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SONS OF THE PINES by Marion & Walter Havighurst

SONS OF THE PINES

By

Pub Date: May 2nd, 1949
Publisher: Winston

This Land of the Free series (edited by Erick Best) is presenting various national cultures as they are grafted on to American soil. The material is fresh- there's definite supplementary reading value for schools in an almost untouched field. And the line-up of author names is impressive. There is danger here, however- and this book illustrates it. Walter Havighurst knows the region of which he writes- the Wisconsin lumber tracts; doubtless he knows their history, their development, the people who settled them. But he hasn't the story-teller's gift; the story pattern is stereotyped, the characters two dimensional, lacking in warmth and human values. This is the story of a Norwegian boy, an orphan of fifteen, a blade sharpener by trade, who learns- when he comes to Wisconisn- to adapt his knowledge to the making of cant hooks, which prove a valuable innovation in American lumber camps. Pretty thin story, with rather contrived incidents, of value chiefly for its teaching of the contribution other nationalities have made to America's melting pot.