I just met Harold

And isn't he quite the cutie-patootie?  I'm referring, of course, to Harold and the Purple Crayon.  On the inside flap of the picture book where Harold lives, the audience level says, "Ages 3-7."  Hmmm, I think we could squeak a lot of thinking out of our older students with this little charmer.

Take, for example, page one: "One evening, after thinking it over for some time, Harold decided to go for a walk in the moonlight."  Now, here's a superb case of illustrations working in perfect unison with the text. If we had only the text, we might think, "Okay, interesting, let's turn in the page and see what happens." But instead, we look at the picture and see a child whose head easily comprises over 40% of his chubby, pint-sized body.  He looks like a standing eight-month old, right down to his footy-pajama'd toes.  So, before we turn the page, we laugh. A baby "thinking it over for some time?"  Funny.  And a good chance to talk about irony with our older students.

And then things get totally bizarre.  Every time Harold wants or needs something, he simply draws it with, I'm not afraid to say, his rather phallic-looking purple crayon (yes, he even holds it at "that" angle).  No moonlight?  Simply draw it.  Hungry?  Nine pies should do the job.  Can't find your way home?  Just draw home, window, and bed, and crawl right in.

Oh, the places we can go with this ... stream of consciousness?  Existentialism?  Sexual symbolism?  The hero's journey cycle?

In the hands of a mature classroom engaging in serious literature study, this book offers a wealth of possibilities for sophisticated conversation. Heck, scratch that.  Why not a rowdy group of ninth graders not sure how to establish a direction for their lives?  Or an art class where the kids are afraid to make their first mark on all that white space?

Glad to meet you, Harold.

A tidbit

I finished my independent study paper a few days ago.  There were days when I thought it was the most boring lump of tripe I'd ever read.  Other times, it seemed fairly interesting and, well, not bad for an old lady in graduate school.  No grade on it yet, but I believe today is THE day.

In any case, I thought I would post a piece of it that moved me when I wrote it. It is the conclusion of the section that addresses how early reading experiences have an impact on the use of picture books in high school.  I'd been tra-la-laaaing through sources that discussed reading stages in children, adolescents, young adults, etc.  Each stage so nicely builds upon the previous one, until voila, we have a fully formed adult who relishes all sorts of reading experiences. But what troubled me were the mental images of my students who had not had any decent early reading experiences at all. No adult took them to the library for story time or folded them up in their lap to point to the pictures, "do" voices, and sigh at the end of the story.  These kids ... well, they probably arrived in kindergarten pissed.  And by the time I got them?  They had figured out how to make dang sure I was so distracted by their nutty behavior that I wouldn't notice they were terrified I was going to figure out some truths about their reading.

Anyway, the independent study paper was terribly formal. But, in a couple of places, I shared my own thoughts.  And here was one of them:
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Many of the students who have walked into my classroom did not encounter positive early reading experiences. That loss is incalculable and most keenly observed in their deep resistance to independent reading. Time and time again, I’ve seen exactly those students open their eyes in wonder (and sometimes sadness, too) when I read aloud a picture book. During independent reading, they furtively reach for the picture books on my shelves. And when my classroom is empty but unlocked, it is the picture books that most often mysteriously disappear.

To Grow Pale

My research has unearthed a TON of picture books suitable for high school use. One title that keeps cropping up is Roberto Innocenti’s Rose Blanche (1985).  Sunday, this book and I spent some quality time together—and I know it won’t be our last visit.

I often tell my AP Lit students to carefully consider the title of a book.  Allow those musings to float around in your minds as you read, I tell them, and then, when you are finished reading, perhaps some interesting insights will occur to you.  And certainly be ready to revise your initial speculations.

I tried this technique with Rose Blanche and want to share here how that impacted my reading.  So, my thoughts about the title as they occurred to me …

On the cover, there’s a girl looking out of a window. I realize Rose Blanche must the girl’s name.  These are old-fashioned names, ones a grandmother might have, yet she’s young.  So the book is set, perhaps 50 or more years ago.  Other details on the cover confirm this, as she appears to be in some sort of a makeshift military hospital, and the uniforms of the wounded men place the story in either WWI or WWII.

Then, I began to read and to look at the pictures. Rose Blanche appears in almost every illustration.  And with one exception, she always wears a large, pink bow in her hair.  “Ah,” I think, “Pink!”  In French, the word for pink is rose.  So now I ponder the word blanche … and voila, the French word for white is blanch/blanche.  Suspicions confirmed; Innocenti is asking us, though his title and illustrations, to think about color in connection with his story.

I keep reading …

The illustrations at the end of the story verify my theory that color matters.  Here’s why: throughout the book, Innocenti relies almost exclusively on browns and dark greens—specifically, army green and dirty snow brown.  Although most pages contain a tiny bit of a surprising pastel, the vast majority of every page is given over to muddy, hopeless colors. But this is not true of the illustrations on the last two pages. Although there is still plenty of green, it’s new-life spring green.  In fact, the last sentence of the text reads, “Spring sang.” And now, too, the pastels abound.  Wildflowers dot the fields and wind up their way around the fences that have, at last, been destroyed.

So … a bit more ruminating on the colors.  In the face of the horrors of war, Rose Blanche exists as a tiny, bright spot, much like the bits of color scattered throughout the text.  More interesting ideas could certainly evolve from this line of thinking (the importance of maintaining hope in the face of evil, for example, or how beauty impacts survival).

Yet, a new idea began to nag at me by the end of the story.  And it, too, connects with color.  The word “blanch” also means to grow pale.  Because of the privations of war, Rose certainly does grow paler and thinner as the story progresses.  And too, she gives  most of her food to the children in a nearby concentration camp.  So the reader literally witnesses Rose Blanche blanch.  Eventually (spoiler alert), she grows pale because dies.  A sweet rose of a girl turns white in death.

Rose Blanche sacrifices not only her food, but also her safety.  Perhaps Rose Blanche’s sacrifice saves some of the children in the story; we do not know for sure.  But we do know, I think, that Innocenti wants his readers to consider the idea that not all soldiers wear uniforms. 

Just by contemplating the title and its implications, readers of all levels and abilities have much to gain from this story.  I have barely scratched at the surface of Innocenti’s brave book.  At the very least, in my classroom, I will pair it with Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms. I find it incredibly interesting that both authors use extremely spare style to address the notion of innocence, sacrifice, and loss.  And both writers offer up a wealth of clues to rich meaning through the simple words in their titles.