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Book List 2009

2009 MK List
A Gate at the Stairs - Lorrie Moore
My Name is Asher Lev - Chaim Potok
Absurdistan - Gary Shteyngart
The Russian Debutante's Handbook - Gary Shteyngart
Don't Cry - Mary Gaitskill
And then we came to the end - Joshua Ferris
The Brief Incredible Life of Oscar Wao - Junot Diaz

2009 Read Aloud List
The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame
Ramona the Pest, Beverly Cleary
The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, Kate DiCamillo
From the mixed up files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler
Holes, Louis Sachar
Little House on the Prairie (series), Laura Ingalls Wilder
Harriet the Spy
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar
The Gypsy Game
The Saturdays
Tuck Everlasting

Elliot's Reading 2009
Stinky
Runaway Ralph
Ramona Quimby, Age 8
Henry and the Clubhouse
Henry and Ribsy
Henry Huggins
The Mouse and the Motorcycle
Knights of the Lunchtable
The Plant That Ate My Dirty Socks
Strider
The Swamp Monster in Third Grade

Little House on the Prairie Dinner

For the past few months Elliot and I have been reading the Little House series of books. I watched the TV show as a kid, but somehow missed the books. Lucky for me, Elliot really loves the stories. We both fell for Laura's crisp and direct descriptions of prairie life, her curious nature and honest voice come through loud and clear. The Ingalls's adventures with outdoor dining, random fires, locusts, screaming prairie grasses, ruthless blizzards and endless snows, encounters with friendly and unfriendly native Americans appeal to his seven year old's notion of excitement. Life can rough, disappointing and unpredictable, but if you keep your wits, persistence and hard work will pull you through.

We just finished On the Banks of Plum Creek and celebrated with a Little House Candlelight Dinner. The menu designed by Elliot included pan fried steak, corn bread, corn, milk, and carrots. I bought my first steak ever. The boys were not terribly impressed with steak and the corn bread wasn't ready until dinner was long over, but the corn was a hit.

H.A. Rey

From the Writers' Almanac with Garrison Keillor, September 16, 2008.

It's the birthday of the childrens' author and illustrator H.A. Rey born Hans Augusto Reyersbach in Hamburg, Germany, in 1898. When Hans was a boy in Hamburg, he lived near a zoo, and he loved visiting the animals there he would imitate their noises and paint them. And in Hamburg he met a young girl named Margret Elisabeth Waldstein, but then she left to go study art. Hans served in the army, he went to school for a while, and he supported himself by designing posters for the circus. But the economy in Germany was bad, so he went to Rio de Janeiro to help his brother-in-law sell bathtubs. Hans changed his name from Reyersbach to Rey because it was hard for Brazilians to pronounce. In Brazil, he met up with Margret, who was all grown up, and they fell in love and got married.

Hans and Margret Rey returned to Europe in 1935, but they were Jewish and they couldn't go back to Nazi Germany, so they settled in Paris. Hans drew some cartoons of a giraffe for a newspaper, and a French publisher liked them and he asked Hans to do some more work like that. So the Reys started writing a book called Cecily G. and the Nine Monkeys (1942), one of its characters was a monkey named Curious George, and the Reys thought he was the best character and that he should have a book of his own.

They were happy to be living in Paris, happy to be working on more children's books and translations of nursery rhymes, but in June of 1940, they discovered that Hitler was about to take control of Paris and that they were in huge danger. As fast as he could, Hans constructed two bicycles from spare parts he found, and on the morning of June 14, the Reys biked out of the city with some food, warm coats, and five manuscripts. One of those manuscripts was Curious George. The Nazis took control of Paris that afternoon, but the Reys were safely out of the city. They biked for four days until they reached the Spanish border, and then they sold their bikes for enough money to buy train tickets to Lisbon.

Over the next few months, they made it from Lisbon to Brazil, and then eventually to New York City. Curious George was published in 1941, and the Reys wrote and illustrated six more stories about him stories like Curious George Rides a Bike (1952) and Curious George Goes to the Hospital (1966).

In Memory of David Foster Wallace

Excerpts from his commencement speech to Kenyon's graduating class of 2005...

There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says "Morning, boys. How's the water?" And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes "What the hell is water?"

Here's another didactic little story. There are these two guys sitting together in a bar in the remote Alaskan wilderness. One of the guys is religious, the other is an atheist, and the two are arguing about the existence of God with that special intensity that comes after about the fourth beer. And the atheist says: "Look, it's not like I don't have actual reasons for not believing in God. It's not like I haven't ever experimented with the whole God and prayer thing. Just last month I got caught away from the camp in that terrible blizzard, and I was totally lost and I couldn't see a thing, and it was fifty below, and so I tried it: I fell to my knees in the snow and cried out 'Oh, God, if there is a God, I'm lost in this blizzard, and I'm gonna die if you don't help me.'" And now, in the bar, the religious guy looks at the atheist all puzzled. "Well then you must believe now," he says, "After all, here you are, alive." The atheist just rolls his eyes. "No, man, all that was was a couple Eskimos happened to come wandering by and showed me the way back to camp."

It's easy to run this story through kind of a standard liberal arts analysis: the exact same experience can mean two totally different things to two different people, given those people's two different belief templates and two different ways of constructing meaning from experience. Because we prize tolerance and diversity of belief, nowhere in our liberal arts analysis do we want to claim that one guy's interpretation is true and the other guy's is false or bad. Which is fine, except we also never end up talking about just where these individual templates and beliefs come from. Meaning, where they come from INSIDE the two guys. As if a person's most basic orientation toward the world, and the meaning of his experience were somehow just hard-wired, like height or shoe-size; or automatically absorbed from the culture, like language. As if how we construct meaning were not actually a matter of personal, intentional choice. Plus, there's the whole matter of arrogance. The nonreligious guy is so totally certain in his dismissal of the possibility that the passing Eskimos had anything to do with his prayer for help. True, there are plenty of religious people who seem arrogant and certain of their own interpretations, too. They're probably even more repulsive than atheists, at least to most of us. But religious dogmatists' problem is exactly the same as the story's unbeliever: blind certainty, a close-mindedness that amounts to an imprisonment so total that the prisoner doesn't even know he's locked up.

The point here is that I think this is one part of what teaching me how to think is really supposed to mean. To be just a little less arrogant. To have just a little critical awareness about myself and my certainties. Because a huge percentage of the stuff that I tend to be automatically certain of is, it turns out, totally wrong and deluded. I have learned this the hard way, as I predict you graduates will, too.

Here is just one example of the total wrongness of something I tend to be automatically sure of: everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe; the realest, most vivid and important person in existence. We rarely think about this sort of natural, basic self-centeredness because it's so socially repulsive. But it's pretty much the same for all of us. It is our default setting, hard-wired into our boards at birth. Think about it: there is no experience you have had that you are not the absolute center of. The world as you experience it is there in front of YOU or behind YOU, to the left or right of YOU, on YOUR TV or YOUR monitor. And so on. Other people's thoughts and feelings have to be communicated to you somehow, but your own are so immediate, urgent, real.

Please don't worry that I'm getting ready to lecture you about compassion or other-directedness or all the so-called virtues. This is not a matter of virtue. It's a matter of my choosing to do the work of somehow altering or getting free of my natural, hard-wired default setting which is to be deeply and literally self-centered and to see and interpret everything through this lens of self. People who can adjust their natural default setting this way are often described as being "well-adjusted", which I suggest to you is not an accidental term.

Given the triumphant academic setting here, an obvious question is how much of this work of adjusting our default setting involves actual knowledge or intellect. This question gets very tricky. Probably the most dangerous thing about an academic education -- least in my own case -- is that it enables my tendency to over-intellectualize stuff, to get lost in abstract argument inside my head, instead of simply paying attention to what is going on right in front of me, paying attention to what is going on inside me.

As I'm sure you guys know by now, it is extremely difficult to stay alert and attentive, instead of getting hypnotized by the constant monologue inside your own head (may be happening right now). Twenty years after my own graduation, I have come gradually to understand that the liberal arts cliché about teaching you how to think is actually shorthand for a much deeper, more serious idea: learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed. Think of the old cliché about quote the mind being an excellent servant but a terrible master.

This, I submit, is the freedom of a real education, of learning how to be well-adjusted. You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn't. You get to decide what to worship.

And the so-called real world will not discourage you from operating on your default settings, because the so-called real world of men and money and power hums merrily along in a pool of fear and anger and frustration and craving and worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom all to be lords of our tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the center of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talk about much in the great outside world of wanting and achieving and [unintelligible -- sounds like "displayal"]. The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.

That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.

It is about the real value of a real education, which has almost nothing to do with knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness; awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over:

"This is water."

"This is water."

William Steig - Psychology of Children

One of my favorite children's book authors is William Steig. After reading Sylvester and the Magic Pebble to Elliot several times, I realized how soothing the language felt to me compared to other children's books. His sentences are spare and crisp but ornamented with eccentric and complicated words like "perplexed" and "discombobulated." His stories are direct and darkly humorous; intuitive but strange at the same time. They're psychologically rich and his insights are unexpected.

Because his tone is so matter of fact and lacks condescension or smirky irony or cutesiness, it feels intimate in a way children's books rarely do, "You can imagine the scene that followed - the embraces, the kisses, the questions, the answers, the loving looks and the fond exclamations." In all of the books we've read, the characters are in danger at some point, but they adapt, survive and remain optimistic. They map to a child's sense of wonder, fears of a strange world, struggle for self reliance. His books reinforce survival and seeking out well being. Very healthy. Although he married four times.

I thought it was interesting that his parents who were working class raised him with socialist bohemian values, they felt business was unethical exploiting and to be an exploited worker wasn't shrewd. So they produced offspring who were artistic and self reliant. And Steig advised his own three children never to take a nine to five job.

Here is Steig talking about summer in Publishers Weekly:
The summer is not a time for art activity or anything related. The summer is for lemonade, flowers, walking barefoot by the ocean, lying on lawns, deck chairs, on hammocks, on porches, listening to birds and crickets and bull-frogs.

From his 1970 Caldecott Award Acceptance Speech for Sylvester and the Magic Pebble

I am well aware not only of the importance of children -- whom we naturally cherish and who we also embody our hopes for the future -- but also of the importance of what we provide for them in the way of art; and I realize that we are competing with a lot of other cultural influences, some of which beguile them in false directions.

Art, including juvenile literature, has the power to make any spot on earth the living center of the universe, and unlike science, which often gives us the illusion of understanding things we really do not understand, it helps us to know life in a way that still keeps before us the mystery of things. It enhances the sense of wonder. And wonder is respect for life. Art also stimulates the adventurousness and the playfulness that keep us moving in a lively way and that lead us to useful discovery.

The Dangerous Book For Boys

The Dangerous Book For Boys, a nostalgic guide / tribute to old fashioned boyhoods is getting a ton of press lately. After hearing the authors interviewed on NPR, it sounds like the title should really be "The Lost Art of How To Be a Boy." It's trying to define boyness for a new generation, it's not "the dangerous book for kids" or "the dangerous book for boys and girls."

Boys are supposed to be risk takers, action adventurers, inventors, clever problem solvers. By embracing retro boyness, does the book also embrace old school gender stereotypes? I haven't read it, so I can't say for certain, but it looks like they're going in the girls are equal but separate direction. In the section "Advice About Girls" they preface their recommendations, which seem sound and not at all sexist for the most part (although if you see a girl in need of help, unable to lift something sounds like a stereotype to me) with:

You may already have noticed that girls are quite different from you. By this, we do not mean the physical differences, more the fact that they remain unimpressed by your mastery of a game involving wizards, or your understanding of Morse code. Some will be impressed, of course, but as a general rule, girls do not get quite as excited by the use of urine as a secret ink as boys do.

Elliot is too young for this book, but I can't see our family taking on any of these ambitious projects anyway, we have trouble making dinner, how can we build a go-cart? Maybe some day.

From the NPR Story:

Boys can learn how to build a go-cart, make an electromagnet, grow a crystal and make secret ink. Dads and their sons can bond over the adventures of Scott of the Antarctic and the Battle of the Somme. The Igguldens even include the long-lost art of tanning a skin and wrapping packages in brown paper and string.

The idea, the authors say, is that courage, risk-taking and a sense of adventure is what being a kid is all about. As for danger, sections on hunting and cooking rabbits and making cloth fireproof may hold more risk than most chapters (including one on how to treat girls), but the overall premise is that learning new skills — and taking a few risks — can be fun.

We Help Mommy - It's Mother's Day

"We Help Mommy" by Jean Cushman and Eloise Wilkin was one of my favorite books as a kid. Published in 1959, Wilkin's detailed illustrations are true to the spirit of that age's commercial print ads - large scale, crisp and realistic with a palette of pastels and bold reds and blues.

I was attracted to the comforting dailiness and the minutiae of the story - Martha has trouble putting her shirt on and her mother helps her; Martha dries the forks and spoons; Mommy buys the kids a picture book and some cookies at the supermarket. Each drawing is packed with sharp focus details - a row of geraniums sits in a window sill; a fireplace in their bedroom is arched with fluted curves; the kitchen floor is black with red and green confetti.

In the 1970s, animal characters and loose, scribbly illustrations dominated children's literature, so the realism must have been refreshing to me. And of course it was about Mommy, my favorite person in the world.

Now, I like the book not only out nostalgia, but because I hope it will inspire the boys to feel more responsibility for their role in our household. Look I can dress myself! May I please sweep the floor? I'll clean the toilet Mom. I'm serving you breakfast in bed Mommy. Asher is actually very motivated to learn how to do all cleaning right now. It must be developmental.

Happy Mother's Day to my Mommy! I love you.

Insects Are My Life

Asher is our bug guy. He'll dig in our front yard for at least an hour (isn't that like 8 hours in toddler time?) looking for worms and beetles and pill bugs. Nothing pleases him more than to have a fat juicy worm slithering all over his hands. He's pretty gentle too. They end up back in the dirt just fine most of the time.

In this photo Asher is inspecting an ant hill. We were stuck here for a small eternity on our way to the farmer's market. We were relieved that he didn't feel compelled to touch the ants.


Speaking of insects, we checked out the book Insects Are My Life by Megan Mcdonald from the library this week and it became an instant hit with the boys. It's a quirky story about a girl named Amanda Frankenstein who is a "Friend to Bugs." Amanda is single minded in her passion for insects, she wears mosquito bites as a badge of honor, practices walking like a beetle and invites bugs into her room at night. Of course she's at odds with the world because she's so head strong. Good messages (follow your passion, intellectual pursuits, be yourself even if you are weird), but we mostly liked it because it's a well written book with plenty of sassy and funny lines and it was about bugs.

Neurotic Angst + the Wild Magic of Growing a Family

I just finished reading "Waiting for Birdy: A Year of Frantic Tedium, Neurotic Angst, and the Wild Magic of Growing a Family" by Catherine Newman. Newman nailed the messiness and craziness of life with two really young kids. Very funny and mostly honest. She talks about her "grief stricken stupor of doting" and how "I wasn't prepared for my terror - twinned freakishly with this love."

She highlights the positive/wacky/strange elements more than the depressing aspects. She writes about her husband as if he's a complete saint, which I'm sure isn't totally accurate. Also, her older son is precocious and she often quotes him for no other purpose but to show how clever he is, but it still made me laugh and she's a good writer.

Aesop's Fables

I've been reading Aesop's Fables to the boys lately. Elliot spots the lazy and greedy characters in The Dog and the Shadow, The Goose that Laid the Golden Egg and The Grasshopper and the Ants from a mile away. "He should have been happy with what he had," Elliot sighs and shakes his head after the completion of a fable. The dog and the man wanted more, grabbed for it and lost everything. The grasshopper smugly thought he wouldn't have to prepare for winter as the ants were doing. He gets it. You don't get something for nothing, and when you do, just be thankful. (that sounds a bit harsh though - just be grateful you're not living on the street, kid).

Now if we could get him to apply that knowledge to his own life. Just because Asher slept in our bed last night, it doesn't mean we love him more. Yes, it appears that Asher received a millimeter more of juice in his cup, but you'll live, right? To Elliot, the grass is nearly always greener in Asher's realm -- which segues into "I never get what I want" lament. I can't get no satisfaction. It will dawn on him someday that he doesn't need more, or something better. Right?

Facts about Aesop from Wikipedia:
The place of Aesop's birth was and still is disputed: Thrace, Phrygia, Egypt, Ethiopia, Samos, Athens, Sardis and Amorium all claimed the honour. According to the sparse information gathered about him from references to him in several Greek works (he was mentioned by Aristophanes, Plato, Xenophon and Aristotle), Aesop was a slave for someone called Xanthus (Ιάδμων), who resided on the island of Samos. Aesop must have been freed, for he conducted the public defence of a certain Samian demagogue (Aristotle, Rhetoric, ii. 20). He subsequently lived at the court of Croesus, where he met Solon, and dined in the company of the Seven Sages of Greece with Periander at Corinth.

According to the historian Herodotus, Aesop met with a violent death at the hands of the inhabitants of Delphi, though the cause was not stated. Various suggestions were made by later writers, such as his insulting sarcasms, the embezzlement of money entrusted to him by Croesus for distribution at Delphi, and his alleged sacrilege of a silver cup. A pestilence that ensued was blamed on his execution, and the Delphians declared their willingness to make compensation, which, in default of a nearer connection, was claimed by Iadmon, grandson of Aesop's former master.

Popular stories surrounding Aesop were assembled in a vita prefixed to a collection of fables under his name, compiled by Maximus Planudes, a fourteenth-century monk. He was by tradition extremely ugly and deformed, which is the sole basis for making a grotesque marble figure in the Villa Albani, Rome, a "portrait of Aesop". This biography had actually existed a century before Planudes. It appeared in a thirteenth century manuscript found in Florence. However, according to another Greek historian Plutarch's account of the symposium of the Seven Sages, at which Aesop was a guest, there were many jests on his former servile status, but nothing derogatory was said about his personal appearance. Aesop's deformity was further disputed by the Athenians, who erected in his honour a noble statue by the sculptor Lysippus.

Roald Dahl - Wicked Bedtime Reading

Reading bedtime stories with my kids is one of the best things about being a parent. I love nestling with the boys and a book; they're calm and completely absorbed in the present moment. It's a bonus when the books we're reading make us giggle senselessly. It's a special treat when the books are darkly humorous absurd tales featuring horrid, gruesome characters, what a bonus!

I always had my nose in a book as a kid in the 70s and 80s, but I never read anything by Roald Dahl. I asked my mom why I never read any Dahl books and she claimed not to have heard of him even though she's a bibliophile and a retired elementary school teacher. Sure I watched the odd and menacing Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory anytime it was on tv. Does that count? Did I judge books by their covers? Of course. Anyway, I was a fan of mysteries, paranormal stories and girly books. I was too immersed in Nancy Drew, Agatha Christy, Madeleine L'Engle and Judy Blume to notice these quirky books with the squiggly line drawing covers.

I read an article about Dahl's complicated life and prickly character in the New Yorker earlier this year (I identified with his dark humor and sense of social justice - I'll ignore the other parts). Now that I've discovered the pleasures of his dry wicked wit, I'm anxious to tackle the whole Dahl library with Elliot.

We started with the Enormous Crocodile about an ill tempered croc who has designs to eat "a nice, juicy child" and spends the whole tale tricking and deceiving everyone in order to get a child. Elliot thought it was hilarious. Next we read The Twits about Mr. and Mrs. Twit who are indeed grotesque, they never bathe or brush their hair, play mean and horrible tricks on each other endlesslly (worm spaghetti, frogs in the bed). Our most recent read was George's Marvelous Medicine, in which George makes a disgusting magical potion that ends up killing his beast of a grandmother. This story was particularly misanthropic, no one cared that grandma died, she was nuisance. But as with all Dahl stories, if you're a mean, nasty person who's cruel to kids then you'll get your due.

Roald Dahl died in 1990. According to his granddaughter, the family gave him a "sort of Viking funeral. He was buried with his snooker cues, some very good burgundy, chocolates, HB pencils and a power saw."

lydia davis on learning to read

I found this old interview with one of my favorite writers Lydia Davis in the Bomb Magazine archives. I've been interested in literary insights into childhood lately. Walter Benjamin's object related ruminations. Hidden meanings in things, everything is pattern based. Lydia loved the words "look" and "see." Unlocking the pattern of language is something that is supposed to click all at once (with exposure and practice). One day it makes sense and you know how to read.

Francine Prose: Do you remember learning to read?

LYDIA DAVIS Yes, and my memories of the Dick and Jane books are very happy memories. I loved learning the words "look" and "see": "Run, Jane, run. See Jane run." It was so clear and easy and unconfusing and neat. Actually I spent my second grade year in Austria. I had one year of learning to read in English and then I learned to read in German. I still have the German textbooks in which the letters got smaller and smaller as the pages progressed through the book.

fp How sadistic!
LD That’s right, very sadistic.

fp Do you think about the rhythms of Dick and Jane?
LD I always liked clarity and simplicity and balance. All rhythms can be seductive. I was attuned to the music of language as well as the music of music. Learning another language when I was seven probably made me hyperconscious of language; also the German language in the classroom was a wall of incomprehensibility around me. Gradually the words began to have meaning. But first I heard the language as rhythm.

fp So do you write for rhythm now?
LD Yes, it’s always rhythm. I always hear it in my head.

p And languages?
LD I was very good at languages. I loved Latin. Latin actually made more sense than French, probably because of the math element again.

fp I loved Latin, although I hated math. That the two things were related never occurred to me. I loved Latin because of how logical it was, like solving a crossword puzzle. There was an answer, and you got it.

LD When you’re solving the problem of the Latin sentence, there are two things going on: the pleasure of solving the puzzle, but also the emotional satisfaction of finding out what this mysterious thing is. Then there’s another pleasure—the pleasure of putting it into English words. I like English best. People assume because I translate French I’m a Francophile, but the fact is I don’t like French as much as I like English.

fp What is it about English?
LD The plainness. I love the Anglo-Saxon words as opposed to the Latinate. Bread, milk, love, war, peace, cow, dog. The English word "and" seems much more solid, like an apple. Maybe it has to do with those early Dick and Jane books again. Words beginning with "a", "and" and "apple" are somehow healthy. The Spanish "y" is just preposterous. It’s weird and strange. (laughter)

Brothers Grimm + Misogyny. Murderous Bedtime Stories.

Wicked Stepmothers
I've been reading Elliot stories from the Juniper Tree and Other Tales from Grimm. It was illustrated by Maurice Sendak and translated by Lore Segal. It's never his first choice, but because he gets really into them and because I'm interested in them, we read them every night (I selectively edit out anything too horrible).

After reading the title story, a very gruesome tale in which a wicked stepmother becomes jealous of her stepson, chops off his head and then tricks her young daughter to believe that it was her fault because she boxed his ears (I synopsized that paragraph as he died under her watch), I started to worry about the message it sends to him about women. The daughter in the story is sweet and innocent, the father is loving and kind. They are both rewarded by the spirit of the dead son who transformed himself into a beautiful bird. The boy/ bird drops a millers stone on the stepmother in a revenge killing.

Out of Control Women - Greed, Vanity
A story about a very stupid woman. An obstinate little girl disobeys her parents and heads straight to a witches den and dies. The other jealous stepmother in snow white. A good man makes a deal with the devil, his soul is safe and he marries a woman who loves him for who he is, but the devil gets the soul of two sisters who killed themselves for his love. A princess who breaks her promise to the frog who rescues her ball. A stepmother who burns her stepson's new wife to death.

Darkside of the Magic Years
I don't know, is this bad for him to hear? There are positive (non-murderous) female characters whose traits are loyalty, honesty, kindness, innocence, resourcefulness, cleanliness..... The male characters aren't especially virtuous either. Many of them are slight and passive. Why am I reading him these stories? The dark side is a part of childhood. He doesn't need to hear anything gory. But I don't want to shield him from dark things. He loves it. He always asks for scary stories. He loves ghosts, monsters, witches, knights, dragons, halloween. I have a feeling he's going to be a dungeons and dragons nerd or a goth. It's part of childhood to strengthen your psyche by working out fears through symbolic play / dreams / stories. "muscle man" "spiderman" "dragonslayer"

3 is the Magic Number
There are so many fears. Who will take care of me? What happens if I'm left alone? What will happen in the future? Fear of losing your parents. Fear of interruption of the holy trinity - mother, father, child. 3 is the magic number. Fairy tales may be especially important to the first born child. Few stories feature a large family. Singletons are common. One other sibling, usually the opposite sex is standard. Goldilocks and the 3 bears is a perfect example of interruption of the holy trinity. The interloper is the new sibling. 3 little pigs and the big bad wolf. The irritating new sibling? a new parental figure?

Books We Love (even after reading them hundreds of times)

Science + Nature
The Magic School Bus Series - Joanna Cole
The Yucky Reptile Book - Jerry Pallota
The Icky Insect Book - Jerry Pallota
The Holes in Your Nose - Genichiro Yagyu
Eating the Alphabet - Lois Ehlert
The Berenstain Bears Big Book of Science Nature - Stan Berenstain
My First Book of Nature
An Octopus is Amazing - Patricia Lauber

Stories 3 + Up
Sylvester and the Magic Pebble - William Steig
The Juniper Tree and other Tales from Grimm - Grimm Brothers
Zeke Pippin - William Steig
Moira's Birthday - Robert Munsch
Love You Forever - Robert Munsch
Murmel, Murmel, Murmel - Robert Munsch
Arnie the Doughnut - Laurie Keller
Martha Speaks - Susan Meddaugh
Martha Blah Blah - Susan Meddaugh
The Picture of Morty and Ray - Daniel Pinkwater
Yoko - Rosemary Wells
Stories for Children - Isaac Bashevis Singer
Fables and Fairy Tales - What your kindergartner needs to know
The Story of Babar
Best Friends for Frances - Russell Hoban
A Baby Sister for Frances - Russell Hoban

Stories for Toddlers
I Love you Good Night - Jon Buller
McDuff Series - Rosemary Wells
My World - Margaret Wise Brown
An Egg is an Egg -
Round is a Mooncake - Roseanne Thong
Hop on Pop - Dr. Seuss
Mr. Brown Can Moo Can You?
Go Dog Go - PD Eastman
Over on the Farm
5 Little Ducks
Mary Wore Her Red Dress

History + Culture
Brother Eage, Sister Sky - Susan Jeffers
I Live in Tokyo - Mari Takabayashi

Poetry
Take me Out of the Bathtub and Other Silly Songs
Eloise Wilkin's Poems to Read to the Very Young
Good for you - Toddler Rhymes for Toddler Times
The Real Mother Goose

Chapter Books
Professor Poopypants - Captain Underpants
Arthur Series

Real. The Skin Horse. Parenting.

I was struck by the skin horse. Rubbed bare by love. His eyes dropped out. He was vulnerable and open. He didn't care how he looked. He had been loved. Real doesn't happen often to people who have "sharp edges, break easily or must be carefully kept." A catch 22. Is that fair? You must be loveable to be loved.

It might be more helpful to look at it from the perspective of parenting, your child will not become Real unless they have been loved. Parents who have sharp edges and break easily cannot cultivate Real. You must be patient, flexible, honest, open, vulnerable and resilient. Being aware of your own emotions, having the vocabulary and the empathy to understand where other people are coming from. The long process of becoming real. It's protective sharp edges that keep people apart. An interesting prescription for parenting.

I remember the cover of the velveteen rabbit from my childhood, but nothing else really. I read it at age 7 (I think) and must have struggled through the antiquated language. After reading it to elliot in one sitting and watching how it really engaged his brain, it hit the spot for him. We've read it twice now. It's good to take it in through an adult perspective.

"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"

"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in your joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

Books for infants and toddlers

Asher's teacher gave us this handout regarding books that are good for infants and toddlers.

For babies look for books with:
• few words per page
• familiar, recognizable objects
• minimal story, if at all

For babies who will sit and listen, and for toddlers:
• books featuring rhyme and/or rhythm
• books based on a repeated refrain or pattern


Photographs of familiar things
Dorling Kindersley (DK) is the premier publisher of this type of book. Some of their books have too many things on one page for this age, so choose carefully. A number are board books. All are sturdy and hold up well.

Another series is the See How They Grow books, which show pictures of animals at different stages of life – the library system has a number of these.
For older toddlers, see the Eye Opener series, which focuses on a particular category of object or animal (trains, boats, small animals, etc.).
NOTE: These are great for encouraging your toddler to “read” to you!!

Pictures (drawings) of familiar things
For older toddlers, usually. Animals, tools, construction equipment, etc. You’ll have to see what style of illustration seems to hold your child’s attention. Generally, the stronger the lines and the bolder the colors, the better.
NOTE: As above, encourage your toddler to read these to you.

“Interactive” books
Lift-the-flap books: Dear Zoo, Nicky’s Noisy Night, Here Comes a Truck, etc
* You might want to keep these for “special” (i.e., only you can reach them).
Tactile books: Pat the Bunny, etc.
Pages with holes in them for turning easily: Moo, Moo, Peekaboo, etc.
Find-the _______ books: Have You Seen My Duckling? etc.
There are always new variations on these. Ask bookstore owners to show them to you.
I would suggest allowing your child free access to these (put them in a basket or on a shelf that s/he can reach; rotate them to maintain interest.


Books illustrating familiar songs
Galdone, Over in the Meadow
Paparone, Five Little Ducks

Books featuring rhyme and/or strong rhythmic patterns
For infants and younger toddlers:
Good Night, Moon
Time for Bed
Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?
Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear?
Mora, Listen to the Desert/Oye al Desierto (in English/Spanish)
For older toddlers:
Carlstrom, Jesse Bear, What Will You Wear?
London, Fireflies, Fireflies, Light My Way
Mahy, Seventeen Kings and Forty-Two Elephants

Books involving repetition – theme and variation
For infants and younger toddlers:
Williams, More, More More! Said the Baby
Goodnight, Moon, Brown Bear, Polar Bear, and Jesse Bear books (above)
For older toddlers:
Brown, The Runaway Bunny (also a story)
Carle, Have You Seen My Cat?
some older toddlers will like Aardema’s Bringing the Rain to Kapiti Plain

Books involving language play
For younger toddlers on up:
Martin/Archambault, Chicka-Chicka-Boom-Boom
Degen, Jamberry
For older toddlers on up:
Pomerantz, Piggy in the Puddle
Mosel, Tikki Tikki Tembo

Simple Stories
For younger toddlers:
Berger, Grandfather Twilight
Carle, The Very Hungry Caterpillar (also interactive)
the Carl books (no text – you have to tell the story by commenting on the pictures)
Hughes, the Max books

For older toddlers and up:
Owl Babies
Mazer, Salamander Room
Trafuri, The Biggest Boy
Hughes, the Alfie books (Alfie is a great problem-solver)
Bread and Jam for Francis