From a 200th-anniversary edition of Clement C. Moore’s Christmas Eve tale to lightheartedly loopy poems for every day of the year, check out some of my suggestions for holiday books to give the kids in your life. Check out the New York Times roundup here.
Check out my latest for the NYT Book Review.
If I’ve been acting a little “extra” these days, chalk it up to recent quality time with “Anne of Green Gables,” the classic 1908 novel by L.M. Montgomery about a spirited red-haired orphan with a flair for melodrama. “I cannot tie myself down to anything so unromantic as dishwashing at this thrilling moment,” I declared one evening after forcing my family to admire a particularly pretty sunset. Another day, as I skimmed the class notes in my alumni magazine, I told my husband, “My life is a perfect graveyard of buried hopes.” And after my neighbor kindly offered to check my mail while I was away, I nearly blurted, “You are a bosom friend.”
Like millions of readers — the original book has sold more than 50 million copies and remained continuously in print — I was captivated as a child by “Anne of Green Gables” and its sequels. The plight and possibilities of orphanhood, the hearty meals and daunting chores of farm life, the catastrophic debacles with things like green hair dye all made a lively impression on me, a Korean American girl growing up on 1980s Long Island. Later, my fandom was solidified by the CBC’s popular mini-series, memorable for the breathtaking beauty of Prince Edward Island and for Marilla Cuthbert’s merciless hair bun….
My obsession with food in children’s books is no secret to anybody who’s read this blog. Here’s a piece I wrote in the November 8, 2020 issue of the NYT Book Review about four books for kids where food plays a central role: MEASURING UP by Lily LaMotte, Illustrated by Ann Xu; A PLACE AT THE TABLE by Saadia Faruqi and Laura Shovan; AMERICAN AS PANEER PIE by Supriya Kelkar; THE SURPRISING POWER OF A GOOD DUMPLING by Wai Chim
A few weeks ago I wrote a piece for the New York Times “At Home” section about a craft project called a “Flibber,” which you make from a few sheets of newspaper. The craft was suggested by a Times reader who fondly remembered learning how to make it from an old children’s book called How to Make Flibbers, etc. by Robert Lopshire. You can read the story here.
This is the same Robert Lopshire who wrote and illustrated the 1960 Beginner Books classic Put Me in the Zoo, about a magical polka dotted creature who, for some reason, wants to live in a zoo.
Put Me in the Zoo is a little problematic to read today, mostly because it makes no sense that this talking creature would be actively lobbying zookeepers to let him live in a cage. By the end of the book, the two kids he meets convince him that the CIRCUS is actually the place for him because he’s so good at impressing crowds with his tricks. (We’ll leave out what we now know about Barnum & Bailey.) But these points aside, it’s a charming rhyming book very much in line with other Beginner Books by P.D. Eastman and Dr. Seuss.
Then I realized that Robert Lopshire, who died in 2002, had illustrated a book that I totally loved as a kid: Big Max by Kin Platt (1965), part of the Harper & Row “I Can Read Mystery” series. Big Max was the first mystery I had ever encountered, and I was fascinated by the illustrations: the royal robes of the King of Pooka Pooka; Big Max’s bushy mustache; the palace rooms overflowing with rubies, emeralds and gold; the giant pink cake at the very end.
I was also rapt by the image of Big Max at home; the man lived in a disturbingly grim room with cracked walls and an old crate for furniture. Of course, now I see that Lopshire was having some fun portraying a down-in-the-dumps NYC (note the Empire State Building in the window).
I wanted to learn more about Lopshire, but I found surprisingly little about him, not even in my ol’ reliable reference, Children’s Books and their Creators (ed. Anita Silvey). I did find a nice post in Vintage Kids’ Books My Kid Loves and also the below obituary, which revealed that Lopshire was a creative art director for Beginner Books when it first launched. And that he was a Navy Coast Guard veteran of WW2.
Though most of his books are long out of print, I was able to find copies of a few through my library. His Flibber book must have been a hit because he also published a followup, How to Make Snop Snappers and Other Fine Things. Both these books are fantastic. Every project requires only simple household materials, and the illustrated instructions are conveyed in the simplest and most kid-friendly way.
And the delightful names he gives his projects! You can make a Clompy Clown, a Link Link Chain, a Two-horned Noser, and even a Creepy Willy. (That last one sounds alarming but is basically a bent strip of paper that “creeps” when you blow it across the floor.)
Still, I would daresay that Lopshire’s magnum opus is his A Beginner’s Guide to Building and Flying Model Airplanes (1967). Ostensibly for children, it’s an exhaustive and authoritative 128-page book that guides you through everything from soldering metals to the ins and outs of different woods to troubleshooting battery-powered engines. This book was obviously written with a true passion for model planes and also for sharing knowledge.
I also stumbled onto a cool little piece of the Lopshire puzzle. In this 1974 New York Times story about a world championship for model airplane enthusiasts (“World’s Top‐Flight Modelists Vie at Lakehurst”) he’s identified as “a children’s writer who is the spokesman for the Academy of Model Aeronautics.”
Used copies of Lopshire’s model airplanes book start at about $100 on Amazon. I loved reading the comments from readers (who seem to be primarily older men, as you’d expect) who remember this book with so much affection.
I keep thinking that Lopshire must have been an amazing dad who not only had appreciation for funny picture books but relished breaking out the tool kit and making things with his kids.
I recently viewed three YA novels with Korean-American teens at their center for the NYT Book Review: Frankly in Love by David Yoon, Somewhere Only We Know by Maurene Goo, and Permanent Record by Mary H.K. Choi. This was a dream assignment for me, bringing together my love for YA with my more recent interest in telling the stories of Korean-Americans.
For about a year now, my friend Juliana Sohn and I have been co-hosting an arts and culture podcast for the non-profit organization KoreanAmericanStory.org. On our podcast, called K-Pod, we interview Korean-American artists, writers, actors, chefs and other creative types about their life and work. One of the questions I most love asking guests is what they were like in high school. After all, the teenage years are all about questioning your identity — and when you’re growing up caught between two cultures, the question of who you are and how you fit in can be especially hard to answer.
You can read the full text of the reviews here.
Download our podcast, K-Pod, here!
Last week, during the 100 degree NYC heatwave, I popped over to the library to kill some time. [Side note: who else, when they hear the phrase “killing time” thinks about Tock from Phantom Tollbooth sobbing, “It’s bad enough wasting time without killing it”? ] I came across a gorgeous large-format book by French author-illustrator Benjamin Chaud called Little Bear’s Big House (2018).
In the story, a precocious little bear wanders into a house in the woods. Halfway through, Chaud gives us this showstopper: A cross section of the house so big and so detailed that your eye can slowly wander from room to room. (The book’s dimensions are 9″ x 14″ so it’s truly immersive.)
I posted a pic on Instagram and immediately got tons of comments from other picture book fans reminiscing about other cross-sections in picture books. There’s something completely captivating about these illustrations: They’re the 2D version of playing with dollhouses, simultaneously instilling in the reader a sense of wonder and also a sense of god-like mastery.
To start, there are the Richard Scarry classics. For many kids, these cutaway views of Busytown are the first cross-section pictures they ever see. The labeled illustrations are perfect for an adult reading with a child, making each moment something to talk about. At the same time, Scarry makes sure there’s something funny to laugh about with each vignette, so the pictures are not simply didactic.
The other author that probably comes to mind with these sorts of illustrations is David Macaulay. The How Things Work author is legendary for the clarity of his explanations and the precision of his architectural and mechanical drawings. This is from Castle (1977):
In the UK, the writer-illustrator Stephen Biesty has single-handedly dominated the field of technical cross-sections with his Incredible Cross-Section series for Dorling Kindersley. He’s very influenced by Stephen Macaulay and the 1950s English illustrator Leslie Ashwell Wood.
While Biesty and Macauley’s illustrations explicate hidden mechanisms in the real world, my personal preference has always learned toward the fictional.
For instance, here’s Gyo Fujikawa’s take on the Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe (featuring the Old Woman whaling each poor kid on their way inside—how amazing is this?!) :
There is also the lesser-known Babar book, Babar and Father Christmas (1940), one of the last written by Jean de Brunhoff. In this one, readers get a glimpse of Father Christmas’s house, including “the doll room, the soldier room, the train room … dwarfs’ dormitories, the lifts and the machine-rooms.”
Are you familiar with The Big Green Book by Robert Graves, illustrated by none other than Maurice Sendak? I have to admit, I was not. It’s about a little boy who discovers a book of magic in the attic and learns all sorts of spells:
And here’s the inside of Pippi Longstocking’s house, as imagined by Dutch illustrator Carl Nicolaas Hollander (1934-1995):
One series I learned about from a commenter on Instagram is the Brambly Hedge series by British author Jill Barklem. (The first in the series, Spring Story, came out in 1980.) The stories follow the adventures of a community of mice who live in the English countryside — the illustrations are very much in the tradition of Beatrix Potter and include some delightful cross-sections of the cozy mouse houses:
Not surprisingly, mice lend themselves well to these sorts of illustrations. When my daughter was little we loved reading Mary and The Mouse, the Mouse and Mary by Beverly Donofrio (2007). The illustrations by Barbara McClintock depict the parallel worlds of humans and mice, with the mice living directly beneath the floorboards of the family’s chic midcentury home:
One of my all-time favorite writers and illustrators is William Pène du Bois, who gave us Twenty-One Balloons and William’s Doll. He wrote a book called The Three Policemen (I wrote about it previously here) which is totally charming but nothing all that special, except for the end pages which are unforgettable. They feature the cross-section of a fantastical ship designed to look like a sea serpent:
Here’s a book I learned about from interior designer Mara Miller, when I interviewed her for a story about designers’ favorite children’s books. It’s called The Fourteen Bears in Summer and Winter by Evelyn Scott (sadly, it’s out of print) and features the stylish homes of bears:
Speaking of bears, I am not a big fan of the Berenstain Bears. But this cross-section of their treehouse is pretty darn fun (note the basement Ping-Pong table):
I am very fond of the illustrations of Japanese author Mitsumasa Anno. (Incidentally, Anno is still alive and is 93 years old!). This is from Anno’s Counting Book (1975):
What else? Do you like gnomes?
There’s also the wordless book Full Moon Soup by Alistair Graham (2007), which is set in a baroque Fawlty Towers-type of hotel. It feels like The Sims!
Sophie Blackall can do no wrong, in my opinion. Hello, Lighthouse (winner of the 2019 Caldecott) has this image of the interior of a lighthouse that feels absolutely perfect in every way, from the sage green interior walls to that tidy bed with single pillow.
And now I will just leave you with this final cross-section, from David Macauley’s Toilet:
What good ones have I missed? Please tell me in the comments here or over on my Instagram @mrslittlebooks
Thanks for reading!
I reviewed four middle grade books for the latest special children’s book section of the New York Times Book Review: My Father’s Words by Patricia MacLachlan; Saving Winslow by Sharon Creech; Squirm by Carl Hiassen; Winnie’s Great War by Lindsay Mattick and Josh Greenhut. You can read the reviews HERE.
Who is this extraordinary book for, exactly? It’s hard to say.
Sy Montgomery is a renowned nature writer who’s authored more than ten adult nonfiction books, including The Soul of an Octopus, which was a finalist for the National Book Award in 2015. Over her impressive career she’s swum with piranhas and electric eels in the Amazon, searched for tree kangaroos in New Guinea, and experienced near-death experiences studying gorillas in Zaire. Montgomery is also the author of 16 books for kids, including a fantastic biography of Temple Grandin aimed at middle graders.
Her latest, How to be a Good Creature: A Memoir in Thirteen Animals is one of the rare non-fiction books that you could arguably call middle grade, YA or adult. The advance copy I was sent came to me via from The Houghton Mifflin young readers PR team. And the very sweet cover art by Rebecca Green and large-point type didn’t exactly fight the impression that this was a book intended for 10 and 12 year-olds. It’s a memoir organized by animal: Thirteen chapters covering thirteen animals (from dogs and pigs to tree kangaroos), each offering insight into the creatures and also Sy’s growth as an individual.
But as I read it, I started to wonder.
There was a lot of dark stuff in there about the author’s depression, career crises and parental discord. There was even one stomach-turning incident involving the author’s mother and a virginity check.* But mostly, the book was about the wonder of these incredible animals. As I plowed through the book I kept thinking to myself that I wanted to share these fascinating stories with my own kids.
Throughout the book Montgomery befriends the unlikeliest of creatures, including a tarantula in French Guiana and an octopus at the New England Aquarium (I know the word “befriend” sounds ridiculous, but it happens). And her passion for her calling is totally inspiring — at age 26, she’s sleeping in a tent in South Australia wilderness, mapping the burrows of wombats, digging through emu droppings and having the time of her life. For a young person dreaming about what they will be when they grow up, it may be totally eye opening.
So, who is this book for, really? As it turns out, it’s officially an adult non-fiction book. But I would hand it to any teenager with an appreciation for nature, animals or gorgeously written confessional personal essays.
*NB: For most 8-12 year-olds, there’s probably too much meditative midlife-crises stuff to keep them interested all the way through. But the chapters on the pig (“Christopher Hogwood,” chapter 3), the tarantula (“Clarabelle,” chapter 4), and the octopus (“Octavia,” chapter 9) will be totally captivating.
I loved working on this story for Architectural Digest. The concept was super simple: I asked a dozen top interior designers and architects to name a favorite book from childhood that somehow influenced them in their work today. Thank you to India Mahdavi, Ellie Cullman, Miles Redd, Sheila Bridges, Stephen Alesch, Mara Miller, Alex Papachristidis, David Alhadeff, Deborah Berke, Barbara Bestor, Martyn Lawrence Bullard and Brian Sawyer, who took the time to give such thoughtful responses.
Some of these books I had never even heard of! Mara Miller of Carrier & Company said her favorite book growing up was something called The Fourteen Bears: Summer and Winter. This book, by Evelyn Scott, was originally published in 1973 and is now out of print.
I found it at the library and I could immediately see its appeal. Each bear has a home in a distinct decorating style. One bear has decorated her quarters in French Empire style, another has gone full Gustavian, another does American Colonial. It’s so good!
In case you’re curious, here’s one of Mara’s interiors. (In fact, it’s Jessica Chastain’s home, shot for Arch Digest.)
I also loved architect Deborah Berke’s book choice, Mistress Masham’s Repose. This 1946 middle-grade novel by T.H. White (The Sword in the Stone) describes the adventures of an English girl who discovers a group of Lilliputians living on her family’s derelict country estate. Berke, who is dean of Yale’s School of Architecture, is probably best known for her modernist architecture, but she has also done a lot of incredible work reimagining old buildings. Here’s one example below, her transformation of the Richardson Olmstead Complex in Buffalo, NY (a 140-year-old hospital with National Historic Landmark status), into a gorgeous hotel.
Hotel Henry, Richardson Olmsted Complex, Buffalo NY. Architect: Deborah Berke Partners.
“I think my appreciation of a building’s patina and how materials change over time began with [Mistress Masham’s Repose],” she says.
More proof that the books you read as a kid stick with you for life.
You can read the full story at architecturaldigest.com HERE
This is exactly how James Comey felt when Donald Trump tried to hug him in front of all the other law enforcement officials in the Blue Room.
You know, that moment when Comey tried to hide in the drapes? And Donald pulled him close with all his might so they could be photographed in an embrace? 
The Humbug is a liar, a name dropper, and a tacky dresser. “A very dislikable fellow,” as the Spelling Bee puts it.
