Of Cabbages & Kings

In Memory of Lady Bird Johnson, 1912-2007, I would like to review a couple of books in her honor. Their choice was inspired by a very old nursery rhyme familiar to us all, the first line of which appears almost to be written as a memorial to her, "Ladybird, Ladybird, fly away home . . . ." The complete poem (at least in one version) is:

"Ladybird, Ladybird, Fly away home. Your house is on fire and your children have flown."

Lady Bird's Life Before reviewing any books or sharing the rhyme's history and meaning, I think it is appropriate to remember Lady Bird's life just a bit. On July 11, 2007 our nation lost a most memorable former First Lady, Lady Bird Johnson, at the age of 94. Born Claudia Alta Taylor, on December 22, 1912, and a native of Texas, Lady Bird was first called by her well-known nickname by her nurse, African American Alice Tittle, who christened two-year-old Claudia as “purty as a lady bird.” The name stuck. For 34 years, Mrs. Johnson lived as the widow of former President Lyndon Baines Johnson, after being married to him for 39 years. She is remembered for being her husband's rock during the many difficult moments he had to face in his political career and as President of the United States--a presidency that encompassed the assassination of President Kennedy, Civil Rights, and the Vietnam War. She is remembered for speaking out courageously giving 47 speeches for civil rights to 500,000 people on an eight state whistle-stop train tour through the reluctant South after her husband signed the 1964 historic Civil Rights Act--a tour that helped turn Southern public opinion in favor of her husband's courageous act and helped bring him a landslide win in the next election. She is remembered for starting a campaign to keep America beautiful. One example is her effort to beautify this country's highways, spawning the Highway Beautification Act of 1965, dubbed "Lady Bird's Act." She saw her efforts to promote beautification and conservation as an integral part of her husband's "Great Society." One of her diary entries says, ". . . beautification is like picking up a tangled skein of wool . . . all the threads are interwoven--recreation and pollution and mental health, and the crime rate, and rapid transit, and highway beautification, and the war on poverty, and parks . . . . everything leads to something else." Decades ago, this fine Lady showed clear vision for effective social planning and was discussing the "web of life" that is so prominent in discussions of global warming or urban planning, among other vital topics, today. Though not as comprehensive, when passed, as she had hoped, it did have a dramatic impact on this country's landscape at that time. Though perhaps we could use another Lady Bird today, if you look around, you can still see evidence of her efforts everywhere. She is also remembered for starting a fight to preserve and protect this country's indigenous plants; and her work led to the opening of the National Wildflower Center in 1982, a center later renamed in her honor. Lady Bird Johnson was awarded the Medal of Freedom, presented in 1977 by President Ford; and in 1988 President Reagan awarded her the Congressional Gold Medal. She called herself an activist. She quietly expanded the role of First Lady. She will be missed by the country she served so honorably. A beautifully assembled biography of Lady Bird Johnson with many images can be found at: http://www.pbs.org/ladybird/earlyyears/earlyyears_index.html Brian Williams, of NBC, writes a touching tribute to her at: http://dailynightly.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2007/07/12/268208.aspx. Book Reviews in Lady Bird's Honor The first book I would like to review in her honor is an old favorite for many readers of children's literature and uses another version of the word "ladybird." In this case the word used is "ladybug," though they both refer to the red and black spotted insect (occasionally yellow and black spotted) we all know and love: The Grouchy Ladybug with words and pictures by Eric Carle. The second book is aptly titled, using a phrase from the first line of the rhyme: Fly Away Home, by Eve Bunting, with pictures by Ronald Himler, whose evocative illustrations often accompany Eve Bunting's words.

.

The Grouchy Ladybug, first published in 1977 and now celebrating its twentieth anniversary, is considered a classic Children's Literature narrative about the "anti-hero" in this tale with its reverse variation of the theme: "Pick on someone your own size." As usual, in this narrative Eric Carle's classic collage illustrations utilizing his hand-painted papers are surrounded by an abundance of white space that set his illustrations off most effectively, accompanied by simple sans serif modern-feeling, uncluttered, yet well-designed, typography. This is a reverse-psychology tale about what else but a bad-tempered Ladybug who learns some manners and how to share. Though another friendly ladybug is perfectly willing to share, Miss Grouchy Ladybug picks a fight with her neighbor because she, herself, does not want to share the other ladybug's aphids. She wants them all. So, she acts out and leaves in a huff. As her day passes, she continues picking fights and then thinking better of and backing away from fights with progressively larger creatures. A small clock in the upper corner of each page shows the passage of time as the ladybug flies from animal to ever-larger animal. In addition, the die-cut pages are first cut very narrowly for the small animals the Ladybug meets, and then progressively wider for the larger animals. Not only do the animals and the pages increase in size, but the words grow in size with them. These layered pages show the sun rising and setting across successive pages as the day passes.

My favorite part of this story is the scene where the Ladybug finally meets up with a great blue whale and it takes her eight pages and forty-five minutes to fly past the whale, picking fights with fins and flippers along the way. At long last, the Grouchy Ladybug picks a fight with the whale's tale and gets knocked all the way back to the original friendly ladybug, who is still willing to share her aphids. This time the Grouchy Ladybug has learned a lesson and some manners, and is even polite enough to say "Thank you." Though a picture book, I believe this book is complicated enough to require an adult to help the youngest child readers understand the narrative's back-handedly humorous lessons about the importance of politeness and sharing, as well as its unique, though complicated layout. Why do I think this? Well, on this book's Amazon.com page, several adults had reviewed this book with an obvious misunderstanding of its narrative intent. This book is not about misbehaving. This book shows children what the possible ramifications of bad-tempered selfishness is. They can explore the theoretical possibilities of such behavior through this narrative instead of acting out themselves and thereby avoid the end results in the real world. It well deserves its designation as a classic of children's picture books. This is just one of many jewels that Eric Carle has created most effectively over his lifetime, among them, The Very Quiet Cricket, and The Very Lonely Firefly. At a future time, I will revisit a larger selection of them; but, for now, to find out more about Eric Carle and a complete list of his picturebooks, visit his official website at: http://www.eric-carle.com/home.html. Final tip: watch for the new book, The Art of Eric Carle.

I have long admired Eve Bunting for her distinctive and delicate touch with words. Of her more than 150 children's picture, my personal preferences are for those books where she tackles subjects from which many authors shy away, such as in this book, Fly Away Home, where, with understated gentleness, she introduces the problems of the homeless to the picturebook reader. "My dad and I live in an airport . . . the airport is better than the streets."

In this narrative, a small child tells of his homeless lifestyle--living in an airport with his father, washing, sleeping, and, above all, avoiding being noticed, as frequently reinforced by Ronald Himler's placement of these characters at the edges of his illustrations. The text is as spare as the illustrations are understated, yet the words manage to reflect the child's emotions that range from matter-of-fact acceptance of his itinerant lifestyle to a fierce desire to experience the homes that other families enjoy. While a tough subject to successfully engage in so few words and for such a young audience, the presentation somehow manages to be serious without being too overwhelmingly depressing. While the ending is not a happy one in the traditional sense; still, by focusing on the sense of family that father and son share, Bunting never lets go of an element of hope in this story, making this treatment of a tough issue successful enough to be a positive addition to anyone's picturebook collection, and a firm candidate to help prompt thoughtful classroom discussions of social problems with elementary-age children.

I have acquired several Eve Bunting books for my picture book collection that are strong candidates for future review. In my view, some of her most successful efforts (among others) and candidates for future review, include: The Wall (also illustrated by Himler) that addresses the issue of war and death, The Train to Somewhere that deals with the hopeful children that traveled the orphan trains of the 1800s to early 1900s that took orphans to be adopted out West; and A Day's Work that deals with the issue of immigrant workers. In addition, her book, Smoky Night, whose narrative grapples with the Los Angeles racially-provoked urban riots of recent history paired with the vividly-memorable mixed media illustrations by David Diaz, is a Caldecott Medal winner and a book not to be missed. An informative interview of Eve Bunting can be found at: http://www.bookpage.com/9705bp/childrens/evebunting.html.

"Ladybird, Ladybird . . . ." Background Finally, let us explore the background and possible meanings of this old nursery rhyme: "Ladybird, Ladybird, fly away home . . . ." The first point the reader should know is that ladybirds and ladybugs are one and the same. Sometimes, especially in the United States, this insect is also called a Doodlebug. Ladybugs come in familiar color variations: the much more familiar red and black polkadotted, and the less-common yellow and black polkadotted varieties. However, they also can be found in orange and black, as well as mostly grey, brown or black varieties that are more difficult to identify. Many versions of this nursery rhyme hail from around the earth. In most of them the children all suffer: that is, all except one, who often may be named Ann, or Nan or Little Anne, though sometimes a less common name creeps in as with Aileen from the following version: "All except one and her name was Aileen And she hid under the soup tureen." These final two lines could be referring to the habit of setting fires specifically with the aim of smoking the adult insects out of a house. When this happens the younger insects, or maggots, are forced to crawl away as they cannot fly as yet--fulfilling the forecast that "your children all roam." the pupate insects, still in their shells, are unable to flee the danger and perish from either the smoke or the fire. In some versions, then, Nan, must still be within her pupal case and cannot flee until she undoes or weaves "her laces," or pupal case. There have long been superstitions that it brought misfortune to kill a ladybird, and that one could cause the creatures to fly away by chanting this verse. In some regions children chant the poem if a ladybird landed on them and if it flew away a wish would come true. Ladybirds are know to be active eaters of aphids and other insects that damage plants; so, though they may be a nuisance at times, especially when they swarm together to enter diapause or dormancy in the winter, killing them is most often considered to be bad luck. Artificial populations of Ladybirds are sometimes actively introduced to kill other insects and pests, but they often can wipe out local populations of their relatives and so, often, become nuisances in the eco-system themselves. Still, from a farmer's point of view, their usefulness in controlling insects may well be the rationale for shooing them aware rather than killing them. Ladybirds have long been considered a special animal to the Virgin Mary. Why is this? Well, some researchers attempt to link this insect all the way back to its scarab beetle ancestors in ancient Egypt, as well as with the worship of Isis; linking this with worship of her Northern Equivalent, Freya, wife of Odin, in Northern Europe, who was later supplanted by the Virgin Mary, when Christianity began to sweep Europe sometime around 400 A.D.. For some, the Ladybird could be seen as representing the old matriarchal religions, temples and followers being swept aside by the spread of patriarchal belief systems that included the male Gods of Zeus and Odin, followed, later, by Christianity and its accompanying patriarchal cultures. In later times, as countries switched from Catholic to Protestant and back again, the rhyme came to symbolize widows left following periods of religious persecution. Since there are versions of this across Germanic and Scandanavian countries, it is thought to be a rhyme with ancient roots. In Central Europe, witches, whose stereotype would view them as frequently unmarried ladies of a certain age, were dispatched frequently by telling them their house was on fire. Another belief from Central Europe is that if a ladybird crawls across an unmarried girl's hand it is believed to forecast her marriage in the upcoming year. Italians believe a ladybird flying into one's bedroom brings good fortune. Russians call the ladybird Божья коровка, or God's Cow, and an accompanying popular rhyme bids the ladybird to fly to the sky and return with bread. Along the same lines, in Denmark, the ladybird is called a mariehøne, or Mary's hen and is bid to fly to "our Lord in heaven and ask for fairer weather in the morning. One last reference about the Ladybird can be made from versions found in Britain and Scotland that were supposedly a way to help tell who one's lover was meant to be: "Fly to the person who e'er they be, The one who loves me best." Suggesting one last special hope for Ladybird Johnson--that she has, at long last, reunited with the one who loved her best, her husband, Lyndon. Much of the information above came from Chris Roberts' book, Heavy Words Lightly Thrown: The Seamy and Quirky Stories behind Favorite Nursery Rhymes from Gotham/Penguin Publishers.