I Did It My Way

One challenging aspect of parenting is learning how to balance what small people want with what we want for them. And to decide which things are just our preference and which are really in their better interest. We’ve all felt justified in saying no way to candy for breakfast, but it’s different when we have to bite our lip over their life choices. I sat chatting with the computer tech while he told a story of just that. He had used martial arts to work through the grief of losing his wife and over time came to harbor a secret desire for his son--the only boy and dad’s namesake--to be the next Kung Fu sensation. But junior had other plans. He wanted to play the drums and he was really good at it. To his credit, dad encouraged the dream that replaced his dream and now son is in demand all over the world. I like that. Some of us take longer to figure it out. When Keilana turned three, I made grand plans for a Snow White party, including baking eight individual cakes--one each for the dwarfs and the princess--with rock candy “jewels” for the dwarfs to mine. It was very exciting. For me. When the party was over, Keilana asked if she could have a cake from the store next time like her friends had. Go figure. In Georgia Guback’s Luka’s Quilt, a grandmother and granddaughter don’t see eye-to-eye until they talk heart-to-heart. It works that way sometimes.

http://www.amazon.com/Lukas-Quilt-Georgia-Guback/dp/0688121543

http://www.harpercollins.com/authors/16768/Georgia_Guback/index.aspx

The F-Word

When I used to team-teach a Rhetorical Criticism class at Chico State, the four of us would divide the semester’s lectures up according to our interests and strengths. The course goal was to teach students a variety of techniques for examining communication artifacts and determining their type and impact on human interaction. Given that I was often the only female instructor on the team and that my thesis had been a gender-specific critique, I always opted for teaching the Feminist Criticism lecture. Which was an interesting communication exercise in itself. First, I would get the “huffers”--baseball hat-wearing guys in the back row of the lecture hall who would slam down their pencils and engage in loud, impatient expulsions of air when they heard the day’s topic. Real Renaissance men. And then I would get the bulk of the rest of the class who would vocally object to being called feminists--even though they had already agreed by raise of hands that employment, family planning, and education should be equally shared. The very definition of feminism. I always felt I’d found the real F-word. So, what’s a forward-thinking gal or guy to do? Well, if you’re Robert Munsch and pretty much one of the best children’s authors ever, you write a kick-hiney book about girl power called The Paper Bag Princess. In this story, Elizabeth has a thing for Ronald, but has to get her open-up-a-can on when he is carried off by the dragon. It’s pretty fem-tastic. You should read it.

http://www.amazon.com/Paper-Bag-Princess-Classic-Munsch/dp/0920236162

http://robertmunsch.com/

Code Of Conduct

At the junior high where I worked, the cafeteria is left littered with mounds of garbage, despite the presence of numerous trash cans. Kids still losing baby teeth publicly sass adults to their faces. And forget about walking in a straight line if you’re an adult, even a very pregnant one. I learned this lesson the first time I assumed that the traffic pattern would yield to the approach of an elder (the way I was taught it should), and almost ended up on my duff from an aggressive shoulder-check. You might say there are always a few bad eggs in every generation, but this is something different. This is pervasive in a way we would have found dumb-founding at their age. An epidemic of rudeness. It mystifies me all the time. I grew up in a house where codes of social conduct were specifically laid out and strictly enforced. Children are seen but not heard when adults are gathered. Every adult is addressed by “Mr.,” “Mrs.,” or “Miss” preceding their last name, or, in rare cases, their first name. Youth gives seating, the spotlight, respect, and the right of way to age. No exceptions. If my father saw me behaving the way these kids do now, even at forty-three years old, I would be on the unfortunate end of an attitude adjustment. And I would deserve it. In the Berenstain Bears Forget Their Manners, the bear family learns to clean up their act. I wonder if they give workshops.

http://www.amazon.com/Berenstain-Bears-Forget-Their-Manners/dp/0394873335

http://www.berenstainbears.com/sjbio.html

Expertise?

When I was the mom of only two children, we hit a tight money time. Spotty employment and believing the myth of American home ownership had stretched our resources beyond their limit. So, I started searching earnestly for ways to get more from less and cut back. One of the smartest and most capable women I knew was the mother of thirteen and I figured if anybody could give me some budget-friendly tips it was her. I had a list of questions I wanted to ask her, but the first and most important was about groceries, specifically bread. How did she keep that whole crew covered when it came to the staff of life? She told me she baked her own bread and that immediately led to other questions. Did she bake a ton once a week? Some every day? Every other day? What? I needed to know. But when her response started with, “Well, first I grind the wheat…” I knew we were not even close to being on the same page. I had no idea what her version of budget stretching entailed, and I think I looked a little foolish for assuming I did. That happens sometimes when I discover things that were written or said by people who are supposed experts on children--but don’t seem like they’ve ever met any. In the Paradise Press book First Words, there are the usual ball, bear, and shoes, but also leek, parsnip, and toucan. What baby needs to know those?

http://www.amazon.com/First-Words-Hinkler-Books-Pty/dp/B000N4QPIY

http://www.macraesbluebook.com/search/company.cfm?company=733718

Earth First

I read an article about “Green Guilt.” Now, what does that sound like? An article about jealousy? Or not doing your part to save the planet? Those would be good guesses (and my first two), but they would be wrong. Green Guilt is the feeling really conscientious planet lovers get that they aren’t doing enough. Sure, they recycle and compost and bring reusable bags, but is their carbon footprint small enough? Are they utilizing too much water or contributing too much to landfills? And so on. At first, I thought it was pretty ridiculous because most of the people in the article were already very environmentally conscious--using bikes for electricity, co-housing, shopping locally--and if they aren’t doing enough, what chance do the rest of us have? But then I thought a bit more and realized that, first of all, a little guilt could go a long way if it was more prevalent, and, secondly, that I feel that guilt myself even when I’m trying to be part of the solution. Every time I start my car for a trip I’ve deemed too long for bike or foot, I wonder if I should just stop making excuses and get there some other way. When I throw my frozen yogurt cup away I think I should save it for next time. And so on. But we are trying. After we read Laurie and Marc Brown’s Dinosaurs To The Rescue, Scarlett took out the recycling and said, “I’m helping the Earth!” That’s progress.

http://www.amazon.com/Dinosaurs-Rescue-Guide-Protecting-Planet/dp/0316110876

http://www.justonemorebook.com/2008/03/31/interview-with-laurie-krasny-brown-and-marc-brown/

A Kernel Of Truth

I tell people I became a vegetarian primarily for philosophical reasons--I simply can’t justify killing another being for pleasure, even the pleasure of eating. Another reason is that I have experienced firsthand the health benefits vegetarianism brings with it. But a third reason I never mention (mostly because it sounds really shallow next to those other two) is that my name is Jodi…and I am a carbohydrate addict. I love simple sugars in all forms, but corn might just be my favorite. And corn in popped form is my most definitive downfall. Any family with two bowls reserved just for popcorn is obsessed. When Scarlett sees pots and pans in storybooks, she refers to them as “corn-corn,” which is what she calls popcorn and primarily what she’s seen pots used for in her young life. So, it seemed only appropriate that during “C” week we would check a book about corn out of the library. And, as happens so often these days, I learned all kinds of stuff I never knew from Gail Gibbons’ Corn. It was the major product of the great Mayan and Aztec civilizations. Early Euro-Americans used every part of the corn plant--kernels, cobs, husks, silk, stalks--for daily purposes. There are types of corn called “strawberry corn,” “Autumn Explosion,“ and “Hopi Blue.” Have you ever even heard of those? Me neither. People and animals use corn products virtually every hour of the day. And, best of all, there is a corn just for popcorn. I like that.

http://www.amazon.com/Corn-Gail-Gibbons/dp/0823421694

http://ethemes.missouri.edu/themes/1069

Grandma Knows Best

My grandparents relocated to towns far away from mine when I was very young, so my experience of grandparents was an at-a-distance relationship. My grandparents were never able to come to my dance recitals, speech competitions, graduations, or weddings. I never doubted my grandparents loved me, in fact I have many good memories of them all, but there is a disconnect that comes from only really knowing the day-to-dayness of family members through letters (when people actually wrote them), photos (always a bit dissatisfying in their two-dimensions), and phone calls (accompanied by watching the clock to keep expenses down). Often that disconnect leaves us wistful or even sad, but sometimes it evidences itself in circumstances that can’t be called anything but hilarious. Like gifts sent in the spirit of great love, but that don’t match the person at all. One Christmas, my brother Todd, who was twelve, got a crocheted vest from my grandmother that was only big enough for a six year-old and had a huge picture of Bert from Sesame Street on it. Now that’s funny. And absurd. But those things happen when families scatter geographically, and you can either laugh at them or feel disenfranchised. Not that having your grandparents close by means that you never get your wires crossed either. In Jan Brett’s classic The Mitten, Nicki insists the mittens his grandma is knitting be white even though she thinks they’ll get lost in the snow…which one promptly does. Maybe it’s just a generation thing.


http://www.amazon.com/Mitten-Jan-Brett/dp/039921920X

http://www.janbrett.com/

A Helping Hand

Sometimes my passionate activist spirit gets me in over my head, and someone has to step in and help. Usually my long-suffering husband. Poor guy has painted signs, corralled kids, frozen in place, marched, chanted, advocated, and debated more than he imagined would ever be asked of him. It’s the life of an activist’s partner and he fulfills his part (and forges paths of his own) admirably. My kids have also been important allies in my quests to make things better by making issues more prominent. They have attended more marches and rallies than most college students, worn sandwich boards with messages on them, carried banners, passed out flyers, dressed as fairy tale characters, and generally been an important part of the change I, and then they, want to see in the world. Together we have taken back the night, taken on discrimination, and taken off the blinders of misinformation. Ours is not a mellow or even calm family, but I think we’ll take “passionate” and maybe even “obsessed” over “complacent” and “silent.” Certainly there are times when tuning out the causes would be easier, but I think the mark of true advocacy is persevering when it gets hard not just when it is fun and easy. And I think my crew is mostly on board with that. In Leslie Valdes’ “Meet Diego” from Dora’s Storytime Collection, Dora’s solo attempts to save a little critter are not working--until cousin Diego swings in (literally) to help. Gracias, Diego! Thank you, family!

http://www.amazon.com/Doras-Storytime-Collection-Dora-Explorer/dp/0689866232

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1656354/

Español Made Easy

Scarlett can count to ten. In Spanish. And we didn’t teach her. Dora did. We certainly recognize the importance of multiple communication paths around here--Scarlett hears different versions of words all the time and we weren’t surprised when she readily picked up sign language as an infant--but it caught me off guard when she busted from uno to diez without any formal coaching from us. Miss Explorer and her crew did a bang-up job of doing their job--the kid knows English…and Spanish, too. How ‘bout you? So, keeping with this new-found ability, I’ve been trying to give her more Spanish vocabulary, at least as much as I know from growing up in California. And it seems to be working. When I told her that a little girl at dance class had a “mariposa” barrette in her hair, I heard Scarlett behind me in the carseat repeating it to herself for storage and retrieval. Then she started whispering, “abra open, cierra closed.” I guess she figured she would pull out all the stops since she was on a roll. It’s pretty fascinating to watch how effortless the process is when it is allowed to progress naturally stress-free. And I guess it makes sense--to small people, every word sounds like a foreign language at first. Susan Middleton Elya decided to make basic Spanish vocabulary fun to learn in her engaging rhyming book Say Hola To Spanish. It’s such a good time, we read it three times. Or should I say tres veces?


http://www.amazon.com/Hola-Spanish-Susan-Middleton-Elya/dp/1880000644

http://www.susanelya.com/files/home.htm

Princess Daydreams

I went through a childhood stage where I had this sneaking suspicion I didn’t belong in my family. I think it came from a Waltons episode where somebody in patched overalls or a shabby calico dress discovered a family secret and John Boy or somebody on Waltons’ Mountain helped them through it. I was sure that one fateful day I’d be looking through an old Bible and a yellowed birth certificate would flutter out or I’d glance into an open hope chest and see the corner of some incriminating letter, and life as I knew it would change. I vacillated between being upset over the idea and fascinated by its implications. My parents could have pulled it off since I was the oldest with no older siblings to blow their cover. Really, when they tell stories of my arrival, it could all be fabricated, right? And if I’m not truly their daughter, I could be anybody--even a princess. Maybe my real home is a castle with a giant canopy bed and elaborate rosebush mazes. Hey, a girl can dream, can’t she? But the chances are slim. When I look into my brothers’ faces, I see my own. Every so often I catch my reflection in the rearview mirror and see my dad’s furrowed brow. For better or for worse, I belong to them. In Carol Diggory Shields’ I Am Really A Princess, daydreams of regal origin captivate one little girl--until she realizes bedtime stories are better than castles and moats.

http://www.amazon.com/Am-Really-Princess-Picture-Puffins/dp/0140558578

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

What Scary Looks Like

There’s an episode of “Speed Racer” where terrifying creatures with claw-like hands reach out of dark places to plague the Mach 5 crew. I probably saw it only once, I may even have morphed it into something more ominous than it was, but the images of it, real or contrived, have stayed with me into adulthood. There was something so relentless and spidery and malicious about them that they have come to represent an amalgam of all the things scaring me when they go bump in the night. I even feel their cold claws grasping at the edges of my self-confidence sometimes. Everything bad and creepy rolled into one tangle of a mess. I don’t remember any of the dialogue, no words or phrases, which is odd for a person obsessed with language, I only carry with me what I saw. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but as a talking kind of gal, I often think words are worth a thousand words--except in the case of the creepy spider claws. No words necessary there. And I couldn’t help but think of that while experiencing today’s book. Since the whole point of reading Scarlett a new book every day was to read, we have included very few picture books so far, but I thought Molly Bang’s Caldecott winner The Grey Lady and the Strawberry Snatcher would be a nice departure. Except for how it was crazy scary. I think I have a new image of what’s creepy.

http://www.amazon.com/Grey-Lady-Strawberry-Snatcher/dp/0027081400

http://www.mollybang.com/Pages/picture.html

Before The Fall

The air is starting to carry a bit of that fall feeling…and I don’t like it. I’m a So Cal girl, summer is who I am and what I love. When autumn begins its not-slow-enough march of death toward summer, I feel restless and panicky, wanting to hold onto every moment of long days and sultry nights for as long as I can before the time changes, the season changes, and everything changes. Fall is my least favorite season because it heralds and hastens the end of summer, yet still permits torturous backward glimpses of what summer was like--a few unseasonably warm days, an extra weekend of camping or barbequing, an occasional night of needing the window cracked open just a touch. The ghost of summer lingers to remind us of what was. I realized this year as the air turned a little too crisp one morning and I loudly protested that it was too early for fall, that no time would be acceptable for summer to wane, and thus any autumn is premature. To be fair, lots of people love this time of year for many reasons, not the least of which is Halloween. Pumpkins and full moons and spooky costumes seduce them into forgetting all about summer and lure them away from the light…and the sun. In Lauren Thompson’s Mouse’s First Halloween, the little guy gets introduced to new experiences by overcoming his fear of the unknown and embracing the season. He’s young, he doesn’t know any better.

http://www.amazon.com/Mouses-First-Halloween-Lauren-Thompson/dp/0689831765

http://www.laurenthompson.net/

Something Fishy

Who decided fish make good prizes? I get stuffed animals and goofy hats, but a living creature that gets put into a plastic bag and carted around in the heat for the rest of the day? What brain trust came up with that idea? I took Keilana to a carnival once when she was two years old, despite her aversion to crowds, sun, and competitive endeavors, because it was a fundraiser for a good cause and I felt we should make an appearance and leave a few good-intentioned dollars behind. To my surprise, she was fascinated by the event. I thought. It turns out she was only mesmerized by one part of the carnival--the throw-balls-into-fishbowls booth. I could not tear her away and she watched with such concentration, memorizing every possible strategy, until she felt she had it down and begged to try. The last thing I wanted as a single mom on a very limited budget was to bring another creature needing food and caretaking into my life, but what chance did a toddler have of winning when not one big kid who’d tried so far was successful? I thought I could let her have what she wanted without paying the price. Wrong. She stepped to the line and sank all three balls in a row. We ended up with a free goldfish that cost me $27 in stuff…and died by the next morning. I thought of that darn fish while we read Lois Ehlert’s Fish Eyes. Fish, meh.


http://www.amazon.com/Fish-Eyes-Book-You-Count/dp/0152280510

http://www.rif.org/art/illustrators/ehlert.mspx

Take My Advice...Or Not

Nick asked me the other day if I believe that proverbs are a useful form of transmitting information. After thinking about it for awhile (which I do pretty often these days since Nick has several theory classes and is in contemplative mode), I decided that colloquial forms of information sharing--proverbs, truisms, wives’ tales, folk wisdom--might be the only truly effective way of passing a society’s norms from generation to generation. But what happens if the advice on any particular subject is conflicting? Which one do you take to heart? This is a question I’d like answered when it comes to helping strangers who are possibly dangerous. There’s a cautionary tale about a man who encounters a snake asking for a lift. The man at first refuses, considering the snake suspect and likely to bite him after the fact. The snake promises to be civil, gets a ride, then fatally strikes the man justifying his behavior by saying the man knew he was a snake when he picked him up. Which is a really different message than The Lion and the Mouse retold by Gail Herman. In that narrative, the theme is that helping others, even if you have reason to fear them, is the most desirable choice. So, which is the most wise? The most practical? The safest? Am I a good Samaritan without picking up hitchhikers? Am I a fool to let someone in the park use my cell phone? I don’t know…and apparently neither do those old wives.

http://www.amazon.com/Lion-Mouse-Step-Into-Reading-Step/dp/0679886745

http://storytellerwv.tripod.com/id21.html

History Lesson

I’ve always been a voracious reader and strict loyalist, which means I don’t need to read a new book in order to enjoy myself. In fact, there’s comfort in reading a book for the second time (or fifth or, in the case of Love Story, twenty-second) that bests the anticipation of reading a never-before-experienced book. When I open a brand-new book, there’s always the chance that I won’t like it as much as I thought I would, but re-reading a treasured favorite never disappoints. One reliable standby still captivating my imagination is a book about a little wooden doll and her century (so far) of adventure. The book Hitty: Her First Hundred Years follows a six-inch carved doll from her first moment of consciousness in a cabin through the years of being marooned on a tropical island, living in a bird’s nest, being stuck in a church pew, and even singing on-stage with Jenny Lind. Her exploits are thrilling, mundane, and stressful, all while taking the reader on a walk through a century of history, with its changing fashions, conflicts, and social norms. It seems so real when told from doll perspective, you feel as if you are there. I thought of Hitty frequently as we were reading Katharine Wilson Precek’s Penny In The Road, about a boy in 1913 who finds a penny from 1793 and lives a day imagining what the coin’s original owner would have done. Maybe inanimate objects can’t carry history with them…but maybe they can.

http://catalog.tempe.gov:90/search~S1?/aCullen,+Bill,+1942-/acullen+bill+1942/-3%2C-1%2C0%2CE/frameset&FF=acullen+clark+patricia&1%2C2%2C

http://hzportal.dayton.lib.oh.us/ipac20/ipac.jsp?session=126U5I604A843.1247448&profile=ger&uri=link=3100007~!328773~!3100001~!3100002&aspect=subtab13&menu=search&ri=1&source=~!horizon&term=Precek%2C+Katharine+Wilson&index=PAUTHOR

Buyer's Remorse

I’ve been thinking about getting my hair cut lately, but I know if I do I won’t like it. It’s not so much that I can never be satisfied (claims of voices from the past notwithstanding), it’s just that I immediately realize all the great things about the way things were--even though I couldn’t come up with any then. If I chop my hair off because I can’t stand the sheer presence of it, I instantly want to braid or bun or ponytail it and can’t. If I whack some bangs with the idea of framing my face for a better look, I can’t bear the claustrophobia of all that hair in my eyes. It goes on and on. Trust me, anyone in my life for about five minutes can attest to how neurotic and annoying it is. And it’s even more frustrating for me. I most often just end up wishing I had kept things the way they were to begin with. If you’ve ever been the muscle for someone who gets a burning desire to rearrange the furniture into ten different configurations before deciding the room looks best the way it was when you started, you probably know how that feels (and have contemplated homicide). I guess that kind of angst happens to you no matter who you are. In Laurent de Brunhoff’s Babar’s Picnic, Queen Celeste is looking for the perfect picnic spot. It turns out she didn’t need to look any further than her own backyard.

http://www.amazon.com/Babars-Picnic-Laurent-Brunhoff/dp/0394805828

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

Religious Studies 101

I give my college students a religion quiz every semester, and, for a country theoretically operating on Judeo-Christian principles, I’m hard-pressed to find folks who are clear on the Christian stuff, let alone the Judeo. Despite our nearly 80% self-reported Christianity, we don’t really know a whole lot about our own religious history, so how can we possibly be open to and embracing of other worship forms? Growing up in a religious tradition that strongly discourages outside theological exploration, I was always the oddball interested in what everyone else was doing in the worship department. That may come partially from being raised with Southern roots and not being an evangelical. It may come from a natural curiosity. It could definitely be part of my contrary nature. But, at the heart of it, I think my intrigue with other religious traditions started in earnest the moment I opened my first All of a Kind Family book. Sydney Taylor’s series centers on a turn-of-the-century Jewish family, full of children, in working-class Brooklyn. They are devout, close-knit, and have little but each other. I love them and find myself reading about their adventures even as an adult. It is from them and those in their circle that I learned about the forgiveness of Yom Kippur, the celebration of Rosh Hashanah, the bounty of Succos, and the sanctity of Passover. In Rabbi Francis Barry Silberg’s The Story of Chanukah, a simple board book tells a powerful story of a great people. Yevarchecha hashem. Amen.

http://www.amazon.com/Story-Chanukah-Francis-Barry-Silberg/dp/0824942256

http://www.ceebj.org/about_us/staff_list/

A Hoop That Never Ends

Six thousand tons of sunscreen wash into the ocean every year, exponentially encouraging the growth of viruses that attack coral reefs and other marine plant life. So, protecting your child’s tender parts as you romp on the beach is potentially contributing to the demise of flora half a world away. I’m not a “butterfly effect” believer--no wing flapping causes a tsunami--but a statistic like that makes you think. Call me an environmental wacko or whatever else means I care about the world I’m walking in and will leave behind, I know there is a cosmic connection between everything and everyone, and it is our job to protect it and our honor to be part of it. This notion of interconnectedness is, in large part, what led to my choice of vegetarianism. I couldn’t keep allowing other creatures to come to harm for my benefit. I thought of the direct link between actions and their impact during a moment of silence in observance of 9/11. My heart kept crying, “I’m sorry!” to all the souls of that day. Sorry for your suffering. Sorry for your death. Sorry for your life lived in chaos. Because of the ties that bind us, the human fabric tore, leaving ragged edges. But if we are united in tragedy, so, too, are we connected in joy. Debra Frasier’s On The Day You Were Born is a message to each little soul that the community of Earth anticipated their unique arrival with wonder. I like that idea.

http://www.amazon.com/Day-You-Were-Born/dp/0152579958

http://www.debrafrasier.com/

The Parent Trap

I recently started hanging out with toddlers (and their parents) again after a ten year absence. And things haven’t changed. There are only a few kinds of parents and nothing like a group gathering to get folks to revert to type. You know what I mean. There’s the perfect hair moms who show up at morning storytime looking like they’ve just come from the salon after picking junior up at the Baby Phat fashion show, who insist on taking the craft out of their kid’s hands to make sure it looks right. There’s the drill sergeant, camo-and-baseball-hat crowd whose kids are threatened with bodily harm for every offense. There’s the Birkenstocks devotees whose wee ones wear layers of fair trade clothes and smell like cruelty-free baby shampoo. There are the sight-impaired parents who can’t seem to see their kid tearing through the place like a hurricane, when even a legitimately blind person couldn’t miss it. There are the competers who need to one-up, the grabbers who snatch the best craft supplies for their darling, and the hoverers who should just put their kid in bubble wrap and be done with it. There are also some normal people who have normal kids with (mostly) normal behavior. They are rare. The bug world has their uptight population, too. In Sue Malyan’s Bugs, there’s a breed of the creepy crawlies called “parent bugs” who caretake their young long after every other big bug has ditched the little ones. Can bugs be helicopter parents?

https://www.libcat.oxfordshire.gov.uk/02_Catalogue/02_005_TitleInformation.aspx?rcn=1405311665&

http://www.jacketflap.com/persondetail.asp?person=223652

Under A Haystack

When I was a single mother on my own, my mom gave us a place to stay when we needed it, a vehicle to drive when we didn’t have one, and a helping hand with babysitting when I had to work or go somewhere you couldn’t wag a kid along. But since she was a working, single mom herself, our schedules didn’t always synch up. One day I had an appointment at the same time my mother had to be at work, so we appealed to my teenage brother, Todd. Not historically a big babysitter, he required some cajoling, but eventually said he would watch her if I could be back in time for him to go to work. No problem. Except the clock at the insurance agency was slow and I got home to an empty house. I thought he must have had to take her to his job and I called immediately to profusely apologize and say I was on my way. But his response was, “Oh, I totally forgot she was there,” meaning he did not have her. Trying to stay calm, I called my mother, thinking maybe she had the toddler. Which she didn’t. Panic-stricken, I had no idea what to do next when I heard a faint whimper. It turns out Keilana had fallen asleep and rolled off and under the bed out of sight. I think of that every time I read Little Boy Blue. Nursery rhyme or no, missing, sleeping kids are scary.

http://www.amazon.com/Little-Boy-Blue-Waldman/dp/0866118683

http://www.paperbackswap.com/Playmore-Inc/author/

Nothing To Fear

I’m surprised anyone ever chooses to be a superhero. It’s a pretty thankless job most of the time. You go around sacrificing your personal life and relationships for the sake of the public good, and, on a pretty regular basis, the community turns against you, even demonizes you, for what you can’t do or be for them. Oh sure, you get super powers, but how can it possibly be worth it? Being different just gets you a one-way ticket to social ostracism, it seems. The book Stranger in a Strange Land (which is not what we read for today, incidentally), is pretty widely known, but mostly for its unconventional treatment of less-than-monogamous sex. I think those who bring only that impression away from the book are missing Robert Heinlein’s more profound message of social commentary. Michael Valentine Smith was not like anybody else, but fascinated by what is generally considered mundane. He just wanted to see and experience the simple pleasures of life, and maybe use his gifts to give something back to the human community. If you’ve read the book, you know the thanks he gets for that. And isn’t that sad? It’s just tragic humanity tends to crush what it doesn’t understand simply to allay the fear the unknown creates. In Tomi Ungerer’s Moon Man, the guy in the green-cheese orb longs for a chance to visit Earth and dance like the people do. When he gets here, the welcome is less than friendly. When will we learn?

http://www.amazon.com/Moon-Man-Tomi-Ungerer/dp/1570982074

http://www.tomiungerer.com/

The B List

The alphabet marches on and we have arrived at “B” week. Naturally, there are many words needing our attention this week--bugs, butterflies, babies, bananas--but one is a can’t miss: bees. It’s particularly handy for teaching the letter, being exactly the same and all, but I have a complicated relationship with bees. I really love honey, but have done the whole honey-retrieval process, including suiting up and puffing out eye-stinging smoke, and would never eat honey if that was the only way I could get it. I am a hard-core pacifist, but experience an almost delirious joy at the idea that a bee I’ve just been stung by has ripped its own guts out and will soon die. I can get on board with the queen concept--giving proper credit to those who actually do the work of procreating is an idea humans could learn from--but feel a little uncomfortable with the drone situation for personal reasons (even though I know they are all boys). What to do? Of course, I may be overthinking things in light of the fact that we’re talking about stories for toddlers, but any two year-old who knows the words to both Queen’s “We Will Rock You” and Elvis’ “Fools Rush In” is obviously picking up messages we don’t even know we’re sending. Regardless of my relationship status with the bee folk, they are fascinating. In Elizabeth Winchester’s Bees!, we learned that one beehive houses 70,000 bees. That’s how many people go to the Superbowl. Who knew?

http://www.amazon.com/Time-Kids-Bees-Editors/dp/0060576421

http://www.amazon.com/Elizabeth-Winchester/e/B001IR1C6K

Out With The Old

Years ago I found myself in a brouhaha without much context for the issue. It was the early ‘90s and Chico Unified School District had chosen to switch to a new math curriculum called “Math Land.” As the mom of a kindergartner, I was new to the public school parent advocacy game, but it seemed as if I should be concerned if everyone was in such a tizzy. I attended a “Parent Information Meeting,” that felt as hostile as a lynch mob, and tried to keep up. A near as I could tell, the parents were mostly freaked out because the new system wasn’t the old system and comfort-zone cages were being rattled. I don’t remember the specifics, but I do remember that “Math Land” is very heavy on the “manipulatives“--teacher talk for stuff you can hold in your hands. There were lots of those little plastic bears for counting and weighing, and those brightly-colored “Base 10” blocks for I don’t know what. Other pieces were collections of geometric shapes referred to by people in the know as tangrams, which I’d never heard of and didn’t know how to use. It turns out the shapes are not only an early introduction to geometry, they are also part of an ancient Chinese storytelling art. I only know this because Nick read Grandfather Tang’s Story by Ann Tompert to Scarlett and then helped her make her own set of tans. It’s amazing what you can learn when you’re open to new possibilities.

http://www.amazon.com/Grandfather-Tangs-Story-Dragonfly-Books/dp/0517885581

http://www.childrensliteraturenetwork.org/birthbios/brthpage/01jan/1-11tompert.html

Under Pressure

Did you ever have something you were dying to say but knew you shouldn’t? As a lifelong super yakker, this rarely happens to me…because I just say whatever it is without proper consideration and regret it at leisure. As hypocritical as it sounds because I readily admit that I speak without thinking sometimes, I really hate it when other people do it. Really hate it. I recently had an encounter with a colleague that still has my nose out of joint. This person and I not only have the same employer, but a previously-existing social relationship of six years that has been nothing but pleasant…until two days ago. Apparently, I have been doing something this colleague is extremely annoyed by for a few weeks (or maybe semesters, I’m not quite sure) and they reached the tipping point where the interior that-bugs-me monologue becomes an external bite-your-head-off monologue. I was surprised, chagrined, embarrassed, and angry. In that order. And I’m having trouble letting it go, as my husband will attest. After a couple of hours ranting about it, he finally told me that most people are bad at confrontation and the majority of the population employs the “summon the courage and blurt” method once they need to get something off their chest. He’s right, I know he is. But still… In Carl Norac’s I Love You So Much, a squirrel girl wakes up with something to say but has to wait all day and finally “blurts.” It can happen to anybody.

http://www.amazon.com/I-Love-You-So-Much/dp/0440417449

http://www.panmacmillan.com/authors%20Illustrators/displayPage.asp?PageTitle=Individual%20Contributor&ContributorID=71593&RLE=Author

Opposite Day

Living with a two year-old can make you feel psychotic sometimes. Never mind the sleep deprivation and mind-numbing repetition that come along with those in the terrible time, the sheer lunacy of their every-day-is-opposite-day mindset will drive you over the edge. We spend the first year of any child’s life anxiously engaged in the business of teaching them to talk, and then once they can, they use their new skill for the Dark Side and start busting out opinions and preferences all over the place. Which wouldn’t be so terrible if there were some consistency to them. But bi-polar mind-changing is the toddler name of the game. The only guarantee in the whole process is that, regardless of what they liked yesterday or five minutes ago, whatever you want them to do or eat or wear will be the very thing they have just decided they will never do and it becomes a fight to the (metaphoric, hopefully) death. And you can’t win because even though you are big enough to force them to get dressed or eat breakfast or stay in the carseat, an obstinate, hysterical two year-old puts up a fuss no one can ignore. Those little suckers will even turn down something they want--a movie, a story, a bath--just to assert their independence and not go gentle into that dark night of giving in. In Rita D. Gould’s Disney Babies at the Big Circus, Mickey and friends show kids what “opposite” means. Like they didn’t already know.

http://www.amazon.com/Disney-Babies-Big-Circus-Opposites/dp/B000AO2O9Q

http://www.paperbackswap.com/Rita-D-Gould/author/