Childhood Books

Today we went to the library and came home with five books, including two I remembered from my childhood: Blueberries for Sal, by Robert McCloskey, and The Year at Maple Hill Farm, by Alice and Martin Provensen. The latter I had forgotten about entirely, until I saw it on the library shelves. While Ben napped, I leafed through it and dimly remembered the placid pictures of farm animals. So strange that memories of a nice but unexciting book were submerged deep in my brain.... It makes me wonder what else is down there, waiting to surface only if triggered by a sight or sound or smell.

(Thinking about lost memories makes me recall Proust's famous passage in Remembrance of Things Past, in which the taste of a madeline cookie dipped in tea brings back a flood of childhood memories. A few weeks ago I struggled through that passage in the original French, my dictionary open beside me. I tried reading it aloud, but stumbled over pronunciation. It's painful to think how much time I spent learning the language, only to forget much of it.)

Blueberries for Sal was a delight to read again, even if the monochromatic illustrations look drab next to today's books. My favorite picture is the one at the beginning of the book, in which Sal and her mother are canning the blueberries they've picked: Sal, standing on a kitchen chair, is intent on putting rubber canning rings over a big spoon, while her mother serenely pours berries from a pan into a jar. I like the disorder of the kitchen, and how McCloskey perfectly captured the preschooler's desire to "help" on her own terms. I was surprised to find that the mother now looks young to me--and when I was younger, it had never struck me as odd that she would climb a mountain in a skirt.

As I read the story to Ben in the library, saying the words kuplink, kuplank, kuplunk! (the sound of the blueberries in Sal's metal pail) made me happy--and I knew there must be warm memories of this book in me, just below the level of consciousness.