Thursday, November 24, 2005

Gobble, gobble

Happy Thanksgiving! Hope everyone enjoys good food, good company, and the (year-long) blessings that God has given us, so many of which are above and beyond what are really needs in our lives. In the sprit of giving thanks, here is a gratitude-inspiring selection for the young:

My Book of Thanks, written by B.G. Hennessey and illustrated by Hiroe Nakata. The author writes that she believes prayers should begin with "Thank you, God," and end with "Help me," and that is the simple--but perfectly suited--pattern for each prayer in this book. The pages feature short, sweet, prayers of thanks, alongside cheerful watercolor illustrations that convey lots of movement and life.(The illustrations are darling and, truth be told, what prompted me to slide the book off the shelf and take a peek.) Perfect for a wiggly audience with short attention spans.

Tuesday, November 15, 2005

Happy Birthday, lover of I Spy and Where's Waldo!

My son turned four this week--four! I was busy with birthday prep, then the birthday, and now post-birthday birthday-present immersion, which basically means that I've been enlisted to play The Incredibles, Trouble and Memory with him ad nauseam because they are new. Repetitive? Yes. But I welcome it as a merciful reprieve from army men. That has left me with precious little time to comb the bookshelves for some new reading selections. But that's okay, because the detail-oriented Birthday Boy got his first I Spy book as a gift from his Grandma, so that has taken the reading spotlight for the past few days anyway. (And now that he has tasted I Spy ownership--discovering that his favorite series can be had without borrowing from the library--he's already dropping hints that he'd like to amass the entire collection for Christmas.

Before I Spy and Where's Waldo, I had a willing audience for any children's book I wanted to bring home and read aloud. For several months now, though he has great love for many-a-story in our collection and still enjoys hearing new tales, his heart belongs to the series that gives him the challenge of finding the difficult to find. When I take him to the library now, it's not so much to allow him to browse as it is to allow him to get a fix. He runs to the sections where the I Spy and Where's Waldo books are kept, pulls every one off the shelf, makes sure I understand that he wants to take them, "all, all, ALL," home, and only once I agree to this is he able to relax and breathe normally. His enthusiasm for the books is sweet, if not a little obsessive.

Ahh, my dear, just wait until you meet Harry Potter.