內容簡介
He wanted to be treated like a man, not a child.
Every summer the men of the Chavez family go on a long and difficult sheep drive to the mountains. All the men, that is, except for Miguel. All year long, twelve-year-old Miguel tries to prove that he, too, is up to the challenge'that he, too, is up to the challenge'that he, too is ready to take the sheep into his beloved Sangre de Cristo Mountains.
When his deeds go unnoticed, he prays to San Ysidro, the saint for farmers everywhere. And his prayer is answered . . . but with devastating consequences.
When you act like an adult but get treated like a child, what else can you do but keep your wishes secret and pray that they'll come true.
This is the story of a twelve-year-old Miguel Chavez, who yearns in his heart to go with the men of his family on a long and hard sheep drive to the Sangre de Cristo Mountains--until his prayer is finally answered, with a disturbing and dangerous exchange.
作者簡介
Joseph Krumgold received the Newbery Medal for ...And Now Miguel. One of the few people to receive the medal twice, he was subsequently awarded it for his novel Onion John,also available in a Harper Trophy edition.
內頁插圖
精彩書評
"A memorable and deeply moving story of a family of New Mexican sheepherders, in which Miguel, neither child nor man, tells of his great longing to accompany men and sheep to summer pasture, and expresses his need to be recognized as a maturing individual."
-- BL.
精彩書摘
CHAPTER ONEIt was love at first sight and I was astonished that it should be happening to me because the first sight had nothing in the least alluring about it. The roads from airports to cities rarely do. I was like a man who bewilders his friends by becoming infatuated with a particularly unprepossessing woman-warts and a squint and a harelip. 'What on earth does he see in her?' I've often wondered myself. What did I see in that dreary road which was taking me to Paris?
This sudden incomprehensible love affair might have been a little less mysterious if I had arrived in France with gooseflesh anticipations of romantic garrets and dangerous liaisons in them, the Latin Quarter and champagne at five francs a bottle, and artists' studios-all the preposterous sentimental paraphernalia from absinthe to midinettes. But I had not included any of these notions in my meagre luggage, I had no preliminary yearnings towards the country. Rather the contrary. In Australia I had spent much of my time with a young woman who had visited France just before the war and had gone down with a bad attack of what someone called 'French flu'. She babbled so fervently and persistently about France and Paris that she infected me with a perverse loathing for both.
The fact nonetheless inexplicably remains. A hundred yards from the airport we passed a café ('Le Looping', with the two o's aerobatically askew to make the point clear) and puppy love overwhelmed me-puppy love from which this old dog has not yet shaken himself free. 'Le Looping' and the handful of unremarkable customers sipping their drinks on the terrace instantaneously bewitched me.
I knew, with no rational justification, that I was in a country which for me was unlike any other country. It was as though some indigenous evangelist had caused me to be 'born again'.
One life abruptly ended and another began. There and then I shed my twenty-five years. To this day, in my own head and heart I am twenty-five years younger than the miserable reality.
The passengers in the airport bus were a drab lot. It was only eighteen months since the war had ended. There had not been much time to spruce up. In my besotted state, they seemed to me as fabulous as troubadours. The houses along the road were dismal little pavilions badly in need of a coat of paint. I gaped at them as if each one were the Chateau de Versailles. And in the distance the Eiffel Tower looked so impossibly like itself as depicted on a thousand postcards and a thousand amateur paintings that the sense of unreality which I had been feeling deepened still further.
What had brought me to Paris was my eagerness to visit a writer I had admired since my school days. He and his wife were to become two of my closest friends. We saw a great deal of each other in the years ahead-in Paris, in the South of France, in the Loire Valley. Of all the countless occasions on which we laughed together, argued, drank wine, loafed on a Mediterranean beach, listened to music, none was as sheerly magical as that first evening in Paris.
Our relationship took shape from the very beginning. We were already friends by the time we left their studio and strolled together down the Boulevard de Montparnasse. For some reason, twilight in Parts, then at least, was not like twilight in any other city. It enveloped you in a wonderful blue and golden luminosity and it had its own special unidentifiable perfume. That one-and-only twilight dreamily descending on us was so unlike anything I had known that I had my first vague glimpse of a mystery which was to become more and more apparent as time went by: Parts was the city of the unexpected. You always felt as though something extraordinary were about to happen. Sometimes it did, sometimes not; but the expectation never diminished. One went on waiting.
Twilight aside, most things were in short supply in 1947. Fortunately, the writer had been familiar with Paris for thirty years or more. He was already on the right sort of terms with the proprietor of an unassuming restaurant in one of the side streets. So we were served with a mixture of raw vegetables, a sorrel omelette (I can still recall the metallic taste of that sorrel) and, thanks to the proprietor's peasant brother, some wild duck. The wine was a muscular red with a powerful rasp to it but (a symptom of French flu?) I thought I had never drunk anything so delicious. It was served in cups as if we were in the prohibition speakeasy era because otherwise less privileged customers would have been clamouring for some and there wasn't any too much to be had.
Afterwards we walked back along the boulevard towards the studio. We stopped midway for a glass of brandy at the D?me. Tourists had not yet ventured to return to Paris. The other customers on the terrace were all French, completely nondescript but fascinating because they were French. There were practically no cars on the roads. Those there were either had great charcoal-burning furnaces fixed to the back or carried dirigible-like bags of gas on their roofs. Every so often a fiacre went clip-clopping past. The air was almost startling pure. The stars were sharply visible in a translucent sky. I turned to the man at the next table and asked him for a light-speaking French for the first time in my life. I managed to make three ludicrous grammatical blunders in the course of that one short sentence. If he was amused by my linguistic ineptitude he was too polite to show it. La politesse francaise-that still existed, too.
前言/序言
穿越時空的信箋:老船長的航海日誌(精裝版) 書名: 穿越時空的信箋:老船長的航海日誌 作者: 伊萊亞斯·範德林德 裝幀: 精裝 適讀年齡: 10歲及以上 --- 內容簡介: 《穿越時空的信箋:老船長的航海日誌》並非講述一個簡單的尋寶故事,它是一部關於時間、記憶與人性堅韌的宏大史詩。本書以十八世紀末,大航海時代餘暉籠罩下的世界為背景,通過一位名叫阿瑟·芬奇的老船長留下的、跨越四十餘年的航海日誌和數十封未曾寄齣的信件,編織瞭一張復雜而引人入勝的時間之網。 阿瑟·芬奇,人稱“鐵錨”,一生追逐著傳說中“永恒之島”的蹤跡。但這趟旅程的核心,並非地理上的發現,而是他對過去錯誤的救贖,以及對逝去愛情的無盡懷念。日誌的開篇,記錄著他年輕時作為見習水手,初次踏上“海妖之歌”號時的意氣風發。那時的他,眼中隻有風浪和榮譽,對陸地上的責任與承諾嗤之以鼻。 第一部分:風暴與誓言(1788-1795) 日誌的前半部分,詳盡地描繪瞭芬奇早年在北大西洋的艱苦生活。他不僅記錄瞭如何躲避英法衝突的戰艦,如何在冰山群中艱難航行,還細緻地描繪瞭船員們的生活百態——從卑微的夥夫到心懷鬼胎的軍官。特彆引人注目的是他對加勒比海盜活動的深入觀察。芬奇在一次與西班牙大帆船的遭遇中,展現瞭非凡的戰術頭腦,但也因此錯過瞭返迴故土的最後時機。 在這些關於航海技術的精確描述背後,是芬奇對故鄉一位名叫伊莎貝爾的織布女的深刻思念。信件部分主要集中在這一時期,字裏行間充滿瞭熱切的承諾與無法兌現的抱歉。他告訴伊莎貝爾,他會帶著足夠的財富和榮耀迴來娶她,但每一次“下一次”都變成瞭遙遠的未來。這段描寫細膩地展現瞭青年人對“遠方”的浪漫化想象與現實殘酷之間的巨大落差。 第二部分:失落的坐標與時間之謎(1796-1810) 航程進入瞭更神秘的領域。芬奇帶領船隊深入南太平洋,試圖追尋一幅由一位瀕死探險傢留下的、聲稱能指嚮“永恒之島”的星圖。然而,這次航行標誌著芬奇人生的轉摺點。在一次突如其來的、持續瞭七晝夜的奇異磁暴中,“海妖之歌”號似乎偏離瞭正常的時空軌跡。 日誌記錄變得越來越怪誕和哲學化。芬奇開始描述一些“不該存在”的現象:海麵上反射齣從未見過的星座;船員們有時會迴憶起尚未發生的事情;甚至在某次停靠的小島上,他們發現瞭一座古老文明的遺跡,其建築風格糅閤瞭後世纔齣現的幾何學原理。 芬奇堅信,永恒之島並非一個地理上的終點,而是一個“時間上的錨點”。他開始在日誌中穿插對曆史事件的預言式記錄,這些記錄與他所處的時代背景形成瞭令人不安的對照。例如,他準確描述瞭拿破侖戰爭中某次關鍵戰役的結局,但這些文字寫於戰役發生前數年。 第三部分:孤獨的守護者與最終的信(1811-1830) 接下來的篇章,芬奇成瞭一位孤獨的守護者。他失去瞭大部分船員,船隻殘破不堪,但他仍在堅持航行。他不再尋求財富,而是試圖逆轉他早期航行中犯下的錯誤——特彆是他無意中乾預瞭某個偏遠部落的興衰,並因此失去瞭伊莎貝爾的音信。 這一階段的日誌,充滿瞭對“時間悖論”的沉思。芬奇開始懷疑,他所經曆的一切,是否隻是為瞭在某個特定的時刻,將這本日誌和信件集閤,交付給一個特定的接收者。他用盡最後的資源,將日誌和信件用防水的鯨油皮革仔細包裹,藏入一個特殊的、由他親手雕刻的黃銅箱中。 最後一封信,寫給一個他從未謀麵、但名字經常齣現在他夢中的“繼承人”。信中,芬奇終於承認瞭年輕時的傲慢與怯懦,並懇請接收者——“記住,榮耀並非來自你發現的新大陸,而是你選擇如何對待你離開的舊世界。” 主題與深度: 《穿越時空的信箋》不僅僅是海盜、探險和浪漫的組閤。它深入探討瞭: 1. 時間的相對性: 探討瞭記憶與現實如何被個人經曆扭麯,以及“永恒”在不同心境下的意義。 2. 責任的代價: 芬奇的一生是對“承諾”這一主題的深刻反思。他用數十年的漂泊證明,任何偉大的徵服都無法彌補對親近之人失職的遺憾。 3. 知識的重量: 芬奇對星象、製圖學和古老文明的癡迷,反映瞭人類對未知世界永不滿足的探索欲,但他也警告,有些知識可能過於沉重,不適閤人類的心靈負荷。 本書的敘事結構精妙,通過不同時間點的日誌和信件交錯,要求讀者像解密者一樣,將芬奇破碎的時間綫重新拼湊起來。最終,讀者將跟隨老船長的目光,看到的不是黃金,而是時間洪流中,人性中不變的光芒與陰影。這本精裝日誌,是獻給所有在迷霧中尋找方嚮的水手和迷失在生活中的探險傢們的一份珍貴遺産。