How to use this Page

I wish I was described as “fearless” and “brave.” Well, maybe I wish I just was fearless and brave and then it wouldn’t matter how I was described. I don’t what it is--being the oldest, having an active imagination, a natural ego-centrism--but I feel like I have more fears than most people. Or maybe I’m just afraid I do. I want to live with a steady-hands, throw-caution-to-the-wind bravado but that seems fraught with peril. I am frightened by closed-in spaces to the extent that I can’t wear turtlenecks. I am afraid that I’ll get hurt or fired and won’t be able to take care of the people I love. I am so afraid I will lose those people and never hear from them again that I won’t erase three year-old answering machine messages. Really. I am becoming a bit of a hoarder with things like fabric and paper and yarn because I’m afraid I will need them and not have them. Seriously. You’d think I grew up during the Depression, for heaven’s sake. These are all very real daily realities, but the big daddy scare of my life is an all-consuming fear of the dark. The fact that I am also an insomniac night owl who is afraid of the dark is just another one of life’s little ironies. In Barbara Shook Hazen’s The Knight Who Was Afraid Of The Dark, our hero overcomes terrible fear to win fair maiden. Which was a relief, because I was afraid he wouldn’t.

http://www.amazon.com/Knight-Afraid-Dark-Picture-Puffins/dp/014054545X

http://www.barbarashookhazen.com/

Some of my favorite authors have written banned or challenged books. J.D. Salinger, Mark Twain, Maya Angelou, Kurt Vonnegut, Justin Richardson, Peter Parnell. What’s that? You don’t recognize those last two names? That’s interesting, because they are the co-authors of the most challenged book of 2006, 2007 and 2008 and the most banned book of 2009. What kind of subject matter could possibly garner that kind of censure, you ask? Murder? Blasphemy? Corruption? War? Pornography? Racism? Impropriety of the biblical “knowing” kind? Nope, none of those. The book that parents, politicians and religious groups have most wanted off the shelves and out of the classrooms for nearly half a decade is about…drum roll, please…penguins. Yep, you read that right. The flightless, tuxedo-wearing birds. Not all of them, of course. Just three very specific ones in the Central Park Zoo who had the chutzpah to mess with some people’s view of the world, even though they were just being them. Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell’s And Tango Makes Three is the true story of two chinstrap penguins at the famous New York City landmark who spent six years together playing, loving and raising a daughter born from an adopted egg. And now you’re wondering why such a sweet (and did I mention true?) story would cause such a fuss. I’ll tell you, but you might not believe it. The problem is that both Roy and Silo were boy chinstrap penguins. That’s the truth. And some people just can’t handle the truth.

http://www.amazon.com/Tango-Makes-Three-Peter-Parnell/dp/0689878451

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Parnell

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justin_Richardson

Remember when jelly jars had cartoon characters on them and when they were empty you used them for drinking glasses? The comedian Judy Gold does and has childhood memories of her mother using the jars as company glassware. When one of the glasses gets broken by one of the kids, as was not only predictable but inevitable, she laments, “Why can’t we have nice things?!” It’s funny because it’s true. One of the first lessons you learn as a mom is that it is fruitless and depressing to maintain your pre-kid level of attachment to material things. The first time something you used to love gets destroyed by a tiny person you still do love, there’s a massive moment of existential angst pitting maternal devotion against egocentric ire. Mommy wins for the first of endless times and you never get to have “nice things” again. Being a big sister prepared me for this, but there are still a few moments that stand out. One in particular. I had received a strawberry-shaped sugar bowl years before Keilana came along, and I really loved it. One day when she was four, she accidentally knocked it on the floor and it shattered into a million pieces. My heart broke, too, but one look at her stricken face and I had to let it go. In Paeony Lewis’ I’ll Always Love You, Alex finds our mommies love you even when you break their stuff. It’s true, but I only buy plain sugar bowls now.

http://www.amazon.com/Ill-Always-Love-Paeony-Lewis/dp/1589253604

http://www.paeonylewis.com/

Remember “Romper Room”? We watched it every day--which is saying something since my mom was rabidly anti-television. I was drawn to Romper Stompers, badgering my mom into making some with coffee cans and string. But the pivotal moment was always when the Magic Mirror came out. The picture is still sharp in my memory: all those lucky kids in the studio and exponentially more kids at home in an expectant semi-circle waiting to get “seen.” Miss Sally would hold that unique-in-all-the-world mirror up and it was magic because she could see all the children in the world. And then she would start calling some of them by name. “I see Billy, and Susie, and…” It seemed she would eventually see me. But she never did. Not once. I was an avid fan, wearing my Romper Stompers in the den to prove my loyalty. At first, I would even wave my arms, but when I got a little older I realized how childish that was. She just didn’t see me. The funny thing is, I seem to encounter a number of adults who felt similarly shunned, hearing only other names, not theirs. Who were all these kids that did get called then?! My husband can never claim he didn’t get recognized by name, though. In Ole Risom’s I am a Bunny, the main cottontail introduces himself as “Nicholas,” which is probably why Nick’s beloved aunt and uncle gave him the book for his first birthday. Some kids have all the luck.

http://www.amazon.com/Am-Bunny-Golden-Sturdy-Book/dp/0375827781

http://www.nytimes.com/2000/08/24/arts/ole-c-risom-80-publisher-of-children-s-books.html?pagewanted=1

I have a confession to make. I have a complex relationship with Maurice Sendak. It started a long time ago, but, darn it, I’m still affected by it. I’ll give you the basic gist of what happened. From the time I was little, my mom would gather up the kids and we would all walk to the public library, pulling a red wagon of books to return and pushing the stroller of anyone too small to make the trip on foot. So, the Reseda branch of the library is where my memories of choosing books according to my own interests began. However, it is also where I first learned that people have different ideas of acceptable reading material. The majority of the books I chose were greeted warmly by my mother, and I hauled or carried enough of them home to stretch my arms out forever. In fact, I only remember one time when a book got vetoed. As a kindergartner, I wanted to check out Maurice Sendak’s nearly new In The Night Kitchen but it was a no go. Apparently, some women at church had been talking about their suspicions that Mr. Sendak must be a pedophile since some of his illustrations included main character Mickey in the nude. Therefore, I wasn’t allowed to be exposed to his books. It’s weird how things change over time because the only thing I noted about the nakey pictures was that it seems like Mickey is intact. And I’m O.K. with that.
http://www.amazon.com/Night-Kitchen-Caldecott-Collection/dp/0060266686

http://www.answers.com/topic/maurice-sendak

Years ago, I discovered Fred Meyer, a giant everything-in-one-place store similar to Super Walmart but with less evil and awesome childcare. A few years later, the single California store in a predominantly Northwestern chain closed its doors. The mammoth building sat empty, in view of the freeway, forever while rumors swirled about its future. And then one day I came over a rise on the off-ramp and saw that the entire building had been leveled overnight. I was swept by nausea as I absorbed the magnitude of such obscene waste. Demolishing a ten year-old, up-to-code building merely because new commercial tenants (a Lowe’s built virtually in the footprint of the bulldozed warehouse) want something specific enraged me. I was angry for years. I’m still angry. I experienced a similar sucker-punch moment the first time I drove past Chico’s old Downtown Plaza Park and saw it laid bare in the name of progress, raped of all the beautiful trees allegedly so “diseased” they had to be removed for public safety but healthy enough to be replanted on the property of the developer. I happen to unexpectedly like the metropolitan feel of the new plaza, but it took me weeks to picture the gaping hole where the gazebo had been without tearing up. Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax is not subtle. I guess the narrative master wanted the message to get through loud and clear: Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.

http://www.amazon.com/Lorax-Classic-Seuss-Dr/dp/0394823370

http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Dr._Seuss/

Three months to the day before Addison was born, we learned we were getting a little sister. We crowded into the ultrasound room peering expectantly at grainy, elusive images on the monitor waiting for some confirmation. The technician asked if we had any preference, and we were divided. The boys had either been flexible or non-committal until then, but the girls, eight year-old Keilana and I, were decidedly in girl camp. Keilana so she could have a majority and me so I could give Keilana what I never had--a sister. The technician then asked if we had any guesses. Since I had dreamed Addison into being long before she came to be, we all guessed girl. And the woman with the magic wand said, “You got it!” I went straight out and bought the girliest pink shoes I could find, just to make it real, and looked forward to a little sister for my brood. But change is always a bit unnerving. As I left for the hospital on the day Addison arrived, I looked at my two earthside kids, especially Connor, tiny in the middle of a king-sized bed, and wondered how it would work out. I needn’t have worried. After some typical adjustment, Addison became what she was always meant to be: a necessary part of our family. In Ed Young’s My Mei Mei, Antonia longs for a sister until reality trumps fantasy and she’s not so sure. Thankfully, there’s a no refund, no return policy on sisters.
http://www.amazon.com/My-Mei-Ed-Young/dp/0399243399

http://www.embracingthechild.org/Bookspecialyoung.htm

It’s astounding, humbling, and thought-provoking to observe monkeys in action. While watching a Jane Goodall documentary that particularly resonated with me, I was transfixed by the similarities between chimp and human behavior. There were teenaged girls cooing over babies, tiny boys posturing like big apes, and even a chilling incident where one chimp who had stayed inordinately attached to his mother dispatched a newly-arrived sibling in the middle of the night, never to be heard from again. So, if monkeys are so much like us, I guess we just lucked out in evolutionary roulette, huh? Charlton Heston’s damn, dirty ape experience notwithstanding, they got the cages and we got the keys. When I was five, my family went to the zoo where we spent time at the monkey habitat. It was very busy and the animals were subjected to waves of gawkers, but seemed utterly unfazed, until one monkey chose me out of the crowd. To my delight and the amusement of the quickly growing swarm of spectators, the chimp would mirror my every move. We danced in tandem for quite awhile, until the bystanders got restless. As I turned to leave, the chimp and I locked eyes and I felt an unbearable sadness that I could walk freely away and he never could. In Esphyr Slobodkina’s Caps For Sale, the naughty monkeys are tricked into giving up their prizes but not their freedom. Esphyr escaped Russia with her family as a girl--perhaps she knows something of being held captive.
http://www.amazon.com/Caps-Sale-Peddler-Monkeys-Business/dp/0064431436

http://www.slobodkina.com/about%20esphyr.htm

We’ve started taking Scarlett to the library. With mixed results. I have such rose-colored memories of the church that books built, it didn’t occur to me that two year-olds aren’t yet aware of the library behavior policy. It all went fine at first. We stopped at the front to get Scarlett a library card since there is no longer a minimum age requirement. She had insisted on wearing her ladybug fairy wings for the occasion, so it all seemed magical. For about five seconds. The moment we stepped in the children’s section, the darling little fairy everyone was fussing over turned into Destructo Girl with me chasing like a maniac behind. She whipped through the shelves, pulling books off as she went, expressing her naughty delight at the top of her impressive little lungs. In seconds, I gave up trying to make this a “teachable moment”--getting at her eye level, using a calm voice, explaining expectations in simple language (you know, the touchy-feely stuff our parents think is ridiculous)-- and concentrated on surviving it without being banned from the library for life. Hurricane Scarlet roared through the stacks, seemingly unstoppable, until one book caught her eye and she stopped dead in her tracks. Melissa Lagnegro’s Sealed with a Kiss, from Disney’s Step Into Reading series, is for beginning readers, not toddlers, but Scarlett doesn’t know any better. Either way, it was enough to get her to settle down and look quietly at the pictures. A welcome lull in the storm.
http://www.amazon.com/Sealed-Kiss-Step-into-Reading/dp/073642363X

http://www.jacketflap.com/persondetail.asp?person=109806

We got our first microwave in 1976, before my brother who is now in his mid-thirties was born, and the darn prehistoric thing still works. It is giant and analog, with a dial instead of a digital readout, and doesn’t do anything except cook stuff, but it has lasted for more than three decades without needing a single repair. Nothing made today lasts like that. It is one of my big gripes--planned obsolescence, the intentional shoddy and temporary manufacture of even expensive things so that they only last a few years at best before needing to be replaced in a consumer-fixated culture. We pay thousands of dollars for cars made of plastic, hundreds of dollars for phones and computers which become ancient history before we can get them activated, and most of our disposable income (and sometimes far more) to replace things we didn’t really need in the first place with more stuff than we could ever need. And the old stuff goes in the dumpster and then the landfill. It’s even an end-of-school rite of passage here in Chico. Not that my corner of the world is immune. I go into the Dollar Store, thinking I’m being thrifty, and end up leaving with fifty dollars worth of complete crap without even really knowing how it happened. In David McPhail’s Ed And Me, a little girl has a long, loving relationship with the family truck, which still starts right up even after a freezing winter. Ah, the good old days.

http://www.amazon.com/Ed-Me-David-McPhail/dp/0152448888

http://www.eduplace.com/kids/tnc/mtai/mcphail.html

One of the nicest things about having a husband almost two decades younger is that his mom and aunts came with him as ready-made friends. I’m lucky, I know, because it could have gone very differently. Not having any sisters, and getting in-laws who only have sisters, I’m still learning the female sibling dynamic from them. But, being a big sister I know, so Nick’s mom, Becky, who is also the eldest, and I have very similar personalities and social interactions. We both typically take the position that if everyone would just get it together, do their part correctly, and stay out of each other’s way, the world would run much more efficiently--thus, smoothly. Or, more succinctly, if people would just behave like big sisters think they should. Nick’s Aunt Michelle, on the other hand, is a middle-child mediator personality. Even though I don’t quite understand her ways, I admire and even envy them. I’d like to be more like her. And one of the methods I like best is what she calls “skillful means,” a way of finding out what people need and want so that you can provide it when possible and everyone ends up feeling content with the exchange. I have to admit it works, but it’s hard to be patient enough when bossing people around is much faster. In Bruce McMillan’s The Problem With Chickens, Icelandic ladies need eggs and chickens need a place to stay. Once everyone starts working together skillfully, it all works out.

http://www.amazon.com/Problem-Chickens-Times-Illustrated-Awards/dp/0618585818

http://www.brucemcmillan.com/

I always wanted to be a teacher. By six I settled on education as my vocation and never changed my mind again. The age-level choice evolved over the years, but I knew that the world of chalkboards (now whiteboards) and grade sheets (now Excel spreadsheets) was where I belong. My first teaching experience was corralling all the unsuspecting kids from the neighborhood to come to my “school” on weekends and summer vacations. Since the internet was still just a big military secret, television had only three channels, and “handheld games” actually meant checkers or Candyland, they were enthusiastic at first. Until I assigned real homework at my pretend school. After that, I had to catch ‘em young or not at all. Another early teaching experience has stayed with me all this time. I spent two years teaching preschoolers basic kindergarten readiness. One of the most surprising and sad aspects of the job was realizing that, although they could reach the highest level of any video game, some of them couldn’t even recognize the first letter of their own name. How did that happen? How could their caretakers let it happen? It wouldn’t be a problem if they were Shaker children, apparently. To avoid the very deficit of which I speak, the Shakers long ago developed the Shaker Abecedarius to teach each child their letters by rote. A Peaceable Kingdom, illustrated by Alice and Martin Provensen makes learning the alphabet as easy as A, B, C.

http://www.amazon.com/Peaceable-Kingdom-Shaker-Abecedarius-Picture/dp/0140503706

http://www.jstor.org/pss/27546611

Baby anything is cuter than its adult version. A blanket statement, I know, but I’m really hard-pressed to think of an exception. Kittens, puppies, tadpoles, lambs--all more precious than the bigger model. Even double chins, chubby thighs, sparse hair and drool are adorable if the person sporting them is still what my grandparents would call knee-high to a grasshopper. Almost every creature seems to have a tender spot for new ones. This is probably nature’s way of keeping often annoying, frustratingly dependent beings from being eaten, I’ll wager. Baby things particularly register with me. Perhaps it’s from being a big sister, or growing up in a religious tradition where women are assigned value based exclusively on motherhood, or maybe even a natural immaturity, but whatever caused it did a bang-up job of making an impression. One of the most enduring pictures in my head of a cute baby thing is an early illustration in the paperback version of Charlotte’s Web where Fern is bottle-feeding a newborn, newly-rescued Wilbur and gazing at him adoringly. How could you not save such a ridiculously darling baby thing? I doubt her zeal would have been as…um…zealous if he had been a full-grown, tusk-wielding boar, but tiny piglet Wilbur is another story. In the Little Golden Book Classic Baby Farm Animals, each youngster is shown at its most endearing. I’m not much of an outdoor girl, but these illustrations make me want to at least visit a farm. Someday. If we don’t stay too long.

http://www.amazon.com/Baby-Animals-Little-Golden-Classic/dp/0307021750

http://www.randomhouse.com/golden/lgb/timeline.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garth_Williams

Keilana didn’t sleep through the night until she turned two, but she was well-behaved in the evening. Unless someone tried to put her to bed. Then she would turn into a whirling wildcat with unlimited aggressive energy. Given this, I learned early on that, contrary to endless criticism, if I let her stay up until she was sleepy, she would snuggle with me when she was ready and drift off. So, when Connor came along, I mistakenly assumed it would be the same. One night when he was a month old, nothing was working. He wouldn’t sleep in the family bed, wouldn’t nurse or rock or walk to sleep, wouldn’t just give up from exhaustion. Finally, worn out, I decided to take a break, put him down, and walk away for a bit. Even if he cried hysterically, it had to be done. I walked with purpose, to steel my resolve, into the bedroom and bent to place him in his crib, braced for the guilt-inducing wails. But there was silence. The moment he touched the mattress, he stretched out his arms as if to give the bed a big hug, laid down his wee head, and fell asleep with a heavy sigh. Just like that. All he wanted was to go to bed at a decent time and be left alone. Who knew? In Claude Clement’s Go to Sleep, Little Groundhog, everyone keeps bugging the little guy to help him drift off. Maybe he just needs some alone time.

http://www.amazon.com/s?ie=UTF8&rh=i%3Astripbooks%2Cp_27%3AClaude%20Cl%C3%A9ment&field-author=Claude%20Cl%C3%A9ment&page=1

http://www.librarything.com/author/clementclaude

I have a weakness for cute things. Especially girly cute things. I don’t remember my first exposure to Sanrio’s Hello Kitty, but I know it was love at first sight--not have-Hello Kitty-officiate-at-my-wedding-like-they-do-in-Japan love, but a deep-seated affection nonetheless. In the late ‘70s, when I was eleven, our local strip mall got a kiosk-sized storefront dedicated to things Sanrio. I almost went into diabetic shock from the sweet adorableness of every single thing in the shop. There were pencils, erasers, socks, earrings, keychains, and all manner of other precious wee things in the shape of or patterned with that cute red-bowed feline or her friends. Since I started at nine earning my own money housecleaning and babysitting, I was fortunate enough to make a few select purchases. And my favorite item was a see-through, plastic Hello Kitty purse. I was so excited to take it to school that I didn’t consider what the reaction would be. Here’s how the math went: No one else had a plastic purse, I didn’t get whatever gene makes a person cool enough to pull off starting a trend, and mocking ensued. It actually still stings a little after three decades. But, a year later, one of the girls who did get that elusive popularity gene started carrying a plastic purse and then they were everywhere. I still don’t get it. In Robert Munsch’s Stephanie’s Ponytail, Stephanie has the opposite problem--everyone copies everything she does when she wants to be unique. Maybe our therapists are friends.

http://www.amazon.com/Stephanies-Ponytail-Classic-Munsch-Robert/dp/1550374842

http://www.indiana.edu/~reading/ieo/bibs/munsch.html

When I was young, I hated green peas more than anything. They grossed me out and I refused to eat them…or I would have if my parents would let me, and since they were both pretty eagle-eyed, the chances were slim. So, I developed another, more subtle technique: get my plate really close to my brother’s, and shovel as fast as I could. Before you begin (or keep) thinking of me as a terrible person, my brother liked green peas and there was no harm, no foul. But if I had my very own robot obeying my every command, I wouldn’t have needed to do the pea switcheroo. I could have had my robot dispatch the nasty little green devils and no one would be the wiser. An intriguing thought, isn’t it? Some mechanized being doing your bidding would be almost too tempting to pass up. Monday morning would lose its sting. Family gatherings could be more bearable. Sink full of dishes? Done. Piles of laundry? Finished. Bills? Yardwork? Diaper changing? No big deal. The only problem I see with having your own robo-assistant is the laziness that would surely come along with such a handy little piece of technology. Then again, you could just set your robot to operate in guilt mode for you and not worry about it. Dan Yaccarino gives Phil a robot in If I Had A Robot and everything is great until there’s only one piece of cake. Then it’s everyone or everything for themselves.

http://www.amazon.com/Had-Robot-Picture-Puffin-Books/dp/014056294X

http://www.danyaccarino.com/dy/

Having small people who still wear diapers is a bummer--buying diapers, running out of diapers, regretting leaving the bag open so the wipes dry out, stinking up the house, adding to the landfills or using water for washing, and longing for the day diapers are done. The problem with potty training (once it’s done, of course) is realizing you didn’t appreciate the convenience of diapers when you had the chance. Anyone who has ever gone anywhere with a newly toilet-trained small person knows that needing to pee, being willing to pee, and having the opportunity to pee are rarely all in the same place at the same time. I had one who never met a public bathroom she didn’t want to visit. I had one who held dry pants hostage by “forgetting” to go pee-pee in the potty chair if she wanted something she didn’t get. I had one whose “Wolverine” costume had to turn into a flannel shirt and jeans “Logan” costume when he (that narrows it down, doesn’t it?) didn’t quite make it in time. I also threw perfectly good panties away on a trip to Disneyland because I wasn’t willing to swish them in the Happiest Toilet On Earth. And now I have one who wears her princessy pink potty-chair on her head. Sometimes diapers look really nice in hindsight. In Robert Munsch’s I Have To Go!, Andrew makes everyone crazy until he and Grandpa figure the potty thing out. When you gotta go, you gotta go.

http://www.amazon.com/I-Have-Go-Classic-Munsch/dp/0920303749

http://robertmunsch.com/

A lot of attention gets paid to falling in love. It has been immortalized in song and poetry. The big screen exists to tell its story. Dance was invented to express its exquisite highs and abysmal lows. Wars have been fought, oceans crossed and peaks scaled in the name of that pristine and perfect moment. We know everything about the majesty of falling in love, but what about the rest of the story? What do we really know about picking up and going on and staying steady after the falling? In an era of broken love stories, there are few examples of love enduring. Most of us don’t know any of those stories. But I know one. A really good one. Teenage John was cool and intriguing. Teenage Velma was sassy and interested. She, a non-smoker, asked him for a smoke. He, nonchalant, gave her one, which she didn’t know how to handle. She, flirtatiously, inquired if he would ask her out and he, bemusedly, said he didn’t date girls who smoked. Thus ended my grandmother’s smoking career and began my grandparents’ love affair. They loved through separation, war, poverty, illness, loss, and tragedy. They loved three children, eight grandchildren, and, to date, nine great-grandchildren. They loved for 72 years and were only apart for about a year until she called him home. Sally Huss speaks of all the different ways to love in I Love You With All My Hearts. She didn’t know them, so she missed a few.

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/I-Love-You-With-All-My-Hearts/Sally-Huss/e
/9781400309863

http://www.sallyhuss.com/

One question parents of young children have to answer for themselves is: What will it do to the child or children we already have if we bring someone new into the family? By the time I was expecting Connor, Keilana was almost five and had been the only child the whole time. Thinking that every singleton must long for a sibling, I was distressed and puzzled by Keilana’s increasingly aggressive behavior as the baby’s due date approached. One day while we were waiting for a table at Marie Callender’s, she said she was going to “bite the baby.” Not realizing she meant right away, I told her I didn’t think that was a very good idea. The next thing I knew, she clamped her sharp little teeth on my tummy and made good on her threat. When I asked her later what was going on with her, she said that everyone kept telling her what a good big sister she would be and she didn’t know how to be a big sister. Poor, stressed-out little girl! I told her I didn’t know how to be the mommy of two children either, so we would have to help each other. When Connor arrived two days later, peace had been restored. In Julie Jacobs’ My Heart is a Magic House, Stephanie worries that a new baby means she will be displaced but her mommy tells her that there’s room and love enough for everybody. That’s a relief for big sisters…and mommies, too.

http://www.amazon.com/Heart-Magic-House-Julie-Jacobs/dp/0807553352


http://www.linkedin.com/pub/dir/Julie/Jacobs/

There have been many surprising things to this blogging project. The sheer level of commitment is one. The challenge of chasing an elusive muse is another. One aspect that leaves me feeling wistful and a bit sad is finding heartfelt inscriptions inside books I pick up at the thrift store for a dime or a quarter. One unexpectedly sweet benefit is discovering older books with a musty aroma that reminds me of my grandparents’ home in the humid South. Reconnecting with books that have profound meaning for me or bring nostalgia to me has been more fulfilling than I could have predicted. But I think the most interesting thing is Scarlett’s lukewarm reception to some of my treasured classics and decided preference for other books I’ve never even heard of. I guess that makes sense, since a toddler only knows what they like and not what receives critical acclaim or ends up on every well-stocked bookshelf. In that respect, Scarlett is very toddler. She is beginning to assert herself more forcefully in all areas of her life, especially in what she wears and has read to her. The other day the only clothes she would consider wearing were Spiderman pajama pants and a too-small onesie that couldn’t even snap. And when we chose a book to read, she insisted on Mittie Cuetara’s Terrible Teresa and Other Very Short Stories. That’s no lie--each story is only four lines long. But Scarlett was mesmerized and that was the point of this, right?

http://www.amazon.com/Terrible-Teresa-Other-Short-Stories/dp/0525457682


http://biography.jrank.org/pages/1357/Cuetara-Mittie-1957.html

One problem with fairy tales is that they make “happily ever after” seem like the rest of the story rather than the end of the beginning of the story. After spending hundreds of hours watching Disney movies frame-by-frame for graduate research, I know the message gets driven home that, once you sweep off to the castle, everything is hearts and flowers from that moment on. But as someone who’s been married (more than once) and had children (more than one), I know you wake up the day after the perfect wedding and the dishes don’t wash themselves--nor are there any woodland creatures around to do them. Bummer. Another facet to life after happily ever after is realizing that sometimes it’s easier to just do stuff yourself than wait for everybody else to figure it out. Especially kids. Or jewel-mining dwarfs. I felt a real kinship with the post-prince Snow White in Disney’s Snow White Makes A Change from the Kindness Counts series when she goes back to visit the little cottage in the woods and finds pandemonium once again reigns. The same thing happens to me every time I clean up after my kids. I should be better about making them clean it up themselves. I understand this, but haven’t been very good at it. Control freak meets no time meets wanting to run my house differently than the one I came from but not knowing how. The dwarfs do renew their housekeeping efforts, so maybe it’s not too late.

http://www.amazon.com/Kindness-Counts-Disney-Princess-Studio/dp/1590693647

http://disney.go.com/index

When you hold your first tiny newborn, a list of endless concerns begins to race through your mind. Surprisingly, one that doesn’t even register on that scale then will become your daily fixation for the next, oh, twenty years: teeth. Early on in your parenting career, those pearly whites become an obsession, or so it must seem to non-parents. When will they show up? Fall out? Grow back in? Need orthodontia? Have to be removed/repaired/replaced? It truly never ends. Since I spread my kids over the better part of two decades, I have some kid in each stage at any given time. My world and my checkbook basically revolve around teeth. And there are some things I really like about that. One of the traditions in our house is that no baby can claim to have a new tooth until they pass the “spoon test.” Only when we hear the distinctive Tink! Tink! Tink! of a spoon tapped against drooly gums hitting the edge of a tiny emerging tooth can we say that the baby has a new (or first) one. That is always a bittersweet occasion--the little one is growing, but the little one is also not so little anymore. While Connor’s teeth are being expensively straightened, Addison’s are falling out, and Keilana’s are being taken out, Scarlett is just getting some. Which is why we read The Tooth Book by Dr. Seuss’ alias Theo LeSieg. TEETH! They are very much in style. They must be very much worthwhile!


http://www.amazon.com/Tooth-Bright-Early-Beginning-Beginners/dp/0375810390

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_McKie

http://www2.scholastic.com/browse/contributor.jsp?id=166971

However you feel about the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act signed into law today, it’s a historic day. Dangerous social engineering? Desperately needed legislation? It depends what side you’re on. In the midst of all the opinions whirling around, I coincidentally encountered a quote I’ve heard many times but never with the impact it had today. Noted anthropologist (and social agitator) Margaret Mead is credited with saying, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” And I believe it with all my heart. But then, so do people with worldviews polar to mine. So, if everyone thinks they are the righteous little David, who is the evil giant Goliath? Pondering all this made the choice of Patricia A. Pingry’s The Story of Joshua even more thought-provoking. Granted, it is a child’s board book with a few simple pages and a condensed storyline, but the one-sided account made me a bit uncomfortable. The basic story: Joshua and his people are given land, including Jericho, by God. The brave little band calls upon all their resources to bring down the walls of Jericho and claim their rightful property. But the problem for me is that there is no mention of why Joshua’s people deserve ownership of the land over the current residents. And this got me thinking even more. I decided that, if you and yours are going to change the world, you better be right.

http://www.amazon.com/Story-Joshua-Patricia-Pingry/dp/0824941535


http://www.amazon.com/Patricia-A.-Pingry/e/B000BPFPMC


http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/m/margaret_mead.html