16-Page Read: Mr. Brown Can Moo, Can You?

September 23, 2009


Mr. Brown Can Moo, Can You? By Dr. Seuss

Mr. Brown Can Moo, Can You?At some point, kids memorize their favorite books.

They know exactly what happens on every page, and while they may not technically read a book cover to cover, they offer the illusion that they’re reading every word.

The first time I was aware of this with Sierra was with Mr. Brown Can Moo, Can You?

It wasn’t just the easy animals. She already knew that cows mooed and birds chirped and she could make the sounds, even if they were a little off. She tried to snort for a pig and instead just spit all over the place. She was sure horses said “geigh,” and sheep always uttered “ba ba black sheep.”

It was the tougher stuff, too. Lightning goes splat? Well of course it does, and now, she’s able to anticipate that page with lightning-like quickness. Butterflies whisper whisper. Horns blurp. Big cats slurp.

Every noise was a new experience, soaked up as only a toddler can. And from there, the noises were no longer new, but standard, as if our child came complete with a full set of onomatopoeias at her instant disposal, rattling off a cock-a-doodle-doo at simply the mention of a rooster, or a sizzle sizzle when seeing a frying pan.

Mr. Brown was Sierra’s favorite book for about a month, which in her mind is nearly an eternity. And though it’s a longer book – I’ll take an 8-page Sandra Boynton book at bedtime any day – it was never difficult to get through.

I suspect it has a lot to do with her understanding – her ability to match picture to sound to real life experience. The synapses are firing, now, and before long she’ll be surprising us with things we never knew existed.

It’s what makes me laugh at 3 in the morning when Sierra, awake and ready for the day despite my bleary eyes and unkempt disposition, relays to me with excitement usually reserved for Christmas.

There’s thunder outside.

It’s going BOOM BOOM BOOM!

There isn’t. And it’s not. But her relaying of sound from Mr. Brown shows how much her imagination has grown in the past year.

And despite the time, and the darkness, and the fact that I’ll now spend the next 15 minutes in a trance, attempting to get her back to sleep, I understand that this curiosity and imagination might be one of the most beautiful things in the world.

Tags: 16-Page Read, Books, Literature, Sierra |

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The not-so-imminent death of the novel

September 10, 2009


A lot of people in the humanities and publishing industries spend a lot of time wringing their hands and furrowing their brows over the predicted downfall of scholarship and the decimation of reading.

So it’s nice to read something positive about the digital revolution in humanities, as Kathleen Fitzpatrick (member of the digitally-inclined, NEH-funded MediaCommons for intellectual exchange between scholars, students and the public) offers in the most recent issue of Humanities. She answers questions on blogging as the next step in novelization, the conversation brewing in scholarly circle, and the supposed death of the novel.

From the September/October 2009 issue of Humanities, a publication of the NEH:

The first video MTV aired was the Buggles’ “Video Killed the Radio Star.” Has the television killed the novel?
The death of the novel has been greatly exaggerated. If not, how could we possibly have a project like Infinite Summer, in which hundreds of people are reading Infinite Jest together?

Or will the Internet kill it?
It might change it, but it won’t kill it. In fact, the Internet gives the lie to many of our anxieties about the state of reading right now; so many people are reading and writing so much online that it becomes crystal clear that ‘no one reads anymore’ really means ‘no one reads anything I think is good anymore.’

With all of the emphasis on digital will anyone read an actual book made of paper in twenty years?
Absolutely! The actual book form isn’t dying, any more than radio died when television came along. It’s just that radio developed a particular niche that wasn’t replicated by television. Similarly, books will survive, but the kinds of things we want to read in print versus the kinds of things we want to read digitally will gradually differentiate.

Read more here: “Impertinent Questions with Kathleen Fitzpatrick”.

A dissident voice telling us that the future of the book isn’t all binary code and Kindles. Weird - a breath of fresh (and optimistic) air seems to have just wafted through here.

Tags: Blogging, Books, Literature, Writers, Writing |

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What I’ve Been Reading - The Cheese Monkeys

September 9, 2009


What I’ve read:
The Cheese Monkeys - Chip Kidd

Chip Kidd - The Cheese Monkeys

Until finishing The Cheese Monkeys, I hadn’t finished a book since before Isaac was born.

I mean, whoa. Right?

To be honest, I didn’t think I’d finish this one either. I wanted to hate The Cheese Monkeys from the moment I picked it up. Without even reaching the actual writing, I could see that the book was packed with design-for-the-sake-of-design.

Blurbs were chopped from one page to the next, quips about blank pages and challenges to the reader’s assumptions, and an overall feeling of “look at how clever I am!” threatened to bog down the entire crusade.

But I got over all of that. Despite the fact that the writing was a little too Special Topics in Calamity Physics for my taste – by which I mean it was a little too cute; a little too unrealistic in that real people have never spoken like this in the history of language – I found myself forgetting all of the design cleverness that plagued the preface.

My reasons for enjoying the book:

1. I find the philosophy of design really interesting. At times, I find it long-winded and falsely anti-authoritarian, but it’s still really interesting. And this book, written by a graphic designer who is posing as a writer, deals with that philosophy in spades.

2. It reminded me of college. Not of the person I was, but of the traditions that reside therein. It reminded me of registration day, and the musty smell of lecture halls, and of studying late in the night, and of neighborhood bars.

3. There’s mystery. Despite the cuteness, there’s a mystery behind Winter Sorbeck, the Commercial Art/Graphic Design professor who attempts to make his students’ lives hell. It’s gripping.

Okay. Stop. Let’s amend that last one. While the mystery is gripping, the conclusion is maddening. I’ll add this:

3a. However, the answer to said mystery is a bunch of deus ex machina bullshit.

Yeah. I just went there.

The mystery behind W. Sorbeck is that he’s mysterious. You don’t really know his deal, despite attempts to crack the facade.

But then – boom! – a random outburst (our protagonist throws a wrapper on the ground; W. Sorbeck challenges our protagonist to discover the person who designed it; lo and behold! It’s W. Sorbeck! See? Deus Ex Machina Bullshit) and a drunken conversation at the bar lead to everything spilling out into the open.

So the Big Bad Professor suddenly has a soft spot because his work wasn’t appreciated? Unlikely he would care, given what we had learned about him previously. But it worked to move the plot along, I guess, and it was quickly forgotten. Mystery solved. And now what?

Well, from there, things get weird. Not plot advancing weird, but weird for its own sake, as if Kidd was eschewing plot for the sake of art.

The same art that he seems to both ridicule and embrace throughout The Cheese Monkeys, depending on the form.

The same art that he uses to muddy the final chapter into an impossible to understand mess.

In literature, if you want your final point to be interpreted freely, using the powers of deductive reasoning or scientific method or art theory or any of those other open-ended concepts, you need to at least first give some guidelines. You need to steer your reader in the right direction, then set him or her free to discover what he or she wants to discover WITHIN THE REALM OF YOUR STORY.

Chip Kidd doesn’t do that. Instead, he introduces some kind of confusing high art that he’s attempting to pass off as introspective literature. And he has the protagonist’s not-so-secret-crush do the deed, despite the reader knowing that she’s off kilter and nothing she does makes any sense within the solid structure of graphic design.

In this way, the book ends in the same way that the preface begins – each half separated from the other, impossible to understand as a whole, unconnected to previous events, unwilling to lead the reader in the right direction.

And in this way, 200 pages of fun design talk and college memories were smashed by an incomprehensible series of events that never manage to fit together and don’t even make sense in the end. Simply put, the book tried to be lofty, but simply couldn’t find the right propulsion to get it there.

Other than that, though, I totally liked it.

Tags: Advertising and Marketing, Books, Literature, What I've Been Reading, Writers |

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Getting stuff done

July 10, 2009


To the right, it says I’m currently reading The Cheese Monkeys by Chip Kidd.

I’m not.

That’s simply the book I’m planning on reading, when I finally start reading books again.

Instead, I’ve been catching up on the last two issues of Atlantic Magazine, wondering what happened to Paste’s print issues, and generally lamenting the slow death of my reading habits.

It happened with Sierra, too. It’s just that, this time, it seems even more drastic. And, what’s more, I don’t give it a passing thought.

So it’s probably more healthy, actually. Instead of obsessing about not reading (and, therefore, not writing a monthly What I’ve Been Reading column) I can simply get things done.

Which is what I do now. I pick up houses. I play around with pictures. I watch network television. I read magazines.

I admire my oldest daughter’s ability to take major changes in stride, accepting a new house and a new brother without a passing thought, embracing both of them with gusto. I respect my wife’s drive to keep working on house projects while I’m at work, despite having two children at her feet. And I marvel at the prospect of my newborn son, wondering all along what kind of person he’ll grow up to be, discovering a new piece of his personality every day.

But I don’t read books. Not anymore. At least, not for a little while. And I’m okay with that.

Just cut me some slack if you still see that same book listed a few months from now.

Tags: Books, Isaac, Literature, Sierra, Vilhauer |

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On adapting children’s books: replication vs. recreation

June 24, 2009


Found a great article on The Bygone Bureau by Tim Lehman regarding the remaking of two of my favorite children’s books: Where the Wild Things Are (trailer) and Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (trailer).

From the article:

Turning a 40-page book, half-filled with pictures, into a feature-length movie is daunting, and judging by recent attempts, fraught with failure. (The Cat in the Hat, The Polar Express, and Curious George immediately come to mind, though I have admittedly not seen a one of them.) Matt Kirby identified the main pitfall of the process when he wrote, “Picture books are an art form altogether different from other types of literature. For me, they are an alchemy of story, poetry, and image, almost impressionistic works.”

I tend to agree with every point of the article. While I understand the difficulty in adapting books this short, there has to be a certain level of consistency.

In this case, both books take a different approach to adaptation – Wild Things’ trailer is steeped in the same imagery and soul that made the book such a beautiful exercise in imagination, while Cloudy’s trailer shows a ham-fisted attempt at recreating The Incredibles, only this time with food.

(I’ve already made it known which one I’m most excited for.)

What made Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs so iconic – and cemented its legacy as, hands down, my favorite children’s book of all time – was the art. The hand drawn illustrations, looking more like a Wall Street Journal staff picture than the typical children’s art, showed great detail in documenting something so implausible, yet so creative.

It’s a wonderful article for those who love both books, highlighting how one film replicates the feeling of the book, while the other recreates it.

Tags: Books, Literature, Movies |

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16-Page Read: The Velveteen Rabbit

June 12, 2009


The Velveteen Rabbit By Margery Williams
The Velveteen RabbitTwo years ago, we read The Little Prince to Sierra.

She wasn’t born yet. It wasn’t an act of consciousness for her – simply a vehicle for getting her used to my voice: the second voice in her life, and the one she often heard when her mother’s was quiet. She didn’t pop out quoting lines from the book, and her propensity toward books is caused more by availability than some deep-seated memory of reading while still in the womb.

It doesn’t matter. We read it to her anyway. And with Baby Boy Vilhauer, we repeated the task – this time with The Velveteen Rabbit.

I understand that Baby Boy Vilhauer probably won’t remember a word from The Velveteen Rabbit.

But that’s not exactly the point, is it?

Really, we read it for ourselves. We both rediscovered the simple joy in making something real – remembering our own Velveteen Rabbits, those childhood items that we loved more than anything, believing they held some kind of magic powers that keep us safe from evil.

Our minds flowed back to the innocence of youth, finding comfort, understanding that as we grow, our own cherished things become more fragile. Harder. Unwilling to protect us. I find no solace in an old clock, or in the cold sharpness of a family keepsake. But I do see that comfort in Sierra’s toys. As if they weren’t designed for play, but for protection from some unseen tragedy. Designed to keep people young, to preserve that innocence.

More than that, we understood that, by reading The Velveteen Rabbit to Baby Boy through the constricting nature of the womb, we were reaching out to him. Longing to meet him.

The Velveteen Rabbit became, without doubt, Baby Boy’s book. That’s an important connection in our household – a story that will forever be connected to a time and place; laying in bed, Kerrie propped on her side, we went through all 33 pages in two nights, reliving the memory of a classic story, and introducing it to our next great discovery.

Sierra had that with The Little Prince. And, though I understand it’s all coincidence, she has grown to be a caring and peaceful individual, seemingly learning from the lessons of that book.

If our baby boy can move forward with his lessons – on accepting everyone, on loving without barrier, and on the importance of believing in yourself – we’re confident that his first book will be as meaningful to him, even if unknowingly so, as it is for us.

Tags: 16-Page Read, Books, Isaac, Sierra |

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Print is dead, long live print

May 11, 2009


Sorry, everyone. I don’t meant to get all Old Man Vilhauer on you.

But can we stop the ongoing “Print is Dead” argument?

Print isn’t – and never will be – dead. It may not be in first place. It may not even be the social norm. But there will always be a part of us – most of us, that is; those of us who aren’t robots – that will long for something more durable, something tangible we can flip through, something we can dog-ear and drop hastily into our pocket, on the side of the bed.

I am positive that magazines and newspapers in their current state will continue to decline. We may be forced to pay more for these services. Quick information is too convenient and too easily accessed to wait for, so magazines will focus on features and other long-form writing.

But books aren’t in danger. Not yet. So let’s not try to raise warning flags because we’re looking for something to scream about.

Things will change, but print will still be around for a long time.

After all. We’ve all got electric heat. But who doesn’t love a campfire?

Tags: Books, Literature, Writing |

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