March 25, 2010
Dear Clusterflock
What was your favorite children’s book?
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oh, fuck. that’s a good one. I’m trying to remember the name of it, but it nvolved a mouse and a motorcycle.
if we expand the years a bit, past the time when someone is reading to you, it would be My Side of the Mountain. we’ve talked about that book a few times here (I know Daryl was as big a fan) it is a book that shows and allows for beautiful independence. I guess the mouse motorcycle book was as well.
One of my first dates with Grace involved us going to a bookstore and finding our favorite children’s books to read to one another. Mine was “The Sign of the Seahorse” by Graem Base, which, after the reread, turned out to be classic noir. The thing that stands out though is the art, which is incredibly detailed and vast — just what a little boy needs to inject himself into the story.
Grace read me “Walter the Farting Dog.” She’s been typecast since.
I always get “My Side of the Mountain” confused with “Hatchet.” Which one has the protagonist ripping his jeans to use as candlewick?
That’s easy:
Where the Wild things are. pre-teens
Later, all Isaac Asimov and Frank Herbert books. (teens)
@Deron – do you mean, Ralph S. Mouse by Beverly Cleary?
I loved both “The Boy Who Saved The Stars” (author last name, I think, Vallejo) and “The Blue Faience Hippopotamus”.
yes! I think that’s it.
Ralph S. Mouse was what I was going to suggest as well. My favorite was Arm in Arm: A Collection of Connections, Endless Tales, Reiterations, and Other Echolalia by Remy Charlip.
pre-teen, I remember a Christmas book about a young bunny rabbit who gets a bag that turns him invisible when he crawls in it was a favorite.
Teenage years, I remember a series (which, I suspect hasn’t aged well) called The Belgariad.
And, of course, My Side of the Mountain.
Oh, I need to find it–I don’t remember the name! It’s a short book about a man who didn’t wash his dishes to the point that dirty dishes were stacked everywhere in the house. During a big rain storm, he piled all of them into the back of his truck with detergent and washed them that way. I loved, loved, loved that book. I also loved an abbreviated version of 101 Dalmatians.
I have many favorites from the years when I read to Flannery: Yummers, Where the Wild Things Are, The Cut-Ups, Ox Cart Man, Good Night Moon, Teddy Bear Baker. I love all of James Marshall’s books.
Horton Hatches an Egg or any of the Dr. Seuss books.
Christian, you read that too? I wonder if we read that around the same time.
I remember your dad reading us Jack London stories when I stayed the night.
Good memories.
When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer (http://www.amazon.com/Learnd-Astronomer-Golden-Honors-Awards/dp/0689863977)
and
Ender’s Game
Books about kids who were private investigators. I picked up tips that way.
oh, yeah! inspector brown! I read two of those books in one day: feeling superior to the kids I could hear actually playing outside.
pussies.
Well I found it inspiring to hear about people wearing fake beards and wigs and finding clues. I couldn’t get a line on a wig until later but I scoured the place for clues. Particularly abandoned/derelict houses. I loved those. I had a sidekick but I was clearly the only one who took the profession seriously in a solemn oath sort of way.
I would have proudly served.
You would have been exactly what I needed.
let’s travel back in time and get started.
One Morning in Maine/Blueberries for Sal. (One morning was better cause she got Chocolate Ice Cream!)
Make Way for Ducklings!
I really liked this Beatrix Potter book about these mice who wore clothes and lived in some sort of Victorian doll house.
My Side of the Mountain, which pretty much was the blueprint for my life after I read it. (That hasn’t panned out so well, but I have my eye open for opportunity.)
When I was very little I had a book in which rabbits were using ladders to try to paint very large eggs. The colors in that book captured me like a note sounded on a piano in a quiet room can. I fell into those colors every time I looked at them, and I wanted to look at them again and again. I don’t know the title of that book or what became of it.
Next: Various books about living in the wilds–My Side of the Mountain, Northland Castaways, Swiss Family Robinson, Island of the Blue Dolphins….
These days it’s hard to say what my favorites are, but I love all of the ones mentioned above by Cindy, that we read to Flannery and are now reading to Mia.
Daryl, was it “The Easter Egg Artists?”
The Wind in the Willows
101 Dalmatians
Misty of Chincoteague (and everything else Marguerite Henry wrote)
everything A.A. Milne
everything Shel Silverstein
Kathy! All of my Marguerite Henry books are signed, to my mother. My librarian grandmother would catch her on her book tours and get them signed which felt like magic to my young horse-loving heart.
Amanda Mae–I think that may have been it. But when I look at it on Amazon the book looks bigger. Maybe it was an earlier edition. Thanks for finding my dear!
Oh, and I forgot to mention The Borrowers. I particularly like the one in which the wee ones made a balloon with hanging basket and used it to leave in search of a new place to live.
Also:
Frog and Toad books. (Frog and Toad Are Friends)
Anatole books. (Anatole and the Cat, Anatole, there are about 10 books. His children are named matching names, like Paul and Paulette, Claude and Claudette, George and Georgette)
Little Bear books
Amelia Bedelia
These days I really like the George & Martha books. They’re hippos, you know.
Kathy & Amanda Mae– When I was in the 5th grade (suburb of Dallas) I had a tyrant of a teacher (good, though) who made all the kids work together on a big scrapbook of horses–pictures cut from magazines, poems, greeting cards with horses, just everything–which she sent to the President of the United States each year. And she must have known Marguerite Henry, because she actually got her to come to our class to talk about her books and her writing career. I liked her books, but I really liked seeing a real writer since I already knew I wanted to be one myself. That teacher–Mrs. Jackson–is connected to all kinds of memories I have of that time. For instance, I was in her class when JFK was shot. And the Beatles were everywhere then, much to her disapproval. She once roasted me for thirty minutes in class for singing The Star Spangled Banner in a funny voice. I just put my head down and cried through the whole tirade.
I’m just… wow.
[...] Daryl Scroggins: When I was very little I had a book in which rabbits were using ladders to try to paint very large eggs. The colors in that book captured me like a note sounded on a piano in a quiet room can. I fell into those colors every time I looked at them, and I wanted to look at them again and again. I don’t know the title of that book or what became of it. [...]
Kathy and Amanda Mae: I’m going through the six boxes of family photos Deron and I shipped to my home in Illinois, and minutes I ago I found the “Sheila on Chincoteague” snapshots.
My current favorite is “Don’t Call Me Little Bunny” by Grégoire Solotareff.
I remember liking one growing up from an “Owl at Home” book where Owl decides to make tearwater tea. So, he thinks of sad things like things lost behind the stove and pencils that are too short. Then he cries and has tearwater tea. I still look back on this fondly although I can’t help but think of it as likely fodder for some emo concept record.
Deron, I liked “The Mouse and the Motorcycle”, too. I thought it was kick ass that a mouse could make a toy motorcycle go by making motorcycle noises. Also, the pingpong ball helmet was super cool.
Wow.
Henry’s Justin Morgan Had A Horse is one of the reasons I have a Lippitt Morgan today and an extensive historic Morgan horse archive to go along with him.
Herman Hesse’s Steppenwolfe. An English translation, naturally. I don’t speak German.
What sort of child age are we talking about? I didn’t much care for the early reading type material. I remember Amelia Bedelia, but nothing in the gap between there and Redwall or Hatchet.
Oh wait! There was Encyclopedia Brown and Marvin Redpost, and some stuff by Beverly Cleary. How to Eat Fried Worms was for a reading group in 5th grade, I remember, and A Wrinkle in Time was in 7th or 8th I think but I had already read that.
Kathy, I was this close to mentioning Justin Morgan Had a Horse.
[...] Chincoteague Island. 1965. [...]
“What sort of child age are we talking about?” Good question, Dave.
I’m on the road (as always), but you got me to thinking.
I needed reading glasses but none of us realized this until I was in the sixth grade. So, my favorite book from my childhood comes after I got my first prescription: The Phantom Tollbooth.
Oh I forgot one: Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh. I love that book and just read it again to Mia.