I love used books. I love to hold a book in my hands that someone else has read, to imagine my eyes touching words some other eyes have already experienced and love or hated.
Going to used book stores and sales is something I do as often as possible, especially when I am feeling restless or agitated. In a used bookstore, I can walk through the aisles touching the spines of books that may have sat on a solitary professor’s shelf for decades. I can hold in my hands a book that a child might have been holding at the exact moment she discovered she absolutely loved to read. I can see a mysterious thumb smudge on a page, or notice the print of one beautifully written sentence is a little faded, perhaps from a finger passed over it repeatedly.
But now and then, the aura of a new book entrances me. The pristine dust jacket, the clean pages pressed tightly together, the whispered sigh of the spine as it opens for the first time.
In the morning at the library, before the doors are unlocked and the patrons begin to trickle in, we receive the delivery. Gray bins full of books are brought to us. These are materials that have been returned to other branches but belong on the Emmitsburg shelves, or materials that belong to other branches that Emmitsburg patrons have requested. Or they are new materials—books, cd’s or dvd’s that have been ordered for our collection. These new materials are marked with a small blue dot on the spine.
Every day is like Christmas. Sometimes the delivery delights with a new title by Mo Willems, or an intriguing book by an unknown author, or the next in a thrilling series the world has waited two years to read. This is similar to opening a gift you have never known you always wanted, and that you will cherish for the rest of your life—a piece of jewelry you were not expecting, or… a really good book.
Other times, the bins are full of vapid romances by “crank-‘em-out” authors, or top selling picture books one can hardly believe would appeal to a child, or the latest bio of a celebrity who took so long to write it, no one cares anymore. This is similar to opening a gift of hard, crumbling soaps in the shapes of seashells that you know the giver regifted from years past, or a box of chocolate covered cherries (you can insert any other confection that makes you shiver or gag—I just happen to loathe chocolate covered cherries!).
This past week, a new book caught my attention. The title on the spine struck me first: Word After Word After Word. I turned the book to see the cover, because, contrary to the popular proverb, you most certainly CAN judge a book by its cover. The cover art was beautiful—a large, shady tree with light filtering through the leaves onto four children, who were focused with anticipation on a fifth child, a girl, who was writing something in a notebook. (I later found out that the artist was Irwin Madrid, who is one of the artists working on the animated Shrek movies, as well as Madagascar, Megamind, and various comic book and computer game projects.)
Then I noticed the author. Patricia MacLachlan. Patricia Maclachlan, author of Sarah, Plain and Tall, which won the Newbery Medal in 1986. Author of Baby and Grandfather’s Dance and, my personal favorite, The Facts and Fictions of Minna Pratt. I snatched the book and checked it out to read.
On my lunch break, I began the book. Before I had read two pages, I grabbed my notebook and wrote this quote:
Ms. Mirabel had long, troubled hair, and a chest that pushed out in front of her like a grocery cart.
Ms. Mirabel, in Word After Word After Word, is a writer who has come to a fourth grade class to give them a new perspective on creative writing.
Two pages later, I copied this into my notebook:
Outlines are silly. Once you write the outline, there’s no reason to write the story. You write to participate…to find out what is going to happen!
A few pages after that, this description: He was short and stocky, like a rain boot.
At this point I put down my pen. It was clear that there would to be too much that was worthy of quoting. I might end up copying the entire book, slim as it was.
Patricia MacLachlan’s story involves five children who each bear a burden too great for their years. One is watching her parents divorce. Another’s mother is sick with cancer. One little boy just lost his beloved dog. Another little girl is crushed that her parents are adopting a new baby. And one, whose life is happy, fears he, like the others, will someday lose what he loves most.
Ms. Mirabel begins to quote to the children beautiful pieces of writing, first from Charlotte’s Web, then from Tuck Everlasing. One quote, the longest, was from the author’s own award-winning Sarah, Plain and Tall. I thought this was vain of Patricia MacLachlan, to use her own words as examples that would mesmerize a classroom of fourth graders on a breezy April morning. But then I decided, why not? Her words were beautiful, were they not? They served their purpose exquisitely. They mesmerized.
Through use of magical words, characters, landscapes, and metaphors, Ms. Mirabel shows the children that writing can make them happy or sad or angry or think. But no matter what, writing can make them brave.
The book did not take long to finish. Patricia MacLachlan writes slim books that are printed with large font and very wide margins. And as soon as I closed it, I sensed the faintest fragrance of Newbery Medal in the air.
Throughout the book, the characters explore their lives using the map Ms. Mirabel creates for them, and each chapter ends with a free-verse poem written by one of the children. As an adult reading this book, it was hardly credible that a concrete-thinking fourth grader could have written something like
Fold tears up and
Put them in a box
So they don’t see
Light
Laughter
Joy!
Send sadness far away
So that even if you
Send for it
It doesn’t hear you call.
But that’s not the point. Through her own beautiful writing, Patricia MacLachlan has created a mini-writing workshop for children who may just be discovering that creative writing can be an exciting form of expression. Or for jaded adults who may have forgotten.
