What Will Our Legacy Be?

The Saalfield Publishing Company of Akron, Ohio, which operated from 1900 to 1976, had its first big bestseller in 1902 with Billy Whiskers: An Autobiography of a Goat. (And I do have some raggedy Billy Whiskers books in stock.) Owner Arthur J. Saalfield was English-born, however, so it is perhaps not surprising that he published a dozen selected children’s titles as his “John Newbery Series,” paying homage to an earlier English publisher, John Newbery from Berkshire County, England, though I only learned about Saalfield’s Newbery series” from the back panel of the dust jacket to Granny’s Wonderful Chair, by Frances Browne, which Saalfield listed in his “Every Child’s Library” series. 

The Newbery Medal in children’s literature, another homage to the 18^th-century English publisher, was inaugurated in 1922, and the winner that year – the first-ever Newbery Medal book – was Hendrik Willem van Loon’s The Story of Mankind, a book with wonderful illustrations but so popular with adults that a small paperback edition was issued for the grownups. In my opinion, however, it is the author’s illustrations as much as his lively story-telling that makes history come alive. The first van Loon book I ever found was at a yard sale in 1993, Van Loon’s Geography. I was charmed and intrigued but really fell in love over Van Loon’s Lives. One of my favorite illustrations from that book was of a man – I believe it was Descartes – walking against the wind, coattails streaming out behind him.

First-ever Newbery Medal winner

So there was the publisher John Newbery, and there came to be the Newbery Medal awards, and Saalfield had his John Newbery series. Here in Leelanau County we are proud and happy to have our very own Newbery winner, Lynne Rae Perkins, whose award-winning book was Criss Cross in 2006. Lynne Rae has written books for young people of all ages, from little kid picture books to young adult novels, and it’s hard for me to pick a favorite, since I love them all. Nuts to You, for instance, a tale of adventure and friendship. Love it! Then in 2019 there was the lovely picture book, Wintercake. If you’re thinking ahead to snow and holidays, you might want to pick up a copy of this book now. 

Newbery Medalist Lynne Rae Perkins at Dog Ears Books

John Newbery, Arthur Saalfield, and Hendrik Willem Van Loon – their names live on, but I will never meet any of them, so how amazing and wonderful it feels, to know someone in the Newbery pantheon! Then I wonder -- what about the rest of us? What will we have contributed when it comes our time to leave the earth?

Squirrels and Nuts Gather in Northport

Me with Lynne Rae Perkins

Along with bookseller and hostess roles, I am generally the photographer of my own bookstore events and thus, all too frequently, appear in none of the pictures. Determined to avoid that pattern on Friday, here I am (thanks to friend Dan Stewart) with Lynne Rae Perkins-- writer, artist, friend, fellow Leelanau County resident (Suttons Bay), and our county’s only Newbery medalist (Criss Cross, 2006). We were launching her new book, Nuts to You, at Dog Ears Books, with chairs for the reading set up next door in my husband David Grath’s gallery.

Lynne's art from her book, NUTS TO YOU

David’s paintings graced the walls, but Lynne also brought some of her own art, delightful illustrations from Nuts to You. Fun!

Jed

She brought a squirrel, too! This one is named Jed, after one of the characters in the book, and for a squirrel (I was somewhat nervous when I heard he was coming) he behaved pretty well at the party. And Lynne’s husband, Bill Perkins, known more as a maker of artisan rustic furniture rather than jewelry, contributed little acorn necklaces (Lynne gathered the acorns), and every book purchaser received one, and we wore them all evening long. Is this adult behavior or squirrelly behavior?

There were raffle items, also: a Nuts to You t-shirt; a Nuts to You iron-on patch (to put on anything the winner wanted to put it on); and a brown knitted acorn cap, knitted by the artist-writer herself.

Raffle items

Early arrivals had a chance to visit with Ms. Perkins before her reading, and I know they were grateful and happy to have the opportunity.

Fans of all ages

Kids meet Newbery author

It’s a good turnout when the chairs in the gallery are all filled and the crowd spills through the doorway and back into the bookstore. It’s fun to have some little kids come, too. Someday they can tell the story to their kids: “We were on vacation, and our mom took us to meet Lynne Rae Perkins. I don’t remember much about meeting her, but we read the book over and over, year after year.” That’s what they’ll say.

Punch bowl needs refilling again

We had punch and cookies and peach pie. (My latest brainstorm for punch—I share it freely—is Kilcherman's fresh apple cider and Vernor’s ginger ale.) The honored guest herself made the sugar cookies in squirrel and acorn shapes, and another guest brought the pie. More acorns? I assembled a few out of tiny crackers, peanut butter, Hersey’s chocolate kisses, and butterscotch chips.

Author-illustrator baked treats

Bookseller assembled hers

So what do you think? Are we all nuts here in Northport, or is it only writers, artists, booksellers and booklovers? No matter, we all had a wonderful time, and I’m not embarrassed that Lynne Rae Perkins and I look like a couple of kids playing grownup in the photo below. Nuts to You is a book for all ages, I love it madly, and Lynne is one of the funnest (not a typo: I mean that just the way it reads), most talented, and most generous people it’s possible to imagine! Lynne, thank you again and again and again!

We had fun! We sold out! We are happy!

We're Gonna go NUTS!

Lynne Rae & Bill Perkins, December 2013

No, we are not planning a winter holiday party (yet); the photo above is just a fun one of author Lynne Rae Perkins and her husband, furniture maker Bill Perkins, taken at Dog Ears Books last year at Glenn Wolff's book signing. Note gently mischievous grin. Anyone who knows Lynne Rae Perkins or reads her blog knows how much fun this creative artist/author is. She’s also Leelanau County’s only Newbery Medal winner, having received the award in 2006 for her YA novel Criss Cross, which you can read about here.

In 2012 Lynne Rae did something new for her, illustrating a book written by another author, and we had a big book party to introduce Esme Raji Codell’s Seed by Seed: The Legend and Legacy of John “Appleseed” Chapman, a party complete with heritage apples, apple-decorated cupcakes, apple cider, and a real live apple tree that a lucky customer took home, along with signed book purchase.

Lynne Rae’s recently released new book, in my opinion, deserves an award all its own. The Newbery committee chair said the last time around, of Criss Cross, that “Perkins writes an orderly, innovative, and risk-taking book in which nothing happens and everything happens.” While it isn’t true that “nothing happens” in Nuts to You—which has lots of action and suspense and many surprises—there’s a lot more “happening” besides a  plot with many twists and turns.

Chapters and pictures both

“What age would appreciate the story best?” a friend asked. I’d looked into the book enough to realize it’s what kids nowadays call a “chapter book,” and yet it also has illustrations throughout, so, based on that, I guessed middle elementary. A quick online search told me that, yes, the book is recommended for ages 8-10.

Then I started reading it.

You know how sometimes a book can be just too good for only a certain age level or even only for children? The kind of book that little kids and grownups adore equally and you feel sorry for those preteens and adolescents who will miss it because they think it isn’t grownup enough for them? That’s Nuts to You. I can already hear a little boy delighting in saying to his parents and older siblings, “Nuts to you!” and then explaining that he means it in a good way, a squirrel way! I also anticipate many adults who will begin reading the “Author’s Note,” as I did, expecting a straightforward how-I-got-the-idea-for-this-story story, and then find themselves hooting out loud with laughter at the author’s meeting with a talking squirrel—and at having a sense of fellow feeling for the squirrel.

“What I love most about peanut butter,” he said, “is how it transports me to my youth. The first taste always takes me back to the very first time I had it. For an instant, I am young again, and strong. And probably foolish.”

I didn’t care for peanut butter as a girl, but for all of us there are certain tastes that carry us back to childhood, and so the adult reader is hooked then and there.

Someone I love was slightly dubious. “You’re not an ordinary grownup,” he said (not for the first time; he says it to me often). But the next day he walked into the bookstore while I was reading a page of Nuts to You to two or three friends my age, and he laughed with delight along with them. “Is that the squirrel book you were talking about?!”

But I don’t want to quote a lot from the book or say too much about what happens in the story because every reader deserves the joy of surprise that comes with turning from one page to the next. I'll tell you that there are serious, weighty issues here, below the surface, but Perkins never lets issues overtake story: when she does turn “didactic” for a brief moment, even resorting to what would formally constitute a footnote, she does it with a gentle wink:

If someone, your teacher maybe, ever asks what “irony” or “being ironic” means, you can say it’s when a squirrel says, “our friend, the hawk,” and you will be right.

Adults who read this story to young children will take a tip, I hope, from the author and not go off on a tangent and start preaching to the kids about moral equality, fair play, race relations, natural habitat destruction, immigration, and so on. Stick with the story. It's a story of adventure and friendship. Little kids will want to hear it (and older kids read it) again and again. (Grownups, too.) The lessons will come through on their own. So will the humor.

Nuts to us all!

Book party with Lynne Rae Perkins is scheduled for Friday, September 19, from 5 to 7 p.m. If you can’t be with us that day, I’ll be happy to take your prepaid order and ship a signed book to you in the mail.

Warning: There will probably be nuts and peanuts and peanut and nut products at the party. I’m hoping Lynne Rae is not planning to bring any live squirrels. An apple tree was great; a squirrel, indoors -- maybe not. Anyone wanting to pretend to be a squirrel, however, is free to do so.