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Children's books that deserve a bigger audience
I reached a critical point with my almost 5-year-old son a few months ago, when he asked me to read a story and I very predictably pulled "Hooray for Fish" out of the bookshelf.
randomhouse.com
More than 114 words ...
"Dada, that one doesn't have very many words in it."
One hundred and fourteen, to be precise. (In my most high-maintenance move so far this year, I just called my mother-in-law -- who is babysitting our toddler for free -- and asked her to count.) And he probably memorized every one of those words two years ago. It was definitely time to find another go-to book ...
Since every parent already has 12 copies of "Goodnight Moon" and "Where the Wild Things Are," I thought this would be a good time to turn to The Poop readership for recommendations of underrated children's books.
My first choice is "Milo's Special Words." This was a Christmas gift, which I'm guessing caught the purchaser's eye because my youngest son is named Milo. The plot is very simple -- Milo wants some milk, but can't get it until he learns to say "please." Then his mom refuses to leave the rug he's sitting on until he says "thank you." In a very John Sayles-like open-ended final scene, Milo shocks his mother by (spoiler alert!) using his special word to ask for a pony, a rocket and a magic wand. Read More 'Children's books that deserve a bigger audience' »
| January 26 2010 at 11:02 AM
What's the most-read children's book in your home?
I enjoyed Regan's recent post about the book-reading in her household over the years, and it reminded me to pay tribute to the current MVP of our children's library.
amazon.com
"Two coyote pups wake up from a nap ..."
I didn't have much hope for "Desert Babies." My intention when my kids were born was to extend my movie and music snobbery to books, and only let them read the classics -- things like "Curious George" and "Sylvester and the Magic Pebble." "Desert Babies" was purchased last minute at the Phoenix airport in March 2009, so I wouldn't return empty-handed to my then 1-year-old son after my latest drunken shirt-optional Spring Training weekend with my friends. I picked it almost randomly, happy I found something that would fit in my smallish carry-on that was age/taste appropriate. (The Sky Harbor International Airport appears to be 90 percent toy guns, chokable Native American jewelry and ugly "My grandma went to ..." T-shirts.)
Purely judged as literature, "Desert Babies" is lacking. It's currently ranked #1,325,136 in books at Amazon.com, and that seems about right. The book consists of a series of photos of baby animals, with captions that couldn't be more obvious -- or have taken more than three minutes to write. ("Tortoise hatchling eats flowers for lunch," "What are these quail chicks looking for?" etc.)
Of course, my 1 1/2-year-old fell in love with this book. It's his "Twilight." And then a really weird thing happened. I started to fall in love with it, too.
Two events sealed "Desert Babies" fate as the most cherished book in our house: Read More 'What's the most-read children's book in your home?' »
| January 14 2010 at 06:32 AM
Reading out loud to kids
When expectant parents visualize the new world ahead, they may picture snuggling with their baby in bed, running down the beach with their toddler and the family dog, climbing on play structures in the park on sunny afternoons. What they might not know is how many hours they will spend reading out loud to their kid.
talesofasweetlife.com
A well-constructed classic.
At bedtime, nap time, in the car, waiting on a park bench, in the middle of a formal dinner party or a backyard barbecue -- you name it -- you'll be hunched over a book, kid sitting on your lap, tucked under the covers or glued to your torso like a barnacle, staring at board books, picture books, newspaper comics, easy readers, chapter books, poetry. You'll be doing it for years, often reading the same book for months, over and over and over, until the book jacket comes off and the cardboard cover underneath becomes frayed and starts to detach from the spine.
As a children's book critic, one of my prime criteria when evaluating a picture book, generally aimed at the 4-8 age bracket, is: Will this book stand up to 100 readings? Since that's what a child may demand of you. If it's got a joke that's funny the first time, or the first five times, and after that the punch line has no punch, it goes on the discard pile.
The great ones passed this test easily. Ones that come to mind: "Go, Dog. Go!," the "Cat in the Hat" books and almost every Dr. Seuss book, "Big Dog, Little Dog," "Lily's Purple Plastic Purse," "Harold and the Purple Crayon," "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie" and most of its sequels, all of the original "Eloise" books, the "Olivia" books.
Of course it's the combination of art and story that works so well in these. Stubborn Olivia would be much harder to take if she weren't such a darn cute pig. Read More 'Reading out loud to kids' »
| January 11 2010 at 06:36 AM
Books that make you cry while reading them to your kid
The cover says "Love You Forever." But I have another name for it: "That #$%&ed; Up Book Where the Mom Dies on Page 20." Jill Tucker mentioned this children's book the other day, and it provoked a strong response among The Poop readership in the comments. If only you all had warned me a few days earlier ...
angusrobertson.com.au
I was totally ambushed.
My 4-year-old son handed me "Love You Forever" during bedtime a couple of weeks back. My wife is in a master's program in library science, and one of her current classes involves children's literature, so a lot of unfamiliar books have been making their way through our house.
I took a quick look at it. It had a picture of a kid playing with toilet paper on the cover, and the illustrations had the kind of rosy-cheeked realism that you find on those free pamphlets dentists hand out telling kids how to brush their teeth. But it was about three millimeters thick, and only had writing on every other page. Looks great to me ...
The book follows the standard "Cat's in the Cradle" narrative, exploring the relationship between mother and son as they get older. She keeps telling him "I love you forever, I'll love you for always, As long as I'm living, my baby you'll be." In the last part, she calls on the phone and says she's too sick to even croak out the first line, so the now-grown boy goes over to her house, holds mom in his arms, and says the words as she -- to my interpretation, at least -- appears to be dying on his lap. (One of several flaws in this book: In the time it took the mom to tell her son she's too old and sick to say the "I love you forever" thing, she could have said it twice.)
My son, who cries during "Curious George Rides a Bike," was actually handling things quite well. He did notice my quivering voice and pauses in the reading ("Why did you stop, daddy") but I managed to hold it together long enough to finish the book and then walk into our bedroom, shaking "Love You Forever" accusingly at my wife. Read More 'Books that make you cry while reading them to your kid' »
| September 18 2009 at 07:02 AM
Q&A; with "Mommy Doesn't Drink Here Anymore" author Rachael Brownell
I confess I've been a big fan of Rachael Brownell for a long time -- back when she was still known in the bloggy world as Crank Mama and then when we started working together over at Babble.com. We spent a lot of time e-bitching about the crappy minutia of our lives and kidding that we'd kick back in the evening and crack one open, toasting each other across great distances thanks to the power of the interwebs.
redroom.com
The reality was we were cracking open quite a lot, although neither of us knew to what extent. We kept that part of our lives hidden.
Rachael went into rehab a few months before I did, and now she's come out with a tremendous, raw and brutally honest book about her struggles with alcohol and what it did to her parenting. Vomiting in the miniature kids toilet at a PTA meeting? That's rock bottom.
Rachael will be in the Bay Area this week to hold a series of readings from "Mommy Doesn't Drink Here Anymore." (Info here.)
Like I said, I confess that I'm biased but I also have to admit how much I thoroughly enjoyed this little book. It's short and reads incredibly fast, and yet, it's so poignant and honest that it feels weightier -- it does for "perfect" suburbia what Pete Hamill did for his childhood New York. From marrying fast to falling apart, finally finding a little independence and coming to terms with a tremendous problem, Mommy Doesn't Drink Here Anymore is an eye-opener even for people who don't know, don't care or aren't interested in addiction stories.
Rachael was kind enough to answer a few questions, but really I was most interested in whether she'd done a full reversal: from popular advocate for the "martini playdate" to teetotaller.
Read More 'Q&A; with "Mommy Doesn't Drink Here Anymore" author Rachael Brownell' »| September 15 2009 at 03:15 PM
Poop reviews: one dad's downward spiral
This is just a quickie post to call attention to a book reading Tuesday by one of my favorite parenting bloggers. There's so much to love about Dad Gone Mad blogger Danny Evans's first book -- "Rage Against the Meshugenah" -- that I find myself unable to pinpoint even a few things to focus on. A memoir about his personal spiral into depression, Rage is so unflinching and honest that I felt myself cringing at times.
Courtesy Danny Evans
Did he just say that?
Man, this guy is messed up!
But he sure can write.
Now, I'm a longtime reader and fan of his blog, so I was looking forward to reading the book. From reading his blog, I knew to expect swearing, irreverence and an underlying theme of familial love running throughout, but I certainly wasn't expecting this. It was an odd confluence of events that conspired to send Evans spinning -- from being fired, to having his first child, to watching the Twin Towers endlessly topple on the news in the days following Sept. 11. Evans found himself trapped on his couch, unable to move -- except to surf for Internet porn or down beer after beer. Something, somehow, had cracked deep inside. He was out of control. And he needed help. Read More 'Poop reviews: one dad's downward spiral' »
| August 17 2009 at 03:02 PM
Exploring changing families in "The Daddy Shift"
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I'm about two-thirds of the way through an amazing new book, so it would be unfair to call this an official Poop Review (how lovely that would look on a book cover, no? Poop Approved!) -- but I did want to call attention to "The Daddy Shift" by San Francisco's own Jeremy Adam Smith because it offers an insightful look at the changing face of families -- and family values -- in America. And because there are some very interesting book-related events coming up this week and next that I don't want you to miss.
As a stay-at-home dad, I admit I was immediately intrigued by the full title: "How stay-at-home dads, breadwinning moms and shared parenting are transforming the American family." I wanted to think dads were finally getting their due, after a too-long history of being seen as some inept sit-com sidekick who is perpetually wrangling with messy diapers or, worse, viewed as some form of babysitter, as opposed to one half of a parenting team. But I was surprised to read that this idea of fumbling dads was a modern-day invention, according to the book -- that most of the 1900s seemingly wiped out generations -- no, centuries -- of deep fatherhood involvement in the family. Read More 'Exploring changing families in "The Daddy Shift"' »
| June 03 2009 at 04:36 PM
A tribute to ... Choose Your Own Adventure books
My first Choose Your Own Adventure book was purchased for all the wrong reasons. Needing to write an essay about the Mayan people for my 5th grade social studies class, I picked up a copy of "Mystery of the Maya" by R.A. Montgomery. I quickly found out that this book was anything but reference material -- during my first attempt to "read" this book, I think my character was abducted by aliens.
gamebooks.org
No way this ends well.
That was the special quality of Choose Your Own Adventure books. Unlike other tween reading of the early 1980s, which coddled readers with stories of high school sweethearts and summer camp high jinks, CYOA books made the reader the protagonist -- and then killed him or her off in horrible ways. I owned three of these books ("Mystery of the Maya," "The Cave of Time" and something with a deep sea theme) and probably died at least two dozen different ways, including getting devoured by a T-Rex, mauled by a Sabertooth Tiger and at least one Cormac McCarthy-style apocalyptic event. Sometimes living was worse than a quick death. It seemed as if each book had a different way for readers to get buried alive.
For those who don't remember or weren't born yet, the books started with some kind of mystery or science fiction plotline. Then readers would make choices that sent their characters to different pages depending on their decisions. After enough of these forks in the road, you might solve the mystery and become filthy rich, or end up slowly suffocating in a closet. The books seem quaint now, in a world of Nintendo Wiis. But in the late 1970s, when Choose Your Own Adventure became extremely popular, they seemed state-of-the-art. When my sons inevitably ask me what people did before the Internet, I'm going to pull out a copy of "Your Code Name is Jonah." Read More 'A tribute to ... Choose Your Own Adventure books' »
| April 27 2009 at 05:03 PM
The children's book you never get sick of ...
I'm a little bit of a children's book snob. I pass on books that are too long, don't like anything with bodily function themes and don't like books that are too cutesy. I know "Goodnight Moon" is everyone's favorite, but if I read it one more time I'm liable to do something horrible to two little kittens with a pair of mittens. And I've only read it twice.
kidstylefiles.com.au
Hooray for brevity!
But I can't get enough of "Hooray for Fish." I can read that book to my son every night and never get sick of it. Someone please include it as a reading at my funeral.
There's no plot to speak of. As matter of fact, it's probably about a year and a half too young for my nearly 4-year-old. The book by Lucy Cousins (she also writes and illustrates the Maisy Mouse picture books) follows a little orange spotted fish as he encounters various other colorful sea life. Imagine "Finding Nemo" without Dora or the dead mother.
Here's a sample line: "Hello spotty fish, stripy fish, happy fish, gripy fish." It ends, like every other children's book in the world, with the little fish encountering his mother. "Hello, mom. Hello, little fish. Kiss, kiss, kiss hooray for fish." (I hate to be a gripy fish, but are there any books that end with a kid hugging his father?)
The phrase "Hooray for Fish" has turned into something of a catchphrase in our house, coming up frequently in non-literary situations. Here's a sample conversation between me and my wife. Read More 'The children's book you never get sick of ...' »
| February 10 2009 at 08:08 AM
What will your kids say in their revenge memoir?
As my 3-year-old son gets older, and he gets more aware of my faults, I've developed a new parenting worry. Along with being scared about him getting hurt, getting in trouble at school and driving my wife clinically insane, there's this concern.
skinnymag.com
Take that, mom!
When he grows up, what will he write about me in his revenge memoir?
I'm not completely convinced we'll ever have to deal with this problem. I'm currently neither rich or famous enough to warrant a book deal to dish about all of my parenting foibles. But he will have a really great title for this book: "Oh, The Poop of It All." And he'll have plenty of ammunition. Most of the revenge memoir fodder I've listed below seems completely innocent when it's actually happening. But when you tell people about these faults (or write them down) they sound borderline criminal. As we do our best as parents, are we also sowing the seeds for future trashy reading?
My top three revenge memoir chapters are below. Yours in the comments.
1. Chapter One: Daddy Dearest. I can deal with the fact that my sons may never be brain surgeons. They can be bad at sports, fail to hold jobs and call every week to borrow money. But they're going to be polite. My biggest worry is having that rude kid who doesn't say thank you to servers and says mean stuff to his grandparents. We've probably gone a little overboard reinforcing this with our older son. Here's how you ask for a sippy cup full of milk in our house: "Daddy sir please may I have some milk please." Or another favorite: "Mommy dear who I love so much. May I please have some milk please sir." (Like I said, it looks worse in print.) Read More 'What will your kids say in their revenge memoir?' »
| December 04 2008 at 09:32 AM
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