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!

Phases

I haven't updated this blog in ages, but it's not dead. The reason is that Charlie has been going through a phase where he is so focused on other things that he has very little time for books. This has not slowed down my children's book addiction at all, unfortunately. I keep buying more and more books, and Charlie just ignores them.

What is he doing? He's very interested in two things: coloring with markers and riding his balance bike. We've been taking bike rides around the block almost every afternoon after school, and he is really getting the hang of pushing off with his feet and gliding. It's amazing to watch, and I'm starting to teach him how to ride safely around cars, too.

Coloring is largely a before-bedtime activity, but he also brings it out at other times of day. He will sometimes color quietly, by himself, for up to an hour. He has dry erase markers and a couple of laminated activity books which he loves, but also a bunch of regular coloring books. He doesn't do the activities in the books. He just colors in all the pictures. His ability to control the markers has dramatically improved.

So, with all this important focused activity going on, he has been too busy to read much. I stressed about it a little bit at first, but when I saw how much attention he was giving to these other two activities, I decided to just relax and let the phase play itself out. It's not that he dislikes books, it's that he's busy learning other Very Important Things. But I think we're starting to see the light at the end of the bookless tunnel. I hope to have some more reviews up soon.

Alphabet Books

I've been thinking a lot about alphabet books lately as Charlie has learned the name and sound of each letter. There are so many alphabet books on the market, and they range from fantastic to terrible, like all other books. I did a sweep of our bookshelves just now and found 18 different alphabet books, believe it or not. And that's not counting the Russian ones.

Alphabet books have their own factors to consider in addition to the things that I think about when selecting other types of books. In this post, I'm going to discuss the major factors to look for in alphabet books. Then, over the next several days, I'll review some of my favorite (and least-favorite) alphabet books and talk about how they stack up on these factors.

Legible Capital and Lowercase: Ideally, an alphabet book should have a large-print, clearly legible sample of the capital and lowercase letters by themselves. I do think it's okay for any particular book to feature just capitals or just lowercase, but it's better to show both. Overall, make sure your child is exposed to both capitals and lowercase letters. Montessori introduces lowercase letters first, because most of the letters you encounter in everyday reading are lowercase. Good theory, but too limiting in practice with all the awesome books out there that use capitals. I think kids are smart enough to catch on to seeing both at once.

Filler Words: Some alphabet books just showcase one or more individual words for each letter. Others are written in sentences. Both ways are great, but with sentences, you should watch to make sure there aren't too many filler words that start with different letters to complete the sentence. Even more important, you should check that the filler words are not made especially confusing by starting with words that look or sound similar (M on the N page, D on the B page, F on the V page).

Cheat Words: There are three types of words that I consider cheating in an alphabet book. The first type are simply made-up words -- things that have the right sounds but are not real words (e.g. Zeep). The second type are words that have the featured letter in them but don't start with that letter (e.g. fox to illustrate X). The third type are words that do start with the letter, but the letter is pronounced in an unusual way (e.g. chicken to illustrate C). These are most commonly found on the unusual letters, so check those pages carefully: Q, X, Y, Z. Some of these can be used effectively, but usually they're not.

Understandable Words: No child is going to be thrilled with an alphabet book full of words he doesn't know and has no need for. A is for Apple and Ambulance and Angry, not for Amphitheater and Algae.

Sounding Out: You're reading an alphabet book because your kid is starting to learn how to read. Once he catches on to the initial letters, you're going to want to extend the book by pointing out the other letters in each word. It gets really frustrating really fast if the words are long and complicated and have unusual pronunciations in them. On the other hand, a book full of three-letter phonetic words is really boring. This is a delicate balance.

Hidden Pictures: Many alphabet books have detailed illustrations that have many objects starting with the featured letter hiding on each page. They aren't mentioned in the text, but you can look and look and keep finding more things that start with A on the A pages, and so on through the book. I love these! They grow with the child.

Illustrations: Just like any book, the illustrations matter. They're what draw the child in, and they help alleviate the adult's boredom at going through the book a million times. Additionally, in an alphabet book, the illustrations should clearly show the words in the text. It helps the child figure out what they're reading, as they begin to do it themselves.

Theme: Alphabet books usually don't have any story to them, but some have a theme. Some themes are obvious (e.g. Texas ABC's!) and others are more subtle. Having a theme is not at all necessary, but it can be fun.

Those are the basics. Starting tomorrow, I'll review some of those 18 alphabet books that are now sitting in a stack on my desk.

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.

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.

It Takes a Village

This review is a "don't judge a book by its cover" tale. Sometime last summer, Charlie and I stumbled across a garage sale held by a recently retired elementary school teacher who was selling off enormous quantities of kids' books for twenty-five cents each. I bought about forty books there, I am not kidding. Some of them were fantastic. Others just okay. It's hard to go through hundreds of books while a squirmy toddler sits in his stroller, and at twenty-five cents a pop, I erred on the side of purchase more often than I otherwise would. When I saw It Takes a Village, judging by the title alone, I assumed it would be terrible. I bought it so that I could have a good laugh and then chuck it in the trash.

It actually turned out to be a rather good book.

Who would have thought?

The only thing I actually dislike about this book is the title and its repetition on the last page of the book. The rest of the story is great, and the pictures are quite nice also.

The story takes place in an African village. (If you look closely at the signs in the background images, you'll notice a French influence. The author's notes on the last page of the book say that it's Benin.) A mother and her daughter and son take their mangos to the market to sell them. The girl, Yemi, around 7 or 8 years old, is given the task of looking after her younger brother, Kokou, who is probably 2 or 3. They set off to look around the market together, but Kokou soon wanders off and Yemi spends the rest of the book looking for him.

Yemi is worried, but Kokou is having a grand time walking around the market and meeting all the friendly people who are selling their wares. Different people give him food, water, entertainment, and a place to nap. Yemi finally finds Kokou and walks back through the market with him, thanking all of the people who helped him throughout the day. Finally they return to their mother, who is not surprised or worried at all. She knows that "it takes a village to raise a child" -- by which she means that the community members are friendly and benevolent and can be trusted.

I really like this moral, just not the words that it is phrased in. In the first place, the children are very free-range. Their mother lets them wander around the market without supervision even though they are quite young, and then the pre-schooler manages to set off on his own and is perfectly fine. This wandering is not shown as subversive or dangerous, but actually quite natural and expected by the mother and all the other adults in the story. And the reason that it's so safe for the kids to wander around freely is that the adults in the community are trusted, even if they are strangers, and they are all relaxed and friendly. This is exactly the kind of community that everyone wants to be a part of. The phrasing is not perfect. It doesn't take a village to "raise" a child. It takes a benevolent community to create a society in which children can exercise full age-appropriate independence. But that's not such a catchy title, I guess.

The illustrations in this book are realistic and use vibrant colors. Charlie loves to point out all the different items for sale in the market and all the activities that Kokou does with the grownups he meets. He is particularly intrigued by the fact that Kokou doesn't wear a shirt or shoes. ("Mommy, why him go outside with no shoes?") My only minor complaint about the illustrations is that on a couple of pages, there are multiple "time-lapse" pictures of the same characters on the same page. This can be confusing to kids who don't understand why there are four Yemis on this page. But it's a small point compared to the valuable things in the book.

So. You can't judge a book by its title.

No, David!

I first heard about No, David! from Charlie's day care teacher, who recommended it as a perennial favorite in her class. Then, when he switched schools a few months later, I heard about it from his new day care teacher. Within a couple more months, I was hearing about it from Charlie himself. Really, it's completely understandable. What could toddlers possibly like more than watching a kid do all the things they're not allowed to do, and getting to tell him "No, David!" on each page?

David writes on walls. He balances precariously on top of a chair to reach the cookie jar on a high shelf. He tracks mud through the house and splashes water out of the bath. He runs outside without any clothes on!!! He bangs pots and pans together, plays with his food, shoves everything into his mouth at once, and chews with his mouth open. He jumps on his bed, picks his nose, and breaks a vase by playing baseball inside the house. David is in sooooooooooo much trouble. But his mother still loves him, and gives him a big hug on the last page.

The story is told with an absolute minimum of words. Each two-page spread is an illustration of a single bad thing David does. The only words are variations on "No, David!" The illustrations are not really to my liking. They're done in a style I refer to as "dumb cartoon," so I was surprised to see that this is a Caldecott Honor Book. Still, they do provide a fair amount of detail to discover, and they manage to tell the story entirely on their own.

Charlie loves to tell me rambling and semi-coherent vignettes from this book. "Mommy say 'No, David!' Maybe he fall and bump his head because he trying to reach the cookie jar waaaaaay up high and it on the shelf and he maybe fall and bump his head so she say 'No, David! That is not ok!' Ask for a cookie maybe?"

This is on my kid's all-time most-loved toddler books list. Highly recommended.

The Day the Babies Crawled Away

When I first read The Day the Babies Crawled Away, I thought the pictures were stunning but the text was pretty lame. Apparently, I am not a two-year-old, because the moment Charlie first heard it read to him, he was enthralled. And after just a couple of readings, it began to grow on me. This is nowhere near great literature, but it's not annoying or boring, either. And the pictures definitely make up for it.

The pictures! All of the characters, scenery, and details are done in black silhouette, intricately detailed. There are many details to notice--butterflies, bees, blackberries on a bush, caterpillars--all pure black silhouettes. What really grabs you, though, are the luminous backgrounds. All the jeweled colors of the sky appear, subtly different page after page, giving the feeling that the entire book is happening at sunset even though we see the tones slowly change from day to evening over the course of the story. The book is just gorgeous to look at.

The story is pretty cute. The adults aren't paying attention one day, and the babies all crawl away. The only person who notices is a very young boy wearing a fireman's hat. He chases after the babies, trying to get them to come back. The babies crawl through forests and caves, take rides on birds, and end up at the bottom of a cliff before the boy catches up with them. He then takes over a parental role, finding them food and serving as a pillow for their nap, before leading them back home to their grateful parents. Nice and free-range: The babies get along reasonably well without their parents, and it's a little kid who steps up, takes responsibility, and successfully brings them home.

So, what is it about the text? I think it's a bit choppy in parts ("I say! What a day / When the babies crawled away.") and not very interesting. Charlie, on the other hand, found it immediately compelling for two reasons. The most important thing is that the book is written in second person, putting the child-reader in the role of the little boy saving the day ("Remember the way / You tried to save the day? / You hollered, 'HEY! / You babies, STAY!'"). Charlie becomes very excited, pointing to the silhouette of the boy and announcing, "That's me! That's Charlie!" and sometimes repeating the little boy's lines of dialogue. The repeated use of the word "remember" draws the child into the story even further, framing the whole thing as a retold story that happened to him personally just the other day.

The other thing Charlie loves about the text are all the exclamatory phrases he can add to his vocabulary: I say! What a day! Nice play! Okay! Hey, hey! He picked these up much faster than I expected.

The upshot is, I was skeptical at first, but this is definitely a worthy addition to our library.

Just a Little Critter Collection

There are approximately nine million books in the "Little Critter" series, and I readily admit, I have not read them all. The ones I have read range from fantastic to very boring. That's why I was pleased to discover Just a Little Critter Collection, a hardcover collection of seven really excellent Little Critter stories. There is no hit-or-miss here. Every single one in the book is great.

Most of this review discusses the stories, but before I launch into that, I want to mention the totally cute illustrations for a moment.  These are not great works of art or anything, but they are adorable and interesting. There are many background details to discover, particularly a spider, cricket, and mouse that follow Little Critter around to many places. The facial expressions on the parents and kids are also priceless.

Each of these stories is also available as an individual paperback. The included stories are:

• Just for You
• When I Get Bigger
• I Was So Mad
• All by Myself
• Just Go to Bed
• Just a Mess
• I Just Forgot

One of the major overriding themes of these stories is a free-range childhood. The main character, who I guess is the Little Critter himself, is probably around four or five years old (old enough to have a little sister who is a kid, not a baby), but his parents give him a huge amount of freedom and responsibility. In Just for You alone, his mother lets him cook eggs, mop the floor, put away the dishes, carry the groceries home from the store, mow the lawn (with an old-style mechanical mower), and set the table for dinner. In every picture, the mother is in the background, looking on, encouraging Little Critter to do things on his own. When he messes things up, which he does repeatedly, she is clearly aggravated but always kind and helpful. This is also the main story of the rather obviously-titled All By Myself.

Despite his age-appropriate freedom, Little Critter has clear rules and limits imposed by his parents. When I Get Bigger is about his fantasies of the exciting things he'll do when those limits are removed. All of them are very reasonable things that bigger kids can do ("I'll go to the corner store by myself."), or at least could back in the 1970s ("I'll have a two-wheeler and a paper route. I'll make lots of money.").

Combining both free range philosophy and good parental limits, I Was So Mad describes what happens one day when Little Critter was prevented from doing a series of activities he wanted to do (putting frogs in the bathtub, climbing inside his sister's dollhouse, painting the exterior walls of the house, and juggling eggs, among other things), and decided that he was so mad he would run away. His parents look on in quiet amusement as he packs his wagon full of toys and cookies and heads out the door. But right outside, he runs into his friends and decides to go play baseball with them instead of running away.

The two ideas also intermingle in the last story in the book, which is my favorite, I Just Forgot. Parents sometimes have trouble understanding exactly how many things a kid has to learn and remember. Things that are second-nature to us--like turning off the bath water when we are done!--are just one more habit that a kid is in the process of forming. Little Critter is doing his best to remember all the things he needs to do, but he only gets about half of them right. The writing in this story is just adorable and captures a little kid's voice perfectly. Some of the things are presented straightforwardly ("I put my dishes in the sink after breakfast, but  I forgot to put the milk away."), and others are almost laugh-out-loud funny ("I didn't forget to feed the goldfish. He just didn't look hungry. I'll do it now, Mom.").

I can totally relate to Little Critter's parents. They rarely say anything in these stories, but their facial expressions and body language always mirror exactly what I'd be feeling if my kid did whatever it is that Little Critter is doing just then. They are by turns proud, amused, frustrated, angry, worried, annoyed, and loving. But they generally stay in the background, letting Little Critter work out his problems for himself. This is most evident in Just a Mess, when Little Critter can't find his baseball mitt and his mother suggests that maybe he'll find it if he cleans his unbelievably cluttered room. She refuses to help, commenting, "You made the mess, so you can clean up the mess." You go, Mom Critter! In the whole story, she only intervenes to prevent Little Critter from washing his bedroom floor with the garden hose.

And parents are not perfect. I completely identify with Dad Critter as he gets increasingly annoyed with Little Critter's refusal to cooperate with the bedtime routine and ends up shouting "Just go to bed!"

Yet the love always shines through in these books. No matter how frustrated and annoyed the parents and child get with each other, there is always a tender moment. You just know that this is a strong, close-knit family. To a parent, one message of this book is that kids can be aggravating as heck, but they are still awesome. To a kid, the message is that parents can be aggravating as heck, but they are still awesome. Capturing both of those messages at once is, in my opinion, brilliant.