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September/October 2002: Horn Book. (Letters to the Editor).

Article Excerpt
While Roger Sutton's editorial about ("Not Just a Walk in the Park") and review of Maira Kalman's Fireboat point out many of the book's fine qualifies, there is another that should be mentioned, one that answers the question, How in the world could you make a genuine picture book about what happened to us on September 11, 2001?

Kalman's genius is not to make her story about 9/11 but to treat what happened as part of another story, a story that begins before and ends after that day, an event that is part of ongoing lives. The story evokes hope, the essential quality in a book for children. Hope does not lie in happy endings but in central characters who take effective actions, actions that, even if only partially, make life better.

Hearing or reading Kalman's book, a young child is presented with an interesting story about a long-ago year when the fireboat John J. Harvey was launched, how the fireboat worked, how later it was retired and then brought out of retirement, how it was called upon in the crisis of 9/11 and "for four days and nights the Harvey pumped water." Then the story goes on; the boat goes on, a continuing part of New York Harbor.

Children may find in Fireboat the sense that the worst disaster can be confronted with effort and determination and contained. Many adults first found similar reassurance as they learned about the passengers who tried to take back Flight 93 and in part succeeded. That story had no happy ending, but in all that's signified by "Let's roll!" many of us felt a small return of hope.

Kalman's reader is left with two important thoughts: an old boat can still do useful work, and something can be done to fight back at catastrophe. She has made a true children's book by focusing not on the horror but on the hope.

Judy K. Morris Washington, D.C.

Claudia Mills ("The Portrayal of Mental Disability in Children's Literature: An Ethical Appraisal") argues that a book's moral stance should be judged by the whole work, not by bits taken out of context. I agree--her example of Huckleberry Finn is a good one. Yet in criticizing J....

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