Bean Pods and Feathers

on early memories, a child's vocation, and mine

Good books for kids take their lives seriously. They are deeply interested in what makes them laugh and cry, rage and rejoice, tick and tock. It’s what I try to do when I write them, and what I’m looking for when I recommend them. In one of my earliest memories, I’m in a chaotic kindergarten classroom, hunching near a bookshelf, my stomach hurting. Even then, I think I found solace backing up to all those stories, sensing their potential for refuge and escape. I loved books as a kid.

my office, where I still back up to stories

My parents took my kindergarten distress seriously and moved me to a Montessori school that year. I remember there was a yard out back where a tree dropped dry, brittle bean pods. When you cracked them open there were hard little brown beans inside. I remember the pleasure of splitting open a pod with my fingernail and scooping the little beans from their hollows. My job, my vocation, my purpose was to collect those beans and take them home each day in the envelope my teacher gave me. It was all very satisfying.

These days my bean pods, my vocation, are stories. I crack them open, whether that means discovering a great new kidlit book or writing one of my own. Recognizing a kid’s vocation is just as important and life-giving to them as an adult’s is part of that secret sauce that makes a great book.

In his book Don’t Call it Art (a great book for artists, writers, parents, teachers . . . ), Austin Kleon quotes Carl Jung who asks, “What did you do as a child that made the hours pass like minutes?” For me, it was collecting beans from pods. For my son, Benji, it was feathers. He would pluck feathers from the pillows on our “fancy couch.” His work was harvesting those pillows. He would bring the feathers to me, cupped in his palms, bestowing his precious gift with wide eyes and great reverence.

I would praise his newest treasure, thank him for his gift, matching his solemnity with my own. I kept the feathers in a little envelope, same as I kept those beans all those years ago. We still have a pillow from that couch, and every once in a while the sharp shaft of a feather pokes through and I pluck it out. When I give it to my grandson, he receives it, wide-eyed, and makes it “flutter-fly” with a puff of breath. Then he goes back to building his tower or train track, diligent and determined. He has a job to do.

And because I love talking about and sharing great children’s books, I’ve got a few for you that circle around what a child’s vocation might look like. Check out:

The Most Magnificent Thing by Ashley Spires, in which a little girl struggles to build the magnificent thing she envisions, the thing that isn’t revealed until the final page.

Just One Wave by Travis Jonker in which a young boy spends all day at the beach trying to catch a wave, and finally makes one of his own

Every Monday Mabel by Jashar Awan, in which a young girl drags a chair to the driveway to do the thing she does every Monday morning. What is the thing? Suspense builds. Her parents think what Mabel does is cute and funny, her sister says it’s boring, but it turns out there are plenty of others who appreciate the arrival of . . . the trash truck!

(I talk more about The Most Magnificent Thing, and other Easter/Spring books, here. To read more about Just One Wave, Every Monday Mabel, and other books about waiting, read my post on Anticipation).

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Happy Little Things

• having our kids in our house a little while longer before they launch, one couple to CA and one (including that feather plucker) to Fort Worth

• cottonwood fluff floating on the breeze

• Wingspan, a beautiful new board game that’s a teeny bit complicated but worth learning

  

  Benji and Emily enjoying Lake Austin before moving, and Nate and Jo packing up to take off.

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  My name is Meredith Davis, and I’m an award winning writer of middle grade books, a former indie bookseller, founder of the Austin chapter of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators and graduate of Vermont College of Fine Arts with an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults. Find teaching resources and author visit information on my website at www.meredithldavis.com. Mother to three, Nana to two, I live with my husband and a crazy doodle in Austin, Texas.