Author says some ‘Wild Things’ about children’s literature – Seattle Times

Bruce Handy, author of Wild Things: The Joy of Reading Childrens Literature as an Adult, takes an opinionated, biography-with-zingers approach to the Kid Lit pantheon: from Beverly Cleary to Maurice Sendak. And dont get him going on The Giving Tree.

Special to The Seattle Times

Bruce Handy doesnt waste time staking out a critical position. On the fifth page of his new book, Wild Things: The Joys of Reading Childrens Literature as an Adult, Handy says Beverly Clearys grade-school novel Ramona the Pest is like Henry James with much shorter sentences. One paragraph later, he complains that the Curious George series carries a stale, colonial aroma and Madeleine LEngles A Wrinkle in Time is a now dated Cold War fable about collectivism Ayn Rand for kids.

Dont get him going on The Giving Tree, Shel Silversteins inexplicably popular retelling of Stella Dallas and Mildred Pierce for nursery schoolers. Handy interrupts a disquisition on the similarities between The Runaway Bunny and Portnoys Complaint for a two-page takedown of The Giving Tree. One minute hes wondering whether Philip Roth was familiar with The Runaway Bunny (probably not), the next hes calling the main characters in The Giving Tree a boy and a tree two deluded losers engaged in a folie deux: the Joe Buck and Ratso Rizzo of childrens literature.

Tell us what you really think, Bruce.

Wild Things is presented as a smart look at childrens literature by a lifelong reader who loved books as a child and rediscovered them as a parent. It is that, and it does make some serious points about fantasy and death and how children use reading to learn critical thinking and find a place in the world. But what its really about is a series of opinionated profiles of the Kid Lit pantheon: Cleary, Margaret Wise Brown, Dr. Seuss, Beatrix Potter, Maurice Sendak, E.B. White, Laura Ingalls Wilder, L. Frank Baum, C.S. Lewis. Handy draws a wide line between those he writes about and those he doesnt; the latter includes Roald Dahl, J.R.R. Tolkien, Chris Van Allsburg and J.K. Rowling, whose Harry Potter series, though spectacular, goes on forever.

The opinionated, biography-with-zingers approach plays to Handys strengths as an editor for Vanity Fair and a former writer for Saturday Night Live and is great fun for those interested in colorful facts about their favorite childrens book authors. Did you know Brown, the author of Goodnight Moon and an Auntie Mame character of some renown, died when she did a cancan kick and a blood clot dislodged and went to her brain? Her last word was Grand! and her epitaph was Writer of Songs and Nonsense. Handy, who cant give anyone the last word, suggests Goodnight Nobody.

Im the ideal audience for Wild Things. I love Clearys novels about Ramona and Beezus, Henry and Ribsy, and believe that her memoirs, A Girl from Yamhill and My Own Two Feet, are neglected Northwest classics. Like Handy, Ive teared up when reading Winnie the Pooh to my kids and, like him, I didnt get Where the Wild Things Are when I read it as a child. Ill even go him one better and say that Charlottes Web is the Great American Novel, Huck Finn or no Huck Finn. Gatsby? Great, but not as great as Charlottes Web.

Handy gives his favorite childrens books a close reading and uncovers one shiny nugget after another about the men and women who wrote them. His book doesnt hang together, but to hear him tell it, Treasure Island and its unfollowable plot dont either. Neither does The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. There he goes again.

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Author says some 'Wild Things' about children's literature - Seattle Times