Pitzmaroon; or, The Magic Hammer by Charles A. Beach
February 2019
It can be hair-raising reading children’s books from the 19th century here in the 21st century. Sensibilities have changed. This children’s book, originally published in 1874, is full of adventure—your kids and grandkids will surely get a kick out of it—but the story is also full of blood, cannibalism, cheating, overcharging, beheading, and general violence. And if all that isn’t enough to give you doubts, he throws in some racism, some anti-Semitism, and even some polygamy.
But in spite of the various and sundry flaws of political-incorrectness and bigotry, the 21st-century reader eventually has to admit: this book from a century and a half ago is a helluva lot more fun to read than most of the ingratiatingly saccharine sap we produce in our own, so-called more civilized era. Anybody with children or grandchildren who seem extra difficult to engage in the process of learning to read, maybe something like Pitzmaroon—with its magician who periodically vomits gallons of blood, its 27 humorously grotesque illustrations, and its virtuous hero who is often not very virtuous at all—is just the thing to engage them.
But in spite of the various and sundry flaws of political-incorrectness and bigotry, the 21st-century reader eventually has to admit: this book from a century and a half ago is a helluva lot more fun to read than most of the ingratiatingly saccharine sap we produce in our own, so-called more civilized era. Anybody with children or grandchildren who seem extra difficult to engage in the process of learning to read, maybe something like Pitzmaroon—with its magician who periodically vomits gallons of blood, its 27 humorously grotesque illustrations, and its virtuous hero who is often not very virtuous at all—is just the thing to engage them.