educating alice

Dear Howie,

Even though you do tend to overuse a certain simile (finely tuned concert piano, anyone?) and overdo the adjectives about one character (that clever dachsund puppy) my class and I love you anyway. You write and worry about your writing, after all, just as they do in your clever series, Tales from the House of Bunnicula of which my personal favorite for reading aloud is It Came from Beneath the Bed. Your creator, James Howe, captures the trials and tribulations of young writers perfectly. Moving back and forth between Howie’s story and his writing journal is brilliant.

I read this story to my class every year as they grapple themselves with the complex issues of writing a good story. Cliff hangers, overusing certain words (…concert piano…), getting bored, and so forth, just what my students are dealing with too. One year we even created a list of “Howie’s Rules for Writing.”

Thanks for being a realistic, charming, and entertaining role model for my young writers.

All the best,

Monica Edinger

Thanks to bookslut I came across a blogger who is indeed reading the new translation of Sir Gawain aloud to his four-year-old.

At chez Salt-Box, I am the one who reads “chapter books” to the Little Man, as opposed to books he can read by himself, or longer picture books or comic books, which anyone is allowed to read to him. As a result, A Santa thoughtfully made to the Little Man and me a joint present: Simon Armitage’s new translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, which we’re now about 40% through after polishing off the Iliad* Monday morning.

Read the whole post at The Salt-Box.

Dear Latke,

I just read you aloud to my fourth grade class and it was great fun. While a religiously diverse group of children, a number are Jewish and very excited as it is the first night of Hanukah. They did want to correct the teller of your story, Mr Snicket, now and then (and me as I had a hard time pronouncing “Antiochus”correctly) until they saw what was what. Given the significance of the ax in another familiar story, that picture packed a wallop. I think most of all they enjoyed playing your part and screaming as loud as they could every time you did!

AAAHHHHHHH!!!

Sincerely,

Monica Edinger

I’m a concrete poetry fan. Right now, when I have a few extra minutes at the end my class’s morning meeting, I read a poem or two from John Grandits’ Technically It’s Not My Fault. From the cover on, this is one hilarious book; Grandits has captured the voice of 5th grader Robert perfectly and uses the special effects of this particular poetic form (the text placed on the page in ways related to the poem’s content) in a notably fresh way. I’m looking forward to the forthcoming Blue Lipstick, evidently more concrete poems from Robert’s older sister’s point of view. (A couple of other recent children’s books featuring concrete poetry are Joyce Sidman and Michelle Berg’s Meow Ruff and Paul B. Janeczko and Chris Raschka’s collection A Poke in the I.)

Then there is concrete poetry’s cousin, animated poetry. I started out looking for animations featuring text and words and came across It’s Not My Fault by Claire Mason and an animated version of John Hegley’s What a Poem is Not. I also love the animated poems at the British Council website (and I love the British Council because when I lived in Freetown, Sierra Leone, they had the only library in town).

Finally, do check out Ana Maria Uribe’s anipoems — very neat mixtures of concrete and animated poetry.

Dear Casey,

Yesterday you came up in a chapter I was reading aloud to my class* from the forthcoming Candace Fleming title, The Fabled Fourth Graders of Aesop Elementary School. You see, the fourth grade teacher in the book decided to hold a poetry contest and one child won by reciting from memory all fifty-eight lines of Ernest Lawrence Thayer’s “Casey at the Bat: A Ballad of the Republic.” Nice, don’t you think? Especially given your….um….unfortunate experience in that poem.

Anyway, I finished the chapter at the end of the school day so today I started by reading your complete poem aloud. I decided to read from my favorite version of it, Christopher Bing’s absolutely glorious picture book version. Full of fake newspapers, tickets, ads, money, and even ripped paper the book is simply wonderful. As is the poem. Thayer really hit the nail on the head with his wonderful parody of the serious poems of his day (and I’m guessing one of his targets might have been the then enormously popular Longfellow).

The kids listened riveted. When I finished there were such smiles! One or two told me they knew what was going to happened because the last line was in yesterday’s chapter and a couple others had seen the book when much younger. But they all enjoyed your story tremendously. Perfect for this time of year!

A very different version of your book (that I told my class about not having a copy at school) is one by Kids Can Press illustrated by Joe Morse. Bet you’d like that one too!

Sure hope the good citizens of Mudville didn’t ride you out of town on a rail and that you came back in the next game.

Sincerely,

Monica Edinger

* We’ve now put a photo of the class on the banner of the class blog for anyone interested!

Dear Alice,

Your visit this year was excellent as always. My students appreciated enormously the wit and wisdom of your story, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Only one had actually read you before; the rest knew you vaguely from the Disney movie or books thereof. The one who had read you hadn’t especially liked the experience, expecting an adventure more of the Harry Potter sort, no doubt. However, this time she had a blast!

Knowing of my obsession with you, my class was eager to get going. As always I read you from The Annotated Alice, slipping in context as necessary, say some of the original poetry that Carroll parodies in his verse. For example, “How doth the Little Crocodile” is a parody of Isaac Watt’s didactic poem, “How doth the Little Bee” which the original child audience would have known well. I also brought in some of the story behind the story — that of the Reverend Charles Dodgson (Carroll’s real name) at Christ Church College in Oxford and his telling of the story to Alice Liddell and her two sisters. Lots of fun references to Oxford and the girls’ real life are sprinkle throughout.

I read it to them while they followed along in a variety of illustrated editions. They enjoyed Carroll’s own illustrations, those of John Tenniel (the illustrator of the first published edition), Arthur Rackham’s, Peter Newell’s, Angel Dominguez’s, Helen Oxenbury’s, and Alison Jay’s to name a few of their favorites. I also showed them Robert Sabuda’s pop-up and read to them Whoopie Goldberg’s variant, Alice.

Before starting you, I showed the kids The 1900 House, a reality show where a family had to live for three months as in 1900 London. The kids loved it and I think it gave them some sense of what life might have been like for Alice, some thirty-five years earlier. And then, during the week or two that I was reading you, I also showed the kids the BBC production of The Young Visiters, sort of Victorian/sort of Edwardian I think, with a similar bizarre sensiblity to your story. Most recently, in preparation for our project, I showed them a pretty dreadful version from 1985 (of which they were most fascinated by Ringo Starr as the Mock Turtle while I was fascinated to noticed that the screenplay was by Paul Zindel). With the latter, I wanted them to pay attention to the different screen shots, especially with chapters like “A Mad Tea-Party” which can seem all talk and no action. After our spring break I plan to introduce them to our anime-ish project, pairing them up to create small movies for each chapter. We’ll post them on our class blog and I’d very much like to put them on youtube too. (I’m really into youtube as a teaching resource. Yesterday, after finishing the movie some of the kids and I commented that the girl playing Alice looked a bit like Shirley Temple. I then went to youtube and found several clips so they could see what she was like exactly.)

I feel as if I could practically recite you, I’ve read you aloud so many times. Because of this I do notice that your creator does over use the words curious and melancholy, but that’s okay. His book and yours is still as fresh today as it was when my father first read it to me eons ago.

Thanks again for another wonderful time together. Can’t wait to do it again!

Fondly,

Monica

Dear Despereaux,

It has absolutely not been the disappointment to spend time with you again. We first met in the fall of 2003 and it was love at first read. My class that year was over the top when you won the Newbery. (Remember this photo of you with your medal? We put it in a card of congratulations to your creator, Kate DiCamillo.)

For the next couple of years kids had read you already and didn’t want to hear you again as a read aloud. But this year, happily, was different. Every kid in my class, even those who knew you already, enjoyed every moment we had together these last few weeks. At each session, you were carefully held by a student so you could read along over my shoulder. (You did lose your tail, red thread and medal along the way, but I did at least restore your tail when the reading was over — another way time moves in strange ways — back to the beginning of your story all ready for the next class to enjoy you.)

The kids talked about you at different points all day long. One commented that she normally didn’t like fantasy, but this was different. Several spoke of being scared of mice with the exception of you (as how could they be scared of you? I mean, really!). A couple of days ago as your story wound to a close, the mention of soup made them think of the soup in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (from the chapter “Pig and Pepper” which I’d just read) and even the poor boy who wasted away because he didn’t eat his soup in Struwwelpeter (which I also happened to have read earlier that day).

Since last reading you aloud, I’d written and given a talk on fairy tales for the 2005 Children’s Literature New England summer institute and considered you in tandem with Philip Pullman’s I Was a Rat! and George MacDonald’s The Light Princess. While I knew your creator had been very influenced by Charles Dickens, it was with this reading that I really noticed it. I listened to A Tale of Two Cities last year and I was wowed by the connections I saw this time. Your self-sacrificing tendency, various sentences (which I can’t find now, but remember noticing as I read aloud), and the light/dark stuff. Very, very cool indeed.

Thanks for a wonderful time. Can’t wait to read you aloud again!

Sincerely yours,

Monica Edinger

Dear Coraline,

It has been such a pleasure having you back in my classroom. Our first time together was so much fun that I couldn’t wait to have you again. However, I had to be sure that I had a class that was ready for you. There couldn’t be too many who knew you already or any likely to get nightmares from you. Fortunately, this year’s class seemed ready. I have one child working her way through V.C. Andrews, of all things (big sister is reading them so she is too with her parents’ okay) and so you seem pretty darned tame in comparison. As for the rest (none of whom knew you), when I told them I was going to read them a creepy story they were game, quite eager, in fact.

But then, a few days in (while you were still mostly in your own flat), one boy admitted that creepy stories sometimes scared him and he’d had a weird dream about you. But he still wanted to listen to you so I had him sit near me as I read and kept an eye on him wondering if I should encourage him to sit this one out. At first the other kids sweetly checked in on him too at scary moments, but soon it was clear to all of us that he was enjoying the book completely and we had no need to worry.

Still I am maintaining a few precautionary measures. For example, my apologies to your wonderful illustrator, Dave McKean, but I haven’t been showing them the illustrations. I just couldn’t risk it. I think some of my listeners (such as the boy I already mentioned) are on the very edge of scaredness. Those illustrations, to my mind, might just take them over it. I also am very careful to end my daily readings at parts that aren’t likely to linger into their dreams. I like to stop with cliffhangers and you are full of them. Makes my class agog and eager to listen to you at our next session!

I did begin by showing Dario and Gabriela’s amazingly cool book-trailer. It wasn’t too scary, just intriguing. I plan to show it again after you are gone (which should be soon as you’ve got the three souls and were heading for the mantelpiece when I last read to them).

Another little thing I did was when you got all three soul-marbles I pulled out a little bag of marbles I received from your publisher when you first came into existence. They are blue instead of gray, but the kids still think they are very cool. I now toss them in one hand as I read, the quiet clinks creating a satisfyingly ominous sound.

The kids enjoying speculating as to how the story will end. They seem confident that it will be a happy ending. It is a quest, a journey they tell me, and those have to end well. We have recently begun a look at Cinderella and fairy tales and so this idea of “happily ever after” is an intriguing one we’ve been talking about a lot of late. Are you a fairy tale? That will be an interesting question for them once you are gone.

So tell your dad, Neil Gaiman, that he did a great job with you! We teachers shouldn’t be afraid of you or your relatives, The Wolves in the Walls or The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish. We’ve had great visits from them too. I do wonder about your big sister, Mirrormask though. My friend suggested she come for a visit, but I’m not yet sure if she is too old for my class or not. What do you think?

So thanks for stopping by! You are welcome anytime.

Fondly,

Monica

Dear Framed,

I’m going to be blunt here. The two of us, it just isn’t working. I’m really sorry, but the other day, I had to put you down. I told the kids I was taking a break, but I suspect it is a permanent one. Sorry.

I really tried to make it work. When I first heard about you I was so excited. Not wanting to wait until I could get you in the US, I ordered you right away from the UK. The day you arrived I dropped everything and dived in. First impressions were NOT good. I mean, you were pleasant, entertaining, but not…here it comes….as good as your big brother, Millions.

So there it is. I’m probably going to scar you for life, but I can’t help it. I mean, I mainly rushed to get you because of your big brother. I adore Millions and read it aloud the last two years with great success. There is just something in Damian’s voice that makes Millions so very special. The situation, the language (such as Damian’s hermitage), the sadness underlying the day-to-day humor (not cloying or overly sentimental), the saints, Anthony’s playground economy, the father, the Mormons, and so much more. The book is an absolute gem and a fantastic read aloud.

If you need me to pay for therapy as the result of your reading this letter, I understand and will do so gladly. I mean, what could be more traumatic than learning for real that people like your big brother best? (By the way, could please not tell your dad, Frank Cottrell Boyce about our break-up? I’m sure he wouldn’t be any happier than Mrs. Smother’s would have been when her son Tommy went on about her always liking his brother best .)

I have given you three chances and that is enough, I think. The first reading felt leadened, but after I read several glowing reviews I tried again. No luck. The magic simply wasn’t there. Then someone else I admire said she liked you better than your big brother. School was about to start and so I thought, “Hmmm….maybe reading it aloud is the answer. Maybe that is all I need to fall in love with it.”

And so I started reading you aloud a few weeks back to my 4th graders. At first it was interesting. Not only did I have to be sure they were clear on the Mutant Ninja Turtles, but on the real artists (Donatello, Raphael, Leonardo, and Michelangelo) as well. And then all the Britishisms — I moved back and forth between using the British term and checking to be sure the kids knew what it was and sometimes just instantly translating it into an American term. Words like boot, petrol, caravan, quid, and a bunch more. But that wasn’t the problem; it wasn’t when I read aloud your brother, after all. Sorry.

And so, I quit. Page 95 if you must know. I didn’t realize I’d quit at first. But when I started to think about reading it again I just couldn’t. I kept looking at your size and thinking, “I’m going to be reading that for months!” (I generally never read aloud a book over 200 pages and you are 312 — what was I thinking?) Not only that, but I realized it had been a big mistake to start the year with an untested book. That is, one I didn’t know for sure would be a surefire hit with an unknown group of kids. I realized that some of the squirrelly behavior by some of my boys was because they weren’t riveted. I’m hurting your feelings again, I know, but to start the year I need a book that engages 100% every child. You did not. I caught one girl reading another book behind her desk — clearly you were doing nothing for her and several boys were spending much of the time making faces at each other. Nope, I just couldn’t do it for several hundred more pages. No way.

So, there it is. Clearly you are beloved by so many that my abandonment will hardly register. And I’m sure some of my students will want to finish you on their own.

I must admit I hate giving up on a read aloud, but I do encourage my students not to stick with books they don’t like and while you were a perfectly entertaining (if not for me amazing) private read, you just weren’t working as a read aloud for me.

Let’s stay friends. Have lunch. I’ll call soon, I promise.

All the best,

Monica