The Pulse on the Page

In “One Writer’s Beginnings,” Eudora Welty wrote: “Learning stamps you with its moments. Childhood’s learning is made up of moments. It isn’t steady. It’s a pulse.”

Books always have been closely connected with the pulse of my life--its heartbeat, past and present. I remember with great clarity when I first read “Peter Rabbit,” when I made my father act it out with me on the front porch and in the back yard and in the car, when I read “Charlotte’s Web” and cried. My parents taught me that books and I were connected, that what happened in books had much to do with life choices. They taught me that books were both windows into other worlds and mirrors held up so that we could see and understand ourselves.

Five new books offer us both mirrors and windows, and though they all are picture books intended for young readers, there is an ageless quality to them. Margaret Wild’s The Very Best of Friends (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich: $13.95; 32 pp.) is about love and loss and the power of friendship. Jessie and James live on a farm with “fifty cattle, twenty chickens, four horses, and three dogs.” They also live with one cat, William, whom James loves but Jessie only tolerates out of love for James.

When James dies suddenly, Jessie is so filled with grief that she stops caring for her house, her animals, herself . . . and William. Jessie shuts William out of the house and soon, without love, William “grew mean and lean, and he hated everything and everyone.” Both Jessie and William are lonely, disheveled and disconnected from life until William proves to Jessie that they can be best friends. Even a cat can teach humanity.

This is a beautifully illustrated and designed book: Julie Vivas’ paintings glimmer with color and movement, and with each reading there is more to see.

Remember first grade? The joy and anxiety, the fear and the fun of it? All of it is captured in Never Spit on Your Shoes (Orchard Books: $14.95; 32 pp.; ages 3-6), Denys Cazet’s humorous large-sized picture book, filled with animals in human dress engaging in the drama of first grade. In simple bare-boned prose, Arnie tells his mother about the hardship of the first day;

“You have to find a desk with your name on it,” Arnie said.

“It’s hard work.”

“Finding your desk?”

“Sitting in it,” said Arnie.

While we may hear about school through Arnie’s words, the illustrations evoke every child’s experience: the child who is constantly amazed; the one who is always ready to leave; the one--depicted, appropriately enough, as a beaver--who examines the details of the wood door (“nice hinges”), and wonderful Raymond, who remarks at a discussion of school rules, “Never spit on your shoes.” With Cazet’s energized watercolor paintings, this book is ideal for any child anxious about entering a new grade.

George Ella Lyon’s Come a Tide (Orchard Books: $14.95; 32 pp.; ages 4-7) is a gem of a book, written in a lyrical yet spare folk tone that rings true:

Last March it snowed

and then it rained

for four days and nights.

“It’ll come a tide,”

my grandma said,

And sure enough,

when all the creeks

rushed down to the river

like kinfolks coming home,

it did.

Lyon captures the warmth of extended family. When the flood comes, neighbors care for one another, but you get the sense that they come flood or not. The story tells us about the best in people, how they connect, and the book bursts with the joy of it. “Come a Tide” is a celebration of community.

Stephen Gammell’s watercolor and colored-pencil art gleams with color. The book, so full of rain, seems damp in your hands. Sometimes the illustrations flow a bit down the pages as if the artist was working outdoors in the Kentucky rain. An unusual marriage of art and words.

Madeleine Winch’s story, Come by Chance (Crown: $10.95; 32 pp.), is seen by one young friend of mine as a modernday Noah’s Ark story where a woman takes in those who need to survive.

“Bertha was alone,

“She had walked and walked and was far from anywhere.”

Bertha comes on a “tumble-down old house” and works to make it a place where others, alone, too, might be welcome. She names the house “Come by Chance” and hangs a sign on the house so that everyone will know.

When winter comes, a storm rages, but Bertha is ready. A cow comes first, followed by all sorts of animals who spend the winter in comfort. When springs come, it’s time for them to go.

This is a story about kindness and caring and one animal who chooses to stay. The lovely soft illustrations add a sort of larger-than-life, primitive quality to this story about what is our most primitive need--to share with others.

Readers will be heartened to hear that a house called “Come by Chance” actually exists in Australia. This is a comforting book to keep and read again and again.

In Eve Bunting’s The Wall (Clarion Books: $13.95; 32 pp.; ages 4-8), a small boy and his father have come from a long way to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial to find the name of the boy’s grandfather.

“The wall is black and shiny as a mirror.

“In it I can see Dad and me.”

The boy notices letters left by loved ones, small flags, an old teddy bear, and family and friends visiting, too. Together they find the name of the boy’s grandfather and the father puts paper over the name and rubs on it with a pencil.

“ ‘You’ve got parts of other guy’s names there, too,’ I tell him. Dad looks at the paper. ‘Your Grandpa won’t mind.’ ”

With its spare language and timeless illustrations by Ronald Himler (my favorite--showing trees, clouds and buildings reflected on the shiny black wall--suggests a connection between past and present), this book can be used with children of all ages to stimulate discussion about those who fought, those who died, those who survived. Just as important, it can be a powerful tool for eliciting questions from children about the nature of war.

It is a book as much about our own history as about the Vietnam War. As a teacher in the book says to her students: “The names are the names of the dead. But the wall is for all of us.”