Mollie HunterReseñas

This novel for children is a good introduction to the sad events in the Scottish Highlands known as the Clearances, when people who had farmed the highlands for centuries were brutally evicted from their land to make way for sheep raising. Such people were left destitute and forced to emigrate to the Americas, because their former chiefs sold off the land in order to enjoy the luxury of lowland Scottish living standards, without a care for those who had served their ancestors for centuries. Harsh laws imposed after the English defeat of the Scots at Culloden ensured that the Highlanders could not bear arms, to defend themselves or resist eviction, on penalty of death.

Set in 1854, the story is narrated from the viewpoint of a 15 year old boy, Connal Ross, who at first is excited by the preparations to watch for the arrival of officials to serve the eviction notice although he is also trepidatious after an old man, Blind John, has visions of seeing violence done to Connal's mother and his sister Katrine. Connal retrieves an old pistol from hiding in the thatched roof of his house where it has been kept since their great grandfather's escape at Culloden. At first, there is hope because the agent who has to sign the eviction notices swears in writing that he will not be a party to signing them, but officials soon arrive with notices (which the people cannot open or they will be deemed to have accepted service of the notices).

The first pair are turned back good naturedly, as the community has determined on a path of passive resistance with the women taking the lead, in the erroneous belief that violence will not be offered against unarmed women and girls. But when two drunken officials turn up and one of them, McCraig, holds a pistol to the head of Connal's mother, Connal uses his old pistol to force McCraig to back down, and from then on things turn ugly, with the story given out that the highlanders have 'rioted'. After that, they are fair game for vicious reprisals to be taken against them, and Hunter does not spare her readership from some of what that entails.

From then on, Connal becomes a fugitive, and he and Katrine have to try to free their mother who has been jailed as a scapegoat as Connal cannot be found, and to avoid the vindictive McCraig who hounds them even as they attempt to board a ship to America after her trial.

It is a fast paced story from the young man's viewpoint, told in flashback as he writes his account for a lowlander Scottish doctor who at first views the Highlanders as savages who got what they deserved, but who comes to respect them by the end.

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I remember this being a particular favorite re-read of mine in my mid-teens. The description of the tinkerers/travellers way of life was described in a way that really made it come to life...even the harrowing bits, but I think what I loved most of all about the book was its heroine Cat.

"I Connemara bodde en gång en man som hette Patrick Kentigern Keenan. Han var en latmask och skrytmåns av stora mått.
"Jag är den smartaste mannen på Irland", brukar han säga.
Patrick hade en snäll fru och en liten son, och de hade kunnat leva lyckliga och utan bekymmer om inte Patrick en dag hade bestämt sig för att överlista småfolket som bodde i trakten.
Det hela började med att Patrick behövde ett par nya skor, och alla visste ju att pysslingarna var de bästa skomakarna på Irland. Men pysslingarna ville ha betalt i guld för sitt arbete och Patrick var både fattig och ointresserad av arbete. Då gällde det för Patrick att bevisa att han verkligen var smart, ja, till och med smartare än småfolket. Och för detta krävdes också en god portion mod."

** spoiler alert ** A sweet book. Lovely how everything works out. Good characters, I really felt like I got to know them. So much was focused on Bridie's passion for writing, but we never really learned if she was any good. I had hoped to learn more about that. I was disappointed that she never found a mentor or someone who would support her efforts or direct. her. It did awaken in me the idea that stories are all around us.

A not very enthralling YA historical novel about Robert the Bruce. Hunter really didn't do much to bring the period to life, and her protagonist mostly just wanders around Scotland watching battles from a distance. Her portrayal of the warring factions is very black and white, with everyone on the Bruce's side as good and virtuous, while the English and those who side with them are all cruel villains.½

Childhoold fears of death follow Bridie McShane for many years after the death of her father, a war veteran. She is able to come to terms with her grief though her desire to be a writer.

I think if this had been written a decade or two later the environmental message would have been stronger. As it is, everyone is apparently 100% behind the scheme to flood the valley for a hydro-electric power scheme, thereby destroying an ancient stone circle and all the wildlife of the valley, and planting masses of conifers. "Well it's progress", as they used to say in the Sixties. Even the Bodach only holds up the scheme to enable certain magical events to take place. The story is told with power and charm nonetheless, especially the relationship between the boy and the old man.
I was reminded too of another valley-flooding story, Berlie Doherty's "Deep Secret", set in Derbyshire however.

I reread Mollie Hunter's The Walking Stones last fall and loved it all over again, so I had high hopes for The Kelpie's Pearls. It's not quite what I'd been hoping for. Like The Walking Stones, the basis of the tale is "real life isn't only what it seems," but Hunter tells this story with much more of a fairy-tale tone. It didn't quite do it for me, but it was still a nice read.

A prolific and very talented children's author herself, Mollie Hunter has published many works of fantasy, folklore, and historical fiction, all set in her native Scotland. She won the prestigious Carnegie Medal in 1974 for her novel, The Stronghold. This collection reproduces five lectures given by the author in the United States in 1975, devoted to the craft of writing for children.

Talent Is Not Enough was the May Hill Arbuthnot Honor Lecture, an annual presentation made by a children's author, or a scholar of children's literature, to the ALSC (Association for Library Service to Children), a division of the American Library Association. The title is taken from Ralph Waldo Emerson's assertion that "Talent alone cannot make the writer. There must be a man behind the book." Here Hunter asserts that craft is as essential to creating a good children’s book as natural talent, and that every author must struggle to discover that unique "code" which will bring their talent to fruition, and allow for true communication with the reader. In a very moving passage, the author describes the powerful effect of one of her own stories on her then eight-year-old son, who sat listening, silent tears running down his face:
"Those soundless tears, then, did more than move me. I felt them as an honour, for the story situation that drew them was poignant beyond the child’s own power to express; but he had understood my form of words for it, and they had spoken for him. And so at last, it seemed to me then, I had discovered my particular code."

Hunter’s point that a successful children’s author must understand the landscape of childhood - the vivid sensory impact of living in a physical world designed for adults, and therefore out of scale to children; the sense of wonder and enthusiasm, not yet blunted by an adult code that "debars spontaneity, and is embarrassed by naked idealism," is well taken. Her contention that the field of children literature, as she found it at the beginning of her career, was dominated by a middle-class sensibility which humiliated poor children, who were "confronted in their reading by the cruel implication that they were the exceptions to the rule of people never having to worry about the rent, or getting enough to eat, or being cold and ragged," is also well observed.

On the other hand, I’m not sure I agree with her position that the "school story" genre has no relevance to the average child, simply because it does not reflect their actual life stories. Fantasy too, frequently includes occurrences that have no direct experiential equivalent for the child - but through a process of association, the reader sees her life reflected back at her. Although I have only just begun to investigate the school story in any detail, the girls' school-story group begun here on the site), I would imagine that it functions in a similar fashion, allowing the child to imagine a world separate from the parent. The phenomenal success of the Harry Potter books, which bridge these two genres, seems to point to the continued relevance of such stories.

Hunter’s concluding discussion of the "convention of care," which obligates authors of children’s books to consider the nature of their audience, and the necessity of balancing good literature with age-appropriate material, should be required reading. I’m not sure that the contemporary reader (this was published more than thirty years ago, after all), will agree with all of the author’s specific ideas, as to what would be appropriate, but the notions of caution and responsibility, as it concerns what children are exposed to, is as relevant today as it ever was.

Shoulder the Sky was the Anne Carroll Moore Lecture, delivered annually at the New York Public Library; this one in May, 1975. Here Hunter addresses the genre of historical fiction, its potential to make the past come alive for children, and its all-too frequent misuse by "pseudo-romantics." The author’s strong Scots sensibility shines through, as she dissects the mythology of Bonnie Prince Charlie, arguing for an approach that balances the need for realism and truth-telling with that for heroes, moments of glory, and that "voice calling bravely out of the past to the youngster of the present day." Her argument that the author of such work needs to be able to combine a sense of history, "an instinctual appreciation of the past," with a detailed knowledge of that past, an ability to create characters that truly inhabit the world/time described, is both convincing and perennially relevant.

One World was a lecture given by Hunter at the Enoch Pratt Free Library, in Baltimore, Maryland, in April, 1975. Here the author addresses the fantasy genre, which she broadly defines to include everything from fairy tales to spaceship adventures, arguing that it is all drawn from folkloric sources. Her analysis of a typical “starship story,” which clearly demonstrates the folktale parallels of character and plot, will no doubt strike a chord with many Star Trek and Star Wars devotees.

Hunter defines folklore itself quite broadly, arguing that it the sum of “What people have learned and passed on through the ages,”, and that it represents, not spontaneous acts of individual invention, but a slow accretion of knowledge, providing humanity with a connection to our pre-historic heritage. Her discussion of the Maes Howe, a megalithic monument on the Orkney Islands, and how its memory was preserved for thirty centuries in folk culture, long after it had been lost from the “factual” record, is as persuasive an argument for the relevance of folklore, as any I have ever read. Often “despised as a source of accurate information about the past,” folklore, Hunter contends, is a “chain of communication through the centuries,” a “long, unbroken line” stretching from Megalithic times to the present.

Thus fairytales and fantasy, though often dismissed as escapist literature, actually provide their readers with connections to a reality deeper and more immediate than history. Hunter demonstrates that this is the case even in supernatural stories, analyzing the Scots selkie tradition, which maintains the existence of “seal people,” who can abandon their skins and come up on shore in human form. Her anthropological interpretation of these stories is fascinating.

In The Otherworld, Hunter turns her attention to the subject of fairies, by which the author decidedly does NOT mean the “minute, gossamer-winged creatures” popularized by the Victorians. Rather, she is referring to the powerful and eerie “Other People” who inhabit much of western European folklore. She examines two major theories, as regards the origins of this lore: the transformation of ancient “Cult of the Dead” religious beliefs; and the more anthropological notion of displaced Stone Age inhabitants of Europe, gradually declining after the coming of more “settled” peoples. Her examination of the Celtic concept of the “Other World,”and her exploration of certain folktales, and what they might (or might not) tell us about interactions between various tribes in pre-historic Europe, make for an enlightening read.

Finally, in The Limits of Language,, Hunter analyzes the mechanics of writing for children: word choice (including issues of obscenity), sentence form and structure, and the rhythm created by word order, are all considered. The “magical” power of the words themselves is discussed, and the need to balance the instinctive with the intellectual. The end goal, of course, is that moment of recognition, of true communication, which is itself a kind of magic...

By turns moving and enlightening, the five essays contained in Talent Is Not Enough should be of interest both to the folklorist and to the children’s literature scholar. I have re-read this classic a number of times, always gaining some new insight. It speaks to themes near to my heart: the power of folk culture, our human connection to the ancient past, and the importance of care in our use of language. I assigned the titular essay in the class I taught on children’s fantasy and folklore, but I recommend the entire collection.

I'm always attracted to stories set in Celtic lands, as I love their mythology and culture. I loved the Bodach and all he symbolized of the ways of old, and how he passed on his wisdom to young Donald. I did not like the dam being built and flooding that beautiful glen.

This is a strange book that I possibly would not have read were it not given me because it is based close to where I live.
the writing reminds me of an old folk tale, althought the majority of the language is more modern dispite being first published in 1974.

What an absorbing book! We're given a glimpse of traditional life in the Shetlands from a child's point of view. There is tension between believers in the old myths and the majority who see them as fanciful tales, and a bona fide seal man who comes up from the ocean to win away Robbie's sister, the golden-haired Elspeth. The story never lags and never disappoints.

Everyone knows that nothing displeases the mermaids that haunt the Drongs (a stone formation off the coast of the village) more than humans who ignore their hold over the seas, but Eric Anderson, a jovial fisherman with little regard for the legendary creatures of the sea disregards the power of the mermaids, he finds that his self-assurance leads him into a whirlpool of trouble. When an enchantingly beautiful but deadly mermaid lures his fishing fleet into the dangerous waters that surround the pointed Drongs, Eric Anderson is certain the end has come. When his life and that of his companions is spared, Eric’s shame at bringing the mermaid’s curse upon his men and their families forces him to leave the village and take the curse upon himself, but Eric’s granddaughter, Anna refuses to believe that her Granda Eric will never return.

When Eric begins to send his family gifts from the many lands he journeyed to, his family is pleased, but worried. For his grandchildren, he selects gifts are more meaningful than he suspects: a conch shell and knife for Jon; a jade comb, a silver mirror, and a multi-hued fabric that shines with all the colors of the sea for Anna. Do these gifts have the power to break the mermaid’s curse? And will Anna and Jon be brave enough to use them?

---

The novel reads like a sea legend; the tale of a vengeful mermaid and a pair of cunning children in a Scottish fishing village. The mermaid is portrayed as a dark and powerful creature, in the tradition of the Sirens, her song allowing her to charm and destroy those who dare deny her. It’s an interesting, fairy-tale like tale, but the feminist in me had some trouble with the portrayal of women(girls) as vain, flighty, and impulsive. It is clear that this is Anna’s story; her actions are the ones that drive the story to its end, but these are depicted as unwise choices resulting from a foolish, stubborn girl’s curiosity. The mermaid, while a powerful creature, is nevertheless portrayed as a vain and self-centered girl, her actions arising as a result of her desire to be revered and exalted as the most awe-inspiring mermaid. The story almost carries the caveat so often associated with the old tales of seafaring men–”Ay, keep yer women-folk off yer boats and out of the seas. Nothing but trouble do they bring.”

However, I can now understand why I was so fascinated by this story when I was a kid; there weren’t that many children’s books that featured dark fantasy. Most mermaid books were of the Ariel variety–lovelorn girl wants to become a human. The Mermaid Summer is definitely not about a sweet, lovelorn mermaid who likes to sing. She’s cruel and takes pleasure in riddles; while Jon and Anna are no innocent children swayed by the magic of a beautiful mermaid.

Gricel @ things-she-read.org

When I was maybe ten, my father brought this book home along with several others from a graduate class he was taking on children's literature. Of all those, A Stranger Came Ashore and Pinballs are the only ones I recall - and A Stranger Came Ashore is the only one I've re-read regularly since that time.

A bit of a magical, mythical tale, it holds up every time I read it, no matter my age. It's set on Scotland's Shetland islands and is tied to the small community (largely of fishermen) there, and interwoven with Scottish legends.

The mystery here is beautifully done, and this short book manages suspense and creepiness with gorgeous ease. It's easy to love Finn Learson and doubt Robbie - and later, easy to find Finn Learson an incredibly unnerving character.

Overall, the story delivers the right measures of tension and mystery, of possibilities and clues, before leading to an awesome confrontation. I'd recommend this book to anyone!½

Genre: Folk Tale
Media: water color
Review: This is an interesting folk tale. It is difficult to believe, yet so many people believe that Brownies used to exist.

Although written over 30 years ago the truthfulness and power in this novel transcends the time period between the date of publication, and the World War I setting and the present day. Bridie's father dies, due to injuries received during World War I, when she is nine. The novel begins when Bridie is told of his death and then goes back into Bridie's memories of her special relationship with her father. It then continues until Bridie leaves home for her first job in Edinburgh five years later. The strong relationship between Bridie and her father is fully explored in the novel, as is the family's grief, but especially that of Bridie and her mother. The realities of this grief are detailed and ring true. A powerful novel.

This book opens with a manhunt. Martin is hunting rabbits for his family's dinner when he sees a man being pursued by English soldiers. He decides to help the man escape. Later the man arrives at his home to thank him for his help. The man is actually Robert the Bruce, King of the Scots. He asks Martin and his brother to help him fight for Scotland's freedom from the English. Martin is no soldier. But he agrees to go with the king and help him in other ways. Martin begins as a page, but Robert soon discovers his courage and intelligence, and asks him to serve as a courier and a spy, a swift rider to bring him news that will help in their fight.

I really enjoyed this book. I'm not a huge fan of historical fiction, but I enjoy it when it's well done. I learned a lot from this book about warfare and Scottish history. But I recommend this with a few reservations. It would be perfectly fine for any adult or older teen. But even though it's written for younger teens, I feel that it was really violent. I'm probably a little too conservative here, since most teens and even kids shrug off violence without seeming to be affected. But Martin witnesses some horrible events, and even though these are not described and are left to the imagination, for some kids with a lot of imagination, this might be a little tough to read. However, for kids who are fine with that, this would be a good book to read and discuss. It brings up issues like injustice, cruelty, prejudice, and the duty one owes to one's country. I think boys will especially enjoy this one. Martin is a great character and I kept wanting to know what would happen next.

Raises and evades some interesting moral questions. While the particular smuggler who is being pursued is an undeniably unpleasant character, in the course of the pursuit the protagonist betrays neighbours he has known all his life - fishermen involved in smuggling - and probably leaves his family open to retaliation in future. This is not addressed - it seems his family is pleased and only pleased. That's not even to mention the political aspect of the situation - young Sandy is uncovering Jacobite plots and there's no sense of why decent Scots might not be wholehearted supporters of King George. But there are few (in fact only one) decent men among the conspirators, who almost to a man are thoroughly nasty pieces of work. I feel really ambivalent about this book because it's so two-dimensional.½

Four brief, gracefully managed encounters with magical beings - a bit conventional for Hunter but enchanting enough. The first and least original tells how "The Brownie" raises hell for the skeptical new farmwife until she learns to put out his porridge each night; "The Enchanted Boy" dreams of fairyland until the fairy queen somehow relents and breaks the spell; "Hi Johnny" is a friendly peddler who makes a good trade with the fairies and learns in the process to value his merry life over gold; and the title story has a plain servant girl earn her place in the family (and acquire a bonnie smile) when she bravely saves the baby from being switched for a changeling. Though Gammell's foggy gray illustrations could do with a touch of humour, the four tales make a charming, nicely varied introduction to Gaelic lore.

#52, 2006

This was one of my favourite books when I was a child – one of those books I read again and again and again. It’s set in the Scottish Highlands, in the Cairngorm Mountains, and it’s the tale of a farmer’s years-long battle with the “sidhe,” or faerie people, after he decides to plow a plot of land traditionally left empty as a “gift” for them. As an adult, I was reminded of the story when I visited the Cairngorms, and told this story to my husband as we hiked the Lairig Ghru, the mountain pass which features prominently in the tale.

A few days ago, my son started asking about fairy tales, and this one came immediately to mind, so we’ve been reading it at bedtime for the past few nights, finishing it up this evening. It’s every bit as charming as I remember, and my son enjoyed it, too – even found it a bit scary, which is pretty unusual for him to admit. :D And the ending still makes me cry, just like it did all those years ago. This is a great book, and if you can get your hands on a copy, I’d highly recommend it.

LJ Discussion

Lexile: 1120
Reading Recovery: 32
DRA: 44
Fountas Pinnel Guided Reading: Z