Assorted Treats

Every now and then -- probably no more than once or twice a year -- my father would come home from work with a special treat for us.

A couple hours after dinner, he’d bring a white drugstore bag into the living room and turn it upside down over the table. Out would tumble 3 Musketeers, Almond Joy, Nestle Crunch, Baby Ruth, Milky Way, Oh Henry, 5th Avenue, Butterfinger, Clark Bar -- every type of candy bar you could imagine.

My brother and I stared at the table trying to decide which to pick first. Well, we knew the Powerhouse went to our mother; that was her old favorite. But after that -- what to pick, what to pick? It was like being at a candy cafeteria with an overwhelming number of choices.

After a lot of thought and debate and second-guessing, we'd each make a selection. And a little while later we each got to choose again. Is there anything better than two candy bars...on a school night...for no special reason at all? Making our second selection was even harder than the first. There were fewer choices left and nobody wanted to end up with the Bit-o-Honey (the paper wrapper always stuck to the candy) or the Chunky, which was way too small, plus had raisins in it. So the second round of choosing always involved a lot of bartering ("Wanna trade half a Baby Ruth for half my Milky Way?") and fighting ("Hey, who took a bite outta my Butterfinger?")

The other occasional treat my father brought home from work was books. Besides being located near a drugstore with a well-stocked candy counter, his office also had a nearby Goodwill shop where hardcover books could be purchased for just ten or twenty cents a piece.

Every now and then -- again, not more than a couple times per year -- he would bring home some children's books from this store. That's how I first encountered Toby Tyler and Henry Huggins and the Boxcar Children. We also ended up with a few school readers. Of course back then we didn't even know they were textbooks, but just considered them volumes of short stories.

The other day I blogged about first encountering the MacKinlay Kantor story "Angleworms on Toast" in a schoolbook, then later finding the book-length edition, which contained some surprisingly politically-incorrect material. Blog-reader Jennifer wrote to say, "I remember Angleworms on Toast...but not the racist bits. Which, checking back, is no surprise because I know the story from Treat Shop, an old reading textbook edited by Eleanor Johnson. And in this anthology, there's a different illustrator, Sandra James, and the offensive parts have been cut out - it just says "the cook turned green" and she's later shown as white with red hair. Wonder what else was cut out?"

Reading Jennifer's note, I bolted upright in my seat.

TREAT SHOP!

I remembered the book well...it was, in fact, the very book where I first read "Angleworms on Toast."


TREAT SHOP was one of the books my father picked up at the Goodwill way back in the early sixties and it had such a ubiquitous presence in our house that, thirty years later, my non-reading brother looked at some blue-and-gold gift wrap on a Christmas present and said, "You know what this wrapping paper reminds me of? That book TREAT SHOP we used to have."

I'm sure TREAT SHOP and other Goodwill finds helped get me interested in reading long before I started school and actually had to deal with textbooks in any kind of serious way. We also had a grubby yellow volume -- title long forgotten -- which, if I recall correctly, had engraved sunburst patterns all over the front cover. I can still remember two of the poems from this book. One was "The Moon's the North Wind's Cookie" by Vachel Lindsay:

The Moon's the North Wind's cookie
He bites it, day by day
Until there's but a rim of scraps
That crumble all away.
The South Wind is the baker
He kneads clouds in his den,
And bakes a crisp new moon that ...
Greedy.... North.... Wind ....eats....again!

(Can't believe I remembered the whole thing and only had to Google the last line!)

The other poem was called "When a Ring's Around the Moon" by Mary Jane Carr and began:

The wee folk will be tripping,
In their silver dancing shoon,
Ring-around-the-meadow,
When the ring's around the moon.

I don't know what I thought "shoon" meant back then; I'm sure it never occured to me that it referred to tricked-up Nikes. And, actually, I have no idea why this poem fascinated so much as a child. Stories about fairies and pixies and such usually made me want to throw up. But somehow this poem got stuck in my head and the first time I actually saw a true ring around the moon -- when I was practically middle-aged! -- I suddenly thought about this verse. That's the thing with stories and poems you first encounter in schoolbooks; you often think you've forgotten all about them and then they pop into your head unexpectedly for the rest of your life.

There was also a story in the grubby yellow book that I still think about; I almost feel like the title will come to me if I squeeze my head hard enough. It was about a little girl who liked to hang out with the town baker while he was mixing his dough; occasionally he'd give her a piece of raw dough or a cookie to eat. One day, without knowing exactly why she does it, the girl places a tiny doll in the dough. It's baked into a cookie (or maybe a loaf of bread?) and of course a customer ends up breaking a tooth. Sobbing, the girl confesses her crime to the baker, who forgives her, but never again chats with her or gives her a free cookie.

Does anyone know the name/author of this bittersweet story?

Once I started school, you'd think that I'd no longer be as enamored of reading textbooks...yet some of my best grade school moments came from old, discarded texts that were no longer used in class. Sometimes if we got done with our assignments early our teachers would let us read quietly until the bell rang. I always headed for the cabinets along the side wall which contained textbooks from an earlier era. As someone who was often (inwardly) chafed by the structured classroom environment, I loved having the opportunity to read any story I chose in these books -- and without being held back by the slowest faction of the class. If I wanted to skip to the end of the book and read a story, I could. If I liked a story so much that I wanted to read it three times in a row, I could do that as well. Is there anything better than reading something not because you "have to," but because you "want to"? Opening those old textbooks was like being at a short-story cafeteria with an overwhelming number of choices.

Every one of them was, in one way or another, a treat shop.

A Sunday Brunch with Maalox Moments

Today’s Sunday Brunch reveals a little-known historical fact about the Newbery and Caldecott Medals, talks about stories we remember from schoolbooks, and serves up an order of toast with, well, let’s just say it’s a “protein” they haven’t yet featured on TOP CHEF. Dig in!


MY LITTLE-KNOWN FACT ABOUT THE NEWBERY AND CALDECOTT AWARDS

Robert McCloskey’s BLUEBERRIES FOR SAL did not win the Caldecott Medal in 1949...but should it have?

And what about Kate Seredy’s THE SINGING TREE? It was a 1940 Newbery Honor Book (then called “runner-up”)...but might it actually have won the award under a different set of rules?

I was thinking about this after discovering that School Library Journal's Heavy Medal Mock Newbery Blog is up and running for the 2010 season.

My old friend Jonathan Hunt is now contributing to the Heavy Medal blog and recently wrote a post called The Ghosts of Newberys Past, which includes a list of 2009 titles by previous Newbery- and Newbery Honor-winning authors and asks who “has the best chance of repeating and why?”

Recent years have given us a number of repeat winners, but did you know that, for the first few decades of the Newbery and Caldecott Medals, it was virtually impossible for an author or illustrator to win these prizes twice?

In 1930, Rachel Field won the Newbery for HITTY : HER FIRST HUNDRED YEARS. Two years later, her novel CALICO BUSH was considered a strong contender for the award, but the committee questioned whether the same author should be honored twice. At that time the ALA Executive Board made this resolution:

Since the Newbery Medal is intended to encourage an increasing number of authors to devote their best efforts to creating children’s literature, the book of a previous recipient of the Newbery Medal shall receive the award only upon unanimous vote of the Newbery Committee.

Unanimous? That almost never happens!

This same "unanimous only" policy was later applied to the Caldecott Medal. It wasn’t until 1958 that this rule was changed -- in a fairly dramatic fashion.

That was the year of Robert McCloskey’s TIME OF WONDER. Having previously won in 1942 for MAKE WAY FOR DUCKLINGS, the only way McCloskey could ever win again would be with one of those near-impossible-to-get unanimous votes. During their deliberations at the conference that year, the Caldecott committee actually adjourned in order to ask the American Library Association if the “unanimous” requirement could be repealed. The board held a special executive session, approved the request, and the committee went back to deliberations...and declared TIME OF WONDER that year’s Caldecott winner.

Since this rule was changed there have been a fair number of artists who have also won the Caldecott twice: Nonny Hogrogian, Leo and Diane Dillon, Barbara Cooney, and Chris Van Allsburg. And Marcia Brown and David Wiesner have each won the award three times!

Newbery double-dippers include Joseph Krumgold, Elizabeth George Speare, Katherine Paterson, Lois Lowry, and E.L. Konigsburg.

One has to wonder about the years prior to 1958. How many previous winners MIGHT have won a second award but for the “unanimous vote” rule? Obviously there is no way of knowing for sure, but we do know that, up until 1964, Honor Books (then runners-up) were listed in order of their ranking. (Since ‘64, they have been listed alphabetically in order to give them equal prestige.) If we go back and look at “first runners-up” by previous winners, we see that BLUEBERRIES FOR SAL placed second to 1949’s Caldecott winner, THE BIG SNOW and THE SINGING TREE was second to DANIEL BOONE for 1940’s Newbery. Can we assume these books could have/might have won the awards those years if they had received unanimous votes? There’s no way of knowing, but it’s fun to speculate!


SCHOOL STORIES

Some of the stories that stick with us the longest are those we first encounter in schoolbooks. Blog readers frequently write and ask if I can help identify stories they remember from their school days. I love getting such requests, but rarely have good luck tracking down the answers. I haven’t even had much luck tracking down some of textbook stories from my own past. Here’s one I remember from about sixth grade that I has continued to haunt me for nearly forty years.

The story concerns a popular boy who is running for class president. When he marks his ballot, he votes for himself -- though it feels a little egotistical to do so. The teacher tallies the votes and announces that he has won the election with 29 votes; his opponent just received one vote. To assuage his own guilt over voting for himself, the protagonist shouts out, “That was my vote! I voted for Billy!” He later feels guilty about lying (this kid sure has a guilt complex) and goes to his teacher, confessing that he lied about voting for the other boy. The teacher understands and tells him that it’s natural that he’d want to vote for himself. Then, as he's leaving the room, the teacher adds something like, “Can’t you guess who actually did vote for Billy?”

I don’t know the title or the author. Does anyone have any ideas?



UM…SPEAKING OF VOTING

The results of the Book Blogger Appreciation Week Awards will be revealed this week. Collecting Children’s Books was shortlisted in the category of “Best Writing” and if this blog just gets one vote, well ...“can’t you guess who actually did vote for it?”



SKIP THIS ENTRY IF YOU HAVE A WEAK STOMACH

As I said, I rarely have good luck tracking down stories from old schoolbooks. Some were originally written for the textbook market by unknown/uncredited authors, some were first published in long-forgotten children’s magazines, others were excerpted from novels. Not too long ago I discovered that one school story I remembered from my youth had actually been published as a picture book -- and the author was MacKinlay Kantor, best known for his Pulitzer-winning masterpiece ANDERSONVILLE. Mr. Kantor wasn’t known for children’s books. In fact, besides writing a couple history books for kids, he appears to have written only this one picture book.

It’s called...well, I’ll give you a moment to grab the Maalox bottle first...it’s called ANGLEWORMS ON TOAST.

Yeah, thirty years before Thomas Rockwell gave us HOW TO EAT FRIED WORMS, MacKinlay Kantor served up this story about young Tommy who, whenever he’s asked what he wants to eat, replies, “Angleworms on toast. Angleworms, creamed on toast.”


Published in 1942 and illustrated by the great Kurt Wiese, this funny tale of attention-seeking Tommy comes to a satisfyingly gross conclusion when the protagonist -- staying home from school because he's "sick" -- is asked what he’d like for dinner and gives his standard reply. Eager to please the poor little “sick” boy, Tommy’s family goes out to the garden to dig...and then Mother and the “Colored Cook” whip up a nice gooey plate of angleworms on toast, angleworms creamed on toast.

The meal makes Tommy so sick (for real this time!) that he never asks for angleworms again.

The irresistible title would seem to make ANGLEWORMS ON TOAST a classic, but the book is marred for today’s readers by its racial insensitivity. In addition to references to the “Colored Cook,” there is an offensive illustration of a cannibal. And check out this spread:


Hard to believe that as late as 1942, this type of thing was considered acceptable for a children’s book. For that page alone, I think I’ll need another slug of Maalox.



MACK AND THE YOUNG WRITER

MacKinlay Kantor unknowingly made another contribution to children’s books when he happened to steer a young author onto the right path.

Back in the 1940s, a young girl returned home from school and discovered a new neighbor visiting her parents. It was MacKinlay Kantor.

This girl was an aspiring writer who was already flooding adult magazines such as the SATURDAY EVENING POST with her childish short stories. When her father suggested that she show Mr. Kantor one of her manuscripts, the girl thought “What an opportunity! A living, breathing, published author was right there waiting to appreciate me!” She later recalled the experience:

I rushed to get the story and stood expectantly at his elbow as Mr. Kantor scanned the pages.

The praise I anticipated did not come.

“My dear,” Mr. Kantor exploded, “this is pure s**t!”

It was the first time the word had ever been used in my hearing. My mother was as shocked as I was.

“Mack,” she said reprovingly, “Lois is only thirteen!”

“I don’t care how old she is,” roared my idol. “If she is putting her stories into the market and expects someone to buy them, she is old enough to take criticism. What kind of subject matter is this for a kid? She has never had a love affair or seen a man get murdered. Good writing comes from the heart, not off the top of the head.”

He turned to me and added more gently, “Throw this stuff in the trash, child, and go write about something you know about. Write something that rings true.”

I was crushed. I was also challenged. Later that week, I did write a story about a fat, shy little girl with braces and glasses who covered her insecurity by writing stories about imaginary adventures. I submitted it to a teen publication called CALLING ALL GIRLS, and by return mail I received a check for $25.

It was the most incredible moment of my life.

The young girl who took Mack’s advice was Lois Duncan. She grew up to write such novels as I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER, STRANGER WITH MY FACE, KILLING MR. GRIFFIN, and many more.

As a fan of her work, I can only say, “Thanks, Mack!”



ACROSS THE YEARS

Many years ago, AOL sponsored a number of message boards devoted to special subjects. I used to spend a lot of time visiting the “Writing for Children” and “Writing for Young Adults” boards. One of the people posting there was named Mary E. Pearson. At that time she had just published her first novel, the unique and thought-provoking DAVID V. GOD, and SCRIBBLER OF DREAMS was about to be released. We exchanged a few notes in passing before AOL shut the message boards down. In the years since, she wrote fan-favorite A ROOM ON LORELEI STREET and the critically-esteemed THE ADORATION OF JENNA FOX. The latter, science fiction set in the everyday world (one of my favorite genres) was one of 2008’s best. Last year a friend arranged to get a signed copy of that book for me. I was so surprised and gratified when it arrived with a note from Mary Pearson, saying that she remembered me from our AOL encounters:


Needless to say, I treasure my copy of THE ADORATION OF JENNA FOX!

And now the author has a new book out that is worth knowing about.



BOOK REVIEW : THE MILES BETWEEN by Mary E. Pearson

“I pay attention to dates, numbers, and circumstance. Obsessively, some say. I prefer to think of it as careful observation, finding the pattern to coincidence.” For Destiny Faraday, October 19 is a day fraught with coincidence -- and meaning. When she tears that page from her calendar pad before the day has barely begun, she sets in motion a series of events that reveal her past, unsettle her present, and determine her future. She is currently a student at Hedgebrook, the latest in a series of private schools she's attended because, she maintains, her uncaring parents will not allow her to live at home. Wishing for “one day when the good guys win. One day where the world makes sense. Just one day where the world is fair,” Destiny discovers an unoccupied running car and suddenly finds herself riding away from Hedgebrook with three classmates. THE MILES BETWEEN recounts the adventures of these four teenagers on an all-day road trip in which each of their fondest wishes are granted in some unexpected ways. The characters are well-defined, the dialogue is smart, and the plot takes some neat twists and turns. Most fictional road trips are metaphors for journeys of self-discovery and the same holds true for this novel’s often prickly, coincidence-obsessed, unreliable narrator who, during the course of “just one day,” confronts some truths about her past and learns to reach out to others. Some readers may guess Destiny’s secrets before they are revealed within the story, but that will not diminish interest in the novel. One of the most fascinating aspects of THE MILES BETWEEN is seeing how Mary Pearson tackles some pretty heavy subjects with a fairly light, almost magical, touch. It’s a sad story that ultimately leaves you smiling.



THE MILES BETWEEN by Mary E. Pearson. Published by Henry Holt, 2009.

Reasons the book may become collectable: The author’s reputation is growing with each new novel.

How to identify a first edition: Copyright page states “First Edition -- 2009” and must contain the full line of numbers: 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2. The price on the dustjacket is $16.99.

Difficulty in finding first editions: Just published, first editions are very easy to find at present.



TAKE OFF YOUR JACKET

THE MILES BETWEEN is another example of inventive book design. An image of the dustjacket is printed above, but take off the jacket and you get this unusual upside-down photographic illustration on the glossy covers of the book itself:




A LONG-AWAITED BOOK FOR ADULTS

Tuesday marks the publication of THE LOST SYMBOL, the long-awaited new novel by Dan Brown, whose mega-millions bestseller THE DA VINCI CODE took the world by storm.

I know it’s fashionable to put down THE DA VINCI CODE for shoddy scholarship and weak writing but, in my opinion, any book that has you turning the pages so fast you get paper cuts definitely has something going for it.

Many teenage readers have embraced Dan Brown’s novels and I suspect younger kids have tried to tackle them as well, though I think the subject matter of THE DA VINCI CODE, in particular, would require a lot of “parental guidance.”

To celebrate the publication of THE LOST SYMBOL, I tried to come up with a list of puzzle mysteries and conspiracy tales that might appeal more directly to young readers. Here’s my list:

CHASING VERMEER by Blue Balliett
THE WRIGHT 3 by Blue Balliett
THE CALDER GAME by Blue Balliett
THE MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCE OF LEON (I MEAN NOEL) by Ellen Raskin
THE TATTOOED POTATO AND OTHER CLUES by Ellen Raskin
THE WESTING GAME by Ellen Raskin
SHAKESPEARE’S SECRET by Elise Broach
MASTERPIECE by Elise Broach
FROM THE MIXED-UP FILES OF MRS. BASIL E. FRANKWEILER by E. L. Konigsburg
THE MYSTERIOUS BENEDICT SOCIETY by Trenton Lee Stewart
THE MYSTERIOUS BENEDICT SOCIETY AND THE PRISONERS DILEMMA by Trenton Lee Stewart



THANKS

Thanks for dropping by for brunch.

Next time I’ll tell MacKinlay Kantor he doesn’t have to bring a dish.

(No really, Mack, it’s not necessary!)

...Well, if he does bring it, I guess I should invite a girl I used to know. She was actually the older sister of one of my childhood friends and she was famous in the neighborhood because she once ate a worm.

I have no idea what precipitated the event.

I don’t know if she ate it creamed on toast or just...tartare.

All I know is that she once ate a worm.

Over the years, generations of younger kids would hear the story and go up to Janet, asking if it was really true: “Did you really eat a worm when you were a kid?”

“Yep,” she’d reply, and her eyes would get misty with the memory. “And it tasted just like bacon.”

Maalox!!!

Cloudy with a Chance of Hope

Twenty-two years ago, on a hot Sunday night, an airplane fell out of the sky.

We’ve all seen air-crash stories covered in the media -- films of tangled, smoking metal...the desperate search for survivors...the endless investigations into what caused the tragedy.

What made this accident different for me is that it happened just outside my hometown. It was the first time such a disaster had occured at Detroit’s Metropolitan Airport. Everyone seemed to know somebody who had flown out of Metro that day or who was due in later that night. Everyone had a story to tell. Northwest Flight 255 crashed just seconds after take-off and the carnage spilled across Middlebelt Road, a major thoroughfare that cuts a swath through our western suburbs. In the coming days I would drive down Middlebelt, passing all the usual stores and schools and houses in my own neighborhood, well aware that just fifteen miles to the south, this same road was covered with recovered bodies, lined up in neat rows.

One hundred and fifty-six people perished in the accident, but there was one survivor: a four-year-old girl who had been traveling with her parents and brother. It seemed like a miracle. There were daily updates about her condition in the newspapers and she eventually appeared on the cover of LIFE magazine. Most of the articles mentioned that her favorite book was CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF MEATBALLS, written by Judi Barrett and illustrated by Ron Barrett. I believe she’d even taken the book with her on the plane that day.

A couple months later, I happened to see a copy of CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF MEATBALLS at the bookstore, so made a point of reading it. I wondered if the little girl would always remember her deceased mother and father reading this entertaining and silly story
to her when she was very young. I wondered if the relatives now planning to adopt her would get her another copy of the book. Would it remain her favorite childhood story for the rest of her life?

It would be ironic if the little girl, now grown and married, has completely forgotten about this book...because I certainly have not. Every time I see CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF MEATBALLS in a bookstore or library, I recall that terrible accident at the airport less than fifteen miles away. Lately I’ve been seeing commercials for the forthcoming movie version and that’s made me think about the event even more. I think about the random nature of tragedies, and what a fragile hold each of us has on life. And how occasionally one person -- by chance? by design? -- somehow gets a second chance.

Of course I realize that even the book in question is random. If the little girl's favorite had been IMPOSSIBLE POSSUM or JUMANJI, those would be the titles I'd now be associating with that long-ago plane crash.

Today when you drive down Middlebelt to the airport you will notice a large memorial for Flight 255 on the side of the road. It features a picture of a dove and the names of all the victims. At various times of the year you may see flags or flowers or stuffed animals on the ground around it. It's one way of honoring those who died in the tragedy, but I find it unsettling. After all, the only time most of us see this memorial is when we’re on our way to the airport to take a trip or drop off a friend or family member. No one wants to even THINK of airplane crashes at those times! So I usually avert my eyes when driving past. Instead of looking at the memorial and remembering the scores who died, I prefer to think of the book as a symbol for the one who lived. It makes me realize that even in the worst kinds of tragedies, there's always the possibility of hope, always a chance of miracles.