WRB—Children’s Literature Supplement, September 2024

“pretending to be a chicken”

There’s nothing quite like having a library card. On the practical side, it saves you money (Sarah’s apparently saved $1,567.35 this year by borrowing rather than buying). More than that, however, it gives you a way to explore almost any subject you could want. Sarah’s request list is always a study in contrasts, from books on sleight of hand to epic Italian novels (which were not in Italian and she didn’t end up reading). Recently, she used the advanced search tool on the library site to collect books by Glen Rounds (more on whom later), and find a picture book about Barbara Cooney. While it’s not advisable to give your children free rein in the library, let the rest of the system work for you, and you’ll be amazed at the results. 

Portrait of a mouse

Speaking of amazed, Sarah often marvels at what wonders a little curiosity will turn up. While preparing for this CLS edition, she was reading various articles and decided to look up books, authors, and institutions mentioned therein as she came upon them. This plan of action yielded many a charming find, and some of her discoveries made their way into this newsletter. 

One is this illustration exhibit at a library in Maine. If you live in Maine (and if the exhibit is still running), please go and then send Sarah pictures. A full exhibit on famous rodents in literature? Inspired. 

Bookish history

Over in Literary Review, Philip Womack tells readers about Sam Leith’s new book, The Haunted Wood: A History of Childhood Reading (October 22):

Sam Leith, in The Haunted Wood, plots a clear course through the thickets, in what he dubs a study of “childhood reading” rather than of children’s books per se. He employs a (generally) chronological structure, identifying the links that connect the British canon (including one or two Americans whose influence on our shores is undeniable). He begins with oral storytelling, and canters right up to the present day and the works of Malorie Blackman et alia, emphasizing the continued kinship of children’s stories with the earliest forms, and the role of the “haunted wood,” with its wonders and mysteries, in so many of them (although he eschews an explicitly Freudian reading). 

Leith manages all this in a supremely engaging style (“Nuts to the Mr. Men”), dotting the survey with lively vignettes. When E. Nesbit’s philandering husband, Hubert, intercepted H. G. Wells as he was about to elope with Hubert’s daughter, he “offered to punch the author of The Time Machine’s lights out.” And it is pleasing to discover that, as a child, P. L. Travers coped with loneliness “by pretending to be a chicken.”

There is a massive amount of history to be covered on this topic, and Womack believes Leith handles the task well. If you’re looking for more direction in what your child should read, however, Sarah can’t recommend Cheri Blomquist’s Before Austen Comes Aesop (2021) enough. 

Fall fiction

Four Friends in Autumn by Tomie de Paola (2004)

The Apple Cake by Nienke van Hichtum, illustrated by Marjan van Zeyl (1996)

In ancient days . . .

Henryk Sienkiewicz’s epic novel, Quo Vadis (1896), is decidedly not child-friendly reading. Returning to this tale, however, reminded Sarah of The Forgotten Daughter by Caroline Dale Snedeker (1933). This poignant historical novel isn’t well-known, but is excellent supplemental reading for a child doing a year of Roman history. If your child needs a story with a bit more action though, try Word to Caesar by Geoffrey Trease (1955) (it sometimes goes under the title of Message to Hadrian).

Taking a trip to Maine

The New Yorker has published a piece on children’s book authors and illustrators who live in Maine and whose work was inspired by their surroundings: 

Among the most loved children’s-book illustrators from Maine is Dahlov Ipcar, whom Margaret Wise Brown chose, when Ipcar was in her late twenties, to collaborate on Brown’s The Little Fisherman (1945). I was not familiar with Ipcar until my adulthood, and though much of her work doesn’t depict Maine—One Horse Farm (1950) and Lobsterman (1962) are exceptions—it celebrates a certain fierceness and expressiveness, especially with regard to animals and nature. Her books are populated by flora and fauna, and some don’t contain human beings at all. One illustration, “Lonesome Loon,” from Maine Alphabet, imparts a strong sense of melancholy. The bird floats on blue-green waves, with its head craned skyward and its bright-red eyes taking in the appearance of a crescent moon.

If this piece doesn’t make you want to move to New England immediately, Sarah suggests reading some of Gary D. Schmidt’s books. She’s been laughing and crying over two of them the past two months, and recently finished up Just Like That (2021). It was The Labors of Hercules Beal (2023) that found its way into a piece for NRO:

Until I read your recent book The Labors of Hercules Beal, I’d only really cried at one other story (Katherine Paterson’s Bridge to Terabithia (1977)). But that’s the beauty of your stories: They are funny without being cynical, descriptive without being overwritten, and heartrending without being sappy.

You have perfected the skill of showing, not telling. That’s an element I so deeply appreciate in your books, and each rereading brings out new elements I hadn’t noticed before. Hercules, your protagonist, has already been through so much by the time we first meet him. He’s in seventh grade, being raised in a small town on Cape Cod by his older brother Achilles after the tragic death of their parents over a year ago. That right there is enough fodder for you to create a snarky, wildly emotional pre-teen who smolders with resentment and takes it out on those around him. But you don’t.

Just Like That is also highly worth your time, and both of these titles can be found in audio book form—perfect for long drives or when you’re doing housework (or when you’re making Christmas presents, as Sarah has begun to do).  

The art of Mr. Scarry

Who doesn’t like Richard Scarry’s books? (This is a rhetorical question, mind you.) Chris Ware, over in The Yale Review, certainly does. It’s a fascinating piece, and though it wanders a bit at points, it strives to captures just how culturally impactful Scarry’s work has been over the decades: 

Richard Scarry’s work could not have been told just in words, either. As Walter Retan and Ole Risom argue, Scarry “didn’t write his stories; he drew them.” His bestselling book was not titled Best Picture Book Ever, even though that’s really what it is. As children, we see the world in all its detail, texture, and beauty, but when we learn the word for, say, a bird, we cease to see it as clearly or curiously as we did before we categorized and dismissed it. John Updike eloquently and beautifully captures this confounding contradiction in his short story “Pigeon Feathers,” where the main character only notices the iridescent, divine beauty in a pigeon’s plumage after he’s shot several of them to pieces in the rafters of a barn. Like it or not, just as adulthood runs roughshod over childhood, words chew images to shreds, and it’s up to the artist—or the writer or the cartoonist—to put those images back together again. Pictures are our first language for understanding the world, but that doesn’t mean they should be ignored in favor of a second. Or, as Dave Eggers once kindly put it, cartoonists (and I include Scarry in this group) needn’t be punished for having two skills instead of one.

Sarah especially appreciated the historical context Ware brings to Scarry, and the biographical information about the illustrator that he weaves into the essay. Ware is trying to grasp what sets Scarry apart and why his artwork is so enduring, and he brings readers along as he explores the truly wonderful world Scarry created.  

Round and round

A few months ago, Sarah’s mom discovered a local Catholic school that had been recently shut down. Management hadn’t decided what to do about the school’s library books yet, so Sarah’s mom was allowed to take as many as she wanted. Except for Sarah’s dad (who has no idea where they could possibly fit another bookshelf in the house) all the Schuttes were ecstatic over this literary haul. The books were divvied up among the seven siblings, and were picked up as each returned home for various reasons. Among her stack (read: three boxes), Sarah discovered a slim volume titled Mr. Yowder and the Train Robbers (1981) by Glen Rounds, and she was immediately hooked. Since then, she’s been scouring advanced library searches for other Mr. Yowder adventures and has stumbled upon more Rounds titles. She’s inundated her local library with requests for the books, and she can’t wait to pick them up. 

What the kids are reading