The Playful Antiquarian

A playful resolution for 2006

Ordinarily, I avoid New Year’s resolutions, but during my holiday break reading, I found one that delighted me. In the 1934 edition of The Children’s Almanac of Books and Holidays, Helen Dean Fish gives this New Year’s advice: “Resolve to read at least a dozen good children’s books next year, and make a list of them now.”

I have not made my list for 2006, but at the moment, I am re-reading Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House in the Big Woods. I wonder if anyone else ushered in the new year with an old favorite as well …

2 comments January 1st, 2006

[People] Stan Berenstain, 1923-2005

Stan Berenstain died last weekend at the age of 82. With his wife, Jan, he wrote and illustrated hundreds of books set in Bear Country.

I was not a huge Berenstain Bears fan as a child, but two Berenstain books hold a special place in my heart: The Berenstain Bears’ New Baby and Inside Outside Upside Down. The Berenstain Bears’ New Baby provided comfort and reassurance for me after my younger sister was born, while Inside Outside Upside Down is infamous in my family as being one of my favorite bedtime books. Many nights I cried for my parents to read that book to me once more.

J’s Scratchpad has a lovely post about her mother’s (and her own) appreciation for the many Berenstain Bears books.

Related links: The Official Berenstain Bears Website

Add comment December 2nd, 2005

Favorite out-of-print children’s books: a poll

Can’t find your favorite childhood book? Would you like for it to be reissued? Until February 2006, you can vote for your favorite out-of-print children’s book. The poll is hosted at the Children’s Book Council (CBC) website and is a project of the ALA-CBC Joint Committee.

The top ten list will be announced in the spring. Perhaps, your favorite book will make the list …

Add comment December 2nd, 2005

Children’s Literature Association Quarterly 30.2 (Fall 2005)

The fall 2005 issue of the Children’s Literature Association Quarterly, guest edited by Donnarae MacCann and Katharine Capshaw Smith, focuses on African and Caribbean children’s literature. Contents include:

• Children’s Literature after Apartheid: Examining ‘Hidden Histories’ of South Africa’s Past / Jochen Petzold
• Sowing the Seeds of Knowledge in Children’s Literature: Sociocultural Values in J.O. de Graft Hanson’s The Golden Oware Counters / Mahoumbah Klobah
• From Orature to Literature in Jamaican and Trinidadian Children’s Folk Traditions / Cynthia James
• The Diasporic Griot: James Berry and His Fiction for the Young / Mawuena Kossi Logan
• Splintered Families, Enduring Connections: An Interview with Edwidge Danticat / Katharine Capshaw Smith

A Project Muse subscription is required for online full-text access.

Add comment November 7th, 2005

Mole on the best part of holidays

“After all, the best part of a holiday is perhaps not so much to be resting yourself, as to see all the other fellows busy working.”

2 comments October 11th, 2005