Posts filed under 'Book People'
I was very sad to learn this week that Aiko Nakane died last Wednesday. Nakane was a Japanese paper expert and the founder of Aiko’s Art Materials in Chicago. She had an amazing understanding of the art and aesthetics of fine paper, and I would have loved to have had the opportunity to talk with her about Japanese decorated papers. My heart, of course, goes out to her family and loved ones. Contributions in her memory can be made to either the Chicago Symphony Orchestra or the Aiko Nakane Fellowship, which supports MA and MFA students at the Columbia College Center for Book and Paper Arts. More details about her life and work can be found in a recent feature in the woodblock printmaking newsletter Baren-suji.
May 26th, 2004
Returning home last night, after a very trying week, all I wanted to do was crawl into bed and not emerge again. But, then, I remembered that I saw a post yesterday on Kids Lit about Maurice Sendak being interviewed by Bill Moyers on NOW and decided to postpone my hibernation.
I am glad that I chose to stay awake and watch that program. As a child, I had mixed feelings about Sendak’s books. Chicken Soup with Rice was a favorite, but In the Night Kitchen would have been banned from our household if I had any say. Where the Wild Things Are was strangely problematic. On the one hand, I felt obligated to love the book–it was given a Caldecott award, after all–but, on the other hand, I felt ambivalent about Max and his behavior.
Hearing Sendak speak last night gave me a different perspective of and new appreciation for his work. His honesty, sadness, and realism were both refreshing and painful. At one point, he became tearful, and I thought that I would start to cry, too. But, through the painful parts of his conversation with Moyers, I felt that I understood his work better.
His comments about Where the Wild Things Are were particularly informative. Responding to Joseph Campbell’s analysis of the story, he said:
“We’re animals. We’re violent. We’re criminal. We’re not so far away from the gorillas and the apes, those beautiful creatures . . . And then, we’re supposed to be civilized. We’re supposed to go to work every day. We’re supposed to be nice to our friends and send Christmas cards to our parents.
We’re supposed to do all these things which trouble us deeply because it’s so against what we naturally would want to do. And if I’ve done anything, I’ve had kids express themselves as they are, impolitely, lovingly–they don’t mean any harm. They just don’t know what the right way is.”
After he said that, I no longer felt ambivalent about Max in his little wolf suit . . . I also learned quite a bit about the author–quirky things, the sort of things that make people interesting. He does not like J.M. Barrie, but he finds great comfort in Emily Dickinson, for example. The full transcript is available at the NOW website, and while I was searching for that, I grabbed a few more links that may be of interest.
More wild things:
March 13th, 2004
Continuing with today’s (unplanned) favorite stories from childhood theme . . . In his latest journal entry, Neil Gaiman writes about his recent photo shoot for an ALA READ poster and his thoughts on Little Red Riding Hood. I will let his journal entry speak for itself; it is great reading.As a personal aside, I decided in November, shortly after a Thanksgiving break spent re-reading The Classic Fairy Tales: Texts, Criticism, a Norton critical edition edited by Maria Tatar, that I wanted to be Little Red Riding Hood for Halloween 2004. I have always loved that tale, especially the pre-Perrault, pre-Grimms, more ribald version that I had the (mis)fortune of discovering at a very early age. Oh, the joys of precocious reading!
January 18th, 2004
A. A. (Alan Alexander) Milne was born on this day in 1882 in London. I had originally planned to put this in the “about this page” module at the top of this page, but then I decided that this author’s birthday deserved a proper post. Milne, after all, is one of my favorite authors and his children’s books (and C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia) have long been my literary comfort food.Less comforting but terribly interesting are the many biographies written on Milne. Milne’s Autobiography (titled It’s Too Late Now in the UK) was published in 1939. Over thirty years later, Christopher Milne, A. A. Milne’s son and the inspiration for the Christopher Robin character, published his first autobiography, The Enchanted Places, a volume offering his perspective on his childhood and his father’s writings.
I have not read much of the other works written about Milne and his life, but there are two that I have read and recommend. Ann Thwaite’s A. A. Milne: His Life (sadly, out of print, I believe) is a very detailed and useful account of Milne’s life and work. Jackie Wullschlager’s Inventing Wonderland: The Lives and Fantasies of Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear, J. M. Barrie, Kenneth Grahame, and A. A. Milne, a book I read last summer, is an interesting study of British literature and its obsession with childhood, in which Milne’s story seems happy among the disturbingly troubled lives of authors like Carroll and Barrie.
On a happier and more cheerful note, more fitting for this day, I have gathered a few random but related links for you to enjoy:
- Visit the “real” Winnie-the-Pooh at the New York Public Library
- Drink tea and play poohsticks with the Winnie-the-Pooh Society (PoohSoc) at the University of Cambridge.
- Explore Ashdown Forest, home of Poohsticks Bridge and Cotchford Farm.
- Although it is most famous for its Winnie-the-Pooh connection, it has a very interesting history separate from that literary link. I, particularly, like this 1822 comment by William Cobbett, after his visit to the forest: “verily the most villainously ugly spot I ever saw in England.” Not a good tourism bureau slogan, but really funny.
- Hear A. A. Milne read from the 1926 classic Winnie-the-Pooh
- Last year the British Library Sound Archive produced a CD of children’s book authors reading their own works, including Milne reading from his classic book. Unfortunately, a sample clip is not available for the Milne reading.
January 18th, 2004
Matthew Battles, coordinating editor of the Harvard Library Bulletin and author of Library: An Unquiet History, earned both the Librarian.net quote of the week and Jessamyn West’s praise today. Jumping on the bandwagon, I would like to add my own glowing praise. Last October, at the library history panel held by the Ticknor Society and Harvard’s History of the Book Seminar, he gave a fascinating presentation and raised good questions about the history of reading and libraries. I am still thinking about some of the ideas and questions that he raised . . . When I have time, I will definitely read some of the Hermenaut articles by Battles that Jessamyn points to in her post.[Ed. note, 1.18.04: this post has been edited/updated to match changes made in the linked to post. FYI, for those who may think something is amiss.]
January 16th, 2004
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