I have admitted before that I always judge a book by it’s cover, and it’s even more true with children’s books. I mean really, the illustrations are at least half the package right? These books are practically begging you to judge by their covers, you woudn’t want to ignore an illistators best efforts now would you?

But sometimes those old sayings turn out to be true.

If you were like me a judged by the cover you would have left passed this book over and sighed when your kids dragged it home from the library the first time.

Then after  having brought it home from the library multiple times and read it 5,789 times you would also have to admit to being completely and totally wrong.

The illustrations may not be exactly what I’m drawn to but there are bicycle riding cows, not to mention an egg laying one…

…the phrase “…an almighty commotion in the barnyard…” which is a good phrase if I’ve ever heard it.

And there are “crafty chickens” I personally have never met a crafty chicken but I like the idea of them anyway.

A super fun book and clearly one of Clara’s favorites!

Months ago we got this book from the library and while I know my lovely assistant and book connoisseur in the picture may not look like she enjoyed it let me assure you she did. We read it over, and over, and over, and over…

It was so simple you just…Then you watch what happens…Follow directions…And watch how the dots change…So simple…So fun!Would I recommend it? Yes, it was a surprisingly fun book – at least the first thirty times!

A sweet, simple story about friendship, seasons, aging and loss.

Illustrated by the same man who did Zen Shorts and Zen Ghosts the pictures are touching and funny all at the same time.

There is not a great deal of text, yet it is enough that the story can be read as a slightly silly, slightly sad book about a dog and his friends or as something that goes beyond that into friendship, aging, loss and the constant changing of the seasons while life goes on.

Would I recommend it? Yes.

I love nursery rhymes.

Once, just after starting my blog I wrote about some of my thoughts on children’s books. You can take a quick peek here: Pick a Good One, O Best Beloved, I’ll wait while you do…

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After reading that I’m sure you know exactly why I love reading nursery rhymes to the girls but just in case you didn’t go read it I’ll elaborate.

Even the most well known of the nursery rhymes have uncommon words, (dame, contrary, posies) and once you venture into some of the other less well known rhymes you get even more, horrid, doth, stile, delve, caper, sup and comely just to name a few. We certainly don’t stop and identify each unknown word, that would be boring but Ivy will often ask if she doesn’t understand a word even if it’s in a rhyme that she’s heard many times before. I like to think I’ve got a decent vocabulary but I’m not throwing around comely and caper very often! I can’t think of a better way to sneakily expand vocabulary than through a bunch of short fun rhymes.

Since the rhymes are so fun and short both girls are starting to memorize a few (beyond Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star)  so we can now “read” together trading lines back and forth. Good for the memory and just plan fun!

Nursery rhymes, gotta love ’em!

Recently one of my librarian cousins told me about this book:

As you now know from reading my old post I say gorgeous illustrations trump even crappy writing when we pick out a book.

This book has nursery rhymes and fantastic pictures -what can I say librarian cousins are great!

The illustrations are photos of artwork made out of everything from acorn caps to beads, sewn together on felt backgrounds and populated with little handmade people. Ivy and Clara have both poured over the pictures and so have I, they are fascinating!

Would I recommend it? Yes!

Kudos to anyone who can name all ten nursery rhymes my uncommon words came from!

I like this book for many reasons but I’ll admit the reason it really stands out is because it doesn’t shy away from the fact that goshawks eat blue-jays and fox eat woodchucks.  Perhaps it makes me overly bloodthirsty and morbid but I think that’s awesome and rare find in recent children’s books.  When you read an older book, things get eaten up all the time,  Peter Rabbit’s father was made into a pie after all.  Nowadays it’d be more likely that he’d get sold to a pet shop and spend the rest of his life in as a classroom pet.

Come to think of it, Mr Rabbit may have preferred the pie.

In any case, in this book children are walking through the woods finding animal sign.

For instance they find blue feathers on the ground, and ask the question:

“Who’s been here?”

The answer is provided on the next page – a goshawk and a blue jay.

In addition to the bloodthirsty aspect and the excellent pictures I like that there is not a lot of text. Not  much text has two benefits, either we can whip through the book at mock 10 because we’ve read it six times that day already and I really need to be getting dinner ready, or we can talk about what’s happening in the pictures, what time of year it is and try for the 7,000 time to convince Clara that it is a MUD dauber not a wood dauber.

But she is two and so I’m afraid it’s going to be a wood dauber for the foreseeable future.

Would I recommend it? Yes, there happens to be a whole series of these, I think we are going to have to find more at the library but I’m glad to own at least this one!

I hate Halloween.

I’ve mentioned this before here but hate it or not it’s coming up and as with all holidays the library has kept us on track with their rack of seasonal/holiday appropriate books. Normally I love the seasonal rack, but these are Halloween books, and I hate Halloween, I also hate Clifford. I really don’t want to read about Clifford and Halloween in the same book.

Ivy does.

It’s a problem.

When I saw that Jon Muth who wrote Zen Shorts had a Halloween book out I pounced on it. I was a little apprehensive since it did involve the word “ghost” but there was no big red dog or ugly drippy monsters on the cover so I thought it was worth a try. I’d like to say it was just as wonderful as Zen Shorts but I can’t get my Halloween hating completely out of my system so I will just say that it is the only Halloween book that I have ever enjoyed.

The illustrations were again beautiful.  And the story.. I’m not even sure what to say, it was a ghost story, sort of, and it was a zen-like-make-you-think-story, and once again Ivy enjoyed it more than I ever would have guessed she would have.

Would I recommend it? Yes indeed! Please replace a certain large red dog with a giant panda named Stillwater, I promise life will get better.

Please allow my lovely assistant Ivy to show you one of her (and my) new favorite children’s books.

Here you see her posing with the cover of the book.

It’s a pretty cover, after all it is a Caldecott Honor book.  You’ll know when you see it at your library because it’ll be the one with the panda with the red umbrella on the cover.

Here you see Ivy showing off more of the illustrations. Wonderful, beautiful, some of my very favorite ever, illustrations.

In addition to the gorgeous watercolor ink paintings (have I mentioned that I really like them?) the book has three “zen shorts” within the main story.  According to the author’s note at the back, ” “Zen shorts” are short meditations – ideas to puzzle over – tools which hone our ability to act with intuition. They have no goal, but they often challenge us to reexamine our habits, desires, concepts and fears. ”

It sounds all scary and woo woo and heavy but I promise it’s not.  It’s just wonderful.

Would I recommend it? Yes, and so would Ivy.

Did you know that Ivy loves horses?

She does.  Really, really loves them.

Sometime last winter her Grandma Mary happened to say, “Ivy, what would you do if Santa brought you a horse?”

Bad idea Grandma Mary, bad idea.

After a few weeks when it became obvious that Ivy was convinced Santa was bringing her a horse I called up my Mom and yelled at her.

In effort to fix the situation she told Ivy that winter isn’t a very good time to get a horse. Ivy accepted this explanation and our conversations turned to, “…when it’s spring and I get my horse…” which was a problem, but I was hoping she would forget.

Of course she did not forget.

We still don’t have a horse and Ivy still wants one, so when the librarian showed her this book at the library I must have got a bit of a wide eyed panicked look because she quickly assured me it would be perfect.

The girl in the story wants a horse for her birthday,

instead she gets a bicycle.

The bike turns out to be a great pretend horse for the “cowgirl,” the last line says: “Yes, sir, I’m a cowgirl from head to toe, and all a cowgirl really needs is a horse…

…and I do have that.”

It did seem perfect for the little girl who really wants a horse but isn’t getting one even though, as she has pointed out, it is spring now.

Ivy listened to the book.  When we finished she pointed at the last page and said “But Mom, that’s not a horse that’s a bike.”

So much for that idea.

Would I recommend it? Yes, while it did nothing to temper Ivy’s horses wishes we did read it approximately 16 million times and she only pointed out the bike/horse discrepancy 14 million. I’m calling it progress.

We are once a week library regulars, we know the librarians, they know us and 95 percent of all children’s books are returned the next week. Even good books are hard to read every day multiple times for more than a week, but Duck Soup was an exception.

It’s a funny book, best read with a bit of flair (we did lots of yelling) and  guaranteed to be kept from the library longer than usual without being lost under the couch!

Would I recommend it? Yes, we’ve also had Duck at the Door and enjoyed that one as well, but this one is better!