Elizabeth Bird's Blog
May 30, 2012
As I’m sure you’ve heard the news already but in case you haven’t, yet another star in the Caldecott firmament went out. Leo Dillon, perhaps best known as the first African-American winner of the Caldecott Award, has passed away following complications with a recent surgery. For a recap of his history, his life with Diane, and his work you can read School Library Journal’s excellent obit here. One thing that I would like to point out is that unlike some artists, even at the grand old age of 79 the quality of art Leo produced with Diane never faltered and never dipped. Last year’s Never Forgotten was a perfect example of how he and Diane were better than ever by the end. The man will be seriously missed.
You may read the PW obit here.
This month couldn’t end soon enough.
#31 Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (1865)
58 points
A full out absurdist assault at the arbitrary nature of language, Carroll challenges everything about the way we speak and write, from homonyms to idioms. When people talk about children’s movies and books being entertaining for both kids and adults, they usually mean that there are jokes that are way over the heads of the child audience that adults will find funny. The beauty of this novel is that the same exact jokes are equally entertaining to children and adults, often for the same reason, although in some cases adults may understand more clearly why they are funny. It is almost impossible to believe that this novel was written almost 150 years ago, as it remains one of the truly brilliant, and accessible pieces of children’s literature. – Mark Flowers
Because these books freakily enough do look a great deal like the inside of my head. – Amy M. Weir
One comment about your request to try to include more diversity: I considered it pretty seriously, as I am Latina and that kind of thing matters a lot to me. And after looking at my bookshelves, both at home and in my classroom, I concluded that there just isn’t enough out there in middle-grade land yet. In terms of Hispanic or Latino literature, that is. Everything I came up with, including books by Julia Alvarez, Margarita Engle and Pam Munoz Ryan felt good, but perhaps not quite good enough for my top 10. And it may be that for this kind of list, we go with books that we remember from childhood, or books we’ve reread hundreds of times over the years, and there just isn’t as much that’s been available for that long. I realized that almost all the books that I look to as inspiring examples of Latino culture and experience are by adult or YA authors, which I thought was interesting. Just an observation. – Cecilia Cackley
I include Cecilia’s comment (which really was her comment for this book) because it brings up an interesting point. It’s important to look at the representation of race on this book, and to see whether or not all cultures have at least some representation. Not so much? Can we infer something from that, good or bad?
Don’t be thinking that the recent 100+ million dollar grossing Tim Burton film played any part in this appearance on the poll, by the way. Folks were voting for this book long before the Burton ads reached their peak. People just love them some Alice. And how can I object? I love her too. She’s like Dorothy, only she never seems to care whether or not she gets home.
The description of these books’ plots from the publisher reads, “Alice begins her adventures when she follows the frantically delayed White Rabbit down a hole into the magical world of Wonderland, where she meets a variety of wonderful creatures, including Tweedledee and Tweedledum, the Cheshire Cat, the hookah-smoking Caterpillar, the Mad Hatter, and the Queen of Hearts who, with the help of her enchanted deck of playing cards, tricks Alice into playing a bizarre game of croquet. Alice continues her adventures in Through the Looking-Glass, which is loosely based on a game of chess and includes Carroll’s famous poem Jabberwocky.”
Foul play, cry the masses. Two books as one? ‘Fraid so. Considering that half the time these books are packaged together as one, I felt few qualms putting them together. Most of the votes were for the two of them anyway, so what does it matter really?
The double quicktime recap of how the books came to be comes via Anita Silvey’s Everything I Need to Know I Learned from a Children’s Book. “The book originated as a tale invented by Oxford don Charles Dodgson for the three Liddell children on a boat trip. Since Alice Liddell begged him to write down the saga, he did so and chose Lewis Carroll as his pen name.” Badda bing, badda boom.
University of California at Berkeley Professor Alison Gopnik summarizes one of the charms of the book quite well. “I think every scientist and every child is the grave, wide-eyed little girl who fearlessly follows evidence and logic wherever it leads – even through the looking-glass and down the rabbit hole.”
Alice is one of those cases where you just don’t know where to start when writing a little recap like this. There’s just so MUCH information. You may as well just pick up a copy of Brian Talbott’s fantastic Alice in Sunderland and read that instead. That’ll cover a good chunk of your Alice basics. After that there’s The Annotated Alice to read (the most recent edition if it’s handy). And maybe you could join the Lewis Carroll Society here in America. I wonder if their numbers have spiked recently . . .
And then there’s the whole was-he-a-sicko-or-wasn’t-he? question surrounding Mr. Dodgson. A recent book came out on the topic and was quite the topic of conversation on the child_lit listserv too. The novel Alice I Have Been by Melanie Benjamin was covered on NPR but not really critiqued by an Alice scholar. Most objections point out that when he took photographs of Alice it was always with grown-ups present and with the permission of the family. Also, the Victorians were just weird. Not just this guy. It’s a debate, certainly.
On the children’s literature side of the equation there are multiple different editions of Alice out there. I’ve always been rather partial to the Helen Oxenbury ones (though I know more than one detractor who refers to those books as GAP Alice). Recently there was the lamentable (sorry teenage fans) Looking Glass Wars and the surprisingly good graphic novel Wonderland which takes the point of view of the rabbit’s maid MaryAnn. I keep putting that graphic novel out for folks to look at and it gets snatched up double quick time!
On the National Book Foundation site author Richard Peck (I came this close to typing Gregory Peck, which I’m sure would please him) gives a lovely personal recollection of his first encounter with Alice.
You can view a whole bunch of different artists’ interpretations of Alice here. It would be a touch difficult to show every Alice cover in creation. Here then is a nice smattering to give you a taste of the whole. Note when the books list the title as “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” and when they simply say “Alice in Wonderland”. This is but a small sampling of the whole.
There are lots of movie versions of Alice too, so how to choose? To begin with, here’s a silent film circa 1903. As you can see, it’s fairly self-explanatory.
We follow this up with a 1933 film.
It’s 1983. You are producing a PBS special production of Alice. You cast an oddly older woman in the lead. So whom do you give a starring song to? Would you believe a young Nathan Lane?
And since last we posted about this Tim Burton made a kind of sequel to it. Ho hum.
And last but not least, the Royal Ballet came up with a new work based on Alice in Wonderland that is certainly worth watching. Just fun.
#32 Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred Taylor (1976)
56 points
This series took me to a time and place so different from my reality. It opened my eyes and made me think. – Martha Sherod
As with all my polls, there is often a shocking derth of authors of color. However, there was never any doubt in my mind that Mildred Taylor’s classic novel would make the list somewhere. I was pleased as punch to see it crest the Top 50 to rest at #32. This is certainly one of the best novels in the whole of children’s literature, as many a child and adult can attest.
The synopsis from B&N reads, “Set in a small town in Mississippi at the height of the Depression, this powerful, moving novel deals with issues of prejudice, courage, and self-respect. It is the story of one family’s struggle to maintain their integrity, pride, and independence in the face of racism and social injustice. It is also the story of Cassie Logan, an independent girl who discovers over the course of an important year why having land of their own is so crucial to her family. The racial tension and harrowing events experienced by young Cassie, her family, and her neighbors cause Cassie to grow up and discover the reality of her environment.”
In 100 Best Books for Children Anita Silvey tells of Taylor’s saga in this way: “Mildred Taylor had unsuccessfully tried to reconstruct her family history, and then she heard about a contest sponsored by the Council on Interracial Booksl After attempting to write a piece using the voice of her father, she shifted the storytelling to a young girl, Cassie Logan, four days before the contest deadline. That shift and the resulting book, Song of the Trees, won the contest for Taylor. On the way home from the award ceremony, Taylor heard from her father and uncle the story of a black boy who had broken into a store and how he was saved from lynching. Taylor began to tell that saga, one that she thought might make an adult book. It turned out to be a book many children’s literature critics consider the most important historical novel in the latter half of the twentieth century.”
Much of the book is based in reality. In fact, to keep her land, the land discussed so often in her books, Ms. Taylor eventually “sold the typewriter on which she had written Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry.”
Silvey says too that “the novel has become the most popular children’s book written by a black writer, selling close to 3 million copies in paperback.”
In Everything I Need to Know I Learned From a Children’s Book, author Ann Martin credits this book as the one that meant the most to her. She says, “I was exposed to, and distinctly remember, many classic picture books. But the most moving children’s book I’ve ever read was one I encountered as an adult, Mildred Taylor’s Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry. I read it for the first time around 1980, and then I was struck by the story itself, by its messages. Rereading it twenty-five years later, I was able to look at it with a writer’s eye, and I was struck anew.”
In the Slate article Great Kids’ Books About Financial Ruin, a passage is dedicated to this particular book. In it, Slate argues that, “it wasn’t until the recession of the late 1970s that there was a strong resurgence in stories about economic woes,” and, “The book’s message to kids of the ’70s was: If you think the Great Depression was just about a bunch of old white men losing their shirts in the stock market, think again.”
It won the 1977 Newbery Medal, beating out Abel’s Island by William Steig and A String in the Harp by Nancy Bond.
Just in time 100 Scope Notes creates a new cover for the book. An interesting direction.
And artist Bryce Christian Lowry created his own take:
Big covers, little covers, lots of covers abound for this particular title.
And there was a 1978 TV movie filmed of this book. Morgan Freeman played Uncle Hammer in it. Unfortunately there don’t seem to be any clips of it online. Give it time. It’ll show up one of these days.
#33 Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH by Robert C. O’Brien (1971)
56 points
My Dad was my 5th-grade teacher, and he read this book to our class. When I re-read it in library school I was still affected by the story. I have such fond memories of this book. – Hilary Writt
First book I ever stayed up reading, under the covers, with flashlight… just couldn’t put it down. – Charlotte Burrows
Considering O’Brien only wrote 4 children’s books (all of them wonderful), it’s pretty impressive that I seriously considering two of them for my top ten (the other being The Silver Crown). But Mrs. Frisby was such an integral part of my childhood. The mystery of what happened to Jonathan. The slowly unfolding backstory of the Rats. The lee of the stone. The Disney movie has its charms (even the strange change of name to Brisbee), but one of the things that makes this book so amazing (and different from the film) is that, once you get past the idea of talking animals, it is amazingly grounded in real life: animal testing, childhood sickness, death, etc. - Mark Flowers
All right! One of my favorite science fiction books out there (or is it fantasy since Mrs. Frisby can talk too?). You’ve got your rats. Your lee. Your stone. What else do you need?
The plot, according to the publisher, reads, “Mrs. Frisby, a widowed mouse with four small children, must move her family to their summer quarters immediately, or face almost certain death. But her youngest son, Timothy, lies ill with pneumonia and must not be moved. Fortunately, she encounters the rats of NIMH, an extraordinary breed of highly intelligent creatures, who come up with a brilliant solution to her dilemma.”
According to Everything I Need to Know I Learned from a Children’s Book, Anita Silvey says of the author that, “He wrote Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH while on staff at National Geographic. Since the magazine frowned on their writers developing projects for others, Robert Leslie Conly adopted a pseudonym based on his mother’s name and published this novel covertly.” As a kid, I always wondered why the sequels (Racso and the Rats of NIMH, R-T, Margaret, and the Rats of NIMH, etc.) were written by a Jane Leslie Conly and not Mr. O’Brien. It makes a lot more sense once you know it was a pseudonym. Jane was actually his daughter. Nice when they keep it in the family like that, eh?
In the end, the man didn’t do that many books. Just The Silver Crown, Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, A Report From Group 17 and Z is for Zachariah. I’ve read two of those four. Now I’m mighty curious about The Silver Crown (which gets republished every once in a while) and A Report From Group 17 (which I have NEVER heard of!).
On September 29, 1995, the New York Times reported that Dr. John B. Calhoun, “an ecologist who saw in the bleak effects of overpopulation on rats and mice a model for the future of the human race,” was the inspiration for this book.
British journalist Lucy Mangan is a fan, as it turns out. In Silvey’s book Everything I Need to Know I Learned from a Children’s Book she says that after reading a section where Nicodemus speculates about a potential rat society, “I read that when I was nine, and it rocked my world. Everything I took for granted only existed because it was built or organized by us, because we were here first. And it could all have been so different. It wasn’t preordained, immutable, or even anything special. Just ours, developed to serve our needs. I was just about catatonic with the shock of this revelation, but at this point Darren Ford started throwing Legos at my head – so my immediate mental crisis was averted. Children should be encouraged to read anything and everything because you never know what they will get out of a book.”
I’ve always sort of wondered what the actual NIMH made of the book’s popularity. On a lark, I went to their website and searched for “Mrs. Frisby”. No results. Now I wonder how many of their hits on their website per day are silly schmucks like myself.
This is one of those cases where the author was so shy he couldn’t give a speech when his book won the 1972 Newbery (beating out Incident At Hawk’s Hill by Allan W. Eckert, The Planet of Junior Brown by Virginia Hamilton, The Tombs of Atuan by Ursula K. LeGuin, Annie and the Old One by Miska Miles, and The Headless Cupid by Zilpha Keatley Snyder). So he sent his editor to do it instead.
The site Picture Book Report had some wonderful illustrations from artist Julia Sonmi Heglund. Lots to look at there. Here is my personal favorite:
And then there are the real covers out there:
*sigh* Here’s the part where I explain about the movie. You may wonder why they changed the title of the book to “The Secret of NIMH” and why they changed Mrs. Frisby’s name to Brisbee. Simple. The movie is by Don Bluth (An American Tail, etc.) and they didn’t want to get sued by the frisbee corporation. True story.
I have difficulty processing this one. At the time I was incensed that they changed so much of the story. Magical amulets? Sinking mud? A DEAD Nicodemus??? But I’ll give Bluth this. That darn film was one of the most evocative, memorable cinematic experiences of my youth. Really wore a groove into my brain, it did. Few children’s films from the 80s outside of Disney could say as much.
May 29, 2012
#34 Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls (1961)
55 points
I remember crying so much through this book, and even today I tear up thinking of Big Dan and Little Ann. I also loaned this to my (then) children’s librarian, because the library copy was always out. I even marked the pages, “Get out tissue here.” – DeAnn Okamura
I love, love, love this book with all my heart and soul. My fourth grade teacher read it to me eons ago, and I’ve read it to two of my three boys. There’s something about weeping together uncontrollably that builds a community of readers… - Tess Alfonsin
I suppose there might be some question as to whether or not this book belongs on the list since it was initially published (mistakenly, I personally believe) as an adult novel. However, since 1961 the book has been marketed to kids and that has worked out quite swimmingly. On this Top 100 Children’s Novels List I am counting “classics” that may not have initially sought out kids as their primary audience, but found their way there eventually. This title certainly slots into that category (and accounts for why it didn’t win any children’s literary awards at the get-go).
The plot from the Scholastic Literature Guide reads, “At age 10 Billy Colman decides he must have two hound dogs. It takes him two years to save the money, but he finally has enough to order the dogs. He names his pups Little Ann and Old Dan. From then on, Billy and his dogs spend most nights hunting raccoons along the river bottom in the foothills of the Ozarks where he lives. As Billy becomes prouder and more attached to his dogs, it becomes clear that they are a unique team. Old Dan is a bold fighter and Little Ann is as smart as they come. The dogs are intensely loyal to one another and to Billy. The story is packed with hair-raising hunting adventures and glorious moments of triumph. By the time Billy’s grandpa enters the dogs in a championship coon hunt, they are known all over the county. Billy and his dogs win the contest but not long afterward, they encounter a mountain lion while hunting. In killing the lion Old Dan becomes fatally injured. Little Ann dies soon after from grief, and Billy buries them both in a lovely spot on top of a hill.”
How did it come about? Jim Trelease in Trelease on Reading puts it a funny way: “Not all stories are published as soon as they are written and some take longer to write than others. Robert McCloskey spent a full year writing the 1,142 words in Make Way for Ducklings. E.B. White thought about and revised Stuart Little for nearly 15 years. But Where the Red Fern Grows, by Wilson Rawls, is the only children’s book I know that was completely burned before publication because of embarrassment by its author–after he’d spent nearly 20 years writing it!” Much of the book was based on Rawls’ own childhood in the appropriately named Scraper, Oklahoma. He spent much of his life writing, but before he married his wife he burned all his manuscripts up. She asked him to rewrite one of them, so in three weeks he wrote (or rewrote, depending on how you look at it) Where the Red Fern Grows. It was sold to the Saturday Evening Post, did poorly because they thought it was for adults, and then in the late 60s teachers and kids got ahold of it and made it a huge hit.
There’s a rather funny “Review of Where the Red Fern Grows” by Robert Wilfred Franson at Troynovant that makes some interesting points about the book that I’d not known before. For example, the sisters are never mentioned by name, which is a bit odd. And then there’s this note: “There are other intriguing moral lessons in Where the Red Fern Grows. For instance, during a challenge to find a particularly wily raccoon, a local young bully-boy and his bully-hound come to fatal ends while crossing our hero and his dogs. But nobody worries much about accidental deaths; the bully’s own family is no more excited than they’d be to see a coon fall out of a tree. So that’s all right.”
The Mississippi lesson plans for this book are particularly fascinating.
A cake of the book anyone?
For years I’ve collected information about statues of famous children’s literary characters. I had no idea until I started researching this book, however, that there is a statue of Billy and his dogs at the Idaho Falls Public Library. Amazing.
The covers tend to like to place the boy and his dogs in the thick of the night.
There are at least two filmed versions of the book. The first was from 1974. You can see a bit of it here.
Re: The song that plays at the beginning of that clip…. oh, 1974. Never change.
I guess I always thought that Dave Matthews made his film debut in Because of Winn-Dixie. Nope. It was in the 2003 version of Where the Red Fern Grows, I guess. The man has a thing for dog movies.
#35 Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing by Judy Blume (1972)
54 points
Nobody can get the voice of kids quite like Judy Blume. Fudge and Peter are every kid and just as relevant today as they were in 1972. – Stacy Dillon
The synopsis from the publisher reads, “Living with his little brother, Fudge, makes Peter Hatcher feel like a fourth grade nothing. Whether Fudge is throwing a temper tantrum in a shoe store, smearing smashed potatoes on walls at Hamburger Heaven, or scribbling all over Peter’s homework, he’s never far from trouble. He’s a two-year-old terror who gets away with everything—and Peter’s had enough. When Fudge walks off with Dribble, Peter’s pet turtle, it’s the last straw. Peter has put up with Fudge too long. How can he get his parents to pay attention to him for a change?”
According to American Writers for Children Since 1960: Fiction, the book came about when, “A house helper who knew that Blume was writing books for children brought her a clipping one day about a boy who swallowed a turtle. ‘Willie Mae,’ to whom the book is dedicated, kept Blume informed of developments, and the story found its way into the enormously popular Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing (1972), in which Peter Hatcher’s ‘problem’ is his two-year-old brother, Fudge . . . The original idea was for a picture book called ‘Peter, Fudge and Dribble.’ It was rejected as a picture book by Bradbury, but Ann Durrell, children’s editor of Dutton, suggested the form in which it was finally published.” And aren’t we glad she did?
Peter is a child everyman. The straight man to Fudge. Doomed to forever be overshadowed by his little brother (they don’t call this series the Peter Series, after all).
For a new perspective, I enjoyed this review of the book from the excelsior file. Sort of brings up a point I hadn’t considered before:
“Peter has never mentioned wanting a dog, never really wanted anything but to have his brother not mess up his life, and all we see time and again are a pair of loving parents who don’t freak out (which is good) but can’t seem to reign in the terror of tiny town. And for all Peter has to put up with he’s given a puppy for companionship. After all he’s endured throughout the book Peter is essentially told ‘we love you, but we’ve got our hands full with your maniacal brother so here’s a puppy to give your the companionship we can’t give you’.”
Twenty-two classrooms at Robert E. Clow Elementary School created cakes based on books. All I can hope is that this one won. There’s something delightfully twisted about it.
Lest you fear that Ramona has all the fun, Fudge got his own television show too. Right about 1995.
#36 The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare (1958)
53 points
Somehow I never read this one as a kid, and that fact hasn’t bothered me. But if you check out the 90-Second Newbery video of this title at the end of this post, you’ll be forced to agree with me when I say . . . where can I get that book?
School Library Journal described the plot as, “The setting is the Colony of Connecticut in 1687 amid the political and religious conflicts of that day. Sixteen-year-old Kit Tyler unexpectedly arrives at her aunt and uncle’s doorstep and is unprepared for the new world which awaits her. Having been raised by her grandfather in Barbados, she doesn’t understand the conflict between those loyal to the king and those who defend the Connecticut Charter. Unprepared for the religious intolerance and rigidity of the Puritan community, she is constantly astounding her aunt, uncle, and cousins with her dress, behavior, and ideas. She takes comfort in her secret friendship with the widow, Hannah Tupper, who has been expelled from Massachusetts because she is a Quaker and suspected of being a witch. When a deathly sickness strikes the village, first Hannah and then Kit are accused of being witches. Through these conflicts and experiences, Kit comes to know and accept herself. She learns not to make hasty judgments about people, and that there are always two sides to every conflict.”
This was Speare’s second children’s novel. Silvey says that with this book, “After spending a year and a half working on the novel, Speare sent it to Mary Silva Cosgrave, the editor who had rescued her first book, Calico Captive, from a pile of unsolicited manuscripts. Cosgrave found the manuscript for The Witch of Blackbird Pond to be the most perfectly crafted she had ever seen. Because Speare had been so thorough in her research and in the way she had pieced the book together, Cosgrave suggested only one minor correction before the book went to press.”
It won the Newbery, of course, beating out The Family Under The Bridge by Natalie Savage Carlson, Along Came A Dog by Meindert Dejong, Chucaro: Wild Pony of the Pampa by Francis Kalnay, and The Perilous Road by William O. Steele. But Silvey reports a shocking piece of news about that committee. “Although the details of the Newbery’s selection process usually remain confidential, the chair of the committee revealed that The Witch of Blackbird Pond won the Newbery Medal unanimously on the first ballot, an extremely rare event.” No secrets that year, I see.
Of course Lizzie Skurnick had to have her say about the book over at Fine Lines. A sample:
“What’s wonderful about Witch — and what distinguishes it, I think, from the American Girl novels I like to flog unmercifully because I don’t think novels should have branded stores with cafes that serve things like ‘American Girl Pasta’ — is that the narrative isn’t a flimsy cover for a history lesson, and neither is Kit a stand-in for heroic, spunky girls resisting the powers-that-be everywhere.”
Be sure to check out Travis Jonker’s re-jacketing of the book.
And I adore the covers. Particularly the romance novely ones like this:
Finally, no video will ever compare to this MAGNIFICENT one created for the 90-Second Newbery. Behold!
It’s the flaming torches I really love.
#37 The Wednesday Wars by Gary D. Schmidt (2007)
53 points
Don’t know if this qualifies as a children’s—it’s kind of on the border between middle grade and YA, but it’s one of my favorite books of all time so I’m including it. There’s so much going on, and Schmidt has the wonderful capacity to make the reader laugh out loud and cry—all on the same page. – Heather Christensen
Two words: cream puffs – Jessalynn Gale
The plot from my review reads, “Mrs. Baker hates Holling Hoodhood. There’s no two ways about it, as far as he can tell. From the minute he entered her classroom she had it in for him and he’s trying not to become paranoid. Now because half the kids in his class are Jewish and half Catholic, every Wednesday Holling (a Protestant through and through) is stuck alone with Mrs. Baker while the other kids go to Hebrew School or Catechism for the afternoon. And what has this evil genius dreamt up for our poor young hero? Shakespeare. He has to read it and get tested on it regularly with the intention (Holling is sure) of boring him to death. The thing is, Holling kind of gets to like the stuff. Meanwhile, though, he has to deal with wearing yellow tights butt-gracing feathers, avoiding killer rats and his older sister, and deciding what to do about Meryl Lee Kowalski, ‘who has been in love with me since she first laid eyes on me in the third grade,’ amongst other things. Set during the school year of 1967-68 against a backdrop of Vietnam and political strife, Holling finds that figuring out who you are goes above and beyond what people want you to become.”
It won a Newbery Honor in 2008, beaten by the fantastic Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! by Laura Amy Schlitz. A good year. Since that time Schmidt wrote the companion novel Okay for Now.
PW said of it, “Unlike most Vietnam stories, this one ends happily, as Schmidt rewards the good guys with victories that, if not entirely true to the period, deeply satisfy.”
Said SLJ, “The tone may seem cloying at first and the plot occasionally goes over-the-top, but readers who stick with the story will be rewarded. They will appreciate Holling’s gentle, caring ways and will be sad to have the book end.”
Booklist liked it quite a bit saying, “Holling’s unwavering, distinctive voice offers a gentle, hopeful, moving story of a boy who, with the right help, learns to stretch beyond the limitations of his family, his violent times, and his fear, as he leaps into his future with his eyes and his heart wide open.”
Horn Book went on with, “Schmidt rises above the novel’s conventions to create memorable and believable characters.”
Kirkus concluded with, “Schmidt has a way of getting to the emotional heart of every scene without overstatement, allowing the reader and Holling to understand the great truths swirling around them on their own terms.”
And best of all was this section from Tanya Lee Stone’s New York Times review, “Still, while ‘The Wednesday Wars’ was one of my favorite books of the year, it wasn’t written for me. Sometimes books that speak to adults miss the mark for their intended audience. To see if the novel would resonate as deeply with a child, I gave it to an avid but discriminating 10-year-old reader. His laughter, followed by repeated outbursts of ‘Listen to this!,’ answered my question. Best of all, he asked if I had a copy of ‘The Tempest’ he could borrow.”
Now the cover seen at the top of this review was by no means the first of its kind. A slightly different jacket appeared when galleys were first sent out. It looked like this:
The changes are, in a word, fascinating. Then there was the paperback version:
Anyone else out there mildly freaked out by how good the kids’ book trailers are getting these days? I offer to the jury example A:
To be fair, it has roughly 5 billion book trailers on YouTube. I just chose one of the best.
#38 Frindle by Andrew Clements (1996)
51 points
This book touches me as a teacher, and I can relate to it from the perspective of the students. I can’t read this to my students without choking up over the letter from the teacher. – Dee Sypherd
If you’re a children’s librarian then you are probably well and truly familiar with the gaps that consistently appear in the Andrew Clements portion of your fiction shelves. Talk about a guy who has made his name memorable to kids. If they’re not devouring School Story then they’re giggling over No Talking or A Week in the Woods. And it all started with Frindle. A little book. A little idea. A title that never received an ALA Awards and yet is one of the most memorable titles to be released in the last 15 years.
The plot from the publisher reads, “Is Nick Allen a troublemaker? He really just likes to liven things up at school — and he’s always had plenty of great ideas. When Nick learns some interesting information about how words are created, suddenly he’s got the inspiration for his best plan ever – the frindle. Who says a pen has to be called a pen? Why not call it a frindle? Things begin innocently enough as Nick gets his friends to use the new word. Then other people in town start saying frindle. Soon the school is in an uproar, and Nick has become a local hero. His teacher wants Nick to put an end to all this nonsense, but the funny thing is frindle doesn’t belong to Nick anymore. The new word is spreading across the country, and there’s nothing Nick can do to stop it.”
Where did he get the idea for the book? Well, according to Clements’ website, the idea of creating a word like “frindle” was all part of a talk he’d give when he visited schools. “I was teaching a little about the way words work, and about what words really are. I was trying to explain to them how words only mean what we decide they mean. They didn’t believe me when I pointed to a fat dictionary and told them that ordinary people like them and like me had made up all the words in that book—and that new words get made up all the time.” When a kid challenged him he had a ready answer. Says Clements, “The kids loved that idea, and for a couple of years I told that same story every time I went to visit and talk at a school or a library. Then one day as I was sitting at home, sifting through my life, looking for a story idea, I wondered, ‘What would happen if a kid started using a new word, and other kids really liked it, but his English teacher didn’t?’ So the idea for the book was born…”
A lot of the charm of this and other Andrew Clements books is entirely in the characters. As Lisa Von Drasek said of it in the New York Times, “His teachers aren’t ”Charlie Brown”-type monoliths. They’re individuals with their own quirks and anxieties, and they don’t always agree. Clements matter-of-factly demonstrates that teachers can be petty and single-minded; a principal can apologize to a student for overreacting. His kids are cruel, kind, bullying, angry, joyful, delightful, tall, short, impulsive, thoughtful, smart, funny. He captures a broad spectrum of human behavior; the gossipy mean girl can also be surprisingly generous.”
This is a lot of fun. If you’re a teacher (or a parent or a librarian, for that matter) why not play a little Frindle Jeopardy with your kids?
Here are the Frindle Discussion Guide, Extension Activity, and Lesson Plan for teachers.
And here’s the Reading Group Guide.
Meta. The Urban Dictionary recognizes frindle as a word.
Publishers Weekly gave it a tepid, “Dictionary lovers will cotton to this mild classroom fantasy.”
School Library Journal was far more positive with, “Readers will chuckle from beginning to end as they recognize themselves and their classrooms in the cast of characters. A remarkable teacher’s belief in the power of words shines through the entire story, as does a young man’s tenacity in proving his point. Outstanding and witty.”
Kirkus agreed, saying, “If there’s any justice in the world, Clements (Temple Cat, 1995, etc.) may have something of a classic on his hands. By turns amusing and adroit, this first novel is also utterly satisfying.”
Said Lisa Von Drasek in The New York Times, “Frindle hits every note right.”
This particular image was created by Justin Ziegler for a children’s production of the play Frindle, performed at Chicago’s Griffin Theatre Company.
Artist Penelope Dullaghan offered this as a pitch piece for a new Frindle cover:
The Andrew Clements website has quite a few cool covers of his books from around the world too.
The UK
Germany
Portugal
Hungary
Italy
Japan
Poland
And, my personal favorite, Korea:
#39 The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick (2007)
50 points
Perfect and artful blending of prose and illustration. – Dee Sypherd
No book like it. It reinvents storytelling. It plays with our notion of “the book.” It takes great advantage of the physical nature of “the book.” In the end, the story celebrates many things, including that very book we hold in our hands. – Aaron Zenz
A picture book on the Top 100 Children’s Novels list? Well, what would you have of me? The trick to Cabret is that this book fits no single designation. Folks nominated it for the Top 100 Picture Books List (it didn’t make the cut) and for this list as well. Spoiler Alert: It is the only Caldecott Award winning book you will find on this list. Or is that not too surprising after all?
The plot from my review reads, “Without Hugo Cabret, none of the clocks in the magnificent Paris train station he lives in would work. Though he’s only a kid, Hugo tends to the clocks every day. But there’s something even more important in the boy’s life than gigantic mechanics. Hugo owns a complex automaton, once his father’s, that was damaged in a fire and it is his life’s goal to make the little machine work again. To do so, he’s been stealing small toys from an old shopkeeper in the station. One day the man catches Hugo in the act, and suddenly the two are thrown together. Coincidences, puzzles, lost keys, and a mystery from the past combine in this complex tale of old and new. The story is told with pictures that act out the action and then several pages of text that describe the plot elements. The final effect is like watching a puzzle work itself into clarity.”
The wordy Roderick McGillis piece “Fantasy as Epanalepsis: ‘An Anticipation of Retrospection’” (found in the Dec. 2008 edition of Papers: Explorations into Children’s Literature) made a rather striking point about the book. He says that, “The story may not be a fantasy, but it is surely about fantasy” at one point and “His last name suggests ‘cabaret’, the site of a mixture of performances.” in another. Later he points out that, “The ‘invention’ of Hugo Cabret is both the discovery and fashioning of the character and, in turn, the character’s discovery and invention.”
Horn Book said of it, “While the bookmaking is spectacular, and the binding secure but generous enough to allow the pictures to flow easily across the gutter, The Invention of Hugo Cabret is foremost good storytelling, with a sincerity and verbal ease reminiscent of Andrew Clements (a frequent Selznick collaborator) and themes of secrets, dreams, and invention that play lightly but resonantly throughout.”
Said Library Journal, “Toss in a wild jumble of references and plot lines, a mean old man, a young girl, toys, secrets, and a fabulous train station, and you have the makings of a novel destined to enchant.”
The New York Times said, “It is wonderful. Take that overused word literally: ‘Hugo Cabret’ evokes wonder. At more than 500 pages, its proportions seem Potteresque, yet it makes for quick reading because Selznick’s amazing drawings take up most of the book. While they may lack the virtuosity of Chris Van Allsburg’s work or David Wiesner’s, their slight roughness gives them urgency.
If the Little Women covers were a bit extreme in terms of the sheer number of them, Cabret makes up for it. I couldn’t find anything but the very first cover. What I found instead was Brian discussing the book in an interview:
And, naturally, there was that recent film:
