The View from Saturday

I first met E. L. Konigsburg, figuratively speaking, when I substituted in my daughter’s fifth grade class so her teacher could return to the states for her daughter’s wedding. We’d just moved to Kaiserslautern, West Germany. Her school, unimaginatively named Kaiserslautern Elementary Number 2, had a marvelous librarian who read voraciously and recommended books that matched their classes to teachers who read aloud. Anna’s teacher was one of those and had started From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler when I began substituting. The class begged for “one more chapter” which I conceded to do if they kept up with their work so they were not behind when their teacher returned. I did and they did, and we all became Konigsburg fans. Mrs. San Filipo was a bit chagrined that we finished the book before her return. She finished reading it in private and started another book with the class, also recommended by that wonderful librarian. I would benefit the next year from that librarian when I joined the faculty to teach second grade.

Fast forward ten or fifteen years, and I would find my personal favorite Konigsburg, The View from Saturday, for a read-aloud with my junior high students. We paused to reread and relish phrases like, “a huge old farmhouse that has had so many add-ons it looks like a cluster of second thoughts,” and, “His smile was as genuine as a Xeroxed signature.”

Ezra Jack Keats said every child should be able to find himself in a book, referring to his groundbreaking Black child, the protagonist in The Snowy Day. Sometimes children need to see differences in addition to culture or ethnicity to place themselves in a book. My students and I found ourselves in this book. Mrs. Olinski, like me, was the team quiz bowl sponsor. Like my students, half from the nearby military base, Mrs. Olinski’s “Souls” were smart and diverse in both personality and ethnicity. How often does an Indian student, not the Native American kind, like my own Indian student show up in a book? Mrs. Olinski’s disability confines her to a wheelchair. My disability – a drawl and continuing tendency to use “fixing” as a verb – rated accusations of hypocrisy from my students since I demanded standard English from them. Finding ourselves in this book made it a favorite read-aloud.

In 1968, E. L. Konigsberg won both the Newbery Medal for From the Mixed up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler and Newbery Honor book for Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth, the only person to win both in one year. Twenty-nine years later, she won her second Newbery Medal for The View from Saturday.

E. L. Konigsberg died on April 19, 2013. I felt like I had lost a friend.

Like Dad's

Four-year-old Murray stood on the step stool his dad had made for him to reach the bathroom sink and concentrated on the mirror above it. I dipped the comb in water to part his hair and tame a cowlick. Knitting his brow, he asked, “Mom, why don’t you part it like Dad’s?” Tremendous self-control kept me from bursting into gales of laughter. His father had gone bald in his early twenties before Murray was born.   

In other ways, that little boy did follow his dad. Catsup was a favorite vegetable. He “helped” his dad with home repairs, handing him tools as needed. Since I was always in the choir, his father taught him to sit quietly in church, primarily by modeling the behavior he expected. By the time he was in second grade, Murray wanted to take piano lessons and was soon making music like his dad.

As he has become a father, the similarities have multiplied. There’s the winter command to his children, “Close the door, we’re not heating the whole outside,” and its summer counterpart that refers to air-conditioning and cooling. He grills a tasty hamburger and has a well-stocked toolbox. My favorite reflection of his dad is his pride in his children’s accomplishments – Lauren’s track and photography, Brittany’s art and culinary skills, and Jack’s Lego constructions and BMX racing success. And yes, he now also parts his hair “like Dad’s”!

A happy Father’s Day to Murray, to his role model, to the two Marks, and to all the other fathers who are setting an example in life and hairstyles.

A Thunderous Whisper

What qualifies as a historical novel is among the great issues of the world – at least among reader/writer nerds. In a recent email conversation with a writer friend, we agreed that a book had to have more than a long ago diary date and an absence of technology to qualify. The time and place needs to be essential to the story. I would add that the book gets a big bonus from me if it makes me want to know more about that time and place.

A Thunderous Whisper by Christina Diaz Gonzales qualifies. In a story set in Guernica, Spain in the late 1930s, Ani is introduced as “Invisible. Irrelevant. Just an insignificant twelve-year-old girl living in a war-torn country.” Ostracized by her peers because her father is away at war and her mother works as a sardinera, she is called “Sardine Girl” and worries that she carries with her the smell of fish. Her teamwork with Matthias, another outcast because he is Jewish, to help his father’s spy operation becomes a central issue of the story. Matthias uses a different name for her – “Princess,” but she is not sure she likes it much better than “Sardine Girl.”

As they use the sardine business to cover carrying spy messages, she runs a dangerous course even as her differences with her mother escalate. She hears her mother’s words, “We are all insignificant. Just a whisper in a loud world.” She knows her mother is wrong and determines not to be insignificant.

True to this time and place, Christina does not tie all the ends in a “happily ever after” bow. I would like to have known more about what happened to Matthias, although I loved the way she left her readers with an intriguing hint in the epilogue. Perhaps a sequel is in order.

The book makes my list of historical novels since the story could only have happened in this time and place. It also gets my bonus since it left me wanting to know more about the Basque people of Spain and their response to the encroaching Nazi army.  

Orange - Not My Favorite Color

As a classroom teacher, papers with no names on them were one of my pet peeves. My junior high students quickly understood the place to find a nameless paper – in the folder with my detested orange color. They understood the logic connecting the hated nameless papers with my least favorite color. I graded all papers when they came in. There would be a number on the paper, but my grade book showed a zero.

After moans of, “But I turned that paper in,” I would suggest, “Then perhaps you should look in the orange folder.” More moans. My ears were deaf to suggestions that I should have recognized the handwriting. My job description did not include recognizing handwriting.

The price of getting the number to replace the zero in my grade book was to write one’s name twenty-five times on the paper. The quantity of papers in the orange folder decreased as the year wore on, but never went away entirely.

Jarred, who sometimes found his papers in the orange folder, was one of those kids who made every day a challenge – and fun. He pushed the boundaries periodically just to see if they were still there. They were. I think he enjoyed testing, and I enjoyed assuring him that no rules had changed.

The day before school was out, Jarred began investigating every time he changed classes to see if anything had been delivered to my room. Nothing had. When his class with me met in the afternoon, he asked if he could run to the office to see if anything had come in for me. I assured him that he could not, that we could trust the office to send anything that came with my name on it to my room. By now, my curiosity was piqued, but I tried not to let on.

Early on the last day of school, the florist delivered a bouquet from Jarred that contained only orange flowers.

I began my thank you note, “Orange you glad you were in my class?” Naturally, I wrote it with an orange ink pen.

Wendell Who?

I confess this title was my response when I heard that Wendell Minor would be the de Grummond lecturer for USM’s 2013 Children’s Book Festival. You might have the same question, but I’d be very surprised if you haven’t seen his work. Wendell illustrated children’s books for writers like Eve Bunting, Charlotte Zolotow, and Jean Craighead George. If you aren’t into children’s books, you have surely seen his book jackets for Mary Higgins Clark, David McCullough, Garrison Keiller, Pat Conroy, Toni Morrison . . . I will stop here or this entire blog will be filled with a list. I did a bit of googling and before long, anticipation of his visit substituted for my question. He did not disappoint.

I met Wendell on a tour of the exhibit room that Ellen Ruffin, curator of the de Grummond Collection, gave for visiting celebrities. (One of the perks of being a escort for festival guests is getting to take part in the “extras” and meet them in small groups.) I loved that he had “little kid” interest in the archives of children’s writers and illustrators, especially those of Ezra Jack Keats.  

During his lecture, I enjoyed his trip through his lifetime illustration journey and couldn’t fail to notice how much he shared with Keats. When he mentioned a book showing twenty-five years of his art, I wanted it for my artist grandson. Later when I asked about it, he said it was out of print. But I googled again, found it, and enjoyed a pre-reading before sending it to Hayden.

Wendell Minor: Art for the Written Word collects color renditions of his book jackets with short narratives or letters by the authors.  Since authors usually get little input about the artist or the illustration of their books or the jackets, they may or may not be happy with them. They want jackets to give a hint of the story and help sell the book. In these authors’ reactions is a recurring theme that Wendell captures the essence of their books because he read the book before he began illustrating. About the time I thought only rave reviews were included, I came across Larry McMurtry who liked one cover but didn’t care much for another. A few other authors had covers that they liked only after they “grew on them.”  

Pat Conroy says Wendell’s illustrations help him understand his own work better, “Throughout our career together, Wendell Minor has not only given me clues and passwords to my own books, he has often handed me the key to the front door. I build the church; he puts in the stained glass windows.”

I loved the stories from the authors about the works, but even more I loved the beautiful illustrations. I’ve snapped pictures of a couple of my favorites –  the Harper Lee reprint edition of To Kill a Mocking Bird and Garrison Keiller’s We Are Still Married.

This book should be read a bit at a time to really enjoy the art. My take-away lesson is that I will never again pick up an attractive book without looking at the inside back cover to see who painted the cover. If Hayden should decide he doesn’t like the book, I’ll be glad to take it back.