I saw How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas Foster on the “New Nonfiction” shelf at the library. I thought I’d take a glance through it when I got home, but I certainly had no intention of reading it: I have a lot of books either in progress or on my bedside table,
Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak. When Max is sent to his room without supper, he finds himself on a journey to where the wild things live. But, in the end, he longs to return to where there are people who love him and he returns to his room to find supper waiting.
George and Martha by James Marshall. George and Martha are best friends, and James Marshall’s storybooks show us what that means. They tell the truth to each other, even if it hurts; they respect each other’s privacy; they learn what it means to be friends. They are also hippos, and that makes the illustrations to
Bedtime books are the best. One of my favorites is Sandra Boynton’s Going to Bed Book. It’s a silly goodnight book because after taking a bath and getting jammies on, the animal kids all exercise for a few minutes before they head to bed. Boynton’s illustrations are as whimsical as always. The animals are acting
Why is autumn always, poetically, so sad? It’s a good season in it’s own right. Yet, the poetry always dwells on the “growing older” analogy. Here’s some Shakespeare.
This week, I got Walk On! by Marla Frazee from the library. Walk On! is a manual for babies to learn to walk. It is very amusing. I believe it is intended for adults, not babies. In fact, most Amazon reviewers suggest it as a gift for high school grads. (In fact, in terms of
The life of the Mormon Prophet Joseph Smith, although short, was full of faith and controversy. In his cultural biography, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling, Richard Lyman Bushman approaches Joseph Smith’s life for all it was, without apology. Bushman does not omit controversy from Joseph’s life; rather, controversy surrounding Joseph is carefully researched in the
Here’s a semi-political book I read in honor of the U.S. presidential election today. Now, if only women could rule the world! Why Woman Should Rule the World isn’t just another cliché: rather, in her well-researched social memoir of women, Dee Dee Myers shares what she’s learned about being a woman, both from her experiences
Sandra Boynton’s Pookie books are a lot of fun. My son received Let’s Dance, Little Pookie by Sandra Boynton for his first birthday, a previously unknown (to me) new Boynton classic. In Let’s Dance, Mama helps Pookie dance the “Pookie Shimmy.” I think it’s very cute. My son likes the part where we march all
The Dangerous Alphabet by Neil Gaiman is a clever alphabet book. While it’s clearly a children’s book, it has an element of spookiness to it and somber, spidery illustrations that make it just right for adults too. The illustrations by Gris Grimly are not my normal preference. I tend to like more realistic illustration and
In medieval children’s primers, the alphabet was the main tool of learning and was often portrayed in a way that also taught religion (Seth Lerer, Children’s Literature, page 61). Poems and teachings would be in the order of the alphabet. This had biblical precedence, as the 22 stanzas of Psalm 118 “use the twenty-two letters
After reading Edgar Allan Poe last week, I thought I’d stay in the same era and read Nathaniel Hawthorne’s stories. To my delight, many of Hawthorne’s stories perfectly fit the “gothic” theme of Halloween in a style that I loved. Even though I dislike of being “scared,” these stories were again the perfect amount of
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