Once Upon . . and Then, Again.

 I’m Reading with My Darling

We sat on the couch.

We sat there, we two

with nothing at all;

with nothing to do.

So we went to the cupboard

and we took out some books

and we looked and we looked

at those books that we took.

We looked and we read;

not fighting—instead,

we read and we read

all the books that we took

from the cupboard’s book nook

where we took a good look,

and found a very good book.

We laughed and we cried

at the books that we spied.

We read and we said

these books are just fine.

Here’s one that is yours.

Here’s one that is mine.

Let’s share them and read them

together today.

Let’s share them and read

them together, I say.

We bookworms discovered

as we went on our way,

we could digest books each and every day

we reread and re-gested,

along with the bested

and left no book untested

from our bookshelf, today.

~ By Annette Gagliardi

I was channeling Dr. Suess in the above poem for my dedication to Books. Even though I have become frightfully old, children’s books are still enchanting and teaching me many, many things. Possibly they are teaching you, as well.

One day  when my eldest daughter was about five, she was mad at me for saying that terrible “N” word—“NO.”  She stormed off, but not before she expressed her dismay and frustration by repeating the best phrase she knew, “Mommy, you are nothing but a hedgehog!” Even though it was supposed to be insulting, I laughed—after she left the room. It was the ending quote from one of Beatrix Potter’s books, “Mrs. Tiggywinkle” is one of our favorite stories and we have read it enough so that my daughter could remember it well. One way children gain vocabulary is by remembering those words read to them from books, and my eldest has a great memory for fabulous words.

Squirrel Nutkin’s riddles still challenge adults; we still consider Jeremy Fisher’s supper unpleasant; like the little black dog, we “just couldn’t, couldn’t eat mouse pie” and Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle is still “nothing but a Hedgehog”. For these and other certitudes, I thank Beatrix Potter.

In the April 2018 issue of Reader’s Digest, Bruce Handy writes an article titled, “Once Upon a Time Again” and expresses his love of children’s books – and how they have captured his attention and passion once again, as an adult. He didn’t have to  convince me. I have been a bibliophile for most of my life.

“The best children’s literature is every bit as rich and rewarding in its concerns, as honest and stylish in execution, as the best adult literature—and also as complicated, stubborn, conflicted and mysterious.” -Handy

Wow. That’s quite a claim. I agree with him! One of the great things about being a grandparent is that you can reread the books you loved as a child to your grandkids and no one tells you that’s weird. Those books are still around! You may find that some of the books you read are dated, racist, sexist or ageist. But many/most of them, really, are as wonderful and inspirational as when you first put finger to tongue and turned pages to discovery.

Yet another great thing about being a grandparent is many of the new children’s books that are as imaginative and entertaining as the ones with which we grew up. I have listed a few newer books, because one is never too old to fall in love with a book.

I read all (23) of The Tales of Beatrix Potter to my girls. We loved them so well that they each have their own set of the diminutive readers. From Apply Dappley’s Nursery Rhymes, to Peter Rabbit and Jeremy Fischer  who “popped up to the surface of the water like a cork and the bubbles in a soda water bottle” to the Tale of Little Pigling Bland, they progressively get longer and more difficult. But they never get boring because Beatrix Potter never talks down to us, yet her language is imaginative and entertaining.

Who doesn’t recognize the wisdom in Mr. Ages in Rats of Nihm, the skin horse in the Velveteen Rabbit, the Owl in Winnie the Pooh, the Wizard of Oz, and other characters who might say the same thing our parents or grandparents might have said. But we can hear it when the character provides a word of advice–seemingly just at the right moment.

“When you need me but do not want me, then I must stay, but when you want me but no longer need me, then I must go.”  ~ Nanny McPhee

I think good literature provides us with an expanded sense of the world—our inner world and the outer world around us. It offers us possibilities we are afraid to think of as children, and opens up the idea that we can think a scary thought and survive it.

With the main characters as animals, a world is created where one race is not more or less than another, because people don’t exist, or are peripheral. Each reader can become Tiger (Winnie the Pooh), Peter Rabbit, Fival (an American Tale), Mrs. Brisby (Rats of Nihm), Fiver (Watership Down) or others. Readers identify with the characters in a book because they can see themselves in that character. I can and have identified with characters who are people, as well. Those heroes such as Harry Potter, Peter Pan, Huckleberry Finn and Pippi Longstocking help us see the fun in adventure and misadventure. They also help us see that we can face danger and work to overcome, we can be scared and keep going, we can loose the race but still strive to do better.

As Handy suggested, I picked up a few of the books I loved as a child. You who have read Watership Down (and were led by the visions of Fiver) along with the other rabbits in the warren, understand that sometimes one needs to go out on blind faith, when you can’t stay were you are, but you don’t want to leave your beloved home behind. This story also offers readers a second language to learn and digest. I remember how fascinating those invented words were when I first read this book.

“As Fiver says: Well, there’s another place — another country, isn’t there? We go there when we sleep; at other times, too; and when we die. … It’s a wild place, and very unsafe. And where are we really — there or here?”- Peter Rock

I think, like the Velveteen Rabbit, we all ask “What is real?” Children’s books help us find that answer. Perhaps being loved is how we get home when we are lost, perhaps it’s how we become real to ourselves.

As my children got older, there were books we read together. The Harry Potter Series, the Golden Compass trilogy come to mind immediately.  I must confess that  Chronicles of Narnia– did not hold my attention, even though it had a land of talking animals and mythical creatures. My girls, however read them, and we talked about being courageous and how that might look in our time.

To reread the books we loved as children is to have a conversation with our younger selves, to remember the place and circumstances we were in when we first read the stories that grabbed our attention. The words in the book are still the same, but  experience has changed us.  Rereading helps us see how interesting and complex these simple stories really are.

“Revisiting a book loved in childhood may be principally an act of nostalgia; I knew a woman who read The  Wizard of Oz every few years because it ‘made her remember being a child.’ ”  ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

I suppose it’s like the spider in Charlotte’s Web, each story is “Some Pig”.

What’s your favorite book from your childhood?

When someone asks me what my favorite children’s book is, I cannot say one single book because there are shelves of books that are my favorite.

Some of my favorite books include:

Caps for Sale by Esphyr Slobodkina, follows the peddler who sells the caps stacked on his head. Finding no buyers, he heads out of town, sits under a tree and takes a nap. The excitement begins when he wakes and finds all his hats on all the monkeys in the tree. Now what? The kids have belly laughs when the monkeys mimic the peddler. And the lesson is how to get your hats back.  I like that the peddler returns to his serene state and strolls back into town. “Caps! Caps for sale! Fifty cents a cap!”

Strega Nona books by Tomi dePaola allow Big Anthony to make a few mistakes and Strega to help solve the resulting dilemma. My girls and I met Tomi dePaolo in the 1980’s and I never was more enchanted by this short elfin man who was as approachable as his stories. He also spoke -sitting on the teacher’s desk with legs folded, at a college class I attended.  My favorite  dePaola book, The Clown of God provides such a wonderous example of selflessness.

Owl Babies Sometimes the night is long and dark, and a bit scary. But if we stick together, like Sarah and Percy and Bill, we will get through it. And most importantly, Mother comes back.

Little Quack (“You can do it. I know you can!”) One year, I taught my of class of 3-year-olds and we began the year with this book. I asked the kids to repeat that line as I read the book. Mama duck chanted that line with each of her five ducklings as they left the nest, and isn’t that what we tell our ‘ducklings’ as they leave the nest. You can do it. I know you can.

Little Blue Truck says “Beep, Beep!” to all his barnyard friends. But the big important truck doesn’t have time for that—until its big important wheels get stuck in the mud. Then the dump truck—and the readers finds out how valuable friends can be.

Mr. Wishy Washy is the best dish washer in Washington county. So good, in fact, that he washed everything, including the cat! He learns to ‘watch what he’s watching’ and we learn to pay attention! And his wife, Mrs. Wishy Washy washes the animals until they run away.

Eloise!  Lives in a hotel and has a nanny who does exercise with her so she can survive for heaven’s sake and shows us that not all children live in the two parent, single dwelling home of television.

Everett Anderson’s Good-bye was a book I wrote a parent guide to, and even reading it today, it provides comfort in the stages of grief. As does, Knots on a Counting Rope, The Tenth Good Thing About Barney (the cat who has 10 good things)

Little Critter: Just Go to Bed and other Little Critter books by Mercer Mayer. If you have ever lived with a preschool, the Little Critter books will put you back to that time, will make you laugh, will make you cry and will tug at your heart like no other.

A Short list of one’s I like:

Apply Dapply’s Nursery Rhymes, Peter Rabbit, Squirrel Nutkin, Jeremy Fisher and others by Beatrix Potter, 1917.

Mr. Brown Can Moo, Can you? The Better Butter Battle, Oh, the Places You’ll  Go, and others By Dr. Seuss

Are You My Mother? By P.D. Eastman

But Not the Hippopotamus, The Going to Bed Book, and others by Sandra Boynton, 1982 -1995.

Caps for Sale by Esphyr Slobodkina, 1940, 1947, 1968.

Eloise! By Kay Thompson, 1955.

Everette Anderson’s Good-bye by Lucille Clifton, 1988.

Harold and the  Purple Crayon by Crockett Johnson, 1955.

Knots on a Counting Rope by Bill Martin Jr. and John Archambault

Little Blue Truck by Alice Schertle

Little Quack by Lauren Thompson, 2003.

Madeline (series of eleven books) by Ludwig Bemelmans, 1939.

Mr. Wishy Washy and Mrs. Wishy Washy by Joy Cowley, 1998.

Owl Babies by Martin waddell

Peter Pan by J.M Barrie, 1902.

Pippi Longstocking  book series by Astrid Lindgren, 1945-1948.

Strega Nona by Tomi de Paola

The Little Mouse, The Red Ripe Strawberry and The Big Hungry Bear by Don and Audrey Wood

The Tenth Good Thing About Barney by Judith  Viorst

Charlotte’s Web by E. B. White, 1952.

Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nihm  by Robert C. O’Brien

Nanny McPhee: The Collected Tales of Nurse Matilda by Edward Ardizzone

Now we are six, The House at Pooh Corner and When we Were Very Young  by A. A. Milne  

The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams. 1922, 1991, Elizabeth Banks.

 The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis and Paul McCusker, 1950.

The Wizard of Oz by Frank Baum

Watership Down by Richard Adams, 1972

Harry Potter series by J. K Rowling

                        And many, many others.

Resources:

“On the Unsettling Allure of Watership Down” by Peter Rock, May 15, 2018, New York Times, at: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/15/t-magazine/watership-down-hampshire-england.html

“Once Upon a Time” by Bruce Handy, Reader’s Digest, April, 2018.

Wikipedia for publication dates.