Last Saturday we had a big dinner with a whole bunch of friends and one of them even stayed over! Oh, I love having people stay over, especially the kind of friend you sit and chat with, after the dishes are done, until midnight… Sunday warm (“heated up,” even, relatively) as we drove “into town” …
Category Archives: books (children’s)
Nature Study and Library Books
I am thinking of participating in Barb-Harmony Art Mom’s weekly “Outdoor Hour” challenges, which follows Anna Botsford Comstock’s book Handbook of Nature Study. Gotta get hold of the book first, though. I’m waiting to get it through the inter-library loan. This, by the way, is why they call him the Red-Bellied Woodpecker (click on image …
Any Good Books about Foxes?
(Choo-Chee the Fox by Galina Kolev, used with kind permission) At the new house we’ll be seeing lots of foxes. I’m looking for a good book about them. It could be a fairytale or a picture story or a more scientific book (not too advanced). As long as it doesn’t reinforce the old stereotype of …
Family Reading
Amie gets it! She was talking about something and suddenly said: – Mama, more begins with M. I had always found it strange that she could rhyme so naturally – she picked it up in one day, months ago – but that she couldn’t isolate the first letter, or sound, of a spoken word, until …
Making Tracks on the Ice
Over the weekend we visited Walden Pond. As I had hoped, it was frozen over. The Ranger told me the ice measured only 4 inches, and that it wasn’t safe to walk on – it being a very deep pond (102 feet). Nonetheless, there were quite a few people on the ice. We just braved …
We Love Rosemary Wells
We are big fans over here of Rosemary Wells. We adore the Mother Goose book she did with Iona Opie, but our absolute favorites are the Voyage to the Bunny Planet books. There are three of them, but we only own The Island Light (about Felix) and Moss Pillows (about Robert). I stumbled upon them …
Barn Books
I came home from the library’s decommissioned books sale with three books (75 c each): I know: why should they give these away? And they are in really good shape too. In any case, “There’s a theme here,” said DH. Mm, maybe there is. My favorite is Phyllis Root’s Kiss the Cow (illustrated by Will …
The Drawing Book for and with Amie
Watching this video of Sir Ken Robinson’s talk on education and creativity at TED – hilarious, insightful, engaging and (ringing) so true – and reacquainting myself with Danny Gregory’s website and books on drawing, I realized there was a gap in my approach to art and creativity with Amie. When she draws or paints and asks …
Children’s Books about Thoreau
 Not content with an article on D.B. Johnson’s wonderful Henry series, I published another article today, on Suite101.com, about five more children’s books about Henry David Thoreau: The Trouble with Henry, written by Deborah O’Neal and Angela Westengard and illustrated by S.D. Schindler (Candlewick Press, 2005). Henry David’s House, words by Thoreau (gleaned from …
Outing on a Fall Morning and a Yard Sale
Amie and Baba at the Park Yesterday morning was blustery and a little cloudy, but sunny and quite balmy. The three of us went to the Larz Anderson Park, where Amie ran and ran, up and down the hill, in a field of leaves and dandelions, hemmed in by trees changed to all kinds of colors. …