Chew on This

Baked Beans for Breakfast, by Ruth Chew. Illustrated by the Author.

The saga behind my ownership of BBFB is a long and involved one but it says much about my history and my psychology. I had developed a distaste for beans, or perhaps my dissatisfaction with them was only realized by the example of art, when I saw Donald’s reaction to them in an early “Disney Gold Key Digest”. I was Donald in our brotherly trinity of Mickey, Donald, and Goofy. The formulation and sudden resistance to beans was rather unfortunate, as they were a cheap staple at meals and one of Pop’s favorites. I remember for a while choking down the least number of beans possible, usually washed down with tea and little chewing. To me they tasted like “little bags of dirt”, and as soon as I could I refused to eat them altogether. As of late, I have modified my position. Anyway, as a joke, Mike persuaded Mom to send off for a copy of this Scholastic book from Weekly Reader (I think it was a bonus free book) as a burn on my bean-hate. I mean I’m sure Mom didn’t see it as a joke, but Mike knew how it would affect me. It came, and I was duly disgusted, but we certainly weren’t in the position to waste a book, so I dutifully sat down to try to read it. It wasn’t bad either, but it wasn’t my favorite kind of story with fantasy or talking animals or humor. It’s the story of a brother and sister who don’t want to spend the summer in Brooklyn with a babysitter who feeds them stewed tomatoes (which may be where I got my own early distaste for stewed tomatoes. Thanks, literature!) while their parents go to Paris, so they run away on their own to camp in the country. They use their own money to buy supplies (among them baked beans which they have for breakfast) and their wits to live off the land. There is a map. I have always liked maps in a book, and this was an early one. In the end there is a flood and the little island they are staying on is swamped and they escape on an improvised raft (shades of the Peanuts’ Ark playing, and that later episode in ‘Elf and Bear’!). Their escapade is discovered, but they get away with it. As I say, this was not one of my favored books. But it is all tied-up in my life story. This is a replacement copy for the old tattered original. Later released as “The Secret Summer.”

Ranking: Essential.

File Code: Children’s Book. Scholastic. Softcover.

The Witch’s Buttons, Witch’s Broom, The Secret Tree-House, Magic in the Park, and The Wednesday Witch, By Ruth Chew, and Illustrated by the Author.

If I had come to Ruth Chew by any of her other books instead of “Baked Beans for Breakfast”, she might have been one of my favorite childhood authors. All her other books – and there are at least seven more than these five - are all about kids’ encounters with magic and witches, my old mania. Got these at a garage sale and found them fascinating, but not fascinating enough to read just yet.

Ranking: Keepers.

File Code: Children’s Book. Scholastic. Softcover.