DEATH | November 1 – HvS

Spike, 1909-1994 (L) and Hilda van Stockum
Marlin, 1908-2006. Photo taken in NJ in 1971.

November 1, 2017–Hilda van Stockum died this day, All Saints Day, in 2006. This is the 11th anniversary of her death.

Sadly this year, the main news is that Sheila died of cancer on September 25, a month before her 78th birthday. Now the living siblings are five. Olga, Brigid, Randal, John, Lis.

Sheila's life was celebrated last month in Watford at her funeral and family lunch.

The tenth anniversary of HvS's death last year was celebrated with the re-issue of a new (2016) edition of her 1975 book The Borrowed House, originally published by Farrar Straus. The family HvS Remembrances post has recently been updated.

Here are some of HvS's many obituaries and appreciations:

Reissued in 2016.

USA
New York Times, Nov. 4, 2006, New York Sun, Nov. 3, 2006, Children's Literature Network, Bethlehem Books, Publishers Weekly, Horn Book, Ana Braga-Henebry's Journal, Love2Learn Mom, Top Ten Sources - Children's Media, Hiram Library, Karen Edmisten Blog, Mailgate.
CANADA Toronto Globe and Mail, Nov. 2, 2006, National Post, Nov. 9, 2006.
IRELAND Irish Times, Nov. 18, 2006.
UK Books for Keeps, Jan. 2007, Berkhamsted Gazette, Nov. 8, 2006, World People's Blog, Achockoblog (Achuka).  
NETHERLANDS (in Dutch) Het Parool (Amsterdam, WWII Underground Resistance Newspaper), Nov. 9, 2006, Leesplein. 
GERMANY (in German) German-Language Wikipedia.  
KENYA Daily Nation, Nairobi, Nov. 14, 2006, p. 38. 
NEW ZEALAND Dorothy Neal White Newsletter. 

Related Posts: HvS English-Language Wikipedia Entry . HvS Dutch-Language Wikipedia Entry . Her brother Willem . European Pilgrimage 1954-55 . New Purple House Press Edition of The Borrowed House . Remembrances by Her Family (Updated to 2016)

HILDA VAN STOCKUM | Her Books (Updated Feb. 2, 2017)

Hilda van Stockum (1908-2006).

Dec. 25, 2016–Today is the 100th Anniversary of the memorial service for Inez Milholland Boissevain, who died on November 25, 1916 in Los Angeles. Inez's death played a significant considerable part in the passage in 1920 of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, recognizing the right of women to vote. Inez married my mother's uncle, Eugen Boissevain in 1913. 

An article I wrote about the centennial of the memorial ceremony for Inez and a dozen other blogposts in the last two months have generated a surge of interest in the books of my mother, Hilda van Stockum. See chart below and her photo (as an art student) at left.

Her 25 books for children and young adults were originally published by Harper & Brothers, Viking and Farrar Straus during the period 1934-1975, a span of 41 years. Her last book, which she thought was her best one, was The Borrowed House.

Of these books, 15 are currently available in English from three publishers in the United States. Her books are available in other languages from several foreign publishers (the Japanese edition of A Day on Skates and the Dutch edition of The Borrowed House are two examples).

Monthly page views, hildavanstockum.blogspot.com, end of Dec., 2016.

Three U.S. publishers currently sell 15 HvS books in the English langage:

The Purple House Press reissued The Borrowed House in 2016. This extraordinary book takes us back to Hitler's occupation of Holland and presents the situation in Amsterdam from the perspective of a 12-year-old German girl in Hitler Youth who took as gospel Hitler's theories of racial superiority. These theories did not fit the reality she came to see in occupied Amsterdam.

Bethlehem Books sells eight HvS books. It took a lead in 1995 in reissuing some of her books that were out of print, notably The Winged Watchman (originally published by Farrar Straus). Other books currently sold by Bethlehem Books are A Day on Skates, the Irish Trilogy (The Cottage at Bantry Bay, Francie on the Run and Pegeen), and the Mitchells Trilogy (The Mitchells or V for Victory, Canadian Summer and Friendly Gables).

Boissevain Books LLC sells six HvS books. It has in recent years reissued five HvS books that were out of print, including Little Old Bear, Patsy and the Pup, Kersti and St. Nicholas, Penengro, and King Oberon's Forest. It also sells Pamela Walks the Dog, originally published by Bethlehem Books. (Boissevain Books also issued a new edition of Olga Marlin's To Africa with a Dream, and Brigid Marlin's A Meaning for Danny and The Box House, and most recently published Kate Bodsworth's Princess Josephine and the Rainbow Dragon. Bois Books also sells a large-sized durable poster of Inez Milholland Boissevain, HvS's aunt.) In the pipeline for reissue are several more HvS books, including The Angel's Alphabet, Andries and Gerrit and the Organ. 

If you are interested in Holland, World War 2, Hitler's Occupation, the Resistance, or any of the other themes that Hilda van Stockum took up, her books continue to enlighten and enthrall. 

Click on the publisher's name above to have any of these books delivered to your door.

THE BORROWED HOUSE | Family Portrait

"The Six Daughters of Charles E. H. Boissevain," by Thérèse
Schwartze (1852-1918).

In Chapter 4 of The Borrowed House, Janna comes upon the family portrait of the van Arkels, who owned the house before the Occupation in 1940.

The house is now occupied by a German family with connections to Seyss-Inquart as well as by Janna and her parents.

Do we have any idea whether this portrait, to which Hilda van Stockum devotes a full page, is based on a real one?

Early in the 20th century a portrait was painted that was similar to the one that HvS describes. It was  done by Thérèse Schwartze, who was a fashionable painter of portraits in Amsterdam. The children are the nieces of my grandmother Olga Boissevain, so they would be first cousins of my mother.

My original thought was that my mother had in mind a portrait in the van Loon museum, But these portraits are older.

Posts on The Borrowed House: New Edition of The Borrowed House (Purple House Press) . Letter 1 . Letter 2 . Letter 3 . The van Arkel Portrait

Order a copy of the new (October 2016) edition of The Borrowed House.
     

HvS | 1971 to Brigid on "The Borrowed House" (Epiphany) (3 of 3)

HvS Sketch of Rhine Mermaids in a  Fountain.

[This third letter from Hilda van Stockum to her daughter Brigid in (an educated guess) 1971 expresses an epiphany. HvS has finally figured out how to end her book, which was later named The Borrowed House.]

Dear Bridgie,

I think I have the answer to my story! It is in the ring. 

[From the beginning of the book, Janna is wrapped up in the story behind Wagner's Ring of the Nibelung opera cycle, which was favored by Hitler and was widely told to young Germans in the late 1930s. The German educational system was made over to support Hitler's racial theories. Nazi racial theories and German myths replaced Bible stories and Greek and Roman history and literature.]

She [Janna] finds the ring in the fountain in the garden. The fountain has three mermaids, which are together with their tails and then lean backwards in a dance. But they had snow on them. She thinks they are the Rhine Maidens, clears the snow off them and finds the ring, which she this is their present.

Now the interesting thing is this: She wants power–she is obsessed with the helplessness of creatures and she wants magic. She imagines she has this power. She thinks if she turns the ring three times and makes a wish it will come true. But then she finds it comes true in a way she doesn't want [the Monkey's Paw theme].

She wants Mina, who won't let her see Sef much, for wise reasons, to be less interfering. When Mina falls downstairs (on the ordinary staircase; the other is too complicated and unnecessary) she feels terribly guilty. She didn't mean that. Then the difficulties she experiences in looking after Sef frighten her. When he disappears to deliver her documents she doesn't know what to do and she wishes with all her heart for Mina back. She turns the ring to that effect, only to find that Mina is ill in bed and only another person for her to take care of. 

She turns the ring and asks for the Baron to be removed–then sees the scene in which her mother turns him out–her weeping and misery–and turns the ring to bring him back with disastrous results at the dance.

I'll have to think up some other examples. I can do this (where I can't use real magic) because I know she doesn't influence events at all. So I don't have that horrible feeling of arbitrary happenings. But people who like magic may think she does.

The interesting thing is that is really her mind that is being affected. Whereas she could have been serene and trustful, thinking it was God's will, she gets panicky and guilty when she thinks it is her own [doing].

I told you once it [The Borrowed House] was a book about God, but I didn't know how. Now I know it is how trust in God changes our attitude so we can deal with things. Hugo tells her that. Hugo has a talk with her after he tells her of the Jewish couple who would not accept his help, but were content to let God's will be done.

Janna says: "It isn't God's will, it's Hitler's will."

Then Hugo says: "It's what you think it is. If you think it is Hitler's will you will feel differently about it than if you think it is God's will, and that is what makes the quality of your life. If you insist on everything being in your own control, you'll find sooner or later that you lack the love, the wisdom and the knowledge to do so. Those who let God rule their lives know He has all three and they have the security and peace the others lack."

So when, through disastrous wishes, she finally contemplates the burning house, Janna knows Hugo is right, that she hadn't the knowledge and the wisdom and the love to steer events properly, she throws her ring in the water, says goodbye to Bruenhilde and the old gods, and is content to be  Janna, to trust God's wisdom and God's providence.

And she does this at the moment she sees the Baron pleading with her mother–because she suddenly wants her mother to be free, to make the choice herself–then, as she throws the ring in the water, her mother sends the Baron away.

Do you know, I almost feel it should be called "The Ring"? And is it not interesting how a book grows–and how opposite it is to what you think? Anyone would say that this idea should come first, that it would be impossible to have everything fit in otherwise. But for me it had to come last, the idea of magic would have repelled me–I can only handle it because I know (though the children won't) that there was no magic, only an illusion. An illusion which caused the child great suffering. And it is an illusion shared by primitive people–who often think they have caused disasters that are natural.

And this magic does not take away from the reality of the story, whereas the magic I envisioned before did. I don't know whether she ever realizes there was no magic–perhaps when she grows older she'll know–but in the book she firmly thinks it was magic, or she would not throw the ring away. And see how beautifully that rounds off The Götterdämmerung [the last opera of Wagner's Ring cycle]–the burning of the heathen conception of magic, the old gods, Brunhild. 

Do you understand now that I sometimes think a book is there, in the beginning, and you only dig it out, and find off pieces? Wouldn't you say so, from the way this story grew?

And yet, done the other way, it would have been all wrong.It would have been a religious and political tract. Perhaps there is a same truth in our lives. That we slowly have to find out the meaning in the seeming jumble of our circumstances, because if we started with the meaning, our lives would be too poor. I don't know. Tell me what you think!
Lots of love,
Mim

P.S. This is not only the answer to the story, it is the answer the the questions people ask: "What does prayer do?" What it does is, [permits people] to be able to meet circumstances freely, because they have chosen them–in the trust of God's knowledge and love. Having chosen them makes all the difference, like [the difference between] a love-act and a rape. Maybe we don't influence circumstances with prayer–but we do influence attitudes and the most important thing about circumstances is the attitude! The only real freedom we have is to choose what IS. "I am who am."
M

Posts on The Borrowed House: New Edition of The Borrowed House (Purple House Press) . Letter 1 . Letter 2 . Letter 3 . The van Arkel Portrait

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HvS | 1971 to Brigid on "The Borrowed House" (Evil) (2 of 3)

The original cover by
Farrar Straus, 1975.

[The following letter from Hilda van Stockum to her daughter Brigid was a postscript to, and as long as, Letter 1 but was much more than a postscript. It's a self-contained, thoughtful exegesis on evil–as treated in The Borrowed House, and with extraordinary relevance to today. Within the past two weeks, I heard someone say that "the U.S. attempt to democratize Middle Eastern politics has resulted in the Middle-Easternization of U.S. politics". Now read the third paragraph below, which I have put in bold face.]

Letter #2 from HvS to Brigid (c. 1971)

P.S. I keep adding to this letter. The more I think about it, the more I can't see it [The Borrowed House] as a simple conversion story [i.e., conversion of Janna from Hitler Youth to an opponent of Naziism].

First of all, I wonder whether my reluctance to depict evil or to have evil happen is so wrong. At present we are fed with a steady diet of violence and it is unfashionable to think up happy endings, but don't you think that contributes to violence?

Is it accident that all the old tales were about heroes who surmounted evil? Don't we become finally what we aspire to, and does it not depend on the model we have? I believe the modern lack of spine and permissiveness came through a generation of books that told people they were not responsible, fate decided, you had to bow before fate.

I felt inspired writing that second chapter [of The Borrowed House].  Do children need to read about another weak sister who sees finally the error of her ways? The more I think, the more I read about this subject, the less it evolves in such a simple pattern. I am glad of your criticism for it forces me to think deeper.

If Gurdjieff is right, then depicting evil and good in simple terms is bad, then that means staying in the opposites. People don't like that Janna stole and lied, but she had a soft heart. I've just read The Gift Horse by Hildegarde Knef [who died in 2002] and it is an extraordinary book. I think Hildegarde and Janna have a lot in common. If you can't get it I'll send you my copy. It gives a very good picture of Germany before, during and after the war.

Hildegarde was not a Nazi either. [She] managed to stay out of Hitler Youth. [But she] suffered from Germans, Russians and the Allies. And the simplifications that people made of good and evil were the reason. She never fitted. So I think these simplifications are wrong. Christ wasn't kidding when he said love your enemies.

I must not show Janna as evil and becoming good, but I can show that her judgement changes and that what she thinks is bad in herself she finds out is good. She is ashamed of her own soft heart.

I have been trying to think what the real evil of Naziism is, because most people just stop at the violence, and violence we see even in an innocent baby. Cruelty is also a universal trait; I was cruel to my donkey and very ashamed of it afterwards. I took real pleasure in beating him.

Unless we recognize that, we can't sift the real reason why Hitler was so bad. I think it was that he waged psychological warfare against good, spiritual good. For instance, when the Dutch wanted to go on a General Strike to protest arrests, the Nazis would spread rumours that the arrest [story] was not true, so that the moment passed and the Strike became half-hearted and ineffective. There was a diabolical knowledge of how to use human frailties to thwart good intentions.

The Pope has recently reaffirmed the existence of the devil and I don't think anyone can understand Hitler except as a puppet in Satan's hand. The funny thing is that I read in the Nuremberg trials his plans for the future, which included killing all American Jews and negroes, abolishing all churches etc. At the end he says: "And then I will retire and do some farming." [I have not been able to find this reference. JTM] I wonder if that strikes you also as excruciatingly funny? It can only indicate that here the real Hitler was permitted to say something [after his death]!

I suddenly saw my story [The Borrowed House] more as a What Daisy Knew tale, innocence besieged by lies and evil.

The funny thing about writing is that it IS on the level of contrasts. Painting is on a higher plane; there the contrasts are merely merely mechanical and the aim is unity. Poets are the only writers who achieve that too. Abstract painting has been following the contrasts by eliminating the psychical meanings and making the mechanical the most important. Maybe that its descriptive of our time.

You see the story [of Janna] as a completely Hitlerized girl, who does Hitler things, then goes to Holland, goes into a house where she is surrounded by Nazi grownups and hostile Dutch. Why should she be converted?

I see the story as a very individual child who has been fed beautiful lies about Naziism but has not met the horrors. She has natural virtue and when confronted with the situation in Holland see through the lies, at least partially, and takes action. I can't see it any other way.

Hilde Knef writes very amusingly of how she got into trouble with her Nazi schoolmarms, asking questions like:

• "Who do have to defend ourselves against? Nobody has attacked us." and
• "Why do you want to bring all those Germans in Sudetenland and South America back if we lack lebensraum?"

Of course, I can't let Janna do that. It would spoil my story completely. Janna must be acquainted with the good side [of life in Germany under the Nazis in the 1930s], which there was. One of my pupils just told me that they got letters from German relatives saying Hitler was the best thing that ever happened to Germany–no unemployment, no vice, etc. [My pupil] Mildred is worried because people here are saying: "Hitler wasn't so bad–it was only about the Jews he was bad, we need someone like him." 

I think it is far more important for me to pinpoint what Hitlerism really was, than to have Janna undergo a moral revolution. Tell me what you think.

Love, Mim

Posts on The Borrowed House: New Edition of The Borrowed House (Purple House Press) . Letter 1 . Letter 2 . Letter 3 . The van Arkel Portrait

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HvS | 1971 to Brigid on "The Borrowed House" (1 of 3)

Just reissued in a new
edition–The Borrowed
House, Oct. 3, 2016.

During the early 1970s, Hilda van Stockum and her daughter Brigid were in frequent correspondence about HvS's new book, which would be called The Borrowed House. It was an urban version of The Winged Watchman.

In both books, HvS wrestles with the question of Hitler and Naziism. The Winged Watchman is written from the perspective of a Dutch patriot during the Nazi Occupation. The Borrowed House is a more difficult book because it starts with a committed Hitler Youth girl and follows her gradual understanding of the evil that Hitler represents and creates.

HvS in the early 1970s corresponded with Brigid about the book rather than talking with her because she was still in Washington, D.C. and Brigid (like her sisters Sheila and Lis) was in the UK.

Here is the first letter to Brigid about The Borrowed House. There is no date on it, but it is on U.S.-sized 8.5"x11" paper and therefore would have been sent from Washington, D.C. The reference to the Tasaday tribe suggests it was soon after 1971 (see link to the Tasaday in the letter), and the latest date would have been 1973, when HvS moved to Berkhamsted and would have had no need to write to Brigid any more because they saw each other frequently. I have corrected typos and I have broken the text up in a few places to make it easier to read.

Letter 1 to Brigid (c. 1971)

Dearest Brigid,

I just got your letter about my story [The Borrowed House] and I am so glad you understand... I think the middle course is the thing: especially as my reading shows me more and more that there was no real unity behind Hitler [or against him! JTM]–

• There were the people for whom Hitler was a messiah who fulfilled the violence and hatred in them,

• the timid ones who wanted to get on with their own lives and not be  bothered (it is after all only righteous indignation that makes you brave the dangers of protest, and not everyone is capable of it, but God bless it, we need it), and

• the brave ones, some who merely saw to it that their children knew the truth and tried to keep them out of the schools and [Nazi] organizations,

• some who actively were protesting and putting their lives on the roulette table, and 

• others who plotted Hitler's death.

Such a kaleidoscope! But some youths were poisoned [by Nazi propaganda], and went on fighting after the armies surrendered and forced the Allies to fight babes of thirteen to fifteen who threw grenades and handled machine guns. I hope God gave them credit for their bravery in a bad cause! The Nazis hadn't had them long enough to do irreparable harm, but the Communists, who have, are faced with a rebellious youth. So who can say there is no God?

What you say about yourself is true but I love you for it. You did shirk work and your generosity sometimes outruns your capacity, but then I wonder if I am too cautious. I know that whatever I do [in the way of giving] will have to be repeated over and over again, one donation and a monthly envelope comes, and when I feel I can't afford it, a voice tells me: "You mean, you're going to save on your FRIENDS?"

By the way, in the Wendepunkt [published in German by the family and followers of Dr. Max Bircher-Benner, who espoused a vegetarian diet and invented Bircher Müsli–JTM] of this month are some interesting articles. Ralph [Bircher] tells of a tribe [the Tasaday] they have found south of the Philippines which has never had any other human contact. These people live solely on the fruit and roots and leaves that grow naturally and on some crustaceans they catch with their hands, wrap in leaves and roast by the fire. They know no steel, don't hunt, don't cultivate, have no herds.

When the people who discovered them imagined them to be hungry because they eat no meat and gave them weapons and told them they could killed and eat animals they were deeply shocked. "But they are your FRIENDS!" they said.

They use the weapons to get the bark out of palm trees, a luxury for them. They live in perfect peace, which suggests that the story of paradise [in Genesis] may have more foundation than people think. The name of the group is Tasaday. [Later, the Tasaday story was questioned and was found to be partly true and partly bogus.–JTM]

There is also an article by a Mrs. Tina Keller, who trained in psychotherapy under Jung and belonged to the Oxford Group. She says that Jung feels that wholeness in a person means balance, and when she became Grouper she became very one-sided. She wanted to put her knowledge in the service of God and the Group loved to count doctors among its members.

Jung had  taught her not to neglect her inner self, but the group forced her into more and more outward activity. She enjoyed that. And she found out that even good things can become an addiction.  They honored her. She was a fighter in a great cause. Her ideals pulled her along with a super zeal. And suddenly she fell into an abysmal depression, until she took the time to listen to her unconscious again. (This is strange, for the Group does recommend quiet time every day, but I always found it pretty impossible; it's not so easy to sit down and have communion with God like that!)

She got her balance back by writing, anything and everything, until she had written herself out. She then had an hour with Jung and they discussed this experience. It had taught her how necessary the daily communication with her unconscious was, and that she had to remember the opposites if she wanted to keep her balance, among the heights and depths of her life. She says that when she neglects this she is in trouble but when she pays attention to her soul she gets help from all sorts of sources. 

She sounds as if she has read Gurdjieff, but of course Gurdjieff is based on Jung.  She says almost what you say, that a high ideal can waft you into an illusion, that one swings happily away from concrete facts and one's own shortcoming. But these belong to the wholeness. Progress is only possible by steadfastly eyeing the facts of one's concrete existence.

That is what you have done. That is what is so wonderful about children; they teach us so much and one can always be sure of their forgiveness–they so pathetically want to believe in us!

She goes on to say that every virtue has in it a vice, which is a truism but one we have to keep in mind, I suppose! She ends by saying that while the old idea was that a family represented wholeness, now they want the wholeness to belong to the individual, and she does not know whether that is progress. I'm sorry you don't know German; I could send these things to you.

Have had no answer yet about about a house in Switzerland! [Spike was working for the AARP, setting up the International Federation on Aging, and they could well have moved from Washington to Geneva. What happened a year later is that Spike gave up his IFA job and they moved to England to be near to their  three daughters and their many grandchildren. Their first UK house was high up on Castle Hill Road in Berkhamsted, Herts.–JTM]

Lots of love,
Mim

Posts on The Borrowed House: New Edition (Purple House Press) . Letter 1 . Letter 2 . Letter 3 . The van Arkel Portrait

Order a copy of the new (October 2016) edition of The Borrowed House.

HvS | "The Borrowed House" – "Stunning" New Edition!

Books Ready to Be Shipped for Oct. 3, 2016.

The third English-language edition of The Borrowed House by Hilda van Stockum has just appeared.

A friend who has been in the publishing business for decades just wrote to me to say that  it is a "stunning" edition. (I haven't seen the book yet because I am in the UK, but I have a photograph of the books getting ready for shipment, at left.)

Once and future cover.

The first edition of the book appeared in 1975, published by Farrar Straus. My mother always considered it her best book. It went out of print in the 1990s and Bethlehem Books picked it up with a different cover. Then the Bethlehem Books edition went out of print and the price of the book on Amazon went up to above $200 a copy.

The new (Oct. 3 pub date) $13.95 edition by the Purple House Press in Cynthiana, Kentucky brings back the original cover, with a better-then-ever-quality scan of the painting on which it was based.

Meanwhile, a Dutch translation of the book has appeared recently, the second book of HvS to have been translated into her native Dutch.

My sister Brigid worked with my mother HvS on The Borrowed House, and I have just received two letters that HvS wrote to Brigid about the book that I will hasten to type up and post here. They are deeply philosophical and I am eager to share them with you. Be back in touch!

Meanwhile, get the book! Here is a link to Amazon.

WW2 | 55K Sales of "Winged Watchman" in Reprint

Hilda van Stockum's book about a Dutch miller's family in wartime Holland was originally published by Farrar Straus & Cudahy (later Farrar Straus & Giroux).

It passed 55,000 in sales in the first quarter of 2016. It is sold by Bethlehem Books.

This is a very high sales figure for a book that was allowed to go out of print. At $15 per book, that amounts to $825,000 in revenue. The book generates about $40,000 in sales per year. 

So by 2020 it will have generated about $1 million in reprint.

A companion book that van Stockum wrote to The Winged Watchman is about a Nazi-occupied house in Amsterdam. It is called The Borrowed House. 

A new edition is about to be released by Purple House Press in Cynthiana, Kentucky, which was founded by Jill Morgan.

The new edition will have a foreword about HvS's life by me and an endnote by Christine Schintgen with information about HvS's writing.

HvS | In Eight Languages (Updated May 12, 2016)

The first HvS book to be translated into
Japanese was A Day on Skates in 2009,
75 years after it was first published!

The following is a representative list of 17 translations of or by Hilda van Stockum. It is incomplete (some illustrators are omitted) and subject to changes (cited copyrights may have been transferred). The full list of books is likely to be closer to 30.

Hilda van Stockum's books have been translated from English into seven other languages–Danish, Dutch, French, German, Hebrew, Japanese and Portuguese.

Her translations into English are from the Dutch or German. (Her French wasn't bad either.)

Six HvS Books Selected for Translation

A Day on Skates (1934) was translated into Japanese as A Skating-Picnic (2009).

The Cottage at Bantry Bay (1936) was translated into Dutch (1958), Hebrew (1961), Japanese (2009) and Portuguese (1971). With four foreign translations, this is van Stockum's most-translated book.

Pegeen (1939) was translated into German (1963).

The Mitchells (1944) was translated into Danish (1964) and Portuguese (1974).

The Winged Watchman (1962) was translated into Danish (1968) and French (1991)

The Borrowed House (1975) was translated into Dutch (2012).

Danish (2 books)

The Mitchells was translated by Rose-Marie Tvermoes (Lene Andreasen also listed–was he the editor?) as Miller-Bornene and published in Copenhagen by Forlaget Fremad press, 1964.

The Winged Watchman was translated as Pa post i mollen by Host & Sons Forlag in Copenhagen, 1968.

Dutch (2 books, plus five Dutch-English translations by HvS)

I have asserted elsewhere that the first book of Hilda van Stockum to be translated into Dutch was The Borrowed House, translated as Het Gestolen Huis in 2012 and published by Mozaiek Junior. I was wrong, because...

The Cottage at Bantry Bay was previously translated as Het Huisje aan de Baai ("The House on the Bay") Translator: Joh E. Kuiper, Tony Holst. Publisher: N.V. Uitgeverij, A. Roelofs Van Goor Meppel, 1958).

Translated from the Dutch by Hilda van Stockum:

Pothast-Grimberg,  C. E. Corso the Donkey (Constable, London, 1962). Originally published as Het Ezeltje Corso (Van Goor Zonen, The Hague, Holland).

Selleger-Elout,  J. M. Marian and Marion (Viking, NYC, 1949). Copyright to the original Dutch book by N. V. Servire, 1934. Viking translation published on the same day in Canada by Macmillan.

Thyssen, Theo. Young Kees.  Manuscript of translation and adaptation donated to the Grummond Center on Children's Literature at the University of Southern Mississippi. Publication status not yet determined.

van Iverson, Siny. The Smugglers of Buenaventura (William Morrow, NYC, 1974). Originally published as De Smokkelaars Van Buenaventura (Uitgeversmij n.v. H.P. Leopolds, The Hague, Holland, 1964).

van Iverson, Siny. The Spirits of Chocamata (William Morrow, NYC, 1977). Originally published as Schaduw over Chocomata (Uitgeversmij n.v. H.P. Leopolds, The Hague, Holland).

French (1 book)

The Winged Watchman was translated into French as Le Veilleur.  Translated from "the American" by André Divault. Published in paperback by Hachette Jeunesse, 1991, acknowledging the Collins edition in Toronto as the original (1962).

German (1 book, plus two German-English translations by HvS)

Pegeen was translated as Polly und die Culainskinder, published by Matthias Grunewald-Verlag-Mainz, 1963.

Translated from the German by Hilda van Stockum:

Achim Bröger, Bruno, William Morrow & Co., NYC, 1975. Originally published in German as Der Ausreden-Erfinder und Andere Bruno-Geschichten, by K. Thienemanns Verlag, Stuttgart, 1973.

Achim Bröger, Outrageous Kasimir, William Morrow & Co., NYC, 1976. Originally published in German as Steckst Du Dahinter, Kasimir? published in Stuttgart by K. Thienemanns Verlag,  Stuttgart, 1975. (Story of someone who alters people's behavior by getting inside them.)

Hebrew (1 book)

An Israeli edition of The Cottage at Bantry Bay was published in 1961.

Japanese (1 book)

A Day on Skates (1934) was translated into Japanese as A Skating-Picnic by Yoshiko Funato in 2009. The cover is shown above. It was published in 2009 by Fukuinkan Shoten Publishers, Japan.

Portuguese (2 books)

The Cottage at Bantry Bay is translated as Quatro Crianças e um Cão (Four Kids and a Dog). A Portuguese-language edition was published in Porto, Portugal, by Livraria Civilização Editora in 1971, authorized by the Viking Press, NYC, which published the original work in 1938. A paperback edition of The Cottage at Bantry Bay has been published by Bethlehem Books by contract with the author and (since 2006) the author's estate. All residual rights have been transferred by the estate to Boissevain Books LLC, in NYC, of which the sole managing director is John Tepper Marlin. Illustrations are copyright until 2076 (70 years after the death of the illustrator). The literary copyright is valid until 2056 (50 years after the death of the author).

The Mitchells: Five for Victory is translated as A Família Mitchell (The Mitchell Family). A Portuguese-language edition was published in Porto, Portugal, by Livraria Civilização Editora in 1974, authorized by the Viking Press, NYC, which published the original work in 1945. A paperback edition of The Mitchells has been published by Bethlehem Books by contract with the author and (since 2006) the author's estate. All residual rights have been transferred by the estate to Boissevain Books LLC, New York City, of which John Tepper Marlin is the sole managing director. Illustrations are copyright until 2076 (70 years after the death of the illustrator). The literary copyright is valid until 2056 (50 years after the death of the author).

This blog is sponsored by Boissevain Books, which publishes books by Hilda van Stockum. To buy a book and support keeping her work alive, go to www.boissevainbooks.com.

HvS | "The Borrowed House" Now in Dutch at Urging of Ineke Kraijo

Dutch teen novelist Ineke
Kraijo liked The Borrowed
 House and urged it be
 translated into Dutch. It is
now, as Het Gestolen Huis.

Sorry for my excitement about the translation of a book by Hilda van Stockum (1908-2006) into Dutch. I just found out today that the Dutch publisher, Mozaiek, says one of its young-adult novelists, Ineke Kraijo, twice asked them to translate the book for a Dutch audience

The publisher quotes Hilda van Stockum, my mother, as saying:

Writing this true story was my way to forgive the Germans. Janna, a German girl, comes to live with her parents in occupied Amsterdam. When she arrives, she knows the Führer has the best for everyone, of course, but she slowly finds out unexpected things.

Three-quarters-Dutch (her mother was half-Irish, half-Dutch) van Stockum lost both her brothers – Willem and Jan – and many other relatives in World War II.

She was a highly esteemed international children's author. Her books have been translated into French, German, Portuguese, Hebrew, Danish and Japanese. The translation of The Borrowed House (The Stolen Home) by Mosaic (Mozaiek) now gives her book the place it deserves in the Netherlands (see May 11).

More information about the book can be found on the web shop "Bookshop Smit" in Gouda, the Netherlands.

The only other HvS book translated into Dutch was The Cottage at Bantry Bay, about the O'Sullivan family.

TRANSLATION: The Borrowed House Now in Dutch!

It was a great source of disappointment for my late mother, Hilda van Stockum (1908-2006), that during her lifetime none of her books was ever translated into her native Dutch language. She was born in Rotterdam and wrote five books* about Holland, although several publishers have over the years discussed with me the possibility of bying rights.

Hilda van Stockum's obituary in Het Parool described her as a famous writer and illustrator - famous everywhere in the world except her native country,  the Netherlands.

My mother always said that fame doesn't come until after one is dead. To which a granddaughter responded, trying to console her with the honors to come: "But Granny, you are almost dead."

The English Edition

Now the granddaughter's prediction about her prospects  is coming true. The first Dutch edition of a Hilda van Stockum came out last week. It was a translation of The Borrowed House. The Dutch name - the Dutch being less forgiving about the Nazi Occupation than an English-language publisher - is Het Gestolen Huis (The Stolen House).

*Her five books about Holland were A Day on Skates (her first, 1934; it was a Newbery Honor Roll book), Andries, Gerrit and the Organ, The Winged Watchman (1962) and The Borrowed House (her last full-length book, 1975).

Postscript

WW2 BOOKS | Winged Watchman #6 (Updated Dec. 23, 2015)

Ranks 6th out of 193 books
for children on World War II..

On the Goodreads list of the 193 Best Books for Children on World War II, two books by Hilda van Stockum rank in the top 8, and a third, The Mitchells, ranks 27th.

Here is the list: http://bit.ly/19SWY2E

World War II on the
home front, in Washington.
Ranks 27th out of 193.

The Winged Watchman ranks 6th. It is about a family that lives in a windmill. Two boys– Doris aged 10 and Dirk Jan aged 14–are the heroes. The book is recommended for children and young adults in the 8-14 age range.

Here is what is posted as a review on Goodreads:

This acclaimed story of World War II is rich in suspense, characterization, plot and spiritual truth. Every element of occupied Holland is united in a story of courage and hope: a hidden Jewish child, an "underdiver," a downed RAF pilot, an imaginative, daring underground hero, and the small things of family life which surprisingly carry on in the midst of oppression.

The Borrowed House ranks 8th.  It is about a German family that moves to Amsterdam,. The parents are there to entertain the troops. The daughter had been in Hitler Youth in Germany and is now in the midst of occupied Holland. She learns a lot, and decides that Hitler is a bad man. Based on a true story.

These lists are looked at by librarians, teachers, home-schooling parents and curriculum designers.

If you go to this site, pleas vote for one of the  Hilda van Stockum books... and of course any other books you recognize? I notice Anne Frank's diary sometimes drops to second place.

Ranks 8th out of 193.

To vote, here is the site on the Goodreads list–the same link as above:

http://bit.ly/19SWY2E

If you would like a free HvS book sent to you to review for Amazon or to vote on a Goodreads list - let me know and I will send it - at least to the first 20 people who ask me. Email me at john@cityeconomist.com.

HILDA VAN STOCKUM NEWS

Hilda  van Stockum, Self-Portrait

- A Dutch publisher located near the Hague has translated "The Borrowed House" into Dutch. That is only the second HvS book to be translated into Dutch, the other being "The Cottage at Bantry Bay", with the title changed to "The Little House [Huisje] on the Bay".  We are sending her the best photos we can find of HvS in her 20s or 30s.
- HvS's obituary in the newspaper "Het Parool" said that her books were famed around the world, everywhere it seems except the country of her birth. With two Dutch books out, that should change. The next two books that should be translated into Dutch are "The Winged Watchman" (which has sold 45,000 copies since it was given up for dead by Farrar, Straus and Giroux) and "A Day on Skates" (which should be given the name in the Dutch edition of "A Day on Skates in Friesland").
- HvS is appearing in a forthcoming book on converts to Catholicism. She would be so pleased to think of herself being in the tradition of Newman and Knox. Chesterton was the writer, she told me, that persuaded her to become a Catholic.
- An Australian comic book publisher is looking into making a comic out of a movie script based on "The Winged Watchman". The Japanese editions of "A Day on Skates" - the first HvS book translated into Japanese - sold well in 2009-2010. The Japanese Ambassador's wife wrote to us saying how much she loved the book. The publisher is happy and is looking at the possibility of doing more books by HvS.

- Portuguese editions of "The Cottage at Bantry Bay" and "The Mitchells" were published. 

-. A French edition of "The Winged Watchman" appeared  under the name "Le Veilleur" published by Hachette.

-. A German edition of "Penengro" was  published..

V for Victory Anniversary July 25

The Mitchells, 1945 [Click here for link]

On July 25, 1941, the New York Times reported, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill announced a plan to take back Europe from Hitler, called "V for Victory".

This was also the subtitle of Hilda van Stockum's book The Mitchells, which is about the World War II effort as seen through the eyes of her five children growing up in Washington, DC.

We were in Washington because my father E.R. "Spike" Marlin, HvS's husband, was an early recruit to the management ranks of FDR's New Deal, via a competitive Civil Service exam he took in 1933 after FDR's administration had taken over. He worked for the Farm Credit Administration, the Civil Service Commission, and the Budget Bureau before the war broke out. After the war he want back to the Budget Bureau.

How did the war affect the Mitchell and Marlin families? The reality was quite close to the fictionalized story, with some important differences. Here are ten of the ways the war affected the family as described in the first 26 pages of the book, with some comments on the reality of the story:

1. On page 1, Joan is teary-eyed because Daddy is leaving to be drafted. The five children and Grannie are at Union Station to see them off. Uncle Jim has already been drafted. Fact: Daddy was exempted from the draft because he was working for the Federal Government already. But he was  taken away from Washington work for the OSS in Dublin and then London, after a period of training with firearms and OSS protocols.

2. Daddy is described as an electrical engineer. Fact: He actually concentrated in history and political science at Trinity College, Dublin. He was recruited by the OSS because he had many Irish friends and his first post was in Ireland where he worked with the Irish and British intelligence services on the activities of the German and Japanese representatives in Ireland.

3. Uncle Jim had already enlisted. Fact: Dr. Willem Jacob van Stockum, HvS's brother, who was teaching at the University of Maryland, was subject to the draft although a Dutch citizen. WvS got a deferral to complete his academic year at Maryland. The American military apparently wanted him to work on the bomb and he wanted to see action, so WvS volunteered for the Royal Canadian Air Force, where he became a bomber flying instructor and then a pilot of a Halifax bomber.

4. To skip to the end of the book - both Daddy and Uncle Jim return. Fact:  HvS's husband returned from the war, but her brother Willem perished after a series of successful bombing runs on German-occupied France during the week of the Normandy landing, June 1944. He flew with the Royal Air Force in 1943 and 1944, and was shot down over Laval, France on June 10, 1944. He is buried with the other six members of his crew and with the seven members of another Halifax bomber on the same mission.

5. On page 10, Peter makes the point that in a war people have to leave home, even if it isn't safe.

6. On page 11, the taxi driver explains that he is too old to be drafted, but has two sons in Italy.

7. On page 20, Uncle Jim is described by the children as braver than Daddy because Uncle Jim enlisted. Mother explains: "Uncle Jim had no one else to worry about while Daddy has all of you as well as Grannie and me."

The NYTimes Story
on V for Victory

8. On pages 21-22 the three eldest children discuss the fact that Mother is not looking so well and wonder what they can do to help her and help win the war. Prices have risen and military pay is not as good as private-company pay. The "V for Victory" (Five for Victory) idea is something they come up with as the name of a club to make a contribution to the war effort. Their first ideas were to earn war stamps and save scrap. Fact:  The V for Victory slogan was picked up in the United States - Victory Gardens were one manifestation. Prices did rise a lot during World War II, but were kept down by (1) sale of Victory Bonds via stamps sold in denominations as small at ten cents, which took purchasing power out of the economy, and (2) price controls.

9. On page 25, the two club songs of the V for Victory club are "Anchors Aweigh" for Daddy and "Into the Wild Blue Yonder" for Uncle Jim. Fact:
Daddy was in the OSS (the World War II-era U.S. intelligence service, succeeded by the CIA), but two of his brothers were in the Navy; both returned. Uncle Willem was in the air force, but not the U.S. Air Force.

10. The Five for Victory Club on page 26 shows how the club got money for turning in (recycling, we would say today) bottles. Peter took the money and bought stamps toward a V for Victory bond. Fact: The Savings Bonds were a brilliant idea for financing the war effort.

Hilda van Stockum wrote three books about World War II. The Mitchells is about an American family in the United States. The Winged Watchman is about a Dutch family in German-occupied rural Holland. The Borrowed House is about a German couple that goes to a Dutch city, Amsterdam, to entertain the troops (the SS and the Wehrmacht), and their daughter Janna, who is shocked to find that the Dutch do not welcome their German invaders.

The Mitchells is usually grouped with two later stories about the family in Canada. But the three books about World War II make their own trilogy. As a group, for me they are the centerpiece of Hilda van Stockum's work. It is remarkable to have these family-oriented perspectives on that terrible war. Someone once asked: "Who is the protagonist in The Mitchells?"  If you had to pick a single person, it would have to be Mother. But my mother's answer to the question was: "The Family is the protagonist. It is the Family that must cope with all the disruptions and threats."

The two books about the Dutch occupation are among the top dozen books about World War II for children (out of 125 listed). The Mitchells is among the top 40 on the same list.