Am I an grown-up if I like kid's books?

I really enjoy finding books for my neices, ages 3 and 5. It is too much fun to go to the local bookstore, hug the wall of books back to the children's literature section and pour over the different authors and stories. For my niece, Fiona, last year I found the book Milo's Hat Trick. I was laughing while reading it and new that Shannon and her husband, Sebastian, would enjoy reading it to my nieces. Lucky for me I was right!

A bit later my friend Holly's daughter, Emma, was having a birthday. I was asking myself, "What do I get a three year old?" So I figured I would get her the gift that keeps on giving, a book! Can you tell I'm a teacher? I was flipping through all the different selections of books when I found, Olivia. I was so excited to find it. The story is about a little pig-girl who is a happy little artist. She paints, she dances, she joins her mom at the museum, she helps her brother... she goes Jackson Pollock on a wall in her house.

I guess Olivia does make sense considering I am an artist and a teacher... its almost the best of both worlds. Mom bought me a kids book for my birthday last year called, Hands, growing up to be an artist. The book is written by an artist, Lois Ehlert, who uses collage like foldouts to help the reader follow her art explorations growing up. It is a really neat book, well thought out, visually stimulating, and allows for growth in the narrator, i.e. at the beginning the author's parents are teaching her and by the end she is helping.

A book that I have in my personal library is The Very Hungry Caterpillar. I remember it from my childhood. I always liked the art in the book, the way the caterpillar eats through all the food, leaving holes in them all and that he turns into a butterfly.

So what is it that makes a children's book so appealing? What is it that makes some better than others? In my personal opinion I find that children enjoy what adults enjoy. In these picture books I read I want to find pictures that are visually stimulating, like the author of "Olivia" using Pollock, or the author "Milo's Hat Trick" using crayon inspired coloring, with penciled lines. It was beautiful work. Then on top of the art one has to look at the writing; its interesting. All four of the books referenced above have strong writing to them that are not only interesting to adults but that are interesting to youth as well.

Maybe next post I'll introduce you to the bookstore I frequent, its stacks and the adjacent bookstore.

Why the Encyclopedia is so handy

I cannot tell you how many of the Encyclopedia Brown books I read. I can tell you I enjoyed him so much that my mom and dad paid for me to attend a workshop with him in Pensacola, Florida when I was in seventh grade.

What was it I liked about the Boy Detective? I would say mostly it was because he was a boy detective. His dad, the Chief of Police for the Idaville Police Department, sometimes gets stumped on cases and brings his son in, how cool is that?

So, why did I start reading Sobol's books? Well my sister Shannon introduced me to them. Encyclopedia Brown helped me start quizzing myself while reading. Trying to see the clues that Encyclopedia saw, trying to beat the story to the punch line, sometimes I was right, a lot of the time I was wrong. It was fun :) Maybe I should introduce some of these short stories to my students and see how they like them. Compare and contrast it to some of Roald Dahl's short stories, like the one where the wife kills her detective husband with a leg of lamb and then feeds the weapon to the police force. What was the name of that story? I am going to have to find it for the class, I believe its in the book, "The Collected Short Stories of Roald Dahl."

Check These Out

At the top left of this page you will find three blogs I linked. Here is my brief recap of what is happening. Three students are on an exchange program to Keene College in New Hampshire. They start blogging, talking of similar things happening but from different points of view. On top of being from the UK, they also have an outsiders perspective on our country. I am really enjoying the anthropological/sociological nature of the journals. Plus they also have a Poisonwood Bible or The Sound and the Fury type feel to them, a mutiple narrator story.

The blogs follow Hellen, Emmah, and Sarah. Emmah keeps mashing her words, it sometimes makes me laugh in the midst of reading her pages, like when referring to a school bus she says, "Cheese Bus," and not "Cheese Wagon." Sarah seems to be haphazardly out to do things, or at least puts her page out on her terms, new favorite term is, "wicked cool." Can you blame her? The New England saying did basically launch Jimmy Fallon's career on SNL. Then there is Hellen, or Princess Hellen, as her handle states, she was the first to devote herself to the blog. I would compare Hellen to Darwin's voyage on the HMS Beagle, she is appreciating one culture for what it is, and not judging it... yet.

Both Hellen and Emmah are religious and are struggling with their devotion to God in the New World. Once again, devotion is not the fitting word, they are both quite devoted... maybe struggling with their belief? (Help me define what I'm trying to say.) Sarah is not religious, but she is trying to support her friends in their time of need.

Another fun part to the blogs are the comments. It seems that the three girls have created a system of support for themselves (the blog) and because it is publicly viewed their families have become a web of support, for each of them as well. But the comments are also fun because the girls get called out for spelling american, requests are made for comparison, etc.

All in all its a fun read, so check it out.

Wow that's a good book!

In the retelling of the Ender's Game series to you I got so excited I had to read the book again... in case you might not know, I loved it yet again! It is such a good book! An anonymous poster commented on the political nature of the books, the parrallel between our factual terroism and the book's big fear of the Buggers. I had never though of it that way, but you I can see where you are coming from. I will be checking out Speaker for the Dead, shortly.

Speaker for the Dead's focus is on Ender as he is still dealing with his slaying of an entire species, the Bugger's, while trying to be a Speaker at someone elses death in a newly established colony. What I like most about the book is that Ender has been struggling with his killing of the buggers for his 15 to 20 years since leaving Eros. Due to relativity, and travel at the speed of light, 200 years later the rest of the humanity feels that Ender is not a hero, but a brash, unstable person. His name is considered a curse, but who made it that way? Ender did, with the publishing of his book, "Speaker for the Dead." Tell me that does not sound good! Layers upon layers of story weaving!

Tara, you mention reading Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild a few months ago, do you remember the images that affected you most? I have two, the first is the image Krakauer draws when he tells the reader about McCandless canoeing down the Colorado to the Gulf of Mexico in an aluminum canoe, with a bag of rice!? And the other is the image of McCandless's old car baking in Death Valley (I think), left abandoned. I don't know what to think of the kid but instead feel the need to quote Mr. T, "I pitty da fool!" And one last favor, what books are you reading now?

Amy informed us that Outside magazine had a breif article on the Into the Wild crew 10 years later. The first two articles on the linked page speak directly to the 1996 tragedy.

And then Steven commented, I think reading is addictive, and no matter what type it is, it fuels the desire to keep reading. So I recommend picking up a magazine, a piece of classic literature, a new novel, the newspaper, or just read Lee's blog... to keep the fires burning. Thanks for putting me on your list of things to read, I appreciate that.

Jas, its great to see you stopped by! My sister, Shannon was telling me of a Card book I need to read, Empire. Have you read it? And if so what did you think? Has anyone else read it? Please tell me about if you have! I deffinitely need to read more by Durrell, do you have more that you'd recomend?

So the next book, oh yes! How many of you read Encyclopedia Brown? That's right, the boy detective will be here next!

That Book

I believe all of us have that one book that they can fall back on. The book that kept them reading. I found a book in seventh grade that held my imagination. A fictional work where it felt as if the author had written the main character for me. I discovered the book lying by the bookshelves that were in front of my door in the upstairs hallway when I lived in Pensacola, Florida.

It was a paperback book. The cover had some embossed shapes on it, the reflecting light on the dimpled cover is really what made me look at it further. It had a space ship landing on it, and I figured it looked decent, might as well pick it up and start reading. The book is Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card.

Shirer was going off to Ole Miss and my family and I were going as laborers to help move her in. It was near a ten hour trip and I needed something to read. I found the book to be so delightful and entertaining that I fought off carsickness to coninue reading it.

The reader meets the main character, Andrew "Ender" Wiggin, at the beginning of the book. He is a 7 year old boy that is monitored by the government, but the reader does not know why. Two voices emerge from the onset, the first is that of government/beauraucratic talk and the other is the thrid person narrator that follows Ender.

Card tells the story of Ender being seperated from his parents, his psychotic brother and his sister, his emotional rock. He goes to a government funded military school, and through his brilliance and perseverance woops up on any challenge before him. The author does a good job of accounting for Ender's pathos, which similar to Gerry Durrell's novel, becomes quite voyeuristic and addictive. Ender saves the world at 11 or 13 by destroying another race (you would not believe why or how), but the novel does not stop there. It follows Ender until he is the age of 25, through his dealing with never being able to return home, through his void of destroying another race, and through his writing of what becomes a new religion in the future, The Speaker for the Dead.

I probably read Ender's Game 15 times before I thought of finding the rest of the series. What Card intended to be a three book series quickly turned into four, Ender's Game, Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide and Children of the Mind. These books were of the original chronical of Ender's life... Oh! SO GOOD! But then, because so many characters in the story had strong individual characters Card had to write their stories, no Rosencrantz and Gilderstern here, by God! So he released books following other characters, Ender's friends, from the books, Shadow of the Hegemon, Shadow Puppets, and First Meetings.

I read Shadow of the Hegemon last year and I am wanting to read the last two of the series. So, Mr. Card, if you are reading this, feel free to send me hard-bound, autographed copies of the series. I am currently reading Ender's Game again, because, yes, it is that damn good!

As my buddy Peter said, it is my Catcher in the Rye.

A Phoenix Rises

Let's just say I was not the most motivated student. In my first year of tenth grade I got the reward for least handed in homework. I transfered schools and had the opportunity to repeat tenth grade.

After graduating high school I was accepted and attended Centre College, in Danville, KY. I spent the year doing as little work as possible and on Academic Probation. I was not a big fan of reading outside of class with the exception of comics, and poetry.

So at the end of that year I took a year off from college, and applied to the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) to attend a semester in Baja, Mexico. I chose this section because I really wanted to sail. This course would last three months and in that time I would hike through the San Pedro Martir Mountains, as well as Sea Kayak and Sail the coastline of the Sea of Cortes.

Reading over the packing list one of the things I was told to pack was a book I didn't understand why, but did what the list said. Not having a big library of my own I asked my sister, Shirer, for a recomendation. She thought I would like Lord of the Rings, The Fellowship of the Rings, so in my backpack it went, I didn't think about it for quite a while.

About two weeks later, several Kilometers into NOLS' FSBI forray into the mountains, I needed some time to myself. Not time with my two other tent mates. Not time in the kitchen trying to distinguish plastic bags of dehydrated potatoes from parmesan cheese, and not time finding smooth sticks in the woods (for all you NOLS alum out there). I needed something that would stimulate my mind, and then I remembered packing the book. I went over to my tent group, if I remember correctly Mike was teaching Big Joe to play cribbage... maybe. I went for my pack and pulled The Fellowship of the Rings from it told the guys I was off to read and walked for a good 5 or 10 minutes.

I found a good boulder with a view over a pasture enclosed by trees and began to read. It did not last long. Me and Tolkein don't mix. I tried to read it for thirty minutes but had to keep going back several pages to where my mind began to wonder. "This is for the birds," I thought, and left my perch in pursuit of another book.

Going back into camp I found another member of the trek, Minnesota Katie, or "Kater" as we called her. I offered a book swap, LOTR for a book in her library. She did not want to trade books but fortunately for me she did have one available, My Family and Other Animals.

I immediately fell in love with this book written by Gerald Durrell. The title in and of itself was full of wit and humor; comparing his family to that of wild animals... I had a feeling I would like the book. And I did. It was nothing like the Shakespeare or Dickens I had to read in the ninth grade in Pensacola, Florida. It wasn't something that needed to be studied and graded like the books I had to read in Switzerland or Canada. More important than either of those I felt like I could relate to the author. Durrell talks about his youth being an ex-patrtiot of England, growing up in Greece. For me the book has a feeling of familial closeness, anthropologic study as well a glint of voyeursim since you are watching a real family from the inside. Durrell's imagery would be alive in my head and I could often see his imagery in the landscape around me. One could say it was the right book for the right time.

After I finished My Family, I was in a reading bonanza. It was rare I did not have a book in my posession. Granted they were books that others had brought with them, but they were books none the less. Several of the books were adventure books, speaking to man taking on the elements: Into Thin Air, Into the Wild, and Touching the Void. Into Thin Air and Into the Wild were both written by Jon Krakauer. Into Thin Air recounts Krakauer's personal experience in the 1994 Everest Tragedy that rocked the world of Eco-Tourism: the most shocking image from the book I recall is that of the amount polution that has been left, from spent Oxygen canisters to dead people. Into the Wild is an account of a real life "Holden Caulfield", Christopher McCandless, who decides to shirk his final term of school for a taste of real life, the real life finally bights him in the ass when he is found dead in an old school bus in Alaska; the book recounts his life from the point he leaves school to the point he is found. Touching the Void is another true story of disaster, and redemption. In this book the author and his friend decide to take on a new route up a mountain in the Peruvian Andes. The author makes it out alive, barely.

I would argue that this sharing of personal books, of ourselves made us a stronger, more complete group.

Feet First First Time

The class of a graduate course I am in has been asked to create a, "Literacy Autobiography."

A fellow student, Veronica, decided she was going to Blog hers. "What a novel idea," I thought, and asked permission to use her idea as well. So here it goes...

Where do I start, at the beginning? Of being little and watching my two older sisters read?

Do I start where my parents and sisters, "spelled," topics around me?

Or do I start where I believe my enjoyment of reading began?