Hello, Poetry Friend
Callie Feyen, at Tell Me A Story That’s True, are writing this month about books considered for the 2024 Caldecott Medal. We begin with Vashti Harrison’s “Big,” which won this year’s award.
I want to write about pink.
The ballerina color. The Komen color. The color that announces girl.
It is the color I feel most vulnerable wearing. It is the color on almost every page of this book, and when it’s not there, its absence is significant. When our Big Girl loses her pink, she loses herself.
She is creative. She is graceful. She is smart and kind. And, yes, she is big.
That word is thrown at her as an insult — by friends and by grownups who ought to know better but don’t. In one illustration, she stands before a mirror wearing a pinky-purple towel, and she sees the word Big tattooed on her back in black ink. Her Big needs room, needs to become a pink word she can hold on to.
I remember a tense meeting in a coffee shop, all of us too worked up to even order coffee, talking through years in minutes. Every word was hard. Some of my own words had left tattoos — including some I had thought were right and good but were hurtful. Other words came at me, like arrows. Some I caught, tucked into my pocket to consider later. Others I let fall to the ground.
Our Big Girl learns to let harsh words go long, long before I did. She hands back to her friends and her adults the words she chooses not to keep.
“These are yours. They hurt me.”
Turn the page.
Not everyone understood or even listened.
For me, this may be the most important page in the book. Telling your truth in a considerate way does not guarantee consideration in return. But our Big Girl is imaginative. She cries pink tears, and her light of revelation is itself pink. She is nimble, able to make room for herself when others cannot. And that is oh so good.
When I was the age of this girl, I took ballet. I wore a pink leotard, pink tights, pink ballet shotes. (I wish I’d had her tutu.) I felt more naked wearing those clothes than in any space in my life up to that time. To dance is to bend your body between music and air, to gracefully grab Look-At-Me space. But I could not stand to be looked at. I sought out my own version of Husky Gray.
It has taken me almost fifty years to choose which words to hold and which to release, to extend my leg, to raise my arm high, to spy a pair of Adidas on clearance and know I will buy them before I even try them on because I see in them the I that I am.
The cover of Big tells the whole story with one word and one illustration. One BIG word. One Black girl wearing ballet attire, holding up the I in Big with all her might. She is surrounded by pink’s brave pearl.
Big won the Caldecott medal and was a Coretta Scott King author and illustrator honor book and a National Book Award finalist.
Caldecott Journaling
Harrison uses words as works of art within her illustrations. Pay attention to how the words change in color, form, and style. How do these shifts impact you as a reader?
The illustrations of the people in the story communicate a lot through their body language. What do you notice about our Big Girl, her teacher, her friends, and the other adults just by looking at the way they hold their bodies?
Why do you think our Big Girl is not named?
I love that this story contains a sort of coda, a picture after the Author’s Note. What do you imagine the next chapter of our Big Girl’s story will be?
Happy poeming!
Megan
P.S. Poetry Friend, Callie's post on Vashti Harrison's "Big" is here!
https://calliefeyen.substack.com/p/big-by-vashti-harrison
I still buy children's picture books, and I'm so grateful for you and Megan recommending this one. It looks positively delightful!