Betty Birney’s Blog

 Many of you students, teachers and librarians are already back in school and everybody will be back soon.

I miss that autumn transition now that I’m grown up and so are my kids. But I still feel the shift when my school visit schedule starts up again - and this time I’m hitting the road early - September 5 in Waco, TX and September 8 in The Woodlands, TX. Other stops this fall include Lincoln, NE, Vail, CO., Petaluma, CA, and Calgary, Canada.

 I get a little nostalgic about the start of school. As I wrote about last year, we’d wear our dark plaid cotton dresses, sharpen up a lot of #2 Ticonderogas and get on the bus. When I go back to visit the St. Louis suburb where I grew up, I usually swing by the high school on McKenzie Road. Just down the road is where I went to Junior High and 9th grade. It was once the high school. It’s not a school any more - just an office building - but it looks the same.

 However, I never go back to my elementary school, on the other end of McKenzie Road because it was torn down a long time ago. I guess the fact that my school is torn down makes me seem pretty darn old. The truth is, it was built in 1949 and sold in 1982 - a pretty short life for a school building. It was an office complex for a while but it was eventually demolished.

The school was built just in time to accommodate the first wave of the baby boomers. My class was always the largest class - none that came after could match the huge bubble of kids born right after the war. It was a time of recovery and a time of optimism. Men like my father and many of our neighbors had been lucky enough to survive terrible action in the war. They were determined to build families and careers and put the war behind them. All eyes were forward then.

Just as so many families are disrupted now, my father left behind a wife and two year old daughter to go to war. My mother and sister Janet rented out our house and moved in with my grandparents and aunt in the city. Imagine the joy when Dad returned home and they moved back to their own house. And then of course the best possible thing happened: I was born!

Dad, Janet, Mom - trying to put on a brave face

Mom, Janet, Grandma and me

My sister was in the first class at Reavis School and I followed a few years later. A year after Reavis opened, six rooms were added. A few years later - my second year there - a large addition was put on.

The picture of Reavis (top of page) looks odd to me because of that door on the right. I know what that room was - it was a beautiful, large classroom with big windows and even a stage. That door must lead out from it. But I never saw Reavis from this point of view. I always approached from the other side, left of this picture. If I were in a car or on the bus, we’d turn in the driveway to the left of the school. Sometimes Janet and I walked to school, taking a shortcut that brought us up behind the school, alongside the playing fields. I remember those walks when I was 6 and 7 and I can recall the route in my mind. It was a little over a mile. We also walked to the Bookmobile, next to Affton Pharmacy.

A few years back, my fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Bernice Hahn, was living in the same retirement community as my father. I went up to her apartment one afternoon to visit with her - she was a lovely person and I enjoyed my year in her classroom. She said that Reavis was rather shoddily built. In fourth grade, we were in a basement classroom in the new addition. She said that room had a lot of problems. The heat was in the floor, and if a crayon dropped, it melted. It didn’t bother me at all - I had a great year and a great time at good old Reavis School.

     Whew, I didn’t really intend to take a vacation from the blog but things have been quiet and I’ve been trying to make the most of it by WRITING-WRITING-WRITING. In just three weeks, the traveling begins again with a trip to Waco and The Woodlands, TX (and a chance to visit my cousin and her family). And we’re off!

Last weekend, granddaughter Remy (and family) came for dinner. I really am lazy this summer - we ordered out. Dinner was over and the grownups were still lingering around the dining table - our family’s favorite place to talk - but Remy went into the living room to play with a few ragtag toys I have left over from Walshe’s childhood. (My son, now 23.) There’s a Coca-Cola Polar Bear, a monkey from Camp Tumbleweed, where my son was a camper and later a counselor, another monkey that was a gift from my parents - kids love it because it waves its tail while its mouth moves and it chatters … and then there are the hamster and frog puppets that represent Humphrey and Og from the Humphrey series.

 I went in to see what was happening and Remy told me the distressing news: “They’re all sad.”

“What should we do to make them feel better?” I asked.

She thought they should go to bed.

So we found a throw and tucked them in together on the couch. Soon, according to Remy, they were feeling much better! And hopefully, our family sing-along around the piano helped cheer them up. I left them there all night and I can assure you, in the morning they were completely happy again.

I love children’s play. I guess that’s why I write for children. Next time I’m sad, I guess I’ll just go to bed … and hopefully wake up feeling a lot better.

New thought:

I’ve often told people that we rarely have lightning and thunder in Southern California. In fact, I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen lightning in the 25-plus years I’ve lived here.

Last night, I got up around 4 (bathroom break - or is that Too Much Information?) and definitely saw lightning. I found this so unbelievable (and there was no thunder), I opened the curtains to watch and the sky was continually lit with what had to be lightning. I went back to bed and forgot about it until I heard the news today: there was a highly unusual lightning storm last night and there were over 400 strikes. At least I wasn’t dreaming.

What a lovely little lightshow, thanks to Mother Nature.

 Sometimes I feel like a little hamster spinning on my wheel, especially when I’m working on three Humphrey books at the same time. Which means I have been: writing a new Humphrey book while also:

- finishing the FINAL-FINAL-FINAL copy editing on Adventure According to Humphrey (coming out in hardcover in the US in February)

- writing the Reader’s Guide and activities for According to Humphrey (coming out in paperback in the US in January)

- and making the LAST-LAST-LAST little tweaks on Surprises According to Humphrey UK (coming to the UK this October)

- plus October is the month when the UK audio version of Friendship According to Humphrey, read by Greg Proops (see previous blogs) is released.

I can now reveal the UK Surprises cover (the purple one on top) and you can compare it to the US cover. I love them both! Humphrey’s fear of aliens and his encounter with the cat are both equally important in the book. But because the aliens may not be real, the UK designer made it a drawing - very clever.

If I could change one thing about myself, I would choose to be able to draw. My dad was a talented amateur artist (and an all-round creative person), my stepdaughters Anna and Becca are both successful professional artists/designers and my late brother-in-law Leon deLeeuw was likewise a very fine artist and art professor. Maybe we just didn’t need another artist in the family! I also tend to have friends who are artists. Mitch, Anne, Cynthia, Davis, to name a few.

Maybe it’s time for Humphrey to express his inner artist!