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Keith Gessen has a new parenting memoir--"Raising Raffi"--and of course I went right to the section on kids' books.


Gessen writes beautifully about Russell Hoban, who is maybe the greatest of the greats. Gessen admires Hoban for maintaining creative juice all through the Frances series: The concluding book, "Bargain for Frances," seems just as strong as the first entry, "Bedtime for Frances." Gessen admires Frances's crafty and patient parents, who endure Frances's hunger strike and "runaway phase," and who never seem to break a sweat. Gessen also admires Hoban's "lapidary style, somewhere between poetry and prose":

The little hand is at 7.
It is seven o'clock.
It is bedtime for Frances....

I really like Gessen's observations about Eric Carle. Carle spent part of his youth in America, but his German emigre parents were feeling homesick. The parents took Carle on a trip to Germany--then everyone was swept up in World War II. Carle was made to dig trenches on the western front. Carle's father was taken prisoner by the Soviets, and he was forced to do hard labor after the war "as a form of reparations."

All this explains Carle's "tin ear" for English, and also Carle's resolute refusal to discuss war in his books. (By contrast, Maurice Sendak *does* include allusions to World War II.)

Carle admired Matisse--and, on that note, I'm posting a ravishing hippo image and caterpillar image, next to some famous fish, herewith.....

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