by Beth Cronk, Litchfield head librarian
It certainly doesn’t feel like it, but spring is here
according to the calendar, and Easter is upon us. If you’d like to read about spring before you
can feel it, you can come to the library to get a fresh, new book to tide you
over until the warm weather arrives.
An early sign of spring is maple syruping, which I hear is
late to start this year. The book Modern Maple by Teresa Marrone tells you
how to make maple syrup in your backyard.
It covers the equipment you’ll need to get, when and how to tap the
trees, and how to turn sap into syrup.
It even includes recipes made with maple syrup, from breakfast to dessert.
Are you waiting anxiously for the birds to come back? The Bluebird Effect: Uncommon Bonds with Common Birds by Julie Zickefoose tells
of the author and illustrator’s experiences rescuing birds of 25 different
species. The author tells of feeding
baby hummingbirds every twenty minutes, playing bird songs to abandoned baby Carolina
wrens, and caring for injured birds until they were healed. The detailed nature writing is melded with
the author’s personal experiences and illustrated with her sketches and
watercolor paintings. Library Journal
named this book one of its top five science books of 2012.
Another of Library Journal’s top science books, America’s Other Audubon by Joy M. Kiser,
celebrates the artwork of a young woman in the late 1800s. Genevieve Jones was
an amateur naturalist and artist in Ohio.
She saw Audubon’s paintings at the 1876 World’s Fair and was inspired to
document nests and eggs, because Audubon had not. She started on a book, Illustrations of the Nests and Birds of Ohio, although her parents
were concerned about the expense and size of the project. When she became depressed over a broken
engagement, her family began to support her project to help her cope. Her father paid for the publishing, her
brother Howard collected the nests, and Genevieve and her friend Eliza Schulze
learned lithography and created the illustrations. The book was issued in 23 parts and was sold
by subscription. When she released part
one, ornithologists and book reviewers praised it as being on par with
Audubon’s work, and Teddy Roosevelt and Rutherford B. Hayes became subscribers.
Genevieve died suddenly of typhoid after having completed
only five illustrations. Her family
continued working on the book for seven years until it was complete, as a way
to honor her memory. Both her mother and
her brother nearly died from typhoid two years after Genevieve, and her mother
lost her eyesight from effects of the disease along with eye strain from hours
of working on the illustrations. Her
physician father spent all of his retirement savings to publish the book. Fewer than 100 copies were ever produced,
despite the fact that it won a medal at the Chicago World’s Fair. The new book
by Kiser reproduces the color artwork of the Jones’ original volume. It is beautiful.
Are you looking forward to the first things that grow? The cookbook Eat More Vegetables: Make the Most of Your Seasonal Produce
includes a section on spring: April and
May. The book was published by the
Minnesota Historical Society Press, so it’s even realistic for those of us who
live in the north. The author, Tricia
Cornell, structures the book around things we can find at Minnesota farmers’
markets, beginning with things like rhubarb, asparagus, and dandelion greens.
Spring will come eventually.
In the meantime, read some good books that help you look forward to growing
plants, nesting birds, and anything else you enjoy about the return of warm
weather.
