A moose named Mona

Dear Annie,

I trust your brief beach vacation is relaxing and entertaining.

As promised, I've found
The Guest by James Marshall. It's  a wonderful friendship story in the tradition of George and Martha.  Unfortunately it's currently out of print, but worth searching for in a library or alibris.

"One rainy afternoon while Mona was practicing her scales," it starts, "she had the oddest feeling.  'I must be catching the flu,' she said to herself."

But it turns out to be Maurice, a pink-shelled snail, walking up her back.  She offers him chocolate milk and cookies, he tells her his life has been getting boring, and she invites him to be her guest.  They play and do chores together.  Mona is shocked when Maurice tells her that in France they eat snails: "I'm told we are very tasty."

After some days, Maurice gets moody, then disappears.  Mona is depressed, worries that he's gone to France, makes mistakes at her job at Flora's Cafe, and posts a sign:

 Finally, while she's playing the piano yet again, Maurice reappears -- with his family! He introduces her to 20 snails -- all with French names -- but never points out which is his spouse, if he has one.  A good time is had by all.

I'm fond of the gentle friendship of this book and of course the fact that the main character is both a moose and bears the name of one of my children.  But it also has the nagging little problem of part-time dad, epitomized in the classic Make Way for Ducklings, by Robert McCloskey. In that, father duck leaves mom to raise the kids alone and walk them across Boston to the new home he's found.  In this, Maurice found life with 19 or 20 children to take care of "was getting boring," so he left.  Ah, the little contradictions of children's literature.  But it's still so entertaining...

Love,

Deborah

The Stupids Blog

Dear Aunt Debbie,

James Marshall is such a nutsy joy.  The George and Martha books were a staple of my childhood, and they wear well with time.  How can you not love George pouring Martha's pea soup into his slippers under the table after she brings him an eleventh bowl because he's been lying to her about how much he loves it?  One of the joys of the books for me is that George and Martha each take turns going overboard about things and being the more sensible one -- they're both a little odd, and totally pleasing.

Looking up books to blog tonight, I was surprised to find that some of the books I think of as quintessentially James Marshall were actually written by other authors, and credit Marshall as the illustrator.  I knew this was true about the fabulous Piggy in the Puddle, by Charlotte Pomerantz, but didn't realize that Harry G. Allard was the author of both Miss Nelson is Missing (which I never really liked -- always thought it was a little creepy) and the Stupids books.

The Stupids became a major force in my life when I was about 10 or 12, and my mom discovered them at work.  They're a sublimely stupid family: Mom, Dad, two kids, Grandpa, a dog named Kitty, and a cat named Xylophone (the animals are the only ones with any brains).  Our favorite was 
The Stupids Die, in which the lights go out and the Stupids decide they must be dead.  While they're debating about what to do now that they're dead, and how they feel, Kitty and Xylophone go down into the basement and repair the fuse.  The lights come on again.  The Stupids decide that they must be in heaven.  Then Grandpa drives his motorcycle through the wall and tells them, "This isn't heaven!  It's Iowa!"

The way I am telling this is not nearly as funny as the way Marshall and Allard do it -- I can remember laughing so hard that tears ran down my cheeks.  And then "The Stupids Do ____" became part of our family vocabulary.  We drove to pick Michael up at sleepaway camp and decided to visit FDR's house in Hyde Park, but it was just off our map and when we finally stopped to ask for directions, we realized that we'd overshot it by two hours.  Oh well, "The Stupids Go to Hyde Park!"  So we went to visit some friends in Great Barrington instead, but they weren't home, so we canoed around their lake in circles for a bit ("The Stupids Go Canoeing"), and then drove home.  After stopping for dinner, we got back on the road -- going the wrong way.  Which my parents realized two hours later ("The Stupids Go Home.").  Really useful, especially on driving trips.

I can't quite believe that "The Stupids Die" was allowed into publication as a title for a picture book -- but there's something about Marshall's good-natured drawings of people who are clearly both dumb as rocks and perfectly happy that takes the sting out of the words.  He must have been a fun guy.

Love, Annie

Dinner had to wait...

Dear Annie,

There's so much demoralizing going on about government funding.  I don't understand how we can all agree that education is crucial to the future of the country, then cut its funding.  I must say I'm kinda fond of the slogan your mother is pushing (echoes of Grandpa Frank, rest his soul): "Son of a bitch!  Tax the rich!"

And as long as we're talking about family, I got a lovely call from cousin Kate (Astoria, Oregon) tonight just as dinner was going on the table.  She was standing in a bookstore in need of a consultation on what to buy for the children of a family she's visiting.  Dinner had to wait.

She was looking for books for three kids: a pre-schooler (maybe 4 years old), a first-grader, and a fifth grader.  We started with the fifth grader.  I rejected The Magician's Elephant by Kate DiCamillo: tries too hard to be profound, but ends as a parable that didn't work for me.  Kate introduced our family to
The Wheel on the School, a wonderful Newbery winner by Meinert DeJong.  The children in a one-room schoolhouse set out to find a wagon wheel to put on the roof of their school (we're in 19th century Holland here) so that cranes will build nests in their town.  Each child goes on a separate adventure, but the exceptional nature of the book has to do with three generations in the town all becoming involved.  There are two climactic scenes -- both involving the ocean and dikes -- that always make me wonder why this hasn't been turned into a gem of a movie, preferably by a small British studio.

But the bookstore in question didn't have it.  Kate has such a good knowledge (albeit a bit rusty: her daughters are in their mid 20s) of classic children's literature.  I suggested
The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin, a classic and engaging mystery, as you have pointed out. We had a winner.

On to the little kids. We kicked around a few, then the Frog and Toad books came up.  The only question there was whether to give them to the first grader to read on his own, or to the pre-schooler to be read to.  There Kate was in the early reader section, which is where the Frog and Toad books are usually shelved, and she spotted some Fox books. 

One of the many enlightened policies of  the progressive school Lizzie and Mona went to for the early grades was to use the Fox books as the introductory reader in first grade.  Fox is an endearingly rebellious adolescent with whom any first grader can identify.   He's just straightforwardly funny, through a dozen or so books.  The byline on the cover of the Fox books is Edward Marshall, which might lead you to believe (erroneously) that they're not by the great James Marshall, author of the George and Martha books and the Miss Nelson books, among others.  There was a dispute with a publisher, and Marshall sold the Fox books to someone else, using his middle name for a byline, saying Edward was his cousin.  There's a fun anecdote about that, which you can discover here.

So the verdict was Frog and Toad as a read-aloud for the four year-old.  And a couple of Fox books for first grader.  A good time was had by all.

Love,

Deborah