Mercer Mayer's Terrible Troll vs. The Bravest Knight

My latest blog, "Terrible Troll vs. The Bravest Knight," is up... but not here.

It is up over at Vintage Kids' Books My Kid Loves, right HERE.

Bizarro? What's Bizarro? .... Bizarro is Weird. Plus, Is there Bizarro for Children?

I went to BizarroCon 2011 in Troutdale, Oregon (at McMenamins Edgefield) this last weekend and had a great time.  I met many Bizarro authors and learned some writing tricks and strategies that will be very useful to me as I continue to expand my writing efforts.

At one point, I arrived a little early to one of the activities.  There were three people in the room that I assumed might be part of the convention. So, I asked them if they were there for BizarroCon.  Their response was, "What's Bizarro?"  One of them made a little joke about Superman ("Bizarro" is the name of a character in the Superman comics who is sort of the opposite of Superman...quick aside: "Bizarro" is also the name of a comic strip by Dan Piraro).  It turned out that these people were just hotel guests exploring the grounds, but I was put on the spot. Strange images and brand new authors flashed in my head, but I had no idea what to say.  I eventually spouted out that it was a genre of literature that has always been around but has only recently been given a more official name.  In the past, some people called it "Weird Sh*t."  I mentioned Joe R. Lansdale, and one of the members of the group perked up.  I mentioned that Mr. Lansdale wrote some very odd and non-mainstream stories and books with elements that you normally wouldn't find on the Best Seller lists.

I then mentioned some titles of books like Carlton Mellick III's I Knocked Up Satan's Daughter: A Demonic Romantic Comedy and Robert Devereaux's Baby's First Book of Seriously F*cked up Sh*t.  I also told them that it isn't always funny and it isn't always gross...but those things can help make a Bizarro book great!  My conclusion was this, Bizarro is weird.  They accepted that and moved on with their explorations.

Now that I think about it, wasn't Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland pretty bizarre?  Bizarro-esque media has been around us for ages: Movies (there are some very weird 1920's films... plus, have you seen Richard Elfman's 80's movie Forbidden Zone?), TV (Monty Python's Flying Circus, anyone?) and music (personally, I love Adam and the Ants' "Don't Be Square (Be There)": "Antmusic for sexpeople / Sexmusic for antpeople / Get off your knees and hear the insect prayer").  If you read a lot of 1960's and 1970's children's literature and picture books, you know there is a lot of bizarre stuff out there.  There are whole blogs dedicated to kids' books that will mess up your children!

The other part of Bizarro literature is that anything officially marked "Bizarro" is currently 99.9% for adults.  Be it language or adult situations, it isn't things the average 10 year old should be reading.

Nowadays, children's literature is very sanitized and oftentimes even dull. There is hope though; Dav Pilkey's Captain Underpants series is WEIRD and fun.  Kids love weird.  I read my son Freaky Friday by Mary Rodgers and he loved its weirdness.

I would love to see some official Bizarro books for kids. Yes, the parody "for adult" children's books are great too, but a well illustrated weird book for kids could be great too. Maybe even some Young Adult books too.

There are some quite strange children's books out there.  One being The Long Journey of Mister Poop (AKA The Fantastic Voyage of Señor Caca) by Angèle Delaunois which features the words "YUM" and "Ah!" on its cover alongside the titular anthropomorphic piece of excrement!   And for the pre-school sex-ed crowd there's Nicholas' Allen's Where Willy Went...The Big Story of a Little Sperm and for the slightly older picture book reader there is Hair in Funny Places by Babette Cole (featuring the scariest hormone monsters you've ever seen and the line, "Inside his penis, Mr. Hormone was lurking with another portion of the mixture..." SCARY AS HELL)!  Oh...and don't forget the smelly fun of William Kotzwinkle's Walter the Farting Dog series of books (their whimsical and totally crazy illustrations are fascinating).

Not all of the Bizarro-esque children's books are bathroom-function or puberty related.  Daniel Manus Pinkwater has been weirding-up children's minds for years.  The Hoboken Chicken Emergency and The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death fascinated me as a tyke. 

I was kept away from some of Daniel Pinkwater's other books like Devil in the Drain (featuring a demon in a little kid's drain!) and I totally missed the awesome sounding The Wuggie Norple Story (illustrated by Tomie dePaola and features a HUGE cat and the line "The next day was Saturday, and Lunchbox Louie didn't have to go to work, so he took Bigfoot the Chipmunk, and King Waffle, and Wuggie Norple, and Freckleface Chilibean, and Papercup Mixmaster and Exploding Poptart, and Laughing Gas Alligator, and a big basket of lunch and they all went to Nosewort Pond for a picnic..." Totally Bizarro!).

Bizarro kids' lit doesn't have to mess up you children's minds or scare them from ever using the toilet or touching themselves again.  If done correctly, it should expand their minds and make them realize that fiction doesn't have to be just Junie B. Jones or Harry Potter.  There's nothing wrong with kids reading those mainstream books, but don't put your kids into the same box that everyone else is trying to put them into.  If you are hesitant, read it with them, or read it first.  But please, please, please, buy your child something weird, strange, weird, bizarre, weird, funny, weird, Bizarro! 

Now snuggle into your Tauntaun sleeping bag and I'll sing you a Bizarro song called "Little Bunny Foo Foo" before I say "Good night, sleep tight, don't let the Zipperump-a-zoos bite!"


PS: If you are interested in trying out Bizarro for Adults, try one of the Bizarro Starter Kit books or read more about Bizarro at Bizarro Central (http://bizarrocentral.com/).

The e-Book Debate: Should Childrens' Books Enter Into It?

I love my "real" books (hardcovers especially), and I don't have an e-reader, but if an e-book is the only way to read my favorites, then I HAVE to download it and read it on my computer. I can get a lot of books in PDF, and Amazon even has a "Kindle for PC" application that you can use to read books on your computer. BUT, this is just for MY reading, not my kids.

Nostalgia may be one of the big reasons I love paper/real/bound books... but children’s books for my kids have to be paper until we get the larger 12" to 24" brightly colored screen for the pictures... and even then, I am not going to let them play with it. They make board books that way for a reason. Ha ha. No one wants their computer drooled on and thrown.

I think letting my kids have access to the bookshelf at an early age has helped them have a huge joy and love of reading. My 4-year-old constantly takes out a stack and "reads" through the books 1-by-1 all by himself... mostly picture gazing. Sometimes this leads to that stack being dropped at my feet with a plea of, "Please, read these to me Daddy!" Sure, there have been torn pages on rare books, but that is a small sacrifice (and a lot of those have now moved to a new home in Daddy's "don't-you-dare-touch-it" library, ha ha).

I also love that after I've read the bed time story; my 4-year-old will take the book from me and "read" it to me. Sometimes silently, and sometimes with many memorized sections (even after only one reading).

PDF files on a computer screen can show a children's picture book, but it isn't portable…. unless it is a laptop. Plus those 2 page spreads, and not to mention the fold-out pages, won't work very well (or look really tiny).

So, what are the benefits for a children’s e-book:
1) No more ripped pages.
2) Possibility for Interactive qualities (we've seen those CD-Rom books).
3) Portable for trips, sort of…depending on size.
4) Shelf space.
5) No more shelf-searching when your child asks for that one book that hasn't been read for 2 years.
6) Saved tress.
7) No lead based inks (ha ha).
8) Many out of print or rare books may become accessible again.
9) Possibly cheaper than new, $15.99 children's hardcover books.

But what about those negatives for a children’s e-book:
1) Drooled on e-device.
2) Tiny black and white screens (or tiny color screens). Yuck.
3) Bigger books just won't have that "cool" factor or "wow" impact.
4) Parents don't know for sure how long the book is until they've been reading out loud for over 20 minutes past bedtime (I hate when this happens, ha ha).
5) Broken e-device because the kids got a hold of it trying to read the latest Little Critter book without your permission and spilled their milk on it.
6) Insert anything else you can think of here.
7) Do you really want anyone under the age of 7 (or 15, or 18) using your $300.00 - $2,000.00+ (USD) e-device?
8) The pictures will make the book files a lot larger, so you won't be able to have "thousands" in your e-reader unless it has a big hard drive (or large amount of file storage space).
9) Accidental purchases of the complete collection of something-you-never-wanted because you let a child touch it for approximately 10 seconds (or the deletion of everything on your device).

So, do you think that e-children’s- books are in our future? I think it is possible.. but I don't know if I want them to happen. My main reason for not owning a Kindle is the price of the Kindle… My second reason is $10.00 a non-physical-book that holds no re-sale value is a bit of a hard thing to swallow. If I don't like a physical book, I can re-sell it or donate it somewhere. If I don't like an e-book, I can delete my $10.00 e-book, and that is it. It isn't like the company is going to give me a refund. The few e-books that I do have, I spent less than $5.00 each for (most under $2.00, and many were freebies).

In the meantime, I will continue to support my local thrift shops. I can't go wrong for $0.10, $0.69, $1.00, $2.00, or slightly more for kids' books, and I doubt an e-reader will ever have them for that cheap.

Secret Confessions of a Hardcover Lover or Why I Love Hardcovers!

I love hardcovers (or hardbacks to some people). I love their heft. I love their feel. They feel safe to me, and they feel important. I prefer them in all that I read. Whether it be to my children or to myself. I do own 100's of paperbacks, but I wish they were all hardcovers. In fact, I am constantly searching for hardcovers to replace the paperbacks that I cherish.

Why am I a hardcover snob? Hmm. Good question. I grew up with paperbacks, and I don't remember them falling apart back then. Nowadays, I seem to buy brand new children's paperbacks and the middle sections fall out just by turning the pages. When I get "vintage" kids paperbacks (anything over 20 years old), the staples are rusting and/or falling apart a lot of the times, or the glue is deteriorating and the pages just fall out. This has happened to my four-year-old son as he reads to himself. He sits there quietly turning the pages, and then a group of four pages fall out, *plop* in his hands. He looks up at me with a pained and anguished expression in his eyes. His mouth forming an excuse that he doesn't have, "I… I…" He has "hurt" the book he loves, and it is almost too much to burden. Then, of course, I have to "fix it"… somehow. If anyone has advice on how to fix these problems, PLEASE tell me.

I do not care if my hardcovers are ex-library. In fact, ex-library ones usually have special extra secure bindings! Of course, I still don't prefer them because the 30 and 40-year-old ones are usually pretty tattered from re-readings. I recently noticed on Amazon that you can buy a lot of the new children's books as (not ex-library but) library bound hardcovers (for about $10.00+ more then the paperback). The price hurts, and I personally haven't made that jump.

I prefer my hardcovers to have dust jackets. Especially if they don't have a picture printed on the cover itself! Why? Because there is usually exclusive artwork on the dust jacket, and artwork is a big part of children's books. I have bought many children's books just because of the awesome artwork (what parent hasn't?).

There is one more BIG reason that I want hardcovers, and there is a stipulation here, to be specific, first edition hardcovers… not because of their collectibillity but because a lot of kids books get edited over time. Why? Who knows? My guess is that publishers start deleting pages to save printing costs. I will write another blog about this very soon, but I will mention one book now: The classic original Little Critter book, "Just for You" by Mercer Mayer. The first printing has about 6 or more pages of artwork and story that are totally missing from the edition that you buy today. For a preview, see the pictures I uploaded onto Amazon's page for it here: Just for You

Of course, some books are so rare or hard to find, that I am satisfied to buy a paperback for cheap if I run across it at Goodwill or another thrift store... BUT I will still be constantly searching for the hardcover to replace it with.

Welcome to my Blog, "Book 'em Bob!"

Welcome to my Blog, "Book 'em Bob!" I am planning on writing mostly about books, and reviews for books on this site including children's picture books (with authors like Mercer Mayer, Maurice Sendak, Steven Kellogg, James Marshall, James Stevenson, David McPhail and many more). I will dabble in other publication related things too.

About me: I am a father of two wonderful children. A boy and a girl, and I read to them constantly. We have our favorites, and somehow, over the years, we have collected over 1,000 children's books in our library including over 200 by Mercer Mayer alone! You can take a wild guess on who a few of these posts are going to be about.