In an average suburban neighborhood, young children are rarely seen with their mothers during standard business hours. Progress, we are told, is giving the drudgery of caring for small children to someone with few skills and lots of time on her hands. Accomplished and liberated women will surely prefer to engage in more lucrative and meaningful employment instead of spending time with feral children.
There are mothers who still choose against all odds to “stay home” with their children in the younger years. For many of these women, there is very little time actually spent at home. So thoroughly convinced have we become of our inadequacy to teach children that entire industries have sprung up to meet every need. Schools, lessons, classes, programs, camps, teams, enrichment opportunities, and social engagements abound. The mother who has excused herself from working standard hours in an office somewhere often winds up shuffling kids from one activity to another. Strangely, even the mothers allegedly “staying home” are rarely if ever seen puttering around their own neighborhood with their own children.
The only children still stuck in the domicile are generally in the care of a grandparent or nanny. Everyone more essential to the functioning of society—or so we are told—is elsewhere engaged. Once children are around two, the treadmill of useful employment and meaningful activities is in full force, and many of the stragglers join their daycare peers in the great wide world.
Jerry Spinelli’s Mama Seeton’s Whistle offers a fun departure from the state of America’s sprawling suburban social complex. The story takes place in the 1950s through the present day and follows the Seeton family as children join the family and grow up and move away. Illustrator LeUyen Pham has created vibrant watercolor and ink pictures that enhance the simple story.
The central leitmotif of the story is, of course, that Mama Seeton summons her children with a simple two-note whistle that reaches them where they are playing in the backyard or around the corner. As the years go by, the children venture farther afield, over the bridge and into the streets of the town. Whimsically, the whistle still reaches them wherever they are.
Pham had fun with the historical details, including period cars, mailboxes, clothes, and accessories. These might be of more interest to the adults who can appreciate the different periods represented, but kids, intrigued by differences wherever they find them, can also become engaged in the minutia of the cheerful illustrations.
Mama Seeton’s Whistle also offers perspective on a family as it grows. Rare are the books that show a mother pregnant and caring for many children over the years. The beauty of new members join the family is a delight.
Some reviewers were confused by the old-fashioned setting and found the nostalgia inappropriate to the children’s lit category. A Kirkus review noted, “The audience is unclear; frequent references to time passing and an aging parent’s wistfulness over her empty nest may be more resonant for adults than children.” What is odd is that the review of this charming book for families starts with a reference to Laruen Bacall’s infamous line about whistling (“You know how to whistle, don’t you? You just put your lips together and blow.”). It’s quite understandable that the story takes place in yesteryear, as there is nary a suburban neighborhood where a mother has four children frolicking in play whom she calls home for dinner with a whistle.
This obvious fact was apparent to other readers of the books. One woman wrote, “Love this throw-back picture book to my own childhood, a time when children roamed the streets of their neighborhood all day long, but returned home every evening for dinner. Like Mama Seeton, my mother used to make a chocolate cake every Sunday for dinner but instead of a whistle my mother called us as if all our names were one ‘Juliejohnnyjimmyjoanie, time for dinner!’ and we’d come running, rolling, and skating home.”
Spinelli’s inspiration was a real-life mother in his own neighborhood growing up. In a note from the author, Spinelli wrote, “Yes, there was a real Mama Seeton. Her first name was Thelma, and she made the world’s best chocolate cake. She was my neighbor as I was growing up in Norristown, Pennsylvania.” He added that Thelma and her husband has “a handful of kids” and, “In those days, kids with free time scattered all over the West End.”
Writing about the illustrations, Pham noted, “Mama Seeton is a very real personification of motherhood, and I did my best to portray her with love.” There is something archetypal about the matron of the home, always present, summoning the children home to an environment prepared to nurture them. That symbolic mother stayed with Spinelli all those years and inspired the story.
Mama Seeton frankly doesn’t seem that exceptional, and, honestly, should her kids be eating chocolate cake every day? Yet, in her unexceptional motherly role she was an institution in the neighborhood. All the children knew her, and when she summoned her children with a whistle, Spinelli and his neighbors all headed home for dinner, too.
The woman and her lasting imprint on the imagination of a neighbor might cause us to pause and consider the image of motherhood we are leaving. For the mothers harried and shuttle between work and activities, there is an obvious lack of physical presence. For mothers physically with their children but miserable, there is for many confirmation that the care of small children is drudgery not fit for a penal colony.
But what about a modern-day Mama Seeton, a woman with fabulous and cheerful style through the expanding and contracting waistline of the childbearing years? Is a happy mother with her children living a lie by appearing happy? Or is it that acting like a happy person can sometimes make one so?
These are questions beyond the scope of the book. It’s simple and cheerful. And, as one review stated, “If nothing else, the book will make kids eager to practice whistling.”
