Where My Wellies Take Me...

Charlotte was home sick today, so in-between making soup and baking muffins, I read her parts of this book.  I can't stress enough how fantastic this book is!

Where My Wellies Take Me...

Clare and Michael Morpurgo

designed and illustrated by Olivia Lomenech Gill 2012

It is indeed Wellington weather.  This is the kind of book I would love to make someday- filled with poems, part scrapbook, drawings of nature and the adventures of a child.  Clare and Michael Morpurgo say this in the introduction:  "For Clare and for me, some of the happiest years of our lives were spent growing up in the countryside.  We had walked on the wild side, gone where our wellies had taken us, and loved it."

A girl named Pippa, is staying with her Aunt Peggy.  Written in a journal format, she puts on her boots (wellies) and goes out for a walk.  I never have any idea of where I'm going, I just go.  Proper, long walks.  I don't care if it's raining, don't care if it's cold.

What a thrill for a child- to just wander around the countryside.  Unfortunately where we live, hedged in by busy roads and houses, my kids don't get that kind of freedom.  Perhaps in a small way, playing out back, running from neighbor house to neighbor house rounding up kids to play with, digging holes, collecting moss, and traipsing through the 'woods' behind our house has given them a sense of that kind of adventure.  I remember Madeleine and her friend Alexa playing for hours outside, mapping the pond and creek beyond our neighbor's driveway.  They gave the pond and the bridge poetic names and incorporated them into their fantasy play.  (Madeleine and her friends played "fairies" well into middle school!)

Lately reading this book with Charlotte as the weather stubbornly turns to Spring, makes me want to pull on boots and go wherever they take me!  As John Masefield says in one of the poems:

O, to feel the beat of the rain, and the homely smell of the earth,

Is a tune for the blood to jig to, a joy past power of words.

There's a wonderful fold out map!

I particularly like Walk This World With Music- a folksong by Chris Wood

It is good to be out on the road, and going one knows not where.

-John Masefield