Take a Look; It's On an iPad!

As I write this it's not even noon (so sayeth my computer; I know enough not to make eye contact with any other clockfaces around here) and already my day has been defined.

By rainbows.

My walk this morning fulfilled my inner spectrum requirements: spray of violets blooming curbside; electric-blue darning needle flitting across my path; green EVERYwhere honoring this first day of summer; white cabbage moth alight on some blooming butter-and-eggs; orange goldfinch trilling overhead; stands of wild raspberries....

The trip was a pleasure for my senses, but it was nice to return home and out of the heat and humidity. Once here again, I poured myself a glass of water and fired up the desktop computer and -- surprise! -- more rainbows.

They're everywhere today, apparently! And perhaps they're inspired by THIS. Dear, dear Levar Burton has apparently taken his beloved Reading Rainbow into the digital age and created an app for the new generation! -- kids like my grandbugs who can intuitively work an iPhone before they even learn to talk.

I was a young mom back when the series premiered on PBS in the early 80s. My Girlz and I considered it an instant hit! We soaked up every episode, making note of our favorite books and checking them out from our local library later so that we could hold them in our hands and page through them at our leisure. Titles like Gregory the Terrible Eater and A Chair For My Mother and Imogene's Antlers. Pete Seeger sharing his storysong 'Abiyoyo'. James Earl Jones bringing the rain to Kapiti Plain. Our love for all things 'Arthur' and the art of Marc Brown began there. And we discovered authors and illustrators and stories and titles that became old friends.

Even after my Girlz grew up and moved away, some mornings could still find me setting the alarm for an early broadcast rerun, or dropping everything to catch a later series' episode. There's just something about Levar and books and just being read to that's pure magick. And over the years I've collected our old faves from the series so that the grandbugs can enjoy them someday, too.

And now just writing about this has put the song in my head: "Butterfly in the skyyyyyyy, I can go twice as highhhhh..........!" I might just have to put the pencils down today and read a book. :)

Did you watch Reading Rainbow like we did? What are your favorite episodes? Was it the one where Levar visits a printing plant to see how books are made? Or the one where he tours Old Sturbridge Village in Massachusetts? How about the Star Trek episode? Or the one with the goats (you know which one I'm talking about!)?

Please share!

And (insert wave and best Levar impression) I'll see you next time. :)
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One Child's Tribute

 Stunned....

I just learned this morning that the amazing writer Ray Bradbury passed away. Ray Bradbury! My heart is sick....

One of my earliest memories is of being read to by my young mother. She'd checked a book out from the Webster County Library (amazing place full of shadows and the smell of paper and with ladders for reaching your books down from tall shelves). The book was full of short stories, and the one she read to me made the hair stand up on my neck. I connected with those words in a way that my young self couldn't describe.

I can still recall being curled up on the green sectional sofa, gazing out the living room window at Mr. Gordon's morning-glory-covered porch across the street, my bare legs in their summer shorts feeling itchy from the rough upholstery, my ears listening to words that transported me. I never forgot the story and rediscovered it again as an adult, hidden perfectly in the chapters of Dandelion Wine. Reading it once more instantly transported me back to my childhood.

Time travel. So appropriate.... And how lucky a kid was I, anyway?, having a mother who read Ray Bradbury to me!?

So many writers have shaped my life, but Mr. Bradbury holds a special place of honor. I think it's because he alone articulated what I can recall feeling in my childhood heart. Things I saw and experienced but had no words for.

It's been a million years since I was a kid. My bookshelves are now teeming with collections of his stories, things I reread often. And when I do, I am instantly connected to the young self that I once was (and still am inside), the deep thinker that felt the passage of Time and the sadness and sweet beauty of every autumn, the child that feared death and wondered about the future....

Such a kindred spirit!

Goodbye, Mr. Bradbury.... Your words will live on and move generations forever. They are carved on my heart and I will never forget you.
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Crazy Book Love!

Books are SO important!!

I can't write two words without one of them being about books, can I? But today I've got a great excuse: Yesterday was World Book Day in the UK and Ireland, and today is NEA's Read Across America. Two very good reasons to write about curling up with an old favorite or a new discovery.

 

In case you hadn't noticed, here at Tumbledown EVERY day is Book Day. And you wouldn't have to get far inside my front door to have that all figured out. Books take center stage here. They cover all horizontal surfaces. They stand two- and sometimes three-deep on the shelves. They're stacked waist high on each available stair step. There's a tower of them tottering within inches of my side of the bed. They concern the heck out of my parents, who I'm sure imagine my body one day being unearthed from beneath a stack of them, squashed completely but with a smile on my face. And, for the record, it's not unusual to find more than one copy here of my personal faves.... It's like I'm saving them from something. Giving them a good home. OK, hoarding maybe, but let's not call it that, 'k? At least not in a paragraph that includes my folks who would love to see me admit it in writing.

 

Do you remember the books from your childhood, the ones that paved the way for a lifetime of book love?

 

An older neighborhood friend of mine took 6-year-old me to a book sale at her school and I used the 30-cents in my pocket to purchase two grade-school readers: The Wishing Well and Three Friends. I read them up, down, and sideways, and studied the watercolor illustrations until my eyes fell out of my head. I still have those books. And rereading them now takes me back a million years....

 

And I can recall a spring weekend in Third Grade spent curled up with Felix Salton's Bambi, gleaned from a shelf in the Monroe Elementary School library that the Librarian there cautioned me I was still too young to read from. A chapter away from the ending I stopped and had a good cry. My mom discovered me and asked about my tears. I said, "Have you ever read a book so good that you didn't want it to end?"

 

And then there was Enid Bagnold's National Velvet, read semi-annually since the day I first discovered horses until the day I first discovered boys (and picked up again almost immediately, as horses were way more interesting -- :->). I learned to draw from its illustrations. I learned to love England from its text. I dreamed of being Velvet Brown and even wrote away to the stewards of the Grand National for race maps and particulars. I learned to like tea with milk and loads of sugar.

 

I didn't make friends with Louisa May Alcott or Lucy Maud Montgomery or discover The Secret Garden until I was a young adult, all married and away from home. They nurtured my soul when my soul desperately needed nurturing, and I think they were put in my hands at just the right time. (And I'm still a little embarrassed recalling the moment a co-worker walked into the office and caught 20-something me at my coffee break, sobbing over Little Women's 'Beth.')

 

*Sigh* 

 

I taught myself to read as a child, then read the days and weeks and months and years away. I do so still, and can think of no other way I'd rather spend my time. It even trumps drawing (but only just). And, in case you haven't already guessed, I could bore you forever with my fond book-related memories. SO -- I'll simply end here and ask: 

 

What were your favorites?

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