Race to the End of the World

Race to the End of the World
by A.L. Tait
Recommended Ages: 11+

Like many other books for young readers, this one features a talented youngster whose adventures begin when he is sent to a special school. Unlike many such books, it then skips over his three-month term at the mapmaking school and resumes just as Quinn and nine other boys find out which of them will participate in a race to map the world. Only three ships are competing, so only the best will make the cut. Quinn isn't worried about winning. In fact, he doesn't want to go on the race; he's only come this far because his family needs the money. Also, he has to be careful who finds out about his incredible memory; there are some superstitious people who might confuse that kind of gift with devilry.

In spite of not wanting to win, Quinn does his best. So, of course, he scores a spot on one of the three ships, accompanying an explorer named Zain who is competing in the hope of being freed from slavery. Competing against them are the greatest explorer alive and his mapmaker, the bully who made Quinn's schooling an experience best skipped over; and, on the third ship, a foppish nobleman assisted by Quinn's best friend. Well, second best – his best friend just stows away on the Libertas, then has to pretend to be a boy (which, by the way, she's not) in order to stay on board.

So their voyage is soon underway: a one-year mission to sail around the globe – not everyone believes it's a globe, yet – and bring back the most detailed map and, as a bonus, a little treasure for the king. Winning would mean a fortune for Quinn's whole family, back home on the farm. But the bigger issue may be survival, with an aggressive enemy nation also racing to make the first world map, and hostile natives tending to sacrifice strangers first and ask questions later, and a monster of the deep making occasional, terrifying appearances. Plus, Zain and his crew face betrayal by their own countrymen, storms at sea, a frigid wintery coast, hunger, and other challenges.

Time after time, the boy who was reluctant to go on the trip in the first place proves to be the right kid at the right time, with unexpected resources of courage, intelligence and resilience. Quinn grows the spirit of a true explorer before your eyes, a transformation that helps make this quick, eventful story a delight to read.

This is the first of four "Mapmaker Chronicles," followed by Prionser of the Black Hawk, Breath of the Dragon and Beyond the Edge of the Map. A.L. Tait, also known as Allison Tait, is an Australian author who has also written two "Ateban Cipher" books – The Book of Secrets and The Book of Answers – as well as a mystery titled The Fire Star and a non-fiction book, So You Want to Be a Writer.

282. St. Matthew Passion Hymn

Here's the last of a quartet of hymns to accompany a Lenten sermon series based on each of the four evangelists' account of Christ's Passion. As usual, the idea is to break up this long hymn into installments, always opening and closing with the first and last stanza and inserting one or two middle verses appropriate to each service's selection from Matthew's Passion history. To distinguish this hymn from the Mark, Luke and John ones, I made an effort here to focus on the application of all that Jesus suffered to our needs, and our response of faith.

The "installments" roughly break down as follows: (1) Bethany (Matthew 26:1-16), (2) The Passover (26:17-30), (3) Gethsemane (26:36-56), (4) Peter's denial (26:31-35,69-74), (5) The Sanhedrin (26:57-67), (6) Judas' death (27:3-10), (7) Pilate (27:1-2,11-26) and the soldiers' mockery (27:27-31), (8) The cross (27:32-56) and (9) Jesus' burial and the watch on the tomb (27:57-66). Finally, I noticed that the first line resembles that of the St. John Passion hymn, but when you're writing four hymns about basically the same story, that kind of thing can happen. So, with no apologies for that:

Hymn on the Lord's Passion according to St. Matthew

Lord, knowing that the hour was nigh
That paschal blood be offered,
For mankind's sake You dared to die,
Yourself as Victim proffered.
Grant us to see God's grace thereby,
To treasure what You suffered!

At Simon's house, a woman poured
On You oil richly scented.
Her unction touched Your inmost chord,
Your death rites represented.
Oh, that such love we might afford
The Lamb, for us tormented!

The festal bread You took and broke,
The cup of blessing sharing.
Of body offered up You spoke,
On blood shed for us swearing:
When we this food and drink invoke,
God answers, sinners sparing.

In garden gloom Your watchers slept
While You alone lay grieving,
Till Satan's pet his tryst had kept,
Your last help swiftly leaving.
But now we love the tears You wept:
Christ, strengthen our believing!

Your flock was scattered from Your side,
All in a moment routed;
Soon even Peter had denied
With strong oaths well-nigh shouted.
But You, Lord, still with us abide;
Your truth shall not be doubted.

The council sought men to denounce
The teachings uttered by You;
But only You, Lord, could pronounce
The grounds to crucify You.
May we, too, worldly gain renounce
And live to glorify You!

In Judas' hands, the price of blood
Weighed heavy, past repaying;
To his own place he went, all good,
All hope of mercy slaying.
Lord, who such darkness understood,
Keep us from likewise straying!

The Roman ruler washed his hands,
Disturbed by what now stained them;
His soldiers laid on cruel bands,
As if no qualm restrained them.
Yet You, Lord, guided all their plans:
Your prophecy ordained them.

With wagging heads and spiteful grins
The crowd looked on Your dying
As You hung, even for their sins,
God's justice satisfying.
Look on us, as each day begins,
Your cross to us applying.

As each day, too, sinks down to rest,
Of Your hewn grave remind us:
Where, having passed the dreadful test,
Your dead clay redesigned us.
Now shall our graves as well be blest,
Till You from death unbind us.

Lord, help us watch for Your great day,
Your swift redemption craving;
For all things in Your name to pray,
All trials and dangers braving;
Your will to do, and when we stray,
To trust Your mercy saving.

UPDATE: I went through my master metrical index of hymn tunes and was surprised to find absolutely nothing that will fit this hymn. Apparently, in my effort to write something that would go with a truncated version of DURCH ADAMS FALL (8787 D iambic), only two lines shorter per stanza, I strayed into a pattern nobody has written for; all the 878787-ish tunes I could find are in a trochaic meter. So, once again, I fall back on my own ability to turn an original tune, such as it is. The following melody is titled PASCHAL BLOOD and was born the day after I wrote the above hymn.

Ho-hum word power

For some reason, just now, I feel like coining a bunch of words that play variations on the theme of humdrum, fair-to-middling, second-rate mediocrity. Here goes:

Oquesadilla /oh-kay-suh-DEE-yuh/ – n. a passable, but not great, American take on traditional Mexican street food. "Is Velveeta OK on your oquesadilla?"

Pediocre /pee-dee-OH-ker/ – adj. acceptable to kids' tastes but not so spectacular for adults. "This canned spaghetti is really pediocre."

Mediogre /mee-dee-OH-ger/ – adj. not especially threatening, for the villain of a story. "Christoph Waltz was mediogre in Green Hornet."

So-sewing /soh-SOH-wing/ - n. fashion items that look like they're worth bargain prices. "Everything in my closet is so-sewing."

Subparlor /sub-PAR-ler/ – adj. not quite at home in the above-stairs scenes of, say, Gosford Park. "Thrupworth's accent is a tad subparlor, what?"

Blanding /BLAN-ding/ – n. a letdown; a somewhat anticlimactic ending. "Shogun is an engaging book, until it comes in for a blanding."

Supermuddle /SOO-per-mud-ul/ - n. a good-looking actor or actress of below-average ability. "I've learned that movies headlined by a supermuddle aren't worth seeing."

The Revenge of Magic

The Revenge of Magic
by James Riley
Recommended Ages: 11+

Fort Fitzgerald has nobody in the world except his dad – well, there's an aunt, I suppose, but she's barely out of college – and then, one day while they're visiting the Lincoln Memorial together in Washington, D.C., Fort watches helplessly while a monstrous hand claws its way out of the earth, snatches his father and drags him back underground. It turns out to have been one of two simultaneous attacks in the D.C. area – the other destroying the National Security Agency building – but Fort's dad is the only casualty the public knows about.

For some reason, this draws the interest of a top-secret school. They recruit him to join a class of youngsters, all 13 or younger, and all (except Fort) with the same birthday. For some reason, only kids in that age group can learn from a set of books of magic that were all discovered on the same day, in different parts of the world, 13 years ago. The Oppenheimer School, at a secret location patrolled by armed soldiers, is preparing a defense against further attacks like the one that destroyed the National Mall and the NSA building. A magical defense, to be precise.

Fort has a tough time adapting to the campus. Some of the students, specializing in destructive magic, are vicious bullies. Others, who like Fort are meant to be learning healing spells, don't trust him. Some members of the faculty believe that Fort's arrival puts the school in terrible danger. As an excuse to kick him out, they set him an impossible task – giving him three days to master three spells that would take most students almost a month to learn. And on top of everything else, a former student no one will talk about has invaded Fort's mind, sending him terrifying visions and enabling him to hear people's thoughts.

I'm going to leave my synopsis right there, except to add that this book builds up to a terrifying climax – setting Fort opposite a surprisingly dark threat to the entire world, and at the same time, against his own anger and desire for revenge. With voices in his head, some quirky friends (well, they'll become friends eventually) and a handful of spells that he shouldn't know how to use at this early stage in his training, he faces off against horrors from beyond the universe that, in my opinion, pushed this book right to the limit of age-appropriateness, if not beyond. But it's also, I must say, awesome.

This is the first book in the "Revenge of Magic" series, which continues in The Last Dragon, The Future King and the recently released The Timeless One. A fifth installment, The Chosen One, is scheduled for release in March 2021. James Riley is also the author of three "Half Upon a Time" books and five "Story Thieves" books.

Christmas book splurge

My mummy, who apparently knows me well, sent me a generous Barnes & Noble gift card for Christmas. I've already gone and spent it. (You may be astonished to learn that I had to set up a barnesandnoble.com account to do so.) Here's what I look forward to reading and reviewing in the year (or possibly, weeks) to come, thanks to dear old Mom:

• Blood of Tyrants by Naomi Novik, book 8 of Temeraire.
• League of Dragons by Naomi Novik, book 9 of Temeraire.
• The Black Reckoning by John Stephens, book 3 of the Books of Beginning.
• The Key of Lost Things by Sean Easley, book 2 of the Hotel Between.
• Broken Lands by Kate Milford, a prequel to Boneshaker.
• The Bootlace Magician by Cassie Beasley, a sequel to Circus Mirandus.
• The Unbreakable Code by Jennifer Chambliss Bertman, book 2 of Book Scavenger.
• Exile by Shannon Messenger, book 2 of Keeper of the Lost Cities.
• Castle Hangnail by Ursula Vernon, who (as T. Kingfisher) wrote A Wizard's Guide To Defensive Baking.
• The Defense by Steve Cavanagh, book 1 of the Eddie Flynn series (cf. Thirteen).
• The Case of the Left-Handed Lady by Nancy Springer, book 2 of Enola Holmes.
• The Goodbye Man by Jeffery Deaver, book 2 of Colter Shaw.

There were a couple other books that I looked at and would have bought, instead if not in addition; they included T. Kingfisher's The Twisted Ones, Matthew J. Kirby's A Taste for Monsters, and more. But either they were currently unavailable in physical book form or priced too high. As it is, I think I made out pretty well for only going just a wee bit over the balance on that gift card. Thanks again, mummy!

Mr. Jones

I've wanted to see this movie for some time, thanks to a review of it that I read online. But was it ever hard to get hold of! I had no intention of buying a license to watch it on a streaming service, in which I am still resistant to enrolling – and I'm increasingly peaved that the only movies that are being issued on DVD these days are terrible ones that I don't want to watch. It's as if the entertainment industry is purposely drilling the DVD format into the ground. To buy it on DVD I had to order it from abroad, in a Region 2 video format that doesn't play on my run-of-the-mill player. I also learned that a procedure published on the Internet to unlock the region designation of my specific model of player is actually a crock of kaka, so ridiculously out of touch with what you can actually do with the equipment that I suspect it was written as a prank. In desperation, I ordered a region-free DVD player off of eBay and waited for it to arrive. Around the time I discovered that the batteries that came with the remote were dead, I almost gave up on the whole operation. But finally everything was squared away, and the movie I had gone to such lengths to see, I saw.

It was worth the trouble. Not to be confused with the romantic 1993 film starring Richard Gere and Lena Olin, or the 2013 horror movie starring Jon Foster and Sarah Jones, the 2019 Mr. Jones is a story about how a crusading Welsh journalist named Gareth Jones traveled to the Soviet Union under phony press credentials, slipped away from his Communist Party handler and blew the lid off of the Holodomor, i.e. the man-made famine in Ukraine that killed millions in the early 1930s. It blacked Stalin's eye and made the west's decision to ally itself with the USSR much more complex than it otherwise would have been, at that stage in World War II. It should have made it even more complicated, I think, after seeing only a brief, cinematic version of what Jones experienced in Ukraine – desperate, dying people being forced, with the last of their strength, to load all the grain they had grown in the Soviet Union's breadbasket onto trains bound for Moscow, leaving nothing for themselves.

The picture stars James Norton of Grantchester as Jones, who (we learn from a few titles at the end of the film) was kidnapped and murdered a year or so later under circumstances that suggest it was the USSR's way of getting back at him. Norton portrays Jones as an upright, straight-laced guy who fearlessly pursued the truth and responded to it with passionate commitment. It will be hard to forget the emotional impact of such scenes as Jones fleeing into the snowy woods under rifle fire; finding a couple of villagers dead in their bed; realizing that what kind of meat an orphan has cooked for him; hearing from a local woman that millions are dying; being told that eight hostages will die if he writes his story; and finally, breaking into William Randolph Hearst's home and telling him about the story he wants to tell before the servants can chuck him out.

Other key roles in the story go to Peter Sarsgaard as the Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times correspondent Walter Duranty, who carried water for Stalin's regime and did all that he could to squelch Jones' story; Vanessa Kirby of The Crown as a leftist journalist who, in spite of her political sentiments, sacrificed her career to help Jones; Joseph Mawle as George Orwell, who is depicted writing Animal Farm in parallel with Jones' story; and director Agnieszka Holland, who brought an expressive style to a film that contrasts the sybaritic excesses of Moscow's Metropol Hotel with the hungry countryside that Jones found. With vivid, stylistic flair, Holland dares to show us the evil that Jones went up against, to say nothing of the pragmatic west's willingness to overlook it. Whatever actual number of victims the Holodomor claimed, whether or not a Soviet finger pulled the trigger that killed Jones, whatever justification the west might have for making common cause with Stalin against Hitler, and all the word-games you can play over what constitutes forced starvation (as opposed to people dying of illness brought on by malnutrition as a result of government policies), a reminder that Duranty's Pulitzer was never revoked forms a pretty jarring postscript to an intense, challenging film.

Three Scenes That Made It For Me come, as it were, in pairs: (1) A drunken Duranty gets into Jones' face at wild party, subtly threatening him for being such a goody-goody, while dressed the part of the Emperor with no clothes. Think about that later when, as the police lead Jones away, Duranty sends him off with a sanctimonious lecture. (2) The girl, Ada Brooks, crosses out and refuses to sign the denouncement of Jones that Duranty dictates to her. You'll recall an earlier scene when Duranty editorially crossed out a large section of one of her stories. (3) After hearing Jones speak about what he saw in Ukraine, Orwell – whom we have seen all this time typing passages from Animal Farm, expressing his own disillusionment with socialism – pleads with him to consider it in a light more favorable to the political and economic miracle Stalin is trying to pull off. Jones only has to say, "I know what I saw," to leave Orwell looking crushed.

Movies indicting the way we live are all the rage these days. Here's one, for a change, that does a very good job of showing that the leading alternative might be even more worthy of indictment, judging by history. Let us pray that our civilization doesn't follow this tried and disproven path.

Album for the Young 10

For the first time in a while, I decided to splurge on a recent Bärenreiter sale on sheetmusicplus-dot-com and I ordered this book along with two others. A thin edition of 17 brief, lightweight piano pieces by Ludwig van Beethoven, it contains at least two numbers that will be familiar to nearly every piano student who has attained to the intermediate skill level if not lower – one of which is right up there with Chopsticks, Heart and Soul and Hot Cross Buns among pieces the sound of which starts to drive one mad as one spends more and more time hanging around a hallway of piano rehearsal rooms on a music school campus.

Yes, we're talking about that piece: "Für Elise," a.k.a. Piano Piece in A minor, which any number of kids will sit down and play anytime they see an unattended piano, whether they can read music or not. But we forgive it because, once you get past its super-simple opening idea, it's a nice and expressive little piece.

But that's No. 11 in this book. No. 1 is an equally well-known Minuet in G, which is also a well-rounded, finished little piece, complete with a Trio. The main part of the minuet combines a refined, handsome melody with a gentle exercise in playing parallel thirds and, later, sixths in the right hand. Its classically polished style isn't far from that of Haydn, particularly with a couple of muscle-flexing second-beat accents toward the end of the left-hand part. The Trio, really almost a duet, is a nice little flowing number built mainly out of scale runs and broken triads, with just one wide leap that junior might have to work on.

Among the other really noteworthy pieces in this set are the four-page Rondo in C at No. 7, which may become a favorite if the idea of using this book as an "album for the young" catches on; the Sonatina in G at No. 8, whose two movements cover one page each; and the somewhat more full-bodied Sonatina in F at No. 9, which also has two movements, but they're each two-pagers. They offer a good taste of what it's like to play in a classical piano idiom without being outrageously demanding for a young pianist just beginning to dip his toe into the music of the great composers, with contrasting dynamics, articulations, decorative turns, rolling accompaniment figures and chromatic scale runs, among other moderate challenges.

Then there are a couple of two-page pieces to which Beethoven gives the title Bagatelle, which more or less literally means a quaint little trifle, though again his inventiveness within the bounds of a technically easy piece is something that will reward young players who discover it. No. 12 Bagatelle in D begins with a pair of repeated periods, suggesting a theme-and-variations type of structure, but Beethoven doesn't belabor it so much that it loses interest. No. 13 Bagatelle in G minor, with a second theme in E-flat major, spins off into a passage that reminds me of one of Bach's keyboard suites.

No. 14 is Six Variations in F on a Swiss Song, which accounts for three pages altogether. Notable devices of variation that Beethoven demonstrates include introducing a triplet rhythm (Var. 1), dotted figures (Var. 2), a minor-key variant (Var. 3), the melody in octaves over rolling triplets (Var. 4), decorating the melody (Var. 5), and fortissimo octaves contrasting with piano 16th-note runs.

I'm afraid none of the other pieces on this book are anything special, in much the same way Schubert's 11 Ecossaises and 12 Ländler aren't anything special; that is to say, they're very nice little pieces that demonstrate a general grasp of piano writing, and exercise the player in acquiring a general grasp of piano playing, but apart from some superficial charm there isn't anything indelibly memorable about them. These include, in numberical order (skipping the already mentioned numbers): (2) a Ländler in D, all of 16 bars long; (3-4) two German Dances in B-flat, each with a Trio; (5-6) two Ecossaises (Scottish dances) in E-flat, (10) a Piano Piece in C major/minor, with two contrasting sections marked as "cheerful" and "sorrowful"; (15) A theme with one variation titled "St. Patrick's day" a.k.a. Scottish Song; (16) A theme and two variations titled "Folksong from Little Russia," which is what they used to call Ukraine; and (17) A theme and one variation titled "Schöne Minka" or Russian Song. Some of the variations are fine, but they're so brief and there are so few of them that mastering any one of these pieces may not be a sufficient achievement to display at a recital.

Still, I like the idea of presenting this book, and others like it that I've written about on this thread, to ambitious young pianists early enough in their formation as musicians to make a difference when they decide what direction, if any, their musical lives will grow. Maybe, if more of them see performing fine-art music as an achievable and worthwhile path, we will continue to have Van Cliburns – or at least, people like me who still enjoy playing the piano at home most evenings, decades after we last took a music lesson.