Andrew Henry's Meadow

My favorite picture book as a child, without a doubt, was Doris Burns’s Andrew Henry’s Meadow. (My copy was a Weekly Reader Children’s Book Club edition.) I savored the text and illustrations every time my mother read it to me. I felt Andrew Henry’s excitement as he set off through the woods to create a place of his own. As other children arrived at his meadow, Andrew built them homes to match their personalities. Each house he built had an element that appealed to me, from Alice’s house for the birds to George’s house with a water view to Margot’s castle with a working drawbridge. “Soon nine houses stood in the meadow. It looked like a small village.” I don’t think it resonated with me as a child that Andrew and his friends were running away from home.

Fast forward to about the time my daughter was born, when my son was 4. I pulled the book off the shelf at Mom’s house to read to my son. I looked at the cover and felt the same pull of coziness. I noticed the book’s slightly out-of-line spine and the almost denim-like texture of the green cover as I was excited to share the story with my son. But as I read the story, the coziness seeped away. The maternal instincts kicked in, and I felt not only sadness for Andrew Henry but also outright fear as the children, one by one, ran away from home, no one knowing where they had gone.

I brought the book back home with me, and it continued to hold its place in the bedtime book rotation for both children. The more I read it and saw my children drawn in by the illustrations, the more the coziness returned. As an adult, I am aware of the draw of that meadow today. A place my home gives me today. A quiet spot to be yourself.