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Cynthia Rylant: A Gentle Mentor
An essay by Angela Johnson
Reprinted from the Winter 2001 Ohioana Quarterly
There is an unerring grace and significance to a writer’s voice simply
spoken. In the late summer of 1983 I met Cyndi Rylant through a series of
hapless and disconnected events and discovered, quite by accident, a voice
for myself and, frankly, one of the most eloquent and elegant voices in
children’s literature.
Cyndi was working at the Akron Public Library when I came to her home
one evening after answering her ad for a babysitting position. I was in the
hell of Kent State student housing, and she was the single parent of a four year-
old boy who needed someone to watch him whom she could trust.
She opened her home, her heart, and her collection of children’s books to
me, and I never looked back.
I remember all the yellow legal pads with the fluid writing in her little
office in her house on College Court. When she spoke, her voice lilted in an
Appalachian twang that I had grown up with, running in and out of the
homes of my childhood friends in Windham, Ohio.
She spoke in soft voices about books
and her son, Nate, and lovingly called
him “the boy,” understated and eloquent
like her writing.
I was to find out soon enough just
how gifted and openhearted this
talented woman could be in her work
and in her life.
Cyndi and I are both children of
small towns - hers in West Virginia
and my own in Northeast Ohio. So when I began to read her early work
(Miss Maggie, her first book, and When I Was Young in the Mountains ), I
was struck. Could you indeed live a life in a small town watching the
characters of your life, always knowing that there was something significant?
A story to tell?
I was drawn in, absorbed by the possibilities of being a writer.
For you see, the woman who wrote the picture books that celebrated the
family of man and woman wrote so deceptively simple, I thought she must be
bewitched somehow, as the emotions she evoked in me rarely emanated from
other children’s literature at the time.
* * *
In 1984 Rylant published a collection of poetry that I’ve always considered
a valentine to West Virginia, Waiting to Waltz: A Childhood. She spoke of
longing, childhood adventures, Holiness babysitters, and fear of the known
and unknown in Waltz.
In “Mad Dog,” the girl laments that her life contains no father like the
children had in To Kill a Mockingbird (which to this day I’ve read twenty-six
times) as she watches the movie in a darkened theater. I imagine the girl in
the glow of the movie becoming three-dimensional with adolescent longing:
Saw a movie about a girl in a Southern town
who dressed up like a ham for a play
and nearly got killed.
And whose father shot down
a mad dog in the street.
Mad dog jerking up the street
in that movie.
And for weeks after,
afraid to walk through Lafon’s yard
to the bus stop every morning,
thinking some mad dog
there
jerking around the corner.
And no father with a gun
to shoot it down.
The poetry in Waltz is evocative and lyrical.
Rylant’s characters never leave you wanting. Should we know them? Are
they relatives? The narrator has grace and indeed is on the verge of childhood,
waiting, watching, taking in her world and wondering.
* * *
It’s hard to judge when a writer feels that she has garnered enough
objectivity to write about her life. I realized after reading Rylant’s 1989 But
I’ll Be Back Again that insight and bravery must walk hand in hand with
objectivity.
If you are a child who is never told the truth, you
begin to make up your own.
Cyndi grew up an insider, as I myself did. Majorettes, cheerleaders, the
right parties and boyfriends. I remember looking through her yearbook and
thinking it all looked a lot like mine. In between comic books, friends, and
life - without knowing, we must have been taking it in. Her characters are
contemplative, but not disaffected.
As the years went on, Cyndi and I remained friends as I watched her boy
when she traveled for her writing. She was there for me in ways that are
incredible to behold, sending a story I wrote to her editor and being
happier than I was when the book was accepted. She was there to encourage
me to write more than picture books. She knew I had a story in me.
I learned through Cyndi to embrace a writer’s life. It seemed that everything
I saw, felt, or tasted contributed to the craft of writing.
I took a trip with Cyndi in the fall of 1986 to Toronto to go to the
Toronto Film Festival. I was exhilarated when we stopped to have lunch at a
quiet restaurant that jutted out onto Lake Ontario. Not only was the day
magical because of the scenery and the company, but I was experiencing
everything anew with Cyndi, who had been on the trip before. I hoped I
would see what she saw in the city.
I did.
On the drive back I realized that writing was like that. You are always
wanting the reader to feel what you felt when you put pen to paper. All of
the emotions, all of the senses. I had been handed a gift that day, and I do
not believe that the giver ever knew it had been given.
We rarely talked about writing, but Cyndi was always a wonderful
supporter of my work, dropping off books I should read. She was stalwart,
too, as I had dug my heels in after my first couple of picture books and
vowed I would never write anything but.
One evening in Cyndi’s kitchen over cups of coffee with sweetened
condensed milk, she gently prodded me into talking about my fears (which
at the time were legion and immovable) of writing a young adult novel. I
believe I mumbled something incoherent and weak about not ever being
able to write anything so long.
She, on the other hand, stood smiling - large blue eyes laughingly
imploring me to give her just one good reason why I couldn’t move on to
the next step in my career. Didn’t I want to stretch my creative sphere and
actually make a living at writing?
Four months later I was writing my first novel; I was on the last chapter
when I heard a car door slam and then the sound of the car pulling away.
There on my porch was a book Cyndi thought might move me.
It did.
Angela Johnson was the recipient of the 1999
Alice Louise Wood Memorial Ohioana Award
for Children’s Literature.
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