This week, as I reviewed the list of books she’s had read to her, or has looked at, over and over again, I thought about the many social, emotional, creative, and intellectual gifts she’s received as a result.

I picture her at a book party, holding a bunch of brightly-colored balloons decorated with each of the reasons why parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, older brothers and sisters, friends, teachers, and librarians—why, everybody!—should read stories aloud to young children.

1. I learn to listen.

2. I grow my vocabulary

3. I develop empathy.

4. I have fun.

5. I laugh out loud.

6. I learn a second language.

7. I find out about the world and all its diversity.

8. I realize that I can be and do many things.

9. I observe amazing art.

10. I feel the rhythm of language.

11. I encounter all the information that can be found in books.

12. I spark my imagination.

13. I see myself and others different from myself.

14. I feel loved.

15. I feel safe.

And now, for a moment I remember how, before I began reading on my own, my mother’s voice brought my favorite stories to life. How these stories created in me a sense of hope and well-being, assuring me that the world was full of possibilities; that I could do and be many things, a heroine of my own adventure.

2018 Children’s Book Week poster, designed by Jillian Tamaki

You ask yourself, are any of my favorite books on the list? Are there any books on the list that I’d like to read?

As a children’s book author, I feel the best book lists are those that are read and selected by the young readers themselves, like the Maud Hart Lovelace Book Award in Minnesota, or those in other states that sponsor such “children’s choice” award programs.

In that spirit, and upon the occasion of my granddaughter’s birthday this week, I asked my daughter to compile a list of Ofelia’s favorite books from the third year of her life.

Ofelia wearing her hand-sewn Pippi Longstocking apron

Except for the books in Swedish, Ofelia’s second language, I admit that her list held a few surprises:

Animalia and The Waterhole by Graeme Base

Aunt Green, Aunt Brown, and Aunt Lavender by Elsa Beskow

Town Mouse, Country Mouse by Jan Brett

The Gruffalo, The Snail and the Whale, and Room on the Broom by Julia Donaldson, illustrated by Alex Scheffler

Oh, No! by Candace Fleming Eric Rohman

Here We Are: Notes for Living on Planet Earth by Oliver Jeffers

Pippi Longstocking (original picture book) by Astrid Lindgren with illustrations by Ingrid Nyman

Fables by Arnold Lobel

The High Street and Grandma’s House by Alice Melvin

Maps by Aleksandra Mizielinska and Daniel Mizielinski

The Peter Rabbit Pop-up Book by Beatrix Potter

Books written or illustrated by Richard Scarry – too many to name – including my favorite, I am A Bunny

Plume by Isabelle Simler

In next week’s blog post, I’ll reflect upon what I learned about selecting books to read to young readers and the reasons that reading aloud is so very important for their social, emotional, artistic, and intellectual development.

Hunter believed that the foremost job of teachers was decision making, and that each teacher makes thousands of decisions each day.

All the decisions a teacher makes can be put into one of three categories: (1) content category—what you are going to teach; (2) teaching behavior category—what you as a teacher will do to facilitate and execute that learning; and (3) learning behavior category—how the students are going to learn and how they will let you know that they’ve learned it.

Following my author visit to Scandia Elementary School on March 28, 2018, third grade teacher Kelly Duncan asked her students to write “reflection papers” about my visit.

Their first-draft reflections provided the teacher with valuable information about how well her students can articulate a shared experience visually and in writing. The papers provided me with valuable information that I can use to plan effective classroom presentations in the future; a continuous cycle of teaching and learning.

I would have liked to have displayed copies of every child’s reflection in this blog post; each was unique and special in its own way. The three I chose nicely illustrate how the students put their hearts and minds into what they saw and heard during my presentation.

Other favorite observations written by these delightful third graders were:

• She told us about how to write a book, and make sock monkeys. I think I’m going to do that when I get home.
• She carries a journal everywhere she goes.
• She gets her character ideas from her life.
• We saw all her artifacts.
• She said to use your imagination.
• She showed us it’s pretty much like putting together a jigsaw puzzle to make a book.
• I asked her a question about why the judge (Annaliese’s father) is mean.
• She talked about how she came up with ideas. She writes whatever comes to her mind, which I like that.
• My favorite part is when Annaliese makes a costume for Great-Grandmama’s 90^th
• She is a grandmother. She was fun!
• The book is great so far. I wonder what the end will be like.

*PS: Spring has finally arrived in Minnesota! Purple crocuses are pushing through the last layers of snow. A wild turkey spent the morning wandering about our backyard. The little girls from next door rode their pastel pedal bikes with sparkly streamers for the first time. Baby birds and rabbit kittens will be here soon. Enjoy!

Photo: Julianna Funk | 123rf.com

Three Chimneys on Lilac Lane

Eileen Beha

If my mother didn’t have Alzheimer’s,
I’d walk up her gravel driveway,
lined with lilac bushes in bloom,
to the brick bungalow with three chimneys,
where I grew up.

She’d be standing on the concrete steps,
waiting for me to arrive.

We’d walk into the cramped kitchen—
room only for a table and three chairs,
the counter covered with freshly-baked pies:
pecan, raspberry, and strawberry rhubarb.

She’d claim to have forgotten my favorite
and baked all three.

She would not be lying in a crank-up bed in a beige room, 
clutching The Lutheran Hymnal with trembling fingers.
She would not tell me about her breakfast: oatmeal full of ants.

She would not look up, wild-eyed.

But even if she did, even if she did, 
Mom would remember my name.

“First Marriage” was inspired by New York City, 1975, a photo by Joel Meyerowitz, from the Howard Greenberg Gallery

First Marriage          

Eileen Beha

Fueled
by the steam heat
of fresh love.
Driven
by the power of
magical thinking.
In spite of
shadows of the past
pressed on our backs
We bought
matching gold bands.
Then Mom said, Marry
in haste; repent
in leisure. And
so we did.

Photo: Jeffrey McGraw | 123rf.com

Upon Reading James Finley in Cabo San Lucas 

Eileen Beha

I get up in the morning and touch my feet to the floor;
the sun rises pink in the sky.
In the distance a pair of flamingos honk, heralding this arrival
And I wonder:
Is this ordinary experience of an utterly ordinary event, 
this press of calloused skin on cool Mexican tile,
the mystery of God manifesting itself
in — and as — this very ordinariness?

I settle into a webbed chair, blue,
on the balcony of Pueblo Bonito Blanco.
In the manicured grass below,
the sun kisses the flamingos’ shell-pink feathers.
With inarticulate certainty in the pit of my stomach
I realize my eternal oneness with God;
the clarity of seeing something beautiful
and immediately knowing:
It is beautiful.

Ms. Maggie Myre’s 4th grade classroom at Scandia Elementary pictured with Christine Maefsky, Mayor of Scandia.

At my request, I did presentations to seven individual 3^rd and 4^th grade classrooms of students rather than in a larger assembly. Also at my request, their teachers helped the students prepare questions in advance.

After my formal 20-minute presentation about reading, writing, and publishing books for young readers, I opened it up for questions.

I’m sure that I answered at least 15 to 20 prepared and spontaneous questions in each of the seven sessions, some the same, many different.

I was impressed by the students’ astute and thoughtful questions. But I also surprised myself when my answers spontaneously released discoveries that I’ve made as a writer over the past twenty years.

Here is an unstructured, slightly random list of some of the thoughts I shared with these young readers and aspiring writers. In essence, they represent the essential core of what I’ve learned as I’ve studied and practiced the craft.

• “If you remember only one thing I say today, I hope it is this: You are unique. There is not now, nor will there ever be, another person just like you.”
• Inside each of you is a story that needs to be told and you are the one to tell it. The only one.
• Write what you know: playing a French horn, being on a hockey team, being an older sister, starting over in a new school.
• Your subconscious—what you know, but didn’t know you knew—will guide you to the emotional heart of your story, if you just let it.
• A story starts with a single spark of the imagination.
• The power of your imagination is infinite, without beginning or end.
• To write a story is to revise a story, over and over again.
• A book is never complete until it is read. It is you—the reader—who finishes the story with your own imagination.
• Writing a book is like doing a 1000-piece puzzle without an illustration on the cover of the puzzle box.

• I use my imagination to create fictional characters (human or animal) that combine what I know about myself with the traits of three others that I’ve known.
• Writers are readers. Why? For my answer I paraphrased one of my favorite quotes about reading by Esther Porter: Your brain files away lesson after lesson all on its own. Reading great books can answer your revision questions, even if you’re unaware of what you’re looking for. We pick up stylistic tools and techniques, we develop our sense of linguistic rhythm, we even become better spellers when we read. And when we return to our writing, we do so with a more complete tool best, with the ability to fix problems we couldn’t see before.
• When writing fiction, keep this in mind: Only trouble is interesting.
• William Faulkner said: The only thing worth writing about is the human heart in conflict with itself.
• Sometimes a writer’s first idea is not the best idea. The pieces of the puzzle don’t fit. The plot threads won’t come together. You can’t find its emotional center. Be prepared to start over.

“Sometimes a writer’s first idea is not the best idea. … Be prepared to start over.”

• Writing a book is difficult.
• Our stories—my stories, your stories—are hidden, like secrets in the attics of our own lives.
• The characters for your stories are all around you.
• Writing IS revision.
• Bringing a book into the world is a team effort; the author is no longer in control.
• You learn how to write a book by writing a book.

My invitation to do so appeared on the front page of the New York Times Travel Section on October 2, 2017, with the headline: “Vancouver Island, Through an Artist’s Eyes.” Beneath an intriguing photo of a trail into a Pacific Coast rainforest, the feature’s first line revealed the artist’s identity. “Revered in British Columbia, little known in the U.S., the artist Emily Carr, born in Victoria in 1871, may be from another era, but amid environmental concerns, her works and images resonate.”

Zunoqua of the Cat Village, 1930

I’d been introduced to Emily’s Carr’s ground-breaking work in a Canadian Literature class taught by poet Deborah Keenan at Hamline University in 2004. Emily Carr: An Introduction of Her Life and Art by Anne Newlands was one of the assigned texts. The book was only 64 pages long, yet the color plates of this unconventional woman’s paintings spoke to me in a way no other visual artist’s work ever had.

I couldn’t articulate why. All I knew was that these images—created by an artist who nicknamed herself ‘Small’ as a child—brought to life a hidden part of me, raw and tender, foreign, yet totally familiar. Later, when I researched and read more about Carr’s life, she became a kind of imaginary friend, a kindred spirit much like I’ve always felt about the Anne of Green Gables author Lucy Maud Montgomery.

Emily Carr (Small, 1876)

The Times article highlighted two major exhibitions of Carr’s art: “Emily Carr: Into the Forest” (at the Vancouver Art Gallery, May 13 – December 3, 2017), and “Picturing the Giants: The Changing Landscapes of Emily Carr” at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria (June 10 – April 1, 2018). The window of time in which to see both exhibits in a single trip to British Columbia was running out.

My desire to see the originals was so strong that I decided I would travel there alone if I couldn’t find a travelling companion. To my surprise, my always-busy husband Ralph cleared his calendar for a week to accompany me.

Usually when we take a trip together, Ralph—a more experienced traveler than I—makes the arrangements. But this time, I quickly booked flights from Minneapolis, reserved two seats on the ferry between Vancouver and Victoria through BC Connector, pre-purchased tickets to the art exhibits, and took advantage of off-season hotel rates for accommodations at two grand, historic Canadian Pacific railway hotels.

The Fairmont Empress, Victoria, BC

Since the Emily Carr House in Victoria, her childhood home, was closed to the public for the season, a friend suggested that I request a private tour. Jan Ross, the curator of the provincial heritage site, graciously agreed to do so.

We departed Minnesota on November 8th with only three “must-do’s” planned in advance. We left the remainder of the sightseeing and dining adventures to chance, as our spirits and the unpredictable rainy-season weather dictated.

I have always loved being in Canada; once I arrive, I always feel like I have come back home.

The Homecoming, Nathan Scott, sculptor,Victoria, BC

Were Emily Carr’s richly drawn paintings of First Nations villages and totems, dark, haunting forests, wild beaches and vast skies all I imagined they would be?

In next week’s blog post, I’ll share my answer.

Eileen at Vancouver Art Gallery, November 9, 2017

Simatai portion of the Great Wall of China

It is the spring of 2002. My husband, Ralph, our daughter, Britt, and I are in the back seat of a black sedan heading 120 kilometers north of Beijing, China to the Simatai section of the Great Wall of China. Driving the sedan is Miss Wang, legal assistant to Xu Yi Ping, a Chinese patent lawyer and long-standing family friend. In the second semester of her junior year, Britt, an East Asian Studies major, is in the country’s capital studying Chinese language and culture. I’m relieved to be traveling out of the densely populated, pollution-heavy city. During our stay, a massive sandstorm had enveloped Beijing, shrouding the city with yellow sand and dust.

The Simitai section of the 3,728 mile-long Great Wall of China is 3-5 miles long, built in 550-570 AD on some of the highest, most rugged cliffs in China. This section has been newly opened to tourists, and few are here on this blue-skied, sun-drenched April morning. We take a gondola up to a broad rock staircase that leads to the first guard tower where we’re met by three women that our friends call, “Goat Ladies.” Agile and experienced, for a fee they accompany travelers up to the “Staircase to Heaven,” an 85-degree slope which narrows to less than a foot near the peak. We decide to ascend without assistance.

A portion of the Great Wall of China with a fairly smooth walkway

An athlete, Britt scampers up the steep, ever-narrowing, rough and eroded trail like an antelope. Ralph goes ahead of me, steady and sure-footed. Bothered by the thin air, our Chinese friends stay behind. Soon the “steps” disappear. The trail becomes a rocky ladder with sheer precipices on both sides of it. By now I am crawling on all fours, breaking my nails on jagged rocks. Ralph calls out, “Eileen, don’t look down!”

Up ahead, Britt approaches the uppermost beacon tower. There, a Chinese guard with a stiff face and a cold black pistol makes a stop sign with his hand, telling her without words that she has come as far as she can go.

Britt descends first, followed by Ralph.

“I’m fine,” I tell them. “Go on, I’ll take my time coming down.”

If I try, I could reach out and touch a cloud.

But then I look down. Suddenly I am light-headed, dizzy, and frozen with fear. No amount of urging can make me take a step.

“Get the Goat Ladies!” I cried.

Three Chinese women assist me on my climb down from the heights.

Fortunately, the three kind and brave Chinese women have been following us—just in case. Ralph signals, and they hastily traverse the trail. A woman wearing a red cap takes me by my right hand, the other takes my left. The third, wearing a white hat, takes the lead. Step by step, the smiling strangers and I make the perilous descent. Soon the “staircase” becomes wider and wider. One lady lets go, and Ralph takes my hand.

What does this once-in-a-lifetime travel experience have to do with writing books for young readers?

Some months ago, a snippet of dialogue drifted into my mind:

“Little Rabbit, Little Rabbit, Where are you going?”

And the little rabbit answered, “I’m going to hop to the top of the Great Wall of China.”

Like a silver cloud tucked in my pocket, these words have traveled with me, urging me to start the rocky and uncertain journey to discover, and then tell, this little rabbit’s story.

In Chapter 23 of The Secrets of Eastcliff-by-the-Sea, “Tea Party,” Annaliese hosts a tea party for her three cousins and their sock monkeys. Nora, Nadine, and Nell Ann have a surprise for Annaliese … their mother gave their sock monkeys away! So how will the cousins be able to attend Great-Grandmama Easterling’s birthday party? Only the sock monkeys received invitations. 

It was a lovely tea party that Annaliese and Miss Pine set out for their guests. Throckmorton sat at the sock monkeys’ table, covered with a lace tablecloth and Throckmorton’s favorite doll dishes, “the ones with daffodils and aqua rabbits.”

“On a larger table, also set for four, a three-tier silver serving dish held dainty petit fours and finger sandwiches cut into hearts, diamonds, clubs, and spades. Devonshire cream, lemon curd, and rosy-red jam accompanied a basket of freshly baked currant scones.”

“Serving the catty cousins,” illustration copyright Sarah Jane Wright from The Secrets of Eastcliff-by-the-Sea, Beach Lane Books

One of the sources that provided inspiration for this tea party is The Anne of Green Gables Treasury (Carolyn Strom Collins, Christina Wyss Eriksson, Ruth Macdonald and David Macdonald, Penguin Books Canada Limited, 1991,) Chapter Five, “Tea Time.”

“The teas that are described most fully in the Anne books are of the special-occasion variety that consisted of treats such as sandwiches, fresh or preserved fruits, cheese, breads, cookies, cakes, pies, tarts, and other desserts. “A splendid tea,” as Anne described one of her Sunday School picnics, would have included those kinds of dishes as well as more substantial fare—meats, salads and vegetables. Extra-special treats such as ice cream assured the success of such occasions.”

The authors go on to say:

“A variety of tiny sandwiches served with the first cup of tea is a fitting beginning for any tea party. Finely textured white bread is most often used for tea sandwiches, but you can also choose whole wheat or light rye or a combination of breads. Slice the bread as thinly as you can—about 1/4 inch slices are ideal.”

Here’s a recipe for finger sandwiches from this cherished book.

_____________________________________

CHICKEN SALAD SANDWICHES

From: The Anne of Green Gables Treasury

1 cup finely chopped cooked chicken
1/4 cup finely chopped celery
1 hard-boiled egg, peeled and finely chopped
1 Tbsp finely chopped sweet pickle or sweet pickle relish
1 tsp finely chopped green onion
2 to 3 Tbsp mayonnaise
Salt and pepper to taste
6 thin slices bread
Butter, at room temperature

1. In a bowl, mix together the chicken, celery, egg, pickle, and green onions. Stir in the mayonnaise until you have a nice moist mixture. Add salt and pepper to taste. Keep the mixture in the refrigerator, covered, until you are ready ot make the sandwiches.
2. Butter each slice of bread on one side. Spread the filling on three of the buttered slices and top with the remaining slice of bread. Trim the crusts off the sandwiches and cut each sandwich into shapes.

Makes 3 whole sandwiches

On each of my many visits to Prince Edward Island, I made a special point to “do lunch” at Dalvay, always ordering the same thing: steamed Island mussels fresh from the sea, bread hot from the oven, and sticky date pudding with toffee sauce.

photo of Dalvay-by-the-Sea, Steven Garrity, Wikimedia Commons

In my imagination I lifted Dalvay — a Canadian National Historic House built in 1895 — and placed the majestic structure on the northeastern coast of Maine on “a high cliff above a frozen sea — far, far away from it all.” Unlike Dalvay, in my story Eastcliff-by-the-Sea is “old and not nearly as fine as it used to be.”

It was never my intention to include “Eastcliff-by-the-Sea” in the title of my book. However, late in the editorial revision process, the Marketing Department at Simon & Schuster decided they wanted a different title, departing from my original choice, Throckmorton: The Story of a Simply Remarkable Sock Monkey. My editor favored inclusion of the setting’s name and characterization of the book’s plot as a mystery. Thus, a new title was born.

Resources:

Learn more about, and see pictures of, Dalvay-by-the-Sea. Note the Anne of Green Gables video connection, also the fact that the original Dalvay estate had horses, a stable, and carriages.

Here’s a rich history of Dalvay-by-the-Sea, including two granddaughters who became princesses!

Did my mention of sticky toffee pudding make your mouth water? Here’s the recipe!

Writing letters to family and friends is a way of saying how much you care about someone, taking the time to write your thoughts on paper, in your best penmanship, and sending it by post.

Here’s a moving TED Talk by Lakshmi Pratury, The Lost Art of Letter-Writing.