Creative Non-Ficion / Memoir / Travel
Date Published: Paperback out this March / eBook November 2014
Publisher: University of Missouri Press
Nancy McCabe, who grew up in Kansas just a few hours from the Ingalls family’s home in Little House on the Prairie, always felt a deep connection with Laura Ingalls Wilder, author of the Little House series. McCabe read Little House on the Prairie during her childhood and visited Wilder sites around the Midwest with her aunt when she was thirteen. But then she didn’t read the series again until she decided to revisit in adulthood the books that had so influenced her childhood. It was this decision that ultimately sparked her desire to visit the places that inspired many of her childhood favorites, taking her on a journey that included stops in the Missouri of Laura Ingalls Wilder, the Minnesota of Maud Hart Lovelace, the Massachusetts of Louisa May Alcott, and even the Canada of Lucy Maud Montgomery.
From Little Houses to Little Women reveals McCabe’s powerful connection to the characters and authors who inspired many generations of readers. Traveling with McCabe as she rediscovers the books that shaped her and ultimately helped her to forge her own path, readers will enjoy revisiting their own childhood favorites as well.
Guest Post:
In my new book From Little Houses to Little Women, I told a story about how, when I ran across a book in a secondhand bookstore by Margaret Hodges called What’s for Lunch, Charley?, a feather brush of memory stirred.
Suddenly, I was seven, reaching up to retrieve from a high shelf at the Seltzer School library a book about a boy named Charley. At twenty, I picked up Hodges’ book and a small, vulnerable feeling flooded back, accompanied by wild excitement and wonder. I didn’t remember anything about the characters or the story. Just that feeling.
I bought the book, intending to reread it, but instead ended up packing it a total of fourteen times in the subsequent eighteen years, unpacking it again in each new home.
Finally, working on my own book about rereading favorite childhood books, I settled down with my copy of What’s for Lunch, Charley? Its front cover promptly fell off and its middle section hung loose. And I was terribly disappointed with the story, which, I wrote in my book, is mostly about how a boy named Charley comes to realize that Plain Jane Lane, who shares her peanut butter sandwich with him, is more worthy of admiration and attention than Rosabelle, the beautiful quiet new girl with painted fingernails and fancy lunches.
Eventually I realized that this was not the book I remembered. That one was Did You Carry the Flag Today, Charley? by Elizabeth Caudill. As soon as I opened that one, its illustrations were so familiar that the second I saw them, a fierce suppressed excitement overtook me, a dual response: the headiness of adult recognition overlaying a long-buried intense childhood connection. Memories fired along my neurons as I relived the story of a delightfully clever, mischievous, well-meaning Appalachian boy named Charley who leaves his remote small home to take a bus to preschool. He can’t seem to follow the rules, but he loves learning. It’s a delightful, funny book about the joys of creativity and discovery.
Now, looking back at what I wrote in my book, I wonder: was I fair to What’s for Lunch, Charley?
A couple of smart, passionate readers on an e-mail list devoted to fans of another children’s writer, Maud Hart Lovelace, didn’t think so.
Jennifer Davis Kay calls What’s for Lunch, Charley? a “sweet story” about “trying something new and stepping off the beaten path.” A Charley fan named Beth also likes the title character’s adventurous spirit and the fact that adults encourage it; she appreciates the lesson that “sometimes asking means getting.”
Jennifer says, “The thing that excited me most about this book as a child. . . was THE FOOD. The pipin hot tomato soup! The fried chicken! The fruit salad! The chocolate cake with inch-thick frosting!! And this gorgeous meal is described not once, not twice, but THRICE!!! (accompanied by olives, celery, crackers, rolls, butter, mashed potatoes, peas, and cranberry sauce in its third and final incarnation!!!)”
Jen’s description brought back a memory of my own childhood delight at these descriptions. Furthermore, Beth and Jen’s defenses make it clear that for many readers the appeal of this book is not unlike the appeal of Did you Carry the Flag Today, Charley?, which is also about leaving a safe, familiar world and embarking on small but powerful adventures as Charley goes downtown and eats lunch alone at a hotel.
Furthermore, Beth says, “I’m fairly sure he lost his crush on Rosabelle because she was JUST pretty, which isn’t something she really had to work at, despite the painted fingernails, because she looked like her pretty mom. It wasn’t the provenance of her lunch, it was that she didn’t offer to share it when ‘Plain Jane Lane’ DID offer some of her much more humble one to Charley when he forgot his. Charley realizes that Jane’s good heart is better than Rosabelle’s curly hair.”
I still find the book oddly hard on Rosabelle. I feel invited to judge her based on appearance—first because she’s beautiful, later because she seems to be staring admiringly at her own fingernails, implying that she’s self-centered. And yeah, it still bothers me that Rosabelle is criticized for not sharing her lunch with Charley. The classroom is full of other kids—why it is the job of a new girl Charley barely knows to share her lunch?
Jennifer says, “My feeling about Rosabelle is that any sympathy is entirely wasted; she spends the whole recess smiling contentedly at her fingernails. That is one self-actualized kid.”
A comment which made me laugh. We may not agree on every point, but this conversation helped me see the charm of a book I had disparaged, and reminded me of the whole point of writing my own book in the first place—to share my perspective, yes, but also to start conversations and learn from other readers.
About the Author
Nancy McCabe is the author of four memoirs about travel, books, parenting, and adoption as well as the novel Following Disasters. Her work has appeared in Newsweek, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Prairie Schooner, Fourth Genre, and many other magazines and anthologies, including In Fact Books’ Oh Baby! True Stories about Conception, Adoption, Surrogacy, Pregnancy, Labor, and Love and McPherson and Company’s Every Father’s Daughter: Twenty-Four Women Writers Remember their Fathers. Her work has received a Pushcart and been recognized on Notable lists in Best American anthologies six times.
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2 comments:
Thank you for posting
"As soon as I opened that one, its illustrations were so familiar that the second I saw them, a fierce suppressed excitement overtook me, a dual response: the headiness of adult recognition overlaying a long-buried intense childhood connection." I just love this feeling!!
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