Charlie and Lola

Image Credit: http://1-2khps.wikispaces.com/1.+Read

 Care to transport your children to a whimsical, colorful world in which pink milk is the cat's meow, video games are never played, TV factors nowhere (unless you're the ones watching them in action), imagination reigns supreme, and imaginary friends like Soren Lorenson are there for you, and provide what seems like sound advice to complex questions and insecurities? A world in which childhood innocence is captured both through language and pictures, pictures that evoke or bring to the life the vivid images that children so frequently conjure? Oh, and did I mention, in this place, sibling rivalry--generally--is at a minimum? Then you're overdue to meet Charlie and Lola, two siblings created by Lauren Child.

Lauren Child, Creator of the series
Image Credit to: www.marlborgoughlifefest.org

Meet Charlie:

Image Credit goes to BBC Press Office

Charlie is seven, though his maturity and patience make his seem older. When my now-seven-year-old was two, I always envisioned him, despite his speaking mannerisms, as ten or eleven: he demonstrates incredible tolerance and patience when interacting with his adorable, absolutely adverb-loving, sincerely curious little sister Lola, unless, of course, she goes overboard, which she often does. Lauren Child invented him as "the" ideal brother, so to speak. So, here's Charlie, the narrator of this successful series of books, who always begins his stories in this way:

"I have this little sister, Lola.

She is small and very funny."

And from those two sentences, we find ourselves launched into a tale that features Lola's latest foible, adventure, or aversion. Each story is different, and yet comfortingly similar, in that the focus remains on the small things that govern the life of so many younger children: fear of starting school, having fun, food aversions...I think you get the picture! So...

Meet Lola:

Image Credit to Lauren Child from:
I Will Never Not Ever Eat a Tomato

Lola, fabulously four, is especially curious and sometimes judging about anything that happens to come into her world. In an interview, Lauren Child admitted that a little Danish girl whom she spotted on a train, inspired the creation of little Lola. Like Lola, that little girl hounded her parents (Lola turns to Charlie for her answers--remember how irregularly parent and adults figure in the lives of Schultz's beloved Charlie Brown?) with countless questions and observations about her surroundings.

On the left, witness Lola's determined aversion to and dismissal of the "pea."

This aversion to particular forms of food is spotlighted in Lauren Child's Award Winning (Kate Greenaway Award): I Will Never Not Ever Eat A Tomato, which you can purchase from Amazon in Hardcover for $11.55, or in softcover, for $6.99.


Yes, in this book, tomatoes are despised unless dressed up in imaginary language that takes these readily available, rudely red, foul-tasting specimens to a realm in which tomatoes totally titulate the tongue, for they are NO LONGER simply tomatoes, but moonsquirters. You may want to try some cloud fluff, orange twiglets, green drops, and ocean nibbles while you're at it!


Lauren Child also wrote I Am Not Sleepy and I Will Not Go to Bed (Charlie and Lola) and I Am Too Absolutely Small for School (Charlie and Lola) (these links take you to Amazon's website). There have been many book tie-ins to her beloved series, but recently, Child has published a fourth Charlie and Lola book, called: Slightly Invisible (Charlie and Lola).

From: I Am Not Sleepy and I Will Not Go To Bed.

Apart from the actual story lines, I love the typographical dance of the words, and how they relate to both the story as well as the perspective of the characters at a precise moment of time. Sentences wriggle on or across the pages, sentences encase themselves on shelves, actually mingling with the illustrations. Their position feels interlocked with the respective moods of the characters and help to indicate whether we're getting glimpses of an emotional outburst or a dose of Lola's logic versus Charlie's stance. There's the swirling, roller-coaster-like print that's a bit visually assaulting, but serves to emphasize the whirl-wind conversation between older brother and determined sister.


While I definitely think each book is worthwhile reading, you may want to consider watching the acclaimed TV series, too (it'll also give you a sense of the retro, imaginative perspective that the books offer). Here's a "sneak-peak" at the intro:

Have fun with this delightful series! I've been reading, and re-reading these books to my kids (and watching the videos, too) for years, and I still find the characters enchanting. Now my seven-year-old sometimes reads them to me!