Collisions with Reality

My son’s obsession with specific books comes in waves, and right now one of the books he loves is The Snowy Day, by Ezra Jack Keats. It’s a lovely book on many levels, and I like the small details in it — like the “friend from across the hall.” What’s that? A character that does not live in a single-family dwelling?

It seems like most children’s books, even if not explicitly set in the suburbs or on a farm, have an implicitly rural or suburban setting — single-family dwellings, traveling by car instead of on foot or via transit, etc. (Yes, there are A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Harriet the Spy, and From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, but they are many years down the road from us.) Most of my son’s books feature animals, not humans, which obviously increases the fraction of books with rural settings. Even if I only include books with anthropomorphized animals (i.e. the Li’l Critter books), here are my son’s books sorted by setting: rural and suburban on the left, and urban on the right. Read the rest of this entry →

It seems like it’s been all bad news over the last couple of weeks. But there are some interesting and bright spots out there!

• So apparently the iPad 2 is out? Is coming out soon? Whatever. Will no one think of the marginalia?
• The Unnecesarean has a fascinating post sharing the script used by 911 dispatchers for guiding someone through an unassisted birth.
• The Year in Pictures had a great writeup of Pier 24, a private gallery/museum in San Francisco. Admission is free, but you need to schedule your visit. No labels or descriptions: just the photographs. I know what I’m doing the next time I go into the city by myself!

Have a great weekend and Mardi Gras, everyone!

Recently I complained about books that haven’t aged well for me, due to a mix of sensibilities and my sense of humor. Today I have a more specific complaint: the bad astronomy in children’s books, particularly in dealing with the phases of the moon. The culprits include, but by no means are limited to:

• Goodnight Moon, by Margaret Wise Brown. Yes, I’ve seen the astrophysics of Goodnight Moon. And while the moon rises in the book, it still implies that a full moon is low in the sky and rising at bedtime, every night.
• Grandfather Twilight is another full moon rising around sunset every night.
• The Going to Bed Book, by Sandra Boynton. I adore Sandra Boynton, but in this book we have a crescent moon rising every night.

I am particularly harsh on the bedtime books, because those are books that get re-read over and over and over. The Going to Bed Book and Goodnight Moon are certainly part of our bedtime routine, and my son has started pointing to the moon in The Going to Bed Book. Yet I am on the hunt for something better. Read the rest of this entry →

Two of the best parts about being a parent are the toys and the books. Since day one, I’ve been reading to my son, and lately he’s been getting more and more interested in the books. We have tons and tons of books, many of which we sought out in particular due to fond memories from our own childhoods. But for me, some of them have not aged well, to the point where I’m hesitant to read them on a regular basis.

• The worst offender for me is The Little House, by Virginia Lee Burton. On one level, it is a sweet tale about finding your way back home. But it is anti-urban to its core, and I don’t know if I want to read it to my son. I love cities. We live in a city. Parts of it are loud and dirty, of course, but so many parts of it are bustling and energetic and brimming with possibilities. I don’t want my son thinking that there is something wrong with cities.
• I am a huge fan of the Jimmy’s Boa series of books, but some of them make me cringe now. The thought of wasting food makes me ill, and thus I cannot handle the food fight in The Day Jimmy’s Boa Ate the Wash. I can’t find Jimmy’s Boa and the Big Splash Birthday Bash funny at all, due to incidents involving orcas and trainers with much unhappier endings.
• That said, I love the narrative structure of the Jimmy’s Boa books. And Jimmy’s Boa Bounces Back is one of the funniest picture books ever, hands-down. (“The POODLE?!?!?!”)
• The Cat in the Hat is an asshole.

I know it sounds like I’m making a mountain out of a molehill. But at this age we read the same books to him over and over and over again. I think I can skip a few books in favor of the hundreds of other children’s books out there that have aged well.

What books haven’t aged well for you?

I have little time to read nowadays, but I recently finished an enjoyable genre novel — the fluffy sort of book that could be read in many short spurts. Sure, it was a bit trite. The characters were way too blase in the face of preposterous plot twists. Material acquisitions were described in loving detail. And of course, it ended with a wedding.

Sounds like I’m describing a formulaic chick-lit book, right? Nope. It was a sci-fi/alt-history book with a heavy military focus. (I’ll reveal the specific book in the comments.) Given the on-going discussion about the (lack of) gender balance of the books reviewed by the NY Times, and the related discussions on genre fiction, I thought this was worth pointing out. The crimes attributed to “chick lit” books are committed elsewhere, too.

There’s good and bad in every genre, whether it’s more often read by men or women. I loved Farthing and Ha’penny, but hated The Eyre Affair. I adore Bridget Jones’s Diary, but hated Confessions of a Shopaholic. A military presence in a book does not automatically make it serious, nor does an unmarried female protagonist make it frivolous.

(And speaking of genre, Blackout should arrive tomorrow. Eeeeee!)