Wanda in our life

The first law of S. R. Ranganathan's Five Laws of Library Science is "Books are for use." This law applies also to puppets and stuffed animals. If no one plays with them, makes up stories with them, or holds them close for comfort, they become dust-collectors. If they’re lucky, they end up at yard-sales, where they have chances to reinvent themselves with people who actually want to play. Such was Wanda's fate.

Wanda’s prototype was a discontinued Folkmanis Kid Gloves marionette. Technically, she was supposed to be a boy. Since the prototype of Wanda's brother Marco (one of the principle players of the Boyer Children’s Clinic) was originally designed to be a girl, the teachers and I decided to roll with the emerging trend. One of Lucia’s teachers had found Wanda at a yard-sale, paid 50 cents to liberate her, and then hung her up on the wall. Even though she had jaunty black-and-white striped limbs, compared to Marco, Wanda lacked vim.

Of course, I had to take Wanda home. Lucia's fascination with the marionette made the work a challenge, but we cheerfully ignored all of our other chores so we could attend to Wanda's makeover. I trimmed Wanda's hair, sewed on tiny peridot earrings, and stitched a black and white polka-dotted dress onto her torso. A silver heart charm once found in a Christmas cracker turned into Wanda’s belt-buckle. I experimented with other accessories (green Mardi Gras beads, a silver lizard pin for the black velvet beret), but decided that the focus really should be the polka-dotted dress as a counterpoint to the striped stockings. The green high-tops stayed, of course. They were an important part of Wanda’s ensemble.

After I finished Wanda’s makeover, the arm strings bothered me. They were stretched out and didn’t help at all with arm movement. I cut the strings attached to Wanda’s hands, and restrung fishing-wire from her elbows to the puppeteer’s glove. While Wanda would never be able to clap through string manipulation alone, now she could wave.

Lucia and I are bringing Wanda back to the Boyer Children’s Clinic today. I hope that some teacher will take a shine to Wanda and work with her in the classroom. Lucia is going to miss having Wanda at home. I know that if I said to the teachers, “Please, let me keep Wanda,” they would probably say yes, but I don’t want to stand in the way of Wanda’s career. At this time, I do not have any active storytelling gigs, and Wanda has hung on the wall long enough. While Wanda is made of cloth and string, I think of her as alive, not in the way I think of the house cats or plants, but in the way that children care for their stuffed animals as friends instead of toys.


From Pablo Neruda's
"Ode to Things:"

O irrevocable
river of things:
no one can say
that I loved
only fish,
or the plants of the jungle and the field,
that I loved only
those things that leap and climb,
desire, and survive.
It's not true:
many things conspired
to tell me the whole story.
Not only did they touch me,
or my hand touched them:
they were
so close
that they were a part
of my being,
they were so alive with me
that they lived half my life
and will die half my death.

Chicken in the Library

What is joke-telling but another form of storytelling? I heard librarian Aarene Storms tell this chicken in the library joke at a storytelling guild meeting:

A librarian is working away at her desk when she notices that a chicken has come into the library and is patiently waiting in front of the desk. When the chicken sees that it has the librarian's attention, it squawks, "Book, book, book, BOOK!"

The librarian complies, putting a couple of books down in front of the chicken. The chicken quickly grabs them and disappears.

The next day, the librarian is again disturbed by the same chicken, who puts the previous day's pile of books down on the desk and again squawks, "Book, book, book, BOOK!"

The librarian shakes her head, wondering what the chicken is doing with these books, but eventually finds some more books for the chicken. The chicken disappears.

The next day, the librarian is once again disturbed by the chicken, who squawks (in a rather irritated fashion, it seems), "Book, book, book, BOOK!" By now, the librarian's curiosity has gotten the better of her, so she gets a pile of books for the chicken, and follows the bird when it leaves the library. She follows it through the parking lot, down the street for several blocks, and finally into a large park. The chicken disappears into a small grove of trees, and the librarian follows. On the other side of the trees is a small marsh. The chicken has stopped on the side of the marsh.

The librarian, now really curious, hurries over and sees that there is a small frog next to the chicken, examining each book, one at a time. The librarian comes within earshot just in time to hear the frog saying, "Read it, read it, read it..."

Money and Run

Last night, a group of us went to see Theater Schmeater's new episode of Money and Run, the serialized story of two outlaws of Crudup County. The new episode, Juke Box Momma, was filled with the usual assortment of features we expect and enjoy: hard rock from the 1970's, slow-motion fist-fights, and homages to The Dukes of Hazzard ("Run" wears a General Lee tee-shirt and "Money" sports an "01" tattoo.) Earlier episodes include "Ninjas and Nuns" (my favorite so far), "Save the Last Dance for Run" (with lots of silly, overt references to Dirty Dancing and Flashdance) and Eyepatch of the Tiger.

I'm sure you've seen better theatre with more highbrow performances, but tell me, did you have fun? Were you allowed to bring your drinks inside the theatre? Were you able to afford drinks after you'd paid for your tickets? (If the answer is "yes" to all three questions, please tell me about the theatre companies you like.) I won't turn down an invitation to the Paramount Theatre,* but when I have to pay for my own entertainment, I'm going to the Theater Schmeater. Of course, now that I'm a parent, I have to work on staying awake long enough to make it to the show. Once upon a time, 11 pm was the beginning of my evening. Now, it's way past my bedtime.

______
*Silent Movie Mondays are first-date affordable. Each film is accompanied by Dennis James on the Mighty Wurlitzer Organ. I've always enjoyed my Silent Movie Monday outings, rare though they be.

Future Busker of Cascadia

A month ago, I wrote that Bede had found at a garage sale a guitar for me for $10.00 USD. What I didn't know at the time was that the neck of the guitar was bent, rendering two out of six strings untunable. I gave the guitar to another parent on my neighborhood email group who wanted a stringed instrument for his toddler son. The quality of the instrument wasn't as important as the parent getting his son to play something other than his parent's guitar.

Today, I came home from my monthly Meeting of the Minds* to find a guitar case in the living room. Bede had gone to another multi-family yardsale and found a guitar that the seller's father had bought for her. In essence, it had never been played, and had lingered in storage until the day of the yardsale. "This guitar cost more than 10 dollars," Bede informed me, but would not say more. I have gathered that we will be eating rice and beans (or the Cascadian equivalent) for the next few months. It's too bad I don't already know how to play guitar, because then I could earn a few coins as a busker in Pioneer Square. (Getting people to pay me to stop playing "Peter Gunn" on one string is not cricket!)



Now I must compose a real ode to Bede (on the guitar! or on the ocarina.) However, Bede has gently reminded me that now we need to clean the house before friends come over tonight. So it goes. As Richard Wilbur wrote, "Love calls us to the things of this world."


_________
*Not its real name. Some of my friends get together once a month to talk about what we're reading, thinking, planning, etc. We have tea, scones and other yummy treats to fuel our fervent discussions.

The Cube

Sometime during my grad school days, my Mom presented me with a game called The Cube. Unlike other personality tests, The Cube was actually enjoyable to me. It was a story in the making. I still remember what my answers were. The particular narrative for this game is lifted directly from Ambivablog. My answers are as faithful as I can make them to my original responses.

From Ambivablog:

There's a catch to this game. Knowing the "key" in advance will ruin it for you. I'm going to post the "key" at its own link at the end of the game. If you want to play the game, DO NOT LOOK AT THE KEY TILL YOU ARE COMPLETELY FINISHED. (I also suggest not reading other people's Cubes in the Comments till after you've played. Nothing should influence your Cube but your own imagination.) Pass this warning on to anyone you want to play the game. It's up to you whether you want to play and be surprised, or peek behind the scenes and be your own spoiler. (You could still "cube" others even if you'd missed your chance. In fact, you can only play innocently once, and after that, the fun is "cubing" others when you know the key and they don't.)

Here's The Cube. Answer each question for yourself thoroughly before moving on to the next.

1.) Imagine a desert landscape. It's very simple . . . horizon, sand, sky, whatever you see when you think of a desert.

2.) In this desert there is . . . a cube! What does the cube look like? What's it made of (if you know)? What color is it? How big? Is it sitting on the sand, or in some other position? How close or far away is it?

3.) In this desert there is also a ladder. Where is it (in relation to the cube)? What is it made of? What position is it in? Does it have many rungs? A few rungs?

4.) In this desert there now appears . . . a horse. Where is the horse? What color is it? What is it doing? Does it have on a saddle or bridle, or not?

5.) Now, somewhere in the desert there is a storm. What kind of storm is it? Where is it? And does it affect the cube, the ladder, the horse, or not?

6.) Finally, somewhere in the desert are flowers. Where are they (in relation to the cube, ladder, horse, storm)? What kind are they? Are they many or few? Scattered or clustered?

***
Please feel free to post your Cube visions in the Comments section, email them to me privately, or totally keep your own counsel. If you post your answers publicly on your own blog, please let me know-- I've not gotten the hang of the "Trackback" gig. I am going to link my answers in a backdated post.

Alkelda's Cube

The Key

Banned Books Week: September 24-October 1

Get ready for Banned Books Week.

"Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak because a baby can't chew it."--Mark Twain

A grandmother once called me at the library to ask if there were picture-book versions of Harry Potter for her four-year-old grandson. After checking the usual resources and finding nothing (as I had suspected), I said to her, "I'm sure eventually there will be." I didn't tell her that the thought distinctly made me unhappy. Publishers have turned the Little House and Chronicles of Narnia books into young-reader formats. What will be next? Board book versions of His Dark Materials?

In my community, there are a lot of children who are reading above grade-level. Academically, they have the ability to read Garth Nix's Abhorsen trilogy years before I'd like them to be dealing with Necromancer bells and other matters of the Undead. However, it's my job to educate myself about the books in order to make recommendations, and the care-givers' jobs to decide what their children may read. Their jobs do not involve keeping books from other people's children.

A person doesn't have to be a book burner in order to be a book-censorer. Often, we will hear people say, "We don't want to burn books, no-no-no. That's preposterous. We just want the books to be in a certain area of the library where people can't get to them."

That's censorship. Yes, it is.

I love my Bill of Rights, even when I don't always agree with the interpretations. As Sarah Vowell said in Take The Cannoli, "About the only thing my father and I agree on is the Constitution, though I'm partial to the First Amendment, while he's always favored the Second."

Here are some of my favorite books on the Frequently Challenged list. Most of them I would rather Lucia did not read before she was in her double-digits. However, most of them I would recommend to Bede. He doesn't have to read them, though. I'm not a pest.

I'm enthusiastic!

Just a Few of Alkelda's Favorite
"Frequently Challenged" Books:

Anastasia Krupnik (series)--Lois Lowry
Annie on My Mind--Nancy Farmer
Brave New World--Aldous Huxley
Bridge to Terabithia--Katherine Patterson
Chocolate War--Robert Cormier
James and the Giant Peach--Roald Dahl
Handmaid's Tale--Margaret Atwood
House of the Spirits--Isabelle Allende
To Kill a Mockingbird--Harper Lee
Ulysses--James Joyce
Wrinkle in Time--Madeleine L'Engle

Addendum: Lori, the Goddess of Clarity, pointed me to a photo link of a memorial in Berlin. Books were burned there. The plaza is called Bebelplatz.

Eye of the Tiger

Favorite tiger tales:

The Story of Little Babaji--Helen Bannerman/Fred Marcellino

Terrible Tiger--Jack Prelutsky/Arnold Lobel

Tiger, Brahmin, Jackal--Indian folk tale

Tiger's Whisker--Korean folk tale


A vignette:

Lucia was in school, playing with animal puzzle-pieces. Her teacher pointed to the tiger puzzle-piece and asked, "What animal is that?"

Lucia replied, "Zebra."

The teacher said, "Yes, I guess it does sort of look like Simba."

Another vignette, leap-frogging off of the first one:

A different teacher held up a large, talking stuffed-animal based on the television character of Barney the purple dinosaur. The teacher held up the stuffed-animal, saying, "Look! It's Barney! It's Barney!" as she pulled the string. Meanwhile, Barney was babbling about something in a tone much too cheery for the occasion.

Lucia looked at the stuffed-animal with some suspicion. I finally whispered to the teacher, "She doesn't know Barney, but she knows 'dinosaur.'"

"Look, it's a dinosaur," the teacher said.

Lucia regarded the stuffed-animal with more interest. "Rarrrrrw!" she said.

Belly-dancing to Metallica

Here is a wild new chapter in the burgeoning chronicles of the Pertwee family. Since I haven't gotten any new words from my readers in the last while (hem, hem), I have had to resort to crafty devices. I went to each of your blogs, and plucked the first word from the title of your latest post. If you didn't have a title, I chose the first interesting noun. The words I found:

New
Creature
Nobody
Rock
Stand
Signs
Bellydancing
Trip
Joke
Mini
Metallica
Another
September
Think
Hetero
Alignment

It was an old joke that Tamar liked belly-dancing to Metallica. Whenever she rode in Zev’s multi-striped Mini, Tamar would stand on the seat, poke her head up through the sun-roof, and undulate to the songs of Zev’s rock and roll cassette tapes. Zev could not convince her that car-dancing was dangerous. "It’s not as if you can actually speed in this contraption,” Tamar pointed out. “I’m as safe as houses."

Zev and Tamar lived in the City, but every so often, they had to take the obligatory trip to the countryside to visit their mother and step-family. They dreaded it. Sometimes Tamar tried to wiggle out of the outing. “I think the stars are too far out of alignment to make the trek,” she joked. “Maybe we shouldn’t go this weekend.”

“We’ve put off the trip three times since September,” Zev pointed out.

“You’re right,” Tamar said. “Let’s get it over with.”

Tamar packed a lunch that she hoped would last them through a good part of the first day. Ever since her mother had married Mr. Pertwee, she no longer made the succulent curries for which she was so famous in the City. Tamar’s mouth watered at the memory of the last vegetable korma her mother had made the night before the Pertwee’s simple wedding ceremony at the courthouse. There were no bells, whistles or anything to distinguish the ceremony from any other hetero-union Tamar had attended since her university days. Still, the party afterward was what she remembered best: the steaming spinach and garlic naan appetizers, the tender cubes of lamb simmered with tamarind sauce, the slices of mango laid out upon china plates like shimmering orange fishes. The vanilla cake was light, not very sweet, but brushed with cardamom icing in swirls that melted upon the tongue.

That was the last good meal Tamar had ever had at her mother’s house. What had happened then seemed to turn her mother into some sort of new creature that only served pre-made food from boxes. It was not that Tamar expected her mother to continue cooking the way she had before, but Tamar missed the warmth of their old dwelling. Their step-siblings, Tristan and Virginia, were of the good-enough sort, but already the signs of country living were showing strain upon the kids.

“We should take Tristan and Virginia back with us,” Tamar said suddenly.

“What?” Zev asked. “Are you crazy?”

“Yes,” Tamar said. “But that is beside the point. We are in the position to do a good deed. After the weekend, we will take the Pertwee kids back with us to the City for a few days. Perhaps they will remember what it is like to be alive, once they stop moping around that wretched dollhouse of a dwelling.”

“That ‘wretched dollhouse’ is quite stunning,” Zev said. “Have you noticed the detail of the architecture?”

“There are no stairs,” Tamar said with a contemptuous wave of her hand. “What is a house without stairs?”

Tamar plunked the picnic hamper into the back seat of the Mini, opened the sunroof, and stood up. “Drive on, Zev!” she said, as the beginning notes of "For Whom the Bell Tolls" began to throb. “This time, we’re on a mission.”

Tandem Tale

Remember the email joke about the English teacher assigning a tandem story to her class, only to have her pupils demonstrate in broad, stereotypical terms how men are influenced by Ares and women by Aphrodite? (Warning: There are rude words at the end of the story I've linked, much ruder than "stinky" or "armpit," but not quite as rude as "bellyflop.") Bede and I decided to test this theory, and so we wrote our own tandem story.

The Short Saga of Pickwick and Pudding

Alkelda:
The Duchess Pudding of Yorkshire paced back and forth in front of the window. “You must go now!” she said to the Baron of Pickwick. “I cannot fathom what will happen if you do not flee.” She brought her hands up to the lace fichu* that quivered above her heaving bosom.

Bede:
“I don’t have time for that now,” said the Baron. “I am just about to prove the theory of time travel. So stop your sobbing and pull that switch. I’m off to the Pleistocene.”

“You cannot leave me in this way!” the Duchess cried. “It would be a cruel, heartless thing for you to do. Take me with you, let us hie and away.”

At that moment, three Morlocks** burst through the picture window, guns blazing. Baron Pickwick unsheathed his 12 gauge, felling two of the monsters in a single motion. “Harriet,” he shouted, “My saber!”

“But Nigel!” the Duchess said, “You’re bleeding. How can you go on this way? We must flee from the Morlocks before my husband returns with his drinking fellows from the Naughty Hellfire Tavern.” She pulled out a handkerchief and dabbed the Baron’s bleeding arm.

He plucked the handkerchief from her hand and pushed a pistol into its place. “Hold them off while I tighten the hydrospanner,”*** he shouted.

She gingerly took the pistol from his outstretched hand. “I do not know if I can do this,” she said. She closed her eyes, and fired.

With a shout of “Eureka!” the Baron pulled the lever and they went off to the Pleistocene for many further adventures with dinosaurs.

(There are no living dinosaurs in the Pleistocene!)

(Maybe there are no dinosaurs in the Pleistocene now, but since I have a time-machine, I can put dinosaurs there.)

End of the Silliness

Notes:
*If you're going to write a historical romance story, you need to put a fichu in somewhere.
**How can you have a time-travel story without Morlocks?
***If you're going to write a science-fiction story, it's just not complete without a reference to a hydrospanner.

Arithmetic is where numbers fly

Throughout my childhood, I had seen Carl Sandburg from time to time. He had white hair, a craggy face, and under his arm, he carried a book about Abraham Lincoln. He was a well-known eccentric poet. I didn't pay him much mind. We didn't become properly introduced until my first professional library stint in New York City. For my children's services speciality seminar, we watched the six minute film "Arithmetic," animated by Lynn Smith. Carl Sandburg narrated it. In six minutes, I was smitten.

I have mixed-feelings about sharing the link to the film "Arithmetic." It is a rare film and I'm surprised that the "clip" is actually the entire film (via RealPlayer, alas.) As a librarian, I want to share the film with everybody, but I am also a little bit shy about doing so. "Arithmetic" is the film that made me starry-eyed over Carl Sandburg. It may tickle your fancy, or it may do nothing at all for you. That's fine.

I love it.

If you can't see the film or listen to Carl Sandburg's voice, here at least is the poem for you to read:

Arithmetic

Arithmetic is where numbers fly like pigeons in and out of your head.

Arithmetic tell you how many you lose or win if you know how many you had before you lost or won.

Arithmetic is seven eleven all good children go to heaven -- or five six bundle of sticks.

Arithmetic is numbers you squeeze from your head to your hand to your pencil to your paper till you get the answer.

Arithmetic is where the answer is right and everything is nice and you can look out of the window and see the blue sky -- or the answer is wrong and you have to start all over and try again and see how it comes out this time.

If you take a number and double it and double it again and then double it a few more times, the number gets bigger and bigger and goes higher and higher and only arithmetic can tell you what the number is when you decide to quit doubling.

Arithmetic is where you have to multiply -- and you carry the multiplication table in your head and hope you won't lose it.

If you have two animal crackers, one good and one bad, and you eat one and a striped zebra with streaks all over him eats the other, how many animal crackers will you have if somebody offers you five six seven and you say No no no and you say Nay nay nay and you say Nix nix nix?

If you ask your mother for one fried egg for breakfast and she gives you two fried eggs and you eat both of them, who is better in arithmetic, you or your mother?

--Carl Sandburg

01/04/08: The video link no longer works. Regrets.

Toast: a short story

ABCGirl, here is your story about toast. I had written it a week or two ago (I've lost track), but put it aside because it seemed a bit more melancholy than my usual stories. Bede said, "Post it anyway." While this bit is technically a Pertwee family story, it touches upon a part of the family not mentioned before: the two older children Mrs. Pertwee had with her deceased first husband, Mr. Linden.

Toast

“I’ve asked Tamar and Zev to come home for the week-end,” Mrs. Pertwee said as she polished a gold-plated dish with the hem of her dress.

Mr. Pertwee sighed. “They don’t like it here,” he said. “Sometimes I don’t think they even like me.”

“That’s not true,” Mrs. Pertwee replied. “It’s just that they’ve always been city children, even when they were little.”

“The last time they were here, they complained about the lack of running water and cooking implements, even the lack of a television,” Mr Pertwee sputtered.

“Tamar is a journalist,” Mrs. Pertwee said. “She cannot fathom how anyone can be so removed from the daily news.”

“I have my Old Country Gazette,” Mr. Pertwee said, shaking the newsprint in front of him.

“How old is that particular periodical?” Mrs. Pertwee asked.

Mr. Pertwee looked at the date and laughed. “I get your point. But still, Tamar criticizes everything, and Zev inevitably follows her lead.”

“Zev just wants to cook for us, and gets frustrated that there is no gas range.”

“The last time he was here, he complained about the toaster! We don’t even have a toaster,” Mr. Pertwee pointed out.

“Precisely,” Mrs. Pertwee said. "We’ve gotten used to the lack of electrical outlets, but Zev doesn’t understand how we can eat on a daily basis what he calls ‘raw toast.'"

Mr. Pertwee sniffed. “When they come to visit, your children must learn to forage as we country people do,” he said. “Really, who needs fresh toast when there are scads of Weetabix boxes and Marmite jars for the finding?”

“Don’t forget zwieback,” Mrs. Pertwee said, proffering a newly opened box. Mr. Pertwee took a piece of zwieback out of the box and nibbled on it. He made a face.

“I do miss the scent of buttered toast in our home,” Mr. Pertwee finally admitted. “Whenever I smell buttered toast, I think of a warm, safe place.”

“In the country, buttered toast is hard to come by,” Mrs. Pertwee said.

Beyond Goodnight Moon: Book Recommendations

Lucia is going through some adjustment to her new "big girl bed," hence Bede and I have become bleery-eyed parents once again. If I had a rainbow canopy over my bed, I'd have nothing about which to complain, but since I don't, I have one complaint: parents don't get enough sleep. If we unionize, maybe we can improve our conditions. You do want higher wages, more backrubs and sanctioned coffee breaks, don't you?

In the meantime, here is a small annotated list of recommended books for your Young Toddler. The "YTs" are officially 12-24 months old, but the guidelines are fluid (unless you're trying to enroll your child for a storytime program.) Most of these books are available in board book format. I choose books that have plot. Even books with one word per page should have some sense of story in the pictures.

A, You're Adorable--Buddy Kay, ill by Martha Alexander.
A singable board book of the alphabet. To hear the tune, listen to Sharon, Lois and Bram's "Great Big Hits."

Alphabet Room--Sarah Pinto
On the surface, this is a simple alphabet book with a letter and corresponding object. Lift the flaps for the wordless story that unfolds with each successive letter.

Big Fat Hen--Keith Baker
An old counting rhyme with vibrant illustrations.

Caps for Sale--Esphyr Slobodkina
This story about a cap-selling peddler and the mischievous monkeys provides opportunity for a lot of imitation. For short attention spans, don't spend too much time on the beginning, but get to where the peddler wakes from his nap! As your child learns to anticipate the monkeys, you can read more of the story successfully.

Cat's Pajamas--Thacher Hurd. *
Jazzy cats are wild and woolly until police-dogs with bullhorns send the kitties to bed.

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom/ Chicka Chicka ABC (board book)--Bill Martin, Jr., ill by Lois Ehlert
Practice the rhythm-- it's worth it! People have various interpretations of the rhythm too, which is fun.

Daisy Says, "Here We Go 'Round the Mulberry Bush"-- Jane Simmons.
Daisy the duck is sweet without being cloying. The companion book, Daisy Says, "If You're Happy and You Know It" is good, too.

Dinosaur Roar!--Paul Stickland, Henrietta Stickland
Six million years later, dinosaurs still rule.

Everywhere Babies--Susan Meyers, Marla Frazee
Babies from all different kinds of families are swaddled, rocked, walked, and loved. I like books that show tired parents.

First Book of Sushi--Amy Wilson Sanger
"Miso in my sippy cup/tofu in my bowl/Crab and avocado fill my California roll."

Give Me Grace: A Child's Daybook of Prayers--Cynthia Rylant
Non-denominational, thoughtful prayers that encourage kindness.

Goodnight, Gorilla--Peggy Rathmann
Keep an eye out for gorillas-- they're sneaky! Perhaps this is a story in disguise about the perils of taking all of one's stuffed animals to bed.

Hush: a Thai Lullaby-- Minfong Ho
As a mother sings to her baby, she asks animals such as a lizard, monkey, and water-buffalo to be quiet and not disturb her sleeping child. This is a long book for toddlers, so a few animals at a time will suffice.

Little Gorilla--Ruth Bornstein
Everyone in the forest loves little gorilla, but what happens when he gets big? The answer is joyful and reassuring.

Max's Ride/ Max's Breakfast/ Max's First Word/ Max's Bath etc.-- Rosemary Wells
Beginning board books with plot: bossy older sister Ruby tries to show Max the ropes, but Max ends up teaching her a few things.

Moo, Baa, La La La-- Sandra Boynton.
Three singing pigs say la la la! A silly noise book.

Over in the Meadow--ill by Ezra Jack Keats.
There are many versions of this song, but the one illustrated by Keats is my favorite, perhaps because of the “soft, shady glen” at the end.

Peek-A-Who?--Nina Laden
Who's peeking through the circle? The last page has a mirror.
Also good: Grow Up! and Ready, Set, Go!

Ten, Nine, Eight--Molly Bang
From 10 small toes to 1 big girl all ready for bed, this is a comforting counting book.

Teeny, Tiny Baby--Amy Schwartz
"I am a teeny tiny baby, and I know how to get anything I want," narrates the main character. I confess that this recommendation is really for the grownups, though older toddlers get a kick out of it.

What Shall We Do With the Boo Hoo Baby?--Cressida Cowell
The cow, the cat, the dog and the duck have good ideas, but in the end, there’s just one thing to do...

Put the baby to bed!

*P. S. A truly fun, subversive tale for your older toddlers: Thatcher Hurd's Mama Don't Allow. Lucia enjoys the story of Miles the badger and his Swamp Band having to find an outlet for their loud, raucous music at the Alligator Ball. (Of course, singing, "Mama don't allow no music playing 'round here," holds a certain irony in this household.)

reckless, role, local, forgot, missing

I found this blurb in a notebook of mine, written sometime around September 2000. The words I had to use were: reckless, role, local, forgot, missing.
***

The sign pasted on the outside window of the coffee-shop in Clareston said, "Cat missing since Thursday, October 21." The Scotch-tape had yellowed and the paper around the edges had the soft-vellum look of old manuscripts, but the picture of the tortoise-shell cat was still distinct. I don’t think anybody forgot to take down the sign. It had its own role and had become as much a part of the coffee-shop as the stacking doll set by the cash register and the green velour couch next to the KISS pinball machine. The pinball machine was still busted. The coffee-shop owner had once offered 50 bucks to anyone who could fix it. My classmates in the city would have snickered if I had invited them here. I wouldn’t ever invite any of them here. In fact, there was only one reason I was here: Ezekiel Wannamaker. In high school, Zeke was the town trouble-maker. He was also my best friend.

Zeke had asked me to come. He said it was important, so I was here. As I walked up to the pinball machine to twirl the knobs, a Bessie Smith song crackled over the half-blown-out speakers:

My mama says I'm reckless,
my daddy says I'm wild.
I ain't good lookin'
but I'm somebody's angel child.

Then, Zeke Wannamaker strode into the coffee-shop. His hands were bare of the heavy silver rings he used to wear on every finger, but he still had his carved wooden turtle hanging on a leather string around his neck. “Hey, bella,” he said, swinging his arms around my shoulders. "When did you dye your hair purple?"
***

Tell me what happened next. Email me a paragraph or two. Every contributor receives proper acknowledgement including a heroic couplet written in his or her honor.

Toast talks, garlic sings

Dear ABCGirl,

When you gave me the word "toast" for a story suggestion, I thought I would have no end of ideas. The scent of my Indiana grandparents' house was that of hot, buttered-toast, and while it's a common enough scent, it rarely fails to make my eyes sting with longing and yearning (or as the Germans say, "Sehnsucht.") When Bede first called me from Seattle while I was living in New York, I wrote in my journal that his voice reminded me of buttered-toast. Why? This passage from Kenneth Grahame's A Wind in the Willows might reveal a clue:

"When the girl returned, some hours later, she carried a tray, with a cup of fragrant tea steaming on it; and a plate piled up with very hot buttered toast, cut thick, very brown on both sides, with the butter running through the holes in it in great golden drops, like honey from the honeycomb. The smell of that buttered toast simply talked to Toad, and with no uncertain voice; talked of warm kitchens, of breakfasts on bright frosty mornings, of cosy parlour firesides on winter evenings, when one's ramble was over and slippered feet were propped on the fender, of the purring of contented cats, and the twitter of sleepy canaries."

It is this passage about toast that superimposes itself upon my story-drafts. While Nigel Molesworth scoffs at The Wind in the Willows, I'm inclined to think he never read beyond the langorous pastoral settings to discover the food descriptions. In the chapter where the Water Rat meets a Sea-Faring Rat, and brings out a picnic lunch,

"[The Water Rat] packed a simple meal, in which, remembering the stranger's origin and preferences, he took care to include a yard of long French bread, a sausage out of which the garlic sang, some cheese which lay down and cried, and a long-necked straw-covered flask wherein lay bottled sunshine shed and garnered on far Southern slopes. Thus laden, he returned with all speed, and blushed for pleasure at the old seaman's commendations of his taste and judgment, as together they unpacked the basket and laid out the contents on the grass by the roadside."

On second thought, perhaps I understand why Nigel Molesworth couldn't stand The Wind in the Willows. How could he torture himself by reading about scrumptious picnic lunches when he had to face the dining hall of St. Custards?

P.S. I happened across an article about a toaster that reveals the weather forcast. This item is more in line with Bede's blog than here, as it enters the realm of things "stranger than (science) fiction."

The Curse of St. Custards

"Pythagoras puzzled by one of my theorems"
--Ronald Searle's Nigel Molesworth

I've learned a lot from Nigel Molesworth, a.k.a. The Curse of St. Custards, a.k.a. The Goriller of 3B. While sometimes it is tempting to write like Nigel, those attempts are best confined to the presence of other fans gathered within a small, secluded picnic spot out in the country. However, there are some notable exceptions.* As a review of the reissued compilation of the Molesworth notebooks points out:

"As far as I can see, what takes Molesworth beyond the merely funny for his fans - the kind of people who, according to Hensher, 'ruin' dinner parties for the 'non-Molesworthphile' guests by saying things to each other like 'nearer and nearer crept the ghastly THING' or 'the prunes are revolting'; the same sort of people, I imagine, as those who describe Gary Larson cartoons or perform one of Eddie Izzard's routines when they want to be funny - is nostalgia. And the books are not just a sunny reminder of blissful childhood days spent climbing trees to smoke clandestine cigarettes during Miss Pringle's botany walks: more pungently, reading Molesworth now is evocative of reading it as a child."

Too true. I don't remember when I discovered Molesworth, but I've always thought him hilarious. (By the way, my parents had a cat named after Nigel Molesworth, and the namesake fully lived up to his precessor in cheekiness and mischief.) My brother, Ulric, fails to see what I find so funny. Perhaps if he had read a copy of Down With Skool! early on, he would have discovered some of these pithy observations from Nigel's schoolbook:

Geometry: "To do geom you hav to make a lot of things equal to each other when you can see perfectly well that they don't."

Literature: "Peotry is sissy stuff that rhymes. Weedy people say la and fie and swoon when they see a bunch of daffodils."

Botany:"Boo to birds beasts crows trees grass flowers also cristopfer robin and wind in the wilows. Charge at the tinies and mow them down."

History: "History started badly and hav been getting steadily worse."


Update: You can download the BBC radio program "Down With Skool." Rupert Grint is Nigel Molesworth.

*Notable Exceptions to the rule that one should not inflict Molesworth tributes upon the general populace:

An essay on Science Fickshun and Fantasy January 6, 2011: This is why I resent the internet sometimes. A book may be hard to find, but these days it often doesn't just disappear (unless we're talking about my bookshelves).

Ho for Hoggwarts!
("Google's #2 hit for poo gosh since 2002." )