Holiday Celebrations: Keeping It Safe and Fun Outdoors

Covid-19  update- 
Much of the communal good will that I sensed throughout the early weeks of Safe-At-Home continues. 
And yet... polarized politics, fueled by cabin-fever, has led to armed protest marches, legal challenges, and social media rants about the need for "FREEDOM", demanding that businesses reopen, and do so NOW. 
I get it. 
People are social beings. 
Businesses have been struggling to survive.
Still...
When I made necessary trips to the pharmacy or food stores, I've seen restaurant patio areas extended with open-sided tents and orange cones. The same is true for taverns and other socializing venues. I'll admit, I feel my guts clench when I see those efforts at responsible operation. All are businesses that also serve alcohol. Even in moderation, that can weaken the attention and honest intentions of those craving a taste of FREEDOM. 
This Memorial Day weekend marks the Covid death toll in the US alone at nearly 100,000 beloved people. FINALLY, belatedly, orders were issued to fly flags at half staff in memory of those lost lives, for one day. On Monday, Memorial Day, flags will again be at half staff for the many who gave their lives in service to our country across the years. 
My worry is that an overeager, sun soaked, socially-starved population will, intentionally or by enthusiastic neglect, spike a rise in incidence and infection. 
All we can do is wait and see, and act as responsibly as we would hope others will.
Which brings me to this wonderful new picture book.

Page Street Kids, 2020

DUSK EXPLORERS has the tag line; "Come! Run free outdoors 

and steal away into the night."

Written by Lindsay Leslie and illustrated by Ellen Rooney, the cover (front and back) echoes that invitation by evoking  the magic of summer twilight gatherings. It is a book that is both timeless and timely, since the outdoors beckons and kids are craving unbridled excitement with friends. The characters  pictured are diverse in age, gender, and ethnicity, romping into the pale sunset dusk with an enthusiasm we can all recall. Sadly, we are also missing such abandon with more than the melancholy of nostalgia. 

The neighborhood and surrounding wildlife portrayed in this story appear safely middle class. Although that's not the reality for many children, kids make their outdoor fun where they find themselves. That may be in a park or playground, in the neighborhood of friends and loved ones, or during a camp experience. 

The various scenes reveal that the magic hour offers fun in any setting, including active play, ground level observations (watching for night crawlers to emerge!), seeking and finding other creatures who become active in the evening hours, and savoring secrets in quiet spaces. 

With the eventual purple haze of night's arrival, houselights and streetlights click on, fireflies blink their coded messages, and kids realize that they will soon be drawn back indoors by that inevitable call from a porch or stoop:

"...their parents' the-sun-is-gone yell: TIME TO COME HOME." 

This is a prime example of Leslie's engaging language, sprinkling an array of dusk exploration with active verbs and charming challenges while the images shift from colorfully detailed to silhouettes, from sunset tones to deepening night. 
I called this story timely, and each of these pages and invitations are ideally suited to these days on the threshold of endless summer nights. And yet the creators and the publisher must be frustrated at the implications of Covid19 restrictions. In fact, though, getting outdoors remains desirable and healthy, with a few cautions. 
By now, kids are aware of the dramatic importance of physical distancing, so this book can be a helpful tool for prepping those dusk explorations. The pages depicting flashlights and toads and frogs call to mind my recent post about AMPHIBIAN ACROBATS. Sure, it would be fun to pursue such fun untethered, but the images do a fine job of showing older siblings as responsible participants. Voices carry in the outdoors, so frog-spotting, tree-climbing, star-gazing, and other distant-but-together games can be brainstormed and rehearsed before going out with a few known friends, neighbors, or cousins. 
Ideas for adaptations can be brainstormed as a challenge rather than chains. Just a few might include porch-to-porch sleep-outs (with throwback string/can secrets?), tag with pool noodles, foam-ball toss-tag, mother-may-I toward a target line rather than to touch each other, and catching lightning bugs in territorial patches with just as many squeals as during random roaming.
Other outdoor adaptations for healthy kid-play can be found online, with the usual caution to consider the source. HealthyChildren.org offers rationale and suggested romps, childmind.org points out the mental health benefits of outdoor activities (with many other great mental health maintenance tips), and none other than NationalGeographic.com provides a wealth of ideas for safe outdoor activities. 
So, get your hands on DUSK EXPLORERS as a way to preview and plan a summer full of healthy outdoor engagement. While you're at it, use this wonderful book to share stories of your own childhood adventures and explorations.
Exaggeration and tall tales are officially approved.

The kids need it. 
Adults need it, too.
Just keep in mind that we all need each other to enjoy "FREEDOM" responsibly.
We always did, but now, more than ever.
The chart here is already two weeks old, but I include it with a reminder that the wartime lives lost, cumulatively, do not equal those in our country who ahve lost their lives to this ongoing pandemic. While tucked safely in our own homes, these overwhelming numbers can fade from immediacy and significance. Not all of the victims of COVID 19 are among those counted, making the actual numbers even higher, and still climbing. 
As we are all climbing the walls, let's not lose sight of our own responsibility role in limiting that Covid death toll climb. In the two weeks since this was published, the count has risen, and will continue to do so.

Fortune Online, May 15, 2020

Suddenly- Grief and Loss

On past Memorial Day weekends I've shared thoughts on that subject and recommended various titles in previous posts, here, here, and here (and more). I linked those to reassure myself that I'm not neglecting the important topic of veterans lost to us in service by veering to a more general theme in this post. 
It's not as if I haven't written about death and loss and picture books in the past. Just enter  death or grief in the search box on the right and you'll find some of the many books I've recommended on this topic. In each case, though, I've found the books first and shared my reactions and recommendations for various uses.

This post, however, is a response to a specific situation, a heartbreaking loss that left me, and I suspect everyone else involved, feeling helpless. I often have to bite my tongue when faced with loss or tragedy, desperately grasping for something, anything, to offer those suffering some tangible relief beyond my sympathy. This is exponentially more true when the grief involves children. The older I get the more aware I am of how grossly inadequate and even inappropriate that impulse is. 

Dial Books for Young Readers, 2019

A recently released picture book makes this point more brilliantly and beautifully than I can. THE RABBIT LISTENED is written and illustrated by Cori Doeerrfeld. 
This little book offers a universe of wisdom. It opens with utterly appealing scenes, introducing a character, Taylor, about whom we instantly care. 
Then trouble swoops in: sudden,  shocking, irrational. Taylor is rightly dismayed. 
The author/illustrator's use of caring, well-meaning, and slightly absurd animal interveners highlights the fact that each portrays a "fixer" approach- giving advice that wasn't sought. Even though the effort is sincere and the suggestions are generally textbook-smart, there is little or no effort to "read" the child and realize that time and circumstances make their well-meaning offers, well, meaningless.
Then Rabbit arrives. As the title says, Rabbit Listened, recognizing and absorbing Taylor's raw emotions. Rabbit's only role is to be present. To offer comfort without expectation or exit. Only then can Taylor (who could be a boy or a girl) try out various reactions, move through stages of grief, and work through the pain of loss until it is resolved. As comforting as this book may prove to be for young audiences, it should be considered an advanced course in human outreach for those of us with the "fixer" impulse.

While respecting the privacy of the family involved, I'll share the circumstances that prompted this post. It involved the recent sudden death of a bright and kind young man. He was the husband of a woman I've known since she and her sister were in elementary school, girls who had cookies and cocoa at my table and helped me open up my classrooms in each fall. Now that little girl I knew has grown to be this young woman. She and her husband are both young professionals, parents of an incredibly bright and sweet five-year-old girl. That former little girl and her own daughter now face the daily reality of drastically altered lives, shifting dreams, and an achingly deep absence in their futures. 
My fixer impulse surfaced in full force, but with an absolute awareness that nothing "fixes" this situation. Nothing can, nothing will. 
That's when I remembered this picture book. I also checked for other titles at CHILDREN'S BOOKS HEAL, a blog by Patricia Tilton and  BOOKS THAT HEAL KIDS,  a blog by Roxanne. I turned to the power of picture books based on the way they can act as the rabbit: to be there, to be present and available, waiting to listen and share the child's grief  whenever and however they are able to express it. 

Star Bright Books, 2013

Those and other searches led to two more very specific titles. These may help now or wait in the wings for several months, or more. The first is ALWAYS BY MY SIDE, written by Susan Kerner and illustrated by Ian P. Benfold Haywood. The simple but lyrical text inspires lovely examples of the ways in which young children can turn to happy memories and moments of comfort to feel the presence of a daddy who has died. The story was inspired by the author's own experience in being the widowed mother of a young child while pregnant with another. This is the book she hoped to find. GEEKDAD blog presents an interview with the author. An added benefit of this book is the diversity of the characters, settings, and supporting cast which emphasizes the universality of the situation and the human responses. 

Magination Press 2007

Another book that could be useful as the months pass is SAMANTHA JANE'S MISSING SMILE: A Story About Coping with the Loss of a Parent, written by Julie Kaplow and Donna Pincus, illustrated by Beth Spiegel. This story, written by two professionals in the field of grief and anxiety in youth, tenderly explores and supports young Sarah Jane as she resumes her "new normal" life after the death of a parent, in particular helping her to accept moments of happiness, even laughter. The story reminds Sarah Jane that, as she recovers a full range of emotions, she can experience happiness without feeling guilty or worrying that it means she is forgetting her parent. 
The story directly addresses these questions but is kid-friendly. Back pages provide additional professional advice to surviving parents supporting a child through such a loss. Magination Press is a publisher curated by the American Psychological Association with a long track record for topic-specific titles that have helped countless children and families. 

Now, back to the Memorial Day question. I grew up at a time when veterans were lost to war,  but those were wars that lasted five to seven years. Even so, they produced a nightmare of losses and family grief. Our current war(s) has extended nearly two decades. For many of the white crosses and  fluttering flags there are young children feeling that loss, whether raw and new or achingly present after many years. Whatever the reason that young people are left dealing with the death of a parent, there are ways to support the grieving and dealing process. Books can help.
But, above all, remember the rabbit:  Be present. Listen.

Memorial Day Flashback

I've been considering what to include in the Memorial Day weekend post. 

My thoughts automatically turn to my dad, who lived through World War II despite his participation in the Battle of the Bulge, among other European theaters of combat. Recently I compared notes with some friends who also had WWII veteran dads. In all cases we agreed that our dads had shared very little about their experiences  as we were growing up. But when the fiftieth anniversary of the end of WWII brought it into the spotlight in 1995, it was as if a door clicked open. In bits and pieces and sometimes artifacts, letters, and  other memorabilia, their stories began to trickle out, often building to a stream of stories and details we had never heard.

Before  I started to address these reflections, I went back to my prior posts about this particular weekend. After rereading it,  the post I prepared during the first year of this blog (May, 2012) struck me as worthy of re-airing. In fact, It outshines any thoughts I was assembling at present.

That's because Memorial Day, in my opinion, should remind us not only of the individuals who served us so well over so many different conflicts. It should remind us of the need for all of us, as a HUMAN race, to realize that wars don't just "happen", that the choices, actions, opinions, and emotional tone we adopt on a daily basis all contribute to an atmosphere that is MORE or LESS conducive to war, to violence, to hatred.

The legacy we inherit, the responsibility we can accept or deny, what we OWE to all those who served and sacrificed, is to make ourselves aware during every moment of our lives that each person matters. That WE matter. That we can choose how we interact with others while so many others are no longer around to make those choices.

To find some recommended titles that might help us understand our place in this Memorial Day, I hope you'll consider reading it here.

Memorial Day: Eternal Flames

Image via www.va.gov

On Memorial Day we commemorate and honor those who served our country to assure the continuation of our independence and freedoms. It is indisputable (and honorable) that we should do so.

That we should do so only on this occasion is indeed a travesty. Our year-round acknowledgement of the service and sacrifice of others should extend far beyond the sincerely polite "Thank you for your service" offered to those in uniform when we encounter them, most often in an airport terminal.

A year ago at this time Maurice Sendak had recently died and my remarks about remembering and honoring those who contribute to society's greater good, to our advancement and improvement as people, focused on his remarkable contributions. In that post I urged the use of picture books throughout the year to share history with new generations, to explore and discuss the values and principles that lead us into wars and require vigilant protection.

As I write this today, on Memorial Day weekend, I can't help but focus on a turning point in the Civil Rights movement, leading to the passage of the historic Civil Rights legislation just one year later. Five young girls had completed their Sunday school class in the basement of a Baptist church in Birmingham, Alabama.

Martin's Big Words: The Life of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Hyperion Books, 2001

MARTIN'S BIG WORDS: The Life of Martin Luther King, Jr., by Doreen Rappaport, illustrated by Bryan Collier, does not need me to sing its praises. Named as recipient of the prestigious Coretta Scott King Illustrator Honor Award, as a Caldecott Honor Book, Jane Addams Book for Young Readers, ALA Notable Children's Book, and New York Times Book Review Award, to name a few.

 I feature this title, on this weekend, not to honor Dr. King, but to honor the young girls who were killed by the fire bomb thrown into their church that day. Today President Obama signed the Congressional Gold Medal Bill conferring on each of these four girls the highest civilian award granted by our government. The fact that the bill passed on a vote of 97-0 in these contentious political times is every bit as impressive as the passage of the original Civil Rights Act which changed all of our lives. By that I mean that the death of these four young girls can continue to challenge and inspire us to rise above our differences, no matter how deeply held, to do what is right.

So why mention these girls in connection with this book? Find a copy and read Bryan Collier's illustration notes. He refers to his characteristic collage techniques, the symbolism of the stained glass motif, and the portrait images he chose to use. Then he explains his intent for depicting four candles burning brightly on a final page. These represent the four girls who died in the fires on that night fifty years ago.   This is yet another example of the power of picture books, of the  the depths and layers of story, emotion, and insight contained in quality titles for readers of every age.

I honor and applaud the many who serve or served  in uniform, including my father and two brothers-in-law. My attention to this topic in no way reduces my genuine gratitude to them and to all who serve, and to the families who make their service possible.

But the anniversary of the Birmingham church fire, the Congressional Medal celebration, and the Memorial Day weekend came together in my mind in a way I could not ignore. It's easy to associate flames (and bombs) with war and battle. Flames can also inspire, commemorate, honor, and comfort. (Think vigil candles, votive candles, fireworks, and "This Little Light of Mine".) Those who serve in the military let their lights shine for the world on a daily basis. But others may inspire us to our higher selves even when it was never their choice to do so.

May their lights all shine, on and on.

To preview a selection of more traditional picture books on the topic of Memorial Day I'll link you to the always helpful Apples4TheTeacher.com post.

MEMORIAL DAY REFLECTIONS

On May 8 of this year Maurice Sendak died. His contributions to children's literature were acclaimed during his lifetime and have been recounted and regaled in the days following his passing. Rightly so.

The title most often mentioned as generating a seismic shift in the publishing landscape is Where the Wild Things Are. Decades before that was published, though, Sendak was making an even more substantial mark on children's illustrations in his collaborations with his mentor, Ruth Krauss.

In 1952 they published A HOLE IS TO DIG: A First Book of First Definitions. Look carefully at the characters in this tiny classic and you'll see Max in the early days, peeking out at us in line drawings, minus his white wolf suit. You can hear the story behind the changing vision of what a book could and should be, what children in books would look like, would have to say, in this interview with Sendak on NPR. This title was not met with rave reviews upon its release, but has since been recognized as timeless and inspired, a true game-changer.

Sendak's family emmigrated to the USA before World War II, but all relatives who did not leave Poland were destroyed in the Holocaust. The reality of that, of the suffering his parents felt as the magnitude of their loss became known to them, shaped him painfully for much of his life.

But some few people, young and old, did survive the concentration camps. Let the Celebrations Begin by Margaret Wild, illustrated by Julie Vivas (1991) is a surprisingly tender and upbeat story based on a most unexpected celebration. In the waning days of WWII, women and children in a concentration camp heard rumors of the impending arrival of American forces. Scrounging scraps from their own tattered clothing the women secretly constructed makeshift toys for the few children who remained, to be presented when they were finally released. Some of these very toys have been preserved in holocaust museums and inspired this telling.

Yet another child's-eye-view of the Holocaust can be found in Star of Fear, Star of Hope, by Jo Hoestlandt, illustrated by Johanna Kang, translated from French by Mark Polizzotti (1993). The mandatory yellow star Lydia's mother stitched on their clothing was seen by her friend, the narrator, as "pretty". All too soon these childhood friends were separated, never to meet again. This story is particularly effective in portraying the sheltered, unsuspecting world of the girls prior to the events of one tragic night.

For those who share powerful picture book titles such as these with older readers, Somebody, Please Tell Me Who I Am, by Harry Mazer and Peter Lerangis is a YA title you shouldn't miss. It moves the conversation into current times, in which soldiers who would have died in past conflicts are being saved, but changed in ways we are only beginning to understand.

Memorial Day is a much-loved holiday in the USA, the unofficial start of summer. Originating in the era of the Civil War, traditions call for the honoring of fallen soldiers with prayer, flags, parades.

It is said that wars are started by old men who send young men (and women) to die. But it is the children who have the most to lose: safety, security, the love of those who are lost or changed forever by war.

When Shakespeare provided Mark Antony's eulogy for Emperor Caesar he said:
"The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones."

We would do well to remember that message this Memorial Day. The evils of war, and the pains inflicted by war, are impossible to forget. But good men and good women have stood strong to protect freedom and dignity, to put an end to evil, not only for their own country, but for the innocents of the world. And other good men and women have used their talents to speak the truth to children in picture books and beyond, to present reality in ways that they can understand- and learn from.

I choose to remember and honor all those whose efforts shape the world in which children grow to become tomorrow's society. Perhaps even one without wars.


That effort, that courage, should not be interred with their bones.



Here is a link to a Holocaust Educational Bibliography, one of many available.