The AMAM Awards for Almost-Freaky Excellency in Children’s Literature

You may be wondering, why these awards, why right now? Well, readers, I’ll give it to you straight. I woke before 6am again (thanks, Primo), have a deadline today, and have both my children at home (thanks Montessori, for making your spring break TWO FRIGGIN WEEKS long) so my mind is in no shape for long-form musings. Thus, today’s post will be short, sweeeeeeet and very much to the point. So, without further ado, for the first time ever . . . the AMAMS!!!!!!!!

Best Depiction of Grrrrl Power:

Pirate Girl, by Cornelia Funke, illustrated by Kerstin Meyer

I have sought out and read lots of these subverted-princess type tales, and nobody does it better than Funke. She’s funny as hell, lyrical, and empowering. I now use the phrase, “piratical nincompoops” as a term of endearment for my kids. When it comes right down to it, we’re all Barbarous Berthas, when it comes to protecting our kids.

Best Book About the Fallibility of Parents, Which Also Features Vampires:

My Mama Says There Aren't Any Zombies, Ghosts, Vampires, Demons, Monsters, Fiends, Goblins or Things, by Judith Viorst, illustrated by Kay Chorao

You have to be deaf, really dumb and blind not to like Judith Viorst and though this isn’t as well-known as her Alexander books, it features the Alexander character and his brothers. This one addresses a profound conundrum: how do you believe your mother when she says there’s no such thing as zombies, when she’s so woefully wrong about so much? It is true, guys, “even mamas make mistakes.” A must-read for kids who are obsessed with Halloween spooks, like my guy.

Most Galvanizing Moral:

Brundibar, by Tony Kushner. Illustrated by Maurice Sendak

If this was a movie preview, the screen would just have big white letters on black, which read: KUSHNER, and then SENDAK, and then BRUNIDBAR. I am a total fanatic of both these guys and the marriage of the two is just what you want it to be – discordant, unpredictable, funny. A brother and sis with a mama who is sick in bed set off on a quest to get her the milk she needs to make her better, encounter the force of pure evil, and beat him down with the help of 300 other children. United we stand!

Best Crying Scene with a Turtle:

How Little Lori Visited Times Square, by Amos Vogel, illustrated by Maurice Sendak

Being a New Yorker who rarely leaves the city, I don’t really need to read books about NYC . . . but I WANT to. What is better than watching Sendak’s little Lori figure (they all looks like Max to me) end up at South Ferry, Macy’s, Idlewild Airport and Queens? Plus, Lori’s bawl-a-thon with the turtle is hilarious. So I featured Maurice Sendak twice, so sue me. Better yet, take this.

Best Children’s Book of All Time and Forevermore:

Where the Wild Things Are, by Maurice Sendak

I still have the edition of this book which I read as a little girl, yellowed pages, broken cover and all. It was my favorite back then, the ‘rents say, and it has been one of Primo’s favorite, too. He even dressed up as Max for Halloween one year, the little imp – see picture above. I could write a whole book about this book but as I’ve got a deadline and not enough coffee, I’ll just say this: He found his supper waiting for him. And it was still hot.

And it is -- it is still hot, this book. Getting hotter by the minute with Spike Jonze’s movie about to touch down. David, the kids and I watched the trailer like 10 times this week and we are so there on opening day. Judge for yourself. Watch the trailer.

Opinions? Ideas? Your own favorites?

Who's the mother here?

I’m getting the feeling that my daughter watches a lot of TV when I leave her with my grandmother. Why am I getting this feeling? She tells me.

“I WANNA WATCH LAZYTOWN!” Seconda yelled last night.

Primo and I both turned our heads to look at her.

“What?” I asked.

“What?” he asked.

“I. Wanna. Watch LaaaaazzzzyTOWN,” she repeated, like we were a bunch of blockheads.

“And how do you know about Lazytown?” I asked her.

“Nonnie put it on for me,” she replied.

So I called my grandmother and asked how much TV she lets Seconda watch.

“Nothing,” she said too quickly. Then: “She hardly watch it. She doesn’t even look when I put it on.”

“So turn it off then.”

“Ok, I know.”

When Nonnie responds this way, it is clear that she’s already tuned me out, like she is my teenage daughter. It is the sign that she has no intention of abiding by my wishes whatsoever. I know this for a fact.

One night, David and I enjoyed the good fortune of having my cousin, Sidney, babysit so we could grab a bite and, you know, connect. We put the kids to bed before we left but of course, just as we were placing our order, my cousin called. I could hear Seconda screaming her head off in the background. My cousin wanted to know what to do and I told her to give the baby the paci but to not, under any circumstances, take her out of the crib. With some kids, you stick them on your shoulder, rock them a minute and they’re out like a light. Once you remove my daughter from the crib, she is awake. Period. No amount of rocking or bouncing or singing will lull her back to sleep – it doesn’t matter if you keep it up for an hour or more. She is wired to sleep only in the crib. I told this to my cousin. I assured her that the child would only cry for a few minutes and then go back to sleep.

Sidney told me later that a minute after we hung up, my grandmother called the house and heard the baby crying.

“Was goin’ on?’ she asked, “Why is da baby cryin’?”

Sidney explained the situation and my instructions.

“Don ‘t you DARE listen to her!” my grandmother shouted, “I gonna tell you wat to do. Pick dat baby up and rock her on you lap. She gonna go right back to sleep nice and easy, and she don’t wake up Primo.”

When we came home an hour later, guess who was awake?

“Nonnie forced me to,” Sidney confessed, “She said not to listen to you under any circumstances.”

It’s always the same old argument.

“I am the MOTHER here!” I yell at my grandmother, “What I say, goes.”

“Ok, ok,” she replies. Which means, “Sure, until you close the door behind you.”

It’s maddening. But this is the price of free child care. And I have chosen to accept it.
So when I ask Seconda what sound the horsey makes and she says, “Kneeee-how! Ni Hao Kai-lan! Put on Ni Hao Kai-lan!!!” I don’t yell at my grandmother. I just unplug the TV when she comes over.

Have a heart (attack)

Yesterday the kids were rotten, really rotten. Primo’s having some sort of fraught moment where the rigors of daily living are unbearably aggravating to him. I can’t get him to eat or take a piss or put on his shirt or clean up his messes. He’s suddenly off-the-charts unreasonable.

Second skipped her nap because she was left under the guardianship of my grandmother, who finds it easier to keep her awake in a colossally shitty mood rather then endure the three minutes of protesting which precedes her napping. More on this another time. Suffice it to say that by 5pm, my apartment was a nuthouse. The inmates are running the asylum sort of thing.

Seconda is flipping out, crying ‘til the drool drips out of her open-wide mouth, for a reason I can not discern. It has something to do with Curious George. Does she want to watch it? NOOOOOOOO. So I turn it off. She continues to scream like something is seriously wrong with her innards. So she DOES want to watch it? YEEEEEEEES. Turn the TV back on. Crying continues.

“I am not a mind reader!!!!” I inform her. Especially not of crazy people.

Meanwhile Primo shouts that all I care about is Seconda and he really needs me to help him draw the smiling mouth of this vampire which he is copying out of a Judith Viorst book, and he needs my help urgently because the vampire looks HAPPY not SCARY and it is ALL WRONG. He is drawing a smile, I point out, which does run the risk of seeming happy, and I am not sure how to make it otherwise. This makes him Bruce-Banner-type angry. If I’d have known I was going to be forced under threat of tantrum to pen the complicated emotional states of characters from horror movies, I would have taken a few classes in figurative drawing before I got knocked up.

In the middle of turning into the Incredible Hulk, he throws the arm to his Darth Vader figure behind the couch, which he instantly regrets because Darth Vader is significantly less fun to play with without a light saber or arm to hold it with.

“Move the couch, Mommy,” he instructs me, “I’m hungry. I want a hummus sandwich.”

In the olden days, this kid would get a slap upside the head. I consider this. I consider giving him his fifth time-out of the day. Instead of choosing either of these options, I sweetly say: “I can’t move the couch, make you food and have a heart attack, all at the same time.”

He considers a moment and then says helpfully: “OK, so move the couch first.”

“Fine,” I reply. I’m tired. The day’s a bust. I’m already a shitty disciplinarian and tomorrow I’ll make a clean start. Right now, I just want to go on Facebook for five minutes.

Primo climbs over the back of the couch and retrieves Vader’s arm. Then we move the couch back into place and he makes himself nice and comfortable on it.

Two minutes later, I am happily reading about other people’s lives on my computer screen, when my son speaks.

“Now you can have a heart attack,” he says.

It is an earnest offer, and I realize he didn’t get my sarcasm at all. He thinks a heart attack is just another one of the annoying things Mommy always wants to do for herself, like take a shower, drink coffee, work, clean the house, pay bills. He says it like, “Hold on, wasn’t there something you were meaning to do? . . . . Oh yeah. Go ahead, treat yourself right. Have a heart attack. You deserve it, Mom.”

“Thank you,” I reply. I mean it.

Then I make everyone some of my grandmother’s chicken soup with passatelli and by the time David gets home, we’re slurping away happily and my children are model children and I am mother of the year again.

Blessings

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Over the weekend my cousin gave a shot-out to my blog via her facebook status which read, “I’ll never have kids if I keep reading my cousin’s blog.” I thought this was great. In fact, I consider what the kids and I provide as a valuable service to my not-yet-parent friends. The effect of an afternoon with us is something akin to that of the Scared Straight program in which troubled teens get sent to juvi boot camp to get a taste of what life in the clink is really like. In the case of Scared Straight, the experience serves, one would hope, as a deterrent. In our case, it’s about managing expectations.

Since I was the very first of my friends to have kids (having two kids under 30 in Park Slope is basically babies having babies), I didn’t know what the hell I was doing or what the hell it would be like. I sort of thought the whole pregnancy and childbirth would be a cross between She’s Having a Baby and Nine Months and I guessed that when I had the kid, it would be like a Pampers commercial with some Full House thrown in. I am not an idiot. I just hadn’t spent time with people rearing young children. Well, let me qualify. I taught at day cares and summer camps and tutored kids and was an instructor at clown class. In fact, I’ve always sought out the small fries because they are smart and unsullied and inquisitive and open to joy. We understand each other. 

But –- spoiler alert -- teaching clown class is not the same as being a parent. I have been dwarfed by the sheer weight of the worry, the guilt, the pain I feel when they are ill or unhappy (pretty much a default setting at 2 and 4 years old). I have been ravaged by the sleeplessness which never seems to end, shocked and discouraged by the limitations of my patience and energy and generosity, enraged at how willing the kids are to bring me to my limits. I am often estranged from my husband. I blame him for things that aren’t his fault because there’s no one else to blame. To say parenting is hard is almost an insult. Driving a stick shift is hard. Parenting is impossible.

But, if you were to spend an afternoon with us, this wouldn’t be your takeaway. (Or at least, I hope not, for the sake of perpetuating the human species). Because you couldn’t help but discern, and quite powerfully, I think, that these children are a blessing which words cannot encompass. And I don’t mean “blessing” in the vague sense of something really cool or neat or nice. I mean, I get down on my old-before-their-time, broken-down knees and I thank God Almighty for the gift of these children, a gift I could never deserve.

My son told me last night that he loves me more than the sky. He called me into his room before he went to sleep and he said, “I am full of so much love, Mommy. I am so full of love, I love you more than the sky.” Then he went to sleep curled up in a ball with his blanket tangled around him and his sister slept in the crib beside him, with her wispy hair in her eyes and smelling of citrus, and both of their chests rose and fell, rose and fell and I actually thought I would have a heart attack if the good feeling didn’t dissipate. So much love, indeed.

So to all the non-parents out there, let me dissuade you from believing people like my cousin’s friends who replied to her facebook post, “OH NO! Don’t listen to her! Having kids is great! We travel, we go out ouce a week, we have so much fun!!!!!!!!”

First of all, dear readers, never take the advice of anyone who uses more than one exclamation point, unless it is me quoting my children, or they are being sarcastic.

Here’s the point. Parenting is not “fun,” and you don’t “still” do anything the way you used to do it. But it has the very real possibly of bringing your life into Technicolor.

Before this adventure of motherhood, I had fun galore, I traveled a ton, I was a happy, fulfilled woman with a career and friends and a soul mate. But looking back, it feels like I was all in sepia. I have never laughed so hard, or cried so hard, or prayed so hard or felt so fully at peace. If that deters you from having kids, well, at least you’ve been fully informed.

How Noggin saved my sex life

That’s right. I credit Noggin with saving my sex life, and probably my marriage. PBS has done its part, and on the rare occasion, Nick Jr. has pitched in. The only windows of time when David and I can ever get busy anymore with some regularity is while Seconda watches TV. This works particularly well on Fridays, when my hub works from home, and my son is in school. We just scroll through the Tivo, select an enticing Wonder Pets or Backyardigans episode, one we know she just can’t refuse, strap her securely into the highchair and retire to the bedchamber.

Is this the most relaxing circumstances under which to enjoy a carnal embrace? Certainly not. Usually, after about 5 minutes, Seconda finds some problem to complain about and start yelling for us. This happened much more frequently when our show of choice was Sesame Street. Its magazine format, with all those short segments featuring different characters and stories, allowed her to develop some very specific preferences, and we were constantly dashing back to the living room to rewind so she could watch Count Dracula again, and again and again, or fast-forwarding past Big Bird because she was suddenly terrified of the color yellow.

‘I NO LIKE TWIDDLEBUGS!!!!!” she’d yell, invariably in the middle of a critical moment between the sheets.

“MOOOOMMMY! MAKE THE TWIDDLEBUGS GO AWAY!”

“DAAAADDY! I NEEEED YOU!”

“MOMMYDADDY MOMMYDADDY MOMMYDADDY! I DID A STINKY POOP!”

It’s not quite as seductive as the Sade my first boyfriend used to put on as our sex soundtrack, but well, it’s better than not having sex to the same soundtrack. It’s really amazing what you can block out and how quickly you can attain connubial bliss when you’ve got no other option.

There is of course the possibility of sex after the children go to bed. But let’s be frank. I can hardly maneuver the remote control at that hour, much less genitalia.

“It’s just so fatiguing," I tell David when he makes advances after dark.

“That’s not how I think about it at all,” he replies.

“Of course not,” I say, “You’re a man. Sex is no more exhausting to you than any other bodily function that must occur daily.”

Sometimes I can be convinced, especially if there is an enticing offer on the table, say that David will wake with the kids all night long, or let me sleep in the next morning. But usually I tell him to wait ‘til Noggin’ time, after I’ve had a strong cup of coffee, before the children have ravaged my resources of patience and perkiness.

Welcome to being married with children.

17 Syllables

I was going to call this a trio of haikus but when I googled “haiku”, I realized the form involves all sorts of complicated rules that I have no intention of following or even informing myself fully about. So here I offer to you a triptych of haiku-inspired poems.

TO MY DARLING SON

Stop filing your

sisters’ teeth or

I will sell

you to the gypsies.

It’s not my fault you

have eczema. Blame Daddy

and his lousy genes.

The reason you can’t

watch SpongeBob is that Mommy

hates his fucking guts

And a bonus one, courtesy of Seconda. By the way, I didn’t change a word. This is straight from the mouth of the teeny poetess.

Oh, I hear the birds.

I better say hi to them.

“Hi!” I did a poop.

Go ahead, have a go yourself. Enough responses and we can get a poetry slam going here.

Little Literati

Let me first say that this is not a picture of my son. I would never let my child read in a window, especially one without bars on it. It is a hazardous location for a reading nook and I neither condone nor recommend it. Now that we’ve established that, please enjoy the feeling of tranquility this picture inspires. Children. Books. Cooooooozy.

One of the great perks of your child growing older is that he and you, too, graduate to more sophisticated children’s literature. This is a huge deal for me because -- I’ll admit it -- since having my son, I have pretty much stopped reading adult books. Please don’t judge. Don’t act like the cashier at City Lights Bookstore in San Fran, when I was purchasing the three novels my husband had picked out for himself, along with the three children’s books I had picked out, who said: “Oh, I’m so glad to see you buying books for yourself. So many parents come in and just buy books for the kids and it’s so . . . sad.”

That’s the worst. The pity from non-parents (I can only assume this 20-something with a faux hawk was a non-parent). The pity for my brain-dead, no-life-outside-my-kids, last-contemporary-work-of-fiction-I-read-was-the-Corrections, miserable existence. Except I was spared the pity because he thought I was my husband, who does read, voraciously so, both legs of his commute and for a full hour during his lunch break.

I have a statement of defense prepared, if you’re interested.

I was the bookiest, literature-loving-est devotee of the written word you can imagine, the kind of kid who walked down the street with my nose in a book, bumping into things. I used to literally breathe in the scent of old encyclopedias at Sterling Memorial Library in my college years. Even when I was preggo, I read constantly, finishing up my masters in English Lit.

Then the baby touched down and I was obliterated by an exhaustion which frankly, has not let up yet. It sounds like a paltry excuse, I know, but if you are still waking with your kids 3, 4 times a night, and then starting your day of manual labor at 5:30am, I think you’ll buy it. The past few weeks, I’ve been falling asleep while telling the kids their bedtime stories at 7:30pm.

“MOMMY!” Primo yells, “You are saying nonsense! WAKE UP!”

So I may not read books intended for an adult audience but I do read to the kids all the time. We load up on new material at the library at least once a week. Seconda’s only two so her attention span is still limited but Primo’s shaping up to be a bookworm himself which makes his mama proud.

A few months ago, we tentatively made a foray into chapter books and let me tell you, there is no looking back. It is sublime. Don’t get me wrong, I brake for Mo Willems, I swoon for Sendak, I am totally tickled by Kevin Henkes and his deliciously precocious rodent characters. But Primo and I am now entering the hallowed halls of serious literature here. Our starter book was Pippi Longstocking, a hit because of the broad comedy and short chapters. Once he’d been baited with Pippi, I slipped in a little E.B.White. When was the last time you read Charlotte’s Web? That shit is INTENSE. During the last chapter I broke down and cried, though Primo didn’t get what the big deal was. Now we’re onto Stuart Little, a lyrical little gem that’s much funnier than you’d expect.

But the crowd pleaser, no question, is Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Witnessing my son get swept away by the irresistible force of Dahl’s fantasy – Primo’s drive to rehash what we’ve just read, to tell the story to his friends, the thrill of speculating what might unfold in the next chapter, and the sweet, sweet sadness of knowing the end is soon to come – it’s kind of breathtaking. And how cool is it that I get to feel this awakening all over again myself, this sweet love affair with other peoples’ imaginations?

Ahhh . . . .motherhood. What bliss! What divinity!

(This message has been brought to you by the League of Little Literati and Foundation for the Furtherance of Dahl Dotage and Devotion.)

OK, your turn. Picks for best first chapter books? Tried and true favorites as well as more recent work, all welcome.