“This Book is all about you. We wrote it because we thought you’d like to know exactly
where you came from, and how it all happened.”
A good old fashioned birds and bees book. I picked this up because it looked familiar
to me, as I witnessed the animated version (here) of the book on vhs at the ripe age
of 8. My sister and I would giggle during the bath tub scene and share crooked
glances at one another during some of the more preposterous parts. Some of the
key elements in the book were changed around a bit for the animated version,
which Howie Mandel narrated.
Edward St. John Gorey (February 22, 1925 – April 15, 2000) was an American writer and artist noted for his illustrated books. Today would have been his 88th birthday so I thought I would share a post from a while back featuring his Gashlycrumb Tinies. (my most fave of all that is Gorey)
Enjoy!
I have fond memories of this book but for some reason I was reluctant to make a post about it. Maybe because it is so, um, well, it’s so, Gorey. (Pun definitely intended) It’s one of those guilty pleasure books. You know the kind, the sort of book that you don’t really like to admit liking unless you find someone who admits they like it first. For me Edward Gorey books fall under that category simply because they are a bit macabre and also because I have come to realize you either get his work or you don’t. It’s hard to explain his books, this one in particular, to a person who has never picked one up but if you had to the explanation would go something like this:
“In The Gashlycrumb Tinies, Gorey tells the tale of 26 children (each representing a letter of the alphabet) ………….. and their very untimely, sometimes ghastly, surprisingly awful deaths ….. oh, and did I mention the book is told in rhyming couplets?”
The response to this explanation may be a look of bewilderment or amazement. Granted The Gashlycrumb Tinies is not a conventional alphabet book but it delivers a hilarious journey into the macabre while at least delivering some educational significance. One can see the paradox of Gorey’s work as being intriguing yet morose, hence the category “guilty pleasure”. Should you like seeing illustrations of children in peril? Probably not, but Gorey brings a whimsy to it that makes it palatable. Maybe it’s the Edwardian feel of the text and the dark crosshatch renderings of the hapless brood, whatever it is, I am a fan, and if you’re not faint of heart, perhaps you will be too.
Almost every child can provide an account of a nightmare, But Mercer Mayer's familiar books do more than just offer visual and written representations of such accounts. These stories ask children to question their relationships to the unexplainable. Issues of reality, ownership and control may be hard to explain to children but Mayer's stories ask us what kinds of things in the world are real, whether objects in our minds, such as nightmares or a menacing imagination, are real all within a child friendly format. There's Something There! is a collection of three bedtime classics by Mercer Mayer including:, There's a Nightmare in My Closet (1968) There's an Alligator Under My Bed (1987) and There's Something in the Attic (1988).
As a child I was afraid of the dark and still to this day I am a little creeped out by things I have trouble explaining and perhaps by reading these books to The BOOG will she will learn how to take control of her mind's eye when it begins to work against her..... Although I have to say, she is pretty fearless already!
The Gashlycrumb Tinies: or, After the Outing 
There's Something There! is a collection of three bedtime classics by Mercer Mayer including:, 