Tea & A Good Book Brewing- Installment 23, Spring Selections for Girls
This week I have something for the girls!
And the good news is that my selections also relate nicely to Spring, so I felt that I was killing two birds with one stone!
Several months ago I did a post about truck books for young boys, and since then I have wondered what the "equivalent" would be for girls?
Books on moving vehicles seems so obvious for boys (at least if my boys are any indication!) but what comes to mind when you choose a "genre" for girls? Quite frankly, I have reasons- moral and otherwise- for avoiding Barbie, Pinkalicious and Disney Princesses.
Instead of showing our daughters through the books we read (even if they are just picture books!) that someday their prince will come and that the best way to get his attention is through immodest dress and mindless action, why not show them that the world needs the unique gifts and beauty they have to offer in other forms?
According to the two books I am featuring today, this can be done in as simple a way as planting flowers.
And not to put the female gender in a box here, but flowers seem a fairly good guess for something that most girls enjoy or at least identify with!
The first book, Miss Rumphius, is one I owned and loved even before I had my own children. Now it has stood the test of time in our home and I can say that the children like it, too!
In Miss Rumphius, by Barbara Cooney, we meet Alice, a young girl who loved to sit on her grandfather's knee and hear stories of faraway places...
When he had finished, Alice would say, "When I grow up, I too will go to faraway places, and when I grow old, I too will live beside the sea."
"That is all very well, little Alice," Said her grandfather, "but there is a third thing you must do."
What is that? asked Alice.
"You must make the world more beautiful," said her grandfather.
"All right," said Alice. But she did not know what that could be.
In the meantime Alice got up and washed her face and ate porridge for breakfast. She went to school and came home and did her homework.
And pretty soon she was grown up.
Once she was grown, Alice set out to do the three things she told her grandfather she would do. She left her home and worked in a library. Eventually she traveled to a tropical island, climbed tall mountains, went through jungles and across deserts. And everywhere she made friends she would never forget. Finally she came to the Land of the Lotus-Eaters, and there, getting off a camel, she hurt her back.
At this point Alice, now known as Miss Rumphius, said, "Well, I have certainly seen faraway places. Maybe it is time to find my place by the sea."
And it was, and she did.
From her new house by the sea, Miss Rumphius was almost perfectly happy. But there was still one thing she had to do: make the world more beautiful.
Eventually Miss Rumphius has a wonderful idea! She ordered five bushels of lupine seeds and then all summer she wandered over fields and headlands, sowing lupines.
The next spring there were lupines everywhere! Fields and hillsides were covered with blue and purple and rose-colored flowers.
Miss Rumphius had done the most difficult thing of all.
The book is written from the point of view of a great-niece and according to one source, the countless lupines that bloom along the coast of Maine are the legacy of the real Miss Rumphius, the Lupine Lady, who scattered lupine seeds everywhere she went!
This lovely story is complimented perfectly with beautiful artwork and I consider this book the cream of the crop in children's literature! There's good reason this book is a winner of the American Book Award.
The second book, The Gardener, is one that popped up when I did a search for children's Spring books (look here for more options!) and it so happened that it was sitting on the shelf at my local library! I checked it out and was immediately impressed.
The Gardener, written by Sarah Stewart with pictures by David Small, is about a young girl named Lydia Grace Finch who goes to live with her Uncle Jim when times are hard (the Depression) and her Papa has been out of work for awhile and no one asks her Mama to make dresses anymore.
The story is told through letters that Lydia writes, first of all to her Uncle Jim, and then later to her parents and dearest Grandma.
Uncle Jim lives in the big grey city, and when Lydia Grace goes to be with him, she takes a suitcase full of seeds, a passion for gardening and plenty of stationary! Uncle Jim is a cantankerous baker who doesn't smile and Lydia soon makes it her ambition to get him to do just that!
In the spring, Lydia discovers a secret place (the flat roof of her apartment building) for which she has great plans (grow plants and surprise her uncle!)
While she works on her secret plan, Lydia also works in the bakery and spruces it up with flowers. Customers become more frequent, attracted by the beauty, and this alone makes Uncle Jim almost smile!
One day in July the secret place is ready for Uncle Jim. Lydia can almost imagine his smile...
In response to Lydia's surprise, Uncle Jim plans a surprise of his own: he bakes the most amazing cake ever- covered in flowers!
Lydia writes, "I truly believe that cake equals one thousand smiles."
At the same time as the cake surprise, Lydia has a second surprise: she learns that she is going home.
The final page in the book, although without words, shows Uncle Jim down on his knees giving his little niece a goodbye hug at the train station.
I love the illustrations in this book, and they really help to tell the story, showing details that aren't in words, so that it is quite worth your while to pour over them and investigate! There are even a few page spreads that have no words at all, so in this book the author and illustrator go together as seamlessly as peanut butter and jelly!
Wow! Just writing about these books inspires me to go out and make the world more beautiful by planting a few flowers...
And yet- being inspired is one thing...doing it is quite another!
Elasa is begging for a garden this year and I want to see that happen, too, but I know all too well what scraggly plants look like in July.
I even know what it is like to have such poor soil in the raised beds that they produce a shameful crop of weeds!!!
This is where I must not let my pessimism from past failures dim the excitement of a new season.
Where there is dirt, sunshine, water and an eager gardener with a few seed packets in her hand, there is hope.
And really, that is what both of these stories are about: planting seeds of hope and making the world a better place by reaping a harvest of beauty...
Both for the sower and the benefactor.
And the good news is that my selections also relate nicely to Spring, so I felt that I was killing two birds with one stone!
Several months ago I did a post about truck books for young boys, and since then I have wondered what the "equivalent" would be for girls?
Books on moving vehicles seems so obvious for boys (at least if my boys are any indication!) but what comes to mind when you choose a "genre" for girls? Quite frankly, I have reasons- moral and otherwise- for avoiding Barbie, Pinkalicious and Disney Princesses.
Instead of showing our daughters through the books we read (even if they are just picture books!) that someday their prince will come and that the best way to get his attention is through immodest dress and mindless action, why not show them that the world needs the unique gifts and beauty they have to offer in other forms?
According to the two books I am featuring today, this can be done in as simple a way as planting flowers.
And not to put the female gender in a box here, but flowers seem a fairly good guess for something that most girls enjoy or at least identify with!
The first book, Miss Rumphius, is one I owned and loved even before I had my own children. Now it has stood the test of time in our home and I can say that the children like it, too!
In Miss Rumphius, by Barbara Cooney, we meet Alice, a young girl who loved to sit on her grandfather's knee and hear stories of faraway places...
When he had finished, Alice would say, "When I grow up, I too will go to faraway places, and when I grow old, I too will live beside the sea."
"That is all very well, little Alice," Said her grandfather, "but there is a third thing you must do."
What is that? asked Alice.
"You must make the world more beautiful," said her grandfather.
"All right," said Alice. But she did not know what that could be.
In the meantime Alice got up and washed her face and ate porridge for breakfast. She went to school and came home and did her homework.
And pretty soon she was grown up.
Once she was grown, Alice set out to do the three things she told her grandfather she would do. She left her home and worked in a library. Eventually she traveled to a tropical island, climbed tall mountains, went through jungles and across deserts. And everywhere she made friends she would never forget. Finally she came to the Land of the Lotus-Eaters, and there, getting off a camel, she hurt her back.
At this point Alice, now known as Miss Rumphius, said, "Well, I have certainly seen faraway places. Maybe it is time to find my place by the sea."
And it was, and she did.
From her new house by the sea, Miss Rumphius was almost perfectly happy. But there was still one thing she had to do: make the world more beautiful.
Eventually Miss Rumphius has a wonderful idea! She ordered five bushels of lupine seeds and then all summer she wandered over fields and headlands, sowing lupines.
The next spring there were lupines everywhere! Fields and hillsides were covered with blue and purple and rose-colored flowers.
Miss Rumphius had done the most difficult thing of all.
The book is written from the point of view of a great-niece and according to one source, the countless lupines that bloom along the coast of Maine are the legacy of the real Miss Rumphius, the Lupine Lady, who scattered lupine seeds everywhere she went!
This lovely story is complimented perfectly with beautiful artwork and I consider this book the cream of the crop in children's literature! There's good reason this book is a winner of the American Book Award.
The second book, The Gardener, is one that popped up when I did a search for children's Spring books (look here for more options!) and it so happened that it was sitting on the shelf at my local library! I checked it out and was immediately impressed.
The Gardener, written by Sarah Stewart with pictures by David Small, is about a young girl named Lydia Grace Finch who goes to live with her Uncle Jim when times are hard (the Depression) and her Papa has been out of work for awhile and no one asks her Mama to make dresses anymore.
The story is told through letters that Lydia writes, first of all to her Uncle Jim, and then later to her parents and dearest Grandma.
Uncle Jim lives in the big grey city, and when Lydia Grace goes to be with him, she takes a suitcase full of seeds, a passion for gardening and plenty of stationary! Uncle Jim is a cantankerous baker who doesn't smile and Lydia soon makes it her ambition to get him to do just that!
In the spring, Lydia discovers a secret place (the flat roof of her apartment building) for which she has great plans (grow plants and surprise her uncle!)
While she works on her secret plan, Lydia also works in the bakery and spruces it up with flowers. Customers become more frequent, attracted by the beauty, and this alone makes Uncle Jim almost smile!
One day in July the secret place is ready for Uncle Jim. Lydia can almost imagine his smile...
In response to Lydia's surprise, Uncle Jim plans a surprise of his own: he bakes the most amazing cake ever- covered in flowers!
Lydia writes, "I truly believe that cake equals one thousand smiles."
At the same time as the cake surprise, Lydia has a second surprise: she learns that she is going home.
The final page in the book, although without words, shows Uncle Jim down on his knees giving his little niece a goodbye hug at the train station.
I love the illustrations in this book, and they really help to tell the story, showing details that aren't in words, so that it is quite worth your while to pour over them and investigate! There are even a few page spreads that have no words at all, so in this book the author and illustrator go together as seamlessly as peanut butter and jelly!
Wow! Just writing about these books inspires me to go out and make the world more beautiful by planting a few flowers...
And yet- being inspired is one thing...doing it is quite another!
Elasa is begging for a garden this year and I want to see that happen, too, but I know all too well what scraggly plants look like in July.
I even know what it is like to have such poor soil in the raised beds that they produce a shameful crop of weeds!!!
This is where I must not let my pessimism from past failures dim the excitement of a new season.
Where there is dirt, sunshine, water and an eager gardener with a few seed packets in her hand, there is hope.
And really, that is what both of these stories are about: planting seeds of hope and making the world a better place by reaping a harvest of beauty...
Both for the sower and the benefactor.
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