Tales for Very Picky Eaters

by Josh Schnieder  
Clarion Books 2011  

Five short tales for beginning readers utilizing reverse psychology. This might backfire for some kids. Like me.  

Know a picky eater? Sure you do. And when it comes to getting them to eat the things we want them to sometimes a little creativity is called for. When James decides that broccoli is disgusting (without even trying it?) he asks for something else. His father offers him pre-chewed gum, dirt, and a sweaty sock. James decides that the broccoli doesn't sound so bad.

I'm not doing the book justice here. It's really very cute and, for a beginning reader, a good mixture of readability mixed with some challenging vocabulary, all in good fun.

There's a troll in the basement whose feelings would be hurt if James doesn't eat the mushroom lasagna. There's a list of the exaggerated effects -- rubbery bones from lack of calcium -- from not drinking milk. There's the ever-growing oatmeal that must be consumed to keep it at bay, else it will take over the house.  Finally come the eggs, the slimy, runny eggs. James guesses a bunch of crazy reasons why he needs to eat them but dad simply suggests he should try them because he might like them. He does.

And they were still hot.

No, wait.

So two thoughts about Tales For Very Picky Eaters, and they really don't have any effect on what I think. Mostly.

 First, I was that kid who would try reverse psychology on adults as a kid. I was once separated from a friend for talking and given my own desk as punishment. I loved that! I made my punishment look like so much fun that other kids began trying to get in trouble so they could get their own desks. Eventually our teacher, Mrs. Bridges, had to create a new row for us misfits.

Second, and this might be a little more germane to the book, I was under the impression that we were moving away from trying to force kids to eat foods? Obviously I'm not saying (and no one else is) that kids should have soda and cake all the time but that their bodies will decide what they need and will come around to eating better in time provided the options were available. Kid doesn't like broccoli, fine, find out what vegetable they do like and give it to them all the time. Then when they ask for something else you can introduce that and build a repertory menu.

Do I think kids will enjoy reading this collection of humorous tales surrounding one of the Great Child-Adult Divides? Naturally they will, and most will probably be able to substitute a food and their own reasons for why they need to eat them. But there is the potential for backlash, especially with any parent who has used similar tactics, for a reader to suddenly realize that the stories they've been told are just that, stories, and the next time they are fed okra or lima beans or something else they have problems with they may just entrench themselves deeper.

Hoddy Doddy

by Jack Kent 
Greenwillow / William Morrow 1979

Three folksy tales of the town fools in an Old World unnamed Danish town.  An interesting window onto a slightly politically incorrect beginning reader by the creator of the King Aroo comic strip. 

In a little Danish town, where these stories are all set, we see three small portraits of hoddy doddy's, or what Kent calls "foolish fellows." The first is a baker who, when told a Norwegian ship has arrived, goes to the harbor because he's never seen a Norwegian before.  When he arrives at the dock the ship is empty except for some stray lobsters that have fallen out of nets, and the baker assumes these are the Norwegians.  In the second tale, the town has learned that the enemy is approaching. In their panic to save the town clock, their most powerful possession, they dump it into the harbor where no one is likely to find it... including the townfolk.  In the last tale a town-proud miller spends his free time admiring how much better his homeland is than others. Upon hearing a contest between cuckoos of neighboring town, he decides to climb the tree and help his town's cuckoo win the contest.  For this he gets a statue erected in his honor as a town hero.

There is little denying the amount of story Kent manages to pack into these brief tales – and their illustrations take on the sort of Old World charm reminiscent of Paul Coker's work with the Rankin Bass animated holiday specials that also mined this territory – but there's something off kilter about identifying the residents from this town as being from Denmark.  The matter of fact presentation and definition of the phrase hoddy doddy makes it seem as if we are reading regional folk tales, but I've recently become aware of the phrase through The 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue in which it's defined as "all ass and no body," which itself was slang to describe short, clumsy people.

I can't presume that the late Jack Kent, whose visual work strikes a nostalgic thrum in me, was attempting to make fun of the Danes deliberately.  It may be that he'd heard the phrase and its meaning divorced from its original use and was simply using it as a peg on which to hang a set of fool's stories.  But it may also have been that its offensiveness went unnoticed until after publication, which may explain why it appears to be no longer in print but not why it's still readily available in my town library.  There's also the chance that I'm being overly sensitive, but it really jumped out at me from page one.

Had Kent not singled out "a town in Denmark" all I would have been able to talk about was his skill at condensing three vignettes into an enjoyable beginning reader with humor and an economy of language.

Fancy Nancy: Bonjour Butterfly

also: Fancy Nancy and The Boy From Paris &
Fancy Nancy at the Museum
all by Jane O'Connor
illustrated by Robin Preiss Glasser
HarperCollins 2008

What began as a cute picture book for the pink-and-sparkly girly-girl set is now officially a brand, a series, and an inferior product. This, the third Fancy Nancy book, was released the same day as two I-Can-Read titles that are trading on the Fancy Nancy name and familiarity to rake in more bucks from the market.

Let's deal with the picture book for a moment. Nancy and her best friend Bree are all about the butterflies. They're typically obsessed with them to the point that Bree is going to make her birthday a butterfly party. They plan a cake, make invitations, get their outfits ready...

Oh, no! Mom suddenly realized that it her parent's 50th anniversary on the same day! Fancy Nancy is going to have to go to her grandparent's party instead. And so she has to go and tell her friend Bree the bad news.

Up to this point the book has been pretty clunky in its exposition. It doesn't feel like a story so much as little two-page set pieces for Nancy and Bree to pose in. But when we get to the spread where Nancy is apologizing to Bree we get an interesting illustration. The text says Bree is devastated by the news but it's Nancy falling all over herself, doubled over in tears. Bree has a look that says "Yeah, like you really care. This is just like you, Nancy, you big self-centered fake!" Is this a mistake in the illustration or is Bree really just pissed that she's being dumped from the story half way.

That's right, now we have an entirely different book on our hands. Bree is history.

Nancy mopes her way through the house, stops talking to people, and generally shows off just how much a brat she really is. And her parents put up with it. They get to the grandparent's place and no sooner is she off the train but suddenly it's as if she'd never been upset. The party is great and afterward they go to a butterfly exhibit at the zoo and, wow! This wasn't such a bad trip after all!

Does Nancy call Bree on her birthday? Does she find something perfectly fancy and butterfly-like to bring back to her friend? No, Nancy finds a butterfly whose color matches the color of her proposed party outfit and thinks it's the grandest of them all.

Selfish brat.

The writing is bad, the story changes midway, and what's with all the dropping of French words and phrases anyway? Well, that, my friends, has everything to do with the Fancy Nancy Brand I-Can-Read Title Fancy Nancy and the Boy From Paris. See, in order to keep the gravy train rolling they need to milk everything fancy for all it's worth. A few French words here and there might let a girl believe she's got some fanciness to her, but now we've got a real live Parisian boy to help her build her fanciness quotient. But wait, he's just a boy, and maybe he isn't so fancy after all. I mean, he likes books about cowboys, and he isn't at all interested in all things fancy. Oh well, lesson leanred. Next!

Fancy Nancy at the Museum allows our Francofile snob to get a little kulchur and some more excuses to work in her French vocabulary. In a lot of ways these beginning readers read a bit more like outlines for possible picture books and don't stand up to the same quality (in my opinion) as many other books in this series. Again, it all feels a little too calculated to be genuine. I'm not necessarily going to fault the parties involved for wanting to make a buck, but when the only way to do it drags down what little good you had before then perhaps it's time to put on the brakes and take stock. Yes, there is a market for girly-girls, girls who like pink and purple and dressing up and sparkles. But character alone can't carry an empty plot, and there's more to fancy than borrowing some French and reinforcing snobbish stereotypes.

The first, and to a lesser extend the second, Fancy Nancy picture books gave us a girl whose fanciness was a fancy of imagination. She would dress up for a dinner out, and teach her family how to be fancy, and in the end her fanciness gave her a dose of humility. Or she would covet a fancy dog, and then take care of a fancy dog, only to learn that fanciness isn't always the best quality to look for. Nicely put lessons in both. What I'm seeing now is a girl forcing the world into her fancy box and when it doesn't fit, oh well. The lesson of Bonjour Butterfly is lost on me -- is it "dump your friends when something fancier comes along?" And as for the beginning reader books, is it really such a good idea to be dropping French words onto those readers who my be having a hard enough time with English?

I hope sales on these books tank. I hope Harper takes a long, hard look at what they are doing with Fancy Nancy and either back off or find a way to return to the quality and the original spirit of the first book.

I never thought I'd see the day I'd be using the words "quality" and "original" in the same sentence as the words Fancy Nancy.

Dodsworth in New York

by Tim Egan
Houghton Mifflin 2007

I don't remember the last time I reviewed a beginning reader, if at all. I know I passed on Mo Williams' recent Pig and Elephant series because (prepare to throw rocks and tomatoes) I just wasn't bowled over by them. They weren't bad, they just didn't go anywhere for me.

But the other day I noticed this title and, I don't know, something about it caught me. Perhaps there's something vaguely New Yorker-ish about the design, or the fact that it's a beginning reader that features New York in the title. It had a handsome, sophisticated look about it. Say what you will about judging books by their covers, if they weren't meant to be judged that way they wouldn't spend so much time and energy designing them.

Dodsworth appears to be a mole-like creature. It doesn't say, it doesn't really matter. He's off on an adventure to see the world. First stop, though, is his friend Hodges the Elephant's cafe for the best pancakes ever. Unfortunately Dodsworth is met by "that crazy duck" which seems to be Hodges' pet. (A moment to consider all the animals who have other animals as pets and ask "What's up with that?") Duck appears to be somewhat of a loon, a bit of a trickster character. He's chased off and after a hearty breakfast Dodsworth is off, next stop New York.

Do I have point out that, unseen until he gets there, that crazy duck has stowed himself away in Dodsworth's luggage?

Dodsworth is hounded by the duck all over New York. He tries to send the duck back to Hodges but the duck appears everywhere Dodsworth goes. "There's that crazy duck again!" kids might well be saying every time they see a duck in the pictures. But is it the same duck, or does Dodsworth simply have duck on the brain? At last Dodsworth catches the duck but in securing him for a voyage home they inadvertently find themselves on a steamer to Paris. Dodsworth calls Hodges to let him know that it might be a while before his duck is returned, to which his elephant friend apologizes for the duck ruining his adventure. Au contraire! "He was the adventure!" Dodsworth admits.

Yes, all of that from a beginning reader in simple language, begging to become a series on par with Frog and Toad and Little Bear et al. Perhaps not quite for a Level 1 or 2 reader, but certainly not far behind.