I don’t get people sometimes. When the Good Girls asked me to pick up some slack over here to entertain y’all today, my first thought was, “You do know who you’re asking, right? I thought you gals ran a ‘classy’ joint.” And I don’t mean Bohemian brothel classy in smoky Ottoman reds with a Madame in layered feather boas smoking a hooka, either (though that is pretty classy). I mean classy like Darjeeling and scones, flowers on the table. Enunciation and dessert spoons. With poison and gunshots, sure, but where are the lingerie pillow fights? The bar brawls? The Thai massages?
I’m not sure I can even spit or swear over here. This isn’t exactly a family show, but there’s a dearth of four letter words that makes a boy like me a touch uncomfortable. It’s almost frilly.
So, let’s see if I can pull off classy. Instead of ranting on gangbangers, Porn Valley and the criminally challenged masterminds who infest my home town like at my regular gig, I thought I’d talk about something different.
Children’s books.
Specifically, I’m talking about the children’s books that you grew up with and keep going back to. The ones that helped make you who you are today.
For me, there are three of them that I can think of. Sure, I got the usual bedtime stories. Macbeth was my favorite to hear and my dad’s favorite to tell. That explains a lot right there, now that I think about it.
Anyway, three books. Alice In Wonderland, Through The Looking Glass and Where The Wild Things Are.
Yeah, the Alice books have been done to death in movies, from Disney to the BBC to some version trenchcoated men in Akron sat through at the Pussycat Theater in ‘81 (So much for classy). But none of them have really grabbed the twisted genius of the childish logic, the wordplay and chaos, the completely alien and yet totally familiar insanity that the books bring.
There’s a wonderfully skewed energy in these books that’s appealed to me since I first read them as a kid and realized that the world could be just as bizarre and strange and out of joint as I would like it to be.
It was a refreshing experience for an 8-year-old who couldn’t get his multiplication tables to save his soul. Everything makes perfect sense. From a kid’s point of view, at least. If there’s anything that the book taught me (beyond the fact that standing in uffish thought by the tumtum tree tends to lead to very bad things) it’s that there are no rules. Everything changes at a moment’s notice, and if you blink, you’ll miss it.
Come to think of it, as I get older it makes even more sense to me. Just ask the Cat.
“But I don’t want to go among mad people,” Alice remarked.
“Oh, you can’t help that,” said the Cat: “we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.”
“How do you know I’m mad?” said Alice.
“You must be,” said the Cat, “or you wouldn’t have come here.”
I think that sums up life pretty well.
And then there’s Maurice Sendak’s “Where The Wild Things Are”.
On the off chance you don’t know it, it’s the story of Max, a kid in a wolf costume who pisses off his mother, gets sent to his room and then decides to head off to the land of the Wild Things. The Wild Things make him their king, realizing that he’s “…the most wild thing of all”.
After a while, though, he gets bored and hungry and decides to go back, even against the Wild Things’ begging for him to stay. ‘”We’ll eat you up, we love you so.” But Max said, “No”.’
Ever since reading that, I’ve wanted to be Max. I want a wolf costume, goddammit. Who doesn’t? The boy’s got the right idea. Be a monster, let it out. Chase the dog with a fork. Ride the Wild Things on their island and be their king.
At some point, though, you need to go home.
There are other books I read as a kid that have had an impact on who I am today, sure. Goodnight Moon. Pat The Bunny. The U.S. Army Improvised Munitions Manual.
So, in the time honored tradition of “I show you mine, you show me yours”, that’s mine. How’s about the rest of ya? What do you keep going back to?
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Stephen Blackmoore is a writer living in Los Angeles with a wonderful wife, two enormous dogs and an irrational hatred of the French. He blogs about crime and writing over at L.A. Noir.
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Youngest of five, and the oldest is 11 years ahead of me, so needless to say I was reading things way above my age most of my childhood. Still, the one book that sticks in my head from childhood is “The Mystical Beast” by Alison Farthing. I read it a million times until it was stolen out of my locker in 8th grade. I found a new copy a couple of years ago to share with my daughter. Other than that, I loved d’Aulaires Greek Myths. I think I was the only one who checked it out during my third grade year - because I had it all year.
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There were two books from our childhood that my brother and I each wanted a copy of - The Purple Prince of Oz and Alexander the Magical Mouse. The Oz book had been our grandfather’s when he was a boy and we were read it serially at bedtime. Kabumpo the Royal Elephant and a small boy try to rescue the vanished members of the royal family. Thanks to ebay, we now have two copies.
And Alexander the Magical Mouse is a wonderful story about an eccentric household with a magical mouse, an old lady, a yak, a cat, and an alligator who try to save the town below them from an oncoming storm. Fortune smiled on us one day and my mother found this book in a used book store.
by Liz
on July 2nd, 2007 at 6:11 am
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OK, get out the violins.
I never had books growing up.
We had two books in our house - the Bible and a life of Jesus.
So when my daughter was little, we devoured stacks of books, all the things I’d never read from my day and all the books that had come after. Wild Things, Pat the Bunny, There’s A Monster at the End of This Book, Alice, Stephen Kellog (we love this guy), Where the Sidewalk Ends and so many more.
It was one of the great and surpising delights about being a dad. It almost made up for all that Bible stuff. Almost.
And Stephen, I thought you comported yourself very nicely. Congratulations.
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Did anyone else love the story of “Harold and the Purple Crayon”? The kid has a purple crayon and he draws off the paper and creates a whole world–and he has no idea where it’s taking him. I loved it. That sense that everything’s out there waiting for me to fall into it. And the Winnie-the-Pooh stories–especially the two volumes of poetry (yeah, I was arty even as a little kid).
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There’s some great ones listed here! I’d like to add The Uncle Remus Stories. I learned to read on the sly by memorizing the words as I peered over my Dad’s shoulder every night.
by Cynthia
on July 2nd, 2007 at 8:08 am
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Welcome, Stephen. Thanks for being guest blogger #1!
I always loved The Giving Tree. The simple drawings, the simple–yet poignant story.
I also have a new favorite. One I’ve discovered as an adult while reading with my daughter one night. It’s called You Are Special by Max Lucado. I have never read a story book that moved me like that one did. Still does every single time I read it.
by Laura
on July 2nd, 2007 at 8:58 am
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Classy, yes, Stephen, but never frilly! Just like your post.
Which, by the way, was excellent.
Influential childhood books: Mary Poppins. (Yes, but not the saccharine-laced Julie Andrews version.) And the Black Stallion series. Also Phyllis A. Whitney’s young adult mysteries, which I read even before the Nancy Drew books–which also had something of an influence.
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Hey, Liz, I adored THE ROYAL BOOK OF OZ, and always meant to go back and read all the others in the series.
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For me, any book with an animal in it was the one I wanted to read. From Babar to Curious George, to the Three Littles Horses (Piet Worm), which my grandma read to me, the Thornton W. Bugess animal stories that my grandfather introduced me to, to the YA stories about Billy and Blaze (C.W. Anderson) and everything Marguerite Henry wrote (Brighty of the Grand Canyon and Mustang) that I thought were absolute magic because they were really meant for the fifth graders but the librarian let me read in third grade.
Of course, all the dog stories by everyone, from Albert Payson Terhune, Eric Knight, Jack London, and my favorite, Alfred Ollivant’s Bob, Son of Battle. Little known gems such as That Dog Tarr, The Lurcher, and A Dog for Davie, and so many more. I kept as many as I could, and snap them up whenever I find any of them (and I have the money).
And then there were the masters, Walter Farley and Jim Kjelgaard. I always felt I was right there, inside the story, with every one I read. The information about weather, the forests (or wherever they were set), the knowledge of how to deal with nature, were all absorbed right into my brain and enriched my life, and my imagination.
I may never have actually done 99% of what happened in any of those books, but the knowledge I gained about animals was invaluable in growing empathy with creatures that has helped me my entire life.
by Kate Hathway
on July 2nd, 2007 at 9:11 am
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Whoa, David! Not that the Bible doesn’t make for fascinating reading, but…that is a serious and scary dearth of intellectual stimulation. I’m guessing TV was not permitted–not that that would necessarily count as intellectual stimulation, but…
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Diana,
My parents just weren’t readers. Other than letters, my father never read a thing I wrote, even after I’d written three novels.
So TV was fine and once I was old enough to get books at school, they encouraged me to read. And I did. A lot.
I was so desperate before then that I had read the New Testament, a good chunk of the Old, and the Jesus bio by the time I was 8. My mother tells people I’ve read the entire Bible, but that’s just something she likes to believe.
She did want me to be a minister but I think she’s given up on that dream.
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Stephen, great post! You’re just what we like: class without frills.
xo
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Awwwww. You’re just being nice.
Thanks for having me. It was fun being had.
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The only one I remember being The Book Keith Loves was something called Animal Train. I think. I must have been three or something.
But on a tangent…I really wish I’d been able to see this.
by Keith
on July 2nd, 2007 at 12:03 pm
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Hey, Stephen. Thanks for kicking off our Bad Boys week.
I think I read every book in the children’s section of the library. My favorite was The Secret Garden. I also devoured the series books I could find like Nancy Drew, Trixie Beldon, and Phyllis Whitney’s series. My favorite picture book to read to my kids is Click Clack Moo. Cows That Type.
by Sara
on July 2nd, 2007 at 2:21 pm
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Stephen, Dude. You done us guys proud. As I read your opening pearagragh of pillow fights my man’s mind shot to the scene in Shanghai Noon with Owen Wilson, Jacki Chan and a host of voluptuous vixens having a pillow fight.
Talking about MAD and Alice, I think of the Mad Hatter. And sorry to say, the only thing that comes to mind is that the hatters of ole England were the first semi-documented cases on nuerological mercury poisoning. Of course they used mercury to rub into the brims of their hats and the old hatters had a unique personality. I know, I’m hopeless.
Okay, so, I didn’t read that much as a child. My memory is Eleanor Cameron’s Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet. I loved that book. Aa a young adult, it was Stephen King’s The Stand that grabbed me.
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Where the Wild Things Are is a huge favorite in our house (as is In The Night Kitchen, especially since it has illustrations of Mickey’s little you-know - that’s a big hit with five and six year-olds you know.
Our favorite stories as a family now (even though my youngest is nearing twelve, is taller than I, and looks sixteen - god help me) are Jay O’Callahan’s storytelling CDs - the best is Michael the Grasshopper (and other stories). Sounds goofy, but many of them are bizarre and absurd enough to rival Lewis Carroll. They have never been books, only told stories with O’Callahan doing voices and sound effects. We quote them all the time - bizarre but fun little bits.
Try them - if you buy the CD and don’t like it (even as an adult) send it to me and I’ll refund your money. They are seriously not to be missed.
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Sara - I love Click, Clack, Moo! It makes me laugh every time.
by Liz
on July 2nd, 2007 at 8:52 pm
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