Children’s Books

This morning Nicholas Kristof recommends kids’ books:

Pry your kids away from the keyboard and the television this summer, and get them reading. Let me help by offering my list of the Best Children’s Books — Ever!

The books on his list include Charlotte’s Web, the Hardy Boys series, the Wind in the Willows, the Freddy the Pig series, Alex Rider series (with which I’m not familiar), Harry Potter, Gentle Ben, and a number of other evergreens of children’s literature. Hundreds of others are mentioned in the comments to the column (sorry, Michael, no Anim*rphs).

I’m probably the worst possible person to recommend books for children. At the end of first grade I was unable to read—not even a little. I don’t remember this very well (it was more than a half century ago, after all) but according to my mother’s reports that summer I took my father’s fourth grade reader, disappeared behind the couch for most of the summer, emerging only for meals and sleep, and by the end of the summer I was reading well beyond grade level.

My father’s fourth grade reader was an anthology of folk tales, poems, anecdotes, and portions of or adaptations of children’s literature from the late 19th and early 20th century. Robinson Crusoe. The Swiss Family Robinson. Masterman Ready. Many others.

In second and third grade I devoured practically everything I could get my hands on in the children’s literature of the time and, more importantly, the generation before: the Oz books, dogs and horses books, the Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, Judy Bolton, Tom Swift, Rick Brant. I was mad about the Great Marvel Series. I sought out, found, and located the complete versions of the works excerpted in my dad’s reader. Andrew Lang’s color fairy tale books. Fairy tales and folklore of all kinds. Edith Hamilton’s Mythology. A series of fundamentally fictional books on the childhoods of figures in American history.

I admit to reading and loving Walter Brooks’s Freddy the Pig series which I continued to read as they came out. Did you know that the television series Mr. Ed was based on a story by Brooks?

I received a copy of Bulfinch’s Mythology in third grade and thereafter sought out the complete version or, at least as complete versions of the things in there as I could find including the Iliad, the Odyssey, the Aeneid, the tales of King Arthur, Robin Hood, La Chanson de Roland. Shortly thereafter I discovered Sherlock Holmes and I haunted used book stores and sales for the entire works of Conan Doyle. At the recommendation of the parish priest I read all of G. K. Chesterton’s mystery stories. The complete works of Jules Verne.

About that time I discovered my dad’s college English text book which included excerpts from early 20th century adult fiction and I began seeking out the works there that caught my interest, mostly H. G. Wells. Theodore Dreiser somewhat less so although I read Sister Carrie and An American Tragedy (!) at about this point.

In fourth grade I discovered, roughly simultaneously, Charles Dickens, Agatha Christie, and Edgar Rice Burroughs and at that point there was no looking back. I returned to the used book stores and dredged up and devoured everything I could find by all three authors. That lead me to other 19th century English fiction, mystery stories, and old science fiction and so on, and so on, and so on.

I read and continue to read children’s literature but I read practically all that I have read of children’s literature as an adult.

For what it’s worth here are my tips on children’s literature. First, if you want your kids to read, you’ve got to read yourself. Read to your kids. There are lots of books interesting to both kids and adults. Among those you may not have heard of are Paul Gallico’s Thomasina, the Cat Who Thought She was God and its sequel, The Abandoned. Whatever you may think neither of these are children’s books. They are adult fantasies but because of the subject matter kids like them, too.

When your kids are old enough, have them read to you.

Second, childhood memories cast a patina over beloved books that may not be transferrable: don’t expect your kids to love the books you loved as a kid. They may. They may not. Be wary of anything written before about 1970. Children’s literature written before about then frequently has a sort of casual racism and sexism which may leave you with a lot of explaining. A lot of 19th and early 20th century children’s literature is so cloying as to be unreadable by either modern adults or children.

That having been said the Caldecott Medal and Newbery Medal winners are darned good places to start. You’ll find a lot of your old favorites among them as well as a lot of forgotten or nearly forgotten gems.

There is a social character to kids’ lit that isn’t remarked on too frequently. I believe it’s particularly a factor for girls. Children recommending books to each other is an enormous driver of what kids read. There’s a sort of informal kids’ lit book club that can drive books into million sellers. Don’t fight it, just try to endure as best you can. Think of England.

One last suggestion I’d like to make: don’t be in too big a rush to push your kids into adult fiction. In the comments to Kristof’s posts there were any number of suggestions to works like The Three Musketeers or The Count of Monte Cristo. I honestly don’t believe that anybody recommending them read them as kids. I think they read Classics Comics as kids and have seen the movies. Those are adult works and I honestly don’t think they’re suitable for kids. Any more than An American Tragedy Is.

Please leave your own thoughts and recommendations on children’s books in the comments.