My Library: Children's Books Written and Illustrated by Women

Victoria Ford Smith's delightful blog re. children's books written and illustrated by women prompted me to visit my library where I have quite a stack of such books, many of them the favorites I gleaned from my sister's collection when she retired from teaching 1st grade.

It's no surprise that I saved Nancy Smiler Levinson's Clara and the Bookwagon. Harper & Row, 1988. Illustrations by Carolyn Croll. This book tells the story of the "country's first traveling bookwagon" which Mary Lemist Titcomb, head of the public library in Hagerstown, MD, designed in 1905. Joshua Thomas, the library janitor, drove Miss Titcomb and hundreds of books through 500 square miles of back country roads. A small bit of history with themes of reading and literacy are to be expected but this little gem also dances about the child as part of the rural labor force. "Books are for rich people... Farm people like us do not have time to read."

Another book about books, reading, writing, and libraries that found a spot on my library's shelf was Katie Cleminson's, Otto The Book Bear. New York: Disney Hyperion Books, 2011. When no one is looking Otto leaves his book's pages to go exploring but one day his book is moved and he is left behind--a very small bear all alone in a very big world. "And just when he thought he couldn't walk any farther, when he felt cold and tired, Otto saw a place full of light and hope. He went inside and found...rows and rows of books!" What reader has not known the joy of a library where we find as Otto did "book creatures just like him?" Award-winning Katie Cleminson's other books include:  Magic Box; Cuddle Up, Goodnight, Box of Tricks, Wake Up. I love this book!

The Midnight Farm is the first children's book published by Reeve Lindbergh in 1987 and illustrated with the heartbreakingly beautiful paintings of Susan Jeffers. The First Puffin Pied Piper Printing (1995) graces my shelves. "Here is the dark when the day is done, Here is the dark with no moon or sun, Here is the dark when the lights are out, Here is the heart of the dark." You can take a look at this book via Amazon. Both Lindbergh and Jeffers have many other books. Jeffers, in particular, is worth exploring. Written for a child who was afraid of the dark, this book makes me feel happy and cozy and safe.


 I have the 1993 edition of Monique Felix's The Colors which has been reissued.  The delightful Mouse Books are books without words "designed to excite a child's imagination, develop verbal skills, and foster an interest in reading. Each beautifully illustrated book allows a child to create a story while learning an important skill."  A sad little mouse gnaws through the page of a book and discovers a box of paints. What a joy! to sit and listen to the story a 4-7 year old tells as they turn page after page of beautiful illustrations. There is an entire series of Mouse Books and Monique Felix has illustrated a number of other books written by others; those have words although not always as much imagination.

Not every library has a whole shelf dedicated to books about rabbits. Yes, rabbits--from Beatrix Potter classics to tacky Easter basket books. I suppose it started when we had house rabbits as pets. I've never met a kid, especially a boy who could resist this book, although several of the girls have found it "creepy" or have wanted to color the pictures. I bought Miriam Schlein's Snake Fights, Rabbit Fights, & More. A Book about Animal Fighting. New York: Crown Publishing, Inc., 1979 with its beautiful and accurate illustrations by Sue Thompson because I couldn't resist the spot-on drawings of cottontails, so like the sweet Christopher that David found drowning in a ditch in Leon County, TX, and I bottle fed. We intended to release him into the wild but with  misaligned  teeth he would not have survived. So we kept him and he was very smart and very brave and oh-so-destructive. I could write a book...


 

 Mary Batten writes excellent nature books for children and her Baby Wolf is one of the best! Published by Grosset & Dunlap, New York, 1998, the illustrations by Jo Ellen McAllister Stammen are better than any photos or documentary. It's a lovely true story about family and growing up and being part of a community and surviving and ecology. I love the honesty of the moose hunt where the wolves kill and eat. This is a "science reader" and children who read such books cannot help but love science and care deeply about the environment. Don't miss the chance to take a look at the first few pages with this link to Amazon. Stammen's illustrations are great nature art full of atmosphere and movement.

And now for something completely different. Susan Meddaugh's Cinderella's Rat. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997. The prolific Meddaugh offers a retelling of the classic fairy tale from the rat/coachman's point of view. "I was born a rat. I expected to be a rat all my days. But life is full of surprises." This delightful book is also full of surprises.

Not enough women writers and illustrators receive awards but When I Was Young in the Mountains by Cynthia Rylant, illustrated by Diane Goode, New York: E. P. Dutton, 1982, is a Caldecott Honor Book. Rylant authored  Newbery Medal-winning Missing May, the Newbery Honor Book A Fine White Dust, and two Caldecott Honor-winning picture books: Relatives Came and When I Was Young in the Mountains. "When I was young in the mountains, we went to church in the schoolhouse on Sundays, and sometimes walked with the congregation through the cow pasture to the dark swimming hole, for baptisms. My cousin Peter was laid back into the water, and his white shirt stuck to him, and my Grandmother cried." It is rare to find a book, a children's book, that mentions baptism especially "believer's baptism by immersion" as practiced both by the Baptist Church in which I grew up and by the Church of Christ (Stone-Campbell movement) in which I have spent my adult life. Those pages always warm my heart a bit.  Diane Goode's illustration evoke the mist of memory with warmth and whimsy. One of my favorite books. This book is like listening to your grandmother tell stories.  If you click the titles you can enjoy the preview at Amazon.  

It is tragic that this beautiful book by George Ella Lyon with illustrations by Vera Rosenberry is out of print. Together was first published in 1989. The paperback 1994 edition (New York: Orchard Paperbacks) is a delight to have on my shelves.  Rosenberry's watercolor illustrations bring this poem to life joyfully, exuberantly, radiantly. The book is about two girls--one black, one white--who together share childhood play and imaginative adventure. The girls are a delight as they engage in physical activity of the sort that is all too often limited to the "dangerous" play of boys. It is, of course, a beautiful book about friendship  and child agency and imagination but it is so much more. The repeated refrain, "Let's put our heads together and dream the same dream," evokes the speech of Dr. Martin Luther King and offers readers of all ages joyful hope that soars like the girls on the back of birds in the final illustration.

"You bring the cheese and I'll fetch the mouse."

 The author's website is well worth a visit. This book should be back in print!

Four Women, Four Hymns.

Perhaps my favorite presentation at the ChLA 2013--which I attended in Biloxi many months ago--was that of Alisa Clapp-Itnyre, "For the Children Who Played... and for Those Who Didn't: Nineteenth-Century Hymnbooks for Home, Sunday-Schools, and Orphanages." This was the second time I have heard Alisa present, and, since I share her interest in Victorian hymnody,  I eagerly await her book Nineteenth-Century British Children’s Hymnody: Re-Tuning the History of Childhood with Chords and Verses. Studies in Childhood Series: 1700-Present series.  Claudia Nelson, series editor.  Anticipated publication 2015.

I have much enjoyed her article ,“Writing for, Yet Apart: Nineteenth-Century Women’s Contentious Status as Hymn Writers and Editors of Hymnbooks for Children.”  Victorian Literature and Culture. Vol. 40.  Issue 1.  (March 2012): Pp. 47-81. Clapp-Itnyre advocates "for the woman hymn writer for children – she who, as hymn writer or editor, surely enacted the role of religious “priest” for countless generations of children during and after her lifetime, but who is all but forgotten today."
In much the same way, I have asserted that women writers of hymns and Christian didactic literature function as theologians, shaping the doctrine and practice of the church. (See my introduction for SEASONS's reading of Evelyn Whitaker's Laddie.)

Later this week, I will teach a short class on the Hebrew word

  בֵּית

ba yith 

which means"House, Household, Home, Family, Temple, Shelter, Stronghold, Door..." and the meaning of the phrase "The House of the Lord" in the biblical Psalms. Since this is a devotional rather than a literary presentation, I selected several hymns written by women for the group to sing. These songs were chosen for their commentary upon the selected Psalms and because they were written by 19th Century Women.
Four Women Writers of Hymns:

Dorothy Ann Thrupp (1779 – 1847) was born in Paddington, England. She was deeply involved in the Sunday School movement. The first Sunday Schools were founded to provide some education to the children of the poor. These children often worked during the week to help support their families. Having Sundays free, they often ran wild and engaged in dangerous and immoral activities. Dorothy Ann Thrupp was a life-long Sunday School teacher. She wrote many materials and songs to be used in the curriculum. Many were published under the name "Iota" and some are noted as by D.A.T.  Alisa Clapp-Itnyre in her presentation discussed the Sunday School movement and  cited the "democratizing influence" of hymns and their importance in a "move from selfish pursuit to core Christian values." Attributed to Thrupp, "Savior like a Shepherd Lead Us" appears in at least 831 hymnals.

Anna Laetitia Waring (1823 – 1910) was born into a Quaker family in Wales  but like her uncle, Samuel Waring, was baptized into the Anglican church in 1842. Both her uncle and her father, Elijah Waring, were also writers. She was a life-long daily reader of the Psalter and learned Hebrew in order to read the Psalms (Yes! a kindred spirit, indeed!) and other Old Testament scripture in the original language. Her first small collection of eighteen hymns was published in 1850 and titled Hymns and Meditations by A.L.W. There was an 1855 publication of Additional Hymns. In 1863 the 10^th edition of Hymns and Meditations was published. Here is a link to the American edition which contains 32 poems.  In 1886 she published Days of Remembrance: A Memorial Calendar. For many years she was active in a prison ministry visiting Bridewell in London  and later Horfield, Bristol, and worked with the Discharged Prisoners Aid Society. When a friend asked how she could bear this ministry, Waring replied: “It is like watching by a filthy gutter to pick out a jewel here and there, as the foul stream flows by.” Many of her hymns are reflective of pain and suffering. In our hymnal she is represented by "In Heavenly Love Abiding" which appears in at least 453 hymnals.

Anne Ross Cundell Cousins (1824 – 1906) was born in Yorkshire, England. She married William Cousins, pastor of the Free Church of Scotland. They ministered for twenty years in various locations with the Free Church of Scotland and with Presbyterian congregations. She was the mother of six children. She began writing hymns to be used in her husband’s worship services and some of these became very popular in Britain. Her hymns and poems for various publications were most often published as by A.R. C.  She was an accomplished pianist having studied with John Muir Wood. Here is a link to the 1876 edition of her collected works. She said her hymn, 'The Sands of Time," was inspired by the last words of the great 18^th Century Calvinist and leader of “the second Reformation,” Samuel Rutherford, whose tombstone is engraved “Acquainted with Immanuel’s Song.”  

 Caroline Louisa Sprague Smith (1827 –1886) was the wife of Rev. Charles Smith of the South Congregational Church, Andover, MA.  She is listed in Hatfield’s Poets of the Church, New York, 1884, p. 564. Her hymn “Tarry with Me. An Old Man’s Prayer” appeared in The Sabbath Hymn Book 1858. She described writing this hymn:  “About 1853 [in the summer of 1852] I heard the Rev. Dr. H. M. Dexter preach a sermon on ‘The Adaptedness of Religion to the Wants of the Aged.’ I went home and embodied the thought in the hymn “Tarry with me, O My Savior.’ I sent it to Mr. Hallock, for The Messenger. He returned it as ‘not adapted to the readers of the paper.’ Years after, I sent it, without any signature, to the little Andover paper…. I send it to you in its original form, in a little paper of which my sister, Mrs. Terry [Rochester, NY] is editoress.” Here is a link to a 1909 edition of her collected writings.

There are at least three other tunes more commonly used with Smith’s words.  The tune in our hymnal #783 is not listed in the references. It is by Knowles Shaw (1834 –1878) who was the “singing evangelist” of the Stone-Campbell Movement. The story of his conversion--he was in the middle of playing the fiddle at a dance--is rather amusing. He was both an accomplished violinist and pianist. Having no objection to instrumental music in the Disciples of Christ fellowship, he frequently played in churches and revival meetings. Smith’s “Tarry with Me” with Shaw’s music was published in Zion’s Harp #165.

 

What I'm reading...

I intended to blog more often this year but...  I'd planned to blog on my birthday a week and a half ago and woke up sick.  The next day my computer didn't wake up at all.  The following Monday my husband became very ill.  It will be a long time before I've put all the pieces back together but everyone and every thing at least seems to be up and functioning more or less normally.

What I've been reading:

Fiction:

Conroy, Pat: The Prince of Tides. 1986.  Kindle.  I seldom read any best-selling book until it's been kicking around a few years.  "Popular" does not equal "time-tested" and there is so little time to read.  I also tend to avoid 20th Century male authors; their world view is often too depressing for me.  I knew I would love this book and I also knew I would hate it.  I loved the first half and hated the last half;  I prefer "elegy" to "nightmare."   Pat Conroy wrote a great novel in the tradition of the great Southern novel with the requisite beauty, quirky characters, and disfunction.  kindle location [kl] 859 "...you're southern to the bone, Savannah.  It don't wash out."  loc 1268 "The southern way?" she said.  "My mother's immortal phrase.  We laugh when the pain gets too much.  We laugh when the pity of human life gets too... pitiful. We laugh when there's nothing else to do."  "When do you weep... according to the southern way?" "After we laugh, Doctor.  Always.  Always after we laugh."  kl 3646 "...in the South.  Sorrow is admired only if it's done in silence."  kl 3748 "I've always found paranoia to be a perfectly defensible position."   It has some wonderful descriptions of childhood and some painful ones:   kl 169 "Later when we spoke of our childhood, it seemed part elegy, part nightmare."  kl 1504 "There are no verdicts to childhood, only consequences, and the bright freight of memory."  kl 3046 "There is no fixing a damaged childhood.  The best you can hope for is to make the sucker float."  It offers descriptions and commentary upon the 20th Century struggles against racism and those of feminism and environmentalism.   kl 201 "This has not been an easy century to endure."  Chapter 18 should be required reading.  I don't know that I've ever fully appreciated the role of a coach, despite having a couple in my family.  The descriptions of the North Carolina locale are heart-breakingly beautiful and made me want to go live on an island and fish. One of my favorite quotes is about reading:  kl 997 "You get a little moody sometimes but I think that's because you like to read.  People that like to read are always a little fucked up."  There is, of course, a movie and it's a good one but the book is better.  I've decided to read some more Conroy: My Reading Life.  Doubleday, 2010.  Kindle.

Victorian scholarship:

Adams, Maureen: Shaggy Muses.  The dogs who inspired Virginia Woolfe, Emily Dickinson, Elizabeth Barrett Browing, Edith Wharton, and Emily Bronte. New York:  Ballantine Books, 2007. Kindle.  My friend, Cathey Roberts, recommended this book {she also mentioned a seminar on Creativity and Madness which riffs nicely with Conroy's book and brought a smile to DMP}and I immediately downloaded it and read it straight through without iterruption--one of the advantages of physical weakness and no computer is that one may read and read and read. kl 3361 Quoting Virginia Woolfe:  "Half the horrors of illness cease when one has a book or a dog or a cup of one's own at hand."   kl 4496 "Like many creative people, she [Emily Dickinson] depended on someone else to oversee the balance between having time alone against the need for connection with others to avoid being engulfed by the work."  Emily Dickinson and her friend Susan Gilbert, who married Emily's brother, "shared a hatred of housework, a love of literature, and an intense interest in religion."  Sounds a bit like me. 

My "intense interest in religion" groups six very different books:. 

I'm continuing the Annie Dillard Reader and have just finished the excerpts from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, perhaps my favorite work of mysticism.  kl 4236 "that which isn't flint is tinder, and the whole world sparks and flames." kl 4270 "An infant who has just learned to hold his head up has a frank and forthright way of gazing about him in bewilderment.  He hasn't the faintest clue where he is, and he aims to learn.  In a couple of years, what he will have learned is how to fake it..."  kl 4567 "But although the pearl may be found, it may not be sought.  The literature of illumination reveals this above all:  although it comes to those who wait for it, it is always, even to the most practiced and adept, a gift and a total surprise...  I cannot cause light; the most I can do is try to put myself in the path of its beam."  . 

I was asked to read an excerpt from For the Time Being during a Sunday worship--which I was too ill to read--and as a result I'm reading W. H. Auden's Collected Longer Poems which I haven't touched since my undergraduate course with Dr.  Monroe K Spears, Poetry of W.H. Auden: Disenchanted Island.  I have a much better appreciation of the modern poets now than I did in my youth. 

"Remembrance of the moment before last

Is like a yawning drug."

Several weeks ago, DMP and I went to see the new Narnia movie which has given us an excuse to re-run the movies and re-read the books.  I first read C.S. Lewis's literary scholarship (the dreaded and still dispised Milton semester with Alan Grob) and happened upon Voyage of the Dawntreader so I started the series in the middle.  It's always been my favorite and  one reason is that dear swashbuckling mouse Reepicheep reminds me so very much of DMP.  This story is also a commentary upon "reading the right books" and celebrates imagination rather than information.  A lesson that our universities might well learn before they slash the funding for humanities and libraries.

I continue my slow progress through Robert Alter's The Book of Psalms which is masterful and magnificent.  From the 39th Psalm:  "Let me know, O LORD, my end and what is the measure of my days.  I would know how fleeting I am... a nothing... mere breath.... For I am a sojourner with You, a new settler like all my fathers.  Look away from me, that I may catch my breath before I depart and am not." 

These psalm readings work really well with the book that is the companion of the Open Door class study of Genesis.  Walter Brueggemann's Land kl 231 "...any society is likely to treat its land in the same way it treats its women."  kl 307 "...land is never simply physical dirt but is always physical dirt freighted with social meanings derived from historical experience."  kl 485 "Biblical faith begins with the radical announcment of discontinuity that intends to initiate us into a new history of anticipation.... rooted in the speech of God..."

Blog note:  I will continue using the Amazon associate links and images in the text of the blog because Amazon usually allows readers to take a look inside or download a sample.  I've switched the sidebars to LibraryThing which lets me maintain an on-line catalog and collection lists.  They have the advantage of being readable on the Kindle.   http://www.librarything.com/home/KCummingsPipes 

I first saw the LibraryThing used in Catherine Pope's Victorian Geek blog: http://blog.catherinepope.co.uk/2011/01/an-eye-for-an-eye-by-anthony-trollope/ and clicked the link in one of sidebars.  The first 200 books is a free membership if you want to give it a try.