Month: January 2010

The Top Children’s Fiction Poll

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The lovely Ms. Bird at A Fuse #8 Production is undertaking the massive effort of conducting a poll of the best children’s novels of all time.  Each person is only allowed to submit his or her top ten (only ten!) and since there are far too many books that I consider The Best, I’ve decided to manipulate the scoring system and choose books that I think might need some extra points.

So: no Charlotte’s Web, no Bridge to Terabithia, no Little House in the Big Woods, and no Alice in Wonderland.  But plenty of other titles that I’m sure you’ll agree are rather wonderful.

From least to greatest:

10. Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfeild.  I ask you:  in this day and age, where else can you find a book about a girl who performs in a ballet of A Midsummer Night’s Dream by night and is an budding mechanic and aviatrix by day?  Nowhere, that’s what.  And it’s precisely because of Petrova Fossil that this book has maintained its high levels of awesome over the years.

9. Daddy Long-Legs by Jean Webster.  Long before today’s batch of “novels with cartoons,” the world was blessed with the ficticious illustrated letters of Judy Abbot’s adventures at college, circa 1912.  Part of this novel’s lasting charm is its revelation that, in some ways, college students haven’t changed that much over the years.  For example: Judy and her friends stay up late in the dorms debating over whether or not it would be possible to swim through a pool filled with lemon-flavored Jell-O.  Add pizza and and a Che Guevara poster to that scene, and you see what I mean.

8. The Perilous Gard by Elizabeth Marie Pope.  It’s the Tam Lin legend imagined as a gothic suspense tale set in Elizabethan England, complete with a secret underground cult, a Fairy Queen, and toxic super-freakouts.  Oh, and Christopher Heron, one of the most swoon-worthy fictional lads this side of Shakespeare.

7. Cheaper by the Dozen by Frank B. Gilbreth, Jr. and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey.  Yes, it has its problematic chapters that have not aged well, but the trials and travails of the Gilbreths, their twelve children, and their glorious, glorious efficiency-expert childrearing methods still makes this one of the funniest children’s books ever written.  Oh, and did I mention that I myself am the oldest of five children?  It’s nice to have Ernestine to relate to when you discover that your little brother has put peanut butter in your hairbrush again.

6. The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett.  Porridge and rope skipping and fountains of roses and a wild boy from the moor who can practically talk to animals!  It’s frequently touted as the “most satisfying” children’s book ever written, and you have to respect any novel that takes a traditional gothic setting (waifish orphan in deep dark mansion with mysterious wails) and morphs it into a heartwarming family story.  It’s had scads of imitators ever since, and no surprise.

5. The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster.  I’d like to know how many kids developed a full-fledged love of wordplay from this book.  There’s something that makes you feel so smart and clever when reading about jumping to Confusions, literally eating your own words, and sparring wits with the Spelling Bee and Canby.  And you gotta love the Watchdog.

4. The Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley.  Is it children’s lit. or YA?  Folks, it’s a Newbery winner.  A Newbery winner in which the heroine kills a dragon by driving her sword into its eye until she’s up to her armpit in brains.  ‘Nuff said.

3. From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E. L. Konigsburg.  Ahh, yes.  The book that has warped the way I view museums forevermore.  Now when I look at rare antique furniture, I think “would that be a good place to sleep?” and fountains are often eyed as potential sources of income.  Bathrooms?  Completely and thoroughly judged for their ability to hide me from security staff.  Look at what you’ve done, Ms. Konigsburg.  Look and despair.

2. The 13 Clocks by James Thurber.  Back off, Princess Bride.  This here’s probably the original “fractured fairy tale.”   The story includes an evil Duke who sports both a glass eye, an eye patch, and a sword cane; man-eating geese; a prince-disguised-as-a-minstrel (or is it the other way ’round?); the magic roses of Princess Saralinda; and the lovable Golux with his “indescribable hat.”  Add to that a heaping helping of classic Thurberean asides (“I sent eleven guards to kill the prince.”  “But the prince is as strong as ten men.”  “So that means there will be one left to finish him off!”) and you can easily see why Neil Gaiman has declared it to be “probably the best book in the world.”

1. Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery.  Pretty much the gold standard for historical fiction with a dreamy-eyed, book-loving firebrand of a protagonist whose imagination gets her up to no good.  You can’t throw a rock into a library without hitting a host of Anne wannabes.  And it’s also possible that you can’t throw a rock into a children’s literature conference without hitting a passel of ladies who ARE Anne Shirley.  It’s not just a book, it’s a lifestyle.  Plus, I have to respect any character with a compulsive drive to emphasize the silent e at the end of her name.  (Did I mention my name was Brooke-with-an-e?)

Made of Awesome

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For most of this month, my city has been living in the winter hell that is locally known as “the inversion.”

If you’re lucky enough to not know what this means, let me fill you in: a high pressure system — aka a layer of warm air — thwops down on top of the Salt Lake valley, slamming like a Tupperware lid to trap all the air below inside.  Every cow fart, truck exhaust, cough and sneeze just swirls around inside, leading to what’s officially known as the country’s worst air pollution. 

We had a case of this that lasted for almost a month.  Yargh.  But a few days ago a storm system swept in, scrubbed the sky clean, and suddenly there was BLUE SKY!  And we could SEE the mountains our city is famous for!  And I was allowed to let my children play outside again!

In celebration of this, I’d like to make a list of other things from this month that come from the land that is Made of Awesome:

  • My sister in law, Deb, has compiled her list of the top twenty albums of 2009.  Those of you who participated in my Mix Exchange a few years ago know that this woman has excellent taste.  So fire up your iTunes account, and get hoppin’.
  • If you’ve ignored Twitter up until now, you may want to reconsider for a chance to read HalfPintIngalls.  Its author writes in the voice of Laura Ingalls Wilder, with her tongue stuffed firmly in her cheek.  It’s snarky, clever, and has posts like this, from Jan 1st:

In New York the ball drops at midnight. In De Smet the blacksmith drops his anvil from the feed store hayloft. It’s really quite a sight!

  • The local drug, Stephen’s Gourmet Hot Cocoa, has come out with a Peanut Butter Cup flavor this year.  It has chopped up bits of peanut butter cups in the cocoa mix.  This means that when you are finished sipping it down, you are left with an incredible salty-sweet layer of peanut butter sludge at the bottom of your cup. 
  • The Baby Name Wizard Blog.  No, I’m not expecting, but these little tidbits on the history and context of baby names is nerdy-cool fascinating.
  • Jeffrey has requested that I write the word Yipe! in extra-large font, and I just realized that I haven’t the foggiest clue how to do that in WordPress.  He then commanded that I stop blogging and turn on a game for him.  “Come on Mom!  DOWNLOG me!” 
  • Americabowl.net.  I read about this in The New Yorker.  It puts all 44 American presidents up against all 44 Super Bowls in the weirdest, funniest mashup of history I’ve seen in a while.  (So far the Presidents are up by three points!)
  • My family had our portraits taken by a local photographer over the holidays.  Check out the sweet results:

  • And lastly, for those of you who are mighty sick of New Moon, I present the best Collie dog with human lips I’ve ever seen:

Comparative Religion

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Jeffrey and Eleanor came out of Primary (our church’s version of Sunday School) eager to show off the pictures they had made:

Eleanor’s is on top, if you couldn’t guess from the pink.  She says it’s a picture of her and Jesus holding hands.  (Awwww.)  This is the first time I’ve seen her draw hearts, so I was duly impressed.  Also note the generous bellybuttons in both figures.  Eleanor always puts bellybuttons in her pictures of people, “because,” she says, “you would look really weird if you didn’t have one.”  True that.

Jeffrey’s drawing is on the bottom.  I couldn’t figure out what it was, so I asked him for a description. 

“It’s the cycle of Jesus’ life,” he explained.  “First he was born in a temple, here,” (he pointed to the big grey building which does indeed look like a temple) “and then he spoke to Joseph Smith, who is holding a sign that says ‘REPENT REPENT REPENT.’  Then he died, and a big volcano,” (pointing to the big red triangle) “erupted and sent him off into heaven” (the cloudlike scribble).  “Then it begins all over again.”

Wow. 

Although I’m sure that Jeffrey knows that Christ was born in a manger in Bethlehem, etc. (for crying out loud, Christmas was just LAST MONTH), I would give good money to have a printout of what goes on in Jeffrey’s brain during Sharing Time.  I think he has a tendency to embellish whatever he’s learning about with his own imaginative prowess.  He’s got reincarnation, Evangelicalism, and possibly volcano worship all blended together there.  It’s rare that Jeffrey spends time drawing — he really didn’t begin making representational pictures until almost the end of kindergarten — so I was pretty excited about this.  Look at the arrows!  Cool!

Snow Days

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Remember how Brian made snow sculptures of dinosaurs last year?  Well, this year he’s doing large African mammals.

Behold the mighty lion!  It is seated among the remains of the elephant sculpture he made a few weeks ago.  Like it’s feasting on its carcass or something.  Mmm!

And the thing de resistance — a towering giraffe!  There are no structural supports inside of it.  All snow, all the way through. 

He had to use a ladder to build up the neck, and the head fell off twice before he found one that stuck.  I especially like the way it looks as if it were nibbling on the tree. 

Today the snow was wet once more, and Brian made a snowrilla.  There’s no word on whether or not it plans to snatch up Eleanor and climb a skyscraper.

Initially, we couldn’t decide if the yard need this gorilla, or a snow rhino.  I argued that a rhino would fall apart too quickly (big heavy head) whereas Brian said a gorilla wasn’t visually interesting.  In the middle of this discussion, Jeffrey scampered through the room and shouted, “Why not a rhinocerous with a gorilla riding on TOP of it?”  But Brian asserted creative control over the project.

Just like the dinosaurs, the snow critters are causing a lot of slowed traffic and picture-taking on our street.  Almost every day my work in our front room is interrupted by some sort of flash going off.  But what we’re really excited about is that other kids in the neighborhood have begun building their own snow creations.  The two girls who helped us with the elephants have made a little bear and duck in their yard, and the family around the corner have constructed a big robot and a series of redrock-inspired arches.  Yesss! 

What’s really amazing is that both of these creatures are still standing; it’s been so cold that they haven’t melted (although the giraffe’s ears are looking a little thin, and its legs grow more lopsided by the day).

We also hosted a sledding party last week, attended by Brian’s parents and two of his siblings.  The kids adored bossing around their aunts and uncles, dictating who got to go down the big hill with them.  Grandpa even pulled Eleanor back up the hill (can you tell they are the only grandchildren on that side of the family?).

The weather was sunny and warm, but the snow was packed down hard, making for a perfect sledding day.  Afterwards, we made ultra-thick hot chocolate and homemade doughnuts.  Mmmmm, delish!