where do we go... from here

I thought the obvious follow-ups to The Monster at the End of This Book would be Mo Willem's Pigeon books and Tickle the Duck but... nothin'. Perhaps he's mainly responding to our enjoyment of it--though I like the pigeon and the duck too, so go figure--but I suspect he may also really like the different volumes--sometimes the book is loud, at the end, it's very soft. Any other books that lend themselves to that kind of reading?

I really love books that "tell me" how to read them aloud, come to think of it. I would contemplate a bibliography, but who knows if what works for me works for other parents.

And hey, as long as I'm talking about it:



Tickle the Duck written and illustrated by Ethan Long. LB Kids, 2005 (0-316-00102-3) $10.99

Any parent whose child has a love-hate relationship with being tickled will smile at this novelty book, which features a belligerent duck admonishing "Don't you dare!" on the cover. The duck sternly tells us exactly where not to tickle her--a soft downy underarm, or a rubbery foot; "touch and feel" has never been more fun. Finally the duck admits that a little tickle is okay, and ends the book snorting, "do it again." A nice choice for sibling reading. (2-6)

oh, I am so happy

Ben has taken to reading us bedtime stories. Tonight he read one of my childhood favorites, The Monster at the End of this Book. It was a vast improvement over his previous choice, The Complete Guide to Everything Sold in Hardware Stores.

There is a particular pleasure in having your child read to you, not just one of your favorite books, but one that you had purchased for him years before his birth.

In other reading news, Evan has been reading him The Hobbit and he is much taken with Gandalf, carrying a staff and making some truly amazing pipes with which to blow smoke rings (using these.) We all have new nicknames: Ben is Bendalf, Evan is Dadagast, and I, lucky girl, am Mombo Baggins.

tonight on bedtime reading: Boo!

My son has been on a ghost kick lately, and requesting that all his bedtime stories be board books made spooky. I wish I had a recording of Evan's Haunted Home: "There's Olaf sitting in a chair -- looking at a picture of his dead friend Venus! Someone calls on the phone -- ohmigod, it's Venus's voice from beyond the grave!" I'm not quite so inspired, but we did have fun with Richard Scarry's Cars and Trucks from A to Z tonight: "Here comes an Egg Car--eat too many eggs and YOU'LL DIE! And there's a Hotdog Car--eat too many hotdogs and YOU'LL DIE!"

big changes in the little house

We're on the shores of Silver Lake now. I was a bit worried about this one--it was pretty shocking to me when I read the series to myself--and there's definitely some processing going on; Ben told Evan today that he wondered if being sad and crying a lot would make his teacher go blind (she just lost her sister) and suggested we should put bumps (Braille) on the card we're going to send her. Thoughtful boy.

still on the prairie

Liz at "A Chair, a Fireplace and a Teacozy" is listening to the
"Little House" books and has some interesting links, particularly this article on the Little House books as fiction. I've pretty much been presenting the Little House books as fact and I hope my son won't be upset about that someday; at the moment he doesn't seem to have the resentment towards "lying" I've been told many autistic children feel. Still, perhaps I should introduce the idea that Laura is telling stories.

I've been finding Little House on the Prairie less difficult reading than I expected. The only mention of a black person so far is quite positive, albeit very much a portrait of someone strange and different. I've been adding a lot of commentary to the sections about Indians, though even that is a more balanced picture that I expected. But check out the site American Indians in Children's Literature for a much more critical dissection of the portrayal of Indians than you'll find in the article above. (Thanks to BookBookBook for the pointer.)

And aside from all those philosophical considerations, what do we think? It's definitely not as cozy a story as Little House in the Big Woods, but my son seems just as enthralled by it. We start to see more of Laura's inner life in this book--perhaps because we're now at a point in the story when she was old enough to have strong memories. I was quite fascinated by Laura's problem when Mary gives her pretty beads away and Laura feels she must give her beads away too or appear selfish (a fear justified by their mother's reponse.) There's starting to be real conflict between Laura's desires and Ma and Pa's expectations of children.

you can only go so far on the Magic Schoolbus...

Hey, check out these suggestion for non-fiction readalouds at BookBookBook; I don't know most of those titles, and I want to. As the homeschooling mom of Captain Nonfiction, finding books I can stand to read to him is a constant struggle. Someone around here recently blogged about loving Sugaring Time and I was so humiliated, because I had ordered that for my son during his tree-phase, took one look at what seemed like acres of text, and gave up instantly. Bad mom--no fiction!

end of the story

"When the fiddle has stopped singing Laura called out softly, 'What are days of auld lang syne, Pa?'

'They are the days of a long time ago, Laura,' Pa said. 'Go to sleep, now.'

But Laura lay away a little while, listening to Pa's fiddle softly playing and to the lonely sound of the wind in the Big Woods. She looked at Pa sitting on the bench by the hearth, the firelight gleaming on his brown hair and beard and glistening on the honey-brown fiddle. She looked at Ma, gently rocking and knitting.

She thought to herself, 'This is now.'

She was glad that the cosy house, and Pa and Ma and the firelight and the music, were now. They could not be forgotten, she thought, because now is now. It can never be a long time ago."

Isn't that just a beautiful ending? It really sums up the feeling I got from the book. It was a long time ago, but it was someone's now.

out of the woods and on to the prairie

Tonight is the last chapter of Little House in the Big Woods and my son is very eager to begin Little House on the Prairie. I hope we'll enjoy it more than some members of the kidlitosphere have! Perhaps I should read ahead tonight to prepare myself for any unpleasant surprises.

Someone on the childlit list brought up the ugly caricatures of Africans in the Asterix books, which I had managed to forget about. Argh, it's always something, isn't it? But those books are absolutely non-negotiable, as far as I'm concerned. (Hockridge and Bell translations only, natch.) The wikipedia article linked to above has an interesting section on stereotypes of different nationalities in the books; apparently no one was left unscathed. I confess that the stereotyping of, say, Germans, does not concern me on the same level as depictions of Africans speaking like Amos and Andy. I think some of the later editions have cleaned that language up, and since we are talking humorous history rather than actual history here, that bothers me almost not at all.