132 years of great children's books

I'm still not quite recovered from the massive amount of research I did on this article... but my column on SFGate.com today is "From 'Black Beauty' to 'The Underneath': 132 years of great children's books about animals":

That's the potential great children's books have: to influence how we see the world as adults. The best children's books about animals also make us think about science and nature, and our place in the natural world. They teach us compassion for other living creatures, including other people, by making us care about both realistic and anthropomorphic animals in the stories we read. Books about animals and nature expose children, most of whom grow up in cities, to ways of life they will only ever know in the pages of a book - to farmlands and countryside, fields and forests. Even children who never ride anything more exciting than the school bus can race the Piebald horse with Velvet Brown, struggle to survive with young Alec Ramsey and the Black Stallion, or believe they, too, could tame a half-wild horse like Flicka.

I created two reading lists, one of classic children's animal books and another of books that may one day be considered classics.

My favorite rediscovered childhood book? Hands down, "Lassie Come-Home," which was much, much better and more complex than I realized when I read it as a young girl:

Forget the television shows, the films, and the marketing hype. It's in the pages of this book, and only there, that you'll find the real Lassie.

It's also there that you'll find the most iconic story ever told about the loyalty and love between child and dog. Lassie belongs to a family struggling with poverty on a Yorkshire farm in Depression-era England. They're forced to sell their beautiful Collie to a wealthy nobleman when the father loses his job, but she keeps coming back to her boy, Joe. After the third time, the lord ships the dog to his estate in Scotland, but Lassie… well, you know the rest. She comes home.

I picked this book up at my local library a few days before I wrote this article, and read it for the first time in many years. I discovered two things: One, there are a number of abridgements and re-tellings of this story in print and on the shelves of bookstores and libraries; be very, very sure you're getting Knight's 1940 classic and not one of the imposters.

Two, you can take my hip cynic's card away forever, but this story deserves its lasting fame. When Lassie makes her last terrible journey home, and Joe realizes that it's not just that he wants Lassie back but that Lassie wants him back, it takes every bit of sentiment in this undeniably sentimental tale and turns it into something altogether different, and more authentic: one boy's sudden understanding of the power of the bond between human and dog, and the fact that the bond goes both ways. Every obstacle falls away before that simple power.

You'll cry until you get to it, but this story has a happy ending. If your child has never read it, or you haven't, or you've forgotten it, find it.

It's all here.

Comments

[Bev at Pet Care]

Christie--thanks for the post. I've been trying to figure out what to get my niece (who is dog-crazy). Lassie Come Home will make a GREAT Christmas present!!