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You know, for kids
This is today's third entry. Furthermore Clio has come out of her cave and written about the Islamic calendar. So if you don't want to read a very list-heavy entry about children's books - and I can't say I blame you - there are plenty of other fresh-baked (or half-baked) words here.
I have a confession to make. I'd have made it sooner but I didn't realize it until this afternoon. I have no idea what a "children's book" is.
I should have gotten a clue about this when two people read my novel and assumed automatically that it was a young-adult novel. Come again? I had originally intended that book for grownups. Of course, I don't mind it being a YA novel, especially if that's where it can most effectively be sold - it was just a shock.
The distinction is blurred for me. I used to go to the library and come to the desk with as many books as I could carry - a stack almost as tall as I was, is the way my mother tells it. I would wander all over the library to get books. Some from the adult section, some from the YA section, some from the children's section, and once in a while one of the picture books for the really small children. All mushed together. The only difference I ever noted was the reading time. A YA novel went faster. Prose was less dense, I suppose.
I was probably not quite out of elementary school - sixth grade or so - when I first began hitting the adult books, and by high school I was there heavily. I spent the time in between reading Xanth books and Asimov and Heinlein ... and folktales, always the folktales. So I don't quite know what a children's book is, and moreover I don't know how to write one.
Simplicity is not always the issue. Is The Little Prince by Saint-Exupery a child's book or an adult's? It's written in very childlike language but I can't imagine a child being interested in it - it's heavy-handed moral symbolism without even a veneer of fun and games to keep it going. I've read much better allegories.
What about Voyage of the Basset by James Christensen? It looks like a children's book but it reads like an adult one. On the other hand, the story is one that even children could love. Beats me.
The point is, based on some email, I got this idea to go through the bookshelves and list all the children's novels we own. (Picture books are a different thing; I'll come to that.) And I found we owned a lot fewer than I thought. In fact, several of them are recent; I've begun remembering books I loved long ago and buying them again. I've bought or otherwise acquired all of these within the last year:
The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle, Hugh Lofting
(but I bought the wrong one, I wanted the one with the Pushimi-Pullyu. Who knew he wrote twelve of them?)
The Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle Treasury, Betty MacDonald
Eight Oz books, L. Frank Baum
The Wheel on the School, Meindert DeJong
Two Alfred Hitchcock 3 Investigators books
(and I'd have more if they weren't so hard to find now)
Mrs. Coverlet's Magicians, Mary Nash
Homer Price and Centerburg Tales, Robert McCloskey
Carry On, Mr. Bowditch, Jean Lee Latham
The I Hate Mathematics Book, Marilyn Burns
(okay, it's not a novel, but it's not a picture book either)
The Mysterious Disappearance of Leon (I Mean Noel), Ellen Raskin
(although I'd have bought it a lot sooner if it'd been available)
These are all books I read probably before I was in fifth grade. So if we don't count attempts to make up for lost time, what's left on the bookshelf that could positively be called a "children's novel"? Or even children's short stories? Or anything intended for children that isn't a picture book?
The Thinking Machine, Jacques Futrelle
(The Scholastic edition with three stories. I didn't find out until last year that he'd written more of them. I don't think of Futrelle as a children's author, but this is a Scholastic book, so it gets in automatically. Besides, I first read them when I was about ten.)
Lots of Tintin and Asterix books
(in two languages - I read them in English and Nonelvis reads them in French)
From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, E. L. Konigsburg
The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame
A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L'Engle
(but that's Nonelvis', I haven't read it)
The Westing Game and The Tattooed Potato, Ellen Raskin
The Phantom Tollbooth, Norton Juster
(I bought this this year, but that doesn't count since it's the third copy I've owned)
I have every book Robin McKinley's ever written, and I believe some of those are supposed to be juveniles, but I'm not listing them because I can never tell which is which. All my books of folktales are similarly not listed, even the ones intended for younger readers.
This isn't a terribly big list for a house that contains so many books, and it's lacking in a number of strange areas. For example, I won a contest to see who could read the most Newberry winners in a year when I was in elementary school - but we only own five between us. (If you can't spot the five in those lists, you probably gave up on reading this entry long ago.)
It's also a little weird that I own more picture books than children's novels. I forget that, because they're so thin that they don't take up much room. Picture books I collect for different reasons. I generally buy them because I like the style of the art or the weirdness level or both.
But, again ... how much of a given Jon Scieszka/Lane Smith book is meant for kids? Some of that goes right over their heads. David Macaulay's Unbuilding, unlike many of his other books in the same series, contains a lot of his mordant humor - that's why I own it - and the kids will not get it, any more than they'll get the joke in his Motel of the Mysteries or Great Moments in Architecture.
Anyway, here's the list.
There is a monster at the end of this book, starring lovable furry ol' Grover
(What? You mean it has an author?)
The Sleep Book, Dr. Seuss
(I can just about recite this from memory. It is the one Dr. Seuss book I must own at all times.)
Squids Will Be Squids, The Stinky Cheese Man, and Math Curse, Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith
(We had The True Story of the Three Little Pigs, but we bought it as a gift and never did get one for ourselves.)
Animalia and The Sign of the Seahorse, Grahame Base
Pish, Posh, Said Hieronymous Bosch, Nancy Willard and Leo/Diane Dillon
The Day I Swapped My Dad For 2 Goldfish, Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean
A whole slew of I Spy visual-puzzle books by Walter Wick and Jean Marzollo
Anno's Sundial, Mitsumasa Anno
(but the one I really want is Anno's Alphabet)
Santa's Twin, Dean Koontz
(that's right, the horror writer, and is this a hilarious book)
June 29, 1999 and Tuesday, David Wiesner
(and if he never does a third book like this, I will be sad)
Santa Calls, The Leaf Men and Dinosaur Bob, William Joyce
Alpha Beta Chowder, William Steig
Where the Wild Things Are, Maurice Sendak
(c'mon, you knew it had to be in here somewhere)
Black and White, David Macaulay
Open Me - I'm a Dog! by Art Spiegelmann
Where the Girls Are, Nicholaus Heidelbach
Zoom and REM, Istvan Banyai
The Slant Book, The Hole Book, and The Rocket Book, Peter Newell
Imogene's Antlers, David Small
Dove Isabeau, Jane Yolen and Dennis Nolan
A Bad Case of Stripes, David Shannon
I don't know how I got so many of these!
And, come to think of it, I don't know why I bothered to make a list of them. Maybe Nonelvis' compulsive streak is rubbing off on me. Well, perhaps some Ardent Readers will see something they can't live without.
Then it'll be useful.
There does seem to be a strong correlation between female escribitionists - and the people who read them - and a love of children's books. I think fully half the writers in my Nibelung ring have a jones for children's books.
I'm still trying to figure that one out.
P.S. Today's title is a film quote; I haven't learned my lesson from last time, you see.
Jette is banned from guessing.
© Columbine
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