Illustration by Inga Moore from Kenneth Grahame's The Reluctant Dragon.
The little old woman (The Witch of the North) took the slate from her nose, and having read the words on it, asked, “Is your name Dorothy, my dear?”
“Yes,” answered the child, looking up and drying her tears.
“Then you must go to the City of Emeralds. Perhaps Oz will help you.”
“Where is this city?” asked Dorothy.
“It is exactly in the center of the country, and is ruled by Oz, the Great Wizard I told you of". . .“How can I get there?” asked Dorothy."
“You must walk. It is a long journey, through a country that is sometimes pleasant and sometimes dark and terrible. However, I will use all the magic arts I know of to keep you from harm. . .The road to the City of Emeralds is paved with yellow brick,” said the Witch, “so you cannot miss it. When you get to Oz do not be afraid of him, but tell your story and ask him to help you. Good-bye, my dear.”
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The Incredible Journey
The incredible journey to get home was undertaken originally by a naive young country girl and her dog (Toto), and not by a lovely adolescent played by Judy Garland. In any case, both the book and the movie have become classics, and are an integral part of the imaginative legacy of the USA.
To make the journey home, Dorothy must develop loyal, dedicated friendships with three misfits: a rusted Tin Man; a Scarecrow with emotional problems; and a neurotic, cowardly Lion. She must also walk a very long distance, sleep outdoors in the wild and overcome many extraordinary and dangerous problems. These include a field of poppies that put you to sleep forever; a vicious tribe of flying monkeys; the Wicked Witch of the West; and a fraudulent Wizard of Oz.
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The Silver Shoes
Dorothy does it all, making the journey with great courage, goodwill, and help from her no-longer-misfit friends. And so it is, with the advice of the Good Witch of the North (and more magic), Dorothy returns to Kansas and home.
“The Silver Shoes,” said the Good Witch, “have wonderful powers. And one of the most curious things about them is that they can carry you to any place in the world in three steps, and each step will be made in the wink of an eye. All you have to do is to knock the heels together three times and command the shoes to carry you wherever you wish to go.”
“If that is so,” said the child joyfully, “I will ask them to carry me back to Kansas at once.”
She threw her arms around the Lion’s neck and kissed him, patting his big head tenderly. Then she kissed the Tin Woodman, who was weeping in a way most dangerous to his joints. But she hugged the soft, stuffed body of the Scarecrow in her arms instead of kissing his painted face, and found she was crying herself at this sorrowful parting from her loving comrades.
Glinda the Good stepped down from her ruby throne to give the little girl a good-bye kiss, and Dorothy thanked her for all the kindness she had shown to her friends and herself.
Dorothy now took Toto up solemnly in her arms, and having said one last good-bye she clapped the heels of her shoes together three times, saying:
“Take me home to Aunt Em!”. . .
Dorothy whirled through the air, landed in a Kansas field outside the new farmhouse, and was embraced by Aunt Em. She was home at last!
All of the above illustrations were created by W.W. Denslow.
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Bob Has Lost His Way Home
Livy is a 10 year old girl from the USA, visiting her grandmother for the first time in 5 years. Grandmother's farm is located in a drought-stricken area of the Australian outback.
Bob is a lost, young, greenish alien boy who has been waiting five years in a closet in Grandmother's house for Livy's return. Livy's mother and her baby brother are with her.
Only Livy has ever seen Bob. Unfortunately, she has forgotten Bob and the fact that she promised him on her previous visit, as a five year old, that she would help him get home.
Bob is a delightful, imaginative book for young readers. It was written over a 7 year period by two talented and accomplished women authors: Rebecca Stead and Wendy Mass. Rebecca wrote the first chapter, in the voice of Livy, on a long flight home from Australia. . .the chapter ended with the introduction of Bob. . . Wendy wrote the next chapter from Bob's point of view and in his voice. They continued this process over the years, creating as they went. During that period, they continued writing well received books, "raised families, and got waylaid by the stuff of life."
Bob is a contemporary elf. In many ways, he is an heir to the elf traditions and stories from Nordic, Irish, British Isles, Iceland, and beyond. Both Bob and ET want to go home, but the format, medium, and story are quite different. Bob is an original fantasy, filled with surprises and grounded in the "real world", as the search for Bob's home unfolds.
Here is an excerpt that takes place after Livy's mother has read a good-night story and left Livy's room. Livy's mother is unaware of Bob's presence as Bob cannot be seen by adults. Livy speaks:
"I feel him turn his head, and all I can see in the dark are his big wet eyes.
'I wish I had a mother,' he says.
I don't know what to say. Bob is alone in the world. Totally, completely alone.
'Bob', I say finally. 'Maybe you do have a mother. Maybe you have a whole big family!'
'Bob doesn't answer.'"
Ultimately, after many surprises and with Livy''s loyal help, Bob does get home.
The cover and illustration above are by Nicholas Gannon.
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The Idea of Home, and of Truly Belonging
"Many of us today have no kith. . .no ancestral place. Or we had one once, but lost it long ago. Or we've been transplanted into new soil, our roots still shallow, our claim still tenuous. Or we are homesick for a home we never actually had; for the idea of home, and of truly belonging.
That's how it was for me for many years, until I crossed the ocean to Devon and, to my eternal surprise, its rain-drenched hills whispered in my ears: Welcome home. You've come at last. We've been waiting and waiting, and now you're here. Until then, I'd found my home in the world only in the pages of certain books, and in the earth-colored tones of certain works of art: in Earthsea and Islandia, Rhyhope Wood and the farmyards of Hed, among Burne-Jones' briar roses and Arthur Rackham trees with goblins stirring at their roots. Those imaginary lands are as precious to me now as they were in my kithless, unmoored youth, and they formed me as much as any "real" place. They are real places. Or rather, I should say that they are true places, which is even better; and which, of course, is precisely why I was able to take shelter inside them. Some kiths exist in the physical world, and some only in the imagination. But all of them are real. All of them matter. All of them place us, nourish us, and give us the stories we most need." Terri Windling, Kith and Kin
"Both the oral and literary forms of the fairy tale are grounded in history: They emanate from specific struggles to humanize bestial and barbaric forces, which have terrorized our minds and communities in concrete ways." Jack Zipes, The Irresistible Fairy Tale: The Cultural and Social Evolution of a Genre.
The illustration by C.R.W. Nevinson is from WW1,1916.
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During the time of the mid-Nineteenth century Finnish Cultural Renaissance, the era of Sibelius, Gallen Kallela, and the Kalevala, a writer named Zacariah Topelius wrote a Wonder Tale, The Birch and the Star. It was inspired by a passed-down story about his great grandfather during a time period of the Russian conquest of Finland in the great Northern War (1714-1721); a war that was so brutal, that to this day, the Finns refer to it as The Great Hatred. The Russians and the Swedes both fought brutal wars over Finland for hundreds of years. Home was not always a safe place.
During this time, the Russians implemented a scorched earth policy over great swaths of Finland. In addition, current research estimates that close to 20,000 Finns were killed and close to 30,000 women and children were taken to Russia as slaves. "Thousands, especially officials, also fled to the (relative) safety of Sweden. The poorer peasants hid in the woods to avoid the ravages of the occupiers and their press-gangs." Source: Wikipedia
The painting, Victory at Narva, is by Gustav Cederström.
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Every Finnish Child Read the Book
I learned about the Birch and the Star from my Finnish wife. Russia had again invaded Finland at the beginning of World War 2. For many years, before and after the war's end, every second grade child in a Finnish school read the Birch and the Star.
During a post war period of 11 years, Russia built and occupied, in Finland, army and naval bases, and two airfields. Russia also extracted a war debt payment of 3.4 billion dollars. Russia took 11% of Finland's land, causing 400,000 Finnish refugees, mostly farmers, to leave their homes and resettle in Finland. Like Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia, part of Finland became Russian territory. And it still is.
The photo is of farmer-refugees forced by the Russians to leave their homes in Finnish Karelia.
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The Birch and the Star -- The Opening of the Wonder Tale. . .
"About two hundred years ago Finland had suffered greatly. There had been war; cities were burned, the harvest destroyed and thousands of people had died; some had perished by the sword, others from hunger, many from dreadful diseases. There was nothing left but tears and want, ashes and ruins.
Then it happened that many families became separated; some were captured and carried away by the enemy, others fled to the forests and desert places or far away to Sweden. A wife knew nothing about her husband, a brother nothing about his sister, and a father and mother did not know whether their children were living or dead. Some fugitives came back and when they found their dear ones, there was such joy that it seemed as if there had been no war, no sorrow. Then the huts were raised from the ashes, the fields again turned yellow with golden harvest. A new life began for the country. . ."
The story, inspired by the true events of his great grandfather's life continues on. It tells of a brother and sister, kidnapped during the war, who escape and find their way back to Finland, home, and family.
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What matters in literature in the end is surely the idiosyncratic, the individual, the flavor or the color of a particular human suffering. Harold Bloom
Photo: Finnish refugee children after Russian invasion in WW2.
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Every Path Leads Homeward
A longing to wander tears my heart when I hear trees rustling in the wind at evening. If one listens to them silently for a long time, this longing reveals its kernel, its meaning. It is not so much a matter of escaping from one's suffering, though it may seem to be so. It is a longing for home, for a memory of the mother, for new metaphors for life. It leads home. Every path leads homeward, every step is birth, every step is death, every grave is mother. Hermann Hesse
The photo is by Julie Ivantsova/Shutterstock.
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Always Coming Home - Ursula Le Guin
Always Coming Home is a post-apocalyptic 1985 science fiction novel by Ursula K. Le Guin. It takes us into the world of the Kesh people. The Kesh are living in a large California valley in the far future, long after our time. The book is a combination of elements and voices, a multi-dimensional record of narrative. In Le Guin's words," The main part of the book is their voices speaking for themselves in stories and life stories, plays, poems, and songs."
The Kesh keep their numbers small, lead lives close to nature, in harmony with nature, much like native Americans did for millennium. The Kesh utilize some benefits of technology, including writing, electricity, and computers. They are pastoral and peaceful, as opposed to the Condor people who live in the City and are militant and expansionist. The book is presented by Pandora, a scholar; there is a strong archeology/cultural anthropological approach to the narrative. I think that for the Kesh people, the entire valley, and its past, is Home.
Here is a link to Kesh music of the Eighth House by Ursula K. Le Guin and Todd Barton: Music of the Eighth House
The photo of the valley of the Kesh is by Tony Reid/Unsplash. The Illustration is by Mike Van Houten.
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Finding Fido
"Between 3 and 4 million pets are put to death in shelters across the U.S. every year. Some of them are owner surrenders, some are impounds, but the vast majority of them are missing or stolen pets.
C.A.Wulff and A.A.Weddle, have compiled a guide to address this sad reality. 'Finding Fido' offers tips for preventing the loss of a pet; advice for what to do with a stray pet you've found; and a step-by-step plan in case the unthinkable happens, and you lose a pet.
100% of the proceeds from the sale of this book benefit The Beagle Freedom Project."
This information was excerpted from Goodreads. I have read Finding Fido and it is excellent.
The cover design is by C.A.Wulff.
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Planet Of The Dogs
Long long ago, there were no dogs on planet earth. This is the story of how the dogs came to our planet to help people, and teach them about love, loyalty, and courage.
In this excerpt, Bean's father; Tomas, has brought him to tell Omeg, leader of the Lake Falls people, what happened to him.
“Bean will tell you what happened, Omeg,” said Tomas. Bean then told the story of Lucy (a small dog) warning the children that a rider was spying on them, and how he followed her and met this man. “He was covered in a garment made of skins and furs. He had a large bow and many arrows in a leather bag that hung by his side. And he asked questions about the dogs. I told him only what I knew he had already seen. I said that there are two dogs and that they help us with the sheep.”
“Was that all he asked?”
“He asked where the dogs came from and I told him he had to ask my father. I had already told him he was going the wrong way to Woodtown,” said Bean.
“And what else, young Bean?” asked Omeg.
“When he turned his horse to leave, Lucy frightened the horse for a moment and the outer blanket that covered him moved. And I saw the emblem of the axe.”
“Did the rider know that you saw this?”
“No, he was too busy with the horse.”
Omeg turned to Tomas. “Your son has done well. Only Stone City warriors ride horses with the mark of the axe.”
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To read sample chapters of any book in the series, visit PlanetOfTheDogs
The Planet Of The Dogs series, including Castle In The Mist and Snow Valley Heroes, A Christmas Tale, is available from many Internet sources and through independent bookstores of all sizes. Free copies for Therapy Dog owners and organizations, Email me at [email protected].
The illustration above and the cover from The Planet Of The Dogs is by Stella Mustanoja McCarty.
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“Just give me a comfortable couch, a dog, a good book, and a woman. Then if you can get the dog to go somewhere and read the book, I might have a little fun.”
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