(Available: 25 January 2000, http://slj.com/articles/articles/P7068.asp
I didn't know about patronyms when I first read Pippi at a suitably impressionable age. One of her names being Ephraim's Daughter sounded a lot weirder to me than another of her names being Windowshade (if I remember right; sadly, I don't own this).
One of the first early readers I remember. One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish might have been the first book I read all by myself, and Green Eggs and Ham the first book with a plot, but Seuss or not, Frog and Toad Are Friends is clear in my memory. Actually it's not. I confuse it with Morris and Boris, another book about two friends who're different.
What am I missing about Lois Lowry? She gets two? She gets two and Betty McDonald's Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle isn't on the list? I never read her Anastasia books. I read A Summer to Die and was suitably depressed. I read The Giver and didn't get why it earned a Newbery. I seem to be the only person who doesn't get it, though. I thought Number the Stars was great, anyway.
Now, here's an author who deserves two separate titles. (I can't judge whether Virginia Hamilton does because I haven't read her.)
Surprisingly, startling perfect. Madame Bovary is called by many the world's most perfect novel. This is the most perfect children's book. All of McLachlan's books that I've read are excellent, and I think so despite that my taste tends toward books for somewhat older readers.
Goofy and fun.
I've heard of this but not read it.
And if Sarah, Plain and Tall is the perfect book for independent readers, Make Way for Ducklings might be the perfect one for listeners. As far as I know the Corner Book Shop on Charles Street still has a window display honoring this book (in whose pages it was illustrated), and the statues of Mrs. Mallard and her ducklings stand in the real Public Gardens just where they do in the book.
Of poetry I remain ignorant as the driven snow.
A fantasy book with a strong, dragon-slaying girl protagonist. Meg of Wrinkle might be brave and loving, but a dragon-slayer she is not. And Lucy always follows Aslan's and Peter's leads. And Sparrowhawk is a boy. Robin McKinley, therefore, is critical.
Another I've not heard of and shall have to track down.
I thought I had read this, but when I read it in March 2000, it was my first time. I'm sure its anti-war stance was appropriate in 1962, when it was published and we were all going to blow ourselves up because of missiles in Cuba. It's set in 1996, which is odd. I don't think of that as a common device in books until the '70s at least.
No T-I-double guh-E-R here, just real--like the Velveteen Rabbit, and where is that on this list?--animals and real, wonderful adventures, and playful language.
Another Christmas present this year, for the family to grow on.
As a child I thought either it was girlie or a take-off on the Little House books, or both; at any rate I didn't read Anne of Green Gables until I was grown and never did read the whole series. I heard someone dies whom everyone wants to live, so maybe it's best that I don't.
I hadn't heard of this before I read the list.
I so wanted to be this girl. My own dog, my own boat, my own fort. I always knew it was based on a real person, but I only gradually realized that her first dog died because she'd been alone for 17 years. That didn't detract from its appeal for me.
Aha, I think this was another of Elizabeth's recommendations. More kids with a fort in the woods. I loved Leslie. I wanted to be Leslie. And to marry Jesse, eventually.
SLJ says "Paulsen's skill in gripping even reluctant readers is nowhere more evident..." and I think that's why, besides the title, I didn't read this. If it looked like one of those books, those high-interest-low-skill books, I woudn't've touched it.
Another recommendation from my second children's librarian. I think I read
this one out of loyalty to her. I don't remember it and should give it another
go.
March 2000: I didn't remember it because I hadn't read it. What an oversight.
It's great.
More machines. Wheee.
Can you imagine someone trying today to publish a picture book geared toward this age level but with Potter's vocabulary?
Never heard of it. Said in tones like Mr. Beebe in "A Room with a View" closing a book titled The Way of All Flesh with a demure shudder and a "never heard of it."
The coworker whom I showed this list had never heard of The Westing Game. This was the one book of the more than half she didn't know that I insisted she go find Right Now.
My buddy George. My favorite was when he offered to deliver all the newspapers and ended up making boats out of all of them. I liked it because of all the bunnies.
Published in 1998, this is arguably too late a book to be heavily influential in the 20th century, but whoever argued that would be wrong. Enthusiasm for Rowling has reignited reading as a pastime for U.S. children, and that is a huge, influential change to have wrought.
I don't know this one but I like his The True Story of The Three Little Pigs
These two, along with Goodnight Moon which is inconveniently elsewhere in alphabetical order, are the sine qua non of children's literature.
We'll miss you, Uncle Shel.
?
This is the one my coworker and I had never heard of that made us think some books might have been chosen for their p.c.ness than for their merit or influence.
?
You know why this one is banned? Because the police officers who look for Sylvester are portrayed as pigs. (Sylvester is a donkey.) Only grown-ups care about that.
Another for me to find.
I love all her stuff.
This was the only Newbery medallist that didn't circulate much in my hometown library, because on the cover is the main character, who is black. This book scared the pants off me--is this true? is it still true? did this really happen? Unfortunately, Taylor is not able to juggle all the balls she picks up in its sequel, Let the Circle Be Unbroken, but Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry is one of the best, and accessible to anyone. (If it was accessible to me, who was if anything more ignorant than the protagonist of Iggy's House, it should be accessible to anyone.)
I don't understand why this (and Watership Down) are considered children's books. Maybe the kids who had vocabulary from Beatrix Potter when they were four could handle reading The Hobbit independently at eight, but I think twelve is the earliest reasonable age.
SLJ points out the racism in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and the Little House books, and it certainly exists in both, implied or cultural or blatant. But in this, it's embraced, and SLJ says nothing. Perhaps because the worst chapters are expunged in contemporary editions? In A First-Rate Tragedy, about Robert Falcon Scott's attempt for the South Pole that failed in two ways (he got there second and he died on the way back), the author investigates how Scott didn't plan as effectly as the Norwegian, Amundsen, who made it first, and wouldn't incorporate the Scandinavian's ideas. She quotes one man as saying he hated all foreigners because they weren't British. Rum sodomy and the lash will do that to a group of lads. Anyway, it's obvious that in 1934 all that xenophobia was still going strong. Mary Poppins takes Jane and Michael north south east and west, where they meet dull Eskimos, bovine Africans of a peculiarly U.S. minstrel sort, sly Asians, and lazy U.S. Indians. Then the three return to the center of the world, England, land of Greenwich Mean Time upon which all else is based. Racist as Dr. Dolittle, Willie Wonka, and Laura Ingalls Wilder might have been, they read to me now as more ignorant than hateful. Travers reads as hateful.
The best thing to happen to picture books since Maurice Sendak.
I love Cynthia Voigt. I love and adore Cynthia Voigt. Dicey, Gram, and Jackaroo are high on my list of women to emulate.
She came around too late for Max's first word to be mine.
I might never have read this. Charlotte dies. Louis in The Trumpet of the Swan doesn't die. Stuart in Stuart Little doesn't die. I like it when the animals don't die.
I know Laura Ingalls Wilder as well as I know Jane Austen. That is, I know her pretty damn well. I love her.
Seven, not three? I'll have to find it.
This caught my eye in the Co-op when it was new. A good version.
One of the few true YA books on this list (The Outsiders, of course, defines YA). I remember it as extremely depressing.
I'm sure I read this, but I remember Mr. Rabbit's Lovely Present better.
The only unforgivable omission is Crockett Johnson's Harold and the Purple Crayon. That's a serious flaw. Lois Lowry but not Crockett Johnson? I laugh, I snort, I go ha ha ha (and sound like Herbie the Dentist's elf supervisor when I do). Give me a solid purple line and some footie pajamas and that's all I need. In fact that's a so grievous an omission that I, in my omnipotence, do hereby strike Lois Lowry's Anastasia Krupnik and insert my boy Harold.
And what about E. Nesbit, without whom few magic books could exist, whom Edward Eager credits entirely?
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