Legal Commentary

One of the benefits of having young children is that it gives me a chance to learn about some terrific children?s literature.  While I?m a big fan of many of the children?s books that Hollywood has also discovered (e.g., Harry Potter, Lemony Snicket?s A Series of Unfortunate Events, Holes, and Where the Wild Things Are) there are some great stories that don?t get that kind of exposure.  I thought I?d post a few of my favorites in the hope that I could get recommendations from some of you in return:

1.    Margaret Mahy?s The Horribly Haunted School and The Mixed-Up Pirate Voyage.

Margaret Mahy is a wonderfully imaginative children?s author from New Zealand who has written many great books for toddlers, 18-year olds, and every age group in between.  She likes to weave some philosophy into her stories.  In The Horribly Haunted School, a young boy who is allergic to ghosts must try to explain his predicament to teachers at a school premised on the empiricist notion that the only things real or relevant are those which you can see, hear, smell or taste (The Brinsley Codd School for Sensible Thought).  Fortunately, he gets some help from a closeted romantic among the school?s administrators, and from the ghost of the school?s founder and former headmaster, Brinsley Codd.  He also gets some unexpected aid along the way from a haunted car, a vendor of food and wisdom, as well as his jig saw puzzle solving champion mother, and his dad, who is a philosopher employed with the government?s Department of National Despair.  In The Mixed-Up Pirate Voyage, a group of waiters and chefs at a floating pirate-themed restaurant decide to become a real pirate ship, and sail into a group of mysterious islands to pursue a life of adventure and romance, arguing all the while with a parrot committed to a dark and deterministic vision of the universe.

2.    Edith Nesbit?s The Complete Book of Dragons

Edith Nesbit lived from 1858 to 1924 and she and her husband were founders of, and major figures in, the Fabian Society.  She?s probably most famous for The Railway Children and a trilogy consisting of Five Children and It, The Phoenix and the Carpet, and The Story of the Amulet.  My favorite works of hers are her short stories. ?The Complete Book of Dragons? in particular has some intriguing tales, including one where an island?s counterclockwise geological formation has caused many things to happen counter to our normal experience of them: The guinea pigs are mammoth-sized while elephants can be held in one?s hand; people grow bread and pudding on trees or farms, but must combine and cook ingredients to create tomatoes or carrots.  In another tale, a forward-looking princess, whose old-fashioned father, the king, insists she be rescued from a dragon by a valiant prince, neither wants to be rescued nor have the dragon slain, and fortunately finds an intellectual prince, who prefers studying mathematics to slaying things and shares her skepticism about gender stereotypes and about killing endangered species (like the last dragon in England).

3.    David Wiesner?s Flotsam and Sector 7

Two stories told entirely with pictures.  Flotsam celebrates discovery by a group of young explorers who, like the scientific community, engage in an intellectual adventure that spans generations and unites them with fellow explorers in different times and countries.  Sector 7 celebrates creativity and non-conformity. 
In Flotsam, a boy examining shells and small sea creatures on a beach discovers an underwater camera filled with pictures of fantastic sea monsters, mermaid kingdoms and other underwater civilizations.  He also discovers that, for generations, each young discoverer of the camera has left a record of his or her own encounter with the camera and its contents.    In Sector 7, a boy befriends a cloud on the top of the Empire State Building during a school field trip.  After riding that cloud to the factory where clouds are given their shape and launched into the sky, he uses his artistic skill to foment a rebellion of sorts against the standard boring shapes into which the factory moulds the poor clouds.

4.    Colin Thompson, The Last Alchemist

I?d be remiss not to include this one ? given what?s happening on Wall Street and Washington these days.  It?s about an alchemist named Spinifex who ? being a committed alchemist ? tries to create gold where there is none, with disastrous results (which fortunately teaches others the folly of the alchemists? designs).   The illustrations are strange, colorful, and somehow remind me of The Codex Seraphinianus. Fallen Angels ? about a girl who discovers that children are born with, but usually quickly lose, the capacity to fly ? is another great book by Colin Thompson.