Posted on by TracyC

Imagine a Day

Imagine a Day by Sarah L. Thomson, paintings by Rob Gonsalves, 2005.

This book celebrates the power of imagination and invites readers to use their imaginations, envisioning things that are impossible but amazing!

There isn’t exactly a story to the book. Each page poses something for readers to imagine with an accompanying picture where the shifts from the real world to the imaginary or impossible one are shown.

Each of the illustrations is surreal, with perspective changes from the real to the unreal.

The book invites readers to imagine powerful and amazing things, like “when grace and daring are all we need to build a bridge”, “when you forget how to fall”, “when we build a moat not to keep strangers out, but to welcome them in”, “when everything you build touches the sky”, “when you build the world around you piece by piece”, or “when the edge of the map is only the beginning of what we can explore.” All of this amazing things are things that could happen on a wonderful day! Just imagine a day like that!

The best part of the book is the end when we “Imagine a day … when a book swings open on silent hinges, and a play you’ve never seen before welcomes you home. Imagine … today.” Books are a key that unlocks a person’s imagination!

My Reaction

The pictures are amazing, and they really make the book! The pictures use perspective to shift the characters and their actions from the ordinary world to the extraordinary! Fence posts or toy blocks gradually morph into buildings. Streets become rivers, and rivers become trees. People on swings or bikes start off on the ground and end up above the trees! I’ve shown a number of pictures from this book to show you what they’re like, but there are many more to enjoy!

The pictures are fascinating to look at, and each of them seems like it could represent the beginning of a story. In that way, the book reminds me a little of The Mysteries of Harris Burdick. The things the book invites readers to imagine are positive, inspiring, and uplifting, and I think this book would be good to use for a story-writing prompts. Even adults can find this enchanting book inspirational for their creative powers!

Posted on by TracyC

Rules of Summer

Rules of Summer by Shaun Tan, 2013.

The book starts with the phrase, “This is what I learned last summer:” On every page, there’s a different “rule of summer”, something that the kid and his brother learned from their summer adventures.

However, they’re not having the ordinary kind of summer adventures. He apparently learned not to leave a red sock on the clothesline when a giant red rabbit appeared, and he learned not to drop his jar when he and his brother were catching falling stars.

The pictures show all kinds of strange things happening, like a giant lizard and weird plants spilling into the living room, which apparently taught the boy not to leave the back door open overnight and a tornado that came after the boy stepped on a snail.

At the end of the book, the two boys sit in front of their tv with pictures of all the strange creatures they’ve seen pinned to the wall. Are they pictures from the boys’ imagination or memories of a fantastic summer?

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

My Reaction

The book is set in a gritty, urban environment where some surreal things happen. Either that, or the surreal adventures all take place in the boys’ imaginations. They could be turning regular adventures in the city where they live into sci-fi, dystopian epics. There is no backstory to anything in the book, so it’s all up to the readers’ imaginations whether anything in the book actually happened or not.

Their world may be post-apocalyptic (at least in their imaginations), peopled by all kinds of strange creatures and robots. There are no other humans in the book other than the boys. I don’t really like gritty or dystopian style books or art, but this book appealed to me because it leaves so much up to the imagination, including whether or not the boys just imagined everything. To me, the last picture, where the boys are just sitting in front of their tv with pictures they’ve drawn all over the walls suggest that they imagined their fantastic summer adventures, but that’s never clarified. In fact, there are a couple of additional pictures after the story ends that suggest maybe it wasn’t all imagination, but you can make up your own mind.

Posted on by TracyC

Matilda

Matilda by Roald Dahl, 1988.

Matilda is an exceptional child, a young genius with amazing talents, but her parents are dull and self-centered, and they never notice. They can’t understand why she wants books when everybody else just watches television, her father prefers her brother Michael to her, and she is often neglected by her mother, who just wants to go out and play bingo. At a young age, she takes herself to the library to get her own books. She reads her way through all the children’s books in the library at age four, and she starts reading adult classics.

Her father hates it that Matilda likes books so much because he’s never been able to like or understand them. He prides himself on being clever, but he only uses his brain to come up with new ways to cheat the customers at his used car lot. Matilda maintains her sanity in this awful family by outsmarting them and playing pranks on them whenever they’ve been particularly nasty. Once, she uses superglue to stick her father’s hat to his head, and another time, she manages to convince her family that their house is haunted.

When Matilda is old enough to begin school, her teacher is the kind Miss Honey. Miss Honey’s is greatly impressed by Matilda’s abilities, realizing immediately that she is more advanced than other students her age. She is even more impressed when Matilda explains that she taught herself. The school’s headmistress is the mean and formidable Miss Trunchbull. Miss Trunchbull intimidates everyone, from the students to the teachers. When Miss Honey tries to tell Miss Trunchbull about Matilda’s unique abilities, Miss Trunchbull doesn’t want to hear about it. She knows Matilda’s father, and he’s always talking badly about Matilda, so Miss Trunchbull is prepared to believe the worst about her. She refuses to believe anything positive about her. Miss Honey thinks that Matilda should be put in a higher grade at school because she needs something mentally challenging, but Miss Trunchbull refuses to consider it.

Since Miss Honey can’t move Matilda up to a higher grade, she gives her higher level textbooks to study in class. She tries to talk to Matilda’s parents about her abilities, but they don’t want to heard about it, either. Matilda’s father only values skills that immediately produce money, and he doesn’t think Matilda’s abilities are likely to do that. Matilda’s mother thinks that the only thing that’s important for girls to do is look pretty so they can get good husbands who will provide them with money. Neither of Matilda’s parents think that a college education is important, and her father says that people learn bad habits at universities. Miss Honey points out that, if they were really in trouble, like if they were sick or needed legal help, they would turn to people with university educations, but it does no good. Miss Honey finds Matilda’s parents offensive and realizes that they are never going to do anything to help Matilda and that they don’t care about her future.

Meanwhile, Matilda and her new friend, Lavender, have discovered just how mean Miss Trunchbull is. She locks up misbehaving students and makes girls with pigtails cut their pigtails off for no other reason than she just hates pigtails. When Lavender plays a trick on Miss Trunchbull by putting a newt in her water, Miss Trunchbull, already expecting trouble from Matilda, decides that Matilda was the culprit. Matilda angrily protests that she didn’t do it, and suddenly, she makes Miss Trunchbull spill water on herself just by thinking about it and looking at her glass. Miss Trunchbull angrily accuses Matilda of having done that, too, but nobody can see how she could have when she was nowhere near Miss Trunchbull when that happened.

Later, Matilda confides in Miss Honey that she made it happen. Matilda’s intelligence has gotten beyond her, and she is starting to develop powers of telekinesis. She also realizes that it gets easier for her to use these abilities with practice. Miss Honey invites Matilda to the little cottage where she lives so they can talk more about it. They discuss trying some tests of Matilda’s abilities, but while they’re at the cottage, Matilda realizes that Miss Honey is actually very poor. Miss Honey reveals that Miss Trunchbull is actually her aunt, and not only has she been withholding her wages but she’s defrauded her of her inheritance. Matilda hatches a plan to use her powers to get justice for Miss Honey.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).

My Reaction

I saw the movie version of Matilda before I read the book, and I think the book is definitely better! It’s a favorite of many fans of cottagecore and light academia because it has elements of both. Matilda is a highly intelligent little girl whose incredible brain and love of books change her life forever. She loves to read books while drinking hot chocolate, and her Miss Honey, lives in a charming little cottage that reminds Matilda of fairy tales.

I love books that mention other books, and Matilda likes to talk about the books she likes. Her favorite children’s book is The Secret Garden, and she also likes adult classics, like books by Charles Dickens. She says that she’s also read books by C. S. Lewis and Tolkien, but she doesn’t like them as well as some others because they don’t have much humor in them. Matilda thinks it’s important that books for children have humor in them.

Humor is what makes Matilda such a fun book to read! Matilda is badly neglected by her parents, and Miss Trunchbull does some horrible things to the children at her school. In a story with a more serious tone, these things could be truly tragic or make readers angry at the injustice, but the horrible people in this story are played for humor. Their misdeeds are portrayed with whimsy. Matilda doesn’t waste time crying and only rarely gets angry, instead using her powerful mind to devise amusing punishments for the perpetrator and to change things for the better. Readers can relax and enjoy Matilda’s adventures, confident that, no matter what the antagonists dish out, she will always get the upper hand in the end.

In some ways, Matilda reminds me of an earlier children’s book called The Girl with the Silver Eyes because both books involve misunderstood girls with unusual abilities. However, they are not the same story. Matilda is more whimsical fantasy, and The Girl with the Silver Eyes is science fiction. Matilda’s unusual mental abilities come from her need to be intellectually challenged, while Katie, the girl in The Girl with the Silver Eyes, gets her abilities as a side effect of a medicine that her mother took while she was pregnant with her. Both girls frighten and intimidate people and sometimes use their abilities to get back at people who are mean to them, but in different ways. Both of them also begin to thrive when they find people who understand them, especially teachers who help them cultivate their abilities. In The Girl with the Silver Eyes, Katie also learns that there are other children like herself, but Matilda remains unique in her story.

Roald Dahl was opposed to any of his books being altered in any way, but in 2023, the publishers had some of the language in this book changed, particularly words related to appearance, such as skin color or people being fat. It was a controversial decision because of the author’s specific wishes against having his work changed, but the publishers insisted that it was necessary to “ensure that it can continue to be enjoyed by all today.” I can understand the purpose of some of the changes, although I don’t see why some others were changed. For people who want to compare the two versions, there are still plenty of copies of the original version available today. Check the printing date of the copy of your book to see which version it is. Updated books will be printed 2023 or later. The changes were also not implemented in all countries where this book was published. As of 2026, the United States, France, and the Netherlands have not implemented the changes.

Posted on by TracyC

In the Garden with Dr. Carver

In the Garden with Dr. Carver by Susan Grigsby, 2010.

This picture book is about George Washington Carver, as told by a young girl named Sally.

The first time Sally sees him is when he’s traveling with his wagon, pulled by a mule. Sally knows that Dr. Carver is a famous plant scientist from Tuskagee and that he uses his wagon as a kind of mobile school. It contains seeds, plants, and gardening tools, and people come to Dr. Carver for advice about growing plants. The nutrients in the soil of this area have been depleted by growing cotton, and Dr. Carver has been advising them about how to restore the soil. He also advises them about new ways to use common crops.

Dr. Carver visits Sally’s school to help the children with their garden. He teaches them how to use observation to notice the conditions that benefits plants and figure out how to help plants that aren’t doing well. When a boy is about to kill a spider, Dr. Carver stops him, pointing out that the spider helps their garden by eating bugs that are pests for the plants. He teaches the children that everything is part of an ecosystem (although he doesn’t use that word) and that they need to observe and understand the roles each plant and creature has in the ecosystem before deciding to eliminate or change anything. The reason why they remove weeds like dandelions is that their presence doesn’t help the other plants, and they take resources the other plants need. Although, he also shows them that dandelions are edible, so they are not wasted.

Dr. Carver teaches the children about restoring the nutrients in depleted soil using fertilizer and compost made from decaying plant matter and organic materials that most people simply throw away. Dr. Carver teaches them not to waste anything, helping them to make a scarecrow and markers for their plants from scraps of wood and other things people have thrown away.

Eventually, Dr. Carver has to return to Tuskagee, but the lessons he teaches the children stay with them.

There is a section at the back of the book that explains that Sally and her school are fictional, but George Washington Carver was a real person and the story is based around his life and writings. He was born as a slave in Missouri about a year before the abolition of slavery, so he grew up as a free person. He began learning about agriculture and botany from an early age, and as he grew older, he sought out schools that would help him further his knowledge and share it with others. He taught at Iowa State College before Booker T. Washington (see More Than Anything Else for a picture book about his youth) recruited him to be the head of Tuskagee‘s Department of Agriculture in 1896. He also believed in bringing education to people who couldn’t come to a college to learn by sending out bulletins about farming techniques and booklets for teachers in lower grades to use in their classrooms. His mobile school in a wagon was another form of outreach that has been imitated in other places.

My Reaction

I enjoy books about historical figures, and I found this story about George Washington Carver gentle and fascinating. There are some parts that I think I appreciate more as an adult than I would have as a child, making this a book that I think would appeal to readers across different ages and something that parents and teachers would enjoy sharing with children.

Although Sally wasn’t a real person, the lessons she and her classmates receive from George Washington Carver help to illustrate Carver’s real-life work and the lessons that he shared with people of his own time. I appreciated the level of detail the story provided about how people can use observational skills to diagnose and fix possible issues with ailing plants, the importance of understanding that plants exist as part of an ecosystem and that gardeners and farmers need to understand how all parts of the ecosystem interact, and how nutrients can be restored to depleted soil. I can’t remember whether I had heard before about how cotton farming depleted soil nutrients, but I appreciated how that explanation helped explain a real problem facing farmers of Carver’s time and how Carver was helping them to solve it.

I think this book would appeal to fans of cottagecore as well as people interested in American history. The illustrations are beautiful, and even the inner covers are lovely, with small, labeled pictures of plants and creatures. As the book explains, George Washington Carver himself used drawings of plants and creatures in his work, and in the story, he teaches the children to make their own drawings to help themselves study details of the natural world.

Posted on by TracyC

The Little House

The Little House by Virginia Lee Burton, 1942.

A family builds a strong little house in the countryside, dreaming of their descendants living in her. The little house is happy in the countryside, watching the changing seasons as the years come and go.

Over time, things begin to change, though. Other farms are built around the little house, but then, a big road is built, and the little farms gradually give way to suburbs.

Eventually, the houses around the little house turn into bigger houses and apartment buildings. As time goes on, the little house is no longer in the countryside or even the edge of the city, but it’s actually engulfed by the city itself.

The city becomes more and more crowded with taller and taller apartment buildings, more roads and trains, and crowds of peoples. The little house stands empty and becomes run-down. She can hardly see the sky and can’t feel the changing of the seasons the way she used to because there isn’t much nature around her to sense changing.

Fortunately, the little house is rescued from this terrible situation. One day, the great-great-granddaughter of the man who built the house spots the little house in the city and recognizes it as the one her family owned. When she and her husband look into it, they verify that this is her family’s old house, and they decide that they want to move it to the countryside, like when her family lived there.

Because the little house was built so strongly, they’re able to move it intact to the countryside. The little house is happy to once again live in the countryside with the family who always loved her!

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

My Reaction

This vintage picture book is about the nature of change. Growing cities do expand into the countryside around them, so a house that was once outside of the city is gradually touched by and then engulfed by the nearby city as it expands. Readers get the feelings of the house as the world around her changes. At first, she’s a little intrigued by the city and isn’t sure if she likes it or not, but as the city becomes overcrowded, the house is neglected, and she can no longer sense the seasons, she decides that she doesn’t like it. When things change for the house again, she is relieved.

I remember this story from when I was a kid, and I remember feeling sad when the poor house was run-down and neglected in the city, surrounded by the towering apartment buildings. However, the book has a good ending. Houses can be moved, and the family that once owned this house remembers it and rescues it from the city, moving it to the countryside, where they all feel more at home. Things change, but sometimes, they change for the better. The house can’t move itself when it isn’t happy, but the family gives it the help and attention it needs.

When I reread this book as an adult, it suddenly occurred to me that this book was originally published during WWII, when the world was changing in some very scary ways. I think a book like this might have been reassuring to children of that time. Life is full of changes, but sometimes, things can change for the better again.

Posted on by TracyC · 2 Comments

What To Do About Alice?

What To Do About Alice? by Barbara Kerley, illustrated by Edwin Fotheringham, 2008.

Theodore Roosevelt had done many things in his life, from herding cattle to hunting grizzly bears, but one thing he could never seem to do was manage his daughter, Alice. From early childhood, Alice was a lively girl, always having things she wanted to do and places to go. She called it, “eating up the world.”

Alice’s mother died when she was a baby, only two days after she was born. The loss was very difficult for her father, and people felt sorry for Alice. However, since Alice had no memories of her mother, she didn’t feel the loss so much, and she didn’t want people to pity her. Eventually, her father remarried, and Alice had half-siblings. Because of her father’s political career, the family traveled between New York and Washington, DC. Alice enjoyed this lifestyle and the experiences she had in different places where they lived.

For the most part, Alice’s childhood busy and full of fascinating experiences, but she did have problems as well. She went through a period where she had to wear braces on her legs because they weren’t growing properly. (The book doesn’t explain why she had this condition, partly because the exact cause is unknown. The common belief was that she might have had a mild form of polio, but that isn’t definite.) The braces worked, and eventually, she no longer had to wear them. Her father encouraged her to engage in physical activities and learn to ride a bicycle because he didn’t want her previous condition to make her overly cautious.

It turned out that there was little need to worry about that. Alice was a wild child! She would run off to explore the cities where she lived, and she once joined an all-boys club, sneaking them in disguised as girls! Concerned that Alice was getting too wild and becoming a bit of a “tomboy” (a girl who acts like a boy and likes things boys like – I don’t think this term is used as much anymore because the modern view is more that people shouldn’t allow themselves to confine their interests based on gender stereotypes).

Theodore Roosevelt considered sending Alice to boarding school to give her some discipline and teach her more ladylike habits, but the idea upset Alice so much that he eventually decided to let her continue her education at home. Alice used the books in her father’s library to study seriously. She read books by famous authors and studied subjects like Greek, geology, and astronomy, discussing them with her father.

When Alice was seventeen years old, Theodore Roosevelt was elected President of the United States. Alice and her half-siblings thrilled people with their wild behavior and exotic pets. (The book mentions Alice’s pet snake, Emily Spinach.) However, Alice also developed a serious interest in politics. She became a goodwill ambassador and took part in public projects, like the Buffalo Exposition. Her antics often became the subject of newspaper reports and society gossip. It earned her some criticism, but because she was such a personable young woman, she was also a social success. She gained the nickname of “Princess Alice.”

Eventually, Alice married a congressman named Nicholas Longworth. She continued to act as an advisor to her father and take part in diplomatic events. The entire time, she was known as an irrepressible personality!

My Reaction

I enjoyed the book for its fun look at a colorful character from American history, although it was on the cartoonish side. In multiple pictures, she is shown holding a giant spoon. It confused me a little at first, and then, I realized that it was a reference to her saying about “eating up the world.”

The Roosevelts were a colorful family in general. Teddy Roosevelt encouraged his children (and nieces and nephews, as explained in the book about Alice’s cousin, Eleanor) to be brave and daring, and Alice and her half-siblings were known for their wild stunts and the small zoo of bizarre animals that members of the family kept as pets. The book shows Alice and her half-siblings sliding down the stairs in the White House on serving trays, something that they did in real life, although it doesn’t explain in the text that’s what they were doing.

Alice was both a scandalous figure and an admired person in her time, and I thought the book did a good job showing that. She was an eccentric person who often trampled on social conventions, but she was also a highly social person and pleasant to be around, so she tended to shine in social and diplomatic situations.

Her life wasn’t always as happy and cheerful as the story shows. She had tensions with both her father and stepmother while she was growing up, and her marriage wasn’t especially happy. There were times when she opposed her husband politically, and she is also known to have had affairs with other men. Her daughter was probably the result of one of these affairs. Of course, these darker subjects aren’t exactly suitable for a children’s picture book. The book gives enough of an indication of tensions within her family by showing her father’s reactions to her various antics and the way she threw fits to convince her father not to send her to a traditional school. Overall, the book is a fun introduction to the life of a fascinating but complex person.

Posted on by TracyC · 1 Comment

More Than Anything Else

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.

Posted on by TracyC

A My Name is Alice

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.

Posted on by TracyC

An Ellis Island Christmas

An Ellis Island Christmas by Maxinne Rhea Leighton, illustrated by Dennis Nolan, 1992.

A six-year-old girl, Krysia Petrowski, knows that her family is preparing to leave Poland for the United States. Her father went ahead to America to establish a home for the rest of the family, and she knows that she, her mother, and her brothers will soon follow him. She doesn’t want to leave her home and her best friend, but her mother explains that life will be better in America because there is more food and there are no soldiers in the streets.

When the family begins packing to leave for America, they cannot bring everything with them because they have a long walk to get to the ship that will take them to America, and they can only bring what they can carry with them. The girl can only bring one of her two dolls with her, and she is sad at having to leave one behind.

When they board the ship, the conditions are cramped and cold. The food isn’t good, either. The voyage is rough and stormy, and many people are seasick. The one bright point is that Krysia meets another girl she knows from school, Zanya, so she knows that she won’t be going to America alone and friendless. Krysia and Zanya play together on the ship when the weather is better.

Finally, they reach Ellis Island on the day before Christmas. Everyone lines up, and the family has to show their papers to the immigration officials. Doctors look at them to make sure they are healthy enough to go ashore and into the city. Fortunately, they pass the health tests, although Krysia sees another woman who is told that she will have to go into the hospital or back to Poland because she is ill. The family converts their money to American money and buys some food. A man has to explain to them how to eat a banana because they’ve never seen one before.

Because it’s Christmas Eve, there is a big Christmas tree, covered with lights and toys. There is also a man dressed like Santa Claus, although Krysia thinks of him by the Polish name, Saint Mikolaj. They don’t receive any new presents, but Krysia’s mother does have a surprise for her. The best part is when Krysia’s father comes for them and takes them to their new home.

The book ends with a section explaining the history behind the story.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).

My Reaction

The focus of this story is all on the feelings and experiences of the immigrant family, especially little Krysia. Krysia’s impressions of the journey and the arrival at Ellis Island are all a child’s impressions, and she often needs explanations of what’s happening and what’s going to happen next, which is helpful to child readers.

The historical context for the story is provided in the section of historical information at the end and in some hints during the course of the story. The section of historical information in the back of the book discusses the peak years of US immigration, from 1892 to 1924. They don’t say exactly what year this story takes place, but it mentions 48 stars on the American flag. That means that this is the early 20th century, after Arizona and New Mexico were admitted as states in 1912. During that time, 70% of US immigrants came through the immigration center on Ellis Island, just off the coast of New York City. Of those who arrived at Ellis Island, about a third stayed in New York, and the others spread out across the US. The family in the story seems to be going to stay in New York, but because the focus of the story is mainly on the journey, there are still few details provided about this family’s background and circumstances. The section of historical information also explains a little more about the traveling conditions of immigrants around that time and what typically happened at Ellis Island, so readers can understand how the experiences of the characters in the story fit into the experiences of other, real-life immigrants. (For more details, I recommend reading If Your Name Was Changed at Ellis Island and Immigrant Kids, nonfiction books which echo many of the details included in this book.)

There is some discussion in the section of historical information about the reasons why immigrants left their homes, and we told in the beginning of the story that there are shortages of food in Poland and soldiers everywhere, but there is more that I’d like to say about this. Because I like to add context to historical stories, I’d like to talk what was happening in early 20th century Poland and what’s behind the circumstances the characters describe. During the 19th century, parts of Poland were under the control of three different European empires: Russia, Prussia (a German state), and the Austro-Hungarian Empire (while later dissolved into Austria and Hungary). The oppressive control of these imperial powers accounts for the soldiers the family describes on the streets. There were Poles who resisted the control of these forces and wanted to reunify their country, so the soldiers were to keep the population under control and put down resistance. Around the turn of the 20th century, Polish territories were also suffering from unemployment and land shortages, which explains the food shortages the family experiences. Because of these conditions, there was massive immigration from Poland to the United States during the late 19th century and early 20th century. The Petrowski family in the story would have been on the tail end of this wave of immigration because circumstances changed for Poland after World War I (1914 to 1918), when Poland became an independent country again. Some Polish immigrants to the United States intended to stay only for a relatively short time, hoping to save up money and return to their homeland with the money to purchase land or improve their family’s circumstances, but many of these people remained in the United States anyway.

Because the main character, Krysia, is only six years old, she likely wouldn’t understand the full background of her family’s circumstances and the political causes of the hardships in her country, but I like to explain these things for the benefit of readers. I think it’s also interesting that this story is a Christmas story. We are never told what the religion of the characters is, although it seems that they are Christian because they care that it’s Christmas. Many people from Poland were Catholic, so it’s possible that this family was Catholic, too, but it’s never clarified.

If you read the short biographies of the author and illustrator of the story, the author reveals that the inspiration for the story was the story of her own family’s journey from Poland. The illustrator says that he went on a tour of Ellis Island to prepare for producing the illustrations, and he tried to capture the “awe and anticipation” of the immigrants and the high vaulted ceilings and views of the New York skyline through the windows. I’ve also been to Ellis Island, and the illustrations in the book brought back memories of my trip there. I thought that the illustrator did a good job of capturing how big, impressive, and bewildering the Ellis Island compound would be to a young child.

Posted on by TracyC

The Legend of the Indian Paintbrush

The Legend of the Indian Paintbrush retold and illustrated by Tomie DePaola, 1988.

This story is a retelling of a Native American legend.

In the distant past, there was a boy called Little Gopher who never seemed able to keep up with the other boys with the skills they would need to be warriors. His parents worried about his future, but he had other talents. He had a skill for making things, and the shaman of the tribe told him that his destiny would be different from the others.

One day, Little Gopher had a vision of a grandfather and a young maiden, who came to him, holding an animal skin, a brush made of animal hairs, and paints. These figures told him that these would be the tools he would use to accomplish great things for his people. He would spend his life painting the warrior’s deeds and the shaman’s visions so people would remember them. The maiden told him to find a white buckskin and paint a picture with the colors of the setting sun.

From then on, Little Gopher gathered animal skins and painted them with the scenes of great hunts, warrior’s deeds, and visions from dreams. When he found a pure white buckskin, he tried to paint it with the colors of the setting sun, but they never looked right. He kept trying and studying the sunset to figure out how to make the right colors.

One night, he heard a voice telling him to take the buckskin with him to watch the sunset and that he would find what he needed on the ground there. He did as the voice told him, and he found brushes with paint stuck into the ground. He used the brushes, and they were just the right colors. The next day, everyone saw plants growing with beautiful colors, like the colors of a sunset, where the brushes had taken root.

My Reaction

I remember this book from when I was a kid, and I always kind of paired it in my mind with The Legend of the Bluebonnet by the same author, Tomie DePaola because both of them are retellings of Native American folktales about the origins of particular flowers. In the back of the book, there’s an Author’s Note about the story. A friend of Tomie DePaola had recommended to him that he write this story about the state flower of Wyoming, the Indian Paintbrush, because he had already written about the state flower of Texas in The Legend of the Bluebonnet. The folk tale about the origins of the Indian Paintbrush came from a book about stories and legends about Texas Wildflowers, which was given to Tomie DePaola by another friend. Although the Indian Paintbrush is the state flower of Wyoming, it also grows in Texas.

When I was a kid, I was often too impatient or absorbed with the main story to read Author’s Notes, Forewords, Afterwords, or any explanations outside of the main story, but as an adult, I find that they really do add to the story by adding context. I appreciated this story even more after understanding its connection to the other story, The Legend of the Bluebonnet, and how the author learned this story before making his own retelling.