Name: 47 Charming Facts About Children's Books - mental_floss on YouTube (Ep.206)
Uploaded: 2014-09-16T08:12:08.000Z
Duration: 11 min 18 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Hi, I’m John Green. Welcome to my salon. This is Mental Floss on YouTube and did you

know that among all of the drawings in Norton Juster’s original The Phantom Tollbooth,

there is not a single drawing of Milo in a tollbooth.

Anyway, that’s the first of many facts about your favorite children’s books I’m going

When E.B. White was once asked why he wrote Charlotte’s Web, he responded with a two-and-a-half

page letter about spiders in his barn and pigs. Wait, did someone say pigs?

Time to put a quarter in the staff porkchop party fund! Man, that's some pig.

Anyway, at the end of the letter, he wrote, “I haven’t told why I wrote the book,

but I haven’t told why I sneeze, either. A book is a sneeze.”

Katherine Paterson, on the other hand, can tell you exactly where she found the inspiration

for Bridge to Terabithia: one of her son’s best friends, Lisa, was struck by lightning

and killed when they she was just eight years old.

As for the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, it was based in part on a 1965

story from the New York Times in which the Metropolitan Museum purchased a genuine Italian

Renaissance statue for just $225. So it was that combined with, you know, our universal

human desire to hide in bathrooms until museums close.

Maurice Sendak based the Where the Wild Things Are monsters on his Polish relatives who came

to live with his parents in New York after surviving the Holocaust. Sendak described

them as cheek-pinchers with crazy faces and wild eyes.

Before he became a famous author, by the way, Sendak illustrated Mrs. Piggle Wiggle's Farm,

which I bring up entirely because somebody just said "pig." Two quarters in one video,

Mrs. Piggle Wiggle is one of the many now-famous children’s stories that started out as an

attempt to lull the author’s small children to sleep. Others include Babar, Winnie-the-Pooh,

“Sick,” “neurotic,” and “masochistic” are just a few of the words that critics have

used to refer to Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree.

Dr. Seuss’ Green Eggs and Ham is a little less controversial. It was written after Seuss’

editor bet him that he couldn’t write a book using 50 words or less.

The 50 words are: a, am, and, anywhere, are, be, boat, box, car, could, dark, do, eat,

eggs, fox, goat, good, green, ham, here, house, I, if, in, let, like, may, me, mouse, not,

on, or, rain, Sam, say, see, so, thank, that, the, them, there, they, train, tree, try,

Speaking of Seuss, he wrote The Cat in the Hat because he thought that kids needed a

more interesting way to learn basic words than the boring Dick and Jane series.

Also, to make sure that his publisher was paying attention, Dr. Seuss inserted this

line into a first draft of Hop on Pop: "When I read I am smart / I always cut whole words

apart. / Con Stan Tin O Ple, Tim Buk Too / Con Tra Cep Tive, Kan Ga Roo." His publisher of

course WAS paying attention, and the line was later changed to: "My father / can read

/ big words, too. / Like... / Constantinople / and / Timbuktu."

Margaret Wise Brown had no children. She left all future proceeds of Goodnight Moon to a

neighbor, who was nine-years-old at the time. He has since made - and mostly spent - more

Mo Willems, best known for Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus and Knuffle Bunny, started

his career as a writer and animator for Sesame Street, where he won six Emmys.

Not easy working for Sesame Street, for starters, you gotta know how to count.

Since it was first published in 1969, Eric Carle’s The Very Hungry Caterpillar has

Beatrix Potter, who wrote The Tale of Peter Rabbit, was notorious for disliking children,

this is actually pretty common among children's book writers. Not me. Others. According to

fellow kid’s author Roald Dahl, he convinced his mother take him to see Beatrix Potter

at her farm when he was just six. And Beatrix happened to be working outside when they arrived

and she asked Roald what he wanted. He told her that he wanted to meet Beatrix Potter,

to which she responded, "Well you've met her. Now buzz off.” Ugh, such a Mr. McGregor

The grown-up Dahl used to tell his daughters stories about one of his most famous characters,

The BFG, long before the book existed. And after he told his kids the BFG stories at

bedtime, he would climb a ladder outside of their bedroom window and use a bamboo cane

to blow dreams into their room, just like his big, friendly giant.

One more Roald Dahl tidbit: an early draft of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory featured

a sixth child in addition to Augustus, Mike, Violet, Veruca, and Charlie. Her name was

Miranda Piker, and she met her untimely demise when she was ground into powder by one of

Willy Wonka’s candy machines after refusing to listen to him.

So the next time you read The Polar Express - or anything else illustrated by Chris Van

Allsburg - keep an eye out for a white bull terrier. He sticks one into most of his works

in homage to his brother-in-law’s dog, Winston, who served as a model for his first book.

In The Polar Express, you can find a Winston puppet on the bedpost.

Margaret and H.A. Rey fled from France on bicycles during WWII, they escaped the Nazis

by mere hours. And included among the few possessions they took with them was a manuscript

for a book that would eventually become the Curious George. Which would then go on to

Pippi Longstocking’s full name is Pippilotta Delicatessa Windowshade Mackrelmint Ephraim's

Ramona Quimby came about when Beverly Cleary noticed that every kid in her book Henry Huggins

was an only child. So to remedy this, she tossed in a little sister for Beezus. Speaking

of which, people often ask me why most of the kids in my book are only children. It's

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., has said that he was inspired to become a falconer by Jean Craighead

In all of R.L. Stine's Goosbumps series, nobody dies. How was it still so scary??

The author of Frog and Toad, Arnold Lobel was the father-in-law to Mark Linn-Baker,

AKA Cousin Larry on Perfect Strangers, which may help explain why Linn-Baker later played

Toad on Broadway. So look for Hank Green playing Augustus Waters in The Fault in our Stars

on Broadway later this year. That is a joke, just in case, like, EW wants to take that

Audrey Penn was inspired to write The Kissing Hand when she saw a mother raccoon rubbing

her nose in her baby raccoon’s paw. Then the baby would rub its paw against its own

cheek, and the two would repeat the process over and over. A park ranger explained that

the mother was marking her baby with her scent so they could find each other if they got

separated. Penn wrote the story and I've been "aww-ing" ever since.

Other names considered for Nancy Drew: Diana Dare, Stella Strong, Helen Hale and Nan Nelson.

The names for the houses at Hogwarts came to J.K. Rowling while she was on a plane,

so she jotted them down on an airsickness bag, which she still has, by the way. Presumably,

The look for Anne of Green Gables was based on Evelyn Nesbit, one of the It Girls of the

early 1900s. It’s kind of like if Kim Kardashian had inspired the look of Katniss Everdeen.

Stan and Jan Berenstain didn't just write about their namesake bears. Among their other

credits: How to Teach Your Children About Sex.

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47 Charming Facts About Children's Books - mental_floss on YouTube (Ep.206)

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