It’s been too long, my darlings. Working like a fiend at my day job and finishing a draft of a novel in the wee hours filled my winter as the snow we didn’t have might have filled in the cracks and crevices in the landscape, quieting the noise of the world and making it difficult to leave the house. Now I’ve returned from across a wide ocean—mad the relative ease (though one might not use that word in yet another long airport queue) with which we can cover miles in the modern world. E. B. White had it right, all right. The world is brimmingly green, and I have much to attend to, in addition to day job and novel revision—war books I’ve been wanting to write about, a request for a post recommending food writers who are writers first, another request from a French friend for a list of English-language writers of unique voice, kids’ chapter books I’m getting to read aloud for maybe one last time.
And this: Three twenty-first-century children’s books that have been asking to share a post, because in the mysterious workings of my brain, at least, they believe they belong side by side. We have: The Dot, by Peter Reynolds (2004), It’s a Book, by Lane Smith (2010), and Press Here, by Hervé Tullet (2011), titled A Book in the original French.
There’s nothing inherently twenty-first century about The Dot—it’s the story of a good, smart art teacher who knows just what to do when faced with a student, a young girl, who believes she can’t draw. The teacher asks the student to make a mark, any mark, and when the girl, in frustration, draws a dot, the teacher takes it seriously. In a lovely example of art meets life, this little girl, Vashti, or a girl very like her, draws all the time now on the Draw On! website (and you can, too, in a choice of inks and implements). Peter Reynolds, Maurice Sendak and others, working with the Aldrich Museum in Ridgefield, CT, created Draw On!, an annual two-week celebration of drawing that is spreading across the Northeast year by year, showing that Reynolds preaches what he practices—that he shares the wealth.
Of these three books, It’s a Book is the most in-jokey. A jackass, laptop in hand, comes upon a monkey reading a book. “What do you have there?” he asks, and then, “How do you scroll down?” and then other questions that show he’s never encountered this particular form of interactive technology before. The series of drawings when the jackass finally stops talking and starts reading prove that not only doesn’t a book need a battery or wi-fi to communicate, it doesn’t even necessarily need words.
And so we come to Press Here, a book that comments on the digital age obliquely rather than directly, as It’s a Book does. As with It’s a Book, the joke and the pleasure come in part because we do know technology, the ways it does and doesn’t satisfy, but in Press Here the pleasure is deeper, more visceral—our sense of the magic of reading, of the way books speak to us, and change us, flares live in our body, not just in our mind. And how is this connected to The Dot? You’ll see—Tullet takes dots far, invests them with nearly limitless power, as long as the reader does his or her job, as long as the reader is willing to do what readers must do and participate in the interactive experience, walk back and forth through the door that opens both ways, greet the author with arms outstretched. Open your arms—it’s worth it.
Here’s the first one I made (image posted here first). You can see that the t-shirt fringe looks, well, fringier, after you’ve worn the dress, and hopefully danced in it:
I have long advocated leaving children alone with no easy distractions (television, computers) so that they can experience boredom, a constructive, fertile boredom that is not to be confused with the trapped boredom one can feel in, for instance, an uninspiring classroom. What a gift when a parent says, “Go find something to do,” instead of offering that something. Out of this ground, this blank muzzy state, an inkling can emerge of what it is we really enjoy, really love.
Children—mine included—have fewer opportunities to enter a state of creative boredom these days, just as it’s uncommon for a child to find herself outside, alone, in timeless and mindless communion with nature. We’re all so busy. Even nose-in-a-book can be a dodge for kids used to a quick fix. And what about the grownups? We’re so damn busy, too. How are we supposed to make time to lead our children out of doors, to plant a seed in dark earth and then watch, like the little boy in The Carrot Seed, and wait, and watch, and wait, until the first pale sprout emerges? And how are we supposed to find our own moments of creative boredom, to leave ourselves time to stare at white walls, to sit in the sun, to listen to the many small sounds that make up silence, to create the space in which a flash of inspiration can burst forth, to hear what the Quakers call “the still small voice within”?
One possibility is Work Less—no new idea. In his 1932 essay “In Praise of Idleness,” Bertrand Russell lays out the advantages of everyone working (no idle rich), but everyone working less. A fun read, and if you don’t have time to read it now, you can save it to Read it Later and check it out on your iPhone while waiting in line at the bank. (Does anyone wait in line at the bank anymore?) Nearly 80 years later, in another difficult financial moment, Juliet Schor in Yes! has a similar thesis, arguing that “Working fewer hours could save our economy, save our sanity, and help save our planet.” What do you think? Will it work? What will you do with your free time? What might you learn about yourself and your life if you had time to watch the paint dry, the petals of the tulips slowly wither and fall?
Found the above on this delightful site with the silly name sent to me by my sister-in-law (thank you!). The photos on the site make me want to pound the table and say, with Sally, “Yes! Yes! Yes!” (I heart bookshelves.)
Walter Dean Myers is being sworn in today as the new Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, an ungainly title, but a great job. His stated theme for his time in the post is, “Reading is not optional.” On NPR this morning he talks about his life, reading, and some of the initiatives he hopes to undertake, including getting people to read to babies from their earliest months of life. He believes that if babies being born now are read to consistently over his two year ambassadorship, that alone will change the world. I’m with him. Go, Walter! Love and blessings surround you!
It’s been too long, my darlings. Working like a fiend at my day job and finishing a draft of a novel in the wee hours filled my winter as the snow we didn’t have might have filled in the cracks and crevices in the landscape, quieting the noise of the world and making it difficult to leave the house. Now I’ve returned from across a wide ocean—mad the relative ease (though one might not use that word in yet another long airport queue) with which we can cover miles in the modern world. E. B. White had it right, all right. The world is brimmingly green, and I have much to attend to, in addition to day job and novel revision—war books I’ve been wanting to write about, a request for a post recommending food writers who are writers first, another request from a French friend for a list of English-language writers of unique voice, kids’ chapter books I’m getting to read aloud for maybe one last time.
There’s nothing inherently twenty-first century about The Dot—it’s the story of a good, smart art teacher who knows just what to do when faced with a student, a young girl, who believes she can’t draw. The teacher asks the student to make a mark, any mark, and when the girl, in frustration, draws a dot, the teacher takes it seriously. In a lovely example of art meets life, this little girl, Vashti, or a girl very like her, draws all the time now on the Draw On! website (and you can, too, in a choice of inks and implements). Peter Reynolds, Maurice Sendak and others, working with the Aldrich Museum in Ridgefield, CT, created Draw On!, an annual two-week celebration of drawing that is spreading across the Northeast year by year, showing that Reynolds preaches what he practices—that he shares the wealth.
Of these three books, It’s a Book is the most in-jokey. A jackass, laptop in hand, comes upon a monkey reading a book. “What do you have there?” he asks, and then, “How do you scroll down?” and then other questions that show he’s never encountered this particular form of interactive technology before. The series of drawings when the jackass finally stops talking and starts reading prove that not only doesn’t a book need a battery or wi-fi to communicate, it doesn’t even necessarily need words.
And so we come to Press Here, a book that comments on the digital age obliquely rather than directly, as It’s a Book does. As with It’s a Book, the joke and the pleasure come in part because we do know technology, the ways it does and doesn’t satisfy, but in Press Here the pleasure is deeper, more visceral—our sense of the magic of reading, of the way books speak to us, and change us, flares live in our body, not just in our mind. And how is this connected to The Dot? You’ll see—Tullet takes dots far, invests them with nearly limitless power, as long as the reader does his or her job, as long as the reader is willing to do what readers must do and participate in the interactive experience, walk back and forth through the door that opens both ways, greet the author with arms outstretched. Open your arms—it’s worth it.
, to create the space in which a flash of inspiration can burst forth, to hear what the Quakers call “the still small voice within”?
. What action must I take when the last petal falls?
