Bonus of audio books...

We went on a trip last weekend and we listened to this wonderfully told version of E.B. White's Stuart Little. Mid story, I discovered something that goes decisively on the "Pro" side of why one should use audio books here and there. We already know that they can be time savers, attention holders and time passers on the road, but they should also be praised for their consistency. Sometimes, when I'm reading aloud to the kids, I trail off during an exciting part and quickly read ahead to myself. I can't help it! The kids have to nudge me back to the present because I'd unconsciously forgotten about them and the stalled story! Terrible I know. Anyway, audio books are an excellent remedy to that situation. While we listened to the gentle tales (more about that topic later, by the way) of dear Stuart, we ALL got to experience the full suspense as he got dumped into the garbage truck; we ALL felt the tension heighten as Snowbell got ready to pounce on Margolo. It was fantastic... very bonding.

I've been waiting for the right time and money to buy this edition of the entire Narnia series on audio. It would be a good investment since these are stories that definitely merit more than one reading... and they are full of adventure which could really use a more attentive and less spacey storyteller than myself!

“All that I hope to say in books, all that I ever hope to say, is that I love the world.”

-E.B. White

A Place for Sentiment

I stumbled across this excellent, excellent post regarding the place of sentimentality in our culture. It helps to articulate why I find so much passion in finding and loving exemplary children's books.

Please read it.

Bee-autiful Books

I want bees. I also want chickens but those are taking a backseat to my interest in beekeeping lately. This has been fueled by a few things: a Texan friend who began exploring the idea, our greater consumption of honey as the primary source of sugar used in this house, my love of all things beeswax, and this fantastic children's book that made my beekeeping itch go rabid:

The Honeybee Man by Lela Nargi. This is an excellent example of a "living book". And these types of course, should live in abundance on your shelves. Published last year, this book caught me with the illustrations done in scrap collage style. It is the story of Fred, an apiarist in Brooklyn. That's right, Brooklyn. Fred loves his bees and shows you the ins and outs of tending them. Urban beekeeping truly can happen! I need to do some research and save some money and talk to the fine folks who offer beginner classes... but I hope to make this dream a reality soon. Maybe 2013 will be my year as it's already springtime and I'm behind the curve. At any rate, there are lots of books out there on the bee theme. Here I mention what I think are the very best:

The Bee Tree by Patricia Polacco. Frolic the countryside with the pastoral imagery that Polacco captures so well.

The Life and Times of the Honeybee by Charles Micucci. A very fun, colorful, informative book on all things related to bees! Would make an excellent spine for a unit study.
The Honeybee and the Robber by Eric Carle. A sweet, moveable flap book that showcases Carle's signature style... especially good for young readers.
 The Bee-Man of Orn by Frank Stockton. Truth be told, I found the story here a little bit strange... just a little left of center on how I like my fantasy books. But the artwork, by the very talented P.J. Lynch is stunning. So thoughtful and detailed and otherworldly... it's worth the read for sure.

Books are the bees which carry the quickening pollen from one to another mind.

-James Russell Lowell

St. Patrick's Day, Irish Saints in General, and How to Be a Savvy Library Patron

A potpourri post that omits some of the best books based in Ireland only because there are many and I'm saving them for another upcoming theme:

Next week is the feast of St. Patrick. If you live in a particularly big city or a particularly literate area or a particularly homeschooler-thick area, it's probably too late for you to reserve your St. Patrick books at the library because bibliozealots like me snatched them up at least a week or two ago already. See you really have to be forward-thinking with seasonal literature. Some people walk into a library on December 23rd expecting to pick up some lovely Christmas stories for their kids to enjoy Christmas Day... ha! It ain't gonna happen my friend! Reserve your Christmas books a month out, then when they notify you that your holds are ready to pick up, you wait until the last possible day to pick them up. Usually you have a week's grace period to pick up your holds. So that puts you out three weeks to the holiday. Your library should let you borrow books for three weeks. But if you want them longer, try to renew your books a week after you get them or so. Some will already have reservations on them from other users, others will be available for renewals. You make the most of it.

This is the way to get seasonal or holiday books. I try not to hoard every single book on St. Patrick or Christmas or Thanksgiving or whatever... that's just gluttonous, but I do try and make sure we have a super great title or two that we can count on to be perfect holiday reading.

Furthermore, I am more and more interested in purchasing seasonal or liturgical books than the average run-of-the-mill book only because it's nice to rotate things in and out of your book basket as the rhythms of the year come and go. So I'll even borrow some Christmas books from the library in October or November for preview's sake... to see if it's something I want to purchase. Right now, I'm getting itchy to purchase some lovely Easter-themed books for the children on Easter morning and the time is already over-ripe to make those plans!

But I digress.

St. Patrick's Day. And a wee bit of Ireland in general just to get in the sprit of things shall we?

My favorites:

St. Patrick's Day in the Morning by Eve Bunting. Very sweet story with excellent Jan Brett illustrations about a young boy who is too big for his britches.

Patrick Patron Saint of Ireland by the incomparable Tomie dePaola. Everyone should have the basic story of Patrick in mind on this holiday that quickly gets overtaken with beer and leprechauns... this is a good a story as any! Also, I haven't personally read these, but here are some other books on the saint himself that look like they might be real gems too: Patrick, Saint of Ireland, and The Story of Saint Patrick and The Life of St. Patrick: Enlightener of the Irish.
St. Patrick's Day by Gail Gibbons. Gibbons does a great job at producing basic, light non-fiction children's books on a ton of topics. This book is a good overview of the holiday and current customs. My only beef with it is that it says the shamrock is a "symbol of St. Patrick"... well, uh, actually it's not. He made this symbol famous for representing the Holy Trinity... but I try not to be too pedantic with kid's books. Key word "try."
Mary McLean and the St. Patrick's Day Parade by Steven Kroll. Wishes really can come true for this little girl!

Saint Patrick and the Peddler by Margaret Hodges is out of print but your library may have it. This is a fantastic story that tells like a verbal story... try to read it with an accent! It may be scary for young readers as the ghost of St. Patrick is shown... the story actually has nothing to do with his feast day but all things Ireland relate to him somehow it seems!

***[Side Note]***

I was typing a title into Amazon to find the link and I stumbled on this book which looks like it could be a real winner... at least the cover art is appealing to me. So don't take my word for it, since I've not reviewed it myself yet, but I was surprised to find a book on St. Patrick that I'd never heard of that looked really promising! (boo, my library system doesn't have it in their system.)

St. Patrick and the Three Brave Mice by Joyce Stengel...

***[/Side Note]***

The Blackbird's Nest: Saint Kevin of Ireland by Jenny Schroedel. This is a good time of year to go through other Irish saints too... and this particular story is particularly Lenten so I consider it a must-read!

Ciaran: the Tale of a Saint of Ireland by Gary Schmidt. St. Ciaran was one of Ireland's first saints... he was encouraged by St. Patrick. This is a lovely, gentle book with excellent illustrations and evocative prose: "But still Ciaran's eyes looked to the east, and his heart longed for the name of God..."
Saint Brigid: Abbess of Kildaire by Jane Meyer. Geared toward slightly older children, this story of St. Brigid has stunning illuminations that make the whole thing come alive from the Emerald Isle... (see also Brigid's Cloak)

Acrosss a Dark and Wild Sea by Don Brown. This is an excellent story about the Irish monk St. Columba...
Brendan and the Voyage Before Columbus by Michael McGrew. Get your history straight on the "discovery" of the New World and add some faith in there too!

update

I added a couple new ideas onto the ever-popular Resistant Readers post. Seeing all the beautiful images all over Pinterest on great reading spaces reminded me that marketing is an important tool in marketing literacy to the disinterested!!!

Upcycling Casualties

It's been a brutal month on the Western Front. Three... I say again, three deaths of library books for which I have to pay. Every year or so we lose a book or maybe one gets a cup of water spilled on it accidentally but to have three casualities in a single month is a new, sobering reality. It is a reality that brings me shamefaced to my husband once again, who shakes his head and threatens to ban the library altogether unless we can get our act together. And like any good commander, I take full responsibility and tell him with all sincerity that we'll do better this time! I have a plan! My platoon was poorly trained, in truth. One young soldier thought it was okay to sit a 5 month old grabbing, teething baby on his lap and read a book to him. It is okay... encouraged even. But the young lad failed to grab an appropriate board book from my shelf... or even one of those annoying books that I have to keep because they were gifts. No, he grabbed a library book. It was one that isn't worth a title mention, for better or worse, as one of the kids tossed it in my book pile before I checked my holds out at the library. Being such a nondescript book, I couldn't even have the pleasure of salvaging beautiful artwork to frame.

Then, we lost something that came to us with a loose binding to begin with. Readers, let it serve as a warning to always check the condition of a book before you check it out! It's easy to hand something off to a librarian for repairs before it's on your account! But should you do any further damage to such a book, you will pay. So, we bought one of the Where's Waldo? books once a couple good yanks from the same teething, grabbing baby got a hold of it when his siblings left it on the floor in too close of his reach. While I never buy Waldo books or I Spy books because their merit lies solely in their novelty, I can use this remains of this book in a constructive way. Waldo backgrounds would make for fun homemade wrapping paper or envelopes for letters that I write (believe it or not, I'm among the dying breed that sometimes still handwrites letters!)

The third loss came when the two year old found a pair of scissors and decided to shred the pages of Raining Cats and Dogs which was a delightful and very well illustrated book of idioms. There are some pages left with which I could do something crafty I'm sure... but it really is a book that needs to be appreciated in its whole; a single page out of context just won't carry even half the charm as the whole thing. Still, I'll hang on to it and toss it in my scrap paper bin for a while at least.

Finally, I am sad to say that the two year old was on quite a spree this month and also ruined my personal copy of a book which is a sweet delight: A Boy, a Dog, and a Frog which is one of my very favorite wordless books out there featuring one of my favorite illustrators, Mercer Mayer. So that was fairly depressing. The book is too small to make envelopes with and I suppose I could matte and frame a series of photos... it would be lovely artwork in a child's bathroom or even bedroom... or I could use the images for gift tags, address labels on packages or mod podge them onto some blocks or a piece of furniture... hmm, here's a sweet bunting idea... what else? I suppose that when it comes to repurposing books, there's quite a bit that can be done. Ideally though, books are best left in their original form. Time to go write a check to the library... *sigh*... the pain of being a bibliozealot can be fierce indeed.

Thrifting Swoon/On Challenging Your Children

I went to the Goodwill yesterday saying a little prayer as I went in that there would be some decent pants in the sizes of my two middle sons... they are in desperate need of some fresh knees to rip through.

No such luck. God, in His infinite goodness, did not allow such a mercy. But He did allow me to find a book that has been on my want list for a very, very long time:

Pagooby Holling C. Holling is the very first living science book that I read aloud to my children when my oldest was six years old. It was a very surprising hit. Kind of like how I was shocked when my six year old requested that we read Pinocchio (the original version) where the language is archaic and challenging, but they loved it! Children really ought to get their ears trained to hearing excellent vocabulary though. Don't make the mistake of thinking they always need to be talked (read) down to. They will rise to the challenge. And when I taught myself to read at age four, whenever I came across words I didn't know, I just sort of ignored them until they slowly came to meaning based on context. That's how readers and writers are born. They get challenged with the words in their natural setting which they are exposed to often. If you yourself are uncomfortable with reading challenging books with your children, get the audio version! Play it in the car where they can't escape the words which might ordinarily make them disinterested only because they are unfamiliar...

But I digress, I think if I were to read Pagoo again with their ages now (9, 7, 5), it would be even more popular. As it is, Holling C. Holling books are one of the more superior options you have in teachable stories. I mean, a lot, lot, lot of picture books really double as educational too... but these are something special. Each one is a perfect science or geography lesson in and of itself with a story wrapped up in it. And the art, which is usually a color spread on every other page, and more nature-journal black and white sketches with captions in between... is super. Do not expect a typical 15 minute story however, they are fairly dense. We spread our reading of it out over a week.

Pagoo is about the life of a hermit crab. We learned all about tidal creatures, life cycles of hermit crabs and fun little facts here and there. It was really easy to make it come alive for them when we went to the aquarium and could see real hermit crabs up close... and then I reinforced it with buying this excellent little companionfor our toy animal bin too.

Other books we've purchased (albeit full price) from this author are Minn of the Mississippiand Paddle-to-the-Seawhich we began reading when we studied the beginnings of European explorers in Canada last year. Excellent, excellent books. And who really needs pants when you have books?

The Arrival

The Arrival by Shaun Tan is in a class of its own. This is what is called a 'graphic novel' (not a comic book) and you'll not find it in the picture book section. The difference between a graphic novel and a picture book is that the former is closer to a cinema experience than anything else. The author/illustrator has to focus especially on the continuity in between images to make the whole piece 'flow' really well. It would be in the young adults section at your library.

I spent the better part of an hour reading this book. Reading might be the wrong word-- let's say feasting. There are no words at all; it is a picture journey that makes it accessible from the very, very young all the way through adulthood. Truly a book for all ages. This artwork is stunning.

The story is about an immigrant who is making his way in a new world and its told in the setting of fantastical, surreal creatures, buildings, foods and skylines. Seems there's a lot of meaty symbolism in there too... the shadow of a dragon's tail over the city could mean so many different kinds of physical, political, or spiritual threats. You get a haunting and satisfying feeling that this experience is what true immigrants must've felt like back in the day when everything was foreign to them.

Shaun Tan grew up as a half Chinese man in Western Australia and he worked on this book for four years, gathering anecdotes from immigrants, doing research and of course the laborious artwork. His website is an interesting place in and of itself... turns out he also worked as a conceptual designer on the movie WALL-E. You know, I'm not generally a big fan of surreal art; Salvador Dali never did much for me, but Tan's work on this particular book really makes me want to seek out his other work for a taste of more...

It occurred to me that photo albums are really just another kind of picture book that everybody makes and reads, a series of chronological images illustrating the story of someone’s life. They work by inspiring memory and urging us to fill in the silent gaps, animating them with the addition of our own storyline. -Shaun Tan

Flicka, Snapp, Snurr.

Do you know Maj Lindman? Seeing how she's a Swedish author and during the wintertime, I'm hot and heavy over all things Scandinavian, I thought it a good time to rave about the wonderful little series she created in the 1930s and 40s. They're still in print today!

Snipp, Snapp, and Snurr are three young triplets who get into all sorts of fun predicaments before a happy ending and good moral end the story. We're not talking phenomenal storytelling here. But don't be deceived by the Dick and Jane vintage illustrations either... there is a real, good, edifying story to be told. It's so charming and happy and just the sort of thing to read to a houseful of rowdy boys to perhaps interest them into wanting a respectable sort of day.

My personal favorite is Snipp, Snapp, Snurr, and the Gingerbreadbecause you are guaranteed giggles over three batter covered boys...

Of course, there's also Flicka, Ricka and Dicka who were something of heroines to me when I was a young girl. I always wished they could have been quadruplets and I could've been, oh I don't know... Nicka? Sticka? Blicka? Whatever... I just wanted to have a gaggle of girls around me to have as much fun as these three had. I loved the story of Flicka, Ricka, Dicka and the New Dotted Dresseseven if it was terribly predictable.

See what's so charming about these books is that they are so happily virtuous. They would never exist in today's children's literature world. The drama would be amped up. The girls would be seeking their individuality. But it's quite refreshing to read a sweet, simple story about sweet, simple girls. And I think kids are inwardly hungry for this kind of innocent goodness. Think of Snipp, Snapp, Snurr, Flicka, Ricka, and Dicka as you would a warm bowl of oatmeal in the morning topped off with a dollop of honey and cinnamon... wholesome, sweet, simply good for you.

Here's a quick, random video that shows the inside of Flicka, Ricka, Dicka and their New Skates. The new edition comes complete with paper dolls!