Picture Book Spotlight

Picture Book Spotlight: One Day in Elizabethan England

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One Day in Elizabethan England by G. B. Kirtland, illustrated by Jerome Snyder

Zounds! It’s a pity this book, originally published in 1962, went out of print. I’m writing about it anyway because many libraries carry it, and a quick Google search turned up a number of online booksellers that have used copies in stock. My family’s copy was a library discard, and this is definitely a case of one person’s (or library’s) trash being another person’s treasure.

The title page proclaims that the place is England, the time is 1590, and the characters are: “You.” You wake up one morning, and a busy day begins as “you pull open your velvet bed curtains and pull off the cap of lettuce leaves you wore to help you sleep.”

The chambermaid comes in to draw your bath, despite your protests that you “already had a bath just this past winter”—for this is an important day, a majestical day, a fantastical day, a day which calls for special preparations. This explains why your father has dyed his beard purple to match his breeches and your sister has donned her new popinjay-blue kirtle and her pease-porridge tawny gown. Everyone is all in a dither, anxious for this important festivity, whatever it is, to begin.

“Oh, Madame,” you say; “Oh, Sir,” says your sister. “Will it soon be time to go?”

“Nay,” says your mother; “Nay, says your father.”

“Alas!” says your sister. “Alack!” says she. “I cannot hardly wait. I wonder what she will be wearing?”

“I wonder,” you say, “will there be tumblers tumbling for her?”

“I wonder,” says your mother, “will there be mummers mumming for her?”

“And I wonder,” says your father, “I wonder will you remember your grandiloquent speech for her?”

Ah, there’s the question, and it haunts you throughout the book until at last the great moment arrives. So wrought up are you that when dinnertime comes, “you are not very hungry and so you eat rather pinglingly, having only: a sip of soup, a snip of snipe, a smidgeon of stag, a munch of mutton, a bite of boar, a pinch of pheasant, and a little lark.”

I love what author G. B. Kirtland has done in this whimsical little book. The language is delicious, the style unique, and the peek at Elizabethan life is fascinating. My kids giggle the whole way through, every time (for this is a book that demands repeated readings). By my troth, ’tis the perfect compliment to a study of Shakespeare—and a majestical, fantastical, grandiloquent remedy for a humdrum afternoon.

If your local library lacks a copy (alas and alack), try this website to see what other libraries in your area carry it.

Fun Learning Stuff, Nature Study

Owlin’ in the Woods

The new issue of MacBeth Derham’s excellent newsletter, WILD MONTHLY, is up on her website today. An excerpt:

“A group of students and I were once exploring some ruins. These were not ancient ruins, which are so often admired as monuments to the achievements of man, but recent ruins of maybe some 60 years, true monuments to the power of nature. These were still recognizably greenhouses, but the glass was long gone, and vines crawled up the sides and around the empty window frames. A single mature tree grew out of the middle of one of the long, low buildings, spreading its branches well beyond the limits of the former roof, while younger trees pushed their way through the floor, past potting tables, over long abandoned seedling trays, and reached for sunlight. The remains of the roofline dipped, mirroring the ground below… “

Read the rest!

Books, Things that Inspire Me

Hot Chocolate Would Work, Too

A quick post while the kids are practicing piano…this is the time of day when I try to sit down with a cup of tea for a quick email check. (Current favorite: “Mandarin Green” from Adagio Tea, steeped in their nifty IngenuiTEA teapot.) I usually wind up on the floor next to the computer with Beanie, rescuing her train tracks from Wonderboy while my tea grows cold in the cup. Scott teases me about the cups of lukewarm tea I leave all over the house. I know I’m not alone in this; my pal Alice jokes that she doesn’t drink coffee, she just brews it.

Which is one of the reasons the beautiful first chapter of Danielle Bean’s new book, My Cup of Tea, struck such a chord in me. I can’t wait to read the rest. You can enjoy a sneak preview of Chapter 1 at Danielle’s website—perhaps over a cup of tea (even the lukewarm kind).

Oh, and speaking of Adagio Tea, I have some $5 coupons for their website—email me if you’d like one.

Poetry

The More it Snows, Tiddly-Pom

Over breakfast this morning, while the girls ate frozen blueberries in their hot oatmeal (they always beg me not to stir in the berries—they like them cold and crunchy, ugh), I read half a dozen poems about snow and winter from our battered, treasured copy of Helen Ferris’s Favorite Poems Old and New. Shakespeare’s owl called out his merry tu-whit, tu-whoo, oblivious to the discomfort of poor red-nosed Marian and cold-fingered Dick. Robert Frost’s pony shook his harness bells inquisitively in the frozen woods—but I suspect that poem’s tone of quiet contemplation was lost on the girls, since their daddy interrupted my reading to recite it in Monty Python fashion, booming and overblown. They’ll be surprised, one day, to discover it’s a serious poem instead of the kind that makes you choke on your frozen blueberries.

Later we laughed over a poem Rose pretended to “read” out of a dictionary when she was not quite three years old:

Slip on ice?
No! No!
Me know what, me know what—
Me go eat my lunch.

I came across this little gem the other day in my file of funny kid stories, along with its prequel, Rose’s first joke.

Me: What kind of cereal do you want today?
Rose: Snow Flakes!

Obviously she has her father’s sense of humor.

Fun Learning Stuff, Logic

How to Keep a Roomful of Moms Occupied

Bring A Case of Red Herrings to the gym.

During Beanie’s gymnastics class, I pulled our trusty Red Herrings (“Solving Mysteries through Critical Questioning”) book out of my bag and read one of the mysteries to Jane. As she peppered me with yes-or-no questions in an effort to puzzle out the solution, I noticed the other mothers, one by one, laying aside their magazines and listening in. By the time Jane cried out a triumphant “I’ve got it,” even the off-duty gymnastics teacher behind the desk had given up on paperwork to get in on the fun.

Jane pleaded for a second mystery, but Beanie’s class ended before she solved it. Jane and Rose ran into the other room for their class, and I put the book away and joined Wonderboy in his game of scatter-toys on the floor. But the other moms rose up in a body and demanded to know the secret to the mystery Jane had left hanging in the air. I made them guess. Yes-or-no questions only, please.

Picture Book Spotlight

Picture Book Spotlight: The Scrambled States of America

The Scrambled States of America by Laurie Keller

ScrambledI heard of this book a quite a while ago, but we never crossed its path until last week. Hilarious! One morning Kansas wakes up bored, tired of being stuck in the middle of the country. He convinces his kindhearted neighbor, Nebraska, that they need something to liven them up—how about a party for all of the states? The ensuing shindig is a roaring success, and all the states are inspired to strike out for a new section of the country: Florida heads north, Alaska goes south, and Kansas thinks the middle of the Pacific sounds like a swell place to savor life—for a while…

My kids were enchanted by the wacky plot, the quirky artwork, and all the funny bits of dialogue scattered around the pages. Immediately upon finishing the book, Rose begged me to read it again. Afterward, the girls dug out our big USA floor puzzle and spent a happy hour assembling it, rearranging it, and narrating a convoluted continuation of Laurie Keller’s delightful tale.

Looks like there’s a board game based on the book, too—hmm, whose birthday is next around here?

Things that Inspire Me

Now That’s Good Writing

“A lot of people like snow. I find it to be an unnecessary freezing of water.”
—Carl Reiner

A wee-hours snowstorm canceled our plans for the morning, much to the girls’ satisfaction. They’ve been waiting for weeks to try out the new sleds Scott hid in the garage, the ones they aren’t supposed to know about. (Sorry, honey—I left the garage door open one day. Oops.) Upstairs in their room an indoor blizzard is raging: mittens flying, long underwear leaping out of the drawer, layer upon layer of clothing sailing through the air en route to its exuberant young owners.

Myself, I’ve always been of the Carl Reiner school of thought when it comes to snowstorms. To me, snow is: an inconvenience, an excuse to drink hot chocolate, and a once useful but now overused basis for metaphor (in that order).

But the children of my best pal, Alice Gunther, recently gave challenge to my admittedly cantankerous point of view. Alice, inspired by Julie Bogart’s The Writer’s Jungle, asked her girls how they would describe snow to someone who had never seen it before. With Alice’s permission, I reprint parts of their descriptions here:

B (age 5) “Snow feels like a cut when it gets into your boots.”
“It is white as white paper.”

C (age 7) “Snow looks like a cluster of diamonds from a fairy tale. If you leave velvet out in the snow, you will find it covered with little snowflakes, and the points look like Celtic knots. Each one is different from the others, yet they could fit together like a mosaic or a flower. Snow looks like lace on the velvet, like a queen’s dress.”

M (age 9) “Snow feels like a very cold chick—a chick with hypothermia.”
“When you step on it, it sounds like baked taco shells.”

A (age 11) “Snow looks like frosting on a cake, with jagged peaks here and there, although it is soft in most places. Where you have walked, it is flat, and greenish brown grass peaks out. As you look ahead of you, all the ground in front of you is level and very wide, almost like a flat plain. If you pick up a scoop in your gloved hand and look closely at it, it seems to have tiny craters, almost like a sponge.”

Wow. These breathtaking bits of freewriting almost make me want to go dig up my own long underwear and venture out to see the stuff firsthand.

Almost. I think instead I’ll curl up with the aforementioned mug of hot chocolate and a copy of Andersen’s “The Snow Queen.” I’ll have to read it to myself, though. The kids are all outside.

To read Alice’s Writer’s Jungle review in its entirety, visit the Bravewriter discussion in the “Living Language Arts” forum at 4 Real Learning.

Picture Book Spotlight

Picture Book Spotlight: It’s Not My Turn to Look for Grandma

It’s Not My Turn to Look for Grandma by April Halprin Wayland, illustrated by George Booth

Grandma3Dawn was just cracking over the hills. Ma was splitting kindling on the back porch.

“Woolie!” she called out. “Where in the hickory stick is Grandma?”

“Dunno,” said Woolie. “It’s not my turn to look for Grandma!”

I’ve been reading this book to my kids for eight or nine years, and it still makes us all giggle. April Halprin Wayland (author of another of our family favorites, the quiet and lovely To Rabbittown), depicts this quirky backwoods family with wit and warmth, and George Booth’s illustrations are a hoot. Ma, a hardworking backwoods mother, needs Grandma’s help and keeps sending the kids to fetch her—but Grandma’s too busy sliding down the haystack with her dirty old dog, or doing something similarly outlandish. She’s never too busy, however, for a banjo band…

The rollicking text is a joy to read aloud. The writing is fresh and lively, and the characters are pure originals—especially that dirty old dog and a pair of disreputable porcupines. George Booth’s art, which would be hilarious even without the words, captures them perfectly. If I had to narrow down our picture book collection to ten titles (horrific thought!), this one would make the cut for its never-fail ability to invoke the belly-laughs I love.

Family Adventures, These People Crack Me Up

Those Stubborn Bunnies

One of my favorite things about motherhood is the way my kids force me outside the box of my own head. I like to collect the little moments when their startling pronouncements on life, the universe, and everything jolt me out of my sedate, grown-up patterns of thought and make me reassess my percerptions. Like these:

Jane was five years old and we were at a conference where I had a speaking engagement. At one point, a friend’s teenaged daughter took her to the drinking fountain. She later related this story to her mother, who passed it on to me. Apparently young Jane was delighted by the arc of the water as it came out of the spout.

"Look, I’m drinking a rainbow!" she cried. Then she took a drink, paused, and added thoughtfully, "That’s funny, I always thought rainbows would be crunchy."

***

Beanie was two years old, and I was reading her Dr. Seuss’s There’s a Wocket in my Pocket for the first time.

"Did you ever have the feeling," I read, "there’s a wasket in your basket?"

Bean burst out laughing. "A wasket in my basket! Dat’s funny."

I continued: "…Or a nureau in your bureau?"

Another enormous belly-laugh. "A nureau in my bureau! Dat’s weally funny!"

By this time I was laughing too. I went on, "…Or a woset in your closet?"

This time, no laugh. She looked puzzled.

"Huh," she grunted. "A woset in your closet. Dat’s not funny."

***

When Rose was two-going-on-three, a friend gave us a "Bunny Bowling Set." The bowling balls were little plastic cabbages with which you attempted to knock down plastic rabbit-shaped pins. Jane set the game up and played it for a while, then wandered off. I was in the next room, fixing dinner, and heard Rose playing with the game. But she sounded frustrated. I kept hearing her knock the bunnies over with the ball, and then she’d cry out in dismay.

Finally she hollered, "Mommy! It no WORK!"

I went to watch her try again. She rolled the cabbage and knocked down half the bunnies. I cheered.

"There you go! You’ve got the hang of it now."

She looked at me incredulously. "No! It no work," she said, through gritted teeth.

"Sure it worked!" I said. "Look how many bunnies you hit."

Her glare was steely with pity and forced patience. "It—no—work," she repeated, slowly, as if she were the adult and I the child. "Bunny won’t catch cabbage!"

***

All right, Wonderboy, your turn. Jostle me out of the ruts of adult perception!