Unfolding Glory & Unfurling Marvel

Reviewed by Lynn Strongin

Hiding Glory (160 pp.) (2007), Marvel the Marvelous (168 pp. Willow Creek Press, 2008) both by Laura Chester and illustrated by Gary A Lippincott, hardback $18.95 each

In two handsomely illustrated books for children, Laura Chester unfolds the age-old passion of girl for horse. The books are part of a series. Each weaves a tapestry of adventures laced with moral lessons. In her two métiers, fiction and highly charged imagistic poetry, Chester proves herself a wordsmith.

In Hiding Glory, Turner, a primary-school student must gather the courage to follow the miniature horse Glory into battle against the greedy Kermudgins. The girl’s love for Glory drives this book and turns the young girl into a heroine, nurturing golden mare, Lilia, who had once turned her jade with jealousy. But Glory is blue like morning-glory flowers.

In keeping with fairytale tradition, Glory is also tiny. This appeals to children’s love of the small. Narrated in first person by Turner Flint (which suggests flint being turned in the hand as well as the spiritual torque of existence), the story begins with the appearance of Glory standing on her bedside table, standing there “pulsing.” Pulsing is the language of a poet: it reminds one of light, of the human vein. This miniature horse shines especially with “that heavenly sky-lit, unearthly blue,” in evening the more remarkably as if lit from inside. His mane is silvery like his tail. This blue is almost otherworldly like Henry Vaughan’s white light of eternity: conceptual, neither ink nor pigment.           

A typical schoolgirl, Turner has set her heart upon mundane things, for school is soon to reopen with autumn. She covets a new pair of Adidas Sambas. The horse plays with language: “Adios Adidas!” says Glory. Language-play is one of Chester’s most enduring techniques in her books for young readers. Glory suggests the girl have an open mind. She imagines things would fall out as out of an open lunchbox. Didactic in the best sense, Chester enchants rather than instructs so that one can picture all sorts of contents spilling out of a lunchbox housed in the mind. There is glint in the writing just as the silvery tail and mane of Glory reflect fire. Turner Flint steps as Alice does through the looking glass, “out of the world of ... Childhood, into the great unknown.”

An integral part of the book are Gary Lippincott’s drawings, both delicate and elegant. He bodies forth the Thorn Indeed; these two kid’s books are a marriage of mastery in word and drawing. Significantly, the drawings are black and white. Elegant and equine.

The girl with “strawberry-colored braids and big thick glasses” is gangly and has freckles. She mounts Glory in a circle of moonlight, Glory who wears yellow saddle and bridle, as golden as the bottom of a morning glory’s throat. They land on a rooftop across the street and proceed – “flying from cloud-to-cloud.” Dawn begins to appear in another world, stars “like a sugar sprinkling . . . glittering up the dark.”  A whole new landscape unfolds. This is the country where children’s minds do not contain facts, dates and useless information the way a drawer collects old rubber bands and pencil dust. That night, the girl falls in love with Glory. They will take care of each other.

In Joya, the girl no longer needs glasses.  Like a young, untamed imagination, this land is in danger of being straightened. The enemy is convention, the savior imagination. To tell the tale would spoil the enchantment. Suffice it to say that nothing is normal. In this sense Chester’s tale follows the route of many fairy tales. But her language is her own.

Occasionally the language slips into cliché, such as “the dear Queen Mother” or a circle of Pansies “who tittered and scattered” as Glory and the child pass. This gilds the lily, the sugarcoating is a lapse. But for the most part, the strength of the book rests on the concept: Glory and Turner Flint defying the world. Such creations as “Mud-Dog” are original. Mud Dog has the brainstorm that if they could raid “the Kermudgins’ coffers, it would undermine Pay Day and the work force would break down in the very dirt they were leveling.” (p. 33) This is brilliant. These “beetle boys” wear tight rubber gloves “and large galoshes,”  while “the Rose Falcon” madly guards rosebuds.

All of these taste and smell details will appeal to children. Such creatures as the Kermudgins provide another crucial element in fairy stories: horror. The odyssey ends with Turner’s plan and her triumphant first day back to school, a reassuring cycle for children although the tale has absolutely jolted them out of their comfort zone. Weather brings one back to earth: in accordance with reality, grows cold, colder. The first bad frost is feared. Will it kill the morning glories? Read the book and find out.

In Marvel the Marvelous the whip crack once again is imagination. In this book, Chester once again paints for us Joya, this time the far reaches of Northern Joya where most inhabitants wear skates. The silver blades are metaphoric: they slice through shimmering ice fields. The King and Queen find a frozen girl child in the snow. Nobody can thaw her despite a huge bonfire which illumines the night sky. Presently, the fields do thaw; a stream becomes a river, a torrent. Lee Ramsey and Little Marvel are, symbolically, swept along with pals Garbonzo and Beanie. But there is a difference in this hero’s odyssey in which the foursome explore both underworld and fragrant gardens of the imaginary Joya. The difference is a wilder zanier take on fairyland. Lee follows her baby sister’s cries only after she helps release Spigot-Von-Glume and tames a tribe of terrible teasers. At the end, the horse must face knowing “for the first time what it was to be real in this truly marvelous world.”  Severe trauma is sustained. Although a northern wind blows ashes of the Orblock away. “The abandoned golden bones are unharmed” by the destruction and become part of the universe.

This book is more thickly textured than the first in the series. But no glory is absolutely locked. With enormous leaps the horse must lance the enemy Orblock’s belly. Evil explodes as the golden apple shoots out of its mouth. Once again words are invoked as magic: “Thank you thank you thank you,” the small bird who appears through billow clouds sings.

Once again, Gary Lippincott’s black and white drawings create counterpoint to text. Poet Chester is well aware that after trauma, and through multiple losses, love and language are saviors. Fires thaw ice, the poet’s embroidered tales and rich language bring us to a plateau far beyond our accustomed zone. Earth sparkles as brilliant as the inside of a geode. I URGE YOU to gift a child with one or both of these books. These would make holiday gifts for children between the ages of nine and twelve. As winter holidays approach go to a bookstore and open the covers of Hiding Glory and Marvel the Marvelous. These books are indeed gifts, which one keeps opening throughout the year.