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Most of Ezra’s favorite books are plot-free. Lots of rhymes, pictures of animals, and endless repetition of phrases. But scattered in the rotation are a few books that he’s picked out from the shelf of picture books, and he loves flipping through them and hearing parts of the story. It just so happens that he has chosen three really confusing books.
1. Corduroy, 1968
The main part of this classic kid’s book makes sense: a teddy bear named Corduroy wants to be taken home by a little girl. Her mom says no because he is missing a button and looks raggedy. The girl counts up the money in her piggy bank and comes back for him the next day. She takes him home, sews on a new button, and they live happily ever after.
But, for 14 pages in the middle of the 32 page book, Corduroy goes on a Mannequin-esque late-night quest for a replacement button that leads to him pulling a button off a mattress which causes a loud noise and raises the suspicions of a security guard.
But then nothing happens. The guard finds the once again inanimate bear lying around in the mattress department, and just carries him back to the toy department. Total anti-climax, and a waste of half the book.
2. A Little Old Man, 1959
In this tattered old book, which Ezra inherited from my childhood, a little old man lives by himself on a tiny island. He is lonely, and wishes he had a cat. Here’s how his cat arrives: a huge storm literally carries his house out to sea. The same storm beaches a houseboat on his island, fully furnished, with a stocked pantry, a woodburning stove, and a cat with several kittens. He worries that the houseboat’s owners will come looking for it, but they never do, and he lives happily ever after with his new cats.
But was there really no other way to get this poor, lonely man a cat? No solution short of swapping his whole house with a whole other house? A house he must constantly worry will be repossessed by its rightful owners?
On the other hand, I really want his adorable blue shawl-collared cardigan.
3. Love You Forever, 1986
Oh, obsessive family love. A mom rocks her baby to sleep with a little ditty, “I’ll love you forever, I’ll like you for always, as long as I’m living, my baby you’ll be.” She takes the “my baby you’ll be” part super-literally. As the baby ages into a toddler, then a kid, then a teen, she continues to sneak into his room at night, pick him up, and sing him the song while he sleeps.
Then, when he is an adult, she sometimes drives across town with a ladder tied to the roof of her car in order to break into his home, pick him up, and sing him the song.
Later, when she is very old, her son has to pick her up and sing her the song. As she lays upon her deathbed, he gets all cat’s-in-the-cradle and weepy and goes to his own daughter’s bedroom to sing her the song.
Which is fine. Except that while there was something just vaguely creepy about a mom breaking into her grown son’s house in order to sit on his bed and sing him a song, the prospect of a dad doing that to his grown daughter is somehow more alarming.
Say something
Matt Haughey
— Dec 8 / 15:04One cool thing about Corduroy: a friend said it was his favorite childhood book because it was the only thing on his bookshelf with people in it that looked like him and his sister (he was adopted into a white family at an early age and child books of the 60s-70s are filled with white people only).
I agree on the “Love you Forever” review. Someone gave it to us as one of their childhood favorites and Kay and I both found the whole thing ultra creepy.
Margaret Maloney
— Dec 8 / 16:20Love You Forever wasn’t exactly a favorite of mine in childhood, but I did like it—it was really comforting as a kid to think my mom would always want to hug me and sing to me like she did when I was small. I think it’s a book that understands the kid side of things, and it only seems weird when you’ve outgrown wanting to crawl into your mom’s lap and have her sing you to sleep.
Sarah
— Dec 9 / 09:29Ugh! I nave NEVER liked Love You Forever. While I can see your point, MM, about the desire to crawl into a loving lap, that does not outweigh the creepy stalker aspect for me… I much prefer the Runaway Bunny message of ‘no matter what you become, you’ll always be my child.’ Perhaps the bunnies just make the “you’ll never escape your mother” thing more palatable to me…?
Margaret Maloney
— Dec 9 / 16:49Perhaps.
Then again, my favorite book when I was little was The Butter Battle Book which is, essentially, a cautionary tale about nuclear war, so my tastes from that time might be a little weird.
Nana Adrienne
— Dec 9 / 18:12Stalker Mom here casts her vote for worst-case masochistic s/mothering to “The Giving Tree.”
sarah weisz
— Dec 10 / 13:14I appreciate the distinction Margaret is making. There is definitely a difference in how you read something as a kid vs. as an adult. I never saw Love You Forever until I was already a mother, and — like the Giving Tree, which I’m totally with my mom about — it feels like a pretty weird, obsessive, and masochistic view of what it means to be a good mother. From a kid’s perspective, I could see it reading totally differently.
In any case, the best thing about Love You forever is definitely the 1980s artwork, including the son as a teenager, eating pizza and singing while wearing a Cliff Huxtable sweater over sweatpants. Also, they have a really deformed cat who changes size rather drastically from page to page.
Sara
— Dec 21 / 11:11You’re totally right about Corduroy, the plot makes no sense. And yet, that late-night jaunt through the department store is the only part of that book I remember. I didn’t even remember that some girl wanted to buy him. I just remember being captivated by the idea of a toy coming to life, and walking around the darkened, closed-down department store.