Taran Wanderer by Lloyd Alexander

The Chronicles of Prydain is a young adult staple series.  The books have been nominated for and won awards in the world of children’s literature.  They have been read widely since their publication in the 1960s.  After reading Taran Wanderer, the fourth and penultimate book of the series, I have a deeper understanding of why the books are so well-regarded.

Our tale picks up with Taran a little older than he was when we left him.  He has realized his feelings for Eilonwy are romantic, and wishes to marry her.  There’s only one problem — how does an Assistant Pig-Keeper get the courage to propose to a princess?

Taran has no idea of what his parentage is.  He sets out on a quest to find out who his father is.  Adventures ensue.

The special thing about the adventures is that, wherever he goes, Taran proves himself to be a mature young man.  He acts with honor and honesty, fights only noble fights, and seeks peace and belonging where he goes.  He makes a place for himself wherever he ends up through his good actions.  He earns himself a dozen “parents” along his path, one so desperate that he lies about being Taran’s father.  Yet Taran, like all teenagers, needs to find and realize himself; only when he gets to the end goal of his journey does he realize the truth.

This is a different book from the others.  Taran is in a very different head space, already knowing right from wrong, and able to restrain himself.  Alexander has crafted a storyline that is much closer to traditional stories and myths in Taran Wanderer, and the result is pleasant.  It retains our familiar characters while giving them room to show us that they are more than they were at the beginning through the use of variants of often-invoked archetypal plot lines.  I found the twining together of our hero’s tale with folktale elements comforting.  Alexander does a masterful job of making the traditional plots and Taran’s story one, and produces something wonderful for his effort.

Rating:  5/5.

The Prince of Frogtown by Rick Bragg

I’ve read All Over But the Shoutin’.  I’ve read Ava’s Man.  And now I have read The Prince of Frogtown, the most recent book Rick Bragg has written about his family and childhood in the rural Deep South.  I am heartily glad he has continued to write these personal books, because he has gotten so much better.

This particular book is about the life of his father, Charles Bragg, who was a charming but somewhat feckless man.  A veteran who was scarred by the Korean War, Charles changed, going from a man who was sweet toward his children and wife into an alcoholic who frightened and abandoned them.

Bragg writes with frankness about his father, having to learn much about him from other people — his mother, his relatives, and men who were Charles’ friends.  Due to the fact that Bragg had relatively little information, I think he did a better job writing about him in a dispassionate manner.  He is able to reflect upon his father’s actions and see the mistakes as clearly as the endearing things he did.  He was forced to contemplate his father in a way he did not have to do with his mother and his maternal grandfather, respectively, in his previous two books.

The big thing that makes The Prince of Frogtown special, however, are the corresponding stories about his relationship with his stepson.  They are funny, they are sad, they are frustrating, embarrassing, and very real.  In those stories, with Bragg’s struggle to understand a child whose background is so different from his own so apparent, and his wish to be able to shape and guide him without having an adequate model for being a father, is strikingly apparent.  Their relationship is a good one, but is one that needed much guiding and instruction from Bragg’s wife and his stepson.

This was the part that pulled on me the most.  I’ve read three books by him now; this is the first time I have felt compassion for him.  I rue that he did not have a father who was a model of good parenting, someone like his grandfather Bundrum.  I could say that the reason this book is the best of the three is that the voice is clearer, without the at-times cloying spelling and hokey colloquialisms that would pop up in the narration of the two previous books, but it’s more than that.  For the first time, Bragg trusts us and bares some of his soul to us.  This makes him more human than either of the other two books did, where he kept the reader at arm’s length by using uncomfortable language and never letting us see his personal life in a meaningful way.

I loved that he’s let us in.  Let us hope that he has more to show us in the future.

Rating: 4.5/5.

The Castle of Llyr by Lloyd Alexander

Oh, back to Prydain and the usual cast of characters.  I can’t get enough of Lloyd Alexander’s imaginary land; these books are timeless with regards to the quality of the story.  The lessons they impart and the plots they follow are at once familiar and fresh.  They are, in one word, delightful.

I actually liked The Castle of Llyr better than the last one, The Black Cauldron.  This book, rather than being a story about sacrifice for the good of all, is more about the exploration of relationships.  Maybe it’s because I’m a woman, but the development and growth of the children from Caer Dallben is just as interesting as the fighting of battles for the fate of the people.

We are introduced here to some new characters, most notably Prince Rhun, a bumbling young man who, to Taran’s dismay, is betrothed to Eilonwy.  When Eilonwy goes missing, Taran is given the task of watching after Rhun when they go out searching for her.  Adventures ensue, but lessons are also learned.  While he is unaware of the consequences of his actions at times, and is not the most competent of people, he is not a bad person.  While Taran saw him as a burden at the beginning of their trek, he learns to view him as someone who has value and an honorable inner core.

Rhun also does not have illusions about how he actually performs on tasks.  He is aware of his limitations.  Alexander has crafted a character that is easier for children and teens to relate to in Rhun, I think, than in Taran, who, despite his faults, somehow always manages to have things fall his way.  Prince Rhun doesn’t have that, and is a more believable supporting character due to it.

Another delicious part of the story of this book is the relationship between Taran and Eilonwy.  There’s always been hints that there is a romantic relationship tying the two together, but it is in this book, with the premonitory presence of Prince Rhun, to actually kindle something more blatant.  It’s rewarding to know that two characters I love also love each other.  I can’t wait to see what happens in the next two books, and wonder if they also are in the collection of short stories by Alexander about the land of Prydain.

Don’t tell me, though.  It’s too fun to find out on my own

Rating:  5/5.

I’m Not Hanging Noodles On Your Ears by Jag Bhalla

I love words.  I love reading about words.  I have a favorite linguist (John McWhorter, for those who are interested), and never turn down a book that discusses language, whether it be English or a foreign one.  Thus I was heartily excited to read I’m Not Hanging Noodles On Your Ears.

The author, Jag Bhalla, is extremely enthusiastic about his subject.  He speaks British English, and has an Indian background.  His delight with language, in all its idiosyncrasies, does not stop with his Hindi, however; he’s an equal-opportunity idiom collector.  (Hindi is one of the languages that is featured, however.)

He provides us with a plethora of idioms, most of which are delightfully descriptive.  Some are not so far from those used in English.  For example, in Hindi, you say you have “stomach fire,” when in English you would say you have “heartburn.”  Not so odd.  Others are completely incomprehensible to the English speaker, like when someone “looks like September” in Russia, they look sad.  I found the variety at turns comforting, surprising, and chuckle-worthy.

So, yes, the book is charming.  It did have a couple of negative points.  The first was the narration Bhalla gives us before the lists of idioms.  Yes, he likes his topic, but the exposition is a little too in-your-face with cheekiness.  Especially annoying to me was the use of italics to point out English idioms within his little introductions.  It was distracting to me to have them pointed out, no matter how much Bhalla was trying to show how idioms become a staple of any language.

Another issue I had with the book is that one idiom might be included two or three times.  Often he will have talked about the idiom in an introduction to a chapter, then included it in a list within that chapter, and then later included in a separate chapter.  This is what happened with the Italian idiom, “to reheat cabbage,” which means to rekindle an old flame.  It is mentioned in the introduction of the chapter about love, then in the list within that chapter of “Other Romance-Related Idioms.”  Imagine my surprise when I also found it in the introduction to the chapter about food.  It is as if he either cannot remember he has mentioned it before, or that his reader is dim-witted.

Those problems are not negligible.  They are, however, outweighed by the enjoyable aspects of the book.  I’d recommend it for those who have an interest in language, but probably isn’t for someone who will be aggravated by the repetition or the boisterousness of the author.

Rating:  3/5.

D’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths by Ingri and Edgar Parin D’Aulaire

I’m going to be up front here:  this book is one of my favorites from my childhood.  In fact, I just had to buy a new copy for rereading purposes.  The old one was paperback and had sadly crumpled covers and some squished pages.  Such is the price a book pays for being so well-loved by a kid.  It meets the storytelling needs of more than just children.  The illustrations are wonderful.  It provides a wonderful, approachable base for those who are interested in Greek mythology.  And it’s just plain fun to share; I’ve given copies to friends before.

One of the nice things about this book is that it is divided into two sections: the gods and the heroes.  The god section, for the most part, focuses on the origin stories and on getting the reader familiar with the personalities and characteristics of the major gods and goddesses.  The stories are memorable; I was the only one in a college history class to be able to answer questions about Greek mythology, and I think it’s in large part to the excellently-written stories in this book.

The heroes section is about notable humans — members of the human race who managed inhuman feats of strength and cunning.  The nice thing about the Greek myths is that it rewards both physical and mental agility; that was a valuable lesson to me when I was young, seeing as I wasn’t the most athletic of children.

The illustrations are great.  They have a noticeable Greek flair, which adds to the setting of the stories.  They’re colorful and vibrant, and, at least to me, are very hard to date.  I thought it was a contemporary book when I was young, which would have been in the late eighties and early nineties.  Imagine my surprise when I learned it was first published in 1962.

If there is one shortcoming of this book, it’s that it has ruined me for other tellings and versions of a lot of the Greek myths.  I hear other versions, and I say to myself, No, that’s not the story! It takes a little practice to let others have their variations, but I think that’s a personal failing, not one of the book itself.

I am, by the way, keeping my old copy.  The new one is nice, but the old one is part of me.

Rating:  5/5.