The Masks We Wear

Halloween is not my holiday.  Scary and, to me, morbid, I could happily skip the whole thing.  But most kids love it and so I decided to find non-scary Halloween books to read to my students this year.

Illustration by Louis Darling

The first book - or rather, chapter of a book - that came to mind - was the one in Ramona the Pest where she dresses up as "the baddest witch in the world" and participates for the first time in the school Halloween parade.  Reading it to classes over and over, I was struck each and every time by how perfectly Beverly Cleary describes the terror that can come with the anonymity that a costume can bring.  Cleary writes, "Nobody knew who Ramona was, and if nobody knew who she was, she wasn't anybody."  Desperate to assert her identity, Ramona runs back to her classroom and writes herself a nametag, which she proudly holds in front of her costume.

Cleary also describes with emotional clarity the satisfaction children (and adults) can have in scaring themselves - in controlling the amount of fear they experience.  Ramona finds her own mask terrifying and hides it under a couch cushion so she doesn't have to look at it.  But then she periodically "would lift the cushion for a quick glimpse of her scary mask before she clapped the pillow over it again.  Scaring herself was such fun." And while Ramona finds looking at her mask scary, when she wears it - and therefore can't see it herself - she feels brave.  That is, until she feels lost and alone.

Illustrations by Kurt Werth

Written five years before Ramona the Pest, A Tiger Called Thomas by Charlotte Zolotow also uses Halloween and costumes to tackle issues of identity, but from a very different perspective.  Thomas, who has just moved to a new neighborhood, is too shy to approach any of his neighbors.  (And why should he?!?  Shouldn't they come over and greet the new arrivees?  But that is neither here nor there.)  But safely inside his tiger costume, Thomas is brave enough to trick-or-treat, feeling secure that no one will recognize him.  Much to his surprise, everyone knows who he is!  (A Tiger Called Thomas wass reissued with new illustrations in 1988 and again in  2003 and will be published again next year with yet another set of illustrations.  There was an article in the March/April 2017 issue of The Horn Book about the different versions, but unfortunately it is not online.) 

Masks - literal and figurative - can embolden us, change us, or render us invisible or anonymous.

But I still don't like Halloween.

Charlotte Zolotow's Books Live On

For a while now, I've been meaning to post about some of my favorite authors, and Charlotte Zolotow has been at the top of the list.  Since I didn't even know she was still alive (horrible of me, I know), you'd think the news of her death wouldn't hit me so hard.  But when I saw her obituary in the New York Times today, I actually teared up.

My absolute favorite book of hers is the now-sadly-out-of-print The Sky Was Blue.  This paean to the things in this world which are eternal - the blue sky, the warm yellow sun, the green grass, the love of a mother - set against the backdrop of a little girl looking through a family album and noticing which things are different - modes of transportation, fashion - is just a perfect, reassuring gem. 

 









I Like To Be Little celebrates the joys of childhood - of jumping into piles of leaves, going barefoot, skipping.  I love this book even though I very firmly believe - much to the shock of  a little girl next to me sitting outside a ball pit at a children's museum - that adults should have fun too, and that some of the things that are fun for children are still fun for adults.  Like skipping.  And ball pits.  The mother's statements that "grown-ups don't want to" sit under the table or skip or jump in the leaves may be misguided, but these joys - whether of childhood or just of life - still shine through.

In When I Have A Little Girl/When I Have A Little Boy (a flip book), the two child narrators each explain how they will raise their children differently from how they are being raised.  An exploration of how difficult it is to follow rules you may not understand and how good adulthood looks from the viewpoint of a child.

And of course, what child of the 70s (and any other decade, for that matter), doesn't love William's Doll, particularly in the musical rendition on Free to Be You and Me?

I've written about other books by Charlotte Zolotow, in particular Big Sister and Little Sister here and The Quarelling Book here.

Which of Charlotte Zolotow's books is your favorite?

She Started It!

My 6-year-old, H, frequently complains that her younger sister, M, is "bothering" her, while her sister does absolutely nothing.  In fact, it is M's very existence which bothers H.  She's going through a phase (a long one, I suspect!) where she wants privacy and time alone, whereas her sister wants to be with her all the time.    On the other hand, last week I took H alone to a gym/playspace that I usually take the girls to together (M was sick).  Afterwards, I asked her whether she preferred going alone or with her sister.  "With M!," came the immediate reply.

Judy Blume really gets both sides of this.  And in The Pain and the Great One, she shows both sides - literally.  This 1974 picture book is really two books - one read from the front and told from older sister Abigail Porter's (the "Great One" as her little brother not-so-affectionately calls her) perspective and one flipped over and read from the other front, from little brother Jake's (the Pain's) point of view.  At the crux of all sibling relationships is, of course, competition for parental attention and love and each book ends with the words "I think they love him/her more than me."  But just as with my two, when the kids get what they thought they wanted - Jake to build with blocks alone, Abigail to stay up late without her brother - they are lonely and bored.  And I love the tag line: "Little brothers are never wrong!/Big sisters are always right!"

Many years after writing the picture book The Pain and the Great One, Judy Blume began a chapter book series featuring the same characters.  The chapter books stay true to the theme of sibling rivalry and love.  While these two may not always get along, they always stand up for each other.  The fact that the picture book exists is a nice way to segue a child into early chapter books (although these would have to be read to a beginning reader).  Of course, Blume's Fudge books, which I read as a child but have not (yet) revisited, are also great books about siblings.

In Mimmy and Sophie, the two eponymous sisters find adventure and joy in everyday life growing up in Depression-era Brooklyn, just as the author did.   In my favorite, Mimmy, the older, gives voice to my older daughter's exact feelings when she yells at her younger sister "[W]hy do you always have to be where I am?  Can't you go somewhere else?" To which her not-quite-5-year-old sister replies, quite logically, "Where?"  At the end, in response to Sophie asking "Am I still your sister?" Mimmy draws a picture of them with their arms around each other, in chalk, on the sidewalk.  It looks remarkably like the drawing H did of herself and her sister the other day.  As with The Pain and the Great One, Cohen followed the initial picture book with a chapter book, Mimmy and Sophie All Around the Town.  Thanks to Storied Cities for the recommendation! 

I love the way Shirley Hughes does siblings, too.  From her Alfie books (particularly Annie Rose Is My Little Sister) to Dogger (our favorite!), siblings annoy each other, play with each other, protect each other, help each other, and comfort each other.  Hughes's illustrations are pitch-perfect, from the loving mom who looks like someone you could meet, to the messy toddler.

In Charlotte Zolotow's Big Sister and Little Sister, the ability of the girls to comfort each other is the focal point of the story.  Irritated by Big Sister's bossiness, Little Sister runs away.  In a nice role reversal, Little Sister ends up comforting Big Sister as Big Sister sobs when she can't find her younger sibling.  The book closes with a lovely thought: "And from that day on little sister and big sister both took care of each other because little sister had learned from big sister and now they both knew how."  I love the illustrations in this one, too! 

The Frances books almost go without saying on any list of great sibling books.  In A Baby Sister for Frances, the Hobans perfectly capture Frances's jealousy and resentment "Things are not very good around here anymore," she says after Mother does not have time to iron her favorite dress or buy her favorite oatmeal topping.  (Books about the arrival of a new baby are admittedly a whole separate genre, but here the series continues as the girls grow, so I figured it was fair game.)  In later books, they again sum up the essence of having and being a sibling.  My favorite is in A Birthday for Frances when Frances, in an attempt at generosity, buys little sister Gloria a birthday present (gumballs and a candy bar) but ends up eating most of it herself! 

These books are all great on the theme of sibling relationships but they are also just all great books, period that the kids and I all love.  Of course, there are tons of books about siblings.   What are your favorites?