A Cockroach Ate My Book Report

In this past Sunday's blog I mentioned the book BRIAN PICCOLO : THE SHORT SEASON by Jeannie Morris.

I later remembered that, back when I was in school, this was the "go to" title for book report assignments.

I don't think many kids actually read Ms. Morris's book...but most of them had seen the TV movie BRIAN'S SONG and that was usually enough to cobble together an acceptable report, providing they didn't slip and say something like, "My favorite part was when Billy Dee Williams visited James Caan in the hospital."

Of course that was a back in the seventies. Jeannie Morris's book is now out of print. The movie BRIAN'S SONG (despite being remade for TV within the past few years) is no longer a cultural touchstone for kids. And "book reports," as such, seem to have gone the way of the dodo, the dinosaur, and Fear Street paperbacks.

Oh, I'm sure they're still assigned in schools here and there, but progressive educators tell me that today's students more often keep reading journals -- or create dioramas, write fake newswpaper stories, and make Youtube videos based on the books they read.

So I guess that contemporary kids will never experience the fear and dread -- not to mention the malingering, procrastination, and downright CHEATING -- associated with the old-fashioned book report.

In addition to the well-worn BRIAN'S SONG ruse, I recall many incidents in which a larger-than-average number of students were absent on the day book reports were due. I remember oddball romances between male jocks and quiet, studious girls which began the day book reports were assigned, lasted only as long as it took the girl to read THE GOOD EARTH, and ended the moment she handed her "boyfriend" a freshly-typed copy of "his" book report. As for procrastination, I must plead guilty to that one myself. I was a good, willing reader, yet even I spent an endless Sunday night -- the house dark, the entire family already in bed -- using the hunt-and-peck method to summarize and critique AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY on my father's manual typewriter. (What kind of teacher assigns Dreiser to a junior high school student?)

Here are some fictional "book report" tales:

* One of the characters in C.S. Adler’s THAT HORSE WHISKEY “based her book reports on jacket flap copy alone.”

* In THE SCHWA WAS HERE by Neal Shusterman, the unnoticed protagonist has the handy ability to "slip a kid's late book report into a teacher's briefcase, right under the teacher's nose.

* Anyone remember the old episode of TV's LEAVE IT TO BEAVER in which the Beaver is assigned to read THE THREE MUSKETEERS and instead watches a slapstick movie version of the classic and writes his report based on that? (Next time try BRIAN'S SONG, Beav!)

* In his memoir ROCK THIS!, entertainer Chris Rock recalled, "I did a book report on O.J. Simpson in the third grade and every year I’d take that same book report, rewrite it, and hand it in for class."

* Then there's Lorraine's story about John's book report in Paul Zindel's THE PIGMAN: "One time last term Miss King asked him what happened to the book report he was supposed to hand in on JOHNNY TREMAIN, and he told her that he had spilled some coffee on it the night before, and when the coffee dried, there was still sugar on the paper and so cockroaches ate the book report. You might also be interested to know that the only part of JOHNNY TREMAIN that John did end up reading was page forty-three -- where the poor guy spills the molten metal on his hand and cripples it for life. That was the part he finally did book report on -- just page forty-three -- and he got a ninety on it! I only got eighty-five, and I read the whole thing."

* In Jeff Kinney's DIARY OF A WIMPY KID : RODRICK RULES, the protagonist shares his secret formula for scholastic success: "I'm kind of an expert at writing book reports. There are about twenty short stories in SAMMY SHERLOCK DOES IT AGAIN, but I just treat each story like it’s a whole book and the teacher never notices."

* Then there's the musical number from YOU'RE A GOOD MAN, CHARLIE BROWN, in which several characters struggle over a book report on PETER RABBIT.

Linus takes the high road:

"In examining a book such as Peter Rabbit, it is important that
the superficial characteristics of its deceptively simple plot
should not be allowed to blind the reader to the more substancial
fabric of its deeper motivations. In this report I plan to discuss the
sociological implications of family pressures so
great as to drive an otherwise moral rabbit to
perform acts of thievery which he consciously knew were
against the law."

His sister Lucy worries about reaching the assignment's 100-word minimum:

"Peter Rabbit is this stupid book
About this stupid rabbit who steals
Vegetables from other peoples' gardens
[She stops to count the words.]
Hmm. 83 to go."

Schroeder is determined to write about another book he apparently preferred:

"It reminded me of 'Robin Hood'
And the part where Little John jumped from the rock
To the Sheriff of Nottingham's back.
And then Robin and everyone swung from the trees
In a sudden surprise attack."

Meanwhile, Charlie Brown is bemoaning the unfairness of it all:

"How do they expect us to
Write a book report
Of any quality
In just two days?

How can they
Conspire to
Make life so mis'rable
And so effectively
In so many ways?"

I imagine that many former book report writers will recognize themselves in one or another of those Peanut characters.

Do you have any memories of taking a sick day when book reports were due? Counting the words in your finished assigment? Or turning in a report on an unfinished novel? Did a cockroach ever eat your homework?

Saint Iggy vs. The Blind Colt : Brunch for Superbowl Sunday

Welcome to another Sunday Brunch at Collecting Children’s Books. Thanks for dropping by.


SUPERBOWL READING

It’s Superbowl Sunday, a day that has become almost a national holiday in the United States. I just read that it’s the second highest day for caloric consumption after Thanksgiving. And that some schools in Indiana will start a couple hours late tomorrow so that bus drivers can sleep in after the big game. Me? I think I’ll read a book. Here are a few titles to choose from:

THE WINGED COLT OF CASA MIA by Betsy Byars (1973)

THE BLIND COLhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifT by Glen Rounds (1941)

SAM COLT AND HIS GUN : THE LIFE OF THE INVENTOR OF THE REVOLVER by Gertrude Hecker Winders (1959)

THE CROOKED COLT by C.W. Anderson (1956)

THE WINNING COLT by Louise Lee Floethe (1956)

THE BLACK STALLION’S SULKY COLT by Walter Farley (1954)

THE COLT FROM MOON MOUNTAIN by Dorothy P. Lathrop (1941)

OR

SAINT IGGY by K.L. Going (2006)

SAINT MAYBE by Anne Tyler (1991)

SAINT GEORGE AND THE DRAGON by Margaret Hodges and Trina Schart Hyman (1984)

A VISIT FROM SAINT NICHOLAS by Clement Clark Moore (1822)

WHEN WE WERE SAINTS by Han Nolan (2003)

THE PATRON SAINT OF BUTTERFLIES by Cecelia Galante (2008)


CURSE OF THE CURSIVE

My favorite writer, M.E. Kerr, once told me that she tries to prevent her publishers from using cursive, or script, writing on the covers of her books.

Why?

Because many of her young readers have told her that they don’t know how to read handwriting.

I was shocked to hear this, but then I began asking around and learned that a lot of grade school teachers don’t have time to teach a lengthy handwriting unit to kids these days. What a far cry from the “old days” (i.e. my own youth) when we spent months learning to write in cursive. Our teacher had a multi-pronged chalk holder that allowed her to draw three straight lines across the blackboard, upon which she’d carefully write out the letters in precise script, the capital letters touching the top line and the lowercase letters grazing the middle line. I still remember how she taught us to write the lowercase M, drawing the first upward and downward motion while saying, “The bear went over the mountain....” then the second curve (“...the bear went over the mountain...”) and finally the last curve (“...the bear went over the mountain...”) and then she’d trail off the end on the bottom line saying, “To see what he could see.”)

I guess one reason handwriting gets shunted aside is because kids are too busy learning keyboarding/typing in third or fourth grade. That was the age when we used to learn handwriting...and we didn’t learn typing till junior high!

I was thinking about this the other day when I came across this recent book for young readers:


I could read the title, but was completely stumped by the author’s last name:


Bowl? Bowie? Bouie? It wasn’t until I looked inside that I discovered her name was Julie Bowe.

Guess I need a remedial class in cursive writing. The bear went over the mountain, the bear went over the mountain....


IN THE MOOD


I was looking at Sarah Miller’s website this week and came across this question and answer:

Q. Do you listen to music while you work?

A. Yes. Almost always. I choose very specific music for each project, and it's always either instrumental or foreign so I can't get distracted by lyrics. MISS SPITFIRE was written exclusively to three Beethoven piano sonatas - the Moonlight Sonata, the Waldenstein Sonata, and the Pathetique. The book I'm working on now is set to Russian Divine Liturgy, with an occasional bit of Favorite Russian Songs, by the Barynya ensemble, and the soundtrack to Les Choristes. I've even got tunes selected for a book I haven't started yet: ragtime and opera.

Music does two things for me:

- Sets the mood.
- Lets me know when I've put in my writing time for the day. End of CD = quitting time!

This got me wondering what music other authors enjoyed as they worked. Hunting around the internet, I came up with these answers:

Tamora Pierce
It kind of varies for me. For a long time, I did need music, but when I'm working I can't listen to music with words in a language I understand. Since I understand words from a bunch of European languages, if I'm not listening to classical, if I'm not listening to symphonic movie soundtracks, I'd better be getting some really esoteric music. Bagpipes are a big favorite. And for the Circle of Magic books, since I was working in a universe rather like the Medieval Middle East and Central Asia, I was listening to Arabic and Hindi and Tuvan throat singing and Balinese and Gamelan and any Japanese or Chinese, you name it.

Philip Pullman
I love music, classical music in particular, but jazz and all kinds of stuff as well -- but not when I'm working. The rhythm, whatever the rhythm is, interferes with the rhythm of what I'm writing. When I'm doing prose, which is what I'm doing almost all the time -- occasionally I've been known to write verse -- I need to hear what I'm doing in my head, and I can't if there's music playing.

Patricia McCormick
I can't listen to music. It's too distracting!

Jay Asher
Sometimes I’ll listen to music before I start writing to put myself into a certain mood. ...But I’m so easily distracted that I can’t listen to music when I’m writing.

Neil Gaiman
I often write with music on. It doesn't distract me. Anything that makes me more comfortable and keeps me writing is good. And occasionally I'll reread something I've written and know what I was listening to when I wrote it.

Lemony Snicket
I listen to music constantly. When I write, I cannot listen to music with words, so the old standbys are Sun Ra and Morton Feldman.

Sarah Mlynowski
I don’t listen to music when I write-I listen to Law & Order. I play the reruns all day. Something about the Da! Da! frees up the creative side of my brain. Weird, eh?

Julie Bowl..l mean, Bowie...I mean Bouie...okay, Julie BOWE
I don’t listen to music while I’m writing because it distracts me. But, sometimes, I like to write in the food court at the mall. It’s helpful for me to have that mix of voices in the background while I’m working. Plus, they have really good coffee there.


THIRTY EIGHT YEARS LATER

I recently came across an article written by Patty Campbell, Pat Davis and Jerri Quinn called “We Got Here...It Was Worth the Trip : A Survey of Young Adult Reading in Los Angeles Public Library.”

In 1972, the authors attempted to find out the most popular books in the LA library by putting a questionnaire in the pocket of each YA book in the collection. This part cracked me up: “The questionnaires were designed to be visually appealing. At the top of the slip was a design of mushrooms and the sun -- two ‘in’ items in current young adult symbology.”

Over the course of six months, the survey was answered 2009 times.

The following titles were listed as the top ten favorites:

1) MY DARLING, MY HAMBURGER by Paul Zindel
2) MR. AND MRS. BO JO JONES by Ann Head
3) GO ASK ALICE by Anonymous
4) CATCHER IN THE RYE by J.D. Salinger
5) BLESS THE BEASTS AND CHILDREN by Glendon Swarthout
6) PHOEBE by Patricia Dizenzo
7) BRIAN PICCOLO : THE SHORT SEASON by Jeannie Morris
8) THE OTHER SIDE OF THE MOUNTAIN by Michael Bernanos
9) RUN SOFTLY, GO FAST by Barbara Wersba
10) LENNON REMEMBERS by Jan Wenner

In the same survey, readers were asked “Are there any books you would highly recommend to other young people?” and the top ten responses were:

1) THE OUTSIDERS by S.E. Hinton
2) THE GODFATHER by Mario Puzo
3) THAT WAS THEN, THIS IS NOW by S.E. Hinton
4) MY DARLING, MY HAMBURGER by Paul Zindel
5) GO ASK ALICE by Anonymous
6) THE PIGMAN by Paul Zindel
7) THE LORD OF THE RINGS by J.R.R. Tolkien
8) GONE WITH THE WIND by Margaret Mitchell
9) LOVE STORY by Eric Segal
10) MR. AND MRS. BO JO JONES by Ann Head

Granted, a list from 2010 would look quite different. And a few of the above titles are now out-of-print and out-of-mind. But, still, I’m surprised by how many of the above continue to be read by teenagers today. Even MR. AND MRS. BO JO JONES remains in print and still appears on high school reading lists.

Here’s the cover I remember seeing on every drugstore rack in the seventies:


I have to admit I never read it back then...though I do recall seeing a TV movie-of-the-week based on the novel. But the fact that this book retains its popularity after forty years definitely makes me want to read it now.

MR. AND MRS. BO JO JONES belonged to a sub-genre of YA fiction concerning married teenagers. Others included FOR ALL THE WRONG REASONS by John Neufeld; MEET ME IN THE PARK, ANGIE by Phyllis Anderson Woods; THE BRIDE WORE BRAIDS by Fredrick Laing, and several more. I wonder if there have been any comparable “young married” novels in the past twenty years? Do teens still get married...or do they just move in together and then appear on Judge Judy six months later because they broke up and now owe money on their apartment lease?

Whatever the case, Bo Jo and Bride appear to still draw young readers. I’d better borrow a copy from the library so I can figure out why.

Thanks for visiting Collecting Children’s Books. Hope you’ll be back.

...Hey, would you visit more often if I decorated this blog with pictures of suns and mushrooms?

The Two Reds Scare

A small paperback called RED CHANNELS was published in 1950.

Subtitled "The Report of Communist Influence in Radio and Television," the book fed into the era's "Red Scare" hysteria -- the belief that communist sympathizers were infiltrating American society. RED CHANNELS listed over 150 actors, directors, and writers believed to be "subversives"; many would eventually be blacklisted by the entertainment industry.

Among the writers listed in RED CHANNELS were Lillian Hellman, Irwin Shaw, and Arthur Miller. No children's authors were included, though a couple of the mentioned writers -- such as Louis Untermeyer and Langston Hughes -- had published the occasional volume for kids.

This doesn't mean, however, that children's books were immune to McCarthy era scandals.

1950 also saw the publication of the picture book THE TWO REDS by Will and Nicolas.

Will was William Lipkind, an anthropoligist, and Nicolas was Nicolas Mordvinoff, an artist who left Russia as a boy and, after stops in France and Tahiti, arrived in New York in 1946.

The two men met through Mr. Lipkind's wife, who worked for the New York Public Library. Over a drink, Will and Nicolas discussed writing a picture book together -- though they had no idea what to write about. At that point Nicolas saw a red cat on the windowsill and said, "Let's do a book about that." Will said the story needed something more. Later that night Nicolas saw a boy with red hair on the street and suggested he be added to the story as well. The result was THE TWO REDS.


This mild story of a lonely city boy and a neighborhood cat is distinguished by Nicholas's loose black-and-white illustrations, judiciously -- but vibrantly -- splashed with red and yellow.

When THE TWO REDS was published, a window dresser at New York's famed F.A.O. Schwarz, whom Will later remembered as a "nice young man," devoted the store's Fifth Avenue windows to displaying the book.

Almost immediately the president of F.A.O. Schwarz demanded that the display be taken down.

A book called THE TWO REDS?

Illustrated by an artist with a Russian name?

Nyet, nyet!!!

The window display was taken down.

But people continued to whisper that the book was subversive.

And THE TWO REDS would eventually be banned in Boston.

Fortunately, the TWO REDS controvery never exploded onto the national consciousness; Will and Nicolas were never called to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee. (A silly thought? Not so silly when you consider that, during the early fifties the Cincinnatti Reds even had to change their name to the "Cincinnatti Redlegs" to avoid the stain of communism.) One of the factors that may have kept the controversy from boiling over is the support this book received from the children's literary community. In MINDERS OF MAKE-BELIEVE, Leonard Marcus reports that Louise Seaman Bechtel wrote in her newspaper column, "The publication of this book restores one's faith in the experimental daring of American publishers."

And Fritz Eichenberg said, "It takes great courage, for reasons too numerous and obvious to mention, to name a children's book THE TWO REDS."

"Or to publish one," Leonard Marcus adds, in a nod to Harcourt publisher Margaret K. McElderry.

THE TWO REDS went on to be named a Caldecott Honor -- an acknowledgement that, when all was said and done, THE TWO REDS was simply a good book.

Of course it wasn't communist propaganda.

And of course the display set up by the that "nice young man" at F.A.O. Schwarz wasn't a political statement, but an acknowledgement of the book's excellence.

That window decorator clearly knew his stuff.

Of course he did.

He was twenty-two year old Maurice Sendak.