Richie's Picks: RIVER OF DREAMS: THE STORY OF THE HUDSON RIVER by Hudson
Talbott, Putnam Juvenile, January 2009, 40p., ISBN: 978-0-399-24521-3
"On the Hudson there was always the opportunity to be educated deeply in
the heart. The beauty of the landscape did the rest, along with the magic
of the moon, the river's hot and reedy bays, the glittering silver ice, days
of summer or days of snow submerged in an ocean of clear blue air, fields
never-ending, the wind from Canada, and the great city to the south."
-- from WINTER'S TALE by Mark Helprin (1983)
"...Down the Valley one million toilet chains
Find my Hudson so convenient place to drain
And each little city says. 'Who, me?
Do you think that sewage plants come free?'"
-- from "My Dirty Stream (The Hudson River Song)" by Pete Seeger (1961)
"The water turned greenish brown, except by the GM plant, where it turned
red or yellow or whatever color that they were painting the cars that day."
I grew up knowing of the Hudson as a river that was dead and only getting
worse, the tainted lifeblood of a region that must have been awfully
beautiful at some point in a previous century. As a Boy Scout I was occasionally
in the vicinity of the river, participating in weekend campouts at Bear
Mountain and, once, touring the grounds of the U.S. Military Academy. In my
early years of raising and showing dairy goats, I would glimpse the river
as I drove Upstate to fairgrounds in the Hudson Valley and beyond.
"When George Washington made his headquarters on a steep cliff overlooking
the river, it became the most important military post in the country.
Known as West Point, it had views of all boat traffic in both directions. The
river wrapped around its base, forcing ships to slow down and to come into
easy range of cannon fire. Washington called West Point the 'key to
America.'"
In RIVER OF DREAMS, Hudson Talbott, who illustrated Jacqueline Woodson's
beautiful Newbery Honor book SHOW WAY, leads readers on a four-century
visual tour de force of the River with whom he shares a name. Incorporating
natural history, colonial and American history, art and literary history,
science, technology, and the environmental movement into a visual celebration
of all things Hudson, Talbott demonstrates repeatedly how this river has
played a unique and pivotal role in America over the four centuries since
Henry Hudson first navigated it in September of 1609.
The river's importance has grown in step with the nation:
"George Washington had once envisioned a canal across New York State,
connecting the waters of Lake Erie to the Hudson. Governor Dewitt Clinton
picked up the dream, and finally saw it completed in 1825. Three hundred and
sixty-three miles long, forty feet wide and only four feet deep, its
nickname switched overnight from 'Clinton's Ditch' to the 'Eighth Wonder of the
World.'
"Suddenly the great, untapped heartland of America was connected to the
world by water. New York-to-Cleveland travel time went from ninety days by
land to thirty days by water. The price of grain dropped from ninety cents
a pound to nine cents as Midwest farm products flooded eastward...The
Hudson became America's first superhighway, and it made New York City into the
greatest marketplace on earth. Money was pouring into the city from all
directions."
The river has given and Americans have taken. Over the centuries,
businessmen and business concerns large and small benefited -- in the short run --
from exploiting the Hudson River, but the long term effects to health and
to the quality of life have been well-documented (if not as obvious as the
tip of one's nose).
"From approximately 1947 to 1977, the General Electric Company (GE)
discharged as much as 1.3 million pounds of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) from
its capacitor manufacturing plants at the Hudson Falls and Fort Edward
facilities into the Hudson River."
-- from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency website
The U.S. environmental movement began in the sixties in the Hudson Valley,
thanks to the way the river was mercilessly exploited, and while it has
taken the better part of a lifetime to turn things around, many things are
now getting better. Toward the end of RIVER OF DREAMS we learn of the
increasing fish, osprey and bald eagle populations and how there are people
actually swimming in the Hudson these days.
"I would explain that the Hudson was a 'drowned' river, up to about
Poughkeepsie. The Ice Age had depressed the river bed to a depth that allowed
the Atlantic Ocean to flood inland. Consequently, the lower Hudson was
really a saltwater estuary."
--from MY AMERICAN JOURNEY by General Colin Powell (whose undergrad was
Geology)
Hudson Talbott's paintings flow through the 400 years of "civilization" on
the river. The illustrations include maps, depictions of the various
sailing and steam vessels, the process of ice harvesting, the work of the
Hudson River School of painting, and images of important characters in the story
of the Hudson such as King James II, Washington Irving, Franny Reese, and
Pete Seeger. An exceptionally notable two-page spread reveals a bucolic
scene of sloops plying the river and cows in a meadow into which a
coal-burning locomotive comes (literally) ripping through the page charging toward
us.
A visual love song for all who have first-hand experience with the Hudson,
for all who have read stories set along the Hudson, and for all who know
it up to now only as a thick line of blue on a map of America, RIVER OF
DREAMS is an inspiring and beautiful picture book for older readers who -- with
a little luck and the help of librarians -- will hopefully become the next
generation of Riverkeepers.
Richie Partington, MLIS
Richie's Picks
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