Adventure ensues in quest for ‘Marmalade’ Children will delight in watercolors of hunt for jam berries on rocky Maine coast

Editor’s Note: Maine Bound is a column featuring new books written by authors set in the Pine Tree State or with other local ties.

Julie Murchison Harris

Of the News Staff

MAINE MARMALADE, by Ethel Pochocki, illustrated by Normand Chartier, 32 pages, Down East Books, Camden, 2004, $15.95.

A little imagination and a lot of Yankee ingenuity stir up a delightful story about a boy and his dream of making the best jam ever in the children’s book “Maine Marmalade,” published recently by Down East Books.

In the story, young Anthony strikes out on his own, toting an empty metal pail, with the mission of picking berries for jam, just as he and his mother had done the year before. It isn’t any particular berry season, so he returns home disappointed but not defeated. The next day, he scours Cape Rosier for the remnants of every kind of edible berry he can find, and takes the reader along on his adventures, both imagined and real. Anthony and his mother then make a batch of jam so unique it needs its own name: Maine Marmalade.

Ethel Pochocki’s prose is filled with treasures that are familiar to anyone who has spent time on the Maine coast.

“Anthony ran lightly over the sand and the lines of seaweed brought in by the tide. He climbed over the wreck of the Tempest, a wooden boat that had washed ashore long before Anthony was born, and moved up over the rocks, where a few raspberry canes were bowed down with scarlet fruit.”

A couple of pages after his encounter with the raspberries, “Anthony’s neck had bumps from mosquito bites, and his arms were scratched from thorns that had torn through his sleeves. But all he felt was pride as he showed the bounty of fruit to his mother and told her what he wanted to do. She wiped her hands on her apron, looking quite pleased.”

Pochocki uses language that is uncomplicated and direct. The story easily flows from one page to the next, without any awkwardness or mental break in the tale. The lesson: Sometimes the path to success takes unexpected directions.

Normand Chartier’s watercolor illustrations make the reader feel comfortable with the characters and the landscape, but are not so cluttered with detail that the story gets lost. Through Chartier’s talent, the reader can experience with Anthony the sights, sounds and smells typical of the rocky Maine coast in late summer.

Chartier’s incredible monochrome drawings and Pochocki’s telling of Anthony’s story, including the book’s catchy title, are reminiscent of the Robert McCloskey’s books, including “Blueberries for Sal” and “One Morning in Maine,” also depictions of everyday life on the Maine coast.

“Maine Marmalade” is a great book and could become a favorite in many homes and libraries.

Dale McGarrigle

Of the News Staff

TWO DOLLAR BILL, by Stuart Woods, G.P. Putnam, New York, 2005, 304 pages, hardcover, $25.95.

Stone Barrington returns in the latest thriller, released last month, by part-time Mount Desert Island resident Stuart Woods, and he quickly finds himself embroiled in a mess of trouble, very little of it his own fault.

The suave policeman-turned-lawyer finds himself taking on a new client, a rich Texan entrepreneur named Billy Bob Barnstormer. He soon discovers that Billy Bob isn’t what he seems.

Around the same time, Barrington meets the gorgeous new federal prosecutor, and they quickly become an item.

Barrington ends up in the middle of a search for Billy Bob, a con man with numerous other identities. His ex-partner Dino and the New York Police Department want him, the girlfriend-prosecutor wants him, his part-time CIA handler wants him. And what Billy Bob wants is to bring down Barrington. Part of his plan to do this involves an old love of Barrington and her son.

Does this sound a little convoluted? Well, it is. But with Woods’ breezy, conversational style, all the plot twists don’t slow down the reader too much.

That being said, this is a fairly weak effort by Woods, as preposterous moments abound. “Two Dollar Bill” won’t circulate as well as many of his previous works.