VAN ALLSBURG’S CLASSIC ‘THE POLAR EXPRESS’ TURNS THIRTY
By Bob Vickrey
When I was a young boy growing up in the suburbs of southeast Houston, every Christmas Eve I would sneak out onto our screened front porch and stare into the night sky as I tried to spot Santa’s sleigh as it arrived from the North Pole.
In our community of Galena Park, the bright lights of the refineries that lined the banks of the Houston Ship Channel lit the sky each night, so it did not require much imagination for a restless boy to envision Santa’s sparkling red sleigh and reindeer moving swiftly across the horizon amid all those flickering lights.
Many years later as an adult, I worked in the book business for the venerable Boston firm Houghton Mifflin, which published Chris Van Allsburg’s landmark Christmas classic, “The Polar Express.”
Thirty years have now passed since the meeting at our Boston headquarters when our sales and marketing group first laid eyes on the early proofs of the book that would eventually rival “The Night before Christmas” as America’s book of choice for the holiday season.
There were audible oohs and aahs heard around the meeting table as we first perused the pages of this vibrant and original Christmas story that would go on to win the Caldecott Medal, which is awarded annually to the best illustrated children’s book.
The story is about a young boy’s fantastical train ride to the North Pole, where he is chosen by Santa to receive the first gift of Christmas. The boy chooses a bell from the harness of the reindeer, only to become disheartened on the train trip home when he discovers it missing after falling through a hole in the pocket of his pajamas.
However on Christmas morning, the boy and his sister find a small package under the tree delivered by Santa Claus who had left a note explaining that the bell was found on the seat of his sleigh. The children were both overjoyed as they listened to the beautiful ring of the bell, but sadly, their parents were unable to hear its sound, and concluded that it must have been broken.
Van Allsburg’s books often revealed a dream-like quality, and offered a curious perspective from a child’s eye view. Children connected with his unique artwork and his mysterious stories. His earlier books had already made a formidable impact on the children’s book market including “The Garden of Abdul Gasazi” and “Jumanji,” which had been his first Caldecott Medal winner four years earlier.
“The Mysteries of Harris Burdick,” featured a series of seemingly unrelated images, including only a title and one-line description that almost invited children to make up their own stories about the mystery behind each picture.
“The Polar Express” was indeed one of those special books that offered all the right ingredients of great storytelling that fired the imagination of children and inspired future generations of young readers.
I have fond memories of accompanying Chris during his many Southern California book tours, but I particularly remember his bookstore signings for “The Polar Express” that very first year the book was released. I watched the long lines of children as they excitedly approached the author who would be signing their copy of the book. Their impatience and eagerness at being given the chance of meeting him was quite evident.
But what I also noticed during those signings were the children’s parents, many of whom demonstrated that same anticipation as they neared the author’s table. The last few lines in the story might well have offered an explanation.
“At one time, most of my friends could hear the bell, but as years passed, it fell silent for all of them. Even Sarah found one Christmas that she could no longer hear its sweet sound. Though I’ve grown old, the bell still rings for me, as it does for all who truly believe.”
For many of us whose hair has now turned grey, the faint sound of the bell is no longer detectable, but each Christmas season as I re-read “The Polar Express,” I find myself listening closely in hopes of hearing its sweet ring just one more time.
Bob Vickrey is a writer whose columns appear in several Southwester newspapers. He is a member of the Board of Contributors for the Waco Tribune-Herald and regular contributor to the Boryana Books website. He lives in Pacific Palisades, California.
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Honey on the road to San Francisco with some of the Spanish explorers
NOTES FROM ABOVE GROUND
By Honey van Blossom
(Honey is a Belgian Marxist former strip-tease artiste)
"Cities of the Golden Gate," Raymond Dabb Yelland, 1893. Most illustrations can be enlarged by clicking on them.
Prologue to the story of the Spanish exploration and settlement of California
Seasonal migrations of animals now extinct in California probably created the roads the native people used before the Spanish land exploration of California. “The heyday of giant mammals in North America was the middle and late Pleistocene, an epoch that started 2.6 million years ago and ended 11,700 years ago, around the time the Earth was thawing out from the Ice Age. The gigantic beasts, which migrated from Asia across a now-vanished land bridge called Beringia, are known as Rancholabrean megafauna, after the famous La Brea tar pits in downtown Los Angeles — the graveyard of thousands of saber-toothed tigers, giant bison and other extinct animals.”[1]
The seasonal migrations of the large mammals may have created the substantial roads used by the indigenous people after their arrival.[2]
Paul S. Martin and Richard G. Klein argue that Paleoindian over-hunting led to the extinction of the megafauna.[3] Others argue that climate change was responsible for mammoth and mastodon extinctions. As the last major glaciation ended around 12,000 years ago, climate warmed too quickly for the megafauna to adapt.
