Children's Books

I sometimes flick through my old Horrible Histories books if the mood takes me.

Horrible Science was a better series. At least in the mid-'90s; Histories seems to have gotten better quality since. The clips I've seen of the show aren't bad, either.

I remember those books! Those were in like every Scholastic Book Club form they handed out in school!

Oh man, I loved those. They were printed on such flimsy paper, but I treasured them and poured over them! I didn't get to buy from them all that often, sadly, due to them never coming out when I had money, but I loved them all the same. And I did buy a few things! Once or twice. But in terms of schools and book buying, it was in the book fairs that I really got to spend gung-ho-like.

I bought my copy of the original Artemis Fowl at a school book fair. Meeeemories...

EDIT: OMG THEY DO! You can even look at the flyers online... though it's just not the same without the tissue paper.

edited 30th Jan '12 7:38:15 PM by FreezairForALimitedTime

Another one that I liked was The Knowledge, which was a similar series which didn't have a singular focus. My favourite was called Mind-Blowing Music.

I am totally digging Catherynne Valente's The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of her Own Making. With lovely illustrations to boot! Grown-up books do not have NEARLY enough good pictures in them.

I read C.S. Lewis' entire Narnia thingy the first time long after I started shaving. I still love them even though I don't like the man's religious beliefs. I read Harry Potter, of course, and tried to read Darren Shan's stuff but gave up halfway through the first book he wrote. Couldn't get into them.

: I know they say you shouldn't judge a book by it's cover, but can we all agree that that is a brilliant title?

Speaking of such, I'd like to give Peculiar Children a read sometime...

Clicketykeys, just the other day I started Valente's In The Cities of Coin and Spice, and I'm tearing through that book like it's due tomorrow. It's a very good book, but definitely not for kids — though, amusingly, the back of the book actually advertises "Where the Grown-Up Wonders Never End," as if to say loudly "This is Fantasy, but Not For Kids!!! Really!"

edited 3rd Feb '12 12:08:17 AM by vifetoile

read Alice In Wonderland
i know why its a classic

So my quest to read every Diana Wynne Jones book continues with The Magicians Of Caprona. Thus far, probably my least favorite of the Chrestomanci books. It's not bad, it's just not as good as the other books. Witch Week was great, and featured that distinct "Jonesian humor" in spades. Charmed Life has a great villain and is quite fun, too. I just loved the way "The Lives of Christopher Chant" played out, too. But this one so far has just kinda been... LIKE ROMEO AND JULIET! BUT FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF A KID! WITH MAGIC! Which is a shame, really, because I am always up for fictional depictions of Italy.

Ah well. It's still a pretty good read, just a wee bit disappointing.

I liked the bit where the R&J couple weren't the main characters, though. Nearly every story around Feuding Families tends to focus on the couple that invariably fall in love.

Just a brief aside: Has anyone here ever read Paul Bowles' short-short story "Kitty"? It was written to be published as a children's book, but unfortunately was turned down by the publisher for being too... depressing to parents, to be perfectly honest, though I can imagine kids appreciating it even if they might not entirely understand the sadness behind it.

This is true. Still, I think Feuding Families invariably remind me of R&J, and that's... not my favorite story in the world.

I did like the magical fight scene in the streets, though. That was pretty cool.

What I didn't like about the story of Romeo and Juliet was how relentlessly it hammered home the point that Poor Communication Kills, (though not knowing the name of the trope at the time I first encountered it meant I called it something different).

I got the point the first time, Mr Shakespeare. No point continually banging away at it. That all that stuff was happening to fourteen/fifteen year olds was also rather iffy...

I thought their Fatal Flaw was rashness. As in, if they didn't get married the day after they met, it might have ended better.

Of course, that point was still hammered home relentlessly, too. If R&J weren't so damn stupid, I might've liked that play a bit better. I think tragedy needs an element of sympathy to it that those two just lack.

...Err, but off-topic.

Wait, you mean Romeo and Juliet isn't a children's book? I feel so embarrassed...

edited 18th Feb '12 10:31:20 AM by asterism

Well it is a children's book as such if you get it rammed down your neck at school, along with much else of Willie's canon, including another play I despise and will not mention the name of. I watched Franco Zefeirelli's film adaptation of R and J and I seriously remember my head rotating in sheer shock at what was being shown on telly in the classroom. I wasn't alone in that either. On the other hand, as an adult, I loved Baz Luhrmann's version with De Caprio and Claire Danes. Go figure.

I remember doing Much Ado About Nothing when I was in school. All the sex jokes just go flying right over your head. It's actually quite fun to read it again later just to go 'Oh, I get it now!'.

My English teacher, actually the only male one of that sort I had in high school was a bit of an arse as far as I was concerned. He preferred the only play of Shakespeare that I would pay to see all copies of burned and their ashes scattered in the Clyde, to any of the fun stuff that he wrote. I would even rather watch Henry V than that and I am Scottish. And that includes both the Olivier and Branagh versions, which every kid should see at least once back-to-back and read the accompanying book versions.

Which play would that be?

My favorite book when I was a kid (and my favorite kids' book now) was (is) a collection of Daniil Charms' stories. He was a Russian writer who died in a madhouse thanks to the commies. It was beautifully illustrated by Gerda Dendooven and those stories were funny as hell. I reread them on occasion. One is about a gargantuan Dumb Muscle kid who goes to Japan to learn jiu-jitsu and receives a damn good trashing by the local martial arts master... They're all very surreal and fast-paced.

edited 19th Feb '12 1:02:39 PM by Fresison

I had a Shakespeare professor in college. I hated 90% of his guts. The 10% I didn't hate was his thoughts on why it's stupid to teach Romeo and Juliet in middle school. "Yes. At the age when people are adolescent, sensitive, and hormonal, we should have them read a play about two idiots whose response to their adolescent hormonal sensitivity is to kill themselves."

To sort of round the subject back, though, I saw a book once that offered condensed versions of the Shakespeare plays for reading to and teaching younger children. While I can see how it would work with some of the plays (like As You Like It and A Midsummer Night's Dream), I can't imagine how it would translate things like Othello. Kinda wish I'd looked more closely at it, because thinking about it now, I'm curious.

Othello For Kids sounds like an interesting concept.

I remember my school doing a version of Dream when we were about 11. It was... decent, considering most of the cast couldn't act.

I could see Macbeth being turned into a children's story pretty easily. It already has a lot of fairy tale elements to it.