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The Rory Gilmore Reading Challenge!

13 Sep

So…..

This isn’t entirely Children’s Lit/ Young Adult lit– but because so many of us watched Gilmore Girls in our teens, I could not help but post this completely ridiculous list that someone has so nicely compiled of every book that Rory Gilmore mentions while the show was running. It is a challenge. It is a challenge for young readers, old readers, good readers, bad readers, braver readers, and not so brave readers. This is ONE HELL OF A LIST. Rory– you still inspire me today. I can’t see a Yale sweatshirt and not kinda/sorta think of you.

1984 by George Orwell
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon
An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
Archidamian War by Donald Kagan
The Art of Fiction by Henry James
The Art of War by Sun Tzu
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
Atonement by Ian McEwan
Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy
The Awakening by Kate Chopin
Babe by Dick King-Smith
Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women by Susan Faludi
Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie
Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
Beloved by Toni Morrison
Beowulf: A New Verse Translation by Seamus Heaney
The Bhagava Gita
The Bielski Brothers: The True Story of Three Men Who Defied the Nazis, Built a Village in the Forest, and Saved 1,200 Jews by Peter Duffy
Bitch in Praise of Difficult Women by Elizabeth Wurtzel
A Bolt from the Blue and Other Essays by Mary McCarthy
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Brick Lane by Monica Ali
Bridgadoon by Alan Jay Lerner
Candide by Voltaire – read – June 2010
The Canterbury Tales by Chaucer
Carrie by Stephen King
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger – read
Charlotte’s Web by E. B. White
The Children’s Hour by Lillian Hellman
Christine by Stephen King
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
The Code of the Woosters by P.G. Wodehouse
The Collected Short Stories by Eudora Welty
The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty by Eudora Welty
A Comedy of Errors by William Shakespeare
Complete Novels by Dawn Powell
The Complete Poems by Anne Sexton
Complete Stories by Dorothy Parker
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas père
Cousin Bette by Honor’e de Balzac
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Crimson Petal and the White by Michel Faber
The Crucible by Arthur Miller
Cujo by Stephen King
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
Daisy Miller by Henry James
Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende
David and Lisa by Dr Theodore Issac Rubin M.D
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
The Da Vinci -Code by Dan Brown – read
Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol
Demons by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
Deenie by Judy Blume
The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America by Erik Larson
The Dirt: Confessions of the World’s Most Notorious Rock Band by Tommy Lee, Vince Neil, Mick Mars and Nikki Sixx
The Divine Comedy by Dante
The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood by Rebecca Wells
Don Quijote by Cervantes
Driving Miss Daisy by Alfred Uhrv
Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
Edgar Allan Poe: Complete Tales & Poems by Edgar Allan Poe
Eleanor Roosevelt by Blanche Wiesen Cook
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe
Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters by Mark Dunn
Eloise by Kay Thompson
Emily the Strange by Roger Reger
Emma by Jane Austen
Empire Falls by Richard Russo
Encyclopedia Brown: Boy Detective by Donald J. Sobol
Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
Ethics by Spinoza
Europe through the Back Door, 2003 by Rick Steves
Eva Luna by Isabel Allende
Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer
Extravagance by Gary Krist
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Fahrenheit 9/11 by Michael Moore
The Fall of the Athenian Empire by Donald Kagan
Fat Land: How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World by Greg Critser
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson
The Fellowship of the Ring: Book 1 of The Lord of the Ring by J. R. R. Tolkien (TBR) – read
Fiddler on the Roof by Joseph Stein
The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom – read
Finnegan’s Wake by James Joyce
Fletch by Gregory McDonald
Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem
The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Franny and Zooey by J. D. Salinger
Freaky Friday by Mary Rodgers
Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut
Gender Trouble by Judith Butler
George W. Bushism: The Slate Book of the Accidental Wit and Wisdom of our 43rd President by Jacob Weisberg
Gidget by Fredrick Kohner
Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen
The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels
The Godfather: Book 1 by Mario Puzo
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy – started and not finished
Goldilocks and the Three Bears by Alvin Granowsky
Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
The Good Soldier by Ford Maddox Ford
The Gospel According to Judy Bloom
The Graduate by Charles Webb
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald – read
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
The Group by Mary McCarthy
Hamlet by William Shakespeare
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J. K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J. K. Rowling
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad (TBR)
Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders by Vincent Bugliosi and Curt Gentry (TBR)
Henry IV, part I by William Shakespeare
Henry IV, part II by William Shakespeare
Henry V by William Shakespeare
High Fidelity by Nick Hornby
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon
Holidays on Ice: Stories by David Sedaris
The Holy Barbarians by Lawrence Lipton
House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus III (Lpr)
The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende
How to Breathe Underwater by Julie Orringer
How the Grinch Stole Christmas by Dr. Seuss
How the Light Gets in by M. J. Hyland
Howl by Allen Gingsburg
The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo
The Iliad by Homer
I’m with the Band by Pamela des Barres
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
Inherit the Wind by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee
Iron Weed by William J. Kennedy
It Takes a Village by Hillary Clinton
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare
The Jumping Frog by Mark Twain
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
Just a Couple of Days by Tony Vigorito
The Kitchen Boy: A Novel of the Last Tsar by Robert Alexander
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
Lady Chatterleys’ Lover by D. H. Lawrence
The Last Empire: Essays 1992-2000 by Gore Vidal
Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
The Legend of Bagger Vance by Steven Pressfield
Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis
Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke
Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them by Al Franken
Life of Pi by Yann Martel
The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis
Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens
The Little Locksmith by Katharine Butler Hathaway
The Little Match Girl by Hans Christian Andersen
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
Living History by Hillary Rodham Clinton
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
The Lottery: And Other Stories by Shirley Jackson
The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
The Love Story by Erich Segal
Macbeth by William Shakespeare
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
The Manticore by Robertson Davies
Marathon Man by William Goldman
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter by Simone de Beauvoir
Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman by William Tecumseh Sherman
Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris
The Meaning of Consuelo by Judith Ortiz Cofer
Mencken’s Chrestomathy by H. R. Mencken
The Merry Wives of Windsro by William Shakespeare
The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
The Miracle Worker by William Gibson
Moby Dick by Herman Melville
The Mojo Collection: The Ultimate Music Companion by Jim Irvin
Moliere: A Biography by Hobart Chatfield Taylor
A Monetary History of the United States by Milton Friedman
Monsieur Proust by Celeste Albaret
A Month Of Sundays: Searching For The Spirit And My Sister by Julie Mars
A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway
Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
Mutiny on the Bounty by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall
My Lai 4: A Report on the Massacre and It’s Aftermath by Seymour M. Hersh
My Life as Author and Editor by H. R. Mencken
My Life in Orange: Growing Up with the Guru by Tim Guest
My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult
The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer
The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
The Nanny Diaries by Emma McLaughlin
Nervous System: Or, Losing My Mind in Literature by Jan Lars Jensen
New Poems of Emily Dickinson by Emily Dickinson
The New Way Things Work by David Macaulay
Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich
Night by Elie Wiesel
Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism by William E. Cain, Laurie A. Finke, Barbara E. Johnson, John P. McGowan
Novels 1930-1942: Dance Night/Come Back to Sorrento, Turn, Magic Wheel/Angels on Toast/A Time to be Born by Dawn Powell
Notes of a Dirty Old Man by Charles Bukowski
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
Old School by Tobias Wolff
Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
On the Road by Jack Kerouac
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Opposite of Fate: Memories of a Writing Life by Amy Tan
Oracle Night by Paul Auster
Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
Othello by Shakespeare – read
Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens
The Outbreak of the Peloponnesian War by Donald Kagan
Out of Africa by Isac Dineson
The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton
A Passage to India by E.M. Forster
The Peace of Nicias and the Sicilian Expedition by Donald Kagan
The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
Peyton Place by Grace Metalious
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
Pigs at the Trough by Arianna Huffington
Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi
Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain
The Polysyllabic Spree by Nick Hornby – read
The Portable Dorothy Parker by Dorothy Parker
The Portable Nietzche by Fredrich Nietzche
The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O’Neill by Ron Suskind
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Property by Valerie Martin
Pushkin: A Biography by T. J. Binyon
Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw
Quattrocento by James Mckean
A Quiet Storm by Rachel Howzell Hall
Rapunzel by Grimm Brothers
The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe
The Razor’s Edge by W. Somerset Maugham
Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

I need a break……. ok…..keep going….

Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm by Kate Douglas Wiggin
The Red Tent by Anita Diamant
Rescuing Patty Hearst: Memories From a Decade Gone Mad by Virginia Holman
The Return of the King: The Lord of the Rings Book 3 by J. R. R. Tolkien (TBR) – read
R Is for Ricochet by Sue Grafton
Rita Hayworth by Stephen King
Robert’s Rules of Order by Henry Robert
Roman Fever by Edith Wharton
Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf
A Room with a View by E. M. Forster
Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin
Sacred Time by Ursula Hegi
Sanctuary by William Faulkner
Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay by Nancy Milford
The Scarecrow of Oz by Frank L. Baum
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Seabiscuit: An American Legend by Laura Hillenbrand
The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir
The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
Secrets of the Flesh: A Life of Colette by Judith Thurman
Selected Letters of Dawn Powell: 1913-1965 by Dawn Powell
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
A Separate Peace by John Knowles
Several Biographies of Winston Churchill
Sexus by Henry Miller
The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
Shane by Jack Shaefer
The Shining by Stephen King
Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
S Is for Silence by Sue Grafton
Slaughter-house Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Small Island by Andrea Levy – on my book pile
Snows of Kilimanjaro by Ernest Hemingway
Snow White and Rose Red by Grimm Brothers
Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World by Barrington Moore
The Song of Names by Norman Lebrecht
Song of the Simple Truth: The Complete Poems of Julia de Burgos by Julia de Burgos
The Song Reader by Lisa Tucker
Songbook by Nick Hornby
The Sonnets by William Shakespeare
Sonnets from the Portuegese by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Sophie’s Choice by William Styron
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
Speak, Memory by Vladimir Nabokov
Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach
The Story of My Life by Helen Keller
A Streetcar Named Desiree by Tennessee Williams
Stuart Little by E. B. White
Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
Swann’s Way by Marcel Proust
Swimming with Giants: My Encounters with Whales, Dolphins and Seals by Anne Collett
Sybil by Flora Rheta Schreiber
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
Tender Is The Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Term of Endearment by Larry McMurtry
Time and Again by Jack Finney
The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
To Have and Have Not by Ernest Hemingway
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
The Tragedy of Richard III by William Shakespeare
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
The Trial by Franz Kafka
The True and Outstanding Adventures of the Hunt Sisters by Elisabeth Robinson
Truth & Beauty: A Friendship by Ann Patchett
Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom
Ulysses by James Joyce
The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath 1950-1962 by Sylvia Plath
Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann
The Vanishing Newspaper by Philip Meyers
Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
Velvet Underground’s The Velvet Underground and Nico (Thirty Three and a Third series) by Joe Harvard
The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides
Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
Walden by Henry David Thoreau
Walt Disney’s Bambi by Felix Salten
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
We Owe You Nothing – Punk Planet: The Collected Interviews edited by Daniel Sinker
What Colour is Your Parachute? 2005 by Richard Nelson Bolles
What Happened to Baby Jane by Henry Farrell
When the Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka
Who Moved My Cheese? Spencer Johnson
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf by Edward Albee – read
Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire The Wizard of Oz by Frank L. Baum
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole

Well…..I’ve read everything in red. I have a WAYS to go…..

This looks like a Qualifying Exam list for a Ph. D. I applaud you Ms. Gilmore! Anyone want to take on this challenge? How many of these books have you read?

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Jana Riess, Molly Weasley, and how hospitality saved the world!

13 Sep

A Weasley Christmas

(this gem is from Loleia at Deviantart.com)

Over at religionnews.com, Jana Riess has written a lovely little blog piece on Molly Weasley and hospitality. Everyone knows I can’t resist a blog post on Harry, especially when focused on the ever lovable and controversial Molly!! Enjoy!

Everything I Need to Know About Hospitality, I Learned from Molly Weasley

Jana Riess

The first time we meet Molly Weasley in the Harry Potter books, she welcomes the stranger. At King’s Cross Station, she patiently teaches Harry the trick of finding Platform Nine and Three-Quarters, not because she knows he’s famous — she has no idea who the scrawny boy before her might be — but simply because the very core of her person is suffused with hospitality.

And when, later in the scene, she does discover his identity, her immediate thought is not that he is famous but that he is alone in the world and needs a little mothering. She cautions her daughter that Harry won’t want to be gawked at like some creature in the zoo.

A few months later, she sends Harry a homemade Weasley sweater for the holidays, much to Ron’s chagrin. But to Harry, who has never received a Christmas present, the hand-knitted sweater signals belonging. It brings a message: You are part of us now.

As I explore our spiritual practice of hospitality throughout September, I keep circling back to Molly as the hospitable person I want to become. She’s not a perfect person by any means; she has a fierce temper, succumbs to a dubious Author Crush, and has lousy taste in music. But she is always, always one who welcomes the stranger. In Book 2, when Harry visits the Weasley family, Molly immediately treats him like one of her own children. He’s given a little extra food to fatten him up, but he’s also allowed to go out and de-gnome the garden, doing household chores like everybody else.

She regards him as both special and not special, which is just about right, I think. One trick of hospitality is treating people not as you would want to be treated yourself, but as they want to be treated, which is usually much harder.

Treating people like we would wish to be treated ourselves is great in theory, but in practice it can be an extension of our own ego and selfishness. Molly and Harry butt heads a few times in the later books over his growing adolescent need for independence, but she ultimately respects his need to not be, quite literally, mollycoddled.

It’s not just Harry who benefits from Molly’s open-handed generosity. The Weasley home is a safehouse for all sorts of flawed humans (Mundungus Fletcher, anyone?), not to mention assorted creatures that others might censure, such as werewolves. Molly feeds everyone her famed cooking, despite the fact that it’s not like her family is drowning in cash. The Weasleys are perpetually short of money with their own large family, but you never see either Molly or Arthur turning guests away because they’re poor. She refuses to accept Harry’s Triwizard Tournament prize money when he attempts to press it on her, even though a thousand galleons would go far to alleviate her own family’s poverty.

Molly’s no saint, except when she is; her fierce love for her own family extends outward to create an entire community with bonds of love. Until the end of the seventh book, we only see her magical power in terms of housewifely arts — she can make potatoes jump out of their jackets (please, please teach me how to do that) and knitting needles clack amongst themselves. But in the Battle of Hogwarts, we get a glimpse of a different, powerful Molly Weasley – a strength that has informed her character all along, but is galvanized into action when her daughter is attacked. “Not my daughter, you bitch!” Molly hurls, singlehandedly dueling Bellatrix Lestrange to the death in order to protect the Weasley family.

But that’s just it. Molly’s protectiveness has never been reserved just for her own seven children. From that cocoon it has ever extended outward to include the stranger and build community. In a fantastic twist of irony, the woman who is best known for welcoming the stranger kills the woman whose very name means “the stranger”; Bellatrix has spent a lifetime as the anti-Molly, and she is about to pay.

And so it is that Molly Weasley, housewife, deals the penultimate death blow to the Death Eaters.

Her hospitality helps save the world.

Any thoughts? Hospitality vs. Love? Is it the same? Lets get talking here!  Paint the ROSES!!

 

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Alice is back! NPR gives us the 100 Best Teen Novels

7 Aug

After a hard couple months of medical and rabbitty hole hardship, I’m back! To start off, I give you NPR’s list of the Best 100 Teen Novels. I think some are missing and some are missplaced. Any thoughts? Sound off!

NPR’s 100 Best Teen Novels

Enjoy some of the highlights and lowlights below and click on the link above to read through the entire list. As always, paint the roses in the comment section!

1. Harry Potter

 

2. Hunger Games- maybe a bit high there?? I mean–I love the series, but it is not the second best ever. Everyone needs to CALM DOWN.

21. Mortal Instruments Series- Seriously? …………………………………………………………….Seriously? I will leave my ranting out of this. But SERIOUSLY? It beats out Tuck Everlasting?? The Giver? Bridge to Terabithea and A Wrinkle in Time (which were missing)? Ugh.

At least my favorite redhead was represented….

14. Anne of Green Gables

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We Have Lost A Wild Thing

8 May

Maurice Sendakv

I could not word it better than Margalit Fox at the NYT (NYT.com)

“Maurice Sendak, widely considered the most important children’s book artist of the 20th century, who wrenched the picture book out of the safe, sanitized world of the nursery and plunged it into the dark, terrifying and hauntingly beautiful recesses of the human psyche, died on Tuesday in Danbury, Conn. He was 83 and lived in Ridgefield, Conn.

The cause was complications from a recent stroke, said Michael di Capua, his longtime editor.

Roundly praised, intermittently censored and occasionally eaten, Mr. Sendak’s books were essential ingredients of childhood for the generation born after 1960 or thereabouts, and in turn for their children. He was known in particular for more than a dozen picture books he wrote and illustrated himself, most famously “Where the Wild Things Are,” which was simultaneously genre-breaking and career-making when it was published by Harper & Row in 1963.

Among the other titles he wrote and illustrated, all from Harper & Row, are “In the Night Kitchen” (1970) and “Outside Over There” (1981), which together with “Where the Wild Things Are” form a trilogy; “The Sign on Rosie’s Door” (1960); “Higglety Pigglety Pop!” (1967); and “The Nutshell Library” (1962), a boxed set of four tiny volumes comprising “Alligators All Around,” “Chicken Soup With Rice,” “One Was Johnny” and “Pierre.”

In September, a new picture book by Mr. Sendak, “Bumble-Ardy” — the first in 30 years for which he produced both text and illustrations — was issued by HarperCollins Publishers. The book, which spent five weeks on the New York Times children’s best-seller list, tells the not-altogether-lighthearted story of an orphaned pig (his parents are eaten) who gives himself a riotous birthday party.

A posthumous picture book, “My Brother’s Book” — a poem written and illustrated by Mr. Sendak and inspired by his love for his late brother, Jack — is scheduled to be published next February.

Mr. Sendak’s work was the subject of critical studies and major exhibitions; in the second half of his career, he was also renowned as a designer of theatrical sets. His art graced the writing of other eminent authors for children and adults, including Hans Christian Andersen, Leo Tolstoy, Herman Melville, William Blake and Isaac Bashevis Singer.

In book after book, Mr. Sendak upended the staid, centuries-old tradition of American children’s literature, in which young heroes and heroines were typically well scrubbed and even better behaved; nothing really bad ever happened for very long; and everything was tied up at the end in a neat, moralistic bow.

Mr. Sendak’s characters, by contrast, are headstrong, bossy, even obnoxious. (In “Pierre,” “I don’t care!” is the response of the small eponymous hero to absolutely everything.) His pictures are often unsettling. His plots are fraught with rupture: children are kidnapped, parents disappear, a dog lights out from her comfortable home.

A largely self-taught illustrator, Mr. Sendak was at his finest a shtetl Blake, portraying a luminous world, at once lovely and dreadful, suspended between wakefulness and dreaming. In so doing, he was able to convey both the propulsive abandon and the pervasive melancholy of children’s interior lives.

His visual style could range from intricately crosshatched scenes that recalled 19th-century prints to airy watercolors reminiscent of Chagall to bold, bulbous figures inspired by the comic books he loved all his life, with outsize feet that the page could scarcely contain. He never did learn to draw feet, he often said.

In 1964, the American Library Association awarded Mr. Sendak the Caldecott Medal, considered the Pulitzer Prize of children’s book illustration, for “Where the Wild Things Are.” In simple, incantatory language, the book told the story of Max, a naughty boy who rages at his mother and is sent to his room without supper. A pocket Odysseus, Max promptly sets sail:

And he sailed off through night and day

and in and out of weeks

and almost over a year

to where the wild things are.

There, Max leads the creatures in a frenzied rumpus before sailing home, anger spent, to find his supper waiting.

As portrayed by Mr. Sendak, the wild things are deliciously grotesque: huge, snaggletoothed, exquisitely hirsute and glowering maniacally. He always maintained he was drawing his relatives — who, in his memory at least, had hovered like a pack of middle-aged gargoyles above the childhood sickbed to which he was often confined.

Maurice Bernard Sendak was born in Brooklyn on June 10, 1928; his father, Philip, was a dressmaker in the garment district of Manhattan. Family photographs show the infant Maurice, or Murray as he was then known, as a plump, round-faced, slanting-eyed, droopy-lidded, arching-browed creature — looking, in other words, exactly like a baby in a Maurice Sendak illustration. Mr. Sendak adored drawing babies, in all their fleshy petulance.

A frail child beset by a seemingly endless parade of illnesses, Mr. Sendak was reared, he said afterward, in a world of looming terrors: the Depression; the war; the Holocaust, in which many of his European relatives perished; the seemingly infinite vulnerability of children to danger. The kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby in 1932 he experienced as a personal torment: if that fair-haired, blue-eyed princeling could not be kept safe, what certain peril lay in store for him, little Murray Sendak, in his humble apartment in Bensonhurst?

An image from the Lindbergh crime scene — a ladder leaning against the side of a house — would find its way into “Outside Over There,” in which a baby is carried off by goblins.

As Mr. Sendak grew up — lower class, Jewish, gay — he felt permanently shunted to the margins of things. “All I wanted was to be straight so my parents could be happy,” he told The New York Times in a 2008 interview. “They never, never, never knew.”

His lifelong melancholia showed in his work, in picture books like “We Are All in the Dumps With Jack and Guy” (HarperCollins, 1993), a parable about homeless children in the age of AIDS. It showed in his habits. He could be dyspeptic and solitary, working in his white clapboard home in the deep Connecticut countryside with only Mozart, Melville, Mickey Mouse and his dogs for company.

It showed in his everyday interactions with people, especially those blind to the seriousness of his enterprise. “A woman came up to me the other day and said, ‘You’re the kiddie-book man!’ ” Mr. Sendak told Vanity Fair last year.“I wanted to kill her.”

But Mr. Sendak could also be warm and forthright, if not quite gregarious. He was a man of ardent enthusiasms — for music, art, literature, argument and the essential rightness of children’s perceptions of the world around them. He was also a mentor to a generation of younger writers and illustrators for children, several of whom, including Arthur Yorinks, Richard Egielski and Paul O. Zelinsky, went on to prominent careers of their own.

As far back as he could remember, Mr. Sendak had loved to draw. That and looking out the window had helped him pass the long hours in bed. While he was still in high school he worked part time for All-American Comics, filling in backgrounds for book versions of the “Mutt and Jeff” comic strip. His first professional illustrations were for a physics textbook, “Atomics for the Millions,” published in 1947.

In 1948, at 20, he took a job building window displays for F. A. O. Schwarz. Through the store’s children’s book buyer, he was introduced to Ursula Nordstrom, the distinguished editor of children’s books at Harper & Row. The meeting, the start of a long, fruitful collaboration, led to Mr. Sendak’s first children’s book commission: illustrating “The Wonderful Farm,” by Marcel Aymé, published in 1951.

Under Ms. Nordstrom’s guidance, Mr. Sendak went on to illustrate books by other well-known children’s authors, including several by Ruth Krauss, notably “A Hole Is to Dig” (1952), and Else Holmelund Minarik’s “Little Bear” series. The first title he wrote and illustrated himself, “Kenny’s Window,” published in 1956, was a moody, dreamlike story about a lonely boy’s inner life.

Mr. Sendak’s books were often a window into his own experience. “Higglety Pigglety Pop! Or, There Must Be More to Life” was a valentine to Jennie, his beloved Sealyham terrier, who died shortly before the book was published.

At the start of the story, Jennie, who has everything a dog could want — including “a round pillow upstairs and a square pillow downstairs” — packs her bags and sets off on her own, pining for adventure. She finds it on the stage of the World Mother Goose Theatre, where she becomes a leading lady. Every day, and twice on Saturdays, Jennie, who looks rather like a mop herself, eats a mop made out of salami. This makes her very happy.

“Hello,” Jennie writes in a satisfyingly articulate letter to her master. “As you probably noticed, I went away forever. I am very experienced now and very famous. I am even a star. … I get plenty to drink too, so don’t worry.”

By contrast, the huge, flat, brightly colored illustrations of “In the Night Kitchen,” the story of a boy’s journey through a fantastic nocturnal cityscape, are a tribute to the New York of Mr. Sendak’s childhood, recalling the 1930s films and comic books he adored all his life. (The three bakers who toil in the night kitchen are the spit and image of Oliver Hardy.)

Mr. Sendak’s later books could be much darker. “Brundibar” (Hyperion, 2003), with text by the playwright Tony Kushner, is a picture book based on an opera performed by the children of the Theresienstadt concentration camp. The opera, also called “Brundibar,” had been composed in 1938 by Hans Krasa, a Czech Jew who later died in Auschwitz.

Reviewing the book in The New York Times Book Review, Gregory Maguire called it “a capering picture book crammed with melodramatic menace and comedy both low and grand.” He added: “In a career that spans 50 years and counting, as Sendak’s does, there are bound to be lesser works. ‘Brundibar’ is not lesser than anything.”

With Mr. Kushner, Mr. Sendak collaborated on a stage version of the opera, performed in 2006 at the New Victory Theater in New York.

Despite its wild popularity, Mr. Sendak’s work was not always well received. Some early reviews of “Where the Wild Things Are” expressed puzzlement and outright unease. Writing in Ladies’ Home Journal, the psychologist Bruno Bettelheim took Mr. Sendak to task for punishing Max:

“The basic anxiety of the child is desertion,” Mr. Bettelheim wrote. “To be sent to bed alone is one desertion, and without food is the second desertion.” (Mr. Bettelheim admitted that he had not actually read the book.)

“In the Night Kitchen,” which depicts its young hero, Mickey, in the nude, prompted many school librarians to bowdlerize the book by drawing a diaper over Mickey’s nether region.

But these were minority responses. Mr. Sendak’s other awards include the Hans Christian Andersen Award for Illustration, the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award and, in 1996, the National Medal of the Arts, presented by President Bill Clinton. Twenty-two of his titles have been named New York Times best illustrated books of the year.

Many of Mr. Sendak’s books had second lives on stage and screen. Among the most notable adaptations are the operas “Where the Wild Things Are” and “Higglety Pigglety Pop!” by the British composer Oliver Knussen, and Carole King’s “Really Rosie,” a musical version of “The Sign on Rosie’s Door,” which appeared on television as an animated special in 1975 and on the Off Broadway stage in 1980.

In 2009, a feature film version of “Where the Wild Things Are” — part live action, part animated — by the director Spike Jonze opened to favorable notices. (With Lance Bangs, Mr. Jonze also directed “Tell Them Anything You Want,” a documentary film about Mr. Sendak first broadcast on HBO that year.)

In the 1970s, Mr. Sendak began designing sets and costumes for adaptations of his own work and, eventually, the work of others. His first venture was Mr. Knussen’s “Wild Things,” for which Mr. Sendak also wrote the libretto. Performed in a scaled-down version in Brussels in 1980, the opera had its full premiere four years later, to great acclaim, staged in London by the Glyndebourne Touring Opera.

With the theater director Frank Corsaro, he also created sets for several venerable operas, among them Mozart’s “Magic Flute,” performed by the Houston Grand Opera in 1980, and Leos Janacek’s “Cunning Little Vixen” for the New York City Opera in 1981.

For the Pacific Northwest Ballet, Mr. Sendak designed sets and costumes for a 1983 production of Tchaikovsky’s “Nutcracker”; a film version was released in 1986.

Among Mr. Sendak’s recent books is his only pop-up book, “Mommy?,” published by Scholastic in 2006, with a scenario by Mr. Yorinks and paper engineering by Matthew Reinhart.

Mr. Sendak’s companion of a half-century, Eugene Glynn, a psychiatrist who specialized in the treatment of young people, died in 2007. No immediate family members survive.

Though he understood children deeply, Mr. Sendak by no means valorized them unconditionally. “Dear Mr. Sun Deck …” he could drone with affected boredom, imitating the semiliterate forced-march school letter-writing projects of which he was the frequent, if dubious, beneficiary.

But he cherished the letters that individual children sent him unbidden, which burst with the sparks that his work had ignited.

“Dear Mr. Sendak,” read one, from an 8-year-old boy. “How much does it cost to get to where the wild things are? If it is not expensive, my sister and I would like to spend the summer there.” (NYT.com)

 

I remember the first time I read this. Everything was possible…..

 

 

 

 

You will be missed……

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The Mad Friday Tea Party

6 Apr

This week, the New York Times paid special attention to Young Adult Literature! I invite you to join in on their very interesting and diverse discussion for this weeks Tea Party!!!

1. When Authors Take Risks 

2. Adults Should Read Adult Books 

3. Why Expect More From Teenagers Than Adults 

4. Social Media Has Fed The Fever 

5. Nothing Wrong With Strong Plot and Characters 

7. Young People Can See Themselves In Books 

So what do you think of the debate? Do you think Adults should only read adult books? Do you think YA authors are doing some daring work? Is social media “hijacking” YA lit?? Paint the ROSES!!!!!!

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Alice’s Musings: Fertility Dystopia

12 Mar

Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale

Any idea why the themes of breeders, child-rape, child brides, and  infertility keep coming up in YA dystopia lately? I am working on some things (possible dissertation ideas) and keep getting more and more confused about what the draw really is for young girls when reading books about girls getting sold into prostitution, forced into marriages when they are 13, forced into government-back “breeding houses”, and brutal violence against women that is romanticized in a love triangle. These books are not obscure. They are NYT Best Sellers. They are also marketed to girls 11-13 (yup…YA means 11-13–even though some us are more adult than young and still love reading it). Help me out here. You can’t keep these things on the shelves. They are obviously very powerful, but what anxiety are they hitting that resonates so powerfully? I would also like to note that there is no clear condemnation of some of these things mentioned above in these books. If there was I would label them straight feminist dystopias, right? They are not–all of the horror is romanticized in the cliche love triangles and …and…..ugh.

I will be reviewing three books this week and I would put at least two into the “fertility dystopia” genre. Could I call it the “malfeminism” genre? The “taboo-exploration” hiding behind dystopia genre? Most of the authors are women and I just want to sit and ask them some questions about certain decisions they made when writing. Why would you make the man who takes the lead character (a young girl) when she is underage (13, 15, or 17), makes her marry him against her will, kills her sisters, then rapes her a part of the love triangle. Who would ever want their daughter to read that and process that message as OK? Did I mention he oks medical testing on you?

I will wonder some more and post a less obscure rant when I review but any thoughts would be appreciated.

It is making me scratch my head and wonder what the draw is (or the underlying anxiety). This can’t be good though right? Oh Atwood…where are you when I want to talk to you.

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Pottermore!

8 Mar

Coming Soon.....

Open to all users in early April……

For more information, visit the Insider!

I am geeking out like Dobby at a sock factory ya’ll!!!!

Dobby, A Free Elf!

Please don’t let me down Pottermore. You are the last thing on my fandom checklist (other than name every single one of my kids after a Harry Potter character….).

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Oldie but Goodie: Juniper

6 Mar

Juniper, Monica Furlong

Title: Juniper

Author: Monica Furlong

Publisher: Scholastic

Date: September 8th 1992

Pages:  208 pages

Genre: Young Adult, Legends and Myths, Fantasy, Girlhood, Fantasy, Magic

ISBN: 0679833692

Publisher Description:

Though Juniper enjoys the easy life of a medieval princess, she chooses to learn about herbs, healing, and the magic within nature from her strange and difficult godmother. As her training comes to an end, Juniper discovers that her power-hungry aunt is using black magic to seize the throne. Juniper must use her as-yet-untested powers to stop her–before the kingdom is destroyed!

(scholastic.com)

Book Trailer: none

Cover and Title Critique: I love this cover! It reminds me of an illuminated manuscript for some reason. When I was younger I used to look at this cover and  imagine myself wearing Juniper’s cloak and training to be a doran (witch, wise woman, take your pleasure with word that makes you comfortable). The wall with the angry dogs alone makes this cover a WIN!

Alice says: I WANT TO BOTTLE IT UP I LOVE IT SO!

So…I should start off saying that Juniper is the prequel to:

Wise Child, Monica Furlong

Publisher Description:

Abandoned by both her parents, nine-year-old Wise Child goes to live with the witch woman Juniper, who begins to train her in the ways of herbs and magic.

(scholastic.com)

and it was followed by this book:

Colman, Monica Furlong

Publisher Description:

Set in very early Christian times, Colman is a spellbinding fantasy of a faraway age, when the mystical and the commonplace walked hand in hand. The healer, Juniper, and her apprentice, Wise Child, are accused of witchcraft and forced to flee their small town. Wise Child’s devoted cousin, Colman, escapes with them. This is his story of their arrival to the land of Juniper’s birth, where she is, in fact, a princess.

(goodreads.com)

The reason I have decided to title the review Juniper is because I read them in this particular order when I was younger and have continued to like reading them in the Juniper, Wise Child, and Colman order ever since. Do as you like– but I LIKE IT THIS WAY (but seriously…you could read it Wise Child, Juniper, Colman. I would not be offended). Juniper is the prequel (written after Wise Child) so it would not spoil anything for you. I just happened to stumble on it first and that is how I came to fall in love with Furlong’s trilogy and her wonderful characters.

Fantasy is a genre you either love or hate– I have yet to meet anyone who is very lukewarm about fantasy. Either you sing praises or you wish it would burn in the fires of Mordor (you see what I did there??). I was on the hate side when I was a tween until I read Juniper. She was my gateway drug for bigger and better things. She is a dangerous gateway drug– have some!

Juniper is a young princess in kingdom caught in the crossfire of the old religion and the new religion. When she loses everything at the birth of her male brother (everything = the kingdom), it is suggested she leave her home to study “the old ways” with the Godmother she has never met.  Juniper’s entire world is turned upside down as she faces a new life path she had never anticipated.

Furlong not only writes a fantasy novel, but a wonderful girlhood novel (and who doesn’t love a girlhood novel–Anne Shirley and Meg March anyone?) — taking you on a coming of age story that leaves you falling in love with a Juniper and Euny, her prickly but lovable Godmother. Her training to be a doran is wonderfully told through the eyes of a girl who is both enchanted by her new, if somewhat unorthodox, reality but also longing for the privileged life she has left behind (I mean…she is a princess…I am glad she realistically misses things…I would miss things). Juniper is a complex character–sometimes a small child unfairly caught in a feudal war between kingdoms, at times a powerful doran showing wisdom well beyond her years….but underneath it all she is just a girl looking for her place in a kingdom that cast her out because she was…gasp…a girl.

Rabbit says: Grades 6-8 (and beyond!)

Interest Level: Grade 6 – Grade 8

Grade Level Equivalent: 5.5

Lexile® measure: 640L

Guided Reading: NR

Look….this will please a 6th grader (and it is an appropriate read, both in reading level and content), but it will also please any fantasy reader out there–or any reader period. If it was at your bookstore, it could easily sit right next to Game of Thrones or The Mists of Avalon. It is just THAT good. Wise Child and Coleman are as well. In regards to maturity level, there is nothing truly controversial in these books other than some mild religious dialogue–more on that below.

Caterpillar says: Bless me father, or mother…

So…what constitutes religious dialogue?

The setting for Furlong’s trilogy is at the birth of Christianity–a wonderful setting for the fantasy genre. The tension between the old religions (those who worshiped the Goddess) and the new religion has always been present in fantasy that chooses this time period. Juniper is no different, but it is not overt. I did not even realize it when I read it as a tween. It is much more obvious in Wise Child (there is that overarching plot story of a priest vs. Juniper) but in Juniper– it is much more subtle. There is a statue of the Goddess that Euny offers alms to, but Juniper also witnesses monks putting flowers at her feet as well. The deep religious commentary here is killing me. Furlong is having a conversation about the Goddess and the old religions, but it is not obnoxious– I find it refreshing and beautiful and wonderful and so. many. things.

Also interesting and good to see: There is quite a healthy discussion about good magic vs. bad magic in Juniper. Much like J.K. Rowling’s distinction between Dark Arts and the magic practiced by everyone else (I will never pass up a chance to talk about my Potter), Furlong’s world has very clear distinctions between the magic or power of a “white” or good doran and a dark witch or sorceress (bad doran). Right and wrong is not left in a world of grey here. It is clearly defined, again and again, in Furlong’s world. There will be no young reader wanting to choose the wrong side…or confusing good magic for the bad.

So…is Furlong, a feminist and theologian herself who wrote on Saint lives, commenting on the identity of the Virgin or the Goddess or both? Is Juniper a feminist novel?

Furlong, a lifelong advocate for women’s ordination, only wrote one children’s series. Even her obituary failed to mention this series. It was not a crucial part of her work. She was a journalist, reporter, and non-fiction writer. Can her passion for women’s issues, but also for the Church (she wrote on Terese of Lisieux and Thomas Merton), be seen in Juniper’s journey?

How do you feel about the scene where both the old religion and the new meet at the statue of the “woman”?

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Shatter Me

3 Mar

Shatter Me, Tahere Mafi

Title: Shatter Me

Author: Tahereh Mafi

Publisher: Harper Teen

Date: November 15, 2011

Pages: 354 pages

Genre: Young Adult, Dystopian, Teen, Romance, Supernatural, Superhero, Comic Book

ISBN: 9780062085481

Publisher Description:

“You can’t touch me,” I whisper.

I’m lying, is what I don’t tell him.

He can touch me, is what I’ll never tell him.

But things happen when people touch me.

Strange things.

Bad things.

No one knows why Juliette’s touch is fatal, but The Reestablishment has plans for her. Plans to use her as a weapon.

But Juliette has plans of her own.

After a lifetime without freedom, she’s finally discovering a strength to fight back for the very first time—and to find a future with the one boy she thought she’d lost forever.

(harperteen.com)

Book Trailer:

Cover and Title Critique: Um….I am conflicted about this cover. It makes this look like Prom 2012. Are we going to prom? Do I need a poofy dress and no one told me??! This is a DYSTOPIAN novel which starts off in an insane asylum, moves on into a totalitarian government compound, and has a total super hero vibe by the time you finish. Just because there is a dress on page 243 (don’t quote me on that–I’m rounding numbers here) does not mean you portray this as a novel where the girl spends most of her time in ball gowns. Again, why the cover a model with a a wind machine? That is not who Juliette is. Who is this PR person? Could you imagine if they had put a picture of Katniss trying on her interview dress on the cover of the Hunger Games (this is no Hunger Games…but still). There are dresses in the Hunger Games, but the Hunger Games are not about dresses or pretty girls….you see what I am saying? AM I MAKING SENSE HERE? I mean…it is pretty…but ugh (le sigh)…I don’t hate it…but I think there was potential for a more commercial cover. Does that make me a horrible practical person–that I think in commercial terms as well?

This book is not meant to be pretty–it is meant to evolve into kickassness (Just thinking of you Mafi–I really like where you are going by the end of the novel). In regards to the title–I get it, but this book has been optioned as a movie by Fox (congrats to the author–YA lit is the new cashcow fountain of youth for movie studios). I am not sure the title is strong enough for a movie–I am kinda thinking they might change it (sadface–I hate when they do that).  Can I just categorize the entire marketing of this as too glittery, too romance novely (is that a word–or should I just make one up–crappy romnovely)?

Alice says: Like it!

I really liked this book. I’ve read other reviews and seen some of the complaints but I want to start off with the pros–who doesn’t like to be complimented first before being told they were too this or too that? Tahereh Mafi is an AMAZING writer. YA is littered with writers that are JUST. SO. BAD. Mafi is not just good–she is immensely talented. She uses words beautifully. I love when I find an author I am excited about. Mafi–I am excited about you. You are going places.

So what did I think of the plot, the characters? I like Juliette. Look–if you’re looking for a character that is cut and dry, Juliette is not your heroine. She is in an insane asylum when the book starts off (and has been for way too long) and she reads like she is in an insane asylum (get this girl an ATAVAN). She is one step away from writing on the walls in her own blood.  Her thoughts are jumbled, she is hurting and her world is bleak. Mafi works you through her layers of thought, careful to unravel a raveling person–which is wonderful and novel. She takes time to do it too. I heard complaints about how this is a slow process–um…no. It takes time to do this…and I appreciated it. It is realistic and well written. The government is erasing all things–religion, art, language, music, nature….and she is stuck in a room hearing about it. Let her have her moments to lose her mind, ok?

Juliette is cursed  has a power that is at the center of the entire plot story–one that I think any comic book reader will immediately trace back to its origin–ROGUE from X-Men (yay X-MEN!!!). I could not write a decent review for this book without acknowledging, without spoiling too much, that Mafi borrows heavily from X-men mythology/ idontevenknowhoworwhattocallthis. I’ve noticed this type of borrowing/being influence in many of the books I love so I will leave it at that. Does this bother me? I don’t know. I will compare it to sampling in music. I think there is X-men sampling here–but at least in the first part of the trilogy, I will say it doesn’t bother me–much (because it is only sampling so far. Juliette is Juliette. She is not Rogue–yet. 

Mafi’s dystopian world is one of her strongest features in the book. There are so many descriptions of what went wrong that I wanted to dogear and discuss with people. I loved it. It is dark and ominous–and still full of discussion and teeming with people who are angry and not sure what went down exactly. It is still falling apart! YES!!! Most dystopian worlds are already set. Authors just show you. Not this world–its crumbling, revolutions (yes–multiple forms) are still everywhere, and everyone is still in shock and trying to grapple with what is. No one has adapted to the new ways of living, new ways of eating, the new governments–this is what you want to see if you are a dystopian fan. You want disorder. You do not want it wrapped up in a neat bow. It was like dystopian porn. This world was a nice surprise.

So, were there character’s to fall in love with? Yes–but they would be a spoiler for you (SADFACE). But when you meet him, you will know and love him too. You will love his whole street (don’t say I didn’t warn you!!). I think the relationship I am referring to (damn cryptic writing) is Mafi’s strongest writing–relationship speaking. Juliette and Adam (the inevitable love interest) were an interesting choice. He is not your typical YA boy toy–no sparkling skin or fangs here readers (sorry….I will try to keep my Twilight distaste to a minimum at RHR–once a post, ok?)! He has tattoos and is a military boy! Gasp! Swoon! Could it be readers–a bad boy? I laugh as I write this–all that was missing was the motorcycle and a lip ring. Their relationship and history is worth the read (you just have to get through some of the heavy metaphors that run through Juliette’s lovesick traumatized mind. There is quite a bit of metaphor written into the prose in this novel, but I think it is part of the charm (most of it revolves around the dreamboat, sexypot, terminator, Adam. Sorry, my sarcasm has ended. I did like this novel, I swear. It is just early on Saturday–and I never get to cross words out. I now know why Mafi had so much fun doing it in the novel!

Ok–so…on the serious note…fantastic dystopian world and setup, great setup for a second novel, good heroine (though in major need of love meds).

Rabbit says: Grades 9-12

Harperteen has this at 13+. I would leave it at a grades 9-12. This is a violent book. I would say if you let your kids read the Hunger Games, this is somewhere in there. The world is bleak, the government is incredibly violent, and the themes of torture are not without needing to be discussed with younger kids. The reading level, like I have said before–might be younger than a 9th grade reading level, but the themes would have me leave it at a grades 9-12. There is an attempt at rape, overt sexualizing of the main character, severe  torture and violence, and the way it is written itself may be a bit confusing for those who are younger (from an emotional level).

Caterpillar says: Ecology on the brain…

So much about this book made me thing about Ecological anxiety in YA and children’s books. I should preface that I just watched the Lorax movie, and read the book, and have been thinking about how much anxiety there is in books aimed at teens and children about ecological issues and political issues. Shatter me  had paragraphs dedicated to ecological anxiety and political unrest. So did Anna Carey’s Eve, the book I read last week. So does Lois Lowry’s the Giver (one of my favorites). So do so many others that everyone is reading today….

Are children anxious about the environment? Are they anxious about our political models? Are authors? Are we, the readers? We buy these books. They are constant NYT Best Sellers…..something in them must be striking a chord within our subconscious….it must be either comforting us or hitting that place that causes anxiety and pleasure (hello Freud).

Maybe this is a better question–will children grow up to be concerned with these things if they have grown up reading these things? I remember how influential Charlotte’s Web was to so many of us who read it when we were younger. Maybe 10 kids in my class went vegetarian for weeks after reading it. Now–many of us are actual vegetarians or vegans. Remember Stuart Little….did he not make you think about mice traps? If Dystopia is the current trend (and it is), and it is FULL of ecological (and political) anxiety–will it awaken more awareness for environmental issues and political issues in our children–in ourselves?? I can seriously list at least 20 books on the Children’s and Young Adult best sellers that are riddled with this type of ecological anxiety and political questioning. It is not subtle. It is not subversive. It just is…….

Thoughts? Discussion? PAINT THE ROSES!!!

If animal rights were the cause of my generations children’s books, there is an underlying anxiety subconsciously being written into so much of today’s literature…..and it is certainly wrapped up in ecology and the functionality of capitalism to best serve the planet and its inhabitants.

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Goodbye Mama Bear!

28 Feb

According to the Christian Science Monitor, Jan Berenstain, co-creator of the beloved series, The Berenstain Bears, has passed away at the age of 88.

Thank You For The Memories!

Michael, son of both Stan, who passed away in 2005, and Jan, will continue on with the books and work to teach a whole new generation of kids simple yet important life lessons.

I just wanted to take a moment to say THANK YOU. Gracias to the original Berenstain Mom and Dad for such wonderful books. It is because of you that I like to share, do homework, love my brother, clean up after school, don’t bully, wash behind my ears and much much more!

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