Cynical politics and awesome first ladies

Dear Aunt Debbie,

And Happy Presidents' Day to you!  Bad Kitty sounds like a funny way to get into the topic of politics, though perhaps, as you say, a tad cynical for a first time through.  Then again, it's hard not to feel cynical these days when trying to explain the democratic process to one's children.  We've had a few conversations about the presidential election with Eleanor -- nothing about the Electoral College, so I'm afraid I'm no help on that front, but a few of those Major Conversations that pop up when you're not expecting them as a parent, often just before bedtime: What color is God's skin?  What happens when we die?  What's the difference between Democrats and Republicans?

We read Duck for President a while back, and while I adore Doreen Cronin and Betsy Lewin's Dooby Dooby Moo, I remember not loving this one as much.  It's wacky, as their books about the animals on Farmer Brown's farm tend to be, but at least when we last picked it up, also struck me as aimed at slightly older, more savvy readers.  Maybe worth picking up again.

The most presidential book we own at the moment is Eleanor's new book of  Obama paper dolls, which my father bought for her birthday.  They're Tom Tierney dolls -- the best paper doll artist ever, and worthy of a complete post someday soon.  It's laudatory, and the text inside is mostly about the clothes.  I love Tom Tierney.  (If you're feeling quite cynical and a little more adult, but still want an activity book, I'd recommend the Idiots' Books mix and match book Build Your Own President, created by my former college classmates, Matthew Swanson and Robbi Behr.)

Rachel at Even in Australia posted recently about historical president books.  Her post made me realize that I've never written here about the first book you gave Eleanor, sent to us mere weeks after she was born: Amelia and Eleanor Go for a Ride, by Pam Munoz Ryan, illustrated by Brian Selznick.

The Eleanor of the title is, of course, Eleanor Roosevelt; Amelia is Amelia Earhart, and apparently the two women were friends in real life.  Ryan draws inspiration from an actual historical episode: an evening when Amelia joined Eleanor for dinner at the White House, and later in the evening the two went flying in an airplane together.  In the fictionalized version, the flight is a spur of the moment decision, and Amelia and Eleanor are the only ones in the plane, swooping over Washington DC at night.  They return to the White House only to go out again, so that Eleanor can take Amelia for a spin in her new car.  The back of the book provides accurate historical information: there were other pilots on the plane, it was arranged ahead of time, Earhart didn't fly it the whole way, etc.  I like having the facts laid out at the end, but allowing for a little bit of fantasy in the plot.

Our Eleanor is a big Eleanor Roosevelt fan, and the depiction of Roosevelt and Earhart is compelling.  They're both presented as strong-willed, charismatic women who aren't shy about pursuing their interests.  And of course, Selznick's drawings are fantastic -- I didn't make the connection until picking the book up again last week that of course these portraits and DC landscapes were penned by the artist and writer who created Hugo Cabret and Wonderstruck.  What an awesome man.  And what awesome women.

Love, Annie

A book to watch

Dear Annie,

I hope your Thanksgiving was a good one.  We had relatives from Bob's side of the family and our Lizzie here with us.  On Friday night, in part because I was so curious about it, some of us went to see Hugo, the new Martin Scorsese movie based on The Invention of Hugo Cabret, by Brian Selznick, which we've written about here.

The book is a visual feat: the story is told alternately in words and in pictures.  Here are two short sequences:

Both those scenes are in the movie, with the same emotional meaning as in Selznick's illustrations.  The film stays very true to the look and feel of the book -- one feels immersed in it, and I don't think that's because it was in 3-D.  Hugo is a12 year-old boy living hidden in a Paris railway station, and much of the film is shot from the perspective of someone shorter than the adults around him. 

The plot swings around two historical artifacts and the characters' emotions tangled up in them.  One is a damaged mechanical man -- an "automaton" -- which Hugo hopes to make work again.  The other has to do with the films of a very early movie-maker, Georges Méliès.  My recollection of the book was that the suspense surrounding the automaton was primary, and the films secondary.  In the movie, the priorities are reversed.  Scorsese, a master filmmaker, offers a history of early film -- and some hilarious and fascinating clips from  old movies.  The history is wonderful, the plot remains mostly true to the book, and true to Selznick's emotionally powerful main character.

I wonder what your father (my brother-in-law), who's so knowledgeable about film, will think of it.  John?

It's almost always disappointing to see what the movie industry does to good kids' books, but this time I think Scorsese made a film that's both his own, and one true to the book.  My biggest problem with the film was the 3-D.  This may be my inner Luddite speaking, but I really didn't see the point of making gears jump out of the screen, snowflakes appear to fall on the audience, or even the crowd scenes be in-your-face.  The film itself is enough to pull you in.  And it really does.

Love,

Deborah

Dolls past and present

Dear Annie,

I remember that edition of Hitty.   I remember that I read it, but not much else about it.  I carry it at the store, and occasionally a grandma will come in looking for it.  But it's not an old classic lots of people gravitate toward.  (Judy [mother of Annie, sister of me]: do you have any memories of it?)

The old and wonderful book I have that I remember receiving at too late an age is Sara Crewe or What Happened at Miss Minchin's:

It's old and fragile.  The copyright page says 1888.  It's the novella that Frances Hodgson Burnett later turned into a play (1902) and then A Little Princess (1905).  I was 12 or 13 when British friends of my parents brought it to me; I felt far too old for such a child's book at the time, although I think I did appreciate the fact that I was being given an antique.  There are just a handful of full-page illustrations.

"She slowly advanced into the parlor, clutching her doll."

I came to appreciate A Little Princess as an adult, reading it with my own kids.

The doll book I remember loving as a child was Rumer Godden's
The Doll's House, about a group of dolls brought together in an old dollhouse.  They're all from different eras and made of different materials.  The salt-of-the-earth central character -- Tottie Plantaganet -- is an old simple wooden doll.  The evil manipulative character, named Marchpane, is a beautiful china doll. This book taught me the term celluloid doll, which was a kind of brittle early plastic (wikipedia tells me it's still used for ping pong balls).  Birdie, the celluloid doll in the Doll's House, is lovely and sweet and slightly ethereal.   Celluloid is highly flammable, and there's an awful climactic scene in which Birdie sacrifices herself in order to save a child doll from flames.   Your household can probably wait a few years before reading it, but the wonderfully varied characters and the situation stayed with me for a long time.

As long as we're on the subject of books about dolls, I'll throw in a lovely contemporary one:
The Doll People.  It's by Ann Martin, of Baby-Sitters Club fame, and Laura Godwin.  It's the first of a series of three.  Brian Selznick, the wonderful author and illustrator I was talking about a few posts back, did the many illustrations.  You have your basic 100 year-old dollhouse, inhabited by a family that has played with many generations of the same human family.  Suddenly, the Funcrafts move in next door.  They are (shudder) plastic, which dictates their more energetic, fearless personalities because they're unbreakable.  The adults are skeptical, but of course the daughters from both families become friends and solve a 45 year-old mystery together.  The story is gentle and the pictures are great: it makes a good younger read-aloud.  For several years I had a colleague at the store whose two sons loved this book, and I watched her persuade many families that despite the gender-aversion some boys go through, this is a great book for everyone.  It's full of adventure, and a good way to nudge the no-girls crowd back into a wider range of books.

And a last question for you on the subject of dolls.  Our family has always been fond of Eleanor's first major doll, whom she named after my second-born.  Has Mona Baby been passed to a new generation, or does Eleanor just occasionally let Isabel do stuff with her, as described in your last post?

Love,

Deborah

The inner life

Dear Annie,

Returning briefly to Brian Selznick, author of Wonderstruck (and many more): BEA has put up a video of his speech here.  I strongly recommend skipping the first five minutes and starting with his reading from the book. 

Today I thought I'd mention another speaker from that lovely breakfast: Kevin Henkes (pronounced with two syllables).  We've both written about him, here, here and here.   His youngest picture books are gentle and sweet; his older mouse picture books are full of personality.  And his middle-grade chapter books are a bit uneven, although I'm about to mention a new one which I like a lot.

Henkes spoke about Little White Rabbit, and the care, skill and thought that goes into creating an apparently simple book.















The video  is an interview with him about it.  Little White Rabbit is hopping along and wondering what it would be like to be as tall as the trees, as green as the grass, as still as a stone, etc.  One of the themes that Henkes says he keeps coming back to is "children absorbed by the inner life."  Little White Rabbit is by himself, observing the world and wondering about it.

He read a bit from his new chapter book, Junonia.  It's the story of turning-ten-year-old Alice, who's on a beach vacation with her parents.  Several old friends who planned to join them can't make it, and an unexpected guest brings his troubled six year-old daughter.  Alice spends a lot of time thinking on her own: some of it a bit dreamy, some angry and hurt.  Her reaction to the six year-old is a combination of trying very hard for empathy, but really not liking the child's self-centeredness.  Henkes does it all with a deft touch.  Alice longs to find a rare shell, the junonia. One always wonders how an author will handle desire for a longed-for object in middle-grade novels.  Do we get the satisfaction of discovery?  Do we learn from disappointment?  This ending brings in the longings of one of the adults in a lovely and unexpected way.  I really liked it.

Love,

Deborah  

Wonder in New York

Dear Annie,

I'm so happy the wombats were a hit.  I'm quite fond of both of those books.

Thinking about Book Expo America, where I was earlier this week, I realize I want to talk about one remarkable author and his new book, which has a lot of resonance with elements of your life.  Brian Selznick started his career as a bookseller, at Eeyore's Books for Children, a store to which your parents introduced me and where I suspect you spent a lot of time in your youth.

Selznick was one of the speakers at the Children's Book and Author Breakfast.  To the extent that the kids' book industry has superstars, he qualifies.  And he enhanced that image by appearing in a shiny gray suit and red shoes which practically glowed; he stepped out in front of the podium to show them off before speaking.  We all cheered.

He's been a quite wonderful illustrator and occasional author for decades, but his most amazing work came in 2007:
The Invention of Hugo Cabret. It's a story set in a Paris railroad station in the early 20th century and deals with, among other things, the history of silent film. About half the book is full-page drawings. The pictures aren't illustrations of the words; they pick up where the words leave off and continue the story in graphic form for pages, then cease and the author's words pick up the story from there.  It's quite wonderful.  Martin Scorcese, of all people, is making it into a 3-D movie this fall (trailer here).

The subject of Selznick's talk on Tuesday was his next book,Wonderstruck, even more heavily illustrated, but with a slightly different structure.  It's due out in September.  It tells alternating stories of two young people, one in 1977 and the other starting in 1927.  Rose, the girl from the earlier era, is deaf and her story is told completely in pictures.  The boy's story is in words.  I haven't read the whole thing yet, but  I watched two of my colleagues each read the entire book (we received advance copies) on the bus ride back from New York to DC.  They were riveted.

Here's part of Selznick's acknowledgments in the book, talking about a documentary called Through Deaf Eyes:

I was especially fascinated by a section about cinema and the new technology of sound, which was introduced into the movies in 1927.  Prior to this, both deaf and hearing populations could enjoy the cinema together.  Sound movies, for the first time, excluded the deaf.  That insight was the beginning of Rose's story.

So, resonance with your life: Eeyore's; history of film (your father's encyclopedic knowledge qualifies there); both of his parents, your grandparents, were deaf -- and you and your mom know ASL, don't you?  Oh, and I don't think I mentioned that Selznick, of course, lives in Brooklyn.  But let's add an element from the maternal side of your family: the Museum of Natural History, next to which my parents, your other grandparents, lived for much of your childhood.  I don't want to put in any spoilers, but Rose ends up on the lam in the museum of 1927:

He meticulously researched the museum of that era -- as he researches all his historical works.

The most magical moment of Selznick's talk was a brief reading from the book.  He started with a dream sequence of being chased by wolves (they silently get closer and closer), then read an introductory section about Ben, the 1977 boy.  Then he showed the opening sequence of Rose's story: closeup of a movie magazine, the picture pulls out to the magazine in Rose's hand, Rose looking out the window of her room.  We see a car pull up, a man knocks, Rose climbs out of her window and down a tree, then runs to the river with a note in her hand that says "Help me."  He projected more than 20 double-page spreads of pictures on the screens in a big banquet hall at the Javits Convention Center.  I can't tell you how long it took -- maybe two minutes?  There was not a single sound in the hall: no coughs,  no cell phones, no clinks of coffee cups.  Everyone was completely absorbed in the pictures.  Full of wonder.

Love,

Deborah