INK Sisters Write

Dear Alison, Thank you for your post about Vera B. Williams . Her last art show in Narrowsburg, NY left a lasting impression on me. One I know I've shared with you. Vera's scribbles and doodles and daydreams remind me of my middle daughter. My eleven year old's notebooks, folders, and walls (yes, walls too) are as much as part of her identity as a creative as her hands and feet. At her root, she imagines and reimagines worlds, and we, as parents, let her. But your post spoke to me in another way.  I love how you read to your son each night, and it reminds me of my own son, now thirteen and the evolution of our reading relationship. Sure, my son still  sits and listens to the picture books I read to my daughters but I no longer read his books aloud to him. We react to them instead. Sort of a mother/son book club.   When he was in fifth grade, he brought home  Kick  by Walter Dean Myers from the school library.  ...

Dear Kim, We read A Chair for My Mother last night at bedtime. It is a favorite in our house. The story reminds me of my own mother and those long hours she worked at the restaurant. My son snuggles up with his mother like the little girl does on the last page. I always savor that last image: mother and child. It hit me last night though, reading the story is a bit sad now too. Reading the loving tale of mother and child (and grandmother) is now a reminder of who we lost this past October.  V is for Vera B. Williams A Chair for My Mother was Vera's fourth author/illustrated book. It won a Caldecott honor in 1983. As is the case with so many of her stories A Chair for My Mother was based on Vera's own childhood. I remember Vera speaking of her mother's wish for a new chair, how she went and bought the chair. Unlike the family in the story, her mother made weekly payments to keep the chair. She shared the hardship those payments put on her family. Vera rewrote ...