Louis the Swan Was Raking it In

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Remember in The Trumpet of The Swan, when slippery Abe “Lucky” Lucas hires Louis to perform in a Philadelphia nightclub? (This comes after Louis’s success with the swan boats at the Boston Public Garden.) Louis takes the new gig because he needs the cash to pay his debts, but…

“The place was big and crowded and noisy. Everyone seemed to be talking too loudly, eating too much, and drinking too much. Most birds like to go to sleep at sundown. They do not want to stay up half the night entertaining people. But Louis was a musician, and musicians can’t choose their working hours… Every Saturday night Louis collected his pay — five hundred dollars.”

Five hundred dollars a week for ten weeks? As my brother points out, Louis was making some serious money. If you adjust this for inflation — E.B. White published the novel in 1970 — it’s equivalent to almost $3,000 a week today.

Is It Just Me???

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Every time I get to this scene in William Steig’s The Amazing Bone — for my money, it’s the most disturbing moment in the book, even worse than when the villanous fox appears —

I always think of the bizarre series of paintings (by Mexican artist Miguel Calderón) hanging on Eli Cash’s walls in The Royal Tennenbaums. I can’t help it — it’s as if William Steig and Wes Anderson are speaking to one another.

Is it just me? Another illo from The Amazing Bone:

And Owen Wilson chilling in front of Calderon’s Bad Route, which I remember made me burst out laughing in the theater.

To be fair, Kurt Andersen did an interview with Wes and Miguel on his radio show where they discussed the paintings in the film and nobody mentioned any talking bones. But still.

In Search of a Few Good Jokes

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“Orange you glad I didn’t say banana?” If you have a child under the age of seven, you’ve probably endured a period where you heard that one every day. As these sort of jokes go, the orange/banana knock-knock is actually a pretty good one — which is not the case with most of what you find in kids’ humor collections. (The tip-off, of course, is anything promising “1,000 MORE of the Very Best Knock-Knock Jokes!”)

Failed jokes and riddles fall into many categories. There are, for starters…

The ones that presume familiarity with obscure phrases. What’s a ghost’s favorite kind of music? Haunting melodies. Why did the boys shoot their BB guns in the air? They wanted to shoot the breeze.

The ones that presume knowledge of farm life. What did the little calf say to the haystack? Are you my fodder? (My little city chickens have never heard the word “fodder”)

The ones that presume knowledge of U.S. geography. What’s the capital of Alaska? Come on, Juneau this one! (Sadly, we didn’t.)

The ones that presume knowledge of the Bible. Who was the only character in the Bible without a father? Joshua, because he was the son of Nun. (I had to to do a Google search to even understand this.)

The ones that presume familiarity with Telly Savalas. Knock-knock. Who’s there? Hugh. Hugh who? Hugh loves ya baby! (I swear, this was in a joke book published in 2007!)

Of the humor books I’ve scoured, my favorite so far is Laugh Out Loud Jokes for Kids by Rob Elliott ($4.99, Spire) which has a better ratio of groaners to good ones than most. (What do you get from a pampered cow? Spoiled milk.) I was also happy to stumble upon the thoroughly fascinating — if at times offensive — 1963 collection Jokes For Children by Marguerite Kohl and Frederica Young. This out-of-print-book is full of quaint classics, but also jokes so violent you can scarcely believe they were meant for kids. In the “Whoppers and Insults” chapter you get stuff like: Want to lose ten pounds of ugly fat? Sure. Cut off your head. Here’s a disturbing one: Father: Broke my kid of biting his nails. Friend: You did– how? Father: Knocked his teeth out. There’s even a section called “The Little Moron.”

I recently did a call out to friends, asking for their favorite kids’ jokes. I think these are all winners but feel free to argue.

15 NO-FAIL KIDS’ JOKES*

1. What did the flounder say to the shrimp? “You’re being shellfish.”

2. What time is it when you get a toothache? Tooth-hurty.

3. What do you call a pig who knows karate? Pork chop.

4. What letters contain nothing? M-T

5. What does a snowman eat for breakfast? Frosted Flakes

6. When can you knock over a full glass and not spill any water? When it’s full of milk.

7. Why is 2 + 2 = 5 like your left foot? It’s not right.

8. Why did the chewing gum cross the road? It was stuck to the chicken.

9. What do you call a deer with no eyes? No eye-deer (no idea).

10. Which are the two coldest letters? I-C

11. What did 0 say to 8? Nice belt.

12. How do you spell “ninjas?” S … because the ninja is silent.

13. Knock-knock. Who’s there? Isabel. Isabel who? Is the bell broken? I had to knock.

14. Knock-knock. Who’s there? Interrupting cow. Interrupting c—–Moo! (interrupts)

15. What word is always pronounced wrong? Wrong.

BONUS (apologies in advance): What is the most constipated condiment? Mus-turd.

Did I miss any good ones? Please let me know in the comments below.

*Special credit goes to our pediatrician and Sam & Daisy Harris

Annals of the Inexplicable: The Five Chinese Brothers

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I have no problem with a politically incorrect classic. Babar may be a colonialist, but he’s dear to my heart. And the only thing stopping me from buying my own copy of Richard Scarry’s original Busy, Busy World (1965) — starring the garrulous Patrick Pig from Ireland and the Israeli wife who wouldn’t stop nagging her husband — is that an unexpurgated edition can cost upwards of $300.

I remember sitting on a rug with the rest of my kindergarden class enthralled by the strange, dark folk tale of five brothers who manage to outwit the authorities when one of the siblings is wrongly sentenced to death. The Five Chinese Brothers by Claire Huchet Bishop (1938) may have depicted my fellow Asians as vengeful and slanty-eyed but that didn’t rattle me. The brothers had alluring superhuman abilities: “The First Chinese Brother could swallow the sea. The Second Chinese Brother had an iron neck. The Third Chinese Brother could stretch and stretch his legs. The Fourth Chinese Brother could not be burned. And the Fifth Chinese Brother could hold his breath indefinitely.”

But on re-reading this book here’s what you realize. The Five Chinese Brothers is absolutely baffling. I still don’t have a huge problem with it being un-P.C. It’s more that it inevitably raises some questions, such as:

1) “How could you kill someone with whipped cream?”

To a kid, being plopped into a container of whipped cream sounds like heaven. Besides that, when the oven is turned on wouldn’t the fluffy cream turn to liquid? (Not to mention my own question — when were the ancient Chinese even eating whipped cream?)

2) “Why were the people so angry each time a Chinese Brother didn’t die?”

Hard to answer without getting involved in a discussion of mob psychology and the public thirst for bloody spectacles.

3) “How come if they couldn’t kill the Brother that meant he was innocent?”

This is biggest doozy of them all. When all the executions fail, the judge decides it means that their prisoner must not be guilty! Truly, it is beyond all logic.

My kids liked The Five Chinese Brothers well enough, but it didn’t seem to make much of an impression either way. In fact, my daughter has since discovered Kathy Tucker’s The Seven Chinese Sisters (2003), which she likes much more. The book (with illustrations by Grace Lin) is also about a Chinese family with preternatural powers, but it’s not a watered-down retelling of the Five Chinese Brothers. The story involves a dragon, a kidnapping, and a noodle soup. Check it out.

Mari Takabayashi Forever

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I love Mari Takabayashi’s I Live in Brooklyn (2004). After buying this book several years ago for my (Manhattan) children, I couldn’t get enough of Takabayashi and all her round-faced, Marimekko print-wearing girls.

Takabayashi paints like a Japanese Grandma Moses, and I mean that in the best way.

When I realized Takabayashi had previously written something similar called I Live in Tokyo (2001), I had to get that one immediately, of course. As a kid I would have died for this book — I’ve been obsessed with Japan ever since my friend Tomoko shared her rice balls with me in first grade. Takabayashi often does these nice little pictorial guides to her characters’ stuff, sort of in the vein of a Richard Scarry word book. They are easy to obsess over. Rush Hour (1996), which has text by Christine Loomis, is the artist’s totally charming portrayal of a working day in New York City, book-ended by the hectic morning and evening commutes.I used to read Rush Hour to my kids when they were little — I thought it was a nice way for them to make sense of where their parents had been all day. True, all Takabayashi’s books pretty much look the same. And the stories are not remotely plot-driven. But who cares? Wouldn’t you want your kids to sleep in this room from Marshmallow Kisses (2000)? See Mari Takabayashi’s website here.

4 Things You Probably Didn’t Know About Richard Scarry

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I’ve been reading The Busy, Busy World of Richard Scarry (1997) by Walter Retan, Scarry’s longtime editor at Random House and Golden Press. I’ve always loved the way Scarry was able to cram so many little details onto a page and explain complicated real-world things (like the workings of a paper factory), with such precision. But who knew he lived such a glittering life? (At one point, says Retan: “They were weary of the constant parties, the steady flow of house guests, the drinking and the endless interruptions.”) Or that his books made such gazillions? (Think: foreign editions.) I learned a few other things as well…

1) There’s a reason Lowly Worm wore a Tyrolean hat. Scarry was a Boston-born, Brothers-wearing, New England preppy but moved permanently to Switzerland with his wife and young son in 1968. This also explains why Huckle Cat wears those leiderhosen.

2) He was fired from Vogue after three weeks. After serving in WWII Scarry got a job in the art department of Vogue. When they told him that he wasn’t right for the position, he asked them why they had hired him in the first place. The HR person explained that they had been impressed by his white suit and blue shirt. (Scarry was a very stylish dresser.)

3) He married Peggy from Mad Men! Not really, but when Scarry met his chic wife-to-be, Patsy Murphy, in 1948, she was working as a copywriter at Young & Rubicam. She later went on to write books with Scarry, but for a time she helped support the couple with her work at the agency.

4) These are his granddaughters, Olympia and Fiona Scarry. Readers of Vanity Fair, Harper’s Bazaar, and WWD know the Swiss socialites by their regular party page appearances. Olympia is an installation artist who has worked for Matthew Barney and wears a lot of YSL and Haider Ackermann. (You can check out her recent appearance in Interview magazine here.)

Out-of-Print Gem: The Man Who Cooked For Himself (1981)

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I bought this used book years ago for 25 cents as a throwaway. We were waiting for a table at a restaurant and I was desperate for something to occupy the kids before they destroyed the place. I was sucked in by the book’s (unintentionally anticlimactic?) title. The pancake letter “o” didn’t hurt either.

The book turned out to be a keeper. It’s basically a child-friendly introduction to locavorism and foraging decades before Michael Pollan, starring a funny little man who looks like a Hanna-Barbera character.

The balding bachelor of the title lives with his cat in the middle of nowhere. As we learn: “He didn’t have a wife or children so he always cooked his own supper, cleaned the house by himself, and made his own bed.” (For an author writing in 1981, Phyllis Krasilovsky has a pretty 1950s-ish take on gender norms, but whatever.) The man also doesn’t have a car, so he relies on a friend to bring him groceries every week. When one summer his friend is unable to make his delivery, the man nearly starves.

Finally, he realizes he can pick wild watercress and blueberries, catch fish and even make pancakes from … acorns. (I don’t think even Rene Redzepi has gotten there.) The story is super simple but charming, and the kids think it’s hilarious when the guy briefly considers eating his newspaper. They also appreciate the size of his hat.

The List: Ann Patchett

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Ann Patchett and I met years ago when she had just published her second novel, Taft, and was writing freelance stories for Vogue, where I was an assistant on what felt like full-time cappucino duty. I remember her as one of the kindest people I had ever met, and though we later fell out of touch, I always held on to the fact that I knew her once. When I read Ann’s captivating Atlantic story about how she came to open Parnassus Books, her independent bookstore in her hometown of Nashville it gave me the courage (and the excuse) to get back in touch.

So, what books did Ann love as a kid? “I didn’t learn to read until the third grade!” she told me. “I found reading terrifying.” She wrote in mirror letters and when she looked at a piece of paper, she says, “I was never sure if I should start on the right or the left.” She recalls being in perfect awe of the books her big sister used to read. “She had Babar and The Little Prince. The type of those books was printed in cursive, which I couldn’t read. And she was reading them in French, which I couldn’t understand. So just looking at them I felt like my head was going to explode.”

Like a child who still crawls at 18 months, but then skips walking and goes straight to running, Ann leapfrogged the children’s books stage almost entirely. By the time she became a real reader, she jokes, “I was ready for Saul Bellow.” Still, she had a few faves to share.

Ann Patchett’s Favorite Children’s Books

1) The Lonely Doll by Dare Wright

“This was by far my favorite picture book. I loved that it looked like no other book I had ever seen and it was a story I could really relate to. I think of it as the great ‘child of divorce’ book — my parents split up when I was four — because it’s about a little girl who gets left behind. In the story, the little doll and the little bear do some mean, naughty things. They are punished, but then they are forgiven and everything is made whole again. I went to Catholic school for years, so this, of course, made perfect sense.”

2) Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White

“When I did finally start reading, I was a real Charlotte’s Web girl. I would read it over and over and over again. I got a toy pig for my 9^th birthday and I stopped eating animals with hooves. I’m still a vegetarian to this day. Strangely enough, I did not read E.B. White’s other books. To be honest I didn’t even know that E.B. White had written other books.”

3) The Little House series by Laura Ingalls Wilder

“Except for Farmer Boy, which I skipped because I was uninterested in absolutely anything having to do with boys back then, I loved all these books. And much later when my grandmother was dying — she passed away almost 8 years ago — I read the whole series again to her. Because she had dementia it was so hard to find the right books, but these were perfect. Reading them aloud was a very moving experience.”

Ann Patchett’s next novel will be out from HarperCollins in November. Parnassus Books continues to flourish. And — in case you missed it — last year Ann published a lovely mini memoir/writer’s guide (a Kindle Single, in fact!) called The Getaway Car: A Practical Memoir About Writing and Life.

Doughnut Heaven

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When I was a kid this is what I remember telling myself: “When I grow up and learn to drive, I will be able to go Dunkin’ Donuts any time I want.” The thought was very consoling to me every time our car zipped by the store, leaving me powerless and powdered sugar-deprived in the back seat.

Doughnuts have also inspired some very good kids’ books.

1) Who Needs Donuts? By Mark Alan Stamaty

Maybe you remember “Washingtoon,” Mark Alan Stamaty’s terrific political comic strip from The Village Voice. Or maybe you don’t. Regardless, this 1973 book (reissued by Knopf in 2003) is a cult classic for good reason. The story follows a boy named Sam who journeys into the swarming, weirdo-filled streets of what is clearly a pre-Giuliani Manhattan (all that’s missing are the peep shows) in search of a sugar fix. Along the way he lands a job with a paisley-wearing donut impressario, meets a toothless Sad Old Woman, faces catastrophe (escaped bull in a coffee factory), and learns about love.

Every obsessively drawn page is crammed with thousands of dark and hilarious details (look for the hotel inside a phone booth). You can pore over each page for hours and still discover new microscopic zingers. I know this sounds like a book only adults could appreciate, but my kids are nuts for it. And once you read Who Needs Donuts, you’ll want to read this excellent interview with Stamaty explaining the backstory.

2) Arnie The Doughnut by Laurie Keller

With its whimsical cartoon-style illustrations and quip-exchanging fried-dough characters, Laurie Keller’s 2003 entry into the genre would seem to be pure fluff. But there’s a dark side here. First, Arnie, a sweetly naive, life-loving chocolate glazed, realizes that his destiny — and that of all doughnuts — is to be eaten. Then, after his eyes are opened to the cruelty of the world, Arnie is gobsmacked to learn that he’s the only doughnut who didn’t know this was coming. There’s something compellingly grotesque when the other pastries (including the beret-wearing cruller) tell him that they don’t mind being devoured. As you’d expect, there’s a happy ending. But Arnie’s look into the abyss (that is, a gaping human mouth) gives this confection some umami.

3) Homer Price by Robert McCloskey

As comfortable as kids are with technology these days, they still grasp the panic of an I Love Lucy-style “Help-me-turn-off-this-craaaazy-machine!” situation. Robert McCloskey (Make Way for Ducklings, Blueberries for Sal) concocted one of the most memorable such moments in his 1943 collection of stories about small-town Ohio boy Homer Price. In the third tale, young Homer gets into trouble with his uncle’s newfangled automatic doughnut maker. To complicate matters, a millionairess wanders into the diner, and, suddenly overcome by her inner Ina Garten, whips up the batter herself, losing her diamond bracelet in the process.

By the end, our quick-thinking hero manages to recover the bauble (and sell a roomful of warm doughnuts). Unlike the other two titles, this is a book totally free of freaks or authorial winks. If Who Needs Donuts? is the retro Dunkin’ Donuts jelly donut and Arnie the Doughnut is the hip bacon-studded variety, Homer Price is the classic cake doughnut.

The List: Maira Kalman’s Favorite Children’s Books

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The book that singlehandedly reignited my interest in kids’ books long after I had lost all my baby teeth was Maira Kalman’s Max Makes a Million, about a New York City dog who dreams of moving to Paris to become a poet. I wasn’t exactly the book’s target audience when my mom bought it for me (I was in college) but no matter. I loved everything about it, from the illustrations reminiscent of Marc Chagall to the urbane vision of a Manhattan populated by artists who paint invisible paintings and architects who design upside down houses. I’ve since interviewed Maira a few times (here’s my story for W magazine) and she recently sat down with me to kick off a new feature where I’ll be asking authors and illustrators to name the kids’ books that have meant the most to them.

So herewith …

Maira Kalman’s Favorite Children’s Books

1) Winnie the Pooh by A.A. Milne

“I loved reading it to my kids when they were little. It’s beautifully written, philosophical, and funny.”

2) Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

“Probably the greatest children’s book ever written, and also a complicated book about mathematics, language and logic. Did the kids like it when I read it to them? I don’t know. It was more like, “You go to sleep, I’ll read Alice in Wonderland.”

3) William Steig’s books

“So lyrical and almost Proustian. The Amazing Bone is probably the one I read the most often. The only Steig books I really wasn’t a big fan of were Rotten Island and Shrek.”

4) Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren

“It was such an amazing experience for me to read about this heroic, intrepid girl who wasn’t afraid of anything.”

5) The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

“Growing up in the Bronx, I was astonished that people lived in this kind of splendor. Ever since then I have adored British castles and gardens.”

6) The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

“I didn’t read it growing up. But as with all my favorite children’s books it’s very funny, with a certain sophistication.”

7) The Philharmonic Gets Dressed by Marc Simont

“A fantastic book from the 1960s that follows musicians through the process of getting ready for a performance. It has such a sense of both groundedness and giddiness.”

8) Eloise by Kay Thompson

“So terrifically funny, and, you know, there’s no punctuation in the book. It runs on like the madcap chatter in a British comedy! Also, I love the use of language. Sometimes the vocabulary is a reach, of course, but I think children can appreciate the music in words.”

9) Ludwig Bemelmans’ books

“Ludwig Bemelmans has been a personal inspiration for almost everything in my life. His books, especially the Madeline books, not only inspired my style, but my attitude towards life. Reading about him helped me realize, “Ah! You can write and you can paint, you can do work for adults and for children. You can travel, you can be a bon vivant — which I’m not — and, even in the midst of tragedy, you can have this great joy in life.”

Max Makes a Million by Maira Kalman

P.S. The American history-loving Maira says she is currently finishing up a book about Thomas Jefferson, which will be published later this year. And she’s working on two more books, both tied to an exhibit she’s guest curating for the Cooper-Hewitt (“Maira Kalman Selects”) when it reopens in 2014. One will be an alphabet book for children about design, and the other will be a book for adults on design.

Mrs. Little

An Obsession With Children's Books

Louis the Swan Was Raking it In

Is It Just Me???

In Search of a Few Good Jokes

Annals of the Inexplicable: The Five Chinese Brothers

Mari Takabayashi Forever

4 Things You Probably Didn’t Know About Richard Scarry

Out-of-Print Gem: The Man Who Cooked For Himself (1981)

The List: Ann Patchett

Doughnut Heaven

The List: Maira Kalman’s Favorite Children’s Books