This week's favorite books

By far my favorite book this week was Silly Billy by Anthony Brown. The artwork was great, and the message sweet. My daughter tried to memorize the names of all (many) dolls in the story. It was cute how important she thought it was to know their names.

My daughter also enjoyed Darkness Slipped In by Ella Burfoot (I thought this one was great too) and Don't Slam the Door by Dori Chaconas.

On the flip side, I have vague positive memories of The Story of Babar (by Jean de Brunhoff) from my childhood, but I found the story scary, superficial and imperialist. Alas!

The week's favorite books

We're somewhere in the Bs (though not absolutely) as we work our way through the library's collection. This week, my favorite book was
Here Comes the Cat by Frank Asch

My daughter loved:
Black Dog Gets Dressed by Lizi Boyd and
Pocoyo and Friends.

The Week's favorite books

Every week we go to the library and take out a stack of books to read for the week. We love it. I select the books more-or-less at random, working my way through the stacks. We're currently in the "B"s. We checked out 12 last week, and particularly loved 5 of them.

My favorites (for artwork and message) are:
Forever Friends by Carin Berger
Over in the Forest... by Marianne Berkes

My daughter prefers:
Swim, Boots, Swim (Dora the Explorer) by Phoebe Beinstein
Dini Dinosaur by Karen Beaumont
Feeding Friendsies by Suzanne Bloom

Amazing Playgrounds Around the World

I stumbled on this slide show of some amazing playgrounds around the world. If you're thinking of planning a vacation around them, they are mostly in Japan, Scandinavia, Spain and Sydney, but I did also see St. Louis in there. Too far for a day trip from San Francisco, but a good note to self.

Bilingual Education

This Stanford study on San Francisco's bilingual education was written up in the Chronicle