April 7, 2013

For me it's been a fairly productive week--which means that while I've read a lot, I've also gotten some other projects worked on! (Often reading is my incentive for getting stuff done around the house. Hey, any carrot as long as it works!)

I read a biography, Kay Thompson by Sam Irvin, that I bought a year or so ago at Big Lots, of all places. I adored Kay Thompson when I was growing up (I guess from appearances on "The Ed Sullivan Show") and then there was Eloise. Enjoyed the biography immensely but when I finished it and went to fetch Eloise off the bookshelf, I was surprised that I'm missing a couple of editions and even more surprised to realize that I didn't read Eloise for my second childhood project. What could I have been thinking?

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Just finished Little Men by Louisa May Alcott. I realize it is early on in this project but Little Men may be the highlight of the year. For many reasons. It’s embarrassing to say how long I’ve had this book and not read it. It was given to me, along with Little Women and Black Beauty, by my Aunt Bertha when I was probably about 8 to 10 years old. Her grandchildren were already college age, I spent a good deal of time with her, and I know everyone thought of me as a bookworm by then. I read—and loved—Little Women then; read and loved Black Beauty a few years ago. The copyright date on this particular volume is 1928 and the book was inscribed to the recipient in 1945! I enjoyed  the story, the moral lessons, et al. With this book I truly began to realize why so many of these are classics: they hold up over the years. I get so quickly taken up by the world’s they present and the characters that inhabit them, even though they are so remote from life in Houston, Texas, in the 21st century. (NOTE: I complain a lot about typos and factual errors in books I generally read—hey, it’s how I make my living!—so I was surprised and a little saddened to note three errors in the last couple of chapters of this version, including a name misspelled.)

Ah, Golden Books! I know that, outside of the Fort Collins Public Library, Golden Books (and comic books) were my meat-and-potatoes for reading. While I have a number of Golden Books on my shelves most are recent releases, not stories I was likely to have read when I was little (except for some of my Eloise Wilkin books). I need to start visiting the antique/junk shops and look for books. That won’t be a hardship! I did indulge in a purchase of a few Golden Book Classics, reissues of older books for today’s readers.

If anyone pays attention to my rantings about children’s literature, they know that I don’t like Dr. Seuss and that I think Goodnight Moon is a stupid book. Three of the Golden Book Classics I bought were written by Margaret Wise Brown, author of Goodnight Moon. The Color Kittens is almost as ridiculous as Goodnight Moon. I found the story practically pointless and the illustrations boring. The other two books, Two Little Gardeners and Seven Little Postmen, were co-written with Edith Thatcher Hurd. Thank goodness. I loved the richness of the story of the little gardeners, and I was inspired to start a garden. The illustrations by Gertrude Elliott were equally rich, old-fashioned and lovely. I’m quite certain I read Seven Little Postmen when I was little. I still found it charming—but it would be like a history lesson for any child today. Makes you rather nostalgic for the USPS of yore.

Walt Disney’s Mother Goose, a Golden Book I’ve had on my shelf for a long time, has never truly interested my oldest grandson nor me and didn’t grab the 2-year-old granddaughter either. I sat and read it through though and rather did enjoy it. Before, the illustrations of the traditional nursery rhymes with Disney cartoon characters seemed to be jarring; now they were rather cute. I have changed my mind and will try to get the grandchildren to change theirs. Another Golden Book Classic I bought was Charles Perrault’s Puss in Boots, retold by Kathryn Jackson. I don’t recall ever reading the original but this retelling seemed familiar. Can’t say I loved it though. The last Golden Book was L. Frank Baum’s The Road to Oz, adapted by Peter Archer. I am certain I never read this one when I was a young girl. Since I am currently reading all of the Oz books for the first time for this project, the oddities of this book made more sense than they would have if I’d only been familiar with the Judy Garland movie. Yet this read like snippets of Baum’s original stories strung together with no rhyme nor reason. Didn’t enjoy it at all.