Why Rillabooks?
A reader was curious: Why just “Rillabooks“? Don’t you read picture books to your little boys, too?
Yup, loads of them. But my three youngest children are experiencing books differently from each other, right now. Huck is, well, a two-year-old. He loves books, loves especially to point out 1) trucks, 2) cars, 3) tow trucks that awesomely pull cars, and 4) trucks and cars actually existing in close proximity to one another on those supercalifragilistic miracles of creation called roads, upon which, if one is extremely lucky, one might also find a bus.
So while he’ll clamber up beside me when I’m reading to Rilla and listening to a few pages, mostly he’s at the talk-about-pictures stage, not the listen-to-a-story stage. All in good time.
As for my sweet Wonderboy, he too comes at a story from a different angle. He’ll listen happily to a read-aloud, but he isn’t really into nuances. He likes good, solid, concrete facts. That’s a boat. That’s a girl. That’s a baby. The girl and the baby are getting in the boat. They’re catching a fish. They’re eating fish soup. Whoa, that was a really great story! Layers, rich language, subtleties, tensions (of which the book I’m referring to has many examples)—these are not what Wonderboy is looking for in a story right now. And that’s fine. What he IS looking for are words he recognizes (very exciting) and special time with mom (delightful), and if you want to throw in some monkeys wearing hats, so much the better.
Rilla, at five-next-month, is relishing the whole package. Plot, characters, setting, language, emotions, sensory details, suspense, conflict, humor, flights of fancy—these are the things she’s reacting to when she listens to (and looks at; the poring-over is such an important part of the experience) a picture book. Often she’ll request the same book two, three, four times in a row, honing in on different aspects each time. Sometimes it’s about the reading—she wants to be the one to read the names, or the repeated phrases, or the punchlines, or a certain character’s dialogue. Sometimes it’s about the art: finger on the page, Look, Mommy, there’s a tiny mouse under the bed. Sometimes it’s about the deep mysteries of Life, the Universe, and Everything: Why did Fats Watson do that? Why is he jealous? Why did Christina Katerina’s mom keep wanting to get rid of that clearly fabulous box?
Sometimes, frankly, it’s all about fashion. Look at what Lilly is wearing on THIS page! I wish I had a dress like that. Can I have a dress like that? And those boots! And a purse.
Her tastes are wide-ranging these days; she’s wanting to go both broad and deep. As in: she’s happiest if we have beside us a stack of half a dozen books, some new to her, some of them books she’s heard a zillion times before. Her huge appetite makes for a lively and varied reading list, which, let’s face it, is a lot easier to blog about than Caps for Sale Fifty-Seven Days in a Row.
So that’s why I’ve been focusing on the Rillabooks. And I have to say I’ve been loving the way these posts have encouraged me to take advantage of our picture-book collection. I really learned a lesson from the egregious Miss Rumphius oversight. It’s been a joy to rediscover some of these gems and to watch Rilla—and her brothers, too, though their reasons are different—fall in love with them for the first time.
Goats are nice, but where are the trucks?
Hannah says:
Chuckling about Huck’s literary preferences brings back memories. One very clear one is of when Ian was 2. We were at the Louvre. For reals. He was in his stroller, and when we arrived in front of the Mona Lisa, along with fifty billion Japanese tourists with videocameras (yes! videos!), I got a picture of Ian. Was he ogling the Mona Lisa? Trying to intepret that famous enigmatic smile? No. He was reading a giant board book about construction vehicles. š
Don’t you think the prospect of revisiting favorite picture books and discovering new ones is a great justification for having babies? š
On March 14, 2011 at 6:26 pm
Love2learn Mom says:
Eeeek! Huck is two????!!!!
I have obviously been asleep. For a long time. š
On March 14, 2011 at 7:34 pm
Rebecca says:
My just-turned-five-year-old daughter relishes what we call the “under-story”…the story under the story…like the way Jan Brett hides a story unrelated to the main one in her illustrations for The Owl and the Pussycat and Graham Base’s froggy I-Spy in The Water Hole. In books like these, one page can give us 15 minutes of entertainment! I love it.
On March 15, 2011 at 9:31 am
Ellie says:
I love books and your posts on them! The only sad part is that we read in french… very few books are translated let alone well translated. I hope to find a french equivalent to your blog one day!
On March 15, 2011 at 6:04 pm
MelanieB says:
Huck and Ben are SO on the same page. His current favorite reading material is an issue of Popular Science. So many trucks and tractors and cars and other things with wheels!!! Oh it’s just too much! And when we read the paper he always demands his tribute: all the pages that have car or truck ads. He spreads them out under his bowl of yogurt in the mornings so he can “read” while he eats.
I keep meaning to blog about Bella and Sophie’s favorite books; but get distracted by Anthony’s cheeks. So I’ll just keep mining your Rilla books posts and living vicariously through them.
On March 17, 2011 at 4:48 am
Pippi says:
I have to tell you that I LOVE your Rillabooks posts. There’s always something new in them that my 3-year-old will like. I always end up at my library’s website placing holds on numerous books as I read through the list. Thanks for all the new discoveries!
On March 18, 2011 at 10:02 am
Emily D. says:
Huck. Is. adorable. š
On March 19, 2011 at 10:55 am