Maybelle the Cable Car by Virginia Lee Burton

Maybelle the Cable Car by Virginia Lee Burton

Rating: 4.5 stars

We just returned from a big ol' family trip to Northern California.  It was the first time I'd ever really  been there (does a two day stint in San Francisco in college for a conference and a ten hour layover in Los Angeles really count?) and I was blown away by the beauty and hipness of the place.  I suddenly realized how uncool I am here on the East Coast!

But rather than go on a tangent about my lack of cool, I'll try and focus on books.   Before this and any trip, I try to find a bunch of books about our destination so to provide a context for the kids.  Since they have few or no expectations and little experience to draw upon, I really think giving them picture-filled books to show them what we'll see is helpful.  Plus sights fly by their window so quickly, I like for them to...pre-steep, if you will...in the city as much as possible.

So, Maybelle the Cable Car.  This is one of my favorite books by Virginia Lee Burton--it is charming, interesting, and informative.  Can't beat that!  In this book, the city fathers are thinking about retiring the cable cars in favor of buses, which are "newer and faster and more economical."  Maybelle is one of those cable cars, and she and her sisters are immediately dismayed at the news.  While some of the people are glad for progress, others are just as sad as Maybelle.  "We'll miss them...what a pity...We'll be like any other city."

So they call a public meeting and put it to a vote!  Obviously the cable cars win, but only after Big Bill the bus, the not-so-horrible enemy in the book, tries to climb the hills in the middle of the night.  At first, he thinks there's nothing to it.  But on a damp and foggy night, he slips, slides, and gets turned around.  He suddenly has a  little more respect for those cable cars.  So he concedes like a gentleman and beeps his horn to congratulate the cable cars as they take a victory climb up the hills of San Francisco.

Lorelei's I'm-on-a-cable-car grin.

After reading this book a dozen times at home and on the plane, all of us were VERY excited to ride the cable car.  We bought our tickets (and lost one...and I might have told a little lie that Lorelei was 4 not 5 so she didn't need one), stood in line, climbed aboard and held on tight.  Lorelei and Ben even got to stand-- though I did draw the line at letting them hang on to the side (see?  I am SO uncool!)--as our cable car noisily climbed up, up, up to the top of the hill.  We got off--where else?--at the Cable Car Museum so we could learn even more about the cable cars.  (Fascinating stuff there...I was eager to learn that Andrew Smith Hallidie, the inventor of the cable car, created it because he was an animal-lover, and he was tired of seeing horses get whipped while struggling up the hills' wet cobblestones.)

Anyway, a really good book even if you're not heading to San Francisco, but required reading if you are!


P.S.  In a man-I-wish-I-had-seen-that! moment, I found a nice little list of children's books (click here) about San Francisco on the blog www.SFKids.org.  But I did find this blog post useful about kid-friendly activities and sites around the city.

Katy and the Big Snow by Virgina Lee Burton

Katy and the Big Snow by Virgina Lee Burton

Rating: 5 valuable stars

Lorelei's preschool just had their annual book fair.  The only reason I didn't spend my husband's entire paycheck there: Grammy was in town, so I made her spend her entire paycheck there.  Thoughtful, don't you think? 

We actually didn't spend that much money, but generous Grammy did let each child pick out a book--though I think my twin nieces got to choose two each...got to say something about that favoritism thing...unless it goes in my kids' direction...  Anyway, I'll write about Lorelei's choice, but this was Ben's choice--heavily assisted by me.  While I don't read through books from the library first, I always want to make sure we're buying good ones.  I don't want to waste Grammy's money!  I don't think you can go wrong with Virginia Lee Burton, a classic writer that you probably associate with her most famous book, Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel, a great book that has been in Ben's bed for the past two weeks.  I had never seen this book before and really liked what I read when I skimmed it.

Grammy wonderfully planted the book on Ben's car seat for the drive home and we read it later that night together.  It is wonderful in that classic, old-school values sort of way.  Ben was hooked from the first line: "Katy was a beautiful red crawler tractor."  I loved the next line: "She was very big and very strong and she could do a lot of things."  How wise of Burton to make a big, powerful tractor female--makes both little girls and boys curious about her.  Lorelei and Ben listened carefully to the story after the first few lines, curious to hear how Katy would use her strength.  Burton explains how Katy did a lot of different jobs throughout the year; "the harder and tougher the job the better she liked it." 

When winter came, Katy was so big and strong that she stayed put when there was only a light dusting on the ground.  But one day that dusting turned into a huge blizzard, and Katy was the only plow who could cut through the snow.  Everyone and everything in the town came to a stand still, unable to do their regular duties.  Then Katy came to the rescue, slowly but surely plowing everyone out, enabling the police to protect the city, the Postmaster to get the mail through, the Telephone Company to repair downed lines.  By the end of the day she was tired but still she chugged on until the roads were all clear.  Then and only then did Katy stop and rest.

What a great story about taking on a challenge, finishing what you start (see the sweet Ella Takes the Cake for another one), working hard, and helping those in need.  Those are such valuable lessons that Burton manages to pack in a classic book with sweet drawings.  This is a wonderful holiday book; I can't say how grateful I am to have it on our shelf.  I'm going to order up all of Virginia Lee Burton's other books from the library right now...any favorites I should read first when they come home with us for a visit?

P.S.  I might extra-like this book because of my name.  I just wanted to point that out before one of you guys did.