Homer shakes his head "That's not it at all, that's not what I meant at all"

Since I have just spent several months in a home with a small child to be read to, today's Cul de Sac hits a vulnerable target. There sure are a lot of decent artists out there who can't tell a story, and it sure doesn't stop them from publishing picture books for kids.

Calvin used to torment his father with one type of horrible children's book -- the kind that relies on stringing together nonsense syllables as a substitute for narrative content. Calvin's favorite author was Mable Syrup, who wrote "Hamster Huey and the Gooie Kablooie."

Alice, we see here, favors the Faux Odyssey, a pointless work in which the author simply draws a random sequence of pictures of animals for a wandering baby (human or animal) to interrogate.

Both genres have some quality forebears. At least for the first two-thirds of his career (before he descended into self-parody), Dr. Seuss wrote brilliant, inspired nonsense, and it is not his fault that those who followed weren't able to do the same, anymore than E.E. Cummings (who did capitalize his name) should be blamed for all the poets who thought they were building on his foundation.

Similarly, there have been some good books in which a young animal wanders, encountering other types of creatures. Similarly, not a lot, as a percentage. And, while books consisting largely of nonsense syllables are more cloying, you at least know from the second page that you are in narrative hell. By contrast, there is a special horror in the Faux Odyssey because, the first time through, you read it with some small hope that there will be a point at the end.

And there never is.

When my kids were little, we made a point of buying them good picture books, like "Millions of Cats," "Angus Lost," "Make Way For Ducklings," "Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel," various classic Seuss books, "Madeleine" and Maurice Sendak and, of course, "Good Night, Moon." But the others appear, like dandelions, unwanted and ineradicable, amid the carefully cultivated pansies and marigolds and irises and tulips ... and kids don't seem to differentiate, at least at the moment. 

Someday they will realize which of their picture books were wonderful and which were dreck, and that is the point when parental vengeance comes, because they will have carefully assembled a garden of wonderful books for their children, and their children will  come racing to them, clutching dandelions ...

Comments

[Brian Fies]

Oh yeah, we saved many of them, the good and bad, and can't wait to foist them on our girls (someday not soon) under the guise of being doting grandparents. Heh heh heh!

Aside from literary quality, the children's books with the highest re-readability in our family were those that encouraged a performance: different characters with different voices, impersonations (I do an excellent Grover and Big Bird), and poetic interpretation. I genuinely enjoyed reading some of Dr. Seuss's books because they rewarded a kind of "Flight of the Bumblebee" mastery that entertained me and dazzled my audience. Of two year olds.

[Mike]

If you do a good Grover, you have, no doubt, read "The Monster at the End of This Book." A cheap throwaway book, but a wonderful performance piece for the reader. My boys had it, their kids have it.

The original Winnie The Pooh was a fabulous read-aloud book, but I don't know that kids will tolerate it anymore, since they "know" what the characters sound like. I remember being old enough to be appalled at Disney's vision of Pooh. Ah well.

But the classic is "Through the Looking Glass," because the chessboard structure means that the characters only appear in one chapter (until the dinner scene, by which time hopefully the kids won't remember who sounded like what). I read that to the boys with the most outrageous voices, half-remembered from the 1933 movie. WC Fields makes a wonderful Humpty-Dumpty, but my Cary Grant Mock Turtle had a lot more Judy-Judy-Judy than I think he gave forth in the movie.

Thank god nobody was recording it. I'm sure Rich Little and Frank Gorshin would have been appalled. The kids were amused, however, as was I.

[Sharon Tuttle]

I think I liked "The Monster at the End of This Book" as much as the kids did...

They probably might not count as classics to y'all, but I loved (still love!) love Sandra Boynton's board books, too. I put several of these to music before she started coming out with CD's. (The cow says "moo", the sheep says "baa", three singing pigs go "La, la, la"...)

[Mike]

If you follow this blog, you will realize that I have a particular affection for "Dare To Be Stupid." And I believe "The Monster At The End Of This Book" falls firmly into that category -- a book that is daringly silly, a Pythonesque ability to be completely foolish.

Mind you, classic Grover embraced silliness like few other characters, even among the Muppets.

[Brian Fies]

Yep, "Monster at the End of this Book" was in my reportoire. But my masterpiece--my Beethoven's Ninth--was Seuss's "Fox in Socks." I could dance through "When a fox is in the bottle where the tweetle beetles battle with their paddles in a puddle on a noodle-eating poodle, this is what they call a tweetle beetle noodle poodle bottled paddled muddled duddled fuddled wuddled fox in socks, sir!" like Baryshnikov.

No, I didn't type that from memory. But there was a time I probably could've...

[Brian Fies]

Forgot to say, the Boynton books were very popular in our home, too. I share Sharon's high regard.

[Mark Jackson]

Boynton's books were among the favorites in our house also, and we're enjoying introducing our granddaughter to them.

My office wall bore a Boynton poster ("If a being does not keep pace with its companions, perhaps it is because it hears the beat of a different drummer. Or maybe it's just a weirdo.") for 25 years - would still, if I had an office.

And among the rare *good* examples of the quest genre our favorite has definitely been "It's Not Easy Being a Bunny."