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

More Chuckles & Guffaws

Dear Annie,

I love your image of Eleanor belly-laughing at The Backward Day. One of the joys of reading with kids is the surprises they can hand you.

I think it's always useful to remember that small children have -- and should be encouraged to have -- very eclectic taste. Eleanor can be captivated by a delightfully silly story like Chickens to the Rescue, then listen in fascination to The Wizard of Oz. Just like grownups, kids enjoy many different forms of writing.

A few additions to your hilarious list:

Backward Day is a New York Review of Books reprint of an out of print classic: they've been exhuming both novels and picture books from earlier eras. This month they released a delightful one: Russell and Lillian Hoban's
The Sorely Trying Day. It's from the folks who wrote Bread and Jam for Frances and sequels, and it has that same sense of families being loving but chaotic and sometimes contentious, always with a large dose of humor. Father comes home from a Sorely Trying Day, only to discover that the children are squabbling miserably. An investigation ensues, with each wrongdoer pointing to a wrong that was previously done to them. Once that circle is closed, a new circle of apology ensues, with everyone trying to outdo the contrition of the previous apologizer. It's just really funny.

Then there's Robert Munsch, best known for The Paper Bag Princess, but he's written dozens of books. He was a pre-school teacher, and his humor is very slapstick. One of my fondest memories of picture book hilarity is of watching my spouse's loving but somewhat taciturn father reading Munsch's
Thomas' Snowsuit to Mona when she was probably around 3 or 4. Thomas doesn't want to put on his snowsuit, and ends up in a series of confrontations (visuals: cloud of dust with hands and feet occasionally poking out) with various adults. When the dust clears, it's always the adult who's wearing Thomas' snowsuit. Mona started giggling, then laughing, then her grandfather started laughing, and he ended up stopping reading and laughing uncontrollably. The power of Munsch.

I'll toss in Katie Davis's
Who Hops here, which appears to be a much younger book. But there's something about it that appeals to many 3 and 4 year-olds' sense of the absurd. "Who hops?/Frogs hop./Rabbits hop./Kangaroos hop./Cows hop." (picture of very startled purple cow, who on the next page thinks, "It would never work.") And it goes on from there.

A quick note on Ruth Krauss, author of The Backward Day. She also wrote the great
A Hole is to Dig, illustrated in 1952 by the young Maurice Sendak. It's sweet and offbeat -- not hilarious, although it has its smiling moments. It's a series of definitions which aren't really, like "A hole is to dig," or "A hand is to hold." Her "a face is so you can make faces" attracted a little flack from critics, who felt Ms. Krauss was encouraging rude behavior. Ah, the Fifties.

Love,

Deborah