"Skags The Milk Horse" by Miriam Blanton Huber, Great Children's Literature From 1931

The first time I came across this book, I bought a copy of it at a large flea market in Northern Indiana, and almost immediately sold it online for a nice profit. In addition to being one of the nicest little pickups I had ever had in that interesting and exciting (at times) pursuit of finding, buying, and either keeping or reselling found objects, this little book has always fascinated me for several reasons. It had survived to be found more than 75 years later in a flea market. I have also spent years of my life working in equine related jobs, more than 20 years in the Thoroughbred horse business and almost four years with the private juvenile treatment company Vision Quest, nearly all of which I spent on the Vision Quest Wagon Trains, riding down the highways of the Eastern United States on one of the best horses I ever knew stopping oncoming traffic on a horse while holding a hand held stop sign. That kind of partnership with a horse is the kind of experience that can give you a lifetime of memories and that mustang, Teepee, and I had a helluva parentership. This book is about a draft horse of unknown breed and a milk delivery man who had that same kind of partnership. The book is 111 pages written by Miriam Blanton Huber and illustrated by Curtiss Sprague. Huber wrote at least 50 or 60 books. Sprague can be found listed as the author or illustrator of about a dozen books. Good biographical information cannot be located online for either of the two. The American Book Company which published the book existed from 1890 to 1981 as an independent publisher of educational books for students at all levels of American education. It ceased to exist as an independent imprint in 1980 after almost 100 years as a publishing company. Another company, unrelated to the original American Book Company, now operates under the same name. The book contains a page labeled "Note" which states that the vocabulary of the book is "512 words of which 81 percent are found in "Gates' Reading Vocabulary for the Primary Grades" and 51 percent are found in the first five hundred words of the Gates list." I have never before encountered the Gates list. I have learned that an author and psychologist named Arthur Irving Gatesin the early twentieth century produced several books in the fields of psychology, education, and the blended discipline of educational psychology. I have since learned that Gates lived from 1890 to 1971 and was an expert on vocabulary in early childhood education. If I had never gotten another positive thing from this book, I would have learned about the lives of three educational professionals who obviously had some positive impact on each of their fields. But, you ask, what about "Skags The Milk Horse". Skags, the hero of the book, is a draft horse who pulls a milk wagon through the streets of an unnamed city, and is driven each day by his regular driver and partner Jim Clark. The milk company has a building and lot somewhere on a city street which is designed in such a way that the milk bottling and distribution operation is on the ground floor and the horse stable is on the second floor with a stall for each horse, a large harness room, an attendant, and a cat named Tibbs who is Skags' friend. Each night, in the middle of the night, the horses are harnessed by their drivers, hitched to their wagons which have been parked in the large lot behind the building, loaded with milk, and set out around the town to make their deliveries. Naturally, each driver and horse have an assigned route with regular customers. Skags and Jim Clark go from house to house and Skags actually knows which houses he is supposed to stop at while Jim delivers the milk. But one day in winter,Jim falls on ice after having walked down an alley between two streets to deliver milk to the only two houses he has on that street. He has left Skags and the wagon on the first street and after his fall he is unconscious and transported to a hospital. No one comes to do anything with Skags and the wagon. Skags waits patiently for Jim until about noon when he finally leaves the spot he has been left in and follows his regular route back to the milk company where no one knows yet that Jim has fallen. Eventually, the hospital calls the milk company when Jim regains consciousness. In the meantime, Skags has found his way back to the milk company and is seen as a hero for knowing his route well enough to return to the company with the wagon, honoring the stop signs and red lights, following his routine, and being safe the entire time. The book describes a very humane operation of the horse stable and the care and handling of the horses. It delivers a wonderful story of the kind of partnership a human and a working horse can establish when they are together nealry every day doing their jobs. Yes, it an aged book and unlikely to ever by used in an educational setting again, except by one or two dedicated teachers who stray into a copy and use it is as auxillary material in a classroom. The book also gives a good history lesson about how milk was processed and delivered in urban areas as American cities grew larger and larger before the common use of automobiles and trucks. The one flaw in the book, possibly, is the fact that the author describes the horse stable as being on the second floor of the building above the milk processing facility. Even in the 1930's when the FDA was much less stringent in their regulation of foods and drugs, it seems unlikely to me that a milk company would have stabled ther horses on a floor above the processing plant. Otherwise, this is a fine early childhood book which is appropriate for grades somewhere between three and five. If you are a horse person or an elementary teacher who likes to use auxillary material in class, this is a fine book to own.

"Nellie And The Mayor's Hat" by Charlotte Baker, A Fine Old Children's Book From 1947

Sometimes, a good dose of children's literature is a great thing to give us all a break from the horrible political events going on in America today. I have read and written about many children's books over the years, both those beginning reader books and adolescent literature can be fun and educational to read. I especially like to read books which have won or been finalists for awards such as the Newberry, Caldecott, and the National Book Award which also gives an award in the category of Young People's Literature. So far as I know, this book, "Nellie And The Mayor's Hat" never won any awards, and might not have even been nominated for any. I cannot find any significant information about the author Charlotte Baker. The search for information about her is also made more difficult by the fact that a currently living Right Wing Radical "Christian" woman of the same name is currently making waves in the country. But Charlotte Baker, the important Charlotte Baker who wrote "Nellie And Mayor's Hat" was an interesting writer and person as proven by this book alone. The book was published in 1947 with simultaneious issue in both the USA and Canada. It is a hardback book of 96 pages and published by The Junior Literary Guild and Cornwall Publishers. It is probably most appropriate for readers in the third to sixth grades. The title of the book refers to a little dog, Nellie, who is owned by a family of Hispanic children and their grandfather in a town somewhere, presumbably, in Texas. They are poor and the grandfather is trying hard to feed the children while at the same time Nellie has a litter of five puppies which are growing fast and eating the family out of house and home. Nellie is actually the heroine of the story which in today's parlance can be said to be a story about DEI, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. The grandfather tells the children they have to find homes for the puppies very soon or they will have to "go away". The children talk about finding a home for the puppies which will have plenty of food, a good yard with a fence, and children to play with the puppies. They decide to "investigate" several people they know whom they believe to be appropriate people to care for the puppies. They begin with Miss Bliss, one of their teachers in school and that is a miserable failure when Miss Bliss leaves the puppies alone in her small apartment and they wreak havoc and disturb the neighbors. Then they "investigate" the service station man who has to tell them he can't keep the puppies because there is too much traffic around his service station. Finally they decide the mayor who lives in a big pink house and has two children would be a good person to take the puppies because he has a big yard, lots of money, and children. They try to see the mayor and have to sneak into his back gate and hide in the shrubbery until he comes out to walk in his yard. But he says he doesn't like dogs and refuses. The mayor has just been given a big hat, actually a sombrero by the mayor of Monterray in Old Mexico and is planning to lead a parade for Founders Fiesta Day wearing the hat and riding a big palomino horse. The children convince their grandfather to take them to the parade along with the puppies in a little wagon. At the parade, the dogs spook the mayor's horse and he loses his hat which falls in the river. But Nellie, who has been a big part of the book and the multiple "investigations" all along, jumps into the river and drags the mayor's hat back to shore just in time to return it to him which causes the crowd to cheer loudly for Nellie. The mayor instantly gives a speech to thank Nellie and finds himself backed into taking Nellie's puppies which saves the day. It is fascinating to find a book this old, written for children, which addressed issues of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in a time when almost no children's books approached subject matter about minority culture, equal rights, or other issues of discrimination or human rights. It is a wonderful surprise of a book from the late 1940's and can become a great classroom tool in today's public schools if enough copies can be located. In all honesty, this is a book for which a legitimate argument can be made to have it reissued in a new edition. Find A Copy! Read It! Tell The World About It! Use it to support Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.

"The Keeping Quilt" by Patricia Polacco, A Great Children's Book For Multi-cultural Education

 

Several months ago, I bought a fairly large collection of books from the estate of a retired school principal and this book was in that pile.  It is actually the second book I have read and written about in that purchase.  The other was "The Play Pretty Book", an Appalachian children's book which was produced by a Kentucky based educational non-profit and illustrated by Appalachian artist Tom Whitaker.  I read many different genres of literature and high quality children's literature is one of them.  This book, "The Keeping Quilt" was a winner of the Sydney Taylor Book Award from the Association of Jewish Libraries.  It was also a Carnegie Medal Honor Book.  This book is about a Russian Jewish family which immigrated to the United States with a little girl named Anna who is the great-grandmother of the narrator.  Anna has a much beloved babushka and dress which, naturally, become too small for her in time.  Her mother decided to invite the neighbor women in to hold a quilting bee and make a quilt from the babushka and dress so that Anna can keep something made from her treasured items. The quilt gets passed down from one little girl to another through several generations of the family throughout the life of the book.  

Since my real academic specialty is Appalachian Studies, let me say that this is a wonderful book to be used with Appalachian children since quilts and quilting hold such a special place in Appalachian Culture.  I grew up sleeping under what is called a "tacked quilt" which, instead of being sewn in regular stitches, has yarn "tacks" all over the body of the quilt.  The creator of such a quilt uses a darning needle and a skein of yarn and at uniform distances of about 4 inches in each direction passes the needle through the quilt twice at about the distance of a regular stitch, cuts off the yarn at about 3 inches and ties the two ends in a knot to make a "tack".  As I fell asleep at night, I would doze off holding and playing with the "tacks" on my quilt.  I have known many other Appalachian children who grew up the same way with "tacked quilts".  Thousands of Appalachian children grew up sleeping under regular patchwork quilts also.  The story of a quilt in this book will make a connection in the hearts and minds of most Appalachian children.  It is a great book for use in teaching Multi-cultural Education and Tolerance to young Appalachian children.  

Yes, this book is a bit aged having been published in 1988.  But it is also a timeless book about family, cultural traditions, expressions of love by elders doing things for young children, and quietly makes the point that the family are Jewish.  The book is published in 8 1/2" x 11" format, both written and illustrated by the author who actually wrote more than 50 children's books, and is a wonderful illustrator.  Her illustration style is unique in that most of the page areas are in black and white with only key areas or items in color.  I have included a page or two from the book here to demonstrate the illustration style which serves to strongly emphasize the importance of the key item in each page of the book. If you are a parent or teacher of kindergarten or first grade children, this is an excellent book to begin the discussion of religious tolerance with.  

"Christmas And The Old House" by Tom T. Hall--Book Review

 

This is a children's Christmas book by Tom T. Hall.  Yes, THAT Tom T. Hall!  And, before you remember who he is and disappear without reading the rest of this review, you should know that I am talking about Tom T. Hall, the writer; Tom T. Hall, the novelist; Tom T. Hall, the short story author; Tom T. Hall, the non-fiction author; Tom T. Hall from Olive Hill, Kentucky.  Oh, yeah, he wrote a few songs too, eleven Number One songs and about a thousand others all of which are somewhere between good and great.  But you do not know the full Tom T. Hall until you have read his books, about a half dozen books in at least four genres: novels, short stories, autobiography, musical instruction books.  The man can write and I first encountered his short stories about thirty years ago. 

But this book, illustrated by Laura L. Seeley, is a wonderful Christmas books for children in the elementary grades.  Yet, it also has value for nearly every other reader.  It has spots which will make you laugh out loud and spots which will almost make you cry.  Which is what a lot of us have also found in that thousand or so songs the man is most famous for writing.  The book is about two children, six and seven, who live in the country across the road from an abandoned house.  The book is also somewhat religious in nature since it mentions Jesus Christ.  The children live next door to each other, play together daily, and Bobby is the narrator.  The book is written in language most second grade students can read and also in language which accurately depicts the thought processes and language of children in that age group.  Against their parents' rules, they cross the road, after planning their trip at their Planning Rock, and find that the old house has an evergreen tree growing up through the floor.  They decide to decorate the tree as Christmas tree for Jesus and the owner of the property and their parents catch them because the owner has come to visit the house he grew up in one more time before having it torn down.  But the book also has a happy ending and you will love reading it for yourself and for the small children in your life.  If it does nothing else for you, it will give you a new appreciation for the breadth and depth of Tom T. Hall's talent.  That old boy from Olive Hill can write and you should give yourself the gift of experiencing another side of the Tom T. Hall you have probably been hearing on the radio for the last fifty years.