The Lusty Month of May!

I actually saw a goose “goose” a goose. In broad daylight!

Ah, well; it’s May. That lusty month of May.

Birds are flitting about, warbling their songs, building their nests. Robins and wrens, sparrows and finch, even the mallards are making way for their ducklings.

I’ve been busy doing spring cleaning in the garden, raking up leaves left on the flower beds from last Autumn, uncovering shoots that seem to burst forth with all the eagerness of a fourth grader once the weather warms and the sun shines. I also uncovered a frog – and a snake, who very rudely stuck his tongue out at me. Imagine that!

We hear there is a fox den under our neighbor’s shed. She counted five kits the other day. I take extra trips out to the compost pile in hopes of seeing them.

There is new growth everywhere, from the emerging ferns to the dripping pine cones. Tiny scilla cast long shadows and crocus pop up from under decaying leaves.

It’s May! It’s May! The lusty month of May.

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Ezra Keats, a boy named Peter, and a little boy named Ezra Petros

Today is the birthday of children’s author and illustrator, Ezra Jack Keats. Keats is known for more than twenty books he wrote and illustrated, in addition to many more he illustrated for others. He was a favorite read, especially on a snowy day, when our girls were growing up, and he is still is a favorite of mine.

The first book Ezra Jack Keats wrote and illustrated himself , “The Snowy Day”, was published in 1962. It was awarded the Caldecott Medal for children’s literature in 1963. It was followed by several other books about the little boy you see here on the cover, Peter, and many other books that have entertained and honored childhood for fifty years. “

The Snowy Day” is a simple story of a little boy on a snowy day in the middle of a very big city. It was remarkable for its time in that it was one of the first books for children that depicted a child of color. It remains a classic today.

I was first introduced to Peter on a snowy of my own, in a children’s literature class in college. My “kiddie lit” teacher was a diminutive woman who was often seen carrying teetering piles of children’s picture books out of her office, the Normal Public Library, and the Milner Library on our campus. Her love of children’s books, authors and illustrators and her dedication to bringing literature alive for youngsters in a meaningful way by teaching elementary education majors was contagious (though I had a lingering case of kiddie lit fever from the time I learned to love books on my grandmother’s lap).

When our darling grandson was born, his parents chose the name of Ezra. I could always tell who the elementary school teachers were when I said our grandson’s name was Ezra, for they all said, with gleeful enthusiasm, Ezra Jack Keats!

Our Ezra’s middle name is Petros, the Biblical Greek for Peter. Peter was my father’s name and I will be forever touched by their honoring him so.

Peter and Petros and Ezra and snowy days; they all seemed to float together today like our recent flurry of snowflakes. I was excited learn that today was Mr. Keats’ birthday and I look forward to one day reading some of Ezra’s books to our very own Ezra.

There is a fabulous website about Ezra Jack Keats, his life, his books, his illustrations and more. If you have the time, click on in celebration of his birthday – and of children everywhere. www.ezra-jack-keats.org/introduction/a-biography/

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Once upon a time . . .

“Once upon a time, sixty years ago, a little girl lived in the Big Woods of Wisconsin, in a little gray house made of logs.”

Laura Ingalls Wilder. “Little House in the Big Woods”

That little girl’s name was Laura. She grew up to become one of America’s most beloved children’s authors with her books, commonly known as the Little House Books, still in publication.

Today is Laura Ingalls Wilder’s birthday.

Those of you who have been visiting with me here on the Cutoff for some time know of my love of Laura Ingalls Wilder and her stories growing up on the vast prairies of the midwest in the second half of the 19th century. You know how I often read “The Long Winter” during snowstorms and of my visits to several of the Little House sites, most recently the one in Burr Oak, Iowa. If you are new to my site, or don’t know about the Little House books, please feel free to click onto the links to learn a bit more.

It is “Little House in the Big Woods” that has started countless schoolchildren on the long journey with Laura and her family that begins in the North Woods of Wisconsin and is one of the first “chapter” books read aloud to children in schools.

This one little book. written when Laura was in her sixties, is a chronicle of midwestern settlers who formed and farmed the heartland of the United States.

“Little House in the Big Woods” was followed by more books that chronologically tell of the Ingalls’ journey across frozen Lake Pepin to Minnesota and Iowa and the Dakota territory. Laura Ingalls Wilder brought the pioneer spirit alive. She still does as her books take us into their sod house, log cabins and shanties, enduring grasshopper plagues, near starvation, and illness that leaves Laura’s sister Mary blind.  Ma’s cheery disposition and ability to cook anything and Pa’s fiddle strings playing the girls up to their beds at night and all the adventures, both big and small, continue to entertain, educate and inspire children young and young at heart

I was so excited to learn of her birthday today that I just may stop right here and read the first chapter of “Little House in the Big Woods” . . . well, you know what will happen if I do that, don’t you?

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Handiwork

I am fascinated with hands; little hands, big hands, wrinkled, weathered hands, manicured hands, the hands of gardeners, mechanics, carpenters, surgeons, clergy, musicians and beauticians. They express who we are, what we do, where we’ve been, and sometimes where we are going.

These are Kezzie’s hands, breaking up a Christmas sugar cookie at a Barnes and Noble cafe. She’s my kind of gal, enjoying coffee shops and bookstores. She was so intent on breaking up her cookie – then she saw my muffin. She got a quarter of the muffin. I got one of the cookie pieces.

That’s the way the cookie crumbles.

One of her current favorite books is “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie” by Laura Numeroff. It is a circular story that starts with giving a mouse a cookie, then he wants a glass of milk, and on and on until the mouse gets another cookie.

The picture has been sitting on my desktop for a month now, waiting for me and my hands to work with it. I’m ready.

I have my Yia Yia’s hands. Grandma’s hand were large, but, Yia Yia’s were quite small. I’d watch her work in the kitchen, kneading bread, wrapping grape leaves over meatballs for dolmathes, rolling balls of butter cookies. I’d watch her hands. They were never still. Grandma’s weren’t either. She cleaned houses until just before she died at 81. I just didn’t know her as well. My mother had her hands, larger than mine, her knuckles swollen from arthritis and her nails perfectly rounded as if they all wore a smile, no matter how much her hands hurt.

While I don’t have my mother’s hands and my fingernails don’t smile, I tend hold them in ways she did; folded one atop the other in my lap, as if in prayer in front of me, or curved backwards at my side when in a car’s passenger seat, where I always start searching for the house keys long before we arrive home.

Kezzie’s mommy doesn’t have my hands, BUT, she holds them the same way as I do and as her Yia Yia did.

Our Kezzie already has hands that are never still. She’s already “working” cookies. I wonder how she will hold her hands. I wonder what they’ll  say. I just hope she doesn’t give a mouse a cookie.

.

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Tasha Tudor

I originally knew Tasha Tudor through the many books she illustrated, some of which she also wrote herself. “Pumpkin Moonshine” was her first published book, followed by the “calico” books, then her illustrations of classics, including those of Louisa May Alcott and Frances Hodgson Burnett, along with cookbooks, nursery rhymes, fairy tales, and a host of other illustrative endeavors.

It wasn’t until the late 1990′s that I discovered Tasha Tudor herself when a series of books about her idyllic lifestyle on a hill-top “west of New Hampshire and east of Vermont” were published. A happenstance discovery of “The Private World of Tasha Tudor ” in a bookstore soon took me on a remarkable journey of learning about Tasha Tudor – and a little bit about myself in the process.

A diminutive woman steeped in old Yankee ways, Tasha’s book, “The Private World of Tasha Tudor” took me inside her Vermont farmhouse, Corgi Cottage, out to her gardens, and into her unique imagination. Tasha Tudor led much of her life steeped in the 1800′s, wearing clothing of that period, weaving her own cloth, making her own candles, and eventually building a house in Vermont that visitors were hard pressed to believe was built in the late 20th century.

In her lifetime, Ms. Tudor was asked by President Johnson to make ornaments for the White House Christmas tree, her hand crafted dollhouse with its furnishings and dolls, made by Tasha, were on display at the Abbey Aldrich Rockefeller Center, and Life Magazine once photographed the wedding of two of her dolls. (The dolls, being quite modern, eventually separated.) After a television interview, Tasha Tudor became an icon for those who sought the simpler life of getting “back to the land”.

It was “The Private World of Tasha Tudor” that took me in, made me feel at home, and spurred a rather large collection of all things Tasha Tudor, as well as an appreciation for the photography of Richard W. Brown, who lives in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont.

“Tasha Tudor’s Garden” is where I often go for garden inspiration. I long to grow foxgloves six feet tall like Tasha Tudor did, and I wish I could encourage my roses to ramble with wild abandon as those in her garden. I’ve given up on sweet peas – well, almost given up, we’ll see. I’ll try them one more time. The point is that Tudor’s garden is lush, a bit whimsical in nature and all that a cottage garden should be. Some of the seeds sown in it are ancestors from two centuries ago. Richard Brown collaborated with Tovah Martin on this book. I love her style of writing and would not be stretching the truth at all to say that she has influenced how I “talk” about my own garden.

Together, Brown and Martin produced a third book, “Tasha Tudor’s Heirloom Crafts”, which is a unique glimpse into the many ways Tudor adopted a 19th century lifestyle into the modern era we all live in. It is chock full of pictures and words about Tasha’s kitchen, the extensive collection she amassed of 18th and 19th century clothing, her well utilized barn that connects to the house in the manner New Englanders use, and the marionettes that led to “A Dolls’Christmas” and helped keep her growing family fed with the performances they starred in. It is a book in which to find Tasha weaving and painting and making candles and all manner of other crafts that she continued to employ into her eighth decade.

Tasha Tudor died a few years ago, just before her 92 birthday, if memory serves me correctly. Some of her clothing sold for handsome sums. A museum is underway in her memory. There is still a family website for all things Tasha Tudor, as well as those of her family.

I first learned of a tin kitchen from books about Tasha Tudor. I was determined to try roasting a chicken in front of fire from the moment I saw her doing so using a tin kitchen. I looked at antique malls, fairs, and searched the internet for about six years before literally stumbling upon one at an antique fair one afternoon. My giddiness was a dead give-away to the seller if there ever was one as my foot brushed against it, I looked down to see what was in my path, only to hop back in pure glee, exclaiming “it’s a tin kitchen”! I lugged it home and before much time had passed, I cleaned it up and managed to roast a whole chicken in it in front of an open fireplace. I can’t begin to tell you how delicious it tasted, or express my sense of accomplishment at having figured out how to cook with it.  How I miss that fireplace of our old house. How I miss that roasted chicken.

 

Well, I rambled about much like Tasha Tudor’s roses. When Juliet mentioned she knew of Tasha Tudor’s books, but not much about her, I thought it might be a good spot in time to share some of the books I have that illustrate the life of such a well-known illustrator, thinking they might interest some of you as well.

It is very cold here, with the temperatures hovering around 16° F. Snow is dancing about, looking for trees and bushes and rooftops to cling to. I think I’ll make a cup of tea and invite Tasha Tudor to visit me for a spell. Which book will I select?

 

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Wheezles and sneezles

Christopher Robin
Had wheezles
And sneezles,
They bundled him
Into
His bed.
They gave him what goes
With a cold in the nose,
And some more for a cold
In the head.

Both Kezzie and Ezra had colds while we were up north.

Kezzie is so sweet and growing up so quickly. She has learned to sneeze and cough into her sleeve, and does it as perfectly as a very big two and one half year old can. She is also well into pretending and we had such a delightful time swimming at the beach, riding in a boat, eating picnic food, all while the first appreciable snowfall covered the house.

Ezra, well, Ezra, dear baby boy, can be showing his charming little half smile one second and exude a mist of moisty germs in the next. Though I ducked for cover, often, it was not often enough. By day three, my throat was scratchy, my head ached, I felt chilled. Day four brought on the “wheezles and sneezles” of A. A. Milne.

When Ezra is a bit out of sorts and fussy, he likes to be held outward and on his side. Most of you know my coordination challenges, so, can appreciate how long it took me to perfect this method. All he needed here was just a bit of TLC. We all need that sometimes, don’t we?

I certainly did by day four. By dinnertime, I had reached my sneeziest and needed to be bundled into bed. There I was, in my pajamas, a sweater, a flannel shirt, and a bathrobe, just needing to close my eyes. I was feeling that headiness that comes with a cold. A cloud of mush over my brow. My eyes burned. I just needed to close them; and so, I did, with a certain young lass coming in and out with plastic sandwiches and watermelon, stirring pots and lending me books. She was fine in her toddler activity and I was fine with my eyes closed tight.

Can you imagine my utter surprise, dear reader, when suddenly I felt an infant nasal aspirator in my own congested cavity? She did hand me tissue and said “Yia Yia, blow your nose”. It was a very special kind of TLC and I felt much better. Sure wish she was taking care of me right now.

AAAAAAA-CHOOOO!

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Soup & Me – and me

It all started with Perpetua’s tasty post on soup. With the nip of frost in the air, I’d already been making soups, but her mention of  such intriguing delights as parsnip and apple soup and the flurry of comments that followed, with every soup imaginable described, some with recipes, my taste buds were on high alert. Since her post, which can be found here, I’ve made vegetable barley soup and tonight’s chicken dumpling. I love soup anytime, but the pot always seems to be simmering the most come Autumn.

Thinking about cooking soup and eating soup led me to thoughts of Robert Newton Peck’s book, “Soup & Me”,  especially  the hilarious chapter titled “Havoc on Halloween”.

Soup and Rob are childhood friends and we follow their mischievous boyhood adventures reminiscent  of Peck’s own childhood. I’ve blogged about “Soup & Me” before which I am incorporating into this post.

My introduction to Soup was as a substitute teacher after our Jennifer was born. I was called in to a 4th grade classroom and there in the lesson plans, right after lunch, was scheduled a Robert Newton Peck book. I remember the children settling down quickly after lunch, eager to hear the next chapter, and so I began. Never having read a Soup book before, I didn’t know what I was in for until the words became blurry on the page as I tried, unsuccessfully, to stop laughing at the hilarity of Rob and Soup, in their Halloween costumes, one a pirate, the other a ghost, with an enormous pumpkin taken from Mr. Sutter’s patch, hauled into a wheelbarrow. and rolled down Sutter’s Hill to a party at the Baptist church, all to impress Norma Jean Bissell.  Of course, the wheelbarrow with the heavy pumpkin picks up speed and the boys quickly lose control, as did I, laughing as loud as the children in the class.

From the street, there was one step up to the door of the Baptist Church. The door was closed. Actually it was a double door, painted red, coming at us like a giant red square. I tried to let go of the handle of the wheelbarrow, but my cramped fingers would not unlace. Just then, the one front wheel of the barrow hit the one step, and several things happened in rapid succession. The wheelbarrow, which had a split second earlier been traveling down Sutter’s Hill at a hundred miles an hour stopped with a buck. The pumpkin flew out and straight ahead. Soup and I tripped over the suddenly immobile bin of the barrow. The big pumpkin smashed open the doors of the Baptist Church, rolling at full steam down the center aisle. The aisle was waxed wood, causing Soup and I to slide on our bellies right behind the pumpkins. Pew after pew flew by. 

Events did not stop there. 

I didn’t see Norma Jean Bissell. But as I hurtled forward toward all the surprised faces, I did see Mrs. Stetson . . . kids were bobbing for apples in a huge tub of water. An adult was among them. Raising his dripping face from the tub of water, with an apple in his mouth, was none other than Mr. Hiram Sutter . . .

From “Soup & Me” by Robert Newton Peck. Illustration by Charles Lilly.

So from soup to smashing pumpkins, my mind floats like the leaves falling from the trees, with a hearty laugh tossed in for good measure.

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Feeling Real

I saw it sitting on the edge of the end table when I came in from my long car ride up north.  A familiar book cover with the worn look that grows on a book after years of its pages being turned. It wasn’t until the wee hours of several days later that I opened the cover. Those everlasting hours between the darkest of night and the first hint of a new day that can hold one in suspended motion seemed to spin a spell that compelled me to open the book up.

Like many-a-classic, “The Velveteen Rabbit” resonates differently at varying moments in life, which it proceeded to do as I followed the little stuffed rabbit from Christmas morn to his final destination as a Real Rabbit.

I’d been feeling a bit like the velveteen rabbit when I opened the book; my sheen all faded and my velvet worn, my hair a bit messy and my joints all flappy.

“Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.” Margery Williams, The Velveteen Rabbit

I don’t mind so much that I’ve become “very shabby”, for you see, dear reader, I also feel very much that I am loved – and that I am Real. I hope you do, too.

 

 

 

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The Big Wave, postscript

Last winter, I noticed that my post on a book by Pearl S. Buck, The Big Wave, was being frequented with some regularity. I wrote about this book shortly after the earthquake and tsunami devastated Japan in 2011. The original edition has extraordinary woodcuts that exemplify the Japanese people as well as the forcefulness of nature. My review of the book is here.

I was moved when a comment was left by Yuko, asking if I could scan copies of the prints in the book. Yuko, a Japanese citizen, has been working with a crisis support group who are helping with children effected by the tsunami. She needed copies of the illustrations for a school project she was hoping to do with the children. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to locate the book at the time. When my son-in-law Tom overheard me talking about trying to find it, he quietly went to his laptop and quickly located a copy in a nearby library. Before he had a chance to obtain the book, Yuko let me know that a friend of hers in California had purchased The Big Wave, I believe through Ebay, and it was on its way to her in Japan.

We truly live in a global community.

There are still so many people displaced. One can only imagine how children are faring. I hope to sometime post an interview with Yuko about the ongoing aftermath of this horrible disaster and the good things being done. I also hope that she can share how The Big Wave has been used to help the children of the tsunami through their recovery and of the work that Tokyo Support Team is doing on their behalf.

I can’t help but wonder how author Pearl S. Buck, and Hiroshige and Hokusai, the artists,would feel about the impact their words and art hold.

If you are reading, Yuko, please know that prayers and good wishes are still being sent to all of Japan. To my friends in New Zealand, still witnessing the devastation at Christchurch and to those here at home in Joplin,  New Orleans and in all of those places where nature has wreaked havoc, you are thought of as well.

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The River Bank

” . . . Never in his life had he seen a river before – this sleek, sinuous, full-bodied animal, chasing and chuckling, gripping things with a gurgle and leaving them with a laugh, to fling itself on fresh playmates that shook themselves free, and were caught and held again. All was a-shake and a-shiver – glints and gleams and sparkles, rustle and swirl, chatter and bubble. The Mole was bewitched, entranced, fascinated. By the side of the river he trotted, as one trots, when very small, by the side of a man who holds one spellbound by exciting stories; and when tired at last, he sat on the bank, while the river still chattered on to him, a babbling procession of the best stories in the world, sent from the heart of the earth to be told at least to the insatiable sea. “

The Wind in the Willows, The River Bank, by Kenneth Graham

Book illustration by Ernest H. Shepard

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