The Grass is Always Greener

Spoon wishes that he got to do more exciting things like cut into food like a knife, pick up hot things like a fork or work as a pair to pick up exotic foods like chop sticks.  Meanwhile, his friends think that he lives the grand life, scooping, stirring etc and Mama Spoon points out the wonderful aspects of his life, like bathing in a warm cup of tea.

It is a sweet and endearing tale of appreciating your own life for its positives and not dwelling on what others have.  BB was mostly interested in the happy illustrations.

Book for Both Ages

We read a lot, as you can probably already tell, but one of our biggest challenges is finding books with are interesting enough in subject for BB and manage to be short enough and engaging enough to hold LF's attention for the entire book.

We found just that in Orange Pear Apple Bear.  The plot is simple, the words are few but repetitive in a fun way which grabbed the attention of both kids (now nearly 3 and 16 months).  LF is still repeating Apple, Pear, Bear and BB thinks the rhyming and rhythm were hilarious and delights in it each time LF brings it up again.

The illustrations are simple, to the point and enjoyable.

Misbehaving Feet

 If you are up for another alternative princess tale, give The Queen's Feet  a try. This queen is in possession of a pair of feet that simply will not conform to the staid and regimental life of a queen.  She battles them as they dance, squiggle, squirm and kick, until the day when she finally comes up with a solution to please both her royal obligations and the free spirit of her soles.

We all had a good laugh reading this story and to be honest, I don't blame her feet. BB and I agreed that we would want to bust a move too, if we had so many restraints on our lives.

Whimsy, to put it lightly

If you are looking for fun, look no further than The Duchess of Whimsy.  This is a tale of a quirky, elegant and beloved Duchess of Whimsy who barely notices the boring Earl of Norm, who adores her.  Barely noticed him; that is, until one evening when an unexpected turn of events, and a grilled cheese sandwich brings them together in a fortuitous way.

Not only does the moral of the story suggest that you look further and the surface of a person, but it is also refreshing change from the run of the mill princess or romance tale and the illustrations are simultaneously beautiful, unexpected and amusing.

If you are looking for other alternative princess tales, try Princess Hyacinth

Help Tackle New Sibling Jealousy

 Does your little one struggle to share the lime light with a younger sibling. BB does and I think this book is a great way to confront the issue in a fun way.

Smile, Principessa! is the story of a small girl who is adored by her parents and is the center of the photo taking storm that we are all guilty of with our first born.  When Baby Bino (her little brother) comes along and she notices that her father takes more pictures of him she looses her smile.  Sweetly, she rediscovers it by making her brother laugh.

If you have more than one kid you might find this a helpful book.  BB thought Baby Bino was hilarious and likes to recreate the scene at the end of the book.

Simple things in life

 

Maybe I am suffering from a bit of nostalgia, but I have really been enjoying these three books for their simple stories of what seems like a simpler life where baking, gardening and self-sufficiency are important. All three stories are told with fairly plain language and illustrated with simple, yet engaging pictures.

A Garden for a Groundhog is the tale of a farming couple - at face value it is the story of planting a garden for a groundhog, however I think it does a great job of illustrating planning and growing a garden to sustain yourself and other things like weather forecasting and knitting.  I just wanted to curl up in the old couples house, like the cat in the winter scenes, and enjoy their warm house full of yummy foods.  I know, I am a bit odd like that.

This Is the Bread I Baked for Ned is a great rhyming tale of baking bread and preparing food for Ned and surprise visitors.  I enjoyed the picture it painted of a simple inviting house full of fresh baked bread and good food and friends.

Pancakes for Breakfast  I wrote about this one earlier.  This is an older story, published in 1978, but it is a good one for depicting how a person can really bake from scratch.  The main character collects eggs from the chicken coop, milks a cow, churns butter etc.   BB was fascinated by all of this, and has asked for this story over and over again and has even started helping me to narrate it.

Finding Giants

 Do your kids need to rediscover some magic in life? Where Giants Hide is a tale of a little girl who is doubting giants, fairies and all sorts of magically mystical creatures and discovers that the magic was there all along, right in her head.

I don't have much to say about this book other than that I really like the sentiment and I love the fresh illustrations.

More Wordlessness

  I posted earlier about some great "wordless" books and I never thought I would be writing so much on a book blog, where I expound on the wonders of reading to your kids, about books without words.  But I have embarked on a love affair with them lately.  There are just so many wonderful books to choose from, and I am finding that they are helping me to tell stories to my kids and have them help me in the storytelling (ok, not LF - she is a little young to help, but she loves the pictures).

Wonder Bear and Pancakes for Breakfast are our latest favs which we just happened upon at the library in the past two weeks.  I can't get enough of Wonder Bear.  The image shown above doesn't do the illustrations justice.  They are batik illustrations which tell a story of a magic hat which, when planted grows into a magnificent plant, and blooms with bear who takes the children on wondrous adventure.   It is such an imaginative story and such spectacular illustration that I felt like a kids reading it.

Pancakes for Breakfast is a cottagey tale of a woman who wakes up earning for pancakes and tells how she goes about obtaining the ingredients to bake them.  If you loved Strega Nona growing up, you will love this first wordless story by Tomie de Paola.

More Christmas Books

We have found a few more titles to add to our Christmas reading list.  After all, we have a lot of finding to do if we are ever going to be able to start an advent book pile like this one.

We are love love loving, The 12 Days of Christmas.  It is a simple board book really, everything you would expect from the title.  But the key is to sing it.  H and I couldn't help ourselves.  We sing it at the top of our lungs.  Each page only deals with the corresponding number and gift, but we then flip back through the pages and sing it like you would the actual song.  I would love to learn to sign this book too in ASL (one of our family goals for learning languages.)   But for now it is just, sing it Mama for me.  OK, maybe our kids will remember us a crazy, but at least they are having fun.

Also from our last trip to the library - in the seasonal category, is: What the Little Fir Tree Wore to the Christmas Party and Christmas In Mouseland (Angelina Ballerina).  If you haven't heard of the Little Fir Tree it is a sentimental little book about a little fir tree who longs to wear a white dress to the Christmas party.  It has lovely illustrations and you can almost imagine that all trees talk to each other after reading this one.

Lastly, I stumbled upon I Love Christmas, because I am a huge fan of Anna Walkers books, and it is just as lovely as I expected.  I was sad to give this one away as a gift.  Hmm, might have to pick up a copy for us.

Happy reading!

Floating Princess

 Just a quick note to say that we check out Princess Hyacinth (The Surprising Tale of a Girl Who Floated) from the library the other day and are LOVING it!

The story is fresh and quirky with a funny narrative voice and the illustrations are joyful and fun.  So if you love a good princess story, but one with spunk and humor rather and tulle and wicked stepmothers, then this is a good choice.  I particularly like the images of Hyacinth enjoying floating and laughed that her floating was best done in the royal underwear.

Do you Readeo?

We did.

We finally tried Readeo with Mimi.  She read three stories to BB and LF and it went over pretty well.  Aside from LF's usually need to smack the keyboard, that is.  Here are my thoughts on it so far.  Please note: I have no affiliation with Readeo, this is not an ad, just my thoughts on a new way to read.

1) What a cool thing to be able to do!  How amazing is it that their grandmother can read to them from the other side of the country and they can talk about the story and look at the same images.  So cool in fact that BB woke up this morning asking if Mimi was going to read him another story.

2) Set up was pretty easy.

3) The book selection seems fairly good.  We don't have access to all the books at the moment as we are only using the free trial, but I can see all the titles.

4) It was a little difficult to start the first "bookchat" - we ended up starting simultaneous chats and could hear but not see each other.  But we figured that out pretty quickly.

5) The pointer tool isn't that great.  It is too faint and I think BB had trouble seeing where Mimi was pointing, but I really liked the idea so that you can discuss particular things in pictures or point to particular words.

6)  I like the layout of the page - Book centered above and video chat windows smaller below.

7)  The text was a bit hard to see, but we were only reading on my fairly small laptop screen.  I think that if we were on a larger desktop screen, it might have been better.  I might even hook my laptop up to the TV screen next time to see how it looks.

In a nutshell. It went really well and BB and I are looking forward to trying it again soon.  Also, Readeo sent out a survey straightaway after the chat, so it seems that they really care about perfecting the service.  (I haven't filled it out yet, but I will) and it will be interesting to see how the feedback is received.

Good Deals and Good Causes

  
As a self confessed book shopaholic (which brings up memories of the giddy fun of my Mom taking me to bookstore and letting me choose whatever books I wanted, on her) I thought I would pass on some good book deals that I came across lately.

You can pick up five different books right now in boxes of Cheerios.  We got No T. Rex in the Library the other day, which was totally exciting to BB.  We also picked up 1 Zany Zoo last time they did this give away, which is a pretty fun book.   I am definitely going to have to do a serious Cheerio stock up, not only because LF and I eat oodles of them, but also because I want a free copy of All the World.  Check out the Spoonfuls of Stories website, it seems like a really great cause to help get books to needy families.

The other good deal that I have been meaning to mention is Costco - I picked up Fancy Nancy: Splendiferous Christmas and Of Thee I Sing: A Letter to My Daughters each at about $8 dollars under the listed price.  (More on Of Thee I Sing later.)

*I don't have an affiliation with Cheerios or Costco - just wanted to pass on some good deals.  Happy shopping!