“No one would know that this is a doll.” Polly Anne fondled the hickory nut, and pointed to its wrinkled shell and the hard knob on one end. “But is it a doll,” Polly Anne continued. “See its cheeks and its sweet little nose. All it needs is to have a face painted on and a body and some clothes. Every time that we make a hickory nut into a doll we’ll be rescuing it from a boy or a squirrel, Sarah.”
Excerpted from Rufus Adolphus’s Red Shoes by Carolyn S. Bailey, in the Continent
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As often happens, Miss Hickory noted, the more one studies a particular subject, the more one is likely to find the whole world contained therein. So it had happened once again in the household. A simple query into Presidential history had led down a meandering pig-track from Jeff Davis’s Christmas through Maria Montesorri and eventually to Miss Hickory’s family tree.
Miss Hickory was tickled to find her heritage documented in a variety of publications authored by Carolyn Sherwin Bailey-happy to know that not only had she existed in the imagination of the author, but, very likely, had ancestors fashioned by the author’s hand. She conceded that her nut-head foremothers (and fathers) might be considered the “funniest dolls of all”. Her own sharp nose and naked scalp told her that was true. It was simply a pleasure to find that Hickory-kind had a long history of helping to grow children into wise, compassionate and imaginative people-perhaps the sort that play with dollies all their life.
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You can read more about the heritage of Hickory-kind by following the links below:
Rufus Adolphus’s Red Shoes reprinted in The Christian Register
Girls Make-At-Home Things by Carolyn Sherwin Bailey
Montesorri Children by Carolyn Sherwin Bailey