crooked house

What the?

From the pamphlet of "instructions" that came with my new curling iron:

Do not use while sleeping.

Huh.

I wonder if this means I shouldn't pluck my eyebrows, wax my legs or, say, fry chicken while I'm sleeping, either.

Happy Halloween.

Lately Luke's been having these very polite temper tantrums. "No, please! No, please!" he half-shouts, half-weeps. Whether he's screaming it because he's having a diaper changed or because he wants candy (in which case it is "Yes, thank you! Yes, thank you!"), this pleading makes him sound pitiful. I feel like the guy who turns down Oliver Twist when he asks for more gruel. Today he's been doing it a lot because he's already absolutely wired on sugar. We veer wildly from:

To:

And back again:

Can you see the chocolate all over his face and shirt?

What Other Kids' Parents Can Do With a Cardboard Box

So I mentioned yesterday that David and I spent the weekend slaving over Luke's Halloween costume and that the result looks a tad... amateur. We're just not magicians with the cardboard boxes. Turns out, though, that a lot of other parents are. I've been seeing this toy kitchen by forty-two roads everywhere:

She's selling the plans on etsy. If you'd like to do something similar but you aren't quite as talented, you can always try Family Fun's simpler version:

They've got a whole page of cardboard creations including this nifty airplane costume:

And I was absolutely blown away by Mr. McGroovy's site. Check out the castle:

This guy has a small business selling the perfect rivets to make these constructions. David wouldn't even look at the site when I tried to show it to him -- he'd had a bit of time finding the right nuts and bolts for our train. He sat there at the train table, collaborating with Luke on an elaborate new arrangement of the tracks, and muttered something about people who had too much time on their hands. 

Our Halloween Prep Continues and More Books

David and I spent the weekend putting together a Halloween costume for Luke. It's a train. A Luke-o-motive.  It looks like an 8-year-old made it. This means we will be able to do Luke's homework for him until he is in the 2nd grade. After that, his teachers will expect him to be capable of better.  Luke says he "loves" the costume "all day" but he doesn't want to put it on so I can take a picture. "No, please!" he says. "No, please!" He is too busy painting a jack-o-lantern:

I hope he changes his mind by Wednesday.

There were some great book suggestions in the comments section of Friday's post. I've lifted them to post here.

Sara O'Leary suggested two books by British Children's Laureate Michael Rosen: Carrying the Elephant is a memoir for adults in the form of short shorts. I love both memoirs and the short short form so I can't wait to read that one. Except that I kind of can, because it's about the death of Rosen's son, at age 18. Michael Rosen's Sad Book is a picture book for children. It's also about the death of his son.

Sara Wise Holmes suggested Susan Cooper's Dreams and Wishes: Essays on Writing for Childrenand Dear Genius: The Letters of Ursula Nordstrom by Leonard Marcus, a suggestion seconded by P. Bucak, as well as The Wand in the Word: Conversations with Writers of Fantasy. I've heard so many good things about the Ursula Nordstrom one, I've ordered it.

Some Scary Stuff, Poetry Friday, and More

When we entered the library yesterday, I headed straight for the counter where they keep the giant pile of  books I've always got on hold. Grandpa and Luke headed straight upstairs to the children's collection, as they always do. Only this time, Luke and Grandpa came back downstairs almost immediately. Since I usually have to go up there and lure the child away with promises of french fries and ice cream, I was surprised.

"Don't love it, Mommy," said Luke, looking distressed.

"What, honey?" I said.

"Don't love it! Don't love it!" he said.

Luke tends to hold one of the following opinions on things. Ranging from positive to negative they are:

"I love it all day! Love it. ALL! DAY!"

"I really like it. Really REALLY like it!"

"Don't like it. No, don't-like-it. Don't-like-it."

"Don't love it! Don't-love-it, Mommy! Don't-love-it!"

So this was a big deal. Grandpa explained that a pair of giant paper monster claws were hanging above the doorway to the children's room and that Luke was definitely not interested in passing underneath them. I had to go up and demonstrate they weren't real. I stood in the doorway, batting at the claws dangling just above my head and laughing fake-heartily in a dopey way that was meant to be reassuring.  From the serious look on Luke's face, though, I could tell he was still worried.  But he trusted my judgment enough to try. Either that or he figured the monster would surely get his mother, who was  stupidly standing right there underneath the thing, before it would get him. The boy is only three feet tall but he felt the need to hunch over  double as he ran as fast as he could through the doorway. There were a number of scary-looking bats hanging from the ceiling inside that he "didn't love" either but at least they didn't appear to have any appendages with which to grab him.

Once inside we found the book Spooky Poems, selected by Jill Bennett and illustrated by Mary Rees. It's a collection of twenty-five poems by people like Shel Silverstein, e.e. cummings, Jack Prelutsky, and Michael Rosen , who is currently the Children's Laureate in the U.K. We especially liked his poem, "The Hidebehind."

Have you seen the Hidebehind?
I don't think you will, mind you,
because as you're running through the dark
the Hidebehind's behind you.

Rosen's only been the Laureate since June, I think, but he's already got some really great ideas:

The first thing I did was come up with some ideas and the second thing I did was come up with some more. Ideas are very cheap. For me, they're usually the cost of a bus journey, with its free moments of looking out the window and thinking. (And my bus journeys are so cheap, they are in fact free with my over-60s Freedom Pass, thanks Ken.)

So, this is what I've thought:             

1. Wouldn't it be great for children and poets to have an interactive youtube-like poetry website?

2.  We could have an interactive webpage for teachers to talk to each other about making poetry-friendly classrooms.             

3. There could be Children's Literature Trails all over the country.

4. It would be good to have a children's poetry roadshow: 'The A-Z of poetry, Agard to Zephaniah'.             

5. There could be an exhibition on the history of children's poetry at the British Library tied in with:

6. ...a conference on the history of children's poetry.             

7.  The  Booktrust's 'The Big Picture' campaign for picture books is something I really support - and will.

8.  Why isn't there a Funny Prize for the funniest children's book of the year?

I was particularly taken with  No.3, the idea to develop Children's Literature Trails. The other day, having finished the Margaret Wise Brown bio,  I asked Sara O'Leary if she knew of any other good books about writers of children's literature. She mentioned two by Joan Bodger: How the Heather Looks and The Crack in the Teacup. Sara told me that How the Heather Looks "is about how [Bodger] and her husband decided to take their two children to England to visit the locales of their favourite children's books. " (I immediately fell in love with the idea of doing that with Luke. I hope Rosen gets at least a couple of his trails set up before we go.) And then The Crack in the Teacup, Bodger's autobiography, "gives you all the real life and heartbreak that followed," says Sara.

We Do Not Have This Phenomenon

The infamous lip. (First haircut.)

Yesterday Luke had two little friends over, a brother and sister duo. The brother, Adam, is 3; the sister, Ellen, is 1. We hadn't seen this pair (or their lovely mother) in a long time so it was lots of fun. It was also a little fraught, as play dates at this age can be. Luke (2) loves to play with other kids. You know, as long as the other children do not touch any of his toys. While the baby toddled round the living room,  smiling angelically as she inserted an assortment of tiny objects into her rosebud mouth and looking for electrical outlets into which she could stick her deliciously chubby fingers, Adam very sensibly got down to playing, first with the trains, then with the dinky cars and the garage.  Luke sat in the middle of the living room floor making whimpering noises and sticking out his lower lip until it seemed twice as big as his face. When that didn't work, he started giving me looks --  horrified and grief-stricken looks, as if someone had just murdered his grandmother. When that didn't work, he started to wail. Thus began an afternoon of lectures, I mean discussions, about "sharing." Luke doesn't get the concept.  When it comes to sharing, Luke is rather like  Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on the subject of gay people in Iran. All his responses to my admonitions to share were along the lines of  "Sharing? We do not have this phenomenon here. I do not know who has told you that we have it." That is, if he'd actually been using words to state his position rather than disgruntled squeaking noises.

It all ended happily, though, with Luke gleefully popping raisins into Ellen's wide-open baby-bird mouth followed by a rousing hour-long game of "Ham and Cheese." This is a game that was  invented some time ago by Adam and Luke. It involves running full-tilt in circles through the front hall, living room, and dining room. First "Ham" (Adam) chases "Cheese" (Luke) and then vice-versa. Spectators (i.e. mothers) must shout, "Ham and Cheese! Ham and Cheese!"  (You'll notice that no toys, and therefore no sharing, are involved.) It's all a lot like the Caucus Race  in Alice in Wonderland:

What is a Caucus-race?' said Alice; not that she wanted much to know, but the Dodo had paused as if it thought that somebody ought to speak, and no one else seemed inclined to say anything.

  `Why,' said the Dodo, 'the best way to explain it is to do it.' (And, as you might like to try the thing yourself, some winter day, I will tell you how the Dodo managed it.)

  First it marked out a race-course, in a sort of circle, ('the exact shape doesn't matter,' it said,) and then all the party were placed along the course, here and there.  There was no 'One, two, three, and away,' but they began running when they liked, and left off when they liked, so that it was not easy to know when the race was over.  However, when they had been running half an hour or so, and were quite dry again, the Dodo suddenly called out `The race is over!' and they all crowded round it, panting, and asking, `But who has won?'

  This question the Dodo could not answer without a great deal of thought, and it sat for a long time with one finger pressed upon its forehead (the position in which you usually see Shakespeare, in the pictures of him), while the rest waited in silence.  At last the Dodo said, 'Everybody has won, and all must have prizes.'

  'But who is to give the prizes?' quite a chorus of voices asked.

  'Why, she, of course,' said the Dodo, pointing to Alice with one finger; and the whole party at once crowded round her, calling out in a confused way, 'Prizes! Prizes!'

By the time David came home, I was exhausted. So, during a brief escape to the grocery store, I picked up a Harold and the Purple Crayons dvd. Who needs cold medicine? I'm not above using television to anesthetize my kid and, by extension, myself. And this one certainly did the trick. The music, performed by Van Dyke Parks, is the highlight for me -- it's jaunty and lilting, with playful, offbeat lyrics. Luke seems most taken with the fact that, by using his purple crayon to draw whatever he wants, Harold controls his environment absolutely. Go figure.

 

How to Live With a Unicorn

Jane Moseley is the author of a series of books called Household Management for Men. Obviously, she was already teetering very near the precipice. Now she has slipped right over the edge with
How  to Live With a Unicorn: The Fantastic Guide to Keeping Mythical Pets.

There's a tantalizing review  at the Ya Ya Yas.

I was just browsing through T.H. White's The Book of Beasts (you'll find a link in the post below) and happened upon the entry for the unicorn, also known as the rhinoceros. The rhinoceros? Isn't the imagination a lovely gift? It turns rhinos into unicorns and walruses into mermaids. Although in the second case it might have been the libido. That, or too much grog.

Zoodles

Elephant, gorilla, zebra, bear, ____?, ____?, hippo and lion. We think. Have  you got any ideas?

Perhaps The Book of Beasts, Being a Translation of a Latin Bestiary from the Twelfth Century by T.H. White, will help.

Oooh

My very talented friend Todd sent me a new Halloween banner today. Spooky, isn't it? Speaking of the banner -- as I mentioned before  it was inspired by the work of Rob Ryan.  Well, I've just discovered Ryan's blog  and, even better, his etsy shop. I learned from his blog that the paper cuts for his new book are on display in a gallery in London. I learned from his shop that I need more money.

And speaking of Halloween, a month or two ago I bought Luke a pair of skeleton pajamas and figured they'd serve as his costume. We even gave it a trial run in a webcam video to Grandma, Grandpa, and his cousins Max and River. However, the other day I overheard Luke telling his grandfather that he is going to be a train for Halloween. So I think it's time to break out the cardboard boxes like these people did. (Some of the homemade costumes on that site are terrific -- be sure to check out the American Gothic painting and the can of worms.)

Interview with Sara O'Leary, author of When You Were Small

Sara O'Leary, author of the award-winning  picture book When You Were Small .

STEPH: Can you tell me a little bit about your background as a writer? From Google I know (or I think I know) that you:

1)  are currently teaching Creative Writing at Concordia University in Montreal
2) have an MFA from the University of British Columbia
3) were the books columnist for The Vancouver Sun and on Freestyle, a CBC Radio One show
4) are widely published here in Canada as a literary journalist
5) have published at least two works of  fiction for adults
6) have won awards for your playwrighting
7) have already written the sequel to When You Were Small
8) have written a YA novel with your oldest son

Is it fair to ask what kind of writing you prefer? Did you always want to write for children or did the desire come out of having children of your own?

SARA: I've been writing since I was young (she says, realising that she no longer is).  Studied poetry as a teenager with people like Patrick Lane  and Lorna Crozier , then fell into fiction and had a dalliance with postcard stories, followed by flirtations with playwriting and screenwriting.  Once I had children of my own it seemed a logical progression to start writing children's stories.  I'm still writing fiction but I'm also doing more writing for children – including writing a YA novel with my son Liam.  It's called Malone Alone and is about a boy whose parents take him from Vancouver to a little village on the Bay of Fundy.  Which is exactly what happened to Liam.  Only in the novel, the boy's parents are sucked into a time portal and vanish. Which didn't actually happen to us when we moved to St. Martin's although we did feel like we'd travelled back in time when we were told there was no high speed internet in the village.

As far as what genre I prefer, I'd probably be better off if I did have stronger tendencies in one direction.  I often feel that rather than being like Sisyphus pushing his boulder up the mountain, I am frantically trying to keep a number of smaller rocks rolling in unison. I love fiction, all forms of fiction.  Writing the novel with my son has been great fun, but now that it's done I'm going back to a collection of short stories I have underway.

STEPH:  Have you always wanted to be a writer?

SARA: Except for the times when I desperately wished to be almost anything else.

STEPH: How is writing fiction for adults different from writing it for children?

SARA: I think the main difference is in the perception, actually.  People seem to think that writing for children is much, much easier than writing for adults.  Which it is not.  And I have a pet peeve about bad writing being passed off as appropriate for YA novels.   Like they aren't going to be able to tell the difference.

STEPH:  I read in one of your reviews (of the Alexander McCall Smith's No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency books) that when you were reading the Nancy Drew books as  a child, you wanted to be Nancy Drew. And that, at a certain point, reading about Mma Ramotswe as an adult, you felt the same way. I love that. What were some of your favourite books as a child? What are some of your favourite books for children now? And what are some of your favourites for adults?

SARA: That's a huge question and I could go on all day about favourite books for children.  I will say that I've always been a huge fan of Maurice Sendak's books and I think the world would be a much colder place without Max and the Wild Things.  And it's lovely reading books to your own children that you remember having read to you – my mother saved my Alice and my Mother Goose and other things which has been lovely.  And I can still read Dr. Seuss with my eyes shut.

New books: I love anything Oliver Jeffers  does does and we're besotted with Ian Falconer's Olivia books - I sort of want to be Olivia these days. We're also big fans of the series of books by Robin Mitchell and Judith Steed that my publisher did.  They are about these little doll characters named Sunny and Windy. There are others too but I have a hard time remembering which ones are theirs and which ones my son made up.   I think Rainy is the one that he made from a clothes pin and some felt and then made his own book.  Which leads me to Euan O'Leary – another of my favourite authors.

For older kids, I loved the Lemony Snicket books and for anybody else who did I would also recommend Philip Ardagh, a British author with a fantastic sense of humour.  The Fall of Fergal is one of his. Philip Pullman, Eoin Colfer, and Marcus Sedgwick are all good. I seem to be reading more boy books because of what comes into the house.There are some very scary books by a fellow named Joseph Delaney which we liked.  Also an Englishwoman named Michelle Paver I interviewed last year who has done a series of novels called Wolf Brother.My son is addicted to the Ian MacKellan cd versions of the books.  Susan Juby, whose Alice books I love, has a new book out called Another Kind of Cowboy which is very, very good.   I have just read a book called Very Serious Children  by my friend Caroline Adderson and it was very funny – about two little boys with circus clowns for parents who try to run away to small-town Saskatchewan to have a normal life where they can do things like eat vegetables.

Adult books, hmm.  I just read a fantastic new book called The Outlander by Gil Adamson.  Published by Anansi and it was the first thing I'd read in ages that really felt fresh to me.  Also just read the new A.L. Kennedy novel, Day, and … well, would have to go look under my bed to tell you what else.  I want to read that Margaret Wise Brown bio that you've been talking about – maybe I can find something to offer in trade.  I miss writing a weekly column because for years I had a steady influx of new books.  I got kind of spoilt.

STEPH:  I read that you got the idea for When You Were Small from a family joke. Can you tell me about that?