The Tiger and the Dried Persimmon

 By Janie Jaehyun Park

This was a great find.  I really picked it up because of the cover.  Plus, it's a Korean folk-tale told by a Korean person. That alone made it seem promising.

The story is of a foolish tiger that becomes confused when he overhears a mother talking to her child and believes that the dried persimmon is a fierce monster.  As he is heading home, a cattle thief mistakes him for an ox.  Comedy ensues!

 The paintings are a fantastic blend of modern technique and traditional shapes and patterns.  Every drawing of the tiger has different proportions, making him a bit cartoony and very expressive.

I love this drawing of the cattle thief.  So much.  This book was a hit with the kids, too.

Jack and the Beanstalk

 By Rosemary Wells and Norman Messenger

I can't tell who wrote the book and who drew the pictures.  It looks like they both wrote it?  Maybe they both worked on the pictures?

The pictures are pretty decent.  I don't mind them.  And the writing is simple enough to understand, so I'm really happy about that.  I want to introduce my daughter to these stories as young as I can because we come across the references so often and I'd really like her to be able to understand those references.

Every time I run into this story it's told in the most long-winded fashion.  The only version that she was familiar with before this was the Mickey Mouse cartoon.  It isn't that bad, but I really can't stand that stupid harp.

This version has Jack living with his mother and rescuing his father, which is more exciting.  And it has the hen laying the golden eggs as well, which the Disney version left out.

Disney Anytime Stories Collection

 Written by Lisa Ann Marsoli

This volume is from 1996.  It's about as bad as you can imagine it being, which means that for some children I guess it's passably okay.  It has pictures in it, which is all they're really after in a Disney book.

The art here is spot on.  No weird modernization of older classics.  They tried to keep it very accurate, so that's nice.  The writing probably suffers from too many editors.

 The stories only make sense if you've seen the movies.  There is little or no introduction of new characters and little backstory.  It's basically a crazy compilation of Disney Fanfiction written for superfans.  My daughter has never seen any of these shows, so nothing in this book makes any sense to her.  The fact that the vocabulary is way beyond that of a 5 year old (my husband balked at the use of the word "pachyderm") only makes things more confusing.  Normally I'm all for varied vocabulary, but if I have to spend twice as long coming up with an explanation for the events and characters in the book than I would spend just reading what's on the page, it's not a very good book for kids.

It bothered me, too, that some of the events in these stories conflict with elements of their own universes.  I'm really not a Disney fan, and I was pretty annoyed, so I'm pretty sure a real hardcore superfan would burn up.  Or maybe a REAL superfan would be able to justify all the deviation.

Anyway, the book cost 25¢.  I'll probably tear out all of the full page glossies and do a craft with them or something.

Friday Post - Ravensburger Puzzle no. 089888

 

Illustrated by Steffie Becker

Two puzzles in one!  and for $3!  (I'm always thrifting, never buying new.)

They're pink and purple, which stinks.  And it's all princesses and maybe a prince or two (kind of vague, though).  But it's easy to put together, and due to the influence of her cousins, my daughter *loves* pink and purple, so this one's a winner..

But she also randomly tells me about how much she loves yellow, so she hasn't been completely hypnotized by the Disney machine yet.


One puzzle has a plain backing, the other polka dots, so you can separate the pieces before you begin.

Interstellar Cinderellar

 By Deborah Underwood
Illustrated by Meg Hunt

This one isn't bad, except that it's in verse, which is annoying, because it's definitely meant for older kids.  Plus the verses don't cover the details of the story; they'll have a vague explanation of what's going on and fill in the blanks with they picture.  So I end up cutting in with explanations because it's even a little confusing for me at times.

I'm pretty sure they stole the pet mouse and the stepsister's name from the Disney movie.  Which are little examples of a bit of laziness here and there.

But I'm happy that everyone is ugly in this book (but charmingly drawn).  I'm happy that Cinderella is a mechanical nerd.  I'm happy that she actually hangs out with the prince and develops a relationship with him, and STILL decides not to marry him in the end.

It's not perfect, but it's good enough.  Plus, my daughter likes it as much or more as her Disney Cinderella book.

Everything is better when it takes place in space.

Walter the Baker

 By Eric Carle

I was pretty disappointed in this one.  I got it because my daughter is all into baking.  We love "Pancakes! Pancakes!" by the same author, and she likes to help me make bread in the bread machine.

It's a folktale.  I'm not sure if it's original or based on an existing one, but the duke and duchess demand that he make a bread that the sun can be seen through three times or something.  Anyway, I'd seen the last page, so I knew the answer and it just made the riddle sound really contrived.

So, here it is.  I've ruined it for you.  If it doesn't sound contrived to you, then it's probably just a hang-up that I have.  The pictures are still pretty great.

Snow White - 1976

 uncredited

 I keep seeing these abridged Disney movies from the "Wonderful World of Reading" series.  I picked up this one because the Disney version is pretty much the same as the original story and it's only a little bit scary, right?

The uncredited art is not quite the same as the original, which I find very interesting..  But the story, sure is.  Which means that the awkwardness of the dwarfs names is more apparent in this shortened version.  We don't watch these movies, so it's not as charming and more confusing without the experience of having seen them act out their characters.

 That's only a little awkward, though.  You know what's really awkward?  Having to reword the part where the hunter is going to kill Snow White because your toddler doesn't understand death yet.

But most awkward of all...

"Mama, what's a princess?"

"Well...  A princess is a girl who lives in a big house, and her parents have lots of money, and she wears lots of big dresses...  and she waits around for a really rich man to take her away..."


Well.  What would YOU say?  This is why I don't read fairy tales that often.

Hansel and Gretel

 By Cynthia Rylant
Illustrated by Jen Corace


I wasn't a fan of this one.  I was torn with the art, because I'm drawn to it, but it's also very hipster.  I don't think my daughter liked it much.

The text was pretty dreadful, too.  I mean, Hansel and Gretel is a weird story from a series of weird stories, and the author is trying to make sense of the abstract details when, really, she should just let it be.

The hipster art is actually pretty good as far as the depictions of the characters.  Their lifeless expressions make the story pretty damn creepy.  But then there's the delicious cottage...  with almost no colour.  I know that usually the cottage is drawn in a particularly gaudy fashion, but surely there could be some compromise?  It doesn't look like it's made of baked goods.

The witch is frightening, because of the bland and understated way in which she's drawn.  My daughter loved the story, but hated the book because the whole thing was way, way too scary.  On top of it all, I took issue with all the extra passages talking about how brave Hansel and Gretel were, like this is supposed to be some moralistic tale or something.

I got this book out because I felt like I was doing my children a disservice by not having fairy tales in the house.  But now that I've had such bad luck finding good ones, I'm pretty apathetic about adding any to our library for the time being.

The Oxford Nursery Treasury

 By Ian Beck

A generic book of Nursery Rhymes!  We've been looking for something for a while, but it's hard to know if something is good or not without seeing it first hand, so I'm going through whatever the library chooses to stock.


 The rhymes are some of the better ones taken from the full Oxford Book.  The accompanying pictures aren't bad, either.

But there are stories as well, and the stories are dreadful.  The tortoise and the hare, for instance, have a bet involving vegetables and they write the hare to be particularly odious so that you can feel particularly great about him losing to the tortoise.  I spent the entirety of "The Princess and the Pea" hoping that the two 12 year old royals didn't end up married at the end (of course, they do), and my daughter didn't care much for the story either; she cut in at the end to ask the only really important question, "DID THEY EAT THE PEAS!?!?"

It was reading this book that made me realize that I really hate most fairy tales.  I can't stand the popular ones, at least.  But I know that if I start in on things like "The Tinder Box" we'll be dealing with nightmares for weeks.  It's a real dilemma.

Many Moons

 By James Thurber
Illustrated by Louis Slobodkin

One of my favourite books.  I always loved this as a kid.  I didn't mind most of the art when I was younger, but I hate it now.

I can't read this to my daughter because it's a little above her level of comprehension.  It's got a lot of sense vs nonsense going on, and she doesn't really understand the reasoning of the whole thing.  I simplified it for her and she loves the basic plot, basically because she's obsessed with the moon.

 It's a bit of a morality tale about perception.  It's a common theme with Thurber.  The smart people all turn out to be wrong and the fool who talks nonsense is the only one who can solve the problems.

I feel like if the illustrations were better, the plot would come across better.  There's another version with art by Marc Simont.  I think I might order that one.

A really well written, very memorable classic.

The Paper Bag Princess

 By Robert Muncsch
Illustrated by Michael Martchenko

I've always hated the whole princess thing.  My daughter talks about being a princess all the time, for instance, just because everyone tells her that she is one.  But if you ask her what a princess is, she'll give you a very vague confused answer.  She has no idea what it is.  Why do they call her princess?  What do they think it means to her?  Why do we have these weird expectations that all girl aspire to be wealthy layabouts with ties to authority but no real authority of their own?  There are many articles about the Princess complex, so I think that's about as far into it as I'll go today.

  I never realized just how much I hated the princess thing until I started reading fairy tales to my daughter.  It probably didn't help that I started with "The Princess and the Pea".  Or that in the version that I read, the prince and princess were 12 and didn't spend more than a couple hours in each other's company before they were married.

But it's all good, because "The Paper Bag Princess" exists to balance out all of that nonsense.  It's so important to learn that sometimes princes are selfish jerks that aren't worth the effort.  So have the self confidence to go it alone!

Also, sitting around in a castle all day wearing fancy dresses is much less fun than running around the countryside in a paper bag outwitting dragons.

The Boy and the Tigers

By Hellen Bannerman

A classic Little Golden book, Originally titled "The Story of Little Black Sambo", this story has been edited to remove racial slurs and offensive illustrations.

It's very folk-tale like with a bit of slapstick thrown in.  It's not an amazing book, but my daughter likes it.  It's still a little long-winded, even for her liking.

Friday Post - Digitized Children's Audio Books

This is an incredible link that I came across many years ago and have kept in my back pocket.  I pass it around to teachers and parents whenever possible, and now I have the opportunity to use it for my own kids.

This is a collection of children's records from the 50's and 60's.  They're all stories, mostly read by very famous actors.  Some are read by Danny Kaye.  The best of the bunch are highlighted.

Down near the bottom is the absolute best of the bunch:  the 13 clocks, read by Lauren Becall.  This is one of my favourite books of all time.  Lauren Becall is an actress that I have the utmost respect for.  She reads the text perfectly with a dry severity.  It's so compelling.

There are many more links on this page, so this is a great jumping off point if you're looking for more recordings of this kind.

Each Peach Pear Plum

 By Janet and Allan Ahlberg

I feel like this book gets skipped over in favour of "Peepo!"

This one is incredible if only for the continuity.  Look carefully at the map.  The basket of plums.  The landscape in each picture.  All of the characters and scenes fit together.

 Once again, metered rhyming that is actually good, and pictures that are a pleasure to look at.

There's a great search and find element, too.

My copy came with a block puzzle, but it's way too tricky for even a toddler to do.  It's probably suitable for a 4 year old, which is weird, because this is definitely a baby/toddler book.