Endlessly ever after (books)

Can we read? No. 148

Only a reminder for you this morning:

If you’re reading to the children in your lives, bringing them to the library, buying them books if you’re able — even if every one of those is happening imperfectly, or not how you’d like — you’re giving them a priceless and lasting gift. Your effort matters. And this is your permission slip to let it be enough.

Now, some books.

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Leola and the Honeybears by Melodye Benson Rosales (1999)

This review was first published in issue No. 45 — I’ve edited and updated it here

“Leola and her grandmother lived in a small, cozy cottage not far from the Pine Hollow Woods. When Leola got her way, she could be as sweet as brown sugar. But when she didn’t, she could be as stubborn as Grandmama’s old mule.” One day, when Grandmama tells Leola not to stray too far from home, Leola’s stubbornness gets the better of her and she ends up lost in the woods, and a scary confrontation sends her straight to the house of the three absent Honeybears.

This is where the story becomes familiar — at least to anyone who has ever read the classic story, “The Three Bears” — but Benson Rosales’ version here offers a twist on tradition that I like very much. Instead of Leola jumping out the window, never to be seen again, Mama Honeybear sees that Leola is “only a youngster, no different than her own Lil’ Honey,” and after a bit of conversation about proper manners, all is forgiven. She has repaired her mistakes, made amends, and as a result, changed.

This is a richly told tale and if the slightly revised delivery isn’t excellent enough, Benson Rosales’ deeply saturated, evocative oil paintings carry it to an unequalled level. If a more tender or endearing version of Goldilocks and the Three Bears exists, I don’t believe it — this is as good as it gets and it is very, very good.

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Endlessly Ever After: Pick Your Path to Countless Fairy Tale Endings! by Laurel Synder, illustrated by Dan Santat (2022)

More than once over the years here, my fellow Millennials and I have discussed in the comments the iconic and wildly popular Choose Your Own Adventure books published from 1979-1998. The premise is a type of interaction in which, every few pages, the reader makes a choice about how to proceed next, and each choice leads to more pages and more options. They never interested me — Wikipedia describes them as “a series of gamebooks,” and that’s as accurate a description I’ve found — but I know they hold a special place in hearts the world over.

The duo that created Endlessly Ever After took that bonkers idea and improved upon it in picture book form. Synder’s imaginative and interactive stories, coupled with Santat’s wild watercolor and Photoshop illustrations, put readers in almost total control of a handful of classic fairy tales. Told in fast-paced, humorous rhyming couplets, the unexpected twists and countless possible endings make this a super entertaining read (that, fair warning, you can spend a significant amount of time enjoying).

This book won’t make sense unless the reader is familiar with the tales included, and some of the images, which are dynamic and even dark, might be too scary for younger readers, but for mid-to-late elementary kids up for a literary adventure in which they participate much more actively than normal, each path is packed with excitement and surprise.

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Esio Trot by Roald Dahl (1990)

The thing I love best about Esio Trot isn’t its Roald Dahl-ness, per se, but rather what it reveals about the breadth of his talent as a storyteller.

Instead of his normal wicked, even nasty — though admittedly hilarious — narrative, this is the charming, heartwarming tale of shy, kind Mr. Hoppy, who harbors a secret crush on his neighbor, Mrs. Silver. Mrs. Silver only has eyes for her tortoise, Alfie — and this is where Dahl does what he does best, inventing a ludicrous, highly comical scheme wherein Mr. Hoppy devises a plan to win her affection by secretly swapping Alfie for progressively larger tortoises while convincing Mrs. Silver that his “magic” words are making Alfie grow.

As always, Blake’s iconic, fluid line drawings convey and add an enormous amount: namely, the unexpected tenderness braided into the mischief and deep playfulness of this story. I can’t say this is my favorite Dahl, but it’s one of my favorites to read aloud — and I recommend it for preschool to mid-elementary kiddos — for its surprising sweetness.

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Go In and Out the Window: An Illustrated Songbook for Young People by Dan Fox (1987)

This review first appeared in issue No. 19 — I’ve edited and updated it here

I’ll admit, had you told me years ago that one day I would not only sing regularly to and with my children but enjoy a songbook, I would have laughed in your face, yet I cannot recommend both singing with children, and singing from this book in particular, enough.

Many of the songs included herein are well-known American or British “songs of childhood,” many of them folksongs, but what sets this title apart from other songbooks is the inclusion of images from The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The songs are traditional — there are no pop songs from former eras (nothing from radio, TV, movies, or theater) and certainly nothing contemporary — and the art is similar. But whereas the songs are pretty much exclusively American or British, the art comes from countries as culturally diverse as Japan, Mexico, England, and Egypt, and spans thousands of years.

In addition to singing these songs over and over (it’s old-fashioned, I know, but we often sang them together with my mother and grandmother when they would come for weekend breakfast when my grandma was still alive), we have looked at the images time and time again. If you’re willing to do something that once upon a time was a normal and regular part of family life but has since not only fallen out of fashion but seemingly off the radar completely, if you have little ones, keep your mind open and try this book. You may be surprised — ahem — how much you enjoy it.

A great-grandmother/great-granddaughter sing-along: 📸 by my dear Jen Lucas

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You’re doing an amazing job.

Keep up the good work 💪
Sarah