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You’ve gotten gifts for pretty much everyone on your list…or at least you’ve thought about what to get them. But here’s the problem…what about the kids? You’ve ruled out the zhu-zhu pet … Elmo Live … and anything to do with “High School Musical.” Well, you can’t go wrong with a good book. The World’s Carol Zall has been talking with writers and getting suggestions.
>>> Purchase these books here and support The World
Thumbelina
The Magician’s Elephant
Alice in Wonderland
Tales From Outer Suburbia
Waiting for Winter
Little Prince Deluxe Pop-Up Book
THE LITTLE PRINCE: Deluxe Pop-Up Book by Antoine de Saint-Exupery,
translated from the French by Richard Howard. English Translation
copyright (c) 2003 by Richard Howard. Illustrations by Antonie de
Saint-Exupery, copyright 1943 by Harcourt, Inc. Copyright renewed (c)
1971 by Consuelo de Saint-Exupery. Present edition (c) 2009 by Gallimard
Jeunesse. Used by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing
Company. All rights reserved.
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MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman. This is the World. You’ve gotten gifts for pretty much everyone on your list, or at least you’ve thought about what to get them. Here’s the problem. What about the kids? You’ve ruled out the zhu-zhu pet, Elmo Live, and anything to do with High School Musical. Well, you can’t go wrong with a good book. The World’s Carol Zall has been talking with writers and getting suggestions. Carol, the first book on your list is a really intriguing book called Tails from Outer Suburbia by Shaun Tan.
CAROL ZALL: That’s right. Shaun Tan is an Australian writer. He is probably best known for his book The Arrival, which got a lot of attention a couple of years ago. Now he has this new collection, Tales from Outer Suburbia, which is a really hard book to describe. It’s got a lot of short pieces in it and a lot of illustrations to go along with the pieces. Shaun Tan presents this kind of quirky world of outer suburbia.
MARCO WERMAN: This is like a suburbia I’ve never seen before. We’re in suburbs of somewhere in Australia and there is weird things that happen. For example, there is this kid named Eric who is like this weird looking adorable house guest exchange student who lives in the pantry but he’s the size of Stuart Little and his head is shaped like a leaf. He is also kind of scary looking.
CAROL ZALL: Yes, he’s a very funny weird little drawing. I actually spoke to Shaun Tan and I asked him where he got the idea for Eric. This is what he told me.
SHAUN TAN: In my sketch books I do a lot of random stuff. One of them was this tiny little drawing of a character with three points on his head, something like a diamond that the third point made and looked fairly immaculate. I had written the name Eric underneath. For some reason, I thought that was hilarious. This weird little character had such an ordinary familiar name.
CAROL ZALL: That’s where Shaun Tan got part of the idea for this little story, which ends up in the book called Eric.
MARCO WERMAN: It’s just a surreal and delightful book. You know the thing about Tales from Outer Suburbia is that it may fall into a kid’s book category but an adult would easily appreciate getting this book. The next book also works the same way.
CAROL ZALL: That’s right. The next book is very different. It is called The Magician’s Elephant by Kate DiCamillo. She’s an American writer but the book is set in this kind of mythical Eastern European city. This is a novel of 200 pages. At the center of it is this magician who was trying to conjure up lilies but instead got an elephant that came through the roof.
MARCO WERMAN: Not good.
CAROL ZALL: Not good. The person who recommended this book to me was author Brian Selznick. This is what he had to say about why he thinks this book works so well.
BRIAN SELZNICK: There is a sense from the very beginning that you are dealing in a place where everything means something larger. When you have this image of an elephant crashing through the roof in this miraculous way, it feels very much like a parable. You start thinking about things in your own life that are impossible or things that have come crashing down around you and how things that are a miracle and are beautiful also have these dark sides.
MARCO WERMAN: [SOUNDS LIKE] Julian’s author Brian Selznick there who we interviewed a couple of years ago when he came out with The Invention of Hugo Cabre. The Magician’s Elephant is kind of like a road runner cartoon where its really dark underneath but on the surface it’s just an elephant falling from the sky and messing things up.
CAROL ZALL: You could say that. You could also say that it works on a lot of different levels.
MARCO WERMAN: Right and although you said it’s 200 pages, the print is spaced out. I can easily see an 8 year old reading this book. The other books that you’ve picked are more straight ahead children’s books aren’t they. Let’s start with Waiting for Winter by Sebastian Meschenmoser.
CAROL ZALL: That’s right. This is a book for little kids. This is a German writer. The book has been translated into English. We picked this just because it’s a really fun book. It’s about a squirrel. The squirrel wants to stay up. It doesn’t want to hibernate. It wants to stay up until it sees the first snowflake of winter. A lot of the pages are just white with brown or black sketches of trees but you have these little dashes of color.
MARCO WERMAN: That little charcoal and crayon drawings are lovely.
CAROL ZALL: Overall it’s just a really nice book.
MARCO WERMAN: Speaking of illustrations, here is a new edition of Alice in Wonderland. I don’t know how the original illustrations from way back then could be topped but somehow this manages to work really well.
CAROL ZALL: Yes, this is a new edition of Alice in Wonderland. The illustrations are done by Rodney Matthews. He is a British fantasy illustrator. All of the images in this book are really colorful, fantastic and kind of drawing from the visual idiom of fantasy.
MARCO WERMAN: The talking cards.
CAROL ZALL: Exactly. We’re looking at this double-paged spread. You have these talking cards.
MARCO WERMAN: Pink sky, purple castle and red roses.
CAROL ZALL: Exactly, and something that kind of looks like outer space behind them and they are painting the roses. There is a lot of just really beautiful illustrations in this. We thought it would be a great gift for someone on your list if you wanted to give them a classic but with a twist.
MARCO WERMAN: It really capitalizes on the trippy side of the story of Alice in Wonderland. Now Thumbelina is a slightly different case.
CAROL ZALL: That’s right. It’s like an updated classic. This is a re-telling of the Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale story. In this case, it is retold by Brian Alderson. The illustrations are by Bagram Ibatoulline. This is obviously for little kids. For that reason, we decided to go to an expert. We talked to our technology correspondent Clark Boyd’s daughter, Sophia.
SOPHIA: Thumbelina, Thumbelina, Thumbelina.
MARCO WERMAN: Translation, two enthusiastic thumbs up.
CAROL ZALL: Ha, ha. No pun intended. She also had a little bit more to say. Here is what it was.
MALE: What do you think of this book?
SOPHIA: Good. Ouch.
MALE: Is your thumb caught in the book?
SOPHIA: Yes.
MALE: It’s a very heavy book isn’t it. Let’s get your thumb out of there. Ah, your thumb is stuck. There we go.
MARCO WERMAN: Janet [PH] Maslins thumbs never get stuck in the book I bet. You’ve got one more book for us Carol. What is that? I don’t even know what this is. You said it is a surprise.
CAROL ZALL: That’s right. We have one more book. It is yet another classic that’s been redone with a twist. This is a pop-up edition of The Little Prince. I have saved it Marco. I have forbidden you to see it because I wanted to get your reaction here in the studio. I’m actually going to hand it over to you.
MARCO WERMAN: Any special place I should get it? How about right in the middle?
CAROL ZALL: Okay. I want you to get something that pops up.
MARCO WERMAN: That’s already very impressive. This is a street sweeper on whatever planet that is and it pops right out of the book. Oh my gosh, here is the Little Prince on top of a mountain. This is very impressive. I thought they had kind of worked the Little Prince franchise as much as they could but they actually squeezed one more thing out. Oh, and they turn. This is very cool.
CAROL ZALL: It’s really nice. For people who love the Little Prince, this is just a great gift.
MARCO WERMAN: The World’s Carol Zall. Thank you very much for making this selection of children’s books for us this year.
CAROL ZALL: You are welcome. It was fun reading them.
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