Why You Should Never Discuss the Classics with Preschoolers

"Why did Moby Dick want to wreck the Pequod?"
"Well, maybe it was because the Pequod hunted whales, and he didn't want to be hunted."
"Why did the Pequod hunt whales?"
"Because a long time ago, people used oil from whales for their lights and things."
"Why did they use oil from whales?"
"People hadn't discovered electricity yet. Remember when we talked about how lights use electricity?"
"Why didn't people discover electricity yet?"
"I guess because it just hadn't occurred to them."
"Why?"
"Well, I don't know. What do you think?"
"No, what do YOU think?"
"I'm kind of stumped, actually."
"Why are you stumped, actually?"

And then my head exploded. The end.

(This post would not have been possible without this fabulous pop-up edition of Moby-Dick, given to Sam by our good friend Shona. It's making me reconsider my hard-line stance against reading the unexpurgated version.)

I Am a Revisionist Female Character in a Kids' Story, Hear Me Roar

So, this is kind of funny. Not "ha-ha" funny, you understand. More like "huh" funny. Play along with me for a moment.

Realizing that our municipal strike, which has been going on for almost FOUR MONTHS now, could keep going indefinitely -- meaning that, in addition to having garbage piling up in a scary fashion in our shed, we also continue to not have access to the local library* -- I finally caved and ordered Sam some new books:

Lost and Found
"Once there was a boy who found a penguin at his door. From this opening line to the very end, this gentle story of friendship will capture young readers' imaginations."

Tikki Tikki Tembo
"Tikki Tikki Tembo (which means "the most wonderful thing in the whole wide world") and his brother Chang (which means "little or nothing") get into trouble with a well, are saved by the Old Man with the Ladder, and change history while they're at it."

Snowmen at Night
"Not since Frosty paraded through the village square have snowmen enjoyed such a slip-sliding good time as they do in the Buehners' latest flight of fancy."

Now, these are all good stories, and I stand behind them, but note anything interesting? Such as the fact that, in light of my recent complain-y post, NONE OF THESE BOOKS HAVE FEMALE CHARACTERS. Argh. Somebody thump me.

So, to refresh my memory -- and to give myself a one-stop wishlist to refer to next time I shop for kids' books -- I've reviewed all your comments on my original post, and I've compiled a list of stories for pre-schoolers that prominently feature girls. It's a work in progress, but it's a start:

• Stellaluna by Janell Cannon
• The Miss Spider series by David Kirk
  
• Princess Smartypants by Babette Cole
  
• The Frances series by Russell and Lillian Hoban
• The Paper Bag Princess, A Promise is a Promise, Angela's Airplane, David's Father, Millicent and the Wind, Moira's Birthday, Murmel Murmel Murmel, Pigs!, Something Good, Stephanie's Ponytail, and The Boy in the Drawer by Robert Munsch (Here's where I sadly must confess that, so far, Sam is not feeling the Munsch)
• Chrysanthemum, Lily and her Purple Plastic Purse, and Julius, The Baby of the World by Kevin Henkes
• The Little House and Katy and the Big Snow by Virginia Lee Burton
• Helga's Dowry and Adelita by Tomie DePaola
• When I'm Sleepy by by Jane R. Howard and Lynne Cherry
• The Charlie and Lola series by Lauren Child
  
• Big Momma Makes the World and Lucia and the Light by Phyllis Root
• The Princess Knight, plus many other titles by Cornelia Funke (who is now at the top of my list... well, not THIS list, but the list in my head)
  
• The Seven Chinese Sisters by Kathy Tucker and Grace Lin
• The Library by Sarah Stewart
  
• Moonstruck by Gennifer Choldenko
• Roxaboxen by Alice Mclerran and Barbara Cooney
• A Bad Case of Stripes by David Shannon
• The Balloon Tree by Phoebe Gilman
• Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle by Betty Macdonald
• Noisy Nora by Rosemary Wells
• The Little Princess series (which, trust me, is NOT all princess-y) by Tony Ross
• The Daisy series by Jane Simmons
• Blueberries for Sal by Robert McCloskey
• If You Give a Pig a Pancake by Laura Joffe Numeroff and Felicia Bond
• Miss Rumphius by Barbara Cooney
• Ugly Truckling by David Gordon
• Knuffle Bunny by Mo Willems (I can vouch for this one. The story is cute and the illustrations are fabulous.)
• Lizzy's Lion by Dennis Lee
• Ganzy Remembers by Mary Grace Ketner
• Mrs. McTats and Her Houseful of Cats by Alyssa Satin Capucilli and Joan Rankin
• Who Said Boo? by Anne Miranda
• Attic of the Wind by Doris Herold Lun and Ati Forberg
• Baby Island by Carol Ryrie Brink
• George and Martha: One Fine Day by James Marshall
• Maggie and the Pirates by Ezra Jack Keats
• Katy No-Pocket by Emmy Payne
• Fairy Wings by Lauren Mills
• Dahlia by Barbara McClintock
• Red Riding by Jean Merrilla
• Outside, Over There by Maurice Sendak
• Peg and the Yeti by Kenneth Oppel
• Bullfrog Builds a House by Rosamond Dauer and Byron Barton
• Petronella by Jay Williams
• A Cowboy Named Ernestine by Nicole Rubel
• Cinder Edna by Ellen Jackson
• Little Red Cowboy Hat by Susan Lowell
• Eloise by Kay Thompson
• Sleepless Beauty by Frances Minters
• Christina Katerina and the Box by Patricia Lee Gauch
• The Maggie B by Irene Haas
• The Stella series by Marie-Louise Gay (Bonus: She has a little brother named Sam!)

Thanks so much to everyone who left suggestions. Keep 'em coming!

*Understand this: I fully support our librarians. They're getting screwed. Vancouver has a higher cost of living than Toronto. Why, then, do our library workers earn, on average, seven dollars per hour less than their eastern counterparts? Yeah, I think it's a good question, too.

There's a Sausage Party on My Shelf, and I'm Not Invited

It took me a long time to realize there's a total sausage party happening on Sam's bookshelves. Perhaps it's the ubiquity of board books that feature practically androgynous characters, such as that bunny from Goodnight, Moon and the caterpillar from The Very Hungry Caterpillar. I mean, I think I've always assumed they were male, which possibly reveals my own gender biases, but their Y chromosomes always seemed kind of beside the point.

But then when you move into books for pre-schoolers (aka "stories that are actually interesting"), you notice the dearth of female characters. Corduroy? Peter Rabbit? Curious George? Babar? The poky little puppy? All boys. Ditto a couple of my personal favourites: Peter from The Snowy Day and Max from Where the Wild Things Are. And when you think about it, almost every major character in any Dr. Seuss book is male, with the the exception of Cindy Lou Who, who's really more of a bit part. Though I guess that kangaroo from Horton Hears a Who is an important character, but let's face it: she's kind of an asshole.

Let me tell you about one Richard Scarry book we have, which really illustrates my point: Busy, Busy World. Billed as "33 exciting adventures for girls and boys," the book is a collection of stories that take place around the world, each featuring a new and different character... and almost every single one is male. There's Couscous the Algerian Detective, Officer Montey of Monaco, Happy Lappy from Finland, Rajah of India, and Ukelele Louie the Hawaiian Fisherman. (Disregard for a moment the raging ethnic and nationalistic stereotypes. The matter currently under discussion is the fact that almost none of the titular characters in these stories are female.)

Oh, there are women in these stories. You've got Heidi, who keeps asking Ernst the Swiss Mountain Climber to rescue her damn stupid cow. You've got Tina, a pig who is so fat that on her wedding day she can't fit into a gondola. (Fortunately, Mario comes along with his melon boat and saves the day.) And you've got Shalom of Israel's wife, a woman who is such a nag she doesn't even deserve to have a proper name. But if you take away the damsels needing rescuing and the nagging wives, you've got precious little left.

There are a few noteworthy female characters in pre-schooler lit, I'll admit. Sam adores both Madeline and Olivia. And I guess you can sort of count Mary Anne from Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel, if Sam's fondness for her is anything to go by... despite the fact that hers isn't really a speaking part. But that's about all I can come up with.

Help! Any suggestions for great kids' books featuring girls? I'm trying to raise a kid who doesn't follow in the footsteps of his father -- a man who, while I love him dearly, has never been known to voluntarily crack the spine on a book written by a woman. Unless you count Annie Proulx... which I suspect he doesn't.

Laying to Rest Childhood Mystery #4619-B

Perhaps you can help me with this. For months -- possibly years -- I've been trying to track down a young adult novel I read when I was ten or eleven. It's called Jem (no, not the National Book Award-winner by Frederick Pohl, though that's the only book the internet wants to tell me about), and these are the only details my spotty memory can yield:

The story starts at some point after the earth's population has been simultaneously afflicted with amnesia. The story is told, I believe, in the first person, by a narrator whose name I can't recall, but he describes how people try to deal with the confusion and aftermath of whatever has happened. A central character emerges in his narrative: a young man named Jem, who seems to have his shit together a little better than everyone else. As the narrator struggles with his own memories, which seem to be trying to resurface, Jem emerges as a possibly dangerous character who may have had something to do with the entire cataclysm.

I think. Like I said, I was only ten or eleven, and my precocious little brain didn't deal well with subtlety, ambiguity, and deliberately unresolved endings. My most vivid memory of reading this book was of perplexedly scrutinizing the last few pages before finally having to return the damn book to the library. And now I need to re-read it just so that I can finally lay to rest the burning question: WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS BOOK ABOUT?

For what it's worth, I've looked on Abebooks and Powell's. No luck. Any tips? Better yet, does anyone have a copy they can send me? In exchange, I'll trade you a book that actually makes sense.

BANG!!!???***!!!

I'm not the only parent who, when confronted with a broken balloon and a toddler who's in the process of deciding how big a hissyfit he's about to pitch, rushes to find a Useful Pot to put things in. Am I?

Because let me tell you something, yo: this strategy works.

He's a Monomaniac, Monomaniac on the Dance Floor

So. Sam seems to have rounded a bend with the heavy equipment obsession that has dominated our lives for months.

Oh, he still enjoys a visit to a contruction site every now and again, and his toy excavator is definitely his most precious possession, but, generally speaking, machines no longer form the central focus of all our activities. When we're drawing pictures (or, more specifically, when Rusty and I draw while Sam dictates the subject matter), we're now allowed to draw animals, trees, and alien spaceships. When telling Sam stories, I no longer have to bastardize old fairy tales by replacing the characters with construction equipment (i.e. Goldilocks and the Three Excavators, The Three Backhoes Gruff, Jack and the Dump Truck, etc.). And at mealtimes Sam no longer demands that we feed him by pretending to be Mike Mulligan while his spoon is Mary Anne.

So, you know, progress. Yay.

But like any hardwired monomaniac, Sam, of course, has to trade one fixation for another. And right now he's all about animals. I'm cool with that, though. For one thing, I like animals, whereas (and don't tell Sam I said this, because I will deny it vehemently) I couldn't give a rat's ass about construction equipment. And for another thing, there are way more species of animals than there are types of heavy machines, so the repetiveness factor, while never totally eliminated, goes way down.

So no one was more gung-ho than I when Sam proposed a recent trip to the library to get more animal books. Once there, we trolled the shelves with the thoroughness that only an obsessive two-year-old can muster, and Sam eventually picked out his allocated five titles. The first four were pretty much the kind of fare I expected, given his preference for exotic critters:

• Alligators and Crocodiles
• Australian Animals
• Animal Dads
• Nights of the Pufflings (Note: This book makes me cry.)

But this last book (one that I'll admit I tried, in my own futile way, to dissuade him from getting) has me freshly worried:

Someone hold me. Please?

BOOKS: Maybe a Thneed IS Something That All People Need

"Congratulate me."
"Why's that?"
"I just got all the way through The Lorax without crying... for the first time ever."
"Yeah. The Lorax gets to me, too."
"I'm a little worried about Sam, though."
"Why?"
"Well, is it a bad sign that his favourite part seems to be when the Thneed factory goes into heavy production?"

BOOKS: How to Pander to Today's Modern Toddler

I've only been back a couple of days, but in just a few hours I'm getting on another plane, this time with Rusty and Sam as we head back to Ontario to visit family. I'd be bitter about the five hours of missed reading time due to wrangling a busy two-year-old, but fortunately I had my shot at uninterrupted reading last week, and I know when to step back and be grateful.

No, this flight is going to be all about Sam, and in case you're wondering what to pack in your carry-on for a toddler, I'm here to tell you: whatever works. This is not the place for progressive boy-dolls or wooden puzzles from Europe or whimsical storybooks with gorgeous illustrations, no matter how much you yourself might love them. In-flight entertainment is all about pandering to their most obsessive-compulsive whims. Don't try to fight it.

So you can imagine the scene in the bookstore early today when Rusty and I were trying to pick out new books with which to surprise Sam once we're buckled in. Has a kid's psyche ever been this scrutinized by his or her parents? Well, probably. At any rate, here's what we decided on:

Richard Scarry's What Do People Do All Day?
Some of you may recall my strong sentiments about one of Scarry's other books, Cars and Trucks and Things That Go (aka "Purple Story"). Well, Sam loves Scarry, and I love Sam, which pretty much makes me Scarry's bitch. What can you do?

Where's Waldo? by Martin Handford
To answer my own question, I may not be able to do much, but I can throw a curveball at my short friend. So you like hunting for Goldbug, do you, Sammy? Have you met my pal Waldo? He likes hiding, too. Go on, look for him. I'll be waiting over here.

Dr. Seuss's ABC
This, of course, is pandering to Sam's insatiable desire for all things alphabetical. (Plus, I've been meaning to pick it up for a while.)

At a Construction Site by Don Kilby
For several months now, Sam is going through that important early childhood rite de passage known as "the heavy equipment phase". Much as it shames me (not really) to admit it, I'm totally exploiting his obsession in order to buy (or at least rent) myself a half hour of peace.

And when that half hour is up...

Big Trucks and Diggers in 3D by Mark Blum
What's better than construction machines in two dimensions? Do you even need to ask? This book is published by the good people at Caterpillar. And when Sam gets tired of it, we've got a JCB flier on standby. (You think I'm kidding. Ha.)

BOOKS: "This is the very newest kind of cracker factory."

Design*sponge is one of my favourite design blogs, and it was there that I first read about illustrator and pattern designer Julia Rothman, as well as about one of her side projects: a blog called Book By Its Cover, where she shares some of her favourite illustrated books.

It's a varied collection, combining the beautiful with the retro with the bizarre, organized into several categories. Not surprisingly I gravitated toward the children's stories. I'm glad I did. If it weren't for Rothman's site, I never would have known that Toni Morrison wrote a kids' story called The Big Box -- "about three children who have to live in a big brown box with a door with three locks because the adults think they 'can't handle their freedom'." -- which I think I may have to pick up.


I also wouldn't have learned that J.Otto Seibold, author of the modern classic Olive the Other Reindeer, has written a gorgeously twisted-looking pop-up version of Alice in Wonderland. Also now on my must-get list, especially now that I've tested Sam with other pop-up books and so far he's shown no propensity to tear out every protruding page element.


And finally, if I hadn't visited Rothman's site, I never would have seen this illustration from the book The Lollypop Factory. Finally, we get to see where Millhouse's dad works!

BOOKS: Just What the Doctor Ordered

I don't know about the toddler(s) in your life, but one thing I've learned about the one in mine is this: you're not going to get him all the way through the reading of a story unless you make a complete ass of yourself. As in, such an ass that you'll make Rich Little's gig at the White House Correspondants' Dinner look like the Gettysburg Address.

Oh, Sam likes books all right. He loves them. When we come home from the library with our half dozen or so new books, he insists on reading them compulsively, back to back, until we get all the way through the stack. I don't know where he gets this from.

Perhaps I'm to blame for Sam's need for theatresports-type performances during story time. Before he became an affable toddler, back when he was officially the Grouchiest Baby in the Universe (see here and here if you're new-ish to this site), I used to pull out all the thespian stops during our readings of Green Eggs and Ham, which was -- if the fact that it was the only book in our library capable of eliciting the ghost of a polite smile from him is anything to go on -- his favourite book in the whole world.

Sam got older and perked up a bit, but Dr. Seuss has continued to be a mainstay of our pre-naptime and -bedtime repertoire. These days, we're reading McElligot's Pool and If I Ran the Zoo twice a day, and with the umpteenth-gazillion reading under our belt, I'm now prepared to tell you why McElligot's Pool is possibly the best book in the world to read to toddlers:

1. The illustrations are awesome. This book was published in 1947, making it one of Seuss's earlier works, and what I like about the artwork is that it hasn't yet become the very simplified style Dr. Seuss is widely known for, in books such as Cat in the Hat and Green Eggs and Ham. (Don't get me wrong: These books are great.) The art in McElligot's Pool is much softer and alternates between black-and-white and full-colour spreads and it's just lovely to look at.

2. The story, also, is awesome. It's about a boy named Marco who's fishing in a little pond that's filled with garbage. He's just minding his own business when he gets this unsolicited commentary from a passing yokel:

The nerve! But is Marco nonplussed? Is he chagrined? Does he reply rudely? No, no, and no. Our young hero, using a stream of logic right out of 12 Angry Men, sets out a scenario in which -- the universe being the random and almost infinite place that it is -- it's quite possible that, in fact, he could catch ANYTHING in McElligot's Pool. It's wonderful.

3. The words and rhymes lend themselves perfectly to reading aloud, especially with the aforementioned theatrics that my home life demands. As Marco theorizes about the increasingly fantastical creatures he could catch -- some whimsical, others dark and weird -- the reader gets to have fun with the entire range of human expression. Good times!

4. And as an addendum to 3) but worthy of note to anyone who knows they will be reading a book until the words and meter are permanently imprinted onto their brain, McElligot's Pool is eminently re-readable. Thank god. It's not just that the illustrations and story are so well done: it's that Dr. Seuss, in all his boundless mercy toward the parents of pre-schoolers, has given us so many ways of reading the words. You can play with emphasis and tone almost endlessly, meaning YOU CAN LOOK LIKE AN ASS IN AN ALMOST INFINITE NUMBER OF WAYS. It's wonderful.

I haven't talked about the other book in heavy rotation at our house: If I Ran the Zoo. Now, here's the thing about If I Ran the Zoo: Sam obviously loves this book, and I like most of it, too, but my goodness, the times sure have changed since 1950, when it was published. The people of Ma-Tant, with "their eyes all a-slant"? The rhyme scheme on the page about the Russian bird, where all the rhyming words end in "-ski"? It's not politically incorrect... exactly. Just kind of awkward in our post-PC times.

Apropos of nothing, though, did you know that Seuss was credited with inventing the word "nerd" in this book? Well, now you do. Don't say you never learned anything here.

BOOKS: Achtung, Babies

Okay, my feminist heart wants to say, "But why is this book just for boys?" But then the Wes Anderson-esque trailer is so cute it makes me relent and say, "Well, we'll just pretend it's called The Dangerous Book for Boys AND GIRLS."

Regardless of the title, I think it's great that there's a book out there that reminds us all that kids need to be kids -- and that sometimes being a kid is a little dangerous. I mean, sure, I'm having a series of small heart attacks just thinking about Sam using a home-made bow and arrow. But then I remember my own childhood spent playing on rusty farm equipment and climbing rickety ladders in various haymows, and I remind myself that I survived without too many scars.

Actually, come to think of it, I do have a lot of scars. Maybe I need to think about this some more.

BOOKS: Fuck You, Purple Story

Alternate post title: Richard Scarry Gives Crack to Children

I've reached a new parenting milestone: I officially hate a book.

Like, I hate it. I HATE IT. All day long it's "purple story" this and "purple story" that. In the middle of the night. "Purple story!" With the crying and the screaming. So you read purple story. "Again!" You read purple story again. "Again! Again! AGAIN! AGAAAAAAIN!" Did I mention the crying and the screaming? "PUUUURPUUHL STOOOREEEEEEEEEE!"

I hate this book. And I'll be honest: I kind of hate Rusty for bringing it home. It's okay that I'm telling you this. I've already told him.

I don't normally believe in burning books. I'm ready to make an exception.

P.S. Fuck you, too, Goldbug. In fact, fuck you THE MOST.

BOOKS: Things I Learned on Walton Mountain

Hey there! It's my birthday! I'm 37, but shhh... don't tell anyone. I'm planning to throw in my hat for Miss Canada this year, and I understand there are some age-ist hurdles I need to thwart.

I was remembering birthdays past, and I recalled that it was on my birthday in the year 1978 that I read my very first chapter book, which was a pretty big deal at the time. It was a novel from The Waltons series (I bet you didn't know there was a book tie-in to the TV show), called The Accident, and I devoured it over and over again. I can't remember if this is because it was such a great book, or if I didn't have any other books, or if I was just so relieved not to be dealing with baby books any more, because, HELLO, I'M EIGHT NOW. Someday I'm going to get my period and a job and a mortgage. TIME TO GROW UP.

I can still tell you the plot from memory, which is pretty sad considering I couldn't even tell you the names of the main characters from the book I'm reading right now.

It's haying season, and the entire family pitches in to help. The youngest daughter, Elizabeth, has just been sprayed by a skunk, to the amusement of everyone. There is much discussion of the best way to de-stinkify her. Milk or tomato juice? Milk works better, but tomato juice is cheaper and more plentiful. Tomato juice it is then. After the tomato juice bath, one of the older boys -- Ben, perhaps? Jason? Was there a Jason? -- makes fun of her, calling her a "ragamuffin." What the heck is a ragamuffin? Elizabeth gets upset. Pa jumps off the hay wagon to console her, and he lands foot-first on a pitchfork, causing the brutally sharp tines to pierce his shoe and impale his foot. He's taken to the hospital, treated, and sent home. At home, his condition worsens. He returns to the hospital. The foot is badly infected. Gangrene sets in. The family worries, each in his or her own way. Despite his own worry, Grandpa does silly things to make them feel better. Grandma calls him an old fool, her gruffness hiding her love and concern. Awww... isn't that just like her? The gangrene worsens. Amputation is discussed. Everyone worries some more. The younger kids are worried Pa will die. The older folks know that, even if Pa survives, the farm and the sawmill are in trouble, as he's the onle able-bodied full-grown male around to run the place. The entire family's future is at stake. As the oldest son, John Boy feels he should step up to the plate, but he isn't sure how. Despite his anxiety, he still can't help catching the eye of a pretty young nurse, Fairlee Somethingorother. Flirtation ensues. Everyone worries some more. And then! A miraculous recovery! The family is whole and together again, safe on Walton Mountain.

Good-night, John Boy!

BOOKS: Tobogganing Down the Slippery Slope

Here's the thing about many book banners: they're not really after people like you and me -- hedonistic, secular, pornography-lovin' humanists though we may be.

Sure, there are probably a few intrepid, right-minded souls who'd like to pluck that Stephen King novel out of your hands and pitch it onto a bonfire so that it can be enveloped in the unholy flames whence it came. But, for the most part, your average censorship zealot has given up on your immortal soul and mine. They're out to save the children. And this is exactly where and why censorship becomes such a dodgy issue. Because everyone wants to save the children, right?

Here's another thing about this breed of book banner: they're so easy to mock.

How can you not make fun of someone -- even if only in your head -- who misspells "obscene" in their scrawled Post-It note critique of a well-known children's classic? It's hard not to laugh when you envision someone angrily counting the number of times the word "fart" appears in an international bestseller. And let's face it, it's just plain funny to use the word "scrotum" in a debate.

The trick is knowing when to laugh and when to get pissed off. For me, the line in the sand (well, one of many lines in the sand) is drawn when people take it upon themselves to ban books that promote values of tolerance and acceptance.

Take, for example, the groundbreaking children's book Heather Has Two Mommies, which has been getting under conservatives' skin for almost two decades. (You can read the backstory here.) Now, this isn't a book we have in our house... yet. We'll get a copy some day. It's a good story. It isn't just about the fact that Heather's mothers are gay: it's about the fact that there are all kinds of families -- single-parent families, blended families, interracial families -- and all are equal. I simply do not get why this is a message people are against. Do they think that, by banning the book, these families will disappear? Do they think that reading about gay people will, horror of horrors, make their own kids gay? (To this charge, Heather's author, Leslea Newman, retorts, "After all, I grew up reading books that all had straight characters.")

Here's why we have to fight against book banning: because if we don't take seriously the free speech attacks against innocuous books of nursery rhymes and books about flatulent canines and books that incidentally name body parts, we give censorship advocates every reason to believe they have the right to ban books about capital-I important issues such as homosexuality and tolerance. And while the right to tell silly stories about farting dogs may not feel like a right we need to go to battle over, the right to tell stories that help people understand that it's OKAY to be different -- that, in fact, MOST OF US are different in some way -- well, that's a right that definitely needs to be protected.

Here's the real, honest, no-messing-around reason why we have to be pitbulls on the pantsleg of censorship: because you never know when and how this issue will affect you personally. And trust me, if this ever does affect you, you're going to be mighty irked with yourself for not speaking up earlier.

Here's how this issue affects me: I'm not gay (though I play a gay woman on TV! Ba-dum-bum!) but Sam's legal guardian is. And let's take a moment to follow the logic of someone who wants to ban books about gay parents:

1. Books about gay parents are bad.
2. Because gay people are bad.
3. Gay parents are DEFINITELY bad.
4. Gay people shouldn't have kids.
5. Not even adopted kids.

Given this chain of reasoning, you see how allowing a book to be banned pushes you just over the teetering edge of that slippery slope.

So, yeah, this issue hits home for me. It's not like I really think (touch wood!) that Rusty and I are planning a visit to St. Pete any time soon. Given the fact that we rarely leave the house, we'd both have to fall in the tub simultaneously, which... well, it could happen, but we got one of those sticky tub mat thingies, so we feel pretty good about things. But say we DO suffer a fatal simultaneous tubbing accident, we want to know our wishes about Sam's guardianship will be respected. The fact that there are people out there who might, even in theory, like to overthrow my wishes makes this censorship issue more than academic for me. P.S. It also really, really, REALLY pisses me off. That sound you hear? That's my blood boiling.

It's so easy for the free speech debate to become overly academic and abstruse. I think it's important to break things down and consider -- really consider -- how this issue affects us in our day-to-day lives. So I've told my story (one of them, anyway). What's yours?

BOOKS: Book Banning Redux

I've just spent the weekend putting the finishing touches on a radio segment I'm doing for Definitely Not the Opera. It's about censorship, children's literature, and farting -- three topics near and dear to my heart -- so you can imagine how much fun I've been having.

But man, if I thought the word "fart" could get a bunch of people's panties in a wad, just try to imagine how much trouble the word "scrotum" is causing.

(Ups to Susi for the link!)

BOOKS: Kids' Books That Don't Suck

Before I say what I'm about to say, I want you to stop and rewind the tapes (or whatever personal archiving system you choose) and make a note of the fact that I'm not one to use this space to brag about young Master Sam. Historically, I've actually been more likely to bemoan his little peccadilloes, such as his old habit of waking up six times a night and his unique gift for nursing grouchily and his tendency to blame me for all of his problems.

So bear all that in mind when your eyes are rolling in their sockets at the end of the following bragfest:

My Samuel has mastered the entire alphabet (English version).

That's right. From A to Zed (or as he prefers to say, in his cheekily yankified way, "Zee"), he knows all the letters, upper case AND lower, thankyouverymuch... though, admittedly, certain typefaces can leave him befuddled in matters relating to lower-case B, D, G and Q. He has his favourite letters, of course. He harbours a nostalgic fondness for A, B, C and D, the vanguard of his alphabetical achievement. And he can't pass any kind of signage with the letters K, M, U and V in it without stopping to exclaim (loudly) over them.

And *cough* did I mention he doesn't turn two until April?

It's easy for me to start getting excited about my budding genius -- sending away for Mensa applications and planning how he's going to start doing our taxes in '08 and whatnot -- but then I remind myself that this is a kid who still stuffs food in his mouth without chewing until he gags, and who can't seem to understand why it's not a good idea to pick up cat poop with his bare hands. Ahhh... sweet reality check.

All this is a roundabout way (and a not-even-remotely veiled excuse to brag, I know it) to get at something I've been thinking about lately, which is children's books. I don't know if Sam's preternatural love of the alphabet is connected to his love of books, but what I do know is that we're reading dozens of stories every day around our house and let me tell you: the wheat is quickly becoming apparent from the chaff.

Now, I've always given a fair bit of thought to kids' books, but this past holiday season -- when I was scouring bookstores and the web to find the very best stories I could for Sam -- really brought this issue into my mental spotlight. Specifically, what I noticed is that, while there are many, many GOOD books readily available, there aren't so many GREAT books. And then I started wondering about the long-term ramifications of this.

I had some specific titles in mind for Sam. As I've already posted, I really wanted to get him copies of semi-classics such as Olivia, Corduroy, and Where the Wild Things Are, among others. It was harder to find these than I anticipated. I visited every single independent bookseller in my proximity, and none carried these books. I ended up going to Chapters, where I was able to find all of them in the huge children's section... provided I didn't mind poring over shelf after shelf of mediocre books in my search. It took me an hour to locate seven books -- books whose titles and author names I'd written down completely and correctly -- among the store's oddly organized offerings. And when I tried to browse new, unfamiliar books... well, I gave up after another half hour with empty hands.

So on hand, you've got narrow selections at smaller booksellers. On the other hand, you've got huge -- if not exactly top-drawer -- selections at larger booksellers. But this isn't an indies-versus-big-boxes debate. Rather, as I've already asked, my question is, no matter where you go, whither the great books?

Because I'm not as bright as I'd like to think I am, it took me a couple of weeks to realize my approach was totally backward. I don't just go to bookstores and pick books I've never heard of off the shelves for myself. (Maybe this technique works for some of you, for which I applaud you, but it's worked for me maybe three times in my entire book-purchasing career, so I generally give it a miss.) No, I read bestseller lists, and I (sort of) follow the big literary awards, and I get recommendations from smart people like you. So I decided to do the same thing when it comes to getting books for Sam. And I'm starting right at the top, with the Caldecott Medal.

I've always been aware of the Caldecott on the periphery of my literary radar. I knew it was kind of a big deal, and that it -- and its runner-up, the Caldecott Honor -- has been bestowed on a few books I count among my favourites, such as Where the Wild Things Are and Zin! Zin! Zin! A Violin. But it wasn't until I started researching that I realized that this award has been around for almost seventy years, which is pretty amazing when you ask yourself how far back your knowledge of children's literature goes. I also didn't know that this prize is awarded to the book's artist, not the writer, and that it's named after nineteenth-century illustrator Randolph Caldecott.

Yet another incredible thing: a great many, if not all, of the past Caldecott winners are still available in print, which puts paid to my half-formed notion that kiddie lit is largely disposable. But don't get too excited just yet. When I made a longlist of titles I'd like to find, almost none of them were available in the bricks-and-mortar stores in my vicinity.

So here's the situation, in shorthand:

• Great books for children exist. Yay!
• But they're not necessarily in stores. Boo!
• But you can look them up in places like the Caldecott site, and then order them online. (Did you know that sites like Amazon, Chapters and Barnes & Noble tag all their Caldecott recipients, so all you need to do is use "Caldecott" as a keyword?) Yay!
• But how many people are actually going to do this? Boo!
• Kids really can like books and reading. Yay!
• But how can we foster this if the books that are readily available aren't the very best ones in existence? Put it this way: how would you feel if someone kept hectoring you for not reading enough, and then you found out they've been hiding the good books in the basement? Boo!

To speak to my last two points: I really do believe that kids have the innate ability to discern great books from kiddie pulp. Why is it that so many of us, with no adult prodding, managed to find wonderful books -- books like Alice in Wonderland and the Little House series and Harriet the Spy and From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler -- all on our own, and then feel the compulsion to read and re-read them endlessly? Because we KNEW there was something special about these stories, even if we couldn't explain what it was (or more likely, didn't give a rat's ass about explaining it).

It's discouraging. I know I can order all these books, and it IS wonderful that they're still in print, but I picture all of these fabulous stories buried in a warehouse, truly like treasure in a cave. And in the meantime, pap like Barbie Fairytopia: Magic of the Rainbow lines bookstore shelves. I'd beat my head against a wall, but I need the brain cells.

BOOKS: Ho-Ho-Holy Crap

Should horror-meister Dean Koontz even be ALLOWED to write kid's books? And if so, how is it that a Dean Koontz Christmas story for children -- ominously titled Santa's Twin -- could become so popular that it spawns a sequel?

Somebody hold me.

BOOKS: Is Any Reading Good Reading?

Students attempt to break record reading popular book:

BRIGHTON - At 11 a.m. Wednesday, the usually bustling Brighton North Elementary School was quieter than is typical, as students joined others around the world to read a few passages from a classic children's book - with a world record to break.

The 476 students at Brighton North took a few minutes to read from Charlotte's Web, the children's story by E.B. White about the friendship between a pig named Wilbur and a spider named Charlotte. As part of its marketing strategy for a new, live-action movie version of the 1952 book, Paramount Pictures and Walden Media, producers of the movie, aimed to familiarize a new generation of children with the book. The film is slated for release Wednesday.

You can read the rest here.

Now, when I first read this article, I was of two minds about it. Allow me to demonstrate using dorky debate-team format.

POINT: Kids are reading!
This is always a good thing and should never, ever, ever, ever-to-the-power-of-infinity be naysayed. Right?

COUNTERPOINT: But dude, it's sponsored by the mainstream film industry!
What have movie folks done for kids' books that we should applaud them for? They've totally FUBAR-ed classics like The Borrowers and Harriet the Spy. And Disney alone is responsible for altering sugar-coating bastardizing ruining pretty much every fairy tale ever written. (Except for Beauty and the Beast. I must admit, in the spirit of full disclosure, that I have an irrational love for that movie that has led me to watch it at least five times in its first theatrical release alone.)

POINT: But kids are reading!
"Sure, the whole thing is a big publicity stunt, but reading chorally helps the students become better readers," says Susan Harris, associate librarian at the school profiled in the article. I didn't know this. Is it true? As a former kid myself, I've always found that a group of children reading in unison sounds like a Gregorian dirge, but perhaps I'm alone in this perception. And if choral reading really does provide children with some extra cognitive development, it's sour grapes to naysay it, right?

COUNTERPOINT: But it's still a shameless shill for a movie!
What have things come to when we let the entertainment industry start affecting the curriculum? Is it just a matter of time before high-school students are performing Saw: The Musical (insert your own pun about musical saws here) in drama festivals? Is this a slippery slope we should fear, or am I just a paranoid hater? (Don't discount the fact that I could be both.)

POINT: It's bringing the young 'uns together in their shared love of a great book!
Apparently, the kids in the article are collaborating on class art projects based on the book. Awww... that's nice. It really is. I feel like making something myself, like maybe a cool wall-size spiderweb made out of twine. I could write "Doppelganger rules" in it!

COUNTERPOINT: Couldn't all this reading and artistic collaboration have been generated independently about any number of great books, and by teachers and librarians, without the impetus of a movie studio?
Would that be so hard? Are kids really so reluctant to read awesome stories that they need the lure of major motion pictures and Guinness records to suck them in? (Teachers and librarians, feel free to school me soundly. I am ignorant in the ways of our school system and today's modern child.)

POINT: But the kids are reading! They really are!
Of the 38 copies of Charlotte's Web in the school's library, all of them had been checked out at the time this article was written.

Of course, you knew the argument would come down on the side of "any reading is good reading." That's my mantra, and I'll stick by it. But if you hear the sound of muffled retching, that's just me with this story stuck in my craw.

BOOKS: Bye-Bye, Mon Cowboy

You can't read any amount of children's literature without having your suspension of disbelief tested waaaaaay beyond the bounds of a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel. Beautiful virgins ascending to the heavens? I'll see you your virgin and raise you a giant red dog, a talking train, and a man with an improbably large hat who keeps a wild monkey in a city apartment without a permit.

I accept all these things, because that's how I roll, but I do find myself having my moments with Richard Scarry, particularly in his Best Word Book Ever. I can handle elephants in sailor suits and pigs driving fire engines. This I'm used to. But if you examine the detail-packed Where's Waldo-esque illustrations in this book, more troubling questions emerge:

• On the bears' farm, why is it that species which, in previous pages, wore clothes and seemed sentient are suddenly naked and contained in pigpens and such? Why do the farming bears all have a look of human-like consciousness on their faces, while the pigs, sheep, and cows all have disturbingly blank expressions that one can only describe as "a state of pre-food-ness"?
• At the supermarket, do the pig customers, who have mysteriously regained their sentience, realize that the store is hawking bacon over in the meats department? Shouldn't a boycott be in order? What's equally alarming is that someone has parked a shopping cart right in front of the meat case, and sitting in the kiddie seat is a piglet who is happily gazing at the bologna. The fact that this porcine infant also seems to have been abandoned by his parents is almost incidental to the scene.
• The zoo is possibly the most disorienting tableau. We see caged bears and elephants and beasts of prey, while the zoo's clientele seems to be exclusively rodent in nature. The zookeepers and other staff are all cats, who attend equally to the mice visitors and wild animals. I don't know why this scene troubles me, but it does. Deeply.

This is what happens when you're forced to read the same books over and over (and over and over, with no end in sight). I was relieved when Rusty -- who has his own issues with the Best Word Book Ever -- sent me this link, as evidence that not only are we not the only parents with a tendency to overly scrutinize our child's books, we're also not the only parents to fixate on this particular book. It's a Flickr photoset created by a member called kokogiak:

Richard Scarry's Best Word Book Ever, 1963 vs 1991 editions (with revisions). The 1963 edition is my own, bought for me in the late '60s when I was a toddler, and read to tatters. The 1991 edition belongs to my kids today. I was so familar with the older one that I immediately started noticing a few differences, and so have catalogued 14 of the more interesting differences here in this collection.

The changes are pretty much on par with what you'd expect. Mom and dad bunny are both in the kitchen now, not just mom. Chanukah has been added to the section on holidays. And the First Nations rabbit no longer paddles his canoe, having been replaced by a garden-variety Rabbit rabbit.

I was a little sad, though, to see that becoming a cowboy is no longer considered a viable career option:

Curse you, "progress."

BOOKS: Sometimes Sequels ARE Better

There's a short story by A.S. Byatt that still makes my blood chill in my veins when I think about it.

A wealthy middle-aged woman is on business trip to a major Asian city with her CEO husband, along with a contingent of his colleagues and their wives. While the men are sequestered in conferences and meetings, the wives are squired around the city by tour guides. While many of the women have buddied up for the tours, the main character is shy and something of a loner. At one point, the tour bus full of women is taken to a huge shopping mall. The woman gets separated from the group, and no one seems to notice. Confused and lost, she tries to enlist people's help, but no one speaks English. She either loses her purse or it is stolen, she's not sure. Increasingly disoriented and bedraggled as the hours pass, she is eventually taken for a beggar woman. When she finally encounters a policeman or some such authority figure, who speaks some English, she is so flustered that he assumes she is a crazy woman.

At the end of the story, the woman is left, alone, muttering, wandering the mall. What eventually happens to her is a dark mystery that I don't like to think about any more often than I have to.

Fiction is a sweet-tongued mistress who will slit your throat with the sharpest turn of phrase, the most devastating knife twist of plot. This is why fiction must always be approached cautiously: you never know when she's going to jump out at you with a dagger in her teeth. And this is why when the going gets tough, the tough read kiddie lit.

Stuart Little
by E.B. White (#28)
The Great Gynecological Debate surrounding Stuart Little had pretty much the effect you'd expect: I found myself needing to read this book for the first time in -- good lord -- twenty-five years. And you know what? I liked it much more this time around. In fact, I think I like it more than Charlotte's Web.

Sure, Charlotte's Web is a tighter story, with a neatly resolved ending. And yeah, it still makes me cry. But there's something so clever, so grown-up, about Stuart Little, including the fact that it ends inconclusively, with Stuart driving off into the sunset in search of his friend. Just like real life!

And yes. He definitely is a mouse-child born of a human vagina. Beyond a doubt.

Return to Gone-Away
by Elizabeth Enright (#29)
This is a sequel to Enright's earlier, and perhaps better-known, story, Gone-Away Lake, about three children who discover a long-forgotten lake populated by a half-dozen or so empty mansions. These houses served as summer homes to wealthy families decades earlier, before the lake dried up and people's fortunes changed. The houses have been abandoned by all of their owners except for two, an elderly brother and sister who fell on hard times and returned to their childhood homes.

While Gone-Away Lake contains plenty of adventures of the sort that fans of Enright's writing have come to expect, I've found that I prefer the sequel. In it, the children's parents buy one of the houses to use as their own summer home. There are a few adventures, but essentially this book is a series of anecdotes about home renovations. As a kid, I'm not sure how I would've felt about the chapter where they discover a bunch of valuable early-American antiques in the attic, but I know that as an adult, I almost squealed with glee. I also found myself far too overly invested in the mother's choice of paint colour for the living room.

The Long Secret
by Louise Fitzhugh (#30)
I've lost count of the number of times I've declared my huge love of Harriet the Spy, so I won't go into that again. What's surprising, then, is that for all these years I've managed to not read Fitzhugh's sort-of sequel to Harriet.

The Long Secret takes place during the summer vacation after the school year documented in Harriet. Interestingly, we learn that Harriet and Beth Ellen (the pretty, pathologically shy girl in Harriet's class) are always best friends during the summers that their families spend in Montauk. The story, presented mostly from Beth Ellen's point of view, is remarkably sensitively told. We get a portrait of a young girl struggling with issues of family and self-esteem and faith, but the story never degenerates to the level of an after-school special. Honestly, you have to read it yourself to get what I'm talking about, but as an adult, I have to sort of admit that I think I prefer The Long Secret to Harriet the Spy. Don't hate on me, Harriet lovers! My world has gone topsy-turvy!

It's funny that as a kid, I had all these favourite novels, but I rarely took the time to seek out other books by these writers, instead relying on happenstance to let them fall in my hands. I think I need to dig through my childhood favourites and do some searching for new reading material.

So what were your favourite books as a kid? And have you found, like me, that your tastes have changed as an adult?

EXTRY! EXTRY!
Apparently, my face was made for blogging and for radio. I'll be on CBC Radio One's Definitely Not the Opera tomorrow (Saturday, September 16th) some time between 2:00 and 3:00 pm. I'll be reviewing this year's Man Booker Prize contenders -- and predicting the winner! -- despite the fact that I haven't read any of the titles on the shortlist. What's my secret? You're going to have to tune in to find out.