PLEASE PUT ME BACK IN THE WATER
I AM PADDLE TO THE SEA

Anyone of any age, assuming his or her soul has any romance, has to be moved by the odyssey suggested by these words.

Western New York is a mighty big place, framed by the Great Lakes on the north and west, and rocky uplands along the Southern Tier, but decorated by Finger Lakes in between. We stand at a triple continental divide, with waters scarcely more than a few steps away from each other flowing to Chesapeake Bay, or the Gulf of St. Lawrence, or the Gulf of Mexico. One bog in Prattsburgh oozes its waters southward from the north end, and northward from the south end, thanks to the lay of the land.

Holling Clancy Holling (I didn’t name him) was an artist, illustrator, and museum professional who in the terrible war year of 1941 published Paddle-to-the Sea, a breathtakingly-illustrated fact book and story book.

A young Indian near Lake Nipigon above Lake Superior carves and paints a man in a canoe, etches the message into the hull, and sets his creation into a snowdrift. As snow melts, Paddle rides downhill into Lake Nipigon, beginning on a journey in which the current will carry him through the Great Lakes, and at last the sea.

Each right-hand page in this oversize book is a full-page color painting, with each left-hand page giving the text of the story, along with line or charcoal drawings illuminating much that Paddle meets on his way: the workings of a sawmill; the structure of a lake freighter. Here we also learn (with illustrations to prove it) that Lake Erie, which lies in a land of coal mines and steel mills, has the outline of a lump of coal. Ontario, on the other hand, lies in farming country – it’s shaped like a carrot.

It’s Paddle’s voyage through Lake Erie, then to and through Lake Ontario, that interest us most. Unfortunately the maps show us that he mostly hugged the Canadian shore after leaving Erie, Pennsylvania, although he did drift toward Rochester until someone picked him up and took him to Toronto, after which he makes his way down the lake and through the Thousand Islands. An elderly woman shelters him for the winter in Montreal before setting him sailing again on the St. Lawrence, bound at last for the sea.

But although we may feel that our two Great Lakes could be longer on shrift, Niagara Falls roars out through one glorious painting, casting up a rainbow. The next painting explodes from the page, drenching the reader as Paddle careens through a whirlpool on the Niagara River.

“Paddle-to-the-Sea” was named a 1942 Caldecott Honor book, joining three others as runners-up for “the most distinguished American picture book for children.” (The winner than year was “Make Way for Ducklings” – no disgrace to finish second in that case.) Twenty years later “Paddle” won the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award, deemed worthy to belong “on the same shelf” with Lewis Carroll’s “Alice” books.

Three other books (“Tree in the Trail,” “ Seabird,” and “Minn of the Mississippi”) are companions, and two of them won Newbery Honors… runners-up for each year’s “most distinguished contribution to American literature for children.” Your kids (and you) can learn a lot (even if it’s a little outdated now). But you and they can also enjoy some wonderful stories… and glimpse the connectedness of things… and lose yourself in lush, lavish artwork… some of it set right here in western New York.