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Kate Seredy

Nov10

Kate Seredy (SHER edy) was born November 10, 1899 in Budapest, Hungary. She came to the United States in 1922. She was the owner of a children’s bookstore at first, and then she began to illustrate children’s books and textbooks. An editor at Viking Press suggested she write a book about her childhood, and in 1935 she published The Good Master. Its sequel, The Singing Tree, was published in 1940. Both books are about children growing up in Hungary during World War I. Seredy won the Newbery Medal in 1938 for her book The White Stag ( a sort of mythological story about the Magyars and the Huns), but I enjoyed the two books about Jansci and Kate surviving war times more. I found this quote at one of the quotation websites:

I make money using my brains and lose money listening to my heart. But in the long run my books balance pretty well.

Rugby

Oct20

Thomas Hughes, author of Tom Brown’s Schooldays, was born on this date in 1822. In addition to writing the definitive fictional treatment of the boys’ public school experience in Victorian England, he also, according to information on this website, started a Utopian community in the mountains of Tennessee called Rugby, named after Dr. Thomas Arnold’s school for boys that is the subject of Tom Brown’s Schooldays.

It was to be a cooperative, class-free, agricultural community for younger sons of English gentry and others wishing to start life anew in America. At its peak, some 350 people lived in the colony. More than 70 buildings of Victorian design graced the East Tennessee townscape.

Thomas Hughes

I am quite interested in intentional comunities, even those of the nineteenth century which rarely seemed to last as established communities. In fact, we were discussing these types of communities and the religious groups that started them in our American Literature discussion group today as we discussed Emerson, Thoreau, and the Transcendentalists. See this post for more on intentional communities. I would like to do a study of Utopian and planned communities and what causes them to fail or succeed or perhaps become manipulative cults.

Drummer Hoff Fired It Off

Oct19

Ed Emberly, children’s book illustrator, was born on this date in Massachusetts in 1931. He’s probably best known for his Caldecott Award winning book, Drummer Hoff. However, some of his most popular books around this house are his drawing books: Ed Emberley’s Drawing Book of Animals(1969), Ed Emberley’s Drawing Book: Make a World (1972), and Ed Emberley’s Great Thumbprint Drawing Book (1977). Karate Kid loves to sit down with a drawing book and produce a masterpiece.

Carol Kendall and Else Holmelund Minarik

Sep13

The Gammage Cup was published in 1959. The story of five non-conformist Minnipins who become unlikely heroes probably hit a nerve in the non-conformist sixties, but it’s still a great story. The Periods, stodgy old conservatives with names such as Etc. and Geo., are wonderful parodies of those who are still caught up in the forms and have forgotten the meanings. And Muggles, Mingy, Gummy, Walter the Earl, and Curley Green, the Minnipins who don’t quite fit in and who paint their doors colors other than green, are wonderful examples of those pesky artistic/scientific types who live just outside the rules of polite society. One of them, Muggles I think, isn’t consciously a nonconformist nor an artist; she just gets caught up in the adventures of the others and finds out that she, too, has her own desires and dreams and talents. I loved The Gammage Cup by Carol Kendall (b. September 13, 1917) when I was a child, and I still remember images and ideas from it. For instance, I’ve always had a desire to paint my front door red or orange or yellow. And I sort of like being different–sometimes just for the sake of difference.
Today is also the birthday of Else Holmelund Minarik, author of the Little Bear stories for beginning readers. What is your favorite Little Bear story? I really like A Kiss for Little Bear in which Little Bear’s grandmother gets some friends to deliver a kiss to Little Bear. The kiss unfortunately gets “all mixed-up” when a pair of lovestruck skunks keeps exchanging the kiss instead of delivering it, but everything turns out all right in the end. I also like the quote from Little Bear’s grandfather when Little Bear suggests that Grandfather might be tired and need a rest. “Me–tired? How can you make me tired? I’m never tired,” says Grandfather, just before he falls asleep in his lawn chair. Then, there’s the story of how Little Bear visits the moon and comes back in time for supper. Oh, yes, and I love Little Bear’s Friend about Little Bear’s friendship with Emily. Little Bear is about as fun and as profound as Frog and Toad. Who ever said that children’s books were boring or unchallenging? They have to be better than adult books so that we can enjoy reading them over and over again until they’re memorized.

Tasha Tudor

Aug28

Last but not least, author and illustrator Tasha Tudor celebrates her birthday today. She is 89 years old. Go here for an article on Tasha Tudor that originally appeared in Practical Homeschooling, Mary Pride’s magazine. According to her family website, Tasha Tudor is still in excellent health: “She continues to lead an independent and active life which encompasses copious artwork, gardening and greenhouse care, pets, family and friends.” If you’re not familiar with Tasha Tudor’s illustrations, all her children wear what my children choose to call “homeschool clothes,” old-fashioned clothing from the 1800’s. (We don’t really know any homeschoolers who wear these kinds of dresses, but we do know some who would like to if they could find them readily available.) Anyway, Tasha Tudor is a wonderful writer and illustrator, and she’s created a life that sounds as if it came out of storybook. She lives on a farm in rural Vermont. To read more about Tasha Tudor’s life and work, read The Private World of Tasha Tudor by Richard Brown. My favorite book by Tasha herself is A Time to Keep: The Tasha Tudor Book of Holidays.

Allen Say

Aug28

Say is a Japanese-American author who was also born on this date. He was born in Yokohama, Japan and came to the U.S. just after WWII with his father. His father enrolled him in a military school in California, and Say hated the school and the United States. He was expelled from military school after a year enabling him to explore California on his own. He began to write and illustrate children’s books while doing advertising photography for a living. His book The Bicycle Man is set in Japan immediately after World War II. In the story, two American soldiers visit a Japanese schoolyard and show the children tricks on a bicycle. Maybe this book would be a good one to distribute among American servicemen in Iraq. Then again, maybe the situations are not that analogous. The Iraquis seem to be more dangerous. Could two American servicemen visit an Iraqui school without guns (the book specifically says, “They had no guns.”) and hope to be welcomed? Would they even be allowed to do so by the U.S. and Iraqi authorities? I don’t know.
Say also won a Caldecott Award for his book Grandfather’s Journey about his own grandfather’s coming to the United States.

Phyllis Krasilovsky

Aug28

Krasilovsky is the author of several children’s picture books, but I am only familiar with our all-time favorite, The Man Who Didn’t Wash His Dishes. Read this one for a humorous answer to the kid question: “But why do we have to wash the dishes?” These titles by the same author sound interesting also.

The Man Who Cooked for Himself: “A man who lives at the edge of the woods discovers that he need not rely on the store for a supply of good things to eat.”
The Man Who Tried to Save Time: “A man drastically reorganizes his daily routines to save time, only to come to a startling realization.”
The Woman Who Saved Things: “A woman who prides herself on her extensive junk collection finds that there is no room in her home for her grandchildren to sleep.”
The Man Who Was Too Lazy to Fix Things: ‘A lazy man takes shortcuts when repairing his aging house. He pastes a broken plate back together with flour and water, wraps band-aids around a chair rung, pounds a nail with his shoe, and spreads chewing gum over a crack in the sidewalk.”
It sounds as if Krasilovsky likes to write about the pitfalls of housekeeping in a humorous vein. SInce I live the pitfalls of housekeeping in a humorous vein, I might have to get some of her other books.

He was so very, very tired after carrying everything back and putting it away that he decided that from then on he would always wash his dishes just as soon as he had finished his supper. —The Man Who Didn’t Wash His Dishes

Roger Duvoisin

Aug28

I have a plethora of authors with birthdays today to present for your reading pleasure. First, we have Roger Antoine Duvoisin, born in 1904 in Geneva, Switzerland. He attended art and music schools in Switzerland and France and eventually emigrated to the United States. Duvoisin wrote and illustrated over forty books for children, and he illustrated more than 140. He won the Caldecott Medal for his illustrations in White Snow, Bright Snow by Alvin Tresselt. Roger Duvoisin created at least two delightful characters that I know of: Petunia the silly goose and Veronica the conspicuous hippopotamus. When she travels to the city, Veronica is “gloriously conspicuous.” However, after getting way too much attention from everyone including the police, “Veronica . . .was tired of being conspicuous. One can be too conspicuous.” Conspicuous is such a fun word to introduce to little children.

Sin Leads to More Sin; Movies Lead to Catharsis?

Aug13

Alfred Hitchcock: “”Seeing a murder on television can help work off one’s antagonisms. And if you haven’t any antagonisms, the commercials will give you some.”

Today is also the anniversary of the birth of Alfred Joseph Hitchcock (b.1899, d.1980). I have seven Hitchcock films on my 102 Best Movies list: The Man Who Knew Too Much, North By Northwest, Notorious, Rear WIndow, Rebecca, To Catch a Thief, and Vertigo.

(Semicolon’s 107 Best Movies)

So Hitchcock is my favorite director. He made scary movies that were not (usually) gory nor full of gratuitous violence. I don’t include Psycho or The Birds on my list because I watched them both ages ago and they scared the bejabbers out of me. I don’t know if that’s good or bad, but I do know that I plan never to see either one of them again. As for the others that did make the list, they are full of suspense, plot twists and engaging characters. I would have preferred that Hitchcock had cast someone besides Kim Novak in Vertigo, but as compensation, Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart are about my favorite leading men.

Hitchcock, again, with the last word: “‘Once a man commits himself to murder, he will soon find himself stealing. The next step will be alcoholism, disrespect for the Sabbath and from there on it will lead to rude behaviour. As soon as you set the first steps on the path to destruction you will never know where you will end. Lots of people owe their downfall to a murder they once committed and weren’t too pleased with at the time ‘”

Children’s literature is for everyone

Aug5

Today is the day for birthdays of authors of “children’s literature.” However, I am in agreement with C.S. Lewis who once said the “it certainly is my opinion that a book worth reading only in childhood is not worth reading even then.” I also think there’s something to be said for adults who still have enough “childlikeness” to enjoy good children’s literature. So, these authors who have birthdays today are all three worth reading and enjoying–even for grownups.
Robert Bright wrote My Red Umbrella, the story of a little girl with an umbrella that expands to protect all her animal friends from the rain. Shouldn’t we all have just such an umbrella?
Maud Petersham (b. 1890, d.1971), along with her husband Miska, wrote and illustrated more than sixty books for children and illustrated more than one hundred books written by other authors. The Petersham book I like best is called The Box with Red Wheels.. I would love to own some of the Petershams’ other books, many of which are out of print. Maud was the daughter of a Baptist minister, and she and her Hungarian husband wrote and illustrated many retellings of Bible stories. Go here for more information about the Petershams.
Ruth Sawyer (b. 1880, d. 1970) was a storyteller, folklorist, and children’s author. I need to re-read Roller Skates, the book for which she won the Newbery Award. It’s the story of a girl who explores New York City, or maybe her section of NYC, on roller skates. I found out when I looked for information about Sawyer that she started the first storytelling program for children at the New York City Public Library. Also, Robert McCloskey, author of Make Way for Ducklings and Blueberries for Sal, was Ruth Sawyer’s son-in-law! And my favorite Ruth Sawyer book is Journey Cake, Ho! was illustrated by Robert McCloskey.
By the way, all the books mentioned in this post (except for Roller Skates which isn’t a picture book) are recommended in my self-published book, Picture Book Preschool. See these posts for more information on my book or my favorite picture books.