A Family of Readers

by Roger Sutton

  I was fortunate enough to be the second oldest of the six Scieszka boys. As one of the oldest, I got more parental attention (not always a good thing) but fewer hand-me-downs. I have a card in my scrapbook announcing my birth as “Lou and Shirley Scieszka’s new addition to the Tappa-Kegga-Milk Fraternity.”

  That’s kind of funny.

  My youngest brother, Jeff (number six), never got a scrapbook. I think my mom was just tired of the whole thing by then. Jeff has a Ziploc bag with some pictures in it. And most of the pictures aren’t even of him.

  Now that’s really funny.

  Growing up with younger brothers, I was sometimes asked to watch them. So I did. I watched them dig in the houseplants. I watched them chew on the dog. I watched them play in the toilet.

  Kind of funny.

  One day when my older brother, Jim, and I were watching the littler ones Jeff and Brian, we were so entertained that we realized we could probably charge other kids to watch, too. We charged the kids from our block a dime each to watch Brian eat cigarette butts.

  Very funny.

  But the funniest thing I ever did was to teach school. For ten years I taught a little bit of everything, from first-grade homeroom to eighth-grade algebra. And it absolutely changed my life. Because it was there in school that I rediscovered how smart and funny kids are. In school I found my true audience. In school my kids taught me about the importance of play.

  Kids are great at playing. That’s what they do best. When I was a kid, we had specific clothes we wore to go out and play. We had clothes we called our “play clothes.” When we got home from school, we took off our school clothes, put on our play clothes, and went out to play. That was our job. We played.

  Teaching in elementary school, and watching kids in action, I came to appreciate how effortlessly kids learn when they play. Babies learn to talk without taking multiple-choice talking tests. Toddlers learn to toddle without writing toddling essays. How do they do it? By playing around.

  So from teaching I learned to respect kids as natural learners, supply them with the tools to learn, and then get out of the way. I learned to inspire instead of lecture. I learned to trust play. That philosophy is at the heart of everything I write for kids. I want my readers to laugh, of course. But then I want them to question, to argue, to wonder — What if? I want them to play. I want them to learn for themselves.

  MORE GREAT HUMOR

  Jon Agee, Orangutan Tongs: Poems to Tangle Your Tongue

  48 pp. Grades K–3. Inspired by such trusty tongue twisters as “Which wristwatches are Swiss wristwatches?” the ever-effervescent Agee fashions thirty-four comic verses. The effect is hilarious — especially with Agee’s visual extensions of the absurdity in his deft cartoons.

  M. T. Anderson, illustrations by Kurt Cyrus, Jasper Dash and the Flame-Pits of Delaware: A Pals in Peril Tale

  423 pp. Grades 5–8. In this spoof on “foreign adventure” novels, friends Jasper, Katie, and Lily (Whales on Stilts) head to the “ancient, eldritch mountains” and mysterious golden temples of . . . Tibet? No, Delaware! Anderson stuffs every scene with exotic details and lampoons everything from organized youth sports to clichéd writing. Absurdist humor at its best.

  Deirdre Baker, Becca at Sea

  165 pp. Grades 4–6. In twelve linked episodes set on her gran’s small island off the coast of British Columbia, Becca averts many mishaps and disasters, saving the day with ingenuity, tact, and enough grace to beguile her family and readers alike. A funny and endearing book.

  Jack Gantos, Dead End in Norvelt

  275 pp. Grades 4–6. In Gantos’s semi-autobiographical novel set in a community founded by Eleanor Roosevelt, young Jack is grounded for the entire summer for accidentally shooting his father’s WWII souvenir rifle, escaping only to help his feisty elderly neighbor write obituaries for all the townspeople who are suddenly dying off. This hyperactive dark comedy will have readers laughing out loud while also considering history, life and death, and the costs of war.

  Hilary McKay, Forever Rose

  291 pp. Grades 4–6. Eleven-year-old Rose is the emotional heart of this fifth and final book about the eccentric Casson family (Saffy’s Angel, etc.). McKay delights us once again with her laugh-out-loud disaster scenes and her celebration of the virtue of kindness.

  Richard Peck, A Season of Gifts

  156 pp. Grades 5–8. As irascible, independent, and unorthodox as ever, the unforgettable Grandma Dowdel (of A Year Down Yonder and A Long Way from Chicago) makes a welcome return in this third novel, set in small-town 1950s Illinois. Pranks and counter-pranks, over-the-top episodes, and colorful characters provide much amusement.

  Lincoln Peirce, Big Nate: In a Class by Himself

  216 pp. Grades 3–6. Sixth-grader Big Nate is convinced that he’s destined for greatness — but he seems destined for trouble. There’s so much to like here: illustrations or cartoon panels on every page, fast-paced trouble for our hero, and laugh-out-loud commentary on the day-to-day awkwardness of middle of school. Sequel: Big Nate Strikes Again.

  Ken Roberts, illustrations by Leanne Franson, The Thumb in the Box

  95 pp. Grades 2–5. With a little ingenuity, eleven-year-old Leon’s isolated community (on the coast of British Columbia) turns some unwanted gifts from the government into just the things they need. Leon’s breezy, direct narration makes this very funny David-versus-Goliath tale accessible and involving. Sequels: Thumb on a Diamond; Thumb and the Bad Guys.

  Maryrose Wood, illustrations by Jon Klassen, The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place: The Mysterious Howling

  268 pp. Grades 3–6. In this first installment of the series, Miss Penelope Lumley is governess to three children who have been raised by wolves. Let the over-the-top characterizations, ludicrous situations, and tongue-in-cheek humor begin! Like Lemony Snicket, Wood has the gift of both telling her story and sending it up.

  When I was a working librarian, this was the conclusion to the at-the-shelf booktalk I used to give to fifth-, sixth-, and seventh-grade boys who slouched after their mothers into the library on the prowl for a hundred-page biography of a nonathlete (the boiler-plate assignment in my community when Biography Month rolls around; see “A Story, by Someone Else, More than a Hundred Pages,” page 196). The book in question is Basher Five-Two: The True Story of F-16 Fighter Pilot Captain Scott O’Grady by Captain O’Grady with the assistance of Michael French. It describes an episode from ancient history: the 1995 downing of an American pilot behind Serbian lines while patrolling NATO’s no-fly zone over embattled Bosnia-Herzegovina during the Yugoslav War.

  The story has all the hallmarks of a classic adventure memoir: real physical danger, the display of both courage and know-how as the protagonist seeks safety, and a delight in the most minute of details. Readers will learn everything they ever wanted to know about military survival training.

  Before you stick anything strange into your mouth, you are supposed to test it for harmful effects. The first step is to rub the plant or leaf on the outside of your lip. If your lip becomes irritated, the leaf is no good to eat. If there is no irritation, you rub the leaf on the inside of your lip, to see if that causes a reaction. If not, the next step is to put it in your mouth for a few minutes. If there is no burning, itching, or nausea, you can swallow it with some confidence.

  By the end of Basher Five-Two, the reader will have learned not only how to test a leaf for edibility but also how to make sense of the F-16 console, how to strip flight uniforms of all identifying insignia (and why), how to refuel a fighter jet in midair, and how to communicate with your rescuers when you’re trapped behind enemy lines — all very useful stuff. Adventure stories are often the first resort for adults trying to con reluctant readers — usually boys — into reading. The fast pace, the concentration on physicality, and the frequent how-to element of the tales can often seduce children who would rather be out engaging in adventures of their own (or finding them in video games). And it often works: kids who read Bash
er Five-Two, and books like it, manage to fulfill their biography assignments, and they also get to live the adventure for the space of 133 (or whatever) pages. They, like the books’ protagonists, learn the skills necessary to survive, and they emerge on the other side of the book as more capable, confident human beings.

  But adventure books are not just for reluctant readers. One of my own favorite books when I, a confirmed reader, was a kid was Jean Craighead George’s Julie of the Wolves. I read it over and over (but after the first reading, I always skipped the dreary middle section that flashes back to before Miyax sets out across the tundra). I learned how to skin a caribou, trap a ptarmigan, make a sled out of water and hide, build an igloo, sew a fur mitten, inveigle myself into the good graces of a pack of wolves, and get them to vomit my supper up for me. Again, all useful stuff.

  Like Miyax, I grew to love the wolves and to sorrow for their future in these modern times. But I think that what I mostly got out of that book was the exposure to life-threatening danger, the acquisition of the skills I’d need to survive it, and the encouragement that I would. For an unathletic, loner kid with really thick glasses, it gave me tremendous (if wholly unearned) confidence in my own capabilities: if Miyax could survive on the tundra with nothing but a needle and a couple of knives, then surely I could make it through gym class.

  Not all adventure books serve up exactly the same recipe found in Basher Five-Two and Julie of the Wolves, but they all, to some extent, share in the same basic ethic: protagonist is put in physical danger and survives, thanks to know-how and guts. Most feature fast-paced action and lovingly described detail. All good ones give kids that vicarious thrill that makes them go back for more.

  Adventure stories typically hew to one of four basic forms: outdoor adventure (which includes survival tales), war books, thrillers, and picaresque adventures. It’s important to remember that nonfiction and fiction share equally at the adventure table, particularly in the first two categories. Memoirs of survival either in the out-of-doors or in wartime can make for gripping reading, with the added fillip that the experiences being described are real — and any adult who’s ever read to a child knows that one of the most potent curiosities inspired by any book is “Is this true?”

  Parents and grandparents whose childhood reading was rooted in the mid-twentieth century may remember that hoary old staple of the outdoor adventure, the boy-and-his-dog story, perhaps best typified by Jim Kjelgaard’s Big Red and its successors. Danny, his dog, and his gun enjoy what seems now to be a wilderness idyll, tromping through the woods around the cabin Danny shares with his father, a trapper, and facing off against Old Majesty the bear. The clash of cultures features as a subplot, as Danny becomes drawn into the rarefied world of dog shows, but what I, and doubtless most other readers, remember are the scenes in the Wintapi woods, as Danny uses his woodsman’s expertise and Red his guts to protect their trapline against Old Majesty.

  Although the boy-and-his-dog formula has faded in popularity, it has not totally disappeared. Meja Mwangi’s tremendous 2005 novel The Mzungu Boy takes place in Kenya, during the Mau-Mau uprising of the 1950s, and tells the tale of young Kariuki, who, with the unlikely company of his white landlord’s grandson, Nigel, tears around the countryside with Jimi the dog in pursuit of the boar Old Moses.

  If Jean Craighead George could be described as the grandmother of the modern survival story, Gary Paulsen, of Hatchet fame, is its granddaddy; in fact, Hatchet is often the benchmark used when describing other survival tales, and his memoir Guts consists of anecdotes that formed the basis of his survival fiction. Thanks to Hatchet, generations of readers know not to eat just any old berry if they suddenly find themselves alone in the wilderness. Paulsen has no shortage of successors: Will Hobbs and Roland Smith, among others, consistently deliver rugged outdoor action.

  Another successor, Terry Hokenson, begins his novel The Winter Road in Hatchet-fashion, with a plane crash, but it is very much its own creation. Willa, the unlucky pilot, unlike Brian, knows how to take care of herself in the wilderness. Also unlike Brian, however, she has crashed her plane in far northern Ontario in the middle of winter, when “warm” is defined as “zero degrees” and snow is both friend and enemy as she struggles to make her way to safety. The Winter Road is worth mentioning, as its female protagonist represents a significant minority within the genre. Perhaps as a nod to the aforementioned received wisdom that most reluctant readers are boys, and adventure stories often serve to draw those boys in, by and large these books feature leading men, not leading women.

  An enthralling true adventure is Jennifer Armstrong’s Shipwreck at the Bottom of the World: The Extraordinary True Story of Shackleton and the Endurance. In 1914, polar explorer Ernest Shackleton set out to lead a party across Antarctica, but his ship, the Endurance, never made it to shore. With the Endurance frozen in the ice that surrounds the continent, Shackleton kept his men alive for a year and a half, first camping on the ice and then, after a perilous open-water crossing, on the tiny, uninhabited Elephant Island — before making yet another nearly impossible voyage to South Georgia Island and its whaling station to fetch help. It’s a mind-boggling tale of hubris and courage, and it will have readers wrapping themselves in extra blankets as they suffer with the members of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition.

  War is a terrible human tragedy, but it is also the source of some of the world’s greatest stories — look at Henry V. The best war stories for kids walk the fine line between acknowledging the alluring rush of adrenaline produced by battle and keeping the real costs of war present in the narrative.

  In Code Talker, Joseph Bruchac tells the fascinating story of Ned Begay, one of the Navajo Marines who were key to American military success in the Pacific Theater in WWII. Simply the facts of how the Navajo code worked — those minute details again — make the book worth reading, but also the always-welcome feeling of being let in on a closely kept secret lures the reader into the story: “While [the code] remained classified, not one of us ever told about the code, not even to our families. We kept it secret throughout the war and long after.” Ned’s first-person account balances vivid combat scenes with retrospective reflection in which readers are treated to the great staples of war stories: the analysis of tactics and a specialized vocabulary. Ned’s commanding officer tells his men that they will not be landing on Guam at the most strategic place because that’s “just where the enemy expects us.” One page later, Ned’s out of his landing craft and running across the beach: “It was easier for me to run now because all us code talkers had the new lighter portable radio units. But it was not just because the new unit on my back was lighter that I ran so much faster. I no longer had forty pounds of TBX radio to hide behind and I needed to get to cover as fast as I could.”

  The immediate impact of Ned’s equipment change on his personal safety is exactly the concrete detail aficionados of war stories crave. Tom Lalicki’s nonfiction Grierson’s Raid: A Daring Cavalry Strike through the Heart of the Confederacy tells the astonishing story of an 1863 raid through Mississippi by some 1,700 Union cavalry and artillery soldiers, who for sixteen days wreaked havoc under the very nose of Confederate command, evading capture and providing a distraction to enable Union troops to muster for an assault on Vicksburg. As in Code Talker, one of the strongest elements of Lalicki’s storytelling is its dwelling on the tactical details that made this seemingly impossible adventure a success. The narrative combines contemporary newspaper accounts with the voices of the participants themselves to make for absolutely riveting reading.

  But not all war adventures take readers into combat. In My Hands: Memories of a Holocaust Rescuer by Irene Gut Opdyke with Jennifer Armstrong is the mesmerizing account of a young Polish nursing student’s own struggle to survive her country’s successive occupation by the Russian and German armies and her decision to hide twelve Jews in the basement of a Nazi officer’s house. No Holocaust story is easy, and this one is no exception, bracketed as it is by it
s teller’s sexual degradation, first at the hands of Russian soldiers who rape her and then in the bed of her Nazi employer, who, when he discovers the fugitives in his basement, forces her into concubinage to purchase his silence. Does this make Opdyke’s story “inappropriate” for young readers? Human beings are regrettably prone to brutality; by allowing kids to encounter it first in adventure reading, we can give them tools to survive and combat it that are just as important as Scott O’Grady’s ejection seat and parachute.

  To speak of the Holocaust within the context of children’s adventure stories is to risk accusations of poor taste, to say the least. But for those kids who seek extreme adversity in their reading, Holocaust stories are often a perfect match — with the added bonus that in enduring the unspeakable horrors along with real-life survivors, these readers may gain an additional appreciation of and respect for the history that has gone before.

  If war stories, real and imagined, have a certain tooth-clenching aspect at the extremity of the dangers endured, thrillers turn up the tension a notch and take it down at the same time. The exaggerated nature of a thriller insulates readers from the peril but also provides a pleasing dose of adrenaline to carry them through the story. These days, the thriller genre for kids is dominated by series offerings, most notably the Alex Rider adventures by Anthony Horowitz. Their debt to James Bond is acknowledged openly in detail after detail, including young Alex’s mocking nickname at his MI6 training camp: Double O Nothing. The action includes car chases, frantic trips through flooded tunnels, and a memorable episode that finds Alex trapped in a giant fish tank with a Portuguese man-of-war. The Alex Rider adventures are such harmless, outsize fun that they’re being copied right and left, in one case by James Patterson’s Maximum Ride novels; in another, by Charles Higson’s Young Bond books. Catherine Jinks’s Evil Genius and its sequel, Genius Squad, is a rather more nuanced example of the genre; it pits teen super-genius Cadel against the criminal mastermind who has nurtured him. (For more on thrillers for teen readers, see Nancy Werlin’s essay on page 302.)