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Jon Klassen

Children’s Book Review, Somewhat Scary Edition: The Dark & Lon Po Po

October 29, 2016 by krisis

Happy Halloween weekend, my pretties!

I’m not much for wearing costumes, but I do have a year-round love of the slightly macabre that has bled into some of our book choices for EV. Actually, when it comes to this trio I can’t even take credit for choosing them – E hunted down both of these offbeat books.

However, I can say that they’ve become great favorites of mine and constant requests from EV. That’s not just for their scare factor, but because they’re both apocryphal folk tales that include important lessons about bravery and independence.

The Dark, written by Lemony Snicket and illustrated by Jon Klassen Amazon Logo

The Dark by Lemony Snicket and Jon KlassenCK Says: 4.5 stars – Buy It!

Gender Diversity: Male protagonist w/agender darkness
Ethnic Diversity: None; white protagonist
Challenging Language: None!
Themes to Discuss: darkness; being scared of the dark; exploring by yourself (positives and negatives)

Read Time: 5 minutes

This book was an early favorite of EV’s from just after her first birthday, and we read it so often that “Hi, Dark!” became two of her first five words.

The Dark is the story of Laszlo, a young boy who lives in a sprawling, creaky old house and who is afraid of the dark. He visits the dark in the doorway of the basement each day, saying, “Hi, dark,” thinking that perhaps if he visited it in his room it wouldn’t come to visit him in his own in the night. Otherwise, Laszlo tries to avoid the dark whenever he can, staying away from shadowy corners and quickly whisking himself to bed in the evenings and letting a nightlight illuminate his room while he sleeps. One night when his lightbulb burns out he has to make friends with the darkness, and it surprises him by being not nearly as scary as he thought it was.

Let me be clear – this book is potentially scary for little readers. Especially if you introduce it to an slightly older toddler who already has some mistrust of darkness, it’s going to positively terrify them that the dark might starting beckoning them in an actual voice and telling them to open drawers. Artist Jon Klassen, whose own sense of dark humor is on display in his Hat trilogy, illustrates the house as its own creepy character thanks to his angular art. He leaves plenty of dark spaces where things can swirl in the shadows. If you live in that sort of a dwelling, the potential for scariness only increases.

the-dark-interior-01However, starting EV on the book so early had completely the opposite effect, because the book itself is about how the dark is no more or less malicious than any other definition of space in your world. The dark leads Laszlo past every shadowy spot in the house, and they’re all just rooms when she shines his flashlight on them.

Just ahead of the climax, author Lemony Snicket (of the Unfortunate Events series) delivers the powerful moral – that the dark exists in our world to create contrast, just like a creaky roof has kept the rain out for years and huge, cold windows let us see outside without letting the outside in. Everything in the world has its place, including the dark, and none of it is inherently frightening.

As a result of that message and many hundreds of readings of this book, EV would say, “Hi, dark!” every night when we turned out the light at bedtime. She has never needed a night light or showed any hesitation about charging into the dark hallway upstairs or upsettedness with open closet doors.

Pair that with the book’s simple, easy-to-read language that’s still fun for caregivers to narrate, and this is a book with legs. We don’t read it as much now as we did two years ago, but it’s never completely fallen out of our greatest hits list. I suspect it will remain there until EV grows sick of reading it herself.

open-book-icon-16370

Lon Po Po, translated and illustrated by Ed Young Amazon Logo

Lon Po Po, a Chinese fable translated by Ed YoungCK Says: 4.5 stars – Buy It!

Gender Diversity: Three young girl protagonists and a male crossdressing wolf
Ethnic Diversity: All characters are Chinese
Challenging Language: disguised, eldest, latched, cunning, awl, hemp, gingko, brittle, delighted (Also, challenging sentence structure throughout. This isn’t an early-reader book)
Themes to Discuss: violence and kids in peril; stranger danger; mythology vs reality; climbing trees and heights; allegorical death

Read Time: 10 minutes

Lon Po Po is a Chinese fable that is part Red-Riding Hood and part Three Little Pigs, but scarier and more empowering than either tale.

It’s a creepy book full of lush, full-page painted illustrations and relatively dense text. It says a lot about E and I (and our oddball taste in books) that it has become our go-to gift for kids who need to read more, especially little white boys who might not have books where girls or kids of color get to be the heroes.

Lon Po Po starts as the reverse of Red Riding Hood – Shang, Tao, and Paotze stay behind while their mother visits grandmother’s house for her birthday. A watchful wolf notices that the three succulent little girls have been left unguarded, and cons his way into their house and bed pretending to be their grandmother, having missed her daughter on the path. Clever Shang catches on to his charade even as her sisters snuggle closer, and manages to convince the wolf the leave the house to enjoy the tender nuts of a gingko tree. Since the wolf cannot climb the tree himself, the girls hoist him in a basket but repeatedly feign fumbling and dropping him until he is killed by the fall.

I mentioned our tastes run slightly towards the macabre, right?

The wolf being creepy on the other side of the door from the children in Lon Po Po.This isn’t going to be a great fit for all families. The kids are in considerably more peril than is presented in the typical sanitized fairy tale. The wolf is legitimately terrifying at points – some of the illustrations even freak me out. And, finally, there’s the little matter of the girls lying to wolf about the ginkgo nuts and then murdering him.

However, to me none of that is as terrifying as a world of inoffensive books about little white boys who solve everything or little girls whose hardest choice is what to wear to ballet class – both of which we’ve had bought for us by well-meaning people.

The wolf’s death is not graphic, making it less terrifying than aspects of Peter and the Wolf, and opens up discussing the idea of allegory. That pairs well with Shang’s relaying the myth of the tender gingko nut to the naive wolf.

This was another book that EV could not get enough of around the one year mark. Despite it being written in perfect English, there’s definitely a peculiar rhythm to its translated text. That kept me engaged through many early reads until it became one of my all-time favorites. There’s the chance to do fun voices for the wolf and the girls, and the text gives plenty of opportunities for emphasis and hamming it up.

Plus, it features a clever young Chinese girl that outwits an evil wolf! It’s one of the first books we had that featured a protagonist that was both a reflection of EV’s race and an aspiration for her self-reliance.

(My wolf voice is Cookie Monster imitating the Wicked Witch of the West. E finds it deeply unsettling.)

As with The Dark, I think this is a book you either have to start early before kids might think it’s scary or late enough that you can explain the context to them. But, there’s nothing inherently bad or offensive about this story – it’s the kind of challenge young listeners deserve as their tastes develop.

Filed Under: books, reviews Tagged With: children's books, China, fairy tales, Jon Klassen, Lemony Snicket

Children’s Book Review: Mr. Tiger Goes Wild & The Curious Garden by Peter King

September 17, 2016 by krisis

We’ve been reading to EV since the first days of her life, but reading to a tiny squirming baby is a lot different than reading to a curious and opinionated three year old.

Peter Brown in a YouTube video for his book The Creepy Carrots.

Peter Brown in a YouTube video for his book The Creepy Carrots.

Back then I read whatever I liked, and baby EV issued nary a complaint unless the language wasn’t smooth and consistent enough to hypnotize her into a lull. As long as I was enjoying the reading, she was enjoying the reading, too.

Three year old EV is a little different. She has a long attention span and a voracious appetite for books, but she’s got some preferences to work around. It’s not so much that she dislikes any one book, but that she likes others a bit too much.

We don’t do any “put it on repeat!” behavior in this house (another post for another time), but if EV is crushing on a particular book it quickly turns into a twice-daily read for a few weeks. As the designated reader for at least another two years, when a new book hits the “Crushing EV” list that means my preferences come into play beyond my typical “is this a good message?” filter.

I don’t want anything with language too simple or silly, or prose too basic. I enjoy books with different character voices where I get to do a little acting or situations that leave some room for imagination so I can editorialize. And, strong graphic design and typesetting can’t hurt – after all, these are books I’ll be spending hours with each week!

Mr. Tiger Goes Wild is one book that I was delighted that EV added to her favorites, so much so that finding more by author Peter Brown was my first priority at the library. When we picked up The Curious Garden I expected it to be good, but I did not expect the two books to have such complimentary, synergistic themes.

Mr. Tiger Goes Wild & The Curious Garden by Peter King

Mr. Tiger Goes Wild: CK Says: 4.5 stars – Buy it! Amazon Logo

Read Time: <5 minutes
Gender Diversity:
 Male protagonist; society of mixed genders; children exclusively minded by females
Ethnic Diversity: not applicable
Challenging Vocab (to read or to define): loosen, peculiar, unacceptable, magnificent
Themes To Discuss: civilization, wearing clothing, differences between animals and people

The Curious Garden: CK Says: 4 stars – Consider it! Amazon Logo

Read Time: 4-8 minutes
Gender Diversity:
 Male protagonist; no other named characters though some female background characters
Ethnic Diversity: A set of briefly-seen wordless background characters are of different races
Challenging Vocab (to read or to define): greenery, pruning, delicate, mysteriously
Themes To Discuss: trespassing / urban exploration, pollution, how plants grow, greening

This pair of beautiful children’s books by Peter King have a lot to say about civilization versus nature, and how the ideal state of the world is a balance of the two. Both books have a positive message and enjoyable prose, and each it rife with interesting topics for discussion.

Peter King’s illustrations are a delight. His characters are all vividly colored and have a slight blockiness to their outlines. They seem to be near siblings to Jon Klassen and even give a very slight hint of Adventure Time.

mr-tiger-goes-wild-peter-brownMr. Tiger Goes Wild is the whimsical tale of a town filled with very proper animals who all dress like pilgrims and walk around on their hind legs. Mr. Tiger feels like something about his routine just isn’t right. After bounding around town on all fours and enjoying some very loud, improper roaring, he decides to take things to the next level and abandon his clothing. His neighbors, already perturbed by his running and climbing, decide this is a a bridge too far and ask that he leave town.

Mr. Tiger enjoys a return to the forest, but eventually misses his friends in town. He returns to offer a compromise on the puritanical dress code only to find that many of the town’s animals have adopted some of his more animalistic habits and are happier for it.

EV loves this book – from the moment of its introduction it has been one she is happy to read multiple times a day if given the chance. Me too, thanks to hilarious pages like the when where Mr. Tiger first has his wild idea. At first, she was more enamored with the variety of the animals in the town, the comic style word balloons that made it obvious who was speaking, and the cuteness of Mr. Tiger. As she has aged, she is more engaged with the plot, why Mr. Tiger wanted to be wild, and Mr. Tiger’s return to nature (and then again to society).

EV has repeatedly initiated discussions about why the tiger is even wearing clothes and if it would be okay for her to take off her clothes outside. If you don’t like your books with a side of thought-provocation, then this might be off-putting – but, we love those kinds of books in this house. I think the topic of what it means to be civilized (and what’s just puritanically-derived custom) is perfect for a little wild thing who is learning to tame their toddler urges and interact with the world around them.

Since we love Mr. Tiger so much, The Curious Garden was the first book I plucked from the shelf the day EV got her library card. Like Tiger, it has inspired intense love from both EV and we parental units, but it’s a very different sort of book with its own message about how the best elements of nature still need some cultivation to blossom. [Read more…] about Children’s Book Review: Mr. Tiger Goes Wild & The Curious Garden by Peter King

Filed Under: reviews Tagged With: children's books, Jon Klassen, parenting, Peter Brown

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