Good story buried in detail

Mary Mapes Dodge

Because the name of Mary Mapes Dodge (1831-1905) shows up in my family tree, I wanted to like her most famous book for children, Hans Brinker, or The Silver Skates (1865), more than I did.

One problem with it is simply that the passage of time has dated Dodge's language and story-telling techniques. More seriously, she apparently didn't think she had enough story to make a book — for a children's book I think she did — and so the middle part of the novel becomes a sort of travelogue. A group of boys, which does not even include Hans Brinker, takes a skating tour through much of Holland. The author describes scenes and customs,  remembers Dutch history and recalls Dutch folk tales. Meanwhile readers — or at least this reader — want to get back to the story.

And that central plot is a good one. Hans and Gretel Brinker are poor children who can afford only hand-crafted wooden skates, which will be hopeless for the upcoming big skating race for children. The prize is a pair of silver skates, one pair for the fastest boy and another for the fastest girl. The reason for their poverty is that their father, Rafe, suffered a serious head injury 10 years previously and has not been the same since. Sometimes he even becomes violent.

Eventually a crusty physician, whose own sadness has soured his personality, performs a risky operation, bringing Rafe back to his senses. With his memory restored, Rafe remembers two secrets that give the Brinkers prosperity and respectability again — and also make the doctor as beholding to the Brinkers as they are to him.

As for the race, that doesn't end quite as you might expect.

So this is a pleasant, sometimes exciting, story for children packaged in such a way that few children, at least today, would care to read.