This book was really popular when I was a kid. We loved the premise: thirteen year old Annabel wakes up to find she has switched bodies with her mother, and has to make it through her mother’s day. The mother, in Annabel’s body, plays hookey from school and makes over her daughter’s life. Various complications… Read more Freaky Friday is freaky (1972)
Though I be beaten to death by enraged fifth-grade teachers, I have to say it: Stuart Little is a terrible book. First off, the premise — that Mrs. Little gave birth to a mouse — just doesn’t bear thinking about. But we’ll let that pass; we’ll pretend that White’s target audience in the 1940’s knew… Read more Stuart Little (1945)
– Part I – – Part II – – Part III – There are three basic problems with this kind of book. The first is their distorted moral vision: that life is gruesome and boys need to toughen up. These books may be beautifully written and of high literary quality (Bambi and The… Read more The Dog Dies, Part IV: Conclusions
– Part I – – Part II – Oh look, there’s more. In today’s post we’ll cover Dead Dog books from the mid-’50’s through the ’70’s. In the final post I’ll have some general comments about WHAT THE HELL WERE THESE ADULTS THINKING. Hurry Home Candy (1954, Meindert De Jong) Puppy is abused by humans,… Read more The Dog Dies, Part III
– Part I – Charlotte’s Web (1952, E. B. White) Fern, daughter of Maine farmers, won’t let her father kill the smallest piglet. Instead she adopts it, names it Wilbur, and feeds it from a baby bottle. But Fern doesn’t get to keep Wilbur; instead he goes to her uncle’s farm to be raised for… Read more The Dog Dies, Part II: Charlotte’s Web
“Go to the library and pick out a book with an award sticker and a dog on the cover. Trust me, that dog is going down.” – Gordon Korman, No More Dead Dogs This is such a cliché, there is even a list on the Goodreads website called “The dog dies . . .… Read more The Dog Dies, Part I
In honor of the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award being renamed, I’m moving my discussion of the Little House books forward in the queue. There is a whole genre of semi-autobiographical books reflecting back on the era between the Civil War and WWI. (More on this in another post.) The giant of the genre, of… Read more The Little House Books: A Historical Slap Upside the Head