Tales from the Seabury Library

The magic of an orange
in January

In July and August I eat blueberries on my oatmeal or shredded wheat every single morning. Then I munch them the rest of the day as if they were candy.

I'd be sad when blueberry season was over, except that I know that equivalent goodness is around the corner.

In the winter, I love seeing the piles of satsuma oranges with the leaves still attached at Metropolitan Market. I buy little bags of them to snack on while I'm copy-editing at The News Tribune. We have a big box of satsumas or Mandarins sitting on our counter all through the winter - plus full-sized oranges in the fruit bowl. An orange is delicious and nutritious, but it's also a cheerful fruit, perfect for this grayest of seasons.

That's why I got excited when a new picture book came to my house: An Orange in January, by Dianna Hutts Aston and Julie Maren.

Most of us in the colder climes, whether we be 40 or 4, probably never stop to consider what it takes to get those bright, juicy oranges to us. This gorgeously illustrated book details the life of one orange, from its beginnings as a white blossom to the day it goes into a little boy's lunch box. Here's my News Tribune review this week.

I loved the book. It gave me the same rush of good feeling I always got when I was little from this page in "The Little Engine that Could," by Watty Piper.

"Some of the cars were filled with all sorts of good things for boys and girls to eat - big golden oranges, red-cheeked apples, bottles of creamy milk for their breakfasts, fresh spinach for their dinners, peppermint drops, and lollypops for after-meal treats."

It's one thing for an adult to like a book like "An Orange in January." A lot of the pictures are landscapes. The language is poetic. There's not a huge amount of action and only a little humor.

Though I thought the child I was would have loved it, I wasn't certain that today's youngsters would. I wrote my review anyway, then brought it to Seabury to read to some of the classes.

From the youngest preschoolers through the first graders, the children were captivated. They were excited to see that an orange began life as a flower. They loved the pages where the big baskets of fruit were loaded onto first small, then bigger trucks, then transported through changing landscapes. The last picture that showed the boy and his friends on the swings, each with an orange slice, was the perfect happy ending for them.

And ... as soon as she saw the cover, a 4-year-old in the Ladybugs class, exclaimed: "He's brown like me."

The conclusion? A good review from me – and the younger half of the Seabury population!

Bye for now ...