Leslie Connor Celebrates Immigrants in Miss Bridie Chose a Shovel

Last month, I read Leslie Connor's Waiting for Normal, an excellent middle grade novel about a pre-teen girl whose optimism allows her to rise above the adversity of her chaotic home life. At one point in the book, the young protagonist, Addie, is given an album containing songs about people emigrating from Ireland to America. When I went looking to see if Connor had written any other books, I discovered that immigration was at the heart of her picture book, Miss Bridie Chose a Shovel.

This book, which is illustrated by Mary Azarian, reminds me of Donald Hall's Ox-Cart Man, about a pioneering farmer who spends his year working the farm in anticipation of his big trip to town to sell his goods, thus earning enough money to get through the next year. In this case, the central object is not a cart but a shovel. Bridie is the name of the young woman who heads for America in 1856 with just one object in tow. She can take only one thing with her, so she chooses something practical, and the book demonstrates how the shovel is of use to her throughout her life.

Its uses are many: to lean on when the waves get too rocky on the boat ride to America; to help her dig a little garden behind the shop where she works upon her arrival; to heap coals into the stove in later years when she is cooking for her family. It's because she has the shovel that she is able to clear away the snow on the pond in the city park, making an ice skating rink where she first catches the eye of the man who will become her husband. Every significant landmark in her life is somehow tied to that tool, for which she finds so many purposes.

Azarian's illustrations have an old-fashioned look to them and are somewhat stylized, with thick outlines that make the pictures remind me of stained glass windows. Each page has between one and three fairly long sentences, all narration. There's a nice circular pattern to the book, with it starting and ending with essentially the same sentence and with Bridie using the shovel for similar purposes in her youth and old age.

"She could have picked a chiming clock or a porcelain figurine," Connor writes, "but Miss Bridie chose a shovel back in 1856." Offering that contrast emphasizes Bridie's work ethic and practicality. Had she taken some type of heirloom, she might have been able to sell it and use the money to help establish herself, but we never get the sense that she regrets her decision. She makes do with what she has, using it to help create a thriving homestead.

This book covers a span of many years, so not only is there the sadness of Bridie leaving her family behind, there is also a death toward the end of the book, not to mention a fire that wipes out the barn. There is a definite harshness to the book, but as in Waiting for Normal, the protagonist's resilience keeps readers from getting bogged down in despair. Miss Bridie is a woman who perseveres no matter what challenges come her way, and her story is a tribute to generations of hard-working immigrants.