I do intend to write about The Problem of Tomboys eventually, but the post is languishing as I struggle to come to terms with the massive amount of material. So in the meantime, I’m writing the companion post about Boys Who Don’t Want to Do Classic Boy Things, a topic to which far fewer Newbery books are devoted, presumably because the general cultural attitude is Who Wouldn’t Want to Do Classic Boy Things? Boy Things Are the Best Things To Do.

In fact, I only found two books that really fit the bill, and in both cases the Boy Thing that our Boy does not want to Do is killing. In Mari Sandoz’s The Horsecatcher (1958), our hero Elk has no interest in becoming a warrior. He wants to become a horsecatcher, which is still valuable and manly work but something you’re supposed to do alongside warrioring, rather than instead of.

Although circumstances conspire to force Elk to kill a raider, proving that he can kill and thus raising his status in the community, he remains true to his own path, traveling far and wide to meet other horsecatchers and learn their secrets. At one point he meets a pair of sisters who are famous for their horse-training skills, who plan when they marry to marry the same man: “We marry together.”

Because it’s 1958 the book of course does not SAY that in a few years time, the sisters marry Elk. But I like to think that sometime after the book ends, the three of them are happily married and surrounded by horses.

The second book is Jerry Spinelli’s Wringer (1998). Our hero Palmer lives in a town that is famous for putting on a pigeon shoot every year. Boys in town are expected to wring the necks of wounded pigeons to put them out of their suffering. Palmer doesn’t want to become a wringer, but also doesn’t want to admit that he doesn’t want to become a wringer because he knows the other boys will think he’s a sissy.

This book was absolutely everywhere when I was a kid, and I never read it because the cover is so creepy (look at it!) and the premise seemed both repulsive and borderline incomprehensible. Why are the boys expected to murder pigeons? Why can’t Palmer just SAY he doesn’t want to murder pigeons? “If you don’t want to murder pigeons, then just say you don’t want to murder pigeons!” I would have shouted at Palmer. “NO NORMAL PERSON WANTS TO MURDER PIGEONS.”

Reading it as an adult, I did grasp that the point was the crushing difficulty of bucking gendered social expectations. But uuuuhhh also I did still feel a little “Palmer stop being so lily-livered and just say you don’t want to murder pigeons.” Sorry Palmer. I know this was very unsympathetic of me.

You may have noticed that neither of these boys want to do girl things. They simply wish to be excused from committing indiscriminate slaughter and do other, slightly less manly boy things. To the best of my recollection (which is of course imperfect), there aren’t any Newbery books focused on Boys Who Want to Do Girl Things. Maybe 2026 will be the year.

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

Sorche Nic Leodhas’s Heather and Broom, which is accidentally a reread, because I bafflingly forgot to record it the first time I read it. I suspected this from the first story and was sure after the second, which is about a woman who bakes marvelous cakes who gets kidnapped by the fairies. Bake us a cake, they said! But of course, the woman said craftily. I’ll just need my big mixing bowl… and my spoon… and all my ingredients… and I can’t stir at the right rate without the thump of my dog’s tail to guide me, and can’t focus without my baby here so I can see he’s all right (the baby begins to cry incessantly), and ooooh did you remember to get me an oven??

At which point the exhausted fairies send her home, and the baker (as kind-hearted as she is clever) promises to leave them a cake once a week on the mound.

So you can see why I decided to keep on and reread all the stories over again. That one’s my favorite, but they’re all a good time.

I also finished Jostein Gaarder’s The Solitaire Mystery (translated by Sarah Jane Hails), which I’ve been meaning to read for years, and… maybe I should have read it years ago, when I read Sophie’s World and The Christmas Mystery. Reading it now, I found the philosophizing repetitive (isn’t it amazing that the world exists at all! Well, maybe it was the first ten times you said it), and although the way the whole story fits together has a charming puzzle-box neatness, at the same time ( spoilers )

What I’m Reading Now

I’ve started A Cavalcade of Sea Legends, because I was under the impression that it was a story collection by Sorche Nic Leodhas, but in fact it is an anthology that showed up in my Sorche Nic Leodhas search because it has one (1) story by her. Reading it anyway because who doesn’t like a good sea legend! Started off with a bang with a story about a girl who gives up her soul to become a mermaid to join her drowned lover… only in giving up her soul, she brought him back to life, and now he lives on land and she in the sea and ne’er the twain shall meet.

What I Plan to Read Next

After the two aforementioned failed attempts, I will at last achieve my Sorche Nic Leodhas book with Sea-Spell and Moor-Magic.

October is almost upon us! Although the weather (after an early burst of lovely cool temperatures) is feeling summery again, I’ve got autumn on my mind, as I feel that the Hummingbird Cottage deserves to be properly decorated for the season.

First of all, I’m going in for decorative gourds this year. I’ve made a decorative gourd centerpiece, strategically based gourds in my china cabinet and the tea nook, and am considering a small gourd art installation in the upstairs bathroom when my guest comes to visit for Feast of the Hunter’s Moon.

Once the gourds have spent sufficient time being decorative, most of them will be roasted and eaten, although a few are too small and also of unknown species so will probably escape the general conflagration.

Second, I’m hard at work on a Halloween cross-stitch. This pattern is from Lindsay Swearingen’s Creepy Cross Stitch, but I also cracked and bought Witchy Stitching, because apparently “spooky” is how I like my cross stitch. Actually I would like to do cross-stitches for ALL the holidays and switch them out seasonally, but I’ve had more luck finding patterns I like for Halloween than many of the others. A lot of cross-stitch patterns are in a cutesy Mary Englebreit-meets-Precious Moments style which is not my thing. Particularly a problem for Christmas patterns!

But returning to the Halloween cross stitch. I’m on track to finish the stitching in plenty of time; the real question is whether I have the stamina to get it ironed and framed, as the pattern is too big to display in an embroidery hoop.

Bramble, being a black cat, brings a Halloween atmosphere with him wherever he goes.

And of course I’m planning a few of my favorite autumn treats: pumpkin bread, pecan bars, perhaps some mulled apple cider. Have already acquired my beloved hard cider Autumntide.

Last but not least, I’ve stocked on spooky books for Halloween: Tasha Tudor’s Pumpkin Moonshine, L. M. Montgomery’s Among the Shadows (a collection of Montgomery’s darker short stories), Vivien Alcock’s The Cuckoo Sister and The Stonewalkers, Penelope Lively’s The Ghost of Thomas Kempe. And at long last I’m having a crack at Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire!