Jeannine Atkins

Yesterday I gave a talk called Once Upon a Time: A History of Children’s Literature to a group of about forty seniors at Greenfield Community College. http://www.gcc.mass.edu/community_education/senior_symposia.html
It was sort of my semester course shrunk down to about an hour and a half. We began with fairy tales



And horn books



And Mother Goose



We took swift looks at Alice in Wonderland, Beatrix Potter, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Winnie-the-Pooh, The Hobbit, then scrambled through Little Golden Books, Dick and Jane, and The Cat and the Hat.

Of course we looked at picture books, most lucky children’s introduction to literature, though I resisted the temptation to just pull a few out and read. People seemed happy to see images of old friends – Wanda Gag’s cats and McCloskey’s ducks --and meet new ones: Brian Selznick's The Invention of Hugo Cabret got a lot of oohs and ahs. And yay, my fifty plus powerpoint images went off without a hitch. Afterward, a couple introduced themselves as Dick and Jane. I also saw two old friends and Nancy Frazier, who’d been my husband’s boss when I met him, overseeing black and white illustrations for the local newspaper. She said, “We had a lot of fun.”

I spoke on the invitation of Margo Culley, who currently oversees the senior symposia program, and years ago was my professor for a class called Lost New England Women Writers, a course which ignited my passion for research. I was so lucky to have her as a professor, and am so lucky to be friends with her all these years later.

If you know jbknowles at all, you can imagine how many times Jo thanked me for offering to show up at her writing for children class while she stayed home with tea and too many tissues. I assured her it would be fun, and of course it was. What a wonderful group of people, who missed Jo, and praised her, but were ready to hear about ways to experiment with nonfiction. They had so many good questions that I never got to my notes, but I think we covered enough. Ronnie asked if nonfiction writing had a voice in the same way that fiction does. “Let’s look,” I said, glad I’d hauled in a small suitcase full of books. They each chose a picture book biography and read the first few sentences. Ann began with Barbara Cooney’s Eleanor: “From the beginning the baby was a disappointment to her mother. She was born red and wrinkled, an ugly little thing. And she was not a boy.”

They all nodded: yes, this was not the kind of writing you’d find in a newspaper or textbook.

I urged them to check out INK: Interesting Nonfiction for Kids http://inkrethink.blogspot.com/
And I would have loved to do a whole class just on poetry that draws from history, my current obsession, but mostly just pointed to another pile, and left them with a quote from Marilyn Nelson, author of Carver and other great collections: “What I do most and best is track, like a good hound, with my nose to the ground, gathering information and impressions, and piecing together a story shaped like a poem, and with a poem’s ambition.” (interview in September’s Writer’s Chronicle)

Yesterday was social, eating and writing with friends before class, then getting an always-coveted phone call from my daughter, and hearing about Halloween adventures already begun. Tomorrow I’m reading not-too-spooky stories at the library. Today it’s gray again, the dogs are sleepy, and I’m hunkering in to creep toward the end of my long-long-revision. I’m always happy for quiet company, so whether you’re sick or well, I hope you can join me. And don’t mind if I break for a bit of knitting.

Thanks, lovely Jama jamarattigan for passing on the kreativ blogger award!



Since Jama is such a lover of picture books – I, too, think they’re the heart of children’s literature, though other genres are wonderful, too – and because Becky beckylevine recently asked for recommendations of good books about picture books, I’m writing about seven favorites. American Picturebooks from Noah’s Ark to The Beast Within by Barbara Bader is a hefty tome with brilliant studies of and pictures from books that have stood the test of time. You may have read Bader’s articles in the Horn Book.

For views of people working in the field more currently, I couldn’t choose between two slender colorful books by Leonard S. Marcus, who is our go-to person for following the industry, and perhaps best known for his biography of Margaret Wise Brown and the collected letters of Ursula Nordstrom, which every children’s writer should read for its humor and insight. But I digress – there are so many books! Marcus’s Side by Side: Five Favorite Picture-Book Teams Go to Work emphasizes wonderful collaborators, and shows more picture books for older readers, perhaps because getting information right was part of the collaboration. A Caldecott Celebration: Six Artists and Their Paths to the Caldecott Medal is also filled with great nuggets from interviews and gorgeous illustrations. I always bring in this book when I teach to show Maurice Sendak’s dummy for Where the Wild Things Are, which was originally Where the Wild Horses Are, until Sendak conceded he wasn’t so great at drawing horses.



I blogged about Show and Tell by Dilys Evans (Chronicle) a while ago, and while it emphasizes art, you get a feel for ways great picture books combine words and pictures.



Writing with Pictures by Uri Shulevitz, who won a Caldecott honor yesterday, puts forth more plainly the work behind a book. Bringing authors and illustrators together is Writing and Illustrating Children’s Books for Publication: Two Perspectives by Berthe Amoss and Eric Suben (Writer’s Digest Book) is one I’ve had around for a long time and may be dated in some ways, but not in the essentials. It’s easy to read and practical, including exercises and checklists, but also inspiring anecdotes.

Finally, Inside Picture Books by Ellen Handler Spitz, published by Yale University, offers an overview and analysis of classics. I love this book, which is the only one listed that’s entirely writing. The voice is lovely and honest and pulls you right in. I didn’t always agree with Spitz’s conclusions, but I loved following her there, and it’s particularly good on what makes a book compelling to some of the youngest picture book readers, those who perch on laps.

Not long after I first learned to read, when visiting the library I habitually headed to two shelves near the floor of books with tattered orange covers. These were biographies that fictionalized the childhoods of famous Americans, and though there weren’t as many girls as I would have liked, I loved them. They were illustrated with cut-paper black silouhettes which seemed to help me dream my way into their lives. And provided fodder for games played in the woods behind my house.

And these are a version of the books I like to write today, though I try to include more detail and grit and lengthen the list of girls and women. I start by reading biographies for adults and getting smitten, like a student who came by my office on Monday to pick up project. She’d brought along the embroidery she’d done of Clara Barton, which I’d asked to see after a conversation about being obsessed with her as a child. Fran wrote and illustrated a biography for children as a project. With class over, I don’t know if she’ll go on with this project, but here would be a beginning: obsession. If you’re going to spend a long time reading and writing about a person, it had better be someone you love, are obsessed with, or both. I know some people write about villains or various kinds of low lifes who may shape history as much as heroes do. Personally, I wouldn’t want that kind of company for long in my room.

Fran based the short book she wrote on letters Barton wrote to children who wanted to know more about her childhood. I think the underlying question for some of these children was: can I grow up to be a little like you? Barton replied, conveying some impatience, almost bristliness, at people “wont to dwell upon my courage.” She wrote “in the earlier years of my life I remember nothing but fear.” Of course I want to know what she feared, and how she overcame it, which Fran’s small book didn’t have the space to explore. And there’s a shape of many a biography, the arc from fear to courage.

Another approach would be to expand from the person to the larger scope of history. A book about Clara Barton might certainly be much about founding the Red Cross, and one might follow the organization’s history to the present. Children might like to know not only more about women in the Civil War era, but the history of nursing. Now it’s a female dominated role, though with more room than it had when I was growing up, when it was one of the few or popular choices, along with teacher and secretary. Clara Barton fought to break into the field, back in a time when women’s legs, sometimes obliquely referred to as limbs, were well covered by skirts, and the idea of the virtuous getting corrupted by male anatomy, no matter how in need of healing, meant that most nurses were men, and scarce.

All kinds of directions are possible. When I get lost in my research, I go back to the first moments of falling in love: what snagged my attention? What made my heart beat harder? That’s got to be at the center of the book, and often suggests its shape.

It was sad to leave my last class at Mount Holyoke, even if we were all a bit tired by ten p.m. after three hours of listening to summaries of final projects. We discussed children’s books that lead to nature appreciation in response to Reesha’s “Truffula Trees and Spider Webs” paper. Both she and Chelsea discussed Dr. Seuss’s The Lorax and others from the darker end of his work, and we learned that Dr. Seuss was never quite comfortable with children who were most excited to see him. Apparently he’d stiffly put out his hand and say, “How do you do?” We heard about various tellings of Little Red Riding Hood (ending with Roald Dahl’s version in which Red pulls a gun from her little basket). We heard some gentler poetry for children that inspired one student, then listened to a few beautiful poems of his own.

A student preparing to be a teacher spoke about a few books that inspired her own creativity and spirituality. Two students wrote about books with religious themes. There was some discussion about the irony of Christians banning books by Christian authors, then a small flare up about the seventh Harry Potter book, which quickly ended as glaring students demanded no spoilers. An apprentice teacher gave an overview of picture books depicting families with gay or lesbian parents. One student delved into the life and work of Frances Hodgson Burnett, another looked at work by Janet Taylor Lisle, one looked at text and image in Alice in Wonderland, and one at queer subtext in Francesca Lia Block.

Andrew, a Five College student from Hampshire, spoke about his “Proposed Essential Guide to the Metafictional Cafeteria,” with epigraphs from Paradise Lost and The Breakfast Club. He discussed the teen bildungsroman, or “the section of the circle of life that moves 2 fast and 2 furious, lives free, dies hard and leaves a pretty corpse.” He’s kept us enthralled with his pop culture knowledge (the go-to guy if you missed an episode of Gossip Girl), but his knowledge doesn’t end with television. He compared the posses or girls who speak as one to the Fates, passing an eye as they take turns, “except the Fates don’t yell, ‘Scandalous!’”)

Creative works included an illustrated ABC of New York City (A is Apartment Building, B is for Bagel, C is for Chrysler Building and Coffee Cup etc.) and an illustrated biography (with handmade paper covers) of Clara Barton based on the primary resource of Barton’s letters. Laura’s illustrated picture book featured a boy’s intriguing friendship with a bear. Two students collaborated on the writing and illustration for a picture book about a child’s first airplane trip, which had us laughing, though also a bit startled as we imagined through the child the flight attendant’s little talk and video before the plane takes off. We agreed that to a child that could be a horror movie.

One novelist analyzed Twilight for the components that made it such a success, and tried to use some of these elements in the first chapter of her book. Another got into the angsty voice of a thirteen year old whose mom was obsessed enough with Madeline to name her daughter that, which seemed fair enough, but the younger sibs were named Pepito and Clavel.

And one student who’d planned to write about Anne of Green Gables, so known for turning hardships into joy, decided instead to start her own novel based on a high school friend who died. As she spoke about her inspiration, she choked up and left the room. We kept a few moments of feeling-for-her silence before taking a break. I’m pleased to say this young woman came back, and I’m in awe of her bravery. And of all these hard-thinking, deeply feeling, creative and kind young people who I’ll miss so much.

Some students preferred The Little Princess, but many loved The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. A few found Mary Lennox too nasty, but more were willing to overlook her selfishness, given her background, and were smitten with the story of children who start with a secret, which, Catherine pointed out, always has power, available to the loneliest and poorest, then share the secret behind the ivy-cover wall. Among rose brambles that look thorny and dead, they find what is living, green, or wick and help it spread. They made a new home in the garden, where there’s some kind of mother. The secret garden was created and first cherished by Colin’s mother, and her spirit is still there, especially for these two bereft children who long for a mother.

Emilie illustrated some themes (I'm sorry I cut off one of the silhouettes/ghosts framing orphaned Mary):



The novel has its flaws. Colin and Martha’s mother, Mrs. Sowerby, is indeed a perfect sort of mother, but how realistic is it that a mother of twelve be so calm and wise? Maybe that doesn’t matter. She watches the robin family and thinks hey, maybe it's not a piece of cake to be mother to twelve, but at least her offspring don't have wings. Now there's a worry.

Some suggested better endings. Nahwah’s map of the plot (below) unfans to a long view of growth, but I kept the ending, even though hers is revised, out of sight in interest on non-spoilers. I’ll leave it that many of us voted Najwah’s version as more satisfying.

I’m catching up on class notes, looking back at favorite picture books which students wrote and spoke about last month. At the beginning of class, each wrote the title of their book, author, tone, and date on the whiteboard, then presented beginning with the classic Make Way for Ducklings to the most recent, And Tango Makes Three, which is about two penguin dads and their adoptive child, based on real penguins in Central Park.

Catherine spoke of the theme of Make Way for Ducklings (1941) as a search for a safe home, and Tango Makes Three, all those decades later, echoes that. One has a setting of a traditional duck family by the Boston Common, where policeman and pedestrians are most pleasant, the other set at a zoo where animals are adored and protected, but there are hints of danger implied by bars and the fact that this picture book leads as one of the most challenged books simply because of its acceptance of all varieties of families.

We looked at other great books, too. Fran could hardly stop reading James Marshall’s very short stories in the epic new George and Martha collection. And we could hardly stop laughing. Ann also used the word epic to describe Kitten’s First Full Moon, Kevin Henke’s Caldecott winning picture book in 2004, emphasizing the heroic kitten’s quest for milk, the Rocky-like moment of triumph. Reesha held up Corduroy, and there was a soft wave of “Ooooohs.”

Yes, that is a cute bear, Reesha acknowledged, then took us from there through her analysis of the parallels between the toy bear and the girl who was determined to not simply own this toy, but have a friend. Both characters were proactive, Reesha said. When Lisa’s mom said he didn’t seem a bargain with a loose button, Corduroy didn’t weep, but that night left his shelf to search through the dark scary department store for a button. The little girl Lisa was equally determined, emptying her piggy bank. Corduroy met the night watchman, who was unable to see his power to walk, paralleling the inability of some adults to recognize a child’s power. At the end of the book, Corduroy finds both a friend and home, and many children, like my daughter often did years ago, say: Again.

In Debra Frasier’s On the Day You Were Born we saw the world from above and in Peter Sis’s Madlenka we watched a girl discover the world of her block in NYC, while showing off a wiggly tooth. And so we’ll move on to The Secret Garden, where we get Mrs. Sowerby speaking of the world as an orange that we must learn to share while knowing here, at last, now, we are safely at home.

One student said that ever since she first read Bridge to Terabithia, she rereads the novel bracing herself, wondering will that awful thing happen here, or now, or here, or now? I feel for her, but my own experience is finding more and more about imagination, family, friendship, gender, and class. Krystal said it’s not the tragedy that’s so important, but what comes before and after. Jack noted that “those who are not children,” which I guess would be us, often have a hard time speaking of death to children because they have a hard time with it themselves, and assume for children the conversation will be even harder. Not necessarily, many agreed, seeing children as more resilient than fragile.

Myra spoke about the beauty of friendship as way for two people to bring out what’s been hidden in each other. Chelsea brought out the way this novel makes imagination more explicit than in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. In Bridge to Terabithia, the second world is clearly created by the children, and thus one like any reader may create. Jesse builds the bridge in the title with a real hammer and real nails.

One of my favorite stories Katherine Paterson has told about herself is how her mother once asked when she was going to write about the time in first grade when she didn’t get any valentines.

And she replied, “Why mother, all my books are about that time.”

Our class began by gathering around Ellen Wittlinger in the Odyssey Bookshop, listening to her read from Love and Lies: Marisol’s Story. Ellen answered students’ questions about writing with honesty, good humor, and encouragement. We were happy as we bundled up to walk a short way through the night to our classroom.

There, Andrew gave a Powerpoint overview of teen literature starting with Goethe’s adolescents. How can you not be fond of a young man who can put Little Women, Gossip Girls, and Paradise Lost in a single sentence? (Or for that matter, compare the hierarchies of friendships in Winnie-the-Pooh with those in Clueless?)

Jack spoke about graphic novels as somewhat evolving from picture books, and gave a close look at Scott Mill’s Big Clay Pot. Alex gave us a taste of the work of Francesca Lia Block, raising the issue of the difficulties of marking lines between literature for teens and that for adults, and bringing us back to fairy tales and a different way to approach the genre through Block’s long winding sentences bristling with the tangible.

One student spoke of the awkwardness of looking at the teen years when really they weren’t so far away, and hadn’t been that great. And might just as soon be forgotten. Many felt more comfortable looking at work that’s more clearly across the divide, on the side of childhood. But everyone did their best at looking back and I think we all grew a little from the challenge.

My children’s literature class at Mount Holyoke actually has a tag at the end: “and literature for teens,” which I didn’t hear until after accepting the invitation to teach the course. I happily added Alcott’s Little Women, which is one of the first novels specifically written for an audience of older girls and Ellen Wittlinger’s Hard Love, an award-winning novel about a high school senior boy falling in love with a self described “Puerto Rican Cuban Yankee Cambridge, Massachusetts, rich spoiled lesbian private-school gifted-and-talented writer virgin looking for love.” What does it mean for a character to name herself thus, we discussed, along with themes of alienation and sexuality, without forgetting the more familiar themes of family, friendships, and imagination.

On Monday, November 17 at 7:00, Ellen Wittlinger http://www.ellenwittlinger.com/ will read from Love and Lies: Marisol’s story, a sequel to Hard Love, and speak at The Odyssey Bookshop in South Hadley, MA. http://www.odysseybks.com/calendar.html My articulate and brilliant 24 students will be there adding their articulateness and brilliance. Or something. Many are great fans of Ellen’s work, and I expect interesting questions will be raised. If you can, please join us!

My children’s literature class discussed One Hundred Dresses, a chapter book by Eleanor Estes and illustrated by Louis Slobodkin, who I learned was an elevator operator before making his name as an artist, and sometimes let the door get stuck between floors to get in some reading time.

I liked this book when I read it along with my daughter when she was eight, and I liked it rereading it for class. But some of my students made me give it a sharper look. When I asked if anyone would want to change the end, two hands shot up. Fast. The mean girls, they felt, were let off the hook too easily. Reesha was most articulate about the lack of justice, and how the short novel trivialized forgiveness and dismissed the complications and wonder of real friendship. There should have been confrontation. At the very least, Fran said, Peggy should have heard someone say: I don’t like you.

Althea brought out the way Wanda, the girl who’s teased, is written about only in the past tense, as a figment of memory, and thus becomes a shadow character: is that itself a putdown? We discussed morals and peer pressure and how they enter books for young readers. I mentioned an observation from my daughter’s first grade teacher years ago, who studied the dynamics of popularity among girls and concluded that a lot came down to what they wore in their hair. She could observe the tops of heads and often figure out who was bent on coming out on top. This statement seemed to strike a chord. Many memories of barrettes and hair ties and bands came flooding out into this female dominated room.

This might be a good writing exercise: memories of pony tail holders and butterfly clips, hierarchy and power and envy. Go for it, if you want! What did you want to wear in your hair when you were six or eight?

I’ve been feeling it, and I’ve been reading it: lately some of us have been running into walls when we sit down to write. Recently I was glad to take a break and listen to two students do a presentation on C.S. Lewis and other fantasy writers, noting the paths characters take to other worlds. They showed a clip of the first Harry Potter movie with Harry at the train station, blinking and gulping in front of what he hoped was Platform Nine and Three-quarters and his entrée to Hogwart’s School.

“Don’t stop and don’t be scared…,” Ron’s mother advised. “Best do it at a bit of a run.”

My students spoke of the magic door handle that turned to various colors which Diana Wynne Jones used as vehicle to sweep characters to various lands in Howl’s Moving Castle. Ann noted that in the Chronicles of Narnia, you have to not only be young to enter new worlds, but to not know where you’re going. Lucy passes through the snug coat-packed wardrobe to the big open forest, feeling both accepting of and astonished at another world. We’ll always love the wardrobe, but at the end of the book, the professor cautions that the children shouldn’t expect to get to Narnia the same way twice. In Lewis’s The Magician’s Nephew, children jump into pools to arrive at different lands. In The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, they step through a painting.

They leap without looking. Can we? I’m not a child and I’ve been writing for a long time, so I’m well aware of words behind me and words I mean to write. Often I feel more obsessed with planning and cleaning up than shutting my eyes and throwing up my arms and jumping. It’s hard to take our eyes off the world past our desks, and the news makes us feel heavy, shallow breathed, not exactly in the mood for leaping.

So lately I’ve been trying to spend more time with blank pages, more time charging on without worrying too much where I’m going. I’ve landed in some strange, some good, and some plain awful places, but they all kind of beat staring at walls, which I do manage to get back to. The poet Auden, and maybe a hundred other people, wrote about writing as discovery, writing to learn what he was thinking. Under our hands, on paper, anything can happen.

We all have real walls we have to face. But when it’s time to write, can we let them disappear, fade into the color of empty paper? Be like the child who doesn’t know where she’s going?

Come on. Let’s run straight at that wall. Or leap.

In my last post I noted that Wheaton College in Illinois has the wardrobe that belonged to C.S. Lewis. And they do. Here's a picture:



But I just read that another Christian college, Westmont, in Santa Barbara, CA also has a wardrobe that belonged to the author of The Chronicles of Narnia. The one at Wheaton College was made by C.S.Lewis's grandfather and is the wardrobe that he and his brother played in as boys. Naturally, there's a bit of controversy you can read about here and elsewhere http://blog.syracuse.com/shelflife/2007/03/the_real_wardrobe.html

Update. I just got this information from a kind person: "Westmont's wardrobe is not on campus as it is touring with the Narnia Exhibition (http://www.narniaexhibition.com/) which is leaving Arizona and will be in Philadelphia in November. Here are some pictures of the exhibit: http://www.westmont.edu/_public_affairs/press_kit/wardrobe_exhibit.html"

Philadelphia in November! Anyone want to meet me? Here's the picture of the wardrobe from Westmont.
I think it’s cool that apparently both colleges display them with fur coats stuffed inside.

I think there’s better food in Narnia than Turkish Delight. Just go the cave of the faun, Mr. Tumnus, for toast with honey and boiled brown eggs. Or to Mrs. Beaver’s snug home for orange marmalade rolls fresh from her little oven. C. S. Lewis isn’t stingy with his food description, and when asked if he put this in children’s books because he couldn’t write about grown up sex, he said, no, he put it in because he likes food. Anyway, it’s the Turkish Delight that Edmund loves perhaps more than his siblings at one point and causes his all important downfall, and people want to know what is is. Jello-like, often rose flavored, sticky, slightly slimy.

But why should they take my word for it? I found a recipe for Turkish Delight, but it involved a candy thermometer, which I don’t have, and the idea of standing over a hot stove stirring something I’d be pretty sure would end up disgusting didn’t appeal to me. I ordered some off the web and brought it in. One student said the Turkish Delight was like gourmet gummy bears. Which sounds better than my description.



We read Lewis’s essay “Three Ways of Writing for Children.” The one bad way is to write to impart a message to inferior beings. The second way is to write with a specific child in mind, the way Tolkien began The Hobbit for his children, or Lewis Carroll started his classic as a story for his neighbor, Alice, or Beatrix Potter began Peter Rabbit as a tale for her former governess’s ill boy. The third way is his, and that’s to write what he calls a fairy tale because that’s the only tale he can tell, coming partly from the child in him still and from the grownup.

He also mentions how his writing begins in pictures. I’ve read elsewhere about how he and his brother used to play in a wardrobe when they were children in Ireland. At age sixteen, Lewis had a dream about a faun holding an umbrella in a snowy forest. As an adult, Lewis began a story called “The Lion,” which fizzled out. During WWII, some children escaping the bombing in London took refuge in his big old house, and the pieces started to come together. Eight years after he penned the first page, he had the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.

I told my students that Lewis’s original wardrobe is now in a collection at Wheaton College in Illinois.
“Oh, can you go in it?” one asked.
“Um, I’m not sure. I guess you’d have to research."
But I don’t think she will. And neither will I. It’s nicer to think that maybe you can climb in.

A few days ago I told my nineteen-year-old daughter that I was going with friends to see Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist. There was a pause before Em said, “Isn’t that a little young for you?”

I thought it was kind of sweet she didn’t phrase it as: aren’t you old for that?

I recently heard Carol Christ, the president of Smith College, speak about fantasy in nineteenth century literature for children. She called Alice in Wonderland her favorite children’s book, in part because of the way it speaks to both adults and children. She mentioned the rabbit hole as perhaps symbolizing the regression of adults, going back into the womb. Hmm. I’m more apt to think about how we wind our ways around words or add layers as we read books we read as children and find more than we first did. It’s not about going back in search of lost boys or lost worlds, but maybe realizing those people and places have been with us all along.

Or something. Sorry. I just mean to say that regression isn’t a word I care to use, and that things are more complicated than moving back or moving forward, and that we may never completely peel away all the people we’ve ever been. It’s why fairy tales stick with us, and why we find more in them as years pass. We don’t have to move beyond, but just let things accrue. I told my students who are studying picture books about my just-hit-up-the-candy-store feeling, part guilt, more elation, the first time I checked out library books not intended for my child, but for me. Yes, you can find pretty or funny pictures even in the stacks of college libraries, which not only have a cataloguing system that’s more complicated than the Dewey Decimal most library-lovers grew up with, but have the jackets removed from books, almost as if to keep the stacks less colorful and shiny.

“There should therefore be a time in adult life devoted to revisiting the most important books of our youth. Even if the books have remained the same,… we have most certainly changed, and our encounter with them will be a new thing.” -- Italo Calvino, The Use of Literature

And C. S. Lewis, wrote, “When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly.” (“On Three Ways of Writing for Children)

The idea of growing up suggests a movement toward a better state. Yes, in some ways, but not entirely. It’s good to read books written for young people and good to hang out with them. I like walking with my contemporary, Mary, as we discuss political campaigns, cholesterol, and calcium, for instance, but yesterday I had fun walking with my thirteen-year-old neighbor, hearing her philosophy on squirrel chasing dogs – they can’t help it, it’s like a video game to them. And did I know anyone who might want some chickens she needs to get rid of? They’re past laying eggs but make nice easy pets, and she has 28, a lot to get in each night. When our dog leashes crossed, instead of passing over the leads as Mary and I do, G. leapt over them, without a break in the conversation.

I vaguely remember being a child reading some already faded books by Thornton W. Burgess. His stories were filled with characters like Mother West Wind, Mrs. Grouse, Mr. Snake, Jack Squirrel, Hooty the Owl, and Grandfather Frog. Recently a friend brought up this author, and said she thought his work had gone out of fashion because of their use of talking animals who wear human clothes. I said that anthropomorphism is not out of fashion, except maybe with “your people,” meaning conservationists, which wasn’t a very nice phrase and took no account of all the trees, frogs, vernal pools etc. my dear friend has saved in her day (not to mention all the treats she gives my dogs and advice she gives me).

I just meant that everyone, even naturalists, have got to check our vigilante leanings. You could wipe out a whole lot of literature if you nixed animals who talk. I wouldn’t want to do without best friends Frog and Toad, or Toot and Puddle, or Jane Dyer’s sweet works, the hungry, hungry caterpillar, Winnie-the-Pooh, Thoreau as a bear and a pigeon who wants to drive a school bus. Beatrix Potter’s work seems timeless. I’m fond of Kevin Henke’s little mouse Lily, and Angelina Ballerina, not so much of Ian Falconer’s Olivia. As the saying goes, whether or not we want talking animals in a book depends on what they say.

Anthropomorphism has its benefits: you don’t have to necessarily distinguish the gender, though many artists do; race isn’t an issue, so children of all colors can identify with the characters; age isn’t important, so pigs, hippos, etc. get to do both childlike and adult things without raising eyebrows. In his autobiography, Burgess adds another reason. “The animal story, because of the psychological factor involve, the intuitive feeling of superiority on the part of the child, is the most effective form of story.” (Now I Remember, p. 337) So is it that children feel a bit above some of the foolishness they find in humanized animal?

What matters is that anthropomorphism be done well, and I went back to Burgess to see. The adventures seemed generally ho hum, the lessons stagy. It’s not the talking animals that let Burgess’s books go out of print, after a long life most of us would envy, but that their dialogue isn’t quite distinctive enough, and perhaps even their animal nature not animal-y enough. I’m afraid I found the stories about as goofy or run-of-the-mill as the names of the characters (except for Mother West Wind, I’m holding her dear).

The flat prose is not altogether surprising considering that Burgess wrote over 70 books and 15,000 stories. Just in case anyone out there was feeling prolific. He wrote six stories a week for a newspaper at one point in his life. He said he often knocked out a story in half an hour, dictating to a secretary, and that he never rewrote. He gives us a formula: “One fact, a liberal amount of imagination with truth, a moral lesson, plenty of good action, adventure or lively dialogue, humor or pathos as desired, sometimes both, and a reasonable amount of simple English.” (p.218)

He doesn’t claim they were grand art, though he is pretty proud and hastens to list admirers including Teddy Roosevelt. I’d say the stories have had their day, but it’s kind of nice that many are still available on the shelves of my local library, with pages bent and yellowed. I think what I like best is their setting – not remarkable, but speaking of an era, or to children who still, plain old play in the woods. Most of us who write about nature in any kind of way for children hope to inspire wonder before endangered planet themes. What I like in Burgess is that he takes a step back even more. Nature is there, but also silliness and magic. I think his stories appealed to children like me who made little porches on stones and thrones on moss, where the woods were part of a kingdom where real squirrels play with elves and fairy queens.

“So I plod away although I don’t enjoy this sort of thing. Never liked girls or knew many, except my sisters, but our queer plays and experiences may prove interesting, though I doubt it.”
-- from Louisa May Alcott’s journal when writing Little Women, an almost immediate bestseller which has never gone out of print.


by Emilie Heidel

A teacher is a kind of a cheerleader, and when I give writing assignments, I hope my students feel there’s more ahead of them than plodding. So imagine my thrill when one emailed me while working on the assignment of writing and/or drawing a map of events in Little Women to ask if she and another could combine their plot points into one big poster. Another proposed working with two others to make a board game. Is there anything better than teaching Little Women at a woman’s college? I don’t think so.

Then I went to the classroom, which smelled of fresh chocolate. A group had baked chocolate chip cookies. One student showed me the book her mom had sent. Inside the front cover of Little Women were the names of her grandmother, her mom, and herself, all signed when they were thirteen. I noticed the “i” in her middle name was dotted with a heart.

It was fun to discuss a book that many were rereading. There was a lot of energy around Jo’s male identity: her remarks re hating being a girl, preferring guy’s clothing, cutting off her hair to raise money. One quoted Alcott’s father saying, as she left to become a nurse during the Civil War, as saying, “I’m sending my only son.” Some concluded Jo is gay or trans. We do bring up historical context. Women’s clothing of the time was truly constraining: we see Amy catching her breath as she walks with tight corsets under her clothes, and Meg buys 25 years of silk for a gown. That’s a lot of cloth to be carrying around. LMA was for dress reform and women's suffrage, among many other causes in days of many restrictions. We can look at her life and history, but still every reader gets to bring who she is now to a book, and hopefully that enlarges the reading for us all. And hopefully the book-banners, who seem to see crossing gender lines as a key reason for taking books off shelves, won’t add Little Women to the list.


Arielle and Najwah's poster


I was thrilled with what I took home in my oversized bag. Andrew considers the four sisters of Little Women as inspiration for the girls of the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, so he “embroidered” a nineteenth century gown, instead of jeans, with mottos appropriate to the March sisters, with many “translated” to the IM language a middle school reader might use.



Other gems include Althea, Hillary, and Jack’s board game which starts at the March House, but with possible stops at a semi-frozen river, the seaside, and France, before you might win the good life – partly by picking The Lawrence Boy card (Laurie saves the day!). You get to go ahead 2 spaces with a Christmas letter from Father, or by trading in a small bottle of perfume for a larger, nicer gift for Marmee (Amy), or by having twins (Meg). They give Jo 2 steps for publishing a book and 10 for selling her hair so Marmee can visit Father: clearly these are more generous people than me! You have to step back for being caught with pickled limes (Amy), deciding to wear small shoes because they’re pretty or failing to make good jelly and being a spendthrift (Meg). Burning manuscripts, falling through the ice, making excuses not to help Beth, or contracting scarlet fever all set you back.




Julia Fuller-Kling also used watercolors and fabric to embellish her fairy tale paper, and these match her warm demeanor.




I liked how Lauren Ray included themes underlying the actions.




Krystal Tusaneza, an economics major, told me how happy she was to spend an evening drawing. And I like the way she suggests the four sisters unite as one woman.

Reading children’s lit, the themes of imagination and refuge reappear. We have the One Hundred Acre Wood, which Christopher Robin gets to visit. Terabithia is where two children feel free from the pressures of home or school. Jo March perched on a three-legged sofa in a garret, with a sack of apples, a pen and ink.

Some of my students wrote about retreats in makeshift forts. Many were nostalgic for places where they remembered figuring out the strange lives of parents, or vowing to be nicer to a sibling, or dreaming up ways, like kings and queens of yore, or Frodo, how to save the world. They missed the escape from structured activities to places where they didn’t have to do anything, except maybe dream or think. One student wrote about wishing for an old comfy chair like the one that gave her comfort through family problems and adolescent angst, and was also where she tucked herself away when she was happy. Not only would a new chair not have the old stains, scents, and memories, she wondered if such private comfort is possible while at college. Where is home?

I think of E.B. White, who struggled with depression, writing CHARLOTTE’S WEB partly as a way to bring back the imagination and hope he took for granted as a child.

I’m no E.B., but I think writing is my haven and fortress-in-the-woods, the place where I go to be alone – but like many of my students, remembering their childhoods, may share with a trusted friend. Writing about old private sanctuaries, several students mentioned the one trusted person who was allowed to enter. One kept a hideout with a stash of nail polish, snacks, and a shared journal: lest it be discovered, the two girls wrote their names backwards. Tricky.

When writing. I think it’s important to feel as if we’re writing in safety, even, or especially, as we dare to push beyond what feels safe. To feel as if we’re writing to that one special friend we trust with our backwards-written name. For a while, no one may sneak into this cobbled-together fort. Then one day we open the door to all our best friends and say: enter, please.

Thanks to those who wrote to me with concerns about young people unfamiliar with family farms. Okay, we have some cause for worry, but also to hope. In a class of 25, if one or two or three people say something, it’s easy to feel bowled over, assuming the class, everyone, thinks this, which by now you’d think I’d know wasn’t true. I’m glad that each and every person writes short papers and I get to hear individual voices, from people who might not otherwise speak up. Which, of course, was the kind of student I used to be.

After reading Charlotte’s Web, I asked my students to write an analytical paper or a memoir of a refuge, such as the barn was to the animals and for a while to Fern. I got to read about some safe hideouts within homes: a favorite comfy chair, a blanket fortress, and a post on the stairs with grape juice, cheese, a thick mythology book, and occasional passing annoyed siblings. One student loved people watching more than reading on the morning subway, but there were enough who found sanctuaries outside, in corners of the backyard or the edge of a very small forest. These were the days when a dozen trees might seem to be a kingdom. One wrote about her initial favoring of meadows over malls, but coming to find a way to friends who taught her about makeup, while she taught them how to climb a tree: without shoes, is part of her strategy.

Then yesterday my daughter and I drove by a big building near a farm on the Connecticut River.
“What’s that?” Her voice kind of choked around “that.”

The boxy building is ugly, but at least it’s for growing and shipping bean sprouts, so I’ve been told, on this farm where Chinese vegetables are grown. The old tobacco barns in town are prettier, but we appreciate its purpose more.

Tomorrow my daughter is “going home.” Her words, which I try to fit into my retro mind. Things change, homes change, it’s all right. Almost. I loved having her around for a week, and she enjoyed sleeping in the bed her dad built, handing around the dogs, taking her old spot on the couch, time with me trying not to grill too much. At the mall, we bought matching necklaces with tiny hearts we’re each wearing now: really, I can’t ask for much more. She seems to love L.A. with all its things to do, nearby beaches, a variety of people.

But still, I was glad that she told me, “In the mornings when I let out the dogs here, I think: what is that I’m smelling? And I remember. It’s fresh air.”

Which at the end of September is scented with maple leaves, drying on the tips, purple asters and wild grapes.

I love starting the semester reading Charlotte’s Web. It may be like starting a poetry unit with the best-ever sonnet; everything here, tone, setting, characters, theme falls so perfectly in place. One astute student pointed out how on the first page, when Fern wonders about her father with an ax, then stops him from killing the runt, we immediately get the themes of friendship and love and saving someone. We had engaged discussions, perhaps the most volatile was pro and con Templeton the rat; some saw him as merely no good, while others, perhaps led by the student who claimed, “Templeton’s the man,” believed he had even more to offer than good dialogue, though that might be great enough.

I asked, “How many had the pleasure of reading this novel outside? On the grass. In a tree.”

The one student who shyly raised her hand later told me she also had the pleasure of reading the book for the first time, and fell in love. Seeing she could hardly keep her hands off my annotated version, I asked if she’d like to borrow it: she sweetly and politely snatched it while nodding.

“How many noticed a spider’s web this week?” I asked.

They laughed, but I urged them to look in the morning, when dew was on the grass and branches. Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised, while discussing the setting, someone said of the farm. “That had to be something just in the forties or fifties, when this was written. Things couldn’t happen like that now.”

My jaw fell a bit. Or maybe a lot. I’m used to my own life being history. Even, the other day, I called “The Stinky Cheese Man and other Fairly Stupid Tales” a classic. But I wasn’t ready to think that wonderful barn was anything but timeless. I told them that while driving to their college, about a mile away, I saw blue lights flash and checked to see that I was close to 40 mph, the speed limit on the windy road. It turned out that wasn’t the issue, but the cop was stopping me due to cows in the road. I watched while a farmer on an ATV tried to herd them back to the pasture. That ATV; now that’s just not right. At least the farmer whistled.

Okay, things do change and sadly, maybe my students, who could accept the talking animals but found the farm strange, are right. Places with miracles do vanish. Can we take a field trip to one of the farms around here that are now selling apples and butternut squash by the bushels, and sometimes also lattes or cider donuts as a way to make ends meet? Can they sneak behind to sniff the barns, see if there’s a rope swing from the hay loft? Extra credit for finding a spider’s web.