Listen With Your Heart, Not Your Ears

I Can Hear The Sun by Patricia Polacco

Patricia Polacco is a children's author with a great deal of courage. She shuns the conventional and sniffs at the idea of shielding a child from reality. Rather, it is obvious by the books that she writes that Polocco has a profound respect for her young readers and is reaching out to something in their souls that is too often overlooked by patronizing adults.

I Can Hear the Sun: A Modern Myth is almost conspiratorial in the way it tells a story to children while baffling we more literal minded adults. It is a modern myth that will resonate with children who believe in magic. We adults will scratch our heads and look for the allegory or symbolism. We will nod knowingly at what we think each character represents. We'll anticipate the ending based on our knowledge of fairy tales. We'll work to extract a moral from the tale. And by doing so, we'll miss some of the magic. It's almost as if we're tugging on Santa's beard to see if it is real. We make judgements. We categorize the book the way the adults outside the pages of this book categorize him.

Polacco begins I Can Hear the Sun in a setting we can believe in, that we know, even if we haven't been to that particular lake on the West Coast. She writes:

Lake Merritt, a lake right in the middle of Oakland, California, is magic for some, a place of rest for others, and a home for many a wanderer. "Throwaway people" as they're called, take up on its benches and call it home. Children play near the water while their tired mothers pull heavy air past their faces with paper fans.

Characaters Who Fit

She then introduces us to four people and a goose who are like so many people that we know, and yet unlike anyone but themselves. We meet Stephanie Michele, a park worker who is "well acquainted with the secret ways of animals and hurting souls needing a place to just be."

We meet Mae Marie, a resident of the park, who travels in her layered clothing with her boxes of belongings stacked in a shopping cart, her hair permanently stringed and gray. Polocco doesn't tell us how Mae Marie ended up homeless, just that her "whole life was stuffed right into that old cart."

There's Willie Jack, who is always yelling and gesturing, a bitter man "who'd been crippled by the war." Which war it was doesn't matter.

Polacco doesn't shy away from presenting these people who are on the edges of society. Nor does she make excuses for them or sugar coat their existence. They simply are. It doesn't matter that we wouldn't invite them to eat with us or that we would avert our eyes if we walked through the park while they were there. They are part of the story, witnesses to the miracle.

But the story isn't about homelessness. It's about a little boy named Fondo. And about a blind goose. Fondo comes to the park and sits on the bench for hours each day. He doesn't run and play like the other children, but sometimes Stephanie Michele hears him talking to the geese.

Flying Against The Odds

Stephanie Michele befriends Fondo and introduces him to a blind goose. Fondo is eager to help Stephanie Michele and shows up every day at the park. He is especially taken with the blind goose. Stephanie Michele tells him, "She'll fly some day, though, probably higher and better than the others."

"She just needs a little help now, don't she?" Fondo asked.

Willy Jack, the man who has lost all of his idealism, is scornful. He says, "That goose ain't good for nothing.She can't even feed herself.how can she fly!"

As if you needed one to do the other! Indeed, that is what Polocco is trying to tell us in this story. She's telling us to re-evaluate the instruments we use to measure people. We miss out on miracles when we judge someone as having less worth than us because they don't meet up to someone's set of standards.

Fondo refuses, meanwhile, to tell Stephanie Michele that he lives in an orphanage and has been designated a problem child. Nor do we the readers get to see either his home nor the behavior that has caused him to be labeled as he is. It is what others, outsiders do.

At the end of the day, after Fondo has left, Stephanie Michele listens to the sun. Willy Jack is derisive, but Stephanie says, "It talks to me about the hearts of people folk and animals too.especially the ones needing one thing or another." She leaves the park, but not before leaving food for Willy Jack and Mae Marie in a place where she knows they'll find it.

Art and Language

The illustrations in this book are captivating. It is the same, artistic style that Polocco has in all of her books-plenty of earthy colors and characters with highly expressive faces and eyes. I was also impressed that while the text made no mention of it, Stephanie Michele is portrayed as a large woman-a woman who is as large in body as she is in heart. The text doesn't mention it, because it isn't important.

One thing that did throw me about the illustrations was the incongruity between the way the words described the suffocating heat but the illustrations depicted Fondo in long sleeves. I'm still trying to determine whether this was a conscious choice on the part of the artist and what it means. Willy Jack and Mae Marie are in long-sleeved, layered clothing that is logical for people who must carry all of their possessions on their back. Stephanie Michele wears a uniform that includes short sleeves and shorts.

The expressions painted on each person's face illustrate as much as the dialog does. At a glance, we are able to perceive the wisdom of Stephanie Michele, the kindness of Mae Marie, and the bitterness of Willy Jack. We are also able to tell that something isn't quite ordinary about Fondo.

Polacco makes effective use of non-standard language. The word "ain't" is woven into the text several times and it adds texture to the story. She is able to put it in the words of Willy Jack to portray him as harmlessly aggressive without introducing the stronger, more objectionable language that would be more realistic.

Let's Throw Away The Rulers

One day, a sad and somber Fondo arrives to tell his friends that he is being sent away. It is here that the book begins to take on mythic elements:

He explains, "I'm not much on learning. They call me slow."

"Oh honey, if only all of us could be slow like you," Stephanie Michele said as she hugged him close.

"I failed all the tests they've been giving me. They say I'm a special needs case."

"Oh child, you're special all right. The most loving and gentle soul that I have ever known."

But those standardized tests don't measure a person's capacity for love and gentleness. They don't measure a person's worth or their ability to be compassionate and kind. His announcement that he will soon be out of their lives affects the people of the park. Stephanie Marie sits on a bench while Mae Marie talks about her sister in Tulsa, a sister she'' never talked about before. Willy Jack, the tough, bitter, cynical one, cries.

Polacco has now set us up for the miracle, and she delivers in a way that is as metaphorical as it is uplifting.

About the Author

All of Polocco's books are based on either her experiences or the stories that have been passed down through her families' oral traditions. She has written heart-wrenching historical picture books such as Pink and Say set in the United States' Civil War and The Butterfly set during the Nazi occupation of France. She's also written more light-hearted tales such as Some Birthday and Babushka's Mother Goose.

Her books are all picture books as she was an artist before she was a writer. They are aimed for the nine- to eleven-year-old crowd, if only because of the challenging concepts she includes in them. However, I would certainly recommend the books to children and adults that are older than that-or even younger if a parent is there to discuss the issues and help the child to explore deeper than the words and pictures on the page.

Polocco tells us that this book was based on experiences that she had while living in Oakland, California in 1996. She ends the book by saying it is for "Stephanie Michele Benavidez, the little blind goose, and Fondo."

While the book is classified as a "modern myth," it is the type of myth that encourages us to look for the miracles all around us. It encourages us to see others for who they are and it encourages us to fly, even when we've been told we have no wings.

--B. Redman