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Books Young KidsThis is a gorgeous and touching book. It’s always surprising when kids’ books have depth. This is one of those. It’s basically Cinderella on the prairie, except that the Fairy Godmother was delayed and Fanny went on with her life. Then, the Fairy Godmother shows up and offers her the chance to marry the prince. And, looking back at her life, hard as it has been, she decides not to. So, my daughter’s named Emma. So what? Emma (the not-my-daughter-one) has a rug for a lovey. She loves to sit and stare at it. She sees pictures in it. When she’s old enough she begins to draw these pictures and she’s a prodigy. But then, her Mom washes the rug and Emma’s inspiration is destroyed. It turns out ok, but it’s devastating. This book gets the whole “transitional object” thing right. Emma is 9 and she will still fiercely defend her bunny, even though it looks like something out of Dawn Of The Dead. Rabidly clever and fun to read out loud! Gritch the Witch wants to make Piggie Pie, but doesn’t have the pigs. She zooms out to Old McDonald’s Farm, but the pigs see her coming and disguise themselves as the other animals. Sounds corny? It’s not. The illustrations are glorious and there are plenty of pretty hip jokes if you look for them. On a page in a Yellow Pages, where Gritch looks for a farm, there’s an ad for Maggie’s Farm. Oh, man! I LOVE David Wiesner! He both writes and illustrates his own books and does both magnificently! The first book we stumbled across, Sector 7, is text-free. It’s about a boy going to the Empire State Building on a field trip. He meets a little cloud that takes him to the Cloud Dispatch Station in Sector 7. The clouds are bored with the shapes they been given, so he designs new shapes. Tuesday, June 29th, is about a girl and her science experiment. She sends seeds up into the atmosphere to find out what happens to them. A week later, giant vegetables begin to fall from the sky. But they’re not the vegetables she sent up. It’s a testament to his vision and wit that Sector 7 contains a reference to this book. Hey! Look I’m Reading!These are great chapter books. Chapter books, for the uninitiated, are short, easy-to-read book that are broken up into...well...chapters. The great thing about these books is they are historical fiction. Those books are for babiesI dare you, the adult reading this, not to get hooked on Lemony Snicket. Yes, they may be geared towards kids, but don’t tell me that you haven’t rented Shrek or Toy Story more than once. “Hip” doesn’t even come close to describing “A Series Of Unfortunate Events”. From the children’s names, Violet, Klaus and Sunny Baudelaire (as in Klaus and Sunny Von Bulow) to references to Thomas Pynchon, these books are compulsively readable. Test your literary knowledge! This is a dark and funny author. She has 5 or 6 books, mostly around ghost or fantasy themes. “Island of the Aunts” is one of her most complex. In order to save the magical island, the aunts must kidnap three children. They don’t want to do it, so they pick children whom they think probably won’t be missed – a girl who’s lost between divorced parents, an illegitimate boy of a wealthy family, and a spoiled brat. I’m really not a fantasy guy, but my oldest loves it. So when she wanted me to read Narnia to her, I was less than enthusiastic. I guess you can’t judge a book by its anthropomorphic looking cover. The whole series is great. Music I’m a music snob. When we had kids I promised myself that I would not subject myself or my kids through the nastiness that is most “children’s music”. Raffi, Barney...what’s the point? To learn to like Brittany Spears? There is absolutely NO reason that you should have to dumb down the music your kids listen to. Therefore, whatever you like they’ll probably like, too. Don’t get me wrong – Public Enemy, Dead Kennedys, and the like, probably should wait until the teenage years. But the nothing like dancing to X with a 3 month old! Video [Coming Soon!] |