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| Times Square, July 1961. Source: Wired New York |
People. It's Monday, it's March. In like a lion, baby....
I'm tired. I know, you are, too.
I'm in the midst of midterms.
I think I've started grinding my teeth.
Winter won't end, gas prices are skyrocketing, and Charlie Sheen is still an asshole.
My great respite today was reading to AJ and CT from "The Cricket in Times Square". Now, I'm as big a fan of JK Rowling as the next girl, but reading George Selden's tale of a (rural) cricket in the Big Apple reminded me of all e.e. cumming's kid lit and that these guys are really from an era-gone-by. We had started into Roald Dahl's "James and the Giant Peach" but when, after the first two pages, James' parents had been killed by a wild rhino and he'd been shipped off to live to two horrible aunts (way to preview that one, mom!), Auden informed me that we needed to read something else because "this is a little bit too upsetting". So we settled on a story of three talking animals and a young boy, in our hometown, at a time when eight year olds could man their parents' newsstand in the Times Square subway station on Saturday night, and the 1, 2, and 3 trains were still the IRT.
Shortly after his arrival, Chester the cricket ventures above the train station for his first view of Times Square:
...Above the cricket, towers that seemed like mountains of light rose up into the night sky. Even this late the neon signs were still blazing. Reds, blues, greens, and yellows flashed down on him. And the air was full of the roar of traffic and the hum of human beings. It was as if Times Square was a kind of shell, with colors and noises breaking in great waves inside it. Chester’s heart hurt him and he closed his eyes. The sight was too terrible and beautiful for a cricket who up to now had measured high things by the height of his willow tree and sounds by the burble of a running brook….
Gradually Chester’s eyes got used to the lights. He looked up. And way far above them, above New York, and above the whole world, he made out a star that he knew was a star he used to look at back in Connecticut. When they had gone down to the station and Chester was in the matchbox again, he thought about that star. It made him feel better to think that there was one familiar thing, twinkling above him, amid so much that was new and strange.
3 comments:
I remember when my mom read that to my brother and I the first time about a year after we had moved out of New York to MD. It was cool to know where they were talking about.
Have you read The Mouse and the Motorcycle to them?
Thanks Renee. We have read The Mouse and the Motorcycle, and Ralph S Mouse. I've been seriously contemplating launching into the HP series this summer. I think AJ's ready (I'm def ready to do it all again!). The real joy for me is that he continues to enjoy being read to despite what an independent reader he's become. I know of families who have kept this ritual up well into their children's teenage years. There's also a book coming out this summer called "The Reading Promise" by Alice Ozma, an autobio about a father/daughter commitment to read-aloud.
And now I'm answering a question you didn't even ask....ahem....yes, we know all about Ralph and his motorbike. --B
We just had to send this up to you guys when we came across it in some books that I had read to the children here in daycare. It was just so appropriate for Auden and where he lives, etc. Makes us feel all bubbly inside to know that he is enjoying it as much as we did while reading it to numerous children down here. Love to you all.
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