Blogging from a hurricane

Dear Aunt Debbie,

The wind is howling outside my windows, and the lights have been flickering, but so far our power has remained on.  Fingers crossed.  I hope you're doing well down in DC, too.

I kept thinking tonight of amazing storm images from children's books we've written about here:

Robert McCloskey's Time of Wonder:



Patricia Polacco's Thunder Cake:

Rachel Isadora's The Fisherman and His Wife:

Yup, that's pretty much how we're feeling, here in New York.  Stay safe.

Love, Annie

After the hurricane

Dear Annie,

I know some of those September 11 books and will devote a post to them soon.  Right now, we're about to be on the road trying to get home after Hurricane Irene blasted up the I-95 corridor just before we were going to take that route home to DC.  So we're still in New England, not badly blown about, but I thought I'd do a short list of hurricane books.

Time of Wonder, by Robert McCloskey, which we've written about here (look again at those great windy illustrations!) is the first that comes to mind.  The build-up, the drama, the aftermath, complete with downed tree.
Hurricane, by David Wiesner (whose works we've explored here and here), is another picture book which does the storm, then lingers on the fantasy world of playing in a fallen tree.

And where would a good natural phenomenon be without Ms. Frizzle?
The Magic School Bus Inside a Hurricane gives the explanation for what's going on in Joanna Cole's usual breezy funny fact-filled style.  The bus starts as a hot-air balloon, then transforms into the airplane on the cover of the book. 

These picture books are about hurricanes which have their scary moments, but are something to get through basically unscathed.  On a much more serious level, for kids about ten and up, Dark Water Rising by Marian Hale is a fictional account of the 1900 Galveston Texas hurricane.  Wikipedia calls it the most deadly natural disaster ever in the U.S.: thousands of people died when Galveston was submerged by a hurricane.  The book follows one 16 year-old boy through a horrifying night as he watches much of the city being swept away. 

A number of books have been written -- from picture books about lost dogs to a magical/fantasy book for teens -- about Katrina, and they keep coming out.  I'm without scanner or my bookshelves right now, so can't explore that route -- but they're out there.

In the meantime, I'm off to pack the car, hit the road, and inspect the damage back home.  Am worried about all those books in the store staying dry...

Love,

Deborah

Maine Summers with family

Dear Annie,

Blueberries for Sal was published in 1948: Sal would have been three then.  The following year, Jane was born, and by 1952, when One Morning in Maine came out, Jane would have been pushing three, and Sal was a mature 7, although both were younger when their dad drew them for his book.

This picture, and the entire book, somehow make me think of Eleanor and Isabel.  Articulate, strong-willed big sister.  Curious animal-obsessed little sister (keep that dog in mind).

Sal wakes up with her first loose tooth, worried that it will keep her from a promised excursion to the mainland.  Her mother reassures her, telling her that when it comes out she can make a wish on it. In a series of amazing pictures of the coast of Maine, Sal finds her father and digs clams with him.  Somewhere in there -- we never know quite when -- her tooth disappears from her mouth.  "Sal's father helped her look, but a muddy tooth looks so much like a muddy pebble, and a muddy pebble looks so much like a muddy tooth, that they hunted and hunted without finding it." 

Sal and Jane both head out with Father in the boat --  but engine trouble ensues.  A long-suffering dad rows across the bay, to Condon's garage, where spark plug trouble is diagnosed.  The old one is pulled like a tooth, and handed to toddler Jane, who clutches it for the rest of the story.  Locals are chatted with, groceries are picked up, ice cream is consumed, and the satisfied family heads back home, in time for Sal's famous final line. "When we get home we're going to have [page turn] CLAM CHOWDER FOR LUNCH!"

The book cares so deeply about the minutiae of family tasks.  The emotion isn't as high as in Blueberries,  but there's a steady feeling of family members contentedly going through life together.

In my imagination, the next book was at least partly spurred by the now-8 year-old Jane pointing out that dad has done two books focusing on Sal, and where's the book for Jane? 
Time of Wonder luxuriates in the magic of spending half a year living on the ocean.  It's written in the second person, with more abstract illustrations: luminous paintings with both girls in them, but the descriptions are of what the younger one is doing.  We go through the steps of a foggy spring morning slowly clearing, ferns growing, sun shining, summer packs of kids at the beach, magical lightning bug nights.  We are in wonder at it all.

But the part that made the biggest impression on me was always the hurricane after the summer people have gone.  "We're going to have some weather," the locals say, and it's anticipated for several pages.  The family is together in their house:

A tree snaps.  Above the roar of the hurricane you see and feel but do not hear it fall.  A latch gives way.  People and papers and parcheesi games are puffed hair-over-eyes across the floor, while Father pushes and strains to close and bolt out the storm.

One can see why McCloskey won the Caldecott for best illustration with this book.  Next page:

Mother reads a story, and the words are spoken and lost in the scream of the wind.  You are glad it is a story you have often heard before.  Then you all sing together, shouting "eyes have seen the glory" just as loud as you can SHOUT.  With dishtowels tucked by doorsills just to keep the salt spray out.

(Dog look familiar?)

The storm passes, damage is inspected the next day, and soon it's time to move back to wherever their winter home is.

Take a farewell look at the waves and sky.  Take a farewell sniff of the salty sea. A little bit sad about the place you are leaving, a little bit glad about the place you are going.  It is a time of quiet wonder -- for wondering, for instance: Where do hummingbirds go in a hurricane?

The end.

I'm so glad your family will be coming to visit us in Maine this summer.

Love,

Deborah

Reading Aloud

Dear Annie,

The McCloskey books are so great -- and I love that picture of canning blueberries.  All these years that we've been blueberry obsessed in Maine every summer, I've never taken the step to can some.  A combination of intimidation at the amount of work, and fear of messing it up and poisoning everyone.

I'll pick up the McCloskey baton and write next time about his next two Maine books: One Morning in Maine and Time of Wonder.  Must scan a few pictures.

My brother, your uncle Al, has found a lovely video of Allan Ahlberg (who spells his Allan as our Al does) reading Peek-A-Boo!  There was also another video of Ahlberg talking about the book -- called Peepo! in British -- saying it's an autobiographical work, set in Oldbury, in the English Midlands, and that the baby is none other than Ahlberg.  Lovely.  Here he is reading it:

One can totally visualize him with a grandchild on his lap.  Reading aloud encompasses such a wide variety of styles.  I think of this as a classic style: there's inflection, but not a lot of it.  He's clearly paying attention to the words, sharing them with the listener.  There's something very intimate about this reading.

Love,

Deborah

Searching for home and child in Robert McCloskey

Dear Aunt Debbie,

I love the Look-Alikes idea -- reminds me of the pleasure we've all gotten around this house from figuring out what the vegetable people and scenes are made of in Food for Thought.  The most fun we've had with a searching book recently was with Adele and Simon; the Waldo and Chaffy books look like a good time for the future.

Tonight I read the girls our two favorite Robert McCloskey books, and remembered again why I love both of them so much.  In a funny way, both of them are about searching as well: searching for a home, mother and child searching for each other.

Make Way for Ducklings has everything going for it.  It's the story of a couple of ducks, Mr. and Mrs. Mallard, who are looking around Boston for a place to build a nest and raise their children.  There's wonderful Boston detail throughout, most notably in the depiction of the Public Garden, where the Mallards encounter a Swan Boat and think it's just incredibly stuck-up not to speak to them.  There are their eight children's fabulous rhyming names.  There's a kind policeman named Michael who feeds them peanuts and, in the climactic scene, holds back traffic so the ducklings can cross the street.  Most of all, there are McCloskey's extraordinary, closely-observed illustrations of the ducks and ducklings themselves.  I'm pretty sure they're rendered in charcoal; the shading is tremendous.  My favorite is a two-page spread of Mrs. Mallard teaching the ducklings how to swim and dive.  Each duckling is rendered so individually: one distracted by a bug in the air, one peeking out quizzically from behind his mother's back, one starting up in the water, tiny wings extended.

Then, of course, there's the absent-father moment.  Jeff and I have always enjoyed reading this bit aloud in a light, dry way:

One day the ducklings hatched out.  First came Jack, then Kack, and then Lack, then Mack and Nack and Ouack and Pack and Quack.  Mr. and Mrs. Mallard were bursting with pride.  It was a great responsibility taking care of so many ducklings, and it kept them very busy.

Next page:

One day Mr. Mallard decided he'd like to take a trip to see what the rest of the river was like, further on.  So off he set.  "I'll meet you in a week, in the Public Garden," he quacked over his shoulder.  "Take good care of the ducklings."

"Don't you worry," said Mrs. Mallard.  "I know all about bringing up children."  And she did.

Ah, feckless Mr. Mallard.  Ah, 1941 gender relations.

In Blueberries for Sal, there are no fathers mentioned at all: it's a strictly mom and kid book.  The drawings here are pen and ink, all the shading accomplished with closely-gathered lines, the color a dark blueberry blue on white.  It's the story of Little Sal, who goes to pick blueberries on Blueberry Hill with her mother, and Little Bear, who goes to eat blueberries on the other side of the hill with his mother.  Each child falls behind and temporarily loses his or her mother, then begins to follow the wrong mother.  There's no fear or anxiety associated with these moments of getting lost: Little Sal looks eagerly for her mother ("She heard a noise from around a rock and thought, 'That is my mother walking along!'"), but tramps along happily behind Little Bear's mother when that is where she finds herself.

Each mother quickly notices something is wrong when the child behind them does something surprising: the blueberries Sal drops in her bucket go "kuplink, kuplank, kuplunk!", while Little Bear gulps two Tremendous Mouthfuls of berries from Little Sal's mother's bucket.  One of my favorite moments in the book is the matching parenthetical description of each mother's immediate, backing-away reaction: "(She was old enough to be shy of people, even a very small person like Little Sal.)" and "(She was old enough to be shy of bears, even very small bears like Little Bear.)" Mothers are reunited with children, everyone finishes gathering and eating their blueberries, and all is well.

Sal doesn't say a single word in the book, but she is marvelously physical: she tromps around, squats to pick berries, observes the world around her with a perfect little-kid focus.  In the two-page spread which begins and ends the book, Sal and her mother are at work canning the blueberries in their Maine kitchen.  The way Sal stands on her chair, methodically arranging the rubber seals for Mason jars along her arm and a large spoon she's holding, as her mother calmly pours cooked berries into jars, floors me.

McCloskey knew what childhood feels like.

Love, Annie

A moose named Mona

Dear Annie,

I trust your brief beach vacation is relaxing and entertaining.

As promised, I've found
The Guest by James Marshall. It's  a wonderful friendship story in the tradition of George and Martha.  Unfortunately it's currently out of print, but worth searching for in a library or alibris.

"One rainy afternoon while Mona was practicing her scales," it starts, "she had the oddest feeling.  'I must be catching the flu,' she said to herself."

But it turns out to be Maurice, a pink-shelled snail, walking up her back.  She offers him chocolate milk and cookies, he tells her his life has been getting boring, and she invites him to be her guest.  They play and do chores together.  Mona is shocked when Maurice tells her that in France they eat snails: "I'm told we are very tasty."

After some days, Maurice gets moody, then disappears.  Mona is depressed, worries that he's gone to France, makes mistakes at her job at Flora's Cafe, and posts a sign:

 Finally, while she's playing the piano yet again, Maurice reappears -- with his family! He introduces her to 20 snails -- all with French names -- but never points out which is his spouse, if he has one.  A good time is had by all.

I'm fond of the gentle friendship of this book and of course the fact that the main character is both a moose and bears the name of one of my children.  But it also has the nagging little problem of part-time dad, epitomized in the classic Make Way for Ducklings, by Robert McCloskey. In that, father duck leaves mom to raise the kids alone and walk them across Boston to the new home he's found.  In this, Maurice found life with 19 or 20 children to take care of "was getting boring," so he left.  Ah, the little contradictions of children's literature.  But it's still so entertaining...

Love,

Deborah