All the little models were real houses, the trolley was real (it probably helped that I grew up in the country and didn't have a lot of familiarity with neighborhoods), and Mister Rogers' house was real. I can't remember if I thought the puppets were real when I was little, but I do remember believing the Neighborhood was real. Mister Rogers' Neighborhood was right there before them, simultaneously real and unreal, just like on the show. As my children began looking through the book, they did not linger over the words at all they LOOKED without reading, and they were fascinated by what they saw.
Yes, Matthew Cordell has written a book for adults to read to children, but as an illustrator, he also intuitively designed Hello, Neighbor! for children first. Cordell had drawn an inventory of my children's oldest and sweetest memories, and he put them first, before there was even one word. And why not? Right there inside the front, before there are any words, is the stoplight, Daniel Tiger's clock, X the Owl's treehouse, and Picture Picture. I hadn't even made it past the title page before all three of my kids came to my side of the table and took the book out of my hands.
I sat down next to my six-year-old at the table and took out Hello, Neighbor! and started reading. My kids love Mister Rogers, but I wasn't sure if that love were already nostalgic, if they had grown up so much that they would say "aw, Mister Rogers," and then find a way to get back to stories about zombies and boyfriends as quickly as their little legs could carry them.īut looking at my kids as they picked at their muffins and blackberries, ready to explode into a day of sibling quibbling and slights, I picked my moment. I confess I wasn't sure how my kids would react to the book. My kids have been engrossed in The Last Kids on Earth and The Babysitters Club graphic novels for their daytime reading, and we are in the middle of Judy Blume and Norton Juster for bedtime reading, so I set aside Hello, Neighbor! for when we had a lull. So I didn't yell or fuss: I did as I used to do when my kids were smaller I turned to Mister Rogers instead.Ģ018 Caldecott winner Matthew Cordell's Hello, Neighbor! The Kind and Caring World of Mister Rogers was released in April, but it just arrived at our house last week. It was a moment I wish I could have more often. I realized I was looking at children, not little adults. I could have yelled and fussed, which is what I normally do, but I took a look at them, and I was stunned. This past Sunday morning, I was anxious to get the day started, and my kids were lolling about at the kitchen table, picking at each other, not eating their fruit, arguing over the funny paper, and I was about to lose it. Yes, our kids miss their friends, but gone is the peer pressure, the intensity to mature, the mean girls and mean boys who were beginning to exert so much influence.
Our oldest children are on the verge of tweendom, and what this time has gifted us is control of their childhoods, and it's an incredible gift.
Not just grateful for extra time with our families, or not being burdened with after school lessons and slow cooker meal plans or any of the other everyday timesucks and hardships that happen when life is what it used to be. Why rehash it all when you surely understand what I mean?īut as we were talking, we came upon something else: We are grateful. A friend and I were talking the other day about having our kids at home all the time, and yes, we complained about messes and fights (I mean, MESSES AND FIGHTS), and about how many snacks they seem to need, and the endless dirty dishes and laundry, etc., etc.