What, You've Never Read Where the Sidewalk Ends?!

Thank you to everyone who commented on the last post.  You reminded me of books I'd loved and forgotten (like Sideways Stories from Wayside School), and given me some great ideas of new books to enjoy.
Yesterday, I was surprised when a number of my tenth grade students did not get my reference to Shel Silverstein's "Boa Constrictor".  So, I promptly retrieved Where the Sidewalk Ends from the library and read a number of selections to them.  Just for fun, here's "The Toy Eater", from Falling Up.

It's strange to think about a childhood encounter with a story, poem, book, movie, or song, and what difference it might have made.  Was some aspect of my personality or sense of humor forever altered by Where the Sidewalk Ends?  It feels that way, but it's impossible to know.
As far as my tenth-graders go, surely some astute teacher or librarian along their educational path read them some Shel Silverstein poems.  Most of them don't remember it, though, and I can't help feeling sad for them.  It makes me want to put out an alert to all elementary teachers.  Of course, that's a can of worms that, once opened, would cause an infestation, because I want them to read all the books on my list and many more.
There are plenty of recommended reading lists by knowledgeable people out there, which is helpful.  Somehow, though, the idea of required reading for elementary rubs me the wrong way.  Childhood is a time for exploration, discovery, and wonder, and adults should do everything in their power to preserve that.  So, there's an art to choosing, suggesting, and guiding kids to the right books.  I, for one, have the utmost respect for those librarians, teachers, parents, and others who practice that art.

Children's Literature, What's the Deal?

The following is an imagined conversation among the characters of Seinfeld.

Jerry: Children's Literature, what's the deal?

Elaine: What do you mean?  It's books for kids.

Jerry: Yeah, but can only kids read them?  What if I want to read one?  Is that not allowed?

Elaine: So, you're saying you want to read Dr. Seuss.  I say go ahead.

George: I love Dr. Seuss.

Kramer: (bursting through the door) Hey, did somebody say something about Dr. Seuss?

Imaginary Jerry brings up a good point.  What is the deal?  What is children's literature?  Infamous book snob (and critical genius) Harold Bloom, in the introduction to Stories and Poems for Extremely Intelligent Children of All Ages, says, "Most of what is now commercially offered as children's literature would be inadequate fare for any reader of any age at any time."  There he goes harping on about universality again, but his point is clear: there's a lot of junky books out there.  Assuming that imaginary Elaine is correct, that children's literature is simply books for kids, then what makes for good children's literature?  This is a question I'm eager to explore.  Tons of smart people (Bloom included) have plenty to say on the topic, but I'm curious about what you think.  

So, I've thought back to my own childhood, made a list of books that stand out in my memory, and I'd like you to do the same.  These are the books that I remember reading, or in a couple of instances remember them being read to me by a teacher.  I figure that's a pretty good measure of the impact the book had on me. I've skipped over the early childhood stuff, but feel free to include those in your own list.

• The Secret of NIMH, by Robert C. O'brien
• The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, by Mark Twain
• The Mouse and the Motorcycle, by Beverly Cleary
• The Trumpet of the Swan, by E.B. White
• The Chronicles of Narnia, by C.S. Lewis
• The Hardy Boys series, by Franklin W. Dixon (pseudonym)
• The Phantom Tollbooth, by Norton Juster
• The Alligator and His Uncle Tooth, by Geoffrey Hayes
• Hatchet, by Gary Paulson
• They Whipping Boy, by Sid Fleischman

Please post a comment with your own "most memorable children's book" list.  Also, you can explore these books by checking out my list on Indiebound.

Elizabeth Bennet: the Anti Bella

After reading Twilight, I should have delved into something more manly to compensate, but that was not to be.  I had already decided on Pride and Prejudice as the second book for my novels class, my plan being to read it over the summer.  That didn't happen, so with all the false confidence I could muster, I announced to my students that I would be reading this book for the first time with them.  It's lame, it's embarrassing, it's probably terrible teaching.  We are now halfway through the book, and today we were discussing comparisons between Elizabeth Bennet and other fictional characters.  The class agreed that she was pretty much the opposite of Bella from Twilight, which was nice to hear.  In fact, compared to any other character, Elizabeth was smarter, more confident, and more outspoken.  I think that, as far as female characters I've read, only Shakespeare's Rosalind rivals her in those qualities.  One girl in my class compared her to Annabeth from the Percy Jackson & the Olympians series for the same reasons.  Another contemporary character who comes to my mind is Sam from The Perks of Being a Wallflower.

I am not an expert in feminist issues, and anything I try to say on the topic will only embarrass me, I'm sure.  I have been intrigued, however, by the responses I've heard to both Twilight and Pride and Prejudice.  Some women say that Twilight is bad because Bella is a terrible role model for girls, and some say that the series honestly captures the essence and emotional intensity of teenage romance.  Most women I know who have read Pride and Prejudice love it.  The girls in my novels class are expressing desires to go back in time and live the life of an 18th century, upper-class English girl, mostly for the balls and the gowns, but also for the simplicity of the lifestyle.  They do not, however, wish for the pressure of finding a well-to-do husband or for the social limitations.  I can't help but remember that one of the things that attracted Bella to Edward was his old world charm.  He spoke eloquently, danced gracefully, played piano, and was exceedingly polite.

I also can't help thinking of Chaucer's The Wife of Bath's Tale, in which a knight convicted of rape was given one year to answer the question, "What do women most desire?"  The answer was mastery over their husbands, but for my purposes in this post I'm not so much interested in Chaucer's answer as in the question itself.  The question is, itself, an oversimplification of the greatest degree, but it is, nonetheless, a question for which the books I'm involved in right now are positing some possible answers.  Bella wants romance, Charlotte Lucas wants security, Elizabeth will know it when she sees it, I think.  Of course, I know that she ends up with Mr. Darcy, but I don't know how yet.  So, don't ruin it for me because I'm actually enjoying this one.

Twilight

I just finished reading Twilight.  I made a deal with my novels class, "You read Dracula, I'll read Twilight."  I think most of them actually read it.  So here, in five words, are a 33-year-old man's thoughts on the infamous teen vampire romance: it's a teen vampire romance.  That's it.  As I told my class one day, "my problem is that I'm not a teenage girl."

I feel like I have no context by which to fairly judge this book, having never read a romance novel, but I'm going to judge it anyway.  Stephanie Meyer has obviously captured the imagination of millions of teenage girls of all ages, so she must doing something right.  For me, though, the book was a series of desperately hopeful build-ups, and awful let-downs.  I wanted it to be good, despite everything I'd heard, and honestly gave it a chance.  For the first 150 pages or so, I thought it was interesting, but only because I assumed it was going somewhere.  Alas, that was not to be.

I'll briefly list my chief complaints:
1. Vampires playing baseball during thunderstorms so they can literally hit the ball with a thunderous crack is the silliest thing I've ever read, and not the good kind of silly.
2. Everyone in this book, especially Bella, needs to eat more food.  Skipping lunch because your crush is mysteriously absent is a bad idea.
3. Every time I thought it was headed somewhere, that something was actually going to happen, all I got was more obsessing, more drooling over Edward.
4. A vampire sparkling in the sunlight of a secluded meadow, cuddling carefully with his human girlfriend is the most inane thing I've ever read.
5.  Will everyone please stop comparing this series to Harry Potter?  It is not at all the same sort of book, but as I was reading Twilight, I got so many questions and comments along those lines.

The worst thing about this book is that it is ALL about a lonely girl obsessing over a boy, mostly for his looks.  That's it.  Even the climax is disappointingly bogged down by pages and pages of Bella in a hotel room missing Edward, then being duped in a ridiculously simple way by her captor.

Finally, I'm not interested in the emotional complexities of loving a vampire.  By the end of the book, Bella wants to become a vampire.  She calls prom a "trite human thing."  Edward refuses to turn her into a "monster", which is supposed to demonstrate Edward's nobility, but somehow only makes him seem more self-indulgent.  The best literature, in my opinion, affirms our humanity while allowing us to escape our personal situation for a time.  Twilight, however, only affirms our desire to escape.

Kids in the 1820's

I am teaching a class on folklore this semester and have completely fallen in love with the stories of the Brothers Grimm.  Not only that, but my students have, too.  I was skeptical when I saw that my roster consisted of five guys and one girl, but I should not have been.   Seventeen-year-old guys love violence and gore, and the Brothers Grimm deliver both with a surprising and twisted sense of humor.  Stories like "The Robber Bridegroom" and "Fitcher's Bird" rival any current horror movie for shock factor.  Here's an example from the latter, translated by Maria Tatar in her delightfully titled book, The Grimm Reader:

"Imagine what she saw when she entered!  In the middle of the room there was a big basin full of blood, and in it there were chopped up pieces of dead bodies.  Next to the basin was a block of wood with a gleaming ax on it."

This is a children's story?!  I think one of my students put it best: "Kids in the 1820's were B.A."

I knew that Jacob and Wilhem had magically imbedded themselves somewhere deep in the Disney-dilluted collective cultural consciousness, and I had a hunch that by reading the raw original stories we could light up some long-dormant regions of our temporal lobes.  I'm delighted that it's working.  So far, we've worked on tracing motifs through the stories: the wicked stepmother, human-to-animal transformations, hidden identities, etc.  We've compared the Grimms' "Briar Rose" to Disney's Sleeping Beauty.  It's been fun, and I hope the good energy continues.

After The Grimm Reader, we'll be reading Yeats' Celtic Twilight, Favorite Folk Tales from Around the World (edited by Jane Yolen), and Legends and Tales of the American West (by Richard Erdoes).  Right now, though, I feel like I could linger with the Brothers Grimm all semester.  So, what do I love about them?  It's not the violence, although I can't imagine the stories without it.  It has something to do with the joy of knowing that when a certain element is at play, you know what's going to happen, but not how.  If there's a wolf, you know somebody's getting eaten, but how is the wolf going to trick them?  If there are any number of brothers and one younger sister, you know they're going to get turned into birds, or maybe a deer, and the sister is going to have to save them, but how?  At the end will the wicked stepmother be boiled in a barrel with poisonous snakes, or drug through the streets in a barrel studded with nails on the inside?

And there are always those out-of-nowhere, never-saw-it-coming moments that you can't help but laugh at, like when the young man enters hell and finds the devil's grandmother sitting in an easy chair.  It is in such moments that you can feel the oral tradition bleeding through the page.  You can imagine yourself in cottage in the black forest listening to some old woman spin the tale.  So, props to Tatar for a wonderful translation.

I'm looking forward to seeing where this semester goes.

So Brilliant, So Modern, It Makes Absolutely No Sense to Anyone

Waiting for Godot is a fun play.  Sure it's weird and confusing, and maybe pointless.  It's also sad, difficult, and uncomfortable.  Was it written for high school students to study?  Probably not.  Beckett, I think, just wanted to do something different, something loosely in the existentialist vein.  I think he nailed it, whatever "it" is.  He throws the absurdity of life right in your face, and you have to laugh or cry.  So, how do you approach this with students?  Well, first, you watch this video.

Then you get scripts, go outside, find a tree, and put it on.  Have students  take turns reading the few parts, and give them some direction as you go.  That's what I've done with my World Literature class so far.  Next, we're going to write our own parodies.  I'm aiming for them to see how the sense of humor in Godot has permeated popular culture in the last 60 years.  We'll see how it goes.  Right now, my students are laughing and enjoying themselves with this.  That, in itself, is worth a lot.

On Teaching Camus' The Stranger

How do you explain Existentialism to 17-year-olds?  I'll tell you how I did it, and you can tell me if I'm an idiot.  First, you write two quotes on the board:

 "We are not what we are."

"Existence preceeds essence."


You let them think you're crazy for a few minutes, then you ask if anyone's ever been really bored on a long car ride and starting asking themselves, "What is this thing I call 'me'?"  A couple of them say yes, and you ask them to explain.  Basically, once you take away all the stuff we usually use to describe ourselves, such as what movies we like, who our friends are, places we've visited, where we go to school or work, our opinions and beliefs, it's really hard to imagine what's at the core of all that.  We use words like "mind" and "soul", but we don't really know what those are, either.  So, then you write this on the board.

(in-itself) -------------------> (for-itself)

You explain that Jean-Paul Sartre calls that thing that is the real "me" the "in-itself."  The in-itself is pure individual existence.  All that other stuff, you know the Facebook-profile stuff, is the "for-itself."  The for-itself is a creation of the in-itself.  It's this ongoing project we call our identity.  It's what the in-itself throws out into the world in order to interact with it.  Most of the time, when we think about ourselves, this is what we think about, because of our situation.  Our situation is that we are individuals in constant interaction with the world around us.


This would be a good time to ask for questions or comments...proceed.

But when I really take time to reflect, I realize that I could decide, at any moment, to completely change the "for-itself."  Right now, I could walk out of this classroom, drive to California, and become a beach bum.  I'm totally free to do that.  There would be consequences, I would be hurting my family, but I could do it.  If I died right now, my obituary would say that I was a teacher.  "Teacher" would largely define the essence of who I was.  But if right now I drove to California and lived out my days as a beach bum, then "beach bum" would be in my obituary and largely define my essence.

Another break for questions and comments...proceed.

So you're completely free to change who you are, or to do anything you want, given that there are always consequences to your actions.  You're absolutely free and absolutely responsible.  Write on the board:

Freedom & Responsibility

Of course, none of it "means" anything.  You're born, you live your life choosing to do this or that, not to do this or that, you experience things, you die.  That's it.  Sartre and Camus were atheists, so according to them, there's no God to predetermine anything, give purpose to, justify, forgive, or reward anything.  How do you like that idea?

Most students say it sounds "depressing."

The word Sartre used was "nausea."  To confront the reality of your existence is a nauseating thing, but we must do it in order to live "authentically."  To live authentically is to choose to commit to our own "project", to the creation of the "self" that creates "meaning" for itself in an honest way.

Now you have have a room full of 17-year-old brains that, though they've only recently acquired the capacity for abstract thought, are ready to read The Stranger and have their own existential crises!  What fun!

Beastie Bards

I was surprised today, though perhaps I shouldn't have been, to find that The Beastie Boys are masters of iambic pentameter. We had read Shakespeare's Sonnet 18 ("Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?") and were practicing writing our own ten-syllable-with-every-other-one-stressed lines when one young man says, "Can I use lyrics from a song?"
I say, "yes," and he blows me away with the concluding line of "Paul Revere."

"I grab two girlies and a beer that's cold."

Perfect iambic pentameter. Of course, this led to more Beastie Boys lines being bantered about, but, sadly, all from License to Ill. I try desperately to explain why Ill Communication is a far superior album, but they're not having it. Oh, well.