Kidlit

Reading and travelling

2007-11-19T16:30:11Z

Ellen has started a new blog about reading to your children in conjunction with traveling, and how the two activities enhance each other: Teddy Bear in a Suitcase.

Today's post is about reading The Philharmonic Gets Dressed and going to the mechanical musical instruments exhibit at Morris Museum.

Speaking of the Moomins...

2007-10-13T14:35:23Z

The second volume of collected Moomin comic strips is coming out this month! You can pre-order it from Amazon. The first volume was a lot of fun.

3 Trials

2007-10-07T01:46:44Z

I was reading Chapter 5 of Finn Family Moomintroll tonight and wondering about great trial scenes in children's books. The argument between the Hemulen (who is counsel for Thingumy and Bob) and Sniff (the prosecutor) is fantastically good, if brief. The whole thing is just one of the high points of the whole Moomin series. 2 other great courtroom scenes: the trial in The Magic Pudding, and (of course) the prosecution of the Knave of Hearts. Any other good ones? What is especially fun about the court of law in the context of kids' books? In the Moomintrial, I really like how sort of lovably pompous and at the same time sympathetic the Hemulen is when he's arguing that Thingumy and Bob deserve "the Contents" of their suitcase even if they belong to the Groke, because Thingumy and Bob believe the Contents to be the most beautiful thing in the world, while the Groke only thinks it is the most expensive thing.

Envy

2007-10-04T21:15:23Z

Daniel Pinkwater loves John Holbo. I'm so jealous. (If that's really, truly Daniel Pinkwater commenting, then I am really, supremely mega-jealous.)

Oddballs

2007-10-01T02:33:26Z

The other day, I had the chance to introduce a friend of mine to Oddballs, William Sleator's collection of stories about growing up in the early Sixties. (The book is described as "semi-autobiographical" various places, but I take Sleator at his word when he asserts, that "unlikely as it may seem--I have told only one lie about my family in this book." Call it a memoir; it's at least twice as truthy as A Million Little Pieces.) The stories are about an ethnic childhood, and the ethnicity is "weird"; Sleator's parents were too ~~young~~ old to be hippies and too professional (his father was a professor; his mother was a research physician) to be beatniks, but they were full-on weird. Sleator's stories reflect the sensibilities of the man who would grow up to give me nightmares with House of Stairs and make me read and laugh and re-read with Interstellar Pig:

When my sister Vicky and I were teenagers we talked a lot about hating people. Hating came easily to us. We would be walking down the street, notice a perfect stranger, and be suddenly struck by how much we hated that person. And at the dinner table we would go on and on about all the popular kids we hated at high school. Our father, who has a very logical mind, sometimes cautioned us about this. "Don't waste your hate,'' he would say. "Save it up for important things, like your family, or the President.'' We responded by quoting the famous line from Medea: "Loathing is endless. Hate is a bottomless cup; I pour and pour.''

]]> Oddballs is available, in its entirety, online, through the auspices of Sleator's younger brother Daniel, now a professor at Carnegie Mellon. (Sleator's judgment about young Daniel? "Not really all that fragile." I like to think that cheating William out of royalties is a small measure of revenge.) It's strange, though--the memoir seems perfectly suited for children's books, but I have real difficulty thinking of any. There are a thousand and one biographies of famous people written for younger readers, but the closest thing to a childhood-memoir-for-children that I can think of are the heavily-fictionalized Great Brain books. Am I missing any classic examples of the form?

Complicated words

2007-09-23T16:10:36Z

I am reading Pamuk's short essay "When the Furniture is Talking, How Can You Sleep?" this morning and thinking, wow -- this would be excellent for reading to Sylvia. So I slip into my reading-aloud mode of scanning ahead and making minor edits in vocabulary and punctuation to make the piece more naturally fit my voice -- though with this work there is very little for the editor to do, Pamuk (and his superlatively gifted translator Freely) is such a close fit for me. But I did catch one word that I thought my daughter would probably not understand, "attendant" as an adjective -- well there were a couple of words that are probably not in her vocabulary, but all besides this one were in positions that seem to me easy to interpolate -- and wondered what I would do with it if I were actually reading the essay to her. I might just skip over it, read "the sense of responsibility", which I think would be just about as meaningful as "the attendant sense of responsibility"; I might try to substitute another word but I don't think I could come up with one gracefully on the spur of the moment. I might try to restructure the clause but that probably would not come off well either. Or I might of course just read the sentence as it stood on the page. (Another strategy: when I was reading "When Rüya is Sad" last night and hit the phrase "lying on the divan", I read it as "lying on the divan (that means sofa), ..." Today when I read past "divan" she asked to see where it said that, so I pointed it out to her, and she nodded.)

Reading Pamuk to a child

2007-09-21T00:42:50Z

Well... not Snow t'be sure. But I just got his new book of essays, Other Colors, and it contains at least 3 pieces that make excellent reading-out-loud material: "I'm Not Going To School", which is in the voice of his daughter Rüya and lacks the funny ending of Silverstein's like-titled piece; "Rüya and Us"; and "When Rüya is Sad". I say "at least" because I just opened the book at random when I was with my daughter and happened on this trio. (Sylvia was into it enough that when I finished one piece she would ask to hear the next.)

Update: On further reading, it seems like these pieces are among the short sketches he wrote for the humor magazine Oküz, and that several of the others in this group would also be good for reading to kids.

Update, the next day: Wow! Sylvia asked to hear these three pieces again today and the second reading was just wonderful! She's been thinking about them overnight and was asking questions, and making extrapolations and identifying Rüya's thoughts and actions with her own... We spent more time talking about the essays than reading the text.

Rollin' Home Across the Foam

2007-09-15T02:39:54Z

(Cross-posted from READIN.) The whole book The Magic Pudding is a huge amount of fun; but the last chapter is a big improvement over the rest in terms of the author's confidence and command of his voice. The rhyming and doggerel are more clever and inventive. The characters grow to fill out their roles in a way that they don't, really, in the first three chapters. And the courtroom sequence is just hilarious.

Reading Aloud

2007-09-06T01:12:06Z

I think it bears repeating (though I've said it many times before) just how much the quality of a good children's book is improved through reading it aloud. It brings out the rhythm of the language much more strongly than does the silent recitation you do when you're reading to yourself; and rhythm is, so I think, a key attribute of a good children's book. By way of example, after I read Redfox's post on Food, I ordered The Magic Pudding. It arrived a week or so ago and I enjoyed reading it over a couple of nights. Tonight I started reading it to Sylvia for bedtime stories, and wow -- it is such a fun book! The poems hold together much better when chanted and the shanties when sung. My reaction to reading it aloud was much stronger than it had been to reading it to myself and it served as a good reminder that books like this are intended to be read aloud. One other note: I see several text-only editions of this book on Amazon, and it seems weird to me. The pictures are at least half the book!

Parents in Kids' Books

2007-09-03T00:08:27Z

Can we make some broad categories of how parents are represented in children's books? I was reading All-of-a-kind Family to Sylvia tonight and thinking, the portrayal of Mama is really nauseating -- it's not enough for her to be wide awake instantly when she hears Sarah crying, the narrator has to say "wide awake as she always was when she knew one of her children needed her" (quoted inexactly from memory). And this type of portrayal is pretty common I think -- I seem to remember the parents in the Little House books being painted at every turn as superlatively competent, and I'm sure there are many other similar titles I'm not thinking of right now. What are some other parental types?

Danny Champion of the World came to mind right away. My memory of it is pretty unclear but I seem to remember Danny's father being very competent, yes, but in a pretty roguish way -- is that an accurate memory? Moominmamma (who may be sui generis) is loving and motherly but quite unconcerned with always knowing what to do. Absent parents of course abound. What else? Are there any parents who are presented as actively incompetent, always messing things up, without being "bad guys"? Are there any parents who are presented as bad guys -- talking about children's books here, not young adult where bad parents are a common trope.

Frog and Toad's Wild Ride Together

2007-08-27T03:04:36Z

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.)

Food, food, food

2007-08-13T00:01:19Z

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.]]> “Barbara,” she said to the servant who answered it, “I have not yet had tea; bring the tray and place cups for these two young ladies.”

And a tray was soon brought. How pretty, to my eyes, did the china cups and bright teapot look, placed on the little round table near the fire! How fragrant was the steam of the beverage, and the scent of the toast! of which, however, I, to my dismay (for I was beginning to be hungry) discerned only a very small portion: Miss Temple discerned it too.

“Barbara,” said she, “can you not bring a little more bread and butter? There is not enough for three.”

Barbara went out: she returned soon--

“Madam, Mrs. Harden says she has sent up the usual quantity.”

Mrs. Harden, be it observed, was the housekeeper: a woman after Mr. Brocklehurst’s own heart, made up of equal parts of whalebone and iron.

“Oh, very well!” returned Miss Temple; “we must make it do, Barbara, I suppose.” And as the girl withdrew she added, smiling, “Fortunately, I have it in my power to supply deficiencies for this once.”

Having invited Helen and me to approach the table, and placed before each of us a cup of tea with one delicious but thin morsel of toast, she got up, unlocked a drawer, and taking from it a parcel wrapped in paper, disclosed presently to our eyes a good-sized seed-cake.

“I meant to give each of you some of this to take with you,” said she, “but as there is so little toast, you must have it now,” and she proceeded to cut slices with a generous hand.

We feasted that evening as on nectar and ambrosia; and not the least delight of the entertainment was the smile of gratification with which our hostess regarded us, as we satisfied our famished appetites on the delicate fare she liberally supplied.Food obviously looms large in kids' consciousness, and that importance is reflected in the books they (and I) love. The Magic Pudding, which is practically unknown in the US but fabulously famous in Australia, was supposedly written to settle an argument about what children want to read about -- the author, Norman Lindsay, maintained that they were far more interested in food and fighting than in fairies, and the success of The Magic Pudding seems to bear that out. Have you read it? It's available on Project Gutenberg if you haven't. It's a truly loony, anarchic delight. The title character is sometimes a pudding, sometimes a donut, sometimes a steak and kidney pie, and he never runs out, no matter how much of him you eat. He has a sour and cranky temper, and wants only to be devoured; he resents every moment when he is not being eaten most strenuously.

What is it?

2007-08-09T02:36:21Z

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.)

Read it if you dare...

2007-08-07T02:27:31Z

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.

Complexity in Moominvalley

2007-08-06T14:54:22Z

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.