Old School: A Wizard of Earthsea

As I grew older and out of children's chapter books, all those years ago, I kept only a handful of favorites on my bookshelf. I'm not sure I knew why, exactly, even back then—because I thought even as a high school student I might want to refer back to them? Or (deep down) because I wanted to hang on to them for my own kids someday? The reason was certainly sentimental in some way, and at a certain point I stopped winnowing entirely; what survived high school stayed on my shelves into adulthood.

These were mostly venerable classics of the kid genre, even at the time—the Narnia series, The Phantom Tollbooth, A Wrinkle in Time—with a few relative newcomers like Ellen Raskin's The Westing Game and Walter Wangerin Jr.'s The Book of the Dun Cow. I didn't care if they were classics, though—these were the books that were in some way or another important to my childhood. I don't always remember exactly why. But these were my books—I remember the surge of feeling I had about each of them very clearly, which must have been at the root of why I kept them.

One of the series I kept about which my memory was cloudy was Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea books. Another classic series, of course—being reissued in handsome new hardcover editions this month by Houghton Mifflin, in fact. The feelings I associated with these particular books years later, having mostly forgotten the plotlines, were less of warmth and affection, as I recalled Phantom Tollbooth, say. It was more like a vague sort of awe and reverence.

And those aren't feelings that drive nostalgic re-readings. So it had been many years since the Le Guin books had come down off the shelves when my seven-year-old, Dash, started showing interest in books with magical themes beyond Harry Potter. (Not, I should hasten to add, that he finds anything at all lacking in Harry Potter.) I remembered Earthsea, my memory perhaps jogged by the news of the reissues, and we took my dusty old copy of A Wizard of Earthsea down (both noticing right away that it's sure a lot shorter than a Harry Potter book).

It only took a page or two for the vague memories to firm up. And I don't mean just the storyline, though that certainly came back, too: the journey to wisdom of a young, brilliant but arrogant sorcerer-in-training. I don't even mean just the amazing world Le Guin has created as the setting for this series, a land of hundreds of small islands and a full, rich culture that's as vivid and fully imagined as any of the best fantasy worlds of children's literature.

I mean the language itself. The Earthsea books are written in a flowing, almost Homeric style that's simply mesmerizing to read (or read aloud). Words and their power are the lifeblood of this series—the source of the most powerful magic its wizards have, in fact. In Earthsea, to know someone's or something's true name is to have power over that person or thing, and everyone accordingly has both a name they go by in the world, and a secret "true" name that they reveal only to those they trust most—the book's hero, Ged, always introduces himself as Sparrowhawk, for example. It's an old conceit that words and names hold magical power, but Le Guin weaves her whole world around it, giving it weight and even a feeling of importance, or reality. (It's one of the things that has always stuck with me from the book.)

Le Guin's is almost certainly the finest writing Dash has encountered since graduating to chapter books, and I could see the effect on him immediately—he was quietly fascinated (unusual, since his enthusiasm about books is usually more amped-up and vocal), with a sort of reverent awe that was very familiar. I think the Earthsea books may have similarly awakened me to a level of writing I'd previously been unaware of, when I first encountered them, which would more than explain their staying power on my shelves all these years. Maybe Dash will feel the same way about them someday.

[Cover image courtesy of Houghton Mifflin]

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Old School: The Bear That Wasn't

It's one of those precious delights of parenthood to share a book we loved as kids ourselves to our own children, and to relive that thrill of discovery through their eyes. But it's a completely different kind of pleasure, and one nearly as great, to discover a classic with your kids, one you somehow missed yourself in your own childhood.

I mainly knew of Frank Tashlin as a famous animator (of Looney Tunes fame) and Hollywood screenwriter and director (of Jerry Lewis movies), and hadn't been aware that he'd dabbled in children's books. Then Dash's grandmother gave him a copy of the author's 1946 The Bear That Wasn't. It's a wonderful allegorical tale of a bear who is awakened from a long sleep by humans who are convinced he is not in fact a bear, but a very hairy man in a fur coat, and that therefore he should get to work on the large factory project that's sprung up around him as he slept.

The bear calmly tries to tell the men otherwise, but is lectured over and over again, as he moves up to the highest levels of the corporate chain, that he must stop being silly and accept that he is not a bear. He heads to the zoo, aiming to get support from his fellow bears for his true identity, but even here he's out of luck: The zoo bears point out that if he were a real bear, he'd be behind bars like they are.

Worn down, he figures that maybe they're all right after all and he's not a bear, and proceeds to live life as a human, working hard in a factory every day. And it's not until circumstances lead him to solve the problem of a cold winter as a bear would that he concludes that he was right and all the bureaucrats were wrong after all, with Tashlin's sublime final sentence: "No indeed, he knew he wasn't a silly man, and he wasn't a silly Bear either."

The message of individuality, of knowing who you are and not letting anyone tell you otherwise, is certainly loud and clear in this tale—as is the criticism of those who insist that anything repeated often enough must be true. But it's Tashlin's tone throughout that really makes the book a classic, mesmerizing to readers of all ages: The bear's quiet sense of puzzlement in the face of a series of humans who are arrogantly confident in their mistakenness is both sympathetic and very funny; you have the sense that the bear is never exactly convinced of his humanity himself, but just decides it's no use arguing anymore. (And there's a lesson there, too, of course.) The humans themselves are an amusing (though not harmless) parody of wrongheadness, becoming angrier and angrier when the bear stubbornly keeps insisting he's ursine.

Dash adores this book (and I can only hope he takes its message to heart as he grows up); it's quickly become one of his enduring favorites. And I'm really glad to have discovered it myself, even at the advanced age of 42!

P.S.: When posting this, I stumbled across an animated version of The Bear That Wasn't. Apparently Tashlin didn't feel it conveyed the message of the book quite as he desired, but it's still worth a look:



[Cover image courtesy of the New York Review Children's Collection]

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Old School: The Story of Ferdinand

I can't imagine many parents are unfamiliar with Munro Leaf's classic about the peace-loving bull; since coming out in the 1930s, it's been universally beloved. And if my two-year-old is any indication, it's lost none of its ability to enthrall young listeners and readers. As is so often the case, this story has been deemed a classic for a reason.

If you're looking to rediscover (or just discover!) Ferdinand, you might be interested in the handsome 75th-anniversary edition that just came out. Also worth a look is an eccentric, marvelous audiobook treatment, read with gusto by David Ogden Stiers and accompanied by music by Saint-Saëns and poetry by Ogden Nash, that I mentioned in this space last year.

[Cover image courtesy of Penguin USA.]

Old School: Richard Scarry

As parents we tend, when looking back at classic children's books, to concentrate on the ones we loved ourselves, rejoicing in the chance to revisit them with our own kids. Or sometimes it's the undiscovered gems we somehow missed back then but got a second, parental shot at. But there's a third category: the books we knew but didn't care for that much—but now gain the favor of our children.

Which brings me to Richard Scarry. I don't recall having much of his massive oeuvre myself when I was a toddler; I think I encountered his books mostly at friends' and relatives' houses. I was more puzzled than engaged by them; it may be that I didn’t discover their existence until I was a little past the fairly young age level most of them are for. As an only child determined to impress my parents with my reading ability by any means necessary, I'd have tackled Dostoyevsky without blinking despite a nearly complete lack of understanding—and as such, I was self-important enough at four to find Scarry's serious-faced cats and dogs a little silly.

That was unfair, of course, in a very four-year-old sort of way. My son Dash, now six, received Richard Scarry's Biggest Word Book Ever! as a gift some years back, and spent a good deal of the following year with it. This book—at two feet high, as tall as most toddlers reading it—is not one you “read,” exactly; there's no narrative, and it consists mainly of a town full of those dedicated Scarry animals going about their lives in the rather Dutch-looking Busytown. Each spread is devoted to a general theme—construction and building, say, or transportation (all subjects dear to a young boy’s heart), and identifies every item or person briefly. (There are a few throughlines from spread to spread, such as the misadventures of Mr. Frumble, a pig who should definitely have his driver's license revoked.)

And finally, from my adult perspective, I can see what Scarry was up to. Recently two-year-old Griffin has discovered the book, and he treats it almost like a big life-reference manual: There's the fire engine, and that's what their tools are called and what they do with them. That kind of boat is called a tugboat, and that other one is a ferry, and this is what they each do. (Scarry does like to toss some wild cards into the mix, but hopefully Griff won't be too disappointed not to ever see any bananamobiles in real life.)

Griff loves it, and I can see that he's learning from it, just as Dash did. Clearly, my four-year-old self didn't know what he was missing.

[Cover image courtesy of Random House]

Old School: Tintin

I remember when a friend introduced me to the world of Tintin. I can't remember exactly how old I was, probably about seven or eight, and he brought out what looked like comic books...but they were bound, and different from American superhero ones. (Basically these were my first graphic novels, though that term wasn't yet in use, and seems rarely applied to bound Europeans series like Tintin and Asterix anyway.)

I was blown away by the adventures, the humor, and the storytelling, and I also recall being a bit hypnotized by the exoticism—these were from Europe, and at the time were a little hard to find in U.S. stores. (Well, only a few stores carried them, at any rate.) I tore through them, as many of my schoolmates did the same, and there was a little competition among us to grab copies of the ones we hadn't read yet from the school library.

In the last year or so, our six-year-old has been pulling down the three or four Tintin books I still have, and so I've been rediscovering them as he discovers them for the first time. As many parents have noted through the years, they are of their times (the Belgian writer-illustrator Hergé created the bulk of his oeuvre between 1930 and 1950) in ways both good and bad. The bad causes occasional generational hubbub—I vaguely remember one from when I was a kid, and recently there was a controversy at the Brooklyn Public Library that put one early Tintin book in a locked room.

Yes, there is some offensive stuff in the Tintin books. Most of it involves a general (and typical of much European pop culture of the time, as anyone who's read Agatha Christie novels knows) patronizing attitude toward nonwhite peoples of the globe. Tintin is almost invariably defending these peoples against violently racist and venal Europeans who want to abuse/enslave/exploit the hapless third-worlders, but there is unquestionably an offputting sense of innocent, simple races that must be protected and treated kindly by their European betters. In a few of the books, Herge goes beyond this into awful stereotype. (His portrayal of a group of Africans whom Tintin rescues from being enslaved by the bad guys in The Red Sea Sharks comes to mind, in how he makes them both appear and speak).

This is a bit uncomfortable, and difficult to explain to a young child—but I also think the all-too-recent past of open racism is a subject they're going to encounter sooner or later, especially in classic literature, film, or television from the period. Tintin books are as good a way to confront it as any. Better, even, since Herge's plots often use real history as their backdrop—The Blue Lotus, for instance, is explicit about (and extremely critical of) Japan's move to dominate China in the 1930s. His drawings of Asians use upsetting stereotypes, and his "the Japanese are bad; the Chinese are good" message is obviously simplistic, but he does make the Japansese characters bad mainly because they demonstrably do bad things, not simply because they're Japanese.

But none of this is the reason you'll want to read Tintin with your kids. It's because these are some of the seminal Western adventure stories, drawing on a prior generation of European thrillers and unquestionably influencing those that followed. (Reading the Scotland-set The Black Island with Dash, I couldn't help noticing how many of the story elements turn up in Hitchcock films—for instance, there's a scene in which a biplane dives to attack Tintin on the ground, just like the famous one that chases Cary Grant in North by Northwest, which was filmed some years later.) The stories are riveting, true page-turners; the characters broad but unforgettable, and quickly beloved to kids and adults alike, from the plucky hero himself to his blustery sidekick Captain Haddock to the brilliant but absent-minded Professor Calculus to the bumbling near-twin detectives Thompson and Thomson. I sense Dash is on the cusp of flying through the entire series just as I did more than 30 years ago. And I can't wait myself.

I should add that there's one more reason to be excited about Tintin right now: Steven Spielberg's 3-D animation Tintin movie is scheduled to arrive in theaters next December. Based on The Secret of the Unicorn and featuring a voice cast that includes Andy Serkis (Gollum in the Lord of the Rings movies) as Captain Haddock, Daniel Craig as villain Red Rackham, and Jamie Bell (Billy Elliott) as Tintin himself, it would seem to have a good shot at doing the books justice. You can bet we'll be there.

[Image: Courtesy of Little, Brown]

Old School: Kids' Classics (Free!) for iPad

The holiday season is upon us, and with it every parent's favorite pastime, family travel. Every generation thinks it has the worst of things, but ever-longer airport lines and the latest guessing games in the TSA circus are making the temptation for ours to lay claim to the title pretty strong. So more than ever, it never hurts to be loaded for bear several times over when it comes to keeping the kids occupied through all that waiting. On the other hand, extra books to pack are…not exactly welcome.

But for parents with iPads, there's a solution to this dilemma, assuming they plan to bring the gadget along for the trip. (If you're anything like me, you've refused to be parted from yours since you acquired it, so that shouldn't be a problem.) Best of all, it's free—ignoring the high cost of the iPad itself, of course, but if you do have one already....

I've mentioned before that tons of classic children's literature, like pretty much all classic out-of-copyright books, has long been available free of charge online, courtesy of Project Gutenberg, which has spent many years painstakingly transcribing them for public use. The only problem was that the PDFs you could grab off the website weren't formatted in a terribly friendly-to-read way.

Enter the iPad and its (free) iBooks app. In the app's store, under the "Classics" entry in the Categories tab, you'll find a library's worth of classic titles (scroll down for the "free" section), including lots of stuff for kids of any age: Alice in Wonderland. Treasure Island. The Secret Garden. If it's more than a century old, it's probably here.

When you download a title, it shows up on your iBooks shelf just as any new, purchased book would—formatted in the font of your choice, with adjustable print size, and easy to read in portrait or landscape view. There's an occasional layout hiccup with illustrations (sometimes the captions bump the regular text in slightly odd ways), but all in all, the books look great in this format. And they're all ready to hand over to your ten-year-old during that layover, or to use as bedtime reading at Grandma's house.

And those who haven't encountered these classics with their kids before may be surprised at how well they hold up—there really is a reason they've lasted this long, after all. (And as corny as it sounds, there's something about reading A Christmas Carol to your kids on Christmas Eve. That Dickens fella could write a little.)

Plus, if you're feeling your literary oats yourself (or, horror of horrors, you exhaust your existing airport reading), you can download Pride and Prejudice once the kids are safely asleep—or, if you're really ambitious, War and Peace! All free!


(I know that similar wonders are achievable on the Kindle, Nook, etc., but since I don't have those particular gadgets, I can't answer for the quality of the text on those. Anyone know offhand if they, too, give you the free books with the same formatting quality as the ones you'd purchase for those tablets?)

[Cover image: Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons]

Old School: Drive-in Movies

I'm really cheating in calling this an Old School, since I'd never been to a drive-in movie theater in my life before last week, and until recently I had no idea there were even any functioning ones left. My eyes were opened by my friends Joyce and Michael (the proprietor of the wonderful movie blog Cinema du Meep), and after some abortive attempts to attend one of the handful of options within relatively easy driving distance of NYC this summer, we wondered if there might be any drive-ins near the spot where we were vacationing in Rhode Island.

As it turned out, there is one. (Well, it's on the other side of the state from where we were--but it's a really small state!) As seems to be the general practice at many of these places nowadays, you pay an entry fee to one screen there, at which two movies play each evening, usually a child- (and not necessarily adult-) friendly option first, and something R-rated second. With young kids, obviously, you generally just go for the first one, rather than attempting to get your toddler to shut his eyes and ears for two-plus hours of Inglourious Basterds.

In this case, there were two screens that were starting out with kid flicks, and our choice was between Despicable Me and Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore. Being big saps, we let our older son choose, and predictably enough, he picked the one that didn't at least have Steve Carell's voice going for it. He loves cats. And dogs. (We were going to get Kenneth the Page either way, though—he appears to have a corner on the drive-in kiddie movie this summer.)

Now, this is not a review of the Cats & Dogs movie, though I will admit it wasn't as bad as I expected. (So nice to see Nick Nolte and Bette Midler working together again, even if the last time they actually had to be in the same place at the same time. And I'm always a sucker for a Wallace Shawn voiceover.) The experience of watching a silly movie with your kids in your parked car, though: This I give two thumbs up. Many more veteran families around us came better prepared, actually, parking their SUVs backwards and essentially tailgating for the film. But for our first go, we found it delightful just being enclosed together for the experience. It blew our two-year-old away in particular—his eyes got implausibly wide when he saw that giant white wall turn into a giant video. The whole thing was the perfect summer shared family experience.

Plus, we got Sean Hayes's vocal impersonation of Hannibal Lecter. Truly something for everyone.

[Photo by Drm31, via Wikimedia Commons]

Old School: The Cricket in Times Square

I always kept five or six of my favorite childhood chapter books on my shelves, all the way through adolescence and young adulthood and marriage. I was never entirely sure why, other than my general reluctance to get rid of, well, anything. (Yeah, I’m one of those.) 

So for all those years, there sat George Selden’s The Cricket in Times Square next to the Sartre play (yeah, I’m one of those, too). It was my very first favorite chapter book—to a kid growing up in a still-gritty Manhattan, Selden’s classic about an out-of-town cricket who becomes the toast of New York City and saves the family newsstand of the boy who befriends him had a comforting familiarity. Heck, two of the three main characters were New York City archetypes, seen on a daily basis in my Upper West Side existence. It’s also not a classic for nothing; the story itself, while undeniably dated in certain ways, is a true kid’s page-turner.

The book was originally published in 1960, and is set in what was, I now realize, a very different city than the one I was living in about twenty years later. But there were enough touchstones in it for me to recognize my city, too: The teeming insanity of the Times Square subway station hasn’t changed that much even now, even if the layout has, several times. More than that, though: Selden’s writing itself has a timeless quality, especially in his portrayal of his lead characters. If you’ve spent any time in New York, you’ve almost certainly met a Tucker Mouse or twelve, and you’ve probably encountered a few Harry Cats as well.

So the first moment I thought there was even a prayer of his having the slightest interest, I introduced my old, tattered paperback copy (the price on the cover: 95 cents!) to my older son’s bedtime reading. It was his first chapter book, and it was really way too early. I don’t think he was three yet, and while The Cricket in Times Square does feature many wonderfully vivid illustrations by the great Garth Williams, they are occasional, not ubiquitous—it’s a chapter book, not a picture book. But as ever, I couldn’t hold myself back; worst-case, I figured, we’d give it a shot, he’d be bored, and we’d stop.

We didn’t stop. Dash loved the book from day one, and became pretty obsessed with it for about a year. It inspired some of his first playacting, involving both scenes from the book—the fire in the newsstand was a favorite—and ones of his own invention, using Selden’s characters. (Dash was always Harry, while his mother and I traded, in repertory, the roles of Tucker and Chester Cricket.) At bedtime, we would read it over and over again, until my already old and fragile edition began to fall apart. Once, during a visit to my office in Times Square, Dash wanted to go down to the subway station to see Mario’s newsstand and Tucker’s drainpipe, and was nearly inconsolable when I informed him that the station has changed since that time (well, it has!) and so we probably wouldn’t be able to pinpoint their exact locations.

In summary, my first favorite chapter book became Dash’s first favorite chapter book. And yeah, I probably did force the issue a little, but it was still pretty heartwarming.

That isn’t the end of the story, though. The Cricket in Times Square turned into the gift that kept on giving in our household. First there were Selden’s own sequels, of course, which I’d read myself as a child. But then, just as Dash’s interest in the books was beginning to lose some of its heat, I discovered an audiobook version, read by actor Tony Shalhoub (of the TV show Monk and many films, including Big Night). It’s a fabulous rendition, among the best children’s audiobooks I’ve encountered; Shalhoub captures each character brilliantly with his voice work. Dash was hooked anew. (Plus, now we had a new fail-safe tool for long drives and plane rides.)

A bit later, I found (courtesy of my former colleague Christopher Healy) a Chuck Jones Collection DVD that includes a 1973 animated short of The Cricket in Times Square by the animator, as well as two odd but entertaining holiday-themed sequels that use Selden’s characters. The immortal Mel Blanc provides Tucker Mouse’s voice for all of them, which demonstrates just how spot-on Jones and his team are with their adaptation. (The DVD is advertised as featuring several stories from Kipling’s The Jungle Book, also well worth seeing.)

At five-and-a-half, Dash still loves every version of The Cricket in Times Square—books, audiobook, videos—and comes back to each of them often. (Though it does seem to be time for a new edition of the book, as pages are starting to fall out and go missing!) Which means, now that I think on it, that The Cricket in Times Square has been among his most treasured books for more than half his life. And, alarmingly, more than three quarters of mine.

[Photos: Whitney Webster]

Old School: Alice in Wonderland

I think I must have read Lewis Carroll’s classics at some point in my early childhood, but I honestly don’t remember doing so. In many ways, I feel like my knowledge of them is more piecemeal, picked up from the many references to them in other literature and art. So I never really expected Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass to become major players in bedtime reading with my kids.

But my five-year-old, Dash, saw some of those amazing original John Tenniel illustrations from the book on some wallpaper or something, and took to them immediately. (I think it was the Cheshire cat that initially drew him in.) That led to our picking up a copy, and eventually the book made its way to his nightstand.

And he loves it. The delightfully light tone; the surreal...well, lack of plot; the offbeat characters—all of it’s very much his cup of tea. (Sorry.) He enjoys the way the narrative just abruptly breaks off into a random, probably nonsensical poem from time to time. Some of the puns and wordplay are a little over his head right now, but there’s not enough of that to bother him. Having recently also seen the old Disney adaptation of the story, Dash has gone back to the original and is having a lot of fun seeing what was changed for the movie and what was not.

It’s also been an education to me, since my memories of the book were so hazy; seeing it through Dash’s eyes as we read it together has been a great experience. I’ve had two separate revelations. First, just how very weird these books are! I’d forgotten how boldly Carroll takes the story every which way he pleases, disregarding tropes of linear narrative and story structure entirely when he wants to. It’s still a breath of fresh air, frankly, even all these years after it was written.

Second—and this shouldn’t really have been a revelation, since there had to be a reason his books have been so beloved for so long—I was taken aback by, simply, how well-written these stories are. In what must be no surprise to many parents who were more familiar with Carroll than I’d been, they are truly a great pleasure to read. I’m really glad Dash saw the Cheshire cat on that wallpaper.

As a side note, another nice thing about Carroll’s work, for the busy and/or vacationing parent, is that it’s  completely out of copyright. In practical terms, this means you can download a copy onto your laptop or phone right now for free, or pay less than the cost of one printed book to get a more aesthetically pleasing version of the text of this book (with many other classics) for your iPhone.

[Image: Public domain, from Wikimedia Commons.]

Old School: '80s Summer Movies for Kids

A friend writing a story about a backyard movie party asked me the other day for some good “summer movie” recommendations for kids—that is, our generation’s summer movies (i.e., from the 1980s) that are kid-friendly. The key being that they should be enjoyable for kids and parents alike, and the parents get a little bonus nostalgia in the bargain.

Having no shortage of opinions, and happy to get a chance to broaden the blog’s horizons beyond what my own kids watched or read last night, I jumped at the chance. Without further ado, my picks, divided by age suitability (one caveat there: my age ranges push the envelope a bit, under the theory that that’s what kids always want to do):

AGES 5 AND UNDER

Safe choice: The Muppets Take Manhattan (1984)
The gang does the old “let’s put on a show” bit, which may sound predictable enough, but did you expect Kermit to get amnesia and think he’s an ad exec named Phil? Probably the best of the Muppets films, and a real crowd-pleaser.

Adventurous choice: The Princess Bride (1987)
Some potentially scary moments here for little ones—the Pit of Despair, the Rodents of Unusual Size—and it also works for the next age group up. (Heck, any age group—I admit it, I still stop and watch it on TBS half the time.) But my five-year-old has adored it since age three, and it’s the kind of movie that’s a particular thrill to watch kids watching.

Nonobvious choice: Wallace & Gromit in Three Amazing Adventures (2001)
I’m kind of cheating here, only justifying this choice by the fact that the first W&G short, A Grand Day Out, was made in 1989. But like all Nick Park’s work, it and the other shorts here (Oscar-winners The Wrong Trousers and A Close Shave) are endlessly entertaining adventure tales—so even if these are not strictly summer movies, they fit seamlessly in with the theme. 

Other options: Pee-wee’s Big Adventure (1985), Follow That Bird (1985)

AGES 6 TO 8
Safe choice: E.T. (1982)
“Safe” is a relative term, since as we all remember, this is a serious tear-jerker. But it’s safe to say it’s a classic most kids this age will be thrilled by, especially en masse. Enjoy the blank looks when you tell them the little girl voiced the female lead in the recent Curious George movie.


Adventurous choice: The Dark Crystal (1982)
Normally the Henson movie with puppets wouldn’t be the risky call, but this is a seriously dark fantasy, about the last of the Gelflings and his quest to end the rule of the evil (and scary!) Skekses. If your audience frightens easily, this may not be the right pick—but if they’re into fantasy lit or graphic novels, it could also be a huge hit.


Nonobvious choice: Labyrinth (1986)
Henson again (live-action this time), but I couldn’t resist David Bowie in tight pants. It’s actually a twist on a really old story: the Goblin King (Bowie) kidnaps Jennifer Connelly’s little brother when she complains about having to take care of him, and she must grow up a bit and use her all her wits to get him back. Extra points for any kids who can figure out which voices are done by Elmo.


Other options: The Last Starfighter (1984), The NeverEnding Story (1984),  Short Circuit (1986), Willow (1988)

AGES 9 TO 12
Safe choice: The Goonies (1985)
I was 15 when it came out, the perfect age to resist this movie, and I did. (Happily, I caught up with it some years later.) For kids a bit younger, though, the rollicking tale of a bunch of kids on an adventure to find pirate treasure is well-nigh irresistible. And it’s packed with nostalgia-inspiring actors, from the firmly-of-the-era (Corey Feldman) to recent and current stars (Sean Astin, Josh Brolin, Joey Pants).


Adventurous Choice: Ghostbusters (1984)
I suppose you can see it every weekend nowadays if you don’t mind sitting through the ads, but it’s hard for me to think of a movie that would amuse and thrill a group of kids and parents more. I seriously doubt it’d be just PG today—there’s lots of swearing, some sexual innuendo, and a bit of scary ghoul stuff—but for kids who are up to it, that’ll just make them love it all the more. Meanwhile, you get to watch a Bill Murray/Harold Ramis movie. It’s win-win!


Nonobvious choice: The Bad News Bears (1976)
All right, it’s not from the ’80s, but it’s certainly a gen-X movie. (Let’s just agree not to discuss the recent remake.) Walter Matthau will keep everyone entertained as the former minor-leaguer forced to coach the saddest Little League team ever . You may pause to marvel at how the definition of a “kid movie” has changed—there’s even more “objectionable” language and behavior here than in any other movie I considered—but you’ll be caught up in the next laugh before you have much time to ponder it.


Other options: Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), Clash of the Titans (1981), WarGames (1983), The Karate Kid (1984), Gremlins (1984), Back to the Future (1985)

In parting, let me add that when it comes to movie nostalgia from this era, I always lean heavily on Cinema du Meep, a blog well worth checking out for the obscure and the sublime in 1980s (and many other) flicks.

[Photo: Chad Davis, via Wikimedia Commons.] 

Old School: Pete Seeger

The “Old School” tag has pretty much jumped the shark these days, but it fits my purpose here well: These posts are about the unique joy of sharing something you enjoyed as a kid with your own children.

And how better to start than with Pete Seeger, who’s working on at least his third generation of that particular joy? Both my wife and I listened to his music as children—in my case predictably enough, as a child of left-wingers who attended Woodstock, but less so for Whitney, whose parents just had a taste for folk music, especially Seeger’s work with the Weavers. (One of the many remarkable things about Seeger is how he has managed to both be fiercely political in his music and yet also somehow transcend politics with it.)

I remember loving in particular Seeger’s “story” songs, like “The Foolish Frog,” though I can’t precisely recall which record it is I was listening to. (I was thinking it could be Stories & Songs for Little Children, but it turns out that’s a compilation album that dates back only to 1994, by which time I’d definitely gone electric.) Later on, when I was no longer listening to my Seeger record, I would still marvel from time to time at a discovery: He wrote the Byrds’ hit “Turn, Turn, Turn”? His co-arrangement popularized the Cuban standard “Guantanamera” worldwide?

Seeger’s work for kids has been so widespread through the years that you can’t help but run into it all the time when you have some of your own. I was delighted to stumble upon an animated version of “The Foolish Frog” on YouTube—and even more delighted when I saw how much Dash enjoyed it; it remains a favorite of his.

Then Dash started learning some of Seeger’s other classics in preschool music classes. And then Bruce Springsteen’s The Seeger Sessions became one of his (and our) favorite CDs to listen to on long drives in the car. And then we all watched in wonder as 89-year-old Pete sang Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land” on TV, at President Obama’s inauguration festivities.

Last year, we were able to take both sons to see the great man live at the Clearwater Festival. It wasn’t just their first live Seeger concert; it was ours, too. Pete’s voice isn’t as strong as it once was, of course, but he’s still a force on any stage. He sang “Guantanamera,” then “Turn, Turn, Turn,” encouraging the audience to sing along with him, as always. Dash complied, and so did we. As we sang, I looked around us, and saw dozens of other sets of grateful grandparents, parents, and children, all sharing the song with one another, and with Pete Seeger.

[Photo: Donna Lou Morgan, U.S. Navy, via Wikimedia Commons.]