FAMILY – Page 29 – Wrekehavoc.com

Category: FAMILY

ian falconer's Olivia

Posted on November 27, 2007 by wrekehavoc

may i first say how much BC adored olivia when she was a preschooler? i mean LOVED! olivia is a cheeky little pig who isn’t quite perfection – she’s a little bossy and tough. and in the end, her mom notes that olivia wears her out — but that she still loves her. a message any parent could appreciate.

i also loved the fact that there were all sorts of artistic and cultural icons sprinkled throughout the work. olivia imitating jackson pollack is a moment i treasure — after reading this book, we went to the national gallery, where, thanks to this book, BC was able to spot jackson pollack easily on the wall (and i was nearly able to corrupt several young minds talking about painting while drunk. not me painting, silly. pollack.) falconer’s illustrations are among the best i’ve ever found in children’s literature. i love them that much.

that being said, olivia seems to be turning into a cottage industry. olivia counts, olivia reads, why, i’m waiting for olivia potty trains her younger brother. i don’t bother with those.

but i definitely bother with olivia. move over, wilbur, or olivia might kick your porky behind.

Olivia

Olivia Saves the Circus

Olivia … and the Missing Toy

Olivia Forms a Band

Olivia Helps with Christmas (Olivia Series)

cars and trucks and things that go

Posted on November 26, 2007 by wrekehavoc

richard scarry has been around since i was a wee tike. i remember that along with Highlights Magazine, his books were a fixture of dentists’ and pediatricians’ offices. i found them incredibly boring (just like Highlights — did anyone ever actually read them??) and wondered whether any child in his or her right mind would read them. i mean, who the hell wanted a book that lacked a storyline? it was never my schtick, and BC didn’t care at all about them, either.

so it came as a major revelation when jools started to enjoy richard scarry. it was a loathsome chore, to be sure, to have to read through the books, chockablock filled with pictures and words. clearly scarry had gone to a ton of trouble drawing and thinking. but it all left me cold.

that is, until cars and trucks and things that go. see, the pig family is going on a picnic. and along the way, there are a zillion types of cars, some of which are, well, extraordinarily silly (a carrot car?? a pencil car??)), much to the delight of a preschooler. then, there’s poor old officer flossie, trying to catch up with naughty dingo, who not only speeds but mauls the poor parking meters. go, officer flossie, go! and then, there’s the added delight of searching for goldbug on every page, out waldo-ing where’s waldo by about 10 years.

[feminist girl here likes the fact that the prime fixer of cars happens to be mistress mouse. she can fix anything. would that i could.]

anyway, while not my favorite book, i actually enjoy reading it in bits and pieces, if only to see how my son giggles every time he sees yet another silly car.

cars and trucks and things that go

mr. lunch borrows a canoe

Posted on November 25, 2007 by wrekehavoc

i heart mr. lunch.

the team of J. Otto Seibold and Vivian Walsh have created a book where the storyline really tests you, the grownup, to suspend all your linear storyline intentions. it’s crazy and kooky, but oh so fun. the illustration, which is inventive and offbeat (and i mean that in the best way possible), really shines, in my opinion — i understand it’s computer generated, yet there’s something so hip yet campy about it. i wish i could put my finger on it.

there’s a short series, but my favorite is mr. lunch borrows a canoe, precisely because the storyline is so zany. canine mr. lunch, you see, is a professional bird chaser. he ends up in a canoe, gets frightened by a bear (who is only trying to take a picture of the famous mr. lunch), and paddles all the way to venice. there, he ends up clearing a palazzo filled with birds, gets a medal, and then goes home.

yeah, i know. it ain’t shakespeare. but it delighted jools and his sister. any book that can hold the attention of a 4 year old AND an 8 year old simultaneously is a winner in my book. and me, i pretended i was on a little mental trip. it was nice to let go of reality for five minutes and end up back in a happy place 😉

Mr. Lunch Borrows a Canoe

Free Lunch

make way for ducklings

Posted on November 24, 2007 by wrekehavoc

okay, okay, preschool book review week starts in earnest with an old chestnut that i feel gets overlooked nowadays — robert mccloskey’s make way for ducklings. it isn’t hip. it isn’t trendy. it isn’t cool.

but boy, is it a great, great book for preschoolers.

the story is one that most little kids can comprehend — duck parents are looking for a good place to raise a family. they finally find one. the dad has to go away. the mom teaches the kids and takes them on a tumultuous walk. dad comes home. everyone quacks happily ever after.

i cannot pick up this book without a few things happening.

1) i imitate an irish policeman whenever i read the voices of the cops in the book. (for you bugs bunny fans out there: “hey clancy, let’s take the boys and surrrrround the house!”)

2) i dissolve into laughter, along with my kids, whenever i have to read the ducklings’ names (lack, mack, quack, pack, oh, who the hell knows them all, i just know they rhyme). and:

3) we end up reading it twice in a row. at least.

the brown-tone drawings are absolutely stunning, earning this bad boy a caldecott. no, they just don’t write them like this anymore.

admittedly, i am a mom who enjoys the hip books; but i must confess that, in the same way i am beginning to rediscover the old, corny Disney movies (hayley mills, anyone?) and enjoying them, i am discovering older storybooks from my childhood, wistfully remembering how it took me longer to wise up and become the cynical chick i am today.

maybe if we read more mccloskey books, my kids will stay younger longer.

Make Way for Ducklings

Diary of a Worm by Doreen Cronin & Harry Bliss

Posted on November 23, 2007 by wrekehavoc

one more gap-bridging book — one that both BC and jools adore!

people adore the click clack moo books by doreen cronin, and i would agree. there’s something wonderful about subversive cows and ducks taking over the joint. but take a gander (har-dee-har, i’m such a card!) at another book by cronin that makes jools nearly pee himself. ok, so that’s no mean feat, but it nearly makes me pee myself, too!

diary of a worm is a silly little journal filled with deep observations about life as an annolid. so yeah, worms aren’t fascinating, right? well, maybe not, but this little worm, illustrated so amusingly by bliss, makes some observations that are worthy of the monty python troupe. two favorites:

1) when the worm gets in trouble with his mother for telling his sister that her face looks exactly like her rear. (she’s a worm. it does.)

2) when the worms do the hokey pokey. a challenge when you consider how they’re built.

apparently, cronin also takes on diaries of other creeply crawlies. i can’t wait to check them out. that is, if jools ever lets me return this bad boy.

Diary of a Worm

Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Book by lauren child

Posted on November 22, 2007 by wrekehavoc

alert the media: i am now hereby bridging the gap between tween girl books and preschool books. just cos every now and again, i have to find a book that works for BC and jools. not an easy task, i would add. but someone’s got to figure it out, and why not me!

as you might figure from yesterday’s post, i am a HUGE, and i do mean HUGE fan of lauren child. not even the charlie and lola series, which brought her some bit of fame thanks to disney picking up the cartoon, but all the clarice bean books, which i discussed yesterday.

but if you’ve a kid who either:

a) loves fairy tales;

b) destroys books; or

c) all of the above,

then you’ve got to read Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Book. child examines what happens when her hero ends up in a fairytale storybook that he has doodled on, torn a bit, and basically manhandled. a modern-day alice falls through the looking glass, and boy, the consequences are hilarious!

c’mon: if you were supposed to be a fairytale mainstay and someone doodled a mustache on you, you’d be pissed, too.

Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Book

clarice bean series by lauren child

Posted on November 21, 2007 by wrekehavoc

tween girls book week concludes with a major fave, the clarice bean books by lauren childs. some of these are chapter books, some are picture books, but all are amazingly cheeky fun.

there’s something so hilariously fragile and funny about clarice and her family. her father is too busy at work; her mother is, well, a bit self-involved; her surly teenage brother is in cave-boy mode; her sister is surgically-attached to the phone; her little brother, minal cricket, is a handful; her grandfather has more than a few senior moments; and her uncle ted, the fireman, is simply a hunky hoot. anyone who has to balance family and hysteria can relate to the over-the-top things that happen in the books. child is perfectly attuned to a girl of a certain age who has to deal with calamity in her daily life. i suspect this is what my house is like on certain days.

incidentally, if you’ve been weaned on charlie and lola (and want to run screaming whenever it shows up on the disney channel), please please PLEASE don’t let that stop you from checking out clarice (i’ve put some faves below, but there are more.) she’s simply THAT FUNNY.

if your kid has finished every junie b. jones book there is, it’s time to graduate to clarice bean. you may find that you like the book, though, even more than your daughter does. i can’t wait to take them out and read them again… (if BC will let me.)

utterly me, clarice bean

clarice bean spells trouble

clarice bean, guess who’s babysitting?

thanksgiving whine

Posted on November 20, 2007 by wrekehavoc

i like writing about books and music as much as the next gal, but gee whiz! some people are wondering about me, the chick behind the curtain! why, i haven’t whined (publicly) in a least a week – what gives!? thus, here’s some whine and cheese for good measure.

when we last left our heroine, she was sick. guess what? i’m sick again. yes, the magic of my condition is such that i pick up every. single. bug. there. is. so a big-n-hearty ~~fuck you!~~ thank you to anyone who lets their kid hit school or daycare with serious stuff (and no, i don’t mean things like runny noses. if we all kept out of circulation when we had colds, no one would ever see daylight.) people like me are thrilled beyond belief that your child and mine will touch and i will be the happy recipient of your child’s generosity.

hey, while you’re at it — can you manage to not vaccinate your children, too? i really can’t wait to see how my immune system hacks it when your measles, mumps, or rubella-laden kid shares her joy with me. (and all because you read some bullshit on the internet about MMR shots causing autism. which they don’t, by the way.) see, i’ve been vaccinated, but as we’ve found from all the testing done on me, i’m not only bionic, i also don’t have very good resistance to things, even when i’m vaccinated. it’s all about my immune system. smallpox? nearly killed me when i was 6 months old, but hell — bring. it. on. just because you’re a selfish fuckwit who refuses to vaccinate.

if you can’t tell, miss crankypants is just a little bitter today. but i’ll lighten things up with things for which i am thankful.

1) the comb that i accidentally flushed down the toilet last week? you know, the one i never actually wrote about because i was too busy talking about books? well, i’m not exactly thankful for THAT, but i am thankful for the plumber who came out and told me that the very worst thing that would happen would be that i’d need to replace the toilet. see, BS painted pictures of lawns being pulled up. pipes being dredged. college funds following said comb. it was an ugly, ugly time. when i told the plumber about BS’s nightmarish scenario, he laughed and told me that i should tell BS that the tree people would be there next week to start pulling up the trees. obviously, he doesn’t realize that BS’s sense of humor had followed the comb down.

2) i’m thankful my house did not blow up kablooey last week after i had to clean the dryer out with Goo Gone, something i had to do once before. once again, a certain someone left cinnamon gum in her clothing. i knew it wasn’t Miss Scarlet with a lead pipe in the library. using my incredible, supergenius-mom powers of deduction, i know a few things: 1) BS doesn’t chew gum; 2) i hate cinnamon gum; and 3) jools has no earthly way of getting his hands on any gum. BC strikes again. i couldn’t get all the gum out with simple elbow grease, so i called in the tangy orange flammable joy that is the Goo Gone. it works, but i was afraid to use my dryer for days. i rationalized that i was doing the earth a favor by hanging my laundry up to dry. which, hopefully, balanced out the toxic, orange fumes i unleashed upon the earth.

but you know, after wearing stiff jeans one day too long, i got a bit antsy. i did what any other red-blooded, passive-aggressive person would do: i waited until BS had laundry to do. i informed him, of course, of the dryer’s status. (if he gets all blown up, then i end up a single mom. there’s no way on Dog’s Green Earth that he’s getting off that easy.) he told me he would gladly try things out once i took some dishwashing liquid and scrubbed the dryer’s inside. which i did. and the rest, as they say, is history.

which fortunately, i can add, is not our status.

3) good things come in threes. and i’m here to report that jools has decided to act like a camel, which would be really useful if i could ride him up I-95, gasoline being as expensive as it is these days. unfortunately, he has decided to be the less-than-nice part of being a camel: he has decided to spit at people when they piss him off. i’m not entirely sure where this comes from: no one in our family spits. in fact, he has heard me several times railing against the no-class bubbas who spit and who probably had the wrong end smacked at birth. but mr. man has decided to spit at his classmates, a major bozo no-no from every angle. so, to bring things full circle, i am thankful that my boy has had all of his shots!

yes, you and your child may end up sharing this lovely snotty, coughing thing that we all have around here. but you can rest assured that my son’s spit will not result in your contracting polio.

which is probably a lot more than i can say about my risk around you and yours.

junie b jones by barbara park

Posted on November 20, 2007 by wrekehavoc

pity poor junie b. jones.

the scrappy heroine of many, many books about her hapless adventures in kindergarten and first grade, she has been reviled by plenty of elementary school teachers, who ban her from classrooms because she commits a sin so heinous, she might cripple your child:

she speaks like an honest-to-G-d kid.

some teachers and parents fear that if your kid reads junie b., her english and her grammar will be ruined for years to come. (i know mine has.)

honestly, though, as a writer, i adore junie b.’s voice. park has captured the diction and attitude of a girl-of-a-certain-age to perfection. and as a parent, i adore the fact that her stories are soooo funny, soooo engaging, that BC actually wanted to read. we’ve listened to a bunch of these on tape during car trips, and i’m here to tell you that even BS got wrapped up in the plots. i never, ever understand why people are so frightened by a book. yes, books are very, very powerful instruments. banishing them does no one any good.

in spite of 1st grade teachers discouraging their students from reading from this series, don’t worry about barbara park. i’m sure she’s crying all the way to the bank.

i’m still waiting for junie b to end up as a float in the macy’s t-day parade.

Junie B. Jones’s First Boxed Set Ever! (Books 1-4)

Junie B. Jones’s Second Boxed Set Ever! (Junie B. Jones)

Junie B. Jones’s Third Boxed Set Ever! (Books 9-12)

Junie B. Jones’ Fourth Boxed Set Ever! (Junie B. Jones)

the best/worst christmas pageant ever

Posted on November 19, 2007 by wrekehavoc

i know, i know. what’s a nice jewish girl like me reading a book like this to her kids?

barbara robinson penned this classic way back in 1972. since then, she has written two more in the series about the six awful Herdman children and how they disrupt life among not just the kids but the entire small-town Ohio community. the Herdmans steal. the Herdmans threaten. the Herdmans are terrible to their insane cat. the Herdmans, left to their own devices by an absentee mother (who chooses to work two shifts at her job, and most of the parents cannot blame her), manage to set fire to things, shut down events, and even paint poor little Howard’s head.

it sounds tragic. but it’s a hoot!

robinson has a dry wit that permeates every bit of this book. you have the bored children, who could care less about the pageant. you have the narrator’s beleagured mother, who gets roped into heading up the pageant this year after the Queen Bee Mother Who Runs Everything (and you moms out there know exactly the type i’m talking about) gets hospitalized. and, of course, you have the Herdmans — six over-the-top children who have never stepped foot inside a church and who, through the oddest of circumstances, end up playing all the lead roles.

if you are looking for a book that de-commercializes christmas in a humorous, lighthearted, but incredibly meaningful way, this is it. this is the literary accompaniment to linus van pelt’s speech in A Charlie Brown Christmas. i’m not even christian, but i can appreciate that. and this is all delivered in a non-preachy, frankly hysterical way that appeals to adults and kids alike.

(BC is still running around the house, proclaiming: HEY! Unto YOU a child is BORN! read the book, and you’ll find out why.)

hey ms. robinson — there are a lot more school holidays. PLEASE write more about the Herdmans!!!!!

The Best Christmas Pageant Ever

The Best School Year Ever

The Best Halloween Ever