From a NYT book review, "A New Manifesto for Children’s Literature/In his chatty, compulsively readable first book for adults, Mac Barnett champions his career choice and urges our culture to hold kids in higher esteem."
The reviewer is Gregory Maguire, who wrote "Wicked" (as well as many children's books).
The famous double-page spread:
ADDED: The word "eucatastrophe" was coined by J. R. R. Tolkien in 1944. He wrote, in a letter: "For it I coined the word ‘eucatastrophe’: the sudden happy turn in a story which pierces you with a joy that brings tears.
He used his own word again in 1947 to say: "The Birth of Christ is the eucatastrophe of Man's history. The Resurrection is the eucatastrophe of the story of the Incarnation."
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It has recently come to my attention that there is a book out there published in January 2025 called The Way of Play and the internet informs me that it "offers seven strategies to help parents join in their children’s play in ways that build creativity, resilience, and emotional intelligence."
I'll just assume the book has a website where you can take quizzes to make sure you're doing it right.
"Eucatastrophe", my vocabulary just expanded.
I've been going to the public library to load up on books for the grandkids, who get read to every day at bedtime, and sometimes during the day.
My granddaughter is using her dad's phonics book and is sounding out words, reading them, not yet 4. But I gotta say, and children's book author talking about manifestos..... that's a flag to me.
I've looked through dozens of kids books and some of them are, shall we say, a little twisted. Review your choices at the public library carefully, is all I would say. Read them critically to yourself first, before checking out.
The Dadists never got anything quite right. Is there an allergy medicine for good metaphors?
I used to read two or three books. Short ones of course with lots of pictures every night that I was home to the kids before they went to sleep. We had our kids young. We didn't have a lot of money so we bought used books from the '50s and early '60s that were cheap and plentiful and had fallen out of favor with the older boomers who are having their kids later in life.
Of course they wanted to hear the same books over and over again until they memorized each story. Then I would turn the tables on them and start making up funny anecdotes and sometimes violent endings to cute furry animals like getting run over by a truck and then picked up by a poor family who fixed it for dinner.
This would cause them to erupt in loud protestations. That's not what it says. I did this just to humor myself reading these stupidly boring books over and over again to these innocent gullible little children. I didn't realize at the time but it was a very successful strategy to make sure that your kids listen to what you say and have a highly tuned. B******* detector and at the same time you willing to accept that life is often a violent muddy catastrophic place.
The old school books are the best, Aggie. Not only are the stories better. Apolitical and very entertaining for the kids, the illustrations are usually quite fantastic. I don't know exactly when it happened, but the Dr. Seuss books used to be really good and then they transitioned more into making political statements.
Books like Five O'clock Charlie and Make Way for Ducklings some of the finer examples of the classic era of children's books
“Anyone who has ever held a child on a lap at bedtime while reading…”
“A lap”?
For as long as I can remember, I’ve grown accustomed to hearing it stated as “anyone who has held a child on their lap.”
Perhaps one of the early examples of the plural, genderless pronoun “their” applied to the singular possessive?
Mike Mulligan and his steam shovel.
Perhaps, Wince, referring to "a lap" instead of "my lap" provides people with plausible deniability that they are a Joe Biden hair sniffer.
Goodnight nobody/Goodnight mush.
"You come to Althouse thinking like lawyers, and you leave with skulls full of mush."
"Eucatastrophe" this is supposedly pronounced Yoo-tah-kay-strophic. I was thinking what happy turn in a story brought me to tears...hmm....no, cant think of anything. Usually when i cried over movies/books as a teenager/kid it was usually over someone's death. Old yeller dies. They read John Wayne's letter in Sands of Iwo Jima. Etc.
With our daughter we tried to read her adult books as much as possible. I think YA books suck. And neither of us thought she should be doing much reading at 5 or 6.
@Howard, yes I mostly agree that the old books have some of the best stories: Dr. Seuss, Mike Mulligan, A Day in Fairy Land, Make Way for Ducklings, so on. I still have my childhood books and we use those, too.
But there are some modern kid's books that are quite good stories, good morality examples, good challenges to kids. At their present age, the kids are mostly liking the sound of their parent's / grandparent's voices in a comforting way, a nightly ritual that helps them wind down and prepare for sleep.
I've read this book a couple hundred times and both my daughters thought "good night nobody" was funny. They seem well adjusted.
I don't know exactly when it happened, but the Dr. Seuss books used to be really good and then they transitioned more into making political statements.
Agreed. When my kids were little, The Rainbow Fish was the big award-winning children's book of the hour. It is basically a socialism guidebook.
Wasn't there a discussion of 'catastrophic success' here a few months ago?
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