Almost everyday there have been a few books to round out the day and there are have been a few occasions where my little extrovert disappears on his own to a quiet space with a book. I think the habit has been formed, though there enough bleary-eyed, first thought of the day requests to watch TV or something on the iPad to keep me vigilant about ensuring the habit keeps rooted.
The evening bedtime routine with books, invariably involves him promising that he'll turn in after one more book and then one more and so on. Whether we are reading his books or those we hoard each week from the library, I am left to wonder at times what it really takes to publish a children's book. There are so many books about fire trucks, fire stations or firemen, that have the exact same plot that I really wonder what sets a prospective kid lit author apart from the others. After pouring through a book of truck photos or a story lionizing the limited things that trucks or construction equipment actually do, I shrug at the kid lit industry and wonder if it is all an inside game. When bored with those books and their premature product placement by Tonka, I drifted into the tones and pomposity of a radio ad pitchman. Gabriel responded with the first furrowing of his young brow. I've let up, unwillingly.
Apart from those books, there are my wife's well-worn and loved collection of Dr. Seuss books which we have complemented with the brilliant posthumous works that have come out in recent years. There has been great relief and pleasure in the discovery of current writers.
I've been lucky enough to have friends recommend the likes of Canadians Melanie Watt and Jon Klassen, but the great discovery in the kid lit section of the store has been the work of Nick Bland, who has in about 10 years assembled a body of work that I have quickly come to trust and adore. My wife and I can recite the entirety of Bland's The Very Cranky Bear from heart in the dark as the concluding tale for the night before putting Gabriel down. Cranky Bear has the depth of theme that is missing from so much of the other kid lit that is aimed at the appetite boys or girls have for the items that fill their respective toy boxes. I know that there is a lot of Young Adult lit that will not match the depth that Nick Bland has etched into the few hundred words he carefully penned for this story and the subsequent ones with the Cranky Bear.
Beyond that brilliant series of five "bear" books are other paths that Nick Bland has followed about incompetent monsters, fathers, pigs and hugs (my non-Bear favorite) that have further confirmed his talent as a big-hearted, wise and ambitious author willing to give kids a little more or require it of them.
With that, I say a resounding, "Thank you," to Nick Bland and look to compile more of his brilliant work. He will emerge as an author to join Seuss and Sendak in the masterful blending of poetry, humour and simple wisdom.
And if you want the kid's point of view, Gabriel's one word review is, "Again."
