The Dream Stealer

by Gregory Maguire
Clarion 1983, Reissued by Houghton Mifflin 2002

A demon called the Blood Wolf will kill all in a small Russian town in order to gain access to a magic doll with powers to defeat the animal. Two small children see a vision of the Firebird and hunt down the Baba Yaga in order to learn the meaning of the omen. An old tale of a beautiul woman, a motherless girl and the collective dreams of a town that build toward a showdown in the Russian countryside.

That's what I thought a few years ago when I wrote it but today I think something totally different:

What a crappy plot summary!

Yes, continuing my "week of coasting on old material" I've dredged up another from an old reading log I kept. This book, however, is much better than my initial summary and in a lot of ways my favorite Maguire book.

Long before he made a name as the king of fairy tale retellings Maguire took on three different classic Russian folktales -- Vasillisa the Beautiful, the Firebird and miscellaneous tales of the noted witch Baba Yaga -- and wove them into a very compact (140 pages) and well-told tale. (If I'm wrong call me out, but I don't know of anyplace else where these tales are all interwoven like this.) I remember the shock of starting this book, expecting it to be light and fluffy, suddenly compelled by the power of the book's voice to sit right where I was standing and read the book without stopping. I can get sucked into a book like most people but I have never before been so instantaneously and summarily been zombified by a book.

The night is dark, and the wind is high and strong and smells of snow: so gather close around the fire, my little friends, and I will tell you a tale of Baba Yaga the witch.

So it begins, and like a yarn told in the quiet of the night by a fire and entire world opens up, a world that exists in folktales that may never have existed anyplace on Earth at any time. It's a tale that taps directly into the vein of historical storytelling, echoing backwards and forwards in time in ways are rooted deep in the sub-conscious. These places, these people, this interconnection between humans and animals, between what is real and what is magical, all dredged from some part of our reptile brains like an inherited collective memory. I'd like to make the claim right now that the oldest profession is, in fact, storytelling and we have the cave paintings to prove it. The need to procreate is a survival mechanism as a species, but it's the need to create stories that feeds our souls and keeps us going.

Yesterday I referred to Daniel Pinkwater as a Zen master; today I'm calling Gregory Maguire a shaman. I am sincere on both counts, without an ounce of hyperbole, and I hope that doesn't discredit me in the process.

There are two things I do not understand concerning The Dream Stealer and they have nothing to do with the story itself. First, I do not understand why this book has never been issued in paperback. Hardcover retellings of classic Russian folktales, they don't fly off the shelves because they ask a lot of a reader (or a reader's money source); mainly they make experimenting with the book a costly proposition. Release this book in paperback, cut the price in half, and you're giving your potential market an opportunity to make a better fiscal risk. I hate to put it in those terms but if publishers are afraid to reissue titles for fear of making back their costs then I don't see why the thinking can't go the other way. Why does the hardcover need to be the proving ground? Go the other way, take the chance on the paperback, I say.

Second, why can I find no one else whose heard of this book? Everyone knows Wicked and Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister and even Maguire's other books for middle graders, The Hamlet Chronicles but no one seems to know about this book. Am I the only cracked person on the planet that thinks it's any good, and is everyone else just too polite to tell me? Is there some conspiracy involved, or some curse surrounding the Baba Yaga that rings bad luck upon you like saying Macbeth in a theatre?

What is it?

The Giant of Seville

A "Tall" Tale Based on a True Story
by Jan Andreasen
Abrams 2007

Playing off the size of the subject at hand, this book isn't so much a tall tale as much as it's a tale about a tall gentleman named Captain Martin Van Buren Bates.

Captain Bates has arrived in Seville, Ohio hoping he has found a suitable place to start up a home. The Captain's concerns center around his (and his wife's) eight-foot frame. Captain Bates has arrived by train with his legs stretched across the aisle over both sets of seats, his torso hanging out the window to accommodate him. He makes his way to a rooming house in town and inquires about a room for the night. When he sleeps in a normal bed his legs from the knee down hang out the window, warmed at night by the fire set and stoked by the boarding-house owner. In the morning he eats an army's worth of flapjacks. He joins everyone at a dance that night and while he's mindful of bumping his head on low ceilings he manages to break through the floor and climb out the basement embarrassed.

In the end Captain Bates decides it's time to move on, that he and his wife could never settle in Seville, but the townfolk have a surprise for him. They have begun the framework on a proportionally sized home for the Captain and his wife. And that was how Captain Bates became the giant of Seville.

When it comes to tall tales we make allowances for exaggeration because that's a large part of what American Tall Tale folklore is about. Pecos Bill lived with coyotes and used rattlesnakes for ropes and rode tornadoes the way other cowboys rode broncos. Paul Bunyan clear-cut the Dakotas and dug the Erie Canal with the handle of his axe (and with the help of a giant blue Ox named Babe). And where folk heroes were based on real people -- Mike Fink or Davey Crockett -- their real exploits were often exaggerated, retold, or taken out of context in ways that made them sound more interesting than they might have been if truth had been strictly adhered to.

I'm mentioning all this because there really was a Captain Martin Van Buren Bates who was nearly eight feet tall and was married to a woman just slightly taller than himself. Given that this story is based on a real individual would put its telling in semi-fictitious camp, asking us to forgive certain exaggerations in favor of telling a tale based on truth. But the only truth in this story is the fact of the man himself and his setting up home in Seville upon retiring from the circus; Everything else is pure fancy, and most of it a little baffling to me.

A railroad car might not be the most spacious of accommodations for an eight foot tall man, but he wouldn't be able to stretch his legs across the aisle and hang his upper body out the window. Nor would he dwarf the folks of Seville so much that they all appear half his height -- that is to say nearly four feet at the tallest. And assuming even a short bed at five feet long the Captain's legs might have been able to rest on the window sill (as they do in the first shown illustration) and not bend at the knee outside the same window (when you flip the page).

Yes, I am being picky about this because the exaggeration, and the inconsistency of the exaggeration, undercuts the telling of the story almost as much as the factual detail included at the end of the book undercuts what we have read up to that point. Davey Crockett fought at the Alamo and was a US Representative but he also allegedly killed him a bear when he was only three years old. Killing the bear wasn't the important part of the legend, it was doing it at a young age. Being tall doesn't make one a folk legend, it's what you do with it, and it requires more than sleeping with your seven foot long legs hanging out a window or falling through the floor. The Captain was a tall man and he fought in the Civil War and worked with the circus but none of that comes out in the story, and you can't just hang a tall tall on a tall person and expect that to be the whole story.

Ultimately this is a dull little story that attempts to make a real person legendary without really giving the reader anything to feel awestruck about. Honestly, the man may have weighed as much as two hefty men, but are we supposed to find heroic his eating enough pancakes to feed a town? Perhaps if that eating brought with it the strength and prowess of a John Henry...

Here's a new rule of thumb for future picture books: No more "based on a true story" books. Either tell the story of a real person or make up a story inspired by a true person or event -- without mentioning the source. No more of these hybrids or attempts to lend credibility and weight to flimsy storytelling.

The Shark God

by Rafe Martin
illustrated by David Shannon
Scholastic / Arthur A. Levine Books 2001

In this adaptation of a native tale from Hawaii, two children, a boy and a girl, find a shark tangled in netting on the shore. Their attempts to get adults to help them are met with derision so the decide to free the shark themselves. The shark can sense the children mean to help and once freed gives them a bit of a nod of thanks before disappearing into the ocean.

Jubilant at their rescue, the children run through the edges of the jungle, stumbling on the king's sacred drum. In their excitement they long to sound the drum, to announce their achievement to the world, but to do so would be kapu (forbidden). But they're kids, they lightly tap the drum anyway, under the watchful smirk of the king who sees it all. Having waited until they have hit the drum the king then calls out his guards to seize the children and have them held for punishment.

Their parents plea to the king, hoping to appeal to his softer side, but his heart has grown cold to the entreaties of his people. Likewise, appeals to the other members of the community are cold and the parents decide that they must make their case elsewhere.

Seeking out the cave of the Shark God they place their lives on the line as the mountain-sized god swoops them up for a snack. After hearing their story the Shark God agrees to help and sends the parents home with instructions to prepare a canoe filled with goods and to wait for a sign.

The Shark God brings about a massive wave that floods the village and frees the children from their cells. The parents, having seen the sign they were waiting for, launched their canoe before the wave hit and were well at sea when their old village was destroyed. They quickly found their children (with the aid of a friendly shark) and the king's drum and with it sail to anew island where they hoped to find (or start) a new community, one with an open heart.

The author points out in an afterword the differences between the original folk tale and the modifications made for this version. The differences mentioned appear slight and motivational and make a good case for maintaining the essence of the original. A little casual Internet research shows that this story has many variations across the South Pacific and not all of them pleasant. In one, "Kauhuhu, The Shark God of Molokai," the children belong to a priest and they are killed for beating on the drums when the chief is away, no mention of freeing a shark. There are greater details about the ordeal necessary for avenging the children's deaths and the wave brings a hoard of sharks who feast on the cold-hearted villagers.

So on the one hand we have these tales collected by a couple of German brothers that are filled with all sorts of strange dismemberings and transformations and gore, and despite there being no solid evidence they were meant for children we consider them as such. On the other hand when we get a story from a non-Western culture we see a need to make it more palatable and perhaps soften the rougher edges? True, many a Grimm tale are themselves softened to the point of innocence though they are far from their original spirit and, for the most part, have been co-opted by Disnefication. But where we have the original tales in translation for ready comparison such isn't always the case and a lesser-known tale like The Shark God, without research, becomes practically gutted and filleted from the original to a piece of nicely presented same at a sushi bar.

In the end, I'm not taking a stand on this book either way. No, really. I read it knowing nothing about its origin and enjoyed it. Had there not be the author's afterword I might not have gone searching for the original story and not known what had been changed. I think I would prefer that when we introduce stories from another culture to children -- especially if there is little to suggest they will one day be taught it's true origins -- then I guess I'd like that "one shot" to be an accurate one. I wouldn't want any child drawing all their knowledge of ancient Egypt from watching mummy movies and don't like the thought of children learning about the culture of our island state in such a sanitized manner.

Jack Plank Tells Tales

by Natalie Babbitt
MDC/Scholastic 2007

Set on the island of Jamaica in the 1720's, Natalie Babbitt's first new book in a quarter century is the story of a former pirate looking for a new vocation after getting kicked off his ship for not being pirate enough. Jack doesn't have the stomach to plunder or rattle swords and would rather cook soup and keeps his fellows company, and for a while the crew of the Avarice were fine with the arrangement. But times for pirating were lean and Jack was set ashore with his belongings and enough florins to get him set up on land.

Checking into a local boarding house his charm wins him an audience among the borders who are slightly excited to have a reformed pirate in their midst. Daily Jack sets about with the landlord's daughter to find suitable work but each day encounters a problem that prevents him from taking on the enterprise. At the end of each day when the members of the boarding house sit down to sup Jack recounts a story relevant to why this job or that isn't suited to him, thus justifying his inability to find employment.

These tales all center around the things he's seen during his days as a pirate, tall tales for the most part of the kind that make for good nautical folklore: The sailor that takes the shape of an octopus during the full moon; The man who bakes a cake to successfully woo a mermaid; The sailor whose prize possession of a mummified hand of king lures a ghost to the ship. There are also the less supernatural yarns, of alligator charmers and gold-fever, and a sailor so enamored of his beard he refuses to cut it off despite having a dead crab lodged within it. Each of the stories ends with a short discussion by the boarding house audience and an agreement that after hearing such a tale Jack's aversion to a particular vocation is justified.

(Non-spoiler alert: I'm not giving away the ending, though I think it can be easily guessed.)

In the end Jack realizes he can no longer afford to stay at the boarding house, but the answer has been staring them in the face the entire time. Arrangements are made and Jack manages to stay, utilizing his skills to the fullest.

In the same vain as a shaggy dog or campfire story, Babbitt's stories don't really justify Jack's inability to find work so much as link a fanciful hornpipe of nautical tales. It's clear from the start that Jack is a master of avoiding work and his amiable ways are what keeps him in good company, if not fed, housed and clothed. When the landlord suggests "Stories aren't much, of course, but on the other hand, they're not so little, either" it echoes an old expression I've often seen credited to Barry Lopez but heard comes from the old Yiddish saying that "people need stories as much as food." It's that hunger for the spirit that comes alive in the telling, the ability to be transported to another place, see through another's eyes, experience adventure.

There's the odd sense I had while reading these tales, a feeling of displacement. Not quite ghost stories, they have that feel of a collection of supernatural tales that would be better suited for Halloween. Not quite campfire stories, because of their nautical settings, they beg to be told by an old salt on the docks of a fishing village to the kids who congregate there, not the parlor setting of Jamaica in the 1720s. To be as genteel about this as possible: the pirate setting almost feels calculated to ride the recent wave of popularity in all things pirate.

As a collection, the stories vary only slightly in quality from one another, and the exercise as a whole feels about three stories too long (there are eight stories total) and we could argue which three could go. (If anyone who has read the book feels so inclined to list their three least favorites in the comments I'll check in with mine). Overall, a not unpleasant option for teachers and the lovers of tall tales, or as an alternative to usual tales told in October. Just not stellar.

Rootabaga Stories

by Carl Sandburg
illustrated by Maud and Miska Petersham
Harcourt 1922

Poet Sandburg was called to create these stories to amuse his own children, and in doing so gave birth to a kind of American fairy tale centered on the ways and manners of the prairie folk at the early part of the 20th Century.

The stories are set in Rootabaga Country, a place at the edge of the grasslands far from the city where the railroad tracks zigzag and villages float with the wind. Real life hardscrabble folk with names like Rags Habakuk and Blixie Bimber run up against talking blue foxes and mystical corn fairies, and inanimate objects like skyscrapers beget railroad trains as offspring. Sandburg the egalitarian gives a beggar like Potato Face Blind Man the same wisdom and dignity as he gives Fire the Goat who knows the secrets of the shadows that walk along the horizon during a sunrise. Throughout, the poet's ear for country vernacular is infused with choice invented words of his own that beg to be read aloud to children who will understand them as they do "adult" words they have never heard before, simply through context.

What is immediately striking about these stories is how much resonance they hold with Baum's Oz books. But where Baum removed his wholesome heroine from her American soil for a land only reached by balloon or tornado, Sandburg offers us a place just off the edge of the map that one can purchase a ticket for... after first selling off all your worldly goods. And the wiggly line-drawn illustrations by the Petershams convey both the era and a sense of whimsy. Baum and Sandburg's tales are cut from the same country cloth and it's a shame that Sandburg's tales seem to have not garnered an equal popularity.

Rooted in the heartland of America they speak with a folksy cadence, centering on the daily events of life or dwelling in a mythical world as imagined by a farm hand two or three generations removed from city life. Innocence walks arm-in-arm with wisdom as youngsters explain the world to their adult uncles and the blind man pities those who have sight but cannot (or will not) see.

The fantastic is celebrated in these tales much the same as they are in Lewis Carroll's works and with equal success. Composed for children, they retain the same appeal in their nonsense while giving children an alternate view of the world that is no less real than the one they confront on a daily basis. I only wish I'd come across these stories when I was younger.