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\lline{\hl It's Story Time}
\lline{by Mark Freeman}

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A lot of us found our first friends in books, back when we were
eight or so. And stories are still a safe place to go, solo. The
subject this time is kids books, my own subjective list, or at
least ones I remembered being good back when I read them. Why not
write in with your own faves? Or comment on these: they suck,
they suck nice, whatever.

I'll skip the modern classics -- Maurice Sendak and S.E. Hinton's
stuff, Madeleine L'Engle's middle class {\bf Wrinkle In Time}
fantasies and Judy Blume's ``problem'' novels, C.S. Lewis' series
of Narnia adventures and good old J.R.R. Tolkien's trilogy.

Let's start with subversive picturebooks. These illustrated and
easy to read books are written by authors who understand that
kids, like everyone else, prefer to break all rules. {\bf Do Not
Open} is by Brinton Turkle: its an old story about a bottle found
on the beach, but this version provides fun, gory, explicit
pictures of the monster that gets let out -- and it has an old
woman hero. 

Harve and Margot Zemach's {\bf The Judge} features a disgustingly
superior authority figure who won't listen to anyone's warnings
about a monster and puts them all in jail for lying. Guess who
gets his in the end? This is what's called a happy ending.

Thacher Hurd wrote and illustrated {\bf Mama Don't Allow}, about
a possum kid whose saxaphone playing gets him kicked out of the
house, and right into the arms of some high steppin' alligators
in the swamp. {\bf Sylvester and the Magic Pebble} is the best
example of William Steig's psycho fiction for grade schoolers,
but all his books are good. This one is about a donkey who finds
a magic wishing rock. Unfortunately, he gets scared and wishes he
were a rock. Then there is {\bf DUCKS!} by Daniel Pinkwater (more
from him later) which qualifies as the weirdest children's book
I've ever seen. A duck bought in a candy store says it is really
an angel and asserts that ``mothers and fathers usually lie.'' 
The narrator's blue collar dad and rock n roller mom are real
classics. 

On the sweeter side is {\bf Rabbit Express} by Michel Gay (that's
for sure). This bunny, with the prettiest butt in children's
literature, is all alone on his birthday until he gets skates and
finds his way into the big city and meets an equally cute cat. 
What lovely music they make together. Farther along, Mary Jordan
has written the first picture book to help kids deal with a loved
one dying of AIDS: {\bf Losing Uncle Tim}. It's a bit treacly,
and the pic tures are too pastel for kids, but it deals with
portraying an obviously gay uncle and with kids' questions like:
can I catch it from him? how can he eat breakfast when he's in
his coffin?

Switching to books written for older kids, but staying on the
topic of life and death, there's Natalie Babbitt's {\bf Tuck
Ever*lasting}. An overprotected girlchild runs away from home and
finds a fountain in the woods whose waters provide eternal life. 
She learns about the danger of that condition from an Okie
family, who have all drunk of it. {\bf Far In the Day}, by Julia
Cunningham, is a running away to the circus story, about a mute
beggar boy and the circus lad with leukemia who becomes his
friend. Fun. 

M.E. Kerr's {\bf Night Kites} was one of the first teen books to
deal with AIDS, and I recall some good coming out stuff in it. A
few others with gay content include {\bf The Man Without a Face} 
by Isabelle Holland and {\bf Sticks and Stones} by Lynn Hall, two
of those ``troubled teen'' boy stories, and {\bf Happy Endings
Are All Alike}, Sandra Scoppettone's girl on girl book. But none
of these has the unashamed, totally accepting approach of newer
adult gay fiction like, say, Pat Califia's {\bf Doc and Fluff}. 
So if you'd like to see explicit, joyful gay juvenile fiction,
please write it.

In the meanwhile, we'll have to settle for the old fashioned way
of dealing with our dreams, desires, and ideal self images:
fantasies. Here are ten favorite books that provide escape
reading for all ages. {\bf The Amazing Voyage of Jackie Grace} 
(Matt Faulkner) has a mother yelling, ``Get into the bath!'' at
this kid who likes to read pirate books. This Raw sized
picturebook soon shows double page spreads of his adventures at
sea in his bath tub. British writer Lynne Reid Banks' {\bf The
Indian In the Cupboard} and its sequel are about a kid who has to
deal with nasty skin heads. He does have a secret, though: a toy
sized Indian that comes to life. (Librarians consider this book
sexist even though it portrays the Indian as a full person, not a
stereotype. But nine year olds, who know better than librarians,
still love it.)

I'll call ``family fantasies'' the stories about who we wish we
had in our family. {\bf The Mouse and His Child} by Russell Hoban
is a modern Pinocchio fable about wind up toys trying to get real
(and it became a Japanese animated film in 1976). Ray Bradbury's
{\bf Something Wicked This Way Comes} is a classic in which two
young buddies save one of their fathers from the evil Cooger \&
Dark's Pandemonium Shadow Show and carnival. (It became a 1983
movie.) Along more realistic lines are {\bf The Planet of Junior
Brown}, Virginia Hamilton's story of a group of homeless black
kids in New York City who are taken care of by a teen, and
Laurence Yep's {\bf Child of the Owl}, about a foul mouthed girl
in San Francisco's Chinatown and her gambler father. {\bf Dear
Mr. Henshaw}, by Beverly Cleary, is about a boy who writes
letters to his favorite author, and comes to grips with the not
unusual case of an absent dad.  

Then there's fiction that requires imagining yourself as either
the boy or the girl in a fantasy novel. Lloyd Alexander's Prydain
series ({\bf The Book of Three} is the first) has a young hero
who starts as a lowly pig keeper, and a young heroine braver than
he is. Youthful sword and sorcery is also found in {\bf The
Beginning} {\bf Place}, Ursula K. LeGuin's great teen novel that
even has a mild (hetero) sex scene. Margaret Mahy is a New
Zealand writer writer whose romantic {\bf The Changeover} 
involves a teenage girl who goes through some changes with a
warlock in her highschool class.

Last, but far from least, is every book from the wicked pen of
Daniel Manus Pinkwater, the Kurt Vonnegut of the wide lined
notebook paper set, and the fat child's own William Gibson. His
cult classics include {\bf I Was a Second Grade Werewolf} and
{\bf The Big Orange Splot} for antisocial younger readers, {\bf
Lizard Music} or {\bf Alan Mendelsohn, The Boy From Mars} for
more mature fans. But his magnum opus has to be {\bf The Snarkout
Boys and the Avocado of Death}, about sneaking out of suburbia to
meet a punk girl named Rat for all night movie watching in an
inner city filled with weirdos. 

And if that doesn't sound like fun to you, then just forget it -- 
you're probably too old to get the whole thing, anyway.

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