Customer Reviews

A Day on Skates: The Story of a Dutch Picnic (Hilda Van Stockum Family Collection)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a wonderful book for younger children, and their older siblings, too. It portrays the values and attitudes of days gone by when boys were masculine and girls were feminine and everyone was happy that it was so. The story is interesting, the action is well-paced and fun; you feel as if you have been on the picnic with the children! One of our favorite books!

Hilda Van Stockum was born in Rotterdam in 1908. Her father was a naval officer and her family traveled extensively. By the time she was seventeen she had visited the East Indies, Paris, Switzerland, and Ireland. As she grew up Hilda was always drawing and telling stories and as a child she made a book for her brother when she was five years old.

Her family moved to Ireland, where Hilda attended the Dublin School of Art. From there she went home to the Netherlands and finished her education with four years in the Amsterdam Academy of Art, where she developed a love for painting. Then it was back to Ireland where she taught art and became an illustrator for Browne and Nolan, publishers in Dublin in the late 1920s.

During her lifetime Ms. Van Stockum has had several shows in fine galleries in Dublin, Geneva, Canada, American and, of course, in the Netherlands. She was president of the Children's Book Guild in Washington, D. C. in the early 70s and received the Newbery Honor Award in 1935 for this very title, A DAY ON SKATES.

"This is a book which mothers and fathers will sit up to finish, after the protesting child has been dragged firmly to bed." So begins the forward by Edna St. Vincent Millay and is it ever the truth. My mother read me this delightful book when I was a little girl and I've just recently read it as an adult, because I've just passed the big three-oh and Mom found me a copy for my birthday.

The story is set in Holland before the Second World War and it's about a pair of nine-year-old twins, Evert and Afke, who go with their class on a day's skating picnic. Along the way we learn an awful lot about life in Holland back then. But it is the children who make the book so divine. I loved this book with I was a child. I love it now. It's a shame it's not still available.

As I said above, I'm thirty now, an adult, and I've studied a bit of art myself, so now I can appreciate Ms. Van stockum's illustrations and her fine color artwork. This book is a real joy and I'm glad I've had a chance to revisit it again and I'll treasure it always.