The Little Bookroom

over, under, around and through

Pat Hutchins. Rosie's Walk. New York: Macmillan, 1971.

"Rosie the hen went for a walk," begins this book, and so she does. But unbeknownst to her, the fox is following, hoping to catch her for himself. As she strolls through the cozy farmyard all unaware, the fox encounters an entirely different environment in his furtive pursuit of her--as Rosie walks around the pond, he, leaping towards her, jumps in; as Rosie steps over the rake handle, he jumps on to it, bringing it crashing into his face. Her obliviousness continues until her safe return to the hen house--and the fox's frantic flight from it. Hutchins' folk art inspired illustrations remove the story from the realm of the real, and allow it to assume an equally folkloric humor. Many little children delight in seeing what Rosie does not, and in seeing the fox frustrated at every turn.

Many do--but not all. If Rosie's Walk is too broad and menacing a tale for you, try Mem Fox's Hattie and the Fox. Hattie the hen's sharp eyes catch something in the bushes that she warns the others about, none of whom are impressed: " 'Good grief!' said the goose. 'Well, well!' said the pig. 'Who cares?' said the sheep. 'So what?' said the cow. 'What next?' said the horse." But Hattie's eyes do not deceive her, and when the fox leaps from the bushes, she alone is unruffled. Children know all too well the experience of calling attention to that which others ignore, and so it is an immensely satisfying story, with its steady repeated refrains.

Together, these two books speak to the child's experience of seeing and being seen, of knowing and not knowing, of the safety of ignorance and of the safety of knowledge.

Too little for either of these? Then don't forget nursery rhymes:

Hickety pickety, my black hen/She lays eggs for gentlemen/Gentlemen come every day/To see what my black hen doth lay.

Chook, chook, chook, chook/Good morning, Mrs. Hen/How many chickens have you got?/Madam, I have ten/Four of them are yellow/And four of them are brown/And two of them are speckled red/The nicest in the town.

Sam Pig

The Sam Pig Storybook. By Alison Uttley. Illustrated by Cecil Leslie. London: Faber and Faber Limited, 2000.

Sam Pig is an innocent, full of wonder and empty of illusion. He is the youngest of four piglets who live by themselves in a thatched cottage: Tom the cook, Bill the gardener, and Ann the seamstress. There is also Brock the Badger, who lives with them nine months of the year, and serves as their friend and advisor. And Sam? “Sam got in everybody’s way because he was young and simple.” It is because he is simple that he encounters elemental forces in one story after another.

Many of these stories are fairy stories in their truest sense, stories about the amoral power of the natural world. In “Magic Water,” for example, Sam listens to the rain as Ann knits a cap for him, his brothers being busy out of doors, Bill watering the garden so that the rain won’t be wasted, and Tom fishing in the rain barrel for extraordinary fish that glimmer like rays of light. Brock wonders over the fish—“Never knew such a thing! Never knew such a lot of fish in our rain-barrel!”—and Tom fries them up for dinner. Then Sam takes out his fiddle and plays with the sound of the rain, singing a little song to it.

There comes a knock at the door. Ann and Tom and Bill refuse to hear the knock for what it is: Ann says it is the wind, Tom the pear tree branches, and Bill the watering-can falling against the door. But wise Brock and simple Sam are closer to the truth: Brock says it may be a friend, and Sam says that it is the rain. The door is pushed open, and a stranger stands there, the rain pouring off of him. Once he has been comfortably settled in a chair, he takes up Sam’s fiddle and plays them all a tune such as they have never heard before, and all the time Sam watches him and his cloak that Ann had hung up: “Little streams rolled down the silken folds and fell on the floor with a patter like a thousand tiny feet.” The next morning, when the stranger takes his leave of them, they are left to speculate as to his true identity. Brock declares that it was Rain himself. So Ann makes another little cap for Rain that she leaves in the pear tree, hoping that he might find it there and preserve himself from the wet. In other tales, Sam has dealings with the wind, with time, with a dragon, with a scarecrow, and in every tale, he is at once enriched and unchanged by his experiences.

There is a curious moment in this collection, when the stories come to focus more on the battle of wits between Fox and Sam Pig, when the stories shift from being fairy tales to stories of the contest between slyness and forthrightness, between cleverness and wisdom. Some children relish these stories, which appeal to their sense of justice; others are put off by them, frightened by the wily fox and the implicit brutality of their conflict.

Like Little Pig Robinson and a few of the other characters who people Beatrix Potter’s tales, Sam lives on the margins of human society, recognized as both a pig and a friend to those people who know him best—notably Farmer Greensleeves, on whose farm Sam helps with the harvest. And possessed of the power of speech, dressed in the clothes so carefully mended by Ann, Sam is capable of entering the market towns where he seems like a little man, but is never recognized for who he really is.

The language of this book is so rich and evocative that while the stories are easily understood by many four-year-olds, who understand Sam as a person much like themselves, children much older find great pleasure in it. And because the stories are not linked in a single narrative that builds over the book, but are distinct from one another, they make for wonderful reading not just at bedtime, but any time you want the diversion of a story that comes to graceful completion in a short span of time.

This edition of Uttley's Sam Pig stories is not currently in rint, but it is so recent an edition that you may still find it for purchase. And if not, choose another edition--these stories should not be missed.