Tag Archives: New York stories

Even if Your Kid Has Never Heard of Gefilte Fish: The Carp in the Bathroom

I’m Korean, but I grew up in Great Neck and I was obsessed with the All-of-a-Kind Family books by Sydney Taylor (I’ve written about them here and here). So I have a soft spot for any book set in old-time New York where the characters have names like Zipporah and Moishe and eat noodle kugel.

Each year when Passover rolls around, my husband’s family gets together for a raucous and extremely secularized seder. I’m not sure the kids have any idea what the holiday is actually about because they are too busy stuffing themselves with chocolate-covered matzoh and playing with the felt finger puppets representing the ten plagues. But I’ve developed my own Passover tradition, which is to break out the 1972 classic The Carp in the Bathtub by Barbara Cohen and force my children to appreciate its charms.

It’s about a nine-year-old girl and her little brother who live with their parents in a tenement in Brooklyn. It looks like the 1940s or thereabouts. Their mother is a wonderful cook who makes an especially mean gefilte fish. To make sure she has the fattest, freshest fish every year for their seder, she always buys a live carp a week early and lets it swim in the family’s bathtub until it’s butchering time.

Love this illustration of the mom, walking so purposefully in her polka-dot dress:

The family’s tub carp is a beloved annual ritual. The kids don’t have to bathe for a whole week and it’s the closest they ever get to having a pet.

“Every time Harry or I had to go to the toilet, we would grab a crust of bread or a rusty lettuce leaf from the kitchen. While we sat on the toilet, we fed the bread or the lettuce leaf to the carp. This made going to the bathroom really fun, instead of just a waste of time.” 

Hands down, the most memorable picture in the book: The brother on the toilet.

One year they get especially attached to their carp. His eyes are brighter and he seems “unusually playful and intelligent.”

“There was something about his mouth that made him seem to be smiling at us.”

So the kids hatch a plan to save their friend’s life by sneaking him out in a bucket and begging their downstairs neighbor, the recently widowed Mrs. Ginzburg, to keep him in her tub.

“A few drops of water dripped onto the oriental rug Mrs. Ginzburg had bought at Abraham and Straus with Mr. Ginzburg’s Christmas bonus two years before.” (Love this!!!)

I love how gigantic all the adults are in the illustrations. They suit the story’s point of view perfectly: the adults are firmly in charge, but they’re not intimidating. They’re more like gentle, oversized, somewhat inscrutable giants. The storytelling has a sweet, gentle humor and even though the stakes aren’t super high, Cohen gives the plot some genuine drama.

But warning: Any child reading this book is going to beg you to let them keep a giant fish in the bathtub.

Christmas carp, c.1971 (photo courtesy of ČTK / Czech News Agency)

Today, when I was poking around the web I learned that keeping a fish in a bathtub for a couple of days is actually a well-established Christmas tradition in Slovakia, Poland and the Czech Republic. The idea is not only that this keeps the fish fresh, but that a few days living in clean water helps to flush mud from the fish’s digestive tract. (Carp are bottom feeders.) And it’s just as common for the kids to get attached to their pet fish and mourn them when the big day arrives.

 

 

 

 

Still My Favorite Baby Gift: A Teeny Tiny Baby

When friends have babies, I love to give books. I buy the same ones again and again:  Amos & BorisI am a Bunny, The Best NestWhen I Have a Little Girl , When You Were Small, Thank You, Bear, and Max Makes a Million, to name a few. The key is the book can’t be so super well-known that I have to worry that my friend already has a copy. (I was annoyed by the time I got my third copy of The Very Hungry Caterpillar — bratty, I know.)  But lately, I’ve been stymied. One of my longtime favorite titles to give is out of print: A Teeny Tiny Baby by Amy Schwartz.

When it came out in 1994, I was in my 20s and years away from contemplating motherhood. My boss and his wife had just had their first baby and someone must have given them the book as a gift. When I saw it, I was charmed from the get-go. I remember looking at the illustrations of the scruffily bearded dads with babies strapped to their chests and realizing the author-illustrator had perfectly nailed that new kind of Upper West Sidey-Brooklyn parent I’d kinda sorta noticed on my way to drink cosmos or catch the new Janeane Garofalo movie.

The story is told from the perspective of an infant in Brooklyn in his first few weeks of life. He reports his experiences at the center of the household —everybody cooing and fussing over him — in the most matter-of-fact way.

The illustrations, meanwhile, give us the other side of the story. There’s his parents’ undignified struggle with the stroller down the steps to the cleaners and the big night out at a restaurant where the family is seated (with stroller) at at an outdoor table … in an alleyway … next to a trash can. It’s all very subtle and subversive about the beleaguered/besotted emotional state of new parents, which is why it makes such a good gift for new moms. Not to mention that the illustrations are totally charming, from the cosy interiors (Thonet rocker!) to the characters’ outfits (Marimekko?).

After the Teeny Tiny Baby hardcovers disappeared from Amazon, I noticed you could still find board book versions of the book. So I bought a few and gave those as gifts. But these days I can only find secondhand copies of this incredible book for sale. Heartbreaking!

I might have to buy some used copies as gifts. I know this might gross out some new moms so maybe I’ll also include a bottle of Purell.

Double Fudge by Judy Blume: A Novel for Adults

Double FudgeDouble Fudge has no sex scenes and not even a single stuffed bra. But the fifth installation in Judy Blume’s Fudge series has something grownups can appreciate: A realistic view of what it’s like trying to raise three kids in Manhattan on a not-astronomical income.

Blume has never hesitated to spell out the Hatcher family’s precise economic situation. In Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, we learn that the family lives in a two-bedroom, one-bathroom on 25 W. 68th St, where Fudge sleeps in the converted den. Throughout the series, money and real estate are the engines that drive the plots (Fudgie’s antics aside). In Fourth Grade Nothing, Peter’s dad, who works in advertising, is fired from the Juicy-O account after he makes the mistake of inviting his boss for an overnight visit; later, Peter’s dad only allows Fudge to appear in the Toddle Bike commercial because he can’t afford to lose another account. In Superfudge, baby Tootsie is born and the family temporarily decamps to Princeton, NJ, where Peter’s dad, apparently having a mid-career crisis, attempts to write a book; we also learn that Peter’s mom, a dental hygenist, dreams of going back to school for art history. In Fudge-a-Mania, the family must share a cramped summer house with Sheila’s family because neither can afford to rent their own houses.

The Hatcher family is said to live at 25 W. 68th St

Double Fudge was published a full three decades after Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, and the city Blume portrays has the distinct feeling of a boom-era New York. Peter’s friend’s dad, the formerly struggling artist Frank Fargo, is at a career high, and moves to a big loft in SoHo. Frank’s paintings, Peter realizes, are now too expensive for the Hatchers to afford.  And then there’s Fudgie’s new friend, six-year-old Richie Potter. Richie is a child of privilege and a masterful underminer. When Fudge and Peter’s mom tells Richie she’s a dental hygenist, he informs her, “One of my grandpas is a very famous neurosurgeon.” When the mom tells Richie they don’t have a cook, he says, “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were poor.” Later he tells the family about his own mother: “She’s a designer. You can get clothes with her name on it.” There is also his discussion of their summer house (clearly in the Hamptons). “We have a house at the beach. Do you? … Our house is on the ocean side but we keep our boat at the bay.” We’ve all met a Richie Potter — maybe our kids have even gone to school with one — and we all want to slap him.

In the midst of all this, Blume introduces the characters of Howie Hatcher and his family, whose defiantly bohemian lifestyle is a direct repudiation to the New York City rat race. These Hatchers live in Hawaii, home-school their daughters (the “Natural Beauties”) and distain television. But they are insufferable, moralizing mooches who turn out to be weak and hypocritical.

My kids loved Double Fudge, as they loved every one of the Fudge books. They snickered at Richie Rich, howled at the “Natural Beauties” and practically cheered when the overbearing relatives finally moved on. But by the end of Double Fudge, I must say I felt a little bit sad. Their mom has stopped talking about getting that art history degree and the family is still sharing the one bathroom. (What will happen when Tootsie gets potty trained?)

I can only hope that Judy Blume pulls out another Fudge book in a couple of years. In this one, an elderly neighbor in their building could die and leave the family her classic six, which the Hatchers combine with their apartment. That’s the New York dream, right?

Mari Takabayashi Forever

I love Mari Takabayashi’s I Live in Brooklyn (2004). After buying this book several years ago for my (Manhattan) children, I couldn’t get enough of Takabayashi and all her round-faced, Marimekko print-wearing girls.

Mari_Takabayashi2Takabayashi paints like a Japanese Grandma Moses, and I mean that in the best way.

Carroll_Gardens_TakabayashiWhen I realized Takabayashi had previously written something similar called I Live in Tokyo (2001), I had to get that one immediately, of course. As a kid I would have died for this book — I’ve been obsessed with Japan ever since my friend Tomoko shared her rice balls with me in first grade. I_Live_In_TokyoTakabayashi often does these nice little pictorial guides to her characters’ stuff, sort of in the vein of a Richard Scarry word book. They are easy to obsess over.Mari_Takabayashi6 Rush Hour (1996), which has text by Christine Loomis, is the artist’s totally charming portrayal of a working day in New York City, book-ended by the hectic morning and evening commutes.Mari_Takabayashi7I used to read Rush Hour to my kids when they were little — I thought it was a nice way for them to make sense of where their parents had been all day. Mari_Takabayashi4True, all Takabayashi’s books pretty much look the same. And the stories are not remotely plot-driven. But who cares? Wouldn’t you want your kids to sleep in this room from Marshmallow Kisses (2000)?Mari_Takabayashi8 See Mari Takabayashi’s website here.

Out-of-Print Gem: Rich Cat, Poor Cat (1963)

The other day at the library I discovered a Bernard Waber book I’ve never seen before: Rich Cat, Poor Cat. And I am in love.The concept couldn’t be simpler. Each left-hand page shows the cushy, pampered life of a rich cat (clearly, a member of cat society’s 1%). Each right-hand page shows the contrasting life of a penurious streetcat named Scat.

There isn’t much of a plot per se, but no matter. It’s sweet, witty, and gorgeous to look at. The scenes of ’60s New York are stunning. How can you not love the outfit on this woman?

Of course, there’s a happy ending for Scat, with a great little twist on the last page. It’s hard to get hold of an original copy of this book (there’s a seller on EBay offering it right now for $99), but I just bought a copy of the 1970 Scholastic paperback on Etsy for $3.00. Now I won’t be tempted to “lose” my library’s copy.