Magic or Not? by Edgar Eager (review)

This will serve as the first post in what I hope will be a regular series of brief "book reviews" in my efforts to uncover the best in children's books. First up: Magic or Not? by Edgar Eager, first published in 1959.

The book is a fairly quick read, at 197 somewhat large print pages in this 1979 Odyssey Classic edition. An afternoon or two will suffice for an adult reader. The are eventful pages, however, and will fly by. Pacing is excellent, with the story building to a satisfying and reasonable conclusion.

The setting is of course a simpler time, when parents could send children off to play by themselves through long summer days, ranging all over the (small) town and surrounding countryside. This should be instructive for today's youth in their more circumscribed lifestyles.

The title poses a central question, whether or not magic is real. This is developed seomwhat along the lines of a traditional mystery novel, which adds a nice element to the others in the novel. Adult readers may feel that this is resolved to their satisfaction by the end, but children, with their more forgiving and fluid attitude towards evidence and reality, may be able to retain some level of ambiguity which I think will reward them. Furthermore, in my post introducing these reviews, I discussed how I was focusing on realistic tales, so I find this ambiguity quite a refreshing change from Eager's other works in which the existance of magic is never in question. This alone makes this my favorite Eager book so far: as I mentioned in my previous post, I'm currently a bit "cool" on stories with fantasy elements in them.

Eager's characters are fairly simple but believable, with fairly realistic sybling relationships. Their imaginations are on full display, checking off one of my personal boxes. As in his other works, Eager sprinkles references to other interesting children's literature such as the works of E. Nesbit, hopeful that these will lead the reader to other finds. He does this in his own voice, which is present but not overdone, and in the childrens' voices also. Vocabulary is a bit of a stretch for the probably reader, as well as for believable characters, but it's a healthy stretch and not a strain.

Altogether, a delightful work.

Intoducing: Book Reviews!

I've decided to add a new feature to this blog: book reviews! I've been reading a lot of "children's" books, with two goals: first, in support of my (future, hopeful) efforts at writing in the same genre; and second, to be able to guide Son and Daughter's reading (which, given their approach to our advice, might be classified as wishful thinking). I thought it would be helpful to save my notes on these books here --- helpful to me to have a bit more discipline about it, and possibly helpful to you, who might be interesting in the same literature. If you're not interested, I've also started to use tags on my posts, so you could change your subscription to follow only the "family" tags ....

While I've read and enjoyed my share of fantastical stories for children, my current favored area is in more realistic settings. In addition, my favorite stories also contain an element of storytelling. I feel this acts in some small way as a counterweight to the all-to-common attitude of today that story is something that someone else does that one passively consumes. In the broader sense, I feel this is connected in some way to the "maker" movement, which celebrates what you can make as an individual (or small group) rather than relying on the people with the design teams and the factories to make things for you.

The archetype of what I'm driving at is the novel Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome. This book follows the summer adventures of two groups of syblings (four in one, two in the other) who during an eventful summer vacation meet, wage war, declare peace, and engage in voyages of exploration (the fact that these are acomplished by sailing is, rumors to the contrary notwithstanding, icing on the cake and not the main course). The characters are believable (more or less --- having lived with children for almost 6 years now, I am forced to admit that there's a large element of fantasy about the children in this book!), the situations are in keeping with the period (contemporary to the writing), and the attitudes of the children are just what I'm looking for: everything they encounter is an opportunity to engage in creative storytelling, the children themselves playing the leading roles.

In a future post, perhaps I'll revisit the Swallows and Amazons (until then, read it --- you won't be disappointed). For now, I'll stop here, and continue in the next post with a review of Magic or Not? by Edgar Eager.

Two Seven-Year-Olds' Birthdays

Daughter chose a pool party for her birthday this year, which we supported whole-heartedly, given the other options she'd talked about. A good time was had by all, as they say.

That's the first and last pictures --- the two in the middle were from a birthday party for a friend (they're only a couple days apart). (Don't ask why they're intermingled like this)

The Newest White House Resident

Oh! In addition to Christmas, and moving in a snowstorm, over Winter Holiday we also aquired Mystic, a young (apx 6 mo) cat. She's really quite a nice cat, other than a habit of waking us up too early on weekends. Daughter was insistant that she wanted a cat but was very nervous around the cat when we met her at the animal shelter. We insisted that she be able to actually hold the cat on her lap before we agreed to adopt it. It was remarkable watching her screw up her courage and finally take her onto her lap (for a few seconds --- enough, anyway!). Since Mystic has been home with us, Daughter has become much more comfortable with the cat, so thus far I think it's been a good thing.