Bright Spots & Resources

My Favorite Children’s Book About Neighborhoods

Posted: 11/13/09 11:59 AM

Every parent of young children who reads this blog should buy a copy of The Big Orange Splot, by children’s book author and NPR commentator Daniel Pinkwater.  It’s a delightful story of independent thinking and creativity in a neighborhood.  Ultimately, it’s also about finding happiness in life, too.

Mr. Plumbean lives on a street where every house and front yard looks exactly the same, but one day, a bird flies over and drops a bucket of paint on his house, making a “big orange splot” on his roof.

His house looks different than his neighbors’ houses now, so they ask him to paint it to make it conform again.  He does paint it, but he doesn’t do as they ask.  He decides that his house should be an expression of who he is.  He goes wild painting it.  Then, he adds some fun & unusual features to his front yard like I’ve done to my front yard.

Neighbors vehemently protest.  He replies, “My house is me and I am it. My house is where I like to be and it looks like all of my dreams.”

So, neighbors try to reason with him one-on-one.  Each one visits Plumbean in his front yard to dissuade him of his folly, but Plumbean converts every one of them.  Eventually, the whole neighborhood has colorful, fun houses, each one different to suit the individual tastes of each owner.

Independent thinking triumphs.  Happiness does, too.  The loser is order and conformity.

Look at your front yard.  I’ll bet order and conformity are winning. 

I hope The Big Orange Splot will inspire you to change that.  You need to demonstrate to your kids that independent thinking and happiness are vastly more important than order and conformity.  Besides, you can make your front yard a much more fun place for them, too…

by Mike Lanza

• 2 comments
• 

This was a great read, and so relevant to us!  We live on a street where you aren’t allowed to have a fence and all the front yards have strategically placed roses.  When we moved in we planted two fruit trees ("out the front? Shock,horror!") and we even have a vegetable patch there too.  Our neighbour, who is a free thinker, but lives with her elderly mother who “conforms” thinks it is hilarious that we have vegetables out the front instead of roses.  Of course nobody has said a negative word and we quite often have passerby’s stop and ask us which vegie this or that is and how we get such and such to grow.  And our children enjoy the fruits of our labor too and will often pick a strawberry or bean to share with the neighbourhood kids.

by Christie on 11/13/09 06:20 PM

I must admit that I enjoy watching the faces of people who walk by my yard and don’t seem to like it’s disruption to the neighborhood order…

by Mike on 11/18/09 05:20 PM

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