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attackfishWhen I started college, my mom insisted I pack up almost all of my books. Instead, I hid as many as I could until she relented and let me have one bookshelf full. Since then, the cravings for the books I didn't manage to save have been overpowering. While my mother was out of town last week, I tracked down those boxes and broke into them, ripped the books free and ran away with them to my room until they overflowed my bookcase. Mmmm, books.
My old childhood friends, these books, and I just had to get reacquainted, so, you know, we've been talking.
Fish: Oh my pretties, I have missed you! *stroke stroke*
Books: Purr
Fish: Now which one of you will I read first?
Books: *Wiggle and wag* pick me, pick me!
The one that keened the loudest was The Moorchild by Eloise McGraw, and since it fits nicely with the other books I've read and reviewed lately, being a fairy book as different from Holly Black's books and Knife as they are from each other, and the Newbery Metal and Honors were just announced and The Moorchild was a 1997 Newbery Honor book, and because it's just a really wonderful book, I'm going to remind everyone about it.
Moql is a carefree child of the Folk, running wild on the moors with the other children in the Mound, but when a human catches her and the Folk learn she can't hide, become invitable, like the rest of them, they realize she's only half Folk, and half human. Since she's a danger to the Folk beneath the Mound, the Prince of the Folk has her switched for a human baby. But Moql, now named Saaski, even after she forgets her Folk roots, knows she doesn't belong there either.
Old Bess, Saaski's unwitting adoptive mother's mother, sees the ill favored baby in her daughter's cradle and the way she shrinks with fear from the iron on Yanno, the village smith and her nominal father's belt and knows that the girl is no human child, and since Saaski's parents won't throw her in the fire or down the well as Bess suggests, she watches the girl. As she grows, the village children and their parents whisper about Saaski. She's freaky-odd, not like them, a witch, a creature, and a changeling. When the children's taunts about her strange looks push her to try to see herself in a pond, Old Bess first thinks to shove the girl in at long last, but then she thinks:
"Poor little unblessed creature, it may be she has no more wish to be here than we wish to have her... Does she even remember a place where she once belonged? Did she never belong even there?"
Old Bess, herself a founding and an outsider, becomes Saaski's friend and ally, and like her daughter and son in law, fiercely protective of the strange child. After Saaski finds her grandfather's bagpipes and meets the nomad boy, Tam, she begins to make a place for herself within the village, but it doesn't last. The Gypsies who come through every year bring with them chicken pox, and then one of the village cows dies. Suspicion falls on Saaski, who though blameless, flees for the safety of the moor. With Tam's help, she goes to rescue the human girl for whom she was changed.
Saaski never harms anyone, and yet everyone around her except her parents, Tam, and Old Bess, fears her and wants to harm her. Their hatred is the problem, not her difference, and McGraw makes this beautifully clear. As cruel as the children and villagers are to Saaski, as lonely and confused as she becomes, she always finds solace in the moors and her bagpipes. It's only when she embraces what makes her different that she figures out where she belongs.
Because, you see, she doesn't belong in the village, the Mound, or even on the moor, but with Tam, because she loves him as the best and only friend she's ever known, even while she's just discovering what love means. He doesn't belong anywhere either, but that doesn't bother him any.
McGraw's statements about difference and social isolation hit me where it hurt when I read this in fourth grade. I too was lonely and miserable and only felt safe at home, with parents who would have defended me from everything. I too frightened the other children and their parents with something I couldn't control. It's not that surprising that I devoured this book, I would read the back of cereal boxes if nothing else was around, but it says a lot about the book that I keep coming back to read this book, and that every time I read it, I feel the same confused desperate happiness I felt the first time I read it.
I want to see it go on, even though I'm afraid that would ruin it. I want to know if Anwara and Yanno, once they have their human daughter back to them, ever get to see their wild, lonely, quick daughter again. I want to know if Saaski ever visits her family. I want to know if she ever finds somewhere she belongs, or if she finds that belonging nowhere means she belongs everywhere. I want to know if she and Tam ever get married (God that sounds pathetic). I want to know if he helps salve some of her defiant alienation.
Really, The Moorchild lives up to McGraw's dedication, "To all children who have ever felt different."
My old childhood friends, these books, and I just had to get reacquainted, so, you know, we've been talking.
Fish: Oh my pretties, I have missed you! *stroke stroke*
Books: Purr
Fish: Now which one of you will I read first?
Books: *Wiggle and wag* pick me, pick me!
The one that keened the loudest was The Moorchild by Eloise McGraw, and since it fits nicely with the other books I've read and reviewed lately, being a fairy book as different from Holly Black's books and Knife as they are from each other, and the Newbery Metal and Honors were just announced and The Moorchild was a 1997 Newbery Honor book, and because it's just a really wonderful book, I'm going to remind everyone about it.
Moql is a carefree child of the Folk, running wild on the moors with the other children in the Mound, but when a human catches her and the Folk learn she can't hide, become invitable, like the rest of them, they realize she's only half Folk, and half human. Since she's a danger to the Folk beneath the Mound, the Prince of the Folk has her switched for a human baby. But Moql, now named Saaski, even after she forgets her Folk roots, knows she doesn't belong there either.
Old Bess, Saaski's unwitting adoptive mother's mother, sees the ill favored baby in her daughter's cradle and the way she shrinks with fear from the iron on Yanno, the village smith and her nominal father's belt and knows that the girl is no human child, and since Saaski's parents won't throw her in the fire or down the well as Bess suggests, she watches the girl. As she grows, the village children and their parents whisper about Saaski. She's freaky-odd, not like them, a witch, a creature, and a changeling. When the children's taunts about her strange looks push her to try to see herself in a pond, Old Bess first thinks to shove the girl in at long last, but then she thinks:
"Poor little unblessed creature, it may be she has no more wish to be here than we wish to have her... Does she even remember a place where she once belonged? Did she never belong even there?"
Old Bess, herself a founding and an outsider, becomes Saaski's friend and ally, and like her daughter and son in law, fiercely protective of the strange child. After Saaski finds her grandfather's bagpipes and meets the nomad boy, Tam, she begins to make a place for herself within the village, but it doesn't last. The Gypsies who come through every year bring with them chicken pox, and then one of the village cows dies. Suspicion falls on Saaski, who though blameless, flees for the safety of the moor. With Tam's help, she goes to rescue the human girl for whom she was changed.
Saaski never harms anyone, and yet everyone around her except her parents, Tam, and Old Bess, fears her and wants to harm her. Their hatred is the problem, not her difference, and McGraw makes this beautifully clear. As cruel as the children and villagers are to Saaski, as lonely and confused as she becomes, she always finds solace in the moors and her bagpipes. It's only when she embraces what makes her different that she figures out where she belongs.
Because, you see, she doesn't belong in the village, the Mound, or even on the moor, but with Tam, because she loves him as the best and only friend she's ever known, even while she's just discovering what love means. He doesn't belong anywhere either, but that doesn't bother him any.
McGraw's statements about difference and social isolation hit me where it hurt when I read this in fourth grade. I too was lonely and miserable and only felt safe at home, with parents who would have defended me from everything. I too frightened the other children and their parents with something I couldn't control. It's not that surprising that I devoured this book, I would read the back of cereal boxes if nothing else was around, but it says a lot about the book that I keep coming back to read this book, and that every time I read it, I feel the same confused desperate happiness I felt the first time I read it.
I want to see it go on, even though I'm afraid that would ruin it. I want to know if Anwara and Yanno, once they have their human daughter back to them, ever get to see their wild, lonely, quick daughter again. I want to know if Saaski ever visits her family. I want to know if she ever finds somewhere she belongs, or if she finds that belonging nowhere means she belongs everywhere. I want to know if she and Tam ever get married (God that sounds pathetic). I want to know if he helps salve some of her defiant alienation.
Really, The Moorchild lives up to McGraw's dedication, "To all children who have ever felt different."
