Look, you. I can do it, too!

Well… to expand a bit on that previous entry: I am a newly-minted member of this blog. My goal is to keep it from being a Harry-Potter-only blog, and to bring in lots of the books that I am reading (and have over the last couple of years read) to my daughter. I have an objectionable tendency to talk people’s ears off about Tove Jansson and the Moomintroll books; hopefully that will go over okay in this locality.

I have a blog of my own, about 4 years old now I guess [off to check… yep! ‘Deed its birthday is coming up in a few weeks!], where I mostly write about reading.

Since yesterday I have looked several times at this chronological list of Seuss’ works, and I must say it’s blowing my mind. Do you realize, he wrote Mulberry Street in 1937, the year of Thomas Pynchon’s birth; and he wrote Oh, the Places You’ll Go! in 1990, when Vineland was published! Extraordinary. (As a note, I was surprised about Oh, the Places You’ll Go! — I have read that to Sylvia and always had the impression it was a book I knew from my childhood — but apparently not.)

What books of his do you especially like, and which ones do you especially dislike? I mean out of the list I linked, probably about 25 or 30 books are real classics, the kind of thing you immediately think of when you hear “Dr. Seuss”. But he did his share of writing that seems phoned in, like In a People House or Oh Say Can You Say — and I am going to go out on a limb by saying I really can’t stand Hop on Pop and Mr. Brown Can Moo! Can You?, which I expect other people would number among his classics. These two just seem like they’re written to the Dr. Seuss formula, but with nothing fresh to make them come alive. Also: 10 Apples Up On Top! is an absolute work of genius.

My dad raises a good question in comments to the previous post:

Do Dr S’s backgrounds remind anyone else of Coconino County in an off-kilter way, or is it just me?

Maybe… this makes me think I have in my head two categories of “surrealist art”, the distinguishing factor being whether the art is aimed at children or at adults — and I would instinctively put Solla Sollew in the former category (with Jansson and Milne) and Krazy Kat in the latter (with Dali and Pynchon). I can’t really justify that though, or clarify what features belong to either category — I think they are more alike than they are different.

Update: But you know, looking at those mountains behind the Solla Sollew narrator and the mountains behind Krazy, I am getting hip to what Dad meant — he was talking about the specific visual composition of the two images, not the conceptual surrealistic nature of the two works. Looked at that way it totally rings true, and I’m not sure why I would have taken it the other way to begin with.

I’m glad that the brief fit of madness where movies based on children’s books attracted screenwriters and directors who seemed to love the books has passed. Via DominEditrix at Unfogged, behold the many many changes made to bring The Dark is Rising to the screen. The big names in the cast were promising — Ian McShane as Merriman; Chris Eccleston as the Dark Rider — and I love Shallow Grave as much as the next man, but this is insane. Now, of course, there will be a generation of children who don’t bother reading the book, with all its twee Arthurian lacework, but think it’s Harry Potter and the Cornish McBritsalot.

On the upside, it will probably still be better than the film adaption of Lloyd Alexander’s The Black Cauldron.

Update: Tim Burke goes all heretical in his response to the same Unfogged thread.

There is a lot I want to write about Tove Jansson’s Moomintroll books. Right now I just want to note, I think there is a good deal of complexity and nuance in Jansson’s characterizations, in the early books of the series as well as the later ones. There seems to be a received wisdom that Comet in Moominland, Finn Family Moomintroll, Moominpappa’s Memoirs, and Moominsummer Madness are simple, light-hearted books without any depth; I think this is wrong. No more to say about this right now, I’m just trying to get my feet wet for a longer Moominpost.

Not exactly sure what to make of this: Mrs. Brisby and the Rats of NIMH (Mrs. Frisby’s name was changed during post-production of the movie Secret of NIMH and somehow the change has carried over) as a verse play in five acts. Google has 500 hits (AOTW) for “Mrs. Brisby and the Rats of NIMH”, and not all of them are about the movie.

I’m reminded, this past week as I’ve been reading Moominsummer Madness to Sylvia, of a device that I reliably find really intriguing in children’s books: the characters are interacting with something familiar to the reader but outside of their experience, and trying to fit it in to the world of their experience. In this case it is the Moomins and their hangers-on, trying to understand the theater by describing it as a house, and the ways that breaks down throughout the book. It is very familiar as a device, though I’m not sure I could point out any other instances of it right now — I think I’ve seen similar things in Babar books, probably in Roald Dahl, maybe in Narnia too. And of course that joke about the blind men describing an elephant. (Update: speaking of which, I am just now watching Lifetime cable’s new TV show “State of Mind”, and it started its first episode with a re-enactment of the blind men and an elephant joke.)

I’m thinking of doing a little series of posts on food in children’s books. Certainly there are any number of striking examples to choose from. What are your favorites?

There’s the scene in (the very weird on class politics) A Girl of the Limberlost in which the main character gets a new, charming lunchbox and her previously cold and unloving mother is suddenly compelled to make her all manner of fabulous dishes to put in it. There are the many lovingly rendered meals in the Little House books — especially Farmer Boy — which one imagines are given in such delectable detail in part because of the long winter when Laura Ingalls and her family almost starved.

There are the dormitory feasts that are such a stock feature of British school stories, and their analogs in the early Harry Potter books. There’s the memorable scene in A Little Princess when Sara Crewe imagines “…suppose—suppose, just when I was near a baker’s where they sold hot buns, I should find sixpence—which belonged to nobody. Suppose, if I did, I should go into the shop and buy six of the hottest buns, and should eat them all without stopping.” Even Jane Eyre, which only starts out as a children’s book, gives its due attention to food as a token of kindness and camaraderie.

An idea whose time has come: a mashup of “Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride” from The Wind in the Willows with Frog and Toad Together. Gee, I wonder if this has ever been done — it seems like a totally obvious thing for someone with the gift of mashing up — I’m not totally sure how one would go about it and do not have the requisite graphical skills but. Mr. Toad takes his loyal friend and companion on a crazy ride in his new roadster in order to keep both of them away from the jar of cookies on the top shelf or something. Any ideas?

(Cross-posted at READIN.)