Winning Numbers: Two Books About Math to Love (Seriously)

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Maybe you’ve never been a “math person.” Maybe you only recently learned that googolplex is not the name of the Google cafeteria. Maybe when you’re out to lunch with friends you sit quietly when the check comes, hoping someone else will calculate how much you owe. But that doesn’t mean your six-year-old isn’t fascinated by numbers.

How Much is a Million by David M. Schwartz, illustrated by Steven Kellogg

“If a goldfish bowl were big enough for a million goldfish … it would be large enough to hold a whale.” – How Much is a Million?

At the beginning of kindergarten I bought my son How Much is a Million? by David M. Schwartz, originally published in 1985. The book is considered a classic — you see it now with a 20th Anniversary Edition banner — but it didn’t exist when I was in elementary school. Though this is a book I thought L. would tolerate at best, he was captivated from the first reading. Schwartz manages to put numbers like million, billion and trillion in concrete terms that speak to five, six and seven year-olds perfectly. For instance: A million Continue reading →

Tomi Ungerer: The Menswear Collection

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We were re-reading Tomi Ungerer’s The Three Robbers (1963) the other day. I never get tired of the story’s sinister fairytale feel; the color palette of black and midnight blue; or Ungerer’s use of the word “blunderbuss.”

But I realized something new this time around. Those voluminous cloaks and bell-shaped hats are very Yohji Yamamoto.

Yohji Yamamoto Fall-Winter 2012

Discovered: The Meat Pie from Danny, Champion of the World!

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Roald Dahl understood the power of food, and not just of the purely sugary sort (i.e. chocolate churned by waterfall, edible blades of grass, Whipple Scrumptious Fudgemallow Delights). The whole plot of The Fantastic Mr. Fox basically builds up to the magnificent subterranean feast of chickens, ducks, smoked hams and bacon. In the BFG, the “disgusterous” snozzcumbers — filthing, coarse, knobbly and tasting of frogskins — are so vividy described you can practically smell their fishy stench. And in Matilda, when Miss Honey serves Matilda tea, brown bread and margarine on an upturned box, that does it; the two are bonded for life.

In all of Dahl’s books, the food moment that made its biggest impression on me comes in chapter 10 of Danny the Champion of the World. After a long and harrowing night involving a rescue of his father from a pit surrounded by armed guards, a kind local doctor gives Danny a package wrapped in wax paper.

I began to unwrap the waxed paper from around the doctor’s present, and when I had finished, I saw before me the most enormous and beautiful pie in the world. It was covered all over, top, sides, and bottom, with rich golden pastry. I took a knife from beside the sink and cut out a wedge. I started to eat it in my fingers, standing up. It was a cold meat pie. The meat was pink and tender with no fat or gristle in it, and there were hard-boiled eggs buried like treasures in several different places. The taste was absolutely fabulous. When I had finished the first slide I cut another and ate that, too. God bless Doctor Spencer, I thought.”

A cold meat pie — with hard-boiled eggs inside, buried like treasures! The image haunts me to this day, even though I realize that it probably sat in your stomach like a giant brick of Spam. Continue reading →

A Dream Vacation a la Roald Dahl

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I have to admit, it was Hugh Jackman who turned me on to what has become my favorite Roald Dahl book. A few years ago Jackman told InStyle (where I was working at the time) that he was so taken with Dahl’s 1984 memoir Boy: Tales of Childhood and the description of the Norwegian islands where Dahl spent summers as a youth that he was planning a vacation there with his own children. (See the page here.)

I eventually got hold of the memoir and all I have to say is: Hugh, I’ve never quite understood your appeal, I don’t care about X-Men, and you could not pay me to sit through Les Mis — but you are so on the money about Boy! The book covers Dahl’s years from ages 7 to 20, much of it focusing on his terrifying experiences at English boarding schools. The book is hilarious, dark and poetic all at once.

S & L were practically screaming with excitement when I read them the parts about Dahl’s boyhood pranks (one involving a dead mouse and a candy shop owner) and the whippings he endured at the hands of his school’s headmaster. But like my friend Hugh, the chapter of Boy I love best is “The Magic Island,” in which Dahl describes the summers he, his Norwegian mother and his five siblings Continue reading →

Out-of-Print Gem: Happy Mother’s Day (1985)

Rhyme and Reason and Steven Meisel

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I was thinking about The Phantom Tollbooth today after seeing the trailer for the upcoming documentary about the book (which by the way looks awesome). I was looking at the Jules Feiffer illustrations and when I came to the portrait of the waifish, lank-haired princess duo Rhyme and Reason in their drapey slipdresses …

they reminded me of these two!

Linda Evangelista and Kristen McMenamy photographed by Steven Meisel for Vogue (October 1992)

The Incredible Sulk! Spinky Sulks; Now Everybody Really Hates Me; By The Side of the Road

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That’s me on the left, mad about something or other during a family vacation.

I was a stubborn child, with an impressive capacity for staying mad for long stretches of time. It’s a character trait that runs in the family. My mother is a champion grudge-holder, and my eight-year-old daughter is already proving herself a natural. So I can relate to any character who excels at keeping the pissed-off flame on long simmer. These are my three favorite books on the art of not-forgiving.

1) Spinky Sulks (1988) by William Steig

When Steig’s book opens, our grouchy protagonist, Spinky, has decided that his stupid family doesn’t love him anymore and his only recourse is to turn his back on the world. His mother, brothers and sisters and grandmother try to appease him, coaxing him with sweet words, flowers, and ice cream. But he’s unmoved. Spinky retreats to a hammock from which he refuses to budge, even through a rainstorm.

When we first got this book a few years ago, it was by far my daughter’s favorite Steig title. Spinky is unlikeable — but if you’re a sulker, you can’t help rooting for him. The emotions feel real and raw. I love these lines towards the end, when Spinky starts to cave:

He wasn’t mad anymore, but he still had his pride. After all his suffering, how could he just turn around and act lovey-dovey? That wasn’t his way.

2) Now Everybody Really Hates Me (1993) by Jane Read Martin and Patricia Marx

Turn Spinky into a girl, give him more of an imagination, launch him into the 90s, and you’ve got Patty Jane Pepper. When the crafty freckle-faced heroine is sent to her room as punishment for hitting her brother, she decides that she is never coming out. That’ll show them!

She’s not only a martyr, she’s a drama queen.

Does every kid in this situation have the same fantasies? The authors (and illustrator Roz Chast) nail them all. She will not eat! She will never clean up! She will speak a language only she can understand! She will find a cool way to sneak out of the house! She will run away from home! Patty Jane Pepper, c’est moi. I’m pretty sure I made a go of sleeping on my closet floor during one of my own childhood sulk sessions.

The book is funnier than Spinky Sulks — and more satisfying to boot. It ends the way I remember things really ending: With my parents lovingly dragging me back to the bosom of the family, to my secret relief.

As Patty Jane knows, it’s all about the body language.

3) By The Side of the Road (2002) by Jules Feiffer

Every time I start reading this one with the kids I think, “Is it crazy for me to be reading this to my children?” Because Feiffer’s book is totally subversive of my god-given parental authority. The story starts innocently enough: A boy and his brother are squabbling in the back seat of the car when their father gets mad. The kid is given a choice: behave or get out. In a normal book, the character would suffer on the side of the highway for a few hours, learn his lesson, and give in. But in Feiffer’s insane story, the boy ends up LIVING ON THE SIDE OF THE ROAD FOR THE REST OF HIS LIFE.

Not only that, he builds an incredible underground bunker complete with internet access, becomes a hero to other kids and later marries a cute, like-minded girl who digs a tunnel next to his. The boy never even has to apologize to his father; by the end, his aged, humbled parents decide they like his way of life better and actually move in with him.

In short, the boy misbehaves, sulks, and wins through sheer stubbornness, defying both parental authority and societal norms. How has this incredible book not been banned?

Little House Books: The Lost Covers

I Want to Live in Ira’s House

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It’s one of those things you appreciate only the second time around, when you’re reading the book to your own kids. Ira’s house in Bernard Waber’s Ira Sleeps Over (1972) seems at first like a typical 1970s suburban home, but when you look closely there are lots of details that convey the kind of culture-loving, bohemian-leaning people Ira’s parents are. It’s the kind of environment I think I should be raising my kids in — if only we got rid of our TV and all took up instruments.

I love how Ira’s mom is curled up with the newspaper while her husband is just hanging out, playing the cello:

Even when Ira’s big sister is taunting him, she’s in the middle of practicing the piano: The dad looks very comfortable in the kitchen … and they clearly don’t eat Wonder Bread:The parents are also fans of ballet: Last but not least, check out what’s under the dad’s arm when he comes to answer the door during the sleepover:An album by the noted Ukranian violinist, Igor Oistrakh!

Out-of-Print Gem: When I Have a Little Girl (1965)

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Charlotte Zolotow’s When I Have a Little Girl (1965) doesn’t have the arch references of Kay Thompson’s Eloise (1955) but the books share plenty of DNA. Both are illustrated by Hilary Knight and feature heroines who are willful, exuberant, self-centered, dreamy, loving and bratty all at once.