halloween-ish reads for two-year-olds and thirty-nine-year-olds

Outside, the sky is grey and a mizzling rain has blurred the edges of the world like a softly smudged drawing. Sean and Hugh bundled up in fleeces and rain suits and left for adventures, and I woke up this morning with the sort of vague headache that either turns into something truly terrible or disappears completely, so I used that as an excuse to cancel all my plans to be a useful member of society and spent the morning instead rummaging through books and thinking about ghost stories.

This time of year, I'm always looking for just the right sort of scary story — usually less outright scare, really, and more creeping dread and uncanny happenings. Penguin sent me a copy of Joan Lindsay's Picnic at Hanging Rock, which looks promising, and I ordered a copy of Lolly Willows.  

There's a wonderful Frog and Toad story by Arnold Lobel called "The Shivers." Frog tells Toad a tale about a monstrous frog, and throughout Toad asks again and again if the story is real. Toad says maybe so, maybe not, and at the end, Lobel describes them both trembling with fear but safe by the fire, enjoying the lovely feeling of the shivers. 

That's the sort of story I like, too — something suspenseful and unsettling that feels just real enough — and I thought I would go through my shelves and find a few books worth putting on a list of Halloween-ish reads.

Halloween stories for Hugh have been a bit tricky to find. He's much too small for anything with ghosts or monsters, and I've been happy to dodge explaining those things to him. We've enjoyed Leslie Patricelli's Boo and Little Blue Truck's Halloween, which both focus more on the fun of dressing up and being out at night than anything scary. In terms of the very gentlest scares, the chapter in Winnie the Pooh "In Which Pooh and Piglet Go Hunting and Nearly Catch a Woozle" is just about right.

For the three-and-up set, The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything and Kazuno Kohara's Ghosts in the House! (about a little girl who catches ghosts and puts them in the washing machine) are delightful.

For older children, the real shivers start to come into play. John Bellairs is an expert crafter of page-turning tales where ordinary kids find themselves mixed up in perilous, supernatural happenings. I find these plenty scary, myself, and enjoy the casual way Bellairs folds in all sort of specific historical details about everything from old coins to Napoleonic cannonry. 

Another shivery read is Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising series. I read it first when I was ten or twelve, and was utterly enthralled. I'm enjoying it almost as much this time around. Narrow grey houses hiding secrets, wheeling rooks and Arthurian legend, secret signs and malignant snow and suspense.

I'd also put Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials on the short list of shivery books written especially for those perched on the far edge of childhood (though it is more shivery in parts than shivery throughout). I can't wait to read the Book of Dust.

Short stories lend themselves well to the uncanny. I have two good collections: Roald Dahl's Ghost Stories and Edward Gorey's The Haunted Looking Glass. Between them, most of the classic literary ghost short stories are represented. Gorey's, as you might expect, has some wonderful, darkly intricate illustrations. 

Reading this collection of M.R. James kept me up late two nights this week. These are a particular type of very British ghost stories, featuring Oxford scholars, antiquarian books, old manors and supernatural monsters. Anthony Lane said James "knew the sensation of evil rubbing itself against us, like a cat." Yep.

For unsettling reimaginings of fairytales with a gothic bent, I'd recommend Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber, though the original versions of most fairy tales are plenty chilling. I have an edition of Grimm's with illustrations by Arthur Rackham that gave me nightmares as a child.

In terms of living authors, Steven Millhauser and Ludmilla Petrushevskaya write brilliantly unsettling ghost stories. The last story in this particular Petrushevskaya book, "The Black Coat," is strange and dreamy and has the peculiar plausibility of an alternate truth, as does Millhauser's "We Others," which always leaves me a bit jumpy.

For a more sustained stay in supernatural realms, I love Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell and the Goremenghast trilogy (both of which I've written about here and here). 

Time to make a plate of pumpkin cookies, brew a pot of tea and start reading.

two years a reader

Before Hugh was born, I had visions of spending hours curled up under quilts, reading with a small being nestled at my side. I saw me and this small person making frequent trips to the library, hauling book-filled tote bags and reciting poems at every opportunity — swinging at the playground, scuffling our feet through crisped fall leaves, gazing up at the sky, engaging in bouts of emphatic puddle stomping. I saw my imagined small person sitting in a sunbeam shaft, lost in a book.

All of these visions have come to pass, and I feel very lucky, because right from the moment they blink open their eyes, little people have thier own interests and preogatives and there is no guarantee they will be anything like you hope or wish (though when it comes to parenthood, I've found that my hopes and wishes are often at best a sort of dinky cardboard model of the actual experience).

Five weeks old (so tiny).

When Hugh was very new to the world, we mainly read him chapter books and things we liked aloud, because we egotistically assumed that hearing our voices mattered most and baby books can get old fast. The Winnie the Pooh books, E.B. White's Stuart Little, Robert Mccloskey's Homer Price stories, Ruth Krauss's A Hole is to Dig and Randall Jarrell's The Bat Poet were favorites. I also read him poems from The Rattle Bag and the occasional New Yorker article. Ounce, Dice, Trice by Alistair Reid was the first book that made him laugh. Tiny babies are the best, because you can read them whatever you like.

Now that we are firmly in the world of picture books, Hugh has more opinions about what gets read. A selection of some of his favorites from the past year would include:

Best Friends for Frances and Bread and Jam for Frances by Russell Hoban.
Best Storybook Ever, by Richard Scarrey (we skip the problematic bits).
A Child's Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson.
Du Iz Tak? by Carson Ellis.
The Elephant Who Liked to Smash Small Cars by Jean Merrill.
The Fuzzy Duckling, Shaker Lane, and A Shaker Abcedarium by Martin and Alice Provensen.
Katy and the Big Snow, by Virginia Lee Burton (an underrated genius).
Last Stop on Market Street by Matt de la Pena.
The Real Mother Goose.
Sam and Dave Dig a Hole and The Wolf, the Duck and the Mouse by Mac Barnett.
The Snowy Day and Over in the Meadow by Ezra Jack Keats.
Poems to Read to the Very Young, selected by Josette Frank.
Professional Crocodile by Giovanna Zoboli.
Pete's a Pizza, by William Steig.
Umbrella by Taro Yashima.
We Found a Hat by John Klassen.
and
an astonishing number of books by the incomparable Margaret Wise Brown, but most especially: The Little Island, The Important Book, The Quiet Noisy Book, The Friendly Book, Scuppers the Sailor Dog, The Growing Story, Mister Dog (The Dog Who Belonged to Himself) [ed. note: my personal favorite], The Runaway Bunny, The Little Fireman and Goodnight Moon. [edited to add: somehow this list missed two of Hugh's most-requested titles: The Little Fur Family and Wait Till The Moon is Full.]

We're never far from something to read. There are dedicated shelves for picture books in Hugh's room and in our kitchen, plus book caddies that hold his favorite reads of the moment strategically plopped by comfortable spots (re: book caddies — I like this portable one by Umbra and this stationary one by Ikea). A separate basket by the front door holds library books and seasonal reads. On my bookshelves, the lowest shelves hold children's chapter books and poetry collections, so almost all of the books in our house at Hugh height are of Hugh interest, and he can go and get any of them whenever he likes. To make it easier for Hugh to sort and shelve at the end of the day, each of his bookshelves are organized by color (this also makes it easier for him to find specific books).

In practice, having toddler-height books everywhere sometimes looks like this:

You have to pick your parental hassles, though, and this is one I don't mind. Spending an hour or two with Hugh and a topply pile of picture books he's picked himself is a pure joy, even when it involves reading Make Way for Duckings for the umpteenth time, and who knows how long it will last. Children change like clouds in the sky. I'm grateful to have these days and plenty of books.

settling in

A few shots of our bedroom. We've had a lot of fun building bookshelves, hanging pictures, and finding nice and necessary things like tiny bookshelf dusters, fern-patterned sheets and sturdy laundry baskets.

new pot

Some nice surprises came with a pot I ordered. Thank you, Kim!

Also: other lovely things to contemplate ordering.

sweater weather

  

 

This is a sweater my mother made me. It came in the mail a few weeks ago and I have worn it nearly every day since. It's especially nice on chilly days, or on days like today when I wish I could sit with my mother and have a cup of tea.

plenty is never enough

A look at my moccasin collection.

making do

I only brought one chair with me from Ohio, and it is too low and slouchy to use at my work table.

Here's my solution:

 

All I needed to do was raid the camping equipment and my magazine stash.

Getting a new chair is a priority, though - magazines are not the most comfortable seat.

the asteroid known as b-612

My much-loved copy.