Hidden deep book series#

Parents who notice it might appreciate the opportunity for a head scratch during the fevered tedium of bedtime. No manner of earthly logic explains the post-bath and toothbrush exercise ritual. On a boat far out at sea, the usual Boyntonian menagerie-lion and pig and rhino and hippo and elephant and more-heads below “to take a bath in one big tub / with soap all over-scrub scrub scrub.” After donning pajamas and brushing their teeth, the animals pursue an unusual bedtime ritual: “And when the moon is on the rise, they all go up to exercise.” They work out! On deck! Right before bed! Take “The Going to Bed Book”: what appears to be an innocuous precursor to the activity that its reading facilitates turns out, on closer inspection, to be rather strange.

Hidden deep book series#

This is, after all, the same author who brought us “Are You a Cow?,” in which a chicken cops to his poultriform shape as a preface to a series of inquiries directed at the reader: Are you a cow? Dog? Duck? Frog? He finally concludes that “you must be you!,” an affirmation likely accompanied by a playful prod at the tiny nose of your precious, singular baby.īut there are similar surprises in what seem to be Boynton’s more innocent works. “If you are eager to learn more about carob,” Boynton’s one-page ode to the supposed chocolate substitute reads, “I really don’t know what to tell you.”įans of Boynton’s board books might be taken aback by the sneering tone. “Cut and chew” the last one dryly instructs. Then: “The same purist would probably argue that water and fructose is not ‘real’ wine.” On the following page, there is an invitation to deploy sight, smell, and taste to appreciate white chocolate, along with three boxes sketched around an empty blank page. Chocolate connoisseurs everywhere gasp, presumably. “Anyone who claims that the absence of cocoa disqualifies white chocolate as chocolate is quibbling,” Boynton writes. What is striking about “Chocolate,” though, is the way its seemingly unvarnished earnestness is coated in a generous robe of sardonic tastemaking. The book defies genre, but on first blush one might be tempted to call it an illustrated natural, culinary, and industrial history of chocolate.

(It features the now familiar cats and pigs and rabbits and hippos-especially hippos.) “Chocolate” helped facilitate the rise of Boynton’s children’s empire, its success leading Workman to print some of her most popular board books. The most successful of her several books for grownups was the 1982 bestseller “Chocolate: The Consuming Passion,” which was just rereleased in a revised and updated edition by Workman Publishing.

It was a book that Boynton wrote for adults that helped me recognize her shrewdness. But I have begun to realize, perhaps belatedly, that they do. A sheep says baa”-that it’s hard to imagine that they could have hidden depths. These books are written so simply, for children so young-“A cow says moo. “A to Z,” “Barnyard Dance,” “The Going to Bed Book,” “Moo Baa La La La”-they are titles whose very mention will draw out tender, fragile memories from kids and parents everywhere. Boynton has published dozens of books that have sold millions of copies, all featuring her hand-drawn animal characters-hippos and cows and chickens and dogs and mice, creatures that she first created for a massively successful line of greeting cards. Then there’s Sandra Boynton, a name that many parents of kids born since the late seventies will know well. The same goes for the Muppets likewise “The Little Prince” or “A Series of Unfortunate Events.”

“The Simpsons,” for instance, with its jovial, animated exterior barely obscures a deeper layer of social satire and allusion. Some stories accomplish this by aiming for adults and merely wearing children’s clothing, so to speak.

They are not just tolerated or long-suffered but truly loved, and beyond the vicarious joy we might feel while reading them in the presence of children. The best children’s stories, whether they take the form of books, television shows, movies, or something else, are also loved by adults.