Can't Keep Away

I've been working hard at not posting to this blog.  Why?  Because I tell myself I don't have time.  But in the three years since I've posted, I've read some truly amazing kids' books (The Book Thief comes to mind--if you haven't read it, read it) that I've had to ignore the itch to write about.  I have finally realized that this was a stupid move, so here I am, writing my first post in three years with baby number three (who helps me find writing and reading time by getting me up at 4:45 a.m.) cooing on the floor beside me.  I'll make this one quick, as cooing baby and unfolded laundry await.

Yesterday the kids and I drove the hour-and-a-half-ish to Niantic, Conn., to visit the Book Barn, which is simply the most awesome used book store in the history of the world.  There are the usual used-book-store cats and the excitement of the search that make it awesome, but there are also some great touches, like toys indoors and outdoors (which occupy the kiddos so you can--what else?--look for books), free cookies and coffee, and--in good weather--a goat.  I am not making this up.  Those of you who live anywhere near Connecticut must visit this place asap.  Anyway, for the long drive I decided to play Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.  My four-year-old son once loved this book but got turned off by the movie (the Gene Wilder version), which I made the mistake of letting him watch a couple of months ago.  Even though I skipped the boat scene, he was freaked out.  And, he complained, "Things were wrong.  Instead of squirrels, there were golden geese."  So, to repair his relationship with Charlie, Willy, and Grandpa Joe, I popped the audiobook in the CD player while my boy was held captive in his car seat.  Success.  An occasional glance in the rear-view mirror confirmed his enraptured delight.  Two-year-old sister enjoyed it, too.  (Baby sister slept or cried, depending on mysterious factors beyond my control.)

As for me, I was reminded to use cruise control on the interstate when, as Charlie unwrapped the fateful bar of chocolate, I noticed I was going 85 mph.  On the way home, with children dropping "like rabbits" (whatever that means, Wonka; why not flies?), I missed an exit.

As for the book-shopping, I scored some cool stuff, including a stack of Louisa May Alcott, an unabridged audiobook of Anne of Green Gables for $4 (woohoo!), a copy of Mufaro's Beautiful Daughters (truly one of the loveliest picture books ever), and a hardcover edition of Rip Wan Winkle illustrated by Arthur Rackham.  At the last minute I resisted buying Christopher Milne's The Path Through the Trees.  It tortured me all the way home, and I am still not sure I did the right thing.

Good to be back.

Hoff, Your Readers Are Young, Not Stupid

I'm typically biased in favor of classics, and I rarely find myself disappointed, so it surprised me just how much I found to dislike in Syd Hoff's Danny and the Dinosaur (HarperCollins, 1958), which the New York Times hailed as an Outstanding Book of the Year, and which has stayed in print and remained a staple of kids' book collections for decades.  The story is cute enough.  A little boy goes to the museum, just because he "wanted to see what was inside" (an endearing moment), looks at some life-sized dinosaur models and wishes they were alive so he could play with them.  One does come to life, and they spend the day romping through the city together and having a grand time until the dinosaur has to go back to the museum and Danny has to go back to his own house, which he has to admit would be too small for a pet dinosaur.

Here's the first thing that bothered me.  Danny knows the dinos in the museum are fake--he says so--but when one speaks to him, there is not an instant of surprise.  The dinosaur offers to play with him, and away they go.  It's awkward and jolting: a definite hiccup in the smooth flow of the story.  Here's the next thing.  The dinosaur stops for red lights, knows what a car is, and understands the rules of baseball.  But he has no clue what buildings are; he mistakes them for tall rocks.

When Danny has to lift up clotheslines so the dino doesn't get his neck tangled in them, the narration reads, "Danny had to hold up the ropes for him."  Ropes?  Who calls clotheslines ropes?  Maybe Mr. Hoff thought "clotheslines" (or even "lines") would be too long a word for children, although I would imagine that a child capable of sitting through a 60-plus-page picture book could figure it out, and even if she couldn't, the picture of what Danny is doing would probably clear things up for her.  

Finally, the dino mentions more than once how nice it is to get out of the museum for an hour or two after a hundred million years.  One wonders, why didn't he ever just walk out before?  Did it take the presence of a wistful kid to wake him up?  If there was a magical formula that enabled him to play in the city all day, the story provides no hint of it.  And we must not ever give in to the temptation to dismiss inconsistencies by saying the story is "just for children."  That would imply that children are inherently less smart and/or less deserving of a coherent and cohesive story than adults are or that writers for children are also less smart and/or less skilled than writers for adults and that children's literature doesn't have to be intelligent as long as it is pretty.

Maybe the dinosaur is just dumb: as dumb as Mr. Hoff evidently thought his small readers would be.  It's a pity.  The illustrations are adorable.

Score!

I love library book sales.  My local one hasn't had a big, official sale recently, but the other day when Matt and Isaiah were enjoying one of their Saturday afternoon adventures sans Mama, I wandered into the library's children's room--yes, even though I did not have my child with me--and browsed through the rack of discarded books for sale.

I picked up a pristine hardcover of Forever in Blue: The Fourth Summer of the Sisterhood...for fifty cents, baby!  Yeah!  And then I spotted a picture book whose spine simply read, The Little Women Book.  I figured it was a watered-down version for little kids who couldn't sit through the novel yet, but I picked it up and flipped through it because I can never resist checking out what other writers, illustrators, actors, directors, etc., have done with my favorite book.  What I found was not an abridged Little Women but a supercool volume of DIY bliss.  Full title: The Little Women Book: Games, Recipes, Crafts, and Other Homemade Pleasures (Random House, 1995) by Lucille Reche Penner.

There's a recipe for that scrumptious-sounding pink and white ice cream and instructions for planting a "name" garden, making costumes for homespun plays, and sewing rag dolls.  This is my far the best secondhand treasure I have acquired in a long time.  I bought both books, but honestly, as much as I love Ann Brashares, I am much more excited by the prospect of doing some arts and crafts March-style.

Now all I need is a daughter.  

It's Not Brilliant...But Is That So Terrible?

I reach for the steak knife hiding in the nest of spoons. The black handle is warm. As I pull it free, the blade slices the air, dividing it into slivers. There is Jennifer, packing store-bought cookies in a plastic tub for her daughter's class. There is Dad's empty chair, pretending he has no choice about these early meetings. There is the shadow of my mother, who prefers the phone because face-to-face takes too much time and usually ends in screaming.

Here stands a girl clutching a knife. There is grease on the stove, blood in the air, and angry words piled in the corner. We are trained not to see it, not to see any of it.

The narrator is Lia, an anorexic teenager who has just found out that her former best friend, Cassie (a bulimic), is dead. Jennifer is Lia's stepmother, who told her the news. The book is Wintergirls (Penguin Group, 2009) by Laurie Halse Andersen. It's pretty good. And that's it.

I recently watched a talk online in which Elizabeth Gilbert admitted, without any apparent bitterness, that her "freakish success" (referring to her bestselling memoir Eat Pray Love) probably doomed her much-anticipated future books to second-best status. Everything she ever wrote would be compared to it, and not much of her subsequent work would be likely to measure up. As a still-young writer, she confessed to her audience, it was possible that her biggest success was already behind her.

Gibert's talk centered on the theme of "genius".  Westerners tend to think of genius as something someone is, but Gilbert pointed out that other cultures have identified genius as something as artist has--and not an inherent something, either.  A genius (singular form of "genii") is a spirit of creativity that just drops in on an artist, often without warning.  The artist's job is to show up for work and be accessible to the genius, which can be frustrating at times and even downright drudgery, but the genius's job is to inject the project with life and brilliance...when it feels like it.

Gilbert enjoys this idea, and I do, too.  It takes the pressure off, and truly, it resonates.  The only good short story I ever wrote came out of me in high school.  And when I say "came out", I mean that's just what happened.  I heard the first sentence in my head, and I just sat down and began to write.  I barely revised.  I turned it in to my teacher, who nominated it for an award.  It won.  I have never written a passable short story since.

Something sort of like that happened to Laurie Halse Andersen.  In interviews she's described waking up in the middle of the night and hearing a young girl crying.  Andersen checked on her daughters, found all was well, and went back to sleep.  It kept happening.  Finally Andersen recognized the voice as coming from inside of her--her genius tapping on her shoulder.  She didn't know who the girl was or why she was crying, but Andersen knew she couldn't ignore her anymore; it was her job to write down this girl's pain, to crystallize it and make it known.  The girl turned out to be Melinda Sordino, a fourteen-year-old rape victim.  The novel that tells her story is Speak, probably one of the most important YA novels ever written and one of the best pieces of fiction I've ever read.  If I were going to be a college professor and teach a YA literature class, Speak would be on the syllabus right alongside Little Women and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Wintergirls is OK.  

I was told by a children's literature editor that Andersen's historical fiction novel Fever 1793 was turned down by every publisher until after Speak came out.  By then Andersen could publish whatever she wanted.  But the genius has its own agenda, its own preferences.  Andersen's genius insisted on the creation of Speak as Gilbert's insisted on the creation of Eat Pray Love.  It's possible that after those pet projects were accomplished, the genii were satisfied and decided to check out for a while.  The writers keep showing up for work, as is their job, and they keep turning out books, because we expect them to and because that's what they do best.  But the genii come and go.  Sometimes they stay away.

Like Gilbert, Andersen's best work may well be behind her, but honestly, what's wrong with that?  To be the name on the cover of a book like Speak is not a bad deal for a writer, even if it means nothing else she writes afterward can quite measure up.  

As for us YA fans, I say go ahead and read Wintergirls.  It contained some powerful moments, like the one I quoted at the beginning, and I often had a hard time putting it down.  It's not Speak, so don't expect that, but it's Andersen--minus her genius, perhaps, but still pretty darn good.  Besides, we have our job, too: to keep showing up for the important work of reading.  When the genius does decide to come around, the writer has to be ready to channel its power, and the readers have to be ready to give it its due.

Hey, Disney, You Call This Mary Poppins?

The day I started reading Mary Poppins, I marched up to the bookshelves in our living room determined to pick up a "real" book.  I was definitely in the mood for some fiction, and I promised myself I would read a grown-up story this time.  We have so many of them--alluring, thick novels from Balzac to Rushdie--and I was going to lose myself in one.  I needed a break from kids' books, I said.  Now...what to read, what to read...Hey, cool: Mary Poppins!

I sighed in amused exasperation, told myself Oh-well-I-tried, and then settled down, perfectly happy, on the sofa.  I only got happier.

We've all had the experience of reading a book that we had long known solely as a movie, and most of us know the outcome: We find the book always, always to be better.  Sometimes, as happened to me with Gone with the Wind and Pride and Prejudice, we can acknowledge that although the book is better, the movie is still pretty darn good, and there's room for everyone at the table.  Other times, we discover that the movie did the book such a gross disservice that it really shouldn't even exist--or it should at least have a different title.  That happened to me when I finally read Mansfield Park.  And Mary Poppins.

If you adore the silver-screen musical and can't wait to get tickets to the Broadway version (or perhaps you've already gone and seen it), be warned.  Reading the book will probably change your perception of these forever.  You'll never be able to see the movie again without noticing just how much is missing.  It's a comparatively slim book, so you wouldn't expect it to contain so much more than a full-length film, but it does.

Sure, the movie shows Mary jumping in and out of pictures and visiting Uncle Alfred on the ceiling, but how could the film-makers have left out the compass that takes Mary and the kids to the four corners of the world, the baker lady who has Mary steal her young charges' paper stars so she and Mary can climb a pair of ladders to glue them onto the night sky?  And what about the tale Mary tells of the cow who couldn't stop dancing because a fallen star had gotten caught on her horn, or the chapter in which Jane and Michael's baby twin siblings talk to Mary, the sunlight, the wind, and a starling one quiet afternoon in the nursery?  Come to think about it, what about the existence of those twin babies in the first place?

I actually found Mary herself more interesting and likable in the book.  She's vain and conceited, but she has magic, everybody knows her and admires her, and she wants to show the children a good time, even though she'd never admit it.  I think the Julie Andrews version comes across as too soft and gentle, so that in the moments when she needs to be harsh, it just seems jarring.  In the book, it's funny because the quips and attitude are consistent.  Mary is like the nineteenth-century British nanny version of House.  (Well, not exactly like that, but inasmuch as they are both unrelentingly gruff, fascinating, and gosh-darn-it, kind of lovable.)

This book made me laugh out loud several times.  I'm down to the last chapter and don't want it to end.  Luckily, I found out, by reading the author's bio, that it's part of a series.  I also found out that the author, P.L. Travers, shared a birthday with Isaiah.  I plan to use that as an icebreaker when I seek her out in heaven, and then I'll beg her to tell me a story.  

But the Books Are All Right?

Someone broke into our car two weeks ago.  It happened on a Saturday night (or early Sunday morning).  That Saturday afternoon, Matt had taken Isaiah and our sister-in-law Magda on one of their favorite excursions--thrift-store shopping--so I could work on some writing projects.  My husband came home glowing with joy.  "We hit the jackpot!" he told me proudly as he opened the trunk of our Honda Accord.  There was a slew of books inside: classic children's books in decent shape.  I spied The Wind in the Willows, Pippi Longstocking, and Betsy, Tacy, and Tib on top of a sprawling pile of titles.  

"And they were free," Matt continued, prouder than before.  Apparently a Catholic elementary school near one of the thrift shops had decided to clean house and left stacks of books outside its doors for people to take.  I gave my husband a big impulsive kiss on the cheek.  This was better than Christmas.

We left the books in the trunk--simply because, in a studio apartment with three people and hundreds of books already, there was nowhere else to keep them--and the next morning, when Matt took Isaiah out for a walk, he discovered the shattered passenger's side window.  Matt called me on his cell to tell me what had happened.  There had been nothing really valuable inside the car, and nothing seemed to be missing.  Our would-be thief hadn't even taken the loose change or the radio.  Matt said it looked like he had just reached in, rifled through the glove compartment and the middle console, and left.  My book of CDs had been opened, but none of the CDs were missing (sometimes it pays to be a nerd).  Matt had already called our insurance company, and they would pay for the window in full.  It seemed like everything was going to be OK.

Then I got a cold, light feeling in my stomach.  "Did you check the trunk?" I asked.  "Are the books still there?"  My wonderful husband, bless his heart, didn't even laugh.  He just reassured me, nerd-to-nerd, that he had checked and the books were safe.

Honda Accords come and go, but a free pile of classic children's books is a rare find.  So is a husband who realizes that.

Fruit

We just got back from vacation in Kansas last week, and thanks to my wonderful husband's child-entertaining abilities and some nice long naps from our son, I was actually able to read.  I gobbled up the sweet and luscious Esperanza Rising (Scholastic, 2000) by Pam Munoz Ryan, which has been on my list for a long time.  

At first, the language annoyed me just a little bit: not the writing style, which is robust and poetic and earthy, but the occasional Spanish word or phrase slipped in and then defined.  I love Spanish, but dialogue like this--"Que paso, nina?  What happened?"--made me grit my teeth a bit.  No one speaks that way.  You say the sentence in the language you and your listener know; only if you're actually trying to teach someone a new language do you bother to say things twice.  So I felt like I was reading a novel that was also trying to be a "Fun Way to Learn a Little Spanish," which I resented.  I would have preferred it if Ryan could have simply provided context clues, instead of outright translations, to make the Spanish accessible for her young readers.  

But enough of that and on to plot.  Ryan has woven a story as beautiful, simple, and subtle as the zigzag blanket that Esperanza crochets throughout the book.  It's the story of a young girl who has grown used to a life of wealth and ease as a rancher's daughter in Mexico.  A series of unfortunate events that would make Lemony Snicket cringe forces Esperanza and her newly widowed mother to flee the country in secret and become migrant workers in California, where they live and toil alongside the couple and son who used to be their servants in Mexico.  

Esperanza is an endearing character: naive and pampered, but well-meaning.  It is poignant to watch her grow from a girl who can't stand dirt and yet has never handled a broom into a budding young woman adept at various kinds of manual labor, paying her own bills and putting aside savings in the hope of bringing her grandmother over from Mexico.  Yet one of the most touching aspects of the book, I think, is Esperanza's mother.  Clearly no snob, she is nothing but grateful to her former servants for helping her and her daughter start a new life, and she embraces the people and the work in the migrant camps.  Esperanza has a harder time, and receives a rebuke from her mother when she won't let a poor girl play with her cherished doll for fear of the girl's soiled hands.  I couldn't help but muse (this is the mom in me) that Esperanza's mother, though grieved over the loss of her home, her husband, and her lifestyle, may secretly welcome the realization that her daughter has been too sheltered and cherish the downfall that will help her grow.

At the migrant camps, Esperanza becomes acquainted with some workers who want to strike for better wages and living situations.  At first she feels nothing but distaste for their actions, which put everyone in danger, but by the end of the novel she wonders if perhaps those strikers, who have been rounded up and sent back to Mexico (even though some of them are American citizens) may have been right.  She never makes a firm decision on that, and the nuance that now tinges her increasingly complex world-view is one of the things I admire most about the book.

I was filled with even more admiration when I read Ryan's afterword, in which she reveals that most of the circumstances in the tale were based on the experiences of her own grandmother, who did indeed find herself expelled from a life of privilege in Mexico to struggle in poverty in the U.S.  For those of us grown-up readers of children's lit. who are feeling frustrated, anxious, or even desperate in our present economy, this story can pack quite a punch.  In fact, as Matt and I wait and wait and wait for our apartment to sell (on the market for ten months and counting...), I find myself recalling the advice Esperanza receives from her father: "Aguantate tantito y la fruta caera en tu mano...Wait a little while and the fruit will fall into your hand."  And maybe our whole country is beginning to taste the fruit promised by a Mexican proverb with which Ryan prefaces her novel: "El mas rico el rico cuando empobrece que el pobre cuando enriquece.  The rich person is richer when he becomes poor, than the poor person when he becomes rich."   

La Vida Es Sueno (And What a Lovely Dream It Is)

Philosophically speaking, I don't really believe life is a dream, but poetically speaking, I can imagine it is, especially after I've spent some time immersed in the luscious colors and poetic imagery of a picture book like A Perfect Season for Dreaming/Un tiempo perfecto para sonar (Cinco Punto Press, 2008) by Benjamin Alire Saenz.  It tells the story of Octavio Rivera, an old man whose summer afternoon siestas have been visited by vibrant and puzzling dreams about objects and people bursting out of a pinata in the sky.  Octavio longs to tell someone about his dreams but fears being laughed at or misunderstood--until it finally occurs to him to tell his granddaughter, Regina, who always tells him her dreams.  What I love about the story is that the dreams are never analyzed, never explained.  They don't turn out to be prophecies of the future or revelations of buried secrets.  They are simply reflections of the mind of the dreamer: abstract, intangible works of art that can only be accessed by those who win the artist's confidence.

I don't know much about art myself, but the paintings that grace the pages of this book are stunning.  The colors are rich, the images fanciful--just what dreams should look like, especially on a summer afternoon.  My favorite part was reading the Spanish translations by Esau Andrade Valencia.  They are lyrical and lovely, and even I, as a non-fluent Spanish speaker, could read them first and then skim the English above to find out if I had missed anything.  (That was a fun exercise for me, but of course, not an essential part of reading the book; I'm just really into bilingual picture books lately, so if you know of a good one, drop me a line.)

If you love picture books that are truly hand-crafted works of art, please don't let the summer end without diving into the dreams of Octavio Rivera.

Any Story That Involves Little People Is OK By Me

But The Borrowers (Harcourt Brace & Co., 1952) by Mary Norton is especially cool.  First of all, I love its explanation of the constant disappearance of things like safety pins.  It is kind of frustrating that I can never seem to find a safety pin when I need one, but I feel better knowing that a Borrower may be putting it to good use as a clothes hanger. 

For those of you who, like me, somehow managed to escape childhood without reading this book, the story begins with a little girl named Kate and a woman named Mrs. May, a distant relative who has become a boarder in Kate's house.  Over their crochet hooks one evening Mrs. May tells Kate a story about her brother's visit, a long time ago, to their ancient Great-Aunt Sophy and her ancient mansion in the English countryside. 

 

One night, while sleeping in a long-unused nursery, the little boy spots a tiny man climbing a curtain with a doll's tea cup in his hand.  The tiny man is Pod, a Borrower who lives under the mansion's kitchen floor and is the husband of Homily (a prim housewife terrified of the upstairs world) and the father of Arrietty (a sheltered girl eager to explore).  Pod and Homily are horrified that he has been "seen," but eventually, the relationship between the boy and the Borrowers leads to quite a bit of excitement.  There's interior decorating (titillating for Homily), a mysterious correspondence with far-off relatives, and finally, terror of discovery by the human adults in the house.

The pen-and-ink illustrations by Beth and Joe Krush are lovely, and it's a lot of fun to read Mary Norton's descriptions of how the Borrowers use their borrowings.  And best of all, the book--first in a series--leaves the reader satisfied enough to walk away but with enough unanswered questions to make it worth it to come back for more.

(By the way, I tried the experiment with Giggle, Giggle, Quack.  Not as funny as Click, Clack, Moo.  It made me smile, though, at the library where I read it.  Isaiah was unamused...but this blog is about adults anyway, right?)

"Cows that type. Hens on strike! Who ever heard of such a thing?"

The first time I read Doreen Cronin and Betsy Lewin's Click, Clack, MOO: Cows That Type (Simon and Schuster 2000) to Isaiah, I almost didn't make it through the last page because I was laughing so hard.  (And as dorky as this sounds, I'm not going to say anything more about that last page because I don't want to spoil it for you adult lovers of picture books who are as dorky as I am.)  I was thrilled to bits when I learned that the picture book was part of a series that includes Click Clack Splish Splash: A Counting Adventure (Scholastic 2006)--which, along with Click, Clack, MOO, we read almost every day--and Giggle, Giggle, Quack (Simon and Schuster 2002)--which I haven't read yet but really need to get my hands on.  (Is it wrong to use my son's upcoming first birthday as an excuse to buy him a book that I want?)  Here's a recommendation that anyone with a baby--or anyone who knows my baby--can appreciate: C, C, M is one of the only non-rhyming picture books that Isaiah loves.  When he sees me pick it up to read to him, he grins.  I get pretty excited, too.

The basis of the story is this: Poor unwitting Farmer Brown has left an old typewriter in the barn, and his cows have gotten hold of it.  Now he's receiving notes with the cows' demands for improved working conditions: i.e., electric blankets for those chilly farm nights.  His refusal leads to a strike, not only by the cows, but by their compatriots the hens, who hope for some electric blankets themselves.  Eventually Duck, a neutral party (the book really does use the term "neutral party"; "ultimatum," too) takes on the job of go-between, and in the end...Nope, you'll just have to see for yourself.  The illustrations are in watercolor but have the lines and feel of cartoons, which is pretty cool.  But the best part, I swear, is that last page, although, like every good ending, it wouldn't be what it is without everything that comes before it.

So here's my challenge if you're up for it.  Take your kid--or borrow one if you don't have your own--and go to the bookstore or library.  Take C, C, M off the shelf and read it out loud: cold.  See if you can make it through the end without cracking up in public, causing the other adult shoppers to look askance at you and making your little companion impatient for you to get a grip on yourself and go back to reading like a normal person so he or she can find out how the story ends already.  

To be fair, I'll admit I was at home when the crack-up happened to me, but I'll take my own challenge with Giggle, Giggle, Quack at my local Barnes & Noble.  Sure, I could be setting myself up for embarrassment, but it'll be worth it.  I love these books, I'll take any excuse to go to Barnes & Noble, and so far I even still love the look Isaiah gives me that says, "Hey, um...Mama, please pardon me for asking, but what the heck is wrong with you?"  Ah, just wait until you can read, kid!  Just wait.  Then you'll understand.

Good Clean American Fun, Sort Of

I am truly not sure how I feel after finishing Robert McCloskey's Homer Price (Puffin Books, 2005). I did enjoy the book very much, but when I recall the sunny hours I spent reading about friendly pet skunks and runaway doughnut-baking machines, there's a shadow around the edges. I'm not even sure I can define it, but I'll try.

First, a word about the book. Homer Price is not quite a novel, nor is it a collection of short stories, but something in between. The best comparison I can think of is to a sitcom: a short-running one with only six episodes. Each episode (neither "chapter" nor "story" seems right) is a discrete narrative, but you kind of need to have read the preceding ones in order to be fully in the loop and comfortable with the landscape.

Homer Price is a young boy who lives in the small American town of Centerburg in the 1940s.  (The first edition of the book came out in 1943).  The volume opens with an account of how Homer and his pet skunk Aroma help capture a small band of thieves who have stolen $2000 and some bottles of aftershave.  It progresses through a number of vignettes that are usually humorous or at least cheery--one involves a contest among three Centerburg residents to see who has the largest ball of string--but by the end, things have gotten just a tad creepy.  

The penultimate tale, about a Rip Van Winkle-esque stranger who has invented a giant musical mousetrap with which he proposes to de-mouse Centerburg, starts with a chuckle but ends with a shudder as the mayor essentially has to pay a ransom to keep the stranger from leading away all the children Pied-Piper fashion.  By the end of the book, it seems that Centerburg as we have known it is done for.  A new suburb has been built with one hundred perfectly identical houses, "down to the last doorknob."  The episode itself is funny enough: There is a problem with the Street-Sign-Putter-Uppers' Union, which delays the erection of the street signs in the new suburb, so the residents have a bit of a tricky time finding their way home among all of those identical houses.  On the other hand, it seems sad that this comical little town has suddenly exploded in size, and not even in a creative or interesting way.  One grieves over the mass production of these depressingly unoriginal and indistinctive houses.

Still, it's nice to read a book about a boy who says "Gosh," reads ten-cent comic books, and accidentally fills his uncle's lunch room with thousands of fresh homemade doughnuts (though there are racist elements that, sadly, infect the book).  Oh, and the uncle's name?  Ulysses.  His wife's name isn't Penelope, but there is another uncle named Telemachus.  If I figure out the deep meaning that somehow connects little Centerburg to glorious Ithaca, I'll get back to you, but I sort of hope I don't.  For now, I'm just enjoying the fact that in the final episode, we find out that the original name of Centerburg was Edible Fungus.  In spite of the eerie feeling that new suburb had given me by then, I appreciated the good laugh I got out of that one.

If Jeanne Birdsall Ruled the Universe

Parents, even single parents, would always have plenty of time for their children. Children would finish their homework and then head off to do things like bake pineapple upside cakes, play soccer, write stories, and climb trees. Oh, and babies would fall asleep simply because someone had put them to bed.

While I wait for Birdsall to ascend to power, I'll just have to keep running away to her books. The latest, The Penderwicks on Gardam Street (Alfred A. Knopf, 2008), left me wishing that more reads could feel like that one: like a walk through a sunlit autumn lawn with piles of crisp leaves waiting to be kicked, tossed, or dived into. And seriously, it's not as corny as I make it sound. It is corny--I won't lie--but it is also really, really fun. The corniness is believable and natural and not at all sickening or preachy. The characters are completely and utterly lovable, especially, of course, the four Penderwick sisters Rosalind, Skye, Jane, and Batty.

I think my favorite thing about the girls is their sense of Penderwick Family Honor. The sisters, each distinctively and delightfully quirky, have formed a solid front since their mother died in Batty's infancy; they are determined to take care of each other and their sweet, Latin-spouting absentminded-professor dad. Naturally, the foursome makes plenty of mistakes, but the scrapes the children get into are downright endearing ones, and the solution is never far away.

Sure, as an adult reader, you won't be able to shake the feeling that this story, no matter how much you are enjoying it, is not a depiction of real life by any means. But I found it equally difficult to shake the feeling that this is the way real life could be--that the world comes so close sometimes to the robust innocence in which the Penderwicks live--and I think I might know why I felt that way. It's because there was a time in my life when the world was that way for me. It happened during my childhood, when I hid in my room and flung myself into Little Women and Anne of Green Gables. Those tales wove a universe unto themselves. But I can never read those books for the first time again. How lovely, then, that Jeanne Birdsall has come along to keep that universe alive.

My Favorite Picture Book (This Week)

It's called Jamberry (HarperCollins 1995) by Bruce Degen, and I can't believe it's not a classic.  The book features a little boy--looking very Huck-Finn-ish in his straw hat and bare feet--and a big friendly bear who takes him on a fantastical tour of berry patches.  Blueberries float down a river and plunge over a waterfall; blackberries spill over the sides of railway cars that bounce finally into the station of raspberry-studded Berryland.  And the whole journey is peopled by animals who revel in each batch of berries alongside the two main characters. 

What I love most about the book is the language.  It's lyrical and light; reading Jamberry aloud feels like singing.  And it's whimsical: Almost every word  becomes "berrified".  Here's my favorite example, from the second-to-last page, when the boy and bear take off from Berryland in a hot-air balloon (berry-shaped, of course):  "Moonberry/ Starberry/ Cloudberry sky/ Boomberry/ Zoomberry/ Rockets shoot by".   (Man, I got chills typing out that quotation.)

And the best part about this intense delight I take in the book?  I can read it to my nine-month-old every day because it fits all of his criteria for a great story: It rhymes, it's short, and it has lots of interesting shapes and colors.  Sounds good to me, too.

See, This Is Why I Read Kids' Books

It's one of the reasons, anyway.  It's also why, when I dabble in writing fiction, these days my writing always turns out to be for kids.  I'm talking about the tendency of modern adult fiction to walk almost exclusively on The Dark Side.  Now, I'm not saying writers shouldn't have sad or even disturbing elements in their tales, and I'm not even against all violence in stories, but I really don't want or need to read stories that just make me feel worse about the world.

Recently I borrowed Watchmen (DC Comics, 1986) by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons.  I was very excited to read it; I like graphic novels (the good ones), and I love superheroes, and several people whose opinion I respect enjoyed this book.  I didn't get far, though.  The story involves quite a bit of flashback, and I quit reading shortly after one such flashback to the end of the Vietnam War in which one of the (American) super-characters shoots a Vietnamese woman who is very pregnant with his child.  I asked my husband, who had read the book twice, if the rest of it was equally upsetting, and he said, "Yeah, it gets worse.  You shouldn't read it."  Done.  Snap went the covers, and I moved on to something else.

This is a book that has won awards and inspired what looked to me like a cool movie (no longer on my list of must-sees).  Why do writers have to go so far?  There have to be problems and distasteful characters in every story, but do I have to walk around with the image of that woman and her unborn baby lying in a bloody heap on the floor of a bar?  It's kind of a good reality check, I guess.  It reminds me to be grateful for writers who don't do that.  

Come to think of it, the last modern adult novel I read--Infinite Jest (Back Bay Books, 1997) by David Foster Wallace--didn't hold me until the end, either.  It was some of the best writing I've ever read.  There is no doubt that Wallace really was a living, breathing, actual genius.  But I stopped reading during a scene with a burglary when the bungling criminals gag the owner of the house, who happens to have a bad cold.  He only speaks French and they only speak English, so they don't understand that he is telling them that gagging him will kill him since he can't breathe through his nose.  After he suffocated, I closed the book.  It's supposed to be dark humor, but honestly, that kind of humor I can do without.

Oh, well.  We all have our preferences, right?  And at the moment I am pretty pumped because I finally got my hands on Jeanne Birdsall's latest: The Penderwicks on Gardam Street (Knopf, 2008).  I'm hoping for a good rabbit chase like last time, but even without that, I'm looking forward to a great story.

 

The Perfect Punk Rock Band Name, Thanks to G. K. Chesterton

Penny dreadful.  If I played an instrument and knew anything about punk rock and decided to start a band, that's what I'd call it, and I'd owe the inspiration to Mr. Gilbert K. Chesterton.  Granted, Chesterton didn't invent the phrase, but he did immortalize it by writing the essay "A Defence of Penny Dreadfuls" about the adolescent pulp fiction of his day.  

Penny dreadfuls were cheap adventure novels devoured by the young and deplored by scholarly adults who wanted to see teenagers reading "real literature."  Now admit it, folks.  How many of us have turned our noses up at Anthony Horowitz or Lisi Harrison and pined for the days when children read Mark Twain and Charlotte Bronte?  (When were those days, by the way?  Are we sure they happened?)  I'm guilty of it, too.  Especially as a brand-new teacher six years ago, I was full of concern about how we were going to get the kids reading, but not just reading: reading good books.  Chesterton, bless his heart, reminds readers of his essay that "literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity." 

I love good literature.  I love good stories more.  When they go together, bliss.  When they don't, I'll choose the good story.  I wouldn't have said that six years ago, fresh out of college with the brilliant conclusions in my senior thesis on James Joyce still keeping me warm at night, but one of the blessings of my teaching career was that it reintroduced me to YA lit. and managed to loosen me up enough that I can enjoy it again.  Heck, maybe Twilight is the Hannah Montana of fiction.  So what?  It's fun.  That's what's so great about reading kids' books.  Kids read for fun, and any book that isn't fun doesn't last.  

That's why I always took my seventh grade students' suggestions on what to read, and that's why I miss their input now.  That's why, even though I've been ravenous for fiction ever since I finished Ann Brashares' new novel last week, and even though the likes of The Faerie Queen and Sons and Lovers and Cousin Bette are sitting on my shelf unopened, I'm not in the middle of a novel right now.  But I hope to be by the end of the week.  That's when the local children's librarian should be calling me to pick up the new Penderwicks book I put on hold.

Pants? Who Needs Pants?

C. S. Lewis said, "You can't make a book long enough or a cup of tea big enough to suit me."  I know what he's talking about: that bittersweet moment of savoring the last drop, the satisfaction of bathing your tongue and teeth before you swallow, and the wistful regret when you realize the experience is finally over.  Yes, there will be others--and without finishing the first, one would miss out on the second and third and fourth and so on--but the moment of mourning is nonetheless real, an important part of the enjoyment.

I felt that regret when I finished Forever in Blue (Random House 2007), the fourth of Ann Brashares' Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (Random House 2003) books.  I loved those books, and when Forever in Blue ended, I allowed myself to mourn, for it seemed that Brashares really had drawn the final curtain: The Pants, after all, were gone.

But wait!  Hope springs eternal, as they say, and I was delighted recently to find that Brashares had decided to resurrect the series with 3 Willows: The Sisterhood Grows (Random House 2009), a new novel about three new girls--Jo, Polly, and Ama--who are destined to pick up the torch dropped by Bridget, Tibby, Carmen, and Lena.  

The circumstances are different.  The three have not been lifelong bosom buddies like the original Sisters.  Jo, Polly, and Ama were best friends for a few years in elementary school, when they planted willows together in the woods and visited them every day, but in middle school they abandoned the trees and one another.  The summer between eighth and ninth grades, however, gives them a chance to remember why they need each other.  (Brashares, like so many writers and readers of YA lit., loves the promise and potential of summers, and she fulfills them beautifully.)

Jo, Polly, and Ama live in Bethesda and are about to enter the same high school the Septembers attended, and indeed, the Septembers do brush against the edges of the story.  The Pants have made them local legends, and our three new heroines remember how they and other girls tried to copy the magic without success.  

Now, Polly babysits for Tibby's younger siblings, and poor Jo's summer job at the beach turns disastrous when Lena's sister Effie shows up.  But this is the story of the Willows, not the Pants; of friendship reignited, not uninterrupted; of ties strengthened through growth alone, not magic.

Maybe Ann Brashares really had planned to lay this series to rest after Forever in Blue.  Perhaps the muse or her fans or her publisher just wouldn't let her.  Whatever happened, I am so grateful for it.  And I am also excited, because those final dregs of story left an aftertaste that hints, subtly but unmistakably, of more to come. 

Speaking of Avonlea...

My in-laws visited from Kansas last week (hence the long gap between this post and the last).  My mother-in-law, Betsy, volunteers at the Habitat for Humanity thrift store, where she is in charge of books.  That means that she handles all incoming used books, sorts them, and often pulls some out that she will buy as gifts.  (Yesss...)  One of my Easter gifts from her was an old hardcover copy of Anne's House of Dreams, the fifth book in the eight-volume series by L.M. Montgomery.  I was so excited when she handed it to me that I think I have to hang my head and use that tired cliche, "squealed with delight," to describe my response.  Betsy was apologetic about the age of the copy, but I love it more for that.  I don't know what happened to my copies of the Anne books, but thanks to Betsy my collection is slowly regenerating.  This particular volume has a brown cover, brown pages, and a lovely illustration--just one--on the first page, all in color.  It shows Anne in a pink dress, standing on a hill with Green Gables in the background.  She's bidding farewell to her old home before her marriage to Gilbert (which, not coincidentally, is the name of my cat, the one I lived with during my brief time as an independent single woman with her own apartment).

I flipped through the book and saw names of characters I had forgotten.  Some of them jogged my memory; others did not.  It made me realize how lazy I've become in my relationship with these dear old stories.  I've seen the Kevin Sullivan film versions several times (the first two, anyway; the third I couldn't finish even once...blech), and I guess I thought that counted as staying in touch with Avonlea, but there is too much left out: Polly's Place, Gog and Magog, Ruby Gillis' death, Paul Irving, and several others whose names I can't even recall but who I know are important (the twins Marilla and Anne adopt, the first two men who propose to Anne, and so on).

I really feel toward Anne as I do those friends whom I have never stopped loving but with whom I've allowed myself to lose contact over the years.  In my busyness and self-absorption I've convinced myself, perhaps, that they know I love them and that I'm here and I think of them.  But that's just a pleasant little self-deception, after all.  True friends may always be together in spirit, as Anne says to Diana (in the film; I don't know whether that line is in the book or not, further evidence of my sloppy fanhood), but kindred spirits know that while the two-disc movie version may be all right some of the time, once in a while we have to be willing to sit down with all eight volumes and dive back in again.

Thank You, Mr. Lewis

Not for inventing Narnia (though our debt cannot, perhaps, be overstated) but for being one of us, a serious adult devotee of young adult literature, even before that genre got its name.  And I owe you one, my friend, for introducing me to one of your finest colleagues whom I somehow managed to miss as a child: E. Nesbit.

I came across Ms. Nesbit's name several times while reading the biography written about you by your friends Walter Hooper and Roger Lancelyn Green.  Quickly I became intrigued: A spinner of children's yarns who kept you reading and rereading her work nearly your entire life must be worth a look.  So I looked.  I visited my local library and picked up a copy of Five Children and It (Puffin Books 2004, first published by T. Fisher Unwin 1902).  And oh, what great fun it was!

When Cyril, Robert, Anthea, and Jane are left home alone for a few weeks one summer with only a couple of servants and their two-year-old brother, whom they call The Lamb, any reader who has been around the YA block once or twice can tell something wonderful is coming.  The best adventures result when parents leave for a bit, especially while school is out.  Better even than that scenario is one in which the novelty of a new home and neighborhood is added, which, in this case, we are overjoyed to find that it is.

And when the four children, playing one day in a sand-pit, uncover a particularly curmudgeonly yet powerful fairy--not, as one might expect, a glittery fluttery fairy but one with a furry body, snail's eyes, and whiskers--who grudgingly must grant them one wish a day, all sorts of delightful disasters come to pass.

I must admit that once or twice E. Nesbit's writing got to me.  As a matter of fact, it was exactly twice, in two separate chapters, when I felt that she was beating a riff in each chapter to death and beyond.  Other than that, Five Children and It was one of the best storytelling rides I've been on in a long time.  I loved the voice of the narrator, who was addressing child readers but clearly writing for adult ones, too, counting on them to catch the sly little jabs that snaked oh so quietly out of the corner of her mouth.  And I loved the tale itself.  Treasure, wings, jewel heists, giants, battles, and a grumpy fairy who declares to all of our beloved heroes by the end of the story, "I'm getting tired of you": What's not to love?

I wish I could sit down and have a chat with you, Mr. Lewis.  I wish you could tell me about more of the stories you loved.  But there are plenty listed in that biography,  I suppose: both the ones you admired and the ones you wrote yourself.  And life is short.  It's not likely I'll get through half of the books I already want to read.  But I look forward, someday, to sitting with you in a pair of heavenly armchairs by a celestial fire, books strewn all about, raising our cups of tea to the company that includes E. Nesbit, Kenneth Graham, Louisa May Alcott, L. M. Montgomery, and--I will insist upon it--you.

 

Woo Hoo!

That's the sound we used to make in high school when we were having a particular kind of fun: the wind-in-your-hair-on-a-roller-coaster kind of fun.  And it's the sound I had to hold in last night between eleven at night and one in the morning, when I finally got to watch the movie Twilight.  My husband rented it for me as a surprise on the day it came out, and my son slept peacefully (only waking up to nurse once and then falling promptly asleep again, God bless him) while I watched it in the dark with my headphones on.  I was so pumped when it was over that I washed the dishes and then lay awake until two.

I've heard criticisms of the movie from readers who were disappointed, and I respect those criticisms.  When you love a book, it's hard for any film version to measure up.  (I let loose on that topic in my last post.)  Personally, I think these filmmakers nailed it.  Bella is exactly what she should be: beautiful but not conspicuously so, unassuming and grave yet passionate.  And I liked Edward even better than the vision in my head, which almost never happens.  He is mysterious and sexy with just a little creepiness around the edges and the perfect mixture of protectiveness and vulnerability, which I preferred to the book's depiction because I found it more subtly rendered.  (For all of Stephenie Meyer's gifts as a storyteller, she tends to overwrite; one thing I enjoyed in watching the movie was not having to stumble over unnecessary phrases or descriptions that dragged out sufficiently crafted sentences.)

The atmosphere of the film struck me as edgy yet beautiful.  In fact, the settings and vistas were so close to what I imagined that I almost gasped at times, particularly when I first saw Charlie's house.  I suspected for a moment that the director must have telepathic abilities of her own.  (The resemblance between our visualizations is more likely due to Meyer's intensely specific writing, which, though occasionally overdone, is undeniably vivid; there are indeed two sides to every coin.)  The dialogue--natural and at times wonderfully awkward--and the soundtrack--eerie, exciting, and enchanting by turns--were perfect.

The only detail I didn't enjoy was the moment when Bella sees Edward in the sun. Meyer describes the setting as an open field, which would have provided a more distinct contrast to the close, shadowy woods where Bella and Edward start out.  I also didn't think the effect used in this scene makes Edward look "beautiful": just grainy, like he's been dusted with glittery sand that I wanted badly to brush off and make him clean and handsome again.  

I will eagerly anticipate seeing the rest of the series; I'm even tempted now to watch Breaking Dawn when it comes out.  The only danger of liking a movie so much is that I might never read the book again, but I doubt that will happen, especially when--God willing--I have teenaged daughters of my own.  This morning, I'm sleepy, but it was worth it.  I'm grateful for any story--whether in book or movie form--that can entice me to forget (almost) that I'm nearly 30 years old and a mom and keep me up until two a.m.  True, being grown-up and a mom brings its own kind of fun, but I'll always snag an opportunity to have that old (or should I say young?) kind of fun again.

 

Ruined or Not, It's a Book You Gotta Read

Maybe we should be used to it by now: A beautiful book is written; we all fall in love with it; Hollywood gets hold of it; we await the movie’s release date, buy our tickets, and a few hours later leave the theater agreeing that despite the film version’s various good points, “it's just not the same.” I guess we book lovers have, to some extent, come to accept this cycle of low-grade torment and despair as normal occupational hazards of the bibliophiliac lifestyles we have chosen.

Still, I admit I was shocked into bookworm’s rage—that pitifully impotent tantrum pitched by someone who sees herself as a champion of books but who makes no impression except to cause everyone around her to wonder what the big deal is—when I walked past the artsy little independent cinema in my town a few months ago and spotted a movie poster for The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (novel: Random House 2006, copyright John Boyne).

No one ever accused Hollywood of subtlety. I know that. And the movie industry, like every other industry, is driven by what sells. I get that. But why, why, oh why did they have to take that book—that wonderful, brilliant book, the kind that makes an actual case for the inclusion of YA literature on lofty universities’ English syllabi—and destroy, in one stroke, everything that makes it wonderful and brilliant?

Now, you may ask, as I am flipping out over this, have I even seen the movie? No, I have not. But I promise you: The existence of the movie ruins the book. The existence of the movie poster ruins the book. In fact, far be it from me to begrudge a successful author his movie deal, but I have to wonder just what John Boyne was thinking when he decided to go along with this.

Everything, and I mean everything, about the story must be a surprise in order for it to work the way it's meant to. Even the blurb on the original book jacket is very careful not to give away the premise or plot; merely knowing the setting before you start to read seriously undermines the effect. I used to recommend this novel eagerly to my seventh grade students by telling them, “I can’t tell you what this book is about or when or where it’s set, but you have to read it. Trust me. You won’t be sorry.”

And now Hollywood has gone and burst a truly rare and stunning literary bubble for millions of would-be readers. It’s sad, but I’m hoping (perhaps vainly, but you can imagine that if I still love children’s books at the age of 29, I can also hold on to hope like nobody’s business) there are still some of you YA-book lovers out there who have not seen or heard anything about the movie. If so, run to your local library or bookstore—carefully averting your gaze if you pass a Blockbuster—and ask the librarian or salesperson to bring you a copy of the book, but only if it features the original cover art (i.e., not a single human being or landscape in sight). If it doesn’t, have him or her wrap the outside of it in a newspaper or bag. Then go home and read it fast, before you can succumb to the temptation to sneak a peek at the cover or you forget to shield your eyes when passing that Blockbuster.

Even if these precautions fail, however, and you are unfortunate enough to have fallen victim to Hollywood’s book-spoiling marketing scheme, read The Boy in The Striped Pajamas anyway. No, it won’t be the same, but read it. Trust me. You won’t be sorry.