In response to Monday’s Margaret Weis Brown post, Michelle Moravec notes that she “was just tweeting with someone about
her other well known work The Runaway
Bunny, aka the stalker mommy bunny book. I do wonder if the ’42
publication date relates to the persistent message that mama will not ever
abandon baby bunny?”
Brenda Elsey adds on
that same post that “these books have incredible staying power. I think Runaway Bunny is both a mother and child
fantasy of complete connection. Creepy, perhaps, but psychically satisfying to
both. I nominate The Story
of Ferdinand – every
pacifist parent’s dream!”
In
response to Tuesday’s Ezra Jack Keats tribute, Tona Hangen writes, “Hear, hear for Ezra Jack
Keats! The Snowy Day is a mid-century
collage graphic marvel. The page where Peter discovers the snowball has melted
makes me cry every time. I think it was one of the few from my own childhood
that had matter-of-fact African American main characters in it. That, and Gyo
Fujikawa’s lovingly multicultural books about babies.”
And in
response to Wednesday’s Mike Mulligan post, Tona writes, “Another of Burton's
marvelous books that's a favorite of mine is The
Little House, in which a sweet pink Cape Cod starts out as a rural
house but eventually gets a big soul-draining city built around it. Like Mike
Mulligan, her colored-pencil illustrations convey the bustle and dehumanization
of the industrial urban landscape with perfection. It's a meditation on the
city vs the country as a deep tension in American life.”
In
response to Thursday’s Maurice Sendak tribute, Matt
Goguen writes, “I remember listening to an
NPR interview with Sendak before he passed away. They were talking about
his last book Bumble-Ardy and how he
was able to write it during a particularly dark period of his life. The most
poignant part of the interview came when Sendak said there were two lines in Bumble-Ardy that meant more to him than
any other he had ever written. Bumble-Ardy is a pig that lives with his aunt
and has never had a birthday party. Close to his ninth birthday, he invites
many of the rowdy pigs in town to his aunt's home while she is at work and
their party gets very out of hand. When Bumble-Ardy's aunt returns from work
later and sees the big mess, she said ‘Okay, Smarty. You've had your party but
never again.’ Bumble-Ardy replied ‘I promise, I swear, I'll never turn ten.’”
On the same
post, Irene
Maryniuk writes, “On a much sillier note, the title Higgilety Piggledty Pop! Or,
There Must be More to Life is a phrase that I and my siblings have
continually used to describe bad days for over a decade. The phrase and the
story just moved into our vocabulary. Now, it's code on the phone or in texts
for when things aren't going well, but said with sweetness, not anger.”
Nikolai Soudek
recommends Spike Jonze’s documentary on Sendak, Tell Them
Anything You Want (2011; available in full at that website).
In response to
Friday’s Curious George post, Rob Gosselin writes, “When my boys were little I rented the original Flipper (1963) movie. My boys were like 6 and 4. In the first
ten minutes the main character finds Flipper (a dolphin) washed up on the rocks
with arrows shot in him. The father in
the movie breaks out a shotgun to "take it out of its misery." Aims
it and everything. Both of my sons freaked. That's when I learned to always
preview, or preread, just about anything.”
Amara
highlights another childhood favorite, Doris Susan Smith’s The
Travels of J.B. Rabbit (1982). Rob
Gosselin adds, “Shel Silverstein. For so
many reasons.” And Irene adds, “I was a big fan of Rosemary Wells’
characters--especially Max and Ruby. I realize they are now industry
characters--stuffed animals and books galore, but back then, there was Morris'
Disappearing Bag and six board books--or at least that's all the
Kent Free Library owned. I realize now that I have a healthy dose of both Max
and Ruby in me. Max is so off-kilter, gloriously free and inventive. He makes
us laugh with his unique logic and sense of love. And Ruby is anxiety driven,
worrying about Max and what everyone else will think. I now own a number of Max
and Ruby books and can truly say my personality type could be classified as
‘MaxRuby.’”
Monica
Jackson adds, “The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein is one of the greatest
children's books, ever. By the way, this is my favorite topic (children's lit)
along with young adult fiction. I could go on and on, but my favorites are: Number the Stars (ages 9-11, a great introduction to teaching children
about the Holocaust), The Legend of the Bluebonnet (ages 6-9, Native
American culture), Alice in Wonderland,
Alice through the Looking Glass, Miss Nelson is Missing (ages 6-9, good for
teaching positive behavior in school, lol), etc.”
10/21 Memory Day nominee: Ursula Le Guin, the pioneering science fiction and fantasy author who has also written eloquently about many of our most complex and important cultural questions.
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