Homer by Elisha Cooper

Homer by Elisha Cooper

Rating: 4 sweet stars


WARNING: DO NOT READ THIS BOOK IF YOU HAVE JUST LOST A PET!  I don't want to make you cry...I already teared up at the end of the book, and our dogs are still young and frisky.


Okay, I'll continue now.


This is a simple book of big, gorgeous pictures and few words.  An old dog lays on a porch, his family inviting him to go with him down to the beach.  He politely declines and just watches, observing, taking it all in.  


Before he heads in, one of his People asks: "Do you need anything?"


Looking out at the beachy sunset, clearly thinking to himself of all his kids who came to play with him while he sat, immobile, and smiling like labs and Goldens do, he thinks:

"Nope, I have everything I want.  I have you."

And then, at the end of the day, he gets up and stretches his stiff body and makes his way inside.  He painfully travels from the porch to an old, comfy chair, and then falls asleep, as his People work around him.

Our two weimaraners are still crazy, despite the fact that they are almost ten years old.  Their favorite moments of the day are clearly those right after bedtime, when I come down the stairs empty-handed and breathing out for the first time all day, looking forward to the transition from mother to wife as my husband drives home from work.  It's usually just me and them walking around the woods together for a few minutes, them romping happily, and me enjoying the quiet.  They would be happy if I was a stay-at-home-dog-mom, tending to them all day long.  Maybe then they'd get a bath more than once a month!

Dogs are so great.  A big pat to your dog if you've got one, too.

A Good Night Walk by Elisha Cooper

A Good Night Walk by Elisha Cooper

Rating: 4 stars

Elisha Cooper is quickly becoming one of my favorite illustrators.  His images seem to be sketched quickly but the people seem to move, the trees seem to sway, and the animals seem to breathe.  My husband really likes Farm and Beach, though I think they are beyond even Lorelei's impressive attention span; I think they are the segue way to chapter books they are so long!  Those books are DK-like in their details and information, but A Good Night Walk is a great bedtime book.

Maybe because we live in the woods, the neighborhood setting of this book makes Lorelei more interested in it.  On our night walks, we see fireflies and hear owls and listen to the rustling leaves and not much else.  While I wouldn't change that, there is something amazingly and magically alluring about Cooper's retro drawings that make me pine for a neighborhood like those in his pictures.  The author takes a walk, presumably with his child/ren, along a sidewalk, where screen doors open and close, with smells of apple pie and sounds of dogs barking.  He simply describes what he sees, nothing more, nothing less.  Friendly waves, chasing squirrels, a pick-up game of baseball....somehow I think of my parents' hometown of Erie, Pennsylvania.  His images are just nostalgic and beautiful.

I'm too young to appreciate the difficulty of the late 1940s, and early 1950s when my grandparents began to raise their children.  I know there were plenty.  But they were surrounded by friends and family--and all of their lives were intertwined in those apple pies and baseball games and picnics. 

Somehow Elisha Cooper with his slow words, "Let's take a walk, a walk at night, and see what there is to see" sticks in Lorelei's and my imagination.  For different reasons, but...that's what makes this a really good book.