Happy Birthday, Alice Babette !

April 30th, 2016 § 0 comments

Happy birthday, Alice Babette! This is not just a wish today on Alice’s 139th birthday, but also a new children’s book by Canadian author Monica Kulling published a few weeks ago by Groundwood Books.

9781554988204_1024x1024

GertrudeandAlice join a long line of famous people that Ms. Kulling has featured in her books including Eleanor Roosevelt, Harriet Tubman, and Henry Ford. Other books have been about lesser known trailblazers such as Margaret Knight, the inventor of the paper bag making machine, and Lillian Gilbreth, the first female engineer with a PhD, who was immortalized by her children in the book Cheaper by the Dozen.

I heard about the new picture book from a friend in Canada who is part of my worldwide network of GertrudeandAlice fans – thank you Brent! The network is one of the most gratifying benefits of my longtime fascination with Our Ladies of Gay Paree! GertrudeandAlice news that I don’t receive through my GoogleAlerts, often arrives via this network.

This imaginative book begins with Alice waking up on her birthday wondering what the day will bring. Gertrude, she senses, is unusually reserved and doesn’t even wish her Happy Birthday. She decides to take a walk around Paris.

9781554988204_1_1024x1024

Meanwhile, Gertrude does have something up the sleeve of her billowy blouse! Her plan is to cook a surprise birthday dinner for Alice with stewed beef, creamed potatoes, vegetables and a pineapple upside-down cake (one of my specialties) for dessert!

With Basket by her side, Gertrude gets underway, but of course, things don’t go as planned – she is the writer after all and not the cook in this household! Her primary distraction is a special poem which she wants to write for Alice and “words flowed through Gertrude’s mind.”

9781554988204_3_1024x1024

By the time Alice returns from her walk, which includes a run-in with a jewel thief and a reward – enough said, you’ll have to read the book!- the kitchen is a mess and the food is ruined since Gertrude had abandoned the pots and pans for her writing desk in order to finish the birthday poem!

Alice to the rescue: the kitchen is cleaned, brownies are baked and a good time is had by all of the birthday guests.

The delicate, pastel illustrations by Qin Leng couldn’t be more perfect. It was fun for me to imagine possible inspirations for her GertrudeandAlice. Gertrude looks a bit like a mash-up between Oliver Hardy and Kathy Bates in “Midnight in Paris,” while Alice looks like three other “A”-listers, Audrey Hepburn, Anna Wintour of VOGUE and Anita Loos (of “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” fame), a friend of Alice’s!

7437-28786

imgres

audrey-hepburn3

Anna+Wintour+Givenchy+Front+Row+Spring+2016+Z_vEeeJfEYMl

url

The pages with multiple illustrations are particularly wonderful each telling its own story.

9781554988204_3_1024x1024 copy

The small details in many of the drawings reminded me of the filler drawings, Spots, in THE NEW YORKER – an open book here, stacked notebooks there, a random flower pot in a corner or mischievous mice under the stove!

It’s also fun that the illustrations do not evoke any particular period making this a timeless tale of longtime love and partnership. GertrudeandAlice’s clothes, though conservative, could have been purchased online yesterday or picked up in the women’s department at Le Bon Marché last weekend.

The birthday poem which Gertrude writes for Alice is not in the story, so I include one that was among the love notes which Alice shipped by chance with other Gertrude papers to the Yale University library in 1947:

“Baby precious, I can’t write

such sweet poetry as baby precious

but I can love baby precious as much

as baby precious loves me, yes

it is true my sweet joy and

pride and my lovely bride

and everything else beside

and thank you for a happy

birthday and I worked a little

too and thank you dear baby

precious your dear”

Happy birthday, Alice Babette!

PS

The Author’s Note on the last page gives some information about GertrudeandAlice. One slight correction: it mentions that Alice wrote two books, her memoir What Is Remembered and her cookbook. Actually there was a second cookbook, Aromas and Flavors Past and Present (1958), but as Alice disliked this book so much because of the major changes her editor made to it, let’s say it’s a birthday gift to her that it wasn’t mentioned in the note!

PSS

Here are GertrudeandAlice in the kitchen of their country place circa 1942:

GAKitchen42

9781554988204_1024x1024

Tagged , , , ,

Leave a Reply

What's this?

You are currently reading Happy Birthday, Alice Babette ! at Questions and Answers.

meta