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Dear Book Lovers, Welcome! I am delighted that you have found The Through the Looking Glass blog. For over twenty years I reviewed children's literature titles for my online journal, which came out six times a year. Every book review written for that publication can be found on the Through the Looking Glass website (the link is below). I am now moving in a different direction, though the columns that I write are still book-centric. Instead of writing reviews, I'm offering you columns on topics that have been inspired by wonderful books that I have read. I tell you about the books in question, and describe how they have have impacted me. This may sound peculiar to some of you, but the books that I tend to choose are ones that resonate with me on some level. Therefore, when I read the last page and close the covers, I am not quite the same person that I was when first I started reading the book. The shift in my perspective might be miniscule, but it is still there. The books I am looking are both about adult and children's titles. Some of the children's titles will appeal to adults, while others will not. Some of the adult titles will appeal to younger readers, particularly those who are eager to expand their horizons.
Showing posts with label Book Expotition. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Book Expotition. Show all posts

Wednesday, May 25, 2022

An (accidental) Book Expotition in Kansas City - Part Two


Dear Friends:

On Saturday we went to the farmer's market in the city, which takes place in the center of a plaza. Specialty food groceries, restaurants, and other shops enclose the plaza in a frame of delicious smells, bright colors, and interesting sights. In the open space in the plaza there were rows of vendors selling flowers, plants, fruit and vegetables, baked goods, soap bars, and other handmade items. What a treat it was so see many beautiful and delicious looking items. If I could have I would have bought a large selection of succulent plants; a vendor there had varieties I had never seen before. Alas, traveling on a plane with a flat of plants is more of a challenge than I am willing to take on. 
   We began by buying the ingredients that we would need to make our pasta primavera dinner: baby carrots, thin asparagus, blue oyster mushrooms, and baby peas. Then we walked around the shops where we bought artisanal pasta and pecorino romano cheese. I also got a selection of sweet delicacies from a Middle Eastern grocery. I had to be firmly removed from a spice shop before I bought a container of every spice and herb in the place.
   We then came to a shop called Dutch Flowers which did indeed sell plants and garden related items, but it also sold a wide variety of other things including bags, scented candles, tea towels, toys, clothes, and an eclectic selection of other goods. And books. Such wonderful books. 
   I managed to restrain myself and only bought two books for young readers. One is a nonfiction book about trees; you will soon learn that I have a deep fondness for trees and so I have a lot of books about them. The other is a picture book called Florette, which was written and illustrated by Anna Walker
   This book reminds me of how lucky I am to live and work in a place where I am surrounded by natural spaces. We live on a ten acre farm that is surrounded by other farms, and just a short drive away there are hiking trails that twist and turn up into the mountains. My town has a beautiful park in its heart, complete with a creek, beautiful trees, and hundreds of flowering shrubs and plants. I could never trade what I have here for a life in a city, though I enjoy visiting cities to go to museums, restaurants, and theatre shows. 

Florette
Anna Walker
Picture Book
For ages 5 and up
Clarion Books, 2018, 978-0-544-87683-5
Mae and her family are moving to the city, and Mae is deeply disappointed that she cannot bring her garden with her. Her mother tells her that Mae can create a new garden when she gets to the city, but it turns out that there is “no room among the crowded buildings for apple trees and daffodils.” 
   Outside, instead of green grass to lie on and trees to climb, there are cement paths, and in the apartment all there is is a forest of cardboard moving boxes. Mae misses her garden so much that she uses her colored chalks to draw a garden on the cement in the countyard below her apartment. Large, colorful drawings of grass, plants, flowers, caterpillars, beetles, and butterflies fill the space, but the rain soon washes them all away.
   Next Mae draws a garden on the sides of the boxes in the apartment, and she sets up a picnic next to boxes that have an apple tree drawn on them. Unfortunately the apple tree boxes fall over and the picnic is ruined. 
  Needing a break from boxes, Mae and her mother go to visit a park; instead of grass and plants, the ground is covered with gravel. Mae sits on a swing, which is when she sees a bird, a bird that is just like the ones that used to sit the apple tree in her garden at her old home. Mae follows the flying bird and it leads her to a ….forest! 
   The forest is inside a garden shop that is called Florette. The bird is able to fly through an open window, but Mae cannot get into the wonderful shop with its huge tropical plants, its succulents, and its trailing vines because the shop is closed. Mae waits and waits for the shop to open but no one appears to flip the closed sign. 
   For many of us, having access to green spaces is essential for our well-being. This is certainly the case for Mae, the main character in this indelible picture book. A spare text is paired with artwork that beautifully captures how empty Mae’s life is when she leaves her home to move to the city. Green is singularly absent in the illustrations until the moment when Mae discovers Florette with its precious ‘forest’ of growing things. 
   Through her story in this provocative book, Anna Walker reminds us that having growing things around us enriches our lives in many ways. We all need plants, trees, flowers, and birds and butterflies to ground us and connect us with the natural world. Such things calm our mind and give us a reprieve from the noise and bustle of our school, work, and domestic lives. 


An author called Carter Higgins, whose books I have reviewed in the past, interviewed the author of Florette to ask her about her creative process. You can 'view' this interview online on Carter's blog, which is called Design of a Picture Book 

What I love about this story is the way in which Florette figures out how to bring growing things into her life despite the fact that she is living in a place that grows more cement than grass and trees. A little creativity can go a long way. 
   After we got married, my husband and I lived in a small second floor apartment in Old Town Alexandria in Virginia. We had no veranda, and so we grew our 'garden' in window boxes, and the apartment was full of houseplants. Little pots of geraniums and herbs sprouted on the windowsills in the summer, and I used miniature evergreens potted out in blue glazed pots to brighten up our home in the winter. 



 

Monday, May 23, 2022

A Book Expotition in Kansas City - Part One

 
Artwork from Little Men created by Ruth Ives

Dear Friends:

This week I was in Kansas City for four days to see my daughter and to celebrate her twenty-second birthday with her. My husband and I had never visited her in her space before, so this was something of a milestone for us; being our daughter's 'guest!' 
   On Wednesday morning we set of on out first expotition, (1) and the first thing that I noticed as we drove into the city was that the topography was flat. Really flat. I live in a narrow valley that is surrounded by mountains, so this was a little bit of a shock to the system. One thing that I did like very much is that is wonderfully green. Here in the Pacific Northwest the summer "toasted" season is already starting, so seeing green trees and grass is a treat for us.
   After stopping at Ibis, a marvelous bakery, for a pastry and some coffee, we headed to Prospero's, a three storey building packed with used books and other media. It has been a quite a while since I set foot in a large bookshop of this kind, and the moment I stepped in the aroma of used books wafted over me like a well-loved old quilt; I gave a sigh of deep pleasure and started exploring the shelves. 
   I found some wonderful copies of Little Men and Jo's Boys written by Louisa May Alcott and illustrated by Ruth Ives. They were published in 1955 and are in excellent condition. These books continue the story of the characters that readers got to meet in the classic books Little Women and Good Wives 
 
 I also got 75 Years of Children's Book Week Posters: Celebrating Great Illustrations of American Children's Books. In 1915 Franklin K. Mathiews (who founded Boy's Life Magazine) decided that he would bring together parents, teachers, librarians and others so that they could, together, create an annual week-long celebration of books and reading. Mathiews teamed up with two very powerful allies, Frederic G. Melcher and Anne Carrol.
   Frederic G. Melcher was the editor of Publisher's Weekly for many years and a huge supporter of children's books. In fact he was the one who proposed the Newbery Medal in 1922, an annual award for "the most distinguished book for children." In 1937 Melcher proposed the Caldecott Medal to honor children's picture books. 
   Anne Carrol was an American educator, writer and advocate for children's libraries. In 1896 Carrol accepted an offer to organize a children's room at the Pratt Institute Library in Brooklyn. Up to this point children had usually been considered a nuisance in library settings, and were often excluded from libraries until they were at least 14 years of age. Carrol set about changing this. She created a welcoming space for children with child-sized furniture, open stacks, cozy reading nooks, story times, puppet shows, summer programming, quality juvenile literature, and perhaps most importantly, librarians committed to working with children. In 1906 she became the the superintendent of children's work at the New York Public Library. 
   Together, with the help of the publishers' and bookseller's associations,' Mathiews, Melcher, and 
Carrol formed a Book Week Committee, and in 1919 the illustrator Jessie Wilcox created the first Children's Book Week poster. The poster was reused for the next four years. Over the years recommended book lists, school and public library events, parades, and other grassroots events have popular around the country, and every year an illustrator is asked to create a poster for the occasion. 
   In 1944 the Association of Children's Book Editors created the Children's Book Council (CBC) to take over the running of Children's Book Week. Then in 2008 the administration of Children’s Book Week, including planning official events and creating original materials, was transferred to Every Child a Reader, CBC’s charitable arm. 
   Children’s Book Week is the longest-running national literacy initiative in the country. Every year, young people across the country participate by attending events at schools, libraries, bookstores, celebrating at home, and engaging with book creators both online and in person. The 2022 Children’s Book Week will take place during two dedicated weeks of celebration, May 2-8 and November 7-13.

A Sample of Children's Book Week Posters
From left to right - Jessie Wilcox 1924, Kate Seredy 1962, Lane Smith 1995
From Left to Right - Jan Brett 1996, Kevin Henkes 2002, Jon J. Muth 2010




(1) The word expotition refers to “voyages of discovery in which, it is hoped by all concerned, nothing Fierce is discovered.” A.R. Melrose, The Pooh Dictionary: The Complete Guide to the Words of Pooh and All the Animals in the Forest, 1995. 
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