New(ish) Books: Wolf Story

You'd think that at some point the New York Review Children's Collection would just run out of obscure, unknown and out-of-print kid lit that's astonishingly brilliant to reissue. But they don't. It's really a testament to both their editorial and archival skills, as well as to the vast amount of great forgotten work out there to be found and reissued for our benefit.

The latest from NYRCC might be my personal favorite of their entire canon: Wolf Story, from 1947, by William McCleery, who was a reporter, a magazine editor, and a playwright. (It also contains excellent illustrations by Warren Chappell.) It's part of—maybe even a forerunner of?—what is now a burgeoning "meta" kid-book genre, i.e., the story that makes the telling of the story part of the story, with The Princess Bride as a good example.

Here, the focus is completely flipped, so that we're mostly in the "real" world of the father who's telling the story of the book's title and his six-year-old son, Michael. (Michael's best friend, Stefan, also makes an appearance.) That story itself—about a wolf trying to steal (and, naturally, eat) a farmer's prize chicken, only to be foiled by the brave, smart, and coincidentally six-year-old son of the farmer—is really less plot than background.

Because what McCleery is really doing is describing the affectionate, sometimes frustrating, often hilarious negotiations that go on between parent and child in the storytelling process. And I've never seen an author capture it better—from the early demands, and attempts at parental resistance to those demands (the father desperately wishes to avoid yet another story about a wolf, but Michael relentlessly drives him to adapt the tale so that his favorite fearsome creature will be included), to the shared joy between parent and child of continuing and finishing a story that's become a collaboration.

Kids of the boy's age and a little older are likely to find the storytelling-about-storytelling aspect fascinating (even if it's no longer as novel as it probably was in 1947). And parents will find plenty to smile sentimentally about in the accurate depictions of how we get wrapped around our kids' fingers in such situations.

But even better, both kids and especially parents will also find plenty to laugh about, thanks to McCleery's dry, charming writing style. The father—one of those dads who seems to speak to children as he does to adults, with no condescension—is both aware of and constantly bemused by his son's fierce knowledge of exactly what he wants from his story (one gets the sense that Dad also knows resistance is ultimately futile). His matter-of-fact way of establishing guidelines for the wolf tale (or trying to, anyway) is both appealing and very funny:

And the man continued: "Once upon a time there was a hen. She was called Rainbow because her feathers were of many different colors: red and pink and purple and lavender and magenta—" The boy yawned. "—and violet and yellow and orange."

"That will be enough colors," said the boy.

"And green and dark green and light green..."

 "Daddy! Stop!" cried the boy. "Stop saying so many colors. You're putting me to sleep."

"Why not?" said the man. "This is bedtime."

"But I want some story first!" said the boy. "Not just colors."

"All right, all right," said the man. "Well, Rainbow lived with many other hens in a house on a farm at the edge of a deep dark forest and in the deep dark forest lived a guess what."

"A wolf," said the boy, sitting up in bed.

"No, sir!" cried the man.

"Make it that a wolf lived in the deep dark forest," said the boy.

"Please," said the man. "Anything but a wolf. A weasel, a ferret, a lion, and elephant."

 "A wolf," said the boy.

Isn't that just frighteningly familiar and on-the-nose?

There's one more reason I found Wolf Story particularly thrilling, though, and it's one that I have to admit has little to do with any appeal to young kids. The father tells his tale in episodic fashion, mostly (after this initial bedtime scene) during a series of weekend outings with the two boys. Since the family live in downtown Manhattan, we therefore get a wonderful, personal, day-to-day view of what a dad would do with two young boys in New York City in 1947. (The whole thing is clearly pretty autobiographical—the book is even dedicated to McCreery's son, Mike!) The field trips include Fort Tryon Park, as well as Jones Beach for some autumn kite-flying (via the FDR Drive and the Triborough Bridge, oddly enough—I guess McCreery didn't like tunnels?). To someone who grew up in the city like me, this glimpse of your basic weekend jaunt of an earlier era is irresistible.

All of which is to say that, while Wolf Story works marvelously as a book to read with children, as intended—the meta magic works for them just fine—it's as much or perhaps even more a book that will delight parents, making us laugh and smile and marvel, especially those of us with attachment to New York City.

In other words, in the long run, this book is likely to end up not on my son's bookshelf, but on mine. I admit it. And I'm so pleased—and grateful to the NYRCC—to have discovered it.

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

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New Music: The Little Red Hen & Other Stories

The Good Ms. Padgett is something of a throwback, in these days of ultrahip, genre-hopping children's music. Her second kids' CD, The Good Ms. Padgett Sings the Little Red Hen and Other Stories, contains four classic children's stories told in a combination of spoken word and song, with acoustic-guitar accompaniment that put me immediately in a retro frame of mind, as if I'd suddenly switched on an old TV set and found myself watching Carole and Paula on The Magic Garden. (I suppose I am forgetting that retro is ultrahip...)

But Padgett, whose real first name is Anna rather than The Good Ms., knows what she's doing. She honed her storytelling skills in front of some of our nation's most demanding audiences—Brooklyn preschoolers—and it shows. (It doesn't hurt, of course, that she has naturally great pacing and a lovely singing voice.)

She's savvy enough to have chosen stories—including one of my own childhood favorites, the Billy Goats Gruff—that fall into repeating patterns, allowing for the kind of musical repetition that hooks preschool-age kids immediately. They learn the simple melody the first time through, and then can sing along themselves each time the pattern comes around again.

Yes, Pete Seeger and hundreds before him have been using this technique for years, but there's a reason for that: It works. As proof, I offer up my three-year-old, Griff, who was mesmerized by The Good Ms. from hello. Since he is not, as a rule, mesmeriz-able at this age by anything, even ice cream, for much more than a minute, that's a pretty serious recommendation right there.

[Cover image courtesy of The Good Ms. Padgett]

New Books: Drawing from Memory

In my spotty posting of late amid vacations and hurricanes, I've been focusing on children's nonfiction, slowly chipping away at my initial statement that it's hard to find good books in the genre. Allen Say's Drawing from Memory, though, is a particular standout, and particularly unusual: an autobiographical memoir in the form of a picture book.

Say is a revered veteran children's book author, responsible for dozens of charming and always very beautiful picture books whose art bears the influence of his Japanese origins; several have become family favorites in recent years. In Drawing from Memory, he turns his immense talent upon his own life—and specifically on his road to his lifelong career as a cartoonist, artist, and author.

It's a tale with some familiar tropes—aspiring artist is told by his father that art is not a suitable profession, then pursues it anyway thanks to a mentor/substitute-father figure. But the specifics are powerful. (For instance: Say's parents and grandparents sent him to Tokyo to live by himself at age 13 so that he could attend a prestigious school there, with predictable and not-so-predictable effects on his relationship with them, and particularly with his mother.)

And the author's means of conveying his story is breathtaking: He expertly blends words, real family and historical photographs, and his own illustrations of memories of places, people, and situations (along with wistful and occasionally heartbreaking confessions of lapses in that memory, as when he cannot recall the name of a favorite schoolteacher). The resulting combination of media is more or less unique, and makes the already personal tale Say is telling almost impossibly so. You feel at times as if you're right there alongside the author as he journeys through his life.

This is not, clearly, your typical picture-book fare, especially as Say's childhood coincided with World War II, and as such, the intended audience is certainly a little older than one expects a book of this size and shape to be. But his treatment, while it doesn't shy away from the facts of his life and the history going on during it, is never overly grim, and our six-year-old (who's starting to show some interest in cartooning himself) was fascinated by the true story. Kids older than that, particularly if they have any interest in drawing and/or storytelling themselves, will be rapt, I think. As will most adults with such interests—or who have childhoods of their own to remember.

[UPDATE: Though Amazon seems to say you can purchase this book now, I've been told by the publisher that it's not officially out till October, so if you're having problems picking it up immediately, my apologies! (You should at least be able to preorder till then, though, I should think.) I'll update further with any new information.]

[Cover image courtesy of Scholastic]

New Books: Bambert's Book of Missing Stories

You can tell at a glance that the late Reinhold Jung’s Bambert's Book of Missing Stories is something out of the ordinary for a children’s chapter book. Maybe it’s the suitably evocative illustrations by Emma Chichester Clark, done expressly for this edition of Anthea Bell’s 2002 translation from the original German (though it’s hard, now, to imagine it without them). Or perhaps it’s the title, a clue that this is a book about a book—a book about itself, in a way.

In it, Bambert, a disabled, very small man who lives as a recluse in an attic apartment in an unnamed European (presumably German) city, takes his mind off his painful existence by writing stories—stories that no one else ever reads. Eventually, he ties ten stories to separate tea-light hot-air balloons and releases them out his window, hoping they will drift to far-off places and be enjoyed by people there. He includes with each a request that the finder mail the story back to him, with the details of where and whom it’s being returned from. He also sends off an eleventh balloon, this one carrying blank sheets of paper—the final story in what will be Bambert’s book, he feels, must somehow write itself before returning home.

At first there are no responses, and Bambert becomes depressed, but finally the stories do start to come back. And as he opens them, and replaces each story’s generic location and background with ones specific to the places where each was found, we are told the stories, one by one. (There’s a twist to how and why the foreign-stamped letters are returning to Bambert, but I won’t spoil it here.)

The individual stories make use of many tropes from classic European folk tales and fables, so that while every story is completely original, it feels strangely familiar to the reader, reminiscent of everything from the Grimm tales to The Little Prince. They do not shy away from dark subjects, either; Bambert’s (and Jung’s) intent, we soon realize, is to grapple with the world’s evils—repression, injustice, cruelty, war, and even genocide come up, and not always in merely allegorical ways. As a result, they have a placid force; collectively, the stories seem to stand for art’s power to help us deal with, and sometimes heal, the pains and wounds life hands us.

This makes for a heavy book to be reading at bedtime to young kids, of course, and you’ll want to be prepared—and maybe to prepare them—for the grim realities described in some of the tales. (It’s not a bad idea to read it yourself quickly first; since it’s an engrossing 100-page read in fairly large type, it won’t feel onerous.) My six-year-old, while interested in the book’s concept, wasn’t as engaged as he usually is by chapter books, I think partially because he was a bit spooked by the stories’ increasing darkness. (I should add that the book ends on a satisfyingly happy note about a sad thing; it does, in the end, convey a positive message.)

But for kids a little older, nine to twelve or so—especially those who may be starting to consider difficult questions, like why bad things happen to good people—Bambert’s Book of Missing Stories will be a revelation, I think, unlike any children’s book they’ve read. Moving and thoughtful, and haunting in the very best sense of the word, it’s beautifully accomplished, and an excellent bridge for kids who are becoming interested in serious adult fiction.

[Cover image courtesy of Trafalgar Square Publishing.]

Roundup: Storytelling CDs

It’s sometimes a little surprising to me that in the era of 3D television, spoken-word audio still hangs on. Clearly car trips have something to do with it, at least where kids’ products are involved (though in-car DVD players are even encroaching there). But even at home, my five-year-old sometimes decides he wants to listen to a story rather than watch something. The power of storytelling remains strong, I guess.

Audiobooks—generally chapter books read by a well-known actor—make up a large part of the selection, of course. But there are also a number of “storyteller” CDs out there, read by their own writers, who are usually professional performers of one kind or another. Dash seems to gravitate toward these even more, listening to them over and over, memorizing both the stories themselves and the way the storytellers choose to tell them.

>His favorite is probably Tales of Wisdom and Wonder, a book-and-CD combo of folk tales from various cultures interpreted and read by British storyteller Hugh Lupton (who sounds uncannily like John Oliver of The Daily Show). Lupton’s reading style has a measured pace that savors the words and style of each story, and Dash is rapt as he listens, especially to “The Peddler of Swaffham,” an English tale of magical dreams that he adores.

Another in high rotation is Tell Me Another Scary Story...but Not Too Scary!, a picture book written by the great Carl Reiner that’s accompanied by a CD on which the author reads his own story. Reiner has been a master of audio his whole career, as anyone who’s ever heard his work on the 2,000-Year-Old Man albums knows, and he has kid listeners in the palm of his hand here. It’s a basic story--a first-person narrative of a Hollywood kid who’s befriended by a neighbor who makes props for scary movies, and then must save the day when something terrible happens to his new friend. Reiner’s delivery is full of expression and dramatic pauses that fill kids’s faces with delight. And I have to say, there’s something especially gratifying about seeing a master entertainer succeed with his third or fourth generation of audience. As the title suggests, this is Reiner’s second such outing; we’re clearly going to have to go back and get the first one.

We also recently came across a new contender. I wasn’t familiar with Bill Harley, but that just shows my ignorance; the two-time Grammy winner and NPR contributor has been enthralling kids with his enthusiastic blend of music and old-time storytelling for years now. His latest recorded release, The Best Candy in the Whole World, contains a set of stories about acts of kindness, most adapted from folk tales, with two composed by the artist himself. Harley’s style is quintessentially American, and his work is a throwback to folksy storytelling my parents’ generation would have listened to as kids. Dash, who had never heard anything like it, was immediately transfixed.

My son’s enjoyment of this somewhat underappreciated medium has me looking for more options, too, so I’ll continue to pass along whatever I find. (If readers have any suggestions, definitely send them my way via the comments!)

[Cover image courtesy of Bill Harley]

Security Blanket: Lane Smith

This post is basically an appreciation, since I suspect not too many parents these days are unaware of the Lane Smith oeuvre. Even I, trying desperately before we had kids to remain as ignorant as possible about them, had heard about The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales, illustrator Smith's and writer Jon Scieszka's groundbreaking deconstruction of classic fairy tales. I also knew Smith's work from another of his collaborations, this one with George Saunders: the irresistibly wonderful The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip, the incredible art for which (see the example here) managed to attracted my wife's attention and interest years before children were in the picture.

So as we embarked on parenthood, we already had more than an inkling that we'd have a family favorite here. But adult appreciation is one thing; bedtime reading quite another. With our first round of Dash's board books, we quickly learned that tedium was a serious threat, first tows, and eventually even to Dash.

Like many parents before us, we turned to the classics to solve this problem—Seuss, Sendak, Silverstein. (They didn't all start with s, I'm certain, but those were the first three names that came to mind. And Smith does too! Freaky.) Before long, we turned to Lane Smith, too, especially since Dash also took to his smart, offbeat humor right away. (Genes or environment? You decide.) Frip was a little wordy for him back then, so we started with Stinky Cheese Man, as well as a Smith solo effort we like even more, if that's possible: Pinocchio, the Boy: Incognito in Collodi. He grounds his version of the classic in his usual wisecracking, modern sensibility, in this case via a little girl who notices all the strange things this poor boy is doing (trying to talk to a cricket, going to dance on a marionette stage). Yet the story still retains the charm and even the beauty of the original.

The super-clever humor would be enough to make an illustrator great, but there's a lot more to Smith as well. He's an imaginative master, both in the structures he devises to tell stories (a storyboard-style spread in the Pinocchio book to get the reader up to speed at the start, for instance) and in his amazingly atmospheric, one-of-a-kind art itself. (The word collage always comes to mind, and then immediately seems insufficient.) There's no question in my mind that familiarity with Smith's books has broadened Dash's view of the ways one can approach storytelling. Heck, they've certainly broadened mine.

We've since made our way through several more of his books, with his typically irreverent take on the history of the American Revolution, John, Paul, George, & Ben, a particular favorite of Dash's. (The title refers to Hancock, Revere, Washington, and Franklin, and Smith's angle is that the very characteristics that made each man a bit annoying as a child—Revere's penchant for yelling, say—ended up serving American history quite well.) And to this day, I'm never more pleased, or more eager to get started, at bedtime reading than when Dash chooses a Lane Smith book. Which, happily, he does quite often.

[Photos: Whitney Webster]

New Books: StoryWorld

I have always been envious of those natural storytelling parents, the kind who sit down next to their child's bed each night and invent rich tales full of memorable characters and exciting plot twists. On the rare occasions I've attempted this, I've found myself internally grasping at straws, with results that are both bizarrely random and overly fixed on getting to the next plot point. ("Once upon a time there was a...muskrat! And he lived in the forest next door to his best friend, a...sloth! And one day they awoke to find...the forest was on fire! So they rushed to...their other friend, an elephant, yeah...and he lived next to a lake, and he took the water in his trunk and put out the fire with it, and the forest was saved. The end.") At the abrupt endings of these tales, my sons tend to look more bemused than amused.

I had more or less given up, accepting that facile, spellbinding storytelling wasn't among my gifts, until I saw the new StoryWorld, by John and Caitlin Matthews. It's an originally British package of beautifully illustrated cards, very much in the style of tarot cards, each featuring a character ("The Mother", "The Youngest Daughter," "The Cat"), a location ("The Castle"), or a magical/potentially magical thing or place ("The Magic Mirror," "The Door to Faeryland," "The Star Blanket"). Each contains a few leading questions on the back ("Where is the cat going on this starry night?"), as well as a number of suitably ambiguous happenings in the background of the illustration on the front.

The point of all this, of course, is inspiration. As the small included instruction book explains, you just pick out a certain number of cards—your child's favorites, or random ones—and then weave them together into a narrative. You can use the provided questions as jumping-off points, or ignore them and come up with your own ideas; you can do the same with all the little things occurring on each card. (You soon discover that these all link together, with major items on one card turning up in supporting roles on others—besides being gorgeous, these illustrations are intricately conceived and crafted.)

The stories still don't tell themselves, of course. But I found these little crutches remarkably freeing the first time I tried: I wasn't grasping for the core characters and ideas of my story anymore, and so I could devote my (clearly limited) creative imagination to filling it out with descriptions and plotting. There's certainly a learning curve—I don't mean to imply I've been transformed into Elmore Leonard or something—but I can feel myself moving along it, rather than completely stuck in place as I was before.

More important than my own storytelling education, though, is that my five-year-old is mesmerized. He's enjoying my stories from the cards, sure, but he's also been eager from the start to use these tools to engage in his own tales. Right now he's in the middle of a stretch where he's adding a couple of cards' worth of plot to a continuing story we both contribute to each night. Nothing like this ever happened before StoryWorld.

I'm hoping we can both eventually reach a point where we don't need the cards anymore. (Dash is a lot closer than I am.) I'm optimistic, and if I'm right to be, StoryWorld will have taught us how to invent compelling tales at a moment's notice. While my son may have been on his way to that anyway (his mother is much better at it than I am, so he has those genes or environment, or both, working for him), I certainly wasn't, so I'll be forever grateful. 

[Photos: Whitney Webster.]