Richie's Picks: Great Books for Children and Young Adults

Problems?
Ideas?
Suggestions?
Please email BudNotBuddy@aol.com

Thank You!

"Don't the hours grow shorter as the days go by?
You never get to stop and open your eyes.
One minute you're waiting for the sky to fall
Next you're dazzled by the beauty of it all
When you're lovers in a dangerous time
Lovers in a dangerous time."
--Bruce Cockburn, "Lovers in a Dangerous Time"

"The door flew open and they burst in--a dozen or so, armed with swords and cudgels. Their leader was a fair, stocky man with a bully's face who announced himself Robert Danson, sheriff, and told us we were all under arrest.
"Edward Beale stood and asked, 'By what authority?'
" 'This is an illegal meeting under the act newly passed by Parliament.'
" 'We are a peaceable people,' said Edward. 'We have come here to wait upon God in the silence --'
"Danson seized Edward and threw him to the floor. The old man fell hard. I gasped, and heard the intake of breath throughout the meeting. I was shocked that they would treat an old man so; and frightened, too, as I realized what was to come.
" 'Seize them all!' cried Danson.
"The soldiers began to strike left and right, hitting anyone within reach. They struck people with fists and clubs. I saw Samuel Minton fall, and his wife on top of him. Judith's brother Tom was struck across the face. Hannah Davies, with her child in her arms, was flung toward the door."

Those sanitized versions in grade school US history books that we all grew up with, of the Quakers coming to Colonial America in order to be able to worship as they pleased, do not begin to hint at the real picture of what these people were subjected to in Britain shortly after the death of Cromwell and the restoration of the monarchy.

Set in 1662, the graphic, gut-wrenching depictions of the violence and "intolerance" of Quakers in Britain makes NO SHAME, NO FEAR the most significant piece of YA literature I have ever read in regard to that cornerstone--the freedom of religion--upon which our nation was founded.

But the relationship between the book's two narrators, 15 year-old Susanna, daughter of Quaker parents, and 17 year-old William, just back from Oxford, and son to a prosperous and influential Anglican merchant, makes NO SHAME, NO FEAR also one of the great love stories of the year.

"I thought about her all the time; imagined being alone with her, being free to touch, to kiss. The strength of my feelings took me by surprise; I had known nothing of this before.
"But I had to keep her secret. I knew my father would see any connection with a servant girl as beneath me, and if he found out she was a Quaker, he would be furious. And yet I sought her out, not just in the safety of Mary's shop, but around the town."

From reading NO SHAME, NO FEAR it is fair to conclude that the supposedly good people of 17th century Britain spent a lot of time (literally) throwing horse manure at those they despised. Ann Turnbull's vivid depictions extend to details of that era's housing, cooking, laundering and bathing, commerce, apprenticeships, court, health care, and prison systems.

Susanna is working for Mary, a fellow Quaker who runs a print shop, and at one point deep into the story when nearly all the Quakers in town are jailed--asphyxiating, being gnawed on by lice, fleas, and rats, and sharing one coed slops bucket among dozens of prisoners--William offers to operate the press for Mary, who had intended to find and hire on some muscled ex-convict to do the work. In observing William's attempt to master the process by trying to actually print a pamphlet, we get a true sense of the work involved:

" 'Concerning the PERSECUTION...' It looked at once more impressive in print.
" 'Well? I did it!'
" 'Then do another.'
"We printed another page, and a third. Nat came in from the kitchen to watch.
"By the fifteenth page I was tired, and by the twentieth my neck and shoulders ached and the strain must have shown in my face.
" 'Could thou run off sixty?' Mary asked, a glint of laughter in her eyes. 'A hundred? Five hundred?'
"I smiled and shook my head. 'Find thyself a vagrant.' "

"Love is careless in its choosing - sweeping over cross a baby
Love descends on those defenseless
Idiot love will spark the fusion" --David Bowie, "Soul Love"

"I went up to my room and flung myself flat on my back on the bed and gave way to thoughts of Susanna and the feelings she aroused in me. She'd be with the Mintons now, sharing a bed with Judith. Suppose I'd brought Susanna here, to my own bed? I imagined smuggling her in, holding and kissing her as we reached the secrecy of my room; imagined how she'd feel without stays, with her hair loose and falling across my neck and arms."

There is no sanitized happy ending to NO SHAME, NO FEAR, but merely an end to a chapter in the couple's young lives. Ann Turnbull is now hard at work on the sequel.

Richie Partington
http://richiespicks.com
BudNotBuddy@aol.com