Category Archives: Classics

Anne of Everywhere: On re-reading Anne of Green Gables and its contemporary reboots

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….

Continues here

In Search of Robert Lopshire

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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.

Lightbulb moment: Donald Trump is the Humbug from The Phantom Tollbooth

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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.

Cakes I Have Known

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Maybe because I grew up in a household where we ate fruit for dessert, I didn’t have a lot of experience with cake. Classic all-American, Betty Crocker-style layer cakes —as high and round as a hatbox, thickly iced on the top and sides — to me, these desserts existed in the realm of the slightly unreal. I saw them on TV, under glass domes at diners, and most of all, in picture books. For the most part, these weren’t books about cakes. These exuberant confections — often pink, with a wiggly decorated border — were usually there as plot punctuation, existing somewhere in the background, maybe rounding out the scene of a party. But the page with the cake picture inevitably became my favorite part of the entire book.

I was recently reminded of this when I heard that Maira Kalman’s newest book was called, quite simply, Cake. It’s a combination of memoir, art book and cookbook that’s very Maira. After all, she’s been lovingly illustrating cakes — many in her children’s books — for years now.

Here are some of my favorite cakes in children’s books:

BIG MAX by Kin Platt, illustrated by Robert Lopshire (1965)

In the I Can Read book by Kin Platt, the King of Pooka Pooka’s pet elephant goes missing and it’s up to detective Big Max to find him. I was enthralled as much by Max’s sleuthing skills as by the birthday cake served at the end. This cake is about as big as a Goodyear tire and to my adult eyes now, looks about as tasty as one. But I know I dreamed about this confection and treasured the near-final scene showing Big Max licking frosting off his finger.

Go, Dog, Go! by P.D. Eastman (1961)

Then there’s the dog party scene in P.D. Eastman’s classic. I loved reading this book to my kids and we would always linger over the insane canine free-for-all at the end. At this tree-top party there are presents, a trampoline, a canon (!), a trapeeze and, of course, the main attraction: the layer cake (again, frosted pink). This one is the size of a wading pool and you could only describe the pieces being served as wedges (not slices). The dogs are literally leaping towards this cake from all directions.

Chicken Soup with Rice by Maurice Sendak (1962)

As a kid I loved the idea that you could bring a snowman inside your house, no problem. And it all made perfect sense, as long as you didn’t let the hot soup melt the snowman. I thought about what I’d do if I were in the house: I would first eat the soup, and then (duh) the cake.

Lyle and the Birthday Party by Bernard Waber (1966)

In this installation of the Lyle series, our favorite adopted crocodile starts to feel “mean, green jealous,” when he realizes he’s missing out on the inalienable right to a birthday party. In his fantasies, Mrs. Primm is lovingly decorating a homemade birthday cake for him. You have to love the way Lyle is clutching his hands and looking upon the thing in joyful disbelief. I feel like this is what it would be like to have Ina Garten making your cake.

A Birthday for Frances by Russell Hoban (1968)

Frances is seething with jealousy over her little sister Gloria’s birthday. Lillian Hoban gives us another giant pink-frosted cake (why were so many of these cakes pink?!) so big it takes two badgers to hoist it. Frances refuses to sing “Happy Birthday” with everybody else and sings her own version: Happy Chompo to me/ Is how it ought to be/ Happy Chompo to Frances/ Happy Chompo to me. (Chompo is the candy bar she was planning to give Gloria as a gift).

Thunder Cake by Patricia Polacco (1997)

Jumping ahead a few decades, there is this strawberry-topped chocolate cake that a grandmother and granddaughter bake during a thunderstorm in Patricia Polacco’s book. The combination of chocolate with “three overripe tomatoes” is so strange I need to imagine that it’s actually good, like green tomato pie a la Ma Ingalls. Polacco includes a recipe as well.

Thirteen Words by Lemony Snicket, illustrated by Maira Kalman (2010)

And now we come full circle. Illustrated by Maira Kalman, this not very plot-driven but totally delightful play on a word book creates a narrative about friendship based on thirteen key words: Bird, Despondent, Dog, Busy, Convertible, Goat, Hat, Haberdashery, Scarlet, Baby, Panache, Mezzo-Soprano, and, of course, Cake. This spread alone is worth the price of admission.

I know I’m missing some important cakes in books. What am I forgetting??? Please tell me in the comments!

The Best, Least-Read Beatrix Potter Book: The Tale of the Pie and The Patty Pan

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Don’t expect your kids to be as taken with The Tale of the Pie and the Patty Pan as they might be with Peter Rabbit or Squirrel Nutkin. But this Beatrix Potter story — #17 in her Peter Rabbit series — is my new personal favorite Potter.

The story is about Ribby, a cat, who invites her friend Duchess, a dog, for tea. Duchess is “dreadfully afraid” that Ribby plans to serve mouse pie (which she absolutely cannot eat) and so comes up with a cockamamie plan. She will sneak into Ribby’s kitchen with a replacement pie, swap the two without Ribby knowing, and then enjoy the party, all without causing offense. Of course, Duchess’s plan goes all screwy. She unknowingly eats the mouse pie, thinking it’s her veal-and-ham pie. And when she sees there’s no patty pan left inside the pie dish (I had to look up what a patty pan is — a tin pan inside a pie that helps hold up the crust), she goes into a nervous fit, thinking she’s swallowed it. The doctor is called, the whole neighborhood hears about it, etc, etc.

At heart, this is a story about two bored gentlewomen who fill their empty days by planning and attending tea parties over which they make unnecessary fuss. Their social engagements are as artificial and prescribed as a formal dance. The morning of the event, the two friends, rushing to get ready, pass each other on the street but don’t even greet each other.

“They only bowed to each other; they did not speak, because they were going to have a party.”

Ribby madly dusts, polishes and puts out her “best china tea-set.” Duchess (after breaking into Ribby’s house and swapping pies) brushes her fur and “passed the time until the clock struck four,” because she has clearly nothing else to do. Then, she arrives a bit too early and she must “wait a little while in the lane” so she may arrive fashionably late at a quarter past four.

The friends exchange rehearsed pleasantries:

“Is Mrs. Ribson at home?” inquired Duchess.

“Come in! and how do you do, my dear Duchess?” cried Ribby. “I hope I see you well?”

“Quite well, I thank you, and how do you do, my dear Ribby?”

and put on a show of gracious congeniality while secretly judging each other.

“How fast Duchess ie eating!” thought Ribby to herself.

The comedy is as sharp as in any Barbara Pym novel. These friends would rather lie to each other than risk a social misstep. And the whole afternoon devolves into chaos and hysteria because neither of them say what they really think.

It’s delightful!!!!!

And the illustrations —with the profusion of garden flowers, exquisite interiors and Ribby’s lilac silk gown and embroidered apron — are some of the most beautiful of all of Beatrix Potter’s works.

The Wrinkle in Time film: We Came, We Saw, We Cringed. Here’s a Better Option

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Read the graphic novel instead!!!

You could tell from the trailer that Ava DuVernay’s A Wrinkle in Time was going to be painful. The colors were way too bright. The special effects —for a $100 million movie — were weirdly cheap looking. Storm Reid was much too pretty, with none of Meg’s awkwardness. And I felt frankly embarrassed for Mindy Kaling every time I had to see her totter across the field in that goofy dress.

Still, I dragged the family to see it because I had hope and because I was influenced by the grudgingly positive review from A.O. Scott (“Fans of the book … can breathe a sigh of relief, and some may also find that their breath has been taken away.” Really?)

Of course it was much worse than we had feared. Where the tone should have been mysterious and tense, it was cute and sitcom-y. The camera lingered way too long on the kids’ open-mouthed expressions of awe. Reese Witherspoon’s transformation into a giant cabbage was mortifying. There were too many closeups of Oprah where you could practically see the dots of glue used to stick the rhinestones on her face. The actor playing Charles Wallace had zero charisma. The pacing was off (like, how did Meg free her dad so quickly?) I could go on and on.

So … here is some advice. If you’re a fan of Madeline L’Engle’s novel and want another taste of it, look for the fantastic graphic novel adaptation by Hope Larson, which came out in 2012. Unlike DuVernay’s film, Larson’s take is very close to Madeline L’Engle’s novel in both spirit and plot. Here’s a look at the opening spread:

I love that she starts with the opening words of the novel: “It was a dark and stormy night.” And the way Larson plays with layers, scale, and moody tones of black, white, and blue support the story beautifully.

Purists will be happy to know that she includes all the memorable scenes that DuVernay didn’t, like the snack of liverwurst sandwiches and hot cocoa, meeting Aunt Beast, and the episode with the little kid whose ball didn’t bounce in time with the others. Larson’s drawings also offer a welcome clarity when it comes to the conceptual discussions of space and time. My kids loved it — I suspect perhaps even more than the actual novel, but let’s not dwell on that. P.S. Larson has a new graphic novel coming out this May titled All Summer Long, about a thirteen-year-old girl facing a summer vacation of guitar playing, boredom, strained friendships and new friendships. Here’s the cover, which I already love:

Another Reason to Love Daniel Day-Lewis: The Phantom Thread and The Tailor of Gloucester

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I absolutely loved Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Phantom Thread. So controlled, so funny, so sumptuous, so mysterious. Paul Thomas Anderson was talking about it the other day on Fresh Air and when Terry Gross mentioned it had the feeling of a “fairy-tale” (think: magical gowns, good and bad “witches”) he said that he was inspired in part by the gothic Christmas horror stories of M.R. James and also … The Tailor of Gloucester by Beatrix Potter.

Evidently, Daniel Day-Lewis used to read the book to his children every Christmas Eve. And then Anderson started doing the same with his own kids.

Frontispiece: The Tailor Mouse c.1902 Helen Beatrix Potter 1866-1943

If you don’t recall, this is the story about a poor tailor who has been hired to make an elaborate coat for the mayor’s wedding. He falls extremely ill before it’s finished and isn’t able to finish the garment. But then, the little mice who live in his house come to the rescue: They finish sewing the suit, all while fending off the tailor’s cat, Simpkin, who is trying to eat them. And when the coat is finished, everybody marvels at the incredible craftsmanship of the buttonholes. (Such tiny stitches, “they looked as if they had been made by little mice!”)

When PTA mentioned the book, what immediately came to mind was the palette of the book’s illustrations. Just like in the movie, there are a lot of gorgeous pinks:

And also jewel-colored blues and greens. (Remember the wallpaper in the movie’s breakfast room? Unfortunately, I can’t find a photo of it.)

Aside from the visual aspects, there is a very PTA element of obsession in Potter’s story. Just like couturier Reynolds Woodcock, the tailor of Gloucester is an obsessed artist and perfectionist. In his fevered delirium the tailor keeps repeating: “No more twist! No more twist!” (As a kid reading the book, this stuck with me because I had never heard of twist — turns out it’s a special kind of silk thread for button holes.)

And of course there are those scenes of the feverish Daniel Day-Lewis lying in bed, just like Potter shows the tailor sick in his own bed:

Here’s the transcript from Fresh Air:

ANDERSON: “I don’t know if it’s a fairy tale, but there’s a great book by Beatrix Potter called “The Tale Of Gloucester.” Do you know that one?

TERRY GROSS: “I don’t.”

ANDERSON: “That is about a tailor who is meant to build a suit for the mayor in town. And the night before, he gets sick, and he can’t finish the suit. He’s so sick he can’t finish the suit. So all the mice come out to help finish the suit while fending off the cat that’s trying to kill them. And it’s a beautiful story. And Daniel always liked to read it to his kids Christmas Eve, and I’ve sort of started to do the same thing for a while and – yeah, there you go.”

Mean Girls of 1974: Thoughts running through my head while reading Judy Blume’s Blubber for the first time

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I’m not sure why I never read Blubber when I was a kid. But the other night I finally picked it up and yow. While I can’t say it’s an enjoyable 153 pages, it’s brilliant and fascinating on multiple levels, from the details of everyday suburban life in the 1970s to the jaw-dropping brutality of the fifth-graders at the center of the story. The novel is definitely worth a read, if only to remind yourself that while many aspects of childhood have changed (these kids have an unsupervised lunch period at school, for instance, giving them the perfect opportunity to torture Linda) other things remain the same: Nice fifth grade girls from nice families can seem totally normal while being secretly sadistic torturers. It is psychologically dead-on.

I don’t usually mark up my books, but I did it this time because 1) I knew I was never going to read Blubber again and 2) It’s the kind of book where you find yourself muttering out loud. Circling sentences and scribbling things like “Holy Shit!” on the newsprint-soft pages of an old paperback with an Uni-Ball pen can be oddly satisfying.

Tracy Wu!

Tracy Wu, Jill’s best friend, is depicted as utterly unexotic. Daughter of local physician Dr. Wu (naturally), Tracy collects stamps, eats hot dogs and lives in fear of getting on bully Wendy’s bad side — just like Jill. For a book written in the 1970s, this is totally refreshing.

It’s only much later in the novel that Tracy gets called a “chink.” Because it seems to come out of the blue, it seems that much uglier. Very effective.

The ubiquitous bum costume

A lot of kids show up at school on Halloween dressed up like ~~the homeless~~ “bums,” complete with smudgy faces and bundled-up bandanas tied onto sticks. In fact, the hobo costume is so common among her peers that Jill deems it “nothing original.”

I remember dressing as a bum too. It was a very easy costume to pull off. Sometimes I’d just dress up like a bum for fun, even when it wasn’t Halloween.**

Young kids, sharp knives

Jill and her little brother (I think he’s nine) carve their own pumpkins every year. The jack o’lanterns usually turn out somewhat lopsided but nobody loses a finger and it is NBD.In my own household, this was the first year I let my 13-year-old carve our pumpkin all by herself. For this, I felt like I deserved a “daredevil mom of the year” award.

Jill is no bookworm.

If you ask me, there are WAY too many middle-grade books featuring earnest, deeply bookish protagonists who serve as stand-ins for the authors’ younger selves. For most kids, It’s impossible to relate to these nerds.

Blubber‘s Jill, on the other hand, is an all-around mediocre student who gets Cs in social studies and struggles in math. It’s the mean girls, Wendy and Caroline, who are the star students.

Who’s afraid of fifth grade girls? Me.

Chapter 11 is when the torturing of Linda goes from nasty to horrific. The girls make Linda recite “I am Blubber, the smelly whale of class 206” before they allow her to get a sip of water, use the bathroom, eat lunch or get on the bus. Bullying becomes a group activity the girls look forward to because it makes school life less “boring” for everyone. Blume lays bare the ugly truth that for some kids, sadism can be fun.As a desperate survival tactic Linda even starts to volunteer these words before anyone makes her, in the hopes of appeasing her tormentors. This sounds like something straight out of a Maoist re-education camp.

And nobody gets expelled?!

Just when you think it can’t get worse, shit gets even more twisted. The girls hold Linda down and force her to show the boys her underpants.

Then the girls pinch Linda’s nose closed and force-feed her a piece of candy that they tell her is a chocolate-covered ant. Wendy keeps her hand over Linda’s mouth “so she couldn’t spit anything out.” Linda gags and vomits.

She is going to need years of therapy but these girls don’t even get detention.

Where are the adults? Ha!

Blume wrote Blubber years before Columbine, National Bullying Prevention Month, the movie Heathers or helicopter parenting. The adults in the book are absent, useless and blissfully oblivious to Wendy’s well-supported reign of terror. Although at one point it’s pretty clear that Linda has told her mother something about being picked on (she starts getting driven to school to avoid the bus) we never actually see her mom and the woman never raises a stink.

At one point halfway through the novel, Jill does bring up the situation with her mother in a roundabout way, telling her that there’s a girl who “lets everybody walk all over her.” Her mother says exactly what you’d expect: “You should try putting yourself in her place.” To which Jill responds exactly the way you’d expect: She ignores it.

These days schools spend a lot of effort cooking up anti-bullying programs and kindness curriculums. But I can’t help but think that preaching this stuff to kids can be a waste of time. The advice goes in one ear and out the other, and the next thing you know some poor kid is getting a chocolate-covered ant shoved in her mouth. I desperately want to believe in the recent studies suggesting that people gain empathy through reading fiction. As a book lover, I’m surely biased, but it makes sense to me. Reading Blubber, Wonder or The Hundred Dresses has got to be more effective than telling kids to “try putting themselves in other people’s shoes.” I think Judy Blume, at least, would agree.