How many children put books on their holiday wish lists? Video games and popular toys dominate over literature. Certainly, children can learn to think creatively through playing games and using toys, but there is something about books that brings a crucial new perspective to any child's life.

I remember clearly the books I read when I was very little and the ones I liked best. Two of my favorites were The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins by Dr. Seuss and Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are. Both are stories of children who are very much alone in unusual circumstances and find ways through themselves to meet adversity. They also both feature wonderful, creative illustrations. I don't recall if these were holiday gifts, but they and many, many others were fixtures in my home as I grew up.

As most subscribers to this newsletter know, books have such a lasting impact on our lives. "Reading at Risk," the National Endowment for the Arts report released earlier this year about the state of literary reading in the U.S., paints a gloomy picture (according to the report, less than half of U.S. adults read literature). To humanities councils nationwide, this translates into a gloomy prediction of what will happen to creative thinking and the pleasure of thought.

We at the Maine Humanities Council are happy to report that constituent support for all of our programs remains strong. Had we more funding, we would have no trouble increasing every one. In a few months, we will release our Fiscal Year 2004 Annual Report that will detail the numbers and stories of our work over the past year, but in the meantime, please know that your interest and support in the MHC has indeed made a difference. If you are new to this newsletter, please glance through past issues to see what we have been up to each month.

Is reading likely to be at risk in Maine in 2005? We at the MHC certainly hope not and will be doing all we can to ensure that every child in this state, every adult who struggles with reading, and teachers, and other thinkers of all kinds feel respected, listened to, and exposed to the world of books and ideas.

From all of us at the Council, thank you so much for your support.

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Visit the link below for details of programs that the MHC funds in whole or in part by providing grants. We hope you have the opportunity to experience one of these projects and see the difference that the MHC grant program makes.

MHC Grant-Funded Event Calendar

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All of us at the MHC warmly welcome three new members to the MHC Board.

Sheila Jans is a resident of Madawaska, giving her a keen perspective of what makes the slice of Maine along the Canadian border even more different from the rest of this largely rural state. Sheila is originally from Newfoundland, lived for some time in Montreal, and became a resident of the St. John Valley in 1997. She now serves as a cultural development consultant and director of the Quebec-Labrador Foundation's St. John valley Field Desk. Her current work involves directing the creation of an international cultural heritage route in northern Maine.

Tom Lizotte is known already to MHC staff as being deeply involved in Literature & Medicine as its liaison in Mayo Regional Hospital in Dover-Foxcroft. Tom also serves as Director of Marketing and Development at the Hospital. Prior to that, he had a 20-year career in journalism with the Central Maine Morning Sentinel, the Piscataquis Observer, and the Moosehead Messenger, and was recipient of many awards from the Maine Press Association. He currently is the Piscataquis County Commissioner.

Steve Podgajny has been the director of the Curtis Memorial Library in Brunswick since 1987. He was named Maine Librarian of the year in 2000 in recognition of his distinguished record of professional service, both to libraries and the broader civic domain. As chair of the Maine Cultural Affairs Council, he spearheaded the conception and development of the New Century Program. Steve was also instrumental in separating Maine's cultural agencies from the State Department of Education.

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Portland, Maine Premiere of "Don't Fence Me In," $500
The World Affairs Council of Maine
In Portland on December 1, 2004, the World Affairs Council of Maine presented "Don't Fence Me In," a video documentary of the September 2003 reunion of Germans held in the U.S. Army prisoner of war camp in Houlton, Maine, in World War II. Students of Caribou Technical High School produced this video, which has been aired on Maine PBS and been accepted in the National Archives in Washington, D.C.

It may be interesting for readers to note that the children's literature book A Penny for a Hundred by Ethel Pochocki and Mary Beth Owens (illustrator) is based on the story of the German prisoners of war in Caribou. This text, honored as a Smithsonian Notable Book for Children, is used in the "Giving" series of New Books, New Readers at 16 sites. Thanks to an additional grant from the MHC, New Books, New Readers was able to bring 25 participants from its Biddeford Adult Education Oxford Hills Adult Education to the screening funded above.

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In late November, Rutgers University Press released Eve Allegra Raimon's new book The "Tragic Mulatta" Revisited. Rutgers University Press writes of this text:

Raimon focuses on the mixed-race female slave in literature, arguing that this figure became a symbolic vehicle for explorations of race and nation-both of which were in crisis in the mid-nineteenth century. At this time, judicial, statutory, social, and scientific debates about the meaning of racial difference (and intermixture) coincided with disputes over frontier expansion, which were never merely about land acquisition but also literally about the "complexion" of that frontier. Embodying both northern and southern ideologies, the "amalgamated" mulatta, the author argues, can be viewed as quintessentially American, a precursor to contemporary motifs of "hybrid" and "mestizo" identities.

Where others have focused on the gendered and racially abject position of the "tragic mulatta," Raimon reconsiders texts by such central antislavery writers as Lydia Maria Child, William Wells Brown, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Harriet Wilson to suggest that the figure is more usefully examined as a way of understanding the volatile and shifting interface of race and national identity in the antebellum period.

Eve Allegra Raimon is an associate professor of arts and humanities at the University of Southern Maine, Lewiston-Auburn College. She is a scholar for the Council's Literature & Medicine.

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"My take away after four years of participation and observation is that the Literature & Medicine seminars begin with illustrating the differences we all have in opinion, perspective, style and background....but we leave with greater understanding, tolerance, respect and a personal bond for each other."

— David Pease, hospital administrator and Literature & Medicine
liaison for Sebasticook Valley Hospital in Pittsfield, Maine

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Notes from an Open Book welcomes feedback from its readers. Please contact Diane Magras by email at diane@mainehumanities.org or by phone at (207)773-5051 ext. 208 (toll-free 1-866-637-3233, ext. 208) to respond.