Her name was Agnes Schlosser, and I couldn’t have talked to her for more than five minutes. When I was a teenager I met a teacher on the banks of the Koyukuk, and she gave me a peek into her little log school. Except that Claudie, who played Scrooge, panicked when he saw the audience and had to be dragged on stage.) We did it just that way in my school in Ruby, with marten traps for the ghosts’ chains. (The school play in Miss Agnes, for instance. I had a great time writing about some of the things we did in those six years. And later I even taught some of the next generation, the kids of those kids. It was a wonderful class, and I had the same kids for six years. I hasten to say no, I’m not anything like her.īut the setting, the classroom, is pretty much like a classroom I had once with kids from kindergarten to 8th grade. People ask me if I’m Miss Agnes which startled me at first,since it had never occured to me that anyone would think that. I don’t think he thought it was going to be a girl. We all thought that was very funny, and I told Fred that the next time I wrote a book my main character was going to be called Fred. We had some animals visit the class, and by chance the ferret was named Fred and the iguana was named Fred.

Neela: Victory Song by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni (HC -597-5 PB -521-5) Ĭécile: Gates of Gold by Mary Casanova ( HC -594-0 PB -518-5).The year I wrote this book I had a delightful boy in my class called Fred. (Oct.)įYI: Other titles in this season's launch of the Girls of Many Lands series: Not only the heroine but the vanished society here feel alive in their complexities. At the same time, the author doesn't glamorize the villagers, in particular exposing the severe conditions facing women. The author penetrates Yup'ik culture to such an extent that readers are likely to find the Hoffs more foreign than Minuk and her family. Hoff, 'why does he make people burn in hell?'). Yet, as seen through Minuk's eyes, the customs make sense, and Hill demonstrates that the Yup'ik belief systems are at least as coherent as Hoffs' version of Christianity ('If your god is love,' Minuk asks Mr.

Hoff condemn the villagers' rituals and practices. Hoff invites her inside for a cup of tea, she sits on a chair for the first time (and tips hers over) and slurps loudly, 'to be polite.' These initial misunderstandings may be comic, but the encounters between the Hoffs and the Yup'ik have grave consequences. She can't imagine what the 'sort of pink butterfly' hanging from the clothesline is (a corset, which astonishes her still further), and when Mrs. Minuk, the narrator, is 12 the spring that the missionary family arrives, and like the other children she is fascinated by the sight of her first kass'aq ) finely detailed novel set in a Yup'ik Eskimo village in the 1890s feels mesmerizingly authentic. , reviewed below), Hill's ( The Year of Miss Agnes

Among the debut titles in the Girls of Many Lands series (see Spring Pearl

Minuk by Kirkpatrick Hill