Kids’ Books Penned in the Green Mountains

By Amy Lilly

Vermont is blessed with dozens of women who write and illustrate critically acclaimed and universally loved books for children. Marje Von Ohlsen, the children’s librarian at the South Burlington Community Library, instantly recalled thirty Vermont women who author children’s books, and claims that there are “many, many more.” Elaine Sopchak, “the book lady” at The Book Rack and Children’s Pages in Essex Junction, helped narrow the selection… many thanks to both. The seven picture books and three young adult books below, chosen for Vermont or female themes when possible, will make cherished gifts for the children you love, wherever they live.

1) Now in its ninth printing, A Farmer’s Alphabet (Godine, 1981; age 4 and up), by Mary Azarian of Plainfield, is a classic and must-own. A woodblock print record of rural Vermont life, it is also a work of art with touches of humor, like the “U” for “underwear” page showing the backside of a figure in a union suit complete with button-flap bottom. Black and white woodcuts are accented with red, Art Nouveau typeset letters and words. Trained in printmaking at Smith College, Azarian won the 1999 Caldecott Award for her illustrations for Snowflake Bentley. Her Alphabet illustrations began as a way to cheer up the bare, one-room schoolhouse in Calais where she began teaching in the 1960s, and were reproduced and distributed by the Vermont Board of Education to every elementary school in the state.

2) My Hippie Grandmother (Candlewick, 2003; ages 4-8), by Reeve Lindbergh, is a tribute to the women who helped make Vermont a liberal state. Think: the Warren Fourth of July parade. Written as a poem with appropriately wavy watercolors by Abby Carter, the book’s opening stanza gives a good idea of its humor: “I have a hippie grandmother. / I’m really glad she’s mine. / She hasn’t cut her hair at all / Since nineteen sixty-nine.” Grandma brandishes “No More War” placards in front of City Hall and gives away produce at the farmer’s market. The book will inspire daughters to be exactly what they want to be. My Hippie Grandmother is one of a dozen children’s books in verse by Lindbergh, including Our Nest (2004) which eases the 3-5-year-old crowd from a literal to a metaphorical understanding of “nest”; and the magical  The Visit (2005), which evokes two sisters’ visit to their aunt and uncle’s farm using repetition of lines within each quatrain. Lindbergh lives in St. Johnsbury and is the daughter of Anne Morrow Lindbergh, author of the 1955 classic Gift from the Sea, and the aviator Charles Lindbergh.

3) Though she is author of six popular Five Little Monkeys books for 4-8-year-olds, as well as Vote!, a detailed explanation of the voting process told through cartoons, Eileen Christelow’s The Five-Dog Night (Clarion Books, 1993; kindergarten-grade 2) will warm the hearts of Vermont lovers of any age. Christelow, of Putney, got this true story of a gruff old Vermonter and his five dogs from Will Curtis on Vermont Public Radio, who had read it in the Audubon magazine. Taciturn Ezra insists he does not need to be given blankets by his nosy neighbor Betty, despite plunging temperatures – and Christelow’s pencil and watercolor illustrations bring those sub-zero days to vivid life. But giving and receiving are reversed in this touching story of two typical New Englanders’ begrudging affection for each other.

4) For girls with older brothers, The Daring Nellie Bly: America’s Star Reporter Knopf, 2003; grades 2-5) by Bonnie Christensen sends the clear message: you can be as competitive as they are. Born in 1864, Bly became famous as the New York World reporter who feigned madness in order to be committed to the Women’s Insane Asylum on Blackwell’s Island – her exposé put an end to its horrendous conditions – and who dared to travel around the world alone in record time (72 days). Bly’s exploits redefined not only women’s job opportunities but “the American girl” herself, in the words of the mayor of Jersey City on her return home. Christensen, who lives in Essex Junction, tells the story in appropriately factual, reporterly prose and her pictorial style evokes Victorian-era illustrations. As an author-illustrator, she is meticulously historical-minded: her Woody Guthrie: Poet of the People, which was a New York Times Notable Book in 2001 and an American Library Association Notable Book in 2002, uses a folksy, poetic narrative and 1920s poster-style illustrations evocative of Guthrie’s era.

5) Tracey Campbell Pearson, of Jericho, entertains with humorously named animals like Bob (2002), the rooster with the experimental crowing voice and, more recently, Myrtle (Farrar Straus Giroux, 2004; kindergarten-grade 2), an exuberant young mouse who is unfairly cowed by her aggressive mouse neighbor, Frances. Poor Myrtle and her little brother become almost mousey, retreating to the closet in their search for a safe playing space. But they are saved by Aunt Tizzy, who breezes in from her African safari dressed in Rasta clothing and carrying terrific masks for all to try on. While some parents may be disarmed by the idea of African ceremonial objects being used to inspire courage in Westerners, children won’t miss the lesson that anyone can stand up to bullying – in this case, girl on girl. Pearson studied with Maurice Sendak; her illustrations are cheerily colorful and her mice, with their long, expressive noses, simply endear.

6) The Fiddler of the Northern Lights (Dutton, 1996; kindergarten-grade 3), by Natalie Kinsey-Warnock, draws young readers into a realistically depicted world where magic actually happens – a kind of mirror of the Northern Lights phenomenon itself. The setting is “far to the north,” on the St. Maurice River (Quebec) where l’hibou blanc  and le loup-garou roam. Vermonters who live up near the border will find the vocab familiar. Eight-year-old Henry is the younger of two brothers, the only one who still believes in his grandfather’s regional folk tales. And rightly so; one of them comes true. Illustrations are works of art in watercolor by Leslie W. Bowman, who is not a Vermonter, but should be, so clearly does she understand snow. Kinsey-Warnock grew up on a dairy farm in the Northeast Kingdom (and today lives in West Glover) and is the author of numerous picture and young adult books, including From Dawn ‘Till Dusk (2002) about life on a farm in Vermont, for which Mary Azarian provided the illustrations. Fiddler won the Smithsonian Notable Books for Children Award in 1996.

7) Karen Hesse, of Brattleboro, is one of our state’s esteemed Newbery Medal-winning authors (Out of the Dust, 1998), an annual award for the single most distinguished contribution to American literature in the “young adult” category. However, her picture book The Cats in Krasinski Square  (Scholastic, 2004; grades 2-5) should not be missed, either. Told in first person, the story appears to be about a girl’s concern for homeless cats, until we learn that it is not the cats who need food but their former owners, now being held “behind the Wall of the Ghetto.” It is 1939, and this is Warsaw, Poland. Because this is a story of resistance, through a collaboration between children and animals, and told by a child witness, Cats serves as an ideal introduction to the major horror of the twentieth century. The brief historical note provided by Hesse on the last page, which covers not only the basics but the Warsaw Ghetto fight of 1943, will help clarify ensuing discussion. Illustrations by Wendy Watson are muted in color, with shadow and light used to startling effect.

8) Lenore Blegvad’s Kitty and Mr. Kipling: Neighbors in Vermont (McElderry Books, 2005; grades 3-6) is barely a month off the press, but it seems uncanny that it never existed before. Children will be as startled as the fictional Kitty to learn that Rudyard Kipling, creator of “Riki-Tikki-Tavi,” actually wrote that story while living in the jungles of Dummerston, Vermont. Kitty lives with her older brother and parents on a farm down the road from the new neighbor, the Englishman Mr. Kipling and his American wife. It is 1892, so farm work is never done, but Kitty takes time after her chores to visit this ebullient man who encourages her to ask questions and sharpen her observation skills. Blegvad has done her research (a full bibliography is listed in the back), so Kipling’s quarrel with his brother-in-law, his still-extant house called Naulakha, and his penchant for snow golf are fully evoked. What emerges is a touching child-adult friendship, and a very real sense of what it feels like as a child when one’s neighbors move away. Blegvad and her husband Eric, who provided the illustrations, live in Wardsboro.

9) All the Blue Moons at the Wallace Hotel (Little, Brown, 2000; grades 4-6) is Phoebe Stone’s first novel. Previously, she was a successful painter and then a picture book author-illustrator; samples from her picture book When the Wind Bears Go Dancing (1997) were shown in a major Boston exhibit alongside the work of such luminaries as Edward Gorey and Maurice Sendak. All the Blue Moons, illustrated only with Stone’s jacket art, is the less vivid, more interior story of a family shadowed by trauma: Fiona, who tells the story in present tense, her younger sister Wallace, their listless mother, once a sculptor, and their missing father. Wallace was named after her unmarried great-great-aunt who, “against great odds,” became Dr. Wallace, as their mother explains after one of her daughter’s many attempts to rename herself. Wallace is fiercely independent while Fiona wants desperately to fit in and be appreciated for her ballet skills; but then Wallace goes missing. Stone, who lives in Middlebury, is the daughter of Ruth Stone, former Vermont poet laureate.

10) Katherine Paterson is the author of more than thirty books, one of which,  Bridge to Terabithia (HarperCollins, 1977; reissued 1987; grades 4 and up), won the Newbery Medal. Rereading it for this column to see why it took my breath away as a child, I discovered a book that is surely among the best we have to offer in children’s literature, and no less relevant today than it was thirty years ago. Jess Aaron is a ten-year-old boy non-plussed by the girl his age who moves in down the road; this is rural Appalachia, somewhere within an hour’s drive to Washington, D.C. The girl doesn’t look like a girl; “she even had one of those dumb names that could go either way.” Jess doesn’t realize that his own name could go either way, too, but then there is a lot he will learn from Leslie, including the experience of real friendship, one which bridges dramatic differences in economic, educational, and religious background. Paterson’s writing is superb and children, with their unerring perception of what rings true, will recognize both their own fears and the possibility for personal courage in this heart-wrenching story.

Amy Lilly is a freelance writer living in Burlington.