Superhero!

Dear Annie,

Denise, your pal, occasional guest blogger, and mother of a soon-to-be 2 year-old boy, raised this question after your most recent post:

As I have been thinking of books to get Emerson, I have been noticing that he gravitates toward Superman and popular cartoon books that involve action, fighting, and lots of loud glossy pages, books I do not enjoy reading. He likes Star Wars, the Incredibles, all those Nickelodean characters..

I would love recommendations for my lil' boy who loves to pretend fight, play with balls, and turn anything into a bat. 

I'm sticking to the superhero part of this question today, starting with
SuperHero ABC, by Bob McLeod, whose day job is being a comic book artist.  It's your basic ABC book, but each letter is a superhero, starting with "Astro-Man is Always Alert for An Alien Attack.  He Avoids Asteroids!  He has Asthma!"

Here are a few more:

Fun sense of humor, occasional gross moment ("The Volcano Vomits on Villains.  He's Valiant!  He's Vile!  It's Very gross!")  No plot, but as long as Emerson isn't totally identifying with brand-name superheroes, there's lots to look at.

Parents come to the store frequently looking for books about superheroes or Star Wars characters that they can read to their very young children.  The demand is usually there because the kids are aware of the characters, but don't really know who they are.  The parents don't want serious violence and they don't want to show their kids the contemporary movies on these characters.   Three very basic biographies of Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman by Ralph Cosentino hit the spot on this request.

They give enough background information about the characters that other books -- and playground scenarios -- will make more sense.  Definitely worth a parental read-through before introducing them, though.  The basic stories have a certain amount of destruction and demise of parents.  They're in comic book format in small-ish hardcover books and sell incredibly well at the store. 

Our friend Bumblebee Boy, last seen negotiating pretend play roles with Ladybug Girl, now has spun off a book of his own:
The Amazing Adventures of Bumblebee Boy, by David Soman and Jacky Davis.  Ladybug Girl isn't here, but Bumblebee Boy (aka Sam)'s kid brother Owen is constantly trying to enter Sam's adventures.

While Bumblebee Boy clashes with evil pirates, fights a fire dragon, stops a runaway lion, and has various other adventures, the pajama-clad Owen keeps intervening.

"No, Owen!  I am playing Bumblebee Boy," says Sam.  You can't be in this game."

"Why?" asks Owen.

This is a bit of a problem.  Sam knows that he is not supposed to be mean to Owen, but he feels like playing his own game right now.

Sam must think fast.

"Because," says Sam, "you are not a superhero like me, see?"

Sam dashes off.

Eventually, Bumblebee Boy decides that fighting aliens on the moon is too much for him to do alone, and he and Owen negotiate a deal in which Owen brings along some bank robber monsters to the moon.  It has echoes of Even Firefighters Hug Their Moms in its pretend play elements, but lots of good swashbuckling too.

And then there's
The Astonishing Secret of Awesome Man by Michael Chabon (yes, that Michael Chabon).

Hi!  I'm a superhero [says the guy flying through an urban landscape in a Superman-style cape-and-tights outfit].  My name is Awesome Man.

I have a cape as red as a rocket,

a mask as black as midnight,

and a stylin' letter A on my chest.

I'm just basically awesome.

 He does awesome, totally super-hero-ish stuff --

-- sometimes with his Awesome Dog Moskowitz.  He stops trains, vanquishes Professor Von Evil in his Antimatter Slimebot, and gives the Flaming Eyeball his comeuppance.  Sometimes he gets a little too wired and starts hitting buildings and throwing trucks around.  "I might hurt somebody, or destroy a city or something."  So he calms down in the Fortress of Awesome and has something to eat.  By the end of the book he's revealed his secret identity -- a slightly airbrushed-looking kid -- and like the firefighter of yore, hugs his mom.

So Denise, these are all definitely action-packed books, but they have more humor, style, and even good writing than the stuff that gets generated by the licensed-product machinery.  I hope there's something here that makes both you and Emerson happy.

Love,

Deborah

Presents!

Dear Annie,

When Eleanor was born, the first of her generation in our extended family, I decided to become The Aunt Who Gives Only Books, to her and to any sibling (hello, Isabel!) or cousin (another coming soon :) to follow.   It didn't exactly start with Eleanor -- we've mentioned a few books I gave you over the years.  Part of the fun of giving books over decades is being able to grow with the recipient.  Starting out with board books, ending up with adult novels (wasn't The Golden Notebook in there somewhere?).

I've spent some of this evening going through the books I'll be bringing to your daughters this weekend.  I had to re-read a few -- can't resist.  Even though I spend a good deal of my days recommending books for adults to give to children, I can end up tied in knots when choosing my own offerings.  There's the Venn diagram of overlapping circles: books I love/books about things I think you love.  So one of the grand experiments here  will be one I've already warned you about:
The Very Kind Rich Lady and her One Hundred Dogs by Chinlun Lee, on a topic we all know Isabel loves.  The book names all 100 dogs: the first time with a label under each picture, the second time (!) as a string of names being called.  Can Isabel do 200 woofs?  We shall see...  Am also bringing monkeys, wombats (fiction & non-fiction), bunnies, gods, and a few humans.

I woke up this morning to find the current issue (June 9) of The New York Review of Books left open for me to an essay by Michael Chabon on The Phantom Tollbooth -- a book you and I will blog about here someday.  I bring this up not to discuss the Norton Juster classic, but to relay Chabon's thoughts on the gift of a book:

The book appeared in my life as mysteriously as the titular tollbooth itself, brought to our house one night as a gift for me by some old friend of my father’s whom I had never met before, and never saw again. Maybe all wondrous books appear in our lives the way Milo’s tollbooth appears, an inexplicable gift, cast up by some curious chance that comes to feel, after we have finished and fallen in love with the book, like the workings of a secret purpose. Of all the enchantments of beloved books the most mysterious—the most phantasmal—is the way they always seem to come our way precisely when we need them.

  May we all be the agent of a secret purpose at some point in a child's life.

Love,

Deborah