Children's Book Recommendation

I read a chapter book aloud to the kids almost every night.  The book we just finished was one I picked up at the library because I thought the title sounded like it would interest Caleb.  He read a few pages and put it down, but when I read it aloud he couldn't get enough. In fact, no one could - this book was extremely popular with all the kids.

The Kid Who Ran for President is about a 6th grader named Judson Moon, who, through the influence of a friend, begins a campaign for president that grows beyond his wildest imagination.  The story is well told and  peppered with simple wisdom (politicians lie, the good old days weren't all that good, etc.).  It also sneaks in a good deal of knowledge about the American election system.

In short we highly recommend this book and look forward to checking out more of Dan Gutman's writing.

Book Recommendation(s)

We were browsing through the ancient Egypt books at the library when I pulled out a large red book with an Eye of Horus with a blue plastic jewel for the iris.  The title was CLEOPATRA.  I added it to our selections and took it home.  The book turned out to be one from a series of diary books that are written from the perspective of a tween aged child.  Cleopatra is voiced by a girl who works as her handmaid.  The kids loved it.  I loved it.  On top of that - we all learned lots and lots about Cleopatra and history.

Since then we have read Pirate Diary and Roman Diary - both by Richard Platt.  We just started Castle Diary.  The books give lots of details about daily life and are only a tiny bit anachronistic (my new favorite word).  There is always a bit of a stretch as to how the diary writer became literate and how they procure so much paper!  But we will let that stand :)  They are fascinating books just the same.

Cleopatra is by Adèle Geras.

Book Recommendation: Fair Weather

The kids and I recently finished listening to Richard Peck's Fair Weather on CD.  Although I've heard of Peck, I can't remember ever reading anything by him.  Wikipedia claims that he still uses an electric typewriter and "refuses to embrace new technology".  That's kind of ironic because this book is all about embracing what is new. 

Set in 1893, Fair Weather is the story of a 13 year old country girl named Rosie who gets the chance to travel to Chicago for the World Columbian Exposition with her grandfather, older sister, and younger brother.  It is a very nice mix of fact and fiction - only branching a little into feeling unreal (Granddad turns out to really know Buffalo Bill and this brush with real famous people seems out of place in the book to me.) and no apparent anachronisms - something that annoys me excessively in historical fiction.

The kids enjoyed this book, however, it is probably even better for middle school aged kids.  The theme of emerging technology is very pleasantly presented and this would make good fodder for a book report or study of a time in history when many technological changes were on the verge of changing life for everyone - something that was scary then and is still scary even though we live in a time when that is starting to become expected.   I liked it.

No Dragons for Tea - Picture Book Recommendation

It's been a while since I found a picture book to recommend, but this is one I think would be a perfect addition to any young child's personal library.

No Dragons for Tea is a cute story about a little girl who meets a dragon in the park.  She and her mother invite the dragon over for tea.  While having tea...the dragon sets the house on fire.  The little girl and her mom remain calm, but the dragon panics and does all the things you worry your kids might do if your house really was on fire.   Because it is a dragon making the mistakes, the tone of the book is not scary.  It is funny, but sensible.  The book ends with a rhyming poem about fire safety and a discussion page to share with your child.

I was very surprised to discover that even our big kids had a strong desire to "save" their favorite toys if the house was on fire.  As we discussed what we would do in that event, they both made clauses to the rules in their imaginary fires that allowed time to grab Softy the dog or a train set.  And although they knew "stop, drop, and roll", they didn't realize that smoke was dangerous.  They also terrified me with an escape plan that involved a 2nd floor window and the baby.

Never a dull moment around here...

Hermit the Frog, Benny the Pooh, and Who has time to blog anymore?

I know I have repeatedly said that having big kids is a big help,and it is, but the bottom line is that life is extremely full right now.  Too full to blog frequently.  So I am going to take advantage of having time tonight and post a bunch of mostly unrelated thoughts and pictures.

Such as...

This is the drain in the downstairs bathroom.  The items you see in the drain are:  a piece of soap, a pencil, a blue crayon, and the piece of mesh that fell out of the faucet.  The thing poking out of the wall of the pipe is the part that lifts the plug up and down.  The plug is MIA.

C and A are such different learners that I hardly know where to start with Natalie.  Will she be a deep thinker like Caleb, but struggle with reading?  Will she zip through the basics like Annalise?  Will she show me another completely different learning style?  She likes to have some worksheets to do, but she also likes to play.  I've decided to add a planner form for her to my weekly plan.  I'm planning 3 days of work and allowing 4 days to complete it.  One project she and I are working on is a "thing alphabet" -  B is for Buttons, etc.

Caleb and I made one of these when he was 2!  I would swear I posted it on this blog, but I can't find it.

Natalie is the one who says Hermit the Frog and Benny the Pooh.  And she's not being funny!  Although she often does try to be funny on purpose (and succeeds!)

Irene slept 9 hours each of the last two nights.  Maybe she is just an awesome sleeper, or maybe it is easier for a baby to get the picture in a house full of kids.  I can tell she differentiates between day and night.  If I turn on a light at night, she looks around for where the light came from.  Of course our house is much much quieter at night and in the daytime too!  I think there is a difference in me too -  it felt very natural to quickly establish a bedtime routine.  I don't mean to compare her to Mako, but it is kind of like how it is with a dog - there is so much said through body language that people who rely on speech don't notice.

One of Natalie's art projects this week was a giant paper doll.  I planned this activity without having a piece of cardboard big enough to carry it out.  Fortunately, my neighbor was throwing out a huge box on Monday.  We took the lid in, traced Natalie onto it, then I cut it out with a knife so that the outline was left on the box lid.  Then we took the lid back to my neighbor's house secretly and put it back where it had been.  We meant it as a big joke, but since we didn't tell anyone we did it, we don't know if anyone else thought it was funny!

I've done a lot more reading than I expected to at this time.  One book I read was The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy.  It's about the French Revolution and a mysterious hero who saves some of the people slated for execution.  It's a very quick read and lots of fun.  About 4 chapters from the end I had figured out the ending and I still loved it when I was right!  I also read Dracula by Bram Stoker.  Horror is not a genre that I ever read, but I liked Dracula - it was extremely intense and scary.  I cannot stomach the Halloween decorations including Dracula this year because of it!  An interesting thing about Dracula is the way the story is told - it is presented as a collection of journal entries, personal letters, and newspaper clippings from several different characters.  The sensation is that you feel you are collecting information instead of being told a story.

I got tired of reading Dragon books to the kids and am reading them Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O'Dell.  They are loving it!   It's about a girl who gets left behind on her island home and has to survive on her own.  I think a good follow up book would be Sign of the Beaver by Elizabeth Speare, but they are looking forward to reading How to Twist a Dragon's Tale by Cressida Cowell.

Annalise was here:

Too cool to drool.

The kids' bedroom:

We occasionally run into families where multiple kids share a bedroom, but not often.  When I talk to the moms, I find that there are lots of benefits to having our kids all in one room.  It is hard when it comes to storage (all of the time) or if someone wants to play alone (much less of the time).  However, the kids get along best after the lights are out.  They talk and laugh - sometimes too loudly.  We want to build another room in our house and that will spread the kids out some, but in their own imaginations, they would all sleep in one room and keep all their toys on another!  We may be getting too old for that to be reality, but I'm glad they are so attached to each other.

Books We've Read...Sort of

Would you believe it?  I finished a book!  Not Les Miserables though....Annalise had been asking about Queen Elizabeth (the first one), so I started looking for books at the library.  Among those that came up in the search was Death and the Virgin Queen by Chris Skidmore.  I though it sounded interesting and requested it along with some kid books about Elizabeth.  It was interesting - although a little anti-climactic.  I like it when there is a real story to go along with dry history.  I got so caught up in the scandal of Elizabeth's refusal to marry.  The book provides some "new" evidence in the case of the death of Amy Dudley - the wife of Robert Dudley, the only man historians believe Elizabeth was interested in marrying.  The coroner's report concluded that Amy died when she fell down a flight of stairs, but naturally it was a suspicious death.  Ultimately, there is no clear evidence as to whether it was an accident or by malice, but it makes an intriguing mystery.

Having stairs in my house, I did learn some interesting facts:
1.  You are statistically very, very unlikely to die by falling down stairs.
2.  However, you are much more likely to fall on a flight of stairs in the first three steps.
3.  Stairs with landings are much safer than stairs without landings.

What a relief!

The kids have been "reading" (i.e. listening to) a lot of chapter books lately.  They have really enjoyed the various Beverly Cleary books - especially ones about Henry Huggins, they think he is "keen".  Natalie seems to find Cleary's books easier to follow.  They are the only chapter books she has commented on.  And they are very funny.

We have also discovered The Doll People and its sequel The Meanest Doll in the World - both by Laura Godwin and Ann Martin.  We listened to both of them on CD.  They are both entertaining and suspenseful.  And they inspired Annalise to make our dollhouse much neater.   

They've also enjoyed lately Stuart Little and The Cricket in Times Square.  Talking animals or talking toys - either one is good fodder for kid fiction.

Caleb read a book this week called Planets Around the Sun.  It was a easy science reader and I am so proud of him.  Reading is very tedious for him and hasn't started being enjoyable to him yet.  He has fabulous listening comprehension, so I know that when it clicks for him, it will all come together.

So I don't exactly intend to give up on Les Miserables.  I just think that maybe this year it's the year I'm going to read it.  

The Boxcar Children

Before Christmas I picked up The Boxcar Children on CD at the library.  The kids had listened to The Incredible Journey a few weeks earlier and enjoyed it (although the vocabulary was pretty advanced for them, following up with the movie helped a lot).  The Boxcar Children was much more enjoyable for them.  Annalise requested a repeat...twice.  They listened to it on the road trip and it was every bit as entertaining to them as the little DVD player.  The CD also included the two sequels Surprise Island and The Yellow House Mystery.

I can understand why these books are so endearing to children.  The Boxcar Children is about four orphaned children who hide in a boxcar, for the young reader/listener, they are basically playing house.  For the adult it is an incredibly questionable book to read!  For starters, the parents of the four children are dead and there is no one to take care of them because their grandfather has shunned the family.  There is no mention of any other grandparents, how (or how recently) the parents died, why the grandfather avoided the family (other than he "did not like" the mother, but it doesn't ever tell why), and the kids never show any grief over losing their parents.  The older boy and girl assume parental roles.  The girl cooks and directs home-life in the boxcar and the boy gets a job helping out at a wealthy man's house.  The wealthy man discovers who the kids are and who their grandfather is (he put an ad in the paper looking for them), but decides not to turn them over to him.  When the grandfather finds out he's not blinded with rage, he understands the doctor's decision.

The books cover 3 consecutive summers.  By the summer of Surprise Island the children are living happily with their grandfather and as a treat to them, he lets them spend the whole summer living on a small island (with extremely limited adult supervision - the eldest child is about 15 at this point, the youngest 6).  There they meet a strange man who turns out to be their cousin.  He wants his identity kept secret, but the reason for that is never given.  At the end of the book, he goes to live with them at their grandfather's too.

To me, The Yellow House Mystery was probably the best of the bunch.  It still had some hard to reconcile items, but for the most part didn't have any parts that left you wondering why no one had called the police.  The gist of it is that a man who had worked for their grandfather's father had disappeared years earlier.  The children and their cousin and his new wife go to Maine to hunt for clues about the man's disappearance.  By this time, the kids know the characters so well they can concentrate on the mystery and the adult listening with them has just given up on the difficulties, suspends her disbelief and begins to enjoy the story.

Honorable Mentions

Here are a few recommendable books that I have found while preparing for the My America class.  These did not make it into the lessons because they were a little more than I needed, they are better books than most of the ones I ended up using...at least so far.

The Hatmaker's Sign is a story claimed to have been told by Benjamin Franklin to Thomas Jefferson when the continental congress made many revisions to the submitted version of the Declaration of Independence.  It is clever and makes a point - kind of what I imagine Benjamin Franklin to have been himself.  It is understandable for kids, but I thought it would be too confusing to explain to a group.  I read it to our kids, they liked it, but I don't know that they really grasped the whole intent of the story.

This book I really liked.  I saw it on the shelf at the library and grabbed it on my way out.  You really could have a lot of fun with this book if you had a group of older kids - say about 5th grade.  It has activities like acting out the battle of Cowpens and making your own tricorn hat.   It was great for me because I was able to read it and get a good overview of the Revolution in whole.  Being for kids, it was about on my level for history reading! 

I didn't read this book in class because I read it twice at home and cried both times.   It's the story of two boys who are fighting for the Union during the Civil War.  It is dramatic and emotional and based on a true story.  I've read other books by Patricia Polacco and I like her style.

And I requested this one after I finished The American Revolution for Kids.  I have a little more prior knowledge about the Civil War than the Revolutionary War.  This is another one I think would be great for older kids.  You can make your own hardtack and learn the Rebel yell.    Janis Herbert has more books like this - Abraham Lincoln, Lewis and Clark (next for me I think!), and Marco Polo.

All the My America studying has made me a little geeky for American History.  I borrowed the first two episodes on the HBO miniseries John Adams and made Rob watch them with me for date night.  Now I want to be Abigail Adams for Halloween!

Kid Book Review: Shipwrecked!

I think we may have accidentally found an author to add to our list of favorites...  A few weeks ago, Caleb pulled Shipwrecked by Rhoda Blumberg off the shelf at the library.  I'm sure he was interested in the large wave on the cover.  I shrugged and toss it in with the rest of our books.  I didn't know what to expect of it.

It turned out to be a fascinating biography of Manjiro Nakahama - the first Japanese person to visit the United States.   We both learned a lot while reading it.  I had no idea that Japan had been so isolated from the rest of the world as little as 200 years ago.

I very much recommend this book as a good biography to read with kids.  I don't want to spoil the story though.  Blumberg wrote several other biographies for kids.  Several of them are carried in our library and we are planning to read more.

Apple to Oregon Art

We have been a little behind on our artwork lately.  Natalie has moved into climbing, so my ability to focus on other tasks has been hampered.  This is a project I have been meaning to do for a while.  I got the idea from Splish Splash Splatter, but once we had time to do it, I could not find the original post.  So, here's how we did it - basically this is a lesson on perspective...well and history.  First we read Apples to Oregon (multiple times - since I planned to do this craft eons ago).  It is a (slightly) true account of a pioneer who brought fruit trees along with his family on their journey west. 

Step one:  watercolor ground and sky.  We let this dry overnight - mostly because that's all we could get done before our resident rock climber's nap was over.

Step Two:  Tree Trunks - I did an example (pictured below) showing them to draw larger trunks at the bottom, middle sized ones in the middle and tiny ones in the back, but...well at least we got tree trunks!

Step Three:  Leaves - I cut up a sponge to dab on the leaves, very nice effect I think.

Step Four: Apples - the end of a dum dum stick was the perfect size!

My sample trees.

Annalise's trees - She drew the middle row of trunks.  I helped her out on the other two rows, but she did all the rest herself. 

Caleb's Trees - can you tell he got bored with the craft after a while!  He really enjoyed dabbing on the leaves though, and I guess that's why the back trees got so huge :)

So I'm not sure how much we learned about creating perspective with artwork, but I think that is ok.  Kids know that things look smaller from farther away.  We put our Christmas tree up on Thanksgiving afternoon and a couple of days later I saw Caleb standing back from it, holding up his hand and squinting, "From here, our Christmas tree is as big as my hand!"

Spanglish Books

We have continued in our Spanish lessons, but it is really hard for me to help the kids review at home.  For one, even when I know the words, I don't have a lot of confidence in how to put together a sentence correctly or how to use the right case.  I was reading Spanish picture books to the kids, but my pronunciation is definitely lacking!  Fortunately, I've found several "Spanglish" books that I can read and I think they help the kids learn a little vocabulary too. 

The Moon is La Luna is a book of clever rhymes - I've been reading it to the kids pretty often and they have memorized several of them, they are funny, like:

To say chair is Spanish is silla.

(See-ya is how it is said.)

So if your friends, to you, say "See ya!"

Yell "CHAIR!" to them instead.

Susan Middleton Elya is an author I've discovered.  She's written several Spanglish books - Say Hola to Spanish, Say Hola to Spanish Otra Vez (Again), Say Hola to Spanish at the Circus, Oh no!  Gotta Go! and others.  All of them are mostly English, but when a Spanish word is introduced, it's done in a way that the reader will be able to figure out the meaning contextually and usually the Spanish word rhymes with a preceeding English word, which helps with the pronunciation.   

Clearly books like these aren't enough to teach you how to speak or understand Spanish, but I think every little bit helps.  And the kids are picking up bits here and there, at least as much as they can without having an actual abuela - a Spanish speaking grandma - but we are pretty partial to the grandmas we have, so that will have to do for now :)

King Cake and Tomie dePaola

Last year we made gumbo (read "time consuming)" and iced a small regular cake with a glaze and colored sprinkles. This year, I made a creole crockpot meal (read "easy") and spent the effort on the king cake. Here it is:


The recipe I used listed it's level as "difficult". Mostly it was time consuming. It took 2 days and four rest periods. But, I think it was not any harder than other breads. I think I made a mistake in not covering it better during the overnight rise. The dough was dry and the resulting bread was dry too. Other than the ring splitting and coming apart during the proof, I think the rest of it went ok.

I already had green and purple/lavender sprinkles on hand. We made yellow/gold.
By the way, it wasn't cold, Annalise just found the sweater and wanted to wear it.

Guess who found the baby this year!


Since Mardi Gras preceeds Ash Wednesday and Lent, I decided to combine this with this book we checked out from the library.

I am becoming a big fan of Tomie dePaola, who is Catholic. He has so many great books. This one is a retelling of an ancient fable about a boy who becomes a juggler and realizes at the end of his life that all can be done for the glory of God. Annalise likes it a lot and I think she finds it very moving because the man dies at the end. It has inspired Caleb to want to learn to juggle! We also like it because it is set in the Reniassance and March 25th is the Reniassance Faire at PEP and we all have to dress up - and its illustrations provide some reasonable ideas for costumes.

Library Gems

Usually when we visit the library, I let the kids pick out a DVD from their unusual collection. This time we picked out:
"Straight Up: Helicopters in Action" - it is an IMAX film and it is great! It showed helicopters that transformed mid-flight from helicopters to airplanes and showed how helicopters are used in law enforcement, air rescue, logging, and power line repair. The kids liked it, I liked it and Rob liked it.

I requested this one, and was very pleased with it - "Somos Amigos: Professor Parrot Speaks Spanish". It is only 30 minutes long, but covers a lot of vocabulary in ways that were fun and easy to learn. Both of the kids have been trying out their Spanish - although they had to watch is about 3 times to get there. Since I've taken a Spanish class before, I found that it refreshed my memory easily. It covered conversational basics and numbers, but also introduced several verbs and nouns. The lessons included songs, games, and a story.

Our books from the same visit were mostly just ok, but the kids really liked:Grandpa's Teeth - it's a mystery story where Grandpa's dentures are stolen, it's pretty clever. We also checked out Amelia Bedelia and although Annalise didn't catch on to the humor, Caleb understood some of it and they both liked her name :)

Children's Book Reviews: Kevin Henkes and The Fat Cat

Just wanted to highlight a couple of our recent finds at the library:

Kevin Henkes must like mice because as far as I know, that's what he writes about! But his little community of mice is as cute as can be and my kids love them. Shelia Rae, the Brave is the first one we've picked up at the library, but they have a Scholastic DVD of 3 of this other stories - Chrysanthemum, A Weekend with Wendell, and Owen. Shelia Rae, the Brave is about two sister mice - the older sister Shelia Rae is very brave! Her little sister Louise is quite timid. But when Shelia Rae gets lost, it is Louise who comes to her rescue and proves that she is actually pretty brave herself!

I like this book, What Will Fat Cat Sit On? (by Jan Thomas), a lot more than I expected to. In fact, when we go to the library I sometimes weed out a few of our selections and discreetly return them in the drop box by the parking lot. The kid-friendly part of this book is that it is really funny and really simple at the same time - all I have to do to get my kids giggling is to say, "Sit on the Pig! Sit on the Pig!" But as a someone who taught first graders to read, I can see this book would be great for a kid in kindergarten or 1st grade to read on their own. Most of the words are short vowel words. Caleb knows most of his letter sounds and the short vowels, but hasn't been interested in stringing them all together (and that is fine with me), but he does have this book mostly memorized and I can see how, if he were personally inclined, he could connect what he knows the book says with the letters he does know and gain a little ground in reading.

Two Favorites of Annalise

Annalise has a new favorite book character:
And I have to admit, Lyle is my kind of character too! Bernard Waber wrote a whole series about Lyle the Crocodile. The stories are kind of silly and at the same time have the most lovely vocabulary. This is my kind of educational book. You never get the feeling that he wrote the book to teach, but you can't help but see kids will learn new words reading it.

We also read Waber's book Ira Sleeps Over and liked it a lot too. It's about a boy who is sleeping over at a friend's house for the first time and is indecisive about bringing his teddy bear along.

And her "for now" favorite Youtube:


I thought it would be funny if we remade the video with Mako, but these pictures will have to suffice, I'm pretty sure we won't be able to get him to dance!

Annalise's New Favorite Book

Here is Annalise's current favorite book. It is a simple little book about a baker who makes a bunch of cookies and then sells them to kids. She could read it every day, multiple times a day! Last time we went to the library, Caleb brought it to me saying, "Let's get this one for Annalise." I guess he knows her style! An online summary about it called it an "educational book", which just about ruined it for me! I think kids learn something from books no matter what, so just write it and let us enjoy it without making it "the perfect supplement to early math units"!

Another book she has really loved lately is Cars and Trucks and Things That Go, a book Caleb was given as a gift when he turned 1 and I didn't bother to read to him because it was so long. But lately we read it every now and again and Annalise especially loves Goldbug! A direct quote from her lips: "Me yuve Go-bug!" I didn't realize he was on every page, but now I can hardly read the book for her insisting we "Find Go-bug!" Anyway, he is on every page. The hardest one to find him on is the military page - he is hiding in a big green tank and barely peeking out of a tiny window, but he is there! Much to the delight of Annalise :)

Children's Book Review: The Web Files

I am really surprised I haven't posted this book before. It has been a favorite of mind since I taught 1st grade - waaaaaay back in B.C. (Before Caleb).

The Web Files by Margie Palatini is a funny little book about a duck who is a detective. The whole book is done in a Dragnet theme, complete with the DUM DE DUM DUM. Ducktective Web must find a thief who has hit several farm homes in one morning. The book is filled with references to nursery rhymes, cleverly placed homonyms, and alliteration - I find myself wondering how Palatini pulled together so many good ideas into one book without it seeming overdone. We have another book if hers, Moostache, and it is cute, but I would have liked it more if I had not read The Web Files first.

This book is ours, not a library book, which is good because I would hate to give it back!

Children's Book Review: The Stray Dog

At one point, I considered maintaining another blog just to review children's books. We read so many! But I decided against it because, well, you know I have sooooo much free time, and because there are sooooooooo many children's books I do not like and do not want to bother reading or checking out from the library. While I certainly do want my children to learn life lessons and grow in character, I don't really like story books that are written for that purpose - the exception being some classic fairy tales, which somehow transcend the preachy-ness and tell a great story while conveying a serious lesson at the same time. I also don't like most serious children's books. Snore...

But this little gem is not boring at all! And I don't just like it because it is short! My mom introduced me to The Stray Dog while I was teaching 1st grade. I always read the byline to my kids when we read stories, The Stray Dog by Marc Simont, is a very short, sweet little story about a family that finds a stray dog and decides to adopt him.

I LOVE how so much of this book is told in pictures. I usually like best the books where the author is also the illustrator (like David Shannon). The very front of the book (before the title page) opens up to a picture of a dirty little dog eating garbage. The title page shows a girl and her little brother looking wistfully at a field of people playing with their dogs, so right from the beginning it sets up these two beings that just need each other.

A side benefit of this book is that it helped both of my kids understand a little bit about ownership. The family at first doesn't take Willy home because "he might belong to someone", and when Willy is almost taken by the dog catcher, the children claim him saying, "he belongs to us!" I was able to tell both kids as new "getting-into-everything-ers", "That does not belong to you" and I think it was because of this book that they understood that it was off limits. At any rate, they usually would put it down.

So if you like dogs, even a little bit, you will probably like this story, and if you are pregnant, it will probably make you cry.

Baby Book Review: Shrek!

Lately, we've picked up a lot of William Steig books at the library. Having fond childhood memories of reading Sylvester and the Magic Pebble made me curious about the other books he'd written. What I didn't expect to find was that he wrote the book that inspired the movie Shrek.

I had to request it, but before we even got it, I thought, "It figures, Steig's books always seem to include talking donkeys!" And the donkey in the book Shrek is an important part of the plot. Shrek is a disgusting, green ogre who marries a princess, but that is basically the end of the similarities with the movie!

On the whole I did not like it as much as some of his other books. So far my favorite was Solomon the Rusty Nail. And I had to do a quick edit when Shrek calls the donkey a name, that really means donkey, but that is also an innappropriate word to teach your 3 year old.

Baby Book Review : Good Boy, Fergus!

Annalise has a new favorite book!

I've written before about how much I like the pictures books by David Shannon. His books are very simple, but are so good at highlighting very funny and very real things. Like this book:
Good Boy, Fergus! Is a tribute to Shannon's own dog, Fergus. Fergus as a character actually shows up in some of his other books, but this one is all about him! He reminds me so much of Mako, it's kind of scary!

Obedient is not a word to describe Fergus!

Caleb really likes this book too, his favorite page is the "pee" page, where good ole Fergus has marked his territory in six different places.

Anyway, there are so few words in this book, to discuss it is to ruin it for you - it's funny, witty, and really fun. Good boy, Fergus!