Gingerbread for Liberty! How a
German Baker Helped Win the American Revolution. By Mara Rockliff. Pictures
by Vincent X. Kirsch. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. $17.99.
A Violin for Elva. By Mary
Lyn Ray. Illustrated by Tricia Tusa. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. $16.99.
A wonderful, much-simplified
retelling of one of the great stories of the American Revolution, Mara
Rockliff’s Gingerbread for Liberty!
contains so many improbable events that it reads like pure fiction – all the more
so because of the highly innovative cut-paper illustrations by Vincent X.
Kirsch, which give the whole book the sheen of a fairy tale. Yet the book hews
remarkably closely to fact in its tale of a German-born American colonist who
so loved his adopted country that he volunteered to fight for independence when
he was 55 years old – only to be turned down as a fighter and asked instead to
ply his trade as a baker to feed the hungry Continental Army. Yes, as the book
says, Christopher Ludwick (or Ludwig) really did induce Hessian mercenaries,
fighting for the British, to desert and join the American side – where they
would be well-fed and have a chance to settle in Philadelphia, as Ludwick had,
and make better lives for themselves. Yes, he did go behind enemy lines to
persuade Hessians to defect. After the war ended, he did bake 6,000 pounds of
bread to feed the defeated Redcoats. Besides all that, what did not even fit
into Rockliff’s book was his marriage to an Indian princess (his wife gets only
a brief mention); George Washington’s gift of a handwritten certificate of good
conduct to a man Washington called “my honest friend”; and Ludwick’s tireless
efforts after the war to help the poor, sick, and others in need. Even without
those elements, this book is packed with fascination. Ludwick really did make a
fortune as a gingerbread baker and confectioner in Philadelphia. He really did
sneak into a Hessian camp (on Staten Island, New York) and persuade some
mercenaries to desert and move to Philadelphia. And he really was on good and
personal terms with Washington. Even the fanciful elements of the book make
sense: Rockliff imagines Ludwick rowing to a Hessian camp while thinking the
German words for “revolution,” “independence” and “liberty” – and he likely did
something very much of that sort. She imagines that he may have made
gingerbread as well as ordinary bread for Cornwallis’ troops – and while no one
knows if he did, he was, after all, known as an excellent gingerbread maker, so
this is possible. The story has a wealth of information told with a wealth of
humor – for example, the illustration of very tall and very lean Hessians
bending eagerly toward the short, plump, moon-lit figure of Ludwick is an
especially amusing image. The book has fine bonuses, too, including an author’s
note that gives additional information on Ludwick, and a recipe for gingerbread
cookies that may not be 18th-century-authentic but that can be a lot
of fun for young readers and their families to try.
The deliciousness is of a
different sort – a rather bittersweet one – in Mary Lyn Ray’s A Violin for Elva, a story about wishes
that eventually come true when it is almost (but, luckily, not quite) too late.
Elva is a little girl who hears music in her head and wants a violin so she can
make more of it. But her parents, for reasons that are not very clear, refuse
to get her one (kids who read the book are likely to ask why not, and since Ray
does not explain, adult readers should consider possible scenarios). So Elva,
instead of asking for an instrument again, simply pretends she has one,
“performing” with sports equipment, her toothbrush and anything else she can
get her hands on, “playing music only she could hear.” Her parents never reappear
after their refusal to get Elva a violin, so their reaction to all this is
unknown. Instead, Ray traces Elva quickly from childhood to adulthood, when she
has “appointments and important meetings” but still longs for a violin. Elva
regales herself with recorded music (today’s parents may have to explain vinyl
records to today’s kids) and talks with her dog to keep herself in touch with
something other than her own feelings (she lives alone and certainly does not
look happy in Tricia Tusa’s illustrations). Eventually, after deciding it is
never too late to indulge in a childhood dream, Elva buys herself a violin –
and soon finds that it is far from easy to play. Despite her determination to
learn on her own, she is disappointed again and again – until she finally gets
up the courage to buy lessons from a violin teacher. And then she does learn to
play – maybe not exceptionally well, but well enough to fulfill her childhood
wish. The picture of the teacher’s students playing together – all of them young
children except for adult Elva – is the most touching in the book, and rather
sad as well for what it says about all the years Elva lost. But it is not the
final picture – indeed, the one just afterwards, illustrating the words, “Elva
was making music,” is as joyous as can be, showing Elva completely captured and
enraptured by her own ability to play the violin at last. This is a sweetly
meant book that is less immediately uplifting than are most picture books for
young readers. The front and back covers show sheet-music excerpts from
Mozart’s well-known serenade, Eine Kleine
Nachtmusik (“A Little Night Music”), and in a sense, that is what A Violin for Elva is about: the chance
to make music after so many years, before night ultimately falls on one’s life.
This is a more-thoughtful, more-cautionary message than is typical in
children’s books, a fact to which parents should be sensitive – especially if
their kids, like Elva, ask to play a musical instrument when they are young
enough to have many decades of enjoyment ahead of themselves.
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