It's been a hectic few weeks in our household, and it was only today that I heard of writer Grace Paley's death last week. The New York Times printed a moving and literary obituary. If you've never read any of her writing, this is a great introduction, quoting some of the most delicious bits from her short stories and giving a great sense of Paley as an activist as well.
Paley never wrote for children (though her friend and sometime collaborator, Vera B. Williams, did and still does), but her stories have the honesty and immediacy that I associate with the best writing for kids, and there are kids all over them: dumping sand on each other in the park; riding daredevil between subway cars; carried on their fathers' shoulders, and always, always, worried over and talked about and arguing with the mothers who are the heroes of most of her writing.
It's killing me right now that I can't find in our box-stacked living room a copy of Paley's first book, The Little Disturbances of Man, which includes the first short story of hers that I ever read, "The Loudest Voice." It's the story of a little girl, Shirley Abromovitz, who gets a coveted part in the Christmas pageant at her (circa 1930's, somewhere in New York City) school. You see, she has the loudest voice: so strong and clear it can peel the paper off Campbell's soup cans, so she's a cinch for the narrator's role in the school's annual reenactment of the Nativity story.
Naturally, Shirley's mom and several of the other parents in her Jewish neighborhood are horrified at this "creeping pogrom" of a public-school activity. But theirs isn't the only opinion; Shirley herself is thrilled, and her dad is encouraging, and the conclusion is more nuanced than anything I've read before or since on the whole Jewish-kid-at-Christmas topic. The important and unquenchable thing is, indeed, Shirley's voice; at the end, after her triumph in the pageant, she hunkers down and prays for everyone: her family near and far, her teachers, and "all the lonesome Christians." She's sure her prayers will be heard: "my voice was certainly the loudest."
Paley herself has quite the voice, zippy and sneaky; she started off as a poet, and it shows. Her verbal path is loopy but at the same time direct--straight to the heart. She's a master of first lines. One story starts out: "There were two husbands disappointed by eggs. One was livid and one was pallid." The narrator refers to the two men as Livid and Pallid throughout the rest of the story. (Not surprisingly, neither of them comes off very well, either as a husband or as a dad.)
After reading and admiring her since high school, I got to see her in person, once. The Seattle Arts and Lectures series hosted an evening with Grace Paley and Anne Lamott, a possibly inspired combination that nonetheless was pretty much a disaster as far as literary events go (Anne Lamott wrote about it in Salon here, and also in one of her recent books). They tried for an unscripted discussion, which resulted in Anne Lamott, nervous and fast-wired, stepping into any pause before Grace Paley got a chance to say much. As the evening wore on and Lamott got more visibly anxious about how it was going, she only talked faster, until I thought the audience would start throwing things.
I only remember one thing Grace Paley said that evening, but it was worth the price of the ticket all by itself: one audience member asked what advice she would give to a new writer, and she said that she would give the same advice she gave her writing students: "Keep a low overhead, and don't live with anyone who doesn't respect your work." Nothing about "write what you know," or "kill your babies"--just smart common (or maybe not so common) sense on how to live and survive as a writer.
Grace Paley always struck me as one of a very few people (Jessica Mitford was another, and maybe Molly Ivins too) who managed pull off three tough feats simultaneously: she knew how to have great time in life; she stayed committed to serious political activism over several decades; and while she was at it, she wrote some kickass books. Not too shabby. But I wish she'd had just a little more time to do all those things.
Her voice will be remembered. It might not have been the loudest, but it was, and is, one of the strongest.
Friday, August 31, 2007
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
Els Kushner Does Love Moxy Maxwell
I usually spend the last weeks of school brainstorming with classes to get their picks for great summer reads (so much more effective than suggestions from adults), and by mid-June, what with the kid recommendations and the review journals and the blogs and the catalogs, I've got a sizeable To Be Read list of my own. This year my self-assigned summer reading list looked like this:
And so I feel for poor Moxy Maxwell, whose tale of woe and required summer reading I just finished half an hour ago (while I was supposed to be doing something else. But that's another story). Summer slips by so fast, with so many projects to accomplish, and in the blink of an eye it's the last day of vacation, and even though you've been carrying around Stuart Little all summer--and, as we all know, carrying a project around is practically the same thing as actually doing it--the actual reading-the-book part has not exactly happened.
I expected to love this book, having read so many enthusiastic reviews in the past few months. And so indeed it was. What I didn't expect was that it would be so suspenseful that, even though I had managed to restrain myself from skipping ahead throughout the 600+ pages [Canadian pagination] of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, I cheated and jumped to the end of this 92-pager because I could not stand one more moment of not knowing whether Moxy's mother would really, truly keep her from performing in the Goodbye to Summer Splash daisy-petal water ballet, as was the threatened consequence if Moxy did not finish Stuart Little by 6:00.
The result left me feeling for Moxy's mother as much as for the title character herself, fellow book-lover and fellow procrastinator that she is. And it left me feeling lucky that my own reading list is made up of books that I chose myself. And that there are still a few weeks left for me to stay up late on hot summer nights getting lost in them.
- Specials
- Heat and/or Travel Team
- So Totally Emily Ebers
- Rickshaw Girl
- Vive La Paris
- Gilda Joyce
- Peaches
- Shackleton’s Stowaway
- The
- Key to the Golden Firebird
- The Jew Store (adult)
- Sleeping Freshmen Never Lie
- Twilight
- Kiki Strike
- Weedflower
- Year of the Rat
- The
- Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life
- Julia’s Kitchen
- Ruby Lu
- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
- Between Mom and Jo
- Dairy Queen
- Plain JANEs
- Total Constant Order
- The Mislaid Magician
- Emma jean lazarus fell out of a tree
- Moxy Maxwell Does NOT Love Stuart Little
And so I feel for poor Moxy Maxwell, whose tale of woe and required summer reading I just finished half an hour ago (while I was supposed to be doing something else. But that's another story). Summer slips by so fast, with so many projects to accomplish, and in the blink of an eye it's the last day of vacation, and even though you've been carrying around Stuart Little all summer--and, as we all know, carrying a project around is practically the same thing as actually doing it--the actual reading-the-book part has not exactly happened.
I expected to love this book, having read so many enthusiastic reviews in the past few months. And so indeed it was. What I didn't expect was that it would be so suspenseful that, even though I had managed to restrain myself from skipping ahead throughout the 600+ pages [Canadian pagination] of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, I cheated and jumped to the end of this 92-pager because I could not stand one more moment of not knowing whether Moxy's mother would really, truly keep her from performing in the Goodbye to Summer Splash daisy-petal water ballet, as was the threatened consequence if Moxy did not finish Stuart Little by 6:00.
The result left me feeling for Moxy's mother as much as for the title character herself, fellow book-lover and fellow procrastinator that she is. And it left me feeling lucky that my own reading list is made up of books that I chose myself. And that there are still a few weeks left for me to stay up late on hot summer nights getting lost in them.
Thursday, August 2, 2007
Don't Toss That Coin inThe Well: Verdigris Deep
Everyone--well, everyone who's ever heard or read any fantasy or folklore, or who has any common sense, for that matter--knows how dangerous it is to make a wish; how the wish, if granted by a god or elf or genie or pixie, is almost always distorted, twisted, turned against the wisher.
But what of the wish-granters?
That's the question Frances Hardinge asks in Verdigris Deep, and she goes deep with it. Hardinge's first novel, Fly By Night, gathered many genres--alternate history, adventure, coming of age, political intrigue--into its capacious (maybe too capacious) embrace, but managed to avoid the one she delves into here: creepy, creepy horror. Like Alan Garner's The Owl Service, with which it's sure to be compared many times, Verdigris Deep pits a trio of troubled adolescents against the raw, living forces of an ancient mythology, forcing them to confront the deepest and most secret recesses of the human heart.
How'd that be for jacket-flap copy? But it's all true. Horror is not so much my thing, and if Fly by Night hadn't been one of my very favorite books read last year (it wasn't everyone's, I know, but it was mine) I probably wouldn't have gone near this one. But there it was, sitting
on the bookstore table, and my hand just went for it. Almost without my control. Ooo, spooky, and so much like this book. I couldn't even bring myself to read it at night. When our hero, Ryan, got those weird itchy bumps on his hands and they turned into--oh, I can't tell you what they turned into but believe me it will give you the willies--and then the well witch started showing up on posters in tunnels, streaming water from her eyes, and then the creepy Miss Gossamer showed her true colors, well it's a good thing there was bright daylight outside or I would have lost even more sleep than I did last week.
For plot, I'll tell you what the back-cover copy told me: three kids steal some coins from a well for bus fare, and are then forced to serve the god ("well witch" is what the back cover says, but really she's a god, that's clear) responsible for granting the wishes each coin represents. It's pitched creepy, and it reads creepy. But there's more here. This book is more compact and less picaresque than Fly By Night; page by page I'm not sure that I enjoyed it more, because it's not my favorite genre, but I think it might be a stronger book. Hardinge doesn't mess around this time having fun with made-up worlds, just goes straight for the heart with a pick-axe. Man, she's good.
I can't decide yet if there's too much troubled-family problem-novel psychological stuff in the book or not. You get right away that Ryan's parents are part of his issue: his mom writes "unauthorized biographies" that get her stalked by her subjects, and does bad-fictional-parent stuff like making Ryan wear his contact lenses instead of the glasses he prefers when reporters come to the house to interview her; she and Ryan's dad alternate between bickering and icy silence, which drives Ryan batty. And Ryan's friends' parents wouldn't win any functional-family awards either: Josh is a charismatic budding juvenile delinquent whose folks punish him for his frequent misbehavior by banishing him from the house; and Chelle is all but ignored by her family, which might be one reason she keeps up a constant torrent of chat, in hopes of catching someone's attention even for a moment.
But the family psychology is part of Hardinge's point, not tacked on but integral. As our three protagonists blunder through the summer, desperately trying to grant wishes, they gradually realize what the Well Spirit cannot: not only can wishes turn against those who make them, but each wish has an unspoken component, born of the wisher's deepest unacknowledged yearnings, and granting these can be even more disastrous than making the intended wish come true.
Ryan lays out the heart of the novel when he tries to explain to Chelle that wishes are "sort of like conkers [chestnuts]...There's an outer bit which is what the wish seems to be, but there's another bit inside which is kind of the real wish...And I don't think when most people wish, they really know what they're wishing. It's like they only see the green spiky outer bit." The ancient Well Spirit, he goes on, "doesn't really get the green spiky bits of their wishes...But the shiny nut bit of wishes, she gets that, kind of. She can help with that. Because those are the great big, painful, simple wishes, you see. Life. Death. Love. Revenge. She gets that."
Hardinge, it's clear, gets that too. Not to give too much away, but some of these wishes--past and present--are the hard, real, unpretty deal, and I wouldn't recommend this book to readers much younger than ten, or maybe eleven, unless I knew them (and their parents) quite well. Or unless they'd already read The Owl Service or Margaret Mahy's The Changeover and come out the other side unscathed.
I can't wrap this up without mentioning Hardinge's way with language, which outshone all the plot baubles in Fly By Night and which illuminates the murky relationships here: When Ryan's mum prepares him for a visiting reporter, "Ryan could feel his mother's fingers pulling and poking at him as they had the orchid. He sometimes wondered whether she thought that if she tugged at him for long enough she would end up with something more interesting." Chelle offhandedly complains about what it's like "when somebody's watching you and you can feel it like dead leaves down the back of your jumper..."Of Magwhite, the town where the fateful well is located: "Nobody could quite remember which, but something had happened to give the name 'Magwhite' ugly edges. If Magwhite was mentioned, parents' faces stiffened as if they had picked up a bad smell."
There are also some nice funny bits, and several adults have their own surprises in store; it's always a relief to see kids' books where the grownups turn out to be flawed human beings rather than caricatures.
All in all: if you liked Fly By Night, try this one. If you didn't like Fly By Night, try this one too, as it is utterly different in its particulars. Either way, watch for more by Frances Hardinge; her first two books, put together, are a pretty powerhouse combination, and I wish (uh-oh) I could read whatever else she's got in store.
But what of the wish-granters?
That's the question Frances Hardinge asks in Verdigris Deep, and she goes deep with it. Hardinge's first novel, Fly By Night, gathered many genres--alternate history, adventure, coming of age, political intrigue--into its capacious (maybe too capacious) embrace, but managed to avoid the one she delves into here: creepy, creepy horror. Like Alan Garner's The Owl Service, with which it's sure to be compared many times, Verdigris Deep pits a trio of troubled adolescents against the raw, living forces of an ancient mythology, forcing them to confront the deepest and most secret recesses of the human heart.
How'd that be for jacket-flap copy? But it's all true. Horror is not so much my thing, and if Fly by Night hadn't been one of my very favorite books read last year (it wasn't everyone's, I know, but it was mine) I probably wouldn't have gone near this one. But there it was, sitting
on the bookstore table, and my hand just went for it. Almost without my control. Ooo, spooky, and so much like this book. I couldn't even bring myself to read it at night. When our hero, Ryan, got those weird itchy bumps on his hands and they turned into--oh, I can't tell you what they turned into but believe me it will give you the willies--and then the well witch started showing up on posters in tunnels, streaming water from her eyes, and then the creepy Miss Gossamer showed her true colors, well it's a good thing there was bright daylight outside or I would have lost even more sleep than I did last week.
For plot, I'll tell you what the back-cover copy told me: three kids steal some coins from a well for bus fare, and are then forced to serve the god ("well witch" is what the back cover says, but really she's a god, that's clear) responsible for granting the wishes each coin represents. It's pitched creepy, and it reads creepy. But there's more here. This book is more compact and less picaresque than Fly By Night; page by page I'm not sure that I enjoyed it more, because it's not my favorite genre, but I think it might be a stronger book. Hardinge doesn't mess around this time having fun with made-up worlds, just goes straight for the heart with a pick-axe. Man, she's good.
I can't decide yet if there's too much troubled-family problem-novel psychological stuff in the book or not. You get right away that Ryan's parents are part of his issue: his mom writes "unauthorized biographies" that get her stalked by her subjects, and does bad-fictional-parent stuff like making Ryan wear his contact lenses instead of the glasses he prefers when reporters come to the house to interview her; she and Ryan's dad alternate between bickering and icy silence, which drives Ryan batty. And Ryan's friends' parents wouldn't win any functional-family awards either: Josh is a charismatic budding juvenile delinquent whose folks punish him for his frequent misbehavior by banishing him from the house; and Chelle is all but ignored by her family, which might be one reason she keeps up a constant torrent of chat, in hopes of catching someone's attention even for a moment.
But the family psychology is part of Hardinge's point, not tacked on but integral. As our three protagonists blunder through the summer, desperately trying to grant wishes, they gradually realize what the Well Spirit cannot: not only can wishes turn against those who make them, but each wish has an unspoken component, born of the wisher's deepest unacknowledged yearnings, and granting these can be even more disastrous than making the intended wish come true.
Ryan lays out the heart of the novel when he tries to explain to Chelle that wishes are "sort of like conkers [chestnuts]...There's an outer bit which is what the wish seems to be, but there's another bit inside which is kind of the real wish...And I don't think when most people wish, they really know what they're wishing. It's like they only see the green spiky outer bit." The ancient Well Spirit, he goes on, "doesn't really get the green spiky bits of their wishes...But the shiny nut bit of wishes, she gets that, kind of. She can help with that. Because those are the great big, painful, simple wishes, you see. Life. Death. Love. Revenge. She gets that."
Hardinge, it's clear, gets that too. Not to give too much away, but some of these wishes--past and present--are the hard, real, unpretty deal, and I wouldn't recommend this book to readers much younger than ten, or maybe eleven, unless I knew them (and their parents) quite well. Or unless they'd already read The Owl Service or Margaret Mahy's The Changeover and come out the other side unscathed.
I can't wrap this up without mentioning Hardinge's way with language, which outshone all the plot baubles in Fly By Night and which illuminates the murky relationships here: When Ryan's mum prepares him for a visiting reporter, "Ryan could feel his mother's fingers pulling and poking at him as they had the orchid. He sometimes wondered whether she thought that if she tugged at him for long enough she would end up with something more interesting." Chelle offhandedly complains about what it's like "when somebody's watching you and you can feel it like dead leaves down the back of your jumper..."Of Magwhite, the town where the fateful well is located: "Nobody could quite remember which, but something had happened to give the name 'Magwhite' ugly edges. If Magwhite was mentioned, parents' faces stiffened as if they had picked up a bad smell."
There are also some nice funny bits, and several adults have their own surprises in store; it's always a relief to see kids' books where the grownups turn out to be flawed human beings rather than caricatures.
All in all: if you liked Fly By Night, try this one. If you didn't like Fly By Night, try this one too, as it is utterly different in its particulars. Either way, watch for more by Frances Hardinge; her first two books, put together, are a pretty powerhouse combination, and I wish (uh-oh) I could read whatever else she's got in store.
Saturday, July 28, 2007
Harry Potter Ate My Week
Technically, I finished late, late Sunday night, chased by a horde of spoiler threats. But it's taken me all week to catch up, on sleep and everything else.
I know lots of people who aren't done yet, and, like MotherReader, don't want any spoilers, not even "it was good" (or not). So I won't be spilling anything here.
But if you're also done, or if you don't care about spoilers, here are two links:
Emily Jiang of TLeaf Readings has painstakingly written a brisk chapter-by chapter summary of Deathly Hallows...in haiku form. (Link via Emily Reads.)
And over in the not-entirely-kidlit-focused blogging world, there is a smart and multi-faceted critique/appreciation/analysis of the book raging in the comments of Phantom Scribbler's HP7 Spoiler Thread. Phantom opened thread at 5:33 AM last Saturday (fast reader, that woman) and it's been going strong ever since.
Now, on to other things. I picked up a copy of a certain other much-anticipated British fantasy at Kidsbooks the other day, (we're still in Canada) and I feel it calling me from upstairs.
I know lots of people who aren't done yet, and, like MotherReader, don't want any spoilers, not even "it was good" (or not). So I won't be spilling anything here.
But if you're also done, or if you don't care about spoilers, here are two links:
Emily Jiang of TLeaf Readings has painstakingly written a brisk chapter-by chapter summary of Deathly Hallows...in haiku form. (Link via Emily Reads.)
And over in the not-entirely-kidlit-focused blogging world, there is a smart and multi-faceted critique/appreciation/analysis of the book raging in the comments of Phantom Scribbler's HP7 Spoiler Thread. Phantom opened thread at 5:33 AM last Saturday (fast reader, that woman) and it's been going strong ever since.
Now, on to other things. I picked up a copy of a certain other much-anticipated British fantasy at Kidsbooks the other day, (we're still in Canada) and I feel it calling me from upstairs.
Saturday, July 21, 2007
Dateline: Ministry of Magic
a/k/a Van Dusen Garden, Vancouver, British Columbia.
The tickets came in the mail just a few days ago: three Ministry of Magic badges, along with one Key to unlock the gate to a copy of That Book.
Last time around, two years ago, we were also in Vancouver and hit the midnight party at Kidsbooks, but this time they went offsite and held the launch at Van Dusen Garden.
The doors opened at 11 PM, but we didn't show up until 11:30. We didn't remember exactly where the garden was, but we soon figured it out by the lack of parking. And--oh, right!--the line of people stretching up most of a very, very long block and around the corner.
We took up our spots at the end: two jaded, sleepy grownups and our very jazzed 6-year-old Hermione, the latter sporting the requisite Griffyndor cloak and tie, a sparkly wand, and a white shirt and plaid skirt found at a thrift store. We flashed our badges at the gate, past Kidsbooks employees urging us to "Hurry! Hurry! It's almost midnight!" and then we were in.
Inside the garden was all drizzly, convivial chaos, which is an apt description of most of Vancouver most of the time. A Celtic band played, and the expected crowds of revelers wore the expected costumes: there were Griffyndor badges a plenty, as well as numerous lightning bolts on faces, tiny children in witches' hats, teenage boys sporting big round black-framed glasses. A very polite dragon (Canadian, dont'cha know) wished us a good evening, and Kidsbook employees wearing Ministry of Magic T-shirts buzzed about.
But where were the books? Oh, at those tents! Scattered about the well-lit grounds, numbered 1 to 12, the vaguely medieval-looking tents were obviously where the books were to be found. Everyone pulled out their paper certificates and looked for the number. Rumor had it, you were to pick up your books at the tent whose number matched your key. Crowds pressed forward around each tent as midnight approached.
Our young scout, hoisted on shoulders, gave the play-by-play: "I don't see anything--now smoke is coming out of the tent--now, nothing--wait, Harry Potter just came out! Now he went back in!" The band stopped playing. We were urged to pick up our books and then leave as quietly as possible, so as to spare the neighbors, and have "a good read." (to which I murmured that this was my kind of party: make an appearance, wander around and mingle a little, and then go home and read.)
The countdown was counted. Wild cheering erupted, and the crowd surged forward.
After much confusion, it emerged that the tent numbers meant nothing after all, and certificate-holders could go to any tent to pick up their book. "Just get in line," we were told, which was easier said than done, as there seemed to be no lines whatsoever, just swirling masses.
It crossed our minds that there might be no books at all, after all, as no one seemed to have any. Then--oh, there was someone gleefully holding a book! And there-- a few more! We were finally in something resembling a line, which seemed to be moving forward. Then we were in the tent, handed over the certificate, and were unceremoniously handed a book and swept out the other side.
The crowds lingered, photographing each other with their books, with some of the most flamboyantly costumed guests (including Sirius Black's mother, wearing black and carrying an elaborate picture frame). I read aloud the first paragraphs to my companions. (Not to give too much away, but it opens in a dark night, in a city that knows how to keep its secrets.)
Then a staffer dressed as Professor McGonagle kindly but firmly shooed us out of the park, and we obediently left.
It was almost 1 AM. Almost certainly, there were kids in England who had finished the whole book by the time we left the party in Vancouver. We walked through the pleasant, tree-lined streets to our car. Most houses were dark. But one, a few blocks away, was brightly lit on the second floor. We could see posters and decorations and a white gauze canopy: a girl's bedroom. We stopped outside the house for a moment, picturing her in there, just home with her brand-new, long-awaited book, and up late reading, reading, reading.
The tickets came in the mail just a few days ago: three Ministry of Magic badges, along with one Key to unlock the gate to a copy of That Book.
Last time around, two years ago, we were also in Vancouver and hit the midnight party at Kidsbooks, but this time they went offsite and held the launch at Van Dusen Garden.
The doors opened at 11 PM, but we didn't show up until 11:30. We didn't remember exactly where the garden was, but we soon figured it out by the lack of parking. And--oh, right!--the line of people stretching up most of a very, very long block and around the corner.
We took up our spots at the end: two jaded, sleepy grownups and our very jazzed 6-year-old Hermione, the latter sporting the requisite Griffyndor cloak and tie, a sparkly wand, and a white shirt and plaid skirt found at a thrift store. We flashed our badges at the gate, past Kidsbooks employees urging us to "Hurry! Hurry! It's almost midnight!" and then we were in.
Inside the garden was all drizzly, convivial chaos, which is an apt description of most of Vancouver most of the time. A Celtic band played, and the expected crowds of revelers wore the expected costumes: there were Griffyndor badges a plenty, as well as numerous lightning bolts on faces, tiny children in witches' hats, teenage boys sporting big round black-framed glasses. A very polite dragon (Canadian, dont'cha know) wished us a good evening, and Kidsbook employees wearing Ministry of Magic T-shirts buzzed about.
But where were the books? Oh, at those tents! Scattered about the well-lit grounds, numbered 1 to 12, the vaguely medieval-looking tents were obviously where the books were to be found. Everyone pulled out their paper certificates and looked for the number. Rumor had it, you were to pick up your books at the tent whose number matched your key. Crowds pressed forward around each tent as midnight approached.
Our young scout, hoisted on shoulders, gave the play-by-play: "I don't see anything--now smoke is coming out of the tent--now, nothing--wait, Harry Potter just came out! Now he went back in!" The band stopped playing. We were urged to pick up our books and then leave as quietly as possible, so as to spare the neighbors, and have "a good read." (to which I murmured that this was my kind of party: make an appearance, wander around and mingle a little, and then go home and read.)
The countdown was counted. Wild cheering erupted, and the crowd surged forward.
After much confusion, it emerged that the tent numbers meant nothing after all, and certificate-holders could go to any tent to pick up their book. "Just get in line," we were told, which was easier said than done, as there seemed to be no lines whatsoever, just swirling masses.
It crossed our minds that there might be no books at all, after all, as no one seemed to have any. Then--oh, there was someone gleefully holding a book! And there-- a few more! We were finally in something resembling a line, which seemed to be moving forward. Then we were in the tent, handed over the certificate, and were unceremoniously handed a book and swept out the other side.
The crowds lingered, photographing each other with their books, with some of the most flamboyantly costumed guests (including Sirius Black's mother, wearing black and carrying an elaborate picture frame). I read aloud the first paragraphs to my companions. (Not to give too much away, but it opens in a dark night, in a city that knows how to keep its secrets.)
Then a staffer dressed as Professor McGonagle kindly but firmly shooed us out of the park, and we obediently left.
It was almost 1 AM. Almost certainly, there were kids in England who had finished the whole book by the time we left the party in Vancouver. We walked through the pleasant, tree-lined streets to our car. Most houses were dark. But one, a few blocks away, was brightly lit on the second floor. We could see posters and decorations and a white gauze canopy: a girl's bedroom. We stopped outside the house for a moment, picturing her in there, just home with her brand-new, long-awaited book, and up late reading, reading, reading.
Sunday, June 17, 2007
Dads on the Page
Children's books are filled with mothers: Moms putting kids to bed, moms taking kids to school, moms comforting kids after various physical and psychic injuries, invisible scolding moms (a la In The Night Kitchen). But where are the dads?
Well, they're out there, but you do have to look for them. Herewith, a small sample of my favorite fictional dads, and the books in which they appear:
Enemy Pie, by Derek Munson. The dad in this book is wise, understands how to turn an enemy into a friend, and makes great pie. What more could you ask for?
Something Good, by Robert Munsch. Featuring a dad who cares about good nutrition, but cares more about his kids. Even when one of them ends up stuck on the doll shelf at the supermarket with a sticker on her nose that says $29.99.
Ten Minutes Till Bedtime by Peggy Rathmann. Well, it's true that the dad in this book is pretty clueless: he doesn't even notice that dozens of hamsters are gallivanting through his home on the "Ten Minute Bedtime Tour." but his goodnight tuck-in once the hamsters are all dispatched reveals the depth of his feelings for his kid.
Daddy is a Doodlebug, by Bruce Degen. "Daddy is a doodlebug/and I'm a doodlebug too./We doodle things together/that doodlebugs like to do." The father and son in this book are truly doodlebugs--many-armed, tentacled creatures who also like to draw together. This warm ode to a parent and child who share a talent would make a great bedtime story.
Owl Moon, by Jane Yolen. I used to think this quiet picture book wasn't dramatic enough to hold a kindergarten story-time audience; I was so, so wrong. Kids are entranced by the father and daughter's nighttime owling adventure. John Schoenherr's luminous Caldecott-winning illustrations convey suspense and wonderment.
The Naked Mole-Rat Letters, by Mary Amato. This quietly smart novel didn't make nearly the splash it should have. It's about a girl whose widowed father has (gasp!) found a GIRLFRIEND. His daughter is not pleased, and starts e-mailing said girlfriend, who happens to work at the zoo, with a pile of (mostly-fabricated) reasons that her dad is really not such good boyfriend material. Both the girlfriend and the father respond admirably. The parallels drawn between human and naked-mole-rat territorial behaviors are kind of cool, too.
Lord of the Nutcracker Men, by Iain Lawrence. The father in this book is physically absent, fighting in World War I. But his son Johnny treasures his letters, and the toy soldiers he carves while sitting in the trenches. Johnny comes to believe that his games with the toy soldiers are affecting his father's fate, lending the book a haunting cast.
The Saturdays (et al), by Elizabeth Enright. I danced a little jig when this book came back into print. The Melendy kids' dad always seemed to have that perfect combination of concern and laid-back-ness: he let his kids run around New York City on their Saturday Adventure Club allowance-sponsored jaunts, but when it came to a crisis he could always be counted on.
The Day I Swapped my Dad for Two Goldfish, by Neil Gaiman. Truth be told, the dad in this book is far from exemplary. In fact, all he does throughout the entire narrative is read his newspaper, completely oblivious to the fact that he's being trundled around, traded hither and yon, and judged bloody useless by one kid after another, until the narrator, who perpetrated the original and eponymous trade, reluctantly tracks him down and retrieves him. Still, this is a terrific book, deadpan and funny and slightly creepy. For the dad with a strong self-image and a good sense of humor.
Well, they're out there, but you do have to look for them. Herewith, a small sample of my favorite fictional dads, and the books in which they appear:
Enemy Pie, by Derek Munson. The dad in this book is wise, understands how to turn an enemy into a friend, and makes great pie. What more could you ask for?
Something Good, by Robert Munsch. Featuring a dad who cares about good nutrition, but cares more about his kids. Even when one of them ends up stuck on the doll shelf at the supermarket with a sticker on her nose that says $29.99.
Ten Minutes Till Bedtime by Peggy Rathmann. Well, it's true that the dad in this book is pretty clueless: he doesn't even notice that dozens of hamsters are gallivanting through his home on the "Ten Minute Bedtime Tour." but his goodnight tuck-in once the hamsters are all dispatched reveals the depth of his feelings for his kid.
Daddy is a Doodlebug, by Bruce Degen. "Daddy is a doodlebug/and I'm a doodlebug too./We doodle things together/that doodlebugs like to do." The father and son in this book are truly doodlebugs--many-armed, tentacled creatures who also like to draw together. This warm ode to a parent and child who share a talent would make a great bedtime story.
Owl Moon, by Jane Yolen. I used to think this quiet picture book wasn't dramatic enough to hold a kindergarten story-time audience; I was so, so wrong. Kids are entranced by the father and daughter's nighttime owling adventure. John Schoenherr's luminous Caldecott-winning illustrations convey suspense and wonderment.
The Naked Mole-Rat Letters, by Mary Amato. This quietly smart novel didn't make nearly the splash it should have. It's about a girl whose widowed father has (gasp!) found a GIRLFRIEND. His daughter is not pleased, and starts e-mailing said girlfriend, who happens to work at the zoo, with a pile of (mostly-fabricated) reasons that her dad is really not such good boyfriend material. Both the girlfriend and the father respond admirably. The parallels drawn between human and naked-mole-rat territorial behaviors are kind of cool, too.
Lord of the Nutcracker Men, by Iain Lawrence. The father in this book is physically absent, fighting in World War I. But his son Johnny treasures his letters, and the toy soldiers he carves while sitting in the trenches. Johnny comes to believe that his games with the toy soldiers are affecting his father's fate, lending the book a haunting cast.
The Saturdays (et al), by Elizabeth Enright. I danced a little jig when this book came back into print. The Melendy kids' dad always seemed to have that perfect combination of concern and laid-back-ness: he let his kids run around New York City on their Saturday Adventure Club allowance-sponsored jaunts, but when it came to a crisis he could always be counted on.
The Day I Swapped my Dad for Two Goldfish, by Neil Gaiman. Truth be told, the dad in this book is far from exemplary. In fact, all he does throughout the entire narrative is read his newspaper, completely oblivious to the fact that he's being trundled around, traded hither and yon, and judged bloody useless by one kid after another, until the narrator, who perpetrated the original and eponymous trade, reluctantly tracks him down and retrieves him. Still, this is a terrific book, deadpan and funny and slightly creepy. For the dad with a strong self-image and a good sense of humor.
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Name-Dropping, Small World, Raspberries
When I was a kid, I lived across the street from a really nice couple of the grandparent-ish variety. They were smart, and bookish, and kind, and when I ran over to their house in brand-new shoes one day and called out from the sidewalk that the shoes were making me dance until my feet were sore like the Red Shoes, they totally got the literary reference, which made me so happy.
They were not only grandparent-ish but were, in fact, actual grandparents, whose grandchildren were a few years younger than me and would come to visit sometimes from the City near our suburb. I think once or twice I even babysat for them. The older grandchild became friends with my younger brother, I think through summer camp, and they've remained in touch through adulthood. This same older grandchild, in one of those weird small-world occurrences, happened to meet and eventually marry a college friend of mine, so they're sort of like relatives on both sides.
And now this selfsame older grandchild of my old neighbors, Mark Dominus, friend of my brother, college-friend-in-law of mine, has gone and gotten himself cited in the kidlitosphere for his thoughtful and deadpan analysis of one of my favorite easy readers, A Bargain for Frances. My college friend Lorrie even makes an appearance, doing our alma mater proud with some hardcore lit-crit speculation regarding the inner life and motivations of Thelma, Frances's nefarious tea-set-swindler pal.
My favorite part, though, is Mark's own rueful evaluation of his attempts to explain the concept of "lying" to his 2-year-old daughter, Iris, using the hypothetical example of his telling her there were no raspberries in the refriegerator, even if there were, if he wanted to keep them all for himself: "I think Iris attached too much significance to the raspberries; for a while she seemed to think that lying had something to do with raspberries."
Well. I don't have any justification for feeling proud by association, but somehow I do. Maybe I can meet Iris in person someday, and we can discuss this crucial raspberry issue further.
Thanks to Fuse #8, now in her new home, for the link.
They were not only grandparent-ish but were, in fact, actual grandparents, whose grandchildren were a few years younger than me and would come to visit sometimes from the City near our suburb. I think once or twice I even babysat for them. The older grandchild became friends with my younger brother, I think through summer camp, and they've remained in touch through adulthood. This same older grandchild, in one of those weird small-world occurrences, happened to meet and eventually marry a college friend of mine, so they're sort of like relatives on both sides.
And now this selfsame older grandchild of my old neighbors, Mark Dominus, friend of my brother, college-friend-in-law of mine, has gone and gotten himself cited in the kidlitosphere for his thoughtful and deadpan analysis of one of my favorite easy readers, A Bargain for Frances. My college friend Lorrie even makes an appearance, doing our alma mater proud with some hardcore lit-crit speculation regarding the inner life and motivations of Thelma, Frances's nefarious tea-set-swindler pal.
My favorite part, though, is Mark's own rueful evaluation of his attempts to explain the concept of "lying" to his 2-year-old daughter, Iris, using the hypothetical example of his telling her there were no raspberries in the refriegerator, even if there were, if he wanted to keep them all for himself: "I think Iris attached too much significance to the raspberries; for a while she seemed to think that lying had something to do with raspberries."
Well. I don't have any justification for feeling proud by association, but somehow I do. Maybe I can meet Iris in person someday, and we can discuss this crucial raspberry issue further.
Thanks to Fuse #8, now in her new home, for the link.
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