Historical May 1984 report or notice. Original dates, prices and contacts describe the source period; current availability has not been established.
Where is faraway?
It can be a place many miles from here or an experience far different from any you’ve ever known.
In both cases, books can take you there.
Two unusual new books, best shared with parents, combine impressive photographs and a fascinating text to give you a real, inside story. Sugaring Time transports you to central Vermont in March to join a family making maple syrup.
The vivid stepby-step descriptions and the pictures bring both spring and an old craft to life. You will feel the cold, stagger under the weight of 30-pound sap buckets, smell the smoke of the fire boiling the sap for 15 hours, and taste the golden new syrup served over snow. Your next pancake breakfast will seem much more delicious after you’ve read this book.
In the Driver’s Seat without a license— that’s where you’ll be when you check out this book by Ron and Nancy Goor.
There are nine short chapters that describe in words and photos the experience of operating nine different vehicles. What do the pedals on the floor and the levers in front of you do? You’ll find out quickly as you take passengers on an aerial tour of Washington, D.C., in a blimp, fly 630 miles per hour over the Atlantic Ocean on the Concorde, and lift 35,000 pounds with your 48,400-pound front-end loader.
The book is a moving experience in the truest sense of the word. Part of a superb series that takes place in England is a book for older children that can really be read on its own. Lucy Boston’s A Stranger at Green Knowe, brings us back to an enchanted old manor house near London. Ping, an orphaned Chinese boy, is spending the summer there with its mysterious owner, Mrs. Oldknow.
When Hanno, a thirteen-year-old gorilla, escapes from the Regent’s Park Zoo, the lives of two homeless, displaced beings become connected.
Unlike the others in the series, this story is not so much a fantasy as an adventure, exciting and deeply emotional. Older readers will also be touched by Dicey’s Song, which won the Newbery Award last year. Strikingly mature, thirteen-year-old Dicey Tillerman continues to act as a substitute parent for her two younger brothers and sister even after they are all taken in by their grandmother when their mother’s illness becomes critical.
In their home, on the shores of Chesapeake Bay, Dicey watches and worries as each child copes with problems caused by fear and neglect. Smart, wary, and independent, Dicey has mastered emotional self-defense to such an extent that she finds it difficult to make friends and to express her feelings. Besides introducing us to life in rural Maryland, the book acquaints us with characters we will remember for a long time and with the often painful process of growing up. You will not want this book to end.
Originally published in The Paper, May 1984.
Read this article in the original newspaper issue.
Original source: SD_Times1984_05.pdf, printed page(s) 4; PDF page(s) 4.
