Pete’s a Pizza – Come to Life

Sometimes, picture books come invading your life.

We had a particularly fun experience of a picture book coming to life last week. 

During the coronavirus panic, my wife and I have been trying to take the boys outside as much as possible. We–like everyone–have also found ourselves needing a break just from working and giving childcare at our homes. We had the thought, “How can we shake things up, go somewhere, without breaking any of the social distancing guidelines?”

We hatched a plan which took us to Schreiner Park in Kerrville, TX. The trip was great for several reasons:

1. Because there is  a significant day use fee and because we were so earlier to arrive, basically nobody was in the park.
2. We were just hiking, and so even though we basically didn’t see people, we were still safe.

So, it was a wonderfully successful day. We had a long hike that was perfect for a 3-year-old, and we followed that by eating a picnic lunch in an empty campground (we had our pick of unused campgrounds). 

After eating, though, was when the most fun began. James saw several unused barbecue grills, and James wanted to play on top of one of those that was built down low over a fire pit. He was nervous to climb up on it, though, and asked me to help.

I said, “Sure, I’ll help you.” But then, I started to carry him to a normal, waist-high grill that was also at the camp. “I’m going to cook you like a hot dog!”

So, I sat him on the grill and made some sizzling noises, and he giggled. Then, he wanted down, so I sat him down, and he ran off, yelling, “You can’t catch me.”

I yelled myself, “My hot dog’s running away. Catch that hot dog!”

So, we played that game a few times. There were three grills in the area where we were playing, and each got its turn.

But then, James wanted some variation. He said, “Make me a pizza!”

I knew immediately what he was talking about. He was remembering William Steig’s Pete’s a Pizza. 

Quick flashback: My first real job was working for a summer as a library assistant when I was in high school, and my favorite task was to go through every single book in the library and place a barcode on it for the new automation system. I particularly relished going through the picture books because, to be honest, I had never read the picture books growing up. I learned to read on encyclopedias and a few Golden Books. I’d vaguely heard about all of these books, but I didn’t know them firsthand. So, the barcoding process was slow as a result of my reading all of the picture books.

Pete’s a Pizza was a new book in the library that summer, and it really charmed me. I wasn’t sure what about it made it stand out. It’s so simple: a boy is stuck inside because of the rain and so his father and mother make him a pizza by laying him out on the table as dough, applying some “toppings” (just paper and stuff), and cooking him in the “oven” (the couch). But it was sweet and funny, and whenever I needed to make a storytime emergency project to serve as our back-up unless a storytime presenter failed to show up on time, I made my first lesson out of Pete’s a Pizza. (That presentation went to good use, by the way, a few weeks after I made it.)

So, years later, when I happened across this interview recommending Pete’s a Pizza as a great depiction of a father in children’s literature, I had to pick up a copy. It is now in the normal rotation of books I read with my three-year-old.

And James remembered it at the park! So, that became the game. I would catch the pizza. Lay him out on a picnic table. Knead the dough. Add tomatoes (which is a little ticklish for the pizza). Add pepperoni (which is a little more ticklish for the pizza). Add cheese (which is very ticklish). Then, I would gather the pizza up (sometimes with the help of sous chef Mommy) and cook him on one of the grills. 

He would then run away, and we would have to catch our dough boy.

It would all start over, and I swear, we did it fifteen times. He never got tired of it, but eventually, we just had to go. It was a lot of fun though.

And it was a lot of fun reading Pete’s a Pizza before bed later that night.

Quiet Streams Flow On

Those who love gardens know that they tend to be filled with surprising charms. Flowers bloom in a lively color you didn’t expect. Or a plant you had not intended to cultivate (a.k.a. a weed) sprouts and…actually looks quite nice next to those hydrangeas.

It was in this spirit of serendipity that I recently stumbled upon Reginald Arkell’s novel about gardening, Old Herbaceous. The book, first published in 1950, tells the story of how Herbert Pinnegar came to be a gardener for a modest English manor and how for sixty years he fought battles, armed with his watering can and spade, to make his garden flourish. The novel is full of beautiful descriptions of flora, eccentric British villagers, and the portrayal of an admirable central character who lived a life of dignity in pursuit of a worthy cause. I recommend the novel highly.

I was particularly struck by one unlikely passage, about Bert Pinnegar’s quiet life in the garden during World War I.

“During this period Mr. Pinnegar — kept at home by Anno Domini and a game leg — was a tower of strength in local affairs,” Arkell writes. “If this had been a history of England instead of the story of a garden there would have been a lot to write of those days; but in the village the quiet stream flowed on.”

Old Herbaceous contains plenty of beautiful sketches of lush gardens, but this isn’t one of them. I doubt that this rather nondescript passage would stand out to most people, but reading it at this particular moment, these sentences struck me as epiphany.

I’m obviously not alone in feeling anxious about the current state of the world. The coronavirus rampages outside the walls of my home, threatening especially my father and my infant son inside. And it, moreover, threatens to even further enhance the frenzies of xenophobia and illiberalism that have been raging through the Western World. This moment, all the chaos and fear, the ineptitude of politicians and communities at being able to join in unified purpose, it all seems like a frightful preview of catastrophes that lurk in humanity’s future as the much larger problem of global warming picks up steam.

And of course, Donald Trump is the President. His poll numbers earlier this week ticked a little higher even as he mismanages and lies his way through this, his biggest, crisis.

In these days, the values that I cherish most — moderation, truthfulness, rationality, and compassion — are certainly not absent in the world, but they feel to me to be waning.

I’m reading a lot of Matthew Arnold right now.

In response to the daily horrors I read in the news each day, I like so many have resolved to do the little things I can think to do to fight for a better world. I spend a fair amount of time — too much probably — reading the news and writing and trying in little ways to advance the causes (climate change, health care, wealth inequality, etc.) that I most care about. Trying to persuade politicians and partisans to think and do the things that I would like for them to think and do is continually a frustrating and dispiriting effort, though.

But even more basically, I sometimes find myself pretty overwhelmed by stress and anxiety, just thinking about how to get through. I seriously ask myself, several times a day, How am I going to stay sane?

That was the question in my mind as I read about Bert Pinnegar toiling in his garden while World War I raged. Of course, I thought, a garden!

Isn’t that an appealing thought? That in a garden, even amidst the raging tides of history, quiet streams still flow.

And so that is what I have focused on for the last several weeks of working and social distancing from home. Along with my wife and my three-year-old, I’ve spent evening after evening in our backyard planting zucchini, tomatoes, peppers, watermelons, cantaloupes, okra, and squash. To beautify our scraggly yard, we’ve cleaned out overgrown shrubbery, overseeded grass, and put in geraniums and impatiens. We have a lot of work still to go, and I look forward each day to finishing up my computer work so that we can finally dig in outside.

Time in the garden provides me with much needed respite from the daily doomsday newsfeed. Old Bert Pinnegar in his garden reminded me that I owe it to myself, if it is at all possible (and I certainly recognize my extraordinary fortune in having the means, property, and health necessary to practice this hobby), to spend all the time I can in spaces of quiet beauty and peace. Doing so is a form of practical self-care that I seem to have been ignoring since the hustle of life picked up sometime around junior high.

But I have also found that taking time to tend the garden has, perhaps paradoxically, provided me with a well-spring of energy to devote to the political and humanitarian causes that otherwise wear me down. Gardening, I think, has done so mainly by reminding me of the things I’m fighting to achieve. Sometimes, it’s easy to get trapped thinking I just want to win. But that isn’t my end goal. Rather, what I’m shooting for is to contribute to building a better world — what the Greeks called eudaimonia, or what we today might call blessedness. When I dig in the dirt alongside my son as we encourage the life of our backyard to thrive, I can glimpse something of the future that I would like to leave for my son: a verdant world which humans can happily and healthily and humbly inhabit.

I recall that Jesus advised his followers to “Consider the lilies” rather than to worry — which is some rather bold advice given that he was surrounded by contentiousness that would lead to his death. But there’s a lot of wisdom in the thought as well. If you want to actually change the world into something better, that means that you should go ahead and begin to live in that future world in whatever ways you can right now. For Jesus, the Kingdom of God was at hand, right there to begin living in, no matter what Rome was doing. If you could recognize that, then you were totally free to consider the lilies.

Desperate times like this one may be the most important ones in which to pause and take hikes along hillside trails, till up a patch of ground in the backyard and play in it with your children, or sit at the window and watch the birds that light upon the feeders outside. Spending time in the garden and being grateful for its simple but abundant beauty is necessary to keep the forces of bitterness and despair at bay at this moment when good cheer, courage, and truth are especially needed. In times of trouble, those are important ways to keep up the fight.

Life in a garden is not easy. Herbert Pennigar himself himself calls gardening “one long war with Evil, but the victory is worth winning.” I fear that I, and perhaps others, have allowed our gardens to go too long untended, and they have grown thorny, wild, and unfruitful. Now, even though there may be months of winter to go, it’s a good time to pick up a hoe and begin to put things in order.

Tomie dePaola (1934-2020)

I just wanted to say a few words about the passing of Tomie dePaola.

He’s one of the only picture book authors that I remember from my childhood. The only picture books we had in my household growing up were Little Golden Books. But in Texas schools, you are guaranteed to read The Legend of the Bluebonnet and The Legend of the Indian Paint Brush if you read no other books in twelve years. And so I did and loved them both.

In adulthood, with children and when I worked as a librarian, I finally discovered more of the full dePaola world, and I enjoyed everything I ever read to the point that I have a rule of checking the clearance shelf of all book stores for any of dePaola’s 270 books. I’m guaranteed to purchase any book I find by him which is not already on our shelves.

We read five books each night before bedtime, and so tonight, I was conscious to choose a selection of dePaola books in tribute. The thing that surprised me, in collecting the books, is just what a wide array of stories he managed to write and publish.

My favorites are Jamie O’Rourke and the Big Potato and Jamie O’Rourke and the Pooka because they’re hilarious and I get to show off my decent (at least for my audience of sub-three-year-olds) Irish accent.

I started with them and of course also chose a couple of the Strega Nona series.

But there were more. I’ve long admired and been touched by dePaola’s religious folktales, like The Clown of God. My three-year-old often requests the dePaola-illustrated Book of Bible Stories. 

We have the American folktales, too, of course. The Legend of the Poinsettia is a favorite which I’ve added to the previously mentioned childhood favorites.

Then, we have the stories inspired by dePaola’s childhood. We have a poetry anthology. We have a cute Too Many Hopkins book that I don’t think has ever been particularly popular (but sure is with my son).

I love the poetic I Love You, Sun I Love You, Moon by Karen Pandell which dePaola illustrated.

We have more, too, but all the Christmas books we have by dePaola are packed away.

He wrote so widely that I almost don’t consciously connect all of those books as going together!

Reading Mr. dePaola’s obituaries, I’ve been thrilled to discover that there are other, progressive strands of his writing of which I’ve been so far unaware. I know what my kids are receiving for Easter.

I’m sad to hear of Tomie dePaola’s passing. But what a wonderful writer and illustrator he was!

Workers Write!

I have a poem out in Workers Write! More Stories from the Classroom—which is a phenomenal journal that centers around a different occupation in each issue. Obviously, this one is on teaching.

I read the whole volume and thoroughly enjoyed it. My poem–“A Report on My Administration of the AP World Exam”–is one of the lightest inclusions in the volume (which makes sense).

Here it is, available at Amazon.

Dorothy Sayers Project

I’ve vowed to read a minimum of five Dorothy Sayers works this year and have gotten off to a pretty quick start.

1. Whose Body? – This is the first Peter Wimsey mystery, and it felt like a first novel. Wimsey and the other characters all seemed to be a little too much caricatures, made up primarily of quirks in this one. Also, there were some remarkably clumsy moments, as when the servant Bunter (who I love, of course) writes a letter to Wimsey comprised of dialogue. The ending was easy to see early on, too, and I was a little put off with some of the language about Jewish characters (I’m aware that Sayers has been criticized for that often). I still liked the novel, on the whole, though. Wimsey and Bunter were funny, and the work had a clear moody atmosphere, and the story was original enough. It felt to me like the first book of a series, clumsy but promising.
2. Clouds of Witness – This was a much better Wimsey novel than the first! It’s actually a little surprising how quickly Sayers was able to hit her stride. Several elements that annoyed me slightly about Whose Body? were entirely absent here (i.e. Wimsey seemed like a real character, and Bunter was charming and efficient…but not a cartoon). The mystery was enjoyable and took a while to figure out, as this had multiple threads going on. So, I enjoyed the plot, and the novel, as a whole, read quickly and with a sense of humor. Overall, I thought that this novel definitely stood alongside the best of Agatha Christie.

 

 

Books To Get Rid Of:

This is just a spot to list the books that I’ve read this year, that have been on my shelves forever, and that I intend now to discard.

1. Eye of the Needle by Ken Follett – I loved Ken Follett novels…when I was in junior high. Sometime in high school, I picked up this novel (which is also one of Follett’s most famous and successful) for free or cheap. And I’ve moved it with me to house after house ever since. I finally got around to reading it, and I discovered (1) my tastes have changed since junior high and (2) they’ve improved a lot. This one had a fine premise and some well-written characters. But, I also found it sensationalist and silly.
2. Front Porch Tales by Philip Gulley – This one may actually be difficult to get rid of. Basically, these are short (very short) nonfiction stories, often centered around memories from the author’s childhood in rural Indiana. The ending manages to be a tie to the gospel reading for the week, as Gulley is a Quaker minister and each of these stories was really a sermon or reflection for the congregation. They can be pretty hilarious and often wise. I’m not sure, though, that it’s going to be worth a lot of rereading, and so I think I’ll follow through and pass this book on to someone else…
3. The Old Man of the Moon by Shen Fu – This is a short classic that I picked up several years ago. It’s basically a chapter from an early biography about the author’s marriage to Yun that works as a stand-alone piece. Shen Fu was an academic/civil servant in 18th Century China who was early married to his cousin. Shen Fu and Yun were madly in love, and Shen Fu was devoted to his wife, as she was quirky, intelligent, passionate, and bold. They were also a little bohemian, and so their life together was destined to be fleeting. I thoroughly enjoyed this little book, though I don’t see myself rereading it. It details fascinating aspects of a foreign culture, but more than that, this is a poetic portrayal of a couple of doomed souls.
4. One Corpse Too Many by Ellis Peters – I honestly think I purchased this book in high school from an overstock bookstore in an outlet mall. When I got home with it, I was disappointed to discover that it was the second book of a series, and so I never got around to it until recently (after I’d finally read the first of the series, A Morbid Taste for Bones. I loved the book, just like I loved the first of the series. In this one, Cadfael is tasked with burying the bodies of the executed losing army who had defended Shrewsbury Castle during the siege by King Stephen. As Cadfael goes about his task, however, he discovers one corpse too many, and that corpse has evidently been murdered in a way that the others were not. This begins the task of discovering–amidst a sometimes hostile occupying force–who had a motive to kill this mysterious boy. The novel is fantastically well-plotted, with several convincing red herrings. The ending was easy enough to figure out before you go to it, but it was all still effective. Cadfael himself was sort of a marvel, and I’m very tempted to dip into the television series. However, I bet I can resist for a while since I’ve so enjoyed the first two novels of this classic mystery series. I do plan, for certain, to get rid of this copy of the book because it’s damaged. I think I can repair it enough to give to the Little Free Library in my town.
5. The Odds by Stewart O’nan – I purchased this on clearance several years ago because I wanted to read more by O’nan. Later, I found out that it was one of his least popular works, and so I’ve been slow to get around to reading it. I did, though, for this project, and you know what, I think it’s underrated. O’nan dissects a marriage that’s falling apart around the 25th anniversary. Both members have made mistakes that haunt and haunt them. Both have hurt each other’s self-esteem; both have fragile egos themselves and are easily hurt by the other. Even when they try to be kind, they often fall into habits that diminish their partner. The couple is on a last-ditch redo of their honeymoon to Niagara Falls with a crazy scheme of making a huge gamble in the casino to go for the infinitesimally small shot of saving their finances and their marriage. I found the book to be tightly written, with believable characters. I think the book isn’t more popular because these aren’t always the most likable characters, but I really appreciate books that try to understand very flawed people. (Heck, I love Georges Simenon. I’m not bothered by unlikable characters). And O’nan nailed the ending (I won’t give away at all what it is); it really surprised me. In the end, this was an insightful and impactful little story.

 

Updated 5.1.20

Book Project for 2020

I have two book projects for 2020. So, that’s a lot fewer than normal! Perhaps I’ll get them both done.

1. Books-to-get-rid-of Goal:

Basically, we’re overrun with books in the house. We’ll always be overrun with books in the house. But still, we do have a lot of books bloating the shelves that are not likely to be books I want to read more than once. Indeed, there are quite a few that I have held onto for years, intending to read and then discard, but I never discard them because I never read them.

So, that’s the goal: read 10 books this year that have been on my shelf for years…and that I get rid of afterward. (So, if I choose to keep the book afterward, it wouldn’t count.)

In a related sub-goal to this one, I intend to get rid of two books for every book that I purchase this year. I expect the choices to be brutal…which will hopefully keep me from buying as many books.

2. Dorothy Sayers

Last year was really a year of heavy reading, and I kept finding myself wanting to read some more for guilty pleasure. So, I decided to choose Dorothy Sayers as my author for the year. I think you can say that she’s a guilty pleasure reading, for the most part. But she’s also brilliant, and I read some of her thoughts on education while I was in graduate school. I think she’ll be both fun and thoughtful, and I’m looking forward to reading 5 books by her in the next year.

The Best Book I Read in 2019: The Overstory by Richard Powers

Looking back, 2019 was a good year of reading for me, with a variety of fun reads from multiple genres. My honorable mentions on the year include The Executioner’s Song by Norman Mailer (which surpassed my low expectations by a vast margin), The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben, Jane and Prudence by Barbara Pym, and In Good Company by James Martin.

But the clear standout to me, that has changed me a little for every moment since I finished it, is Richard Powers’s Pulitzer Prize winning The Overstory. 

Here is the review I wrote a few days after finishing it:

The Overstory by Richard Powers is the best novel I’ve read in years. I often sort of miss those experiences reading in elementary and junior high, when I could find myself so thoroughly lost in a novel and could sense myself having been subtly (or sometimes profoundly) changed after reading one of the great ones. Even if there are plenty of books I enjoy out there, those sorts of experiences are increasingly rare in my reading life as I age. But The Overstory was an exception. I read it slowly and found myself to be thoroughly relishing every moment.

The novel is unique in many, many ways. Indeed, as much as I liked it, I’m guessing that I’ll have trouble recommending it to many people over the years. The first section introduces all of the characters, pretty well in a short story format, and each of the stories, trees play a role, as the characters find themselves increasingly conscious of the mysterious figures hovering in a position adjacent to their lives. After the first section, the rest of the novel weaves the stories of these characters together as they go about their lives, being changed and enlivened by encounters with trees.

I think a lot of people are likely to read paragraphs like that last one and think that a book that’s as much about trees as it is about humans is a silly idea at best, and more likely a boring one. But to me, everything worked about the novel. I cared about the characters. Indeed, this was the rare novel featuring a large cast of characters where I didn’t feel as though there was a drop-off between any of the stories. They all are compelling.

More importantly, Powers is aware that he is trying to effect a change in the reader in how they conceive of trees and how they orient their lives toward trees and the natural world. To this end, the novel is wildly unique in managing to weave science, history, mythology, and humans stories to make its case and its story. I can think of pretty well no other novels (Tolstoy is the only other writer who comes to mind) that have been both this ambitious, morally urgent, and accessible.

Where I Was From

Where I Was From was a pretty entrancing book. It’s quite a mixture of things (sort of like its subject–California). It starts by recounting Didion’s family’s history of traveling (as part of the Donner Party) to California and settling in the Sacramento Valley. Didion then explores the massive railroad and irrigation projects that ‘settled’ California and the self-image that developed out of its western image. From the mid-twentieth century, Didion details the similarly massive, government-sponsored factories which built military planes and formed the basis of California’s twentieth-century boom…but which ends in a tragic economic crash with people trapped and lives crushed. In each of these woven stories, Didion sees similar themes: an imagined frontier open to seemingly endless growth which ends up being exploitative and destructive before moving on to the next iteration of this similar cycle.

An Amazon reviewer called it “profound and sad, half poetry, half NPR, half Men to Match my Mountains.” That’s dead-on. The book is informative and meditative, sometimes beautiful, sometimes bleak. While I don’t think Where I Was From is as memorable as Didion’s Slouching Towards Bethlehem, this book did reminded me a lot of her best essays from earlier book, particularly in Didion’s clear-eyed view of the naivete of the dreamers she is studying. This is well worth a read, and it has left me eager to move on to Didion’s more personal writings.

Book Goals for 2018

I’ve never posted my specific reading goals for 2018, but I find it really helpful to make a list to push me to be reading particular things. Here they are:

*Out of all books, 50% +1 should be written by women.*

*I will allow books to appear in two or more categories this year, just so long as the categories are covered.*

Five books by Joan Didion:

1. Slouching Towards Bethlehem

2. Where I Was From

3. Blue Nights

4. Political Fictions

5. The Year of Magical Thinking

Ten Nature Books:

1. The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating – Elizabeth Tova Bailey

2. Field Notes from a Catastrophe – Elizabeth Kolbert

3. A Walk in the Woods – Bill Bryson

4. The Solace of Open Places – Gretel Ehrlich

WELP, I DIDN’T FINISH THIS ONE.

Two Newbery Medal Winners:

1. Caddie Woodlawn – Carol Ryrie Brink

2. The Hero and the Crown – Robin McKinley

Three Books by Texas Authors:

1. The Killer Inside Me – Jim Thompson

2. Transcendental Misappropriation – Robert Harper

3. Arcane Transmogrification – Robert Harper

Two Books from the “Books I Should Have Read By Now” List:

1. Slouching Towards Bethlehem – Joan Didion

2. The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett

Four Theology Books:

1. Hallelujah Anyway: Rediscovering Mercy – Anne Lamott

2. The Road Back to You – Ian Morgan Cron & Suzanne Stabile

3. Autopsy of a Deceased Church – Thom S. Rainer

4. Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I’ve Loved – Kate Bowler