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Saturday, December 20th, 2008
"Let's work hard and cheerfully and we'll continue to be happy," the Old Lady tells the elephants, and, though we know that the hunter is still in the woods, it is hard to know what more to add. Adam Gopnik has a good article in the current New Yorker about de Brunhoff's Babar books -- "Freeing the Elephants" addresses complaints about the colonialist worldview in Babar by calling the books "a self-conscious comedy about the French colonial imagination and its close relation to the French domestic imagination." I'm not totally convinced that this describes the spirit in which the books were written -- Gopnik doesn't really make an argument, just an assertion -- but it does seem like an excellent spirit in which to read the books.Next week we're going to see the exhibit at the Morgan Library. The library's website features a digital reproduction of de Brunhoff's first, hand-printed copy of Histoire de Babar.
posted morning of December 20th, 2008: Respond
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Thursday, December 18th, 2008
 Ellen tells me she has gotten me two books for Hanukkah, both featured on this year's reading list: What Can I Do When Everything's on Fire? by António Lobo Antunes, and The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman. Thanks El!
posted morning of December 18th, 2008: Respond
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Monday, November 17th, 2008
 Sylvia asked the question tonight that has been bugging me since we started reading The Golden Compass: "How do people get their dæmons when they are born?" I have no answer -- I said well, do you think the dæmons are born with the people, and she was like maybe...
posted evening of November 17th, 2008: Respond
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Saturday, November 8th, 2008
Chapter 7 of The Golden Compass is a trip. When Sylvia and I were reading it this afternoon there was a lot of talk back and forth -- "Oh, so that's what was happening!" "Oh, so that's why Lyra was at Jordan!" etc. This is a really nice trick -- there was a lot in the first part of the novel that we were just accepting on faith without really understanding, the exposition is placed so that you've just about gotten used to not being sure what's going on in the plot -- you're just reading and enjoying the characters and the action, and suddenly you turn a corner and much of the mystery is laid bare. (Not all -- there's still the central mystery of what the G.O.B. is using the kidnapped children for, and what's the city in the sky, and why is Asriel being held prisoner.)
posted evening of November 8th, 2008: Respond
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Monday, November third, 2008
Chapter 5 of The Golden Compass -- now things are starting to get really interesting. Sylvia and I are both on the edge of our seat. I really like the way Pullman drops hints about what's going on -- very graceful, they are not so cryptic you can't easily pick up on them, but they are not hammered into your ears either. A bit like reading a good whodunit. And at the end of the cocktail party scene, the transition to Lyra fleeing from Mrs. Coulter's house was handled very well. This book just feels elegant.
 (Note from an adult reading a kids' book -- it was such an eerie feeling I had, to be identifying with Mrs. Coulter as I read her cruel disciplinarian lines to Lyra before the party. I can't recall ever feeling this way though I've read many children's books with authoritarian adult figures in them.)
posted evening of November third, 2008: Respond
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Thursday, October 30th, 2008
Chapter 4 of The Golden Compass: Sylvia and I are both, separately, trying to figure out why the Master sends Lyra off with Mrs. Coulter,  who is obviously a Bad Guy. Sylvia laid out her hypothesis to me: Sylvia: Dad? What is that thing the Master gave Lyra? What did he say it could do? Me: The Alethiometer you mean? He said it was a machine that would tell her the truth. Sylvia: ...I think it's going to tell her that she's a Gobbler. He knows it and he wants it to tell her. Me: Hm, that sounds like it could be...
(A minute later) If he knows though, why doesn't he just tell her? Sylvia: Because she would probably just refuse.
That's a good thought. I also am working on an idea where maybe Mrs. Coulter's kid-stealing activities are actually benign, or serving a greater good, and we've been misled by the children's talk of Gobblers. The distinction between Good Guys and Bad Guys is not as clear in this book as in most of the other stuff we've read before. But I think Sylvia's idea is probably closer to right.
posted evening of October 30th, 2008: Respond
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Thursday, October 23rd, 2008
Sylvia has been absolutely absorbed with reading and listening to and watching the Harry Potter books and books-on-tape and movies for a couple of months now. This is my introduction to the series as well -- I am pretty familiar with the plots of books 1 and 6 now from hearing Sylvia's tapes repeatedly, and have a glancing knowledge of the rest of the series from her narration of the events. Somehow it's not really drawing me in to read them myself -- some interesting bits but the overall structure doesn't really appeal to me. But I did recall having Pullman's His Dark Materials series recommended to me time and again, and that seemed like it would have enough points of similarity to Harry Potter to be generate interest quickly. So we've been starting to read that together over the last few days. Really nice language and plot, and Lyra's character is starting to come together. Sylvia's totally interested in the dæmons, what they are and what they do.
posted evening of October 23rd, 2008: Respond
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Wednesday, July 23rd, 2008
Sylvia comments that the King and the Duke's plan to perform a Shakespearean exhibition (featuring the balcony scene, with the King as Juliet, and the sword fight from Richard III, and the King doing Hamlet's soliloquy) reminds her a lot of Moominsummer Madness. And I think she's on to something; Jansson could very well be referring directly to this scene. That's assuming Huckleberry Finn was translated and available in Finland in the early 20th C., which seems to me like a reasonable assumption. An interesting moment was explaining to Sylvia why it would probably not be a good idea to read Huckleberry Finn out loud while we were on the airplane flying to California.
posted evening of July 23rd, 2008: 2 responses
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Monday, June 30th, 2008
 I met Ellen and Sylvia for dinner this evening in Montclair -- Sylvia started art camp at the Montclair Art Museum today, where she is happily learning how to draw animals. In one of her classes they are doing a group project, a sculpture of Huckleberry Finn -- Sylvia has never read it, so while we were eating we decided to swing by our favorite bookstore and pick up a copy... of course it is hard to leave there without a bunch of books. Our haul:
- Huckleberry Finn
- Tom Sawyer -- nice to have this on hand for when she's read Huck Finn -- it is a lesser book of course, but I remember it being a fun read.
- The Prince and the Pauper, to round out the kid-friendly Twain selections.
- The Golden Compass -- people keep recommending this to me; I should take a look. Sylvia is loving the Harry Potter books these days, and this seemed like it would be in a similar vein.
- Teddy Roosevelt -- Sylvia's pick (after she found out that no, we're not buying Dragonology today), from a series of biographies of important Americans. Teddy Roosevelt is, she explained, her favorite president: I'm not totally clear on whether this is because 26 is her favorite number, or vice versa.
- The Cave -- my pick.
posted evening of June 30th, 2008: Respond
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Sunday, May 25th, 2008
Sylvia and I saw Prince Caspian tonight -- we enjoyed it and I would recommend it to people who are fans of the books. I don't think I'd recommend it as a movie to somebody who is not predisposed to like it; I guess my reaction to it was a little bit like Ebert's reaction to the latest Indiana Jones movie.  Good things: the talking animals, great; Trumpkin, great; the beautiful scenery and handsome actors were candy for my eyes. The camera work in the opening sequence was really startlingly good. Not so good: There wasn't really anything to distinguish this movie as a different film from the previous one -- where the two books are quite distinct from one another. A lot of the battle footage in particular, which made up a huge proporiton of the film, seemed like it could easily just have been lifted out of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
Sylvia had a good time identifying the differences between the movie and the book, which I guess means the movie was faithful enough to the book, for them to stand out.
posted evening of May 25th, 2008: 2 responses
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