105 Ways to Give a Book

Poetry Friday: Someday

We interrupt this Poetry Friday to bring you an important announcement. Monday, July 16th, is Tell An Author You Care Day — so sayeth Whimsy Books. Take some time to send some love to a favorite writer. Though in sending love, don’t show up at the author’s door with brie and a bottle of Merlot, because for some reason it comes off as creepy. Lesson learned.

SomedayBack to the poetry. I’ll admit it: Someday, by Alison McGhee, made me teary. I’m not sure whether or not that is a good thing. The book shows how a mother’s love follows her baby growing up into a woman, who in turn passes that love on to her own child. I teared up throughout, but I got choked up on the idea of me being gone and my white-haired daughter remembering me. I’m not sure if the book is too sappy or too heart-tugging, but hey, I was moved. I’m not sure that it’s really a children’s book. It’s more like a bound Hallmark card.

Here are some lines from the middle of the book, after the mom has kissed her newborn baby’s fingers, but before she watches her daughter brush her granddaughter’s hair:
Someday your eyes will be filled
      with a joy so deep that they shine.
Someday you will run so fast and so far
      your heart will feel like fire.
Someday you will swing high — so high,
      higher than you ever dared to swing.
Someday you will hear something so sad
      that you will fold up with sorrow.
Someday you will call a song to the wind,
      and the wind will carry your song away.
Someday I will stand on this porch
      and watch your arms waving to me
      until I no longer see you.
I should tell you that the line breaks are mine as most of the sentences went over two-page spreads. The book features the soft, gentle illustrations of Peter H. Reynolds, which complement the text nicely. Tissues are not provided.

3 comments:

tanita✿davis said...

Oh, wow.

Darn you withholding the tissues. Darn you, I say!

Little Willow said...

It's a beautiful book, both in text and in pictures. The collaboration of McGhee and Reynolds = SO GOOD.

Have you read any of her novels? I have enjoyed every single Alison McGhee I've read - Countdown to Kindergarten (PB), Shadow Baby (Fic/Lit), Snap (Juvie/Teen), All Rivers Flow to the Sea (Teen), A Very Brave Witch (PB - Holiday), and Someday (you are here!) - and I have been waiting for Falling Boy to come in for me at the library for a month. If Snap is good, then Sea is great, and Shadow Baby is grand.

EM said...

I feel the same way about the "bound Hallmark card" aspect. I see so many crappy manuscripts that are really love poems to the author's kids, and I always reject them with some line like, "the perspective seems more adult than kid." Then something like this comes along -- something that, despite its heavy schlock potential, is actually quite nicely written -- and sells a billion copies and gives all the grandma-trap writers unwarranted confidence. That said, I don't think it would work at all without Reynolds's art.