Who's Lucky?

All right, so I just gave my guest lecture on Asian-American literature to a semi-rapt (okay, mostly asleep) class of students. I'm concerned that I may have inadvertantly given the impression that people only dislike Amy Tan because she plays in a rock band with Stephen King. There are MANY more reasons than that to dislike her, people. (Yes, I know I hit one twice, but that's because it's twice as bad.)

I'm also concerned because in my rush to finish at the end, I segued directly from lavish praise for Dictee to lavish praise for Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle. The students were left wondering what exactly is going on inside my head. But really, do you want to live in a world where we're not free to love both multigenre postmodernist autobiographies and stoner comedies? I didn't think so.

Last night's read-alouds: Moses goes to the Circus, Terrific!, Elsina's Clouds, Redwoods are the Tallest Trees in the World, and My First Guide to the Seashore. (Can't wait to get to California next week! Am forcing my child to listen to dull nonfiction books of the 70s in anticipation!)

Books to Read Places In

So I've been planning a summer trip lately (I'll spare you the book report on Fodor's Gold Guide to Atlantic Canada), and, after slogging through an avalanche of references to locations where Annie Proulx wrote or did anything else remotely related to The Shipping News, I'm thinking about how to travel "It's A Book Club Style."

Before I acquired so many demanding traveling companions, I used to have a complex formula for working out how many books I needed to bring on a trip--something like (miles traveled) X (need to avoid chatty seatmates) / (monotony of mode of travel) + (distance I'll have to carry my book bag)--but now that's shot all to hell, and I just try to bring whatever book will best avoid a screaming, seat-kicking meltdown with 3 hours left in flight. And ten times out of ten, that book is not The Shipping News.

I guess I've always been suspicious of tailoring my reading material to my geographical destination. (Though I am exceedingly proud of myself for reading Don Quixote during last year's trip to Spain, but that has more to do with overcoming my fears that I might never crack a non-board book again). For one, I think it tips the scales a little farther over onto the "earnest and engaged tourist" side of things, and I prefer more the "I'm just here riding this bus and reading a book like any other local" side, clearly untrue though it may be. For another, I like the feeling of looking back later and realizing my memory of reading a certain book is inextricably linked with an improbable locale--Two Girls Fat and Thin and the London Underground, maybe, or Crime and Punishment and the ferry to Martha's Vineyard. (Before I start to sound show-offy, let me add that I never finished either of those books. Maybe's there's a flaw in this reasoning.)

So, that leaves me with two questions. One, what do you read when you travel, and why? And two, what is there to read about Newfoundland that is not The Shipping News?

Periodical Deathmatch

Two men (er, bound volumes of printed matter) enter, one man leaves.
Round One: W versus Mojo.

[A note on technique: people usually make these comparisons about related magazines, like, say, Bitch versus Bust or Readymade versus Make. I thought I'd let fate, or the mailman, set the terms, so I'm comparing the two most recent magazines that arrived in my mailbox. And in a way they're related--they both seek to relay a individual sensory experience--touch for W, hearing for Mojo--through words and pictures. But, in another, more accurate way, they're not at all alike. All the more challenge for me then.]

OPENING IMPRESSIONS: Mojo comes with a CD, which is nice. Imagine if W tried to ship out a Marc Jacobs shoe as a ridealong. Unfortunately, that CD is "Psych Out!: 15 Nuggets from the scene that spawned Pink Floyd." Hmm. And there's a photo of David Gilmour on the cover too. At least it's not a current photo. W has Jessica Simpson attempting to be Jerry Hall, with a greater degree of success than I would have thought.

FIRST PAGES: Mojo starts strong. There are many funny quotes from British musicians that I have not heard of, a tribute to Wilson Pickett, Carlos Santana on how A Love Supreme changed his life, and a spread called "Time Machine:1956" in which I learn that Nat King Cole was attacked on stage by the KKK at a whites only show in Birmingham, AL, and had the following comment about it: "I just came here to entertain you. That's what I thought you wanted. I was born here in Alabama. But those folks hurt my back. I cannot continue because I have to go to a doctor."
W: Gee, there are a lot of ads here. I think I also see a runway report and a few shorts on film and television personalities, but it's hard to tell amid all the heavy lidded partially undressed women. Hey, that Prada ad has kittens!

MIDDLE PAGES: Mojo features a transcribed interview with Van Morrison. And then one with Morrissey. And then, a little later, one with coverboy David Gilmour. In between are histories of Wire and Billy Bragg. All right, Mojo, we get that you're a niche publication, but could you mix it up a little? Also, the type size is miniscule. I have to resort to reading only every third paragraph out of eyestrain. As a result, I have a very confused idea of just what happened to poor old Syd Barrett.
W: Oh my god I had no idea so many fashion brands existed. And those "secret" beauty treatments women won't admit to described on the cover? Toe-waxing, and crotch facials. Yecch.

CLOSING PAGES: Putting in a P-Funk review doesn't change the fact that the only non-white musicians you seem to be interested flourished prior to 1980, Mojo. And lovingly reviewing a RECENT Rolling Stones concert doesn't help.
W: Oh, here are the articles! And incredibly disturbing photographs of Shalom Harlow playing dead! As for the Jessica Simpson piece, well, I give you this: "Since age 11, she's been keeping a diary and feels that the time is right to publish her innermost thoughts, favorite quotes, and musings on life." The world has been warned.

BACK PAGE: Mojo's gimmick is "Hello Goodbye," which tells the story of how something began and ended. This week it's on Chaz Jankel and Ian Dury, which, okay, I have no idea who those two are. W features a supposedly-hilariously-scathing commentary by a faux European countess of a certain age. This is always lame, though this month it does remind us that Marie Antoinette's dressmaker said her role was to "give protection against the cold, the dirt, and the hardships." Tell that to Shalom Harlow.

LOOKS: The Mojo graphics department clearly needs a shot in the arm. They've done the paint-splatter "graffiti" headline so many times it's not funny, not to mention the signature Sex Pistols typography. As for W, well, design is basically their all in all, so of course they do it well. But does the magazine have to be so frackin' heavy?

OVERALL: Mojo on content by a nose, subject to the approval of my opthamologist.

NEXT UP: Special all-Victorian edition--The Girl's Own Paper versus Godey's Lady's Book. Kidding!

Help a Library

The YALSA (Young Adult Library Services Association), a division of the American Library Association, posts the following plea on their website:

Donate Books Now: The New Orleans Public Library needs help in rebuilding the African American, Vietnamese and GLBT collections at Alvar. She is especially seeking new or "like new" books that have been Stonewall, Coretta Scott King, BCALA Literary or other appropriate award winners, as well as canonical and popular titles in these collection areas. Send book donations to: New Orleans Public Library 219 Loyola, New Orleans, LA 70112, Attention Rica Trigs. Geraldine states: DO NOT SEND anything by US mail unless it is first-class. NOPL does not receive anything that is not first class. We can receive packages via FedEx, UPS, and DHL.

Caveat: the New Orleans Public Library general FAQ on donations basically asks, please send cash not books (especially used ones).

Let your charitable impulse and common sense be your guide.

Another dispatch from the land of the obvious

Going out to all of you profoundly uninterested in comic books and their troll-like creators.

Hayao Miyazaki doesn't need any help from me; Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke are two of Japan's highest grossing films ever. But if you haven't seen his earlier work My Neighbor Totoro (Tonari no Totoro) with a child that you love, well, then, you know what to do. The film concerns a friendly troll (as you can see, Miyazaki has a very different understanding of what trolls look like) who helps two young sisters adjust to a new house in the country and cope with their longing for their invalid mother, who's confined to a hospital with an unnamed illness. Containing one of the most beautiful of Miyazaki's signature night-flying scenes, the film also features a cat that's also a bus. I need not say more; except this: the great-looking 2-disc version just released by Disney is dubbed by Dakota and Elle Fanning. (There's also a Japanese-language audio track, for those of you with families capable of reading subtitles or fluent in Japanese). And I still loved it. 'Nuff said.

Oh wait, one more thing, while we're speaking of trolls. Uglydolls now come in vinyl. Perfect for Lord Droolypants, otherwise known as YoungerKid. Who's going to be one very soon. Hint. Hint.

Who Owns Fu Manchu?

So, apparently in America we celebrate Guy Fawkes Night on March 17 now? (Actually, I'm not going to comment on the movie version of V for Vendetta, since a) I haven't seen it yet and b) I seem to be the only person in America not breathlessly interested in the status of Natalie Portman's shaved head and really, what else is there to say about the movie other than that?)

But I am interested in the comic book that it is based on, and in the complications behind Alan Moore's recent disavowals of the whole endeavor. As the New York Times reports, the noted author and crank wants nothing more to do with some of his greatest works. This includes V for Vendetta, which tells the story of an anarchist clad in a Guy Fawkes mask who works to overthrow a fascist government with the help of a 16-year-old girl. As he puts it, "...[the works] were stolen from me...knowingly stolen from me."

Now the obvious response here, of course, is "Cram it, Alan Moore," since by "stolen," he really means something more like, "given up by signing a lucrative contract transferring the film rights of this work to a known peddler of Hollywood pablum." (Yes, yes, the process was more complicated than that. My point stands). Yet what makes this brouhaha interesting to me at least, and what the New York Times didn't mention, is Moore's own interest in the status of literary property. His ongoing series The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (itself subject to a rather horrifying cinematic interpretation) rests on the conceit that a group of characters from late-Victorian genre fiction--Mina Harker from Dracula, Alan Quatermain, the Invisible Man, Dr. Jekyll, and Captain Nemo--band together to fight against a mysterious "Oriental" enemy. In the comic this enemy is never named, though it's clear from references and illustrations that he's meant to be the the devil doctor himself, Fu Manchu. Moore has acknowledged this in interviews and confirmed that the reason Fu Manchu cannot be named is because the character is still under copyright. Can we imagine Sax Rohmer, or H. Rider Haggard for that matter, rolling around in their graves grumping about their stolen property?

So how does V for Vendetta fit here? After all, Guy Fawkes isn't a literary character, he was a real, if possibly misguided, person. (And as an aside, I guess it's because I'm in the U.S., but I don't get the big deal about commemorating a failed act of domestic terrorism. No one's trying to celebrate the guys who got on board the Dartmouth but forgot their crowbar and couldn't open the crates of tea.) And the ultimate message of the comic is that, when governments oppress their people excessively, the people ought to respond by completely dismantling the structure of the society that created that government. I get that V sees himself as a facilitator of this destruction who must himself be destroyed for peace to continue (kind of like Chiwitel Ejiofor's character in Serenity, though on the other side), but why then would the "character" of Guy Fawkes continue into the new, post-fascist world, as it clearly seems to? It's because Moore can't really imagine a future which must invent its own cultural icons out of whole cloth--they need continuity in the form of Guy Fawkes, whose historical "reality" is now less important than the significance of his character.

Thus the reason Alan Moore is so cheesed off about Hollywood misappropriations of his creations, I suppose, is not just because they suck but also because of his inordinate faith in the power of literary/historical characters to act as self-contained beings that can continue to exist above and beyond their original narratives. If the characters act stupidly and, more importantly, uncharacteristically, as they frequently do in Warner Brothers releases, that's not only bad product, but a betrayal of creative responsiblity. It's a rent in the curtain that shows how vulnerable creative work is to the vagaries of the marketplace and the system of law.

In general literary fiction, doesn't play that way; the text is a specifically situated entity and the characters don't get to come out of that text and walk around doing new things (pace, Jean Rhys). But this is genre fiction, I guess, and maybe that kind of textual anarchy within a tightly controlled form is part of the reason I like genre fiction, and get hives around Michael Cunningham. I wish the text of V for Vendetta was a little better (David Lloyd's images are superb, I think) so that it could offer a stronger rebuttal to this historically-restrictive notion of art. As it is the comic just seems angry at the fascist government for killing off black people and their jolly music, and gay people and their beautiful art. But I applaud Alan Moore for trying, at least. It's much more common to hear old stories with new people in them, and I like that, but I also like to hear new stories with old people in them too. Just as long as they don't involve Natalie Portman's head.

Confidential to those who are mad about Crash's Best Picture Win

Annie Proulx is even madder than you are.
And Fametracker might be more paranoid.

When Nerds Reproduce

They produce something like this: Trixie Tracker, a $59/year subscription application that "allows new parents to create detailed records and custom charts of Sleep, Diapers, Bottles, Solids, Nursing, Pumping and Medicine." With special features like Sleep Telemetry, which has the following capabilities:

• Record sleep in real-time or input data at the end of the day
• Track transition time in addition to time asleep
• Track attempted naps
• Track sleep locations
• Easily record overnight wake-ups or fell-asleep-in-the-car naps with the Sleep Split Tool

Not to mention these hilarious bonus features:

• [A] Sleep Probability chart [which] uses a gray scale to display the probability of your child being asleep at a certain time of day.

• [E]xtremely useful sleep editing options. For example, if your child wakes up for 5 minutes at 3 o'clock in the morning, you don't have to rush to the computer. You can easily add it the next morning using the Split Tool, which allows you to insert a wake-up in a sleep cycle or a cat nap in an awake cycle.

Really? I don't have to rush to the computer at 3 a.m.? But I want to!

Trixie Tracker concludes, rather ominously:
These tools make it easy to record accurate data which means you'll be able to make better sleep schedule decisions — for you and your child.

To which I say: Thanks. I really, really needed that laugh.

Link via Lifehacker.

Dept. of Fitting Ends

So, yesterday afternoon around 4:15 I thought it would be a good idea to go over to the public library and pick up a new round of books for the kids. Others thought this idea was not so good, given the odd green color of the sky, the predictions of serious thunderstorms, and the general fussiness of the kids. They stayed home to fingerpaint.

Flash ahead half an hour. I am in the basement of the library, sheltering as the tornado sirens go off across town. On the radio, the oldies station DJ is advising everyone who is not in a house to find a ditch and lie in it, face down. Scenes from the movie Twister are playing in my head. And as I sit there imagining my imminent demise by wind gust (and ruing the fact that my final thoughts will be of Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt), it seems like a cruelly appropriate way to go. Zil: She died as she lived--overwhelmed by thousands and thousands of books.

My Honeylamb and I

Note to parents considering taking their young ones to Oklahoma, excuse me, Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma. (Surprisingly, Hugh Jackman is not in the third tier touring company. He must be busy with something else.) It's a long, long stretch between "Everything's Up to Date in Kansas City" and "The Farmer and the Cowman Should be Friends." And in the interim, you will have to explain repeatedly in your best whisper why Curly is trying to persuade Judd that his suicide is in everyone's best interest. And while "Laurey's Dream Ballet" will actually be a highlight due to its lack of confusing/boring dialogue, you will also have to explain repeatedly that the stabbing and rape "is just pretend because she's dreaming," leaving you at a loss for how to explain the "real" stabbing at the musical's end. Damn, that plot is dark.

On the plus side, the actors will say "pigslop" repeatedly during moments of tension, causing your child to laugh loudly, a fact particularly obvious because he will be the only one laughing. And in the end, your child may have the following comment: "I had fun, Mama. I liked Oklahoma where the wind comes rushing by. Those two men were pushing each other. And then they fell down."

Technorati Tags: Musicals, Parenting

It's hard out here for a lady, too.

Now it's serious. Despite the fact that two babies have popped out of my belly (to borrow OlderKid's tasteful phrasing), I may not be a woman between the ages of 20 and 40. Or so according to this recent essay in Salon on a certain famous book by Judy Blume.

If you're an American woman between the ages of 20 and 40, the following passage will likely be familiar to you:
"I locked the bathroom door and attached a Teenage Softie to the little hooks on my pink belt. Then I got dressed and looked at myself in the mirror. Would anyone know my secret? Would it show? Would Moose, for instance, know if I went back outside to talk to him? Would my father know it right away when he came home for dinner? I had to call Nancy and Gretchen and Janie right away. Poor Janie! She'd be the last of the PTS's to get it. And I'd been so sure it would be me! How about that! Now I am growing for sure. Now I am almost a woman!
"Are you still there God? It's me, Margaret. I know you're there God. I know you wouldn't have missed this for anything! Thank you God. Thanks an awful lot…"

To the author's dismay, that passage now begins as follows:

"I locked the bathroom door and peeled the paper off the bottom of the pad. I pressed the sticky strip against my underpants. Then I got dressed and looked at myself in the mirror..."

Let me tell you straight. It's not just that I've never read a book by Judy Blume. What's worse, it's that I think I might have read one, but it had so little impact on me in any way that I can't remember one thing about it, let alone treasure the memory of that act of reading as my true initiation into American girl/womanhood. Since I don't think the book was AYTGIMM, (and even if it was), I was largely unmoved by the change.

Yet apparently the revision caused concern in the blogosphere. Some approved of the revision as helpful to contemporary girls confused and horrified by the antiquated concept of "sanitary belts," others deplored the mutilation of a classic historical document. Rebecca Traister of Salon falls into the latter category, comparing the belt to Laura Ingalls's corncob doll or Jane Eyre's sketch of her beautiful rival Blanche Ingram (yeah, that made no sense to me either) as a mark of historical difference which paradoxically helps reinforce the continuity of puberty and its many travails.

What's going on here is the classic "literature as instruction manual" versus "literature as inspiration" debate, of course, and while I'm pretty squarely in the latter camp, I'm not bringing out the big guns on this one. First of all, Blume is just a plain terrible writer, and so may not even qualify as literature at all. Second, why do so many defenses of this book begin "Even though I wasn't as excited as Margaret to start menstruating..."? If you have to make that disclaimer, why are you hitching your wagon of femininity to that narrowly-defined star? How about championing some literature that lets you incorporate some of that frustration and ambivalence about what America understands as "becoming a woman"? Heck, even Elizabeth Gaskell, whose Victorian classic Wives and Daughters I'm reading right now, spends as much time challenging those titular categories as she does affirming them. I'd say more about this but half of you fell asleep right after you saw the words "Victorian classic."

So what about it? What's the big deal that I'm missing? (And those who care to link the themes of this entry with the fact that my mother called me last night to tell me in minute detail of her dream that I had adopted a baby girl, going on for more than 15 minutes about how I held the girl, then she held the girl, then we put her in a dress, etc., etc. are welcome to arm-chair psychologize away.)

World Book Day

Was March 2. Oops. As usual, I'm two steps behind the rest of the world, or really, let's be honest, the UK, since this was the only place that I can tell really celebrated this holiday. As the Guardian reports, one notable achievement of this day was the release of a study showing that 41% of readers participating in the poll prefer happy endings, compared to 2.2% who prefer sad ones. Additionally, Britain's librarians released a list of the top 30 books every adult should read before they die. (The oddly morbid phrasing of the question doesn't hide what this really is--a tired retread of the same old inexplicable best-of lists that everyone likes to crab about, myself included. I mean, the top three choices are To Kill a Mockingbird, the Bible, and the Lord of the Rings triology for heaven's sake.)

But I'm in a mood to crab about all this love for happy endings after the ridiculousness of the Oscars. (Am I ever! Things that make me mad about that ceremony include: the terrible Best Picture win, Charlize Theron's dress, the fact that Louis Gossett Jr. is no longer the default black man that editors cut to whenever someone says something "racial" (we miss you, Lou!) and of course, the fact that I am still wasting time thinking about this.) George Clooney is a handsome and charming man, sure, but his assertion that Hollywood deserves props for giving Hattie McDaniel an Oscar is justifiably getting ripped apart. Let's thank the civil rights movement first, please, George, and then we can talk about the mammy and the tragic mulatto that are Hollywood's idea of roles for black women.

The happy escapism of popular entertainment, whether literary or filmic, works precisely because it doesn't cross over to real life. In our regular lives, sad endings are much more reliable than happy ones, and race differences don't get solved by calling one group Orcs and killing them all off. How can an industry lead the way in enacting social change when their product defines itself by giving closure where none exists elsewhere? The fundamental story that popular culture tells is the one of how we all learned to stop worrying and get along, and that's a story that can, in theory, be done very nicely. But it's not all there is, and, for this reader, movie-goer and mother at least, it's not even close to enough.

Sigh.

In a library in northwest Missouri, the recent picture book And Tango Makes Three has been removed from the fiction shelves,
reports this L.A. Times story. After parental complaints about "homosexual undertones," librarians moved the book, which tells the story of a pair of male penguins who adopt and raise an abandoned egg, to the nonfiction shelves so no one would be "blindsided" by the subject matter.

New York Times Book Review, Now Featuring Sci-Fi

The New York Times has a new science fiction column in its book review. I'm happy to see it, because the columnist, Dave Itzkoff, seems genuinely enthusiastic in talking about science fiction itself, in contrast to most critics who just want to explain the meaning of science fiction, yet always begin and conclude their column alluding to its geekiness. (For example, I like her reviews, but see this recent review of Battlestar Galactica in the New Yorker.) True, Itzkoff also rather lamely opens and concludes with a self put-down, but at least the middle is about the book he set out to review.

The new columnist also has a list of ten favorite science fiction books, which is interesting because the authors on it are familiar, but his selections are offbeat.

Changes in the New York Times Book Review have been long rumored, and everyone seems to be happy about it. This oft-referenced article from a journalism website, PoynterOnline, was one of the first to report on some of the new changes.

By the way, for those of you actively blogging at home to overthrow the MSM, then you should be heartened! A rather good and straightforward update to the broader changes at the New York Times in BusinessWeek magazine is here. It is much better than the navel-gazing, self-flagellating articles -- full of rather schizophrenic anger and rueful self-pity -- that the NYT seems to run regularly now whenever they make obvious missteps in journalism (see: Jayson Blair, Judith Miller, or holding back stories on illegal wiretaps).

Places to Read Books In

Actually, this doesn't have much to do with reading, necessarily, but is a fun project. Also kind of humbling, since I think of myself as a traveler, but I've only been to 5% of the world's countries. Luckily, some of them are very big countries, so it looks a little less pathetic. (My rule is that I have to have stayed overnight in the place at least). Below, my travel maps for the United States and the world. Also see the other interesting geographical Google Hacks.



create your own visited states map


create your own visited countries map

Via Bitch PhD, again.

Episode Two

In keeping with my role as the frivolous member of this book club, I present the second installment of my Children's Book Roundup.

I'll begin with some recent library check-outs. The first is Jump Up!, by Dan Zanes, illustrated by Donald Saaf. Now let it be known that I am a fan of Dan Zanes generally. His lifestyle, which seems mainly to consist of playing folk music with his friends, teaching himself Spanish, shopping at thrift stores with his daughter, and generally hanging out on his stoop in Brooklyn, would be the life I would lead if I a) had rhythmn and b) was independently wealthy. His flotilla of CDs are fun to listen to, especially if, like me, you like to pass the time with your family by singing your way through the Fireside Book of Folk Songs. But Jump Up!, to be polite, is a weak effort. Saaf's illustrations are joyful, and OlderKid digs the book for that reason, but I think there's also a reason he never wants to listen to the accompanying CD. The words are, as platitudes always are, flat boring. Two other choices at the library also struck out. The Problem with Chickens, by Bruce McMillan, illustrated by Gunnella, despite being a New York Times Best Illustrated Book, suffers from several deficiencies. First of all, Aliki should be the only one-named children's book illustrator. Second, the story is needlessly convoluted. The titular problem, that these Icelandic ladies' chickens won't produce eggs, is inexplicably solved by having them do arm exercises and nest on a cliff. OlderKid was unimpressed by this "ending." Leopold, the Liar of Liepzig, was just plain ugly. 'Nuff said.

Our big success, however, was the ominously titled When Sophie Gets Angry--Really, Really Angry.... Various cranky Amazon reviewers have complained that this book teaches children to run away into the woods when they are mad. These are the same kind of literal minded people who, in my lit classes, complain that Alice should have gotten hurt after falling all that way down the rabbit hole. OlderKid, who is currently deeply involved in the project of anger management, found this book to be a revelation, and he asks for it again and again and again. I don't mind because the text and pictures are so simple yet so perfect for each other, and also because I need help remembering what to do when I'm angry too. It goes pretty well with James Marshall's Hansel and Gretel, which is both alluring and disturbing to OlderKid. "Is that the witch burning up in the chimney," he asks, more as a statement than a question. "Did Gretel push her there."

On to some birthday gifts. Animals should definitely not Wear Clothing is exactly what it sounds like, funny and straightforward, plus (given its 1960s publication date) a humorous reminder of how people used to dress. Martha Blah Blah, about a dog that gains and then loses the ability to speak with the help of canned alphabet soup, is hilarious to me but a little beyond OlderKid's comprehension. The divine Frog and Toad are Friends hardly needs my recommendation here; it's not The Known World, maybe, but if you don't own it you've got a bookstore visit to make post-haste. The last story, in particular, can reliably make me cry if I start thinking about it too hard. One last book that was new to me but is quickly climbing up to favorite book status is William Steig's The Amazing Bone.
This tells the story of a young pig named Pearl who, while taking the long route home from school, discovers a talking bone lying lonely in the forest. The two ramble along happily until a lascivious fox appears and imprisons Pearl, intending to eat her for dinner. The following exchange maybe captures what I love about the book:
"I hope it won't all take too long," said Pearl. She could smell vinegar and oil. The fox was preparing a salad to go with his meal. Pearl hugged the bone to her breast. "Bone, say something to comfort me."
"You are very dear to me," said the bone.
"Oh, how dear you are to me!" Pearl replied. She could hear a key in the lock and was unable to get another word out of her throat or turn her eyes towards the door.

Is there nothing Stieg can't do? Suspense, horror even, humor, and real sympathy and love, all captured in the relationship between a pig in a pink dress and bonnet and the tiny bone she keeps in her purse. Needless to say, Pearl escapes, and it's so satisfying for both me and OlderKid that some nights we only want to read this book and it's enough. I know there are lots of people who don't have any interest in what children read until they get old enough to read "real" literature, but I'd set The Amazing Bone against those "real" books any day.

P.S. I know this post is long, but one more thing. As I was driving OlderKid and YoungerKid to daycare today, I was telling OK why YK couldn't sing "I've been working on the railroad" with us. "[YK] doesn't talk," I said. A look of absolute indignation crossed OK's face. "Yes he does, Mama," he replied. "He talks to ME." And it's true, he does, and he loves books too, even if his fingers are too chubby to always turn the pages easily. Currently, he loves the collected works of Byron Barton, especially My Car.