KidLit Pilgrimage: Klickitat Street

Me on Klickitat Street, 2001 (Excuse the bad fashion..)

Today is Drop Everything and Read Day, in honor of Beverly Cleary's birthday, and today's KidLit Pilgrimage is also in honor of Ms. Cleary. She was my favorite author growing up and is probably a huge part of why I became a children's librarian.

My husband was a consultant for many years, which meant that he's worked in lots of different cities. Pre-kids, I always enjoyed spending a weekend or two where he was staffed and getting to explore a new city. One of my fondest memories is when he was staffed in Maryland, and we spent a morning getting library cards to allow us access to the Library of Congress. Swoon.

He worked off and on outside Portland, Oregon for a number of years, the first time in 2001.  And the first time I went out there to visit him, I had one thing on my mind: visiting Beverly Cleary's Portland. 

I didn't know a lot about Portland as a kid growing up in suburban Chicago, but I did know that you could see Mount Hood on clear days. And that Ramona lived in Klickitat Street. And... that's about it.  I didn't even know if Klickitat Street was even real, but I was excited to learn that it was. So I printed up directions from the hotel we were staying at to Klickitat Street (this was long before smartphones or GPS, back when the concept of Google Maps was amazing. Actually, it was probably Mapquest back then... Anyway...)

Cleary, I believe, never lived on Klickitat Street, but she lived close by and she'd always loved that particular name, so when she started out writing the adventures of Henry Huggins, she set his house on Klickitat. Cleary's books, I think, have a very real time and place. As a kid, I really had no idea what Ramona's neighborhood looked like -- my worldview at that point didn't expand much past "1970s planned suburban subdivision" -- but as soon as I started walking around Klickitat Street and the surrounding neighborhood, I knew I was walking where Ramona lived. I could just recognize the landscape from Cleary's familiar words.

The city of Portland has erected a beautiful sculpture garden in the neighborhood park.  There's a neighborhood map that points out local landmarks and their significance in Cleary's books, and there's also sculptures of Ramona, Henry, and Beezus.  It's just perfect.  I've been back to Portland many times since then, but I've not made a pilgrimage back to the garden.  I'll have to take my kids there the next time I go.

Ramona

Henry Huggins

Ribsy

Neighborhood map

KidLit Pilgrimage: The Metropolitan Museum of Art

My kids are on spring break this week, and we're having a little staycation.  They've recently discovered the Percy Jackson series and have developed an interest in Greek mythology. We've lived in New Jersey for almost three years now, and we've gone to many of the local museums, but I'd never taken the kids to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I asked if they might be interested in going to check out some of the Greek and Roman antiquities, and I got a resounding YES!

We had a wonderful time, and I was very pleased that the museum offered a guide for kids based on the Percy Jackson books.  It led us through three galleries (Greek, Roman, and European sculpture) and pointed out works that would be appealing to kids.  We had a lot of fun entering the galleries and looking for the pieces spotlighted in the brochure.  Three cheers for the people who put that together!

The Met always loomed large in my mind as a child, even as a Midwesterner who'd never been to New York City, because it's featured in so many children's books.  The most obvious, of course, is the beloved and wonderful From The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E. L. Konigsburg.

It's still the first thing that comes to my mind when I think of the Met, and I was thrilled to see the museum acknowledge it with a museum guide for kids based on the novel.  I haven't introduced this book to my kids yet, but when I do, I'm sure we'll be up for another field trip.

Then, of course, there's Olivia the pig, with some pointed commentary on the works of Jackson Pollock.

We didn't make it upstairs to the Modern & Contemporary Art wing on this visit, but when I went with my mother last year, we did take a picture of this and email it to my niece, a big Olivia fan.

The last stop we made at the Met was the amazing Temple of Dendur, an ancient Egyptian temple that was moved brick by brick and rebuilt in the Sackler wing, in an amazing room that is full of natural light.

(Photo by Ana Lopez)

The Temple of Dendur features prominently in the YA classic Annie on My Mind by Nancy Garden, and when I first visited the Met as a teenager, I was so excited to recognize something I'd read about.  (I still haven't been to the Cloisters yet, which I will admit I was first introduced to by the Baby-Sitters Club Super Special where they visit New York.)

The Met is such an icon that I'm sure I'm missing some other classic kids books that feature it or its artwork. Tell me: what did I omit?