Once Upon a Time

There is a goal I've wanted to accomplish for quite some time now and I went ahead and started working on it last November. Although I'm not a children's librarian, I think it's important to be familiar with core children's literature. I went through my children's area and, author by author, went through and made a list of the 24 books I wanted to read in a year's time. I only made it up to M before my list was full to bursting.

I began with Paddington Bear. That was one of the dumbest books I've read. Although it was cute that he was from "Darkest Peru," his shenanigans were nothing short of idiotic - only stupid people wouldn't see that he was going to get into trouble and stop him. But I read it.

Then I read Lloyd Alexander's The Book of Three. Just so you know, The Book they are talking about in the story isn't even the main topic of the story. It's just a cool title. Apparently it is based on Welsh legends. An assistant pig-keeper is the hero of the story and I never learned to care for him. After Tolkien or Harry Potter, the assistant pig-keeper wasn't the least bit interesting.

After two bummer reads, I let myself read Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It was fun, but i liked the movie better.

Then I read AA Milne's The Complete Winnie the Pooh. It was fantastic! The wordplay was clever! Pooh was oh so cute! I have no idea how to describe the difference between this silly bear and Paddington. They both got into messes, but Paddington seemed unbelievable. Pooh lived in a world of a little boy's imagination and he was trying to be a good bear. Loved him!

And I finished Alice's Adventures in Wonderland last week. Ooh... so interesting! And clever! And strange. I was glad to see that Disney had used much of the original dialogue from the text. That meant I was semi-familiar with it... :)

Today I came home from work because I just wasn't feeling well. I laid in bed and picked up a book that I'd had sitting there for weeks: The Indian in the Cupboard (I tried to get one book whose author was from each letter of the alphabet - this was for B). It was written in 1980 and must have been before all the political correctness about native cultures became popular. There were so many stereotypes that it hurt. Still, I felt good that I've actually read it!

Other books that I've picked up and finished since November are The Alchemyst Nicholas Flamel (almost interesting, but too slick for my taste), and the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series (liked them, but got weary of Greg's self-centeredness during the fourth book).

Now I need to find something else to read... yum yum yum yum yum... books!