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“. . . one thing I’ve learned is that you don’t have to understand things for them to be.”

– Madeleine L’Engle, A Wrinkle In Time.

When I was a kid, growing up in the 60’s, I didn’t read many children’s books. P.D. Eastman, of course, whom I liked better than Suess, some of the Little Golden Books, and later, the Hardy Boys. Frank and Joe, I think their names were. I have no memory of either of my parents reading to me, ever. It may have happened, must have happened, but I can’t recall it. I was the youngest of seven, born in 1961, and bed time wasn’t the hour-long ritual it’s become for so many kids today, with reading and talking and snuggling and sharing, etc. When I was a kid, it was more like, “Good night. And don’t forget to brush your teeth.”

The words that formed my reading habit came from the sports pages of The New York Daily News and The Long Island Press. I still maintain that my writing style, such as it is, was probably more influenced by Dick Young than anybody else: I faithfully read his column for many (formative) years. I also remember, as I reached my middle grade period, talking to my older brothers and sisters about books. They were readers, all of them, and loved Bradbury and Vonnegut and Brautigan and Robbins, so I picked up those books. I have a vivid recollection of writing a book report in 7th grade on any book I wanted. I chose Anthem by Ayn Rand, probably because it was a slendest paperback on the family bookshelf.

I also read sports biographies, being an ex-boy, and still hold a special fondness for Go Up for Glory Bill Russell. It hit me like a thunderbolt, and for a time I was determined to grow into a very tall black man who’d willingly pass up a shot in order to set a fierce pick and roll into the paint, looking for the put-back.

Anyway, I basically missed the entire canon of children’s literature. I didn’t read Where the Wild Things Are until I worked at Scholastic as a junior copywriter in 1985, hauling in $12,500 a year, thank you very much. These days I still try to fill in the holes, though I’ll admit it: I love adult literature. After all, I’m an adult. Those are the books that lit my fuse. I am not giving up my grown-up books.

Now, about A Wrinkle In Time. I liked it. Some parts — the first few chapters, especially — I really, really admired. Other parts — after the tessering, and into the full-blown fantasy — I didn’t care for as much. It reminded me of the original Star Trek series (my brothers loved Star Trek and we watched it religiously). In sum: Dated, kind of corny, a little obvious, but entertaining and fast-paced and intelligent and provocative, too. There’s a quality to the book, a be

I am currently illustrating my first Little Golden Book, which is quite exciting :)
I can show you the cover because it is now available for pre-order on Amazon:


Sketches are all finished for the interior and now the painting begins!

My writing group gave my baby-to-be a great gift–a library full of their favorite picture and board books. I am thrilled–it is such a generous gift and great idea. Two of the books that I received were Little Golden Books, which of course brought back fond memories of my own Little Golden Books. I used to ask for these all the time when we went to the grocery and drug store. I wanted the ENTIRE collection, of course. But I thought I would revisit these today with the couple I got from my writing group–Nurse Nancy and The Monster at the End of this Book (starring Grover).

Before I do, I want to talk about how important inexpensive and quality books are for young readers. Study after study has been done about literacy, and one of the important points that always pops up is that a child needs books at home. Okay, so Little Golden Books are no longer like 39 cents (they are about $3.99), but that’s still cheaper than many of the gorgeous, but expensive, picture books at the bookstore that sell for $15.95. So, if you are on a budget, think about Little Golden Books for your young reader or your preschool/kindergarten classroom.

So, the first book I received was Nurse Nancy by Kathryn Jackson with illustrations by Corinne Malvern. This book comes with band-aids attached to the title page. I love it! My daughter will love it! It’s about a little girl named Nancy, who likes to play nurse with her dolls. But not only does she take care of her dolls, she also helps her mother and her brother, Tom, who gets a cut when he is running from some bees. This book shows the first aid steps–from cleaning out the wound to bandaging it. And soon her brothers are joining in the fun with a wagon for an ambulance. The illustrations are darling, the book is still timely (remember when we all used to play and pretend things instead of watch TV, go on the computer, and play video games?), and your child or your students will love it!

There’s a Monster at the End of This Book by Jon Stone is one of my very favorite books of all time. It’s not just because I love GROVER–I mean, who doesn’t? But it’s a funny, funny book, and I can’t wait to giggle over it with my daughter. If you aren’t familiar with it, then you need to get familiar with it–WOW! That ‘s a strong statement. And it’s now A Little Golden Book, so the price is right. Grover finds out that there’s a monster at the end of the book, and he is SCARED. So, who is this mean monster? Well, what is Grover after all?

Check out everything that Little Golden Books still has to offer here: www.goldenbooks.com

We're nearly finished filling my daughter's backpack with all the supplies she'll need for kindergarten. (The last item we need to find is a pack of feathers. Wonder what they'll use that for?) For the most part, I'm confident she's prepared. She can write her name, knows all her letters and numbers, and is just starting to read on her own.

Choo! Choo! Chomp! Even though I coordinate our school's science fair, science is a subject that we haven't spent a lot of time on yet at home. However, my daughter has learned a few things through watching shows like The Jim Henson Company's Dinosaur Train on PBS. The show encourages basic scientific thinking and skills as well as discussing various dinosaurs, life science, natural history and paleontology. Both my kids like watching Buddy the Tyrannosaurus Rex travel on the dinosaur train with his adoptive Pteranodon family. Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous - I can barely say those words but thanks to the show my children can easily recite them along with spouting out other interesting dinosaur facts.

The PBS website also contains a lot of wonderful content useful in helping to prepare pre-schoolers for school. Several fun scientific activities can be found on the DINOSAUR TRAIN website for parents and teachers http://www.pbs.org/parents/dinosaurtrain/activities/ or http://www.pbs.org/teachers/dinosaurtrain/lessonplans/. Here are a few but make sure to click on the links above for more:

• A Colorful Hypothesis: help your child understand and apply the term "hypothesis"
  
• Dinosaurs A to Z - learn the alphabet letters and memorize some dinosaur names from A to Z
  
• Dinosaurs of a Feather - all about bird feathers
  
• Make a Dragonfly - learn basic insect anatomy by creating a model of a dragonfly
  
• Homemade Fossils - learn what fossils are and create a model of a fossil
  

PBS Kids Reading Activity Calendar
The summer months are often challenging when it comes to encouraging children to read and learn. This handy calendar, developed by PBS Kids is a great source for suggestions on how to combine reading and fun this summer.

Third Grade is proving to be a crucial year for young readers
A new report titled, “Early Warning: Why Reading by the End of Third Grade Matters,” details the importance of mastering reading skills before kids enter the fourth grade. This period of time marks a child’s transition from learning to read to reading to learn.

Walter Farley Literacy Foundation gets kids reading
The Walter Farley Literacy Foundation seeks to encourage literacy in children by introducing them to the beloved Black Stallion story. In addition to reading this classic tale, kids also get a chance to meet the real thing and develop a connection with real horses.

Museum Exhibit Exemplifies Treasure in Little Golden Books
We all remember the charming stories from Little Golden Books. Here is a museum exhibit which features them called, “Golden Legacy: Original Art From 65 Years of Golden Books.” The exhibit will run through August 22nd, so be sure to check it out this summer.

Classic Children’s Book Favorites Now Infiltrating Your Cell Phone
Today’s technological advances are proving more and more that everything can be digitized-even Dr. Seuss. Children’s book favorites are now making their debut as cheaper digital versions.

In my first year of college at Cal State Los Angeles, some kitchen mishap made our dorm apartment reek. As we opened the windows to get rid of the stench, I sputtered something about the smell being worse than a skunk. One of my roommates, a born and bred Angeleno, gasped back that she wouldn’t know because she had never smelled a skunk. Even having been metropolitan-born myself, I could not believe such a thing. Never smelled a skunk? Ever? To what do you compare all bad smells (other than Long Beach)? And then it got more bizarre: she’d never seen a cow either. My mind still reels all these years later. This young woman had reached pre-med student adulthood but had never been to a petting zoo, for heaven’s sake? How is this possible? My kids have been very fortunate that they have always had a local working farm and pumpkin patch to visit where they experience the animals, from newborn to retired, up close and personal. The farm shut down as a public entity this year, but I have twenty years worth of petting, feeding, and hay riding pictures as proof that I at least tried to broaden their suburban horizons. Annie North Bedford’s The Jolly Barnyard shows an idyllic picture of farm animals brainstorming what contributions they can make to the farmer’s birthday celebration. Maybe there’s some rich Southern California doctor that would pay for them to take their show on the road to the inner city.

http://www.amazon.com/Jolly-Barnyard-Little-Golden-Book/dp/0375828427

http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/585620.Annie_North_Bedford

photo by jelene www.flickr.com

When I was little, I loved my Little Golden Books, and I had a bunch. From The Poky Puppy to The Little Red Caboose to my favorite–We Like Kindergarten, I listened to my parents read me those stories over and over again until I could read them myself. I also remember looking at all the titles listed of those books and thinking, I have to get all the Little Golden Books. They even used to sell them at the grocery store—and they were so cheap. If I am remembering correctly, didn’t they cost between 29 and 49 cents?

In the summer of 2008, I went to the SCBWI-LA conference and learned that Little Golden Books are not dead. An editor from Little Golden Books (now owned by Random House) was there and talking about the new line. Some of the Little Golden Books Classics, reprinted in 2001, are:

So, Little Golden Books are the perfect Timeless Thursday topic because 1. they are still around; and 2. kids still love the stories. My stepson happens to have a Little Golden Book with Simba and his lovable friends from The Lion King. He loves to read this book with us before he goes to bed, and he is in third grade, reading chapter books like Charlotte’s Web for school. There’s just something about Little Golden Books.

And one of the best things–they aren’t 29 cents anymore, but most are $2.99 or less. That’s about 29 cents in today’s economy. WOW!

Happy Reading Little Golden Books!
Margo

Do you or your child have a favorite Little Golden Book?

Over on the child_lit listserv, a subscriber posted a link to an online article in The Weekly Standard. Titled "Picture Perfect," the article is about an exhibit of the Little Golden Books. Here's the excerpt that caught my eye:

"The great Leonard Weisgard--who painted covers for the New Yorker before he was 20 and whose half-century career ranged far and wide--illustrated another Margaret Wise Brown classic, Pussy Willow, for Little Golden Books. Even more arresting than his painting of the soft grey kitten peering up between grasses and wild strawberries at a grasshopper in flight is his picture for Indian, Indian: a black-haired, clay-colored little boy encountering a recumbent white horse with flowing mane, full of power and grace, in a field of daisies.

It is surprising how undated these pictures are. A few images and titles are politically incorrect by present standards. Doctor Dan the Bandage Man's counterpart is, I'm afraid, Nurse Nancy. And the traditional family ideal implicit in We Help Mommy, We Help Daddy, and The Happy Family--whose cover shows a girl in a dress picking flowers from a flower bed and a boy pushing a hand mower across the surrounding lawn--has taken a beating in the decades since these books appeared."

Golden Legacy: How Golden Books Won Children's Hearts, Changed Publishing Forever, and Became An American Icon Along the Way (Deluxe Golden Book) by Leonard S. Marcus; Golden Books, 2007.

Ages 9-12

I'm sure many of us have memories of those metallic spines of Little Golden Books. I always love looking at the -This Little Golden Book Belongs To page and checking out my penmanship as a child. THE YEAR 2007 marked the 65th anniversary of a bold experiment: the launch of the Little Golden Books during the dark days of World War II. At a time when the literacy rate was not nearly as high as it is now - and privation was felt by nearly all - quality books for children would now be available at a price nearly everyone could afford (25 cents), and sold where ordinary people shopped. Golden Legacy is a lively history of a company, a line of books, the groundbreaking writers and artists who created them, the clever mavericks who marketed and sold them, and the cultural landscape that surrounded them.

The Children's Museum of Manhattan is offering an exhibit on Little Golden Books from July 4 until August 28. View 60 masterpieces of original illustration art by legendary artists from American publishing's best-loved and most consequential picture-book line - Little Golden Books.

Watch the video, The Little Golden Milestone, from ABC News.


Hop over to Anastasia Suen's picture book of the day blog for the Nonfiction Monday roundup!