Once upon

 Once upon a time.,…. don’t you love those words? 

I loved fairy tales when I was a girl.  They are all the genres woven together wondrously; mystery, fantasy, romance, horror, with a bit of historical fiction and even faith revealed. 

Illustrating

Art surrounds us. It is on packaging and signs, magazines and books, and children’s books are my favourite. 

When I was a preschooler I badgered my big sister to read and reread The Gingerbread Man.  It didn’t have a happy ending.  A fox gobbled up the little cookie man, but I loved how he jumped off the cookie sheet and hot footed it out of the kitchen.  It was that kitchen that has stayed in my memory. The wooden walls.  The wooden salt box so European. The cast iron stove. The braided rug.  Sure sounds like my grammas log house. I never saw the connection until this moment.  But I do know that recalling that book and its illustrations has always comforted me.  I feel a literal warmth, golden and cinnamon infused. 

Bookish

 “B, b, what begins with b? Barber, baby, bubbles and a bumblebee”  This snippet of awesomeness is Dr. Seuss, quoted from his alphabet book. I can still chant the entire volume front to back from memory, having read it and reread it, first to my tiny daughters and then to my equally tiny grandchildren. Aren’t books wonderfully re-readable? I have favourite books that I read once a year or every few years. In 2021 I read Silas Marner three times! I found it such a comfort; how he is crushed, numb with despair but gradually emerges into the light of love, his faith destroyed and then reformed aright. 

And I’ve read LM Montgomery literally dozens of times over the years. I wish I had to write a term paper on her view of war and how it shifted right along with public sentiment from the First to Second World War. And her commentary on the role of women in society is worth discussing at length. 

Some books have aged right along with me, their message morphing. When I first read Elizabeth Von Arnim’s Enchanted April in my 20’s it grated on my romantic sensibilities. Where was the passion!! But when I reread it years later I laughed and laughed.  How clever the author was. How witty and charming and hopeful and redeeming her view of love! 

Books, some books especially, have been my companions for years and years and have helped me through some perilous times,. 

“Your Word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path” Psalm 119:105 

very

 

What does a very, very long bulletin board in the children's section of the library need?

A very, very long list of characters to fill it from one end to the other.

I started in the centre, cutting my characters from discarded book pages. 

A knight on horseback.  

A fearsome fire-breathing dragon. 

A bridge to nowhere.

Then I added to the left and right, left and right until the space was spanned.

A towering, flag festooned fortress.

A wizard and his wise owl. 

A leaping wolf and prancing unicorn. 

Puss’n boots. 

Mary Poppins and Alladin’s carpet on a collision course with a crescent moon. 

A prince and princess.

These all became a back story to the action up front.

Black silhouettes of a cottage, dimly lit. 

A maiden between a mushroom and a gnome. 

Peter Pan and Wendy aloft. 

The tortoise and the hare. 

A swan watching a mermaid dive and fish leap. 

A dancing frog and fairies three.

 A reader (of course). 

A trio of children. 

A maiden in a tower. 

A mysterious mouse, and birds of every kind flying high and low and left and right and up and down.

(The blue background paper had been around the block a few times and there were signs galore of tape doing what tape does best. The placement of more than a few characters helped to hide the past life of what was now, blue sky) 

Re-use, Re-think, Re-tape.

marvelous

I flipped the pages of the magazine halfheartedly, my eyes roving tiredly. Ahhhh, the Book Reviews. Catchy cover art works, doesn't it? My eyes focused on the title, and drifted down to the review.  Here was a book warning all takers of the dire and deadly dangers of sugar. I think the word poison was tossed about.

The entire bottom half of the page was a marvelous Sugar Cookie recipe.

a clutch

A clutch of pom pom bookmarks.

alegria

Before there was Google Translate, there was Giuseppe Mezzofanti, chief Vatican librarian, who could fluently speak 50 languages and translate 114 more. Wow! And I can't even read both sides of a cereal box. That wouldn't have held back Sir John Bowring. He, a British governor of Hong Kong, could speak 100 languages and read 100 more. Owed it all to his dictionary collection I bet.  Mind you, what's not to love about dictionaries, words rolling off your tongue, foreign and unknown. They were some of my favourite books when I was young. I especially loved the lists of words arranged by grade level at the front of the World Book Encyclopedia Dictionary, A-K. Vocabulary and spelling from Grade One to College were there, tantalizing and tempting. Words, wonderful words. And of course I loved the Merriam Websters Dictionary, wedged in my desk. Loved its small sketched illustrations too.

I've been savoring two delicious reads of late.
May I recommend Native Tongues by Charles Berlitz. If you love trivia you'll adore this book. Everything you ever wanted to know about language is there for your edification and entertainment.
And I've also been reading Landmarks by Robert Macfarlane. He is brilliant and poetic and completely captivating. He refers to at least ten authors whose books have inspired his own writing and they have been added to 'the list,' along with his other works, The Old Ways, The Wild Places, Holloway, and Mountains of the Mind.

Hay alegria en el aprendizaje!! 

ocka bocka

If you find an old book,
and its covered in linen,
especially if it is wonderfully vintage orange linen,
and especially if it is a collection of children's counting and skipping and bouncing ball rhymes,
just like the collection I've been enjoying,
chant a few for me.

Here, what do you think of these jewels?

Bouncy, bouncy, ball-y,
I broke the head off my dolly,
My Mom came out,
And gave me a clout,
That turned my petticoat
Inside out.

My brother broke a bottle,
And blamed it all on me.
I told Ma,
She told Pa,
Brother got a spanking.
Ha ha ha.
How many spanks did he get?
1,2,3, etc.

My mother, your mother,
Live across the way,
Every night they have a fight,
and this is what they say;
Ocka, bocka, soda crocka,
Ocka, bocka, boo.
Your old man chews tobacco,
And so do you.

What's not to love?

one of the few

I've just finished reading One of the Few: A Marine Fighter Pilot’s Reconnaissance of the Christian Worldview by Jason B. Ladd. It is such an articulate and powerful book. 

Skillfully combining story with analogy, Ladd offers an immensely practical and passionate defense of the Christian worldview. He is disarmingly genuine and personal while achieving a rare universality that makes this book widely readable ( and highly recommendable). 

His stories span childhood to adulthood with enough action to appeal to even reluctant readers. 

One of my favourite things about this book is the use of dual quotes to begin each chapter. They made me want to cheer!  

I found this honest recounting of the journey of faith incredibly encouraging and challenging. It rings with truth and hope.

in the bank

"In the bleak midwinter,
frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron,
water like a stone;
Snow had fallen,
snow on snow,
snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter,
long ago."
Man I love Christina Rossetti.
Love all poetry.
Poetry and song lyrics.
Old hymns too.

Last night I sat with an old friend, visiting my mother.
Our conversation led us by the hand in big loops and circles and brought us around to our beginning point; the power of words to comfort us.

My mother has forgotten things.
She is even forgetting how to speak, how to frame her thoughts with words.
But words have not forgotten her.
If anything, they hold an even greater power and importance for her.
When I quote back to her, snatches of song and poem, her eyes brighten.
Hearing a story read aloud stirs all of her emotions in turn, right in time with the words.

When I was a child, students still memorized things, poems mostly although nothing like the previous generation had. Nor they, like the generation before them. My great grandmother was known for breaking into snatches of song and for reciting poetry. My great Uncle Howard could recite great long epic poems, stanza after stanza. My own grandmother was a quoter as well and my mom too.  And my dad too now that I think about it. Bits and pieces and fragments of poems, selected just for the moment from a rich repository.

I'm so glad my earliest memories include plenty of poetry and song. That while I sat fidgeting and squirming on hard wooden pews, mighty hymns swirled in an out of focus. That as I sat pouring over the pages of Childcraft Encyclopedia's stories and poems, I was building something important. Those words, so rich and varied and colorful and comforting are there now. Just like money in the bank.

jump right in

I wish I had a dollar for every alphabet book I've ever read where x means xylophone. I'd be a rich woman today.
Sure enough, yesterday as my tiny granddaughter and I flipped the pages together, we found ourselves gazing down at The Letter X and a rainbow colored xylophone. "What's that?" I ask. "A Hellophone," she answers confidently.
I love that so much!
It makes me think of language and learning in general because children are just so very clever aren't they. My daughter called a trampoline a bounce-o-line when she was two, although at first, she had called it a tunic. What?? Why on earth a tunic? Turns out that in Winnie The Pooh and the Blustery Day, Christopher Robin takes off his tunic and he and Rabbit catch Pooh as he tumbles from the sky on it and of course he bounces.
Nothing like a good book to enrich your vocabulary.
Especially books with British expressions. Books like Winnie the Pooh or Beatrix Potter's Tales of Peter Rabbit. Children aren't bothered a smidge by the vagaries of the English language. I suppose to the young, all language is mysterious.
They look and they listen and they think.
And they jump right in.

with feathers

Birds come and go in the city.
Sparrows,
Crows,
Pigeons,
Seagulls.....
Not eagles though.
They remain lofty and austere.
Wheeling above country roads.
Gazing down from towering tree limbs,
their triumphant cry on the wind....
You don't expect to hear that cry at your elbow.
You don't expect to glance up with startled eyes, into the steady, level gaze of an eagle.

My friend was reading.
Really reading.
She was gripping the book as she tensely read.
There were monsters lurking.
And then, just at her elbow,
beyond the glass door,
with mighty talons gripping the balcony rail,
an eagle.
A Bald Eagle, monstrous and shrieking.
Fiction with feathers.

things unexplainable

"Would you like a story?" I ask, clutching a little bundle of books.
My granddaughter pauses in her play to examine the goods.
"That one," she pronounces, pointing to a very tattered volumn.

"Once upon a time," I begin happily.
"You can be the wicked stepmother Gramma," my little granddaughter offers.
"Sure," I say, agreeably.
"Once upon a time there was a girl named Cinderella.... "
My granddaughter strikes a pose and the story unfolds.
Action...Take one...
She is such an earnest little Cinderella, dutifully and optimistically cleaning everything in sight.
I, the cold hearted stepmother and somehow, two nasty stepsisters at once.
I read on.
When I get to the part where the stepsisters tear Cinderella's dress, her little shoulders droop with dejection.
But the Fairy Godmother never fails to appear.
Hooray, I'm finally a good guy.
I'm magically transformed.
My face takes on the light of love.
A few waves of my wand and my granddaughter is transformed as well.
I am in the presence of joy.
And beauty.
And hope.

I find that I have become a prince
We dance and twirl and dip.

I am a clock, bonging the hours.
And she, no longer a princess-in-waiting, but a tattered girl, clutching a worn, pink, sparkly shoe.

I bet you know the ending of the story.
The matching shoe is produced and Cinderella is swept away to her happily ever after.
But, my granddaughter wants to know why the shoes didn't disappear like all the other borrowed finery.
Children are wise and logical.
The truth is very simple.
There are mysteries and miracles and things unexplainable.
Especially where hope and love reign.

to grapple

What happened to Little Red Riding Hood?
What I mean to ask is what happened to the story?
I remember the plot being pretty straight forward.
Little girl travels alone to visit sick grandmother.
Encounters wolf.
Wolf impersonates grandmother after scaring her away.
Tries to eat Little Red.
Is dispatched by an axe wielding woodsman.summoned by grandmother, who although ill, has managed to keep her cool, keep her wits about her and keep running until she finds help and returns.
Grandma the hero.
What's not to love about that story?
It teaches all kinds of marvelous things to children.
Go ahead and jot down a list.

Last week I checked out several versions of Little Red Riding Hood from the library. My grandchildren and I have been making up epic puppet tales and we have exhausted poor Goldilocks and are moving on to Little Red.
The only version I had in my own library was so watered down and sweetened up that it was barely recognizable.
Sadly, the handful of versions I brought home were no better.
One moralized by admonishing children to do as they were told to prevent trouble. Too preachy.
Another warned of stranger danger and actually scared me.
Another was written in creole slang and would have been almost impossible to read aloud. It did have a wonderful character swap in that the wicked wolf became an alligator, and the woodsman a cat with a bottle of Cajun hot sauce.
The version set in China had the mother depart to visit the grandmother whilst a wolf terrorized the children left home alone. They rose to the challenge literally by climbing a tree.

Death and danger and deceit exist in the world.
Stories are a way to grapple with those realities.
Isn't that a wonder?

like flypaper

"If you take a book with you on a journey," Mo had said when he put the first one in her box, "an odd thing happens: The book begins collecting your memories. And forever after you have only to open that book to be back where you first read it. It will all come into your mind with the very first words: the sights you saw in that place, what it smelled like, the ice cream you ate while you were reading it... yes, books are like flypaper—memories cling to the printed page better than anything else"
Cornelia Funke, Inkheart

stories

"Stories never really end...even if the books like to pretend they do. Stories always go on. They don't end on the last page, any more than they begin on the first page.”

Cornelia Funke, Inkspell

space saving

I didn't really collect things as a child. Well, I did have a shoe box full of marbles for a while and a stash of paper dolls. A small stash.
In my late teens though, bookmarks began to accumulate and fall like autumn leaves out of my books.
They earned their keep a few years later entertaining my little girls, especially as they sat perched upon a church pew.

Money was as scarce as hens teeth then when my children were small, but that has never seemed a barrier to creating. Necessity truly is the mother of invention. 
A leather jacket from the Thrift Shop was sliced and diced into many projects and a bookmark was one of them.
A nice navy blue, hand painted leather bookmark.
I made it for my Grandma because she lived by then in a tiny apartment and didn't have a spare scrap of wall or shelf or table top for extra frippery.
A book mark seemed so sensible,
so useful,
so space saving.
She hung it on her wall.

poor bartholomew

I always viewed Dr. Seuss with suspicion as a child. We owned a large hardcover copy of The Five Hundred Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins but I felt scared every time it was read to me. The executioner was large and burly. Did I just say executioner? That story should have been rated PG seven or eight at least for violence don't you think. Poor Bartholomew. He was supposed to take off his hat and he really did try. It's just that there was no end to the hats hidden under hats hidden under hats. I found that disturbing too. Couldn't he have just snatched them all off at once?
The artwork of Dr. Suess added to my unease. Thing One and Thing Two looked strangely like The Cat in the Hat and for that matter, the fish had the same face as the Zizzer Zazzer Zuzz and that can't be right.
Time heals they say and perhaps it's true in measure.
One of my favorite books to read my own little girls was the Dr. Suess ABC book. I had it committed to memory in time and could probably still chant it out if I had to.
A...a....what begins with a.....Aunt Annie's aligator....a...a....a
B....b....what begins with b....Barber, baby, bubbles and a bumble bee.....

a bargain at that

Yesterday was Fun Day at my grandson's school. Isn't that an optimistic name for an event involving hundreds of children roiling in disarray amidst drizzle, mist and rain? Teachers are heroes to plan these special treats for the children.
The day marched on past races and tosses, relays and tug of wars, past snacks and drinks and sand pits.
My grandson had placed two loonies in his pocket to spend on candy after lunch.
He had eyed the candy table longingly whenever activities marched his class within gazing distance of it.
At last it was his turn, and he dashed off with the rest of his class.
A few moments later, he appeared, breathless before his mother.
"Can I buy some books with my loonie," he asked.
"Instead of candy?" his mother asked incredulously?
"They are such a bargain," he stated enthusiastically.
A used book table had been set up in the foyer.
One, three, or five books for a dollar.
"I want a book that teaches me something," he said earnestly to the woman behind the table.
He had hoped for a dictionary but settled on learning more about birds, science fair projects, and assorted facts.
He gleefully accepted a Websters Dictionary from my library after school and happily crowed, "Four books for a dollar."
I congratulated my mother on the superiority of her progeny.
Books over candy, and a bargain at that.

gentler gingerbread

"Would you like me to tell you a story?" I rashly asked.
My little granddaughter nodded.
"Once upon a time," I began, quickly sorting through the file labeled Stories For Small Girls, in my mind.
Ahhh, there it was, The Gingerbread Man.
I loved that story as a child.
I loved the illustrations just as much as the words or maybe somehow, even more.
My older sister balked at reading it aloud to me, but would always grudgingly give in.
I had memorized it as though my life depended on it and so of course she was unable to edit it for brevity.
I took some liberties with the tale as I told it to my granddaughter.
That is the beauty of story.
It can be so easily custom shaped to fit.
Together, she and I added ingredients into an imaginary bowl and then baked the little fellow. The story magically transformed our little gingerbread man into a friend. He was just the right size to play with her dolls when he visited the doll house with her.
Much better than the shock of having him leap, shouting, from the oven to run away and be gobbled up by a dishonest fox. That version will have its day no doubt, but for now, a gentler gingerbread man snoozes on a pink plastic sofa.