“In another showcase are gloves and bags and different kinds of stocking and handkerchiefs.”

Doesn’t Mother look so smart? And the clerk so prim and proper? Look at that bow she tied on Little Girl’s dress!

“Little Town” is the first chapter in the oddly titled, Around the Home by “Geography Professor,” John R. Borchert (Univ. of Minnesota), and “Teacher of Social Studies” (Evanston, Illinois) (Rand McNally Company, New York, 1961).

Some days ago I wondered about the emptying of America. This book is what I was talking about.

Little town, of course, has shops and markets and a post office. We learn about how mail makes its way to Little Town. On Little Farm the fields are plowed and planted. Mother has a garden and bakes bread. The children help tend the chickens and pigs.

The folks of the many Little Farms help make Little Town a prospering place, providing them with fresh strawberries and whatnot. And in turn the Town folk provide a market, social activities, and schools for the Farm folk.

That is the way of the world. Most people depend on other people for one thing or another. No person can get along day after day without the help of other people.

Big City is so big! “Here people do not stop to speak to one another as people do in Little Town.” You can say that again!

The book is about the adventures of children who travel to other places in America. Along the way we learn about how a dairy operates, how cotton is picked, how maple syrup is made, how the children’s wool sweaters come to be. There’s even a bit of history thrown in! Log cabins to homes of lumber– thanks to the sawmill– to a houses of bricks.

It’s an interesting little book– not even 200 pages!

There’s a sort of connectedness to the whole story– not in a cog-in-a-machine, “you didn’t build that” sense, but rather in the sense that everyone’s role has worth. The little book pays respect. It also assumes that there is a cultural unity. “No good ranchman wants to keep cows that do not belong to him.” “Sam knew it was important to sell good fruit.”

People need more than food, clothing, and homes. They want to live right. They want to learn and they want their children to learn. They want to keep well. And they want to know what goes on in the world.

The churches of Little Town help people live right. A school and a library help them and their children learn. Doctors and dentists help them keep well. …

The children of the book are remarkably independent. (That’s a sad thing to write.) Patty walks four city blocks to fetch a loaf of bread for her aunt. And it’s assumed the readers are as well. They are asked, “Have you ever gone fishing alone and gotten caught in a thunderstorm?”

Well. Have you?