I do not recall the process of learning to read, although my mother tells me that it began some time before first grade, as I began to pick up more and more from our nightly story-hour. I DO recall, however, that this little picture book by Gladys L. Adshead was one of the delights of my early childhood, a regular feature at bedtime, and one of the first books I read on my own. I would pore over it for hours, reading and rereading the simple story, and gazing at the soft, pastel illustrations.

This tale of an old man and an old woman, who lived quietly together in a little white house with a twisted chimney, a beautiful garden full of flowers, and (most importantly) a lazy, purring cat named Miranda, has always had the power to enthrall me, despite its rampant sentimentality. Something about the gentle cadence and matter-of-fact tone of Adshead's story made the appearance of a band of angels and two little babies seem like a perfectly natural development. The little old man and little old lady were lonely, after all, with their own children all grown up and far away... It made perfect sense that some angels would descend with little "Jennifer -an- John" to keep them company. And of course, it also made perfect sense that whatever happened, Miranda always knew...

My copy of What Miranda Knew is rather battered, having survived my tumultuous childhood, and it is all the more precious to me for having been my mother's before me, with the inscription at the front indicating it was a Christmas gift in 1944. Although I was not aware of this as a child, the illustrator, Elizabeth Orton Jones, won the Caldecott Medal in 1945 for her work on Rachel Field's Prayer for a Child. Given the charm of this book, I am not at all surprised. ( )