Stellaluna

Charlie is still into his bike and coloring books, but I'm pleased to report that he is finally showing interest in books again. But after a two-month break from most reading, it took me quite a while to figure out what kinds of books he would enjoy and appreciate. His capacity for understanding plot has increased dramatically, and he now loses interest in stories with simple plots or no plot at all. But at the same time, he still needs pictures to hold his attention, so books with very long text passages and few or small pictures, such as the original Winnie the Pooh stories, were not working, either. It can be quite difficult to find something with just the right balance of text and pictures.


Stellaluna is one of the first books I've found that fits the bill perfectly. I bought this at least a year ago, because it is always featured prominently at bookstores. But back then, it was much too wordy for Charlie and he couldn't pay attention through the whole thing. Now, at age three years and three months, it's just perfect.

Stellaluna is a story of a baby fruit bat who is separated from her mother and taken in by a mother bird with three baby birds. She starts to behave like a bird even though it is very difficult for her to do things like eating bugs, standing upright instead of upside-down, and sleeping during the night. Eventually she finds a flock of bats again and learns that she is one of them ... but her bird step-siblings are not! The moral is that even though we are different from each other, we can still be good friends.

The illustrations are also gorgeous. They are very realistic and detailed paintings. Many are in drab colors--white, brown, grey--with just a splash of vibrant color on the page. Others show the brilliant blues of daytime and nighttime skies. Somehow, the emotions shine through on highly realistic bat and bird faces.

There is a second, hidden story in this book, told entirely through small line drawings at the top of each page. The text and main illustrations tell the story of Stellaluna, the baby bat. But the line drawings tell the story of the mother bat after she is separated from Stellaluna. An owl chases her into a cave, but after she escapes she searches and searches for Stellaluna until finally they are reunited and the mother takes her place back in the main story. It's very clever and helps the child understand that there can be several perspectives on the same story, or several things happening at the same time.

This book is not one of my all-time favorites, but Charlie does love it and it has filled a very empty niche for us at the moment.

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.

Green Eggs and Ham

Dr. Seuss books are most commonly marketed to beginning readers in kindergarten and first grade. But some of them are excellent for barely-verbal young toddlers as well. Charlie fell in love with Green Eggs and Ham when he was about 15 months old, and it was a constant favorite in our house until he turned two.

Most people know this story already, but here's a brief recap for anyone who, like me, did not actually read this book as a child (I think my mother disliked it because ham is unkosher). Sam asks his nameless Friend if he'd like some green eggs and ham. Friend says that he does not like green eggs and ham. Sam then asks Friend if he would eat green eggs and ham in various exciting situations (in a house? with a mouse? in the rain? on a train?), but Friend repeatedly insists that he will not eat them anywhere. Finally, after much harassment, Friend agrees to take a bite if Sam will finally leave him alone. Lo and behold, Friend turns out to really like green eggs and ham.

The story is written as a cumulative poem, introducing concepts of repetition and rhyme. The incidental words change (for example, "I do not like them in a box" changes a few pages later to "I would not, could not in a box") but the major subjects appear every time in the same order as new situations are added. The easy rhymes allow a child to think of the correct word to fill in the blank at a very young age.

The simple story is also easy to follow from a very young age. This was the first book that Charlie ever tried to read to me. He must have been about 18 months old, and his rendition went something like this: "Green eggs and ham? No! In car? No! In boat? No! On train? No! All gone!" It was completely adorable.

A friend reminded me yesterday that many Dr. Seuss books have made-up nonsense words throughout. This can be problematic for babies and toddlers who are still trying to acquire a basic vocabulary. Montessori advocates talking to even very young children in ordinary English, without baby talk or nonsense words. Fortunately, Green Eggs and Ham doesn't have any nonsense words. It's composed entirely of short, simple, real words.

This is a classic that served us well for many months. It's back on the storage shelf now, but I plan to bring it out again during the early reading stage if not sooner.

For a hilarious coda, here is Jesse Jackson performing a dramatic reading of this book on Saturday Night Live.

A Chair for My Mother

A Chair for My Mother is a wonderful story about the importance of work, savings, and family. I remember this book from when I was a child, and it was featured on Reading Rainbow, but judging by the number of Amazon reviews, it's not too widely known. If this is your first introduction to it, you are in for a real treat.

The book is narrated by a young girl who lives with her mother and grandmother. About a year ago, their house burned down. Everyone was safe (even the cat!), but all of their possessions were completely destroyed. The mother works as a waitress, so the family doesn't have very much money. They move into a new apartment, and their extended family and neighbors all pitch in to donate furniture and other necessary items. But there is not a big, comfy chair for them to relax in. So the mother brings home a huge glass jar from the restaurant, and they save up their coins until they have enough to buy the perfect chair.

The story is told somewhat out of order, beginning with working at the diner, moving through how they save up the coins, taking a flashback to tell the reader about the fire and moving into the new apartment, then culminating with filling up the jar, shopping for a new chair, and bringing it home to enjoy. This structure adds a lot of interest compared to the straightforward narrative arc of most picture books. It means the story is a bit more complex to follow, but I don't think Charlie had much trouble grasping that we were moving back and forward in time.

This is an incredibly useful book for introducing children to two major economic concepts: the importance of work for earning money, and saving and spending.

Work enters the book on page one. The opening line is about work ("My mother works as a  waitress in the Blue Tile Diner."), and by the end of the first paragraph, the little girl has a job, too. She visits her mother at the diner after school, and the owner pays her to do small tasks like refilling ketchup bottles. The girl clearly takes pride in her work and in her ability to earn money to spend herself and to contribute to her family's finances.

Work is fulfilling and necessary, but it's also exhausting. When mama comes home from work, "[s]ometimes she's so tired she falls asleep while I count the money out into piles." And making ends meet is not easy. When there are not many tips, mama "looks worried." Grandma apparently does not work, but she's responsible for the shopping in the family, and is always looking for "a good bargain on tomatoes or bananas or something she buys." Life is not all just candy and roses in this book. I really like the way the budgeting issues are presented. They are clearly there, but the book doesn't beat you over the head with them. This is a family that is not exactly struggling to make ends meet, but that has to stick to a pretty strict budget. They're not lacking for food or clothing or other necessities of life, but they've suffered a setback and they don't have much extra to go around. Nobody whines and cries over not being able to have the newest shiny toy, but working, earning money, and saving are central to this family's life.

The family has a clear savings plan for this concrete goal of buying a comfortable chair. The little girl always puts half of her earnings into the jar. Mama puts all the change from tips into the jar, presumably because her salary goes to providing necessities. And grandma puts the savings from her shopping trip into the jar as well. Charlie is too young yet to understand the value of money (he likes to use a shiny coin to buy pretend train tickets, but that's about it). For an older kid, this would be a great illustration of not only budgeting and saving, but also setting goals, making plans to achieve them, and  following through.

When the jar is full, nobody can quite believe it. They set out, first for the bank to change the coins into bills, and then out to the stores to shop for a chair. Having saved up for an entire year to buy this chair, they will not settle for anything but the best. They search and search until they find the perfect chair that they all love. The achievement of this goal is something to celebrate, so they take a picture of the three of them sitting together in the chair. Most importantly, they chose a goal that was truly a value to all of them. The last page of the book explains how the chair materially enhances their lives: "Now Grandma sits in it and talks with people going by in the daytime. Mama sits down and watches the news on TV when she comes home from her job. After supper, I sit with her and she can reach right up and turn out the light if I fall asleep in her lap." This is not a whim or a waste of money. This is a real value they have worked hard to add to their lives and will appreciate for a long time.

The portion of the book dealing with the fire and its aftermath is also rich with values. First, the family has its priorities straight: check to make sure that all the people are safe, and then the cat. There's no mourning for the lost physical possessions here, interestingly. Instead, there's a sadness that the rooms of their new apartment are empty. The book doesn't say so explicitly, but it seems to convey the idea that physical things are just things. They're replaceable. We might miss them, but generally we can get new ones. "[W]e're young and can start all over," as the grandmother puts it.

This family is struggling financially, though, and not able to buy everything new all at once. Fortunately, they live in a loving community made up not only of extended family, but also friendly and generous neighbors. When they move in to the new place, their friends and family bring everything from furniture to dishes to toys to curtains to pizza. This outpouring of benevolence is especially touching because it is unforced. The people in the community are reaching out because they care about their neighbors and are able to help.

The illustrations are rich with color, but in my opinion, somewhat simplistic. I was surprised to find that this is a Caldecott Honor Book, because the illustrations didn't really do much for me. I think the rich, complex, value-laden story is the true appeal of this book.