When I Was Young in the Mountains by Cynthia Rylant

I read Cynthia Rylant's Caldecott Honor book, When I Was Young in the Mountains, after reading Waiting to Waltz, A Childhood. After reviewing reader's responses online, I was interested in seeing the similarities and differences between both books that captured Rylant's experiences in living in West Virginia as a young girl. When I Was Young in the Mountains has an entirely different feel to it than Waiting to Waltz. When reading this story, her words were inviting, welcoming, and warm. The experiences told in this story explain the events in living with her younger brother and loving grandparents in the mountains. Rylant's somewhat autobiographical story reflects how her life was simplistic yet pleasing living in Cool Ridge. She reminisces about the simplistic yet satisfying pleasures such as visiting the general store, pumping water from the well, and floating in the local swimming hole. She even remembers the smell of the sweet milk bought from that general store and how awful she felt after eating too many of her grandmother's okra. The vivid details and descriptions prompt you to question, how can she remember these events as if they just happened yesterday? In a Q&A interview with Harcourt Publishers, Rylant states, "I long to put what I have lived, how my heart and mind have changed over time into beautiful, meaningful language."

Illustrations by Diane Goode fully compliment the text in displaying Rylant's recollection of her experiences in Cool Ridge as if they happened yesterday. The warm colors comfirm the happiest feelings expressed by Rylant as she details her fondest childhood events that happened in the mountains. While I have not lived in this setting, I have a clearer picture of what life would be like living in this type of rural environment. Life doesn't seem as busy and complicated in the past as it does today. I feel somewhat envious of the fact that I haven't experienced the smell of fresh, clean air in the mountains - you can't smell that growing up in a heavily populated city!

Comparing this autobiography to Waiting to Waltz, both pieces are similiar in how Rylant depicts her childhood experiences of growing up in West Virginia. However, Waiting to Waltz contains experiences that were not the warm, fuzzy feelings portrayed in When I Was Young in the Mountains. The poems told more about the moments that challenged her, as well as moments that she experienced grief, sadness, and tragedy (with a few poems that showed times of happiness and certainty). Both stories tell of different times in Rylant's life; When I Was Young in the Mountains demonstrates Rylant's transformation of her childhood into becoming a young woman, while When I Was Young in the Mountains strictly details her experiences and feelings as a young, carefree girl living with her grandparents. I found myself questioning a few things: where was her mother during this time? Why did she leave her son and daughter in the care of grandparents? I found in an article about Rylant's life when trying to find answers to my questions on the web. In the article, it stated that her parents were separated when she was four years old, and her mother wanted to pursue a nursing degree. So young Cynthia and brother were left with their grandparents in Cool Ridge. Four years later, Rylant's mother reunited with her children and moved to Beaver, West Virginia - the setting for her childhood poems, Waiting to Waltz. She once called this new location "without a doubt a small, sparkling universe that gave me a lifetime worth of material for my writing." www.edupaperback.org/showauth.cfm?authid=40

It is evident that Rylant's past truly impacted her success as a writer today. Her experiences I can describe somewhat like a rollercoaster ride - there are many ups, downs, twists, and turns. Sometimes you feel safe, happy, and secure. Other times you feel terribly frightened. I truly admire her as an author as well as a young woman. She inspires me to hold onto memories, both good and bad, as they are all a part of life and make us who we are today.