Category: children’s literature

Ranch Dressing

Karen

I’m thinking about the horse-and-alpacpa-and-goat ranch/yoga retreat/organic farm I want to retire on lately, and, since it’s me, I’m also thinking, “What does one wear on the imaginary ranch?”  Good thing My Friend Flicka can tell us what Nell wears:

When Nell walked up to the stables she was dressed in well-cut jodhpurs made of carefully softened and faded blue-jean denim…A darker blue jersey polo shirt with very short sleeves left her brown arms bare; she wore pigskin gloves, a round blue linen hat with a narrow brim to pull down over her eyes and stick on against the Wyoming winds…and on her feet, under the straps of her trousers, soft tan jodhpur boots.

 

Wind

Karen

Reading The Little Duck must have gotten my mind thinking about other kid books, because in the last 24 hours of a north wind I could only think of this poem from an old anthology. (I wanted to say it was A Child’s Garden of Verses but I just learned that’s all Robert Louis Stevenson.)

Who Has Seen the Wind?

By Christina Rossetti

Who has seen the wind?
Neither I nor you:
But when the leaves hang trembling,
The wind is passing through.
Who has seen the wind?
Neither you nor I:
But when the trees bow down their heads,
The wind is passing by.

Hatching

Karen

Last week I had the pleasure of showing a friend’s toddler son a book that I loved as a kid: The Little Duck by Judy Dunn. I’m sure most adults my age read it growing up, but have you seen it lately? Go find your old copy because it is a delight. And it has a hatching sequence, which ties it in to yesterday’s quote:

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Getting hatched is hard work!

Theology From Children’s Literature

Karen

…complete with Yorkshire dialect. This is from The Secret Garden, my spring book:

“Do you believe in Magic?” asked Colin….”I do hope you do.”

“That I do, lad,” she answered. “I never knowed it by that name but what does th’ name matter? I warrant they call it a different name i’ France an’ a different one i’ Germany. Th’ same thing as set th’ seeds sweelin’ an’ th’ sun sunin’ made thee a well lad an’ it’s th’ Good Thing. It isn’t like us poor fools as think it matters if us is called out of our names. Th’ Big Good Thing doesn’t stop to worrit, bless thee. It goes on makin’ worlds by th’ millions–worlds like us. Never thee stop believin’ in  th’ Big Good Thing an’ knowin’ th’ world’s full of it–an’ call it what tha’ likes.”

No Thaw

Karen

The 2-4 inches of snow we got Monday night disappeared by Wednesday. It made me think of the part in The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe where spring comes to Narnia in about four hours:

And now the snow was really melting in earnest and patches of green grass were beginning to appear in every direction…Every moment the patches of green grew bigger and the patches of snow grew smaller. Every moment more and more of the trees shook off their robes of snow. […]

“This is no thaw,” said the Dwarf [to the White Witch], suddenly stopping. “This is spring. What are we to do? Your winter has been destroyed, I tell you! This is Aslan’s doing.”

Homebodies

Karen1 Comment

I was reading the Christmas chapter of The Wind in the Willows this week, where Moley finds his old home and the caroling field mice show up, and thought, “Forget Dagny or Franny; I identify most with Moley.” Consider this:

He saw clearly how plain and simple…[his home] was; but clearly, too, how much it all meant to him, and the special value of some such anchorage in one’s existence…It was good to think he had this place to come back to, this place which was all his own, these things which were so glad to see him again and could always be counted upon for the same simple welcome.

I Am Ignoring You, Predicted Snowfall

Karen

I see bulbs coming up in all the planters downtown, and the bulbs are not only up but blooming at my parents’ house. So I think it’s time to re-read my spring book, The Secret Garden. Here’s the scene where Mary is finding bulbs in the titular garden:

There had been a flower bed, and she thought she saw something sticking out of the black earth–some sharp little pale green points…she knelt down to look at them.
“Yes, they are tiny growing things[…]Perhaps there are some other ones coming up in other places,” she said. “I will go all over the garden and look.”
She went slowly and kept her eyes on the ground. She looked in the old border beds and among the grass, and after she had gone round, trying to miss nothing, she had found ever so many more sharp, pale green points, and she had become quite excited again.

The (Not So) Secret Garden (That Is Actually A Flowerbed In The Front Yard)

Karen

I’ve been pulling weeds in the flowerbed we cleared out last fall and finished up yesterday, just in time for five inches of snow. But the bulbs I planted are coming up, so spring is near. I had let the weeding go all fall, so there was a lot to do, and as I cleared out the bulbs I knew I had a ready-made blog post from The Secret Garden:

She found many more of the sprouting pale green points than she had ever hoped to find. They seemed to be starting up everywhere and each new day she was sure she found tiny new ones, some so tiny they barely peeped above the earth…She wondered how long it would be before they showed that they were flowers.

Happy Christmas Eve

Karen1 Comment

Like the rest of the blogging world, I won’t be posting the rest of the week because of Christmas. But I have more plans than celebration and vacation–I’m going to attempt to move the blog to Blogspot (gasp!) to help with the organization and overall look.*

So I will leave you with three things to read for the next three days:

  1. Tonight I’ll be reading The Tailor Of Gloucester (this link even has the illustrations!) to everyone. Mr. Isbell can humor me, Toby can look at the pictures of the mice, and I can commiserate with the Tailor about not finishing his projects and buttonhole quality. And we can all say NO MORE TWIST.
  2. If you’d rather read something to yourself or if your cat has a longer attention span than mine, I recommend the Christmas chapter in The Wind in the Willows. It’s the winter chapter where Mole rediscovers his old home after living at Rat’s all summer and takes Ratty there on Christmas Eve. There are also caroling field mice.
  3. And if this is all too cute, here’s something adult you can read: It’s Nigel Slater describing Christmas in Vienna in a Guardian column last year. You will want to listen to Strauss.

*I am a little nervous about this, but I have reinforcements I can call in (hi Amber!) to fix things if the move goes horribly awry. So if you don’t see a blog here next Monday, don’t panic; it just means that I’ll need another week to have someone who knows what she’s doing fix things.