OK, two more children’s book authors. Both have been through a lot. Laura defeated cool person Banksy, lawgiver Steve Stigler, person known by initials Malcolm X, and then a come-from-behind victory against lawgiver Alison Bechdel. Meanwhile, Maurice dethroned alleged tax cheat Martha Stewart, namesake Steve McQueen, and fellow children’s book author Margaret Wise Brown.
Who’s it gonna be? I’d say Maurice because he’s an illustrator as well as a writer. On the other hand, Laura’s books have a lot more content than Maurice’s, also as a political scientist I appreciate the story of how Laura rewrote some of her life history to be more consistent with her co-author daughter’s political ideology.
Both authors are wilderness-friendly!
Past matchup
Raghu suggests we should sit here for the present.
Dzhaughn writes:
I have had the Cleary image of Ramona sitting in a basement taking one bite out of every apple for more than 90% of my life.
But Diana counters:
I don’t wanna go down to the basement.
Moving away from Ramona for a moment, Pedro writes:
A little bit of Googling reveals that Shakira once started in a soap opera (Telenovela) in her teen years. Apparently embarrassed, she ended up buying the rights to the soap and now it’s no longer available in any legal way.
Although I’m very sympathetic towards her actions and feelings, this blog is very pro-open science and sharing data and her actions are as against that as possible…
Good point! Cleary is very open, as you can see if you read her two volumes of autobiography. Maybe if she comes to speak, we’ll hear some excerpts from volume 3?
Well we’re sure to have a childrens’ book author at the end, and not Dahl, so I’ve gotten my wish. Can’t wait for the date to be announced.
This one’s hard for me.
Sendak might talk about where the Wilder things are. Then we’d have a two-fer.
The Wilder things are in De Smet, South Dakota, right? Oooof.
This will be a really tight match up.
I notice that Sendak has won the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award. Yet no one has won more Maurice Sendak Awards than Wilder. And she was dead when he won it.
Maurice Sendak’s paid for his college by working at FAO Schwarz. That’s Big, isn’t it?
The Anagram Department notices “Serial Lulling Award,” not a good sign for a seminar speaker. “American Dukes” and “Armenia Sucked” are hardly top notch, but less ominous.
So, I come up with a narrow edge to Sendak but I hope there is a better reason.
This morning I finished my few-page-a-day reading of the biography of basketball inventor and first-round loser James Naismith, and I was struck again by how well-suited he is to this tournament:
“It was shortly after seven o’clock, and the meal was over. He added briskly, ‘Let me show you some of the statistics I’ve collected about accidents in sports. I’ve got them in my study.’ He started to rise from the table and fell back into his chair. Ann recognized the symptoms. A cerebral hemorrhage had struck her father.” — “The Basketball Man, James Naismith” by Bernice Larson Webb
Statistics! Sports! Medical inference!
I am not, however, suggesting that the rules be bent; I’ve had enough of Naismith.
I finished Sendak’s “Higglety Pigglety Pop! Or, There Must Be More to Life” — this only took me 15 minutes or so. It is surreal, amoral, and fascinating, and I should read more by Sendak. Wilder is neither surreal nor amoral, though as I think I noted before, when I was a kid I found descriptions of playing ball with pig bladders as bizarre as science fiction. I don’t know who that’s a vote for.
> Wilder is neither surreal nor amoral
There’s some sort of libertarian angle with Wilder though right?
What if we told Wilder about bitcoin and defi and whatnot? Surely that qualifies as surreal and amoral in the most entertaining kind of way. I know talking about these things in any context is a bit played out at this point but c’mon. This isn’t some tired old celebrity we’re selling here! This is author of an American classic, from the grave — any way she hits that ball is gonna be funny.
If you look at the chart, you can pretty clearly notice that the bracket is only as wide as it is because of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s prodigious name. I’ve got to throw my hat in the ring for Sendak, simply for storage.
Note the abundance of liquid and glide consonants in Laura Ingalls Wilder’s name: l, r, n, w.
Maurice Sendak has liquids as well, but the rest are nasals, plosives, and fricatives.
Sendak’s name has more consonantal variety in fewer syllables, leading me to think he could pack a punch. So while I loved the Little House books as a kid, I’m casting my lot for the Dak.
Afterthought and correction: The “n” should be considered a nasal and not a liquid, so Laura Ingalls Wilder has five liquids, a nasal, a fricative, a glide, and two plosives, whereas Maurice Sendak has two nasals, a liquid, two fricatives, and two plosives (and, if you count his middle name, three nasals, three liquids, two fricatives, and four plosives). So Wilder’s name actually has the greater variety of consonants, given the glide, but in Sendak’s name the various kinds are better balanced and a little more spill-resistant.
Trying to settle the matter with quotes from Goodreads, to see who might have the best stories:
“Once a little boy sent me a charming card with a little drawing on it. I loved it. I answer all my children’s letters — sometimes very hastily — but this one I lingered over. I sent him a card and I drew a picture of a Wild Thing on it. I wrote, “Dear Jim: I loved your card.” Then I got a letter back from his mother and she said, “Jim loved your card so much he ate it.” That to me was one of the highest compliments I’ve ever received. He didn’t care that it was an original Maurice Sendak drawing or anything. He saw it, he loved it, he ate it.”
― Maurice Sendak
“As the years pass, I am coming more and more to understand that it is the common, everyday blessings of our common everyday lives for which we should be particularly grateful. They are the things that fill our lives with comfort and our hearts with gladness — just the pure air to breathe and the strength to breath it; just warmth and shelter and home folks; just plain food that gives us strength; the bright sunshine on a cold day; and a cool breeze when the day is warm.”
― Laura Ingalls Wilder
Would it be better to have someone grateful for bright sunshine on a cold day or someone grateful for a kid eating his card? Somehow, Wilder seems more relatable.