Rooting around my old things, I found this 1971 set of books written and illustrated by Richard Scarry, mostly. I believe they originally came in a cardboard sleeve, long lost, also decorated like a building.
I remember them as landmarks, books that taught me to read. Surprisingly, I see that they also taught me the critical
principles that have governed my reading ever since.
First, Best Stories Ever.
On the one hand, of course we become readers because we love
stories. But note the emphasis on the best
stories. Even at this young age, I was
encouraged to judge and rank, to stop wasting my time with the typical
story. We will see, in later volumes,
that for the imaginative reader story-as-such is not necessary at all, but as
long as I want a story, stick with the best.
I also learned that many of the best stories are in verse. Lyric poems, even. This book is full of poems.
Leafing through, I am not so sure that these stories,
despite some fairy tales and bits of Aesop, are actually the best, but I
learned the principle. That’s the
important thing.
Reading is also for Going Places. I always loved the casual surrealism of
children’s books. A goat in a hot-air
balloon, a cat flying a helicopter, a Danish mouse-witch (“All witches must put
their brooms away when they have finished with them, “A Castle in Denmark,” p.
19), why not, why not.
Related, but here is where I diverge from most readers: Things To
Know. Many readers of the
internetting variety write about what they experienced, while I am more
interested in what I learned. In
this book, it was colors, numbers, etiquette (“Everyone likes the polite elephant,”
“The Polite Elephant,” p. 49, what propaganda!), but also the names of flowers
and birds, and most curiously Epicurean philosophy, as expressed in the 25
pages of “I Am a Bunny,”* where the “thing to know” is not the biological
life cycle of rabbits but the jumper-clad bunny’s attitude towards the
universe (pp. 98-9):
Yes, that is the bunny on the cover of Best Stories Ever,
but his anti-story actually appears in Things To Know. “Story” can mean a lot of things. The most curious thing in Things To Know
is that it ends with a cluster of Mother Goose rhymes, which are themselves things to know. In the arts, the only way to learn about
things is to encounter them. Many
readers, as far as I can tell, read their dreary novels expecting to “love”
them, and are often disappointed, while I read literature in order to learn
what it is, and am always happy, and find that love generally takes care of
itself.
The best for last: what is literature, really, what is
reading, if not Fun with Words? Now Scarry is giving me the pure stuff.
The first fifty pages of Fun with Words are much like
the cover, typical scenes – a supermarket, a firehouse, “A Drive in the Country”
- with every possible item labelled ("owl"), perfect for quick vocabulary growth and
also for training the taste of a reader who especially loved – still loves –
watching Robinson Crusoe unload the shipwreck item by item or Huckleberry Finn looting
Pa’s cabin before faking his death.
Sometimes I want the best story, but sometimes all I want is a list, an
imaginatively inspiring list. The most material literature can be strangely abstract. Fun with words.
The next 125 pages of this book contain an illustrated
children’s dictionary full of recurring characters and little stories that
unfold over the course of the alphabet. Innovative! No wonder I so enjoy novels written like
dictionaries or indices or what have you.
I first read one when I was five.
I wonder what equivalent book today’s five year-old is reading. I am not much of an identifier, but I hope
whatever it is includes a scene as identifiable and influential as this one was
on me:
* “I Am a Bunny” is not by Richard Scarry but by the Danish-American
children’s publishing innovator Ole Risom, who supervised the Little Golden
Books line and was also a Monuments Man!
I somehow can't imagine you as a 5-year-old (?), but what a lovely post.
ReplyDeleteI have to admit Richard Scarry is the last author I (wutheringly) expected to see discussed in these parts, but it makes sense given your experience of him. I know him only from reading his Busytown books to my grandsons, and I confess I didn't find them very stimulating. I wish I'd known about Fun with Words!
ReplyDeleteI must have received this set of books for my fifth birthday and then absorbed them over the course of the summer. I wish I could remember who to credit for the gift.
ReplyDeleteThese Scarry books contain some proto-Busytown, as I understand it. The characters are coalescing. But yes, I wish you had had this instead - it contains a dictionary that is literally meant to be read through. The Q words are: quarrel, quarter, question, quick, quiet, quit, quite.
Still, I was not tempted, scrounging in them, to re-read these books, even the poetry. The five year-old found them a lot more interesting.
Your mother and I discussed it and we also have no idea who gave them to you. Maybe we lifted them from the local library---but I doubt it. I was rather more a fan of Where's Waldo, took less thinking.
ReplyDeleteI actually think I remember, but such a memory is utterly untrustworthy.
ReplyDeleteMy children were brought up on Scarry books. When I was small it was the Beacon Reader books, then the Andrew Lang Fairy Books. They were from an era when it was not thought necessary to adopt a style of speech or illustration designed for children. Beatrix Potter never talks down - she was a relative of my father's mother.
ReplyDeleteA relative! How fun. After Scarry pumped up my reading level, I was ready for Potter. I wonder what literary-critical principles people learn form Potter.
ReplyDeleteScarry definitely talks down. Mid-century pedagogical ideas are audible and visible. I guess they worked on me.
I love this post, and I meant to comment on it when you wrote it.
ReplyDeleteMy mother read me I Am A Bunny when I was small, along with many, many other lovely children’s books. It was she, more than any teacher or librarian (“Don’t touch the books! You’ll get them dirty!”) who gave me my love for literature.
And, Richard Scarry? I think I could still settle down with one of his books in my lap.
I just finished a reread of Harriet The Spy, which I had not read since 1972. The best children’s books, I think, are most suited for adults. Adults who have forgotten great truths they once knew down deep inside.
Harriet the Spy, talk about a classic! your mother was so strict. But books deserve special care.
ReplyDeleteMore people should write about the books that taught them to read. It is interesting.
Ah, I see my comment was poorly written; it was the librarians who said not to touch the books. It’s a wonder I love to read, despite their best efforts. Two interesting topics to write about and discuss in the future: the books that taught us to read, and the librarians who tried to keep us from it. At least in my experience.
ReplyDeleteThe librarian! That's terrible. Ah, librarians, they're mostly wonderful, but once in a while you run across the other kind.
ReplyDelete