From the Archives #21: Rowan Farm by Margot Benary-Isbert

Rowan Farm is the sequel to The Ark, which was reviewed here in May, and continues the story of the Lechow family, Pomeranian refugees who have had to resettle in the Hesse area in Germany after the war.  It begins precisely where The Ark left off, in January 1948.  The war has been over for almost three years, but the effects are still being felt everywhere.   Most things continue to be rationed, everyone is still hungry and cold all the time and much of the country still bears the scars of wartime destruction "Ruins rose into the clear winter air like broken teeth...To the left was the cemetery, torn up by bombs; to the right the ruins..." (pg 9)

All the Lechows from the first novel are still around in this second work: Dr. and Mrs. Lechow, Matthias, 17, Andrea, 13, Joey and adopted Ull, both 7, but the story is still centered mainly on Margret, 15.  Margret still loves working as a kennel/stable maid for Mrs. Almut, who also breeds champion Great Danes as well as running a small farm with her son Bernd, who had returned from a prisoner of war camp the previous summer.

The story begins with two important events: first is the arrival of the new school teacher, Christoph Hühnerbein, a 20 year old war veteran with a disabled leg and an amputated arm; and second, Margret's rescue of a badly abused Shetland pony from the slaughterhouse and her nursing it from near death to heath.

Both of them are perfect metaphors for Germany at the end of the war and its endeavors to rebuild itself  after the horror of its Nazi past.

Despite his disability, the new teacher soon has his students well in hand.   When he hears about the Wetz Farm, which had taken a direct hit from a bomb during the war that killed the family and destroyed the house and everything near it,  Hühnerbein comes up with the idea of cleaning it up to see what is reusable, and build what is called "rammed earth housing"with it for returning homeless veterans, most of whom had been in Russian prisoner of war camps.  And much of the work is done with the aid of Margret's little Shetland pony, named Mignon, "after the poor, unhappy little gypsy child in [Goethe's] Wilhelm Meister." (pg 30) The project of supported by everyone except the mayor, who plans to put a stop to it.

Meanwhile, Margret also meets an American Quaker, Mrs. Coleman, who is in Germany to help out with the refugee problem and who has a farm with her husband in Pennsylvania.  Now that the war is over, she and her husband want to start breeding Great Danes again, so she has a genuine interest in the dogs being bred at Rowan Farm.  Naturally, she and Margret hit is off and she offers Margret a position in America.

Life is further complicated when a beautiful young woman from Frankfurt comes to visit her relatives, and both Matthias and Bernd loose their hearts to her, even though it was clear that Bernd had always been attracted to Margret, but too shy to do anything about it.  Margret is hurt by Bernd's behavior and decides to wash her hand of him and men in general.  But will that resolve really last or will it simply give her the push she needs to go to America with Mrs. Coleman?

Once again, Benary-Isbert has taken difficult topics and presented them in the gentlest manner in a story that is told so well geared for her young readers but without being overly graphic.  Unlike in The Ark, she does talk more about the Nazi past, especially with regard to the 15 and 16 year olds who were drafted into the German army towards the end of the war and then found themselves homeless and unable to adjust to life again.  Besides Bernd Almut, Benary-Isbert includes the story of two boys, Karl and Alfred.  These two boys ran away from east Germany, whose Russians occupiers are sending former teen soldiers to work and mostly likely die in Uranian mines.  They are hired at Rowan Farm and become the first two veterans to live in the rammed housing at Wetz Farm, but when they hear the mayor is going to report them to the Russians, they run away.  Alfred gets caught stealing and Karl is found dead by suicide.  Their stories are very compelling and point to a postwar problem not usually addressed in YA literature.

So again, as in The Ark, Benary-Isbert has given the reader the bad and the good together, to remind them that this is life and, like the continuous birth of new animals on the farm, life goes on.  I wrote about The Ark that it is almost an overly sentimental story, yet people are surprised by how much they like it when they are finished.  The same can be said of Rowan Farm.

This book is recommended for readers age 12+
This book was borrowed from a friend.

This is book 11 of my Historical Fiction Challenge hosted by Historical Tapestry.

*From the Archives used to be called That's the Way it Was Wednesday.

It's Monday! What are you Reading?

There's a new meme on the block, an offshoot of that seasoned meme hosted by Sheila at Book Journey.  The newbie is called It's Monday! What are you reading? - from Picture Books to YA and it is hosted by Teach Mentor Texts.  The purpose is the same: to recap what you have read and/or reviewed and to plan out your reading and reviews for the upcoming week but with a focus on kidlit.

Well, after two weeks of vacation at the shore, I can't say I managed to read as many books as I would have liked to, but what with great weather and four kids around, it was also a little hard to focus.  And of course, my recently returned from China daughter was home for a few weeks before heading out to San Francisco and naturally, I wanted to spend as much time as possible with her.  

Nevertheless, I did manage to do some reading:

Tamar: A Novel of Espionage, Passion and Betrayal by Mal Peet.  A sophisticated YA novel in part about two men in the Dutch Resistance towards the end of World War II and in part about the granddaughter of one of them in contemporary London.

Rowan Farm by Margot Benary-Isbert.  A sequel to The Ark, this YA novel continues the story of the Lechow family, refugees from Pomerania, in post-war Germany

Black Radishes by Susan Lynn Meyer.  The suspense story about an 11 year old French Jewish boy and his family trying to avoid the Nazis and survive in Vichy France until their American visas arrive.  Great for middle grade readers.

T4 by Ann Clare LaZotte.  A YA novel in free verse, it tells the story of a 13 year old deaf girl living in Germany when the T4 law is passed, the Nazis so called Euthanasia program that let they do whatever they wanted to people with disabilities.   

Little Orphan Annie and her Junior Commandos by Harold Gray.  A retelling of the comic strip the helped mobilize thousands of kids around the country to collect scrap for the war effort.  An interesting piece of history.  

Olivia Bean, Trivia Queen by Donna Gephart.  In this middle grade/young YA novel, a young east coast girl dreams of becoming a kid contestant on Jeopardy, in part to be able to see her divorced father living in California with his new family, her former best friend and her mother.  A nice coming of age story.








I was hoping to be able to read the following:
The Absolutist by John Boyne
Madhattan Mystery by John J. Bonk
Moon Over Manifest by Clare Vanderpool
Becoming Clementine by Jennifer Niven

Sad News - Nina Bawden Dies

I was very sad to see that another kidlit author has passed away.   Nina Bawden, author of Carrie's War, passed away at the age of 87.

Ms. Bawden's obituary in the New York Times can be found here and in The Guardian here

Nina Bawden 

Keep Calm and (fill in the blank)

By now, you are probably pretty familiar all the incarnations of the Keep Calm sign that have become so popular.  Heck, I even use an incarnation of it as my grab button.  But for all it can be seen everywhere now, during World War II, it was no where to be seen.  It just wasn't used, and for a very good reason.

When the war first broke out, the Ministry of Information realized that they would need the support of the British people if they were going to defeat the Germans.  So, they decided on a poster campaign to boost morale and gain support at the cost of £44,000, beginning in September 1939.

According to the Imperial War Museum, 800,000 copies were made of this poster and distributed all over Britain, placed on the sides of buildings and billboard-type structures for all to see, with smaller versions found in places like shops, banks, trains, buses and railway stations.  The problem with this poster was that it was very unpopular with the British people, who felt that the wording "You" and "Us" separated the people from the government and monarchy, and that winning the war was placed solely on the shoulders of the people.  The world resolution didn't go over well either, because the British prided themselves on always being resolute - they are, after all, a "pull-up-your-socks-and-carry-on: kind of people.

 Over 400,000 copies of the above second poster were also distributed in the same places all over Britain.  It was actually more disliked by the people than the first poster.  The British resented the expression Freedom is in Peril because they already felt that their freedom was in peril by their own government due to all the wartime restrictions that were being placed on their daily lives.

That brings us to the third poster, the infamous Keep Calm and Carry On

  
It is believed that 2.5 million copies of this poster were printed, and apparently some were distributed.  The reason this on was never used had nothing to do with the unpopularity of the first two posters.  Rather, it had everything to do with the idea of a German invasion, something that the government thought was a pretty definite possibility.  This poster was only supposed to be used when that invasion happened and since it never did, it never got used.

Fast forward 60 years to a charming second hand bookshop in Northumberland called Barter Books, where an original copy of Keep Calm and Carry On was found in an old box of books for at an auction.  The owners of Barter Books decided to frame and hand the poster and as customer interest grew, they decided make copies and sell them.  The rest, as they say, is history.

 Listen to the story in their own words, along with very interesting archival footage:

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Used with permission of the good people at Barter Books.

And who knows, maybe that very book you have been wanting forever is right there in their catalogue.

It's the Dog Days of Summer and...

I am on vacation and for once I didn't have any posts scheduled before I left.  My daughter is here until August 22nd, when she moves to San Francisco and, well, we have been having a lovely visit.  And the time has just gone by so quickly since I reviewed Violins of Autumn.

And I would like to thank everyone for taking the time to leave your comments about Violins of Autumn.  I didn't have internet access right away and couldn't respond individually to you all.

So where am I vacationing?  Well, it is a place called Seven Mile Island in New Jersey.  It is a barrier island in the Atlantic Ocean, and is actually 7 1/2  miles long and three to four blocks wide.  Originally occupied by the Lenni Lenape, it was bought by the Leamings family in 1722 and called Leaming's Island, but that name didn't last.  Some of the island's incredible dunes are still left, but they are not nearly as spectacular as they used to be because of beach erosion.  I have been here during hurricanes and witnessed the beach just completely disappear.  But it is still here this year so...

My plan is to sit in the sun and read for the next week and a half.  I have lots of books and hope to be able to post reviews of them while I am here, reading somewhere on this beach: