In the 1960s, first lady, “Lady Bird” Johnson, was a known advocate for preserving wild spaces. Carrie Lippincott called herself the Pioneer Seedswoman of America for starting a seed business in Minneapolis in 1886. Marie Clark Taylor was the first Black woman to receive a doctorate in botany in 1941, and then  Ph.D. in science from Fordham University. For ten years, Waheenee, also called Buffalo Bird Woman, shared her traditional Hidatsa cultivating, planting and harvesting methods with a minister and anthropologist, that the American Museum of Natural History published in 1917 as Buffalo Bird Woman’s Garden: Agriculture of the Hidatsa Indians.

Rereading Kate DeCamillo’s Newbery Award winner, Tales of Despereaux, was rough. The language was exquisite but the poverty, pain and cruelty were hard to stomach. The ending and redemption through sharing soup was uplifting. The contrast between her children’s story and others in The Illustrated Treasury of Children’s Literature, edited and with an introduction by Margaret E. Martignoni (1955), was stark. Some of those old-timey nursery rhymes were equally hard to stomach. My childhood favorite, The Fisherman and His Wife had wonderful illustrations, as did most of the entries.

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