Classics, Nonfiction, and Children's Literature
Sandra Boynton’s children’s books are new classics. I first discovered her delightful picture books via my sister-in-law, who had an entire shelf of Boynton’s books for my nephew. Now, with my own little boy, I’m really enjoying them. Her books all claim “serious silliness” on the back cover. I’d agree: we all enjoy the light-hearted
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
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
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
I didn’t understand The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry at all. I guess I’m not a child. A pilot has crashed his plane in the desert. While striving to repair it, he meets a young boy from a asteroid-star planet. The little prince’s planet has 44 sunsets a day, and the little prince is
I was looking for a nonfiction picture book for my son at the library the other day when I saw Eats, Shoots and Leaves: Why, Commas Really Do Make a Difference by Lynne Truss. I enjoyed the grammar guide (Eats, Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation) by Lynne Truss so this caught
While I loved the gorgeous illustrations in Brian Selznick’s Caldecott-winning novel The Invention of Hugo Cabret and I was entertained by the story, I found the writing amateur and the developing plot overdramatic. In the end, however, I liked this children’s novel, as “unbalanced” as it felt. The Invention of Hugo Cabret is an illustrated
I love Eric Carle’s The Very Hungry Caterpillar, so when I saw Eric Carle’s Fairy Tales and Fables, I thought I’d enjoy it too. Unfortunately, I didn’t enjoy his retellings of Aesop, Hans Christian Andersen and the Brothers Grimm. The Very Hungry Caterpillar delights me because the colorful collage pictures follow the simple story. Each
My library had a dozen reserves on Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief. I didn’t feel like waiting yet longer to read it, so I bought the audiobook from audible.com. (I can’t explain why in this case I got the audio instead of the physical book, but I did.) I hadn’t read many reviews of this
There are hundreds of book blogs reviewing The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. I didn’t really read any of them before I began this book. What I did read was my cousin’s suggestion that I read it, along with some comments she had. She wrote: It addresses orphans and hunger and family separation and Jewishness
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
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. The book I read, Beatrix Potter: The Complete Tales, is an absolutely gorgeous book. If you’re going to read Beatrix Potter, this volume is the one to have. I completely loved
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