Can we read? No. 37
Can we read? No. 37
Hi there 👋 Welcome to another Wednesday. We are all in this together!
Before I get into the meat of today’s issue I want to thank those of you who reached out after last week’s Spotlight On: Loss, Death, and Grief. I was not expecting it. You made me realize how far we’ve come since last fall and recognize there are some tender places still waiting to heal, and I’m grateful for that.
If you’re new here, thanks for signing up! Today’s issue is a regular one — for more on what you can expect from me and when, hop on over to my about page or just stay tuned — I show up in your inbox twice a week, every week without fail. (It’s so much fun for me!)
Alright, let’s do this.
Through the Rainbow: A Waldorf Birthday Story for Children retold by Lou Harvey-Zahra, illustrated by Sara Parrilli (2018)
One of the many traditions in Waldorf education — which is perhaps rooted more deeply in storytelling than anything else — is the rainbow bridge birthday story, told especially for each child in a classroom or a home on their birthday, all about the spiritual journey a soul takes, sometimes as an angel and other times guided by an angel, from somewhere out in the universe (one side of the rainbow bridge) to be born as a baby on earth (the other side of the rainbow bridge).* Like any other story, there are as many ways of telling this one as their are children to whom to tell it — but, never being all that great with tellings of my own when I feel pressure (from myself) to make it deeply meaningful, I am grateful that Harvey-Zahra’s version exists so I can simply read it and offer it as the perfect gift I intend it to be. Parrilli’s extremely soft, dreamy watercolors add to the otherworldly quality of the story here, which begins with a little soul who wants to visit earth and who finds, in a dream, a family who wants just such a little soul. After a time the soul’s guardian angel determines that the time is right and leads the soul to the rainbow bridge — the soul must leave its wings behind but together they travel “through the colours of the rainbow into the new land,” where it “was welcomed with awe and wonder into loving arms.” If this seems fantastical, it absolutely is, and yet there is something that seems to answer in a deep way the questions in children’s hearts — and, interestingly, mine have never questioned the veracity of this story. They accept that they came from another realm, that they each had (have) a guardian angel, that they journeyed across a rainbow bridge — and on the days when I do not feel like enough as their mother, when my imperfections threaten to overwhelm and sink me, I take great comfort in believing that they saw their father and me from the other side and then chose us, exactly as we are. This is a beautiful book and worth buying to keep for many birthdays to come.
*If this intrigues you I recommend the book, Beyond the Rainbow Bridge: Nurturing Our Children From Birth to Seven by Barbara J. Patterson, which offers several examples of the rainbow bridge story, amongst a lot of other great information
Other books about birthdays to check out:
Happy Birthday, Moon by Frank Asch
Eat the Cake by M.H. Clark
When Grandma Gives You a Lemon Tree by Jamie L.B. Deenihan
Ten Rules of the Birthday Wish by Beth Ferry
When’s My Birthday? by Julie Fogliano (my favorite birthday book ever)
Happy Birthday, Little Witch by Deborah Hautzig (one of the Little Witch early reader series, all of which are super cute)
Alfie by Thyra Heder
A Little House Birthday (Little House Picture Book) by Laura Ingalls Wilder
Who Made This Cake? by Chihiro Nakagawa
It’s My Birthday by Helen Oxenbury (I reviewed this sweet title in issue No. 15)
Some Birthday! by Patricia Polacco
Curious George and The Birthday Surprise by Margret and H.A. Rey
Related: if you have a child that struggles when it is someone else’s birthday, I highly recommend the Daniel Tiger episodes, “Birthday Buddy Daniel” and “Margaret’s Birthday Party.”
Everyone Can Learn to Ride a Bicycle by Chris Raschka (2013)
Bike riding, at least without training wheels, has been a terribly fraught and mostly miserable experience in our house — to be fair, my eldest daughter has some sensory processing challenges that make the experience of precarious balancing genuinely uncomfortable and scary — but we haven’t given up (and at the time of publishing this, she unlocked the secret with basically zero further guidance from us and now has her wheels under her — forgive me if this feels like a minor miracle and only makes me suspect there is a deep parenting lesson in here somewhere).
When I saw this title at a library sale earlier this year I just shoved it in my bag without even looking at it — I have liked what little I have seen of Raschka’s work (I reviewed his collaboration with Norton Juster, The Hello, Goodbye Window in issue No. 6) and anyway, we’ve truly been working on the bike riding for years so it seemed worth it.* I’m not going to pretend that this book made my kiddo run right out to the garage to snatch up her bike and ride away like Mad Max, but the gentle story about what you need to learn to ride a bicycle (the just-right bike for you, time spent watching others, and the willingness to try and try again and again and again) did help. Raschka’s ink and watercolors — which show an unnamed but supportive adult alongside the little girl in all her efforts — are colorful, evocative, and fun to page through. If you have a little one struggling in this area, I hope this is the magic solution for you — if it’s not, it’s still a reassuring, encouraging read about a time-honored rite of childhood.
If you like this one, an excellent read-along is Sally Jean, The Bicycle Queen by Cari Best
*This is how we work on (and through) the challenges we face — see the April issue of (How) Can we read? for my explanation about how we connect everything to reading and reading to everything
Islandborn by Junot Díaz, illustrated by Leo Espinosa (2018)
The likelihood of you already knowing this book is high, I realize, but given how good it is — and how captivated my children have been when reading it — I didn’t want you to miss out on the off chance it’s new to you. Lola has been tasked by her teacher in a class project to draw a picture of the place where her family emigrated from — in her case, “the Island” (which is never overtly named but one infers from both the details of the story and Díaz’s own background is the Dominican Republic). The only problem is that though she was born there, Lola can’t remember the Island. So she calls on her community for help: she speaks to her cousin, the woman in her neighborhood who sells empanadas, some people in the barbershop, the superintendent of her building, and her grandmother, sketching their wild and wonderful memories as they tell her what she can’t recall for herself. A couple of folks she talks to refer to a darker, far less wonderful history — a hurricane, and then “the most dreadful monster anyone had ever seen,” one that stayed for 30 years until “heroes rose up” because “they got tired of being afraid and fought the Monster” (a reference to the Trujillo regime and the civil war that followed — this is never spoken of directly or in terms that children cannot handle). Lola ends up writing a whole book for her project and when she shares it with her grandmother, her grandmother explains that the Monster is the reason her family came north in the first place.
This book is a journey — Díaz has written a dense and completely engrossing story paired to perfection with Espinoza’s equally dense and vibrant digitally-rendered mixed media — and it’s one worth taking. Threaded into themes of family, history, memory, and imagination is pain, grief, bravery, and fortitude. There is also Lola herself, whose curiosity and heart make her seem like she is both of the Island and also the Island itself. Her mother tells her, “You might not remember the Island but it remembers you.” Her grandmother tells her, “Just because you don’t remember a place doesn’t mean it’s not in you.” By the end of this spectacular book, the reader comes to know this is true.
My Two Blankets by Irene Kobald, illustrated by Freya Blackwood (2014)
The sentence on the cover of this book sums it up perfectly: “Moving is hard — friends make it easier.” Here we meet an unnamed girl (the one in orange) who had to flee her war-torn country and come to a foreign place where everything and everyone was strange, and “nobody spoke like I did.” She feels she has lost herself, and takes comfort in wrapping herself in her old blanket. One day she sees a girl smiling and waving at her in the park, and a friendship slowly develops — the girls move slowly with one another but grow to trust the burgeoning relationship. The girl from this strange place (the one in pastels) eventually teaches the new girl new words, and at home, under her old blanket, she practices them until she realizes she is “weaving a new blanket” — this one made of new language and new experiences. Freya Blackwood’s watercolor and oil paint illustrations enhance the feeling that this is a soft and subtle story — it’s not until the end when the reader realizes (if ever), that the “blanket” is really a metaphor for memory, a sense of self, a place of peace in mind and heart — that Kobald has approached with great sensitivity, compassion, and kindness. In a world of children’s literature where both mirrors and windows* are of utmost importance, this book is a lovely mirror for some children, and window for others.
*See “What are Mirrors and Windows?” via We Are Teachers for an explanation of what this means and why it matters
Peace is an Offering by Annette LeBox, illustrated by Stephanie Graegin (2015)
This is a title I used in our Morning Time* years ago but recently pulled off one of my longer-term storage shelves to bring out again: it’s a message that bears repeating again and again (which is another way of saying it’s timeless). In this book, Le Box’s rhyming prose works with Graegin’s warm. tender illustrations to create a full picture of what peace is: “Peace is an offering. A muffin or a peach. A birthday invitation. A trip to the beach. Peace is gratitude for simple things. Light through a leaf, a dragonfly’s wings.” Less a narrative and more a meditation, the text provides both literal and figurative pictures of simple yet meaningful ways for kids — for people, really — to show family, friends, neighbors, and community members that they care. It also includes some important questions that live inside all of us: “Will you wait for me when I’m slow? Will you calm my fears? Will you sing to the sun to dry my tears? Will you keep me company when I’m all alone? Will you give me shelter when I’ve lost my home?” The answer, lived out on every page is yes, I will be there — helping readers to understand that by sharing our presence and our kindness, we’re offering peace.
My edition (pictured) is bilingual — there is an English-only version, but I find I like the dual concept, as it shows my children that peace is universal and not limited to our particular language or perspective.
*I wrote about Morning Time in the February issue of (How) Can we read?, which was about reading routines
My eldest turns 7yo on Saturday, so really, this whole issue has been a list of wishes for her for the next year: a happy birthday, brave bike rides, the support of her elders and ancestors, friendship, peace, and prayers. I’m sending out the same to you, even if it’s not your birthday 😊
Sarah