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‘Children Books Passion Blog’ Category

  1. Oh, the Places You’ll Go!

    April 11, 2014 by Nicole Kirchner

                Dr. Seuss had to make his way into my blogs eventually and, lo and behold, I have saved his books for the last blog!  Like most children, 5013452346_14191cbcecI absolutely loved Dr. Seuss books when I was little.  The fun rhymes and silly stories were such a joy.  Past the wackiness, though, these books often had strong meanings.  The Lorax, Whorton Hears a Who!, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, and Oh, the Places You’ll Go!, to mention a few, have wonderful meanings that compliment their silly stories.  Although, I did not have a stand out favorite when I was little, I remember particularly liking, One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish, Green Eggs and Ham, and Yertle the Turtle. I sporadically read the Dr. Seuss books throughout my childhood, as is required for all children.

                 In my senior year of high school, much removed from Dr. Seuss books, I once again encountered these wonderful stories.  It was senior awards night, where seniors are awarded for excelling in a particular area of study.  Three people were going to be awarded the English award, and, as a struggling writer who was not even in AP English, I had absolutely no expectation of winning.  Although I still do not know why, I did in fact win the English award, of all things.  When they called my name, I turned bright red and walked at a quickened pace to the front of the auditorium, so that I could get back to my seat as soon as possible.  Unfortunately, they made me nervously stand up front and wait for the other two names to be called.  gift-wrapped-upOnce we were all standing in the front of the auditorium, instead of handing us a certificate, like all of the other awards, my English teacher gave me three beautifully wrapped objects, which were obviously books.  The rest of the award ceremony went painfully slow, as I pondered about which literary classics I had been given.  When I finally returned home after the ceremony, I opened the books, one of which was Oh, the Places You’ll Go.  I was so touched that I think I almost cried.  It was such a perfect book to be given at that time.  It was no Shakespeare or Hemingway, but it was perfect.  That night I once again read Oh, the Places You’ll Go, as I contemplated where I could go in my life.  I thought back to my childhood dreams that I formulated reading this wonderful Dr. Seuss book.  I was going to be a princess, a veterinarian, the Pink Power Ranger, a spy, a professional soccer player, a mermaid, or an astronaut.  Rereading Oh, the Places You’ll Go reminded me to keep dreaming silly, crazy dreams. Sometimes I may get trapped by my doubts and fail to dream big, but I will always have Oh, the Places You’ll Go to remind me that:

     

    “On and on you will hike

    and I know you’ll hike far

    and face up to your problems

    whatever they are.

     

    You’ll get mixed up, of course,

    as you already know.

    You’ll get mixed up

    with many strange birds as you go.

    So be sure when you step.

    Step with care and great tact

    and remember that Life’s

    a Great Balancing Act.

    Just never forget to be dexterous and deft.

    And never mix up your right foot with your left.

     

    And will you succeed?

    Yes! You will, indeed!

    (98 and 3/4 percent guaranteed.)

     

    KID, YOU’LL MOVE MOUNTAINS!

     

    So…

    be your name Buxbaum or Bixby or Bray

    or Mordecai Ali Van Allen O’Shea,

    you’re off to Great Places!

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    Today is your day!

    Your mountain is waiting.

    So…get on your way!”

    ~Dr. Seuss Oh, the Places You’ll Go!

     


  2. The Baby-sitters Little Sister Series

    April 7, 2014 by Nicole Kirchner

    The Baby-sitters Little Sister chapter books, written by Ann M. Martin, are a spin off of The Baby-sitters Club series meant for a younger audience.  Although I did eventually go on to read The Baby-sitters Club series, the Little Sister version was the series that I truly loved when I was younger.  I enjoyed constantly reading this series, with its nearly endless 117 books.  This mega-series, though, was not long enough for me, and I eventually read almost every one of the books in this series. I primarily read this series because one day, in my distant memory, a family friend gave me a giant box full of hundreds of The Baby-sitters Little Sister and The Baby-sitters Club books that her daughter was too old to read. That was the day that my obsession with The Baby-sitters Little Sister books began.

    600full-keep-out,-claudia!-(the-babysitters-club,-56)-cover            Karen, the main character of the series, had such a relatable and interesting story that I loved reading about.  Karen is Kristy Thomas’ little stepsister, from The Baby-sitters Club series.  I loved reading about Karen’s perspective on her sister’s club, and Kristy’s opinions about her little sister’s shenanigans, particularly when their stories would overlap in their respective books.  Karen’s fun adventures, though, trumped Kristy’s interest in boys and gossip-related tales, when I was little.

    I wanted to read about Karen solving mysteries and exploring new fun places.  The books, though, were often very value-based, like most children’s books.  For instance, in the first book, Karen’s Witch, Karen thinks that her neighbor, Mrs. Porter, is a witch.  Karen spends a lot of time sleuthing and spying on Mrs. Porter.  She eventually gets caught and has to write a letter of apology to Mrs. Porter.  In the 14th book, Karen the spy strikes again, in Karen’s New Year.  In this book, Karen’s family members all come up with New Year’s Resolutions to keep.  Karen, though, secretly spies on her family members catching them breaking their New Year’s Resolutions.  Her family is really upset when they find out, and they all decide to spy on Karen to punish her.  Ultimately, Karen learns her lesson and feels really guilty for spying on her family.  Karen does not spy again until book 111.

    p_312_i_9496655I like that Karen often makes the same mistakes more than once in her books because unlike most value-based children’s books, children do not get punished for something and then never do it again.  It is a slow process learning what is right and wrong and sometimes children need further reinforcement to really hit home what is right.  Karen’s mistakes were really relatable because of this, but they sometimes had a bad influence on me.  After I read Karen’s Roller Skates, in which Karen breaks her wrist roller-skating, I decided that I wanted to break a bone so that, like Karen, I could get a famous actress to sign my cast.  Although I never succeeded in breaking a bone, I was always jealous of kids with casts when I was little. Ultimately, The Baby-sitters Little Sister chapter books were a joy to read throughout my childhood and will forever spark a recollection of some wonderful memories.  

     


  3. The Boxcar Children

    April 1, 2014 by Nicole Kirchner

    The Boxcar Children was my favorite adventure series, when I was little.  This series is the story of four orphaned children, who run away from home after their parents die and find an abandoned boxcar, which they decide to live in.  Their grandfather later finds the children, but the children think that he is cruel, in spite of his truly kind nature.  He even moves the children’s boxcar to his backyard so that they can feel more at “home” and gives the children plenty of freedom.  The four children, ranging in age from 6 to 14, form a parentless family, with the oldest sister Jessie acting as the mother of the group.

    297249            I always loved the concept behind and setting of this series.  The boxcar serves as a perfect symbol for the adventures and travels that they go on in their grandfather’s backyard.  They are always solving a mystery and making an adventure out of their everyday lives.  Adding to the interest of the stories, they often are traveling with their grandfather in the books, finding a mystery in every location that they visit.

    Past the cool adventures that the children went on throughout the series, these four siblings were always so independent without ever needing much help from adults.  The idea of being able to live on my own was such an exciting and scary concept, when I was ten.  I thought that it would be “so awesome” to be able to live on my own.  Now that I am finally sort of on my own, it is much different than I imagined when I was ten.  I do not live in a boxcar, and I do scrounge food out of the trash, like the boxcar children.

    It still is a very different experience, being able to live my life any way that I see fit, within reason. In no way, though, did I spend my childhood dreaming of escaping home and running away from the harsh constraints of my childhood.  I love my family, and they let me live my life how I saw fit, within reason.  Subsequently, without having set out to college with a dream lifestyle to lead, living on my own has rather been a time of deciding how I want to live my future life. Being at college has often challenged my morals and values and has led me to reevaluate what is really important in my life (shout out to Option 2!).

    156809      Like the Boxcar Children having to find their way on their own, I must adapt to my environment, always challenge my beliefs, and embrace my future.  The way I see it, I have four options.  Like 6-year-old Benny, I can eat my way through college and gain the Freshman 15, plus some.  Like 10-year-old Violet, I can creep quietly through college without embracing the many wonderful opportunities all around me, due to my introverted nature.  Like 12-year-old Jessie, I can be strong, independent, and responsible, dutifully completing each task at hand.  Like 14-year-old Henry, I can use my intelligence to get a job.  Each of the Boxcar Children has something to bring to the table, which makes them such a great team.  I hope to embody bits and pieces of each of their personalities and hopefully one day, like Henry, get a job.

     


  4. My “Little House In the Big Woods”

    March 25, 2014 by Nicole Kirchner

                The Little House in the Big Woods, by Laura Ingalls Wilder, is the first of a nine book series, detailing the fictionalized life and adventures of Laura Ingalls as a child growing up on the American frontier.  The first book begins in 1871, when Laura is 5 years old, and spans an entire year, detailing the duties and responsibilities of living on a farm.  Laura’s Pa farms, hunts, traps, and takes care of the livestock.  Laura’s Ma cleans, cooks, and takes care of Laura and her two sisters, Mary and Carrie. Throughout the book, Laura’s perspective sheds a positive light on life at the farm, even though the family faces trials and tribulations throughout the year.

    893            When I was little, I idealized the time period and the world in which Laura lived.  I wanted to be just like Laura, running around barefoot through the woods and just enjoying the simple things in life.  Reading this series, I tended to gloss over the hardships that Laura’s family faced, focusing mainly on the positive outcome in every situation.  I created this fantasy world of an idealized farm life in my mind, and I loved to live there, by reading these books.

    A lot of my fascination with this time period stems from my family’s participation in Pre-Revolutionary war reenactments when I was little.  Dressing up in “costumes”, which did not include shoes, since most kids did not have shoes in the 1700s, was always a treat. I hated and basically still hate wearing shoes. On top of the oh-so-exciting no shoes thing, I also had tourists watching me and asking me questions, as I helped my mom make a meal over an open fire.  I had this really distorted view of history, when I was little because I thought that people just walked around and watched each other do work in the 1700’s.  As weird as that may sound, I loved the amount of attention that I got when reenacting.

    photo copy            More than reenacting, though, I have just always loved nature and, in the 1800’s, like in the Little House series, it was almost a requirement to interact with nature on a daily basis.  Although I walk outside and see nature, in modern day, in the 1800’s, you relied almost completely off of the nature around you.  It was such a beautiful balancing act of give and take between one and one’s surroundings.  I loved the idea of walking to the well to get water and feeding chickens, rather than sitting inside and staring at a chalkboard all day, in school.  Although my view was quite romanticized and distorted from that of true life on the frontier, it still drew me into the depths of the Little House books.

    Today, thoughts of this series resurface my deserted imaginings of life on a farm in the 1800’s, and sometimes I still have to remind myself of the hardships that people faced on the frontier. Forever, though, regardless of how romanticized it may be, my image of the frontier will be a little wooden house, sitting in a big, peaceful woods.


  5. Beezus and Ramona

    March 20, 2014 by Nicole Kirchner

              Beezus and Ramona, one of my favorite childhood chapter books, paints the beautiful and sometimes ugly picture of sisterhood.  This book, from the Ramona series by Beverly Cleary, is written in the perspective of Ramona’s older sister Beezus.  Like any nine-year-old, with a curious, hyper four-year-old sister, Beezus is fed up with her little sister’s antics. Throughout the book, Beezus is constantly annoyed with her little sister, as she makes Beezus’ life increasingly difficult.

    beezusandramona            From writing in Beezus’ library book to cooking a doll into Beezus’ birthday cake to embarrassing her by throwing a tantrum in front of her friend, Ramona just cannot seem to stop infuriating Beezus.  This anger that Beezus feels, though, coincides with feelings of guilt over her annoyance with her little sister.  Throughout the book, Beezus reflects on her mother’s close relationship with her sister, Beezus’ Aunt Beatrice.  Beezus wishes that she could love Ramona all of the time, like her mother loves Aunt Beatrice, but she just cannot.

    At the end of the book, on Beezus’ 10th birthday, her aunt comes over to celebrate.  Beezus’ mother and aunt reminisce about memories of fights that they had during their childhood together.  The book ends with Beezus realizing that she will not always get along with Ramona but that she will always love her because they are sisters.

    photo 1

    My Sisters and I at the Philly Zoo

    With such a heartwarming ending, how could anyone not love Beezus and Ramona?  When I was little, I primarily loved reading about Ramona’s hilarious antics in this book, but I did also cherish the idea that my own older sister was like Beezus and would love me no matter what.  My older sister Jacki, like Beezus, is five years older than me, which I guess makes me Ramona.  Although I was not as imaginative and hyper of a child as Ramona, I definitely did get on my older sister’s nerves.

    In fact, my family recently found one of my older sister’s journals from when she was seven, which contains an entry that details my older sister’s reaction to the news that my mom was pregnant with yet another little sister.  Her journal entry hilariously complains that she does not think that she can handle another crazy little sister, saying that she already has her hands full with me.

    photo 2

    My Sisters and I in Germany

    As a 10 year old, reading Beezus and Ramona, I myself was then in Jacki’s and Beezus’ shoes, having to deal with my own crazy little sister Katie.  At the same time, though, Ramona’s antics reminded me of a lot of my own eccentricities that my older sister had to put up with when I was little.  As a result, this book gave me a deeper appreciation for the Beezus role that my older sister filled, as she loved me regardless of how annoying I may have been.  The book also taught me to be nicer to my little sister Katie and to be tolerant of her exasperating behaviors.  Essentially, Beezus and Ramona had such an extremely relatable story for me and for anyone who has been fortunate enough to have a sister.  I believe that this story truly made me more thankful for my sisters and gave me a better understanding of the meaning of sisterhood.

     

     

     


  6. The Magic School Bus

    March 6, 2014 by Nicole Kirchner

    magic-school-bus

    Ms. Frizzle, her class, and her magic anthropomorphic school bus took me on scientific adventures around the universe.  From Pluto, back when it still was a planet, to inside the human body, science came alive in the Magic School Bus books, creatively written by Joanna Cole and artfully illustrated by Bruce Degen.  This series of 12 Original Series Books, 20 Chapter Books, 33 Scholastic Level 2 Reader Books, and 32 Science Readers allowed me, to an extent, to grow up reading increasingly more difficult Magic School Bus books.  If that was not enough, I was further exposed to these stories, as the Magic School Bus became an animated TV series, premiering on PBS exactly 2 months prior to my birth on September 10, 1994.  The following video is the theme song for this show:

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    Although the show ended in 1997, before I was old enough to really appreciate the show, re-runs of the Magic School Bus were always a delight.  I loved seeing the stories that I had read about come to life through animated characters.  I felt like I was really part of the class going on another crazy field trip, watching the show.

    The books themselves really tried to facilitate this feeling of being a part of the class, since the books were written in first person by an unknown, unidentified student in the class.  I automatically, in my mind, became a part of the class and enveloped myself in the school bus excitement.  Reading these books, I remember falling in love with the concept of school.  Although my class was nothing like Ms. Frizzle’s, school subjects, especially science, suddenly became more interesting with the Magic School Bus.  The thought that maybe one day, like Ms. Frizzle, I could explore the scientific world, plus go on field trips everyday, definitely steered me toward science.

    Magic-School-Bus-1

    The closest teacher that I ever had to Ms. Frizzle was my kindergarten teacher, named Mrs. Morgan.  Mrs. Morgan was eccentric, upbeat, and fun.  She had bright red hair, like Ms. Frizzle, and wore the most colorful clothing, often sporting her stylish leather pants.  She was constantly planning fun activities for us to do, encouraging us to be curious and creative.  In our classroom, we had plants, a guinea pig, a play kitchen set, art easels, and an enormous bin of blocks, probably taller than I was at the time.  I remember playing with those blocks and building structures to my heart’s delight, during play time.  My favorite things that we did in that class, though, were our science experiments.  There was one experiment where we tried to grow plants in the dark and in the light.  I remember being really upset that my plant had died in the dark.  My favorite experiment, though, was one where we placed one handful of spaghetti noodles into cold water and one handful into hot water.  When the hot spaghetti noodles softened and the cold spaghetti noodles did not, I remember being so fascinated and shocked at my discovery.  I concluded in that moment that I was going to be a scientist when I grew up and unlock the mystery of this phenomenon.

    Even though I am currently in a science-based major, I can obviously say that it is not because of one spaghetti experiment in kindergarten.  A lot of my tendencies towards science, though, do come from the exposure that I got early on to science through my classes and through reading books, like the Magic School Bus.  The Magic School Bus allowed me to look at science topics at the elementary level, making them accessible yet interesting.  Although I will never have a chance to ride in the Magic School Bus like I dreamed in elementary school, I have been able to take all that I have learned from this special bus into my future, full of college level science and almost magical CATA buses.

    Shout out to Liz the Lizard who somehow did not make it into this post!!!!

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  7. My Friend Amelia Bedelia

    February 26, 2014 by Nicole Kirchner

    One of my favorite childhood book characters, named Amelia Bedelia, presents herself in the form of a wacky maid, with an excess of outrageous hats.   Throughout her various adventures and stories, this maid, working in Cameroon, takes every statement that her employers tell her, in an extremely literal sense.  Figures of speech fly over her head, as Amelia Bedelia follows commands, exactly as they are stated, without considering what else is implied past the precise words of those commands.  Amelia Bedelia’s escapades span a series of over 40 books that I loved reading throughout my childhood.  For me, though, nothing beats the original.

    AmeliaBedelia

    In this kooky maid’s first tale, entitled Amelia Bedelia, Amelia is hired by the Rogers family and sets off on her first day to complete Mrs. Rogers’ list of chores.  Amelia, though, ends up making more of a mess than actually helping.  When asked to dress the chicken, she puts clothes on the raw chicken.  When asked to draw the drapes, she draws a picture of the drapes.  When asked to dust the house, she spreads dust all over the house.  In this manner, Amelia finishes all of her chores, before Mrs. Rogers arrives home and realizes what Amelia has done.  When Mrs. Rogers gets home, she is furious and wants to fire Amelia, but Amelia makes Mrs. Rogers a lemon meringue pie.  Amazed by the taste of the pie, Mrs. Rogers decides not to fire Amelia but says that she will be more specific with her instructions for Amelia next time.  As the series must go on, though, Mrs. Rogers is never able to make her instructions explicit enough for Amelia Bedelia.  Fortunately, Amelia is a wonderful baker, so every time she misinterprets her employers’ directions, Amelia makes amends with the Rogers through one of her delicious pies.

    amelia_0

    Obviously, for a young child learning to read, Amelia Bedelia’s stories are funny and outrageous.  Her mistakes reinforce how words can have different meanings in different contexts.  Much more than helping a child with English, though, Amelia Bedelia taught me to not take things so literally.  Her stories taught me that English is much more than mere words.  These words must have meaning, inflection, and emotion behind them.  Looking at just the words, gives you just that: the words.  In order to really connect with and understand another person, we must look past just the words that we speak.  Conversely, we must provide meaning behind our own words.  How often do we ask someone else, “How are you?” out of habit, rather than actually meaning it?  Amelia Bedelia’s stories point at this disconnect in a ridiculous, hilarious manner, through Amelia’s close attention to every little word spoken by the Rogers.  9780060014216Obviously, Amelia makes Mrs. Roger’s life increasingly difficult, due to Amelia’s inability to discern underlying meaning in Mrs. Roger’s words.

    In spite of all Amelia’s mishaps, throughout the series, the Rogers always forgive Amelia.  The whole family loves Amelia, even though she is a bit crazy.  Amelia’s relationship with the family is endearing and teaches readers the importance of forgiveness and always giving others second chances.  Amelia, with the best intentions in mind, constantly makes mistakes.  These mistakes, though, lead to the Rogers’ forgiveness, which pulls the whole family and Amelia closer together in each book.

    Amelia Bedelia’s tales are beautiful fun that I loved to read through, as a kid.  Imagining a world in which everyone was like Amelia Bedelia was often a fun feat.  Every task would be completed chaotically, but, like Amelia, we would have a fun time doing it.  Plus, every mistake would end with pie for everyone.  Ultimately, past giving me an outlet through which to imagine a silly world, though, Amelia Bedelia taught me that words are much more than just words and that they must not be taken too literally.

     


  8. Beyond “Where the Sidewalk Ends”

    February 18, 2014 by Nicole Kirchner

    Invitation

    “If you are a dreamer, come in.

    If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar,

    A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer . . .

    If you’re a pretender, come sit by my fire,

    For we have some flax golden tales to spin.

    
Come in! 
Come in!”

    –Shel Silverstein, Where the Sidewalk Ends

    The “Invitation” poem entreats the reader to enter inside the imaginary, silly world of my favorite childhood poetry book, Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein.  Throughout elementary school, these poems lay as a source of joy, inspiration, and silly thoughts, as I would read and re-read this book from one year to the next.  The book starts with the “Invitation” poem inviting the good and the bad, the dreamers and the liars to not only read the poems in the book, but also to create, invent, and imagine tales beyond the words written on the book pages.

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                The over animated drawings pull a child into the world of each poem.  The drawing style also creates continuity, in a seemingly random collection of silly poems.  Silverstein’s poems are full of rhyme and rhythm, following no particular pattern or order.  The changing patterns always kept me hooked, as I was able to point out and speak aloud the changing rhyme schemes.  The lack of patterns also reiterated that these poems were not about rules and regulations but about silliness and imagination.

    hug o war

                For months, when I was in about 3rd or 4th grade, I remember reading a Shel Silverstein poem almost every night before bed.  His poems took me to the place Where the Sidewalk Ends; a place where I was able to grasp at the depth of my imagination, take hold of an idea, and let it soar.  I would fall asleep in a stupor of pure imagination and creative thought.  Sometimes, I would wonder how Shel Silverstein, himself, came up with his poems, and I wondered if I could possibly do the same.  I remember trying to write poetry of my own, inspired by the poems from this book.  My poems were never any great literary feats, and I refused to let anyone else read them, but I remember thinking that one day I would be able to write poetry just like Shel Silverstein.  I have now, though, come to terms with the fact that his wacky, fun style is not replicable.

    387652854_wherethesidewalkends-copy

                Reading his book as a kid, I loved all of the silliness of his poems, yet one poem in the collection, I remember not particularly liking.  It was the poem, which the collection was named after, “Where the Sidewalk Ends.”  It was serious and, to me, boring without a ridiculous story to follow.  At the time, though, I did not realize the true meaning of this poem, which I now quite enjoy to read.

    Where the Sidewalk Ends

    “There is a place where the sidewalk ends

    And before the street begins,

    And there the grass grows soft and white,

    And there the sun burns crimson bright,

    And there the moon-bird rests from his flight

    To cool in the peppermint wind.

    Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black

    And the dark street winds and bends.

    Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow

    We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow,

    And watch where the chalk-white arrows go

    To the place where the sidewalk ends.

    Yes we’ll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,

    And we’ll go where the chalk-white arrows go,

    For the children, they mark, and the children, they know

    The place where the sidewalk ends.”

    –Shel Silverstein, Where the Sidewalk Ends

                This poem, in short, tells its reader that there is always a place for one to escape from the trappings of everyday life.  That place is one’s own imagination or “Where the Sidewalk Ends”.  In the poem, the children are the ones who know where the sidewalk ends because they use their imagination on a daily basis.  I think that this poem teaches its readers a great lesson about the significance of using one’s imagination, as not only a child but also as an adult.  Looking back at this poem, I am inspired to just imagine and be silly sometimes.

    Ultimately, I think that is what most of Shel Silverstein’s poems are trying to get across.  Through his random, wacky rhymes Silverstein shows us how to let our minds run wild in a creative frenzy.  Silverstein portrays the importance of not only letting this happen, but also the importance of always actively seeking to stretch the depth of our own imaginations past the point “Where the Sidewalk Ends”.

    P.S. Shout out to The Giving Tree!!! Another great Shel Silverstein book!!


  9. Mrs. McNosh Hangs Up Her Wash

    February 3, 2014 by Nicole Kirchner

    Silly, nonsensical books were my literary addiction, as a quirky little kid.  As I learned the standards of how to properly live in society, I was allowed to laugh and ridicule the storybook characters that lived out of the norm.

    Mrs. McNosh was one of those oddballs who grabbed my attention and drew me into her outrageous story.  Mrs. McNosh, at the start of her book would hang up normal clothing that one would expect someone to put on their clothesline, but, as the story progressed, she would hang up increasingly ridiculous things to dry.  By the end, she had hung up a vacuum, a whole raw turkey, and finally herself. 61ZzRQxE8yL._SX258_PJlook-inside-v2,TopRight,1,0_SH20_BO1,204,203,200_

    The insanity of theses actions was just too hilarious to handle and would make me laugh like a banshee.  Most other kids, including my sisters, found this story immensely funny.  To me, below the surface of this story, though, was the underlying message that people should act properly or we would end up hanging ourselves up on the clothesline.

    After reading this book a few times through, all I wanted to do was tell Mrs. McNosh how silly she was and to teach her how to properly do her laundry.  This character that came so alive in the story through her outrageous personality, though, was trapped in the pages and could not be helped.  After digesting this notion, I felt bad for Mrs. McNosh, as the perfectly placed rhymes of the story pulled her uncontrollably to her fate.  Every time she would end up hilariously and disgracefully tied up on her own clothesline.

    I took this story as a warning, and I decided that I would not end up like silly, old Mrs. McNosh.  I believe that I reacted in such a nonsensical manner because I was a very shy child, who felt embarrassed over the simplest of matters.  Past the immensely funny story on the surface, I thought about how Mrs. McNosh would have felt, pathetically hung up with her wash.

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    I did not see it at the time, but Mrs. McNosh was absolutely not embarrassed or ashamed or even crazy.  She was happy because she was making the act of doing laundry silly, outrageous fun, and she was being completely herself.

    A few summers ago, cleaning out my basement, a painfully slow and dull task, I ran across a box of old childhood books.  Unbeknownst to me, Mrs. McNosh was hiding far within the depth of the box, as I searched for books to toss or donate.  In this moment of searching, I found my treasure: Mrs. McNosh Hangs Up Her Wash.  I decided to read through the book and once again smiled at the silliness of the story.  Although the book was no longer as immensely hilarious as it had once been, it communicated to me what Mrs. McNosh had always wanted me to learn from her outrageous laundry escapades.  By demonstrating her comfort in her own craziness, she was teaching me to not me afraid to be myself.

    Mrs. McNosh’s story has remained close in my heart, as one of my favorite childhood books that I will always treasure.  And even though Mrs. McNosh’s actions have had different meanings for me as I have grown up loving this book, in the end, Mrs. McNosh Hangs Up Her Wash has shown me to always be me.


  10. The Nicki Who Could Wish

    January 29, 2014 by Nicole Kirchner

    “In the deep blue sea,

    In the deep of the blue,

    Swam a fish who could wish,

    And each wish would come true.

    Oh the fun that he had!

    Oh the things he would do!

    Just wishing away

    In the deep water blue.”

    (The Fish Who Could Wish by John Bush and Korky Paul pg 1)

     

    Learning to read, I gravitated towards one book in particular, The Fish Who Could Wish by John Bush and Korky Paul.  Its artful illustrations, the fish’s crazy wishes, and the easily understood moral, all self-deemed this book one of my favorites.  For those who have not read this book, the premise of the story is that there is a fish that can wish for anything that he could possibly imagine.   He wishes to fly, to go skiing underwater, to have a castle, to have fine suits, etc., until one day, without thinking, he wishes to be a normal fish, causing him to lose all of his amazing powers.

    the_fish_who_could_wish_sml

    I began to read and re-read this book with my mom the summer before first grade.  When first grade started, we were required to read a book to the class at story time, and I eagerly chose to read The Fish Who Could Wish.  I had an itty-bitty problem, though; I had not actually learned to read at that point.  Cunning, creative little me, struggling with reading, had learned to memorize all of the books that my mom “taught” me to read.  Thus, I only liked “reading” a few books at home because I had only memorized those particular stories.

    Regardless, I was thrilled to show off my super-awesome pseudo reading skills, by reading the oh-so advanced The Fish Who Could Wish story.  Unfortunately, while I was reading in front of the class, with my teacher watching over my shoulder for mistakes, I accidently turned two pages in the book instead of one.  I kept reciting the words of the story, which did not match that which was on the page.  My teacher noticed and made me read that page over, but, at that point, I was extremely lost and could not actually read what was on the page.  I did not finish “reading” the book, and I had to sit down embarrassed and disappointed.  All I had wanted to do was impress my classmates, prideful of my secret memorizing skills, but I had failed.

    DSC_0169Not that I realized it at the time, but I had, in a strange way, learned the lesson that The Fish Who Could Wish was trying to get across.  I, like the fish, had wished for something without thinking it through.   He wished to be normal and lost his powers, and I had wished to impress my classmates, without ever having learned to read.

    From that day forward, though, I decided to actually attempt to learn the words, rather than memorize the stories in my books.  Soon enough, my reading comprehension improved, and I was reading all by myself.  I, quickly, became an avid reader, reading everything that I could get my hands on.  A love was born, one that I still share with literature today.

    In the end, I made a dumb wish, but it taught me a much more important lesson then to be careful about what I wished for.  The Fish Who Could Wish taught me the significance of truly learning a subject, rather than just memorizing the words.  The Fish Who Could Wish taught me to be curious and question, to ponder and wonder, and, most importantly, to truly read.

     

    “One day, just for fun,

    That silly old fish

    Wished the silliest, silliest

    Wish he could wish.

    That silly old fish

    Wished he could be

    Just like all the other

    Fish in the sea.

    But wishing was something

    Other fish could not do,

    So that was the very last

    Wish that came true.” (The Fish Who Could Wish)

     


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