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Had some fun reading this article from the Washington Post Book World:
And now, if you can move on from the spectacle of Emily Dickinson in a bikini with Garrison Keillor at her side (don't you think it odd that he thinks of her as a "fictional character") I ask you:
With whom would YOU share a beach day? I grant you two answers, if you wish: one from all of literature, and one from children's literature.
I only have one answer so far:
Reepicheep from the Chronicles of Narnia. I hope I don't regret that choice when he sticks his pin-sized sword into some blowhard's ankle, but strolling along the beach with an armed mouse at my side seems the height of summer fun.
5 Comments on Don't mind me and my armed mouse, last added: 6/16/2009
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I would probably hang out with Mia from the Princess Diaries books, because she'd want to do the same things I'd want to do at the beach--read and write in my notebooks.
I pick Ferdinand, as he'd just sit down quietly with me and smell the ocean, as he smelled the flowers in all the lovely ladies' hair in the bull ring.
I can see you and Mia now, Adrienne. :)
Jules, I love thinking of Ferdinand by the sea. My family thinks I'm crazy for picking Reepicheep---they say I'll never get a moment's rest. But I don't like sunbaking anyway. I'd rather watch a little armed mouse jump from rock to rock and challenge hermit crabs to duels. When I'm tired of that, I'll come sit with you and Ferdinand, and maybe he can put a gentle hoof down on Reepicheep's tail.
Lovely idea. I'm going for Poly O'Keefe from the Madeleine L'Engle novels. L'Engle's love of the ocean makes many of her characters good choices, and maybe I should go instead for Vicky Austin, who could ask the dolphins to swim with me, since she communicates with them in Ring of Endless Light--one of my very favorite L'Engle books.
For my second choice, I'm cheating and saying an author. And cheating and saying more than one. I want a day at the beach with Lilian Moore, whose wonderful ocean-related poetry I adore, and also Rachel Carson.
Boy, when I go to Fla. in July and spend a day at the beach, I'll be looking around for all three of these!
I'd go with Harriet M. Welsch and we would look in on the man selling taffy, and the red-headed lady who looks so sad, her child might have just drowned in the waves, or maybe she's just sad because she has to stay under that umbrella all the time. And perhaps Ole Golly would come along, too, but I don't think she would wear her bathing suit.