It was in the Roosevelt grade school library that I found Lois Lenski and her series of regional books. “Strawberry Girl”, “Cotton in My Sack”, “Houseboat Girl” and other books managed to follow me home from school. These books took me to places I had never been to and introduced me to children in other parts of the United States, their schools, their homes, their regional dialect, their family life and in the places where they lived in. Some of the children were itinerant workers along with their families, some lived in poverty and a few were put in harm’s way. These books were adventuresome and, in spite of troubles that came, they were uplifting. They were also illustrated by Lois Lenski. The artwork often told as much of these stories of the 1940’s and ’50s as her words did.
Watching the devastation of Hurricane Harvey and its continuing aftermath in Houston, Texas has been sobering, to say the least. The loss of lives and of livelihoods, homes, jobs, infrastructure as well as the peril to all involved – the list is far-reaching and will be never-ending for many. Yes, people are resilient and will persevere. They will rebuild, move, leave the area. Time may heal and it may not. From afar, I can only hope and pray and do what I can, which seems meager, to help in the recovery effort. Each of you grapple with similar concerns and many have had your own “hurricanes” in life.
As I tend to do, I look toward books in times such as these, and, in so doing, I remembered one of Lois Lenski’s books, “Flood Friday”. I read it, several times, as a child and I tried, unsuccessfully, to find it in one of the libraries in my loan system this week. The book is based on a flood in Connecticut in the 1950’s and one I hope to find someday soon.
The flood takes place on a Friday, as the title suggests, and finds the town’s children displaced, first to the grade school, then to a neighbor’s house on higher ground. I remember the book being riveting as the characters experienced everything being safe and secure as they went to bed at night to their rescue from the roof of their house the next day. I also remember the feeling of people working together and of helping each other out. Lenski’s words put me into the school’s gym and I imagined our own gym being used as a shelter with cots lined up across the floor and my friends and neighbors, out of context yet there in a room where we played dodgeball and duck-duck-goose. I tried to imagine having only the clothes on my back and could not quite grasp how my grandmother would have gotten up on the house’s roof, remembering family lore of how the ushers had to carry her down from her seat at the circus. Sigh. My thoughts rambled even as a young girl. The drift of this line of thought is how books transported me to other places in time and allowed for my imagination to grow.
Like Pearl Buck’s “The Big Wave”, which I came across after the tsunami in Japan a few years ago, I find myself pondering the miracle of books and their ability to help us understand and to heal. I know how they can help children work through issues, troubling or frightening times and to understand what others may be going through, how they live, where they live.
I will continue my search for “Flood Friday”, perhaps finding an old, used copy in one of my antique store haunts, and I will continue to pray for the victims of Hurricane Harvey as the storms continue and in the long period of recovery.
Thank you for this beautiful post, Penny. I haven’t read that book, but I’d sure like to read it. I’ve read many other books by Lois Lenski.
I’ve talked to my family in the Houston area. They’re hanging in there. They’re grateful for the thoughts and prayers of others.
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You are welcome, L. Marie – and thank you. 🙂 Lois Lenski was such a prolific writer and illustrator. The regional stories were 15/16 books, and she wrote so many others. “Flood Friday” is a good one to read.
It is good to hear that your family is doing okay. This hurricane effects the surrounding areas as well, in known and as yet unknown ways. I will continue to keep your family, and you, in my prayers. Here’s hoping Harvey leaves Texas for good quick.
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The sobering event in Houston makes those of us who are lucky enough to not being going through this particular trial thankful for what we have and at the same time really horrified at what these poor people are dealing with. Your post and book reference is such a different approach to dealing with this information. Books really can be a comfort and I can see how reading this book in particular would be very helpful for children who are hearing about the hurricane and flood and probably afraid that it might also happen where they live. It’s good to see people coping with difficulties and surviving, even when it’s fictional characters.
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Indeed, we are thankful for what we have as well as horrified for those impacted by Harvey. This sustained hurricane just doesn’t seem to want to stop and his destruction is much more wide spread than imaginable.
Even a child in a place like Chicago might be impacted by the hurricane. Will it happen to me? How will the children get to school? Where will they live? If someone sees this and finds it helpful . . .
Some time after I did the post on “The Big Wave” about a tsunami I was actually contacted by a woman in Japan who was working with children impacted by the tsunami there. She was trying to find a copy of the book with the woodcuts originally used in the illustrations and hoping they would help the children work through their trauma. I really just gave her a few suggestions, but, they led to contacts and it felt like I did just a little something through reading. All that to say that books can bring comfort and still fears for children.
Thanks, Janet. I always like hearing from you.
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For openers: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/p/flood-friday-lois-lenski/1107960465/2686020988252?st=PLA&sid=BNB_DRS_Marketplace+Shopping+greatbookprices_00000000&2sid=Google_&sourceId=PLGoP24104
For some reason this flood that won’t end seems more heartbreaking than most of the disasters that have occurred in my lifetime. I’m not sure why that is, but I feel quite helpless in the face of this one. Yes, I’ve made a charitable donation and I continue to say prayers for all who have been impacted, victims and rescuers alike, but it seems so much less than enough.
The one thing that has struck me as a possible “good” from all of this heartache, however, is that it’s shined a light on the wonderful and the good that the people of this country are capable of, and at least for awhile, put all of the recent news negatives on the back burner. Maybe we can figure out a way to keep that positive energy flowing.
It always amazes me that you have such recall for the books that you read as a child, and I enjoyed this post.
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Thanks for that opener, Karen. 🙂 I may go that route, though I have one used bookstore that I want to check first to see if they have the original cover. If not, I’m going online.
It does seem more heartbreaking. I wonder if it is because of the round-the-clock coverage and that iHarvey just won’t stop, even impacting areas that have not been before. The only weather event I can think of that is similar is the tsunami in Japan with the added horror of the nuclear meltdown. Charitable donations are important and help pick up the slack after the initial material donations subside. I cannot imagine having everything taken away by this storm – but, Karen, it would be so wonderful if we could all continue the goodwill that exists right now.
Thank you, Karen. My memory is really a testament to good writers and books that crossed my path early in life.
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I hope you can find the one you want in one of your shops, Penny. I found a first edition, but YIKES the pricetag!
https://www.biblio.com/book/flood-friday-lois-lenski/d/475465043?aid=frg&utm_source=google&utm_medium=product&utm_campaign=feed-details&gclid=Cj0KCQjw557NBRC9ARIsAHJvVVMsLuGLNXxw0HEWVOSJwG6NUNxfprK4noOQ-jgCX2EQNJBqyWslCo0aArmHEALw_wcB
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Yikes is right! I think finding this in vintage condition is beyond my means and money that can be better spent. Thank you, Karen, for looking this up and for sending the link to me. I do appreciate it.
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I hope you find a copy of “Flood Friday”, Penny. Watching the coverage of Hurricane Harvey has been both heartbreaking and heartwarming. Watching strangers risking their lives for other strangers represents what this country really stands for.
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Thank you, Jill. I’d really like to find an older edition with Lenski’s simple cover.
You are right. This has been both heartbreaking and heartwarming bringing out the good in folks and the spirit of everyone helping each other. Here’s hoping that Harvey finally leaves.
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Thank you for posting this. I have been following the news one minute and then deciding it is too much the next. It is heartbreaking. One of my former students lives in Houston. She and her family are ok, and her home has become a neighborhood refuge. I’m so proud of her. I have followed other friends in the area and all are ok. A good friend of my children who lives in Arizona is fostering a dog from a shelter in a flood zone. Heartbreak one minute and people with big hearts who have become heroes overnight has become the norm.
I love the Lois LenskI books, but had not heard of Friday flood. I will be looking for it too. I read a book called Tide in the Attic when I was a child. It was about a family in a village in Holland. They were flooded when the sea cme over their famous dikes. There was a description that stays with me of the water creeping into the attic in which the family was seeking safety before their rescue. It was a powerfull book for a ten year old girl.
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You are welcome, Janet.
I know. I find myself riveted to the screen then turning the television off (then back on again). Thank goodness for good folks like your former student and her family. They are small but relevant ports in this horrendous storm. With all the stories of people helping people, there are so many other stories about helping pets and I’ve read a few stories about people opening up their stables for cows and farm animals and horses and all.
Flood Friday has had a long-lived impact on me. I don’t think it was the most popular of the regional books Lois Lenski wrote but it had me turning the pages and remembering it all these years later. Tide in the Attic sounds like a similar plot but in Holland. Imagining water rising up to your attic bedroom must have played into the power of the story.
Thanks, Janet. I’m hoping Harvey finally loses steam.
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I am in Europe and get very little news from the US . My heart goes out to the people of Houston and the area. Floods are so devastating . This is a beautiful post Penny. Thank you!
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I am sure your visit is going well, Gerlinde, and appreciate you taking the time to stop by here. Thank you.
Hurricane Harvey has wreaked unimaginable destruction on Houston and the surrounding areas in a storm that refused to stop. My heart goes out to them as well.
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Hi Penny. As always, great memories of hours spent working in the Roosevelt School library when I was in 6th-8th grades. Here’s a link I found at one of the book stores I use for old books (Abe Books) that has the book you wanted:
https://www.abebooks.co.uk/servlet/SearchResults?sts=t&an=Lois+Lenski&tn=Flood+Friday&kn=&isbn=
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I know, Janice. The memories are special for me and those were magic hours in that library and working in it. I think I was a library helper in 7th and 8th.
Thank you for the link to Abe Books and Flood Friday. I will check it out. I think I located a book for my husband, Tom, a few years back on Abe Books.
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The earthquake and flooding are beyond horrible. But it does seem as if the people in TX are coming together and perhaps will be able to get their towns back eventually.
I remember that author…. I read every single thing in the library when I was in grade school, but probably thought that the flood sounded like an adventure …. I don’t think I could even relate to the fear and loss back then. Empathy came later — when I read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and Anne Frank — somewhere around the 8th or 9th grade….. .both books i re-read annually. But it was that early grade school reading that prepared me to open my mind. I worry about children today … all those electronic toys instead of books. (Not my grandchildren of course and not yours)…..
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It does seem that they will, Sallie. I can only imagine what an uphill climb it will be and my heart goes out to them. 😦
I agree. I have read both “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” and Anne Frank several times since my first readings of them, as well as “To Kill a Mockingbird”. I was at least in 9th grade, but, I think you are right. It was those earlier years of devouring books in the school and public library. Our little school library was, as I remember it, filled with such wonderful books.
No. Not mine, either. Books are a big part of their daily routine. Thank you for stopping by, Sallie, and for your words. Here’s hoping for a good recovery of all the Mother Nature has wrought.
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Oh my goodness, Penny, I have never read these books and I’m intrigued! I think you really touched upon something quite special in recognizing the way special books can offer us a glimpse of experience we might otherwise not consider as clearly. Both Harvey and Irma leave me quite astonished as I attempt to relate out of grave concern, but really cannot understand. Books! Of course!
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I devoured every one of them in my little grade school library and now have a copy of “Flood Friday” to re-read. These books are well-written, illustrated, and bring to life other regions of the US.
I can only imagine what the impact of the hurricanes must be like, as well as the northwest and the fires. On Labor Day, I developed an annoying little cough. The air was a bit hazy and the sun was just different. It was odd. It wasn’t until the late night news that I realized it was from the fires thousands of miles away. Boy-oh-boy, what a moment of realization as I thought of how those fires were impacting all those living near the fires and especially those fighting the blazes.
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