June 15, 2014


There are been some recent discussion--via some Facebook sites, as well as among my friends and librarian friends--about the lack of diversity in books, particularly YA novels. Some good sources about the issue are Amy Poehler's Smart Girls Facebook site and Elizabeth Kennedy's posts about children's literature on about.com.


During my year-long project the issue of diversity was evident all along the way, pretty much any period of time that the book was written. And I probably don't need to say that minorities and ethnic groups were seldom the main character of a novel, seldom more than a novelty character, and too often the target of slurs. Times change. But is ignoring our diversity just another form of bigotry?


On Facebook I recently pointed out some books that do feature characters, main and supporting, of different ethnic groups and vowed that we should all point them out when we do come across good examples. Counting by 7's by Holly Goldberg Sloan features a blended family formed out of an emergency and together they redefine what "family" can be. (This book is a 2014-15 Texas Bluebonnet book so it should get a lot of young readers' attention.) I recently downloaded a YA novel I'd seen on a library shelf (costs but not much and sometimes convenience outweighs "free"): To All the Boys I've Loved Before by Jenny Han. The three daughters in this book have a Korean mother. An interesting point was brought out in this book when Lara Jean, the main character, and her younger sister were choosing Halloween costumes. As Lara Jean says, anything she wears elicits the question, "What are you? A manga character?" So she chooses to dress as Cho Chang, from Harry Potter. Hmmm, Harry Potter books? Not a great deal of diversity there either.


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I do have some literature triumphs in my life, one being reading Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales in its entirety in Middle English. Yes, you can get editions that have the old and new language side by side but my professor strongly advised us against doing that. She said to just start reading, maybe even aloud, and soon it would make sense. I felt I needed to apply that same diligence to reading the Southern black dialect in Joel Chandler Harris’ Uncle Remus and Brer Rabbit. I cannot imagine tackling this as a youngster and making any sense out of it. But somewhere along the line I must’ve become acquainted with more than a Disney version of Brer Rabbit for it is familiar. And I did enjoy this.

IT’S BEEN SIX MONTHS SINCE I BEGAN THIS PROJECT AND IT’S TURNED OUT TO BE EVEN MORE REWARDING THAN I’D HOPED IT WOULD BE. I’VE READ SOME BOOKS THAT I’M SO GRATIFIED TO HAVE FINALLY READ. I THINK I’VE FOUND BOOKS TO PUSH MY GRANDCHILDREN TOWARD AS THEY GET OLDER. I’VE HAD SOME GREAT CONVERSATIONS WITH OTHER PEOPLE ABOUT SOME OF THESE BOOKS ON THE LIST. I’VE EVEN CHECKED OUT MORE BOOKS FROM THE LIBRARY WHICH I’VE LEARNED HELPS THEIR FUNDING WHICH IS BASED ON CIRCULATION! BUT, ASIDE FROM THE SIMPLE PLEASURE OF READING THE BOOKS, I THINK THE BEST PART HAS BEEN DOING A LITTLE RESEARCH ABOUT SOME OF THE BOOKS AND THEIR AUTHORS. I’M NOT TALKING THESIS HERE, JUST A READ-THROUGH OF WIKIPEDIA OR SOMESUCH. AS A LITTLE GIRL I JUST CRAVED THE STORIES, BUT WHAT FUN IT HAS BEEN TO LEARN THE “STORY BEHIND THE STORY,” SO TO SPEAK. FOR INSTANCE, I’VE LEARNED THAT THE INFLUENCE OF JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS AND UNCLE REMUS WAS WIDE-RANGED. BEATRIX POTTER, FOR ONE, BORROWED LANGUAGE SUCH AS “COTTONTAIL” AND “PUDDLE-DUCK.” MARK TWAIN WAS A FAN; THE DIALECT AND STORIES INFLUENCED THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN. A.A. MILNE WAS ANOTHER AUTHOR WHO BORROWED DIALECT, PLOT, AND STRUCTURE FROM HARRIS. HE EVEN INFLUENCED WILLIAM FAULKNER!

I LOOK FORWARD TO MORE BOOKS AND FURTHER TRIVIA TO ENRICH THEM OVER THE NEXT SIX MONTHS.

Believe it or not, often during my lifetime I’ve been called a Pollyanna. I’ve always taken it as a compliment (whether that was the intent or not), and having just finished Pollyanna I now want to make it my daily goal to be a Pollyanna. It’s almost a shame that I didn’t read this book earlier (sometimes I wonder if I’ve read some of these but just have no clear recollection of them) because it would’ve become a companion and I’m sure I would’ve read it over and over. I LOVED this book! In fact, I’m GLAD I read it!

Found two little books hidden away on a shelf: The Little Sailboat by Lois Lenski and The House That Jack Built, a Mother Goose rhyme illustrated by J.P. Miller and another Little Golden Books Classic reissue. Lois Lenski books always have me smiling as I’m reading them. I wonder if I did when I was a little girl reading them the first time. Little Tinker the dog is so adorable! I was struck by the vocabulary a young reader could acquire from this little book. That’s a good thing, always. Jack is a fun rhyme to read aloud and these illustrations are pretty entertaining.

Unfortunately I chose to read A Little Princess shortly after reading Pollyanna. Both have a very similar plot—motherless girl loses her father and handles life’s difficulties with her attitude. Or mind games, so to speak. If someone had asked me if I’d read A Little Princess, I would’ve said that I didn’t think so. While details didn’t come streaming back into my head, I’m reasonably sure that I did read it when I was little. Which then begs the question of why I didn’t read A Secret Garden back then.  And I know I did not  read that one until starting this project.

It has been decades since I’ve heard anyone use the term “little Lord Fauntleroy”—another remembered favorite of my grandmother’s—but until reading the actual novel I didn’t realize that I’ve had the wrong perception of a “little Lord Fauntleroy” for most of my life. I thought it meant a sissified, pampered, fancily dressed, imperious little man. The title character, Cedric Errol who becomes Lord Fauntleroy, is, yes, a long, golden-curled boy in velvet suits and often big hats, but he is a loving and lovable, charitable, caring child. And the good he does is heartwarming. It’s also uncanny how similar Little Lord Fauntleroy is to Pollyanna and A Little Princess (by the same author, Frances Hodgson Burnett)—here a fatherless boy “loses” his mother (they’re not allowed to live together for a short period of time) and his innocent personality wins over everyone and gives him a wonderful life when it could have been a harsh experience with his brash grandfather. I could hardly put this one down I enjoyed it so much.

Thank you, Elizabeth! She bought The Rooster Crows at a book sale benefiting the Adult Reading Center of Pearland, a total win-win proposition in my book. The Rooster Crows is subtitled A Book of American Rhymes and Jingles, and it is chock full of things I learned by heart growing up but I suspect they’re no longer part of the modern curriculum. Too bad. I need to incorporate more of these in my times with my grandchildren.

Pollyanna, A Little Princess, Little Lord Fauntleroy, and now Anne of Green Gables. This project has been worthwhile if only because I’ve read these four books. Thoroughly enjoyed them, got a lot out of them, was affected by each of them. And now for a little op-ed:

Sometimes I do feel I’m one of those little ol’ ladies who pines for the good old days. Even if I know they weren’t all that good. But growing up in the mid-20th century was a lot more pleasant than growing up in the early years of that century, when these books were written. I prefer indoor plumbing and cook stoves, dishwashers and clothes washers and dryers, automobiles, televisions, record players, telephones—you get the idea. Now, into the second decade of the 21st century, it saddens me to see the malcontents all around. Malcontents seem to come in two varieties: those who don’t have “it” and those who have “it” and don’t appreciate it or want more. Furthermore they all feel they are entitled to “it.” Bicycles are now ten (or more) speeds, automobiles are now Hummers, telephones are now iPhones, televisions are now high definition and color and huge and ubiquitous, record players are now iPods, indoor plumbing is now jetted spa tubs, cook stoves are now microwaves and convection ovens and double ovens, and the excess goes on and on. No, I don’t want to give up some of these inventions that I love dearly but I don’t obsess over things I do not have and I certainly don’t feel that I deserve to have everything available out there. I pray that my grandchildren don’t grow up to be the type that cannot appreciate having something as opposed to demanding the best, designer, Brand Name whatever. There’s a time for video games—which I stink at but they fascinate me anyway—but there’s a time for Scrabble and Yahtzee and Solitaire. There’s a time for a read-to-me NOOK book (again, one of the reasons I began this project) and a time for a lap and a cuddle and a giggle or seven and a book to maybe be read 12 times in a row. There’s a time for fast food and a time for breakfast for dinner at the family dinner table. I didn’t lead a life like Pollyanna or Anne Shirley, my children didn’t, my grandchildren don’t. Life was sterner when those books were written. Orphans and homes for them were commonplace. There were classes of people, de facto as in Little Lord Fauntleroy or not. There was WORK to get through each day. Each of these children suffered and led lives that were not cushy by any means. Yet they were happy and they triumphed. Why does the populace today want to have what everyone else has without working for it, and why does the populace drag down every person or institution that has seemingly made it and revels in their demise? Somewhere along the line we’ve lost our sense of self—self-acceptance, self-determination, self-reliance, self-respect. A line from Anne of Green Gables hit me deeply: That is one consolation when you are poor—there are so many more things you can imagine about. Imagining about how to earn a pair of $200 sneakers and imagining your $50 sneakers are as cool as those $200 ones rather than beating someone to a bloody pulp in order to steal a pair of $200 sneakers seems to be such a better, more civilized, kinder way to live. Not having a pair of Dolce and Gabbana sunglasses is not a tragedy. Not being able to see is a tragedy. Not having designer sunglasses is a disappointment. Make life’s disappointments matter less by playing the “Glad Game” or caring about other people worse off than yourself or imagining good things around you or seeing the real beauty of the world and the people around you. They’re all free.

 

I’d love to hear the critiques of young readers today of these books. Does any class expect them to even read such “out of date” novels?

 

February 23, 2014


How embarrassing that I've neglected this blog for FIVE MONTHS! Not that it is likely to reveal a cure for Parkinson's Disease or stop the fighting in Syria or even get the Kardashians off television, but once started I feel an obligation to keep it up.


I just conversed via e=mail with some college friends and said how my project begun in 2011 still continues to this day. So to catch up, here are some current recommendations of children's books. If I am repeating myself, I'm not really repeating myself; I just want you to know how sincere I am in recommending these books. The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate is based on a true story, and if you love Bambi, you will love Ivan. A wonderful book (pun sadly intended) is Wonder by R. J. Palacio. Inspired by a real-life incident, written for children ages 8 and up, marketed to all ages, and a must-read for everyone in my opinion. This book is about KINDNESS. Along with love, that's what the world needs now. I have already mentioned my love of the Benedict Society books by Trenton Lee Stewart but they now have rival in Chris Grabenstein's Escape from Mr. Lemoncello's Library (for which the rights were just purchased by Nickelodeon for a TV movie). Another new book (first in a series) I liked A LOT is Nick and Tesla's High Voltage Danger Lab by Steve Hockensmith and "Science Bob" Pflugfelder. My only hesitancy with Nick and Tesla is that this grandy is not up to all the experiments (we've done the Coke and Mentos a couple of times without propelling anything with it though). Steve is a favorite author of adult mysteries and his first venture into kidlit shows as much promise for enjoyment as his Holmes on the Range series. (My husband is Steve's Number One fan. Really. You can check out his website/fan page and see that Bob is right there. One of the Holmes books even mentions him by name.) Regarding my project, I found myself sort of bummed by some "modern" books I was reading, so I went back to some of the series that I'd read for the first time during that year. Read another tale of the Bobbsey Twins and Anne of Avonlea, which was just what I expected. Yup, I have my curmudgeonly days when I wish for days of more goodness and less animosity. Hardships maybe, but people tended to work together more and families truly were families.


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Growing up in Colorado the summers were often hot so the places where it was cool in the long afternoons were places we would hang out. The museum, the library, the shade beneath bushes alongside our houses, our basements—finished or not. All fertile places for imaginations to grow and make-believe games to be played. Alice in Wonderland would have been the perfect book for those hot hours just after lunchtime when our mothers/grandmothers/babysitters asked us to rest for a while. I don’t think anything I ever imagined was quite this fanciful but, oh, we did have some adventures of our own.

Another journey back in time with the Bobbsey Twins, but this time the plotline, while thrilling and heartwarming, was a mite contrived.


Through my friendship with our local children’s librarian I have learned a few things about the Houston Public Library system. Their staffing is based on their circulation—so I’ve been checking more and more books out of the library. Books may be returned to any branch; however, books remain at the branch they’re returned to unless they originated at the Central Library Branch downtown. I’m conscientious about only returning books to our local branch, Park Place, now. For some reason, which I’ll determine later, our branch was closed yesterday, so I have a bulging bag of books to be returned there on Monday and I had to go to another branch to look for some of the books I’d like to put on this list. Checked out about half a dozen that I haven’t found at our branch—and I’m going to be sure to return them to Park Place this week. How to help the neighborhood!


I was able to pick up the second Madeline book and the first Babar book. Madeline was as adorable if not more so this go around, and I learned something new about Babar—I didn’t realize that Celeste was his cousin whom he married. Another little fact I didn’t know, and the kind of thing I appreciate knowing in case it ever comes up on Jeopardy!:  Jean de Brunhoff is often referred to as the father of the contemporary picture book. It did disturb me a bit that right off at the beginning Babar’s mother is shot and killed. I’m sure English literature majors have written many theses about the dead mother motif/wicked stepmother motif in children’s literature. The third book I’ve read from my recent library jaunt is near the top of my favorites list for this project thus far. The Courage of Sarah Noble was written in 1954 so it is entirely possible that I did read this when I was a little girl. Since it’s a Newbery Honor Book, I think it might have been recommended or at least displayed at the library as a choice offering. Oh, and it is! Not only did I relish this little story (it’s less than 60 pages long) but I know myself well enough to know I would’ve felt the same about it at age 10 or so.  

There were many reasons why Pippi Longstocking was one of the first books I thought of for this project. One, of course, it’s a children’s classic, and two, I’d never read it. Also, I’d recently read that Stieg Larsson, author of the The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series, said that he envisioned Lisbeth Salander as a grown-up Pippi. That's reason #3. When I went to check the library shelves I found several editions of Pippi but the one I just had to check out—and reason #4 for reading Pippi—was the edition illustrated by Lauren Child, of Ivy and Bean and Charlie and Lola fame. After reading this book, I have to say: It’s a classic, I’ve read it, I can rather see Lisbeth being a product of Pippi (in the book notes Pippi is described as “fearless, independent, original, and lives exactly how she chooses”), and Lauren Child’s illustrations were perfect for Pippi.

Little Black Sambo. Wow, for the price of one you get two: a classic and a banned book. I loved Little Black Sambo as a child and remember buying the reissued original version for my children—where that particular little book is, however, I don’t know. Gotta be on a shelf around here somewhere. But in the meantime, I checked this out from the library. Then I read up on the “controversy.” So Helen Bannerman used a lot of black ink in her drawings? Have you read the story, folks? With modern and updated versions, is it still an offensive book? So Sambo resembles a typical pickaninny? OK, growing up I heard the word “pickaninny” often. I don’t recall it being used as a racial slur, however. It was more like an imp or a rascal. That great modern-day source of all answers, Wikipedia, defines pickaninny as a juvenile, dark-skinned and immune to pain. I don’t know where that came from and I see no relevance to this little story. What do I still see in Little Black Sambo? A little boy, well-dressed and well-loved by his mother and father, who successfully barters with a series of tigers by giving them clothes rather than being eaten alive and then succeeds in taking advantage of the tigers’ egos and self-centeredness to retrieve the clothes and get home unscathed. Brainy little guy, to be admired. Plus there’s just something so delightful in the image of the tigers racing around that tree, turning into butter, and then being served on those delicious pancakes.

As I said above, I found Alice in Wonderland to be an imaginative delight. Through the Looking Glass, though, was more of an absurd tale. In my opinion, of course. I do adore Jabberwocky and The Walrus and the Carpenter but the rest was just sort of silly.

With my oldest grandson I discovered a little animated show on Nick Jr., or probably Noggin back then, called The Backyardigans. Fantastic music, simple but make-believe adventures, characters designed by one of our family-favorite illustrators, Dan Yaccarino. These days the episode Polka Palace Party is a favorite, much-requested show. But Abby probably first discovered The Backyardigans through an interactive book called Polka Cowboys. The story is a little bit condensed from the TV episode but it features “buttons” to push to make the appropriate sounds within the story—tuba, clarinet, accordion, drums, runaway horses, Cheyenne River, etc. This book was published in 2006. Recently I downloaded the same story but called Polka Palace Party onto my NOOK. And it’s yet another version of the TV episode. Abby and I—we like them all!

When I looked The Swiss Family Robinson up on Wikipedia to get the publication date I learned something that really made the book make a great deal more sense to me. While I read it as an adventure tale along the lines of Treasure Island, it’s really written as an educational treatise on moral lessons such as frugality and family values, resilience and cooperation, for example. I downloaded this one also onto my NOOK—all 805 pages of it! It was enjoyable but hard to get to the end. It didn’t take me long to realize that if I was ever stranded on an island, even one this large, in the East Indies or wherever, I would’ve lasted about a week. For sure not 805 pages worth.

And now for something completely different… The Borrowers is a fantasy (maybe? maybe not?) and pure pleasure. Having read this, I’m now eager to watch the recent movie, Arrietty. I’m wondering if this might be a good book to read to my oldest grandson this summer. After all, I have a whole set of Borrowers books. Why do I own so many books that fit the criteria for this project but I’ve never read them? Guess I’ve always had an itch that needed scratching plus I bought them for my children either because they were lucky enough to have someone (a teacher) tell them it was worth reading or I wanted them to read something I wished I’d read when I was their age. ("Better late than never." That should be the title of this project.) Not only was The Borrowers one of my favorite books so far but I learned that it was a Carnegie Award-winning book. The Carnegie Award (named for Scottish-born American philanthropist Andrew Carnegie who established libraries all over the world) is given to the outstanding book for children or young adults by the British Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals, which in 2007 also named The Borrowers one of the most important children’s novels of the previous 70 years.