My Favorite Children’s Book
My friend and fellow writer (she is actually published) Katherine Harbour recently asked me if I could write a few words about my favorite children’s book.
Here goes.
I work at Barnes & Noble in the Children’s Book Department. I do storytime. I have a 5 shelf bookcase at home full of children’s books.
There are so many to choose from.
I have been an avid reader for most of my life. I attribute this to a couple of different influences.
My father (through means unknown to me) came across a cache of comic books when I was a young lad. He paid my allowance in comic books. It worked like gangbusters, until I discovered the secret location of his troll hoard in a cubby ‘neath the stairs.
Those comic books sent an electrical shock wave up and down my spine and caused my eyes to spin and unleashed torrents of my imagination.
My Great Grandmother Naomi used to take me to the Velma Teague Library in Glendale, Arizona.
I remember dozens of people thumbing through vinyl records searching for an LP to check out. There were comic books there as well. My obsession was the discard racks at the entrance full of pulp science fiction novels with lurid and fantastical covers.
To this day I still fetishize discarded books. My particular kink lies in books from far off libraries that still have the library cards inside with names and dates.
That is how things get embedded in our psyches and our collective unconscious minds methinks. A mixture of childhood sense overload and budding hormonal desires. I still get a particular warm shiver when I find a certain book at a used bookstore or when my rabid comic book desires get whetted.
Anyway, we were talking about children’s books. Let’s hit on a few while I try to settle on one.
Brighty of the Grand Canyon by Marguerite Henry. As an Arizona kid reading a true legend about the place I was from was a real treat. The illustrations by Wesley Dennis are like kid catnip. I love this book so much I currently have two copies.
Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing by Judy Blume. When I was in fourth grade an elderly teacher began reading this to us as a treat. I was desperate for each installment. I had to know what happened next. I was feverish. I was manic. I was obsessed. The way my teacher would lick her finger before slowly turning to the next tantalizing page filled me with unquenchable anticipation. I tried looking at a new version of this book to see if I would get the same sense memory from it to no avail. Without the Roy Doty illustrations, it just wasn’t the same.
How To Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell. With laugh out loud humor and Vonnegut like short chapters, I read and re-read this one until it literally disintegrated in my hands. This is the only cover for me. New updated covers of books you loved as a kid seem, at the very least, to take away some of the ownership you might feel for a beloved tale of childhood yore. Here is an example below.
You see? Just not the same.
There are others. So many others. Bunnicula - which sent me spiraling into the vortex of anticipation known as the Scholastic Book Fair…
My Side Of The Mountain by Jean Craighead George and the film that followed…
Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls which spoke to the spiritual yearning that has been a companion to me and something for which I have had to struggle to reconcile in the face of what I know now vs. what I knew (or thought I knew) then.
The Mouse and the Motorcycle by Beverly Cleary …
There are some children’s books that transcend the genre and becoming something more. They speak to us at the various stations in our lives and are as relevant to us when we are young and when we are old. Like…
And…
The above you could read to an infant, or a graduate, or at a wedding, or to someone on their deathbed, and it would have meaning at all those occasions.
Okay? Okay. I’ve stalled long enough…
Drum roll.
a beat...
(insistently) Drum Roll!
My favorite children’s book (at this time) is…
As much as I love Quentin Blake, Joseph Schindelman has been and will be the only illustrator for Roald Dahl’s Charlie And The Chocolate Factory. I have focused a lot on illustrators throughout this piece. Illustrators are vital. Tellers of tales are vital. When you find the perfect partnership between the two, sparks and magic are created.
Is there a Hunter S. Thompson without Ralph Steadman?
What would The Wizard of Oz be without William Wallace Denslow?
No, for a children’s book to become a classic it has to fire on both cylinders - a fantastically written tale married to timeless illustrations. That is why I love “Charlie And The Chocolate Factory” so much.
I love classic Disney. Roald Dahl is like the anti-Disney. He is the Agent Smith to Walt’s Neo…
Whereas (most of the time) Walt & crew polished over the rough edges, Roald Dahl dove right into them with sinister delight. The book is like a children’s version of Dante’s Inferno. Dahl was a treasure. His voice is sorely missed.
Schindelman’s illustrations scratch an itch deep down in my soul. I am as satisfied when studying his delicate whimsical crosshatching as I would be eating a Wonka Scrumdiddlyumptious Bar. Truly a masterpiece.
I even tried to duplicate his drawing technique.
Well, there it is. My favorite. For so many reasons.
 |
| My own well worn and much loved copy. |
What is yours?
I’ll close with this quote from the film version…
fin
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