In today's entry, I posted a children's book quiz. Do you read children's books? How many of the questions can you answer?

-- Kymm Zuckert (hedgehog@hedgehog.net), July 30, 2000

Answers

number five is from the saturdays - is that by elizabeth enright? i think so. number seven is the secret garden. i recognize number six but can't come up with a title to save my life. but now i'm curious about the rest of them! tell us the answers.

-- aggie (donkara@carleton.edu), July 31, 2000.

Let's see, #3 should be an Edward Eager, probably Knight's Castle. (I just cheated and loooked it up, and it is.) And #6 is Homer Price? And #7 is indeed The Secret Garden, and is #8 The Boxcar Children?

Now that I think of it I did read The Saturdays, but obviously it didn't stick. I still read tons of children's books, but obviously not the same ones as the quiz's composer.

-- Jessie (sorokin@alum.mit.edu), July 31, 2000.

1. Beverly Cleary, The Luckiest Girl
2. J.D. Salinger, Catcher in the Rye
3. Edward Eager, ? (thanks, Jessie, that would have tormented me!)
4. ?
5. Elizabeth Enright, The Saturdays
6. Robert McCloskey, Homer Price. Or The Cider House Rules.
7. Frances Hodgeson Burnett, The Secret Garden
8. E. Nesbit, The Railway Children. There was another book by someone else called The Boxcar Children, wasn't there?

Kymm, be merciful. Nine and especially 10 are going to make me smack my forehead with shame.

-- Lisa Houlihan (lisa@penguindust.com), July 31, 2000.

I was toast on all but 7 & 8, but...in the "pain in the ass" entry, you referred to a book in which the sheep were always startled by everything, and now I am *dying* to know what it is so please, do you remember, or does anyone else?

-- Dorothy Rothschild (dorothyr@spies.com), July 31, 2000.

The book with the sheep is one of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy ones. I think it is not in the first two, but one of the last three. I know that isn't too helpful, but I know for sure it is from Douglas Adams :) I just reread the series a couple of weeks ago so that is why it is fresh in my mind.

-- Kate Dougherty (ceithern@yahoo.com), July 31, 2000.

I'm pretty sure the startled sheep were in The Little Prince by Antoine De Saint-Exupery, the only thing I can still read in French.

Oh, and all I got were the gimmees.

-- Amanda (missdufour@hotmail.com), July 31, 2000.

I don't remember any bits about sheep being startled in The Little Prince, but that doesn't mean one isn't in there. I do remember a bit about sheep being startled in, I believe, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish, the "fourth book in the Hitchiker's trilogy."

The bit about the sheep is in the opening of the first chapter, when some sheep are startled by a spaceship which lands on Earth, Mark 2, a ship from which Arthur Dent disembarks.

However, there isn't anything in that passage about speaking with the sheep and finding out how dull their conversation is, as Kymm originally suggested in her entry. There is, though, a passage in, I believe, Life, the Universe, and Everything, book three in the same trilogy, wherein Arthur Dent, having learned to fly, also learns birdspeak, and finds out how dull birds' conversations are. That they're about nothing but airspeeds and vectors and such, and having learned to understand the birds, Arthur does his best to ignore their incessant chattering.

In response to Kymm's actual question above, I didn't get any of the opening lines, though I did have a vague recollection that #2 could be Catcher in the Rye.

-- Michael (mwalsh@lynx.neu.edu), July 31, 2000.

It's definitely Hitchhiker's Guide, Caoimhe was the first to write me with the info, and I knew that it was right. I'm sure that I got the talking to the animals thing mixed up with something else, Jack Chalker or Black Beauty or something.

And Catcher in the Rye isn't a children's book!

-- Kymm Zuckert (kymmz1@yahoo.com), July 31, 2000.

It isn't?

-- Michael (mwalsh@lynx.neu.edu), July 31, 2000.

i got most of 'em, but then, i'm a librarian, and i work with teenagers, so it'd be kinda' sad i i didn't know and love the books. the saturdays and homer price were favs. of mine as a kid, too...

-- nicole (nicolemrw@go.com), July 31, 2000.

The only quote I got was #7, from The Secret Garden, and the only reason I got that was because I know the musical. I don't remember reading much children's fiction. When I was a child I read mainly biographies and stuff about the space program. It wasn't until I discovered The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew books at the age of twelve that I really started reading fiction, and then it was pretty much mysteries of all levels, from Encyclopedia Brown to Ellery Queen. Though the occasional fantasy/sci-fi book made it into my hands (lovedlovedloved A Wrinkle in Time).

That I was a very odd child shouldn't be a surprise to anyone.

-- Carol (webgal@ordinarygoddess.com), July 31, 2000.

I don't read the books that I loved as a child now, because I invariably discover that they aren't nearly as wonderful as they were when I was little. One reason is that I have far more exacting, hyper- critical standards for fiction now than I did then (not that this is a point of pride with me. I would love it if I could be entertained by the latest Steve King -- I mean, the guy writes a thousand pages a year, so I'd never lack for quality entertainment.)

Another reason, I'm afraid, is that I had a far more vivid imagination as a child than I do now. I'll open a book that I loved twenty years ago, remembering how fully-realized the characters were, and how reading a passage about a riverbank or carnival was just like being there yourself, and I'll discover that all those details were things that I'd filled in myself, in my little primary-school head. So I've learned not to try to revisit my old favorites -- I'd rather have them live in my head as I remember them than as they really are.

Of course, there are some kiddie books that *never* disappoint! _Stuart Little_ by E.B. White, for example, or anything, anything by Daniel Pinkwater, esp. _Alan Mendelssohn, the Boy from Mars_, _The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death_, _Slaves of Speigel_, and _Lizard Music_. If I get a secondhand invitation to a birthday party and I don't know the guest of honor, my standard gift is a copy of _Lizard Music_, because no matter how old or young or odd or normal or gay or straight the birthday boy or girl is, s/he will appreciate Pinkwater.

(Don't see any point in posting my quiz answers, since we'll supposedly learn them all today regardless.)

-- Kim Rollins (kimrollins@yahoo.com), July 31, 2000.

No, I'm going to wait until tomorrow to post the answers, because I posted the questions so late last night. Also, the writer of the quiz hasn't given the answers yet and there are two that I don't know!

-- Kymm Zuckert (kymmz1@yahoo.com), July 31, 2000.

Kim,

Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death is one of my favorite books in the world! Usually people look at me like, "What the fuck?" when I mention the title, so I'm always thrilled to find the (rare) fan. Yay! Woo! Pinkwater forever!

-- Monique (mo@mopie.com), August 01, 2000.

Mo, a lot of his work was out of print for several years, but in 1997 Farrar Straus Giroux compiled _Alan Mendelson_, _Slaves_, _Snarkout_, _The Last Guru_, and _Young Adult Novel_ into a single volume called _5 Novels_. Now a new generation of kids can get some Pinkwater action. One of the things I like about the compilation is that instead of critical reviews on the jacket and overleaf, the publishers printed excerpts of letters that Pinkwater received from fans. _4 Fantastic Novels_ was just published last month and contains the second Snarkout book, which I didn't even know *existed*.

At PAWS, the animal shelter where I work, I saw a dog-training guide called SUPERPUPPY on our reference shelf, and the name on the spine was Pinkwater. Could it be...? Yup. I'm still discovering new stuff of his. (If you're looking on Amazon, check under all permutations of his name: Daniel, Daniel M., Daniel Manus, and D. Manus. I don't know why he does that. It's not like Fitzgerald published using F. Scott, Francis S., etc.)

-- Kim Rollins (kimrollins@yahoo.com), August 01, 2000.

And here are the answers!

1. "One Saturday morning early in September Shelley Latham sat at the breakfast table with her mother and father."

"The Luckiest Girl" by Beverly Cleary.

2. "I don't know just why I'm telling you all this."

"Seventeenth Summer" by Maureen Daly. 3. "It happened just the other day, to a boy named Roger."

"Knight's Castle" by Edward Eager.

4. "The way Mama could peel apples!"

"The Moffats" by Eleanor Estes.

5. ""It would have to rain today,' said Rush, lying flat on his back in front of the fire."

"The Saturdays" by Elizabeth Enright.

6. "About two miles outside of Centerburg where route 56 meets route 56A there lives a boy named Homer."

"Homer Price" by Robert McCloskey.

7. "When Mary Lennox was sent to Misselthwaite Manor to live with her uncle everyone said she was the most disagreeable-looking child ever seen."

"The Secret Garden" by Frances Hodgson Burnett.

8. "They were not railway children to begin with."

"The Railway Children" by E. Nesbit.

9. "Just a few lines to open the record of my sophomore year."

"Betsy In Spite Of Herself" by Maud Hart Lovelace (that one was kind of a joke, because it's a Maud Hart Lovelace list that this was posted to, so of course everyone got that one right!)

10. "The first week of August hangs at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning."

"Tuck Everlasting" by Natalie Babbitt

-- Kymm Zuckert (kymmz1@yahoo.com), August 01, 2000.

Kim again-

I have Lizard Music, Alan Mendehlson, and both Snarkout books. I also bought the collection of five novels, but I didn't know there was a new one with four more! Good to know!

-- Monique (mo@mopie.com), August 02, 2000.

i was just wondering if i could get a critical review on Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbit before the end of the day. Today is May 8, 2001.

It would be very appreciated,

tehnk you

-- Bob Douglass Sukit (jdb_2005@hotmail.com), May 08, 2001.