, culminating in a mass courtship ritual at once thrilling, romantic, and, I must blush to report, intensely erotic. Intrigued? Read the book.

I cannot begin to do justice to the final volume in all its cryptic glory. Gnostic is the word I think, perhaps. Much of it, Bean reports, came to him in a vision upon awakening in his ice house to find himself plunged into the darkness, his lantern out, his limbs numb with cold. Bean began writing feverishly, but much of his writing proved illegible later, and other needs forced him to break off from his work and leave the icehouse for a minute or two. In the intervening moments the visionary gleam fled. One can only imagine the greatness that was lost from the greatness of the fragments we do have. Intrigued? Xerox copies of The Smelt Elegies are available from Mr. Bean and he reports, with his characteristic modesty, that several publishers have the manuscript "under review."

Jayne M. Whoollychesterre is a full time lover of books, authors, and wordsmiths old and new. She divides her time between reading, the textile arts, and part-time volunteering at th

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