Category Archives: classics

April 25, 2012   Miriam   classics, favorites, fun, great books, Miriam  
11

The second time around

The stack of new books perched precariously on a child’s stool by the door in my bedroom is taller than my six-year-old and gaining on my 5’4” height fast.  My e-reader is full to bursting with books, manuscripts, my renewed subscriptions to The New Yorker  and Vanity Fair (which will be less entertaining and provocative now that Christopher Hitchens is gone), episodes of Mad Men I never seem to be able to watch when they run on TV and the awesomely addictive Words With Friends app.  So, perversely, I’m thinking about books I’ve loved or that have been game changers for me that I want to re-read.

I think I’d start with The Good Soldier, Ford Maddox Ford’s perennially underrated masterpiece, move on to some lighter reading with the deliciously unsettling Rebecca by Daphne DuMaurier, and, if I’m still in re-tread mode after that, dive into the prodigiously brilliant One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.  Thing is, if I go down this road, Jeffrey Eugenides will have finished another novel before I go back to my tottering pile.

What is it that makes us have to go back and re-read, sometimes obsessively so, our favorite book(s)?  What magic or comfort or insight do we find there the second of fifteenth time around?  Most book lovers I know have at least one title they revisit time and again and clearly it’s a widespread phenomenon.

So, what books do you find you go back to over and over again?  Maybe your choices will inspire my own.

April 24, 2012   John   children's books, classics, John, lists, opinion, parenting, reading  
4

Raising geeks

Back in the stone ages (okay, the 1980s) when I was a kid, “geek” was a pretty harsh name to call someone—maybe not as soul-crushing as “nerd,” but certainly up there with “dweeb” or “spaz.” But thanks to Bill Gates and other titans of the information age, the geek stigma has been turned on its head—today we’re proud to call ourselves computer geeks, book geeks, music geeks, etc.

And now that the geeks (I would include myself, but really, I was always more of a nerd) are of parenting age, they’re raising a new generation of geeks, no doubt with the belief that their spawn will rule the world in 20 years. Hence, we have blogs like Wired’s GeekDad, which posted a list of 67 Books Every Geek Should Read to Their Kids Before Age 10 in an attempt to identify “what books are essential to the Geek experience.”

It’s a great list of books, and certainly just about every title is essential—but essential for geekiness? True, there might be a few more fantasy and sci-fi titles than you might see on a regular “best books for kids” list, and the lack of any sports titles does seem to favor geekdom. But Curious George? Frog and Toad? Charlotte’s Web? In the Night Kitchen?

I have to say, I’m a little hard pressed to see how these classics would help geek parents create a specifically geeky kid–as opposed to a generally intelligent well-rounded member of society. Maybe I’m being overly sensitive here (admittedly, a geeky move on my part), but it does bother me when the great books for kids are used to promote an outside agenda—would these parents approve if their kids asked for Matt Christopher’s or Dan Gutman’s classic sports stories?

Far be it for me to defend the jocks, but maybe a better title for the list would be “67 Books Every PARENT Should Read to Their Kids Before Age 10”, and let the kids figure out on their own whether The Lord of the Rings leads down the road to geekdom or not. After all, isn’t self-discovery the point of reading in the first place?

March 02, 2012   Rachel   children's books, classics, memory, Rachel S.  
6

Today was good. Today was fun. Tomorrow is another one.

One of the most widely read children’s authors in the world, Dr. Seuss, would have celebrated his 108th birthday today. A cultural icon, one would be hard-pressed to find a child or adult who had never flipped through, read or recited, say, Green Eggs and Ham or the Cat in the Hat. I have no idea what my younger brother’s first word was, as it has always been attributed as “Ish,” one of the appropriately named characters of One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish.*

Theodore Geisel, AKA Dr. Seuss, revolutionized children’s literature. No longer were the stories, if you could even call them stories, of the plain and simple “Dick and Jane” variety. Children could now, and were encouraged to, use their imagination, make up silly words and rhyme to their heart’s content. Values and life lessons were still imparted, but now in a way that made children want to learn about them—reading could be fun and playful.

Browsing the various tributes to the good doctor today, I came across this fun assortment of Dr. Seuss trivia put together by Time magazine. Who knew that “Seuss” is meant to rhyme with “voice”! Trying it out, it sounds more like I’m impersonating Sylvester the Cat.

What are some of your favorite Dr. Seuss-related memories? I’m sure you have them

*My first word was “pretty,” thank you for asking.

October 26, 2011   Stephanie   authors, children's books, classics, favorites, fun, Stephanie  
2

Everything old is new again

I’ve always been a firm believer in the notion that the past is something to hold on to, interpret, and learn from. Which is why I really loved reading this piece from NPR written by Norton Juster, author of the 1961 classic, The Phantom Tollbooth.  Fifty years after its debut release, Juster looks back at the road that led him to create what was and continues to be one of the leading classics for young readers. I myself can remember reading it as a child.

What really resonated with me in this piece was Juster’s own experiences with reluctant publishers, who felt that Phantom’s vocabulary and themes were too lofty and would be lost on young readers. His response?

There is no such thing as a difficult word. There are only words you don’t know yet…Children are still the same as they’ve always been. They still get bored and confused, and still struggle to figure out the important questions of life.

In thinking this through, there’s no doubt that Juster’s words withstand the passage of time. With the publishing world changing as much as it has been lately, it’s always comforting to see that there are still ideals that hold true today.

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