The final seasonal Ladybird Nature book we've collected and it's just as wonderful as all the rest. Reading through it is like taking a gentle walking tour through England in the Autumn. The descriptions are often just as lovely as the pictures and it's the kind of book that we are currently happily escaping into.
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 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.
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.
Absolutely lovely book about Autumn, the beauty and magic of nature and the love a mother has for her daughter. Charlotte Zolotow is a premier children's author. So many of her books are just beautifully written, simple but full of deep emotion. In this one a mother and daughter take a meandering walk through an Autumn filled world. The daughter keeps emploring the mother to "Say it!" but while the mother rhapsodizes about the nature around them...
"It's magic," said her mother. "It's a golden, shining, spendiferous day!"
It's not what the daughter is wanting to hear. As they make their way back to the house, where their father has made a cozy fire for them to return to, the mother finally says what the daughter has been waiting for all along. If this book doesn't end with you scooping up your child and hugging them, I don't know what will!
Little Mousekin has never seen a Jack-o-lantern before. But soon it becomes his hideaway and house. He likes his new golden room and the jaggedy smile of the jack-o-lantern scares off any predators. When the weather gets colder, phoebe and chipmunk warn Mousekin that his house won't do when the winter winds blow. But they are wrong!
In the late 1700's the Reverend Samuel Peters (a loyalist) left the Puritan colony in Connecticut and returned to England. There, in his frustration, he wrote a General History of Connecticut full of untrue stories that were generally unflattering to the colonists that drove him out. This book, about the townsfolk of New Haven who MUST find a replacement for their "cutting cap" (a standard to cut all of the men and boys' hair to the same length), is based on one of his stories. "Pumpkin Head" hardly seems like the most derogatory thing you could call someone, but maybe in Puritan New England is was quite the insult! And the story portrays the leaders and residents as being pedantic and silly.
This is also a fun book to display during Autumn with it's black and orange design!
School has started here and the first day was very rainy. September is usually still a warm month, but it's hard not to long for Fall and the change of leaves and cooler weather. That's how I always picture the start of school. This Golden Picture Book has such quintessential back to school pictures (though disappointingly a very homogenous depiction of children- not surprising for a vintage book unfortunately). I like imagining elementary school is still this simple- learning to hang up your coat, going for a walk in the woods, making things out of clay, story-time and singing songs.
