LAUREN CHILD, POST #1

LET ME INTRODUCE YOU...

Are you acquainted with Lauren Child?  She is one of my favorite author/illustrators of contemporary children's picture books.  Her quirky humor and unique collage-style art draw kids and adults alike to her books.  You can read about her journey in becoming a best-selling children's book author HERE, in the British newspaper THE GUARDIAN.

I thought this photo of her kitchen was cute.  She says, "My mother used to have this joke with me when I was little that I used to arrange things in my room to look like a shop window, and when she came in here she said I still haven't grown out of it."

Writer and illustrator Lauren Child's kitchen. Photograph: Beth Evans

I was introduced to Lauren's fun books by my library side-kick, 5-year-old Sophie and her mom.  We've read several Lauren Child books together and I look forward to sharing them with you in my posts this week.

Here's the first one Sophie introduced me to:

BEWARE OF THE STORYBOOK WOLVES “It’s bad news for a boy named Herb when the Big Bad Wolf and a little not-so-bad wolf fall out of a storybook, drooling and hungry. Thank goodness for fairy godmothers. After all, who else can bring the big wolf down to size and turn the little wolf into a fashion plate? If all that sounds silly, it is. It’s meant to be, in Beware of the Storybook Wolves. With a sly wit and a handful of evocative characters, Lauren Child takes the familiar “once upon a time” story, shakes it and then spins it for a giggle. Imagine Mother Goose meeting Roald Dahl’s “Enormous Crocodile.” The result is a smile-provoking yarn full of fairy-tale twists.”-- The New York Times

If your kids like this kind of wacky humor, they'll like Child's second book about Herb:

WHO'S AFRAID OF THE BIG BAD BOOK? "When Herb falls asleep with his head on top of a dusty book of fairy tales, he finds himself stuck inside the volume with no quick way out. Chased by a raging Goldilocks, who is upset that he landed in her story, the boy journeys through a parade of fairy tales and finally gets caught in the middle of "Cinderella." All of his past mishandling of the book comes back to haunt him-Cinderella's kitchen is sticky with cookie crumbs, the Queen does not appreciate the mustache Herb has drawn on her face, and Prince Charming has been missing since he was cut out of the book and used as a birthday-card decoration. Child's wildly expressive collages include boldly patterned backgrounds, cartoon characters, and photographs in unexpected places. The text (and font) grows and shrinks and winds jaggedly through the story, and turns upside down on several pages. This fast-paced creative tale has some really funny moments." - Library School Journal 

FROM "I'M NOT"...

TO "I AM"!

When my sister-in-law told me about the book I'M NOT, I thought, "Uh-oh, I hope this isn't an Alexander and the Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Day kind of book" (I know a lot of people like Judith Viorst's story, but it was a bit too negative to resonate with me and my children - Alexander's a grouch at the beginning and pretty much still a grouch at the end - we read it once and that was enough).  But on the contrary, I was pleasantly surprised with Pam Smallcomb's positive outcome to a negative sounding title, and it's a story I think young children will ask for again and again!

What I love about this book is the way the shy Narrator (a nameless little brown alligator who constantly compares herself to her talented friend, Evelyn, a little green alligator) begins to finally realize it's okay that she's different from her friend.  Even though there are a lot of things Evelyn is good at that she is not, there are things Evelyn isn't good at that she is!

This book doesn't celebrate being the "best" at everything, it's simply about being the best friend you can be. In the end, Evelyn says she needs a friend  - "A friend who is always by her side, through thick and thin, a true-blue friend."  She wonders, "Is there anyone in the whole wide world like that?" and our little narrator proclaims, "I AM! I AM! I AM!"

Pam Smallcomb's story made me think of two other sets of storybook characters that are good friends,  FROG AND TOAD

(who are also brown and green!)  and James Marshall's hippos, George and Martha,
 who bear a striking resemblance to Robert Weinstock's little alligators.

"BE-CAREFUL-WHAT-YOU-WISH-FOR"

Lots of stories, fables and fairytales convey the message, "Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it." Remember the myth about King Midas and the Golden Touch?  In answer to his wish for wealth, he is granted the gift that anything he touches will turn to gold.  He is unable to eat because his food and drink turn to gold.  Nathaniel Hawthorne penned a version in which Midas' own beloved daughter is changed into a golden statue when he touches her.  In the end, Midas hates the gift he had coveted.

In the movie The Wizard of Oz, young Dorothy wishes she could escape all her problems and live in a better place than Kansas by going "somewhere over the rainbow." She partly gets her wish, but her dream world winds up becoming a rather scary nightmare and ends up making her homesick for the very place and people she tried to get away from...she wanted to get away from home, but ends up realizing, "There's No Place Like Home"!

We can find the same underlying moral about "being careful what you wish for" in Edith Nesbit Bland's Five Children and It. In turn-of-the-century England, five children find a Sand-Fairy (or "Psammead") that can grant them wishes. But the sand fairy is an irritable literalist, who interprets the wishes of the children exactly as they ask, and wild things happen (e.g., the children wish for great beauty, and then the people around them don't even recognize them).

The book I'd like to highlight today is based on a Celtic tale with this same classic theme, in a picture book for kids 4-8.  It is Too Many Fairies, retold by Margaret Read MacDonald and colorfully illustrated by Susan Mitchell.  As I sat with my friend's 5-year-old daughter on the floor of a local bookstore reading this hilarious tale, she and I couldn't help laughing out loud at the trouble the old woman in the story gets herself into when she grumbles, "Work! Work! Work!  How I hate it! Hate it! Hate it!"

Her nonstop complaining soon brings four different fairies to her door to perform her chores. (A voice from outside calls each time: “Your luck has come! Open the door!  Let me in and you'll work no more!”) They each in turn wash her dishes, sweep the floor, make the bed, and do her knitting. But all the help still can't stop her from complaining about the noisy racket the fairies are making: "clankety, clankety," "swishety, swishety," "lumpety, flumpety," and "clickety clickety."

"These fairies are driving me crazy!" she laments. But when she tells them to stop, they begin to reverse all of their chores, tearing everything apart. A visit to the village "wise one" teaches the complaining old woman a lesson of being careful about what you wish for and being content in your situation.

The ending is imaginative and clever and the sound effects of the "rackety" fairies and the Old Woman's whining complaints make it fun to read aloud.  Your kids will definitely get the message!

HUGS FOR DADS!

There are lots of ways that parents nurture and hug their offspring -- not just with arms! But no matter how the embrace is made, one thing remains the same: all hugs are given with love.  Told in sweet rhyme with soft pictures: hugs with noses (elephants) and hugs in red roses (ladybugs) show that from the largest animals to the small bug, hugs are important to all! This sturdy board book (best for toddlers) shows how all sorts of animals express affection for one another. I love this little book for Father's Day, because even though it's about all kinds creatures, the last page shows a Dad hugging his child. (Written by Lorie Ann Grove and illustrated by Rebecca Malone)

If you'd like to read my post about Father's Day choices for older readers and Dads-who-love-baseball, CLICK HERE.   Last year I posted "Celebrating Dads", with a variety of picture books for kids up to age 8.  Another great Father's Day book is THE FATHERS ARE COMING HOME, from my recent post about Margaret Wise Brown.

The board book choices listed below are more great stories for First-Time Dads or any Dads with children, ages baby-4 years old:


DADDY HUGS

DADDY KISSES

DADDY CUDDLES

NO MORE TWIST!

THE TAILOR OF GLOUCESTER by Beatrix Potter is about a tailor whose work on a waistcoat is finished by the grateful mice he rescues from his cat, Simpkin.  It was based on a real world incident involving a tailor - John Pritchard, from Gloucester - who was commissioned to make a suit for the new mayor.  The tailor  returned to his shop on a Monday morning to find the suit completed except for one buttonhole. A note attached read, "No more twist". His assistants had finished the coat in the night, but Pritchard encouraged a fictitious explanation that fairies had done the work and the incident became a local legend.

"A mouse threads a needle with cherry coloured twist."

"No more twist."

Beatrix Potter set her tale in the 18th Century. She made an extraordinary effort to create the setting as authentic as possible. Passing a tailor’s shop in Chelsea one day, she deliberately tore a button off her coat and took it in to be mended so she could observe first hand the tailor’s posture, tools and workbench.  She went to the same great lengths in seeking inspiration for the Mayor of Gloucester's 18th Century embroidered waistcoat when she visited the costume collection owned by the local museum in South Kensington, the "Victoria and Albert Museum".

Cream satin waistcoat embroidered with
coloured silk, Gloucester, England, UK, 1770.
Museum no. 652A-1898

She wrote to her publisher, Norman Warne:
I have been delighted to find I may draw some most beautiful 18th century clothes at the South Kensington Museum. I had been looking at them for a long time in an inconvenient dark corner of the Goldsmith’s Court, but had no idea they could be taken out of the case. The clerk says I could have any article put on a table in one of the offices, which will be most convenient.
(Her sketches are so accurate that it is possible to identify the original garments, including the mayor’s waistcoat, "worked with poppies and corn-flowers", which can be found in the Victoria & Albert Museum's costume collections to this day!)

Beatrix's sketch of the waistcoat.

In May 1903, Beatrix made many sketches of the town of Gloucester.  The street scenes in her story, particularly that of the tailor’s shop in College Court, depict actual places in the city.

Miss Potter gave a copy of the book to her Chelsea tailor who, in turn, displayed it to a representative of the trade journal, The Tailor & Cutter. The journal's review appeared on Christmas Eve 1903:

...we think it is by far the prettiest story connected with tailoring we have ever read, and as it is full of that spirit of Peace on Earth, Goodwill to Men, we are not ashamed to confess that it brought the moisture to our eyes, as well as the smile to our face. It is got up in choicest style and illustrated by twenty-seven of the prettiest pictures it is possible to imagine.
(Source: Victoria and Albert Museum website. Visit their Beatrix Potter Page!)

INSPIRED BY CRAZY HATS!

Theodor Seuss Geisel, aka Dr. Seuss, loved to wear crazy hats to parties. When he was having a hard time coming up with rhymes, he would sometimes put on one of his many “thinking caps” for inspiration.  This tidbit of author trivia reminded me of the pink poodle in the beginner reader book, GO DOG, GO! -- which happens to have been written by a protege of Geisel: author and illustrator P.D. Eastman.  It's about all these zany dogs: green dogs, yellow dogs, big dogs, little dogs. Dogs who drive cars, dogs who ski. Where are they all going?  To a treetop dog party, of course!

Whether you use them as beginner readers or as read alouds, your and your children will love these enduring classics by Eastman as well:

ARE YOU MY MOTHER? A baby bird is hatched while his mother is away.  Fallen from his nest, he sets out to look for her and asks everyone he meets, including a god, a cow, and a plane: "Are you my mother?"

THE BEST NEST Mr. and Mrs. Bird's search for a "better" nest leads them to some peculiar spots.

SAM AND THE FIREFLY When Sam, the owl, teaches Gus, the firefly, to write words in the sky, cars crash, movies are free, and hot dogs are cold.