A Classic
Last week, the spine of Polar Bear, Polar Bear What Do You Hear? finally broke away. For less than a twenty-dollar bill, I could buy a new one on Amazon that would be on my doorstep tomorrow. But I don’t want a new one. I want this one. This one holds Eric Carle’s story, my son’s bedtime rituals, my daughter’s two year-old sing-songy voice, and now my granddaughter’s head bob inside of it. It is a haven, you could say, for my most favorite things.
A couple of pages of ‘Polar Bear’ have a tear or two and the very back page, the one where children are pretending to sound like all the animals previously introduced in two-page full color glory, is missing though we don’t really need it anyway. I read it as if it were there from the sheet music in my mind.
None of that matters a bit to Austyn, though. She cannot get enough. Every time we read it, her eyes dance. She points out the leopard’s teeth, the elephant’s trunk, the boa constrictor’s tongue. And when we turn the page to the peacock, she never fails to gasp in wonder at its big, bright, beautiful fan. Every page holds first time status. Each and every time I read it, it’s as if she’s discovering the ninth wonder of the world.
‘Polar Bear’ never gets old.
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I guess that’s one of the identifying marks of a classic. It sticks because at least a part of it continually feels brand new. It’s hard to say what the magic looks like that gives such enduring power. But it makes me think about Zacchaeus.
Zacchaeus was the wee little man we sang about in vacation Bible school. The tax collector who climbed the Sycamore tree to see Jesus and then modeled generosity by giving half of what he had. I’ve heard it, told it, and sang about it my entire life and yet, it never fails to teach me something sort of new. The story just doesn’t collect dust. Somehow it feels simultaneously like my favorite pair of jeans and the dress with the tag still on it. A reminder and an epiphany in one collective burst.
They say that the three determining factors that make a classic a classic are quality, universality, and longevity. Big words with all kinds of space inside. If this is the case, in my box goes “The Andy Griffith Show” and “My Way” sung by both Elvis and Sinatra, and “It’s a Wonderful Life” with Jimmy Stewart, even though I’m not sure I need him because I can recite most all his lines. ‘Polar Bear’ goes in there, too, along with Moby Dick. All these categorically fit for me, because in layman’s terms, their mojo stands the test of time.
It's the mojo that’s hard to explain.
Eric Carle’s classic sat in the drawer of a dresser in my house for over two decades between kids and the kids of our kids. But when summoned to jump back in the game, it was all I remembered it to be. It fits as perfectly now as it did twenty-five years ago. I am happy even as I read for the one hundred and umpteenth time. Maybe it’s the rhythm. Maybe it’s the repetition. Probably it’s a sturdy combination of the pairing of the two. But it’s mostly, I think, the first blush wonder that it conjures up inside my granddaughter every time she grabs it and comes running toward me with it in her hands.
I open and I read, “Elephant, elephant what do you hear? I hear a leopard snarling in my ear” and I hit re-fresh, too. Everything that is old is somehow new again.
Italo Calvino says, “A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.” Maybe, per that definition, he wouldn’t put ‘Polar Bear’ in a category with Melville’s Moby Dick. And yet, maybe he would. Maybe what the book has left to say is in constant flux depending upon who is reading it and where it takes her heart. Maybe what makes anything a classic is its ability to freeze a moment and keep it handy so that we might be given the privilege of tasting it again. Maybe what makes it a classic is that it makes us feel at home.
Simple stories, like the one John tells about Zacchaeus and the one Eric Carle tells about a polar bear both have sticky spots. Like Sinatra’s croon and Andy Griffith’s whistle, they grab you in a place that while familiar, always feels brand new.
That’s the mojo mark. The relentless shelf life of a thing so good it simply can’t go bad.