If you don’t know that the Fay B. Kaigler Book Festival is a highlight of my year and that I use the pronoun “our” when I speak of what is in de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, I can assume that you have not often read this blog. Sometimes, I get surprised myself about the connections I find there.
A pleasant couple took turns holding the last two doors for me as I left the last hour of the last day of this year’s book festival. Perhaps reluctance for it to end caused him to ask me how long I had been coming. He marveled at my 23 years of attendance before saying this was their first, but would not be their last. Then he explained that they had just donated his mother’s truckload of archives to the de Grummond Collection. I had heard about a truckload of archives being processed, and he made the connection that they were that truck.
He went on to say that his mother, Gail Owen, had done illustrations for many children’s books. The name did not ring a bell and sent me to Google as soon as I got home. It turns out she did book jackets for a number of books that I recognized right away. Book jacket artists get little publicity considering that the book cover is often the enticement that leads a reader to buy the book. In this case, it turns out that her covers for Johanna Hurwitz’s books brought back the memory of what has to be my favorite day of my teaching career.
Scholastic, in an effort to promote Johanna’s books, ran a contest for creative stories from either individual children or whole elementary classes. The idea sounded like fun for the students and teacher as well as a great learning activity. I allotted it the forty-five minutes before lunch in my lesson plan book. Twenty or so second graders greeted the idea with great enthusiasm. We designated the best handwriting student to record on the chalkboard and began. Ideas flowed thick and fast with a couple of students recording at their desks everything on the board so we could erase and continue as the story flowed. The lunch bell rang while the story was catching fire. Students moaned. I assured them they could think while they were out for lunch recess, and we would continue when we came back in.
At lunch, I warned my principal that if she took a notion to observe my class that afternoon, we would not be doing what was in my lesson plan. We had a story to finish. Thankfully, she believed in chasing educational magic when it was happening. We returned from lunch recess with a group of students who had indeed thought about the story during their break and were ready to add excitement to their story.
The end of it all: the Beautiful Butler Bunch, as I named my classes, won third prize in the national contest and a full set of Johanna Hurwitz books with several jackets done by Gail Owen, though I only made that connection thirty-seven years later at the close of a book festival.