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The Fort
Worth Central Public Library was opened in 1978 and sits at the
intersection of 3rd and Taylor. It is an unassuming, neoclassical edifice,
a building with two stories above ground and one underground level. The
windows are tinted black to protect its holdings and its readers from the
brutal Texas sun, though the library is now overshadowed by the towering
structures that have sprung up downtown. It is not nearly as grand or
austere as some city libraries; yet it is entirely accessible and
possesses the classic features one would expect from such an institution.
On some Saturdays, my daughter and I will make the hour trip from our
exurban home to visit this library, especially if the weather is bad,
which in our part of the world includes virtually every kind of
meteorological extreme. We’ll take the backroads, driving by thickets of
bois d’arc, pecan, and mesquite, coasting slowly by the paint horses
grazing in the open pastures, then up the rise to stop at the ranch of
llama and alpaca. We’ll roll down the windows to hear the large black
llama, a particularly lively individual, hiss and spit at us, who will
then chase us down the fence-line, hopping over sagebrush and bitterweed,
as we drive away. The road takes us past herds of cows, buffalo and
longhorns that lounge in the pipe-fenced prairie, and leads finally to
I-35, a rather flat and featureless 30-mile straight shot to downtown.
While
we have numerous books at our home, I derive much enjoyment from our
excursion to the library. Even though the advent of Internet access,
cyberspace, e-libraries, online catalogs, and downloadable books is quite
convenient and wonderful, nothing can replace physically making the trip
to an actual location and wandering through the labyrinth of books,
pulling something strange and new from the shelves. For us, it is a little
adventure. Books have always been a part of my own life, and I want to
share what I think to be a pleasurable, enriching experience, where one
can lose oneself in other worlds. As Emily Dickinson once wrote: “There
is no frigate like a book / To take us lands away.”
A
generous portion of the library has been devoted to youth and children’s
books. One enters the area through a columned portal that invites its
visitors to pass under a rainbow and into the brightly decorated space. It
is a veritable playland of books, games, puppet theaters, and child-sized
castles. I, personally, enjoy visiting the children’s area. Here, I can
eagerly return to the deliciously wicked verses of Roald Dahl, the
brooding drawings of Edward Gory, or experience the wildly fantastic
artwork in picture books that my daughter digs from the stacks. A certain
freedom and imagination lives here that is quite different from the other
sections of the library.
When
it comes to children’s poetry, however, that freedom quickly dissipates
from the controversy over what our children should be reading. A great
fear is spread by some teachers, scholars, and critics in their countless
reports and educational studies that our children are not only not
reading, but when they do read, they are reading the wrong books. And the
argument gets quite heated since, after all, the decisions that are made
will affect our children’s education, or, more to the point, their
ability to score well on district-wide proficiency tests that enable
schools to receive government funding.
Critics
and scholars such as Glenna Sloan and Michael Benton question if there is
such a genre as children’s poetry or if, in fact, any real poetry exists
in today’s abundance of children’s verse. Sloan, in her informative
essay “But Is It Poetry?” published in Children’s Literature in
Education (2001), says, “Children’s poetry as a genre is by no
means universally respected. Furthermore, the greater literary world
treats children’s poets as nonentities.” Though the field of
children’s verse is growing (consumer spending on all children’s books
has exceeded $2.1 billion), and the list of writers lengthening, Sloan
questions: “In today’s abundance of children’s verse, is there
genuine poetry?”
How
does one define children’s poetry? What are the criteria? What constitutes “genuine” poetry? This has
proven as difficult as defining poetry, or art, in general. Is it as Neil
Philip writes in the New Oxford Book of Children’s Verse (1996):
“A true children’s poem is distinguished by clarity of thought,
language and rhythm”? According to Philip, a certain “directness”
must reside in order for it to be called a children’s poem.
Unfortunately, “clear-eyed economy” is insufficient in defining
children’s poetry. One must consider all that nonsense verse, the most
famous of which is “Jabberwocky.” Children are constantly making up
their own rhymes and nutty songs that entail no reason whatsoever. D. H.
Lawrence, whose poetry is included in numerous children’s anthologies,
said, “The essential quality of poetry is that it makes a new effort of
attention and ‘discovers’ a new world within the known world.” While
this definition certainly fulfills the criterion one expects of any poem,
a sense of wonder and fresh, sensuous perceptions, it is still a vague
statement that could be applied to virtually any art form.
This
difficulty of defining children’s poetry usually encompasses the debate
as to whether children should be reading only “great,” or classic,
poets, or should they even bother reading successful contemporary
practitioners of the genre, such as X. J. Kennedy, Jack Prelutsky, Shel
Silverstein, Aileen Fisher, Eloise Greenfield, et al. Many anthologies of
children’s verse include such “classic” authors as William Blake,
Emily Dickinson, Christina Rossetti, Robert Frost, and Langston Hughes,
while avoiding living children’s poets. This seems like a reincarnation
of the quarrel of the ancients and the moderns of the seventeenth century,
though contemporary critics will not even allow poets the avenue of
imitation, preferring instead to shun them completely. Funny enough, as
time passes, those who were once contemporary authors slide into the
category of classic authors, making them eligible for inclusion. Perhaps
we prefer our artists safely tucked away in their tombs before we regard
their work with any seriousness.
Janine
Certo, in her essay “Cold plums and the old men in the water: Let
children read and write ‘great’ poetry,” published in Reading
Teacher (2004), admits Shel Silverstein “was instrumental in
focusing my own interest in poetry as a child.” Though Certo teaches
both “great” poets of the past alongside contemporary poets, she
spends the majority of the essay validating the use of great poetry with
children.
Michael
Driscoll’s anthology A Child’s Introduction to Poetry (2003)
seems aimed more at adults rather than children, whose modus operandi
seems to favor a force-feeding of the classics. Sharon Gill, in her essay
“The forgotten genre of children’s poetry,” published in Reading
Teacher (2007), writes that she is disappointed by the absence of
poems written by twentieth-century children’s poets in Driscoll’s
anthology. “Driscoll’s collection teaches children that poems are
written by ‘great poets,’ which can only be understood and evaluated
by academics, whose job it is to tell the rest of us a poem’s
meaning.” Calling himself “Professor Driscoll” will probably do
little to endear him to his youthful readers. Though he provides good
poems by William Blake and Christina Rossetti, he includes eight lines
from Homer’s 15,000-plus line Iliad, eight lines that would make
no sense to a child, and possibly few adults. Furthermore, the book
is cluttered with illustrations, explanations, and definitions that bury
the poems like flowers in an overgrown, weed-filled garden.
As
with many children’s anthologies and school curriculums, emphasis is
placed on analysis, in which an academic examination of the poems is
encouraged, instead of allowing the child to derive some joy and meaning
for herself, because, as you know, this poetry stuff is dire business. X.
J. Kennedy refreshingly notes in his anthology Knock at a Star: A
Child’s Introduction to Poetry (Revised Edition 1999), edited with
his wife, Dorothy, “There is something wrong with (as poet Elizabeth
Bishop once said) ‘making poetry monstrous or boring and proceeding to
talk the very life out of it.’”
The
Kennedys’ collection has a balance of “great” poets with
contemporary poets. He includes probably the most famous, and most
well-represented, poet, Anonymous, along with the likes of “greats”
like Wordsworth, Dickinson, Rossetti, Tennyson, Stevenson, Carroll, Frost
and de la Mare, Edward Lear, Ogden Nash, Charles Causley, Richard Wilbur,
and Jane Kenyon, as well as more recent authors such as Jack Prelutsky,
Sandra Cisneros, Aileen Fisher, and Ted Kooser. To my mind, this seems the
smart way to go about it. The Kennedys are in line with Sloan, writing,
“We gathered poems that we have found to amuse, delight, and engage
children in third grade through sixth. We have tried to leave out what
children ‘ought’ to like.” Sloan believes poems chosen for children
should be “suitable to their needs and desires.” Though the poetic
needs and desires of a child are difficult to ascertain, is it detrimental
for a child to read an “unclassic” poem? Shouldn’t children
experience a wide variety of literature, and certainly, some of those
needs and desires will include a little junk.
Michael
Benton, in his “Essay Review: Poetry for Children—Prepositions and
Possessives,” reminds us what W. H. Auden once said in “Rhyme and
Reason” (1973):
While
there are good poems which children cannot appreciate because they deal
with experiences which they are too young to have known, there are no good
poems that children appreciate which lose their appeal when they grow up.
According
to Sloan, “To test whether poetry written for children is ‘real’ is
to examine it, not in relation to sophisticated lyrics for grownups, but
in light of the traditions of children’s oral lore,” which includes
riddles, jump-roping songs, tongue twisters, jingles, taunts, and the
like. However, I think Douglas Florian’s definition is as good as any:
“Poetry is not black and white. It is more like the gray and purple area
that connects all things we live in.”
Poetry
covers the whole range of human experience, and children’s literature
should be part of that experience, one that is inclusive of all its
possibilities, rather than limited by academic definitions and school
curriculums. Sloan says that those who deny children’s literature a
place probably haven’t read much of it. Probably true. And for those
sad-sack draconians who would deny children’s poetry, let them read Ezra
Pound. Fortunately, we have authors who continue to write good, memorable
children’s verse that might encourage children to read, and to continue
to discover literature through their adult years, and who also remind us
adults of the giddy pleasures of nonsense and wordplay, providing us an
opportunity to board their frigates and briefly take us lands away. As I
attempt to read one of the “classic” poems to my daughter, she
impatiently surveys the library and spies a book across the room displayed
with a bright yellow duck on the cover. I read her this one instead.
It’s not very good, I think, as I turn the pages, clunking rhymes and
stumbling rhythms, but she laughs at the comical situations and facial
expressions, and when we are finished, she scampers off to find another,
perfectly pleased with the book. Which was the whole point of the trip.
Douglas
Florian, author and illustrator, has created more than 30 picture books.
Florian was an illustrator for newspapers and magazines, who said that he
turned to children’s books because it allows him “a lot of creative
freedom.” His best-known titles, Insectlopedia and Mammalabilia,
are noted for their brilliant pictures. Though Florian’s artwork
delightfully accompanies his poetry, it does not supplant it. His poetry
is able to stand alone, and Florian’s wit and wordplay evokes such poets
as Ogden Nash and Edward Lear. He eschews the literal and mundane,
favoring the whimsical, spelling words incorrectly, using bad grammar, and
exaggerating. He knows that children are capable of reveling in the absurd
and nonsensical, though even so-called nonsense poems often make perfect
sense. His bouncy rhythms and surprising rhymes makes his poems excellent
to read aloud:
Just
when you think you know the boa,
There’s
moa and moa and moa and moa.
His
zoological cleverness involves more than just rhythm and rhyme; the
subject matter is grounded with real insight to the animals he is
describing:
Did
you know the ocean’s oysters
Sometimes
change from girls to boysters?
With
Comets, Stars, the Moon, and Mars, Florian has traded in his
microscope for a telescope, moving his lens from the microcosmic to the
macrocosmic, featuring short poems on the various bodies and interstellar
matter of our solar system and universe. For the illustrations, Florian
used brown paper bags, primed white with gesso, with gouache, collage, and
rubber stamps, giving the pages colorful brilliance and a luminous
texture. The die-cut pages add planetary dimension, and the paintings are
child-like, with informative descriptions, such as indicating the Great
Dark Spot on Neptune while also playfully including a cutout of the Latin
god’s face and his trident.
The
poem “A Galaxy” is written in spiral form, and the other galaxies that
inhabit the universe are stamped in their proper shapes: barred, barred
spiral, egg-shaped, flattened, elliptical, irregular, ball-shaped, and
spiral. The planets are stamped with mythological creatures and humorous
references, like Mercury, which consists of a paper cutout of the car.
There are poems on solar systems, planets, comets, and black holes, not
bursting with vivid imagery, but all which are informative to the budding
astronomer, providing facts within the rhythmical, rhyming poems.
With
the moon, for instance, he explains the satellite’s phases, which, I
fear, many adults no longer know.
Moon
A
New moon isn’t really new,
It’s
merely somewhat dark to view.
A
Crescent moon may seem to smile,
Gladly
back after a while.
A
Half moon is half-dark, half light.
At
sunset look due south to sight.
A
Full moon is a sight to see,
Circular
in geometry.
After
full, the moon will wane
Night
by night, then start again.
He
also makes commentary on up-to-date scientific decisions, such as the
planet Pluto being demoted:
Pluto
Pluto
was a planet.
But
now it doesn’t pass.
Pluto
was a planet.
They
say it’s lacking mass.
Pluto
was a planet.
Pluto
was admired.
Pluto
was a planet.
Till
one day it got fired.
The
poem hops along happily in trimeters, and the illustration of the planet
contains words that are both indicative of the problem of classifying
Pluto and that are humorous: “debris?” “planetoid?” “ice
dwarf?” “asteroid?” “hard place?” “dog?” etc.
Florian
enjoys wordplay, as he turns his verse on a single word in the poem
“Saturn”:
Saturn’s
rings turn round Saturn.
Its
moons turn round it, too.
Saturn,
by turns, turns round the sun.
Saturning
through and through.
With
such minimalist poems, it can sometimes be difficult to keep the strings
tightly strung, and some fall a bit flat, the language somewhat lazy,
creating rather ordinary and forgetful verse, like this one about our own
planet:
Two-thirds
water.
One-third
land.
Valleys
deep.
Mountains
grand.
Sky
of blue.
Clouds
of gray.
Life
here, too—
Think
I’ll stay.
The
line “Life here, too” is the important element, since, so far, no
other bodies in the universe have been found to contain life, making our
planet unique, but the eight-line poem lacks any striking image or use of
language to impress such a fact. However, the advantage of a brief text is
to keep children’s attention focused, and it can prepare them for
challenges. The final poem, “The Great Beyond,” challenges kids’
vocabulary:
If
you flew past Pluto
There’s
more that you’d see:
A
planetoid, Sedna,
Found
2003,
And
objects in orbit
Known
as planetesimals
(Sometimes
so small,
They’re
measured in decimals).
Great
galaxies spin,
While
bright comets race.
And
I’d tell you more,
But
I’ve run out of space.
The
book ends with a galactic glossary, for those who would like further
definitions and explanations of the objects of the poems. As a funny
topper, the author has painted himself where the author photo should
reside, a green, pointed-eared alien with red eyes. This is a lovely book
for young novice stargazers, and in an age of video games, TV, and the
ever-increasing dampening of starlight by our cities, it may encourage
parents to join their children and rediscover the wonders of the night
sky. Florian’s book was chosen by Horn Book Magazine as a best
poetry book for 2007.
I’m
unsure why celebrities feel they can write children’s books. From
Madonna to Spike Lee, Katie Couric to Jay Leno, the number of stars
conquering the covers of kids’ books continues to grow. Children’s
book author Jon Scieszka said, “Everybody, and I mean everybody, thinks
they can write children’s book.” Perhaps it’s the deceptive
simplicity of the poetry, or the sentiment of writing a children’s book
for one’s own children that leads these stars astray. Though these folks
have money and access to the Today show to promote their mawkish
scribblings, Scieszka says children’s book authors have a secret weapon,
the children. Children are the most honest and most brutal critics in the
world, and they do not care who you are, just about the pictures and words
on the page.
The
famed actor John Lithgow threw his hat in the children’s book ring some
time ago and has written several successful picture books, and, for his
latest, he has returned to a mainstay of children’s storytelling, the
use of a baby animal as protagonist. Whether it be a duckling, a mouse, or
a rabbit, I find the use of rodents, birds, and other diminutive creatures
to be hackneyed. But they continue to delight children.
Mahalia
Mouse Goes to College was read by Lithgow as
part of his keynote address at Harvard’s commencement in 2005. A CD of
the reading is included, and Lithgow gives an energetic performance and
provides the pauses and emphasis where appropriate for a dramatic
rendering. It’s entertaining to hear the reactions from the crowd, and
my daughter enjoyed this storytelling while we followed along in the book.
Told in a variable ballad meter, Lithgow often uses sophisticated turns of
phrases and vocabulary to tell the tale of a mouse who discovers the world
of learning and student life at Harvard.
The
skies of September were bursting with rain,
Pelting
the old dormitory.
It
filled every gutter and choked every drain.
(Chapter
1 of Mahalia’s story.)
So
begins the story of Mahalia and her life with her family beneath Dunster
House, a Harvard dormitory. Mahalia must leave her family to gather food
(the father’s away on some unknown errand), and enters the downpour
wearing a small bit of newspaper as protection. Mahalia hides in a hall by
the dorm of the cafeteria and smells some cheese coming from an open
backpack lying on the floor. As she explores its interior, she is zipped
shut inside and transported to a classroom, until it is “opened up to
the light”:
A
room unlike any she’d been in before,
Full of rows upon rows of young students.
In terror, she beats a retreat to the
door,
Repenting her recent imprudence.
But
Mahalia doesn’t leave and becomes entranced by the wild-haired
professor’s lecture, who is rendered as if he is giving a speech at a
rally, and she decides to take the class. As to her previous mission to
gather food for her starving family, Lithgow solves this problem of
responsibility by choosing to have Mahalia’s mother appear in a dream
and assuage Mahalia’s guilt at having abandoned her family to attend
college by telling her “Be happy and follow your heart!” While this is
interpreted as so much Emersonian self-reliance, I found it more like
youthful self-indulgence. In any case, Mahalia attends college where she
dabbles in art, history, math, and zoology, until she finally receives her
degree. News of her graduation reaches her parents, and at the
commencement, there is a joyous reunion.
Mahalia
is drawn as a soft and vulnerable creature, with large eyes, and is quite
cute wrapped in her newspaper. Oleynikov uses a dark palette, with
digitally enhanced gouache illustrations. The perspective from Mahalia’s
point of view inside the backpack, complete with the metal teeth of the
zipper, peering into the classroom as from a mouth, is a lovely touch, and
emphasizes her loneliness and vulnerability. Though the commentary on lab
fees and university life will be lost on children, the clever rhymes and
quick pace make the story a good read. The dark moments with Mahalia alone
in the backpack and separated from her parents creates an anxiety with
which children can identify, and the happy reunion at the end will bring a
sigh of relief.
Jack
Prelutsky is the first U.S. children’s poet laureate and is
well-deserving of the post. Children don’t really need a poet laureate,
and the nomination seems more an appointment fulfilling some politico’s
agenda, but Prelutsky is a good representative for contemporary
children’s poets. He has been writing children’s poetry for about 40
years, frequently in traditional forms, employing puns, alliteration and
wordplay that is exciting and inventive and best when read aloud.
Unfortunately, Good Sports: Rhymes About Running, Jumping,
Throwing, and More is a dull collection. For the inventor of the
“Duhduhs” and purple orangutans and pigs in stilts, the poems in Good
Sports are flat, with none of the playful and witty language for which
Prelutsky has been so celebrated in such mischievous and clever
collections as It’s Raining Pigs and Noodles and A Pizza the
Size of the Sun. Take, for instance, these lines from “The Apathetic
Thwo,” for whom “There’s nothing that I want to do / I have a dreamy
point of view,” or “Mister Pfister Gristletwist,” the “preeminent
contortionist / exhibiting for all to see / my peerless elasticity.”
The
illustrations by Chris Raschka are of watercolor and ink, and they have a
kinetic energy, capturing the motion of playing children, but they do
little to enliven the verse:
I’m
standing at home,
And
count’s three two.
A
fastball is coming,
And
here’s what I’ll do—
I’ll
swing at that ball,
And
I’ll smack it so hard,
I’ll
send that ball sailing
Clear
out of the yard.
Or:
I’m
a gymnast,
I
can vault,
Swing
and spring
And
somersault,
Even
balance
On
the beam—
Some
day soon
I’ll
make the team.
I
much prefer the Prelutsky of nonsense verse and playful exaggerations,
whose altered perspectives make his poetry so much fun, such as in “Is
Traffic Jam Delectable?” Though appearing as nonsense, the verse makes
perfect sense, and asks the literal questions a child very well might ask.
Is
traffic jam delectable,
does
jelly fish in lakes,
does
tree bark make a racket,
does
the clamor rattle snakes?
I
recommend searching for the classic Prelutsky titles.
Mucumber
McGee and the Half-Eaten Hot Dog, written
and illustrated by Patrick Loehr, his first children’s book, is
reminiscent of the artwork of Tim Burton and Edward Gorey, two artists who
have provided me with hours of sinister enjoyment. The author’s bio is
written in meter and rhyme, and we learn Loehr “grew up to oversee /
serious business. / He spends his spare time / making pictures of
weirdness.”
The
book is ominous and dark, drawn in gothic purples, blacks, and eerie
greens, with a large stone house and a pale, thin boy in a black suit who
has a pet lizard. An attractive book with dark spreads, I was immediately
drawn to the odd Mucumber, a peculiar Johnny Depp-style character. The
story begins:
In
a rainy old village
down
by the sea,
Lived
a young boy
named Mucumber McGee.
Mucumber’s
plight is that he can’t find anything to eat. The emaciated Mucumber is
so hungry that he scours the pantries and cupboards, until he finally
spies something in the back of the icebox:
But
wait—a hot dog!—
albeit quite old . . .
and
wrinkled and lumpy
and lonely and cold.
Though
not exactly a classic gross-out, it’s enough for the narrator to ask:
But if you were that hungry,
what would YOU do?
So
Mucumber eats half of the odious frankfurter, until his sister warns him
of the dangers of consuming raw meat and even includes a diagram of how
his insides will react. But the macabre story’s verse often falls into
awkward lines, which is distracting and disrupts the music and pace,
especially when read aloud. Loehr has a tin ear for meter, which is
disappointing, as in the first and third lines of this stanza:
You’ll
be sickened, you’ll be paralyzed,
you’ll
be ill enough to cry.
Your
insides will turn upside down!
it’s
reported you might die.
So
Mucumber resigns himself to death, and spends the rest of the book
melodramatically waiting for the end to come, until his mother comes home
and tells him that it’s OK, the hot dogs are precooked. And the moral:
Don’t
listen to others,
like
sisters or brothers.
Next
time you are hungry . . .
just
go ask your mothers.
The
book has lovely dark details, such as the gothic figures in the portraits
that hang on the walls are eating turkey legs and pancakes and the like.
If Loehr can get his rhythms right, I look forward to more of his darkly
humorous cautionary tales.
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