There is a part, in Betsy in Spite of Herself, when everyone in Betsy Ray's Deep Valley High School class is required to read Ivanhoe over the summer. Betsy is one of the few who has, but when she sits down to write a synopsis of the novel, she is so overcome by her desire to do it full justice that she chokes and doesn't manage to complete the assignment. I feel her. This is exactly the feeling I have sitting down to put my thoughts on Maud Hart-Lovelace's series into words.

This feeling about the books - which start when Betsy's 5 and follow her through her early 20s and the beginning of World War I - is not unique to me. Perhaps because you grow up with them, age along with the characters and the writing, the affection you feel for the world of the books is very intense. It's also an intensely appealing universe; the autobiographical stories are set in a a world of happy families, safe streets, and a tight circle of friends known as The Crowd.

A lot of writers have talked about how meaningful Betsy-Tacy was to them growing up. In fact, the new editions, which properly classify the books as "modern classics" and are beautiful and dignified and almost make one forget the treacly atrocities of the past decade's children's edition, feature prologues by Anna Quindlen, Meg Cabot, and Laura Lippmann. All the women talk about the fact that, although she is growing up in the early 20th Century, Betsy always assumes - as does her supportive family - that she will have a career. Sure, she likes boys and fashion, but there's never any question that she'll have an independent life as a writer and world-traveler, just as her sister will become a professional singer and they'll all go to college.

And Betsy is a great heroine: relatable, complex, smart but prone to errors of judgment and famously bad at math. The Crowd, as one friend told me, shaped her idea of teenage life - and she was forever disappointed that she wasn't able to find such a cohesive, supportive group of friends. Because the way friendship is portrayed - between girls, and between the sexes - is really nice. There's rarely jealousy or pettiness or back-stabbing, despite the fact that the characters feel real (as, if you read The Betsy-Tacy Companion you'll find they all are.) The author was clearly someone who loved people and loved life, and this comes through. This is also probably why the books are particularly wholesome to read at a young age - although make no mistake, they hold up, and there's no better comfort read. Betsy and Joe is my particular poison, although I also have a fondness for the spin-offs Carney's House Party and Emily of Deep Valley. Comforting, yes - and by the way, the food and clothes descriptions are great - but also inspiring. I've joined the Betsy-Tacy Society, and I want to go to Mankato someday and see the author's real house. But in a way, these early loves are always personal, and even as it's wonderful to share them with fellow nerds, you know that your relationship with Betsy is special. Read - or re-read - for yourself, but I've tried to, well, "hit the high spots."

The night Max wore his wolf suit and made mischief of one kind and another. His mother called him "WILD THING!" and Max said "I'LL EAT YOU UP!" so he was sent to bed without eating anything. That very night in Max's room a forest grew and grew- and grew until his ceiling hung with vines and the walls became the world all around and an ocean tumbled by with a private boat for Max and he sailed off through night and day and in and out of weeks and almost over a year to where the wild things are. And when he came to the place where the wild things are they roared their terrible roars and gnashed their terrible teeth and rolled their terrible eyes and showed their terrible claws- till Max said "BE STILL!" and tamed them with a magic trick of staring into their yellow eyes without blinking once and they were frightened and called him the most wild thing of all and made him king of all wild things. "And now," cried Max, "let the wild rumpus start!" "Now stop!" Max said and sent the wild things off to bed without their supper. And Max the king of all wild things was lonely and wanted to be where someone loved him best of all. Then all around from far away across the world he smelled good things to eat so he gave up being king of where the wild things are. But the wild things cried, "Oh please don't go- we'll eat you up- we love you so!" And Max said, "No!" The wild things roared their terrible roars and gnashed their terrible teeth and rolled theur terrible eyes and showed their terrible claws but Max stepped into his private boat and waved good-bye and sailed back over a year and in and out of weeks and through a day and into the night of his very own room where he found his supper waiting for him- and it was still hot.

That's it. That's the whole book - well, that and some of the most memorable and iconic illustrations of any 20th century children's story. By now, everyone knows that Where the Wild Things Are, The Movie, has had the kind of rocky production history of which movie legend is made: the genius auteur with a vision fighting the string of suits who push for less scary and more conventional; the wild anticipation of Jonze's fanbase; the raptures over the preview.

Jonze, as a profile in the new NY Times Magazine reminds us, has always had impeccable cred, somehow managing to combine his skate-punk origins, his friendship with luminaries, his innovative videos and his marriage with Sophia Coppola into an unimpeachably cool version of what a self-directed movie career can be. Despite the trappings of Hip Hollywood, he's got the artistic license of one who's done only work he's proud of, and which, whatever its failings, is always interesting. But you don't watch Being John Malkovich or even Adaptation and love them because they resonate so deeply with you: although they're anchored by real emotion, at the end of the day it's a look into a different psyche, and that's what's engaging.

I get that he's the "perfect choice" to make this movie. He loves the book, and he has Sendak's okay. He didn't want to make it for years, according to the article, because "I love it in this form, and I don't want to add something on that seems extraneous." Maybe he didn't want this: "There's a line of "Wild Things" skateboards, a soundtrack album by Karen O of the art-rock group Yeah Yeah Yeahs and branded "Wild Things" jewelry for sale at a boutique near Jonze's Lower East Side apartment."

If they have to do it, he's the one. And I guess they do have to; in a world where they're re-making Melrose Place, it's unrealistic to suppose that actually amazing source material should lie fallow. And yet, even the stirring preview fills me with irrational ambivalence, and not just because I don't trust Dave Eggers after Away We Go although that's true. My WTWTA has nothing to do with The Arcade Fire. It was about conjuring complex feelings of fear and rage and righteous vengeance. The Wild Things didn't bante! (And doesn't giving them normal grown-up voices just make the whole "be our king" thing weird? ) And I know that's just me, that millions of children who've read and loved it and been kind of scared have had a unique, personal interpretation and vision. Children's books are great because they live in your head and depend on projection. This will be Jonze's vision, and it will be cool and neat-looking and interesting. But it won't have anything to do with what I or any other child felt while reading it. Maybe that's okay.

Bringing ‘Where The Wild Things Are' to the Screen [NYTimes]
Catch Of The Day: Where The Wild Things Are [Guardian]
Spike Jonze's Where The Wild Things Are To Be Entirely Reshot?! [SlashFilm]
We Love You So [Official Site]

When I was in second grade, we studied the "Little House" books. I don't mean that we read them, although we did; rather, the entire year's curriculum was centered around the series, just as first grade's had been "birds" and third grade would be spent studying the local native American tribes who'd lived where we now ate graham crackers and learned multiplication. Even twenty years ago, the "Little House" curriculum was considered old-fashioned, and after the veteran teacher's retirement, both classes would adopt the "Dinosaurs" lesson plan already in effect across the hall. But I loved it. We sewed sunbonnets and cooked green pumpkin pie. While our teacher read the books aloud, we took turns passing around the antique coffee grinder like the one Ma used in the stories.

Even then, I hated the soppy Michael Landon TV series, with its sickly 70s colors and lurid plotlines. That wasn't what Mr. Edwards looked like! And Pa certainly didn't have feathered hair. For that matter, it seemed strange that the show should be based on the grim Little House on the Prairie which, despite its musical name and heightened drama, had nothing, to my mind, on the domestic details of Little House in the Big Woods, On the Banks of Plum Creek, and Farmer Boy.

According to a piece in the New Yorker by the superb biographer Judith Thurman, though, this may have been a provident choice; whether Landon knew it or not, the hardships of 'Prairie' were a far more accurate reflection of Laura Ingalls Wilder's later life. And that of her daughter and co-writer was hardly more romantic. As Thurman tells it,

The Wilders' life on a shrinking frontier was considerably bleaker than even the Ingallses' had been. The first decade of their marriage, as Laura later recalled, was a period of almost unrelieved calamity and failure. Their infant son died. Drought and hail destroyed their crops, and they struggled to pay the interest on their heavily mortgaged house and equipment. Then the house burned down. Almanzo had a stroke, brought on by diphtheria, and he never fully recovered from the paralysis. Virtually destitute, they embarked on a series of futile peregrinations, by train and wagon, across the Midwest, with a wretched interlude on the Florida Panhandle. In 1894, they were uprooted by one of the worst depressions in American history, and headed for the Ozarks, which had been touted by promoters as yet another promised land. They struggled for years to eke out a living from the rocky soil.

By the time Laura wrote her first memoir, they were hard up, supported by daughter Rose, "a frumpish, middle-aged divorcée, who was tormented by rotten teeth and suffered from bouts of suicidal depression" and made a living as a "hack writer." Rose's involvement - and maybe authorship - of the books is pretty much acknowledged nowadays, even as it's understood that her mother would have provided the detail that contributes so much of the series' richness. Rose provided narrative structure, polished the writing, embellished when necessary. But it was surely understood, even by Rose herself, that the involvement of a jaded urban sophisticate wouldn't appeal as much to Depression-era America as the memoir of a real pioneer woman.

Indeed, the series is nothing if not a paeon to old-time competence and thrift. Thurman says of the long-suffering Ma,

She made all their clothes and linens, recycling the scraps for her patchwork quilts. She baked the bread, churned the butter, blacked the stove, and restuffed the pallets that they slept on with fresh hay. Even when it was twenty below, she did the washing for six people, pressing with heavy flatirons laundry that had frozen stiff. When her husband was away on some urgent survival mission (Laura recounted how he once walked three hundred miles to find work as a field hand), she fetched the wood and pitched feed to the horses, then waited up for his uncertain return, knitting in her rocker. Informed summarily that she would be packing up, yet again, to start over in a new wilderness, she protested feebly but acquiesced.

This emphasis on self-sufficiency may not have been a coincidence: by the time she collaborated on Little House, Rose had already become fiercely political, and would come to be known as one of the "founding mothers" of the Libertarian movement. Infuriated by what she saw as the infantilization of the New Deal, Rose was surely glad to have such a bully pulpit for the spread of her message, organically housed in the context of another era's privations. But although she was considered suspect enough to be on the FBI's radar, no one seems to have taken any exception to the books.

So, does the series promote the agenda? I wouldn't say so. And frankly put, here's why: even as a child, I thought Pa was something of a crackpot. At first glance, sure, Ma's the disciplinarian and Pa's the fun-time, fiddling parent. Certainly they share the brunt of the hard work. But by, say, By the Shores of Silver Lake, you start wondering, why can't he just keep still? Sure, the peregrinations are fun, narrative-wise, but is town really all that bad? No one else is moving so often, and while one's certainly willing to believe that any pioneer faced a barrage of challenges, it becomes pretty clear that this family isn't typical. If Rose sought to portray her grandfather as an independent spirit who refused to be beholden to the government (who kicks them off the prairie) or the system, she succeeds. She probably viewed this as heroic; to many readers, it feels irrational and selfish. And while the article points out that the books also served to further the interests of Reagan and his ilk, I think he must not have read the books his beloved TV show was based on. In the show, the Ingalls family lives in town, Pa is a pillar of stability who takes in random orphans, and they are indeed a model of family values. In fact, the dynamic is complex, their lives challenging, and the narrative is fraught with tensions. I'd be hesitant to append my political philosophy to it - but I'd certainly read it to my kids.

Wilder Women[New Yorker]

• You can also buy a book that allows you to put your dick in a hole, if you have one, since some men have the need to make everything about their dicks. • The Wall Street Journal investigates the pink taxi service launched in Beirut in March, which provides a safe mode of transportation for women. Many Muslim women, who are barred from riding in cars with men other than their husbands or relatives, find the service especially helpful. • Mazen Abdul Jawad was arrested in Saudi Arabia earlier this month for bragging about his sex life on the Lebanese television show "Red Lines." He reportedly discussed his enjoyment of sex and how he lost his virginity at age 14. According to a Saudi daily newspaper, Abdul Jawad has issued a public apology about his behavior. • Sheila C. Bair, chairman of the FDIC, on her side career as a writer: "I discovered children's picture books when I had children and began reading to them. I loved the combination of the written word and a visual depiction... That gave me the idea to write children's books that would educate children about finance. I thought it could be a powerful way to convey information to children, and that parents would pick it up, too." • Nearly 71 percent of cats live in multiple cat households, so there are a lot of people unhappy with the "crazy cat lady" moniker. • Chief justice Abdul-Raoul Halabi of Gaza said on Monday that he plans on instituting a ban on female lawyers who do not dress in accordance with Islamic law when the court returns from summer recess in September. Women will be required to wear a headscarf and a long, dark colored cloak in order to appear in court. • The Hindustan Times reports on the sad truth of child marriages in India. Despite the 2006 Prohibition of Child Marriages Act, almost every child in the village of Kachoulia is "married," usually to a much older husband. • An Amnesty International report shows that the recent full ban on abortion in Nicaragua is causing women and girls to kill themselves, be deprived of treatment for cancer and AIDS and carry unwanted children to term — even their own half-siblings. The government and Catholic Church continues not to care. • According to a recent study released by the nonprofit Catalyst, 75% of women of color working in U.S. law firms are likely to leave their jobs within the next five years because of job dissatisfaction that results from the the unique barriers minority groups face. The Chicago Sun Times put it a slightly different way: "75% bail within 5 years due to barriers." • Crazy Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann thinks that Obama's health reform plans are just an effort to make us more like Cuba. Yes, Michelle Bachmann thinks: she doesn't do so with any insight or logic. • Crazy Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe's spokesman says "His focus is on issues" rather than the comments he made legitimizing the Obama birther nonsense. • White American Congressman Thaddeus McCotter wants to get Congress to make the President apologize to the white cop that arrested Henry Louis Gates inside his Harvard home. Earlier this year, Congress apologized for slavery 146 years after the Emancipation Proclamation. • A baby bit Al Franken and there's a picture. • Researchers from the University of Chicago and John Hopkins University found that divorce and widowhood have a lasting detrimental impact on health. This may be due in part to increased stress over shared child care, and the decreased income of a single-parent household. •

Although not well-known stateside, the "Little Grey Rabbit" books are classics of English children's literature. But like so many famed children's writers, their author was apparently no great lover of humanity. Uttley was very impressive - only the first woman to graduate from Manchester University, with a degree in Physics, she went on to write more than 100 books, and, after her husband's suicide, raise her son as a single mother. Biographers find the contrast between Uttley's scientific background and her lifelong belief in fairies and time travel to be curious; but eccentricity and imagination - and, okay, a touch of crazy - have never been barriers to good children's writing.

Uttley was intensely competitive: she hated being compared to Beatrix Potter, whom she didn't consider a real writer; despised her illustrator - "a humourless bore" - and had nothing but scorn for popular children's author Enid Blyton, whom she dismissed as "a woman ogling [the fishmonger], her false teeth, her red lips" provoking Uttley's disgust. Says the editor of the diaries, "Her competitive and passionate nature often clouded her judgment and drastically affected her private and professional life. Though she ended her life as a grande dame of literature, she was acclaimed but never entirely content." That said, who wants to read about someone who's uniformly generous and non-judgmental in her private diaries? And has a little misanthropy ever hurt children's writing? Roald Dahl and Dr. Seuss would say otherwise. If people are shocked that a woman could write sweet stories and still bear grudges, it does Uttley quite a disservice; personally, we like a little complexity.

Diaries reveal dark side to Little Grey Rabbit's creator [Guardian]

The enduring lure of the YA is no secret to the Jez community; see "Fine Lines", where the genre gets its due. (By the way, "Fine Lines" is coming back next Friday.) Harry Potter has long since made it acceptable to read a juvie title on public transport, and the Twilight phenom is not news. But it seems to have opened the floodgates: according to the PW article, The Book Thief by Markus Zusak is another big crossover hit, as is Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games. Both of these deal with decidedly "adult" themes, but with the energy and optimism of YA prose.

We keep reading that the economy's prompting nostalgia and comfort reads, so it's not a shocker that people should return to old favorites - or even just want to return to a time when problems were simpler and you could throw yourself completely into a book. Lately, my reading seems to be evenly divided between Serious and Escapist; Simone Weil and a charming novel called the Tea Shop Girls. Comfort reads need not be cozy, though; sometimes the comfort comes from the sense that, however scary - see the forces of evil in Harry Potter or His Dark Materials - the fight will be won, problems are controllable, and more to the point, within the reader's hands. Invariably the protagonists of these books have the power to change things. Important developmental lessons for young people, but no small comfort to adults in times when we feel like the Gayles' house just before Munchkin Land.

One funny point the PW article makes is that the adult women buying these books are greedy: they tend to buy whole series at a time, unwilling to wait between books. I get it - we can afford to do this now, and know to seize our pleasures where we find them - but I wonder if we're not missing some of the point. After all, when you're younger time moves slower; don't you want to make the illusion complete?

Adult Readers In The Kids' Section [Publishers Weekly]

Check out Thomas's face in this one:

Are you cool enough to know what this one means? We're not. It's like when you're in fifth grade and your friend tells you "queef" means "awesome."

And this one took us forever to get: