My First LiveJournal Entry

It seems odd that only a couple of hours after starting my blog I'm starting a LiveJournal instead. But some friends talked me into it.

Partly, I suppose, it was the way some of the other folks with whom I hang out use it, too, meaning that we could take advantage of the community features. Partly it was the way the journal content is actually hosted on the site itself, so I don't have to futz about with an advert-spammy GeoCities page. But I think what really sold me was the fact that there is a PalmOS client--so I can plug it into my Visor and tap out entries while I'm at school or elsewhere. Sweet.

And now that I have not one but two separate web journal entry type things . . . I have no doubt I'm suddenly going to find I don't have a lot to say here. Story of my life.

Adventures of...WHO???

I've been reading an interesting book over the last couple of days; I'm about 2/3 of the way through it now. I first read it in school, and then I had the urge to read it again recently, so I acquired it on eBay. It's a rather odd book, from some points of view. It's a rather good book, make no mistake--I'm just wondering why the fellow wrote it.

This is nominally a "children's book," though it's not written down to kids (much like the Harry Potter novels in that respect). It comes off as sort of a cross between Indiana Jones and From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler with some of Raboo Rodgers's Magnum Fault thrown in, if you can imagine such a thing. The plot involves a 13-year-old girl, Liz Dutton, whose famous archaeologist father has been missing for over six months in the jungles of Guatemala. When he vanished, he was searching for a fabulous lost Maya city--and the clues inscribed on an ancient jade pendant lead her and her companion to suspect there was foul play (and artifact thievery) involved.

There seems to have been a great deal of serious scholarship involved in this book, or at least some very good faking it. It's sumptuously illustrated, and there are detailed drawings of Maya pictographs and stelae, explanations of ancient Maya and Olmec culture (including werejaguars), and a good deal of historical narrative. The writing is smooth and professional, serious with a good bit of humor interjected. It's a very good book, and it still holds up even now, as the rereading strips the veneer of nostalgia away.

The really strange thing, though, and the thing that makes me wonder why it was written is, well, the name and nature of Liz's travelling companion--the spirit of a 13-year-old ancestor from 1803 who comes out of a portrait in her father's old room. An ancestor named, well...the title of the book is The Adventures of Holly Hobbie.

That's right. Holly Hobbie, the character whose sole reason for being was apparently to look cute on greeting cards and a line of related toys and things. And that's what I just can't figure. I mean, I can see a serious adventure story written about the hunt for a missing archaeologist/father. I can see a book about Holly Hobbie. But I just can't see the two intersecting like this. It's like envisioning Strawberry Shortcake as an action hero, or a serious drama featuring Precious Moments characters. And yet...it works. It really does. It's played completely straight, and what humor there is in the story comes mostly from the "stranger in a strange land" meme of 18th-century Holly adapting to 20th-century America. In the end, I'm left wishing Dubelman had written a sequel.

Anyway, I can't help but think there has got to be an interesting story behind this book. Unfortunately, I can't find anything about it on a websearch, and there's no way to ask the author, Richard Dubelman, about it, as he passed away a couple of years ago.

In the end, it's quite an interesting and amusing book...as much for what it is as for what's in it.