Last week, Robb Johnston rode the AATA bus from Ypsilanti into Ann Arbor and walked from downtown to my front porch take his turn on the teeter totter. [Robb Johnston's Talk]

Johnston has written and illustrated a self-published children’s book called “The Woodcutter and The Most Beautiful Tree.” And whenever anyone pitches me Chronicle coverage of a project they’re proud of, my first thought is: “Can I get a teeter totter ride out of this?”

Before Johnston’s ride, I test-read his children’s book the best way I could think of, given that my wife Mary and I do not have children: I read the book aloud to her, and did my best to pretend that she was four years old. It was my own first read through the book, so I was satisfied when I did not stumble too badly over the part of the woodcutter’s refrain that goes, “Thwickety THWAK, Thwickety THWAK.”

Oscar Wilde’s “The Happy Prince” notwithstanding, I think it’s fair to expect that a children’s book with a title like “The Woodcutter and The Most Beautiful Tree” will end well and leave everyone with smiles all around. And it does. So it’s not like I was truly surprised when I turned that one page near the end that reveals exactly how the final encounter between The Most Beautiful Tree and the Woodcutter ends.

But the book’s text and its illustrations pull the reader along to that point, and suggest so unmistakably a dark and dreadful ending, that when I did turn that page, I gulped a genuine breath of relief that she did not wind up getting milled into lumber at the end. [The tree in Johnston's book is female.] Well, yes, you might conclude that I am just that dopey. Or more generously, you might try sometime reading aloud a book you’ve never seen before.

But speaking of things we’ve seen before, some Chronicle readers might be thinking: Haven’t we seen this guy Robb Johnston before? Why yes, you have.

Once Johnston arrived for his totter ride, pre-tottering conversation revealed how The Chronicle had previously encountered him. In April 2010, in his capacity as a temporary city worker in Ann Arbor’s natural area preservation (NAP) program, he had been helping a group of volunteers clear brush on the Argo earthen berm. I’d run past on the path and stopped to inquire in hey-mister-whatcha-doing fashion. And I’d logged the encounter as a Stopped.Watched. item – he’s mentioned there by first name only.

Later when I searched through The Chronicle’s archives for “Robb,” I learned that a few days before the Argo encounter, we’d published an article about the controlled burns conducted by NAP, which mentioned Johnston and includes a photograph of him.

Johnston is currently on his regular extended break from the city, which is part of what defines him as a temporary worker. He’ll start back in a few weeks.

This totter-ride encounter with a city worker, in his guise as a children’s book author, reminded me of some text that was included in the original About The Chronicle section, when we launched this publication in September 2008 [the text has been revised since then]:

… every day we encounter eccentric, enterprising, or regular people doing the remarkable or even the routine.

My recollection is that the sentiment was meant to reflect the idea that our appointed and elected officials are regular people, whose work for the public is a part of the routine – and that’s exactly why it’s worth documenting, just as other routine activity by regular folks is also important to document.

To be clear, Johnston does not strike me as eccentric. He comes across as a regular guy. And he’s now found his way into The Chronicle doing both the routine (his job as a city worker) and the remarkable (writing and illustrating a children’s book).

I’d like to wrap up this introduction to Johnston’s Talk by making a suggestion to those Chronicle readers who still think that an actual children’s book is a routine part of childhood that makes for remarkable memories. You know the kind – a big book that small hands can still handle, with painstakingly hand-drawn illustrations, the kind that you can read aloud and turn pages together with your kid or your spouse, if you don’t have kids. That suggestion is this: Buy the book and read it to a kid. And there’s no reason to wait for Christmas – it has a Christmas ending, but I wouldn’t call it a Christmas book.

For readers who’d prefer not to order online, it’s available at two bricks-and-mortar locations: Vault of Midnight at 219 S. Main St. in downtown Ann Arbor, and Fun 4 All on 2742 Washtenaw Ave.

In thinking about how to read this particular book to children, I’d like to share an insight: I’m pretty sure think that reading this book on a teeter totter with a child would be a mistake. Depending on the child’s ability to appreciate irony, awkward questions could arise: Isn’t this board made out of a tree? Did a woodcutter chop her down to make this teeter totter?!

What, if anything, is there to say to that? Sorry, kid, but not every tree is The Most Beautiful Tree. So maybe it’s better to just choose a comfortable chair.

The author's well-worn, 1965 edition of "The Happy Prince" by Oscar Wilde.

Christmas is over. Was everyone properly grateful?

You know who we’re talking about here, even though there are certainly none of them in your family. We’re talking about that little sugar plum who works up a sweat ripping open loot and caps the frenzy with, “Is this all?” Or the tot, her golden curls still sleep-tousled, who tears enough paper off each present to see if it’s worthy of further attention and, if it disappoints, chucks it aside for the next one.

A woman I know recalls the Christmas her brother visited with his family; the little darlings plowed through the booty in the twinkling of an eye, allowed themselves a few minutes to fight with each other and then demanded to go back to the hotel pool because they were bored. Visions of stuffing them in a coal sack and dumping them into the deep end danced in Auntie’s head.

This time of year always gets me thinking about Oscar Wilde’s “The Happy Prince,” a fairy tale guaranteed to bludgeon a sense of empathy into the most irredeemable of brats.

Here’s the gist: A gilded statue of a prince looks over a city governed by self-satisfied dolts and peopled by a few aristocrats, some merchant types and a whole bunch of people who these days are called “the underserved.” Along comes a swallow who is late migrating to Egypt for the winter because he fell in love with a slender reed and hung around hoping, in vain, that she’d come away with him.

He stops for the night at the feet of the golden statue but is soon disturbed by what he thinks are raindrops; in truth they are tears, falling from the Happy Prince’s sapphire eyes. Turns out the Prince, who enjoyed an opulent, pleasure-filled existence oblivious to the suffering of his subjects, is spending his afterlife with a spectacular view of their misery.

The not-really Happy Prince persuades the swallow to peck the fat ruby out of his sword hilt and carry it to this destitute seamstress who is working late into the night embroidering passionflowers on a ball gown for a snotty maid-in-waiting to the queen. The seamstress’s feverish son is crying for oranges, but all she can afford for his comfort is cold water from the river. (BTW, do you know how many hundreds of dollars can be spent on a set of Legos?)

Then comes the freaky part: the Prince talks the swallow into plucking out his eyes. The swallow balks; he has fallen in love with the Prince, you see (animal on vegetable, animal on mineral: this Wilde bird swings both ways), and can’t bear to blind him. But before long one of the eyes ends up with a poor little match girl and the other with – get this – a struggling playwright, who greets the mysterious appearance of the sapphire thusly: “I am beginning to be appreciated; this is from a great admirer! Now I can finish my play.”

By this time the swallow has bagged Egypt to devote himself to his beloved Prince, and spends his days tearing gold leaf off the statue and raining it on ragged children delirious at the prospect of dinner. Winter comes and, well, you can guess what happens to that swallow. The town’s leading citizens find that the once-gilded Prince has deteriorated into an eyesore where birds go to die, and order it hauled away. As the story ends, the burghers are fighting among themselves over who gets to pose for the new statue and an angel brings the dead swallow and the Prince’s cracked leaden heart up to Heaven, where they belong.

If your kid makes it through this story without crying, you need to lock up the steak knives and find a safe home for the family pet.

“The Happy Prince” also gets you thinking about the uses of public art – a timely local topic that gives me the tissue-thin cover to file this column with The Chronicle.

There’s been some outrage about the money at the disposal of the Ann Arbor Public Art Commission; right now it has about $1.32 million in the bank. More than half of that appears to be earmarked for an outdoor water sculpture by German artist Herbert Dreiseitl, which is being proposed as an installation at the municipal center still under construction next to the Larcom building.

This money, some critics argue, is desperately needed elsewhere in these tough economic times. Others argue that local funds should finance work by local artists (such as my husband, who wishes a sapphire eye would come flying through his window).

It’s a tough choice, always. Public money requires careful stewardship. There are solid arguments for guns and for butter. But shouldn’t any civilized society worthy of the name treat itself to the occasional feather boa? Besides, that water sculpture will be a cool blessing for Ann Arborites who have embraced the myriad benefits of downtown living and can’t afford oranges anymore.

“The Happy Prince and Other Stories” is available at Nicola’s Books in Ann Arbor’s Westgate Shopping Plaza, at the intersection of Jackson and West Stadium. About the writer: Domenica Trevor is a voracious reader who lives in Ann Arbor.

Jo Mathis

There’s nothing worse than facing a room of 25 college kids – and boring them, says University of Michigan French instructor Jenni Gordon.

In Paris years ago, the Ann Arbor resident discovered the power of storytelling in the classroom. Recently, in an attempt to help her UM students grasp the difficult concept of imparfait (imperfect past tense), Gordon wrote and illustrated a bilingual children’s story to share with them.

It worked.

The story of a little girl named Mathilde stirred within the students so many memories of childhood. “Suddenly, lots of people had a story to tell in the past tense!” said Gordon.

Now Press Lorentz/littleBeast Books in Ann Arbor has published Gordon’s story of Mathilde, a little girl with mixed feelings about her new baby brother. It’s titled both “Les Problemes de Mathilde” and – on the flip side – “One day, I had enough!”

The story is already a hit with the 20-ish crowd.

“I realized I had something going for me when they’d say, ‘No, no, don’t stop there. Keep going!’” recalled Gordon, sitting in her apartment on the city’s north side. “And this was a group of undergraduate students.”

The story is a familiar one. As the oldest of four children, Gordon recalls what a drag it was to “welcome” a baby sister into the family decades ago. “I thought she was coming with her parents – and leaving with them,” she recalled with a laugh.

Gordon, a first-time author at 57, said the collaborative endeavor has been both creative, and lots of fun.

The French cover of Jenni Gordon's "Les Problemes de Mathilde." The flip side is in English.

Publisher Jude Wilson got involved with the project when she fell in love with the character of Mathilde, and knew others would, too.

“The combination of Jenni’s brilliant illustrations and narrative style immediately convinced me that readers of just about any age would instantly want to be friends with Mathilde, could read her story a hundred times and still enjoy it, and would identify with both her problem and the ultimate solution,” she said.

Wilson also thinks Ann Arbor parents will like the idea of a bilingual book as a way to introduce their children to the French language.

Born in Detroit and raised in the metropolitan area, Gordon earned a bachelor’s degree in education at UM. After working for three years in Nashville and Boston, she decided it was time for adventure. A big one.

“I had studied French in high school so I could speak it, but as soon as someone answered me, that was the end of the conversation,” she said. “But I was fascinated with the chance to step into another universe.”

So she packed up and moved to Paris, staying the first couple weeks with cousins she’d never met. Soon she was teaching English as a foreign language in a French private school.

“They had me teaching six- and seven-year-olds a language they didn’t understand at 3 in the afternoon,” she said. “The French school day is fairly intense. So by that time, they were all kind of basket cases.”

One day she drew a small dog – the only thing she could draw at the time – and began a tale about a pup named Hoover.

That’s all it took.

“Suddenly I realized the power of drawing, and the power of a story,” she said.

“Anytime I wanted to get their attention and teach them something, I’d use the character of Hoover.”

Soon she was drawing other little characters, again keeping the kids’ interest in their stories. Through the years, she realized people of all ages love a good story.

“Stories, particularly stories that engage the emotions, and sometimes old buried universal emotions, tend to awaken if not passion, a very focused interest and sense of fun,” she said.

Jenni Gordon, author of "Les Problemes de Mathilde."

After a few years, she switched to tour guiding, escorting groups of American teachers and students on educational tours throughout western Europe.

The job wasn’t as romantic as it sounds.

“You’re up every day at 6 with your suitcase, responsible for 40 teenagers who are losing their passports, busting into the mini bar, and passing out in the hallway,” she said with a smile.

When she returned to the United States in 1995, Gordon spent four years teaching English as a Foreign Language to adults of varied nationalities in Detroit before beginning work as a lecturer at UM in 1999. As a full-time instructor, she teaches all levels of elementary French.

“French is an abstract language, and there’s a way of communicating, whether it’s with someone on a train or with someone with whom you’re having dinner, that goes very easily to an abstract level. The conversation itself takes on a life of its own,” she said. “American conversation tends to be more personal, more sharing, more open in a lot of different ways. So if you’re deprived of either of them – in my case, because I was brought up American and lived in France – then I miss them.”

Gordon, who is single, lives in an apartment in the upper level of a house on the city’s north side. She loves it not because it reminds her of bustling Paris – but because it doesn’t. Rather, it’s quiet and woodsy and feels very Midwest American.

Still, she misses Parisian culture.

“I would miss it much more if I weren’t working in the French department, because it’s a very international environment, and I’m speaking the language all the time,” she said. “But I do miss it. It’s a hard place not to miss … Paris has a personality all its own, and you can develop a love-hate relationship with it, just like a lover.”

Gordon’s book is available by ordering online at Press Lorentz/littleBeast Books or calling 734-604-1627.

About the author: Jo Mathis is an Ann Arbor-based writer.

Maria LoCicero and Leandra Blander, students at Summers-Knoll School, read from the book "Moon Wolf," which they helped illustrate. They helped with a book reading on Sunday at the Crazy Wisdom Tearoom.

The Chronicle has no idea how often howling echoes through Crazy Wisdom Bookstore & Tearoom, but customers there definitely heard wolf-like sounds on Sunday afternoon. The occasion was  a reading of “Moon Wolf,” a children’s book illustrated by students at Summers-Knoll School and written by the head of school, Joanna Hastings.

The book is a classroom project turned fundraising venture – it’s now sold at several local stores. “Moon Wolf” tells the story of a wolf who lives in the moon and leaps to Earth when the moon is full, enjoying many adventures and raucous howling along the way.

The 22-page book is actually an excerpt from a much longer narrative poem by Hastings, also called “Moon Wolf,” that was performed several years ago at Performance Network in its old digs in the Technology Center on Third and Washington. [That warren of buildings burned down in 2003 – the YMCA's new facility is now on that site.]

Joanna Hastings, head of school at Summers-Knoll, reads from "Moon Wolf."

So how did the excerpt from her longer poem end up as a children’s book? The saga started at last year’s Ann Arbor Book Festival, an annual event featuring panel discussions as well as a vendor fair. Summers-Knoll had a booth at the festival to promote the school – as an activity for kids at the booth, they had materials to make miniature books using paper, stickers and markers. Hastings worked the booth with Kim Guziel, the school’s business manager, and while they were there they started making little books themselves, just for fun. That activity prompted Guziel to encourage Hastings to write a children’s book of her own.

Guziel kept nudging her, as did Melissa Bruzzano, a parent at the school. As Hastings thought about it, she realized that part of the long “Moon Wolf” poem she’d written years ago might work as a poem for children. And that’s what she decided to pursue, with the idea of having students illustrate the work.

Several parents got involved in the project too. Ruth Marks, an artist whose daughter Amelia attends Summers-Knoll, coached the students as they worked on the drawings, which were done in February of this year. Bruzzano researched book printers. She tried to find one locally, but none she contacted could produce the work in color, she said. A couple of local firms suggested she try Color House Graphics of Grand Rapids, and that’s where they ultimately got “Moon Wolf” printed.

Ruth’s husband, James Marks, owner of VGKids in Ypsilanti, did the pre-production work, which included selecting the artwork that ended up in the book. (Because not all the images could be used for the story, the final pages include photos of the kids and their art.) The project cost around $1,300 for 200 books, an amount that included shrink-wrapping the books.

On her head of school blog, Hastings wrote about the process earlier this year: “Most of the images were developed by several children. When the selections were made, no one knew who had drawn what. Each illustration is a collaboration and a fusion of energy from each class. That is what makes them so special, and makes me so proud of the finished product. I feel as if every child’s spirit is represented in the overall response.”

Some of those students were on hand Sunday to sign copies of the book. And after Hastings read it aloud once, two students – Maria LoCicero and Leandra Blander – read through it again, the second time embellished with sound effects from the audience, which consisted mostly of Summers-Knoll families. (Hastings had hoped for a broader community turnout. Before the reading began, she said she wished some of the families who came to town that day for the Taste of Ann Arbor would wander in for the book reading. It wasn’t clear that any of them did, despite the alluring howls.)

The books are selling for $20 at Crazy Wisdom, Downtown Home & Garden, Falling Water and Nicola’s Books. Proceeds will go toward needs-based scholarships at the private elementary school, which is located at 2015 Manchester Road in Ann Arbor.

Alec Bayoneto, one of the illustrators of "Moon Wolf," reads a brochure about summer camps at Summers-Knoll School while he awaits the start of the book reading on Sunday.

The front cover and an inside page from "Moon Wolf," on a table in the Crazy Wisdom Tearoom.