Newbery Books

Adri's Newbery books 

 

As I’ve previously discussed, books and reading, both fiction and non-fiction, has always been a big part of my life and it was for Adrianna as well. One of the things I would collect for her were Newbery Medal books.

This award has been given annually by the Association for Library Service to Children to the author of “the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children” since 1922. The other big award for children’s literature is the Caldecott Medal which is awarded annually for the most distinguished picture book, and together these are the most prestigious awards for children’s books in the US.

Ever since she was born, I’d hunt through the stacks of children’s books at Half Price Books across the country, at first in Austin but later in Dallas, San Antonio, Madison, Wisconsin… anywhere where there were books, I’d be searching with my printed-out list of Newbery books and cross them off as I found them for her. It was a never-ending treasure hunt as those who scour used book stores in a similar manner can surely relate.

Later, when I actually worked at HPB it was almost like cheating, because I’d get to see all the books even before they were sorted, priced, and shelved as they came through the buy area. Plus, I got a 50% discount. It sort of took the fun out of the hunt… but only sort of.

The thrill of the hunt was a secondary to actually sharing them with Adri, of course. Before she could read, I’d read them to her, and later she’d devour them herself. There were other great books that were not Newberys, obviously, such as the entire oeuvres of Judy Blume, Louise Fitzhugh, and countless others, and we enjoyed those books as well, but you could never go wrong with blindly buying a Newbery. The ALSC knew what they were doing.

Once Adri was about 13 or 14, however, I started to slow down. In the end I’d found 56 Newberys for her, which was over 70% of all Newbery books extant at that time.

I had built her a desk/hutch/bookcase when she was about eight which had three adjustable shelves as well as a fold-down door that served as writing surface. She loved it and always wanted to bring it over to her apartment for the boys, but there was never room. I put all the Newbery books on those shelves for her, as well as some of the other special books and of course “Where the Wild Things Are” front and center.

When we purchased our house almost twenty years ago, we made one of the bedrooms hers, and the bookcase/desk lived in a corner. Years later when we converted her room to a guest room, the bookcase remained, waiting for a time when Adrianna would have room for it in her own house. That of course never happened, but now that room has many remembrances of Adri, the collection of Newberys on her desk as well as an entire wall of photos of her with her boys.

I took this picture today of the Newberys, a gloomy overcast rainy morning that is brightened up just a bit by all the spines of the volumes on the shelves and memories of our time together reading them. Books that were the pinnacle of children’s literature the year they were released. Books that brought joy to my daughter as well as myself. Books that live on for others even though she does not… yet another melancholy happy-sad reminder of my daughter.

Bedtime Reading

Books always were a major part of my life, the importance of reading always stressed when I was growing up not by lecturing but by modeling. Books were everywhere, shelves full of volumes that provided an escape to other worlds and cultures before the easy access to the internet we all have now.

My grandmother was an elementary school librarian, and she spend hours reading to me when I was young, favorites being the Curious George oeuvre.

We all had our own library card, and as soon as I was able I’d ride my bike to one of the local public library branches in my village after school and spend hours in the stacks before riding home again in the quickly approaching dark.

I’d unpack the books in my room and sit in my comfy chair for hours reading while listening to music, so much so that I wore out the carpet where my feet touched in front of the rocker that was my cockpit to other worlds.

When Adrianna was born, naturally reading was an important activity for her, and one that we shared together from the moment she could hold her head up on her own. When she was an infant and toddler, we’d read board books to her while she sat in our lap, her eyes bright with curiosity, taking in all the images from the page and listening intently to the words as we read them aloud to her.

Often, especially after repeated readings she’d reach out to the page to turn in to one that pleased her more, and we’d make a game of looking for otherwise unnoticed images and scenes in the background. I’d ask her questions about what we were looking at: colors, animal names, counting, whatever. She’d smile and laugh and want to immediately start from the beginning the moment the final page was turned.

When she was a bit older, four five six or seven, we’d read together as I attempted to lay her down for bed to transition to an activity she never wanted: the end of the day and bedtime. Here I’d have her sound out a word or two, and we’d talk in a bit more complexity about the plot with lots of “why” questions initiated by both of us.  These would be the larger picture books, so often with wonderful and amazing Caldecott Award winning illustrations.

During this time I’d often find her reading some of these books to Simba, her cat, or one of her dolls, or a meeting of several Barbies hanging out on her bed.

Later, when she was ten eleven or twelve the bedtime ritual would end with reading a chapter book, covering a chapter (and occasionally two) each night before finally turning out the light. Often during this era we’d take turns reading, depending on how tired she was, or how tired she was willing to admit she was. We’d save longer books for the summer, and we’d portion the pages out so the book would span her entire time with me.

Besides the bedtime reading of this era, she’d also plow through dozens of others that she had checked out using her Dallas library card. We’d go to the library at least twice a week a turnover of usually a have dozen or so books each time. Sometimes she’d be partaking in some summer reading program and receive stamp after stamp for each book read and we’d feast on the small personal pan pizza and Pizza Hut that was the most common reward, but usually she’d just read to read.

We read hundreds and hundreds of books together in this manner, but three stand out, one from each “era.”

1. Board book from infant/toddler era:

I am a Bunny, illustrated by Richard Scarry, written by Ole Risom

This was one of if not the first we’d read to her, a short little tale about Nicolas the Bunny with wonderful whimsical illustrations by Scarry. We read it so often the words were and are still seared into my brain. It began:

“I am a bunny. My name is Nicolas. I live in a hollow tree.”

Every page would have colorful illustrations, many depicting the different seasons, full of images to look at and marvel at. One of her favorite pages showed dozens and dozens of butterflies, and Adri would always linger here at all the beautiful colors.

Each page would have Nicolas somewhere, so the ritual would become me asking Adri after the page had been read, “Where’s the bunny?”, and then I’d wait for her to locate Nicolas and point to him.

The story concluded in winter:

“When winter comes, I watch the snow falling from the sky. Then I curl up in my hollow tree and dream about spring,” and she’d point to Nicolas as he drifted into dreamland.

2. Picture books, 4 – 7 years

Where the Wild Things Are, written and illustrated by Maurice Sendak

This book probably needs no introduction. It was a favorite of mine when I was that age, and it quickly became a favorite of Adri’s as well. We’d read it at bedtime, close the back cover, and then read it again. Often, we’d read it three times.

We loved Max. We loved his wolf suit. We loved the wild things and how they "roared their terrible roars and gnashed their terrible teeth and rolled their terrible eyes and showed their terrible claws," and we loved how Sendak’s illustrations were full of whimsy and character. Even during all their "terrible" behavior, the beasts would appear smiling and unthreatening.

In the middle of the book there are three facing pages with no text, just great illustrations of the “wild rumpus” that Max and the beasts partake in. Adri loved the word “rumpus” here, and over the course of those pages we’d sing a song, nonsense syllables to the tune of “Tequila” (for some reason.) At one point we’d point out the bare human feet on one of the beasts and instead of shouting “Tequila!” we’d say, “I’ve got smelly feet!”

“Ba DUM ba da DUM da DUM dum… Ba DUM da da DUM da DUM… I’ve got smelly feet!”

I guess you had to be there.

And when Max finally returned home and found his supper waiting for him, we’d both say in unison,

“…and it was still hot.”

We couldn’t get enough of Sendak’s works and images. I still can’t.

A few years ago while working at Half Price Books I came across a beat-up copy of Where the Wild Things Are in the trash in the buy area, and I rescued it out of nostalgia for Adri's childhood as well as my own, and upon inspection discovered that it was inscribed by Sendak on the title page. I had it priced appropriately and immediately purchased it for Adri, planning on giving it to her when she was older with her own kids. I first wanted to get a dust jacket for it, but never did, and I never did give it to her. Time just slipped by when I wasn’t noticing. It’s a big regret.

3. Chapter books, 7 -10

Harriet the Spy, written and illustrated by Louise Fitzhugh

We read this wonderful book about eleven-year-old Harriet, a writer-in-training who keeps copious notebooks of observations of the neighborhood around her. The notebook eventually gets stolen, and Harriet uses various spy gadgets and techniques to get back at the kids who took her notebook.

Harriet is an outsider who has some close friends, who loves to write and is a keen observer of human behavior. Harriet as well as those of us reading this book learn the power of words, which can both hurt and heal.

We spent the entire summer reading this one when she was eight. She was happy to learn that keeping notebooks and such was not such an odd thing peculiar to just her, and she loved all the gadgets Harriet used, or “utensils” as Adri called them.

After we finished, we learned that a movie staring Michelle Trachtenberg was about to be released, and we of course had to go see it. As is often the case, the film did not capture or create the same kind of magic that reading the book together had over the course of that summer.

During the subsequent summer we read two follow ups, “Sport” and “The Long Secret,” but nothing could match the magic of the original.

...

I got other books for Adri that I’d give to her as Christmas and birthday presents, always trying to seek out the current and former Newbery Award winners which were almost always uniformly terrific. These included From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, It’s Like This, Cat, The View from Saturday, Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret, Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, Summer of the Swans, and countless others.

Most of these she’d read on her own, and she loved them almost as much as I loved that she loved them, but the three I mention here will always represent and remind me of a special part of my daughter and her memory, of her life and our moments together, when the day had ended and the sun had set as we quietly bonded over words before falling asleep with hopeful dreams of another tomorrow to follow. 

 

"Love You Forever"

"Love You Forever" was always and will remain the most heartbreaking read in children's literature. I could never get through it then when she was little, and let's just say that the passage of time and events haven't softened its blow.

Read to countless children by countless caregivers since 1986, including, naturally, both her mother and me, independently.  It is almost borderline cliché at this point, of course, but that's for a reason. Universal themes often become this.

I know it's supposed to be uplifting, but it was almost too melancholy even then. All life eventually ends in loss, but providing acceptance and love along the way is all we have to make the ride as bearable as possible. 

Stacy's Heart

Background Information

So today I finally finished Stacy's Heart by one Cary Rainey. (He doesn't really have a blog per se, so I'll link to this LJ instead.) Even though I purchased this book when it was first published in 2001, and even though my lovely wife read it a couple of weeks after we received it, I didn't get around to reading it until about a week ago. Why did it take me so long to read a book published six years ago, you ask? I could say that I was an extremely slow reader, but that wouldn't be true. I could say that I'm a procrastinator. Yeah, that's true, but not the point, here. Truth be told, I was afraid to read it. I "know" and like the author, and I was afraid to read it and discover I didn't like it.

See, I gathered from Cary (may I call him Cary?) and others that this book was in the style of a Stephen King novel, and that sent red flags or smoke signals or little beeps... or whatever other metaphorical warning signs one cares to imagine... in my direction. This was for two reasons, really:

1. I don't like Stephen King novels ("horrors!", I can hear you thinking right now, followed by "pardon the pun". I know it's hard to believe, but it's true... that I don't like King, not that I can hear your thoughts). I appreciate King's writing and realize he's good at what he does, it's just not my cup of tea. I still read his stuff, however, and enjoy them to a certain extent. No, it's just not number 1 that worried me, but rather that combined with

2. So here's this unpublished novelist guy who's written a book that might be attempting something in the style of King. Now, imagine writing void of any real talent or style that strives to be like Stephen King. I don't know about you, but I imagine something that just gloms onto the violence and gore at the expense of real writing, and who wants to read 500 pages of descriptive blood and guts with no story, characterization, pace, style, or talent. Yuck. Especially considering #1 above, the fact that I'm not too keen on blood and guts and horror fiction even when it's done well.

So I was afraid to read Stacy's Heart out of fear of disappointment and thus put it off for six years. To cut to the chase (yeah, I know, it's a bit late for that already), I worried for nothing. I really enjoyed the book. It's not void of talent or style, and even if you took out the vampires and violence, you'd still have a pretty good tale in the vein of Thomas Wolfe's You Can't Go Home Again. And, truth be told, perhaps a few scenes involving stakes through the hearts of the undead would have livened up Wolfe's book a bit. He could have called it then Look Homeward, Demon or something... but I digress.

Plot/What The Hell Happened?

In a nutshell, Stacy's Heart is basically the story of Kyle Crader, successful author now living in beautiful southern California, who has to reluctantly come back to his Alabama hometown in order to promote a movie based on his wildly successful first book, a satirical novel that pilloried his hometown and is both loved or hated for all the wrong reasons. The return dredges up memories of the unrequited love which was at the heart of his self-induced exile (or escape) in the first place.

Oh yeah, and there's some vampires running amok, too.

If you insist on a non-nutshell version and don't care about spoilers, continue reading. Else, jump to the next section. You'll be glad you did.

At the insistence of his publisher and agent, Kyle returns to his home of Birmingham, Alabama, to promote the opening of the film Coming Down Fast based on his best seller by the same name. Some have used this movie and book as an excuse for a series of racist crimes that have occurred, and Kyle finds himself thus being harassed by local politicians and lawmen. He puts up with this because he wants to see Stacy again. He'd been in love with Stacy during high school, but never got around to telling her how he felt. Then, on graduation night, he left Birmingham in his dust for places west after discovering that his buddy Darren and Stacy were kadoodling.

Now, after his return, he hooks up with Stacy again, along with some of his other boyhood friends, all of whom would be right at home in the basement of that kid in The Seventies Show. Still, he can't tell Stacy how he really feels. While in Birmingham he becomes intrigued with Lacy, who evidently is a cutter, someone who gets erotic pleasure from being cut or cutting. Kyle begins his new book using this cutting fetish as his main theme. It turns out that most of these cutters are actually vampires, vampires that are sick and tired of hiding in the shadows. They want to be out in the open. They want to rule over humans. And, apparently, they want Kyle to be their leader. Kyle isn't too keen on the idea, and they try to use Stacy in order to get him to change his mind. Kyle battles these vampires, killing several with the help of some wolves, some sharp sticks, gasoline, and his wits. However, in the end The Big Daddy Vampire kills Stacy, and Kyle does become, albeit unwillingly, a card-carrying member of the undead.

Upon his return to Los Angeles, however, he kills himself by self-stakeification, after first sending off the new completed manuscript to his publisher.

End Scene.

General Musings, or, Hmm This Is Interesting

The book within the book, or rather the book within the book that's already written and is the basis of the movie within the book, is called Coming Down Fast. This book doesn't seem to be very autobiographical to Kyle Crader's life in Birmingham. Instead, it seems to have taken a page from Charles Manson, who was trying to use the Tate/La Bianca murders in order to incite a race war in the United States. Manson wanted the murders to be blamed on "The Blacks" and hoped "The Whites" would rise up in anger, causing an apocryphal race war that would bring about the End Times. Manson believed The Beatles had predicted and were encouraging this through songs such as "Helter Skelter", from which one assumes Kyle Crader gets his book's title. The unintended consequences of this book are a series of race related crimes across America. The racists love Crader and the book, viewing it as a sort of "how-to" manual, whereas the authoritarians who miss the satire intended overreact in the form of censorship and even try to hold Crader legally responsible for the various hate crimes that follow in the book and movie's wake.

There's also a second book-within-the-book; this is the follow up book to Coming Down Fast called The Cutters, that Kyle is working on during his downtime in Stacy's Heart. This book seems more autobiographical, for Kyle seems to more directly deal with his high school relationship with Stacy and their mutual friend Darren . This book is ostensibly about a group of people who derive erotic pleasure from cutting each other, but in reality in appears to be a thinly-veiled account of that night senior year when Kyle saw Darren and Stacy hooking up, and the ramifications that caused.

When you add the fact that the real author, Cary Rainey, also grew up in Birmingham, also wrote a book about his home town, and also left for California, you're presented with a book within a book within a book within, I think, still another book? It's sort of like a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma, swallowed whole by a vampire. Or something.

Okay Fine. But Did You Like It Or Not?

The book was more character-driven that I'd expected. Minor characters, like for example the truck stop short order cook and the man running the homeless shelter, to name just two, come alive on the page and are more than just afterthoughts. Kyle's various fuck-up friends from high school are other examples. They fleshed out the story and made it more than the series of gruesome killings that it could have been. You believe that they could be real people. Again, lesser writers would skimp on these details in their hurry to get to the scene where someone gets their face blown off. In this I was pleasantly surprised. And when he did get to the violent scenes, A. Cary Rainey comes through with flying colors, creating the ballet of blood and mayhem that is the hallmark of such prose. Even if I'm not into that, I "know what I like" as the boorish art critics say.

Furthermore, the flashback structure, going back and forth from the present to the past, was used well and helped the pace a bit, though I think there's room for some improvement in this area. Still, Mr. Rainey (I think I can call him that), at least tried; again, more amateurish writers would have just slapped everything down in a chronological manner, and if they addressed Kyle's past at all it would have simply been a few perfunctory paragraphs at the beginning. The back and forth helps create the tension, at least the non-vampire-related tension. There's not only the back and forth between present and past, but also the back and forth between dream and reality. Cary does a good job keeping us guessing at which is which, too.

He uses music to set the mood, too, and in a manner that's a lot cheaper than the way Stephen King does it. (He can simply state that "Living After Midnight" was playing on the car stereo; by not quoting lyrics, no money has to change hands with the music publishers. Etc). It's almost cliched to invoke musical references in horror fiction, but screw it. I like it in general and liked it here.

So yes. I liked it. A lot, actually, and that surprised me.


P.S. One Robert Lieberman did a great job on the cover, too.

Little House In The Red Station Wagon

One summer I saw half of America backwards. A greater poriton of the western United States receded from me at about 60 mph as I read the entire Laura Ingalls Wilder oeuvre from the rear-facing jump seat of a red station wagon.

We started out from Chicago. I grabbed my sister's box set of Little House books so I'd have something to read. By the time we got to Mount Rushmore I'd finished Little House In The Big Woods. The Four Stone presidents were fine and all, but I was disappointed at how small they looked from the observation deck; on TV and the movies they always appeared much bigger.

Deadwood, South Dakota, however, was an interesting town. Hey, is that the same Deadwood as the TV show? Either way, it had the grave site of some famous Western outlaw or hero, I forget who now. Maybe Wild Bill Hickcock? Someone like that. We went to a Safeway there and got a bunch of grapes which we ate in the town square as I started Little House On The Prairie.

Back in the jump seat, I skipped Farmer Boy because I didn't want to leave the Ingalls family and started On The Banks Of Plum Creek. That got me through most of Montana and Wyoming, at which point we stopped at Yellowstone National Park. Eh. We saw Old Faithful, and again I was not impressed. Much ado about nothing, really, yet there we sat with about 20 other people waiting for a bit of water to issue forth. Next.

I was well into By The Shores Of Silver Lake when we got to San Francisco. This was the middle of the summer, and it was like 48 degrees. We'd crossed the Golden Gate Bridge in the fog, and thus I saw nothing of the bay or bridge. Laura was beginning to annoy me, however. Why couldn't she go blind? Oh well.

I enjoyed Fisherman's Wharf, and even bought a magic trick at a shop there (The Pull Apart Dove Box Vanish... it took almost half of the money I'd budgeted for the trip, but no matter). There was a lock-picking set, too, but it was too expensive ($20) so I had to pass. All the seafood looked great, but of course my step dad is even cheaper than me, so we didn't get to try any of it.

A few hundred miles and The Long Winter later, we were in Los Angeles, or rather Anaheim, where we finally got to sleep in real beds at the home of our uncle and aunt. I'd never heard of Anaheim before outside of people on game shows who were occasionally from there. Everyone was from some California town on game shows when I was growing up in the 1970s. I used to envy Californians because they got to go on game shows.

While there my mom, dad, and I also went to Universal Studios while my sister chose to go to the beach with my cousins. To this day she thinks she was gyped. She whines about these things, but did she ever have to help paw in the wheat fields or carry heavy pails of water to maw so she could make the morning biscuits like Laura did? No. So shaddup.

Back in the jump seat, we were off to San Diego as I started Little Town On The Prairie. The Ingalls family were really starting to wear thin on me by this point, but I carried on. San Diego had nothing really to offer other than Sea World, so off we went to view various aquatic mammals debasing themselves for a few pieces of herring. However, we did get to go to MEXICO while we were there (It was only later that I realized that Tijuana hardly counts as Mexico). I bought a really tasteful leather belt there; it wasn't gaudy or anything. Really.

We drove through Needles, California when it was 117 degrees Fahrenheit, and we had no air conditioning. But I didn't mind; after all, the folk who lived in the Little Town on the Prairie didn't have AC, either. I finished that book as we got to the Grand Canyon.

The Grand Canyon? Eh. Again, TV and movies had built it up in my mind. I base most things on what I learned on TV... usually The Dick Van Dyke Show, but that's a post for another day. For the Grand Canyon, however, it was of course The Brady Bunch. And guess what? We didn't get to ride down into the canyon on donkeys. This disappointed me to no end. I at least wanted to throw a rock into the big hole, but I couldn't as I seem to remember signs saying specifically that you couldn't do this. The Grand Canyon hates 11 year old boys.

I read most of These Happy Golden Years and The First Four Years as I saw New Mexico, Texas, Arkansas, and southern Illinois recede from me during the next few long days. I didn't read all of these last two, however, since the covers made them look dull and "girlie". I wanted to read about making your own smoke house, not about early marriage life. Who needs that?

We finally got home and I put the Little House books back in my sister's room. Someday I'll have to read Farmer Boy, but it won't be the same if I'm not reading it while traveling backwards in a station wagon.

McMurtry, Redux

BTW, McMurtry just got nominated for an Oscar, for the screenplay for "Brokeback Mountain." Suddenly I sort of want to see this film.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Larry McMurtry's Opening Lines.

Amazon has a nifty feature for most of its book listings: You can see the opening line of the given novel. I like this, as you can quite often at least get a taste of the author's style and tone. To me, this is never more evident than in the works of Larry McMurtry. He excels at the opening line, the line that sets the stage and makes you want to read more. Plus, most of his opening lines are like little Clift's Notes that sum up the whole book, at least in spirit.

Some examples:

From Lonesome Dove:

When Augustus came out on the porch the blue pigs were eating a rattlesnake.

Now come on. I defy you to read that and not want to read another and another. Even if, like me, you normally don't like the Western genre.

Leaving Cheyenne:

When I woke up Dad was standing by the bed shaking my foot.

From The Last Picture Show:

Sometimes Sonny felt like he was the only human creature in the town.

Not that original, perhaps, but this tells you how the characters in this book will speak and think.

Cadillac Jack:

Boog warned me about Washington, but until I saw the rich lady set her pugs on the dinner table, I didn't take him seriously.

Typical McMurtry, creating an outlandish visual right off the bat. See "Lonesome Dove".

Somebody's Darling:

"All I've learned about women is that whatever it is they want it's what I don't have," I said, to see what kind of rise it would get.

Terms Of Endearment:

"The success of a marriage invariably depends on the woman," Mrs. Greenway said.

Critics often praise McMurtry for his depiction of women. Of course, most of critics are male, so who knows...


Moving On:

Patsy sat by herself at the beginning of the evening, eating a melted Hershey bar.

How can you not already be in love with Patsy? I ask you.

Then you have my favorite McMurty book, and one of my top 10 favorite novels period, All My Friends Are Going To Be Strangers. I'll cheat a bit with this one and give the first paragraph:

I think I fell in love with Sally while she was eating breakfast, the first morning we were together. Either I did it then or I did it a little earlier the same morning, watching her stretch. I had gone up to Austin to waste time and eat Mexican food and ended up getting invited to a party at a professor's house. He was a dapper little English sociologist with a great lust for his students-- he referred to girls as fuckists, a term I had never heard. Several times during the evening he came over to me and pointed at a girl and said, "There's a great little fuckist for you, my boy."

The first sentence is pretty good, but the entire paragraph, the first thing I'd ever read by McMurtry, totally sold me. Not to mention the title of the book itself, which I just love. The fact that some of it took place in Austin didn't hurt, either (though more takes place in San Francisco and Houston).

Compare this to the opening sentence of the book Katiemoo is currently reading, if you can believe her blog: Bret Easton Ellis's Less Than Zero:

People are afraid to merge on freeways in Los Angeles.

See, I read this book about the same time I read "All My Friends" (1986 or so). Though I liked both books, one hooked me right away and told me what to expect; the other didn't. I guess I'm a sucker for first impressions.