ONE

On the twelfth dark day of December,
a lingering frost lay stiffening the hospital grass-
razor sharp blades of lawn fingers,
turned bright white, crispy, very wintry.

So, really toe biting it was and eerily chill,
ear pinching, teeth chattering, cheek bruising,
when a very unusually cold, late morning thrill,
stole closer to lunch than to breakfast time.

On leaving Maternity, cars drove slug slowly,
careful, fearful of sliding, chugging-n-colliding,
brakeless on sleeping policemen and steep ice.

‘We’ve got brand new and still undamaged
very hard to manage fragile babies on board!’
the frantic parents roared, dismayed and afraid.

Anxieties made them see just dreadful catastrophe.
Through huge billowing clouds of chuffing exhaust,
off-white, a ghostly sight, their ever so slightly yellow,
pale-n-sorry side-lights twinkled like faded orangeade.

In the December town’s crammed festive windows,
jammed full of jolly jams, honey glazed hams,
and a hundred yummy scrumptious tum-tum joys,
kazammed tight to the oak beams, way up to the brim
with tens of thousands of brilliantly glinting toys,
a million, or more, or maybe even a zillion teeny
tiny fairy light illuminations shone rainbow brightly,
blinking, shimmering, glimmering with all their might,
as if all of the magic kingdom was thinking very hard-
‘PLEASE PLEASE get everyone home safely this night.’

Well it was hell. It’s always a hectic, loads to arrange,
heaps to prepare, cook and wrap-up imaginatively,
totally busy-body, utterly maddening part of the year;
in some ways it can be dizzy and fizzingly dangerous.

But, cool little baby whizz Benjamin, open wide-eyed,
and swaying in his mum’s arms, lightly, side to side,
was oblivious to the fuss and just glad to have arrived.

Snug-as-a-glo-bug in a knitted blue travelling rug,
He began enjoying his first ever car trundle home,
he dreamed he was deep in the world of his past
like a diamond crystal trapped in an ancient stone.

TWO

On the freezing, but fabulously teasing afternoon,
Friday the thirteenth dark day of December-
[Ho dee ho, only eleven more tea-time treats to go
before the arrival of mince-pie-eating Santa Claus,]
Mr and Mrs Christmas, who lived rather plain lives
at very plain number five The very plain Crescent,
plain Mount Pleasant near normally picturesque St Ives,
settled their new, but far from ordinary, baby gently
into his decorative crib, stroked his blubbery double chin,
tucked his chubby fingers softly in and beamed broadly.

BC you see was ageing, already seven whole days old,
he was engaging, loved, nightly admired, mightily adored;
the apple of his mother’s eye, his father’s bouncing boy,
a pride, a joy, a fact not fiction begging to be explored.
They couldn’t stop staring at him, cooing him, gooing him
flouncing him, smiling him, almost but not quite poking
fingers into him. He was a wonder, really was a treasure-
gifted above measure, the most loved Chrissie present ever.
But, how clever was he actually at hiding all his wizardry?

Not a lot. Guess what?
Suddenly folks, he actually spoke!

Exactly! This innocent offspring loudly shouted,
a very vast voice from his very small mouth
super matter-of-factly spouted!

Both his parents turned a ghastly ghostly white!
What a ‘Friday the Thirteenth’ fright! Who dunnit?
Could it really be the kid in the blue angora bonnet?

Soon in the neat-n-tidy, newly dainty painted nursery
someone or something shouted out again with a-
‘BOOM! Da Da BOOM! Da Da BOOM BOOM BOOM!’
awfully out of place for a brand new baby’s room.
Well, it wasn’t daddy Christmas, no, no, no,
he was so knocked aside by this spooky din.
And it wasn’t mummy Christmas- suddenly struck dumb,
she was shocked, and alarmed, marbles garbled in a spin.

That ‘BOOM! Da Da BOOM! Da BOOM! Da Ding’,
the phrase that was shouted far too loudly for the space,
rightly, frighteningly, extraterrestrially, way out of place
couldn’t have come from one with so sweet a human face,
someone born so very young and naturally polite-

it was ‘Eco-warriors unite!’, got it? Right!

‘Save our sickly planet.
There are mean and mental men
killing the amazing Amazon-
grab men, ad men, stealing our lungs,
greedy bankers counting big sums,
felling trees as if it’s all a scam, a wheeze.
And in the factories they’ll can it,
label it, stack it, then ship it overseas!
To make a fat profit they do as they please.’

Got it. Right! Right on.

And the personage to blame for this miraculous noise
was Benjamin by name, the smallest sort of naughty boy
who was baldy, very brave, only almost eight days old,
far too tiny to be told, far too teeny to be scolded,
too young to be put in corners with his weenie arms folded.

Then, just to be sure, to be certain he’d been heard,
BC repeated certain key words. Freaky! Even absurd!
But this time he yelled much louder than before! Mad!

‘ECO WARRIORS UNITE!’ he duly shouted.
‘ECO WARRIORS UNITE!’ he truly spouted.

Ben’s mum’s tummy rumbled, then she yellowed.
‘OH MY!’ she sighed, ‘My son Benjamin just bellowed!’
Both parents were besides themselves with scares
and spiky haired confusion, in some hurry to make
common sense of what was circus trick illusion.
Then, next, oh yes, no jest and quite unexpectedly,
the nursery flipped, made them glaze over even more.
It started rearranging this baby space and novel time.
Its floor, its walls, its ceiling all changed their faces
as befits the real feelings of strange and distant places-

Mum cried ‘Santa, help if you will! I’m feeling rather ill.
We’re in some amazing jungle- is it the Amazon, Brazil?’

There it was for them to see, fortunately in privacy,
at very plain number five The very plain Crescent, in
plain Mount Pleasant near normally picturesque St Ives-

a buzzing canopy of trees, jungle frizz bees, forest flies,
the busy flying birds of paradise, humming tune birds,
the fat batty bats, black coated yellow eyed jungle cats,
the creepies and the crawling, the hooting, the calling,
the nattering and chattering the undergrowth battering
barbarian beasties; birds, reptilians, smelly mammalians,
hunting-men, feasting, resting, gathering then nesting.
BUT gnashing, slashing, clattering, came you know who
battering, bashing, burning and driving ways through,
sat on massive, progressive mega earth movers to do
their evil worst, having their fill of the amazing and brill’
Amazon jungle in Brazil! All very sad but infuriatingly true.

Oh! You go your way. Believe it if you will.
There is a consequence to selfishness-
a new baby weeping for fallen trees,
calling for his world
to be rid of the creeping disease called
couldn’t care less,
says as much.
But you’ve got to let him touch your heart.
That’s how true recovery starts.

THREE

On the fourteenth dark day, just turned bright,
the sunrise burned firelight,
left the wet tree twigs steaming, freed from frost.
No-one was dreaming.
None were lost but some even dared to believe
in solar gleaming, moon beams and star streaming.

Saturday, by some tidy habit of the universe, the nursery
came back into spic-n-span order at the crack of dawn,
it’s paint work beautifully repainted proper eggshell blue,
the carpet carefully re-carpeted exact tortoiseshell fawn.

Boring. No-one was snoring at after six in the morning,
The Christmas’ were drinking absolutely serious tea,
thinking of their Benjamin’s well grown curiosity.
Bleary eyed, tongue tied, all at sea, but trying very hard
to make the most of being awake, they struggled to beat
soft scrambled eggs, then burned then dumped the toast,
stumbled over nappy packs on their way to fetch the post.
Oh! Only ten more breakfasts, lunches, dinners, left to go
and cards had started stacking up, settling thick as snow.

‘It’s a sensation. We’ll all be eiderdowned under by six
foot drifts of Yuletide felicitations!’ cried Mrs Christmas,
being seasonable, sentimental, excitable and party-ish.

‘What a waste of re-cycled paper!’ sighed Benjamin’s dad,
sounding strangely unreasonable, rather out of sorts
‘Have you read this morning’s sports’ reports mother?
Is this new Welsh soccer manager stark raving mad?
It’s finally made my mind up, it has, finally, yes it has.
Ben’s going to be an international biker, not a striker,
that’s final. I’ll give ‘im a chance at The Tour de France’

‘No time like the Christmas present!’ laughed Mrs C,
attempting a festive quip, tickling her husband’s jelly belly
just above his hip. ‘It is time we bathed our smelly baby,
maybe you can stop him slipping, the midwife did say-
‘Wet and naked children slide about like beef in dripping.’
AHH! Bless. Well yes he is meaty but no real trouble.
He loves to feel the water and he wiggles like an eel,
giggles like an angel and the bubbles make him squeal.’

‘I know.’ glowed Mr C, turning off the hot and cold,
‘We can show him how to swim. Imagine Ben winning
a genuine once in a lifetime Olympic Butterfly Gold.’

Dad’s baby medallist, was making rough shoreline waves,
shaking wet seaside droplets off his sand castle nose,
drawing rock-pool ripples with his pink shrimping toes:
spluttering, almost stuttering, yet saving stuff up for now-
NOW!
So quick, there in a tick; all of a sudden he was muttering
more mystic words for his next out-of-this-world creation.
He saw both his parents go sickly pale in the situation
but nevertheless let rip with this massive deep sea song-

‘SAVE THE WHALE!’
‘SAVE THE WHALE!’
‘SAVE THE WHALE!’

Oh! And then it came happening in a North Atlantic flash,
one almighty crash, one tremendous South Pacific splash,
one horrendous roar. Yo! Ben’s big mouthed commotion
made the tiny bathroom flood with one stupendous ocean.

Mud, sand and seaweed, cockleshells and jellyfish,
killer squids, luminous snails, small green smelly fish,
starfish, groupers, loafing loofers, monk fish in cloisters.
Oysters yeah, guppies, carp, angels harping on about
sinning sharks, Siamese fighting fish, stinging scorpions,
rays that say- ‘Electric fish are eels with shocking ways.’
Longer congers, giant squid, a hermit crab in a stolen lid.
Clowns, an octopus, an acrobatic frilly skirted sea slug,
a big blue mammal ten times the size of a school playbus.
Dolphins singing doleful songs, dead whales wailing on-

‘Sea life is walking on a wet tightrope,
so never ever let it slip.
Death sits waiting on the keen knife-edge
of the very clever all weather factory ship.’

Yes. A little baby boy letting rip
can be a bit unsettling.

If you want to get a life, get a grip.
Get a grip! Get a grip! Get a grip’

FOUR

Six days of darkness later
the sky begins to flake,
it’s the bronze colour of an eating pear
and aching to burst its Christmas goodness
upon the thirsting air.

On everywhere, on everyone
wherever the need is sweet.
YES! Let sweet oblivion come.

Fools, trifles, custards, creams, sherbet snow, coconut ice,
nice green slush puppy dreams of candy pink sugar mice
chasing fat as butter chocolate cats or truffles snouting
in the trough for marzipan pigs who’ve eaten the lot, so
hoggy they’ve got very big, too massive for the chef’s pot.

Friday the twentieth’s a date to hate: wonky store trolley-
great! Figs in frantic boxes, limp mistletoe, frenzied holly,
skating the packed aisles with slack cake-baking smiles,
singing canned carrot carols and damp old cracker songs.
Fuzzy festive booze fuelled sounds on the tinny intercom-
TILL GIRLS DO THE CONGA BINGA-BONGA! SING ALONGA!
All in the wrong key. A lot get wonky. Quite a few kronky.
WAH!
WAH!
There’s a pants supermarket Santa in his fake fun fur,
waving in the shoppers with cash saving offers- there’s
50p off of a miniature Norwegian pine, a pound off tarts,
there’s a whole half-price turkey thawing out in parts
plus the great Christmas joke that sprouts make you fart.

Mr and Mrs Christmas have their baby fitted for the task,
they’ve wrapped him well in a fleece lined Moses basket,
he’s safe, he’s untroubled, snuggled up and wide-eyed.
It’s his first visit to the cathedral where shoppers come.
He’s only fourteen cold and dark, days and nights old,
warm as a toasted teacake and star struck quite dumb
by all the glowing lights, the silver balls and the gold,
the meaty mountain ranges, the river valleys of dead fish.
Oh! He thought, just a little bit distraught, ALL OF THIS
it’s the land of having everything that anyone might wish.

Well his parents do have their list and on their list is lots
from a brace of pleasant pheasants to a glaze of apricots

FIVE NAPKIN RINGS!

Twelve speckled eggs, three bread sticks, four more cards
and ten litres of red wine from Bordeaux- which together
sounded so familiar they shook themselves with laughter,
waking Benjamin far too fast from harsh dreams of Africa.

Oh no! Quickly, prickly, losing all of their seasonal mirth,
Mr and Mrs Christmas were looking at their worst option.

‘Almost a week with not so much as a sound.’
mum said, ‘Why should he speak in the middle of town,
why make a peep now, some whisper, or utterance
so close by the fish, the five loaves and butter?’
‘Keep him mum!’ dad said, ‘Oh! Santa Claus forbid,
doesn’t this Moses basket contraption have a silent lid?’

But, just then, as his mum reached in to keep Ben quiet,
afraid of a breach of the peace, scared of an all out riot,
her waking baby hollered like a cataclysm, just the once.

‘FEED THE WORLD!’ that was all that he said
but he’d pumped up the volume to waken the dead,
he’d huffed, well tough, and once yeah was enough,
his mojo was now incredibly powerful wicked stuff.

Those mega words spouted by Benjamin Christmas
brought about a shift in society not short of miraculous.
They outed greed.

Caught in a typhoon of loony proportions the goods
on display made loopy contortions. Slippin’ and slidin’
raising themselves, they flew above the prison shelves.
All the dry goods held tight to the wet goods’ hands,
and the fishy goods met with the fowls’ clucky demands.
Food’s got the right yeah to strike when the iron is hot,
to down tools and leg it yeah from the cruel cooking pot.
So, the meaty foods kissed all the sweetie foods better,
they buried the sour and then they savoured their future.
Then Cutie Fruity and Reggie The Veggie, Witty Cheese
and Pretty Pickle escaped the nasty supermarket without
a second thought. Oh! It tickled them immensely to know
they’d cheated being bought as excess to requirements.
Hell. They didn’t care where on earth they might land
or when they’d sense some starving hand that needed
to eat them. All they knew was they’d been freed from being
just surplus to the lakes and mountains of runaway greed.

Total chaos. The jolly shopper’s Christmas shopping fled-
stuff jumped right out of their dead shopping trollies. Yes.
And all that was left on display to plug the unsightly gaps
were a few bits of string and some trodden on old scraps,
torn and twisted patterned wrap, unstitched Care-bears,
split plastic holly, a torn Treasure Map of ‘Spot The Wally.’

Every off-their-trolley shopper was raving hopping mad-
even hoped it was a dream that none of them had had.
‘It must be the local pantomime, a scene from Peter Pan,
I’m certain it’s just a publicity stunt, I am, I am, I am.’
My points, my joints a lot of them screamed in a panic.
Christmas is going down the plug like the holed Titanic.

An endless exodus of precious bargain buys flew away,
quite beyond anyone’s grasp, flying higher, then higher
than high, out through Ben’s window in the wintry sky.

All the grasping lot could do was watch in shock-n-horror,
and gasp, and ask questions, like grown-ups always do,
‘Why me?’ and ‘What on earth? ‘Why?’ and ‘Why you?’
No-one could ever remember seeing groceries fly before.

Wait. Listen wait. There IS something here to celebrate.

Somewhere in the darkest Africa, torn apart by war,
in a camp of countless mouths, broken hearts and more,
there’s always the wide skies and a relentless fierce sun,
and then all the riverbeds dry when the rains don’t come,
there are TEARS in the eyes and PAINS in the tummies
of hungry kids who’ll never say odd words like scrummy.

They’ll never play ‘Shop’ or ‘Bake Away’ or stop to buy
treats on their way home from school. That’s the rule
of their day- NO SWEETS ever! They are bored with eye
blubbing, sore with the belly-ache. It’s a poor way of life,
their fragile bodies break. The pictures are very troubling.

Then, suddenly, right out of the blue, the climate changes.
It brings the village elders to their knees. None of them
is old enough to have witnessed trees as alien as these.
It sleets unanticipated surprise, it hails unexpected gifts,
it snows all the Christmas from Ben’s tinsel shopping trip!

A baby speaking out in a distant land
is telling the whole world of adults
to PLEASE understand.
The day has come to be fair,
to share, to see reason.
Tomorrow
we begin the end of everyone’s hungry season.

NOTE: I have been advised for legal reasons to post only half this manuscript.

Further enquiries can be made to me at chris.madoch@googlemail.com

© CHRIS MADOCH 2009

IMAGE: Illustration by DPF for eye2eye designs international

We recently undertook some research with children and they strongly expressed a preference for the highly detailed black and white drawings which this book is now being illustrated with. DPF’s black and white’s are simply stunning.

LIST OF WORKS IN MS

Poetry

Published in print magazines and online

A maverick collection is scheduled for  publication  in NYC 2010

Fiction

Hysteria

Living With Lesley Dying For Fame- excerpt first published on the net in Suspect Thoughts a journal of subversive writing out of San Francisco

A large back catalogue of short stories for adults

Children’s Fiction

The Alien Being With Child

Yukio Moon

The Mega Words Spouted By Benjamin Christmas

The Bantam God

The Crowing Of Tom Flight

Cody Columbus And The Glasshouse Secrets

Toylett Town

Alphabetica Botanica La La

Twelve Full Length Stage Plays- some being re-written as adult fiction.

01 The Place On The Plaza

Set in a café bar on Sunset Plaza LA the play explores the colourful complexity of relationships amongst the ‘bizarre’ characters that run the place. It has an extremely violent conclusion- a black singer-songwriter beats up on his estranged white Californian trophy wife.

02 Rumours From The Balcony

We are simultaneously on three ‘balconies’- Beverly Hills, San Diego, West Hollywood. The Californian lifestyle is ruthlessly exposed. At the heart of the play an ageing starlet enlists the help of her gay major domo to assist in her suicide. It is lush film noir brought to the stage.

03 Consorting With Seers

(This is the work that almost got there at The New End, Hampstead. Lady Pamela Kalms loved it. Pluto Productions screwed it. The Tidal Theatre in New York also said they wanted to do it. And it got real close at The Mandel Weiss Theatre in La Jolla San Diego. It was to have been the opening production for my former agent’s production company.)

Two women in their sixties, tired of sitting at the top of their respective crap heap- dysfunctional families, one Jewish, one lapsed Church Of England, find mutual solace in their fascination for all things psychic. The work is shot through with revelations both material and spiritual and the conclusion is deeply poignant.

04 Living With Lesley Dying For Fame

Lesley, an art teacher, does a very good Barbara Streisand. His neighbours run a small hotel- ex musical hall people they have a psychotic son who is ‘dating’ Lesley’s daughter. The two families decide to rehearse a ‘show’ for charity. The play largely explores fringe and extreme emotional experience and in some way makes a stab at explaining the cross-dressing/transgender phenomena.

05 One Day In The Diet Of A Boot Sale Junkie

This is council estate territory. It is black and comic. The fat heroine is trapped inside an obsessive love of boot sales and obliviously married to a swervy husband. By the end of the play we know that she has incurable cancer.

06 Dame John And The Bedsit Title

Dame John is the country’s leading Pantomime dame. His girlfriend is the daughter of an English Lord- she lives in a bedsit in Fulham. On her many journeys to California she indulges in serial killing and trophy collection. The play is structured in such a way that it can be played by four people or as a tour de force for two.

07 Waiting For Mary

Rural Surrey. The hideously deluded owners of a vast manor house seek to have their land become sanctified as the equivalent of Lourdes.

08 The Cretan Return

This is a spin on Alan Aykbourne territory. (His theatre at Scarborough said it was too ‘hot’ for them) Very fit and very wealthy old people behaving very badly in both Surrey and Crete. Delicious and salacious fun and dollops of poignant darkness. I wrote the central female roles for Maggie Smith and Judy Dench.

09 The Man Who Sheltered Butterflies From Rain

The play that seriously explores ugly and beautiful and evil and good. A brilliant half-caste American poet beaten up by rabid female journalists. A magical aftermath. Incredibly violent but deeply mystical.

10 Blue Box And Twigloo

Middle-class veneers are stripped bare in this savage attack on token ‘greenism’. The two families are not likely to be in a position to save themselves so why be so ‘in your face’ about trying to save the planet.

11 Bitter Suite- a one act play/screenplay

Vicky is living in a condemned building in Cardiff. She is haunted by her upbringing, her dying mother and her dead grandmother. Her child Iona was taken from her. She has resorted to talking to angels.

12 Dot.Com, Mouse and Wizzie Tough It Out

 Children’s theatre.

 Lyrics And Collaborative Songwriting

With John Cambridge (PRS) Current Collaboration

Many songs developed to full demos. This is my major and most productive ongoing collaboration.

With Lamont Dozier of Holland/Dozier/Holland

Five songs written with him in Beverly Hills.

With Phil Collins On/Off Prospective Collaboration

With Jez Larder and James Gregory

Six songs For ‘Dot.Com, Mouse And Wizzie Tough It Out’

Demos were produced for a possible production by The UK National Youth Theatre. James is a twenty+ keyboard whiz and Jez works for Microphonic UK who produced Bowie’s last album.

With Dominic Shaw (Rain) The Rock Album ‘Cerulean Blue’

Hit and Run Music/Phil Collins/Tony Smith loved this but didn’t know how to market it.

With Patrick Nunn (Classical) ‘Sanctus Natalis’

Patrick is hopefully still interested in composing for this sung-through nativity.

Stage Musical Librettos

Venice Beach

The beach by day versus the beach by night. A love story. A cast of bizarres. This is Hair meets West Side Story. Well, that was the plan. For the time being my errant mate Phil Collins has first choice on it. But other composers are possible.

Sanctus Natalis- A Peoples Nativity

A lyrical sung through musical at the heart of which is the unsung miracle- that Mary was never stoned to death by irate elder women. It also explores the pagan origins of ‘the miracle birth’. I have ambitions for this to become the seasonal performance. I’m looking for a crossover classic/rock composer to work with me on this. My last literary agent tried to get me McCartney but he seldom collaborates or gives anything away. (See Patrick Nunn above)

The Ugly Sisters Waltz

This is The Follies meets Cinderella. Very high camp theatre indeed. Has cult potential.

Black-eyed Susan, a women committed to education and an inspiring blogger,  runs a community library at a non-profit, Alternatives For Girls,  in her fair city, Detroit.  Color Online is running  a summer book drive to support the library at AFG.  Please visit the web site, take a look around and consider sending a book or two.

Lately, I find myself reading picture books as a change from all those word-heavy pages and because I love the artwork.  The first book was one I read about on Vasilly’s blog at 1330v, it is on her list for Herding Cats II.

The Black Book of Colors by Menena Cottin and Rosana Faria, translated by Elisa Amado. Groundwood Books, 2008.

This is one of the most beautiful picture books I’ve seen in a long time, and there is no color here.  I wish it had been published when I was an adolescent as I spent many hours trying to describe color to my dear friend Henry, who was blind from birth. It was impossible but we spent afterneens laughing about it.

The text is clear and simple and written in braille along with typeface.  The illustrations are textures embossed on ink black pages.  A sighted reader must read the book tactilely, the way a blind person would.  It will expand your or a child’s universe, and offers a starting point for discussions on different ways of experiencing the world.

The House in the Night by Susan Marie Swanson and Beth Krommes, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 2008. The winner of the 2009 Caldecott Medal.

When I first saw the scratchboard artwork in The House in the Night it reminded me of the art in Wanda Gag’s Millions of Cats, but this is a very different book. Krommes, the illustrator, adds  yellow to deep black and the soft color brings comfort.  Light and warmth glow in the dark night.  Simple phrases and objects,  a bed, a book , a bird, lead up and out into a glorious star-filled sky and then back again to the security of a child’s bed. She is surrounded by the things she loves and those who love her.  She is safe.

A beautiful, comforting story for children and adults.

A River of Words: The Story of William Carlos Williams by Jen Bryant and Melissa Sweet. Eerdmans Books for Young Readers, 2008. A 2009 Caldecott Honor book.

First, let me say that William Carlos Williams is one of my favorite American poets.  I am awed by his life and his work. This book is an lovely introduction to his life for the young reader or for any adult who enjoys picture books. The  layering of colors and mixed-media collage blend with the text  to illustrate important events and there are examples of his work at the end of the book.

A River of Words is the celebration of a man who chose  earn a living being a doctor and caring for others and also found the time to  follow his desire to be a poet.

Other reviews:

The House in the Night

Rebecca Reads

SherMeree’s Musings

The Well-Read Child

A River of Words: The Story of William Carlos Williams

She changed her name from Starling Burgess, claimed she was the “reincarnation of a sea captain’s wife” from the 1800s and was often called “a 19th century Martha Stewart,” writes Douglas Martin in a New York Times obituary of Tasha Tudor (6/20/08). You may know Tasha best as the author and illustrator of “Sparrow Post,” a children’s book about “a postal service for dolls with delivery by birds. Birthday parties featuring flotillas of cakes with lighted candles. Mouse Mills catalogs, for ordering dolls clothes made by mice, who take buttons for pay.”

Her lifestyle certainly transcended such comparison, living the very life — a 19th century life — she depicted in her books: “She wore kerchiefs, hand-knitted sweaters, fitted bodices and flowing skirts, and often went barefoot. She reared her four children in a home without electricity or running water until her youngest turned five…” She raised her own farm animals; turned flax she had grown into clothing; and lived by homespun wisdom: sow root crops on a waning moon, above-ground plants on a waxing one.”

Not only that, but Tasha Tudor “could play the dulcimer and handle a gun.” All of which added up to “a cottage industry” based on her artwork, “which has illustrated nearly 100 books,” including “The Secret Garden,” the “Night Before Christmas,” and “Mother Goose.” Her family set up shop, selling “greeting cards, prints, plates, aprons, dolls, quilts and more, all in a sentimental rustic, but still refined style resembling that of Beatrix Potter.” Some suggested that Tasha Tudor was “enthralled by her own creativity,” but she denied it. “That’s nonsense,” she said. “I’m a commercial artist, and I’ve done my books because I needed to earn my living.” She was 92. [Link]

This is our library blog. I call it “our” blog because it’s not just for me. I want you to participate too. It will be an opportunity for us to talk about one of our favorite subjects …. books. It can be old books, new books, good books and those other kind. You know the ones I mean. The ones that you read just because your best friend was. Now that you’re done with it though, you realize that your friend has a weird taste in books. But there’s a place for those too.

Here’s how this will work. I’m going to read a book. I’ll tell you about it and if I liked it or not. Yes, I’m going to tell you about the ones I don’t like too because maybe you will. Books are like candy bars. But not everyone likes the same kinds. For example, I can’t stand a candy bar that has caramel in it. Milky Ways? Yuck! I much prefer a Rocky Road, Almond Joy or Mr. Goodbar. But you might not like almonds or you’re allergic to peanuts.

That’s how books are. Fortunately there are so many good books, we can find something that is just right for us. So let’s get started and see what we can find.