Posted on by TracyC · 1 Comment

Mailing May

MailingMay

Mailing May by Michael O. Tunnell, 1997.

Four-year-old Charlotte May lives in a small town in Idaho in 1914. May, as her family calls her, wants to visit her grandmother in another town, but travel during this time is difficult and expensive. With a lack of roads that are easy to travel, the only comfortable way to get to May’s grandmother’s town is by train. Unfortunately, May’s family can’t afford to buy a train ticket for her.

MailingMayParents

May wants so badly to go see her grandmother that she even asks at the local general store if the owner can hire her, but he doesn’t have any work that a little girl could do.  Then, May’s mother’s cousin helps the family to find a more affordable alternative. If May can’t travel as a passenger, is it possible for her to travel as . . . mail?

MailingMayPostOffice

It turns out that the rate for mailing a live package the size of May is much cheaper than the fee for a passenger ticket.  Because May’s mother’s cousin works in the mail car on the train, he could take responsibility for her during the trip.  So, with a label on her clothes, declaring her to be “baby chicks” and the proper postage stuck to her jacket, May undertakes the journey to her unsuspecting grandmother’s house.

MailingMayTrain
MailingMayMailCar

This story was based on a real incident. In fact, May wasn’t the only child to be sent through the mail when their parents couldn’t afford to send them as passengers. I also like the book for its glimpse at travel and mail services over 100 years ago.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.

MailingMayGrandmother
Posted on by TracyC

The Mysteries of Harris Burdick

HarrisBurdick

The Mysteries of Harris Burdick by Chris Van Allsburg, 1984.

Harris Burdick isn’t exactly a mystery story, not even really a story exactly, but it is mysterious.  Most of the book is pictures, and that’s kind of the point.  The premise of the book is that a mysterious stranger known only as Harris Burdick approached a publisher about some stories that he had written and illustrated.  As examples of his work, he gave the publisher a collection of illustrations he had done for each of his stories with accompanying captions.  The publisher loved the illustrations, but Harris Burdick didn’t keep his appointment to bring in the complete stories the next day.  When the publisher tried to contact him about the stories, he was never able to find Harris Burdick and never heard from him again.  However, the publisher continued to be intrigued by the pictures and wondered what the stories were like, so his children and their friends wrote their own stories about them.  The pictures are therefore presented as a collection, and readers are invited to imagine the stories that they are part of.

HarrisBurdickAnotherPlace

I remember one of my teachers using this book as part of a writing exercise, having us each choose a picture and write the accompanying story as we imagined it.  Over the years, I’ve changed my mind about which picture is my favorite.

HarrisBurdickLibrary

I thought for awhile that “The House on Maple Street” could have inspired the author himself in writing Zathura, the sequel to his other book, Jumanji, although there is apparently no direct link between the two.

HarrisBurdickHouse

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.  There is also a collection of stories called The Chronicles of Harris Burdick in which well-known authors present their own versions of each of the stories.

HarrisBurdickVenice