The most fondly remembered character in all of children’s literature is a spider. At least that’s what a torrent of messages declared in response to my story last week about books written for children that are every bit as meaningful and enjoyable for adults.
The beloved book is, of course, E.B. White’s “Charlotte’s Web,” the story of a spider who befriends a pig. Charlotte’s kindness, grace, and ingenuity make her one of the great characters of literature for any age. The book ends with one of the most beautiful lines I know: “It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer. Charlotte was both.”
Linda Packer of Highland Park expressed the views of others who wrote as well: “My all-time favorite childhood book — and perhaps my all-time favorite book — is ‘Charlotte’s Web,’ which captivated me from the first word to the last, kept me up nights (after bedtime, of course, reading by night light) and taught me about the value of true friendship. I still sob uncontrollably at the end. It’s worth it.”
It is especially heart warming to be reminded of books such as “Charlotte’s Web” that inspire children to write as well as read.
I was captivated by Jo March in Louisa May Alcott’s “Little Women” scribbling away, the position of her cap signaling to her family whether she was struggling or whether “Genius burns!”
Louise Fitzhugh’s “Harriet the Spy” is about a girl who responds to the problems that trouble her by writing about them — though she runs into some bigger problems when her friends discover her candid reflections.
Kate Leahy of Evanston reminded me of “The Westing Game” by Ellen Raskin. It has a deliciously tricky puzzle inside a mystery inside a riddle, and characters you are sorry to leave once it is all resolved. Anyone who reads it will want to try to create a mystery too.
A former kindergarten teacher recommended another one of my favorites, “From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler,” by E.L Konigsburg, about a brother and sister who join forces to run away from home and hide out in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
That book led me to the whole shelf of Konigsburg books, and I loved them all. I especially like the way Konigsburg matter-of-factly includes disabled and minority and older characters and lets them be complete (and imperfect) people.
“I believe that the writing of it makes it normal,” Konigsburg wrote in “Talk Talk: A Children’s Book Author Speaks to Grown-Ups” (Atheneum 1995). She urges authors to “Tell how normal it is to be very comfortable on the outside but very uncomfortable on the inside. Tell how funny it all is. But tell a little something else, too. What can it hurt? Tell a little something else — how you can be a nonconformist and about how you can be an outsider. And tell how you are entitled to a little privacy. But for goodness’ sake, say all that very softly.”
My favorite response came from my own 6th-grade teacher from Glencoe’s South School, Marvin Martin, now retired in Kenosha, Wis., who guided the reading of thousands of 11-14 year olds over his career. He sent me a copy of an article he wrote in 1967 called “Fifty Books They Can’t Resist.” I remembered reading many of them when I was in his class, including “A Wrinkle in Time” by Madeleine L’Engle; “Homer Price” by Robert McCloskey and “Cheaper by the Dozen” by Frank B. Gilbreth.
My husband asked me to remember that one of the great pleasures of books written for children is the illustrations. For him and for generations of other readers, Robin Hood will always look the way he did in illustrations by Howard Pyle, and King Arthur and his knights were brought to life as much by the paintings of N.C. Wyeth (father of Andrew Wyeth) as by the tales of their adventures. Those pictures can help to entice a child who might otherwise be put off by the “forsooths.”
It always helps to interest kids in a “classic” by tying it to something they enjoy on television. Allison Blakley of Northbrook points out that “The Amazing Race” echoes the famous adventure of Phileas Fogg in Jule Verne’s “Around the World in 80 Days,” and “Survivor” reminds us of “The Swiss Family Robinson.” For fans of “Nanny 911,” she recommends “Nurse Matilda” by Christianna Brand. I’d also add the implacable but irresistible “Mary Poppins” by P.L. Travers.
Blakley, like several of the others who responded, spoke of the pleasure of the language, of writing so elegant and vivid that they could not resist sharing some of their favorite lines.
“E.B. White, of course, sets a high standard for writing style, and in `Stuart Little’ we see the eloquence of writing that follows the rules,” Blakley wrote. “There are few first lines in literature, children or adult, that can compete with `When Mrs. Frederick C. Little’s second son was born, everyone noticed that he was not much bigger than a mouse.'”
Some readers reminded me of “reality” children’s books — non-fiction. My friend Debra Haffner, a Unitarian Universalist minister from New York and the author of “From Diapers to Dating” (Newmarket Press, 2004), loved true stories, especially stories about girls, when she was growing up. “I was always looking for heroines,” she wrote.
And it was wonderfully satisfying to hear from readers who had managed to track down childhood favorites online.
Barbara Goldstein of Northbrook wrote: “One book, and one story in particular, was always stuck in my mind. The story was called `The Poppy Seed Cakes’ and told of Andrewshek and his grandmother’s feather bed. I knew the story was in a book titled “Under The Blue Umbrella.” After an extensive search, she finally found a copy of “Told Under the Blue Umbrella” on eBay — for $1.
“I won’t go into the depth of emotion I felt when I opened the book and discovered not only `The Poppy Seed Cakes’ but all the other stories in the book that I had buried deep in my memory,” she wrote. “What a flood of nostalgia came back to me. My entire childhood was there, laid out in front of me.”
Like Goldstein’s, the best responses told me about books I did not know. Blakley told me there is another book by Norton Juster, author of “The Phantom Tollbooth.” It is called “Alberic the Wise,” and she urged me to get the original edition because it has better illustrations than the reprint. I’ve already ordered it, and can’t wait for it to arrive. No one’s childhood is long enough to read all the great children’s books; it’s a lucky thing that we have the rest of our lives to keep reading them.
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Nell Minow reviews movies for radio stations across the U.S. every week and on movies.yahoo.com/moviemom. You can reach her at moviemom@moviemom.com.
