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.
BOOKREADINGBOOKREADINGBOOKREADINGBOOKREADINGBOOKREADINGBOOKREADING
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.