A Child(s) Tale
It's that time of year when children's eyes turn especially bright and hopeful, what with all the lights and decorations, songs and fables, and traditional and religious services making the rounds. Hopeful eyes stare out from both orphans and charities alike, mimicking the colorful ads online and in magazines wanting to capture your eyes and dollars. But it is the children that truly capture our hearts more than ever, perhaps their eyes just mirrors of what our eyes saw so many years back... wonder and excitement and anticipation. Our adult eyes now seem to have shifted from what things we could open to what things we can now feast upon, but that child remains within us. So it was only natural that my eyes were drawn to A History of Children's Books, a massive undertaking which the authors limited to 100 books. Just staring at the title made me try to sum up what books I could remember as a child, the classic Fox in Socks by Dr. Seuss being one of them (to be fair, I heard the recorded version first and remember being fascinated that someone could speak so quickly and so fluently...my first challenge as a youngster to enter the world of tongue-twisters). The publisher's description of the children's books' history is a bit droll (A History of Children's Books in 100 Books takes a global perspective and traces the development of the genre from ancient stories, such as Aesop's Fables and the Indian Panchatantra, through the Puritan primers of the 17th century to the Harry Potter series and books as technology) but imagine trying to tackle such a field as authors, capturing the ancient tales on up to the modern tablet...how would you begin to compress such a field? But as I read more, I would be quite surprised.
One example came from this chapter on the Sumerians, their childhood readings pre-dating the Egyptians and others as evidenced by recovered cuneiform tablets (which have their own interesting history). Here's part of what it said: The Sumerians developed irrigation and started to plant crops and to utilize and domesticate animals...their ability to store an excess of food was the foundation of modern civilization that allowed other innovations to flourish: the population within their walled cities included tradesmen working in building, pottery, weaving and metalwork...The skills of reading and writing were not uniformly spread amongst the general population, but nor were they limited to the priests. The bureaucratic nature of Sumerian society meant that many "middle-class" boys learned to develop these skills in what were probably the earliest schools anywhere in the world...one early cunieform piece made in about 2500 BCE contains a lullaby in which a mother implores sleep to come to her ailing son...this lullaby, written over 4,000 years ago, still resonates with the hopes and concerns of all parents about their children.
I can't remember a time when my parents read a book to me, which may be more a fault of my early memory more than what actually happened. But on the other side, I've always been drawn to those scenes in movies where one or both parents sit down to "lull" their child to sleep with a quick reading from a book. Seems easy to do, that of writing a read-aloud book complete with overly elaborate illustrations and colors that seem to capture a child's imagination. It'd have large pages and even larger pictures, complete with somewhat crinkly paper that felt crisp to turn. Just pop into any library and see the shelves full of what eventually became the published dreams of early authors, from the mathematician Alan Alexander (A.A.) Milne (Winnie the Pooh) to the classic Swedish author Astrid Lindgren (Pippi Longstocking). When one looks back, one can seem to cover whatever was most popular in one's time or country. The Indian Panchatantra was (is) easily as popular as the Arabian Nights in the Arab world, but never quite made the transition to the West; much can likely be said about many western tales (Canterbury, Grimm and Aesop, which likely borrowed heavily from Arabic tales), their titles and popularity apparently heading in just one direction. But as I tried to dash off my own "sure thing" child's tale, I would discover just how difficult the process is, from finding an illustrator to finding a publisher (agents alone can take 6-12 months to answer back). Yes, there are that many people trying to publish their "sure thing" story for children (my friend has written 30 unique children's stories but is still trying to hook a publisher or agent).
Some years ago when I did publish a cartoon book (on --don''t laugh-- boogers), my illustrator would patiently listen to each idea, totally vivid in my mind but apparently not so much so in hers. Listen, she told me, I'm going to draw you two sketches for each idea, one being exactly how you're describing it and one being how I think you're meaning to describe it. By the third drawing or so, I had given her total free reign. It showed me that often a writer or artist or musician can be so good at one thing and so terrible at another. She was able to capture virtually everything in my head, even if it was different from what I though I was describing; like a good artist, she had chipped away the rough edges and polished the finished result to which I nodded my simple, misdirected and egotistical "exactly." A good producer and singer/actor will do that for a songwriter or screenwriter, bringing a song or film to life, germinating the seed...a child's book is born.
In reading about our surge to avoid overcrowding and thus become domesticated (the review of Against the Grain which appeared in the London Review of Books), it was pointed out how our human brains may have likely shrunk, if we are to follow the patterns of domesticated sheep vs. those in the wild. The brains of domesticated sheep are 24 per cent smaller than those of their wild counterparts, and they are less timid, which probably relates to changes in the limbic systems relating to emotional response. The rodents in the settlements underwent similar changes, indicating that some of these were a consequence of village life rather than human selection. The implication is that we should assume the same process in people: how did the brains, personalities and patterns of thought of Neolithic farmers differ from those of their hunter-gatherer ancestors? Was this a critical step towards the complete domestication of Homo? That didn't really bother me as much as what was said a bit later in the review: As Scott explains, the city-states were dependent on grain: wheat and barley in Mesopotamia, millet in China, maize in Mesoamerica. The reason is that cereals are easy to tax: they ripen at predictable times, the size of the harvest can easily be assessed, and the grain can be divided, transported and distributed in precisely measured rations by weight and volume. It is much more difficult to tax merchants who smuggle their goods, or to tax crops such as tubers that are hidden underground and can be dispersed throughout woodlands, or chickpeas and lentils, which have an extended ripening season. If the cereal farming takes place close to a river that can be used for bulk transportation, a potent power base can be established. That is what happened among the river and canal systems of Mesopotamia and Ancient China. Record-keeping naturally follows. Writing was used for this purpose in Mesopotamia for five hundred years before it was used for storytelling and poetry. Huge numbers of lists on clay tablets recording crops, yields and taxes have been recovered. It shows what we continue to view as important throughout history...taxation and record-keeping, all taking place 500 years before storytelling.
Thinking back to an earlier post on my visit to our friends' cabin, I mentioned our seeing three bright lights in the sky, their quick flash then a warp-like streak as they vanished. Some days later came the report that an asteroid had come close to our planet. Called Oumuamua by the astronomers at the University of Hawaii who first picked it up, author Nick Richardson in the same magazine said the name:...reportedly means ‘scout’, but which, according to the one Hawaiian dictionary I could access online, refers specifically to ‘the foremost soldier or the front line in battle’. The object was cigar-shaped, much like the craft in the book/film Arrival, and traveled far faster than anything we could manage (the fastest human object in space has been the Voyager 1 probe). I pray every day that super-intelligent aliens will come to earth and save us from self-destruction, so when an 800-metre-long cigar-shaped object was found to have hurtled into our solar system I felt a stirring of hope...Its speed and the direction of its orbit indicated that it had come from outside our solar system --making it the first object we’ve ever identified as an arrival from interstellar space-- and that it would eventually leave on its way towards the constellation of Pegasus. It was initially thought to be a comet, but soon reclassified as an asteroid: comets are icy rocks formed on the outskirts of solar systems and produce a tail of gas and dust when they fly close to the sun, but the cigar had no tail. It is also deep red in colour, the result of its irradiation by cosmic rays over millions of years...
There are so many signs that we’re on the cusp of a new dark age, adds author Richardson. Religion is on the rise, as are the numbers of believers in astrology and conspiracy theories, and average IQ is falling: according to one psychology professor at the University of Amsterdam it has fallen among Westerners by as many as 14 points since the beginning of the 20th century. The pace of technological development is slowing. He talks about efforts underway to try and catch this "asteroid," something that may be possible sometime around 2039 if we launch something within the next few years and utilize a bunch of unexplored technologies. Alien life and more intelligent species. Santa Claus and the Easter bunny. In many ways it's the pattern of life, our childhood fables and nursery rhymes growing our imaginations until we grow older and realize that the stories were just that, fairy tales. But that certainty begins to fade as we grow older, our belief in another life suddenly becoming more urgent. Another Santa Claus, another childhood's tale? Our universe is vast, far beyond the imaginations of our shrinking brains. Perhaps there are species far more advanced that ours, popping into our field of vision as bright flashes in the sky that dart away at warp speed. We can only believe and maybe hope, believing again in what we hope won't be just fables. But as Richardson adds in closing: Get it wrong and we’ll forever be the dunces of the universe, pointed at and mocked by aliens as they pass through in their cigars on their way to somewhere more sophisticated.
One example came from this chapter on the Sumerians, their childhood readings pre-dating the Egyptians and others as evidenced by recovered cuneiform tablets (which have their own interesting history). Here's part of what it said: The Sumerians developed irrigation and started to plant crops and to utilize and domesticate animals...their ability to store an excess of food was the foundation of modern civilization that allowed other innovations to flourish: the population within their walled cities included tradesmen working in building, pottery, weaving and metalwork...The skills of reading and writing were not uniformly spread amongst the general population, but nor were they limited to the priests. The bureaucratic nature of Sumerian society meant that many "middle-class" boys learned to develop these skills in what were probably the earliest schools anywhere in the world...one early cunieform piece made in about 2500 BCE contains a lullaby in which a mother implores sleep to come to her ailing son...this lullaby, written over 4,000 years ago, still resonates with the hopes and concerns of all parents about their children.
I can't remember a time when my parents read a book to me, which may be more a fault of my early memory more than what actually happened. But on the other side, I've always been drawn to those scenes in movies where one or both parents sit down to "lull" their child to sleep with a quick reading from a book. Seems easy to do, that of writing a read-aloud book complete with overly elaborate illustrations and colors that seem to capture a child's imagination. It'd have large pages and even larger pictures, complete with somewhat crinkly paper that felt crisp to turn. Just pop into any library and see the shelves full of what eventually became the published dreams of early authors, from the mathematician Alan Alexander (A.A.) Milne (Winnie the Pooh) to the classic Swedish author Astrid Lindgren (Pippi Longstocking). When one looks back, one can seem to cover whatever was most popular in one's time or country. The Indian Panchatantra was (is) easily as popular as the Arabian Nights in the Arab world, but never quite made the transition to the West; much can likely be said about many western tales (Canterbury, Grimm and Aesop, which likely borrowed heavily from Arabic tales), their titles and popularity apparently heading in just one direction. But as I tried to dash off my own "sure thing" child's tale, I would discover just how difficult the process is, from finding an illustrator to finding a publisher (agents alone can take 6-12 months to answer back). Yes, there are that many people trying to publish their "sure thing" story for children (my friend has written 30 unique children's stories but is still trying to hook a publisher or agent).
Some years ago when I did publish a cartoon book (on --don''t laugh-- boogers), my illustrator would patiently listen to each idea, totally vivid in my mind but apparently not so much so in hers. Listen, she told me, I'm going to draw you two sketches for each idea, one being exactly how you're describing it and one being how I think you're meaning to describe it. By the third drawing or so, I had given her total free reign. It showed me that often a writer or artist or musician can be so good at one thing and so terrible at another. She was able to capture virtually everything in my head, even if it was different from what I though I was describing; like a good artist, she had chipped away the rough edges and polished the finished result to which I nodded my simple, misdirected and egotistical "exactly." A good producer and singer/actor will do that for a songwriter or screenwriter, bringing a song or film to life, germinating the seed...a child's book is born.
In reading about our surge to avoid overcrowding and thus become domesticated (the review of Against the Grain which appeared in the London Review of Books), it was pointed out how our human brains may have likely shrunk, if we are to follow the patterns of domesticated sheep vs. those in the wild. The brains of domesticated sheep are 24 per cent smaller than those of their wild counterparts, and they are less timid, which probably relates to changes in the limbic systems relating to emotional response. The rodents in the settlements underwent similar changes, indicating that some of these were a consequence of village life rather than human selection. The implication is that we should assume the same process in people: how did the brains, personalities and patterns of thought of Neolithic farmers differ from those of their hunter-gatherer ancestors? Was this a critical step towards the complete domestication of Homo? That didn't really bother me as much as what was said a bit later in the review: As Scott explains, the city-states were dependent on grain: wheat and barley in Mesopotamia, millet in China, maize in Mesoamerica. The reason is that cereals are easy to tax: they ripen at predictable times, the size of the harvest can easily be assessed, and the grain can be divided, transported and distributed in precisely measured rations by weight and volume. It is much more difficult to tax merchants who smuggle their goods, or to tax crops such as tubers that are hidden underground and can be dispersed throughout woodlands, or chickpeas and lentils, which have an extended ripening season. If the cereal farming takes place close to a river that can be used for bulk transportation, a potent power base can be established. That is what happened among the river and canal systems of Mesopotamia and Ancient China. Record-keeping naturally follows. Writing was used for this purpose in Mesopotamia for five hundred years before it was used for storytelling and poetry. Huge numbers of lists on clay tablets recording crops, yields and taxes have been recovered. It shows what we continue to view as important throughout history...taxation and record-keeping, all taking place 500 years before storytelling.
Thinking back to an earlier post on my visit to our friends' cabin, I mentioned our seeing three bright lights in the sky, their quick flash then a warp-like streak as they vanished. Some days later came the report that an asteroid had come close to our planet. Called Oumuamua by the astronomers at the University of Hawaii who first picked it up, author Nick Richardson in the same magazine said the name:...reportedly means ‘scout’, but which, according to the one Hawaiian dictionary I could access online, refers specifically to ‘the foremost soldier or the front line in battle’. The object was cigar-shaped, much like the craft in the book/film Arrival, and traveled far faster than anything we could manage (the fastest human object in space has been the Voyager 1 probe). I pray every day that super-intelligent aliens will come to earth and save us from self-destruction, so when an 800-metre-long cigar-shaped object was found to have hurtled into our solar system I felt a stirring of hope...Its speed and the direction of its orbit indicated that it had come from outside our solar system --making it the first object we’ve ever identified as an arrival from interstellar space-- and that it would eventually leave on its way towards the constellation of Pegasus. It was initially thought to be a comet, but soon reclassified as an asteroid: comets are icy rocks formed on the outskirts of solar systems and produce a tail of gas and dust when they fly close to the sun, but the cigar had no tail. It is also deep red in colour, the result of its irradiation by cosmic rays over millions of years...
There are so many signs that we’re on the cusp of a new dark age, adds author Richardson. Religion is on the rise, as are the numbers of believers in astrology and conspiracy theories, and average IQ is falling: according to one psychology professor at the University of Amsterdam it has fallen among Westerners by as many as 14 points since the beginning of the 20th century. The pace of technological development is slowing. He talks about efforts underway to try and catch this "asteroid," something that may be possible sometime around 2039 if we launch something within the next few years and utilize a bunch of unexplored technologies. Alien life and more intelligent species. Santa Claus and the Easter bunny. In many ways it's the pattern of life, our childhood fables and nursery rhymes growing our imaginations until we grow older and realize that the stories were just that, fairy tales. But that certainty begins to fade as we grow older, our belief in another life suddenly becoming more urgent. Another Santa Claus, another childhood's tale? Our universe is vast, far beyond the imaginations of our shrinking brains. Perhaps there are species far more advanced that ours, popping into our field of vision as bright flashes in the sky that dart away at warp speed. We can only believe and maybe hope, believing again in what we hope won't be just fables. But as Richardson adds in closing: Get it wrong and we’ll forever be the dunces of the universe, pointed at and mocked by aliens as they pass through in their cigars on their way to somewhere more sophisticated.
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