Our town has a lovely little independent book store and this week they hosted an author's event for J. J. Ferrer's new non-fiction title, The Art of Stone Skipping and Other Fun Old-Time Games. Ms. Ferrer took a small group of kids to the sidewalk in back of the store so they could learn a game or two.
"Wheelbarrow" relays...
Finger Jousting...
Crab races...
Watching Eli reminded me of how great some of these old-fashioned games really are. I happily bought the book and think it will give us a good bit of summer fun. In fact, I wish I'd had this book back when I was doing programs for kids and hanging out with a passel of nieces/nephews on the weekends. The book offers games divided into sections, so it is easy to find something for kids to do solo, with a partner, or in a group. Ferrer gathered quiet puzzles and card games as well as romping outdoor fun. There is even a chapter on games for car trips. I feel like I have an arsenal now for birthday parties and playdates but also things I can teach Eli to ward off hot summer afternoon laments of "Mama, there's nothing to do!" In addition, I think the simple layout and appealing drawings in the book will mean that someday when Eli is reading well, he can pick it up and find fun things to do himself.
(Pssst! Jane Brocket is another wonderful author to know about if you're looking for fun things to do with kids. Click HERE for a post about her books.)
I can't quite leave author L. M. Boston yet. There are still two beloved books to share and both have the ability to almost suspend time by absorbing the reader in the setting. No matter how old I am, I still get caught up in the beauty of nature woven into these adventures! Also, I'm always a little in awe of how vividly Boston portrays children's inner thoughts and feelings when she was at least a half century past her own childhood as she wrote. While I read, I get jolts of remembrance on how it felt to be small.
The Sea Egg, written in 1967, takes us to the Cornish coast to enjoy summer holidays with brothers Toby and Joe. The magic begins when they find an egg-shaped stone -- that soon hatches. Before long, they are learning some of the secrets of the sea. Less than a hundred pages, this is a perfect story for a summer trip to the beach.
Nothing Said was written in 1971 and is set in a riverside house based on Boston's ancient 1130 A.D. manor house, Hemingford Grey. Young Libby's parents need to attend a conference, so a family friend named Julia offers Libby a temporary place to stay. Julia is an artist as well as a home gardener and amateur naturalist. With Julia as an ally and sometimes-guide, Libby finds herself leaving London behind for fields, hills, forests, and waterways. Although there is enough plot to pull the reader forward, it is the setting that lifts and propels this story. The old house and its gardens as well as the river and its upland tributaries are practically characters in their own right. (And if I live to be a hundred, I'll never stop hoping for a chance to swim in the still, crystal-clear waters of a flooded flower garden just like Libby!)
Although not preachy in any way, this small novella is a spiritual book about awakenings. I think of it often even if several years have gone by since I read it and Nothing Said always pops into my mind if someone asks about my favorite books. In fact, I have given a copy of this book many times to people going through hard times because there is something quietly profound and balm-like about it. It is a joy to read, a tale with a peaceful afterglow.
Happy reading!
I often thought of The Sea Egg when we lived in Northern California and visited the Pacific beaches. Here's Eli last spring with his buddies Garrett and Rosie. Rodeo Beach north of San Francisco felt like the sort of place where a magical egg might wash up...
Yesterday's post was about L.M. Boston's Green Knowe book series. In 2009, a movie came out called From Time to Time that is based on The Treasure of Green Knowe. (This is the American title for the book. In England it is known as The Chimneys of Green Knowe.) This adaptation was written and directed by Julian Fellowes, the writer of Downton Abbey. Not surprisingly, the cast is full of familiar faces if you're a Downton follower. Maggie Smith (Violet Crawley) plays Mrs. Oldknow. You'll also find Hugh Bonneville (Robert Crawley), Allen Leech (Tom Branson), David Robb (Dr. Clarkson), and Christine Lohr (Mrs. Bird, Isobel Crawley's cook). The rest of the Time to Time cast is also a who's who of British period/costume actors including Timothy Spall (Wormtail in the Harry Potter films) and Harriet Bird (Fanny in Sense and Sensibility).
The reviews were a bit harsh for From Time to Time, but I love the book so much I decided to chance it. Knowing movies are hardly ever as good as the book and learning from the reviews that it doesn't follow the book closely, I didn't have high expectations. Here is the bad news (as I see it)... To say the movie doesn't follow the book is an understatement. Some of the acting is a little stiff. The setting is portrayed during midwinter and comes across as a bit bleak.
Here's the good news... I still enjoyed the movie and am glad to have it in my DVD library. It has a delicious sense of mystery and moves past tidy endings to explore important ideas. The main character, Tolly, is much older than in the book and thus has a teenager's shell about him. The result is that while in the book Mrs. Oldknow and her young relative have an instant understanding and camaraderie, the film builds this relationship across the story with the stresses of late World War II for a backdrop. Many reviewers strongly protested this change in the story, yet I felt it did not betray Boston's ideas or beliefs. Of course, I can't really speak for Boston, but I am fresh from rereading her autobiography, Perverse and Foolish: A Memoir of Childhood and Youth. If Tolly is a more complex character now rather than a young "everyman," I doubt it would faze her after her own headstrong choices as a teenager. Indeed, one of the greatest joys of the book series is that even though the main characters are not sugary-perfect, they are loving and strong enough to weather challenges.
In a way, this movie is more akin to a fan fiction "what if" than a true retelling. What if Tolly was older? What if the war impacted Green Knowe to a greater degree? What if we learn more about Mrs. Oldknow's family life? In the end, the deeper message of the Green Knowe series is preserved, so I am satisfied. I only hope anybody who likes the movie will move on to the books!
This reading project gives me a reason to go back and reread beloved childhood favorites -- not that I needed an excuse to pick up L. M. Boston's books again.
Lucy Maria Wood Boston (1892-1990) began writing after the age of sixty and used her riverside home as the fictional setting of her novels. As a single mother, she moved to Hemingford Grey, a country manor house in Cambridgeshire (northeast of London) on the bank of the River Great Ouse that is estimated to have been built around 1130. Boston lived there almost five decades until her death, restoring it and developing an extensive garden.
As Boston readily admits in her autobiographical book Memory in a House, the influence of Hemingford Grey produced stories are deeply English. They reflect folklore and history but also the riverside habitat in a way that is both rare and compelling. (You can tell by my stack pictured below how much I love these books. In the days before Amazon or online booksellers, I carefully tracked down copies from library sales no matter how battered.)
Many of the books I've been reading for this project would fall into the genre of Action/Adventure. Boston's stories, too, could fall into this category, yet they more fully fit into the Low Fantasy genre. "Low" doesn't describe quality in any way, but rather describes the fictional world of the book in comparison with everyday life. In "High Fantasy" stories, setting, characters, and plot involve a purely fictional fantasy world. The Hobbit is a great example. "Low Fantasy," on the other hand, involves fantastic occurrences within our known world. The Harry Potter books and Narnia stories are Low Fantasy.
L.M. Boston brings to life a wonderful country house called Green Knowe. Through six books, readers come to know the house and its occupants in different historic time periods. One of the most magical aspects, however, is that the children living in the house get to visit each other across time. The ensuing adventures are fun to read, yet also inspiring. Fantasy stories are often about the classic battle of Good vs. Evil. The Low Fantasy genre -- with a foot in both the physical and spiritual realms -- seems to particularly coax authors into revealing their thoughts about life and their values. Although this may seem preachy to some, I find authors like C.S. Lewis and Madeleine L'Engle create an oasis where readers can come to learn and feel strengthened. That is how I feel about Boston's books as well. They offer a world full of love and joy but also an appreciation of tradition, history, and nature.
1. The Children of Green Knowe -- The first of the Green Knowe stories takes place in post-WWII. It centers on Tolly, a boy who has lost his mother and doesn't have a real place in the world until he meets his great-grandmother and discovers Green Knowe. He soon meets the children who lived there in the 1650s.
2. The Treasure of Green Knowe (English version is The Chimneys of Green Knowe) -- Tolly gets to know the house and its occupants in 1798, helping them solve a centuries-old crime.
3. The River at Green Knowe -- Two war orphans come to Green Knowe for the summer and have grand adventures along the river -- while also finding healing from their experiences.
4. A Stranger at Green Knowe -- Ping, a war orphan visiting Green Knowe, befriends a runaway zoo gorilla. (This book won the prestigious Carnegie Medal.)
5. An Enemy at Green Knowe -- Tolly and Ping defend Green Knowe from an enemy who wants to find hidden treasure and claim the house as her own. (Note: I find this book quite a bit darker than the others. Boston wrote it while trying to defend the house from developers. I'll read the other books to Eli soon but will save this one until he is older. If you have an older child who is compelled to read by "spooky factor," this is a great one!)
6. The Stones of Green Knowe -- Tolly meets Roger, who lived in the house when it was first built in the times of the Norman invaders.
The Green Knowe stories are still in print and I have bought copies for many of the kids in my life. Truly, these are not to be missed!
At a gift stop on St. Simons Island, we came across an excellent bubble wand. It opened a whole world of joy!
I used to do bubble programs with kids during my college days. I had large wands, but the handles were wood so kids needed a deep bucket of bubble solution before they could easily coat the wand themselves. In that St. Simons gift shop, however, I discovered somebody thought to put a flexible tube handle on a bubble wand. Hooray!
Here's Eli's buddy, Simon, demonstrating why this wand is so great..
Back in college, I used the Klutz Press book How to Make Monstrous, Huge, Unbelievably Big Bubbles. The book kit includes a tool called "The Bubble Thing" that does exactly what the title promises. I think, though, that at age four, Eli isn't quite ready for The Bubble Thing. With a rope loop and ring that moves along a stick, it takes longer arms and more coordination to make the trailing bubbles that are its specialty. I'm saving that fun for happy spring days in years to come.
From the Klutz book, however, I knew that there are three components to huge bubbles -- bubble wand/maker, atmospheric conditions, and bubble solution. Calm, humid air is important. And we needed the right bubble recipe. After some experimenting, I decided the best one is on the website of Steve Spangler, an author who writes great books about science for kids. Here is the link to the recipe (as well as some bubble-making tips):
The gift shop where we bought our wand used an oversized plastic planter saucer as a bubble solution container. That worked well, but I didn't want to have to drain and clean a container each time. We use a Rubbermaid TakeAlongs large rectangular container (one gallon or 3.7 liter capacity) so we can just snap the lid on for storage.
On St. Patrick's Day, we took our bubble supplies (including some dime-store bubble pipes and wands) when we went to visit friends. Eli, Lucas, and Simon had a grand time making, chasing, and popping bubbles while Baby Arthur sat in the grass staring in wonder...
I'd forgotten how much giggling and happy exercise this entails. I predict many bubble adventures for us this spring. And our next step? While roaming the web, I found lots of sites for making your own bubble wands!
Adventure, friendship, romance, ocean voyages, pirates, treasure, and great escapes...not to mention canine heroes and more doggie puns than you thought were possible. We checked this book out of the library so many times that we finally just got our own copy. I love the rhymes so much that I don't mind reading it over and over.
Got a kid in your life? Or simply have a sharp memory of your preschool days? What are some of your favorite picture books? Please share!
On St. Patrick's Day of 2011, we adopted a wee leprechaun from an Irish shop on Pier 39. (He promptly spent the next few hours touring San Francisco from the vantage point of Eli's overalls bib.)
He was a well-behaved leprechaun -- at first. Then last year, he took to wandering. He was part of the spring decorations on our mantel, but at night he'd explore the house and invariably get stuck somewhere. For several weeks before St. Patrick's Day, Eli would have to find and rescue the leprechaun each morning. The leprechaun had his own pot of gold, so after every rescue he would reward Eli with one of his coins. Upon earning all the leprechaun's gold, Eli got to "buy" treasure with the gold and the game would start over. (Click HERE to see that post.)
Wouldn't you know it. That leprechaun hitched a ride with our moving van this summer and this March is back to his old tricks in our new Georgia house.
As I think you can tell, I love holidays and get a kick out of traditions. Hiding the leprechaun for Eli is much like the Elf on a Shelf book-based activity that many parents do at Christmastime, which I admire but find I'm too busy for in December. (A web or Pinterest search for The Elf on the Shelf shows the spirit of the game and can give you great elf/leprechaun mischief ideas.)
If you'd like a leprechaun hunt on a smaller and more predictable scale, Eli loves Hooray for St. Patrick's Day by Joan Holub. The book explains the basics of the holiday and a leprechaun hides on each page.
The Night Before St. Patrick's Day by Natasha Wing goes into greater detail about the antics of leprechauns and offers up a traditional Irish folk tale.
Would you like a leprechaun to come to your house?
Introduction, links to the series, and the booklist.. (Bookmark this page to check for new posts and updates)
Above is the Oxford pub where writers C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien used to meet up to discuss writing and life. They dubbed it "The Bird and Baby."
I adore reading, and few books are as dear as the ones I fell in love with during childhood. Upon learning to make characters, setting, and plot come to life in one's own head -- the magic of imagination kicking in -- a kid is never quite the same again. Children's stories give us our first peeks into others' inner lives, teaching us lessons we never had to suffer through and helping us develop empathy.
I'd like to argue that the children's stories we loved shouldn't be left behind when we grow up. It is a lovely thing to be able to share old favorites with the kids who come into our lives, but those books have value for us too. It is a joy to get to take those fun journeys with beloved characters all over again. We remember our beginnings. And a well-written children's book reminds us that we are coming of age in varied ways throughout our lives.
So why British books? Many of the books near the top of my childhood favorites list hail from British authors, which has admittedly turned me into an Anglophile. Also, almost all of my ancestors are from the British Isles; a literary time-line doesn't have to go back very far before I'm essentially reading family history. But those reasons aren't the most compelling. What truly draws me in is the gifts that come with reading original works from a long-lived people, tracing history and culture but also a literary tradition. I would argue that the children's literary tradition in the British Isles is just as rich and valuable as the larger tradition that brought us Chaucer, Shakespeare, Austen, Dickens, Woolf, Browning, the Bronte sisters, Eliot, Kipling, Forster, Lawrence, and Auden, to name a few. And for those who love a good fantasy story, there is a lovely path to follow from ancient Beowulf to Harry Potter and beyond. Writers such as Sir Thomas Malory, John Bunyan, George McDonald, Edith Nesbit, J.R.R. Tolkien, Lucy Boston, and C.S. Lewis dipped into British history and folklore to create stories that fire the imagination while exploring the human soul.
As much as I love C.S. Lewis' Narnia books and similar still-popular books, I won't explore those in this series -- at least not yet. What fascinates me is that there are older books that are slowly falling deeper into obscurity, yet they are wonderful reading adventures. These were often the books that the great writers of the last century read when they were growing up and they still have the power to delight, inform, and inspire. And what fun it is to sniff them out and share them here!
Enjoy!
Above is a detail from the Peter Pan sculpture in Kensington Gardens (London). Author James Barrie commissioned it. When it was done, he then had workers install it in the Gardens in the dark so it would seem to the children of London that the artwork appeared magically overnight.
Boston, The Green Knowe Series -- In these six novels, children living in an English manor house almost a millennium old travel up and down in time to meet each other and have adventures. Genres: Action/Adventure, Low Fantasy.
Boston, The Sea Egg -- Brothers Toby and Joe are on holiday on the Cornish coast when they come across a mysterious rock that looks like an oversized egg. Sure enough, it hatches! Genres: Action/Adventure, Low Fantasy
Boston, Nothing Said -- Libby leaves the city behind to stay with a family friend in the countryside and soon finds herself in a beautiful, compelling world of meadows, woods, gardens, and rivers. Genres: Nature Fiction
Hull and Whitlock, The Far-Distant Oxus – Three English school children have adventures in the Exmoor countryside while their parents are away. They ride horses across windswept moors, camp out under the stars, and build a raft to journey to the sea, but there are many other adventures to be had too. (This is a wonderful gift book if you have a horse-loving kid in your life.) Genre: Action/Adventure.
Jerome, Three Men in a Boat – In this humor story for adults, three young men and a rambunctious dog set off to explore the Thames between London and Oxford -- often with disastrous results. Genres: Action/Adventure, Humor, Travelogue.
Lucas, The Slowcoach – An anonymous stranger sends a family a horse-drawn Gypsy caravan. Off the kids go to explore the historic spots and back roads of their native England… Genres: Action/Adventure, Travelogue.
Ransome, Swallows & Amazons Series -- This series of twelve adventure books take place in the 1930s and offer everything from shipwrecks and pirates to ice sleds and gold mines. Genres: Action/Adventure.
Uttley, A Traveller in Time – A visit to her ancestors’ Derbyshire farm turns into a time travel adventure for Penelope. Soon she learns secrets that may just be her family’s undoing. Genres: Low Fantasy.
Companion Posts:
How the Heather Looks – This is the book that inspired the British Reading Adventure project. Come along for the ride as a family in the 1950s goes looking for traces of children’s stories of yesteryear. (The blog post about this book also explains more about our family project to read classic children's books and then someday explore the settings in person.)
Children’s Literature Cookbooks – Read classic children’s books and then head to the kitchen to whip up the same treats you read about. This is a great way to bring books alive for kids!
Cherry Cake and Ginger Beer – Jane Brocket’s books peep into British children’s literature, giving ideas for fun things to do and cook.
The British Reading Adventure List:
If your library doesn't have these books, try interlibrary loan or online used booksellers.
Fiction for the Very Young Edith Blyton -- The Noddy series L. Leslie Brooke -- Ring o’ Roses, Johnny Crow’s Garden, Golden Goose Book, The Roundabout Turn Randolph Caldecott John Cunliffe – The Postman Pat stories Joseph Jacobs – English Fairy Tales A. A. Milne – The Winnie the Pooh books Beatrix Potter – The Fairy Caravan, etc. Robert Louis Stevenson – A Child’s Garden of Verses
Children’s Fiction (Also see the list of Carnegie Medal winners and the New York Review Children's Collection.) Eleanor Atkinson – Greyfriars Bobby Reverend W. Awdry – Thomas the Tank Engine James Barrie – Peter Pan Enid Blyton – The Circus of Adventure, The Folk of the Faraway Tree, etc. Mr Galliano’s Circus, The Secret of Spriggy Holes, The Treasure Hunters Famous Five series, Malory Tower series, Twins at St Clare’s series Michael Bond – Paddington Bear stories L. M. Boston – The Children of Green Knowe series, Nothing Said Pamela Brown -- A Swish of the Curtain Frances Hodgson Burnett – Little Lord Fauntleroy, A Little Princess, The Secret Garden Lewis Carroll – Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass Pauline Clarke – The Return of the Twelves Roald Dahl – Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, etc. Mrs. (Juliana) Ewing – The Story of a Short Life, Jackanapes Ruby Ferguson – Children at the Shop, Jill books, Lady Rose and Mrs. Memmary Eve Garnett – The Family from One End Street Kenneth Grahame – Wind in the Willows, Reluctant Dragon, etc. Elizabeth Janet Gray – Adam of the Road Katherine Hull and Pamela Whitlock – The Far-Distant Oxus, Escape to Persia, The Oxus in Summer, and Crowns Rudyard Kipling – Stalky & Co, Puck of Pook’s Hill, Rewards and Fairies, etc. C. S. Lewis – Narnia series, etc. Hilda Lewis – The Ship that Flew E. V. Lucas – The Slowcoach Hugh Lofting – Dr. Doolittle series Captain Marryat – Children of the New Forest George Macdonald – The Princess and the Goblin Gavin Maxwell – Ring of Bright Water, The Otter’s Tale E. Nesbit – The Railway Children, etc. Mary Norton – The Magic Bedknob, the Borrowers series Philippa Pearce – Tom’s Midnight Garden M. Pardoe – The Far Island, Bunkle series, Argle’s Mist (Celtic Britain), Argle’s Causeway (Norman England) Howard Pyle – Robin Hood, Otto of the Silver Hand Arthur Ransome – Swallows & Amazons, Swallowdale, The Child’s Book of the Seasons, etc. J. K. Rowling – The Harry Potter stories Margery Sharp – The Rescuers, etc. Robert Louis Stevenson – Treasure Island, Kidnapped, etc. Noel Streatfeild -- Circus Shoes, Tennis Shoes, Ballet Shoes, Traveling Shoes, etc. Rosemary Sutcliffe – The Shield Ring, etc. P. L. Travers – Mary Poppins series, Gingerbread Shop, etc. Alison Uttley – A Traveler in Time, Little Grey Rabbit Henry Williamson – Tarka the Otter
Young Adult and Adult Fiction Alfred, Lord Tennyson – Idylls of the King Richard Adams – Watership Down Jane Austen – Emma, Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Northanger Abbey, Persuasion Richard Doddridge Blackmore – Lorna Doone Charlotte Bronte – Jane Eyre, Villette Emily Bronte – Wuthering Heights John Bunyan – Pilgrim’s Progress Geoffrey Chaucer – The Canterbury Tales Daniel Dafoe – Moll Flanders Charles Dickens – The Pickwick Papers, David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, A Tale of Two Cities, Great Expectations, etc. Daphne du Maurier – Rebecca, Jamaica Inn, etc. Robert Browning – “Childe Rowland to the Dark Tower Came” George Eliot – Adam Bede, The Mill on the Floss, Silas Marner, Middlemarch Eric Ennion – House on the Shore E. M. Forster – A Passage to India, Where Angels Fear to Tread, A Room with a View, Howard’s End, Maurice, The Longest Journey Elizabeth Gaskell – Cranford, North and South, Mary Barton, etc. Thomas Hardy – Tess of the d’Urbervilles, Far from the Maddening Crowd Christina Hole – English Folk Heroes Robert Hunt – Popular Romances of the West of England Jerome K. Jerome – Three Men in a Boat Eleanore Jewett – The Hidden Treasure of Glaston Charles Kingsley – Westward Ho!, The Water Babies, Hypatia, Hereward the Wake D. H. Lawrence – Sons and Lovers, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, etc. Laurie Lee – Cider with Rosie, The Edge of Day John Milton – Paradise Lost Hope Muntz – The Golden Warrior Barbara Picard – Tales of the British People Rosamund Pilcher – The Shell Seekers Sir Walter Scott – Ivanhoe, Rob Roy, etc. Caroline Dale Snedeker – The White Isle Rosemary Sutcliffe – Warrior Scarlet, The Lantern Bearers, etc. J. R. R. Tolkien – The Hobbit, Lord of the Rings Sir Thomas Malory – Le Morte d’Arthur Robert Smith Surtees – Jorrocks’ Jaunts and Jollities Unknown -- Beowulf T. H. White – The Once and Future King, Mistress Masham’s Repose, etc. P. G. Wodehouse – Jeeves and Wooster stories, etc. Virginia Woolf – A Room of One’s Own, Mrs Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, Orlando
History Leonard Cottrell – Seeing Roman Britain Jacquetta Hawkes – Early Britain Geoffrey of Monmouth – Historia
Travelogues and Guides 1851 -- Lavengro by George Henry Borrow (also The Romany Rye and Wild Wales) 1880s (fiction) – Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome 1904 – A Wanderer in London – E. V. Lucas 1908 (fiction) -- The Slowcoach by E. V. Lucas 1933 – English Journey by J.B. Priestley 1958 – How the Heather Looks by Joan Bodger 1968 – Journey Through Britain by John Hillaby 1982 – Kingdom by the Sea by Paul Theroux 1984 – A Matter of Wales by Jan Morris 1994 – Notes from a Small Island by Bill Bryson 2002 – Once Upon a Time in Great Britain: A Travel Guide to the Sights and Settings of your Favorite Children’s Stories by Melanie Wentz
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I'd like to thank my mother for always taking us to the library. Even if we were living somewhere just for the summer, she'd take us to get a temporary local card. And thanks, too, to her friend Ms. Elaine who knew an awful lot about children's books and shared lists with our family.
One of the many things I love about frequent long walks is how you notice the landscape changing with the seasons. The neighborhood where I now live is fairly new, carved out of farmland less than a decade ago. There are many empty lots as well as surrounding patches of woods. Near my usual turn-around point, I noticed a lovely old tree. With the leaves gone for the winter, its limbs seem even more beautiful.
See how most of the trees around it are pines?
From wandering land in rural Arkansas with my grandpa, I learned that pines are often a mark of transition in the South. Abandoned fields grow over with broomsedge and other grasses. Briars work their way in. Then comes privet and saplings -- including fast-growing pines -- as a forest begins to form.
Grandpa showed me that when you see a huge hardwood among pines with thin trunks, you know they didn't start growing at the same time. So why would there have been a big old hardwood growing in the middle of then-open land? Shade on a hot summer's day. A solitary old hardwood among pines is often a sentinel standing over a former home place.
As winter came and more leaves fell, I saw other telltale signs. I found cedar trees, deceptively old for their size and growing in a line. They grew up like weeds along the fence rows once upon a time. The fences crumbled long ago, but those cedars quietly mark the old boundaries.
Weeks passed. More leaves fell. And then one day I saw an outline, dark against the morning light...
The next dry and sunny morning, I came back with my camera. I wriggled my way through the brambles, getting more than a few scratches. But there before me, standing on wobbly red bricks, was a small farm outbuilding.
More clues. Up near the peak of the roof was an open window. Hayloft? The building was high enough off the ground that it wouldn't have been a very good space for sheltering animals. The building was also quite small. It couldn't have been a barn. Then I saw another shadow through the bare limbs of the winter trees...
It took me a little while to creep my way over. I had on thick boots, but a decaying farm often means boards full of rusty nails, broken glass, pottery shards, and old equipment hidden under piles of leaves. I also didn't want to blunder upon another feature of old farms -- the well!
The other structure was much bigger. It had a red, sandy dirt floor, liberally pocked with the soft cones made by ant lion bugs. The corrugated tin roof was full of rust on top, yet still somewhat shiny beneath. Spaces for horses or cows were neatly laid out, although now cluttered with brown leaves from autumn storms. Some of the mangers still held clumps of matted, dry hay.
I stopped for a while, listening to the wind in the trees and an occasional whoosh of a car passing on the highway. Dust motes swirling through rays of sunshine. A squirrel rustling a few dozen yards away. A hard winter leaf dropping to the forest floor now and then. Hushed.
The word "home" conjures up images bright and tidy. This home place is dark and falling down. It isn't home to people or farm animals anymore. But it is full of life of a different kind.
And it is full of peace.
I can't wait to take Eli on such adventures when he is older. My love of history started with my grandparents' stories and with finding traces of the past on rural land. If you've got a child old enough to safely explore such spots with you, a lovely picture book to start with is Home Place by Crescent Dragonwagon. While hiking, a family comes across traces of an old home. Jerry Pickney's soft watercolor illustrations give the past dreamy life. This book has long been a favorite and sometimes sits on my coffee table for folks to stop and wander through on an otherwise busy day.
Before we moved this summer, we got Eli a couple of children's books about Georgia. It is nice for Eli to know more about his state and the fun things it offers. (The Good Night Our World series visits many cities and states, which can be particularly helpful before you take your kiddo on a trip.)
We recently learned about another Georgia picture book, this one written by former UGA football head coach, Vince Dooley. Hairy Dawg's Journey Through the Peach State came out in 2008 and highlights some of our state's natural, cultural, and agricultural wonders. We got a copy and had a chance recently to get it signed.
Admittedly, I haven't gone searching for more, but does anybody know of other Georgia books for kids they would recommend? Thanks!
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