Classics for the e-reader

Dear Aunt Debbie,

I agree with you about the generally anodyne quality of Eric Hill's Spot books -- nothing wrong with them, they're just not that interesting. But even before watching that wonderful video of Hill reading aloud Where's Spot? with different voices, I confess I've always liked the understated weirdness of the book. Why are there wild animals hiding in every nook and cranny of Spot's house? Totally unexplained. Sally, the searching mother dog, seems completely unperturbed by a bear, a lion, a hippopotamus. A crocodile under the pink ruffly bedcover? Yeah, whatever. Especially when compared to Spot Goes to the Farm (spoiler alert: he discovers farm animals) and the other Spot books, Where's Spot? gives you something to work with.

A brief respite of health has given way to another virus for Will, on the eve of our vacation and then -- gulp -- our move to a new house at the end of July. We're all feeling a little discombobulated. A friend of mine recently asked for recommendations for toddler-appropriate books about moving to a new house -- any good ideas? We took one out of the library a little while ago about a girl moving to a new house with her stuffed animal elephant, who grows to her size and has a tea party with her. I can't for the life of me remember the title, but it had what I assume is the basic Moving Narrative: "This new house is strange. I discover things I like about it! I make a friend! This new house is great."

Come to think of it, are there any Moving Books you'd recommend for Eleanor and Isabel's ages? Eleanor, in particular, is feeling deeply nostalgic about leaving the apartment where she's lived her whole life, and concerned about what it will feel like to move. Maybe it's time for Anastasia Krupnik.

Packing the right books (and enough of them) for vacation with children of different ages has always posed some difficulty for me. This year we face a longer trip than usual, and Eleanor's increased reading speed -- she's devouring roughly a chapter book a day this summer -- had me stymied. Help came from my awesome mother, who has loaned us her Kindle and given us permission to load it up with Eleanor-appropriate books. This is a great travel solution. I've already borrowed several books from the library -- Ruth Chew, Edward Eager -- and have found a motherload of free classics.

I have very mixed feelings about Amazon as a company, and about reading on a device rather than holding paper and ink in my hands. Still, it's hard not to love the ability to download classic fairy tales for free, not to mention E. Nesbit (seriously -- we still haven't written about E. Nesbit?), Treasure Island, all the Oz books, and more. The Amazon site does a poor job of aggregating these together into a decent list, which I found surprising. In searching around online, I came across this blog, which pulls together a number of interesting choices.

Among them: the Twins series, by Lucy Fitch Perkins. In each of these books, published between 1911 and 1938, Perkins writes about a pair of twins living in a country somewhere in the world (The Scotch twins, The Eskimo Twins, The Italian Twins). Some are set in the early 1900s, and some are historical fiction. I remember reading The Spartan Twins in what must have been a book from your parents' childhood, and being fascinated by elements of Spartan culture. This blog has an excellent rundown of the plots of the books, and notes how many of them deal subtly with the sexism inherent in many of the cultures profiled. I may need to sneak the Kindle away from Eleanor at some point over vacation to refresh my memory.

She hasn't waited for vacation to start dipping into it, of course. On non-school nights, we allow the girls to stay up with reading lights in bed. Earlier this week, Eleanor emerged an hour and a half past bedtime, raving about how much she loved Edward Eager's Seven-Day Magic: "The adventure they're having is exactly the kind of adventure I'd like to have!"

One of the perils of the e-reader format: she thought she was reading E. Nesbit's Five Children and It. (Both books center on five children finding a magical creature.) Eleanor caught a reference to Half Magic, and assumed that E. Nesbit was writing after Edward Eager. When I explained that it was the opposite -- that Eager had been inspired by Nesbit, and sometimes wrote about her in his books -- Eleanor practically jumped up and down: "That is SO COOL!"

Not for the first time: I love raising a reader.

Love, Annie

The American Academy of Pediatrics and Spot

Dear Annie,

Oooh, family epidemics: the pits.  I'm so sorry you guys have been so miserable.  It reminds me of a wonderful scene in Jane Smiley's novella The Age of Grief.  If all our fiction shelves weren't wrapped in plastic while the kitchen is being redone, I'd quote from it at length.  The flu hits the entire family sequentially in that book, striking the parents in overlapping fashion.  Smiley does misery very well.

Two news events since last we posted seem worth noting today.  The American Academy of Pediatrics is now officially recommending that parents read aloud to their children starting in infancy.  They cite both language development and strengthening of parent-child relationships.  Hey, we knew that -- but it's still good to hear it from the family doctors of this world.  Just yesterday, a regular customer who's about to become a grandfather asked me about when to start reading to babies, and what to read.

This of course is one of our big themes -- see Books for Babies in list at right -- with lots of pointers in our posts. 

I also wanted to note the passing of Eric Hill, creator of the Spot books.  As you know, they've never been high on my list, and I have a particular dislike of Spot's First Christmas, which I've been forced to read every Christmas eve for the past 20 years.  But I must admit I found his obit in The Washington Post fascinating.

Hill is credited with creating the lift-the-flap book concept back in 1980 with his first book, the iconic
Where's Spot?   I never knew.  I also discovered a bit of the Spot origin story which my father, your grandpa, would have appreciated.  Eric Hill, who was 15 years younger than grandpa, had this to say about Spot's markings:

As a child, during the war, I drew Spitfires and Messerschmitts.  With Spot, I found that I had designed a fuselage! His spot is on his side, the roundel marking of an English fighter plane, and the color bar of his tail is the color stripes of a plane’s rudder.

Take a look: 

The Spitfire's in there for Grandpa, who loved airplanes. I can imagine him pointing out to a grandchild, look, that doggie looks just like a Spitfire.  

I've always felt that Spot was too bland, and (especially in the Christmas book) annoying (always demanding his presents).  Hill phrased the blandness differently:

There is no violence in the books. No pussycats get chased. ... He is a happy dog, a little naughty at times, but predictable.  Children like this.

Cozily Predictable walks a fine line, easily crossing over into the Land of Boring.  But my opinion of Eric Hill has gone way up after viewing a video of him reading Where's Spot out loud to a stuffed toy Spot.  It appears to have been done four years ago, when Hill was 82.  The American Academy of Pediatrics should post it: this man knows how to make a bland book a lot of fun.  He adlibs all the way through, and even does voices -- although not as good as yours and Jeff's.



So thanks to Eric Hill for never being bored with a book he's read thousands of times.  Rest in peace.

Love,

Deborah

Christmas Eve

Dear Annie,

This is my last post before Christmas, so here's what the four of us will be reading on Christmas Eve:

Starting from the bottom:

The two Night Before Christmas versions blogged earlier this month.

 A facsimile edition of the 1939 Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer written for the Montgomery Ward department stores.  This is very far from my favorite Christmas song.  I think of it as the ultimate Washington scenario: odd guy gets bullied until someone in power decides he's useful, at which point bullies tell him he'll go down in history.  But hey, the book showed up in our pile of Christmas tradition many years ago.

The Polar Express. by Chris Van Allsburg What can I say?  It's a wonderful classic with slightly fascist imagery.  We all love it.

Jingle Bugs, by David Carter.  He's done quite a few bug pop-up books.  Some of the lines from this one: "Who's in the chimney, warm and snug?" [pull tab, a Santa with buggy eyes and antennae pops out of a chimney] "Ho, ho, ho!  It's Santa Bug!"  This goes on through "jingle bugs swinging to and fro," "Gift-wrapped bugs for you and me,"  and on and on.  Pop-ups are very well engineered.

The Gift of the Magi, by O. Henry.  The wonderful story of hair sold to buy a watch chain for a watch sold to buy combs for the hair.  We read the Lisbeth-Zwerger illustrated edition, still beautifully in print.  I've never understood why they didn't just return the combs and go buy back the watch, but I guess that's a story for another day.

Spot's First Christmas, by Eric Hill.  This is the one that, per Grandma's advice, I would have thrown out -- but I realized it too late, alas. Also, it was given to the girls by a friend whom we love.  It's inane, it doesn't rhyme, it's full of Spot and his mother getting ready for Christmas, mostly with Spot wanting to know what presents he's getting.  Our girls have a weird sentimental attachment to it.  I think they're also amused by how much I dislike it.  There was a little serious discussion about giving it to Isabel for Christmas this year, given her dog obsession.  I was willing to mail it if Lizzie and Mona wanted to buy it, but the decision was finally that they worried that you'd feel the same way about it that I do, and that you'd hold it against them for years.  You have been spared.

The Story of Christmas, words from the Bible, illustrated by Jane Ray.  Part of the Christmas tradition of your mother's and my non-religious family was to read the King James Bible story of Jesus' birth.  Our parents felt, as I did with my kids, that if you're going to get the pagan elements of the celebration, you should know the religious story on which it's based.  The language, needless to say, is beautiful.  And Jane Ray's illustrations in this out-of-print books are gorgeous.  All the characters are very middle eastern Semitic-looking, except for an occasional blond angel.

A Christmas Story, by Mary Chalmers, which I remember owning in miniature edition as a child, tells how a girl named Elizabeth, along with Harry Dog, Hilary Cat, and Alice Rabbit find and and trim a tree.  When they discover there is no star for the top, Elizabeth goes out in the snow to find one.  She encounters one of the best-named characters in children's literature: "the Santa Claus for rabbits and other small animals."  He gives her a star, which she carried home triumphantly.  The last word in the book is, "There!." Ahh.

Babar and Father Christmas is one of the longer ones, but totally enjoyable. Babar sets off to find Father Christmas to ask him to deliver to the Elephants' country.  One of the challenges of the book is pronouncing PRJMNESWE, the town in Bohemia near which Father Christmas lives.  Babar finally finds him, and they work out a deal which results in no additional work for the old guy, but joy and presents for the little elephants.

And last -- and best, in many of our opinions -- is The Story of Holly and Ivy, by Rumer Godden, illustrated by Barbara Cooney.   An orphan wandering alone in a small town, a doll in a toy shop, and a slightly sad middle-aged woman married to a policeman all wish for each other, and get their wishes.  This is such a wonderful book that someday -- maybe next December -- I'll devote a whole entry to it.  It's long, it's magical.  We love it.

It's a huge pile.  It takes a couple of hours to read them all.  In recent years we've pulled out one of the three biggest --Holly and Ivy, Babar, or The Gift of the Magi -- to read on the 22nd or 23rd, so that we still have time to race off to our rooms to wrap gifts before midnight Christmas Eve. 

Happy Christmas to all.

Love,

Deborah