Knitting Iris

Woodland Folk books

We had the first in this series, Meet the Woodland Folk, by Tony Wolf, found at a thrift store a year or so ago.   Santa brought the boys the other five books in the series.  I guess he must have found them second hand on Amazon or something, or else rescued them on the Island of Misfit Toys.  That's all he brought this year.  That, and a 1 pound block of Sculpey clay.  Here are some of my favorite illustrations scanned.  Click for a closer look.

From Meet the Woodland Folk:

From The Woodland Folk Meet the Gnomes:

From The Woodland Folk Meet the Giants:

From The Woodland Folk in Fairyland:

From The Woodland Folk Meet the Elves:

From The Woodland Folk in Dragonland:

I haven't read all the stories in these yet but R has, and E has spent many hours on the couch "reading" through these.  The writing isn't always the best, although charming for the most part and filled with rascally characters from mischievous elves, raucous dragons, troublesome fairies, silly gnomes, and all sorts of other critters, even a blue fairy named Iris.  The illustrations more than make up for any little shortcomings in the stories.  The series at least ends on a good note, the build up to a war between the dragons and all the other folk of the woods evolves into a tug-of-war and even that is put to a stop by a fairy, ending in a great, friendly feast for all.  If only such fairy tales could come true.

There.  I couldn't keep these to myself any longer, finally gathering all the books into one place again and finding time to scan them.  I figured all you gnomey/acorny/woodlandy/elfin/fairy folk out there would enjoy.

   

More Josef Paleček

One more illustration from this book.  Someone recently left a comment there with a link to more scanned pictures of his artwork here, most with winter themes.

Lupines: books, seedlings, blossoms.

As well as the drawing books, we also took two picture books about lupines with us to read together on our excursion into the burnt woods the other day:  Miss Rumphius, by Barbara Cooney (a favorite, and better known around here as The Lupine Lady) and The Legend of the Bluebonnet, by Tomie dePaolo.  These books were given to us by C's dad's wife (one of the boys' three grandmas) who is an elementary school teacher.   We have read these two books countless times over the past few years or so and almost each time there is something new to notice and more to discuss.

Last month, just before Mother's Day, we read Miss Rumphius and then planted some lupine seeds that my mom had brought back to us from Norway.  (I don't think that they're any different than the seeds you can get here.)  Then, we picked out a few of the shells that the boys had found on the beach during a daytrip to Bainbridge Island outside Seattle with my parents this Spring.  R wrote out the phrase from the Miss Rumphius book, "You will always remain in my heart"  on the big shells and E drew on some of the smaller shells.  I tried putting a water-based coat of finish over the shells but the colors of the washable markers ran and blurred.  Finally just the other day, we picked up a pack of multicolored, permanent Sharpie markers and redid them.  My mom already took hers home with her during her recent visit.  These were supposed to be Mother's Day presents for all of the three grandmas.  I guess we'll send them off with Father's Day presents this week.

The single, blue lupine is "The Governor" that I planted from seed three years ago and is blooming this year for the first time.  The bouquet is of wild, Silky Lupines are ones we brought home from the woods the other day.

Mother Brown Earth's Children

This was one of the children's books that my grandmother kept, Mother Brown Earth's Children, Flower And Berry Babies, Vegetable and Fruit Chilren Combined, by Edna Groff Deihl, published in 1927 by Albert Whitman & Co., Chicago, U.S.A.  My father was born in 1931 and his brother a few years following so I'm assuming this was a book that was read to them as children.  It's not in the best of condition and quite fragile so I have only flipped through it reading a few pages here and there.  I'd like to at least try and read each story through at least once or twice to R an E if I can.  It's filled with short stories with titles like: How the Onion Got Its Smell, Honey Plum's Lesson, The Brave Violet, Reddy Currant and her Country Cousin Gooseberry, and (!) Naughty Goldie Peach.  This book comes from a considerably simpler time, but still holds true for today.  The writer was open minded from what I've read so far.  In one of the stories her social commentary may be written in an outdated way but the areas she covered such as tolerance, racism, and immigration issues, are still current, only she's written about them in a way that is geared toward children in the guise of a story about California fruits and imported asian fruits.   It's a good read for children and adults alike and mostly just fun stories that are cleverly written.   Check out her Preface, above.

These are some of my first attempts at scanning so bear with the crooked pictures, please. They didn't turn out quite as clearly as I had hoped but click on them for more detail if you'd like.