Where the Wild Things Are

(I started to write this on 7/18 – over a month ago – this is the promised “fun” post. I guess I was referring to the pictures and the subject of the text, more than the text itself. I’m not too excited by it, but I wanted to post anyway, mostly because it was too much work to upload all the pics :)

Oh yeah, the boys have been getting wild lately, unfortunately*, but, no, I’m not referring to them here! I just wanted to paraphrase the wonderful Maurice Sendak:

That very night in our front porch a forest grew
and grew –
and grew until its ceiling hung with vines
and the walls became the world all around

Every time I go out the front door I think of these lines (slightly changed here – “our front porch” instead of “Max’s room”) from Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are, and I can feel “the forest” growing and enveloping everything. Of course the forest only consists of several morning glory vines that I planted in large pots on each side of the porch. I was hoping that in time we’d have flowers too, not just pretty heart shaped leaves, and they’re finally here, as you saw (or can see) a few posts ago. But it’s quite amazing to behold how this plant grows, practically overnight, from tiny seedlings, to fast growing vine:


(6/14/05) (6/24/05)
(7/7/05) (7/19/05)

That’s how it looks now:

I thought I’d use this reference to Sendak to write about something I haven’t said here yet: I love children’s literature passionately. I was lucky enough that I got to teach a children’s lit class a few times, both as a T.A. and on my own (2 summers). Of course, I’m more familiar with Brazilian children’s literature, but as I was growing up I had a few American favorites as well – the beloved “Little House” books by Laura Ingalls Wilder, that I knew (and still know) by heart, and Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women. I almost went on to write a dissertation about these “girl books” (comparing the characters of “classic” American books – the ones I mentioned above plus Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden, to certain Brazilian books and their characters), but in the end I decided to change advisors and consequently my topic. My favorite picture book author in Brazil is Ziraldo, he’s AWESOME, but unfortunately, not many of his works have been translated, and one of my dreams is to translate or facilitate the translation of his books into English. I am writing a chapter of my dissertation on a children’s author, though, Ana Maria Machado, and her books translated into English.

I could go on and on writing about children’s literature, but I want to go back to my garden/ yard. There’s another children’s book author that I have been “bumping into” quite often lately when I go outside, can you guess who it is by looking at these pictures?

Don’t they look like Peter Rabbit, Benjamin Bunny, etc (minus the cute clothes)? I always think of Beatrix Potter when I see them. Ever since we moved here I realized that there were rabbits, or hares (I don’t really know how to tell the difference, I’m assuming they’re hares) who lived in our neighborhood and often came to eat the grass and other plants on our yards (first picture above). But now, we have an official “neighborhood” bunny rabbit (second picture)! Over a month ago my neighbor’s brother brought this rabbit (who was said to be abused by the kids in its previous house), and they decided to let it go loose outside. I privately call it Peter Rabbit. It’s quite tame, and sometimes we pet him, to the utter delight of Linton, my youngest, who’s a fervent animal lover.

* The very first version of this post actually said something like “No, I’m not referring to my boys, they’re not wild”. As I kept on postponing the post, my two own exemplars of “Max” started doing some normal but annoying “wild things” such as: Linton has broken most eggs from 2 egg crates I brought from the car and left (BIG mistake) on one of the low tables in the living room in two separate occasions – he thought it was loads of fun and cried when I screamed and removed them from him. When I had guests in the last weekend of July, and I was busy preparing for their arrivals, Kelvin pressed down the dough of the 3 loaves of bread that were rising nicely until that moment – I had a fit!!