I remember being read to as a child, snuggled against my mom. Hours and hours and hours she read to us throughout our childhood. Even when I was old enough to read myself, she still would read aloud, often with me cuddled up on one side of her, my brother cuddled up on the other. It was in this way that my brother heard many, many Babysitters Club books and all of the Laura Ingalls books.
And of course, the picture books. Some would strike our fancy for different reasons, and we'd want them read to us over and over and over again.
It's no surprise that I want to mimic this for my girls. I'm certain that my mom patiently reading to us so, so often played a huge part in instilling in me a deep, genuine love of stories and books. Although my brother will declare his favorite books are under 100 pages and contain pictures, something stuck. After all, he's a better writer than most (and I deal with a LOT of writers)--a fact that stunned me when I edited his half-assed college papers. You have to have a lot of exposure to language and sentence structure to pull that off so effortlessly.
Although reading to Charlotte and Lorelei is a no brainer, I had become disenchanted with the drivel Charlotte was selecting. In short, one of the Disney princesses was the main character in practically everything. If I was lucky, maybe Peppa Pig or Strawberry Shortcake. But I really wanted to create worlds for my girl, through books, that were not variations of shit she was watching on TV.
So, we started making extra trips to the local library. She can pick whatever she wants to check out, but I select a few extra books as well. A much larger library is near my work, but connected to the same county system, so sometimes on my lunch hour I go peruse its children's section, which is WAY bigger than the one in our wee town. And I check out a few extra books.
I unveil the books after dinner, removing them from my work bag. Charlotte, surprised and giddy, wants to read them ALL that very night, so she hustles into jammies and we settle on the couch.
We haven't read a princess book in a LONG time, praise the reading gods.
I thought I'd share three fabulous books that have caught Charlotte's fancy.
The first is Grimm's Rumpelstiltskin, retold and illustrated by Paul O. Zelinsky. This book is large, illustrated in a renaissance-like fashion, and the tale is told without sugarcoating: The miller's daughter must spin the straw to gold, or the king will kill her.
Oh, we have read this so many times---and each time, Charlotte is tense, eyes wide, even though she knows how it ends. I was also DELIGHTED that when the king marries the girl after she successfully spins the third room of straw to gold, Charlotte said, "He's only marrying her because she makes gold. That's not a very good reason to get married." Truth, baby girl. TRUTH.
She also added, "The king is not a nice man! She's NOT lucky that she has to marry him, even if she gets to be queen."
Sniff sniff. So. Freaking. Proud.
(Although we both agreed that her wedding dress was quite pretty.)
A second book that has brought Charlotte and me much, much reading joy is The Snow Globe Family. Alas, this book is out of print, which is a pity because I'd love to buy it. We've renewed the one from the library several times. Written by the same Jane O'Connor of Fancy Nancy fame (I love Fancy Nancy books, too), this snowy book is fabulous. It depicts a sweet little Victorian family hoping for a snowstorm as the dad reads stories aloud in the parlor. In that same room, a snow globe on the mantle contains a teeny tiny family that mimics the actions of the "big" family, and they too are hoping for a snow storm--but nobody really remembers to shake the snow globe. Finally, the big family gets their blizzard, and the baby knocks over the snow globe, sending the little family joyfully flying and creating a great hill for sledding.
Charlotte has been utterly delighted with this tale, especially during all the snow we've gotten during the past month. It's such a cozy, charming read, and exquisitely illustrated. We've read it many, many times.
Finally, Charlotte has successfully read her very first book from beginning to end: Dr. Seuss's Hop on Pop. She worked on it at school, and at the library she begged to be able to check out a copy to read at home. Of course I said yes. She proudly read it to Chris, Lorelei, and me, several times, and when I was putting together a pile of books to return to the library, I held that one up. "Can Hop on Pop be returned?" I asked.
Charlotte's eyes widened. "No, no, no, no, no! Not yet!" I had never seen her have such a visceral reaction to the idea of losing a book.
I decided then and there that Charlotte Marie should have her very own copy of the first book she ever learned to read by herself. (My first, around her age, was One Fish, Two Fish.) I bought her a hardback of Hop on Pop. When I gave it to her, she clutched it to her chest. "It's mine? I can keep it FOREVER?" Yes, yes. Your very own, sweetie. We're so proud of how hard you've been working on learning to read.
She bolted to go show it to Daddy.
Hop on Pop is the perfect first reading book for a preschooler. Simple, repetitive words, whimsical illustrations, LOTS of pages that engender a big fat sense of accomplishment. In a way, I feel bad--if I had known how precious this book was to Charlotte, I'd have bought her a copy much sooner.
Tell me, what books have caught the fancy of your little ones?
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