"Toad began it."

“Toad began it.” So begins Heidi’s Alp by Christina Hardyment.

Once a year, Cricket magazine has a feature called “Famous First Lines” which I particularly adore. These “first lines’ are lures so sparkly that they can hardly be denied, and pull readers into the book immediately. This first line, however, lured me into life. Reading the book with a pre-schooler and an infant, squeezing reading time in between children, home chores and work at the LJCDS library and a weekend library job as well, the story of a mom who sets off to discover the places of the literature she shared with her children was for me the story of an amazing adventure. I wished it was I, and I wished it so hard and for so long that the dream came true. It came true in several ways, to be honest. It was the spark that fueled the original Children’s Literature family summer trips. It was the reason for joining two of the annual Nye Memorial Children’s Literature Trips, trips for adults planned by experts in the field of children’s literature. It offered me the plan for many day trips with my children, who will tell you, for example, they see Oz when they see the Hotel Del Coronado. And, most recently, Heidi’s Alp clutched in my hand, it was the map for my travels in Denmark. You could even say that this book was the reason for my sabbatical.

When I was a child I was given The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame. I did like the maps on the end papers (I am a fan of interesting end papers.), and I started the book many times. But I never got past the first few pages. This is the only book I can remember not liking, and this was a surprise to my parents as much as to me, for I was a reader, always with an open book in my hand. But, not too many years ago, while teaching Junior Great Books in summer school, I read a selection from the classic. Shocked at how much I enjoyed it, and how interesting the discussion that followed was, I took that same book that my parents had given me, saved all these years, to the beach and read it, cover to cover. What a great story! So, when I started Heidi’s Alp, I certainly knew where the sentence, “Toad began it,” was going and that great adventures would follow.

“Here today, up and off to somewhere else tomorrow! Travel, change, interest, excitement! The whole world before you, and a horizon that’s always changing!” Those are Toad’s words. Do they capture you, too? I built a dream on those words, as, apparently, so did the author of Heidi’s Alp.