I work at Guilford College, a historically Quaker institution and my colleague, Diya Abdo has begun an initiative, Every Campus a Refuge, to house refugees on college campuses, using student and faculty volunteers to help settle and work with the families. I have done a little work with ECAR, but after reading Alan Gratz’s book Refugee, I will definitely try to do more.
​     There are many reasons kids (and their parents) should read Refugee.  First of all there is the sheer pleasure of getting lost in a well-constructed page turner. Every chapter ends with a cliff hanger. The interwoven narratives increase the tension. Alan Gratz leaves readers on the edge of a precipice and then they have to speed through the next two chapters before finding out whether one of the three protagonists lives or dies. The cultural and historical details are interesting, authentic, educational, and introduced without clumsy information dumps. (My daughter is studying abroad in Cuba this semester and I was tickled to see how many details of Cuban life that she has relayed to us were included in the book). But the main reason kids should read Alan Gratz’s book is that refugee crises are a children’s issue. 

​     As the pictures in the news of children covered in dust or drowned on the beaches reveal, children are there, front and center. (Gratz mentions in the back matter that the image of Omram Daqneesh sitting in an ambulance inspired the character of  Mahmoud's younger brother, Waleed.) These pictures display children as passive victims, but in Gratz’s book, the children have agency; they make choices; they take initiative. The child reader, identifying with them, is empowered and grows through their experiences. 

     ​Take Josef, the boy from Nazi Germany, who flees to Cuba. With his father traumatized by the violence and inhumanity of a concentration camp, he must step up and become the man of the family. Isabel, the Cuban fleeing to America, trades her beloved trumpet for gas for their boat.  Mahmoud, fleeing Syria for Germany, decides that it is more important to be visible than invisible and initiates a mass exodus from a detention center. In each narrative the roles of child and adult shift and transform as the children, jolted out of their ordinary lives, must perform feats of amazing bravery and strength. 

     I am always interested in the backstory of books. Gratz tells in an interview how he and his family were on vacation in the Florida Keys and came upon a raft on the beach, a crude water craft clearly built of scrap materials to carry refugees from Cuba. The experience reminded him of his own privilege and ignited his curiosity. 

​     Drawing on the emotions and ideas provoked by this experience, he made boats and water a central motif in Refugee. Josef and his family sail on the unlucky MS St. Louis. The boat that Isabel travels in is cobbled together from fragments of this and that with an ironic poster of Castro on the bottom. Mahmoud makes a terrifying journey on a rubber dinghy across the Mediterranean in the dark. For all three families bodies of water, the space in between,  provide escape and salvation, but also bring unmentionable terrors. 

​     In conclusion, the intertwined narratives make clear the perennial, ongoing nature of refugee crises. By profiling one family fleeing from Germany and another fleeing to Germany, one family fleeing from Cuba and another fleeing to Cuba, Gratz cleverly reveals how history repeats itself, but always with a twist. How does one become a refugee?  Simply by being born in the wrong place at the wrong time.  Gratz has said that he likes to remind children that unless they are Native Americans, someone in their family came here at some point as a refugee. Refugee teaches and encourages not just empathy, but activism. For my own part, I will now try to up my volunteer hours with ECAR.

     I have found blogging discouraging. I write and post and then nobody responds. However, I recently received an intriguing message from the other side of the world (Australia) to one of my earliest posts. I had read a New York Times Op-Ed by Alberto Manguel about a secret library at Auschwitz. I was haunted by the idea of children in a concentration camp seeking comfort in books. Here is the blog I posted. 
     It turns out I was not the only person haunted by Alberto Manguel's mention of a secret library at Auschwitz. In 2011 a Spanish journalist, Antonio Iturbe, read Manguel's book, The Library at Night, and using his considerable journalistic skills, he went in search of information. He found the actual librarian, the older girl, in charge of the eight threadbare books. Her name was Dita Kraus and she was then 80 years old and living in Israel. He wrote a novel in Spanish based on her story. The English translation, elegantly done by Lilit Thwaites, was just published to great acclaim this October by Henry Holt. Lilit's husband came across my blog post and contacted me. I promised to read and review The Librarian of Auschwitz, which I stayed up finishing last night, with a box of kleenex at my side.

     The Librarian of Auschwitz is the perfect follow up to Anne Frank for the young adult and adult reader. It details the horrors of the camps, the inhumanity of genocide, and the amazing spirit and light of those individuals whose names and stories we must never forget. Here in the US, where fascists chanting "blood and soil" march with tiki torches through the lovely town of Charlottesville, we especially need to be reminded.  But, The Librarian of Auschwitz is not just about the holocaust. It is also a story about the magic of books.
     Iturbe describes eloquently the power of books to transport readers to other places and times. What could be more important than to escape metaphorically for an hour from the horrors of a concentration camp? As Iturbe explains, for Dita this magical power inhered not just in novels, but even in H. G. Wells's A Short History of the World:

Here Wells' book returns her to the comfort of her life before it was interrupted by war. But it also carries her far, far away.

Dita is in charge of not just books on paper, but also living books, the stories narrated by gifted tellers. One of the most moving scenes in the novel is when a fellow inmate tells Dita the story of The Count of Monte Cristo. She is drawn to the figure of Edmond Dantes.

Here books give her a way to explore the ethics of revenge and to sort through the immensely complicated emotions of her experience.
      It was through the magic of books, specifically Alberto Manguel's book, The Library at Night, that Iturbe came across Dita's story. I am thankful to him. I am thankful to Iturbe for writing the novel that has brought the story to life, and I am thankful to Lilit Thwaites for making the novel available to English speaking audiences. I am thankful to Lilit's husband to reaching out to me. Books have ripple effects. One cannot anticipate how and where these ripples will expand. It is my hope that the waves from The Librarian of Auschwitz will reach far and wide for a long time to come.

First I want to thank Eliza Wheeler's amazing husband who had the computer skills to put together this trailer for John Ronald's Dragons.  The way he makes the figures in the background move is called parallaxing. As someone who struggles daily with simple classroom management software (moodle an canvas ugh!) I am forever impressed by and grateful to those who can combine technical and creative skills with grace.

Second, I want to point out that last Saturday, March 25th, was Tolkien reading day. Our Carolinas SCBWI leader, Teresa Fannin, sent me a beautiful article explaining the significance of the date.  Apparently dates in Tolkien's books are just as carefully chosen as the names of his characters. I celebrated Tolkien reading day by reading John Ronald's Dragons at Scuppernong's Bookstore, a warm, quirky community bookstore in downtown Greensboro.

Third, I want to review a book I read over my spring break, Adam Gidwitz's middle grade novel The InQuisitor's Tale.

The Inquisitor's Tale by Adam Gidwitz is amazing! This is the book I wish I had written. It is the book I wish I could go back and read to my kids using my special time turner travel kit. It is the book I wish the college kids I teach had grown up reading because it would make them wise, thoughtful, and literate about that strange country, the past,  more specifically the past of the middle ages. 

Adam Gidwitz's three main characters are two boys and a girl as in the Harry Potter formula, but he builds on this formula by adding a dog and by making one child black, one child Jewish, and one child a peasant, thus taking on the topics of class, race, and religion.

Gidwitz builds on actual Saints' legends, which are great and gory stories, and mixes them up with the modern superhero trope. And what are saints but superheros with magical powers? The mash up makes the past new and the present old. 

Again following a classic kid lit formula the three children are relieved of parental comfort and authority early in the novel. In picaresque fashion they wander the French countryside and have adventures with silly knights, a farting dragon, a close minded queen, and a fat angel. But along with the fart jokes, Gidwitdz takes on deep questions: the origins of mistrust and conflict between Christians and Jews, the construction of racial difference, the banning and burning of books and the biggest question--if God is good, why does he allow terrible suffering.
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Also, the book is beautiful to behold. The illustrator, Hatem Aly, has decorated the margins with charming illuminations and doodles that are like the text, historically informed but also modern. I now want to read the book a second time (I had to read it really fast the first time to find out what happens), and dawdle and peruse the pictures and their relationship to the text. I also love that this is a book about mutual understanding between different religions and the author is Jewish and the illustrator is Muslim. What could be more perfect?
And for adults who read the book to their children (and why wouldn't you?) you must read the elegant author's note which explains how much of the story is based on actual medieval legends and lore.

John Ronald's Dragons has launched, and it is thrilling to hear from all of the people who are reading  and enjoying it. As the book has come out so have the reviews. Publishers Weekly really understood the purpose of the book, to introduce younger readers to Tolkien before they encounter him in middle or high school. Here is their review:

The dragons of imagination are always there, but sometimes it takes time for them to breathe fire—that’s what McAlister (Holy Molé!) suggests in this thoughtful look at the creative development of John Ronald, aka J.R.R. Tolkien. Reflecting Ronald’s lifelong preoccupation with dragons, Wheeler’s (This Is Our Baby, Born Today) illustrations blend hints of the fantastical and the mundane—chimney plumes and steam from a young Ronald’s oatmeal mimic the smoke curling from an imagined dragon’s nostrils. McAlister moves briskly through Ronald’s life, touching on the influences of his faith, military service, and education before he hit upon the invention of a hobbit, one who would lead him all the way to “a dragon named Smaug.” It’s an ideal lead-in to family readings of The Hobbit. Ages 4–8. Author’s agent: Jennifer Mattson, Andrea Brown Literary. Illustrator’s agent: Jennifer Rofé, Andrea Brown Literary. (Mar.)

The Horn Book also gave the book a good review and points out how I introduce Tolkien's themes and show their origins in his childhood.

This picture-book biography of J. R. R. Tolkien shows the roots of many themes
later found in The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings trilogy. McAlister introduces
John as a boy who loves horses, trees, words, and especially dragons. We see
young John encountering dragons in Andrew Lang’s famous colored Fairy Books,
making up a language with his cousin, and eventually fighting in WWI, teaching,
and writing stories. Despite Tolkien’s sometimes-difficult young life (after his
mother died, he and his brother lived with an aunt who “didn’t like boys”), the
prevailing tone is one of warmth and security. Wheeler’s illustrations, in what look
like line and watercolor, are deftly executed in light colors with carefully placed
darker shades that ground her compositions. Swirling shapes and trees silhouetted
against pearly skies are reminiscent of Rackham, an appropriate reference given
the subject and time period. The book finishes with Tolkien’s conception of The
Hobbit; the final illustration shows the author “discovering” the great dragon
Smaug in his mountain cave. An author’s note fills in the gaps in Tolkien’s story,
and an illustrator’s note points out pictorial references to actual books, locations,
and people not mentioned in the text. “A Catalog of Tolkien’s Dragons,” “Quotes
from Tolkien’s Scholarly Writing on Dragons,” and a bibliography are appended.
lolly robinson

The one not so nice review came from School Library Journal, a big disappointment since I want to sell to schools and libraries:

Gr 1-4–McAlister’s picture book introduction to the life of J.R.R. Tolkien (whom she calls John Ronald) is written in simple, descriptive language—a fragment to six short sentences per page or spread. (“John Ronald was a boy who loved horses. And trees. And strange sounding words.”) Critical to John Ronald’s life were the “stillness, beauty, and peace” of the Catholic Church; his love of English (coming up with new languages and using them to write stories); his lifelong school friends who shared his love of literature; and his dreams of dragons and other fantastical creatures that inhabited the books read to him and his brother by their mother, who died when John Ronald was 12. After marrying, then fighting in the trenches during World War I, Tolkien taught at Oxford University, where he gave lectures, went to meetings, tutored students, and “graded many, many, exams.” The world of the Hobbit and his adventures, created for Tolkien’s own children, became a book in 1937. Wheeler’s pencil-detailed paintings in subdued greens and yellows effectively portray Tolkien’s quiet life and his ability to imagine magical creatures and places (Misty Mountains, Mirkwood Forest) in the countryside around his home. The appended illustrator’s note points out elements in the pictures not mentioned in the text. An author’s note offers more sophisticated facts; a bibliography lists Tolkien biographies for adults. VERDICT This beautifully illustrated introduction to Tolkien’s life for younger readers fails to provide sufficient information to satisfy those old enough to appreciate the lengthy, in-depth storytelling style of his novels.–Susan Scheps, formerly at Shaker Public Library, OH

This last reviewer wanted a different kind of book, a middle grade or YA biography because Tolkien's books are read by middle grade and YA readers.  But my conception and Eliza's as well was to write a book about how a writer's imagination begins to take shape in childhood and to write this for children.  What I have learned as a teacher from this experience is to be a more thoughtful grader, to think not about the ideal paper I have in my head, but to think about the student's objectives, the student's purpose in creating a piece of writing and whether the student has achieved that purpose. The next set of papers I get,  I will ask students to articulate for me what they have tried to realize with this piece of writing. (Just doing that is an important step as a writer.) Then I will try to grade them based on whether their creation does what they meant it to do.
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In my book, John Ronald's Dragons, I mention the origins of J. R. R. Tolkien's supremely nerdy hobby of inventing his own languages. As a child, with his cousin, Mary Incledon, he made up a language based on animal words.

Later, as an adult, of course, he developed languages with full fledged grammars and histories: Quenya, and Sindarin.
     In the essay "A Secret Vice" he describes this pastime as lonely and embarrassing. Although the word nerd had not yet entered the English language in 1931, he is clearly describing something all nerds experience when he explains the isolation brought on by the pursuit of a hobby not recognized by the popular or the powerful. He writes:
          "Most of the addicts [people addicted to inventing languages] reach their maximum of linguistic  playfulness, and their interest is swamped by greater ones, they take to poetry or prose or painting, or else it is overwhelmed by mere pastimes (cricket, meccano, or suchlike footle) or crushed by cares and tasks. A few go on, but they become shy, ashamed of spending the precious commodity of time for their private pleasure, and higher developments are locked in secret places. The obviously unremunerative character of the hobby is against it--it can earn no prizes, win no competitions (as yet)--make no birthday presents for aunts (as a rule)--earn no scholarship, fellowship, or worship. It is also--like poetry--contrary to conscience, and duty; its pursuit is snatched from hours due to self-advancement, or to bread, or to employers."
     We can hear in this passage Tolkien's own frustration with duties that prevented him from pursuing his "secret vice" full time and sharing it publicly. He was sure that there were other people out there like him, but before the internet he had no way of meeting up with them. So he continued to toil on Quenya and Sindarin in private.  But finally his hobby is having a renaissance.  As Philip Seargeant points out in "Why J. R. R. Tolkien's Tradition of Creating Fantasy Languages Has Prevailed" conlangs are now popular, even cool.  J. R. R. Tolkien was just ahead of his time, as his shy manifesto, "A Secret Vice" suggests. So fly your word nerd flag high and proud.

     This week I got a surprise package in the mail. It was two beautiful, shiny copies of John Ronald's Dragons wrapped in a blue ribbon. They have that new book smell of fresh paper and ink. The title is embossed, and I love touching it, but what I love most of all is the cover illustration with the green tree that is also a green dragon whose head is turned towards the young John Ronald. He stares up at the dragon with wonder and delight.

     Eliza Wheeler has done an incredible job capturing my central idea that Tolkien's childhood desire for dragons inspired his fantasy writing as an adult. When I tell people that I write children's books, inevitably one of the first things they ask is who is your illustrator or how did you find your illustrator as though the illustrator were someone who worked for me.
​     But that is not how picture books are created. I write a manuscript. Then I hold my breath and cross my fingers and if I am very lucky an editor at a publishing house will like it enough to buy it. Then we do some further editing and polishing, and the editor begins to search for an illustrator. I just have to trust that the editor has the experience and contacts and knowledge to find someone who will be able to match my words with illustrations.
     When Roaring Brook editor Kate Jacobs sent me a link to Eliza Wheeler's website , I was impressed by the whimsical nature of what I saw, the beautiful palettes, the sense of movement. I am not an art expert and I had not heard of Eliza before, but I liked what I saw and I trusted Kate. (Eliza just won a prestigious Sendak fellowship award. As it turns out, she is a very big deal.)
     Eliza sent Kate preliminary sketches for the book. Kate then shared them with me, and I was supposed to tell Kate any suggestions I had. The editor thus stands as a buffer in between the egos of the artist and the writer, a very sensible system. I remember that Kate and I had a discussion about whether Tolkien's aunt, who burned his mother's letters in the fireplace, was too witchlike. I liked that Eliza had made her appear rather like the witch in Hansel and Gretel. I thought Tolkien would appreciate that his own story had become mixed up with what he calls the soup of story in "On Fairy-Stories. "
     I am still a fairly new and inexperienced writer and this is my first non-fiction picture book. What I did not know was how much research Eliza would do. She travelled to Oxford and Birmingham visiting and taking pictures of the school Tolkien attended, the Oratorio where he was an altar boy, and the colleges where he worked. Eliza also read through the biographies and letters of Tolkien. She included red poppies in the world War One scene because Tolkien mentioned the poppies in his correspondence. I was especially happy with her illustration of the trenches because his war experiences were very important in shaping his imagination.
​     All of Eliza's research means that the illustrations have incredible depth; they are not just flat representations of what is in the text. They have a life, a vibrancy of their own. They are also historically accurate. They reflect her imagination and research as well as my imagination and research, and the result is, I think, fabulous.  Buy the book and let me know what you think. It will be on the bookshelves March 21. You can also pre-order on Amazon.
     

Before Tolkien was a member of the Inklings, he was a member of the TCBS. TCBS stood for Tea Club and Barrovian Society, so named because the members had surreptitious tea parties in the school library and also drank tea together at the Barrows Store. The core members of the club were four young men who had attended King Edward's School in Birmingham together, Robert Gilson, the son of the school's headmaster, Christopher Wiseman, J. R. R. Tolkien, and G.B Smith. 

​The young men all wrote poetry, painted, and drew. They were intellectually ambitious. As a club, they hoped to spur each other on to great accomplishments. However, their youthful ambitions were tragically upended by World War 1.  In the summer of 1916, exactly one hundred years ago, all four of them had shipped out to France. They spent their days marching through mud, dodging bullets and shrapnel, and crawling through trenches filled with vermin and lice. 

Robert Gilson was the first to die at the Somme on July first, 1916. After receiving the news, Tolkien wrote in a letter to the remaining members of the club, dated August 12, 1916 :

"So far my chief impression is that something has gone crack. I feel just the same to both of you--nearer if anything and very much in need of you--I am hungry and lonely of course--but I don't feel a member of a little complete body now. I honestly feel that the TCBS has ended . . . . Still I feel a mere individual at present--with intense feelings more than ideas of powerlessness"(Letters 10). 

G.B. Smith was wounded by a shell on November 29 and died of his wounds on December 3. 

Throughout the fall of 1916 Tolkien fought in the trenches, seeing notable action at the battle of Thiepval. He served as a signalman for the Lancashire Fusiliers sending out signals of troop movements, calls for more grenades, etc. On October 25 he visited the medical officer, complaining of a fever. He had contacted trench fever, which was caused by bites from the lice. He was sent home. Since the fever allowed him to escape from the front, it almost certainly saved his life.

Already an orphan, Tolkien lost two of his closest companions that summer. The club they had created with so much youthful energy and hope, was no more. Tolkien only saw Christopher Wiseman a few times over the course of the rest of his life. Perhaps it was too sorrowful for the two of them to meet without the others.  If there is something elegaic about the male friendships in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, that sadness is the result of the summer and fall of 1916. 

Tolkien's old school, King Edward's has a gallery of photos on the great war as well as a movie about Tolkien's experiences at the front made by students at the school. There is also a film about Robert Gilson. I also recommend Joseph Leconte's excellent article published this June in the New York Times about how Tolkien found Mordor in 1916 during the deadly summer of the Somme.
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In The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe Edmund tells the white witch where she can find his brothers and sisters while cramming his mouth full of Turkish Delight. C. S. Lewis builds up the desirability of this treat by first describing the beautiful package in which it arrives. "The Queen let another drop fall from her bottle onto the snow, and instantly there appeared a round box, tied with green silk ribbon, which, when opened, turned out to contain several pounds of the best Turkish Delight. Each piece was sweet and light to the very center and Edmund had never tasted anything more delicious." Of course, everything always tastes better when it is beautifully presented. Also, as Cara Strickland informs us, Turkish Delight was an Edwardian Christmas treat. C. S. Lewis's own childhood memories would have included opening boxes of Turkish Delight under the Christmas tree. The beautifully wrapped box evokes not just gustatory delight, but the whole experience of Christmas.

​The sensory appeal of Turkish delight and the moral error of Edward's gluttony would have been intensified for Lewis's readers in the early 1950's by the experience of war time rationing. 

I was astounded also by this other image of women rushing a chocolate shop in 1953 when rationing ended. It puts in perspective not just Edward's desire for Turkish delight, but also Roald Dahl's chiding of spoiled post war children in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

When I teach The Chronicles of Narnia, I buy a box of Turkish Delight at our local Middle Eastern Restaurant and food store, The Nazareth Bread Company. Students are always a little mystified by what all the fuss is about when they taste the dessert. To the modern American palate, it is not terribly sweet and has a strangely plastic, unnatural texture.

A friend of mind posted this wonderful article about Hobbit food on face-book: http://oakden.co.uk/tea-in-the-hobbit/  The amazingly gifted illustrator of John Ronald's Dragons, Eliza Wheeler,  has a Hobbit party every year that she makes Hobbit food for.  Perhaps this true love for all things Hobbit  explains why she seems to have read my mind in composing the pictures for the book.
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My favorite thing in this article is the explanation of the distinction between high and low tea.  I will definitely use this article next time I take students to Oxford and will perhaps give extra points for participation in both a high and a low tea.

I'm sorry that the recipes are all in UK measurements.  They look quite old fashioned and complicated, just the sort of thing to make a huge mess in the kitchen, which i secretly like doing.   I have not yet tried any of them out, but when I do I will write a post about it and include pictures of my creations.I may try some of them out on my next group of Oxford students.  I stole the photo below from food.com.  It is a photo of Mrs. Beeton's Seed Cake.  Mine, when I make it, will be much less artful.

     


​Exciting Tolkien news today.  Two lost poems by Tolkien have been found.  They were originally published in the obscure annual magazine of an Oxfordshire Catholic high school in 1936—an odd place for an Oxford Don to publish his work.
     However, Tolkien was not a professional poet, but an Anglo-Saxon scholar.  His poetry, old fashioned and out of step with the high modernism of Eliot and Pound, would not have been picked up by the top literary journals.  But clearly Tolkien valued it enough and believed in it enough that he wanted to see it published even in an obscure place.  Also, the poem “Noel,” about the Virgin Mary, is deeply Catholic.  What better place to share it than with a Catholic religious community dedicated to Mary. 
     I like “Noel” very much.  The first line: “Grim was the world and grey last night” gives the poem an alliterative Anglo-saxon flare.  The description of the wintery world of the first two stanzas has much of The Wanderer and the Sea-farer in it.  If the poem looks backward with its wistful romantic style to a Catholic medieval world, it also looks forward to the eucatastrophe.  Tolkien was not just a man with his head turned to the past.  He was always interested in uniting past and present and thereby redeeming the present. 
I have printed "Noel" below and here are the Guardian article and the BBC article about the poems’ discovery. 
                                                                               
NOEL
Grim was the world and grey last night:
The moon and stars were fled,
The hall was dark without song or light,
The fires were fallen dead.
The wind in the trees was like to the sea,
And over the mountains' teeth
It whistled bitter-cold and free,
As a sword leapt from its sheath.

The lord of snows upreared his head;
His mantle long and pale
Upon the bitter blast was spread
And hung o'er hill and dale.
The world was blind, the boughs were bent,
All ways and paths were wild:
Then the veil of cloud apart was rent,
And here was born a Child.

The ancient dome of heaven sheer
Was pricked with distant light;
A star came shining white and clear
Alone above the night.
In the dale of dark in that hour of birth
One voice on a sudden sang:
Then all the bells in Heaven and Earth
Together at midnight rang.

Mary sang in this world below:
They heard her song arise
O'er mist and over mountain snow
To the walls of Paradise,
And the tongue of many bells was stirred
in Heaven's towers to ring
When the voice of mortal maid was heard,
That was mother of Heaven's King.

Glad is the world and fair this night
With stars about its head,
And the hall is filled with laughter and light,
And fires are burning red.
The bells of Paradise now ring
With bells of Christendom,
And Gloria, Gloria we will sing
That God on earth is come.