Historical March 1984 report or notice. Original dates, prices and contacts describe the source period; current availability has not been established.
After chasing away the blues in February, I have to bring them back in March since the Kiosk’s only children’s story set in St. Louis is a tragic one. Local author Jan Greenberg’s, A Season In-Between, takes us through thirteen-year-old Carrie’s difficult period of adjustment to Miss Elliott’s Academy, an exclusive private school in St. Louis County (Mary Institute’?) and through to her father’s ultimately fatal bout with cancer. Sprinkled, fortunately, with humorous episodes like the May Day Pageant and head lice epidemic at school and adolescent attempts at self-beautification (“once a gawk, always a gawk,” says Carrie’s younger brother, Sonny, supportively), the story is full of life, even while it focuses on a family coping with death. Sonny provides many light moments.
When a visitor paying her respects after the funeral remarks, “I’m sorry you lost your father,” he replies in all seriousness and innocence, “Will we ever find him?” Carrie’s life and thoughts center around her father now, but the usual teenage problems of insecurity do not pass her by.
She strives to adapt to a school atmosphere in which she is not completely comfortable because of her background.
She is also trying to be grown up enough to help her mother and brother through a very difficult time. What helps make the story real for us is its very real setting, though it could have been placed anywhere. Carrie and her friends go to Famous, to Baskin Robbins, to Forest Park, and to the Shady Oak Theater, just as you might. You’ll read about Jewish Hospital, Plaza Frontenac, Lindell, Oak Knoll Park, and other familiar places. It’s intriguing to find your neighborhood in a book. Though the story is not a happy one, it leaves both characters and readers with hope. Don’t miss it.
We don’t want to leave younger readers out this month, so we have to step outside St. Louis for a little trip to the Ozarks. Harve and Margot Zemach recreate an old Ozark folk song in the picture book, Mommy Buy Me a China Doll. Eliza Lou wants a china doll, but the only way her parents can manage it is by trading for it. Eliza Lou suggests Daddy’s feather bed.
But where will Daddy sleep? Eliza Lou moves the whole family around, even the animals, in a hilarious series of verses and illustrations.
In order to get that doll, Daddy will have to sleep in the horsey’s bed and poor Granny will have to sit and sew in the piggy pen.
Originally published in The Paper, March 1984.
Read this article in the original newspaper issue.
Original source: SD_Times1984_03.pdf, printed page(s) 5; PDF page(s) 5.
