Talking about children's books and films. Useful information for parents.
12 Feb 2013 6 Comments
in Authors, Illustrators
Here’s a great little video about Oliver Jeffers, creator of many picture books such as Lost and Found. It’s entertaining but also gives a glimpse into what goes into the making of a children’s picture book.
Charming video, and yet… I can’t wait until filmmakers stop doing all those distracting out/in focus pulls. (In the good old days camera operators checked the focus before starting to shoot!)
You can check out his website here.
13 Jan 2013 Leave a comment
Jane Austen, Watercolour and pencil portrait by her sister Cassandra, 1810 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Here’s a great post on Huffington: 8 Life Lessons from Jane Austen. A lot has changed in the last 200 years or so, but love and relationships remain constant, it would seem. Not to mention flirtation, attraction and deception. And the allure of dashing young ne’er-do-wells.
I did not read Austen as a young person, sadly, but this post reminded me how relevant these books can be for romantically addled teenagers. If they can get a grip on the language and persevere through the slow parts, they will come away with a sense of the social rules of Austen’s time (“Oh, man! It would suck to live back then!”) as well as some pertinent love advice for their own era.
02 Apr 2012 Leave a comment
in Authors
Here’s an interesting Slate article about Goodnight Moon author Margaret Wise Brown, “Do Childish People Write Better Children’s Books?” by Katie Roiphe.
Re. Roiphe’s question, I’d have to read more about Brown to find out how she did it*, but it seems to me that being truly childish would help in the inspiration and writing part, but the attendant lack of discipline and application would make financial/career success kind of unlikely.
Especially today. The market for children’s content is massive, as Print and Media toil in service of the great god Merchandising. As the dollars flow in, writing for children is no longer seen as a less-than-serious pursuit. Lucre leads to respect, et voilà! Suddenly everyone has an idea for a picture book or fantasy series. This intense competition makes it less likely that any but the most driven and ambitious (ie. least child-like) might actually succeed in having a children’s book published.
At any rate, Ms. Brown was a real character – read the article. Despite her bunny books she enjoyed rabbit hunting, and once told a Life reporter:
“Well, I don’t especially like children, either. At least not as a group. I won’t let anybody get away with anything just because he is little.”
– Margaret Wise Brown
* Another interesting question would be: how do we, as adults, define “childishness”? (Flighty? Selfish? Innocent? Silly?) Another can of worms for another day…
09 Feb 2012 Leave a comment
in Authors, Books, Introduction to... Tags: British history, history
Here’s a good article, it made me want to run out immediately and get Nicholas Nickleby to read to my five-year-old. Hmm, perhaps better to work our way up to it…
“Let’s give our children great expectations” by Allison Pearson in The Telegraph
I’ve jotted down a couple of her suggestions for younger-age introductions to Dickens, namely:
The Muppet Christmas Carol – “admittedly a great work in its own right, but slightly lacking the moral heft of, say, Bleak House” – This is a lighter, funny presentation of the classic story that, nonetheless, doesn’t omit any of the hard stuff… the frightening appearance of the last ghost, Scrooge’s visions of his own death … And Michael Caine holds his own amidst a host of fuzzy muppets.
Oliver! – of course, the lively, fantastic musical by Lionel Bart brought to the screen in full splendour by Richard Lester.
“Gill Tavner’s excellent condensed Dickens Real Reads” – will definitely look these up. (Here’s an amazon search.)
And now that I’m at it, here are a few more suggestions off the top of my head:
A Christmas Carol movie – look up the more classic versions of it, if you don’t want to “muppet” it up. The story is gripping enough to keep young viewers engaged throughout, even without Kermit. Perhaps the most famous is the Alastair Sim version from 1951 (aka Scrooge), though there are many others. (Be aware that the 2009 film with Jim Carrey I’ve heard described as terrifying, so other versions may be better for young ones.)
Christmas Carol readings – once they know the basic plot, going to a live reading of the original may be fun. (Plus it’s usually for charity.) I took my four-year-old to one a couple Christmases ago. She only lasted halfway through, but seemed to get the drift, and enjoyed the acting and language of it all.
The Magic Fishbone – a children’s story by Dickens. Funny and odd.
A Tale of Two Cities – if you’re child goes crazy for adventure stories, don’t forget about this one! Also a fascinating introduction to the history of the French Revolution.
It just so happens I’ve been reading a book about children’s literature and culture that had the following to say about Dickens:
Like many other books written expressly for adults, these biographical novels [David Cooperfield, Great Expectations, Oliver Twist] became children’s classics, prescribed on children’s school curriculum because of the lucidity and sensitivity with which Dickens treated problems of youth. His writing seemed to dredge from the collective depths of youthful memory a way of characterizing early experience that contained a new sympathy for the child’s struggle to achieve understanding and control unruly feelings. In Dickens’s time this was a radical point of view.
– Kline, Stephen. Out of the Garden: Toys and Children’s Culture in the Age of TV Marketing. (Toronto: Garamond Press, 1993), p. 94
Dickens’ novels provide a perfect entry point for the study of other historical times. What child wouldn’t be interested in finding out how children used to live, ie. working in mines and factories? What child wouldn’t be immediately sympathetic to Oliver Twist and his plight?
As Allison Pearson points out, we often forget that in his day Dickens wrote what was regarded as rather “trashy” reads – cliffhanging, melodramatic serials. The strength of his books are the bare-bones of the stories, the wildly gripping plots, and this is what makes them so loved by so many after all these years. How fantastic it would be to introduce our children to his books in the year of the 200th anniversary of his birth!
08 Jan 2012 Leave a comment
in Authors, Illustrators
Maurice Sendak gives an interview and, as always, speaks pretty candidly. (The interview was done for TateShots in the UK and I came across it via writerswrite.com.)
04 Oct 2011 Leave a comment
in Authors, Books, books 4+, books 5+, books 6+, books 7+
The wonderful world of Roald Dahl is sharp, irreverent, sometimes violent, sometimes gross, and nearly always funny as hell. I’ve been reading all the Dahl I can get my mitts on lately. Here they are in the order I’d recommend reading them, from younger listeners to older.
21 Sep 2011 Leave a comment
in Authors, Books, books 4+, books 5+, Quick Lists
Roald Dahl’s books are notoriously violent, scary, rude, gross, full of extremely bad behaviour and insulting language, and above all tremendously funny. Now, there’s nothing wrong with any of this, especially not when the stories are so well-written and inventive, but parents may prefer to start with some of the more ‘benign’ Dahl titles, before working their way up to James and the Giant Peach, or Matilda, or The Witches.
Lately I’ve been working my way through all of Dahl’s children’s books (he also wrote for adult audiences), and while I haven’t quite finished my “Dahl-Readathon”, I have found five titles that are more suitable for younger ages. (A more complete Roald Dahl Overview to come once I’ve finished all the books.)
Here they are, in order of mildness…
1. Esio Trot (1990) – 62 pp.- Ages 4 +
The gentlest tale of all. No violence, no nastiness whatsoever. The story of how a shy older gentleman wins the lady of his dreams with ingenuity, patience, and a lot of tortoises. (This title on amazon.)
2. The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me (1985) – 80 pp. – Ages 4 +
A boy befriends the new window-washers in town – a rather magical team of Giraffe, Pelican and Monkey. During their first job they capture a burglar, impressing the Duke of Hampshire and securing great success for all. Generally happy and peaceful, except for one incident: burglar shoots off a gun while captured in the Pelican’s beak, creating a hole but not harming anybody. (This title on amazon.)
3. The Magic Finger (1964) – 63 pp. – Ages 4 +
A little girl teaches a family of hunters to see things from another point of view, by having them trade places with the birds they shoot at every day. Very funny. (This title on amazon.)
4. The Enormous Crocodile (1978) – 42 pp. – Ages 4 +
Very short and readable story about a crocodile with “secret plans and clever tricks.” Or so he thinks. The crocodile steals into the town intending to munch on children for lunch but the other jungle animals always call the alarm before he can succeed. In the end the elephant forcibly ejects the crocodile by flinging him all the way to the sun, where he is “sizzled up like sausage!” (The crocodile’s talk about crunching up small children might be too much for some, but it is all talk.) (This title on amazon.)
5. Danny the Champion of the World (1975) – 196 pp, 22 chapters – Ages 5 +
A lesser known, totally sweet story of a boy with a wonderful single father who teaches him the secrets of poaching. The boy, Danny, devises a fantastic plan for the biggest pheasant heist ever, with unexpected and hilarious results. Unusual topic, yes, with a little class warfare thrown in. Much suspense during the poaching adventures, but without violence or rudeness. Highly recommended. (This title on amazon.)
Rarest Kind of Best 
Jan Berenstain, RIP
29 Feb 2012 Leave a comment
by Kim in Authors, Books, Commentary
Jan Berenstain, co-creator of the Berenstain Bears with her husband Stan, has died at the age of 88.
When she was 3 and 4 my daughter couldn’t get enough of the retro-Berenstain collection at Grandma and Grandpa’s, the books I read long ago in the 60s and 70s. Even though she asked for them a gazillion times, even at my weariest I appreciated how zippy these books are – not too many words on a page, and lots of action. At nearly-six the boss is still quite entertained by them, though these old titles are a lot more alarming than the newer ones. (Papa Bear gets banged up pretty good, thanks to his own boneheadedness!)
The later books and cartoon series, which added a girl cleverly named “Sister”, dialled down Papa’s recklessness and amped up the educational content. (Previously the main lessons to be learned were things like “don’t stick your hand into a beehive” and “don’t ride your bike off a cliff”.)
The Berenstains’ rigid problem-solution plots, and problem-solving prescriptions, are straightforward and without nuance, cut and dried, spinach with a dash of sugar. … Where is the warmth, the spirit of discovery and imagination in Bear Country? Stan Berenstain taught a million lessons to children, but subtlety and plain old joy weren’t among them.
Pretty harsh, with some truth to it, but this same criticism can also be levelled at many (all?) of the major children’s book/cartoon franchises around today. As he thoughtfully puts it, shows and books of this nature are more successful at reassuring anxious parents than kids.
Another point he makes is the undermining of parental authority with the old dad-as-dummy plots, which I don’t quite buy. When the first books came out, in the early 1960s, dufus dad wasn’t quite the cliché that he is in today’s sitcom culture. He was probably even a bit of a new thing back then. And besides, children have been entertained for decades by stories about adult authority figures who are dumber than the kids. In these early books little cub manages just fine despite his dad’s ineptitude, even rescuing the old man from time to time, and that only heightens the delight of young readers.
Whether or not you agree with Farhi, his article is aimed squarely at the latter books and tv series. My recommendation is this: for sheer Roadrunneresque anarchy, dig out the old books! Whether stealing a boat, getting struck by lightning, or breaking nearly every bone in his body at scout camp, Papa Bear is always good for a laugh.
As a parent I’m not a huge fan of the Berenstain Bears, though I do remember finding those old books pretty funny. These days my favourite title doesn’t have much to do with the iconic bear family at all. Bears in the Night features a family of numerous small bears who sneak out of bed to investigate a mysterious noise and get a good (harmless) scare. A great ‘first reader’ with a repetitive pattern that kids will enjoy (“out the window, down the tree, over the fence, around the lake, through the woods…”, that kind of thing).