Pete and Johnny to the Rescue

Pete and Johnny to the Rescue

Jorgen Clevin 1974

Interactive books are always fun.  This one has lots of things to look for and questions to answer as you read along.  There's even little stoplights on the pages to remind you to stop and answer the questions!   Pete the elephant goes to school while his friend Johnny stays home and takes care of their house on 14 Flower Street.  But as soon as school ends, Pete knows he has to get a job.  He wants to help people so Pete and Johnny start a Rescue Squad.  Soon they are performing all sorts of helpful tasks around their town.

Elephant end pages!

Mooch the Messy

Mooch the Messy

Marjorie Weinman Sharmat

picuters by Ben Shecter 1976

 I hate to admit how much I identify with Mooch!  He's a messy mouse who tries changing his ways when his father comes to visit.  But it's hard when you like everything messy!  It's a funny book because instead of being happy that his mouse hole is cleaned up and deciding to keep it that way, Mooch is unhappy and immediately reverts back to his messy self after his father leaves.  Let's just say this vintage I Can Read Book wasn't about a moral lesson!

Daniel Boone

 I didn't know Feodor Rojankovsky made some deliciously colorful illustrations for this 1945 book about Daniel Boone! 

Daniel Boone

Esther Averill

illustrations by Feodor Rojankovsky 1945

Once again such lovely end pages!  I would LOVE to have fabric with this pattern!

John Tabor's Ride

 I found this recently at a flea and was quite smitten!  Sea stories and accompanying folklore always draw me in.  Blair Lent's illustrations (woodcuts?  linocuts?) feel old fashioned but mesmerizing.  

John Tabor's Ride

Blair Lent 1966

John Tabor has been shipwrecked when along comes the most curious character, a man who looks a hundred years old wearing a "greasy wool sweater and a pair of tarred and tattered trousers."  No sooner does he catch a whale than he takes John Tabor on a ride around the world back to his home in Nantucket.  This is just the sort of old magical sea chanty kind of book that we would spend Summer afternoons reading.

Terry and the Caterpillars

Terry and the Caterpillars

Millicent E. Selsam

pictures by Arnold Lobel 1962

Since this is the time of year for caterpillar hunting and butterflies, here's an early reader combining a story and nature facts illustrated by one of our favorites, Arnold Lobel.

Terry is my kind of girl, curious and loving insects!  Even better are her parents who encourage her to keep her caterpillars, finding out how to care for them from the library, calling the museum with a question, and even waking Terry up in the middle of the night so she can watch one emerge from its cocoon.

"I wonder," she said.  "I really wonder how this can happen."  

"Things can change when they grow," said her mother.  "You change when you grow, too."

Miracles on Maple Hill

Miracles on. Maple Hill

Virginia Sorensen

illustrated by Beth and Joe Krush 1956

        This was such a heartwarming book with surprising gravitas.  Written in the 1950's, the father in this endearing story is implied to be suffering from PTSD from the war.  He's always tired and moody and isn't able to hold down a job.  So the family decides to have a change of scene and leaves the city for a rural house in the mountains that belonged to their grandmother.  Told through the adventures of the daughter Marley, the book follows the family through the year as they adapt and make a new life for themselves.  The children start a new school, meet a woodworking recluse and learn about country ways (especially tapping trees and making maple syrup) from their wonderful neighbors.  Meanwhile their father finds purpose and solace in the hard work of gardening on their land.  I absolutely love accidentally finding books like this, such forgotten gems!  

Some wonderful ways to read about this season of Springtime...  

    "Now the trees were growing up again, but there were tangled old limbs in piles and ancient stumps overgrown with lichens and moss and little green leaves and ferns.  If she stopped in the middle of all the thousands of things growing in every direction, she got what she called the 'push-feeling'.  Everything was pushing up into the sun, trying to grow taller and bigger.  She had never thought about it before in all her life, but all the miracles every week made her think about it."

    "So many things to begin again!  She knew how the leaves would come green on the trees, how their flowers would turn the soft maples red along the brook.  She knew where water would go tumbling as the snow melted, making waterfalls that were there only in the spring.  She lifted her face to the sun and laughed.  Spring sparkled already in the sharp air."