Read To Me

Josie  2007

There are many things that I wish I could do better as a mother, but I'm not going to focus on those here.  There are plenty of pages filled with such ramblings in my personal journal.  In this post, I'm going to focus on something that I'm good at--exposing my children to books and reading.

I love to read and so it has always been something I enjoyed doing with my children.  All those months I spent pregnant with not enough energy to entertain the kids in any other way, we would grab a pile of books and get cozy in my bed together.  OK...I do that even when I'm not pregnant, and I would choose to do it even if I had enough energy to whip through the whole house like a cleaning machine.  In fact, one of my best memories of reading in my bed was one of my non-pregnant days when I had set aside a Sunday afternoon to read Fablehaven to the two older boys.  When I closed the book, insisting that I had to at least make dinner, Evan said,  "Nooo... this is better than food."

Still, I must confess to running the other way when my children grab certain books for me to read to them.  There are a lot of picture books out there that make me feel like my brains are going to ooze out my ears if I have to read them one more time.  Those books will remain nameless as I am choosing to follow the wise advise of Thumper's father:  " If you can't say somethin' nice, don't say nothin' at all."

I like to mark especially good picture books that I read in my goodreads.com account, so I can remember to pick them up at the library every so often.  A fact which caused Kimball to accuse me once of "cheating."  Until that conversation, I had no idea we were competing to see who had the most books listed on goodreads.  Has anyone else noticed that kids can make a competition out of anything?

But, I digress.  I started writing this with the intention of making a list of 25 Picture Books Everyone Should Read.  I got the idea because I've run into many such lists over the years, and when I saw another the other day I began wondering what I would put on my list.  I ended up with 30 books because I just couldn't help it.  And, I changed the name because who am I to tell everyone what to read?  These are books that make my face light up when I see them as part of the Story Time line-up at the library.  (Yes, I still like to be read to and take my kids to story time partly for that reason.)

Some of these are books that adults would enjoy even if they didn't have a small person around to listen.  If you don't believe me ask my kids grandparents.  There are certain books they look forward to when coming to my house to babysit, and even talk about every so often when they aren't babysitting.


So, without further ado:

30 Picture Books That Rock

1. Quick As A Cricket by Audrey Wood (Don Wood is the    illustrator and his pictures are amazing!)
2. My Lucky Day by Keiko Kasza 
3. Bark, George by Jules Feiffer
4. Dinosaur Roar by Paul Stickland
5. Duck on a Bike by David Shannon
6. Sneetches and Other Stories by Dr. Seuss (Did you know that when you look this up at the library you have to look under 'G' for Geisel as in Theodor Seuss Geisel?)
7. Bear Wants More by Karma Wilson
8. Chrysanthemum by Kevin Henkes 
9. There's a Nightmare in My Closet by Mercer Meyer
10. Hug by Jez Alborough
11. Come Along, Daisy by Jane Simmons
12. Big Dog Little Dog by P.D. Eastman
13. How Will We Get to the Beach? by Brigitte Luciani
14. Inside the House that is Haunted by Alyssa Satin Capucilli
15. We'll Paint the Octopus Red by S.A. Bodeen
16. So Many Bunnies by Rick Walton
17. Chicka Chicka Boom Boom by Bill Marin Jr.
18. Snowmen at Night by Caralyn and Mark Buehner
19. If Anything Ever Goes Wrong at the Zoo by Mary Jean Hendrick
20. Wild About Books by Judy Sierra
21. My Little Sister Ate One Hare by Bill Grossman
22. The Perfect Nest by Catherine Friend
23. If You See A Kitten by John Butler
24. Ten Minutes til Bedtime by Peggy Rathmann
25. Go Away, Big Green Monster! by Ed Emberley
26. Off We Go! by Jane Yolen
27. Look Once, Look Twice by Janet Perry Marshall
28. If You Were Born A Kitten by Marion Dane Bauer
29. Hippos Go Berserk! by Sandra Boynton
30. On Noah's Ark by Jan Brett

I made a rule for myself while complying this list (because that's what I do--I make rules and lists):  Only one book could be listed per author.  If this hadn't been the rule, half the list would have been gone with my favorites from Audrey Wood, Mercer Meyer, Dr. Seuss, and Sandra Boynton.  It almost killed me not to put The Little Mouse, the Red Ripe Strawberry, and the Big Hungry Bear on the list.  (Yes, I know I'm sneaking it in, but technically I stuck to my rule.)

I hope this makes you think of some of your favorites.  Feel free to share them with me anyway you can.  Comment, email, facebook, call....

I have one friend that whenever I see him, he starts into a list of good books he's read lately before he even says 'hi.'  I love it!  Maybe in the future that will be how I begin all my interactions.  Instead of "Hi, how are you?"  I'll say, "Hey, have you read any good books lately?"

Oddly Grateful

June 2003

Mat and I went on a date to the movies last night.  Walking in, we began laughing at the time we went to see X-Men United (or X2) and I kept getting up and going to the bathroom.  Although I was very pregnant with my third child and Mat knew all about how the baby rests on the bladder, he finally leaned over and asked me what was up.  I responded that I felt like I was going into labor and was feeling restless.  Later that day, I felt slightly annoyed that I had missed so much of the movie when all the contractions went away and I was still uncomfortably pregnant.  After all, I had two other children.  I knew what actual labor felt like, and I was not one to mistake the signs.  If anything, I was the mom who liked to hang out at home as long as I possibly could before sounding the alarm that the baby was coming.  This cycle of experiencing more than the normal Braxton Hicks contractions and being convinced I was in labor repeated itself a few other times as the due date neared and passed.  My third child, it seemed to me, could not make up his mind.

As Mat paid for our movie tickets, yesterday, I started thinking about the fact that had I actually gone into labor that day, Isaac would have been born premature.  This may have contributed to him experiencing more health complications than he experienced by being born with Down syndrome which caused plenty of issues to present themselves.

Standing in the movie line, I suddenly felt grateful that Isaac's legs had been tangled in the umbilical cord, stopping labor from progressing that day, and beyond, allowing him extra time in utero to develop and grow.  Even after his due date passed and they induced me, my labor would not progress past what could be forced by the drugs they gave me because he was held firmly in place and could not drop into the birth canal.  He eventually had to be taken by emergency C-section.  It felt like a very odd thing to be grateful for.

That night, as I mulled over those thoughts, I realized that my new insightful gratitude could partly be attributed to the book that I just finished reading.  365 Thank Yous by John Kralik was a great book about a man who, when he hit a low point in his life, got it into his head to write 365 thank-you notes in one year.  As the project progressed, his circumstances and attitude about life improved tremendously.  It is a true story and a great one.  It is one of those books that I would recommend to anyone. 

I love this quote from it:

"Whether or not my life had changed, my experience of it, moment by moment, had been transformed.  When bad things happened, they might slow me, but they no longer unraveled me."

My experience also brought to mind another one of those books, The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom.  In it Corrie and her sister Betsie are prisoners in a concentration camp when Betsie states that she can find things to be grateful for even in their pitiable situation.  When her list of things she is grateful for ends with "fleas,"  Corrie feels her sister has gone too far.  However, later she discovered that it was the fleas that infested their barracks that kept the guards out and allowed them more freedom within those walls than anywhere else in the camp.  This book is also an account written about true events.  

When I remembered that story, I no longer felt strange in my gratitude.  I suddenly found it odd that it had taken me so long to feel grateful for the tangle of legs and cord that extended Isaac's time in the womb, giving him those precious extra weeks to prepare to take on the world.