![]() ![]() And because Mike and Mary Anne “always work faster and better / when someone is watching us,” the whole town comes out to stare. ![]() ![]() He doesn’t sign a contract or plan anything beforehand he just makes a promise like a kid crossing his heart on the playground. Stuck but not wanting to chuck his darling into the scrap heap, Mike hatches a practical but theatrical plan: The new town hall in Popperville needs a cellar, and Mike promises that he and Mary Anne can dig it in a day. In the book, Mike and his steam-shovel friend, Mary Anne, have spent a whole life traveling and working together, until new technologies threatened to make them obsolete. Like Mike, I just wanted a job that made me happy and gave me a home. Reading it offered me a simple, true relief. Best, the book’s tone tells us that if Mike can do this work, everything will end well-happily, even. ![]() Unlike the real-life men I knew who dug, Mike doesn’t care about horizons or wives or beer, or anything but his work. In Virginia Lee Burton’s classic children’s book Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel, burrowing is a way of settling into the ground, not taming itĪS a kid I loved Virginia Lee Burton’s book Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel for its simplicity: Its hero, Mike Mulligan, spends one whole day digging a hole to save his life. Right: Virginia Lee Burton, Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel, 1939 Left: Louis Lozowick, Steam Shovel, 1930. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |