fine reads: when winter comes

When Winter Comes, by Nancy Van Laan, illustrated by Susan Gaber, is a short and sweet read that answers questions like, "Where oh where do the leaves all go when winter comes and the cold winds blow?"

With calm, rhythmic text, this book manages to be at once informative and soothing. Classified as a title for "the very young," my almost three year old loved the somewhat muted, earth-toned acrylic-painted illustrations and the rhymes, and enjoyed being able to answer some of the posed questions himself.

Before cozying up in bed, a child (whose only real gender signifier is a very cute bob, though interestingly I can only find them referenced as 'he') explores the outdoors with two big people (one of whom looks rather female; the other is just an adult in winter clothes). They check out the icebound pond, wonder about where the flowers went, and eventually make their way back to the house, where the little one gets ready for sleep.

A perfect bedtime story for sensitive kids, this has no tension, just wintery imagery heavy on the beauty and wonder of the cold weather. When Winter Comes is relatable for anyone who lives in a snowy clime, but is equally appealing for those in warmer places who like a little seasonal vicarious living.

There's nothing didactic about the adults; I got the impression that they were -- as we were --along for the ride, being led by the child's questions about the nature that surrounds us. They seem fairly ambiguously-aged as well as gendered (in the case of the blue-coated grownup), and, because there's no mention of them by name or title, they could easily be two mamas, a mama and a papa, grandparents or any other combination of a vaguely feminine person and someone else. The clothing and surroundings don't speak to a time period, and so this story feels enduring despite having been written in 2000. Racial identitiy is similarly ambiguous; the family's dark hair and the child's olive complexion mean this story could come across as a depiction of many different ethnicities and a few different races, with some room for multiracial or multiethnic families to feel represented.  I, of course, imagined a little Jewish girl, and started scheming about how to recreate that hat.

Ratings:

Kids' Gender Neutrality: ***** 

Five stars for an outdoors-exploring, nature-interested kid dressed in simple, non-gendered clothing, without a name, with no pronouns and only a bob-with-bangs to serve as a hint to their gender. 

Family Situations: ****

Four stars for two companion adults, one of whom is probably female, not mentioned by name or pronoun but obviously loving and engaged. 

Multiculturalism: **

Two stars for a family that is not necessarily white, but not obviously anything else.

Gentle Parenting: ***

Three stars for involved adults who take a backseat to the child, and for a story with no correction and no negativity but lots of clearly (if poetically) stated answers to questions my own toddler might ask.

Story and Illustration Quality: ****

Four stars for beautiful pictures and truly endearing, lilting text. For a picture book, maybe a little too spare, but if this were a board book it would get five stars, easily. 

Our family's Overall Rating: ****

Four stars. George found it a "nice and quiet" exercise in rhyming, which he's loving lately, and especially liked the page about caterpillars. I appreciated the simplicity and warmth despite the snowy subject matter, and the inherent inclusiveness of a book with characters like these. When Winter Comes was enjoyable enough that I'll be looking for it to add to our permanent library here at home! Buy it at Powell's, or Amazon, or check it out at your local library.

on offbeat mama!

One of my very most favorite pictures of George (in case you couldn't tell by the banner) is in Offbeat Mama's roundup of reading-related photos to celebrate banned books week. Both the holiday and the subject matter are near and dear to my heart, so I'm stoked to see my formerly-much-littler dude included. 

spoiler alert: i love suzanne collins

I just finished reading Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games trilogy. It blew my mind. Totally and completely blew my mind. I'm a reader, and I'm skeptical of hugely popular young adult series for their manufactured mass appeal, the terrible norms they tend to perpetuate and the shoddy writing and editing that goes overlooked when time is money and the audience is waiting to find out which creepy, immortal jerk Bella will marry. Several friends had recommended The Hunger Games, but (alas) countless are the number of people I know who've loved Harry Potter, so it wasn't until I started seeing Suzanne Collins raved about on feminist blogs that I started to believe the series might be really good. 

Um. It is. Really, really good. It broke my heart. Broke it in two, then into thirds, and slowly, surely, into a million pieces and... left it there. Few storytellers have the nerve to do that: to offer little or no redemption for the characters with whom they know you've fallen in love. As the series progressed, I found it harder and harder to believe that a grown woman wrote these stories, as I couldn't imagine her allowing such terrible fates to befall children, fictional or otherwise. And that led me to consider the real children who make up Collins' intended audience. Of course, the actual readership is much larger, more varied than the suggested reading level suggests, as it should be. In reading, however, in suffering every gory loss, detailed and mourned by poor Katniss Everdeen and in experiencing, by proxy, the horrors of battle, I appreciated -- on one hand -- the indictment of war, but found myself aghast at times. Could kids really handle this? I looked periodically at my own, as he slept and I tried to angle my Kindle's light away from his face. Of course not! How could he process this at twelve, at fifteen, even at Katniss' stated age -- seventeen -- when I was having a hard time dealing? When is anyone prepared for such a vivid, largely unforgiving picture of death and violence and need and desperation?

But as I thought, I considered the books I read in adolescence, even shortly before. I tried to remember any that had scarred me -- none had, so far as I can tell. It struck me that it's possible that our teenage years are the perfect time for these gut-wrenching stories that are somehow nuanced while beating us over the head with message. In order to get invested without falling into a depression, I thought; In order to feel for these characters without being distracted by your want to save them, you have to feel invincible. You have to be a kid. 

I am always learning. Always surprised by the revelations I have now that I'm a parent, looking through the glass at the other side of childhood. I hope that when George is twelve, fifteen, seventeen, however old, I can trust his judgment. Give him the freedom to read, see, do what he can, because, as I'll tell him, if you wait until you're older -- until you have kids of your own -- your heart will be mush. You'll read books written for ninth graders while silently begging your snoring sixteen month old never to enlist in the military. 

read: On Mother's Lap & Mama, Do You Love Me?

Some of our favorite stories are quiet ones. George and I like the bouncy, funny books with opportunities for different voices and exaggerated faces, but on sleepy mornings and after cranky afternoons, a nice, calm story can re-set the tone or ease us into the day. 

We got On Mother's Lap by Ann Herbert Scott (illustrated by Glo Coalson) and Mama, Do You Love Me? by Barbara Joosse (illustrated by Barbara Lavallee) for a grand total of twenty five cents. One was a (free) library cast-off and one was a score from a particularly generous neighbor's yard sale: some of my favorite places to get books. Having never heard of either author or either illustrator and not really taking the time to pre-screen, I took these home on a lark and am so glad I did. Both are sweet tales of Inuit or Eskimo mothers and their babes, with similar themes: that mama's love is constant and growing. 

It seems that Glo Coalson has re-illustrated On Mother's Lap in the years since our edition was published (1972) which is a real shame. Her original watercolors are serene and artistic, depicting a sweet, round mama with an abundant, inviting lap. She's a welcome change to the standard cartoon mom-with-a-bob that runs rampant in George's other board books. The family's home is very modest -- beds with exposed springs, a wood stove with laundry drying overhead -- but  the comfort that Coalson manages to convey with such simple pictures and a limited palette is pretty amazing. Also noteworthy is the fact that neither poverty nor ethnicity is mentioned, as I would expect in a more modern story. This kind of exposure, to me, is more helpful in teaching multiculturalism than all the heritage days or exoticizing documentaries in the world. Scott's words are few but plenty illustrative when coupled with the pictures, and tell of a little boy who's hesitant to share his mama with a new baby. SPOILER ALERT: There's room for everyone, plus a reindeer blanky, on Mama's lap. Cute, right?

In Mama, Do You Love Me?  a kid wants to know just how bratty she has to be before wearing out her welcome with ol' mom. This book is full of new vocabulary -- ptarmigan, umiak, mukluk -- a rarity for anything aimed at preschoolers, and that alone excited me. In reading Amazon reviews, several cited the language and lack of a glossary as a drawback (they had to use the dictionary: THE HORROR), but they are evidently trying to trick their children into believing that parents are omniscient. I, on the other hand, am not above a quick vocab lesson in my child's presence. 

Joosse's moral here is simple: you, little one, might be mean or clumsy or make a bad decision, but mama will always love you. If this doesn't ring true to you, as a parent, well... don't get the book (also: might I suggest sending your son or daughter to live with a nicer relative?), but it's definitely appropriate for my family. There's lots to look at in these pages: puffins, a walrus, a musk ox and another pretty, plump mama. The pictures are timeless and keep George's attention even now. 

The next time you're experiencing a crappy, I-dropped-all-my-ptarmigan-eggs kinda day, think of us and check one of these babies out. 

Ed: weird, Hobo Mama and I both mention On Mother's Lap in the same week. Ann Herbert Scott, are you feeling the blog love?