Linda’s Mom preferred to assume the garb and persona of Mother Goose rather than Conan the Librarian, but if there were ever a muscular champion of children and books, Donna Unger French was it. She began in the Sixties as library volunteer in an elementary school that didn’t have a library – Mom French created one in a wide place in a hallway. Eventually each of the Aurora Public Schools had its library, and with Mom’s magical touch they became temples of creativity and imagination. They were holy refuges for readers. They were FUN! At its acme the middle school library included: an old clawfoot bathtub lined with purple shag carpet where students could lounge and read; a life-size E.T. and a menagerie of giant cut-out Sendak Wild things; doll houses and dragons, cowardly lions and witches, masks and puppets. And every good book.
Mom French’s home is still overflowing with books. Every Newberry. Every Caldecott. Racks and stacks of Bill Peet, Wallace Tripp, Richard Scary, Tomie DiPaola. When we took our kids to visit it was a marathon of reading on Grandma’s lap. Before Margaret and Josh themselves could read they could name each book’s artist with a single glance. Thirty years later, Saul knows that when he and Dad go to the used book sale at the library, they are going to come home carrying a huge sack of books.
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The Fairies
William Allingham (1824-1889)
Up the airy mountain
Down the rushy glen,
We dare n’t go a-hunting,
For fear of little men;
Wee folk, good folk,
Trooping all together;
Green jacket, red cap,
And white owl’s feather.
Down along the rocky shore
Some make their home,
They live on crispy pancakes
Of yellow tide-foam;
Some in the reeds
Of the black mountain-lake,
With frogs for their watch-dogs,
All night awake.
High on the hill-top
The old King sits;
He is now so old and gray
He’s nigh lost his wits.
With a bridge of white mist
Columbkill he crosses,
On his stately journeys
From Slieveleague to Rosses;
Or going up with music,
On cold starry nights,
To sup with the Queen,
Of the gay Northern Lights.
They stole little Bridget
For seven years long;
When she came down again
Her friends were all gone.
They took her lightly back
Between the night and morrow;
They thought she was fast asleep,
But she was dead with sorrow.
They have kept her ever since
Deep within the lake,
On a bed of flag leaves,
Watching till she wake.
By the craggy hill-side,
Through the mosses bare,
They have planted thorn trees
For pleasure here and there.
Is any man so daring
As dig them up in spite?
He shall find the thornies set
In his bed at night.
Up the airy mountain
Down the rushy glen,
We dare n’t go a-hunting,
For fear of little men;
Wee folk, good folk,
Trooping all together;
Green jacket, red cap,
And white owl’s feather.
Copied from a well-thumbed edition of Volume 1 of CHILDCRAFT, (c) 1954 by Field Enterprises, Inc. Mom French gave each of her seven children a set of Childcraft books when they left home on their own.
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A true story: When Mom French finally retired after forty (fifty maybe?) years as Aurora schools librarian, she still returned as a volunteer to read stories. We’re not sure just how she arranged this, but one Saturday night she loaded the car with books, put on her Mother Goose outfit – pointy hat, shawl, wire-rims – and drove to downtown Cleveland to a bar near the Cuyahoga River. While the longshoremen raised their beers, she read them nursery rhymes, poems, and bedtime stories. They begged her to come back again.
Mom, in each story we read and in each one read to us, we will always hear your voice.
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V E R S E ❦ I M A G E 