Librarians and Teachers: Please Help!

Hello book people! I am sending a call-out to librarians, teachers, and others who are versed in what different ages of humans like to read. I would appreciate your help so much!

People are assuming Poetry by the Iguana is for an audience who actually would not appreciate it, tiny children, and so I need to know who its audience actually should be. I will gift my book to you so you can please help me with this, because it's a bit frustrating seeing it go to little persons who won't care, and ignored by those who would like it.

I'm asking because for some reason, on its Amazon page, Iguana's poetry is being bought by people who "also bought" picture books and really cute, adorable stories for very young children. While I didn't write it with any age in mind, I do understand why people assume it is for small children - I mean, usually anything from the point of view of a critter is for tiny beings, ones who normally can't read yet on their own. And I do love seeing those cute books next to my own, it just makes me smile!  :)  It just isn't...where it should be.

What concerns me is that I think aside from the first chapter, most of the poems would go completely over the heads of people so young. Plus, at this stage it isn't a picture book, because it is an ebook, although I guess people are reading it out loud to their kids.

I love to think of Poetry for the Iguana as being for tiny children, but I'm not sure that is who should read it (or have it read to them). Iguana is a character in a much larger story. The larger story, written in prose, will be more for kids than anyone else, but kids who can read on their own.

So could any book-people and kid-people help me out? I really need to know who the actual audience is for my little book! Thank you so much! You can reach me either through leaving a comment here, or go to my email zantippyskiphop@gmail.com or twitter @ZantippySkiphop, and I will gift it. Then please let me know what your recommendations are! Thank you so so so much!

Aesop's Fables

Oh my goodness! I woke up today to Aesop's Fables as the Book of the Day! When I was little, starting around 6 or 7, this was my second favourite book, after Carlo Collodi's Pinocchio. I often kept them right on top of each other. That may seem strange, given that I said in the last post how I hate stories with lessons, and of course Aesop's Fables are nothing but lessons! On top of that, I hardly ever agreed with the point. Why should a tortoise be dashed on rocks just because he was pleased someone thought he was the King of Tortoises (The Tortoise and the Ducks)? Why should a donkey be punished for trying to lighten his load (The Ass and the Load of Salt). Why shouldn't a jackdaw dream of being an eagle (The Eagle and the Jackdaw)? It seemed to me like the message often was, "keep your place".

Then sometimes a fable of compassion and consideration jumped out (The Boys and the Frogs). I liked that message, but the lesson wasn't the point of reading these fables. I read them in spite of the lesson in each one.

Why did I love them so very much? And still do? Maybe it is how everything is filled with consciousness, like in The Oak and the Reeds, where all the characters are plant-life. Or maybe it is because all the characters are usually animals (I love critters!), with the occasional mean human critter in the guise of a boy or farmer. The complexities of human interactions are put into the lives of animals, where the petty actions of humans do not belong, and this was obvious even to me at 7. It makes the "lessons" seem ridiculous.

The Fables to me seem to put all the inane over-judging of humans into perspective. Of course we should prepare for the winter, but we should be able to also play, instead of the dichotomy in The Ants and the Grasshopper. At 7, I believed that people bent on evil could still be talked into compassion, unlike the Wolf in The Wolf in the Lamb, but now know that is often not the case. But I also now know that it does sometimes happen, that sometimes a closed heart can be open by the right person.

I guess I love the Fables because they takes this false world of this-or-that, black-and-white, with-us-or-against-us and show one of the characters in such a situation coming to a terrible end - something that doesn't have to be. It shows the whole dichotomous mindset as being ludicrous, a mindset we aren't bound to. We can choose to think and feel and act in a multilayered way.

Plus, the Fables are full of critters.

You can read Aesop's Fables here:

Aesop's Fables at the International Children's Digital Library

The International Children's Library

The International Children's Digital Library has quickly become one of my very favourite web sites EVER. It is literally an online library for children's books, is VERY interactive and a lot of fun. You can read books by flipping through them in a web file, not pdf. It's fun even doing the search for books!

The ICDL has a "Book of the Day", which is a kids' book you can read on an active web page, like the others, instead of in pdf form. If you have Google as your home page, in the iGoogle format, you can add the ICDL as a gadget. I have that, and wake up every morning to a new children's book with my coffee! Very happy :)

Today's BotD is the 1903 picture book, Humpty Dumpty, located here:

Denslow's Humpty Dumpty

Old children's books are so curious in how they almost always seem to have the goal of teaching kids lessons, which this picture book, Humpty Dumpty does. From the summary:

" The story of Humpty Dumpty's son and how he avoids making the same mistakes his father made."

I really do not like stories-as-lessons at all, but seen in the perspective of history, it is a very interesting thing to me. It is one reason why I LOVE Mark Twain so much, because he hated that too and made a point of very much not teaching kids lessons, and maybe even encouraging them to go afield. :D

This Humpty Dumpty is very cheerful, and I really like how Humpty Dumpty's son is given life and how he chooses to have a happy life. Maybe it's inescapable in almost any story to have a lesson because our minds are geared to learn from our, or others', mistakes. I guess it is just the "Sunday School" tone that a lot of kids books had in the past that can get tiring, but I do love it from an historical perspective - and from the perspective that people today still try to move kids' lit towards that.

Please go to this site! If you love kids' books, you will love it there. You can also help translate children's books without speaking the other language. They have a mission to help connect people on the planet through children's books. Be sure to register before doing this because that is interactive also, but you can do it without registering and is a very uncomplicated process! Have fun! :) Read at the   ICDL

Storytelling, and a Wonderful Quote by Philip Pullman

I knew that Philip Pullman would be one of my favorite all-time writers when, after reading His Dark Materials, I saw on his website that he also writes picture books. His Dark Materials is complex and layered and disturbing, with a core of happiness in Lyra. Picture books, on the other hand, are thought of by most people as happy pages for children who haven't learned how to read, simple and vapid.

To me, picture books are profound poetry. You can see that the ones who write and illustrate them also feel this. Children get them. Grown ups who still have the imaginative part of their soul get them. So I am always surprised when the world of adult literature tends to view children's literature as not very meaty. Frankly, it makes me not want to read adult literature, because I figure that most adult lit, like most adults, have lost their imaginative core.

The way that Philip Pullman tells his stories in prose is something I admire so much. To think of his imaginative worlds told in the tighter bubbles of story-verse, where every word has a weight, felt to me like a colorful Beowulf.

I'm so glad he is on the planet! A future post will be specifically to talk about his picture books.

As said by Philip Pullman: "The meaning of a story emerges in the meeting between the words on the page and the thoughts in the reader's mind. So when people ask me what I meant by this story, or what was the message I was trying to convey in that one, I have to explain that I'm not going to explain.
Anyway, I'm not in the message business; I'm in the 'Once upon a time' business."