The first-graders were fascinated by the young girl on the poster, and especially her face. The young girl was about their age when the poster was created 65 years ago.
I'd been invited to speak on the subject of writing to the first-graders at Shawsheen School, and I was feeling some trepidity, because it is not an age group with whom I regularly speak. Mrs. Susan Infantine, their teacher who'd invited me, had been helpful by explaining where her students were in their sentence development, and I had the help of my granddaughter, Elena Dalton, who was in the class and answered questions I had beforehand.
The poster had been my wife's idea, for I had written a column about it two years ago after Maureen Fredrickson, the girl in the picture, had given me the poster. We were a little worried the poster might scare the kids because it depicts the little girl sprawled on the road looking injured, the victim of a careless driver. Standing over her is Andover Police Chief Dane; another uniformed policeman is down on one knee, assessing the level of injury to the little girl, and a third man, well-dressed, is standing and looking at the little girl, apparently intending to be remorseful about his carelessness in hitting the girl with his car. The little girl's bike is lying in the street behind her.
The poster's purpose was to convince people to drive carefully so they wouldn't run over sweet children like Maureen. The poster was created in 1947, and is titled, "Posted In The Interest Of Child Safety." Several local merchants are listed as sponsors.
On the morning the picture was to be taken, Maureen received a phone call from the police chief asking if she would help them by having her picture taken. Maureen jokingly says when she received the call she thought it might lead to a career in Hollywood, and she was a little disappointed when she arrived at the shoot scene to find out what it was really all about. She wore her good clothes and was a little concerned they might get dirty or damaged.
Before showing the poster to the first-graders, I explained it was make-believe and the young girl in the picture was not injured and, in fact, was a good friend of mine today. I further explained the look on the little girl's face may be more from anger or disappointment rather than faked pain, because there wasn't a production crew with a director and several cameramen; however, I made it clear that I didn't know and wanted the students' opinions.
I explained to the children that the process of using words, rather than drawing pictures with paints or crayons, meant they had to draw word-pictures that would allow the reader to have an image in their head. The students were interested in this idea, and stared quietly at me as I explained. I said they would soon be taking the simple sentences they are now writing and using those sentences as blocks to build bigger structures and those bigger structures were called stories. Finally, I said the most important thing about writing is to be able to observe things, such as the little girl's face on the poster, and to describe what they see, because those descriptions are what make writing interesting.
I'd been worried I was presenting something too complex for this stage in their learning process, but I think they got it entirely. They asked questions about the girl in the picture and each asked repeatedly if he or she could see the girl's face again, and when they looked they really studied the face.
Well, what was the-little-girl-in-the-picture's facial expression and what did it mean? The students looked carefully and some of them changed his or her mind, occasionally more than once, but the point is they really wanted to get it right, although there is no "right"; there is only the writer's perception and the writer's ability to describe that perception.
I left the class feeling good; the students had been interested and interesting. They'd been respectful without being shy and they had understood my message, or at least the part we discussed.
I don't remember being as intelligent in first grade.
Bill Dalton writes a weekly column for the Andover Townsman. His email address is billdalton@andovertownie.com.
