R. S. V. P.
By IRMA E. WEBBER
With drawings by the author

SOME invitations are precisely worded, beautifully en­graved, and even gilt embossed. They generally come in two envelopes. Less elegant invitations, to perhaps more pleasurable affairs, are sometimes painstakingly penned or hastily scrawled. Others are casually extended over the phone or over the fence. Still others come to us in such camouflaged form we may not heed them because we do not readily recognize them.

Some of my most memorable invitations have been worded simply, "Mommy, come see! " They were first extended to me when my husband, son Herbert, and I were living at the foot of Riverside's Mt. Rubidoux. In those days, I frequently whizzed through the housework in order to study the anatomy of plants while Herbert played. My converted breakfast-nook laboratory overlooked the large, completely fenced back-yard playground, so I could alternate studious gazing into the micro­scope with motherly glancing out the window. While this arrangement permitted some botanical progress, the periods of study were frequently shortened by Herbert's eager invitation, "Mommy, come see!" In the years since, I've been thankful that I sensed this was an invitation, rather than a mere inter­ruption, and that I so often went to see what Herbert wanted me to see.

What was I invited to see? Nothing the newspapers con­sidered newsworthy. Nothing my adult friends picked as topics for conversation. Just matters of genuine interest to a small boy: little, crooked plants that pushed up the soil; taller, straighter plants that 􀀇pread out new leaves; the California Poppy bud that doffed its dunce cap; the tomato that was red enough to pick; the honey bees that buzzed about the rambler roses; the birds that pecked the figs; the glistening trail left by a snail; the lizard that climbed the pergola; the water that gurgled out of a gopher hole; the ants that labored with their loads; the worms that wiggled in the mud; the clouds that floated in the sky; the shadows that changed. shape. These are but a few of the things I was invited to see in Herbert's back­yard world.

I soon learned that, so far as Herbert was concerned, " Mommy, come se􀀕!" didn't always mean " see " in the visual sense. Often the invitation was really to touch, or smell, or listen. Herbert soon discovered that different parts of a rose bush don't all feel and smell alike, and that there is no more similarity in the feel of stickery rose leaves and sticky petunia leaves than there is in the fragrance of roses and petunias, or the song of jays and canaries, or the flavor of carrots and spinach. As Her­bert, without assistance, repeatedly discovered significant simi­larities and differences in the things about hin;i, I was repeatedly struck with the contrast between the sharp observations of a young child anxious to learn, and some of the perfunctory, slip­shod observations I had encountered among college students who admittedly enrolled in science courses solely because some science was required for graduation.

When Herbert was nearly four, Irma Jean was born. By the time she was two, she also invited me to "see" many things. Her interests in back­yard matters were as varied, and her obser­vations as keen as Herbert's had been in his pre-school years. Moreover, they clearly in­dicated a lack of any inborn, feminine dis­like of mice, grubs, spiders, or mud.

When Irma Jean was not quite three, I en­rolled her in a small, but very good, nursery school. She was delighted with the idea of going to school as Herbert did, and she thor­oughly enjoyed the school activities. With both children in school five mornings a week, I once again found a good deal of time for intensive work on plant anatomy. The whole family was very happy until the nursery school director moved away and the nursery school closed. This meant, that after having experienced the companionship of children her age and the assorted activities of school, Irma Jean couldn't go to school because she had suddenly grown too young. It also meant that I had a broken-hearted youngster who knew she was old enough for school because she had gone to school for about a year. I couldn't stand seeing her so forlorn, and felt that the least I could do to attempt to cheer the child was to supply some of the school activities that she craved. Accordingly, for the next year, a large share of my time and energy was devoted to run­ning a sort of one-child school.

Fortunately, the back-yard still invited a great many obser­vations and activities. The near-by rocky slopes of Mt. Rubidoux invited hikes midst chaparral and its dwellers. The house invited mastery of simple tasks. Clay, blackboard and chalk, paints, crayons and paper invited artistic expression. And fortu­nately, the junior branch of the public library invited even those who were "too young" for school.

Our junior branch library doesn't extend its invitation in the most mod­ern or elegant housing in town. No, its invitation is just an unpretentious, genuine welcome to all, betokened by good books, a comfortable place in which to peruse them, and a cheerful librarian with helpful suggestions. Its invitation is restfully quiet yet audi­ble. Generally there is a soft shuffling of books. The canary is apt to sing, or splash, or crack seeds. The phono­graph plays opera on occasion. The librarian sometimes reads aloud to groups. And once in a while, a book, too cumbersome for little hands, falls with a resounding thud.

In this little library for little folks, I found friends of my own childhood along with the latest in children's lit­erature. There were books that invited song and laughter, books that invited enjoyment of beauty, books that invited journeys to real and imaginary places, and books that invited a better understand­ing of things close at hand. There were books that one felt lucky to discover. There were also some books that made me wonder why anybody ever bothered to print them, and some that made me wish they could have been printed in larger type, or better illustrated, or put together in more durable form.

Even with the many types of books to appeal to many tastes, I found great gaps in available material that invited other books for other needs. My own training in botany, combined with the great pleasure I have seen many people derive from an in­terest in nature, and my own children's early interest in nature, perhaps made the gaps in factual plant literature for youngsters seem disproportionately large·. After bothering me for some time, these gaps seemed to invite me to divert some time from technical botany into an effort to bridge a few gaps in children's plant literature.

I believe the response to the little books resulting from this effort should partially answer the often-asked question of whether my children's early interest in nature wasn't an atypical one induced mostly by heredity, or by as­sociation with botanical parents, a botanical grandfather, and their bo­tanical friends. Basically the children of scientists seem to be as human as those of plumbers or poets. All chil­dren normally want to acquaint them­selves with their surroundings, what­ever their environment. Unfortu­nately, all children don't have sunny, back-yard playgrounds where they can become• acquainted with plants and the animals the plants attract. Yet whatever their environment, children are little human beings, and, as such, inescapably concerned with living things and the forces of nature that influence all life.

Modern children often have their early natural desire to learn about nature's marvels curbed or crushed by parents or teachers. There are homes where children are told in very positive terms to refrain from ever again picking up those ghastly, disgusting grubs; those horrid, slimy snails; those awful, wiggly worms; or those dirty, sticky pine cones. There are homes so overcrowded, or so full of parents' priceless bric-a-brac, that they lack any space for a sparkly rock, a curiously shaped seed pod, or a beautiful shell that a child finds and yearns to keep. There are homes where a child's questions about the sky, the earth, a plant, or any animal are always answered," Don't know," in a manner that implies, "And don't care! "

A young child that has had his desire to learn something about nature nearly squelched at home, may have the squelching com­pleted in his early school years. Where the teacher has a huge class and a schedule that must be rigidly followed, there is apt to be little time to look at nature materials children bring to school, and no time to answer questions about them. Even where there is a nature study period, something so rare as a Southern California hail storm may pass unnoticed by the teacher because the hail signals its invitation to look out-of-doors during the arithmetic period. It takes an earthquake to awaken an aware­ness in some adults of greater things than personal schedules.

Important as plans and schedules are, unexpected events often make changes in them necessary or desirable. How often the acceptance of a sudden invitation to the unfamiliar seems doubly pleasurable because we hadn't scheduled it! Yet the fact that children's interests so often are aroused without reference to the schedules of their parents and teachers too often means that early interests worth developing are persistently ignored or repeatedly rebuffed until they perish.

Fortunate are the children who learn early that their interests, regardless of when they are aroused, are always invited to de­velop and expand at the library. Yet even at the library, de­velopment of interests is occasionally curbed by lack of infor­mation in assimilable form. That is why I feel that inviting, intelligible books about matters that interest young children are every bit as important as technical works for specialists.