Sunshine State Stories

Greetings from Florida, an enchanted land where the sun shines all day, snow is nonexistent, and my daughter and her little cousin convene peacefully over Playmobils for hours at a time!

When we fled our Northwest home for this vacation (a process that involved dragging our suitcases down our icy and unplowed hill, and a hair-raising and yet agonizingly slow cab ride through snow-blocked streets with a driver who cheerfully explained that he makes most of his money trading stocks on the Internet, and then proceeded to do just that, while driving, until we made him stop) I admit that, aside from the chance to spend time with family, the warmth and the mouse-ears were foremost in my mind.

But there's much more to Florida. When I browsed through the local library catalog today in search of children's books set in the Sunshine State, I realized that my image of the state, and some of my understanding of its complex nature, has been formed by a bunch of children's books. It's such a vivid setting, it's no surprise that it's been the inspiration for some of the most notable kids' novels of recent times--and a few older ones, too, like...

Strawberry Girl, by Lois Lenski. I came upon this 1945 Newbery winner as a kid, and even then it seemed old-fashioned and unthinkably far away (I grew up in New Jersey). Flipping through my sister-in-law's copy the other day, I got a strong, visceral rush of memory, brought on by the illustrations as much as the text: Birdie and her sister walking through the forest to school in their bare feet and sunbonnets; the mean, probably abusive neighbor who lets his pigs forage wild instead of fencing and and feeding them; and of course the cover illustration, the cheerful but slightly stylized Birdie, gathering her the strawberries that her family is optimistically farming under hardscrabble conditions. For anyone who thinks Florida is mainly about beaches, retirees, and Disney, Strawberry Girl offers a humanizing window into the state's real-life history.

Hoot and Flush, both by Carl Hiaasen. It was a good day for children's literature when Florida mystery writer Hiaasen started writing kids' novels. Both of these are about kids who solve mysteries, get in trouble, go on secret missions, cope with irascable school bus enemies and quirky little sisters-- all that fun stuff. But they're also about the constant bitter struggle between Florida's land and ecosystem and the people (in Hiaasen's books, comically mean and nasty people) who want to pave it over and make money off it, by building restaurants in owl's habitats or by dumping sewage into the ocean. The kids save the day, and very entertainingly, but in the meantime you get a strong sense of the powerful forces that are constantly struggling for Florida's soul.

Tangerine, by Edward Bloor. You know that devastation of the environment thing that Florida's got going, that Carl Hiaasen writes about so engagingly? Edward Bloor's got his eye on that, too, only he turns it up to Eleven. On the surface, it's a thriller: Paul is a sort of geeky, legally blind kid who slowly uncovers the truth about his creepy, bullying football-hero older brother, Erik.  But Paul and his family have just moved into a brand-new fancy development in Tangerine, Florida, and all through the book, there's a strong sense of nature fighting back against the humans who are trying blithely to ignore its existence: there are flash floods, sinkholes. weird burning smells...Tangerine is much, much more than a "message" book (I find it weird that it didn't win an award), but the message is there, loud and clear: if you mess with the Earth, the Earth will mess with you.

Because of Winn-Dixie and The Tiger Rising, both by Kate DiCamillo. The day after we got here, we were out shopping at a strip-mall when I looked across the street and saw a literary landmark: " A Winn-Dixie! Look, look!" I didn't really expect to go in there and find a stray dog that would change my life, as Opal does in DiCamillo's quiet masterpiece, but it did remind me that Winn-Dixie (the book) is actually set in Florida, as is a lesser-known book by the same author, The Tiger Rising, in which a quiet, shy boy discovers a tiger being kept in a cage in the woods behind the hotel where he lives. Come to think of it, both these books have a sort of juxtaposition-of-lush-nature-and-human-commerce element to them, as well. It seems to be a Florida kind of theme.

The View from Saturday and The Mysterious Edge of the Heroic World, both by E. L. Konigsburg. Konigsburg is best known for her very New-York-centric From The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, but she lives in Florida and is very much a Florida writer. The most memorable sections of The View from Saturday, in which the lives and talents of four smart sixth-graders and their teacher coalesce in an Academic Bowl competition, take place in Florida, where one character has a moment of triumph as best man at his grandfather's wedding, and another, feeling alienated and lonely during a visit to her divorced father, experiences an epiphany while helping sea turtles on the beach (that was my favorite part of the whole book).

Konigsburg's newest novel, The Mysterious Edge of the Heroic World, unfolds in the small (and invented) Florida town of St. Malo, in which the flamboyant, cranky, elderly Mrs. Zender is reluctantly preparing the contents of her house for auction, largely assisted by eleven-year-olds William Wilcox, whose mom runs estate sales, and Amadeo Kaplan, who is new in town and mightily peeved about it. Like the others listed here, this book strikes me as a Florida novel not just because it happens to be set there, but in how you get the sense that people's lives, and their treasures, and the complex and untold stories behind both themselves and their possessions, have washed up and come to rest on these seemingly tranquil, sandy shores, and that sunshine and apparent simplicity can hide truths as well as revealing them.

It will come as no surprise to anyone who reads this blog that one of the highlights of this vacation has been a visit to the local library, where my 4-year-old niece proudly showed us all how to use the self-checkout machine. The library building is gorgeous, and the entrance to the children's room is especially striking and brilliant: it's a transparent Lucite arch which is also a huge aquarium filled with vibrant tropical fish. Kids (and visiting adults, too) find it endlessly fascinating, it pays homage to the local ecology, and it appeals to budding scientists and fantasy-lovers alike, because it's both naturalistic and magical. Sort of like Florida itself, and the literature it has inspired.