Favorites now

I've had a hectic past few weeks at work and gotten behind on my book updates. Of course, we are still going to the library, and my daughter still gets bedtime stories. I just haven't been returning our favorites or blogging about them.

As you know, we randomly select books off the library shelf. Well, not entirely randomly. I reject books that have too many or too few words in them. I reject books that are thematically inappropriate (like "My teacher is having a baby" which seems focused on a particularly event, for example). But that's about it. Since we will go through a lot of books throughout my daughter's childhood, I try not to miss any by going shelf-by shelf, and the library organizes these shelves by author's last name.

Today, we're planning to return some favorites because we have had them for a while:
Violet the Pilot by Steve Breen -- this is the story of a strong and competent little girl doing something extraordinary .... things don't go exactly as planned.
Hannukkah in Alaska by Barbara Brown -- my daughter loved this one because a swing figured prominently. I loved it because it involved some of my favorite things: nature and natural events, Alaska and Hanukkah.
Mouse and Lion by Rand and Nancy Ekholm Burkert -- I remember this one from my childhood. The drawings are just beautiful and the story of kindness repaid is nice.

Book Reviews

We've had such good luck in recent weeks with the books we randomly selected from the library that I hardly knew what to say about them. I can't list the entire pile of 12 books -- that doesn't show discretion. I'm returning only about half the pile today... sometimes just because we've had these books a long time. I'll tell you now a couple of our favorites.

The Ninja books by David Bruins and Hilary Leung -- we had 2 of them recently and really liked the sweet messages in both.

One Cool Friend by Toni Buzzeo -- I like the eccentricity of this family. I also liked that it appeared to be a single father. Finally, their love of learning is definitely something I am trying to impart to my daughter.

Enjoy!

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