Urban Living

The human race passed a significant milestone this past year (or maybe in the past five years, because of difficulties in measurement and definition it is challenging to say exactly when). More than half of the world's six billion people now live in cities. This is pretty momentous.



Despite an idealization of the bucolic countryside with shaded glades and an easier pace of life, cities, since their inception some five thousand years ago, have exercised an inexorable pull of people from the country to urban life. The frank truth is that the myth of the noble savage and the free-loving native in a natural Eden are precisely that; a myth. Over the long haul, and usually even the short haul, city living, despite the sacrifices and the adjustments to personal habits that it requires, has been by far the better bargain for most people. People live longer in the city, enjoy better health, are richer, have greater gender equity, enjoy greater access to education and cultural resources, have lower infant mortality, etc. Not every single person, to be sure, but overall, the lesson is just about iron clad. Forget about going west: go to the city to seek your fortune.



City living is a technological, cultural, economic and political outcome not a function of the size of your country. Australia, a continent sized country with 20 million people, is more urbanized (91%) than the Netherlands with 16 million people on a virtual sliver of land where urbanization is measured at 90%. This despite Australia having 465 times as much land.



Modern man exited Africa about 75-100,000 years ago. The first walled towns or villages showed up around ten thousand years ago (Jericho in Israel at nearly five thousand years is the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world). Cities showed up first in the Middle East; Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Turkey, Persia then began appearing in Asia and Europe.



So - a hundred thousand years for the emergence of modern man; ten thousand years for the first towns; and last year for most people to now be living in a city. Progress of a sort.



What's so special then about cities that everyone seems to want to live in one? Well, there are the obvious reasons mentioned above which might be best summarized as opportunity and development. With one or two occasional (and usually temporary), exceptions there is a high correlation between the basic measures of well-being and the degree of a country's urbanization.



Why is this? Cities exist because of a capacity to generate surplus wealth (whether measured in baskets of grain, gold, or credits in a ledger). For most of our history as humans, we have been prey to weather, natural disasters, disease, and endemic warfare at a tribal level. That endemic warfare was in turn a function of insufficient productivity, people did not have enough to eat and so they sought to take what they needed from others.



With the first surpluses, people needed for the first time to band together to protect those surpluses. They began to have the capacity to plan not just for the next season's harvest but for things longer term. Roads, irrigation, permanent dwellings, etc. Planning required greater social cooperation and coordination. Urban dwellers moved beyond egalitarian familial decision making or close communal decisions based on the extended tribe. They had to develop new and more efficient forms of collective decision making involving people beyond their immediate family or tribe.



At the same time, with greater surpluses, cities were not only able to create larger more efficient forms of decision making, planning, and execution, but they also created the environment for new and more ideas and skills (such as writing) to be transmitted between individuals and from one generation and the next. More ideas among more people inevitably led to new ideas, new inventions.



The process of urbanization is therefore tightly bound up with the development of new forms of government (and gracious knows we have tried a lot of those), new forms of economy (trade, manufacturing and now the knowledge economy), new forms of technological development and new forms of cultural expression.



The archaeological evidence of early cities shows that this was not an easy or inevitably virtuous cycle. Concentrated power (politics) with larger and more concentrated wealth (economy and technology) led to a greater capacity for both improvement but also disaster. Greater concentrations of wealth in towns and cities made them natural targets for quick programs of income redistribution by foragers, farmers and passing raiders. This is of course why most early cities are in part characterized by defensive walls. Members not of the community had to be kept out because they were not part of the communal miracle of productivity and were likely to want to take the fruits of that productivity without exerting the disciplines required to create it.



Cities have not had an easy time but they have a winning promise to those willing to adapt to the disciplines and regulations required to make communal living among strangers feasible. For all that cities have attracted violent attention and have created the capacity to inflict destruction (through larger armies and advanced technology), it is clear that, despite our assumptions of an earlier Eden, the rural existence of foragers and farmers was far more violent. Evidence from the historical record as well as contemporary anthropological studies indicate that mortality among forager and agricultural communities from inflicted violence seems to uniformly range from a low of 5% to levels of 30%, i.e. 30% of all people died from some form of inflicted violence (punishment, war, personal attack, etc.). In most OECD countries over the past one hundred years, despite world wars, regional conflicts and what often seem to us as excessive levels of criminal violence, the mortality rate from violence is in the very low single digits. Almost everyone can anticipate dying from old age or disease.



Cities are a marked level of improvement for virtually all people on virtually all measures. Yet we seem to have an exceptionally ambivalent view of urbanization. We romanticize the rural past. We often directly or indirectly demonize the city.



Partly this is an artifact of history. Writers of children's books of the 1930's and earlier and through the 1960's had mostly grown up in rural and small town America. (America's urbanization stands at 76% and the big transition from country to city occurred between the World Wars and shortly thereafter.) Though they practiced their craft in the cities, they took as their subjects the idyllic recollection of their youth. Think of Twain's Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn. Huck Finn in particular has attracted all sorts of dissertations as an emblem of the noble savage being suffocated by civilization and town living. Think of the works of Robert McCloskey (Lentil, Homer Price, Blueberries for Sal, One Morning in Maine, etc.) and Virginia Lee Burton (Katie and the Big Snow, The Little House, Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel) all of which idolize rural or small town living. Granted McCloskey did have a nice portrayal of Boston in Make Way for Ducklings and Burton to some extent of San Francisco with Maybelle the Cable Car. But the ratio sort of tells the story.



More contemporary authors deal with cities in a somewhat more favorable light but still often in a markedly ambivalent manner. Cities might be good but we aren't sure about that. If you look at a list of the most commonly cited children's books among librarians, teachers, parents, etc. among the top one hundred titles, about a third are set in the country or small towns and/or depict the countryside in a very positive fashion (e.g. The Secret Garden, The Little House, Little House on the Prairie, My Side of the Mountain, Pippi Longstocking, The Tale of Peter Rabbit, Blueberries for Sal, etc.)



Slightly less than 15% depict cities in a positive light, even making a fairly generous allowance for what is positive or considered urban (e.g. Mr. Popper's Penguins, Madeline, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, The Cricket in Times Square, All-of-a-Kind Family, etc.)



Given how critical cities are and have been to our progress and well being, surely they deserve a better shake than this. This is not to undercut country and small town living by any means. But what are some of the books that are set in the city and that celebrate the advantages of city living? Below is a cut at some of those tales.



Enjoy these representations of city living and let us know of others that you and your children might have enjoyed.





This book list is divided into three sections:

(1) Picture Books

(2) Books for Independent Readers

(3) Young Adults



The list begins below with Picture Books, but you can use the following link to skip directly to the Independent Readers or the Young Adults sections.

Go to books for Independent Readers

Go to books for Young Adults




Picture Books

	Make Way for Ducklings written and illustrated by Robert McCloskey Highly Recommended
	The Gardener by Sarah Stewart and illustrated by David Small Highly Recommended
	Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile written and illustrated by Bernard Waber Highly Recommended
	House on East Eighty-Eighth Street written and illustrated by Bernard Waber Highly Recommended
	The Adventures of Taxi Dog by Debra Barracca and Sal Barracca and illustrated by Mark Buehner Recommended
	Peppe the Lamplighter by Elisa Bartone and illustrated by Ted Lewin Recommended
	Madeline written and illustrated by Ludwig Bemelmans Recommended
	C Is for City by Nikki Grimes and illustrated by Pat Cummings Recommended
	Alphabet City by Stephen Johnson Recommended
	The Journey by Sarah Stewart and illustrated by David Small Recommended
	City Mouse-Country Mouse and Two More Mouse Tales from Aesop by Aesop and illustrated by John Wallner Suggested
	Urban Roosts written and illustrated by Barbara Bash Suggested
	Madeline in London written and illustrated by Ludwig Bemelmans Suggested
	The Little House written and illustrated by Virginia Lee Burton Suggested
	Katy and the Big Snow written and illustrated by Virginia Lee Burton Suggested
	Abuela by Arthur Dorros and illustrated by Elisa Kleven Suggested
	Good Night New York City by Adam Gamble and illustrated by Joe Veno Suggested
	Sky Boys by Deborah Hopkinson and illustrated by James E. Ransome Suggested
	My New York Holiday written and illustrated by Kathy Jakobsen Suggested
	Taxi by Betsy Maestro and Giulio Maestro Suggested
	This Is London written and illustrated by Miroslav Sasek Suggested
	New York Is English, Chattanooga Is Creek written and illustrated by Christopher Raschka Suggested
	You Can't Take a Balloon into the Metropolitan Museum by Jacqueline Preiss Weitzman and illustrated by Robin Preiss-Glasser Suggested
	Sky Scrape/City Scape edited by Jane Yolen and illustrated by Ken Condon Suggested
	The Wheels on the Bus illustrated by Paul O. Zelinsky Suggested
	Trashy Town by Andrea Zimmerman and David Clemesha and illustrated by Dan Yaccarino Suggested

Independent Reader

	The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum and illustrated by W. W. (ILT) Denslow Highly Recommended
	A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett and illustrated by Tasha Tudor Highly Recommended
	Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl and illustrated by Quentin Blake Highly Recommended
	The Cricket in Times Square by George Selden and illustrated by Garth Williams Highly Recommended
	All-Of-A-Kind Family by Sydney Taylor Highly Recommended
	Mary Poppins by P. L. Travers and illustrated by Mary Shepard Highly Recommended
	Stuart Little by E. B. White and illustrated by Garth Williams Highly Recommended
	A Bear Called Paddington by Michael Bond and illustrated by Peggy Fortnum Recommended
	From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E. L. Konigsburg Recommended
	Underground by David MacAulay Recommended
	Sahara Special by Esme Raji Codell Suggested
	The Saturdays by Elizabeth Enright Suggested
	Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh Suggested
	Snow in August by Pete Hamill Suggested
	The Best of Nancy Drew Classic Collection by Carolyn Keene Suggested
	Betsy and Tacy Go Downtown by Maud Hart Lovelace Suggested
	145th Street by Walter Dean Myers Suggested
	Roller Skates by Ruth Sawyer and illustrated by Valenti Angelo Suggested
	Child of the Owl by Laurence Yep Suggested
	Rats by Paul Zindel Suggested

Young Adult

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith Recommended

Tintin Turns 80

Though just mentioned in the prior post, I think it worth drawing particular attention to this article in the December 18th, 2008 Economist, A Very European Hero. Tintin is a boy adventurer from Europe (Belgium actually) who might be characterized as a comic book version of a European Hardy Boys. However, there is much more to the success of the series and the development of Tintin as a cultural and literary icon of Europe than just being a well drawn cartoon with a hero having interesting adventures. The article is an interesting meditation on the role of culture and history and context in the shaping of a childhood favorite.

Socializing the creature

Just a coincidental juxtaposition of three articles that interestingly all deal in different aspects of how children are socialized and the possible role that books and reading play in that process. While I don't believe children can learn manners from books, they have to see it expected, practised, and reinforced around them, and I do believe books can make that process easier or more difficult by being consistent or not in demonstrating that manners matter.



The first article is from today's New York Times, January 13, 2009 by Dr. Perri Klass, Making Room for Miss Manners is a Parenting Basic.



The second article is from the December 18th, 2008 Economist, A Very European Hero about Herge's Tintin who turns 90 this year and who in part was originally created to reinforce certain admired personal behavioral attributes.



And finally an article by Dr. Theodore Dalrymple in City Journal, lamenting the passing of an older generation's quintessential "Britishness" in an article, The Quivering Upper Lip.



Through each of these articles runs a quiet desire that we improve the means by which we inculcate in our children the positive behaviours that not only benefit them but also the community to which they belong. There is also the less than explicit message that books can play a role in reinforcing those desired behaviors.

Hugh Lofting

Born January 14,1886 in Maidenhead, Berkshire, UK

Died September 26, 1947 in Santa Monica, California



Hugh Lofting at times seems almost an amalgam of the life stories of a number of other famous writers. Like P.G. Wodehouse, P.L. Travers and Gerald Durrell, he was distinctively the son of a Victorian Imperial era. Like Lewis Carroll, the work for which he is best known has its origins in tales he wrote in letters to two children. Like Walter Brooks (Freddy the Pig and Mr. Ed) and E.B. White (Charlotte's Web, Stuart Little, and Trumpet of the Swan), his stories centered on anthropomorphized animals. Like Arthur Conan Doyle, the demand for more stories about his beloved protagonist began to weigh upon him, leading him ultimately to try and kill him off or abandon him; and like Doyle, later having to resurrect him. Like Roald Dahl (Boy and Going Solo), his early life took him to the far corners of the British Empire, then to war before establishing his career as a writer.



Hugh Lofting was born January 14, 1886 in Maidenhead, Berkshire to an Irish father and English mother. He was one of six children and had the abbreviated home life so typical of the British middle class of that era. He showed an early love of nature, animals and storytelling. He at one point raised the ire of his mother by establishing a miniature menagerie of mice and other natural exotica in his mother's linen closet. At the age of eight he was sent off to a Jesuit boarding school, effectively ending close contact with his family.



On completion of boarding school, he secured a scholarship for study in engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1904, completing his engineering studies at London Polytechnic in 1907. There followed a peripatetic few years as he travelled the empire exploring different careers. Starting as an architect, he soon took himself to Canada as a prospector and surveyor in 1908 and 1909. He then spent a couple of years in West Africa as civil engineer for the Lagos Railway. In early 1912 he found himself working as an engineer for the United Railways in Havana, Cuba.



At this point he moved to New York, met, fell in love with, and following a whirlwind romance, quickly married Flora Small in late 1912. Lofting had abandoned engineering as a profession and started to support himself by writing articles and short stories for magazines. Elizabeth and Colin, his first two children were born in the next couple of years.



Lofting's nascent writing career was set aside with the advent of the World War I. Still a British citizen, though resident in the USA and married to an American, Lofting joined the British Ministry of Information in the first couple of years of the war. In 1916 he volunteered and served as a Lieutenant in the Irish Guarders in northern France for two years until wounded in 1917. The war ended before he was fully recuperated.



It was the tragic and soiled battlefields of northern France that saw the birth of that long cherished character of children's literature, Dr. John Dolittle. As Lofting related in his autobiographical entry in The Junior Book of Authors:

It was during the Great War, and my children at home wanted letters from me - and they wanted them with illustrations rather than without. There seemed very little of interest to write to youngsters from the front; the news was either too horrible or too dull. And it was all censored. One thing, however, that kept forcing itself more and more on my attention was the very considerable part the animals were playing in the World War and that as time went on they, too, seemed to become Fatalists.



Oftentimes you would see a cat stalking along the ruins throughout a heavy bombardment, in a town that had been shelled more than once before in that same cat's recollection. She was taking her chances with the rest of us. And the horses, too, learned to accept resignedly and unperturbed the falling of high explosives in their immediate neighborhood. But their fate was different from the men's. However seriously a soldier was wounded, his life was not despaired of; all the resources of a surgery highly developed by the war were brought to his aid. A seriously wounded horse was put out by a timely bullet.



This did not seem quite fair. If we made the animals take the same chances as we did ourselves, why did we not give them similar attention when wounded? But obviously to develop a horse-surgery as good as that of our Casualty Clearing Stations would necessitate a knowledge of horse language.



That was the beginning of the idea: an eccentric country physician with a bent for natural history and a great love of pets, who finally decides to give up his human practice for the more difficult, more sincere, and for him, more attractive therapy of the animal kingdom. He is challenged by the difficulty of the work - for obviously it requires a much cleverer brain to become a good animal doctor (who must first acquire all animal languages and physiologies) than it does to take care of the mere human hypochondriac.

This was a new plot for my narrative letter for the children. It delighted them and at my wife's suggestion, I decided to put the letters in book form for other boys and girls.



When Lofting and family returned to New York from Britain in 1919, he met a friend aboard ship who was taken with the bound letters and offered to make an introduction to the publisher, F.A. Stokes. There the narratives were equally well received and publication of the first Dr. Dolittle story, written and illustrated by Lofting, followed in 1920, The Story of Doctor Dolittle: Being the History of His Peculiar Life at Home and Astonishing Adventures in Foreign Parts.



The public, critical and commercial reception was very positive. There followed in 1922, the second in what was to eventually turn into a series of twelve Dr. Dolittle books, The Voyages of Dr. Dolittle. Winner of the recently established Newberry Medal for children's literature (first awarded the year before), The Voyages of Dr. Dolittle, was equally well received as its predecessor.



Dr. John Dolittle is a doctor living in that most English of towns, Puddleby-on-the-Marsh. Dolittle has a fondness for animals and his house is well populated by a large variety of pets, lorded over, in a fashion, by his African Grey parrot, Polynesia. In fact the intrusion of the many animals into his practice sees the diminution of numbers of his human patients. Through Polynesia, Dolittle discovers that animals have their own languages which he begins to learn. It is through this opening of communication that allows Dolittle to solve his increasingly dicey financial prospects. Instead of treating humans, he finds that, by being able to talk with them about their symptoms, he can treat animals far more effectively and thereby earn a different income. One of his first patients is a draught horse who appears to be losing his eyesight and is at risk of being put down. By being able to talk with him, Dolittle discovers that he is not going blind and that he just needs glasses.



And so the adventures begin. Dolittle and his immediate circle of animal friends such as Polyniesia, Gub-Gub the pig, and Dab-Dab the duck are regulars through the series but there are many great walk on characters as well such as the exotic Pushmi-Pullyu (a two-headed creature, one at either end). Tommy Stubbins, Dolittle's young assistant makes his appearance in the The Voyages, and is in most books of the series. Lofting takes Dolittle to many different places around the world, full of characterful animals and strange adventures. His imagination within the natural world rivals the antic creativity of L. Frank Baum in his created world of Oz.



Throughout Lofting's stories, there is an underlying theme of respect for the other, kindness, seeking to connect through communication. This is interesting because one of Lofting's strictures as an author was that his first duty should be to entertain and to entertain both the child and adult. He fulminated against the habit of publishers to classify his books as juvenilia.



Again from his The Junior Book of Authors entry, Lofting might be writing for the world of children's literature today in 2009 with our plethora of didacticism instead of in 1934:

I would like to make it quite clear that I make no claims to be an authority on writing or illustrating for children. The fact that I have been successful merely means that I can write and illustrate in my own way. Whereas, I have always maintained that there is no end to the variety of ways there should be. This would indicate that no one is a real authority, which I think is probably true.



There has always been a tendency to classify children almost as a distinct species. For many years it was a constant source of shock for me to find my writings amongst "Latest Juveniles" or "Leading Juveniles" or some such category.



It does not bother me any more now, but I still do feel that there should be a category of "Seniles" to offset the epithet.



There are two points which I wish to bring out as of primary importance in writing for children.



First, the writing must be entertaining and nothing may be allowed to interfere with or sacrifice that entertainment. There is never any excuse for "putting over" a preachment under the guise of entertainment. The main trouble with children's books is that many writers and many publishers feel that because they are catering to young minds that pretty much anything will do. They don't admit that, of course, but it's true just the same.



Another trouble with the average writing for children is that authors always seem to think they must "write down" to them. I have found that the intelligent children (and I am afraid that the intelligent children are the only kind I am interested in) resent nothing so much as being written down to. Which, of course, is very natural. We adults resent also, if we think a superior intellect is patronizing us. What the intelligent child likes is being "written up" to. He wants promotion; he wants to get into the adult world; he wants progress; and I have always maintained and always will maintain that there is no idea too subtle, no picture too difficult to be conveyed to a child's mind, if the author will but find the proper language to put it in.



Another thing I have always maintained is that there should be just as many kinds of stories and books for children as there are for grown-ups. I have often quoted my daughter's interest when at the age of five, she learned her mother had just returned from an employment bureau, where she had gone to hire a cook. Elizabeth wanted to know all about it. She was looking forward, no doubt, to the time when she would hire a cook (the poor child did not realize, of course, that by the time she would be grown up, there would not be any more cooks, but that's neither here nor there). Well, I have never seen a story for children about an employment agency, but after all, why not? It is really pathetic that the majority of writers for children feel that the only material children are interested in is pussy-cats and puppy-dogs. When really there is nothing in the whole wide world that they are not interested in.



This is proved by the fact that, when ever a book is a real success for children, it is also a success and an enjoyment for grown-ups. If writers would only get away from this classifying of children as a separate species, we would get very much better books for the younger generation. For who shall say where the dividing line lies, that separates the child from the adult? Practically all children want to be grown up and practically all grown-ups want to be children, and God help us, the adults, when we have no vestige of childhood in our hearts.

Lofting is a bundle of unresolved contradictions. He served his country(ies) in the Great War and emerged from that conflict with a profound desire for peace and revulsion at the destructiveness of war. He believed profoundly in the capacity to connect peoples through communication. He became a pacifist. In an article in the Nation, he expressed hope that the destruction of barriers between people would create peace and "getting the child to realize that the day of the old-fashioned military hero is gone." He attributed wars to "the sagas - with the folk-tales, the tribal legends that were purposely designed to keep alive race hatreds combined with a paramount respect for military prowess."



For all that though, Lofting was very proud of his military service. When war again confronted the civilized world in 1939, despite being in his fifties, having a family, and being a pacifist, Lofting tried to reenlist with the Irish Guards but was, to his disappointment, turned down.



Similarly, it is indisputable that Lofting was a progressive man deeply respectful of the "other". His characters and heroes are almost always the down-trodden and disrespected members at the margin of society. He can easily be characterized as one of the early environmentalists and animal rights advocates. He clearly believed in the capacity of all people to find a means of living together.



Yet, for all that, there are elements in his wonderful stories that are not only discordant but somewhat shocking. There is the African chief that wishes to be white. There is the characterization by Polynesia of Africans as lazy. The terms coon and nigger feature in a couple of sequences of dialogue. His illustrations of Africans are representative caricatures of the time. I am deeply resistant to the over-sensitized political correctness ninnies that want to condemn and ban books from the past based on their own ignorance (such as with the book Little Black Sambo) or on their incapacity to allow the past to be different and have different mores and norms than our "enlightened" present.



That said, were I an African American parent, I would probably have some marginal hesitation about the representations in the Dolittle books. They might be normal for their time and entirely consistent with late Victoriana attitudes. Indeed, there is even more to it than that. They might not reflect a white person's view of Africans but a genuine desire on the part of Africans at that time. I lived in West Africa as a young child for a year or so and recall the tale of our gardener. One day, while I tagged along behind him in the garden, watching what he did, nominally helping out, he pointed out to me a particular, large, furry caterpillar. He warned me to be careful of this particular insect (though in Nigeria it seemed as if you needed to be careful of practically everything that moved). He explained that this caterpillar, if it bit you, turned you from white to black. He said that he used to be white and had been bitten by this insect and was now, obviously, black. This was in Nigeria in the 1960's. I don't offer the story to make a particular point other than that it is easy to forget just how disparate the tales can be among all peoples at different times.



The Dolittle stories are a magical exercise in imagination, bridging the interests and humor of both adults and children. It would be a shame to omit them because we impute values of today to terms and actions from an age ago that were not intended in that fashion. With our children, we handled this by reading the Dolittle books to them when they were young. We made the decision about which terms to skip or render differently. It gave us the opportunity as well to later discuss changing ways of expressing one-self and of changing attitudes in general.



Lofting's books have always been praised for their creativity, freshness, style and ability to engage both adults and children. As with all series there is an unevenness in later books but no real agreement among critics about which of the later books were especially good or poor, each has its advocate. In the seventies and eighties, the Dolittle books fell from favor because of the assaults of the language police and only a fraction of the series (The Story of Dr. Dolittle and The Voyages of Dr. Dolittle), remains in print.



There are choices to be made among the different editions currently available. Lofting's original versions of the first two books with his original illustrations are in print but have been edited to omit the terms that so offend our ears. There are other editions which go yet further and re-illustrate the books as well (and sometimes more extensively re-edit them.) I am an advocate of the earliest books.



Lofting had a long run of success with the Dolittle books. His own later life and writing career were marked by challenges and tragedies. He struggled with alcoholism (attributed to his war-time experiences) through the rest of his life and which ultimately contributed to his demise. His first wife struggled with mental illness, eventually being confined to a series of asylums before her death in 1927.



Lofting remarried in 1928 to Katherine Harrower-Peters but tragically she succumbed to pneumonia later that same year.



It was in that same year Lofting published what he intended to be the last Dolittle story, Dr. Dolittle in the Moon. He had grown tired of the sustained popularity of his most noteworthy character. He had already written a story that did not involve Dolittle in 1923, The Story of Mrs. Tubbs, and eventually wrote four other books for children and a couple for adults, but none of them ever gained anything near the traction of the Dolittle books.



In 1933, bowing to sustained pressure from his readers and publishers, Lofting wrote Dr. Dolittles Return. Lofting remarried again in 1935 to Josephine Fricker and with whom he had a third child, a second son, Christopher.



Hugh Lofting passed away in Santa Monica, September, 26, 1947.



After his passing, Disney ensured a new life for Lofting's books with the release in 1967 of their movie version of Dr. Dolittle. Unlike some movie renditions of books, this one is actually pretty decent. As is always the case, it can't do justice to the book and should not be viewed as a substitute, but it does carry a whiff of the magic that infuses Lofting's writings.



There is a further adaption in 1997 with Eddie Murphie. As entertaining as Murphie often is, I think this version of Dr. Dolittle falls short. In the books there is an ever-present call to a better world through the language of communication. In the second movie version, perhaps in an attempt at contemporary "relevance", there is more of a call to a cheap laugh through the language of the bathroom.



Hugh Lofting lived an interesting life and gave the world a wonderful character who ought to be part of the childhood reading of all children. Enjoy!







Independent Reader

	The Story of Dr. Dolittle by Hugh Lofting Highly Recommended
	The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle by Hugh Lofting Highly Recommended
	Porridge Poetry by Hugh Lofting Suggested

Hugh Lofting Bibliography



The Story of Doctor Dolittle: Being the History of His Peculiar Life at Home and Astonishing Adventures in Foreign Parts written and illustrated by Hugh Lofting 1920

The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle written and illustrated by Hugh Lofting 1922

Doctor Dolittle's Post Office written and illustrated by Hugh Lofting 1923

The Story of Mrs. Tubbs written and illustrated by Hugh Lofting 1923

Doctor Dolittle's Circus written and illustrated by Hugh Lofting 1924

Porridge Poetry: Cooked, Ornamented, and Served by Hugh Lofting written and illustrated by Hugh Lofting 1924

Doctor Dolittle's Zoo written and illustrated by Hugh Lofting 1925

Doctor Dolittle's Caravan written and illustrated by Hugh Lofting 1926

Doctor Dolittle's Garden written and illustrated by Hugh Lofting 1927

Doctor Dolittle in the Moon written and illustrated by Hugh Lofting 1928

Noisy Nora: An Almost True Story written and illustrated by Hugh Lofting 1929

The Twilight of Magic written and illustrated by Hugh Lofting 1930

Gub-Gub's Book: An Encyclopedia of Food written and illustrated by Hugh Lofting 1932

Doctor Dolittle's Return written and illustrated by Hugh Lofting 1933

Tommy, Tilly, and Mrs. Tubbs written and illustrated by Hugh Lofting 1936

Victory for the Slain (poetry) written and illustrated by Hugh Lofting 1942

Doctor Dolittle and the Secret Lake written and illustrated by Hugh Lofting 1948

Doctor Dolittle and the Green Canary written and illustrated by Hugh Lofting 1950

Doctor Dolittle's Puddleby Adventures written and illustrated by Hugh Lofting 1952

Doctor Dolittle: A Treasury written Hugh Lofting and illustrated by Olga Fricker 1967

TTMD Comunity Members forecast which 2007 books will endure

One of the things that fascinates all involved in the world of children's books is trying to figure out which books will endure (and why) and also to figure out why some well deserved books seem to fade from the scene. Through the Magic Door has had a shot at assessing the enduring popularity of past winners of major awards, (see Awards as Forecasts as well as Sic transit gloria mundi).



Through the Magic Door invites you to partake in a quick exercise in which you forecast which of the winners of recent awards will still be popular twenty-five and seventy-five years from now. You can vote on the titles that won major national awards in 2007 as well as log those books that you thought were great works published in 2007 but which may not have won a major award (or any award).



Use your own criteria for forecasting which ones will be around. I suspect your votes would be shaped by considerations of how universal is the message of the book, the nature of its emotional impact on a child, how much its current popularity is shaped by topical fads (e.g. vampires), how much is the language of the book colored by current styles, etc.



Thanks in advance for your thoughts.

Sic transit gloria mundi

From Slightly Foxed Winter 2008. Umbrellas at Dawn by Richard Hughes.

'I don't think he'll be remembered at all.' The hugely successful novelist sat in his apartment at No. 90 Piccadilly confiding to his diary. 'His only fault', he continued, 'was his pomposity about himself and his works.' The year was 1937 and the man of letters, within weeks of being knighted for his services to literature, was musing on the passing away - prematurely at the age of 55 - of the poet and dramatist John Drinkwater.



From his desk overlooking Green Park, the richest novelist of his age was commenting on the foibles of a less successful colleague and competitor. At this moment he seemed master of all he surveyed - the purveyor of best-selling fiction with a literary gloss that placed him comfortably above the Howard Springs and Warwick Deepings of the world; recently returned from a profitable period in Hollywood writing screenplays for several directors, including George Cukor; a man whose vast wealth had allowed him to become a respected collector of books and paintings, and a well-known and generous patron and benefactor of the literary circle of the day. But four years later he too was to die prematurely, at 57, and, more shocking and difficult to credit, he was soon to be as forgotten as John Drinkwater. His name was Hugh Walpole.



It is hard today to appreciate the extent of Hugh Walpole's success. Not only did his novels - which had appeared annually since his first triumph, Mr. Perrin and Mr. Traidill, in 1911 - consistently head the best-seller lists, but he was also a well-known public figure on both sides of the Atlantic. At the time of his death in 1941, he was giving a series of wartime propaganda broadcasts to the USA called 'Hugh Walpole Talking'. His views were sought, his opinions respected. Hugh Walpole was master of his game. Yet there has always been a problem about the reputation of this seemingly dominant figure.

Humanities Indicator

If you have not already seen this, The Humanities Resource Center has released an excellent study, The Humanities Indicator Prototype, which attempts to measure, as the name suggests, the nature of and degree of engagement between the humanities and the general culture. Follow the link to the main page.



Part V, The Humanities in American Life, is the section particularly pertinent to those of us focusing on the role of reading and children's literature. In particular, Section A covers Adult Literacy, Family Literacy, and Book Reading.



This is an excellent collation of information from disparate sources and the general observations and conclusions map well to research we have been doing at Through the Magic Door which is more concentrated on these same trends but with particular focus on young people rather than the population at large.



The one element I do not see addressed is the degree of concentration of reading. Based on only two studies some years apart, it would appear to me that in the US, discretionary reading is highly concentrated. Approximately 50% of the population read nothing for pleasure in a given year, 40% of the population reads about 20% of the books consumed in a year and 10% of the population does approximately 80% of the discretionary reading. The closest the study comes to shedding light on this issue is measurement of levels of prose proficiency. The US comes ninth among twenty-two OECD countries (and ahead of all the big European countries such as UK and Germany) in terms of prose proficiency but it also has one of the most bi-polar distributions. 21% of the population reads at the highest level of proficiency and 21% reads at the lowest level. Three Scandinavian countries (four of the nine countries that are ahead of the US) have similarly high levels of the population reading at the most proficient level but are more effective at minimizing the percentage of the population reading at the lowest levels. For Sweden, Norway and Finland, 24% of the population reads at the highest literacy level (compared to the US's 21%) but only 9% read at the lowest level (compared to the US's 21%).

Other interesting findings in this report:

43% of the population read no books for pleasure in the prior 12 months. That figure is for 2002. More recent studies for the US that I have seen all hover around the 50% mark not having read a book in the prior 12 months. In Europe the corresponding figure tends to average 55% but with marked national and regional variations.



While overall voluntary reading has been declining for a number of years, the most marked declines are among the younger demographics. Between 1992 and 2002, voluntary reading declined from 59.8% to 51% for 18-24 year olds and from 63.8% to 58.4% for 25-34 year olds. Remember, this is a measure of people that read at least a single book.



All demographics showed an increase in the habit of daily reading to children in their household, increasing from 53% to 58% between 1993 and 2001. Households with the mother having a college degree education or higher (about 25% of the population) had the highest rates of daily reading to children at 73%.

Awards as forecasts

A while ago I conducted an exercise with some interesting results. I wanted to know how well awards reflected enduring enjoyment by the reading public. This was not an exercise in criticism of awards. I think they are a critical part of the annual cycle of events among the literate public and they play an important function of bringing attention to new works in a fashion somewhat separate from the marketing hoopla of publishers. But how good are they as forecasters of future popularity? Pretty good in the short term, so-so in the medium term, and not so much in the long term is the answer.



I decided to look at a couple of different aspects of this. First I made the assumption that the degree to which books are still in print some years after they were initially published, reflects, at least imperfectly, enduring popularity. Second I decided to compile a list of most cited books in terms of popularity. I compiled this from some 80 sources made up of library lists, academic texts (dealing with the teaching of children's literature), awards, and independent lists (informed amateurs, newspaper contests, etc.). I then looked at how often the most critically popular books had actually received awards.



In order to answer the first question (how have past winners fared?), I looked back 75 years, 50, 25, 10 and 5 years to see how many titles picked as winners or runners up by six national awards (Newberry, Caldecott, Horn Book Fanfare, Kate Greenaway, Carnegie and Bank Street awards, not all of which were in existence for the full duration) were still in print. I did this at the end of 2007 and looked back to 1932, 1957, 1982, 1997 and 2002. Up to ten years after they won an award, between 80 and 90% of the titles were still in print. There then was a plunge to 45% still in print for the periods twenty-five and fifty years after receiving an award. At the seventy-five year mark (only the Newberry was then in existence), only one of the seven (15%) Newberry Honor/Medal winners for 1932 was still in print. It wasn't the Medal winner, Waterless Mountain, but rather an Honor winner, Calico Bush by Rachel Field. In fact, among the authors represented and aside from Field, I suspect only Dorothy P. Lathrop would garner a glimmer of recognition outside the most rarefied of experts.



So only 15% of winners from seventy-five years ago were still in print.



How about the second question, (how many of the most popular books were award winners in the year of their publication?) This was an interesting exercise and I will publish the results in more detail shortly.



From an overall perspective, Awards lists were the least accurate pickers of the most enduringly favorite books compared to academics, libraries and independents. Roughly 30% of the top 100, 500 and 1000 books failed to receive a single award (recognizing that some of the favorite titles were published before the earliest awards were given).



Finally I looked, not exhaustively, for any other titles from way back to see what other books published in 1932 (but which did not receive an award), were still in print. Among the books I found were:

Freddy the Detective by Walter R. Brooks

Angus Lost by Marjorie Flack

Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder

The Little Family (now out of print) by Lois Lenski

So what does it all mean? Well, the sensationalist headline might be "Fewer than Half Award Winners Still in Print After 25 Years."



However, to an extent, it just quantifies what you might expect. Trying to sort through all the books of a particular year, to identify which are the most exciting or engaging works is a difficult task with incomplete lists of books, sharp deadlines, and all sorts of pressures, fads and influences. It is not quite the same as identifying at leisure which are likely to be the most loved books over time. If journalism is the first draft of history, then awards are the first draft of enduring popularity - somewhat hit or miss, but getting a reasonable number of the winners right and overlooking just enough to keep bibliophiles fussing and fuming.

Such was Archimedes

Doesn't this sound like Doyle's depiction of Watson describing his own response to Sherlock Holmes? This quote is Plutarch describing Archimedes.

Some ascribe this to his natural genius; while others think that incredible effort and toil produced these, to all appearances, easy and unlabored results. No amount of investigation of yours would succeed in attaining the proof, and yet, once seen, you immediately believe you would have discovered it - by so smooth and so rapid a path he leads you to the conclusion . . . Such was Archimedes.

At the Villa of Reduced Circumstances

At the Villa of Reduced Circumstances by Alexander McCall Smith



From the opening paragraph:

Professor Dr. Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld's birthday fell on the first of May. He would not always have remembered it had the anniversary not occurred on May Day itself; as a small boy he had been convinced that the newspaper photographs of parades in Red Square, those intimidating displays of missiles, and the grim-faced line-up of Politburo officials, all had something to do with the fact that he was turning six or seven, or whatever birthday it was. Such is the complete confidence of childhood that we are each of us at the centre of the world - a conviction out of which not all of us grow, and those who do grow out of it sometimes do so only with difficulty. And this is so very understandable; as Auden remarked, how fascinating is that class of which I am the only member.

Feline Memoriam

She was just an American mutt cat. People hardly noticed at first, but she was a calico. White across most her body, she had a splash of black on the crown of her head, lapping up on one ear, a splash of gold on her cheek and a smudge of gold by her nose and then a beautiful gold and black tail. She had the tiniest, daintiest, and the most beautifully pink paw pads you could imagine.



She joined us as a kitten, in October 1994. At church, a semi-feral mother cat had had a litter of kittens which, for reasons unclear, she had nested in a trellis, twenty feet above ground. Daily, she would, one by one, carry the kittens down to the ground and then back up the trellis. Eventually, the church staff began capturing the kittens as they became old enough and found homes for them among the parishioners. We took one. But still there were more kittens. With a two and a half year old boy and a two month old girl, and two other cats at home, Sally did not feel like there was quite enough going on and thought that if one kitten was good then two would obviously be better.



The call came one week while I was away on business. Sally trekked down to church, children in tow and in hand. Another kitten was available. "She doesn't seem at all friendly, I don't think you will want her with small children in the house" she was told. Sally instructed our boy to sit down against the wall and to be quiet and still. He sat as infinitely flexible children sit: back straight up, legs straight out in front. "Open the cage. Let's see what happens." Bennett jumped out, trotted over to Price, lay down in his lap and started purring loudly. That was all that was required to secure a place in Sally's heart and a new home.



So she joined us. Late Friday, I returned home, digesting the week's events, writing reports in my mind, figuring out how to analyze a client's business problems. Washing up before joining the family for dinner, I registered that there was a cat litter box in our bathroom. Hmmm. Wonder why that's there? But I just registered it. Other more important things to think about.



At dinner, Price could hardly contain himself. Despite coaching from Sally to not say anything and to see how long it would take before I noticed that the cat population of the house had increased by fifty percent, after two or three bites of dinner he burst out, "Daddy, did you see what was in your bathroom?" I could only look at Sally, "You didn't."



But she had. And so Bennett joined us and became a part of our family adventures. Quiet, shy and self-effacing, she was hardly to be seen when visitors were about. But when we were on our own, she would find whoever was still, snuggle up to them and softly purr contentedly. She took to jumping into the crib with baby Sarah, always curling up in the crook of her arm, two little lives bound together from the beginning. It has been one of those cherished small pleasures in my life to come into a room and find one of the kids reading and there, no matter what posture they were in, would be Bennett. Lying in their lap, snuggled up by their face, on their back, crouched on their legs. Somewhere. And purring.



She was a well travelled cat, one of not too many that circumnavigated the globe. She moved with us from Atlanta to Australia. There in that wonderfully strange land, she stalked geckos and huntsman spiders in the house, chased mynah birds out of the kitchen and fended off Australian possums trying to climb through Price's louvered windows.



She came with us from Australia to England where she had to reside in quarantine for two or three months. Fortunately she was relatively close to us and Sally and the kids could visit her periodically. They would be shown down the hall of large cages, somehow squeeze all of themselves into her cage and then be left for an hour to commune and share their ham sandwiches. Never aggressive, Bennett could be forward when there was a whiff of ham in the air.



Then back to Atlanta. Around the globe and with a world full of experiences, she was back where she began, back to the familiar.



The family has grown. The two and a half year old is now sixteen, towering above Bennett's visual horizon. The baby girl is a lovely young woman with a tender heart. Another boy came along, noisy and energetic but capable of gentleness where an aging cat is concerned. There have been other pets, a magnificent Boxer dog, guinea pigs, hamsters, gerbils, frogs, etc. They have come and they have gone but Bennett was the quiet mistress of the pet world in the house.



This last year, age crept up on her. She slowed down. Always petite, she lost weight. Always stalking, this past month, she was now being stalked. In the past week it was clear the time had come. And now she is gone.



She was just an American mutt cat, but she was loved. She was one of those small, gentle, quiet, ornaments of life. She brought her own measure of grace, beauty and contentment. Rest in Peace.

Sometimes the solution is just waiting to be found.

One of the issues with which we have wrestled at Through the Magic Door is the incorporation of an appropriate rating system for books. One that is meaningful, descriptive, reliable and not subject to gaming. A rating system that addresses the world as we find it, rather than the world as we might want it to be.



In the next iteration of our advanced search database on the site, we will be incorporating a rating system that we hope meets these criteria.



There has, however, been one unresolved issue. We have Highly Recommended (HR) books (with appropriate descriptions and examples of what that means), Recommended (R) books and Suggested (S) books. We even have a category of books, Possible (P). P books are those that are pretty pedestrian or flawed in some way and are unlikely to appeal to the average reader but might be happily read by individuals with a strong interest in the topic or genre.



But what to do about those books towards which we as parents raise a skeptical eyebrow? Books which our children may enthusiastically want to read but of which we are deeply suspicious in terms of taste or values? Books about gastrically impaired canines (Walter the Farting Dog), sartorially challenged kids (The Adventures of Captain Underpants), trans-species (?) romance (Twilight), socially twisted mean girls (Baby-Sitters club), the linguistically challenged (Junie B. Jones), etc.



Books which under most circumstances we would definitely not recommend except that they are books which kids love to read at a certain age. Books that, in their own fashion, do help build the habit of reading despite their content or nature. Which is the greater good, more reading or reading fewer, "better" books? Of course that is a false dichotomy. In fact, the raison detre for Through the Magic Door is in part to make sure parents can easily find the really good books that are likely to appeal to their children in place of the aesthetically challenged fare being hawked so indiscriminately. None-the-less, no matter how many good books you may make available to your child, like as not, there will be a phase (or two or three) when your child wants to read something that is highly suspect in terms of either aesthetic quality or in terms of behavioral norms that are being advanced.



The problem is compounded by the fact that we only review books we believe are likely to be worthwhile to some child and parent. We don't invest time in reading or reviewing a book in order to trash it. De facto, if there is no review then we either haven't read the book or we have read it and it is not one we would recommend.



So how to deal with books that we have read and don't recommend but recognize that children will want to read anyway because it is the hot item on the publishing circuit and being heavily promoted or because their friends are reading it or because it touches on the inappropriate? "Eskimo", to use Mrs. Gilbraith's euphemism in the wonderful Cheaper By The Dozen.



We don't want to necessarily promote these books by drawing attention to them but it is not appropriate to stick one's head in the sand and just pretend that they don't exist and aren't effective in getting some children to keep reading? That is the problem we have been wrestling with.



In this quarter's ever delightful Slightly Foxed, (the literary magazine that is dedicated to bringing attention to wonderful books from the past few years or century that have drifted from the limelight), there is an article, Nobody Ever Writes to Me, by David Spiller regarding the six volume collection of the correspondence, The Lyttelton Hart-Davis Letters, 1955- 1962, between those classic old-school literary figures George Lyttelton and Rupert Hart-Davis. Their very names evoke a lost age that was only a blink of the eye ago.



As an aside, I should warn readers that Slightly Foxed is an incideous magazine for anyone infected with even the mildest strain of bibliophilia. In a house bursting at the seams with books and no place to put even the normal volume of new acquisitions that I make, the last thing I need is to be lured into new purchases. Collected correspondence between literati from fifty years ago, is, in the normal course of events, virtually at the bottom of my list of books to watch out for. More than at the bottom. Down the well. Way down.



And yet Spiller has done what all the writers in Slightly Foxed do. He has piqued my interest. He has ignited a spark. I know that, should I come across this set of books in my visit to bookstores, there is a high likelihood that, despite my prejudices, other interests and lack of space, those books will be coming home with me. Subscribe to Slightly Foxed if you wish but beware.



In his article, Spiller comments on how Lyttelton and Harte-Davis corresponded about many things but among other items, they wrote of literature and of books and how despite the differences in their ages, there was a high degree of agreement and judgement. He mentions:

Both men read Ian Fleming, whom Lyttelton described as 'bad and at the same time compellingly readable'.

I think we have there the answer to our rating dilemma. To HR, R, S, and P we can now add BBCR - Bad But Compellingly Readable.

Magical Toys

We are entering that period of the year when magic is in the air and there is hope in many little hearts for toys under the tree. We don't usually think about it in this way but this is the time when the imaginative juices are primed. There are unfamiliar and intriguing smells from the kitchen, sparkling and enchanting decorations about the house, lights of rarely encountered hues are to be seen around the neighborhood, songsheets of music new to young ears and for whom Joy to the World or Little Town of Bethlehem are still fresh and have no whiff of nostalgia. There is an unusual inward turning, the building up of time with family, a reknitting together of strands that might have become frayed through a busy year. Traditions and family rituals, unfamiliar or forgotten by young minds, are given new life.



Some of our most powerful children's stories bring together the elements of this season - hope, imagination, magic, and toys. It is worth recollecting these powerful stories because they also become part of our future lives and those treasures that we in turn hand to our children.



E.T.A. Hoffman, a German author (1776-1822), was born in that geographically quixotic city of Konigsberg, Prussia, now known as the exclave of Russia, Kaliningrad. He was a leading exemplar of German Romanticism and suffered from a surfeit of talent. He earned his living primarily as a lawyer/jurist but wrote music, plays and poetry as well as painted. The work for which he is best known today is his Nussknacker und Mausekonig; Nutcracker and Mouse King written in 1816. The Nutcracker received a new lease on life through the magic of Tchaikovsky who accepted a commission to translate Hoffman's work into a two act fantasy ballet which premiered December 1892 (seventy years after Hoffman's death).



Since the original work is long out of copyright, there are many, many different versions floating around. Indeed, the French author, Alexandre Dumas (of Three Musketeers fame) did an adaptation of the original in 1847 and it was in fact that version that served as the basis for Tchaikovsky's work. The best retellings, while simplifying the story line somewhat, capture the sense of magic and imagination in the original as well as the element of mystery, suspense and danger. There is a certain darkness in the tale which characterizes some of the other deep classics that appeal to young children generation after generation. Think of motherless Peter Pan and the Lost Boys; of the tragic fate of Andersen's Little Mermaid; of the immolation of the Steadfast Tin Soldier.



The story of the Nutcracker is that of Maria Stahlbaum, a young girl in Frankfurt, eagerly awaiting the Christmas Eve party to which family (including her mysterious godfather Drosselmeyer) and friends are invited. She and her brother Fritz are given a beautiful nutcracker in the shape of a soldier by their godfather Drosselmeyer. That night, Christmas Eve night, the nutcracker appears to come to life to fight the evil mice, enchant Maria, whisk her to his far away kingdom (for after defeating the Mouse King he assumes his real form as a Prince upon whom a spell had been placed), and then, before dawn, resumes his shape as a nutcracker so that he might always be with her.



After all the phantasmagorical scenes and activities, the story ends (in Daniel Walden's retelling) with Maria's mother telling her:

"If Nutcracker came alive, it was because you like him so well. If you love something very much it is always alive . . . What a funny child you are today! Now get washed and dressed and have your breakfast. I'll light the fire."

Thus is achieved that close juxtaposition of magic and the quotidian which is inherent to every child discovering the world for the first time. And like all masterpieces of this nature, you are left wondering what really happened - what was real and what was imagined.



The Nutcracker is a wonderful tale but it is deep and it is dark and can be interpreted at many different levels. It is often better suited for slightly older children, perhaps six or eight years old. For young adults, it is actually a very interesting case study for trying to tie what was going on in the author's world (Napoleonic invasions of Prussia where Hoffman was living, Hoffman's personal careening between careers, etc.) to the text that he then created.



The final lines of Nutcracker are the central premise of Margery Williams Bianco's The Velveteen Rabbit, that love is not only a transformative experience but can actually transform things. A child receives a toy rabbit for Christmas but quickly sets him aside for other baubles. Later he takes up with the toy rabbit again and comes to love it deeply, so deeply that the rabbit is his critical companion as he suffers through a life threatening illness. He recovers but the toy rabbit is set aside to be burned as part of the general sanitization after the illness. It is then that the rabbit discovers that he has been so well loved that he becomes real. No simple summary of this tale can really capture, though, how much it touches the heart.



The transformative power of love is similarly central to the Hans Christian Andersen tale of The Steadfast Tin Soldier of which there are a number of excellent versions.



The Raggedy Ann and Raggedy Andy stories are simple masterpieces of delight for young boys and girls, relating the adventures of Ann and Andy who are stoical and immobile when people are about but play and have numerous adventures and misadventures with the other toys when left unwatched. Written and illustrated by Johnny Gruelle and based on a real doll he had given his own daughter, the Raggedy Ann and Andy stories were written in the 1910's through the 1920's and there is a whiff of the era in the books but largely they exist in that timeless world of a child's imagination.



The Adventures of Pinnocchio is yet another in these tales where a toy comes to life but differs in that, for most of the book, Pinnocchio is not a real little boy but an animated marionette. The Adventures of Pinnocchio is recognizable to many because of the Walt Disney version, but as is often the case, the original is much deeper and with more dark elements than managed to make it into the cartoon. This is not a bad thing. The story has more substance and less froth than the cartoon and keeps a child gripped when hearing the tale and coming back to it again and again.



One of my personal favorites, partly for the story, but mostly for the pictures is the perennial childhood favorite, The Little Engine That Could by Watty Piper, a house name for the original publisher, Platt & Munk. There have been subsequent releases illustrated by others but I think for sheer magical inspiration, none of them hold a candle to the original version illustrated by George and Doris Hauman.



Moving a little further afield from the magical toy theme you have others such as Winnie the Pooh and Polar the Titanic Bear in which there is no claim of magic per se. Instead you have a much loved toy that has a life of its own (Pooh) or some consciousness (Polar). Polar the Titanic Bear is based on a true story and is tremendously poignant, one of a good handful of discoveries I have made of newer books when reading to my children when they were young.



What I think is most wonderful about these type of stories is that, while often poignant and touching, they are also fun and affirming. Take a look at the list of books below and let us know which ones you enjoy or others you might recommend.





Picture Books

	The Little Engine That Could by Watty Piper and illustrated by George and Doris Hauman Highly Recommended
	Raggedy Andy Stories written and illustrated by Johnny Gruelle Highly Recommended
	Raggedy Ann Stories written and illustrated by Johnny Gruelle Highly Recommended
	The Steadfast Tin Soldier by Hans Christian Andersen and illustrated by P. J. Lynch Recommended
	Corduroy written and illustrated by Don Freeman Recommended
	The Nutcracker by E.T.A. Hoffmann and illustrated by Don Daily Recommended
	Santa Calls written and illustrated by William Joyce Recommended
	Polar the Titanic Bear by Daisy Corning Stone Spedden and illustrated by Laurie McGraw Recommended
	Arthur's Honey Bear by Lillian Hoban Suggested
	The Nutcracker by Stephanie Spinner and illustrated by Peter Malone Suggested
	Block City by Robert Louis Stevenson and illustrated by Daniel Kirk Suggested

Independent Reader

	The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams Bianco and illustrated by William Nicholson Highly Recommended
	The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams Bianco and illustrated by Michael Hague Highly Recommended
	The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane by Kate DiCamillo and illustrated by Bagram Ibatoulline Recommended
	Hitty by Rachel Field Recommended
	The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi and illustrated by Roberto Innocenti Recommended
	The Castle in the Attic by Elizabeth Winthrop and illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman Recommended
	Lord of the Nutcracker Men by Iain Lawrence Suggested
	The Doll People by Ann M. Martin and illustrated by Laura Godwin and Brian Selznick Suggested

The House of Christmas by G.K. Chesterton

The House of Christmas
G.K. Chesterton

There fared a mother driven forth
Out of an inn to roam;
In the place where she was homeless
All men are at home.
The crazy stable close at hand,
With shaking timber and shifting sand,
Grew a stronger thing to abide and stand
Than the square stones of Rome.

For men are homesick in their homes,
And strangers under the sun,
And they lay on their heads in a foreign land
Whenever the day is done.
Here we have battle and blazing eyes,
And chance and honour and high surprise,
But our homes are under miraculous skies
Where the yule tale was begun.

A Child in a foul stable,
Where the beasts feed and foam;
Only where He was homeless
Are you and I at home;
We have hands that fashion and heads that know,
But our hearts we lost - how long ago!
In a place no chart nor ship can show
Under the sky's dome.

This world is wild as an old wives' tale,
And strange the plain things are,
The earth is enough and the air is enough
For our wonder and our war;
But our rest is as far as the fire-drake swings
And our peace is put in impossible things
Where clashed and thundered unthinkable wings
Round an incredible star.

To an open house in the evening
Home shall men come,
To an older place than Eden
And a taller town than Rome.
To the end of the way of the wandering star,
To the things that cannot be and that are,
To the place where God was homeless
And all men are at home.

P.D. Eastman

Born November 25, 1909 in Amherst, Massachusetts

Died January 7, 1986 in Cresskill, New Jersey



It is perhaps ironical that an author noted for using few words to tell stories that children love, should have had so few words written about him. P.D. Eastman at first glance seems something of a cipher but instead is, I think, just a simple victim of circumstance.



The reason he seems a cipher is that is that there is not much information about him, the books that he wrote won no major awards and are rarely if ever critically acclaimed, and in fact, many if not most people don't even believe he existed, assuming instead that P.D. Eastman was a pseudonym for Dr. Seuss or was a syndicate house name such as Watty Piper, Frank Dixon or Nancy Keane.



So who was this man of mystery and what exactly did he write? And why doesn't anyone know about him?



First, let it be said, Philip Dey Eastman was a real person. He was born in 1909 in Amherst, Massachusetts. He was educated at Phillips Academy and then at Amherst College and pursued a career in animation, working for Walt Disney productions in the 1930's. It was at Disney that Eastman met Mary Louise Whitman whom he wed in 1941. With the advent of World War II, Eastman joined the Army in 1942 and served as an illustrator in the Signal Corps. in the film division headed by Frank Capra, creating animated training films and writing and storyboarding a film series, "Private Snafu." Also in this unit was the author/illustrator Munro Leaf, most famous for his book, The Story of Ferdinand. The head of the animation unit, and to whom Eastman reported, was one Theodore Geisel, later to attain fame as Dr. Seuss.



After the war, Eastman went back into animation, joining United Productions of America where he helped create the cartoon character and series, Mr. Magoo. Eastman also co-authored with Theodore Geisel the film script for Gerald McBoing-Boing, winner of the 1950 Academy Award for Best Short Subject (Animated).



In 1954, the Eastmans, now with two sons, moved to Westport, Connecticut. This was the period when a movement gathered force in the US to reinvigorate children's literature in general and in particular to revitalize early readers. In May, 1954 Life Magazine published an article by John Hersey (author of the classic Hiroshima), "Why Do Students Bog Down on the First R?" that lit in to school readers for their "insipid illustrations" and their "abnormally courteous, unnaturally clean boys and girls." In the article, Hersey suggested that a more engaging and dynamic form of illustration was needed to capture students and specifically alluded to the effectiveness of Walt Disney illustrations and to Dr. Seuss in particular. In 1955, Rudolf Flesch came out with the book Why Johnny Can't Read further fueling the push for more creative, and engaging early readers.



Responding to this quintessentially American manufactured, but well-intentioned hoo-hah to improve, William Spaulding of Houghton Mifflin's educational division issued a challenge to Dr. Seuss to write an engaging early reader for children using fewer than 225 distinct words (from a list drawn up by Spaulding) and which would replace the anemic Dick and Jane readers used in schools. Seuss undertook the dare, thinking to dash out the story but soon discovered that fewer words meant much more work. A year and a half later, in 1957 and at only 236 words, he was ready with the book that marked children's literature forever. Watch out Dick and Jane; make way for The Cat in the Hat.



Seuss had written nine children's books prior to The Cat in the Hat but the Cat is what really started things rolling. Working with Random House, Seuss initiated a series of Beginning Books that were to follow a similar model - colorful, cartoon illustrations, lots of imagination, large fonts, simple texts based on a restricted range of words, much use of repetition and usually having a distinctive cadence and rhythm to the text. Seuss of course wrote many of the books in the series but by no means all of them. He reached out to former colleagues in the Signal Corps.' Animation Unit, including Eastman, to solicit their participation in this new reading venture.



In 1958 Eastman, while still working as an illustrator and animator, published his first book, Sam and the Firefly, which was respectably received. His next book did not come out until 1960 but then he started a four year run in which he produced five books (he only wrote or illustrated fifteen in all) each of which were unique classics and which have remained in print ever since.



The run started with Are You My Mother? (1960), followed by Go, Dog, Go! (1961), A Fish Out of Water (1961, written by Helen Palmer and illustrated by P.D. Eastman), The Cat in the Hat Dictionary (1964, co-authored by Eastman and Seuss and illustrated by Eastman) and finally Robert, the Rose Horse also in 1964, written by Joan K. Heilbroner and illustrated by Eastman. Interestingly, Helen Palmer was actually Helen Palmer Geisel, Theodore Geisel's wife.



Whenever you gather together enthusiastic readers from five to fifty-five years old, if they start to reminisce of favorite books of childhood, virtually every one of them will mention at least one of these titles as an early favorite.



So why isn't Eastman better known? Certainly one reason is that many people, if not most, have assumed that P.D. Eastman was just another pseudonym for Theodore Geisel, who wrote primarily under the name of Dr. Seuss but also penned a number of titles in the Beginner Book series as Theo LeSieg. This would have been reinforced as there were some strong similarities between the illustration styles of Geisel, Eastman, McKie and Lopshire; all author/illustrators in the series. Many people assume all are the same person.



Further confusing authorship is the fact that the popular The Cat in the Hat Dictionary was authored, per the cover, by The Cat Himself and P.D. Eastman; an oblique way of saying that it was co-authored by Theodore Geisel (Dr. Seuss) and P.D. Eastman and illustrated by Eastman. Finally, the fact that two of the books for which he is famous were written by other's while he illustrated them, further muddies the waters.



Are You My Mother? is the story of a hatchling wandering about querying all and sundry, regardless of shape and size, as to whether they are his mother, until at last he is reunited with his mother. Go, Dog, Go! is the mother of all concept books. At 64 pages it is much longer than your standard concept book and the whole story is moved along by all sorts of comparative and action concepts - big dogs, little dogs, red dogs, green dogs, one dog going in, three dogs coming out.



A Fish Out of Water was one of my favorites as a child and is the story of a boy who ignores what he is told to do and feeds his little fish not just the pinch of food that is needed but instead the whole bottle of fish food and the consequences arising from that simple act of disobedience. A wonderfully improbable but engaging story.



The Cat in the Hat Dictionary is exactly what it sounds like - a child's dictionary of a thousand or so words, each defined in a comprehendible fashion but always with humor and an element of improbability not characteristic of Webster of Johnson. Robert, the Rose Horse is the tale of a horse that loves roses but is allergic to them.



A couple of later books by Eastman, Flap Your Wings and The Best Nest are also frequent favorites. Flap Your Wings in particular is pretty entertaining as a couple of birds attempt to raise a toothy off-spring when an alligator hatches from the egg that a boy mistakenly put in their nest. You can make all or as little as you want out of the metaphor of being yourself and of parents having to let go - it is still a pretty entertaining story.



What makes this small handful of books so durable? That is a little hard to say. Certainly, Eastman just simply tells a good story. These are books that move forward despite their restricted vocabulary; there is always something amusing going on. The fact that there is a cadence to the sentences helps. These are easy stories for parents to read to a child and that is part of the attraction - children know these stories from listening to them, just at that stage in life when they are also beginning to pick up the skill of reading themselves. The fact that Eastman's books are longer and busier than most early readers would, at first blush, seem to be a problem for a new reader. I think, though, that because there is a lot going on, it means that a parent is more likely to be willing to continually re-read these books to their children as parents are so often requested to do. That frequency brings greater familiarity and therefore an easier transition from being read to towards independent reading.



Eastman as an illustrator, relied somewhat less than Seuss on antic fantasy in his drawings. While in the cartoon style, there is a greater expression and use of motion to convey and elaborate on the story being told by the text. For first readers, I think those subtle clues make a material difference and therefore are part of what make Eastman's works so engaging and useful to a new reader. Similarly for the books that he wrote himself, Eastman is characterized by more "real" material: in and out, up and down, behind and in front. These are tough concepts for the early learner and reader and while Seuss' imagination for the fantastic is entertaining, it can be distracting and confusing as well.



However he achieved it, there is the simple fact that Eastman wrote and illustrated a series of books that have marked each group of new readers for the past two or three generations. Though not frequently mentioned in children's literature textbooks, or on many classics lists, or winners of prizes, his books pass the highest test of all - they are well loved and perennial favorites by each wave of new readers.



Though he never became a big author/illustrator of children's books, Eastman did end up writing and/or illustrating fifteen books between 1958 and 1979. Remarkably, all but two of those books are still in print some forty years later. That might be said to be the ultimate tribute to the creative powers of an author and illustrator.





Picture Books

	Are You My Mother? by P. D. Eastman Highly Recommended
	Go, Dog, Go by P.D. Eastman Highly Recommended
	A Fish Out of Water by Helen Palmer and illustrated by P.D. Eastman Highly Recommended
	Robert the Rose Horse by Joan Heilbroner and illustrated by P. D. Eastman Highly Recommended
	Cat in the Hat Beginner Book Dictionary by P. D. Eastman and Dr. Seuss and illustrated by P.D. Eastman Recommended
	Flap Your Wings by P. D. Eastman Recommended
	Sam and the Firefly by P. D. Eastman Suggested
	Snow by Roy McKie and P. D. Eastman Suggested
	The Best Nest by P. D. Eastman Suggested
	Big Dog Little Dog by P. D. Eastman Suggested
	I'll Teach My Dog 100 Words by Michael Frith and illustrated by P. D. Eastman Suggested
	The Alphabet Book by P. D. Eastman Recommendation
	Red, Stop! Green, Go by P. D. Eastman Suggested

P.D. Eastman Bibliography


Sam and the Firefly by P.D. Eastman and illustrated by P.D. Eastman 1958

Are You My Mother? by P.D. Eastman and illustrated by P.D. Eastman 1960

Go, Dog, Go! by P.D. Eastman and illustrated by P.D. Eastman 1961

Fish Out of Water by Helen Palmer and illustrated by P.D. Eastman 1961

Snow by P.D. Eastman and Roy McKie 1962

The Cat in the Hat Dictionary by P.D. Eastman and Dr. Seuss and illustrated by P.D. Eastman 1964

Robert, the Rose Horse by Joan K. Heilbroner and illustrated by P.D. Eastman 1964

Everything Happens to Aaron in the Autumn by P.D. Eastman and illustrated by P.D. Eastman 1967

The Best Nest by P.D. Eastman and illustrated by P.D. Eastman 1968

Flap Your Wings by P.D. Eastman and illustrated by P.D. Eastman 1969

Big Dog . . . Little Dog: A Bedtime Story by P.D. Eastman and illustrated by P.D. Eastman 1973

I'll Teach My Dog One Hundred Words by Michael K. Frith and illustrated by P.D. Eastman 1973

The Alphabet Book by P.D. Eastman and illustrated by P.D. Eastman 1974

What Time Is It? by P.D. Eastman and illustrated by P.D. Eastman 1979

Red, Stop! Green, Go! by P.D. Eastman and illustrated by P.D. Eastman