Wednesday, January 10, 2007

Chapter Books

I started writing this as a comment on Dawn's post, and it grew so much that I decided it had better come to live here.

Oh, chapter books... I have been visiting my husband's family while his mom recovers from surgery, and have been going to the local library to get work done each day. The joy of being in a children's department at a library! They have so many of the books that I grew up reading and loving. Since I grew up in South Africa, many of my favorite books are British rather than American, so this may have some new ideas for you. Many of these may be more suitable for slightly older kids, but I think they work for reading aloud for little kids too. As far as I can, I've included what might be objections to these books.

(This is going to read mostly as a list...)


Joan Aiken's books have been with me my whole life. They range from fairy stories for very young children, all the way to adult mysteries, and one of the best Jane Austen continuations ever ("Jane Fairfax"). For young children, she has two collections of short stories - "A necklace of raindrops" and "The Kingdom under the Sea." If you can find the editions illustrated by Jan Pienkowski, they are breathtakingly beautiful. Then, for older kids, "The Wolves of Willoughby Chase" series is a wonderful adventure book - scary but in a good way.

I haven't read them for a long time, but I think that the Paddington Bear books (Michael Bond) don't have as much scope for objectionable colonialism as some others, and they're aimed at small children.

Rumer Godden is another author with books for all ages. She has books for small children - "Miss Happiness and Miss Flower" and "Little Plum" are books about Japanese dolls in a doll house - as well as books for older children. "Diddakoi" (which is sometimes called "Gypsy" in America) is an excellent book about prejudice and being socially excluded. Her books tend to have a religious and particularly a Catholic slant - but are often about outsiders discovering the sacred than about preaching orthodoxy. She grew up in India as well as in England, and some of her books are about India, so there's a different perspective.

My favorite book from when I was 7 til I was 13 was "Ballet Shoes" by Noel Streatfeild, and I pretty much gobbled up anything she ever wrote. "Ballet shoes" is about three adopted sisters who go to a ballet and drama school. One of the girls grows up to be a mechanic instead of a ballerina, so there's some gender roles upset in the process. I used to read it every time I was sick, and still frequently do so even now! There are many other "shoes" books - "Winter boots" (called "skating shoes" in the us) and "Tennis shoes" are among my personal picks. They often deal with children overcoming adversity and working hard to succeed. I found them very comforting because of the structure and routine that are built into them. She also has more than her fair share of orphans in her books. Some of the books ("The circus is coming" and "Thursday's child") I remember as being quite sad, so they might wait for older kids.

My other best evers were the "Swallows and Amazons" books by Arthur Ransome. They are adventure books about children on holiday at a lake, who have adventures that are part imagination and part real. They are allowed to go camping by themselves on an island in the middle of the lake, with their sailing boat, and imagine they're explorers, or pirates, or settlers. These are great books for older children to read on their own, but I would think they are equally suitable for reading aloud to younger children since they're not very scary. They value imagination and independence very highly. They are however, very rooted in the concept of the British empire and voyages of discovery, so if you find those ideas objectionable you might not like them, although I don't personally, within their cultural context, find them racist. -- The children, to make their explorations more intrepid in the face of a world with tourist boats and parents, designate anyone who's an adult a "native" or an "eskimo" (depending on whether it's winter or summer.) The only other thing that might count against them with older readers is that one of the characters is called "Titty" - short for Patricia I think.

Books that I loved, though I haven't read them for a long time, are "The children of Green Knowe" by L. M. Boston. I do remember that they dealt with slavery, among other themes.

Elizabeth Goudge has some books for older children - "The little white horse" is a lovely fairy tale, and "Gentian hill" was for a long time one of my favorites.

I know we read a lot of Enid Blyton ("Noddy", "Faraway tree" "Cherry tree farm") when I was small, but I really didn't like books where people continually got into trouble, and some of her series were a bit like that. (I think I was an anxious child). I also know that my mother thought the books distinctly lacking in literary merit, although some of them were better than others.

Roald Dahl has great books bridging the "picture" to "chapter" book divide. I remember a great kids book called "The enormous crocodile" and another called "The twits". Chapter books include "James and the giant peach", "Danny the champion of the world", "The Witches", "the BFG", "Charlie and the chocolate factory". His books are all scary - he said that children liked to be scared - but they're brilliant as can be. And don't miss "revolting rhymes" and "dirty beasts" to make your kids blow milk out of their noses.