Sunday, July 8, 2012

One of My Favorite Books (or Two)


Then there was no end to the rage and disappointment of Tom Thumb and Hunca Munca. 

Well, and so would you be full of rage and disappointment if the nice, juicy ham that you were about to feast on turned out to be nothing but plaster. Here they are trying to burn the fake fish in the "red-hot crinkly paper fire" but unfortunately that won't work either. I'm sure we've all had days like this.

Tom Thumb and Hunca Munca are the eponymous anti-heroes in The Tale of Two Bad Mice  by Beatrix Potter. My daughter reminded me of the book today when she told me that her and her husband's favorite line in the book is the one quoted above. Maybe it was the way they felt recently when they had to spend their vacation money on getting their gas line fixed. Well, at least they don't have to depend on a red-hot crinkly paper fire to cook their dinner.

I don't remember my parents reading me any books, although I know that my mother read to me when I was too small to remember. All my favorite children's books were ones that I found at the library or even later when I had children of my own. So, I love it when my children are excited about reading the books I read to them to their children.

This is a book that Captain Kangaroo read to me. To tell you the truth, I don't know why I love this book so much, but I do love it. I loved it when the Captain read it to me, and I loved reading it to my children, and I loved it when Lavar Burton read it on Reading Rainbow. Maybe it just suits my sense of justice when the peddler tricks the monkeys into throwing down their hats. Maybe, being a person who is desperately challenged by gravity, I really admire a man that can balance all those caps on the top of his head: first his own checked cap, then the gray caps, then the blue caps, and then the red caps. I can't even keep one cap on my head. Or maybe I just like the idea of getting a cap for 50 cents. All those caps for $6.50!


My friend Toby posted a link to this picture of Mary Flannery O'Connor on Facebook today.



I wish I knew what that book was. I have flipped the picture on its side and and enlarged it a lot, but its still pretty blurred. I think I'll recognize it, though, if I ever come across it. She's probably thinking, "It's interesting that all the folks that are buying it don't know they are reading a children's book."

AMDG


11 comments:

  1. You didn't mention Good NIght Moon! That's one of my faves to read to very young children.

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  2. Well, I'd never heard of Caps for Sale, but the local library is now going to find it for me.

    I didn't think I remembered the books my parents read me either, but then when I started reading to our kids I did remember some of them. My mom says she read to me by the hour, and I believe her. The Poky Little Puppy was a favourite (and still is).

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  3. Craig, There's a YouTube video of Caps for Sale here if you want to see what the story is like.

    LL, I like Good Night, Moon, too, but if I got started naming all my favorite children's books, I wouldn't know where to stop.

    AMDG

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  4. And Craig, watch out for loud trumpets at the beginning of the video that don't have anything to do with the book.

    AMDG

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  5. I dearly love Good Night Moon. Probably my favorite of the very simple children's books. I'm a child when I read it. I can't remember whether it was read to me when I was little, but I suspect it may have been, at an age too young to remember now. I do remember having a vaguely familiar and nostalgic sort of feeling when I discovered it as an adult. And I dearly love the Two Bad Mice. Also the Fierce Bad Rabbit. Most of Potter, in fact. My personal favorite might be Jemima Puddleduck.

    Great children's verse book: A Great Big Ugly Man Came Up And Tied His Horse to Me.

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  6. I don't remember ever seeing Good Night, Moon until I bought it for my youngest, so I was almost 40. We did read it many, many times and have a lot of fun discovering all the things that were happening.

    Those BP books are wonderful. I love it that she insisted that they be the size that they are. I like Jemima and Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle, and I think that the story about the Roly-Poly Pudding rivals X-Files for sheer horror. I also like it that she "knew" the characters.

    AMDG

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  7. Lets not forget "Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel" and "Mrs. Pickerell goes to Mars."

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  8. Two Bad Mice is a big favourite in our family as well, second only to Peter Rabbit himself. "Hunca Munca had a frugal mind."

    We're collecting the little books at garage sales and second hand bookstores, so there are some we are missing. Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle is unknown to us, as is Roly-Poly Pudding. All in time.

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  9. Roly-Poly Pudding is The Tale of Samuel Whiskers or the Roly-Poly Pudding or something like that. That's how I got most of my BP books. Some of them seem to have moved out of the house. Hmmmm.

    AMDG

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  10. Darn. There was a third book I was going to write about and I couldn't remember what it was, but what it was was Mike Mulligan.

    AMDG

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  11. The Tale of Samuel Whiskers is far and away the most gothic of the lot.

    The comedy of manners in The Tale of the Pie and the Patty-Pan is unmatched.

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