Literary Lunar Landings
Everyone know that Mars ain't the kind of place to raise your kids. But after that, it's pretty wide open. One of the (many) reasons I left New York was because I thought that if I ever managed to find a proper mate (read that "soul-") and breed, then our poor little offspring would be strolling right at the level of all that thick Manhattan exhaust. Not to mention that the idea of getting a wiggling little person into a snowsuit, into a stroller and onto a bus was more daunting than anything my sundress-spoiled Texas mind could comprehend. And then, by the time they were sixteen, they would all be hanging out at the Smurf Club, and worse.
So I chose Houston. Or, more accurately, Houston agreed to take me back, and embraced me, and it's been love ever since. And it turns out, that soul mate wasn't even in New York, anyway. He was right here in River City. We have these two offspring now, and as they are very dear to our hearts, we have always tried to do our best by them. So, as my parents did for me, we started reading to these girls the night they came home from the hospital. It was ingrained in my head that reading was the most important thing (after love and sustenance) that we could provide.
My husband is the youngest of eight children, and so no one read many books to him when he was little. Bedtime reading for our girls became as much of a treat for him as it was for them. And since they were not verbal enough to complain, I chose children's books he would like. The first book we ever read to our oldest was Danny, the Champion of the World. We went through Matilda, Mrs. Frisbee and the Rats of NIMH, Maniac McGee, and loads of other elementary school classics before our little bitty pretty ones could finally sit up, look at pictures and read age appropriate titles.
And, of course, the first book we turned to was Goodnight Moon. Goodnight kittens, goodnight mittens, and that peaceful old lady who was the only one who would ever stay the night with most of us when we were small and bedeviled with bad dreams. There has never been a more soothing book, and to this day that flat wonderful art pulls me into a parallel literary universe where life is beautiful, tea is taken with fauns, and the most efficient mode of travel is ruby slippers. After the waterfall of wonderful words we had poured over our babies, their first official indoctrination into the rite of passages that is reading was this masterpiece by Margaret--love her middle name--Wise Brown.
The news has gotten me thinking about the moon a great deal recently. In 1969 the world was abuzz with the moon, and Neil Armstrong and other guys were bouncing around on the real one. But even back then, I was already light years beyond that green cheese moon, on Margaret Wise Brown's planet, a planet I hope never to leave.
Books are like that. I will never go to the moon--like Elton John's Rocket Man I feel like it's lonely out in space. I may never go to the Ukraine, or Rio, or Iowa, either, but I have been to those places on the page and experienced them more deeply than ever possible with a Frommer's guide or even on a lavish Butterfield and Robinson expedition. I've been to the moon in the best way possible: on the wings of imagination. It's a powerful trip.
Sometimes my husband complains that I singlehandedly support the book industry, and sometimes the mountains of children's books in our house attest to his insight. But we needed to give our girls a first class ticket for the most important journey of their lives. And they are on their way.
For now, they think they are beyond Goodnight Moon, as they are on beyond Barney and other childish pursuits, but I know better. And while I don't get to go with them to Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle's farm or Pippi's porch anymore, I love that my work lets me be part of providing opportunities for other children and grownups to have an unlimited ticket to experience the escapism that delving deep into a book provides. The books we publish at Bright Sky cover a wide variety of topics--we laugh sometimes that we publish books that are of interest to Texans, and just try to pigeonhole the denizens of this vast state. Each encounter with one of these diverse topics stamps my mental passport and fills my internal scrapbook with beloved images of journeys remembered.
I will leave you with the thought of one small book that seems particularly pertinent this July, forty years after Neil took his historic hike and forty years after I began visiting Margaret Wise Brown's world: Good Night Cowboy (in this more egalitarian world, there is also Good Night Cowgirl, thank goodness). Just as Margaret Wise Brown put generations of us to sleep in her classic nursery, author Glenn Dromgoole will put future generations to sleep at home on the range. And I find that very comforting. Because wherever I may travel, wherever I may roam, there is, indeed, no place like home.
Click your boots together three times when you say that.
