East, West, Home's Best.
Margaret Wise Brown was a prolific children's author through
the 1940s and into the early 60s. She also wrote under various
pseudonyms (see
The Little Island, 1946) speaking to all kinds of issues
through a child's eyes. Home For A Bunny is a picture book
full of the geography of animals, places, sounds and the season of spring.
It's steeped in a central theme, the desire to belong somewhere,
with someone, to feel safe, to feel loved, to be....at home. "Is
this a child's book?" I ask my students. How many adults
seek these same things in their own lives? Where is home for you?
Perhaps Brown
had an insight into these desires and issues. Perhaps that's why a book for children can live on
like the lyric of a classic piece of music...because it touches
a collective sense in our hearts?
Cultural geography has a term, "hearth" which means
generally, an origin point for cultural phenomenon. But the term
hearth is derived from the term that's associated with
the term home. Both hearth and home are historically
linked in that the hearth of a home was the fireplace, a central
feature of a home. Both terms have become know as origin points,
starting places perceived and real. As Margaret Wise Brown presents
it, even the groundhog,
the frog, the robin, the bunny
rabbit have a place
they can "call"
home. Geography is
about places, and Home For A Bunny is about a little bunny
rabbits "desire" to be some place....a place called
home. "Deep River! my HOME is over Jordan!" "Country
roads, take me HOME, to the place where I belong." "Be it ever so humble, there's no place like HOME."
Dr. M. Mustoe Geographer EOU
P.S. Home For A Bunny,
one of my personal favorites.
Back
to Acoustic Space HOME!
INTERESTING LINKS
The
Margaret Wise Brown
website. Search information about her books and the aurthor. A
very good resource.
A Story For Bed Time, which nearly all stories might be, but this one in
particular..... has a sense about it for bed time, especially
the last image, I'd say. Check out the UK Web site, "A Story For Bed Time"
with stories read in very naturalistic settings. An excellent
site supporting reading!
ABOUT GEOSOUNDS
Home For A Bunny has been produced with live ambient sounds from
a marsh I recorded, 4 May 2007 at 6:16 a.m. located on the Walter Sholz road in Whitman County Washington
at the approximate
coordinates of Lat. 46.858562 N,- Long 117.675741 W.
Also included in the production of this narration is the use of
the Official Audubon Bird Call. The call was used
for the sounds associated with the baby robins. Also, a Haydel's Dove call was used as a metaphorical
tone at the moment the Bunny found a home. The call of a mature
mourning dove was mimicked.
Ground hogs do make sounds! The Hog
Haven is a wonderful site dedicated to learning about Groundhogs!
Hog Haven has an excellent collection of ground hog sounds. A portion of one of the
sounds in the background narration for the groundhog is indeed
the sound of a real live Hog Haven groundhog!
Another Ground Hog site of interest is groundhog.org,
the official site of the Punxsutnawney ground hog club.
