THE BORNING ROOM, Paul Fleischman; Harper Collins Publishers; A Charlotte Zolotow Book, 1991; 101 pages, $13.95.If you ever receive a postcard from Paul Fleischman, it will have more information on it than most letters. Small printing and concise details are typical of this author.
"The Borning Room" is as tightly written as his personal messages; for example, the first half-page establishes plot, setting (both time and place):"Four small walls . . . A window. A door onto the kitchen for warmth. Two chairs. A bed, filling up the room like a bird held in cupped hands . . . Look out the window. That's a sugar maple. Grandfather greatly cherished that tree . . . look at the beams. You can still make out the track of his plane. He'd put it, and everything else that would fit, and his wife and baby into a wagon and set out from New Hampshire in the year 1820 . . . "
The borning room, a place set aside close to the kitchen, is a place for both dying and giving birth. It is the focus and hub of this story. Four generations of Lotts farmed in the area and lived and died in the borning room. The novel begins with Georgina's birth and concludes with her death, now the grandmother in the extended family, as she reaches out to those who died before her. The beauty of this concise novel is that there is all indication that the traditions will continue.
The traditions are as vivid as if they appear in visuals. The patchwork quilt that is brought out for "the occasions," the painting of the old person on his or her deathbed and the basic values of a God-fearing people who send their sons off to war ("Lincoln's and the Kaiser's") and endorse the social changes of mechanism, education and women's suffrage.
Two themes that Fleischman handles head-on but with delicate strokes are slavery and church-going. "Just to know where a runaway slave was hiding was a crime." Georgina had heard the tales of those who abetted the blacks: $1,000 fine and six months in prison or "they split his stomach open, filled it with rocks and stitched it up again. Then they dumped him into a lake and let those giant catfish on the bottom eat up all his flesh . . . "
When Georgina first met Cora, a runaway slave, she recalls the prejudices, but "I'd never set eyes on such a collection of swellings and scars before. . . . Then I thought of my family's hatred of slavery. They would feel it a duty and an honor to help her. My unease gave way to pride . . . "
Cora is hidden away by the young girl, and ultimately the black woman saves a life in childbirth. The borning room again becomes the pivot space for sacrifice, prejudice and emotional turmoil.
While the notion of slavery or hiding slaves is not used as a moral or value statement in "The Borning Room," the family is enlightened about the societal issue.
Even though grandfather was a religious man, he had his own way of keeping the Sabbath. His communion with nature was well-known in the family and the village, but he never relented in spending his Sundays "to take up worship in the woods and fields."
On Sundays, when one of the children was invited to join the visit to the outdoors, they learned the beauty of the earth. "Grandfather gave water the same study that others gave to the Book of Revelation."
Again Fleischman has shown the moral issue in a delicate way through the eyes of a child. "I dashed on, floating on the river of wind. How I pitied Mama and the others closed up in church like biscuits in an oven."
"The Borning Room" is a riveting novel for many ages. Adults will treasure the nostalgic mood, and young readers will be satisfied with a glimpse of the past told through the voice of a sensitive participant of that history.
Paul Fleischman is the author of many books for young readers, including "Graven Images," a Newbery Honor Book; "Path of the Pale Horse," "Coming and Going Men," "Rear-View Mirrors," "Saturnalia," "I Am Phoenix" (a collection of two-voice poems about birds) and "Joyful Noise," a companion collection about insects and winner of the 1989 Newbery Medal.