Quiet 3

QUIET 3

THE QUIET PLACE is a beautiful, tender tale of  Isabella and her family who move to the US from Mexico.  Isabella misses all that she has left behind, especially her Aunt Lupita and the sound of her own language.   In America she experiences her first snowstorm and she turns a large box into her QUIET PLACE, where she keeps her books and toys and writes letters to Aunt Lupita.  In her box, she feels safe and at home, and learns to adapt to her new life.  Set in the 1950’s and told through Isabel’s letters to her aunt, this is a story of immigration and assimilation.

I read this story (at the school where I read stories and majority of children are Hispanic)  in May at the close of the school year.  I had planned on reading it only to the 1^st through 4^th grades, but….I recognized after the 2^nd or 3^rd reading, that this was not only a timeless tale, but an ageless one.  The 8^th graders sat as spell bound as the 1^st graders.

I loved this story, not just because it is exquisitely illustrated and touchingly told, but because it opens up so many issues near and dear to my own heart.

Even although I was an adult when I moved to States, I still experienced (sometimes still do) a deep longing for my native land….homesickness.  I too missed my “language” (Scots English is different from American English).  I too missed my family back in Scotland and Ireland.  And I too missed my history, my roots, my identity.

This book also addresses what Doris Lessing (British novelist, who grew up in Zimbabwe and won Nobel Prize for Literature in 2007) calls – SPACE.  When reporters asked Lessing about her writing process, she told them that the essential question to ask any writer was not how they wrote, with quill or pen or word processor, but rather, “Have you found a space?"

because, Lessing claimed, " into that space, which is a form of listening, the ideas will come.”

 Dictionary definition of QUIET

1.       An absence or near absence of noise

2.       Peaceful, calm, tranquil

3.       Untroubled

4.       Not busy

5.       Not public

6.       Secret

7.       Modest

From the Latin – past participle – quietus, from quierscere TO REST.

QUIET books, like quiet people, teach us how to LISTEN.  It is not only writers who need SPACE, all of us do….and most especially, our little people need SPACE – QUIET PLACES

Be it a big cardboard box,

A spot underneath the table,

A den at the bottom of the yard,

A grassy patch beneath an oak tree

In their SPACE, children can pause and ponder and wonder and...

REST awhile, 

They need REST in order to GROW.

“There is nothing so strong as gentleness, and there is nothing so gentle as real strength.” Francis de Sales (patron saint of writers)

QUIET LEADERSHIP is not an oxymoron.”  Susan Cain.

Shh….Shhh….Shhh……

QUIET 2

QUIET - 2

Two schools of thought seem to surround  QUIET.

For some, “QUIET!” sounds like a stern admonition to cease and desist from all things fun and noisy.

For others, “QUIET!” sounds like balm for the soul – a blessed relief from the barrage of busy noise that assails them on all sides.

And the same opposing views surround the whole issue of QUIET books.

Some editors and agents malign QUIET books.   “Too quiet,” is a common reason for rejecting a manuscript.  Quiet books don’t sell well, they say.  Publishers want books with more action, more drama, more excitement – all of which will sustain attention spans, warrant multiple readings, and of course, sell more books!  Or so the theory goes!

There are others (myself included) who believe in QUIET books.  

QUIET books, like the state of QUIET itself, have power.  

What they lack in excitement and suspense, they compensate for with poignancy, with moments that make us pause, ponder, and wonder. Pondering and wondering are fast becoming obsolete in this age of Google, where the greatest sin of all is to admit,

 “I don’t know.”

Good stories can remind us that not all things can or should be Googled.  Not all things can or should be measured.  Our world brims with mystery and wonder and often the best response to such mystery is……SILENCE.

We all have experienced times in our lives when words fail us. In the face of immense beauty or gut-wrenching tragedy, words seem out of place, like an unwelcome guest.  A priest friend of mine says that when people are in the midst of grieving and sorrow, we should not even try to utter words, for there are none that can possibly comfort.  Instead, we should bring only our silent presence –

 hover, hush, and hug. 

  Not an easy thing to do in our culture that clamors for answers to the mystery of suffering!

Our world has led us to believe that busy is good, that the hum of voices, and the clatter of tools equates with productivity. But remember what Socrates warned, 

“Beware of the barrenness of a busy life.”

 We link work with a tangible, quantifiable product.  We are more comfortable with that which can be measured, defined, and quantified, than something more elusive, such as an idea simmering or an image being created.

It's interesting to note that Americans use the word, VACATION for that period of non-working time, whereas I grew up in Scotland using the word, HOLIDAY.

VACATION - comes from the Latin, VACARE, meaning to empty.
HOLIDAY - comes from the Old English, HOLY DAY ( a time to RE-CREATE).  Hmm, different ways of looking at the whole issue of being versus doing.

We are human BEINGS, not DOINGS, so we do need to find time to BE so we can DO. 

“The Quiet Book,” by Deborah Underwood is a beautiful example of the power of QUIET.  With spare, poetic text, and enchanting illustration, this book explores the different kind of quiets that fill a child’s day from morning to night.  There is no dramatic storyline, no plot twists and turns, no specific characters, no huge excitement – it is a quiet book about all things quiet from a child’s perspective….and it is a New York Times bestseller!  So much for quiet books not selling!

Some other quiet books that I love to read to kids.

"Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the number of moments that take our breath away.”  ANON