Frog and Toad Are Friends, by Arnold Lobel -- Day 78

Arnold Lobel’s Frog and Toad Are Friends is an outstanding saga of friendship between two very different personalities. Toad – well, he’s a bit grumpy. Frog – always ebullient. In the first of five short chapters for new readers, springtime has arrived but Frog cannot get Toad to arise and enjoy the sunshine even though Toad has been asleep since November.

“What you see is the clear warm light of April. And it means that we can begin a whole new year together, Toad. Think of it,” said Frog. “We will skip through the meadows and run through the woods and swim in the river. In the evenings we will sit right here on this front porch and count the stars.”

“You can count them, Frog,” said Toad. “I will be too tired. I am going back to bed… Come and wake me up at about half past May.”

Frog resourcefully pulls off old calendar pages until he gets to May. Toad awakes exclaiming “Why, it is May!” and runs outside with Frog to enjoy the springtime. This is just the first of the loving and supportive gestures between Frog and Toad. Frog tries to find just the right replacement button for Toad; Toad tells Frog a good story when he is sick; Toad worries about looking funny in his bathing suit; and when Toad longs to receive a letter, you can imagine what happens.

“Dear Toad, I am glad that you are my best friend. Your best friend, Frog.”

“Oh,” said Toad, “that makes a very good letter.”

This, like the other Frog and Toad books, is a simple testament to civilized conflict resolution! Lobel is the well-loved author and illustrator of numerous fine books, receiving the Caldecott Medal and Caldecott Honor award among many others. His stories are gentle and truthful. Ages 4-8.

Yours for Justice, Ida B. Wells: The Daring Life of a Crusading Journalist, by Philip Dray, illustrated by Stephen Alcorn -- Day 77

Yours for Justice, Ida B. Wells: The Daring Life of a Crusading Journalist by Philip Dray is an inspiring story of a determined and influential woman. Ida B. Wells was born in Mississippi during the Civil War; her parents were slaves. When she was about three, the Emancipation Proclamation freed her family, and Ida’s parents immediately began to strive for a new life. The oldest of eight children, Ida was a great help to her parents. She learned to read in school and helped with chores; she especially enjoyed reading the newspaper to her father, who could not read. When she was sixteen, Ida lost her parents to yellow fever. Not wanting her family broken apart, she pledged to take care of her siblings; with the help of her grandmother and other relatives she managed to do so by becoming a teacher. Eager to be a writer or journalist, she never hesitated to speak up about issues in society and even sued a railroad company when she was unceremoniously removed from a train car due to her race. She did not succeed in her suit but was heartbroken primarily because Jim Crow laws were adversely affecting so many black people. She put her thoughts about the facts of the day into print, inspiring others to seek the truth about conditions under which people suffered. Deeply saddened when a good friend of hers who owned a small grocery store in Memphis was killed, she was horrified to learn that her friend’s death had been a lynching (an execution outside the law) provoked merely by her friend’s business success. Blacks fled from the community in fear, and no one would stand up for the truth. Knowing that lynching was killing innocent people, Ida dedicated herself to writing and speaking about it; those who wished to silence her burned her newspaper offices. Relocating to New York City, she published an article for the New York Age, a well-known black newspaper. She believed that “the way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them,” and she did. Opposition to lynching was not the only campaign in which her words made a difference. She was a founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), worked for integrating public schools and establishing kindergartens for black children in Chicago, and joined the woman suffrage effort (indeed, integrating it by refusing to march separately from the white suffragists). Stephen Alcorn’s dramatic artwork conveys the narrative of this illustrated biography perfectly; further notes about Ida’s life, the practice of lynching and a timeline are appended. Ages 7-11.

Brave Irene, by William Steig -- Day 76

When Irene’s mother, the dressmaker Mrs. Bobbin, falls ill and can’t deliver the duchess’s new ball gown to the palace, Irene declares she will deliver it despite the impending snowstorm. “I love snow,” Irene insists, dressing warmly after carefully packing the pretty dress into a big box. She sets out across the landscape, box on her tiny shoulder, as the wind gets stronger and the snow deeper. In fact, the wind tells Irene to “…go hooooooome…” but she remains resolute in her intent to deliver the gown. Sadly, the wind succeeds in ripping the gown out of the box and sending it fluttering away. Irene is left to continue on through the raging storm, despite a twisted ankle and nightfall, in order to reach the palace and explain what happened. Just as she asks herself “how long a small person could keep this struggle up,” dawn arrives, the palace is in sight and, miraculously, the ball gown has been left by the wind on a nearby tree. Happily, Irene delivers the gown to an overjoyed duchess, enjoys a glorious evening at the ball, and is returned safely home by horse-drawn sleigh to her loving mother. Brave Irene is one of William Steig’s masterful picture books, almost mythic in its storyline with its plucky heroine demonstrating where there’s a will there’s a way. Steig’s illustrations are captivating. Ages 4-8.

Jeannette Rankin: Bright Star in the Big Sky, by Mary Barmeyer O'Brien -- Day 75

Jeannette Rankin was the first woman elected to Congress when she became a U.S. Representative from Montana in 1916, having campaigned hard, far and wide in that big state. Her colleagues in the House applauded her on her first day. On her sixth day in office she, along with forty-nine other lawmakers, bravely voted “No” to President Woodrow Wilson’s request for support in entering World War I, a vote consistent with her lifelong pacifist beliefs but ultimately costing her reelection to a next term. Her Montana girlhood had called for resourcefulness and hard work; she also inherited from her father “an easy, cordial way with others” and independent thinking, personal characteristics she carried with her all her life. While preparing for a career in social work after graduating from college in 1902, she became aware of Washington State’s campaign for woman suffrage and worked tirelessly for the cause. Moving back to Montana, she championed woman suffrage for the next four years and was rewarded when it passed in her home state in 1914. After her term in Congress, her years were filled with work for social welfare and peace. A founder of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, she was, by the 1930s, recognized nationally as a pacifist leader, speaking before Congress and elsewhere. Reelected to the House of Representatives in 1940, she was not the only congresswoman this time, but she was the only person who voted against the United States’ entry into World War II after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. In the years following, Rankin traveled widely, mostly to India as she studied closely the life and work of Mahatma Gandhi. In 1968 she mobilized women’s peace groups to march in Washington, D.C., as the Jeannette Rankin Peace Brigade in opposition to the Vietnam War, the largest march by women since the Woman Suffrage Parade of 1913. Said Rankin: “Wouldn’t it be too bad if we left this world and hadn’t done all we could for peace?” Her statue stands in the U.S. Capitol inscribed with the words: “I cannot vote for war.” Mary Barmeyer O’Brien’s biography Jeannette Rankin: Bright Star in the Big Sky, with a forward by Montana First Lady Lisa Bullock, is amply illustrated with archival photos and is a fine introduction to a principled woman. Ages 9 to adult.