Shake, Shake, Shake!

You can tell what you need to know the first time a person shakes your hand. Especially if you’re a woman shaking hands with a man. Believe me, I know. Shaking hands matters to me and, when ineptly done, is second only to grown-woman baby voice as my biggest social interaction pet peeve. Some men hesitate to shake your hand at all because they, what, might hurt you? Might get hurt by you? Whatever it is, they need to get over it because women as handshaking equals are here to stay. Then there’s the men who begin with promise and fade. They start in proper handshake fashion, grasp your hand, and slide to the tips of your fingers giving them a cursory wag. Probably my least favorite of the bunch. Since no man alive today was born in an age of knights and damsels chivalry or Queen Victoria’s England, ending up with my hand in kissing position is weird, patronizing and unnecessary. Maybe if one of them actually did kiss my hand once in awhile, it would be quirky enough to have some charm. Or just gross me out, I don’t know. And there’s the pumpers. These guys are going to show how comfortable they are shaking hands with a woman by tearing my arm out of the socket. Preferable to the others, but still. In Grace Macccarone’s Oink! Moo! How Do You Do?, the barnyard folk get acquainted without any of that handshaking nonsense. Maybe it’s better that way.

http://www.amazon.com/Oink-Moo-How-Do-You/dp/0590206559

http://content.scholastic.com/browse/article.jsp?id=10182

My Up, My Down, My Pride And Joy

In “Fiddler on the Roof,” Tevye’s daughters sing about the boy they hope will be their match. When one sister professes an interest in the rabbi’s son, the others scoff. Indignant, she demands to know why this is laughable. Her sister offers, “Because we’ve only got one rabbi, and he’s only got one son.” To which the interested sister replies, “That makes him the best, and why shouldn’t I want the best?” Good question. An even better question is: What is it with only sons? They are the subject of history, myth, legend and lore. Henry VIII killed for one, John the Baptist prophesied one, and most cultures do not consider a man complete without one. What’s up with that? I’ve had four children but only one son, and he’s the one who tried to do me in. Bed rest for weeks, panicked trips to the emergency room, premature labor, and incessant worry. All for nothing, it turns out, since he showed up sixteen years ago today big, fat, and healthy. There is something visceral and therapeutic in having a child of the opposite gender. For the first time, you experience the other in a pure form and the best of you can respond. In no offering is the mother-son relationship more completely and lovingly showcased than the greatest stalker story of all time: Robert Munsch’s Love You Forever. If you’ve read it, you know what I mean. If I could only have one son, I’m glad it was Connor.

P.S. Happy Birthday, Con-Man!

http://www.amazon.com/Love-You-Forever-Robert-Munsch/dp/0920668372

http://robertmunsch.com/

Cat Call

I was never really into horses. That definitely made me part of the minority. It seemed every girl I knew between the ages of nine and fourteen was obsessed with horse shirts and notebooks and lunch boxes and posters. There were girls with impressive horse figurine collections--which stood proudly gathering dust and envy on shelves in their rooms. This was always a sad mystery to me. There was even one girl in third grade who was so horse crazy that she often lived in her horse alter ego persona and would hoof anyone who upset her. Seriously. No, horses never interested me but I did have a thing for cats. Well, kittens really. Perhaps I was training to become the weird cat lady someday, or maybe kittens just lend themselves to being adorably marketed, but I desperately wanted a cat in my life. Unfortunately, since my dad was allergic and not very fond of them otherwise, the cat train missed our station until I snuck a kitten home thinking I could keep it in my room and no one would know. As luck would have it though, had my dad’s itchy eyes and closed throat not alerted him to cat presence, the escaped kitten hanging by its claws from the brand new sheer drapes would have. The kitten miraculously survived but, alas, was deported. I couldn’t help thinking about my childhood kitty craving while reading Jacqueline East’s Wiggle-Waggles Kitten. Not to worry, someday it’ll just be me and my cats.

http://www.tower.com/kitten-jacqueline-east-hardcover/wapi/101018662

http://www.allbookstores.com/author/Jacqueline_East.html

Seeing Red

I come from red-headed people. Not Carrot Top redheads, but the russet to auburn spectrum. My mom used to describe my dad’s teenage hair as “like an Irish Setter,” and I had a flame-haired great aunt who was in the roller derby. So, apparently, I come from people with recessive genes who also skate roller derby. Although those might be the same thing. But, I digress. Even my hair, before it rudely developed an inch and a half of gray roots which turn pink if I try to stay red, has always naturally been more auburn than anything else. And I have intentionally gone more vibrantly red at times because I think it suits me. Something about being a red-headed woman sends a message to the world. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had complete strangers remark on an action or statement of mine with some reference to knowing “how redheads are.” And no woman who is trying to blend chooses to go red. Just as studies have shown that women in red get approached more often by men, red hair seems not only to send a signal but emboldens the head it’s on. While being a redhead isn’t always met with social approval, I’m enough of a general oddball that I have always embraced it. And my favorite redhead of literature is Ludwig Bemelmans' little French powerhouse Madeline. She is brave and brassy and as unconventional as a girl from two-straight-lines land can be. Vive la rouge!

http://www.amazon.com/Madeline-Reissue-Ludwig-Bemelmans-Illustrator/dp/0670445800

http://www.madeline.com/

Bon Anniversaire, Ma Petite Scarlett!

My least favorite having a baby phrase is “We’re pregnant” (yeah, right!) and my most favorite is “expectant mother.” Everything good about pregnancy is wrapped up in that term. While waiting for the small person whose room and board you are literally supplying with body and soul, you spend most waking and many sleeping moments anticipating, expecting. What they will look, feel, sound like. What the big day will entail and how you’ll deal with it. What dad’s performance and reaction will be. What the family will think and feel (and hopefully not say). You project what motherhood will be and what this child will become. Great expectations. One thing we don’t seem to realize until later is that people don’t have to be earthside for very long before they start to have their own expectations. Since being pregnant at forty takes ten eternities, I had a lot of time for contemplation and expectation while waiting to meet Scarlett. And I got most of it wrong. Two years ago today, Scarlett Aurora arrived and has been nothing but her authentic self since. She’s tall, won’t wear hairbows and can already recite the alphabet--all things I didn’t expect. She also craves the outdoors but didn’t expect to be born to indoor parents. It’s never quite how you see it in your head. In Jane O’Connor’s Fancy Nancy, our glamour girl can’t understand her plain family. Then something happens she doesn’t expect…

P.S. Happy Birthday, Scarletta!

http://www.amazon.com/Fancy-Nancy-Jane-Oconnor/dp/0060542098

http://www.harpercollins.com/authors/12552/Jane_OConnor/index.aspx

What Shall I Wear To The Ball?

You’ll find this hard to believe, but when I was a teenager I was high-strung. Impossible, you say, given the even-tempered paragon of tranquility I am now, but it’s true. Mind you, a combination of factors contributed to this diva angst--biochemical hurricanes, family dysfunction, an overachieving mentality, innate dramatic tendencies--but I have to claim it. One memorable interlude occurred prior to the Senior Prom. Working with my limited self-subsidized budget and not finding anything fabulous enough, I decided to make my own dress. It was to be a silver satin, sequined, beaded piece of designer heaven. I had become pretty adept at sewing by then but I didn’t take one factor into account: once you sew on satin, even if you pull the stitches out to make an adjustment, the needle holes remain. So, every few hours, even on the day itself, I would have a moment, call my long-suffering boyfriend, yell “We’re not going!” into the phone, and collapse in tears. Eventually he decided to stop ordering the side order of crazy with his prom date, came over, took me to his mother and sister, and turned me over to be dealt with. Which I was. Beautifully. Looking back now, I resembled Alice in Wonderland on acid, but I felt lovely. In Jane Yolen’s An Invitation to the Butterfly Ball, the forest creatures are all in a panic over what to wear. Dire threats and dramatic proclamations are made but they all turn out and turn up nicely. And…scene.

http://www.amazon.com/Invitation-Butterfly-Ball-Counting-Rhyme/dp/1563976927

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Yolen

Dinnertime

My relationship with food drives my husband crazy. It’s not that he doesn’t try to be understanding and supportive, but, having a very straightforward dietary life himself, he mostly just doesn’t get it. He feels hungry, goes to the kitchen, finds the first thing that won’t kill him if he eats it, and his meal preparation process is done. I, on the other hand, usually start the journey by knowing I need to eat something so I don’t get a headache and it just gets more complex from there. I know I want something, just not what. So, because he is a really sweet guy, Nick makes suggestions starting with the stuff already prepared, proceeding through things he can make, occasionally offering take-out, and finally ending up at dishes only I can readily prepare. I sigh through the list, never quite hearing the magic answer. I just don’t know what I want to eat. Given the strong preferences I have in every other facet of life, this is a frustrating conundrum for the guy who cares about me but will eat just about anything veggie-friendly. I do eventually find something, but it is usually one of the first suggestions Nick made and he just gives up in defeat. In Else Holmelund Minarik’s Little Bear, the cubby protagonist wants to play in the snow, but can’t quite figure out what he needs. Mother Bear offers ideas and assistance until he finally goes with the original option. I see nothing wrong with that.

http://www.harpercollinschildrens.com/HarperChildrens/Kids/BookDetail.aspx?isbn13=9780064440042

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Else_Holmelund_Minarik

Family Matters

There is an episode of “Angel” where our favorite vampire envisions the people he loves around a table sharing love and heaping plates of food. Of course, he is actually in a welded-shut container at the bottom of the ocean and the vision quickly dissolves into a terrifying spectacle where Angel can’t make anyone hear him, but, for a moment, he had just what I’ve always wanted--a peaceful family dynamic. Scarlett was born into a combination of extended family issues. We’ve got a truckload of marriages, steps, halves, and exes with all kinds of mixed-up connections to each other. Nowhere is this more evident than in our cousinhood. Nick has never met his paternal cousins and didn’t get a maternal cousin until two months ago. The paternal cousins that are my age moved away when we were preschoolers and, since they were raised as Tennessee folk rather than California kids, it seems we are more foreign than familiar now. My other two cousins were born when I was in high school and although I dearly love them both, they are in a different generation altogether, which made the cousins-as-friends relationship impractical. I’d like for my kids to have the kind of life where their cousins live nearby and are part of their daily lives, but it doesn’t seem to be in their familial stars either. In Gina and Mercer Mayer’s Just Me And My Cousin, Little Critter only enjoys parts of his family visit. Maybe closeness has its downside, too.

http://www.google.com/search?um=1&hl=en&gbv=2&q=just%20me%20and%20my%20cousin&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=iw

http://www.harpercollins.com/authors/17622/Mercer_Mayer/index.aspx

School Days

I love school. Apparently so, since I never left it, but it’s more than just a career choice. I love going to classes, perusing new textbooks, and learning things I never knew I didn’t know. The feel and smell of new school supplies are like a hit of some highly addictive drug, without all the prison time. Every September (back when school administration had not lost its ever-loving mind and school still started in September) was electric with unlimited potential. I am a big summer fan and hated to see it go, but the school bell was an irresistible siren song. Even as a teacher the start of a new semester lightens my mood. Before I had enough seniority to teach summer classes, I would get really nasty near the end of August. I was restless, crabby and uncomfortable in my own skin without being able to define what the problem was--until the first day of class. I would walk in, begin reading a new class roster, and feel like I took my first full breath for three months. No wonder I was in such a bad mood being oxygen-deprived for so long. Admittedly, not everything was or is perfect about school, but, if I could, I would go to school full-time every semester and take every class they’ve got. Sister Bear is feeling some trepidation about starting kindergarten in Stan and Jan Berenstain’s Go To School, but gets over it right away. Maybe she truly is a sister bear.

http://www.amazon.com/Berenstain-Bears-School-First-Books/dp/0394837363

http://www.frontiernet.net/~bmariska/bears/bio.html

Small Packages

Baby anything is cuter than its adult version. A blanket statement, I know, but I’m really hard-pressed to think of an exception. Kittens, puppies, tadpoles, lambs--all more precious than the bigger model. Even double chins, chubby thighs, sparse hair and drool are adorable if the person sporting them is still what my grandparents would call knee-high to a grasshopper. Almost every creature seems to have a tender spot for new ones. This is probably nature’s way of keeping often annoying, frustratingly dependent beings from being eaten, I’ll wager. Baby things particularly register with me. Perhaps it’s from being a big sister, or growing up in a religious tradition where women are assigned value based exclusively on motherhood, or maybe even a natural immaturity, but whatever caused it did a bang-up job of making an impression. One of the most enduring pictures in my head of a cute baby thing is an early illustration in the paperback version of Charlotte’s Web where Fern is bottle-feeding a newborn, newly-rescued Wilbur and gazing at him adoringly. How could you not save such a ridiculously darling baby thing? I doubt her zeal would have been as…um…zealous if he had been a full-grown, tusk-wielding boar, but tiny piglet Wilbur is another story. In the Little Golden Book Classic Baby Farm Animals, each youngster is shown at its most endearing. I’m not much of an outdoor girl, but these illustrations make me want to at least visit a farm. Someday. If we don’t stay too long.

http://www.amazon.com/Baby-Animals-Little-Golden-Classic/dp/0307021750

http://www.randomhouse.com/golden/lgb/timeline.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garth_Williams

Personal Space

Keilana didn’t sleep through the night until she turned two, but she was well-behaved in the evening. Unless someone tried to put her to bed. Then she would turn into a whirling wildcat with unlimited aggressive energy. Given this, I learned early on that, contrary to endless criticism, if I let her stay up until she was sleepy, she would snuggle with me when she was ready and drift off. So, when Connor came along, I mistakenly assumed it would be the same. One night when he was a month old, nothing was working. He wouldn’t sleep in the family bed, wouldn’t nurse or rock or walk to sleep, wouldn’t just give up from exhaustion. Finally, worn out, I decided to take a break, put him down, and walk away for a bit. Even if he cried hysterically, it had to be done. I walked with purpose, to steel my resolve, into the bedroom and bent to place him in his crib, braced for the guilt-inducing wails. But there was silence. The moment he touched the mattress, he stretched out his arms as if to give the bed a big hug, laid down his wee head, and fell asleep with a heavy sigh. Just like that. All he wanted was to go to bed at a decent time and be left alone. Who knew? In Claude Clement’s Go to Sleep, Little Groundhog, everyone keeps bugging the little guy to help him drift off. Maybe he just needs some alone time.

http://www.amazon.com/s?ie=UTF8&rh=i%3Astripbooks%2Cp_27%3AClaude%20Cl%C3%A9ment&field-author=Claude%20Cl%C3%A9ment&page=1

http://www.librarything.com/author/clementclaude

Moving Day

The first time I moved I was days old. No trauma there. The next move was different. I was nine and we were leaving the only place anything had ever happened to me. It was where I learned to climb (and practically live in) trees. It was where I woke up to Christmas morning. It was where my schools, friends, and special places were at little more than arm’s length and the only place I’d ever called home. Leaving, even for a new house I’d seen built, was the most painful experience of my life until then. Parents try to make light of those times, but kids know what’s what. The new place might have a bedroom just for me, but it wouldn’t have a ramshackle grape arbor in the backyard where I could play house for hours. The never-lived-in house would have beautiful decorating but none of the floors would be scuffed-just-right wood and there was no raised porch to jump from. The new neighborhood would have friends I hadn’t met yet, but they wouldn’t be the Romaldos or the Tagaliers or the Mocks. None of what I would come to love about the new place could make up for losing the old place. At least not right away. Judith Viorst, wise to the ways of childhood, understands. In Alexander, Who’s Not (Do you hear me?) Going To Move, she validates what it’s like to be a kid and experience loss. I wonder if she writes big kid books.

http://www.amazon.com/Alexander-Whos-Hear-Mean-Going/dp/0689820895

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Viorst

Stick Around Awhile

Did you know a million Earths could fit in our sun? Did you know that, since atoms are mostly space, if a cathedral-sized model was made of an atom, the nucleus would be a fly in the middle? I’m sure I learned either these or similar facts as a junior high school student, but I didn’t really take note of the information until lately when I spent the semester working with a student in Physical Science. This school year we’ve been watching an astrophysics series produced by NOVA. With stellar (no pun intended) production value and fascinating Generation Tech-friendly graphics, it has been riveting. For me. Today’s jaded eight-grader basically embraces one guiding principle: If I can’t text to it or with it, why do I care? So, we all sat having the universe passionately explained to us while the only person in the room listening was the nerdy old lady. Every day I would come home with some new tidbit captivating or astounding me. And the one that most knocked my socks off was the theory that 99% of all species ever having existed on Earth are now extinct. Ninety-nine percent. Obviously, that means everything in the world now--plants, animals, insects, humans--comprises only 1% of the sum total of everything that ever was. Mind-boggling. Maybe Bill Martin Jr. and Eric Carle wrote Panda Bear, Panda Bear, What Do You See? about a child dreaming of endangered animals because they are NOVA fans. Or maybe they are just not-going-extinct fans.

P.S. Happy Birth Day, Posey Emmaline! Welcome!

http://www.amazon.com/Panda-Bear-What-You-See/dp/0805017585

http://www2.scholastic.com/browse/collection.jsp?id=387

http://www.carolhurst.com/newsletters/24dnewsletters.html

Visionary

Do you ever get asked those impossible choice questions some people live for? You know, the ones like which one of your children you would save if you had to choose or if you would flip the switch that would keep a full train from plunging into a canyon but kill your only son who had wandered onto the track. Those impossible questions. Maybe people just like to see me squirm because I seem to get that type of conundrum presented to me all the time. Most of the questions have varied and morphed over time but one has remained constant: Would you rather lose your sight or lose your hearing? Of course, the real answer is neither, thank you, but the point of these dumb dilemmas is to force you to make a choice. So, for me, the answer has always been clear. If I couldn’t see--to read, to recognize loved ones, to move about independently--my life would be qualitatively fractured beyond repair. I would have to preserve my sight, but I say that realizing how much I would lose if I couldn’t hear. Singing and dancing as I know them would be gone. I couldn’t gauge the tone of sadness or joy in voices I love. And a speech teacher who can’t hear speeches…But that would still be my choice. Maybe Bill Martin Jr. and Eric Carle’s arctic protagonist in Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear? would choose differently. Snow is snow is snow, after all.

http://www.amazon.com/Polar-Bear-What-Brown-Friends/dp/0805053883

http://www.teachingk-8.com/archives/celebrations_in_reading_and_writing/remembering_bill_martin_jr_by_maryann_manning.html

http://ericcarleblog.blogspot.com/

Animal Instinct

Years ago, I made a Christmas trip to Seattle. Being a California girl, I was worried about dealing with the rainy Washington weather. Especially when everyone I knew kept telling me I should be. It would be gray. It would be dreary. I would be miserable. To my delight and the begrudging surprise of anyone who wanted to say they told me so, it was gorgeous. So, when the Northwest gives you sunshine, you get out and enjoy it. We did some driving, some sightseeing, and even had dinner on the shores of Lake Washington (where we coincidentally saw a giant, prehistoric monster of a fish they caught years later). We had a good time, but our real adventure was at the Seattle Zoo. It was a great time to go--the weather was cool enough to keep the animals from hiding in their shadowy caves but warm enough to encourage them to come out and play. At one point, we remarked on how close we could get to the animal exhibits, particularly the lions. It seemed the habitat designer had done a flawless job of camouflaging the fences keeping us separated from the King of the Jungle--until a zookeeper in a Jeep chased us down and said that we were actually in the lion enclosure, having walked through a gateway left open by someone careless. Great. In R.P. Anderson’s Curious George at the Aquarium, our little monkey gets closer to the exhibits than he should. Naturally, wacky penguin chaos ensues.

http://www.amazon.com/Curious-Aquarium-Illustrator-Grossnickle-Anderson/dp/0618800689

http://www.amazon.com/R.-P.-Anderson/e/B001IGJTC0

Too Much Of A Good Thing

I really, really, really loved angel food cake. It was a rarity in our house because my mom was a healthfood spaz, but it did show up at Easter. I’m not sure what the celebration of the Resurrection has to do with fluffy sponge cake, but I was glad somebody thought of it. Coincidentally, back before VCRs (yes, there was such a time), Easter was also the one time in the year when you could see “Sound of Music” because they played it on network television. And if there was one thing I loved as much as angel food cake, it was movies about song triumphing over the Nazis. Life was good. Until that year. The year when what we will refer to as “the incident” occurred. The family had settled down with our reasonably-sized slices of sponge cake and watched goatherds and brown paper packages tied up with string until bedtime. Sounds nice, right? It was until I ruined it. Just before bed, I snuck in and cut myself a ridiculously giant slab of angel food cake for a secret midnight snack. Which I gobbled down in its entirety long before the clock struck twelve. And then it proceeded to make several violent reappearances all night. I couldn’t eat angel food cake for years after that and “Sound of Music” is still a bit tainted. The voracious snake in Richard Buckley and Eric Carle’s The Greedy Python shows the same lack of restraint. And he learns his lesson, too.

http://www.amazon.com/Greedy-Python-Richard-Buckley/dp/0689820593

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Carle

Handle With Care

The first time I remember becoming aware that our bodies aren’t invincible is the moment my dad said “stitches” while holding his blood-stained white t-shirt to the busted open head of my beloved brother. I didn’t jump off my bike in lieu of using the brakes. I wasn’t physically injured. I wasn’t going to the E.R. as a patient. But when I realized that my unflappable father couldn’t handle this injury himself, and that my extremely tidy mother considered this enough of an emergency to grab a clean dishtowel to stem the bleeding, and that some doctor was going to sew up my brother’s five year-old head, I lost it. Hysterical screaming lost it. Taking all the attention away from the hurt child lost it. Can’t stop yourself even though you’re acting like a crazy person lost it. The sudden sure knowledge the bodies I loved could be gravely wounded made an impression still visceral today. I sat in the waiting room, randomly clutching a plastic mouse from the "Mousetrap" game like a talisman, waiting for news. It was not serious--just a few stitches with no residual effects other than a tiny scar--but the world changed for me in that moment of vulnerability. In Tedd Arnold’s Parts, the main character is a little boy who doesn’t understand baby teeth are supposed to fall out and belly button lint isn’t your stuffing leaking. All he knows is that if bodies don’t get tended to, bad things happen. Tell me about it.

http://www.emints.org/ethemes/resources/S00002322.shtml

http://www.amazon.com/Parts-Tedd-Arnold/dp/0803720408

Come And Play

I wish some imaginary places really existed. I’d like to sip a cool drink under a parasol at pre-war Tara. I’d like to get my eyes dyed to match my gown in Emerald City. I’d like to hood slide in ’70s Hazzard County. And I’d really like to be daring in my smartly tailored Federation uniform on the bridge of the Enterprise. But perhaps the one make-believe place I’ve wished I could visit most is that diversity-embracing metropolitan melting pot Sesame Street. I wish I could buy candy at Hooper’s Store and that Mr. Hooper was still there to sell it to me. I wish Maria and Luis and Gabi were my brownstone neighbors. I wish I could hang out on the stoop on bad days and out-grouch Oscar. I wish Scarlett could play fairies with Abby and basketball with Miles. I want Snuffy’s eyelash secrets, Ernie’s optimistic outlook, and Guy Smiley’s enthusiasm. I want to live in a neighborhood where numbers and letters and learning are important. Elmo lives in a place like that and sometimes I get jealous. He’s relatively new to the street, showing up in the ’80s almost two decades after Big Bird first napped in his giant nest, but has been thoroughly embraced by the house that Henson built. In Shana Corey’s Where Is Elmo’s Blanket?, the little red monster spends a day visiting his friends until he and blanket are reunited. Can you tell me how to get, how to get to Sesame Street?

http://www.amazon.com/Where-Elmos-Blanket-Nifty-Lift/dp/0375801383

http://www2.scholastic.com/browse/media.jsp?id=304

Kiddie Lit

One nice and seemingly unavoidable result of teaching kids to love reading is that they eventually want to become authors themselves--with some interesting results. Keilana spent the better part of her kindergarten year regaling us with stories of the adventures of dragons named Peanut Butter and Jelly and their baby Jar. With that narrative accomplishment under her belt, she decided to tackle non-fiction by writing a self-help math book. When it was finished, complete with basic equations and illustrations, she insisted we take it to Kinko’s and make spiral-bound copies with fluorescent pink covers. Then she called the local bookstore in Nana’s small town, where she had experienced special literary moments, and asked them if they would carry her book. Caught off guard, the proprietor didn’t really know how to respond. But Keilana has always been clever and persuasive, so five copies found their way to Margie’s Book Nook in the first and only printing of To Help You Do Math. Before my friend Marguerite’s daughter, Sara L. McCarthy, was a successful college grad/wife/new mom, she was a precocious little scribe who wrote stories and one of them became a book her mother was nice enough to share with us. In The Rats Meet The Cat, there is some comedy, some tragedy, and even a moral or two. Nice work for a kid, huh? Maybe someone is out there doing complex trigonometry (as if there were any other kind) because they were inspired by Keilana’s instruction manual. You never know.

http://margiesbooknook.net/

Have A Nice Day

Some people have more drama in their lives than others. I know because I am their queen. Most people lead fairly normal lives with occasional dramatic bumps in their functional roads. I do not. Realizing I have some Murphy’s Law brothers and sisters out there, I give my college students one free absence per semester and tell them if trauma regularly occurs in their world ( and you know who you are), to save their one day for when space junk falls from the sky and crushes their car or a tornado rips down the street missing every house but theirs. In other words, if they have lives anything like mine. I realize not everyone agrees with my worldview. There are those who fervently believe you bring or create your own circumstances and all that matters is your attitude. There are also those who feel I manufacture drama because I love it so. Um, no. I truly long for the boredom continually eluding me. I didn’t “bring” the drama when my teenage son flipped off a trampoline last year and split his shin knee to ankle with bone showing. I didn’t “create” the drama when my toddler picked up some vicious rogue infection from a tooth breaking through and her face swelled like the Elephant Man. But that’s my life and why I’ve always felt a kinship with Judith Viorst’s disaster boy in Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. Maybe I’d have better luck in Australia.

http://www.amazon.com/Alexander-Terrible-Horrible-Good-Very/dp/0689711735

http://www.kennedy-center.org/programs/family/alexander/author.html

Trendsetter

I have a weakness for cute things. Especially girly cute things. I don’t remember my first exposure to Sanrio’s Hello Kitty, but I know it was love at first sight--not have-Hello Kitty-officiate-at-my-wedding-like-they-do-in-Japan love, but a deep-seated affection nonetheless. In the late ‘70s, when I was eleven, our local strip mall got a kiosk-sized storefront dedicated to things Sanrio. I almost went into diabetic shock from the sweet adorableness of every single thing in the shop. There were pencils, erasers, socks, earrings, keychains, and all manner of other precious wee things in the shape of or patterned with that cute red-bowed feline or her friends. Since I started at nine earning my own money housecleaning and babysitting, I was fortunate enough to make a few select purchases. And my favorite item was a see-through, plastic Hello Kitty purse. I was so excited to take it to school that I didn’t consider what the reaction would be. Here’s how the math went: No one else had a plastic purse, I didn’t get whatever gene makes a person cool enough to pull off starting a trend, and mocking ensued. It actually still stings a little after three decades. But, a year later, one of the girls who did get that elusive popularity gene started carrying a plastic purse and then they were everywhere. I still don’t get it. In Robert Munsch’s Stephanie’s Ponytail, Stephanie has the opposite problem--everyone copies everything she does when she wants to be unique. Maybe our therapists are friends.

http://www.amazon.com/Stephanies-Ponytail-Classic-Munsch-Robert/dp/1550374842

http://www.indiana.edu/~reading/ieo/bibs/munsch.html

Danger, Will Robinson!

When I was young, I hated green peas more than anything. They grossed me out and I refused to eat them…or I would have if my parents would let me, and since they were both pretty eagle-eyed, the chances were slim. So, I developed another, more subtle technique: get my plate really close to my brother’s, and shovel as fast as I could. Before you begin (or keep) thinking of me as a terrible person, my brother liked green peas and there was no harm, no foul. But if I had my very own robot obeying my every command, I wouldn’t have needed to do the pea switcheroo. I could have had my robot dispatch the nasty little green devils and no one would be the wiser. An intriguing thought, isn’t it? Some mechanized being doing your bidding would be almost too tempting to pass up. Monday morning would lose its sting. Family gatherings could be more bearable. Sink full of dishes? Done. Piles of laundry? Finished. Bills? Yardwork? Diaper changing? No big deal. The only problem I see with having your own robo-assistant is the laziness that would surely come along with such a handy little piece of technology. Then again, you could just set your robot to operate in guilt mode for you and not worry about it. Dan Yaccarino gives Phil a robot in If I Had A Robot and everything is great until there’s only one piece of cake. Then it’s everyone or everything for themselves.

http://www.amazon.com/Had-Robot-Picture-Puffin-Books/dp/014056294X

http://www.danyaccarino.com/dy/

"M" Is For The Million Things She Gave Me

Families are weird. At least all the ones I am in, have created, or hang around with. Of course, the popular media offerings we get of families don’t really show what most people experience--they either depict sunshine and nurturing or violence and depravity. We don’t see many movies or shows with people who kind of have good stuff much of the time but still have rough edges that peek out pretty regularly. You know, what your family usually looks like. So, the big, complicated messiness that is family makes official days of celebration a spectrum of experiences and emotions. Today is Mother’s Day, one of those aforementioned official days complete with one of those previously mentioned spectrums. It should be easy, right? Everyone is here because a woman became, again or for the first time, a mother. That’s simple enough, but everything after that moment is part of the package, too. The mother-child relationship is the most fundamental of all relationships. Nothing can replace a healthy bond and nothing can compensate for a troubled one. Even if you are fortunate to have a really lovely one, it is still a lifelong push and pull for establishing the right balance of independence and connection. Given all this, it seemed too perilous to choose a mom book for today. But, a book about how weird families are is perfect. Robert Munsch’s Good Families Don’t tackles the expectations and realities of families. Although it’s a Canadian family, so the rules might be different.

P.S. Happy Mother's Day to all who care for others.

http://robertmunsch.com/

http://www.amazon.com/Good-Families-Dont-Robert-Munsch/dp/0440405653

Hindsight

Having small people who still wear diapers is a bummer--buying diapers, running out of diapers, regretting leaving the bag open so the wipes dry out, stinking up the house, adding to the landfills or using water for washing, and longing for the day diapers are done. The problem with potty training (once it’s done, of course) is realizing you didn’t appreciate the convenience of diapers when you had the chance. Anyone who has ever gone anywhere with a newly toilet-trained small person knows that needing to pee, being willing to pee, and having the opportunity to pee are rarely all in the same place at the same time. I had one who never met a public bathroom she didn’t want to visit. I had one who held dry pants hostage by “forgetting” to go pee-pee in the potty chair if she wanted something she didn’t get. I had one whose “Wolverine” costume had to turn into a flannel shirt and jeans “Logan” costume when he (that narrows it down, doesn’t it?) didn’t quite make it in time. I also threw perfectly good panties away on a trip to Disneyland because I wasn’t willing to swish them in the Happiest Toilet On Earth. And now I have one who wears her princessy pink potty-chair on her head. Sometimes diapers look really nice in hindsight. In Robert Munsch’s I Have To Go!, Andrew makes everyone crazy until he and Grandpa figure the potty thing out. When you gotta go, you gotta go.

http://www.amazon.com/I-Have-Go-Classic-Munsch/dp/0920303749

http://robertmunsch.com/