In the playroom outside the doctor's office, my six-year-old son was maneuvering a toy airplane through Lego constructed twin towers. The doctor explained his stomach pains were a symptom of post traumatic stress. In the midst of the insanity, I had failed to notice the impact on our own child of relentless media coverage of the worst domestic attack in American history. I remember hugging him close while writing this explanation for him on the back of a Chemical Bank envelope...
Papa built two towers
with a thousand other men.
Papa says that things went wrong
time and time again.
But yet they just kept going
because they felt real pride
that someday folks from every land
would make new friends inside.
One day their great creation
stood boldly in its place.
Papa says that day he felt
warm tears roll down his face.
And as he had predicted,
his towers in the sky
became a special place to be
as years went by and by --
until some evil people
tore those towers apart.
Papa says that day he felt
a bad pain in his heart.
But as the Towers were burning,
friends from everywhere
came to help each other
to comfort and to care.
And as the Towers were breaking
and tumbling to the ground,
friends gave their lives for other friends --
and friends not found.
And I think Papa's towers,
in a special way,
will keep those friends together
forever from that day.
But what about my Papa
and the thousand other men?
He says they'll build their towers
one more time again.
First Day of School is our most recent book from the same series. On the last day of summer, Nicholas meets his friends at the park and they share their nervousness and excitement about returning to school. As they compare haircuts, new backpacks and memories of last year, the friends eagerly anticipate this all important transition.
As an adult who grew up in New York City and Connecticut, the brilliant skies, crisp air, and long shadows of September will always suggest the possibility of a new beginning.
Jane Yolen writes:
I selected two books for the Brooke Jackman Foundation that are about genocidal times -- one somewhat accidental and one entirely organized, orchestrated, and programmed.
The almost (but not quite) accidental one is called Encounter, a children's storybook about what happened when Columbus came to the Americas, from the point of view of a young Taino boy. Columbus thought he was there to find a new trade route to India, but carried with him three things that nearly wiped out a peaceful people. First, he brought a lust for gold. Second, European diseases that the isolated Taino people could not fight off. And third, a disdain for cultures that were not European.
The second book is a novel for children 12 and up about the Holocaust called The Devil's Arithmetic. The story takes a modern girl back in time to a small shtetl in Poland in the early 1940s, and from there to a concentration camp. The book is about remembering history in order not to repeat it, as well as reminding us that we can all be "small heroes."
When we think about 9/11, it is important to remember all these things. The golden rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. In Matthew: As you do to the least of my people, so you do unto me. In Buddhism: Hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful. The Yoruba people of Africa: One going to take a pointed stick to pinch a baby bird should first try it on himself to feel how it hurts. Jewish--from Levitus: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. Islam: No one of you is a believer until he desires for his brother that which he desires for himself.