A. O. Scott, film critic for The New York Times asks what it takes to entertain a child. Does it take 3-D, talking animals or CGI? Mr. Scott sees children’s pleasures as much simpler and describes the 34-minute long, 1956 film The Red Ballon as “a masterpiece of simplicity.”
Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and caldron bubble.
Fillet of a fenny snake,
In the caldron boil and bake;
Eye of newt and toe of frog,
Wool of bat and tongue of dog,
Adder's fork and blind-worm's sting,
Lizard's leg and howlet's wing,
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.
Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and caldron bubble.
Cool it with a baboon's blood,
Then the charm is firm and good.
The Random House Book of Poetry for Children (1983)
Photograph: Yasuhiro Ishimoto
Melissa Dixsondesign year:2008
Dear President Obama,
Here is a list of the first 10 things you should do as president:
— Chandler Browne, age 12, Chicago
Sotheby's London announced that on 17 December, 2008, it will offer for sale the finest single collection of E.H. Shepard’s original drawings for Winnie-the-Pooh books to come to auction. Prior to the sale, highlights will be exhibited in New York on 3-6 December before being exhibited in London on 12 December.
Featured in the sale is ‘Winnie-the-Pooh lived in a forest all by himself under the name of Sanders’ (est. £40,000-60,000), which accompanies the chapter in Winnie-the-Pooh in which Pooh is first introduced.
The printed books include a first American edition presentation copy of Winnie-the Pooh (E.P. Dutton & Company, 1926, est. £20,000-30,000). The edition is inscribed by the author to E.H. Shepard, together with an eight-line verse inscription, and additionally signed by the illustrator. This highly important and personal gift from Milne to Shepard reveals the author's sense of debt to his illustrator:
When I am gone,
Let Shepard decorate my tomb,
And put (if there is room)
Two pictures on the stone:
Piglet, from page a hundred and eleven,
And Pooh and Piglet walking (157) . . .
And Peter, thinking that they are my own,
Will welcome me to Heaven.
via: artdaily
Drawing Babar at The Morgan Library and Museum, brings to life one of the most treasured children’s stories of all time—that of a baby elephant, cruelly orphaned, who has adventures in civilization and eventually returns to the forest to become king of all the elephants. On view are original illustrations and manuscript material from The Story of Babar the Little Elephant (1931), the first book by Jean de Brunhoff, and Babar’s Cousin: That Rascal Arthur (1946), the first book written and illustrated entirely by Laurent de Brunhoff, Jean’s son.
Drawing Babar: Early Drafts and Watercolors September 19, 2008, through January 4, 2009
also check out: FREEING THE ELEPHANTS What Babar brought. By Adam Gopnik in The September 22nd issue of The New Yorker.
My sons Arthur, 5, and Gustav, 3, are obsessed with the New York City subway system. They can barely sit through an episode of “Sesame Street.” But when we go for aimless subway joy rides on the weekends, they sit like little angels, devoutly calling out the names of every station for hours. People often ask me for directions in the subway. Even though I know my way around rather well, I still have to defer to Arthur very often. Yet it seems people don’t trust the advice of a preschooler. They should.
link: The Boys and the Subway
