The Golden Chain of Reading: Marking Time

For those of us living away from the Equator, the passing of seasons is something noted but not necessarily noticed. Summer passes at an indefinable point to autumn, autumn to winter but it is the natural scheme of things. But it ain't necessarily so.

I have lived in far northern climes such as Sweden where the change of seasons is very notable, not to say extreme. I have lived in the tropics such as Nigeria where there really are only two seasons: hot and wet and hot and dry. I have lived in extremely temperate climates such as Sydney, Australia where forecasts from one season to the next vary from the depths of winter ("The upper seventies and fine") to the harsh summers ("The upper eighties and fine").

And then there is the correlation between seasons and holidays which seems both natural and necessary. However. For a number of years my family and I lived in Sydney, Australia in the southern hemisphere where the seasons are reversed. While we loved our time there, I never became accustomed to the reversal of the seasons vis-à-vis the holidays. I well remember my continuing sense of discombobulation, sitting in the living room of our house with the sun beaming in, sweltering in the midsummer heat, everyone in t-shirts and shorts, handing out presents from under the Christmas tree on December 25th.

Even getting a tree had been something of a task. Since traditional Christmas trees were neither indigenous to Australia nor part of the local tradition, it was hard to find one in the first place. Unlike the US where every other corner lot seems dedicated to the selling of hundreds of Christmas trees for a month or more before Christmas, in Australia, they were few and far between. Your best bet was a local nursery where you might find one or two dozen trees pathetically parching in the summer sun. Timing was everything. You had to find the nursery, find when their delivery of trees was going to be and then get out there that morning. If you did all that, you stood a reasonable chance, come the day, of not having just the skeleton of a fir tree with a pile of needles beneath it.

The one mitigating factor to this sense of seasonal dislocation was the malicious opportunity to call family in the northern hemisphere, wish them a Merry Christmas and then excuse oneself to go swimming in the pool.

Seasons are really quite a complicated thing when you think about it. They are over-freighted with words, imagery, metaphors, allusions, myths, etc. Pity the poor child trying to make sense of it all. Do you mark the season by the change in temperature or the change in weather or the change in foliage, the progression of holidays or some combination thereof. Our oldest was four when we first moved to Australia and had just begun to associate certain season's with certain holidays (such as winter with Christmas, spring with Easter). Needless to say there was considerable four year old incomprehension when we had to try and reverse those associations and it required an only marginally successful crash-course in astronomy to justify to him why Christmas, despite what he had already learned, was now going to be in the summer.

Children, with their sharp eyes and attuned senses, tend to be much more alert to the changing of seasons, the physical changes that go with the season's changes and of course are full of questions as to why, why, why. For young children, the causes and effects of seasons are fairly complex. G. Brian Karas's On Earth is probably a good place to start a factual explanation to answer the torrent of why's but it is really just a beginning.

I think one of the best starting points is with those picture books that tell a simple story of the passing of the seasons. Stories like In the Small, Small Pond which describes from a frog's point of view, what is happening in the pond as the seasons change. Maurice Sendak's rhyming verse for each month in Chicken Soup and Rice has always been a favorite among our kids with everyone still able to quote some favorite line or other.

I

n August it will be so hot
I will become a cooking pot
Cooking soup of course-why not?
Cooking once, cooking twice
Cooking chicken soup with rice

Elsa Beskow's Around the Year is another good candidate for explaining the month's and the season's. Her beautiful paintings capture the kind of detail that a child often focuses on and can relate to.

Another essential book for many other reasons is, Ingri and Edgar Parin D'Aulaire's The Greek Myths. It is beautifully illustrated and a great introduction to young children of all the major Greek myths (and a good precursor to the more complete myths by Edith Hamilton at the Young Adult level). In this instance, the Persephone and Demeter myth is of course pertinent.

There are two Tasha Tudor books which can work in nice combination, helping children to understand the months and seasons (Around the Year) as well as the seasons and their associated holidays (A Time to Keep).

I am very partial to well illustrated stories especially when the verse or narrative tie closely to the illustrations as I think they do well in David Bouchard's If You're Not From the Prairie, which is really about our relationship with a place but is done in verse form by describing the different times of year. It works especially well in the prairie setting where the seasonal changes are extreme. Nancy Kinsley-Warnock's From Dawn till Dusk which is illustrated with woodcuts from the gifted Mary Azarian is another example of narrative (describing the different chores on the farm associated with each of the seasons, set on a New England farm in the 19th century) and illustrations working well together.

For older children, there are a solid swath of books in which the child moves beyond just recognizing the characteristics of the seasons as with the stories for younger children. In these stories for independent readers, the seasons form the backdrop for the story but are also integral in moving the narrative forward. With this device, children move from identifying seasons to beginning to better understand the implications of seasons.

Not to be too morbid, I hope, but books with a strong season element to them also provide an opportunity to begin laying a foundation for children to understand the cycle of death and rejuvenation. If you are anticipating the loss of an elderly pet for example, it is great some months in advance to have read something like Elsa Beskow's Around the Year , or Helen Dean Fish's When the Root Children Wake Up, where the concept of the cycle of life has already been established. Books with a seasonal element that also include loss such as Jack London's Call of the Wild or Frances Hodgson Bennett's The Secret Garden, are of course more appropriate to older children.

As always, given that teenagers/young adults are fairly incomprehensible beasts, it is somewhat challenging to identify just what would be of interest, or to whom. Seasons and cycles of change are especially relevant to this time of life but they are usually getting a fair exposure to the relevant books and stories in either school or religious instruction. There are a handful of books that tell in an interesting way the story of how we name days, months, developed calendars, etc. including David Ewing Duncan's Calendar and Bonnie Blackburn and Leofranc Holford-Strevens' The Oxford Companion to the Year.

For some there might be interest in one of my favorite lesser known authors, Roger Welsch, a "tree farmer" in Nebraska but in reality one of our finer essayists. His It's Not the End of the Earth But You Can See It From Here is a fine collection of stories about small town living but has a couple of essays describing his adventures and experiences with the local Lakota Indian tribe, and particularly about the deeply divergent cultural comprehensions of time.
Picture Books

The Four Seasons of Mary Azarian by Mary Azarian - Not Available

The Four Seasons of Brambly Hedge by Jull Barklem - Not Available

Around the Year by Elsa Beskow

If You're Not From the Prairie by David Bouchard and illustrated by Henry Ripplinger

The Little Fir Tree by Margaret Wise Brown and illustrated by Jim Lamarche

The Little House by Virginia Lee Burton

The Winter Wren by Brock Cole - Out of Print

My Favorite Seasons by Dandi and illustrated by Teddy Edinjiklian - Out of Print

Book of Greek Myths by Ingri and Edgar Parin D'Aulaire

When the Root Children Wake Up by Helen Dean Fish and illustrated by Sibylle Olfers - Out of Print

In the Small, Small Pond by Denise Fleming

Paddle to the Sea by Holling C. Holling

Tree in the Trail by Holling C. Holling

On Earth by G. Brian Karas

From Dusk till Dawn by Natalie Kinsey-Warnock and illustrated by Mary Azarian

The Happy Day by Ruth Krauss and illustrated by Marc Simont

A Circle of Seasons by Myra Cohen Livingston and illustrated by Leonard Everett Fisher - Out of Print

Mousekin's Woodland Sleepers by Edna Miller - Out of Print

McCrephy's Field by Christopher A. Myers and Lynne Born Myers and illustrated by Normand Chartier - Out of Print

When the Frost is on the Punkin by James Whitcomb Riley and illustrated by Glenna Lang - Out of Print