So it is Book Review Tuesday again (already – honestly, time really does fly!), and today’s topic is inspired a bit by last week’s comments about children’s book series and mostly by the books I saw sitting at the Franclehouse last night. I love the titles and cover art on children’s books. There are so many clever people developing reading materials for kids these days – actually, these past years. I don’t know if this trend is purely commercial – the desperate hope of publishers to glom on to the Harry Potter derivative market – or if there have always been such intriguing children’s titles, but regardless of why, I unabashedly love it.
Generally speaking, I think that it is harder to write for kids – the story cannot rely on standard plot contrivances like sex and violence and the audience cannot be counted on to automatically fill in gaps in logic, detail, or sequence. As a result, I find that the writing tends to be stronger and the stories more carefully crafted. As a writer myself, I enjoy reading not only the story for itself, but also the individual words comprising the story – for inspiration, insight, and ideas.
I also love the way so many children’s/young adult’s book authors work in references and plays on words targeted at adults. Disney has been doing this in cartoons for years, as have several other movie and television show conglomerates, and I think it is brilliant. After all, someone has to buy the tickets/subscribe to the cable or satellite service, and someone has to buy the books/take the children to the library. Those someones are, of course, adults (or very very clever children with access to credit cards, teehee), and targeting children’s products to appeal to (or at least not bore to death) adults is a very smart way to encourage adults to select those products.
So here are a few ostensibly children’s books that I think adults not only can safely encourage children to read, but also can either enjoy with them or on their own:
- Rare Beasts (Edgar & Ellen, book 1) (Charles Ogden): I will start with the book I read today that most directly triggered this post. Edgar & Ellen are extraordinarily precocious twins, of course – it is, after all, de rigeuer for the children in truly clever children’s books to be so (precocious that is; twins is just a bonus) – but their particular brand of precocious is one you don’t actually see all that often. They are determined havoc-wreakers. Yup, truly nasty children always playing mean-spirited tricks on each other and the world, and reveling in their meanness. The embodiment of this is found in the sign over the door of their tall, skinny, grey, creepy house (which they live in alone, as their parents have long-since departed for a vacation that apparently never ended). It reads: Schadenfreude, (teehee), which is defined (accurately) in the story. How fun, she said! And how obvious that this is a series written not just for kids – not a lot of German-speaking, psychologically-savvy 8-12 year olds out there, in my opinion. Let’s be honest, it is fun to vicariously enjoy nastiness – and it is possible to do so here without fear of encouraging behavior that is too bad, because their nastiness always comes to a bad end for them and they ultimately pay the price for their choices. It may not be high literature, but it is a quick and easy read and it is definitely fun to see what kind of antics the twins get up and how, eventually, their uppance comes.
- Artemis Fowl – Again, a nefarious plan-fomenting child makes his way onto the list. Teehee – you are going to start to think I have a penchant for evil-spirited children. I most certainly do not, but I do find that their shenanigans are often some of the most entertaining to read. In the world of precocious children, Artemis Fowl may perhaps take the cake as the most precocious of them all. He is a criminal mastermind who globe-trots in a world of theft, elves, and international (and interspecies) conspiracies, accompanied at all times by his ubiquitous “sidekick”/faux-parental-figure Butler (who is, non- ironically, actually his butler). Yes – I said elves. There is a very fun world-beneath-the-world layer to these stories that is witty and punny and sure to entertain (the elven-secret police are called LEPrecon, teehee).
- The Book Thief (Markus Zusak) – I am going to jump topics and tone to a very serious book now, so forgive the utter lack of a transition. This is one of those truly amazing, inspirational, heartbreaking, incredibly literary young adult novels that I think should have been characterized as a novel, pure and simple, no age-qualifiers, from the outset (although am somewhat glad it was not, as children’s books in hardcover are, on average, at least half the price of adult’s books, making it much less pricey to assemble an impressive children’s book library). I do not think that every book with a youthful protagonist is automatically a child’s (or more appropriately non-adult) book, and this is a prime example of that thought in practice. In this regard it reminds me of the most famous book of its genre – The Diary of Anne Frank. Yes, it is a book about the Holocaust, and yes, it is a book about a child in the Holocaust – in this instance, a foster-girl (the eponymous book thief) living with a family outside of Munich, and her interaction with a Jewish man who hides in the family’s basement. Zusak takes difficult subject matter and renders it accessible to all ages without ever over-simplifying or sugar-coating anything – including Death (who is actually embodied as a character). This is one of those books that will stick with you forever – the descriptions are some of the most evocative, literary bits of wordplay I have ever encountered (and that’s saying something given the quantity of words I have read), the storyline is moving and poignant without ever falling into maudlin. This is truly a beautiful story and a wondrous piece of writing, and I cannot recommend it highly enough.
- The Graveyard Book (Neil Gaiman) – Neil Gaiman is one of my favorite authors of all time. He writes brilliantly dark, insanely clever stories about alterna-worlds people with complicated anti-heroes and long-suffering regular people. This is a prime example of his storytelling. Categorized as a children’s book, it is still entirely Gaimanesque – it opens with a brutal, violent murder of (nearly) an entire family and the subsequent stalking by said murderer of the infant he left alive quite by accident. It is part graphic-novel, part bedtime story (if one enjoys going to bed but never actually falling asleep, that is), and pure genius. Gaiman’s words paint violent pictures that stick with you long after you finish reading them; the contrasting moments of touching care and concern are equally evocative and just as sticky. I guarantee you will never again walk through a graveyard quite the same way after reading it – and not in a bad way…
- A Wrinkle in Time (Madeline L’Engel) – How L’Engel manages to make extremely complex science both child- (or scientifically-unsavvy adult-) accessible AND thorough is utterly beyond me, but she does. And she does it in the context of a compelling and engaging story that allows you to not only understand the concepts of physics but also want to read more about them. The book, the first in her extraordinary series of books about the Wallace children, has won more awards than I can mention. It centers around a family of “misfits” – most are prodigies at math/science – and their missing father; the quest to find him brings in the incomparable Mrs. Who, Which, and Whatsit. L’Engel’s ability to turn abstract principles into utterly believable and endearing characters is nearly as great as her ability to render science entertaining.
So there you have it – five “finds” that most adults will probably never pick up, but that I think are worth the time. You will notice that I did not reference Harry Potter or the Series of Unfortunate Events or the Dark Materials books – anything referenced in a previous post. This is intentional – they too are children’s books that adults can/will enjoy, but I will generally intentionally not reference books in more than one blog post. There are a LOT of books out there. Only a very small fraction make it onto bestseller lists, and in my humble opinion, many of the most extraordinary books often do not. I consider it my personal mission to help people find these (and to help those authors get the credit they deserve – writing books is HARD WORK people. Seriously! So authors who do a great job deserve support and credit even – dare I say especially – if they are not receiving popular acclaim for their efforts). So I am going to try, whenever I can, to mention books that are less in the public eye – things you might not necessarily find without a recommendation. The road not traveled and all that, you know. After all, if you’ve ever watched children play, you will surely have noticed they have an uncanny ability to find small, hitherto unidentified tidbits hidden in unlikely and unexplored spots, and that these tidbits are often thereafter among their most valuable treasures. As it is in play, so it is in reading.
I think you are going to have to start including a dictionary with your posts because my vocabulary would be vastly increased if I actually knew what half the words in your posts actually meant. Contextually, some are actually not easy to figure out….
How about a post referencing books from oh say HS that really shaped why you decided you loved to read so much.
For example, I think of Dave Howe and “Catcher in the Rye” and “Lord of the flies” as very inspirational and very important, but vastly underutilized in schools now-a-days (especially b/c some schools ban them, which is absurd)
Actually, Mamy, a dictionary widget will be added JUST FOR YOU… 😉 Seriously tho, I’m sorry if things aren’t always clear – that’s not good. I may have to write a post on language now, as well as one on high school/curriculum books – thanks for the ideas, for reading, and for taking the time to comment!!
I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again: you should be a book critic. I hope someone stumbles upon this post and hires you immediately. Paying you exorbitant amounts of cash per word, and displaying your wares on the front page of the New York Times.
Ah, Lynn, from your lips to God’s ears, as they say… Seriously – I would LOVE to be a book critic, so if you/anyone else ever stumbles upon anyone looking for book reviews/commentary, pleasepleaseplease let me know!