the more they keep changing and changing and changing. So, upon the most helpful advice of Alice, I have moved my blog to typepad. If that link doesn't work, you can just go to thediamondinthewindow.typepad.com
I'll be happy to see you there!
Friday, April 3, 2009
Thursday, April 2, 2009
They're Not on Your Side
So, a coworker of mine wrote a children's book, and he generously gave me a copy to see if it would make sense to talk about here. It looked sweet, and I dutifully took it home, and set it down with my bag and shoes in the entry hall.
Little did I know.
The book is a neatly flipped echo of the adult refrain, "But we're doing this for you!" For instance, the narrator, an older sister who is offering tips to a younger sibling, suggests, "You can help Mom and Dad keep the tub clean by sloshing the water around while you're playing. You can also wash the floor by not using a towel when you get out." And so on.
I wasn't sure Child No. 2 would get it. This despite the thrilled fascination that Child No. 1 (and all other children who have entered my house) have shown this little gem:
and the one she took home from the library the following week:
But still, would Child No. 2, who is only 7 and not quite as...diabolical as Child No. 1, get the joke?
Well, yes. And by that I mean, really yes. YES. She read it over and over, just like Child No. 1 with How to Bug Your Parents. She read it through dinner, she read it with her playmate, they read it aloud to each other. They laughed at the parents' boring clothes, their wet bathroom floor, their being asked over and over for a puppy. Later that night, when she was in the bathtub, she whispered, "Those kids were pretty mean, right?" with a big, happy smile.
"Well," I said, "not exactly—"
"Yeah, mean," she answered herself ruminatively, ignoring me. She smiled again. I know she wasn't hatching any clear plan, it was more like she got a glimpse of a possibility: that she had power she hadn't quite fully understood before. You could see the wheels turning. It was...unsettling. But kind of cool.
What they're reading now
Child No. 1: The Eye of the Crow
Child No. 2: See above.
Little did I know.
The book is a neatly flipped echo of the adult refrain, "But we're doing this for you!" For instance, the narrator, an older sister who is offering tips to a younger sibling, suggests, "You can help Mom and Dad keep the tub clean by sloshing the water around while you're playing. You can also wash the floor by not using a towel when you get out." And so on.
I wasn't sure Child No. 2 would get it. This despite the thrilled fascination that Child No. 1 (and all other children who have entered my house) have shown this little gem:
and the one she took home from the library the following week:
But still, would Child No. 2, who is only 7 and not quite as...diabolical as Child No. 1, get the joke?
Well, yes. And by that I mean, really yes. YES. She read it over and over, just like Child No. 1 with How to Bug Your Parents. She read it through dinner, she read it with her playmate, they read it aloud to each other. They laughed at the parents' boring clothes, their wet bathroom floor, their being asked over and over for a puppy. Later that night, when she was in the bathtub, she whispered, "Those kids were pretty mean, right?" with a big, happy smile.
"Well," I said, "not exactly—"
"Yeah, mean," she answered herself ruminatively, ignoring me. She smiled again. I know she wasn't hatching any clear plan, it was more like she got a glimpse of a possibility: that she had power she hadn't quite fully understood before. You could see the wheels turning. It was...unsettling. But kind of cool.
What they're reading now
Child No. 1: The Eye of the Crow
Child No. 2: See above.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Censorship!
While there are, of course, many, many types of readers in the world, the ones whom I am concerned with today divide into two camps: those who like scary books, and those who won't touch them.
Child No. 2 finds the plot stress of All of a Kind Family—will the children eat the corned beef that wasn't meant for them?!—almost beyond bearing, and will writhe in an agony of terror: "It's not their corned beef and they're eating it! Oh, tell me what's going to happen! Tell me what's going to happen! Oh, stop reading, I can't, I can't!"
Child No. 1 will happily read through the twists and turns of any number of monster, dragon, and magic books, some of which get really scary: Inkheart, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and so on.
I myself am now rereading 'Salem's Lot, which is probably one of the scariest books I've ever read. Reading it, for me, is terrifying but also in some ways a tonic: the great fear (and do understand that it's not that they don't scare me, I am terrified, but at least it takes my mind off other things) is transporting. It takes me away from other more uncomfortably real, worries. But, as so often happens, Child No. 1 espied my book.
Now, we have made some decisions at our house. One was that Child No. 1 was to be allowed free reign over the books in the house.
All of them.
I came to this, following an interesting discussion with the author Charles Slack, who told me that one of the joys and motivations for his writing life was his sense of his parents' bookshelves as this place of wonder and possibility, his own private place to discover. I worried, though, that Child No. 1, an extremely early and avid reader, would read things that her mind, while very sharp, could not quite process. But talking to others, and thinking it through, I came to believe that whatever she couldn't quite process would just sort of float away, unprocessed, filed under: to be understood later.
But when I saw Child No. 1 looking interestedly at the back cover of 'Salem's Lot, I just said NO.
No, that book is way too scary. No, you may not read it. No, you will not be able to just scoot past the things that you don't understand, because you will understand them all and THEY WILL TERRIFY YOU.
I explained this in as low-key and rational a way as I could. But I know that, however much I believe that children should have a world of possibility open to them, that books themselves cannot do any real harm, I am going to keep a very close watch on that book. And when I finish it, it is leaving the house.
This is censorship, isn't it? But this book scared me so much when I read it at 15, that I slept with the covers pulled high around my neck for...well, let's just say for a long time. I'm trying for benevolent censorship. But is there such a thing? What do you think?
What they're reading now
Child No. 1: Heir Apparent
Child No. 2: These Happy Golden Years
Child No. 2 finds the plot stress of All of a Kind Family—will the children eat the corned beef that wasn't meant for them?!—almost beyond bearing, and will writhe in an agony of terror: "It's not their corned beef and they're eating it! Oh, tell me what's going to happen! Tell me what's going to happen! Oh, stop reading, I can't, I can't!"
Child No. 1 will happily read through the twists and turns of any number of monster, dragon, and magic books, some of which get really scary: Inkheart, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and so on.
I myself am now rereading 'Salem's Lot, which is probably one of the scariest books I've ever read. Reading it, for me, is terrifying but also in some ways a tonic: the great fear (and do understand that it's not that they don't scare me, I am terrified, but at least it takes my mind off other things) is transporting. It takes me away from other more uncomfortably real, worries. But, as so often happens, Child No. 1 espied my book.
Now, we have made some decisions at our house. One was that Child No. 1 was to be allowed free reign over the books in the house.
All of them.
I came to this, following an interesting discussion with the author Charles Slack, who told me that one of the joys and motivations for his writing life was his sense of his parents' bookshelves as this place of wonder and possibility, his own private place to discover. I worried, though, that Child No. 1, an extremely early and avid reader, would read things that her mind, while very sharp, could not quite process. But talking to others, and thinking it through, I came to believe that whatever she couldn't quite process would just sort of float away, unprocessed, filed under: to be understood later.
But when I saw Child No. 1 looking interestedly at the back cover of 'Salem's Lot, I just said NO.
No, that book is way too scary. No, you may not read it. No, you will not be able to just scoot past the things that you don't understand, because you will understand them all and THEY WILL TERRIFY YOU.
I explained this in as low-key and rational a way as I could. But I know that, however much I believe that children should have a world of possibility open to them, that books themselves cannot do any real harm, I am going to keep a very close watch on that book. And when I finish it, it is leaving the house.
This is censorship, isn't it? But this book scared me so much when I read it at 15, that I slept with the covers pulled high around my neck for...well, let's just say for a long time. I'm trying for benevolent censorship. But is there such a thing? What do you think?
What they're reading now
Child No. 1: Heir Apparent
Child No. 2: These Happy Golden Years
Sunday, March 29, 2009
The Other Side
One of the great treats of living with a particularly voracious reader, like Child No. 1, is that she brings home a really wide variety of books. She will read almost anything (provided I don't push it toward her too much), and this has brought both of us toward that great nation of previously unknown (to me) books: Boy Books.
I know, I know, they're not really boy books. I mean, just because a book has a main character of one specific gender, does that have to mean that only people of that same gender will like/understand/read that book? And isn't a great book great in its humanity? There aren't boy's and girl's painters, or sculptors, or musicians? Or if there are, can't we all be bigger than that, too?
I hope so. But it's not exactly how I have found the world to be.
Growing up as one of three sisters, the books that came my way were often handed down by an older sister who was very interested in Little Women, Ann of Green Gables, and so on. These are worthy books. But they have in common that very excellent and familiar narrator of young fiction: the bookish girl. Now, I am a HUGE fan of the bookish girls in the world, but being a bookish girl, reading about bookish girls, who themselves think about other bookish girls, can be...limiting. So imagine my fascination when Child No. 1 came home with this:
I thought, at first, that the title, and thus the book, was the horrified voice of a girl. But, seeing as the house was a terrible mess and I had lots of things to do and work worries to attend to, I decided instead to sit down on the couch and read it. All of it. And it is excellent.
It's (in some ways) the story of Bradley Chalkers, a boy who is everything that girls fear about boys: a bully, gross, clueless, mean, angry, large, overwhelming. In no way is he an everyman; he is troubled and difficult and committed to being BAD. But this is his book and holds tight both to his powerful difficulties and his humanity, never sacrificing one for the other. It never tries to make him "normal" or easy. Its eponymous scene allowed me that rare thing: a moment of crystallizing insight into just how massive and ridiculous the divide between the genders is. How scary we look to them, how scary they look to us. It made me so happy to see that my girl might have the opportunity to see a boy depicted this way, to have a glimpse inside one boy's head, and know that there really is a person there.
And this is just one. A whole slew of amazing books seem to have appeared between my being a child and my having one. I will try to post more about them here.
I know, I know, they're not really boy books. I mean, just because a book has a main character of one specific gender, does that have to mean that only people of that same gender will like/understand/read that book? And isn't a great book great in its humanity? There aren't boy's and girl's painters, or sculptors, or musicians? Or if there are, can't we all be bigger than that, too?
I hope so. But it's not exactly how I have found the world to be.
Growing up as one of three sisters, the books that came my way were often handed down by an older sister who was very interested in Little Women, Ann of Green Gables, and so on. These are worthy books. But they have in common that very excellent and familiar narrator of young fiction: the bookish girl. Now, I am a HUGE fan of the bookish girls in the world, but being a bookish girl, reading about bookish girls, who themselves think about other bookish girls, can be...limiting. So imagine my fascination when Child No. 1 came home with this:
I thought, at first, that the title, and thus the book, was the horrified voice of a girl. But, seeing as the house was a terrible mess and I had lots of things to do and work worries to attend to, I decided instead to sit down on the couch and read it. All of it. And it is excellent.It's (in some ways) the story of Bradley Chalkers, a boy who is everything that girls fear about boys: a bully, gross, clueless, mean, angry, large, overwhelming. In no way is he an everyman; he is troubled and difficult and committed to being BAD. But this is his book and holds tight both to his powerful difficulties and his humanity, never sacrificing one for the other. It never tries to make him "normal" or easy. Its eponymous scene allowed me that rare thing: a moment of crystallizing insight into just how massive and ridiculous the divide between the genders is. How scary we look to them, how scary they look to us. It made me so happy to see that my girl might have the opportunity to see a boy depicted this way, to have a glimpse inside one boy's head, and know that there really is a person there.
And this is just one. A whole slew of amazing books seem to have appeared between my being a child and my having one. I will try to post more about them here.
Saturday, March 28, 2009
The Oldies Problem
While we here at Diamond in the Window don't own a car (the beauties of living in Brooklyn), we do sometimes use cars (we're zipcar users). And when we do use a car, there arises the question of the radio station.
I know that there is a lot of excellent new music being made, all the time. And I know, too, that for art to exist, it needs people to support it. And I wish—how I wish!—that I were the sort of person to push my own boundaries and take more risks in what I take from the world around me.
But.
Far too often, I end up somehow, again, on CBS 101.1, "Songs you can sing along to," belting out something from the early eighties behind rolled-up windows.
It seems to me that somehow something in my—what is the word for palate, but for all five senses? Something in my taste-judger got set in stone around 1979, and however much I might pretend to view things differently, deep inside, when I see Frye boots, or hear Aerosmith, or eat Mystic Mints, that something inside just resonates.
And so it is with books. When I pick up The Long Winter, or Ballet Shoes, or The Cricket in Times Square, (and of course The Diamond in the Window), I lose all perspective, distance, and critical judgment, and I just fall into it. Totally and completely. And don't get me wrong, this is a joyful experience. It is, in some way, the most basic pleasure of reading to me—I disappear, and the story magically becomes real while I fade to the background, able to live, invisibly, somewhere else.
But, just as it nags at me now that I might be missing the next amazing Radiohead (which someone had to drag into my ears against my general stodgy proclivities) by singing along so complacently to on CBS, I don't entirely trust the way I bring my literary past into my children's lives with me and dump it on their beds. Or in their bookshelves. Or whatever.
So here is my fear: That I am so entirely enamored of the books I loved as a kid that it is to the exclusion of better, newer books that would be theirs. Not that I block their access to the outside world of books, but it may be true that I don't foster it as much as I might. Is there a problem with the idea of comfort books? (And then there's the inevitable weird dated racism/sexism/class-ism that is a bit too prevalent to be considered only "teaching moments.") I'm not sure.
What they're reading now:
Child No. 1: The Battle of the Labyrinth
Child No. 2: Watch Me Throw the Ball!
I know that there is a lot of excellent new music being made, all the time. And I know, too, that for art to exist, it needs people to support it. And I wish—how I wish!—that I were the sort of person to push my own boundaries and take more risks in what I take from the world around me.
But.
Far too often, I end up somehow, again, on CBS 101.1, "Songs you can sing along to," belting out something from the early eighties behind rolled-up windows.
It seems to me that somehow something in my—what is the word for palate, but for all five senses? Something in my taste-judger got set in stone around 1979, and however much I might pretend to view things differently, deep inside, when I see Frye boots, or hear Aerosmith, or eat Mystic Mints, that something inside just resonates.
And so it is with books. When I pick up The Long Winter, or Ballet Shoes, or The Cricket in Times Square, (and of course The Diamond in the Window), I lose all perspective, distance, and critical judgment, and I just fall into it. Totally and completely. And don't get me wrong, this is a joyful experience. It is, in some way, the most basic pleasure of reading to me—I disappear, and the story magically becomes real while I fade to the background, able to live, invisibly, somewhere else.
But, just as it nags at me now that I might be missing the next amazing Radiohead (which someone had to drag into my ears against my general stodgy proclivities) by singing along so complacently to on CBS, I don't entirely trust the way I bring my literary past into my children's lives with me and dump it on their beds. Or in their bookshelves. Or whatever.
So here is my fear: That I am so entirely enamored of the books I loved as a kid that it is to the exclusion of better, newer books that would be theirs. Not that I block their access to the outside world of books, but it may be true that I don't foster it as much as I might. Is there a problem with the idea of comfort books? (And then there's the inevitable weird dated racism/sexism/class-ism that is a bit too prevalent to be considered only "teaching moments.") I'm not sure.
What they're reading now:
Child No. 1: The Battle of the Labyrinth
Child No. 2: Watch Me Throw the Ball!
Friday, March 27, 2009
Girls and Ego
So, Child No. 1 in my household has never had any great love for Babymouse.
Quite the contrary, actually. Back when a lot of girls in her class were falling for Babymouse's powerful charms, she was loudly, vociferously, adamantly immune to them. But the charms seem obvious: clear unmistakable voice, a sense of defiance, very few words, very many pictures, and, most of all, a real, deep channeling of that all-too-fleeting sense that girls can get in second grade or so, that they are POWERFUL.
I saw it work wonders for my daughter's friends; it spoke to them in some deep way. It gave voice to their sense that they were, in fact, the center of the universe, and the best things in the world. And, most likely, it spoke, too, to their fear that they were not.
She felt that Babymouse was bossy, shrill, and "thinks she's so great." And certainly this is sort of true. Why this worked to communicate empowerment to her friends but only alienated her is a complete mystery to me. I suspect it will be a different story with Child No. 2.
Instead, Child No. 1 got her power from a really sweet series, Girls to the Rescue. They were very folktale-like, and almost aggressively wholesome. She loved them, and they certainly spoke to girls about power, but unlike Babymouse (for the most part) it was a more public, external sort of power: being the one who saved the village, rather than the hero of one's own more private, internal life. The wholesomeness made me think it would be less compelling, but then again, I'm not 8.
The other power-girl books Child No. 1 reads that I love, the ones that are about really envisioning the strength possibilities for girls, are the Tamora Pierce books, like Young Warriors and Emperor Mage.
But they're definitely for older girls, and have such a deep appeal that I will promise myself to publish another post of them later.
What they're reading now.
Child No. 1: Searching for Dragons
Child No. 2: The Trek
Quite the contrary, actually. Back when a lot of girls in her class were falling for Babymouse's powerful charms, she was loudly, vociferously, adamantly immune to them. But the charms seem obvious: clear unmistakable voice, a sense of defiance, very few words, very many pictures, and, most of all, a real, deep channeling of that all-too-fleeting sense that girls can get in second grade or so, that they are POWERFUL.I saw it work wonders for my daughter's friends; it spoke to them in some deep way. It gave voice to their sense that they were, in fact, the center of the universe, and the best things in the world. And, most likely, it spoke, too, to their fear that they were not.
She felt that Babymouse was bossy, shrill, and "thinks she's so great." And certainly this is sort of true. Why this worked to communicate empowerment to her friends but only alienated her is a complete mystery to me. I suspect it will be a different story with Child No. 2.
Instead, Child No. 1 got her power from a really sweet series, Girls to the Rescue. They were very folktale-like, and almost aggressively wholesome. She loved them, and they certainly spoke to girls about power, but unlike Babymouse (for the most part) it was a more public, external sort of power: being the one who saved the village, rather than the hero of one's own more private, internal life. The wholesomeness made me think it would be less compelling, but then again, I'm not 8.
The other power-girl books Child No. 1 reads that I love, the ones that are about really envisioning the strength possibilities for girls, are the Tamora Pierce books, like Young Warriors and Emperor Mage.
But they're definitely for older girls, and have such a deep appeal that I will promise myself to publish another post of them later.
What they're reading now.
Child No. 1: Searching for Dragons
Child No. 2: The Trek
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Problem Books
Sometimes, life is just hard.
This is what I tell Child No. 2, who is the one who seems most in need of comfort after a day of school. There are, of course, the usual odd assortment of bumps and trials, and then there are the recurring ones. Each child has her own, of course, but for Child No. 2, the big ones seem to be:
Fear of growing up
Fear of losing her teachers, parents
Dread of mean girls
Fear of monsters (all kinds, including the little known but lately prevalent (to her) idea of fairies-gone-bad)
I’ve tried to compile a group of books that helps these in some way, and it’s been tricky. Books you think might work, don’t (they make you feel worse, because the kid in the book solved the problem while you didn’t); books about monsters turning out to be nice after all get rejected out of hand as too scary; and some books they just refuse to read altogether, apparently smelling a rat in a too-obvious title (How Nancy Learned Not to Be Afraid of Dogs!). And then there’s the whole problem of things backfiring. Like when I told someone about The Boy Who Cried Wolf, and then had that someone spend the rest of the day running around the house and crying “Wolf!” and then laughing hysterically.
So what does work, at least sometimes?
Well, here are a few of the ones we rely on. Note: these categories are really embarrassingly random.
For feeling afraid of getting older and wanting to stay a little kid, we appreciate Little Gorilla. This is pretty much made for little kids (up to 5 or 6 or so) but we here have a 7-year-old who appreciates its message mightily.
For when someone in your class is teasing a fat kid, or you are the fat kid getting teased, or you just want your child to understand that “fat” is not synonymous with bad, there is Bigger Is Better. (Sorry, I couldn't find the link or the book in my house. And let me tell you: don't google this title, because you will be washed away in a river of p*rn, and not the Cobble Street Cousins type). This is more of a YA novel, told first-person, from a girl who is big and wishes everyone would let her be herself and think about something else for a change.
For generalized anxiety (dogs, water, swimming, you name it), Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great made one of my children endlessly happy, just the relief of knowing there was someone like her. Judy Blume is some sort of mad genius with her books, able to reach out and speak a truth that kids connect with so viscerally. We read this aloud to our nervous at-the-time-6-year-old, and it was unadulterated joy.
For the deep hatred and despair that come (for some) with the arrival of a new sibling. We found the brilliance that is Bear and Roly Poly at the bottom of a bin at a church book sale, and I don't even know why we took it home with us, but boy am I glad that we did. It pulls an amazing power move by casting the little girl as the mommy, and her favorite toy bear as her child. The new baby's role is played by a new toy, a GIANT panda, far, far bigger than Bear, her original teddy bear. The physical representation of the interloper as overwhelmingly larger, louder, and more alien seemed to reach some intense inner core of pain for our older one, and she really grasped onto the whole thing, including the welcoming of the Other into their world by the end. It's pretty high on the pastel-pretty things-little girl scale, but I know more than a few boys who have felt its touch on their hearts just as surely as my girl did. It was just intensely healing. Go figure.
I will try to think of more of these (and then, of course, there are the nonfiction ones) and put them in another post. Are there any books that have saved you?
What they're reading now.
Child No. 1: Warriors Field Guide: Secrets of the Clans This series is so nutty, sure to be the subject of some future post. This book is like a guidebook to all the cats and their relationships.
Child No. 2: Little Town on the Prairie We're just about to get to the minstrel show, which is so amazingly disturbing.
This is what I tell Child No. 2, who is the one who seems most in need of comfort after a day of school. There are, of course, the usual odd assortment of bumps and trials, and then there are the recurring ones. Each child has her own, of course, but for Child No. 2, the big ones seem to be:
Fear of growing up
Fear of losing her teachers, parents
Dread of mean girls
Fear of monsters (all kinds, including the little known but lately prevalent (to her) idea of fairies-gone-bad)
I’ve tried to compile a group of books that helps these in some way, and it’s been tricky. Books you think might work, don’t (they make you feel worse, because the kid in the book solved the problem while you didn’t); books about monsters turning out to be nice after all get rejected out of hand as too scary; and some books they just refuse to read altogether, apparently smelling a rat in a too-obvious title (How Nancy Learned Not to Be Afraid of Dogs!). And then there’s the whole problem of things backfiring. Like when I told someone about The Boy Who Cried Wolf, and then had that someone spend the rest of the day running around the house and crying “Wolf!” and then laughing hysterically.
So what does work, at least sometimes?
Well, here are a few of the ones we rely on. Note: these categories are really embarrassingly random.
For feeling afraid of getting older and wanting to stay a little kid, we appreciate Little Gorilla. This is pretty much made for little kids (up to 5 or 6 or so) but we here have a 7-year-old who appreciates its message mightily.
For when someone in your class is teasing a fat kid, or you are the fat kid getting teased, or you just want your child to understand that “fat” is not synonymous with bad, there is Bigger Is Better. (Sorry, I couldn't find the link or the book in my house. And let me tell you: don't google this title, because you will be washed away in a river of p*rn, and not the Cobble Street Cousins type). This is more of a YA novel, told first-person, from a girl who is big and wishes everyone would let her be herself and think about something else for a change.
For generalized anxiety (dogs, water, swimming, you name it), Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great made one of my children endlessly happy, just the relief of knowing there was someone like her. Judy Blume is some sort of mad genius with her books, able to reach out and speak a truth that kids connect with so viscerally. We read this aloud to our nervous at-the-time-6-year-old, and it was unadulterated joy.
For the deep hatred and despair that come (for some) with the arrival of a new sibling. We found the brilliance that is Bear and Roly Poly at the bottom of a bin at a church book sale, and I don't even know why we took it home with us, but boy am I glad that we did. It pulls an amazing power move by casting the little girl as the mommy, and her favorite toy bear as her child. The new baby's role is played by a new toy, a GIANT panda, far, far bigger than Bear, her original teddy bear. The physical representation of the interloper as overwhelmingly larger, louder, and more alien seemed to reach some intense inner core of pain for our older one, and she really grasped onto the whole thing, including the welcoming of the Other into their world by the end. It's pretty high on the pastel-pretty things-little girl scale, but I know more than a few boys who have felt its touch on their hearts just as surely as my girl did. It was just intensely healing. Go figure.
I will try to think of more of these (and then, of course, there are the nonfiction ones) and put them in another post. Are there any books that have saved you?
What they're reading now.
Child No. 1: Warriors Field Guide: Secrets of the Clans This series is so nutty, sure to be the subject of some future post. This book is like a guidebook to all the cats and their relationships.
Child No. 2: Little Town on the Prairie We're just about to get to the minstrel show, which is so amazingly disturbing.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
