At One In a Place Called Maine, Lynn Plourde, Illustrated by Leslie Mansmann

At One In a Place Called Maine is one of those ageless books that delights everyone from the smallest child to the family elders. Lynn Plourde’s extraordinary ability to write with poetic grace and clarity makes the story of living in Maine with all its natural wonders come alive. Alongside Mansmann’s beautiful gouache illustrations, Plourde’s narrative will inspire a love for Maine’s natural landscape in all readers. (Martina Duncan)

About the Author & Illustrator: Lynn Plourde grew up in Skowhegan, heir to a rich Frano-American cultural tradition. She always loved books and gained skills that would become useful to her as an author of children’s books first in her work as a speech therapist in Maine public schools, and then as the stepmother of two boys, whom she read to each night. It took 13 years for her first book to be published, Pigs in the Mud in the Middle of the Road. Her other works include A Mountain of Mittens and Margaret Chase Smith: A Woman for President. Leslie Mansmann, also a Maine resident, is a graduate of the Philadelphia College of Art and has spent more than 25 years as a freelance illustrator, much of it within the advertising industry. Her first children’s book was When I’m With You.

The Yearling, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

If looking for a book gift for a “young adult,” I highly recommend the long-time but, perhaps forgotten, classic, The Yearling, by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. Set in the Florida scrublands in the late 1800s, this coming-of-age story describes a year in the life of 12-year-old Jody Baxter. Jody is the only child of Penny, who is kind, wise and hard-working, and Ory, who has lost too many babies to show any affection for the one child who hasn’t died. They live an isolated, hard life, dependent on what they can get from farming the sandy soil and hunting in the scrub, miles from any kind of town and their one neighboring family. In this one year, their survival is challenged by nature’s harsh realities, including a flood, a pack of hungry wolves, an encounter with a rattlesnake and Slewfoot the Bear. Jody is hungry for his own creature to love and care for, and while his mother refuses to let him bring in so much as a pet raccoon for fear of not enough food to share, events unfold that allow him to keep a pet fawn. In the end, difficult times force tough decisions and choices in which Jody loses his innocence and gains wisdom. Outshining the struggle is the magnificent beauty here—conveyed by lyrical descriptions of the natural world and of the richness of Jody and Penny’s connection to it and to each other as father and son; connections many of us are missing in our lives today. Having read this in the context of Louv’s Last Child in the Woods, and today’s “eat local’ movement, gave me an added sense of this story’s powerful relevance. However, this is not a book for the very sensitive or tender-hearted—my 12-year-old insists she doesn’t want to read it because she worries it’ll be too sad. I hold on to the aspiration, regardless, to read The Yearling to my children and share with them a work of such compelling beauty and wisdom, when they are ready. (There is a 50th anniversary edition illustrated by NC Wyeth that is a particular treasure.) (Denise Pendleton)

About the Author: Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, known most for The Yearling, was born in 1896 and moved to rural Florida in 1928 with a small inheritance with which she purchased a 72-acre piece of land in the hamlet of Cross Creek. Her writing dwelt much on her area and the people who lived there. Her first story was published in 1912 and The Yearling in 1938, winning a Pulitzer Prize in 1939.

Why We Run, Bernd Heinrich

Do you have a runner on your Christmas list? Or do you enjoy books that range across literary boundaries? Bernd Heinrich was the lead speaker on Saturday of the Maine Literary Festival in Camden this year, and his Why We Run caught my eye at the bookseller’s table. I expected another natural science book like ones that I have tucked under the Christmas trees of friends. But Why We Run is a blend of memoir, biology, philosophy, and the desire to find out what place the will to win and the mind-body connection play in human endurance. It’s the story of a biology professor who decided to run ultramarathons (yes, more, way more, than 26 miles!).

Heinrich started his running as a member of the Cross Country team at Hinkley, where he lived for 6 years while his parents were in Africa. His successes on the team elevated his nickname from the derisive “Nature Boy” to the general compliment “animal” and eventually led to his aspiring to a college education and the UMO cross-country team. Heinrich mixes the story of his preparation for a Chicago ultramarathon with these bits of his experience in Maine and his research and observations on the musculature and breathing of animals-cockroaches to antelopes. It was an absorbing read even for someone who only got as far as the “pleasure of jogging.”

Heinrich’s acknowledgements include this comment on writing: “Writing is like running. It requires seemingly innumerable repetitions to improve pace, strength, and economy of words until it all looks easy.” Words of wisdom from a National Book award nominee and ultramarathon winner! (Carolyn Sloan)

About the Author: Bernd Heinrich is professor emeritus of biology at the University of Vermont, known best for his writings on insects and birds. His research is well-respected by the biological community but his books are unique for the focus on how animals think. Heinrich is also an accomplished marathon and ultra-marathon runner and almost made it into the 1980 U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials.

Oblomov, Ivan Goncharov

For some, the ultimate holiday gift comes in text-form by way of Russia and the 19th century. Oblomov is a unique story among Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Tugenev with an anti-hero resplendent with charm. It is about the powers and dangers of sloth, not the ordinary kind that causes one to spend a morning in bed, but the kind that causes one to put off life-changing actions, make choices, and achieve goals. The protagonist, Ilya Ilyich Oblomov, spends close to the first 100 pages in bed, greeting different visitors who each has his own reason for prompting Oblomov to rise. It is only the last who brings him out of his state of comfortable stupor in a move that leads to the love of shy, quiet Oblomov’s life: Olga. She is intelligent, witty, and ambitious, and can see the potential in Oblomov. Under her influence, he adopts real social habits, is driven to learn, and begins seeing himself as someone who can accomplish much. But sloth and indecision return to threaten his happiness. This is a charming, moving, and gentle book, nicely read in a chair as well as in bed. (Diane Magras)

About the Author: Ivan Goncharov (1812 - 1891) created the term Oblomovism with this, his best-known and most successful novel. While he worked for many years as a minor government official, he wrote many novels, stories, and critical articles, which were admired by Dostoevsky and other Russian greats. Goncharov never married and his works were not always successes. His final days were marked by a much darker perspective toward life and life’s failures than, fortunately, his character experienced.