Leonard Marcus

Between the lines: children's book critic Leonard Marcus to visit city

PUBLISHED : Tuesday, 20 May, 2014, 9:39am

UPDATED : Tuesday, 20 May, 2014, 9:39am

Annie Holife@scmp.com

Leonard Marcus is a living encyclopedia of children's literature who shares his knowledge through the many books that he has written, analysing the authors and artists who have created some of the genre's greatest works. He has reviewed children's books for The Washington Post and The New York Times, judged multiple book awards and curated exhibitions.

In honour of the 50th anniversary ofThe Phantom Tollbooth, Marcus created an annotated edition with insights from author Norton Juster as well as Marcus himself. In my recent conversation with Marcus, he described The Phantom Tollbooth as "the Alice in Wonderland of our time - a book of amazing verbal inventiveness and a work of the most playful kind of philosophical reflection". The Annotated Phantom Tollbooth, packed with so much commentary, greatly amplifies the experience of reading one of the greatest children's books of the past half a century, and one of my childhood favourites.

Marcus says "in a classic children's book, you will typically find a character at its centre with whom children can form a strong and immediate emotional connection. You will also find the art and storytelling are well matched to each other and to a child's comprehension."

He will explore some of those emotional connections developed in early childhood (between child and family, child and friends, child and self) in a talk, "Children's Books and the Ladder of Years", which he will present next month in Hong Kong. I will attend with plenty of paper and ink, as I expect to be busy scribbling recommended children's book titles, as well as gaining a fuller understanding of books that I've already read.

Another talk is titled "What Makes a Great Picture Book Great?" According to Marcus, famed children's book author Maurice Sendak built on his vast knowledge of the history of illustration to create the magical worlds of his books.

Marcus advises says it's important for budding picture book creators to immerse themselves in the best picture books of the past.

"They should concentrate on learning their craft and always ask themselves, 'What story do I want to tell?' Success usually follows from hard work that is rooted in a deeply personal vision."

Marcus believes that "an essential qualification for any children's book writer or illustrator is a vivid emotional memory of childhood, that is, the ability to recall what it felt like to be a child".

Magic results when picture book creators transform those early memories into stories and images to which readers can universally relate.

• For more information on Leonard Marcus' talks on June 11-12, visitwww.lovetolearn.asia.

Annie Ho is board chairwoman of Bring Me a Book Hong Kong, a nonprofit organisation dedicated to improving children's literacy by reading aloud to them. Visit breingmeabook.org.hk

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as Lessons from the master

Dinosaur Museum

Between the lines: children of all ages love to read about dinosaurs

PUBLISHED : Tuesday, 25 February, 2014, 11:32am

UPDATED : Tuesday, 25 February, 2014, 11:32am

Annie Holife@scmp.com

My daughters and I joined a dozen of their friends on a visit to the Legends of the Giant Dinosaurs exhibition at the Hong Kong Science Museum during the last school holidays. Our expectations were low but, to our surprise, it was a world-class educational experience that kept the group entertained for an entire morning.

There were robotic dinosaurs and a "petting zoo" where the children took turns prodding a stick at an animated Agilisaurus that responded with short forward lunges, swishing its tail or baring its teeth.

Children love to learn dinosaur names, and this point has not been lost on book publishers

The reconstruction of a fossil dig showed the important work done by palaeontologists. Scattered throughout were interactive games and electronic presentations designed to appeal to tech-savvy children.

Dozens of dinosaur fossils, including a replica of the 30-metre-long Daxiatitan that was discovered on the mainland, made up the finale.

Shaheen Bilgrami's Amazing Dinosaur Discovery is the perfect book to prepare ahead of this outing. It tells the story of Tom, a boy who loves dinosaurs, visiting a museum with his father. The book is arranged with the left-hand side showing pages from Tom's scrapbook to provide readers with trivia about each dinosaur.

The dinosaur fossils are on the right-hand pages, with clever acetate sliding panels. Pull out the panel and the fossilised bones are transformed into a full-colour creature from 100 million years ago in its natural environment.

"Bones. Bones. We look for bones. We look for the bones of dinosaurs." The work of palaeontologists is simply explained in Byron Barton's Bones, Bones, Dinosaur Bones.

Progressing from setting out to dig for bones, to wrapping and packing them for assembly at the museum, this picture book uses bold colours to help young children learn about dinosaurs as well as the fossils they see at museums.

One consistent factor about dinosaur books is that no matter the genre, whether fiction such as Jane Yolen's How Do Dinosaurs Say Good Night? or a non-fiction resource book such as Bob Barner's Dinosaur Bones, they all come with a back page containing an illustrated list of dinosaur names.

This doesn't happen with other animals. Picture books about birds, butterflies and bears rarely include an introduction to the different members of their species.

The exception to this dinosaur book phenomenon is Dinosaur! by Peter Sis. Why? Because it is a wordless picture book. The clean line drawings show the delightful experience of one boy's bath time when he takes his dinosaur bath toy into the tub with him.

Children seem to love learning the names of dinosaurs, and this point has not been lost on book publishers.

As I re-acquaint myself with those wonderfully multi-syllabic dinosaur names, my mind returns to Land of the Lost, the 1970s television series that was the genesis of my fascination with dinosaurs, and provoked my interest in science fiction and time travel.

Another indication of my old age is discovering that the large dinosaur that used to be called a Brontosaurus is now known as an Apatosaurus.

Legends of the Giant Dinosaurs, Hong Kong Science Museum, TST East until Apr 9

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as Take some big steps back in time

A Wrinkle in Time; When You Reach Me; Where the Wild Things Are

Fond memories linger despite wrinkles in time
BETWEEN THE LINES Annie Ho (familypost@scmp.com) May 06, 2012
In my quest to introduce the best quality storybooks to my children, I've rediscovered some favourite book titles from my childhood. Now I have amassed a humble collection of books I read and loved years ago. My parents didn't read aloud to me and I didn't become fluent in English until after we emigrated to Canada when I was seven, so I never read those early classics like The Very Hungry Caterpillar or The Cat in the Hat. As a result, my favourite books are stories that my daughters will probably not start to enjoy until they are in primary school. One of my first purchases was A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle, science fiction for junior readers at its best. Re-reading it brought me back to those wonderful upper primary years in Mrs Taylor's class. Every Tuesday and Thursday, I would gather with a half-dozen other students to attend a special class that used an interdisciplinary approach to teaching. This class was very likely modelled on the International Baccalaureate programme, which didn't exist in Canada until I was in high school. We worked on one class project per term and were taught maths, history, science and anthropology in that context. One of those projects was "Build a city of the future", in which we spent months creating architectural models, writing descriptions of the city we each envisioned (form of government, city planning, transport, family home life) and discussing our choices. In my future city, the residents teleported. I must have been reading A Wrinkle in Time and taken the idea from the book. From there on, I went through a phase of reading science fiction and fantasy; one that sticks in my memory is a story by Ray Bradbury about a child who has moved to Venus and is locked in a closet by classmates on the one day every seven years when it stops raining and the sun comes out. I didn't read science fiction as an adult until I re-read A Wrinkle in Time. Then I learned about the new book by Rebecca Stead in the young fiction category that had just come out. What prompted me to immediately obtain a copy of When You Reach Me was a book review describing it as a story that "pays homage to A Wrinkle in Time". When You Reach Me is about Miranda, an 11-year-old girl living in New York City. Two incidents happen to her at the beginning of the story: her best friend is punched by a random kid on the way home from school, and she receives a cryptic message about her lost spare key. These two incidents end up being intertwined, and Stead spins a yarn inspired by A Wrinkle in Time. In fact, A Wrinkle in Time is Miranda's favourite book, and she carries it with her wherever she goes. It is of no surprise that When You Reach Me won many awards, including the 2010 Newbery Award. A wonderful story inspired by another book is Dave Eggers' The Wild Things, loosely based on Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are. In this case, quot;inspired" means taking a 30-page children's picture book and fleshing it out into a 300-page adventure for Max, the main character, that includes divorced parents, an older teenage sister and many new characters on the island where the beasts live. One of the hardest things to do when you write for junior readers is use the right language to communicate a young adult's point of view. While Stead does a better job than Eggers in finding that exasperated tone of innocent but all-knowing youth, their complex, multilayered stories will appeal to children and grown-ups alike, especially those of us who remember what it was like being on the cusp of adolescence. Annie Ho is a board governor of Bring Me A Book Hong Kong bringmeabook.org.hk a non-profit organisation devoted to improving children's literacy