I know what you're going to do next Saturday
or, what was the WORST children's book of 1963?
You Obie friends o' mine know what kind of trouble starts when I get on a researching kick, especially when it revolves around children's books (and to think yesterday morning I was just musing that I still have William Anderson's phone number and have never called him).
A funny (in both your haha and troubling ways) thing was just discovered by your humble heroine and her two accomplices. Yours truly was fussing with her resume yet again and her roommates jumped in on the fun. For comparison, I was perusing Eric's resume for action verb ideas and we got into a discussion about the "literacy celebration" he coordinated a couple of years ago. It centered on Dr. Seuss. Eric then brought out a copy of a book written by Helen Palmer; the title of it is _Do You Know What I'm Going to Do Next Saturday?_
He insisted it was militaristic. I thought he was being merely metaphorical. I was wrong. First appearances (cover design, font and lettering) suggest a Seussian tome, but the inner tone is vastly different, despite its obvious attempts to imitate Seuss' style. It's just... disturbing.
http://www.snopes.com/language/literary/seussban.asp
I know this says to give the book a chance. But consider an actual snippet:
---
There are things I want to do.
Did you ever play
with the United States Marines?
Shooting!
I'll go shooting
with the United States Marines.
Little guns! Big guns!
I'll shoot every gun
that they shoot.
The Marines will like my shooting.
And they are going to like me.
They will ask
me to stay
and eat a little
something.
You have to keep eating
if you want to keep going.
----
So it turns out Palmer was T.S. Geisel's first wife. I think I also read that she killed herself in 1967. This book is just seriously frightening, and I don't think I'm reading very far between the lines.
The pictures do not put anything in context that I hadn't already independently determined the context of.
At least I'm very delighted by Sharon Creech's _Walk Two Moons_ and am reassured that the Newbery medal goes to deserving authors for rich stories. It's hard to turn the attention back to the resume from this topic, but I find myself again pondering that MLS in kiddie lit...
You Obie friends o' mine know what kind of trouble starts when I get on a researching kick, especially when it revolves around children's books (and to think yesterday morning I was just musing that I still have William Anderson's phone number and have never called him).
A funny (in both your haha and troubling ways) thing was just discovered by your humble heroine and her two accomplices. Yours truly was fussing with her resume yet again and her roommates jumped in on the fun. For comparison, I was perusing Eric's resume for action verb ideas and we got into a discussion about the "literacy celebration" he coordinated a couple of years ago. It centered on Dr. Seuss. Eric then brought out a copy of a book written by Helen Palmer; the title of it is _Do You Know What I'm Going to Do Next Saturday?_
He insisted it was militaristic. I thought he was being merely metaphorical. I was wrong. First appearances (cover design, font and lettering) suggest a Seussian tome, but the inner tone is vastly different, despite its obvious attempts to imitate Seuss' style. It's just... disturbing.
http://www.snopes.com/language/literary/seussban.asp
I know this says to give the book a chance. But consider an actual snippet:
---
There are things I want to do.
Did you ever play
with the United States Marines?
Shooting!
I'll go shooting
with the United States Marines.
Little guns! Big guns!
I'll shoot every gun
that they shoot.
The Marines will like my shooting.
And they are going to like me.
They will ask
me to stay
and eat a little
something.
You have to keep eating
if you want to keep going.
----
So it turns out Palmer was T.S. Geisel's first wife. I think I also read that she killed herself in 1967. This book is just seriously frightening, and I don't think I'm reading very far between the lines.
The pictures do not put anything in context that I hadn't already independently determined the context of.
At least I'm very delighted by Sharon Creech's _Walk Two Moons_ and am reassured that the Newbery medal goes to deserving authors for rich stories. It's hard to turn the attention back to the resume from this topic, but I find myself again pondering that MLS in kiddie lit...