‘You are a Snort’” (spoken after the baby bird is picked up by an earth mover). Favorite line: “‘Oh, you are not my mother,’ said the baby bird. (Does anyone know why her hair is red in the tiger scene, but blonde in all the other scenes?) In addition to enjoying this book on its own merits, I want to make sure that Emily reads books with strong female characters.Ī childhood favorite in our family. In the first of Bemelmans’ books about Madeline, the title character is small but brave: “not afraid of mice,” says “Pooh-pooh” to the tiger in the zoo, and happily displays her post-appendectomy scar. And, as in Crockett Johnson’s Harold and the Purple Crayon, the imagination is a source of both possibility and danger. It has rival painters whose names are puns on French cuisine. René Magritte + Ernie Bushmiller = this book by Jon Agee. Jon Agee, The Incredible Painting of Felix Clousseau (1988) (As noted in the original “Emily’s Library” post, Emily is being raised in both English and French.) For me, at least, absenting these translations (from the total) signals my list’s deficiencies. I need to find more French-language originals. I didn’t because I feel that, somehow, it’s a limitation of mine – choosing (usually) French translations of English-language originals.
As Walter Benjamin writes, in translation “the original undergoes a change.” Expanding on that idea, he offers the following simile: “Just as a tangent touches a circle lightly and at but one point, with this touch rather than with the point setting the law according to which it is to continue on its straight path to infinity, a translation touches the original lightly and only at the infinitely small point of the sense, thereupon pursuing its own course according to the laws of fidelity in the freedom of linguistic flux.” 1 So, perhaps I should have included translated works in my tally. I do realize that no translation is identical to its original.
I have not included in my tally (above) works in translation – that is, if a book is listed in both French and English versions, I only count it once (though I do list it below). (At the end of this blog post, you’ll find links to other resources for finding good children’s books.) Despite its shortcomings in theorizing its own criteria, this ongoing list does name good books, and thus may (I hope) be useful to other people seeking books for young readers. As noted in the first entry in this series, my aim is to build for her a kind of “ideal” library of children’s books – understanding, of course, that ideals are impossible, and that my own criteria (see first entry) are fuzzy at best. Welcome to the fifth installment of “ Emily’s Library,” in which I list books bought for my 13-month-old niece.
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