What a delightful picture book! I was
pleased when I learned of its existence. I have read, reviewed, and enjoyed three
other picture books about Brigit so I looked forward to discovering another person’s—or rather pair of persons’—perspective on her young
life. I was not disappointed.
Brigid and the Butter is the first Catholic offering I’ve
encountered in the Saint Brigit picture book genre, which have included one specifically Orthodox book and two that
tell the saint’s tales from an “Irish Legends” perspective and from an almost
magical perspective in which young Saint Brigit goes to Bethlehem to help out
Joseph and Mary in the birth of Jesus. (For my review of these books please go here.)
In Brigid and the Butter the first thing I notice of course is the art
of Apryl Stott. The cover shows a comely, open-faced young girl with a bowl of
butter, cattle in the pasture behind her, and a painted framework round the
whole that mixes Irish knotwork with another style of art inlaid into it—beautiful
though a little out of keeping with the setting. Flipping through the book
without reading, to get an idea of the flow of the story and to steep in Stott’s
imagery, I grew more excited—her paintings are rich and generous and well
designed, and even the non-reader is quickly drawn into a land where there are
great cattle looming over us, finely arching thistles growing up along a page, and
an earnest young girl caring for the cattle and setting to work making butter.
I have few criticisms of Stott’s lovely
work, apart from a neglect of research into the times depicted. The hut, for
instance, looks like something from a different land (England, perhaps?),
unlike what would be expected in Iron
Age Ireland, when Brigid lived. The cattle would be at home in a modern
cowyard but are not the native cattle of Ireland—and so on. Those elements, if
done correctly, would have added to the charm of the book and its usefulness in
teaching children about 5th century Ireland, but even as it is, the
art is outstanding and supports the story of the book very well.
Pamela Love has drawn together a
number of elements to tell a story that is both entertaining and educational,
mostly in terms of its spiritual teachings. The child who reads the book will
learn a little of what life was like for a youngster in Brigid’s time, for
instance that children were expected to work independently and hard (potentially
dangerous work, too, if you check out the size of and the horns on those
critters). She handles a herd of animals much larger than herself, caring for
them in many ways, and does the exhausting work of making butter from their
milk. Butter comes from milk?! From a cow?! Amazing! And this is how it’s done.
By hand?!
Add to this that the girl is
briefly mentioned to be a slave. It may come as news to a child that Irish
children have ever been slaves—in our uneven coverage of the topic we have
tended to give the impression that only African people were ever captured as
slaves, but of course slavery exists even today and has been an important and
legal part of many cultures all across the world. This mention might give a
teacher or parent an opportunity to talk to a child about slavery. But it is
not explored in the book, and indeed if you forget that one introductory line
you may think from the following story that Brigid and her mum lived unmolested
on their own in a pretty, well equipped house and had a good herd of cows. You would
notice, though, that they seem to have very little to eat.
And that is the crux of the story.
Hard-working Brigid churns the butter and comes up with only a little for
herself and her mother (who we never meet). There is no mention that most of
the churnings and indeed most of the milk would have gone to the master; the
impression is that only a teeny bit of produce comes from all that work, and I
can only assume this is to simplify the story, but I do think it leaves it a
little bit unanchored. If we saw that the results of Brigid’s hard work were
mostly carted away and then she was
left with only a little there would be a stronger impact—although even the
smallness of the butter is a literary device, as there is no indication in Brigid’s
Lives that she and her mother were poorly fed, only that they were hard-worked.
No matter, a small opportunity lost but possibly needless clutter avoided.
So, back to the crux of the story,
which is that with only a small amount of food for herself and her mother, Brigid
is faced with a situation where someone with even less has asked for help, and
she must decide what to do. An elderly, skinny woman comes to the door asking
for food. Brigid offers to let her wait for her mum to return, saying she might
bring food and they could share it with her, but the woman is in a hurry. Brigid
says all they have is butter, with nothing to put it on, and the old woman gets
a look of longing and says how much she loves butter and how it’s been ages since
she’s tasted it.
Earlier in the story Brigid has
heard Saint Patrick tell the story of the loaves and fishes. In it a young
child brings a tiny offering of bread and fish, all he has, to Jesus, and Jesus
makes of it enough to feed a great crowd. Brigid thinks of this when
considering what to do with the butter. She and her mother had eaten nothing
all day and she had been looking forward to tucking into the butter, whether
her mother brought other food back with her or not. Now she was faced with the
difficult choice of preventing a hungry woman from finding enough food to carry
on and facing that deepening hunger herself. Her instinct is to be inviting and
generous, but her feeling of self-preservation makes her reluctant to just give
it all away.
Suddenly she understands that “helping
others could be difficult”. What had seemed like a nice idea in the story was
actually a hard reality in day to day life. She has a little conversation in
her head with Jesus, a kind of natural prayer where she acknowledges that
unlike him, she isn’t able to feed thousands, but that she can help the one person right in front of her. Thus, the elderly
woman walks happily away, all the butter and even the bowl tucked nicely in her
bag. Brigid is a little worried that her mother will be upset, and she asks
Jesus to provide for them so that they, too, will have something to eat.
As was nearly always the case in
the Lives of Brigid when she has acted in this fashion, her generosity ends up
not being as costly as it at first appears it will. She turns back to the table
and there two bowls of butter stand,
each more full than the original. The young girl who has taken a risk with her
own and her mother’s bellies in order to help someone else is rewarded with
enough food for several days, and gives thanks.
I like how gently and humanly this
story is told. There is no hectoring, no sense that she was a bad girl even to
think of not giving, but that this was a difficult life decision that each of
us faces—in fact we face such decisions thousands of times in our lives. Will we
be generous today? Will we reserve enough for ourselves? What makes sense in
any given situation? The complexities of such ethical decisions aren’t gone
into here, nor should they, but the beginning of the conversation is opened up.
The idea is put before a child that even when we ourselves have very little, we
are capable of giving, capable of helping someone else, and that we might
consider this when faced with a decision of whether or not to give help.
I like that Brigid and the Butter can be read as it is and enjoyed quite
simply, with no pressure to have big heavy Teaching Discussions, or can become
the starting off place for several different conversations, then or later,
round the dinner table perhaps, on the different kinds of responsibilities
children face, on slavery, on miracles, on generosity, on taking care of
ourselves and our own families, on cattle rearing and making butter, or on the
Biblical stories referred to in the text. (A family that is into history might
even look into whether or not Saint Patrick and Saint Brigit could ever
actually have met, as they were said to have done in some of her later Lives.)
The story is followed by a
portrait of the grownup Brigid and a few paragraphs about her later life, and
then by a short prayer to Saint Brigid:
“Saint Brigid, you gave food to
someone who was hungry although your stomach was also empty. I want to be
generous, too. Pray for me so that, like you, I may do what I can to help
others. Help me to care for people in need, even when it isn’t easy. Amen.”
A prayer we could most of us
benefit by.
The book ends with writeups and
photos of the author and illustrator but also, wonderfully, of the Catholic
Sisters who run Pauline Books and Media, as well as a brief catalogue of some
of their children’s books. I am left with the sense of a very joyful and loving
group of women, and I am well pleased that I have this book.
For a sneak peek into the first
few pages of the book, follow this link.
For a review by a Catholic father
of three (so you can get the kids’ response, and not just some fusty old adult’s),
check out Steven R. MacEvoy’s blog.
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