Minor surgery and out-of-town guests and thoughts in Japan have me all tied up this morning, but I did get a chance to scan some pictures and update You Will Go to the Moon. Lots of folks wrote in about it when I mentioned it the other day, so I figured it was time to polish off the old post from 2007... for your enjoyment. 
Open Your Eyes
One rainy day Tim Small said
In my son's kindergarten class, his teacher always asks them to study the pictures if they need clues to figuring out what the words are, and here the pictures are the words, so it's a nice tie-back.
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Have You Seen Birds?
I almost wasn't going to write about this book today, as I know sometimes I overwhelm with the bird books, but then I dug a little deeper into the artist and decided to share the intrigue. Have You Seen Birds? was re-illustrated in a more contemporary edition, but I couldn't find much on this original. However, there is a ton about the artist. It's not often you see someone who was considered a fine art painter delve into the world of children's books. It makes me so curious as to how it came about. A Spaniard by birth, he (not surprisingly) conceived carnival performances, designed opera sets, was a jeweler and lithographer, and was married to Gypsy Rose Lee for a spell. (Here's a picture of them together from the Life Magazine archives.) His paintings have been shown all over the world, in a fascinating life story that ended in Sarasota, Florida, which if you've never been there, has a colorful artistic history unto its own. So, how did he find his way here, painting these fluid birds for children? Curiouser and curiouser.
Have you seen birds? 
Was this the only book he did? And who did he meet that inspired him or charged him to paint a children's book? Gosh, I almost can't stand it sometimes, the amount of talent in the world, swirling around. And the ones who get remembered the most, how is that decided? To me, that's the best thing about the Internet. Books like these would have slowly crumbled away, one by one. But now, somewhere in cyberspace, each one is getting slowly chronicled or remembered or talked about. Will the Internet last forever? Will it be able to handle all the information and images it gets filled with everyday? What happens when blogs like these go and someone stops paying for the domain names? Where does it go then? It's hurts my brain almost as much as thinking about the universe itself does.
All cosmic woes aside, this is a beautiful little book filled with all sorts of fabulous notions about our winged-friends. I'm glad I reconsidered it this morning.
Fun with Figures
The "Figures" referred to in the title of this book are triangles, squares, circles and other shapes drawn and used in geometry. This science was used in Egypt at least five thousand years ago to measure land flooded by the River Nile, and the name geometry comes from Greek words meaning "earth-measuring."
Only as an adult am I able to look at these pages and appreciate their meaning. See, I took pre-algebra in the eighth grade. And when I transfered into high school, the counselor mistook it on my transcripts for Algebra 1, and when I went to correct her, my well-meaning mother stopped me and whispered under her breath. "No, no... it means you get out of having to do another year of Algebra." Well, it also means I was thrown into Geometry and then Algebra 2 without the basic skills necessary to, um... how do you say it... not fail. Thus, a legacy of being always lost and confused in the ways of high school math was born. 
The boy pictured throughout is identified as 15-year-old Robert Delasso from Princeton, New Jersey. Again, I can only imagine what this child went on to do as an adult, but I'll bet his life was filled with places of higher learning like MIT and pipe smoking and strategic thinking and concepts and bridge building and architecture and engineering. Unlike me, a theater school dropout. I stink at math because my artist mother told me from the moment I popped out of the womb that I was no good at it. Maybe I could have been great at it if I'd had this book tucked under my wing. (It and its companion titles: Fun with Science, Fun with Astronomy and Fun with Chemistry). Again, who knows. What I do know, for a fact, is that figures are fun, no matter what your momma tells you.
Also by:
Up for grabs this week out of our personal vintage book collection, is this little sweetheart, Mammals, part of the wee Golden Nature Guide series. If you haven't started a collection of these yet, they are a MUST. We are always adding to ours and gifting away doubles. When I was little, no books in our house saw more action than the Butterfly and Reptile editions.
Butterfly Time
One sunny day the first butterfly of spring fluttered down and lit upon a stump in our backyard. It was a dark-winged Mourning Cloak. It spread its wings as if to warm them in the sun. We saw the bright blue spots and yellow borders. It slowly raised its wings and brought them close together above its back. We tiptoed nearer, and the Mourning Cloak stayed quietly on the stump as if not fully wakened from its winter sleep. I picked it up and it lay upon my hand as light as thistledown.
Delicate words and pictures to usher us into the pastel months. 
As a newbie Texan, I'll ignore the other signs of spring... the scorpion that bit my husband last night. The dead snake in my backyard, and its cousin who wiggled over my foot a few days later. Instead, I'll focus on the pinks and the blue and the green exploding everywhere. Using Adrienne's soft drawings as a guide for all that is good and born anew. 17 days, seven hours, forty minutes and 22 seconds to go. But who's counting? 
Also by:
The Merry Shipwreck 
Adorable ducklings. Harmlessly cute mice. Doves, rabbits, a goat, a donkey, a cow, a turkey, a goose, chickens, cats... and don't forget the parrot! Plus a salty, tattooed sailor who must commandeer a fire boat when his animals sail off and become shipwrecked and lost at sea.
Suddenly--before the parrot could say "Jack Robinson!"-- the rope snapped and the barge was headed down the river! What a lark! All the animals hung over the side to wave good-by to Captain Barnacle who was just coming back with his basket. The cow steered, the donkey poled, and the pig waved a towel at the tugs that passed. They reached the end of the river, and traveling was such fun that no one noticed when the sun slipped under a cloud. The sky grew dark. Soon there was thunder and lightning and wind and rain. Big waves slapped against the barge, rolling it this way and that. The crew bellowed and barked and bleated and meowed for dear life.
Fear not, all is well in the end, and as with all good books, this one finishes up with a party. The moral of the story? Never sharpen your teeth on a rope that holds you safely to shore. A life lesson for all of us...
Though mine is a Giant Golden Book from 1970, it's still in print in a Little Golden Book version. I found this, what must be the original dust jacket, on another blog. (Yes? No?) It's fabulous, and from the scan it looks like one of those books that would feel so nice in your hands. And that fabulous spread of Manhattan. Wow. The Merry Shipwreck is still a charmer after all the years. So great that books like this are still around for children to fall in love with.
