Smoke [MWB’s first Kerry blue terrier] was
also there and Smoke contributed something to the situation because it made a certain
impression on the children that here was this woman who came to talk with them and brought
her dog. Margaret made herself into a listener, a “receiver” in the presence of
the children. She did not try to outfox them to their face and she never spoke down to
them. It was in the air at Bank Street that children were people like anyone else and as a
result there was a deep rapport between the children and adults that could be taken for
granted.
One of the children asked LW and MWB about The Noisy Book: “How
much money do you think you’ll make from this book?” These children were very
sharp and worldly-wise. Many of their comments about the pictures and text were
incorporated into the final version. The children called MWB “Brownie.”
MWB felt very passionately about spring and would go south each year
at the very beginning of spring and drive north, following the onset of the season all the
way up to Maine.
In Maine something about her would be liberated and her face somehow changed and
she would become animated in a way she wasn’t elsewhere.
When she was feeling mischievous, MWB would wrinkle up her eyes and when she wrote
she also did this but with an intense concentration that did not seem mischievous but very
serious, as though she were pulling the words from inside her |
