Choose Your Weapons. I Pick Picture Books...

Did you ever hear someone say, "It was Colonel Mustard, in the studio, with a children's book"? Uh, no. Yet, author Hilary Mantel recently said, "It seems to me there's a point in your life where you hear an inner prompt, and it says, 'Choose your weapons.' This is it," she said, shaking her pen and nodding her head toward it, "mightier than the sword."

So if a writer's pen can be a weapon to fend off ignorance or inaccuracy in history and drama, then maybe I can give myself license to choose children's literature as my weapon to fight off the dragons in motherhood and family life. I choose picture books, in the home library, done with a child in my lap. 

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It’s a bit ridiculous to admit, but I added up the number of hours I've read children's books in my life. (I had my sixteen-year-old son double-check my math here, just in case.) Ready to hear the nerdy numbers? 

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• 2,150 hours (Ages 1-12): being read to at night (Thanks, Mom!), or writing, drawing and stapling together my own books, Then devouring everything on the shelves at home and school for at least thirty minutes a day, times six days a week. (Remember, rough averages here.)
• ​1,748 hours (Ages 13-18): reading on my bed and spending babysitting income on L.M. Montgomery's books and the Babysitters' Club Series. I single-handedly supported Ann M. Martin's writing habit (that's Ann with no 'e,' for you Lucy Maud fans).
• 1,400 hours (Ages 19-23): attending writers and illustrators conferences with my mom, poring picture book art, devouring books on book-making, and painting.
• 1,051 hours (Ages 24-26): researching the history of "chapbooks" (the first picture books in England) while writing my 2" thick senior project on "the history of picture books" for my BFA in illustration. Selling kids' lit at the Books of Wonder bookshop in NYC, and walking the streets of NYC from publisher to publisher--dropping off my portfolio to every art director in the city on my lunch breaks. I filled a sorry binder full of rejection letters. (Oh, the pain! But then oh, the joy, after leaving New York and finally hearing an art director say, "Would you be interested in illustrating a story for us?" Yes, oh yes! And did I say the answer is yes!​)

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• 1,131 hours (Ages 27-28): Reading and illustrating children's stories for The Friend magazine and CarolRhoda Books, including my two (very obscure--and very out-of-print) picture books. Don't try to look them up. They were they never big sellers. They never will be. In fact, some of the illustrations in one of those books were not stellar. I shudder. But they were decent work for a starving artist eating potatoes, apples, and peanut butter. And they taught me a thing or two about deadlines and meeting expectations.
• 2,350 hours (Ages 29+): The important stuff--reading aloud every day for at least 10-60 minutes to my own children for sixteen years. Golden days. Checking out the maximum twenty-five books each visit to the library for about ten years, then as the kids went off to kindergarten one by one, visiting the library twice a month.

​So, Malcolm Gladwell, if you purport that an expert is a person with 10,000 hours of experience in any given field...then I'm almost there--170 hours away from being an expert children's lit fan. With 9,830 hours of spending time with kids' books, I'm either crazy, or just feel like children's literature has a lot of quality to offer--depth, beauty and truth which many adult books lose along the way when authors try to be edgy, confrontational, and dark. Life can be bleak enough. Who wants to read depressing stuff? I want stories that show me and my children the way to live a happier existence.


Why am I such a children’s book zealot? Because they’re what got me through sleepless nights of bringing my babies into the world. When my teenagers were toddlers, if we were having a rough go, I'd start to get the shakes, and realize it was because we hadn't been to the library in a week! (And I didn’t have a kids’ audio book on-hand for our escape while cooking dinner or washing dishes. Like many people, for the first few years of family life we had no dishwasher. Audio books rescued my mind from tedium!)

​Loading up on the maximum number of picture books our library system allowed was what helped me connect with my kids instead of going insane. With often fifteen diaper changes a day between a newborn, a toddler, and a potty-training child, books could turn a monotonous day into a delight!

​After all six of our children joined our family, keeping half-a-dozen small children alive physically with meals and clean clothes was a whirlwind of activity! I often needed to slow down at least a few times daily to keep us alive emotionally. Books created a bond for us to sit down, take a breath, and do something we all enjoyed.


​By piling into a big glider chair with a bunch of books, we could escape into "a wonderful elsewhere." No dishes to do, no floor to mop, no taxes to file, and no blow-out-stained onesies needing a good soak…For at least ten minutes. Until we closed the cover of the book. Ahhh! Short-lived bliss. But right there within the covers of a book--and at our fingertips whenever we needed it.

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Even without babies at home, when an older kids has a rough day at school, it's therapeutic to listen to Jim Dale reading Harry Potter aloud while doing dishes, right? JK Rowling is a pro at making the world feel as if everything's going turn out okay in the end. Sorry, old Voldemort, even your schnozless-appearances in the series don't tarnish that Hogwarts glow of comfort, delight, and the warmth of the Weasley family.
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Harry, Ron, and Hermione are experts when it comes to learning how to make and keep friends. We feel the pain of Harry and Ron's separations when they have a falling-out, and then feel the relief and joy as they figure out how to overcome pride by apologizing.

Reading about others' experiences of navigating the wide world, reminds us that we're not the only ones going through this earthly realm. Some writer out there once had the same emotions that we now have, and had the foresight to write them down for us. Because of that, that we could relate to other human beings across time and over seas--when we'd need that (trans-time-and-place) commiseration and encouragement the most.
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One of my favorite creative writing mentors, Shawn Coyne, says in his Writing Grid podcast (paraphrasing here), that since the dawn of time, people have used "stories" as the tools we need to cope with the challenges in life. We read how a favorite protagonist (Lizzie Bennet, possibly?) deals with a specific difficulty, and it gives us ideas of how to resolve our own problems when they arise at a later date.

So, I hope you might find six excellent children’s book recommendations handy and useful to enjoy each month on the first Friday with your children, grandchildren, or spouse (they may or may not fit in your lap).

​Or you can enjoy these six books in the bliss of solitude. Some of my happiest reading memories are of discovering middle grade books as a lone single adult, while sitting on the N-line of the NYC subway. (That’s a pretty happy commute if you've got Susan Cooper's Over Sea, Under Stone in hand.)

And in honor of my half dozen children who teach me each day how to be a better person, and my crazy six passions: Family, Art, Writing, Nature, Cooking, and Books, enjoy the half-a-dozen recommended titles in tomorrow's post...

​P.S. Now tell me what your favorite picture book title is in the comments below. Happy reading, dear bookworm friends!

-Emily