Books for children!

(I began this entry a week ago, which is why it implies today is Wednesday. Obviously it is not)

Tonight is a very special Wednesday Books, both because it's actually on a Wednesday, and because it is from babysitting and reading a great number of books to a very wee child! So here, have some board books and other children's books reviews, in roughly the order that the one particular wee child I look after picked them off the shelf:

• Animals in the Snow: This was a children's nonfiction book! At this point removed, I can't remember if it rhymed or not, but it did have very beautiful illustrations and lots of keen information about various forms of animals.I especially liked the two page spread that looked identical to the land behind St. Grandma's house, and the fat-positivity about the woodchuck being able to live off their stored energy.


• Raven's Ribbons: A sweet little two-spirit tale, with a couple excellent repetitions, both of which I caught The Toddler quoting to herself. Stomp stomp shuffle shuffle!


• Miss Leoparda: This is a charmingly illustrated tale about how much cars suck, and I am absolutely here for it. More pro-transit children's books, hell yes! Although it occurs to me, that really, children are already inherently pro-transit, what kiddo doesn't love a bus? (especially whose wheels go round and round)


• Bears in Pairs: This does indeed have the bears paired up! The best part is the strong variety in the illustrations as to what the bears specifically look like.


• Touch and Feel: Animals: Do I include books with no literary merit? The point of this book was to feel different textures, and I couldn't even really find an author, possibly because no one was willing to own up to "the koala's fur is soft. the lizard's skin is bumpy" style prose.


• The Number Devil: We read one chapter of this, which was _delightful_ as I knew it would be. It's one of my favourite books, and it's impressive that the kiddo was chill to listen through the entire chapter because while it's illustrated, it's really not a classic children's book, it's a chapter book if ever I saw one. I was very happy to revisit this one, it's been a while and I should finish reading the rest to myself sometime soon.
  
• The Girl Who Never Makes Mistakes: I believe I have already reviewed this one. On a second re-read, it's...fine? I like that Toddler identified it with the word "Humbert", referring to the hamster owned by our protagonist.


• Corduroy: Someone (EveZed, maybe?) was extolling the virtues of this one recently, and saying that they think every child should have a copy because of how nicely it is a found family/everyone belongs with someone who will love them as they are. It is a very sweet book, without being at all saccharine, and reads out loud extremely nicely.


• Goodnight Moon: Another one that is classic for a reason! I really like that the cadence isn't quite as poetically strict while still being extremely good to read.


• Mommy Hugs: I remember nothing about this at this point, but it is lots of hugging animals, so that's quite charming?


• Pajama Time: Another Boynton, one I'm a little less familiar with, but the rhythm was so good that I actually wound up singing it starting halfway through. She is such a treasure!


• The ABCs of Contra Dancing: I own a copy of this as well! It rhymes and the scansion is good! It's a very sweet little board book that does an extremely good job of fitting into its very specific niche.


• Hop on Pop: Ah, the first of several Seuss! I don't think I had realized/remembered how late into the book the actual titular hopping occurs, but I also was unsure if the board book version was slightly abridged or rewritten.


• The Foot Book: Not Seuss's finest work, but you do get to say feet and foot a lot, which are very good readaloud words.


• Ten on a Twig: This was a cute batch of birds, but felt mostly designed around its gimmick (pages of changing length, with the twig crossing over them.


• If Animals Kissed Like We Kissed Goodnight: This is the one that's still in my head the next day, and you know what? _that_ is a mark of a well cadenced board book. I had read this one nine years ago to the RBeast, quite a few times I believe, but it holds up pretty nicely to endless rereads.


• The Going to Bed Book: More Boynton, and I think one of my unexpected faves? It's not one of the ones I can quote or nearly, but I think I particularly like "when the moon begins to rise, the animals all exercise" and "with some on top and some beneath they brush and brush and brush their teeth". Boynton is just a _really good writer_, okay?


• That's Not My Kangaroo: You can't judge this particular line of books on their literary merit, because they have basically none --they're stim toys for babies, with the added bonus of some teaching of physical descriptors. As a stim toy, this one was _okay_. I felt there was a little too much repetition in textures, although the nose-was-too-rough was a particularly good feeling piece of velcro.


• There's a Wocket in my Pocket: More Seuss. Another one of his less great works, although it does feel extremely quintessentially Seussian with all its creatures. As a mature adult, I did giggle a bit at the bofa on the sofa.


• Max's New Suit: Rosemary Wells is also just really damn good. I love Max and Ruby stories, and associate them very strongly with being at St Grandma's house, so I feel like she must've had several. This one is a board book rather than a picture book, so it's very short, but I still quite liked it!


• All the Hippos Go Berserk: Everything Sandra Boynton writes is absolute gold. This is no exception, although as a more refined reader, I can't help but notice that the six hippos are not actually shown leaving, just distraught as the seven hippos head out. But serious bonus points for a counting book that goes ahead and acknowledges that sum of all the numbers we've just counted to.


• Moo Baa La La La: Both my mother and I have this one memorized, so it's a cute party trick where you can get one of us to start reciting it, and the other will join in, either chorusing or swapping lines back and forth. Anyways, this might be the single best board book ever written. I am not tired of it yet, and I have read it way more times than most people.


• Meena's Saturday: this one feels culturally complicated to write about, because on the one hand it is abhorrently "oh yeah, the boys in the fam all get to chill out while us woman and girls have to constantly work" but on the other hand, it is very clearly about a group of people which I do not belong to, and *also* it feels very much like it does not approve of the status quo and is not willing to accept "boys just get privileges over girls for no good reason". The descriptions of food were delectable though.


• The Magic School Bus Learns About Electricity: This was the last book before bedtime, very cleverly chosen as a pretty long one. I only read the core text and would've liked to read all the side notes (which contain puns and tons of extra information). Anyways, the crew goes through a power plant. Having read only the core story, I gotta say MSB is a little weak without any of the extra zjujing you get from the interstitials or the animations. Which is fine, it's got those things under ordinary circumstances!

Whew!

I should write a proper books as well, since I've been reading a fair clip, but that is probably going to wind up as a separate post. Part of me feels like maybe this kind of thing shouldn't count for my medialog, but no, fuck that, books are books. This is part of why I don't track "oh I read a hundred books this year" sorts of things though, because okay, yes, I did read 23 books this evening, but the average word count was probably somewhere in the low hundreds.

I do kinda wish it were acceptable as an adult to go sit in the children's section of a library more often and work through the shelves. I completely understand why I, an un-child-accompanied adult should not be allowed to do this, but I still wish it were occasionally an option. Sometimes you want to explore cadence and rhyme without worrying overmuch about plot!

~Sor
MOOP!

Scavenger Hunt!

Today I had a good morning of ADVENTURES!

I am visiting Tuesday in Providence, and ke found out about EscapeRhodeIsland's Eggscape scavenger hunt! (There was also an egg hunt which we mostly didn't participate in). The scav turned out to have ten locations to visit throughout downtown PVD: six local businesses, three interesting clocks, and a set of coordinates that led to some pretty great mushroom murals.

It was a really nice adventure through the town! We came in third, but we came in first in our hearts, mostly because we weren't at all treating it like a competition, we were treating it as a nice stroll through the city. After, we wound up chatting with Dizz and Chase who run the place for a goodly while, about internet culture and cool scavenger hunts and the like.

The weather was absolutely perfect for a long walk outside. It was sunny, but not brutally so, deliciously breezy without being chilly, and warm and not-too-humid. Hats off to the showrunners for getting us such a good day! Of the six locations, Tuesday and I had definitely been to one of them before (the Weird Lovecraft Bookstore in the PVD arcade!) but most of them were new-ish, and a few definitely felt like places to visit again in the future! Mostly it was just really nice to connect to the community so much, and get to visit a bunch of very local shops.

Afterwards, we got sammiches at Geoff's, and then strolled slowly back home, sitting sometimes to enjoy the sunshine and snuggling each other a bit. It is so good to get to hold hands with a pretty partner while you walk through the spring weather! It was also lovely to get to see lots of murals and interesting graffiti, and other nice bits of the city. I'm slightly regretting not having brought my camera!

We had a very lazy afternoon, to make up for the fact that we got up at like 7:30am on a weekend in order to make it to the hunt on time. Lots of lying in bed with the window open, enjoying the breeze and snuggling and napping. Eventually we woke up enough to have snacks, which turned into dinner when we actually looked at the clock.

Now I've settled in to write words and hang out online, and Tuesday is checking in on ker local puzzle-hunt team as they do a different big puzzle-hunt (which ke apparently did last weekend). Tomorrow I think we have no plans at all, which probably means playing rock band and watching telly and maybe going on another good walk outside. On Monday I have to return to Boston, which turns out to probably be the worst timing known to man (I have been so good about not traveling anywhere on marathon Monday for so many years...) and then on Tues I take a bus to BurlingtonVT for a few days to wander around a different city with a different partner. Then back to Massachusetts for NEFFA and back home somehow on Sunday. No sleep at all, just straight into work again.

Still, I am glad to have some vacation time, and doubly glad that at least some of that time is being wrapped in sunshine and spring breezes.

~Sor
MOOP!