Up the Down Staircase (1965) by Bel Kaufman

👩🏼‍🏫 Sylvia Barrett is an English teacher with idealistic hope of inducing her pupils to the love of writing, and of Chaucer. However, teaching at a minority high school like Calvin Coolidge High, opens her eyes that nurturing and shaping young minds is not a simple task. This book is a parody of American public school system, particularly in the 1960s when this book was published (I have no idea how relevant it is today). 👩🏼‍🏫 The book is structured as a compilation of memos and circulars from the office or the authority, inter-classrooms notes between teachers, fragment of discarded notes dropped in the trashcan, essays to be graded, Sylvia's letters to her best friend out of school, and one of my favorites: notes from the students dropped in the class suggestion box. Through all the entangled communication, readers would catch the frustrating degree of bureaucracy which involved in a teacher's daily task (when the teachers complained, the answer will be: "Let it be a challenge"). I was wondering how Sylvia could manage to divide her time between reading all those instructions and whatnots, actually teaching a subject, and reading and writing notes to her best pal teacher Bea Schachter (how they exchange notes during school hours, I wonder? Do they use students for courier? This was 1965, before internet era, anyway). 

👩🏼‍🏫 And the students. I have left talking about them for last, because they are the best part of this book. I believe that one can value a teacher from his/her students. That is, a good teacher would reflect his/her influence on the student's improvement. And by reading all those notes from the suggestion box, I could surmise that Sylvia is a dedicated and affectionate teacher. The suggestion box is a brilliant idea from Sylvia (the school ought to adapt that to their system). Basically, it's a box where any student could drop notes, whether signed or anonymous, usually on a particular subject. But sometimes, even students from other classroom dropped notes to say something to Sylvia. This is a good idea, because the students could express their honest views on things without being afraid of punishment or judgement. From that notes, Sylvia could gather how the students gained from her teaching, and what were their problems.

👩🏼‍🏫 There are students who signed their names - usually those who approved of her, or loved her teaching. But the anonymous letters are the most interesting; these were from students who, at first, hated her, or disapproved of her teaching. There's one who signed as "The Hawk", complete with a doodle, who always end his notes with 'this is the last time I'm writing to you' or something like that. However, The Hawk would always write again everytime Sylvia asked their opinion or suggestion, and always with the same ending, haha! I think Sylvia's success with her pupils is, first of all, because she listens to them. These students, who come from low social background with all the problematic nature, often need to be listened, understood, and appreciated.

👩🏼‍🏫 Amidst these chaotic life Sylvia must endure everyday, she received an offer from a private school who'd give her position of English teacher with comparatively free reign; less students, focusing on the teaching, free subjects and less clerical duties, and she could even have a seminar on Chaucer - the topic she loves. Moreover, the building offers comfort, not like the public school's with its broken doors or windows, and lacking of... well... almost everything needed to teach, as Sylvia put it in one of her letters to her friend:

We have keys but no locks (except in lavatories), blackboards but no chalk, students but no seats, teachers but no time to teach.

The question is, will Sylvia accept the offer and have her own ideal of teaching? Or will she remain at Calvin Coolidge and face the same chaos and frustration everyday?

👩🏼‍🏫 This was not a very comfortable read for me. I skipped almost all the official memos - I didn't understand half of it anyway - and only read the more interesting communications of human beings (internal memos to other teachers, or the students'). Nevertheless, this is a touching story of dedicated teachers who fought alongside their pupils against poverty and hierarchy, to obtain a better life for future generations.

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐1/2

Airs Above the Ground (1965) by Mary Stewart

🐎 My second read of Mary Stewart brought me to Austria, to the circus and dancing Lippizaner stallions. The heroine is Vanessa March, a young wife, whose salesman husband is supposed to be on business trip to Stockholm, but she saw his glimpse on a newsreel, during a big fire in a circus in Austria! And moreover, with a young blonde on his side. So, when a friend asked her to chaperone a seventeen year boy who will be on a flight to his estranged father in Austria, well... how can Vanessa resist the trip? After some awkward moments, the young wife and the teenage boy open up to each other about their real intentions. Vanessa isn't coming to join her husband on holiday, and Timothy, the teenage boy, isn't to see his father. Tim is obsessed with horses, and intends to seek a job in the Spanish Riding School.

🐎 After the confessions, so to speak, they immediately become close friends and partner-in-crime. They soon found two things. That the blonde from the newsreel is Annalisa Wagner, the daughter of the circus owner, who performs with the dancing horses; and that Lee Elliot, who'd been helping in the circus, is none other than Lewis March, Vanessa's husband, and whose real job is not salesman, but a secret service agent! He is meeting his colleague, who was found dead during the circus fire, together with Annalisa's Uncle Franzl. Naturally, Timothy and Vanessa - who would have been a veterinarian had she not married - are delighted that Lewis asked them to loiter and look around for anything suspicious. What they find in the circus stable is Old Piebald - Franzl's old horse with a swollen leg (hematoma) during the fire. Vanessa operated the leg, and thus, bind a relationship with the old white horse.

🐎 The circus was a lovely addition to this book's charm. That, and the dancing horses. 'Airs above the ground' are the beautiful, traditional dance moves that the trained Lippizaner stallions do, including the levade, where the horse rears up and holds his pose.

The best part of the book is when Vanessa brought Old Piebald to graze on a patch of grass outside the circus tents, one evening. His leg was still a bit lame. It was during the show; Tim was watching, and Vanessa and Old Piebald were alone. Then suddenly, tuning in with the music, the horse slowly danced along. The rest is one magical moment that would carved itself into my memory deeper than the story itself.

In the distance the music changed: the Lipizzaner down in the ring would be rising into the levade, the first of the airs above the ground'. And in the high Alpine meadow, with only me for audience, old Piebald settled his hind hooves, arched his crest and tail, and, lame forefoot clear of the ground, lifted into and held the same royal and beautiful levade.

The moonlight flooded the meadow, blanching all colours to its own ghostly silver. The pines were very black. As the stallion rose in the last magnificent rear of the levade, the moonlight poured over him bleaching his hide so that for perhaps five or six seconds he reared against the black background, a white horse dappled with shadows, no longer an old broken-down gypsy's piebald, but a haute école stallion, of the oldest line in Europe.

🐎 All in all, this is a suspense novel with idyllic Austrian landscape as a background, and dancing Lipizzaners as a center point; spiced with some car chases and few actions. The heroine is a married woman, so you would find no romance here, as is usual with Mary Stewart's. But I think, I prefer it like this. Timothy stole my heart from the beginning, when he comforted Vanessa during the flight, as she dreaded the forthcoming landing, he said something like, I can hold your hand during the landing if you like... or something like that. And that's a gentleman on the making, Timothy Lacy! Then later on, when Lewis March appeared on the scene - and the show begins, because the suspense started with him - it is clear that Timothy adored Vanessa's husband. The villain (someone from the circus) had hit Vanessa earlier, so that she met Lewis with bruises on her face. When Lewis confronted the villain, he 'punished' him for ever laying hand onto his wife. And here, Timothy showed his admiration, which also showed his views of men hurting women. Bravo, Tim! 

* Originally I would have rated this one four stars, but the 'airs above the ground' scene of Old Piebald - his real name is Neapolitano Petra, by the way - and the ending, definitely deserved another star!

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐