Category: Literature

It snowed yesterday. Consistent hours of powdery fluff, the kind that blankets the world and makes everything brighter, more quiet, and muted.

My little neighbor across the way – she’s two I think – wielded a shovel twelve times her size and danced in her boots.

As I watched her delight, I remembered a book: The Snowy Day. Do you remember it too? It was about a little boy enjoying a snow day, with illustrations that looked like paper cuts but were actually watercolor. He wore red from head to toe, and he looked back at his footprints in the snow.

What I didn’t realize until I looked it up was that the book was written in 1962 and featured one of the first Black main characters in a children’s book. The hero’s Black face is etched in my mind, but I hadn’t thought of him in terms of the historical context. What a statement that choice made – at the time, and even decades after it was written.

My memory of this book was automatic, and it reminded me of something important: What we read and consume as kids shapes us in ways we will never realize.

So let’s make sure we curate the books we share with our children. Let’s make sure they get messages we want them to receive, and that they see people of all races, religions and circumstances.

I used to be that aunt. The one who always gave books. Not just books, but books that were different. I thought they were interesting and important. I’m sure they were received at first as strange.

I stopped doing that a while ago, in favor of gift cards so the kids could have some autonomy. Let’s be honest, I wanted to be the cool aunt for a change. I wanted them to like what I gave them.

Watch out guys, I may be going back to strange books.

Because art solidifies ideas in our minds from an early age. And how could I possibly allow Nintendo to do that work?

We know that literature sparks latent dreams and shows us windows to worlds we will never know personally. Even the simplest children’s book can do this. So I was sad to hear this week of the passing of Richard Adams, author of Watership Down.

Watership Down was one of my favorite books. I haven’t read it in many years, but it captured me completely. I read and re-read it. At that time, I didn’t connect that it was an allegory for epic tales like The Aeneid or The Odyssey. 

Looking back now, it’s no surprise that I was captivated by the adventure of the rabbits, searching for a new warren that would be safe from humans, complete with their own language and customs. Given the world today, I could benefit from a reread.

Here’s one of my favorite passages, one that captures just how universal the messages of Watership Down were, not just for children but for all of us.

“When Marco Polo came at last to Cathay, seven hundred years ago, did he not feel–and did his heart not falter as he realized–that this great and splendid capital of an empire had had its being all the years of his life and far longer, and that he had been ignorant of it? That it was in need of nothing from him, from Venice, from Europe? That it was full of wonders beyond his understanding? That his arrival was a matter of no importance whatever? We know that he felt these things, and so has many a traveler in foreign parts who did not know what he was going to find. There is nothing that cuts you down to size like coming to some strange and marvelous place where no one even stops to notice that you stare about you.”

Today, even in the most familiar of places, I find myself staring about me, wondering at the strange world we now occupy. I feel like a traveler in foreign parts. Perhaps Watership Down would have some tips for me.

And isn’t that what art is for, after all?