Chicken Scratch

I just got done watching the Korean children's movie Leafie: A Hen Into The Wild, based on a children's book. It was a pretty sweet little movie but to my surprise included some pretty serious and depressing themes (for starters, the movie begins in an industrial chicken farm and does not shy away from depicting intensively confined, scraggly-feathered hens and their corpses being loaded daily into wheelbarrows). Anyways, for some reason this paired with a post by smw about hir readlist's formative fiction reads made me consider some of the childhood books/series I enjoyed. So I thought I'd share a few for your amusement.

My youth reading consisted, as it does today, largely of non-fiction; I was young enough that my mom still periodically read to me when I tackled Cleveland Amory's Ranch of Dreams, which included some really graphic stories and images of animal cruelty and was definitely not penned with children in mind. My discovery of the chapter book, however, did involve a flurry of young adult reading before moving on to adult-geared fiction at an early age. Among my favorites were the following:

- The Bunnicula series by James Howe, or at least the first few books; by the time Return to Howliday Inn rolled around, I was already finding that I wanted something a little more meaty. Still, I cherish the series to this day - vampire bunny, dog-and-cat mystery solving team? Yes please.
- Anything Roald Dahl. Really, I think I read everything he wrote, as my sister - three years my senior - was a huge fan, passed all of her books to me, and frankly it proved one of our only areas of mutual conversation matter. I think I still have Revolting Rhymes somewhere.
- I had a brief dalliance with the Goosebumps series that immediately moved into reading Fear Street when I found the former insufficiently gory for my liking. I think the "super chiller" Bad Moonlight was one of my first werewolf reads... which surprisingly didn't turn me off of werewolf books forever?
- I was delighted, even if finding them QUITE silly by that age, by the Bug Files books, which featured killer inverts of various sorts. I think I only read the ones about killer ants and killer caterpillars before my "you're too old for this shit" ten year old SHAME compelled me to other novels, but they were fun while they lasted.

From here I very quickly started reading mostly non-fiction and adult fiction - unsurprisingly, mostly animal epics and horror lightly peppered with scifi/fantasy, generally of the social commentary flavor - and now have the prestigious honor of being the most failheap fiction reader in the world. Basically, I WRITE spec-fic but would give you a glassy, deer-in-headlights look if you asked me my favorite fiction author or what good fantasy novel I've read lately or even WHAT I've read in fiction lately - because the answer wouldn't be fiction and would probably be something large and depressing (speaking of, almost done with Guns, Germs, and Steel. It's amazing.).

I don't know where I was going with this post, so here:

I don't have signs for what I want to say to you, I explained. Misunderstanding me, Jerimiah leaned close as though to prepare for lip-reading. I back-handed him across the cheek hard enough that his head jerked to the side; that should have sent the message loud and clear. Where in the Book of Mormon does it say you can fuck a friend's girlfriend?

[If you think this scene is gratuitous, just try to picture a dude in full-on bird watching gear slapping a big wolftigerbeast in the face, then the two making furious sign language at each other, and eventually hugging. Then you'll see why it is absolutely needed.]

This reminds me of a quote from Wanderlust: "Some people call it verbal diarrhea. I call it word shit." I have word shit this morning, so sorry about all the rambling.