!"! BOOKS A VERY SUBJECTIVE GUIDE THE GREATEST" KID BOOKS OF ALL TIME By Andy Ward who edits books and Jenny Rosenstrach who writes them With help from their daughters who love to read them !"!!"# BOOKS BOOKS Why We Write About Books THIS INTRODUCTION was hard for me to write. Not only because writing is always hard and there’s a certain amount of staring-at-the-blank page and self-hating that has to happen before you can begin to put something coherent down, but because the books you are going to read about here are more than just books to us. These books are, as Margaret Wise Brown would say, important. They are, in many ways, the story of our life as a family, not all that di!erent in their memory-conjuring powers than a photo album or a diary or, God, one of those old home videos from when the kids were just babies and you had convinced yourself that, as exhausted as you were, you would Caterpillar or The Velveteen somehow be able to preserve them this way forever. The books Jenny Rabbit or Blueberries for Sal or Harry Potter or Pat the and I read to our kids carry that kind of weight for me. I can tell you Bunny because we figured where I was when we read each one of them: in a king-size bed in you don’t need us to tell you our hotel suite (free upgrade!) in Philadelphia, when Abby and I did that these are enduring works of art. You will also note a a father-daughter weekend away, and we tucked into some Lemony disproportionate number of Snicket after hitting the hotel pool and devouring the warm cookies titles by William Steig and they left on our nightstands; on the living room floor of our Roald Dahl, and that is because we are disproportionately in love with the way they see Brooklyn apartment with a Esta Maude’s Secret, a book walk through all 121 of these and explain the world. Lastly, nine-month-old Phoebe, as that belonged to my aunt Jane books, one by beautiful one, you’ll find that we are heavy in we read and reread Moo Moo before it belonged to me; in and let the nostalgia pour the graphic novel department, Brown Cow until one day, the sticky, Cheerio-strewn, forth. But I will refrain. but for a good reason: graphic her first word—duck!—just crime-scene-ish backseat of Reluctantly. novels did not exist when I kind of magically leaped our leased sport utility vehicle I will say, though, that was a kid, and I’m not sure I out of her toothless mouth; (I still have guilt-pangs about any list of favorite books is can ever forgive the world for in our town’s public library, the ways in which we violated inherently subjective, and that. There is, then, a certain as Phoebe brought over a that car), as we deployed The this one is no exception. Our element of vicarious living copy of Meanwhile by Jules Sneetches to stave o! waves of criteria here: we simply picked going on here and of making Fei!er, the book that would Abby’s unhappiness on our first books that we loved most, and up for lost time. Any book list set o! a torrid comic book/ real road trip, as a foursome, that we think have a better- reflects the biases and tastes of graphic novel obsession that to see the grandparents in than-decent shot of turning the people who compile it, and continues to this day, and that, Virginia; in Phoebe’s second your kids into geeked-out I’m afraid ours is no di!erent. with any luck, will endure grade class, reading The Very book-lovers and readers, too. I hope that means you won’t for the rest of her life; in my Persistent Gappers of Frip Because of this, you might enjoy it, or trust it, any less. old bedroom in my parents’ aloud to 21 kids, and getting to note some glaring omissions So: why do we write about house, with all the books from those last transcendent pages and odd, obsessive-seeming books on Dinner: A Love Story, my childhood on the shelves, and watching the weight of tendencies. These are, for the a website about family dinner? as the four of us laid on our that story’s message sink so most part, intentional. We It’s a valid question. All I backs on the bed and Jenny completely into those hungry did not include Goodnight can say is, we didn’t set out and I took turns reading Miss little brains. Seriously, I could Moon or The Very Hungry to do any of this. I distinctly 1 !"!!"# BOOKS BOOKS Why Books? con’t We picked books that we loved most, and that we think have a better-than-decent shot of turning remember a moment, when as well? The bus ride home? your kids into geeked-out DALS was still in its infancy, Those last moments before that Jenny and I sat at the sleep? Or even the dinner book-lovers and readers, too. kitchen table and debated the table? Yes, we decided. If we idea of writing about children’s talked about these books— books on a site that was all about which TinTin adventure about, you know, dinner. was the best, or whether Kate Finishing The Trumpet of the The cygnets crept under Would it be weird? Would it DiCamillo was in the same Swan when I was a kid. (I their mother’s wings! Such a fit? Would it be true to the league as Judy Blume—at was eight years old. Or maybe beautiful earth! The light that DALS mission? The answers the table, that was enough nine. I forget!) I remember returns with the day! Dear, to those questions, as best as justification for us. Books turning that last page, and not dear God. I would never forget I can recall them, two years would be part of the mission. wanting it to end, thinking this one. The Trumpet of the later: (Also: we needed more stu! this was the best book I’d ever Swan was the book I would to write about. You can only read, and having this vague always think about when I 1. Maybe a little. come up with so many chicken sense that something was thought about books from my 2. Maybe kinda? recipes before a little piece of going on here that I didn’t childhood, the book I would 3. Yes, absolutely. you dies.) quite understand—at least, not use to forge an identity apart Here’s another reason we enough to articulate it—except from the big brother I revered It would be true to the DALS write about books: we like maybe to say that the words (he was a devoted Stuart mission because the DALS books, and believe in them, on the page, and the way they Little guy), the book I always mission, as we saw it, was not, and like it when other people made me feel, were a whole imagined reading aloud to kids in fact, dinner. It was family. believe in them, too. I’m not lot more powerful than what I of my own. Which, thirty years I’m talking family on the so good with remembering the was getting from Strange But later, I did. broadest, most basic level here; everyday details of my life. I True Sports Stories. The last As friend-of-DALS and Jenny’s salmon salad, to take can’t tell you the name of my paragraph still crushes me: writer-extraordinaire George just one delicious example, eighth grade math teacher, Saunders (see page 11) puts is about a recipe that you or my freshman year dorm On the pond where the it, “A minute spent reading can pull o! on a Wednesday room phone number, or my swans were, Louis put his to your kids now will repay night, and that tastes really cholesterol reading from my trumpet away. The cygnets itself a million-fold later, not good, but it’s also—deep down, last checkup, or even who I crept under their mother’s only because they love you realizing that I am in danger of had lunch with last Thursday wings. Darkness settled on for reading to them, but also overstating things here—about (at least without checking my woods and field and marsh. because, years later, when the intensely good feeling calendar first). Compared to A loon called its wild night they’re miles away, those that comes from giving your Jenny, whose institutional cry. As Louis relaxed and quiet evenings, when you kids something they love, and memory for every moment prepared for sleep, all his were tucked in with them, from sitting around the table, and triumph and hiccup of thoughts were of how lucky everything quiet but the sound enjoying it together, maybe her life is downright scary he was to inhabit such a of the page-turns, will seem to even high-fiving each other photographic, I’m like the beautiful earth, how lucky you, I promise, sacred.” Why do because of its excellence. It’s amnesiac guy from Memento: he had been to solve his we write about books? That’s about pleasure and fulfillment I should probably start problems with music, and why we write about books. and, really, isn’t that what a tattooing every inch of my how pleasant it was to look –Andy, April 2012 story, properly executed, does body with the little stu!—i.e., forward to another night too? Don’t stories exist beyond the important stu!—before it of sleep and another day those moments where your fades away forever.