Children's Books

In general, I don't like a book that makes the characters stupid just because they're in a kids book. It may be a bit high standard, but there's a difference between innocent and a complete idiot as dense as a brick. I'll probably get trashed for this, but that's why I never really liked warriors or Harry Potter. The characters were only smart when the plot wanted them to be, many of the things it tried to teach came off as underhanded and badly done, and in general earning quality by popular vote. They're certainly not badly written, and have their moments, but hardly modern classics.

That annoys me too. Like, it's fine when the characters legitimately wouldn't know something, or the terminology is contrary to what they're used too, but when the characters just can't understand something that isn't that complicated...it's just really annoying.

Today, I remembered one of my favourite picture books as a child: Look-Alikes by Henrik Drescher. You can read it on his website, along with his other works for children, which are on the whole only slightly less insane than his adult illustration work. But that's what drew me to it as a youngling: It is simply such a whimsical little book, often grotesque and occasionally scary but always invitingly so.

It's pretty rare now, unfortunately; had my mom not chanced upon it when I was in utero, I'd likely have never even heard of it.

Thinking about surreal picture books reminds me of a truly WTF one I remember my grandmother having: Pickle Chiffon Pie. THAT was a trip, lemme tell you.

The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame is actually rather good. Miles better than that live action adaptation we got a few years ago with Alan Partridge as one of the stars.

It's a fun little story, but continuity isn't one of it's strengths. Like the Oz books, really.

Recently read Return to the Willows, a fan-made follow-up and thought it was very well done.

Has The Phantom Tollbooth been recommended enough in this thread yet?

Oh yes, it's one of my favorite kids books. It's highly creative and strikes a perfect balanc between kid-friendly fun, good nostalgia for adults, and a ton of references and jokes older readers will love. Second only to The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making by Catherynne M. Valente..

Someone mentioned Bartimaeus and I can't help but just want to hold your hand and Squee. It's been a while since I've seen/heard anyone just mention that lovely series. (Or perhaps you've all mentioned it already?)

I've just finished the Abhorsen series, and I am incredibly pleased by all of them. The endings in general could've been better, I think, but overall I loved reading them.

Luckily, Nix isn't finished quite yet. He's got a somewhat loose sequel and a prequel set to be out this year. And his other books especially the Keys to the Kingdom are well worth a look.

Ooh, I love The Keys to the Kingdom.

I remember reading the Keys to the Kingdom series in middle school. They were good, but really, really weird. I didn't get the chance to read the last two.

Speaking of Garth Nix, I really need to reread the Seventh Tower books sometime. Again, I read them in middle school. I remember liking them, but I hardly remember anything about them.

On a different note, I only ever read the first two Percy Jackson books, and I've been meaning to remedy that. I really did like them. Also, someone I watch on Tumblr keeps drawing fanart for the sequel series, and it's making me curious.

edited 19th Apr '13 5:40:02 PM by SapphireBlue

The sequel series is quite good. Though take a little time with the first as we've still got a year and a half before the series is finished.

Plus the related Red Pyramid trilogy of Egyptian mythology is also quite excellent. I suspect he's working in a Myth Arc of some sort with the mythologies, but that remains to be seen.

ME!

I even like some board books, this Gingerbread Man book has excellent art that contributes greatly to the story, with the little side panels giving glimpses into what else is happening.

I also like Hairy Maclary and Zachary Quack, another board book. No deep plot, but I like the rhythm of the words and sounds.

At a grade school level, I remember loving the Silver Brumby books as a pre-teen. I should go back and reread them. A brumby is a wild-running horse in Australia, and these are anthropomorphized to some extent, without losing all their horsiness. Most of the protagonists are stallions who are chased by humans because they want such a beautiful horse; the silver horses also collect their herds and keep them safe. Not sure how they would hold up to a more adult perspective.

Ah, Hairy Maclairy. My mother read those to me so many times. Their writing is so nice and lyrical.

edited 22nd Apr '13 12:03:27 AM by LoniJay

I thought I was the only one who read The Dragonet Prophecy.

Just reread Charlie and The Chocolate Factory...and I have to say that the plot progression is not only unorganized and silly, but that the book has kinda become outdated. Kids don't care about eating all the chocolate in the world anymore. The illistrations are terrible.

The movie was just better.

Agreed. RD had some great ideas, but his tone often came off as patronizing and somewhat cruel.

@JM Qwilleran

Speaking of Return to the Willows, has anyone here read the "official" follow-up to Wind In The Willows, The Willows In Winter? It's also basically fan fiction, but it's really well done.

edited 16th May '13 5:46:08 PM by lewattoo

I haven't really read children's litterature since middle school, with but one exception: "The Report Card," by the same guy who wrote Frindle. (the guy actually wrote tons of kids' books, but Frindle's the only one well-known enough to have gotten its own page here...)

I'm kind of a slow/unmotivated reader as it is, so typically I never read a novel more than once, even if it's a more mature one. But I tried going against this last year, because of how much this particular story influenced me:

It's about a girl named Nora, who is born a genius at birth. She hides her genius her entire life because, well, people stare at her when she's smart and it makes her uncomfortable 0_e (any introvert can totally relate). So, she intentionally gets sub-perfect grades most of her life.

But as she recounts her life up to the present day (a late-elementary school kid), it's revealed that she's disgusted with the way the education system works. Mainly, it comes down to standardized tests and her best friend, Stephen. Stephen isn't a genius like Nora, but Nora does not consider him dumb in any capacity. However, Stephen becomes convinced that he IS dumb because he does sub-average on one or more of his tests.

From this, Nora decides that the whole educational system is broken, and wants to convince people that grades don't matter - that grades do not equal intelligence. As such, she intentionally gets all D's on her Report Card (with the exception of one "C," which was an accident). This is the main set up for the present story, and it all gets crazier from there.

Compared to all the other books I had read up to then (and all the movies I had seen), I had never seen a character with motivations like that before. I completely sympathized with the character (Andrew Clements is very good at making characters young school kids can understand, plus the aforementioned introvert thing), yet there was something new there that I hadn't seen before, and liked. Wasn't really able to put any of this into words until recent years.

Like I said, I tried reading it again recently, but I kinda gave up after a certain point, where the most anti-climatic character development happens. You see, there are two main plans that Nora makes in the novel: the first one is the plan involving the bad Report Card. A second plan comes up later, involving an effort to get all the other kids to get zeroes on their assignments. The first plan fails, basically, because she gives up (to be fair, though, she gets herself in a sticky situation, and doesn't want to make up another contrived lie like she's usually comfortable with). To make the long story short, giving up on her first plan directly reveals her secret genius, after having kept it hidden her whole life (though one other adult had recently found out, who sympathized with her cause).

This progression of the story made sense; however, what happens later in the book was such a let-down to me (I had forgotten this happened), that I gave up re-reading the book: while at the cusp of her second plan's execution, Nora comes to the realization that her entire philosophy was wrong. And this realization just comes to her on some random day, because she sees other kids acting happy. Beyond this point, I didn't end up re-reading anymore of the book (though I still remember how it plays out from there).

Now, I should be clear here: Nora had good reason to be second-guessing her plan. It was much more radical than her original plan, and (from a rational, adult perspective) would've ended up causing some serious harm. In fact, Nora ultimately wants to call off the plan, but she procrastinates on it (this is justified as well, as she was scared of calling her friend Stephen, which I won't go into detail about). However, it's not the plan's wrongness itself that bugged me: it was Nora's perception of its wrongness. Just suddenly, out of the blue, she changes her mind and no longer believes that grades hurt. This kind of thing does happen in real life, I know for a fact, but as far as the story was concerned, it just seemed totally out of place, and ruined the character for me.

In spite of all that, I feel that there was a lot of potential in this story, and it definitely has an idea that, like Frindle, challenges young minds to think in a new way. In fact, although I did read Frindle as a kid, niether that nor any of the other Clements books had the kind of "whoa, what?" effect which The Report Card had on me. I feel like the story could even be adapted for a slightly more mature audience, in a form which could better develop the (REALLY) intriguing, psychological situation Nora's in.

Given the nature of tropes and such, I'm sure the whole "system is broke" thing has been deconstructed and reconstructed to death by now, but I have yet to have read/seen/played a story quite like this.

edited 22nd Jun '13 1:59:54 AM by Izon

That book sounds very interesting, and that flaw you mentioned sounds like a pretty major one. I read one of that author's books, The Landry News, which my younger brother had. I thought it was a dumb story that was aimed more at parents than kids, bringing up mature subject matter (like freedom of speech) in a way that kids wouldn't understand, and with a classroom full of kids who don't seem to really mind that this one girl is basically turning their workless class into one with actual homework assignments and work. I just thought it was stupid.

I own that one, but it's one of the ones I never got around to reading when I was younger. He always seemed to like to put an interesting concept in the setting of regular elementary school kids, and I guess you kinda just had to go with whatever concept he chose. Even Report Card might've not been for everyone, that's just been my own reaction to it.

edited 22nd Jun '13 7:51:36 PM by Izon

I've always got the feeling he would do a better job with teenage protagonists. It seemed he was stretching what they could do just a little too far.