The 24 Hour Read-a-thon (not an A to Z post)

This is my sign up post for the Dewey's 24 Hour Read-a-thon which takes place on the 27th April. It has been run twice a year since October 2007. I am not sure why it's not just called a Reading Marathon but people do like to make up gimmicky words so we'll just go with the consensus. I feel like I don't often give myself over to extended periods of reading and this sounds like a good excuse to ignore everyone, get some snacks in and hide myself away for a day. It works out quite nicely since it is organised from America somewhere so the official start time here in the UK is 1pm, by which time I am usually back from work, so I can read from 1pm Saturday until 1pm Sunday (though I am anticipating having least a little nap during that time). For anyone interested you can sign up here.

E for Elephants

Elephants feature widely in children's books, they are very endearing animals. Who could not love (to return to Dr Seuss for just a moment) the wonderful Horton (who gets his own wiki page even) as he lovingly hatches that egg and is rewarded with an elephant/bird hybrid that thinks he is its mummy. Today however we are meeting a much less salubrious character.

The Elephant and the Bad Baby by Elfrida Vipont and Raymond Briggs (he of The Snowman fame) is the tale of an unnamed elephant who kidnaps a small baby and takes him on a crime spree. 

The story doesn't actually call it a crime spree but it is. Along the way the elephant steals items of food from a variety of small businesses who's proprietors give chase. The best part of the story is on each page where they go "rumpeta, rumpeta, rumpeta, all down the road" with all the grown ups following along behind, and the reader gets to bounce the listening child on their knee with increasing enthusiasm.

While the essence of the story is great fun, and it can be considered amusing (assuming you don't take it too seriously) as the elephant sneaks his trunk into each shop to steal the buns, pies and ice-cream, the ending always somehow struck me as hypocritical: the elephant gets away with his criminal behaviour by drawing attention to the baby's lack of good manners, and all the grown ups stand there and chorus in agreement, "Just fancy that! He never once said please!" Now where parenting is concerned I have never been a fan of enforced politeness, such things should result from normal socialisation rather than the unpleasantly cute "What's the magic word?" ... give me one genuine 'thank you' over a hundred obligated ones.

But in the end all is forgiven and the mummy makes pancakes for everyone, which endears the story to me because that was always my speciality when it came to making a treat for the kids:

The elephant appears to get away scot-free and runs off down the darkening street to rob again another day. When the children were a little older however the book always did raise some interesting conversations about morality, right and wrong, and justice .

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D for Dr Seuss (who else)

It's funny how books can feel familiar without any specific memory of having read them before. The Cat in the Hat was like that for me when my children were little; I already knew it but was not sure how. I did debate the idea of doing my entire A to Z challenge on Dr Seuss, he certainly has enough books and enough crazy titles to cover all the letters of the alphabet.

My favourite thing about Dr Seuss is his sheer exuberance and imagination. He understands something about the way children think and at the same time manages to take on their way of seeing the world, a rare quality in adults. He invents animals by the score and then invents wonderful names for them. He invents new nonsense words any time he needs a rhyme and there isn't one. Most of his books have a story line but others for very young children are much more a matter of playing with words.

A book like Hop on Pop is meant partly as an early reader, with large simple words at the top of the page, then the same words put into a rhyme:

and others like One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish:

We moved on to books like I Can Lick 30 Tigers, in which an unfortunate cat has to back down in the face of real tigers, though the favourite tale in this book is King Looie Katz which is about egalitarianism and everyone being responsible for their own tails:

The Lorax was one of the first Seuss books we owned. Many of his stories have a message or even a political point, but this is probably the most vociferous; I always used to linger over the moment when there is a sickening thwack and the last truffula tree is chopped down. I have not seen the film and have no desire to after the hatchet job that was done on The Grinch; the stories are wonderful and complete in themselves they do not need the embellishment necessary to turn them into a full length film:

However hard it might be to have a favourite Dr Seuss book mine will always be The Sneetches:

Here are the poor starless Sneetches, sitting on the beaches and watching the star-bellied Sneetches having frankfurter parties and marshmallow toasts. It's a fairly no-nonsense message about prejudice and how meaningless it is, and also partly I always felt about how there's always someone out there able to make money out of stupid people. For the grown up reading it makes it more enjoyable if the story has  bit of something going on alongside the silliness:

My favourite story in the book however is 'What was I scared of?' about a little person who meets this strange and slightly ghostly empty pair of trousers and, 'in a dark and dreary snide field' is forced to confront his fears. 

Dr Seuss is utterly unique as a children's writer and unmatched in my opinion. I have not encountered all his books but have never read one that I have not loved.

(Click here for other mentions of Dr Seuss on this blog)

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Still Alice - (not an A to Z post)

Yes, that does say Large Print Edition, and no, my eyes have not got that bad, it was simply the edition the library had. 'Still Alice' by Lisa Genova is another one of those books that I read about somewhere and added to the request list. Her website says that she has created her own genre, and she certainly has found her niche; her other two books are about a woman struggling after a brain injury and a boy with autism. This novel examines Alzheimer's Disease. She is a highly educated science type who's aim in writing seems partly to be to raise awareness and understanding of these complex conditions. The story follows Alice from her first noticing strange symptoms, through her diagnosis, telling her family, having to give up work and the huge readjustments of her life, and then traces her steady decline, watching as the world makes less and less sense to her. It is written totally from Alice's point of view, but in the third person, so you have a slight element of distance, someone telling us what Alice is thinking and feeling and experiencing. It is told like this I suppose because Alice reaches the point where she is no longer capable of articulating what she thinks, at which point, if she was telling it herself, the story would have had to end.  

It has all the ingredients of a best seller (which it has been); people who live a perfect life succumbing to tragic events that are beyond their control. Alice and her husband John are high achieving academics,  their children, a daughter lawyer, a trainee-doctor son and a wayward actor daughter, can all have whatever they want in life, the sun shines on them whenever they pop off to their holiday home retreat and doctor's bills cause them no concern. While it was well written and portrayed Alice's growing confusion very effectively, I found that I did not relate to any of the characters very much. Her conflict with her youngest daughter over her life choices and her rejection of the acceptable school-college-good job path that was expected of her did not endear Alice to me from the outset. And the husband, didn't like him at all, very unsympathetic and did not appear to give his wife the support you would expect in such dire circumstances. As she deteriorates he wants to take up a very prestigious position in New York, an idea she rejects outright, but then he justifies his desire and actions by telling the children that Alice would not want him to restrict his life because of her condition. He is so wrapped up in his career that her needs seem to come a very poor second for him. The daughters however come through for their mum and create a support network that encompasses her needs and their own lives and their desire to continue to love and care for her. 

The things I didn't like about the book: far to much waffle at the beginning, the description of their life and her work, I guess to emphasise what she is losing but I found it boring. Something that nearly made me put the book down: enumerating the contents of her daughter's bathroom she labels everything with brand names ... why? It was utterly irrelevant to the story and made me wonder if there was some kind of product placement thing going on. Thirdly, maybe this is just me but it felt like there was some not so subtle intimation that because she was very intellectual the loss of her brain function was somehow more of a tragedy for her than it would have been for someone who's life did not revolve around language, teaching, writing and all these academic achievements. She doesn't say it in so many words but she harps on and on about this aspect of Alice's life, how important it is to her and how appalling the loss is. And then the ending; she is enjoying a busker along the sea front before going back to spend the weekend with her daughters and grandchildren, contentedly oblivious to her situation, still active and physically able, well cared for by a private carer, apparently living in the family holiday home. It was far too idealistic and even slightly rosy and hopeful. Considering how true to life she had obviously tried to make the rest of the story I think she chickened out from presenting the reality of where Alice's existence was headed.

The book was interesting mostly because of the Coursera course I am doing about the nature of the self. It raised many questions about the nature of consciousness and thought and what makes a person. The title is asking that question in a way; is she still Alice when everything that was Alice is gone?

C for Cole

Babette Cole is a children's writer who's irreverent humour knows no bounds, I am not sure that there are any sticky subjects out there that she has not tackled in print. We first encountered her through such classics as Princess Smartypants and Prince Cinders, books that mock gender stereotypes by turning them on their heads. We did briefly encounter Drop Dead, old people telling their grandchildren about ageing and dying and of course Dr Dog, who deals with the delights of nits, worms and flatulence (toilet humour always goes down well):

But today's real delight is Mummy Laid an Egg, a classic of the 'where do babies come from' genre. I bought this book thinking it might be a good way to introduce the subject in a light hearted way, but the first time I read this to my children I got absolutely no reaction, it was just another story to them. Come to think of it, I'm not sure I ever did have that conversation properly, maybe it's something I should tackle soon.  

 Two children are fed some very strange stories by their parents about where babies come from, storks and puppy dog tails feature, also baby plants:

So they decide to explain the truth to their deluded parents and draw some very imaginative pictures of the mechanical process of conception, and then, my favourite page, of the many and varied ways in which mummies and daddies can fit together. I like the fact that she makes no moral judgements of any kind and shows sex as a fun thing rather than the serious 'adult' business it is so often presented as:

The natural consequence of all this space hopper sex is a baby, who grows and then pops out of a smiling mummy to greet the world with a cheerful hello. It's good because really the information does not have to be more complicated than that. It answers the kind of questions that a small child has and doesn't try to impose an agenda. 

(Go to the list here and visit other A to Z Bloggers.)

B for Burningham and Blundell

John Burningham's books fall very much into the imaginary world camp of children's writing (I just read on his wiki page that he was educated at Summerhill, so that explains a lot, well it does to me even if Dunk disagrees). 'Mr Gumpy's Outing' and 'Where's Julius' were two of our favourites but the one I have a copy of is 'Oi! Get Off Our Train'. His books all have this lovely soft quality, line drawings with pastels, very simple and uncluttered. The stories are often about children's imaginary play and this one is about a young boy going on a train journey and meeting endangered animals along the way.

It has a fairly in-your-face ecological message about environmental destruction, with each animal they meet explaining why they have to come on the train because of the threat of extinction. 
However once on the train they just fly kites:

and mess about with umbrellas:

and then get stuck in the snow:

At the end they have to return in the dark through this rather grim polluted urban environment, but the little boy somehow manages to bring all the animals home with him; not a real solution but it plants the idea that as individuals we can do something to influence the wider world.

Honourable mention today for Tony Blundell because these are two crazy corruptions of traditional stories: child versus wolf, and you just know that the wolf is not going to come out of the story well. Although it felt like the 'Beware of Girls' was a little bit of an afterthought and follows a very similar story line they are still brilliantly hilarious books. In 'Beware of Boys' the wolf is sent off to hunt for an increasingly outrageous list of ingredients for recipes to cook his captive:

and in 'Beware of Girls' the girl goes to visit her grandma and she persuades the wolf he has to dress up in high heels and a feathery hat and make a trifle in order to gain admittance to the cottage:

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A for Alfie

Shirley Hughes wrote many stories under a vague heading of 'Tales of Trotter Street', that focussed on the ordinary lives of a group of families, most significantly Alfie and Annie Rose, a little boy and his baby sister. What is lovely about the books is the sense of community, people all knowing each other and being involved in each other's lives; they are very much ordinary life, about the lives of the children. And the pictures too; I love that the drawings, also done by Hughes, are very realistic, with lots of details and things to point out as you read along. In this book, 'Alfie Gets in First', Alfie finds himself in a scary situation that he manages to resolve.

So, Alfie gets home with his mum from the shops, so far so good, but then he slams the door shut behind him:

Mum is on the outside and the keys are inside. The neighbours come over and they all discuss what to do, Alfie can't reach the latch and is getting a bit upset. I like the way the book is laid out, the outside world on one page and then Alfie behind the door on the other page:

While the adults are getting all complicated and organised on the outside Alfie has his own ideas ... and manages to solve the problem by himself:

I like this story because it encourages children to see that they can have answers too, that adults aren't the only people who can fix things. While as adults we know that life can be very complicated and often uncertain I think that having a happy ending is essential. I think that is an important part of making children feel that problems have solutions and that it reassures them that life is predictable and secure. 

In the spirit of A (some post are going to involve numerous books because I couldn't decide which one to go with, sorry) I am also going to mention briefly Anno's Journey by Mitsumasa Anno which is my most favourite wordless book, and if you are interested you can pop back in time and read the review I wrote last October.

(Go to the list here and visit other A to Z Bloggers.)