Memories With Mem

Many years ago when I began realizing my passion for children's literature, my mom bought me the first picture book I received as an adult: Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge by Mem Fox, with soft illustrations that add so wonderfully to the story's appeal by Julie Vivas. It is about a boy with four names who was familiar with the old people who lived in the home next door. Each of his friends has a distinguishing characteristic or passion, like Mrs. Jordan's organ-playing. His favorite, though, was a lovely lady named Miss Nancy Alison Delacourt Cooper, and after her overheard his parents talking about how Miss Nancy had lost her memory, Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge asks his other friends to define memories. I have read it so many times - and shared it with so many classes - the text is ingrained in my memory.

Tonight Mem Fox signed that book that was given to me so many years ago. Along with talented Lauren Stringer (who illustrated Mem's latest book Tell Me About Your Day Today and recently was named a McKnight Fellow), Mem was honored at a gathering of dozens of Minnesota authors and illustrators. Tomorrow night she will deliver the Book Week lecture at the University of Minnesota.

Birthday Call

A dear friend, Gloria Rand, celebrated her birthday this week. We met in person - after many phone calls - in May of 2005 when we celebrated the life and work of her husband Ted, winner of the 2005 Kerlan Award from the University of Minnesota. After a fabulous speech about Ted's career by his editor Laura Godwin, Gloria, my mom, and I headed out to do some sight-seeing in St. Paul before her flight home. It was a swell day, Gloria still reminisces.

I love Gloria's stories, especially Baby in a Basket and The Cabin Key, both illustrated by Ted. During our conversation, I heard so many good stories about the people in her life and people we both know. She said our conversation was the best part of her day. I think it was the best part of mine, too.

Listening Dogs

Children at the book festival on Thursday afternoon took advantage of the opportunity to read Micki and Morgan, two dogs trained as therapy dogs. The dogs and their kind and patient owners routinely listen to readers at our local library, and they have thoughtfully participate in our book festivals twice now! Readers chose dog-themed books from a basket and settled down on the carpet - amidst all the bustle of sales and searching - to share stories. Each reader was intent on showing the pictures, and the dogs were perfect listeners. Not surprisingly at a school where author/illustrator David LaRochelle has visited for 14 straight years, his book The Best Pet of All was read several times!

Time Lapse

      

Yesterday our fall book festival took shape, hour by hour, until everything was in place for visitors to wish, ponder, and shop today. What wonderful women help to make this possible!

Ventriloquists

Each year I read aloud at least one book by Dick King-Smith (who died in January of 2011), and this year I picked George Speaks, the humorous story of a girl named Laura and her baby brother George. Laura was not as pleased as everyone told her she would be about the arrival of the baby, but when, at four weeks old, he speaks to her in complete sentences, she is stunned and enchanted with George. The second-grade children were entranced by the story. When George furrowed his brow in a frown, brows furrowed up and down the story steps. Best of all, when George suggested that, should they ever be caught talking in front of their parents, Laura act as if she was pretending to be a ventriloquist with him, twenty-six children commenced to speaking with their mouths closed! Thus followed more information about ventriloquists and a quick peek at Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy on YouTube.

Note: My little brother did not surprise me by speaking English as an infant, but I was enchanted by him.

Trusted Source

There are a few cookbooks which I use on a weekly basis. Lora Brody's Basic Baking is one I love reading for pleasure, as well as for the excellent recipes, and I used it twice yesterday. Louise Rosenblatt's transactional theory of reading (see Literature as Exploration, 1938) posits that we read both aesthetically (for pleasure) and efferently (to find out information). What one person reads in one way, another might read in the opposite mindset. While my husband would never read a cookbook aesthetically, I find the text and the recipes filled with intrigue and pleasure. He, on the other hand, might have an aesthetic experience with a book about fish or fishing, and I would need to read that efferently, taking time to understand and process the text.

Yesterday I made Cranberry Orange Bread with fresh cranberries from a Wisconsin bog near a friend's cabin. My husband was intrigued by how lovely the cranberries look on the inside with their star-shaped centers and tiny seeds. In her chapter about quick breads, tea loaves, and coffee cakes, Lora says, 

"There is something intensely satisfying about these plain-looking but fancy-tasting desserts. I don't know whether it's their heft, their dense, sweet moistness, their comforting taste and texture, or their unintimidating appearance that makes me think of snowy days, warm, toasty kitchens, woven pot holders, and freshly brewed pots of coffee served with half-and-half instead of that anemic no-fat "blue" milk. They are the quintessentially old-fashioned dessert that never went out of style. Isn't it lovely that you can serve them at all three meals?"

Thank goodness someone else thinks it is okay to have dessert for breakfast!

Fortune Wookiee

Before I wrapped one of my nephews Christmas gifts, I just had to read it: Tom Angleberger's The Secret of the Fortune Wookiee. The third book in the "Origami Yoda" series, this one features a kirigami Chewbacca and a kirigami (paper-folding + cutting + additions) Han Solo (Han Foldo in the story), supposedly given to Sara by Dwight, the original creator of Origami Yoda. Told in case files with Tommy as the compiling editor, the story takes place in the middle school where Dwight was once a student. The advice Dwight's Origami Yoda gave to his classmates was surprisingly insightful, and all were appreciative except for Harvey. In a mean-spirited gesture, Harvey created Darth Paper (in the second book Darth Paper Strikes Back) to provide the dark side to Origami Yoda's advice. The resulting conflicts forced Dwight to attend a private school.

In this latest installment, Fortune Wookiee's responses (interpreted by Han Foldo) are similar to those offered by Origami Yoda and lead the young people to greater understandings of each other's characters and personalities. Readers at school are anxious for this title to arrive on our library shelves, and I know my nephew will enter the reading zone when he sits down with the book.