Even if you don't know me very well, you still probably know that I'm not the biggest fan of children. I have 3 younger cousins (no siblings) but we were all born within a few years of each other and so I had none of that "here, watch your cousin for the evening while I talk to your uncle for 4 hours" experience. (My mother did - she mutters that there wasn't a family gathering that she didn't get spit up on at least once. She wanted to start wearing a tarp but my grandmother wouldn't allow it.) I also worked in retail, which is as close to an effective abstinence education program as we have in this nation. Watching your children is not the fitting room attendant's job, people. (That said, I have great respect for parents who actually teach their children to be well-behaved and quiet - I guess I'm kind of old school with the "seen and not heard" bit, which has been lost on many parents these days.)
But even if they were raving little terrors (they're not), there are 4 children I love unconditionally and will even let them put their sticky fingers on my nice clothing - Caitlin, Matthew, Jessica and Olivia. They're my nieces and nephew and they're wonderful. I love being "Aunt Sarah". I know, it surprises me too.
But - getting to my point, finally - I also have to get them Christmas gifts and I'm starting to worry. As I wander through the children's section of the bookstore, dodging perilous sticky fingers and snotty noses all the way, I have to wonder where all the decent authors went. Is there some 15 year long luau in the South Pacific that I missed? Surely - surely! - we can do better than "Do Unto Otters: A Book About Manners", which was chosen as Amazon's best picture book for 2007! Or "Psst!", which aside from its questionable name has drawings that look like they came straight out of MAD magazine. I am completely freaked out.
Perhaps my mother and all of my family and family friends were just fortuitous or educated shoppers in my youth, but I had huge amounts of fantastic picture books. Usually they had gorgeous artwork and if they didn't, they always had a great story. And while I'm aware that some of them - "Goodnight Moon" and "Where the Wild Things Are", for example - are much older than I am and were culled from the sea of mediocrity, I would have thought some talent remained. But it seems that the greats of my youth are fading away, either into retirement or into tedium. 1986's "The Stranger" was the last good book that Chris Van Allsburg did, for example. It was so fantastic, maybe he just didn't have any more left in him.
*Sigh* Perhaps I'm being too cynical. Perhaps I should just lower myself to get Dora the Explorer books and even venture into movies and toys - although Lord knows they don't need any more of that. Perhaps I'm still not over the questionable quality of the 7th Harry Potter book. I don't know. I do know that I'm glad that my parents kept my old picture books and that I've already given copies of all those classics to my nieces and nephew - it's old genius, but it still works for now.
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Depending on how old the munchkins are, Zen Shorts might work. It's adorable, and features a panda named Stillwater. I still want a copy on my bookshelf, but apparently I'm too old to convince my mum to buy me picture books. The last time I was at the kids' book store, I also saw a cute book about an elephant that everyone but the protaganist claimed didn't exist, leading to much hilarity. And you could always try some of Neil Gaiman's kids books - The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish, Wolves in the Walls... those are supposed to be excellent. *shrugs*
J
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