March 31, 2013

I finished Like Pickle Juice on a Cookie this evening. A nice book--a little funny, very contemporary, deals with a no-doubt common problem (the only nanny the third-grader has ever known leaves to care for her ailing father and a new, younger girl takes her place), written in a breezy style that I'm certain must be appealing to third-graders. I'll have to ask our carpool buddy, who read the book and is in fifth grade, what he thought about the book.

A fringe benefit of my second childhood project--and the books I keep finding that could've been on that list--is the niceness, I guess, of the books and their worlds. I just finished an adult novel about a cult who believes in "love" and that it justifies their sexual abuse of their children, and at the same time I'm reading another adult novel of a little girl who is also being sexually abused while a third book is the bleak story of a young girl who finds herself pregnant but with no one who really cares about her, her child, her life, her future. I expect that they all depict a world view that is accurate. I just can't stand to suffer heartache along with my book characters constantly. Does that make me a wimp? Does that make me an ostrich? I don't know. As a reader, I finished Pickle Juice and The Innocent and I will finish Girlchild and Salvage the Bones and many, many, many others.

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While I’m in the midst of two novels for this project, I have been reading some other books to Abby. She’s my primary cohort in this endeavor!  The dollar stores or the dollar bin at Target are useful sources for adding to a library; undoubtedly there must’ve been an equivalent when I was young, maybe comic books at 10 cents. Abby’s choice (not mine) was a Sesame Street book, Grover’s Guessing Game about Animals. Perhaps this caught her eye since she and her family had attended a special Sesame Street production Saturday evening featuring Elmo (“Melmo”) and all his friends. She’s always liked this book fairly well but there’s just something that doesn’t “click” with me—the writing doesn’t sync with Grover (one of my favorite characters), the “game” is very elementary, there’s no rhythm to the book, no charm. Oh well. They can’t all be winners and it’s apparently OK in Abby’s estimation. Similarly we read a library book, Rabbit’s Bedtime by Nancy Elizabeth Wallace. Simple story and simple cut-paper illustrations—an OK read for both Abby and me but nothing to recommend.

A set of books on manners by Karen Katz has proven to be good lessons for Abby and her older brother Aidan; I sent a set to their cousin Rowan but I have never inquired as to whether he liked to read them or not. I like these books—No Hitting!, Excuse Me!, and I Can Share—but they were purchased and read for the first gazillion times before the unfortunate experience of finding a gross error in one of Karen Katz’ other books. (I mean, really? A 9-legged octopus?) They still are favorites to read and they’ve been constant almost from the time I first started reading to Abby 2 years ago. Guess they must have something going for them if neither of us has grown tired of them yet.

Another Karen Katz book, Counting Kisses, has always been a dear little counting story to me. Abby asked for this one today after reading just about everything else in the book basket. And, today I found this one kind of boring. Guess it doesn’t have the longevity of a Baby Cakes.

Little Quack’s New Friend by Lauren Thompson, illustrated by Derek Anderson, came from the library. It took some cajoling to get Abby to listen to this one but now we’ve read it several times. Little Quack is a series and they all seem to be simple stories with life lessons in them. This one was that friends didn’t have to look or be the same to have fun together. The illustrations really complement the story and Abby adores the Mama Duck. It’s hard to dislike little ducks named Widdle, Waddle, Piddle, Puddle, and Little Quack.

I found a book on my bookshelves that’s probably just been waiting for a new child to read to so I tried Fish Kisses and Gorilla Hugs by Marianne Richmond on Abby. She didn’t let me finish. It’s the story of a 6-year-old boy going to bed and I think a 2-year-old might be young to appreciate it. I liked this book: the rhyme, the illustrations, the premise. However, while it appears to be a book to read at bedtime to get your child to sleep, I think it might provoke more “one more” moments than a parent could put up with for long. LOL! Like a few other children’s books I’ve read, I suspect this one began from a real life experience with the author’s child(ren).

In the meantime, I’ve also read Mister Seahorse a few more times. Maybe a bit more than “a few.”

I know for a fact that I would “devour” authors when I was younger, in a manner similar to today when I read nearly every John D. McDonald or Stephen King or Lewis Grizzard or Elizabeth Berg, for example. So I frequently read books by the same authors (or illustrators) to my grandchildren; they seem to like it and so do I. Hence, Abby and I read Eric Carle’s Rooster’s Off to See the World.* Can’t say that either of us enjoyed it quite as much as Mister Seahorse—but that would be exceptional, wouldn’t it? [This book was a prize in last summer’s reading club through the Houston Public Library. They finally got the funds (through HEB, I believe) to award books rather than cheezy coupons for a free hot dog or a ticket to the circus if you purchase another ticket. Or two.] *Rooster has since become a HUGE favorite!