The Clay Ladies

Patricia Morley is professor emerita of English and Canadian Studies at
Concordia University and an avid outdoor recreationist. She is also the
author of The Mountain Is Moving: Japanese Women’s Lives, Kurlek, and
Margaret Laurence: The Long Journey Hom

Frances Loring and Florence Wyle are two sculptors whose lives are
dramatized in The Clay Ladies. This beautiful and imaginative
re-creation of their home in an old wooden church in Toronto in the
early decades of this century, and of their work and their
personalities, is aimed at preteen children.

A boy visits Grandmother’s house occasionally and imagines ghosts in
the windows of her old shed. As a young girl, Grandmother lived near
“the clay ladies.”

By bringing together the memories of Grandmother and the boy’s
curiosity, Michael Bedard draws his readers into two worlds—one
ordinary and the other extraordinary—turning Loring, Wyle, and their
sculpture into a vivid reality that becomes part of the boy’s
experience, just as it had been part of Grandmother’s. When she was
young, she had gone to the clay ladies to get help for a young robin
that had fallen from its nest. The sculptors welcomed the girl and
encouraged her to try sculpting a lump of clay, to “feel the life in
the thing.” History and artistic genius take on flesh and blood as
three-quarters of a century melts away.

Bedard, a Torontonian, has written several award-winning books for
young people, including the novel Redwork. Les Tait also loves Toronto
and continues to paint its streets. His full-page illustrations of the
organized chaos of the church–studio’s interior, full of cats and
sculptures in various stages of completion, are wonderfully detailed.

With its fine blend of art, history, and human drama, The Clay Ladies
should appeal to a wide age range. Highly recommended.