Dear America: Christmas After All by Kathryn Lasky

Author:Kathryn Lasky
Language: eng
Format: azw3, mobi, epub
Tags: United States, Juvenile Fiction, 20th Century, Historical, General
ISBN: 9780545469654
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
Published: 2012-09-01T13:40:35.033000+00:00

which looks out on the playground. She drew the window so exact — every little paint chip — and then through the window she showed a kind of blurry image of children playing. Miss Morse, the art teacher, said it was “very advanced.” So even if you don’t know about toilets, porcelain bathtubs, adjectives, Booth Tarkington, and Charlie Chan there is still stuff you can be advanced in.

December 13, 1932

We went to the shantytown last night to deliver cookies. Delbert came, but guess who else came, too? Marlon! Marlon is so handsome and so nice and we could have all just killed Delbert. Delbert was so high and mighty and snooty to Marlon. Marlon is different. He comes from Minnesota and he’s not a college graduate like Delbert but he’s every bit as smart. You can just tell. He works as a lifeguard at the Antlers Hotel’s indoor swimming pool and then he does half a dozen other things as well. He drives a truck and works in the shipping department at L. S. Ayres and Company, and he works part time at the jazz club where he and Clem met. But he has “lovely manners.” Mama said that when he came by the house before we left for the shantytown with the cookies.

We all walked over to the shantytown. This is the one they call Curtisville. It is the biggest Hooverville in the state of Indiana even if they do call it after the vice president. It was a long, cold walk but I forgot the cold and my freezing feet when we got there. Honest to gosh, I saw people living in contraptions that you couldn’t believe. I saw one family living in a pile of old tires covered with a tarp! Marlon said it was very dangerous. If all those tires collapsed they’d be squashed to death and there was a little baby, just a toddler. Then we saw ramshackle shacks with tin roofs made from flattened

garbage cans. Garbage cans and oil drums were the most important part of Curtisville. People lit fires in them, cooked on them, flattened them into sheets for roofs or walls, and some people who were too tired to build anything just crawled into them and slept. I think they liked our cookies, but to tell you the truth, I felt a little stupid standing there with our cardboard boxes filled with cream cheese dainties, sugar cookies decorated like Santa Claus, and molasses crinkles. The children loved them, that’s for sure. There was one little boy with the dirtiest face and I let him have a Santa Claus cookie, and he just stared and stared at it and then he turned his face up and he said, “Ma’am, if I don’t eat this cookie, do you think it might through Christmas magic turn into a real Santa Claus?”

Well, I just didn’t know what to say. But that Marlon was so nice. He just crouched down and said to the little boy, “I’m

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