A while ago WD Fyfe posted “Stuff I’ve Learned from Literature,” a collection of life’s lessons from the pages of best sellers such as “never volunteer for anything” as taught by The Hunger Games. In a comment I added “never underestimate the power of a woman” learned from “anything by Ian Fleming” to which he replied, “Including Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.” Of course my reference to Ian Fleming was to the Bond Girls of the 007 franchise but the famous children’s story turned movie has several strong female characters. Perhaps a Fleming trait?
You didn’t know that the author of sixteen Bond, James Bond spy novels tossed in one book about a magical car? He did. Published right between You Only Live Twice and The Man with the Golden Gun it was the last book he wrote. Based on bedtime stories he told his son Casper, he wrote as he convalesced from a heart attack from which he never fully recovered.
That got me thinking which as you know not only do I have the time for but is also rarely a good thing yet often results in a blog post. Thank you Bill.
So … the world is full of talented authors and more than a few of them are both quite well known and are parents. So how many of the well-known parents have favored their children with tales that themselves became well known in spite of the parent not being well known for authoring children’s books. I found three. Four if you stretch a point.
The second to come to mind and first in the “I didn’t know that” list is Mr. Fleming’ famous tale of the famous car. The first author famous for a child’s story harkening back to his child to come to mind but on the “but what else did he do” list is A. A. Milne. If before this summer’s film release you didn’t know Christopher Robin was indeed Christopher Robin Milne and Pooh, Piglet, Eeyore, Kanga, Roo, and Tigger were the younger Milne’s childhood toys, you do now. But before the poem featuring Winnie-the-Pooh appeared in When We Were Very Young, the elder Milne was known as a playwright.
Also on the list is one known more for penning songs. Kelly Clarkson, former “American Idol” winner and singer/songwriter has also published two children’s books inspired by and featuring her daughter River Rose. Though not yet classics, who knows what we might be saying about them in fifty years.
After extensive research spanning at least 30 minutes, the closest I could come to uncovering another author who was known for one thing but exploded on to the scene with a book inspired by an offspring is the historian Dorothy Kuhnhardt, author of the 1965 winner for longest title, Twenty Days: A Narrative in Text and Pictures of the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln and the Twenty Days and Nights That Followed–The Nation in Mourning, the Long Trip Home to Springfield. The book she wrote as her gift to her daughter is more succinctly titled Pat the Bunny. I say this is a bit of a stretch to my search because although Kuhnhardt was a legitimate historian and author, the books she is better known for are the children’s volumes which she was putting out before the first bunny was patted but the patting was going on before she wrote the first book. It’s all very confusing and probably doesn’t belong on the list but I liked the book both as readee and reader.
There are many well-known authors who have written children’s books but were they inspired by stories they told their own children? Google doesn’t know about any so I guess not. If you do, share, but be sure to tell Google too. Can you tell Google anything?
While we’re talking about Facebook (I did say click bait), did you hear about the spat going on between Dutch tourism and the harbinger of all things questionable? Apparently the Visit Flanders tourist bureau would like to advertise their museums on the site but because the video they prepared includes shots of paintings by Rubens, the site usually not known for decorum refuses to allow the video to post because Rubens painted, er, nude models. It seems the number for Facebook is 1/4, as in the number of inches wide the shoestring covering the nipple of a spring breaker frolicking on the beach must be to make the post “decent.”
Ah but there’s more to the story. The hamburger thought that popped into my head when that hamburger got me thinking wasn’t just about hamburgers. Because one of the hamburgers that thought popped was the venerable Quarter Pounder, that particular hamburger got me to think about a non-hamburger sandwich from that chain, the McRib. Or you prefer: the McRoo (inaccurate though since it contains no kangaroo meat although rumors do persist) or the McTripe (actually quite accurate since tripe is one of its 70+ ingredients) (sorry) or even the McOhNoI’dNever which is probably also inaccurate because they sell between 30 and 50 million whenever they are released and I only get one) (really).
For example, if you have a cell phone any less than say six years old you likely have a GPS mapping program at your fingertips. When I was traveling for work I appreciated my locating and traffic apps. I’d step out of an airport that looked quite like the airport I departed from, got into a rental car that look quite like the one I returned in a city earlier, and navigate to a hospital that looked suspiciously like one I visited the previous day on roads that held no resemblance to anywhere I’d even been. Yet I never got lost. My “phone” always knew where I was and which way to go.
We know moth balls still exist. You can find them in Amazon so they are still real. And we still say when something isn’t used anymore that it is mothballed. Is that because we used to use mothballs when we stored things we aren’t using anymore? Or is it because we don’t use moth balls anymore? Or do we? Just because I don’t have a closet hanger filled with moth balls doesn’t mean all my neighbors don’t.
Ham has always had something of an image problem. Years ago there were basically two kinds of ham you could get. Cooked or not cooked. You had to cook both but the not cooked took more steps and more hours than the cooked to cook. Then someone decided that was too confusing so they started calling them city hams and country hams. It only took a few times to the store to figure out which was the cooked ham that didn’t require as much cooking as the not cooked ham. That’s the one I wanted. Maybe because I was from the city. Or maybe it was because I liked the idea of someone starting the cooking for me. I don’t know. But I figured out which was which and which to take home and cook. Or finish cooking.
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