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.