After many many many years, my search is finally over.
I have waited, I have been creative in my search, and patient … I have kept my eye on the ball … I have left no stone unturned …
I have waited a long long time. I have dreamt of this moment. And I cannot believe my own triumph.
Here’s what happened.
I have a VIVID memory of being about 4 or 5 years old, and of LOVING (yes – LOVING – more like OBSESSING OVER) a picture-book that had to do with something called a “bimulous night”. [Correction: My father told me I was in the 7 or 8 year-old realm … due to the publication date. There are many many benefits to having a librarian for a father.]
What “bimulous” meant, in the book, was one of those magical summer nights, when you’re a kid, when ANYthing can happen. When it feels like animals can talk to you. When it seems like grown-ups don’t exist. Like a midsummer bimulous night’s dream.
The pictures, as I remember them, were amazing watercolors: purple raggedy clouds in the sky, with a full moon beaming through, trees tossing by the lake – I can see those watercolors in front of me right now. They made a huge impression on me.
What happens on a “bimulous night” is quite extraordinary. First of all: there must be a raggedy purple sky. Second of all: the otters start to sing. Third of all: you MUST eat spaghetti. That’s all I remember. In the book, we follow three little girls, who all are in white nightdresses, and all have long blonde hair … they lie in their beds, in the middle of the night, fast asleep. It is dark. A purply dark. And then, the “bimulous”-ness of the night wakes them up. The otters are singing by the lake. The sky is ragged and purple. The moon is full. They sneak downstairs and cook a vat of spaghetti. Because, of course, that’s what you must do. And then they race outside to cavort through the woods and by the lake, reveling in bimulous-ness.
This is all from memory, I assure you.
It’s a picture book, so I had to be a wee girl when I read it.
And then I moved on with my life. I left the bimulous night far far behind.
But I never forgot it.
I could not remember the author or the title of the book, but I was sure the book was called “On a Bimulous Night” – I mean, what else could it be called? And so … at various times in my adulthood, whenever I would remember the book, and remember WHILE I was in a bookstore, I would ask a clerk: “Do you have a children’s book called ‘On a Bimulous Night’?” The answer was always, sadly, No. And so then I kept my eyes peeled in second-hand book stores, at flea markets, and I would periodically check at the Strand.
On a Bimulous Night? Do you have it? No? Okay, thanks.
I have no idea why this book suddenly came into my brain again last week, but it did. And, duh, like I SHOULD have done long ago, I googled the phrase “bimulous night”.
And OH. MY. GOD. It came up. I found it!
Only it is NOT entitled On a Bimulous Night, like I thought. It is called When the Sky is Like Lace
Barbara Cooney rocks.
My breath literally caught in my throat, when the Amazon link came up, to this long-lost book, this book I have dreamt of since I was 5 years old.
There it is!!!
I bought it immediately. And, heavens and saints be praised, it just arrived. It’s sitting next to me RIGHT NOW. I can’t believe it. I haven’t read this book since I was three feet tall, and here it is. I remember some of the illustrations exactly.
The watercolor of the three little girls cooking spaghetti in the middle of the night, the linoleum, the old-fashioned stove …
The purply-dark nighttime, with the three little girls fast asleep in their bed, but outside the window you can get a glimpse of the bimulous-ness starting …
And the last illustration, of the three girls running down the front lawn, towards a lake, with a purple lacy sky above, and trees swaying in the wind … That one I used to REVEL over, when I was little. I wished I could somehow dematerialize from THIS plane, and step through the pages, into that watercolor. It LIVED for me.
And so now. I have it!
Thrilling. I’ve been dreaming about this book for 30 years. Which is pretty scary, if you think about it.
Here’s the cover:
I LOVE this book, and I’m so happy to be reunited with it.
Sounds pretty wonderful actually, and a good reason to, temporarily, set aside The One That Needed An Editor.. Google is your friend, you know.
I can’t believe I didn’t think of Googling “bimulous night” until last week. I know. I know. I’m an idiot!!
And yes. Mr. I-Just-Wrote-an-800-Page-Book-Which-Could-Easily-Have-Been-a-500-Page-Book will have to wait.
If it’s bimulous tonight, I’ll make some spaghetti and go dancing on the ice floes out in the Hudson or something.
Say ‘hello’ to any otters you see out in that bimulous night.
Congratulations, Red. May you have many bimulous nights. Best, Terry
Oh for GAWD’s sake, don’t go out on the Ice, Sheila!!!
Have a bimulous night, and everything, but DON’T GO OUT ON THE ICE!!!!
The world can’t be without such talent!! I’m glad you found the book. Personally, I put in my monster suit, and sat in my room til it turned into the woods, then I Rumpused around a campfire, but what the hell else was I going to do?!!! It was a blizzard outside, and I couldn’t go out and play!!!
:: sips his Grand Marnier ::
Oh Christ, I’m getting all emotional….
Oh for GAWD’s sake, don’t go out on the Ice, Sheila!!!
Have a bimulous night, and everything, but DON’T GO OUT ON THE ICE!!!!
The world can’t be without such talent!! I’m glad you found the book. Personally, I put in my monster suit, and sat in my room til it turned into the woods, then I Rumpused around a campfire, but what the hell else was I going to do?!!! It was a blizzard outside, and I couldn’t go out and play!!!
:: sips his Grand Marnier ::
Oh Christ, I’m getting all emotional….
Sheila –
I also have a book that I have been obssessing on since I was a kid. I could remember all the details and not the title. Thank you Peteb for mentioning google. I can now share Miss Happiness and Miss Flower – an awesome book that includes instructions on how to build a Japanese dollhouse – with my favorite little girls.
Girl – I know how exactly how happy you are to have found your biminous night.
When trying to local much-loved but lost books, don’t forget to try Alibris. They have a vast network of used book stores tied in, and your chances are probably much better there in a physical bookstore.
Just wanted to second David Foster’s comments about Alibris. I have found many a treasure there. There is something really great about finding a special book from years gone by. At a young age, the right book can take on a magic that’s hard to duplicate when you grow up.
Just wanted to second David Foster’s comments about Alibris. I have found many a treasure there. There is something really great about finding a special book from years gone by. At a young age, the right book can take on a magic that’s hard to duplicate when you grow up.
I always wondered why people sometimes posted a comment twice. Now I understand.
I guess I better start by saying Yay, Sheila! I love it when adults still appreciate their beloved childhood books. I know I still crack open A Wrinkle in Time every now and then.
But. . .how do y’all find a book when you don’t know the author or the title? When we first moved to this town, I checked out a book from the library several times. I want to read it again, but APPARENTLY our local library is run by IDIOTS who SELL the books that haven’t been checked out in a certain period of time. The book is gone; I know because I have literally gone row by row looking for it. (It’s not a big library, so it didn’t take long. That fact ALONE makes their annual “book sale” even stupider.)
All I remember about it is it was written by a mother who had eleven kids. It’s non-fiction, and is in the genre of Teresa Bloomingdale and Erma Bombeck (but it’s NOT by either of them). At the beginning of the book, she names the children and describes each with a small paragraph. I remember that the first four children (one a year — yay! good Catholic woman) were boys, and that one daughter was named Mackey.
That’s all I got. I’ve done Google, Alibris, and chicklit.com. I’m stumped. Any other suggestions?
Congrat’s on your treasure, red.
A friend of mine found a book from her childhood in a second-hand bookshop in Sydney. It was her very own book with her name inside and her own childish scribbles. Her parents had disposed of it among excess items when they moved 40 years before and she had forgotten all about it. Not only that but they had moved from over 500 miles away.
She’s the emotional type and completely broke down to the distress of other patrons who couldn’t work out what was wrong with this crazy woman.
When all was explained the owner refused to let her pay for it.
I still lookout for some of my childhood favorites but no luck so far. I envy you Shiela.
What a sweet feeling. Yes, I know what it’s like to rediscover a book you loved as a kid, and just remember bits and pieces of – for me, that book was “No Flying in the House.”
I remembered Gloria, and the kissing-of-the-elbow, but not much else. And then, one day, I happened to be reading a bookseller’s website, and she had a page of “stump the bookseller” questions – people who remember bits of childhood (or later) books, who want the book again, and can’t remember title or author. (And sadly, there are few used book shops where the owner is such a wizard that you can walk in and say “It was green, and about this big, and it had a moose in it” and have him or her go right to the shelf and find the very book).
Well, one of the questions involved a “faery dog named Gloria.” And she gave the name and the author.
Even more amazingly (to me at least), a few weeks later I found a copy in the used book shop down the street from my office. I have no children nor do I plan to have children, but I bought the book (and have systematically bought copies of a number of books I loved as a child, just to have them again).
I will say the ending of the story was very different than I remembered – I remembered it as ending very sadly and beautifully, with Gloria sitting down in the moonlight and turning herself into a small statue of a dog, because her girl had betrayed her. Turns out there’s a whole ‘nother set of chapters that either I never read, or forgot I had read, where everything is all wrapped up hunky dory and happy.
I actually liked “my” ending – the more melancholy one – better.
My wifes favorite childrens book was from the Ant & Bee series, and she recently decided to add on to her collection of one. Problem. They’ve gone out of print. Bigger problem. The childrens book wankers have driven up the price of the remaining books in a frenzy of upbidding on Ebay.
She’s heartbroken at the thought of a stack of the books she passed up at a garage sale years ago
Good story well told. I’ve hit bookfinder.com several times for a copy of There’s an Elephant in My Bathtub, but I haven’t bought one yet. I did find my other favorite, I Wish I Had Duck Feet (one surmises correctly that my tastes are rather more prosaic than yours), through interlibrary loan, though I’m pretty sure it’s still in print (one surmises that I am also cheap, or at least broke).
These stories are INCREDIBLE! I love it! I’m laughing and also welling up with tears.
ricki: “It was green, and about this big, and it had a moose in it” – hahahaha LOVE IT. And LOVE the bookseller who could take those clues and find the book.
Lisa … let me think about your dilemma. strangely enough, that book sounds familiar to me.
Lisa … it’s not Jean Kerr, is it? No … she only had 6 kids.
Oh and ricki: I have an entire bookshelf in my apartment devoted to my childhood favorites. I LOVE having those books around. EL Konigsburg, all the Anne of Green Gables books, all the Madeleine L’engle books … not to mention some of the picture books I remember adoring. All the EB White books … Trumpet of the Swan!! Charlotte’s Web!! I just feel the need to own all of these.
Oh, and of course, my favorite childhood book of all: Harriet the Spy.
Cannot live without Harriet somewhere nearby. She’s an inspiration, my number one fiction-character idol.
Ken,
I have “I Wish That I Had Duck Feet.” I got it through a book club that I had signed my kids up for back before I even HAD kids. I don’t remember the name of the club, but it’s the one where you get all the Dr. Suess books along with other classics such as “Hand, Hand, Fingers, Thumb”, “Go, Dog, Go” and “Are You My Mother?”
If you want, I can mail you my copy. Email me.
My favorite book as a kid was the remarkable The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Grey Bridge, by Hildegarde H. Swift and Lynd Ward, which is still in print. I had the pleasure of giving it to my nephew this past year; Ward’s gorgeous illustrations nearly made me weep, after all these years.
What does bimulous mean? Seriously!
Bimulous is along the lines of “O frabjous day”! or something. A made-up word. A word meaning: magic.
A “bimulous night”, as described in the book, can only happen ‘when the sky is like lace’. Bimulous-ness starts with the SKY. A raggedy clouded night sky … the edges of the clouds gleaming from the moon behind it … one of those summer nights that feels like life is magic.
A midsummer night’s dream. A night when, you can get moon-drunk, you can dance in the forest, you can talk to animals … etc.
You know.
Bimulous.
i just googled “bimulous” because my friends and i were lamenting the fact that we haven’t felt that way in a while, and your blog was the first thing to come up. so glad i’m not the only person in this world to remember the book. really hope the cold snap here passes and the nights get that wind-rush feeling of glorious possibility.