Picture Books for the Holidays

It’s the Week Before Christmas and Hanukkah too,
And I’m thinking of books that I’d offer to you.

Storybooks have played a huge roll in my family’s holidays.  When I was a child, my dad read “A Visit from St. Nicholas” on Christmas Eve until he thought I’d outgrown it, and then I started reading it.  One of my favorite picture books of all time was “The Country Bunny and the Little Gold Shoes,” by DeBose Heyward, which I faithfully read at Easter but also throughout the year.  When my husband and I were ready to start a family, one of our most precious preparations was deciding which books our children needed immediately and all through their childhood.  And as the years went by, our collection grew faster than the kids, which is saying something.

The kids are way past picture book age, being appropriately surly teenagers, but I still haul out the holiday books for the month of December.  Some of them are tattered, some are duplicates (we must have half a dozen versions of “A Visit from St. Nicholas”), but they are still good.  I thought I’d share a few favorites here, especially since some are off the beaten track of the regular classics.  Yes, we have and love the Grinch.  But there are others. 

The first pictured here is a Hanukkah book.  Eric Kimmel has written several, but the one we keep going back to is “Herschel and the Hanukkah Goblins.”  First—what a great title.  I just like to say it.  (I’m kind of kooky, though.)  Second, this edition is illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman, whose work I adore, and third, it’s a lovely folktale about outsmarting the demons and restoring celebration and worship to a dark place.  And there are goblins—silly goblins, creepy goblins, and a really, really scary goblin.  When the goblins are outsmarted, the light returns.  What a lovely message for the winter holiday—just keep your wits about you, and you can survive anything.

The rest are Christmas books.  “The Jolly Christmas Postman” is the sequel to the Ahlbergs’ “The Jolly Postman,” and they both follow the postman as he delivers mail around the forest, to Little Red Riding Hood, Humpty Dumpty, and the Big, Bad Wolf, among others.  Each letter is interactive in some way—the letter comes out of the envelope-page, and there are games and puzzles and extra, interactive tidbits along the way.  It’s a delightful, witty little book. 

“Who’s That Knocking on Christmas Eve?”  is Jan Brett’s retelling of a Scandinavian folktale about a house that always gets invaded by trolls when they smell the Christmas goodies, and how a clever houseguest with his tame polar bear (oh, we can only dream, here in Southern California) scares them away for good, leaving the family in peace as they celebrate and share their good cheer.  If I were a cynic, I’d point out that they share with the boy, but don’t share willingly with the trolls, but I’m not, so I won’t.  The trolls are hoodlums and thieves, of course, cute as they may be, drawn by the generous hand of Jan Brett.  The bear is awesome--categorically.  Who doesn’t want an ice bear for a pet?

The last book I’ll mention today is “Santa Calls,” by William Joyce, whose greatest genius, I think, lies in negotiating the different media his stories take (I’m thinking of his Guardians of Childhood series, which contains picture books, novels, and a movie, all with the same storyline or universe.) This one, though, is a Christmas book.  It’s also an adventure, and also a sibling book.  The younger sister wants to be taken seriously by the older brother, and Santa arranges not so much a gift as an experience--an adventure, and an opportunity for them to bond.  It’s not about getting presents; it’s about love. 

And that’s a good place to end—with love.  All of the winter holidays celebrate a return of the light after the dark winter, a new commitment to life and a celebration of love, whether it comes from a deity, a jolly elf, or our fellow humans.  Whatever and however you celebrate the turning of the year and the return of the light, I wish you joy, love, and wonderful stories to keep you warm.  Happy Holidays!

People Are Not Meant to be Like Oysters: Reflections on Scrooge

I collect editions of Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. It’s one of my favorite stories. I collect film versions and print versions and even have the audio cds of Patrick Stewart’s one-man version in my car. I love it. And by this time in the season, I’ve usually seen or read it a couple times already.

I love how awful Scrooge is at the beginning, and how some of the clear, crisp images Dickens uses to describe him stick with me and ring in the back of my head when I meet people who bear him a resemblance. “Darkness was cheap, and Scrooge liked it” could be good or bad, really, but in Scrooge’s case, it’s bad and associates him with dark-heartedness and meanness, not just frugality. He was “solitary as an oyster.” He was closed off from the world, utterly alone, and practically hermetically sealed against companionship. Poor Scrooge. His greed supplanted his humanity. His need to amass wealth cut him off from all his friends and family. I can’t imagine a life more wasted.

I love that there are three spirits who visit after Marley—it’s such a lovely, fairy-tale truism that we have to think about the past, the present, and the future, that it takes three times to work the charm. The fact that the past is sad and the future is completely wretched if he stays this course is broken up by some of the most wonderful scenes of joy and contentment. The present is beautiful—it’s more than enough to make up for the past—but he’s missing it.

Most productions and abridgments choose to cut here. Dickens really lays it on thick, though. Scrooge sees the Cratchits, of course, and their small but satisfying feast. He sees Bob’s eldest daughter, Martha, come home and begin to play a trick (that she can’t make it home for Christmas) that she cuts short because she can’t bear to see her father sad, even for a joke. The middle children are described as being “up to their eyeballs in sage and onion,” and the Christmas pudding is described with such detail, I’ve kind of always wished I were British. He watches the family sing together and pass around the proverbial cup of cheer. It is a vividly depicted, sentimental, and I find, utterly charming scene.

But it doesn’t stop there. Scrooge gets a tour of London, stops at his nephew’s, flies out to sea and finds sailors and near solitary lighthouse workers sharing meals and stories and being variously contented on what feels like a cellular level. All of this is happening all around Scrooge, every single year, and with his scope tightly trained on making more and more money, he has not seen any of it.

When medieval priests described the Seven Deadly Sins, they offered contrasting virtues that one could practice to overcome, or “cure,” a sin. Practicing humility is the answer to pride; diligence cures sloth, etc. But for greed, there is no cure, only a “relief.” One can practice mercy and generosity, but they will only relieve the symptoms; nothing really gets at the root of the sin. The medieval implication is that greed is the one sin that will not be overcome.

But here is Dickens, and Scrooge, proving them wrong. I think it’s not just the fear of dying unloved and unmourned that gets him. By the time he gets to the third ghost, he’s mostly cured. The real action is with the second ghost, the Ghost of Christmas Present, who reveals to him the warmth and love all around him, that he’d been sealing himself off from, like his little oystery self. All he has to do is peel open that shell. And he does. The spirits pull back the veil and give him a glimpse of what he’s missing, and he is so stirred by the sight, he wants it badly enough to change. His first, stuttering attempt at singing a Christmas carol is a delight. He literally finds his voice and learns how to use it. (This may be my favorite moment in Patrick Stewart’s version!) It’s a beautiful thing.

Here’s wishing all you lovely readers find some holiday miracle that makes you want to sing and share and love.  (That's Lucie, my cat, by the way, named for an entirely different Dickens hero.)

Fairy Tales are for Grown-Ups

I know what they say—that folktales are told to children as a way to transmit and preserve cultural knowledge and norms. Grandparents tell simple stories in the nursery to keep children quiet and entertained, while also keeping alive tradition and custom. But I also know many of those stories scare the pants off us. And I know this too—they are not simple because they’re for children. Children understand plenty. They are simple because that makes them easy to remember, and because they convey straightforward truths that don’t need dressing up.

We call fairy tales simple because they rely on stock characters (often nameless heroes, villains, millers, and youngest daughters…) and they are mostly plot, with little extra description, rationalization, or back story. But just because they are plot-heavy, and modern novels tend to be character-heavy, developing round, rich, psychologically real characters, does not mean plot-heavy works are lesser. What they are is speedy.

Folktales communicate their lesson and their drama in as little time as possible; sometimes it seems even as few words as possible.  Stock characters inhabit familiar scenes—a challenge, some assistance, punishment, or reward.  Tales leave out anything that doesn’t contribute to the narrative action.  A mother has daughters with one, two, and three eyes, respectively, and Little One-Eye and Little Three-Eyes bully their sister mercilessly, but no one asks how on earth it came to happen that a child was born with three eyes.

Think of Little Red Riding Hood.  We know precious little of her.  She is loved by the women in her life—her mother and grandmother—and she has a red cloak that suits her. Newsflash: the color red suits LOTS of people—whole ethnicities, really—huge swaths of the world. We don’t know clearly how old she is, what her favorite food is, even if she’s been asked to run questionable errands for her mom before now.  We know what we need to know:  she’s an innocent, young girl.  Grandma is old and (at the moment) feeble, and mom is confident in Red’s ability to find Grandma’s house or too busy to go herself. The wolf is ravenous. And scheming. Those two traits define him. If he weren’t scheming, he’d eat her on the road. If he weren’t ravenous, he couldn’t eat two humans in two gulps.

Given these skeletal characters, we are invited to project our own ideas on to the characters. Red can be any little girl—just like your little sister or your neighbor—and we begin the process of identifying with the narrative, concretizing the words in to images in our heads, building up a character we know, who will be unique from anyone else’s. The mother is any harried but well-meaning parent. She puts Red on the path and then lets her go. We know kids who are let loose too young, who don’t have enough guidance or tools to deal with the world, and we know what happened to them!  So keeping the characters spare encourages us to build them up in our heads, to clothe them in what we know of the world, and to make the tale seem personal. It speaks directly to us. 

With so little time spent developing character, the bulk of a folktale consists of plot. What does Red do?  What does the wolf do?  The actions define the tale. Is this a questing tale or a rags to riches tale?  A coming of age, or a tale of retribution?  The plots are often simple and focused on one problem or stage in life, because that’s the way we experience things.  Human life is formulaic:  we are born, we grow, we thrive as adults (often by means of choosing an occupation and starting a family), we age, and we die. But we deal with one phase at a time, as folktales allow us to. 

Folktales give us familiar crises and supply solutions. They help us learn to think our way out of problems, and depict others successfully escaping the jaws of the Threat Of The Day.  That is why they are loved by adults as well as children, and that’s why they mean different things to us at different ages. They’re therapy. (Second Newsflash: literature is therapy.) But folk literature uses a unique method of stock characters and scenes that allow us to project people we know in to the story, so it becomes more individualized, and hence, more meaningful. The gaps we fill as we read or listen render the tale much more complex than it looks, because it is unique to each reader. 

That is the magic and the allure of folktales, and why even in an age of digital effects and science fiction, we can’t get away from them.  We just keep retelling them. The television shows Grimm and Once Upon a Time first aired the same season, for goodness’ sake.  We’re not just not done with fairy tales; we seem not to be able to get enough of them. The wolf is as terrifying today as ever he was, and we all have to face him. May we all see him for what he is, as Red does, when we do.

Billy Elliot, Chaucer's Monk, and the Modern Reader

I was asked today, by a student doing research on teaching, how I feel when I am teaching.  There are lots of answers, of course, depending on how well it’s going, but the most prominent feeling I have in the classroom is electricity.  I even quoted the film Billy Elliot (where he's asked what it feels like when he dances) because that’s what it feels like—electricity.  

When it’s going well, we are looking at a narrative and feeling a connection to it.  A circuit closes for any number of reasons---someone discovers a parallel in the narrative to her own life, or a character who reminds a student of a family member, or the text recalls the tv show or movie they watched last week.  I talked about it as a current, as I reflect now, in rather sci-fi terms, of people establishing connections to texts and to each other, as if we create a cloud of electricity that we all tap in to (to varying degrees, perhaps, but when it’s great, pretty much everyone is plugged in).

Sometimes the current exists between two people (who we might say were “on the same wavelength”), but sometimes it is between a reader and a time, a text, a context, an archetype.  In my Chaucer class this morning, I had occasion to make a parallel I’ve never made before.  In the wake of the attack at Ohio State this morning, which was described initially as a shooting, I made the connection to our feelings about that kind of news—as college students who commiserate with other college students when violence erupts on campus, but who also sigh inwardly, relieved that it wasn’t on our campus.  

This, believe it or not, was relevant to Chaucer’s “Monk’s Tale,” which is a collection of seventeen tragedies in chronological order from Lucifer through the 14^th century, with the exception of a handful of vignettes that are typically referred to as “current events” for Chaucer:  the assassinations of King Pedro of Spain, Peter of Cyprus, and Bernabo Visconti. 

This rather lengthy tale ranges from the fall of Lucifer, through the Bible and through history, with stops at Samson, Caesar, and Alexander the Great, to name a few.  But it is interrupted by these contemporary stories—ones that would have been more immediate and somewhat sensitive. The Canterbury pilgrims listen to the monk as we do to the news. The knight even knew one of those guys. But mostly it is a moment where tragedy becomes personal:  where individuals react with compassion when someone else’s king is killed and with relief that it wasn’t theirs. 

When I connected this awful, complicated set of feelings to our reactions to yet another scene of violence on a college campus, that electricity sparked. Groggy, reluctant students still full of pumpkin pie and in vacation-mode woke up, sat up, and thought about how uncanny it is that we keep having these conversations in Chaucer class about contemporary problems. 

I’ve taught this tale a minimum of fifteen times. Probably twenty. I’ve never framed it in that particular way before, never quite seen that connection. But I will make it again. There is truth to the claim that the text changes with each reading because the reader changes. And teaching reading changes, because the more of these electric moments happen in class, the more ways I have to reach the next group. And the more connections I can facilitate--the more sparks fired, switches flipped, circuits closed--the more students learn to make those connections themselves. Narratives inform narratives. The more connections we can see, the more skilled we become at reading our world, the more easily we write and re-write our own stories. And that’s how we change the world.

*That’s a stamped image of a lightbulb, by the way, from a Stampin’ Up! Stamp set called “You Brighten My Day.”

"Because I think I am getting better!"

There’s a lovely anecdote about Pablo Casals, the cellist, that I hope is based in reality, but that I love has taken on a life of its own, because I think it says something beautiful about humanity that we keep wanting to hear it.  The first version I saw was on Pinterest, a photograph of a newspaper clipping, unattributed in the clipping, and unattributed on the meme.  (Oh, the joys of the Internet—my inner English major cringes.)  But it was small and maybe not worth chasing down:  “The legendary cellist Pablo Casals was asked why he continued to practice at age 90.  ‘Because I think I’m making progress,’ he replied.”  I repinned this.  I love it.  Like Michelangelo’s famous “Ancora imparo” I am still learning, it gives us hope.  If the masters of this caliber still have things to learn, we, in our significantly lesser states of grace can rest easy.  It’s a process, and maybe we’re never done.  Ideally we’re never done, in fact; that way we can continue to learn and improve all our lives and nod at other people at their various places in this journey.  Some are ahead of us, some behind, but as long as we all keep moving, we’re all right where we should be. 

This particular anecdote is even more charming to me because when I chose to write about it, the first thing I did (being such a responsible English major) was to try and track down that source.  Who had interviewed the master?  When?  What I found was a preponderance of reprinted vignettes, and a meme tradition.  The quote I offered is presented on the internet (and running with abandon all over Pinterest) in the same format as I found it—the newspaper clipping image—but also reprinted on lovely backgrounds with no regard for who said it, when, or in fact, who Casals is.  For the internet, this quote has become its own entity, and Casals needn’t even have existed, he makes such a good story. 

But lots of people had realized he was a good story. My search took me to QuoteInvestigator.com.  (These people must have endless business, given the Internet’s slipshod handling of text.)  They found this quote in several places, actually, and even in several renditions.  First, it seems the artist may have said something similar in more than one interview.  The Quote Investigator team reports, “there is substantive evidence that Casals made a remark about making progress in 1944 when he was 67 or 68 years old as indicated by the 1946 citation. There is also good evidence that he made a similar remark circa 1957 when he was 80 years old” (http://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/02/12/casals-progress/).  Then he may even have kept talking, or perhaps by then the charm of this story may have just taken on a life of its own.  In the quote I found, he was supposed to be 90.  It’s certainly possible he said it again. He lived to be 97; the last account of this quote puts him still saying the same thing at 95.  Either he continued to feel optimistic about his ability to learn and improve, or we can’t let the idea go, and keep telling the story, like a fish tale, with an older and older man. 

Why?  We want to believe that the master can continue to improve, no matter how old.  We need to.  Not only does it give us hope that even someone such as he has more to learn, so we (who have so much more to learn) are not alone, but the fact that he keeps getting older and older seems to suggest there is no end to this potential progress.  In an age of dementia and Alzheimer’s Disease, some manage not only to age well, but to keep improving, right in to extreme old age.  In fact, the Alzheimer’s Association suggests that continuing to learn, for instance a foreign language, or to play an instrument, is one of the best ways to stave off dementia (http://www.alz.org/we_can_help_stay_mentally_active.asp).   Pablo Casals has become a little Internet legend, popping up here and there, borrowed by various groups and websites to embody the possibility of perpetual improvement—a model of aging not just gracefully, but exceptionally, so that old age is no less pleasurable and satisfying than any other age; in fact, it may hold the deepest pleasures because we weren’t able to experience them before.  This is definitely a comfort, and a gift. 

“I am getting better” is practically a mantra for me at this point, and a manifesto of optimism.  But the most important thing the Casals quote teaches me is the importance of the moments along the way.  Casals is quoted saying he is improving with practice at 67, 81, 83, 90, and 95.  He is improving at all those points.  But at all those points he is also already a master.  What he knows is enough to impress everyone but himself.  They are all points of success, not just transitions to the next, better phase of himself.  The life of this quote is the satisfaction and happiness that come from the moments where we pause and take stock not of the motion of where we are going, but the stasis of where we are.  Right now.  Still.  (And still improving.)

Texts and Textiles: How we make our peace

One of the wonderful benefits of a hobby is sharing it with a community.  I wasn’t out to convert everyone to love what I love, but I was keen on creating time to be creative, and time to be chatty with friends.  Most of my friends are creative, and those who thought they weren’t have been shown otherwise.  Before long, I established a space where my friends could crochet, cross stitch, sew felt coasters, and make labels for homemade products, in addition to stamping and paper crafting.  My dining table is an oval—the only better shape would be a circle, but a circle big enough for all our ramblings would be too large for my space.  The oval works.  It is cozy, welcoming, warm, and inviting—surrounded by wonderful people and topped with creativity.

Along with this making, though, we do other important work.  Sometimes I cook, and we have a meal first.  Sometimes we do a potluck sort of meal; sometimes we just nibble on snacks as we work.  All of that contributes to a feeling of nurturing conviviality, and to me gives the sense of “product in, product out.”  We eat, then we create.  Lately, though, for various schedule and complicated-life-related reasons, we have been meeting later, after dinner, and snacks are less necessary than they were when I was building this community.  Now what we feed on is words. 

A group of women around a table doing handicrafts is a recipe for conversation, of course.  It takes part in the long, glorious tradition of quilting bees, craft bazaars, and the more modern idea of the “Stitch and Bitch” session.  We talk as we work.  We tell each other the story of our days.  Whoever is having the worst time at the moment, and needs the support of the group most immediately gets to go first, and we sort of tacitly understand we need to “deal” with that person’s problems before anything else.  And that’s what we do.  I read an article in The Onion one time that detailed a Girls’ Night Out, where women spent the evening “validating the living shit out of each other.” That’s where we start.  Whoever needs to dump their drama on the table does so, along with the paper scraps and yarn and ink pads and chocolate almonds, and we sift through it together.  We are honest in our support, and not afraid to speak truth to each other, but overall, we are a very sympathetic audience.  And somewhere in the snipping and pasting and analyzing and categorizing, things get sorted out, set to right—we reassemble ourselves as we assemble our little projects.

After the first person has spoken, the conversation moves fluidly, in and out of associations, memories, current struggles and successes.  The stories that we shape while we’re making cards or knitting baby blankets or stringing beads for a bracelet are every bit as important as the physical product—individually, perhaps moreso.  What has happened is that lovely concatenation of camaraderie and comfort that a semi-common purpose facilitates.  We are all woven in to each other’s stories, as supporting characters and new narrators.  We help each other see from different perspectives and offer multiple solutions to dealing with current problems.  Then we re-position ourselves as main characters and write ourselves in to the future. 

Sometimes the drama is small—daily dramas of the home or workplace.  Someone’s child is struggling in school.  Someone else has a family member causing unnecessary trouble.  Some project at work is fraught with setbacks or frustrations.  We deal with all of that pretty quickly.  Sometimes, though, it’s big stuff—decisions about starting a family, changing careers, moving out of state, caring for parents.  I think we rise to those too, with the same sort of diligence and good will.  Fewer cards get cranked out on those nights, but that’s ok.  Crafting is only the vehicle—the excuse to gather.  The real work is social, communal, and yes—literary, as we rewrite our lives and revision who we are.  It’s true that sometimes you don’t know what you think until you say it out loud (or write it down, but that’s a different blog).  My crafting table is a place where past stories are analyzed and future stories scripted. Sometimes this happens quite literally:  we help each other word responses to angry clients and cousins, repeat mantras or catch phrases to help us deal with problems in the moment, and talk through strategies to solve particular crises.  Because some of us are in academia, some of our support happens in the form of reading and helping to revise academic papers, tenure packets, and grant proposals.  Or someone needs help crafting descriptions for items for an online store, or topics for a blog.  Really, very literally, much of what we deal with directly is made of words, and we are called upon to “wordsmith” our way out of problems.  We create as many texts as textiles around my table.

But all of this wordsmithing takes place around an oval table littered with scissors and markers and felt and beads, and over a drink or a snack or a meal, between a few friends, whose characters make possible not only the meeting, but also the changing—the crafting of well-wrought lives.

“Female Friends Spend Raucous Night Validating the Living Shit out of Each Other.” The Onion.  Feb 23, 2012. Vol. 48, Issue 8.  http://www.theonion.com/article/female-friends-spend-raucous-night-validating-the--27446

Happy Election Eve!

If I Can Wait for the Cubs to Win the World Series, I Can Get Through This Election.

This week’s blog is not overtly about reading, except as insofar as I am reading the world.  I want to tell you how I’m surviving this election.  It has been harder than any other, as I’ve heard many others say.  For me part of that was having my kids be teenagers, not voting this time, but both of voting age in the next four years.  This was a terrible way to introduce them to what I think is one of our greatest freedoms.  It was so difficult to talk to them about why I’m voting for my candidate, who was not my first choice.  But we don’t always get our first choice candidates, do we?  And we still have to vote, sometimes for someone we doubt. 

I have tried to stay informed, so I can make the best decision, but while the internet makes so much more information available, it also produces so much that is questionable that staying informed seems harder than ever before.  Mainstream media is losing its credibility, and new media sources may be independent, but often are no less biased.

Usually I tell my kids we just have to have faith in the election process, but this time that has been very difficult to maintain, with corruption and voter fraud apparently at every turn.  So what do we have faith in? 

People. 

I have faith that people are essentially good, and that bad behavior (dare I say evil?  Yes, this election I think we’ve seen evil) will be curbed by and for the greater good in people.  I trust humanity.  I trust it to screw up, to stumble, and to err, but I also trust it to rise ultimately—to learn and to love.

I am a Cubs fan, and have been for better than twenty years.  If the Cubs can win the World Series, we can survive this election and learn from the trauma it has caused.  It has been traumatic.  I’m exhausted and full of doubts.  Social media has kept each wretched act of this play right in my face for months now, and it has taken a toll.  But I’ve been a fan of human beings even longer than I’ve been a fan of the Cubs, and I’m certain we have our own 10-inning Game 7 coming.  We just have to keep believing.  It might help to sing.  Loud.  And vote.  We all need to vote.  And whichever direction we go, we have another tough road ahead of us.

Meanwhile, I’m going to listen to some beautiful music and read a good book and escape for a bit and see what I can do about recovering my balance.  When this is over, we’re going to need some metaphysical band-aids to heal the wounds we’ve incurred.  I’ll need to be whole myself to take part in that.  It’s going to start small, as all important work does—first with my family, and then in larger circles, like ripples in water.  That’s my wish for us on this election eve:  that we make decisions with the whole country in mind, that, starting from what’s best for our family, we vote for what we want for the world they live in, and that we do our part to effect that world.