Wednesday Reading Meme

[osprey_archer]

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

Miriam Mason’s Yours with Love, Kate, a biography of Kate Douglass Wiggin. I picked this up solely because Barbara Cooney did the illustrations, and lucked into a delightful mid-century biography of the kind that would definitely be published as a novel today, as Mason is 100% making up conversations.

Wiggins seems as boundlessly charming and enthusiastic as one of the heroines of her own novels, only even more extraordinary: a girl born under a lucky star. She meets Charles Dickens in a railway carriage, befriends famous actresses, is invited to act in the company of the famous Dion Boucicault, but decides to stay with the free kindergarten she’s building: this is a time when the kindergarten movement was new and exciting, Wiggins a pioneer in these children’s gardens where children learn through dance and story and song.

She marries Samuel Wiggin, who enthusiastically agrees that women can and should continue to work after marriage, and so continues to work in the kindergarten movement. She starts to write in order to raise money for the kindergartens and becomes one of the most successful children’s authors of her day with The Birds’ Christmas Carol.

I also read Rumer Godden’s Premlata and the Festival of Lights, a slim story about a little girl in India whose family has become so poor that they’ve had to sell the deepas they would usually light to celebrate Diwali. She comes into possession of some money and heads off to the fair to buy new lights, but the fair is full of merry-go-rounds and hot fresh samosas and bangle sellers where she might buy a present for her mother…

What I’m Reading Now

Sebastian Smee’s Paris in Ruins: Love, War, and the Birth of Impressionism, which is about the early years of the impressionist movement and the effect of the Franco-Prussian War on their lives and art when it came crashing into their world. Loving it so far. Especially loving in the bits about Berthe Morisot and her sister Edma (also a painter), but all the information about the social world of the impressionists is fascinating.

What I Plan to Read Next

As you can see, I’ve allowed myself to be distracted from my Newbery readings, but this week I’m hoping to buckle down with Lesa Cline-Ransome’s One Big Open Sky.

Comments

[landofnowhere]

Yours With Love, Kate sounds absolutely delightful! Kid me loved The Birds' Christmas Carol, though it is so very Victorian. (I never got into Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm.)

[osprey_archer]

It was such a fun book! I didn't find Kate Douglas Wiggin till I was an adult, but I enjoy reading her books.

[landofnowhere]

As a kid I felt like Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm was one of these books that I was supposed to like but never got into. (I certainly liked plenty of other books of a similar genre!)

But I'm looking over The Birds' Christmas Carol just now, and realizing how much I remember: the Circulating Library! the etiquette lesson!

[katherine]

The etiquette lesson and the best clothing getting shared 'round fairly!

[lirazel]

I feel like I read one of those Childhood of Famous Americans books about Wiggin as a kid, and this makes me want to read a real biography of her! Perhaps I will pick this one up!

[osprey_archer]

This one is a pretty novelistic biography, and as it was written for children it does focus mainly on Wiggin's childhood, but as long as you like that sort of thing it's a lot of fun.

[troisoiseaux]

Sebastian Smee’s Paris in Ruins: Love, War, and the Birth of Impressionism, which is about the early years of the impressionist movement and the effect of the Franco-Prussian War on their lives and art when it came crashing into their world. Loving it so far.

Yay!

[osprey_archer]

This was preordained, haha.

[katherine]

I somehow can never keep in my head that The Birds' Christmas Carol and Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm are by the same author. Maybe because my childhood copies didn't match?

From your mentions of Barbara Cooney I got Ox-Cart Man from the library. Particularly liked the illustrations of the sheep.

[osprey_archer]

Oh hooray! I love Ox-Cart Man and I hope you're enjoying it too.

[asakiyume]

Does Premlata end up getting lights?

[osprey_archer]

She does, through a happy plot twist!

[asakiyume]

Phew!

[asakiyume]

Oh wait, and I missed this line from your talk about the Kate Douglass Wiggin biography:

...in these children’s gardens where children learn through dance and story and song. SO Greensky. SO GREENSKY.

[osprey_archer]

Modern kindergartens should really return to their roots tbh. The whole POINT of kindergarten is that children are gently introduced to learning through story and song, not drilled on phonetics from day one! And perhaps we could consider following the Greensky example and continuing this approach in later grades...

[asakiyume]

CO-SIGNED!