Speak, Child: The Illiad as the Infancy of Children’s Literature

In his first chapter (“Speak, Child”) of Children’s Literature: A Reader’s History from Aesop to Harry Potter, Seth Lerer discusses the “infancy” of children’s literature. Such a study requires a review of children’s education, as that is the basis for children’s literature. Lerer discusses the classics (the “really old classics,” as I’ve dubbed them on this blog) that were the basis of education in the ancient world.

I took note of two elements within his discussion of the classics. First, children’s education was based on recitation and memorization. Also, children learned from extracts of The Illiad and The Odyssey, and later The Aeneid, works that even then were “adult” literature. Continue reading »

Baby’s Sunday Salon, October 5

My baby turns one year old this week. I can’t believe he’s so old, and yet I can’t believe he’s only been in my life for one short year.

I’ve never really done Sunday Salon, but there are so many great books I’m finding at my local library for my son, I thought I’d share what I’m reading to him, with him, and about him these days. Continue reading »

The Jungle Book(s) by Rudyard Kipling

The Jungle Book and The Second Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling contain much more than the story of the adopted wolf-boy, Mowgli, who is probably the most familiar of Kipling’s characters.

Kipling’s Jungle Books are collections of stories about animals and people from around the world. Each story seems to be rooted in traditional facts about the animals and/or traditions, so they make for an interesting read. Some stories have fantastic, speaking animals; others are about people and superstition. Some stories take place in the Indian Jungle; others are in Eskimo North America or the deep seas of the Atlantic Ocean. As with his Just So Stories, Kipling has interspersed a poem or two before or after each story. Continue reading »

Bookworms Carnival: You Are Never Too Old

The August Bookworms Carnival is up at The 3 R’s. This month’s theme is “You Are Never Too Old.”

I submitted my review of The Complete Tales and Poems of Winnie-the-Pooh by A.A. Milne.  I love Winnie-the-Pooh, and I look forward to rereading it many times with my son!

I also wrote a post recently about the picture book Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown. I love that picture book!

I have also reviewed number of other children’s books and stories, but not all of them are books that I enjoy as an adult. View summaries of all of the children’s books I’ve reviewed on Rebecca Reads in the Child/Young Adult category.

I’m going to New Zealand for nine days! If all goes well, I have a couple of posts scheduled to appear. I probably won’t be visiting your blogs or responding to comments in the next few days. I’ll try to make up for it when I return!

Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown

I was dressing my 10-month-old son on his bedroom floor the other evening when he started reaching up. I saw his fingers brush the edge of the orange cover of Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown, which was on the edge of the second-lowest shelf. Once he was fully clothed in pajamas, I sat him up and pulled the book off the shelf.

“In the great green room,” I began, setting him on my knee.

He stopped squirming and clapped his hands together, ready for his story. Continue reading »

Stuart Little Was a Banned Book

The New Yorker has an interesting article this week about the development of literature for children and E.B. White’s writing of Stuart Little. Did you know that after it was published in 1945, Stuart Little was banned by many libraries? I haven’t read Stuart Little since I was a child, but I hadn’t realized that and I couldn’t think why it would have been banned. Why would anyone ban a seemingly harmless book about a mouse-child?

The reasons behind the ban are surprising. Banning Stuart Little was a sort of political battle between two woman in the newly developing field of children’s literature. How many other “bans” on books are simply personal?

If you are interested in children’s literature, banned books, or Stuart Little in particular, check out the article. It made me want to reread Stuart Little and see what the fuss was about.

The Arrival by Shaun Tan

The Arrival by Shaun Tan is the story of all immigrants. By relying solely on pencil illustrations, Shaun Tan attempts to capture the emotions and the story of not just one man leaving his family to enter a new world but the story of all immigrants entering a new life. I was not completely convinced that the immigrant story can be properly told via illustration, but The Arrival was intriguing nonetheless. Continue reading »

Too Young for Books?

Yesterday at the library, after I returned our books, I stopped briefly by the board books and found a few appropriate book for my eight-month-old. I gave him The Airplane Book as he sat in the stroller. He grabbed it and held on.

I found the book I was looking for in the fiction aisle and was turning to go when a grandmotherly lady stopped and looked at my son. I’m used to this at the library: grandmothers, kids, toddlers. Everyone loves a baby! She asked if he’s a boy or a girl. I told her he’s a boy and smiled at her.

“Humph. A book for him! He’s a bit too young, don’t you think?” she said in a low voice as she turned away.

I had already started pushing the stroller to the checkout when I realized what she had said.

Too young for a book?

I read my son Winnie-the-Pooh when he was 4 months old and I’ve read to him every day since. Granted, most days now he “talks” loudly over my voice or ignores me or tries to eat the book, but I still read to him every day.

Is there such a thing as too young for books?

I think not.

Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling

I read Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories because I wanted to read this Nobel-prize winning author and also because I remembered the imaginative premise of his magical world and wanted to experience his world as an adult. I very much enjoyed reading them again, although there are some “politically incorrect” stereotypes in them I hadn’t expected. Continue reading »

The Complete Tales of Beatrix Potter

I thought I was going to love Beatrix Potter’s tales. Who doesn’t love Peter Rabbit? To my surprise, however, I didn’t love her stories. Continue reading »