One thing I knew for sure: it’s never too early to begin reading to a baby. A lifelong book lover, I figured I’d be naturally proficient at this task of parenting, if nothing else. Not only proficient, in fact, but blissed out. In pregnancy, I dreamed of cuddling in a comfy chair avec l’infant, paging through exquisitely illustrated books as sunbeams fell upon our heads.

I began to prepare, thinking about the books I’d loved as a kid—Leo Lionni’s A Color of His Own, the requisite Pat the Bunny and The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Onto the registry they went. I dipped deeper and deeper into lists and blogs, hit the kids’ section of the local bookstores, and slowly, I became heavy, not just with child, but with a realization: there are an awful lot of children’s books out there.

More than we could ever own. More than we could ever even check out from the library. Could I happily breeze through the children’s section and pluck a few of the abundant, perfectly decent titles off the shelves? I could not.

This wasn’t going to be the gentle, soft-focus pastime I’d envisioned. No, I was going to have to curate this kid’s reading life.….And so begins an essay I wrote a while back and published at Chapter 16, a literary culture site for the great state of Tennessee, where things like BasilMarceaux.com come from.

I don’t know why I haven’t linked it up here before now. But here it is–at least the first part of it. Please click through above to continue reading, will you?

I just discovered that folks in the Twitterverse (ugh. I hate that word.) are spouting off their #badkiddybooks inventions. Apparently there is some contest.

Some entries:

D-I-V-O-R-C-E: An Early Guide to Spelling (@SareyH)

What’s In Tommy’s Trousers? A Pop-Up Book (@GeneDoucette)

Hitchhiking, a Guide for Girls Daddy Never Loved (@weirdlucy)

Are You There, God? It’s Me, Lindsay Lohan. (@aard)

The Velveteen-Corsetted Rabbit and Her Leather Whip (@midos_mom)

….and lots, lots, LOTS more romper-room raunch.

Now you may return to whatever meaningful thing you were doing. Thanks.

(Note Beaver, there, atop the red logging truck.)

There are only two pages of text in Beaver Is Lost, one being that titular phrase, the other “Home.” (You can probably deduce which marks the beginning, and the end, of the story.) So it’s one of those image-only books that allows the reader to lend her own words to the narrative told by the pictures–in this case, pretty watercolors detailing Beaver’s accidental daytrip into Chicago. (Lucky Beaver. He lives close enough to just make a day of it in Chicago…ah, sorry, never mind.)  Beaver is happily gnawing a recalcitrant branch off a log, afloat in the Chicago River (or some tributary?) when his log is lifted onto a truck, to be shuttled many miles along with many other logs, into the city. He escapes the lumber yard and begins his search for home, passing through a swimming pool, the zoo, the sewers, the Loop, and across a bridge before splashing into the river that takes him back to his dam-building brethren.

It’s a fun, simple story that older readers can easily narrate–or that you, wise Literagoan, can narrate for your toddler. But here’s a confession: There are times when I just don’t feel like reading Beaver Is Lost (which was an instant huge hit with Thalia), and the lack of text is why. Simply put, I’m lazy, and you can’t just read Beaver Is Lost; you have to tell it.  It’s harder to make up the story as you go along, even if the story is clearly outlined for you in adorable images. And there’s this overachiever part of me that feels like I should make it snappy and fresh every time, or maybe snappy and consistent, with pitch-perfect words to tell my version of Beaver’s journey. Not that I have ever accomplished that. I just tell the story super casually, and depending on how tired and fried I am when bedtime rolls around, I fumble to remember the most basic words for things. (”Uh-oh, here comes the uh….grabber-thing…the, uh, crane, no, the claw….whatever, it’s picking up Beaver on the log, see? And look! There goes Beaver, through the, uh, the, big tube, I mean sewage pipe…”) No, reading Beaver Is Lost does not leave me feeling brilliant. And I don’t think there’s much chance that Thalia will be reciting my words to this one, the way she does with, say, Kate Banks’ downright poetic And If the Moon Could Talk (which I really should feature in a future post).

[Hey! How about a Literago contest in which readers create their own narratives for Beaver Is Lost, and we vote for the best one, and the winner gets Cooper's entire backlist, and....No? Not happening? Oh, all right...]

But my own laziness and off-the-cuff storytelling shortcomings aside, Beaver Is Lost is a joy, a very welcome addition to our shelves—not least because it’s set in beloved Chicago, but also because Cooper’s style is gorgeous. I’ve already checked a bunch of his former titles—Magic Thinks Big (about a cat who can’t decide whether to go out or stay in; you gotta love that); A Good Night Walk; Farm—out of the library. You should, too.

So I was pretty pleased when a press release showed up in my inbox the other day, announcing the celebration of (what would have been) Leo Lionni’s 100th birthday, and in honor of that, a new website celebrating his life’s work. In a bio of Lionni on the site, I read this, about his childhood in Amsterdam:

His room became a miniature zoo and botany laboratory filled with jars containing live insects; aquariums containing minnows, tadpoles, snails, and shrimp; and cages with mice and birds. Best of all were his terrariums where he could create tiny environments for snakes, toads, salamanders, and frogs. In addition to all these live creatures, he had boxes of shells and pebbles and displays of butterflies and beetles, and hanging on strings running the length of the room were leaves, seedpods, feathers, and dried flowers.

Which reminds me quite a bit of my own childhood out in the boonies, up on a hill in middle Tennessee. Terrariums? Check. Box turtles, baby sliders; oh, I brought home many. Butterfly displays? Check. (This, a brief project of my mother’s, woman of many, many nature-based projects.) Snakes? I was brought up with no fear, really. Tadpoles? We had a pond right next to our house–a heart-shaped one that my parents had dug when they bought the house, but I remember being taken to another, smaller pond in the nearby woods to examine tadpoles close up. And so on… My childhood was, in short, one big nature trip, and then there was also Leo Lionni.

But what appeals to me so much about this artist-writer is not so much a celebration of nature for nature’s sake as it is the way he uses small creatures to tell parables that speak so clearly and movingly to the predicaments of the tender human psyche. Lionni’s mice and fish are lonely, jealous, ruminative, insecure; they are full of the foibles of sensitive types. Alexander wants so badly to be something he is not—to be more like his cool buddy, Willy. Frederick is castigated for being a dreamy, artsy type, but ultimately he makes it work for him. The chameleon wants to be a single color, like all the other animals, but eventually finds peace in the friendship of another “oddball”: an older, wiser chameleon. The fish wishes he could get out of his pond and experience the wonders of the world on land, but he learns to appreciate life underwater.

Many good children’s books relay a message or lesson, but it occurs to me that I haven’t come across many contemporary titles that traverse the emotional landscape the way Lionni’s do. (Please, speak up if you have suggestions.) So many children’s books are didactic (learn to go to bed easily! clean up! use your manners!) or purely sentimental (mama loves you) or fantastical, whimsical. None of which is wrong; all of those kinds of books have merit. But I’d like to see more that take on these tricky emotions in a subtle, graceful way (and I should also point out: Lionni’s artwork is very simply beautiful.)

I wonder if Lionni was a product of his time. Were more books with themes like his being published back then? Or does his work really stand alone–or am I just missing the books that are like his?

And I wonder what effect reading lots of Lionni may have had on my own tender young psyche. Am I a sensitive nature-lover, a little to prone to daydreaming a la Frederick, because I read and re-read these beloved stories? Or did they resonate with me so strongly because of something intrinsic to my personality, even as a really little person?

Probably a bit of both. 

So, hey, it just so happens to be the 91st annual Children’s Book Week, as Amazon has duly notified me, and in honor of that and Lionni’s birthday (May 5), do check out some of his work, yes? I’m pretty sure it won’t disappoint.

I’m still thinking about it, in fact, but then I think about cleaning up all those little bunny poop-balls, and how the bunny would no doubt poop on the floor in the house from time to time, and how the toddler would probably think that poop-balls are really cool to squish between her fingers, and…yeah. Also, I had two bunnies in my sweet, bucolic childhood, and both were put to rest, shall we say, by neighboring dogs. So. For now, at least, we’ll get our bunny love in the form of books. And if you’ve cruised the children’s shelves lately, you’ll know that there is no shortage of books featuring bunnies. I considered doing a post rounding up 8 or 10 of my favorites, even. For now, just the most recent adorableness, which falls snuggly into the category of THE CUTE:

Bunny Days, by Tao Nyeu, was brought to Thalia by—who else?—the Eastah Bunny. Bok bok. And I’m sorry, but I had a cute overload moment of meltiness tonight as she sat on the floor paging through it and said, in her toddler voice (which is, you understand, is THE MOST ABSOLUTEST CUTEST THING EVER), “Muddy bunnies!”

I’m just in love with the style of this book’s illustration—clean lines, supersimple white bunnies with cotton ball tails and pin dot eyes, and lovely limited color palettes for each of the three stories contained within (”Muddy Bunnies,” “Dusty Bunnies,” and “Bunny Tails”). And the stories tickle me too: In each, there’s a mishap involving industrious Mr. and Mrs. Goat: he splashes mud on our happy bunny friends while they’re at play; she vacuums them up from their underground dens as she’s vacuuming (yes) the meadow; he snips off their tails as he’s pruning the hedge they’re playing hide-and-seek in. Each time, the goats run to Bear to rescue the day, and Bear does so with aplomb—enlisting his washing machine, giant fan (WHIRRR!!!!), and sewing machine, respectively. Bear, it seems, is quite handy with the small appliances and such. OK, so this book would be fun enough if it just featured bunny-and-goat mishaps, but we have small appliances hanging out in the meadow with a scarf-wearing, tea-sipping, scarf-knitting Bear. (Who, like, is just sitting there knitting, in the meadow, right next to…his washing machine.) This is the kind of silliness and fancifulness that the littlest reader doesn’t even question; she just knows it’s fun. And an older kid or adult gets the humor of the incongruity and thinks it’s fun too. Score! And bonus: The dust jacket unfolds to a gorgeous, full-color poster of the entire cast. (Here we learn that Bear can also pick a mean banjo.)

So you can imagine my surprise—and amusement—when I came across this stiff, thumbs-down review from School Library Journal:

PreSchool-Grade 1—The bear from Nyeu’s Wonder Bear (Dial, 2008) returns in three simple stories. In each tale, six white bunnies are lounging around when Mr. or Mrs. Goat comes by and disrupts them. Bear comes to the rescue and repairs the damage. Each story ends with, “Everyone is happy.” Although they may be satisfied, Bear’s problem-solving methods are dubious. In the first tale, the bunnies are splattered in mud from Mr. Goat’s tractor. Bear puts the bunnies in a washing machine (conveniently located in the meadow) and then hangs them up by their ears to dry on a clothesline overnight. Next, Mrs. Goat is inexplicably vacuuming the field and sucks up the bunnies that are dozing in their underground burrow (but not the leaves or grass from the ground). Bear removes them from the vacuum cleaner bag, hangs them on a vertical clothesline, and directs a large fan at them to blow off the dirt. In the final story, Mr. Goat cuts off the bunnies’ tales while trimming the bushes. Bear uses a sewing machine to stitch them back on. Don’t try this at home, kids! Nyeu’s illustrations are silk-screened using water-based ink. The pastel palette and thickly outlined characters and objects are reminiscent of those in Crockett Johnson’s Harold and the Purple Crayon (HarperCollins, 1955). The simple language and layout of the book make it suitable for beginning readers, but the art far outshines the unremarkable text.—Martha Simpson, Stratford Library Association, CT

OK, Martha, for reals, please tell me you’re not a children’s librarian, because you so Don’t Get It. (Also, I have to say that the illustrations don’t remind me a thing of Harold and the Purple Crayon, not that there’s anything wrong with that cute classic. In fact, we read both of these at bedtime tonight; I didn’t think for a second of any comparison.) It is HILARIOUS that Mrs. Goat vacuums the field! HILARIOUS that Bear blows dirt from the bunnies while they’re pinned to a vertical clothesine!

You know what’s dubious, Martha, huh? Your reviewing skillz iz dubious. Ha!

Ahem.

And now for THE NOT SO CUTE:

In case you missed this fabulous collection last week, The Creepiest Children’s Book Covers EVER. (HuffPo)

I only question the inclusion of the Winnie the Pooh cover. C’mon, guys; even the littlest kid knows the all-important difference between POOH and POO. No creep factor here, sorry!

Finally, this post gave me an excuse (not that I really needed it) to eat the both-cute-and-creepy white chocolate, peanut-butter-creme-filled Bunnicula I picked up in Louisville the other week. Mmmm. Yummy Bunny.

Then again, children’s lit is, of course, lousy with farms. There are enough tractors and cluck-clucks and benevolent, overall-clad farmers to make you long for anything BUT the pastoral setting for your story-time travels. I have spent the past year of my life mooing and neighing and baaing, surely more than I have in the past thirty-odd years combined, and there’s more to come. But have I begun hiding all farm tales behind the couch? Nah. I’m cool with farms.

Here we have two groovy farm-related books, one new, one published a few years ago.

Jarret J. Krosoczka’s PUNK FARM tells the story of some rockin’ farm animals—cow on drums, sheep on vocals, chicken on keyboard, goat on bass, and pig on guitar—who kick out the jams all night long. As the band prepares for tonight’s big show, their farm animal fans line up around the barn, waiting to show IDs to the bouncers (that would be the horsies). The band is a big hit, belting out—you guessed it—a rendition of “Old MacDonald,” and ending with a true-to-life, “Thank you, Wisconsin!” The next day, Farmer Joe is bright eyed and bushy tailed, ready to work; the animal rockers are much more bleary.

The paintings are lively, colorful, and cartoonish in a child-pleasing way, and while I don’t know about your kid, mine snaps up any opportunity to belt “EE-I-EE-I-O!!” repeatedly. But I can’t help feeling that the book misses some great opportunities. There are so many silly directions you could go with the conceit of a farm animal rock band, right? Instead of much of the story being devoted to several verses of that familiar song, the band could’ve cranked out farm-takes on some classics, hung out backstage with some pretty heifers, and slamdanced (”Careful with the horns, dude!”). And considering that this book came out in 2005 and features a bovine percussionist, I was pretty surprised that a “More cowbell” joke didn’t show up as a wink-wink moment for the parents. And you kind of have to wonder why the concert wasn’t billed “LIVESTOCK”…and so on. Still, it’s a very fun concept, and not just another baby-animals-on-display title.

A totally different sort of farm music can be found in the just-released OUR FARM: By the Animals of Farm Sanctuary, by Maya Gottfried and fine artist Robert Rahway Zakanitch. Gottfried imagines the voices of various animals, then lets them narrate the sweet, mostly free verse poems that make up this book. Take the beginning of “Freedom!”, by J.D., a piglet:

I’m free!
And I’m running, and I’m running,
and oh, I can feel the sun on my snout.
There goes a fence post!
(…)

Or this haiku, by Barnaby the rabbit:

See me in the grass?
Maybe I will hop to food…
Or go sniff pansies.

Barnaby, J.D. and the other animal “poets” on display in this lovely book (the lamb on the cover makes me swoon a little every time I look at it) are real-life residents of Farm Sanctuary, a shelter for neglected and abused animals, and a portion of the book’s proceeds will be donated to the organization, which “works to end cruelty to farm animals.” Gottfried captures the animals’ characters—shy, gentle, twitchy, docile, frisky, playful, wise, and so on—in her poems, and their personalities seem equally realized in Zakanitch’s watercolor and ink paintings, which blend into and are accompanied by rough pencil sketches on bright white pages, bringing to mind a young artist’s sketchbook full of inspired doodles dancing with more finished pieces. The whole book feels carefree and springy, artful in a loosey-goosey (sorry) way. (I will not be at all surprised to find it on prominent display at Anthropologie.) It’s nice, too, to see farm animals’ genuine nature represented—the wary eye of a rabbit, the curious gaze of a goat—rather than the ubiquitous anthropomorphic take. I’ll be reading this one to Thalia, living vicariously through the warmth its pages exude, until we can get out and take some farm tours of our own later this spring. . .

Visit the book’s Facebook page.

A Penguin Story, by Antoinette Portis

Harper Collins

40 pp.

PERFECT FOR: Dreamers, people who want to move away from home, people who have moved away from home, eternal seekers, the insatiably curious, those who bore easily, fans of the color orange, fans of the color green, fans of penguins.

We were already big fans of Portis’s first book, Not a Box, so when I saw this new one from her on The New York Times Best Illustrated Children’s Books 2009 list, it didn’t take me long to decide it’d be one of our Christmas adoptees. And I was in love on first read—in love with Portis’s simple, bold illustrations, rough and clean at the same time; in love with the story, which follows penguin Edna, weary of her home turf, as she looks for that “something else” that she knows must be out there, somewhere. The other penguins just want to play penguin games, but Edna is devoted to her search. And yep, her devotion pays off. Color represents the “something else”: Edna’s North Pole home is exclusively white, black, and blue, and what she finds—the tents and parkas, etc. of a team of research scientists—is brilliant orange.

She shares her discovery with the rest of her penguin crew, and the birds delight in their encounter with the scientists, who offer them an orange glove as a souvenir. But on the final page, Edna, our dear seeker of new experience, stands atop an icy outlook, wearing the orange glove as a jester hat, staring out at the blue, blue sea. “The next day, Edna wonders, What else could there be?” Behind her, on the facing page, a green boat is inching its way onto the horizon. The book’s end papers? Orange (front) and green (back).

I’m sure I don’t have to go on at length about how the theme of this book—the eternal search for the “something else”—should thrill any thinking adult. You’ll get it. That’s mainly why I’ve flipped over it, though it’d be a beautiful winner based on its look and design alone. A kid’s book that feeds the noisy adult mind’s need for meaning as well as it feeds its intended kiddo reader is a rare thing (rarer, maybe, than animated films that do the same?), and this is an exquisite example. And Thalia? She’s hooked too, on those sweet little penguins and the wide swaths of color and the pleasing geometry of each gorgeous page. And she wasted no time learning to see, and point out, the green boat…

I’ve already given A Penguin Story as a gift twice, and frankly, it’s killing me that I can’t show you every. single. page right now. It’s that good. (You can see a few pages, though not my absolute faves, here.)

(”I’ll never get tired of looking, thinks Edna.”)

Like the adult stuff, children’s lit encompasses worlds, and I don’t plan to traverse all of them. My exploration will be focused on picture books – from, say, baby-friendly titles up to about age 8 or so. There may be exceptions—say, when I discover Chicagoland middle-grade or YA authors I simply can’t not rave about or pull into our lair for a quick Q&A, or otherwise flirt with and flatter. But mostly, what you can hope to find here is regular dish and dialogue (and I do hope it’s a dialogue!) on marvelous books for the blankie set.

I come to this column bubbling with semi-selfish excitement, but also a lick of humility. As mama to one book-crazy toddlerina, I’m hot for the picture books right now, too—i.e., enthusiasm I have in spades. But let’s face it: The kidlitosphere is richly populated enough already to, well, merit the description “kidlitosphere,” so who do I think I am, hoisting myself all up in here as a children’s lit blogger, adding my tinny chirp to the chorus?

I base my authority on two pieces of cred: A) I am writer of some things that’ve found their way into print, including one quasi YA novel, and B) that bona fide mama status I mentioned just above.

Which is to say: Not that much. But hopefully enough.

If I am so lucky to have other, more seasoned children’s book bloggers out there reading these words? Please do send word (to susannah.felts [at] gmail [dot] com). Take my sweaty, sticky little hand in yours, and let’s play nice. Please: send inspirations, kind nudges of direction, corrections where merited.

What I hope we’ll all get out of this: Inspiration and guidance for your next library or bookstore spree. A glance at the latest and best in newly published picture books. A doorway to the lively chatter in the kidlitosphere. Lively (and by lively, I mean toddler-worthy lively) discussions of kid lit old and new, and of the challenge of raising readers in not-so-book-besotted world (A licensed-character-driven narrative of a world. The question: To Elmo lit or not to Elmo lit?). And, as my toddler would say, with left pointer finger poking vigorously at right palm: “Meh,” or more.

I hope to offer you an idiosyncratic, at times irreverent, take on the books my family and I are digging at a given moment, on our adventures in reading. And I hope to bring in some children’s book writers and illustrators for hearty Q&A, especially those bedded down in, or with even the most tenuous ties to, Chicago. (Shout out via that email address above if this sounds like you; likewise, if you’re a publicist/publisher/author workin’ it…)

More soon, but for now, speaking of irreverence, I leave you with this bit o’ fun: “Mom Takes Children’s Songs Literally,” from McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. (What are you talking about, “how I wonder what you are”? It’s a star. You just said it was a star.)

Check back soon for official column the first!

It’s interesting to note that he published his first best-selling book, Division Street: America, at age 55, which brings to mind this recent article about different kinds of creativity.

He gave genuine voice to working Americans long before plumbers became useful politicking devices. He loved his wife enormously. He faced death, it seems, with no illusions, with little fear. The epitaph he suggested for himself? “‘Curiosity did not kill this cat.” Gotta love all that.

A bit of the coverage:

Trib

Sun-Times

NYT

Times Online

And good thing, with young people (nay, everyone) reading less and less. Whatever works, get ‘em to read. But what the Trib piece doesn’t acknowledge is that this practice really isn’t new. The House on Mango Street and Stop Time, among other contemporary titles, made it into the curriculum in my high school, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see Middlesex or Housekeeping on the lists these days. Somewhere out there, I’m willing to bet, there’s a senior seminar on graphic novels where they’re poring over Maus and Persepolis. And all of this makes me very happy. There are classics that should never get elbowed out, but curriculums should always resist calcification. And when the objective is, in large part, getting kids to learn how to read and analyze texts, not just feeding them their recommended allowance of the canon, a text written last year is no less worthy a tool than one written in the 19th century.  

What contemporary books did you read in high school? Or, teachers: Which ones do you use in your classes now?