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Summer Reading Is Killing Me, Part One

You know it’s coming up soon. The summer reading lists from school, the summer reading programs at the library (and in other places too– my kids’ tae kwon do studio holds a summer reading program, if you can believe it)!

What to do for the kid who wants a scary book for his summer reading? On the Indiana K-2 state recommended reading list, the only book that probably qualifies is Where the Wild Things Are. So is there anything out there that didn’t win the Newbery Award that a monster-loving kid could get into? Of course there is!

Between the point where all reading is grown-ups reading aloud to kids, to the point where kids are fluently reading chapter books, is a transitional category of books called easy readers. Easy readers were pioneered by Dr. Seuss and Else Holmelund Minarik and have been a blossoming category of books ever since. They’ve come a long way since Margaret Hillert’s Happy Birthday, Dear Dragon.

 

 

And here are a few books that might catch your early reader’s interest.

 

There Is a Bird On Your Head! (Elephant and Piggie) by Mo Willems

Before getting specific to monsters, chills and thrills, first I have to recommend above and beyond almost any other easy reader the Elephant and Piggie books by Mo Willems. They are so absurdly funny that you probably won’t mind reading them over and over again and again. And your first grader will probably be able to read them to you, too.  There Is a Bird on Your Head! won a Geisel Award, and for good reason. You just cannot go wrong with Mo Willems. Unfortunately, once you’ve read all of the books, you will find there really isn’t anything else like them. I asked the librarian at our library, and she couldn’t come up with anything. If you do find something that measures up, I want to know!

 

The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss

Maybe you never considered this interpretation, but a lot has been written about the creepiness of  this book, with a giant intruder breaking in to the children’s house while their mother is gone, and causing havoc.

 

Spooky Hayride by Brian James (Level 1)

Who spooks who?  How spooky IS the hayride, anyway? This book uses very simple and limited vocabulary and still tells a story with wit.

 

Looking for Bigfoot by Bonnie Worth (Level 4)

Kids transitioning to easy chapter books may miss out on some of the more complex easy readers. Looking for Bigfoot is aimed at kids who can read paragraphs independently and is as long as some of the shorter chapter books, at almost 50 pages. This is more of a nonfiction title about the mysterious cryptid than a scary story, but monster loving kids may still get into it.

 

Beastly Tales:  Yeti, Bigfoot, and the Loch Ness Monster (Eyewitness Readers) by Malcolm Yorke (Level 3)

When it comes to Bigfoot, there’s no such thing as too much, at least in this house.

 

In a Dark, Dark, Room and Other Scary Stories by Alvin Schwartz (Level 2)

Alvin Schwartz’s name should be familiar: he’s the guy who compiled the classic Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark and its sequels. We get questions here every once in awhile where someone who can’t remember its name describes a story from this book. It may have been around long enough for you to remember reading it as a kid yourself, but it never gets old.

 

Ghosts! Ghostly Tales from Folklore by Alvin Schwartz (Level 2)

Alvin Schwartz collects together ghost stories for early readers.

 

No More Monsters for Me! by Peggy Parrish (Level 1)

This is a classic I Can Read story.  Minneapolis Simpkin desperately wants a pet, and when she encounters a monster, she sneaks it into her house. Sneaking a monster into the house, she discovers, really is not a good idea.

 

I Spy A Scary Monster (I Spy)  by Jean Marzollo (Level 1)

It’s I Spy–you can’t go wrong! You can read this with the earliest readers. The objects they are supposed to find in the photographic spread  on the page opposing are pictured next to the clue, so words can be matched with pictures, and then discovered in the photo.

 

Amanda Pig and the Awful, Scary Monster (Oliver and Amanda) by Jean Van Leeuwen (Level 3)

Amanda overcomes her fear of bedtime monsters when Oliver helps her build a monster trap.

 

The Witch Who Was Afraid of Witches by Alice Low (Level 4)

Alice Low wrote several children’s books with witches as characters. According to a reviewer at Publisher’s Weekly, this is “an irresistible way to add joy to the scarey fall holiday.” But you can also read it as a way to add joy to your summer holiday.

Three Claws in the City (Meet the Monsters of the World) by Cari Meister (Level 3)

This is one of a series about some monsters that are more funny than frightening. Their look: cartoony. Their names: Snorp, Ora, Moopy, and Three Claws. The publishing imprint, Stone Arch, also published the early graphic novel series Monster and Me by Robert Marsh.

 

Don’t Go In The Water! (Easy-to-Read Spooky Tales) by Veronika Martenova Charles

This book is also part of a series of ten books, and the books, while labeled “easy to read,” have not been leveled. They are 56 pages long, which is long for an easy reader, but the books, depending on the child, are readable by first and second graders. Each book has three ‘spooky tales,’ loosely related to a folktale, and the ending of the last story is open ended. These would probably be appreciated most by the kids who REALLY are looking to be spooked, and not just those who want a mildly funny monster story.

 

The Vampire Bunny (Bunnicula and Friends) by James Howe and Jeff Mack (Level 3)

Who knew that James Howe’s classic middle-grade novel Bunnicula would spawn so many sequels and spin-offs? This is one of an entire series of Level 3 easy readers starring the characters from the original novel. This one follows the plot of the book fairly closely.

 

Hope that gets your early reader started for summer reading! Enjoy!

 

 

 

Posted on May 7, 2013 by , Reply

The Tenth Good Thing About Barney: Reading Aloud With a Child

I have been doing a little academic research into children’s literature and horror recently, and one of the things I’ve seen mentioned multiple times is that children’s literature is different that any other kind, because it’s really written with adults in mind. Let me explain.

It’s mostly adults who write children’s books. Adults decide what books are appropriate for publication for children, edit them, and market them. Adults are the ones who usually buy them. And adults decide how and where they should be made available. Many children’s books are written well beyond the capacity of  the child to read the book independently… so most children’s books, for many years, are also read by, or with adults, to children.

As adults, we have too much of a past to experience a children’s book in the same way a child does, and our roles in the present also change the way we look at them. And that affects the reading experience children have when we read aloud with them.

My mom bought a book containing a variety of stories meant for reading aloud with a child. It’s a strange collection, really, and includes The Shrinking of Treehorn by Florence Parry Heide and The Magic Finger by Roald Dahl. My five year old daughter pulled this book out, opened it to the middle and said “I want this one.” She had chosen The Tenth Good Thing About Barney, a picture book by Judith Viorst about a boy grieving for his cat, who has just died. It’s often recommended for use with children when talking about death. Not really a feel good bedtime story. Even though I’ve never had a cat, I tear up at the end. I said, “This is a very sad story. Are you sure you want me to read it?” She did. And so I read it to her. And for her it wasn’t sad. She made a connection between Barney, the cat in the story, and Picky-picky, Ramona Quimby’s cat (in Beverly Cleary’s Ramona books), who dies in the movie, but she wasn’t sad. And the next night at bedtime she wanted it again. And so did her brother. I warned him that it could be sad, but he still wanted to hear it, so I read it again. And it wasn’t sad for him. As an adult who knows how this book is supposed to be used, I didn’t really feel the need for my kids to hear the story. As a mom, I was afraid it would make them sad, and maybe scared, so that it would be hard to go to sleep. And I have heard a few questions about cats and about death in the last day or so, but nothing that seems to make them sad, or scared, or worried. Keeping it away from them because of my own worries, fears, and preconceptions seems, in this case, like it would have been kind of selfish. They don’t appear to have been damaged by the experience, and maybe it has made their lives richer. I think that goes for a lot of books that people worry about putting in the hands of children. I am glad that I didn’t say more than that this was a sad story. Even that gives them a frame that is not their own for understanding what the story means for them.

Reading aloud to children, and with children, is a joy, a pleasure, and sometimes a frustration. And it’s also a responsibility, not just as adults reading for thirty minutes at night with them so they’ll grow up to be independent readers with a love of stories and books (or at least children who can pass the I-READ exam). It is a responsibility, because by what we choose to share and how we feel about children’s books, as adults, as professionals, and as former children, we have the ability to change the way our children see and feel about a book that so very many adults wanted to put into their hands. Once it’s in their hands, though, children can change the book for us, as well.  Reading aloud  with a child alters the world. That’s something to keep in mind.

 

Posted on January 8, 2013 by , Reply

What Was I Scared Of? and Other Dreadful Tales

I’ve come to see that there is often a difference between what is marketed as children’s horror and what they find truly unsettling. Horror is an atmospheric medium, so illustrations and artwork(even those you might not expect) can terrify on their own or interact with language to create a sense of dread. Following R.L. Stine’s philosophy, it can be written to be so fantastical that it’s a thrilling scare, easily separated from the real, with a billboard on it letting kids know “Hey, this is scary!” Or, it can tap into real fears, but in unreal ways (some, I am sure, that the author never imagined), as this article suggests. The comments are surprising (or maybe not). What’s even more interesting is the adult perspective on reading these books not just as children but to them. The Story of Babar, for instance, is mentioned multiple times in the comments as scary and unsettling to both children and adults reading to children because of the scene in which Babar’s mother is killed, but I don’t remember that at all. From looking at the comments, it’s clear that what inspires dread or fear is often very individual… but certain authors and books do stick out. The Velveteen Rabbit, Love You Forever, Sylvester and the Magic Pebble, Der Struwwelpeter, The Giving Tree, Curious George, The Five Chinese Brothers, and The Runaway Bunny top the list, and it seems that the works of Dr. Seuss, Maurice Sendak, and Hans Christian Andersen should be handled with care.

Here are some of the titles (not specifically listed above) that people mentioned. Did, or do, any of these disturb you or your child?

The Little Match Girl, The Little Mermaid, The Snow Queen, and The Robber Bridegroom by Hans Christian Andersen
Madeleine by Ludwig Bemelmans
The Secret Garden and A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett
Olivia by Ian Falconer
Are You My Mother? by P.D. Eastman
The Duel by Eugene Field
Only One Woof by James Herriott
The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling
I Stink! by Kate McMullan
Winnie the Pooh by A.A. Milne
Amelia Bedelia by Peggy Parrish
We’re Going on a Bear Hunt by Helen Oxenbury
The Tale of Peter Rabbit and The Roly Poly Pudding by Beatrix Potter
Goodnight Gorilla by Peggy Rathmann
The Cat in the Hat, I Had Trouble Getting to Solla Sollew, and What Was I Scared Of? from The Sneetches and Other Stories by Dr. Seuss
Where the Wild Things Are, In the Night Kitchen, Outside Over There, Kenny’s Window and Higgelty, Piggelty, Pop! There Must be More to Life! by Maurice Sendak
A Bad Case of Stripes by David Shannon
The Starry Messenger by Peter Sis
Sylvester and the Magic Pebble and The Amazing Bone by William Steig
Goosebumps books by R.L. Stine
The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
Jumanji by Chris Van Allsburg
The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder
Mama? by Jeanette Winter
The Lonely Doll by Dare Wright

If none of these fit the bill for you or the kids you know, which ones did, and why? Comment below and let me know!

Posted on November 30, 2012 by , Reply
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