Sunday Brunch for the End of a Three-Day Weekend

The long holiday weekend is drawing to a close, but I’m not willing to let it go just yet. In fact, since I’ve spent the last few days cleaning, sorting books, and running errands, I almost feel like I didn’t get a true break from work and am considering taking Monday off as an “Any Purpose Day” -- a “use it or lose it” day that must be taken by the end of the fiscal year, July 31. In the meantime, here’s a Sunday Brunch blog containing random information on children’s books old and new.

FIRST FRIENDS

While straightening out my shelves this weekend, I came across a couple books that helped teach us how read in the first grade: MY LITTLE RED STORY BOOK and MY LITTLE BLUE STORY BOOK, both written by Odille Ousley and David H. Russell, and illustrated by Ruth Steed.


Everyone knows Dick, Jane and Sally. But in the Detroit Public Schools we learned from Tom, Betty, and Susan. Finding the books again this weekend was like running into old childhood friends.

By today’s standards, the books seem pretty sexist. Consider the following spread. (To get a better look, you can click on the image to enlarge it.)


Tom gets to have fun playing in the tree (AND gets a gift!) while Betty lounges around on the grass like a clothed version of the woman in Manet's famous painting “Le dejeuner sur l’herbe.” (Who am I kidding? I don’t speak French and didn’t know the original title for that painting OR that Manet was the artist until I looked it up on Wikipedia just now.) But the fact remains: in LITTLE RED and LITTLE BLUE, boys are usually shown DOING THINGS while girls laze around and look pretty. In the next story, Tom gets to ride a pony, while Betty merely stands on the sidelines jabbering, “Father! Father! Come and see Pony. See Tom ride. Tom can ride Pony. Tom can ride Pony fast.” Later, during a rainstorm, Mother sends Testosterone Tom out to pick up toys in the sandbox while dainty Betty and Susan huddle on the porch.

To be fair, in LITTLE BLUE (which seems to be for somewhat more advanced readers) Betty does don overalls and grab a hammer when the kids build a playhouse...but as soon as the playhouse is finished, listen how imperious the male members of the family get. Tom immediately begins bossing his sisters around: “Susan! Betty! Go and get the toys. Get Bunny and Patsy. Get the little green ball. Get the toy airplane.” Apparently the girls aren’t speedy enough, because Tom feels the need to add: “Go fast, Betty and Susan!”

Even Father gets in the act, ordering the girls to “Get Mother.”

I am tempted to pencil in a couple caption balloons over Betty and Susan’s heads, saying, “Get your own damn ball and toy airplane!" and "If you want me to get Mother, at least say please!”

UNDER THE COVERS

I thought this dustjacket for Jaclyn Moriarty’s THE SPELL BOOK OF LISTEN TAYLOR was particularly arresting:


The other day I removed the jacket and noticed the binding itself is also quite unusual, mimicking a hand-made book with white lettering on the front panel and faux staples at the binding:


The back cover features open-ended staples and a quote at the bottom: “This Book Will Make You Fly, Will Make Your Strong, Will Make You Glad. What’s More, This Book Will Mend Your Broken Heart.”

I always need to remind myself to peek under dustjackets and see what's hiding beneath. Generally it’s just a plain cloth cover, but every once in a while you get a nice surprise like this.

And here’s a bit of trivia about THE SPELL BOOK OF LISTEN TAYLOR: It was originally published as an adult book in Australia with the title I HAVE A BED MADE OUT OF BUTTERMILK PANCAKES.

ELVIS HAS APPARENTLY NOT LEFT THE BUILDING

Sometimes I think certain bright ideas just float around the cosmos, ripe for the taking. Unfortunately, sometimes two people grab the same idea at the same time. How else to explain two new spring books, by Audrey Couloumbis and Shelley Pearsall, both about thirteen-year-old kids (one a girl, one a boy) whose fathers are Elvis impersonators? Published within three weeks of each other, the books are also named after Elvis songs.


TWIN TIKIS

These two recent books, by Ralph Fletcher and Jennifer McMahon, even share a cover motif.


QUICKFIRE CHALLENGE

A recent English import, THE VIPER WITHIN, concerns several boys who become embroiled in a nefarious made-up religion and kidnap a “different” girl at school because they think she’s a terrorist. The tension never flags as the boys hold the girl captive, issue public statements (“We demand that the government immediately hold a vote in the Houses of Parliament to amend the Prevention of Terrorism Act and make it tougher! ...We demand a million pounds to build a temple to spread our message") and threaten to kill their hostage, whom they call “SNAKE.”

I must admit I was pulled outside the story every time the poor girl's real name was mentioned: Padma Laxsmi.

Okay, it’s spelled slightly different, but I still kept expecting her to order her assailants to drop their knives and guns by shouting, “Utensils down, hands up!”


ANOTHER REASON TO LOVE BOOKS

Last fall I happened to drive past a store’s grand opening party.


The shop was devoted to holiday decorations -- ceramic Jack-o-lanterns and Thanksgiving door hangings and Christmas tree lights -- but as I looked at the excited faces of the owners and employees cutting the ribbon, my only thought was, “It won’t last till Independence Day.”

I felt terrible thinking that, but I knew that after the winter holidays the store just wouldn’t be able to make it. Not in this area. Not with this economy.

Every time I passed the store in January it was empty. (Sorry, there just isn’t a market for Martin Luther King knick-knacks.) Valentine’s Day and Easter didn’t seem to increase business either. May...June...I could never bring myself to go inside, as I knew I’d feel so sorry for the owners that I’d end up buying armloads of Memorial Day and Flag Day decorations that I didn’t need and couldn’t afford.

I passed there again yesterday and the store was gone.

The handpainted signs were no longer on the windows, the interior was completely empty.

Just as I predicted, the store didn't even make it till July the Fourth.

Someone’s dream had come to life and been destroyed in little more than six months.

A year from now the building will have another occupant, another business, and I doubt anyone will ever remember the holiday store.

Yesterday afternoon I happened to come across this volume on my shelf and began paging through a year’s worth of celebrations bound within the pages of a book:


I guess that’s one of the things I love best about books. Some titles may not be popular...some titles may go out of print very quickly...yet they never quite disappear for good. There are always copies out there somewhere. The words and pictures remain -- fifty, sixty, a hundred years after they were first published.

Once someone’s dream comes alive in the pages of a book, it never truly dies.

POSTSCRIPT TO HEYDAYS AND HOLIDAYS

...Another reason I love this particular book is that it contains a wonderful postscript that commemorates an event that occurred on the day that Grace Paull finished the illustrations for the volume. It’s a nice moment in which the book’s theme and “real life” happened to bisect on August 14, 1945.

But I’ll save that story for a blog in August.

Fireworks, Flags, and the Fourth of July

Happy Independence Day!

A NEWBERY-WINNING STEAMBOAT?

It used to be that I’d wake up every Fourth of July to the sound of fireworks exploding but, as I write this it’s mid-morning and I haven’t heard a single “boom” or “bang.”

On this holiday I’m always reminded of RUFUS M by Eleanor Estes.


The Fourth of July finds a bored Rufus sitting on the bottom step of the Moffats’ porch burning punk -- which according to my dictionary is a “dry spongy substance made from fungi.” Joey has already shot all his firecrackers and Janey has lighted her snakes and watched them unwind on the pavement, so the siblings are glad that older sister Sylvie prefers night-time fireworks -- “otherwise the Fourth of July would be over and it was only nine o’clock in the morning.”

The Moffats spend the holiday on the beach and are told to return home when they see the steamboat that runs between New York and New Haven at four o’clock. Back when I read this book as a child, the name of the steamboat didn’t mean anything special. Today when I looked at the volume I discovered the steamboat is called “the Richard Peck.” Now everyone knows the name “Richard Peck” not as a steamboat, but as a contemporary, Newbery-winning author.

SPEAKING OF NEW HAVEN

...The Moffats lived in New Haven, Connecticut and that’s also the setting for another children’s book about this holiday, Wilma Pitchford Hays’ FOURTH OF JULY RAID.


This was one of several short historical novels the author wrote about holidays. I have three or four in my collection, ordered from a used bookstore in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts. The bookstore’s description of this volume said that it had been signed by a previous owner -- so I of course hoped that the previous owner’s last name might start with K. But it turned out to be someone named Douglas Banks. Oh well, maybe he was a neighbor of the Kennedys.

THREE-CORNERED HATS

Tom Morris, the protagonist of FOURTH OF JULY RAID, is shown wearing a three-cornered hat and that put me in mind of Johnny Tremain, hero of the eponymous novel by Esther Forbes -- a book that many rank as the best Newbery winner of all time. However, when I took my copy of the book off the shelf I was surprised to discover that...

...although Johnny wears a three-cornered hat on the cover of the recent hardcover illustrated by Michael McCurdy:


...and the cover of the paperback version:


...and on the cover of the Disney DVD:


...he does NOT wear a tri-cornerd hat on the cover of the original book -- though in my mind’s eye he always did!


WHERE DID THIS WOODCUT COME FROM?

Lynd Ward did the dustjacket illustration of the original 1943 edition of JOHNNY TREMAIN. The book also includes illustrated endpapers, a frontispiece, and decorations at the start of each chapter.

However, this morning, when looking up info on the book, I came across this Lynd Ward woodcut featuring Johnny Tremain, which is owned by the University of PIttsburgh.


Since it most definitely did not appear in the original book, I wonder where it came from. Did Lynd Ward do another illustrated edition of JOHNNY TREMAIN? If so, I do not know about it. I will have to keep researching this one.

JOHN CONLAN AND JOHNNY TREMAIN

Does anyone remember the reference to JOHNNY TREMAIN in Paul Zindel’s great young adult novel THE PIGMAN? That novel’s wisecracking protagonist, John Conlan, once wrote a book report on JOHNNY TREMAIN and got a higher grade than his friend Lorraine.

Lorraine remarks, “You might also be interested in knowing that the only part of Johnny Tremain that John did end up reading was page forty-three -- where the poor guy spills the molten metal on his hand and cripples it for life.”

A FAVORITE FOURTH OF JULY STORY

A couple years ago I came across Janet S. Wong’s picture book APPLE PIE FOURTH OF JULY. I loved it, but it also made me mad.


I really enjoyed the story of a young Chinese girl who spends Independence Day hanging out at her parents’ take-out store and ends the evening sitting on the roof eating apple pie and watching fireworks.

You can practically hear the fireworks explording in this picture, can’t you?


...So you’re probably wondering why the book made me mad. Well, you may notice the library label on the above cover. I’m mad because Ms. Wong came to town a few years ago to do a signing and, since I was unfamiliar with her books, I did not bother to attend. A couple years later I read APPLE PIE FOURTH OF JULY and kicked myself for not discovering it sooner. If I had, I could have a signed copy of this great book in my collection right now instead of having to borrow it from the library when I want to read it!

I guess that’s a lesson for book collectors. If you hear that an author is coming to town, it’s a good idea to do some research first...maybe borrow a couple of their books from the library and read them...rather than learn too late that you love their work and missed your one big chance to meet them and have their books signed.

MY FLAG

They say you shouldn’t display an outdated flag, so I don’t hang my own flag outside on patriotic holidays these days, but I still treasure it.

It’s only got forty-nine stars, which means it was manufactured sometime in the narrow window between January 3, 1959 when Alaska entered the union and August 21, 1959 when Hawaii became a state.

Although we already had fifty states by the time I attended first grade, every morning we said the Pledge of Allegiance to this old, forty-nine star flag displayed in the corner of the room.

At the end of that year our teacher announced that the school had finally received a bunch of brand new flags for the classrooms. She told us that she was going to give the retired flag to someone in our class who had been a “good citizen” all year long. She told us to stand at our tables, close our eyes, and hold out our hands.

I stood in front of my chair and heard her walking all around the room on the hard wooden floors...and then she stopped behind me and placed the flag in my hands.

Wow!

I still remember running home that June afternoon with the flag streaming behind me in the breeze.

It wasn’t until many years later that I thought about all the other kids standing in front of their chairs that day, eyes shut, opening and closing their palms in anticipation...and hearing the teacher walk past them.

Now I wish there was some way we all could have shared that flag.

So I’ll share it with you now instead:


BACK TO RUFUS M, ON THE BOTTOM STEP

Don’t worry, Rufus didn’t spend all Independence Day burning fungi on his porch. After going to the beach with his siblings, hunting for buried treasure, and coming home when they saw the Richard Peck steamboat go by, the Moffats gathered outside that evening to light sparklers and watch Roman candles explode in the sky: “It was truly a glorious evening. And Rufus stomped up to bed tired and happy and wondering how he could wait until the next Fourth of July.”

Hope your holiday is just as happy as his was.

By Candlelight

I was looking at a library book today when I noticed it.

It would have been easy to miss -- a tiny paper sticker pasted discretely on the bottom, inside edge of the back endpaper:


It spoke of another era -- when Detroit was a bustling metropolis and Hudson's Department Store was the place where everyone shopped. People came downtown, by bus or car or streetcar, to visit what was then the tallest department store in the world. Hudson's sold furniture, clothing, sporting goods...basically everything under the sun. There was even an equestrian shop and something called "A Nice Girl Like You Shop." There were restaurants and elevator operators and tot-sized drinking fountains especially made for the children's clothing department. On patriotic holidays, the largest American flag in the world hung outside the store. Each year the Thanksgiving parade ended right outside Hudson's, where the mayor of Detroit would give Santa Claus (accompanied by his assistant, "Christmas Carol") the key to the city, thus opening the holiday season. Anyone who grew up in this area can tell you stories about visiting Hudson's twelfth floor -- transformed into "Santaland" -- at Christmastime.

By the time I came along, the Hudson's downtown store was no longer the big deal it once was. During the sixties and seventies, everyone began flocking to Hudson's satellite stores in suburban malls: Northland, Eastland, Southland, and (you guessed it) Westland. I visited the downtown Hudson's just once as a teenager and it was a shadow of its former glory. The top floors were closed down and the remaining two or three levels looked like a cheap discount store. I especially remember earsplitting music blasting from the the mezzanine record department -- one of the few departments that remained in that dying, hundred-year-old store.

What I didn't know then was that the mezzanine was once the home of Hudson's Book Shop. And from what I understand, it was a very special place. Major authors used to come to Hudson’s for booksignings (Dr. Seuss actually arrived by helicopter) and the store even had a rare book department. A friend of mine recalls visiting Hudson’s as a young woman and the head of the rare book section bringing out special volumes just for her to look at. (Perhaps inevitably, my friend ended up working in a library.)

The downtown Hudson's closed its doors in 1983. Fifteen years later, the store was razed in a controlled implosion. You can watch the building fall on Youtube; I viewed the tape today and realized that what was once a major event -- something most of us stayed home to watch live on TV one October Saturday -- had now been dwarfed and usurped by the more horrific televised implosions we all witnessed on television three autumns later.

In fact, time has begun to usurp many of our memories of Hudsons. All the Hudson stores that remained, anchoring those malls to the north, east, south, and west, had their names changed to Marshall Fields a few years back. Then, a couple years ago, they all became Macy’s. Even the name “Hudson’s” is receding farther and farther into the past.

Book collectors normally hate finding stickers pasted inside books -- even little labels glued at the bottom of a back endpaper. But I’m glad Hudson’s stuck a small reminder in every volume that they sold. All over the Detroit area -- in libraries, in used bookstores, in attic trunks, and on living room shelves -- there are books, now decades old, containing Hudson’s name and a picture of a candle that never goes out, shedding a tiny bit of light on this bookstore from our past.