It’s Children’s Book Week, so I have a couple of posts featuring some of my favorite children’s books. Check out last year’s posts on the topic: Passing Down My Beloved Books, Bizarre Children’s Literature, and Tips on Reading to Babies.
Today, I’m celebrating some children’s books that draw on a rich history of literature and more importantly, make you look smart in front of your kids. These books all reference other books, especially the classics. In other words, a geek’s dream.
“Where everyone is napping,” I read, as my baby crawled off my lap. Soon, he was across the room and out the door. With him gone, who was I reading to now? As cute as The Napping House is, it’s not the book I would pick for myself.
Babies are not easy audiences. Nonetheless, reading to them is essential. The American Pediatric Association appears to agree, with a recommendation to read to children – even babies – every day. While “every day” is tough, it’s still a good goal. But besides remembering to do so in a sleep-addled state, the idea of reading to a squirming baby can be intimating.
From my experience, here are a few tips for reading to very young children:
Did you know this is Children’s Book Week? My posts this week are going to focus on reading to children and children’s books, from the weird to the patience-building.
There are some things you remember from childhood as odd, blurry phantoms, cloaked in a haze of nostalgia and strangeness. You always wonder if what you remember was less weird – or perhaps more! – than you recall, warped by a child’s view on the world. If you’re really lucky, some of those things are books. I had a book growing up like that about dogs that lived in a city like humans, a canine version of friends. The main character had a bulldog as a boss and moved to a little stone cottage in the woods at the end. These days, my Mom and I can find no trace of this book on the Internet, not helped by the fact that our best guess at the title is the rather obvious but most likely wrong Dog City. Perhaps due to the loss of this work of my childhood, my Mom appears committed to keeping Sprout’s bookshelf well-stocked with picture books that are just plain odd. Between my mom’s contributions and others, he’s starting to have quite the collection of surreal books. None of them are nearly so awful as the ones on this Cracked.com list, but I hope a few leave their fond, vague traces in memory.
Edamame and Edapapa: This book is about a mommy bean and a daddy bean with a pet sesame seed. The only things that distinguish them from each other is that the mommy bean (Edamame – say it out loud) has a pearl necklace and the daddy bean has a luxurious mustache. One day, a paper crane drops off a baby bean for them. The End. It’s short, it’s based on a very silly pun and it’s adorable. But anything that involves talking plants – especially ones that use phrases like “teeny weeny beany” – is inherently weird.
The Secret Life of Squirrels:This book tells the story of a “very unusual squirrel” that cooks on his grill, plays the piano, reads, and cleans his house more than we do ours. None of this would be that odd for children’s literature, except that the book is made up of photos of real squirrels interacting with tiny domestic tableaux. The author actually handcrafted little beds, chairs, bookshelves and ice cream stands, smeared peanut butter on them and took photos of squirrels when they came to investigate. It’s the sort of hobby that if it was your friend, you might suggest joining a Meetup group. But as the author now has a best-selling children’s book, what do I know?
Dragons Love Tacos: According to this book, dragons love tacos and parties. But not spicy salsa, because then they get indigestion and will burn your house down. What makes this one odd is how it blatantly and purposely ignores all cultural trappings around a renowned mythological creature, creating an entirely new take in only a couple of pages. Also, the fact that the kid actually has his house burn down is kind of shocking. The success of the kid’s dragon taco party also raises a lot of questions – How did he advertise this party? Where do dragons get their community calendars? Have dragons just been going to Taco Bell in disguise (like the animals in Little Dee) and we’be been missing it the whole time? While I thought this book was kind of dumb at first, I now respect how weirdly radical it is. Sprout has also given it his ultimate approval – Figment the Dragon has now been renamed “Taco.”
I Want my Hat Back / This is Not My Hat: It is very rare when a children’s book involves one character eating another, especially when the protagonist is the one doing the eating. In both these books, a top predator gets its hat stolen (a bear and a large fish respectively), finds the perpetrator, and then presumably eats them. While it’s possible there was a peaceful negotiation (as one hopeful child asked the author in a story he told at the National Book Festival, “What happened to the bunny?”), it seems extremely unlikely. Especially because the bear in I Want My Hat Back says, “What bunny. I would never eat a bunny.” Riiiight. Perhaps the most bizarre thing is that you totally feel like the thief deserves it, even (and especially) in the book where the narrator is the thief!
Any Maurice Sendak book besides Where the Wild Things Are: Where the Wild Things Are is odd by itself, but his other books make it look like Dick and Jane. When we were at the library, I flipped through some of his books and was frankly shocked – not offended, just surprised – at how bizarre they were. From full frontal nudity to children kidnapped by goblins to cartoon homeless people, his books mine the depths of dark innocence. Some of them have the same feel as the old fairy tales, with things that lurk in the woods and pose true dangers to children. I suspect they are an acquired taste for adults, so used to relatively simple ideas in children’s stories and not the surreal grotesque. I need to give them a second look, quite honestly.
What are your favorite weird children’s books?
Did you know this is Children’s Book Week? My posts this week are going to focus on reading to children and children’s books, from the weird to the patience-building.
Saying that I am attached to my books is an understatement. I have two large Tupperware containers of books in my closet that I’ve owned since I was a child, ones that I either believed would be out of print or that I valued so deeply it pained me to get rid of them. But because I was a very precocious reader, very few of them are picture books. In fact, I have few distinct memories of reading picture books at all. This leaves me at a bit of a loss for now when it comes to passing on my beloved books to Sprout. Fortunately, there are a few that remained from my young childhood, mainly because my mom “borrowed” them for her classroom and brought them home when she retired. However, some are a bit different than I remember them.
Squiggly Wiggly’s Surprise: This was definitely the most hilariously disappointing of the bunch. Squiggly Wiggly is a worm (according to the book – he’s actually a caterpillar) that is represented by a little finger puppet that you push through holes in the book. However, his brown coloring and black rings make him look suspiciously like part of the male anatomy. Less funny but more unfortunate, Squiggly has some serious body image issues. While the story is ostensibly about him learning about different colors, most of it is actually him complaining that he’s drab and ugly, opining he could be something else. In the end, of course, he’s transformed into a beautiful butterfly. That’s kind of a crappy message though, as not everyone actually gets to become a butterfly. Squiggly should love himself for who he is. If you want caterpillar stories, stick with The Very Hungry Caterpillar.
Bialosky Goes Out and Bialosky Stays Home: In contrast, these books were a pleasant surprise. I faintly remembered the books that used photos of a teddy bear as pictures, but before re-reading them, wouldn’t have been able to tell you anything about them. Bialosky is like Winnie the Pooh’s long lost cousin: he makes grand plans that go array, loves honey, and is “a bear of very little brain.” In Bialosky Goes Out, he spends so long deciding on where to go and what to bring on a walk that it starts pouring before he has the chance to leave. In Bialosky Stays Home, he attempts to make cookies, but “tests” so much of the batter via nibbling that’s there isn’t any left to bake! In both books, he responds to his dilemma with a shrug and declaration that he’ll do better next time. While they lack the moral ambiguity of Winnie the Pooh, he has an irresistible attitude even when his plans completely fail. I’m very glad my mom kept them – they seem to be out of print now.
The Day Jimmy’s Boa Ate the Wash: This is by far my favorite handed-down book, a tale of subversive fun narrated by a hilarious little girl (Meg). It has a sense of unbridaled, unashamed chaos. It starts off with the main character greeting her mother – who wears a very 1970s outfit combining no fewer than 3 floral patterns – after a trip to the farm. In the course of telling her mom about the trip, we find out that not only did a bale of hay fall on a cow, but that pigs ate the students’ lunches, motivated by the kids throwing their corn, due to the students running out of eggs to throw, all precipitated by Jimmy bringing his pet boa constrictor into the hen house. And the narrative – or Meg’s mom – doesn’t judge the kids at all for this behavior. Meg’s mom acts surprised, but far less than I suspect I’d be in the same circumstance. In fact, it’s very clear that Meg is a key instigator in it all of it – while she didn’t start it, the scene in the henhouse shows her with a full armful of eggs, ready to chuck at her classmates. The other thing I love is the fact the protagonist is female. Not only are girls underreprestened in children’s literature, but they tend to either fit into two stereotypes – full-on tomboys or very pink, very conventionally feminine girls. Meg and her fellow female classmates are neither. They all wear cute 1980s style dresses and skirts to the farm, but participate in the chaos as much – or more than – the boys. When Meg comes home, she changes into a car racing costume to pilot a homebuilt racecar with Jimmy (owner of the boa constrictor) and his new pet pig. But the best part is her non-plussed reaction to the day’s events -“I suppose it was exciting if you’re the kind of kid who likes class trips to the farm.”
A Very Young Dancer: I haven’t given this book to Sprout yet, as it’s rather text-heavy. Nonetheless, I look forward to reading it with him. It follows a young ballet dancer training in the School of American Ballet in New York and what she has to do before the big performance. Because my mom took me to the New York City Ballet every year (we lived near its summer home), I was a little obsessed with ballerinas as a kid. While I can’t force him to like anything, I want Sprout to be able to appreciate dance and theater, especially because they are often seen as “girly” interests. I hope this book can give him some insight into the hard work, athleticism, and beauty that goes into dance. Unfortunately, he won’t even be the second kid to use it. A little boy at my mom’s school was interested in dance and I gave her permission to take it to school. He then drew on it with crayon. At least I know it was loved.
What were your favorite books growing up? Did you have the chance to pass any of them on to your kids or kids you know?