Childcraft: Creative Play and Hobbies

I took this book on vacation with me, thinking I might have some time for creative play. But all I did was read it. Reading must be my hobby of choice! I apologize to my relatives that I didn’t choose collecting instead so as to ease their gift-giving decisions.

Collecting is a game which the whole family can play. The hobby also is one that often solves the problem for parents, uncles, and aunts, as to what to give you for Christmas or on your birthday.”

Maybe it’s a Midwestern thing, but you know that argument over “duck, duck, gray duck” or “duck, duck, goose” even among people who no longer recall the game to which the name refers? Well I’ve found a couple of other terms to fight over. Childcraft called tic-tac-toe “Tic-Tat-Toe.” I thought it was a typo, but they used the term several times. I’ve heard of “noughts and crosses” before, but never tic-tat-toe. Wikipedia states that another alternative name is “hugs and kisses.” That one I like. Tic-tat-toe sounds like a tattooing accident caused by a nervous artist missing your ankle.

You know the old campfire standby of graham crackers, chocolate, and marshmallows? Well this book calls that a “somare.” What!? That makes no sense at all. Even Canadians call it a s’more. But since I’ve never liked them (‘smores, not Canadians), I was happy to see an alternative recipe that called for apple slices, a peppermint drop and toasted marshmallow. If I can find peppermint drops I might try it.

I was very glad to see the rules for Button, Button, Who’s Got the Button. I have vivid memories of inserting what I thought of as my prayer palms into the closed palms of others during vacation Bible school, but I had been confused about who was It and who passed the button. Now I won’t be embarrassed in a group of Wii-deprived children sitting in a circle playing party games. I’ll know the proper rules for Passing the Ring, Pussycat’s Whiskers (like Pin the Tail), Forfeits (totally new to me) and Button, Button.

Why is musical chairs also known as “Going to Jerusalem”? Neither Childcraft nor Wikipedia will spill the beans on that. Is it some slanderous secret?

The world has really changed since these articles were written. No parent today is going to suggest that kids make eggnog for each other. Hey kids, it’s a salmonella party! And most parents won’t have these handy scraps lying about for their kids to use to make useful pieces of furniture: orange cases, nail kegs, piano boxes, barrels. And most parents (aside from my wonderful neighbors who let us dig Matchbox car roads in their side yard) won’t let their kids take over landscaping the backyard, although the authors do acknowledge that this should be a family decision.

If the hobby you’ve chosen is playmaking and play acting, then this book has lots of ideas for you. It’s not just about playing house. There’s advice on how to select plays, actors, and music; how to create scenery and costumes; how to print and sell tickets; and how to prepare for playing your character. There are even suggestions for historical pageants and May festivals. Geez, my friends and I obviously had no ambition. We mostly just rode our bikes, sometimes took a pony out for a drive or ride, and argued over who got to get shot and die dramatically when we played cowboys and other cowboys.

I should review the chapter “Cooking Up Fun.” I’m tall enough to use the stove so there are so many recipes I could try. I certainly never learned not to cook vegetables until they are limp. My mother loves them that way. Over two pages are devoted to making a roast beef birthday dinner for your father. I’m not sure if I can find the tartrate or phosphate baking powder for the oatmeal cookie dessert. Luckily my dad isn’t celebrating any more birthdays so I’m off the hook. He always seemed happy with just a pecan pie from Mom anyway.

This entire volume just makes me feel like I never showed any creativity at all as a child. Or I’ve forgotten all the tricks I used to know, like how to make hollyhock flower dolls. I might have made a sock puppet, but I never made my own sweetheart apron or xylophone. Were kids in the 40s and 50s just creative overachievers who are now getting their comeuppance with their lack of computer skills? Previous volumes of Childcraft made me miss the silliness and freedom of childhood. This volume made me feel like a lazy dullard.
MORE on the Childcraft collection:
Poems of Early Childhood
Storytelling and Other Poems
Folk and Fairy Tales
Animal Friends and Adventures
Life in Many Lands
Great Men and Famous Deeds
Exploring the World Around Us
Creative Play and Hobbies
Art for Children

A caregiver’s confessions

I didn’t want to visit my mother yesterday. I was glad that her doctor had gotten ill and her appointment had to be rescheduled. I wouldn’t have to see her. I’d had a week of vacation and then saw my mother just two days prior and took her for an echocardiogram. Wasn’t that enough? But I didn’t feel like any of that was an excuse. Mom is still quite delightful most of the time, so that wasn’t an excuse either. I just didn’t want to see her again this week. Of course, I made the 45-minute drive out there anyway. And stayed for only 15 minutes more than it took me to get there.

Mom has always been very independent. She turned down several marriage proposals and never even said yes to my father whom she married at age 32. She married because she wanted children. I came along when she was 40. She was never my friend; always my mother. And she insisted that I, too, be independent. Vulnerability has replaced the countenance of strength I grew used to. So it feels wrong to have her dependent on me and for me to be taking care of her.

She handled all the finances in our home and for our church. Now I’ve tried to make sure that all her bills come straight to my home. Otherwise they will be lost. I received a new check card for her in the mail today and can’t decide if I’m going to allow her to have it or not. Allow her to have it. Allow her. But she’s given her number out to scam artists before and I don’t know if she will again. Am I protecting her or restricting her by keeping the card?

To add to my confession, I must say that I applied for a full-time job this week. This feels like a betrayal of my commitment to her care. I’m lucky that I can survive without working, but I need the order and stimulation and human contact work provides. Mom might be healthy enough now that she won’t need more than a couple of doctor visits a month now. She’s walking more and seems to be breathing with more ease. So I’m hopeful.

But there always a but, a however, an on-the-other-hand. She seems to be coming out of her delirium, but that doesn’t mean that the dementia is any better. She’s lost her keys twice this week, is convinced that another woman is wearing her clothes, doesn’t recognize some of her own clothing, and is absolutely unable to determine if it’s night or day. She’s also convinced that her stomach was operated on recently. Does any of this mean that she needs me? It certainly means that I feel a need to be with her for as long as she’s able to recognize and welcome me.

Last week I resolved to not contradict Mom unless it was medically necessary. I would allow her her own reality, even if it didn’t correspond with mine or make sense to me. Then yesterday I tried to convince her that a sweater was hers by showing all the hairs on it that matched her own. And, in jest, I accused her of being anorexic because of her obsession with the size of the belly on her tiny little 87 pound frame. I think I hurt her; I know if confused her. I’m not sure that I erased all that by kissing her on the nose. But I might have. I think I still have that much power.

The power to make Mom laugh or feel love is one that I enthusiastically embrace. It makes up for the boredom of sitting with her as she looks through her purse or wonders again about where the cars go that drive by. She was always unconditional in her love for me and for my sister and I think I can reflect that back. It’s the power over her finances, her health care, her access to the world outside her assisted living home that makes me uncomfortable and uncertain.

It used to be, only a year or so ago, that if I called my mother twice during a week, she would express dismay at the frequency. She’s ask me if something was wrong. For most of my adult life she lived hundreds of miles away and we found that a monthly letter and quarterly phone call was just about the right amount of contact. We each had our own lives and these lives intersected only in our hearts and during the one- or twice-a-year visits.

So my twice-weekly visits feel like an interruption in my life. I chose not to have children and I chose a spouse with whom I can enjoy parallel play. I see my closest friends only occasionally. Perhaps I haven’t grown up enough to learn how to be generous with my time and attention for extended periods. Or maybe I’m not so selfish and am really lucky that I still experience love and affection from my mother. At some point the dementia might take that away. I could be trying to distance myself from that day by distancing myself from Mom now. I guess I’ll leave the judgment up to you readers and any psychologists in the audience.

Silly poems of my own

Silly poems are harder to write than you might expect. I’m having trouble with the rhythms. But I’m going to share anyway.

Skunks in love

They drink their lattes in perfect sync.
Drink by drink their cheeks turn pink.
Lost in each other; their love turns blind.
Neighbors point; they do not mind.
Neither notices the other’s stink.

Tea, jam and honey

Tea, jam and honey
What will you have?

   Tea, jam and honey?
   Why I’ll have them with toast.

Just tea, jam and honey.
It’s really better than most.
But to have it with bread
I’m afraid you’re mislead.

   Just tea, jam and honey
   I heard what you said.
   If that’s all that you serve?
   Man, you really have the nerve.

Tea, jam and honey.
Please to observe
how it sweetens the tongue,
its praises to be sung.

   Yes tea, jam and honey
   Maybe I’m just too young.
   Perhaps a cracker instead
   to use your sweet spread?

Just tea, jam and honey
What’s gone to your head?
A cracker is dusty and crumbly and dry.
I don’t feed the wasp or cockroach or fly!

   So tea, jam and honey
   I think I might cry.
   A pancake would be good.
   Or a bagel if I could.

Just tea, jam and honey.
Has your mind turned to wood?
Bagels are too round and pancakes are so flat.
What waste my condiments on something like that?

   Then tea, jam and honey, I finally agree.
   Yes, tea, jam and honey — with a spoon if you please.

Tea, jam and honey. I’m so glad that you see.
A spoon? I’ll have to get one. Pray lend me your keys.

Notes on a South Dakota trip

South Dakota is usually a drive-through state on my way to Yellowstone, but this year HabMoo, his parents and I made the state a destination. Here are some of my thoughts about the trip.

I’d like to suggest that the state might be a wee bit overly concerned about death and the afterlife. Billboards provide Christian spiritual guidance even though that is not probably where most of us seek out that type of service. How many of us have a Bible there in the front seat of our car where we can immediately refer to chapter and verse? Great anxiety is expressed about the future of any unborn fetuses I may have brought with me. From what I’ve observed of pregnant women, they don’t need reminding that the bun in their oven has a beating heart, they need to know how far it is to the next clean restroom. And then there are the exhortations to “Think!” with the reverse of the sign asking “Why Die?” The loneliness of much of the landscape is enough to encourage contemplation of heavy issues like life and death.

By the way, asking me to “Inspect our restrooms” is not going to get me to stop at your motel. I don’t want to think about checking for hair in the shower drain. I want to think about getting myself clean and sleeping in a comfortable bed. And I’m pretty sure that I’ll never see a buffalo under a palm tree anywhere in the state. So that image just confuses me. I suggest just going with the cowboy theme everyone else uses.

Typos, misspellings and misplaced apostrophes add some character to billboards and signage, making you feel like South Dakotans are just regular down-home folk, but the state park system could really use a proofreader. HabMoo was trying to determine what type of wares we could be peddling in the Black Hills.

Wireless now rules the marketing world. Every hotel and most campgrounds bragged about having it. No one cares about HBO any longer or free local calls. It’s all about being able to check Facebook while you’re getting away from it all.

It’s great to see something other than corn and beans growing in the fields. I enjoyed driving past the sunflowers and sorghum. The fields full of round hay bales started to make me wonder if hay has a herding instinct.

Birding is great in the state. There just aren’t enough trees for the hawks and other raptors to hide in. There are more water birds than you’d expect. We saw herons and coots and yellow-headed blackbirds. Many mountain bluebirds make their homes in Custer State Park. And the meadow larks seem to understand their duty to sit on fence posts for optimal viewing.

The pronghorn antelope, on the other hand, are rather antisocial. If there was only one in sight it had it’s backside towards us. If there was a group of five, then four of them had their butts pointed in our direction. The tourism board should work on this rude behavior.

It’s much easier to spot big horn sheep at Custer than at Yellowstone.

The drinking water at Chamberlain is overly chlorinated. The water at Custer is very tasty. I think they could sell it. Not at Wall Drug, of course, but maybe a little further east.

Am I the only person who thinks that the Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse memorials are USA-sized pieces of graffiti? Where else would someone look at the side of a beautiful cliff and think “I could do better” and then get funding to blast away? I really prefer the more limited and personal hubris of John Freemont’s signature in the stone at Pipestone National Monument or all the names at Independence Rock in Wyoming. Crazy Horse didn’t want his photo taken so do you think he wanted his image carved into a mountain? I find it all to be a gross insult to the beauty of the Black Hills.

If you fall on a trail in the Black Hills you might get mica embedded in your hands. This will make them sparkle. It totally makes up for the pain of the scrapes.

After I die, if you feel that you should try traveling to the underworld to plead for my return, I suggest that you begin your search in the Badlands. If any place has an opening to the underworld, it’s this place.

I hate hot weather, but it’s so appropriate in the Badlands that I relish it there. The heat and the wind seem almost nourishing amidst that dry eerie landscape. HabMoo and I once visited after a rainfall and while the moisture made the earthen colors stand out, it just seemed wrong. If I ever take a mud bath, however, I want to take it in that earth.

There are not enough jackalopes in the world.

Childcraft: Exploring the World Around Us

Now that I’m up to reviewing the seventh volume, the text is getting much denser and the graphics fewer. I have no memory of this book. Maybe it’s because it begins with “Animals of Zoo and Circus” neither of which I had ever seen.

Stories about the zoo and circus animals are told from the animals’ viewpoints. “Little Ram’s ears were torn. His tender trunk was bleeding.” The stories about trapping elephants and bears are scary. But later we are assured “Ranta and Ram had good memories. Soon they learned to know what was expected of them. Ram was very popular with children, who often fed him melons.”

The volume ends with articles on plants. The chapters by Margaret McKenny are very engaging. Her paragraphs on the dandelion makes me feel a bit guilty about how I treat them. “Perhaps you, too, have sent these tiny troopers dancing on their way by blowing the parachutes from the dandelion’s head.” I’d forgotten how fun that can be.

What I learned

Tiger hunting is a popular sport of rich princes in India.

A baby kangaroo,” even with the nipple in its mouth, cannot suck. So the mother has to pump the milk into the baby. She does this as you would blow up a balloon or bubble gum, or pump air into a bicycle tire.” Huh? I found this to be a wee bit disturbing. There are no references in this book about the lack of kangaroo flatulence. Perhaps that is a newer discovery.

When an opossum is playing dead “it may be picked up by the tail and swung about in a circle, yet its feet continue to stick out stiffly.” I didn’t try that when the cats and I were confronted by a possum last spring. I don’t think I could make myself even touch its tail. But now I think I might substitute opossum for cat when referring to how much room there is to swing one.

I’m happy that I had just a normal pet mouse. “A most interesting kind of tame mouse is the waltzing, or dancing, mouse…. This pretty mouse spends a large part of its waking hours spinning gaily around in dizzy circles.” I’ve now learned that it’s also particularly susceptible to disease and sensitive to changes in temperature. If your mouse waltzes, you should take it to the vet immediately.

“Pigs raised near cities usually are fed on garbage.” All the hogs I ever knew got grain. But I’ve never known any suburban pigs.

Ants have customs, just like foreign people do.

The praying mantis is the only insect that can look over its own shoulder.

Spider silk is used to make “the cross lines for surveying instruments, telescopes, and gun and submarine-sighting equipment.”

If you pick a trillium flower will likely cause the plant to die. I never considered picking one.

Children used to go for a ramble. I’ve meandered and walked idly a few times, but I’m not sure if I rambled as a child. Well I probably did ramble on and on while talking to my parents. But I never looked for flowers while rambling. Not even a ramblin’ rose.

Dick Whittington’s cat was once famous even though that particular folktale didn’t make it into the early Childcraft volumes. I had to go look up the story.

So today’s trivia question is …

   What made Dick Whittington’s cat famous? Answer.

MORE on the Childcraft collection:
Poems of Early Childhood
Storytelling and Other Poems
Folk and Fairy Tales
Animal Friends and Adventures
Life in Many Lands
Great Men and Famous Deeds
Exploring the World Around Us
Creative Play and Hobbies
Art for Children

Fears: Part two

I’m currently afraid that the fly the cats can’t seem to catch is going to land on my face while I sleep. Then it’s going to crawl up to the corner of my eye and take a drink. Like they do to horses.

Thanks to a friend who educated me about these things, I’m also scared of dermoid cysts and teratomas. These are tumors with hair or teeth in them. According to Wikipedia — which I may have to stop reading — teratomas have even been know to have an eyeball inside. This is seriously screwed up biology. I want to know exactly where I have hair, teeth, and eyeballs. But I can’t help but wonder if if did have a dermoid cycst (and maybe I do, how would I know?), would the hair be gray or still brown?

I fear that Wikipedia will soon be authored only by men who think it’s fun to include photos of things like dermoid cysts to their entries.

I worry that the seas will rise and while we look pretty safe here in Minnesota, people from Miami and Virginia Beach might come knocking. Or people from the West Coast.

On a related note, I fear that not only will a warmer climate make life harder for polar bears and birds in the Amazon, it will all mean soggy and pale pork chops. I love pork chops.

I could cry tears of blood. Now that’s a pretty cool thing for a vampire to do in a movie, but can you image what that would do to your makeup?

I have anxiety about my wardrobe. I could be wearing the wrong color and people are judging me for it. I’m not referring to my fashion sense, but to how your brain is wired. I guess I better start wearing red to job interviews. I wonder if red cowboy boots are enough red.

I fear that I might be average. Luckily I don’t think I ever received a “C” while in school. And my personality type (INTP) is a very small percentage of the population. I worry more about becoming a typical old lady and somehow acquiring the three chronic health conditions that most senior insured women have. Really I’d prefer to have no chronic conditions. I’ve hit middle age without any so keep your fingers crossed for me. Unless you have chronic arthritis.

I think I share this fear with many others. I fear that I married a mutant. I think it would be OK if I was the mutant. Then there would be no way I could be average. But I don’t want to be sleeping next to one. I mean the guy might have teeth growing somewhere in his abdomen.

I’m also afraid that I might be reading too many stories about science.

Childcraft: Great Men and Famous Deeds

“Great Men,” huh? Since the previous volumes didn’t have any content newer than the late 1940s, I took the editors at their word. I hoped only to see Madame Curie’s story inside. But I think this volume had more women included than my 1980 edition of Norton’s Anthology of English Literature. And most of the stories inside were written by women.

Adventures of Famous Persons

I remember reading about Dolly Madison as a child and wondering what it must be like to be remembered only for saving a painting. But they’ve also included Louisa Alcott, Clara Barton, Rosa Bonheur, Jane Addams, Madame Curie, and Jenny Lind. I was excited to see that last name because there’s an elementary school in town that I didn’t know was named after an unattractive singing sensation in Sweden. I’m not sure why it was so important for the author to point out more than once that little Jenny was not a pretty child, but I guess it was proof that talent is more important than looks. Apparently she was an illegitimate child, too, but no mention was made of this.

Many of the men about whom I studied in school are included in this volume: Washington, Lincoln, Franklin, Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, George Washington Carver, Daniel Boone, Babe Ruth. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Will Rogers included in such a list before, however. And being from the side of Northern Aggression, I’d never read anything about Rober E. Lee before, but I’m sure parents in the South expected to see him included. And I’m assuming that Childcraft was trying to enter the Canadian market because I never studied the lives of these famous Canadians: Alexander MacKenzie, the “Black Robes” (priests), Pierre Radisson, and Wilfred Grenfell. And I’m pretty sure they didn’t care at all about the Native American market or they would have edited out lines like this: “But he little knew the blackness of the Iroquois heart.”

I learned about two artists I’d never been introduced to before: Thomas Hart Benton and Rosa Bonheur. We don’t learn much about Mr. Benton, other than the fact that his son’t dog was very attached to his son. So I need to look up his story and artwork. I’d like to read a biography of Ms. Bonheur, but I think I’ll skip the parts I now know about her learning dressmaking as a child. I want to know about more about her dressing as a boy, speculation about her being a lesbian, and I want to see examples of her art.

Myths and Legends

I found it a little odd to read biographies and then come to fictional tales. Included here are stories about Pandora’s box, Icarus, King Midas, Persephone, Balder, King Arthur, William Tell, Robin Hood, and Paul Bunyon. I adored tales of King Arthur and Robin Hood as a child so I guess I have to approve of their inclusion. But the entire section feels like an editor really wanted to use these stories and the previous volumes were already filled. So in they went. And unfortunately, there must not have been room for a Pecos Bill story.

I did learn some good trivia. What is the name of Paul Bunyon’s other ox?  It’s Benny. Babe and Benny.

MORE on the Childcraft collection:
Poems of Early Childhood
Storytelling and Other Poems
Folk and Fairy Tales
Animal Friends and Adventures
Life in Many Lands
Great Men and Famous Deeds
Exploring the World Around Us
Creative Play and Hobbies
Art for Children

What I miss about working

I brought home my last paycheck over six months ago. So obviously one thing I miss is the paycheck. But there’s so much more of greater importance.

I miss

• brainstorming new Web pages and architecture, designs, program names, story ideas, strategies, etc.
• laughing together at silly ideas that come up
• watching silly ideas get turned into something clever, resourceful, even practical
• listening to a client’s plans, desires, and ideas and attempting to take them a step further
• telling the client that I just did something over and above what was promised or expected
• the thrill of working out the code or solution to a problem that’s been waking me up at night
• watching usage stats, reviewing search logs, checking on link-backs, reading what others have to say about me, my colleagues, and our clients
• excellent conference speakers
• sharing good food after listening to great speakers (or even suffering through dull ones)
• being able to offer some good advice
• getting good advice
• fact-checking, fixing my own mistakes before someone else catches them
• preparing for presentations
• tightening language, making instructions more clear, reducing jargon, writing in plain English
• going to new places for lunch
• going to familiar places for lunch and running into seldom-seen colleagues
• learning about the work of my colleagues
• sharing in the successes of my colleagues
• enjoying the successes of my clients
• mastering a new skill
• seeing the end of a large project ahead in the distance, knowing we’re going to make it
• mapping the progress of a project
• Aha! moments when interviewing users or getting feedback from colleagues
• getting specific and intelligent feedback
• thank-yous

Taking care of a mother with dementia doesn’t give you very many of those rewards. It’s the working cooperatively with colleagues (or siblings) that I really miss. And there will be no pretty package to present to others when I’m finished. But there are more rewards than you’d think. Mom’s a long-term project requiring lots of creativity, lots of emotional intelligence, and a lot of planning. I get to spend time with a funny and eccentric lady. And she’s good at showing her appreciation of what I do. Really, I’m pretty damn lucky.

Childcraft: Life in Many Lands

I had to sit down and read volume five in the Childcraft encyclopedias I’m reviewing. I haven’t recognized a single story yet. Perhaps I didn’t read them or wasn’t enamored of them as I was the earlier volumes.

Many of the stories in this volume were originally published in Child Life magazine which was published from 1921 to 1997 and was aimed at children ages nine to 11. Child Life has been incorporated into Children’s Digest. That magazine might also be out of print now.

I hope the children’s magazine industry isn’t suffering too badly during this recession and era of electronic games. I was thrilled to get The Horn Book Magazine delivered just for me. Dad would get all his horse magazines, Mom all hers with pictures of food and the Lennon sisters, and I’d get my own magazine, too. Our library carried Highlights for Children, but my magazine was just for me.

A little aside on children’s magazines

I’ve learned that John Newbery published one of the first children’s magazines, The Lilliputian. A photo of an issue up for auction shows that it was also known as “the young gentleman and lady’s golden library. Being an attempt to mend the world, to render the society of man more amiable, and to establish the plainness, simplicity, virtue and wisdom of the golden age, so much celebrated by the poets and historians.” An attempt to mend the world? As a child I just wanted to be entertained and maybe learn something if it was interesting.

The first American children’s periodical, Children’s Magazine, was published in 1789. I wonder how large its circulation was. The entire count for the country was still under three million. The publication ceased within a year.

Another source of stories in this volume of Childcraft was The Junior Red Cross News. It was the first of several Red Cross publications for young people and appeared in 1919. It lasted at least until the 1950s.

The first periodical written for black children was published even earlier, but enjoyed a much shorter run. At least three literary magazines have been published for African American children: Joy (1887 – 1922), The Brownies’ Book (1920 – 1921), and Ebony Jr.! (1973 – 1985) [Ebony Jr.!: The Rise and Demise of an African American Children's Magazine]

Back to the stories

There is one story about a black child in this volume. It’s a tale of a North African (Algerian) boy who proves his honesty and is rewarded by American GIs. Hussein, the young shepherd in “Eggs for Sale,” has learned enough English to say “Tank you veddy mooch.” The story is in the final section, “Stories of Many Lands,” and doesn’t say as much about Algeria as it does about how Americans think others should see us.

I suspect that the editors felt that they were being very inclusive, and maybe they were for the the 1940s. Other stories from many lands are about children from Dalmatia (part of Croatia), Hungary, Greece, France, Lithuania, China and Bora Bora. The section on “Children of the Americas” covers more than just kids from Appalachia and Indiana. There’s a story about an Argentinian child, and two from Canadian provinces. There’s even a story about a Yaqui Indian and another about a Texan. This is where a Laura Ingalls Wilder story appears, too.

The first section, “Holidays and Festivals,” was a bit of a surprise. I assumed there would a story about Hanukkah or Purim, and maybe Boxing Day or Japan’s Children’s Day. I knew enough not to expect anything about Ramadan or Kwanzaa or even Labor Day. But I didn’t expect to see two Christmas stories, one set on Beacon Hill in Boston and one in the Arkansas Hills. And I didn’t expect to see “Indians for Thanksgiving.” Rest assured that the Indians were not a turkey or ham substitute. Two little Pilgrim girls simply take in and feed a young Native American, thereby achieving their goal of seeing an Indian and also preventing an attack by his tribe. There’s also an incredibly dull story titled “Star-Spangled Banner Girl.”

My favorite story is about two girls who get so engrossed in their library books that they don’t notice when the library closes and they are locked inside. That’s such a great fantasy. I would have immediately ventured into the section of the library directly behind the librarian’s desk and snooped around. And then I would have gone through the librarian’s desk, which is something Garnet and Citronella, the girls in the story, did. The story, “Locked In” is part of a larger book by Elizabeth Enright: Thimble Summer, a Newbery Medal winner set in a small Wisconsin town during the Great Depression. I guess I just prefer stories set close to home.

These stories provide a good window into what the general culture thought children should learn. The stories generally feature polite, honest, generous, thrifty, and industrious children. And the boys are also courageous. “Locked In” was the only story I noticed that encouraged children acting in their own self-interests. Current children’s literature themes include celebrating differences, dealing with teasing, staying safe (no illustrations of children riding in a truck bed), dealing with trauma, going after your dreams, the environment, powerful girls and such. However you’ll still find themes like friendship, responsibility, honesty, etc. I think there’s good reason most of the stories in this volume are no longer seen on bookstore shelves. I think I might have to find a copy of Thimble Summer, however.

MORE on the Childcraft collection:
Poems of Early Childhood
Storytelling and Other Poems
Folk and Fairy Tales
Animal Friends and Adventures
Life in Many Lands
Great Men and Famous Deeds
Exploring the World Around Us
Creative Play and Hobbies