Celebrate the Author: Robert McCloskey

I’ve missed Robert McCloskey’s birthday on September 15 of this month. But considering the timeless appeal of his stories and pictures, maybe it doesn’t matter.

This book, for instance, was one of my friends as a child, and it remains a favorite as an adult with children of my own. As a child, it was the marvellous, detailed drawings of a Boston turned upside down by the confident Mrs. Mallard as she waddled through the streets trailing her brood behind her that drew me in. I remember distinctly — and it may be that this is a quality shared by all the favorite books that I’ve remained attached to since childhood — that my parents read this book to me with delight. They took real pleasure in Michael the policeman’s friendship with the ducks, and in the confused spread of honking cars brought to a standstill to allow the ducks to cross the street. Now I take pleasure in those things myself, with the additional perk that Jack, Kack, Lack, Mack, Nack, Ouack, Pack and Quack can’t be beat for teaching the short-A vowel sound and the sequencing of letters of the alphabet.

Apparently, my pleasure in this book isn’t unusual. First published in 1941, it won the Caldecott medal for McCloskey’s charcoal illustrations, and now it’s the official children’s book of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. A set of statues stands in the Boston Public Garden. Check out the Wikipedia article for more cultural effects of the book, such as the similar set of statues in Moscow, and the annual Duckling Day Parade held in Boston. Want a lesson plan? Click here. And here’s a quiz for dyed-in-the-wool fans.

Then there’s this one, easily tied for first place as a cause for celebrating this author. Blueberries for Sal, also an award-winner, has been woven into my love of blueberries, and my experience of blueberry-picking, for as long as I can remember. What little child can’t relate to Sal, the girl who can’t get more than three blueberries into her pail — kuplink, kuplank, kuplunk — without eating them? How many years did I nurse the secret hope (and terror) of meeting a bear in the blueberry patch, like Sal does? And the illustrations are amazing tributes to a bygone era of canning days, mothers who venture into the blueberry bushes clad in skirts and sweaters, and the quietness — it seems to emanate from the page — of an isolated wild berry patch on a Maine hillside. Recently I heard the sorrowful news that this book is going out of print, and I may invest in a better copy than I have. Strange, how books become a part of us. Thanks Robert McCloskey for sharing your talents, now become part of the imaginative landscape of countless children of all ages.

Head over to the September Celebrate the Author Challenge for other author birthday honors.