The Powerful Lessons of Time

E veryone struggles with time. Some are constantly tardy, and others never have enough of the stuff. It is constant and unstoppable. Writers are no stranger to this time battle, and fight against everything from deadlines to deceased sources. Even within their works, time can be their enemy, as a story’s success rises or falls on proper framing and focus. Newbery-winning author Irene Hunt understood time and used it to her advantage. In her children’s books Across Five Aprils and Up a Road Slowly, time and its passage are used in impactful ways, allowing readers to grow alongside the protagonists in a steady, but never ponderous, manner.

Up a Road Slowly, the story of Julie Trelling’s “growth from a tantrum-throwing seven-year-old to a gracious young woman of seventeen,” spans a decade in 183 pages. Never once does it feel rushed or jumbled, as Hunt highlights various moments that punctuate our protagonist’s years. Some are small happenings, such as dinners with her father. But at other times, she is cruel toward a classmate or fights with her beloved sister. School, friends, family, dating, death — all are woven together and show us the formative years of a young woman. One mark of good children’s literature is its ability to teach us how to grow up well. Not every aspect of Julie’s life perfectly matches our own, but it contains many universal themes that do touch us all.

She isn’t famous or brilliant; she is ordinary. It is this ordinariness that allows us to reflect on our own early years. What lessons has time taught us?

Hunt tells us right at the beginning how long we will have with Julie: “That was the one time I have ever known her to cry, and it was the first time I remember her holding me in her arms,” Julie says of her Aunt Cordelia. “We sat in the dark closet together for a long time; then when there were no tears left, we crawled out and began our decade together.”

There are numerous wise characters in literature, and Julie’s Aunt Cordelia stands proudly among them. She is not perfect, but she is firm, astute, and kind. Perhaps Hunt modeled Aunt Cordelia a bit off of herself. Both were teachers for many years, with Aunt Cordelia spending her career at a country school and Hunt working at the University of South Dakota and then Illinois’s Cicero Schools. It wasn’t until she was in her 50s that Hunt published her first book, and though her body of work is small, it is wonderfully rich. Hunt once said about writing, “Words have always held a fascination for me, causing me to be teased often as a child when I used them lavishly without having the slightest idea of their meaning. The wish to write pages full of words, to make them tell the stories that I dreamed about, haunted me from childhood on.” This fascination with words is clear in her first publication, Newbery Honor book Across Five Aprils.

War is never an easy issue to discuss, particularly in a children’s story. But Hunt handles it with prudence and skill in Across Five Aprils. Based off the vivid stories recounted to her by her grandfather, a boy of nine when the Civil War began, this book uses many of the anecdotes he related. We follow Jethro Creighton, a farm boy from southern Illinois, as he watches his family and community be torn apart by political and philosophical loyalties.

Hunt was meticulous in her research about the battles, generals, and dates of the war. All this information is carefully entwined with the lives of the characters inhabiting the story. Readers are brought face to face with the crushing loss of loved ones, hatred from long-time neighbors, love that must bide its time, and age-old questions about evil. It is a sad book, a book to read deliberately, ponder, then reread. Jethro is a young boy who must grow up quickly in troubled times, and though he is not on a physical battlefield, he learns courage through the many trials that assail him at home.

These trials range from farm-life hardships to war deaths. And while Jethro is the main character, the women of this story are often equally inspiring. Jethro’s mother, Ellen, his sister Jenny, and his sister-in-law Nancy are all strikingly different. But each works tirelessly to serve those around her. Tense fear and uncertainty constantly grip them, as they wait for news from husbands, sons, and sweethearts, but never do they stop moving forward. Fields must be planted, food must be prepared, and clothes must be mended. These women, and Jethro too, have a remarkable courage and intense will to continue living, all told in a clear, compelling manner by Hunt’s keen pen.

The emphasis on learning and on growing in virtue is present in both of these stories. Julie is a good writer who strives, with the help of her uncle, to become a great one. Jethro thirsts for knowledge and drives himself on in his studies, even when his beloved teacher leaves to fight. Wisdom and virtue are not preached, though. As Hunt said, “We adults may preach the values we wish to instill, and the children will turn away from our sermons; but a book, a fine book that mirrors life accurately and honestly — there is the effective substitute for our ineffective sermons.” Some of the wisest words in Up a Road Slowly come from Julie’s Uncle Haskell, a handsome but misguided man who has wasted his life in drinking, lying, and laziness. His sudden words of insight come as a surprise to readers, catching us off guard and giving us a new perspective on a rather repellent character.

In both books, Hunt made time work for her, reining it in, giving it limits that focused our attention. Her stories transcend time and setting, blessing readers with moving tales of courage and love that remind us what it means to grow up well.