Stuart Little by E. B. White

I read The Trumpet of the Swan a couple of years ago for the first time since I was a small child. I really loved E. B. White's animal trilogy as a kid and decided that I would also reread Stuart Little. White does a great job of mixing together everyday life and the absolutely absurd. In The Trumpet of the Swan, it was people quickly getting over a swan that could communicate with humans by writing on a chalkboard that hung around its neck. In Stuart Little, it was a woman going into the hospital to have a baby and giving birth to a little mouse. As a kid these were the kind of absurdities that kickstarted my imagination, unlike the acid-trip absurdities of Lewis Carroll.

When Stuart friend Margalo--a bird--goes missing. He decides that he must try to find her. He leaves his family and sets out to locate his friend. The story ends rather abruptly, with Stuart heading down a country road, still looking for his friend.

One of my favorite exchanges was when Stuart was trying to convince a man who owned a tiny sailing ship to let him captain it across the lake. The man asks Stuart, "Are you sober?" as one would of any potential sailor. Stuart replies, "I do my work." Brilliant.

While Stuart Little did not hold up quite as well as The Trumpet of the Swan, it was still a fun read, and remains a great kids book.

The Trumpet of the Swan by E. B. White

When I was a kid, this was one of my favorite books. However, I am not sure that I ever actually read it. I think my mom read it to me and my brother and sister. She had this really funny habit of falling asleep while she was reading. Her eyes would be closed, but she would still be saying things, things that usually made very little sense. We always loved it when this happened, and tried not to laugh too loudly, which would cause her to wake up.

In short, the book is about Louis, a trumpeter swan that is born mute. Befriended by a boy named Sam, the swan learns how to read and write, and eventually learns how to play the trumpet to compensate for his inability to make the appropriate swan noises. Louis's trumpet-playing abilities take him to many different places, and make him famous.

White does a great job of mixing in the absurd with the ordinary. The people in the story are initially taken aback by a swan that can read, write, and play a trumpet, but they quickly become okay with it. In one part of the book Sam's dad asks his son if he has heard from his friend Louis recently. Sam replies that Louis has not written him in a while. And the father seems to be alright with the fact that his son has just told him that a bird has not written him in a while.

White's love for animals and nature really comes through in this book, as it does in Charlotte's Web and Stuart Little. I loved this book as a kid, and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it as a budding pseudo-adult.