What's for Brunch? Books "Over Easy"

The library where I work classifies picture books under a “PE” heading.

PE stands for “Picture Easy.”

I’ve never quite understood that designation. To me, “easy” books are titles geared for early readers, such as the “I Can Read” series published by HarperCollins.

I wouldn’t necessarily call a picture book an “easy” book. They are not easy to write, nor are they easy to illustrate. The intended audience (often preschoolers) probably doesn’t find them easy to read. Heck, they’re not even easy for me to catalog.

But I guess people just assume they’re “easy” because they contain mostly pictures.

I’ve been busy this weekend, so didn’t get around to preparing a blog entry. Then I thought, “Why don’t I just post a bunch of pictures? That should be easy.”

...Oh.

See how quickly one can fall into that “pictures” equal “easy” trap?

Anyway, a couple people have asked to see pictures of my Newbery Book collection, so I thought I’d post a couple on my blog today. All the books are first editions. It’s taken a whole lifetime to collect them...and I still haven’t found them all yet. (Anybody have a first edition of the 1922 Newbery Honor WINDY HILL by Cornelia Meigs? How about 1931’s DARK STAR OF ITZA by Alida Malkus? Buyer desperate.)

Here’s a panoramic view of the main collection:


And here’s a close-up of a random shelf. This one contains books from the early to mid-1960s. ...Hey, does that book have a tail?


That’s actually a fraying tassel attached to the program for the 1967 Newbery-Caldecott banquet. Every year the people who attend this ceremony receive a program or souvenier of some sort. Last year it was a harmonica! Naturally these items are highly valued by collectors. I’ve never attended an N-C ceremony but sometimes I’ve had friends who attended and brought me back a souvenier (thanks, guys!) If that doesn’t happen, I usually try to buy one. The older it is, the more it costs. This program from 1967 cost over one hundred dollars:


The program for the 1967 banquet, which was held in the ballroom of the San Francisco Hilton on June 27, contains a list of the people who sat the head table. In addition to the winners (Irene Hunt won the Newbery for UP A ROAD SLOWLY and Evaline Ness won the Caldecott for SAM, BANGS & MOONSHINE) and their editors, guests included Daniel Melcher (“Donor of the Newbery and Caldecott Medals"), Mary Gaver ("President of the American Library Association") and Mrs. Clift, Mr. Meeks, Mrs. O’Hara, Mrs. Holman, and Mrs. Mohrhardt, who not only don’t have any positions listed...they don’t even seem to have first names! The highlight of the banquet program are two removable pages, one containing a quote from UP A ROAD SLOWLY (if you have a copy of the book, the quote is from page 171. It concerns the moment the novel’s protagonist first becomes a REAL writer) and the other a print from SAM, BANGS & MOONSHINE:


As you can see, there are many shelves in my Newbery collection, each one special. This one contains a favorite book, that one contains a favorite memory. But if you asked me about the most special shelf of all, I’d have to say this one:



Not just because it also features pictures of treasured pets, a treasured friend (and favorite author), and a treasured memento -- a mug from another Newbery-Caldecott dinner. No, what makes this shelf special is that it contains the most recent winners and Honor Books. I love that it’s always in a state of flux. As soon as I added this year’s winner (GOOD MASTERS! SWEET LADIES!) and Honor Books (ELIJAH OF BUXTON, THE WEDNESDAY WARS, and FEATHERS) people were already talking about what books will win NEXT year. My Newbery book collection isn’t just a bunch of dusty old books sitting on a shelf...it's something that continues to grow and change with every passing year.

Incidentally, if you’re wondering about the mug, it’s a gift from a friend who attended the 1989 banquet, honoring Paul Fleischman for JOYFUL NOISE and Stephen Gammell for SONG AND DANCE MAN. And you can see I put it to good use:


Every night I empty my pocket change into the Newbery mug. When I have enough coins saved, I may be able to add a new book to my Newbery collection.

...Now if only I could find copies of WINDY HILL or DARK STAR OF ITZA....

WHO IS THE "QUIET OLD LADY"?

WANTED: INFORMATION ON THIS UNIDENTIFIED “OLD LADY”

NAME: ???

LAST ADDRESS: THE GREAT GREEN ROOM

OCCUPATION: ???

D.O.B. 1947

EYES: BLACK

HARE: YES

PARENTS: DNA TESTS REVEAL SHE IS THE CHILD OF MARGARET WISE BROWN AND CLEMENT HURD

NOTABLE CHARACTERISTICS: KNITS. ROCKS. UTTERS THE PHRASE “HUSH” WITH GREAT FREQUENCY

IF YOU HAVE ANY INFORMATION REGARDING HER IDENTITY, PLEASE CONTACT SGT. U. NORDSTROM OF THE MISSING PERSONS AND RUNAWAY BUNNY BUREAU

A couple days ago I read the new young adult novel THE LOSER’S GUIDE TO LIFE AND LOVE by A.E. Cannon, an enjoyably slick story about the romantic entanglements of several Salt Lake City teenagers in the days leading up to a big Midsummer Night’s party. Though the characters are familiar (the worrisome boy trying to impress a beautiful blonde; the nice girl in love with her unaware male best friend; the-science-geek-next-door) and the plot is sitcom-lite, Cannon keeps the multi-voiced narrative moving at a fast pace and does a great job with the novel’s “moon” motif; the science-geek-next-door gazes at the lunar surface through a telescope, characters quote Edward Lear’s “And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand, they danced by the light of the moon, the moon, the moon, they danced by the light of the moon,” and each chapter is marked by an illustration of a waxing moon.

Cannon's book also includes a riff on Margaret Wise Brown’s GOODNIGHT MOON. Science geek Quark (short for Quentin Andrews O’Rourke) recalls, “My mother
used to read Goodnight Moon to me when I was little. I used to love to hear her low voice as I stared out my bedroom window.” Quark quotes the book’s familar opening lines (“In the great green room / There was a telephone / And a red balloon / And a picture of-- / The cow jumping over the moon...”) and then adds, “It’s such a comforting book. Just a bunny and his mother in a roomful of familiar things. No surprises. Just things the way the bunny expects them to be. Just things they way they’re supposed to be.”

Well, that pulled me up short.

A bunny and his “mother”? I didn’t know the female rabbit in the long dress and apron was supposed to be the sleepy bunny’s mother! I quickly grabbed a copy of GOODNIGHT MOON from the shelf and looked it up. No, the book only refers to her as “a quiet old lady who was whispering ‘hush’.” Surely if she was his mother, the book would refer to her as “Mama” or “Mom” or “Mother.” It wouldn’t refer to her as an “old lady,” would it?

But it did get me wondering: exactly WHO is this "quiet old lady" sitting in the great green room whispering "hush"?


I decided to do a little searching around on the internet and discovered that Quark is not alone in viewing the quiet old lady as the bunny’s mother. Several other sites also refer to the two characters as a bunny and his mother.

I also found other sources -- including reviews for a recent musical version of GOODNIGHT MOON -- that believe the old lady is the bunny’s grandmother.

Personally, I always felt she was some kind of babysitter or housekeeper charged with taking care of the little bunny. I think the long apron drew me to that conclusion; Julie Andrews wore something similar in Mary Poppins.

Then I saw the movie SEANCE ON A WET AFTERNOON, in which a crazed Kim Stanley kidnaps a little girl, keeps her in a darkened room, and puts on a nurse’s outfit so the little girl will believe she’s in a hospital. ...That ALMOST made me wonder if the quiet old lady had sinister motives for watching over the little bunny so intently. I mean, he is pretty groggy. ...And, hey, what’s in that bowl of mush anyway?

Looking for definitive answers, I consulted Leonard Marcus’s excellent biography, MARGARET WISE BROWN : AWAKENED BY THE MOON. He tells us how GOODNIGHT MOON came to be written and published, but offers no explanation for the quiet old lady’s identity. I did learn some interesting trivia about the book, though. Upon publication, it was not even deemed worthy of review by the Horn Book Magazine. And the New York Public Library rejected it as an “unbearably sentimental piece of work” and didn’t order its first copy until 1973!

But back to the nameless old lady. I’ve come to the conclusion that she functions as a sort of Rorschach Test for the reader. It’s not surprising that Quark from LOSER’S GUIDE views her as the bunny’s mother: his own mother has been absent for most of his life. Whether we think she’s a mother...grandmother...babysitter... whether we find her cozy and comforting...authoritative and no-nonsense...or even slightly sinister mostly speaks about our own complicated psyches and personal issues.

It also strikes me that fretting about her name and status is probably something only adults would do. The millions of kids who fall asleep each night to the words of GOODNIGHT MOON never question it. They know exactly who she is: she’s simply the quiet old lady who whispers "hush" -- and that’s all they need to know.

Corresponding with a Character in a Book

Many people send fan mail to their favorite writers, but has anyone ever written a letter to a CHARACTER in a novel?

I have.

Previously in this blog I’ve spoken of an experiment that the American Library Association conducted in the early 1970s, publishing lists of books that were nominated for each year’s Newbery and Caldecott award. I’d always try to read as many of the nominated titles as I could. Mostly I borrowed the books from the library, but occasionally I’d save up a little of my paper route money and order one or two from the bookstore. In the fall of 1974, I ordered three books off the list and, amazingly, all three turned out to be life-changing favorites that I have continued to read over and over again through the years: William Sleator’s HOUSE OF STAIRS, Ellen Raskin’s FIGGS AND PHANTOMS, and Sandra Scoppettone’s TRYING HARD TO HEAR YOU.

One of the things I liked best about TRYING HARD TO HEAR YOU was how contemporary and real this novel felt. It’s set in the summer of 1973 and, as I read the book in the late fall of 1974, I could completely relate to the characters. After all, they were practically my peers. They dressed like me and my friends, spoke like us, listened to the same music (Carole King, Jim Croce), and went to the same movies we did. Today when I read the book it still transports me right back to the summer of 1973.


Sandra Scoppettone only wrote a few more young adult novels (THE LATE GREAT ME, 1976; HAPPY ENDINGS ARE ALL ALIKE, 1978; LONG TIME BETWEEN KISSES, 1982, and PLAYING MURDER, 1985) and because she wrote about “hot topics” (homosexuality, alcoholism, rape, multiple sclerosis) she was often unfairly labeled an author of “teenage problem novels.” The critics didn’t always note her genius for realistic dialogue or the incisive, highly sympathetic characterizations that made her books rise far above the “problem novel” category.

Ms. Scoppettone definitely had a gift for creating characters you wished you knew personally...could hang out with...call on the phone...correspond with. I actually had a literary crush on Camilla Crawford, the likable -- even lovable -- narrator of TRYING HARD TO HEAR YOU and didn’t realize I’d picked up one of her catchphrases until someone mentioned how often I said, “I find that hard to believe.”

But I didn’t write a letter to Camilla Crawford. I wrote to another character in the book.

This happened several years after the publication of TRYING HARD TO HEAR YOU. By then I was crazy about a new show on television, a domestic drama called FAMILY, starring theater actress Sada Thompson, actor James Broderick (before anyone knew he had a son named Matthew), Meredith Baxter (before she had a TV son named Michael J. Fox), Gary Frank, and Kristy McNichol. I watched the show every Tuesday night and devoured every article I could find about the series. Back then there were dozens of TV and movie magazines with names like MODERN SCREEN, SILVER SCREEN, TV MIRROR, HOLLYWOOD GOSSIP...on and on. One day I was standing in the bookstore flipping through one of these publications and saw a column by the magazine’s editor, Elissa Rosner. I immediately did a double-take. Where did I know that name from? Then I remembered. TRYING HARD TO HEAR YOU was dedicated to someone named Elissa Rosner --



-- AND a character named Elissa even appears in the book! In the story she runs “Elissa’s Bookstore,” which Camilla calls “one of the coziest and nicest bookstores I’ve ever been in.” Elissa is described as the type of “warm and sunny” person who offers her customers a free cup of coffee and a cookie, someone who “never made you feel foolish about the books you bought” and is so supportive of the local kids that “this past June she came to an assembly to hear Billy Shipley give his campaign speech for president of student council. Billy’s parents weren’t even there.”

In other words, she’s another of Scoppettone’s supremely likable characters.

The photo of the magazine editor looked exactly like I pictured Elissa in the novel. (Strange, because the character’s appearance is not even described in the book. But I had conjured up a mental picture of the character and she was a dead ringer for the woman shown in the gossip magazine.) I’m sure there is probably more than one person in the world named “Elissa Rosner,” but somehow I knew this had to be the same one depicted in the book.

So I wrote her a note in care of the magazine, ostensibly to ask a question about FAMILY but really just to say, “Are you THE Elissa from TRYING HARD TO HEAR YOU?” I even included a stamp so she’d write me back.

A week or so later I received a letter in the mail from “Sterling’s Magazines” on Lexington Avenue in New York. If you click on this image you can enlarge it and read it for yourself:


I immediately glued the letter into a scrapbook. Hokey? Well, how often do you hear from someone who was featured as a character in one of your favorite books? Who lives and works in New York City (someplace I never expected to visit in my life)? Someone who edits and writes for a magazine (something I could only dream about doing)? Someone who goes to see “live theater” (something I’d never done before)? ...And she even sent my thirteen cent stamp back!

Well, obviously the cost of postage has changed a lot since then. And so have many other things.

Sandra Scoppettone began writing primarily for adults, both under her own name (SOME UNKNOWN PERSON, 1977, is a real stunner) and as “Jack Early” (check out 1988’s DONATO & DAUGHTER.) Her private investigators Lauren Laurano and Faye Quick (each featured in her own series) are as winsome and likable as the protagonists in her young adult books.

As for me, I actually did get to visit New York eventually. I’ve gotten to know other editors and have written for magazines. I’ve seen lots of live theater and have even seen Sada Thompson on stage.

But I still treasure the letter I got from Elissa Rosner in 1977. After all, how many people can say they’ve written to a character in a favorite book? And actually gotten an answer back!