My Father's Hands by Joanne Ryder, illustrated by Mark Graham

I just realized that Lesley has tagged me for the One Book Meme going around. Luckily it requires a single book answer to each question, so I can still stick to the Renee’s Book of the Day format—it will simply take nine days to complete the game!

One Book That Changed Your Life

I’ve been racking my brain for books that changed my life, and the problem, of course, is that many if not all books have changed me in some small way. But I was looking for The Big One, a book that made me a different person, that visibly pushed me in a new direction, that changed the course of my life. I thought for a while that there might not be one single book that held the honor—after all, wouldn’t I readily remember it if there was? But finally, a memory came back to me and I knew this was The One.

It was 1993. I was in the Harvard Book Store in Cambridge wandering aimlessly, probably waiting for someone or between classes. I came upon the store’s small alcove of children’s books and I began looking at the picture books displayed on a table, running my fingers across the wide, smooth expanses of their hard covers. I picked up a book called My Father’s Hands by Joanne Ryder and illustrated by Mark Graham because it had such a warm and touching image on the cover, and I began to read.

In the five minutes it took to finish reading the book, something very small that had been lodged in a fold of my brain began to grow. This feeling expanded until it was as big as the sky, a vast span of blue and green and yellow inside my head. I turned back to the beginning of the book and read it again, studying each illustration as if the answers to all of life’s questions were etched there.

My Father’s Hands is a tribute to Joanne Ryder’s father, in which

a girl watches her father as he tends a garden--as well as its wiggling, sliding, bumbling and graceful creatures. He opens his cupped, earth-encrusted hands to reveal a "pink circle of worm," a beetle "shining in gold armor" and a praying mantis "so light, so bold, so strange." The father wordlessly conveys his enthusiasm to his daughter, who narrates: "I bend closer, knowing that nothing within my father's hands will harm me." Graham's oil paintings, scumbled beneath a dewy veil of early summer light, perfectly match the intimacy of Ryder's text. (Publisher’s Weekly)

My Father’s Hands was never a bestseller or award-winner, but it was the first picture book that I saw with an adult’s eyes, and I felt it nudge my soul. I began to hang out in the children’s sections of bookstores while my friends browsed fiction or history. However, I was a music major and made no connection between my hobby and my future.

That summer, I worked for a small record company in Boston that produced children’s music. The following summer, I interned at Storyopolis, a new children’s entertainment production company in Los Angeles. Besides the production company, Storyopolis also included a children’s book store and illustration gallery. I found myself spending more time in the bookstore than in the production offices.

When I graduated from college, I had many rejections and no job, so my plan was to move in with my parents in northern California while looking for a job in movie or music production in Los Angeles. In the meantime, I took a part time job at The Linden Tree, a children’s bookstore near my parents’ house. Two days later, it became a full time job. I never moved to Los Angeles.

My Father's Hands by Joanne Ryder, illustrated by Mark Graham

tags: children's books book reviews one book meme Harvard Bookstore Joanne Ryder Mark Graham