The Wine-Dark Sea

The soldier has a lance piercing Jesus’ side. You can see the nails in Jesus’ hands and feet.

Bella says the rainbow, flowers, clouds, and wreath above Jesus’ head symbolize Heaven.

It’s really late now, after the feast of the Presentation so the Christmas season is gone no matter how you stretch the definition. But I wanted to write a bit about the books the kids got for Christmas and Epiphany. Perhaps it’s just as well that I’m only getting to it now because I can fill in a little about which have been favorites.

[Sorry about the Amazon buttons. I really prefer the look of the images without the “buy now” buttons; but they take twice as long to cut and paste into the blog as the pre-made button. And yes, we do get a little bit of money for the Bettinelli book fund if you buy after clicking through from one of our links. Thank you for supporting our book addiction]

I’ve already packed away the Christmas books so I can’t remember all the new ones we got. I know we did enjoy these two:

The Donkey’s Dream—we didn’t get to read it more than a few times before the Christmas book were packed away; but I love the way the book delves into traditional Marian imagery. The kids might not understand it all; but boy did they get it.

Joy to the World Tomie de Paola, a great collection of some of his best Christmas stories. It duplicates a couple we already have but it’s nice to have them all in one volume. And Sophie really loved the story of Los Posadas, though it was the way that you love a roller coaster or a haunted house, a delicious scare with the devils paired with the reassurance of the familiar Biblical Nativity Story characters.

Georgia O’Keeffe by Georgia O’Keeffe This isn’t a children’s picture book, strictly speaking, but I believe in giving kids books with real art and it is entirely suitable for young children. We’d checked this one out from the library last fall and the girls loved it and I loved it. Even Ben liked looking at the pictures. Georgia O’Keeffe is one of my favorite painters so I love being able to share her with my children. I saw an exhibit of her work at the Dallas Museum of Art many years ago and I still treasure that experience among all my experiences of looking at paintings. There is something marvelous about Georgia.

What is truly wonderful about this book, which I didn’t realize the first time we had it, is that it is a book by Georgia and not one about her. Consider these notes from her Acknowledgements for the original edition:

I wish to thank William Einstein, a painter, who died some years ago, for urging me in the early thirties to write about my painting.

He went away and I forgot about it until Virgina Robertson found the writing a few years ago and encouraged me to continue.

Juan Hamilton has helped me with this book for the last three years and has taken care of many details, from collecting the paintings and arranging the photography to working with the color proofs and layout.

I love that the text is all Georgia’s own words about her art rather than some art critic’s explanation. It is a delightful window into her own thoughts about the paintings and is so fresh and vibrant. Bella loved when I read it to her. She wouldn’t let me stop but kept begging for more and more and more. She said the words helped her to see the pictures and to understand them.

It’s a big book, large full-color panels. Luscious. This copy is an ex-library copy with that nice durable library binding. I don’t feel so worried about the kids paging through it because it’s already stood up to quite a bit and it isn’t new and crisp.

Emily by Michael Bedard pictures by Barbara Cooney
This is a sweet little story about a girl who meets Emily Dickinson. Even though Bella has no previous acquaintance with Dickinson, she loves this picture book. Of course, she’s already predisposed to love everything by Barbara Cooney. Reading this book along with A Snow Story has prompted Bella to begin asking, “What’s a poem?” She thought she knew but both of these books present very metaphorical definitions of poetry, which puzzle her because she is still a very concrete thinker in many ways. Some day soon I need to use this book as a launch pad to get us into more Dickinson. I think Bella would like that very much.

Emma by Wendy Kesselman illustrated by Barbara Cooney A story about a 72 year old grandmother who takes up painting when her family present her with a picture of her childhood village that doesn’t match up with her memory. I love the lesson that it is never too late to learn a new skill. Bella, Ben an Sophie, all seem to like this book. Recently they’ve been playing at being artists and I think this fits into that game nicely.

Joan of Arc: The Lily Maid by Margaret Hodges illustrated by Robert Rayevsky, a beautiful version of the story of a medieval saint. I love the medieval feel of the illustrations. It’s fun for us because I was able to point out that the girls’ beloved St Therese once dressed up as St Joan. So far she hasn’t become a part of Bella and Sophie’s playing; but I’m sure that day will come.

Saints Lives and Illuminations by Ruth Sanderson. This volume focuses on saints from the first centuries of the Church. (It does include Constantine, who is considered a saint by the Orthodox churches but not, I believe, by Catholics.) Many of these saints don’t make it into children’s saints books very often, so it’s a nice mix. Includes St Nicholas, St Lawrence, St Helen, St Ephraim, St Catherine of Alexandra, St Benedict and Scholastica, St Mary of Egypt, and many of the Irish saints. I love it. The illustrations are gorgeous and it’s a book worth lingering over. 

Psalms for Young Children by Marie-Hélène Delval. I was of two minds about this book. On the one hand I know from personal experience that children are able to appreciate the beauty and grandeur of the psalms without any need to translate them into simpler language. My children do listen as I pray the psalms and I can tell that the psalms speak to them. They speak to their hearts even if they don’t understand all the words. On the other hand, I do like the simple paraphrases of one or two main ideas from each psalm. They choose verses that speak to children’s various needs in prayer and I think provide a nice entryway for children into making their prayer into a real conversation with God, expressing their fears and desires, vocalizing their praise and petitions, in short the full range of human emotion and experience. So I would say that this book is not a substitute for introducing children to the richness of the book of psalms, the Church’s universal prayer; but a good supplement to such an introduction. Just as when teaching Shakespeare, I might have children read a simplified prose version first before diving into Shakespearian language, I see these versions as a way to highlight some of the main themes of the psalms in a plain, everyday language any child can understand.

The Library Lion by Michelle Knudsen illustrated by Kevin Hawkes A sweet story about a lion who loves story time at the library. Indirectly it’s also a story about rules, especially about the times when it is necessary to break the rules. Also about admitting you are wrong and seeing the good in people who are different. The pictures are magical, reminiscent of Robert McClosky’s Make Way for Ducklings. Ben, Sophie, and Bella all love it and request it; but it seems to especially speak to Ben.

Little Blue Truck, this book was one I picked up at Target on a whim to fill out the gift roster for Ben and Anthony but we have all come to love it. One of those rare books that has a rhyme and rhythm that is delicious to read, with plenty of fun animal sounds. It’s the story of two trucks: a friendly little blue truck who befriends all of the animals, and a too-busy, stuck-up dump truck. The dump gets stuck in the mud and Blue gets stuck while trying to help get him out. Then all the animals who couldn’t be bothered to help the rude Dump come to Blue’s aid. Despite their collaborative effort, the animals can’t budge the trucks until the little green toad saves the day. A perfect book for my truck-crazy boy.

Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed board book by Eileen Christelow. Ben loves to jump on my bed while chanting, “No more monkeys jumping on the bed!” So this board book was a no-brainer.

Shark vs. Train I’m not a huge fan; but I seem to be the exception. Ben and Sophie and Bella all seem to like this one. Ben and Sophie more so than Bella.

Rose of Lima by Mary Fabyan Windeatt

Actually not a picture book but a chapter book. Rose is my confirmation saint; but sadly this is the first book I’ve ever read about her. Bella and I loved it and it gave us much to talk about and think about. Today Bella was pretending to make a stations of the cross int he back yard just as Rose used to do in her garden. It has fired Bella’s imagination and that is the best sign of a book that has done it’s job. I’ve been inspired to dust off a full-length biography of Rose that has been on my shelf for years. It was interesting too how much Rose’s life was an imitation of St Catherine of Siena. I’m still slowly nibbling away at Sigrid Undset’s biography of Catherine and so was able to appreciate that aspect of Rose’s story even more. I’m finally really seeing the influence of my patron saint in my life, though it took having daughters who name their toy camels Rose and Lima before I really appreciated the first canonized saint of the new world.

Homeschooling has kind of stalled out for us since before Christmas. It’s not that Bella isn’t learning, I’m sure; but formal lessons of any kind have fallen by the wayside as I’ve not had much energy for gathering myself into a purposefulness. So today it was a wonderful surprise to find ourselves stumbling into a little impromptu lesson inspired by today’s feast, which is one of my favorites.

It is a frequent custom, though it doesn’t happen every single day, for Bella to get a chapter from a longer book read to her while the boys nap. So we read her chapter of our current book, a life of St Rose of Lima. Then I read a picture book for Sophie. Then I pulled out my Bible to read to them the passage of the conversion of St Paul from The Acts of the Apostles, part of my resolve to read to Isabella from the actual Bible more often in addition to retellings from her various Bible story picture books.

After we’d read the story of Saul’s vision on the road to Damascus and his healing by Ananias and his preaching of Jesus, then I thought it might be fun to show them some art inspired by that famous story. I googled “Conversion of St Paul” and clicked on Images and found the Carravaggio that I expected and a Michelangelo. Then I found this great Biblical art website that has catalogued a most impressive number of images of the subject, four pages of thumbnails. We didn’t look at all of them, there wasn’t time. But we clicked through to see quite a few of them. We had fun trying to identify which figure was St Paul, where the light was, or where Jesus was. It was interesting to try to figure out why each artist interpreted the picture as he had. Then Bella told me that none of them looked like what was in her mind. I told her that if she wanted to she could try to draw it; but she said she wouldn’t be able to get it right. Bella and Sophie had no idea that this was a school lesson and they are developing visual literacy. They just had fun looking at the pretty pictures.

Some of the images we looked at were from illuminated manuscripts and one, by Fra Angelico, was clearly from a psalter with the square neumes of chant notation so I turned on my iPod and played the girls the Invitatory Psalm from today’s Divine Office podcast while we looked at the image and I briefly explained that the picture was from a song book and would sound something like the one we were listening to.

One image that caught Isabella’s eye was very colorful and very modern looking. The link took us to a gallery of images from a contemporary Chinese artist, He Qi. So we clicked through and looked at all the images in the gallery, and Bella was able to identify the subject of almost all of them, thus demonstrating to me both her visual and her Biblical literacy. She immediately knew the subject of the Finding of Jesus in the Temple, the Annunciation, the wise and foolish virgins, she identified an Agony in the Garden as Jesus on the Mount of Olives with the apostles falling asleep while he prayed. (Here’s the index to the gallery where you can see all of He Qi’s work. I’m in love and have spent hours staring at all the images in the galleries)

We couldn’t actually tell which character in Brugel’s painting is meant to be St Paul.

We had a nice little side trip because Sophie spotted the one picture that wasn’t a conversion of St Paul but an image of the Road to Emmaus. So they asked me what that story was and I retold the story in my own words. (One of my favorites, because my parents used to own a Catholic book store called Emmaus.) That led to Bella asking about why were the women in the upper room and us discussing whether the apostles taught Mary about Jesus or Mary taught them about him.

Then Anthony woke up long before we’d exhausted the girl’s curiosity, which is probably a perfect place to end.

Bella was captivated by this one but neither of us could figure out which figure is supposed to be St Paul.

We’re all still sick and the house is a terrible mess from days of everyone being too tired to pick up properly; but it was one of our best learning days in a while. Isn’t it funny how that happens? Isn’t it funny how this spontaneous excursion was so much better than anything I might have planned ahead of time? Why do I spend so much time worrying? If I just rusted more I would see that Our Heavenly Father has it all taken care of.

And now it is time for me to go to bed. I think today was Day 6 of everyone being sick. I’m ready for this saga to be over.