{"id":10243,"date":"2006-07-26T16:36:49","date_gmt":"2006-07-26T20:36:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/vardibidian\/2006\/07\/26\/10243.html"},"modified":"2018-03-12T16:54:53","modified_gmt":"2018-03-12T21:54:53","slug":"interview-part-v","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/2006\/07\/26\/interview-part-v\/","title":{"rendered":"Interview, Part V"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The great bloggist Benjamin Rosenbaum fell into that “interview me” meme, and as I was waiting for some sort of inspiration to go back to blogging, and as Benjamin Rosenbaum is capable of thought-provoking-ositiage on a scale unparalleled in the modern era, I fell with him. The meme, which I have seen kicking around lj before, goes something like this: Person A offers to interview her readers. Person B, one of her readers, expresses willingness to be so interviewed. Person A, then, chooses five questions for Person B, which Person B then answers over at PersonBBlog.com<\/a>, along with an offer to interview his readers. Person V, then, takes Person B up on the aforesaid offer, receives five of the best, and posts them. Person G (that is, you yourself, Gentle Reader) is then welcome to ask me for five questions about you, which you then promise to post on your own journal, or as a guest post here, or tacked to a nearby telephone pole, along with a repeated offer to interview such readers as you may have or want. Simple, no?\n

Of course, when it comes to answering questions posed by Mr. Rosenbaum, nothing is quite as simple as it seems. So I'll do this gently, so I don't get the bends, starting at the end and working my way up.\n

5. What's the best children's book I may not have heard of?<\/b>\n

The Short answer is 17 Kings and 42 Elephants<\/a> by Margaret Mahy. The long answer is, well, long. I’ll begin with the disclaimer that I don’t know what you have or haven’t heard of, so I’ll include a few books that you probably have<\/I> heard of, just in case, because I’d hate for you to miss something just because I assume you know it.\n

Let’s break this down by group, shall we? For picture books, by which I mean books that have only a little text, and which are aimed at an non-reading audience via an interpretive reader, I think the best is Mickey in the Night Kitchen<\/a>, which I’m sure you know, but I really like Peggy Rathmann’s Ten Minutes to Bedtime<\/a>, Romanelli’s Little Bobo<\/i>, Molly Bang<\/a>’s Ten, Nine, Eight<\/a>, David Small’s Imogene’s Antlers<\/a> (and his other wonderful works), and of course Chicka-Chicka Boom Boom<\/a>. I’ll add Kate Duke<\/a>’s Guinea Pig ABC<\/I> for lagniappe, since I feel quite confident you have read most of the above.\n

The next category is what are sometimes called beginner books, that is, books that are for new readers, often with very limited vocabulary and liberal illustrations, but that are more text-oriented than picture books. I don’t think these get much better than the Frog and Toad<\/a> series, but I recommend Cynthia Rylant’s Mr. Putter series<\/a> (she also writes the Poppleton books, the Henry and Mudge books, the Cobble Street Cousins, and about a billion other books, but I think the books about Mr. Putter and his fine cat Tabby and his neighbor Mrs. Teabury and her good dog Zeke are particularly good), John J. Muth’s version of Stone Soup<\/a>, Kin Platt’s Big Max<\/a>, and the poetry of Jack Prelutsky<\/a>, particularly The Gargoyle on the Roof<\/a>. Very little here, actually, that is good but obscure. At least that seems obscure to me.\n

For somewhat older children, say, 7 to 9, something like that, I recommend the Wayside School<\/a> school books, less well-known that Mr. Sachar’s Holes<\/I> but more fun. Oh, are you familiar with Alice for the Very Young<\/a>? It’s also (having now done TSOR) evidently called The Nursery Alice<\/a>, and our Perfect Non-Reader quite liked, having read it after having proper Alice<\/I> read to her. It’s echt Lewis Carroll, not some Disnified machine-translation. I don’t know where your little ones are for reading and whatnot, but it is actually nice to have a little Alice for those who like her but aren’t really up for reading the full book.\n

Oh, and in this category is the answer to a different question, that is, not the best children’s book you may not have heard of<\/I>, where I interpret the criteria as being (1) quality and (b) moderate obscurity, but the most obscure children’s book that you might like<\/I>, where the critera are (A) obscurity and only then (2) quality, and that<\/I> book is Ten and a Kid<\/a>.\n

And that’s quite enough.\n

chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek<\/I>,
-Vardibidian. \n\n\n<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The great bloggist Benjamin Rosenbaum fell into that \u201cinterview me\u201d meme, and as I was waiting for some sort of inspiration to go back to blogging, and as Benjamin Rosenbaum is capable of thought-provoking-ositiage on a scale unparalleled in the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[201],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-navel-gazing"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10243"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10243\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17778,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10243\/revisions\/17778"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}