Category Archives: children’s books

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Favorites

Let’s see: I am going with two favorite writers.

My favorite female author is Laura Ingalls Wilder. My favorite male author is Walt Kelly.

Louis Carreas wrote about how descriptions can be cages, here. WordPress won’t let me comment on his blog (Hi, Lou!), saying that I have to be logged in. Even when I AM logged in. Ah well, maybe the AI has a sense of humor and is messing with me. Anyhow, his comments make me think of the DSM V, the list of behavioral health symptoms defining them into disorders, fifth version. We humans make them up, these lists. My daughter pointed out years ago, “We make up all the words.” It’s all an effort to communicate and we make it all up.

Walt Kelly is my favorite master of playing with words and word silliness. One time Howland Owl and Churchy are trying to make a bomb. They need a certain material. They have a small yew tree and a geranium. They both fall over and CROSS! Owl and Churchy dive for the floor. There is no explosion. Howland Owl says, “The natural born reason we didn’t git no yew-ranium when we crosses the li’l yew tree and the gee-ranium is on account of cause we didn’t have no geiger counter.” They decide against an A-bomb and put a honey bee hive in a shoebox, making a quite effective B-bomb.

Laura Ingalls Wilder starts the book about her youngest years explaining that she tries to be good but she just can’t be as good as her sister Mary. There are ways they are supposed to behave and she fights with her sister and misbehaves on Sunday and runs around. They are also not supposed to talk about certain feelings, but the feelings show through the events. When I read the books to my son and daughter, I found myself a bit appalled and editing the bits about the blackface minstrel show that they do and about Laura’s Ma talking about “dirty Indians”. Mrs. Wilder edited her life quite severely for those books, but I too chafed under the cage of society’s rules and what feeling I was and was not allowed to express.

Now there are series based on Laura’s mother, grandmother and great grandmother. I like them though the feelings aren’t as authentic to me. Not quite. My daughter loved the books about Laura’s mother and I think is like her. My daughter objects to Anne’s behavior in the first book of the Anne of Green Gables series. “No one is like that!” she says. I mention a classmates name, who is very very extroverted. “Hmmm,” says my daughter, “Ok, she is like that.”

The photograph is from 1965. My maternal grandmother, me and my sister. I do not know who took it.

And a favorite carol:

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: favorite writer.

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Peace and strudel!

After the Tweetle Beetles battle with their paddles in a puddle in a bottle on a noodle eating poodle, peace declared, they eat oodles of flapdoodles and noodles and share it with their poodle, who brings raddled strudel. Paddles down, Tweetle Beetles peace the poodle with flapdoodles and sing “Praise for peace and strudel!”

Wrong Dr. Seuss book: the Tweetle Beetles are in Fox in Socks. But this book is in my Little Free Library today, hooray!

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: flapdoodle!

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Fibbing Friday Silly Adages

  1. Cool as a caterpiggle.
  2. Is that a   heffalump in your pocket or are you just glad to see me?
  3. Green as Groot.
  4. Wet your Walrus (and carpenter).
  5. Too many woozles spoil heffalump hunting.
  6. You can put lipstick on a woozle, but it will still be a weasel like worry.
  7. O what a tangled web we weave, when first we imitate Charlotte.
  8. Don’t throw the Winnie-ther-Pooh out with the woozles.
  9. Many hands make light of silly adages.
  10. It must be Groot, because Yoda don’t shake like that!

I have been not thinking about this for a couple of days, stuck on the first one. Oh, silly and nonsense go together, don’t they? Let’s play with some made up words! Many thanks to Winnie-ther-Pooh, Groot, the Walrus and the Carpenter, Pogo, Yoda, Charlotte’s Web, and all the many woozles, caterpiggles and heffalumps out there!

For Fibbing Friday, just under the wire!

What does the photograph have to do with this? Nothin. Heh-heh.

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The introverted thinker on the playground

My daughter is an introverted thinker. Sometimes this is extremely entertaining.

When she was in first grade she came home part way through the year and said, “I want to get my hair cut like a boy.” “Short?” I said. “Yes,” she said. I didn’t think about it too much but made an appointment. I thought it was because she has that fine tangly hair that is really difficult to comb.

On the way to the salon, my intuition kicked in and I realized that something was up. She was in that deep abstraction mode, thinking.
I said, “Why do you want to get your hair cut like a boy?”
Her reply, “The boys chase the girls on the playground.”
Hmmmm.
“Do they chase you?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“They are not sure if I am a boy or a girl.”
“You don’t want them to be sure?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“There is another class that gets to recess before us. They get the tire swing. They have a club that is all boys. They won’t let us use the tire swing.”
“You are going to fool them. Okay.” I sat back to see how she would proceed with whatever plan she had regarding the tire swing.

She had her hair cut very short. The next morning she chose hand-me-downs from her brother. A rugby shirt, a navy blue sweatshirt, flannel lined thick jeans and his old hiking boots. She had never worn any of them before and her usual preference was pink. I took her to school. She went into her class and just went to stand by some other children, not saying anything at all. They commented on her haircut.

I went to the principal and described my daughter’s plan, mostly because I thought it was quite brilliant. He said, “Oh, we have to do something about this.” I said, “I wasn’t trying to get anyone to interfere.” He said, “No, but we have a playground policy. They are allowed to have clubs, but they are not allowed to exclude anyone. In other words, no ‘boys only’ clubs. We will hold an assembly to remind them.”

So for a seven year old introverted thinker on the playground, a problem required careful thought and a plan, which she then carried out. I liked the approach of challenging gender. As far as I could tell it did not occur to her to ask for help. I do wonder at times what other plans she is implementing.

She did get to use the tire swing. Then she went back to wearing pink.

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Bad Pig

This is Bad Pig. She is helping with the computer.

Bad Pig was born, or made, in 1982 or 1983. I made her in college. She is constructed of a coat hanger, a cardboard tube and some stuffing and then I found fabric to cover her. I used post earrings for eyes, because that is what I had on hand. They are rather nice earrings. Her tail curls around so that she can sit on your shoulder like Anne McCaffrey’s fire lizards. I made her for a convention of some sort. Fantasy, I think.

Anyhow, I gave Bad Pig to my sister Chris. She was not named Bad Pig at that time. I don’t know what Chris named her. But she continued with Chris through multiple moves. When my sister was in hospice, I asked if I could take Bad Pig back home with me. Chris said yes. Later Chris asked me to keep the bad pigs from harming anyone else. I was not exactly sure what she meant, but I said yes.

On the way home, I named the dragon Bad Pig and explained that I didn’t want her to harm anyone. Let the past be the past and bygones be bygones. I am not sure exactly what the details of Bad Pigdom were, but it’s the future I am concerned with.

Bad Pig has been in the living room on the book shelf since coming back to Washington. Currently she is helping out with the computer. I tell her when the computer is considering being unhelpful and Bad Pig then considers breathing fire on it. However, the computer straightens up at that point, so she doesn’t have to.

My sister was born in the Chinese year of the dragon. In hospice she said, “How will I find you?”

I said, “You are a dragon. You are letting me take the dragon I made you home. You will be able to fly. All you have to do is find the dragon and you will find me.”

So it is very comforting to have her so close.

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The Brewer’s Big Horses

This is one of the Songs to Raise Girls, songs that I learned before Kindergarten. A very weird list of songs.

This song comes from my maternal grandfather. My mother said that it was a Congregationalist temperance song….

The photograph is Morris D. Temple and his grandson, F. Temple Burling. F. Temple Burling is my maternal grandfather. I am related to Temple Pumps. According to my mother’s stories, Morris Temple was more interested in Japanese art than in Temple Pumps and the company eventually folded. I don’t know if that is true, or if it was a different Temple then Morris. However, my middle name is Temple.

This song is one that I don’t have memorized, though I know the tune. I have my mother’s handwritten lyrics, with her drawings framing it. There is a tape of my grandfather singing it in the Library of Congress, according to my mother. I would like to go listen to it some time.

I’ve copied it just how my mother wrote it out. There might be an issue about political correctness, but I have a picture of Morris Temple in the 1860s, in his civil war uniform, with a sword. You will have to wait for that post to see which side he fought for….. I presume that my mother wrote it down as she was taught it. I am not sure who talked like this in Iowa in the 1880s, but maybe it was most people.

The Brewers’ Big Horses

O, the brewer’s big horses, comin’ down de road
A totin’ along old Lucifer’s load
Dey step so high and dey step so free
But them big horses can’t run over me

Chorus:
O no! boys O no!
De turnpike’s free where ever I go
I’m a temperance ingine don’t you see
So them big horses can’t run ovah me
Repeat with “toot toot toots”

O de liquo’ men been actin lak de own de place
A livin’ off de sweat o’ de po’ man’s face
Dey’s fat and sassy as dey can be
But deir big horses can’t run ovah me

Chorus

I’ll harness dem horses to de temperance cart
I’ll hit ’em with the gad fo’ to give ’em a start
I’ll teach ’em how fo’ to haw an’ gee
So them big horses can’t run ovah me

Chorus

It took me a while to find this song on the internet. It is listed in temperance songs in wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperance_songs and is mentioned in The Christian Advocate under lyrics: The Brewers Big Horses. It is listed as written in 1913 by JB Herbert and HS Taylor. Isn’t it interesting that Budweiser still uses the Brewer’s Big Horses in advertising?

Again, this is a song I was learning way before I know what a brewer or a turnpike was. My parents stopped singing a bunch of songs when they realized that I was memorizing all of them. They did not want me singing certain songs in Kindergarten.

They did not need to worry. I shut up when I got to school, because no one wanted to sing and no one knew the songs. They all talked about television and we didn’t have one.

I was very disappointed in school. Not enough singing and it was lonely.

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Juxtaposition

The photograph in my Quimper Family Medicine home clinic and guest room is of my grandmother and my daughter, in 1988. I took the picture. My grandmother is Evelyn Ottaway. The other picture is one of my mother/baby or parent/child pictures. I like the juxtaposition.

It’s not just parent/child that is important. It is parent/child, grandparent/child, great grandparent/child.

I am reading a book that appeared in my little free library box, about grandmothering skills. It’s got some very interesting ideas and I am enjoying it! Radical, man.

My grandmother had amazing organizational skills. I think that my daughter got them from her.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: Radical.

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Mundane Monday 188: making a move

The theme for Mundane Monday 188 is making a move.

Do you have a photograph or series of shots about making a move?

Princess Mittens is contemplating her move in the first shot. Next:


Princess starting her move...
Princess starts her move
cat climbing into the lap of the reader
slick move
cat settling in to lap
settling in!

_______________________________

Mondane Munday 187’s theme was warm:

klallendorfer has lots of warm photographs.

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N is for normal

N is for normal. How often do you feel normal? Are your feelings normal? Are mine?

I kept my books from when I was little and I have some of my mother’s too. Some we wore out. I am thinking of Nobody is Perfick, a book by Bernard Waber. The illustrations are fabulous as are the sentiments from a kid’s point of view. Peter Perfect is held up as a model to all the other children: he is polite, he says thank you, he says please, he doesn’t roll in the glorious mud….. but…. the ending is very satisfying.

Does normal mean average? No one is the perfect average. Does normal mean the cultural norm? Are animals normal? Maybe we are all normal all the time: if a sparrow is normal and a deer is normal and a cat is normal even when she is acting like there is a phantom in the house…. maybe we are all normal too….

N

And since we’re on children’s books, I started playing with N words, inspired by another great children’s author….

Normal is nice, normal is nutty, normal is naughty and nasty and new. Maybe it’s nearly narcissistic to need to know that no one is not normal. It’s nasty to natter that Norman’s not normal. It’s naughty to name a normal nematode Abnormal Norma. Nodes newly known nearly never need normalcy. It’s not nice to knock nude nuts. Knight knapping is not as nice as night napping… nighty night!

Bernard Waber’s website: http://www.bernardwaber.com/

nematodes: http://entnemdept.ufl.edu/creatures/nematode/soil_nematode.htm

I took the photograph of my daughter and two friends at an October beach Hawaiian birthday party…  the coldest Hawaiian birthday party I’ve been to, so the girls were gathering wood for the fire.