Blog on the Lillypad
Tuesday, January 27, 2004
 | Diamond in the Window by Jane Langton
In my quest to have a more social life, I joined two reading clubs at our local bookstore. One of the clubs is devoted to the appreciation of children's literature. Our assignment was Diamond in the Window, which I had never read before. I purchased it and read it. Then that hideous ice storm came and wiped out all meetings for three straight days in Raleigh, so our monthly meeting was canceled. I'll have to express my ideas on the book here. As an introduction for children to some truly American ideas in literature, the book serves a great purpose and achieves its goal with a light, whimsical touch that I really liked. This is the sort of book a fifth or sixth grade teacher could read to a class while simultaneously introducing them to the Transcendentalists, the Industrial Revolution, the Gilded Age, etc., in history and social studies. |
But strictly as children's literature, I would lump the book in with The Borrowers and The Mouse and the Motorcycle. The story focuses on a rather long riddle, written in verse, that the two children (a brother and sister) solve, stanza by stanza. On their quest to solve the riddle, they encounter a mysteriou, evil figure that is truly haunting in its personification as a jack in the box. They also encounter relics of the Transcendental writers and some of their ideas.
The fantasy, to my taste, is over embellished, over mechanized, and not seamlessly fitted into the reality side of the story. Some readers love these types of stories. To me, there is a lack of naturalness to the fantasy. It becomes forced. Or, if not forced, it's overdone.
The story was terrific to read, very cheering, often funny, at times intriguing. But for me it just misses being truly classic. I would use it to spark discussion in a classroom setting, or as a companion to studies of the Romantic Age in American Literature and History for middle achool children. But the natural spark and flare in other books is absent in this book. And the ending, truly, comes across as forced to me. Your results may vary, and the book has received wide acclaim across the best critics of children's literature, but I would rate is a very good second place book.
