“Pa!” Mary cried. “They didn’t even wait for my prize tomatoes to ripen. They ate them green!”
“Pa!” little Clarinda said. “What happened to your socks?”
I looked down. Glory be! Those infernal [grasshoppers] had eaten the socks right out of my shoes—green socks. All they left were the holes in the toes.
I next wrote in my Notebook that we had two very different kinds of grasshoppers that summer. We had the usual quick little emerald ones decorated all over with black speckles. And then there were huge bright yellow ones, twice as big, and torpid, so waxy and fat that they bowed down the grasses when they landed. I had never seen these before. I polled everyone in the house (except Grandfather) to find out where these odd yellow specimens had come from, but nobody could tell me. Not of them was the slightest bit interested.
As a last resort, I rounded up my courage and went out to my grandfather’s laboratory. I pushed back the burlap flap that served as a door and stood quaking on the threshold. He looked up in surprise from the counter where he was pouring a foul-looking brown liquid into various beakers and retorts. He didn’t invite me in. I stumbled through my grasshopper conundrum while he stared at me as if he was having trouble placing me.
“Oh,” he said mildly, I suspect that a smart young whip like you can figure it out. Come back and tell me when you have.”
Two grasshopper stories: not a coincidence. I started reading Calpurnia to Rose and Beanie today (with Rilla listening in and, after a bit, curled in my lap picking out words Scout Finch-fashion), and when it came time for me to read a story to Rilla, I went straight for McBroom. If I’d thought about it in time, I’d have hunted up Joyful Noise: Poems for Two Voices; there’s a grasshopper poem in there, I’m sure. In fact, I can picture a hopper on the cover. Maybe tomorrow. Today has rolled on to the next thing. Polly Pockets for those three girls, and the Shakespeare kids coming in a bit to work on costumes for our Twelfth Night performance.
Related post: Sciency fiction and nonfiction
More about McBroom: Hoppers
More about Calpurnia Tate: Our first encounter; Naturalists in literature
More book recommendations here.
March 23, 2010 @ 8:00 am | Filed under:
Books Literary giant Sid Fleischman died on March 17th at the age of 90. I have loved his work since I was a little girl—the McBroom books are some of the first books I remember reading and rereading and howling over and collecting. Even today I can still rattle off a good WillJillHesterChesterPeterPollyTimTomMaryLarryandlittleClarinda!
The amiable Farmer McBroom’s surprising triumph over that lowdown dirty swindler, Heck Jones, who sold McBroom an 80-acre farm and after pocketing the cash revealed that the 80 acres were stacked one on top of another like pancakes—at the bottom of a pond, no less—is one of the most deeply satisfying events in print, period. (You remember the tale. Blistering Iowa heat dries up the pond, leaving an acre of soil so rich that seeds grow to maturity in minutes, and if you drop a nickel, it’ll be a quarter before you can bend over to pick it up.)
The McBroom books
• McBroom’s Wonderful One-Acre Farm: Three Tall Tales
Includes:
McBroom Tells the Truth
McBroom and the Big Wind
McBroom’s Ear (Was this the one with the heat wave? So hot the corn was popping on the stalk?)
• Here Comes McBroom: Three More Tall Tales
Includes:
McBroom the Rainmaker
McBroom’s Ghost
McBroom’s Zoo (Sidehill Gougers! Teakettlers! Oh man, I loved this book.)
• McBroom’s Almanac
• McBroom Tells a Lie
• McBroom and the Beanstalk
• McBroom and the Great Race
It was one of the first books I wrote about on this blog, back in early 2005:
I began reading this hilarious novel to the girls on a cold winter afternoon, but after Scott got caught up in the story during a coffee break, it became a family dinnertime read-aloud. At times, the kids laughed so hard I feared they would choke. We sailed with young Jack and his unflappable butler, Praiseworthy, from Boston Harbor all the way around Cape Horn and up to San Francisco. Along the way we visited Rio de Janeiro and a village in Peru. We panned for gold in California and made friends with half a dozen scruffy, optimistic miners. We found ourselves caring deeply about such oddities as rotting potatoes, dusty hair clippings, and the lining of a coat.
Caring about oddities, and making you care about them too—one of Sid Fleischman’s special geniuses.
Goodbye, Mr. Fleischman. We’ll miss you. Your imagination was as fertile as McBroom’s farm.
Elsewhere:
Memories of Sid Fleischman at Greenwillow Books (I especially loved the American Idol story).
Author Lisa Yee remembers Sid fondly in this touching post.
Lin Oliver’s moving tribute at the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators site (Sid was a founding member of the SCBWI):
“In 2003, the SCBWI established an award in Sid’s honor, for humorous writing for children. We will continue to honor his legacy by granting the Sid Fleischman Award to one deserving book each year. Sid was a great writer, a great friend, a great mentor to us all. His loss will be felt by all of SCBWI for a long time, but his work and his memory will survive.“
Related post: Hoppers.
