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November 29, 2008
A Christmas Book
Guest blogger Paul Talbot sets exactly the right tone for the Holiday Season ahead:
“What book do you want to get him?” asked my bride.
I didn’t give it a second’s thought.
“Make Way for Ducklings.”
One of our friends had asked us to pick out a few Christmas gift books for her son, who is just starting to read.
The book has been sitting on a filing cabinet for a few days and this morning I read it once again. Years ago I read it to my daughters and years before that my mother read it to me.
While we speculate, pontificate and otherwise ruminate on the directions of media, sixty-seven year old treasures such as Robert McCloskey’s book are an uncommon comfort.
Children’s books stitch together otherwise frayed generations. They fertilize family tradition and unearth lost memories of our personal history.
“Make Way for Ducklings” was published in 1941. The same summer that Mrs. Mallard led her ducklings through Boston’s Beacon Hill under police protection to the Public Garden, another kind of history was unfolding a few miles away. At Fenway Park, Ted Williams had his .406 season.
Just as baseball players lure us back into the past, just as they bind generations, so do children’s books.
And Robert McCloskey was as much a master of his craft as Ted Williams was of his.
Posted by Charles Warner at November 29, 2008 1:54 PM
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