Ruth Stiles Gannett Kahn

Or…as you might know her, Ruth Stiles Gannett, the author of MY FATHER’S DRAGON.

I loved this book when I was a child, I loved reading it to my child, and I still pick it up every few years and read it again–just for the joy of it.

I even picked up this toy years ago, because it reminds me so much of the dragon in the story.

There’s a reading “stage” for some children (many children?) when they are ready for a very special kind of book. They may still love picture books–either listening to someone read them or just curling up and spending time with a favorite. They may have started on some beginning readers–with some help or by themselves. But sitting still for someone to read them a novel is still a little tricky, when even one page may have more words than they’re used to, and a lot of pages don’t even have one picture on them.

This is when, I think, episodic books are wonderful. These are books that may have the same page count as one for older children, but don’t ask the child to carry all the pieces of a long story in their head. Instead, each chapter is a story in itself, with things like setting and characterization staying consistent across the entire book.

When my son was young, I couldn’t find many recently published books that had this structure.* So I went back to some of my favorites–Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, Homer Price, Amelia Bedelia (short chapters, but lots of word play).

And MY FATHER’S DRAGON. Unlike some of the others, it has an overarching plot that the author touched base with, lightly, at the beginning and end of each chapter, so the child didn’t have to remember that bigger goal. This left them free to focus on the goal of each chapter… typically to get past or away from animals of various scariness. And she handled the scary parts so beautifully. She would show the danger with a sentence or three, then drop the reader right back into Elmer’s ingenuity and resourcefulness, dropping the tension just enough that the child could stop worrying about if Elmer was going to escape and start wondering how he was going to escape. Such good writing.

I had no idea that, until last month, Ruth Stiles Gannett was still alive. She died on June 11th.

Here’s a link to her obituary, if you’d like to read more about her.

*If you have any good episodic books for young children that have been published in the last few years, I’d love to find out about them.