One Day Means A Lot

One Day Means A Lot

by Marisa

pictures by Reisie Lonette 1965

 Reisie Lonette sweetly illustrated the poems of her four year old daughter, Marisa.   I love kid poems because they're often so beautiful and have a simple use of language.  Lonette's pictures are lovely.  I think they have a sort of Tasha Tudor quality to them.

My Stars, It's Mrs. Gaddy!

My Stars, It's Mrs. Gaddy!

Wilson Gage

pictures by Marylin Hafner 1991

A nice collection of stories about the silly Mrs. Gaddy who is always saying things like "Oh my stars and garters!" or "Good gravy!".  She lives on a tidy farm with her cow and mule and some chickens, but it seems that there is always something bothering her.  In the first story it's a pesky ghost, then a troublesome crow begins a pranking feud, and in the final story Mrs. Gaddy makes the mistake of planting a fast growing vine that threatens to over-run her house (which reminded me of my mom's wisteria that she has to beat back every year!).  Charlotte did well reading this on her own.

A Kindle of Kittens

A Kindle of Kittens

Rumor Godden

illustrated by Lynne Byrnes

In a subtle cautionary tale (beware of those "love 'em and leave 'em" Tom cats!), a sweet tabby cat finds herself having to care for her four small kittens all on her own.  She selflessly searches the village, finding just the right home for each little kitten.  It bothered Charlotte that she had to give them away, but it showed a mother loving and wanting the best for her offspring.

Sea Witches

Sea Witches

Joanne Robertson

illustrated by Laszlo Gal 1991

There's an old Scottish saying, "When you're done eating, give your eggshells a beating, never leave them whole!"

For if you do, as a young boy learns from his grandmother, the sea witches will take them and make them into boats.  Out on the sea they will conjure storms and havoc and wreck any luckless ship.  An interesting tale told in haiku form.

Ghosts

A cold and starry darkness moans

And settles wide and still

Over a jumble of tumbled stones

Dark on a darker hill.

An owl among those shadowy walls,

Gray against the gray

Of ruins and brittle weeds, calls

And soundless swoops away.

Rustling over scattered stones

Dancers hover and sway,

Drifting among their own bones

Like webs of the Milky Way.

-Harry Behn

The Halloween Tree

The ravine, filled with varieties of night sounds, lurkings of black-ink stream and creek, lingerings of autumns that rolled over in fire and bronze and died a thousand years ago.  From this deep place sprang mushrooms and toadstool and cold stone frog and crawdad and spider.  There was a long tunnel down there under the earth in which poisoned waters dripped and the echoes never ceased calling Come Come Come and if you do you'll stay forever, forever, drip, forever, rustle, run, rush, whisper, and never go, never go go go...

I don't know how I could have gone through so many Halloweens and never read this book.  It's absolutely stunning.   A group of boys, dressed and ready for trick-or-treating are led on a spooky trip by a mysterious character named Carapace Clavicle Moundshroud.  Part history lesson, part magic, part adventure story, the writing is pure poetry and magic realism at its most glorious.  On a crisp October night, make some hot cider, tuck your legs under a blanket, and read this book.

Eight boys, bedecked in Halloween costumes, letting the sheer exhilaration of being alive and out on this night pull their lungs and shape their throats into a yell and a yell and a... yeeeellll!

The Halloween Tree

Ray Bradbury

illustrated by Joseph Mugnaini

(The cover artwork is by Leo and Diane Dillon)

Wicked Jack

 

Wicked Jack

Adapted by Connie Nordhielm Wooldridge

illustrated by Will Hillenbrand

We've come across several variations of this story about a character so mean, even the devil himself can't beat him.  There's something about the pictures in this one that caught my fancy.  It might make for some good Halloween reading.