Prairie Girl

My very favorite literary character and author is Laura Ingalls Wilder. I have read every book many times and, if I believed in reincarnation, would think I once roamed the prairie in a covered wagon. We’re practically the same person. She was a brown-haired braid-wearer in a blonde-curls-are-better world. She was short, a bit round, willful, and tended toward a wild streak. She was a teacher, a writer, and spoke her mind (sometimes to her detriment). It all feels familiar for me, until we get to family composition. The Ingalls family had four children, like my family, but Laura’s three siblings were all girls and that doesn’t jive with my experience at all. But I feel like I understand a little of the sister bond from reading Laura’s books so often. Her dedication to and sacrifice for her sisters, particularly older sister Mary, are central themes in the series. In fact, Mary’s early and tragic loss of sight due to scarlet fever was the impetus for Laura’s writing career. When the sad diagnosis first came, Laura vowed to see the world for Mary, to be her eyes, and describe all that she saw in vivid detail. She wrote everything down on lined school tablets, and the rest is history. And literature. In Charlotte Zolotow’s Do You Know What I’ll Do?, a sister lists all the loving things she can think of to do for her beloved brother. We never again have any friends like the ones who share our parents.

http://www.amazon.com/Do-You-Know-What-Ill/dp/006027879X

http://www.charlottezolotow.com/

Stool Pigeon

From upstairs, I heard that sound every parent dreads. The I’m-so-hurt-not-a-lot-of-sound-comes-out cry. As I fought to get over the baby gate, I was met by Addison hip-carrying a distraught Scarlett down the stairs. While I tried to figure out what had happened, Addison claimed she had “no idea” why Scarlett was so upset. Which might have worked except for one thing: Scarlett reaching enough verbal maturity to rat mean big sisters out. As Addison continued to feign mystification, Scarlett pointed to her sister, with a finger still bearing the telltale red welt of being recently pinched, bellowed “Her hurt me!” and began relating a story of little sisters wanting to get into places big sisters didn’t want them and the painful results. Miraculously, just then Addison regained enough memory to admit that she might have “accidentally shut the door on Scarlett’s hand.” Coming on the heels of an afternoon of bickering over babies being allowed to do anything they want, the accidental component of Addison’s story rang a bit hollow. And so it goes for little siblings everywhere. It’s nice to be the baby and get all that attention, but you take some abuse. In families, the proverbial you-know-what rolls you-know-where--and the shortest ones are at the bottom of the sibling hill. In Kathleen N. Daly’s Little Sister, Liz feels cheated when big brother David ditches her for the older kids but realizes he still loves her when he comes to her rescue. I guess blood is thicker than squabbles.

http://www.amazon.com/Little-Sister-Big-Golden-Books/dp/0307682560

http://www.librarything.com/author/dalykathleenn

Tell Me What You Want, What You Really, Really Want

One of the nicest things about having a husband almost two decades younger is that his mom and aunts came with him as ready-made friends. I’m lucky, I know, because it could have gone very differently. Not having any sisters, and getting in-laws who only have sisters, I’m still learning the female sibling dynamic from them. But, being a big sister I know. So Nick’s mom, Becky, who is also the eldest, and I have very similar personalities and social interactions. We both typically take the position that if everyone would just get it together, do their part correctly, and stay out of each other’s way, the world would run much more efficiently--thus, smoothly. Or, more succinctly, if people would just behave like big sisters think they should. Nick’s Aunt Michelle, on the other hand, is a middle-child mediator personality. Even though I don’t quite understand her ways, I admire and even envy them. I’d like to be more like her. And one of the methods I like best is what she calls “skillful means,” a way of finding out what people need and want so that you can provide it when possible and everyone ends up feeling content with the exchange. I have to admit it works, but it’s hard to be patient enough when bossing people around is much faster. In Bruce McMillan’s The Problem With Chickens, Icelandic ladies need eggs and chickens need a place to stay. Once everyone starts working together skillfully, it all works out.

http://www.amazon.com/Problem-Chickens-Times-Illustrated-Awards/dp/0618585818

http://www.brucemcmillan.com/

The Big Brother Conundrum

When I was nine, my parents decided to give us the good life in the suburbs. Which meant I was going to have my own room. Which meant I wouldn’t share with my brothers anymore. Which meant I spent the entire first night in my expensive new bed crying. My life was and has been largely defined by being the sister of my brothers. I desperately wanted a little sister until I became familiar with some of my friends’ sisters and realized that being the only girl isn’t so bad. So, I understood the dynamics when I made my oldest a big sister by giving her a brother, but was more at a loss when I made him a big brother by bringing home a baby girl. He seemed perfectly at home with his role as older brother--for about a month. He then came and said it was “time for her to go home now,” and I realized he had just been playing the good host. When I explained that she was ours forever, he gave me one of those preschool looks that projects horror. Thinking back now, he may have had a premonition. In Niki Daly’s Monsters Are Like That, Leo doesn’t want Fran to play with his toys, but Fran is resourceful and gets into his stuff anyway. She paints her face, finds monster hands and lies in wait. The joke is on her, though, because it turns out that Leo likes his sisters on the scary side.

http://www.childlit.org.za/ndaly.html

http://www.amazon.com/Monsters-Are-Like-That-Storytime/dp/0744509823/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1265785241&sr=1-1