A question of honor
Hill, Carlene B.
Going.... From Commonweal forty years ago- "Again and again we have protested against the change in our bombing policy. When the war started, the bombing of open cities, the massacre of...
...Delacorte, 1982...
...It is the women and the children, the old and the young whom we burn alive, suffocate, bury and destroy...
...Women are taking the same fast exit...
...Viking, 1982...
...The real point is that clarifying the notion of primacy of conscience must be given high priority in any serious consideration of abortion...
...There is a kind of halo effect around appeals to both conscience and legality that blurs the question of whether state, church, or morality should ever demand that conscience be answerable to some clear standard...
...Alina: a Russian Girl Comes to Israel, by Mira Meir...
...His name could remain unknown...
...An interesting as well as illuminating anthology...
...12 and up) I Commonweal: 176 Advertisement I I A Girl Called Bob & a Horse Called Yoki, by Barbara Campbell...
...Nonetheless, the bishops are having trouble getting support -- widespread support -- for what has come to be known as "their" view, as well as the view of a few portrayed too often in the media as the lunatic fringe of the rosary cult...
...Like more than a million of her peers each year, Pfeifer could have chosen abortion...
...Lothrop, 1982...
...There are poems about children at work, work gangs, work of artisans and women's work: "Man may work from sun to sun/But woman's work is never done...
...Greenwillow, 1982...
...19.95 ($9.95 paper) Thirty-nine accomplished women, some well known, most lesser known, in a wide variety of careers (politics, arts, science, literature) discuss their achievements, goals and struggles...
...The argument must flow from the belief that abortion is a matter of personal choice, that is, the fights of another human are not being violated by means of abortion...
...This is the straightforward, inspiring biography of a man who was guided by his belief that one "who cannot change the very fabric of his thought will never be able to change reality...
...9.95 Born and educated in Vienna where she received training with the corps de ballet of the Vienna State Opera, the author recounts her childhood and bittersweet experiences of growing up in a war-torn country -- both joyful (earning four curtain calls in an early performance) and sad (being raped as a teenager by a Russian soldier...
...Her crime...
...When a social worker comes to tell them that Johnny must move to the city and go to school, he and his grandfather run away...
...9.50 Twelve-year-old Esther Atoolik tells of her nomadic life on King Island near Nome, Alaska, where her family spends each winter...
...But some of these politicians, too, speak often and loudly regarding the "rights of women to privacy in their reproductive choices" -- as though that were the only issue and ignoring what one activist bishop often says, that the A QUESTION OF HONOR PENALIZING BIRTH A RLENE PFEIFER was three times class president, ranks in the top ten percent of her class, chaired her school's student government last year, and got expelled from the National Honor Society last month for lack of good character...
...Crowell, 1982...
...12 and up) I Commonweal: 178...
...14 and up) Goodbye, My Island, by Jean Rogers, Illustrations by Rie Munoz...
...Legalized abortion gave teenaged girls an out, paralleling the irresponsibility allowed teen boys...
...Although Arnold belongs to the youth organization of the Dutch National Socialist Patty, he has nagging doubts about loyalty to his schoolmates, an outspoken but competent teacher, or his ambitious father...
...The story is grist for the abortionist's mills, a perfect example of how the pettily self-righteous have taken a moral wrong and made it a political necessity...
...14 and up) Rickey and Robinson, by Harvey Frommer...
...It could be that the trainers are not trained...
...The pictures are beautiful paintings with the dreadful message of destruction and suffering caused by war...
...11-14) The Girl on the Outside, by Mildred Pitts Walter...
...12-14) Good Night, Mr...
...9.95 Bob, who enjoys her chats and visits with the local storekeeper's old delivery horse, is ~hocked to hear that the horse will be sold to a glue factory while his owner is ill...
...Strong, sad, sweet verses...
...12 and up) Two Truths in My Pocket, by Lois Ruby...
...14.95 The saga of a young woman anthropologist who goes to the I jungles between Venezuela and Brazil to study the curing practices of the tribes...
...Story and Pictures by Barbara Cooney...
...For generations, parents have kept their daughters closely tethered on the grounds that unlike the boy next door, their daughter could get pregnant...
...A poignant, touching, readable autobiography, written without sentimentality, of a talented, spirited young woman...
...11-14) ,lust Us Women, by Jeannette Caines...
...Their philosophical laziness has now returned to haunt them, and there is still no real education as to the distinctions...
...About the character of Jessica's father, we know only by inference...
...Illustrated with Photographs...
...9-11) This Strange New Feeling, by Julius Lester...
...Strangers appear, two American soldiers, one with a face "as black as earth" and the other "a white man with bright hair like fire...
...As easily as the $200 cash for the operation could be raised, all evidence of a pregnancy could be erased even before it became publicly visible...
...The vivid illustrations in this picture book...
...3-7) Gandi, by Gerald Gold...
...Through the help of a new friend, Rutti, Alina gradually becomes acclimated and, in the end, is the one who helps Sonia, a new arrival from Russia...
...Chosen by Helen Plotz...
...00-14) Miss Ramphlns...
...and when we arrive we'll just tell them we had a lot of girl talk to d o . . . " A special trip for young readers...
...Churchill announces will not be abandoned.., is in our opinion murder and suicide...
...Vivid and thoughtful...
...He stays with Mr...
...As his popularity at school wanes, or the hostility of his classmates becomes more overt, Arnold emerges with only one friend who believes as his father does...
...She and Chuckie are determined to save the horse and do so with the help of Bob's eccentric landlady...
...show the progress of the family as they try to fill a huge jar with coins for the purchase of a "wonderful, beautiful, fat, soft armchair" to replace one destroyed in a fire...
...Crown...
...A good story for inner-city thildren who will relate to the events and to the warm relationships...
...Harper, 1982...
...Personal but objective handling...
...For those who like history and biography, this period will be of great importance.For those curious about King, they will find him an intelligent, passionate, driven man who, through his church, was determined to make a major contribution to the Black Movement...
...Their very special love is not an easy one...
...All ages) The Jewish Americans: A History in Their Own Words 1650-1950, edited by Milton Meltzer...
...An interesting view of the peoples of China...
...12-14) War Without Friends, by Even Hanman...
...Greenwillow, 1982...
...It is the murder of innocent people and the suicide of our civilization...
...Newmarket Press, 1983...
...Eventually, the King Island school closes,marking the end of a way of life...
...But unlike the girl, his deed is invisible, rinsed away in the shower within hours of commission...
...14 and up) Some One Sweet Angel Chile, by Sherley Anne Williams...
...Crowell, 1983...
...12-14) Shabono, by Florinda Donner...
...By the hundreds and thousands...
...11-14) The Truth About the Ku Klux Klan, by Milion Meltzer, Franklin~Watts, 1982...
...Not even the advent of birth control liberated teenage girls from parental anxiety...
...This is not taught, because it seems to give legitimacy to the other, nonabortifacient methods of birth control...
...8.90 Beginning his military career as a member of a revolutionary group trying to rid his beloved Egypt of British rule, Anwar Sadat rose to become a firm leader who fearlessly took bold steps toward peace in the Middle East...
...Such an understanding of abortion is spreading, and the bishops are doing next to nothing to stop it...
...The Editors, "Area Bombing" March 17, 1944 that according to this word Catholics are sinning by earning money from the defense industry...
...9.95 An excel[gnt collection of six short stories which deal with the family relationships, friendships, hopes and fears of Jewish teenagers today...
...This fictional recreation of that event brings us into the heads of two girls -- Sophia, white, and about to have her senior year spoiled, and Eva, black and 15, fearful for her life and those of her family and fellow students...
...10.50 In this sensitive and illuminating collection, Jewish Americans speak for themselves through letters, diaries, speeches, memoirs and journals...
...Whoever he may be, he, too, chose not to postpone sex until after marriage...
...No amount of passed or unpassed legislation will change that attitude, and without a change in attitude, the legislation will not pass...
...Greenwillow, 1983...
...Readers will learn the customs of the Eskimos, their day-today struggle for self-sufficiency, and some authentic language from this absorbing story...
...16.95 ($9.95 paperback) Gandi's life and works are presented through the words and pictures of the man, his people and his country...
...2-14) Let the Trumpet Sound, by Stephen B. Oates...
...7-9) Partteaflar Passions, by Lynn Gilbert and Gaylen Moore...
...Many still photographs from the Academy Award-winning motion picture are included...
...Morrow, 1982...
...After a year and a half, the author is forced to leave the area but not before she has become deeply involved with the people, about whom she writes with great respect, love and tenderness...
...The tall black soldier stages a magnificent, daring show riding a bicycle, to the delight of the children, and is awarded a prize -- the largest box available...
...14 and up) T he following titles have been selected from among the many published from August 1982 through July 1983 to cover a wide range of ages, interests and readability...
...Photographs and text by George Ancoma...
...When this friendship turns into romantic love, they must face the problems and conflicts not only within themselves, but also with their families, friends and schoolmates...
...Crown, 1982...
...Only in Pfeifer's child has his impulse taken root, and only in Pfeifer's life will it have an impact...
...There follows closely the belief that if something is legal it is therefore moral...
...8.90 This dramatic study of the organization dedicated to white supremacy in America explores the origin and nature of the KKK...
...There are Tibetans, Uygurs, Kazaks, Hui, Sodos, the Miao, and Dai, Ui, Yao and Zhuang...
...9-12) Hiroshima No Pika, Words and Pictures by Toshi Maruki...
...If American Catholics, struggling as they are beneath the weight of their bishops' various and varying political agendas, perceive abortion as a matter of private choice, there is no hope for passage of any legislation to limit or eliminate abortion because the people who most ought to argue for that legislation have not been educated...
...13.95 Much more than a sports biography or a nostalgic trip back to Ebbets Field, this is the story of two great men...
...People are beginning to argue that nearly anything the church states, whether it states it definitively or not, is a matter of individual conscience...
...photographs by Yael Rozen, translated from the Hebrew by Zeva Shapiro, Jewish Publication Society, 1982, $7.95 "This is A l i n a . . . " begins this photographic picture-book account of the experiences of a third-grade Jewish student whose family has emigrated to Israel from Russia...
...Lothrop, Lee & Shepard, 1982...
...An absorbing story which holds some surprising and threatening twists...
...They are the stories of three couples: Ras and Sally, Forrest and Mafia, William and Ellen, how they lived as slaves and how they escaped, but above all how their love for each other and the love of those around them helped them survive...
...5-8) Black Theater in America, by James Haskins...
...9.50 A simple story told by a child whose mother is a waitress in the Blue Tile Diner...
...What is perhaps most unsettling, and is really at the root of the failure of the various amendments, is the notion of what has come to be known as "primacy of conscience" in these matters...
...Viking, 1982...
...Dodd Mead, 1983...
...19.95 A well-written, fully detailed biography of Martin Luther King, Jr...
...It is one of the most moving anti-war books produced...
...10.89 Willie, an abused child of a single parent, is evacuated from London to a small English village during World War II...
...In discussing the Mansour case, for example, it was almost inevitable that Network, a Catholic lobbying group, should invoke "the long-standing Catholic principle of primacy of conscious," should complain that a demand made by the church on a Catholic holding public office was "inconsistent with and inappropriate to the way in which public policy is made in a pluralistic society," and should support "the individual's fight to act on the dictates of conscience in pursuit of the public good...
...Her grandfather, whom she emulated, had been to many places and finally settled in a house by the sea, but told her to do a third thing: "Make the world more beautiful...
...Asked whether premarital sex or taking a human life is the greater moral issue, members of the faculty council at Pfeifer's Pennsylvania high school would undoubtedly say taking a human life...
...9.50 In 1957, nine black students integrated Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas...
...Readers learn about the fire and about life in a city tenement as the girl's mother and grandmother save to buy a new, overstuffed chair...
...Tom, by Michelle Magorian...
...The special day was a joyful experience for children who had never before seen Americans...
...These firsthand accounts will inspire as well as inform...
...12 and up) Johnny Stands, by Harry W. Paige...
...No wonder the bishops are losing the abortion issue...
...Parnassus~Houghton Mifflin, 1982...
...Given the choice between killing an unknown infant and dropping a notch or two in their profession, the decision, for most, has been clear...
...It is the cities and the towns...
...Dial, 1982...
...From the humorous to the tragic, from peddler to Auschwitz survivor, from Haym Solomon to Alfred II I Paula K. Lazrus Libm"y of Intergroup Relations Selected by . . Edith...
...Harper & Row, 1982...
...By contrast, abortion, it would seem, is just the sort of question where they would not have to...
...She bore a child out of wedlock...
...On sportsday, the children and parents prepare for a day of events...
...Clearly, on political questions the bishops have always had to watch their steps as well as their 501 (c) (3) exemptions...
...8.95 Fourteen-year-old Johnny and his elderly grandfather live in peace together on their Sioux Indian reservation...
...Some photos show workers of all ages and of different races...
...In this, her high school principal John Mallino told the press, the teen demonstrated her lack of leadership "and character, and I emphasize character...
...9.50 From the African Grove Theater in the 1820s to the Negro Ensemble Company today, this fascinating history traces the participation of blacks in American theater...
...She is put in a special class for immigrant children, visits a kibbutz near the Lebanese border (and has to stay in a shelter during a bombing raid), and learns that there are many other immigrants in Israel...
...Tom find friendship...
...The races begin and the adults join in the fun...
...CARLENE B. HILL (Carlene B. Hill works fbr a Massachusetts daily newspaper...
...When we started bombing the continent our 'precision' bombing was our great pride...
...After thanking the school in their language, the smiling Americans leave arm-in-arm...
...Then the crime becomes not a direct one against an individual but an indirect one against society and its mores, or against the specific regulations of a church, which for much of the population are now in opposition to the mores of society...
...12-14) Annie on My Mind, by Nancy Garden, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1982...
...As Little Sister tells of her experiences as a teenager coping with a generation gap, changing customs, and her family's involvement in political demonstrations, one becomes aware that teenagers of 1925 faced many of the problems confronting today's youth...
...Crowell, 1982...
...Franklin Watts, 1982...
...And the public press conflates the argument as well, from another direction, calling abct'tion just another form of birth control: speaking of unwanted pregnancies in an article about choosing a contraceptive, New York Times writer Jane E. Brodie said, "About half are terminated by abortion, a procedure decidely safer for the pregnant woman than childbirth," although she granted that this approach to birth prevention was "emotionally traumatic" and "more problematic" than other methods...
...Most Catholics know more than they really need to about nuclear weapons, El Salvador, and the annual bishops' appeal, yet could not convincingly either explain or defend their own church's understanding of abortion...
...But when decisions like Arlene Pfeifer's -- decisions to sustain life despite personal inconvenience -- are made harder by a society that insists on exacting its pound of flesh from the less-than-perfect, then society has clearly taken a stand against life...
...It still is, but it has become the precision bombing of entire inhabited areas . . . . It is no longer the factories we are bombing...
...for anti-war and anti-nuclear activists they include fines and court fees...
...And so the American Catholic public goes blithely about its way, using all forms of birth control, not knowing that some methods are abortifacient...
...With a safe, dean abortion civic in the nearest mid-sized city, no one I I IIIII III IIIII IIII II I needed to know what had happened...
...12.50 The picture book format belies the stark realism of the horrors of the atomic bomb as it fell on Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945...
...It examines why the Klan is reborn again and again and outlines what can be done to combat it in the 1980s as Hispanics and Asians have been added to its list of victims...
...But confronted with both issues in one person -- a girl who chose not to kill her fetus and so branded herself with a scarlet A -- the panel said premarital sex and stripped Pfeifer of an honor it had previously awarded...
...Yet in a society where personal comfort is uppermost, and nothing is worth endangering it, everything dictates the belief that the choice of abortion in this case or that case might very well be the" sensible" answer...
...There is absolutely nothing in Catholic doctrine, principle, or judgment which would in the remotest way support direct abortion...
...Macmillan, 1982...
...For Martin Luther King and his followers, the price was beatings and jail terms...
...Catholic philosophy cannot support any view which would tend in the direction of legitimizing abortion for any of the myriad of reasons given these days -- from rape through incest to inconvenience and psychological disability, not to mention the panoply of medical debilities in the fetus which would create a"substandard" child...
...12.95 The story of Alice who became the "Lupine Lady" is told in colorful illustrations which trace her trips around the world...
...Tom, a man who has pretty much given up on the world...
...5-8) Langston, by Ossie Davis...
...Whenever individual moral convictions fall outside the social order, decisions of conscience come at a price...
...Facing the marketplace's conviction that pregnancy means professional unreliability -- and their male employers" less-readily admitted belief that women who sleep around (unlike male bons vivants) deserve punishment -- they, too, are aborting...
...Warner, 1982...
...Messner, 1982...
...His personal life was not perfect...
...No method was certain and the penalties for failure - - childbirth and public censure -- would fall only on the girl...
...13.95 Caught up in he May Thirteenth Movement of 1925, Little Sister's family goes through many changes, but is held toll I 25 March 1984:177 Advertisement I gether by a strong grandmother...
...9.95 Through the soft illustrations, readers get a glimpse of life in a Japanese island village circa World War II, the time of the author's childhood...
...Nothing much happens in this quiet adventure -- the pictures and dialogue explain what will occur as they travel through states: they will stop at roadside stands to shop, walk through the rain, "mosey down back roads," stop and take pictures, eat at fancy restaurants...
...10.95 In these three deeply-moving tales based on real events, six people born into slavery taste freedom for the first time...
...Birth control and abortion are separate arguments, yet some methods of birth control are really early abortions...
...Ancoma's blackand-white action photographs depict occupations and sports events in which teamwork is a vital element: mountain climbing, drilling crews, nursing, filmmaking, car racing, the fashion industry, and sailing...
...Treated as an outsider, shy, inquisitive, Alina is puzzled by the strange customs, food, and language of the people...
...Children who love animals will empathize with Bob and her friends, but the other dimension to the story is a realistic but loving look at the economic facts of life for many poor Americans during World War II, and in particular for this black family with a working mother and a father in the Service...
...Poems of Work...
...Delacone, 1982...
...In teaching Humanae Vitae, the American bishops made the quite serious educational mistake of not separating, and separating clearly, abortifacient methods of birth control from other methods...
...10.95 "A picture essay about crews and teams...
...9.95 By a skillful weaving of Langston Hughes' poetry with the dialogue of his play, Davis achieves a great depth of feeling for the poet and what motivated Hughes to write...
...Willie learns to read and to develop his art talent...
...Their triumph was to change baseball and our society forever...
...r, m SOURCE of this confusion and ignorance, purposeful or not, is clearly the conflation in the press (and in the minds of Catholics) of the questions of birth control and abortion...
...11.50 Poems by a black poet whose themes are the Blues, Blackness and Feminism...
...12-14) The Minority Peoples of China,by Margaret Rau...
...9.50 The well-known anthologist has compiled a volume of poetry about work, starting from Biblical times to the present, as depicted by several contemporary poets...
...Those books have been listed which seem best to portray relationships among people of different origins, races and religions, and depict their varied backgrounds...
...10.95 A rather sobering story of World War II is told from the point of view of a Dutch teenager whose father is sympathetic to the Nazis and the Hitler regime...
...9.50 A delightful picture story of a young girl's trip to North Carolina with Aunt Martha, 'no boys and no men, just us women...
...This policy, which Mr...
...But he makes a final decision when this friend joins the army and the war escalates...
...Nationwide, among teens, roughly forty percent pick abortion as the remedy of choice for a pregnancy...
...If the father were a fellow student - - which Pfeifer says he is not - - he would not have to face honor society expulsion...
...Until women pregnant out of wedlock are fully accepted, and are supported in their material needs, abortion will remain what it is today: a moral wrong widely viewed as politically essential to establishing parity between men and women in the world...
...One might well argue that Agnes Mansour, despite the complicating factor of perpetual religious vows, was subject to a seeming double standard...
...This attitude is becoming ingrained in the public mores, creating an independent problem for pro-lifers and bishops alike - - the halls of Congress do, after all, loudly echo constituent beliefs...
...8-10) The Bicycle Man, by Allen Say...
...it is the areas in which the factory workers must live that we bomb...
...Harper & Row, 1982...
...Four Winds, 1982...
...In that house, Willie and Mr...
...Branch Rickey, general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, was determined to break the color barrier in baseball and Jackie Robinson was the superior black player he needed to do it...
...He was hounded by the FBI, black leaders were jealous of him...
...8.79 Some of the fifty-six minority groups who live in China under the domination of the Han are described...
...14 and up) Saturday's Children...
...As the story begins, Esther is happy to be returning to the isolated island -- she feels that King Islanders are looked down upon by other students in the Nome school...
...1929-1968), by the author of With Malice Toward None...
...Centuries of political upheavals keep their traditions and customs unique and seemingly intact...
...Although many live in so-called autonomous regions in the mountains or along the borders, their political life is similar to that of the rest of China, though often their day-today life and activities seem unchanged...
...II IIIll 23 March 1984:175 Advertisement Ill THE HUMAN FAMILY UNDERSTANDING OTHER PEOPLE Children's and Young Adults' List As the Waltz Was Ending, by Emma Macalik Butterworth...
...Translated by Patricia Crompton...
...14 and up) Team Work...
...Johnny comes to realize that he must accept and live in the world outside of the reservation, but that he can also hold onto his Indian culture and heritage...
...10.95 Liza and Annie, high school seniors, meet and instantly develop a close and wonderful friendship...
...Far more graphically, and at a far greater personal cost than any of the statements borne for a day on placards by pro-life demonstrators, Pfeifer bore her pro-life statement for nine months and will live with it -- her daughter, Jessica - - for the next eighteen years or so...
...A gentle story with beautiful pictures to complement the text...
...14 and up) Little Sister, by Margaret Gaan...
...Persisting in the face of racial discrimination, lack of education and demeaning stereotypes, black theater evolved into the creative force it is today, giving us such well-known mists as Paul Robeson, Ethel Waters and Ossie Davis...
...penalties of whispered comments and averted eyes as her widening form entered a room...
...The campaign needed to pass one or another amendment is rooted in educating the population, especially the Catholic population, to the church's very human reponse to this very human problem...
...When the war started, the bombing of open cities, the massacre of civilians was a German crime...
...Selig, Supervisor Joseph Benkovitz, Librarian, Springfield Gardens High School Bertha Cheatham, Associate Editor, School Library Journal Ruth Rausen, Coordinator of Young Adult Services, The New York Public Library R. Bryan Roberts, Coordinator, Programs and Services Department, Queens Borough Public Library Barbara Rollock, Coordinator of Children's Services, The New York Public Library Roslyn Rubinstein, Head of Young Adult Division, Central Library, Queens Borough Public Library Kazin, they share their experiences and reveal their feelings about life in the United States...
...12-14) I I II I I A Chair for My Mother, by Vera B. Williams...
...The list is the result of agreement by a representative committee of the best in the field for children and young adults...
...Illustrated by Pat Cummings...
...Dial, 1982...
...There are numerous American politicians presumed to be Catholic whose stance on abortion is basically the same as Mansour's, and no one has called them to task in quite the same way...
...12 and up) Anwar Sadat, by Raymond Carroll...
...Pfeifer, however, determiaed that the life within her deserved to survive, and accepted the II Commonweal: 174 choice has already been made once conception takes place...
Vol. 111 • March 1984 • No. 6
