E.B. White’s 98-year-old poem is now a children’s book
E.B. White may be best known for his heart-tugging story about a pig and a spider. But it was ducks and geese, birds of any kind really, that held a special place in his own heart.
“When he was a boy he came to Belgrade Lakes and was out in the canoe watching the loons and ducks and all the waterfowl. Later on the farm in (Brooklin) Maine, it was chickens and ducks and geese and so forth,” said his granddaughter, Martha White. “He loved birds of all kinds.”
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White’s latest book, published some 40 years after his death, is called “The Duck Can’t Sleep.” The text is a poem he wrote for The New Yorker magazine in 1928 called “Natura in Urbe,” with new art by Portland author and illustrator Melissa Sweet. It’s full of whimsical wonderings about a sleep-deprived duck and what might be keeping him awake. It goes on sale Sept. 1.
Maine artist Melissa Sweet created nighttime pond scenes for “The Duck Can’t Sleep,” based on a poem by E.B. White. (Photo courtesy of HarperCollins)
Martha White, who lives in the Midcoast, rediscovered the poem and thought it would make a good children’s book, with its fun rhymes and vivid images. The duck swims around New York’s Central Park reservoir long after dark, while the rest of the natural world is in slumber, his “head a-wobble” and his “tail a-bobble.” In the poem, White seems worried about the duck and what was weighing so heavy on his mind.
“I wondered if he’d left his kind / Because of something on his mind / A midnight sail to clear his vision / And help him reach some duck decision.”
Martha White thought of Sweet right away as the person who could best illustrate her grandfather’s witty thoughts about a nocturnal duck. Sweet had written an illustrated children’s biography of White called “Some Writer!,” a reference to the phase “some pig” scrawled into a spiderweb in White’s beloved story “Charlotte’s Web.” She’s also done other picture books based on poems.
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Melissa Sweet, left, and Martha White collaborated on the new children’s book “The Duck Can’t Sleep,” based on a poem by E.B. White. (Marti Stone Photography)
Sweet and White will be talking about the book and signing copies at 7 p.m. Sept. 1 at Left Bank Books in Belfast. Sweet will also be making appearances to promote the book on Sept. 5 at G. Willikers! Books and Toys in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and on Sept. 19 at the Bath Book Bash.
Sweet has illustrated more than 100 books, and has won Caldecott honors for “A River of Words: The Story of William Carlos Williams” and “The Right Word: Roget and his Thesaurus.” Both were written by Jen Bryant. The awards are given annually by the American Library Association to the the artists of the year’s best picture books. Sweet has also written several children’s books besides “Some Writer!,” including “Balloons Over Broadway: The True Story of the Puppeteer of Macy’s Parade.”
Sweet said when she read “Natura in Urbe,” she could see White walking the reservoir at night and loved the “classic White wit and humor” in the poem’s lines.
Art by Melissa Sweet from “The Duck Can’t Sleep,” based on a poem by E.B. White. It goes on sale Sept. 1. (Photo courtesy of HarperCollins)
INSOMNIAC’S DELIGHT
“The Duck Can’t Sleep” includes a two-page forward by Martha White, tracing her grandfather’s love of waterfowl back to childhood trips to Belgrade Lakes, where his family rented a camp on Great Pond. He raised squabs at the family home in Mount Vernon, New York, and later, after buying his farm in Brooklin, Maine, in the 1930s, he raised “gray geese for the table and Muscovy ducks for fun.”
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She explains that her grandfather was a young bachelor living not far from The New Yorker offices and the Central Park reservoir when he published the poem in 1928. In his own journal, he had written about having trouble sleeping, and walking around the reservoir to figure things out. On one walk he debated whether to quit his job. The New Yorker is now well known for its writing and wit, but at that time it was just three years old.
E.B. White, in an undated photo. (Photo by Donald E. Johnson)
“Like the small duck in this poem, White was a man who worked out his word tangles or life’s conundrums by perambulating, and he was never a sound sleeper,” Martha White wrote. “He’d once had a mattress delivered from the Algonquin Hotel (in Manhattan) to his place in Maine because he had enjoyed an unusually good night’s sleep while there for work.”
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White lived on his farm in Brooklin until his death in 1985. The barn on the property was the setting for “Charlotte’s Web,” published in 1952. Another of his classic children’s books, “Stuart Little,” was published in 1945.
The book includes more than a dozen illustrations, some spread across two pages, with a line or two from the poem. Sweet’s art begins with a young man in coat and cap crossing a stone bridge and starting on his walk. There’s a two-page spread showing the duck, with bright green head and yellow beak, swimming under a colorful tree full of sleeping insects. The illustrations create a colorful night scene, with lots of shades of blue, purple and green. One spread shows a variety of under-the-water creatures, with colorful shells, fins and foliage.
A look at life underwater in the new book “The Duck Can’t Sleep,” based on a poem by E.B. White with art by Melissa Sweet. (Photo courtesy of HarperCollins)
Sweet decided to write her book about White after illustrating several picture book biographies. She was fascinated with how White wrote three children’s books that, in her mind, were masterpieces: “Charlotte’s Web,” “Stuart Little” and “The Trumpet of the Swan.” As a children’s book writer herself, and a fellow Mainer, she wanted to know how he did it.
Sweet said that one of the things that struck her about “Natura in Urbe” when she began to work on illustrations, was how contemporary it felt even though it was written 100 years ago.
Much of White’s work seems timeless, as new generations seem to discover his work all the time, especially his children’s books. Both “Charlotte’s Web” and “Stuart Little” were made into films. Martha White thinks at least part of the continued popularity of her grandfather’s classic books is because of the way he thought about young readers.
“He was so honest with children. He never tried to write down to children or preach to them or teach them something. He simply put out the story in the best language he could.”
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Ray Routhier has written about pop culture, movies, TV, music and lifestyle trends for the Portland Press Herald since 1993. He is continually fascinated with stories that show the unique character of. More by Ray Routhier
