August 3, 2024

In some ways, I am tempted to call this "What's The Box?" Number 6 has nothing written on it, with only the stamp of "Everything Fiesta." It is a square box, probably the smallest of all the book boxes. I have no idea what "Everything Fiesta" is, and only through a Google Search do I learn that it is a factory-direct outlet in Flatwoods, W.V. While we have stopped in Flatwoods the few times we drive through the southern part of West Virginia, I am sure we never bought anything from there. So, the only mystery here is what gift did someone give us from "Everything Fiesta."

Inside the box is everything Lincoln, as this represents one of several purges of Lincoln's books. And it is a reminder to me that in many ways, kids' books and young teens' books are infinitely more interesting, at least if you judge a book by its cover, than what adults read.

It's amazing how there seem to be two extremes for Lincoln's childhood books within this box: the silly ones, primarily picture books, meant for, I assume, toddlers, and then the rather serious teen-focused ones. Of the 34 books in the box, 8 are these picture books, most about animals. I am reminded of "Bad Kitty," "The First Dog," "Diary of A Worm," "Runny Babbit," and "The Three Javelinas." The illustrations are fantastic, making me wonder how well the illustrators got paid as compared to the writers, who might have had to dredge up a couple hundred words to become a "published writer."

However, my favorite, long forgotten, is the one non-animal book (assuming we can agree that humans aren't animals in this sense): "It's Hard To Be Five: Learning How To Work My Control Panel," Jamie Lee Curtis's (with Laura Cornell illustrating) simply perfect analysis of controlling emotions. I love Jamie Lee Curtis, beyond obvious reasons, because she branched out in her career into areas like this. However, I swear she missed her opportunity to expand her "control panel" series. She probably could have written one for 10-year, maybe even 5-year, periods. "It's Hard To Be Fifteen" could focus on the ways to diminish middle-school bully interactions (more on that in a bit), while "It's Hard To Be Twenty-Five" could focus on the demands of expectations to be married and start a family. Don't even get me started on "It's Hard To Be Sixty-Two," with the challenges of trying to get to retirement while biting your tongue in work meetings.

Seriously, Jamie Lee, podcasts, graphic novels, political stances? Couldn't you have just stuck with this great gimmick? You could still have made Halloween Ends, a much less scary proposition than the assumption that we all manage our control panels after childhood.

However, back to the topic at hand: children's literature. The box has 26 young teen books, a small segment of both Lincoln's collections and even smaller segment of the publishing empire that is young adult/teen fiction. I find several in the "Warriors" series, several in the Rick Riordan canon, although one from the Percy Jackson series and one from the Kane series, several in the 39 Clues series, and a few in the "Scary Stories" series. None of these seem vaguely interesting in terms of navigating real life.

Children's literature was the one void in my literary education. Now that I have retired, I regret not sitting in an SMC faculty member's Children's Literature course. What is it about the genre that is so appealing? I am sure there are studies about why a book series can do so well with adolescents/young teens. All these warriors, all these clues, and all of these wimpy kids, couldn't survive into adulthood like Harry Potter, or a bunch of hobbits, which bridge the abyss between teenager and adult.

More significantly, children's literature seems to eschew the pretensions that can doom adult fiction. I can look through 20 of these boxes and probably not find a title as enticing as "Al Capone Does My Shirts” or as accurate as "Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life." Noooo, as we have seen, I am stumbling upon "Arrowsmith," "The Bostonians," "Bleak House," and "Burnt Bones." No wonder most kids dread growing up.

Full series here.