Holy Moley, Green Anole!

When did you first start learning science in school as a young child?

I don't recall ever having a science textbook in my hands during elementary school in the 1960s, despite this decade being the heyday of the Space Race after the 1957 launching of Sputnik.

Sure, we dabbled in science a little bit, at least in fifth and sixth grade, which was when I started public school.

I vaguely remember the eruption of Mt. Clay-and-Vinegar-and-Baking-Soda in the big sink of my sixth-grade classroom. A student had made it and brought it in as his science project, and I think the electrical circuit I built with my dad was part of this adventure, too.

As I recall, the teacher had told us all to go home and find a science project to do. I'm sure many a parent quaked then as they do today when the kid comes home and says it's time to get a trifold board because the science fair is coming up.

But my dad was an aeronautical engineer as well as a very capable carpenter, electrician, and fixer-of-things, so he was more than thrilled to throw himself into helping with this project.

I was in Catholic school for first grade through fourth grade, however, and there was even less science education going on. (Which is odd considering how Catholics are not biblical fundamentalists, and the Church, for example, doesn't reject the theory of evolution.)

My entire science education in those four years consisted of...a chameleon.

Yes. A single lizard. And actually, it wasn't even a chameleon. That's how poor our science education was. The little reptile was really a green anole--often called a chameleon in America, but a species distinction that would be pointed out by a teacher teaching science.

But the anole wasn't even used to do that. It just sat on a rock in a little terrarium for a month. Sometimes we were allowed to look at it. It looked back. Then it was given away to a lucky kid at the end of the month, and that was that for science.

Oh. Wait. No. I think the planting of the corn seeds must've been science, too.

We all brought in some dirt, put it in an empty half-pint milk container, stuck a corn seed in it, and set it on the window ledge.

Except for Bernadette.

Bernadette forgot dirt, so she used clay. Our seeds grew. Hers didn't. She looked ashamed and we glared at her as if she'd murdered a kitten.

Sum total of science learned in grades 1-4:

1. Chameleon. 
2. Grow plants in dirt, not clay.

It's a start.

This all changed when I entered the brand-spanking-new junior high school building constructed just an eight-minute walk from our house.

Thank you, Robert Bunsen!

Seventh-grade science and beyond was a dedicated class, held in spacious classrooms with long, sleek, black countertops equipped with sinks and glass jets (and Bunsen burners!).

We covered topics ranging from asteroids to zygotes. It was short on ecosystems, habitats, and animals, but otherwise absolutely, smashingly splendid.

Since those heady days (plus a few marvelous science classes in college, a training program to become a zoo docent, and a course for teachers of science taught at a local university), my acquaintance with science education lies mainly in writing books and articles on science topics for children, parents, and teachers.

Oh, that and helping my child with the dreaded trifold boards at science fairs.

Wiki commons photo

Watching my child learn science at school was an eye-opener, especially as I became curious about how science has been taught at the elementary level over the past hundred years or so.

If it barely ranked as a subject in my elementary school--a good public school on Long Island in a community packed with Grumman engineers--how was it treated in earlier decades?

For my daughter, science existed as a distinct school subject from her earliest elementary years. I still have one of her dedicated science notebooks buried around here in a box somewhere. I recall seeing little aquariums and terrariums sitting in the center of a cluster of kindergarten desks.

Nonfiction books are thriving in the elementary classroom. Kids are becoming citizen scientists. Science is properly part and parcel of their education and their lives.

Now, STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) is the acronym of the day. With a daughter who's going into a technical vocational field, I'm pleased that kids are learning how science applies to everyday life and that it's not some arcane realm of little relevance to their lives.

But as a reader and writer with a great fondness for natural-history writing of the past that reveled in the sheer wonder of nature, I sometimes wonder if perhaps we might err too much on the side of emphasizing science's utility. As if we're hustling kids to hurry up and get past that fascinating mammoth diorama on the field trip because we have to catch the bus.

I don't know if this concern has any validity. I only started wondering about it several years ago as my child entered high school. We visited the school during an open-house event and marveled at the lab rooms, the equipment, the artifacts. We wished we were students again as we heard about the biotech and maritime academies.

But when we asked one teacher about the biotech program, he resolutely refused to answer specific questions.

Arms crossed, looking across the room without making eye contact, he maintained that he taught science and taught kids to be interested in and thrilled by science. He was implicitly telling us that he wasn't a big fan of teaching science only as something you do as a career step.

So my goal now is not only to learn more about how science was taught to elementary school kids in the past, but also to find out more about what teachers think of today's focus.

Which means I have two-thirds of my trifold board started!

(This is Part 1 of an "I'm not sure how many parts there will be" series, but I can tell you that I have picked up some interesting old science textbooks at thrift stores and that there are also some Very Funny Bits in some of them, so please stay tuned.)

Soft Spring Evenings with "Apricot Sky" by Ruby Ferguson

In the early 1970s my uncle delivered a stack of books to me. He'd picked them up on a trip to Ireland and assumed, quite rightly, that his horse-crazy niece would love a series of books about a girl her age who acquires first one pony, then a second, and tumbles into a series of misadventures with them.

These books were the "Jill" books by Ruby Ferguson, a series of nine titles starring the sharp, funny, sometimes klutzy, and often impetuous Jill Crew. She begins the series as an 11-year-old and ends as a 17-year-old, pony-mad from start to finish.

Sadly, there were only the nine, and my equally horse-besotted friend M. and I read the paperbacks over and over and went around talking like Jill, saying "frightfully" and "smashing" rather a lot, until the pages became soft as tissue and the spines scored with folds.

So, since there weren't any more Jill book to be had, about a decade ago I thought I'd have a go at reading some of the books Ferguson wrote for an adult audience. (Ferguson, by the way, was born Ruby Constance Ashby in Yorkshire in 1899. Between 1926 and 1934, she published 7 mystery novels under the name R. C. Ashby. Her 13 adult novels were published between 1937 and 1967; the "Jill" books fall in the middle of that span, as does a children's book entitled A Paintbox for Pauline. More biographical information can be found here.)

Ruby Ferguson

Unfortunately, it isn't easy to find these books, at least not in a Pacific Northwest library system, which is pretty far removed from Yorkshire. At one point the Seattle Public Library had two of her titles circulating (or not circulating actually, which would explain why they were ultimately weeded from the collection). The King County system had just one title: Apricot Sky, published in 1952.

Apricot Sky is picked out by Ferguson fans as the best one to track down, the other romances being fairly gloomy and the mystery novels being just OK. Author Hilary Clare describes this book as "a glorious romp through the summer of a West Highland family and contains some children who might be straight out of the Jill saga." And she's totally right.

The story unfolds in post-World War II Scotland. There are references to some brothers lost in the war and to rationing, but there's generally an air of "things are looking up," no doubt because the heroine, Cleo, has just arrived home after spending three years in the United States and because her younger sister is about to be married--to the younger brother of the next-door laird, Neil. Whom Cleo has pined after for years. Neil, however, is very Darcy-like and barely seems to notice her existence.

Cleo's hapless attempts to engage in conversation while writhing inwardly at her blunders alternate with the escapades of her niece and nephews, Primrose, Gavin, and Archie, who are wonderfully messy, rambunctious, and realistic kids who long to spend the summer potting about in boats rather than preparing for a wedding and entertaining their sordid, stuck-up older cousins, Cecil and Elinore.

Apricot Sky is an affectionate comedy of manners, with humorous touches that remind me not only of the beloved "Jill" books but also such works as Shirley Jackson's stories about parenting (Life Among the Savages and Raising Demons) and Betty MacDonald's stories about finding a job in Seattle and spending time in a TB sanitarium (Anybody Can Do Anything and The Plague and I).

Ferguson described moors, fishing villages, and lovely seascapes, but didn't neglect to leave out the little things that intrude into the most heavenly moments, such as ill-fitting shoes and sore feet, leaky  jam jars, and the embarrassment of saying stupid and obvious things when you're desperately trying to seem lighthearted and carefree in conversation with the object of your crush.

A New York Times review sums up the book thus: "What happens during the long, lazy summer of Apricot Sky is not of great consequence....What counts are the gently satiric pictures of life in the highlands and the fresh, light wind of wit and charm that ripples the pages of this book."

Here are a few of my favorite bits and pieces from the story.

Scene: the garden. Characters: Cleo's mother, who's been ambushed by the arrogant, pretentious poppycock of a novelist who lives next door and has asked her to tell him, as a woman, what his Sister Agnes character in his latest work might do next. She hasn't been listening to a word he's said, so is caught off guard and wildly suggests she break her vows, which makes the novelist cross, saying that would be out of character.

"There wouldn't be any novels at all if everybody did everything in keeping with their characters,' said his hostess stoutly. "and what's more, people love stories about nuns who break their vows. Look at The Woman of Babylon, by Joseph Hocking. It's the best novel I ever read."
     Mr. Trossach closed his eyes in pain and made a kind of whiffling sound in his throat.
     "Would you mind getting off that pansy?" said Mrs. MacAlvey. "It's rather a favourite one of mine. You know," she added triumphantly, "I've always thought I could write a novel myself if only I had time."

(Any writers among you will be only too familiar with that last line.)

The "Jill" books are filled with descriptions of food, because Jill and her friends are always starving and gobbling up cream teas and toast, so it was fun to discover that the inhabitants of Apricot Sky likewise enjoy good feasts:

In spite of being so disturbed by love, Cleo was hungry. The roast chickens came in, preceded by a rapturous smell mingling the odours of bread sauce, rich gravey, and game chips....Everybody disposed of large platefuls.

In their sailboat, the younger kids are barely away from shore before they're ready to tuck into their picnic:

"I've never been so famished since that day we went to watch the shooting and forgot the sandwiches. I could eat a whole sheep. Let's start on the meat pie, and then work up to the apple charlotte and the chicken legs and the crackers and jam. Isn't this utter blissikins?"

That's 15-year-old Primrose speaking, who's what they would've called a tomboy back then. She's full of great observations, such as  her disgust at her aunt's decision to buy 25 yards of brocade for curtains in her new home:

"What a waste!" said Primrose. "Fancy spending fifty galumptuous pounds on curtain material when you could use old sheets or anything and buy a cine-camera."

Primrose is not one to mince words ("She really is the most binding clot," is how she describes cousin Elinore). And she's not about to be put down by her supercilious cousin, as evidenced by the mockery she incites among her siblings and their friend Gull at Elinore's expense:

"I think Elinore is a beautiful name, and I have another. Felicity. Elinore Felicity. Don't you think that's musical? Have you got another name, Primrose?"
     "As a matter of fact, I have," said Primrose, dragging one leg out of the sand to scratch the ankle. "But I don't like it much. It's Hephzibah. Primrose  Hephzibah."
     Archie gave a great snort of joy. "I've got another name, too," he volunteered. "It's Brontosaurus."
     "I think Neurasthenia is an awfully musical  name for a girl," said Gavin. "Don't you, Prim?"
     "Oh yes, and so's Lethargy."
     "They only call me Gull for short," said Gull. "My real name is Seagull Nightingale Cuckoo Stork Tordoch."

One scene mid-book reminds us that fussy food fetishes have always been in fashion: here Raine and Cleo are visiting their snobbish, controlling sister-in-law Trina and her two milquetoast children. Trina is ushering them out the door of her home at lunchtime without exactly shedding a tear at their departure.

"I'd have asked you to come back and share ours, but I don't think you'd be satisfied with our simple food."
     "Oh, but we're not fussy--" began Cleo, and Trina interrupted, "When I said Simple Food, I was speaking advisedly. I don't suppose you've read Adelaide Amble MacPherson's book, but we all have the greatest faith in it. She says that to obtain the maximum of nourishment, food ought to be simplified to the nth degree; that is to say, colourless, formless and practically tasteless. We've been practising this for three weeks, and we're all wonderfully better for it. It seems to have made our lives quite different."
     "I'm sure it has," said Cleo.

But I'll have to leave you with much better fare than that. Here's the younger kids, out on another sailing adventure, and Archie has just asked if they can have dinner before they do anything, because explorers always begin by eating.

"I've never heard that," began Gavin, but Hamish was already unpacking the food....There were packs of sandwiches, ham, egg, and tomato, wrapped up in separate dozens in paper napkins with pink roses round the border. This novelty added considerably to the success of the feast, especially from the point of view of Elinore, who was faddy about finding bits of the boat bottom in her food. There were also fresh scones, buttered thickly, and chunks of fruity cake. There were tarts with apple inside and biscuits with chocolate on top. Finally everybody had a bottle of fizzy orangeade, the quart size, all to himself. So superior a lunch seemed fitting for such an occasion.

Odd Things People Say to Writers

Look! Even pre-Internet, cats. (Image courtesy Graphics Fairy).

A few weeks ago a humor piece about what it'd be like if strangers spoke to everybody the way they often speak to writers was making the rounds, eliciting chuckles, sighs, and rueful self-recognition along the way.

It made me think of some of the odd things people have said to me over the years as I've pursued my freelance-writing career.

I present them here with no irritation, astonishment, bitterness, or desire to have my soul soothed, because by now I just think they're kind of funny. Everybody in every walk of life hears people say stuff that takes them aback (how many times a day does a doctor hear "but I read on the Internet that..."?).

Scene: college cafeteria, freshman year.
Me: Oh, hello [unnamed arrogant author who happily lay around on college lawn with nubile college roommate discussing her, um, writing]! Er, I was just wondering if I got into your writing class?
Author: Hmm? Oh. No, I'm sorry. You have a lot of enthusiasm, but little talent.

Scene: college, different professor's office, later in freshman year.
Me: Um, hello [frightening professor who went on a tear one day raging against people who described things as being "a dull black"]...you wrote on my paper that you wanted me to come in and see you?
Professor: Hmm? Let me see. [Takes paper. Reads uplifting comment that says "Please come and see me. You have unusual talent."]
Me: [Silent. Scared. Hopeful.]
Professor: [Hands paper back abruptly. Fixes me with glare over pince-nez. Sneers.] Soooooo. You've come to hear me sing your praises, then?
Me: Oh! No! No, not at all.
Professor: [Rambles on a really long time about something.]

Scene: Living room, right after opening parcel that contains new book I wrote as work-for-hire about the history of everyday objects.
Houseguest (angry young woman fresh out of college): This your new book?
Me: Yes.
Houseguest: It's all just schilling for corporations!! Listen to this! [Reads text aloud in mocking tone.]
Me: Well, sometimes companies did invent and make stuff that we buy, like Band-Aids and crayons...
Houseguest: [goes on to scorch teakettle left on untended stove and to borrow clothing without returning it.]

Scene: Same living room, years later. Family from down the street whom we thought would be New Friends asks to see some of my books.
Me: Here's some animal books I did for young kids.
Guy from Other Family: "All About Baboons"???
Me: Yeah, I know, the title's funny! Can't help it, "baboon" is just a funny word.
Guy from Other Family: [Reads aloud from book while wife and children snicker and sputter.]
Me: [Silent in clear knowledge that these people will not be New Friends.]

Scene: kid's soccer game.
Soccer dad: So what's your next book about?
Me: Birds.
Soccer dad: Oh. So you just go and steal other people's research and write it all down.

Scene: UW classroom, science class for elementary-school teachers.
Fellow student: So you write books?
Me: Yeah.
Fellow student: So what are you doing in this class? You're here to steal all our ideas, aren't you?
Me: [Silent, thinking, What is up with this stealing stuff? And, hey, don't flatter yourself, lady.]

Scene: elementary school cafeteria.
Other mom: So what's your next book about?
Me: Birds.
Other mom: Oh. How boring!

Scene: A friend's baby shower.
Guest: I hear you're a writer!
Me: Um, yeah. I work as a freelance writer.
Guest: I've written a book! It's a memoir! Let me go get it.
Me: [worriedly waiting as fellow guest runs out of house to her home to fetch manuscript.]
Guest: [dumps manuscript in lap.]  Here! Maybe you can just read some of it for now.
Me: [vast alarm as manuscript reveals itself to be long, rambling diary filled with complaints about the woman's husband and personal details.]

Scene: Multiple occasions, throughout life, whenever people winkle it out of you that you're a writer of books for children. (Note, however, that the vast majority of people say pleasant things. Sometimes I think people are stinkers, but at heart I think most people mean well, so I actually don't mind the common comment "Would I have read anything you've written?")

"I've always wanted to write a children's book, but I don't have time."

"Really? Do you think that you'll ever write a real book?"

"Well, it's not like you need a college education to do what you do."

"That must be easy."

"Well, that's nice. I have to work for a living."

"So you just write stuff with short words?"

"Did you ever have a real job?"

The Weird Vintage Pop-up Books in the Basement

The creepy pop-up clown.

When I was a kid, I was always amazed to read stories in which the child protagonists felt fortunate to own a book.

I loved to read, so it wasn't that I thought a book was a strange item to cherish. It was just that books seemed like something everybody had, like air, or spoons.

Books were indeed plentiful and relatively inexpensive by the time the 1960s had rolled around (for a typical middle-class family, that is, such as mine).

My childhood home was awash in Little Golden Books, Big Little Books, and "I Can Read It All By Myself" Beginner Books. School order forms for paperback books routinely trailed me home, and books regularly appeared wrapped up for birthdays and Christmas.

There were also the somewhat mysterious books that had come down through the ages to reside alongside our colorful books on the shelves. At least, they seemed to me as if they came from antiquity--they dated back to my mother's childhood, a time that seemed as distant to me as Jane Austen's heyday. (I believed her when she said, after being badgered for hours by five-year-old me to reveal her age, that she was 100 years old.)

Among those books were four battered cardboard books filled with clever pop-ups and some vaguely unsettling illustrations.

I didn't like the stories very much, but I did enjoy opening the books to the pages that contained the pop-ups.

My mom always spoke reverently of the books, noting that they were very old and very valuable.

She wasn't far off the mark--they would have been valuable, if they weren't in terrible condition. Though they'd come by that condition honestly; they'd been read to pieces by my mom and her brother when they were kids.

My uncle had also colored in most of the pictures with paints. He filled them in very neatly and carefully, but I don't think they've done much to increase the books' value.

Their value wasn't further enhanced when one of my siblings, discomfited by some of the distorted, exaggerated features of various characters, went through the books and cut off the heads of many of the pop-up people and animals.

In researching the books, I learned they were part of a British book series called Bookano Books (which made sense family-history-wise, because they'd been sent from Ireland by my great-grandmother to my uncle in the 1930s).

Their creator, a publishing-industry executive named S. Louis Giraud, teamed up with a paper engineer named Theodore Brown to create pop-up books that featured "mechanical" moving parts. The name "Bookano" was a blend of the words "book" and "Meccano," the name of a popular European building-toy kit. The team produced 16 or 17 books between 1929 and 1949 (sources vary on the number).

Giraud geared the books to sell to a wide audience by using very thick, cheap paper, inexpensive printing techniques, and low-cost bindings (which is obvious to collectors of the falling-apart books) so that the books could be priced low. Oddly, it's the colorful pop-ups in each book that have best stood the test of time.

Bookano Books was also a cottage industry. Cutting out and constructing the pop-ups was a job hired out to women working from home. The materials would be delivered to them and picked up when finished. The pop-ups' claim to fame was that they could be viewed from all angles.

That was a big part of their appeal, and I can personally attest to that appeal because I spent a lot of time getting down on eye level with the books to peer into some of the scenes. I remember being particularly fascinated by this one, with characters gathered around a table, because you could see them from the front and the back, unlike a flat illustration in a book.

I don't know why I thought this was magical--I certainly didn't regard my three-dimensional toys in this way. I suppose there was just something about the 2-D managing to be 3-D that was inherently amazing, like View-Master slides. Or like getting one of those postcards with a plastic corrugated front that turned the picture into a 3-D image. (I spent a few hours of my youth trying to peel the plastic off one of those cards so as to enter the world of Mowgli and Baloo the Bear on a Disney postcard. I never succeeded.)

The regular illustrations in the books were, as mentioned previously, just kind of weird. I mean, jeepers. Check out this one. The first of many scary ringmasters in children's books. And clowns.

The comical stories were illustrated in a style similar to that used in the early Disney cartoons, with exaggerated features and rubbery limbs, lots of big teeth and giant nostrils. The serious fairy tales' illustrations were peopled by stiffer, more remote characters. The writing varied from formal and wordy to overwhelmed-by-cupcakes cheerful.

There were stories the likes of which you'd probably not find in the children's section today:

And I don't think I've ever run across the words "eunuch" and "female slaves" in any other children's books outside of these ones.

But the books' endpapers often delighted with more enchanting images:

The pop-ups really could be astonishing, such as this one of a Red Admiral butterfly and an orchid:

Though I don't think I'll ever forgive Bookano for giving me nightmares about clowns.

Pony Books and the Making of a Reader

Photo courtesy Newspix/Rex Features

A few months ago there was a dust-up online regarding adults who like reading YA literature.

Apparently this twisted the knickers of some critics, who muttered about the quality and (supposed) lack of depth in YA literature.

Reading the Harry Potter books, anything by John Green, and the like was suddenly a shameful thing for adults to be doing, though I guess it was OK to read chick-lit or light beach-escape reading as long as it was written with grown-ups in mind.

Far better writers than I have addressed this issue and extolled the fine writing and substance to be found not only in YA but also chapter books and picture books. I can only say that I've had a very pleasant few months indulging in the habit of reading horse books, which took turns with other novels that would be more likely to pass muster with these critics.

As a horse-crazy kid, of course, I did nothing but read horse books between the ages of 9 and 14. My local library helpfully labeled all its horse books with a little horse-head sticker on the spine, so you didn't even have to use the card catalog.

I figured I'd probably read every horse book available in our library system and most of the ones ever written for the middle-grade/young adult crowd by the time I got to high school, but there were actually herds and herds of literary oaters out there that I'd never come across, and that's not even counting the hundreds of titles that kids in England enjoyed throughout the 1900s.

Among these titles was a five-book series I stumbled upon in a vintage-items shop in late summer: The Timber Trail Riders. This series was published between 1963 and 1964, when I was still a very tiny person learning to talk, let alone read.

The adventures of the Timber Trail Riders were published by Whitman Publishing Company of Racine, Wisconsin. Whitman Publishing Company became a subsidiary of Western Publishing in 1915 (Western later published the beloved Little Golden Books). The Whitman line included many mysteries and westerns; series based on characters such as Trixie Belden, Donna Parker, and Troy Nesbit; and many books based on popular TV shows and movies such as Lassie and various Walt Disney films.

One aspect that intrigued me about these books was their obvious appeal to boys--three of the five stories featured boys as the main characters. This might not have been remarkable back in the day, but among the connoisseurs of pony books (yes, there is such a thing, and we hold our heads high), there is concern about the pinkification of the horse world--is there too much emphasis on all that is pink, glittery, and princess-y?

When the Resident Teen was a very small Resident Horse-Crazy Tot, a friend who was the mom of a little boy told me her son had rebelled at the idea of visiting some horses while they were on vacation. "Horses are girrrrl animals," he sneered, wrinkling his face in disgust. (Interestingly, in his middle teen years, this boy became a Brony.)

There was no shortage of boy-friendly horse stories when I was looking for books in the 1960s and early '70s, though. Marguerite Henry's books appealed to both boys and girls, as did the many volumes in Walter Farley's "Black Stallion" series. Most of these books had boys as the central human characters, but the horses figured so strongly in them, it wasn't off-putting to a horse-crazy girl reader.

I read Henry's books over and over, though the Black Stallion books didn't grab me--I read a few of them and then left off when my mom signed me up for the World Famous Horse Story Library book club, which brought books from authors around the world to my doorstep.

So when I sat down to read the Timber Trail Riders, I wondered if they'd have appealed to me when I was a kid, when just about all it took for me to like a book was the presence of a horse every few paragraphs.

When I finished them, I knew for sure they wouldn't have been my cup of tea.

 Not because the writing is terrible--it's not scintillating prose, but it's up to the task for a simple, unadorned, straightforward action-adventure mystery, perhaps the sort of writing for teens that would be called "hi-lo" today (high interest/low reading level).

One reason I wouldn't have liked them is the fact that they're mysteries. I hated mysteries as a child and I still don't like them. I had only one mystery book as a kid, and the only reason I read it again and again was because I knew how it ended. Something involving--wait for this--a false drawer in a desk! Unheard of!

I also wasn't, and am still not, really interested in fast-paced adventures. I couldn't have said so at the time, but the fact that as an adult one of my favorite books is The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating by Elisabeth Tova Bailey is a pretty good clue that this taste in reading has deep roots. (The book chronicles the long, slow recovery of the author from an obscure virus and her observations of the tiny snail that lives in a potted violet on a table by her bedside.)

My childhood obsession with horses taxed the patience of many adults--an art teacher took credit off my grade because I painted too many horses, a great-uncle ridiculed my drawings because they were of "yet another horse," and I was praised mightily when I brought home a book from the library that wasn't about horses.

(I often wonder if kids who were interested in cars, rockets, stamps, ancient Egypt, or the like were pressed to set aside their interests in this way.)

But I can say only this to teachers and parents who fear that girls' horse obsessions will limit them in life: Stop worrying. Horses carry the young reader into all kinds of amazing worlds of imagination and history and fact. And I can see now that the types of books I like now are rooted in those horsy books I indulged in as a kid, so I was actually forming reading tastes while I was steeping myself in horse lore. Jill Crewe of Ruby Ferguson's "Jill" pony books and her stories set in a small village where everybody knows each other, life turns on small hinges, and there's lots of talking and humor? Well, Jill, meet Jane Austen.

OK, So, What About the Books?

As noted, there are five titles, all published in a two-year span. I have found very little about them on the internet and absolutely nothing about the author. Or authors? Was Michael Murray a pen name for several writers? A copyright-renewal page online notes only that Murray was a hired writer. Either Murray was a very fast writer, or he was actually two or three writers.

I also wondered whether Whitman intended to continue the series. Each book's cover includes the title and a tagline featuring the main character's name: "A Mike Casey Story," "A Peggy Lewis Story," and the like. This billing makes me think they thought the series would take off and that the characters would become household names.

What they have in common is a scheme used by authors from the Brothers Grimm to Roald Dahl and J. K. Rowling: get rid of the parents, and get rid of them quick!

Fortunately for the parents of the assorted Timber Trail Riders, most of them are not stomped to death by an angry rhinoceros, blasted by an evil wizard lord, or otherwise dispatched. Typically, the kids simply get a marvelous opportunity to live away from their family for a month or two or even as long as a year and have thrilling adventures during that time. They also obtain horses or access to horses in ways that real kids can only dream of. Details below.

The Long Trail North: A Mike Casey Story

Mike Casey and Danny Hall are 13-year-old boys who help out on an old-time cattle drive set in modern times. It's all part of a nostalgic whim of an Englishman who’s bought an old cattle ranch that other people wanted to turn into a game farm. Failing to obtain the ranch (spoiler alert), the bad guys try to sabotage the cattle drive.

Little hiccups in the journey include  a near drowning, a few stampedes, a steady loss of cattle, and a hostage situation in a ghost town.

A fun surprise in this book is the appearance of a Native American boy who's also coming along as a drover. Mike speaks to him in stupid, truncated English, saying things like "We come from east, far toward rising sun.”

Little Bear plays along for a while, until he's asked if  he's ever heard of Chicago. He replies, “If you’re referring to Chicago, Illinois, I’ve been there at least half a dozen times, visiting my uncle who teaches ethnology at the university. I presume that is the Chicago you have reference to?”

The Texas Tenderfoot: A Dave Talbot Story

Dave Talbot, age 15, arrives in Chicago’s airport, dressed like a cowboy, and gets stared at a lot. Dad is off for a year working in the oil industry and Mom is deceased, so Dave's going to stay with Dad’s old pal  Colonel Dwyer who owns a big horse farm,. There he meets mysterious Lee Ann Burton, a poor little rich girl whose jet-setting parents are out of the picture.

They contend with Bo, the mean stableboy who's up to no good. You know he's Trouble with a capital T from the start: "“Bo was a husky tanned youth, with heavy features and a sullen manner. His dark brown hair had streaks of yellow, and he wore it too long, with slicked-back sides and exaggerated sideburns.”

Long hair--and dyed, no less! Clearly bad news.

Dave falls off a horse that Bo deliberately saddles improperly. Bo also lets valuable horses escape and tries to blame it on Dave, puts a burr under his saddle, and even attempts to burn down the stable. Dave ends up playing Sherlock Holmes and proving Bo's the culprit. In other news, Dad buys the brilliant horse Star Bright for Dave. There's also a show and party. The author of this book describes all the food lavishly. It will make you hungry.

The Luck of Black Diamond: A Sunny Saunders Story
Sunny Saunders is a young teen who goes off to live with her aunt and grandmother for a few weeks in Colorado. Straightaway she is witness to the rescue of a cow that gets stuck in quicksand. Soon after she is given free use of a splendid black horse named Diamond, who is getting a month off from his job as a regular lesson horse—he will be hers alone.

And then her uncle buys the horse to send home with Sunny, on the condition that she ride him and not neglect him. Which causes her to worry mightily about her magnanimous decision later on to let her friend ride the dependable horse in a show—her uncle has arrived for a surprise visit and when he sees that, he’ll hit the roof, won’t he? No, because at the last minute the other girl gets another lovely horse and all is well.

This, the third book in the series, appears to have been written deliberately to cater to the tastes of many girl readers by focusing on relationships rather than adventures (a stereotype, for sure, but it probably resonates for a lot of women who like romances). After the quicksand bout, there are no other big adventures than a snarly dog that sometimes frightens the riders as they trot by a house.

One aspect of this book that I liked was how Black Diamond is actually endowed with a lot of personality--he's got opinions and quirks. However, I didn't appreciate the stunning lack of sympathy for a girl in the story who's afraid to ride after a fall—she’s repeatedly told she's “silly.” The book is also, of course, a product of its time, which still doesn't stop you from bridling when you read that when Sunny hugs her horse and he objects, Sunny concludes, “He was not like a girl, pleased to be kissed just because some boy wanted to. His favors had to be won.”

The Mystery of the Hollywood Horse: A Peggy Lewis Story

Teenager Peggy Lewis heads off to California to stay with her Aunt Paula for a month. Her aunt finesses a job for her at the stable of the trainer of Cinder, famous TV-star horse. She soon becomes friends with the girl who’s starring in Cinder’s next movie.

There’s also a mysterious, grumpy older teen named Chuck who skulks around fretting about Cinder. They find lots of clues that point to somebody plotting to steal Cinder, and speculate a lot about it and whether or not to tell his owner for fear of being dismissed as worrywarts and fussbudgets. Guess what! Cinder gets stolen! Peggy, however, finds the horse thieves’ secret lair and spirits the horse out. The police show up and the bad guys are caught.

This story stars a girl, and has more in the way of "relationship" angst than the adventure-oriented tales even though it has more hijinks than Sunny Saunders's story, but I did grow weary of all the hand-wringing and keeping things silent. Perhaps just my frustration with mysteries showing through. Or else knowing that the darn horse would be stolen and wanting to head this off at the pass.


The Mysterious Dude: A Dave Talbot Story

Dave Talbot reappears in this book. He arrives at the California dude ranch of one of his dad’s friends. Dave and that man’s son, Ron, were childhood friends. Ron's parents, Mr. and Mrs. Maynard, have to go East because Mrs. Maynard suffers from some mysterious illness, and she will get examinations there.

Because they're gone, the ranch may have to be sold—but no! Ron and Dave will run it in their absence!

Mystery shows up in the form of a slight girl with a “pale” voice who corrects everybody and recites information like a machine. She's annoying as heck and does irritating things like take horses out of the stable in the middle of the night. But I have to say she's a weird and interesting twist on your typical horse-book character.

Unfortunately, unlike the tongue-in-cheek and fairly respectful portrayal of a Native American teenager in the series' first book, this title includes a Mexican cook who's a hot-headed, fiery South-of-the-Border stereotype straight out of central casting; she flings pots and pans and mutilated English right and left, and has a son who speaks like the mouse Speedy Gonzales from the "Bugs Bunny" cartoons. Kind of cringe-inducing.

Later on, it's revealed that the Mysterious Dude-ette has a photographic memory. Not only that, but she turns out to have witnessed a crime and is hiding out at the ranch to escape a trio of men who are aiming to snuff her out, which they attempt to do during the big parade before the rodeo.

I have to admit that by this time I was weary of action-adventure and mystery, and eager to get back to reading Molly Gloss's Falling from Horses, so I was rather racing through the books at the end. It did feel nicely subversive, however, to read books that the "no teen lit for adults" leagues would've chided me for perusing.

What Was Your Favorite Childhood Book?

It is Children's Book Week (as I realized on, oh, about Tuesday) so before it slips away I thought I ought to at least make an attempt to celebrate it here.

I don't recall that my school celebrated Children's Book Week when I was a child, but I do remember that every week ended in children's books: Friday was the day that my father would drive out to the big Huntington Library after dinner, and I nearly always went with him.

He'd set me free in the children's department (back then nobody thought twice of leaving a youngster unattended while they were on a different floor of the library...but back then people were also supposed to be quiet in the library, too). A big stuffed bulldog--an actual bulldog, prepared by a taxidermist--stood guard over the shelves.

On the way home, I'd read all the titles of the books out loud to my dad. He nodded approvingly at each one. I thought he'd read them all and was indicating that he remembered their plots well.

We also had plenty of books at home, and I still have some of them today: the Tintin books that provided endless hours of entertainment when I was sick in bed, the big Just-So Stories volume with eerie pictures that gave me the shivers, and one of my favorites, the big book about Noah's Ark.

I loved the myth of Noah's Ark, because I loved animals and obviously this story was packed with them. My favorite toy was a Noah's Ark set made by the Marx toy company--the whole thing fit into a container smaller than a shoebox, with animals ranging from olive-sized elephants to dogs so tiny you could kennel them all in a thimble. I played with it so often on the wide blue ocean of the living room carpet that most of the animals, over time, suffered a second natural disaster and disappeared into the tornado of the vacuum.

When my parents asked me what I'd like for getting a good report card in elementary school, I requested a supersized Colorforms Noah's Ark scene.

My favorite picture in the book, of course.

The edition I had as a kid (and still have) was published by Grossest & Dunlap in 1957. It was vibrantly illustrated by Art Seiden (Art! So perfect a name!), who worked in advertising and also illustrated more than 300 books. Some of his animal books have rabbits and bears that remind me of Richard Scarry's creations.

What impresses me is just how beautifully he filled the frame of a page, achieving a wonderful balance and fizz.

Lots of his books were published by Golden Books, Wonder Books, and other imprints that sold books inexpensively in places such as grocery stores and five-and-tens. These books are being newly appreciated for their fabulous illustration and design, and they well deserve it.

I always loved the cutaway view of the ark with all the animals inside and spent many a happy hour drawing cutaway views myself:

Some books of his you might recall if you're a certain age: Never Pat a Bear, A Dragon in a Wagon, Dinosaur Comes to Town, and Where Is the Keeper?

Riding Horses vs Writing Horses

I covered reams of paper with scenes like this...

When I was a girl, all I could think about was horses.

Like many horse-crazy girls, I plastered my room with horse posters, lined the shelves with horse statues, read and reread every horse book in the library, and galloped around the back yard tossing my hair ("flowing mane") and neighing (much to the irritation of the people next door).

I took riding lessons for two years, fell off once (my fault, Snowball), but managed to stick on going over jumps up to three feet high.

I also spent countless hours drawing pictures of my dream horse, a palomino Arabian stallion called Golden Stardust, who was going to found a dynasty of palomino Arabians, and writing stories about such noble steeds. Plus I was going to be a jockey.

Never mind that palominos don't necessarily breed true, meaning you won't always get golden foals with white manes and tails. Never mind that Arabians technically do not possess the "cream dilution gene" that produces a palomino and that palomino Arabians are actually genetically chestnut horses with blond manes and tails.

And never mind that I now weigh about two jockeys.

I think this blur is a horse called Udam, who finished in third place.

I thought about all this as we attended a glorious equine event the other night: the 2014 Spring National Jumper competition at the Evergreen Equestrian Park in Monroe. It was the last night of the show and featured the Grand Prix.

In Grand Prix events, horse and rider bound over (hopefully) from 10 to 16 jumps, some of which may be more than 5 feet high or more than 6 feet wide.

Most of the horses flew over the jumps. Some gave a jaunty kick in midair as they sailed over the top. One particularly flashy gray flagged his dramatic white tail as he galloped and leaped; another bore down on each jump like a terrier going after a rat.

A few riders lost stirrups and looked as if they'd fall off any second while others seemed like a natural extension of the horse. A few horses threw their heads around as if they had bees up their nostrils while others were dead serious about their jobs.

The Resident Teen's trainer, Katherine Wade-Easley, aboard
Smooth Criminal (a.k.a. Toby), who finished 6th in the event.

It was terrifying to watch the ones who seemed out of control, inspiring to watch the ones who literally took it all in stride, even if they rapped a pole here or knocked down a pole there.

I thought a lot about who and what I thought I'd be when I grew up, and how my love of horses never translated into being dead-set on acquiring one and mastering the fundamentals of horsemanship.

No doubt fear and lack of confidence had a role to play; the last time I was on a horse and it bucked, it scared the bejesus out of me and I had no "emergency drill" in place to respond. (The bucking felt like crowhopping to the sky, to me; the Resident Teen, who was watching, noted that the mare's hind feet were actually barely two inches off the ground.) Certainly lack of opportunity was a factor, too.

But as I watch the Resident Teen follow her passion for horses, I am happy to realize that I'm content with the way my own fondness for them has developed.

She has long since jettisoned the toy horses and little glass statues for the down-to-earth and practical as she pursues her sport, and shown that despite our shared love of horses, she is certainly no Mini-Me; she has grit and self-preservation skills when it comes to horses that I don't and never did.

YIKES!!!

I think it's amazing that she's not intimidated by going over huge jumps; she thinks it's amazing that I can manage a budget, a schedule, and a freelance job.

(At least I can still manage to impress in one sphere of life!)

It's been nice to discover that there are as many ways to appreciate horses as there are kinds of horses, just as you can be a train fan without being an engineer, a birder without being an ornithologist, or a patron of the arts without being in an orchestra.

I don't know why it took me half a century to realize this. After all, my dad designed F-14 Tomcats and other fighter aircraft but wasn't a pilot.

So I'm quite enjoying my role as a spectator and handmaiden to a horse and rider. The Resident Teen, when she was the Resident Preschooler, told me that when she had a stable as an adult, I could muck out the stalls. Now she even says that yes, I may even be able to keep some old bombproof horse or pensioner pony of my own.

We've come a long way. As long as my non-palomino, non-Arabian, definitely-not-stallion steed can carry two jockeys, we're good.

Hooray!

Australia on My Mind

I have always wanted to go to Australia. Any country that has animals with names like bandicoot, numbat, wallaroo, tasmanian devil, hairy-nosed wombat, and squelching froglet clearly must be seen to be believed. (Seeing pictures on Facebook of relatives frolicking on sunny shores Down Under is a bit of an inspiration, too.)

Taking a Qantas leap to Australia is not, however, in the budgetary cards anytime soon, so I'll have to content myself with reading about the place, which for some reason has been happening all winter as one book has inspired the reading of another in domino fashion.

It started when I was nosing around online to see if I could get a DVD of the movie Phar Lap for the Resident Teen. Phar Lap was a magnificent Australian racehorse who raced during the early years of the Depression and died under mysterious circumstances after coming to the United States.

This research caused me to disappear down the rabbit hole of Google to find out more about Phar Lap when I was supposed to be doing other things.

I started getting giddy notions of purchasing various and sundry books but sternly reminded myself that I was already guilty of tracking down books online, receiving them with glee, then stockpiling them for future reading, and that perhaps I should read some of those books first before taking up with other titles.

The Christmas season seemed a perfect time to curl up with some fiction. (Why do we curl up with books and nothing else, I wonder?) So I pulled down the stack of books by Australian author Elyne Mitchell that I'd ordered for the Resident Teen back when she was the Resident Horse-Crazy Girl.

Elyne Mitchell's best-known works are her stories about Australia's wild horses, called brumbies. The movie The Silver Stallion, starring a young Russell Crowe, is based on her beloved series about Thowra, the Silver Brumby. The series kicks off with this horse's birth in The Silver Brumby, continues with four more books featuring this horse, his mares, and his offspring's adventures, and canters off into the sunset through a number of follow-up titles about the horses in his range.

Mitchell wrote the stories from the horses' point of view, complete with dialogue--not an easy style to pull off when you're trying to make your animals believable as animals even as they give voice to their thoughts.

But she does it very well. The animals are all far more clever and deep-thinking than their real-life counterparts ever could be, which can make a jaded adult reader raise an eyebrow, but if you are still a horse-crazy girl inside, and if you can suspend disbelief enough to read them as twentieth-century legends (with the whole "horse kingdom" aspect of the Australian mountain ranges being something like an equine Olympus in these books), they're a lot of fun to read. (And I would venture to say they're the only books I'll ever read that contain the phrase "Venerable Wombat.")

The movie (called The Silver Brumby in Australia) blends the first book in the series with bits of the author's life. Mitchell created the stories for her own children's entertainment and education. She stocked them not only with horses and adventure but also lush depictions of the flora, fauna, and geography of Australia. In the film, the horse's story unfolds as an ongoing narrative being created by the author for her daughter.

It's kind of funny to see the original video-box cover for the film, which features the horse front and center and also gives prime seating to the actresses portraying the author and her girl--

and compare it to the one that came after Russell Crowe rocketed to stardom:

Crowe was still a gangly youth when Australian author Miles Franklin's book My Brilliant Career became a film in 1979. Franklin wrote the book as a teenager, and it was published in 1901. The movie popped out of my memory after I'd finished up the brumby books and had the words "Australian" and "icon" etched in my mind.

My Brilliant Career was based on Franklin's life and is often referred to as "semi-autobiographical." It became wildly popular across Australia when it was published and remains a source of pride today. Franklin herself was a determined, strong person and an ardent feminist. The girl in her story rebels and fulminates against the repression of women and their role in Australian society.

Franklin followed up by writing My Career Goes Bung (published in the U.S. as "End of My Career"), in which the semi-autobiographical character endures post-publication trials involving having published My Brilliant Career. (My head spun a bit as it tried to keep this all straight: "OK, so the first book features a girl named Sybylla and tells her story, but the second  book is about Sybylla and none of what happened in the first book really happened to Sybylla, it was just a story that Sybylla made up and published and in this book she's dealing with the fallout.")

In real life, Franklin's second semi-autobiographical book was not well received by publishers, and so was not published until 1946. (She meets with one of the most damning rejection letters I've ever heard of: one editor who was an early champion of her work responds with a note that begins "You've made me jolly glad I didn't meet you...not even 200% would induce me to publish.")

I found Sybylla fascinating, but a bit tiresome at times, in the first book. I liked her quite a lot in the second one, though, in which she lets fly with some great insults, such as "You conceited lord of creation!" and "old frogabollow" and "feeble nauseating creepers" and "flap-eared weakling." (She tosses in a great word, too, that I haven't turned up anything on by googling: "There was no end to the annoyance caused by that feraboraceous book.")

Sybylla also recounts her wild experiences riding horses in this book. (My husband, in the first year of our relationship, accused me of planning vacations in such a way as to always include horses at every stop. But I cannot help it that horses somehow come to the fore in almost everything I pick up to read. The world truly does revolve around horses, you see.) Here is Sybylla/Miles on being an equestrienne:

"There was one great recreation open to me, even at Possum Gully, which was a sop to energy. I could ride. I could ride tremendously. I loved horses and seemed to become part of them. In the district were any number of good horses, most of them owned by bachelors. As one of these bachelors said, 'A lovely high-spirited girl is just the thing to top off a good horse.' All kinds of horses, from racing stallions to hunting mares, were brought to me with the owners included as escorts and the source of chocolates in wonderful boxes."

Franklin really did rampage on horseback as a girl in her actual life, not just her semi-autobiography. She grew up in a valley called Brindabella and started riding as an infant, recalling that "the rhythm of horses came to me earlier than walking." According to the introduction of one edition of My Brilliant Career, she was known throughout the valley as "a precociously fearless and accomplished rider."

She brought an equally fearless attitude to the rest of her life, going on to work as a nurse, travel and live in the United States, publish novels, speak out as a feminist, and endow a literary award that is still granted in Australia today.

I am pretty sure that, after reading the first five of the Silver Brumby books, I don't feel the need to devour the rest of that series, but I'm pretty eager to get my hands on Franklin's actual biography, a memoir of her first ten years called Childhood at Brindabella, as well as some of her other works. I wonder what snippet in them will then point the way to the next book or topic of interest, quite likely one that has absolutely nothing to do with Australia.

A Month Devoted to Writing

November's National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) passed me by this year, as did PiBoIdMo (Picture Book Idea Month) and NaPlWriMo (National Playwriting Month) and probably a lot of other NaMo things I've never even heard of.

But November was still a wonderfully writer-ish month, filled with events that took me away from the computer and into the company of other writers and all the inspiration that such mingling can bring.

For starters, I went to a writers' retreat for the first time ever, namely the "Weekend on the Water" retreat at Port Ludlow in early November. This event was associated with the Society for Children's Book Writers and Illustrators. The speakers were Patricia Lee Gauch, author and former Editorial Director of Philomel Books, and author Linda Urban (A Crooked Kind of Perfect).

And what a spoiled-rotten weekend it was. I sat enthralled as Ms. Gauch analyzed passages from Olive Kitteredge by Elizabeth Strout, drawing our attention to the author's word choice and imagery, tone and voice in a way I hadn't enjoyed since college.

My mind traveled back even further, to my 10th-grade English class, when teacher John Long surprised us all with a pop quiz on To Kill a Mockingbird that tested our knowledge of seemingly ridiculous details in the book.

His purpose, it turned out, was not to prime us for winning trivia contests but to show us how important it was to read carefully and closely instead of gobbling up pages and racing the clock.

The spoiling, of course, also included excellent meals, walks in the woods, beautiful views, lively conversations, and time to just read and write.

To top it all off, my roommate and I discovered we shared all sorts of connections; not only did we live in Hoboken, New Jersey, during the same span of time in the 1980s, but also one of her oldest friends turned out to be one of my former work colleagues.

The retreat was followed a few weeks later by PubCamp, hosted by Writer.ly, an online marketplace for writers in search of editors, book designers, and marketing assistance. This event took place in Seattle in the lovely Center for Urban Horticulture, where the plants were edged with crystalline rime at the start of a very cold day.

The morning got rolling with an introduction by Shawn Welch, author of APE: Author, Publisher, Entrepreneur, followed by advice from a social media expert, Peggy Fitzpatrick, and Writer.ly CEO Kelsye Nelson. After that, I had the luxurious choice of presentations divided into four blocks of three sessions each.

I opted to hear Peter Rowan (Coinstar) discuss "The Business of Self-Publishing."  Next up was Waverly Fitzgerald (author of Slow Time, Dial C for Chihuahua, and more). Ms. Fitzgerald focused on the considerations one should keep in mind when thinking about self-publishing or going the more traditional route with a publishing house; paramount among these considerations were how to best locate and connect with your readers.

After lunch, I attended a "self-editor's toolkit" workshop presented by author Wendy Call, which provided a nice summary of levels of editing, and rounded out the day with a lovely, humorous presentation about memoir writing by author Theo Nestor (How to Sleep Alone in a King-Size Bed and Writing Is My Drink).

Peek-a-Who Owl from "Peek-a-Who" by Nina Laden watches readers
peruse books at the Ballard Writers Collective "Writer Next Door" event.

As if this weren't enough, the month also included an evening at the Sunset Hill Community Center called The Writer Next Door, hosted by the Ballard Writers Collective (authors' panel! refreshments! books! readings! raffle prizes, of which I won one!).

Not long after, I enjoyed an SCBWI informal gathering on a chilly Sunday night at a Bainbridge Island pub called the Harbour Public House, a cozy restaurant tucked inside a house built in 1881.

I feel as if I need another retreat and evening at a pub to process it all. In the meantime, here are a few quotations and observations I jotted down during these events. I'm amazed I can read my scrawled notes, actually. So, see? I did do some writing outside of my freelance work this month after all. It was all part of NaJoDoMo (National Jotting and Doodling Month).

When writing for children:
"Honor the small things in a big world that matter to kids."--Linda Urban

On "show, don't tell":
"There's a terrible thing going around: 'show, don't tell.' Don't you believe it!"--Patricia Lee Gauch

(Ms. Gauch went on to explain what she meant, so she was certainly not advocating dull writing. I wish I could summarize what she so eloquently expressed, but basically she used Olive Kitteridge to show how showing related to introspection. Showing could also help you "navigate the contours of your character's life." I believe this topic was linked to another of my cryptic notes about the author writing as though on a dolly used for filmmaking, to move in and out of a scene. Ms. Gauch also stressed, "Don't report it; let it live.")

Adverbs?
"Of course, use adverbs when you want them! Give me a break! [Banning adverbs]...it's the dumbest thing." --Patricia Lee Gauch

Attitude:
Attitude is like "a fine rain casting a mist over the whole story."--Patricia Lee Gauch

A quip on being realistic:
"If you want to make a lot of money, publishing probably isn't the right business for you!"--Waverly Fitzgerald

Serial commas or not?
"You know, there are comma people!" --Wendy Call

On submitting your memoir:
"Yes, it's been done before. Here's how mine's different." --Theo Nestor

On the universality of your story:
"A book about you that is also about others makes your want real; they [readers] will want it for you." --Theo Nestor

A Dozen Scary Children's-Book Illustrations for October

I love autumn. I love the crisp air and the fiery foliage and even the ridiculousness of all the Halloween decor, the black arched-back cats and hollow-eyed pumpkins and beady-eyed bats. The images got me to thinking about children's-book illustrations that scared me when I was a kid, the kind of illustrations that forced me to look at them again and again, to revisit the scenes that gave me chills.

Of course, what's scary to one person is pablum to another. The Resident Teen, for example, is completely unafraid of the 1,100-pound, unpredictable beast that she rides, yet is terrified of bees. My husband will stride fearlessly through a field with a bull in it, but puppets give him the creeps. My dad was a soldier and the bravest man in the world, but he couldn't look at a diagram of an eyeball without fainting.

So Beware! Full disclosure is that my one dozen selected Scary Children's-Book Illustrations are exceedingly tame and are probably pretty unlikely to raise a single hair on your neck. But they gave me the shivers when I was little. Here they are, in no particular order:

1. The Giant Golden Book of Dinosaurs was my all-time favorite book between the ages of 3 and 7. I pored over the stunning images by illustrator Rudolph F. Zallinger. This scene, in which Allosaurus attacks my then-favorite dinosaur Brontosaurus, absolutely terrified me. This blurry reproduction of the painting spares you the sharp rawness of the wound and the blood flowing from it, but the poor Brontosaurus's grimace is evidence enough of its suffering. 

Whenever I read this book, I alternated between staring at this page in fascinated horror and skipping past it with my eyes shut. The obliviousness of the other dinosaurs in the background disturbed me, too: Why didn't they step in to help? (Clearly I hadn't yet understood that that was Not the Dinosaur Way.) There was another picture at the end of the book, of a small, grinning ratlike critter that was about to gnaw on some dinosaur eggs, juxtaposed with some text pondering the possibility that dinosaurs' extinction was hastened by hungry mammals. I wanted to yell at that little beast and tell it, "Stop! You have no idea what you're doing! You're going to make the dinosaurs extinct! Don't eat that!!"

2. The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss was chock-full of images designed to turn a child prone to anxiety into a cyclone of worry. The Cat was messing up the house! Anarchy ruled! Everything was out of control! And look--here comes Mom!!

Her foot got closer and closer on each of the last few pages...there would never be enough time to put things back in order before she burst through the door, and then there'd be heck to pay. Tick, tock, tick, tock. 

The anxiety was fanned to fever pitch by the rattled, panicky fish who chastised the cat and urged the children to hurry and clean up before their misdeeds were discouraged. Nowadays I realize that I have always had a lot in common with that fish, who would have nibbled his fingernails to the quick if he'd had fingers or nails.

3. Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi, published by Caxton House, Inc., in 1939. This edition was owned by my mother and my uncle as children growing up in Queens, New York, and passed along to us when we were little. It's cram-packed with illustrations to give a kid the heebie-jeebies. 

They're starkly black and white, with a spidery, spindly, stiff quality to the lines that gave me the same uneasy feeling that was spiked by the jagged theme music of "The Twilight Zone." Most of the characters Pinocchio meets are also rogues and ruffians, so most of the figures in the scenes are likewise indifferent to his plight, adding the chill of emotional coldness to the pictures.

The fact that the text attending the illustration was alarming no doubt added to my morbid fascination with it: "The Serpent...laughed, and laughed, and laughed, until from the violence of his laughter he broke a blood-vessel in this chest and died."

4. This picture of a spoiled picnic is from Summer by Alice Low, illustrated by the wonderful Roy McKie. I loved this book as a kid and still love it, as it captures the essence of the timeless, hot, humid days of a Long Island summer back in a time when you were told to go play outside, unfettered by small hand-held electronic devices. 

The ants on this spread, however, made me squirm, probably because in proportion to the kids, they're really quite alarmingly large. Whenever I got to this page, I was always exceedingly careful not to touch any part of the paper other than the large white space on the lower right, where the "47" is. I see that nowadays this book is still published, though it's been cut to bits to shorten it and to take out anything that could possibly make even a child with the most delicate of nerves feel the slightest twinge of discomfort. 

5. Two carriages hurtle toward each other and an inevitable collision on a narrow road in the Whitman edition of Black Beauty by Anna Sewell, published in 1965. Black Beauty survives unharmed, but Rory, the horse he's teamed up with, suffers a ghastly chest wound. 

The imminent-catastrophe aspect of the picture combined with the gaping mouths and the lack of eyes on the horses, due to the blinkers, made this image a veritable Guernica to me as a kid. This impression was surely enhanced because the text notes that poor Rory, once healed, was sent off to a miserable life as a coal-carter's horse afterward. Everything about this scene from the story injected a little bit of dread about the random unfairness of life, something that I'd had the good fortune not to experience in my secure, predictable 1960s suburban childhood.

6. Struwwelpeter ("Shock-headed Peter") by Heinrich Hoffman! The epitome of freak-you-out pictures!! The Scissor-man cutting off a thumbsucker's thumb! Girl Who Plays With Matches going up in flames! They were all scary, but the boy Kaspar who refuses to eat his dinner and wastes away into this stringy thing before finally starving to death scared the bejesus out of me. I've read that Hoffman wrote this book as a spoof of the moralistic, lecturing fare that was published for kids in his time (the mid-1800s), though many sources state he wrote it because he couldn't find any decent children's books for his kids. The stories are so over the top I tend to think the first reason is the real one.

7. Walter Crane's illustrations for Household Stories by the Brothers Grimm (Macmillan, 1927) are lavish, detailed, and often beautiful. Many of them also capture the cruelty inherent in the stories. This particular bit of spot art embellished the final page of the story "Prudent Hans," illustrating a section in which Hans is said to respond to his mother's instruction to "cast sheep's eyes" at the lovely Grethel by taking the eyes out of the sheep and throwing them in Grethel's face. Ugh! 

I vividly remember asking my mom why his mom would tell him to do something like that, and my mom informing me that to cast sheep's eyes meant to make flirtatious faces at someone--what you'd call "batting the eyes" or "making cow's eyes" at someone.

Not surprisingly, the text reports that Grethel "ran away and became the bride of another."

8. Anyone who accuses Beatrix Potter of being sentimental and twee has never really read Potter's stories.

Her animals, despite wearing frock coats and pantaloons, are animals through and through. Dim-witted geese have their eggs devoured by dogs; rabbits get put into pies; a bully bunny is shot by a hunter; and squirrels happily pay protection money to owls in the form of dead mice. 

This illustration from The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin was a real cliffhanger...Nutkin is absolutely powerless in the clenches of the owl, who bides his time deciding what do to with the impertinent squirrel who's been taunting him for pages (much to the growing alarm of the reader).

9. Another Potter illustration, this time from The Tale of Peter Rabbit. Peter has disobeyed his mother by larking about in the garden where his father was caught and later baked into a pie, stuffing himself with food and losing all his clothes and narrowly escaping capture himself. 

Now he's too plump to get out of the garden by slipping under the gate, and the mouse with the pea in her mouth is mute and unable to give him advice. 

This picture of Peter, totally lost, totally full of regret and fear, and surrounded by uncaring strangers is the essence of being a very young child who's lost Mom in a big department store.

Peter Rabbit, the Existentialist Lagomorph!

10. Hmm, I'm sensing a running theme of alienation and panic in my childhood fears here; perhaps the idea of anything happening to disrupt the loving security of my home and family was far more frightening to me than any monster, bogeyman, or zombie could ever be. Because if I ever wanted to feel desolate, all I had to do was turn to this page in Rich Cat, Poor Cat by Bernard Waber. 

This lovely book, which contrasts the life of poor, feral Scat with that of rich, pampered city kitties and winds up with the happiest of endings, has long been out of print and isn't easy to find in libraries--I have no idea why, as it's a wonderful story, simply told, with beautiful, vivid illustrations. Scat's lonely days, summed up in this image of her as an unwanted, sick kitty with nobody to say bless you when she sneezes in the midst of a crowded, noisy, unfeeling city, give the reader just enough of a shiver and feeling of desolation while knowing that soon Scat will find a loving home. The child's anxiety about nobody being in control and being unloved is nicely rounded by this touchdown in a comfortable, safe place. It's much like Max's safe-harbor experience in Where the Wild Things Are, when he wakes up to find a hot meal waiting for him.

11. I always loved the illustrations done by Louis Darling for Beverly Cleary's books, especially Ribsy. Darling's illustrations were anything but darling--Ribsy was a bony, ugly mutt, and Cleary's wonderful girl-terror Ramona was a skinny, scraped-knees, messy child. In Ribsy, the dog gets lost and there are multiple near-misses in which he's almost reunited with his owner, Henry Huggins. The suspense is unbearable for a kid and maintained right up to the last chapter. 

This little spot art of Ribsy is nothing more than an adornment for the end of a chapter, but it captures how forlorn Ribsy is. I guess I found it particularly evocative when I was a kid because of the text it related to: Ribsy, after behaving badly in an elementary school classroom, is evicted from his position as school mascot and told to "go home" by the principal.

"After one more sad backward glance Ribsy started walking. He wanted to obey the man. He wanted to go home, but he did not know where home was, and there was no way he could make the man understand."

12. The scary picture I just couldn't get enough of, however, was tucked away in a little paperback storybook purchased through one of those classroom book-ordering schemes. It was called Rabbit and Skunk and the Scary Rock by Carla Stevens, illustrated by Robert Kraus. Throughout the book, the animals shudder in fear because of horrible noises, such as "Gruummch!", coming from behind the big scary rock. 

I liked this illustration a lot even though Rabbit is clearly so very frightened partly because he was safe (I knew the thing behind the rock wasn't that scary, plus he was being tightly held by his protective friend Skunk, who wouldn't let anything bad happen), but mostly because whenever we got to this part of the story, my grandma would always pause at my request to give me a big, squashy hug just like the one Rabbit was getting, before we turned the page to confront what lurked behind the rock. And that, to me, is the whole point of scary images and scenes in picture books.