This past Saturday (11/26) we read from Loren Long’s Otis, a beautiful story about a little red tractor who forms an unlikely friendship with a calf and discovers an unexpected inner courage when his new friend needs his help. After we read Otis, we colored an activity page from Loren Long’s website, which has several print-outs that are engaging and fun to color. Here’s a lineup of the books and activities for the next few story times:

12/3 – We will be reading Dr. Seuss’s classic Green Eggs and Ham and decorating place mats!

12/10 -  In lieu of story time, illustrator Barry Moser will be here signing copies of The Cheshire Cheese Cat at 11:00 am!

12/17 – We will be reading If You Take a Mouse to the Movies and decorating Christmas stockings!

12/24 -  We will be reading The Night Before Christmas and making reindeer food!

We hope to see lots of listeners this week! Come hear a story, participate in a craft and then maybe head downstairs to Broad Street Bakery to grab a bite for lunch!

Barry Moser is a well known illustrator and even better known by those of us who work at Lemuria. A few of my favorite books that he has illustrated are The Blessing of the Beasts by Ethel Pochocki, Ring of Tricksters by Virginia Hamilton, Hogwood Steps Out by Howard Mansfield, and Hummingbird Nest by Kristina O’Connell George.

All this to say, we think Barry is the best. And to top it all off, Barry will be here in the store on Saturday, December 10th at 11:00. Barry’s books, The Cheshire Cheese Cat and Franklin and Winston: A Christmas that Changed the World, are also our Oz First Edition’s Club Picks for December!

As I finished one book and was ready to move on to another, I looked at my bookshelf and this bright pink cover caught my eye. When I was little I remember watching the movie with my grandmother. A wonderful memory but the book is better. Isn’t that always the case?

Many other classics have been republished with an eye catching cover. Take a look at some others.

Think how good this would look in your hands as you read.  It’ll look just as good on your bookshelf. Instant decoration!

See the whole collection here.

If nothing else, I was drawn to this cover. All those books? And the title? The Reading Promise: My Father and the Books We Shared. Perhaps I love the thought because my father and I are on the same path of reading. Generally, we read the same type of books. It is fun to read and pass on or get a recommendation from him.

I read a review of this book somewhere when it first was published in May. I read only a portion of it and knew I had to add it to my list. A few days later I was in need of a read, so I jumped into the lives of Alice Ozma and her father.

Young Alice and her father, a hard working school librarian, both love books. He is a single father who works hard and strives to be both a mother and father in Alice’s life. He succeeds. As a school librarian, his love for books carries over from school straight into his home. He and Alice start out with a promise. A reading promise. They set out to read 100 nights in a row. Once that 100^th night passes, they enjoy it so that they decide to continue on.

It is such a hard question when someone asks you to name your favorite book. I have so many and  often that depends when I read the book. I feel certain that some books I liked at one time tend to have to do with when I read them, how old I was, what mood I was in…the list is endless.

Charlotte’s Web is my all time favorite. My parents read it to me when I was young. I read it in elementary school, in middle school and again in high school. I most recently read it to a class of 3rd graders. If you had seen that class sit and listen so intently, you would might also think there is not a better story.

E.B. White, the author of Charlotte’s Web, grew up amidst animals and stables on a farm. His surroundings in life were much like the scenery so well described in the book. The book jacket of the newly released, The Story of Charlottes’ Web: E.B. White’s Eccentric Life in Nature and the Birth of an American Classic by Michael Sims, states that Mr. White follows the maxim “Write what you know.”  Boy, does he ever? There are numerous readers who have lived on that farm with him.

That being said, books have a certain appeal when they are coming directly from the author’s being and heart. Perhaps that is why Charlotte’s Web is adored by so many. There is a sweet little farm somewhere–where the story unfolded to E.B.White.

The Llama Llama books chronicle a little llama and his relationship with his mama. Little llama is perpetually losing his patience with Mama Llama, whether it be at the store (This one is my personal favorite and involves Llama becoming bored at the Shop-o-rama, and before you know it, he begins to throw things out of the cart in a fit. I mean, haven’t we all been there?) or at bedtime, or when he gets dropped off at school, but all it takes is a quick reprimand from his mama (Please stop all this llama drama and be patient for your mama.) and all is well again. Because, despite all of his drama, Llama really does love his mama. These stories are funny, and even when the little llama is throwing a “tizzy,” he’s still quite lovable.

These fun books are written and illustrated by Anna Dewdney (you can visit her site here), and I’m happy to announce that she will be visiting us here at Lemuria on September 19 at 4pm to sign her new book Llama Llama Home with Mama.  I hope that you’ll join us for a great event!

And now that I’ve kept you in suspense for an entire paragraph, here’s what is in store:

1. Every Thing On It–poems and drawings by Shel Silverstein

Sadly Shel Silverstein passed away in 1999, but lucky for us, some of his work has continued to be published posthumously.  In 2005 a book of poetry titled Runny Rabbit was published and this September Every Thing On It, another new volume of poetry, will be published. Flipping through the small preview copy that we received brings back distinct memories of reading through the copy of Where the Sidewalk Ends that my grandparents kept at their home for me, my brother, and cousins to read whenever we came to visit (and which eventually found its way to a home on my younger brother’s bookshelf).

2. The Bippolo Seed and Other Lost Stories by Dr. Seuss

This collection of seven short stories (accompanied by the sort of illustrations we know and love from the Dr. Seuss collection) were all originally published in magazines between the years of 1948 and 1959 . In his introduction of this collection, Seuss scholar Dr. Charles D. Cohen likens these stories to buried treasure and claims that they “were hiding in places that could be found without a treasure map,” and I, for one, am so grateful to Dr. Cohen for tracking them down.  I read through this collection and am happy to report that they are precisely what we love in the already classic Seuss stories.  I often giggled at Hop on Pop as a child and today The Cat in the Hat is still a popular story-time choice for the little girl I babysit.  Be on the lookout for The Bippolo Seed and Other Lost Stories this September.

3. Bumble-Ardy by Maurice Sendak

In my last blog on children’s classics, I mentioned that Where the Wild Things Are was (and still is so far as my recommendations to customers) one of my favorites.  So I’m quite glad to see that Sendak is still at it with this new book about a little pig and his misfortunes with birthday parties.  This book is full of Sendak’s usual quirky creatures who are up to some sort of mischief.  A fun book with great illustrations, Bumble-Ardy will be for sale this September!

So keep these classic authors’ newest work in your mind this fall when you begin your Christmas shopping because quite frankly, you just can’t give child a better gift than a wonderful book from one of these beloved authors.  And before these books come out, perhaps you can refresh yourself on some of your old favorites from Silverstein, Sendak and Seuss.

It’s different from adult classics, which are often just an accepted part of the Western canon and appear again and again on high school and college reading lists to teach us about certain cultural and historical perspectives.  And that’s not to say that some children’s classics are not also on the academic list for important literary analysis, because they certainly are, but what makes them stay on the shelves just for a child’s enjoyment?

For example, a book that I am always eager to show children and their parents is Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak.  I had a hardcover copy of this book when I was a child and distinctly remember my parents reading it to me quite often.  And though I consider this book a classic, it’s not as if it’s very old.  Maurice Sendak is still alive, and Where the Wild Things Are was first published in 1963.  That’s not so long ago.  Not like, say, Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden which was first published in 1910 and lives in children’s classics along with Sendak’s work.

Philip Pullman’s (author of His Dark Materials) publisher David Fickling (in a 2007 Times article )”says that his definition of a classic is ‘rereadability.’ ‘Plenty of books are enjoyable to read once, but with a classic, the more you reread, the more comes out. It’s the same for all ages; there is that tone, that care with words, that control from the big picture down to individual sentences.’”

And I have to agree with Mr. Fickling on that, but I have to wonder if there’s not more to it than “rereadability.”  What about books that I read and loved as a child that would never be on the Western canon, but that I would certainly buy for my child to read for fun–books like The Baby Sitters Club series, R.L. Stine’s creepy collection of child-appropriate horror stories, and Bunnicula. Everyone in my elementary school enjoyed those books, and no one buys them now.  But who is to say that when my generation starts having children that they won’t come back in style?  I mean, I wouldn’t want my future child to miss out on vampire bunnies! That just wouldn’t be fair.

So what do you think makes a children’s classic?  What kid’s books have staying power with you? Or with your kids?

Just to start the conversation, I will say that some of my favorites are The Witches by Roald Dahl (1983), The Adventures of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll (1865 and 1871 respectively), The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster (1961),  I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith (1949) and The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien (1937).

Drawn and Quarterly described one collection of Morstad’s illustrations as “fairy tales infused with dreamlike innocence and a touch of the macabre.”  I mean, honestly, who wouldn’t want to look at something that warranted that description?

I like to think of illustrated books as  little reminders that sometimes books are beautiful not only for their words and stories, but also for the words and stories that they have the possibility of evoking (like this trés eloquent blog post, perhaps? I kid). So, Julie Morstad, I want to thank you for creating these beautiful images. My hope is that  they inspire everyone who sees them to write dreamlike fairy tales with macabre touches so that you may illustrate more books that I, in turn, can covet and love.

Check out Julie’s website here.

John Chase’s Review:

The book Brain Jack is about a hacker called Sam. One day Sam hacks into Telecomerica’s files and accidentally turns off America’s power for one day. Later he is caught and sent to prison. Sam escapes and is offered a job at CDD or Cyber Defense Division. He accepts and then while stopping hackers, a freak virus destroys the hackers’ computers from the inside.

The team at CDD consists of Dodge, Kiwi, Vienna, and Sam. Later they are beaten by the hackers and Sam thinks it is because the hackers have neuro headsets. So CDD gets neuro headsets, then the virus shocks Dodge to where he is unconscious. The virus is a virtual being that made Kiwi think that Sam hurt Dodge, so Sam, Dodge and Vienna escape to Las Vegas which was nuclear bombed by terrorists. The virtual being is hunting them down by making everyone think Sam, Dodge, and Vienna are terrorists so that the police will hunt them. Once Dodge regains consciousness he builds a virus to destroy the being. Will the Virus work? Read to find out.

I liked the book; it was a good read. The book is easy to understand for someone like me who isn’t that interested in computers. However, there are some parts I had no clue about. It does start at a slow pace but accelerates all the way through the book. Review written by John Chase