Security Blanket: Pictures from Our Vacation

There are kids' books that you just know are going to be family favorites from the get-go, the ones whose covers grab you and never let you go. Then there are the quiet ones that get into the inner circle gradually, hanging on for renewed wave after wave of bedtimes as your kids get older, remaining favorites even as they lose interest in the rest. These are the survivors, and like old teddy bears, they become the most treasured items your kids' rooms.

For our family, Lynne Rae Perkins's Pictures from Our Vacation is one of those. It's a picture book (naturally), narrated by a girl whose nuclear family is heading off to an old family farm in the Midwest via multiday car trip for its vacation. The conceit is that the book we're reading is her diary of sorts from the trip, containing her own drawings and Polaroids (though they're really illustrated too) of her experiences. It works marvelously, lending the story a realism that escapes most picture books.

And Perkins captures the voice and point of view of a child on such a journey perfectly—the boredom interrupted by sudden flights of imagination, the mostly here-and-now perspective. (We don't find out until quite late in the book that part of the reason for the the trip is a memorial service for a remarkable great-aunt. since our narrator only mentions it herself right before it's about to happen.)

The whole structure of the book—the framing mechanism, the narrative voice, the art—works together to create a vivid, fully developed portrayal of the whole family. It's a warm, gentle sort of read, in a matter-of-fact sort of way, without actively trying to be. (Very Midwestern, I suppose.)

And that's a big reason our six-year-old son keeps bringing it back into the bedtime rotation, I'm sure, but there's another: Perkins's flashes of unforgettable imagery. At one point near the book's end, for example, the girl looks out the car window and sees a line of huge metal power-line towers. She whimsically imagines them to be giant robots walking through the countryside, and in an illustration, we see them transformed into just that. It's a great channeling of a child's creativity, and the image has stuck with Dash since the moment he first read that page. (To this day, we casually refer to those towers, when we see them on drives of our own, as giant robots.)

In short, Pictures from Our Vacation is a magical book, in its understated way. I think we'll have it on the shelf for years.

[Photos: Whitney Webster]

New Books: Terrible, Horrible Edie

I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to sing the praises of the New York Review Children’s Collection, which continues to find and reissue great but out-of-print children’s literature from decades past, by authors well-known (e.g., James Thurber) and forgotten alike. Anyone in search of the little-known classics of the genre should look no further than its catalog; I pretty much covet every single book in it. (The website even lets you suggest titles of out-of-print classics you think NYRCC should consider!)

Among the more recent releases is Terrible, Horrible Edie, by E. C. Spykman, a book I’d never heard of, by an author I’d never heard of, that’s part of a series I’d never heard of. It’s actually Spykman’s third book about the Cares family—mainly the six children of the family, four from a previous marriage and two toddlers from the current one; they are modeled closely after the author’s own Massachusetts upbringing in the first decade of the 20th century.

In this one, the Cares kids head off to their aunt’s beachhouse on the Atlantic coast, where they’re to spend the summer under the observation of a caretaker, housekeeper, and cook (if it wasn’t already clear that Mr. Cares was well off from the menagerie of family pets along for the trip, which includes a monkey) while their parents tour Europe. The title character could not be more a middle child—her three older siblings are 18, 17, and 16; Edie herself is 10, and her two younger stepsisters, Chris and Lou, are 5 and 3. Which gets to the heart of the adjectives in the title, too: Edie longs for the independence her older siblings are now enjoying, to command sailboats and drive cars and such, but those charged with looking after her are always getting in the way, and she is forced to find creative ways around the restrictions on her summer plans. Since she is about the most determined 10-year-old you’re likely to meet, she usually succeeds.

Spykman presents the family (sans parents) summer at the beach through the eyes of this no-nonsense child, complete with adventures both typical (a rebellious solo sailing adventure) and extraordinary (a massive hurricane, seemingly based on the real one of 1938 but moved back a few decade for fiction’s sake). Through it all, the Cares children react with a resolute sangfroid reminiscent of characters books about English families—it’s not unlike the tone of the Pevensie kids in the Narnia books, except that this is all happening in real-life Massachusetts. Nothing can faze these children for long.

But the real draw, as it should be, is specifically Edie. She’s fiercely self-reliant, endlessly frustrated at the general uselessness of many adults and almost the entire male gender (“In all her life, Edie thought, she had never met so many stupid, nutty men at one time.”), and remarkably adept at solving problems, even the ones she has created in the first place. She’s also completely irresistible, and not at all terrible or horrible, unless you happen to be one of her caretakers. Spykman, a fourth child in a large family herself, brilliantly transcribes Edie’s 10-year-old logic as she convinces herself that, say, it’s okay for her to take the two young children with her out in the sailboat without telling anyone.

Sypkman’s writing in general is outstanding, maintaining funny deadpan humor throughout with moments of beautiful child-POV lyricism sprinkled in. (“Lou gave her one of her hugs and kisses. It was just like eating a new doughnut while you put your face in sweet peas.”) The portrait she paints of the family is vivid and true-to-life, every single sibling relationship with a color and tone all its own, and despite the chaos—and the shock at how very different parenting was in this country a hundred years ago—you come to like them all very much. But especially Edie.

Now, the subject matter and writing style of Terrible, Horrible Edie were a little advanced for my five-year-old at present—he could follow it, but the story wasn’t immediately grabbing him the way it did me, and I ended up finishing the book on my own. But I think he’ll be ready for it—and love it—within a few years. And for those of you with kids, especially daughters, around Edie’s age, say 7 to 12...well, this is the perfect book to read with them this summer. On vacation, of course!

[Image courtesy of New York Review Children’s Collection.]