When Life Imitates Art: a Thanksgiving Tale of Woe

This is Forrest.

For those of you who are still in the process of making saccharine aaawwwing noises, stop right there and let me set you straight.

This is the adorable bug-eyed face of mayhem.

In a moment of weakness I agreed to dog-sit for my son, while he went off for a carefree holiday weekend.

After all how much trouble could one 15-pound canine get up to in a home with nearly 3 grown adults and 2 cats? How much trouble indeed?

Forrest has never met a garbage can he didn’t view as a personal bowling pin/smorgasbord.

His favorite snack is recycled cat food. (And that is as descriptive as I’m willing to get on that subject.)

As far as I can tell, his bathroom etiquette is pretty much theoretical.

A closed door is merely an invitation to reinforce the indentation of his nose and increase his brain damage.

His cologne is eau de flatulence.

Although he seems to recognize his name, thus far he shows no signs that he needs to respond when it is called, particularly if he has encountered something more interesting like a dead bird or a tantalizing odor.

One morning after sharing a thoroughly enjoyable walk, Forrest and I stopped the little white van at a nearby convenience store to pick-up the recommended daily dose of Diet Pepsi. I explained in firm tones that he was to remain in the van and not roll down the windows. He seemed to nod in understanding. I opened my door, and faster than you can say, “Where the Houdini did that little dog disappear to?” He had vanished from the passenger’s seat, leaving me swiveling my head in panic afraid of discovering a pug pancake in the parking lot. A kind bystander assured me that he was safely out of harm’s way as he had entered the store. During the next few minutes I was introduced to the very undignified game of fat-lady vs. pug tag played among the diminutive isles filled with beef jerky and processed pastries.

All of this could be seen as good fun, or merely the wild oats that any young pug would be expected to sow, but let me now relate a tale that will make your spleen spurt in despair.

I don’t know about your home at the holidays, but here at our house we like the turkey and stuffing just fine, however, the real stars of the meal are the pies. And if I do say so myself I bake slamming great pies. My husband in particular has a fondness for pecan pie that only rivals his fondness for Peanuts holiday specials. A day after the big meal, while the household was still enjoying the pleasures of abundant leftovers, this very husband walked into the kitchen to discover a harrowing sight: a squat four-legged beast on top of the counter with his snout eagerly snuffling up the last of his cherished pecan pie. Not being a particularly graceful or nimble dog, it is unclear how a dog of Forrest’s size was able to reach those heights. He was promptly scolded and returned to solid ground. Alas, a few hours later the last of the pumpkin pie fell to the same fate. The unrepentant culprit snorted incredulously as he was once again removed unceremoniously from his flakey prize.

This very situation brought to mind one of my favorite read-aloud books of all time. A book I read several years ago, to the detriment of my vocal cords, to every class in my school. A book that brought gales of laughter and many yapping, yipping attempts at imitation. Patricia MacLauchlan’s masterpiece of canine personalities, Once I Ate a Pie. Somehow it was more amusing when I read it from a book.

Oh yes he did.

Twice, in point of fact.

Claudette Colvin is MVP of the NBA

That's "National Book Awards" for those of you more inclined to sports than literature.



By all accounts this is one of the top books of the year. And I'm not sure what it means that I got my copy in the mail the same day the award was given. Does that make me as special as I would like to think?

In an upcoming recap of Kid Lit Pie Night I will be announcing the picks for our Mock Newbery. Sneak peek - Claudette is on the list.

Attempting to Make Utah a Little Slice of Manhattan

Many of you reading this post may also be devotees of A Fuse #8 Production blog, AKA the world best blog. Possibly I should have qualified it as the world’s best Children’s Lit blog, but in my world there are no other blogs. This blog is brought to us supposedly by one Mrs. Elizabeth Bird, a lovely, witty, and prolific New York Public Librarian/soon-to-be published picture book author. I say supposedly because I am not entirely convinced, based on the sheer quantity and quality of her output, that she is merely one person. In moments of well-deserved inadequacy regarding my own blogging ability, I have fanaticized that in reality she is a conglomeration united to enlighten the world to current trends, long-forgotten gems, and the finer points regarding literature for our young. And Betsy Bird is merely the Carolyn Keene veneer they use as a front man.

The talented Elizabeth, be she one or twenty, frequently hosts Kid Lit Drink Nights, where interested parties can mingle and talk Scieszka, DePaola, Yolen, Willems et al. Being that these suarays takes place in Manhattan; I’m guessing the subjects of discussion could also show up in person. After enviously reading about these splendid gatherings the thought occurred that I could try something similar close to home. After musing this thought aloud I met Brooke Shirts in the comments of Fuse #8. Brooke is an MLS on hiatus to raise her children, recently moved to the Salt Lake area. She was willing to help me bring social mingling over Kid Lit to our state. Being that our state is Utah the “drink” part of the event needed to be changed to something less alcoholic if not less decadent.

I am here today to introduce you to – Kid Lit Pie Night, hosted by Brooke and myself. The first of which will be held this coming Tuesday evening, Nov. 10, at The Salt Lake Roasting Company at 8:00. We fully realize at this late date that attendance may just be the two of us, and we are ok with that. With any luck it will not be the last.

Before the Rumpus Begins

Let me say this right here, right now, and then I will forever be silent on the issue.

I am not excited for the forthcoming cinematic version of Where the Wild Things Are.




There I said it - let hellfire rain down from on high.

I have little doubt that Mr. Spike Jonze's flick will we a resounding success, both critically and with audiences. The trailers have been stirring and enchanting. It has been blessed on high from the great Sendak.

So what, you may be saying, is the big deal. The cast is stellar. Mr. Jonze had proved himself to be imaginative and adept at nonconformist storytelling. The screenwriter, David Eggers, has written at least one other movie that I personally adored. What I have heard of the soundtrack is alluring enough to make it necessary to fatten my CD collection. And in a big sigh of relief from discriminating picture book activists everywhere, Jim Carey and Mike Meyers have been kept far, far, away from all things Wild.

My issue is this: After October 16, 2009 –

Millions of Maxes will die.

In the few sentences we have about Sendak’s hero we are given very few concrete facts:

He was up to no good. (he made mischief of one kind and another. . . )

He had a mother. (. . . his mother called him wild thing.)

He was made of the stuff that would allow him to meet his foes and ultimately reign as conqueror. (. . .they made him King of all the Wild Things.)

He was loved. (. . .he found his dinner waiting for him, and it was still hot.)

Up to this point Max could have been any kid between the ages of 3 and 10.

He could live with a mother and father and 12 siblings, a mother and a grandmother and a great-aunt Gertrude, two mothers and a hamster, or a single mother with a boyfriend.

He could be an ADHD kid going through his nightly routine harassment of the household. He could be a previously shy child objecting to changes in his life outside his control. He could be an autistic child experimenting with all things canine. He could be a socially-conscious kid acting out his objection to Sarah Palin's stance on wolves in the wild.

He could be a kid, who from the day he emerged into the world, had the confidence to confront any large and hairy beast with yellow eyes and terrible claws. He could be a kid who was forever hiding beneath the covers hoping someone else would come to his rescue, but ultimately found the ability within himself. He could be a kid with delusions of grandeur, who longed one day to become Homecoming King of his Senior Class.

From this Friday on Max will be what Spike Jonez and David Eggars decide he is.

R. I. P. Maxes everywhere from around the world.

Me and Mo and 150 First-Graders

This week was fine

This week was dandy

This week me and my friends were happy

We found out that we like Sim. . el. . .

We like Sim . . el. . .

We like MO-CASTS

We also like Piggie

We like Gerald

We really like the funny, funny man

Who dresses fancy to tell us funny stories

Sometimes the funny man makes funny faces

Sometimes he makes funny sneezy noises

We liked his pretend phone

We don't think his pretend phone would work to call for pizza

We liked the new Piggie and Elephant book

We liked that we were the first to see it

Some of us went home and wrote our own Piggie and Elephant books

We think the Big Frog book will be good too

We want to thank the funny man

Thank you for showing us how you make the funny books

Thank you for showing us your thinking chair

Thank you for writing lots of books

The books that make our librarian loose her voice

when she reads them over and over and over.

Thank you for making us giggle, laugh, and roll on the floor.

They Have Stars Upon Thars

When it comes to purchasing books each year with the diminutive budget at my disposal, I feel that each and every book I buy must be heavily weighted to add substance, relevance and/or temptation to our collection as a whole. It’s a no-brainer to add the tempting books, all that is needed there is an eye to what is passing through the circulation desk at breakneck speeds, and find more of the same: Bone, Wimpy Kid, Fablehaven, etc. . . For relevant texts I listen to my teachers, check our state and district standards and pay attention to NPR. To unearth the cream of the crop I rely on the tried and true, librarian crutch - starred reviews. Don’t ask me what power on high gets to grant these sparkling little attention-getters. All I know is if I am faced with hundreds of reviews to sift through in the back of my issue of School Library Journal, my eye will immediately fall on the ones with the happy little star preceding it. When these stars begin to stack up I know it’s time to sit up and take notice.

The following is a list of heavily stared books for 2009. Elizabeth Bluemle over at Shelftalker has already done something similar. What I’ve added is groupings based on who they will share shelf space with, in our library. Apologies to those very worthy Young Adult books, they are left out in the cold for the purposes of this post. (Although if you don't happen to be an elementary student may I recommend you run off and read Marcleo in the Real World as quickly as possible) Many, many thanks to Kathy Baxter for sharing her nifty starry spread-sheet with me. I could never have collected all this info on my own.

I think we shall work our way to the top.

Quite a bit of non-fiction here

A BIT OF BIOGRAPHY:

CORETTA SCOTT by Ntozake Shange. Illustrated by Kadir Nelson

YOU NEVER HEARD OF SANDY KOUFAX? by Jonah Winter. Illustrated by André Carrilho.

DARWIN by Alice B. McGinty. Illustrated by Mary Azarian.

GERTRUDE IS GERTRUDE IS GERTRUDE IS GERTRUDE by Jonah Winter. Illustrated by Calef Brown.

ALMOST ASTRONAUTS: 13 WOMEN WHO DARED TO DREAM by Tanya Lee Stone.

OF HISTORICAL IMPORTANCE:

YEARS OF DUST: THE STORY OF THE DUST BOWL by Albert Marrin.

MISSION CONTROL, THIS IS APOLLO: THE STORY OF THE FIRST VOYAGES TO THE MOON by Andrew Chaikin and Victoria Kohl. Illustrated by Alan Bean.

PHARAOH’S BOAT by David Weitzman.

A SAVAGE THUNDER: ANTIETAM AND THE BLOODY ROAD TO FREEDOM by Jim Murphy.

SCIENTIFIC PRINCIPLES

REDWOODS by Jason Chin.

WRITTEN IN BONE: BURIED LIVES OF JAMESTOWN AND COLONIAL MARYLAND by Sally M. Walker.

THE DAY-GLO BROTHERS: THE TRUE STORY OF BOB AND JOE SWITZER'S BRIGHT IDEAS AND BRAND-NEW COLORS by Chris Barton. Illustrated by Tony Persiani.

FROG SCIENTIST by Pamela Turner.

POETRY JAM

DINOTHESAURUS: PREHISTORIC POEMS AND PAINTINGS; written and illus. by Douglas Florian.

A FOOT IN THE MOUTH: POEMS TO SPEAK, SING, AND SHOUT by Paul B. Janeczko, illus. by Chris Raschka.

A WHIFF OF PINE, A HINT OF SKUNK: A FOREST OF POEMS. Deborah Ruddell. Illustrated by Joan Rankin.

ORANGUTAN TONGS: POEMS TO TANGLE YOUR TONGUE by Jon Agee.

PICTURE BOOKS

YUMMY writen and ill by Lucy Cousins

TSUNAMI! by Kimiko Kajikawa. Illus. by Ed Young.

LITTLE CHICK by Amy Hest. Illustrated by Anita Jeram.

THE DUNDERHEADS by Paul Fleischman. Illustrated by David Roberts.

DINOTRUX by Chris Gall.

HIGHER! HIGHER! by Leslie Patricelli.

BIRDS. Kevin Henkes. Illustrated by Laura Dronzek.

BUBBLE TROUBLE by Margaret Mahy. Illustrated by Polly Dunbar.

CHICKEN LITTLE by Rebecca Emberley and Ed Emberley.

ROBOT ZOT by Jon Sciezcka. Ill by David Shannon.

MIDDLE-GRADE FICTION

ALL THE BROKEN PIECES by Ann E. Burg.

WHERE THE MOUNTAIN MEETS THE MOON by Grace Lin.

THE MAGICIAN'S ELEPHANT by Kate DiCamillo. Illustrated by Yoko Tanaka.

HEROES OF THE VALLEY by Jonathan Stroud.

THE LOST CONSPIRACY by Francis Hardinge.

THE STORM IN THE BARN written and ills. by Matt Phelan

THE SMALL ADVENTURES OF POPEYE AND ELVIS by Barbara O'Connor

NON_FICTION

CHARLES AND EMMA: THE DARWINS' LEAP OF FAITH by Deborah Holt Heiligman.

PICTURE BOOKS

ALL THE WORLD by Liz Garton Scanlon. Illustrated by Marla Frazee.

THE SNOW DAY by Komako Sakai.

THE LION & THE MOUSE by Jerry Pinkney.

THUNDER-BOOMER! by Shutta Crum. Illustrated by Carol Thompson.

RED SINGS FROM TREETOPS: A YEAR IN COLORS by Joyce Sidman. Illustrated by Pamela Zagarenski.

BUTTON UP! by Alice Schertle. Illustrated by Petra Mathers.

HOOK by Ed Young.

MIDDLE-GRADE FICTION

A SEASON OF GIFTS by Richard Peck.

THE EVOLUTION OF CALPURNIA TATE by Jacqueline Kelly.

NON_FICTION

MOONSHOT: THE FLIGHT OF APOLLO 11 by Brian Floca.

MIDDLE-GRADE FICTION

WHEN YOU REACH ME. Rebecca Stead.

There have been some discrepancies found between my sources since beginning my research. A few of these titles my be deserving of an additional star. My plan is to update this monthly. In the meantime I will use intrepid detective skills to see that all get their due.

#1 Highlight of Trip to Portland

WALKING THROUGH THE WORLD OF BEVERLY CLEARY

There are certain scenes from my childhood reading that remain indelibly etched in the crevices of my brain. With the smallest provocation they can be recalled clearly and tangibly, overshadowing the mundane moments of my actual childhood. Many, many of those moments can be claimed as a companion to the Klickitat gang - Henry, Beezes, and Ramona.


I remember when Henry brought Ribsy home. As awkward as the situation was, I agreed it was worth the trouble he went through to get such a fine and dandy dog.



I remember Beezes’ chagrin at being called an embarrassing and blasphemous name by obnoxious boys, and the humiliation of having her little sister rush to her defense.

Mostly I lived and suffered with Ramona. We were always a little too loud. We were often misunderstood by adults who seemed to applaud good manners before good intentions. We were never able to stay quite as clean as the other girls. And we never, ever were to have hair that spiraled in tantalizing boing-boing curls.

Klickitat Street and its environs felt so like the streets I rambled about as a grade-schooler, I was thoroughly shocked to find that right in the middle of Portland Oregon they actually existed. A few years ago when my sister first clued me into this astonishing fact it was like finding out I could go to the back of my closet and run into a goatman.

It should be no surprise that when this visit was discussed, a plan was devised to set aside a day to invade the current avenues, shops, parks, schoolyards, and haunts of the famed neighborhood. In search of a fictional past made ever relevant through the magical pen of the Queen of realistic childhood fiction. We were armed with The Beverly Cleary Handbook, which lays out in pictorial accuracy, various locations where scenes from her books took place. As you may have noticed this helpful piece of literature was not titled The Beverly Cleary Stalker’s Handbook. In what I assume was a stab at protecting the current residence of some of the private homes, street names were given but no actual addresses. Never fear, we are very good detectives, and with a crime scene investigator’s ability to scrutinize the growth patterns of landscaping over the ensuing years, we were able to deduce the current location of several of the homes listed. Our other useful tool was a pamphlet produced by the Multnomah County Library system. We picked it up at the Hollywood Library, which would have been the Quimby’s neighborhood library if it had existed at the time Ramona was looking for her steam shovel books. The Beverly Cleary’s Neighborhood pamphlet was dead useful in ferreting out various destinations in our quest to “dork-out” in Kid Lit nostalgia. OK, so the map is really not to scale, but we were intrepid and undaunted.

It is an old dictum that a writer should write what she knows. A dictum that was not lost on Mrs. Beverly Cleary. Her fictional children ran about the same streets she had as a child. Want proof? According to the above resources these two houses were former homes of little Beverly. I wonder how often the current residences wake up in the mornings only to find Cleary voyeurs out their window? (If said current residences should happen to stumble across this blatant exploitation of their homes, my humble apologies.)


As I mentioned above, the current neighborhood library did not exisist at the time Beezes took Ramona to get her first library card.

Although you can no longer find a copy of Big Steve the Steam Shovel at the Rose City Library (Glenwood Branch Library), you can get a scrumptious croissant in it's current incarnation.


Remember the great night-crawler escapade - when Henry, in order to earn enough money to buy a football, spends long hours into the dark doing his best to empty Grant Street Park’s lawn of worms?


Here is that very park on a hot August day 60 years after Henry first wrangled those squirmy little money-makers.

Several years ago, the city’s park department immortalized Mrs. Cleary’s beloved characters in the Beverly Cleary Sculpture Garden, located in the upper corner of Grant Street Park. Ramona and Ribsy and the small fry of Portland will perpetually frolic in the fountains on hot summer days as Henry looks on from a safe dry distance.

That's what new boots were for - showing off, wading, splashing, stamping (Ramona the Pest)

"Jeepers I don't know what this neighborhood would have done without Ribsy," said Beezes (Henry Huggins)


This next shot made me ridiculously happy.

You may wonder why the parking lot of a ubiquitous grocery store would give me chills, and cause little pin-pricks of moisture to sting my eyes? If I were to show you this next picture and explain that this brick building is the former Fernwood School (Glenwood School), currently sporting the name of Beverly Cleary Fernwood Campus - the place where Henry was covered in green paint, saving him from the fate of playing the bekissed Little Boy - the place where Ramona met her dear Miss Biney - the place where Ramona set justice to rights by scrunching Susan’s copycat owl. Now do you understand the significance of the nearby grocery store parking lot?

Think back to that very spot, long before the current franchise, or its many predecessors, was in existence. Back when workmen and their big machines were hard at work churning the landscape in preparation to build the new shopping center. Back to the rainy day when Ramona, finally in her shiny red, girl boots, discovered on her way to school the unpaved parking lot void of construction workers, but full of “the best mud, muddiest mud, the most tempting mud Ramona had ever seen.” She was warned not to venture in. Did she heed the warning? No she did not.

Stuck up to the tops of her glorious new boots, she fantasized on possible means of extraction.

(This is possibly my favorite illustration of all time)

Only to be rescued by a disgruntled crossing guard, one Henry Huggins. Upon being brought back to safety Ramona swears her undying love to her rescuer and promises to marry him.

I read this chapter from Ramona the Pest every Valentine’s day to my fourth graders. It never fails to captivate these kids that showed up more than 50 years after Ramona and Henry first showed up on Klickitat Street.

I realize that to many of you the stories of Henry, Ramona and the rest are just that - stories. I, who have now seen tangible proof, have little doubt that somewhere out there Beverly Cleary kids are alive and well. They will always be relevant not only to a middle-aged librarian who may perhaps spend too much time rewriting her own childhood, but to the young readers of today. After-all every child knows that new boots are “not for keeping your feet dry, but to show off.”