Virginia Lee Burton: A Life in Art by Barbara Elleman; Houghton Mifflin Company: Boston, 2002; $20 I can still remember when my dad read Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel to me. In fact, my dad remembers when his mother read Mike Mulligan to him. Did you ever wonder what was the story behind the acknowledgment to Dickie Birkenbush at the bottom of a page in Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel? Have you ever wondered if there was a real Mike? I did and found the answers in the book Virginia Lee Burton: A Life in Art. If you are curious, read the book to find the answers in the first chapter. Virginia Lee Burton: A Life in Art is Burton’s biography that describes her creativity and lifestyle. Energetic and amiable, Virginia kept busy from dawn to dusk, raising sheep, vegetables and two children on her New England farm. Abandoned by her mother as a teenager, she found emotional strength from her artwork, as well as her skill as a dancer. Burton created a home environment that promoted her artistic fervor, surrounding herself with artistic things and people. Her husband was, in fact, a well-known sculptor. Numerous photos that depict her life in art fill this book. I particularly like the one of her dancing on the giant granite picnic table in her backyard. In another photo, Virginia and her sons stand in front of the boys’ bedroom wall that shows hilly tracks and trains painted by their mother. The back cover shows an eye-catching picture of her uniquely decorated barn studio, only steps away from her house. I admire Virginia because of her ability in handling the emotional stress of her mother’s abandonment. Despite the negative impact that this must have had on her, she created a happy life for herself and her family. Interviews with her sons, who never recalled any visible signs of distress from this sad event, proved her successful efforts. While I still have my mother, I want to follow Virginia’s example of not dwelling on negative aspects of her life, but living in the present and improving her future. It must have taken a lot of courage to remain positive without letting her inward feelings affect her outwardly. I probably could not do this, because, if I have a problem, I go to my mom. Without her, I would have a hard time coping. Although Virginia was emotionally stronger than me, we are similar in several ways. Like me, her perfectionism made her constantly fix her work. If I’m doing a project and don’t like something about it, I mess with the mistake until it looks right. Sometimes, I end up making it worse. Virginia loved drawing, always sketching down ideas. When she took art and designing lessons, she had a long commute by rail, ferryboat and cable car. During those long hours, she sketched her unwary fellow passengers. I also enjoy sketching my friends and other people I meet. If I don’t have anyone to sketch, I draw people and animals from my imagination. Virginia read her stories to her children to test if they were interesting enough for them. I’m always testing my funny stories on my younger brother to see whether he will laugh. The hard part for me is writing the stories down on paper. It’s fun to read a biography about a person with whom I found much in common. Vivienne Clark, 10 Albuquerque, New Mexico
Book-Reviews
Melanie Martin Goes Dutch
Melanie Martin Goes Dutch by Carol Weston; Alfred A. Knopf: New York, 2002; $15.95 How would you feel if your parents told you that you were going to Holland for your summer vacation? Happy? Excited? Well, Melanie Martin feels both until she lands 3500 miles away from her home in New York City Melanie, a ten-year-old almost-fifth-grader, keeps a daily diary, and her entries and doodles make up the pages of the book. In this story, she travels with her mom, an art teacher; her dad, an overworked lawyer; her pesky brother, “Matt the Brat”; and her best friend since kindergarten, Cecily Hausner. This book has many good qualities. It is smart and witty. It made me laugh out loud because it was so funny. Through Melanie’s eyes I learned a lot about Holland. I learned what the Dutch eat (lots of cheese, including fondue) and how they get around (by bicycle). I learned about their great artists (Vermeer, Rembrandt, and van Gogh) and a great writer (Anne Frank). I learned about their windmills, wooden shoes, and half-nude beaches. I even learned that the Pilgrims were in Holland before sailing on the Mayflower. I also learned how jealousy and anger can make you behave badly and how important it is to try to be a good person. Melanie is a special girl. She is funny and intelligent, but she can also be stubborn and selfish. By the end, though, she learns to be kinder, especially to Cecily, who is dealing with a very serious issue. Melanie learns, with the help of Anne Frank’s diary, that “being a good person cannot just mean doing nothing wrong. It also has to mean doing something right.” Melanie also learns that it is stupid to complain about privileges when Anne did not complain about hardships, like having to live in a small area without making noise. I could relate to this book a lot. I have traveled to Europe with my family and I know that traveling can be both exciting and difficult. I have enjoyed going to museums and learning about different cultures, but sometimes I get sick of walking around and want to watch TV, and sometimes I get sick of foreign food and want to eat at McDonald’s. When my family travels, we are five people, two parents and three kids, just like in Melanie Martin. Most of the time we enjoy ourselves, but sometimes we argue. My brother can be annoying like Matt. Like Melanie, I enjoy writing. I keep a journal in school. This book made me want to keep a journal the next time I travel with my family. Melanie writes lots of short, funny poems and is very interested in words. I learned some new vocabulary and the derivation (the origin) of some English expressions. For example, Melanie’s dad says that “nitwit” probably came from the Dutch for “I don’t know.” When Dutch settlers went to school and couldn’t speak English, they would answer the teacher “niet weten” which earned them the nickname nitwits. Melanie Martin Goes Dutch is the second in a series—the first is called The Diary of Melanie Martin—but it doesn’t matter which order you read them in. I read Goes Dutch first and liked it so much that I immediately read The Diary in which Melanie and her family travel to Italy. These books are real page-turners. I can’t wait to read the next book about Melanie and her travels! Libby Coleman, 9Scarsdale, New York
Shatterglass
Shatterglass by Tamora Pierce; Scholastic Press: New York, 2003; $16.95 Shatterglass, a fantasy novel by Tamora Pierce, touches ingeniously close to the real world. Pierce is able to weave a tale which, although fiction, is startlingly believable. The last volume in The Circle Opens quartet, Shatterglass follows the life of Tris, a young ambient mage of unimaginable power, and Kethlun Warder, a glassmaker who just wants to live a normal life but can’t. Together they encounter two major crimes in the city of Tharios—one that takes away all rights of the prathmuni and the other, a murder. Who are the prathmuni? They are the “untouchables” of Tharios, uncomfortably similar to the Untouchables of India. In this book we are able to see the extremes of the mistreatment of people in India in a totally different world. When Tris asks a prathmuni girl why they are discriminated against, the girl explains, “We handle the bodies of the dead. We skin and tan animal hides. We make shoes. We take out the night soil. But mostly, we handle the dead, which means we defile whatever we touch . . .” This is similar to the Hindu law that says that working with animal skins makes one unclean, as does work that involves physical contact with blood, excrement, and the dead, all things which the Untouchables of India do. Shatterglass touched me because it shoved the issues of human injustice right into my face. When I first read about the prathmuni I thought, This is insane! I am so thankful that I don’t live in a world like that! And yet, only a day after I had read about the prathmuni, I happened to read an article in National Geographic that spoke of the injustice of Untouchables occurring in my world! As I read on I realized that Shatterglass had many messages that reflected reality. For example: Kethlun Warder. Keth is a glassmaker of about twenty years who just wants to be normal—but can’t. After being hit by lightning, he finds that his previous ease at glassmaking is gone and a mysterious power has taken its place. It is Tris’s job to help Kethlun accept the fact that he is not like everyone else and that being different is OK, even good. Almost everyone deals with the issues of wanting to be someone he or she is not and having to accept reality. And then the murder mystery. (That is the great thing about Shatterglass. It has at least three major plots occurring and intertwining all at the same time—and the book makes perfect sense!) Obviously I have never been involved with murder, so I can’t relate directly to it, but the mystery made the story that much deeper, that much more believable, that much better. After murdering the victims, the assassin would take the bodies and place them in public areas where everyone would notice them, in order to make the point that the caste system was wrong. In this way the murderer ridicules the government, but that does not mean that this method of drawing attention to the issue is the right one to use. The killer’s method of displaying the corpses brings further into view the insanity of the treatment of the prathmuni. It also shows how wrong murder really is; Pierce shows that no victims are anonymous losses. Hayley Merrill, 13Waterford, Connecticut
