George and Martha

It’s not usually my thing to talk about something useful, but following Michelle’s lead, I also have a book recommendation.  My boys just borrowed a stack of books from the library.  Among the dozen books was a compilation of “George and Martha” short stories.  Each story is only a few pages long and is therefore an excellent choice for when your child demands one more story before bed.  The books were also the basis for the “George and Martha” series of cartoons on HBO.  The cartoon is also adorable and follows the book relatively closely, helping young readers gain confidence. 

Pooh Pooh

Okay, this is becoming a regular thing, but my girl likes books. I like books. We don’t always like the same books. A couple of nights ago, she pulled out a Winnie the Pooh boxed set. Now this sounds like a good opportunity to snuggle up with some classic kid’s lit. Uh, no. I made it through Pooh Goes Visiting alright, though she interrupted me every two sentences or so to ask who said what because A. A. Milne doesn’t bother to attribute quotations. Guess Milne counted on moms being able to do really good Eeyore impressions so kids can tell his moppy remarks from Pooh’s slackerly ones. Then we moved on to Kanga and Baby Roo Come to the Forest. I made it to the part where the team lays out a plan to capture the marsupial duo and simply couldn’t made it another insipid nearly-nonsensical word. Not good nonsensical either. Not Seussian whimsy, rather more a complete lack of comprehensible narrative. So at about page six, I turned to my 3 1/2 year old girl and told her straight-up: “Mommy can’t take this book anymore; it is giving mommy a headache. Please, dear girl, pick out anything else in the world and I’ll read it.”

Luckily, she just received a couple of wonderful books, written by what I think may be of one of the most underrated kids authors I’ve come across: Chris Van Dusen. Usually when books are beautifully illustrated and the illustrator pens the text, well, at least the pictures are pretty. Not so with Van Dusen. Oh, he can illustrate alright–the pictures are amazing–but the stories are really fun as well. He keeps it simple, but original. He rhymes a lot, but it has a bounciness that makes it fun to read. And his recurring characters Mr. McGee and his dog Dee are immediately loveable without becoming saccharine after a few reads. However, the book If I Built a Car (in which McGee only makes a cameo) is truly marvelous. It is one of those books that inspires the imagination (and even an interest in science and engineering) effortlessly. It is a joy. Read up, moms.

Mars Needs Moms

I previously posted a brief list of our top books at the moment and know that my #1 choice is one most moms haven’t heard of. However, those among you that are, uh, “my age” may well remember a cartoonist named Berkeley Breathed, who wrote the comic strips Bloom County and Opus and won a Pulitzer way back when I was in college.  For a while, my husband and I were on a dog-book-buying-binge and it was then that we bought “Flawed Dogs” by Berkeley. Once we started reading books to our daughter (over and over again), we found that this one had a lovely message to go along with some silly rhymes and gorgeous illustrations.  Well, Berkeley strikes again: This year, he released “Mars Needs Moms.” The illustrations alone merit the book’s price, but once again Berkeley finds fun in the mundane and ultimately aims his pen right at the heart, and hits dead on.

Recommended Toddler Reading

So, I have ranted on bad kids books in the past, but my three year old requested one of our favorites last night and it made me realize it might actually be more useful to mention a few of our off-the-beaten-shelves favorites. So here goes:

1. Flawed Dogs — The rhymes may be more than a stretch, and a few of the subtler themes, well, a touch mature but the illustrations are spectacular and the moral of the story nearly brings me a tear every time. We may all be different (and some of us more so than others), but we all need love and are loveable.

2. Harold and the Purple Crayon — This one won a major award for its illustrations, but I value it more for its approach to creativity and an independent spirit (as well as love of ones own bed).

3. The Giant Jam Sandwich — Again, stunning illustrations feature prominently in this book. And to be honest, it isn’t a morality tale on its surface (despite the line about Itching Down not being a Waspish sort of town, perhaps. But I might be reading into that one). This one is just fun to read, with a nice rhythm and good characters.

4. The Maurice Sendak Nutshell Library. While Wild Things gets all the press, these little gems are not to be missed. A particular favorite is Chicken Soup With Rice, though I can’t really say why. Guess I’m a sucker for a good bowl of soup, particularly under water. But the set also includes good alphabet and numbers-based books along with Pierre: A Cautionary Tale in Five Chapters and a Prologue. (oh, and I read another Sendak at Amanda’s recently, a Little Bear collection, that completely rocked. The kids were enthralled and not only did I not chuke reading it, I found it rather sweet.)

5. Oh, let’s end this list with a swell tongue-tier: Tiki Tiki Tembo. Truely astounding illustrations, in quite an unusual style. Excellent cultural aspect along with that tried and true moral we all love–listen to your mother. But I can’t help but notice a theme running through these few books: They are all nice to read aloud; they have a strong oral quality that makes them particularly suited for the inevitable multiple reads.

Read Me

One of the best baby gifts I received was a basket of kids books put together by my co-workers. They each chose several of their personal childhood favorites–well, almost all of them did. It was pretty obvious that one of the gift-givers wasn’t a reader, or couldn’t recall what she’d actually liked as a kid. She fell pray to some clever marketing and gave me an adorable  boxed collection of classic fairy tales, delivered in wee board book format. The result: what looks cute on the outside makes no sense whatsoever on the inside. The stories are truncated to the extent that the classic tales are almost unrecognizable. I must say that almost every other book in the basket was a winner, however, including One fish, two fish; Fox in Socks,  Goodnight Moon, Goodnight Gorilla, and many other wonderful books. In the years since, we’ve been given many books by well-meaning souls and I’m here to say that one should NEVER give a book a small child without having read it themselves. No, not once. Read it at least four times in a row. Better still, to have read it several times a day for weeks on end because that is what the receipient’s parents will have to do as long as the book is in their possession. I add this last bit because I have actually thrown away two of my daughter’s books. While the mini fractured-fairy tales will likely be donated to a local book drive, there have been a couple of titles inflicted upon us that I think will do more harm than good. While I curse my (otherwise marvelous) mother in law for the stunning, yet almost unreadable, pop-up books she’s given us, my own mother gave us one charming little tale about a greedy hippo (or was it an elephant?) that I read twice before deciding that it wasn’t working for me as a cautionary tale about selfish behavior. Rather, it struck me as a bulimia primer. Seriously, this book was all about not eating too much, because you will get fat and then others will make fun of you. Now I’m all about keeping kids a healthy weight, but this book took it to a dark place best left out off the toddler reading list (she can wait until the ‘tween and teen fashion magazine phase for these inevitable lessons, thanks).

So now that I’ve come out as some sort of preschool lit fascist, let me tell you about the book that is headed for a landfill today: I Have to Go! This book was given to me by a well-meaning co-worker that adores the author, who appears to have published a great many titles, even winning some critical acclaim. But take it from me, this book is all about refusing to go to the bathroom at an appropriate time. Nope, at no point does the lad in the text learn that going to the bathroom when one is available preferential to causing massive delays or, say, peeing the bed. In fact, grandpa is there at the end of the book to reinforce the inevitability of potty issues. Uh, perhaps the author is a hyper-realist who knows that every kid on earth will, in fact, torture their parents by withholding pee until completely clad in snow gear or until miles from the nearest rest stop, but come on… Do I really need to read this lesson over and over until it is drilled into the head of my toddler in much the same way as are all the words to My Darling Clementine? Okay, I don’t want my toddler to date a guy who can’t rescue her from drowning, but at least Clementine actually makes it clear that if the narrator had learned to swim, he’d still have the love of his life.