Monica Edinger's Blog, page 98

The Compexities of Help

My experiences as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Sierra Leone in the 1970s, my work there and subsequently with a variety of NGOs, a graduate degree in International Education, my later travel to various needy spots in the world, my work as an educator, and my observations of the way well-intended outsiders (adults and children) respond to humanitarian issues world-wide has made me very aware of the complexities of help. And so reading Jon Krakauer's piece on Greg Mortenson had me saddened to see such well intentions go so far astray, but also hopeful that it will be a wake-up call to others who mean well and want to help.

Ease on Down to Wonderland

Last night Jack Murphy and Gregory Boyd's musical version of Alice in Wonderland arrived on Broadway.  Now I am indeed quite a Carrollian, but a fairly selective one. That is, I don't go to stage versions or buy book adaptations that do not seem likely to fit my tastes.  And so I'd held off going to this version based on the videos I'd seen which left me completely cold.  Charles Isherwood's review in today's Times only reinforced that feeling. He writes:

The model here appears to be the Broadway behemoth "Wicked," which recast L. Frank Baum's "Wonderful Wizard of Oz" as a moral-dispensing tale of exceptionally gifted young women (hitherto known as witches) finding common ground in girl power. Unfortunately "Wonderland" reminded me even more strongly of another latter-day iteration of the Baum story, the bloated 1978 movie version of the Broadway musical "The Wiz."

You'll recall — or maybe you won't — that in the film the teenage Dorothy of the stage version became a grown-up, put-upon New York schoolteacher played by a saucer-eyed Diana Ross. The adventurer in "Wonderland" is also a harassed New York schoolteacher, Alice (the capable Janet Dacal), who aspires to write children's books. Recently separated from her unemployed husband, she has moved to the "kingdom of Queens" with her daughter Chloe (Carly Rose Sonenclar, a good actress and an almost preternaturally skilled singer).

The problem for me is that Baum and Carroll's stories are so different. The first has a driving quest plot — Dorothy wants to get home, but Alice hasn't a similar wish in her original book — the only vague plot thread is her desire to get to the beautiful garden.  The heart of Alice's story is the wit, the language play, and the episodic encounters with odd creatures.  I have no problem with someone figuring out how to strengthen the plotline as long as they maintain the humour and wit, but that doesn't seem to be the case here.  (Nor was it, for that matter, in last year's Tim Burton effort.)  And so Alice as Dorothy-in-the-Wiz just doesn't work for me. (And by the way, Whoopie Goldberg already did an urban Alice for kids years ago.)

One film that does, I feel, give a sense of what Carroll was all about is Dennis Potter's Dreamchild which is currently and frustratingly not available on DVD.  It does seem to be on youtube in bits so here is the first part so you can get a taste:

Happy Birthday, Charlie!

Some here already know of my affection for Charlie Chaplin. I've been showing his movies to my students throughout my career and am now working on a book for children about his films. This year my class has been doing a year-long study of Charlie which is culminating in a "Charlie on the Mayflower" movie, now in production.  (Our final social studies unit of the year is on the Pilgrims.) Today's Charlie's birthday and here is Google's clever celebration of it (although I do have to say my kids are channeling the Little Tramp and company better than these folks — wait and see!):

Thinking Further About Nonfiction

Jim Murphy has a post up over at I.N,K., "Battle Cry Freedom" in which he further considers aspects of the conversation Marc Aronson's "New Knowledge" article provoked.  Jim is rightly concerned about shoddy research and the critics, reviewers, and gatekeepers who are unaware and thus support problematic (Jim calls them "rogue") books.  He wonders:

Which brings us to the most important element of the discussion: our readers — kids of varying ages and depths of learning and sophistication, who read (sometimes reluctantly, sometimes happily) and absorb the printed word as gospel. When a rogue book gets out (whether it's a willful act to grab attention or build drama in a text or an honest attempt to re-interpret the historical record) who is going to pick up the pieces?

I wonder about this too.  Jim writes further:

Is it fair to expect librarians and teachers to constantly patrol and explain these problem texts to scores of young readers? And in case you think any errors might be minor in nature, please remember that recent Virginia textbook where the author informed young readers that thousands of slaves happily signed on to defend the south and its traditions during the Civil War. That text (and its historical implications) was floating around in schools for weeks and months before the error was caught and the books recalled. There's no reason to assume something just as egregious couldn't happen in trade books.

Whether they are as serious as this example, I've seen errors in lauded books of nonfiction that troubled me greatly and which were pretty much dismissed by those who already had decided these were terrific books. And even before Jim raised this issue I was wondering about it when doing my own debating with Marc.  Since I'm smack dab in the middle of the intended audience and see how they respond to books and ideas, I have similar reservations to those Jim has expressed.  Marc has responded here and he, Jim, and others have continued the conversation in the comments.

New York Times' Children's Book Editor Pamela Paul

Recently, Pamela Paul, the new children's book editor at The New York Times Book Review chatted with me about her background, books, and some of her plans. In the course of our communications, Pamela asked me how I found the time to blog as a full-time teacher and I responded that I wondered the same about her. The author of three well-received books, and articles for a variety of publications including The Economist, Time Magazine as well as the New York Times, Pamela is also the mother of three very young children. Count me as impressed. 

"Going back to my origins" was Pamela's answer when I asked her what made her want to take on this new role. These include a stint at an international school in Thailand where Pamela taught kindergarten, high school, and ran the library and another at Scholastic involving parent book clubs. When she moved into journalism Pamela's first focus was on the arts. And so she has indeed, "circled around this whole world" coming back to children and their books.

Going back further, Pamela spoke to me of the pleasure she took as a child visiting the library that was close to her home. Frances Hodgson Burnett, Beverly Cleary, and Judy Blume were among the many authors of fiction and nonfiction that she read and loved making her understandably delighted to be able to interview the latter two for an essay in the latest Book Review. Her children are a  "built-in focus group," especially her oldest who will examine the books she brings home and occasionally suggest that Pamela "… bring this one back to the office."

Pamela sees the audience for the Times' children's book reviews as not only parents, teachers, librarians, booksellers, and others looking for great books for the children in their lives, but adults looking for their own reading material as well. As she pointed out last year in her essay, The Kids Books Are All Right, more and more adults are enjoying and appreciating books written for young people. Pamela gave Ruta Sepetys' novel about life in a Siberian prison camp, Between Shades of Gray, as an example of a book that would be equally appreciated by teens and adults.

One of Pamela's first new acts was to begin a weekly online picture book review as she feels strongly about their importance. In order to make it easier for readers to find books on a particular topic and to further highlight books for younger and middle grade readers, Pamela is reframing the monthly Bookshelf (consisting of several shorter reviews) as a thematic feature; the latest is on the environment. She is also adding a new Back to School special section in August and planning to expand the children's books part of the Times' Notable Books of the year from 8 to 25.

Pamela's enthusiasm, varied background, and commitment has me optimistic that under her watch children's books will continue to be a valued and respected part of the New York Times Book Review.

Tolkien, Carroll, and Other Bits and Pieces

Tony DiTerlizzi recently attempted to track down the details of a tantalizing story that Sendak was considered and rejected by Tolkien as an illustrator for a new edition of The Hobbit.  Tony makes a couple of statements in his article that I wonder about.

Each generation should have an edition of these timeless stories that speaks directly to them in a style and design that they are familiar with. If you don't believe me, ask a group of fourth-graders to put down their iPhones and Wii game controllers and see what they think of Sir John Tenniel's illustrations for [Lewis] Carroll's first edition of "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland."

While I agree wholeheartedly that it is wonderful to have new versions of old stories,  in my experience, fourth graders enjoy Tenniel's illustrations just as much as more recent renderings of Carroll's story.  (I've been doing a unit on Alice and her illustrators for several decades now so I do, ahem, know about this, probably better than anyone. See here, here, and here for a taste of what I do with Alice and fourth graders.)  I'm still waiting for a children's film adaptation that really fits the wit and humor I see in Carroll's tale, but have found numerous more recent illustrators who have done some very cool things with it — say Anthony Browne, Helen Oxenbury, and Robert Inkpen.

I also was curious about this from Tony:

As those years passed and the book's fame grew, Tolkien despised the fact that it was considered by many to be a children's story, as indicated in a letter from 1959, "I am not specially interested in children, and certainly not in writing for them."

I'd always thought that Tolkien considered The Hobbit a story for children and  The Lord of the Rings for adults.  Not so?  I used to love reading it aloud to my fourth grade classes — felt very much a book for children to me.

Kat and the Dragon

I'm quite taken with Kat and her book.

For Those with Means

…there's a pretty remarkable auction happening this coming Monday at Sotheby's. It consists of original illustrated art from the collection of Kendra and Allan Daniels and boy would I love to get some of it.  It feels like just about every major illustrator of the so-called Golden Age of Illustration (circa 1880-1940) is represented.  And some of the art is spectacular.  You can peruse the catalogue here, register for a paddle, and do online bidding here.  If you are in the NYC area you can go to Sotheby's to see the collection today, tomorrow, and over the weekend.

On the Internet No One Knows You're a Duck — or Do They?

I'm a huge fan of Tim Egan's Dodsworth books so was delighted to come across this.

via @MrSchuReads

SLJ's Battle of the Kids' Books' Finale

This year's Battle of the Kids' Books has been amazing.  I'm totally biased, of course, but I truly feel that each judge has written a remarkable decision essay.  For that is what they really are — thoughtful and carefully written articles, each on two books.  Some of the judges ended up going for books that you might expect of them (due to their own writing) while others did not. And each of the fourteen who judged the rounds leading up to this Monday's Big Kahuna finale (judged by Richard Peck) came up with unique ways of deciding their matches. Here are tastes of each that I hope intrigue you enough to go (if you haven't already) and read their decisions in total:

Francisco X. Stork decided to abandoned "fun" as a criteria and went for the match winner's "elegant, readable, complexity."
On the other hand Dana Reinhardt decided that "there is just as much drama and adventure in a girl riding a rope swing over a pit of gravel despite her paralyzing fear because she wants to impress the brown eyed boy she loves, as there is in a newly minted king orchestrating the defeat of ten thousand…."
Barry Lyga split himself in two and wrote his decision as a One Act Play.
The match winner's "lasting resonance of its narrative power" was what decided Susan Patron.
Dubious about the graphic novel format Karen Hesse was "… forced to retract my misgivings."
Adam Rex called it on a footnote.
R.L. Stine was direct and blunt in his decision.
After contemplating character, setting, language, and plot Mitali Perkins made her decision on theme.
Shakespearean comedy made the difference for Laura Amy Schlitz who wrote in her decision that "Comedy is a celebration of human resilience."
Naomi Shihab was won over by a contender's "… muscular and forward-moving, the lavish hum of place, waves, longing, wrap around a reader with hypnotic transporting power."
An all-nighter factored into Patricia Reilly Giff's choice as did finding the winning contender's creator's "… imagination dazzling."
Pete Hauptman channeled his childhood self in his decision.
"One is soul-filling while the other satisfying. For me, I'll go with the soul and I choose…" wrote Grace Lin.
Karen Cushman was gobsmacked!