A Good Day

Ever since Charlie moved from the toddler classroom to the primary classroom at his Montessori school, he's been telling me every day that he did not have a good day. I know that this is not true. His teachers tell me that he loves the classroom. I've observed through the windows and seen him absorbed in his activities, wandering around the room, and talking with the other kids. When I pick him up from the playground in the afternoon, he is almost always having a great time. And yet he keeps telling me, for a month now, that he's had a bad day.

I've been dealing with this situation on several fronts, but the aspect I want to talk about today is the concept that even though some bad things happen, or you have some sad feelings, you can still have a good day after all. I think that Charlie misses his old teachers and friends from the toddler classroom, and even though he has a great time in primary, that sad feeling (or a couple of bad incidents like falling on the playground) is turning the entire day bad in his memory.

A Good Day has been an excellent book to help with this problem. This is a very, very simple book. The first page states, without illustration, "It was a bad day. . . ." The next four pages introduce us to four different animals. Each animal has had something bad happen that day. The bird lost a tail feather. The dog got his leash tangled in the fence. The fox couldn't find his mom. The squirrel dropped her nut into a creek. "But then . . ." four more pages, each with a good thing happening that gets the animal out of its bad situation. On the last two pages, a little girl is introduced. She find the bird's tail feather and puts it in her hair, exclaiming to her mother, "What a good day!"

I used this book to introduce the idea to Charlie that bad things and good things can happen in the same day, and that even though some bad things happen in your day, it can still be a good day. I think he's catching on. From the moment I brought the book home, he was very interested in it. He's concerned for the animals as the bad things happen to them, and then he's happy together with them and the girl as good things happen. After we read the book, I usually ask him whether he can think of a bad thing and a good thing that happened in his day. He usually can't, but at least he's started being more talkative about what he's done. When he tells me things that happened, I try to point out the good things and remind him that they were good and/or fun.

The illustrations in this book are quite nice. They're done simply, but with bright and vivid colors. You can definitely see the expressions of sadness and worry in the animals' faces in the first half, and their joy in the second half.

Despite, or perhaps because of, the simplicity of this book, I've found it to be a great parenting tool for this problem that we've been having.

Caps for Sale

Caps for Sale is an awesome book. If you don't own it already, you need to go buy a copy right now. I'll wait here until you get back. Okay, okay, you can read the review first if you really have to. But trust me, this is a great one. I loved it as a child, Charlie loves it now, and I still love it as an adult.

The story of this book is very simple. A peddler sells caps, walking around town with all the caps stacked on top of his head in a huge tower. One day, nobody wants to buy any caps, so he goes for a walk in the countryside and falls asleep under a tree. When he wakes up, he finds that all the caps are missing, except for his own cap. Looking around, he finds that a group of monkeys have taken his caps and escaped up a tree. How will he get them back?

This book has some serious staying power. Charlie is as obsessed with the book at almost-three years old as he was at 18 months. The story is cleverly told, but with lots of repetitive phrases to draw in young children. For example, whenever the book mentions his caps, it talks about "[the peddler's] own checked cap, then a bunch of gray caps, then a bunch of brown caps, then a bunch of blue caps, and on the very top, a bunch of red caps." There are plenty of opportunities to count the caps and point out their colors.

The best part of the book is the story of how the peddler tries to get his caps back from the monkeys. The illustrations are great -- the peddler in his suit and cap standing at the base of the tree, looking up, and the monkeys hanging from the branches, each wearing one of his caps. The peddler is a little bit angry, but he's pretty sure he can work things out with a simple appeal.

"You monkeys, you," he said, shaking a finger at them, "you give me back my caps."
But the monkeys only shook their fingers back at him and said, "Tsz, tsz, tsz."

This made the peddler angry, so he shook both hands at them and said, "You monkeys, you! You give me back my caps."
But the monkeys only shook both their hands back at him and said, "Tsz, tsz, tsz."

A few pages later, the peddler is so angry that he's essentially having a temper tantrum, stomping his feet and waving his fists and shouting at the monkeys up in the tree. And the monkeys are still playing their game, imitating everything he does. And then the peddler gives up.

At last he became so angry that he pulled off his own cap, threw it on the ground, and began to walk away.

The monkeys have been copying everything he does up to now, and surprise, surprise, they copy this action, too. They throw the caps to the ground and leave the peddler alone.

So the peddler picked up his caps and put them back on his head--first his own checked cap, then the gray caps, then the brown caps, then the blue caps, then the red caps on the very top.

And slowly, slowly, he walked back to town calling, "Caps! Caps for sale! Fifty cents a cap!"

I absolutely love the way they show the peddler's temper tantrum progressing bit by bit as he gets angrier. And particularly, how all of his yelling and screaming and shouting doesn't work at all. It's a great lesson for kids (and grownups!) about how not to convince someone to do what you want.

The other thing I really love about this story is the way the mood progresses in a cycle. It's very calm at the beginning, and then it builds up the huge emotional temper tantrum in the middle, and then once the peddler gets his caps back, it returns to the same calm and peaceful tone of the beginning. I've been looking for books to help Charlie deal with his emotions, and I think Caps for Sale gives an excellent model of how to calm back down and accept the good after an emotional outburst.

A note on versions and ages: I bought the board book version of Caps for Sale when Charlie was about 18 months old. He loved it and wanted to read it every day. Unfortunately, we lost the book while we were on vacation a few months later. Eventually I got around to buying a new one, and since Charlie was two and a half by that time, I went for the paperback instead of the board book. It turns out that the board book leaves out some interesting details of the story, but nothing crucial. I would recommend going straight for the paperback. You can buy the paperback alone, or for just an extra two dollars, you can get it packaged together with a CD that narrates the story and adds some songs. In my opinion, the songs are just so-so, but Charlie loves listening to it in the car. This is the first book-CD package I've tried, but I will certainly be doing some more in the future.

Caps for Sale gets my absolute highest recommendation. It's a wonderful story, well-written, with great lessons, and has excellent power to hold a child's interest.

This Is the Rain

We've been on something of a kick with cumulative poems lately, with some I've reviewed before and another one that I'm planning to review soon. Today's cumulative poem is This Is the Rain. I was a bit nervous when I picked it up at the library right as we were running to check out, because I thought it might be full of environmentalist nonsense. But in fact it's not, and it turned out to be a solid choice.

The book is about the water cycle, and with each verse of the poem it introduces a new phase of the cycle. It begins, "This is the ocean, blue and vast, that holds the rainwater from the past." Next it introduces sunshine, then water vapor, then clouds. Finally we see actual rain, and then the land that absorbs the water, and the puddles that form after a storm. On the last page, we see running water, creeks and rivers that flow back into the sea. It's a very effective introduction that touches all parts of the water cycle in a catchy poem without cumbersome scientific explanation that would be too much for a toddler.

The illustrations are not really my style, but some people might like them. It's that sort of modern style that I sometimes describe as "throw a lot of relevant things onto the page in random places." So, the night sky is full of ... starfish, and the seahorses stick their noses out of the water. Oh yeah, and there's a random apatosaurus at the bottom of the ocean. Whatever. The colors are quite vivid, however, and all of the items are real if their placement leaves something to be desired.

In sum, this is a nice one to read a few times, but I wouldn't have purchased it.

Birds

I am thoroughly impressed with Birds, a book I picked up at a garage sale last weekend. Have I mentioned how much I love garage sales? Anyway, Birds veers wildly back and forth from straightforward to whimsical, somehow managing to tie the two into a lovely package.

One page points out all the different colors birds can be. Another remarks on their variety of sizes. And another imagines (and illustrates!) what the sky would look like if birds made marks with their tail feathers when they flew through the air. Vibrant colors woosh through the sky. Brilliant!

Other pages are told from a child's first person perspective. One two-page spread is illustrated with seven birds sitting on a telephone wire, copied three times, with the birds in exactly the same positions from picture to picture. "Once I saw seven birds on the telephone wire. They didn't move and they didn't move and they didn't move." I looked away for just a second . . . " (page turn) "and they were gone." A thick black telephone wire slices through the otherwise empty page.

Charlie cannot read this book just once. He's asked for it many times since I brought it home, and each time he has to read it at least twice in a row, sometimes more. He loves to point out all the colors of the birds and says some of the surprising punch lines along with me. This is a real gem!