SOUNDTRACK: RALPH’S WORLD-Peggy’s Pie Parlor (2003).

When my son Clark was born, Sarah and I made a conscious effort to find music for him (really for us) that wasn’t, well, Raffi.  Not that there’s anything wrong with Raffi per se, but well, he’s kind of annoying.

In the 4 years since he was born, there’s been an awful lot of cool bands making kids records.  And I’m all for that (sometimes it’s nice being in tune with zeitgeist).  Although it is nice to hear one of the guys who started the whole movement.  Ralph himself was a member of Bad Examples a fairly forgettable band, nowhere near as fun/clever as Ralph’s World.

This was the first Ralph’s World disc we bought.  And it’s still in pretty heavy rotation (although, now, really, the kids just listen to what we listen to…maybe when they’re a little older and actually understand Decemberists lyrics, we’ll be playing more Ralph).

Ralph’s songs rock, they’re amped up and excitable, like a toddler.  They’re simple, easy rock songs in a multitude of genres.  He also mixes his own originals with covers and even a public domain track (“Yon Yonson”).

And so overall you get a disc that sounds like a children’s disc from They Might Be Giants, before They actually made children’s discs.  (TMBG’s children’s discs aim a little younger).  Ralph’s songs are whimsical and catchy, in the way of TMBG’s adult songs, although the lyrics skew more towards about 6 or 7.

If you don’t have kids you probably won’t enjoy these discs, although really all is takes is a silly streak to enjoy them when the kids aren’t around.

[READ: July 24, 2009] Clarice Bean, Don’t Look Now

My son has just started watching Charlie and Lola, a delightful show based on the books by Lauren Child.  [And it has one of the single coolest theme songs of any show ever.  Seriously.  It’s fantastic.  Here, listen.]  When I mentioned that Clark was watching this, my friend Eugenie said, Oh, Lauren Child, of Clarice Bean!

I wasn’t familiar with Clarice Bean.  And then, as coincidence will have it, I was showing a patron some books in the Ch section, and there was a Clarice Bean book.  I grabbed it and only found out later that it is the last (or at least that latest) book in the Clarice series.  Well, it’s a kids book, I thought, I’m sure  I can join the series late and not miss anything.  And I was right.

I was also surprised by how into this book I got.

Oh, and also how eerily appropriate it was that I selected this particular book while I’m in the midst of Infinite Summer.  I figured Clarice Bean would be a nice relaxing thing to read in my Infinite Jest Downtime.  But Clarice Bean starts out: Part One: Where does infinity end?

Seriously.

Anyhow, Jesting aside, this Clarice Bean story was quite gripping.  I don’t know anything about how the previous books work or the characters’ pasts or anything, so if you do, please bear with me.

Clarice Bean is  a young girl in primary school.  (I’m not even exactly sure how old she is).  She is best friends with Betty Moody.  And they are obsessed with the Ruby Redfort series (TV shows and books)  (Ruby is a spy and survivalist, and has great catchphrases and sage advice (“Never eat a polar bear’s liver no matter how hungry you are.”)). In fact, Clarice is constantly referencing her Ruby Redfort Survival Handbook and her Ruby Redfort Spy Guide.

But we’re moving too quickly.  As the book opens, Clarice’s sister forgets to turn off the bath water which overflows and causes the bathroom floor to come crashing into the kitchen.  The state of her house simply gets worse from there.  And, naturally, Clarice’s parents aren’t terribly happy.  Especially since Clarice’s dad has to work late, Clarice’s mom is getting grief from an old man at the old folks’ center where she works, and they have no oven (it was destroyed by the bathroom floor).

So they’ve been eating toast for weeks.

Clarice writes in her Worst Worries handbook.  She has several worst worries, but Ruby suggests that the worstest worst worry is the one you are not even worried about.  And this proves to be true.  For her normal worries are totally beside the point when she is convinced that all of this fighting means her parents are going to get divorced.

But Clarice’s unrealized worst fear comes true when her best friend in the world tells her that she is moving to San Francisco.

Clarice is devastated.  Plus, she was going to take Betty to the premiere of the Ruby Redfort movie (which Clarice has a role as an extra in).

Things only get worse when a new girl, Clem, who is from Sweden, comes to her school.  Clem is strikingly pretty and very quiet.  And of course, everyone loves her and fawns all over her. Clarice spends a lot of time just reading her Ruby Redfort book and seething at the way her friend Karl is always staring at Clem.  And to make matters worse, Clem is always talking to Justin Broach, the absolute worst kid in school who will give you Chinese burns just for walking past him (and who all adults think is sweet and charming, of course).

Well, Clarice uses all that she learns from Ruby Redfort to suss out what’s going on with Clem, and why she’s always whispering to Justin, and what happened to her kanin.

I was quite pleased with the way the book wrapped itself up and how all of the different aspects of the book, from the spy stuff, to the animal safety stuff, to the foreign language stuff played into the book.  Yes, there’s foreign language stuff in the book!  Clem is Swedish and there’s a bunch of Swedish words in here.  And the guys who fix Clarice’s’ house are Polish and she learns some Polish words too!

And, circling back to Infinite Jest, there’s even footnotes!

This was a really charming story, and I think anyone would enjoy it.  It even comes with a bookmark stitched into the binding.

The one thing that I found unsettling, but which I did get used to, is the typesetting.  This seems to be a Lauren Child thing, as Charlie and Lola has it too: she uses a lot of different fonts in the book.

They are used consistently (the Ruby Redfort books are listed in one font, and her Worst Worries book is in another).  And some words are

big

and other words are                    scattered

all  over

the
page.

But, hey, that’s alright.  It gives the book charm, I suppose.

Anyhow, this book was really fun and quite clever.  And despite the protagonist being a little girl, I can see it being read by boys and girls both (even if the boys would be embarrassed by the powder blue bookmark).

I will certainly go back and read the rest of the series someday.