Suzuki Beane

#585
Title: Suzuki Beane
Author: Sandra Scoppettone
Illustrator: Louise Fitzhugh
Publisher: Doubleday
Year: 1961
96 pages

I haven't re-read this for many years and it seemed like time. A copy floated around the house when I was a child and I bought my own copy some decades later. I adore this faux children's book narrated by a beatnik child who lives on Bleeker Street in Greenwich Village with her parents, Hugh (a poet) and Marcia (a sculptor). The text is funny and poignant by turns, with cultural references that I didn't understand as a child but appreciate now. The illustrations by Louise Fitzhugh are charming and dynamic. I've always loved the illustration on page 86 where High and Marcia are asleep on a bare mattress, curled up fetally with their backs to each other. If you remember the Village when it was, like, not square, you'll, like, dig Suzuki Beane.