Tree of Birds

Another great book we've found for this in-between phase is Tree of Birds. Once again, this is out of print, but Amazon has a few reasonably-priced used copies available. I picked this up at a garage sale or something about a year ago, but Charlie wasn't ready for it until now.

This is a delightful story, and one that I like much better than the sappy-sweet Stellaluna. A boy named Harry finds an injured bird and takes her home to nurse her back to health, and names her, amusingly, Sally. But once Sally is all better, Harry still wants to keep her. It's getting cold out, and normally she would fly south for the winter, but he keeps her locked up indoors so she won't leave him. But there are a couple of problems. First, Sally is very lonely, gazing longingly out the window all day. But even more disturbing is that her flock refuses to fly south without her. Instead, they follow Harry around, staying in a tree outside his bedroom window, flying behind him to and from school, and even waiting for him outside the schoolroom window all day.


Harry is very concerned, because it's starting to get cold out and the birds will die if they don't fly south for the winter. He tries to convince them to go away, telling them that he is taking very good care of Sally, but he cannot convince them. Finally, it begins to snow. Harry and Sally stare out the widow, distraught. Harry finally makes the difficult decision to open the window, even though he will miss Sally very much. But in a surprise twist, Sally doesn't leave -- the other birds fly into his house instead!

I love this book because of the concern Harry shows for Sally the whole way through. His emotions are very real. So are those of the birds, who do not talk but express their feelings through very well-drawn facial expressions. I also love how Harry makes his own decisions and takes care of his own problems. His mother shows up here and there with help and advice, but Harry is definitely thinking and acting for himself. This one is highly recommended!

The Alphabet from A to Y with Bonus Letter Z

I desperately wanted to like The Alphabet from A to Y With Bonus Letter Z!. Partially because it's co-written by Steve Martin (yes! the actor!), partially because the title is so fun and hilarious, and partly because the inside cover has a series of great cartoons in which non-English letters like ash, thorn, and a-circumflex complain about not being included in the book. Tragically, however, the book is terrible as an alphabet book.

Legible Capital and Lowercase: F.  Each page features a very large capital letter. There is no lowercase version featured. This would be fine, except that they use a highly embellished font for the large letters, so some of them are completely unrecognizable to a child just learning the alphabet. You can see what I mean by going to Amazon's look-inside feature and scrolling down to the A page. The A has a long flag flying off to the left from the top, and the left leg of it curls into a spiral. I pointed to it and asked Charlie what letter it was, and he said, "I don't know that one." FAIL. A few of the letters are normal-looking, but with this font, Charlie had trouble identifying A, E, F, G (honestly, I had a little trouble with this one!), M, N, Q, U, and W (this one, too! it looks like an X with wings!).

Filler Words: D. There are a lot of them, and the authors seem to be intentionally putting confusing sounds together. More on this under the Cheat Words section, because in this case, they kind of go together.

Cheat Words: D. This book goes out of its way to play with unusual starting sounds. That can be fun for grown-ups, but it's just plain confusing for children. The N page, for example, is an extended play on words that start with "kn." It reads, "Needle-nosed Nigel won nine kinds of knockwurst / By winning a contest to see who could knock worst." The W page uses "weally" instead of "really" to be cute, but try reading that to a child who has trouble saying the difference. The X page not only puts X's in the middle of words, but also intersperses them with ct and ck making the same sound: "Ambidextrous Alex was actually axed / For waxing, then faxing, his boss's new slacks." They also sometimes, randomly, use foreign words.

Understandable Words: C. This book is probably written for an older audience. It has a lot of gross-out jokes going on, and the vocabulary can be pretty abstract and/or obscure at times. Words include clingy, clueless, dapper, derby, frijoles, gravlax, heaven, and hunchbacks.

Sounding Out: B. The sentences have a mix of long and short words, some phonetic and some not. If you're intent on sounding something out, you'll find opportunities for it here.

Hidden Pictures: A. This is one area where the book shines. Each letter has a full-page illustration filled with things that start with the letter. The A page, for example, shows a scene of three women eating sandwiches in a living room. Checking out all the details in the picture, you can find aces (from a deck of cards), aardvark, angel, acorn, a tube of "Acne Away," alligator, abacus, apple, axe, and books labeled "Art of Antarctica," "All About Algebra," "Asparagus Acres," "Aaron's Appendicitis Almanac," and more.

Illustrations: B+. The pictures are cartoon style and kind of ugly, but full of the rich detail described above. They also show the characters and activities listed in the sentence for each letter.

Theme: (none).

Wow. Overall, this is one of the worst reviews I've ever written. The book does have a couple of redeeming features, mostly the illustrations. Some of its humor is good, but other jokes are very potty-oriented and gross-out, so I wouldn't recommend reading it just for the adult humor value. But the main problem here is that this is not a book designed to teach the alphabet to kids. It certainly does not accomplish that very well at all.

Cat Up a Tree

We found Cat Up a Tree at the library this week, and I like it so much I might buy a copy. Charlie and I have both enjoyed it very much.

At the beginning of the book, an old woman notices a cat stuck in the tree outside her window. Naturally, she calls the fire department to help. But they won't help. "Sorry, we do not catch cats up a tree anymore. Call back if that cat starts playing with matches."

By this time, there are five cats stuck in the tree, so the old woman tries calling the police station. They won't help either. More cats show up. She calls the zoo. They don't catch cats. And so on, and so on, and so on.

This is a fantastic book for a number of reasons. It teaches about different institutions and what services they provide. The old woman calls the fire department, the police, the pet store, the zoo, the post office, the library, and city hall. Each of them says they don't rescue cats up a tree, but mentions something about the job they actually do. Notably, most (but not all!) of these institutions are governmental. If it weren't for the inclusion of the pet store, one could make a nice little lesson about government services versus the free market here. Still, it does provide an opportunity to talk about all of these institutions that are set up for specific helpful purposes, but not for anything you might want them to do for you. And it's quite funny, too, particularly when city hall offers to put up a sign that says "Danger! Look up for Falling Cats."

The book also provides some fun counting practice, and in particular, counting by fives. It starts with one cat, then five, and then adds five more on each page, up to forty. This is quite a lot, compared to most counting books that only go up to ten or twelve. And since they're scattered all over the page, it's a challenge to keep track of which cats you've counted already.

So, what happens in the end? Are the poor cats stuck up the tree forever? Fortunately, no. The old woman gets so frustrated that she throws her phone out the window. But she doesn't unplug it from the wall first! The cats walk across the phone cord into her apartment, safe and sound. Good thing it wasn't a cell phone!

There's a nice little coda at the end, too. The old woman gets a call from city hall (presumably after reeling her phone back in to the house). There are mice everywhere, all over town! Can she help? "Sorry," she tells them. "The cats do not catch mice anymore. Call back if you wish to hear cats purr." I was so pleased that she didn't get altruistic in the end, but refused to help the people who had refused to help her. You might look at this as a sort of modern re-telling of The Little Red Hen, the classic fable in which nobody helps the hen with her planting and harvesting of wheat or baking of bread, so she refuses to share the bread with them in the end. This is a little different, because the old woman didn't actually do any work to rescue the cats herself, but just happened to rescue them by chance. Still, the principle is pretty similar.

We've had tons of fun with this book. It was a great find.

Have You Seen My Potty?

Yes, yes, I know. Bear with me.

Despite the gross subject matter, Have You Seen My Potty? is a really great book. I was skeptical at first. But this story is actually humorous, and kids of potty-training age will be riveted, just as they are with all things poop. Best of all, no actual poop appears in this book!

"This is the story of Suzy Sue," the book announces on page one, "who had something very important to do." Suzy Sue appears in the illustration, smiling and proudly holding up her bright red potty chair. Unfortunately, just as she's sitting down to use it, a cow grabs it out from under her and she lands smack on her bottom on the ground.

"What a terrible thing. What an awful to-do. Who would play such a trick on poor Suzy Sue?" A good question, indeed. Why would "a rascal quite ruthless and rotten . . . steal someone's potty from under their bottom!" (At this point, Charlie always interjects, "Suzy Sue fall down! Oh no! Why she fall down?")

Meanwhile, on the other side of the barnyard, the cow, sheep, goat, horse, and several chickens are gathered around to examine the "poo pot" the cow has found just "lying around on the ground." The animals all line up to give it a try while Suzy Sue, stuffed rabbit in tow, searches the farm for her potty.

In a series of clever twists, Suzy Sue asks each of the animals if they've seen her potty, while that animal is actually using the potty. But the potty is hidden from her view each time--by a newspaper, a clump of grass, a scarf being knitted, or just around the corner. A failure of communication arises because Suzy Sue calls the object a potty while the animals are calling it a poo-pot. As the horse puts it, "Of course he'd not seen her potty. He knew this because he had no idea what a potty was!"

Suzy Sue eventually gives up, and since she really really really has to go, she decides to do it au naturale behind a plant. (This, by the way, is the most hilarious thing ever to a two-year-old. "No, Suzy Sue! We not poop in the grass!") Fortunately, the animals realize what she's about to do and provide the poo-pot for her use at the last minute. Whew! So, "That was the story of Suzy Sue, who had something very important to do."

The text is almost laugh-out-loud funny for grown-ups, and the illustrations are great, too. I love all the ways the potty is hidden from Suzy Sue's view, and also the numerous hold-it-in poses of the animals waiting in line for their turn.

My only real complaint with this book is that the story is hard to follow at Charlie's age. It depends on understanding that the animals (and the reader) can see something that Suzie Sue can't, which I believe is a concept developed more around the age of three and a half or four. The text goes back and forth from Suzy Sue's perspective to the animals' perspective, and I'm certain that Charlie isn't following it entirely. This doesn't seem to bother him in the least, however, since he asks for it every time we go to the bathroom and can nearly recite the entire text from memory. It's a huge hit in our household, and I definitely like that it stresses the importance of getting to the bathroom and not just the how-to aspect of using the potty like most other potty training books cover. Highly recommended!