Eagle-eyed readers or attentive listeners will likely catch that
either the illustrations or the text describing dad's activities for
minutes 4 and 3 seem to be reversed, as the text and illustrations don't
match. Nonetheless, a fun read-to or early reading book!
Recommended.
Dave Jenkinson teaches courses in children's and Young Adult literature in
the Faculty of Education, University of Manitoba.
Volume 1 Number 4
July 7, 1995
Tchaikovsky Discovers America
Kalman, Esther
Toronto: Lester Publishing, 1994. 40pp, hard-cover, $16.95.
ISBN 1-895555-82-5
Grades 4 to 6/ Ages 8 and Up
Review by T.S. Casaubon.
excerpt:
Later, as I walked along the promenade [at Niagara
Falls], I heard a voice behind me. It was Mr. Tchaikovsky, but I could
barely make out what he was saying through the crashing of the falls and
the noise of the vendors trying to sell us picture postcards and other
souvenirs. In my loudest voice I asked Mr. Tchaikovsky if he wanted to buy
something to press in his diary to remind him of his trip. But he said that
he had no need of mementos, that his words alone would form the memories
that would be pressed between the covers. ``When I read my diary back in
Russia," he said, ``I shall remember the sights and the sounds and the
smells of America. But here in America, I am remembering
Russia."
Deservedly listed among the ``Notables" of the last year, Tchaikovsky
Discovers America
is a follow-up to the successful Beethoven Lives Upstairs.
Both books are published to accompany recordings from Susan Hammond's
Classical Kids series; introductions to great music by looking their
composers from a very personal and human angle. Obviously the book can't
contain the music, but the triumph of Tchaikovsky Discovers
America is that while it recalls the music, and might even inspire
a reader to seek it out, it lives on its own.
Kalman based the story on Tchaikovsky's actual 1891 visit to
America to attend the opening of Carnegie Hall. The composer kept a diary
of his visit, and it is this diary that inspires eleven-year-old Jenny
Petroff to keep one of her own, which she begins with her account of how
she came to know the great man.
Jenny is an American, but her family is from Russia, where her
father was a count; in America, however, he has made his fortune running a
railroad. So Jenny is not quite the ordinary person she feels in
Tchaikovsky's presence, but her background does give her the chance meet
him on the train, one of the wonders of the New World he admires, (``this
train! There is even a barbershop on the train!"), and, because she speaks
Russian, to become his friend.
Of course, the great man touches Jenny's family too, who have lost
not only a title, but Russia itself. When Tchaikovsky conducts at Carnegie
Hall, Jenny's mother cries because the music is so Russian; after he meets
the composer, her father pines for the scent of lilac and the fields of
yellow flowers. ``I did not know that grown-ups could get homesick," Jenny
writes. ``I thought about the fields of yellow flowers and, although I have
never seen them, it was as if I remembered them too."
In many ways, the book is a meditation on loss: meeting Tchaikovsky
lets Jenny understand her family's loss; talking to him and hearing his
music brings out Jenny's desire to be a ballerina, which she is already too
old to become; there are reminders of the composer's age (``but when he
stood up to conduct he was like a young man again"), suggestive of the
death that will come only two years after this visit to America. And making
friends with the great man is itself a gift that can only lead to the loss
-- the parting that closes the story:
Today Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky, my friend,
sails away from
New York back to Russia.
He is the first person I have written about in my diary.
I wonder if he
has put me in his.
But if Jenny learns about loss and sadness, she also learns the gifts
they can carry of music and memory.
The fourteen colour illustrations, by husband-and-wife team Laura
Fernandez and Rick Jacobson, are excellent, and surprising in their
variety: intimate domestic scenes, vistas of Russia, a vision from
Swan Lake; and two great dark, dramatic spreads -- one of
Tchaikovsky conducting at Carnegie Hall, and one of him taking leave of his
friend Jenny in front of the tremendous, smoking train that brought them
together.
Highly Recommended.
T.S. Casaubon is a Winnipeg-based freelance writer
Volume 1 Number 4
July 7, 1995
HI-TECH Culture.
Omni Films, 1995. 52 minutes.
Distributed by Moving Images Distribution,
606-402 West Pender St., Vancouver, BC, V6B
1T6. Voice/fax: (800) 684-3014.
Grades 10-12/ Ages 15 & Up
Review by Duncan Thornton
excerpt:
If you took my computer away, so that I had no access to
being on-line, I'd have to hunt you down and kill you. I think the number
one thing is meeting people. Being able to sit in your living room, no
make-up, dressed horribly, not having to even go out, and be able to talk
to anyone, anyone you want to, is just absolutely amazing.
It's hard to imagine that you can sit in front of a screen, and
there may be no sound, all you're doing is reading, for three to six hours,
or longer, a day, and how anyone could get any enjoyment out of that. It's
totally different from reading a book; you're actually talking to people
live . . .
-- Cheryl, a woman with over 100 close on-line friends
HI-TECH Culture is a quickly paced, magazine-style overview
of the ``Digital Revolution." (Depending on your point of view, the on-line
CM you're reading is either a herald or a symptom of that revolution). The
video moves quickly and appealingly through six aspects of the Digital
Revolution that might be of special interest to young people, starting from
the most familiar and leading through to the most exotic: Games; Education;
Getting Wired; Law and Order; Virtual Reality; and Cybersex.
Along the way, HI-TECH Culture (which is also to
become a weekly series on the Discovery Channel this fall) covers a lot of
interesting ground, both high and low. The ``Games" segment might seem
redundant for a high-school audience, but it looks beyond electronic games
themselves to how the industry has grown to rival Hollywood in both revenue
and production values. We hear from makers of both hi-tech shoot-em-ups and
of the dreamy and absorbing ``MYST," and from two guys from JamBone Comics
who are trying to claw their way into the big-leagues with a home-made
baseball game.
In the ``Education" segment we start with an image of a blackboard,
and an explanation by Adam, our host, of how primitive it is: ``. . .
monochrome interface, one-to-many communication metaphor, and that horrible
screeching sound. . . ." Industry leaders and students from the
computer-intensive Virtual High, explain how computers can expand the
learning process, though Brian Falconer, who takes kids out to sea to learn
about nature first-hand, is on-hand to bring a contrary, low-tech viewpoint.
Still, Falconer's concerns are pretty much lost in the shuffle, and HI-TECH
Culture itself is such a resolutely ``high-tech" sort of product (something
like Fashion Television: fast cuts, graphics and clips
overlaid and thrown at you, lots of sound-bites but no interviews, etc.),
you know who's going to get the last word in any argument.
So in ``Getting Wired" concerns about high-tech culture spawning a
new underclass without the education or money to access the Internet are
quickly answered by introducing the Vancouver FreeNet. And in ``Law and
Order," issues of high-tech policing and social control are debated by
simply cross-cutting rapidly between boosters of crime-control kiosks
(where video-clips of the recent Vancouver hockey riot are displayed so
that offenders can be identified by the public), those worried about the
social effects of the new law-enforcement technology, and clips of rioters.
Again we end with the easy answer that the crime-kiosks are ``no different
than a wanted poster."
Actually, I think I agree, but I still wish that Adam, who pops up
almost randomly in the corners of the screen, like some video-game sprite,
was more like a real journalist -- that he actually interviewed people on
either side, asked them hard questions and gave them time to develop their
arguments.
The ``Virtual Reality," segment looks at that technology from an
artist's perspective. There's a sort of debate here too, of the ``but-is-it
art?" variety, but since even its proponents agree that the technology is
still too primitive to really do what they want, it's moot. The really
fascinating part is a Virtual Reality math exhibit where you put on the
goggles and zoom along the surfaces of a möbius strip, or something like
that. I don't know if it's art, and I don't know if it teaches topology,
but it sure looks fun.
Saved for the end, of course, is ``Cybersex," where theoretical
talk about the nature of acquaintance, intimacy, and romance over the
Internet is overshadowed by a sad story (told, for once, without too much
haste). A young woman tells of forming a close friendship with a man over
the 'net which gradually became (virtually) sexual. It was only then that she
discovered he had a live-in girlfriend, and even after that, it wasn't
until she sent him a picture of herself that the (virtually) adulterous
affair came to an end. Apparently her real image didn't live up to his
fantasies. A very human story from the high-tech frontier, and the video
ends, appropriately: ``The new digital media offer us fabulous
opportunities to expand our realities . . . but as we've seen, they raise
the same basic human questions we've been trying to answer for centuries:
How do we teach our children? How do we form communities? What is love?"
At times HI-TECH Culture makes you desperate for a
more sceptical, even Luddite viewpoint. For that you'll have to read
Clifford Stoll's Silicon Snake Oil (using both together would
be an excellent thing for a class considering media and cultural issues).
But HI-TECH Culture delivers just what it promises: an
entertaining overview of the digital revolution. And it serves as a useful
introduction or discussion-starter for many of the issues raised by the
change we're living through.
Duncan Thornton is the editor of CM.
Volume 1 Number 4
July 7, 1995
Catchy titles from Oz
By Reg Sylvester
Oz debuts with Flash Fiction:
Teenaged heroes overcome the threats of
monsters, gang rivalry, drunken brawls, and a desperate man bent on arson
Flash Fiction grabs you, especially if you're the
kind of kid who usually ignores books. Consider the titles: The
Things and Mall Rats by Martyn Godfrey; Bush
Party and Burn It by Lyle Weis.
The publisher is Oz New Media of Edmonton, who commissioned the
cover art to a guy with a reputation as the best airbrush van painter in
town. Jim Beveridge created a multi-fanged monster dripping with blood for
the cover of The Things. When you pick up Mall
Rats, you are confronted by a maniacally grinning security cop about
to take you by the throat. On Bush Party, a desperate hand
reaches out of river water while a plume of black smoke streaks across a
gigantic moon, low on the horizon.
This might be one occasion when you can judge the books by their
covers. The action continues inside, as the teenaged heros overcome the
threats of monsters, gang rivalry, drunken brawls, and a desperate man bent
on arson.
In marketing shorthand, these are hi/low/ESL books -- high impact,
low vocabulary, suitable for kids who have trouble reading or for students
of English as a second language.
The authors are experienced and popular writers of children's
literature. Martyn Godfrey has written more than 30 books for children,
with titles such as The Great Science Fair Disaster and
Wally Stutzgummer, Super Bad Dude, both published by
Scholastic Books. He has also been published by Avon Books in New York and
by Oxford University Press.
Previous books by Lyle Weis include No Problem, We'll Fix
It (General, 1991) and The Mill Under His Skin
(Thistledown, 1992).
Flash Fiction is the first sign of life from a new publishing
company on Earth. (Oz stationery and business cards locate the company in
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, Earth.) The president is Randy Morse, former
general manager of Hurtig Books and a founder of Reidmore Books.
Without Morse, Reidmore continues to publish books for the
educational market.
Oz, meanwhile, looks to exploit continental and worldwide markets
for multiple media publishing. Imminent releases include Kate's
Story, a combination of Kodak Portfolio photo-CD with a softcover
book, and So, This is Canada!, a comic-book history of our
country designed with the American school market in mind.
Though the marketing objective is far-reaching, Morse and his crew
still look for talent close to home. The authors and artist for Flash
Fiction are all from Edmonton, as are the cartoonists Gary Delainey and
Gerry Rasmussen, who created the Canadian history
book.
Flash Fiction Titles:
Each book, 80 pages, $4.99
Mall Rats
by Martin Godfrey
ISBN 1-896295-00-2
Burn It
by Lyle Weis
ISBN 1-896295-01-0
Bush Party
by Lyle Weis
ISBN 1-896295-03-7
The Things
by Martyn Godfrey
ISBN 1-896295-02-9
Article originally published in Praire Books NOW. ©1995 Reg Silvester.
Copyright © 1995 the Manitoba Library Association. Reproduction for personal use is permitted only if this copyright notice is maintained. Any other reproduction is prohibited without permission.
Published by
The Manitoba Library Association
ISSN 1201-9364
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