Wild Things: The Joy of Reading Children's Literature As An Adult
1 journaler for this copy...
7 stars: Good
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From the back cover: Like many avid readers,Bruce Handy had fond memories of iconic books by Dr. Seuss, Beverly Cleary, Maurice Sendak, and other children's authors. But when he became a parent himself, revisiting the kids books he'd been raised with, Handy realized that there was much more to them than originally met the eye.... Along the way, Handy learns what The Cat in The Hat says about anarchy and absentee parenting, which themes are shared by The Runaway Bunny and Portnoy's Complaint, and why Ramona Quimby is as true an American icon as Tom Sawyer or Jay Gatsby. Profound and eye opening, Wild Things is a love letter to the stories and authors who have shaped countless children and parents alike.
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I liked, but didn't love this book. I particularly found many of the first chapters to be a bit slow and his grouping of various books together didn't always make sense to me. having said that, upon completion I found that I had highlighted quite a few points, and want to keep for his remembrances and insights on various reads. I have myself read about 80% of the books mentioned, though there were a few I hadn't. In particular, I was fascinated by a picture book called "The Dead Bird" he mentions--it seems a perfect way to teach young children about death (in the book, a group of children find a very recently deceased bird, bury it, hold a funeral, and visit its grave regularly. I also particularly liked the chapter he did on Narnia--his love, hate, back to love relationship with the books roughly tracks mine as well. Definitely not the best book I read, yet I'm keeping it for now, so that does say something...
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Some quotes from within I'd like to remember:
"As we will see, the mother in "The Cat In the Hat" is so loopy she leaves her children in the care of a fish; hers will be the house where all kids go to smoke weed in high school."
"Anyone who read The Catcher in the Rye or The Outsiders as an adolescent will remember how those books crystallize the conflicting emotions, the yearning for security and the need to rebel, so endemic to that stage of life."
(Maurice Sendak observed the following) Disney has often been condemned for corrupting the classics, and he has, to be sure, occasionally slipped in matters of taste and absolute fidelity to the original. But he has never corrupted. If there have been errors, they are nothing compared to the violations against the true nature and psychology of children committed by some of the so-called classics."
"If kids are going to learn to read, they have to *want* to learn to read, which means they need stories worthy of their attention and sympathetic to their sometimes outre' tastes. One of Dr. Seuss' many gifts is that he shared those tastes... the hell with propriety. The hell with sentence structure. he hell with how it ought to be. Let me show kids what they already know, which is how cuckoo their world really is."
(As quoted by Louis Menard) "Every reader of The Cat in the Hat will feel that the story revolves around a piece of withheld information: what private demons or desires compelled this mother to leave two young children at home all day, with the front door unlocked, under the supervision of a fish."
"By all accounts [Dr. Seuss] liked kids fine but wasn't particularly natural around them or even very interested in them. he had no children of his own. His boilerplate response when asked about that: you have them, I'll amuse them."
[Discussing the ending of Cat in the Hat, where the kids contemplate whether to tell their mom what happens, and ends 'What would YOU do if your mother asked YOU?' ] "That Geisel leaves the question hanging--that he allows for the possibility that the kids might not tell their mom about the Cat..that they might LIE, could be this books most radical moment."
"Thus the dismay, even anger I felt when, while rereading "The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe' for a children's lit class in high school, I now understood the whole enterprise as a Christian Trojan Horse. What had been rich and mysterious, strange and thrilling was revealed, in the unforgiving glare of teenage enlightenment, as phony and tawdry--as kiddie propaganda, lollipops spiked with dogma." [I just love that description!!].
"But the biggest surprise was finding myself charmed and persuaded by the religious undercurrents of Lewis' tales--in the sense that I am moved and persuaded not by the theology itself but rather by Lewis' ability to convey in tangible, organic terms what his religion means to him, what Christianity feels like for him. "
[Discussing Susan's exile from Narnia, for being 'grown up' and into 'girlish pursuits, which is described by Handy as being "the one sour note in the rapture"]. Lewis takes a preemptive swat at those who would argue that religious belief is childish, in the pejorative sense, when another character dismisses Susan with a huffy 'Grown up, indeed. I wish she would grow up.' The idea seems to be that adult concerns-lipstick, and ew, boys--are a distraction from the true wisdom that childhood itself is a higher plane of being. How patronizing it seems to me, and how sentimental."
"What does it say about the nation's psyche that in an age of terror, interminable war, and blue state-red state polarization, our superheroes have become so conflicted, tortured, and angry?"
[Anne of Green Gables] is here revealed as an early, prophetic version of the manic pixie dream girl archetype that would proliferate in the independent cinema of the early 21st century.
"On the subject of death I'm ignoring altogether the YA lists, where series such as The Hunger Games boast body counts that rival Shakespeare's or Thomas Harris's."
---------
From the back cover: Like many avid readers,Bruce Handy had fond memories of iconic books by Dr. Seuss, Beverly Cleary, Maurice Sendak, and other children's authors. But when he became a parent himself, revisiting the kids books he'd been raised with, Handy realized that there was much more to them than originally met the eye.... Along the way, Handy learns what The Cat in The Hat says about anarchy and absentee parenting, which themes are shared by The Runaway Bunny and Portnoy's Complaint, and why Ramona Quimby is as true an American icon as Tom Sawyer or Jay Gatsby. Profound and eye opening, Wild Things is a love letter to the stories and authors who have shaped countless children and parents alike.
-----------
I liked, but didn't love this book. I particularly found many of the first chapters to be a bit slow and his grouping of various books together didn't always make sense to me. having said that, upon completion I found that I had highlighted quite a few points, and want to keep for his remembrances and insights on various reads. I have myself read about 80% of the books mentioned, though there were a few I hadn't. In particular, I was fascinated by a picture book called "The Dead Bird" he mentions--it seems a perfect way to teach young children about death (in the book, a group of children find a very recently deceased bird, bury it, hold a funeral, and visit its grave regularly. I also particularly liked the chapter he did on Narnia--his love, hate, back to love relationship with the books roughly tracks mine as well. Definitely not the best book I read, yet I'm keeping it for now, so that does say something...
---------
Some quotes from within I'd like to remember:
"As we will see, the mother in "The Cat In the Hat" is so loopy she leaves her children in the care of a fish; hers will be the house where all kids go to smoke weed in high school."
"Anyone who read The Catcher in the Rye or The Outsiders as an adolescent will remember how those books crystallize the conflicting emotions, the yearning for security and the need to rebel, so endemic to that stage of life."
(Maurice Sendak observed the following) Disney has often been condemned for corrupting the classics, and he has, to be sure, occasionally slipped in matters of taste and absolute fidelity to the original. But he has never corrupted. If there have been errors, they are nothing compared to the violations against the true nature and psychology of children committed by some of the so-called classics."
"If kids are going to learn to read, they have to *want* to learn to read, which means they need stories worthy of their attention and sympathetic to their sometimes outre' tastes. One of Dr. Seuss' many gifts is that he shared those tastes... the hell with propriety. The hell with sentence structure. he hell with how it ought to be. Let me show kids what they already know, which is how cuckoo their world really is."
(As quoted by Louis Menard) "Every reader of The Cat in the Hat will feel that the story revolves around a piece of withheld information: what private demons or desires compelled this mother to leave two young children at home all day, with the front door unlocked, under the supervision of a fish."
"By all accounts [Dr. Seuss] liked kids fine but wasn't particularly natural around them or even very interested in them. he had no children of his own. His boilerplate response when asked about that: you have them, I'll amuse them."
[Discussing the ending of Cat in the Hat, where the kids contemplate whether to tell their mom what happens, and ends 'What would YOU do if your mother asked YOU?' ] "That Geisel leaves the question hanging--that he allows for the possibility that the kids might not tell their mom about the Cat..that they might LIE, could be this books most radical moment."
"Thus the dismay, even anger I felt when, while rereading "The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe' for a children's lit class in high school, I now understood the whole enterprise as a Christian Trojan Horse. What had been rich and mysterious, strange and thrilling was revealed, in the unforgiving glare of teenage enlightenment, as phony and tawdry--as kiddie propaganda, lollipops spiked with dogma." [I just love that description!!].
"But the biggest surprise was finding myself charmed and persuaded by the religious undercurrents of Lewis' tales--in the sense that I am moved and persuaded not by the theology itself but rather by Lewis' ability to convey in tangible, organic terms what his religion means to him, what Christianity feels like for him. "
[Discussing Susan's exile from Narnia, for being 'grown up' and into 'girlish pursuits, which is described by Handy as being "the one sour note in the rapture"]. Lewis takes a preemptive swat at those who would argue that religious belief is childish, in the pejorative sense, when another character dismisses Susan with a huffy 'Grown up, indeed. I wish she would grow up.' The idea seems to be that adult concerns-lipstick, and ew, boys--are a distraction from the true wisdom that childhood itself is a higher plane of being. How patronizing it seems to me, and how sentimental."
"What does it say about the nation's psyche that in an age of terror, interminable war, and blue state-red state polarization, our superheroes have become so conflicted, tortured, and angry?"
[Anne of Green Gables] is here revealed as an early, prophetic version of the manic pixie dream girl archetype that would proliferate in the independent cinema of the early 21st century.
"On the subject of death I'm ignoring altogether the YA lists, where series such as The Hunger Games boast body counts that rival Shakespeare's or Thomas Harris's."
