It was such a special find. I found this book while walking ever so slowly through a used bookstore in Charlottetown on Prince Edward Island. Just to be in the setting of my beloved Anne of Green Gables, and to be exploring the home of the author L. M. Montgomery - whom I had long cherished as a kindred spirit - was enough. But I was hoping to find a book that was unusual, something I wouldn't know about unless I stumbled across it in the small, dusty kids' corner of a bookstore. I wanted to take home a book that resonated with that part of me that resonates with Avonlea.
And that's when I found this - a small, gentle, good, warm, real collection of poems for children by the poet Charlotte Zolotow. Here's one of my favorites:
GOOD NIGHT
We turn out the lights
and the color is gone.
The shapes are gone.
The desk,
the chair
with tomorrow's clothes laid out,
the books
in the bookcase,
the crayons
on the floor,
the bright curtains,
the red rug
are covered by friendly dark.
Only with eyes closed
can you see now.