The Golden Chain of Reading: Living on a River

Rivers flow through our life but there is a curious paucity of books in children's literature of stories set on a river. And that is most peculiar when you consider just how central rivers have been in the development of human society. Fortunately, however scarce they might be, the river stories that there are, are wonderful.

Man's first tentative steps away from the trials of living by hunting/gathering came on the shores of rivers, most famously on the Nile, the Jordan and the Tigris/Euphrates rivers but elsewhere around the world as well. Rivers exert an ancient tug at the ancestral memory. The very names are charms calling up romance, adventure, exotic locations of different peoples and different ways: The Nile, the Indus, Mississippi, the Yellow River, the Congo, the Yangtze, the Amazon, the Ganges, the Niger, the Tigris and the Euphrates, the Jordan, the Murray Darling, the Mekong and the Irrawaddy. You can almost smell the romance of adventure with these names.

Few capture it better than that subtle bard of the British Empire, Kipling, as in his poem Mandalay (on the Irrawaddy). See Thing Finder for the full poem.

Mandalay
By Rudyard Kipling

By the old Moulmein Pagoda, lookin' eastward to the sea,
There's a Burma girl a-settin', and I know she thinks o' me;
For the wind is in the palm-trees, and the temple-bells they say:
"Come you back, you British soldier; come you back to Mandalay!"
Come you back to Mandalay,
Where the old Flotilla lay:
Can't you 'ear their paddles chunkin' from Rangoon to Mandalay?
On the road to Mandalay,
Where the flyin'-fishes play,
An' the dawn comes up like thunder outer China 'crost the Bay!

Then there is of course the bucolic brook in an idyllic English setting. (Full poem also at Thing Finder)

The Brook
by Alfred Lord Tennyson

I come from haunts of coot and hern,
I make a sudden sally
And sparkle out among the fern,
To bicker down a valley.

By thirty hills I hurry down,
Or slip between the ridges,
By twenty thorpes, a little town,
And half a hundred bridges.

Till last by Philip's farm I flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever.

One of the aspects in which rivers resemble life is that they conjoin in the same entity both change and continuity. The exact path, volume and even to a degree, the nature of a particular river is subject to change on a day-to-day basis. And yet it remains broadly recognizable for what it is, was and will be. Interestingly, in linguistics, river names are one of the markers for linguistic archaeology. River names tend to remain the same regardless of who has settled the territory. In Europe, for example, the Rhine, Neckar, Inn, Seine, Marne, Thames, Severn, Avon, Tyne, Shannon and many others are not Romance names from a Latin based language or Germanic names. Rather, they are all remnants of the earlier inhabitants, the Celts.

Likewise, here in the States, with a new people settling a new land, those that were here earlier can not be forgotten because it is their river names we use: the Mississippi, Ohio, Chattahoochee, Missouri, the Allegheny, the Connecticut, the Arkansas, etc.

The rivers captured in young children's stories are usually places of mild adventure and exploration (The Story About Ping, Wind in the Willows, Where the River Begins, Paddle to the Sea, etc.). That of course belies the reality that rivers are a fundamental force of nature, never to be taken for granted. There are a couple of first rate older reader/ young adult level books that explore the force and potential for terror of rivers such as David McCullough's The Johnstown Flood as well as a picture book, Kate Shelley: Bound for Legend. I think though that the best introduction to powerful rivers for younger children is 'Banjo' Paterson's Mongrel Grey poem (in Thing Finder).

Rivers offer a great object lesson in change and continuity, in the mechanics of force, in ecology, etc. In the woods near us, there are a couple of creeks that are always fun to muck around in, search for pretty stones or Indian pottery, etc. It is always impressive to the kids though, (and to me), after a reasonable rainfall, how swollen the river becomes and just how much raw force there is in this deceptively gentle force of nature. Wading out into the swiftly flowing creek, while it is still raised from the rain, you can feel the hungry, almost insidious tug at your rain boots as if it were wishing to pull you away on its journey.

Being an ever more urban concentrated population, fewer and fewer kids have the opportunity to wade about in a river, scrabble around embankments, and to mess around with boats (per Rat of in Wind in the Willows - "There is nothing - absolutely nothing - half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats."). While this is regrettable, there are still plenty of books that can introduce your children to the wilds, wonders and charm of a river.

Picture Books