Fighting In The Captain's Tower

One of the great things about fatherhood is the ability to thrust one's heroes upon one's children. Undoubtedly, this will backfire -- the children will rebel against these supposed heroes, investigating their hypocrisies and contradictions, and they will then find heroes of their own in contradistinction to those of their father. But this is okay, too.

Yesterday we bought a few children's books, mostly because our evenings needed a change from Eric Carle's 10 Little Rubber Ducks(subject, in part, of a smart and fascinating Harper's essay on plastic waste in 2006) or Robert Munsch's awesome The Paper Bag Princess. When you read 3-5 children's book a night over a span of two and a half years, you begin to crave variety.

Paul Roger's book illustrating the lyrics to Bob Dylan's "Forever Young" has an aspect of the Schoolhouse Rock cartoons to it, a kind of childlike view of reality whereby adults are slightly two tall, and still pictures radiate both a sense of calm and of movement. It's a fun, bright book that juxtaposes Dylan's lyrics with a life story of a very Dylan-like boy who grows through the course of the book from a childhood by the record player to busking in Washington Square park to leading a march to "Save the Earth!" alongside Martin Luther King, the Beatles, and Edie Sedgwick. Throughout, there are plenty of "Easter Eggs," as they're called in the video game industry, or inside jokes that refer to Dylan's life, influences, and other song lyrics, some of which are revealed at Paul Roger's website. Lots of cameos from the likes of Dave Van Ronk, William S. Burroughs, and Ezra Pound.

Pound also shows up in River of Words, a biography for children of William Carlos Williams (or "Willie Williams" as he's called in the book). Here, the illustrations by Melissa Sweet combine representations of Williams' early life with the images and text of some of his poetry, so that words rush through and lend an energy to each pages' illustration. Jen Bryant suggests that it is the sound of the Passiac River that leads Williams to strive to find a "New American" approach to poetry, one in which meter and rhyme mattered less than presenting a fresh and uniquely American perspective, as if the continent and its politics and its people could be channeled through the poet. Williams, the small and bespectacled country doctor with his pockets full of poems, becomes in this book a bold and heroic figure. As someone who had to balance an interest in art and poetry with a practical career, Williams has long been a particular hero of mine, and this book clarifies the choice, the sacrifice, and the challenge of that particular balance.

And what three-year-old wouldn't love the guy who wrote the best poem ever about a firetruck in the rain?

How the kids will respond to the books remains to be seen. Last night, Sam was eager to sit patiently through each book, considering each page, but I suspect that he was waiting for Batman to appear. (We'd just been talking about Batman, and said he wanted to read a Batman book. Since we didn't have any age appropriate Batman books, I read these two instead.) In any case, he didn't complain. Caleb, who only slowly and hesitantly expands his particular shelf of favorite books, will be the harder sell...

(Thanks, too, to the local booksellers who proved themselves, in making me aware of one of the two books above, better than any algorithm.)