Classic, Holland

A Dutch brother and sister work toward two goals--finding the doctor who can restore their father's memory and winning the competition for the silver skates.

What a delightful book this is. I am generally disappointed by children’s books, but Mary Mapes Dodge did not talk down to her audience, and as a result the read is enjoyable, even for an adult.

Interestingly enough, I had thought this book was written by a Hollander, but it was written by an American. She obviously wanted her young readers to learn something about a nation that she so clearly admired, so she included a great deal of history, descriptions of customs and well-drawn images of the countryside and the cities. The history was interwoven into the story as a group of boys showed off their land to a visiting English lad. It was done deftly, so that you could learn a great deal without feeling you had just sat through a lecture, and it did not subtract from, but rather added to, the boy’s adventures.

The story at the heart of the book, a tale of a poor but proud family with a seriously ailing father and a race in which the two children, Gretel and Hans compete to win a pair of silver skates, was nothing like the idea that I had harbored over the years. I never read the book as a child, so somewhere along the way I had adopted an erroneous idea of the plot. The actual story was much more complex and far more interesting than the one had imagined.

I’m sure modern children might find this a little old-fashioned, but it was sweet, had a good moral purpose, and would make a worthwhile read for them all the same.
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Imagination inspiring. I read this when I was 8 and remember everything. ( )

On a bright December morning long ago, two thinly clad children were kneeling upon the bank of a frozen canal in Holland. The sun had not yet appeared, but the gray sky was parted near the horizon, and its edges shone crimson with the coming day. Most of the good Hollanders were enjoying a placid morning nap, even Mynheer von Shoppelhoze, that worthy odd Dutchman, was still slumbering "in beautiful repose."

Now and then some peasant woman, posing a well-filled basket upon her head, came skimming over the glassy surface of the canal; or a lusty boy, skating to his day's work in the town, cast a good-natured grimace toward the shivering pair as he flew along.