| From
the September/October 2002 issue of The Horn Book Magazine
Editorial
Not Just a Walk in the Park
 arry
Root’s bird’s-eye vision of Central Park on the cover
of this month’s Horn Book reminds me of the elegant
image Nancy Ekholm Burkert designed for our 1989 covers. Hers —
a window opening onto a woodland scene — was every bit as
much an invitation as Root’s painting, each one calling us
into a beautiful part of the world. But where Burkert’s cover
always made me feel like I was glimpsing the pre-human Eden, Root
pictures a place I could and would visit tomorrow. It’s New
York: people, buses, taxis, and buildings are as much a part of
the picture as the greenery.
It’s also a picture of New York that calls
up something other than Ground Zero. At this first anniversary of
September 11, we are seeing the beginning of what will be dozens
of children’s books related, openly or obliquely, to the terrorist
attacks. As Peter Sieruta notes in his “Other Stuff”
column this month, many of these books are rushed and cursory, qualities
we can understand but still bemoan. When I look at the new series
nonfiction about September 11, I can’t help seeing wasted
money and missed opportunity, since more timely and more interesting
information is available in the paper, on the web, in the newsmagazines,
and on TV. Picture books on the subject — directly or allegorically
— tend toward the don’t-be-afraid theme, as does Rabbi
Marc Gellman and Monsignor Thomas Hartman’s Bad Stuff
in the News, a relentless pep talk that tells middle-graders
that “the good people always win over the bad people.”
Then there are the reassurances that we are the good people, such
as Lynne Cheney’s America: A Patriotic Primer, which
alphabetizes the nation’s virtues (“H is for Heroes
and I for Ideals”) in a classic slugfest of form
and content, serving neither the alphabet nor the point.
But there are two books that both honor this dark
first anniversary and respect their audience. Maira Kalman’s
Fireboat: The Heroic Adventures of the John J. Harvey,
reviewed on p. 596, gets high marks from me for first and foremost
having a story, a true one in this case, about an old fireboat
that is getting a well-deserved retirement cruising New York Harbor.
What seems just an amiable souvenir book becomes vital when the
boat is pressed into service to fight the flames of the WTC. Unlike
Cheney’s, with its empty platitudes, this book is about honor
earned. Some in the Horn Book offices objected to the sudden graphic
intrusion, in a picture book sure to be picked up by boat-mad toddlers,
of the planes flying into the towers and the subsequent explosion
(depicted with spectacular vividness by Kalman). “You don’t
see it coming,” complained one reader. Precisely.
Laura Godwin and Barry Root’s Central
Park Serenade, reviewed on p. 552, has nothing to do with September
11 but everything to do with New York and good poetry. We’re
already seeing some 9/11 poetry, both good and not-so-good, but
Godwin’s sprightly tribute to New York’s green heart
is a reminder that good poetry is never about just one thing. The
book is a celebration of a fine day spent in the Park, and while
it demonstrates no knowledge of what happened downtown one September
day, we know — and that’s how hope springs. Books that
feel compelled to tell us to buck up don’t do nearly as effective
a job as ones that let us tell it to ourselves.
|
