14 October 2011 MRS. HARKNESS AND THE PANDA by Alicia Potter and Melissa Sweet, ill., Knopf, March 2012, 40p., ISBN: 978-0-375-844448-1

This was when pandas really caught the attention of so many of us Baby Boomers:

"One highlight of panda diplomacy was the Chinese government's gift of two pandas, Ling-Ling and Hsing-Hsing, to the United States in 1972 after President Richard Nixon's historic trip to China in 1972. (President Nixon reciprocated by sending back a pair of musk oxen.) Upon the pandas' arrival in April 1972, First Lady Pat Nixon donated the pandas to the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., where she welcomed them in an official ceremony. Over twenty thousand people visited the pandas the first day they were on display, and an estimated 1.1 million visitors came to see them the first year they were in the United States. The pandas were wildly popular and China's gift was seen as an enormous diplomatic success, evidence of China's eagerness to establish official relations with the U.S. It was so successful that British Prime Minister Edward Heath asked for pandas for the United Kingdom during a visit to China in 1974."

-- from Wikipedia

What I've never known is that 75 years ago, after her adventurer husband died during his own quest to capture a live panda in China and bring it to the United States, newly-widowed New York City dress designer Ruth Harkness embarked on her own panda expedition and returned successfully to the U.S. with a baby panda in her arms.

(Can you imagine getting on a security line these days while carrying a baby panda bear?)

MRS. HARKNESS AND THE PANDA is the picture book story of how Ruth Harkness ignored skeptics and naysayers, got her late husband's warm adventurer clothing tailored down to her size, teamed up with a young man who knew the Chinese bamboo forests and had seen pandas, and proceeded to travele by ship, by vehicle, by foot, (and sometimes by sedan chair) upriver and up-mountain to where they eventually found a panda cub they named Su Lin. Fortunately, Mrs. Harkness had packed a baby bottle and some baby formula that was then put to good use while she and the baby giant panda spent a month making their way from China to San Francisco.

Artist Melissa Sweet once again uses her award-winning talent for incorporating objects into her mixed media illustrations. Here, in depicting the story of Mrs. Harkness and the panda, Sweet employs watercolors that are paired with such relevant objects as a section of a dress design; an old world map and postcards of China from Mrs. Harkness' era; sheets of Chinese calligraphy; Chinese coins; beautiful handmade paper; and objects made from bamboo. Sweet also incorporates a great photo of Mrs. Harkness together with Su Lin at the conclusion of the tale.

"The expedition was another success. This time the expedition collected forty big mammals, six thousand birds and reptiles, and the giant panda. The panda the brothers killed was an old male. In their book about the expedition, both brothers [Theodore, Jr. and Kermit] claim to have fired jointly and thereby shared in the honor of being the first Westerners to shoot a panda."

-- online article, "Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., The Hunter," discussing a late 1920s expedition underwritten by the Field Museum

Things have sure changed over the past 100 years as to the way we think about rapidly disappearing large mammals! And as to what women have been capable of accomplishing. MRS. HARKNESS AND THE PANDA is a superb addition to the literature for children relating to both of these topics.

Richie Partington, MLIS
Richie's Picks http://richiespicks.com
BudNotBuddy@aol.com
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