Time of Wonder

 Some children's books are just beautiful, like this one.  Robert McCloskey's muted illustrations take us to a northern island in the summer.  His story celebrates nature and the sea, the passing of days like the tide, and the coming of a hurricane.  In a melodic way, McCloskey invites us into the world of children exploring the nature around them and the wonder of it all.

   

Time of Wonder

Robert McCloskey

1957

"Out on the islands that poke their rocky shores above the waters of Penobscot Bay, you can watch the time of the world go by, from minute to minute, hour to hour, from day to day, season to season."

"Back from the shore the trees look like ghosts.  The forest is so quiet that you can hear an insect boring a tunnel deep inside a log.  And that other sound- not the beating of your heart, but the one like half a whisper- is the sound of growing ferns, pushing aside dead leaves, unrolling their fiddle-heads, slowly unfurling, slowly stretching."

Come to the Window

Just a lovely illustration by Sharon Kane (from the Little Golden Book Counting Rhymes 1972).

Cranberry Thanksgiving

Cranberry Thanksgiving

Wende and Harry Devlin 1971

The Cranberry series was written and illustrated by the husband and wife team Wende and Harry Devlin in the 1970's and 1980's.  This one is the only one we have in our collection, but I remember some of the others from when I was a kid. They take place in New England and feature a girl named Maggie who lives with her grandmother at the edge of a cranberry bog.  Her grandmother is so famous for her secret cranberry bread recipe that she has to hide it in their house.  When guests come for Thanksgiving dinner, grandmother learns not to judge a book by it's cover!

The Poppy Seed Cakes

The Poppy Seed Cakes

Margery Clark

illustrated by Maud and Miska Petersham 1924

Maud and Miska Petersham are fun illustrators to collect.  Their work is always so bright and colorful.  I've noticed that thrift stores tend to have many of their books.

Auntie Katushka makes the most delicious poppy seed cakes (with poppies she's brought from the old country) for little Andrewshek.  But he never can seem to obey her when she tells him to keep an eye on things!  Anderwshek reminds me a bit of Astrid Lindgren's Emil.  A little boy who doesn't intend to be naughty, but gets into mischief easily!  The other stories involve a little girl named Erminka and her beloved red boots that seem to be the source of her trouble!  

Miss Hickory

Miss Hickory

Caroline Sherwin Bailey

lithographs by Ruth Chrisman Gannett 1946

Definitely an odd book, originally published in 1946, but maybe that was why we liked it.  Carolyn Sherwin Bailey even won a Newberry Award for it.    

Miss Hickory is a doll made out of an apple wood twig with a hickory nut head.  When she gets left behind in the yard she learns to fend for herself, setting up home in an old robin's nest and making new clothes using pine needles to sew.  Soon she is acclimating to her new life out in nature and the animal characters she meets (including Squirrel who may want to be her friend or eat her head!).  She can be a cranky fussbudget at times, but she is resourceful and thoughtful.  Although she meets an unusual end, there's something sweetly charming about her story.

Flower Fairies of the Autumn

 Autumn will always be my very favorite season.  It seems to be coming a little later this year, the trees hit their peaks at the end of October and November is still burnished red and gold.  I like to take this little book out and display it with the rest of our Fall decorations.  The colors and drawings and poems are just right.  It's also fun to look for the plants and trees Barker illustrates while we are out on our walks.  

The sweet Spring came,

And lovely Summer:

Guess, then, her name- 

This latest-comer!

Flower Fairies of the Autumn

Cicely Mary Barker

Hickory

 The change of seasons always makes me melancholy.  I've always felt this, even as a child.  That might we why I love children's books that evoke this feeling, even in a soft innocent way.  This little Weekly Reader edition by Palmer Brown is one such book.

Hickory

Palmer Brown 1978

It starts off with the happy description and antics of a mouse family that live in an old grandfather clock.  (It's explained that because the mother mouse had a sense of humor the mouse children are named, "Hickory", "Dickory" and "Dock").  As the story progresses, Hickory decides to leave his family and strike out on his own in the meadow. 

There he makes himself a cozy house in a burrow under a rock.  (He even has an old pickle jar "sunroom".).  Soon he befriends a grasshopper.

"The grasshopper's name was Hope, so Hickory called her Hop for short.  Together they went exploring, and they discovered the sweetness of blackberries and the sharpness of sassafras twigs.  They learned useful things- that chicory is bitter, but sorrel only sour.  And they learned useless things too- that the track of a snail is silver winding through the grass, but the light of a firefly is green gold melting in the air."  

Of course Summer cannot last, and the chiming of a church bell reminds Hickory that "time is going, never staying, always flowing, every saying: gone!"  Since grasshoppers do not last past Summer, Hickory decides to travel with his friend south where it will be warmer.  The story leaves off here and though we know the eventual outcome will be bittersweet, we are left with the impression of a beautiful true friendship.