Antho returns!
Like you were on the edge of your seat...
But for any interested parties-- here are my picks for five quality kids books. In my quest to re-discover the good stuff, I've found out that my tastes in this area have hardly changed, which is kind of refreshing. I've also found out that limiting the list to five makes for a tough task-- I could've gone for twenty. Anyway, there's a good chance that each one of these titles would have been included on my list eight years ago, they are all... so... awesome.
As always-- I'm eager to hear what your picks might be. But I'm not on the edge of my seat.
FIVE CHILDRENS BOOKS
1. Call It Courage, by Armstrong Sperry, 1940
I would have killed for a name like Mafatu. In this book, the nervous 15-year old island kid builds his own raft and sails across the South Pacific, with his dog and a friendly albatross. After beaching on a remote island, he makes camp, lives off the land, staves off cannibals, and finally decides to return home.
2. The Butter Battle Book, by Dr. Seuss, 1984
One of the first books I can remember. The Yooks and the Zooks prepare to duke it out over which side of the bread is the right one to be buttered. An arms race ensues-- complete with "Triple-Sling Jiggers" and "Eight-Nozzled Elephant-Toted Boom Blitzers." What I didn't realize at the time was that Suess' story was also a parable for the Cold War.
3. The Adventures of Tintin, by Hergé, 1929 - 1983
I haven't read them all-- but among my favorites are "The Black Island" and "Explorers on the Moon." Hergé's cartoons are fantastic, and Tintin's adventures were always a blast to read / listen to. It would've been even more of a blast to read them as they were being released-- when things like rockets to the moon and the land of the Soviets were present realities.
4. My Side of the Mountain, by Jean Craighead George, 1959
"I am on my mountain in a tree home that people have passed without ever knowing I am here. The house is a hemlock tree six feet in diameter, and must be as old as the mountain itself. I came upon it last summer and dug and burned it out until I made a snug cave in the tree that I now call home." You cannot get anymore hard-core than Sam Gribley, a boy who ran away from home and spent his time in the woods taming a falcon and making rabbit fur underwear.
5. The Chronicles of Narnia, by C.S. Lewis, 1950 - 1956
I've heard that Lewis thought of his Narnia stories not as allegory, but rather as a tales from a fictional parallel universe. I'm still hoping that Narnia is an actual parallel universe-- and that someday I'll unassumingly stumble across one of the portals to be transported into the land of talking animals and deep magic. "Further up and further in."
Honorable Mentions: Henry Huggins by Beverly Cleary, Charlotte's Web by E.B. White, Homer Price by Robert McCloskey, The Boxcar Children by Gertrude Chandler Warner, and... uh... Harry Potter.
Next on the list: Five essays / articles / short stories.
