[CALIBK12] Richie's Picks: RIVER OF DREAMS

[BudNotBuddy at aol.com]

Richie's Picks: RIVER OF DREAMS: THE  STORY OF THE HUDSON RIVER by Hudson 
Talbott, Putnam Juvenile, January 2009,  40p., ISBN: 978-0-399-24521-3  

"On the Hudson there was always the opportunity to be educated  deeply in 
the heart.  The beauty of the landscape did the rest, along with  the magic 
of the moon, the river's hot and reedy bays, the glittering silver  ice, days 
of summer or days of snow submerged in an ocean of clear blue air,  fields 
never-ending, the wind from Canada, and the great city to the  south."
-- from WINTER'S TALE by Mark Helprin (1983)
 
"...Down the Valley one million toilet chains
Find my Hudson so convenient place to drain
And each little city says. 'Who, me?
Do you think that sewage plants come free?'"
-- from "My Dirty Stream (The Hudson River Song)" by Pete  Seeger (1961)
 
"The water turned greenish brown, except by the GM plant,  where it turned 
red or yellow or whatever color that they were painting the cars  that day."
 
I grew up knowing of the Hudson as a river that was dead and  only getting 
worse, the tainted lifeblood of a region that must have been  awfully 
beautiful at some point in a previous century.  As a Boy  Scout I was occasionally 
in the vicinity of the river, participating in  weekend campouts at Bear 
Mountain and, once, touring the grounds of the U.S.  Military Academy.  In my 
early years of raising and showing dairy goats, I  would glimpse the river 
as I drove Upstate to fairgrounds in the  Hudson Valley and beyond. 
 
"When George Washington made his headquarters on a steep cliff  overlooking 
the river, it became the most important military post in the  country.  
Known as West Point, it had views of all boat traffic in both  directions.  The 
river wrapped around its base, forcing ships to slow down  and to come into 
easy range of cannon fire.  Washington called West Point  the 'key to 
America.'"
 
In RIVER OF DREAMS, Hudson Talbott, who illustrated Jacqueline  Woodson's 
beautiful Newbery Honor book SHOW WAY, leads readers on a  four-century 
visual tour de force of the River with whom he shares a  name.  Incorporating 
natural history, colonial and American history, art  and literary history, 
science, technology, and the environmental movement into a  visual celebration 
of all things Hudson, Talbott demonstrates repeatedly  how this river has 
played a unique and pivotal role in America over the four  centuries since 
Henry Hudson first navigated it in September of  1609. 
 
The river's importance has grown in step with the  nation:
 
"George Washington had once envisioned a canal across New York  State, 
connecting the waters of Lake Erie to the Hudson.  Governor Dewitt  Clinton 
picked up the dream, and finally saw it completed in 1825.  Three  hundred and 
sixty-three miles long, forty feet wide and only four feet deep, its  
nickname switched overnight from 'Clinton's Ditch' to the 'Eighth Wonder of the  
World.'
"Suddenly the great, untapped heartland of America was  connected to the 
world by water.  New York-to-Cleveland travel time went  from ninety days by 
land to thirty days by water.  The price of grain  dropped from ninety cents 
a pound to nine cents as Midwest farm products flooded  eastward...The 
Hudson became America's first superhighway, and it made New York  City into the 
greatest marketplace on earth.  Money was pouring into the  city from all 
directions."
 
The river has given and Americans have taken.  Over the centuries, 
businessmen and business concerns large and  small benefited -- in the short run -- 
from exploiting the Hudson River,  but the long term effects to health and 
to the quality of  life have been well-documented (if not as obvious as the 
tip of  one's nose). 
 
"From approximately 1947 to 1977, the General Electric Company  (GE) 
discharged as much as 1.3 million pounds of polychlorinated biphenyls  (PCBs) from 
its capacitor manufacturing plants at the Hudson Falls and Fort  Edward 
facilities into the Hudson River."
-- from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency  website 
 
The U.S. environmental movement began in the sixties in  the Hudson Valley, 
thanks to the way the river was mercilessly exploited,  and while it has 
taken the better part of a lifetime to turn things  around, many things are 
now getting better.  Toward the end of RIVER  OF DREAMS we learn of the 
increasing fish, osprey and bald eagle  populations and how there are people 
actually swimming in the Hudson  these days.  
 
"I would explain that the Hudson was a 'drowned' river,  up to about 
Poughkeepsie.  The Ice Age had depressed the river bed to  a depth that allowed 
the Atlantic Ocean to flood inland.  Consequently,  the lower Hudson was 
really a saltwater estuary." 
--from MY AMERICAN JOURNEY by General Colin Powell (whose  undergrad was 
Geology)
 
Hudson Talbott's paintings flow through the 400 years  of "civilization" on 
the river.  The illustrations include  maps, depictions of the various 
sailing and steam vessels, the process of  ice harvesting, the work of the 
Hudson River School of painting, and images  of important characters in the story 
of the Hudson such  as King James II, Washington Irving, Franny Reese, and 
Pete Seeger.   An exceptionally notable two-page spread reveals a bucolic 
scene of sloops  plying the river and cows in a meadow into which a 
coal-burning locomotive  comes (literally) ripping through the page charging toward  
us. 
 
A visual love song for all who have first-hand experience  with the Hudson, 
for all who have read stories set along the Hudson, and  for all who know 
it up to now only as a thick line of blue on a map of America,  RIVER OF 
DREAMS is an inspiring and beautiful picture book for older  readers who -- with 
a little luck and the help of librarians -- will  hopefully become the next 
generation of Riverkeepers.  
 
 
Richie  Partington, MLIS
Richie's Picks 
_http://www.librarything.com/profile/richiespicks_ 
(http://www.librarything.com/profile/richiespicks) 
BudNotBuddy at aol.com
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