The UnBEARable Liteness of Blogging

via law professor Ilya Somin at The Volokh Conspiracy, I found this delightful little blog post comparing English Bears and American Bears.

Bear with me as I take a bearly deserved break from serious blogging.

On the English side, we have one of my favorites,  Winnie-the-Pooh.

Pooh is first presented as highly imaginative, if somewhat absent-minded. In the first story he tries to fool a hive of bees by disguising himself as a small black cloud in the sky. But he is worried that he still looks like a bear covered in mud and holding a blue balloon, so he asks Christopher Robin to help by holding an umbrella. "Well, you laughed to yourself, 'Silly old Bear!'" says the narrator, addressing Christopher Robin, "but you didn't say it aloud because you were so fond of him."
Soon, however, Christopher Robin loses any reservations about calling Pooh a silly old bear. Sadly, Pooh internalizes the characterization. Their eventual dynamic is summarized when Christopher Robin is dragging him down the stairs by one paw …

hmmm.  I can bearly bear to think of pooh bear being abused.  Silly old bear.

On the other hand, are American Bears really more more assertive and autonomous than English bears?  Or just more brazen?  Here’s one of my favorite American bears:

Also (overly?) self-confident is the muppet Fozzie Bear, who is pursuing a career as a stand-up comedian, despite the fact that people often throw rotten tomatoes at him.

Fozzie gets by with the bear minimun of talent,

I think I agree with Ilya Somin, who says: “The definitive study of Anglo-American literary bears remains to be written, even as its absence gets ever more unbearable.”

And here’s a little music to make your day more bearable:

Books of my Life: AA Milne’s Winnie the Pooh

The Guardian had a series of podcasts called “Books of My Life” in which they interviewed famous people (mostly writers I think) and asked about the “books of their lives”.  At about the same time I started listening to this series of podcasts I also got an iPad and downloaded the free iBook app.  One free book comes with the app and that is AA Milne’s Winnie the Pooh.  I was virtually thumbing through it, looking at the pictures, and I thought “This is a book of my life.”

When I was a child my sister received a full set of AA Milne books and, at about the same time, acquired a set of records in which a British man read them aloud.  I have no idea who the man was.  Probably some famous British actor but, as a child, names meant nothing to me.  I don’t remember either my sister nor I picking up the AA Milne books and reading them but we listened to that record over and over.  I can still hear his baritone voice:

“Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now, bump, bump, bump, on the back of his head, behind Christopher Robin.  It is, as far as he knows, the only way of coming downstairs, but sometimes he feels that there really is another way, if only he could stop bumping for a moment and think of it.  And then he feels that perhaps there isn’t.  Anyhow, here he is at the bottom, and ready to be introduced to you.  Winnie-the-Pooh.”

There was a time in my life when I probably knew the short story in Chapter One, “We are Introduced to Winnie-the-Pooh and Some Bees, and the Stories Begin,” by heart.  I probably could still tell you that entire story very close to word-for-word.   Eventually, when I was older I read all of the AA Milne.  I still sometimes give the original Winnie-the-Pooh books as baby gifts in the hope that, eventually, the small children will grow into the stories. 

Chapter One of Winnie-the-Pooh shaped my expectations of what a good work of fiction should be.  Winnie-the-Pooh was more than a story book.  Oh, sure, there were stories.   In Chapter One Winnie-the-Pooh decides to try to steal some honey from the bees he discovers living in a tree.  He comes up with a plan that involves floating up in the air under a balloon so that he can reach the honey.  He enlists the help of his friend, Christopher Robin, who is doubtful about the plan but helps out anyway.  In the end the plan fails.   My first encounter with a non-happy ending.  Not a tragic ending, but not a typical American ending where everyone gets what they want.

AA Milne created a world that was imaginable but wasn’t too full  of detail.  We know that the story takes place in a forest and that one day Winnie-the-Pooh “came to an open place in the middle of the forest”.  We know that Christopher Robin lives “behind a green door in another part of the forest.”  But we are never overwhelmed with detail.  And if I imagined a Missouri forest rather than an English forest, it didn’t matter.

AA Milne created real, living characters for Winnie-the-Pooh, even if he took his inspiration from his small son and his collection of stuffed animals. He invested his characters with depth without ever having to describe that depth.  We learn about Pooh Bear from his what he says and what he does.  We learn about Christopher Robin from what he says and what he does.

But none of this is completely out-of-the ordinary in children’s books.  The Madeleine books certainly had simple stories, just-enough description and vivid characters.  Milne did something that was a revelation to me as a child.  In Chapter One he told two stories simultaneously.  The main story is the story of Pooh Bear and the honey bees.  But the Bee Story is a story within a story.  It is wrapped up in a story of a man telling his little boy a goodnight story.  There is an “outer story” and an “inner story”.   The little boy, Christopher Robin,  comes downstairs, dragging his bear behind him, and says “What about a story?”  The father, AA Milne, complies and tells a story about Christopher Robin’s bear in which a further fictionalized Christopher Robin makes an appearance. 

This is something that parents do all the time, tell stories to their children in which the children are characters.  Children love that.  What I loved as a child and as an adult about Chapter One of Winnie-the-Pooh is that AA Milne told both stories at a level that children could understand even though he used two “voices” and the “audience” for the two stories is different.  The inner story-within-a story is directed at a “you'” who is the Christopher Robin of the outer story.  The “you” to whom the outer story is directed is the reader.   As a child I completely understood this.  As an adult I marvel that AA Milne could make children understand this.  Here, he is talking to the “you” who is the reader.

When I first heard his name, I said, just as you are going to say, “But I thought he was a boy?”

“So did I,” said Christopher Robin.

“Then you can’t call him Winnie?”

“I don’t.”

“But you said –“

“He’s Winnie-ther-Pooh.  Don’t you know what “ther” means?”

“A, yes, now I do,” I said quickly; and I hope you do too, because it is all the explanation you are going to get.

In AA Milne’s world, readers (even childish readers) live on the adult side and are talked to as adults.  Adults either must know everything or must pretend to know everything.  The inner story-within-a story is told to a child and children are not barred from asking the obvious questions, even if the adults have to make up the answer:

Once upon a time, a very long time ago now, about last Friday, Winnie-the-Pooh lived in a forest all by himself under the name of Sanders.

(“What does ‘under the name’ mean? asked Christopher Robin.

“It means he had the name over the door in gold letters, and lived under it.”

“Winnie-the-Pooh wasn’t quite sure,” said Christopher Robin.

“Now I am,” said a growly voice.

“Then I will go on,” said I.”)

The Christopher Robin in the outer story is a boy described to us the reader and is just a little boy.  Here Winnie-the-Pooh has fallen into a gorse-bush:

He  crawled out of the gorse-bush, brushed the prickles from his nose, and began to think again.  And the first person he thought of was Christopher Robin.

(“Was that me?” said Christopher Robin in an awed voice, hardly daring to believe it.

“That was you.”

Christopher Robin said nothing, but his eyes got larger and larger, and his face got pinker and pinker.”)

The Christopher Robin in the inner story is still a boy but is invested with much more sophistication than the real Christopher Robin, as befits a character in a story.   Here Winnie-the-Pooh has put his plan into action and has rolled himself in mud in the hope of looking like a small, black cloud in a blue sky.  He has then floated upward holding onto the balloon:

“Hooray!” you shouted.

“Isn’t that fine?” shouted Winnie-the-Pooh down to you.  “What do I look like?”

“You look like a Bear holding on to a balloon,” you said.

“Not—“ said Pooh anxiously,”—not like a small black cloud in a blue sky?”

“Not very much.”

And of course the more sophisticated Christopher Robin would not have gone for a walk in the English woods without taking his gun with him (in the pictures it is a hunting type of gun with a pop cork on a string hanging from it) which comes in handy when he has to shoot the balloon so that Winnie-the-Pooh can get down. Of course he misses the first time and grazes Pooh Bear.  The more sophisticated Christopher Robin just simply says “I’m so sorry” but the child Christopher Robin of the outer story is troubled by this:

Christopher Robin gave a deep sigh, picked his Bear up by the leg, and walked off to the door, trailing Pooh behind him.  At the door he turned and said, “Coming to see me have my bath?”

I might,” I said.

“I didn’t hurt him when I shot him, did I?”

“Not a bit.”

He nodded and went out, and in a moment I heard Winnie-the-Pooh – bump – bump – bump -  going up the stairs behind him.

This is a sophisticated structure for a children’s story.  It’s a sophisticated structure to pull off in an adult short story.   As a child I didn’t overtly wonder why AA Milne chose to tell the story this way.  I understood that he was accomplishing something by doing it this way but I never thought to ask myself what he had hoped to accomplish.  But it made me take sophisticated structures for granted.  To this day, I’m never completely satisfied with a novel or a short story that just wants to tell a tale or give me well-drawn characters.  I can enjoy them but I’m never really satisfied. 

I’m only satisfied if there is a good tale with well drawn characters and a complicated structure.  Then I’m in heaven.  And I blame AA Milne for that.

Why Am I Fascinated with Wombats?

I’ve never seen a wombat in person.  But ever since my sisters returned from a trip to Australia with stories (and pictures) of wombats I’ve been fascinated by them.  And their square poop. 

On Steve Reads I saw there is a picture book:  Diary of a Wombat by Jackie French. 

Here is the Wombat’s  usual diary entry:

Monday

Morning: Slept.

Afternoon: Slept.

Evening: Ate grass. Scratched.

Night: Ate grass.

Heh.  But things change when she meets humans.

Steve says this is a “classic” book but I’ve never heard of it.  Here is the publisher’s summary:

Wombats are cuddly-looking, slow-moving Australian animals. Their favorite activities are eating, sleeping, and digging holes. Here, in the words of one unusually articulate wombat, is the tongue-in-cheek account of a busy week; eating, sleeping, digging holes . . . and training its new neighbors, a family of humans, to produce treats on demand. This entertaining book, with its brief, humorous text and hilarious illustrations, will endear the wombat to young children, who may recognize in the determined furry creature some qualities that they share.

If you click through to Steve Reads you’ll see some cute pictures from the book.   I’m in love with it and I haven’t even seen the actual book.  I want to buy it for some child. 

Must. Restrain. Self.

Happy Birthday Nancy

I was away for a few days and I missed someone’s birthday. Nancy Drew is 80 years old.

It was 80 years ago yesterday [Wednesday] that the world was first introduced to the intrepid, titian-haired girl detective. On April 28, 1930, the first three Nancy Drew books – The Secret of the Old Clock, The Hidden Staircase and The Bungalow Mystery — were released, opening up a world where girls could — and did — do anything. Nancy wasn’t relegated to the sidelines; she was the one leading the charge, usually in her cool roadster.

It’s been years since I’ve picked up a new Nancy Drew book so I don’t know what she’s like now. But, apparently, she’s still working:

Three hundred books, a dozen video games, five films, and two TV series later, Nancy’s still at it. These days, she drives a sky-blue hybrid and carries a cell phone, but River Heights still depends on her to prevent everything from identity theft to political assassinations. Her books don’t follow any of the hot trends in young adult fiction: Nancy fights no zombies, owns no designer clothes, and lusts after nary a vampire. Yet each new book has a print run of 25,000 and, cumulatively, the books have sold more than 200 million copies. It’s hard to imagine another cultural icon that could bring together Sonia Sotomayor and Laura Bush, both of whom cite Nancy as an inspiration.

I’ve already talked about how the first Nancy Drew book I ever read was The Witch Tree Symbol. In that story, Nancy and her friends solved a mystery set amongst the Amish. At 8 years old, I had never heard of the Amish so it was a whole new world to me. I think that was part of what was great about reading the Nancy Drew Series. One week I was traveling to Buenos Aires (The Mystery of the Brass Bound Trunk), the next week, after a brief stop in New York City (which might as well have been Timbuktu to me) I was in China (The Mystery of the Fire Dragon), the next week it was Hawaii (The Secret of the Golden Pavilion). One of my favorites was The Secret of the Wooden Lady which took place on board a clipper ship in in Boston Harbor.

I didn’t read the series in order, I read the books as I could get my hands on them. At some point I realized that the original versions of the first books in the series had been re-written at some point. Nancy had gone from being 16 to being 18. I didn’t care that there were different versions; it meant more books to read.

The thing about a Nancy Drew Mystery was that the mystery wasn’t solved by brute strength but by brains. And by lack of fear. Sometimes the talents that Nancy evidenced were a little hard to believe. Or, at least, they are hard to believe now that I look back at them. Nancy manages to compete in a figure skating competition (The Mystery of the Ski Jump). And she joined the circus as a stunt rider (The Ringmaster’s Secret). But I was willing to suspend disbelief.

So, Happy Birthday Nancy. You may be 80 years old, but you are still 18 to me.

Reading is Fun-damental

In Great Britain they have the children's laureate. Doesn't that sound like a fun thing to have? It did to me.

Actually I had no idea what it was but I imagined it was a sort of poet laureate for children. Someone who traveled around to schools reading poetry to children and creating poetry for children. In fact, it isn't tied to poetry.

The children's laureateship was the brainchild of Michael Morpurgo and his friend - and then poet laureate - Ted Hughes, although it was not first endowed until 1999, after Hughes's death. The role, which lasts for two years, is awarded to a children's writer or illustrator to celebrate immense achievement in their field. The long selection process encompasses nominations from all areas of children's writing, along with the opinions of children themselves, before the decision is made by a final selection panel.

Got that? The decision includes the opinions of children. This sounds better and better.

In 2007 Michael Rosen was named children's laureate. Who? Maybe those of you with children know who he is.

The author of over 140 books, Rosen is best known for his collections of humorous verse for children, including You Tell Me, You Can't Catch Me and Quick Let's Get Out of Here. He has written picture books, such as Burping Bertha and Mustard, Custard, Grumble Belly and Gravy, and is a familiar voice on radio as the presenter of Radio 4's linguistics programme, Word of Mouth. He is also a vocal critic of the way stories are taught in primary schools for SAT tests.

Did you catch that last sentence? A vocal critic of the way stories are taught in primary schools. What concerns him the most is that students are taught literacy but not the enjoyment of reading books. In fact, they seldom get to read an entire story. They are given excerpts to read and then are tested on comprehension.

He thinks that a child who learns to like reading will be a better student - not just in their school years but all their lives. He says:

Books are low-tech, portable packages of the widest range of human experience, presented in a format which gives time to grasp complex ideas or to spend time in imaginative worlds. Children who "get" the reading thing have the best possible platform for "getting" the trick of school learning, as well as a resource for the rest of their lives.

But, he thinks, schools aren't empowering teachers to teach love of reading. As described in The Guardian:

With teachers under pressure to deliver a "reading curriculum", Rosen said that schools have developed what he dubbed "excerpt-itis", where classes read an extract from a book and are immediately asked questions about it. "It's absolutely pathetic - they don't even tell the whole story," he said.

It sounded a lot like what we call "teaching to the test" and I've had so many teachers complain to me about that.

Rosen is trying to do something about it. He has a new BBC show, a "reality" show, in which he tries to get an elementary school in Cardiff, Wales to "fall in love with literature in just 10 weeks."

The hour-long show, Just Read with Michael Rosen, is due to appear in February. It will see Rosen, author of Mustard, Custard, Grumble Belly and Gravy and We're Going on a Bear Hunt, giving staff at the school permission to shake up their timetables in an attempt to get classes reading for fun. Many of the children at the school have few books at home, and have never visited a library.

"This is a chance to engage at the chalk face," said Rosen today, laying into the national curriculum and SATS. "All these initiatives the government has put in place have actually spoilt many children's chance of loving books ... These initiatives are about learning to read - there's virtually nothing at all about enjoying books."

Will he succeed? I guess we'll need someone in Britain to watch the show and let us know. But he seems to understand one essential thing. You have to get the teachers on board. As he wrote in How to Start A Reading Revolution, a blog post he wrote in The Guardian:

I'll say now that it "wasn't about me". It's about the teachers in the school. If you say to teachers, how can we, with the resources we've got here, develop a policy on reading books, then within minutes, people have ideas, make plans, invent activities. It's as if these wellsprings of teachers' creativity have been held in aspic for the last 15 years.

I hope those teachers had fun and I hope the kids had fun too.

Drift House

I don't intend to make a habit of blogging about books that I haven't read but, reading Inkweaver Review the other day, I happened upon a book review of a type of book that I thought was long gone.


I seem to remember, as a child, reading scores of books that involved children (usually in England) being sent to live in big old mysterious houses in the country without their parents. It was a temporary situation but usually ended up to be life changing (in a good way) for the children. The reason for the exile was always due to some upheaval that was either never explained or that was explained in a way that made no impression on me.

The thing is, I've racked my brain to think of specific examples and I'm coming up short. There was, of course, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, by C.S. Lewis, in which the children have been sent to the English Countryside because of World War II. There was also The Snowstorm, by Beryl Netherclift. I can't remember why the children were sent to the country in that one. One of Noel Streatfield's books, Party Shoes, is about a little girl sent to live in the country during WWII. I know there were more, but I just can't think of their titles and the plots all run together in my mind.

The cause of the evacuation to the country is never dwelled upon, but the adventures of the children in their strange new locations are magical, either literally or figuratively. And the adventures in the country made the upheavals that caused the original displacement seem, somehow, more romantic than scary.

It never occurred to me that someone would use our very own 21st century upheaval in this way. But Dale Peck has, in his book Drift House.

The main characters are three children named Susan, Charles, and Murray. The story begins shortly after the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001. At the time they were living in New York City, but their parents, worried about safety, send the three children to live with their Uncle Farley.

Peck doesn't shy away from starting with a specific mention of September 11.

"After the towers came down Mr. and Mrs. Oakenfeld thought it best that their three children go and stay with their uncle in Canada. Although Susan, Charles, and Murray knew something terrible had occurred, the Oakenfeld family lived high on the Upper East Side, and the children understood very little of what was going on downtown. In the days immediately following the tragedy their parents wouldn't even let them watch television, so it's understandable that the children were mostly concerned—at least at first—with how the move would affect school. Susan, in particular, had just joined the eighth grade debating club, and she was quite annoyed. When she was nine she had decided she would be a lawyer like Mr. Oakenfeld: she had been waiting to start debate for three whole years. Whereas Charles, in fifth grade, was secretly relieved. He was taking special classes at a magnet high school for science, and two days a week had to ride the West Side train all the way up to 205th Street in the Bronx, where the older boys were more than a little intimidating. At five, Murray was only in kindergarten, and so didn't care about all that. But of course he didn't want to leave his mother and father."

I have no idea if this is a good book or not, but doesn't that first paragraph bring back memories of long ago books?

Predictably (if you were a fan of that kind of children's literature) it all turns into a magical adventure as Uncle Farley turns out to live on some kind of ship which has washed ashore. Of course the ship/house drifts away to magical adventures.

Soon Susan, Charles, and Murray are involved in a grand adventure that involves devious mermaids, a fearsome pirate ship, a huge whirlpool, and an attempt to halt time in its tracks forever.

I haven't read Drift House so I can't recommend it, but I find myself happy that an author would carry on in a tradition that I loved as a child. I did a little research found that and Peck himself admits this was his intention.

Shortly after “the towers came down” Dale visited a friend on Cape Cod who dreamt that the ship builder’s home he lived in had floated out to sea.

“The image captivated me, and I immediately sketched some notes. I took my cue from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe—another children’s book set against the backdrop of war: the four children are sent out of London during the Blitz to stay with a mysterious, slightly eccentric professor,” explains Dale. “The children in the Narnia books leave their house behind, of course. Mine get to take theirs with them.”

Published in 2005, Peck also has a sequel out called The Lost Cities: A Drift House Voyage.

But what's really on my mind are the names of all those other books that I know I read as a child.