Antoinette Tryssenaar Villa
… my parents don’t like other people’s children. Actually, I don’t think they like their own children much. My mom once said if she could live her life over again, she wouldn’t have children. Well June, if I could live my life over again, I wouldn’t have parents.
With these words Willy tugs at the heartstrings of young and old alike. A Kaleidoscope for June is the fictitious journal of baby boomer Willy Velthuizen’s coming of age in rural Ontario Canada in the late 1950’s. Willy writes about her struggles against the strictures of an authoritarian upbringing with pathos, humor and insight. She is influenced by her education in a one room country schoolhouse, her passion for reading as well as her love of nature and augments this coming of age narrative with songs, poems and recipes of the times. Reading A Kaleidoscope/or June will bring back the late 1950’s vividly to readers who lived at that time and bring it to life for those who did not.
The author, Antoinette Tryssenaar Villa was born in the Netherlands and immigrated to Canada with her parents when she was a baby. She grew up on a farm in Southern Ontario where A Kaleidoscope for June is set. Like Willy she attended a one room country school. Antoinette Tryssenaar Villa is a teacher who lives in Washington State with her husband Nick.
One of my hobbies, June, is reading the Eaton’s and the Simpson’s Sears catalogues. We get both and do most of our wardrobe shopping from them. I like looking at them to see how many different things there are in the world, but also to learn new words for colors. All the fabrics and clothing are shown in their various colors and I have learned ever so many different words to describe colors. So this is my plan, June, I’m going to have a “Color of the Day” every day in my diary to tell you a new one every time I write to you. That way, my diary will be a kaleidoscope of colors as well as a kaleidoscope of sketches of my life just for you, June.
