I was thinking today about undeservedly obscure children's picture books. There are certain picture books that are widely acknowledged to be classics, like Where the Wild Things Are, and other picture books that are widely acknowledged to be classics for reasons that utterly escape me (I'll refrain from shooting any sacred cows here, but feel free to chime in with your own), and others that are new but have gotten a lot of publicity, like Click Clack Moo (which I love, incidentally).

Anyway. Here is my list of children's picture books that you may have never heard of, but should have.

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My honorable mentions were not on the first list because they don't quite count as overlooked -- they're all reasonably well known and thus don't count as Great Overlooked Classics, but I wanted to talk about them anyway.

1. The Sneetches by Dr. Seuss.

I'm not sure if anything by Dr. Seuss can be considered overlooked. However, The Sneetches doesn't get the attention that Green Eggs and Ham or The Cat in the Hat get, and I think that's too bad because it's a really excellent story. In fact, three of the four stories in the collection are interesting in some way or another.

The first thing I find really interesting about this book is that it was published in 1960, and as far as I was able to discover from my admittedly not-terribly-in-depth research, it attracted no particular controversy. Despite the fact that it is clearly a story about racial prejudice: The Star-Bellied Sneetches had bellies with stars, and the Plain-Bellied Sneetches had none upon thars. It's a really fun example to use of how children's fantasy literature can sometimes fly right below the radar, making fairly radical statements without attracting controversy. Because it's not a story about race relations between people -- it's about Sneetches! (There's a really fascinating collection of political cartoons that Theodore Giesel drew during WWII, called Dr. Seuss Goes to War. The "Eagle" he draws to represent the U.S. looks exactly like a Sneetch. Sadly, while he is clearly opposed to racism against blacks in the WWII era cartoons, he expresses some really vitriolic prejudice against the Japanese. He was not always exempt from the prejudices of his times, alas.)

The last story in the book, "What Was I Scared Of?" is also a story about prejudice based on appearance, but one that focuses on fear rather than feelings of superiority. (The narrator meets and flees from a pair of pale green pants with nobody inside them -- in the final scene, he and the pants are trapped together and he realizes that the pants are afraid of him, too.) The other two stories are shorter. One is called "Too Many Daves" (about a mother who gives all her kids the same name) and is purely silly, as far as I can tell. The final story is "The Zax," which tells the story of a North-Going Zax and a South-Going Zax who meet, refuse to move, and wind up standing in the same spot forever while the world moves on without them. During the Clinton Penis Hearings of 1998, I listened as Congresswoman Mary Bono asked a series of amazingly inane questions. She had just been appointed to replace her dead husband and was clearly a little overwhelmed and out of the loop, but still, I found myself fantasizing about what I would do with my five minutes if I were in her place. I decided that I would read this story as a cautionary tale. It would have fit right in with the rest of the absurd atmosphere. I still wish someone had done that. I think the story works awfully well as a metaphore for the U.S. Senate at its worst.

2. The Complete Works of Sandra Boynton.

The non-parents who read this may think of Boynton solely as an author of greeting cards (mostly featuring big-eyed hippos and other whimsical animals). Well, she also writes children's books. These are well on their way to becoming universally acknowledged classics, because they are incredibly fun to read out loud. My favorite is probably Birthday Monsters ("You're not awake. It's six o'clock. You hear a ring -- you hear, knock knock. You hear the door come crashing down. THE BIRTHDAY MONSTERS ARE IN TOWN!") Hippos Go Berzerk was the first one we got and is also a hoot. She did an entire music album ("Philadelphia Chickens") that we don't own but have heard good things about. And the first book that Kiera would request was the Boynton starter book, "Fuzzy Fuzzy Fuzzy."

Boynton is a genius. Not unappreciated, but I wanted to acknowledge her genius anyway, hence the honorable mention.

3. Outside Over There by Maurice Sendak.

Sendak, like Seuss, is quite well known, but he's mostly known for Where the Wild Things Are. Which is an excellent book, don't get me wrong, but it makes me sad that more people don't know about Outside Over There (which was springbok1's favorite book when she was little). Like Where the Wild Things Are, it uses imagery that taps right into the collective unconscious of the five-year-old mind. It's also wonderful to read out loud. In the Night Kitchen is another excellent example of this. Sendak has some other books that are really not written for children (like Dear Mili) but these both make excellent children's books.