Animals and magic in the great early chapter books

Dear Aunt Debbie,

Your breadth of book knowledge makes me so happy. Now I'm excited to read more of the books you recommended for 13-year-old Jack!

Today I'm responding to another reader request. Chloe, a friend from college and mother of Jackson, writes:

Jackson (nearly 5) has finally been showing interest in beginning chapter books -- we've been reading Winnie the Pooh (which he seems to tolerate) and at school they just finished Charlotte's Web (which he loved). What are the great early chapter books -- that have ZERO Ninja Turtles in them -- that we can read to him? He can't read yet on his own. He is that classic boy-kid who loves superheroes as much as he loves animals...ok, maybe superheroes a little more.

Chloe, you're at a fabulous point!

Our pages of book lists (over there on the right) are a good place to start. Check out Early chapter books and the sections on "Diaper bag books" and "Short chapter books" on the Learning to read books page.

Aunt Debbie has already pointed you to My Father's Dragon, by Ruth Stiles Gannett, and some thoughts on the transition to chapter books, with its possible pitfalls (the Stuart Little problem!).

Knowing the intense love of animals going on in your house, a few specific recommendations:

The Doctor Dolittle series, by Hugh Lofting. The veterinarian Doctor Dolittle can speak and understand animal languages -- not through any kind of magic, but because he pays attention, bonds with the animals, and is open to learning from his parrot, Polynesia. Some books are narrated by 9-year-old Tommy Stubbins, who becomes Doctor Dolittle's apprentice. Bonus: chapters are short, and the animal characters are all well-drawn.

Wind in the Willows, by Kenneth Grahame. The version we love is slightly abridged, but gorgeously illustrated by Inga Moore -- pictures on almost every page. Mole, Water Rat, Mr. Badger, and the indomitable Toad of Toad Hall are vivid companions.  Right now the girls and I are reading Inga Moore's version of The Secret Garden (first time for Isabel, a re-read for Eleanor). Moore's illustrations break open books that would otherwise be inaccessible to most 5-year-olds.

The Cricket in Times Square, by George Selden, might also be a hit. The animal characters are wonderful, and, like Doctor Dolittle, it has a nice young boy as protagonist. (Also like Doctor Dolittle, there's some unfortunate racial stereotyping -- see blog posts linked above.)

Let's throw in a little magic:

The Amazing World of Stuart, by Sara Pennypacker, was one of Isabel's favorite early chapter books last year. In it, 8-year-old Stuart makes himself a cape out of 100 ties, and suddenly gains superpowers. The catch: he has a different power each day, and doesn't know what it will be.

Half Magic, by Edward Eager. This has become one of my favorite gifts to give kids in the 5-7 age range. Four siblings find a magic coin, which grants wishes -- but, it turns out, only half of what they ask for, so they have to get creative. Eager's writing is totally engaging and terribly funny. If you and Jackson like this one, he has several more in the series.

Isabel's love of superheroes has found a natural extension in the Narnia books and D'Aulaire's Greek Myths and Norse Myths. (As you may have noticed, we're on a real mythology kick over here.) If you're up for some graphic novel action, I can't say enough good things about George O'Connor's Olympians series.

Then there's always Roald Dahl, who tosses in fine sprinklings of magic and makes for a gripping read-aloud, though the undercurrent of misanthropy always turns me off a little.

Finally, two more that don't fall into either the animal or superhero/magic categories, but which we've loved as entry-level chapter books for their depiction of kids:

Jamie and Angus, by Anne Fine, focuses on the relationship between a boy (Jamie) and his stuffed Highland bull (Angus). It is fine and tender, with a nice British flavor.

Anna Hibiscus, by Nigerian storyteller Atinuke, is also wonderfully warm, and provides a window into life in an African city. Lots to enjoy and discuss.

Do let us know if any of these are a hit with Jackson!

Love, Annie

Dahl, a little less mean

Dear Aunt Debbie,

Of course, just after writing about my mixed feelings for Roald Dahl last week, we cracked open one of your birthday presents for Eleanor, a slim, beautifully illustrated picture book with all the adventure and none of the nastiness I've come to expect of him.

The Minpins begins:

Little Billy's mother was always telling him exactly what he was allowed to do and what he was not allowed to do.

All the things he was allowed to do were boring.  All the things he was not allowed to do were exciting.

One of the things he was NEVER NEVER allowed to do, the most exciting of them all, was to go out through the garden gate all by himself and explore the world beyond.

Of course, the majority of the story involves Little Billy doing exactly that.  Inspired by a voice in his ear that he thinks of as the Devil, he hops out the window and runs off to explore the Forest of Sin, though his mother has warned him of the horrible creatures living there: Whangdoodles, Hornswogglers, Snozzwanglers, Vermicious Knids, and the Terrible Bloodsuckling Toothpluckling Stonechuckling Spittler.  (Okay, I admit that so far it sounds very Dahl-like.)

Once in the forest, Little Billy is chased by a monster he can hear and smell but not quite see -- the puffs of smoke are too great.  He climbs a tree to get away, and finds himself face-to-face with first one, and then hundreds, of Minpins: tiny people who live inside the trees.  The horror of the monster below is forgotten as Little Billy peers into their miniature rooms through postage-stamp sized windows.  The illustrations, by Patrick Benson, are intense and lovely in equal measure.

The Minpins are friendly as can be, and show Little Billy how they live, foraging for food and exploring on the backs of all the birds in the forest.

They urge him not to climb back down the tree, as the monster who was chasing him -- the Red-Hot Smoke Belching Gruncher -- is waiting below.  Little Billy learns about the Gruncher from the Minpins, devises a plan to destroy him, and enlists the Minpins' help in doing so.  He's calm in the face of danger, and earns the respect of the Minpins.  Plus, he gets to fly on the back of a very large swan.

The Gruncher is a funny creation: from the beginning to the end of the story, we get only glimpses of him through the smoke.  There's none of the usual Roald Dahl detail -- the Gruncher is a fuzzy nightmare creature, not a specific terror.  What sticks, and what has captured both Eleanor and Isabel's attention, is the wonder of Little Billy's meeting the Minpins.  Little people, as we've written about before (also here and here), are endlessly fascinating, and there's a sense of wonder in Little Billy's ultimate explorations.

That's the way The Minpins ends, with this sense of wonder in Dahl's final words to the reader:

Watch the birds as they fly above your heads and, who knows, you might well spy a tiny creature riding high on the back of a swallow or a raven.  Watch the robin especially because it always flies low, and you might see a nervous young Minpin perched on the feathers having its first flying lesson.  And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places.  

Those who don't believe in magic will never find it.

Love, Annie

My love/hate relationship with Roald Dahl

Dear Aunt Debbie,

I've often found our family's taste to be out of the mainstream; I've even been known to take a perverse pride in it.  That being said, I'm sorry that your favorites this year didn't win the big awards.  Ah, well.  Maybe next year?

I am, happily, writing to you from my maternity leave (or rather, in Dept. of Education parlance, my Restoration of Health leave, which comes before my Maternity and Childcare leaves.  Each of these, you understand, requires separate forms).  In any case, I've finished up my end-of-semester grading and am able to rest a bit and prepare for the arrival of Barleybee, who's due in a few weeks.  So there's a maternity leave from the blog pending, but right now, I'm back!

Thank you for the fabulous birthday gifts for Eleanor (and Isabel, and Barleybee) -- we've been reading new books from you since opening them last night.  As always, you are an amazing gift-giver.

The book I want to focus on tonight came from you for Christmas, and reading it to Eleanor has reminded me of how much I love -- and really, really don't love -- Roald Dahl.

Like pretty much every kid I know, I went through a huge Roald Dahl phase in elementary school.  I've read most of his novels, and scenes from several of them -- Danny the Champion of the World, James and the Giant Peach, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory -- are ingrained in my mind.  I have vivid memories of lying to my mother about how much I had left to read and sneaking an extra chapter in before bedtime: these were addictive, thrilling page-turners, filled with heroic kids and mostly ineffectual or evil adults; modern, super-readable fairy tales.  Jeff remembers loving Dahl as well.  Tonight when we talked about it, he referred to a "gleefully malevolent juvenile quality that spoke to me as a ten-year-old boy."  His aunt Karen, who teaches elementary school in Texas, reports that her 3rd graders love Dahl more than just about anyone, from the fabulous plots to cliffhangers and the fart-joke humor.

Even as a kid, though, there were moments that made me queasy.  There's a lot of straight-up meanness in Dahl's work, not only in books like The Twits, which Jeff remembers as "an exercise in sustained cruelty," but in some of the books containing his most empathetic characters.  Reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and now The BFG to Eleanor, it's hard not to feel that Roald Dahl just didn't like people very much.  Aside from one main character at a time -- Charlie, Sophie, Matilda -- the supporting cast is treated with an off-hand cruelty that's quite off-putting.  In The BFG, Dahl takes equal delight in describing farts ("whizz-poppers"), good dreams that the BFG catches and puts in jars, and the bone-crunching bloody exploits of the mean hairy giants who gallop off every night to eat people in all corners of the world.  When the bad giants are caught at the end, they're sentenced to a sadistic imprisonment, forced to eat repulsive snozzcumbers in a pit while being watched by tourists.  Somehow, it feels more cruel than killing them off.

Eleanor loved The BFG. She loved the heroine, Sophie, who is brave and intelligent and gets to ride in a friendly giant's ear.  She loved the BFG, with his charming way of mangling words and his vocation of blowing good dreams into the ears of sleeping children.  She was on tenterhooks whenever Sophie was in danger of being discovered by the mean giants, jumping around on the couch or covering her head with a pillow.  As I read her the many descriptions of giants eating "human beans," however, or the almost as gross descriptions of hairy giant bellies and slobbery wet giant mouths, I couldn't help wondering if I were setting her up for nightmares.

Maybe these are books better read by kids alone, and a few years older.  I can't decide -- it's hard to separate out the pleasure from the meanness.

Love, Annie

Max, Ruby, and how to deal with terrible adaptations

Dear Aunt Debbie,

You raise a complicated question, in this era of adaptations and TV spinoffs and You Tube clips. When should we allow our kids to watch a movie adaptation before reading a book, especially if the book is something they're not quite ready for? We try to be purists where we can (or, more accurately, where we feel it would be blasphemous for Eleanor to get a sub-par impression of a character first), but it's not that simple.

So: we read the abridged Wizard of Oz just before watching the movie, and had good conversations about the differences between the two. When Eleanor discovered the Disney Peter Pan book at our local coffee shop, and then was given the movie by her grandparents, we followed it up quickly with a good abridged version as well. But when she followed the same path to the Disney Alice in Wonderland, which is a bizarre movie and bears little resemblance to the book, we let it stand. She's too young for the full-length Alice, and when she gets old enough, I think she'll enjoy it just as much even with the movie for background.

The more insidious adaptations for us at the moment are kids' TV shows. I've mentioned previously that the Little Bear books are better than the TV series; the same goes double for the adaptation of Rosemary Wells's Max books into the TV show "Max and Ruby" and all of its associated products, including books.

The original Max board books are perfect. Each, in ten pages, chronicles a small tussle between Max and his older sister Ruby: Ruby wants Max to eat his egg for breakfast (Max's Breakfast); Ruby gives Max a lobster toy for his birthday, and he's scared of it (Max's Birthday) ; Max is in love with Ruby's doll Emily, and wants to play with her (Max's Toys). Ruby is a big sister trying to exert control, and Max wants to do things his own way, and they are very, very funny. I can't do justice to quite how funny they are without a scanner; when our new one comes, I'll add to this post the image of Max wrapped up in Ruby's stuffed snake after he can't find his red rubber elephant to sleep with in Max's Bedtime.  (As promised.)

There were originally eight Max board books; as far as I can tell, four of them are now out of print: Max's First Word (Ruby tries to get Max to say a word other than "Bang"); Max's Bath; Max's Ride (a great concept book, as Max goes over, under, etc.); and Max's New Suit (Ruby tries to make Max wear his new suit for her party).

I'm taking the time to list them all here, because it's practically impossible to find them by doing a search in the mess of dreadful TV-related "Max and Ruby" books. Ruby, in the TV show and the spinoff books, sounds like somebody's whiny grandma, nagging her way through every lengthy story. (In our house, by contrast, Jeff reads Ruby with a faint Chicago accent -- a nice flat "A." Works perfectly.) The other problem with the series is that, when you enlarge the focus from just Max and Ruby, their lack of parents becomes conspicuous. In the board books, they're the only characters, but it doesn't seem odd: every pair of siblings has some alone time. In the TV show, they apparently live alone in a gigantic house with bizarre computer-generated wallpaper (sombreros in the kitchen). Grandma is in a house nearby, and there are neighbors and friends, but parents just aren't mentioned. This is weird.

Of course, Eleanor loves the show. I've done my best to discourage her from watching it, which has worked somewhat, but her pure experience of Max and Ruby as I knew them from my brother's childhood and before we discovered the TV show has been sullied. I'm sure it won't be the last time.

Love, Annie