Thanksgiving Treat

Thanksgiving Treat by Catherine Stock (Atheneum, 1990). 

This is a sweet book about a young boy who wants to help with Thanksgiving preparations but no one in his family wants his help because they think he'll just get in the way.  Until of course his grandfather teaches him out to collect chestnuts for roasting, and his family is appreciative of the yummy treat.  

Catherine Stock has written and illustrated numerous wonderful picture books, including Galimoto which was a Reading Rainbow book.  

Thanksgiving Day

Thanksgiving Day by Anne Rockwell, illustrated by Lizzy Rockwell (Harper Collins, 1999). 

I'm going to be sharing several Thanksgiving books that I found at my local library over the next couple weeks.  I'm starting off with a popular book that, while well meaning, is quite problematic at times.

First of all, the good:  The illustrations are lovely and I like that they show a diverse range of children and multiculturally mixed families.  It's the story of a classroom learning about the first Thanksgiving and putting on a play.  The history that is taught is where it gets problematic.  The author refers to the Native Americans by their tribal name, the Wampanoag, which is great.  However, other than that, she portrays the whole situation as peaceful and caring between friends. Of course we want to promote sharing and kindness among children, but rewriting history to do so is not justifiable. 

One line that jumped out at me was: "Michiko was thankful that she and all the other Pilgrims were greeted kindly by the Wampanoag people, who shared the land with them." Saying that the Wampanoags "shared the land" with the Pilgrims is twisting the true history and making it seem like it's ok to just steal other people's land. I might still read this story to a child just because of the illustrations, but rewording or skipping the problematic passages.

Debbie Reese at American Indians in Children's Literature has a good critique of the book here, which also has the author's response.

The Witch Who Was Afraid of Witches

The Witch Who Was Afraid of Witches by Alice Low, illustrated by Karen Gundersheimer (1978).  

This was one of my Halloween favorites growing up.  It's the story of a young witch who lives with her older sisters who are bossy and mean to her.  They make her feel like she's not good enough to do magic like they can.  But one Halloween she befriends a trick-or-treater and learns she really does have witch magic.

It was reissued in 2000 with new illustrations by Jane Manning and made into an "I Can Read" book.  From the images I've seen of that version (Amazon), they are perfectly nice illustrations but lack the quirkiness of the original version.  It's actually really interesting to compare the two to show how a story can have such a different feeling depending on the illustrations. The expressions of the character faces in Gundersheimer's version just can't be beat. 

See my Pinterest board for more Halloween books.

The Trouble with Mom

The Trouble with Mom by Babette Cole (Putnam, 1984).  

This is a book from my childhood that is a lot of fun.  I used to read it at Halloween time although it's not actually about the holiday.  It's about a boy whose mom is quite eccentric.  Although she's never called a witch in the text, the pictures portray her as such.  His mom doesn't fit in with his classmates' parents, in fact they call her names and don't let their kids hang out at their house. The boy is ashamed and wishes his mom were normal.  But when a fire breaks out at school, his mom saves the day and the other parents realize she's ok afterall.  This is a funny book with a good message to not judge people who are different.

The Boy Who Fell Off the Mayflower: John Howland's Good Fortune

The Boy Who Fell Off the Mayflower: John Howland's Good Fortune by P.J. Lynch (Candlewick, 2015). 

When I found out about this book, I had to get it.  I'm a descendant of Mayflower passengers John Howland and Elizabeth Tilley so I was eager to see how a picture book would tell their story.  P.J. Lynch is an award-winning author and illustrator from Ireland.  His illustrations here are beautifully rich and detailed. He also did a good job with writing the story from a teenage Howland's perspective. The title of the story comes when Howland falls of the Mayflower in a storm but of course is saved and pulled back on.  It's a good thing or I, and millions of his other descendants, wouldn't have been born. 

Despite being a picture book, this is definitely a book for older children-- I'd say probably 10 and up.  He lets readers into the mind of Howland which, while not being historically factual, helps kids put themselves in a Mayflower passenger's shoes.  Being an adult, some of these thoughts and dialogues made me question how accurate some of the sentiments would have been at that time.  For instance, there is a scene where Howland is given an order to steal corn from a native's home and he expresses how it weighs on his conscience.  In reality, would he have cared about taking food from a native? I don't know, maybe. I think coming up with excuses for our ancestors' behavior to be problematic. But at least this is a way of conveying to kids that stealing did happen.  There is also a scene where Squanto tells them how his whole village was killed off by a plague brought by the white man.  So the author definitely tries not to gloss over the hard truths while still telling the story from Howland's point of view. 

I also liked how he included "Lizzy" Tilley throughout the story.  She has a pivotal role in the end especially.  When Howland wants to sail back to London to make a fortune and suggests she go too, she tells him that her parents died trying to start a life in America and she won't let their dream and hard work be in vain, that there is still more work to do and neighbors to help. This persuades  Howland to stay, which turns out to be a good thing because the boat that went back was attacked by pirates, and of course a couple years later he and Elizabeth marry. While her speech to Howland to persuade him to stay probably isn't accurate (although I don't know personally if that came from research or just an invention of Lynch), there isn't a reason why it couldn't be, and helps readers to imagine women at the time.  It actually makes me want to read a story from Elizabeth Tilley's perspective now.

Overall, I thought this was a great book and definitely worth reading with older kids.  It could open up a lot of questions and be great for having conversations about our history and its portrayal. 

On The Mayflower

Suffering the first winter

Squanto showing them how to plant their crops and manure the fields

Thanksgiving

The Swing

The Swing by Robert Louis Stevenson, illustrated by Julie Morstad (2012).

How do you like to go up in a swing,
            Up in the air so blue?
Oh, I do think it the pleasantest thing
            Ever a child can do!

Many of us are probably familiar with the poem from Stevenson's collection A Child's Garden of Verses (1885).  It is beautifully illustrated by Julie Morstad in this board book.

Click here for my review of another of Julie Morstad's books, How To.

Beany and His New Recorder... and a literary agent scandal

Beany and His New Recorder by Carol Panter, illustrated by Imero Gobbato (1972, Four Winds Press).

I stumbled across this book online, I believe through another children's lit blog.  I decided I had to have it because I took recorder lessons from the ages of 8-18.  A lot of people don't realize recorder is a classical instrument, not just a kid's practice instrument in music class. Anyway, I ordered a used copy from Amazon and it's a really nice book.

However, what was intriguing to me was what I found in the book.  There was a note written on stationary from Russell and Volkening Literary Agents, signed by "Harriet."  Well, interestingly enough, the book is dedicated to a Harriet Wasserman.  I wondered if it was the same person and who she might be.

A Google search led me to find quite a lot of information about Harriet Wasserman. I found that she was an assistant at Russell and Volkening before going on to start her own literary agency. One of her most famous clients was Saul Bellow, whom she was in love with. She represented Bellow for 25 years, during which time he called her his "coach, manager, and trainer" and a close friend. So she felt betrayed when he switched agents. In 1997 she actually wrote a memoir about the experience called Handsome Is.

Now this is where things get even MORE interesting... she was involved in a huge scandal when she disappeared in 2007 after allegations of not paying clients their royalties.  You can read a whole article about it here.  Some of the clients who sued her were children's authors Walter Dean Myers and Emily Arnold McCully.  (Myers claimed she owed him $120,000, McCully "only" $60,000.) 

Apparently she had suffered several strokes and it was her declining mental state that led to her not paying back her clients.  She was 69 year old in 2007.  I couldn't find anymore information after that year, so it seems she is still missing.

I never thought I would find all this in a cheap used book from Amazon! 

Now, here is the book... I am assuming she was the agent for it.

12/3/2019 Update: I decided to search for Harriet Wasserman again now five years later, and found an obituary. She died on September 24, 2018 at the age of 81.