Finding Spring by Carin Berger

Finding Spring by Carin Berger
Greenwillow Books

Rating: 4 stars

Seasons are such a great thing. They embody that wise, ubiquitous "this, too, shall pass" magnet that is stuck on most of our refrigerators but we've seen it too many times to really remember what it's all about. Every year, the same magical thing happens: Winter melts to Spring. Spring morphs to Summer. Summer blows into Fall. Fall gives way to Winter. Again and again and again. Seasons are one way--a really great way, methinks--to teach our kids that life goes on. No matter what.

And when I look outside and see snow falling a-freaking-gain, I have to do my best to shake my head and smile, try to appreciate my kids' delight on another morning with freezing temperatures and school delays closures, and choose not to be grumpy. Instead, I'll dust a bit of "snow" (powdered sugar) on their waffles to celebrate this white stuff.

I've gotten off topic. No, I actually was never on topic. I started the blogpost with a tangent rather than interjected one in between paragraphs... Either way, Finding Spring was of course going to find its way to our library bag because I really want to find Spring in my own life. My kids, despite loving the snow, really want to find Spring, too. So we read this with earnest, as if somewhere in the pages of the book was the answer to Spring's whereabouts.

Mama and Maurice are bears preparing to hibernate for Winter. But all Maurice can think about is Spring. "Waiting is hard," Mama says wisely. "Right now it is time to sleep."

"Wow!" says Maurice.

Mama nods off; Maurice wanders off. He's just not sleepy and is curious to find Spring. Alone and unafraid, he asks forest creatures and looks everywhere for Spring. He comes up empty-handed until he feels an icy sting on his nose. A snowflake! He chases the snowflakes falling from the sky until he arrives at the top of Great Hill, where he witnesses a gorgeous snowfall, a sweet illustration made from a photograph of dozens of different snowflakes, some held up with push-pins and some glued down. It's a neat change of illustration pace.

Maurice realizes Winter is coming and runs back to the cave, to his Mama, and sleeps.

When they wake, they realize Spring is here. Finally! But Maurice wonders where it is exactly, and asks the same creatures he asked months before. He searches high and low until he remembers Great Hill. Together, in parade-like form and celebration, he and his pals march up and look out and see flowers blooming everywhere. Hoorah!

Okay, my turn. Can I look out and--nope, not yet. With one inch down and snow still falling, it is clearly still Winter around these parts!

(The snowfall pages in this book made me think of this Waiting for Winter book we bought years ago. The kids ran to find it in on our messy shelves and we laughed again at the animals' thinking that toothbrushes and tin cans were snowflakes...!)

A Wonderful Year by Nick Bruel

A Wonderful Year by Nick Bruel

Roaring Brook Press

Rating: 5 stars

Last week I had the chance to chaperone a field trip with Lorelei and all of the second grade classes at her school. They were going to hear Nick Bruel, author of all the Bad Kitty books, speak at an independent bookstore (Politics & Prose) in Washington, DC. Did I want to come along? Um....twist my arm...YES!

So I rode on a big yellow bus alongside some happy kids who then sat criss-cross-apple-sauce in front of an author I honestly didn't know much about. Despite the fact that it's the second best selling series for Scholastic, Bad Kitty isn't a title that lures me. But my kids have read them at school and think they're a hoot. As Nick Bruel stood and read from his most recent Bad Kitty book (Bad Kitty Puppy's Big Day) I definitely saw and appreciated the humor in the series--I think the chapter books are on the pulse of what kids want (read: something slightly inappropriate and therefore wildly funny).

We took his magic rubies! His rubies! His rubies!
We took his magic rubies! And now we have to FLEEEEE!

But then Nick Bruel read from his other recent book, A Wonderful Year, and I was struck by how it could be silly and zany ("outright buffoonery" said one review) it was one moment, and then thoughtful and sweet the next instant.

It's a picture book about the seasons, divided into four parts, linked together by an unnamed girl.

Nick Bruel "had me at hello" in a way when, on the first double page spread, the girl is super excited that it's Winter and it's snowing. Her mother tells her to put on her boots. Her father tells her to put on her earmuffs. Her dog tells her to put on her snowpants. Her purple rhinoceros Louise tells her to put on her gloves. Her can of beans tells her to put on her coat. Her tree tells her to put on a sweater. And then she opens the door and sees...that it's Spring. It's taken her so long to get dressed that winter is now over.

Can't you hear the crowd of criss-cross-apple-sauce sitters roar their approval? My face broke out into a grin. I laughed loudly, too. It was great! Brilliant! Silly!

Spring involves a very catchy--it'll be in your head and on your lips for days--sing-songy poem about a "demented fairy" (that's the girl again) and her dog and the imaginary adventures they are having as a princess and a handsome dog. Then they run into their pal, a cat, who is sleeping, who would rather nap than play. His reluctant participation is pretty funny. Hearing Nick Bruel read it out loud was even funnier.

"Hurry, hurry, hurry!" says Louise.

Summer is perhaps the zaniest of all--the girl and her purple rhino Louise are walking down the sidewalk on a hot day when suddenly the girl melts. Louise slurps up the girl and spits her into a cup, which she puts in the freezer to cool off. While waiting, Louise is excited to watch what the kids know is the least exciting show on earth: the can of beans show. (Random!) The girl waits a little too long in the freezer...but does end up cooling off.

And then there's Fall. The girl sits and reads under a tree. And, while reading, has a conversation with the tree about the book she's reading which is, coincidentally, about a girl and a tree. The tree is alarmed to hear that the leaves on the tree in the book turn colors and eventually fall, leaving the tree completely bare. As the girl gets up to walk away, the tree calls out, "you should put on a sweater!"

So funny and random and silly and thought-provoking. That Nick Bruel writes some funny stuff, and it was great to hear him speak to this crowd of kids. A Wonderful Year is his first non-Bad Kitty book that he's written in five years--all four of us kidlit-book-lovers in this house hope there are more where this comes from!

Tap the Magic Tree by Christie Matheson

Tap the Magic Tree by Christie Matheson

Rating: 4 stars

This week Lorelei and Ben are at camp.  A camp that requires a bus.  A bus that will need to be ridden every day, starting in the fall.  As a rising second grader, Lorelei has been riding this bus for two years.  She's a book-wielding, bus-riding pro.  Ben, as a rising kindergartener, is a newbie. A rookie. And Ben was nervous for his first bus ride on this first day of camp.  As he matures, the hump he needs to get over before he's comfortable and confident decreases in size, but…it's still there.

On Monday morning he came down in his pajama bottoms, a bare chest, and a very wobbly chin.

"I'm scared, Mommy," he confessed, his eyes full of tears.  I gave him a hug, told him it was normal to feel scared on the first day of anything.  I had opened the door to the deck, letting in the sounds of a spring morning fill the space in which I was sitting and writing.  "Can I go outside?" he asked.  I nodded.

We are lucky to live in the woods, surrounded by tall trees that house loudly chirping birds.  I don't know what Ben did out there with only pajama bottoms and without shoes, but he came back in ten minutes later with a smile on.

We must have some magic trees that sprinkled some of their calming magic down on my nervous Ben.  It makes me smile now, just a few days later, to remember how quick was the transformation, how trees really did help get him to a better mood. I'm grateful that somehow this book now houses this memory inside its pages.

Tap the Magic Tree is a beautiful book, about a subject we love: trees.  I snatched it right up when I saw it in the library, eager to find out more about it. Flipping through it, I saw it was most likely inspired by Press Here, the wildly successful and truly wonderful book that's been on the New York Times best seller list for--get this--144 weeks.  And that made me skeptical of Tap the Magic Tree.

But I needn't have been.  The morning after Ben's nervous bus debut (which was wildly successful!), my trio and I sat outside for breakfast, surrounded by acres of tall, tall trees, and read this book together.    I wasn't sure it would work--Press Here is a lap book for one, really, not a circle-time book for a crowd--but it did work, and really well!

Matheson instructs us to tap the bare brown tree, then tap it thrice, then tap it many times, and as I turned the pages, the bare brown tree has more and more leaves on it.  When the kids "rubbed the tree to make it warm," buds appeared.  Instructions helped us help the tree to mature the buds to blossoms and then apples, then watch the apples fall, the leaves turn autumnal colors, then fall, then make snow…  You get the idea.

It worked, and worked well.  Especially for the three younger book lovers at the table who didn't start out skeptical at all.  We watched together the magical transformation of a single tree through the seasons, including pajama-clad Ben whose own magical transformation happened just the morning before!

Snow by Roy McKie and P.D. Eastman

Snow (I Can Read It All By Myself) by Roy McKie and P.D. Eastman

Rating: 5 stars

Throwback Thursday!

This book will always hold a special place in my heart.  I remember Jonathan coming home from work one night when Lorelei was about three years old at her bedtime, which was probably around 6:30 then.  So early!  Must laugh at that now...  Anyway, I told him, "Ask her to read this to you."

He walked in and sat with her; I looked on from the door.  As he turned the pages, she recited the entire book to him.  It was fun to see the look of amazement on his face.  In truth, she wasn't reading.  But she had memorized every single word, and she wouldn't say the next line until you turned the page to get to it.  She read it exactly like I read it to her so many times--with excitement.  Her three year old version of this book was PRICELESS.  She'd been book-crazy for a long time, but this was a different example of her bibliophile nature.

Snow is good
For making tracks...
And making pictures
With your backs.

And it's a great, fun book with simple rhymes and funny pictures.  Just a boy and a girl and their dog playing in the snow.  Making snow angels and igloos and snowmen...all before the sun comes out and melts it, and takes their fun away.  They have big smiles and seem to be laughing with each other and at the snow though they sit, frozen, right on the page.


A little sample of the simple text (I've still got the whole book memorized even though years have passed since Lorelei's infatuation with it):

Snow!  Snow!
Come out in the snow!
I want to know if you like snow.
Oh yes! Oh yes! I do like snow.
Do you like it in your face?
Oh yes! I like it any place.

AND it's perfect for this time of year, nearly March, when you want winter to be over (at least I sure do) but it's just. not. yet. over.  Much to my frustration.  Perhaps this book will help you look at snow and the cold in a more child-like way so that these last few weeks of winter will cruise by quickly...

Winter is for Snow by Robert Neubecker

Winter is for Snow by Robert Neubecker

Rating: 4 stars

Since it might snow tonight here in the Northern Virginia area (!!), I thought I'd let you know about a cute book by Robert Neubecker about two siblings who have very different views on the wonderful-ness of snow.  I am a huge fan of Neubecker's huge, simple, great WOW! books, and I like this new one a lot.

Brother loves winter, Sister hates it.  They argue in color--no words are wasted on "he says" and "she says," which works well.  Together, the siblings' words form a rhyme:

Winter is for fat snowflakes,
swirling as they blow,
glittering like diamond dust!
Winter is for snow.

Winter! I say No.

The illustrations make me pause.  They are fitting, but I cringe at the thought of my kids choosing Sister's act rather than Brother's attitude.  In one picture she's on her i-something.  In another, she is glued to the television.

Kiefer is up too early (5:29 AM!) so he gets to blog with me.

But finally, Brother gets her outside--he is somehow resistant to her poopy pants behavior.  Then Brother really gets on his winter soapbox and starts waxing poetic about all the neat things about Winter in the Arctic, and Sister starts paying attention to the good and forgetting the bad.

And wouldn't you know it?

Winter is for all these things?
Is it really so?
Winter might not be so bad.
Winter is for SNOW!

It's a cute book, a nice reminder to get outside and enjoy Winter rather than complain about it (my husband can assure you that I need a cattle prod every now and then to do this as I was made for flip-flops more than snow boots).

BUT.  There's a small but to this book.

When I first read it, I had Neubecker's Wow! books in mind, where the two characters are a father and his daughter.  So I thought that the two characters in this book were the same: a father and daughter.  It made sense to me (though when I read through it again I realize it's a pretty short father!) because a big brother would probably NOT put up with all that pouting about winter.  Plus I really loved that the father was pulling his daughter out of the house and playing WITH her--I love any book that has that in it.  Maybe in Neubecker's next book...

Fall Ball by Peter McCarty

Fall Ball by Peter McCarty

Rating: 2 stars

Hmm.  I hope I don't offend any football-watching enthusiasts out there, but...this book is not for me.

Peter McCarty's unique, soft illustrations show a handful of kids enjoying a few great things in the great season of fall.  They suit themselves up in light coats to keep themselves warm against the chill. They bounce like crazy over a bump while coming home on the school bus.  They enjoy leaves blowing all around them.  And they enjoy a fine game of football on a leaf-filled field.

Then, it starts to get dark.  Earlier than they would like.  Another fall thing, right?

So they give up the game and pile on the sofa and watch football on TV instead.

Say whaaaaat?

How can a children's book's happy-ending involve watching TV?!  I know: I admit that TV watching isn't abhorrent all the time, and that some bonding can occur, especially when the TV watching involves sports and boys, big and small.  But STILL.  I just can't love a book that lauds it.  I sure wish that the kids in this book had creatively rigged some lights, or worn headlamps in order to play longer, or found a way to take the game indoors.

Again, sorry to those football-watchers out there.  I don't hate you, promise!  But please do balance your watching with playing and you're all right by me.

Snowmen All Year by Caralyn Buehner

 Snowmen All Year by Caralyn Buehner, illustrated by Mark Buehner

Rating: 5 stars

We read this library book--another of Lorelei's quality check-outs--and bought it a few hours later.  We liked it that much!

I only bought it (read: let me justify my purchase to you) because I was really happy to find the board book version.  The number of words on each page, nice, rollicking rhyme, and hilarious pictures make it a fantastic choice for Kiefer right now.  He's nearly 19 months and definitely into books.  He walks up to me, book in hand, sees me sitting "criss-cross-applesauce" and turns around a full two feet in front of me, backs up, and then plops down happily when his feet hit my legs.  I find it altogether adorable, makes me want to freeze time.

But what does Kiefer like even more than the laps of his parents?  The laps of his siblings, of course.  Just today he sat in Ben's lap for the first time.  Both boys grinned wildly as Ben "read" the book to him, trying to balance a boy almost equal his size and remember to turn the pages of the book.  I find THAT equally adorable, makes me want to freeze time some more.

So if there's a book that is going to cause more of these cute moments to happen, I'm buying it!

On stormy evenings I would play / My favorite games with him;
On sunny days I'd teach him how / To dive and how to swim.

This wonderful, silly book is about a boy who wishes he his snowman could stay with him all year long instead of melting when the warm sun comes out.  The whole book is about what the boy would do with him.  The huge illustrations are so great and fun!  You see boy and snowman flying kites, playing pirates, going to the zoo, riding a roller coaster, watching fireworks, playing chess, getting buried in the sand.

For Ben it is laugh-out-loud silly, and SO FUN to be the parent who gets to read it, and gets to ask, "Have you ever seen a snowman at the zoo?!" and then go on and on (and on and on) about all the other things that would be fun to do with a snowman that are not in the book.  The things on our list: throw rocks in the creek, go to the library, play soccer, ride on a train.

This is a fantastic book for any age kid--or, like in our house, every age kid.  I've heard through the grapevine that the kids are getting Snowmen At Christmas from Grammy...  I hope the gift-opening will pause long enough for us to read it on Christmas morning, because I'm excited to read it.

The Tale of Jack Frost by David Melling

 The Tale of Jack Frost by David Melling

Rating: 4 frost-filled stars

I got a sneak peak at how Lorelei and Ben will react to fantasy stories like the Hobbit series and Redwall books with this tale of Jack Frost.  I hadn't realized how scary some of the scenes might be until we were mid-book, but I plunged ahead with my usual oh-I'm-sure-it'll-be-fine attitude.  I'm glad I did; they loved the story and the magic of Jack Frost got under their skin a bit.  Melling's beautiful illustrations are a perfect amount of scary for children--the goblins aren't friendly, but the befuddled looks they have gives them a humorous slant, so hopefully no child will lose sleep over them.

I grabbed this book at the library because the mornings have been downright chilly here in Virginia.  I don't love the cold, but I do appreciate how frost decorates our deck and leaves swirls on my Suburban.  Here is the fairy tale that accompanies those images:

Jack is a little boy ("a real boy!") who wakes up in an enchanted forest, barely clothed and alone.  The animals--from hedgehogs and beetles to unicorns and "skitlets"--all circle around him, curious and afraid.  When the little boy wakes, he remembered nothing, not even his name.  The animals take him in, teach him all the know--both magical and mundane tasks.  But his skin is snow white and always ice cold.  Whatever he touches turns to frost."  So he was named Jack Frost.

Funny looking creatures peered around each other, and even the trees
shuffled forward for a better look.

One day, goblins enter the forest, wanting to steal the magic from the animals.  They kidnap Jack Frost, thinking he can give them the magic.  Instead, he gives them a trick: Jack promises to help them catch the sun.  "Every night the sun goes to sleep in a lake by the forest.  It is full of magic and easy to catch."  The goblins and Jack then circle a lake and see the reflection of the moon, which Jack explains is actually the reflection of the sun.  He dips his finger into the lake and it quickly turns to ice.  They pick up the frozen "sun" and carry it off as Jack returns to his friends before the "sun" melts.

But melt it does, and the goblins are, of course, upset.  As they run after Jack, they step into magical puddles that makes them freeze in their tracks.  (Hmm...can I get some of that stuff?)  Jack laughss but gives them magical sunflowers to hold that will eventually melt them, so the goblins stare with stiff grins and chattering teeth, unable to chase him further.

And the frost you see in mornings like this morning in Virginia is proof that Jack Frost left the enchanted forest to leave little spells of magic, just for your kids to wake up to and smile at.

The story helps make winter mornings a little warmer, and...shouldn't we all believe in a bit of magic?

Farming by Gail Gibbons

Farming by Gail Gibbons

Rating: 5 stars

Gail Gibbons throws in a lot of information into her books, sometimes a bit too much, but this one is a GREAT introduction for little ones.  Here's a picture-laden book about farming: all the types of farms there are, and what happens on a farm.  Gibbons divides the books up into seasons, and draws all the different things that happen in each season on a farm, and then sketches the jobs that have got to be done in each season.

I love it!  It's a great book to carry along with you if you're heading to a farm for the day.  We frequent Frying Pan Park, though it doesn't count as a working farm.  We love Butler's Orchard for fruit and vegetables, too.  I like to have a book like this when we go to places like these so that my kids can understand the big picture at a nice, slow pace--one page at a time, they turn to the next page when they're ready.

Confession: I'm beginning to think that I might like to be a small-scale farmer in some future phase of my life.  My husband thinks I'm nuts.  He might be right, but...  I'm a girl with a lot of energy, a bunch of patience, and a passion for doing anything and everything outdoors.

So I've already started to brainwash my kids so that they can help me out with the chores and stuff.  And Lorelei can convince my husband that this venture is brilliant.  If it were up to me, we'd go to some working farm for the summer.  This appeals to me for so many reasons, including:

1. The "noise" (all that silly competition for the kids, the keepin' up with the Jones for us) from our everyday life would decrease, possibly disappear for a little while completely.
2. My kids would see--not just read about--the origin of their food.
3. They'd really know the definition of chores and learn how to work--I'm all about kids pitching in, regardless of their age.  "Everybody does their part," I say.
4. A change of scenery for any reason is a good thing.  I'm an Army brat, so I'm sorta restless by nature anyway.
5. I know they'd love it.  Me, too.

But since I can't snap my fingers and transport us to a working farm...at least not just yet...  I'll have to make do and go to farms around our area and garden as much as I can.  And dream.  And imagine myself in this book.

Beth's Post: The Tiny Seed by Eric Carle

The Tiny Seed by Eric Carle

Rating: 5 stars

Eric Carle is a master at combining beautiful illustrations with thoughtful stories and subtlety engaging children in life science subjects.


Our copy of The Tiny Seed is worn with years of reading, the binding taped in several spots and a bold, “JULIA” written in the first page to mark that we are never, ever getting rid of this book. My kids loved looking at the pictures and were mesmerized by the story as toddlers, pages were used with tracing paper to copy the trees and flowers, and now that they are great readers they still love picking it up and reading it to me.

A tiny seed, smaller than any of the others blows with the strong Autumn wind and flies by the sun, over icy mountains, the ocean, the desert and drops down to a perfect grassy spot only to narrowly avoid being eaten by a bird. It rests in the soil through the long winter nights, and grows to astounding heights in the spring. In the end, autumn again, it releases its tiny seeds in the wind.

I hope that you will get to experience this beautiful book, but you can’t have our copy, we’re still reading it.

Sally's Snow Adventure by Stephen Huneck

Sally's Snow Adventure by Stephen Huneck

Rating: 5 stars

I'm not really counting down the days till winter, but I'm trying to keep that un-excitement a secret from Lorelei and Ben.  Part of the problem of our last winter--apart from several storms with many feet of snow each, the fact that Ben was barely walking on solid ground, let alone ice and snow, and losing power on a 9 degree night--was my attitude.  I'm trying to improve it a bit before the snow starts following.

This book does help!  A little.  (I know, I know, it's still barely fleece-wearing temperature outside now in mid-September, but...I'm trying to be optimistic.)  Sally and her family (whom we never see) go on to a dog-friendly lodge in the snow-covered mountains.  Sally meets lots of new canine friends, including two rescue dogs who tell her to stay on the trails so she doesn't get lost.  One afternoon she tries all the fun winter sports: skiing, sledding, and saucering.  By dinnertime she's at the top of the mountain and wants to take a shortcut home.  She gets lost but then gets rescued--a great little, early lesson for Lorelei and Ben about the importance of staying on established trails.  The lesson helps in a large, woodsy poison-ivy-filled backyard with one marked trail.

Fall is barely here, but that means winter is just around the corner.  Lorelei seems excited to try the sports Sally does in the book, which is a nice change from last year when she lasted about five minutes in the snow.   I'll be grateful if it means this winter is better than last!

Waiting for Winter by Sebastian Meschenmoser

Waiting for Winter by Sebastian Meschenmoser
Rating: 5 surprisingly wonderful and funny stars

This is one of my favorites.  Do I say that so much that it doesn't mean anything?  Maybe, but REALLY, this time, I mean it!  I can't believe that I've not seen this book before, one that makes Lorelei belly-laugh (and Ben pretend belly-laugh, just to assure her that he gets the joke, too, even though he doesn't totally get it) every time we read it.  One that stands outs with its unique artwork and quirky, human-like animal characters.  One that really has fewer words than I thought was good, but Sebastian Meschenmoser does all kinds of right in this book. 

I'm going to spend awhile on it.  By the end, you'll probably bypass the library and go right to the bookstore, which I think is a wise decision.

 So squirrel is waiting for winter--waiting, specifically, to see snow, which he usually sleeps through.  There are a dozen pictures (no words) of him waiting, waiting, waiting.  Then he almost falls asleep waiting and decides that exercise will help him stay awake.  More pictures (no words) of frantic squirrel scurrying up and down and around and through a tree.  That wakes up hedgehog, who decides that since he's awake, he, too will wait for the first snowflake.  They wait and wait and wait and begin to fall asleep (few words).  They decide that, to stay awake, they should sing sea shanties.  (This is my favorite part because Meschenmoser doesn't provide any words, so I fill in with a hearty, pirate-sounding "What do you do with a scurvy pirate?" that makes Lorelei and Ben smile.)  Not surprisingly, they wake up someone else: bear.


Squirrel and Hedgehog's sea shantys wake up Bear.



Bear emerges looking like most of us do after a night that started too late and ended too early.  His barely-open eyes are pained by the fact that they are not closed.  C'mon, I know you know that feeling.  Or maybe you forgot about it since your children now sleep through the night? 

Anyway, they decide to wait together but then realize they might have missed the first snowflake. So they go hunting for it.  Each finds something white and wet and cold and soft and is convinced that it is, without a doubt, the first snowflake.  Squirrel finds a toothbrush; Hedgehog finds a can.  Two full pages are dedicated to what a snowfall would look like with these "snowflakes."  Squirrel, surrounded by toothbrushes with toothbrushes falling down around him.  And Hedgehog, surrounded by cans with cans falling down around him.  (Ouch!)  And then there's Bear, with a sock.  Meschenmoser writes: "But the snow will be a little smelly."  Giggle, giggle. 



The first snowflake falls on Bear's nose.



This is where Lorelei really gets into it.  She knows what snow looks like, so she thinks it's really funny that she knows something these two animals don't.  Another note to aspiring children's book writers: Make your young listeners think they are smarter than your characters!

So the animals sit around thinking about which one is right when a snowflake--a real one--lands on Bear.  And then more fall, and soon they are surrounded by it.  The last few pages are wordless and show the animals walking and playing in the snow.  They build a snowman--with a tin can hat, a toothbrush pipe, and a sock nose--that make two men trudging through the tracks stop in curious wonder.

Making a snowman before going to sleep.

This is a delightful, delightful book that is super fun to read aloud.  I can't wait to read it again when winter gets closer (though I am certainly not waiting for it...more like dreading...I'm a warm weather person, myself) and when Ben can understand more and produce a true belly laugh for himself.

Have You Seen Trees? by Joanne Oppenheim

Have You Seen Trees? by Joanne Oppenheim, illustrated by Jean and Mou-Sien Tseng

Rating: 5 beautiful stars

This is a must-read book for any teacher or parent.  I know that the picture on the left is unusually and perhaps obnoxiously large, but a) I couldn't find the right book on my Amazon.com link-thingy on Blogspot and b) the poem is beautiful but the pictures are even more beautiful.  So just breathe in the beautiful spring blossoms on that tree and enjoy...and be annoyed with me that I couldn't find more images for you to check out.  I might have to break out the camera to add some images myself.

The watercolors in this book are breathtaking, truly frame-worthy.  They even make chatterbox Lorelei quiet--especially the page with the weeping willow (her favorite tree since she read Dandelion), where the bright green weeping willow covers 80% of the two huge pages. 

And the text, save for the slightly un-enticing title, is great, too.  There are rhymes within the lines--I'm sure that my English teachers would be sad I didn't remember the word for this--that make this one of the best read-aloud books I've ever read.  Joanne Oppenheim describes different trees in different seasons, starting each season with a question: "Have you seen Winter trees?" or "Have you seen Spring trees?"  She thus provides the opportunity for chatting on about which season we're in now, and what sorts of things we see in our trees.  On the winter page, Lorelei always makes me tell her about the snowstorm she probably doesn't remember but did, in fact, live through--when our very own trees somehow balanced a foot of snow on their branches; some were successful, others not.

And the best part is, both Lorelei and Ben love it.  Whenever I read the title to them, they look out of our big windows and Lorelei says, "Yes!" and Ben points and says, "EH!"  (That's Ben-speak for "yes!")  Ben especially chooses it again and again and again.  He'd probably sleep with it if I let him, but we try and keep library books downstairs, especially one this fragile.

I think the best part of this book is that it's nonfiction and doesn't "just" tell a story.  It teaches kids about the importance of trees, and to appreciate the variations among the trees and between the seasons.  We've read a few books about trees lately, and they all helped Lorelei answer well my question today: "What do trees give us?"  She said that they gave us fruit like apples and mangoes and shade from the sun and wood for clubhouses and a home for birds.  I was really proud of her.  And I realized that all these books that I sometimes feel like I'm shoving in her face actually impact her in more ways that I realize.  She's listening, and I'm so thankful that I have a book like this to share with her during these sponge-like early years.

This is a great, great book.  It seems like it's available through multiple sellers, but also through your local library.  I found it through Childsake, an organization dedicated to nature and the environment.  They have a hefty list of children's environmental books.  Check it out, especially if you have older kids.  It's a great resource.

Summer by Alice Low

Summer by Alice Low, illustrated by Roy McKie

Rating: 5 summery stars

It's been retro week at our house for the past few weeks.  It all started with a trip to my Dad's house a few weeks ago.  He's got a pool, which is cool, but he's also got (drumroll, please) The Children's Library.  This library is a few shelves stuffed with all the old books that my sister and I loved as children.  During a break from swimming and sun, Lorelei said she was ready for some quiet time, so we got a stack of books from The Children's Library and set her up on a pool chair.  Her twin cousins joined in the read-fest and they turned the very pages I turned as a kid.

This was the best of the best in the stack of books.  I read it out loud to Lorelei and her twin cousins while the sun shone down on us, warming our towels that were wrapped around us.  It was towards the end of June, during an unusually hot spell here in Virginia that meant summer really is here, ready or not.  The girls' hair was still wet and in their face as they sipped their chocolate milk, given to them because it was Sunday and they were at GrandDad's house.

Really, is there a more perfect book than this one at that moment? 

All of them loved it, with the references to the sun and the heat and the beach and the waves and the fireflies and the roasted marshmallows and all that good stuff that childhood summertime should be all about.  It was like jumping back a dozen years into my own childhood, one that was full and dirty and fun and perfect.

We loved it so much that we checked it from the library, too, so we read it on the way to GrandDad's house again today, and then read it at his house, and then on the way home. 

Hooray!  Summer is HERE!

A Penguin Story by Antoinette Portis

A Penguin Story by Antoinette Portis

Rating: 5 curious stars

It's nearly 100 degrees out for the fourth or fifth day in a row (I've lost count...am becoming a puddle) so I thought I'd write about a book with snow in it to make myself feel cooler.

We received this as a gift last Christmas; both Lorelei and Ben love it.  Ben especially, as he digs penguins.  What kid doesn't go through a penguin phase?  We are already excited to see them at a zoo whenever we brave the traffic and crowds this summer to see the National Zoo.

Edna the Penguin is tired of the three colors she always sees: black, white, and blue.  Every day, every night, the same colors.  She believes--she has this deep faith in herself--that there is Something Else.  She's not sure what, but she just knows with her little penguin heart that there is Something Else, some other color out there to see.  So she sets off, hiking night and day, with little food to sustain her, till...

WOW!!!

She finds Something Orange!  It's a tent, and a flag, and a glove, and a jacket, and a coat...tons of orange stuff at a scientists' camp near the penguin camp.  She is so excited that she turns around, runs home, grabs all her friends, and together they trudge back to the camp to see the Something Else.

Kinda makes me think of Plato's Allegory of the Cave...ah, Philosophy 101 back at Seattle U...

The scientists and the penguins make friends, and one guy gives the penguins an orange glove with which to return home so they will always have another color in their black, white, and blue lives. 

The story ends with Edna thinking, "There must be Something Else..." and you see a green ship in the background.

This is a really sweet book, and one kids get excited about.  The illustrations are simple, wonderful, clear-cut pictures that, like I said, Ben especially loves.  I know that Antoinette Hartis is best know for her Not a Box book, which we appreciate, but this one is better for us during this phase of Lorelei and Ben's childhood. 

We'll be reading it all summer long.

Blueberries for Sal by Robert McCloskey

Blueberries for Sal by Robert McCloskey

Rating: 5 stars (of course)

This summer we are going on weekly field trips.  Field Trip Wednesdays.  Yesterday was our third field trip; we went blueberry picking.  It was the hottest day of the year but we went anyway, along with some of my very favorite people and their adventurous kids.

Ben's favorite part was definitely the tractor ride from the parking lot to the fields.  It was already 88 degrees by the time we stepped off of the trailer and followed a dude with an orange flag to our assigned bushes.  While walking to our spot in the row of bushes, we passed a mother and her two children and --gasp!-- guess what they were reading underneath the welcome shade of the tallest blueberry bushes I'd ever seen?  Blueberries for Sal!  Of course, I couldn't resist the urge to say, "We love that book, too!  We should have brought it along, too!"  Luckily, I did resist the urge to ask them to pose for a picture and then put it on this blog.  I think that might have weired them out a bit.  Proof I can bite my tongue.  Sometimes.

Anyway, we had a blast.  I didn't realize that I came with such Serious Pickers.  I was taking pictures and handing out clementines to everyone's kids while Serious Picker #1, Caitlin, and Serious Picker #2, Michele, filled an entire bucket in approximately 4.2 minutes.  The littlest Serious Picker was Lorelei; she stood there and picked blueberries for 15 minutes without tasting a single one!  Apparently she delegated that job to Ben, who pulled a Sal and sat down and just pulled berries down one handful at a time.  Lorelei turned pink within that time from that time but obediently drank when instructed, and then told me: "We need to get back to work, Mommy!  Our bucket is not full yet!"

Man!  We produced a 3 year old blueberry-picking machine!

I wish I had been trickier in combining my blog with my children's activities: I could have had them pose in pictures just like McCloskey drew or made them say "Kupink! Kuplank! Kuplunk!" (though we had a gigantic plastic buckets, not small tin pails) or looked (happily unsuccessfully) for bears, or crows, or a partridge family in the fields.  But we were having too good a time to stop for a book-related anything, which was just fine with me.

I was having another bee-bim bop moment, feeling fairly mom-of-the-day-ish.  My kids were able to:

1.  Break out of their normal cycle of activities (that includes an embarrassing number of trips to Starbucks)

2.  Experience child labor (or, tough it out in imperfect conditions)

3.  Relate a book to real life (we talked about how the fields at Butler's were so much taller than those in the book)

4.  Pick their own snack/dessert/breakfast (for the next month or two)

Oh, and by the way, I have 7 pounds of blueberries.  Good grief!  What do you do with 7 pounds of blueberries when you really don't have to can them to store up for food for the winter?!  Please let me know if you'd like any.

Mama, Is It Summer Yet? by Nikki McClure

Mama, Is It Summer Yet? by Nikki McClure

Rating: 3.5 stars

On Father's Day Lorelei, Ben, and I made a list of Daddy's favorite things so that we could give/make/provide those to him.  On the list, tucked between homemade oatmeal cookies and tinkering in the yard, was taking an afternoon nap.  So Lorelei and I happily obliged; we read books to our boys, tucked them into their respective beds, and went to the bookstore.  It was a treat for all of us! 

That morning in the New York Times Book Review was a special children's section.  When they have reviews of children's books, I show them to Lorelei--once or twice we've already read them, which makes her feel pretty proud to know the books that she sees in Mommy and Daddy's newspaper.  Since they had the Children's Bestseller lists, we decided to bring the list along and see if we could find any books on it.  I particularly wanted to read The Quiet Book (I love the idea of it!) and Over the Rainbow.  We couldn't find either of those books (drat!), but we did find plenty of others.

Including Mama, Is It Summer Yet? 

The illustrations are incredibly beautiful.  I looked up Nikki McClure's bio and found out that she arms herself with an X-acto knife and cuts out her images from a single sheet of paper.  Pretty impressive!  The pieces of art she creates for this book are just gorgeous.  I will definitely seek out other books she's illustrated because the images are so captivating.  The text is nicely simple: A little boy asks her mother if it's summer yet, and she says no, and gives an example of how the boy should know that summer is almost here.

However, the story doesn't make me want to read the book again and again.  It reminds me of a road trip I don't ever want to take, with my kids in the back seat, asking "Are we there yet?" and then, five minutes later, "Are we there yet?" and then, five minutes later, "Are we there yet?" and then...  You get the idea.  The story would be so much better if the "Are we there yet?" pages were just taken out (in my humble opinion).

Still, if I were an art teacher, I'd want a book like this within arm's reach to show kids the different types of art that they can create.  It is illustrations like these that make me really appreciate artists for choosing to devote their time and energy to children's books.  What a gift to kids like ours!

PS  Check out the artist/author's GORGEOUS journals.  One for new mothers and one "verb-laden" journal.

In the Town All Year 'Round by Rotraut Susanne Berner

In the Town All Year 'Round by Rotraut Susanne Berner

Rating: 5 look-and-find stars

This past April our family headed to the beach in North Carolina, a five-ish hour drive from our home in Great Falls.  I took 34 books for our kids.  I'm not kidding.  My husband even told me "Let's pack light."  So I did.  Knowing that there would be a washing machine readily available to wash our clothes every night if I wanted, I packed just two or three outfits for all of us.  Knowing that there would be a kitchen full of pots, pans, and Tupperware, I packed just a few toys and puzzles for Lorelei and Ben.

But books?  Who can skimp on books?  I actually hid them in each bag so that Jonathan wouldn't find them.  I put four or five bedtime books in the clothes bag for the kids, and another couple in our bag.  I had a book bag for the ride down there, and then had another book bag for the ride back.  I stuffed a few books under each child's car seat.  I cracked myself up!  I earned a "look" from my husband, which of course made me chuckle a bit.

For the record, we did read all of them many, many times.

But for this past weekend's trip to St Louis to visit my husband's family, we took just one.  This one. 

(Ok, I cannot tell a lie.  We packed two, In the Town All Year 'Round and Planes by Byron Barton that we had checked out from the library so we could read it on the plane.  Then we bought two at the airport's bookstore: Lorelei chose Ladybug Girl at the Beach and Ben chose Five Little Monkeys Wash the Car.)

Anyway, back to this great book.  It's a look-and-find, and is organized by seasons.  There are seven huge, gorgeous pages chock full of little details for each season, and the scenes are the same for each season.  They are, of course, altered according to what is happening in each season.  For example, in the town square picture in Winter, everything is decorated for Christmas; in Spring there's a farmer's market and flowers everywhere; in Summer there are picnics and a flea market with a storm brewing overhead; and in Fall leaves are streaming throughout the picture and geese are flying South.  You get the idea.

Lorelei received the book for her birthday, and, after she and Ben read through it once (and I snapped the picture above) I promptly tucked it away for the airplane ride.  We looked at it for about 30 minutes straight on the flight there and on the flight back, which is pretty good for a 3 year old and a little 19 month old!  Because Ben isn't talking just yet, he can point to things when you ask him to identify stuff.  And there are plenty of hot air balloons, helicopters, tractors, and airplanes--just a few of his favorite things!

We LOVE this book.  Is it bad if I hide it away until we go on our next airplane ride?