Yonder, by Tony Johnston, illustrated by Lloyd Bloom, is a gentle peek into the olden days and olden ways. To my way of thinking, the word "yonder" ranks right up there with the back o' beyond, vanishing point, North Pole, and the Milky Way for taking the mind to some far away and wonderful place.
Tony Johnston starts the first page by using the word "yonder" five times, and in this way she takes us immediately to some distance horizon line: "Yonder. Way over yonder."
And then she sets us right down smack in the middle of this yonder place by saying "There. Just over there." This phrase is a repeating phrase used throughout the rest of the picture book, until she brings us back again to "Yonder. Way over yonder."
With a kind of poetic magic, Tony Johnston makes "yonder" seem like "here" just for few pages of time.
The story grows up around a tree. A man comes with his bride. They plant a plum tree. They build a cabin and a barn. Children come, and the seasons come and go, too. There is one really wonderful two-page spread where the mother is sewing a patchwork quilt on the left-hand page that perfectly mirrors the father on the right-hand page who is plowing his field in front of a patchwork of land like the one show above.
The mother's quilt is a fabric painting of all those patchwork fields outside.
This is the mother from the cover of the book. I love that little button of a baby's face peeking out at us.
Tony Johnston's words cast a poetic spell, and Lloyd Bloom's illustrations have a lovely impressionistic look to them. In the springtime, the plum-tree blossoms are strewn upon the page in a hundred tiny pink and white splashes, and in winter, snow spatters everywhere, both inside the house and outside on the trees.
Soon all the children grow up. The boys are taller now than their father. A daughter gets married. A new baby is on the way, and the mother and father become grandma and grandpa. The plum tree keeps on growing. And it all takes place:
The father gathers all the grandchildren on his lap and tells them stories. I think one of my favorite parts is that during the telling of these tales:
"Owls are listening. Bears are listening . . . There. Just over there."
The father who is now the grandpa dies and one last tree is planted for him. Such a tiny book, only 32 pages, to carry the whole story of one family, from the first bride and groom to the first children to the first grandchildren to the first death, in and out of years, and through all the seasons.
If you want an old-fashioned story with a wagon in it, a swing and a quilting frame, pigs, geese, and a goat, a wedding and a cradle, children in nightshirts, pumpkins and knitting, and the planting of a tree to say goodbye to a loved one, it's all there, just over there and way over yonder, in a beautiful children's picture book called Yonder.
It's a very "Tasha Tudor" kind of book, both in the lifestyle it portrays and in the sweet illustrations.
This book is sadly out of print (I found it in a second-hand store ~ by chance), but I do see that a few used copies are available on Amazon. I checked with the Austin Public Library and found that two copies are available in Austin, so if you live in a largish city, I hope you can find it in your library, or can receive it through an inter-library loan system if you live in a smallish city.
I would love to know how easy or how hard it is to find a book like this where you live, and especially if you live on the other side of the world. And have a wonderful weekend, wherever you are, way over yonder or there, just over there!
