"When I was Young in the Mountains" Written by Cynthia Rylant

When I taught fourth grade in my old school my students always enjoyed this book "When I Was Young in the Mountains" written by Cynthia Rylant, illustrated by Diane Goode. This is an award winning Caldecott Medal of Honor book. Too my surprise, when I started teaching middle school, this story showed up in one of our daily readers.

The story is about Cynthia Rylant and what she experiences when she used to visit her grandparents in the mountains. These are all of her old memories that she is sharing with her readers. She talks about how when her grandfather would come home from working in the coal mines, she would remember him kissing her on the top of her head with only his lips that were clean. She remembers when her grandmother would bake corn bread, cook pinto beans, and fried okra. The pictures even show the smell coming off of the fresh baked bread. She can remember having to use the "Johnny house" (the bathroom outside) because she ate too much okra and her grandmother had to walk her outside. The pictures can even show her not feeling so well. She can recall swimming at the local swimming hole even though it was muddy and filled with snakes. She also recalls the time they stopped at the local grocery and how the owners looked alike and smelled of sweet milk. It is amazing that she recalls the actual smell. Another one of her memories is when she had to pump the pails of water to fill a tub for her bath. Her grandmother used to make hot cocoa for her and her brother while they dried off. On Sundays the family would walk to Church for their weekly sermon. She can recall when her cousin Peter was baptized and how her grandmother cried. I always laugh at the part when her grandmother is chasing a snake with a hoe. The memory that I liked best was when the family would sit on a the porch swing while her grandfather sharpened pencils with his pocketknife and her grandmother would braid her hair. At the end of the book she states that she never wanted to go to the Ocean of the Desert. All she wanted to do was go to the mountains to visit her grandparents. She enjoyed her visits so much.

After reading this book many times, you can picture yourself in the mountains living a much simplier life. Things didn't seem as complicated as they are now. You can't smell the fresh air in the city as much as you can probably smell it in the mountains. These memories are precious to her and it is wonderful that she is willing to share them with her young readers. This is a great teaching tool for your students to come up and share their own special memories. A lot of my students come from other countries and it would interesting to hear their memories of special times from t heir country. I am sure they will be different than mine since I grew up in a different country than them.

This book can give you so much to expand on. You can read it, you can write about it, and you can illustrate it. Cynthia Rylant shows that it is ok to be different. Everyone has different memories and it is interesting to hear what they hold special to them. No wonder this book is an award winning piece of literature.