Sunday Brunch for September 19

Did you know that Stephen King once wrote a short story based on a famous picture book? Would you like to see a note that Elizabeth George Speare wrote soon after winning her first Newbery Medal? These topics -- plus dancing librarians! -- are served up in today's Sunday brunch-style offering of facts and opinions on children's books old and new.


I DREAMED A DREAM

I have been fired from more jobs than you can shake a stick at.

It’s bad enough having to experience that kind of thing in real life, but once it happens to you (or at least, once it happened to me--repeatedly) you continue to having recurring nightmares about it for years and years and years.

I’ve heard the phrase “You’re fired!” more times in my sleep than the cast of THE APPRENTICE hears during a dozen seasons of that show.

Last night I even dreamed I got fired from a job in a bookstore.

From the children’s book department, no less!

In my own defense, the bookstore in my dream didn’t make good use of my children’s book knowledge. Instead, they had me hanging novelty items (pillows, toys, calendars) from hooks on the wall, and the boss-lady was skulking around behind me the whole time, complaining that I wasn’t doing a good job. At one point I picked up a calendar that was pure white, with no pictures or print on the outside. I went to the boss and said, “Where does this one go?” and she pointed to a TINY line of print on the back that said “Arlene Alda 1991 Calendar,” then hit me over the head with it, snarling, “You idiot!”

(I wasn’t shocked that the boss hit me – that happens all the time in my dreams. What shocks me most was that I dreamed about, of all people, Arlene Alda. And that the calendar was nineteen years old. …I later figured out the Alda part. I’d recently come across an ad for a children’s book called LULU’S PIANO LESSON…written by Arlene Alda. I still don’t know where the “1991” date came from though.)

Because I was such a bust at hanging merchandise, the boss said she’d give me one more chance and brought out a gigantic plastic model of Eric Carle’s “very hungry caterpillar”:


Each of the caterpillar’s segments was about three feet in diameter and I was supposed to hook them all together to create a big floor display that kids could climb on, sit on to read, etc. I didn’t know where to start. Well, I guess I did know where to start -- with the head -- but had no idea which segment came next. So I sat there on the floor, forlornly cradling that big red, vacant-eyed caterpillar head in my lap, surrounded by dozens of loose caterpillar segments and various feet scattered on the floor around me...along with a bunch of tools and nails and bolts...and I didn’t know what to do next.

That’s when the boss stormed up to me, but before she could say, “You’re fired!” I woke up.

Oh well, if you’ve got to have a nightmare, at least it’s nice to have a children’s-book-themed nightmare.


SURVIVOR : RAPPAHANNOCK

Far be it from me to infringe on my friend Fuse #8's "Video Sundays" series, but when I logged on to America Online this morning and saw this library-related video clip on AOL's main page, I couldn't resist sharing it. The video was created by the library staff from the Central Rappahannock Regional Library in response to the budget cuts affecting libraries everywhere:



Are you like me in that you spend half your time watching library videos trying to spot specific titles on the shelves in the background?


A GUINESS HALF-PINT

Also on today's AOL main page is a story about Swallow, the eleven-year-old cow (and moo-ther of ten calves) who has just been included in the new Guiness Book of World Records as the smallest cow in the world. She measures 33.5 inches "from rear foot to hind" and I don't think I need to explain that she's the one on the right:


My question is: did anyone check with Katherine Paterson to see if she knows an even smaller cow:



HARRIS BURDICK RETURNS

Chris Van Allsburg's picture book THE MYSTERIES OF HARRIS BURDICK contains fourteen black-and-white illustrations, each accompanied by a title and one line of text.


Since its publication in 1984, readers have been mesmeritzed by Van Allsburg's stunning artwork and the mysteries contained with the illustrations and minimal text.

Stephen King was so intrigued by HARRIS BURDICK that he wrote a short story, "The House on Maple Street" based on one of the illustrations; it was published in his 1993 collection NIGHTMARES AND DREAMSCAPES.

There has even been a stage adaptation of Van Allsburg's book.

For decades, teachers have used HARRIS BURDICK to inspire students in creative writing classes.

Not long ago, the daughter of Houghton Mifflin editorial director Margaret Raymo was given such an assignment in school. This gave Ms. Raymo the idea of asking several famous authors to write their own stories based on the illustrations and tantalizing bits of text in THE MYSTERIES OF HARRIS BURDICK.

The result?

A book which may be called THE CHRONICLES OF HARRIS BURDICK, which contains original stories by Sherman Alexie, M.T. Anderson, Kate DiCamillo, Cory Doctorow, Jules Feiffer, Stephen King, Tabitha King (Stephen's wife), Lois Lowry, Gregory Maguire, Walter Dean Myers, Linda Sue Park, Louis Sachar, Jon Scieszka, and Chris Van Allsburg himself. Daniel Handler (AKA Lemony Snicket) will write the book's introduction.

Scheduled for publication next fall, it's sure to be one of the most anticipated books of 2011.

It will be interesting to see if these mystery stories add interest and resonance to the original picture book and give it new life -- or instead provide an unnecessary sense of closure, making readers feel that the mysteries of Harris Burdick have now been definitively solved.


THE REAL BINK & GOLLIE?

On Friday I stood in the bookstore and read BINK & GOLLIE by Kate DiCamillio and Allison McGhee. It's only 96 pages, heavily illustrated, with just a few lines of text on every page. The perfect book for standing-in-the-store-reading-but-not-buying. However, after getting home and thinking about the book -- which contains three warm and funny stories of friendship and compromise, I think I'm going to have to go back and buy it. Just the final Tony Fucile illustration -- of Bink and Gollie skating while a goldfish, who appears in an earlier story, swims beneath the ice -- is worth the price of admission.

I have read many books by Kate DiCamillo and a few by Allison McGhee. I have no idea if they are friends in real life -- though I assume they are, since they're working together here -- or if their friendship and banter is similar to what's depicted in this very enjoyable book. Nor do I know how well illustrator Tony Fucile knows the two authors. But, as my bookstore friend pointed out to me (instead of saying, "Listen, mister, either buy the book or put it down. This ain't a library") last Friday: don't you think the characters of Bink and Gollie bear a certain a resemblance to their creators:





GAS CRUNCH

Maybe it was the millennium. Maybe it's the upcoming arrival of 2012. Maybe it's the economy. Whatever the case, young adult literature has seen a recent run of dystopian novels. Leslie Connor's latest, CRUNCH, might come under the category of apocalyp-lite novels, telling the story of a summer in which gas is suddenly unavailable, but life goes on. Mom was accompanying truck-driver Dad on a trip up north when the gasoline pumps suddenly ran dry, so fourteen-year-old narrator Dewey is left home with only his older sister, Lil, "people phobic" brother Vince, and five-year-old twins Angus and Eva. Lil's summer art class is closed, food and supplies are hard to get, but -- because no one can drive cars -- it's a boom time for the family's bike repair business. Leslie Connor has created a likable crew of characters who -- although faced with missing Mom and Dad, dealing with a cranky neighbor, and a local thief -- learn that family and community support are the best way to weather any crisis. Some may complain that this plainly-written novel feels a little simplistic. The Marriss kids never face any true danger...or even much internal family conflict. Dewey seems like a very young fourteen-year-old. And the problems imposed by a gasless society don't impact this family much beyond making Dewey and Vince take on some major responsibilities running the bike shop. We never doubt that a happy ending is in store. Still, it's refreshing to read a dystopian novel that simply shows young characters facing challenges and getting along -- and proving that bad times don't always mean, either literally or figuratively, the end of the world.


TWO WITCHES

It's been a while since I've purchased any older books for my collection, but this week I found two volumes.

The strange thing is that they are both the same book: THE WITCH OF BLACKBIRD POND by Elizabeth George Speare.


THE WITCH OF BLACKBIRD POND was the author's second book (after CALICO CAPTIVE) for young readers and this historical novel won the Newbery Medal, reportedly with a rare unanimous vote. Three years later Ms. Speare won the Newbery again for THE BRONZE BOW, a brilliant novel set during the era of Jesus. It would be another quarter century before she wrote another novel for kids but -- remarkably -- THE SIGN OF THE BEAVER also received Newbery recognition as an Honor Book.

Elizabeth George Speare's accomplishments are even more amazing when one considers her generally small output of work; she only wrote two other books -- one adult novel and one nonfiction volume for children.

After waiting several decades to find a signed copy of THE WITCH OF BLACKBIRD POND, two of them came on the market this past week. That is the way it always happens.

One copy was a signed first edition. The other was also an early (1959) signed copy, but it was not a first. The way to identify a first edition of THE WITCH OF BLACKBIRD POND or ANY Houghton Mifflin book, is to check the title page. If a book is a first, the date of publication will be on that page:


The later printing will not have the date on it:


Normally I would only have bought the signed first edition of this book. But there were two reasons I ordered both copies. First, both books were relatively inexpensive. Secondly, the later printing was advertised as having a "warmly written eleven-line note from the author laid in." Of course I was very interested in reading that note!

As it turns out, the note was written on a scrap of folded paper barely two inches tall. Here it is, enlarged a bit for legibility:




In case you can't read that, I'll type it out:

Friday

Dear Dorothy--

Thank you
so much for
your very
thoughtful note.

The nicest part of this
rather dubious business
of being "Famous" (?) is
hearing from friends. It
makes me resolve to
write more such letters
myself.

Sincerely,

Eliz Speare

Or does it say "Betty Speare"? I can't tell. Anyway, I'm so intrigued by this note. Does it sound "warmly-written" to you? Or is it written with the reserve of a born-and-bred New Englander? Or is there something more there -- a flaunting of being famous and a brusque brush-off? Hey, maybe it just seemed that way because she was busy and trying to answer many letters that day.

It's amazing what one can read into an eleven-line note, isn't it?

But then I have an overactive imagination.

Now I can see why so many writers were willing to write stories for that forthcoming Harris Burdick book.


NEWBERY SEASON

I guess we can say that awards season has offically begun with the return of the Heavy Medal Blog at School Library Journal. If you'd like to be kept up to date on which titles might soon be wearing gold, join Nina Lindsay and Jonathan Hunt for some engaging discussions here.

And I hope you'll also join me back HERE at Collecting Children's Books as well.

Thanks for dropping by!

Teenage Baboons and Dragon Forces

When young-adult author Paul Zindel was at the top of his game, there was no one better. His first novel, THE PIGMAN, is a landmark of YA fiction -- hilarious, poignant, eccentric, and honest.

Many of his later novels are very entertaining, but the characterizations are often over-the-top, the tone is frantic, and the writing seems repetitive and forced.

The same is true of Mr. Zindel's plays. He won the Pulitzer Prize for THE EFFECT OF GAMMA RAYS ON MAN-IN-THE-MOON MARIGOLDS, a pitch-perfect drama about an emotionally-wounded girl who is able to free herself from an abusive mother.

Zindel was never able to re-capture the brilliance of MARIGOLDS in his later plays, which were usually loud, labored, and featured grotesque characters.

It was actually Mr. Zindel's skill as a dramatist that brought him to the field of young adult fiction. A public television presentation of MARIGOLDS caught the attention of legendary children's book author and editor Charlotte Zolotow, who suggested that Zindel try his hand at a young adult novel. Beginning with the publication of THE PIGMAN in 1968, the author continued on a dual career path, regularly publishing novels for young people as well as writing plays and screenplays for general audiences. He seemed to keep these parts of his work compartmentalized. Though an acting edition of THE PIGMAN has been performed at high schools all across the country, Mr. Zindel did not write it.

Only once did the worlds of YA author and playwright collide -- and the results were fascinating.


For many years I've had a tradition of going to the bookstore on New Year's Eve and picking up a book (or three) to read over the holiday. On New Year's Eve 1977, I stopped at Little Professsor Bookstore and bought CONFESSIONS OF A TEENAGE BABOON by Paul Zindel. I'd been a big fan of the author's books since the beginning and couldn't wait to read this new one.

The first-person story concerns fifteen-year-old Chris Boyd, who has spent much of his youth residing in other people's houses as his mother -- a home nurse -- tends the sick and dying. When Mrs. Boyd is sent to care for elderly Carmelita Dipardi, she immediately butts heads with Carmelita's thirty-year-old son Lloyd, an alcoholic and irresponsible shipyard worker who throws wild pool parties for all the neighborhood teenagers and is waited on hand-and-foot by a sixteen-year-old boy, Harold, who idolizes him. Chris, a chatty kid who tells big lies, actually has a lot in common with Lloyd Dipardi (both have a love/hate relationship with their emasculating, emotionally-abusive mothers -- a recurring character in Zindel's books) yet Lloyd has nothing but contempt for the teenager he calls a "nurd" [sic] and cruelly mocks Chris in hopes of toughening him up ("You don't know how to hang up your clothes after you take them off. Or about polishing your shoes. Have you ever looked in the mirror when you walk? You droop over. You don't even know how to take pride in your body. You don't know the first thing about being a man.") Tensions continue to mount in the Dipardi house, with Chris's mother stealing from her employer (kleptomaniac nurses are another recurring theme in Zindel's novels), Carmelita's health declining, and Lloyd becoming increasingly confrontational. Reading the novel, I found both Chris and Lloyd difficult to like. Chris seems a lightweight character whose romantic feelings for neighborhood "concubine" Rosemary ring hollow. And even when Lloyd opens up about being a misfit ("I know what it's like to have a witch for a mother. And just because my father was around physically doesn't mean I had a father any more than you do. I really feel for you, kid, and I don't want to see you grow up twisted.") and tells Chris about his own growing up years ("I joined a gym. I put inches on my arm. I brought my voice down an octave! I even put a mirror in front of the telephone so I could study my expressions. I did everything I could to present myself as a man.") it's more hectoring than helpful. And I never could figure out the character of Harold, who always seems to be at Lloyd's elbow, serving up a plate of fruit salad or handing him a beer. When I finished reading CONFESSIONS OF A TEENAGE BABOON on January 1, 1978, I felt strangely unfulfilled. The book seemed underwritten. Too much was left unexplained. I felt like I'd missed something....

Several years later, I read an interview with Paul Zindel in which he commented, "CONFESSIONS OF A TEENAGE BABOON is a story so close to me that I almost had a nervous breakdown writing it. I pushed myself too close to the inner demons which drive me."

This intrigued me, so I went back and read the book again. A little older, a little wiser, and a little less naive, I now found myself questioning why the adult Lloyd hung out only with young people. And I wondered more about his relationship with his teenage friend Harold. When I read the book the first time, Mrs. Boyd's late-in-the-novel accusation that Lloyd had been inappropriate with neighborhood boys seemed baseless...just something she angrily tosses off to get Lloyd in deeper trouble during the book's frantic conclusion. Now I wondered if there was any truth to it.

In April 1989, New York's Circle Repertory Company presented a new play by Paul Zindel called AMULETS AGAINST THE DRAGON FORCES. I did not know until years later that this play was based on his young adult novel CONFESSIONS OF A TEENAGE BABOON. There are some differences between the play and the book. The book was contemporary in 1977 (a character is shown watching ALL IN THE FAMILY on TV), whereas the play is set in 1955. Rosemary, the girl whom Chris falls for, or claims to fall for, in the book only has three words of dialogue in the play ("Hi, I'm Rosemary.") In this version Chris is a puppeteer who tells stories using handmade figures and Lloyd's name is now "Floyd." Although the drama doesn't end as tragically as the book, much of the plot is the same. Yet the play tells us things that were only hinted at in the novel. Look at Lloyd's...er, Floyd's...hectoring of Chris in this version: "Your fingernails are fermenting. You slump! You take no pride in yourself. A boy's got to have pride. Jeez, you're cute when you're scared."

Whoa, didn't see that one coming!

In the play, we also actually witness Harold sleeping in Floyd's bed (Chris: "How long have you been letting him do stuff like that to you?" Harold: "I figured you knew I used to hustle.") And in this version, Floyd's relentless criticism of Chris is aimed at helping a sexually-confused teenager toward self-acceptance. (There's a reason that Rosemary, the novel's love interest, doesn't really have a role in this production.) So, unlike the book -- which ends with Chris holding hands with Rosemary -- the play ends with Chris confronting Floyd: "Mr. Dipardi, I want to learn how to love...whoever I love...I don't want to be ashamed and angry like you," to which Floyd responds, "M'boy...that part of you you don't like so much... don't be so afraid of it. Someday it may fit you more kindly..."

Considering that both BABOON and AMULETS basically share the same plot, the difference between novel and play is staggering.

Of course they are two separate works and should be viewed as such. Perhaps Mr. Zindel completely reconceived the story for the stage, choosing a more adult approach for a more sophisticated theatre audience.

Yet when I see how neatly the scenes from AMULETS would fit into the BABOON narrative, I suspect this was what was the author was implying all along. And what I sensed was "missing" from the story all along. 1980 was a long time ago and even in today's more open times it would be shocking to include a pedophile as a mentor in a young adult novel.

Reading AMULETS AGAINST THE DRAGON FORCES not only made me discover hidden depths within CONFESSIONS OF A TEENAGE BABOON. It also makes me wonder what unspoken themes are submerged just beyond the surface of other books I've read.

Sunday Brunch for Prinzes and Frozzies

My all-time favorite scene from the movies is that moment in the Jane Fonda/Vanessa Redgrave film JULIA when playwright Lillian Hellman (played by Fonda) becomes so frustrated with her writing that she throws her typewriter out the window.

I have lived that scene in my imagination many times.

Many decades have passed since Hellman's era. Now we use computers instead of typewriters, but the impulse remains the same and there have been many times in my life when I've looked down at my uncooperative computer and thought what a dandy projectile it would make.

One of those instances occured this morning, when I had to spend an hour uninstalling, then reinstalling a piece of malfunctioning software.

I considered it again when I looked at some of the notes I'd written down for this blog and couldn't decipher a word I'd written:



Oh yeah, I was looking at the notes upside down.

So I righted them and -- guess what? -- I still couldn't read them!


No wonder I feel so frustrated and frozzy today.

What does the word "frozzy" mean?

And what is a "prinz"? (No, it's not a mispelled young adult book award.)

Read on for the answers in today's Sunday Brunch, featuring an eclectic mix of info and opinion on children's books.


READING AND WRITING

Two recent children's books with a focus on reading and writing recently caught my eye. In MY LIFE AS A BOOK by Janet Tashjian (Henry Holt & Company) twelve-year-old Derek -- dubbed a "reluctant reader" by his teacher -- insists that he actually likes reading ("If everyone just left me alone with Calvin, Hobbes, Garfield, Bucky and Satchel, I could read all day") but would prefer having his own summertime adventures "instead of reading about someone else's." Since his idea of adventure includes making hand grenades out of avocados and uncaging a monkey being treated by his veteranarian mother, Derrick soon finds himself attending Learning Camp. The lessons he learns there -- plus a family vacation in which he investigates a mystery from his own past -- don't make a Derrick a big reader, but he does finish one of his assigned books and learns that "even if reading is hard, everyone needs stories." Large print, lots of white space, and clever stick-figure drawings that define words in the text make this a natural for other reluctant readers looking for something a little more challenging than the Wimpy Kid series.

The text is even bigger and the white space is even whiter in WORD AFTER WORD AFTER WORD by Patricia MacLachlan, yet this easy-to-read book still packs a powerful punch. When a author named Ms. Mirabel visits their fourth-grade classroom, dispensing wisdom about writing and life, a group of students is inspired to write their own poems and paragraphs. Patricia MacLachlan has written some near-perfect books (SARAH, PLAIN AND TALL; THE FACTS AND FICTIONS OF MINNA PRATT) and some bogged down by sentimentality (JOURNEY; BABY -- and yes, I know, I'm the only one who dislikes these books.) There's only one show-offy misstep in her latest -- a scene in which Ms. Mirabel reads samples from several children's books, including a couple of MacLachlan's own -- but otherwise this story of how several kids use writing to confront troubling personal issues (a sick mother; a parental separation; a new baby in the family) is sometimes funny and often extremely touching without become sugary or over-sentimental. Ms. Mirabel may inspire more than the characters in this book to put pen to paper. Some young readers may finish WORD AFTER WORD AFTER WORD and discover that they are also young writers.


THE BLUE AND THE ORANGE

Last week I wrote about the "Childhoods of Famous Americans" books, a much-loved series from the past that related the youthful experiences of notable individuals in a fictionalized format that included manufactured events and imaginary dialogue.

Some readers remembered the books as being blue:


while others recalled orange volumes:


Some remembered seeing both colors on their library shelves and wondered if the blue books were about male subjects while the orange featured females.

I did a little poking around this week and discovered that the series was printed in blue bindings from its inception in 1932 through the early 1960s. During that time all volumes apparently utilized silhouette illustrations. Beginning in the 1960s, the books changed their bindings from blue to orange and also switched from silhouette illustrations to more modern black-and-white illustrations, always accompanied by one color, such as green:


or tannish-orange:


Beginning in the late sixties and early seventies, the style of the books was revised yet again to include a glossy cover with illustrated vignettes from the subject's life:


These volumes, like the orange books before them, also included black-and-white line drawings with one color overlaid. These are actually the versions of the "Childhoods of Famous Americans" books I remember from my grade school years in the late 1960s.


BAKED PUMPKINS AND OTHER BOOK FOOD

As I looked at those last couple covers and remembered others from the series, I was suddenly hit with a craving -- for pumpkin!

I'm almost certain that reading one of those "Childhoods of Famous Americans" volumes with the illustrated covers back in grade school caused me to beg my mother to bake me a pumpkin. One of those books -- and I wish now that I could remember which one! -- had a scene in which a boy's mother was cooking dinner. One of the items baking in the oven was a whole pumpkin which filled the house with a spicy aroma. She then took it out of the oven and -- here's where it gets vague for me -- either sliced it up for dinner or scooped the contents onto the plate. Being a big pumpkin pie fan, that scene really made an impression on me and I asked me mother if she would bake a pumpkin for us. After saying "no" about ten times, she finally relented. I can't remember if she just used our old Halloween pumpkin or actually went out and got a new one. All I remember is that -- as good as it smells baking in the oven, all sprinkled with cinnamon and nutmeg -- baked pumpkin is a far cry from a pumpkin pie.... Of course I was only about nine at the time. Maybe I would like it now. I imagine it tastes like squash...a vegetable I hated back then but really like now. Hmm...fall is here and pumpkins are appearing at the grocery store. I may have to try this recipe again!

This may also be the autumn that I finally try my hand at Spaghetti Carbonara. My favorite writer, M.E. Kerr, mentions this dish in several of her young adult novels and it always sounds so good (what's better than pasta and bacon?) until she adds that some people like to put a raw egg on top. Well, I guess I won't be one of those people (I almost spit up my popcorn with Sylvester Stallone drank that glass full of raw eggs in ROCKY) but the rest of the ingredients are so inviting that I need to try making this meal very soon.

What fictional meals have caused you to rush to the kitchen and pull out your recipe book?

Over the years I've heard that many readers hunger for "Turkish Delight" from the "Narnia" series by C.S. Lewis. If you're interested in making this sweet treat, just click here for a recipe.


BACK TO BIOGRAPHY

Last week's discussion of the "Famous Childhoods" series, brought a few letters asking about the "Signature Biography" series.

Beginning in 1952 with THE STORY OF BUFFALO BILL by Edmund Collier and continuing through at least 1967 with the fifty-first volume in the series, THE STORY OF JACQUELINE KENNEDY by Alida Sims Malkus (does anyone know of a Signature Biography after that date?) the books were published by Grossett and Dunlap. They always featured the subject's signature on the front cover, as in these volumes about Winston Churchill and Dwight D. Eisenhower:


Many readers recall the illustrated endpapers, which showed an illustrated timeline of events in the subjecdt's life:




Like the "Famous Childhoods" series, I believe the "Signature Biographies" also included invented dialogue, but the focus was the subject's entire life, as opposed to the youthful experiences primarily captured in the "Childhoods" series.


FICTION AND NONFICTION

One of the things that dates the "Famous Childhoods" series is its reliance on imaginary dialogue. This was true of many, if not most, juvenile biographies of the day. Nowadays, such books would be called "fictionalized biographies" or "novels based on the life of...." and stored on the fiction shelves, rather than nonfiction.

I've been thinking about the differences between fiction and nonfiction writing lately. Not all writers are adept at both. Some have no interest in crossing between fields. But this got me wondering if any authors have become so enthused about a world they captured in nonfiction that they later wrote a novel using that background. And has anyone ever done factual research for a novel and then written an accompanying nonfiction book? I can think of two recent examples.

In 2002, Chris Crowe wrote MISSISSIPPI TRIAL, 1955 an unusually strong novel set against the backdrop of the Emmett Till murder case. The following year he published a nonfiction account of that event: GETTING AWAY WITH MURDER : THE TRUE STORY OF THE EMMETT TILL CASE.

Susan Campbell Bartoletti took the opposite tack -- going from nonfiction to fiction in writing about the Holocaust era. In 2006 she published HITLER YOUTH : GROWING UP IN HITLER'S SHADOW, an informational book that received a Newbery Honor. She followed this up in 2008 with THE BOY WHO DARED, a novel about Helmuth Hübener, one of the young people profiled in HITLER YOUTH.

Can you think of other examples where an author wrote a novel and nonfiction work on the same subject?


PRINZES AND FROZZIES

Wandering through the library stacks this week, I came across this historical oddity from 1973, T.A. FOR TOTS by Alvyn M. Freed:


A condescending, handprinted text and subpar illustration explain the concept of transacational analysis for kids...or, as they are called in this book, "little boys and girls."

According to the introduction, T.A. FOR TOTS:

...is designed to help little boys and girls get acquainted with themselves, to find out that they are not frogs, but princes and princesses. By talking straight to their mothers and fathers and other important people, they will be able to avoid some of the unhappiness that most grown-ups now experience.

The book explains:

You and I have three people inside of us. Bossy Me (acts like mom or dad), Thinking me (learns and makes sense), Feeling me (Is happy, sad, hurt, or angry, likes to play.) These three make us act like we are three different people. Can you recognize the three people inside of you?

T.A. FOR TOTS tells kids that, " At one time all boys and girls were PRINZES." (The author explains that "Prinze is woman's Lib for 'prince' or 'princess.'") He continues:

Then along came some people called Ma and Pa who changed the little Prinzes...

into FROZZIES! (a footnote tells us that "frozzies" are "girlfrogs and boyfrogs.")

It gets worse:

And for many years they wandered around feeling frozzy.

Until later they discovered that WARM FUZZIES

could change them back into--

PRINZES again!

My favorite run of pages in T.A. FOR TOTS starts with page 166:


Followed by -- what else? -- page 167:


Then comes...167 and a half!


Followed by 168:


Have you ever seen such a thing in a children's book before? Even in THE STINKY CHEESEMAN? I can't explain it, except to say...well, it was the seventies.


AT LEAST IT CLEANS UP WELL

You may noticed that our library's copy of T.A. FOR TOTS, pictured above, was downright dirty and grubby. I had a container of "Clorox Disinfecting Wipes" in my office and they really did a good job cleaning off the cover:


People often ask about cleaning grubby books. I'm sure every case is different. And that a professional would punch me in the nose for using Clorox Wipes on a book...but it worked. In this case the book had been rebound and had a shiny cover. I never would have tried it on a cloth bound book. But it's worth trying on library rebounds. Just test a little on a less obvious place (for instance, a corner of the back cover) before using it on the front an obliterating half the letters so the title reads "T.A. ROTS"


PRINTINGS

I was also interested in this printing statement on the copyright page of T.A. FOR TOTS:


Wow, this book sold a lot of copies in the first five years!

T.A. FOR TOTS must have been hot back then. (Okay, let's be honest here: did any of your parents have this book in this house? Did your parents ever try to commune with Feeling You, Thinking You and Bossy You? Did they ever call you "My little prinze" or chastise you by calling you a "Little frozzie" in public? ...Do you still speak to them?)

One of the reasons these print figures intrigue me is that I suspect they are much larger than most printings today. I have no way of knowing this for sure, but I think first printings much be comparatively small these days. Consequently, brand new books are arriving in stores already in their second and third printings. My bookstores copies of THE ETERNAL ONES by Kristen Miller all arrived as third printings. And Nancy Werlin's latest novel, EXTRAORDINARY, was unpacked this week and turned out to be second printings. This is great for the authors' royalty statements, of course, but lousy for us collectors, who now have to cheat our favorite independent bookstores by running all over town trying to find a first printing somewhere else and spending our money there.


AMELIA WALDEN REDUX

Thanks to all the readers who sent in names of many other "forgotten young adult writers" of the 1950s and 1960s. I'm going to track their books down and will probably blog about them at a later date. I was intrigued by this note from Roger Sutton:

Amelia Elizabeth Walden wrote some of the great crypto-gay YA novels. Although most of her books featured standard boy-girl romances, the most intense relationships were frequently between a jock and her female coach or between two girls. I don't know what Walden's story was but her books provided pre-Stonewall gay kids with some heady stuff.

Since I haven't yet read the Walden novels, I can't really comment...except to say: Amelia Walden, meet Margery Bianco!

Although best known for such children's books as THE VELVETEEN RABBIT, Ms. Bianco also wrote a couple young adult novels, WINTERBOUND (a Newbery Honor) and OTHER PEOPLE'S HOUSES. These books -- particularly the latter title -- feature "handsome" girls who go by boy's nicknames, wear androgynous clothing and hairstyles, and enjoy hobbies which were then considered masculine, such as woodworking.

I wonder if these novels read the same way in the 1930s as they do to modern-day readers.


A MOMENT OF HOPE

Last night I watched a TV movie based on Jeffrey Deaver's mystery novel, THE DEVIL'S TEARDROP. (Quick, can anyone figure out Jeffrey Deaver's connection to children's books? Answer: his sister, Julie Reece Deaver is the acclaimed author of SAY GOODNIGHT GRACIE, FIRST WEDDING ONCE REMOVED and other good books for kids.) The hero of THE DEVIL'S TEARDROP is a former member of the FBI who specializes in the documents. In this story, he was called back to the FBI to investigate the source of written clues from a crazed bomber. I especially liked the final scene, in which the protagonist and his new love interest sat looking at an aging postcard and the document specialist said, "Paper seems so fragile...but it lasts longer than almost anything."

In today's increasingly Kindled world, I found those words very hopeful.

Thanks for visiting Collecting Children's Books. Providing that life doesn't get too frozzie, I'm hoping to do at least one mid-week blog in the next few days. Hope you'll be back!