Lily-of-the-Valley Day

I remember three French customs from A Brother for the Orphelines by Natalie Savage Carlson (pictures by Garth Williams, 1959):  masks on Mardi Gras, the April fish, and lilies of the valley on the first of May:

"The first of May is Lily-of-the-Valley Day in France.  People gather the flowers in the woods and give sprigs to their friends for good luck.  Even the president of France gets one, because ever since the days of King Louis IX, the head of the French government has been presented with a lily of the valley on the first of May."

The orphelines look for their lilies of the valley in the Ste. Germaine Woods outside of Paris, where they live in a falling-down house with Madame Flattot and Genevieve to care for them.  A Brother for the Orphelines is the third in Carlson's series of books about them:  The Happy Orpheline, A Pet for the Orphelines (cats, 12 of them), A Brother for the Orphelines (Josine, the youngest, finds a baby boy in the breadbasket), The Orphelines in the Enchanted Castle, and A Grandmother for the Orphelines.  I seem to have liked French orphans, too.  Happy May Day!

Easter eggs

We decorated eggs today. 84 of them! It's a big Anderson family tradition.  I always pull out our copy of An Egg is Quiet for inspiration (Dianna Aston, illustrated in ink and watercolor by Sylvia Long; Chronicle, 2006).  Its endpapers look like the blue speckled scarlet tanager egg pictured here; for a variety of eggs, see the first double page spread and the one for "An egg is colorful."

Other family favorite Easter books (mostly picture books, and one middle grade novel) listed here.  Which are your favorites?

Santa Lucia, Hugo and Josephine

Happy Santa Lucia Day!  This image of Lucia and her attendants comes from my childhood copy of Hugo and Josephine by Maria Gripe, with drawings by Harald Gripe (1962); translated from the Swedish by Paul Britten Austin (Dell, 1969).  Sorry about the poor image quality:  what kind of paper were Dell Yearlings printed on in the 1970s?  Anyway, there is Josephine as a maid of honor (May-Lise, the prettiest girl in the class, is Lucia) and Hugo at far left as a star-boy.

I read and loved the Hugo and Josephine trilogy as a child (Hugo has since gone missing); my other favorite Gripe book was the more mysterious Glassblower's Children.  Gripe's books must have been widely available in translation then:  Maria Gripe, "one of Sweden's most distinguished writers for children," had won the Hans Christian Anderson Award in 1974.  Now my library system doesn't hold a single copy of any of her books.  Not one.  Which is a shame:  Hugo and Josephine, the one I've most recently reread, is a delight: perceptive, often very funny, told in a distinctive present-tense and set in a place (Sweden) and time similar to but interestingly different than our own.  When I start my own press dedicated to printing neglected or OOP children's fiction, the Hugo and Josephine trilogy will be on my list.  Does anyone else remember it?

Poetry Friday: Los Gatos Black on Halloween

From Los Gatos Black on Halloween by Marisa Montes; illustrated by Yuyi Morales (Henry Holt, 2006):

Los gatos black with eyes of green,
Cats slink and creep on Halloween.
With ojos keen that squint and gleam--
They yowl, they hiss...they sometimes scream.

This book won the 2008 Pura Belpre Medal for Yuyi Morales's richly atmospheric paintings, which reflect the traditions of both Halloween and the Mexican Day of the Dead.  It also won a Pura Belpre Honor for Marisa Montes's rhyming text about a monster's ball on Halloween night that is interrupted by the arrival of [spoiler alert!] trick-or-treaters.

Montes incorporates some spooky Spanish words: see above as well as, for example, la bruja (witch), el esqueleto (skeleton), la calabaza (pumpkin), and medianoche (midnight).  I like that the Spanish words are specific to the Halloween context; this helps integrate them into the text.  The text itself is sometimes redundant (I don't think the English word is always required, especially when there are context clues, illustrations, and a glossary), but that doesn't seem to bother the kids.

What does bother them are those gorgeous, glowing paintings.  Too scary!  Maybe next year.

[The Poetry Friday Round-up is at Becky's Books Reviews today.]