The Fiddler of the Northern Lights

(From: Amazon.com)

What makes the northern lights transform shapes and move so beautifully across the night sky? You're probably thinking it has something to do with energy in the atmosphere. Actually, it's due to the expertly played music of a North Woods fiddler. Just ask Grandpa Pepin and his grandson Henry from forests of Quebec. In The Fiddler of the Northern Lights (illustrated in watercolor by Leslie W. Bowman), Vermont author Natalie Kinsey-Warnock tells the story of how the Pepin family and their neighbors overcame their skepticism and came to believe in this mythical musician.

Grandpa Pepin tells eight year-old Henry many French-Canadian legends, about the "great white owl--l'hibou blanc--or the terrible loup-garou, who was part man and part wolf," and about rabbits who dance on moonlit nights. Henry's brother and mother both insist that his Grandpa is just telling stories again. One moonlit winter night, Henry and his grandfather, hoping to find the legendary fiddler, go ice skating down the St. Maurice River. They return home to the rebukes of Henry's mother for being gone so long. But then they all hear a knock on the door--quite an unusual event for a winter night at a backwoods cabin. The fiddler of the northern lights is on the doorstep looking for a fire to warm himself up. Taking his fiddle from a black case, the man begins to play. With the northern lights dancing overhead, neighbors make their way to the Pepin cabin to dance inside. The fiddler played "all through the night, until they could dance no more." Just before dawn, the fiddler packs up his instrument. Stepping out of the cabin, he turns to the north and disappears into the woods.

Some of us have deep affection for the mountains and wilderness of northern New England. It's in the North Woods that city-dwelling Bostonians like me satisfy a craving for uneven skylines of spruces and white pines, perhaps as a backdrop to a mountain lake. However, it is books like The Fiddler of the Northern Lights that remind me of the whole Canadian province to the north of New England, namely Quebec. For Quebecois, you have to travel south to get to northern New England!

Saint-Maurice River Drainage Basin (From: Wikipedia)

The Fiddler is set in the forests of Quebec near the St. Maurice River. Today, the original headwaters and upper stretches of this river have been altered by the Gouin Reservoir. The reservoir was built in 1918 in order to control the river's flow and generate hydroelectric power at several points downstream. It is hard to say whether the setting of the story predates the dam or not. The stream pictured in the book is so placid as to be completely frozen over during the winter. Could this be the result of controlled water flow from the dam or is it just naturally so? In any case, much of the river today from the reservoir to its junction with the St. Lawrence River at Trois-Rivieres appears to be only a couple of hundred feet wide on average. One picture in the book depicts the St. Maurice as a very narrow stream, perhaps 30 feet or so. This makes me think of the some narrow streams I've canoed in the Adirondacks--the Osgood and Oswegatchie Rivers, for example.

Oswegatchie River in the Adirondack Mountains
of New York State (From:
New York State Department of Environmental Conservation)

The Gouin Reservoir is not much use as a tool for dating the story. But there is another way to date the setting. Many of the material goods in the cabin were manufactured to a relatively high quality. The chairs are perfectly identical; a craftsman could accomplish this, but could a family living in a cabin so distant from civilization afford a hand-made set of chairs like this? The wood stove likewise has the appearance of a modern manufactured stove. The family enjoys porcelain dishes. I doubt that one could find all of these goods in a mid-nineteenth century backwoods Quebec cabin. Yet, the Fiddler is clearly not a contemporary story either. Grandpa Pepin makes his ice skates from wood and barrel hoops! I would guess that the story is intended by Kinsey-Warnock to be set sometime around the turn of the twentieth century.

The neighbors' dancing to the fiddle deep into the night also bespeaks an earlier time. If there's anything that contemporary children do deep into the night, it's probably either video games or (I hope!) reading a good book. Occasionally, I see a picture of fiddle dancing like this in the newspaper. It usually has senior citizens smiling and enjoying the music as in ye olden times. Community fiddle dancing events were a wonderful way to spend time with neighbors during most of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries, particularly in rural areas like the one in the Fiddler. There are similar scenes depicting the joy of rural fiddle dancing in Kathryn Lasky's Marven of the Great North Woods and in Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House in the Big Woods. 

If you see one of these, RUN!
(From: Wikipedia)

Grandpa Pepin tells Henry many old folktales of French-Canadian origin, the Fiddler being the foremost among them. Most folktales have a long and complex history as they are told with innumerable variations in different times and places. I was able to find at least one version of each story Grandpa Pepin tells. "Those Damned 'Marionettes'" has a fiddler named Fifi Labranche who becomes convinced by a protagonist, Lababiche, to take up the challenge of making the northern lights or "marionettes' dance to his music. His success in doing so casts a spell over him so that he cannot put the fiddle down or stop playing a tune called "Money Musk" (the above video) all night long. He collapses into unconsciousness by morning. He cannot lift an axe for three months afterwards because of his soreness.

Square dancing scene from Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House in the Big Woods.

"The White Owl" or "L'Hibou Blanc" is a French-Canadian legend about the dangerous supernatural powers of white owls. One version of this legend appears in storyteller Hazel Boswell's Legends of Quebec, From the Land of the Golden Dog. This version has four men setting off into the woods for a day of repair work on a sugarhouse. One of them is a scientifically-minded, factory worker American named Felix. Upon spotting a white owl, three of the men are spooked and immediately return home in hopes of avoiding the calamity traditionally associated with a sighting of the creature. Felix argues that such legends were "all nonsense. Old men's stories." Deliberately countering the legend, Felix decides to remain in the woods alone. The next morning, a search party goes in search of Felix because he had never returned for the night. He's discovered near the sugarhouse, dead under the weight of a fallen birch.

The legend of the loup-garou is probably the most well-known of the stories that Grandpa Pepin tells Henry. This is a terrifying half-man, half wolf creature. French-Canadian storyteller Louis Frechette relates one of many stories about this creature in his story collection, Christmas in French Canada (page 241). Frechette also explains in a footnote the central idea of the legend: "the loup-garou here, is not a sorcerer, but a victim of irreligion. A man who has been seven years without partaking of the Easter Sacrament falls a prey to the infernal power, and may be condemned to roam about every night in the shape and skin of a wolf, or any other kind of animal, according to the nature of his sins. A bloody wound only can release him." (242) Hmm... I wonder if Grandpa Pepin used the words "infernal" and "bloody wound" with Henry. 

Finally, Grandpa Pepin's story about rabbits dancing on moonlit nights is a worldwide legend. This tale of rabbits in the moonlight is similar to the story of Cinderella in that geographically disparate cultures around the world tell strangely similar versions of both stories. For as much as you'd probably ever like to know about rabbit folklore around the world, see blogger Terri Windling's post "The Folklore of Rabbits and Hares." Folklorists continue to puzzle over an explanation of this phenomenon of a folktale or legend that spans the globe. Of Cinderella, historian Robert Darnton writes, "Folkorists have recognized their tales in Herodotus and Homer, on ancient Egyptian papyruses and Chaldean stone tablets; and they have recorded them all over the world, in Scandinavia and Africa, among Indians on the banks of the Bengal and Indians along the Missouri. The dispersion is so striking that some have come to believe in Ur-stories and a basic Indo-European repertory of myths, legends, and tales." (The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History, 21) Grandpa Pepin's dancing rabbits just might go back into Indo-European pre-history!

Now, shifting gears, how about those northern lights! The northern lights certainly do move as if they were dancing, though I don't think they move as fast as your average fiddle tune. Most videos of the northern lights available online are time-lapsed, so it's hard to get an idea of the original rapidity of their movement. Full confession: I have never seen the northern lights. My father says he used to see them sometimes while driving in northern New York. But he hasn't seen them there for a couple of decades. How I'd love to see this amazing display!

If you want to see the northern lights, you need to travel to either the North or South Poles. The magnetic field of the earth is weakest at these two points. The northern lights are caused by collisions between electrically charged particles emitted by the sun and gasses in the earth's atmosphere. Except at the poles, the earth's magnetic field does not allow the sun's particles to reach its atmosphere. The color produced by the collisions depends on the type of atmospheric gas involved. The most common color of the northern lights is green, which is caused by the combination of oxygen and the sun's particles. For more detailed explanation of the northern lights, see the Northern Lights Centre. 

The Fiddler of the Northern Lights is a picture book that tells the story of a special relationship between a boy and his grandfather in the backwoods of early twentieth-century Quebec. As often happens with this blogger, a story--the legend of a fiddler who make the northern lights dance--sparks their imagination to ask the questions, "What if this story were true? Can I imagine a world where this story is true or actually happened? What would that world be like?" These are the kinds of questions that make a person (or pair) set out ice-skating on a cold winter night in the wilderness! Of course, Grandpa Pepin and Henry did not ask these questions in the story, but one can easily imagine such questions running in their minds. I recommend this book for its feel of winter in the North Woods as well the cultural experience of French Canada. It reminds us that the northern lights are (or would be if I can ever manage to see them!) a magnificent phenomenon that inspire viewers with a sense of wonder.   

The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle

I was wrong about Avi. Many years ago, I read Nothing But the Truth and did not like it at all. The story was jam-packed with teen “issues.” I read it in my early twenties, freshly out of my teenage years. I was relieved to not be a teenager anymore. Being a teenager is hard in almost every way. It may be that Nothing But the Truth reminded me too much of those years past.

I read Avi’s Crispin: Cross of Lead a few weeks ago and stayed up until 2 am to finish it. That book was suspenseful! I finished The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle--at 1 am this morning. I am now a solid Avi fan. The imagery and intensity of his historical fiction is top-notch. True Confessions has mutiny, murder, a mad ship captain, and high seas adventure, ironically with an upper-class teenage girl at the center of it all. I cannot think of a book that is more mismatched with its most-often-seen cover than this one. The only time Charlotte's clothes look as clean and puffy as that are in the first ten pages of the book. I’m glad I read it so that I can tell the students at my school what it's really about!

Old Dock, Liverpool, 1799. Charlotte boards the Seahawk
here on June 16, 1832. (From: The Maritime Gallery)

Charlotte Doyle is the daughter of a prosperous American businessman who had temporarily lived with his family in England for several years. Prior to the beginning of the story, Mr. Doyle moved his family back to their home in Providence, Rhode Island--all except Charlotte. Charlotte was to finish her school year in England, then travel home to Providence aboard a merchant ship, the Seahawk, with which her father had business connections. Two other families were to accompany her, but at the last minute were strongly warned by the ship’s crew to stay away. The crew was planning a mutiny against their ship’s captain and did not want non-sailors aboard to complicate their plans. Charlotte, however, was forced by her English guardian, who would not listen to the warnings, to board the ship anyway.

A brig is a sailing ship with two masts. It was a popular
ship design in the 18th and 19th centuries. In the story, the
Seahawk is a brig. Pictured here is the Niagara.
(From: Wikipedia)

These circumstances set the stage for a wildly terrifying voyage. The well-mannered and cultured Charlotte, a 13-year old girl, was in for a two-month Atlantic crossing with a crew of ten uncouth, violent sailors, a dirty roach and rat infested ship, and a captain who turned out to be raving mad. By the time the Seahawk arrived in Providence, Charlotte had helped Captain Jaggery to quell a rebellion by the crew, taken an oath of loyalty as a crew member, climbed to the main mast as the ship was blasted by the wind and waves of a hurricane, been tried and convicted of murder, and led a mutinous rebellion against Jaggery that resulted in his death. Hardly a story that fits well with the genteel Charlotte pictured on the book’s cover! In this blog post, I’ll provide you with some background information to help you to better understand the story and its setting. Of course, I’m hoping you’ll decide read the book and enjoy it as much as I did!

This cover provides a much
better idea ofthe story than
the one above.

The Seahawk, Avi explains, is "what is known as a brig, a two-masted ship (with a snow mast behind the main), perhaps some seven hundred tons in weight, 107 feet stern to bow, 130 feet deck to mainmast cap." (13) In the story, Charlotte incurs the wrath of Captain Jaggery after she defends a black sailor named Zachariah, the supposed leader of a mutinous crew. The first mate, Mr. Hollybrass, is commanded by Jaggery to whip Zachariah fifty times across his bare back. But, as Zachariah had become Charlotte's friend, Charlotte defends him by tackling Hollybrass and taking away the whip. As she backs away from Hollybrass with the whip in hand, she accidentally strikes Jaggery across the face with it, leaving a long, bloody cut.

From that moment, Jaggery hates Charlotte and schemes revenge against her. Charlotte seeks the protection of the crew by joining and taking an oath of loyalty to them. They permit her to join them (doing all the normal work of a male sailor) on one condition. She must climb the main mast of the Seahawk by herself in order to prove her seriousness. This is one of the most intense scenes in the whole book. She climbs the rope ladder barefooted and without any protection against a fall. As she nears the top, she notes that "what seemed like little movement on deck became, up high, wild swings and turns through treacherous air... This final climb was torture. With every upward pull the swaying of the ship seemed to increase. Even when not moving myself, I was flying through the air in wild gyrations. The horizon kept shifting, tilting, dropping. I was increasingly dizzy, nauseous, terrified, certain that with every next moment I would slip and fall to death." (125) What would it feel like to be Charlotte at that moment? Check out this video of someone climbing the main mast of the Charles W. Morgan, a 19th century whaling ship now kept at Mystic Seaport in Connecticut. The mast of this ship is 110 feet tall, 20 feet shorter than that of the Seahawk.  



Charlotte boards the ship at Liverpool, England on June 16, 1832. They sail across the northern Atlantic Ocean to Providence, arriving on August 17th. (See this 1831 map, Atlantic Ocean.) The voyage has mostly good weather until a hurricane comes upon them off the coast of New England. By this time, Charlotte has become a member of the Seahawk's crew. I have already asked you to imagine climbing 130 feet up the mast of a brig. Now imagine climbing it during a hurricane on the ocean. Jaggery commands Charlotte to climb the mast and cut a sail loose. If a sail remains up during hurricane winds, the ship's wooden mast may crack and topple. Clearly, the job had to be done by someone. Of course, Jaggery, in his hatred for Charlotte, did not shy away from giving her a dangerous job like this. What's a hurricane on the ocean look like? Here's a video of one--but remember that the ship in the video is much, much bigger than a brig and can more easily remain stable the massive waves.

 

In the story, Captain Jaggery cruelly treats his crew. If a sailor makes a mistake in his work, the captain punishes him severely. One reason for the crew's mutinous anger toward him is that, on a prior voyage, he had beaten a sailor so badly that the man's arm had to be amputated. His cruelty extended to the risks he took concerning their safety. Before the hurricane arrives, one sailor explains Jaggery's hurricane strategy to Charlotte. "'I don't think the captain wants to avoid it.' 'Why not?'... 'The captain's trying to move fast. If he sets us right at the hurricane's edge, it'll blow us home like a pound of shot in a two-pound cannon.' 'What if he doesn't get it right?' ' Two pounds of shot in a one-pound cannon.'" Meaning, of course, that if Jaggery didn't get it right, the Seahawk would be floating (or sunk) on the Atlantic in two pieces, not one. The satellite picture of a hurricane below helps to more easily understand Jaggery's folly. 

The white parts of the storm have the highest winds. Jaggery wants to
keep the Seahawk on the edge of the white, so that he can catch
winds that will move the ship faster, but not so fast as to endanger the ship.
If Jagger arrives earlier in Providence than expected, then he stands
to profit financially. Of course, this idea of toying with a hurricane is a
risky proposition to begin with! (This picture comes from an
excellent article about hurricanes on the National Geographic website.) 

After reading this book, I was skeptical about how realistic the story is. Could a teenage girl really assume the work duties of a normal sailor and challenge the authority of a captain? But, as it turns out, there have been a handful of women throughout history who, by disguising themselves as men, taken to the sea on whaling ships, navy vessels, and as pirates. The National Park Service website has an insightful article about women sailors, Women in Maritime History. It notes that women and girls became sailors for many reasons: "dire emergencies while at sea, patriotic wartime duty, economic necessity, a chance at a better life, search for adventure, devotion, and love."

Did you ever wonder how you would live and how different of a person you would be if you lived at a different time in history? I wondered this while reading The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle. I do not know if I would have the courage to stand up to the evil Captain Jaggery. I do not think I could have been a sailor in the days of sailing ships. I would have been a much better farmer, I think. But I sure do enjoy reading sea adventures like this one that Avi has given us. If you like adventure and suspense in historical fiction, you should read it. I don't think you'll regret it!

The View From Saturday

The View from Saturday is a story about how four sixth grade students form a team for a quiz competition called the Academic Bowl. Noah, Nadia, Ethan, and Julian all have the same sixth grade classroom teacher, Mrs. Eva Marie Olinski. She selects them to represent her class in the Academic Bowl. They are matched against other middle school students. But their friendship with one another precedes Mrs. Olinski's quiz team. At the beginning of the school year, Julian, a new student with an exotic personal background in India, an English boarding school, and cruise ships, invites each of them to his house for tea on Saturday afternoons. They become friends and decide to call themselves The Souls. In the quiz competition, first they win in their own Epiphany Middle School, then the school district, and then the Finger Lakes region of New York state. The Souls eventually win the state-wide Academic Bowl held in Albany.

That is the main plot. But there are many subplots as E.L. Konigsburg devotes space in the book for Noah, Nadia, Ethan, and Julian to express their own perspectives on how The Souls came to be, how they foiled several bullies in their class, and how they won the Academic Bowl. A significant part of the pre-Academic Bowl backstory for Noah, Nadia, and Ethan takes place in Florida during the prior summer. Nadia and Ethan's grandparents (both previously widowed) marry each other at a retirement community in Florida, the same community where Noah's grandparents live. Over the summer, Nadia and Ethan learn from their grandparents how to guard and care for sea turtle eggs on the beaches of eastern Florida.

The View from Saturday's setting is split mainly between two places: 1) the fictional town of Epiphany, New York, and 2) the fictional Century Village on the east coast of Florida. The short scenes appearing throughout the book of the Academic Bowl state finals take place in Albany, New York. Century Village is probably on the east side of Florida. We know this because the sea turtles laying their eggs on the nearby beaches swim as adults straight out to the Sargasso Sea, an area of the Atlantic Ocean. Although action in Century Village, Florida is a major part of the summer backstory for Ethan, Nadia, and Noah, it is not where the main plot of the book takes place.

The fictional town of Epiphany, New York is located in the Finger Lakes area of western New York state. It is in Clarion County, also fictional. The Souls attend Epiphany Middle School, one of two middle schools in the school district--the other is Knightsbridge Middle School. Somewhere in or around Epiphany is the fictional Clarion College, creator of "The Farm," a new housing development in Epiphany. Julian and his father run a bed and breakfast in the oldest house in Epiphany, which is located close enough to a large lake--possibly one of the Finger Lakes--to catch the cool lake breeze in its windows.

What real Finger Lakes town could one identify Epiphany with? There are few towns in the Finger Lakes region that are big enough to maintain two middle schools. Even the comparatively large cities of Geneva and Canandaigua only have one middle school each. There are only two candidates I can find: Ithaca and Rochester. There also needs to be a college in or near the town; Ithaca and Rochester both meet this requirement. Finally, the town should either contain or border on a large lake. Ithaca is situated on the southern end of Cayuga Lake; Rochester is on the south shore of Lake Ontario.

One problem with identifying Epiphany with Ithaca or Rochester is that Konigsburg refers to Epiphany as a town, not a city. But because of the fact that Epiphany has two middle schools, we are left with few choices other than Ithaca and Rochester. Still, Rochester is a major city of 210,000 people--far larger than a town! Moreover, the Rochester City School District has no middle schools--only elementary and high schools (grades 7-12). Ithaca has two middle schools and two colleges, Ithaca College and Cornell University. Ithaca seems to be the best choice for visualizing what Epiphany would look like.

Aerial View of Ithaca and Cayuga Lake
(From: www.visitithaca.com)

There are handful of other real places in New York state that are mentioned in the story. As mentioned above, the Academic Bowl state finals take place in Albany. On their way to and from Albany, Mrs. Olinski and The Souls ride on the New York State Thruway (I-90), between Albany and Syracuse. Late at night on their way back from Albany, they stop for gas in Oneonta.

The Academic Bowl is another aspect of The View from Saturday that has a realistic counterpart in New York. There is no Academic Bowl in the state. However, there is a competitive quizzing league for high school students called MasterMinds. It includes high schools in western and central New York, along with the Capitol Region. Check out the video here if you're wondering what this type of competition look like.

While The View from Saturday is partly set in New York state, there is nothing about the story that necessarily ties it to New York. Neither the plot nor characters are connected to a specific aspect of New York geography or history in a way that the story could not be set in any other state. Konigsburg probably intended to only loosely connect her story to New York. Her decision to create a fictional town in the story is evidence for this.

I enjoyed this Newbery Award-winning book for its entertaining story and unusual structure (switching between the first-person perspectives of each person in The Souls). But, as you might guess from reading this post, I always like a story that is clearly set in a real place because of the imagination it sparks in me. Yet, I have admit that I enjoyed piecing together the story details and thinking about what real places that Konigsburg might have had in mind while writing.  

         

Storied Mountains, New England, and New York

Paddle-to-the-Sea might have paddled right past my grandmother's house! (Or would have, if he existed.) My childhood mind was occupied with thoughts such as these, mixing children's fiction with its many real story elements. Paddle-to-the-Sea is the name given by a boy to a toy wooden carving of an Indian in a canoe. Set afloat in Lake Superior, the toy has all sorts of adventures as it floats through the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River, all the way to the Atlantic Ocean. If Paddle-to-the-Sea were real, he would have floated right past my childhood home in northern New York state. Even better, he would have floated in the St. Lawrence River right past my grandmother's house in Cape Vincent, New York. I can remember standing next to the river as a child, staring at the water and imagining Paddle-to-the-Sea floating by.

This blog is rooted in my fascination with place, specifically the places I know and love well. These are the places I've spent large amounts of my life in and with which I feel a deep connection. New York state, New England, Pennsylvania, the Appalachian Mountains. As a child (and adult), my imagination has extended beyond the real settings of fiction to the landscapes of history. I have often stood at a historically significant place, trying to visualize what happened there. "This probably happened near that tree. That building would not have been there at the time...." I have stood on the sidewalk near the New York Public Library in Manhattan while trying imagine a large hay field in which George Washington's Continental Army skirmished with British soldiers in 1776.

Of course, picturing the past and locating the events of fiction on a landscape involve much more than visualizing where this or that happened. What did a certain historical figure look like? What are the smells and sounds of history or of a fictional scene set in a real place, historical or contemporary? What were the sounds Johnny Tremain heard as he walked on Long Wharf in Boston at dawn?

This blog will explore the real aspects (places, historical figures, sounds, etc) of children's fiction. This focus will be on children's literature that is set in the places that I know and love: New England, the Mid-Atlantic states, and the Appalachian Mountains. The inspiration for this blog comes from Leonard Marcus's marvelous book, Storied City: A Children's Book, Walking Tour Guide to New York City. Marcus locates the fictional characters and events of children's literature on the landscape of New York City. In a sense, you could stand on certain street corners in Manhattan and imagine a parade of children's book characters walking by you, each engrossed in their own story plots. This is an idea that I'd like to expand beyond New York City to upstate New York and beyond, mapping out children's literature set in other places. In some cases, this map and landscape work will help the reader to better understand the story, as it would with an accompanying map for Lost on a Mountain in Maine, a true story/memoir. In other instances, it will simply satisfy the readers' curiosity.

Finally, for children's historical fiction, I'll add any insights I might have on historical or other contextual facts that help the reader to understand the story a little better. Perhaps there will be a few books in which the past was not portrayed, in my view, accurately. Or maybe the story's believability is in question after a closer look at the real facts of the setting. I'll note these interpretive problems and point readers to further nonfiction resources that establish the story's context.

I have always done this background investigation as I read children's literature. But with this blog, I'd like to share my insights and discoveries with you. Each post will focus on a single book and in addition to text, will contain maps, videos, pictures, and other devices to facilitate readers' understanding of what's real in children's literature.