#reeve lindbergh

[detroitlib]

From our stacks: Cover detail from Homer, the Library Cat. Reeve Lindbergh. Illustrated by Anne Wilsdorf. Somerville, Mass. : Candlewick Press, 2011.

[uwmspeccoll]

It’s Fine Press Friday!

For the last Friday of 2024, we’re featuring John’s Apples, produced by Walter Hamady’s Perishable Press in Mount Horeb, WI, in 1995, in a limited edition of 125 copies. The book contains thirteen paintings by American artist John Wilde (1919-2006).and twelve poems by American poet and author Reeve Lindbergh (b. 1945). The book is made with a variety of papers including papers from Japan, Europe, and domestic paper handmade by Hamady’s elder daughter in Perry Township, Ohio. According to the colophon,the book was made “pretty much by Hand using passé technology.”

Walter Hamady (1940-2019) founded Perishable Press in 1964. The press was one of the first to produce work with a Vandercook proofing press, and is known for its innovative use of type and paper. In a profile of Hamady from 1991, Mary Lydon, his colleague at UW-Madison, suggests his books work to deliberately frustrate the “too adept reader.” This reader is frustrated and forced “to regress and, to recapture something of the pleasurable mystery (and frustration) of preliteracy” (155).

Appropriate then, that the text of the book is built on the poetry of Reeve Lindbergh, a children’s writer, and daughter of Charles Lindbergh. The playful verses sometimes sit opposite a relevant produce-related painting from Wilde. Other poems are printed on translucent paper through which you can make out Wilde’s vegetal shapes. The poems appear to be ekphrastic – composed directly from the paintings.  John Wilde (1919-2006) was a frequent collaborator with Hamady, and both taught for many years at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.

This book comes to us from the collection of the late Dennis Bayuzick.

View other Fine Press Friday posts.

View other books from the Dennis Bayuzick estate.

View more work by Walter Hamady in our collection.

-- Amanda Haag, Special Collections Graduate Intern

[lunasong365]

The Circle of Days, adapted from Canticle of the Sun (St. Francis of Assisi) by Reeve Lindbergh

Lord, we offer thanks and praise For the circle of our days. Praise for radiant brother sun, Who makes the hours around us run.

For sister moon, and for the stars, Brilliant, precious, always ours.

Praise for brothers wind and air, Serene or cloudy, foul or fair.

For sister water, clear and chaste, Useful, humble, good to taste.

For fire, our brother, strong and bright, Whose joy illuminates the night.

Praise for our sister, mother earth, Who cares for each of us from birth.

For all her children, fierce or mild, For sister, brother, parent, child.

For creatures wild, and creatures tame, For hunter, hunted, both the same.

For brother sleep, and sister death, Who tend the borders of our breath.

For desert, orchard, rock, and tree, For forest, meadow, mountain, sea,

For fruit and flower, plant and bush, For morning robin, evening thrush.

For all your gifts, of every kind, We offer praise with quiet mind. Be with us, Lord, and guide our ways Around the circle of our days.

[brittanyr30]

Now Reading: No More Words by Reeve Lindbergh

I pressed pause on Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf. It was just too dense for me right now. 

From Goodreads: 

In 1999 Anne Morrow Lindbergh, the famed aviator and author, moved from her home in Connecticut to the farm in Vermont where her daughter, Reeve, and Reeve's family live. Mrs. Lindbergh was in her nineties and had been rendered nearly speechless years earlier by a series of small strokes that also left her frail and dependent on others for her care. As an accomplished author who had learned to write in part by reading her mother's many books, Reeve was deeply saddened and frustrated by her inability to communicate with her mother, a woman long recognized in her family and throughout the world as a gifted communicator.  No More Words is a moving and compassionate memoir of the final seventeen months of Reeve's mother's life. Reeve writes with great sensitivity and sympathy for her mother's plight, while also analyzing her own conflicting feelings. Anyone who has had to care for an elderly parent disabled by Alzheimer's or stroke will understand immediately the heartache and anguish Reeve suffered and will find comfort in her story.

[cbcdiversity]

Industry Q&A with author Tanita S. Davis

Tell us about your most recent book and how you came to write it.

I read a newspaper account of Theresa Sparks, who was formerly a man. I was struck by what she had to say about love and family, and I wondered if my own family could have survived a transgender member intact. During this time, the hatemongers under the banner of the Westboro Baptist Church were up to some headline-grabbing stupidity, and I found myself wondering if people who claimed Christianity could ever love someone enough to accept them – thus Happy Families came out of a lot of quiet thoughts. It challenged me to explore my own hidden fears and beliefs and to make a personal resolve in favor of love.

Do you think of yourself as a diverse author?

Who is your favorite character of all time in children’s or young adult literature?

A tough question; the answer changes almost hourly, but today, my favorite character is Dicey Tillerman, from Cynthia Voight's Homecoming, Dicey's Song, A Solitary Blue, etc.

Dicey is kind of a harder-edged Anne of Green Gables. Homeless, orphaned, has to make unpopular decisions to care for herself, and yet she believes in the intangible against all expectation. Her reality is ugly –and yet, she can still take the leap of believing that something is going to break, and things will get better, and to make it happen.

Hypothetically speaking, let’s say you are forced to sell all of the books you own except for one. Which do you keep?

I would keep In Every Tiny Grain of Sand by Reeve Lindbergh. This is both a picture book, prayer book, almanac and multicultural celebration. I've been thinking about this for about an hour, and ...this is the book I come back to, because it sort of reflects my internal world.

What does diversity mean to you as you think about your own books?

Diversity means embracing all of my stories –all that makes up me –and yet not letting any one part of what makes me always be the winner or the victor or look the best. Diversity for my own writing means letting reality percolate through my stories, and then stretching the story wider so that everyone can find their place, and the commonality of the human experience is lifted above all.

What is your thought process in including or excluding characters of diverse backgrounds?

I try to write inclusively, and yet, you can't stuff the U.N. into every scene and have it be good writing. I don't want to condescend – "Here, we can add your little group in there, too!" –yet I want to acknowledge that we are privileged to be given this blank slate, as writers, and we can people our worlds with anyone. Especially in areas of society or thought which are traditionally dominated by either sex, or dominant-culture populated, we have the opportunity to give the gift of allowing a young person to choose Option C, instead of the A and B choices with which they've been presented for much of their lives.

Please write an example of a paragraph that is tone deaf when it comes to cultural diversity, then write the correct version. Explain the differences in the third paragraph.

Paragraph 1 

The almond-eyed girl stood in the lunch line, the silken black curtain of her hair nearly obscuring her exotic beauty. As usual, she walked very slowly, since her nose, as usual, was buried in the physics book cradled in her arms. Behind her, Marisol clicked her tongue impatiently. “Chica, wake up!” She snapped. “Some of us have things to do!” She shot a glance across the cafeteria, and blew a kiss to a table full of boys. Laqueesha shook her head, her gold hoops swinging. “Girl, don’t you be messin’ with Anna. You know she always got her face in a book.” The chocolate-skinned girl leaned over Anna’s shoulder, her smile sly. “Now, Anna, honey, how much smarter than everyone else do you got to be?” Paragraph 2  

Anna, scowling over her phone, only moved up in line because Marisol practically stepped on her heels. Anna shot her a dirty look, then took an exaggerated step forward in her leather combat boots. “Sorry,” Marisol muttered, grabbing a pencil from the bun on her head. “Physics test.” In front of them, Laqueesha turned, looking amused. “We went over those proofs last night,” she reminded her friend. She turned to the texting girl behind her. “Hey, Anna, what’s Aric up to?” Anna grinned, ruffling her hand over her nearly shaved head as she gave Laqueesha an exaggerated leer. “I don’t French and tell, baby!” 

Explanation

The predominant stereotypes addressed, of course, are that Asian females are exotically beautiful, demure, submissive and, like all Asians within stereotype-land, scholastically brilliant, Latina’s are hyper-sexualized and hyper-emotional –the fiery Latina is always ready to go off. The African American stereotype I chose is of the large, anti-intellectual and grammatically challenged Mammy figure. Other problems are linking people with comestibles to describe them. While there’s nothing wrong with having heavy characters, grammatically challenged characters, or even hypersexual characters, I prefer to avoid the stereotypical labeling. Anna is both Asian and more edgy, speed-texting her man; Laqueesha studies with Marisol, who completely obsesses over physics. The best way to keep from being offensive is to see one’s characters as real people, and not a sort of collection of characteristics that “everybody knows” are just like them. One size never fits anyone.

Tanita S. Davis is the author of Happy Families, the Coretta Scott King Honor Book, Mare's War, and A La Carte. She lives in Northern California.