One thing I loved about Amy Bloom was that she included, in her college syllabus, "The Cat in the Hat."
You would read and discuss Alice Munro's works, and the sad, weighty fictional universe of Raymond Carver, but then you'd also spend time on Dr. Seuss.
If I could have designed my entire college experience, there would have been a great deal of Dr. Seuss--generally. I hadn't really lived, in significant ways, so vast swaths of Tolstoy and Brecht and Tacitus were lost on me.
The main thing about Dr. Seuss: A good piece of writing is as seamless and authoritative as a dream. It takes the reader from point A to point B. There doesn't have to be a moral. There doesn't have to be a grand statement about history. You just have to feel transported. And so "small," intense stories can sometimes seem more successful than "Uncle Tom's Cabin" or "The Help."
What in the world are you meant to take from "The Cat in the Hat"? The Cat really is obnoxious; it seems to me he is not a hero. The tight-assed Fish has valid points. A story doesn't have to provide any answers; it just has to raise questions. If Dr. Seuss is saying anything here, it seems to be this: "Life? You think you know it, then an insane cat arrives and almost kills you." That's all he is saying.
Bloom's love of children's literature lives on. She recently wrote about George and Martha for the NY Times. And she published her own kids' book, about a quirky Sweet Potato who is exiled from his community and seeks refuge among some misfit Turnips (or something like that). Around the same time, Bloom was contributing to an anthology for young LGBT readers, so ideas about "community" and "invented families" were clearly on her mind.
When teaching, I found that the thing I loved almost as much as chapel was: picture books. I loved how you could create a world with very few words. I loved how the very best picture books matched text to images in surprising ways. For example, in "Wemberly Worried," the OCD-addled mouse protagonist becomes so obsessed with dark thoughts of the first day of school, the colors fade away and the page is swamped with thick, inky question marks. In one of Waber's "Ira" books, Ira and his friend become so absorbed in Ira's father's stamp collection, the stamps seem to come to life; an entire two-page spread is overtaken by little inky red squares, evidence of hyperactive "stamping" activity. (This is delightful. The book really does seem to "engulf the reader.")
In the best writing for children, the story seems to have bubbled up from the writer's subconscious; there's nothing schematic; the writer isn't trying to force-feed you a sermon about "what it all means." Bernard Waber came back from fighting in a war and discovered that he couldn't stop drawing little cartoon crocodiles. And those crocodiles became the basis for "The House on E. 88th St." Something "spoke" within Waber; the story had to spill out.
This morning, I puttered around and thought, and thought, about "Doctor De Soto." It's a bit like "Cat in the Hat." The "moral," such as it is, seems unclear. A generous mouse dentist takes pity on a fox, who wants help with an aching tooth. While under anesthesia, the fox murmurs about his desire to eat the mouse. (The fox is, after all, a fox.) De Soto feels nervous about finishing his procedure, but he's duty-bound; he has the fox return the next day, wraps up his work, then coats the fox's teeth with "a special solution." The solution is billed as "a cure for all aches." But it's not that; it's glue. The mouse is protecting himself. The fox stumbles out, bewildered, in misery, his jaws sealed shut, and that's the end of this troubling tale.
What can you make of this? The mice (De Soto and his spouse) are scrappy, smart children, doing battle with an often-cruel, often-stupid adult world. The mice use their brains and "win" (just as children regularly dig deep and find inner resources for coping with the intolerable meanness and dullness of adult behavior). But it seems weird to applaud the mice. There's something unsettling about the world Steig has given us (just as there's something unsettling about the actual world).
Am I overthinking things? It's just a picture book.
Such are the pleasures and mysteries of being an elementary-school teacher.
P.S. I can't help but notice that Steig's work is--over and over--a celebration of the apparently powerless. In "Brave Irene," it's the child who gets Mom's work done (in a kick-ass fashion). In "Amos and Boris," the mouse saves the whale. In "De Soto," mice defeat a fox (and their victory seems, to me, murkier and more complex than Irene's victory).
P.P.S. It occurred to me that Dr. Seuss and his iconic Cat have something in common. The Cat takes ordinary objects and makes mayhem. The writer takes ordinary, monosyllabic words and--you guessed it--makes mayhem. "Cat," "fish," "mat," "cup," "jump"--These words all play roles that surprise and delight us in "The Cat in the Hat." Anarchy in the living room, anarchy within individual sentences. It still amazes me that Dr. Seuss could craft something so eye-popping with the simplest and most banal bits of language.
You would read and discuss Alice Munro's works, and the sad, weighty fictional universe of Raymond Carver, but then you'd also spend time on Dr. Seuss.
If I could have designed my entire college experience, there would have been a great deal of Dr. Seuss--generally. I hadn't really lived, in significant ways, so vast swaths of Tolstoy and Brecht and Tacitus were lost on me.
The main thing about Dr. Seuss: A good piece of writing is as seamless and authoritative as a dream. It takes the reader from point A to point B. There doesn't have to be a moral. There doesn't have to be a grand statement about history. You just have to feel transported. And so "small," intense stories can sometimes seem more successful than "Uncle Tom's Cabin" or "The Help."
What in the world are you meant to take from "The Cat in the Hat"? The Cat really is obnoxious; it seems to me he is not a hero. The tight-assed Fish has valid points. A story doesn't have to provide any answers; it just has to raise questions. If Dr. Seuss is saying anything here, it seems to be this: "Life? You think you know it, then an insane cat arrives and almost kills you." That's all he is saying.
Bloom's love of children's literature lives on. She recently wrote about George and Martha for the NY Times. And she published her own kids' book, about a quirky Sweet Potato who is exiled from his community and seeks refuge among some misfit Turnips (or something like that). Around the same time, Bloom was contributing to an anthology for young LGBT readers, so ideas about "community" and "invented families" were clearly on her mind.
When teaching, I found that the thing I loved almost as much as chapel was: picture books. I loved how you could create a world with very few words. I loved how the very best picture books matched text to images in surprising ways. For example, in "Wemberly Worried," the OCD-addled mouse protagonist becomes so obsessed with dark thoughts of the first day of school, the colors fade away and the page is swamped with thick, inky question marks. In one of Waber's "Ira" books, Ira and his friend become so absorbed in Ira's father's stamp collection, the stamps seem to come to life; an entire two-page spread is overtaken by little inky red squares, evidence of hyperactive "stamping" activity. (This is delightful. The book really does seem to "engulf the reader.")
In the best writing for children, the story seems to have bubbled up from the writer's subconscious; there's nothing schematic; the writer isn't trying to force-feed you a sermon about "what it all means." Bernard Waber came back from fighting in a war and discovered that he couldn't stop drawing little cartoon crocodiles. And those crocodiles became the basis for "The House on E. 88th St." Something "spoke" within Waber; the story had to spill out.
This morning, I puttered around and thought, and thought, about "Doctor De Soto." It's a bit like "Cat in the Hat." The "moral," such as it is, seems unclear. A generous mouse dentist takes pity on a fox, who wants help with an aching tooth. While under anesthesia, the fox murmurs about his desire to eat the mouse. (The fox is, after all, a fox.) De Soto feels nervous about finishing his procedure, but he's duty-bound; he has the fox return the next day, wraps up his work, then coats the fox's teeth with "a special solution." The solution is billed as "a cure for all aches." But it's not that; it's glue. The mouse is protecting himself. The fox stumbles out, bewildered, in misery, his jaws sealed shut, and that's the end of this troubling tale.
What can you make of this? The mice (De Soto and his spouse) are scrappy, smart children, doing battle with an often-cruel, often-stupid adult world. The mice use their brains and "win" (just as children regularly dig deep and find inner resources for coping with the intolerable meanness and dullness of adult behavior). But it seems weird to applaud the mice. There's something unsettling about the world Steig has given us (just as there's something unsettling about the actual world).
Am I overthinking things? It's just a picture book.
Such are the pleasures and mysteries of being an elementary-school teacher.
P.S. I can't help but notice that Steig's work is--over and over--a celebration of the apparently powerless. In "Brave Irene," it's the child who gets Mom's work done (in a kick-ass fashion). In "Amos and Boris," the mouse saves the whale. In "De Soto," mice defeat a fox (and their victory seems, to me, murkier and more complex than Irene's victory).
P.P.S. It occurred to me that Dr. Seuss and his iconic Cat have something in common. The Cat takes ordinary objects and makes mayhem. The writer takes ordinary, monosyllabic words and--you guessed it--makes mayhem. "Cat," "fish," "mat," "cup," "jump"--These words all play roles that surprise and delight us in "The Cat in the Hat." Anarchy in the living room, anarchy within individual sentences. It still amazes me that Dr. Seuss could craft something so eye-popping with the simplest and most banal bits of language.
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