True love, picture book style

Dear Aunt Debbie,

Eleanor spent much of the day helping her cousins bake cookies for her Uncle Mice's wedding.  She has her own kid-sized apron, and has recently been fascinated with helping in the kitchen, especially when it has to do with baking.  Pretend Soup gets a good workout in our house, though the most-requested recipe in it is "Homemade Lemon-Lime Soda Pop."  Quesadillas are a big favorite too.

With all this wedding celebration, I've had love on my mind.  Two classic, slightly offbeat takes on true love keep recurring to me, both illustrated by Garth Williams. The first is a book I've mentioned once before: A Kiss for Little Bear.  It's the only one of the Little Bear books that contains a single story (the others each have four).  Little Bear makes a drawing for his grandmother, and asks Hen to take it to her.  Grandmother Bear loves the drawing, and asks Hen to take a kiss back to Little Bear.  But Hen wants to stop to chat, so she asks Frog to take the kiss.  The kiss is passed on until it reaches Little Skunk, who finds another little skunk, and they pass the kiss back and forth until Hen discovers them: "Too much kissing!"  The book ends with the skunks' wedding, and a fine picture of Little Bear as Best Man.

Else Holmelund Minarik's text is excellent, but what makes the book perfect are Williams's dry, funny illustrations.  The text: "Then Hen saw some friends.  She stopped to chat.  'Hello, Frog.  I have a kiss for Little Bear.  It is from his grandmother.  Will you take it to him, Frog?'  'Okay, said Frog.'"

The illustration:

And then there is the marvelous Home for a Bunny, by Margaret Wise Brown.  It is a poem of a book, about the arrival of spring and one little bunny's search for a home.  The opening lines always crack me up:

"Spring, Spring, Spring!" sang the frog.
"Spring!" said the groundhog.
"Spring, Spring, Spring!" sang the robin.
It was Spring.

Amid all this Spring activity, a bunny is looking for a home.  He asks the robin, the frog, and the groundhog about moving into their homes (lots of great opportunities for different voices here: high-pitched for the robin, low for the frog -- "Wog, wog, wog" -- and grumpy for the groundhog).  Eventually, he meets another bunny, who has a home under a rock, under the ground, and it's a happy ending:

"Can I come in?" 
said the bunny.
"Yes," said the bunny.
And so he did.

Love, Annie

Kitchen reading

Dear Annie,

Well, here I am in New York with Lizzie (20 yrs old) where she is about to embark on a three day adventure of making a wedding cake for her cousin Michael (your brother, of course) whose wedding day is Thursday.  The basic recipe is the same one he used to make your wedding cake eight years ago.

Which makes me think about cooking -- and although these kids are grown now, both Lizzie and Michael have been cooks since childhood.  The first kids' cookbook our household bonded with (Lizzie & Mona both) was
Klutz Kids Cooking. It's very kid-friendly in layout and choice of foods.  This is not high cuisine: the three we ended up making most were muffins with jelly baked inside, popcorn with cheese on it, and sloppy joes made by adding equal parts of ketchup and mustard to cooked ground meat.  And it comes with plastic measuring spoons which we still use.




Pretend SoupMolly Katzen, author of the Moosewood Cookbook and sequels, has done several cookbooks (vegetarian, of course) for kids. Pretend Soup, aimed at preschoolers, is definitely healthier than Klutz, but is also very clear and simple.  Each recipe has an adult page and then a clearly illustrated kids' page with all the steps in the recipe.  It gives you a fun way to play in the kitchen with little ones -- and still end up with lunch.  Katzen's book for older kids, Honest Pretzels (ages 8 and up) eliminates the parent pages and lays out what kids will need (both ingredients and equipment) and how much time the recipe will take, before taking the reader through the (once again) well-illustrated step-by-step.  The first complete meal Lizzie and Mona ever cooked for us came from Honest Pretzels: it was tacos made with homemade tortillas.  Excellent, and heart-warming too.


Teens CookThen there was the summer when the girls were in middle school and I had brought home Teens Cook.  This books is sophisticated enough for an experienced teenage cook, but still clear and with a great choice of recipes.  Mona points out that the photographs of every dish were very helpful, both deciding what to cook, then figuring out how to do it.  Anyway, that summer, I came home from work many evenings to dinner from the cookbook, lovingly prepared by my girls.  I have fond memories of potstickers, made with wonton wraps and a really good homemade filling.  And a great red beans and rice with cornbread.

So grab a cookbook this summer and head to the kitchen with your kids.  Always an adventure.  I'll report back on the wedding cake.

Love,

Aunt Debbie

Picturing the working mom

Dear Aunt Debbie,

Oh, dear.  Does "working mom" in picture books mean "absent mom"?  Owl Babies sounds lovely, but as a working mom myself, I hate to think that the absent mom is the best we can come up with in that category.

That said, only two picture books spring to mind for me.  The first is I Live in Brooklyn, which we have been given no less than three times because, well, we live in Brooklyn.  (At some point, I'd love to do a post on place-specific books, so many of which are deeply dull.)

Mari Takabayashi wrote and illustrated this book, and the illustrations are often quite appealing and accurate in depicting aspects of Brooklyn life.  My favorite page has pictures of all the different kinds of street food carts.  Unfortunately, the book is plotless.  It's narrated by a six-year-old girl, Michelle, and she walks you through some things she does in Brooklyn throughout the year: "Daddy takes me window shopping on Fifth Avenue every year.  It is fun to see Santa Claus standing in the crowd with his bell....Whenever my mom makes a sandwich, she saves the edges of the bread for us so that we can feed the ducks in the park.  They are always hungry."  It's not horrendous, just flat -- the voice of an adult trying to sound like a child, but losing any shred of personality by making the language too simple.  Eleanor loves it, of course.  But it's one of the books I sometimes hide at the back of the shelf.

Still, Michelle's mother works!  Every morning, she leaves Michelle's sister Lucy with their grandma (who conveniently lives one block away, sigh), and takes the bus with Michelle: "She drops me off at school and then goes on to her office."  No drama, no emotion, just simple fact.

The other book that came to mind after reading your post isn't really about a working mother, but another animal mother who leaves her kid alone to go forage for food.  It's one of my all-time favorite children's books, however, so I'm going to seize the opportunity to write about it.

Wait Till the Moon is Full is Margaret Wise Brown at her best:

Once upon a time in the dark of the moon 
there was a little raccoon.

He lived down in a big warm chestnut tree 
with his mother -- who was also a raccoon.

This little raccoon wanted  to see the night.  He
had seen the day.

So he said to his mother, "I want to go out in the
woods and see the night." 

But his mother said, "Wait."

"Wait till the moon is full."  So he waited, deep
in his warm little home under the chestnut tree.

As the raccoon waits and grows, and the moon waxes, he hears the sounds of the night, and his mother tells him to wait, and sings him songs about the night.  On one page, his mother is late coming home, and the raccoon "sat there wondering to himself."  But then she returns, "skuttle bump, in came his mother, her pointed ears pushed back on her head" (and, in the Garth Williams drawing, in a shawl and carrying a basket of groceries).  And of course, eventually, the moon is full, and the little raccoon gets to go out and play in the moonlight, and the waiting is rewarded.

As ours will be starting tomorrow with our week of family weddings!  See you then.

Love, Annie

Working moms

Dear Annie,

It's true, Pippi Longstocking, like Ramona Quimby and Henry Huggins, are best when one understands the world of school and peers that they inhabit.  But as long as we're on the subject of Pippi, I'd like to point out
that a few years ago Lauren Child (known to this generation as the creator of Charlie and Lola) did new illustrations for a fabulous (hardcover only) new edition of
Pippi Longstocking. This is a case of an illustrator totally in sync with the author, even though they're decades apart.




Owl BabiesThe other day, we received a question about books for 3 year-olds about working moms.  The problem, of course, with working mom books is that one is writing about someone who's not there in a picture book.  The book that I think captures that emptiness and waiting very well is Owl Babies by Martin Waddell.  Three owl babies wake up one night in their home in a tree to discover that their mother is gone.

    The baby owls thought

    (all owls think a lot) –

    “I think she’s gone hunting,” said Sarah.

    “To get us our food!” said Percy.

    “I want my mommy!” said Bill.

They keep worrying and waiting (while Bill repeats his refrain) through some lovely illustrations.  Then:

    “WHAT’S ALL THE FUSS?”

    their Owl Mother asked.

    “You knew I’d come back.”

    The baby owls thought

    (all owls think a lot) –

    “I knew it,” said Sarah.

    “And I knew it!” said Percy.

    “I love my mommy!” said Bill.

Okay, so one can say it's a bit saccharine.  But the pictures are very engaging and the message is clear: mom always comes home.


This mom is about to leave home to go join many family members for two weddings in the next week.  I'll see you soon, Annie.


Love,


Aunt Debbie

Pippi and Poppleton

Dear Aunt Debbie,

Your thought about the age at which books become funny to a child makes me think immediately of two we've picked up recently.

The first is an example of the Stuart Little problem: remembering my own love of the book, but forgetting at what age I enjoyed it, I bought Eleanor a copy of
Pippi Longstocking, by Astrid Lindgren.  Turns out that Pippi's kookiness doesn't fully translate until you've had some experience with school.  Sure, it's kind of odd that she lives with a horse and a monkey, but without the context of rules and expectations that Eleanor will understand later in childhood, the book takes too much explaining, and just isn't funny yet.  We're putting it away to try again in a few years.

The second is a series that hits the funny bone of child and adults in this house at once: Cynthia Rylant's Poppleton. Rylant is also the author of the High Rise Private Eyes series I've written about before; her sense of humor is quirky and odd and totally pleasing, and happily, she's prolific, so there are always more books to check out.  We've read three of the Poppleton books so far; there are eight.

Poppleton is a pig who moves from the city to a small town peopled by a variety of animals: Cherry Sue, the llama next door; Fillmore, the hypochondriac goat; Hudson, a mouse who likes to go to the shore.  The stories are highly random: in our favorite in the first book, Fillmore is sick but refuses to take his pill unless Poppleton hides it in his food:

"I'll put it in the soup," said Poppleton.
"No, it has to be in something sweet," said Fillmore.
"Sweet?" asked Poppleton.
"Sweet and soft," said Fillmore.
"Sweet and soft?" asked Poppleton.
"Sweet and soft with raspberry filling," said Fillmore.
"Sweet and soft with raspberry filling?" asked Poppleton.
"And chocolate on top," said Fillmore.
"Chocolate on...Fillmore, are you talking about Cherry Sue's Heavenly Cake?" asked Poppleton.
Fillmore smiled.


This passage reduces Eleanor to giggles every time.  

Our favorite in Poppleton and Friends is titled "Dry Skin," and is entirely about Poppleton believing he has dry skin, and trying to fix it by covering himself with oil (which makes him want french fries) and honey (which makes him want biscuits).  Each book contains three stories, with brightly colored and personality-filled illustrations by Mark Teague on every page.  We are clearly going to have to read them all.

Love, Annie

Caveat Lector

Dear Annie,

Part of my job when I'm selling books is to issue the occasional warning.  One category of those warnings is: the first chapter is tough, but stick with it.  I say this almost every time someone says they're thinking of getting The Hobbit for their child.  It's true, the beginning drags.  But just stick with it, I say, until Bilbo hits the road.  As soon as he gets moving, so does the plot.  Another book which gets this warning is The Borrowers by Mary Norton, which was a big favorite of Mona's: little people living under the floorboards.  After we read it the first time, she always refused to let us read the first chapter, which explained why the full-size human boy was living in his elderly relative's home, and had nothing to do with little people.

Scary, as you so eloquently put it, is a little more complicated.  Each child -- and each parent -- reacts differently.  The wonderful Santore-illustrated Wizard of Oz whose praises we've sung here -- is often rejected by parents because they think their children aren't ready for the scary parts. When I read it with my girls, I kept a post-it in the book reminding me of the three pages where I would skip a line or rework something scary: the one I remember is the decapitation of a cat, which takes place in half a sentence. 

I've run into quite a large number of kids who can tolerate -- even enjoy -- scary stuff in the context of fantasy writing: as long as they know it's taking place in an imaginary world, it's okay.  But they will reject books with real-life bad situations that they can imagine happening to them or those they love. 

So much depends on what age a child is.  The death of Babar's mother is often much harder on the parent who is reading than on the child who's listening and, like Eleanor, doesn't quite yet understand what death is.   I have vivid memories of the specific moment at which each of our girls was devastated by realizing someone we were reading about was dead.  In Lizzie's case, it was Andrew Jackson; for Mona is was Casey Jones.  There was nothing exceptionally traumatic about these deaths over other ones that had come up in their books.  The difference was their growing awareness.  Both girls were around 5 or 6, and had matured to the point of understanding the finality of death.

Leaving scary for a moment, the other place it's clear that kids reach different levels of understanding at different ages is sense of humor.  A wonderful school librarian I used to work with told me she never recommended The Phantom Tollbooth -- which is full of wordplay -- before the third grade.  Second graders, she said, can sit and listen to it straight-faced.  But try reading it to the next grade up, and it's hilarious. 

You ask about when is the right time to introduce your child to books with scary bits -- but there is no clear answer.  It  sounds like Eleanor is figuring out how to handle scary stuff -- and that she likes it enough not to reject it.  I think parental comfort with the level of scary is equally as important as the child's.  Stopping and talking about something scary can help.  A friend's child would simply reach out and shut a book his mother was reading if it got too creepy: a clear message. 

I'm going to leave fairy tales for another post -- lots to explore there in the wonderful world of the subconscious.

Love,

Deborah

The Scary Parts

Dear Aunt Debbie,

Oh, I hope that they'll reprint the Michael Hague-illustrated The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. I'll have to check out his Tolkien, too, when we get to that age.  I wasn't a huge Tolkien fan myself, though I did eventually read them all (and saw all the movies).  I remember getting stuck on the beginning of The Hobbit at least three times, as Tolkien went on and on about every detail of the entrance hallway, just before Bilbo Baggins left his house for the rest of the book.  But I know Lizzie loved the books; I remember visiting your house when she was in high school and marveling at the life-sized cutout of Viggo Mortensen as Aragorn propped up in the corner of her room.

So what is the right age to introduce your kids to books with scary bits?  After my last post, my good friend Cyd commented about her daughter Rebekah's strong reaction to the dog running away in Beverly Cleary's Ribsy, saying that she couldn't believe Eleanor (a month younger than Rebekah) was ready for Narnia.  This got me thinking about what does and doesn't scare Eleanor, and why.

My theory is that things like witches (which she knows are imaginary) and death (which she doesn't fully understand), are far less scary to Eleanor than things closer to home.  Rebekah really does have a wonderful dog of her own, so I can imagine that the thought of a dog getting lost and not being able to find his way home would be extremely frightening.  When we watched the movie Up with Eleanor, the moment which upset her most was when Carl, the old man, lost his house.  Eleanor burst into tears: "But where is he going to live?"  Out of all the frightening and sad things that had happened in the movie, this was the one she could relate to most.

We've read a number of fairy tales with Eleanor, and I've been surprised by her hardiness in the face of awful plot developments.  We have a gorgeous edition of Rapunzel illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman from the library right now, and of course I didn't pre-read it before we read it together, and I had forgotten how dark it is.  Rapunzel's parents have their baby taken from them by the witch, and never see her again; Rapunzel grows up with no contact with anyone but her witch-mother, and is locked away by her when she turns twelve (such interesting puberty-related issues there!); after the witch has discovered Rapunzel's relationship with the prince, she attacks him and he falls from the tower, landing on thorn bushes which poke his eyes and blind him.  Rough stuff.  When faced with this (or with the White Witch, or Aslan's death), Eleanor has taken to doing what she does during the scary parts of movies: she gets a blanket and hides in it.  She doesn't want me to stop reading, and in fact will say "I like the scary parts," but she wants to hide nonetheless, and will turn away even from a book, like Narnia, that doesn't have pictures on every page.  It's a measure of control, I suppose.

I'm trying to go along with where she seems to be, prepping her for some of the scary parts when it's something I've read beforehand (that's what we did with The Wizard of Oz, and with Narnia), and stopping when she wants to.  As in so many other aspects of life, we do our best to follow her lead and enjoy the surprises along the way.

Love, Annie