Teamwork

The bane of child-rearing is the parent/teacher conference. Even if you have a well-behaved, academically successful kid, there’s still an awful lot of ego and self-identity enmeshed in that half-hour time slot. You want Mr. or Mrs. so-and-so to say that your little scholar is the inspiration which makes their career choice worthwhile, and they try to avoid telling you that your child is the reason they drink. When my oldest daughter was in elementary school, the conference was a study in opposites. Every teacher she ever had praised how bright and advanced she was, but when it came to the “plays well with others” part, not so much. It wasn’t that she was an unruly child, just that other kids exasperated her to no end and she made darn sure they were aware of it. Frequently. I used to feel great impatience over hearing about this twice a year each year until I became an instructor at Chico State teaching Small Group Discussion. I’d always preferred working on school projects alone when I was a student, but seeing multiple groups go through their frustrating lifecycle each semester, I developed a whole new aversion for the teamwork process and a heightened appreciation for Keilana’s socializing challenges. Which is why I have mixed feelings about Sonali Fry’s Teamwork in Tonka Town. I’m glad that Chuck the Dump Truck and his various automotive pals can work together, but I think things are more simple in Tonka Town than they are in mine.

P.S. Happy Birthday Oba and Uncle Todd!

http://www.amazon.com/Teamwork-Tonka-Town-Sonali-Fry/dp/0439429293


http://www.jacketflap.com/persondetail.asp?person=144269

Memory Lane

It was really different when I was a kid. I experienced a childhood of black and white televisions, rotary phones, and milk in glass bottles. We had to go to the library to look stuff up, get all our music from maddeningly easy-to-scratch vinyl, and cook hot dogs on the stove. But it wasn’t all bad living in such primitive conditions. One of the best parts of being a kid in the pre-Internet and “To Catch a Predator” era was the freedom--to create, imagine, explore and just play. There wasn’t anything kid-friendly to watch on television after school (except for the odd Sid & Marty Krofft offering) and once Saturday morning cartoons were over, everything interesting moved outside. We could make plans for the day, pack some snacks, kiss our moms, and go. As long as we were home by dark, the whole wide world was ours to experience as we pleased. And we played. Hours and hours of Hide and Seek, game after game of street softball, day after sunny Southern California day of riding our banana-seated bikes for miles. In Frank Asch’s Moongame, Bear and Little Bird spend all day playing in the sunshine and then Bear teaches the game to the moon. I miss those games, those friends, and the memories my brothers and I made on those endless days. I feel such sadness that my children will never know that childhood. But, I do really like making veggie hot dogs in the microwave. So, there’s that.



http://www.amazon.com/Moongame-Frank-Asch/dp/0689835183


http://www.frankasch.com/splash.html

Model Behavior

Not too long ago I held a fashion intervention…for myself. I went to the mall determined to crack the code of the right-clothes, right-hair girls even if it took the whole day. It would be easy to say (and mercifully does get said by people who care about me and don’t want me to feel defeated) that my fashion disability arises from a complete lack of time and disposable income. But, kind as that is, it isn’t true. I haven’t ever been very good at it, but I have been better at times. Now, it’s just gotten to the point where being warm, dry, cool, and/or comfortable is paramount to any social acceptance. Take my rain boots, for example. No woman my age should be tromping around in boots with pink polka dots on them, but every time I splash through a freezing cold puddle unscathed, the fashion faux pas doesn’t seem as detrimental. Besides, I think they are kind of stylish in a funky, modern way. Nancy White Carlstrom’s Jesse Bear, What Will You Wear? features a little guy who plays so hard all day that bedtime comes just in time and who seems to know just what wardrobe any occasion calls for. He’s lucky. During my mall excursion, I saw a lot of classy gals and one hideously tacky woman. I was thanking my lucky stars that at least I’m not that bad…until she stepped out from behind a display wearing pink polka dot rain boots. Fashion fail.


http://www.amazon.com/Jesse-Bear-What-Will-Wear/dp/0689809301


http://biography.jrank.org/pages/1058/Carlstrom-Nancy-White-1948.html

Who Knew?

There have been many surprising things to this blogging project. The sheer level of commitment is one. The challenge of chasing an elusive muse is another. One aspect that leaves me feeling wistful and a bit sad is finding heartfelt inscriptions inside books I pick up at the thrift store for a dime or a quarter. One unexpectedly sweet benefit is discovering older books with a musty aroma that reminds me of my grandparents’ home in the humid South. Reconnecting with books that have profound meaning for me or bring nostalgia to me has been more fulfilling than I could have predicted. But I think the most interesting thing is Scarlett’s lukewarm reception to some of my treasured classics and decided preference for other books I’ve never even heard of. I guess that makes sense, since a toddler only knows what they like and not what receives critical acclaim or ends up on every well-stocked bookshelf. In that respect, Scarlett is very toddler. She is beginning to assert herself more forcefully in all areas of her life, especially in what she wears and has read to her. The other day the only clothes she would consider wearing were Spiderman pajama pants and a too-small onesie that couldn’t even snap. And when we chose a book to read, she insisted on Mittie Cuetara’s Terrible Teresa and Other Very Short Stories. That’s no lie--each story is only four lines long. But Scarlett was mesmerized and that was the point of this, right?

http://www.amazon.com/Terrible-Teresa-Other-Short-Stories/dp/0525457682


http://biography.jrank.org/pages/1357/Cuetara-Mittie-1957.html

Once Upon A Time

One problem with fairy tales is that they make “happily ever after” seem like the rest of the story rather than the end of the beginning of the story. After spending hundreds of hours watching Disney movies frame-by-frame for graduate research, I know the message gets driven home that, once you sweep off to the castle, everything is hearts and flowers from that moment on. But as someone who’s been married (more than once) and had children (more than one), I know you wake up the day after the perfect wedding and the dishes don’t wash themselves--nor are there any woodland creatures around to do them. Bummer. Another facet to life after happily ever after is realizing that sometimes it’s easier to just do stuff yourself than wait for everybody else to figure it out. Especially kids. Or jewel-mining dwarfs. I felt a real kinship with the post-prince Snow White in Disney’s Snow White Makes A Change from the Kindness Counts series when she goes back to visit the little cottage in the woods and finds pandemonium once again reigns. The same thing happens to me every time I clean up after my kids. I should be better about making them clean it up themselves. I understand this, but haven’t been very good at it. Control freak meets no time meets wanting to run my house differently than the one I came from but not knowing how. The dwarfs do renew their housekeeping efforts, so maybe it’s not too late.

http://www.amazon.com/Kindness-Counts-Disney-Princess-Studio/dp/1590693647

http://disney.go.com/index

Mom Genes

A few days after my first Mother’s Day, my middle brother sent me a card apologizing for the delayed greeting and telling me he had “completely overlooked the fact” that I was a mother now. It was weird for me, too. Mother’s Day is when you call your mom, write your grandma, and watch all the mothers get a flower at church. Since I was on my own with this month-old baby, I might have passed the day without marking my mother status had it not been for my oldest younger brother. At some point in the night, he snuck in and placed a card from “the baby” in her crib for me to find in the morning. It was an unexpected surprise, but also a singular moment realizing that for the rest of always I would be someone for whom Mother’s Day is applicable. Which was really good, if surreal, news. I had wanted to be a mother my whole life, ever since I could remember. I had baby dolls of all types and sizes who needed my constant care. I even chose to be a teacher because it seemed the most mom-friendly job you could have (which has proven true more often than not, so score on that one). All of these things add up to one very good reason to read P.D. Eastman’s Are You My Mother? to my little Scarlett. And to get dressed up that first Mother’s Day so I could go get my flower.

http://www.amazon.com/Are-You-Mother-P-D-Eastman/dp/0394800184

http://book.consumerhelpweb.com/authors/eastman/eastman.htm

Who Are You?

Since public performance scares the stuffing out of normal folk, people often think that actors have rock-solid confidence and an insanely secure sense of self. As an always-on-the-border-of-basket-case neurotic and a lifelong theater person, I can assure you that is a largely mistaken impression. One of the reasons we do what we do is because, from a very young age for most of us, we have yearned to be someone else. Or many someone elses. Many actors are acutely awkward offstage and have a hard time navigating the real world without scripts, costumes, and rehearsal. Others stay onstage at all times to avoid having to navigate the real world. A pretty complicated bunch. Either way, losing yourself in a character and walking around in someone else’s skin for awhile is pretty seductive. “They” can do all sorts of stuff you would never do and provide a chance to fit in with groups you might never be able to infiltrate as the real you, but it’s important to remember that they aren’t the real you. In Mick Manning’s cock-a-doodle hooooooo!, a sad, lost little owl wanders into a chicken coop and finds a home. He admires and likes his fowl friends so much that he embarks on a very frustrating quest to be one of them and begins to act chicken-y. The problem is he stinks at it, as he would being an owl. One day, though, his owl instincts kick in and save the henhouse--little owl is a nocturnal-friendly hero.


http://www.amazon.com/Cock-doodle-hooooooo-Mick-Manning/dp/1561485683

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

To Tell The Tooth

When you hold your first tiny newborn, a list of endless concerns begins to race through your mind. Surprisingly, one that doesn’t even register on that scale then will become your daily fixation for the next, oh, twenty years: teeth. Early on in your parenting career, those pearly whites become an obsession, or so it must seem to non-parents. When will they show up? Fall out? Grow back in? Need orthodontia? Have to be removed/repaired/replaced? It truly never ends. Since I spread my kids over the better part of two decades, I have some kid in each stage at any given time. My world and my checkbook basically revolve around teeth. And there are some things I really like about that. One of the traditions in our house is that no baby can claim to have a new tooth until they pass the “spoon test.” Only when we hear the distinctive Tink! Tink! Tink! of a spoon tapped against drooly gums hitting the edge of a tiny emerging tooth can we say that the baby has a new (or first) one. That is always a bittersweet occasion--the little one is growing, but the little one is also not so little anymore. While Connor’s teeth are being expensively straightened, Addison’s are falling out, and Keilana’s are being taken out, Scarlett is just getting some. Which is why we read The Tooth Book by Dr. Seuss’ alias Theo LeSieg. TEETH! They are very much in style. They must be very much worthwhile!


http://www.amazon.com/Tooth-Bright-Early-Beginning-Beginners/dp/0375810390

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

http://www2.scholastic.com/browse/contributor.jsp?id=166971

Change Is In The Air

However you feel about the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act signed into law today, it’s a historic day. Dangerous social engineering? Desperately needed legislation? It depends what side you’re on. In the midst of all the opinions whirling around, I coincidentally encountered a quote I’ve heard many times but never with the impact it had today. Noted anthropologist (and social agitator) Margaret Mead is credited with saying, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” And I believe it with all my heart. But then, so do people with worldviews polar to mine. So, if everyone thinks they are the righteous little David, who is the evil giant Goliath? Pondering all this made the choice of Patricia A. Pingry’s The Story of Joshua even more thought-provoking. Granted, it is a child’s board book with a few simple pages and a condensed storyline, but the one-sided account made me a bit uncomfortable. The basic story: Joshua and his people are given land, including Jericho, by God. The brave little band calls upon all their resources to bring down the walls of Jericho and claim their rightful property. But the problem for me is that there is no mention of why Joshua’s people deserve ownership of the land over the current residents. And this got me thinking even more. I decided that, if you and yours are going to change the world, you better be right.

http://www.amazon.com/Story-Joshua-Patricia-Pingry/dp/0824941535


http://www.amazon.com/Patricia-A.-Pingry/e/B000BPFPMC


http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/m/margaret_mead.html

Follow Me

There are three tests of parenthood: putting a drawing on the fridge, hearing your parents’ words come out of your mouth, and seeing yourself in your kids. You realize pretty early in the parent experience that you are always being watched…even when you are doing something mundane. One day I heard preschool Keilana chastising another child for their “totally unacceptable behavior,” and I thought I was in an echo chamber. The first time I saw toddler Connor adjust his jeans with his wrists--a perfect miniature of his dad--I knew how closely we are observed by our little ones. Just when I think Addison is acting as neurotic and uptight as a person can possibly get, someone will remark how like me she is. And now Scarlett watches us like a little hawk, so what we do and say is suddenly infinitely more meaningful than it was just two years ago. We spent this past Saturday at the Pathway to Peace rally in a local park, listening to passionate speakers and trying to make collective sense of the world. At one point, everyone joined hands and called out individual wishes for humanity--everything from clean water to global peace. As I looked around at these good people, I felt I was giving my daughter a gift by introducing her to them. I read Richard Edwards’ Copy Me, Copycub, about a baby polar bear learning by following his mother’s footsteps, with a fervent prayer in my heart. Please, let us lead her well.


http://www.amazon.com/Copy-Me-Copycub-Richard-Edwards/dp/0060285702


http://www.jacketflap.com/persondetail.asp?person=130677

Read To Me

Shortly before Keilana was born, Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses set off a firestorm of controversy over an author I had never heard of before. When he began getting death threats, the popular media aimed the spotlight on Rushdie for his fifteen minutes. I particularly remember one interview where he said that, in his family of origin, the written word was so sacred that if someone accidentally dropped a book, they had to pick it up and kiss it in remorse. That kind of commitment made a soul-deep impression on my young, pregnant self and I vowed to teach my soon-to-be child an appreciation for books. I took a whole stack of them with me to the hospital and began reading to her the moment we were alone. I read to her every day, including the day we sat in the pediatrician’s office for her two-week checkup. When I told the doctor that his staff spent our entire wait mocking me in quiet nurse-y voices, he asked me if the baby listened when I read. Defensive, I launched into a detailed description of how Keilana’s eyes would get bigger looking at the pictures and how she would sit quietly and…and... When I finished, he just said, “Well, then, it doesn’t matter what they think.” And we just kept reading. So, it touches my heart when I watch my first baby, now a beautiful woman, share Phoebe Gilman’s Grandma and the Pirates, or any of her childhood favorites, with our little caboose.


http://www.amazon.com/Grandma-Pirates-Phoebe-Gilman/dp/059043425X


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

Don't Let The Bedbugs Bite!

Scarlett hates going to bed. She can be an eye-rubbing, falling-down exhausted, emotion-spewing mess and still fight sleep like a rabid little tiger. What’s up with that? I spend most of my life either fervently hoping I can fall asleep or desperately wishing I could stay asleep, and Scarlett, like every kid ever known, avoids it like the plague. We just don’t appreciate what we’ve got until it’s gone, I guess. Sleeping has reached such mythic proportions in my life that I have actually dreamed about sleeping. Sad, but true. I saw a snippet of poem waxing rhapsodic about sleep on a half-torn magazine page once and it captivated me so completely that I had to track down its origin and author. When I finally found all of 19th century poet and humorist Thomas Hood’s ode--”O bed! O bed! delicious bed! That heaven upon earth to the weary head!"--I realized that I love him almost as much as I covet naps. He just gets it. The authors of kid books must get it, too, because it seems that time-to-go-to-bed stories are rivaled only by time-to-use-the-potty tales for sheer numbers. In Leigh Hope Wood’s Sleep Tight, Roosevelt Rhino, the two-horned little protagonist gets very tired during his busy day of trains and teddy bears but, in true kid fashion, needs routine and his parents to find his way to the Land of Nod. O bed, I’m sorry for those childhood years of playing hard to get! Can you ever forgive me?


http://openlibrary.org/b/OL12327020M/Sleep_Tight_Roosevelt_Rhino


http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/315582.Leigh_Hope_Wood

Jamming In Berryland

I didn’t know you could see the Milky Way without a telescope. I was born and raised a city girl, so until I visited my Nana and Grandfeathers at their Thunder Mountain Ranch in Northern California, I had never heard a brook babble, smelled a forest, or truly seen the stars. Of course, I knew what stars looked like and could find the Big Dipper, but until that trip, all the jaw dropping splendor the cosmos has to offer had been completely drowned out by light pollution. Seeing it for the first time was magical. Another experience that stands out for me on that visit is “discovering” Indian Rock, where Native American women ground holes for making acorn flour, for the first of many times. I felt so connected to history near that rock and, because it was outside the split rail fence “no rattlesnake zone,” more than a little brave for spending time exploring it. California is rightfully known for its natural abundance, so there were always plenty of acorns around, but the most sumptuous delicacies served up by Mother Nature around Indian Rock are…the berries. Blackberries, raspberries, and I don’t even know what other berries grow in tangly, scratchy, juicy, totally-worth-the effort profusion. We’d have to fight the birds, dodge the bugs, and beware the snakes, but those sticky, finger-staining berries warm from the sun still live vividly in my memory. I think of them every time we read Bruce Degen’s delicious Jamberry. What a jam jamboree!


http://www.amazon.com/Jamberry-Bruce-Degen/dp/0694006513


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

Tradition

There’s a commercial where the uncle from “Fresh Prince of Bel Air” plays the role of a professor apologizing to his students for an educational system that has become dysfunctional by being “traditional.” Now, I get it: clinging to archaic notions and methods is often less than innovative and sometimes downright dangerous, and I am definitely not in favor of doing things the way we’ve always done them just because that’s how we’ve always done them, but I can’t help thinking of all the traditions I would be sorry to see go if there was a purge. There is something sad about the idea that the things we have enjoyed together--as families, friends, cultures, and communities--would suddenly become suspect because “traditional” became a bad word. There are songs from church dances I went to as a teenager that still make me feel happy and young for a minute. Here in Chico, nursing moms of the '90s who have never met each other can be brought together by the name of a lactation consultant whose classes saved our sanity. And can I get a shout out for Girl Scout cookies?! Another place it seems we all can meet and stand together for a moment is in our attachment to Margaret Wise Brown’s Goodnight Moon. It seems everyone loves it. I even found my voice getting softer and more nostalgic as we read. And my friend Joanne's adorable son, Nick Kydd, once took an adorable picture with the book that touches everyone.



http://www.amazon.com/Goodnight-Moon-Margaret-Wise-Brown/dp/0694003611

http://www.btd-island.com/MWB.htm

The Wearin' O' The Green

St. Patrick’s Day used to be a big and pretty complicated deal. There were rules about what colors to wear--everyone=green, some people (either British or Irish or American of some descent other than British or Irish, it was never really clear, even to the popular kids who declared the rules)=orange. There were rules about who could be pinched and why, along with more rules about the consequences for pinching someone with hidden green (like the label-on-the-underwear trick). One year caused great concern in my world because I had to wear my yellow Rancho Simi Drill Team shirt on the day of Erin Go Bragh and didn’t have any green unmentionables to wear underneath. Knowing that I would be an easy target for people who only had one day a year to get in touch with their inner bully, I panicked and gave myself green freckles with what was apparently the most indelible permanent marker ever manufactured. I remember this because I was still trying to get rid of the bright green dots across my face days later when any quirky charm they may have had had long since worn off. Another tally mark in the hopeless dork column. As a Chico resident, I can’t remember the last time St. Patrick’s Day meant anything other than studiously avoiding the vomit and nonsense of downtown, but it did seem appropriate to observe the “holiday” by reading Dr. Seuss’ Green Eggs and Ham. And maybe get a Shamrock Shake at an outlying McDonald’s.

P.S. Happy Birthday, Bampa!


http://www.amazon.com/Green-Eggs-Myself-Beginner-Books/dp/0394800168


http://www.seussville.com/seussentennial/resources1.html

Splish! Splash!

There’s something about water. We are instinctively hard-wired to respond to its presence and properties. As much as we try to avoid weather water with umbrellas and overhangs and jackets with hoods, there are moments when we all break out and embrace the deluge. What tips the balance? How do we go from pulling our coats closer and avoiding the wet one moment to dancing in the rain the next? There’s some primal threshold that, once crossed, allows us the freedom and abandon to get our clothes and hair and skin soaking wet--and revel in the drenching. My kids seem more prone than most to loving water in all its forms. Keilana was a bona fide water baby, swimming across the spa at eight months with her diapered hiney bobbing at the surface. Connor didn’t like the pool, too cold, but would stay in a steamy bath until he was as red as a lobster. Addie would cry to get out the door in stormy weather, so she could stand under the spout from the rain gutters in her diaper. We have to distract Scarlett every time we go past the Downtown Plaza fountain unless we have something to use as a towel in the van. Vera, the sassy little mouse star of Marjolein Barstin’s Vera in the Washtub, splashes in puddles, gets covered in ink, and generally makes messes that she’ll have to clean up by soaking in some kind of bath. I guess she ends up “squeaky” clean.


http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Vera-in-the-Washtub/Marjolein-Bastin/e/9780812060881


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

Definitely Different

I have a big mouth, a loud voice, and something to say about everything. I don’t blend well. I am cosmetologically impaired--I can’t use a straightener, properly apply makeup, or figure out what not to wear. If someone were asked to list adjectives describing me, I can’t imagine any of the first ten (or maybe hundred) would be “classy.” Oh, sure, I’d get “enthusiastic,” “vivacious,” and “intense” (on the nice lists), but not much in the way of “elegant” or “gracious.” It’s not that I haven’t tried to be those things, just that my efforts have been entirely unsuccessful so far. Each time I go into a new situation, I make a silent vow with one of the voices in my head that I will show a different side to my personality. And I usually succeed. For about five minutes. Then, someone says something I disagree with or brings up a subject I feel passionately about (which is most of them) and the braying laugh bellows or the pushy broad comes out and I’ve ruined another chance to be elusive and mysterious by being me. I get not fitting in and feeling like everyone else does. So, reading Helen Lester’s Tackylocks and the Three Bears was therapeutic. Tacky is a Hawaiian shirt-wearing penguin in a tuxedo kind of crowd and the other penguins (with names like Goodly and Neatly) never let him forget it. But, he ends up the most popular wig-wearing guy on the iceberg. That gives me hope.


http://www.amazon.com/Tackylocks-Three-Bears-Tacky-Penguin/dp/0618439536


http://www.helenlester.com/

Oh, Brother!

My first friend, playmate, and confidante was born just as princesses and vampires started Trick-or-Treating. The family story is that I didn’t get to wear the pink and white bunny costume laid out carefully on my parents’ bed because my brother John came a month early and my grandparents didn’t have the key. So, I went as a gypsy instead, and the pictures made my mother cry. I don’t remember any of this because I was still just a baby myself--which means he has been a part of everything I can remember for all my life. We are so different that we could never have been peas in a pod, only the yin to each other’s yang. While I was described as someone who thinks of things to worry about, he had nicknames like “John the Beloved” and “John the Peacemaker.” Very different. He was a cerebral boy who fiercely loved animals and books, an introspective teen who ran hundreds of solitary miles, and a world-traveling young adult who didn’t even have time to grab a pair of shoes before rushing me to the hospital where his first beloved niece was born. Even with childhood vision challenges, he was an impressively early reader and, since we are so close in age, he was learning his first book while I was learning mine. Eleanor Clymer’s Benjamin in the Woods is the story of a frontier boy who comes West with his family including, coincidentally, his Uncle John. Somehow, that seems fitting.



Check out what he's doing now:
http://www.shopliftwindchimes.com/


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


http://www.amazon.com/benjamin-woods-wonder-eleanor-clymer/dp/B000O5S7TM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1268534707&sr=1-1

Over And Over Again

Kids are creatures of habit. Repetition is heroin for them and they always need a fix. How do you think the Teletubbies pull off “Again! Again!“ without a rebellion? You have to be very careful interacting with underage folk because something you do once you’ll have to do a million times. And there is no rhyme or reason to what that thing will be. A bazillion clips on youtube showing babies losing it over some completely random sound prove that. I smooched Keilana once during the chorus of “Kiss the Girl” from “Mer-naid” and, forever after, had to kiss her each time the song played--even if I was driving. When Connor was tiny, the sound of tearing paper would send him into hysterics--so we did it every chance we got. I must have opened a can of Pringles a few times to keep Addie quiet during Walmart trips, because the one time I passed by the food aisle, there was broken-hearted wailing. And now Scarlett. Maurice Sendak’s trip through the calendar Chicken Soup With Rice, about a little guy who never tires of the comfort-food staple, is when it happened. According to the book, August is so hot that the little boy will turn into a cooking pot and simmer his own soup. When Scarlett reached out to touch the page, I pulled her hand back and hollered, “Ouch!” She was laughing so hard it took us about ten minutes to go to the next page. Toddler humor, go figure.


http://www.amazon.com/Chicken-Soup-Rice-Book-Months/dp/006443253X


http://childrensbooks.about.com/cs/authorsillustrato/a/sendakartistry.htm

And Never The Twain Shall Meet

Some people lead more normal lives than others. I know, normal is relative and you never really know what challenges and stresses other people deal with and such, but, let’s face it, we all know the unspoken benchmarks and how we measure up to them. Or not. It’s been my contention for a long time that there are really only two striations of people in American society: those who can’t imagine sleeping in a bed with sheets that don’t match and all the rest of us. Not only are these categories pretty all-encompassing and descriptive, their boundaries are fairly rigid--sheet-matchers rarely end up socially or romantically linked to at-least-there-are-sheeters. It just isn’t done. Oh, sure, there are the occasional sheet-crossed lovers, but they are usually doomed. If you know the thread count of your bedding (or even know what thread count means) you’ll never be happy with someone who has slept on top of the comforter because the sheets are still in the dryer. Some differences are just too profound. I bring this up because I couldn’t help noting that Eloise Wilkin’s My Goodnight Book is a precious, heart-warming little tale about a matched-sheet family in a matched-sheet house. When it’s time for bed, the little girl in the story goes upstairs (without a tantrum) to brush her teeth (with a toothbrush that perfectly matches the perfectly matched soap dish and cup) and take a bath (in a bathroom that has a footstool…with a ruffled cover). Who are these people?!

http://www.amazon.com/Goodnight-Book-Golden-Sturdy-Shape/dp/0307122581


http://www.randomhouse.com/author/results.pperl?authorid=33195

The Human Touch

Trivia fascinates me. I compulsively collect bits of data and useless information. When it comes to finding the paperwork for the car registration, I’m clueless. However, if you ever need a piece of Trivial Pursuit pie or the question to an answer that will only appear on Jeopardy, I can probably help you. One area where I’ve found the greatest minutiae-based achievement is that of Disney movies. I know every song lyric, most dialogue, and enough back story details to make my own special features DVD. So pronounced is the fixation that I even wrote my Master’s thesis on the “narrative elements of the Quest story as presented in Disney animated features.” No kidding. And one of the best things about Disney animation is the animals-and-things-that-seem-like people anthropomorphism. The scissor-wielding mice from Cinderella amuse me and the randy candlestick from Beauty and the Beast is an eye-rolling favorite. But the most swoon-worthy character of all is that sly fox, Robin Hood. His skill with the bow, dry wit, British accent and noble cause make my heart flutter. This technique is so engaging that, at times, it is easy to forget what you’re watching is truly impossible. The same thing happens in Kidsbooks’ The Giraffe Numbers Book when a whole tower (the honest-to-goodness name for a group of giraffes) of the long-necked set do some really people-y things like sun bathing and riding in limousines. I draw the line at “put toys on the shelf,” though--most humans don’t even do that.