{"id":39,"date":"2007-09-17T11:11:54","date_gmt":"2007-09-17T15:11:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/2007\/09\/17\/review-of-the-new-yorker-book-of-kids-cartoons\/"},"modified":"2007-09-17T11:11:54","modified_gmt":"2007-09-17T15:11:54","slug":"review-of-the-new-yorker-book-of-kids-cartoons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/?p=39","title":{"rendered":"Review of The New Yorker Book of Kids’ Cartoons"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"kids_cartoons.jpg\"<\/div>\n
\n
The New Yorker Book of Kids* Cartoons<\/p>\n

*and the people who live with them<\/p><\/div>\n

edited by Robert Mankoff
\nintroduction by Roz Chast<\/div>\n

Reviewed September 17, 2007.
\nBloomberg Press, Princeton, 2001. 126 pages.<\/p><\/div>\n

My son checked out several collections of New Yorker<\/em> Cartoons and this one was my favorite. These cartoons rang true in my life much more than the ones about dogs or cats or money or lawyers. With several of the cartoons, I wanted to call up friends and read it to them.\u2014I decided to review it instead.<\/p>\n

The cartoons by Roz Chast were some of my favorites. From the introduction, I learned that she\u2019s a mother, too\u2014and she has an eye for the hilarious moments of motherhood.<\/p>\n

For example, there\u2019s one that shows the Berlitz Guide to Parent-Teacher Conferences. We see that when you hear the phrase \u201cShe\u2019s a riot!\u201d in teacherese it means, \u201cI can\u2019t stand her.\u201d When you hear \u201cHe\u2019s doing just fine,\u201d that means \u201cWhat\u2019s your kid\u2019s name again?\u201d Okay, maybe it\u2019s not what the teacher is really thinking, but it\u2019s certainly what the parents fear she is thinking.<\/p>\n

But the Roz Chast cartoon that got me laughing uproariously was the one of \u201cBad Mom Cards.\u201d (\u201cCollect the Whole Set.\u201d) the cards show pictures of bad moms like Suzie M. who \u201cLet kid play two hours of Nintendo\u2014just to get him out of her hair.<\/u>\u201d Or the awful Deborah Z., who \u201chas never even tried<\/u> to make Play-Doh from scratch.\u201d And those are only two of the horrible things these bad moms have done to their kids. I love the way this cartoon plays off the guilt we feel about the silliest things.<\/p>\n

Roz Chast must have had sons like mine. She pictures one saying to his mom, \u201cOver all, I think a happy childhood is more important than the table\u2019s being set, wouldn\u2019t you agree.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the most convicting and sad cartoon in the bunch was drawn by Lee Lorenz, portraying a hen looking at her newly hatched chick and the broken eggshells around him. She frowns at him and says, \u201cNow look what you\u2019ve done!\u201d<\/p>\n

The best antidote I can think of to being that kind of a Mom is to learn to laugh at yourself. Laughing at the people in this collection is a good start.<\/p>\n

This review is on the main site at:<\/p>\n

www.sonderbooks.com\/Nonfiction\/kids_cartoons.html<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The New Yorker Book of Kids* Cartoons *and the people who live with them edited by Robert Mankoff introduction by Roz Chast Reviewed September 17, 2007. Bloomberg Press, Princeton, 2001. 126 pages. My son checked out several collections of New Yorker Cartoons and this one was my favorite. These cartoons rang true in my life […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humorous","category-nonfiction-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}