Survival Of The Finest

In nature, different is often desirable, necessary for adaptation and a varied gene pool. In fact, if a population is not diverse enough, the species can perish. As the beings at the top of the food chain, you’d think we’d have that embracing difference thing down pat. Unfortunately, we just don’t seem to remember our animal roots and let a whole lot of other stuff cloud the issue. To be different in humanity is always suspect, potentially dangerous, and even possibly deadly. Oh, we talk a good game--superficially celebrate the unique, give lip service to elevating the unusual--but then we all go shop at the Gap and get Kim Kardashian’s new do. And being really different, like disabled different, is almost certain to yield nothing but misery. Which is why I felt apprehensive when I started working with severely disabled youth. I just knew I would have to protect those kids every moment and maintain constant vigilance to spy cruelty before it could reach them. But I was very pleasantly surprised by the maturity and kindness of the traditional students at our school. Always at the ready to defend (if necessary) and befriend (though challenging) our kids, these students showed a level of compassion we rarely encountered from adults on our field trips. They took good care of us. In Becky Ray McCain’s Nobody Knew What To Do, one boy finds the courage to stand up to the bullies for the sake of another. I know some people like him.

http://www.amazon.com/Nobody-Knew-What-Do-Bullying/dp/0807557110

http://www.jacketflap.com/persondetail.asp?person=14665

Not I!

Am I the only person who finds the Prodigal Son story frustrating? Most people hear the tale of a wayward child, come home from the world back into his loving father’s arms, and get a warm feeling inside for the message of redemption it tells. I hear that too, but the more prevalent message this oldest child, good kid takes away is that making good choices and following the rules gets you nothing while doing whatever you want, making a giant mess of your life, and breaking the hearts of everyone who loves you requires only an apology and everything is hunky-dory again. That sounds bitter, doesn’t it? But I have a point, right? Or “nice guys finish last” wouldn’t be a phrase that makes so much sense. There are a number of examples of this idea in fables, literature and popular culture, but the one that most speaks to me is the story of the Little Red Hen--that long-suffering, bread-baking chicken who eventually gets her vindication in the form of a piping hot slice of payback. I think that last part is what appeals to me the most. But sometimes even the classics can use some spin. In Janet Stevens and Susan Stevens Crummel’s Cook-A-Doodle-Doo!, the Big Brown Rooster, great-grandson of the Little Red Hen, gets fed up with chicken feed--and even more fed up with friends who want goodies without doing the work. So, he gets some new friends who do help--and everyone eats to their heart’s content.

http://www.amazon.com/Cook-Doodle-Doo-Janet-Stevens/dp/0152019243

http://www.harcourtbooks.com/authorinterviews/bookinterview_stevens.asp

Long, Beautiful Hair

I come from lushly-maned people. Both sides of the family have plenty of heads with thick, healthy locks cascading over their shoulders or swept up for somber family portraits. And how many times have I heard the story of my poor mother, the girl who couldn’t wear ponytails for the searing headaches the bunches of blonde hair would cause? I do not experience any of these things because my hair is what can best be described as spindly. It is thin, fine and a bit wispy with a cowlick smack in the middle just for fun. My brothers all got good hair, which figures since we come from boys-wear-short-hair stock and it all went to barbershop waste while mine took forever to grow and then didn’t really live up to expectations once it arrived. My mother, used to flowing tresses, had no idea what to do with the two tiny twigs sticking straight out from my head. Then someone gave her some advice--braid my hair. Every day. So, until I was in sixth grade and flatly refused to participate in the daily braiding ritual anymore, my mother braided my mousey, brown hair like Laura Ingalls. The only day I didn’t wear braids was picture day, so it seems like I’m lying when people look at my braidless school pictures. But braids I wore. In Rita Williams-Garcia’s Catching The Wild Waiyuzee, girl gets caught by Shemama and the tresses are tamed. Hey, no complaining--she could have been born with my hair.

http://www.amazon.com/Catching-Wild-Waiyuuzee-Rita-Williams-Garcia/dp/068982601X

http://www.ritawg.com/

The Cow Says, "Moo!"

How did we decide what is important for babies to know? And who decided it? I know it wasn’t me, and I know it wasn’t recently because my parenting of toddlers has spanned a generation and the stuff we taught when Keilana was little is still on the kid menu today. Some of the things make sense--colors, letters, numbers--but others leave a little more mystery to be explained. For instance, why are dinosaurs such a popular small people topic? I get cuddly things like teddy bears and fuzzy blankies, but when did sauruses of all kinds--prickly, spiny, scaly--become the go-to place for kids’ books? And why things that babies could never wrap their heads around or very few people really use anymore--like trains? Is it just because they fascinate us? Like I said, strange choices. But perhaps one of the most frequently occurring, but mystifying, topics that every baby in the know must know is animal sounds. What possible use could a baby, any baby anywhere, have for knowing what an elephant “says”? Or a goat? Or, heck, even a cat or a cow? But learn them they do and we measure how well things are going in baby learning land by how many they know and when. It’s funny, even the heavy hitters are in on the plot. In Eric Carle’s My Very First Book of Animal Sounds, all the regulars are present and accounted for. And guess who got the coveted cover shot? Yep, you guessed it--the elephant.

http://www.amazon.com/Very-First-Book-Animal-Sounds/dp/0399246487

http://www.eric-carle.com/home.html

Again?!

I was getting ready to read to Scarlett, and she was less than thrilled with the idea. She flipped her chubby little hands into an attitude of exasperation and clearly said, “Stop reading me books. Is getting on my nerves!” Which is funny for such a small person to say, but also annoyed me a bit. Isn’t every ill in the world caused by people not getting enough love as children? Doesn’t she know that orphan babies turn their sad little faces to the wall and languish from lack of attention? Can’t success in adult life be measured page-for-page by how much a person was read to when they were young? For heaven’s sake, she’s why I’m doing this! Why isn’t she on board? Then, later that day, I saw a Facebook post from a friend with a baby asking just how many bedtime books there are in the world and if she really has to read every single one of them at the risk of losing her mind. And then I took a look at today’s book---and I put it all together. Reading a new book every day has not yielded a new topic every day. In fact, a few have shown up so often that I don’t know what to write about them anymore, and apparently the repetition hasn’t been lost on Scarlett. Lois Ehlert’s Color Farm has cool geometric cut-outs of all the farm regulars--but you can only get just so excited about just so many farms.

http://www.amazon.com/Color-Farm-Lois-Ehlert/dp/0397324405

http://www.readingrockets.org/books/interviews/ehlert

Beach Baby

After a fancy-restaurant dinner on my seventeenth birthday, we decided on the spur of the moment to go to the beach. It was already dark and none of us was dressed in beachwear, but we went anyway on that gorgeous summer night and walked on the sand in our stockinged feet. It was great and a favorite memory. And one of the best things about living in Southern California--the beach is just a breath and a wild hair away. It becomes part of your world, your culture, even your blood. What a great way to grow up. But, unfortunately, not one I’ve shared with my kids. All of my children except Keilana were born in Northern California, and she was young enough when we relocated that she doesn’t have any memories of living below Santa Barbara (which, in my opinion, is the official dividing line between north and south). So, their visits to the oceanside have been few and far between. It almost broke my heart the first time five year-old Connor sputtered up from a wave yelling, “Someone put salt in here!” As if he had just discovered that. Which he had. And Scarlett’s first impression of the beach as a toddler last summer was a definitive “No, thank you!” She really hated the experience, was freaked out and scared. How can these be my kids? In Margret and H.A. Rey’s Curious George Goes to the Beach, our favorite monkey spends a day in the sand and surf. Heaven.

http://www.amazon.com/Curious-George-Goes-Beach-Rey/dp/0395978386

http://thereycenter.org/Welcome.html

Just A Tad

Once baby Keilana crawled out on our porch for about five seconds, which turned out to be just enough time for her to put something bulgy in her cheek. Since she loved food and had a bad habit of continuing to eat even if she was choking, I had trained her early to spit out anything in her mouth if I put my hand under her chin. So, I did and she did. And it was the half-chewed remains of a snail. Gross factor off the charts. All of this is background for the story explaining why I feel a little ambivalent over tadpoles. In the summer of 1991, we were taking a dip in the natural pool created by damming the local creek, when Keilana once again looked up at me with a full cheek. When asked what she had in her mouth, she opened her teeth just enough for me to see a grayish-green blob, and I thought to myself if it was one of those giant bullfrog tadpoles, especially one with legs starting to sprout, I would never stop throwing up. Fortunately, when I put my hand to her chin, a big river rock plopped out of her mouth and I didn’t have to begin the never-ending cycle of barfing. So, that’s good, but I still feel a little queasy around tadpoles. In Barbara Ann Porte’s Tale of a Tadpole, Francine has a pet tadpole that actually grows up to be a…toad. Good thing nobody ate him.

http://www.amazon.com/Tale-Tadpole-Barbara-Ann-Porte/dp/0531330494

http://www2.scholastic.com/browse/contributor.jsp?id=2494

Keep The Change

I think I have some Luddite in my blood because change often unnerves me and makes me at least a little bit sad. Not big, sweeping social change so much as small, insignificant-to-anyone-but-me change. Or it might be because I am a Virgo. I recently made Nick read a horoscope blurb on “Loving a Virgo” because I thought it was dead on--most particularly the part where it said not to expect a lot of change-up with those of us under the water-bearer sign. We like continuity. So, in keeping with this, I want stuff I like to stay the same. Like the “Swiss Family Robinson Treehouse” at Disneyland. Back when tickets were required for entrance to rides at Disneyland, everyone was always disappointed to be down to the “A” tickets, the look-at-stuff ones. But not me, because that meant we were on our way to the treehouse. I loved the clamshell sink, the hammocks, the creative use of what they had mixed with what they salvaged later or found. I have vivid memories of the plank and rope construction, the steep (it seemed at seven) climb to the top anticipating seeing cool stuff, and the wistful descent knowing that the best part was behind me. Until “the incident.” Which is probably more commonly known to the non-purists as “changing the treehouse over to Tarzan.” In Giles Andreae’s Rumble in the Jungle,” the animals love their jungle home. I liked the treehouse better when it was still on a deserted island.

http://www.amazon.com/Rumble-Jungle-Giles-Andreae/dp/1589250052

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

Weather Report

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I’m a So Cal girl, born and bred, so warm weather is important for my psyche. I love New York, no cliché, I really do, but I couldn’t live there in January. I think Chicago is one of the most vibrant cities I’ve ever been in, but one big storm and I’d be outta there. I imagine myself as one of those gaudy, giant-hat-wearing biddies on the beach someday. If I could live anywhere, it wouldn’t be a place where it snows--except maybe a place where it snows once in a hundred years and the news makes the front page of the newspaper. That would be acceptable. I know that those of us who love the sun are legion (Are there any songs about Minnesota girls? Are postage stamp-sized pieces of property a million dollars in Iowa?), but, to my surprise, we aren’t the only game in town. And this time of year always reminds me of that with people glorifying snow, traveling to snow, and lamenting the lack of snow. I still find the snow fixation a bit mystifying--no airport was ever closed for too much nice weather and no car ever slid on patches of sun--but there are diehards who find the benefits outweigh the negatives. Apparently, they’ve got company. In Margaret and H.A. Rey’s Curious George In The Snow, the monkey who’s game for anything goes ape for the white stuff. What does he know? He’s a monkey.

http://www.amazon.com/Curious-George-Snow-H-Rey/dp/039591907X

http://www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com/features/cgsite/history.shtml

Can You Hear Me Now?

I advise my students to find out what’s important to their instructor, not just me but any instructor, and make sure to study that, because chances are good it will show up more often on quizzes and tests. You’d like to think tests equally reflect all the course material, but teachers are people and people have preferences. And preferences influence us, even if we don’t realize it. But deviating from the norm seems to be a thematic thread in my life, so I tend to concentrate test questions on things that challenge me--like listening, which is really hard. Since I have two degrees in Communication and have been teaching it for seventeen years, the fact that I have not yet mastered the art of listening is sad. But listening takes a lot of work. As I tell my students: Hearing and listening are not interchangeable and listening implies intent. Which means you have to listen on purpose. And that takes a level of concentration I’m not always comfortable with. I once went on a school trip to Yosemite and one of the activities planned for us was a nighttime walk where we spread out far apart and were supposed to use the time for reflecting and really listening to the sounds of the evening. It was seriously one of the longest hours of my life. In Paul Showers’ The Listening Walk, one little girl hears, really hears, her neighborhood for the first time. One of these days, I’ll tackle mine.

http://www.amazon.com/Listening-Walk-Paul-Showers/dp/0064433226

http://www.harpercollins.com/authors/12722/Paul_Showers/index.aspx

Quite Contrary

We’ve come to the end of gardening season. Or at least the end of my first gardening season. I learned a lot (The Idiot’s Guide to Gardening at my side), had some disappointments (no pumpkin bigger than a Superball, no carrot longer than a Mike ‘n Ike’s), had some successes (the fact that anything grew at all and a bunch of beautiful azaleas), and find myself looking forward to next year. I have many people to thank for their support during my efforts--Nick’s dad for providing the azalea seeds in the first place and getting Scarlett jazzed about gardening, Nick’s mom for being supportive when I was acting obsessive and understanding when I brought the baby plants with me to Sacramento for a visit, Keilana for watering her leafy green siblings in my absence, Scarlett for making it magical, Nick for just letting me do my own thing, and many of you who gave moral support, kudos, and advice. I am truly grateful because I needed all the help I could get. I felt a little tug of sadness as I pulled up withered stalks, tossed faded flora in the trash, emptied out containers, and put everything in storage to await a warmer day. It had to be done, but it was sad. In Nicole Sulgit’s Dora’s Garden Adventure, Dora and Boots travel through the Froggy Pond and the Spooky Forest to get to Isa’s Flowery Garden. I didn’t have to work that hard, but it was still an adventure.

http://www.amazon.com/Story-Reader-3-Book-Explorer-Library/dp/1412762847

http://www.jacketflap.com/persondetail.asp?person=117606

No Shrinking Violet

At the ballet studio where Scarlett takes classes, spectators can’t be in the room where the dancers are to avoid distractions. But there is a big window where we all gather to keep an eye on the fancy footwork. While watching one day, I said something friendly to a pre-school-aged older sister waiting for her class. And she just stared at me like I was speaking Chinese. Her mom hastily explained that she has what is called “periodic selective mutism,” which apparently means that she sometimes can choose to talk and sometimes can’t. Interesting, I thought to myself, but I could literally hear my dad say, “Or your kid is just rude.” And I laughed a little to myself. Not that I don’t believe selective mutism exists or that this little girl isn’t afflicted with it, but it did get me thinking about the lengths we go to putting the actions of those we love in a positive light. And parents are the most stubborn spin doctors there are. Have you ever noticed how other people’s children need more discipline but yours needs a nap? Or that other kids are badly behaved but yours is overwhelmed by the situation? I guess it all depends on who’s doing the defining. In Cathleen Schurr’s The Shy Little Kitten, everyone assumes the reluctant feline is shy because she doesn't hang out with the crowd or talk a lot. Maybe she needs her space. Maybe she’s communicatively selective. Or maybe she’s just a brat.

http://www.amazon.com/Shy-Little-Kitten-Golden-Storybook/dp/0307160394

http://www.randomhouse.com/author/results.pperl?authorid=38357

Go Ahead And Get Mad

I shouldn’t be surprised when my kids display temper. They came by it honestly. When I was young, I had such a challenge expressing frustration appropriately that my mom developed a method for helping me get the beast back in the box. I had to count to ten. And not just count, but count slowly and clearly. Which would usually make me more mad than I had been in the first place. We had a blue-flowered couch where my counting calm-down was supposed to take place. And I learned to loathe those overblown blue flowers and that darn couch with all my heart--and most of my senses. I can still see the gradations of blue as the upholstery faded over the years. I can still feel the fabric against my cheek from when I would stick my face in one of the corners of the couch and holler to ten at the top of my lungs. And I can still smell the stuffing, springs and every-house-my-mom-has-ever-had scent of that torture chamber. I often thought then, even though I couldn’t put it into words for many years after, that I couldn’t understand why a person couldn’t just be angry sometimes. I didn’t know it as a child, perhaps only sensed it, but I was tapping into my still-held belief that complacency is useless. Sometimes you gotta get worked up. The Reverend Wilbert Awdry, author of Thomas the Tank Engine Counts to Ten, probably wouldn’t agree with me. That ticks me off.

http://www.amazon.com/Thomas-Tank-Engine-Counts-Ten/dp/0679888799

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

Do As I Do

When Keilana was tiny, she often got the technique of something before she truly understood the meaning. For instance, she learned the pattern of knock-knock jokes long before she knew what would make them funny. So, about a hundred times a day, we would hear jokes like this: “Knock, knock. Who’s there? Door. Door, who? Don’t forget to shut the door!” Which, of course, would make us howl with laughter from the absurdity but what she interpreted as us succumbing to the hilarity of her humor. And it went on for a really long time. Another one is Keilana’s version of Peek-a-boo. I recently watched the video of her first birthday and, in between tears of nostalgia, was amused to see that we had caught her particular brand of the game on film. She learned Peek-a-boo very early, but she thought the point was to hold something over your head, thus rendering you invisible. So, she would dangle something over her head, without covering her face in the least, and chuckle to herself when we couldn’t “find” her. Then she would pull the thing down past her chin and we would suddenly “see” her again. It was really hilarious and a perfect example of how perspective is very, very personal. And a warning to remember that babies only see what you do, not what you intend. In Margaret Miller’s Peekaboo Baby, all sorts of babies hide and seek. I wonder if any of them know they are learning about life.

http://www.amazon.com/Peekaboo-Baby-Look-Books/dp/0689844336

http://www.harpercollins.com/authors/14585/Margaret_Miller/index.aspx

Disorderly Conduct

I think people who can lie down and fall asleep until it’s time to wake up are the luckiest people in the world. And also some of the advice-iest people in the world. Being a lifelong bad sleeper, I have been told by the sleep-easy crowd that I don’t get enough fiber, exercise, and/or protein. It has been suggested that I should just lie in bed because I am really probably getting more sleep than I think. I even had a counselor query whether smoking pot would be the answer. Lots of advice, very little remedy. The fact is, you are either a good sleeper or you’re not, generally speaking. Every easy sleeper has an occasional restless night and every insomniac has moments of complete exhaustion resulting in deep slumber, but we come here wired a certain way and that’s just the facts. I recently discovered through a high school friend that there is a name for what ails us: Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome. Basically, DSPS-afflicted folk have a different rhythm than the nine-to-five crowd and they will never understand us. If you are a DSPSer, three in the morning is productive time and early morning staff meetings are torturous. Think about it--asking a DSPSer to come to work at 7:30am is the same as asking the normals to come in at 4:00am. Which sounds ridiculous, right? But it’s our reality. In Sandra Boynton’s The Going To Bed Book, the monsters learn some skills. I hope they have good wiring.

http://www.amazon.com/Going-Bed-Book-Sandra-Boynton/dp/0671449028

http://www.sandraboynton.com/sboynton/index.html

Just Playin' Around

Re-entering the new-mom gig after ten years away took some getting used to. I realized this the first time I went shopping. What I was expecting to see were the items of my first mother go-round--cute pieces with teddy bears or bunnies--with a little technology updating. But what I got was a surreal experience in the new world of parenting. Everything was light-up, twirl-around, noise-making and digital. I’m surprised the babies of today don’t have seizures every five minutes. I knew from that experience that the baby-parenting game had changed and I would need help navigating it. So, I signed up for several parenting email loops to see the news. And one of the things I found was more prevalent than any other topic: over-scheduled kids. It seems we have more money than time and more ambition than patience, so we put our kids in every activity under the sun (and moon, sometimes) to help them “develop” and “succeed.” Which leaves very little downtime for unstructured play. Which gets lamented in all the articles I read. And then gets excused in their own particular case by the author of the piece. It’s apparently just other parents who are doing it wrong. Well, I say, “Progress be hanged!” and I let my kid roam around the house naked with flip flops on pretending to eat plastic waffles. She’s a free-range kid. In Sesame Street’s Playtime With Big Bird, the yellow guy gets his play on. And he’s kind of naked, too.

http://www.amazon.com/Playtime-Big-Bird-Toddler-Books/dp/0679888810

http://www.randomhouse.com/kids/index.pperl

Travel Plans

I read an article recently where a columnist took the Eat, Pray, Love, travel-and-find-yourself concept to a new level. It seems her editors thought the way to rope in the fans of that book and its subsequent film was to send a willowy, blonde writer (not unlike Elizabeth Gilbert, author of the travelogue sensation) to a foreign locale (not dissimilar to, say, India or Italy) for some self-discovery. Sounds pretty familiar so far, but the twist in this case was that she wouldn’t know where she was going and wouldn’t have access to any travel guides or professional advice--she had to plunk down in the middle of some place chosen at random, rely on friendly locals for help and her own wits for navigation, and write about her experience at the end of her month in limbo. It’s certainly an intriguing proposition, but also scary as all get out in my opinion. I suppose many people would look at her interlude as an adventure--taking off into the unknown and carpe dieming the heck out of life. They would be right, of course, but I must be a bit too much of a homebody (or, more likely, control freak) to imagine undertaking such an excursion without having indexed and cross-referenced my own personal copy of the Lonely Planet Guide for the area. But not everyone is like me. In Susan Rich Brooke’s Elmo’s Colorful Adventure, Elmo takes off for far-flung parts on the spur of the moment. He sure is brave.

http://www.amazon.com/Elmos-Colorful-Adventure-Other-Reader/dp/1412701627

http://storyreaderbooks.com/

Hidden Treasure

Twenty years ago, my mom sold her two-story house and moved with my teenaged brother into a brand-new, much smaller apartment. It was an opportunity, the first one, for her to purposefully choose the color schemes and decoration of the new place. My mother has an artist’s soul, so the look had a lot of class--pastels and natural materials. One of the pieces she purchased would become very familiar to me over the years. A hinged, wicker chest, tinted softly in spring hues, ended up mine when she left the apartment and returned to more spacious accommodations. It has been with me ever since, getting an updated coat of color with each move. It currently serves as toy chest in the living room, so it is a shiny black, but never seemed particularly special. Until Scarlett heard about treasure chests. The other day she was feeling especially pretend-y and whimsical, so everything took on a bit of magic--most notably the ordinary wicker chest that had now become a “treasure.” There were no limits to what might be in the treasure, and she was so convincing that I had to peek a couple of times just to make sure it was still the same old chest I’d always known. Which it was…to me. For Scarlett, anything was possible. In “Dora’s Treasure Hunt” from Dora’s Storytime Collection, the explorer gang looks for a key to open the treasure chest. In our living room, all you have to do is lift the lid.

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

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

Hard Times?

It’s no secret that economic times are tough these days. Or at least people think they are. There’s no doubt that people are feeling the pinch, but I keep wondering if “pinch” is relative. I seem to keep seeing signs that things aren’t as bad as everyone is making them out to be. In the fabric store the other day, I thought I would check out their iron selection since my trusty companion of fifteen years had just given up the ghost. What I saw blew my mind. There was an iron on the shelf in this chain fabric store where ordinary people shop in a little town no one famous shops in that was $179. For an iron. To take wrinkles out of clothes. How is that possible in a time when people are predicting the end of prosperity as we have known it? Not to minimize any actual need people are suffering, and I know they are out there, but what am I to think listening to a couple at the playground tell a friend that they have run out of money for groceries while they both consume grande designer coffees and text constantly on new smart phones? True, I don’t know their story, maybe there are elements I’m missing, but I really think “going without” means something far different to us than our 1930s counterparts. In Three Gold Pieces, retold by Aliki, a humble man struggles to feed his family. And there’s not a Blackberry in sight.

http://www.amazon.com/Three-Gold-Pieces-Aliki/dp/0394917375

http://www.harpercollinschildrens.com/Kids/AuthorsAndIllustrators/ContributorDetail.aspx?CId=11719

Only You

My bookend kids are very similar--both girls, both smart and sassy, and both the only small person around a lot of attention-paying bigger people. I have also spent considerable time worrying for both of them over their only-ness. Will they get enough socialization? Will they be lonely? Will they be indulged to the point of selfishness? That last one is the toughest, I think. You always hear about how bratty only children are, how unpleasant to play with or be around. But is there validity in that? Since it’s been a concern of mine for more than twenty years, and I am an information seeker, I can assure you through examining the child development research that, personal opinions aside, the statistics actually show the opposite to be true: onlies seem to perform better in work, school, and yes, even social situations. It may be due to a monopoly of parent time and resources or it may have something to do with self-reliance, but they turn out all right. And that’s great, but how do I teach an only to share in the meantime? If you are two, and all the toys in sight are yours, it’s hard to get the concept that not all the toys in the world are yours. Which is why we have recently joined two playgroups to figure it out. Slowly, apparently. In Linda Alpozon’s I’ll Share With You, brother and sister learn that working together beats being bored alone. Now if they’d just tell Scarlett.

http://www.paperbackswap.com/Ill-Share-First-Linda-Apolzon/book/0307101665/

http://www.jacketflap.com/persondetail.asp?person=195748

Get A Clue

I come from not-quiet-during-the-movie people. We repeat lines, give encouragement, remark on interesting facts/costumes/discrepancies, and, most of all, make predictions about what we think will happen. We make other people crazy, including and especially Nick, but we would have us no other way. I was trying to trace the origin of this behavior in my own personal history and I think I found it yesterday. The hubby and I were discussing what books we enjoyed as children and what effect they had on us. A number of common titles got tossed around--by Tolkien, Ingalls Wilder, Lewis-- and then Nick asked if I had ever read the Encyclopedia Brown series and a little bell went off. I did read, and love, every page of those kid detective stories, and that is where my fascination with picking up the clues and figuring out the ending started. Not that I didn’t have the family trait before then (I know I’m at least a carrier because my son is a devout movie-talker, too), just that it found its expression once I had memorized the adventures of Encyclopedia and his friends. And now it’s second nature. If I can’t figure out the major plot points and the ending by halfway through any movie, I feel a bit frustrated. Unless they really surprise me, and then I have to give credit where credit is due. In Mary J. Fulton’s Detective Arthur in the Case of the Mysterious Stranger, Arthur gets a big surprise ending. That’s nice.

http://www.abebooks.com/9780307618818/Detective-Arthur-Case-Mysterious-Stranger-0307618811/plp

http://www.jacketflap.com/persondetail.asp?sort=date&category=3&size=25&page=1&covers=&person=107031

Fact Finder

When Connor was little he used his diaper like pants pockets. He would tuck all sorts of things in the top and sides of his diaper, and when we changed him, they would all tumble out. The stash was varied from day to day, but by far what we would find most often were folded up pieces of paper with print on them. Pages out of magazines, ads from the Sunday paper, notes with telephone messages, and even an occasional mini-book. The kid loved paper, and his favorite piece of paper was a picture he had torn out of the newspaper featuring Sacramento Zoo’s new red panda (which I never even knew existed until I had pulled the picture out of my son’s nappy a dozen times). And from that time on, Connor has always gravitated toward non-fiction offerings that tell him stuff he didn’t know. Even at the public library or the school library when all the other kids were choosing story books and fairytales, he would flip over a book about planets or mythology or dogs. Or rocks. Lord, the child renewed one book about rocks and minerals about ten times. Teachers would often remark how thoroughly entrenched in non-fiction he was, refusing anything shelved by author’s last name. But I did learn a lot from his choices. In Chris Arvetis and Carole Palmer’s What Is An Iceberg?, we get just the facts, ma’am. Like did you know all icebergs are chipped-off pieces of glaciers? Connor probably does.

http://www.paperbackswap.com/What-Iceberg-Ask-Series/book/0026890097/

http://www.paperbackswap.com/Chris-Arvetix/author/

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

An Herbivore's Lament

Living in California makes being a vegetarian easy. In fact, vegetarianism is so accepted and expected here, you forget how different your diet is from most of the rest of the country. And since they are never called upon to think about a meatless lifestyle, when you visit, you starve. I once had a long layover in the Houston airport, and if it had been much longer, I wouldn’t have made it home alive. There’s not a single food item in that state not wrapped in, stuffed with, soaked in, or fried with something that used to be alive. At a “Cracker Barrel” in Tennessee, they were at least trying. A tiny section at the bottom of the menu said, “Vegetarian Entree--pick two items,” and listed a number of bean dishes theoretically herbivore-friendly. When the dishes arrived at the table, however, each plate was crowned with a giant hunk of salt pork to top off the veggie vittles. When we brought the attention of our server to the dead pig parts nestled in our beans, she said, “Well, they’re big pieces, just pull ‘em out.” And thus the glaring discrepancy between California and pretty much everywhere else is clearly illustrated. It’s easy to get lulled into dietary denial here. When we read Rita Golden Gelman’s The Biggest Sandwich Ever, it was weird trying to weed through the tuna, lunch meat and hamburger pictures to find something Scarlett could recognize. Then again, it was published in 1980. And not in California.

http://www.amazon.com/Biggest-Sandwich-Ever-Rita-Gelman/dp/059030559X

http://www.ritagoldengelman.com/kids.html

Windy Valley

When I was nine, we moved from the San Fernando Valley (yep, I was a “Valley Girl”) and into Simi Valley a few miles “over the hill,” as the locals refer to the trip through the Santa Susana Pass and back. Before the move, I had, of course, experienced the wind--light breezes catching my hair, packing up and leaving the beach early to avoid the late-afternoon sand swirl, blustery winter and fall storms--or so I thought. The truth is, and any Simi-ite will back me up on this, you have never experienced a windy day until you’ve tried to walk to school down Cochran. When you’re young and thin enough, you can literally lean back with all your weight and, if the Simi Valley winds are at your back, be held up or eddied along like a falling leaf. No lie. I have always heard that “Simi” means “windy valley,” and I whole-heartedly believe it, but I’ve never investigated until now--and, darn it, if the late ethnographer Janet Cameron doesn’t claim that “Simi” is Chumash for “valley of the winds.” There are the remains of Chumash settlements at the edges of the valley, and the description sure does fit, so maybe it’s the truth. But, verified or not, it is one of those legendary references that makes so much sense, no one is motivated to change public opinion otherwise. In Janet Craig’s Windy Day, Penny gets buffeted about a bit, I admit, but she doesn’t know what real wind is.

http://www.thebackpack.com/used_childrens_library_books.htm

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

Makers Of Wonderful. Marvelous Pigs

I think the crafty gene skips a generation. Through my own informal research (which has been exhaustive if not scientifically vetted), I’ve determined that most of the people I know who love to create things out of other things do not end up with children who share their passion. But they almost always seem to have a grandparent who passed their love on down the line. I don’t know if it’s because children always try to define themselves in opposition to their parents, or if kids get so sick of the trappings of crafts that pile up everywhere in the creative process, or if they have never had to stretch their creative muscles because their parent already knows how to make whatever they want, or what, but I have seen this pattern play itself out time and again. My aunt lives for crafting (one of her world-famous sock monkeys was even featured on the “Ellen DeGeneres Show”), her daughters not so much. I come to life behind a sewing machine or crochet hook, but my mother, bless her heart, who has come through in a pinch when she has to, dreads the fabric and yarn domain. So, it seems we are either crafty or not. And some things will resonate with us or they won’t. Phoebe Gilman wrote a book about a freckle-nosed girl with a messy room and a penchant for making stuff. She called it The Wonderful Pigs of Jillian Jiggs, but I think it’s really about me.

http://www.amazon.com/Wonderful-Pigs-Jillian-Jiggs/dp/0590413414

http://www.phoebegilman.com/home.html