In the great green room
There was a telephone
And a red balloon
        .     .     .
Goodnight stars
Goodnight air
Goodnight noises everywhere.
                                                 from Goodnight Moon
                                   written by Margaret Wise Brown
                                            pictures by Clement Hurd
                                                           Harper, 1947

    Can you still imagine Clement Hurd’s pictures of the great green room? You probably remember the old lady sitting on her rocking chair next to a table holding a telephone and a bowl full of mush. And the picture of the cow jumping over the moon in its scalloped frame. And the little mouse that appears on each page. What makes this simple story so incredibly memorable?
    In my blog celebrating 20 years of Harry Potter (7/31/2018), I made a list to define a literary classic. As I said then, I based the list on my training and experience as a children’s librarian, and my pleasure in reading to young children, (my own and other people’s), not-so-young-children, and reading to myself. Yes, I read children’s books. Really, I mostly read children’s books.
    Here’s what I came up with then, and I think it still holds true.

1. Re-readablility: How many times can you read the same book and enjoy it? Can you find new details that add to your understanding or your child’s? Is it still fun to read and listen to? 
2. Characterization: Are the characters real? Do they do real things and think real thoughts? Can  both you and your child identify with them? 
3. Philosophical: Does the book help you and your child understand what it means to be human? Life lessons in classic literature are hidden. They’re subtle. Are you still thinking and talking about the book and character(s) even after you finish reading it?
4. Emotional: Is the ending satisfying? Surprising, but tied up? Leave you feeling good? Even the sad ones, like Charlotte’s Web and Where the Red Fern Grows?
5. Sturdy: Is it able to stand the test of time? 

    Part of the reason Goodnight Moon keeps its charm after hundreds of readings, and I’m sure I’ve read it many hundreds of times, is because familiar objects and routines are just a little bit mixed up with the unfamiliar. It’s comforting to lie in bed getting sleepy surrounded by the cozy and familiar, but on the very last line of the book, the child narrator says “Goodnight noises everywhere.” Is she addressing the noises, wishing they would let her sleep peacefully? Or is she simply acknowledging and accepting their very existence, both the familiar and the strange.?             
    Questions without answers abound. Who will eat that presumably cold bowl of mush. Why say goodnight to nobody? Where is the old lady at the end of the story? These questions and others keep the story interesting time after time, for the children and their grown-up readers.
    Only one character, the narrator, describes her surroundings. And unless you count the old lady or the kittens or the little mouse, which I don’t, we watch her perform her bedtime ritual alone, saying goodnight to everything important to her. Even both moons, the real one outside her window and the one drawn in the picture of the cow jumping over it, and even that bowl of mush. In 1947, it was a ground-breaking move to write of the mundane in a children’s book.
    We see life lessons in Goodnight Moon. Children need routine and curiosity, relationships both real and fantastical, a firm grounding in their real surroundings and the freedom to imagine.
    Goodnight Moon is tied up at the end with a surprise. We, as readers and listeners,  expect the whole process of bedtime rituals to end with a parent’s kiss on sleepy eyelids. What we have is just as satisfying, but just a little unexpected. After saying goodnight to the outside world, we return inside to those familiar nighttime noises.
    My last criterion, can the book withstand the test of time? Well at 75 years and counting, I vote yes.
    People buy about 800,000 copies of Goodnight Moon every year. This includes gifts for new babies, personal purchases, and library copies. By 2017, the latest information I could find, an estimated 48 million copies have been sold. You can find copies published in French, Spanish, Dutch, Chinese, Japanese, Catalan, Hebrew, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, Swedish, Korean, Hmong, German, and Armenian (both the Eastern and Western dialects). 
    Even though the actual 75th anniversary of Goodnight Moon will not be until September 3, 2022, I decided to give the book and Margaret Wise Brown a little extra love and celebrate early. 
    So much changes in our fraught world. Sea-levels are rising and extreme weather events continue to wreak havoc on our Earth’s resources, plant, and animal life including our own. Wild fires rage. Laws change to promote the minority’s will. And all any of us can try to control or even influence (people, things, and ideas) are those nearest and dearest to us. 
    Just like Goodnight Moon’s narrator, we need to identify those things most precious to us, but unlike her, instead of saying goodnight, let’s fight back, with our words and our actions. 

                                        Be curious! (and courageous)  

    We were so far away from the sun that it didn’t look big anymore. It just looked like a very bright star. We were leaving the solar system!
                                         from The Magic School Bus:
                                             Lost in the Solar System
                                                written by Joanna Cole
                                            illustrated by Bruce Degen
                                                         Scholastic, 1990

    I was 16 years old in 1968, the year the Rock Musical Hair opened on Broadway and ignited the Age of Aquarius. Peace, it predicted, would guide the planets, and love would steer the stars. It would be a time of harmony and understanding. Sympathy and trust would abound. No more falsehoods or derision. Living dreams of golden visions and mystic crystal revelations would fill the earth. And the mind’s true liberation would be cause for celebration.
    Some lyrical interpretation makes a better narrative, but the gist is still here, even though we’re all still waiting for those predictions to come true. Seems like planetary alignment is more important to poets and astrologers than it is to astronomers and cosmic science in general. 
    But dreaming is important, even crucial to being alive in this time fraught with fear of so much that is out of our control. And real danger, too.
    All month astrology and astronomy are traveling companions, of a sort. Five major planets are aligned in the early morning sky. They have been visible without a telescope for most of this past month (June) and Friday (6/24/22), if the clouds stay away, will be the best day to look for them. About 45 minutes before dawn look toward the eastern horizon. At south-south east you’ll find Mercury pretty low in the sky. A little higher and about due east you’ll find Venus. A crescent moon comes next. Then look a little higher still and a little farther south. You’ll see Mars. Past Mars, Jupiter appears due southeast (is that a thing?) and higher still. Finally continue turning till you’re due south. You should be able to see Saturn a little lower in the sky than Jupiter. Here's a link to an article from Sky and Telescope. Scroll down till you see the skymap. 
    Sunrise occurs at 5:51 here in my part of Ohio, so I’ll need to be in my backyard by dawn, about 5:00. The birds start singing good morning, calling each other to my birdfeeder around 5:30, so it will dark and quiet. Trees clutter up my horizon. I'll need to take a short drive across the street to the country!
    Our sister planets all orbit the sun in similar orbits so being able to observe a conjunction (two or three planets close together) is fairly common. Seeing these five, though, especially in their order of distance from the sun, is pretty rare. According to astronomers, the planets won’t line up again like this until August, 2040. 
    Robert Fitzgerald, a prominent British astrologer says astrological ages shift about every 2,160 years. He says in The Astronomical Journal (02/06/16), we are at the edge of the Age of Pisces and about to enter the Age of Aquarius. We’ll be moving into an era of “genius and science, revolution, brotherhood, utopian ideals, immortality, and world culture.”  
    Okay, I’ll keep waiting, but I’m not as patient as I was when I was 16.

             Be curious! (and work toward the Age of Aquarius)

…word spread
from the port
to town
through the countryside
and into the fields
that a Union general read from a balcony that we were all
now and forever free
and things
would be
all different now.
                                           from All Different Now:
                          Juneteenth, the First Day of Freedom
                                         written by Angela Johnson
                                           illustrated by E. B. Lewis
            Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2014


    I remember when we celebrated Abe Lincoln’s birthday and George Washington’s birthday on their real birthdays. I remember when Decoration Day became Memorial Day. We all knew when D-Day was, and Armistice Day, and Pearl Harbor Day, too. 
    Names change to become more inclusive, dates change to become more convenient, and very occasionally, a new national holiday is added to our calendar to emphasize a particular aspect of American heritage or celebrate an event in American history. 
    Congress has considered national holidays honoring both Susan B. Anthony and Caesar Chavez, each for their contributions to American society. Since 2011, Congress has discussed, on and off, a proposal to make Election Day a national holiday. None of these suggestions has become reality.
    In 1934, FDR established the second Monday in October as Columbus Day, a national holiday. “Congress believed that the nation would be honoring the courage and determination which enabled generations of immigrants from many nations to find freedom and opportunity in America.” (Congressional Research Service Report) In 2022, many people choose to celebrate Indigenous Peoples Day on the second Monday in October instead. 
    Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday has been celebrated as a national holiday since Ronald Reagan signed legislation in November, 1983.
    All together, we celebrate eleven National Holidays. Here they are. Even though Juneteenth has been celebrated, mostly in Texas, since June 19, 1865, it took over 200 years for Americans to recognize its importance and for our president to establish the day as a national holiday. Many people still don’t know why June 19 was selected for our newest national holiday, the first since 1983.
    Here it is: Juneteenth commemorates the end of the Civil War, the official end of slavery, and celebrates the significance African American heritage has added to our culture.     
    On January 1, 1863, in the midst of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln, through the Emancipation Proclamation, declared all enslaved people to be legally free. But that freedom could not take effect in places still under Confederate control. This included the western-most part of Texas. It took two-and-a-half more years before the announcement could be made telling the enslaved people there, that they are free.
    On June 19, 1865, Major General Gordon Granger along with 2,000 soldiers, rode into Galveston and explained that the Emancipation Proclamation combined with the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States assured their freedom throughout the land. The 250,000 formerly enslaved people of Texas were finally and legally free. 
    The joint resolution of the amendment was signed by President Abraham Lincoln on February 1, 1865, and ratified on December 6, 1865. In the language of the amendment, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”
    The phrase “except as a punishment…convicted” was the cause of much agony. Its misinterpretation led to lynchings and Jim Crow laws, and did nothing to assuage ingrained, generational prejudice.
    In the century and a half since the end of the Civil War, our citizens, Black, white, brown, young, old, men, women, and everyone landing anywhere on the spectrum of these several dichotomies, grapple with what it means to be American. 
    Juneteenth can be appreciated by everyone. It’s a national holiday honoring our Union, the defeat of division, and a celebration of African American influences on American culture.
    Despite recent and current pushback, the US is becoming more diverse and more accepting. Our holidays and celebrations highlight and lift up our differences, and our similarities.
                           Happy Juneteenth!

                             Be curious! (and celebrate each other)​

Do not stand there, Reha, says Amma. Come in or stay out.
It’s the old superstition,
    .     .     .
neither inside nor outside,
            .     .     .
A metaphor, as Amma says,
for not doing anything halfway.
                                           from Red, White, and Whole
                                                      by Rajani LaRocca
                                  Quill Tree Books/HarperCollins, 2021
   
    When I was in grade school, I spent birthday money or my weekly allowance coins at my local dime store to buy, among other stuff, lucky rabbits’ feet. I don’t remember how many I had. They had a way of getting lost or borrowed or given away and needed to be replaced. Some were dyed pink or blue. I preferred the plain white ones. Their claws were still attached. On the opposite end was a round metal clasp, like a cap. A chain made of tiny balls was threaded through a small hole at the top so it could be clipped to a keychain or necklace. 
    Like most of my friends, I carried a rabbit’s foot on my keychain for good luck. When our teacher handed out tests, purple-inked ditto sheets, sometimes stapled together, sometimes just a single page, we’d all lay our rabbit’s feet on our desks. For good luck, in case the studying and generic prayers were not enough to ensure our success. Just in case.
    One year, maybe third or fourth grade, our teacher told us “No rabbit’s feet in my classroom.” She gently explained that the good-luck charm had cost a living animal its life. 
    Why in the whole world had I not made that connection before? I was appalled. And now I had a dilemma. What would be the best way to rid myself of the sad and disgusting dead foot of a once living, furry bunny? The other sad part of this story is I don’t even remember. Maybe I gave it to a younger friend who did not have my same teacher. Maybe I gave it to my brother. I know I did not throw it away. That would have been sacrilegious. I’m not even sure I knew the word, but the idea of throwing away even part of a once-living being was as appalling as keeping it. 
    During a conversation with my older daughter we started talking about superstitions. She suggested that superstitions are portents of something bad. Unless you did a particular thing or carried or said one thing or another, something bad would happen. Black cats, ladders, and broken mirrors came to mind. But like carrying that rabbit’s foot, I knew sometimes superstition could foster good luck.
    The New World Encyclopedia defines a superstition as “a way of attempting to regain control over events, particularly when one feels helpless.” 
    Understanding why events occur is one of humanity’s deepest yearnings. When something good, or especially when something bad happens, a common response is Why me? The quest for answers has led to many superstitions. 
     Often superstitions are born through coincidence. Who besides me has a lucky shirt or a penny? or pair of socks? or fork? or pencil? … Sometimes the item wards off the bad, and sometimes it attracts the good. I’ve been known to walk under an open ladder, just to see. (BTW, nothing happened.) I’ve also been known to toss a few grains of spilled salt over my shoulder, just because.
    Some superstitions are particular to one society or culture or group of people. Some are more universal. Breaking a mirror will bring bad luck is a superstition believed in many cultures. It may have begun in Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome whose citizens attributed a person’s reflection with a connection to a their soul. Viewing your reflection in a pool was akin to seeing your soul. When artisans learned how to put a high sheen on metal, they believed their gods could see their souls in these reflective pieces. Later, when mirrors were made of glass, they became much more likely to break, often due to poor handling. It was considered so disrespectful that “people thought it compelled the gods to rain bad luck on anyone so careless.” ("The Conversation" from the University of South Carolina)
    But maybe superstitions are really related to our attitude. If we think something bad will happen, but we carry a four-leaf-clover, or find a face-up penny, we’re likely to be more aware of the moment. We can ward off the bad happenstance through our own sensitivities. Likewise with “good” luck. If we expect good things will happen, we’re more likely to work toward that end. 
    I’m really more of a “gray” person than one who lives in the black and white of the world, but opposites are one of my fascinations. I keep a list of them. So I wondered, what is the opposite of superstition?
    Expecting something in the spiritual realm or something faith-based, I took a quick peek at the antonym for superstition on my computer’s built-in thesaurus. What I found was not really a surprise: science.
    Pure and simple, science is based in fact. But science is ever-changing and very complex. And we’re acquiring new scientific knowledge all the time. That doesn’t change the science, but it does change what we know to be true. At least until we learn the next new thing.
                                              -—be curious! (and believe)