Full disclosure: The love of words brought my late mom and Liz Kennedy together. I’m glad Liz stayed in touch with me because she’s someone I admire. After taking her B. A. in English Lit. at Brown, she earned an M. S. at Emporia State University. She’s also been a teacher, a museum educator, a mom and for the last several years the resident expert in children’s literature at the website, about.com. Her column, (http://childrensbooks.about.com/) is a must-read if you want the skinny on current kid-lit. She was kind enough to (virtually) sit down with me and talk about one of our favorite things : books. Me: Liz, you’ve created an amazing career as an expert in children’s literature. What journey brought you to this point? LK: Serendipity and my love of reading and learning were factors. I love to read, libraries and bookstores are my favorite places, and I have a background in education. However, what particularly helped at the beginning is that I also knew html, which when I got started 15 years ago, was very important to writing for the Web. My husband taught me. Me: What were your favorite books as a child? Do you still re-read any…
There’s a theory that people come into our lives to teach us what we need to know. They may be people we like or dislike and we may not always care for their lessons but the knowledge we gain from them helps move us through our lives. I like that theory but I think it needs to be expanded to include books. Along with entertainment and education, the right book at the right time can change a person’s future. I’m still giving thanks for a book that came my way about twenty-five years ago. I’ll always be indebted to Pat Conroy for writing The Prince of Tides. If anyone missed the announcements, Mr. Conroy writes stories about the perennial outsider. Whether the focus is on a Marine’s family readjusting to a new environment or the English Major in a military college, his people don’t think they fit in the orderly pattern that makes up their world. Because they don’t fit, Outsiders tend to stay on the defensive. The first lesson in The Prince of Tides is how defending yourself can cost you everything you care for in life. Tom Wingo, the coach in The Prince of Tides has had good…
I learned to read because of envy. Some little girl in my pre-kindergarten class walked in one day, waving a Little Golden book like it was a fan. During show-and-tell she read aloud to the class. The teachers all went nuts. How smart she was, how sweet she was and wasn’t she wonderful to entertain the other children? Phooey. A show-off in a pinafore is what she was and I wasn’t interested in being her audience. I buckled down to understanding the Little Bear books Mom had been reading aloud and soon there were two readers in my Pre-Kindergarten. With a little help from Dr. Seuss, I left Blondie behind in the dust. Since then, I’ve read most things with ease. The thing is, even a talent for reading won’t make every book easy and some worthwhile works require effort. I found that out in high school when we were assigned Chekhov’s “The Cherry Orchard” and all those Russian characters were confusing me. That is also where I learned the single greatest reading trick. When you sit down to read a challenging work, have something close you can write on. Let me go back to “The Cherry Orchard” This play may be instantly comprehensible…
Everyone, from my college advisor on down, will tell you I love tales with orphan heroes. You name them: Oliver Twist, Harry Potter, Tensy Farlow, the Baudelaire children, I fell in love with each and every one of those books. (Well, I hated the ending of the Baudelaire series, but that’s another story.) The thing is, there are orphans and then there are orphans and they aren’t really alike. To explain what I mean, look at one of the most famous kid books to come out of the 19th century: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. You can’t get past the first page without learning Tom’s parental status. Aunt Polly’s first soliloquy says, “he’s my own sister’s boy, poor thing, and I ain’t got the heart to lash him.” So, Tom is an orphan but he doesn’t really fit the mold. Orphan heroes are usually vulnerable kids who miss the love and security of a stable home. They tend to grow up fast because they have to and any tendency toward mischief has been knocked right out of them. Can you think of anyone less like that than Tom Sawyer? Tom and his siblings may be orphans but they’ve never lacked…
Because Harper Lee’s “other” book, To Kill A Mockingbird has been read and loved by so many people over the last half century, the release of her Go Set A Watchman has received the hype and fever of a Harry Potter book release. In a way, that’s appropriate. One of the themes in J. K. Rowling’s series is how a person’s perception of people and events changes as they receive more information. Go Set a Watchman challenges everyone who thinks they know everything about To Kill a Mockingbird. If you don’t like surprises, shut this page down now. There are Spoilers Dead Ahead. Watchman is the story of young adult reevaluating her past. Jean Louise is Southern by birth but a New Yorker now by choice. Like others who start adult life in a new location, she finds visiting home a bit difficult. Still, she looks forward to spending time with Atticus, the father she’s worshiped all of her life. Then Jean Louise hears the political opinions of her adored father and falls into shock. Atticus sees southern black people as a group without the sophistication and education necessary to handle the privileges of citizenship responsibly. He fears their full…