Lucy admired Dewey’s philosophies but felt his methods required testing on a broad basis. Fortunately, Lucy received a generous inheritance and used it to fund a school laboratory—thus Bank Street was born. Bank Street began as a center where psychologists and educators could test and share new approaches for teaching.
It wasn’t long, though, before Lucy realized that math and science easily conformed to a fair-minded classroom. What challenged her was finding children’s literature that didn’t subjugate women. Fairy tales often positioned marriage as the ultimate goal for a girl. Moreover, the violence and questionable morality of the characters in those stories were not appropriate for children. She needed literature that reflected children’s lives in an evenhanded way.
The curriculum Lucy needed to support their classrooms simply didn’t exist, so she created it. By the time Margaret arrived at the school’s front door, Lucy’s textbook, a thick collection of stories and rhymes, had been used for more than a dozen years in progressive schools. Lucy labeled her book and the literature movement behind it the Here-and-Now philosophy. Her writings met children at their own stages of development—where they were emotionally and psychologically at that moment. Children became more aware of the larger world as they grew. Two-year-olds’ perceptions and interests differed vastly from six-year-olds’. Stories about Mother, Father, bed, and breakfast were fascinating subjects for a toddler. By the age of six, they were more interested in the outside world. They were not only curious about vehicles and buildings but how they were made.
*
Margaret walked into Bank Street at the most opportune moment. Lucy had been hired to write another large collection of stories and poems in the Here-and-Now style for her publisher, Dutton. The last book had consumed an inordinate amount of her time, and she knew she needed help to meet the publisher’s deadline. She was looking to hire an editor and author for their new publications staff. Margaret’s graduate writing courses coupled with the psychology classes at Hollins qualified her for an interview. Lucy was impressed with the pretty blond girl’s quick mind and spunk. On a hunch, Lucy hired her, and although it was only a part-time position, Margaret’s writing career was finally about to take flight.
Margaret was thrilled to be earning money as a writer, even if it was for a children’s textbook. Her days were packed. She woke early in the morning to write, then reported to her classroom of eight-year-olds at the Little Red Schoolhouse. There, Margaret read manuscripts to her class and others. She kept extensive notes on what captured the children’s attention and what bored them. The children, too, shared stories, songs, and poems with Margaret so she could home in on the words they used at each age level. Margaret hurriedly wrote down what the children said and then created lists of age-appropriate words. She listened to the way they described the world around them, and in their words, Margaret recognized flashes of true poetry. She was in awe of how naturally the children expressed themselves.
Afternoons were spent at Bank Street, where Margaret took courses necessary for teacher certification or chased behind Lucy, sharing her notes on which manuscripts did or didn’t work in front of the young audiences. It was soon clear to Margaret that her own stories lacked a certain spark. Her writing was stilted; not at all as effortless as a child’s own language. It took a while for Margaret to understand what felt false in her simple lines, but one day she realized she was talking down to children in her writing. She was handing them a version of their world filtered through her words, emotions, and eyes. Somewhere along the way, she, like most adults, had forgotten how it felt to be a child.
Books and music had helped Margaret escape the walls of her boarding school; stories and songs had lifted her from her own troubles and transported her into a carefree world. That was what she wanted to do in her own writing, but adulthood had dulled those memories. Her senses, once so keen as a child’s, had a blanket over them. Even in recalling those days, Margaret was revisiting them as a grown woman with a different perspective. If she were ever to write honestly for children, she’d need to be able to see the world as they saw it. Margaret became convinced that she needed to recapture the pleasures and frustrations of childhood.
She returned to the fields and woods of Long Island and physically positioned herself to see things from a child’s point of view. She picked daisies, watched bugs crawl, and gazed at clouds floating by. But it was going to take more than seeing the world from a child’s physical vantage point to capture those moments clearly. She had to experience it as a child would, with a sense of awe and wonder. That was the real key to writing for children. She had to love, really love, what they loved.
When writing about a certain topic, Margaret would spend days studying the subject. When writing about farms, she drove to the north end of Long Island and picked potatoes in the hot summer sun. To write about boats, she spent days at the Hudson and East River docks, watching ships come and go, learning sailors’ songs, and talking to the tugboat captains. She even paddled a canoe around Manhattan. She recalled her childhood days of walking on these same docks and the way the cargo and rivers changed with the seasons. She struggled to remember what it felt like as a young girl to watch her father sail away; she tried to recall her overwhelming fear that he would never return and also her joy when he came home with gifts from exotic lands.
After studying every aspect of boats, sailors, and the sea that she could, she led a group of students that varied in ages to the same docks. She noted what impressed them, what generated questions, and what language they used to describe what they saw. On any given day, they might visit a skyscraper or she might lead an expedition to the zoo to watch the seals swim. The day after she wrote a poem on bees, she and the students buzzed around the classroom together, pretending to be bees.