Today I brought the girls with me to my new favorite book store. Each girl has a birthday party coming up so it seemed like a good place to go for gifts. As always, the girls chose one book and one small toy for their friends and the same for themselves. I know I overindulge but somehow I can’t walk out of a bookstore without letting them get something…

Anyway, the confusion came today in the definition of a book. Although this store is thoughtfully laid out and the flashy, commercial books and toys are actually placed nicely out of sight of small children, Katherine found them. As hard as both Caroline and I tried, she could not be swayed away from Mickey Mouse Clubhouse’s Take Along Tunes.

And it was impossible (not really, but  you know where I’m going) to convince Katherine that this item was in fact a toy, not a book. “Mom! It has pages. It has words! There is a picture of a girl my age reading the book on the back cover.” All of these statements are in fact true statements.

So what then? To be hones,t we are most of the way through a relatively unscheduled vacation week and my resolve is slim. I let her buy the ‘book’ but I can’t shake my nagging annoyance at it. It is a toy. It has pages and words but it is a toy. I know that parents of all generations claim theirs to be the hardest to parent in but I swear… couldn’t a book just be a book and a toy just be a toy? Please.

I am going to choose to ignore the weather that we had yesterday- 6 more inches of snow- and focus on last week. On Friday, it was 60 degrees and all our snow boots were put away in favor of rain boots as rivers grew beside the sidewalks. Caroline and Katherine went on an ‘Adventurers Walk’ with a friend, collecting sticks, rocks and leaves from the giant puddles that had formed at the foot of our neighborhood driveways.

When we returned home, the girls set up a museum, charging $2 admission as the sign below reads “Pay $2 to come to our A.C. (Adventurer’s Club) Museum.” Each girl choose a surface and artistically displayed her treasures.

 

This week I began work as a professor in residence at the North Haledon Public Schools. As a district, North Haledon is going through a challenging and exciting transition from homogeneous classes to heterogeneous grouping with differentiation. I have been brought in to help the teachers and parents with this enormous change.

As if this wasn’t all exciting enough, I learned that Dan Gutman  would be spending today at the Memorial Elementary School, the one elementary school in North Haledon. While Friday is not a day that I typically work, I was there. How could I miss the opportunity to meet Dan and to hear him speak about his writing process?

I was lucky enough to hear Dan present to two groups. Our day began with a room full of first and second graders eager to hear about Dan’s My Weird School series.

This is currently my older daughter, Caroline’s, favorite series so I was anxious to learn about how these books came to be. Dan told us that when his daughter Emma was in the second grade, she loved the Junie B. Jones books. My Weird School was created as a  Junie B. Jones type of story, told by a boy. Dan has a new Weird School book coming out on February 22nd, Ms. Leaky is Freaky, and we were lucky enough to hear the first chapter. It is always so great to hear the author read his own work, to hear how he uses expression to make his own characters come to life.

During Dan’s second presentation to the third and fourth grade, he talked about the beginning of his baseball card adventure series, specifically the first book in that series called  Honus and Me.

I was certainly inspired as he read one rejection letter after the other knowing how successful these books have become. It turns out that Dan worked for two years to get Honus and Me published. You could almost see the brains of the students spinning, thinking about things that hadn’t worked for them that might be worth a bit more of a fight.

It was also fun to hear that the little boy shown on the bottom of the cover of Honus and Me is Dan’s nephew. And then it was not so fun to hear that when the book was published as a paperback, the publisher took a new picture of a new little boy. I always love the inside facts that you learn when you hear an author speak about their books. These little tidbits truly do give inspiration to both readers and writers.

And for further inspiration, Dan shared that when he was a kid he “hated to read.” In fact, he told the kids that he remembers no favorite books from his childhood. I hope that even one reluctant reader in the crowd today will remember that this one time book hater is now the author of 98 books. Now that is inspriation.

I have such fond memories of my Scholastic book orders that I couldn’t wait until my girls were able to have the same experience. I remember spending hours pouring over the newspapery sheets that were sent home in my  folder once a month. Certainly the task is a bit harder for my girls than it was for me as I insist that we order only books. Toys and games have found their way to the pages of Scholastic book orders as they have into any other realm that used to belong exclusively to books but never mind… My girls are able to part ways with the eye catching toys and focus solely on books.

Just today, Caroline ripped open her backpack to examine this month’s books. After a trying afternoon of appointments, she declared what a bad day she’d had until she remembered her Scholastic order. She sat turning the pages of each book, deciding which one she would read first. She then told me that there was only one other child in her class who had ordered books. When I asked her if she knew why she said,

“A lot of parents say that their kids have too many books. Like you say with toys. But you’d never say that with books.”

And she is right. Thank goodness.

Last week  I wrote about the fabulous book, When Marian Sang. After finishing that book, I knew I had to read the book that proceeded it by the same author/illustrator team. And I was glad I did. For two reasons.

Amelia and Eleanor Go For a Ride is written by Pam Munoz Ryan and illustrated by Brian Selznik. Like the tale from last week, Amelia and Eleanor tells of the strength of woman. The reader learns of the special friendship between Amelia Earhart and Eleanor Roosevelt, women of like minds. And also like last week, the illustrations in this book are stunning. Again, they tell a tale all on their own.

I am thrilled to have had this book in the house though for an entirely different reason. When I began writing Nonfiction Monday posts I admitted that I had passed my preferences for fiction off to my daughters. If I offered to read a nonfiction book or suggest that they read one of their own, I was met with a lot of resistance. While my girls have always loved to read, they have not always loved nonfiction. Tonight though, Caroline picked up Amelia and Eleanor and asked what it was about. She then quickly asked me to sit down and read the story. It sure is true that children learn by what we do, not by what we say.

 So off I go to read some more nonfiction…

Last week my mother in law arrived to babysit with a beautiful gift in hand, When Marian Sang  by Pam Munoz, pictures by Brian Selznik.

The story tells of the life of Marian Anderson, the amazingly talented singer who was discriminated against for years based on the color of her skin. As can be expected from the author illustrator team of Ryan and Selznick, the story and pictures are incredible. I have gone back again and again to examine the illustrations and to learn a little bit more of the story in doing so.

I always love when I see an author that I love and an illustrator that I love come together to create something special. Ryan’s, The Dreamer and Selznick’s, The Tale of Hugo Cabret were two of the best books that I read last year. No wonder they were able to create something so magical in When Marian Sings.

At the top of my To Be Read List  is now, the duos first book, Amelia and Eleanor Go for a Ride. Perhaps I will discuss it next Monday…

I love it when we stumble upon a new author. At the very start of this blog, I wrote about our new found love of Amy Krause Rosenthal. It was until this week, that we felt the same surge of new love. I have read Laura Vaccaro Seeger’s books for years but somehow hadn’t put them together as a collection until just a few days ago. And it isn’t until you look at her work as a whole that you realize how very talented Seeger is.

Katherine became enthralled with the Dog and Bear books first. We began with our own copy of Dog and Bear: Two Friends Three Stories

and then nearly immediately had to leave for the library to find Dog and Bear: Two’s Company 

and Dog and Bear: Three to Get Ready

I have read reviews of these books comparing them to some of literature’s greatest friends, Frog and Toad and George and Martha. Few can hold a candle to these pairings but I must agree that Dog and Bear are keeping their own. You can feel their companionship rising up from the pages.

What makes Laura Vaccaro Seeger such a great author is her ability to write these charming Dog and Bear books with the same hand that writes the thought provoking and amazingly artistic books like Lemons Are Not Red

Black? White? Day? Night?

and Walter Was Worried

My four and seven year old were equally taken in by each of these books, answering the near riddles posed on page after page before admiring the artistic vision that created each spread. With the days upon days of snow and ice that have resulted in more delayed openings, early dismissals and snow days than I care to count, a new author has been a welcome distraction. That being said though, Laura Vaccaro Seeger’s writing and art work will be admired in this house, long after the ice and snow have melted. If they ever do melt…

A few weeks ago, we stumbled upon Lotta Says No!by Pippi Longstocking’s author, Astrid Lindgren.

The book tells a charming tale of three siblings and the girls were enchanted. When we finished the story this week, I was anxious to start reading the author’s classic Pippi Longstocking. The original English version of Pippi Longstocking was published in 1950. While our copy of Pippi was certainly more current than that, the translation sounded a bit dated, the print was small and there were few pictures. I love reading chapter books that both my four year old and seven year can relate to and frankly, I was afraid that I might lose my four with this reading. Quite by mistake, while at the library yesterday, I found a newer version of Pippi with illustrations by Charlie and Lola’s Lauren Child and translation by Tiina Nunely.

The story remains true to the original but the pictures and translation are fresh. Both girls sat transfixed last night and have already incorporated Pippi into their pretend play, a sure sign that a story is loved. I learned a valuable lesson with this experience. While we all want our children to enjoy the classics, it is possible to give in a little to modern sensibilities allowing children to truly embrace our older stories. Perhaps Shakespeare will be next…