Ludwig Bemelman’s Madeline was my first favorite book–or at least the first one I remember as my favorite. I knew it by heart before I could read. I remember the cadence in my mother’s voice as she read it to me, and my grandmother’s too, and how each of us would have a lilt when we came to the line, “And the smallest one was Madeline.”
It was the sound of the words and the ideas too, that I loved about the book–the crack on the ceiling that had a habit of looking like a rabbit. Or the way all the other girls wished they could get their appendix out too. (Who didn’t want crutches and a cast when they saw the attention a friend got?)
I still love books that do that–bring sound and ideas together in such a way that creates both rhythm and meaning, and ultimately something I connect to, even if I have never been to Paris and have no first hand knowledge of a boarding school.
My grandmother has been gone for 35 years. But I can still hear voice and the way she would speed up the pace as Miss Clavel, afraid of disaster, ran fast and faster. And something else familiar was in her voice, too, that I know now (but didn’t know then) was irony. She knew what was coming.
I’m visiting my parents in Maui, and this morning we went to their favorite breakfast place Longhi’s and I asked my mom if she remembered Madeline. She said, “every word,” and we tested my dad, leaving out the last word of each sentence the way she always did for me when I was young. “To the tiger in the zoo, Madeline just said, ___.”
I have had many favorite books since Madeline, but I still know this one by heart.
Laura Stavoe