'Can't change it back to the way it was'

Paula Danziger seems like the kind of person you’d call by her first name. That’s why I began my letter to this children’s book author, famed for her flamboyant headscarves and sparkly shoes, with the words “Dear Paula.”

I was inspired to write the letter after a trip to the library this week. I had assailed the children’s section in search of a familiar spine: white, hardcover, printed in 1995, and labeled Amber Brown. I had first discovered Danziger’s sandy-headed, spunky protagonist in the library of my elementary school. Here she was again: my friend Amber Brown.

I chose Amber Brown Goes Fourth, the story of how Amber Brown (who is not named after a crayon) begins fourth grade. Her best friend Justin has moved away, her parents have divorced, and her mother is contemplating marriage to a man named Max. On top of all this, Amber doesn’t even win the prestigious playground burping contest and has to forfeit the glorious prize—a mermaid doll with a music-playing jewel embedded in its belly button.

The book, full of punny and true-to-life balm for the grown-up soul, kept me dazzled till the last page. I began formulating my message to Danziger the minute I snapped it shut.

Amber Brown’s fourth grade year is about letting people go and letting life change. One poignant piece stuck with me above all: “I wonder if it’s hard,” Amber muses, “for grownups when their friends move away.”

“When I was little,” she says at the book’s close, “I thought that things were always going to be the same. Actually, it wasn’t even something I thought about … it just always was the same, in all the big ways.

“And then it all changed, in all the big ways. …

“But I, Amber Brown, can’t change it back again to the way it was.”

I needed to write to this woman. “Yes,” I would say,“It is hard when your friends move away and your life changes, even when you are grown up.” Because she was Paula, and she would understand.

It never occurred to me that Paula Danziger might be dead. But she died during a fantastic Manhattan sunset in the year 2004, which means I conceived my letter more than 10 years too late. The news made my insides sink.

Instead of a convenient fan-mail address, my Google search yielded long paragraphs written by her mourners. They said Danziger was a woman of incredible winsomeness, warmth, individuality, and honesty. She didn’t hide the dysfunctional family of her past. Nor did she follow conventional fashions, rather choosing to wear a flowing black dress to breakfast and a fishnet around her hair. She thought it perfectly acceptable to add 20 dots to an ellipsis, and had won the hearts of everyone in a room before she stood up to give a speech. I would very much have liked to meet this Paula. But I, Chelsea Boes, can’t change it back to the way it was.

Danziger famously took time to talk to each person individually. And because of Amber Brown, she’s still talking to me.