From: Sally Miller <derbymiller>
Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2007 15:28:22 -0400

Since I am old enough to remember when the Mary Poppins books were "new," and the movie had not even been thought of, I was intrigued, a few years ago, to learn of another P.L. Travers book, one with which I was unfamiliar.
    I Go by Sea, I Go by Land is the story of Sabrina and James Lind, who journey to the US aboard ship in a convoy taking hundreds of children out of reach of the bombs falling on England during World War II.
    I always enjoyed reading about those English children, contemporaries of mine, who left their homes and families to come here and of the ways in which the familiar landscapes, physical and mental, of my childhood world seemed so alien to them.
    The book is vintage Travers, of course, with humor and quirky characters. This quotation from it bears an interesting resemblance to the words Dean quoted from Breakout: "We must take everything that comes to us, Sabrina. Good or bad, refuse nothing. It's the only way to live." The philosophy underlying the book and leading to what many children would consider a very unsatisfactory ending is so very English that I'm not surprised it never became very popular over here -- or at least not as far as I know.
    Still, for P.L. Travers' fans, it's worth looking up if you can find it.
     Sally Derby
Received on Thu 05 Jul 2007 02:28:22 PM CDT