The picture book When I Was Young in the Mountains was a Caldecott Honor book in 1984. The book is a story based on author Cynthia Rylant’s own childhood in Appalachia living her grandparents and other relatives in Cool Ridge, West Virginia. The illustrations by Diane Goode have an old-fashioned feel as this loving family of grandparents and grandchildren go about their daily lives.
Almost every page begins with the words “When I was young in the mountains”. The repetition gives the book a nice oral tradition storytelling kind of feel. This book is great early history about the pleasures and hard work of mountain living. While the book mainly has a peaceful feel, there is a huge snake that the grandmother kills and the children pose with it for a picture from a traveling photographer.
The grandfather in the story comes home in the evenings covered with the black dust of the coal mine. Only his lips are clean, and he uses those lips to kiss the children on the top of their heads. The table is spread with hot corn bread, pinto beans, and fried okra.
Not only adults work in the mountains. Children are shown bringing water to their grandfather so he can wash, stopping by the general store for butter, snapping beans, and pumping pails of water from the well to be heated for their baths. They have fun too. They swim in a dark and muddy swimming hole. Sometimes they see snakes, but they jump in anyway. The family attends church and watches as a cousin gets baptized in that same swimming hole. Some of the harsher realities of mountain life are avoided in this story, and that’s okay for this age group. For example, no one talks about what that coal dust is doing to the grandfather’s lungs, or what would happen if those snakes turned out to be poisonous.
To celebrate its twentieth anniversary, When I Was Young in the Mountains was re-released with a commemorative copper-colored band. The story is recommended for preschoolers and younger elementary school students.
Also See:
Christmas in the Big Woods – Laura Ignalls Wilder
Snowflake Bentley – Jacqueline Briggs Martin
Children’s Literature – American History for Kids