Vera B. Williams was an American illustrator and author who wrote several popular picture books for children. The two that I’m most familiar with are A Chair for My Mother, which won a Newbery Honor, and Three Days on a River in a Red Canoe, the story journal of a mother-daughter-aunt canoe trip. A Chair fro My Mother is a beautiful homely story about a girl whose family experiences a fire in their apartment. No one is hurt, but all of their possessions are destroyed in the fire. Their community and family come together to give them things to help them start again, but the one things they don’t have is a soft, comfortable chair for the girl’s mother to relax in after a hard day of work at the diner. SO the family begins to save up their money in a big jar to buy a chair for mother (and grandmother who lives with them). It’s such a good book about a working class family and about how families work together to manage their money and save for something important. I feel as if the book teaches gratitude and delayed gratification and teamwork and so much more, but in a story, not a sermon.

Ms. Williams’ bio sounds as if she led a colorful life: she helped start a “community” (sounds like a commune) in the hills of North Carolina and a school based on the Summerhill model. Then she moved to Canada and lived on a houseboat for a while, where she illustrated her first book. Oh, and she spent a month in the federal penitentiary in West Virginia after a “peaceful blockade of the Pentagon.”

“I don’t make a point of ending up in jail. But if you try to put your hopes and beliefs for a better life into effect, arrest is sometimes a hazard. As a person who works for children, who raised three children … I have to be able to say I did something to try to save our planet from destruction.”

It sounds as if our politics may differ, but I do appreciate Ms. Williams’ books.