Books equal love

As a very young child, my grandmother gave me the Peter Rabbit books, which I loved. She also gave me tiny books with great pieces of artwork in them from Monet, Degas, and Cezanne. I don't have them anymore, just the memory of a painting of a little girl that looked kind of like me on the cover of one.

As I grew, the books' content grew too, but it's funny that I only remember my first ones. I still have the Polar Express with her handwritten note inside the cover, and I've saved the books she gave my son. My grandma was the perfect grandma, and her books reminded me, and remind me today that I was, and am, loved by a very special person.

The Lonely Doll

I love going to the library, something that started when I was just a kid. Our town didn't have a library, so every Saturday we drove 6 miles to Merrillan, Wisconsin, population 636, where they had a tiny library, open only on Saturdays. My grandparents' insurance agency was just up the street, so we usually parked there and walked down.
This was the early 70's, and I doubt any book in that library had been published after 1965. So my check-outs consisted of oldies, like the The Wizard of Oz series and The Five Little Pepper series, both of which I now collect. ( Most of my Pepper books are first editions, with publication dates between 1890-1910. Oldies, indeed...) But they were new to me, so their age didn't matter.
But I think my absolute favorites were Dare Wright's books about Edith, The Lonely Doll. The library had big hardbacks of them, dressed in noisy, crinkly plastic covers. I'm not sure what it was about them that fascinated me, but one has to wonder the depth of the impression, given my first picture book was about a doll... I have searched on ebay for first editions of these, to no avail, but happily they came out as reprints a few years ago and I picked a couple up. There is something absolutely reassuring about having copies of these books and the Oz books and the Pepper books on my shelves. It's like I have my childhood there, just waiting for me to open the covers and go back to those days when I walked into that little library, eager to take stories home.

Favorite Picture Books from Childhood

A LITTLE HOUSE OF YOUR OWN (Harcourt Brace and Co.) by Beatrice Schenk De Regniers and with drawings by Irene Haas was one of my favorites. I was a child who loved to find my own cozy nook or hideaway to read in, and all the ideas triggered by this book gave both my brother and me endless hours of fun.



















I was also a girl who loved horses, saved my allowance for horseback riding lessons, collected china horse figurines, and spent hours galloping around on my imaginary horse, Salute. So, it's no surprise that THE LITTLE FELLOW (The John Winston Company) written by Marguerite Henry and illustrated by Diana Thorne was another favorite. Of course I went on to enjoy all of Marguerite Henry's books.



















A new bedtime favorite of my grandchildren's (and mine) is ONE WOLF HOWLS (Sylvan Dell Publishing) written by Scotti Cohn and illustrated by my good friend, Susan Detwiler. It's a wonderful concept book for not only learning about wolves and their habitats, but also counting and learning the seasons and months of the year. A favorite page for finding and counting all the wolves is for September:

"Nine wolves hide on September hilltops-
shy ones, sly ones, no one sees.
Nine wolves hide on September hilltops
deep in the woods in the falling leaves."

Tears of Laughter

I read a lot growing up, but mostly on my own. I do, however, remember reading Fox in Socks together with my father. He had been working out in the garage that evening, but when he came inside, we began taking turns reading the silly nonsense tongue twisters. "When Tweedle Beetles fight, it's a tweedle beetle battle..." As we stumbled through the rhymes, we laughed harder and harder until we both had tears running down our faces. It is a great book, no doubt about it, but part of what makes it so great in my memory is that I shared it with my father. That's the priceless magic of reading picture books together; it creates a bond between the reader and listener.

Fast forward thirty-five years and you'd see me sharing another picture book, this time with my friend Gary. Mo Willems' Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus! is so ridiculous, and so hilariously accurate with regards to children's (and yes, adults') emotions. Gary bought the book for me as a birthday gift that year, and we still crack each other up by quoting favorite lines. True story. Who says you ever get too old to share a picture book?

You are a cowboy

…riding around the range. Suddenly Bad-Nose Bill comes up behind you with a gun. He says, "Would you like me to shoot a hole in your head?"
What do you say, dear?





Early Sendak tickles me. The pages are graphic, open, and perfectly composed. Characters strike just the right emotional chord, yet nothing is labored. The economy of line makes the drawings fresh—like they were dashed off. Figures move with whimsy. This text, by Sesyle Joslin, is wonderfully absurd.


Give me any early Sendak book (don't care for the fussy later ones). These books all shaped my sense of what a picture book or early chapter book should be.

Words Like Seeds

Words are seeds that grow into stories. Images many times give rise to the words, for me. In Strong Moon Tonight, I saw a river, a tree, a father and son, and a mighty moon. I could see it and remember writing that image on a yellow legal pad. I wonder if other writers have beginnings that way? In the Alfalfa and the Omega, it was a voice that spoke so sassy and loud that she made me laugh out loud. In the short stories I have written for adults, I've found that the seed arrives from images and experiences. Then, my imagination joins the clan and off we go . . .

As a child, my first official story was a play titled "Santa Claus on the Moon". I gave my brother and sisters parts, used brown car coats for reindeer costumes with cutout round paper noses colored red (Rudolf, of course). My brother was Santa, in red footed pajamas and a beard made out of a paper plate and cotton balls. The Moon was three sofa cushions wrapped in a old yellow sheet with black marker craters. Our production debuted on Christmas Eve at my grandparents house, in front of 30 cousins, aunts and uncles and family friends. It was a great hit--but of course, they loved us! I was nine years old then.

Picture Books and Me

Ever since the NY times posted that article about the "Picture Book is Dead", I have wanted to write about it on this blog. It was the picture book that assured me one-on-one time with my mom, sitting in her lap, listening to the rise and fall of her voice while I had the luxury of "reading" the pictures without interruptions from my siblings. I had favorite picture books; carrying them from room to room, waiting for my mom to be finished in the kitchen or return from dropping my older sister off at nursery school and put my younger brother down for his nap, so I could curl up with her in the rocking chair and rock back and forth with her reading aloud. I loved the pictures and was not in a hurry to read myself. Picture books meant "love" and if I learned to read chapter books on my own, then I was alone-- or at least that is what I felt until I got hooked on Nancy Drew in the second grade and I have been an avid reader ever since.

When I was in the fourth grade, my family moved to Mt. Lebanon, a small suburb of Pittsburgh, PA. I had a wonderful art teacher, Miss Yingling, who noticed my shyness, being the new kid, and who also noticed my passion to draw. At that time the Carnegie Museum of Art had a program where art teachers in the public schools could choose one or two students to attend an art class held in a huge auditorium on Saturday mornings. I remember taking the city bus downtown to the museum, then getting in line with what seemed like hundreds of other 4th - 6th grade students to be given a 11 X 14 masonite drawing board, a sheet of manilla paper, a box of crayons, and a pencil. We took our places in the auditorium and wrote our names, address, and phone number on the back side of the paper in the upper left-hand corner. We used the crayon box to outline a horizontal box and a vertical box for thumbnail sketches, then used the slim side of the crayon box to outline a narrow rectangle in which we used our pencil to shade from dark to light. A color wheel with complimentary colors and secondary colors was drawn-- all of this was accomplished while waiting for all of the students to be seated. Then the teacher, whose name I cannot remember, would use a microphone and an easel and teach us to draw. There was usually a theme and we would watch, then draw two ideas for a picture- one in the horizontal box and one in the vertical box. This was the first hour of the class. The second hour was spent drawing the full-size picture on the other side of the paper in color with crayons. When the hour was done, we waited in line to turn in our supplies and place our drawings on the pile with hopes that our drawing would be "chosen." To be "chosen" would mean receiving a phone call mid-week and asked to come to the stage the following week and reproduce your drawing really big at an easel in colored chalk while the teacher taught in front of the stage. Then at the end of the two hours you would get to go up and speak into the microphone to briefly speak about what inspired you, and receive a pin. All during my fourth grade year, I yearned to be asked up onto the stage. In the fall of my fifth grade my mom finally got the call. I had drawn a kid jumping in leaves paying special attention to hands and feet, as we had learned how to draw them the week before. I remember donning a white painter's smock. There were ten easels on stage as ten students were chosen each week. I remember the feel and smell of the large colored chalk in one hand and holding onto my drawing from the week before in my other hand, referring back and forth as I enlarged it in front of all the other students in the audience. I remember my voice cracking in a whisper and being asked to speak louder into the mike. And then the pin. A little round pin. I felt like a real artist. An official artist. Two more times I went to that stage to draw before my family moved again. And what do picture books have to do with this? It was picture books that taught me to understand and connect to the world around me. It was picture books that inspired me to draw-- I learned about shape and expression, movement and composition that was re-inforced by the lessons I learned at the Carnegie Museum of Art. I no longer have the drawings except in my memory, but I have the three pins-- those three official pins that told me I was "real".