A Day on Skates: The Story of a Dutch Picnic

I am really quite embarrassed to admit that before reading the first line of this book and then conducting some curiosity research, I was unaware that Holland was simply a pars pro toto for The Netherlands. Did everyone else know that? And did everyone else know the meaning of pars pro toto? 'Cause I had to look that one up, too.

Anyway, A Day on Skates was a dull 30-minute online read. I probably found the foreword by Edna St. Vincent Millay the most entertaining part of the book. She begins, "THIS is a book which mothers and fathers will sit up to finish, after the protesting child has been dragged firmly off to bed." I found this manifestly false. I wasn't in any way curious what would befall Evert or Afke on their school skating picnic (which (in case you've never been on one) involves ice-skating on frozen canals all over Holland from dawn to dusk with your 4th grade teacher). Nor did I have any difficulty "putting it down" when my bedtime arrived.

Three main critiques:
1. As an educator (of a particularly rough crowd at a Title 1 middle school), I was bothered by the picture the author painted of the ease of teaching. You just tell your class you're going to skate around all day all over the country! And then they all show up that morning on time and you skate around with no worries and every student behaves and the trip is a wild success even though you haven't planned anything! This, my friends, is not public education. Then again, I wasn't an educator in Holland in the 1930s.

2. As a woman, I found many of the female author's assumptions about women annoying. Personally, if "Teacher" had told me I had to stay inside to make the pancakes because I was a girl and all the boys got to go outside to play in the snow, he would have had some serious Jenny to reckon with. Then again, I wasn't a 9-year-old girl in Holland in the 1930s. But it still would have bothered me.

3. This book made me feel cold almost constantly.

I don't recommend it, even though Edna claims, "this is a book which should be in the library of every child who likes to read," but here is the full text online. Maybe it would be worth it to read the three-paragraph foreword. It really is pretty funny.