Tag Archives: children’s literature

The Mystery of the Stuttering Parrot revisited

Anyway, the boy really likes the Three Investigators. The Mystery of the Stuttering Parrot is about how the teens with the junkyard secret base set out to find a missing parrot who only quotes Hamlet, but with a stutter[1], and end up embroiled in the sinister world of European art theft.

So, this book was written in the mid ’60s, and is very clearly of its time in some ways. The last book had some pretty glaring stereotypes, even if they were perpetrated by notional bad guys, and the next book, which I’m already reading, just casually indicated that rich women get involved in charities because they do not have enough housework to keep them busy, which, wow. Some things I’ve lightly edited on the fly as I read, others, i’m not sure where to begin.

All of that to say, this particular book has a Mexican boy named Carlos, and his uncle, usually a flower peddler but most recently a parrot peddler. They are poor immigrants, but it was honestly astounding to see them written so positively given the publication date. Nobody thought any ill of them just for being on this side of the border, and in fact at one point plans are made for the uncle to go home to Mexico to convalesce after an illness, and then probably just come back and resume his flower business, just as though we have more or less open borders and share freely with our neighbors.

It’s hard to remember, and I mean this in both the knowledge gap sense and the emotional gut punch sense, that some things about the past are better than we’d expect today and in fact maybe even better than they are, today.

Anyway, that Rolls Royce is still pretty cool. Also, like with all such series, I’m really loving the strong continuity. They’re kid books, yes, but they’re certainly better than the modern chapter books I’ve been reading to him[2]. Hooray!

[1] “To to to be, or not to to to be. That is the question.” Honestly, the payoff on that line was pretty good and has stuck with me all this time, even if almost none of the rest of the book had.
[2] I’m not not reading them to the girl, but she is not nearly as patient to sit and be read to as he was at the same age, and certainly she’s not taking much in right now, as pertains to the plot and its twists and turns.

The Secret of Terror Castle revisited

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Long, long ago, in the 1980s, I spent some brief amount of time obsessed with the Three Investigators books, as introduced by Alfred Hitchcock. It wasn’t that they solved mysteries; Joe and Frank and Nancy already had that covered. It’s that they had a secret clubhouse in a junkyard and drove around in an old model Rolls Royce. The whole idea was so enchanting, plus they got to solve mysteries on top of that? Let me in!

I’ve now read The Secret of Terror Castle to my son, and I have adult thoughts about this childhood love. In no particular order, they are these:

I am not sure how old the boys are supposed to be, 14 maybe? In any case, this book might be too old for the boy, even though he liked it. He definitely found it scary in addition to liking it, maybe just a little too scary?
The probably OCR scan I read was of the 1978 edition paperback I once and long ago read from the library, and there were just enough errors to be distracting, without being a bad scan at all. Whereas apparently the brand new Kindle version no longer has Alfred Hitchcock in it?? I am extremely offended. I also wonder what other changes they made,
There were definitely positive changes that could have been made. I have a hard time accepting the old name for Romani as a slur, since I’ve never seen or heard it used as one, but I nevertheless try not to use it, and certainly wouldn’t when describing a real person as opposed to a character. What bothered me in this book was not that usage nor the old fashioned usage for someone from eastern Asia, it was how hard into certain stereotypes that the story leaned into, even if there was an in plot reason for that to happen. I’m just not ready for the boy to grapple with casual stereotypes, because I’m not ready to have conversations about why they are a problem and would not be accepted in a book written today on the same topics. So I made some on the fly edits.
So yeah, I really wonder how much of the book has been edited for audiences that are sixty years more enlightened.
Also, the scan was of a British version of the book? Because everyone was carrying around torches instead of flashlights, even though they were in L.A. It was pretty dang weird.
On the whole, it’s fine. Certainly not as good as I remember the gestalt of the series being, but at the same time not so bad that I regret having read it. The boy was really excited by there being a hook into a new story at the end of this one. He thought maybe the book would never end, so I suppose at some point I’ll need to rustle up a copy of the second book. Plus, you know, they might improve as they go. Who’s to say?

Anyway, though, the story: there are these three friends on what would have to be summer vacation in southern California. One has a recent leg injury and works in the library, so he doesn’t do much adventuring, but is definitely the research guy. One is tall and athletic, you know, the muscle. And one is a bit fat, extremely clever, won the use of a fancy car for “thirty days of exactly 24 hours each” by ~~guessing right~~ calculating best in a “how many jelly beans are in this jar?” contest hosted by a local car rental company, and has a secret clubhouse in his uncle’s junkyard. That last one, Jupiter Jones, also has the idea to form a detective business with his friends Bob (research) and Pete (muscle), the first case of which will be to prove a local abandoned house once owned by a silent film era star is in fact haunted, so Alfred Hitchcock can use it for authenticity in his next movie,

I guess my point is even if in practice the writing is workmanlike and the mystery is at least a little predictable, you simply cannot convince me that’s anything less than a spectacular premise, rife with future possibilities,

The Truth about Triangles

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Obviously, I read to my kids all the time. Just as obviously, I do not review the hundreds of picture books and board books, nor still the dozens of chapter books that I have read. But once, almost exactly a year ago, I read Malcolm a real book, and that time has come around once more.

This time, he chose The Truth about Triangles. I wasn’t at the library when he picked it, so I don’t know if it was on one of the monthly themed displays or how he found it, but I assume he liked the picture of the pizza slice on the cover. The last one was probably 50ish pages shorter but aged identically, 12 going on 13. That said, it was a noticeably younger book than the one I’ve read this past month. And I have to say, I don’t know if Malcolm was entirely ready for this one?

In part I say this because he took quite a while to get into the groove, consistently wanting me to read something else.[1] But mostly I say it because this 12 year old is dealing with much older situations than the last batch were. Luca Salvatore has to contend with a junior high crush on the new kid in school, and with his parents’ eroding marriage, and with their eroding family pizza business, and with his overblown sense of responsibility to resolve these issues by himself and without affecting his best friendship.

Luckily, he’s a really good pizza maker, and he has an idea about getting on a reality show and winning over his celebrity crush who hosts the show, as a method of solving nearly all of these problems. But will he be able to keep everyone together and solve all of their many problems, even with such a great plan up his sleeve?

Kid book that nobody who sees this will read so: mostly, yeah. If you accept the premise that he was always going to get on the show, the book shines for dealing with the other problems in mostly thoughtful and realistic ways. Luca has to learn how to not solve everyone’s problems and just be a kid, but since pizza is his passion, he’s allowed to nevertheless solve the biggest one that way. Everything in his personal life is solved through a judicious helping of telling the truth instead of lying about how he’s fine in order to keep other people from feeling more stressed out. And the divorce…. isn’t fixed. He learns that, no, that’s not how life works. Kids cannot fix adult relationship problems, nor be responsible for them.

And so on the one hand, that was a lot of stress for Malcolm to wade through, and I get why he was so unwilling to listen to the earlier parts of the book where it’s all a quagmire of tween angst. But I’m glad to have him be matter of factly exposed to gay kids, and the idea that some parents don’t make it and the kids are not and cannot be responsible for that, and hell, even the idea that sometimes with enough passion and perseverance, problems can be magically solved. It doesn’t happen much, but it doesn’t happen never, y’know? But mostly the prior things more than that last one.

Oh, and also: the triangle as slice of pizza but also as visual metaphor for many, many three-sided relationships? It comes up a lot. Which makes it the most literary book I’ve ever read to a child. Hooray!

[1] I’m not a monster, after the first few chapters I offered for him to not finish reading it and take it back to the library. But he always vociferously refused, and he did basically devour the second half.

Grounded

I have mentioned, on occasion while justifying the snail’s pace at which I read the books I review, that I also read a lot of books to my son. Board books, picture books, and lately early chapter books[1]. 80-100 pages, almost always exactly 10 chapters, almost always with characters that are 7 or 8 years old, the kind of thing that makes it truly and painfully obvious who they are aimed at. And I mean, he cannot read them, but boy does he love them.

I, on the other hand, do not. I mean, they’re mostly fine, but they are not worth writing a review over, any more than each comic I read is. This is both in consideration of time and of content. It would be different if this were a kidbook or a comic review site, but since it isn’t, well.

All of that to say, over a period of a couple of weeks, I read Grounded to the boy, and, okay, yes it is still a kidbook, this time aimed at a tween audience either to show them Muslim-American culture or to make them feel seen as Muslim-Americans. (I couldn’t tell you which, if either, was the goal of the authors; but it was more likely the second one, based on how little hand-holding they offered for the religious terminology.) It seems to be written in “pass the typewriter” style among them, with each taking the reins of one of the four main characters, children trapped in an airport due to inclement weather after a cultural/religious conference. Said children are in search of a missing cat, which provides the narrative propulsion against which backdrop their forming friendships and individual problems (too-early adult responsibilities; replacement of a dead mother; navigating junior high in the age of social media; not-quite crippling anxiety) are projected.

If I’m being real, it reminded me of nothing so much as Stand by Me (or more properly, The Body) by Stephen King, modernized and written from a non-white perspective. There’s virtually no way this was an actual influence, so whether this says something more about my own, er, cultural background or about my low-grade obsession with King is left as an exercise for the audience.

It was, despite anything I may have said or implied up to this point, definitely a book aimed at children of a certain age[2], with the pitfalls that implies to a more discerning audience. But still. There was an emotional climax to Feek’s[3] story that made it hard for me to keep reading, both in the voice and in the eyes, if you know what I mean. (And it paid off Chekhov’s Rhyme from all the way back in chapter one, to boot.)

It’s hard to imagine recommending this to anyone who is likely to see the review, but it really is recommendable, if you know anyone in an appropriate age range.

[1] I do not understand the derivation of “chapter book”. Well, no, I mean it’s obvious what it means, what I don’t understand is how it came into vogue. Once you get past Dick and Jane and Grinches and Green Eggs and Nights before Christmas, pretty much anything more advanced has always had chapters. Why are we calling out that graduation to more advanced books now?
[2] This review is not a vehicle to showcase that my three year-old is comprehending at a twelve year-old level. He just cared about if the kids found the cat or not, and if they got in trouble or not. But it’s not not to showcase his attention span. I don’t think a ton of kids his age will sit still for 75% of a 272 page book. (I don’t want to exaggerate the accomplishment; sometimes he was all jittery, but never enough that my threats to stop reading were fulfilled.)
[3] One of the four narrators, Rafiq.

Phoebe and Her Unicorn

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I have been making much of the fact that I’m basically reading nothing, or at a snail’s pace, or what have you. This is not entirely accurate, as a) I read rather a lot of comics (currently summer 1987, Marvel time) and b) I read rather a lot of kid books, mostly to the boy.[1] So many, in fact, that if I tried to write reviews for all of them, I would frankly have little or no leisure time left for anything else. Plus, kidbook reviews really don’t fit the aesthetic of Shards of Delirium, so I’d also need a new site (easy) and a new writing style (erm, less easy) to make it happen, and long story short, I opted not to go that way.

Plus also, imagine if I included a review per reread? Yeesh.

The difference, then, with Phoebe and Her Unicorn is that I did not read it to anyone but myself, egged on by Peter S. Beagle’s[2] effusive introduction. This is one of those comic strip collections, so my categorization may be off I suppose? Also, I have no idea where the comic strip exists. Newspapers? A website? Couldn’t tell you, unless maybe if I did research. A little girl is skipping rocks, and hits a unicorn in the nose, knocking her out of her narcissistic contemplation of her own reflection. For this favor, the unicorn offers to grant a wish, and the wish that comes out is for the unicorn to be the little girl’s best friend. Is it Calvin and Hobbes but for girls? Yeah, maybe, but is that fine? Yes, yes it is.

The book is endearing, sweet, and occasionally quite funny. I do not regret the 40 minutes or so I spent reading this first collection, and if more of them appear, I’ll probably read those too.

[1] I have really complicated feelings about how we started reading to the girl a lot later than to the boy, such that she has a hard time sitting still for it, which makes it hard to read to her, especially when someone else is competing for attention. Complicated feelings, also, about how this is an obvious self-perpetuating cycle. That is the number one thing I would change about how we have parented up to this point, if I could.
[2] The Last Unicorn guy