Storied Mountains, New England, and New York

Paddle-to-the-Sea might have paddled right past my grandmother's house! (Or would have, if he existed.) My childhood mind was occupied with thoughts such as these, mixing children's fiction with its many real story elements. Paddle-to-the-Sea is the name given by a boy to a toy wooden carving of an Indian in a canoe. Set afloat in Lake Superior, the toy has all sorts of adventures as it floats through the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River, all the way to the Atlantic Ocean. If Paddle-to-the-Sea were real, he would have floated right past my childhood home in northern New York state. Even better, he would have floated in the St. Lawrence River right past my grandmother's house in Cape Vincent, New York. I can remember standing next to the river as a child, staring at the water and imagining Paddle-to-the-Sea floating by.

This blog is rooted in my fascination with place, specifically the places I know and love well. These are the places I've spent large amounts of my life in and with which I feel a deep connection. New York state, New England, Pennsylvania, the Appalachian Mountains. As a child (and adult), my imagination has extended beyond the real settings of fiction to the landscapes of history. I have often stood at a historically significant place, trying to visualize what happened there. "This probably happened near that tree. That building would not have been there at the time...." I have stood on the sidewalk near the New York Public Library in Manhattan while trying imagine a large hay field in which George Washington's Continental Army skirmished with British soldiers in 1776.

Of course, picturing the past and locating the events of fiction on a landscape involve much more than visualizing where this or that happened. What did a certain historical figure look like? What are the smells and sounds of history or of a fictional scene set in a real place, historical or contemporary? What were the sounds Johnny Tremain heard as he walked on Long Wharf in Boston at dawn?

This blog will explore the real aspects (places, historical figures, sounds, etc) of children's fiction. This focus will be on children's literature that is set in the places that I know and love: New England, the Mid-Atlantic states, and the Appalachian Mountains. The inspiration for this blog comes from Leonard Marcus's marvelous book, Storied City: A Children's Book, Walking Tour Guide to New York City. Marcus locates the fictional characters and events of children's literature on the landscape of New York City. In a sense, you could stand on certain street corners in Manhattan and imagine a parade of children's book characters walking by you, each engrossed in their own story plots. This is an idea that I'd like to expand beyond New York City to upstate New York and beyond, mapping out children's literature set in other places. In some cases, this map and landscape work will help the reader to better understand the story, as it would with an accompanying map for Lost on a Mountain in Maine, a true story/memoir. In other instances, it will simply satisfy the readers' curiosity.

Finally, for children's historical fiction, I'll add any insights I might have on historical or other contextual facts that help the reader to understand the story a little better. Perhaps there will be a few books in which the past was not portrayed, in my view, accurately. Or maybe the story's believability is in question after a closer look at the real facts of the setting. I'll note these interpretive problems and point readers to further nonfiction resources that establish the story's context.

I have always done this background investigation as I read children's literature. But with this blog, I'd like to share my insights and discoveries with you. Each post will focus on a single book and in addition to text, will contain maps, videos, pictures, and other devices to facilitate readers' understanding of what's real in children's literature.