You have a fun blog.

Oh Gawd… I can’t believe it was not until this morning, when I rolled out of bed muttering, “have read the bloggers linking, each to each”, that I realized the punchline—“(I do not think that they will link to me.)”

The Watchmen would have been on the list—had I been smart enough as a young adult to have discovered it.

Maniac Magee Jerry Spinelli.

Geez, hearing that would have pissed Roger off. But that was then and this is now and Forry has won.

C’mon, tell more. What’s with Zelazny and Creatures? And Forry? And all that?

If it’s “Niles” I want to know whether that title served as inspiration for “Giles Goat-Boy” or vice-versa…

Yep. Still good.
—-Myca

susanc, you put me in mind of foreign children’s books (I’m writing from the U.S.).

Children’s books one revisits to read as a parent are a bit different from childhood reads one picks up for personal pleasure; so in my previous examples I forgot all about these foreign books which were important in my childhood, and which I re-read for bedtime stories:
Selma Lagerlo:f (that’s an umlaut), The Adventures of Nils Goose-Boy (Swedish boy is shrunk, rides goose around all of Sweden, returns)Norman Lindsay, The Magic Pudding (koala turns swagman, takes up with charming rascals in possession of magic never-finished sentient pie, fights off cretinous antagonists who want to steal the pie)Dorothy Wall, The Adventures of Blinky Bill (cute, naughty koala boy has adventures; strong conservationist moral)

Like your example, Nils Goose-Boy makes Sweden a magical place. I only want to know, do you say it “nills” or “niles”?!?

I’ve reversed my opinions of the two Australian books. As a kid (approx. 8, I guess) and as a very young adult, I thought Blinky Bill was way too treacly and sentimental, while The Magic Pudding was super cool for its irony, its biting wit and social satire, its nonsense verse, and its amoral universe (the villians want to steal the pie, which is only what the “heroes” have done in the first place; and the pie itself is a caustic little character). It has a similar appeal to Don Marquis, Herriman’s Krazy Kat, Rocky & Bullwinkle, The Simpsons, or Fafblog——definitely a superior literary work to BB, and also part of the Pantheon of Coolness.

However, I’ve found that as a parent, I don’t really want my kids blasted with icy gusts of irony and amoral satiric wit; treacle is okay. Lack of irony is okay. And they like Blinky Bill much better, for now.

And Blinky is not as simple as I thought; there is wit, and the conservationist message is pretty good (be nice to animals; don’t destroy habitat; don’t hunt endangered species). The never-ending magic pudding, on the other hand, is a metaphor for endless exploitation of the land. I still like MP better as lit, but not at bedtime.

Geez, hearing that would have pissed Roger off. But that was then and this is now and Forry has won.