I’m thinking, in particular, about how to find the good new ones, from among the many thousands of children’s books that appear each year. Â This is a question I’m often asked, but it’s a question of particular interest to my Literature for Children classes right now, since their third paper requires them to find a…
The only edition of James Marshall’s The Three Little Pigs (1989) currently in print has been vandalized by its publisher, Grosset & Dunlap. In reprinting the book at 8” x 8” instead of its original 8.5” x 10.5”, the publisher has truncated images, altered the layout, changed the typeface, and removed the final illustration. Here’s…
His first non-fiction work, Queen of the Falls (2011) is also one of Chris Van Allsburg’s best. Indeed, in some ways it marks a return to form. After writing and illustrating a picture book each year for about 15 years, Van Allsburg stopped producing picture books for a while. Following Bad Day at Riverbend (1995),…
As winter continues its assault, let’s turn to a classic book about winter: It Looks Like Snow (Greenwillow, 1957), Remy Charlip‘s picture-book tribute to John Cage. Like Cage’s 4’33” (1952), Charlip’s piece makes the audience’s experience the subject of its experiment. The primary difference of course is the specific sense through which we apprehend the art…
Celebrity children’s books usually suck. The good news about Al Yankovic’s When I Grow Up (2011, illustrated by Wes Hargis) is that it does not suck. Unlike many celebrity books, it does not star a child version of the author, it does not simply add illustrations to one of his songs, and nor does it…
Following the deaths this month of Brian Jacques, Janet Schulman, and Margaret K. McElderry, we turn to the last words of those who wrote for the young – Seuss, Dahl, Thurber, Montgomery, Nesbit, Charles M. Schulz, Crockett Johnson, and others. “Yes. I’m not going to die tomorrow.” – Dr. Seuss (Theodor Seuss Geisel, 1904-1991) “Ow,…
Last week, I finally finished Donald Sturrock’s Storyteller: The Authorized Biography of Roald Dahl. I highly recommend it. In addition to being well-written and carefully researched, it’s a heck of a story. In it, you’ll encounter such facts as these: During World War II, Dahl was a spy. (This has previously been documented in Jennet…
On the BBC’s Faulks on Fiction this week, Martin Amis said, “People ask me if I ever thought of writing a children’s book. I say, ‘If I had a serious brain injury I might well write a children’s book’, but otherwise the idea of being conscious of who you’re directing the story to is anathema to…
What would Kansas be like without Langston Hughes, William S. Burroughs, or The Wizard of Oz? Â What would Kansas be like without art? Â That’s what the blog Imagine Kansas Without Art is considering, in light of Governor Brownback’s order to eliminate the Kansas Arts Commission (which, if approved by the state legislature, will go into…
Last Friday, in my English 703: Critical Approaches to Children’s Literature class, the students and I spent 5 minutes talking nonsense. Â We’d been reading theories of nonsense, and Lewis Carroll’s Alice books – I thought it would be both fun and educational to put those theories into practice. So, based on our readings of Tigges,…
