THE PINK MAPLE HOUSE REVISITED

     I was able to request a copy of The Pink Maple House through interlibrary loan. It was the book both my mother and I had read during my childhood. I had hated it, she had liked it, and I wanted to see if I still felt the same way.

    The Pink Maple House was published in 1950. It is very dated. My guess is I read it in 1961. I think it was dated even then. It tells the story of Polly Trent, who moves to the "beautiful  beautiful"pink maple house with her family.

     Sadly, Polly moves away from her best friend, Jenny Spears. She starts a new school But not to worry, Jenny often comes to visit, and the two families spend both Thanksgiving and Christmas together.

     First of all, Polly and Jenny are terrible snobs. If I were Mrs. Trent, I would be concerned that Polly makes no new friends at the new school, and has to rely so heavily on Jenny coming over. The only girl she starts to know is Tilly Jenkins, but she and Jenny act very superior to Tilly. Tilly has a ramshackle house and her mother yells and hits. And of course, she is jealous of Polly's "perfect" life, so is portrayed as poor Tilly. She's described as fat, "the fat little girl", which really bothered me.

     I also couldn't stand the portrayal of the servants, the Trent's housekeeper, Delsey, and the Spears' man, Robert. Although they act like they have warm admiration for Delsey and her good cooking, she has to work on Christmas Day! They only had two guests for dinner, so why couldn't spoiled Mrs. Trent handle it? And whoop-de-doo, they give Delsey a whopping $5 and a new pocketbook for her Christmas gift. Come on! That was cheap even in 1950! She's treated as badly as Bob Crachit was by Scrooge, in my opinion.

    So verdict. I was a wise little girl. I didn't care for The Pink Maple House then and I still don't like it now. Reading it made me realize why a tumultuous decade like the sixties followed the 1950s. I can't help wondering - if there really was a Polly Trent, did she decide to "tune in, turn on and drop out" during the late 1960s? As for Tilly Jenkins, I hope she received a full scholarship to college, worked hard, and became the glamorous CEO of her own international firm!

    


    

CRITIQUE SERVICE

     I am pleased to announce that I am now offering a critique service for picture book manuscripts. For the past year I have been a volunteer judge at Rate Your Story, critiquing three or four picture book manuscripts per month, using their rating system. Of course there is usually so much more I would like to tell the writers, but I'm limited to the Rate Your Story system. With my professional critiques I'll be able to give a much more detailed response.

     My second gig, as a children's librarian, is also helpful in giving critiques. I have read literally thousands of children's books and keep up with the current titles. Reading is second only to writing daily as a necessity for a writer. Sadly, it's often obvious when reading a manuscript that the writer really has no understanding of children's picture books, probably because they haven't read enough. So in some cases I'll be recommending a reading list too.

     If you're interested, you can read more about it at my website, www.pamelamayer.com.
     Click on Critique Service on the left hand side.

FOOD II


      In my last blog, I wrote about a picky eater. Today I'll write about another of my characters, Dorcas Cummings, who longs for "something good to eat". The only child of brilliant inventors, Mr. and Mrs. Cummings are more interested in their fleet of robots than they are in Dorcas. They feed her health foods, green milkshakes, kale, sardines and soybeans. But sometimes children ought to have a cookie!

      Like my picky eater, Dorcas is another side of the same coin, that is, food obsession.

      Is it any wonder I am food obsessed? It seems most people who live in the San Francisco Bay Area are. New fantastic restaurants open in San Francisco on a weekly basis. All types of ethic cuisines are represented. Every town has a farmer's market, food trucks and specialty food shops. Add to that list artisan chocolates, coffee, craft beers and cocktails. Like tech, food is a part of the culture around here.

      Actually it didn't just start there for me. My grandmother was a fabulous cook. She was "old country", none of her recipes were written down, she had learned to cook by watching her mother. Grandma made so many wonderful desserts, cakes, cookies, strudels, homemade noodles, wonderful soups and chicken. She loved to invite the entire extended family over for a feast and would give everyone a "care" package to take home, enough food for dinner the next day.

     When my daughters were small, serving nutritious food seemed like a large part of the job of "mom" to me. They liked to pretend that our kitchen was a restaurant called The Sunshine Cafe.I had a chalkboard on the wall where they would write out each night's dinner menu. They are both excellent cooks now.

     Of course food has always been important in children's books. As a child, I remember longing to taste the foods the characters in books I read were eating. Treacle and toffee in British children's books sounded particularly enticing. I wanted to know how hardtack and salt pork tasted. Food is not only taste of course, it's smell and texture, all those sensory details which make writing, like one's palate, come alive.

     You are what you eat, which seems especially true when creating a character.

FOOD I

    I've been thinking about creating a character who is a picky eater. So it got me thinking about the foods I disliked as a child, like runny eggs and lima beans.

     Or the revolting foods my parents ate, Tripe, Calves' Liver, Limburger Cheese, Pickled Pigs' Feet, Sweetbreads, Tongue.

     With the exception of the eggs, I still wouldn't eat any of the above.

     When I was in high school I participated in a program called The Experiment In International Living. I stayed with a family in Limoges, France. The Experiment instilled in us the importance of using proper French table manners, and of eating everything we were served. Although I loved my French family dearly, there were certain foods I could not bring myself to even taste - ox brains (the texture), raw horsemeat (they loved it with buttered bread), pate tete de chochon (head of pig, 'nuff said), rabbit (sorry, but no).

     If I were served these foods today, I still wouldn't taste them. And I don't have a hankering for raw oysters or escargot either.

      I've always considered myself to be a person who is open to new foods and eats everything. But I now realize the truth.

     I am a picky eater!

     

OLD MOTHER WEST WIND

     The first book I remember loving was Old Mother West Wind by Thornton Burgess. Long after I read it, whenever I went to the public library, I would walk by the shelf where it sat and look at it, as if I were visiting an old friend. I doubt many children read it nowadays, and even whether it is part of many library collections.

     It's the same with my mother's favorite childhood book. She loved The Water Babies by Charles Kingsley. I read it at her insistence as a child, but not with the same passion for it that she had. My daughters didn't read it, and I'm certain modern children don't know much about it.

      I wonder if it will be the same with the favorite books of my daughters' childhoods. Stonewords by Pam Conrad was Rebecca's favorite, and Bridge to Terebithia by Katherine Paterson was Amy's.

      Fortunately certain classic books have survived, Peter Pan, Little Women, The Wind in the Willows, Mary Poppins. They are on the library's shelves, although I'm not certain they are read, even as a family read aloud. Just yesterday, a woman asked me for Peter Pan. I was so thrilled that she wanted to read it to her daughter I practically pranced to the shelf.

       Then I handed her the book.

       "Oh, no," she said, looking at it. "She's only five."

        "That will be fine," I said. "I think she will enjoy your reading it to her."

          "Don't you have a children's version?"

         "This is a book for children," I said, wanting to remind her that she was standing in the children's section of the library, after all!

           "Well, I mean like abridged, or like by Walt Disney or something."

           THAT WOULD NOT BE PETER PAN! Is what I wanted to scream at her. Of course, I couldn't.

           "No, we don't have anything like that," I said. I took the book back, giving it a little squeeze to remind it that it was still loved.

         Are old books like abandoned toys, desperately wanting a child to love them again?

         

THE PINK MAPLE HOUSE

  I've been writing a series of early literacy tips for the library's facebook page. This week's was about having a Family Book Club, and it brought me back to a happy memory of my mother. Long before it was fashionable, back in my childhood, my mother and I had our own book club. I would read a book, she would read it too, then we would sit together to discuss it. It was fun, not only because I liked to read, but because she liked to read too. Her reading the same books as me let me know that they were important and good and they mattered.
      
      The book I remember us disagreeing about was called The Pink Maple House. I don't remember much about it, apart from the cover being pink, and the story being so sweet it made me gag. But my mother loved it and couldn't understand why I didn't.

      It's an old book, published in 1950, but available at ABE, and through World Cat, although not in our library system. Perhaps I'll get a copy to see if all of these years later I still find it too saccharine, or if I now agree with my mother about The Pink Maple House.

Hooray for Books!

Congratulations to the winners of all of the children's book awards. With so many wonderful titles this year, I'm sure it was hard to choose!