louise on the left (coast)

I just read a salacious piece from an interesting blog called This Recording , entitled  ANGRY MAN,  by Alex Carnevale , about the so-called "real life" of Roald Dahl. It was interesting, but was it really all true? Carnevale's post basically states that uber successful children's author, Roald Dahl, the creator of classics such as  Charlie and the Chocolate Factory  and James and The Giant Peach , was no more than a racist, bigoted, womanizing, pedophilic, raging, not to mention extremely cruel son-of-a-bitch. The piece has another title as well:    In Which We Consider The Macabre Unpleasantness Of Roald Dahl Naturally, I found this piece impossible to put down.  But as everyone knows, good non-fiction cannot live by salacious grandeur alone.  Facts are good, too.  As in this case, I suspect there's so much more to The Long and Winding Tale of Roald Dahl than has yet been told.  Somebody very clever should tell it.  Complicated people are usually ver

A loyal "WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE" fan. So after many long months of waiting to see this movie, I finally got a chance to go see a matinee of "Where the Wild Things Are" this week with my daughter and her Brownie Troop. (But, for the record:  I've been eagerly awaiting seeing this movie for months: Click here for my former post .) This week she and her fellow third grader girl buddies all got a full tour of the cinema. They went up to the projection room, each received their own box of popcorn and drink, and to top it all off, each got a "Wild Things" paper crown to wear! Not too shabby, for your average Brownie field trip! I was really excited because I knew this would be a great opportunity to get a broader perspective on how others liked the film. Note* Unfortunately, I don't have a photo here of the girls sitting in a row in their Brownie vests and paper crowns, but you'll just have to take my word that it was pretty adorabl

My favorite children's author is, hands down, Maurice Sendak. However, my favorite of his books is not the hugely famous   Where The Wild Things Are , (yes, the same book that  that Spike Jonze based his hit film on ), although that's a good one.  Instead, my  personal favorite Sendak book is the much lesser known book from 1967 called: " Higglety Pigglety Pop! Or There Must Be More to Life " Introducing "Jennie"  I remember my mother bringing this book home from one of her library conventions.  She's always been something of a genius about spotting great children's literature early on, and always brought gifts from these trips which I still treasure today.  Posters and odd first edition books by eccentric artists, like Edward Gorey (who apparently shared her love of 1920s raccoon coats) and the sweet husband-and-wife team of the D'Aulaires.  She always came home with great gifts, and even better stories to tell.   In any case, ever since th

To be honest, I've blogged about this before , but it's worthy of blogging about again . The book Where The Wild Things Are is a must have for any one's personal book collection, period. If you know someone who just had a baby, then be the first person to add this treasured book to that child's library. It's a classic's classic. It put the book's author, Maurice Sendak, right up front and center regarding children's literature and raised the bar so much higher for every other illustrator and author for the rest of all time. Embedded here in this blog post are two different video versions of this groundbreaking illustrated classic. The first one is a video of "Where The Wild Things Are" which you probably had to watch on rainy days at school in the "Media Center." (If you are my age, they called that place a "library" and it's where they kept all those clunky things we call books, today.) The first video wa

Ever since I can remember I have considered Maurice Sendak's book, Where The Wild Things Are , to be utter perfection. His illustrations so brilliantly capture the freaky way adults can crowd and overwhelm a child on their own personal journeys. One minute appearing to be a loving tribe, then an angry mob, the next. All depending on one's perspective, of course as well as the adults expectations of the hero of the story, Max. Anyhow -- Since I clearly hold Sendak's original classic to be one of the few bibles of great children's literature, I was reluctant to accept that one could improve it by reinventing it into an art that that doesn't, actually, involve reading. However, perhaps I'll be a convert if the entire film is as good as this trailer.