Boy-girl best friends in an easy reader format

Dear Aunt Debbie,

At her new reading level, Eleanor has discovered another series of Easy Reader books that she's really into, and  I've been enjoying as well: the Pinky and Rex series, by James Howe. You blogged about one Pinky and Rex book a while back, when we were writing about gay and gay-friendly YA and middle grade books.  As you mentioned at the time, no one in the series is explicitly gay, but there's some nice gender-bending going on.  

The series focuses on elementary-school-age best friends Pinky (a boy whose favorite color is pink) and Rex  (an active, ponytailed girl).  Pinky has a younger sister, and Rex has a younger brother; their families live next door to each other, and their parents are friends as well.  Each book contains six short chapters, with a decent amount of text on each page, and pictures (by Melissa Sweet) on each facing page.

Howe says in a note at the end of Pinky and Rex and the Double-Dad Weekend: "Writing the Pinky and Rex series gives me a chance to remember what it was like when I was seven. It also gives me a chance to say: It's okay to be different, and it's okay for boys and girls to be friends--even best friends."  Happily, Howe knows how to get these ideas across without becoming treacly.

In Pinky and Rex and the School Play, Pinky wants to be an actor, and has his heart set on becoming the lead in the school play, "Davi, Boy of the Rain Forest."  He convinces Rex, who has no interest in acting, to join him for the auditions.  Rex impresses the director so much that he casts her as the lead, changing the name of the play to "Bahi, Girl of the Rain Forest."  Pinky is cast as a monkey.  Jealousy and bad feelings ensue.  As rehearsals continue, however, Pinky decides to learn as much as he can about acting, even though his character is minor.  He pays attention to everything that Mr. Lacey, the ponytailed teacher directing the play, says.  On the day of the performance, Rex does a terrific job, and Pinky saves the play by ad-libbing and directing the other kids on stage who have frozen up and forgotten their cue.  Hard work pays off: Mr. Lacey compliments Pinky, and offers him the opportunity to be the director's assistant on the next school play.

One of the most interesting moments for me comes with Rex's reaction to her success as an actor.  Pinky's sister Amanda praises her after the show:

"Oh, Rex!" Amanda cried. "You were so-o-o good.  Are you going to be a movie star when you grow up?"

"No way," said Rex.  "I'm through with acting."

"That's too bad," her father said.  "You were very good."

"I can be good at something and not have to want to do it, can't I?" Rex asked.  Her father looked surprised, but nodded his head.  "It's just that there's other stuff I'd rather do, like soccer."

Not the predictable moral, and a nice lesson to pull from this story.

Eleanor was so excited by these books that she came home wanting to read them aloud that evening instead of having me read to her.  She took one on the subway to a birthday party the next day finishing reading it aloud to me, and on the way home, reread it silently while I talked with a friend.  I'm loving this stage.

Love, Annie

The benefits of children reading to each other

Dear Aunt Debbie,

As Eleanor's independent reading is progressing (and she's going like a house afire!), we're starting to enjoy some of the benefits of our kids reading to us, and to each other.

Benefit #1: Eleanor finds new authors and series she's really into.  In her classroom, Eleanor "shops for books" once a week, choosing five independent reading books at her level and bringing them back and forth to school every day.  Lately, she's been choosing multiple books by the same author, really paying attention to who's writing what she likes to read. This is how we've gotten a lot of Syd Hoff books into the house: Sammy the Seal, Danny and the Dinosaur, Mrs. Brice's Mice. She loves the cartoony drawings, and the general sense of play throughout Hoff's stories. They're a little meandering, and fun.  Henry and Mudge, who you blogged about a while back, have also become huge favorites here -- the third series by Cynthia Rylant that we've fallen in love with, after Poppleton and The High Rise Private Eyes.  Watching her gain a conscious appreciation for the work of a particular author is a joy.

Benefit #2: Eleanor reads Isabel the crappy books I don't want to read to either of them.  As I'm home with Will full time right now, and Isabel is home with us three days a week, we're going to the library a lot. Isabel's library book picking habits are fairly indiscriminate: she stops in front of a shelf and just pulls out whatever's there, barely looking at it until we sit down to read it there or later.  What she gets most excited about are books she knows, or books with pop culture characters she recognizes.  Each visit, she picks up at least one badly-written series book: a Star Wars industry story, or a godawful Disney princess book, something either cloying or nonsensical in its narrative, and sometimes both.  Then, of course, this is the book she wants me to read to her sixteen times in the next two days.  Imagine my joy when I peeked around the corner of the kitchen into the living room a few days ago and saw Eleanor reading Isabel Rapunzel and the Golden Rule/Jasmine and the Two Tigers!  They were both totally into it, and I didn't have to be involved.

Benefit # 3: Both girls have started reading board books to Will. At three months old, Will is starting to be entertainable at times, and he's really paying attention to his two older sisters.   Among other games (painting his hands and feet with dry paintbrushes, dancing around him, putting hats on his head), they're showing him books. Eleanor caught his attention first with Pat the Bunny, that wonderful old standby with things to touch on every page. It's such an odd, pleasing, dated little book.  The next day, there was Isabel showing him My Friends, by Taro Gomi, a gentle recitation of all the things a little girl learns from the animal kingdom:

I learned to climb from my friend the monkey.

I learned to run from my friend the horse.

I learned to march from my friend the rooster.

I learned to nap from my friend the crocodile.

While all this kid reading has been going on, I've managed to find time to read Fire, Kristin Cashore's second book.  I'm in total agreement with you -- it's not nearly as good as Graceling.  Turns out that skipping it and going straight to Bitterblue was a good idea.

Love, Annie

Hero on a Bicycle

Dear Annie,

Bitterblue sits on my shelves -- clearly it's time for me to read it soon.  I really liked Graceling, then felt Cashore had lost her touch completely with Fire, so I'm glad she came back to form with the third.

As long as we're on the subject of of moral culpability in difficult circumstances, I'll bring up an excellent new middle-grade book by Shirley Hughes, author of Dogger and many other wonderful picture books.  She has just published her first novel at the age of 84.

Hero on a Bicycle is set in Florence during the Nazi occupation --  siblings Paolo (13) and Costanza (16) are living in the city with their English mother; their Italian father has left, apparently to join the Resistance.  Paolo rides his bike after curfew, longing for the excitement of war, wishing to be heroic.  His sister spends vaguely uncomfortable time at the home of a family of collaborators, listening to records with a friend and meeting German officers.  When Paolo tries to find and join the Resistance, fighters ridicule him and steal his bicycle.  A commander stops the theft but growls at Paolo:

"Take it -- go home -- presto! -- as soon as you can.  And remember, you say nothing about this little adventure to your family -- nothing -- understood?"  Then he turned to go and gestured to the others to follow him.
   "But I want -- " said Paolo weakly.
   "Just get going -- now!"
   Paolo could resist no longer.  Forlorn, dejected, and utterly humiliated, he set off, bumping dangerously down the path on his bike and praying that the sharp stones wouldn't wreck his tires.

When he gets home, the Resistance has pressured his mother into hiding escaped Allied prisoners of war.  She tries to keep it from her children, but Costanza says, "Oh, Mamma -- we're not kids anymore.  Of course we can guess what's happening."  The story progresses through heart-stopping action -- saving a wounded Canadian soldier from the Nazis, aerial bombings, searches of their home, a near-execution in a town square, constant fear and confusion.  As the family comes under suspicion of helping the Resistance, it's clear someone has informed on them, and others are warning them.  A Nazi officer's genuine fondness for Costanza saves the family in one situation; a friend's need to save his own family endangers them.   Hughes even deals with that how-do-you-live-near-them-afterwards question that you brought up.

Both brother and sister have their moments of exceptional courage in terrifying situations.  Paolo and his bicycle help to save a man's life.  Later that day, as Germans are retreating in a chaotic scene, Costanza hears her name called on the road, thinking it's a soldier she's helped.

Then she realized that it was an even more familiar voice.
   "Paolo!" she shouted back.
   She could see his head bobbing along some way off.  He was waving.
   "Oh, Paolo -- thank God!"
   They struggled toward each other.  Paolo looked every bit as exhausted as she was, and he was clearly so close to tears that she stopped crying and hugged him.
   "Paolo -- where have you  been all this time?  Where's your bicycle?"
   "I lost it.  I mean, I gave it to someone."

It's a novel, they're teenagers, there's a war on -- but their reunion on the road made me think of the much younger David and Bella in Dogger.  In Dogger, Bella gives up a bear that she's won in order to retrieve her little brother's beloved stuffed animal.  It's an act of sibling caring and sacrifice that always brings a tear to my eye when I read it.  Hughes lets the reader feel the depth of caring between brother and sister.  And in Hero on a Bicycle, we feel the deep connection between Paolo and Costanza.  They start out on parallel tracks -- each in a separate internal world.  But having to face the realities of the war brings out what's been there all the time: intense caring and family feeling.  I feel these brave Anglo-Italians show us how sweet British David and Bella could have turned out.  A lovely reading experience.

Love,

Deborah

Thought-provoking YA fantasy

Dear Aunt Debbie,

In the excitement of Will's newborn baby state and our busy spring, we skipped right over our third anniversary! That's right, as of last month we've been writing Annie and Aunt for three years.  And there are still so many books to write about....

A couple of years ago, in search of alternatives to the Twilight series (which you know I don't like), you mentioned a couple of YA novels by Kristin Cashore: Graceling and Fire.
(Full disclosure: Kristin Cashore and I both went to Williams College, and have mutual friends, though I didn't know her there.)

I finally picked up Graceling, had a pleasantly obsessive read, and followed it up with Cashore's third book, Bitterblue.  I didn't mean to read them out of order, but was confused by the publisher's choice to put an excerpt from Bitterblue at the end of Graceling. You don't need to read Fire before Bitterblue for it to make sense (and I know you weren't a fan of Fire), but there's a character payoff at the end of Bitterblue that I think would have been more fun if I had read Fire first.

While Fire is a prequel or companion book to Graceling, Bitterblue is more of a sequel: there's a different main character, but many of the characters in Graceling return here. Spoiler alert -- in writing about Bitterblue, I will by necessity reveal some plot points from Graceling.

Queen Bitterblue, who appeared in Graceling as a ten-year-old girl, is now eighteen, and trying to bring her kingdom of Monsea back to some kind of normalcy after the death of her father, King Leck. Leck was Graced with the ability to make people think and feel what he told them to -- to have all his lies believed -- and was an astoundingly manipulative and evil man.  Though Leck's reign of terror ended eight years earlier, Bitterblue is just starting to understand what a mess he's left, and how much she doesn't know about what happened under his rule.

Bitterblue herself is not a Graceling -- she has no special powers, though she does grow in knowledge and strength throughout the book, as a good YA heroine should.  The Gracelings around her are physically recognizable by their eyes, which are two different colors.  Each has an extreme talent, some more fantastic than others: the ability to read minds, or tremendous physical strength, or the ability to know what a person would most like to eat at the present moment. Gracelings have to figure out what their Graces are, which is easier for some than for others.  It's a nice metaphor for different intelligences.

Cashore knows how to move a plot forward and create suspense, and Bitterblue is sprinkled with effective moments of decoding -- ciphers play a large role in the unraveling of the mystery.  What I find most compelling about the book, however, is the way Cashore gets you thinking about culpability.  Many people committed crimes while under Leck's influence.  Is it fair to hold them responsible for their actions?  Is the way forward to silence discussion of the terrors of the past and the lives lost, or to delve into them and talk about the truth?  The people in Bitterblue's castle, who worked closely with her father before serving her, refuse to talk about the past.  Bitterblue seeks out friends in her city who are, as she is, interested in exposing what really happened.  There's a human cost to either way of proceeding, which Cashore renders in realistic ways.  I found myself thinking about South Africa at the end of apartheid, or Rwanda after the genocide -- how do you come to terms with horrors committed by people who now must live together peacefully?

Many of Leck's crimes have a sexual element: under his reign, hundreds of young girls were stolen from their families and disappeared.  Cashore is thoughtful about gender, creating strong female characters in all walks of life, and with different kinds of strength, but placing them in a world where violence against women is a palpable threat.  (I should add that she draws a number of kinds of men as well, and that several of her nicest characters are gay.)  This is a patriarchy familiar to those of us who live in the real world.

I'm left thinking, and looking forward to Cashore's next book.

Love, Annie

Making manners fun

Dear Aunt Debbie,

A propos of our conversation on "lesson books" (here and here), a friend recently recommended a couple of books by Aliki, which I checked out of the library.

Manners and Feelings are an interesting hybrid of playful and didactic.  Each book is a series of unconnected episodes riffing on the theme of the title, and rendered in Aliki's wonderful cartoon drawings.

The drawings are of a racially diverse group of kids (somewhat more so in Manners than in Feelings), enacting the ideas on each page. A pair of birds provide commentary at the top and bottom margins of each page, which is both cute and serves as an invitation for the kid reading to comment on the action as well.  These are great books for parents and children to talk through.

In Feelings, many of the pages simply evoke or illustrate a feeling or feelings you might have in a certain situation:

In Manners, more of the episodes are cast as lessons, and tell a brief story:

Flipping through the pages of both books before reading them aloud, I thought, Oh dear, these really are Lesson Books.  Happily, my fears that both the girls and I would find them too preachy were unfounded.  Aliki's cartoony drawings and sense of humor make even the didactic bits palatable, and both girls love the books.  Eleanor, at age 6, can read them herself. The day I brought them home from the library, she tried to sneak a flashlight into her room to keep reading at bedtime (always a good sign, in my opinion). Isabel, at 3 1/2, is captivated by the depictions of bad behavior, and requests repeated readings of specific pages. "How Anthony Almost Ruined Diana's Party" is her favorite:

So far, this hasn't resulted in her co-opting the most interesting new insulting phrases and using them on her sister, though I'm on the lookout.  I've found myself referencing episodes as well, so that it's not just me, but also Aliki encouraging them not to pick their noses or grab toys from each other.  (Thanks, Aliki!)  There's a richness to the varied format that holds up well on repeated readings, and keeps everyone engaged.

Love, Annie

Captured by the Mixed-Up Files

Dear Aunt Debbie, 

After spending much of last week trying to absorb the terrible news from Boston and the rest of the world without betraying too much of it to my kids, this week felt a little more normal.  I was saddened, however, to read of the death of E.L. Konigsburg, a favorite author of mine who we have somehow never written about here.

Konigsburg's best-known book, and certainly my favorite, is the Newbery-winning
From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler.  I happen to have reread From the Mixed-Up Files a couple of weeks ago, when a lovely hardcover version of it arrived from friends as a big-sister present for Eleanor in a package for Will. I sat on the couch with Will napping and nursing on my lap and tore through it in one sitting. I'm looking forward to reading it to Eleanor soon.


It's the story of 11-year-old Claudia Kincaid and her 9-year-old brother Jamie, who run away from their home in Greenwich, CT to spend a week living in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Their adventure gains a bit of mystery when they become interested in a small statue of an angel which the Met has recently acquired, and try to figure out through their own research whether or not it was sculpted by Michelangelo. The story is introduced via a letter from Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler to her lawyer, Saxonberg, claiming authorship of the story, though it's unclear until close to the end of the book what her involvement with the Kincaid children is.

I'm sure I'm far from the only child who fantasized about following Claudia and Jamie's footsteps.  It's not a romantic vision of running away, exactly, though Claudia would like it to be so -- there are too many little difficult details for it to feel easy or comfortable.  But such indelible images: the kids bathing in the restaurant fountain at night and discovering coins underfoot to supplement their savings, hiding in bathroom stalls at closing time  by standing up on the toilet seats so their feet won't show, stashing Claudia's violin case filled with clothes in an empty sarcophagus.

While a number of details in the real-life museum have changed since the book was published in 1967 (the Met helpfully provides a children's guide here), and there are no Automats left in New York to eat in or stores with typewriter displays on their sidewalks, the story doesn't feel dated. Claudia and Jamie read like real kids, bickering a little, Claudia wanting very much to be in charge and to retain her romantic ideal of the adventure, Jamie far more focused on how much money they're spending (most of it is his, won by gambling at cards on the school bus). As the older sister of a younger brother, I recognized their dynamic early on.  The book wears well.

E.L. Konigsburg was a genius with odd titles: Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth; Father's Arcane Daughter; and my second-favorite Konigsburg book, A Proud Taste for Scarlet and Miniver.  The last is a story about Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine, narrated in the afterlife -- Eleanor is in heaven, waiting for the judgment of her second husband, Henry II, to see if he'll join her.  It's an interesting and somewhat challenging conceit for YA historical fiction.  I loved it.

It's hard not to imagine Konigsburg herself as a little like Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler: a connoisseur of fine art and experiences, attuned to people but possessing her own indomitable voice.  She will be missed.

Love, Annie

P.S. On another note, have you seen this lovely piece in the NYT about a father packing away his favorite children's books?  Some gems here, and beautifully written.

A Near Thing

Dear Annie,

Soon, I'll do an entry on Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, possibly one of the Ur-texts of Eleanor's "lesson book" genre.  And riotously funny.  I want to spend a little time and do it justice.

The other week, Lizzie and I were in a doctor's waiting room (her injured knee mercifully turned out to be only bruised) and I dug around in my bag for something to read.  Out popped the delightful
A Near Thing for Captain Najork.  Russell Hoban, of the Frances books and many others, wrote it and Quentin Blake, illustrator of Roald Dahl, did the amazing illustrations.  We read it to each other (quietly) as we waited.  It has definitely withstood the test of time.

Tom and Aunt Fidget Wonkham-Strong

A Near Thing is the sequel to How Tom Beat Captain Najork and His Hired Sportsmen.  That one is, alas, currently out of print, so my precis here is relying on long-ago reading.  Tom lives with his Aunt Fidget Wonkham-Strong who disapproves mightily of Tom's tendency to fool around.  So she hires Captain Najork and his four trained sportsmen to knock some sense into him.  They challenge him to games of womble, muck and sneedball, which turn out to resemble what Tom does when he's fooling around -- mucking around in mud is all I can remember of those scenes.  Tom ends up freed of Aunt Fidget Wonkham-Strong's discipline and living with his Aunt Bundlejoy Cosysweet. Captain Najork and the evil aunt marry.

In the second book, A Near Thing for Captain Najork, Tom has fooled around with his chemistry set and invented anti-sticky.  He builds a two-seater frog which runs on the interaction of anti-sticky and jam.

Tom and Aunt Bundlejoy Cosysweet in the jam-powered frog.

Captain Najork was in the observatory looking through his telescope at the girls' boarding-school across the river when the frog hopped past.
  "Follow that frog!" he shouted to his hired sportsmen as he leapt into his pedal-powered snake, and away they undulated.  Captain Najork had not forgotten the time when Tom had beaten him and his hired sportsmen at womble, muck, and sneedball.  "I'd like to try some new games on him," said the Captain.  "I'd like to see how good he is at thud, crunch, and Tom-on-the-bottom."

(How many books will give you an undulating robot snake?)  It turns out Captain Najork has been peeping at the girls' boarding-school's Headmistress while she pumps iron.  Aunt Fidget Wonkham-Strong Najork discovers this, swims the river in snorkel and flippers, and challenges the confused headmistress to an arm-wrestle for the Captain -- "Best out of three," she says.  Meanwhile, the frog is running out of jam, so Tom and the Good Aunt stop at the boarding-school to ask for more, leading the school's commissionaire (read: doorman) to say one of the book's great lines: "There is a lady at the door who wants a pot of jam and there is a snake at the window, madam," he says to the arm-wrestling Headmistress.

There's some chaos; the Najorks work out their differences and go home, followed by the Headmistress who, having seen the Captain, wants to continue the competition for him:

I love the Captain's expression in this one.  The whole story is wacky and delightful.  No lesson to be learned here, but much fun to be had.

Love,

Deborah