If you think I'm a terrible writer, it's probably because I don't read much. I mean, I do, but not really. I'll balk at most any fiction novel that doesn't incorporate dinosaurs or laser fights, and even then, it's going to take a sleepless eight hour plane trip to get it done. I'm tempted to say it's an attention span thing, all but proven by the fact that I consider the snippet fiestas that are Uncle John's Bathroom Readers worthy of the under-the-pipe position on the table in my million dollar study.

The fact that I still like to read children's books probably doesn't help much either, and I remind you that I'm getting into my late twenties now -- saying "I still like to read children's books" isn't going to make me seem cute. It's just the truth. And I'm not talking about Harry Potter, either. I'm talking about twenty page, hundred word picture galleries straight from the Troll Book Club. I'm really trying to come up with some clever psychocultural reason for it, but the progress on that front is being stifled by the fact that I'm not really sure what "psychocultural" means and only continue peppering articles with it because it's just such a cool sounding word. These are certainly the kind of complexes and limitations that must be expected when one refuses anything over sixty pages unless it lets them choose their own adventure.

I don't actively pursue new children's books. You won't find me fighting for floor space against Grade 2 Tommy at the Lil' Learners section at Waldenbooks. Despite this, I've somehow amassed a collection of kid books that fuels my confidence that I will someday own a library that throws out the quiet rules and knows how to party.

Actually, most of the collection came from yard sales and thrift stores. Especially in recent years, the people behind the yard sales and the people behind the thrift stores have become eBay savvy. Or so they think. Marking up this and marking up that because God knows they could get such-and-such for it on eBay, rarely do these folks bother to inflate the prices on their used books. Those? Those are still a quarter. You'll have to pay fifteen bucks for an Atari 2600 controller because it's a god damned pop culture RELIC see, but a book? Any book? Twenty-five cents.

Sometimes, I pick up children's books that I owned and read as a child. Reading their words (albeit their very few words) again makes everything stink of Grandma's cookies and Elmer's glue. Others I pick up because a lot of children's books are about dinosaurs and laser fights. Still others find their way into my possession because they had freakin' sweet cover art and I've always had this lingering sense that this one weird wall in our living room would look so down-to-earth glam wallpapered in freakin' sweet book covers. Today we review five different children's books that are all very dear to me, each for a different reason, each for a different season. (There are five seasons. One is being kept secret but I know it exists.) If I had pink legwarmers on, now's about the time I'd hop up and shout "Let's Get Literary!" I admit nothing.


Tiny Dinosaurs, by Steven Lindblom (1988)
I've lost count of the number of dinosaur books in my collection, but a good number of them are children's books. It never really feels that way when I read them, though. It's not like they're making up different information to suit kiddy tastes. Sure, they might sum up the Mesozoic era in five words (It was warm and long.), but they're not going to claim that certain dinosaurs were friends with the Tooth Fairy to make them seem more palatable. I'm a dinosaur junkie. I'm getting less information in a children's dinosaur book than I would from a "normal" encyclopedia, but I'm still getting information. And colorful pictures.

Tiny Dinosaurs is a Little Golden Book from 1988 and a very welcome addition to that particular library's exhausting collection of dino-related titles. Most Little Golden Dinosaur Books focus on the big beasts. I can't begin to count the number of times a Little Golden Book threw ol' Three-Horn my way. Frankly, I love T-Rexes, but since children's books aren't going to go into incredible detail about their menacing, biting-their-cousins-faces-off ways, the coverage gets a bit repetitive. I mean, who really buys a T-Rex book for jokes about their pitifully short arms? Don't make fun of the T-Rexes, man. If nothing else, Tiny Dinosaurs is a nice break from the norm. We're not talking about Brontos. We're not going to compare Brachiosaurs to the height of your very own house. No, with this book, we're fighting for the little guys. The dinosaurs all the other dinosaurs ate like candy.


Granted, the "tiny" in Tiny Dinosaurs is all relative; the species featured aren't palm-sized or anything -- they just weren't giants. Complicating matters is the fact that the author obviously would've preferred to write about BIG dinos, because as the pages turn, the focus shifts away from the small monsters and onto all the creatures that might eat them. Same goes for the illustrator, whose idea of what baby dinosaurs might look like is essentially pictures of full-grown brontosaurs standing next to miniaturized foliage. What I've learned from Tiny Dinosaurs is that Tiny Dinosaurs lived "like the mice and chipmunks of today."

I've had this book since its debut year. As we all know, boys are born with a peculiar love for anything relating to dinosaurs. Prior to this book, I'd pegged our prehistory as a very sparsely populated soiree, where handfuls of big dinosaurs roamed about, occasionally eating each other but maybe sometimes going weeks and months without other dinosaurs in sight. This was grossly incorrect of course, but so rarely did my grade school teachers consider our history lessons an avenue to chat it up about dinosaur life. Usually we were just getting the basics on tea parties and revolutions and cherry trees, and dinosaurs had no tea parties. This dumb little book helped flesh out the land where dinosaurs roamed, making Old Earth seem more like Today Earth, with citizens of all shapes and sizes and jawbones congregating and eating each other. This was again grossly incorrect, but it was less grossly incorrect than I'd been before. As the book ends by mentioning that the birds of today are perhaps the direct descendants of dinosaurs, I spot a bluejay by my window and wonder if it's eyeing my sack. I excavate this book, which is to say, I dig it. A+.


The Berenstain Bears And Too Much Junk Food, by Stan & Jan Berenstain (1985)
I've owned many Berenstain Bears books in my life, each using this obscenely nuclear bear family to help children gets past their fears, inhibitions and dickeries. Mama Bear usually serves as the voice of reason, forever trying to improve the sensibilities of her idiot husband and children. I guess Papa Bear could be construed as the series' comic relief, but I only really say that because he splits his pants in Too Much Junk Food. As kids, our focus should be on Brother and Sister Bear. They're "us." We're to live vicariously through their triumphs and tribulations, learning as they learn, seeing as they see. The fact that they're far from literal bears makes it much easier to do this; we never see Sister Bear pawing skunks to death and eating them, so I can relate without question. They live in a tree (which judging from the rooms inside must be roughly the width of whatever city you live in) and they're fuzzy, but that's about it.

And Too Much Junk Food was and remains by far my favorite in the library, detailing all of the horrible things that happen to people who never eat carrots and always eat Choco Yums. While the book delivers its promised message, I must admit that it also makes me really want to eat junk food. It's not that the morals and virtues are hard to see within Stan & Jan's holy text, merely that all of the illustrations of the junk food are so damn appetizing. I don't think I've ever had pink popcorn much less seen pink popcorn, but Papa Bear's ecstatic demeanor can only mean that my new life mission is to find and eat pink popcorn. There's a lot of this in the book. The junk food is often nondescript, letting readers make up in their own minds what it'd taste and smell like, and jeez, when all's said and all's done, you'll spend three times as much time fantasizing about this alien bear candy than reading about how chubby you'll get from eating it.


It goes like this: Brother and Sister Bear are fucking junk food addicts. For every activity they share, a wagon full of junk food is needed. This isn't your normal case of kids-who-don't-eat-right, no way. You're barely a page into the book when they start eating sixteen kinds of junk food simultaneously. Mama Bear is naturally concerned, and even moreso when her kids give her a side view and she notices how disgustingly fat they've become. Seriously, they drew big paunches and everything, it rocks. Hoping that Papa Bear can help, Mama become more distressed to realize that he too is a Son of Sugar, fatter and sweatier than ever before. Her family has become an embarrassment, and for a woman/bear who does everything and I mean everything in a crusty blue nighty and matching showercap, this is saying something.

It takes a trip to the local bear doctor to set the fatties straight, and though it's barely worth the doubletake now, I was so alarmed as a child by all the images of see-thru bears with their guts and organs in plain view. They didn't go full monty with the private parts, but the sights of lunging intestines and fibrous muscle tissue was enough to get my bag of Cheetos closed for the night. Actually, if you look at that above picture of Internal Bear's midsection from just the right angle, it's 100% Mother Brain. After this and a few other life lessons, the family resolves to eat right and exercise, trading in all of the "Yumms" for apple slices and raisins. With a blockbuster ending like that, it's incredible that And Too Much Junk Food isn't slated for the big screen in 2006.


The Noah's Ark Book, by Tibor Gergely (1966)
Like any good Catholic Italian, my education has at least in a small part involved God and the many wacky rituals He requires. This involved "religion class," or "CCD," an acronym I've still never bothered to decode. I went to these classes through much of grade school, but they were held completely separate, at another, more God fearin' school. Classes were held once a week, either after a regular schoolday or, in the worst case, on Saturday mornings. I'm not a religious person, but I have to say that the residual hate I have for God is mostly for making me miss the whole second season of Pee-wee's Playhouse.

Religion was never Master in my house growing up, but as my parents certainly wanted me to make Communion and Confirmation, going to these classes was the only way to do it. Seriously, that was the only reason most of the kids were there. I lived in a religious city but not a bible thumpingly religious city -- parents wanted their kids to take part in the big stuff, but that was about it. When put in such simplistic, means-to-an-end terms like this, a lot of us thought the whole thing was a sham. Even if we didn't, we sure as heck didn't like the idea of "more school." The teachers were a mix of legit Catholic school teachers and pure volunteers, and this really showed in the diversity from one class to the next. I had teachers who took it for what it was, giving us the God basics and not much more. We were fine with that. Other teachers quite literally told us that if we didn't go to church each Sunday, we'd go to Hell. We weren't so fine with that, mainly because nobody went to church each Sunday. Most of us thought churches were only open on Easter Sunday and during wedding ceremonies.

I didn't hate the classes, really, I didn't. I was just as curious about this God character as the next guy. Besides, the two benchmarks -- Communion and Confirmation -- were met with many fine gifts from family and friends. Sure, you'd get a few gold crosses that weren't worth toting to show-n-tell, but for every one of those, there was something like Street Fighter 2 for Super Nintendo. Nothing was going to make me like God quicker than the ability to see Blanka bite people from the comfort of my very own home. I also enjoyed the classic religion tales, told to us with such straight faces that there was no possible way that they couldn't be true. My favorite? Noah's Ark.


I'm sure you can understand my fascination with the Noah's Ark story when you consider that I believed it was a literal, true story. Never mind God picking this random old dude and doing a bit of insider trading -- it was just the thought of a big boat full of animals that did it for me. The Noah's Ark Book was simplistic and didn't offer much more than pages upon pages of animal duos. I didn't learn many new things about Noah and his Big Ark Adventure from the read, but here's something: Who's that Tarzan dude helping Noah round up the cattle in the picture above? WHO is he? Not referenced in the text and definitely not somebody I can recall hearing about during "religion class," I'm left wondering how the cheetah print leotard gained so much steam in biblical times. Then again, judging from Noah's reaction in the same picture, it's possible that Tarzan was merely an unrelated straggler hoping to boost his status by latching onto Noah's Big Ark Adventure. "To this remora," said Noah, "No more-a."


Teddy's Winter Adventure, by Ken Forsse (1985)
I have no special love for this book in particular, but the collection of Teddy Ruxpin titles at large hold a mighty place in my mighty heart. The books were intended to be used in conjunction with the toys themselves, each sold with a corresponding audio cassette that could be slipped right up Teddy's ass for read-along superfun. Teddy was a landmark toy, and as was the case with many children, the entire focus of my life shifted to Teddy Ruxpin the second he debuted in my house. It only got worse when I finally realized that Teddy's mouth and eyes would move along to any cassette, not just the ones that came in the patented Ruxpin packaging. If I had a nickel for every time Teddy wanted to take me down to Kokomo.

And then, just as suddenly, I grew bored with Teddy and didn't bother asking Mom for a new set of forty-seven "D" batteries just to hear his sweet siren song once more. From that point forth, he was just another stuffed animal -- not the kind that doubled as a pillow when a real pillow wasn't in sight, and not the kind that you'd throw at a buddy for outpacing you in Excitebike, but for all intents, he was just another member in the big club full of creatures I won out of arcade claw machines. In the most shocking twist of the previous century, I actually got more mileage out of the stupid books than the hundred buck talking bear.


Now the stories in the book...they were okay. Teddy, Grubby and Newton, flying around in an airship, meeting good guys and befriending them, meeting bad guys and defeating them through purely nonviolent means, and chuckling a whole lot. There was a ton of chuckling going on. Whenever someone said anything, they followed it up with a chuckle. Example:

"I bet Tweeg's going to need a new pair of shoes after that one!," Teddy chuckled. Grubby chuckled. "Sure will, Teddy! He sure will!" Newton chuckled along. Then more chuckling.

Where the books really shined wasn't so much in Teddy's musings or methods by which he adventured, but rather the places he went. His turf was one of much mythology and intrigue, where you'd stumble across ten foot multicolored corn stalks one second and land in a pile of glowing quicksand the next. None of the characters were impressed by any of it, but I wasn't used to such daily hassles. In fact, I barely bothered reading the books, instead focusing my attention to the "Land of Grundo" map printed on the final pages of each title. I was obsessed with this map. Referencing places I'd never seen in any of the other books or on the cartoon show, it was up to me to decide what the hell went on there. There's one spot marked "Trembley Fault," and as a decidedly stupid child, I had no idea that "fault" also referred to some kind of geographical hiccup. So that place was always a little weird to me. I figured some spider monster named "Trembley Fault" stuck his claim flagpole somewhere in the middle of it. I keep some hope that this could still be true.


Sprout's™ Valley Adventure, by Susan Shimshak (1992)
There are many unbelievable things about this title, not the least of which the fact that it's actually got an audio cassette component which was sadly not there when I picked this out of some yard sale bin a few years ago. The more unbelievable thing is that it's a book about the Jolly Green Giant's surrogate son, Sprout! In what had to be a free-with-two-proofs-of-purchase promotional thing, we're reading what's essentially a vegetable commercial. It's Field Day in the Valley, and Sprout can't wait to meet up with all the hip vegetable teenagers for the big baton race. No seriously, that's what's going on. Much of the storybook details Sprout's long journey in finding the hip vegetable teenagers, and since he's saying so many words along the way, it was imperative to come up with some sort of sidekick so Sprout wouldn't appear to be talking to himself for five hours, and thus, insane. Look at the front cover up there -- see that little bee by Sprout's head? That's his sidekick. This random bee follows Sprout through grass and trees and cornfields, and the amazing thing is that this is the least surreal aspect of the entire story.

It's not hard to comprehend the allure of the Jolly Green Giant. When I was really young -- too young for school, too young to even dictate what went on our television -- I was at the mercy of my mother's endless fascination with midmorning game shows. Within this I grew to consider the Press Your Luck Whammies as good as any other cartoon character. I grew to place Bob Barker right up on Mr. Rogers' shelf. And I grew to love the Jolly Green Giant. The commercial breaks during these game shows were heavy on promoting anything sold at a supermarket, and while I may have been slightly afraid of the Scrubbin' Bubbles monstersponge, I always looked up to the Jolly Green Giant. It took a real man to make broccoli sound like a good idea. Sprout was a welcome addition to the ad campaign, because the Jolly Green Giant was just way too much into being the Jolly Green Giant to do anything unexpected. Sprout was good for that. He'd talk about carrots, sure, but he'd throw in a pratfall or two for good measure.


When Sprout finally finds the hip vegetable teenagers, all hell breaks loose. They take turns telling Sprout why they're the best vegetable, often doing this with totally nutritional terminology, much in the same way your crazy aunt would toot her horn by exclaiming, "I'm best for eating because I am mostly protein!" We're also faced with the small dilemma of these very real and breathing characters insinuating that they should be eaten, which is almost excused when they pull miniature versions of themselves (without faces or clothes) to share with Sprout.

It's crazier than I'm making it sound. Every page features a new hip vegetable teen; they all have eyes half as tall as Sprout, and the universal first-thing-they-do is force-feed sprout with their totem vegetable. I can only imagine how this sounded on the audio cassette component. All of the characters are memorably weird, but my personal favorite is "Kid Red," who wears sunglasses, who has a giant ass, and who is a skateboarding kidney bean. The story ends on a not-worth-mentioning subdued note, but I can't resist bringing up the recipe section printed on the inside cover. After spending a whole storybook likening vegetables to a miracle cure-all, they go and blow it with all of these fucked up disgusting vegetable recipes that call for corn syrup as the primary ingredient. If it takes making vegetables into candy to get a kid to eat them, it doesn't really count.

I'm going to play video games now, bye.

MORE BOOK REPORTS:
The Monster At The End Of This Book - The Adventures of Kool-Aid Man Comic Book
Masters of the Universe Coloring Book - The Congo Activity Book - Marvel Secret Wars Sticker Book
Transformers Coloring Book - The Adventures of Q*Bert - Toys 'R' Us `80s Catalog

-- Matt (1/4/06)