Lily Did it For the Least of These

 A dollar for the paper growls a tall man in a raggedy coat. His hair sticks up higgledy-piggledy all over his head. He thrusts a thin newspaper toward Lily's mother. Lily hides, clutching her mother's coat as she peeks out.

I was drawn to Lily and the Paperman  simply because of the name Lily. My mother, who preferred being called Peggy, was named after her grandmother. The spelling Lily-dell was a little different and mother could never quite get used to the dell as an addendum to the name Lily. When I read Lily and the Paperman by Rebecca Upjohn and illustrated by Renne Benoit, I was captivated by a little girl whose generous heart also reminded me of my mother as a child. Being very tender-hearted she would have reacted just as our storybook Lily did on a cold city sidewalk.

 

The story is set in a major metropolitan area in a cold climate. Lily and her parents live in a high-rise apartment with an elevator rather than a front porch or a backyard. So many of our children’s books are set in simple frame houses with yards and flowers. Children living in urban areas (like in EJ Keats' Snowy Day) would feel right at home with the setting of this book. Children in typical suburban communities will benefit from reading about life in the city.

 

Poverty, homelessness, and loneliness are realities that young children don’t usually read about in their picture books. Rebecca Upjohn beautifully frames the story around a man in need. Little Lily reacts, at first,  like any young child but soon makes some very generous and grown-up decisions. It’s a beautiful lesson for every child and every adult living in our hungry world of today.