A Summer Tour of American Children’s Literature

     
   This sum­mer, I joined a few like-mind­ed friends and our chil­dren on a chil­dren’s lit­er­a­ture tour of the north­east­ern Unit­ed States. We had no clear des­ti­na­tion at the out­set, but every­one list­ed their top des­ti­na­tions: Thore­au’s Walden Pond and Alcot­t’s Con­cord, White’s farm and Maine Lake, and the Eric Car­le Pic­ture Book Museum—and the trip grad­u­al­ly evolved into a chil­dren’s lit­er­a­ture tour.

First stop: New York

New York was a con­ve­nient start­ing point for our trip, and we made a spe­cial trip there because the New York Pub­lic Library was host­ing an exhi­bi­tion called “Chil­dren’s Books.“ABC: Why are chil­dren’s books so impor­tant? ” (The
ABC of It: Why Chil­dren’s Books Mat­terThis exhi­bi­tion has been run­ning for more than a year and should have been dis­man­tled long ago, but it has been extend­ed sev­er­al times due to its pop­u­lar­i­ty.S.Mr. Mar­cus is a his­to­ri­an of chil­dren’s lit­er­a­ture and one of the most respect­ed crit­ics of chil­dren’s lit­er­a­ture in the Unit­ed States today. The book he edit­ed and anno­tat­ed, Dear Genius: The Let­ters of Ursu­la Nord­strom, was recent­ly pub­lished in Chi­na. It was a book that I led a team to work on.16Months of trans­la­tion results.6Ear­li­er this month, Mar­cus had been invit­ed by Genglin Cul­ture to give a lec­ture in Chi­na. We met in Bei­jing and imme­di­ate­ly hit it off. When he heard I was plan­ning to see his exhi­bi­tion in New York, he was so excit­ed that he insist­ed on com­ing to give the lec­ture him­self. Who could refuse such a gen­er­ous offer?

On a mod­er­ate­ly hot after­noon, we met in front of the stone lions at the main entrance of the New York Pub­lic Library on Fifth Avenue. Those two famous lions, one rep­re­sent­ing per­se­ver­ance and the oth­er for­ti­tude, have become sym­bols of the library’s spir­it and even appear in the pic­ture book “Library Lions.” Pass­ing the lions and ascend­ing the steps, we entered the mag­nif­i­cent library hall.

The exhi­bi­tion is locat­ed direct­ly oppo­site the entrance, and almost all vis­i­tors enter to take a look. Mr. Mar­cus explained that the exhibits are all from the col­lec­tion of the New York Pub­lic Library. He obtained per­mis­sion to enter the base­ment and spent sev­er­al months scour­ing the col­lec­tion, select­ing the most rep­re­sen­ta­tive items and cat­e­go­riz­ing them accord­ing to the devel­op­ment of chil­dren’s books. Thus, when dis­play­ing the ear­li­est chil­dren’s books in the Unit­ed States in the late 17th cen­tu­ry, we see the ear­li­est Amer­i­can chil­dren’s Bible sto­ries, and when dis­cussing dif­fer­ent con­cep­tions of child­hood, we see one of the few sur­viv­ing orig­i­nals of William Blake’s “Songs of Inno­cence and Expe­ri­ence.”

We read and talked, and before we knew it, two hours had passed. It felt like I had read a brief his­to­ry of Amer­i­can chil­dren’s books in one breath. What impressed me most were: the chil­dren’s books writ­ten by Hawthorne, and his long-term res­i­dence in Con­cord and close rela­tion­ship with the Alcott fam­i­ly who wrote “Lit­tle Women”; the ide­o­log­i­cal influ­ence on Amer­i­can chil­dren’s book cre­ation from Locke to Rousseau, for exam­ple, White’s “Char­lot­te’s Web” is seen as a con­tin­u­a­tion of Rousseau’s nat­u­ral­is­tic edu­ca­tion­al ideas; the orig­i­nals of var­i­ous pup­pets in “Win­nie-Poo” (real­ly! Prob­a­bly donat­ed by Milne); the umbrel­la in “Mary Pop­pins and the Wind” (donat­ed by author Tra­vers); orig­i­nal paint­ings donat­ed by some famous pic­ture book cre­ators such as Wan­da Geiger; and the con­tri­bu­tions of pio­neer­ing Amer­i­can chil­dren’s librar­i­ans such as Miss Moore; of course, there are also many clas­sic chil­dren’s books that were once reject­ed or banned by these librar­i­ans, such as “Pip­pi Long­stock­ing”… But the chil­dren in the group were more inter­est­ed in the very cre­ative­ly dec­o­rat­ed big green room in “Good­night Moon” and the var­i­ous adven­tures in “Alice in Won­der­land”… Every­one got what they want­ed.

That day, the enthu­si­as­tic Mr. Mar­cus was in high spir­its. After view­ing the exhi­bi­tion, he invit­ed me and anoth­er trans­la­tor, Jingjing, to have a drink at a hotel near the library.Algo­nquinMany famous lit­er­ary and artis­tic fig­ures often go there.EBWhite refused to go there because he thought it was too lux­u­ri­ous, but Gus Williams loved it very much and would go there every time he returned to New York.

In the evening, Mar­cus took us to a restau­rant near Green­wich Vil­lage. He and sev­er­al old friends held a small din­ner par­ty to cel­e­brate the pub­li­ca­tion of Dear Genius in Chi­na.10It was 10 o’clock, and Mar­cus was still in high spir­its. He sug­gest­ed we go for a walk in Green­wich Vil­lage. I thought he must have some­thing spe­cial to rec­om­mend.12In front of an apart­ment build­ing on the street, he point­ed to a room on the sec­ond floor and said, “That’s where Robert McCloskey paint­ed ‘Make Way for Duck­lings’!” I asked, “Is this the apart­ment he shared with Mar­co Semon? The one where he also raised a flock of ducks as mod­els?” Mar­cus nod­ded proud­ly. I could­n’t help but ask in sur­prise, “How did you know that?” He smiled and said, “He (McCloskey) told me him­self!”

Turn­ing anoth­er street, Mar­cus point­ed to a white build­ing sand­wiched between two apart­ment build­ings. He explained that this was the for­mer site of the Bank Street School of Edu­ca­tion. Each floor of the build­ing was just big enough for a class­room, and behind it was an exper­i­men­tal kinder­garten, where stu­dents like Mar­garet Wise Brown and Ruth Kraus stud­ied and observed chil­dren. Two or three blocks fur­ther north, Mar­cus sud­den­ly stopped in the dim street­light and point­ed solemn­ly and mys­te­ri­ous­ly at a two-sto­ry build­ing in front of the apart­ment build­ing across the street. He explained that this was Mar­garet Wise Brown’s res­i­dence from the 1940s to the ear­ly 1950s, pri­mar­i­ly used as a stu­dio and a venue for host­ing friends and the media. It was here that she wrote books like “The Run­away Bun­ny” and “Good­night Moon.” The five peo­ple who had wan­dered there were filled with awe. They gath­ered around to hear how Mar­cus had dis­cov­ered the place, how he had posed as a home­buy­er to get in and observe, and the fas­ci­nat­ing anec­dotes about Mar­garet’s life. On that dim street in low­er Man­hat­tan, we seemed to have trav­eled through time to anoth­er world.

Sec­ond stop: Con­cord

It was evening when I first arrived in Con­cord9It was a tru­ly quaint lit­tle town. I walked around twice but could­n’t find a sin­gle super­mar­ket open. The white-lit church and town hall, cast against the gloomy night sky, had an eerie qual­i­ty. A local friend told us that Con­cord is one of the top ten towns in the Unit­ed States for tran­quil­i­ty and safe­ty. There haven’t been any seri­ous crimes in years, and peo­ple prac­ti­cal­ly leave their doors unlocked at night.

With the assur­ance of my friend,4At half past eight I set out alone, walked through the town, and head­ed to the hotel.6Walden Pond is a few kilo­me­ters away. The small town in the ear­ly morn­ing is even qui­eter than the night before. I hur­ried for­ward, hop­ing to reach the lake before sun­rise. The pre-dawn dark­ness is like a dew-cov­ered leaf, a lit­tle heavy and sticky. Lis­ten­ing to the crunch of grav­el under my feet, I sud­den­ly felt a lit­tle strange. There was­n’t a sin­gle dog bark­ing in the entire town. As I approached the woods by the lake, I saw a large dog accom­pa­ny­ing an elder­ly man across the road and into the woods on the oth­er side.

Turn­ing from Thore­au Road onto Walden Street, I crossed a busy high­way even in the ear­ly morn­ing and arrived at a place with a sign for “Walden Pond State Nat­ur­al Area.” This should be the place about a mile from town that Thore­au men­tioned. I thought qui­et­ly for a moment, what would Thore­au do next? I decid­ed to take the slight­ly uphill path on the right, which was more dense­ly wood­ed. Sure enough, after walk­ing a dis­tance, I saw the sign: Emer­son–Thore­au strolled along the path. Then, I first saw the lake, then turned and saw the ruins of Thore­au’s cab­in. I stood for a long time among the stone piles, savor­ing the qui­et and com­plete soli­tude of this moment. Step­ping out of the cab­in, I fol­lowed the cus­tom­ary pil­grim tra­di­tion and wrote my name on a peb­ble and placed it in the pile beside the ruins.

The weath­er was­n’t good; it was over­cast that day, pre­vent­ing sun­rise. I strolled around the lake and was sur­prised to find it even more live­ly than on shore! A group of swim­mers splashed in the water. From a dis­tance, they looked like ducks pad­dling, but the sounds were clear­ly quack­ing and gig­gling, a joy­ful spec­ta­cle. Sev­er­al well-equipped swim­mers swam around the lake at a steady, freestyle pace, approach­ing the shore. By com­par­i­son, the num­ber of peo­ple run­ning around the lake was rel­a­tive­ly small.

There is a rail­way pass­ing through the woods on the west side of the lake. Curi­ous­ly, I lay on the rails and lis­tened, but it was still very qui­et. I guess the rail­way should lead to Fitch­burg. Thore­au once dis­cussed: To enjoy the trip to Fitch­burg, should you work first to earn mon­ey and then buy a train tick­et? Or should you just hit the road with your hands wav­ing? This is indeed a ques­tion worth con­sid­er­ing. But at this time, I saw that the sun in the east had emerged from the clouds, dye­ing the lake and leaves on this side with warm col­ors, so I went to a seclud­ed place by the lake to read. I flipped through a few pages of “Walden” and found the pas­sage I want­ed to read: “Not only watch the sun­rise and the dawn, but if pos­si­ble, also admire nature itself!… Real­ly, although I did­n’t specif­i­cal­ly help the sun­rise, don’t doubt that appear­ing before sun­rise is the most impor­tant thing.”

My friends who were trav­el­ing with us met up after break­fast. We were all cap­ti­vat­ed by the beau­ty of Walden Pond and did­n’t want to go any­where else. Some of us who loved water want­ed to go in the lake imme­di­ate­ly. After some dis­cus­sion, we decid­ed to vis­it the Alcott fam­i­ly home in the morn­ing and then go in the after­noon when it was warmer.

The Alcott fam­i­ly home is well worth a vis­it, espe­cial­ly for chil­dren and adults who enjoy “Lit­tle Women.” Although fic­tion­al, the fam­i­ly’s char­ac­ter­is­tics and per­son­al­i­ties close­ly mir­ror those of the real Alcott fam­i­ly. The mid­dle sis­ter, Jo, is a reflec­tion of the author Louisa, while the trag­i­cal­ly deceased musi­cal prodi­gy, Beth, is a true-life cousin. For var­i­ous rea­sons, the Alcott home has been remark­ably well-pre­served, remain­ing vir­tu­al­ly as it was when Louisa wrote it. This makes a vis­it to the home par­tic­u­lar­ly mov­ing for read­ers famil­iar with “Lit­tle Women.”

We were also impressed by Louisa’s upbring­ing. Her father, Mr. Alcott, a soci­ol­o­gist and edu­ca­tor, pro­vid­ed his daugh­ters with a won­der­ful learn­ing envi­ron­ment at home, includ­ing a rig­or­ous sched­ule. He exem­pli­fied the con­cept of “home school­ing.” He was close friends with Hawthorne and Emer­son, who lived near­by, and they often met and chat­ted. Louisa and Hawthorne’s son often played togeth­er, and they fre­quent­ly bor­rowed books from Emer­son­’s home library. When Louisa and her sis­ter grew old­er, they attend­ed nat­ur­al his­to­ry school, taught by Thore­au! We could­n’t help but mar­vel at the impor­tance of the com­mu­ni­ty we grow up in.

When we arrived at Walden Pond that after­noon, it was bustling with peo­ple swim­ming, boat­ing, sun­bathing on the sandy shore, and chil­dren run­ning around. Thore­au prob­a­bly could­n’t have antic­i­pat­ed Walden, a place so play­ful yet so unthink­able. We entered the lake in a shady, less crowd­ed area, and the water was just the right tem­per­a­ture. I swam deep­er, and grad­u­al­ly the crowds dwin­dled. By the time I reached the cen­ter, not even the tour boats had left. I swam to the oth­er side in one breath, feel­ing sur­pris­ing­ly relaxed and over­joyed. I final­ly under­stood the joy of those ear­ly morn­ing tourists. On the way back, I lay on the sur­face, gaz­ing at the blue sky. For a moment, com­plete­ly obliv­i­ous to the sur­round­ing noise, I recalled the many times Thore­au had spent soli­tary boat­ing and con­tem­plat­ing here, and I felt a bit lost. Sud­den­ly, I felt a surge of water from the bot­tom of the water, a chill that pen­e­trat­ed my heart. I shud­dered, quick­ly turned over, and swam back the way I had come.

Stop 3: Brook­lyn Vil­lage, Maine

Brook­lyn, Maine, not Brook­lyn, New York. It’s a vil­lage in the town of Blue Hill in Han­cock Coun­ty, Maine. Once a rel­a­tive­ly unknown fish­ing vil­lage, it rose to promi­nence thanks to fre­quent appear­ances in pres­ti­gious mag­a­zines like The New York­er and Harper’s.EBThe arti­cles White wrote in Brook­lyn Vil­lage were lat­er com­piled into a book, his essay col­lec­tion “Every Man Is Dif­fer­ent”. In fact, the three clas­sic fairy tales of this great writer, “Stu­art Lit­tle”, “Char­lot­te’s Web” and “The Trum­pet of the Swan”, were all com­plet­ed in this small vil­lage. In White’s view, “Char­lot­te’s Web” is “singing prais­es to the barn”, and the barn is locat­ed in this salt­wa­ter farm. Mr. and Mrs. White1933When they came here for vaca­tion, they fell in love with this place hope­less­ly; the fol­low­ing year, they could­n’t wait to use6000The salt­wa­ter farm was pur­chased with US dol­lars; after sev­er­al years of painful weigh­ing and selec­tion, it was final­ly1939He moved here from New York in 1916 and lived here until his death.

We stayed at the Brook­lyn Inn, the only one in the vil­lage. Coin­ci­den­tal­ly, the own­er of the inn was named Angel, but he seemed to have no rela­tion­ship with Rogers Angel, White’s step­son. Mr. Angel was a retired old cap­tain, and his wife was a retired old pro­fes­sor. They ran the inn very ele­gant­ly. Although it only had five rooms, their busi­ness was boom­ing because of their well-known cook­ing skills. The most inter­est­ing thing was that dur­ing our chat, we dis­cov­ered that most of the tourists who came to Brook­lyn for a “pil­grim­age” were not here for the great writer White, but for his son Joe White. In the eyes of fans of small sea ves­sels, Joe was a “mas­ter-class” ship­builder. He was1960In 1996, he took over the Brook­lyn Dock­yard. In addi­tion to build­ing ships, he also taught ship­build­ing tech­niques. Every year, many enthu­si­asts come from all over the world to learn the craft. It is the dream of many peo­ple to own a sail­boat built by Joe him­self. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, Joe1997He passed away in 2000 and the ship­yard is cur­rent­ly being man­aged by his son.

That morn­ing, I walked to the Brook­lyn Dock­yard, hop­ing to catch the sun­rise over the water. But when I got there, I real­ized I was head­ing in the wrong direc­tion. On this bay, the ocean faces west. I turned east and watched the sun rise over the hills beyond. By the time I reached the church in the cen­ter of the vil­lage, it was already above the tall trees in the ceme­tery. A thought struck me: Where are the Whites’ graves? Wad­ing through the thick morn­ing dew on the grass, I searched the ceme­tery row by row. The ceme­tery is vast, and some of the tomb­stones have inter­est­ing inscrip­tions, and the sur­round­ing dis­plays are quite inge­nious. I wan­dered, explor­ing, and by the time I reached the last row, it felt like ages had passed and I was feel­ing a lit­tle tired. But I still could­n’t find them. No, there were some rel­a­tive­ly inde­pen­dent tomb­stones beneath that tree over there. I guess I should have checked those out first. Sure enough, the White fam­i­ly was there. In the back row were the Whites and their son, Joe; in the front row were the fam­i­ly of their step­son, Rogers Angell. How­ev­er, Rogers, who is over 90 years old, is still alive, and there is just a place left for him here.

When I placed some wild flow­ers in front of the Whites’ grave, I found anoth­er tomb­stone under the tree, which was blocked by a small pine tree, so I could­n’t read the words on the tomb­stone. I curi­ous­ly part­ed the pine branch­es and saw to my sur­prise that it was the tomb of Wilbur Trapp. This Mr. Wilbur hap­pened to have the same name as the piglet in Char­lot­te’s Web, but he was born in1915died in1995The fact that the locals buried him next to White’s fam­i­ly was obvi­ous­ly a lit­tle joke, but I think White would have liked it.

That day, as we passed through North Brook­lyn, we stopped briefly at Salt­wa­ter Farm. It’s now a pri­vate farm, closed to vis­i­tors, so we could only peek out­side. The far­m’s lay­out has­n’t changed from White’s orig­i­nal draw­ing; the barn is still there, but the sur­round­ing trees have become much denser. Stand­ing at the edge of the farm, look­ing out toward the sea, you can see a gen­tle slope all the way down to the ocean. That year, the Whites, hold­ing three-year-old Joe in their sail­boat, had spot­ted the farm from the sea and instant­ly fell in love with it.

 
White’s own draw­ing of the farm


A glimpse out­side the farm


Salt­wa­ter farm behind look­ing out to sea


In Brook­lyn Vil­lage, there are no oth­er activ­i­ties for tourists except boat­ing or tak­ing a boat. How­ev­er, the sur­round­ing area is very pop­u­lar.1An hour’s dri­ve away is the pop­u­lar Aca­dia Nation­al Park; about20A few min­utes’ dri­ve away is Deer Island, where many artists gath­er. Robert McCloskey and his wife lived there with their two daugh­ters for a long time. Dur­ing that time, they cre­at­ed sev­er­al clas­sic pic­ture books, includ­ing “Sel Pick­ing Blue­ber­ries”, “Morn­ings on the Seashore” and “Good Times”. The lat­ter two are based on island scenery and island life, while “Sel Pick­ing Blue­ber­ries” is set in Blue Hill.Blue
Hill)—Blue­ber­ry Hill.

North from White’s Salt­wa­ter Farm4Miles is Blue Hill. If you wan­der around that area, you will find that every few steps there is a hill­side that looks very much like the place where lit­tle Sel and his moth­er went to pick blue­ber­ries. As for where exact­ly it is, even the locals can’t tell you for sure. Blue Hill is close to the Atlantic Ocean. The moun­tains on the shore are rocky, with many small lakes between the moun­tains. The forests are dense and the pop­u­la­tion den­si­ty is low, so the whole area is beau­ti­ful. In fact, you don’t have to go to the nation­al park to squeeze with peo­ple to see the scenery. In addi­tion, the lob­sters in this area are also very deli­cious and very cheap. Unprocessed raw lob­sters are equiv­a­lent to about one kilo­gram.40It is said that White was also quite knowl­edge­able about lob­ster fish­ing. His book “A Short His­to­ry of Lob­ster­men” can be found in the near­by Lob­ster Muse­um.

On our last day, at the innkeep­er’s rec­om­men­da­tion, we head­ed to a boat club near the old mines on Deer Island, ready to go boat­ing and expe­ri­ence the pic­turesque seascapes first­hand. But ear­ly that morn­ing, the skies turned sour, and it began to rain. When we arrived at the club, the rain had­n’t stopped and was get­ting heav­ier. The club’s own­er, Cap­tain Bill, firm­ly declared that boat­ing on such rainy days was out of the ques­tion. Our hearts sank. But then, point­ing to a satel­lite image on his com­put­er, he said the rain would stop at 1:00 PM, allow­ing us to boat all after­noon. Over­joyed, we quick­ly booked a reser­va­tion.

A heavy rain driz­zled down on Deal Island all morn­ing, mak­ing it a per­fect time to browse the gal­leries. In the town cen­ter, gal­leries appeared every few steps, show­cas­ing a wide vari­ety of styles: abstract mod­ern paint­ings, roman­tic impres­sion­ism, and real­is­tic land­scapes. Strange­ly enough, view­ing the Deal Island land­scapes here felt par­tic­u­lar­ly inti­mate. While the scenery was already pic­turesque just look­ing out, turn­ing back to view the scenery with­in the frame offered a unique fla­vor, per­haps because it had been rein­ter­pret­ed by the artist’s eye and hand.

See­ing12It was past half past mid­night, and the rain showed no sign of stop­ping, so we had to return to the club to can­cel our reser­va­tion. Arriv­ing at around one o’clock, we sud­den­ly felt the rain stop, and the sun peeked through. Cap­tain Bill was amaz­ing! We excit­ed­ly found our guide, packed our gear, found the boat, sort­ed our belong­ings, prac­ticed on land, announced things, con­sult­ed with the trans­la­tor… After a lot of has­sles, we were final­ly able to go out to sea.

There are many small islands scat­tered in the bay out­side Deer Island. The islands are not far from each oth­er, form­ing a series of sea cor­ri­dors. So on a clear day, it feels very pleas­ant to row among these islands, which is sim­i­lar to the feel­ing of row­ing on the lake, but you have to pay atten­tion to avoid the lob­ster boats shut­tling back and forth. As soon as I got to the sea, I looked for the island where the McCloskey fam­i­ly once lived, but I found that every island I passed by looked like the one in the pic­ture book. I asked the guide, and the young man smiled and shook his head and said he did­n’t know. Well, let’s just pre­tend that every island here is Sear­le’s Island. There are pine trees on each island, rocks and slip­pery sea­weed on the shore, clams on the beach, loons swim­ming around, and seag­ulls fly­ing freely… Which island here is not like this? The boat we rowed is calledkayasIt was said to be the kind of canoe Indi­ans used to row. The hull was so light and thin that sit­ting in it felt like sit­ting direct­ly in the water, and glid­ing along the sur­face felt like glid­ing through the sky. That day, after the rain, every­thing felt espe­cial­ly clean. Not only was the sky pure blue, the water clear, but even the white clouds seemed to have been washed clean.

Fourth stop: Amherst

Our first impres­sion of Amherst was of a par­adise. Before enter­ing Amherst, we had to pass through a series of moun­tains and forests. The roads twist­ed and turned, and the trees were as dense as a primeval for­est. After a long dri­ve, we sud­den­ly arrived in the city of Amherst. Here, there were the uni­ver­si­ty cam­pus­es, a cen­tral square that resem­bled a park, and large super­mar­kets lin­ing the main highway—a stark con­trast to the primeval for­est feel­ing we had just a few min­utes ear­li­er.

The first pur­pose of going to Amherst is to vis­it the Eric Car­le Pic­ture Book Muse­um, the first ded­i­cat­ed pic­ture book muse­um in the Unit­ed States, found­ed in2002Inspired by the Chi­hi­ro Muse­um of Art in Iwasa­ki, Japan, Eric Car­le and his wife, Bar­bara, found­ed the muse­um. Today, the muse­um boasts a col­lec­tion of over 10,000 orig­i­nal illus­tra­tions and boasts three exhi­bi­tion gal­leries, an art stu­dio, a library, and a the­ater. Besides rotat­ing exhi­bi­tions based on themes, the muse­um also offers a vari­ety of relat­ed activ­i­ties. Pop­u­lar activ­i­ties for chil­dren include col­lage mak­ing in the art stu­dio, lis­ten­ing to pic­ture book sto­ries in the library, and watch­ing relat­ed per­for­mances in the the­ater.

Recent exhi­bi­tions have three themes: a visu­al game Eric plays with his artist friends—What’s your favorite animal?—an imag­i­na­tive visu­al feast, with top illus­tra­tors seem­ing­ly com­pet­ing against each oth­er, each show­cas­ing their tal­ents; an exhi­bi­tion of illus­tra­tions by Sims Tar­beck, whose works like “Joseph Had an Old Coat” and “An Old Woman Swal­lowed a Fly” are also pop­u­lar among Chi­nese read­ers; and an exhi­bi­tion of orig­i­nal illus­tra­tions by Louise Fitzhugh. This artist is renowned for her chil­dren’s nov­els, and her book “Har­ri­et the Spy” has been trans­lat­ed into Chi­nese. How­ev­er, read­ers often over­look her as a gift­ed painter, whose illus­tra­tions leave a last­ing impres­sion.

Pho­tog­ra­phy is pro­hib­it­ed here, so I real­ly want­ed to exam­ine every paint­ing care­ful­ly. But I was also curi­ous about how the sto­ry­tellers told sto­ries to the chil­dren, so I rushed to the library dur­ing sto­ry­time. There weren’t many chil­dren lis­ten­ing; they could sit on the floor or in their par­ents’ arms, while the par­ents set­tled com­fort­ably on the sofas. That day, the sto­ry­teller was a slight­ly plump woman. I did­n’t catch the name of the sto­ry, but it was about a curi­ous boy fid­dling with a piece of silk rib­bon. She told the sto­ry qui­et­ly, wait­ing for the audi­ence’s reac­tion to each new dis­cov­ery or twist. Sure enough, two chil­dren, like tod­dlers, would rush over to help, car­ry­ing the sto­ry for­ward all the way to the cli­max.

After hear­ing the sto­ry, I walked back to the lob­by and dis­cov­ered that the cater­pil­lar there was actu­al­ly a small sto­ry­telling house. A moth­er (or father) was hid­ing inside with her child, shar­ing a sto­ry. It was so heart­warm­ing and enjoy­able! I think chil­dren under eight or nine might enjoy it more. Of course, pic­ture book enthu­si­asts of all ages will enjoy it.

Mr. Mar­cus hap­pened to be a trustee of the muse­um, and through him, I was con­nect­ed via email with the muse­um’s direc­tor, Ms. Alexan­dra Kennedy. She gave me a detailed intro­duc­tion to the exhi­bi­tions and events and strong­ly rec­om­mend­ed a pic­nic in the orchard out­side the muse­um. What a great idea! That morn­ing, we bought bread from a pop­u­lar local bak­ery and some fruits and veg­eta­bles at the farm­ers’ mar­ket in the cen­tral square. After enjoy­ing the illus­tra­tions, we enjoyed a deli­cious lunch in the beau­ti­ful orchard.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, we had to leave after noon because there was still one place in Amherst that we need­ed to “make a pil­grim­age”, which was the for­mer res­i­dence of Emi­ly Dick­in­son, who also hap­pened to be one of my favorite female poets.

The Dick­in­son fam­i­ly’s old house and the big oak tree

Dick­in­son is arguably the world’s most famous home­body. Through­out her life, she rarely left the house her grand­fa­ther had orig­i­nal­ly built, spend­ing her time con­fined to the home, the large oak tree in the gar­den, and her broth­er’s adjoin­ing house next door, which her father had built for him and is now in bet­ter con­di­tion. The oak tree men­tioned in her poems is read­i­ly vis­i­ble, now even more robust. The vast green space she often ref­er­enced in her poems is no longer vis­i­ble; judg­ing by its loca­tion, it rep­re­sents a cor­ner of the Amherst Col­lege cam­pus across the main street from the house. Both Dick­in­son’s grand­fa­ther and father were active­ly involved in the found­ing of this pri­vate col­lege.

Our tour guide, who called her­self “Joe,” felt like a sea­soned pro­fes­sor. She seemed to know the his­to­ry of every brick and tile in the old hous­es, and could recite excerpts from Dick­in­son’s poems and let­ters. As those lines con­nect­ed with the scene before me and the sto­ries I asso­ci­at­ed with Dick­in­son, I felt a surge of elec­tric­i­ty. In one of the old rooms, Ms. Qiao invit­ed every­one to sit down and used a dis­play board to demon­strate how Dick­in­son repeat­ed­ly pon­dered dif­fer­ent pos­si­ble word choic­es. This remind­ed me of Jia Dao’s “Tui Kao” (refined phras­es) and Du Fu’s “In my lat­er years, my poet­ry grad­u­al­ly became more refined.”

The entire tour last­ed near­ly two hours, but I did­n’t feel tired at all. When we said good­bye, Joe curi­ous­ly asked if non-native Eng­lish speak­ers would be able to relate to Dick­in­son’s poet­ry. I assured her that we loved it and that there are many Dick­in­son read­ers in Chi­na. I think the beau­ty of Dick­in­son’s poems is that they are rel­a­tive­ly short, yet rich in imagery and have a beau­ti­ful sound to them, much like clas­si­cal Chi­nese poet­ry. We may not under­stand every line, but we feel their pow­er. Joe was delight­ed to hear that.

Not far from the old house is the for­mer res­i­dence of Dick­in­son’s broth­er and sis­ter-in-law (which is more well-pre­served).

Fifth stop: New York again

Back in New York, before head­ing back to Chi­na, I set aside a full day for myself to spend time at the New York Pub­lic Library, look­ing up infor­ma­tion, and tak­ing the time to review the chil­dren’s book.ABCexhi­bi­tion.

Con­trary to my expec­ta­tions, the New York Pub­lic Library’s main branch is a research library, where open-shelf access is not per­mit­ted. One can only search the cat­a­log and ask a librar­i­an to retrieve the book. I first applied for a tem­po­rary library card and found a com­put­er to search. Con­fused and strug­gling for a while, a librar­i­an offered to help me find the book. After find­ing it, he asked me to write down the search code. Even he found the title and code I’d writ­ten down, and he felt a bit over­whelmed. He then asked me to con­sult a seem­ing­ly more expe­ri­enced librar­i­an. The librar­i­an was indeed more expe­ri­enced and found the book quick­ly. He told me that the book was at the New Jer­sey State Library and would be deliv­ered to me the next morn­ing if I was sure. I said that was a shame, as I had to return to Chi­na the next morn­ing. She also felt help­less, but after under­stand­ing my needs (research relat­ed to chil­dren’s lit­er­a­ture authors), she sug­gest­ed I check the chil­dren’s book sec­tion on the ground floor, where they had open-shelf access. That’s right, I thought. The chil­dren’s book sec­tion found­ed by the Moores should have been the place to go.

After half a day, although I did­n’t find the book I was look­ing for, I did man­age to flip through a bunch of chil­dren’s books. After a quick glance, I real­ized there were so many good books, and so many I still did­n’t know about. So I tem­porar­i­ly aban­doned my search and decid­ed to take anoth­er seri­ous look at Mar­cus’s exhi­bi­tion.

The biggest advan­tage of vis­it­ing an exhi­bi­tion alone is that you have plen­ty of time to appre­ci­ate and reflect. I first walked through the exhi­bi­tion briefly and final­ly got a clear­er under­stand­ing of its struc­ture. It remind­ed me of a his­to­ry of Amer­i­can chil­dren’s books writ­ten by Mar­cus, “Guardians of Chil­dren’s Books: Ide­al­ists, Doers, and the Mak­ing of Amer­i­can Chil­dren’s Lit­er­a­ture” (Min­ders
of Make-Believe: Ide­al­ists, Entre­pre­neurs, and the Shap­ing of
Amer­i­can Chil­dren’s Lit­er­a­tureYes, the main idea of this exhi­bi­tion comes from this.

With my mind sud­den­ly enlight­ened, I decid­ed to enjoy explor­ing the muse­um’s trea­sures once more. Then, a new group of vis­i­tors arrived. They did­n’t look like ordi­nary tourists, as they were led by an ele­gant, elder­ly woman, who occa­sion­al­ly engaged in dis­cus­sion. I leaned over to lis­ten to her expla­na­tion, which was undoubt­ed­ly quite pro­fes­sion­al, seem­ing­ly on par with Mar­cus’s. Her calm and com­posed pre­sen­ta­tion cap­ti­vat­ed most of the vis­i­tors, who also low­ered their voic­es to accom­mo­date her.

As the woman led the group into the large green room, near­ly every­one gath­ered around her. She had already picked up the book “Good­night, Moon” and began to read aloud. When she reached the “old lady” in the book, I could­n’t help but laugh. Was­n’t that her? With each good­night, every­one grad­u­al­ly qui­et­ed down. When she fin­ished the last line, “Good­night, all the voic­es,” the audi­ence froze in their tracks. It was­n’t until she asked, “Are you all asleep?” that every­one burst into laugh­ter and enthu­si­as­tic applause.

Yes, the won­der­ful feel­ing brought by beau­ti­ful chil­dren’s books is not exclu­sive to chil­dren, but should belong to every­one.

 

Ajia …
Writ­ten on2014Year9moon6Bei­jing