Children's Poetry Collections

The books I read were Favorite Poems Old and New, Selected for Boys and Girls by Helen Ferris (1957); Poems to Read to the Very Young (1982), selected by Josette Frank, and A Child's Garden of Verses, by Robert Louis Stevenson. Many Stevenson poems were included in the other two collections.

For the most part, these poems bored me out of my mind. I was reminded of when I read every Sherlock Holmes story one after the other. Individually, they might have been caviar, but consumed all at once they were more like Spam. They tended to be pretty insipid, reflecting the sweet-rural-innocence view of childhood. I longed for Shel Silverstein, with his gulpable caviar, or Dr. Seuss with his tasty confections.

The Ferris book was huge--567 pages of poems and more than 40 pages of indexes and credits. The book's average of two poems per page added up to more than 1000 poems. The poems were nice enough and some of them excellent, but most were bland. Roughly half were poems from "real" poets like Stevenson, Dickinson, Hughes, and so on. If I had children to read to, this book would be a useful resource, I think, and would certainly introduce some grand formal language.

I was frightened by the fact that the world of this book is completely gone. Today's young don't do the things the kids in the poems are doing, roaming freely through the out-of-doors, staring around in wide-eyed wonder, watching plants grow and cheerful birds pull worms from the ground. Kids don't occupy their own charmed world, and I'm sure they never did, but this vision of bucolic, mild, gentle children has deeply persisted.

I've written before of the odd prevalence of agricultural and gardening imagery in children's literature, even though the agrarian era is completely past. Whenever children see where vegetables are grown or cattle are raised, for example, it's always in a small garden or on a small farm and the cattle are cheerful even though heading to slaughter. Milk comes directly from the bucket to the table. The Ferris book is actually more balanced than the other two because it has more of an academic slant. It includes selections of Shakespeare and beautiful quotes from the bible. The 23rd psalm is in the book. But this tome is culturally archaic and I say this sadly, not sneeringly. It tells me we really need more Shel Silversteins and Dr. Seusses to speak to our modern children of modern times. The Pokey Little iphone. Three little pigs crying "Wii, wii, wii" all the way home. Let's write for the kids we've got, not the kids we wish they were.

The Frank book is insipid. Most of the poems in this book were also in the Ferris book. I thought that by 1982 we would have been a bit more culturally advanced, but the illustrations in this book show rural small town life (a few city scenes thrown in) with every child but one being white. I don't know how that one black kid got in there on page 15. There is also one illustration of "children of the world," with appropriate stereotypes--looked like the art was from 1962 instead of 1982.

Again, the poems in the Frank book would not hurt a kid, and added to a bedtime story would be beautiful. But it might benefit your children to have more up-to-date selections available.

A Child's Garden of Verses just makes me barf. Coy. Precious. Soft-soaped. Sentimentalized. I know Stevenson is famous for this book, but I can't stomach it. As with the Frank book, it's probably not harmful, but I don't think our children 200 years later will relate to it.

Earlier in my reading list, I read a baby book of little poems and they were quite nice, small poems written directly for small children. Here is my review of three books by Kay Chorao, including The Baby's Bedtime Book.


Kay Chorao's The Baby's Bedtime Book is a collection of poems for babies and toddlers, with big, thick, cardboard pages. The illustrations are beautiful and the poems are sweet. They are focused on woodlands and farm life—so prominent in the experience of today’s kids. If you share this book’s idealized vision of babies, you’ll love the poems, too. And, really, they are repetitive and gentle—good for calming babies in preparation for sleep.

 

I also picked up two other books by Chorao. Pig and Crow is a funny picture book about a lonely pig. I liked the fact that the pig got tricked over and over by the crow, but came out happy in the end. Kids learn about growing plants and hatching birds—what you see is not what you get—a little seed turns into a big pumpkin. A small egg turns into a fun goose for company (not dinner). All good. I think little kids would enjoy this book.

 

Little Farm by the Sea takes you through the life of an idealized family farm—one where they grow and raise just about everything at once. The book moves through the growing season from early spring plowing and planting through late fall harvest. The romance with our rural past continues. Are young people really able to relate to this? In the time of Dora the Explorer and ipods? I thought this book, though beautiful, was pretty boring. It was way more didactic than Pig and Crow in presenting the cycle of life.

Burnett's Little Lord Fauntleroy

My most previous blog post was on A Little Princess, by Frances Hodgson Burnett. I thought it would be interesting to go back into my reader response journal to see what I thought of another of her works, Little Lord Fauntleroy, from my pre-blog period.

I was surprised to see that in this response to Burnett's Little Lord Fauntleroy I cited Dickens, as I did many months later in my response to her A Little Princess. Dickens' child characters are not nearly as sentimental as Burnett's--he moves from the personal story into the sociological and the metaphysical. But both portray some pretty harrowing ordeals for young people and give them due credit for responding to those ordeals. The children are not paper cutouts.

Here is my response:

Little Cedric, a charming boy living in working class neighborhood in New York City in the approximate 1850s, is discovered to be the sole heir of an English Earl. He is plucked from his happy life and becomes equally happy in his new life. There are plots twists here and there, but the core of the book is in the relationship between Cedric and his grandfather.

The grandfather is hardened, self-serving, and disliked. Cedric, though, sees all through his own eyes, and asserts the essential goodness of grandpa. Grandpa’s transformation is both sweet and unsentimental.

I was surprised that this was such a delightful book. The excessive sweetness and virtue of the title character, Cedric, Lord Fauntleroy, was well balanced by wry wit and dry asides from the author. The boy Cedric’s golden character transforms the lives of all who come in contact with him. He is not trying to rescue, but his very self is enough to work wonders.

The book is funny and well paced—as fast as you always wish a Dickens book would be. The writing was fine. Clashes between working class folks (American and English) and the aristocracy were well drawn. There's a great joke about U.S. Independence Day not being celebrated in England.

As with the book Black Fox of Lorne (see earlier post), England is presented as a cultural paragon. Even the crusty shop owner from New York City goes to live in England without a backward glance. And Fauntleroy, while asserting his American-ness, submerges wholly in upper class English life and doesn’t look back.

I enjoyed this book. I don’t know if I’d recommend it generally to today’s children, but it holds up well as a genre book from its own time.

Burnett was born in England and split her adult life between England and the United States. She was a socialite, fashion-conscious, and wrote books to maintain her lifestyle through her own earnings. And, she was successful. Her books sold (and continue to sell) well and were filmed and dramatized for the stage even in her lifetime. She started a fashion rage based on Fauntleroy's clothing--lacy shirts and velvet suits and fancy shoes for boys--and on his hair--long, blond, and curled with bangs like a girl's.

I think this is very funny, that her boy was so girlish, since, as I mentioned in my Little Princess blog post, Fauntleroy played a role in his book that is usually reserved for girls.

The funniest example of the Fauntleroy look is Eddie Munster. I never realized until reading these books that Eddie was dressed like Cedric in a huge fashion inside joke!

Child-Hero
I wish that I had had more of a sense of heroism in my own childhood. I put it down to a lack of delusion--in a sense, the little princess and the little lord Fauntleroy survive because of the faith/delusion they have that they are part of something serious and important. And studies have always shown that non-depressed people are actually somewhat delusional--they tend to see things through rose-tinted lenses. How to make depressed people re-delusionalized, that's a question begging to be answered.

A young friend told me recently that he went off his anti-depressant medication because the pills made him feel like he wasn't worrying enough--that stuff was getting away from him. He couldn't take the delusion, wasn't ready for it. I thought that was interesting and self-aware. And goes to the issue of resilience. What made Sara and Cedric so resilient? Was it their early awareness of devoted parental love? Was it their submersion in heroic literature? Was it just a literary device to make the plot happen?

Anyway, I could have used some rosy spectacles in my younger days. I was so much older then...I'm younger than that now.

A Little Princess, by Frances Hodgson Burnett

The ultimate Little Princess,
Shirley Temple (colorized photo)

I am happy to announce that I loved A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett. I'm happy because my expectations were low. From other Burnett works (namely, Little Lord Fauntleroy) I worried that the book was another slice of overly sweet and over-decorated stale cake, if you can imagine that. The counterpart of the boy-grows-up book is the girl-saves-everyone book, such as another Burnett work, The Secret Garden. Little Lord Fauntleroy is an oddity because in it the boy saves everyone emotionally--it's almost always a girl.

[Please note that my reviews of The Secret Garden and Little Lord Fauntleroy will comprise my next blog entry.]

But, A Little Princess turned out to be much more sophisticated than either of the other two books. It really was about a girl's character development; how a person faces adversity is the key issue addressed. Our heroine, Sara, has been somewhat spoiled and pampered, treated truly like a princess. And her idea of being a princess involves being kind and likable, taking care to spread happiness, being courteous, and helping others, especially "the populace," as she calls her poorer subjects. It's the ultimate in noblesse oblige, with an emphasis on noble.

Sara's one remaining treasure from
her better days was a doll given to
her by her father.

So, where does this leave Sara when her fortunes take a downward turn? How does a princess act when she's on the bottom instead of the top? Sara decides that when the chips are down is when a princess really steps up. It's her behavior in times of trouble that truly determines whether a girl is a princess. Thus, Sara does not allow her behavior to change even when her circumstances do.

Sara is a delight to be around (ok, a bit unrealistic) and she does help many people, but this book is about how she is helped, rescued really, from poverty and servitude. She learns much from her experiences--mainly about how "the populace" really lives. In a particularly awful sequence, we see that Sara is starving to death--she does not have adequate food. (I clarify because "starving to death" is such a cliche.) I was desperate for her situation to be resolved.

And I cried, yes, hard-hearted reader that I am. (But I'm a soft-hearted person.) I was totally engaged by Sara and by what was happening to her. I couldn't put the book down until I saw that she was going to be all right, even though I already knew the ending from seeing several movie versions of this story.

Here's Frances herself, a fashion
conscious woman who started
a boys' fashion rage from Little
Lord Fauntleroy's clothing.

There are also some truly magical plot points, especially when Sara's cold and barren attic room is mysteriously transformed. It feels almost like death, like she has died and this is what heaven is like. There are also times when she looks through people's windows and sees normal happiness, people who don't have to fight to keep their chins up. Great poignancy. The rooftop scenes are also wonderful--another world.

Sara is an orphan, as are so many child-heroes in children's literature. It seems to take the child out of context, give him or her more interesting problems to solve. Think of Anne Shirley of Green Gables fame. The heroine of The Secret Garden is also an orphan, I believe, or at least out of contact with a parental unit. The children in the Chronicles of Narnia are off on their own, too. The other message here is that parents tend to keep magic from happening! Those who dare much risk much!

The animal companion role that often features in these developmental novels is in this case a rat named Melchisidec. Sara makes friends with him and his "family" in the attic. A true princess can always spare a few crumbs for a rat.

This book most reminded me of Dickens' David Copperfield, of all books. David, too, undergoes many swift changes of fortune, from cherishment to disparagement (nice rhyme!). He, too, has to rub elbows with and comes to respect the underclasses of his society (the Micawbers!). And somehow, his inner prince wins out and attains a good life. If you waved a sex-change wand over David Copperfield and then added pink frosting, you would have A Little Princess.

High recommend for this book.

Was I Ever a Princess?

The first man I really WANTED--but
I wanted to sing, too.

No, I didn't usually go with the royalty fantasies. I was a modern girl, a mid-century modern girl growing up in the 1960s and 1970s. My vision of royalty was to be a rock singer, or, better yet a rock singer and also the girlfriend of a rock singer. Or I would be an actor. Somehow, though, I would be popular and known around the world. I would struggle for my privacy. I would have secret sufferings that no one knew about but would turn a brave face to the world. Men would love me but I might have to leave them behind for my art.

An image of my hippi
rock singer self--it's a
future I thought might be
waiting for me, alas.

In my family, we always joked that my oldest sister would be the woman ultimately chosen by Prince Charles as his wife (yes, he was considered to be a hot bachelor, if chinless). And, yes, we were only half joking. My sister was certainly worthy of royalty, even if Prince Charles wasn't. And when I think about how Charles's marriage to Diana finally turned out, I thank the stars for my sister's narrow escape.

Musicians and actors were my royalty, which is fitting for my time and place. And, although I was about 10 years too young, I wanted to be a hippi and I believed in hippi-ness. I bought the package--so much so that I still work for peace and justice in my own way and expose the odd bit of bullshit here and there.

This was my vision of Daniel Boone--
also pop-culture based

One of my poems talks about being Daniel Boone and whether or not I would have dared what he dared, and the poem concludes that "I'm still a Daniel Boone--of a kind." I like that. And maybe it's just an egotistical illusion, but I at least hope Daniel Booneism is at the core of my identity. Keep your fingers crossed!

Sir Gawain & the Loathly Lady, by Selina Hastings

The cover reflects the high level of the
decorative elements.

I will try to copy in some of the illustrations from this gorgeous book because Selina Hastings' retelling of Sir Gawain and the Loathly Lady strikes first at the eyes with its lush drawings and its intricate designs. This 9" x 9" (small cake pan!)  24-page picture book is crammed with art--wall to wall. Each page has an intricate border of vines and crests. Each illustration (beautiful in itself) is bordered and framed. Small patches of each page are filled in with a patterned design like a fabric swatch of brocade, silk, or linen. The printer did not use gold ink, but the color scheme gives that effect--the feeling of old gold. In fact, I held the book up to the sunny window to make sure it didn't have gold ink, the feeling was that strong.

The Loathly Lady herself

The illustrations range from the ultra close-up of an old woman's hand to a beautiful distant landscape and tie directly to the action of the story. Each illustration contains patterns and fabrics and rich color. The art in Loathly Lady sets the mood of medievalism--a time of fabric and precious metals and gilt and gem. Everything is drawn and painted to the greater glory of God. The story is much older than medieval times, but it is told in that context.

Loathly Lady is a story of daring and disguise, love and loyalty. King Arthur is challenged to answer a difficult question or to lose his kingdom--What is it that women most desire? An ugly old lady gives him the answer, but in turn requires that Arthur find a husband among his men for her. Sir Gawain steps forward to do his duty by his lord. And, he holds true to his word and marries her. Everyone at court is filled with awe and pity for him. Well, of course, the woman turns out to be bewitched and Gawain breaks the spell through the answer to the question. He gives her what she and all women most desire--to have their own way.

Queen Ann from The Tudors--great costumes

There's a bit of tongue in cheek in this story, but no mockery. The ugly old woman is not mocked or scorned by Gawain. And giving women their own way is truly a sign of trust and love, not just a snarky statement about women being overly demanding.

BBCAmerica has been running a series called "The Tudors." It's a pot-boiler of court intrigue (and sex) set in the 1580s, of course. The costuming and hairdos and sets are sumptuous and exquisite, lavish in fabric and pattern. The series is like the imagery of Sir Gawain and the Loathly Lady come to life. Only in atmosphere do they vary. Loathly Lady is atmospheric and moody, dark and mysterious. "The Tudors" is glaring and concrete, exposing all to the camera (and at times, truly ALL). Neither work shows the yucky side of medieval times--the sewage running down the middle of the street, the bad skin from surviving smallpox, the lice and rats, the smell of body odor, and the sheer drudgery of the lives of most people. Both works are fantasy, whether dimly or brightly lit.

Loathly Lady is told consistent with the great Arthurian legends, such as "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" and "Morte d'Arthur." Hastings is true to the conventions of those stories and does not try to reinterpret or bring forth any kind of agenda. I admire that. In a sense, she deeply honors the story telling of the heroic genre. The story is light but it does not poke fun at anyone.

I don't see this book as being necessarily a children's book. The Arthur stories are multi-age and enduring for all of us. However, children would especially appreciate the dilemma of Gawain and Arthur being somewhat painted into a corner. Their honorable behavior makes the ending somehow more satisfying. And of course, there are weddings and journeys and horses and all that art. A treasure for us all.

Me and the Arthur Legend

My first falling in love with the Arthur legend came through Mary Stewart's wonderful book called The Crystal Cave (and its sequels). The Crystal Cave is Merlin's story and is just beautifully done. I still imagine myself sometimes in the cave itself with its glinting light and hard angles. I read this book in middle school and then several times thereafter.

After the imagery of Stewart, I had a hard time appreciating the play/movie "Camelot," another key retelling of the legend. It was just all wrong to me--people looked wrong and were so facile. But now I love it. I love the slyness of the wit and yet its sincere respect for the idea of a Camelot--a beautiful, glowing time of beauty and love and ideals that exists mostly as an inspiration of the imagination--my own imagination.

The Lady of Shalot as I imagined her in Idylls
of the King

Most modern intrepretations (including BBCAmerica's "Merlin") leave me cold. They are too self-centered or too agenda-based. The story fell from Mary Stewart like water in a stream. She just let it flow.

The other telling that figures greatly in my love of the Arthur legend is Tennyson's Idylls of the King, which I read and examined in college (thank you, Professor Susan Lorsch). I fit those stories in with the imagery I had developed from Crystal Cave. Idylls was wonderful and sad and salacious all at the same time--just as the legend should be.

I would say that Peter Jackson's Tokien movies give the best match for the imagery I see in my mind from Crystal Cave. Blend the poignancy of those films with the sensationalism of "The Tudors" and we might just have it--my personal vision of Arthur: Aragorn with better hygiene!

Great Northern? by Arthur Ransome

Great Northern?, by Arthur Ransome, is the final book in a long series, none of which I have yet read. I got this last book because it was the only title by this author in my library--I'll catch up with the other books as soon as I get caught up with other reading.

So, I was already supposed to know all the characters and the conventions of the series. These were: (1) children traveling to remote places with minimal adult supervision; (2) a mystery or adventure; (3) an environmental orientation; and (4) lessons woven through the text. Great Northern (I will leave off the question mark from now on) was very much a here and now book. There were mysteries and unknowns, but it was the job of the children to find the actual or "real" source of the unexplained.

Please note that there was no "series cystitis" with this book--I gradually gleaned the conventions of the series--I was not whacked over the head with updates from previous books as is so common with modern mystery series.

This book was quite sweet. Eight children and one adult were on a yachting trip. At least, it seamed like a yacht-sized vessel. It had both sails and an engine--and the children were completely proficient with both technologies from their lifetimes of adventures. The real hero of this book is Dick, one of the younger children who took on the role of ship's naturalist (in the best tradition of Darwin). Dick's obsession was birds. He had a life list and had researched the birds he was likely (and unlikely) to see on this boat trip to the Hebrides off of Scotland. He makes a sighting of a nesting pair of what he thinks (hence the question mark) are great northern divers, which are thought to never nest in the British Isles. The book involves the development of a threat to the birds and the heroic action of the children (and Dick in particular) to save them.

Great Northern started off slow...each of the children was laboriously introduced, as well as the adult chaperon and the boat itself. As the plot unfolded, the book sped up some and although it was still quite a slow read, I found myself engaged in the action and the setting. I felt acutely the threat to the birds and fully appreciated Dick's bravery. Great Northern shows that action need not be destructive to be exciting.

This book is very British, very cheerio and stiff upper lip and noblesse oblige. The children are to be fitted for life through productive activity in an idealized setting. Quaint. The native Scots were pretty well stereotyped as bagpipe playing buffoons.

The success of this book was not in the plotting or the setting or the themes or the characters--it was in the detailed descriptions that led to my feeling that I had been on a vacation too. I have the distinct feeling that I was there, that I rowed to a small island in the dead of night with a camera, that I led the villains on a merry chase away from the birds. I was as sorry as the children in the book when the book ended.

Sidebar: New Resource

The reading list that I have now been working on since late 2009 has gotten a boost from my library's joining with other local libraries to combine their collections electronically if not physically. Now when I search the catalog of my local Herbert Wescoat Memorial Library, I can call up and reserve books from a half dozen or more libraries. So, I have high hopes of actually reading every single book on the Eager Reader's list that I downloaded on June 10, 2009, according to the printout.

Just to review: I work for a youth development organization. We are always challenging the young adults to set lofty goals and then to chip away at them for the long haul. I decided I needed a challenge for myself so I would participate also in this process. I chose the project of reading a 12-page list of books from Eager Readers--their list entitled "The Best of the Best." And most of the books have been great. And I have been greatly enriched. I thought that I might never find some of the books...but now that fear is dissolved. Full speed ahead...