A Pilgrim’s Digression

Despite the fact that I frequently complain about summer and prefer fall or even winter, I always feel a bit sad when summer comes to an end.

I have been off work the past two days. My wife started back to school late last week; her students return today. However, Brendan doesn’t start back to Montessori until tomorrow. Rather than paying a babysitter, I decided to take off yesterday and today to spend some final hours with him before he goes back to school.

So far today, we went to a local diner for breakfast (Brendan likes sitting at the counter); we’ve read a stack of Little Golden Books while waiting for a mechanic to change the fuel filter on the car; we’ve both had a haircut at the barber’s; and we’ve built an elaborate track layout for his Thomas trains in his bedroom. Now we’re watching “Maisy” on Noggin. Nothing special about today, except that the summer is done, another year is about to begin.

I bought the sixth season of “The Simpsons” on DVD yesterday and have watched a couple episodes on the first disc. The very first episode of the sixth season, “Bart of Darkness,” captures some of the sweet and bittersweet of summer. The Simpsons buy a swimming pool, which is promptly appropriated by every kid in the neighborhood. Bart breaks his leg jumping into the pool from his tree house and has to spend the rest of the summer in his room, his leg in a cast. When he laments the loss of his summer, Homer tells him “Don’t worry, Boy. When you have a job like me you won’t have any summer anyway.”

Homer is both correct and incorrect. Since I don’t teach anymore, I have no summer, but the memory of it still itches like the ghost of some amputated limb. I miss those long summers!

More feelings of nostalgia were stirred up by our marathon reading of all Brendan’s Little Golden Books at the garage. There can be few things worse than waiting with a child at a garage, unless it be waiting with a child in an emergency room. I’ve learned from hard experience: either bring lots of books for these waits, or be prepared to take long walks. I prefer the books myself.

Save for a few standard titles, such as Where the Wild Things Are, these Little Goldens are the only children’s books we collect. My grandparents read them to me when I was a kid in the seventies, and Grandma gave me a few of them to read to Brendan as well. One of them, which turned out to be one of his favorites, is Little Black Sambo. Little Golden Books has recently re-issued a culturally correct version of the story, set in India like the original but with an Indian family rather than an African family. The names have been changed, too. We bought the new version, and that is the one I read to Brendan now, but the first time I read it he corrected me and insisted I call the boy Little Black Sambo. Today, when I read it to him and he corrected me, I told Brendan this was a different story with a different boy. Unfortunately, the Indian name of the boy is not quite as easily memorable as Little Black Sambo. Brendan said he didn’t want to read that story anymore; he wants to read the old book my Grandma gave us. I’m not sure what to do. There is nothing wrong with the story itself; it’s just the names of the characters and the incorrect cultural references that are troublesome. Perhaps I shouldn’t read the story at all, except that Brendan often asks for it.

Another of Brendan’s favorites is “The Train to Timbuktoo,” for obvious reasons. I think Brendan likes it best because when I read it, I have to make all sorts of train noises, like piff piff piff and pocketa pocketa pocketa. This is another old book my Grandma gave us (copyright says 1951, the year my Dad was born), and the pages are tearing where one normally bends them to turn the page. Unfortunately, I haven’t found a new copy of this one; it may be out of print. So we’re reading this antique book until it falls apart. But then, that’s what books are for, aren’t they?

Scuffy the Tugboat is another favorite; it was my favorite as a child as well. Generally, Brendan likes anything illustrated by Tibor Gergely. The Little Red Caboose doesn’t interest him nearly as much as I thought it would, though, perhaps because the story is not about an engine. However, when I really think about it, Gergely illustrated just about all of Brendan’s favorite books: “The Happy Man and His DumpTruck,” “The Fire Engine Book,” “The Seven Little Postman,” “The Jolly Barnyard.” There has to be something about these illustrations, more so than the stories. The pictures are colorful, cute, with bad perspective, rather like…what do you call it…American folk art? There’s a specific style I can’t seem to think of, but it’s kind of an anti-Wyeth style of children’s book illustration.

I’d like to write one children’s book that children and their parents read together fifty or sixty years from now. I think that would make me more happy than completing a novel right now. Of course a good children’s book is only as good as the illustrations.

We have a few modern children’s books we read regularly as well, though the old ones still seem to be the best. Sendak is always good; Eric Carle is a favorite illustrator, and I’ve been reading the books he did with Bill Martin (”Brown Bear, Brown Bear, what do you see?”) since Brendan was born. I think I read to Brendan for the first time the very day we brought him home from the hospital, and “Brown Bear” was the book I chose. We also like David Shannon’s “No, David!” books because David is always driving his parents crazy. Polka Bats and Octopus Slacks by Calef Brown is fun to read, as well.

I am certain I’m leaving out a lot of good books. One benefit of parenthood is that I have become intimately familiar with the root of all literature, children’s literature. These books are where literature begins, and where writers begin as well. I love reading children’s books.

Now it’s lunchtime on our last day before Brendan goes back to Montessori. I think I’ll fix some grub, then go dig out some of the books we haven’t read in awhile. Country Crossing is one we haven’t read in a long time, but it is still a favorite. I have to supply sound effects for that one as well, including the hoot of an owl and the chirp of crickets. Brendan says he prefers me to read to him because his Mama doesn’t do the sound effects or voices correctly. I always tease Lynn a little about that.