A Bookworm's Tour Of the Big Apple

By MEGAN RUTHERFORD

The population of New York City is 7 million--that is, absent the horde of literary characters who hover in odd corners of museums, frolic in the parks, stroll ordinary streets and make the city a warm and friendly place for a well-read youngster. "Seeing real places that are associated with books makes stories come alive," says Judy Zuckerman, a children's-books specialist at the New York Public Library, "and visiting something kids have read about adds a personal dimension to a trip."

Virtually any place a family might go in New York has literary associations. Young readers will recall that the long spire of the Empire State Building, for example, was the last stop for Roald Dahl's James and the Giant Peach. Other readers will enjoy deconstructing the great skyscraper, a la David Macaulay's Unbuilding, which tells of the landmark's fictional dismantling by Saudi Prince Ali Smith for transport to the Arabian desert and reassembly as the headquarters of his petroleum empire.

Parents with big purses may want to stay--or dine at least once--at the Plaza, well known to the younger set as the residence of Kay Thompson's mischievous Eloise, whose portrait (by Eloise illustrator Hilary Knight) overlooks the hotel's Palm Court. There, modern-day urchins can order kid-friendly delectables like Home Alone Sundaes and s'mores.

Nearer Manhattan's southern tip, pre-schoolers will recognize the waterfront from Donald Crews' picture book Harbor and Hardie Gramatky's tugboat tale Little Toot. Older ones will recall Fraunces Tavern as the setting of Judith Berry Griffin's Phoebe the Spy, the tale of an African-American girl who supposedly saved George Washington's life.

The quaint streets and charming bistros of Greenwich Village hold many treats for book lovers of all ages. The narrowest house in the Village, occupying just 9 1/2 ft. at 75 1/2 Bedford Street, was once the home of poet Edna St. Vincent Millay. Another tiny house, a lopsided cottage on Charles and Greenwich, is surely one of the most charming in the city. Named Cobble Court, it was once located on the Upper East Side, where it housed Margaret Wise Brown, author of Goodnight Moon. Sophisticated teens will want to stop for a hamburger at the White Horse Tavern on Hudson Street, the onetime haunt of poet Dylan Thomas. And St. Luke's Place is a literary warren: novelist Theodore Dreiser lived at No. 16, poet Marianne Moore at No. 14, playwright Sherwood Anderson at No. 12.

Children who have read Sydney Taylor's All-of-a-Kind Family will find it easy to picture immigrant life by imagining Ella, Henny, Sarah, Charlotte and Gertie calling on friends in what is now the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, a restored tenement building on Orchard Street.

Times Square is the closest subway station to New York's theater district, and it was the home of Tucker Mouse and Chester Cricket in George Selden's The Cricket in Times Square. Bookworms will recall the neighborhood around the public library in Bryant Park across town as the domain of Lucinda Wyman, the heroine of Ruth Sawyer's Roller Skates, who prowled the city a century ago, making friends of cab drivers, patrolmen, fruit vendors, junk dealers and confectioners--defying her class-conscious relatives. A pleasant place to lunch nearby: the Algonquin, onetime hangout of wits and wags Dorothy Parker, George S. Kaufman and Robert Benchley.

Even a stroll in Central Park can be a page turner. The resourceful mouse of E.B. White's Stuart Little was washed overboard on the Conservatory Water (or model-boat pond) just north of the East 72nd Street entrance. A stone's throw north is a statue of Alice in Wonderland on her toadstool, surrounded by the Mad Hatter, March Hare, Dormouse and Cheshire Cat, all invitingly designed to be clambered on. West of the pond, Hans Christian Andersen, the Ugly Duckling at his feet, sits with a book--and often a child or two--on his lap.

At the museums that border the park, children will also meet old friends. Despite a sea change of renovations at the American Museum of Natural History, teenagers will recognize many of the old haunts of Holden Caulfield, protagonist of J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye, including the Indian canoe "as long as three goddam Cadillacs in a row." At the Children's Museum of Manhattan, beginning readers can walk right into their favorite Dr. Seuss stories and cook green eggs and ham, jump on the seven-hump Wump of Gump or climb into the Cat in the Hat's cleanup vehicle. And the staid Metropolitan Museum of Art, on the eastern flank of the park, was the hideout of runaways Claudia and Jamie Kincaid, who slept in a 16th century English bed, stashed their belongings in a Roman sarcophagus and behind a French tapestry, and solved the mystery surrounding a priceless statue. Their adventures are recounted in E.L. Konigsburg's From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler.

There's lots more, but if you're tired from all this, stop at the cozy, old-fashioned Lexington Candy Shop luncheonette on Lexington Avenue and 83rd Street for a rest, a nice New York egg cream (favorite drink of Harriet, in Louise Fitzhugh's Harriet the Spy, who lived on East 87th Street)...and a good book.

--With reporting by Kate Zambreno

With reporting by Kate Zambreno