内容简介
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.
作者简介
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.
内页插图
精彩书评
"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.
精彩书摘
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
穿越时空的信笺:老船长的航海日志(精装版) 书名: 穿越时空的信笺:老船长的航海日志 作者: 伊莱亚斯·范德林德 装帧: 精装 适读年龄: 10岁及以上 --- 内容简介: 《穿越时空的信笺:老船长的航海日志》并非讲述一个简单的寻宝故事,它是一部关于时间、记忆与人性坚韧的宏大史诗。本书以十八世纪末,大航海时代余晖笼罩下的世界为背景,通过一位名叫阿瑟·芬奇的老船长留下的、跨越四十余年的航海日志和数十封未曾寄出的信件,编织了一张复杂而引人入胜的时间之网。 阿瑟·芬奇,人称“铁锚”,一生追逐着传说中“永恒之岛”的踪迹。但这趟旅程的核心,并非地理上的发现,而是他对过去错误的救赎,以及对逝去爱情的无尽怀念。日志的开篇,记录着他年轻时作为见习水手,初次踏上“海妖之歌”号时的意气风发。那时的他,眼中只有风浪和荣誉,对陆地上的责任与承诺嗤之以鼻。 第一部分:风暴与誓言(1788-1795) 日志的前半部分,详尽地描绘了芬奇早年在北大西洋的艰苦生活。他不仅记录了如何躲避英法冲突的战舰,如何在冰山群中艰难航行,还细致地描绘了船员们的生活百态——从卑微的伙夫到心怀鬼胎的军官。特别引人注目的是他对加勒比海盗活动的深入观察。芬奇在一次与西班牙大帆船的遭遇中,展现了非凡的战术头脑,但也因此错过了返回故土的最后时机。 在这些关于航海技术的精确描述背后,是芬奇对故乡一位名叫伊莎贝尔的织布女的深刻思念。信件部分主要集中在这一时期,字里行间充满了热切的承诺与无法兑现的抱歉。他告诉伊莎贝尔,他会带着足够的财富和荣耀回来娶她,但每一次“下一次”都变成了遥远的未来。这段描写细腻地展现了青年人对“远方”的浪漫化想象与现实残酷之间的巨大落差。 第二部分:失落的坐标与时间之谜(1796-1810) 航程进入了更神秘的领域。芬奇带领船队深入南太平洋,试图追寻一幅由一位濒死探险家留下的、声称能指向“永恒之岛”的星图。然而,这次航行标志着芬奇人生的转折点。在一次突如其来的、持续了七昼夜的奇异磁暴中,“海妖之歌”号似乎偏离了正常的时空轨迹。 日志记录变得越来越怪诞和哲学化。芬奇开始描述一些“不该存在”的现象:海面上反射出从未见过的星座;船员们有时会回忆起尚未发生的事情;甚至在某次停靠的小岛上,他们发现了一座古老文明的遗迹,其建筑风格糅合了后世才出现的几何学原理。 芬奇坚信,永恒之岛并非一个地理上的终点,而是一个“时间上的锚点”。他开始在日志中穿插对历史事件的预言式记录,这些记录与他所处的时代背景形成了令人不安的对照。例如,他准确描述了拿破仑战争中某次关键战役的结局,但这些文字写于战役发生前数年。 第三部分:孤独的守护者与最终的信(1811-1830) 接下来的篇章,芬奇成了一位孤独的守护者。他失去了大部分船员,船只残破不堪,但他仍在坚持航行。他不再寻求财富,而是试图逆转他早期航行中犯下的错误——特别是他无意中干预了某个偏远部落的兴衰,并因此失去了伊莎贝尔的音信。 这一阶段的日志,充满了对“时间悖论”的沉思。芬奇开始怀疑,他所经历的一切,是否只是为了在某个特定的时刻,将这本日志和信件集合,交付给一个特定的接收者。他用尽最后的资源,将日志和信件用防水的鲸油皮革仔细包裹,藏入一个特殊的、由他亲手雕刻的黄铜箱中。 最后一封信,写给一个他从未谋面、但名字经常出现在他梦中的“继承人”。信中,芬奇终于承认了年轻时的傲慢与怯懦,并恳请接收者——“记住,荣耀并非来自你发现的新大陆,而是你选择如何对待你离开的旧世界。” 主题与深度: 《穿越时空的信笺》不仅仅是海盗、探险和浪漫的组合。它深入探讨了: 1. 时间的相对性: 探讨了记忆与现实如何被个人经历扭曲,以及“永恒”在不同心境下的意义。 2. 责任的代价: 芬奇的一生是对“承诺”这一主题的深刻反思。他用数十年的漂泊证明,任何伟大的征服都无法弥补对亲近之人失职的遗憾。 3. 知识的重量: 芬奇对星象、制图学和古老文明的痴迷,反映了人类对未知世界永不满足的探索欲,但他也警告,有些知识可能过于沉重,不适合人类的心灵负荷。 本书的叙事结构精妙,通过不同时间点的日志和信件交错,要求读者像解密者一样,将芬奇破碎的时间线重新拼凑起来。最终,读者将跟随老船长的目光,看到的不是黄金,而是时间洪流中,人性中不变的光芒与阴影。这本精装日志,是献给所有在迷雾中寻找方向的水手和迷失在生活中的探险家们的一份珍贵遗产。