Caldecott Beginnings

When I first launched this project, I envisioned that I would have already posted 3 or 4 times by now. . . alas, life (and mostly homework) intervened. However, I will not bore you with excuses, rather get right straight to the heart of the matter. My brief reactions to the first few Caldecott books, I’ve read. Beginning with the second Caldecott Medal winner:

Mei Li by Thomas Handforth (Winner 1939)
This story is based on a young girl that the author met while living in the city of Peiping, China. The action takes place leading up to the celebration of Chinese New Year and revolves around Mei Li visiting the New Year Fair in the city. Reflective of its setting in 1930’s China, traditional gender roles are constantly reinforced throughout the simple adventure that Mei Li and her brother have attending the fair. The question—but what can a girl do at the fair reoccurs frequently. The book closes with the Kitchen God greeting Mei Li (part of the New Year’s custom) and answering her question “. . .but where can my kingdom be?” with the following “This house is your kingdom and palace. Within its walls all living things are your loyal, loving subjects.” Disconcerting to say the least to an American woman living in the 21st century, and yet the story does transport you to another place and time. It’s also interesting to note the book jacket reference, “It is a book that has universal appeal at this time because of the ever growing interest in China and her people.” Hmm. . . I wonder how this would compare to similar books today.

Children's Lit Challenge

The other day I was looking over a list of quotes by my English 315 professor Dr. David Sprunger, which included the line “If you work with children or have children or remember children. . .” At this point in time I have no idea what subject matter he was referring to, but still the quote makes me smile. You see I work in a small academic library where our collection is fairly evenly divided between professional materials relating to library and information science and juvenile literature with a special emphasis on multicultural, international, and award-winning books.

Many students will walk in and--- struck by the school media center in the 1970’s décor-- assume the books here are not for them. Granted, I am under no illusion that library science texts are applicable to all, but I do believe in the universal value of children’s literature. Regardless of whether people have their own children, teach or work with children, or have some other kind of obvious connection; the fact remains that we were all children at some point and at the end of the day good literature is good literature. After all as my favorite author C.S. Lewis stated, “A children's story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children's story in the slightest.”

So, it is from that vantage point that I begin my first “librarian-in-training” reading challenge. One of the most frequent questions people have for librarians is “can you recommend a good book?” Big question and the answer depends on a lot of variables—taste, information needs, and so on. Although there are many resources where it is easy to find titles based on genre, similar plots, writing style and so on; nothing really replaces the need for a librarian to be well-read. I have a big stack of reading lists begging for my attention, but I’m going to begin at the beginning as it were.

By January of 2010, I am determined to read all of the Newbery and Caldecott award winning books since the annual honors were bestowed in 1922 and 1938 respectively. One hundred and sixty books, but since a little less than half of these are picture books I believe it is a doable goal. As I plow through the titles I will share my observations with you here. First of all to keep me honest and on-track and second of all if you have children, or work with children, or remember being a child you might find some titles worth checking out.
Let me know what you think.