Walter the Lazy Mouse by Marjorie Flack

Walter the Lazy Mouse by Marjorie Flack, illustrated by Cyndy Szekeres

Rating: 4.5 stars

Walter sleeps through his family moving. That's lazy for ya. He sets off to find them and transforms himself into a hard-working young lad, a giver not a taker, alert not asleep...you get the picture. A coming of age story, of a mouse.

Of course, there's a little more to the story (there always is).  Walter wakes, surprisingly calm for a kid who woke up alone, without the family that surrounded him when he fell asleep. He sets off to find that family.  He makes some friends and realizes he can't let other people take care of him for the rest of his life.  He meets three funny unnamed frogs that can't for the life of them remember Walter throughout their friendship with him.  Within hours of "see you later" the frogs are back to "who are you?"  It's a funny twist for Lorelei, but troublesome to me (my brain can't stop searching for the metaphoric or symbolic reason they can't remember his name).  Through his friendship with these three amphibians, Walter becomes a responsible guy.  He erects his own house, builds his own furniture, learns how to swim, teaches the frogs (incorrectly), and becomes a stand-up mouse.

Lorelei holds Jessica's mom's childhood copy of Walter.

He's ready to join his family, who are overjoyed to see him (but with a dozen siblings, I get the feeling his mom barely noticed his month-long absence).  They are impressed with and proud of his growth, but it's Walter's pride and new-found confidence in himself that really matters.

The book is ten short chapters, with plenty of sweet illustrations by Cydney Szekeres.  Written in 1937, this is a pretty old book, but still a great, charming read.  It is a great early chapter book for kids to read alone or with their favorite parent (hopefully that's you).

This was Lorelei's friend Jessica's choice for book club this month, and it was a really good one.  Yesterday we met at a coffee shop to chat about the book; Jessica and her mom prepared some good questions for us to discuss.  The girls tossed around these and other questions: 

• How does Walter feel when his family moves away?
• What would you do if you came home and couldn't find anyone?
• Do you think the frogs are good friends?  Why or why not?
• Would you want to be Walter?
• Are you ever lazy?  When?  Give some examples of how you are not lazy.

The discussion, as always, was pretty funny--after dutifully answering the question about how they're lazy in little ways, they threw their classmates under the bus for being lazy in big ways.  Lorelei brought up how Walter says he's hungry but he never eats throughout the whole book.  And then, when discussing how many siblings Walter has, the conversation turned to the siblings in Lorelei and Jessica's lives.  They both have two, but Lorelei has two little brothers and Jessica has two older sisters. The girls whipped out pens and paper and drew up a Venn diagram to compare their situations.  When a conversation with two first graders end with a Venn diagram, you know they aren't lazy Walter-types!

As always, it was a delightful way to spend an afternoon.  Next month (Lorelei's choice): Mr. Popper's Penguins!

The Hundred Dresses by Eleanor Estes

The Hundred Dresses by Eleanor Estes, illustrated by Louis Slobodkin

Rating: 5 stars

This should be required reading for first and second grade kids. Obviously girls will be drawn to the book more than boys (for the most part, excuse my sexism) because of the title and cover, the talk of dresses throughout the book, and because the three main characters are all female. But the lesson of being kind to and showing empathy towards others are for everyone--boys and girls, grown ups and kids alike. 

The story starts off with an empty desk.  Young Wanda Petronski is not in school today, and Maggie and her pal Peggy wonder where she is. Together and separately they remember Wanda, and how she wore the same "shabby but clean" dress to school every day. But one day, when all the girls in the class stood together to admire a new dress that belonged to a different classmate, Wanda blurted out, "I have a hundred dresses at home." All eyes turned towards Wanda.  

Wanda repeated her words firmly.
"I got a hundred dresses at home."

She soon became the subject of fascination, and a gentle teasing, a light but constant ribbing--nothing as hideous as the bullying nonsense that, horribly, plagues playgrounds around the country these days. In the end, the girls find out that Wanda's family--recent Polish immigrants--have moved to the big city where their odd name and thick accents will blend in more, stick out less. Her father writes a note to her class explaining the situation. The teacher chides her class, saying that she sure hopes they were kind to these people. 

Peggy and Maggie feel guilty (though this word, interestingly, never appears in the book).  They realize that they were unkind. They know it right away (because they've got these things called consciences, and are humble enough to realize when they've done something wrong).  A drawing contest that Peggy expects to win helps illustrate the point further--all the girls submit one dress for the competition, but Wanda submits 100 brilliant drawings of 100 brilliant dresses.  Everyone, especially the two girls, are impressed.  

There must have been one hundred of them all lined up!

They can't "make it right" by apologizing because Wanda is gone.  Instead, Maddie comes up with a conclusion and makes a pledge: "She was never going to stand by and say nothing again."

The book is great and, despite being written in 1944, is very timely for four reasons:

1. Empathy is learned.  The lesson: "Be kind, always" is so true. Kids need to be taught and adults need to remember that we never know what someone else is going through--from just a bad day or perhaps their parent is dying from cancer. 

2. The story is about Polish immigrants, and all my ancestors are from Poland.  That fact only enhances my love for this book!  I love that Lorelei (third generation) understands a little the teasing that some of her ancestors endured when they first arrived. 

3. The language in this book is wonderful--there are huge words that even chapter-book-inhaling Lorelei doesn't know. Exquisite. Admiration. Stolid. Exaggerated politeness. I get the sense that we're expecting less of our children's vocabulary these days...and so I appreciate the word choice in this book.

4. Maggie and Peggy have to sit with the uncomfortable feeling that they did something wrong and can't apologize for it, can't make it right. That's just the worst feeling ever: to have ended something abruptly or horribly and not be able to go back and make things right.  What a good lesson in doing things well the first time.

I loved this book--it is my favorite book I've read with Lorelei so far.  It is wonderful for 5-10 year olds. Or 37 year olds, like me.

Mary Poppins by P.L. Travers

Mary Poppins by P.L. Travers, illustrated by Mary Shepard

Rating: 3.5 stars

Lorelei and I read Mary Poppins for two reasons: First, it was on a How Many Of These Children's Books Have You Read quiz and I wanted a higher score; second, I haven't seen the movie in nearly 30 years and thought it would be a good one to view.  Reading the book first would make a movie a literary experience, at least in my book, and therefore the extra screen time would not induce any mommy guilt.

I loved the movie as a child but had never read the book.  There's a reason for it: the movie, I think, is better than the book.  The book was just okay.  There were a handful of really wonderful parts, including:

After Mary Poppins first arrives, she takes them to visit her uncle who is unburdened by gravity.  He simply floats on air.  The children and Mary Poppins are lucky enough to share in this magic and they float up towards the ceiling, too, and have a tea party high in the air.  They also have a bit of laughing gas, so they roll around the air, laughing hysterically.  Lorelei and I loved that part, and we talked about what it would be like to go to school or hang out in our house without gravity.

We also liked the chapter "Full Moon."  In it, the children wander to the zoo in the middle of the night, only to find that the humans are behind bars and the animals are walking about, visiting them and feeding them and commenting on how wild the humans are acting.  It's a scene where the switching of humans and zoo animals really has dark implications, but Lorelei didn't pick up on anything but the funny mixed-up-ness.  Why did this happen, you might wonder?  As it turns out, it is Mary Poppins birthday, and this mixed-up zoo happens under the direction of a Snake King once a year to celebrate.

What I didn't like was actually a who.  I didn't like Mary Poppins much at all.  As a child, I loved her character (played by the delightful Julie Andrews, of course); I remember her to be a stern woman who would give a wink on the sly so as to assure you that she wasn't so uptight.  And she would laugh and smile as she sang--I still have a warm feeling thinking about her.  In the book, she's stern without the reassuring, warm wink.  She sniffs (is this a British thing?) to show her displeasure--and she sure sniffs a lot.  There is hardly any warm feeling at all.

Her abrupt departure is odd to me in two ways: First, who leaves children without saying good-bye?  I know that she forewarned the children (and us, the readers) that she would leave--fly away with her magical, posh umbrella--but the end seems abrupt and cold.  Second, the kids are totally distraught, and as a reader I'm surprised by their emotional response to her leaving.  Having a magical nanny does have its perks, but she was so quirky and cold and unpredictable that their attachment to Mary Poppins seems unearned.

Julie Andrews was so delightful as Mary Poppins!

And yet, I'm glad I read this book with Lorelei, because the book's ending, unsatisfying though it was for me, was priceless because of what happened while we read it.

Lorelei and I were lying on her little twin bed, on a quilt bursting in little girl pink and butterflies. I lay flat on my stomach, reading the last chapter.  She lay next to me, on her side, propped up on her left hand, which meant her right hand was free.

As she listened, she doodled on my arm with her small finger.  She ran her finger up and down my arm, first in circles and then in zig-zags.  She made her pointer and middle finger walk along my arm.  She played with my shirt sleeve, seeing if she could push it up and then down again.  When she had had enough of that she moved on to my hair, which is usually unruly in its current state.  She tried to pull it behind my ear. It flipped back out.  She tried to pull it behind my ear again, then giggled when it flipped back out.  She brushed the hair on my forehead out of my face with her whole hand, just playing with it, maybe wondering what it felt like, and then letting her hand figure out the answer.

I didn't remark on any of this.  I didn't want to break the spell.  Honestly I didn't want the book to end because I loved these sweet gestures.  I loved that Lorelei felt so comfortable she could twirl my hair in her fingers just as easily as she could twirl her own.

We finished the book and talked about the ending a little; I was honest about how I didn't like the last few pages.  It didn't seem like a true ending to me in a few ways, I explained.  I tried to explain why I thought it was unsatisfying--didn't give me that aaaahhhhh sighing-out experience that great books have at the end.  But in my head I knew that the whole experience was very satisfying.  Lorelei's sweet little touchings on my arm and in my hair made the book's ending very memorable to me.

It reminds me that I read books with her and with my boys for literary purposes, sure, but also because sharing a book together can be a sweetly intimate, completely priceless experience.

Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren

Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren

Rating: 5 stars

Earlier this afternoon was the second official meeting of the Mother-Daughter Book Club, which Lorelei now calls "MDBC."  It's her military roots wanting to make everything an acronym, I think.  Happily, we had another mother and daughter join us!  Her pal and birthday twin Jessica and Jessica's mom Eily joined us to discuss Lorelei's chosen book, Pippi Longstocking.  Eily read the book aloud with Jessica and her older daughter.  I think that was a great choice--it would be a fantastic book to read out loud, together.  Lorelei and I read the book separately, mostly because Lorelei had read the book three times before.  It would be a fine book to read with Ben, who turns 5 in 8 days, and we might read one of the sequels together soon.

Anyway.  On to the book!

In case you've not read it, Pippi is a character in every sense of the word.  Her mother dies when she's little and her father...well, we're not really sure but Pippi thinks he's now the king of the cannibals.  The point is: he's not around.  So Pippi parents herself quite happily, making up rules as she goes (just as we parents do, uses the gold coins she grabbed from her father's boat to buy anything she needs, stays un-lonely with her pets and friends.

After galavanting across the globe for a decade or so, she moves to a new town and befriends her neighbors, Annika and Tommy. The three of them have unbelievable Pippi-led adventures.  For example, they go to the circus, where Pippi jumps atop a horse, gets kicked out, then defeats the strongest man in the world (all to the delight of the crowd).  In most of the chapters, though, it's just Pippi--amusing herself, being fearless towards things that usually scare grown ups.  (This book is really just an excuse to enter the word "moxie" into Lorelei's vocabulary!)

This is a very interesting girl!  A page-turner of a book for sure in the eyes of almost any little reader (or listener).

Eily came up with most of the questions that we talked about today, and there was a good little discussion around the treats and drinks we bought before talking (sugar helps discussion, you know).  I took these eight questions, wrote them on slips of paper, then put them in a glass mason jar, aka The Question Jar:

1. What are 3 words that describe Pippi?
2. Do you like Pippi?  Why or why not?
3. Why do you think Tommy and Annika like to play with Pippi?  Would you like to play with her?
4. Do you think that Pippi knows she's behaving appropriately at the circus and coffee party?
5. Would you want to be Pippi for the day, or for forever?  Why or why not?
6. What would be the best thing about living without parents?  What would be the worst thing?
7. What was the most realistic thing about the book?  The least realistic?
8. What would Mrs S (the girls' teacher) think if Pippi showed up to class with you tomorrow?

Question 4 was definitely my favorite.  

Jessica wisely brought up that there are a few boys in her class that don't "make good choices" and they behave inappropriately at times.  This bugs her (as it should!).  Unlike those boys, we agreed that Pippi does NOT understand the rules.  She's oblivious to them, and this frees her to do more and be a little wild, though she doesn't mean to do anything wrong.  I think the whole notion of unsaid rules within cultures--that remain silent but you KNOW they are there and you KNOW when you break them--is so very, very interesting.  If the girls were a little older, I would have happily launched into that, questioning them about how one learns rules in a culture...

This is a great book to read with kids or to kids.  Or maybe these kids can read to us big kids!

The People in Pineapple Place by Anne Lindbergh

The People in Pineapple Place by Anne Lindbergh, cover illustrated by Marla Frazee

Rating: 3.5 stars

Young August Brown moves to Washington, DC, after his parents divorce.  He is adjusting to a new reality in many ways--his mother is back at work for the first time in his life, he lives in a brand-new city (specifically, a neighborhood in Georgetown), and he has no friends.  Until he meets April and her siblings and friends.  He stumbles upon them one day in an alley around the corner from his house, and is overjoyed that they have taken him in as their new playmate.

The funny thing is, they are not real.  They are invisible to everyone but him.  (Well, even more mysteriously, one of the kids is often seen by an adult or two, causing for massive confusion in both real and imaginary worlds.)  They have some fun adventures in their neighborhood and in Washington, DC, itself, and August begins to feel more at home in his new home and also within himself.  Amazing what friends can do, huh?

This book is not the best read aloud chapter book for younger (5-8) kids.  It is not the best book for a 6 year old to read on her own.  But it is the book that our local library selected as the book to be discussed at this afternoon's Kids Book Club.  Lorelei saw the sign and said, "I would love to do that!"  So...I read the book myself, decided it was fine for her to read, and then met with her to have our first Mother-Daughter Book Club.

My goal was two-fold: First, to spend time with our oldest, whose good behavior often means that she gets the least attention.  Mix that with the longest school day of all three children, and you get a mom who misses her daughter when the school year starts. We are both pretty crazy about books; why not share that passion with someone I'm crazy about?  Second, I wanted to give her an example of what a book club was about.  Sure, plenty of them are more social than literary, but I needed to gauge her interest and ability to talk about a book in a focused way.

Well, she did great!  And we had a great time.

Lorelei and her chosen treat: a cake pop

I couldn't find any study questions on The People in Pineapple Place so I got into Kate-the-teacher mode and made up my own.  Along with a fancy-ish invitation to join me for tea, I gave Lorelei a list of these questions about a week before we met so she could think about the answers, reread the book if she wanted (she did), and know what sort of thing we'd be discussing.

1. Pretend I've not read the book. What is the book about?
2. Which character do you like the best?  Why?
3. Why is August mad at the beginning of the story?
4. Do you think August is telling the truth--can he really see the kids?
5. What would be fun about being 10 years old for a long, long time?  What would NOT be fun?
6. What places have you been to that August has also visited?
7. Why can August's mom only see one child?
8. What was your favorite part of the story?

The book was fine, the afternoon with Lorelei was priceless.  We sat outside Starbucks--well, I sat and she twirled and flitted around the seating area while answering all these questions and more.  We laughed about the silly parts of the books, especially about the games the invisible kids could play and get away with, such as roller skating in the National Museum of Art.  A conversation with any child is a bit like sitting in the passenger seat and letting them drive a little--you've got to just follow their lead, take advantage of the focused moments and chuckle at the very random tangents that inevitably occur.

I'm really looking forward to next month's Mother Daughter Book Club!  I think Lorelei is, too, though she might be looking forward to the cake pop at Starbucks more than time with her mom.  That's ok, those things do look tasty.