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Joshua's Library

 I have kids' books on the brain....and I may have a few suggestions.....so, herewith, an update on Joshua's library:


*There's a wonderful essay about James Marshall's technique at the back of "The Collected George and Martha." The writer discusses Marshall's way of subtracting, subtracting, subtracting, so that the reader is required to make inferences and guesses. Marshall became *more* adept at subtracting (and the text became sparer) as he went along. 


The writer also discusses Marshall's gift for surprise; the best of the stories don't seem schematic, in any way. For example, in "The French Lesson," it's genuinely bracing (to me, at least) when Martha says, "I knew you were going to do that." And, in another story, when snakes pop up out a cake box, I'm actually caught off guard. (And don't get me started on the twists in "The Misunderstanding" ....) It's said that Marshall was an heir of Tomi Ungerer's--and I see that same twisty-ness and understatement in Ungerer's work. Who can anticipate the arrival of the mer-pig, in "The Mellops Go Diving for Treasure"--? And what do we make of the quiet, haunting, spare ending to "Rufus the Bat"? I could read these books again and again with Joshua.


*Another favorite of mine is Jerry Pinkney. Pinkney isn't really a writer, but, still, he absorbs the stories he adapts, so you feel he is using his voice even when he isn't. My husband and I are a bit obsessed with "The Three Little Kittens" -- an old rhyme, but also an occasion for Pinkney to seduce you with bizarrely realistic, detailed kittens, going crazy with soap bubbles and spilling shiny jam all over their mittens. You look at the mittens and think: This guy Jerry Pinkney spends hours and hours contemplating how light hits a piece of wool at a certain time of year. That's extraordinary.


*Finally, we in this house are happy to return to "Locomotive," by Brian Floca (mainly for the pictures). It's especially therapeutic to see a steam train charging through the West when we're all so homebound and Covid-controlled. I also think--one day--Josh will be interested to learn that you couldn't poop if your steam train was stopped in a station (bad manners). The toilet was just a hole in the floor, so if you left your poop at a stop, you forced your friends and colleagues to smell, and smell, your waste--possibly for several hours. Who can pass up a picture book with a scenario like that?


My two cents....

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