There has been a lot of talk about Harry Potter in the newspapers but the piece I liked the best was this Times Select piece (again, free for .edu emails, which made me laugh and almost made me cry It was one of the best defenses of children's literature I've seen in a while. Not that it often needs defending.
"Though Harry Potter's birth preceded our 9/11-conditioned era by a number of years, Julia discovered him at precisely the time that she learned of the downing of the twin towers. She learned of Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein and (despite my best efforts) Adolf Hitler at just the time when she was deepening her understanding of the dark Lord Voldemort. Just as I took refuge in Pa Ingalls's house precisely at the time, in the mid-1970's, when the anxieties of being a "tween" overwhelmed me, Julia found solace behind the thick walls of Hogwarts when she most needed protection.The article got me thinking about the books I would want on my children's bookshelf. It's a fun game. Here are the ones I thought of so far. As I search on Amazon for these books, I see more and more that I loved. I consumed books so quickly, that it's impossible to write down all the books I loved. The list is inevitably truncated.
Nine can be a tough age under any circumstances. But in our age, with the family room TV beaming in not just Britney but news of falling bodies and beheadings, a series of books in which small-bodied Good defeats disembodied Evil can be just what the doctor ordered.
Whatever terror Harry experiences is controlled terror; it has no life outside the page. Villains, too, are not immortal once you break beyond the bindings of J. K. Rowling's realm. What greater comfort today — what greater source of power — for a child who has lived through airplanes becoming missiles, the Washington-area sniper, and now, daily storms that she takes as a sign of deadly global warming, than to have the ability to shut the book and walk away?"
- Sylvester and the Magic Pebble, Brave Irene, Amos and Boris, and Dr. DeSotto and more by William Steig (but Brave Irene is my favorite)
- Where The Wild Things Are and In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak
- Make Way for Ducklings by Robert Mcloskey (you can't be from Boston and NOT want this book around.)
- The Story About Ping by Marjorie Flack
- Tiki Tiki Tembo by Arlene Mosel
- Madeline by Ludwig Bemelmans
- Miss Nelson is Missing by Harry Allard
- A New Coat For Anna by Harriet Ziefert ( I remember this book so fondly)
- Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day by Judith Viorst
- Good Night Moon by Clement Hurd (fun fact: the publishers photo-shopped Hurd's ciggarette out of his hand on the author profile.)
- The Key to Winter by Janet S. Anderson (Author), and illustrated by David Soman. (This book, sadly, seems to be out of print. It is a book I won in a writing contest when I was probably too old for picture books. Still, I loved the amazing illustrations and the seasons myth plot line and read it again and again).
Ok, I am posting a new post for chapter books, because the list got too long.
Happy Reading.
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