Discovery
Archive for the ‘Huck’ Category
All Dem Leaves
Autumn Leaves
by Ken Robbins.
This is Huck’s current favorite read-aloud. I grabbed it from the library on impulse a couple of weeks ago—we’re short on fall color here, and the cover appealed to me, but I didn’t expect it to grab the three-year-old’s attention. Shows what I know. The kid is smitten. He thinks it’s called “All Dem Leaves.”
The bold images on the cover are a good foretaste of what’s inside. We’ve spent many happy moments poring over these bright leaves, matching their shapes to their names. Turns out we have a lot of sweet gum trees on our street—almost the only sparks of autumnal foliage we see here. (Mind: we’re not complaining. 70-degree weather and soaring blue skies. I’m content to satisfy my fall-color longings with children’s books.)
Rilla’s a fan of the book too—it ties in quite serendipitously to the fun we’ve been having with the Trees of England course over at Memrise. (By golly, I know my horse chestnut from my blackthorn now.)
Most of you probably live in places where the gold and scarlet has been stripped from the branches by now, in late November. (Jiminy crickets, it’s late November. I’m quaking.) This recommendation may come a bit late; we’ll all be in Holly and Ivy mode soon. But if you’re not ready to let go of autumn, you might enjoy a ramble through these colorful woods.
Ready…
October 25, 2012 @ 5:59 pm | Filed under: Huck, These People Crack Me Up
Huck, pretending to read a Trivial Pursuit card: “What comes after set?”
Me, genuinely stumped: “I don’t know, what DOES come after set?”
Huck, triumphantly: “GO!”
Me Confused
September 8, 2012 @ 7:25 am | Filed under: Huck, These People Crack Me Up
“Mommy, can me have that book? You know, that one me like. Me want to read it. It’s called I’m Hungry.”
Sloppy Reporting
Scott thinks I omitted the most riveting detail of yesterday’s racklenake encounter, which is that all those day camp kids I mentioned—and their counselors—were wearing pajamas.
I like the foreshadowing in this photo. He warmed up by climbing on the park’s non-poisonous reptiles before leaping over the venomous one.
The Story Huck Told Me Tonight
May 27, 2012 @ 7:10 pm | Filed under: Huck
“Me was talking to the moon. Me told him come down and give me a ride.”
“You did?”
“Yep.” He sighs. “Me had fun talking to the moon for a little while.”
:::melt:::
Where the Weekend Went
The eclipse through Scott’s homemade pinhole lens.
Eclipse shadows through the trees—lovely.
I watched him walk back and forth past my overgrown coreopsis for a good five minutes—walking deliberately close to them so that they repeatedly thwapped him in the face. This is fun because…why?
Scrub jay. Showed off for half an hour in various parts of the yard, preening, strutting, demanding admiration. We obliged. 🙂
The Sisters Have Spoken
They think he should be the Little Prince for Halloween. Does this mean I need to come up with that amazing coat??
Dump Truck Huck
Tom Lichtenheld is one of my favorite illustrators. I discovered his work—how was I missing it??—in the wonderful Chris Barton picture book, Shark Vs. Train, that you’ve heard me rave about so many times before. Tom’s bold, energetic style crackles with humor and appeal. My kids are all drawn to his work; his illustrations are the kind you pore over, giggling at the details.
I went on a binge last week and ordered all the Lichtenheld our library system could muster. (The entire second row pictured in this link is sitting on my bed right this minute.) The resulting reading pile is a Rillabooks post-in-progress, but I could not resist interrupting myself to write about one particular book from that pile, the one that has completely enchanted my two-year-old son.
Huck’s a truck kid, through and through. Trucks, cars, and trains. Preferably half-buried in dirt. He has staked a claim on a corner of my veggie garden: it’s where the trucks grow. When I saw that Tom Lichtenheld is the illustrator of Goodnight, Goodnight, Construction Site by Sherri Duskey Rinker, I knew I’d pretty much found Huck’s dream book.
I underestimated. He is CRAZY about this book, carries it everywhere, begs for it a dozen times a day or more. It’s his Mike Mulligan and the Steam Shovel (you Ramona fans know what I mean), but I’m not in a Beezus place yet because when I read it to him, he is SO. DARN. CUTE.
It’s a bedtime book set in a construction site. Are you thinking: that’s brilliant? Because the moment I saw it, I thought, that’s brilliant. Five big rough, tough construction vehicles finish their day’s work and get ready for bed, one by one. I wish I could show you every page of the art. If you click on the title above, you can view some images from the book. There’s a book trailer there, too, which HUCK MUST NOT SEE or I’ll never pry him away from the computer ever again.
Besides, I’m greedy for the cuddles this book gets me. My busy boy climbs into my lap and more or less acts out the book—raising an arm high when the crane truck lifts one last beam, whirling his hands when the cement mixer mixes a final load—and when the excavator snuggles into its dirt bed, Huck hugs me tight: “Now we ’nuggle, Mommy.” Ridiculously cute, right?
The best part is right in the middle when the dump truck appears. “Dat me!” he says every time.
“You’re the dump truck?”
“Yes.”
Shh…goodnight, Dump Truck, goodnight.