Today in Books
Yesterday I was looking for a book for Beanie—Diane Stanley’s Michelangelo—and I kept coming across picture books I really really really need to read to Rilla. It’s that fifth-kid thing again, where I’ll suddenly realize she is missing out on one of our favorite books because I’ve read it so many times to the four above her that I forget there are kids in this house who haven’t yet had the pleasure.
I wound up with a stack of must-reads in the middle of the living-room floor. Rose teased me. “Every time you look for a book, you wind up with a pile of twenty.”
Guilty as charged.
Rilla and Huck and I squoze onto the couch (technical term, you know) and read several of the found treasures. I plopped the rest of the stack into a cloth basket and vowed to return to my habits of old: filling a basket with picture books every week or two, rotating new ones from the shelves.
Here are the books that went into the basket for this week—no particular theme to the selections; none of them new; most of them quite well known. This list is for our family chronicle more than anything else.
• The Grouchy Ladybug by Eric Carle (that crabby voice is such fun to read aloud)
• James in the House of Aunt Prudence by Timothy Bush (one of our family’s most beloved picture books)
• One Hungry Baby by Lucy Coats (see the comments for my take on this charmer)
• Strega Nona by Tomie de Paola (like I had to tell you that)
• Crazy Hair by Neil Gaiman. (Rilla’s the one who added this to the pile—it’s a special favorite of hers.)
• Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See by Bill Martin. (Huck’s first time! Egad! It made him chuckle—a delighted, delicious huckleberry chuckle. The teacher page especially—I don’t know why.)
Meanwhile, Wonderboy continues to love Elephant and Piggie best of all. Understandably.
We did eventually locate Michelangelo; Beanie enjoyed it. It will not surprise you that today I gave her From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankenweiler. Rose recently finished Pride and Prejudice for the first time and announced that she would have liked it very much if only it contained more fantasy and adventure. If, in short, it had been more like a Warriors book. 😉
We have one chapter left in The Family Under the Bridge. As for young Mr. Copperfield, he has only just arrived in Yarmouth, where his vague misgivings about Mr. Murdstone have been swept out of his mind by the miracle of a house made out of an old boat.
“…The wonderful charm of it was, that it was a real boat which had no doubt been upon the water hundreds of times, and which had never been intended to be lived in, on dry land. That was the captivation of it to me. If it had ever been meant to be lived in, I might have thought it small, or inconvenient, or lonely; but never having been designed for any such use, it became a perfect abode.”
maria says:
Reading this makes me feel so very normal. Glad you found the book you were searching for, which is quite the accomplishment as I all too well know. Thus the making me feel so normal part. I often just end up with the stack of “must reads”. 🙂
On January 19, 2012 at 8:22 pm
Shauna says:
The first time I read The Grouchy Ladybug to my girls, they giggled so much that I almost couldn’t finish reading it because then I got the giggles. I love Eric Carle.
On January 19, 2012 at 8:28 pm
Ruthie says:
This reminds me of a few that I need to dig out for my third-born! (“The Grouchy Ladybug” is among then.)
And I’m so looking forward to the day that I get to hand my Claudia her own copy of “Mixed-Up Files.”
On January 19, 2012 at 10:54 pm
sarah says:
That quote about DC: Substitute “box” for “boat” and that describes the littles’ past week with the last packing box. Perfect.
On January 20, 2012 at 4:21 am
Lucy Coats says:
I’m so pleased you picked One Hungry Baby as a ‘must read’ picture book. It was the first real book I ever had published, way back in the last century, and I still have a huge affection for it. Do hope you’ll enjoy ‘squozing’ up with it!
On January 20, 2012 at 9:25 am
Melissa Wiley says:
Lucy, what a delight to have you visit Bonny Glen! One Hungry Baby has been a favorite book of all six of my children, especially around age three when bedtime and bathtime are Major Life Events—they are charmed by all those whimsical animal babies counting their way through the familiar steps of a routine they can very much relate to. Such fun. 🙂
On January 20, 2012 at 9:32 am
Selena says:
I so appreciate your book recommendations. So I’m writing with a question.
My 8-year-old girl is an excellent reader, but she is stuck on the “Rainbow Magic” series. She does not want to read anything but these. I have encouraged her with a great number of novels (and she has enjoyed Little House books read aloud for a couple of years now) but she is not interested in anything else.
She explains that she only likes books with happy endings, with quite a lot of pictures, with always the same kind of things happening, about magic, and without hard words. I know she can manage “hard words” very well, because in the reading I set her for homeschool she thrives. She likes graphic novels but they are so quickly done with. She reads Asterix and Tintin voraciously, but they have all been read now.
Any ideas? Should I stop worrying and let her read all 150 Rainbow Magic books?
Kind regards
Selena
Australia
On February 7, 2012 at 2:02 am