When my son was young, I read him a picture book over and over again. It was called The Midnight Farm, written by Reeve Lindbergh and illustrated by Susan Jeffers.
I still have the copy, sans the dust jacket, and it’s almost time to give it to Hudson.
The book is a rhyming poem with a strong repetition element. These lines are a sample of the book which is also a counting or 1-2-3 book.
Here is the dark of the chair in the hall
Where one old dog curls up in a ball,
Breathing each breath with a rise and a fall
In the dark of the chair in the hall.
***
Here is the dark by the big wood stove
Where two white cats have a leftover glove
And a birthday card that was signed with love
In the dark by the big wood stove.
I think I loved this book at least as much as my son did. It won the Redbook Award for 1987, but wasn’t a Caldecott winner or honor book, which I find sad. This was Lindbergh’s first children’s book. I feel the book deserved to be honored by the Caldecott committee, but it makes me sad also because:
In 1985, Lindbergh (Charles Lindbergh’s daughter–her brother was kidnapped and died years before she was born) lost her baby boy to a seizure. The day he died, she began to write this book as a lullaby to him. Are you tearing up yet? It made me emotional to learn this.
Now I find this also very interesting. Jane Kenyon, esteemed American poet, wrote a poem called “Let Evening Come.” It was published as the title poem in her 1990 collection. These two poems remind me of each other. They sound so similar with the emphasis on the repetition. But, more importantly, they are about the same thing.
Both poems seems to be about not being afraid of the dark, of nightfall, that we are part of a natural cycle, of nature. But with the adult poem by Kenyan readers read the theme as not to be afraid of death.
Well, certainly The Midnight Farm is about not being afraid of death, although it’s also about not being afraid of the dark for children. Perhaps it’s one of those books for children on one level and adults on another.
I read “Let Evening Come” here:
Doesn’t being afraid of death mean different things to different people?
It took me eighteen years from the first story I wrote about my father’s workshop in our basement until publication for Scrap: Salvaging a Family. Some of that time was “down time,” including from the day ELJ Editions accepted the manuscript until it was actually published. So in the meantime I was writing other things, usually poetry, but some micro or flash fiction, too.
