So did you know that it’s
Spring? Yeah I know, I keep forgetting too. But no matter what the weather is
like, Spring is here, and so is Easter! Eggs, chocolate, bunnies, chocolate bunnies, the whole
thing. And as usual, I am here to enhance all that holiday fun with books!
Books with poetry, books with lessons, and books with bunny rabbits! Lots of
bunny rabbits. So join me in hopping down the Bunny Trail (I’m sorry, just one
Easter pun I promise!) as we look at some of the ways to celebrate Spring
(especially if you’re a talking rabbit).
This is a classic Easter
book written back in 1939, about a cute little rabbit who wants to be an Easter
Bunny. Thankfully, she lives in a Rabbit society where there are snobby rich
white rabbits with monocles and overconfident jackrabbits who mock little
country bunnies when they aren’t being beaten in races with tortoises, and five
Easter Bunnies who are chosen by the great Grandfather Bunny, who lives in the
Palace of Easter Eggs. How people haven’t caught on to this magic rabbit
society I`m not sure, but whatever. She wants to be an Easter Bunny, but she is
both a hick country rabbit, and a girl, so that’s never going to happen. So she
gets married and does what all rabbits do: has a million babies. Does her
bunny army make her dreams impossible? This is a fun little story, and
surprisingly modern, with its girl power motif, and message that being a Mom or
being a simple country girl shouldn’t stop someone from living their dreams. It’s
a fun little piece of late 30s fun, when even though the country was a mess,
kids could still read about the magic Easter Bunny world, and the little bunny
that could.
Did you ever read the
Little House on the Prairie books? It was one of the first book series I ever
read as a kid, and it sort of left me with a bit of a soft spot for covered
wagon “prairie style” stories. There was something about the great expansive
outdoors, and the little family trying to make it in the great outdoors as the
grass blows in the wind and the great sun sets in the West. This might be why I
liked Dandelions, a children's picture book about a family moving out to the prairie and trying to
survive. But what I really love are the pictures. It's beautifully drawn, with lots
of great colors and pictures of the prairie and the sun and flowers growing. To
me, I always associate this sort of story with Spring. The fresh start, the
flowers symbolically blooming on the prairie (this happens in A LOT of these
sorts of stories), and the importance of the great outdoors. And if nothing
else, it will give an appreciation of pretty colors, and your GPS (you could get really lost on those prairies.)
So you might have read
some of the things written by Thoreau in some English class, and you may or may
not remember it. Thoreau was a 19th-century writer, naturalist, and philosopher who was really into nature and how being
in the outdoors could help your emotional and political life. He wrote a lot of things
in his life, on a TON of topics, but his favorite subject was
nature, and his favorite thing was Walden Pond. Walden Pond is actually not a
pond at all, but a pretty sizeable lake (much bigger than you would expect
reading this book- I’ve been there, and I swear it’s huge) in Massachusetts
where Thoreau lived alone in a cabin for a while. If you want to do some
reading about the importance of nature, and the beauty of Spring, this is a
good place to look. Thoreau’s writings are generally quite accessible, and he
has a lot of interesting things to say about a variety of things, but I love
his stuff about Spring on Walden Pond. To me, while it’s not exactly poetry, it’s
pretty darn close. Nowadays, Walden Pond is a big tourist place with gift shops
and a beach, but it’s still easy to find a nice quiet place to enjoy the
outdoors. And that is kind of the point of Spring right? Just sit back, relax,
and watch nature do its thing.
So, Spring time. I hear
it still exists somewhere. Even if the weather out there right now might not
scream Easter Bunnies or pretty flowers, we can at least look to books to think
about a time of flowers blooming, and flood warnings on the Ohio. Whether you
feel like kids’ books, or some philosophical rambling by a transcendentalist
loner, there are plenty of books out there to cure that case of pre-Spring
fever. Or at least spend some time questioning an Easter Bunny-based government
while chilling at a pond that's actually a lake. Oh, and from this blog's title you thought I was going to write about basketball, didn't you?
CP
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