The Wonderful Ice Cream Cart
Alice Rogers Hager, il. Mimi Korach
1955, The Macmillan Company
Jerry peered through
the doorway and rubbed his eyes. He had
never seen anything like this in America.
Drawn up in grand style in front of the shop was a small, sturdy white
horse with tassels on his feet and a coat which shone like satin. Behind the horse was a cream-colored cart,
with a cream-colored roof. All over the
car were paintings of fruit and flowers.
A gay, decorated panel ran around the lower edge of the roof and
underneath, in the exact center of the ceiling, hung a crystal chandelier, its
prisms chiming in the breeze.
I
must say, I’ve never seen anything like this in America, either. I’ve seen carriage horses wearing Phillies
caps, and riding horses wearing fly masks, but never a horse pulling anything
which featured a chandelier.
American
kid Jerry Tuck meets Belgian kid Jean Pierre Auriol in Brussels, where the
Tucks have relocated for a year in the 1950s.
Jerry knows little French, is financially secure and has a father; Jean
Pierre knows little English, is struggling to help his mother make their shabby
flower shop pay, and his father has been missing since the end of the war. They get along beautifully, though, and Jerry
agreeably falls in with Jean Pierre’s friendship with Papa Goncourt, an ice
cream vendor, and his horse Bobo. The
two boys help Papa and Bobo find a new sales line for the winter months and a
snug new home when he falls ill. Their
attentions are rewarded with a vacation in the Ardennes. Bobo, of course, takes them there:
The church bells were
ringing as they drove steadily out the long avenue and tiny, pale green leaves
curled their fingers around the limbs of the chestnut trees. The chandelier tinkled a faint, elfin tune in
time to the click of Bobo’s heels, and Jerry suddenly knew he would rather be
taking this trip than anything he had ever done in his life.
They
visit Jean Pierre’s uncle, a monk working at a convalescent hospital for
veterans of the war, and Jerry hears the very old legend of the magical horse
Bayard for the first time. The boys go
riding in the woods –
… Jean Pierre guided
Bobo through the gate and across the highway, turning him into a faint trail
which wound upward into the forest. The
sun filtered through the pine trees, dappling the forest floor with golden
pennies. All around them was deep,
fragrant silence.
- where they come across a mentally unbalanced resident of the hospital teetering on a cliff. They rescue him, and return to Brussels as heroes. But something nags at Jerry, and he eventually tells his parents he suspects that the man they rescued is Jean Pierre’s father.
There
are more adventures, a contest, a parade, and a homecoming. And the final line belongs to the little
white carthorse, which seems fitting.
The
primary attraction of the book, and its strongest point, is the uniqueness of
the setting and background. The boys’
adventures are rooted in the horrors of war, but while the effects of WWII are
all around, there are few direct comments on it. The emphasis is much more on the ancient past
- the legend of Bayard, the walled farm in the Ardennes – and the present of
two boys being pals. The writing isn’t
very interesting, and the action has a curious way of both lagging and
leapfrogging. A chapter will pass
slowly, and then the next chapter is suddenly some unspecified time in the
future. You get the sense of an author
not entirely in control of her plot, or not entirely convinced of its interest.
Links
Author- Syracuse University Library – papers
Author - Notes about her aviation interest and work
The legend of Bayard at Wikipedia
About the Authors
The
author and the illustrator for this book were restless women. Professional career women – a journalist and
a commercial artist – they both ended up chronicling the Second World War from
Europe.
Author
1894-1969
Hager lived and worked all over the world as a journalist who specialized in aviation news, a war correspondent during WWII, and an employee of the State Department in the 1950s.
Other books
(nonfiction)
Brazil, Giant To The
SouthWings Of The Dragon: The Air War In Asia
Washington, City of Destiny
Wings Over The Americas
Frontier By Air (Brazil Takes The Sky Road)
Wings To Wear
Big Loop And Little: The Cowboy’s Story
Other books (fiction)
Janice, Air Line
Hostess – YA, career romanceWashington Secretary - YA
Love’s Golden Circle - YA
Dateline: Paris – YA, career romance
The Canvas Castle - YA
Cathy Whitney, President’s Daughter - YA
So High The Hill
Of
the lot, a few have minor equine relevance: Cathy Whitney has to leave her
beloved horse behind when Daddy is elected president; the heroine of The Canvas Castle balks at moving yet
again for her father’s job, in part because she’s acquired a horse; and Big Loop and Little is a nonfiction
photo essay of the ranch life.
Kirkus,
the fabulously acid review which has been around for quite a while, summed up Cathy Whitney, President’s Daughter in
typical style:
Sic
Transit--Margaret Truman, Caroline, Lynda Bird and Luci Baines. Well now it's
Cathy Whitney, who has to leave her horse Sinbad behind, nickering, when her
father is elected President. There's the absolutely
""terrific"" flight there and the first days are drenched
in gala occasions from the inauguration on; but there are problems--she doesn't
like her quarters and she is allowed to do ""her suite""
over--and she misses Sinbad and her best friend; she resents the disruption of
family life. But Sinbad is sent for and Cathy inaugurates ""Ice Box
suppers a la White House"" and she gets to have an hour a day with
Daddy, and sister Ann gets married, and Cathy Whitney is going ""to
be the girl with the lamp""--upholding the symbol of this family.
About all that can be said for this is that it indulges girls with fifty stars in
their eyes and not a scintilla of sense in their heads. There is a prefatory
note, acknowledgements and foreword, along with the welcome reassurance that
the ""White House is real.
She went to Europe toward the end of WWII as part of a program for artists to sketch portraits of soldiers in evacuation hospitals, to send home to their families. Her account of her experiences is something.
Korach’s narrative of her time in 1945 Europe
Brown University Library – an example of Lesser’s portraits
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