Stellaluna!

Sometimes, when you find yourself suddenly pitched up in bed wheezing and sneezing, your will to tackle the latest novel, the most comprehensive new recounting of the War in the Pacific, or some ground-breaking natural history of the American bison - well, your will just fizzles. Suddenly you, who prided yourself on being a front-line soldier, find yourself in desperate need of the mental equivalent of a week's furlough in Paris.

Sometimes, in other words, only a stack of children's books will cure what ails you.

It isn't necessary to have kids, of course. As I've pointed out here at Stevereads on many occasions, most children's books are at least as much a product of sentimentality as pedagogy - adults so consciously write them for other adults that sometimes the books themselves would be utterly incomprehensible to actual children. No, the best children's books can be read and re-read and enjoyed even if all you've got snuggled next to you on your sickbed is an alarmingly dim-witted basset hound.

I took up Janell Cannon's 1993 classic from Scholastic, Stellaluna, for instance. It's the story of a tiny baby fruit bat named Stellaluna who falls out of her mother's grasp in mid-flight one night when they're both attacked by a marauding owl. Stellaluna falls through the dense jungle canopy and eventually ends up head-first in a bird nest, much to the amazement of its three occupants, Flitter, Pip, and Flap.

Stellaluna misses her bat-mother, and she's dismayed to discover that her new bird-mother only brings disgusting bugs to the nest for everybody to eat. Eventually Stellaluna becomes so hungry that she forces herself to join in, and she likewise tries to forget many of her bat-ways, especially after mother-bird comes home one day to find all four young ones hanging upside-down from the nest. "I will not let you back into this nest unless you promise to obey all the rules of this house," she scolds, and Stellaluna complies.

There's only so much she can do, however. True, Flitter, Pip, and Flap convince her to fly during the day - but they can't do much about her inability to land on perches. Afraid of letting everybody see how clumsy she is, Stellaluna decides to fly all day long, so nobody will have to see her disastrous attempts at landing. But after a long day of flying, she's quite left her new siblings behind - she lands, clumsily, on a branch and closes her eyes in exhaustion.

She's startled by another bat, who wonders why she's hanging the wrong way on a branch! Other bats gather around to hear her story of flying during the day and eating disgusting bugs - and one of those bats is her bat-mother, who survived her encounter with the owl and has missed her little Stellaluna all along. Overjoyed at this reunion, Stellaluna flies back to the nest to tell Flitter, Pip, and Flap that she's OK. She tries to show them the wonders of flying at night, but it terrifies them. "How can we be so different and feel so much alike?" asks Flitter, and Pip wonders, "And how can we feel so different and be so much alike?"

Stellaluna is as much a parable about that kind of difference-defying friendship as it is a touching story of a little lost fruit-bat, and it became an enormous hit for Scholastic, even among readers who have never face-nuzzled with an adult fruit-bat (they're quite wonderful people, and if you ever have a chance to smooch with one, you shouldn't pass it up). The publisher came out with a Stellaluna plush-toy complete with a little dot of velcro on the wing-tips, so it could be made to cling for dear life to the nearest branch. But even without the toy, this is one of my all-time favorite kids books involving bats (against some stiff competition!), and the story of a floppy, ungainly creature who seems utterly out of her element in the world around her ... well, let's just say that story resonates ...

The Big Snow!

Our book today - looking more and more ominously appropriate as this winter progresses - is Berta and Elmer Hader's charming 1948 Caldecott winner, The Big Snow.

It's the story of a northern forest and its wild animals, all of whom pause as the book opens to watch a flock of geese flying south across the sunsetting sky. The animals - jays, robins, squirrels, woodchucks, rats, raccoons, skunks, deer, rabbits - all confer on the meaning of that flight: that the cold days of winter are coming.

The book's laconic narration lets us know how each animal expects to fare (for a far more detailed - and equally charming! - examination of just such a question, you're all urged to find a copy of Bernd Heinrich's Winter World as fast as you can). The raccoons, the woodchuck, and the skunks all plan to sleep or hibernate through most of the worst of it (no amphibians are consulted in the book); the deer on the hill and the crows in the plowed fields aren't worried - we're told they know how to find ample food even during the coldest months.

But there's more to winter than cold:

Then the night after Christmas there was a rainbow around the moon ... The wise owls knew what that meant. A rainbow around the moon meant more snow. MUCH MORE. "Hoooooooooooooo," the sad trilling call of the screech owl was heard up and down and across the hillside.

And snow does indeed fall, for two days, and the book does a wonderful job of conveying not only the hushed anticipation of such an event but also the hushed duration of it and the hushed aftermath.



In that aftermath, everything in the valley covered with more than a foot of snow, the animals who were confident of surviving the cold winter months are suddenly hungry. The squirrels can't find their buried nuts; the deer's usual forage is unreachable under mounds of snow.

At the end of the book, a kindly old couple shovel out the walkway to their cozy stone house and liberally scatter a "banquet" of seeds, nuts, and bread crumbs. The hungry animals come flocking. The message might be counter-evolutionary (the animals who didn't die off because of the snow would, presumably, have passed on their more clever and resilient genes to the next generation), but it's comforting.

Comforting and familiar, to anybody who's ever spent a winter in, say, Vermont or Maine (and one hears rumors that there are crude human settlements even further north than than!), where a 'big snow' can blot out a whole stretch of days, and where some well-stocked feeders in the back yard near the wood line really can make the difference between life and death for the local animals.

It's a quietly delightful tale - I wonder how many times I'll re-read it, on storm-days this season.

As I Was Crossing Boston Common!

Our book today is Norma Farber's delightful 1974 childrens classic As I Was Crossing Boston Common, and it tells the story – through nature-nerd specifics and Arnold Lobel's charming pen-work – of what is surely the most remarkable procession ever seen on good old Boston Common, the 50-acre 400-year-old public park at the heart of Boston.

The procession starts off slow and steady, in the Brahmin way: day has broken over the Common, the stately houses of Beacon Hill are visible along Beacon Street, and – fittingly – a tortoise is inching its way across the foot-path. Nothing unusual – nothing uncommon – in any of this.

But then a man shows up leading a train of miraculous animals, starting with an Angwantibo!




The procession proceeds through Boobook and Entellus and Galliwasp, as the citizens of Boston – in corsets and top-hats – turn out to watch in amazement.

The Hoopoe, it turns out, had an Isabelita in tow (in a bowl, with a spout – for the overflow), and the fish bowl pulled in tow a Jacare, to the wonderment of all:

I snapped a picture, to prove it was so.

And everyone said, “How uncommon!”

“Uncommon!” cried pigeon, squirrel, crow,

and sparrows lined up in a common row.

“Most uncommon!”

There was a Kiang and a Narwhale and a Sassaby and a Trogon, a Wapiti and a Yaguarudi, and at the very end, all tangled up in his own string, was the very fellow who started the day leading the procession! And round they went, and round, although:

the dusk of Boston began to glow.

The lamps gave light enough to show

the turn of events that was uncommon:

sweet and slow, a circular tow,

round as the moon that leaned to blow

its beams upon Boston Common.

I am the Mummy Heb-Nefert!

Our book today is Eve Bunting’s superb 1997 childrens title I am the Mummy Heb-Nefert, with rich, glowing artwork by David Christiana. The book is told in a very loose, lovely verse, as a young girl from thousands of years ago relates the remarkable story of her life and afterlife:

I am the mummy Heb-Nefert,
Black as night,
Stretched as tight
As leather on a drum.
My arms are folded
On my hollow chest
Where once my live heart beat.
My ears are holes
That hear no sound.

Bunting unobtrusively weaves many authentic details of ancient Egyptian life into her story, always with the stress on how natural everything was to the people who were living it all. Young Heb-Nefert catches the eye of the Pharaoh’s brother – she dances for him, and they fall in love:

Handmaidens dressed me every day.
They kept my head so sweetly shaved,
Pumiced and polished till it shone.
They painted me with yellow dye,
Darkened the lashes of my eyes with kohl,
Shadowed my lids with blue,
The color of the evening sky.
My nails were hennaed red as jasper beads,
My flaxen wig was jewel woven.
And on the top
A cone of scented fat
Melted to liquid in the summer warmth
And smelled of flowers.

In bright colors, we’re given elegantly chosen scenes from their life together:

We sailed upon the Nile,
My lord and I,
The wildfowl rising from the reeds
Along the bank,
The ripples of the sacred river
Soft against our boat.
Sometimes we saw a hippopotamus,
Great jaws agape,
A crocodile.
But we were ever safe.

We’d wander in the gardens, he and I,
Beside the pleasure lake
Where lotus blossoms grew.
The servant girls would come
On soundless feet
And bring us fruit – grapes, dates, and figs –
The baskets balanced on their heads,
A cloth of linen spread
Beneath a canopy that kept us from the sun.
And we would feast
While harpists played.

Time eventually passes for the pair, and while still young, Heb-Nefert dies. She floats above herself and watches the complex process of her own mummification. And soon enough she watches her loved one approaching the afterlife as well – and their shared journey toward the incomprehensible:

My Noble One grew old
And also left that life
To lie at last beside me
In the night that followed night.
Time passed and time,
Dark time and years,
Till we were found,
Our bodies moved,
Placed in glass coffins
Under lights
In quiet rooms.
I rose above myself and watched
As people came,
They peered into the cases where we lay.

They spoke,
The words unknown to me
But understood as they were said.
“This was a person? This … and this?”

Heb-Nefert was no wise woman in her own time, no prophet or seer. Nevertheless, her words as she becomes aware of these awestruck museum gawkers are suffused with a serene wisdom that utterly, wonderfully preserves the weird, imperative dignity of the ancient Egyptians. The concluding line of I am the Mummy Heb-Nefert never fails to move me in its quiet, knowing way:

How foolish that they do not see
How all things change,
And so will they.
Three thousand years from now
They will be dust and bones.
I am the mummy Heb-Nefert,
Black as night,
Stretched as tight
As leather on a drum.

Once I was beautiful.

Diary of a Wombat!

Our book today is Jackie French’s 2002 classic kids book Diary of a Wombat, with utterly charming illustrations by Bruce Whatley.
The book tells the story of a fat little wombat somewhere in Australia who’s grown a bit bored with the life she records in her diary. A typical entry runs like this:

Monday

Morning: Slept.

Afternoon: Slept.

Evening: Ate grass. Scratched.

Night: Ate grass.

One day, she discovers he has new neighbors: humans! This delights her as a prospect for change, although there’s an obstacle in the way – the welcome mat:

Discovered flat, hairy creature invading my territory.

Fought major battle with flat, hairy creature.

Won battle. Neighbors should be pleased. Demanded a reward.

The reward in question is carrots, and the little wombat quickly comes to prefer them to boring old grass. She grows demanding, and soon her tastes have broadened to include oats as well. The long-suffering human family is not consulted in any of this; our wombat feels a serene self-confidence.



Eventually, she makes a comfortable hole for herself directly under the home of her new neighbors, so she’ll never be far away from carrots or oats.



We’ll just have to hope the whole thing isn’t an extended parable about the irritation of guests who overstay their welcome. I’m hoping instead it’s about the pleasures of serendipity. Otherwise, things could get pretty uncomfortable for the wombat in question.

Hurricane!

Our book today is David Wiesner’s 1990 kid’s book Hurricane, which uses simple language and a great range of somber colors to capture perfectly the ambiguous thrill of waiting out a big storm – the way it turns day into night, the way it feels, as one of the characters puts it in this book, like being in a “green blizzard.”



The focus here is on one family: a mother, a father, two little boys (David and George), and Hannibal, the family cat. They live in a pretty little house on a manicured suburban street, and as the book opens, a long-predicted hurricane is just starting to touch land all around them. The boys’ parents have brought out provisions – batteries, flashlights, candles – and secured the glass doors and windows of the house with duct tape (arranged in playful faces). The boys notice that Hannibal is nowhere to be found – they discover him meowing indignantly on the back steps, having been accidentally left outside during the storm preparations (inexplicably, they then take him inside).



As the storm picks up strength, the power goes out – but the atmosphere here is purely calm: the house itself is never in danger, despite the loud and ominous sounds outside. The boys go to sleep that night to the comforting light of their storm lantern, wondering how the squirrels and birds outside are managing to survive.



In the morning, the storm has passed, and the boys emerge to survey the aftermath. They’re amazed to find that an enormous tree has been downed – they’d played around it all their lives and no doubt thought it was indestructible. Wiesner’s narrative here takes a whimsical, enchanting turn, as the boys’ imagination transforms the fallen tree into the bedrock of several fantasies, ranging from the savannahs of Africa to the far reaches of outer space (there’s also a pirate ship with a particularly well-done octopus).



Soon enough, workmen come to carve up the tree and cart away the sections, which saddens the boys. They’re dejectedly remembering their “good tree” when their father calls them inside – another storm is coming, and the family once again needs to batten down the hatches and wait it out. The boys go cheerfully, wondering if this time another big tree will fall.

Of course this book was written well before the word ‘hurricane’ became synonymous with ‘Katrina’ in America, and no callousness is intended in how the boys consider the storm and its damages to be one big game. Instead, what Wiesner perfectly conveys is the wonder of a big storm hitting (especially if you live in a lightly-landscaped suburb instead of a flood plain well below sea level), the way it sparks the imagination by changing all the givens. The book’s use of colors is particularly sharp – the dark of the storm gathers gradually, page by page, and the bright of the morning after is all the more dazzling.

It will probably bring back fond memories for any adults who’ve lived through such storms (especially in the American northeast, where the book is clearly set), and kids will like that aspect of it too – although I suspect they’ll enjoy the octopus more, at least until they’re a little older. Until then, the fantasy elements will win the day (in the final panel, even Hannibal is dreaming a particularly catlike dream).