"Have a carrot," said the mother bunny.

Cheaper by the Dozen. A Little Princess. The Princess Bride. All beloved in that deep, emotional way that goes beyond the objective, and all books my mother read to me. We had a nightly reading ritual that lasted well into middle school, most books chosen because they were her old favorites, A Little Princess selected because Sara started as "a new girl" and I was about to move to New Jersey.

If I remember correctly, All of a Kind Family was the first chapter book we read together. It was definitely the first chapter book I read on my own, by virtue of my sneakily reading ahead when my mom went to check on my chicken-poxed sister. Other than that incident, though, I never dreamed of reading ahead, other than letting my eyes jump across the spread as I sat at my mother's side, anticipating how she'd handle the very occasional bad word. (Yeste of The Princess Bride "sits there on his world-class mmmph!")

There were a few duds that we loved to dislike together, a few mystery series that didn't quite live up to her memories. But nearly every book we read together became a favorite, and I later read most of them to my four-years-younger sister. (I also read her a few things we couldn't tell our mother we were reading. But I think she turned out okay, given that she graduated from college this afternoon.)

The read-alouds petered out, but during my high school years, my mother and I came full circle, becoming volunteer readers in the waiting room of a local health clinic. We developed a Where the Wild Things Are routine that involved the roaring of terrible roars and the gnashing of terrible teeth. Children's books became our thing, a thing it was our job to share with the world. "Oh, yeah, children's books," I said to myself. "You know, I really like these."

Thanks, Ima. Happy Mother's Day.

A frog, a toad, a little bear, a wolf, and a reader

S, age 4 and a half, is about as literate as one can be without being able to read. Many of her favorites are the types of early readers generally associated with first-ish graders, like the Frog and Toad and Little Bear series; she just listens instead of sounding out the words, at least for the moment. She's an engaged listener when adults read aloud to her, often offering instructions on just how scarily to read about the Dark Frog today. She also follows along when she listens to both series on CD, and I imagine the transition to literally reading these books will be virtually seamless. Her comprehension is clear; she often pretends to be the characters she's read about or uses their expressions ("Never better!") correctly in conversation.

S particularly impressed me this evening when she told me the story of Wolf's Coming, by Joe Kulka. I wasn't familiar with the book, and in fact just identified it now through the magic of Google, but I'm pretty sure I heard it word-for-word, complete with expression, sound effects, and pauses in the right places.

Now that's reading readiness.

Love-hate reading relationships

An exchange in the comments of the last post got me thinking about a scene in Gone with the Wind, and I found myself almost ashamed to tell the Internet that I have any positive feelings toward that novel. There's no question that it's a deeply problematic text, portraying most of its enslaved characters as loving but lesser members of the families that enslave them, and indicting them when they don't immediately produce exactly the help the white characters need. Why should Prissy know anything about birthing babies?

But even realizing all of the above, I developed some affection for GWTW when I first encountered it at age twelve. I admired Scarlett's independence and Melanie's deceptive strength, and I thought Rhett was hilarious. It didn't make me root for the Confederacy, but I was willing to suspend my outrage and root, just a little, for these particular Confederates.

Plenty of books that are beloved for good reasons also raise objections for good reasons. Both The Indian in the Cupboard and the Little House books have faced criticism for their portrayals of American Indians, for example, and my pretty little head can't even begin to count all the sexist stories out there. And then there are the offensive throwaway lines, the stereotypical "Chinaman" in And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street (later changed), the German Jew selling good old Anne the dye that turns her hair green.

Where do we draw the line? Perhaps more importantly, how do we reconcile the good with the bad? I think my answer is that if I'm reading for myself, I just need to read critically; if I'm sharing a book with a child, I need to remark upon what's wrong with it and let the child ask questions. I've also on occasion skipped or changed a line when reading aloud, but I'm not sure how I feel about that. Actually, I'm not sure how I feel about any of the above; these questions, though not new ones, are far from rhetorical. If any of you have your own answers, I'd be curious to hear them.

Little emergencies, little adventures

Eastern Massachusetts is under a boil-water order for at least a few days due to a major leak. We're washing our hands from pitchers, carting in bottled water by the delugeload, and realizing all the little ways we use running water in everyday life. I am okay with all this, and for that I credit children's literature.

When the little emergencies of a northeastern childhood sprung up--the thunderstorms, the blizzards, the minor injuries, the auto breakdowns--part of me always wanted them to get a little worse, a little more exciting. (I'm sure there was a line I wouldn't have wanted them to cross, but I was luckily secure enough in being taken care of that I never had to figure out where that line was.) I wanted to walk miles and miles to safety like the Tillermans in Homecoming. I wanted to bathe in a museum fountain like Claudia and Jamie in From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. I wanted to be in charge of the younger kids stranded somewhere with me like the babysitters in Snowbound. I probably also wanted school to be cancelled, but hey, that happens in a lot of books, too.

Of course, I hope this water situation doesn't last too long. My heart goes out to anyone dealing with a serious health problem or with anything else that makes these circumstances harder to handle. But for now... since I can't do anything about it anyway... bring on the adventure!

Literary Love: Captain Underpants

Do I eagerly await each new installment in Dav Pilkey's Captain Underpants series? I do not. But if the image of me snort-laughing at scatological reference after scatological reference makes this post more fun for you, then go ahead and imagine it.

That disclaimed, I did read the first book in the series when I TAed a children's lit class, and it made a favorable impression, even more so than I expected. I tend to fall into the camp that believes virtually anything that will help kids enjoy reading has value, even if some gatekeeper somewhere thinks it's not "quality literature." (There are exceptions, and my exceptions might be different from your exceptions, but isn't that sort of debate what makes this field so much fun?) Even before I picked up this tale of the toilet, I knew I liked the idea (perhaps more novel at The First Epic Novel's 1997 publication than it is in this era of Sir Fartsalot Hunts the Booger) that a mainstream book for kids would appeal to this most basic part of their developing senses of humor. I knew I was glad to see it legitimize something that kids liked even if their parents didn't want them to like it, and that it sent the message that they could find this sort of thing in books.

The happy surprise when I read the first book is that the series goes farther than I realized in that granting of legitimacy. Captain Underpants' adventures don't happen in the books' "reality." Instead, they are the stuff of a comic created by young George and Harold. In other words, something the kid characters write and draw gets to be the most important part of the book.

"Your ideas matter," the books tell young readers. "What you create matters. Even if it's about underpants."

Freewriting and encumbered reading

No one will ever see your freewriting unless you want it seen. That makes it okay to be really inane, which cuts down on time spent sitting and tapping the pen you're not actually using. This freedom to write (see how that works?) often leads to breakthroughs, and I highly recommend it.

My freewriting mostly falls into two categories:

a) writing through a particular problem in the manuscript or question about what will happen next. (Often begins, "Hokay. So.")
b) having a character answer a writing prompt about anything so I can get to know the character and the novel's world a little better.

Today was a Category B day, since I wasn't trying to figure out anything in particular. I snagged a Monday Morning Warm-Up (Friday, Schmiday) (prompts are at the end of each post) and set out to complete the sentence, "I love my library because..." from my main character's point of view.

This particular prompt put my bookselling brain to work as well. What has my main character read lately? This information will probably never appear in the text, but it turns out she just finished James and the Giant Peach, and she loved it while she was reading it. That part was easy. The hard part was imagining how she feels about the book now; her current conflicts cast a few of my most beloved poems/songs from the novel in a completely new light. That taught me a bit about reader response and a lot about how the things my MC is going through affect the way she sees everything.

So what are your characters reading, and how do they feel about it? (By "your characters," I mean characters you've created, and I also mean characters you've read about and made your own. You don't have to be writing a novel to play this game.)

A place for preaching?

Please don't take away my writer's license for saying this: some kids like preaching.

Don't get me wrong. My manuscripts are not going to start saying, "Now, children, remember, lying is a really bad idea." My characters will not begin making observations like "You know, I think the real drug-free zone is in our hearts and minds." (The second example is an actual quote, to the best of my recollection, from a book that shall remain nameless.)

It's just that when I was a kid, preaching and predictability in general were kind of a guilty pleasure (and if that means I was an innocent child, well, I could've told you that). I'm certainly not the first to observe that kids find comfort in predictability. It's a major reason series are so popular, after all, and with a quick explanation of who all the characters are, an author can easily bring latecomers up to speed and get them hooked. I wonder, though, if those little explanations aren't just there for new readers. Confession: as a kid, I enjoyed Chapter 2 of every Baby-Sitters' Club novel, the chapter that informed us in slightly different words each time, "Kristy is our leader. Claudia is the artistic one..."

Why? Because when I read that chapter, I got to say to myself, "I know that already." I knew the author was talking to the kids out there who didn't know, and I knew that if called upon, I could've helped the author show the other readers around. That was an empowering feeling.

The same goes for books that teach lessons. There's comfort in knowing what's going to happen and what the book is going to say. Kids spend a lot of time feeling like they know less than other people, and it's nice to have a chance to know that already.

What about the rest of you? Did you feel this way when you were younger?