If I Ran the Circus

If I Ran the Circus by Dr. Seuss

A boy, Morris McGurk, walks by a large, nearly empty lot with Sneelock's store at the corner. He imagines the great Circus Mcgurkus. Sneelock has a role that gets more and more elaborate, starting as a vendor, and growing to performing some increasingly elaborate stunts. The book feels a little too long for the story.

 

They Shall Have Stars

They Shall Have Stars by James Blish

In a not too distant future, the west has "won", but they have become more authoritarian like the communists, thus giving the communists what is akin to a real victory. The book centers on some researchers out in Jupiter. They have built a giant bridge to do research. Part of the public face is in anti-age research. They think they can find something that will stop aging. However, what they have really found is magnetic research. This allows traveling great distances at super fast speed with minimal power usage. The flying will enable people to travel across the galaxy and export the western culture via ships. The book was written in the 1950s and had a very different view of our future. Some areas like magnetic propulsion The magnetic propulsion and anti-aging research still seem to be just around the corner. Authoritarianism does seem to be coming back into vogue. Despite getting many details "wrong" about today, it did seem to get a lot right.

Madeline and the Bad Hat

Madeline and the Bad Hat by Ludwig Bemelmans

The son of the British ambassador moves next door. He is cruel to animals. When given tools, he builds a guillotine for chickens. Later he tries to bring a cat to a group of dogs. He ends up getting injured by this escapade. The girls visit him as he is recovering and Madeline tells him to be better. He turns a leaf and starts being a vegetarian who is super kind to animals. He takes it too far and tries to release animals from the zoo. Luckily they calm him down before he can release the lion. I love all the yellow in the book. The rhyme is good, but the meter and rhythm has some challenges.

My Go to Bed Book

My Go to Bed Book by Hildegarde Ford (Author), Mary Win (Illustrator)

It's a classic book about the process of going to bed. Why is it still around? Maybe some grandparents had it read to them when they were a kid.

Night

As World War 2 was breaking out, people didn't regard the warnings that were given of bad things to come. They thought the Germans would continue to let them live in peace. Even when Jews were moved to Ghettos, there was still general contentedness with Jew self governance. However, that soon changed when they were hauled off to concentration camps. Survival often depended on lucky decisions. One had to be healthy enough to work, but not too healthy to have to put one's family in the furnace. The author jumped out of the infirmary when their camp was soon to be captured by the enemy, thinking all the sick would be killed. However, in that case, the sick were set free. (One can never know what will happen.) Sometimes small "bribes" given to a bully end up being for naught as the bully is soon chased away.
The book has a feel somewhat like Schindler's list. The concentration camps were part of the "coming of age" of a youth. It was the horror he lived through. He feels some regret about the poor decisions he made, as well as guilt about being a survivor when others did not. He was deeply involved in religious training before. He desires that we acknowledge the history to prevent it from happening again. It didn't seem possible when it happened. We should be careful to spot the signs before they happen again.

The Last Battle

A clever ape's chance encounter with a dead lion starts a serious of destructive events in Narnia. The ape is able to dress his donkey friend in the lion skin, and thus convince everyone that he is the great lion "Aslan". Others fall for this, and blindly agree to follow his words, eventually enslaving themselves to nearby enemies. The enemy-Ape crowd continue to use their detailed knowledge of Narnian believes to spread small lies and entrench their leadership position.

With conditions really bad, all the previous "Narnian children" are called back to help resolve the problems. It turns out that they were "called" back via a train crash in their real world, and are now permanent residents of Narnia. After the calamities of Narnia, it too is transformed to a "new Narnia". Those that were not worthy did not make it through the door to the new area. (And some, like the Dwarfs, failed to believe of the goodness, and thus continued to live in darkness.)

. People are eager to accept the appearance of the long-missing deity. The eagerness encourages them to blindly follow him - without stopping to question or think that it might be an impostor. Many of those that finally stop following the "false Aslan" are so disturbed by the experience that they begin to abandon their faith altogether. By subtly mixing small lies with the truth the evildoers are able to undermine the faith for their personal gain. (However, they are soon undermined when they discover that even their 'evil' deity is real.)

The end is a story of the rapture and the joyous afterlife. Those believers were obvious participants in the joy. While others with strong belief and morals, even if misplayed in an evil god were also allowed to join, as they were willing to accept the true "good" Aslan.

This completes the epic, coming from the creation on to the final destruction of the Narnian world and the afterlife. This book feels somewhat different than the other Narnia books. Its not a mere battle that they children are set join, but a true destruction of the world. While things are extremely ominous, out of the destruction rises one of the most joyous occasions. This makes this also one of the better books in the series.

Till We Have Faces

It took a while to get in to this book. The first part had to do something with the tale of Psyche. The narrator completes clandestine martial training, and eventually uses it to challenge a nearby nemesis. This leads to her becoming a warrior queen. She has success in her kingdom. She also always wears her veil, thus adding to her mystique. She eventually discovers a small temple that tells the mythology of the people that she has known in her life. "What many people see is real, while what one person sees is a dream."