While I was working on my book review master list, I came across this post about a book that, four years later, remains a family favorite. I read it to our Shakespeare Club, too, last year when I was launching the group, and that bunch of nine- to twelve-year-olds (at the time) guffawed all the way through it.
One day in Elizabethan England
by G. B. Kirtland, illustrated by Jerome Snyder.
Zounds! It’s a pity this book, originally published in 1962, went out of print. I’m writing about it anyway because many libraries carry it, and a quick Google search turned up a number of online booksellers that have used copies in stock. My family’s copy was a library discard, and this is definitely a case of one person’s (or library’s) trash being another person’s treasure.
The title page proclaims that the place is England, the time is 1590, and the characters are: “You.” You wake up one morning, and a busy day begins as “you pull open your velvet bed curtains and pull off the cap of lettuce leaves you wore to help you sleep.”
The chambermaid comes in to draw your bath, despite your protests that you “already had a bath just this past winter”—for this is an important day, a majestical day, a fantastical day, a day which calls for special preparations. This explains why your father has dyed his beard purple to match his breeches and your sister has donned her new popinjay-blue kirtle and her pease-porridge tawny gown. Everyone is all in a dither, anxious for this important festivity, whatever it is, to begin.
“Oh, Madame,” you say; “Oh, Sir,” says your sister. “Will it soon be time to go?”
“Nay,” says your mother; “Nay, says your father.”
“Alas!” says your sister. “Alack!” says she. “I cannot hardly wait. I wonder what she will be wearing?”
“I wonder,” you say, “will there be tumblers tumbling for her?”
“I wonder,” says your mother, “will there be mummers mumming for her?”
“And I wonder,” says your father, “I wonder will you remember your grandiloquent speech for her?”
Ah, there’s the question, and it haunts you throughout the book until at last the great moment arrives. So wrought up are you that when dinnertime comes, “you are not very hungry and so you eat rather pinglingly, having only: a sip of soup, a snip of snipe, a smidgeon of stag, a munch of mutton, a bite of boar, a pinch of pheasant, and a little lark.”
I love what author G. B. Kirtland has done in this whimsical little book. The language is delicious, the style unique, and the peek at Elizabethan life is fascinating. My kids giggle the whole way through, every time (for this is a book that demands repeated readings). By my troth, ’tis the perfect compliment to a study of Shakespeare—and a majestical, fantastical, grandiloquent remedy for a humdrum afternoon.
If your local library lacks a copy (alas and alack), try this website to see what other libraries in your area carry it.
For more book recommendations, visit my Booknotes page.
April 7, 2009 @ 7:12 am | Filed under:
Rilla Rilla is standing on a stool, flicking the light on and off, using, so she tells me, “the light flitch.”
Jane just entertained Rilla for fifteen minutes by writing letters and names with her finger…IN THE DUST ON OUR TELEVISION SCREEN.
Someone got to my blog the other day after googling “Melissa Wiley tortilla soup.” Do you think she added my secret ingredient?
I need to use up some mozzarella and was thinking about making a pizza tonight. A Google search for “pizza dough” turns up almost 900,000 hits. I want something tried and true—and EASY—so I thought I’d ask you lovely Bonny Glen readers. You’ve never steered me wrong before! Got a favorite recipe?
Thanks!
April 5, 2009 @ 7:26 pm | Filed under:
Books I’ve begun to compile links to my book reviews on one page for easy access. With four years’ worth of recommendations in the archives, this will be a long term project. So far I’ve got about four months’ worth of review on the page. Got a long way to go, but if you’d like a sneak peek, here it is.
April 5, 2009 @ 6:49 pm | Filed under:
Books Halfway through lunch, Beanie lets her book fall to the table. She sighs contentedly.
“I LOVE Einstein,” she announces.
She’s reading our small collection of Childhood of Famous Americans biographies, one by one. So far: Amelia Earhart, Sacagawea, Albert Einstein.
“Do you know why I like these books so much, Mommy?” she asks. “Because when I finish one, I feel like I know the person in real life. I feel like Albert Einstein and I are real friends.”
April 5, 2009 @ 6:32 pm | Filed under:
Books Spent much of this afternoon rocking a sleeping baby and finishing The Mysterious Benedict Society. Loved loved loved it. But then you knew that already.
We’ve already got the sequel on reserve at the library.
Funny aside: Scott was tickled that the book’s cool cover art was done by Carson Ellis, the same person who did the jacket art for his Decemberists CD. Connections!
April 4, 2009 @ 6:58 pm | Filed under:
Books 
I’m halfway through The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart, and already I know this is a keeper. Figuratively speaking, I mean, because the copy I’m reading doesn’t belong to us. It’s the kind of book you want to own a copy of, the kind the kids are going to fight over when they grow up and start claiming favorites from these overcrowded shelves. So good, this book. I can recommend it wholeheartedly even before I read the second half.
It’s a mystery, full of puzzles, loaded with quirky characters in tight spots. Reynie Muldoon, our young hero, is an eleven-year-old orphan who answers an ad aimed at “gifted children seeking special opportunities.” The first “opportunity” turns out to be a series of curious tests containing questions such as “What’s wrong with this statement?” (“What’s wrong with YOU?” writes another special-opportunity-seeking child, an obstinate and somewhat churlish girl named Constance.)
Only a very few children make it through the rounds of testing, either by merit of their intellect or their daring, their inventiveness, their creative approach to problem-solving—and all of them by merit of their strong sense of honor and truthfulness. The peculiar tests are but the beginning of an adventure that quickly escalates to a perilous mission requiring strength of character and quick wits.
And if this all sounds very vague, that’s because I wouldn’t dream of spoiling any of this captivating novel’s many twists and turns. As I said, I’m halfway through, and I can’t wait to find out what happens next.
