Children's Books

[naomikritzer]

Last week's library trip included the first Magic Treehouse book; these are a popular series so I figured Molly would like it. No dice. She did read it -- I found it in the finished books basket -- but when we got to the library and I asked her if she'd enjoyed it, she said not really. The kids visit the time of the dinosaurs in the first book; Molly is not particularly interested in dinosaurs, so maybe that's why? Or maybe the problem is that it's fantasy? The problem is probably not that it's written in an incredibly bland and clunky style, though who knows. The Junie B. Jones books are written in a style I don't care for at all, but it's distinctive (distinctively ungrammatical), not bland. The viewpoint character seemed to be a boy, and she seems to have a strong preference for girl protagonists.

One thing that's a little frustrating to me, in finding books for her, is that she can't really articulate what she likes or doesn't like about a book. I have theorized that she likes the Junie books because they're about a girl who's five years old, like she is, whereas most chapter books are about kids who are much older.

I checked out the Kit series from the American Girls collection, and the first five Judy Moody books. Molly complained this week that the Junie B. Jones books are too short. They're still her favorites, but she wishes they were longer. I'm hoping the Judy Moody books will offer a slightly longer but comparable series. Well, comparable except for the fact that there are only six of them, whereas there are about 30 Junie books. Good grief, I just realized Molly is about 2/3rds through the Junie series. Also, once she's done with the books we have out, I think we've only got three American Girls left, at least until the company comes out with another one.

Molly is a voracious reader -- have I mentioned that?

For myself, I checked out blackholly's Spiderwick chronicles (books 1 through 5 -- I'm not sure how many there are in all). And oh my goodness, it is fabulous. I read the first one this evening, and I'm putting it down with Molly's pile for her to read, as well. What was particularly striking to me on the first page was how incredibly well-written it is.

There is so much dreck that is published for children. Seriously, I have always taken seriously what Jane Yolen and other respected children's authors say -- that you can't write dreck and expect kids to read it, that kids demand and deserve good writing, etc. Yet -- in comparison to some of the books that Molly picks up and willingly devours -- the American Girls books (which were written as sales tools for overpriced dolls) are literary masterpieces.

I mean, okay. Let's take the first page of the first Magic Treehouse book.

"Help! A monster!" said Annie.

"Yeah, sure," said Jack. "A real monster in Frog Creek, Pennsylvania."

"Run, Jack!" said Annie. She ran up the road.

Oh, brother.

This is what he got for spending time with his seven-year-old sister.

Annie loved pretend stuff. But Jack was eight and a half. He liked real things.

"Watch out, Jack! The monster's coming! Race you!"

"No, thanks," said Jack.

Annie raced alone into the woods.

Or The Boxcar Children, which I read as a child and LOVED.

One warm night four children stood in front of a bakery. No one knew them. No one knew where they had come from.

The baker's wife saw them first, as they stood looking in at the window of her store. The little boy was looking at the cakes, the big boy was looking at the loaves of bread, and the two girls were looking at the cookies.

Now the baker's wife did not like children. She did not like boys at all. So she came to the front of the bakery and listened, looking very cross.

"The cake is good, Jessie," the little boy said. He was about five years old.

"Yes, Benny," said the big girl. "But bread is better for you. Isn't it, Henry?"

"Oh, yes," said Henry. "We must have some bread, and cake is not good for Benny and Violet."

"I like bread best, anyway," said Violet. She was about ten years old, and she had pretty brown hair and brown eyes.

I'll pass on quoting Junie, as she's supposed to speak in the voice of a five-year-old and it would be unfair to simply say the books suck. They're not to my taste, and I don't think she sounds much like my five-year-old, but whatever.

Anyway, the point here was to quote those, and then Holly. From the beginning of The Field Guide:

If someone had asked Jared Grace what jobs his brother and sister would have when they grew up, he would have had no trouble replying. He would have said that his brother, Simon, would be either a veterinarian or a lion tamer. He would have said that his sister, Mallory, would either be an Olympic fencer or in jail for stabbing someone with a sword. But he couldn't say what job he would grow up to have. Not that anyone asked him. Not that anyone asked his opinion on anything at all.

The new house, for instance. Jared Grace looked up at it and squinted. Maybe it would look better blurry.

"It's a shack," Mallory said, getting out of the station wagon.

It wasn't really, though. It was more like a dozen shacks had been piled on top of one another. There were several chimneys, and the whole thing was topped off by a strip of iron fence sitting on the roof like a particularly garish hat.

Holly's writing is good no matter what you're comparing her to, but when the standard of comparison is children's series books? Holy cow. And what I find particularly fascinating is that here is evidence that you can write using simple language (important for Molly, who has trouble with long words and doesn't like books with too many of them) and short sentences, and still write a vivid, interesting story. There are a few words a kid might find unfamiliar (fencer, garish, shack) and the paragraphs are constructed from as many as six sentences, one right after the other. But it's readable at a very early level. And it's still good.

Of course, Molly may reject it because it's fantasy. We'll see.

Comments

[wordswoman.livejournal.com]

Have you tried her on Beverly Cleary's Ramona books? Ramona is five when the series begins, and as incorrigible as Junie B. Jones, but the books are better written and longer.

[naomikritzer]

She loves those. But, she had those read aloud to her as bedtime stories.

[(Anonymous)]

My son never got into The Magic Treehouse (and he loves fantasy, go figure). He did like the Boxcar children for a while.

His latest favorites are the Lemony Snicket books (which I'm afraid are still too old for Molly), and the writing is good and challenging in these too. Although I was a bit taken aback at the last word he didn't know: bannister. Well, we don't have one, so maybe not so surprising. Now of course he just wants to find one to slide down.

Maybe Molly would like the Akiko graphic novels by Mark Crilley? There's nothing that would be unsettling for a young reader in there (I think!), and I'm having a hard time thinking of good series in the Junie B. Jones age category. My son loved Captain Underpants at that age, but I'll bet a lot of girls wouldn't so much, and I know a lot of parents don't care for Dav Pilkey's books a bit. Zea

[naomikritzer]

In the spirit of being openminded about girl books vs. boy books, I bought her a used copy of the first Captain Underpants book and we brought it on the trip to Boston. So far as I can tell, it's the only book that's clearly aimed at kids her age that she has not so much as picked up and leafed through. (No, wait. The other one she's refused to touch entirely, for reasons that aren't at all clear to me, is The Littles. Which is also kind of inane when read as an adult, but I remember loving when I was a kid.)

[fehler.livejournal.com]

Your post reminds me of the first time I tried to read Hemingway; I found his sentence structure short, vocabulary limited, and really, really boring. I guess he could have been writing children's books, if the topics weren't drinking and fighting.

[naomikritzer]

My father talked me into reading The Old Man and the Sea when I was a kid. (Not five. But still definitely a kid.)

Its charms were utterly and completely lost on me. I read For Whom the Bell Tolls as an adult and really, really liked it; I'm pretty sure The Old Man and the Sea would still mystify me, though. I don't really get boat books, and I really don't get fishing narratives.

[joxn.livejournal.com]

I have a bunch of Famous Five books, in battered condition, but still readable. I'm not saving them for anything in particular (I certainly don't think I'm going to re-read them), so you could have them if you wanted. Of course, the gender politics are mostly atrocious, given that they're written to late-40s early-50s norms, but there is one genderqueer girl who is portrayed mostly sympathetically.

http://www.btinternet.com/~ajarvis/blyton/five.htm

For me they were first-grade books. Of course, by the time we connect up for you to get them from me, Molly will probably be in first grade...

[naomikritzer]

Dang, John, it sounds like you could sell them for the downpayment on a house (if they've still got dust jackets, anyway).

We actually have some Enid Blyton -- the entire Girls of St. Clare series, which I bought (mostly used) while living in England. Given that those were all still in print in the mid-1980s, I'm surprised that the Famous Five books sound so hard to find.

Given that Molly seems to harbor a prejudice against most books with boy protagonists, I think I will hold off for now.

[jimlawrence.livejournal.com]

I'm trying to think back to when my kids (now 37, 24, 21) were that age. We always began weekly library trips at age two and, of course, there were lots of books purchased as well.

With my eldest it almost seems as if we went from Berenstain Bears to Robert Heinlein (hey, Have Space Suit Will Travel and some of the other Heinlein juveniles work quite well with six year olds who are into a Sci Fi mindset). There were some transitional books in there (such as all of the Laura Ingalls Wilder books) but reading Heinlein to him when he was in first grade didn't seem strange to me because I had been reading Edgar Rice Burroughs and Zane Grey and Jack London by myself when I was in second grade.

With the younger two I can remember lots of Beverly Cleary's Ramona books and those Boxcar kids and lots of books about various clever elementary school detectives and some Judy Blume, and Roald Dahl, and Avi, and Madeleine L'Engle, and Wilder's Little House books. [Oh, and Have Space Suit Will Travel, of course.]

Not surprisingly, all of my kids read science fiction (the youngest is a big Orson Scott Card fan) and my daughter (the 24 yr old) is also a major fantasy fan and may well grab your novels when amazon finally gets them here and read them before I can get to them. (I'm afraid I currently have more than a dozen books in my waiting to be read pile -- it seems as if I am buying them faster than I can read them these days.)

[naomikritzer]

I have thought about trying some of the Heinlein juvies on her, but my recollection (I didn't read very many) is that they're kind of Y-chromosome-centric in a 1950s Boy Scout kind of way. Also, I haven't found a good list of which Heinlein books are for kids and which most emphatically are not.

One clever elementary school detective I remember from my own childhood was Encyclopedia Brown; he's still around, and I haven't steered Molly towards him yet because she'd just read the answers without trying to figure out the puzzles, and what's the point of that?

[jimlawrence.livejournal.com]

Yes, thanks. Encyclopedia Brown was indeed one of those detective series I was trying to recall.

"1950s Boy Scout kind of way" -- well, some of his stuff did appear in Boy's Life (the official scout magazine), so that makes sense. Offhand (and only two coffees into the morning) I can only think of Podkayne of Mars for Heinlein juvenile with a female protagonist and that has a bit of a bummer ending for a young kid.

[blackholly.livejournal.com]

*blush*

Thank you!

[(Anonymous)]

I'm trying to remember what books I liked when I was five. I didn't learn to read until I was seven, though, so what I'm mostly remembering is the stuff my dad read to me at bedtime, which included the entire Narnia and Little House series; Kidnapped and Treasure Island; Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn; The Three Musketeers; everything I can think of by Frances Hodgson Burnett; The Five Little Peppers [which, I'm warning you now, does NOT age well]; The Scarlet Pimpernel; and Little Women. I'm sure most of these must have been in abridged versions, because surely not even my dad would read Alexandre Dumas to a five-year-old, right?

A series I loved soon after I learned to read (so, around the 6-7-8 range) was the Family From One End Street by Eve Garnett. I read a lot of British books as an early reader because shortly after I learned to read my family spent a sabbatical year in Spain, where the only English-language books you could get were from the British bookshop. Enid Blyton (especially The Castle of Adventure, etc. -- talk about icky sexual/racial politics!!), E. Nesbit, Roald Dahl (especially Danny, the Champion of the World) ...

I also really liked Sydney Taylor's "All-of-a-Kind Family" books, which definitely fulfil the X-chromosome requirement ;).

Not sure how much any of this helps ...