One of my all-time favorite opening lines is in a biography, entitled The Trouble Begins at 8: A Life of Mark Twain in the Wild, Wild West . It begins,”Mark Twain was born fully grown, with a cheap cigar clamped between his teeth.” Only one person was in attendance at this 1865 event, “…newspaperman and frontier jester named Samuel Langhorne Clemens.”
Author Sid Fleischman, was a jester himself. He died earlier this week at age 90.
The children’s book world is ever-changing, but some contributions never age or change. Books by Newbery medal winner Sid Fleischman are among those books that children today appreciate like the children who first read them.
His books all have a sense of adventure sprinkled with humor and a respect for the audience.
His Newbery winner, The Whipping Boy Greenwillow), is filled with fantastic escapades, likeable and some unlikeable characters such as a boy who takes the punishment for Prince Brat (he really is though he does come around!).
And who can forget the McBroom books? These over-the-top modern tall tales are just right for reading aloud to slightly older children (perhaps 6 years up).
Though some of Fleischman’s books aren’t humorous, they retain the sense of adventure.
I’m thinking of White Elephant (Greenwillow) about an orphan who cares for elephants in old Siam. How the boy named Run-Run deals with a so-called gift of a white elephant is a story of growing up, taking charge of one’s destiny and done only as this author could.
There are many more books by Sid Fleischman , a magician and former newspaper man, who wrote not only award winning books for children but books that spoke to them and will be read long into the future.
His voice will be missed.