Happy New Year! Many publications will give you, in December, a nice “year in review” list of books, chronicling their favorite reads from the past twelve months. Not so the CLS. Sarah has a bone to pick with some specific titles, so to open the new year, she’s giving readers three categories full of (in her humble opinion) dreadful titles. These are books which scared her, frustrated her, bored her, or angered her. Will you agree with her selections? Probably not, but what better way to begin the new year than with rigorous debate and disagreement? Will she also give suggestions for better reads? We shall see. . . .
List of Dislikes
We all have books we loath for various reasons, some of them reasonable, others not so much. The following children’s literature titles are divided into three categories, and Sarah hopes readers and authors alike will hear her out and not be (too) offended.
Books Sarah Dislikes for Good Reasons
Anything by Scott O’Dell, especially The Spanish Smile (1982). Perhaps she just read it at too young an age, but Sarah found this book absolutely horrifying. Perhaps it was the multiple murders that turned her off, or perhaps it was simply O’Dell’s writing style. Sarah has always found his style off-putting, even though she’s tried to read both Sarah Bishop (1980) and Island of the Blue Dolphins (1960). No matter what the ALA, the Hans Christian Andersen Award committee, or the Newbery committee says, Sarah is firmly against this author and his work.
The Penderwicks (2005) by Jeanne Birdsall. Sarah couldn’t put her finger on it when she first read this book, but something bugged her (and it wasn’t just that the characters weren’t very compelling). Then she read Leila Lawler’s post on why you should avoid The Penderwicks, and it helped clarify so much about the story.
The Willoughbys Return (2020), by Lois Lowry. Sarah generally enjoys Lowry’s work, having read and deeply appreciated both The Giver (1993) and Number the Stars (1989). She was also a fan of Lowry’s darkly hilarious book, The Willoughbys (2008), in which four children plot to get rid of their dreadful parents. The Willoughbys Return is a sequel to that, and it was an immense letdown after the cleverness of its predecessor. Whatever Lowry was trying to do here, the book felt ham-fisted, awkward, and downright ridiculous.
Surviving the Applewhites (2002), by Stephanie S. Tolan. See the July 2024 CLS for Sarah’s tirade against this badly written book.
Books Sarah Dislikes for Lame Reasons
The Boggart (1993), by Susan Cooper. Sarah enjoyed Cooper’s Over Sea, Under Stone (1965) series, but on rereading them recently, she found that the characters lacks some kind of spark to make them lovable (or even hateable). This short story suffered from the same problem, and left Sarah feeling uninspired. It was a promising premise, but the execution felt bland.
Daddy Long-Legs (1912) by Jean Webster. Sarah’s best friend growing up loved this book, and for a while, Sarah did, too. But then she reread it and found it rather sappy and manipulative.
Where the Wild Things Are (1963) by Maurice Sendak. Perhaps it’s the pictures. Or maybe it’s the little boy. Whatever it is, Sarah has always found this book—beloved by so many people for so long—dreadfully annoying.
Sylvester and the Magic Pebble (1969) by William Steig. The only book by Steig that Sarah likes is Brave Irene, and even that book has the oddest sinister undertones. She really does enjoy creative tales, and she even grew up reading the gruesome Grimm’s Fairy Tales (1812), but Sylvester and his pebble were just a bridge too far for her apparently.
One Book Sarah Simply Dislikes
Call of the Wild (1903), by Jack London. Sarah was forced to read this book as a young child (a move her mother regrets to this day), and absolutely refuses to even touch the book ever again. She honestly can’t remember anything about it now, but there’s a wonderful picture in the Schutte archives of her slouched on the couch with scowl on her face, reading this book.
Are Sarah’s takes really, truly terrible? Do you agree with any of them? What would you add to the sections?
A CLS “Read This, Not That”
If the above list riled you up, perhaps these suggestions, antidotes to the aforementioned disliked titles, will calm the soul.
Instead of Scott O’Dell, try the Dear America series, A Lantern in Her Hand (1928) by Bess Streeter Aldrich, or Lois Lenski’s American Regional series.
Instead of The Penderwicks, try the Melendy series by Elizabeth Enright.
Instead of The Willoughbys Return, read the original Willoughbys novel.
Instead of Surviving the Applewhites, try Meet the Austins (1960) by Madeleine L’Engle or The Good Master (1935) by Kate Seredy.
Instead of The Boggart, try Five Children and It (1902) by E. Nesbit.
Instead of Daddy Long-Legs, try The Blue Castle (1926) by L. M. Montgomery.
Instead of Where the Wild Things Are, try My Rotten Redheaded Older Brother (1994) by Patricia Polacco.
Instead of Sylvester and the Magic Pebble, try this version of The Nightingale by Hans Christian Andersen.
Instead of Call of the Wild, try The Black Stallion (1941) by Walter Farley.
It’s for the kids
Over in the New York Times, Jon Klassen has an amusing look at the art of the board book:
When your job is to write picture books for children, an imaginary child sits in front of you as you work and yells “TOO LONG” pretty often. (They can yell this in real life, too.) So you put your head back down and cut, reading shorter and shorter drafts to them until they yell “TOO LONG” fewer times, and eventually not at all. . . .
You start out with something you think you want to impart to them—some kind of lesson or message, or at least a clever idea. And by the time they’re through yelling “TOO LONG,” you’ve cut everything you set out to tell them.
The result might still be a story, with a beginning, middle and end, or some kind of conflict that’s been resolved. But it’s clean and spare and maybe even abstract. . . .
Now imagine that just as you’ve found your speed in this format—by conjuring the murkily-aged yelling child who forces from you the best that you’ve got—your imaginary child is taken away. In their place, someone puts a more specific imaginary audience member. This one is clearly a baby.
The baby has a note taped to them. The note says, “I can’t read. I can’t talk. I don’t care about stories or plots, classically speaking, or characters as they’re usually defined. What do you have for me?”
Klassen mentions that fabulous author/illustrator, Sandra Boynton. Many of us have read her books (to children and to ourselves, let’s be honest), but if you haven’t ever listened to music from her Philadelphia Chickens album, Sarah recommends your check it out pronto.
What the kids are reading
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