Books! At last!
Well we’ve been reading, just not keeping track. Let’s see if I can hit some highlights.
Magic School Bus books continue to come up if not daily, weekly. We found a couple of new (to us) easy readers at goodwill and a chapter book at the Arboretum. We checked out the newest book, in the format of the original 10 and discussing global warming, from the library. It didn’t quite live up to my expectations. It follows the lead of the cartoon and the added on series in that it only has the main 8 kids. It also seemed to try and cover a little too much. More than one page of snapshots of different locations and not that much follow through on what kids can do.
For poetry, lately, we’ve been reading Bow Wow Meow Meow by Douglas Florian (so many times that I don’t have to look up the author’s name!). The book is a set of dog and cat poems with illustrations. The poet has a real knack for playing with language and some of them are funny in ways that I’m not sure Fiona “gets” but she loves it all the same. Each time she reads it she claims a different poem as her favorite, but I think I like the “Dog Log” and “Cat Chat” that start the two species.
I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned it, but Fiona loves Animal Nursery Tales by Richard Scary. I think we have the copy from when I was a kid and she just loves it. We go back to it over and over and she knows most of the stories even without the book.
Fiona has also recently decided that Dr. Seuss is the greatest ever. This is delightful, despite the fact that I think she’s discovered him due to the fact that PBS is launching a new Cat in the Hat show and she saw the clips on their website. We have been reading Hop On Pop, Green Eggs and Ham, One Fish Two Fish, ABC’s and There’s a Wocket in my Pocket over and over (as we own those) and checked out Fox in Socks and The Foot Book from the library. We also got The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins, but she decided it was boring. We did get my new favorite, Hooray for Diffendoofer Day! which is also by Jack Prelutsky and Lane Smith. Apparently, Theodore Geisel had been working on this story at the time of his death, but had never gotten beyond a dozen or so drawings, some with couplets and a few other sketches. His editor eventually decided to ask Prelutsky and Smith to write and draw the book, and I just love. Set in a school where the teachers are different and one is “different-er than the rest” the students are faced with a standardized test to determine whether or not they will be sent to Flobbertown. I really recommend you go check it out. Or buy it, which we will probably do by November.
Finally, I’ve just started reading Birdology by Sy Montgomery which is absolutely amazing. Just read it, because I have to go do actual life things, having typed at least twice as much as I intended.