Omnivoracious

Sloane Crosley, Why Are You So Funny?

I picked up Sloane Crosley's I Was Told There'd Be Cake because of the dioramas.

Following a link on Critical Mass, I found that Crosley had not only created Plexiglas-encased diorama sets for her essays, she had also narrated video tours of them. (The full story of The Diorama Diaries is on her website, including a trip with her dad to a place called PlasticWorks.)

And, there's more. The book has a video trailer with paper pony stand-ups, a Hot Wheels ambulance, and a bit with fingers wearing pants that I can't really write about on this blog. Every book should have a video trailer.

Though Crosley has been widely published, with essays in the Village Voice, Playboy, Salon, and The New York Times, I Was Told There'd Be Cake is her first book.

I read the book. It was hilarious. I had questions, and she was kind enough to answer them. --Heidi

Amazon.com: People have compared you to David Sedaris, Sarah Vowell, Dorothy Parker, even a post-modern Mary Tyler Moore. Do you relate to this at all or does it just seem like a way for people to place you in a category that readers can connect with in some way?

Sloane Crosley: A little bit of both. I try not to relate to the part of the Dorothy Parker comparison where she’s suicidal and swallows a bottle of shoe polish. But what huge and wonderfully distinct compliments each of those comparisons are. I don’t flatter myself by assuming I’m in the same ballpark as those people in terms of their end products. But I do hope that I have some of the same basic motivations behind writing humor essays.

Amazon.com: What has been the response to the dioramas and videos?

SC: So far the response has been quite positive. Then again, are people likely to become enraged by videos of dioramas? I certainly nose-dived into the crazy pool by making them to begin with and then soaked myself to the bone by having them filmed. I’m still not sure what I’m going to do with the dioramas themselves. Maybe auction them off for charity. Diorama rescue.

Catching Up with Rebecca Woolf in Seattle

After I had my son, I went in search of all these DIY, irreverent mommy blogs that I just knew were out there. All I found were tips and tricks, ways to pamper myself or get organized, or cool gadgets I had to buy. I quickly gave up, and now I realize that I missed at least one irreverent mommy, who, thankfully, has now turned her blogs into a book.

Rockabye: from Wild to Child is Rebecca Woolf's first book, and it's more than just a compilation of entries from her blogs. (She writes Girl's Gone Child and Babble.com's Straight from the Bottle.) It's a fully formed book of essays about her experience of motherhood.

Woolf had always planned to become a writer, and she had been freelancing since she was 16. She was living in L.A., collaborating with a guy on a script, then they started dating, then she was pregnant. She was 23. She decided to have the baby, marry the guy, and keep writing. After her son, Archer, was born, she not only worked two jobs, she kept blogging and freelancing, writing when he took his naps.

People kept giving her unwanted advice: you need to cover his face, you can't be out walking with him, he's too little, etc. One stranger even grabbed her son's hands and tried to teach him how to walk (!). Exploring these anecdotes allowed her to keep asking, Why? Why do I need to do this? Why do I need to do it this way?

On Saturday, Woolf had a reading a couple of blocks from my house, so I got to meet some of her very loyal fans, who braved the neighborhood on the day of a baseball game and a gigantic motocross event (read: $40 parking). Here are a few highlights from the reading and Q/A:

After she read the title of the first chapter, "Holy Shit! I'm Pregnant," she looked around the room to see if any kids were there. "I have to edit the expletives," she said. "I keep saying, Duck. Duck. Duck. Everyone gets very confused."

For Rockabye, Woolf said she took the blog entries, hundreds of pages worth, and put them in order to decide what she wanted to use. About 25 percent of the book came from the blog, then she went back and filled in the rest.

The book is not exactly what she pitched. Her original pitch to Seal Press was a DIY Parenting Guide with lists and funny anecdotes.

For her next project, she was going to pitch a book called Love in the Time of Jason Priestly, essays about growing up in the '90s. But when she started to write them, they were too much in her teenage voice. (One of her teen writing gigs was Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul.) Instead, she is writing fiction and working on a pilot with her husband, Hal, based on Rockabye.

Someone in the audience asked, "How long did it take you to get to the new normal, as a mom?" Her answer: "I don't think you ever go back to what normal was. I know that I'm more myself now than I ever was. You figure out a way to be engaged with your life. But you have to do it for yourself. You can't fake it. What's the point of life if you just lie there and wait?"

Oh, and she's pregnant. She finds out whether her second baby is a boy or girl as soon as she gets home from the book tour. --Heidi

A New World for Lemmy Caution

I love Godard, so whenever I find a new interpretation, I'm pretty excited.

BoingBoing reported this morning that the next Scott Teplin exhibition at the Adam Baumgold Gallery in New York would be Alphaville, based on the 1965 Godard film about a futuristic city where the hero, American private eye Lemmy Caution, meanders until he learns that, basically, love has been weeded out of human experience.

Teplin's version doesn't look quite so dark. In his vivid pen and ink and watercolor drawings, Teplin has created his own Alphaville, preserving the humor and sense of confusion of the original with modern-day rooms that play with scale and unexpected juxtapositions.

Even if you won't be in New York for the exhibition, which runs May 1 through June 7, 2008, you can see previews from the gallery or Teplin's site of the Alphaville drawings, the alphabet rooms (like the "O" shown here), and photos of an artist book set “Sinker Down and Out,” which the gallery describes as "a Kafkaesque journey of a donut’s travels through the digestive path."

One of the Alphaville drawings will also be the cover of McSweeney's #27, due out in early summer.

And, if you're into seeing art in progress (I'm a sucker for it), you will probably enjoy Teplin's blog, Future Trash, which shows the evolution of the drawings as he's been working them out.

After discovering Teplin's awesomeness in his work and his blog, I was excited to also discover that he and I (and fellow Omnivoracious contributor, Paul) worked on the same book: Beasts! (2006) for Fantagraphics. His Loathly Worm can be found on p. 121. --Heidi

More from the Conjuring Chabon...plus a Script!

McSweeney's has posted bonus materials for Michael Chabon's new essay collection, Maps and Legends--Chabon's proposed script for Spiderman 2, which, apparently, has never been seen. According to McSweeney's, Chabon was the third of four screenwriters assigned to the project. He received shared "screen story" credit, but the actual script as written was not used.

I haven't had a chance to look at Maps and Legends yet, but Harper's (in "New Books" from the April issue) makes Chabon's ruminations on the adventures of reading and writing sound pretty exciting:

Readers ... will enjoy his wind-chiming on genre fiction from Poe to Nabokov; “tricksters” from Loki, Coyote, and Krishna to Borges, Calvino, and Pynchon; horror stories by M. R. James, Sherlock Holmes under Conan Doyle’s hood; Norse myths, Philip Pullman, John Milton and epic fantasy; Jack Kirby, Stan Lee, and Captain Marvel; Howard Chaykin and Citizen Kane; Ben Katchor and Julius Knipl; Cormac McCarthy, Will Eisner, and other golems. What is so startling is how much more interesting most of these indulgences are to read about in Chabon’s pages than they were on their own, in the pulpy original, as if the nostalgic novelist, like the magician-for-hire in his Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, can make paper roses consumed by fire bloom from a pile of ash.

Both seem worth looking into, though it looks like the script may not be out there for long. --Heidi

April is the Baby-est Month

I've been reading poetry to Silas since he was born (since before he was born, actually--yes, I'm one of those). I have to admit, it was based more on a selfish need to get in my poetry reading than on some idea that he would grow up loving poetry or out of an obligation to help him develop language or musical skills, though those are definitely nice side benefits.

This Saturday, April 12, HBO Family will air the next installment in their Emmy-winning Classical Baby series: Classical Baby (I'm Grown Up Now): The Poetry Show. Even though it keeps the Classical Baby title, the show is geared more for kids ages 4 to 9, and features the baby from the first three (for music, art, and dance, produced in 2005). Now he's a little boy and into poetry.

The idea: if we introduce kids to poetry at an early age, they have a positive association and become lifelong readers of poetry. (This is not just rhetoric. The Poetry Foundation found this generally to be true based on their 2006 study of adult poetry readers--the majority of them had poetry, especially nursery rhymes, read to them as children.)

HBO collaborated with the Poetry Foundation on this special, which features 12 animated short poems from a range of poets (all dead--this is "classical" after all), and readers ranging from famous actors (who doesn't want to hear the beyond-awesome Jeffrey Wright reading Shakespeare's Sonnet XVIII?) to kids (Finn, age 7, reads "The Red Wheelbarrow") to the poets themselves, which is actually my favorite. Let's face it: no one reads Gertrude Stein like Gertrude Stein.

If you're thinking, what's an animated short poem, you can watch ladybug Stein's "A Very Valentine," as well as Lorca's "Mariposa" and Langston Hughes' "April Rain Song" on the Poetry Foundation's website.

Between the poems, children comment on "the meaning and mystery of poetry." I haven't seen this interspersed commentary, but, come on, it sounds pretty cute.

HBO has the full schedule posted here. And, if you miss the show, the DVD will be available for purchase next week. Or you can just check out the list of poems, find them (most are online), and read them aloud to your kids. You do a mean Robert Frost, right?

Meantime, Silas and I will be starting That Little Something as soon as I finish this post. --Heidi

Trust no one over 14: The Children's Choice Book Awards

I know. I know. Another set of book awards. But this one is actually different, I promise. This time the kids get to decide who wins.

Finalists have been posted for the first-ever Children's Choice Book Awards (sponsored by the Children's Book Council). Finalists in the following categories were determined through the CBC's Children's Choices program, which means that they were chosen by kids from all over the country:

Favorite Book, Grades K to 2

Dino Dinners by Mick Manning and Brita Granstrom
Five Little Monkeys Go Shopping by Eileen Christelow
Frankie Stein written by Lola M. Schaefer, illustrated by Kevan Atteberry
Three Little Fish and the Big Bad Shark written by Ken Geist, illustrated by Julia Gorton
Tucker's Spooky Halloween by Leslie McGuirk

Favorite Book, Grades 3 to 4

Babymouse #6: Camp Babymouse by Jennifer L. Holm and Matt Holm
Big Cats: Hunters of the Night by Elaine Landau
Magic Treehouse #38: Monday With a Mad Genius written by Mary Pope Osborne, illustrated by Sal Murdocca
The Richest Poor Kid (Another Sommer Time Story) written by Carl Sommer, illustrated by Jorge Martinez
Wolves  by Duncan Searl (Smart Animals series)

Favorite Book, Grades 5 to 6

Beowulf: Monster Slayer written by Paul D. Storrie, illustrated by Ron Randall
Encyclopedia Horrifica:The Terrifying TRUTH! About Vampires, Ghosts, Monsters, and More by Joshua Gee
Ghosts by Stephen Krensky (Monster Chronicles series)
The Short and Incredibly Happy Life of Riley by Amy Lissiat and Colin Thompson
When the Shadbush Blooms written by Carla Messinger with Susan Katz, illustrated by David Kanietakeron Fadden

Kids can also vote on finalists in these categories, which were essentially the top-selling books of 2007:

Author of the Year

Anthony Horowitz for Snakehead (Alex Rider Adventure Series) (ages 9 to 12)
Erin Hunter for The Sight (Warrior: Power of Three, Book 1) (ages 9 to 12)
Jeff Kinney for Diary of Wimpy Kid (ages 9 to 12)
Rick Riordan for The Titan's Curse (Percy Jackson and the Olympians: Book Three, grades 6 to 9)
J.K. Rowling for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (YA)

Illustrator of the Year 

Jan Brett for The Three Snow Bears (ages 4 to 8)
Ian Falconer for Olivia Helps with Christmas (ages 4 to 8)
Robin Preiss Glasser for Fancy Nancy and the Posh Puppy (ages 4 to 8)
Brian Selznick for The Invention of Hugo Cabret (ages 9 to 12)
Mo Willems for Knuffle Bunny Too: A Case of Mistaken Identity (ages 4 to 8)

Children have until May 4 to cast their votes at bookstores, school libraries, or online. (Actually, anyone can vote on the website, but of course we know that you'll all stick to the honor system.) Winners will be announced during Children's Book Week, which runs May 12-18.--Heidi

A Real-life Kids' Publishing House, and its Really Close Imitation

"My mom says you write kids books."

"I don't write kids books. I edit kids books. It's a very different job. Hard to explain."

"She said you wrote Brambles McGee."

"I didn't write Brambles McGee. I edited Brambles McGee."

"How come you made Brambles die?"

"I didn't make him die, I made him die quicker. And with a fancier font."

So began last week's pilot of The Return of Jezebel James, the latest show by Amy Sherman-Palladino and Daniel Palladino (the pop-culture quipping creators of Gilmore Girls). The new sitcom, which will run its next episode tonight on Fox, features a children's book editor, Sarah (Parker Posey), who asks her sister (Six Feet Under's Lauren Ambrose) to have her baby.

It's no mistake that Sarah's office looks like the real-life Harper Collins Children's Division. PW had a nice article today about how the Palladinos worked with HarperCollins to make the show as true to life as possible, down to the classic book quotes painted on the conference room windows. Their attention to detail is no surprise to Gilmore fans.

(True confession from one of those fans: Silas is napping while I write this, and G.G. is playing in the background--our afternoon nap routine since I received the complete series over the holidays. The credits just came on and I'm waiting for his head to pop up.)

Now, Fox and Harper Collins are commemorating the TV show with a sweepstakes. If you want to fly to New York City for three nights and get a tour of Harper Collins Children's Division--home of Charlotte's Web, The Chronicles of Narnia, A Series of Unfortunate Events, and a few other children's titles you may have heard of--you just need to go to the Jezebel James website and register by March 28.

In the final scene of the pilot (which you can watch online, if you missed it), Sarah looks out at her sister through the conference room window. The quote painted in cursive above her head sets the tone for shows to come: Let the wild rumpus start!--Heidi

New This Week: Foxie is Back in Print

This week (today, actually) The New York Review Children's Collection is releasing the latest installment of the works of Ingri and Edgar Parin d'Aulaire: Foxie, a stunning reprint of their 1949 picture-book adaptation of Chekhov's story, Kashtanka, about a "singing" dog who loses her master.

The d'Aulaires are best known for the way their children's books were made, particularly in the early years of their nearly 50-year career. At the time of the original Foxie, they were sketching their illustrations onto slabs of Bavarian limestone (weighing up to 200lbs a piece!), and one four-color illustration would require four slabs of limestone. This gave their books a hand-drawn vibrancy that the re-issue has definitely captured.

Other bonuses that set this book apart are the endpapers, with a storyboard extra of Foxie and her bone (the coveted item that sparks her master's teasing, and leads to her getting lost), as well as two musical notes on the first page, so we know how it sounds when Foxie's master calls her name.

Foxie is the sixth of the d'Aulaire's books that the press has re-issued since 2005. It follows their acclaimed collection of Norse myths, D'Aulaires' Book of Animals, D'Aulaires' Book of Trolls, The Two Cars, and The Terrible Troll-Bird. --Heidi

Golden Kite Award Winners

The Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators recently announced the winners of their Golden Kite Awards, which honor the most outstanding children’s books published during the previous year. The SCBWI distinguishes the Golden Kites from the slew of book lists and prizes as "the only award presented to children's book authors and artists by their peers."

2007 winners include:

Fiction: Home of the Brave by Katherine Applegate (ages 9-12)
"American culture, the Minnesota climate, and personal identity are examined in this moving first-person novel written in free verse."--School Library Journal

Nonfiction: Muckrakers by Ann Bausum (ages 9-12)
A story of investigative journalism in America.

Picture Book Text: Pierre in Love by Sara Pennypacker, illustrated by Petra Mathers (kindergarten-grade 2)
Pierre, a mouse who sails a fishing boat, falls in love with Catherine, a ballet-teaching rabbit.

Picture Book Illustration: Little Night illustrated and written by Yuyi Morales (preschool-kindergarten)

"Morales has created a sumptuous feast of metaphors in her text: a bathtub filled with falling stars, a dress crocheted from clouds." --Booklist

Honor recipients:

Fiction: Emma-Jean Lazarus Fell Out of a Tree by Lauren Tarshis (ages 9-12)

Nonfiction: 1607: A New Look at Jamestown by Karen Lange (grades 3-6)

Picture Book Text: The End by David LaRochelle, illustrated by Richard Egielski (preschool-grade 3)

Picture Book Illustration: Who Put the B in Ballyhoo? illustrated and written by Carlyn Beccia (kindergarten-grade 4)

The awards panel members aren't the only ones who think these are really great books: they've also received consistent five-star ratings from Amazon customers. --Heidi

Do Adult YA Readers Need to Grow Up?

Roger Sutton, editor-in-chief of The Horn Book, sparked an interesting discussion on his blog today with some casually derisive remarks about grown-ups who prefer to read children's books and YA novels:

As annoying as adults who dismiss children's books as unworthy of attention can be, I also feel my jaw clench when a fellow adult tells me that he or she prefers children's books to adult books because they have better writing or values or stories. This is just sentimental ignorance. ... Adults whose taste in recreational reading ends with the YA novel need to grow up.

Some fans of his Read Roger blog (with its "rants and raves" on children's books) were not too happy when he turned his barbs on them. Many of the commenters gave surprisingly specific reasons for liking YA better, like this one:

Ouch! I feel indicted. I do prefer to read children's literature, mainly due to narrative structure. I like fairly linear plots and neatly resolved endings, which puts me off a lot of adult literary fiction (with the exception of some South American authors). So I read a lot of Dickens and children's lit.

Commenters identified Scott Westerfeld and Stephenie Meyer among the YA authors who write the kind of stories they like to read, grown-up or not. --Heidi

Nikki McClure and The Midnight Folk

When I got Nikki McClure's The First 1000 Days: A Baby Journal and Awake to Nap as pre-baby gifts, I knew these were not your average baby books. What I didn't know from looking at her serene paper-cut illustrations--of babies, moms and dads, crows, boats, and vegetable gardens--is that Nikki McClure is a rock star.

A Different Stripe, the blog for NYRB Classics, clued me into this when they posted an appreciation of McClure with a preview of a cover she illustrated for The Midnight Folk, an upcoming edition in their children's classics line. This 1927 story by Brit poet John Masefield will be coming out in September as a follow-up to last October's The Box of Delights (Masefield's other Kay Harker book, written in 1935). 

McClure is definitely emerging as a rock-star illustrator. Her books and calendars are on display everywhere from quirky children's boutiques to chain bookstores to galleries. She cuts her illustrations by hand from a single sheet of black paper, a process she has used to propel herself from starving artist to the author-illustrator of an annual calendar series, various children's books, and, most recently, a collection of images from her calendars and other works, Collect Raindrops: The Seasons Gathered.

And she's a real rock star. McClure has been part of the Olympia rock scene as a collaborating visual artist since the early '90s and has designed posters and CD covers like this one for years. (Her website has a discography, as well as a portfolio of her current work.)

The downside to having a baby journal illustrated by Nikki McClure? Fear of spoiling the paper-cut images with ugly handwritten notes. Our pages all look something like this:

I'd better dive in soon with a black Sharpie so Silas doesn't get a baby journal on his 21st birthday full of stickie notes. --Heidi

A Six-Word Memoir Family

Heidi: Bookish farm girl citifies, finds love.

Silas: Almost a year, not much sleep.

And, after a grueling session of rejections, almost culminating in "Still deconstructing after all these years"...

Paul: You can do it, Charlie Brown.

More Margaret Wise Brown... And More Moon

What's the deal with Goodnight, Moon? That's what I thought every time I saw it on a toddler's shelf or at a baby shower, and when Seattle Children's Theater made it into a play (now playing in Dallas!). Even when I first started reading it as part of my son's night-time ritual, I didn't really get it: Goodnight nobody? Huh? And what's that mush doing in his bedroom?

Like so many great things, the brilliance of Goodnight Moon reveals itself only with repetition. Silas caught onto it before I did; it's the only book he can sit through without squirming. I've even found myself reciting the rhymes in a cheap effort to make him laugh when he's cranky.

I recently found this fun, thoughtful analysis of the book by Elizabeth Kolbert in the December 6, 2006 New Yorker. Kolbert includes some background on its author, Margaret Wise Brown (who admitted to Life magazine, "I don't really like children..."), and says of the book:

Goodnight Moon is more restrained, more exacting, and more lyrical than anything written for children today. In its own quiet way, it is also more brutal.... Time moves forward, and the little bunny doesn’t stand a chance.

Now that the book is a family favorite, we were excited to see that a new Margaret Wise Brown story, The Moon Shines Down, is about the see the light of day.

Thomas Nelson acquired Brown's manuscript, which was found among a "sheaf of yellow pages held together by paper clips" in her sister's attic, according to Publishers Weekly. The picture book, with Clement Hurd-style illustrations by Linda Bleck, will be available in November of this year.

This time the moon story is based on an old prayer/nursery rhyme: I see the moon, and the moon sees me... --Heidi

 

 

100 Books Every Child Should Read, UK-style

In mid-January, Telegraph.co.uk published a list of the "100 books every child should read." Like many must-read lists, it includes expected stalwarts such as Where the Wild Things Are, Charlotte's Web, The Chronicles of Narnia, and To Kill a Mockingbird. But this Brit list focuses on stories that are exciting to read (vs. books that teach you things you ought to know) and it actually has some titles I haven't seen on American recommended book lists.

I'm adding a sampling here, but I recommend clicking through to the actual list for the thoughtful introduction by author Michael Morpurgo about kids and stories, as well as fun thumbnail reviews like "A stirring tale," "No reader remains untouched," and my favorite: "Runcible." 

Early and Middle Years

The Tiger Who Came To Tea, Judith Kerr
Quoting their blurb:
"[The BBC's] Newsnight's Emily Maitlis has a theory that this book is an allegory about sex. Most children understand it as the story of a tiger that eats its hosts out of house and home. Debate continues."
If you're unfamiliar with this book, you can enjoy a lovely reading here.

Roald Dahl has five books on the list: The Twits, Danny, the Champion of the World, George's Marvelous Medicine, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and The BFG. (Notable exclusion: American favorite James and the Giant Peach.)

Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, T.S. Eliot
I was surprised to find poetry on a general reading list. Maybe that's not so surprising in Britain, I don't know. I started reading these poems to my son based on a tip from my ex-hippie uncle who read them to his kids--and I love reading them aloud--but I have been afraid he might grow up unknowingly quoting lyrics from Cats. (Although, let's face it, quoting T.S. Eliot could be equally dorky.)

Comet in Moominland, Tove Jansson
A new discovery in our family, though very popular in Europe ("the Mickey Mouse of Finland.")

Early Teens

Frenchman's Creek, Daphne Du Maurier
"A swashbuckling love affair," chosen over her potentially more familiar titles, Rebecca and My Cousin Rachel.

Junk, Melvin Burgess
A "clear-eyed story of heroin addiction." This winner of the Guardian Fiction Award and the American Library Association's Carnegie Medal appears on a number of UK teen book review websites, though little seems to have been written about it in the U.S. (A more extensive review is available at Amazon.co.uk.)

The Rattle Bag, edited by Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes
More poetry(!), recommended for the "higgledy-piggledy mix of glories within."

The American Library Association's website and Book Crush, by Nancy Pearl, contain similar lists focused for young American readers in case you want to compare. --Heidi

The Three Potentially Offensive Pigs

I'll huff, and I'll puff, and I'll blow down your shoddily constructed...

Shoo-fly publishing's The Three Little Cowboy Builders is circulating the blogosphere as the latest casualty of eager political correctness. The digital pop-up book based on the classic story, The Three Little Pigs, was not shortlisted for the first annual (British government-backed) BETT Awards because, according to the panel of educator-judges, "the use of pigs raises cultural issues."

Today's BBC News report elaborated on the panel's judgment. Apparently, the use of pigs in the story was considered potentially offensive to Muslims. And Asians. And, well, construction workers:

The judges criticised the stereotyping in the story of the unfortunate pigs: "Is it true that all builders are cowboys, builders get their work blown down, and builders are like pigs?"

(Examples of judges' comments must have been released by someone associated with the book, because they are not reflected at all in this vague public statement, which essentially says that the book just wasn't good enough.)

Looking for some kind of response from any of the potentially offended communities, I found this Daily Mail article from March 2007, about a church school that renamed their Three Pigs musical "The Three Little Puppies." It includes a statement from Shaykh Ibrahim Mogra of the Muslim Council of Britain who said, "The vast majority of Muslims have no problem whatsoever with the Three Little Pigs. There's an issue about the eating of pork, which is forbidden, but there is no prohibition about reading stories about pigs."

No comment so far from the builders. Bob?

For the oft-maligned wolf's perspective, you can also check out children's laureate Jon Scieszka's The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs! --Heidi

Can Michael Pollan Fix the American Diet, One Kid at a Time?

Feeding our kids should be simple, right? We've been feeding ourselves for years. How hard can it be to whip up some oatmeal and crush a banana? But everywhere you turn, there's an edict on what they can eat and when (yogurt and cheese at nine months, but no milk until one year--huh?), or how they should drink water (regular cup vs. sippie-cup), or how we need to make sure meal time is enjoyable so the kids don't grow up with food issues.

Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto speaks to one of my biggest anxieties as a new parent--feeding my child.

Talk about food issues, Pollan highlights the pitfalls (or pratfalls) of our culture's obsession with healthy eating. Expanding on his indictment of "nutritionism" from the January 28, 2007 New York Times Magazine, he presents tidbits of recent studies and statistics that range from the absurd (like how lobbyists manage to keep the acceptable level of free sugars in the U.S. diet at 25 percent of daily calories, despite the World Health Organization's recommended limit of 10 percent) to the downright embarrassing, like this statement from a 2001 study: "It has now been recognized that the low-fat campaign has been based on little scientific evidence and may have caused unintended health consequences." Oops.

Such factoids are entertaining (or disturbing, depending on what you've been eating), but what really comes in handy is Pollan's list of easy-to-remember guidelines like, "Avoid food products that make healthy claims" and "Don't eat anything that your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food." It's a great philosophical companion to helpful yet overwhelmingly detailed parenting staples like Super Baby Food.

Will In Defense of Food do for the local food movement what An Inconvenient Truth did for environmentalism? Maybe. I don't know. I do know that this book that never once mentions parenting or children is one of the best parenting guides I've found so far on the subject of food.

(For a quick NYT Book Review excerpt, see Old Media Monday, January 8.)--Heidi

What Silas is Reading: Baby Loves Books

Until recently, our son Silas has been fairly disinterested in books. I thought, hmmm, maybe he won't be into books. Weird, but possible.

Everything has changed. In the last couple of weeks, seven-and-a-half-month-old Silas has adopted his own book-loving tendencies. He prefers board books. He likes to hold them, turn the pages (or at least grab at them in a seemingly purposeful matter), and chew on them. He doesn't mind hearing stories from other books, but he prefers quick sentences, lively words, and repetition.

This is an exciting development for our family. We have reading time in the morning and just before bed, and Silas sits on my lap while we read (just like the parenting books say you're supposed to).

One small downside is that I can't read my books to him anymore. We started The Brothers Karamazov this summer, and he stuck with me through long excerpts of Parts I and II. In Part III, though, he started this "mom, I'm bored" humming, which escalated the longer I read until I finally gave up.

Meantime, here are the books he's into right now:

Count the Birdies (Matthew Porter): Silas loves counting the birds. And I'm excited that we found this imaginative book to introduce him to counting (and Porter's paintings, a bonus for parents).

Urban Babies Wear Black (Michelle Sinclair Coleman, illustrations by Nathalie Dion): My theories about why Silas likes this snappy book include the stark contrast of white text on black pages, the repetition ("Urban babies wear black. Urban babies do yoga. ..."), and the size--it's easy for him to hold and put in his mouth.

Black on White (Tana Hoban): A gift from Grandma. He loves the contrast. He loves the familiar objects. And it's wide and thin so it makes the best drum.

Fairy Tales (E.E. Cummings): We have a fun 1974 edition that's on the verge of falling apart, so he does not chew on this one. Silas' favorite story is "The Old Man Who Said 'Why'," probably because of the silly voice Mama uses when she says "Why" over and over again.

On the Banks of Plum Creek (Laura Ingalls Wilder): Ok. I am using this as an excuse to re-read my favorite book series from childhood, one chapter at a time. He seems to like it. I hear that boys don't like this series much, so I hope he doesn't resent me for it when he gets older. But if he is going to resent me for something, it might as well be a book. --Heidi

Another Short Note on Elizabeth Hardwick

I found my copy of Sleepless Nights today and realized that I read it at a time when I was color coding my annotations. It's pretty funny. My copy is littered with purple and green: purple whenever there is a significant shift in time, green whenever she talks about a man.

This un-narrative in pieces with its author as the main character (before either of these things were commonplace), was easy for me to relate to even more than 20 years after it was written. It gives a picture of a writer, a woman, using the tools of her craft--character development, scenic observation, a unique lyrical style--to sort out the arc of her life and her relationships. In the end Hardwick tries, in a way, to sum up what she has learned by this pursuit, which is not much:
"The torment of personal relations. Nothing new there except in the disguise, and in the escape on the wings of adjectives. Sweet to be pierced by daggers at the end of paragraphs."

Susan Sontag called it a "novel of mental weather" and I think that's apt, although I'm still not sure it's a novel. Whatever it is, I like it, and I'm excited to read it again. Hardwick is probably better known for her essays and criticism, but I think this is her best and most enduring work.
--Heidi

Comics: Not Just for Grown-ups Anymore

Françoise Mouly, art director for the New Yorker, and her husband Art Spiegelman have parlayed their love of comics into a mission to help kids learn how to read. Following the success of the RAW anthologies for grown-ups, then the Little Lit comics for young adults, Mouly and Spiegelman have launched Toon Books, a line of full-color, original comics for children ages 4+, i.e., kids who are just learning to read.

Mouly, who says her family learned their love of reading from comics, got grade-school cred for the books by getting feedback from librarians, teachers, and kids in Brooklyn, the South Bronx, and Pennsylvania. She also met with the Maryland State Superintendent of Schools, who is planning to use the books in K-3 classrooms as part of the Maryland Comic Book Initiative.

In a recent Publishers Weekly article, Mouly talked about her ambitions for Toon Books:

“Comics are the gateway to literacy for young kids,” said Mouly, who expects Toon Books to transform books for early readers the same way RAW influenced indie comics. “RAW showed that comics can be taken seriously,” she said. Little Lit... “was an intermediate step using the RAW model. Now there are more comics for kids 10–12 years old but not for very young kids.”

Toon Books will release three titles in spring 2008: Benny and Penny by Geoffrey Hayes (April), Silly Lilly and the Four Seasons by Agnes Rosenstiehl (May), and Otto's Orange Day by Frank Cammuso and Jay Lynch (June). And, exciting news for Spiegelman fans whose little ones aren't quite ready for Maus--in the fall he will release his own Toon Book, Jack and the Box. --Heidi

The Story Behind the "Best Illustrated Children's Books of 2007"

In case you missed it, the New York Times published its annual list of the Best Illustrated Children's Books of 2007 in last weekend's Book Review, featuring sample art work from each book in its centerfold—and in a cool online slide show.

Like most year-end lists, it has many people asking why this book and not that book. The School Library Journal just posted an interview with Ellen Loughran, a panel judge, who provides perspective on the judges' decision-making. She admits that the list is probably more for parents and industry professionals than for kids (which is why librarians often disagree with the selections):

I have always felt that this particular list is like the Society of Children’s Book Illustrators’ list—a lot of those picture books do not have child appeal, but they do have wonderful art and wonderful illustrations. And what that says to me is, “Look for this person’s next book”—artists feel the art in this book is exceptionally strong.

Here's the list (with writer/illustrators) so you can judge for yourself if they got it right:

• Every Friday (Dan Yaccarino)
• Jabberwocky (Christopher Myers)
• The Arrival (Shaun Tan)
• First the Egg (Laura Vaccaro Seeger)
• Not a Box (Antoinette Portis; image shown above)
• 600 Black Spots (David A. Carter)
• The Frog Who Wanted to See the Sea (Guy Billout)
• The Wall: Growing Up Behind the Iron Curtain (Peter Sis)
• Old Penn Station (William Low)
• The Invention of Hugo Cabret (Brian Selznick)

--Heidi

A Brief Kids' History of Time

The NBC Today show's Al Roker announced last Friday that Stephen Hawking's new book, George's Secret Key to the Universe, will be the next selection in Al's Book Club for Kids, Roker's Oprah-style discussion group for young readers

George's Secret Key, co-authored by the renowned physicist and his daughter Lucy, is the first in a trilogy that the father-daughter team are writing together to present the cosmology of Hawking's A Brief History of Time for children ages nine to 12. They are calling the books "science fact," interspersing adventure stories with mini science lectures.

If you're thinking this sounds too much like a dry science text thinly disguised as a children's book, you should check out this Los Angeles Times review, which compares the adventure to the Captain Underpants series, calling it a "manifesto to the irrepressibility of the scientific mind."

The Today website has an excerpt from the book, a Q&A with the Hawkings, and--the coolest part--a form for nine-year-olds to email Stephen Hawking with questions like: "What is the Sunyaev-Zeldovich Effect and can it be used to calculate the Hubble Constant?"

(This question actually came from NASA's Ask an Astrophysicist, an extensive Q&A source for young physicists-in-training. Or for their parents who haven't taken a science class since the 10th grade and want to brush up on atoms and quarks before their family reads the book.)--Heidi

"Daring" and "Dangerous"? Hardly, Says the New York Times

The New York Times yesterday included an editorial titled "Childhood for Dummies" responding to last week's release of The Daring Book for Girls and its predecessor, the UK (and later U.S.) phenomenon, The Dangerous Book for Boys.

The editorial points to the un-daring, un-dangerousness of both books--with suggestions for girls like "wear high heels" and "try sushi or another exotic food" and with equally hazardous activities for boys, like making a paper hat and wrapping a package in brown paper and string. The Times editors attribute the appeal of the books for parents not to nostalgic design, or even wry humor, but rather to a deeper cultural need to offer a simple how-to manual to a generation of kids who have "superior thumb-joystick coordination" but who can't tie their shoes:

These books are so clearly not about daredeviltry. They are about ineptitude. They seem to perfectly capture a fear, floating in the culture, that a generation of preoccupied parents has been raising a generation of children full of sophisticated knowledge that is useless when the power goes out or the batteries die. ...

How strange, yet telling, that parents would see a pair of $25.95 how-to manuals as the keys to a richer childhood. … We do hope the trend dies out before the next book:

“Lying on your back in your crib, point your knees outward and draw your heels toward your stomach. Using both hands, grasp your left ankle, if you are right-handed (or right ankle, if left-handed), and slowly draw your toes into your mouth. Chew with caution!”

--Heidi

About a (Young Adult) Boy

Does labeling a novel YA change the way someone writes--or reads--it? Nick Hornby's recent foray into YA fiction, Slam, was released by Penguin U.S. last Tuesday. The novel, which has received mostly positive--though limited--acclaim so far in the U.S., is narrated by Sam, a teenager who finds out that his ex-girlfriend is pregnant.

Hornby briefly talks about his inspiration for writing a YA novel in this Seattle Times interview. He says that writing the novel "didn't feel different" from writing his adult novels, and he was inspired by the teenagers who were coming to his readings (who apparently already liked his non-YA novels).

Author Steve Almond reviewed the book in last Sunday's L.A. Times and he believes Hornby adjusted his style significantly for the YA format. While he praised Hornby's writing in general, he criticized him for dumbing down his narrator, avoiding the topic of abortion, and generally talking down to his readers:

That Slam is supposed to be a young-adult novel only makes matters worse. It suggests that Hornby sees teens, and teen readers, as incapable of adding up those narrative twos, let alone grappling with complex feelings and issues. That's not just condescending, it's flat-out wrong.

I wonder if Almond's critique is tougher, and other reviews more forgiving, because of the YA label--as though adult readers of YA expect more or less from a book because it is YA. In fact, adult readers have compared Slam, favorably and unfavorably, to The Catcher in the Rye, a compliment to any writer, though this comparison probably would not have been made had it not been YA. It'll be interesting to see what the intended audience--actual young-adult readers, not reviewers and other YA authors--think of Sam as a narrator. --Heidi

Best of 2007: Mother's Little Literary Helper

It's hard to imagine a book written by Lydia Davis not being one of my favorite books of any year. As a language geek, I've always been drawn to the technical aspects of short forms--poems under 12 lines, one-page essays, aphorisms, and the like--and Davis is famous for her mastery of short fiction, encapsulating life's little (and big) situations in stories as short as one page, or even one sentence.

Hi, I'm Heidi (a.k.a. Silas' mama), and I write for the Family Room with Paul (a.k.a. Daddy). Davis' latest story collection, Varieties of Disturbance, came out at the perfect time for me--less than a month after Silas was born--when reading short prose shifted from a pastime to a necessity.

This collection traveled with me many times around the house, even before it was a National Book Award nominee. The shortest pieces were convenient for a new mom with limited time (letting me focus my analytical skills on something other than my son's poop). But the real reason this is my favorite book of 2007 is the way it illuminates all the craziness inside the ordinary, without talking on and on about how crazy life is, or leaning on quirky characters or hyperbolic dialogue. Davis accesses emotion simply by being deliberate about language--and, believe me, that's pretty appealing when your emotions are all over the place.

(A close second favorite for 2007 would be Sorry, Tree by Eileen Myles. I first heard these poems while helping out on the Poetry Bus tour last fall. Myles reads in a casual, matter-of-fact way that quietly slaps you in the face and kisses you at the same time. I couldn't wait to get to the book, which was also perfect for me this year: it's all about big changes.) -- Heidi