Little House, big reach

Dear Annie,

"Mellow" and "oddball" - excellent choice of words when describing Bob Graham's lovely books.  I'm glad April and Esme was a hit.

Bob found a lovely little story in our neighborhood paper the other day, about a kids' writing contest.  The Library of Congress invites students from fourth to tenth grades to write a letter to an author -- not necessarily a live one -- talking about how the author's books "affected them personally."  49,000 kids sent in letters this year, and the winner is from here in Washington DC.  I thought you'd enjoy this story because she wrote her letter to Laura Ingalls Wilder.

Alessandra Selassie is a fifth grader in a DC charter school; she started reading the Little House books as a kindergartener, and has re-read them over the years.  I can't find the full text of her essay, but here are some excerpts:

When I want water, I turn on the tap.  When it’s dark, I turn on the light.  While my life is so different than yours, I was still so touched by your books because they helped me to finally understand the life of someone I love: my father. 

Her father grew up in Eritrea.  "My dad kept on telling me stories about his childhood, but I wouldn't really understand them," Alessandra told the paper.  He grew up without electricity, sometimes without enough to eat.  "When this contest came up, I thought about my dad, and I realized how I have sort of changed over the time that I had read [the series] because I understood them more, and I related to the books."  Wilder, she writes,

gave me a new way of looking at him. ... I know you wrote these books to help children understand the lives of American pioneers, but for me, it helped me see my father's African childhood as being less foreign.

This makes me think of a discussion you and I had back when the blog was young, about books as windows or mirrors.   Author Mitali Perkins spoke at BEA in 2010, saying that some books will reflect readers' own experiences back at them, while others provide a window into unimagined new worlds.  For Alessandra, Wilder provided the window to a mirror reflecting her father back to her.

Love,

Deborah

Alessandra Selassie, holding a mock-up of her $1,000 prize check, with lots of supportive unidentified grown-ups.

Mirrors & windows 2

Dear Annie,

I think I may have oversimplified Mitali Perkins’ mirror/window analysis in my last post. You talked about a book being able to be both: a reflection of the reader with which s/he can identify, and a way to see new places and have new experiences. Which of course Perkins was intending with the concept too. I really want to read her Bamboo People. Here’s her May 27 post on that BEA breakfast. I love her description of how Cory Doctorow entertained himself while others were speaking.

I’m so glad Eleanor took to Babies Can't Eat Kimchee. It acknowledges the ways in which a newborn can be disappointing (can’t play yet, cries inexplicably, etc) while still celebrating the relationship between siblings – and reminding the older one of her many accomplishments. The window element of the book -- introducing three year-old Eleanor to little bits of Korean culture – is such a great thing to be able to do within the context of everyday reading.

You ask about Lizzie and Mona and the window/mirror stuff. At some point in their chapter book lives, they each gravitated to different kinds of books. Their reading wasn’t exclusively one kind. But Lizzie definitely got very involved in adventure and fantasy books. Treasure Island, The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle, and The Hobbit were books that she revisited frequently. I think she loved worlds which were very different, yet at the same time she could imagine herself an adventurer in those worlds. Window?

Mona, a year and a half younger, grounded herself in what we referred to as “domestic fiction,” Beverly Cleary’s Ramona books being the best example. Real life for kids. As you know, they’re among my favorites for taking the trials and tribulations of growing up so seriously, while presenting them with such a gentle sense of humor. Mona has always been interested in the interpersonal dynamics around her, and many of the books she chose gave her more reflections of her world. It’s funny, the last books we read aloud with Mona, when she was a high school freshman, were The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series. She was already a strong feminist, and I think the biggest attraction of those books was Mma Ramotswe’s perception of human relations, and Mma's own strong sense of self. So does that make it a mirror? Am I pushing this concept too far?
Love,

Deborah