CMIS Evaluation Primary Focus

Used with permission HarperCollins (ABC Books)

Recently published is a must-have resource for all school libraries and parents’ bookshelves.  Entitled 1001 Children’s Books you must read before you grow up, it includes one page reviews (many by well-known authors) of the best of children’s and adolescents’ books from different countries and from different periods of history.  These are grouped into broad age bands: 0-3, 3+, 5+, 8+ and 12+, and most are illustrated with the original cover art.

The preface, written by Quentin Blake, and the introduction, written by the general editor, Julia Eccleshare, are well worth reading.  Blake takes us inside the illustrator’s head and gives a valuable insight into how he dialogues with the text, with the prospective reader in mind, to produce his pictures. He also spotlights the professional concerns which authors face in writing children’s books. Eccleshare writes about the selection as being “a lesson in history and cultural change as much as it is a journey of literary discovery.  Snapshots of attitudes to children, expectations of them, and messages thought suitable for them are all held within the pages of these stories.” (p.11)

With the release in the US and Canada last week of the movie Where the Wild Things Are (although made in Australia, we won’t see it until 3 December), the mainstream media seems to have rediscovered children’s literature. Or more specifically, children’s picture books.  And they don’t always like what they see.

In the New Yorker today, critic Daniel Zalewski has penned a lengthy essay entitled ‘The Defiant Ones’ in which he cites changes in the tone and messages of  picture books over the past 40 or so years. Parents no longer rule, it seems:

Many recent picture books offer inventive variations on the theme of parental subjection. Consider a recent entry in the “Knuffle Bunny” series (Hyperion), by Mo Willems, which revolves around the obsessive relationship between Trixie, a Brooklyn girl, and her plush bunny. Trixie, beginning school in Park Slope, discovers that another girl owns the same toy. They accidentally switch bunnies. That night, Trixie wakes up and realizes that her comfort object is an alien impostor. She flips out—she wants Knuffle Bunny, now! Her dad sheepishly requests a reprieve: “Trixie’s daddy tried to explain what ‘2:30 A.M.’ means. He asked, ‘Can we deal with this in the morning?’ ” Trixie’s fixed stare makes clear that the answer is no. Salvation comes in the form of a ringing phone: the other girl’s father, equally cowed, has called to propose a handoff in Prospect Park. There’s an element of satire here, but the idea that children have executive authority is now so entrenched that many readers, old and young, are likely to consider a moonlit stuffed-animal exchange an ordinary turn of events.

The parents in picture books used to be tougher. In “Bedtime for Frances” (1960), a little badger—as clever as Olivia, but less snotty—devises various schemes for staying up late. (“I forgot to brush my teeth”; “There is a tiger in my room.”) The author, Russell Hoban, lets young readers root for Frances but makes clear that it’s not a game that the badger can win. Frances’s father—after reminding her that he needs sleep so that he can be ready for his job the next morning—calmly issues the threat of a spanking. Implied violence is probably not the ideal means of maintaining control. Yet, a few pages later, Frances is fast asleep.

The whole essay is worth a read, and maybe a comment. Is Zalewski right?

The Guardian newspaper has been running a nice little series on fairytales in recent days. As well as discussing aspects of the tradition, some well-known and not so well-known stories have been retold or newly translated. Here are the links:

Themes

• Adult content warning : beware fairystories
• Love (A.S. Byatt)
• Wicked parents (Hilary Mantel)
• Quests (Adam Phillips)
• Justice and punishment (Sarah Churchwell)
• Rags to riches (Philip Pullman)
• Beastly tales (Marina Warner)

Translations and retellings

• The black geese (retold by Alison Lurie)
• Mossycoat (retold by Philip Pullman)
• The little mermaid (translated by Naomi Lewis)
• The fisherman and Ifrit (translated by Malcolm C. Lyons)
• Hansel and Gretel (translated by Joyce Crick)
• The one-handed murderer (translated by George Martin)
• Red Riding Hood (translated by A.E. Johnson)
• The red shoes (translated by Naomi Lewis)
• The mixed-up feet and the silly bridgegroom (retold by Elizabeth Shub)
• Clever Gretchen (retold by Alison Lurie)
• Jack and the beanstalk (retold by Joseph Jacobs)
• The lion and the hare (retold from the Sanskrit by Ramsay Wood)
• The sleeping prince (retold by Alison Lurie)
• Rumpelstiltskin (retold by Joyce Crick)
• The boy who set out to learn fear (retold by Joyce Crick)
• Rapunzel (translated by Joyce Crick)
• The steadfast tin soldier (translated by Naomi Lewis)
• The tinderbox (translated by Naomi Lewis)
• Cinderella (translated by Angela Carter)
• Snow White (translated by Joyce Crick)
• The Juniper Tree (translated by Joyce Crick)
• Beauty and the Beast ( by Jeanne Marie Le Prince de Beaumont)
• The heart of a monkey (retold by Andrew Lang)
• Hans my hedgehog (translated by Jack Zipes)

The full Guardian fairytale archive is here and well worth exploring.

Steve Weaver’s flickr image of Fairy Woods used under Creative Commons licence

Have you caught up with Colin Thompson’s latest baby, Fearless? This time he has outsourced the illustrations to Sarah Davis, and they make a fine pair.

The publisher’s website has a short trailer, and here are some teaching notes.

Definitely one for dog animal lovers.

Run for your lives, me hearties. Or at the very least, shiver yer timbers.

Tomorrow is International Talk Like a Pirate Day. The day, always 19 September, when even the most unlikely people start to talk strangely, with lots of arrrrrrrrs and curious head gestures.

What happened last year? Google has some ideas about how you can join in for 2009, including the never-fail pirate name generator.

And here’s a few (well, 76 actually) pirate stories to get you in the mood.

Image courtesy of freedigitalphotos and used under Creative Commons licence.

Have you seen? Look to the right. There’ll be more soon.

For our blog post on the CBCA winners see our Fiction Focus blog.

If you hurry over to the UK’s Independent newspaper site, you can download free audio books for the next few days. Available so far is Polly Dunbar’s Penguin (a long-time favourite in our house); The Gruffalo (Julia Donaldson) and Cock-a-Doodle Doo Mr Sultana (Michael Morpurgo).

Two more to go, but we don’t know yet what they will be. So hurry.

Catching up on my professional reading, I came across a gem I think is worth sharing.  In the May 2009 (No.176) edition of Books for Keeps, Joanna Carey interviews 80-year-old Eric Carle.  On being asked how his years as a poster designer and then a graphic designer influenced his work with children’s books, he responds:

Enormously!  The rules that govern graphic design can easily apply to children’s books.  Each page in a child’s book is, in effect, a mini poster.  Advertising teaches you to convey complex ideas economically, but with maximum impact and children need pictures that they can read and understand immediately.  It’s all to do with composition.  It’s just a matter of moving things around until they are in the right place. (p.5)

These words, along with Carle’s May 19 blog post Some thoughts on LOOKING and SEEING, (not to be confused with a current TV advertisement!) may well stimulate students to produce some interesting art pieces or picture books.  Eric Carle and the United Kingdom’s new Children’s Laureate, Anthony Browne, are on the same page when it comes to the importance of “looking”.  Browne has made the encouragement of this a priority for his term as laureate:  What I believe we all need to do is to stop and really look at pictures and at the world.  By looking we learn so much. He has some interesting things to say about Creativity in Schools.

We last gave a plug for our State Library on 25 May when we blogged their new space for kids, The Place.

Well the up-coming holidays is the time for children to test run the facility by participating in the school holiday program, Boredom Busters.  Read the flyer for an overview of the program.