Another Rippling Effect

One of my second grade teacher colleagues is always eager to read books recommended, and she took Me and Rolly Maloo by Janet Wong home with her for spring break. Today she eagerly told me how much she loved that book. The voices are so true to life. The situations could happen in our school. Children and parents alike would appreciate the perspectives.

Instead of returning it, could she keep it and share it with the teachers in her master's program? She knows they will all want to read it.

I agree completely. I love that a well-directed recommendation can carry on to so many others.

Book Haven

Whenever I walk into my favorite bookshop, I feel like a character from Cheers. Everybody knows my name. They always have something interesting to share. The front window is beautifully painted, this month by Claudia McGehee. Staff picks on an endcap generate ideas for books to order for the library collection. Music plays softly. It is a haven for me.

As I talked with the staff about our upcoming book festival, a wee customer brought a box of fake food that can be "cut" for serving to the counter. She was quite articulate about her purchase, and hefted the box with a grunt to a staff member who needed to bend to take it from her.

My teaching partner and I perused new books this afternoon, read things we had been hoping to see (like Tom Lichtenheld's Cloudette - gosh, I love his humor), and admired all the new Ravensburger games and puzzles. The visit yielded a birthday gift for my first-grade neighbor, a paperback copy of Snipp, Snapp, Snurr and the Gingerbread, two copies of Margi Preus's new book Celebritrees, and one book my husband chose. I left contented...and went home to read.

Have You Read? #10

I have been lost in a book, specifically Candace Fleming's Amelia Lost: The Life and Disappearance of Amelia Earhart. Written in alternating chapters about the search for Amelia, her Lockheed Electra, and navigator Frank Noonan in July of 1937 (on grey paper) and her life story (on white paper), the narrative re-taught me things about the famous aviatrix...and introduced me to things I did not know.

That happens to me with famous people (my former hero Charles Schulz is one such example). My childhood acquisition of information about them is filtered somehow, and through the years, I gather details and learn traits and facts that I somehow need to mesh. In Amelia's case, my younger self admired her, saw her as a gifted flier, imagined her as the icon about whom I had read. In Amelia Lost, I discovered that she was more determined than talented, that she sometimes got credit for things that were not all her doing, that her disappearance might be due to some technological omissions (the Morse code key, for example) from her aircraft, and that her stubborn nature contributed to several mishaps in her career.

The biography captivated me, and I continually reconciled new information with remembered information. With another round of wax museum book talks coming up next week, I will recommend this to the person who chooses to learn about and portray Miss Earhart.

Child Artist Revisited

Earlier this week my younger son and I re-organized the contents of my cedar chest. The many journals I have written for them about their words, actions, challenges, and accomplishments were placed in chronological order. We laughed at some of the notes written to me by him (and his brothers). I even cried at some of the forgotten works of art and cards created for me!

When we came upon some of his ship artwork, he snatched them to save in his bucket of special things (along with favorite stuffed animals, school accomplishments, and other noteworthy objects from his personal history. Today, though, he brought them out again, along with Ed Emberley's Jumbo Color Drawing Book and several of the other ships and boats he drew years ago.

That book - and Mr. Emberley's many other drawing and thumbprint books - have brought joy to so many would-be artists. The step-by-step drawings make it easy to create detailed pictures. We are going to try one tomorrow together.

Water On My Mind

Instead of ice on the walking paths, there is water today. The line of trees in our backyard appears to be a reflecting pond. Lines of geese fly overhead and drop down at the surrounding lakes. Worries about rising rivers and flooding are in the news headlines. And in my mind, The Water Seeker resonates.

It is an unusual Oregon Trail story, begun in 1833 along Bittersweet Creek in Missouri. Trapper Jake Kincaid returns to his cabin and bride for a few months each year, but upon one such trip, he finds her buried beneath a tree and her mother holding the infant son (named Amos by his deceased wife) he did not know he would have. The story chronicles Amos's life from Pretty Water mission (where Jake's brother Gil is a preacher and his wife Rebecca is a teacher) to life on the prairie with the neighboring Block family (who take him in after Rebecca's death) to a life of dowsing with Jake and his Shoshone bride Blue Owl and finally to the trail leading to Oregon Territory.

Intermingled with Amos's story are the many references to water: the gift or curse of dowsing, Amos's fear of water as a child and Jake's lessons in learning how to swim, the digging of wells for many settlers, the crossing of rivers on their trek northwest, the scent of water young Gwendolyn (whom he will later marry) associates with Amos.

Kimberly Willis Holt's novel is historical fiction, but it is also magical, humorous, a bit romantic, and thoroughly captivating.

What Makes a Portfolio?

Debra and I spent many hours today (in our less-than-healthy states) scanning and copying items from Miss Alaineus: A Vocabulary Disaster. We completely took over the counter at a local copy center and had many customers interested in our work. Most folks have no idea of the thought processes and revisions that contribute to a finished book. We hope children and teachers who check out the portfolio from the Kerlan Collection will discover incredibly interesting things about Debra's process and begin to think of books in new ways.

Some of the many things we reproduced today include...

• the first draft scrawled on unlined paper
• a bound later draft with rough sketches included (and a much different subtitle)
• correspondence between Debra and her editor
• definitions (from two sources) of all the words she chose to define in the text (like Forest and Sage)
• skin tone examples and notes for the book's characters (all Crayola markers - she wanted everything used in the book's creation to be things found in a 5th grader's desk)
  
• photographs of grocery store aisles and the produce section and then artwork of Sage and her mom at the grocery store
• versions of the extra credit sentences that appear along each page
• versions of Sage's Miss Alaineus costume and her Miss Sterious costume as well
• photos of Debra's daughter posing in the positions Debra would need to create the artwork for Sage
• information about the flap copy (which she say is the hardest thing to write - and which she always writes herself)
• a style guide she created for her editor and art director

Something Old to Something New

More than 27 years ago my sweet grandmother taught me to knit. After that basic knit/purl scarf made by every beginner, I wanted to learn how to make mittens. She had two copies of the 1953 publication Gloves and Mittens To Knit and Crochet for the Entire Family, and she gave one to me. It is worth far more than the 30 cents she paid for it decades ago.

Grandma guided me through a pair of basic mittens and showed me how to add a cable or two to the back of the hands. She taught me to change colors, and I later made those snowman mittens for my sons. I have made dozens of pairs over the years and am going to try something new today. With the wool I use for felting projects, I plan to make an extra large pair of those mittens she taught me to knit so long ago - and then see how well they turn out felted. Doing something to remember her is always a good way to bring someone dear close to my heart.