I admire Pura Belpre for her life and her devotion to children. She seems more inclined to folklore than fable which is no surprise, the latter a more classical form that may have overshot her particular "children" but she must have read Aesop and Jean de la Fontaine. ( I never oe'r look the opportunity to mention the latter's name even if it is only marginally germane to context) I wonder if she made her own puppets. Her first story is a love story between a cockroach and a mouse. Two creatures that are generally maligned though the mouse is more friendly to a child's mind. As an adult, my stomach churns in contemplating the chemistry of such a pair. But that's not what children have "learned" yet and Signora Belpre surely knew what she was doing.EP Millstone wrote: ↑December 23rd, 2022, 7:19 pm A friend introduced me to the Icelandic Christmas tradition known as Jolabokaflod (pronunciation: yo-la-bok-a-flot; translation: Christmas Book Flood). My friend is one of those compulsive folks who L-O-V-E-S lists. Reading them. Making them. Having other people make them. Me: Not at all.
She is currently editing an article titled Books of My Life for a European publication. Famous writers were asked to respond to the following list of topics (my responses are in blue):
- My Earliest Reading Memory
One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish by Dr. Seuss
- My Favourite Book Growing Up
Perez and Martina by Pura Belpré
- The Book That Changed Me as a Teenager
The Puberty Book (Rimshot!)
- The Book That Made Me Want to Be a Writer (I'd change this topic to The Book That Made Me the Person I Am)
Vinegar Puss by S.J. Perelman
- The Book or Author I Came Back To
Harlan Ellison's Watching
- The Book I Reread
Without Feathers by Woody Allen
- The Book I am Currently Reading
Spaghetti Westerns: Cowboys and Europeans from Karl May to Sergio Leone by Christopher Frayling
- The Book I Could Never Read Again
Spaghetti Westerns: Cowboys and Europeans from Karl May to Sergio Leone by Christopher Frayling
- The Book I Discovered Later in Life
The Prostate Massage Manual
- My Comfort Read
The Prostate Massage Manual
If you're so inclined, share your responses.
A brief review of S.J. Perelman's life suggests that he cared more for his automobile and pet bird than his only child who in his twenties committed robberies. But wait, the rearing of the child might have might have been positively influenced my the mother? Poor Laura West, sister of Nathaniel West, was besieged by a husband who chronically cheated, there goes the mother. S.J. considered children as a "nuisance." Thank Heaven he and wife didn't have another. I am taking a few facts of the life of ... and gleaning more elaborate ramifications. Even without that, Groucho thought little of him, calling him, "A son of a bit*ch." I wouldn't be surprised.
No book that ever changed your mind? About anything? If that were me I wouldn't bother to read at all. Such rigidness would infect any book I would ever attempt. The most usual question and certainly the more difficult is the formidable, "What book changed your life?" Heaven forbid that!
The book you are reading and the book you will never come back to are one and the same. Do you detect a contradiction? I hope that book is not affecting your appetite for food.
The teenager book and the later-than-life book bear a certain similarity. Am I finally come round to an element of humor in all this? And your comfort book too? Attempt at humor?
True story, I remember looking at bookcases at home at probably four years old lamenting that I could not read. It was really a problem. You'd think that I might be the type that would be reading War and Peace at 10. (My growing up books were Freddie the Pig.) One day I picked up a comic book and to my amazement I could read what the characters were saying. My first conscious realization that I could actually read. And that is still vivid today. So there you have it, Freddie the Pig and comic books. And, of course, Peter Wheat. I always like it when that truck rolled around.