I was browsing the library shelves looking for titles to consider for our proposed parent-child book club (inspired by Deconstructing Penguins). I checked these out not because I’d consider them for that (in fact we’ve chosen Christopher Paul Curtis’ wonderful Bud, Not Buddy for the first meeting), but just because I was curious about them (familiar author/unfamiliar work, or, in the case of the dragon book, a genre I like).
Michievous Meg – Astrid Lindgren, 1962.
I was a big Pippi Longstocking fan as a kid, although I don’t think Lindgren is a great writer (unlike Tove Jansson). This is a cute collection of stories about Meg getting herself into hot water, sometimes dragging her little sister Betsy along. Meg floats Betsy off in a boiler to be Moses in the rushes, uses an umbrella to parachute off the roof, skates too far and gets them lost, and stars in a shameless rip-off of the story “Charles” by Shirley Jackson (the classic tale wherein a child tells hair-raising stories of the awful boy who causes so much trouble at school, ending with the parent meeting the teacher and discovering that the awful child does not exist and their own offspring is the trouble-maker).
McBroom’s Almanac: Containing Truthful Accounts of Amazing Happenings on McBroom’s Wonderful One-Acre Farm, to which are added Astounding World Records, Infallible Weather Signs & Predictions, Useful Advice (Fully Guaranteed), Miraculous Inventions & Sundry Jollifications – Sid Fleischman, 1984.
I’m a big fan of the McBroom family (“Willjillhesterchesterpeterpollytimtommarylarryandlittleclarinda!”) and their forty-acre farm, which is only one acre in extent, but forty acres deep–hence the incredibly fertile soil that grows giant vegetables in minutes. This isn’t really a McBroom book, even though it has a few stories about the McBrooms versus their rival, Heck Jones; rather it’s a hodge-podge of one-liners, tall tales, silly proverbs, etc.–viz. the subtitle. Some samples:
Rowdy storms, cold and gruff;
A week of Feb. is quite enough.
FARM TIP
It’s poor advice to plant potatoes in the dark of the moon. Better to plant
them in the garden.PRAIRIE WILDLIFE
The Shlunk
This is a shy little animal with big feet and pink whiskers. Shlunks come out of their burrows only one day a year, on April 31. They are impossible to track because they walk single file and eat each other’s footprints. The last one walks backwards.
Unfortunately it’s illustrated by Walter Lorraine, one of the few children’s book artists I really dislike.