Ma Dear’s Aprons by Patricia C. McKissack, illustrations by Floyd Cooper, 1997.
Young David Earl’s mother, called Ma Dear, has a different apron for every day of the week, and David can always tell what day it is and what the task of the day is by which one his mother is wearing.
On Monday, she likes to wear her blue apron because that’s wash day, and she keeps clothespins in the pocket of that apron. After she’s done with the laundry, she has time to talk to David Earl, and she tells him about his father, who died as a soldier.
On Tuesday, she wears her yellow apron, when she does her ironing. On Wednesday, they deliver the finished laundry to their clients, and Ma Dear gives David Earl a treat from the hidden “treasure pocket” in her green apron.
On Thursday, Ma Dear wears her pink apron, and they pick vegetables and visit people who are sick or elderly at their homes. On Friday, Ma Dear cleans the house of another family, so she wears her brown apron. David Earl comes along, and she sings to him while she works. Saturday is for baking pies to sell, so she wears her flowered apron. She also gives David Earl a bath on Saturdays.
The best day of all, though, is Sunday. Ma Dear doesn’t work on Sunday, so she doesn’t wear an apron
My Reaction
The book starts with an author’s note, explaining that the characters in this story are based on her own family. “Ma Dear” was the nickname of her great-grandmother, Leanna, and Leanna was a single mother in Alabama during the early 1900s, who earned money by doing laundry, cooking, and cleaning for other people, like Ma Dear in the story. The story is about the family stories told to Patricia C. McKissack about her great-grandmother and how she made time for her children, even when she was tired from working hard. The aprons in the story are like one that Patricia McKissack inherited that used to belong to Leanna.
The author’s note, which I would have probably ignored when I was kid because I was too eager to get into the story, made this story better for me. I liked the explanation that this was a family story about a real person. The aprons are a device to help readers connect to memories of the real Ma Dear, similar to how the girls in Aunt Flossie’s Hats (And Crab Cakes Later) hear family stories and memories because they’re associated with the hats in their aunt’s collection. It’s a sweet way to share family memories.
I also like the soft, old-fashioned pictures that accompany the story. Their softness and sometimes slightly blurred quality help create the mood of memories.
More Than Anything Else by Marie Bradby, pictures by Chris K. Soentpiet, 1995.
Young Booker lives with his family in a little cabin, and every morning, before the sun is up, he goes to work with his father and brother. They work at the saltworks, shoveling salt into barrels, and it’s hard, tiring work.
There is something on young Booker’s mind, though. More than anything else, he wants to learn how to read. One evening, he sees a black man reading aloud from a newspaper to a group of listeners, and he wishes that he could read like that himself. It inspires him that the man is black, like himself, showing that reading isn’t just something for white people.
Booker tells his mother how badly he wants to learn to read. His mother can’t read herself, but somehow, she manages to find a book for him to study. Booker tries to figure out how to read by studying the letters in the book, but he just can’t figure out it by himself.
Then, Booker thinks of someone who could help him: the man who was reading the newspaper. Before Booker can learn to read, he needs some help from someone who already knows.
My Reaction
The boy in the story is a young Booker T. Washington. The book doesn’t refer to him by his full name in the story because it’s told from his perspective and because, when he was young, he was never referred to by a surname and was only known as Booker. We only get his first name, but the book summary makes it clear that it is Booker T. Washington, the famous African American educator, who lived from 1856 to 1915 and was the first principal of the Tuskegee Normal School, which later became Tuskegee University. He was born into slavery, but he was freed as a child during the Civil War.
I’m not sure whether the description of how he learned to read from this story actually happened in real life. From what I’ve read, he learned to read at a school managed by the Freedmen’s Bureau. Another account that I read said that he wanted to learn to read after seeing white children going to school and that his mother got him a book that taught him basic reading and writing. I don’t know whether he was ever inspired by seeing a black man reading a newspaper, but I couldn’t find anything about it. Because I’ve read some differing accounts, I think that either Booker’s exact inspiration for learning to read is unknown or that there were multiple influences in his early education, with different people putting emphasis on different aspects.
I liked the story, although it doesn’t explain more about Booker T. Washington’s life. I think it would have been more educational if it explained to readers what he did when he grew up, showing how he became a teacher and influenced others’ lives and education. It’s a little disappointing that kids can read the story as it is without really understanding who Booker T. Washington was and what he did. A section of historical information in the back of the book would have helped add context to the story. The story in the book simply ends at the point where Booker learns to write his own name, but I think that showing how this simple accomplishment in basic reading and writing started him on a path to greater accomplishments.
Light in the Darkness by Lesa Cline-Ransome, illustrated by James E. Ransome, 2013.
As the subtitle of the book says, this is “A Story About How Slaves Learned in Secret.” During the history of slavery in the United States, slaves were often forbidden to learn to read, and there were punishments for people who taught slaves to read. These anti-literacy laws were the norm for most people prior to the Civil War. However, there were some slaves who managed to acquire some basic reading and writing skills in secret, in spite of the anti-literacy laws, and that is what this story is about.
The story is told from the point of view of a young slave, Rosa. Rosa’s mother wakes her in the middle of the night, and they sneak out to go to the secret reading and writing lessons. They have to be careful because there are patrollers out, looking for runaways and slaves who are doing what they’re doing.
The risks are serious because slaves are whipped for learning how to read. Rosa and the other slaves were once forced to watch a girl being given a lash for each letter she learned. The slaves who go to this secret school know that the same thing will happen to them if the patrollers catch them and turn them in to their master.
The man teaching the secret school, Morris, was taught to read Bible stories by his master’s wife when he was young, although nobody expected him to teach other slaves. Morris’s “school” is an improvised pit hut, a pit dug in the ground and covered over with branches. He uses sticks to show his students the shapes of the letters by the light of a lantern.
During the day, the slaves who go to this secret school have to proceed with their usual chores and pretend like they don’t know anything about reading and writing at all. By night, they help each other learn their letters. It’s a slow process, and sometimes, they can’t hold the school because they know that patrollers are traveling the area, and it’s too dangerous. However, they keep coming back when they can because this is important to them. They are doing something that their masters don’t think they’re bright enough to do, and they know that this secret knowledge will be an important tool in their eventual quest for freedom.
My Reaction
I thought that this was a good book, focusing on a particular area of history that isn’t always explored in detail in other sources. I’ve read other books that refer to slaves, both real and fictional, as having found ways to read in secret, but this book focuses solely on that process, how they managed it, how they organized others to participate, what the risks were, and what it meant to them. There is an Author’s Note in the back of the book, which explains that the author was doing research for a book about Frederick Douglass when she found a reference to “pit schools”, like the one in the story, where slaves would meet in secret for lessons from each other. I had never heard about pit schools before, and I found the concept fascinating.
The subject of education and literature is a particular sore point for me when it comes to the Confederacy, and I’m sure I’ve mentioned it before. Slavery apologists sometimes talked about how slave owners treated slaves like “family” and taught them to read and gave them Bible lessons, etc. These claims have been made since the 19th century, and you can see it in plantation or “anti-Tom” literature, including some 19th century and early 20th century books for children. (I discussed this earlier in my list of Books from the 1850s, the decade when Uncle Tom’s Cabin was published. “Anti-Tom” literature was a direct response to that book.) However, such lessons were actually forbidden by law in most slave-owning areas. There were exceptions to this rule, like Phillis Wheatley in the 18th century and Frederick Douglass in the 19th century, but the reason why these people became famous was because they were the relatively rare exceptions. Only a small percentage of slaves ever achieved any level of literacy, and of those who did, few received any help from their masters or their masters’ family because the practice was discouraged more than encouraged, with laws and punishments in place against it. In real life, Frederick Douglass received some basic lessons in reading and letter recognition from the wife of one of his masters, but that ended when his master found out about it and made his wife stop.
I never believe those stories about slaves and masters being just one big, happy family or the assertion that it was common for masters to benevolently educate their slaves to better their lives because I already know that was not at all the case for the vast majority, by design, with intention, and enforced by law. The “history” books produced by the United Daughters of the Confederacy particularly try to create this impression of slavery as a benevolent institution, but actual benevolent institutions do not have laws that specifically restrict both the personal development and freedom of movement of the people they serve with harsh physical punishments for violations. I resent the mere existence of these history books and the organization that produced them because I resent anyone who lies to me (whether directly or indirectly or even by omission or implication) about anything important, and it is personally insulting to me that they would think I would ever be dumb enough buy that bunk. I’m sure they didn’t mean it as a personal insult to me because they’ve been doing it since long before I was born. I’m sure they have no idea who I am and couldn’t care less about me as a person, but at the same time, the fact that they did it at all carries an implied insult to anyone who may potentially believe them or is pressured to read and believe them. They must either think very little of other people’s intelligence or simply never think about other people outside of their own family lineage at all except as resources to be used or manipulated for social aggrandizement. I don’t blame people for merely having ancestors who owned slaves, but when someone works hard to make me believe that slavery wasn’t bad, that their ancestors weren’t bad for doing things they admittedly did, that I don’t really know the things I actually do know about that, and that I should not only be respectful but reverent toward these people and their institutions, I blame them a lot, specifically for that. When I was young and found out about censorship, propaganda, and book burnings, I daydreamed about writing something that would personally offend this type of person as much as they offended me, and it seems like the best way to do that is just by telling the truth about history.
Although some people like to think of people in the past, especially their own ancestors and family, as being above average, most people are average, by definition. It’s not that it never happened, because I know that it did in rare cases, but most people are simply not rare exceptions. If they were, the average would have looked very different indeed, and those anti-literacy laws would not have existed in the first place, but that’s just not the reality. The reality is that those laws did exist, and most people both followed and enforced them because they both agreed with them and feared the consequences of disobedience. Most people, by definition, are basically average, and this is just what the basic average was. The average slave-holder was harsh, punitive, anti-education, and far more interested in what they could get out of their slaves than in the slaves themselves because that was the entire reason for having them in the first place.
Plantations were not non-profit organizations, and they were not run like non-profits as tools for the welfare and social betterment of clients. Non-profits serve others. Slave owners forced other people to serve them, and that’s seriously all there is to it. Slave owners were takers, not givers, although I’m sure that they engaged in occasional public philanthropy for the social cred because one of their primary goals was climbing that all-important social ladder and maintaining their place on it. Plantations were family businesses for the wealth and social betterment of the families who owned them, designed to maximize profits, and the profits were meant entirely for the owners and no one else.
In the story, Morris becomes a teacher for the other slaves because he is the rare exception among them, having had lessons from his master’s wife when he was young. Most were not given any lessons at all, and both the slaves and their potential teachers could face serious consequences if they were caught. Everyone knows that, if Morris is caught teaching the others, he will be punished much worse than the rest of them. They’re all taking a serious risk, but Morris is in the most danger if they are discovered.
Bamboo by Paul Yee, illustrated by Shaoli Wang, 2006.
Bamboo is a young farmer. He falls in love with a girl called Ming and marries her. His brother, Banyan, approves of the marriage, but Banyan’s wife, Jin, doesn’t like Ming. When Bamboo and Ming marry, Ming gives Bamboo some bamboo seedlings, and they plant a bamboo grove.
The two couples, Bamboo and his wife and Banyan and his wife, tend the farm together, although Jin complains frequently about the farm work. Then, Jin gives birth to a son, and Bamboo thinks that their growing family can use more land. He decides to go to the New World to earn more money to buy land.
Although the two brother have shared the farmland between them, Jin convinces Banyan to claim the best parts of the farm for them while Bamboo is gone. Her argument is that Bamboo will likely return rich, and Banyan needs to provide for his family. They leave very little for Ming to use to support herself in Bamboo’s absence.
However, the bamboo that Bamboo and Ming planted is magical, and it tills the soil for Ming. When Jin discovers that, she tries to steal the bamboo poles, but they hit her instead. In retaliation, she gets Banyan to throw the poles in the river. Ming cuts a new pole, and it helps her by carrying water. Angrily, Jin gets Banyan to destroy all the bamboo, but Ming’s field still grows rice, and the bamboo grows back.
Bamboo writes to Ming that he is returning with gold, but then, she gets word that his ship has sunk. Still holding onto hope that he will return, she keeps going to the dock to wait for him. The kind villagers bring her food while she waits, but Jin eats it. While Jin is eating, her young son falls in the water, and Ming jumps in to help him. She saves the boy, but she is swept away by the current.
However, Bamboo saves her, and Ming discovers that Bamboo and the others on his ship were rescued by the bamboo poles that Banyan threw in the river.
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.
My Reaction and Spoilers
This story is written in the style of a folk tale or fairy tale, although I don’t think it is a folk tale. The book didn’t mention that it was based on a folk tale or a retelling of an old story. It does have some similarities to fairy tales, with the cruel, greedy, and jealous relative; the kind and patient woman who is mistreated; and magical objects that help the good woman with her problems.
The trip to the “New World” and finding gold sounds a little more modern than most folk tales and fairy tales, like something that might have happened in the 19th century, but the idea of the husband being away on a long journey sets up the situation for what happens to his wife while he’s away. Like in fairy tales, everything works out for the best in the end. The bamboo poles that Banyan threw in the river save his life when they reach him, and when Ming saves her young nephew’s life, Jin apologizes for the way she’s been treating her. The story’s familiar themes are comforting. Readers can be confident that there will be a happy ending, and I liked it that the very act of throwing the bamboo poles in the river, which was meant to be a punishing act, is what saves the day.
Mooncakes by Loretta Seto, illustrated by Renne Benoit, 2013.
A young girl is excited because tonight is special, and she will be allowed to stay up late and eat mooncakes with her parents for the Chinese Moon Festival. They decorate with paper lanterns, and they spend the evening looking at the night sky from their backyard.
Her parents, called Mama and Baba, tell her stories from Chinese legends. The book includes the stories they tell, like the story of Chang-E (who was a woman who escaped from her cruel husband with the elixir of life and now lives in the Jade Palace on the moon), the story of the woodcutter Wu-Gang (who chops wood forever on the moon in his quest for eternal life), and the story of the Jade Rabbit (who lives on the moon with three magicians and brings food to people who need it).
As they tell stories, the girl and her parents drink tea and eat mooncakes. The girl tries to look for the characters that they talk about on the moon until it’s time for bed.
There’s an Author’s Note in the back of the book that explains a little more about the Chinese Moon Festival. It’s a harvest festival that takes place in the eighth month of the lunar calendar. It also honors family, and even family members who can’t be together will remember that the rest of their family is looking at the same moon, no matter where they are.
My Reaction
I know that I’m presenting this story out of season because the Chinese Moon Festival is in autumn. Because it’s based on the lunar calendar, it sometimes happens in September and sometimes in October. I did my review at this time of year because it fit best with my blog’s schedule.
I enjoyed experiencing this lovely festival through the eyes of a young girl, having a gentle celebration with her parents. It’s an idyllic evening of cozy story-telling, and I really enjoyed the three folktales introduced in the book! I enjoy folk tales from different countries, and I liked these brief stories. I think this book would make a good beginning introduction to Chinese folklore for young children.
The focus of the story and the pictures in the book alternate between the stories the parents tell and the girl and her parents as they enjoy their evening together. I think this would make a great bedtime story.
The Korean Cinderella by Shirley Climo, illustrated by Ruth Heller, 1993.
In this Korean version of the classic Cinderella story, a couple who live in a little cottage have a daughter they call Pear Blossom. Pear Blossom is a lovely girl, and when her mother dies, her father thinks that he should remarry, so he will have a wife to help care for his daughter.
The village matchmaker matches him with a widow who also has a daughter, a girl called Peony. However, after the marriage, it becomes clear that Pear Blossom’s new “mother” doesn’t like her, and her new “sister” doesn’t either. Her stepmother and stepsister are jealous of her, so they nitpick everything she does and make her do all the chores. As Pear Blossom’s father’s health worsens, he is less able to interfere with their mistreatment of Pear Blossom, and the stepmother schemes to find a way to get rid of Pear Blossom entirely.
The stepmother keeps assigning Pear Blossom chores that she thinks will be impossible for her to complete, but various animals take pity on her and help her. A frog helps her to fill a jug that has a leak by plugging the leak, and some sparrows help her to hull a massive amount of rice.
One day, Pear Blossom’s stepmother and stepsister go to a festival in the village, leaving Pear Blossom at home. The stepmother says that she can only go to the festival if she weeds the rice paddies first. However, a huge black ox appears out of a whirlwind and takes care of the task for her!
On her way to the festival, Pear Blossom sees the handsome magistrate but accidentally loses one of her sandals as she gets embarrassed and runs away. The lost sandal helps the magistrate to find Pear Blossom at the festival, and he declares that he wants to marry her.
There is an Author’s Note in the back of the book about the background of this fairy tale, and the author notes that there are multiple Korean versions of this story. There’s also an Illustrator’s Note that discusses the style of the illustrations. It explains about how designs that appear in the illustrations are based on designs from Korean temples, and there is also information about the clothing the characters wear.
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.
My Reaction
Shirley Climo has written multiple picture books about versions of the Cinderella story form around the world, and it’s fascinating to see how a story that so many of us recognize varies from country to country while still maintaining the same basic pattern. An aspect of this particular version of the story that Climo explains in her Author’s Note is that the animals that help Pear Blossom in the story are sent by a kind of “goblin” called a tokgabi or doggabi. The story itself says this, but in folklore, this kind of “goblin” can represent the benevolent spirit of someone who has died. In this story, the spirit might be Pear Blossom’s mother. This explanation makes sense to me because I remember reading something similar about the Chinese version of the Cinderella story. The story of Rhodopis, which Climo retold in The Egyptian Cinderella, may be the oldest form of the Cinderella story, and it doesn’t have that element of the girl’s deceased mother helping her through trials until she finds happiness, but it does put the concept of the Fairy Godmother from European version of the story in a different light.
This is another children’s picture book where I appreciated the notes from the author and illustrator because they add more depth to the story. When I was a kid, I never read notes like that because I was only interested in the story itself, but notes like this make the book more appealing for older readers.
The Persian Cinderella by Shirley Climo, art by Robert Florczak, 1999.
This is a Persian version of the classic Cinderella story.
There is a lovely girl named Settareh, a name that means “star” because she has a star-shaped birthmark. Her mother died shortly after she was born, so she has grown up with a stepmother, two stepsisters and some aunts and cousins. Her father leaves her to the women of the family to raise, but she is often ignored and neglected by them. Her stepsisters are jealous that she is pretty and are mean to her.
Then, one day, her father visits the women and gives them each some money to buy cloth for new clothes because the princes is inviting everyone to his palace to celebrate the New Year. However, in the market, Settareh spends her money on other things and has none left to buy cloth. She spends part of her money for something to eat because she’s hungry, and then, she gives some to a poor beggar woman as an act of kindness. Finally, she finds herself compelled to buy a strange blue jug. Her stepsisters tell her that she was a fool for buying the jug, which has an obvious crack in it and for wasting the money that she was supposed to spend on cloth, but Settareh still loves the little blue jug.
Then, Settareh discovers that the jug has a fairy inside and has the ability to grant wishes! Although her relatives think that Settareh won’t be able to attend the festival at the palace because she doesn’t have anything appropriate to wear, Settareh secretly asks the jug for a special gown and comes to the festival anyway. People at the festival don’t recognize her and think that she’s a visiting princess, and she catches the eye of the prince. However, she leaves the party quickly so she can return home before her family, accidentally losing a diamond anklet as she runs away. One of the prince’s servants finds it and gives it to the prince, who begins to search for the girl who wore it.
When the prince finds Settareh, he proposes to her, but Settareh’s jealous stepsisters scheme to get rid of her and take the magic jug for themselves! Settareh will need the prince’s help to escape!
There is an Author’s Note in the back, explaining more about this version of the story, which comes from The Arabian Nights, and some background information to the story, including a little about the New Year festival of No Ruz in the story, which is still celebrated in Iran. There is also an Artist’s Note about the style of the artwork.
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.
My Reaction and Spoilers
I enjoyed this Persian version of the Cinderella story! I like Shirley Climo’s picture book series showing different versions of Cinderella stories from around the world, including The Egyptian Cinderella and The Korean Cinderella. One of the parts of this story I found the most interesting is that the story doesn’t end when the prince finds the girl who attended his party, as so many other versions of the story do. There is one last obstacle for the couple to overcome, when Settareh’s mean stepsisters use the magic of the jug to turn Settareh into a bird, until she flies to the prince, and he changes her back. I don’t now whether adding one more obstacle to the story enhances it that much, but I appreciated it as an interesting twist. It also resolves the matter of the jug because, while it grants the stepsisters’ evil wish, their wish also destroys the jug, so the wishing is over.
The artwork in the book is beautiful. The artist tried to make the art style as authentically Persian as possible, using models for the characters who were ethnically Persian (Iranian). The artist used a combination of water-based markers, colored pencils, and ink, and pictures are lively and full of color.
The Princess and the Warrior by Duncan Tonatiuh, 2016.
This story is a folktale about the origins of a pair of volcanoes near modern Mexico City.
The Aztec emperor had a beautiful daughter, Princess Izta, and there were many men who wanted to marry her. They gave her many wonderful gifts, but Princess Izta wasn’t impressed by any of them.
The man she loved was a warrior called Popoca. Unlike her other suitors, he really loved her for the person she was. The emperor disapproved of Princess Izta marrying a warrior who wasn’t from a wealthy, influential, or royal family, but he also knew that Popoca was brave and a good warrior. Their kingdom was at war with a neighboring kingdom, led by Jaguar Claw, so the emperor promised Popoca that, if he could defeat Jaguar Claw, he would allow him to marry Princss Izta.
There were hard battles against Jaguar Claw, but Jaguar Claw gradually realized that he would lose the war. As a final act of revenge before defeat, he sent a messenger to tell Princess Izta that Popoca was dead. Worse still, the messenger gave Princess Izta a potion that would supposedly help her with her shock but which put her into a deep sleep.
When Popoca finally returned victorious, he was shocked and grieved to find Princess Itza in a deep sleep, from which nobody seemed able to wake her. He sat by her side, waiting for her to wake up. The story is based around the two volcanoes, one which looks like a sleeping woman and is dormant, and the other which looks like it’s sitting upright and shows signs of activity.
There’s an author’s note in the back of the book about the origins of the legend and how this version of it differs from other versions and about the volcanoes that inspired the story, Iztaccihuatl and Popocatepetl. There’s also a glossary of Nahuatl words used in the story.
My Reaction
I hadn’t heard this story before, but I enjoy folktales from around the world! The art style is fascinating, incorporating aspects of traditional Aztec art, such as showing things in a very two-dimensional style and human beings in profile. Even though there is fighting depicted in the story, it isn’t too graphic for children
When I was a kid, I would never read author’s notes, but I appreciate them as an adult, especially in cases like this, where they provide more information about the background of legends. This picture book is meant for children, but it can also be fascinating for adults, especially with the addition of the background information.
Amelia Bedelia is just starting her new job as a maid with Mr. and Mrs. Rogers! Mr. and Mrs. Rogers can’t be there to supervise her on her first day, but Mrs. Rogers leaves her a list of things to do and tells her to do exactly what the list says. Little does Mrs. Rogers know just how literal Amelia Bedelia can be!
When Amelia Bedelia reads that she’s suppose to “change the towels”, she thinks that she’s supposed to change the way they look instead of replacing them with new ones. To Amelia Bedelia “dust the furniture” means to add dust to the furniture instead of removing it. The instruction to “draw the drapes” sounds like she should draw a picture of them instead of closing them.
When Mr. and Mrs. Rogers return to see how Amelia Bedelia is doing, they are shocked at what she’s done!
There is only one thing that can save Amelia Bedelia’s job: her ability to make an amazing lemon meringue pie!
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.
My Reaction
This is the very first book in the Amelia Bedelia series, and I remember reading it when I was a kid. The point of the Amelia Bedelia books is to introduce kids to expressions and words that have multiple meanings. They’re pretty funny to read, although even as a kid, I had trouble believing some of the phrases that Amelia Bedelia takes literally. For example, when she “dusts” the furniture, she thinks that Mrs. Rogers should have told her to “undust” the furniture instead. I see what the author is saying, that it’s funny that we say “dust” the furniture when we’re actually removing dust instead of adding it, but I’ve never heard anybody in real life use the term “undust” the furniture. Amelia Bedelia is funny, but sometimes, it seems like it’s reaching a little to find terms she can credibly misinterpret.
I also don’t think I fully understood the parts about trimming the fat on the steak and dressing the chicken as a kid because I wasn’t used to cooking. I think I got the concept that she was supposed to cut the fat off the steak rather than decorate it as one might trim a Christmas tree (a concept that Amelia Bedelia interprets the opposite way in her Christmas story). What she was supposed to do with the chicken she ended up “dressing” in clothes was a little more confusing. When I was a kid, I knew that people make stuffing or dressing to put in poultry, like chicken or turkey, when they cook it, or they can rub herbs and spices under the skin for flavoring, and I think that’s what Amelia Bedelia was supposed to do here. Even so, there are different types of stuffing or dressing to make and different mixtures of herbs and spices to use, and Mrs. Rogers doesn’t say what kind she wants. Of course, if she was more specific, Amelia Bedelia couldn’t have gotten so confused, and that’s really the point of the story.
I don’t know whether any teachers still use Amelia Bedelia books as examples of words and phrases with multiple meanings, but they are fun in that fashion. A good accompanying activity for these books is a project that I had when I was in school and that I’ve heard students still do – explain how to make a peanut butter sandwich (or any other kind of sandwich) to someone from another planet, who has no idea what a sandwich is or how to make one. Students doing this activity need to be as careful and detailed as they can because some phrases are easy to misinterpret if you assume that the person you’re talking to has no idea how anything works. I remember my old teacher would act out our instructions literally, almost like Amelia Bedelia. For example, if you said, “Put peanut butter on bread” without saying that you need to open the jar first and remove the peanut butter from the jar with a knife, the teacher would set the whole jar of peanut butter on top of the bread and just stare at it. If you explain the peanut butter sandwich instructions well enough that there’s no room for misinterpretation, you may have a future in technical writing!
The pattern established in this first book continues through other books in the series. In many other Amelia Bedelia stories, Amelia Bedelia misinterprets instructions she’s given by taking things too literally or misunderstanding words with multiple meanings, but she always manages to keep her job because she’s really good at baking and makes cakes, pies, and other treats that Mr. and Mrs. Rogers love.
If you read the 50th Anniversary edition of the book, there’s a section in the back about the Amelia Bedelia series and how it’s changed over the years!
A My Name is Alice by Jane Bayer, pictures by Steven Kellogg, 1984.
I remember this book from when I was a kid! I always liked the pictures in the book, which are by Steven Kellogg, who also did the pictures for The Day Jimmy’s Boa Ate the Wash.
This book isn’t a story. It’s based on a talking game that’s often played on car rides called A My Name is Alice or Alphabet Chant. Like many casual folk games or childhood playground/car games, it goes by different names and has variable rules. In the back of the book, the author, Jane Bayer, says that she learned the game on a playground when she was a child in the 1950s. When she played it, they would bounce a ball while playing. This book was a favorite of mine when I was little because it was the first place I learned about this game.
This game is an alphabet game where players have to follow the alphabet, giving the names of people, objects, and places all according to which letter of the alphabet they were currently on, using the following format: “(Letter) my name is (female name) and my husband’s name is (male name). We come from (place name), and we sell (object name).” (Because the rules vary, some people who have played this game with a slightly different format, possibly using the male name first.) First, you give all A names and words in this format, then you do the same for the letter B, then C, and so on to the end of the alphabet. (Or until you reach your destination, get stuck, get bored, etc.)
The fun of the game is that you can be as silly as you want with the names, places, and things to sell. The challenge is that it’s harder to think of names, places, and objects for certain letters than it is for others. Many kids playing this name will use the most common words they can think of first, took keep the game going quickly. However, the author deliberately goes for silly and unusual, which makes the book and the pictures fun and interesting.
She also adds the element that all of the “people” she’s talking about are animals, and the types of animals they are also fits the alphabet theme. It can be difficult to think of animals for certain letters of the alphabet, but again, she goes for the unusual ones. The husband/wife pairs being named aren’t always the same animal, either. When they match, it’s usually because it was too difficult to come up with two different animal names for particular letters. The types of animals are given under each picture.
X is always the most difficult letter in an alphabet game because there aren’t many words or names that start with X. However, I liked the way the author dealt with it, just using aliens!
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.
Jestress's Forgotten Books and Stories 