Of Balloons and Children’s Literature

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As wonderful as my parents were at taking care of us, taking us to church, and taking us to fun and historic and beautiful places (in their one and a half days a week off and their three and a half days a year vacations), my literature heritage was practically non-existent. I had two reading periods as a child — one when I was in about fourth grade when I liked biographies from the school library, and one when I was in junior high. I ordered paperback books from the Scholastic flyer for about 35 cents apiece. My reading fare then was titles like Three Loves Has Sandy and Hi There, High School, in which I learned that to be popular you ought to carry things like safety pins and bandaids in your purse so that you could make friends at school.

I got a tiny taste of literature in high school and college, but, even in college, I rarely read anything besides the Bible that I would consider important today.

The first book I remember anyone giving our first child was Peter Spier’s, Noah’s Ark — what a treasure. Somewhere along the way someone told me that reading to children was important to do, and wanting to be a good mother more than anything else I had ever wanted, I followed that advice. Ray’s stepmother (who married Ray’s daddy three years after Ray’s mother died when we had been married for six months) was a first grade school teacher. She gave wonderful books to our children. That helped a lot.

Because we were always on a tight budget while our children were growing up, when I bought a book for one of them it was often a Little Golden Book or a Happy Day Book, a series of books from a Christian perspective which were at the time almost exact replicas of Little Golden Books but with a silver binding along the edge instead of a golden one. In those early 1980 days, before birthday parties became events that rival wedding receptions, Little Golden Books were popular as birthday presents. The price per Little Golden Book was about 89 cents, far lower than the $4.99 apiece price I saw at the grocery store last Friday night.

My children have never outgrown Little Golden Books, not even now after they all have children of their own. My collection has grown to the point that I now have catalogued mine, because when I find one at an antique store (where they are still a bargain, usually around $2-$3), I am often unsure whether I have it or not.

On Saturday one of our grandsons picked out a Little Golden Book from our well-used stash that I don’t remember reading before. It was a story about Shari Lewis and her hand puppets, whom I watched on television when I was a girl. I understand that she and her puppet Lamb Chop made a comeback on PBS in the 1990s, but I am only familiar with her work in the 1960s.

In Party in Shariland, published in 1959, the puppets have a surprise birthday party for Shari. They make party invitations, a centerpiece, place cards, party hats, a game, and party favors all out of balloons — I told you children’s birthday parties used to be simpler. Seeing those old crafts from my childhood days was a sweet walk down memory lane for me.

Yesterday I thought about the balloons children carry around all the time — balloons we can protect or deflate. I want never to deflate a child’s balloon.

“Look, Mommy, see my snowball?”

A balloon protector says, “Wow, Justin. That’s so-o-o-o big! Cool!”

A balloon deflater says, “Justin, look at what a mess you are making! It’s dripping all over the floor!”

Don’t we wish sometimes that we had zippers for our lips!

Anxiety in a man’s heart weighs it down,
But a good word makes it glad.
Proverbs 12:25

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